Hunter and Hunted
Chapter One
"KATIE! Hurry up!" Johanna yelled from her own bedroom as she madly packed what she could find and remember to take for both her and her husband. "And don't forget your tampons. ALL OF THEM!"
"Shit," Kate cursed, hustling back into her bathroom to grab all of her products including the few pads that remained. While she was there she grabbed all of the first-aid items that were in her bathroom. One suitcase and her backpack and she was out of her bedroom just in time to see her dad come back into their apartment. She and her mother had done the packing while her dad had packed all the food that would fit in the car and still leave room for their clothes and of course, them.
"That was the last trip," Jim told Johanna as she left their bedroom.
"What are you doing?" Johanna knew what he was doing but thought he was mad.
"You may have mocked me when I bought this but you're not laughing now." Jim finished checking that the clip was full and slapped it back into the Glock that he had bought years ago. The only possible downside to owning it was that because of his wife, he'd never actually taken it to a shooting range to learn how to use it properly. He did, however, have almost 300 rounds for it that were already out in the car.
Johanna really wanted to tell him that he was still nuts, but he had a point and given the circumstances, she was starting to wish that they had more than one.
"Load up, Katie, we'll be right there." Johanna watched as she carried her stuff out the door. She looked at Jim worriedly. "Are we going to make it?" New York was a big city and they couldn't possibly be the only ones trying to leave it while they still could.
"I don't know. We need to use the Brooklyn Bridge or the bridge on I-478. Or the Manhattan Bridge if we have to. In addition we could really use a few more propane bottles. I don't know how much propane we have…do you?" Jim asked, hoping that she knew.
Johanna had always left that to her husband, though, so she had no idea. "Stop and get some?" she offered but her husband shook his head.
"Places like Home Depot or Walmart are going to be free-for-alls and a good place to get killed." Civility of even the neighbors that you had known for years flew out the window in times like this. "We just need to get there and pray we can do that." Jim feared just reaching it.
"Then let's get moving." Johanna picked up her two suitcases. "Movies, books?" she suddenly asked as she moved past them to reach the car.
"I'll grab a few but we don't have room for another box." She hadn't yet seen just how much space was left in the car, but she was about to.
It took a few minutes. Kate found herself sitting in the back with her own backpack on her lap since the car was unbelievably full. "Cross your fingers." Jim started the car and pulled out of the underground garage where he found the area in total chaos. There were cars and trucks and even a lot of taxi cabs trying to get through the streets. That didn't include all the people that were either walking or running.
"Good God!" Johanna had never seen anything like it. She watched as Jim drove until it looked like they were going to be trapped. Then suddenly he turned down a side alley that was working fine until they came across a trash bin. "Do we get out and move it?" Johanna reached for the door handle until suddenly she saw her husband using the car to push it in front of them. It was on wheels so it was actually working until it and they stopped.
"Now we push or whatever." Jim squeezed out his door as did Johanna. "Stay here," he told his daughter who wasn't sure how she was going to get out anyway.
"Fine by me." Kate felt like she was in a cocoon at any rate.
It turned out to be just trash that was blocking their progress. Picking it all up and throwing it all into the dumpster cleared the way and they squeezed back into the car.
Then came the next problem. One street over was also crowded and Jim had just slammed the dumpster into the side of a car that had been sitting there. A few 3-point turns and he was actually driving down the sidewalk, hitting trash cans, newspaper dispensers, and anything else that was in the way.
Jim saw an opening and sped across the front of one car, into another alley and got lucky; it was empty. The next street over had him stopping again. They were trapped for a moment until a car moved a little and Jim squeezed between two cars. They all heard a scraping sound on both sides. "JIM!" Johanna wasn't happy that her husband was damaging their car.
"We're never going to see this car again nor are we going to be making payments on anything, so stop complaining," Jim bit out since he was beyond tense from all the worry.
What Johanna wanted to do was to yell at him to not snap at her. It was just that he was right, which only magnified the problem. She held her tongue. They were at least making progress.
Then Jim began to worry. "Here take this." He fished out his weapon and handed it to Johanna.
"What am I supposed to do with this thing?" Johanna didn't even want them to have one, let alone possibly use the stupid thing.
"Hand it over, Mom." Kate reached between the two of them and took it from her. Kate didn't really know how to use it, either. What little she knew about guns was what she'd seen in movies.
While they drove down another alley, Kate pushed the button and popped the clip out. She looked at the rounds that were already in it, slapped the clip back in place, and pulled the slide back. Then she found the lever that took it from safe to firing. Although it wasn't marked in any way, she found that it went up and down with relative ease. She guessed that down was safe and up wasn't so she made sure it was down and placed it in her lap between her and her backpack.
They were actually beginning to make progress and they knew they were getting closer. That was until Jim was forced to stop because there was too much debris in the way. It was supposed to be a short cut that would help them avoid roads.
