Free Radioactive Omnibus- A Prepper Survival Story by BJ Knights

the photo were just shapes that he couldn’t recognize through the one good eye he had left, but he knew who they were.
     
    “I know it’s probably hard to see them, but there’s your little girl playing with her cat and, oh well god damn! Look at your wife! I didn’t know you were holding out on me like that, Matt,” Garrett said.
     
    Matt focused on the image of his family. Not the one in the picture he couldn’t see, but the one in his mind. They sat around a table eating pancakes. Bowls of strawberries, bananas, and syrup filled the table; his daughter giggling after squirting whipped cream on her nose.
     
    “You think if we bring your family over here it’ll refresh your memory?” Garrett asked.
     
    Matt saw his wife waking in the morning, the sun peaking through the blinds and warming her face. She smiled at him and pulled him in, her soft lips pressing against his own. They rolled over each other getting tangled in the sheets.
     
    Garrett smacked the photo off Matt’s leg sending it flying across the room. Garrett’s face was twisted and flushed red.
     
    “Listen you prick. If you don’t tell me what I want I’m gong to bring your daughter, your wife, and your fucking cat in here and kill them in front of you. Now, tell me who you’re working for!” Garrett shouted.
     
    Matt felt weak. He was beaten. He was bloody. His family was in trouble, but something wasn’t right about what Garrett had threatened him with. He tried to pull the pieces of the thought together slowly forming in his mind. Something was there that didn’t make sense.
     
    Then it hit him. His body started shaking again, but not from pain or fear or cold. He felt the corners of his mouth tilting upwards into a smile. Small gasps of air left him, passing for laughs. They started soft, but grew louder. Matt wheezed and winced in pain each time the sounds left him.
     
    “What the fuck is so funny?” Garrett asked.
     
    “That’s not my cat,” Matt said.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Samantha sat on her cot staring at her daughter, Annie, curled up next to her brother Jim’s cat, Tigs. She watched her little chest slowly rise and fall. The inside of the tent was gray with light as the sun outside struggled to break through the dawn.
     
    She rubbed her eyes with her palms trying to remove the lost hours of sleep. Two weeks. It’d been two weeks since they arrived at the refugee camp. They were plucked from their home in Phoenix and sent here. She had no idea where her husband, Matt, was and no idea when she would ever see him again.
     
    Jim Farr poked his head through the tent door silently.
     
    “Hey,” he said.
     
    Samantha whipped her head around and threw her hand over her mouth letting out a gasp.
     
    “Jesus, Jim,” she said.
     
    “Sorry,” he replied.
     
    Jim stepped inside and Tigs rushed over to him. He reached down, scooped her up, and scratched behind her ears. It was one of Tigs’s favorite spots. Jim placed her back down and glanced over to his sister who was still watching Annie.
     
    “We’ll find him, Sammy. Once the military gets their communications back up they’ll be able to give us some more information,” Jim said.
     
    “Yeah, because they were so willing to share things before everything went to shit,” she said.
     
    “I thought we weren’t supposed to say that word,” Annie said.
     
    Annie’s eyes opened slowly. She blinked away the sleep and stretched across the cot.
     
    “You told Uncle Coyle he couldn’t say it,” Annie said.
     
    “That’s because Uncle Coyle’s met his life quota for bad words. Your mom hasn’t,” Jim said.
     
    “Have I met my quota?” Annie asked.
     
    Samantha scooped Annie up from the cot.
     
    “No, but that’s because you haven’t been given a quota yet,” Samantha replied.
     
    Annie looked up at her mother and grinned, exposing her missing front tooth.
     
    “When do I get mine?” Annie asked.
     
    “When you’re thirty and that’s