Moonshine, p.1
Moonshine, page 1
Moonshine
Kat Bostick
Contents
Title Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
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35
A Note from the Author
Acknowledgement
about the Author
Books By This Author
Moonshine Copyright © 2020 Kat Bostick All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
For permissions visit: www.katbostick.com
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organization is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
ISBN 978-1-7350097-0-4 (eBook Edition)
ISBN 978-1-7350097-1-1 (Paperback Edition)
Book Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com
For everyone who believes love can conquer the darkest days.
1
Living on a Prayer
No one knows why the lights went out. Except maybe some secret branch of the government. They always know stuff like that, don’t they? I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. Six months after the blackout, they went dark too. Government officials disappeared and with them, government aid.
It was like someone took the seams of the entire nation and started tugging. At first there was only a little pilling; a handful of looters who thought they could get away with stealing—they usually could—and soccer moms fighting over the last package of toilet paper at big box stores. At first, I thought the people stockpiling had to be out of their minds. The power was out. Why bother stocking up on groceries that won’t keep?
One or two months in, I suddenly understood the appeal of buying sixteen cases of canned vegetables. Food was food in the end of the world and those of us without it found ourselves at a disadvantage that could serve to be deadly. On the other hand, those who had it also found themselves facing death by the hands of those without.
I still remember the sickening dread I felt over the first report of someone killed over supplies in the city. It seemed so barbaric, so inhuman. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning.
Despite having no lights, no fridge, and no running water, the blackout felt inconsequential during that first month. Moving from my duplex to one of the disaster relief camps was like going to summer camp. Most of my bunk mates were friendly enough and though the food wasn’t amazing, it would keep me going. We even made a game of tossing ideas around, trying to figure out how we’d gotten in this mess.
People at camp said it couldn’t be an EMT—or was it EMP?—because there wasn’t a weapon big enough to knock the whole country off the grid. And plenty of technology still worked. My cellphone had power—though no signal or Wi-Fi—and most older cars ran just fine. It wasn’t like airplanes suddenly fell from the sky. Not that I saw, anyway. We just didn’t have electricity.
There were plenty of other theories; a massive solar storm, rapture, Russians, super intelligent sentient computers, aliens…the list went on. You name an apocalypse movie, and someone believed we were living in it. As for me, I didn’t think the world was ending. I was naïve enough to believe that someone somewhere was taking care of it for me.
That was how I ended up in my current predicament. I didn’t even bother to pack the right shoes when I left for camp. I believed my stay would be temporary. Those trendy low impact, brightly colored barefoot shoes were great right up until you stepped on a pointy rock. Make that six hundred pointy rocks on the gravelly shoulder of a back-country road in middle-of-nowhere Washington State.
Or, as one of my former travel companions charmingly referred to it, Bumfuck, Washington. In my mother’s household that phrase would have earned me a mouth full of soap. That was before though, and as much as I could use the laugh, I needed to keep my mind on track.
And I couldn’t risk the noise. Making too much noise got you killed in the end of the world.
Boots. I needed boots and for the first time in thirty miles, I might have found somewhere to acquire them. Shimmering before me like a beautiful oasis in the desert was a sporting goods store. Alright, fine, it wasn’t shimmering. In fact, the weathered building looked like it had seen better days before the world ended. The yellow sign advertising live bait was practically crushed under the weight of creeping moss that made its way down the roof, threatening to cave the whole thing in.
The second I saw the place I wanted to sprint to the door with tears of joy in my eyes. Experience taught me better. After grocery stores and gas stations, outdoor gear stores were the next to become hotspots for looting. There was that handful of eager people who attacked shopping malls and jewelry outlets but somehow, I doubted they were sitting pretty on a lifetime supply of Twinkies that they traded designer shoes and diamond rings for.
Stuff was useless in the end of the world unless you could eat it, wear it, or defend yourself with it. A shame, really. I loved stuff. I missed throw pillows and fingernail polish and sparkly tops that had no practical purpose. But there was no use lamenting over the past. It could swallow you up like a black hole if you weren’t careful.
It was over three days ago that I last spotted recent human activity and even then, the trail was fairly cold—based on my very lacking knowledge of such things. Still, the store was surrounded by a concrete lot and left me wide open to anyone inside or scouting from the trees. I could wait until night, but my flashlight ran out of batteries and it would take me forever to fumble around in the dark.
Was I going to risk it? I sat in stillness for another minute, listening for any sign that I wasn’t the only one here.
That was the thing about the end of the world. It wasn’t the earth ripping in two or cities consumed by tsunamis. It wasn’t hordes of zombies wandering the streets. Most of the time it was…empty. Quiet. Sometimes just quiet enough to trick you into thinking it was a Sunday morning and everyone was sleeping in and any moment the smell of fresh baked goods would waft down the road from a café like nothing had changed.
