Separated: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (One Family's Survival Book 1) Read online

  Over the years, Cole and Jenny had criss-crossed it with trails. Some were just game trails they followed often enough to widen them up a bit. Others were intentionally cut through the undergrowth for mountain biking.

  Cole figured that anybody coming to the cabin, especially if they were going to come at night, would naturally gravitate to these easy routes.

  He wished desperately that they had set up game cameras out on the land, even though he wasn’t sure if they’d still be functioning after the EMP or not.

  The past few years, intermittent droughts had left things dry enough up in the area that they had to be cautious about fires outside.

  Not only small evening bonfires for the family to gather around, but even sometimes using their charcoal grill was too much of a risk.

  That summer had been one of them, so even if Cole could rig up some sort of trip flare with a mousetrap and the powder from one of the rifle bullets or something, he figured that would be a terrible idea.

  Still, they did have mousetraps. They had a lot of fishing tackle, and assorted tools, fixtures, and other odds and ends.

  “How you feeling, JJ?” Cole asked, after coming in from a trip around the property to get a good look at how many trails were out there.

  “Better. Not as hot, and the ibuprofen is working a little bit to take the edge off the pain.”

  “Still bleeding?”

  She lifted up her shirt to look at the bandages. “Nothing’s bleeding through Mount Bandage here.”

  “OK. I’m going to need your help with something. Your brains and your hands.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” Jenny said, tapping the side of her head.

  “I’m still the better looking one,” Cole said.

  “Which will help us out how?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. But what I have figured out is that we have fourteen different trails on the property that I want to cover somehow. I don’t know if there’s a way to set an alarm of some sort with what we’ve got.” He gave her the quick inventory of stuff he’d identified as being potentially useful.

  “Out in the shed,” Jenny said. “We’ve got the empty bottles and cans and garbage we’ve made over the past couple of weeks. Plus more full bottles and cans in the pantry that we can empty out if we can safely repackage the food.”

  “Noise makers?” Cole asked.

  “Pretty much. I don’t think we could make anything super loud, but it might give us a bit of advance warning. Even if we did set something up that would let us know if something had crossed a trail. If somebody was just scouting about, we’d be able to tell they’d been here at least.”

  “Couldn’t they just reset the trap?”

  “Not if we make it a huge pain in the ass to do so in daylight, so it would be impossible to do quietly at night,” Jenny said.

  Cole considered this.

  “Or, if we set something up that couldn’t be reset at all, like if the trap physically breaks something,” Jenny continued.

  “So how would we design it?”

  “Give me one of those mouse traps,” Jenny said.

  After an hour of trying things out, they figured out something that worked inside the cabin. A trip wire would trigger the mouse trap, and that would release a catch that could drop something else. Cole brought in the bags of trash, and they tied several empty bottles and cans to a length of fishing line.

  They tested their first trap, with the noise maker bundle thrown over a tree branch twenty feet up.

  The trip line worked exactly as they’d intended, and the tumble of garbage was enough to startle Cole, but most of the sound was swallowed up by the woods, and Jenny was able to hear it quietly from inside the cabin.

  “It’s not a perfect system, but it might help,” Cole said.

  “There’s no way that would wake either of us up at night.”

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to be both sleeping at the same time for quite a while now. There should always be one of us up and moving around. Especially after dark.”

  “So fifty-percent guard, as dad would say?”

  While Cole went to reset the first trap, Jenny started tying more noisemakers.

  It was near nightfall on the second day that they had put at least something across each of the trails onto the property.

  It was good for Cole to have a reason to go out and put a critical eye on the grounds as he looked for the best places on each trail to set the trap.

  He started to think about which routes he would take to get to the cabin, noting where he could and could not be easily seen from the doors and windows.

  He decided that his task for the next day would be to find a way to map out those places with Jenny, so they could figure out how to handle them.

  Dinner that night was late and cold, nothing exciting. The cabin had solar panels up on the roof, but the EMP seemed to have fried the circuitry in the battery chargers attached to it.

  They had a small supply of non-rechargeable batteries for their flashlights and LED lanterns, and some fuel for their gas lanterns, but both were in very finite supply. They still didn’t feel like eating in darkness, so they turned on one a single LED lantern on its lowest power setting.

  “Best thing to do is to assume we’re in it for the long haul, and find ways to use as little fuel as possible,” Jenny said.

  “We’ve got the wood stove, too,” Cole said.

  “Smoke. Unless we’re burning very dry wood, there will be smoke. And even a dry wood fire will still have a smell.”

  “Well, if we’re in it for the long haul, we need to be prepared to keep this place warm. We’ll be getting our first frost soon, so we’ll need to start heating this place with the wood stove.”

  “True,” Jenny said. “We should ration the seasoned wood we already have, and start stockpiling more now. Dead wood still on the tree is going to be best. We may need to consider only heating the place at night, as long as we can hold out that way.”

  “Would we only cook at night, too?”

