Survival EMP Box Set | Books 1-4

by Lopez, Rob

  Rick toyed with the glasses. “Because he’s a bad man.”

  “Come on, Dad. I’m not five. I can see what’s going on. Everybody can. Mom didn’t do anything, and now she’s in prison. You told me this is all your fault. So what did you do to make Connors hate you so much?”

  Rick scattered the glasses with a grimace. “It’s not what I did,” he said. “It’s what I wouldn’t do.”

  “Which was what?”

  Rick looked at his son. “You have to understand the full picture to make sense of it.”

  “Which is?”

  Rick rubbed his jaw. “Which is the story of a good friend of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you remember a guy called Martinez? Came to the house a few times.”

  Josh shook his head.

  “You met him, but you probably don’t remember,” said Rick. “Martinez and I trained together in basic. Served in most of the same units until we got to Special Forces. He served under Connors in Colombia, and I lost track of him for a while. After 9/11 his team got shipped to Afghanistan to reinforce ours. That’s when he told me what Connors had been doing. Showed me evidence he’d collected about drug deals, protection rackets and assassinations of local officials. Connors had deals going with the guerrillas, local military and CIA operatives, making money off the drug trade and the cartels. It was pretty explosive stuff, and I didn’t believe it at first, but Martinez had it on his hard drive, and he showed me. Said he was getting ready to expose Connors, Fick and the others. But it also meant exposing himself, because he’d been in the middle of it.”

  Rick gathered the glasses back in a line.

  “I don’t know what he’d done himself, or how guilty he was. There was some stuff he didn’t want to talk about. He was determined to end it, though, and release the evidence. Would have been the biggest scandal in years, and he wanted my help. I knew a colonel from the first Gulf War, where we inserted to help the Kurds. Pretty much the only colonel I ever liked, and we had a good relationship for a while. Martinez wanted me to use him to bypass Connors in the chain of command.”

  Rick sighed.

  “I passed on the idea. I wasn’t comfortable with that stuff, and I had more than enough to think about in Afghanistan as it was, so I told him no. Three days later he was dead.

  “They told us he’d been with Afghan policemen out in the field and had been ambushed by the Taliban. Got shot in the back as he was trying to get away. I didn’t believe it.

  “His laptop and pen drive were missing from his personal effects. When I asked Fick where they were, he said they never existed. I knew then that something had happened. I drove down to the ambush site, which was a valley in Kandahar, and started poking around. The locals told me there were no Taliban in the area, and hadn’t been for a while. It was winter, and the Taliban normally came back in the Spring. The locals told me, however, that there were two American-led groups in the valley the day of the ambush, not one. These people knew their valley. You couldn’t move around without some goat herder or kid seeing you, and they loved to gossip, so they were pretty up-to-date on what was happening. The official army report never mentioned any other group. It was a whitewash.

  “That’s when Connors started breathing down my neck. He knew I was investigating. He managed to bring my team under his command, then ordered me out on dubious missions that looked like suicide, which I aborted. He wanted me dead. I guessed he was already getting involved in the local heroin trade, and at one point Fick offered me a chance to get in on the deal and make a lot of money. I wish I had taped that conversation. I don’t know if they were trying to buy my silence or set me up for blackmail. In the end I went to that colonel I knew and told him everything. I didn’t have any evidence, but there was just enough to make a few people suspicious of Connors. Turns out he had enemies. Anyway, he got shipped back to the States, and nothing else happened. We were going into Iraq, and nobody at the higher levels cared about Colombia. They certainly didn’t want a scandal during our biggest war since Vietnam. So Connors was put on ice and I was left out in the field. I assume he lost all his overseas deals and the money he was making from them, and he lost any further chance of promotion. His career was over, and for that he blames me. But I could have done so much more. If I’d listened to Martinez the first time, he might still be alive and Connors would have been in prison. I screwed up, and now that bastard’s here. So yeah, it’s my fault.”

  There was silence for a while.

  “I never realized,” said Josh finally.

  “You weren’t meant to,” said Rick.

  19

  In Asheville, the people were angry. The day before, they were angry about the loss of water, which still hadn’t been restored. Today they were angry about the draft, and especially the news that daughters as well as sons were to be registered. That really riled everyone up, and they chanted at the barricades, calling the governor’s name. Of course, neither Jeffries nor anyone else in his administration were willing to come out to address the mob, so it was left to the militia to keep the crowds away from the government buildings. They did so reluctantly, at first, but as time drew on and the crowd grew bolder, the militia got heavier-handed, hitting out with their rifle butts. When people at the back of the mob began throwing stones, warning shots were fired, everybody flinching in unison at the cracks. Snipers on the surrounding rooftops peered into their scopes, looking for the stone throwers, and the loud report of a rifle echoed in the streets. People ran.

  Watching from behind the barricade, Eagleburger fully expected a dead body to be revealed as the human tide receded. But it turned out to be another warning shot, though probably a little too close for comfort for whomever it was meant. No matter. Enough people took the hint for there to be a general retreat.

  Eagleburger assumed they’d be back. There was too much discontent for them not to.

