Read EMP (The Districts Book 1) for Free Online Page A

were really capable of harming each other when it came down to it. His heart told him that people were better than that and they were capable of coming together in a time of need. His brain told him that people were still animals and when something of this scale happened, it was all about survival and people would be willing to do anything to protect themselves.
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
    Mike turned off the headlights and slowed the truck to a crawl once they passed through the town of Lyons. There was enough light from the moon that he could keep driving. Mike turned off the main road onto a dirt road that was barely visible and looked more like the driveway to an abandoned piece of property. He stopped the truck in front of a small cabin and turned it off.
    It wasn’t much, Nick vaguely recalled having a conversation about it with Mike at some point, a small log cabin that looked like it had seen its fair share of harsh Colorado winters.
    “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Mike said as he climbed out of the truck. “You could never see all those stars in the city.”
    Nick looked up. The pine trees surrounding the cabin reached for sky. There was a clearing above the cabin where he could clearly see the Milky Way. It was beautiful, Mike was right, and Nick had never seen anything like it. He was brought back to reality when he heard the door of the cabin creak open as Mike went inside. Nick lifted his pack out of the front and went inside.
    Mike lit a lantern and looked over the supply shelf that stretched the length of one wall. The interior of the cabin was sparse. There was a loveseat along one wall, a supply shelf along another, a wood burning stove in the corner by the door and a single bed against the back wall. Nick set his pack down next to the loveseat and followed Mike back outside.
    “Let’s get the truck unloaded and get some sleep. It’ll be light soon and we have a big day ahead of us.”
    They unloaded the bed of the truck, which took up most of the empty floor space in the cabin. Mike handed Nick a bottle of water, which he gladly accepted and took a sip from as he sat down on the loveseat. Mike climbed under the covers of the bed, still in his clothes, and Nick adjusted the pillow on the loveseat. It wasn’t an ideal sleeping arrangement, it was much too small for his nearly six-foot frame, but he felt content and safe.
     
    ~~~
     
    Nick woke up and looked around the cabin. It took him a moment to realize where he was and then it all came flooding back. A sense of sadness filled him as he thought about the day before… and his parents.
    The supplies that he and Mike had brought into the cabin had been organized into piles in front of the supply shelf and Mike was nowhere to be seen. Nick stood up and stretched his cramped legs. He was already dreading sleeping on the loveseat and it had only been one night.
    He walked outside and looked around. Mike had backed the truck in between two of the large pine trees and covered it with boughs to give it natural camouflage. Nick walked around to the back of the cabin and spotted Mike walking through the trees with an arm load of sticks.
    “You need some help?”
    Mike shook his head, “Nah, but you could chop some wood.” He motioned to a stump with an axe blade buried into it as he walked by Nick and disappeared around the cabin.
    Nick yanked the axe free of the stump. He had never chopped wood, but had seen enough burly men in movies and on television that he figured he could do it. He picked up a large piece of wood off the ground and stood it up on the chopping stump. He swung the axe over his head and brought it down on the wood. The blade of the axe glanced off the wood and buried itself into the stump again. Nick wrenched it free again and prepared for another swing.
    “Be careful.”
    Nick lowered the axe and turned toward Mike.
    “Don’t forget, there are no hospitals anymore. If you get injured, there is only so much we can do. A major