The Recovery - Solar Crash Book 4: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series) Read online

  Len shot Harrison a slightly confused look before turning back to the man, thinking on his feet as he chose his words quickly. “It’s where my family is. We’ve come all the way from Chicago to find them.”

  The man whistled again now, though in a different manner to show his surprise at Len’s statement. “And another pair who’ve traveled so far to get there! I wonder if I’m missing a trick by staying here. Grand Haven sure sounds like it’s the place to be.”

  Len furrowed his brow, perplexed by the man’s statement. “I’m sorry?” He questioned after a moment. “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “Had another couple pass by here not that long ago,” the man replied with a slight smile on his face. “They were also heading to Grand Haven. Stayed with us for a few days before they continued. Not kitted out like you. A mother and her son. They…”

  “What?” Len instantly silenced the man, his heart skipping a beat inside his chest. “A mother and son? Do you know what they were called?”

  “I do,” the man replied slightly suspiciously. “What’s it to you?”

  “Amy and James,” Len spoke rapidly, his voice quivering as he uttered the words. “Please tell me they were called Amy and James.” Tears filled Len’s eyes as he waited for the man to respond, blood pounding in his ears as he desperately listened to hear the words he wanted.

  “Yes,” the man nodded, “they were.”

  Len sank instantly to his knees as tears fell freely from his eyes. He felt like he had been hit by a car. The footprints. He knew there had been something special about them. They had been Amy’s. She had walked this path before him and she had been in these woods. He was so close. Sniffling and breathing heavily, Len forced himself back to his feet. He needed to get answers from this man and he needed them fast.

  “When were they here? When did they leave? How were they?”

  The man took a small step backwards, his fingers twitching on his hunting rifle for just a second. The movement wasn’t missed by Harrison, who quickly stepped forward, holding his hands out in front of him. Len was acting strangely so it wasn’t a surprise the man was reacting how he was, and Harrison now had to protect his friend. He had to explain what was happening.

  “They’re his family,” he blurted out, putting his body between Len and the man with the hunting rifle. “That’s who we’ve been trying to find. James is his son. Look, we can show you.”

  Harrison turned around and urged Len to open his rucksack, to show the man the picture of James that he carried with him. Len nodded and fumbled through his rucksack, pulling out his own wooden box and the one that belonged to Amy as well. More tears threatened to fall from his eyes as he held them side by side. He knew she hadn’t been killed at the country club, he knew would’ve made it out alive.

  “Look,” Harrison continued, “they are his family.”

  The man stepped closer and inspected the items Len was holding, realizing in a matter of seconds that Len and Harrison were telling the truth and dropping his rifle immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” the man breathed. “I just—”

  “It’s okay,” Len replied quickly. “Just please, tell me, are they all right?”

  “They’re fine,” the man smiled and reached down to scratch between his dog’s ears calmly. “Why don’t you come with me? There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

  Chapter 20

  Finally picking their way out of the woods, Amy was happy to see clear skies above them. That morning she’d stuck to her guns and explained to both Derek and Katie—Derek turning up at the underground hideaway while she slept—that she and James were leaving. She apologized for the added pressure she must have put on their small family, trying her hardest to leave them with something as a thank you, though neither of them would accept anything.

  They had helped Amy and James even further as well, providing them with a hand-drawn map of the woods and the path they should take that would bring them out just a short walk from where the lake house was. Amy had tried to persuade the four of them to join her and James, to leave for a place where they wouldn’t be forced to suffer through nighttime raids.

  Unsurprisingly however, Derek and Katie refused. They proposed a similar argument, reminding Amy that she couldn’t be sure the lake house was still there, let alone safe. Even though in the woods their lives occasionally came under threat, at least they had a secure roof over their head that they could call home every night.

  As a result, it was an awkward goodbye. Katie made Amy promise that if she and James didn’t find what they were looking for at the lake house, they would return to the woods. Amy made the promise, though she was unsure if she would stick to it. She understood the argument her new friend was making, but even though the lake house could be worse than the woods, Amy still felt like she had to try. Not only could it be a place for them to live, but it was also home to two of her oldest and dearest friends. For their sake, Amy had to travel to the lake house. She had lost Len, Giles, and countless others already; she had to find out if Ellen and Maria were still there.

  “Are we nearly there, Mom?” James asked as Amy sat down on an old tree trunk just outside of the tree line, pulling out two bottles of water from her bag and handing one to her son.

  “Yes James,” she said with a smile, finally able to tell him the truth. “We’re very nearly there.”

