Officer Of The Watch: Blackout Volume 1 Read Free Page B

Eric said, “I’m Eric, and that’s Christina, my fiancée.”
    Claire put her arms around Christina and held her as the younger woman shook and cried.  Mike mumbled something under his breath, then turned and walked back down the trail towards the park office.  Eric wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he stood and waited in the uncomfortable silence.  After a few long minutes, Christina finally cried herself out and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.  Sobs still shook her shoulders, but she had settled down enough for Claire to help her to her feet.
    “Eric, you take Christina here back to camp,” Claire said, patting Christina on the back reassuringly.  “Get her some good cool water from the pump, and you two get some rest.”
    Claire started to turn away, but Eric reached out, caught her sleeve, and stopped her. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.  “We saw… Well, we saw a lot of things.  Have you heard anything at all? Any news?”
    Claire patted Eric’s hand as she gently unclenched his fingers.  “We’re trying to find out as much as we can.  As soon as we hear something, we’ll let you know.  For right now, though, we’re asking everyone to stay close to their campsite so we know where everyone is for safety reasons.  Y’all just concentrate on getting something to eat, staying hydrated, and getting some rest.  We’ll take care of everything else, okay?”
    Eric nodded and half carried Christina as they walked down the short trail to the campgrounds.  Each camp site was sectioned off from the others with a thick hedge-row.  The individual sites had their own electrical outlets under a small lean-to style picnic shelter.  A circle of large, rounded river stones marked the campfire area, and each site had a hand-operated pump that gave fresh, cold water from the naturally filtered subterranean springs in the area.
    Inside their medium-sized six person dome tent, Eric spread out a foam pad and then opened Christina’s sleeping bag and lay over top of it.  He helped Christian onto the pallet and then stepped back outside.  A wave of exhaustion rolled him, but Eric shook it off and went to refill all of their water bottles from the hand pump.  He set the full water bottles and coolers under the picnic shelter out of the sun.
    With the water supply replenished, Eric carefully and quietly stuck his head in the tent and retrieved his phone charger, Christina’s cell phone, and the small weather alert radio he always carried when camping.  He first tried to power on his phone again but couldn’t get any life out of it even after plugging it into his charger and plugging the charger into the outlet under the picnic shelter.  Christina’s phone also had a shattered touch screen and wouldn’t respond to any of the buttons he could press.  Discouraged, Eric tried to power up the small alert radio with similar results.
    Drained, Eric folded his arms on the picnic table and leaned forward to rest his head on them.  He closed his eyes briefly and tried not to relive the last moments of the night before as he and Christina had watched airplane after airplane crash to the ground.  He wondered how many people had been on board those flights.  He’d stopped counting after fifteen explosions, but there had been many more.  At least a couple of thousand passengers, probably more, had perished in front of them in the space of a few minutes.
    Eric shuddered hard, and the tears he’d been holding back by sheer force of will finally broke through, and he wept. 

Ch. 6
    The Kindness Of….
    Eric woke with a start and winced as the muscles in his neck cried out in protest.  He blinked and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he looked around, trying to get his bearings.  His eyes fell on the line of water jugs underneath the table, and the reality of the night before crashed down on him.  Eric sighed heavily and pulled himself to his feet.  He made a quick round of the camp