That feeling was a lie. Everything had changed.
And I’d learned the hard way that sometimes, quiet doesn’t mean empty. Quiet doesn’t mean you’re alone. Quiet can be much more dangerous than gun fire and raised voices. Quiet means you’re being watched. As much as I desperately hated being alone, I would rather not have company.
Even if there were others nearby, I wasn’t in any shape to run from them in ripped up shoes. I glanced down at my sneakers with a sigh. There wasn’t really another option.
Looks like it’s now or never, Liv. I thought, feeling the familiar tightness of anxiety constrict my chest.
Up until the world ended, I wasn’t one for prayer. Growing up in the Bible Belt, you’d think I would have been well versed in religion, but my parents weren’t the type to believe in anything that didn’t make them wealthy or make them look wealthy. One man back at camp claimed God had abandoned us and we were what was left after the rapture took the good ones. Maybe that was true. Maybe there was no God, but when it’s just you and the eerie silence of an empty town, you start asking for guidance from anywhere you can get.
Please God, let there be size five and half boots in there. And please God, don’t let there be raiders in this town. Don’t let there be anyone but little old me.
Prayers sent and parking lot scouted, I took off at the fastest pace I could manage, my backpack slinging back and forth as I went. I wasn’t sure if it kept getting heavier or I kept getting skinnier, but the darn thing nearly toppled me. By the time I reached the glass door my heart was pounding so fast that my head felt light. That was happening a lot more often lately and I couldn’t always blame it on fear.
Please God, let there be a box of granola bars in this shop.
Based on the smashed glass, which I hadn’t noticed from a distance, that was unlikely. This store, like many others I’d passed, was already hit by other travelers, maybe raiders if I was especially unlucky. They always trashed what they didn’t take because, hey, why not? If you’re going to stoop so low you attack fellow humans with blunt objects, knocking over mannequins and lighting useful stuff on fire is only to be expected.
Not ready to give up hope and terribly uncomfortable being so exposed, I ducked through the glass-less bottom half of the door. Shards crunched beneath my sneakers and I winced. There were at least three holes in the soles of each shoe and there was no avoiding the glass. I would have to tip toe and hope nothing large embedded in my skin.
There were no windows in the shop, making the broken door the only source of light. I could easily make out a dusty counter with an open and empty register, two shelves of disturbed fishing
If someone was in here, the glass skittering under my feet would have immediately alerted them. I held still for three breaths, listening intently for any sign that someone was coming to shoot me and take my stuff. Maybe there was a God after all. No one came for me and as my eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior, I spotted a sign marked “shoes.”
In my experience, the first thing people went for in sporting goods stores were the guns. This store was a tiny place in a tiny town and didn’t sell firearms but there were several empty shelves that previously held knives. If not seeking out guns, people usually took anything else they could carry. The boots in the back were picked over, obviously visited by more than one person or group in the past.
On the bright side, my shoe size was small enough that most people couldn’t wear it. Unfortunately, that also meant that retailers in nowhere towns didn’t typically carry it. I’d found that a six was doable if I doubled up on socks but currently, I was lacking in the sock department and it didn’t look like there were any left here.
Just behind the furthest shelf was a door marked “employees only.” Feeling more desperate than brave, I twisted the handle and tested the lock. The door opened with a creak. Inside appeared to be storage shelves, most of which were as disturbed as the rest of the store. It was nearly pitch black in the stock room, but I propped the door open and crept inside anyway.
I’ll be honest, I’m afraid of the dark. Of all the things I’d seen in the end of the world, darkness wasn’t all that bad, but for some reason my brain just went haywire every time the lights were out. Five steps in, I started imagining clowns hiding behind the shelves. Not raiders or creepy cannibals that were hungry enough to eat my flesh, but clowns. If I could go back in time and warn my sixteen-year-old self how many nights I’d be spending alone in the dark, I would have skipped every single one of those horror movies.
I barely managed to stifle a scream when the plastic crate I was reaching for fell off the shelf and dumped shoe boxes on top of me. I definitely got a cardboard cut on my forehead and several on my arms but, because God was real and feeling the love for me today, I found brand stinkin’ new boots in size six. The only pair, too.
It took serious guts, but I pushed myself further into the room in search of socks. Bingo! There was half a crate of wool socks hiding under a bunch of the duck toys used for training hunting dogs. It was tempting to take all of them but even if socks were lightweight, I knew I shouldn’t add too much extra bulk to my pack. These days I was lucky if I found more than a picked over blackberry bush or two. The hungrier I got, the harder it was to carry anything besides my own body.