  “Probably. But I also remember reading something a while ago that will help stretch our fuel supply. Tonight while I’m up on guard, I’ll start working on a haybox. It’s really just an insulated box, an old way of cooking when fuel was in short supply. Put all the ingredients into a container, get it up to boiling, then stuff the container into the insulated box, and let it finish cooking by its own residual heat.”

  “Great,” Cole said. “But that does bring us to the next thing to consider, which is food in general. Assuming it’ll be just us.”

  He paused then, for the first time admitting out loud that he was doing survival math was for two, not four.

  “We could live on what we’ve got in the cabin for at least six weeks, longer if we stay in good health and go on lighter rations. Most of the food we’ve got is shelf-stable, but we’re going to need to think about supplementing it.”

  Jenny nodded. “I had been thinking about that, too. Big game is out if we’d like to avoid the sound of gunfire as much as possible. Hunting well away from the cabin would be less likely to reveal its location, but the farther we are from here, the greater the risks. Even if we did go for big game, we don’t have the means to really process and preserve it. Smoking uses a lot of wood and makes a ton of smoke and odor.”

  “Let’s research air dehydrating or other methods. Plus, in winter, we’ll have natural cold to preserve meat,” Cole said. “In the meantime, we’ve got one old snare in the garage, and we’ve got the survival books. Those will have instructions on how to build our own snares and traps for smaller game.”

  “We could fish down in the creek, too.”

  “Once we really get the situation figured out, maybe at the lake as well. Better chances there.”

  “Looks like we’ve both got a lot of reading to do. And a lot of work over the next few days.”

  Chapter 9

  “Damn, damn damn!” Bill said. “I was hoping we could get a
cross the lake fast, before anything got organized.”

  “They’re not completely set up,” Sally said. “They only had a local deputy at Rexford, which is how we slipped the net there. We’ve still got some time to get across if we can figure something out fast.”

  Bill looked out over the still water of the lake.

  There was a boat on a trailer and four kayaks over at the cabin, which wasn’t doing them any good at all on the east side of the lake.

  They hadn’t encountered any boats as they’d come along the shoreline.

  As Patten had warned them, it was steep in a lot of places, and there were no decent landings between Rexford and the bridge where somebody could get a trailer down to the water. The few homes on that part of the lake were a couple hundred feet uphill from the water.

  He thought back, trying to remember any details from his drives along Highway 37 over the years they’d had the cabin.

  There was no shortage of canoes and kayaks mounted to vehicle roof racks all over the area.

  Many of the homes also had at least one or two small boats in a shed or leaned up against the side of the house.

  “Maybe it’s time to get a little bit dishonest,” Bill said.

  “How so?” Sally asked.

  Twenty minutes later, they were carefully approaching the first house to the north.

  The farther they were from a known concentration of troops when they crossed the lake, the better, so they had started backtracking towards Rexford.

  Before they got within two hundred feet, of the house, though, they heard a dog start barking.

  “This one’s out…” Sally said, as she and Bill slowly backed themselves down the hill and out of sight of the house’s windows.

  They had no idea if night vision equipment would have survived the event, but didn’t want to find out the hard way if the homeowner had a functioning scope on a rifle.

  Two more houses north, and they found a possible candidate to approach more closely.

  Even in the darkness, they could pick up the too-neat feel of the yard and the kitschiness of weekenders as opposed to a full-summer or year- round family.

  The place simply didn’t look lived in, even though the lawn was mowed there were toys and patio furniture in the yard. There wasn’t a vehicle in the driveway, which boded well for the place being empty.

  Bill hoped it meant the family had been in town when the event happened, and had been swept up when the law and military started rounding people up. Still, they took no chances as they hugged the tree line and looked in on the place with their binoculars.

  “Curtains open all over the place. If they were home, they’d shut them up, right?” Sally asked.

  “I assume so. We close ours at night.”

  “Think it’s worth a shot?”

  Bill looked at his watch. It was four in the morning, and dusk would be breaking soon.

  He wasn’t sure they’d be able to get anything down to the water and across the lake before daylight, but also didn’t want to just cool his heels for another full day on the east side of the lake instead of moving tangibly closer to their goal.

  “Yeah. Best chance we’ve had or are likely to get.”

  They crept up to the side of a small outbuilding, white with cute blue window trim and scalloped eaves.

  There were three kayaks inside, two singles and a double, along with paddles, life jackets, and fishing gear.

  “Bust a window?” Bill asked.

  “Not if we can avoid it,” Sally said, looking around.

  There was no way either of them would be able to crawl in through the small side window, much less push a kayak out through it.

  “Here,” she said, picking up a long metal poker beside the steel fire pit in the middle of the yard.

  With a little bit of finagling, she got the poker wedged into the hasp of the padlock on the door, and after a couple of attempts, got just the right leverage to pop it open.

  Bill and Sally darted back behind the shed as fast as they could while still being reasonably silent, and waited, listening to see if the noise had gotten any obvious response.

