Evan awoke to confusion. He was lying on a cold hard flat surface, perhaps a concrete floor, in complete darkness. He felt a dull throb in his head and he was stiff and cold. He had no idea where he was, nor how he had gotten there.
Evan cautiously sat up. He concluded he was in one piece with no significant injuries, with just a sore spot on his left shoulder. Getting on his hands and knees, he picked a direction and started moving slowly, feeling the floor as he proceeded. He soon came to a vertical surface that also felt to be concrete.
Sitting with his back to the wall, Evan took stock of his situation. Between the unnatural darkness and the flat orthogonal surfaces, it was obvious he was in an enclosed room. That meant somewhere there was likely a door. He added finding it to his very short to-do list, but he didn't feel a compelling reason to rush to seek it. Haste often led to mistakes. He didn't survive this long in this world gone to hell by making a lot of hasty mistakes.
"Don't pat yourself on the back,"
Evan thought,
"you obviously made a mistake to end up here."
He tried to bring up his last memory prior to awakening in the room. He recalled moving quietly through the forest as the sun was just setting, looking for a good spot to bed down for the night, when . . . what? A sharp pain in his shoulder. Yes, that was his last memory.
Sitting quietly, Evan became aware of a faint sound that he had not previously detected: breathing, and not his. A chill ran up Evan's spine. Someone or something living was in the room with him. That could be a good thing, but he needed to assume it was a threat for now. He felt for the hunting knife he kept in a sheath on his hip, only to find both the knife and the sheath were missing. Perhaps now was the time to find the exit.
Evan worked his way along the wall looking for any breaks, picking a direction that seemed to move him away from the breathing. Eventually, though he came to a corner, and his exploration began taking him closer to whatever was in the room with him. He tried to be as quiet as possible, but in this enclosed space, he knew any conscious person or animal would hear his movements.
Suddenly, there was a scrambling sound and a voice hissed, "Stay the fuck away from me, I've got a knife."
OK, so the other occupant of the room was human and sounded female. Evan felt some relief in that. He wasn't thrown in here as lunch for some nameless beast. Then again, if their captors had disarmed him and yet left her with a knife, he couldn't rule out the possibility that she was meant to eat him; the world had gotten that crazy.
"Hey, I have no desire to harm you; I'm just looking for a way out." Then Evan bluffed, ". . . and by the way, I'm armed as well, so don't get any ideas."
"The fuck you are. I searched you while you were out cold. You haven't got any weapons."
She still had the upper hand, but Evan suspected she was also lying. It's what he would do in her shoes. The good news was, even if she was armed, she had not chosen to kill him while he was unconscious. That meant she either had a shred of human decency or she felt he could be useful to her.
"The name's Evan."
"Fuck you, asshole."
"That's an unusual name, Miss Asshole. Mind if I just call you 'Fuck'?"
"Very funny." She paused, then said, "Fine, you can call me 'Liv', but I'm not looking for a friend. Stay the fuck away from me or I'll stab you."
"I call bullshit. You haven't got a knife either."
"You can believe what you want, but do you really want to chance it?"
"Nope, not worth the risk," Evan conceded. He went back to searching the wall.
"You're wasting your time, I've already tried the door and it won't open. There's not even a handle on this side."
After inspecting the metal door himself, he concluded that Liv was correct. "Did you try slipping your knife blade between the door and the frame to see if you could get to the latch?"
Liv hesitated for a split second and then said, "Yeah, no luck."
The hesitation confirmed to Evan that she was lying.
There appeared to be an access plate in the center of the door, with a seam all around it, possibly to pass things through the door.
"You a nomad, too?" Evan asked.
"Fuck off, I'm not talking to you."
Evan felt like their best chance to survive their current situation was to work together, but she was going to make it difficult with her standoffish attitude. It was ironic that he was looking for cooperation, given the way he had chosen to live his life.
When civilization had broken down, people had gravitated to three basic survival strategies. A common terminology had evolved to describe them that seemed to be universal at this point.
"Settlers" were the most common group and probably had the best chance of survival. These were people who established a home base and fortified it. It could be just a single building or an entire walled community. The larger the group, the more safety it generally afforded, but often at the expense of freedoms. Many of these groups, as Evan had found the hard way, were ruled by ruthless individuals who exploited their community members.
The second group were the "marauders." These were roving gangs that took what they needed as they traveled, by force if necessary, leaving destruction in their wake. They were often the undoing of smaller or poorly fortified settlements, but each always ran the risk of encountering a larger and better armed gang.
The final category was the "nomads," the lone wolves who trusted their own survival skills more than they trusted other people. Most kept to remote areas, where contact with other humans would be limited. Statistically, this was probably the most risky way to live, but the category that Evan kept gravitating back to.
These categories were not completely black and white. Many nomads maintained small shacks in the woods, or flitted between various hideouts in the cities, but the difference in strategy was they did not openly defend a property and did not seek strength in numbers. Settlements often sent out raiding parties to rival settlements, essentially acting as marauders, if they felt that there was a weakness to be exploited. Marauding gangs would occasionally settle down for a limited time until they used up the resources in the vicinity.
Footsteps announced the arrival of people outside the door. The access panel in the door swung open, sending light streaming into the room. A voice said, "Step back from the door."
The door swung open and four men entered. All four were large and powerful. They were dressed in all black outfits that appeared to have some type of body armor sewn into them. Two were carrying clubs and the other two each had something small and black in their hands. Evan backed up toward the wall. He stole a sidelong glance at his fellow captive and she was taking a defensive stance.
"Come with us and no-one will hurt you," one man said as he beckoned Evan to step forward. Two of the men turned toward Liv.
She stepped forward, but just as one of the men reached for her arm, she suddenly kicked him in the groin. As he bent over in pain, she connected with a knee to his nose, dropping him to the floor. She caught the club he dropped before it hit the floor and swung it at the other man's head.
As soon as Evan saw Liv begin her attack, he thought,
"This is a bad idea."
Still, he felt compelled to follow her lead. The man closest to Evan was briefly distracted by Liv and Evan dropped low and swept the man's feet with his leg, then delivered a punch to the man's throat as he fell to the ground. He turned toward the second man only to feel two Taser electrodes find their mark followed by intense involuntary contractions as the voltage incapacitated him. A second later he was handcuffed.
Evan looked over to see that Liv had met a similar fate. The man Evan had taken down glared at him, rubbing his throat. Liv's victim was slower to get up and was bleeding profusely from his broken nose. He cursed at her, "Fucking bitch, I should beat you to death."
A fifth man stepped into the room. He was small and balding, but had an air of authority. "Shut up and keep your hands off her. It's your own damn fault. You goons are supposed to be trained for this kind of stuff and these two almost took you out. Let's go."
They were led into a hallway. There were additional armed guards outside the room. These men had guns. Evan wondered if they actually had real ammunition, a very difficult commodity to come by these days.
Evan was shocked to find that the hallways were lit with electric lights. When was the last time he had seen anything running on electricity? He couldn't recall. Come to think of it, those Tasers would have needed to be charged somehow also. This settlement had resources beyond any he had seen since the early months of the collapse.
Civilization had turned out to be a veritable house of cards. Few people understood just how much regular human intervention was required to keep the infrastructure in place that made society work. When the pandemic reached its peak, people abandoned their jobs and focused on their own personal survival.
Public transportation ceased almost immediately.
