Compound Interest Read online

  Compound Interest

  (Post-Apocalyptic MILF)

  Holly Ardent

  Text copyright © 2018, Holly Ardent

  All Rights Reserved

  Find Holly's other stories on her Amazon Author Page:

  Holly Ardent's Amazon Author Page

  Nick glanced across the front seat of the pickup to see Ed drumming his fingers on the door. Ed was also scanning the area, his head constantly moving. The hand that wasn't drumming was wrapped around an AK-47, ready to put it into action quickly.

  They were headed for a gas station, one that had still had half-full tanks the night before when Nick had found it on his scouting mission. If they managed to fill the tank they'd mounted in the back of the pickup truck, they'd transfer it to the underground tank at the compound and have it more than three-quarters full.

  “Anything Ed?”

  “Nope, not seeing anyone moving around. Doesn't mean they aren't there though.”

  Even though the gas station was on the outskirts of town and they'd skirted the town proper on back streets to get here, Nick was still nervous. He'd been shot at a couple of times in the last week when he was out scavenging.

  Who'd have guessed? I thought we had everything we needed, do did all the others, but once we had to rely on it we found out just how wrong we were. I've spent the last few weeks since The Day scrounging this and that. People were pretty cool with things at first, treated it like an extended holiday, but after the second attack? They got cagey really fast. Even so, this getting shot at thing is new, and it really sucks!

  He didn't want to get any more specific in his thoughts than just The Day. It was what they'd taken to calling it at the compound. The Day when Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Houston, and Washington DC were all turned into flaming wreckage. The Day that the end of the world as we know it finally arrived.

  As if that weren't bad enough, it would be decades before anyone could even consider visiting those sites unless they wanted to die of radiation poisoning. The bombs used weren't of the dirty variety, but they'd still put out enough radiation to make being anywhere near those locations a bad plan. Nick had never been so happy that he lived in the middle of bumfuck nowhere as he had been that day.

  The country had tried to pull itself up by its bootstraps after The Day, but a week later, just as recovery efforts were getting into full swing, they'd been bombed again. This time with a different kind of bomb. The nuclear blasts in the second attack detonated in the atmosphere. They were designed to destroy electronics and the Grid and they did an admirable job of it. Just about every car with a computer in it, every computer for that matter, and all delicate electronics that hadn't had some sort of protection were now non-functional.

  The truck they were in predated computers in cars, so it was fine. They even had a couple of computers, plus a lot of other electronics, that still functioned back at the compound. They'd installed a large Faraday Cage in the basement and had stored a lot of electronics in it. But even the compound had taken damage from the EMP attack. They'd already put up a few solar panels before the EMP since electricity had been sketchy after the first attack. Those panels were still working, but nowhere near as effectively as they had before the blasts in the atmosphere.

  They'd also lost several of their cars. They were still there, parked at the compound, but the newer vehicles some of them had driven for their every day lives were now just so many spare parts, lots of them that couldn't be used on the older vehicles that still ran. The only other exception besides this truck was Bill's diesel pickup truck, he'd just had to replace a couple of parts, ones that he'd had replacements for in the Faraday cage, and it had started right up again.

  Ed's little Honda andNick's Chevy weren't going to be running again. Sheri and Cassie had come together in Sheri's Subaru and that was toast as well. Even so with two running vehicles they were miles better off than most others. The funny thing was that due to the general poverty of the area, they probably had more cars still running than eighty percent of the other areas in the USA. Evidently when all you can afford to drive is an old beater that predated computers in cars you had an edge after an EMP. At least, if you could still obtain gasoline after the blast.

  That was one of the reasons they were making this run now. The gas station they were going to had an extra set of tanks that, apparently, no-one had known about. The main set was empty, drained by people who needed the gasoline for whatever reason, but the second set was harder to get to and not so obvious. Nick had smelled gasoline near the station and since the main tanks had been dry for weeks, he'd taken the time to determine where the smell was coming from, finding the secondary tanks, one of them with its lid only partway on.

  Since it was obvious someone else knew it was there as well, they'd decided they needed to make this scavenger run ASAP or they were afraid the gasoline would all be gone by the time they got there for it.

  They were probably still five minutes away from the gas station when Ed spoke again.

  “Dude, you given any thought to what we were talking about?”

  “When?” Nick replied.

  “About bringing other people in to the compound? We've got three empty slots. I'm sorry, but after this long I'm pretty sure Sheila isn't going to make it here.”

  Sheila was Nick's ex-girlfriend. She'd helped brainstorm the compound, make the plans for it, and make it reality. The only reason she was his ex was because she'd gotten tired of living in the middle of nowhere and taken a job offer from a major city a few hundred miles away.

  She'd offered to take him with her, but he had no desire to live in the middle of hundreds of thousands of people. They'd parted mostly amicably, but he'd hoped she'd make her way back in case something happened. Ed, and probably the others, had finally given up on her, but Nick had clung to hope. Until now, at least.

  He nodded.

  “If she were going to make it, she'd be here. We can start talking about bringing others in at least,” Nick said.