  After a couple of minutes, they went inside the shed and took a couple of life jackets off of their hooks.

  “Grab two singles or the double?” Sally asked.

  Bill chewed on that thought for a moment. “Singles. If anything happens to one of us on the crossing, the other still has a chance.”

  In the dim, pre-dawn light, Bill could see Sally’s frown as she agreed with the assessment.

  They lashed the life jackets to their bug-out bags, and each grabbed a paddle and a kayak, taking time to close the shed door and at least put the busted padlock back in its place.

  The trip down the hillside to the water was nowhere near as quiet as they’d hoped.

  They had found a slight trail to follow, but it was obviously just for foot access down to the water, never intended for hauling boats up and down.

  Every time one of them banged a kayak against a tree or bounced part of it off the ground, the hollow thunk made them cringe and grit their teeth.

  Having a son like Cole who loved the water, Bill and Sally had learned how to load and handle kayaks pretty well. At the water’s edge, they reloaded their rucks to get the weight distribution right, and put their pistols and a few other items into the waterproof wells to keep them dry in case they dumped.

  Bill felt uncomfortable not having his pistol right at hand, but he felt it was safer to keep it dry and secure in the kayak than risk it slipping out and sinking to the bottom of the lake.

  It was just before five when they got everything set just right.

  Sally was sitting on a piece of driftwood taking her shoes and socks off, and Bill stood next to her. He could almost make out the far horizon.

  “Think we can make it?” he asked.

  “We’ve crossed the lake in under a half hour with the kids before. Maybe we make it in twenty, if we paddle like we mean it.”

  Bill nodded. “Go for it, or hide out until night again.”

  Sally looked at her watch and up at the sky. Stars were still visible, but fading as the first deep purple hue of dawn was starting to show to the east.

  “The longer we linger, the more control the government’s going to have. They’re clearly trying to shut down movement in the area.

  They managed to get the bridge within a few hours. If we give them another day, how much more control will they be able to assert?”

  “I think you’re right,” Bill said.

  He sat down beside Sally and took off his boots and shoes, tying them together and securing them to one of the cargo nets on top of the kayak.

  As he settled into the seat and felt the small boat rock slightly, between his weight and the bulk of the ruck sitting on top of the deck, his stomach tied itself up in a knot.

  Ever since he’d lost his brother, Bill had always been uncomfortable on the water. Raising Cole had gone a long way towards helping with that – he was bound and determined that he would not pass his own fear onto his son – but he also spent a lot of time hiding that fear from his family.

  It always left him paying way too much attention to every single motion of the boat or his balance, and way too little to everything else, which is why he’d frequently drop his sunglasses or a soda can or a sandwich into the lake.

  With Cole and Jenny on the far side of the lake, and crossing at a bridge not being an option, paddling across quickly while they still had a little bit of darkness for cover was what he had to do.

  As much as he really wanted to hop out of the kayak, duck around a corner, and let his nervous guts empty themselves out before he started across, he just didn’t have the time for it.

  “We’re burning darkness,” he said to Sally, taking his oar and pushing off from the shore.

  They made good time getting across the lake, always aiming a little north to account for the light current.

  They wanted to keep as much dist
ance between themselves and the bridge as they could.

  As the far shore came ever closer, Bill finally started to relax knowing he was just a few minutes from getting off the water.

  They were just a couple hundred yards away when he heard the buzzing hum of an outboard motor. He and Sally both looked left, to see a boat coming up at them from the bridge.

  Two strong flashlights on it were raking over the surface of the water, seeking them out.

  “Pour it on!” Sally said to Bill, setting the example as she redoubled her efforts at her own paddle.

  Bill felt his stomach flip over and had to bear down to keep his bowels from emptying on him.

  His first hard stroke unbalanced him, not enough to dump the kayak, but he had to lean and swish the paddle to right the kayak and steady himself. Sally spared him a look over her shoulder.

  “Keep going,” Bill said. “At least one of us needs to get to the kids.”

  “Keep coming,” Sally said. “Best if we both make it.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Bill said, putting paddle to water again, this time forcing himself to keep it at a pace he could control.

  Sally was getting ahead of him, but he knew that if he tried to catch up, he was going over.

  “US Army! Both of you stop! Put your paddles down and hands up!” somebody shouted from the boat.

  Bill took another look back. There wasn’t enough light yet for him to make out anything other than a small motorboat coming his way.

  The two flashlights aimed towards him and Sally suggested at least three soldiers aboard, assuming the driver was not also searching the water ahead.

  “Get to shore!” Bill said to Sally.

  “Keep coming, you can do it,” she said, turning to give him another quick look, but Bill noticed she also didn’t slow down. She just kept powering along, steady and smooth.

  Bill took another look at the oncoming boat. It was clearly angling to get between Sally and the shore. He needed to do something to buy her some time.

  With a loud slap of his paddle against the water Bill pushed the kayak over its tipping point.