The World After: An EMP Thriller by Ryan Casey

Author:Ryan Casey [Casey, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Higher Bank Books
Published: 2017-04-11T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Another day of walking and suddenly this new world started to feel like a very pertinent reality after all.

The sun was hidden behind the clouds, which were thickening by the hour. To be honest, I had a fear in the pit of my stomach, and that fear was night. We’d been allowed to take the tent that suburban family had let us stay in with us to the bunker, in case our journey took longer than a day. Admittedly, we’d had to trade a few things, but that was the way of the world now. Anyway, according to Jason’s instructions, we weren’t all that far off. Soon, we’d be back to something like normality.

But that was the problem. Jason was dead, now. We were relying on a mixture of Sue’s faint—and grief-stricken—knowledge, road signs, and our own intuition. Neither were a great mix.

We’d been trying to stray off the beaten track for some time now, but we weren’t having much luck. It was just suburb after suburb, each of them the same in their dim hopes that the power was going to return at some stage. Every supermarket we passed was a scene of chaos and panic, now. Honestly, I’d never believed the world would fall so quickly when shit went down, quite in the way it had. I’d always thought—and hoped—that people could pull their shit together in the face of a disaster.

I was fast realising that those hopes were misplaced. Of course people were going to lose their shit. Everything they’d worked for, everything they’d spent their money on, everything they’d invested in—and not just financially, but mentally, like the internet and the news and pornography—all of it was gone.

And I was just expecting them to pick up the pieces and band together like nothing had changed?

“I’m thinking we’re almost at the stage where we’re gonna have to eat rats,” Haz said, mournfully.

“Don’t be disgusting,” Hannah said.

“What? I’m just being realistic. Our nicely packaged food isn’t gonna last forever. We’ve got a decent portable stove. Besides, I don’t think the peanut butter crackers are really doing it for me anymore.”

“It’ll do you good,” Hannah said.

“What? Are you saying I’m—”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re overweight. You know you are. Not point hiding from it.”

I saw Haz’s cheeks blush, a wave of shame covering him, much like the time he’d confided in me.

“So just don’t worry. You aren’t gonna die because you’re suddenly only getting… shit. Less than a thousand calories if you include all the exercise, probably.”

That thought made me feel tense. I wasn’t the heaviest of guys. I lost weight easily. I knew it was going to take its toll on me, all this exercise combined with a lack of food.

Besides, what if I got sick? We’d have to think about hydration. Because like the food issues, water was going to be a problem too.

Unless we could think of a way to make water on the outside safe for drinking.

“Haz,” I said, interrupting his and Hannah’s bickering. “You said a day ago that you knew a thing or two about survival methods.

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