Chapter 6
The moment John saw the gunshot wound in Jake’s abdomen, he rushed to his friend and caught him before he hit the ground.
Jake was already cold and sweaty, his skin clammy to the touch. He was losing blood, and John immediately removed his work shirt and pressed it against the wound to help stop the bleeding.
“I don’t feel too good, buddy,” Jake said.
“Everything is going to be okay,” John said, but as he spoke, he noticed the chaos around him. Everyone was only out to save themselves.
John glanced behind him and saw the pregnant woman leaning against a blue Mercedes as she struggled with her contractions. He couldn’t leave her here but couldn’t carry her into the city.
It was nearly impossible, but John had never shied away from a challenge or left somebody who needed help.
“Hang on,” John said.
John rushed back to the truck, which was totaled, but all his survival gear was still inside. He ripped open the driver’s door and reached for the hidden compartment beneath.
After John salvaged his supplies, he returned to his friend and started to clean and dress the wound. Upon closer inspection of the gunshot, John saw it had gone all the way through.
“The bullet is not inside of you,” John said. “That’s a good thing.”
“It doesn’t feel like a good thing,” Jake said.
“It’s good that you still have your sense of humor,” John said. “I’m going to clean the wound and then get you stitched up, and then we need to move. This is going to sting.”
Jake screamed when John poured the antiseptic over the wound. “It feels like my heart is going to pop out of my chest,” Jake said.
John checked Jake’s pulse and felt it racing. But there was little he could do. All that mattered was stitching up the wound and getting Jake stabilized enough to where they could move him.
Jake swore and grunted as John stitched up the bullet hole.
“I don’t think I’ve heard you swear like that since your divorce,” John said.
“Yeah, well, the divorce was more painful than this,” Jake said.
“Almost done,” John said.
John finished the stitch work, which was ugly, but the bleeding had stopped. After that, he placed fresh bandages over the wound to guard it from infection, and then he left Jake with a bottle of water as he tended to the pregnant woman.
“How are you doing back there?” John asked.
The woman was sitting down now, her back against the same blue Mercedes as before.
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last,” she said. “I feel like he’s going to come any minute now.”
“I need to see how far along you are and if you’re dilated,” John said. “That requires me being slightly invasive.” John didn’t know how else to say it without appearing perverted, but he decided that keeping it professional and clinical was the best course of action.
“Okay,” she said.
Both of Maggie’s pregnancies were home births, so John knew a little about the process.
“Okay, it looks like you’re only about two or three centimeters dilated,” John said. “The good news is that you still have some time before the baby will come. The bad news is your contractions are only going to get worse.”
“Great,” she said.
“What’s your name?” John asked.
“Pam,” she answered.
“Okay, Pam, we need to get you to the hospital as quickly as possible,” John said.
Pam shook her head. “I can’t even stand up. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
“Pam, listen to me,” John said. “If you want your baby to survive, you must get on your feet. I’m not leaving you. I’ll be there to help you every step of the way, but we need to move now.”
The mention of her baby’s life prompted Pam to find an inner strength she didn’t know she had and forced herself to stand. “How far to the hospital?” Pam asked.
“Best if you don’t know,” John said.
“Great,” Pam replied.
Now that John was confident Pam would make it, he needed to figure out how to get Jake to the hospital because he doubted his friend would make it.
“Can you walk?” John asked.
Jake had always been a prideful man, so he nodded when he saw Pam, who was in active labor, walking toward them.
But when John helped Jake to his feet, he couldn’t stand up straight. He was forced to hunch as he hobbled forward and gained momentum.
“I’ve got this,” Jake said.
Once everyone was on their feet, John guided them down the highway toward the city, joining the masses who wandered aimlessly.
John wanted to warn all of them, to tell them it was a mistake to go into the city, but he didn’t have time for that. He was only heading into that chaos to get his wife and son. Once he had both of them, he’d be gone.
When they neared the city limits, it was clear that insanity had taken control of Cincinnati.
Stores had been looted, cars lit on fire and overturned.
What little order had been holding society together had vanished the moment the power turned off.
