Chapter 3: Survivors

Sunday, March 26th, 9:53 AM

West Side — High Street Ruins

Santa Cruz, California

“You fucking serious?” Joe muttered under his breath. The five men they’d encountered along the Cabrillo Highway just North of Antonelli Pond hadn’t spoken a word after Joe called out to them. They stared for a moment like startled animals, until one began screaming incoherently as he rushed toward Joe and his friends, and the rest followed.

When the hostiles opened fire with pistols from a distance beyond 100-Meters, Joe gave the signal for Michael and Rihelah to follow as he ducked off the pavement to take cover while Michael’s father, Mike, squeezed off a warning shot with his SR-25 sniper rifle.

“United States Marines. Lay down your weapons!” Joe yelled, hoping the men would listen. But they continued charging blindly forward, dropping spent revolvers to the pavement before two of their number opened fire with a second set while still well outside the effective range of their weapons.

Joe frowned at their hungry, wild-eyed expressions just before Mike’s next round took the lead man in the center of his chest, dropping him like a puppet whose strings were cut. The twitching body ground to a halt face-first on the pavement.

To Joe’s surprise, none of the attackers stood down or even bothered with evasive action, charging blindly forward even after seeing one of their own struck down.

“Fuck.” Joe heard Mike “Eagle-Eye” Elliott swear to himself before four more shots rang out over the next six seconds, stopping their enemies cold.

“No!” Rihelah choked on the word, burying her face against Michael’s right shoulder after watching, wide-eyed while the last of their ill-fated attackers tumbled to a stop.

Two of the stricken men tried in vain to crawl forward as if possessed, and Joe heard the telltale clicking of a revolver being cycled without ammunition while one of them pointed it skyward.

It wasn’t long before the men bled out and stopped moving. Mike and Joe moved forward to investigate.

Upon inspection, Joe found one man’s hand still gripping a pair of filthy syringes inside his sweatshirt.

“Shit,” Joe sighed as he tore the clothing open to reveal what he’d found.

“Fuckers were lit up like the Fourth of July…” Mike shook his head.

“Explains their lack of fear.” Joe nodded.

---

An hour later, Joe sighed and shook his head while he trudged precariously through ankle-deep ashen mud alongside Mike, his old war buddy and mentor.

Pausing for a moment, Joe shot a wounded glance down at Mike. “That’s bullshit and you know it! These footprints are too big to be hers, and there are five sets!”

Mike let his rifle hang by its shoulder strap to bring his hands palm-up in a placating gesture. “Look, Schimpf, I’m just saying that Anna’s resourceful! She’s your wife, so—”

“She,” Joe’s deep, powerful voice cut him off, “was home alone, Mike! I hope to God she was sound asleep when it happened. Fuck’s sake, look at this place! We won’t find anyone alive out here except maybe a few dumb scavengers like us, picking through whatever remains. Damn it, just lay the hell off with the fucking hopium, alright? It’s almost three weeks since it happened! Twenty days of… fuck me—” Joe choked off as he stopped walking. He squinted hard for a moment and tightened his huge fists, fighting to control his breathing.

Mike pressed his lips firmly together. He opened them to speak, but his voice caught and he only nodded.

Fuck. This shit’s embarrassing. Joe looked away to block his friend’s view of the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.

Cool ocean fog had soaked into the exteriors of their light camo windbreakers, keeping both a little less warm and certainly more irritable than either would have preferred.

Joe frowned and said, “Sorry, Master Guns. I just don’t want to get my hopes up too much before we get there. We both know what’s likely to have happened.”

They resumed plodding slowly forward through the slime and muck.

It was Mike’s turn to frown as he put his right hand firmly on Joe’s left shoulder, then patted it without a word while they slogged on.

The bigger man grunted his appreciation for the silence, keeping his eyes on their surroundings and his right hand near the holstered Glock-19 at his hip. The disorderly trail of footprints tracked inward to the remains of each destroyed home.

The sad, pitiful remains of a row of picturesque homes lay across High Street from a still-smoldering hillock of rubble that had once been Peace United Church. Runoff from the rain carved tiny canyons through the mud, some of which had been disrupted by the footprints.

The previous night’s torrential downpour had offered the group their first non-saltwater shower in weeks and cleansed the air enough to make them comfortable enough to search for Anna.

I hope the rain’s washed some of the radioactivity away.

Joe frowned. He knew it was risky to move around without a Geiger counter to monitor the ambient radiation. They all knew that. But Joe couldn’t wait any longer, and the others had insisted on tagging along.

The possibility that he might be leading them to an early grave gnawed at him, but he appreciated their support.

Rubbing his temples to soothe the dull headache he’d developed over the past hour, Joe glared at the ruined landscape.

Numerous lush trees that once shaded the devastated neighborhoods had burned away, leaving only pits of ash where their trunks once stood. Scorched and heat-warped metal skeletons were all that remained of any exposed vehicles.

With no trees or houses on the hillside to block his sight, Joe had a clear view across most of the city and the surrounding mountains.

