No Ordinary Day | Book 2 | No Ordinary Getaway
No Ordinary Getaway
A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller
Harley Tate
Copyright © 2021 by Harley Tate. Cover and internal design © by Harley Tate. Cover image copyright © Deposit Photos and NeoStock, 2021.
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The use of stock photo images in this e-book in no way imply that the models depicted personally endorse, condone, or engage in the fictional conduct depicted herein, expressly or by implication. The person(s) depicted are models and are used for illustrative purposes only.
Contents
No Ordinary Getaway
1. Emma
2. Raymond
3. Emma
4. John
5. Emma
6. Gloria
7. Emma
8. John
9. Emma
10. John
11. Emma
12. Emma
13. John
14. John
15. Emma
16. Holly
17. Emma
18. Emma
19. John
20. Emma
21. Willy
22. Raymond
23. Holly
24. Emma
25. Emma
26. Raymond
27. John
28. Dane
Also by Harley Tate
Acknowledgments
About Harley Tate
No Ordinary Getaway
A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller
Can you ever trust a man hired to kill you?
Emma survived the collapse of the power grid, chaos in a sporting goods store, and a run in with the wrong end of a shotgun. But nothing prepares her for discovering that she’s trusted the wrong man.
Does the past determine our future?
John turned his back on everything he knew to keep Emma alive. If he fails to complete the job, it’s only a matter of time before more hitmen come their way. But this time, they’ll be gunning for him, too.
The apocalypse makes strange bedfellows.
With chaos unfolding all around them, Emma, John, and their friends are forced to flee. It’s a race against technology, tenacity, and time. Not everyone will make it out unscathed.
The EMP is only the beginning.
No Ordinary Getaway is book two in the No Ordinary Day series, a post-apocalyptic thriller series following ordinary people struggling to survive when an EMP plunges the United States into chaos.
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Chapter One
Emma
“Arms out straight. Fingers curled over each other like this.” John demonstrated the proper grip on the handgun again and Emma mimicked it, fingers wrapping around the grip as she straightened her arms. “No, don’t lock your elbows. You need to absorb the recoil, not brace against it.”
Emma blew a puff of frustrated breath from her lips and took a step away from John. “Who knew shooting was so complicated? In the movies, holding a gun any which way works just fine.” She waved her free hand in his general direction. “You sound like my chemistry professor in college. He hated my pathetic attempt at equation work.”
John cracked a smile. “Shooting takes work just like anything else. It’s a skill to learn. You didn’t hop on a bike and learn the first day. This is no different.”
Emma frowned, more at herself than at John. She wished none of this were necessary. After fleeing the confines of Atlanta for a secluded cabin in the North Georgia mountains, she hoped anyone searching for her would be thrown off the trail for a good, long while. “Do you really think someone will still come after us?”
John favored his ribs as he shifted position, gunshot wound giving him grief despite the sutures. “I do.”
“The grid collapse meant nothing, then? When half the country is either looting or being looted and everyone is in full-fledged panic mode, guys like you are still coming after me?” Emma shook her head. It didn’t seem possible. Despite every news station playing it off as nothing to worry about, a massive geomagnetic storm and resulting EMP fried the electrical grid of the United States, part of Canada, and possibly into Mexico.
Four days later, every American now grappled with the same issues of food, water, and shelter. Basic survival. But Emma and her coworker Gloria faced a potentially larger threat: a hired gun determined to silence them before testifying in front of Congress. She glanced at John. “It doesn’t make sense. We’re teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Even hired guns have to know that.”
“Dane isn’t one to give up even if the world goes to hell.”
Emma blinked. “Who’s Dane?”
John hesitated.
A rush of guilt twisted Emma’s gut and she raised a hand. “If you don’t want to talk about it—”
He shook his head. “I just never have, that’s all. The code, you know? Don’t go talking about being an assassin, that sort of thing.” He shot her a rueful smile as his hand drifted to the back of his neck. “Dane is technically my boss, but I owe him my life. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know where I’d be today.”
Emma scoffed. “Probably not killing people for a living.”
“True.” He snorted in agreement. “But after Afghanistan, I wasn’t right. What we did, what we saw—it messed me up. Most of my unit, too. Dane brought us all back together, dragged me out of the hole I’d been living in, a couple of the other guys, too.”
“Like a family?” Emma offered.
John nodded a fraction. “I suppose. Never thought about it that way, but the closest thing to a family I’d had for a long time.” He kicked a rock wedged into a clump of mud. “I entered the military after my mom died. Cancer when she was forty-seven. Never knew my dad. The Marines gave me purpose, somewhere to belong.”