It was unlike anything John had seen before and anything he’d seen again.
They were witnessing the collapse of society.
“Come on,” John said, steering Jake and Pam through the madness. “We need to stay off the main streets and away from large crowds.”
John guided them down a side road, and they moved between the buildings, doing everything they could to stay out of the limelight. People were their greatest threat.
“It’s like the entire city is about to explode,” Jake said.
A few other people traveled the backstreets, rushing past them in opposite directions or hurrying past them to wherever they were going.
But regardless of their direction, John noticed how all of them were unsure of what they were doing, and no one was confident about what came next. The world had an uncertain future, and most people chose violence in the face of that uncertainty.
“How much farther?” Pam asked, clutching her stomach as she pushed through another contraction.
“We’re close,” John answered. “We just need to keep moving.”
They made good time, and just when John believed they were about to be in the clear, they turned the wrong corner.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” The man was big, burly, and had tattoos on his arm. He was flanked by three other men, one on his left and two on his right, each just as menacing as the one before.
“We don’t want any trouble,” John said, knowing that Jake and Pam were vulnerable in their current condition.
“Well, you found it anyway,” the man said.
The four of them were blocking the alleyway, and when John glanced behind him, he saw the chaos on the streets. It wasn’t ideal to backtrack, but he wouldn’t put Pam and Jake’s lives at risk.
John glanced at Pam and kept his voice low. “Turn around and find a place to hide. Move as fast as you can. I’ll find you.”
Pam nodded, clearly frightened but propelled by the desire to keep her unborn child alive.
“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” the leader asked.
“She’s not your concern,” Jake replied.
John wished Jake would have kept quiet. Now wasn’t the time for escalation.
“She is now,” the leader said.
The group moved forward, and John saw the weapons in their hands. It was a mixture of baseball bats and crowbars. But John didn’t see any firearms.
“Wait,” John said, taking one step back, but it would be the only ground he would give up. “I’m giving you a chance to walk away. We don’t have to do this.”
The group of men laughed. They were high on the blood lust of hurting people. They had allowed the world’s madness to soak into their thoughts and minds, and John didn’t believe he could say anything to get them to stop. But he had to try.
“You’re going to be fun to beat up on,” the leader said.
“No,” John answered. “I’m not.”
Part of John’s survivalist preparation involved self-defense. He had never learned how to fight to hurt people, only to defend himself and others. John didn’t want bloodshed, but these men had forced his hand.
John never let any of them even get close to him and Jake. He removed his pistol and aimed at the leader, firing only once. The bullet struck the man in the chest, dead center, and he died instantly.
The moment their leader dropped to the ground, John held his position. The others looked at their fallen leader and then at each other. It was clear that none of them had expected John to shoot. They had thought he was soft. He wasn’t.
But he wasn’t a killer, either.
“Go,” John said, growling his final warning.
The others hesitated a moment, but the second that one of them retreated, the others did the same. Once they were long gone, John lowered the weapon and released a shaky breath.
“You should have killed them all,” Jake said.
Maybe Jake was right, but it took all of John’s strength to take one life; he didn’t want to take anymore.
“I’ll find Pam,” John said. “Stay here.”
John walked away before Jake protested, but once his back turned, he glanced down at his hand and saw it trembling.
The thought had not crossed his mind for forty years, and he had never killed anyone. He became a farmer because he wanted to feed people, to keep them alive. And now he had blood on his hands. And he feared it would never wash off.
John eventually found Pam hiding down another intersection of an alleyway, and he helped her up off the ground.
“The contractions are getting longer,” Pam said, worried.
“We’re close,” John said.
It was a bit of fudging the truth, but it was for the best; he needed to keep everyone’s spirits up. With so much crumbling around them, it was easy to lose hope, especially given how much pain they were all in.
Pam and Jake nearly collapsed into tears when they finally reached the hospital, both from relief and the state of the facility, which was completely overrun. And while John was concerned with ensuring his friends received help, he had also come here to find his wife and son.
