The No Where Apocalypse (Book 1): Stranded No Where by E.A. Lake

answered, staring at the small but homey interior. The insides were as blue as the outside, if not a little brighter. Two children appeared from another room. A girl I’d guess in her young teens, and boy no older than eight.
    From the same room entered his wife, Marge. She did not possess the same look of amusement as her children. They may have been happy to meet some stranger Dad drug in off the road, but not her.
    “Warren,” she said in a low tone. “Are you sure this is safe?” Her eyes studied me as if I were Charles Manson himself. I noticed her nervous hands clutching at her apron.
    He pulled me forward further into the warm room. “This is the man who gave us the deer two weeks ago,” he stated in a boastful tone.
    Her eyes opened wide flooded by an honest smile. “Oh!” she exclaimed, rushing to hug me. “Thank you so much, sir. We were so hungry and down to nothing. You saved us.” The children moved closer.
    I wasn’t comfortable being deemed their savior. For the most part, I gave up the hindquarter grudgingly. But they made it seem as if the messiah himself had just stepped into the room. I half expected someone to offer to wash my feet.
    “You have on pink boots,” the young daughter said, eyeing them with a grin.
    “I’m not from here,” I admitted finally escaping their embrace. “I’m from Chicago. I just got stuck here when things went down.” I peeked at her smiling face. “And you got purple hair.” Her smile broadened.
    “Do guys wear pink boots in Chicago,” the boy asked. I couldn’t tell if he was sincere or making fun of my unique winter footwear. I went with the former.
    “I was unprepared,” I stated, being led to a chair by the man I now knew as Warren. Little did I know that I was unprepared for the news they had for me.

Day 65 - continued - WOP

    They were from Covington, just up the road some 10 miles. Warren, Marge, Violet, and Nathan — who preferred to be called Nate. Warren and his wife never offered their ages, but I took them to be in their 40s. Violet announced her 13 th birthday would arrive with the first day of spring. I joked that might be a while off, maybe even June. The whole family laughed.
    Nate would be eight any day now. But that was the problem. None of us knew what day it was anymore. I knew we were just over 60 days into this mess, whatever it was. Back at the cabin, I’d been keeping a daily journal of weather and game observations.
    It struck me and my new friends as funny how in 60 days we’d lost touch and given up with most of the trappings of our former world. Cell phones — dead; internet — gone; running vehicles — almost nonexistent. Not only did it not matter what day of the week it was, it no longer matter the date on the calendar. Or the time on the wall (they still had a working wind-up clock, though it may have been off by an hour or two).
    Their story went, as mostly told by Warren with a few tidbits added by his wife, that they were sound asleep all safe in their home when things went quiet. The first few days passed without incident. But as with any panic, times worsened quickly.
    By day four, or five if Marge was to be believed, most of the food for sale in Covington was snatched up. Hoarding kicked in quickly. That left the haves and have-nots. The sheriff and the mayor worked diligently to provide for all, but storm clouds hovered on the horizon.
    “Somewhere after three weeks in, a group showed up on foot,” Warren continued, his face pained as his sad story progressed. “They were armed pretty well, handguns and shotguns mostly. They damn near drank the place dry. When things started getting out of hand — like looting and robbing — the sheriff tried to step in. They shot him dead in the one bar on Main Street.”
    The air in the cabin cooled as Marge wrung her thin hands, pacing behind her husband. She picked up the tale. “The mayor went to ask them to leave. They strung him up just outside of town, on a pole