They were stunned when a man appeared next to Jim and jammed a gun to his head. "OUT!" These idiots had just what he wanted and needed. By the look of it, the car was fully loaded and would last him for weeks if not months. Jim was shocked into inaction. He couldn't hand over their car, they needed it and what was in it to survive.
"I SAID OUT, OLD MAN!" Then he noticed the good-looking young woman in the back hidden behind a backpack. He was actually ready to start drooling all over himself while he thought of all the fun he was going to have with her every night. He was probably going to have to lock her up until she adapted to him. It would take time to play out but he was beginning to enjoy this version of a future. It looked like his life was going into the shitter until these people arrived at his trap.
It was taking too long; he bellowed at Jim, "I SAID OUT!" and pressed the gun farther into his ear. He now had most of his attention focused on the old man behind the wheel. He was no longer paying attention to the woman in the back seat. As far as he was concerned, she now belonged to him.
There was the tremendously loud sound of a gunshot and the crack of a bullet; Johanna screamed, terrified that he had actually shot her husband.
Jim instinctively clapped a hand over his ear that ended up pushing the thug's gun away from his ear. Glancing up at him, he could see that the thief had a look of total shock on his face. As Jim continued to watch, a red spot started to bloom bigger and bigger on his chest. Johanna had automatically covered both ears. The pain was terrible.
Then the thief lost control of his gun; it fell to the ground and he soon followed.
Johanna spun around to look at Katie since she had their gun. What she saw was her daughter sitting there with their gun in her hand; it was almost behind Jim's head. "Katie!" What had she done? Katie also had a hand over one of her ears from the pain of firing the gun inside the car.
Kate's face had a look on it like she'd just gotten caught sneaking a peek at all of her Christmas presents early and knew she was in really big trouble. Serious trouble! "I'M SORRY, I HAD TO. HE WAS GOING TO KILL…KILL ALL OF US," she yelled since she could barely hear her own voice. She was thinking of saying he was going to kill Dad, when in reality he was probably going to kill all three of them. If he didn't kill her she was going to want to kill herself, she just knew it.
Johanna turned her attention to her husband. "Jim?" Was he all right? "JIM!" He wasn't even looking at her.
For Jim's part, the pain in his ear was almost debilitating. To say that his left ear hurt was an understatement. His ear wasn't ringing thankfully, however, besides the pain, he wasn't hearing much of anything at the moment.
"Jim?" This time Johanna grabbed hold of his arm and shook it. He turned to look at her. What she saw was a look of pain. "ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" she yelled. Like Kate, she could barely hear her own voice.
Jim ignored his wife for now and turned to look at his daughter. What he wanted to do was scream at her. It was just that the look on her face told him that she was about ready to begin crying and that softened his heart. It took him a few moments. "GIVE ME THAT THING!" He didn't need her shooting it next to his other ear, let alone every shooting it again. At least not in his lifetime.
Kate handed the gun over, trying to shrink back into her seat and disappear. She wasn't sorry she'd done it. She needed to protect her family. She just wasn't a fan of what it had cost her so far. She wasn't even really thinking of what she had done yet. Just that her parents were both angry with her.
Jim opened his door to check on the thug that had tried to either take everything they had or kill all of them. It wasn't hard to tell that he was certainly dead. A closer look had Jim betting that somehow his daughter had shot the guy right in the heart. He wasn't really knowledgeable about such things but without moving the body to look he was betting that the hole on the other side was a lot bigger. Possibly enough to actually blow his entire heart out of his body.
Jim ignored anything he had on him and began looking around to see if they'd attracted any unwanted attention. He saw nothing and no one coming. He chalked it up to it being New York where people didn't involve themselves in other people's business. Besides, everything had gone to hell.
Jim picked up the thief's gun and got back into the car. "IS HE DEAD?" Johanna asked loudly since her ears still hurt. Seeing Katie holding both of her hands over her ears told her it had affected everyone.
Jim ignored his wife for now and started driving. They still had a little ways to go.
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They couldn't park all that close so it had taken a lot of trips to transfer everything. Still they had managed and none of them had talked about what had happened…yet.
"Cast us off," Kate asked her parents as she started one of the engines so that they could leave the marina.
Her parents had talked about buying a cabin deep in the woods. They'd actually found one, though it needed a fair amount of TLC. Kate, however, had broached the idea about spending that money to buy a boat instead.
They'd balked at the idea at first until Kate had started listing off all the reasons a boat was a better choice than a house in the middle of nowhere. For one, the boat meant they could go new places. She had talked them into a boat that had sails by volunteering to take sailing lessons. "Sailing means we're more environmentally friendly. We don't have to rely on fuel to get around," had been another of Kate's reasons for the boat.
They had actually used it a number of times over the last three years. Jim and Johanna had even begun to get the hang of sailing.