  “The girls want to make sure the first one's a female, one that's attracted to you. They feel guilty that they're part of couples and you aren't,” Ed replied.

  Nick winced. He had been feeling left out, but he thought he'd kept that concealed. Either he hadn't or the others were thinking along the same lines.

  “If that's how it works out,” he said. “But I'd rather focus on the survival of the compound and its inhabitants than finding a girlfriend for me.”

  “You know we've got everything covered. As long as anyone else we let in is willing to get their hands dirty and actually work they're not going to be a drag on the rest of us.”

  Ed let the conversation drop after that, they were getting close to the gas station and Nick had slowed down. Ed was scanning everywhere as best as he could, his eyes moving from left to right plus up and down. Nick glanced up himself, knowing that far too many people still didn't look up.

  Nothing more than two stories for a few blocks of the station, he thought. Means we have to worry less about someone on the rooftops, two stories just isn't enough for a good sniping position. An okay one, sure, but Ed could handle an okay sniper so long as he wasn't taken down in the first shot.

  He turned the engine off and coasted the last few blocks in. No reason to let anyone that heard them know exactly where they'd been going and it would be harder to find them if anyone looking started searching where the engine noise had stopped.

  He brought the truck to a stop, then put a hand on Ed's shoulder before the other man could open the door.

  “Stop,” he hissed. “Ed, I'm pretty sure that garage door was all the way closed when I was here last.”

  The door in question was now open, a gap of about two feet visible betwe
en the ground and its bottom edge.

  “Got it,” Ed said.

  He reached out again, this time slowly opening the door to minimize noise. When he had it open, he tucked the seat belt strap in the gap between door and frame, then slowly closed the door, the seat belt preventing it from clicking shut.

  He didn't have to worry in Nick's opinion. As soon as the truck door had opened, Nick heard sounds of a struggle that would've masked any noise made by the door. He opened his own door, taking the same precautions to prevent any noise. Then he pulled his pistol and dropped to his knees.

  Tilting his torso to one side he could see through the open door. There were three people on their feet in there, plus one on their back. The one on their back was a woman and she was being held down by two of the other men while the third was in the process of trying to tear her clothing off. So far he hadn't been that successful. As Nick watched he reached down again, trying to grab her shirt, only to have her rear her head up and bite at his hand.

  The man reaching drew his hand back quickly and proceeded to kick her in the side of the head.

  “Bitch! I told you what was going to happen if you tried that again,” he yelled.

  The woman shook her head dazedly, then glared up at the man.

  “We'll try this once more. I'm gonna strip you and you're going to lie there and let me, or the next time I'll keep kicking until you stop moving.”

  Ed hissed softly and Nick glanced over. Ed was lying prone on the ground, rifle in hand. He had a shot lined up and he held up a hand with five fingers raised. Then he lowered one, then a second, then a third. After setting the pace for the countdown he snapped his hand back into position on the rifle. When the count would've reached zero, he squeezed the trigger.

  The sound of the shot was easily heard over the struggle and even if it hadn't been, the ankle of the man who had kicked the woman exploding as the large caliber, hollow point bullet tore through it let anyone inside know that they'd been seen. Nick had used the time to line up a shot on the thigh of one of the other men. He wasn't as good a shot as Ed, no-one he knew was, so he was looking for a larger target. He squeezed his own trigger on zero also, the man he'd aimed at staggering and going down as the .45 ACP round tore through his thigh.

  The third man in the garage reacted quickly, letting go off the woman and sprinting towards what Nick assumed was a side door. He glanced at Ed who quickly cocked his head and nodded towards the garage. Nick replied with a nod and Ed took off for the side of the gas station that the last man had run towards. Meanwhile Nick kept an eye on the two men still in the garage. The one Ed had shot wasn't moving much. There was a massive puddle of blood beneath his mostly severed foot and the bleeding had already slowed from the jetting fountain of blood that it had started as.

  He's gone, or will be soon, but...

  Motion caught Nick's eye as his initial target recovered enough to roll into a crouch. He could practically hear the man's cursing as he bent the leg he'd been shot in and put pressure on it, but he could definitely see the man pulling his own pistol from a holster on his belt.

  Fuck! Nick thought. I was hoping I wouldn't have to kill him. I've managed to avoid killing anyone so far, but...

  He zeroed his eyes on the front sight of his pistol, treating the face of the man beyond it as just another target to practice on.

  I'm just target shooting, he told himself as he squeezed the trigger. And... bullseye!

  Then he had to work hard not to retch when he looked up and saw that his shot had been true. The man had fallen over, a hole in his face where one of his eyes used to reside.

  Nick tore his gaze from the dead man, swallowed once, twice, then grabbed his canteen and took a swig of water. He swished it in his mouth and spat before turning and walking towards the garage.

  Because as queasy as my stomach is from having just shot that guy, she's in there with two corpses right now.

  Before he reached the door he heard another shot that he recognized as Ed's rifle.

  Sounds like the third one isn't going to be a problem either, he thought.

