Edge of Fear: An EMP Post-Apocalyptic Survival Prepper Series (American Fallout Book 3) by Alex Gunwick (rooftoppers .txt) 📕

Edwin dropped his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment. “I can’t believe it has come to this. How did we get here?”

“It doesn’t matter how we got here. It is what it is. Personally, I hope we nuke the hell out of those borscht-eating bastards,” Derek said.

“Why are we even fighting about this?” Liz asked. “It’s not like we can do anything about it.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. Finally, someone was being reasonable. It sounded like the Russians nuked the US, but we hadn’t nuked them back yet. What difference did it make? Unless the Russians planned on nuking this particular mountain, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered right now was killing the men who’d killed his sister.

His mom saw him creeping past them, but she didn’t call out to him. Good. He didn’t feel like talking, especially about Sierra or the cult member Kyle killed. And he didn’t particularly care about what was happening in the world. He had one mission—to avenge his sister. Until he accomplished that, he wouldn’t have time to worry about anything else.

Kyle kept walking, leaving the main room and turning down the passage toward the locked door. He needed to get that door open. He might not be able to take out the whole cult by himself, but maybe something on the other side of this door could help him.

While the rest of them wasted time arguing about politics and counting sacks of rice, Kyle would stay focused on what mattered. It wasn’t just about killing the cult members; it was also about securing the bunker and protecting his family. That’s what his dad would do.

He was jealous of his dad. He was back at their cabin, actually doing something to help. Hell, if his dad got lucky, maybe he’d even run into a few cultists out in the woods. He’d have no problem killing them.

Kyle thought back to when he’d sighted the cultist in his scope. When he’d pulled the trigger, the bullet had punched a hole in the glass almost instantly. The man had crumpled in front of the fireplace almost instantly.

As he reached the locked door, Kyle grinned. He hadn’t felt a shred of regret for ending the man’s life. As far as he was concerned, every single person who had ever associated with the cult was responsible for his sister’s death. That man had chosen to join with those people. It was nobody’s fault but his own. He got what was coming to him.

Derek and his dad seemed to think they could just drive the cult people off. But in Kyle’s opinion, they all had to die. There was no reasoning with those people. They only understood violence, so violence is what they would get.

Kyle pulled the lockpick and tension wrench out of his pocket. He pushed them into the deadbolt. He torqued the wrench gently, working the pick into the lock and sliding up the pins one at a time. It came easier this time, but he still didn’t have the right touch. The pins slipped back into place a few times. He kept at it. The third pin proved to be especially difficult to get past, but he was getting closer to unlocking it.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, he finally managed to slide the third pin up with the pick. The cylinder turned enough so that the first three pins were all held in place by the tension on the wrench. He worked the pick deeper into the lock, lifting the last two pins. When the final pin slipped into place with a satisfying click, the whole mechanism turned counterclockwise. The deadbolt slid back with a thunk.

“Yes!” Kyle pumped his fist in the air in celebration.

He grabbed the knob to wrench the door open, but the knob only rattled in place.

“What the—shit!” He remembered that he still had to pick the lock on the doorknob.

He groaned, disappointed, but set himself to the task. Truth be told, he found it entertaining. It was like a game, and most importantly, it distracted him from everything else that was going on. While he focused on opening the lock, nothing else mattered. His sister, the cult, the dusty bunker, it all faded away. It was just him versus a lock that didn’t want to be opened. It probably hadn’t been opened since before he was even alive. That was a funny thought.

He stopped to consult the manual. He flipped to the page with a diagram of a doorknob lock. He would have to start with the rear pin this time.

As he worked the pick inside the top of the lock with his right hand, he used his left to hold the tension wrench in place in the bottom of the key slot. He pried at the rear pin, trying to work it up out of the cylinder, but found that no matter how he jiggled it, his pick could find no purchase.

He tried a few of the other picks from the set, each with a differently shaped tip, before finding one that enabled him to contact the rear pin.

It took him a few tries to get the touch right. The pins would slip back into place when he had too little tension on the wrench, or they would refuse to respond to the delicate touch of his pick when he torqued too hard. It was frustrating as hell.

Eventually, he struck the right balance. He had the third pin pushed up and out of the cylinder when his mom called out to him from down the hall.

“Kyle! Come and get some food!”

The unexpected sound caught him by surprise, throwing off his concentration and causing him to release the tension on the wrench. The pins clicked back into place.

“Damn it. Great timing, Mom. You couldn’t have waited two more minutes,” he muttered under his breath. Then he raised his voice, calling back down the hallway. “In a minute, Mom. I’m in the middle of something.”