  James grinned back at his mother, graciously taking the bottle of water and having a few cautious sips before putting the lid back on and handing it back to her. He was excited to get to the lake house. Granted he didn’t know very much about it but seeing as they had been traveling toward it for so long, he knew it had to be something special. While he had enjoyed his time in the woods, James understood why they had to leave. They needed to find somewhere safe and when they’d had to hide underground last night, that hadn’t been very good.

  “It should be just over that hill,” Amy spoke softly to herself, regarding the map that Derek had given her. It was crudely drawn and only really showed the inside of the woods, but she had briefly described where the lake house was to Derek and he had tried to add it onto the map as best he could. Looking around, Amy sort of recognized where they were. During the brief periods she’d spent at the lake house they hadn’t explored very much, more just had drinks out on the balcony or paddled around in the water when it was hot. But still the tree line was familiar; it was visible from the bedroom she’d always had and though it might be wishful thinking, Amy felt confident they were in the right place.

  Once she and James were both ready to start walking again, Amy slung the bag back over her shoulders and, with James’s hand in her own, started walking toward the hill she hoped the lake house was behind. The area they were in was dotted with various large houses, most of them owned by very rich families and only used during summer time. Ellen and Maria lived in theirs all year round however, Maria spending her long days painting on the balcony while Ellen worked as a writer in her office downstairs. The two of them lived a very simple and carefree life and that was why, providing the lake house was still intact, Amy was confident the two of them would be there.

  As they started climbing the hill, Amy was pleased to see the houses they passed all looked as they always had. There was no evidence of the sun’s mass ejection here; it simply looked like the houses were uninhabited, waiting for their owners to return. That was the small detail that threw Amy off slightly though. They were all empty. From the recent weather they had been having even before everything happened, Amy would’ve expected the lake houses to be filled to the brim. Instead it was eerily quiet, almost like a ghost town with a deadly secret.

  “Where is everyone?” James whispered beside her, echoing Amy’s thoughts and keeping his voice low as to not disturb the peace. There weren’t even any birds chirping in the sky or the distant sound of the lake water lapping up against the shore. It was like even nature had stopped, nothing daring to disrupt the silence.

  “I’m sure
they’re all just inside, darling,” Amy squeezed her son’s hand to reassure him. “We will be soon as well,” she continued, letting go of his hand for a moment to point toward a house in the distance. “Look! That’s the one!”

  The two of them stopped at the top of the hill and looked out at the house Amy was pointing to. It was unmistakable, a huge mural of a sunset painted onto the back wall. It was one of Maria’s paintings of course, something she had spent almost an entire summer creating back when they had first moved to the area. They received several complaints from the neighbors at first, but eventually everyone stopped protesting and the mural was allowed to stay. After that Maria spent one week of every summer restoring it, making the colors pop so it looked almost real at the right time of day.

  “Wow,” James exhaled, taking in the painting. He had been to the lake house once before but only when he was very young; Amy wasn’t surprised he didn’t remember it. “That’s so cool!”

  “Isn’t it?” Amy smiled down at her son, pleased to see him looking so excited. “Do you want to go and get a closer look?”

  James nodded enthusiastically and started walking down the hill towards the lake house, eager to take a look at the painting up close. Amy followed with a smile on her face, though she couldn’t help but continue to look into the other houses she passed, desperately searching for any sign of life. With each empty window the knot in her stomach grew tighter and tighter, a bad omen of what she desperately didn’t want to find at Ellen and Maria’s.

  Standing in front of the large wooden door, Amy closed her hand into a fist and rapped her knuckles three times on the frame. It felt strange, knocking on a door to be let inside. Manners were definitely one of the things that had been mostly wiped out with the power, the thought of holding a door open for someone or letting a stranger out of an intersection suddenly such foreign acts of kindness. Instead, people fired guns through windows at children or broke into houses while their inhabitants slept. Amy wondered if she was the first person to knock on a door since everything happened, the motion itself already feeling alien to her.

  After a few seconds had passed she knocked again, pressing her face up against the glass pane in the door and peering inside. Everything was shrouded in darkness which didn’t come as a surprise with there being no power, but even the curtains were drawn closed, which Amy regarded as slightly odd. After knocking a third time she started to believe there was no one home, but told herself her friends could simply be somewhere they couldn’t hear the door or had perhaps stepped outside for an afternoon stroll—like the world wasn’t crumbling around them.

