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  “Where did you come from? How did you find me?” Joel asked. None of this made any sense. Previously, he was in an airplane, piloting it on his way back home, and now he was in the back seat of a stranger’s car covered in blood with more questions than answers.

  “I saw the crash. It’s a long story, but I figured there would be some survivors, so I got here as fast as I could, and I found you lying in the dirt,” the woman said. “I wasn’t sure you were still alive, even though you were breathing, so I loaded you into the car,” she said.

  “I need to get to Los Angeles,” Joel said.

  “Los Angeles? Dude, you don’t waste any time, do you? I just pulled you away from a fucking burning plane wreck, and you want to go charging off to Los Angeles? It looks like you hit your head pretty bad, I think you need to take care of that first,” she said.

  “Besides, we’re in Woodacre. LA is a good six hours or more away from here, and that’s on a good day,” she said. “But I can’t imagine traffic is going to be great after, well, whatever the hell just went down. I mean, assuming there are enough cars left working to create traffic in the first place.”

  Woodacre? The flight path wasn’t supposed to take them anywhere near there. Had they gone that far off course when the plane stopped responding?

  “What happened down here?” Joel asked.

  “That’s a damn good question. I don’t know. The power went out, and there were all these crazy lights up in the sky, then the next thing I knew this noise like an earthquake started and then I saw the wreck in the mountains so I got here as fast as I could, and I found you—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Joel interrupted her. His head was still foggy from the impact and the loss of blood, but it was clear enough to put the pieces together. If the power was out and the mysterious lights were visible even from the ground, then there was little doubt left in Joel’s mind about what had happened.

  He had to get back to Los Angeles.

  “What happened, you know, up there?” the woman asked, pointing at the ceiling of the car.

  Joel struggled to remember. All he could remember were bright lights, the tendrils coming from the sky reaching for him, and the panic pumping through his veins as he realized the plane was going to crash.

  “I don’t know. The sky turned wild, and the plane’s instruments stopped working, and then we were falling,” Joel said. Aaron’s face flashed in his mind, and he shook it away, wincing from the pain of both the memory and his injury. Joel couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t focus on what he’d lost. If what he suspected had really happened, there were plenty more lives at stake.

  “Holy shit,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth. “Do you have any idea what it was? Why would a plane just fall out of the sky like that?”

  “I have no idea,” Joel lied. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to name it what it was. With his head gushing blood and his arm shattered, the woman who’d found him wouldn’t have believed him anyway. No one would.

  He’d read several books on the subject, even joined a few online communities for disaster preparation. They’d urged him to start stockpiling supplies and to prepare a bug out bag just in case things went to hell in a handbasket. He’d listened, even though his family thought he was crazy, and now he was hundreds of miles away from them and his supplies.

  “We should get moving,” Joel said.

  “All right, but Los Angeles is out of the question,” the woman said, and Joel bit his tongue.

  “Fine. Then where are we going?”

  “Back to the center where I came from. I don’t live here myself; I was here for a meditation retreat. We were just sitting down to meditate when all the shit hit the fan,” she said.

  “What’s there?”

  “Not much but there’s gotta be some supplies I can use to stitch you up at least. I don’t want to go charging off to the city with everyone else right now. We don’t know what’s going on and I think the cities are going to be chaos,” she said. Joel agreed, but he couldn’t just sit by and wait. The longer it took him to get home, the worse things would be when he got there.

  “Wait, you’re going to patch me up?” Joel asked. Judging from the hooks in her face, Joel didn’t have a lot of confidence she knew what she was doing with a needle and thread.

  “I know I don’t look like it, but I used to be a medic in the service,” she said, and Joel laughed.

  “Seriously?” he asked, unable to believe it. How the hell had he gotten so lucky to be found by someone who used to stitch people up for a living?

  “Seriously,” she answered with a smile.

  “Christ, no wonder you were on a meditation retreat,” Joel said.

  “You know, when I asked God to send me someone to help me understand why He’d put me through all the shit I’ve seen, I didn’t think they'd literally fall out of the sky,” she said, and Joel laughed. What else could he do?

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Ashley. You?”

  “Joel,” he answered.

  “Well, Joel, I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but the circumstances aren’t exactly nice,” Ashley said and released the brake. The car lurched forward, sending pain shooting through Joel’s head, but he bit back his groaning as they drove for what felt like forever, each bump in the road like a hammer to Joel’s skull.

  Finally, they came around a bend and a building nestled among the mountains appeared. It must’ve been the meditation center Ashley mentioned. Sure enough, there were no lights on in the place—and it seemed empty.

  “I thought you said you were here for a retreat. Where’s everyone else?” Joel asked.

  “I told you, they left,” Ashley said as she drummed on the steering wheel.

  “But I see a bunch of cars here,” Joel said.

  “Yeah, that’s the other thing. My car was the only one that started. Guess that’s what I get for driving a rust bucket,” Ashley said as she stroked the dashboard like a beloved pet.

  “Holy shit, so they just left on foot?” Joel groaned. All the books he’d read about prepping and all the discussion he’d seen online came flooding back to him.