The pristine beauty of Monterey Bay drew a sharp contrast against the desolate wasteland that had once been Santa Cruz. The scale and extent of the bomb’s devastation made Joe’s gut churn as he recalled some of the many faces he’d known.

“Those bastards will fucking pay for starting this war. I swear it on my life…” Joe hissed through his teeth.

“You and me both, Schimpf. One World Order, my ass.” Mike responded gravely.

Joe glanced behind at Mike’s son, Michael, who walked with wary eyes beside his childhood friend, Rihelah. Usually vibrant and highly social, she had grown unusually quiet since the bombs fell. That silence had only deepened following their fatal run-in with that raiding party.

Though she had started working as an Emergency RN at Dominican Hospital a few months before and seen a number of corpses, Rihelah still had difficulty handling the sight of dead people.

The younger pair each wore pistols at their hips, looted from the drugged-up raiders.

The damaged revolvers worn by Michael and Rihelah were currently only for show, since they lacked ammunition. The raiders had wasted what little ammo there was during their ill-fated attempt to gun the group down.

Still, everyone agreed that displaying the weapons openly could help deter future attacks—so long as potential threats had any wits about them.

“Damn good thing we decided to go fishing so early that morning. Whole fuckin’ world’s gone to shit.” Mike mused after he followed Joe’s gaze to the pair behind them.

“Yeah, lucky for most of us—” Joe began, but cut himself off. His eyes sharpened and both military men shared a hard look when the partly-muffled sound of a woman’s panicked screams washed over them from somewhere up ahead.

“Michael. Rihelah. Hang back and find cover, but keep your eyes open. We’ll return shortly. Schimpf, you’re on point.” Mike smoothly passed out their orders.

“Here we fucking go again,” Joe griped quietly, shaking his head as they all sprang into action.

While Michael and Rihelah ducked into the narrow space between two tall, burned-out Mercedes vans, Joe and Mike trotted carefully along the slippery road. They avoided deeper deposits of ash and mud as they neared the source of the screaming.

---

The distant, anguished cries cut off with a pained yelp, then resumed with blood-curdling vigor.

“Michael…” Rihelah shuddered. She shifted herself closer and shot a haunted look up at him, her eyes locking onto his of sky-blue.

He nodded slowly as she leaned purposefully into him and allowed his long arms to enfold her.

He’s so warm… Rihelah melted into his embrace, despite the too-obvious fact that neither had bathed properly in weeks. She welcomed the distraction, which took the edge off the gnawing hunger in her gut.

She shut her eyes firmly at the disturbing sound of another anguished cry in the distance, pressing herself more urgently against Michael’s torso. “I wish—” She murmured softly, but hesitated.

“Me too, but war is here.” He supplied, helpfully.

Rihelah scrunched her brow up and drew her lips in tightly, “That’s not—” she began, but closed her mouth and frowned a little as she pulled back.

“Not what?” Michael cocked his head to the side, looking down at her.

“It’s nothing.” She nuzzled back against him, reasserting her grip around his torso.

“Mm.” He nodded, patting her back dutifully. He returned his wary attention to their surroundings.

Rihelah sighed, half-frowning as she pressed her cheek against the thin layers of fabric separating her from his trim, muscular chest. She flinched when an even more urgent scream reached her ears.

---

Mike tossed a chunk of cement debris from his hiding place behind a scorched cargo van, striking the stone-faced wall of a ruined church.

The youthful, mustachioed man whom they’d discovered standing guard with a machete turned warily toward the noise and rushed over to investigate, only for the left side of his face to meet with Joe’s massive fist after he rounded the corner.

Joe’s eyebrows scrunched up slightly when he noticed a line of clear, thin wetness on his knuckles and realized the young man he’d just sent crashing to the ground had probably been crying.

Gleeful chuckling and strangled screams rang out from between an open set of damaged steel doors that once guarded the entrance to the basement in front of him. Joe inhaled slowly, sharing a quick look of resignation with Mike.

While Joe covered the entrance, Mike trotted to the unconscious man and retrieved some large zip-ties they’d looted from the previous raiders. He deftly secured the enemy’s hands behind his back and his ankles to one another, then joined Joe at the entrance.

Joe crept quietly down ahead of Mike on gray-painted concrete steps into the cramped, candle-lit gloom of the basement amid sounds of desperate sobbing. His nose twitched at the potent and acrid tang of stale urine just before a sharp smacking sound echoed up the stairwell, followed by a strangled feminine yelp. He squinted before rounding the left turn upon reaching the bottom to help his sight adjust more quickly to the relative darkness.

They moved cautiously through a surprisingly long, carpeted hallway, carefully checking and clearing two open side-rooms for potential threats. All they discovered was a long, nearly-empty storage area to one side, and the powerful reek of a surprisingly spacious bathroom on the other.

As they neared the final room at the end of the hall and a portion of the scene ahead came into view, Joe and Mike slowed to a snail’s pace to avoid detection.

All Joe could see so far was a trio of massive, scented candles and a lanky middle-aged man in a flat-brimmed ball cap with a pistol on his hip. The man backhanded a petite brunette hard enough to knock her to the floor in front of the doorway, but Joe kept his movement steady while he stalked warily forward.