Tension poured off John in waves, thick and heavy. He ground his heel into the soft earth and stared at some point beyond her head. Emma gave him time, and after a minute, he continued. “I didn’t have to question anything, think about anything. Just did what my superiors told me. At the end of the day, I hung out with other guys just like me. It was easy.”
Emma smiled in encouragement, even though he wasn’t looking. “And when you left?”
A weighted sigh slipped out with his breath. “After Dominic and Sam died in that accident, ambush, whatever we were supposed to call it, I was adrift. Spent my nights drinking, basically not caring. My tour ended and I was forced out along with the rest of my unit.”
“And Dane?”
“He tracked me down. I’d been surviving on my savings, barely scraping by, when he offered me this job.”
Emma understood what barely making it felt like. With CropForward firing her after she blew the whistle on their experimental modified seeds, and Congress subpoenaing her to testify, she’d been a pariah. Whistleblowers weren’t part of the popular crowd. “I take it no one wanted to hire you?”
He shook his head. “After being admin processed out? Not a chance. We all got disability, of course.” A bitter laugh cut his explanation short. “One appointment with the VA shrink a week and a prescription for pills to dull everything. It wasn’t living.”
He turned halfway, face shadowed by the trees. “Harry didn’t make it more than a month before he stuck a 9mm in his mouth. Dave OD’ed. Someone found him a week later, decomposing in some crack shack in Philly.” J
ohn shook his head in disgust. “We were all in rough shape.”
“Sounds like Dane saved you.”
“He did. I owe him for that.”
Emma pressed. “You didn’t owe him enough to become a hired killer.”
“Honestly?” John shrugged. “At the time, I’d have done anything he said. Anything to regain that sense of purpose and belonging.”
Emma thought it over. If she didn’t have the lab job at Fielding, would she feel the same? Adrift and purposeless with no friends and no one to talk to? Would the hopelessness of it all drive her to drink, take pills, or worse? She had no family in town, no one to connect with apart from Gloria and Zach. Without them—she shuddered as memories of Zach’s murder filled her mind. “Tell me about the organization.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How big is it? How many people—” She paused, searching for the right word.
“How many assassins are there?”
She nodded as the reality of the situation sank in.
“I don’t exactly know, to tell the truth.” John scratched behind his ear. “Dane kept a tight leash on his operatives, only providing us the information we needed. I know two or three of the guys from the unit still work for him.”
Emma swallowed down the desire to ask about Zach, but it snuck back up her throat like pepperoni pizza by the slice. “What about the guy who killed Zach? Do you know him?”
John pressed his lips together before answering. “Possibly.”
“Who is he? Someone from your unit?”
“He’s not someone I associate with. Some of the crap he—” John cut off his explanation mid-sentence with a shake of his head and a deepening crease between his brows.
Emma began to protest, but one look at his face and she let it go. Pushing now would achieve nothing except hard feelings. Until John neutralized the threat, she needed him. She held up the revolver. “So how do I reload this thing?”
John’s shoulders sagged in relief and he stepped forward, taking the unloaded weapon from her and flipping open the chamber. “Six rounds all slip in here. Easy to load, easy to see how many you have left.” He handed it back. “The downside to a weapon like this, is the kick. It can be pretty brutal for someone not accustomed to it. Now if someone allowed us to practice—”
Emma glanced at the cabin. Gloria and her husband, Raymond, begrudgingly allowed John to stay on the condition he surrendered his weapons. Although Emma convinced Raymond learning how to shoot was necessary, her request for live rounds fell on deaf ears. Not that she completely disagreed with Ray.
Trusting John with a gun might be foolish. He may have saved her life, but he’d been hired to take it. Forgetting the truth helped no one.
Over the next hour, John taught Emma everything he knew about how to shoot, draw, reload, even break down and clean the weapon. When they finished, Emma flopped into an Adirondack chair. John eased into one beside her, still favoring his side.
As they sat in companionable silence, Tank tore around the corner of the cabin with Pringles hot on his heels, barking and yipping. The two dogs bounded and played with each other, the little Chihuahua giving the German shepherd every bit as much as he got.
Emma laughed. “What is it about little dogs? They always seem to have the most fight.”
John remained silent.
Whatever connection built between them while he taught her weapon basics was gone. Emma watched him from the corner of her eye. He was more than a hired killer, more than the snap judgment she’d levied after stumbling upon the truth. But the reality of his life and struggles failed to negate the horror of his actions. He killed people—some likely innocent, some not—for money.
As she thought over his actions, from helping her escape the elevator, to saving her from the family in the woods, to bringing her Tank, Emma came no closer to figuring him out.
The front door to the cabin swung open and Raymond stepped out. He caught sight of Emma and John and closed the distance between them. “It’s looking like we need to hit the town, gather supplies before things get crazy.”
