Dark New World (Book 1): Dark New World

by Henry G. Foster

  THE SHORTWAVE RADIO crackled again: “So, Dark Ryder, where are you? Not many folks are talking back right now. I’m bored. Talk to me.”

  In the LED-lit EMP-hardened underground bunker, surrounded by crates of canned and dried food and gear, a huge map of the USA, pierced by scattered multi-colored pushpins, was mounted on one wall. Desks with computers and multiple radios seemed like adjuncts to the map.

  Glancing at the map, “Dark Ryder” chuckled. Short and slightly round, he ran his thick fingers through thin receding hair, then wiped them on the green MMORPG tee shirt he wore. “Watcher One, you know I can’t tell you that. What’s the point of a secret lair if it isn’t secret?”

  “Roger that,” said the voice on the other end with a laugh. “So, like I said, Big Apple is applesauce now. Have you heard anything about that from your other radioheads?”

  “Aff, Watcher One. I have a backdoor on a commercial satlink, and copied some images from Up On High. City’s being overrun by someone - I’m still working on who. A guy in Alaska said they were North Koreans, and a gamer grrl from Orlando says it’s Iranians. No idea how North Koreans would get to New York, though. And they have what we leet gamers call ‘combined arms’. Ships, tanks, planes, troops.”

  “Yeah, Ryder, I know what combined arms are. I heard that POTUS declared martial law, whatever good that will do her. What’s the whispernet say about how the unwelcome visitors got here?”

  “Guy I know in D.C. morsed me a message, old-school style,” replied Dark Ryder as he adjusted his tee shirt. “Says they hit New York by ship, but he didn’t know how they got past our fleet. But I think I know how.”

  “You’re talking out your fat ass, Ryder! You don’t know shit.”

  “True, but I got cross-ref from someone else that the whole mid and south Atlantic are dark like us.”

  “Yeah, man, I heard that too. And all the East Coast bases cleared out right before someone flipped the switch off. Small units scattering, taking old gear - like they knew it was coming. Shit, I gotta go dark, satellite due to come overhead stat, Watcher One out.”

  Ethan Mitchel, who thought of himself more as “Dark Ryder” than as his given name, leaned back in his chair. It squeaked annoyingly, but he had neglected to stock WD40 in the bunker. He gazed again at the wall map and his thoughts drifted. He didn’t trust anyone, and this was truer of Watcher One than of others. Watcher had appeared just after everything went to hell and he didn’t speak geek, though he tried hard. Too hard, which was a red flag. Also, even though his signal was pretty weak, it wasn’t because he was far away. Ethan’s remote gizmos triangulated his signal to somewhere in Virginia, or at least that’s where the short wave signal had bounced last. But the most damning evidence against Watcher was that he knew too much about what was happening. He had information Ethan didn’t, and vice versa, so he was useful, but Watcher claimed to be some weekend warrior HAM operator. No way he should know so much.

  Ethan had been staring blankly at the map, lost in thought, but now he sharpened his focus. Black pins over Ohio, the Pacific, and now the Atlantic - these showed where he thought EMPs had simultaneously occurred. That meant that only LA southward wasn’t pulsed into the dark ages, though they had no power because the grid was down. They could rebuild, though. The Marines at Camp Pendleton probably had generators. So there was still an island of USA somewhere.

  Red pins over New York City, Anchorage, Vancouver B.C., and Orlando showed where rumors had suggested foreign troops had landed. How much of that was real, he didn’t know, but New York was a certainty—he’d seen satellite images, and knew that units all over the eastern seaboard had scattered just prior to the EMP. Or EMPs, whichever.

  Ethan also knew that the President had declared Martial Law within minutes of the EMP. The statement was well-written and well-read, suggesting it was prepared and practiced well ahead of time. How much did the Fed know ahead of time, and how far ahead? Could they have stopped it? Too many questions, and no answers. Not yet - but Ethan was certain he’d figure out at least part of the puzzle, given time. And all he had was time, down here in his bunker. Time, and a working computer loaded with twenty years of classic video games.

  Dark Ryder smiled, and double-clicked on his “games” folder while he waited for someone to transmit, out in the world.

  - 8 -

  0600 HOURS - ZERO DAY +1

  CASSY AWOKE AS the first glimmers of sunlight shone on her face. She was flooded with memories of the horrible events of the day before and she had to stop and wait for the feelings to pass. She’d been nearly raped by a man she had foolishly trusted, but had probably killed him by leaving the man to die. If he wasn’t dead yet, the bastard was almost certainly going to die soon from blood loss, dehydration or infection. She had shied away from finishing him off—she hadn’t actually killed anyone before—but a part of herself that she was ashamed of felt happy at the thought of him lying on the road, bleeding life away and waiting to take his last breath.

