THE ONLY SURVIVING BREEDER AFTER THE APOCALYPSE

When I was sick, Mom fed me chicken broth and Gatorade to keep me alive. Five days ago, I was finally able to stand up and was in the bathroom when she got home from the grocery store. Some guy followed her home and came in the back door with a gun. She was too sick to fight him when he tried to rape her. They were making enough noise fighting that he didn't hear me sneak in the kitchen. I took one of the knives and made sure he never bothered anyone again. That's where I got the gun," she explained. I didn't ask about her mother. The fresh grave out back bore silent witness to her fate.

"What did you do with his body?" I asked.

"Tied it behind the car and dropped his sorry ass off a few blocks from here," she answered proudly.

"Feel up to a little recon tonight?" I asked. She looked up expectantly. "I want to see if anyone else is watching the grocery stores. I'm going to run back to my car and bring it here for now," I explained.

"Can I come with you? I'd feel safer," she asked coyly.

The trip back to the car was much faster than my initial trip to her house. Once we got back with the SUV, we put it in the garage where her dad's car used to go and securely locked and barricaded the door from the garage into the house.

We also introduced ourselves. She was Stacey Donaldson, 17, and would have been a senior this fall. At 5'11" she was on her high school's volleyball and basketball teams, which explained her athletic figure.

I am Lt. Mike Miller, USN. I enlisted at 18 when I graduated and have been a member of the SEALs for the last four years. All of my male relatives, including uncles and cousins, are ... were ... electricians. They worked on everything from residential to commercial to industrial. I spent enough summers working with them that I signed up originally for electronics school when I enlisted.

And there we were. We spent the rest of the day securing the house. While she nailed the windows shut and then taped the blinds down so nobody could see inside, I secured the doors. After "appropriating" mattresses and couches from a couple of neighbors I rigged Claymores to go off if anybody opened the now locked front door.

After punching through the drywall, I also affixed one Claymore to the inside wall on either side of the front door in case they had anyone else with them. The stucco walls wouldn't stop the blast. The appropriated mattresses helped to cushion the inside of the house from the blast and the sofas held the mattresses in place.

Next, I rigged three sets of brackets on the door to the garage and on the back door. Each set of brackets held a 2 X 6 cross-brace to strengthen the door. Anyone coming through those doors would be slowed down considerably. If it had just been me in the house, those doors would have had Claymores, too.

By nightfall, the last vestiges of power failed across the city. All nuclear plants had been shut down over three weeks ago. All dams had been opened five percent to release the water without causing any serious flooding. With nobody to care for them, the dams would have eventually decayed and failed, causing catastrophic flooding downstream for anyone who might have survived. Coal-fired plants were shutting down as they ran out of coal or people to tend them. No power was bad, but good at the same time. No lights gave me a distinct advantage at night since I had night vision goggles. Anyone dumb enough to use a generator would stick out like a sore thumb.

We spent an hour scouting the exterior of the store and found nobody. Inside was just as deserted. After clearing the interior of the store, I watched the front of the store from the roof while Stacey loaded several shopping carts full of canned goods into the SUV. "Down," I hissed into my radio mic, satisfied when she dropped to the ground immediately. I watched a lone figure coming closer, carefully concealing herself as she approached the front of the store.

"Freeze," I ordered. She froze after ducking behind the concrete support for one of the non-functioning parking lot lights.

"I can still see you. Hold up some fingers and I'll prove it," I hollered.

"Three," I yelled.

"That's not very nice," I chuckled at her next gesture. She finally came out and lay on her stomach in front of the SUV like I ordered while Stacey cuffed her wrists.

"He's not going to hurt you. Look, I still have my pistol," she comforted the woman before finishing loading the car. I rappelled down the wall and flipped the grappling hook loose, taking one last look around before I helped the woman up.

"Please let me go," she sobbed.

"I'm not going to hurt you. If you want to take your chances on your own, I'll set you free. Or you can choose to come with us."

"No, I have to go back or he'll ... he'll hurt her," she sobbed.

Some guy named David had captured her going to the hardware store. He also had a fourteen-year-old girl at the house. As long as she returned with food, he'd let the girl live. The woman's name was Pam and she showed us where they lived. Since it was only two blocks away, I zoomed through the parking lot before cutting the engine and coasting a block. The last block we did on foot. Pam filled her bags from what we already had in the SUV, and I followed her home.

"David?" she called hesitantly when she opened the door.

"Took you fucking long enough, bitch," he spat. It was the last thing he ever said. The young girl beneath him screamed when his lifeless body fell on top of her, but she'd been sobbing already as he raped her. Pam helped pull Vickie out from under the dead asshole and I left them alone so Vickie could get dressed.

On the way back to Stacey's house, both women were frightened and silent, huddled together in the back seat while Stacey tried to reassure them. After making sure the nearly invisible seals I had put on the back door and garage door were unbroken, we went inside. I warned them about the front door, explaining that both the back door and garage door were safe to use as exits.

"Any chance that either of you knows how to use a pistol?" I asked the newcomers.

"I can use just about any kind of gun," Pam replied confidently.

"Military?" I asked.

"And stunt woman," she laughed. I handed her a military issue Beretta. "What's a big guy like you doing with a woman's gun?" she asked teasingly, cocking her head coyly. I showed her "my" pistol, the .45 caliber Glock.

"Now that's a gun," she cooed. Seconds later she'd ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, slammed the magazine back, and loaded a round into the chamber.

"I'm impressed, keep it. We'll get you a holster tomorrow," I said. They looked at me like I was crazy when I sent them upstairs to bed explaining that I was sleeping on the couch to better watch the doors. Fortunately, the master bedroom was closer to the back of the house and wouldn't be affected if the front door exploded.