  The sheriff wanted to get out to resume his daily patrol. His deputy had told him he was crazy, that he was part of the same authority that the people were angry at, and that he’d get lynched if he was by himself. Eagleburger didn’t see himself as the same authority at all — not now — but it was true he was at risk. On the other hand, he’d gotten to know enough people in the town, and had been seen often enough as a separate entity from the militia, that he figured he could still get about if he was careful.

  Real careful.

  So he waited for the tension to subside, then slipped out from a different barricade.

  He found the East End neighborhoods deserted. There’d been a few families there before, but the cutting of the water supply left the high areas dry, and the migration had been instant. Skirting the edge of the city and heading north, he found people congregating around Grove Park and Reed Creek. Making his presence known, he was soon inundated with complaints. Those that lived in the area were aggrieved by the sudden influx of migrants — they actually used that term about their own townsfolk — and the migrants, for want of a better word, complained about harassment from the locals. Eagleburger tried to mediate, getting people to see that they were all in the same boat and needed to work together, but he felt inadequate, and everyone soon lost faith in him once they saw he had no magic solution. There was also the problem with wood being scarce in the city, so the water from the creek wasn’t being boiled before consumption. Eagleburger noted these pressing issues in his already crowded notebook and promised he’d do his best to get someone onto it.

  At Five Points he witnessed a heavily armed militia convoy driving by and tried to hail them, but they were more interested in watching each others’ backs than solving anything, and he was forced to back off as they pointed their rifles at him.

  At Jackson Park, he was called over to his first murder of the day, with local people pointing to a body on the sidewalk. Apparently a man had been chased by two men and a woman and clubbed to death. When Eagleburger examined the body, he saw it wasn’t fresh. The corpse was at least a day old. In the de
ad man’s bloated fist were the remains of a blue plastic bag that had been torn from his grasp. He checked the body fruitlessly for any kind of ID, then prised the fist open. Inside he found a single chunk of crystal meth.

  It wasn’t the first sign of the drug Eagleburger had seen in recent days, but its presence still baffled him. Just as the antifreeze drinkers had baffled him. But he hadn’t seen too many of those lately. They’d been replaced by drug overdoses. Where the drugs could possibly have come from, he had no idea, but their arrival coincided with the influx of the new currency. Somebody had been quick to take advantage of that. Eagleburger couldn’t believe anyone had taken the time and energy to make the drug — not when food and water were already scarce commodities — but here it was, and people were already fighting over it.

  Questioning the witnesses brought no new leads, and he couldn’t find anyone interested in identifying either the man or his attackers. The only reason they’d called him over was because they wanted him to get rid of the body, as if all he had to do was get on the radio to bring an ambulance and a coroner.

  Ordering them to bury the body, he added another line to his notebook and moved on.

  He ducked into a doorway when he saw a large group of people walking together down the main highway at Broadway Street, thinking they might be returning from the demonstrations at the barricade. He didn’t want to be the convenient target for their anger.

  Taking the side streets, he made his way to Montford, calling in on Rufus and his boy.

  The house was empty. It had been empty for three days now. Eagleburger originally thought Rufus had gone out on a hunting trip, but now he wondered whether he’d skipped town as he’d threatened to. With the arrival of the draft, it was possible he’d kept his word, and indeed there were a few families who’d gone missing, but Eagleburger wasn’t sure if they’d simply moved to where there was water.

  Charlene hadn’t moved, however. She stood at her fence, looking out at the sheriff.

  “Howdy, Charlene,” said Eagleburger, walking over. “You seen Rufus lately?”

  “Uh uh,” said Charlene, shaking her head. “But I got news about Ione.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl I told you about. The one gone missing.”

  “Oh, right. She turned up, then.”

  “She did, indeed. She a whore.”

  “Come on, Charlene. You know it ain’t polite to pass judgments like that.”

  “No, you don’t understand. She a whore. That’s where she was taken. To do whoring. Betty told me that Lucas talked to a guy who knew someone who’d been, you know, serviced by her. For five dollars. She a five dollar whore.”

  Eagleburger leaned over the fence to ease the weight off his legs. “And did this guy say where he saw her?”

  “No sir, but he wouldn’t say anyway, on account of telling on hisself.”

  Eagleburger figured as much. If he had a million dollars for every solid lead he’d acquired, he’d still be poor. He tipped his hat back and massaged his brow, feeling he was going around in circles. Had he been a more sensitive guy, the state of affairs in the city would have depressed him, but instead he felt tired, knowing he wasn’t really getting anywhere. He felt worse than useless.

  He felt foolish.

  “Okay,” he said straightening up, “thanks for your time. You have a good day.”

  “Sheriff, you look beat.”

  “I am, Charlene. I feel like a rat on a wheel.”

  “You should have gotten yourself a horse like I told you.”

  “Ain’t no chance of that.”

  “I bet you could do with a good cup of roasted chicory.”

  Eagleburger sighed. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer, this time.”

  “Well, you wait right there and I’ll go inside and fix you up a good drink.”