“If they aren’t already,” John offered.
Raymond narrowed his eyes. “I was going to ask if you would come.”
“Can I have my gun?”
Anger flashed across Raymond’s face.
“He could carry unloaded,” Emma interjected, before the situation devolved. “A show of force, even if no bullets backed him up.”
John leaned forward, about to argue, but Emma caught his eye. She shook her head once to ward off his complaint, and after a tense moment John slumped back in the chair. “If that’s the best I can do, it’s better than nothing.”
Emma turned back to Raymond, hands gripping the arms of the chair in expectation.
Raymond exhaled. “I suppose that’s sensible. But the first sign of—”
John waved him off as he stood up. “I won’t be the source of any trouble.”
“We’ll see.” Raymond turned toward the cabin without another word and John followed a step behind, leaving Emma alone.
She stared out at the forest all around them, unease lingering in the back of her mind.
Chapter Two
Raymond
A rut cracked across the southern side of the forest service road and Raymond angled the front right tire directly for it. The vehicle hit the divot and John bounced into the passenger side door. He winced and shifted position.
Raymond hid a smile. Serves you right, you monster. If anyone told him he would not only welcome the man hired to kill his wife into his home, but rely on him for protection, he would have laughed them out of the room. But the apocalypse made strange bedfellows.
If the man sharing his vehicle actually meant what he said about protecting Gloria and her coworker Emma Cross from a company hired to snuff them out for telling the truth, then Raymond needed the guy around, no matter how much he hated the idea. But he didn’t have to make it easy.
“I’m surprised you don’t have everything you need.” John broke the silence for the first time since leaving the cabin. “You seem so well prepared.”
Raymond cut him a glance.
“That smashed out window in the Highlander have anything to do with it?”
Observant, I’ll give him that. “We might have lost a few things.” Another rut cut across the road and John tensed beside him. Raymond navigated around it. He wasn’t about to tell John about the run-in with the kids on the way to the cabin or how Raymond almost broke his hand fighting to rescue Pringles. Knowing their dog was a weak point would only play to John’s advantage.
He glanced at his hand where bruises speckled the knuckles. “It doesn’t help that now we have extra mouths to feed.”
John turned to stare out the window. After a few minutes of silence, he spoke again. “Look, I know you don’t like me, and I don’t blame you. It’s not every day you have to share a ride with a man hired to kill your wife. I get how you must feel.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me or how I feel.”
“Fair enough. But I can guess.” John stretched his hands out on his thighs. “I can’t convince you to trust me and I’m not going to try. All I can say is that I have no intention of killing Gloria or Emma. Not anymore.”
Anger flared inside Raymond and he struggled to keep his voice even. “Why the hell not? Don’t tell me you’re a sinner with a heart of gold. This isn’t some romance novel where you get a happy ever after despite all the horrible things you’ve done.”
John snorted. “Let’s just say I’ve finally given some thought to my profession and I don’t like what I see.” He turned toward Raymond. “Thank you again for fixing me up. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Believe me, I know.” Raymond refused to look John’s way, focusing instead on the road. Another mile on the dirt and gravel and they would hit the small, two-lane highway leading to civilization and the Walmart.
“Where did you learn to be a medic?”
Raymond bristled. “What is this, twenty questions?”
John held up a hand. “Just making conversation. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Gloria’s voice popped into Raymond’s head as sure as if she were in the back seat, admonishing him for the prickly demeanor. He threw the guy a bone. “The way I grew up, it was learn or die trying. I opted to learn.”
“I take it you’re not an EMT or something?”
“Personal trainer.” He flexed his biceps as he smirked. “Can’t you tell?”
John shook his head. “Be glad you didn’t meet my boss. He’d have thought you were perfect.”
The desire to be nice snapped. “I’d never be somebody’s hired gun.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
Raymond let the silence linger, unable to think about anything except the threat John posed to his wife. Was it all a game? Was he waiting for some piece of information before he put a bullet in her head?
As Raymond turned onto the paved road, he broached the subject. “I’m only going to ask this once, and I need an honest answer.” He slowed the SUV as he turned to look at John. “Are you going to kill my wife in her sleep?”
John stared him straight in the eye. “To be honest, all I can say is I don’t think I can kill on orders anymore. Not after seeing what happened to Zach and Holly. Not after getting to know Emma. She doesn’t deserve a bullet.” He broke eye contact to stare down the road. “I’ve never gotten close to a mark before and I swear that that’s the truth. This isn’t like the movies, where a spy pretends to be a confidante or lover and stabs a mark in the heart. I’ve always been anonymous and impersonal.”