  Leading James off the front porch, Amy walked around the side of the building to where she knew another door was. This door was less visible from the roads and other houses and so she felt more comfortable having to break it to get inside. She instructed James to stand back while she worked at jimmying the lock, a trick she had picked up in high school and thankfully never forgotten. After a few minutes of hard work she heard the familiar click and leaned back on her heels as the door swung open, a half smile on her face. As quickly as she could, Amy hurried James inside and closed the door behind them, hoping that no one had witnessed what she’d just done.

  Once inside, Amy quickly became certain that her friends weren’t at home. She called out for them a couple of times and checked every room in the spacious lake house. Nothing. Upon doing her second sweep of the house just to be sure, James pointed to something on the dresser in their bedroom. It was a piece of paper containing several scribbles, dates and times. After a moment, Amy realized what it was: flight information. She gasped as she realized what it meant and carefully counted back in her head to the outbound date that was written on the piece of paper. How many days had passed since everything happened? Could her friends have been in a plane when all the power went out?

  With a huge sigh of relief Amy deduced that they already would’ve landed in the Bahamas before whatever it was that had technically happened, happened. That was enough knowledge to give her peace of mind that they were both still alive. Things could be very different in the Bahamas and, for her own sanity, Amy made herself believe that they were. Ellen and Maria were alive and safe and one day they would return.

  With that out of the way, Amy finally started to relax in the lake house. James seemed happy here and although it had been slightly strange that no one was around, Amy couldn’t figure out the reason why and chose not to dwell on it. The downstairs pantry was stocked to the brim with an assortment of food for the pair of them and, because Ellen and Maria had been going on vacation, all the fresh food that could’ve rotted and left a nasty smell had been thrown out long ago. Obviously none of the lights or electrical devices worked, but Amy hadn’t been expecting them to. Quite simply, finding the lake house in such good shape was a welcome surprise and as Amy drew open the curtains in the front room and gazed out over the lake, she finally felt like things were going her way.

  James managed to find a few blank sheets of paper and some colored pencils from Maria’s studio upstairs and happily lay down in front of the floor-to-ceiling window that Amy gazed out of to draw the lake beyond. He scribbled away feverishly, his small tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as it often did when he concentrated. The smile on Amy’s face only widened as she watched him, feeling joy at the fact her son was finally once again concentrating on something he should be doing. Drawing was a task suitable to an eight-year-old; being hit by a bullet or hiding out underground in the woods was not.

  The view was truly idyllic and when James set down his pencils and held up the drawing to show Amy, she couldn’t have been more proud of him. That was, until she noticed an element of his drawing she had not seen with her own eyes.

  “Who are they, James?” Amy asked, pointing to two stick figures in his drawing that appeared to be walking towards their lake house while scanning the expansive view from the window.

  “The two men,” James replied innocently. “They were walking out there.”

  Amy’s hand started to shake slightly as she held James’s drawing, nerves creeping into her previously calm state. She tried to remain relaxed, talking to her son as if nothing was wrong with what he’d just observed. “Where were they walking, darling?” She asked again, keeping one eye fixed on the window. “Were they coming this way?”

  “Yes,” James nodded. “They went around the back.”

  Amy’s shaking intensified as she came to a quick assumption about what had happened. She knew it was too good to be true; the lake house being empty and all the others seeming deserted was too perfect. Someone must have watched her and James breaking into the house and now they were coming for them.

  “Stay here,” Amy whispered to her son, snapping into the serious and protective mother she had been ever since she’d heard that first explosion in South Haven. “Stay quiet James, but scream for me if you see anyone else, okay? I just need to go downstairs to check on something.”

  James nodded earnestly, his playful and childish demeanor fading away almost as quickly as it had come. Amy hated to see it happen but knew she had to deal with the two approaching figures quickly. Kissing her son on the top of his head, she crept away from him and made her way down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen to pick up a large knife, which she brandished in front of her body as she walked.

  As quietly as she could, Amy moved to the back door that she had broken in through and picked up the chair she had placed in front of it. She held her breath as she moved it to one side and allowed the door to swing open, the wind catching it and pushing it toward her.

  Seeing no one immediately outside, Amy took a few steps forward, reluctant to go much farther from the lake house in case she needed to go back for James. She was just weighing her options when a man walked around the corner and came into view. The knife fell from Amy’s hand and landed with a clatter on the floor, grabbing his attention. They both froze. Amy could barely even breathe. All of her thoughts disappeared from
her head until she was left with only one. A single word encompassing everything she knew or had ever known.

  Len.

  Solar Crash Book 5

  Available Here!

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