It was a Catana 522 Ocean Class. It had a complete kitchen, a single bathroom with a shower, and two bedrooms, one of which had two twin beds that had become Kate's room. It was a 52 foot catamaran that was equipped with GPS, Log-speedometer, radio, depth sounder, repeater(s), VHF, TV, Radar, CD player, cockpit speakers, plotter, radar detector, navigation center, wind speed and direction, autopilot, AC, fresh water maker, inverter, generator, solar panel, cockpit shower, swimming ladder, and tender.
They hadn't really noticed that they were the only ones in the marina. Everyone, it seemed, had chosen to leave town either by car or by plane. They were just happy that no one was trying to stop them and that they'd actually made it.
They were just starting to pull out into the water when they heard the screaming. "There!" Kate pointed into town. All three of them looked. What they saw was a lot of people running for their lives.
"Watch where you're going, Katie." Johanna didn't need her to see this. She wasn't sure she needed to see it, either. Still she watched a few of them get over run, fall to the ground, and Johanna was sure she saw what was on TV. The person caught was swarmed, ripped to pieces, and eaten alive. In other cases they talked about a person that was bitten but escaped later died or in some way became one of them.
Johanna did her best to keep the contents of her stomach in place and turned away. It was too disgusting to watch. She did have someone she needed to care for, though. She turned to her husband. "How do you feel, babe?" There was no response. "HOW DO YOU FEEL?" She had to yell at him to get his attention.
"I CAN BARELY HEAR A THING!" Jim yelled back not realizing that he was practically screaming.
"I'm sorry," Kate said to them while she watched where she was going.
"It's okay, Katie. You probably saved all of us. We just need to find out what it has cost us." Johanna turned to Jim. "Go lie down and get some rest. I'll start unpacking our food and get it into the refrigerator." He didn't move. "GO LIE DOWN, BABE, GET SOME REST!" Johanna yelled and pushed him down the stairs to their stateroom. She would look in on him later. What they didn't have a lot of was medical supplies. There were some basic medical items, yes. But specialty items like antibiotics, plasma, or even saline bags, no. Hopefully his hearing wasn't that bad.
"Where do we go, Mom?" Kate inquired when Johanna came back to her before going downstairs to unpack.
"Just get us out into the Atlantic for now. Perhaps Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. Hopefully it hasn't reached everywhere. We only have so much food. …Maybe your dad's dedication to fishing will come in handy." Eat fish instead of beef.
"And if those places are bad?" Did they have a plan since she didn't.
"One thing at a time, Katie. We eat one meal a day for now to make our food last longer. Just keep an eye on the controls and where we are going. Try and think of a place for us to stop for the night. Some place safe." Johanna squeezed her arm and headed below deck to begin unpacking.
"So we don't have a plan," Kate told herself after her mom left. "It's like one of those stupid movies," she muttered.
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Come morning, Jim woke up next to his wife, relieved that a lot of the pain was gone. But after he got up to go use the bathroom he saw a red spot on his pillow. He hurried to the bathroom. Once there he found drying blood in his left ear. He quickly cleaned it up before thinking about taking a shower.
Meanwhile Johanna woke up and saw the blood. "Jim!" He was missing and she didn't see him. "Jim! Where are you?" She was starting to panic and got out of bed. It was the sound of water running that had her moving to the bathroom.
She found him in the shower. "Jim?" Johanna knocked on the glass enclosure. "Jim?" She raised her voice until he finally turned to look at her.
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"So you can't hear anything at all in your left ear?" Kate was ready to begin crying; she was certain it was her fault. She was the one that had fired the weapon practically next to his left ear. She'd had no choice, though; it was about the only space where she could hit the guy with the shot.
"I'll be fine, Katie. Losing hearing in one ear is a small price to pay. You saved all of us from that guy. He was going to take everything we had. We would all be dead by now, or worse." His idea of worse was ending up one of those.
"I'm still sorry." Kate truly wished there had been another way. "What do we do now?" They had talked about how much food they had and what they didn't have. They had things that always got left on the boat. It was just that the boat was meant to get from one place to another. It was not meant to be lived on forever in the middle of the Atlantic or anywhere else. They needed somewhere to go.
"We stay on course, sweetheart. Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. Pull up your maps of the area and show us our options. Those two islands are the biggest I can think of at the moment. Maybe too large." Johanna feared greatly that the bigger the island the better the chance it had reached them.
"Maybe one of the smaller islands in the area. We can anchor offshore and take the dingy in search of supplies or help. …Or information. Have we tried the TV yet?" Johanna queried and saw two shaking heads.
"I can try our radio. See if anyone is in the area. Maybe one of those mega yachts is around here. They might know more," Kate suggested.
"We have spare sails, don't we?" Johanna was pretty sure they did.
"One of each, yes. We just haven't had much practice in changing one." None actually. They had taken a class but never actually changed one as a crew. They wouldn't have had even that had Kate not insisted that they go.
"One day at a time. We conserve our food and perform maintenance on the boat. This is home now." At least Johanna still had her family and that was what was important.