  Once the overwhelming feelings passed somewhat, she stretched and slowly got up, groaning at the pain of her stiff back and neck. She wasn’t used to sleeping on bare earth and hoped she wouldn’t have to do much more of it. She took a couple minutes to stretch out and limber up, then rummaged in her pack for one of the granola bars she’d taken from her would-be rapist. She chased that down with a gulp from her limited supply of water, and packed up to move out.

  As Cassy crept up the embankment to the freeway’s guard rail, she looked around carefully. Although she was well outside of Philly, that was no guarantee she would be safe from other travelers. “To hell with people,” she muttered as she searched for movement but saw none. Climbing over the railing, she got back onto I-76 and continued on her way.

  For the first hour all was quiet, and she saw no other people. Things changed, however, rather abruptly as she walked with a steady pace around a turn in the road and saw three people ahead, a couple with one child. He looked about the same age as her own son, Aidan, though she couldn’t be sure from that distance. She was about to climb back over the railing to go around them and hopefully avoid being seen, when she saw movement to the west of the family.

  Four men vaulted suddenly over the railing, aiming rifles at the road family. She could hear the men shouting but couldn’t make out the words. The man and woman dropped down to lie face-down on the road, arms out. Then the family man grabbed his child and pulled him down to the ground with him.

  The four men surrounded the family, still shouting, still pointing death at them. One then slung his rifle over his shoulder and threw his head back, probably in laughter. He strutted up to the people on the ground, clearly cocky even from Cassy’s distance, and stripped them of their backpacks. Seconds later, they melted back into the foliage west of the freeway.

  It took several minutes for the family to stand up, and they clung together for a while before moving on, shoulders hunched and heads down forlornly. Cassy knew this simple robbery had probably spelled the family’s death, but there was nothing she could do to help. Nor did she want to have to hurt them if they chose to try to take her own pack; She shook her head and, with a heavy heart, climbed over the railing and disappeared like a ghost.

  It would not be the last such scene she witnessed, but she would never forget that one, her first. Nor would she ever forget the terrible hopelessness that painted the family’s body language when they moved on. She resolved never to become like those men. “No matter the cost,” she swore to herself aloud.

  After regaining her composure, Cassy continued walking north on I-76, and all was deceptively quiet. Woods stretched off in all directions on both sides of the freeway. The monotony made it difficult for her to stay alert. A couple hours later, however, the road veered west following the Schuylkill River, and she could see buildings in the distance across the water. There were more cars on the road as well, probably commuting to Philly when the lights went out.

  Cassy ducked behind a car and
pulled the .38 out of her pack, along with its inside-the-waistband holster, and tucked it into her pants. “Let’s hope we only meet good, friendly people, okay?” she asked the gun, then continued on her way.

  She wove back and forth around the cars left in the road, struggling to stay alert for danger. It wouldn’t be too bad yet, she mused, as it had only been a day and a half since the power crapped out. But she’d learned a lesson about being too trusting of other people’s good intentions. As she thought about James and his Camaro, anger rose in her again and she fought to quash it. Sooner or later she would have to process what had happened with James, but now wasn’t the time.

  And then she saw, ahead of her, a group of perhaps a dozen men and women, systematically going through the dead cars. She glanced around and saw that to her left, on the south side of the freeway, there was a dense forest. “Time to hide,” she muttered to her hidden gun, because she had no one else to talk to. “Hide or use up most of my ammo right now. Better later than now.”

  With that, Cassie crouched low, made her way to the railing, slid down the embankment to the trees below and took cover. When she looked out from the tree line at the road, she was relieved to see no one had seen her, or if they had, at least they weren’t following her. “Time to go, girl,” she said out loud.

  “Talk to yourself all the time, do you?” a voice responded, only a few feet from her. Cassy’s heart surged as she spun around to see a young woman crouching near a bush, hidden from the road. The woman was stunningly beautiful, Cassy noted, and couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, going by the girl’s appearance and body language. She wore tight-fitting jeans, a low-cut black halter top with a white skull on it, green “skater” shoes, and a thin black jacket. Her blonde hair was long and wavy, falling to her mid back.

  Cassy thought the girl would get herself into trouble looking like that, if she wasn’t careful. And then she shuddered as she suppressed a recent unpleasant memory along those same lines.

  “Funny,” Cassy said, smiling at the girl. “You live around here?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. Good girl! Not too trusting, Cassy noted with approval.

  “No,” the girl said hesitantly. “I live west of here. My car died, yeah? So, I’m walking. But I didn’t like the look of some peeps on the road, so I bounced.”

  “Right,” said Cassy with a grin. “Good choice. There’s bad people out there now, believe me. Still headed west?”

  “Yeah, but I’m staying off the road until I get past this town. I’m hungry, but not that hungry. Not yet.”

  Cassy thought about the girl stumbling across another James out there, and frowned. Aw hell, she decided suddenly, they were going the same direction for a while, at least, and Cassy had a gun to chase off any unwelcome attention the girl might attract. Plus, it would be nice to have company, even if that company was closer to her daughter’s age than her own.