  Whether or not he could share that info was another matter entirely, but he knew that whatever happened definitely wasn’t an isolated event; it’d impacted him in the plane and affected everyone else on the ground, and that could only mean one thing: there’d been an EMP.

  But it wasn’t like the books said it would be. There hadn’t been a nuclear attack or an infiltration of the power grid by a foreign agent, but the results were the same. What else could knock out power, destroy cell phones, disable vehicles, and turn Joel's plane into a glorified paperweight all at once?

  “I guess so. After the crash, when I came out to my car, they were all hoarding around me, trying to get me to take them back into town but I knew I had to get to you so I bolted,” Ashley said. Joel’s stomach flipped.

  People were already panicking. If those at the center were scared enough to run back into town, then Joel could only imagine how bad things were in the nearby cities. They might not have realized it yet—Ashley probably hadn’t either—but Joel knew the power wasn’t coming back on and things were only going to get worse as time passed.

  And he couldn’t afford to wait to find out how desperate people might get so Joel reached for the door handle, flung it open, and stumbled to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” Ashley demanded as she jumped out of the car.

  “I told you, I have to get back to my family. I can’t stay here, and you shouldn’t either,” Joel said.

  “You’re not going anywhere. You shouldn’t even be up moving around like this. We don’t know the extent of your injuries,” Ashley said, stepping toward him, but Joel backed away.

  “I’m fine, trust me.”

  He didn’t feel well though. Had it not been for the dull pounding in his skull overriding everything else, no doubt he would’ve felt panic in its purest for
m. While they were standing and debating, Joel’s family was probably wondering where he was—and what was happening to them.

  They needed him.

  “Yeah, the blood gushing out of your head says otherwise,” Ashley said. “I understand you’re worried about your family, I am too, but we can’t just go rushing off like this. Especially not you. Let me take a look at your wounds, stitch you up a little bit, and we’ll make a plan in the meantime,” she said.

  What choice did he have? As far as he could tell, Ashley had the only working car in the area, and he was going to need a car if he was going to get home in a decent amount of time.

  “Fine, but I’m not sticking around any longer than I have to,” Joel said.

  “I don’t expect you to. Now come on,” Ashley said, holding out her hands to be non-threatening—not that Joel could have done any damage in his current state; he could barely manage to stand. Reluctantly, he nodded, and she wrapped an arm around him to help him walk to the front door of the center.

  It wasn’t smooth sailing. Joel stumbled more than once, his head feeling like it’d been split in half fresh each time, but he was determined to stand on his own two feet as much as possible.

  He didn’t know this woman from Eve, and for all he knew, her talk about being a medic could’ve been pure bullshit. How could anyone trust other people after a catastrophic situation like an EMP?

  Then again, maybe he was paranoid; maybe this woman did just want to help. If she’d really been in the service, wasn’t that her job? Even if all she knew how to do was stitch up a wound, it was more than Joel could’ve done for himself.

  As soon as they stepped through the front doors, Joel stumbled as his vision spun, turning fuzzy, and though he tried to shrug her off, Ashley was there waiting for him.

  She wedged her shoulder underneath his and hoisted him up to carry him over to the middle of the room where a sea of pillows and cushions waited. Ashley kicked together a giant pile of them before lowering Joel down onto the mound.

  “Don’t move,” she said and disappeared through a nearby door.

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Joel called after her. Instead, he laid still and stared up at the ceiling. It was elaborately painted in some sort of mandala design, which swam together in a blurry mess in his mind.

  Ashley returned with a first aid kit in hand, and a giant duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Joel chuckled.

  “Somehow I don’t think a Scooby Doo bandaid is gonna do the trick,” he said as he examined his mangled arm.

  “It isn’t supposed to,” she said and slung the bag to the ground beside him. She rummaged around inside it and pulled out a roll of gauze, a bottle of peroxide, and a nondescript plastic box.

  “You really are a medic, aren’t you?” Joel asked, eyeing the supplies. He couldn’t fathom for the life of him why she’d bring something like that to a meditation retreat, but he was glad she had. Maybe old habits died hard for her.

  “Why would I lie about that?”

  “People lie all the time,” Joel said. “What are you gonna do?”

  “We need to start with the hole in your head. Can you sit up?” she asked, kneeling beside him and offering a hand. He took it with his good hand, and she hoisted him forward to a sitting position.

  Joel waited while she examined the wound, her fingers gingerly touching the skin around it.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “It doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure,” Joel said.

  “I don’t think it’s very deep. You’re lucky,” Ashley said. “This could’ve been much worse. Still, you might have a concussion. You probably shouldn’t sleep for a while just to be safe.”

  “Hadn’t planned on it,” Joel said. Even if he’d wanted to sleep, he doubted he could—not while he was haunted by thoughts of his family facing the aftermath of an EMP without him.

  Ashley pried open the plastic box with her free hand. Inside were cotton balls, needles, stitches, and a collection of forceps. She selected a cotton ball, reached for the bottle of peroxide, flipped open the cap with one thumb, and held the cotton over the opening. She turned it upside down several times, soaking the cotton, and when she was satisfied she grimaced at him.