John pushed through the dense crowd, forcing a path for Jake and Pam until they finally reached the front desk, which was no longer operating.
“We need to find someone to help,” John said.
“Get someone for Pam first,” Jake said. “I’ll be all right.”
John nodded and then helped his friend sit down. “I’ll be back.”
The madhouse of the hospital was chaos incarnate.
Everywhere John looked, people were bleeding, crying, dying, or all three.
He had never seen anything like it in all his years.
It was like the entire city had been bombed.
But while John didn’t know who had set off the EMP, it was clear the destruction had been caused by the masses.
Everybody had panicked, and society had spiraled out of control.
John grabbed hold of the nearest nurse. “I need your help. I have a pregnant lady in the lobby who is about to give birth.”
“Where is she?” the nurse asked.
John guided the nurse back to the front lobby, ensuring she didn’t get distracted. Thankfully, no one stopped them, and when Pam saw help arrive, she burst into tears.
“Thank you,” Pam said as the nurse guided her away. “Thank you so much.”
John was glad Pam was getting the help she needed, but he still had Jake to worry about and needed to find his wife and son.
“Did you see Maggie or Blake?” Jake asked.
“No,” John answered, standing in the center of the madness. People rushed around him like pouring water breaking on a rock. “It’s going to be impossible to find them here.”
“Just start yelling,” Jake said.
“Good of a plan as any,” John said. “Maggie! Blake!”
But no matter how loud John shouted, he couldn’t break above the noise of the ER room. There was nothing he could do to make this easier for all of them, and when Jake started to cough and wince, John returned to help his friend.
“God, something’s not right,” Jake said, wincing.
“Let’s take a look at the bandage,” John said.
But when John pulled up Jake’s shirt, he saw a massive bulge around the wound the size of an apple.
“That doesn’t look good,” Jake said.
“No, it’s not,” John said, realizing that the wound was most likely creating a blood sack, which would need to be drained quickly. “Hang on, I’ll be back.”
“Yup, not going anywhere,” Jake said.
John rushed through the hospital again to search for a nurse, but then John came across a familiar face.
“Darlene!” John shouted.
Darlene was hunched over a clipboard, staring at it with intensity, and it took her a moment to look up to see John nearby, and then it clicked for her.
“John, what are you doing here?” Darlene asked.
“Blake broke his arm, and Maggie told me she was coming here,” John said. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” Darlene said, flabbergasted. “They were here, but then I lost them.”
“Where was the last time you saw them?” John asked.
It is evident that Darlene had a lot on her plate, but John didn’t take no for an answer.
“Darlene, please,” John said. “I need to find them.”
Darlene finally nodded, and John followed her through the hallways, closer to the ER lobby, where they entered.
“The operating room was there,” Darlene said. “Blake passed out when they set his bone.”
John figured the power must have already been out when they had worked on Blake’s arm. He couldn’t imagine how difficult that must have been for his son to go through and for Maggie to watch.
“I don’t know where they went after that,” Darlene said.
“It’s okay, thank you,” John said. “And Jake’s here. He needs help.”
“Jake?” Darlene asked, showing the first sign of surprise. “What happened?”
“He was shot on the way over,” John answered. “I stitched up the wound, but I think he has some internal bleeding.”
John managed to get Darlene over to Jake to help him. He had always believed that Darlene had a crush on Jake, and he hoped to take advantage of it for Jake’s sake.
Once Jake was in good hands, he continued his search for Maggie and Blake, shouting their names, checking in rooms, and searching high and low to find them.
But John’s ears perked up at a familiar voice among the chaos and cries. It was faint and muffled, almost like it was behind closed doors.
John followed the noise to a room down a darkened hallway and opened the door to find his son sitting in a wheelchair with a cast on his arm and a man sitting in a chair next to him with blood over his chest and stomach.
“Blake,” John said, rushing to his son and checking him over. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Blake answered groggily. “I just woke up.”
“Where’s your mom?” John asked.
“She’s not here.” The answer came from the man John thought was dead nearby. He was barely clinging to life, his complexion piqued. “And if you want to find her, you need to keep me alive.”