  His trust in Ed told him that the third man was now dead. If not, he'd have heard Ed fire again by now. Even so he wasn't going to relax his guard until Ed came back. He walked up to the door and pushed it gently upward. It opened, but with a loud screech.

  The woman on the floor snapped up into a sitting position. She glanced to both sides, turned slightly green, then focused on Nick. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him.

  “What do you want?” she snarled.

  “Whoa, what the hell? I'm guessing that we just saved you from getting raped, was I wrong?”

  She looked at him, slightly confused.

  “I figured you were just gonna take me from them. It's not like I've got anywhere else to go, not now that those asshole destroyed my house and dragged me through the streets. No-one else did anything, none of my neighbors did anyhow, so why would you?”

  He was having a little bit of a problem following her so he tried to clarify.

  “Wait, those guys destroyed your house, then kidnapped you in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, and no-one did anything?”

  “That's what I just said. You hard of hearing or something?”

  “No,” Ed interjected, having entered from the side door the other man had left through, “he's just not believing what he's hearing. Nick here always wants to see the best in people, even after they let him down over and over.”

  Her head swiveled and her eyes widened when she saw Ed.

  “Calm down,” Nick said. “There were two shots together at the start of that, did you think I was firing two weapons at once? This is Ed, the second gunman. I'm Nick, we were coming here anyhow so when we saw you being assaulted we decided to help.”

  She blinked, repeatedly, before she started to try to speak. Before she could get the words out, she glanced left and right, then burst into tears. She kept trying to speak through them, but Nick couldn't understand a word she was trying to say.

  “Take her out to the truck Nick,” Ed said. “I'll get these guys out of sight and maybe that'll make it better for her.”

  Ed proceeded to kneel down next to the first man he'd shot, rummaging through his pockets and making a pile of items they might want to take. When he was done, Nick almost had the woman out to the truck. He slid her into the cab, making sure he'd taken the keys out of the ignition earlier.

  “Just stay here,” he said, “we'll be out in a few minutes. You don't need to see any more of them.”

  As he was swinging the door shut, she reached out and stopped it.

  “Wait,” she said, through her sobs. “Trap door... back of storage.. was why I was here when they spotted me. Followed me home, brought me back, wanted me to tell them—”

  At that point her sobs took over again, but Nick thought he understood.

  She knew there was a trap door in the storage area and had been going down into it. They followed her home, dragged her back here and wanted her to tell them about it, where it was probably. They wanted to have a little fun with her too. I get that, she's a looker.

  He almost blushed at his last thoughts, but one look at her was enough to tell any man that she was attractive, even if she was older. He could understand the desire to have some fun with her, but not by force, only with her consent. He didn't see it being any fun for either of them if she weren't actually willing.

  He was glad he'd already turned away from the truck since she'd be sure to notice his blush and possibly ask why. He'd seen how she was fighting and was pretty sure that she wouldn't shy away from awkward questions.

  “Ed,” he said, once back inside the garage, “what did you find?”

  “A few decent guns and some ammunition, not a lot else. How is she?”

  “I didn't ask. She was still pretty much in shock, but she did give me a tip, managed to spit it out between sobs.”

  Ed rolled his eyes.

  “Dude, perfect opp
ortunity for you to play white knight here. Her house is trashed so she's going to need a place to stay. We're looking for more people. We, I mean you, just saved her life. Don't you get it?”

  “I'm not going to play on her emotional trauma that way,” Nick said. “Listen to me, there's a trap door in the storage area. She didn't say what was down there, but I'll bet it's good.”

  Ed shook his head and Nick was slightly uneasy with the look in his eyes as he stopped and looked at Nick again.

  “I can't believe you don't want to take advantage of this opportunity yourself. Well, let me take this stuff out to the truck, then we'll go take a look. The truck is still there, right?”

  “I'm a nice guy, not an idiot,” Nick said, pulling the keys from his pocket and jingling them in the air. “Unless she can hot wire a truck, it's still there. And with the way she was crying I don't think she'd be hot wiring it even if she were capable.”

  Ed snagged the keys. He'd tuck the loot in the lock box in the bed of the truck, then lock it down. He'd taken the shirt from the guy whose foot he'd shot off, tied the sleeves together, and used it as a bag to carry everything he gathered. He headed out to the truck, while Nick moved deeper into the convenience store section of the gas station.

  Everything had been looted. The front panes of glass were all shattered and if there were a crumb of food remaining here, he'd be amazed. The 'employees only' door in the back wall was hanging off of one hinge and when he went back there it looked just as looted, only with less mess on the floor.

  Alright, so where would I be if I were a trapdoor, he wondered.

  He looked around but couldn't find anything. Quickly he thought it through and changed his question.

  Wait, if I were hiding a trapdoor, where would I hide it?

  When he looked around again, he noticed the rolling shelf, the one that they moved refrigerated items back and forth on. It had been pushed to the side and was flush against a wall. Beneath its wheels was a layer of cardboard splattered with oil.

  He nodded with satisfaction, then moved the shelf and kicked the cardboard out of the way. It revealed a door in the floor. He'd been working off the ambient light filtering into the area, but if this was really a basement then he was going to need more light.