The young woman screamed hoarsely through a rough gag, while a second man wrenched her back to her feet in front of the one who’d slapped her.

Her hands were bound tightly behind her with the left sleeve of her loose-fitting dark gray blouse with large white polka-dots that had been torn away.

At the far end of the room, near a sofa, two more men were tying up the unconscious body of a much taller, willowy young blonde. A short-barreled .12-gauge with a pistol grip and a small-caliber rifle were laid across a small oak dining room table to one side.

The ball-cap man spoke with unsettling calm in his voice, “Ain’t nobody coming, ‘cause everyone’s dead, little girl. Scream all you like, but it won’t make a bit of difference. Your tall girlfriend over there done fucked up! We were just trying to make your acquaintance, but you refused to open those doors and we had to pry ‘em free. Then she happened. Now, because of a bat-wielding harpy, there’s a bruise on my hand. You see that? Now, she’s gonna pay.”

Joe and Mike doggedly maintained discipline, keeping their movement steady as they approached.

Ball-cap man’s voice turned cold as ice. “And you, little miss pissy-pants—you’re gonna watch every last moment while she pays for it.” The man cupped the girl’s crotch before rubbing his glistening, urine-drenched hand across her face.

A despairing wail entered the short woman’s voice as it ramped toward another scream.

“Shut the fuck up!” The man lost his cool for a moment, screaming at her and clamping his hand firmly over her gagged mouth and nose. She squirmed in panic as he forced her head backward.

“I’m tired of your bitching and moaning! Oh, but don’t worry, sweetie. You don’t have to suffer like her.” He ducked his head as he shut his eyes and sniffed at her hair, leaving him oblivious to the slight change in lighting when Joe’s massive frame stepped silently into the room behind him.

Still actively preventing the young woman from taking a breath, her captor’s voice grew excited as he turned his head to watch the scene unfolding across the room. “Tell you what—if you’re extra sweet, maybe I’ll overlook your little attitude and let you—”

Having secured a view of the entire inside of the finished basement at last, Joe quickly confirmed there were only four hostiles. He checked to confirm that Mike was in position, then signaled, 3-2-1.

With a powerful sense of duty and zero hesitation, Joe and Mike moved.

Mike fired a 7.62 Nato round through the head of the man with his pants around his ankles, who was just positioning himself behind the tall, naked woman bent over the arm of the couch.

Simultaneously, Joe sent a 9mm round through the back of the speaker’s head at point-blank range, then followed that up with another between the shocked eyes of his partner who’d been helping to restrain the short brunette, while Mike fired a second shot as well.

All four enemies collapsed like puppets whose strings had been cut while blood poured from the holes in their heads.

The expression in the tiny brunette’s eyes went ape-shit when blood splashed across her face after she was pushed to the floor beneath one man’s lifeless body, with his ruined head lying directly atop hers.

She screamed wildly through her cloth gag and squirmed frantically to move out from under the fresh corpse.

After a quick check to confirm that all threats had been neutralized, Joe kneeled to assist the brunette and Mike crossed the room to the nude woman.

Around ten minutes later, the freed young women had been properly clothed and bandaged, and the dead men were carried up from the basement.

Joe and Mike stood outside in the tepid humidity of a late Santa Cruz morning, each feeling grateful for the sun’s relative warmth as chilly morning air blew across the area.

As they emerged from the basement, both young women kept their distance from the Marines while frowning at their groggy captive. Both flinched backward when they spotted the corpses neatly laid out on the ground a few dozen feet away.

The short brunette eyed the men warily as Joe and Mike inspected the firearms they’d salvaged.

Joe frowned at the .12 gauge the raiders had left behind after he cleared the weapon and checked its action. “Shotgun’s fucked until it’s cleaned. The morons never maintained it.”

“You’re surprised?” Mike snickered ruefully.

Joe rolled his eyes.

The antique .22 rifle was serviceable, but only just. Joe handed the second weapon off to Mike with a sigh and looked back to the young women.

Ever since she’d regained consciousness, the tall girl had stubbornly refused to meet their eyes. Under the circumstances, Joe didn’t see fit to press that issue.

Both girls had turned deliberately away from the dead bodies, sniffling and trembling while hugging one another tightly.

“Time’s a-wastin’.” Mike muttered.

With a nod, Joe turned to look after their captive as Mike stepped past him.

The meek young man had an impressive bruise blooming across his left cheek as he sat trembling in cold mud.

“Hi, I’m Mike, and that skyscraper looming behind me is Joe.” Mike gently addressed the women.

“Fuckin’ Master Guns,” Joe whispered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Mike grinned and continued. “US Marine Raiders—we’re Special Forces. You’re safe now. Can you tell us what happened here?”

Both girls ignored him. They turned to one another and walked a short distance away, whispering. Joe and Mike shrugged, sharing a knowing half-smile of acceptance.

Without skipping a beat, Joe and Mike descended on the three damaged backpacks the attackers had carried. Two serviceable knives with sheathes were promptly stuffed into Mike’s pack.

In addition to the weapons, they salvaged nine .12 gauge shells and a few dozen rounds of .22 long-rifle ammunition.