  Eagleburger gazed across at the abandoned homes and wondered what he should do next. Apart from getting a lot of exercise, he didn’t feel useful anymore. He was just going through the motions, and his badge didn’t mean much, apart from allowing him to draw rations. Somehow, he didn’t feel he was earning them. That didn’t seem to bother a lot of people, but it bothered him.

  Didn’t seem a lot of point carrying on.

  A yellow and red pickup with armed men in the back came up the street. He thought at first they were militia, but as they got closer he noticed they weren’t wearing green scarves on their arms. The pickup slowed as it passed him and he dropped his hand down to the butt of his revolver. The men in the truck eyed him with interest. They were armed with semi-automatic weapons, which was unusual, as only the militia were allowed to be armed so. The fact they had a truck was also unusual.

  The pickup jerked to a halt, and a gaunt figure with hanging jowls leaned out of the cab.

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” said the man with a smirk.

  He had a rose tattoo on his neck, and Eagleburger realized this was the character known as Fat Danny. He wasn’t fat — nobody was now — but it was clear he had been once. His face looked like it was wearing hand-me-down skin. The sheriff had heard about him, plus rumors of his shady past, but hadn’t crossed paths with him before.

  “Howdy,” said Eagleburger cautiously. “How can I help you?”

  “Just shooting the breeze. Haven’t seen you in this neighborhood before.”

  “Well, I’ve been around.”

  “Doesn’t seem like there’s much of a need for you to be around no more.”

  “That bother you?”

  “Nah. Me and the boys just enjoying a ride.”

  The boys, casually pointing their weapons in his direction, enjoyed their dominance over him.

  “You got a permit for them rifles?” asked Eagleburger.

  Danny chuckled. “Why sure, Sheriff.”

  He reached into his top pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Wrote something on it and held it up for Eagleburger to see. In scrawled letters, it read: Fuck You.

  Eagleburger, however, was more interested in something else. In the pickup bed was a line of small blue plastic bags. The same kind of bag that had been ripped from a dead man’s hand.

  “What’s in the bags?” asked Eagleburger.

  Danny followed his gaze. “Nothing that should interest you, Sheriff. You want to be careful out here on your own. These are dangerous streets.”

  Charlene came out of the house with a steaming cup of chicory, and she froze when she saw the truck.

  “Take care now,” said Danny with mock sincerity. The truck drove off.

  Eagleburger watched them go, mixed thoughts running through his mind. Charlene sidled up to him.

  “That’s the fella,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “The one giving you lip. He the one I saw talking to Ione before she disappeared.”

  “You sure?”

  “I swear.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t see him too well.”

  “I don’t see too well, Sheriff, but I ain’t blind, and I recognize the fella with him. He still wearing the same coat.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Ain’t seen them before, but they look bad. You going to do anything about them, Sheriff? Can’t have fellas like that roaming the neighborhood.”

  Eagleburger thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think I am going to do something.” He took the cup from Charlene’s hand and drank the hot chicory down in one gulp. It tasted like dirt. “Thank you kindly. I’ll be on my way now. And don’t you worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Eagleburger strode west out of the city with fresh determination. He had his first lead, and he wasn’t about to let it slip away. Crossing the river, he made his way up to the National Guard Armory.

  The armory had been turned into the barracks for the militia in control of Asheville. Having tried, and failed, to get the attention of the government administration, Eagleburger decided it was time to go direct to the local militia commander.

 
Before the arrival of Jeffries and Connors, the local militia commander had been Corporal Parson, but he’d since been sent east and Eagleburger hadn’t seen him for a while. The man Eagleburger saw in the armory office, after negotiating the checkpoint and numerous delays, declined to give his name, but he wore a red arm band instead of a green one. Eagleburger had seen an increasing number of Red Bands, as they were known, in the city and knew them to be some sort of elite militia. Quite what qualified them for that, he wasn’t sure, but they carried themselves with a little more arrogance, and tended to be better armed.

  “How can I help you, Sheriff?” said the commander, leaning back in a reclining chair. On his desk sat the remains of a meal, with fatty meat and a piece of pan bread having been pushed to one side, as if it wasn’t worthy of his consumption.

  “I have a lead on who might be supplying the drugs in the town,” said Eagleburger.

  “What drugs?”

  “The drugs I mentioned in my reports.”

  “I haven’t received any reports.”

  “They’ve been going to city hall. I assumed they might have forwarded a copy to you.”

  “Nope,” said the commander.

  Eagleburger produced the shard of crystal meth he’d retrieved and placed it on the table. “This is in our city.”

  The commander didn’t even look at the sample. “My job is to maintain order and protect the city,” he said.

  “You’re the law,” said Eagleburger. “Your job is to protect the people, and this stuff is poison.”

  The commander looked bored. “Was there anything else?”

  “Yeah. The guy distributing this stuff is currently riding around in a truck with armed goons.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, and they’re all armed with semi-automatics, which, as far as I’m aware, are now illegal for ordinary citizens.”

  “And you saw them distribute drugs?”

  “No, but I know they’ve got bags of it in the truck. If you send a patrol in quick, you can catch them and see for yourself.”