Neighborhood Watch 3: After the EMP by EE Isherwood

Author:EE Isherwood [Isherwood, EE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

“Did he follow us?” I asked Ben, thinking back to how I’d asked him the same question when we were escaping the red Jeep.

“I don’t think so. I can’t say whether he saw us, but the truck was driving in the opposite direction without slowing or stopping, so maybe we’re good.”

“I’ll take it,” I said out the window to him.

I shifted into third as we sped along the roadway, heading west and then north at the edge of the small commercial district. Without the trash cans in my way, it was easy to watch the rearview mirrors to see if anyone was tracking us, but it appeared as if Ben was correct. No one was back there.

We passed the hospital and all its problems and went a few more blocks until we reached the vet clinic.

“What’s the play, boss?” Ben asked. “Want me to run in?”

“No, we go in together or not at all. Let me do a drive-by, and we’ll turn around.”

We drove by the clinic on the right-hand side of the road. The building was modern, but it was designed to look rustic, with a pointy metal roof, giving it the appearance of a lodge in a National Park. And, though it was no surprise, there were forty or fifty people gathered at the front door and on the parking lot, many with pets. That was the main reason I passed by it the first time.

“What do you think?” I asked Carmen.

“They looked like regular people with their pets, not hardened criminals.”

“Ben?” I asked out the rear window.

“I agree. We may never get a better chance, so we should go in and see what we can find.”

Ahead, about a hundred yards up the road, a group of people seemed to dance around a disabled white Porsche Cayenne SUV. It took me a second to piece together they were slamming baseball bats into the windows, hood, and roof.

“This is far enough,” I declared.

I did a U-turn in the middle of the empty street. The thought of the illegal maneuver crossed my mind, but I was no longer concerned that a police car was going to jump out of the bushes and write me a ticket. If they weren’t chasing down the guys damaging the car with bats, they wouldn’t come for me.

“We’ll park on the lot next door and walk over. That will let me do the kill switch without being seen, but everyone around here already knows we have this working car, so parking it on that busy lot will only invite trouble. I’d rather it be over here, where we’ll see people messing with our stuff.”

There was no one formula for travel during the apocalypse.

“And I agree these people look pretty tame,” I continued, “but if we run into any trouble, I’ll get us out of there in a heartbeat, okay?”

I parked in a little lot for a small strip mall anchored by a law office and karate dojo. My companions got out while I flicked the toggle on the kill switch, then I joined them.

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