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

how to dress a wound. He’d probably find a bunch of unhelpful advice too, but at least it would be something. Matthew was woefully aware of how much he didn’t know; how much survival knowledge was out of his reach. Knowledge that would be much more helpful than knowing how many Facebook shares would make a post go viral, how to create a pitch-deck for a new business client, and how to use search engine optimization to his benefit.

He felt useless. He couldn’t care for his father. The same helplessness he’d felt when David had his heart attack overwhelmed Matthew suddenly. Once more, he imagined what kind of shame he would feel if he arrived back at the hotel without his father. He couldn’t tell his mom that her husband had died on the long road back to Galena because Matthew’s healing skills were next to none.

He wiped his sandy-blonde hair off his forehead with his elbow and cinched the tail of the gauze with a bendable pronged metal piece. How long should the bandage stay on? He had no idea. He knew that wounds needed to breathe, and hoped that in his attempts to protect the wound from the elements, he wasn’t accidentally creating a perfect breeding ground for bacteria and infection to thrive.

“You should go on ahead,” David piped up, his face still an exhausted gray. “I’m not in any state to keep walking. I’m holding you back.”

Matthew let out a slow breath, knowing what David was about to say next.

“You’ll be much faster without me. Find help. Get home to your wife and kids.”

“I can’t do that, Dad,” Matthew said as a sob caught inside his chest. “I’m not going to walk up to Mom and tell her I left you. You’re not roadkill.”

“Might as well be at this point. Maybe this is a sign I’ve outlived my luck.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Matthew hissed. “I won’t hear it.”

“Ruth will need you. The kids need you. Kathleen can’t do everything on her own. The hotel is probably the safest place in the world right now. You can’t risk them over me.”

“I’m not leaving you here.”

“You have to think of your family,” David said.

“You are my family. Dad, why do you think you’re not important? You’re the guy who taught me how to be a good father, how to take care of my kids. I’m not just going to abandon you because you’re hurt. Pushing me to do so isn’t going to help your case. I inherited your stubbornness.” Matthew handed David a water bottle and David drank deeply. Matthew continued, “Patton wouldn’t give up on me. Kathleen wouldn’t give up on me. I’m not giving up on you. So stop this doom and gloom leave-me-on-the-side-of-the-road crap and let’s get to Galena together in one piece. Can we do that?”

David let out a soft sigh and looked beyond Matthew to the stretch of road left for them to walk. “What are we going to do, then?”

Matthew carefully put away the rest of the supplies in the first aid kit while his mind reeled. Slipping the white container back inside his bag, he managed to fight past the emotion clogging his throat to say, “We need more supplies. You need more than aspirin for the pain. We need more bandages and an anti-bacterial salve. Something that fights off infection and can bring your fever back down.”

“Too bad we don’t know what kind of herbs are growing on the side of the road that we could use.”

Matthew stifled a laugh. “So far I see brush grass and knapweed. Not much for saving your life, unfortunately.”

“You wouldn’t know the difference between aloe and poison ivy.”

“That’s the truth.” Matthew zipped up his backpack and coaxed David to eat a few bites of a protein bar. As David munched on the food, Matthew pulled out the waterproof map and spread it out over his crisscrossed legs. The red squiggle of the highway looped across the map’s slick surface. Everything looked so small and compact on the map, Galena to Madison only a finger-length of distance that translated to miles upon miles. He tried to estimate where he thought they were—noting that they really hadn’t gone far enough to pass any signs—and figured about a mile up the road, he’d find another pull-off exit where they could search for a gas station or grocery store. They could restock their supplies, hopefully avoid any gunfights, and get out in one piece.

Jade lingered in his mind. Both he and David had been wrong to trust her. Yet at the same time, no matter how many times Matthew played out what they could’ve done better, he knew he always would have tried to help her. His heart of gold had been pick-axed by selfish and scared people. The map blurred in front of him and he blinked back tears. He realized he needed to be more careful, especially in trusting others. Question them more than he normally would. He had to take off his rose-tinted glasses and face the reckless ways he’d put both himself and his father in danger. Jade was a wake-up call he didn’t know he needed. If he’d questioned her more, maybe he wouldn’t be sitting on the side of the road with a father flush with sickness and having a crisis about his faith in humanity.

“We aren’t far from an exit,” he told David. “If we go about a mile up, we can probably find someplace to get more supplies, have another rest, and then I can re-dress your wound.”

David nodded weakly, as if that was the only thing he could do at this point.

“Can you make it another mile?” Matthew asked. “Should we rest longer?”

David shook his head and tried to get to his feet. He wobbled, clutching Matthew’s arm for support. When he tried to take a staggering step, he swayed as if he were on the deck of a dinghy. “I feel woozy,” he said. “I need to sit back