EMP Catastrophe | Book 1 | Erupting Trouble Hamilton, Grace (read book .txt) 📖

was climbing him like a tree—and then he finally got enough lift with his chest to push her to the side. She slammed his hands on the pavement, and he cried out in pain. His grip weakened. Her fingers wrapped around the gun barrel—keep your hand off the trigger, Jade, hand off the trigger—

Bang. His ears were immediately deafened by the loose gunshot. Screaming filtered in through the ringing silence and it had to have been him, he was the one screaming, was he the one wounded? The bellow filled his mind, clenched around his heart. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t him, it was…

Dad.

Oh god, was David shot? A fuzzy blanket of anger surrounded him. How could she have done this? They’d been kind to Jade, they’d helped her, and she shot his father. With a strength he didn’t know existed, he managed to bring his knee up and jam it into her stomach. She let out a sharp gasp. He tossed her off him and lunged to his knees, scrambling to his feet. The gun was still in his hands. He aimed it at her.

Well. Aimed it just over her shoulder.

“Dad?” Matthew shouted, even though his back was turned to his father. “Dad, say something. Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better,” David wheezed out, his voice faint.

Jade scrambled up to her knees, as if ready to lunge for Matthew and start the fight over again.

“Don’t even think about it. Hands up,” Matthew said. Adrenaline surged through him, taking away the pain from the fall and the bloody gouges trailing up and down his forearms and wrists.

Jade’s hands rose, her lower lip trembling. A gash covered her side, looking like road rash. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Listen to me,” Matthew said. “You’re going to leave us alone. You’re going to get out of my sight as fast as you can, do you hear me? I don’t want to hurt you, but you will not hurt me or my father again. Do you understand?”

One swift nod of the head and suddenly she pivoted, shooting back the way they’d come, keeping her head down as she zig-zagged around the cars down the highway. As soon as Matthew lost sight of her, he turned, terrified to see the damage Jade had done. David slumped against the concrete curb, unmoving. Horror filled Matthew as he ran to his father, skidding on his knees. “Dad? Dad, answer me. Dad!”

“Still…here. Thought I’d had another heart attack for a moment.” David winced as he raised his head. He clutched his arm. Blood seeped between his fingertips, dotting the ground. Without thinking, Matthew pressed his hands over the wound. David moaned in pain.

“Is the bullet in it?” Matthew asked. He tried to inspect the wound as best he could. He was a marketing major for goodness sake, he had no idea what to look for in a wound, but he did know that he had to find out if the bullet was lodged inside. It looked more like a graze—although a deep one. Nothing appeared to be lodged inside. “I need bandages. Right. Bandages.”

Dragging his abandoned backpack toward him, he dumped the food Jade had insisted they carry until he found the bandana he’d bought at the sporting goods store the day before. Had it really only been a day? It felt like a lifetime.

Pressure. He wrenched David’s sleeve apart, and tried to make a loose tourniquet above the wound with the bandage. Using a new bottle of water, he splashed what he could over the gash, attempting to clean it out. With trembling hands, he popped open the first aid kit, ripping open sterile alcohol wipes. The blood had eased to a steady trickle and he tried not to focus on how much of it covered his hands. He then applied cotton swabs over the wound and wrapped gauze around David’s arm as best he could.

“Do you need stitches?” Matthew asked helplessly. He didn’t know why he asked, only that he felt he should. He needed to hear his father say something, say anything. “I barely know how to sew. Not sure I can handle stitches.”

“Good job, Dr. Riley,” David breathed out. “Knew you should’ve gone into the medical field.”

“Don’t joke, how can you joke? You just got shot!” Matthew wiped his hand across his forehead. Small tremors shook his hands.

“Give me some more aspirin,” David said.

“Can you have that?” Matthew asked, feeling frantic. “What about your heart?”

“I just got shot. I think my heart can give me a break.”

Matthew busted open the bottle and David palmed a couple pills, took them without water. Matthew stood, giving David space, but he had to do something with the falling adrenaline leaving his body. He grabbed David’s bag and emptied out the crushed chip bags and melted chocolate bars onto the pavement as if angry at the inanimate objects for making him haul them all the way out here.

He remembered how heavy everything had been and bit his lip. There was no way he’d be able to carry everything stolen from the store to Galena. He opened a bag of jerky, made himself eat and drink, before offering some to David. David took small pieces of the jerky and tried to stand.

“Whoa,” Matthew said, grabbing his arm. “We can rest for a minute, the whole day if you want.”

“We need to get home,” David said, using Matthew like his crutch. “Now more than ever.”

Unable to speak, Matthew nodded. His father was right. Now more than ever.

22

Ruth knew she’d need to go to the grocery store. Her attempts at canning the remaining food in the hotel had been moderately successful, and the meat preservation hadn’t turned out too terrible—if at first you don’t succeed and all that nonsense—but now they needed to get actual food from an actual store. Any scheduled deliveries from town had been woefully absent. The power was still off. She hadn’t heard from the rest of her family in days. So, Ruth