  “This is gonna sting, but we’ve gotta clean it up before I can stitch it,” she said, holding the cotton ball up.

  “I assumed,” Joel said and braced himself. She applied the cotton and Joel bit his tongue as his wound sizzled and popped from the peroxide. His eyes watered but he refused to make any noise.

  “Sorry,” she said as she dabbed along the wound. When the cotton was too spoiled to use, she wet another piece and continued.

  “Here comes the real fun,” Ashley said as she tossed the cotton aside and reached for a needle. Joel watched her thread it carefully, impressed with her surgical precision, and realized he had nothing to fear with Ashley. In fact, her skills could be a real asset going forward—if she decided to join him.

  “Hold still,” she said, and Joel gripped one of the pillows beneath him as she pierced through the tender skin near the wound with the needle and stitch. It hurt like hell, but it was nothing compared to the pain he’d feel if he didn’t let her treat it.

  In a matter of minutes, she’d stitched the entire wound, snipped the thread with a tiny pair of scissors from the kit, and tied it closed at the end.

  “You should come with me,” Joel said.

  “Yeah, you already said that,” Ashley said as she tore into an alcohol cleaning wipe and washed off her hands.

  “There’s no way you can stay here, or at least not for long. What happened, it’s worse than you think. This isn’t just some freak power outage that’ll fix itself in a few days. You know that, right?” Joel asked, testing the waters.

  “I know,” Ashley said. “I was in the service. I know bad shit when I see it. Besides, I don’t plan on staying here much longer. You’re not the only one with family, you know.”

  “So why do I get the sense you haven’t made up your mind yet?”

  “Because I haven’t,” she said with a smile. She gathered up the soiled materials and walked them to a trash can in the corner of the room where she tossed them. The smell of alcohol again filled Joel’s nose as she opened another sanitary wipe and rubbed it between her hands.

  “Now, about that arm,” she said, looking at it like it was a lab experiment.

  “What about it?”

  “It looks rough. Can you extend it at all?” Ashley asked. Joel lifted his arm awkwardly and tried to stretch it out but almost screamed from the pain.

  “I take it that’s a no?”

  “Definitely not,” Joel hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Can you feel or move your fingers?” Ashley asked. Joel wiggled them, and she smiled. “Good,” she said. “Now try to bend your wrist upward like you’re telling me to stop.”

  Joel did it without issue, though it did hurt.

  “Good. Now spread your fingers apart,” Ashley said, and Joel managed that as well. “Perfect. Now try to touch your thumb to your pinky.” Though it also hurt, Joel pulled it off.

  “Alright, looks like we’re on to something,” she said and reached out for Joel’s wrist.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking for a pulse,” she said, her fingers placed against his wrist.

  “I’m obviously not dead.”

  “Not yet,” she said and winked. “But I feel a pulse, so that’s a good sign. Can you feel me touching your arm?”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t feel good,” he admitted, and she chuckled.

  “No, I imagine it doesn’t, but it’s good that you can feel it. Based on all that, I think your elbow’s dislocated. We need to reset it.”

  The stitches Joel could handle, but setting a dislocated elbow sounded intense. Still, Ashley was right. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t heal correctly, and then Joel would be in much worse pain than he currently was—and might even lose the use of his arm altogether.r />
  “Fine,” Joel sighed.

  “That’s the spirit,” Ashley said as she took hold of his wrist. “You might want to hold onto something. This is gonna hurt like hell.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll be—” Joel started, but he never finished his sentence.

  Ashley yanked downward on his wrist with both hands, sending a pain the likes of which Joel had never experienced pulsing through his body, and he blacked out.

  8

  Cass couldn’t sleep.

  No matter how much she tossed and turned, and despite the comfortable breeze blowing through her open windows, nothing settled her mind.

  Not even staring at the ceiling and counting sheep seemed to help, a trick she’d been using for years, despite how childish it was. Cass was physically exhausted from dealing with her mother, who’d locked herself in her room after she found neither of the cars would start, but still Cass’ mind wouldn’t stop.

  They shouldn’t have stayed; they should’ve packed up their shit into whatever bags and barrels they could and left with everyone else, even if they had no destination in mind. It was the smart thing to do, but Cass hadn’t been able to convince her mother of that thanks to Nate.

  Their dad wouldn’t have been scared—and definitely wouldn’t have been indecisive. Cass couldn’t say for sure what Joel would’ve done, or where he might’ve led them, but he at least would’ve taken action. He wouldn’t have sat by and waited for something worse to happen.

  But he wasn’t there—and Cass had no way to know if he was okay. That was the most unsettling of all her thoughts.

  Frustrated, she sat up in bed and reached for the candle and matchbook sitting on her bedside table, only possible thanks to the moonlight.

  She struck a match, and the flame filled the entirety of her small bedroom with its light. It was something she would’ve overlooked just a few hours ago, but the light made her smile now. Cass realized then just how much she’d taken something as simple as light for granted—and how valuable it was without electricity.