Once back in the relative safety of the shoe section—and once I’d closed the gaping clown hell door—I sat on the floor and hastily exchanged my ripped up tennis shoes for hiking boots. The fit wasn’t perfect, and I was probably going to have blisters for days. Nothing to be done about it.
The longer I stayed inside the store, the antsier I got. With only one obvious entrance, I was trapped. Despite my nerves, I forced myself to check the back shelves for food or any other useful items. I found a collection of books but sadly none of them detailed wild food or how to identify it, which would have come in real handy. There were dozens of discarded beef jerky, protein bar, and snack mix boxes but not a single one had any food left in them.
I would have felt better if I’d never discovered those boxes. Seeing colorful pictures of food brands that I recognized made my stomach rumble painfully and my mouth water. I needed to get out of here and find somewhere to settle down before nightfall. Then I could worry about sustenance.
The new leather boots were rigid around my ankles and toes, but holy cow did it feel good to walk over that glass without worrying about any of it getting through the holes in my shoe. It was about time something went right.
I was less careful coming out of the store as I was coming in because if someone was watching, there was no way I would avoid their gaze. Once out the door, I powerwalked—running risked using up the rest of my energy for the day and I needed to do some serious hiking to get far enough away from this town—to the tree line and located the road I’d been following for the last three days.
Without a compass or frequent road signs it was hard to say exactly where I was. I was fairly certain that I was still going east or at least east-ish. Based on the way the towns were gradually shrinking and the elevation was rising, I was getting closer to the Cascades. Mountain wilderness would be great for avoiding other people but considering what a poor job I’d done of keeping myself fed on wild food, this didn’t bode well for me.
Not to mention, the weather was getting colder. It was subtle right now, but the sunny, dry days were giving way to cooler and cooler nights. Without a tent or proper clothing there was no way I would even make it through autumn in the mountains.
That didn’t leave too many options. Whether or not I headed back west, I would have to deal with winter. While I might be lucky enough to find more supplies, maybe even some canned food, I risked encountering raiders. Thus far I’d seen signs of others heading this way but most of it looked to be from a single person or small groups. Raiders travelled in numbers and they were quickly overtaking urban areas.
From what I’d seen, many of their groups were pre-existing gangs or younger men with no qualms about committing horrible acts of violence. They swept through cities, towns, and camps like knife wielding locusts, taking whatever—and whoever—they wanted. By now Seattle was probably split up into territories, each maintained by one bloodthirsty raider group or another. Returning to the city was less desirable than freezing to death in the mountains.
East-ish it was then. Sooner or later I would have to come upon a town that hadn’t been abandoned or perhaps another FEMA camp that wasn’t ravaged by raiders. I slipped as far into the trees as I dared, noting that the afternoon sun was already beginning to hint at that golden evening glow. I wasn’t going to make it much farther today. That was the struggle of travelling on foot.
When I wasn’t gathering meager amounts of food or sneaking through towns, I was walking. I couldn’t really say what my goal was with all that walking. Maybe I was headed for the fabled camps in eastern Washington, the ones supposedly untouched by raiders and blessed with wind energy. Maybe I thought if I just walked far enough, I would find some normal place that wasn’t affected by the end of the world and be welcomed by kind strangers. Or maybe I simply wanted to survive and so far, the only way I knew to do that was to keep moving.
I didn’t encounter any berry bushes for the remainder of the day. The invasive Himalayan blackberry proved to be an ally on my journey through the wilderness—when I wasn’t getting painfully tangled in it, anyway—but it seemed to grow scarcer as I neared higher elevations. I picked several dandelion plants throughout the afternoon, chewing the bitter leaves and grimacing. That was hardly enough food to fill my mouth, much less my stomach.
By twilight I was wandering aimlessly, barely aware of the road, feeling lightheaded and like my legs were made of pool noodles. That sprint to and from the store took its toll. Once upon a time I was a cardio-bunny, but my days of track and field were long over. Though I struggled to walk, I forced myself on until I found a patch of evergreen bushes tucked around the back of a Douglas fir. It wasn’t the ideal place to sleep but it would conceal me.
Settling between the bushes with my backpack in my lap, I clenched my jaw in an attempt to ignore the painful emptiness in my gut. I didn’t want to consider what my frail state meant. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if I didn’t wake up with enough energy to walk tomorrow. It hadn’t been this bad before. I was hungry, sure, but I never stopped.
Darkness gradually closed in around me and my heart tripped with the familiar terror that accompanied the night. Even with my knees tucked to my chest and my location hidden, I never felt safe. It was going to be another restless sleep, waiting for any sign of a hunting predator or a bold group of raiders. Any of the hope I earned from my successful scavenging trip in the sporting goods store was quickly fading and I found myself praying once again.