  “Well, I’m Cassy. I have a bit of food, if you are hungry, and if you want to walk with me for a while. Two are safer than one. I hope to get to my mom’s house in the morning, but I’m going to have to camp out here at least one more night. There’s more food at my mom’s - you’d be welcome to get a full tummy and rest up there, if you want, before you go on your way. If you decide that’s what you want to do.”

  The girl stiffened, and her eyes darted around once, warily. “Why would you do that, Cassy? You don’t owe me. Not that I’m complaining. But what’s in it for you?”

  “I have a daughter not much younger than you. And I know some of the people out here are not nice. The kind of not nice that women have to worry about, especially pretty young women traveling alone. What’s your name?”

  “Jaz. That’s what people call me, and it’s good enough. You know, I don’t have anything for you to steal if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No, Jaz. I have enough to get to my mom’s. I don’t need anything from you. I’m just trying to be nice, kid. Let’s walk, and you can have a couple of my granola bars. Sound okay?”

  Cassy walked with Jaz at a comfortable pace, and was happy to give the younger woman a few granola bars for the company. Somehow helping this girl seemed to calm her ragged feelings about what she’d done to her would-be rapist.

  Jaz turned out to be outgoing, funny and smart, if naive, and Cassy felt things were definitely looking up. Better still, Jaz loved to talk, which helped take her mind off the horrible encounter with James.

  In an hour they were closer to King of Prussia than to Conshohocken—which, Jaz had informed Cassy, was the name of the urban area north of I-76 they had passed—and it was still only early afternoon.

  “So, we have a decision to make, Jaz. We’re away from the towns right now, which is good, but there’s not enough light left to get past King of Prussia today. We’d have to camp out on the edge of the town, and I don’t think that’d be safe.” She decided not to mention James, or the fact that he lived there. “Also, we need to decide whether to camp together. Like I said, you’re welcome to join me on my way to my kids, and I have plenty of food at my home. But do I trust you enough to camp with, and do you trust me? Things aren’t all that bad yet, but they soon will be. Trust is going to matter. So you have two choices to make.”

  Jaz beamed a winning smile, and Cassy was again struck by how pretty the girl was. “Well, my feet really hurt. I know you saw me kinda limping. These damn shoes weren’t really meant for all this. So yeah, I could camp here and rest my feet. Blisters are ugly.”

  “And the other thing?” asked Cassy, amused that the girl still cared about how her feet looked.

  “Well, I have no reason to mistrust you, Cassy. You kinda took me in when you didn’t have to, you know? And you gave me some granola bars, which you didn’t have to do. You’re, like, a good person. I just get that sense about you.”

  Cassy grinned, openly pleased at the compliment. “Well, I try to do the right thing. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I still try. Okay, let’s find a place to camp. Someplace out of view and maybe with some shelter.”

  The two of them searched for about half an hour before finding a clearing between some trees, just big enough for both to lie down with what little gear they had. The trees would block both wind and rain, if it came to that, and would hide them from anyone passing by unless they were almost on top of them. They spent the rest of the day quietly talking, and just after dusk weariness overtook them. They settled in to sleep.

  - 9 -

  1130 HOURS - ZERO DAY +1

  SSGT TAGGART WIPED sweat from his eyes. Passing through York had been rough, physically and mentally. A lot of people had wanted to get out of the city, where stores already had bare shelves, and the crowd had migrated to Highway 30 just north of town. This made driving slow, as they had to be careful to avoid hitting anyone.

  Once they got just south of Pleasureville, a wealthy neighborhood, things got uglier. A second small horde of well-off suburbanites arrived at the freeway wanting the protection of moving with armed soldiers. While there were more of the less affluent people, the wealthy ones felt entitled to better protection. Taggart grinned when he remembered the Lieutenant ordering the unit to keep moving, and the smug look falling off those arrogant faces.

  Before they had gone another hundred feet, the Lt. gave the order to halt and Taggart frowned. It turned out the Lt. had been bought. Not by money, of course—that would be useless to the soldiers, and soon, to everyone else. But the wealthy suburbanites had brought stockpiles of drugs with them. Painkillers, uppers, downers, anxiety meds, antibiotics. These they traded to the Lt. for an escort out of York and away from the large mob of filthy peasants.

  Taggart had questioned the Lt. away from everyone else, and was told sobering news: they’d be in the field without support for weeks, if not months, fighting something or someone unknown. They would need all those supplies. Taggart guessed, correctly, that the pharmacies were among the first stores cleared of merchandise, and a trade like th
is might mean life or death for the men later on. Dammit.

  And worse, it took hours to get the civilians as far as the Susquehanna River. They could have made much better time without the civvies, who complained endlessly whenever anyone came within earshot. They were hungry, they were tired, little Suzie-Q had a blister, Agnes was unspeakably rude. Waah.

  Because of the complaints, to Taggart’s frustration, the Lt. gave the order to stop for the night and they circled up the vehicles. They would no doubt have to ward off the less fortunate rabble all night long, though so far they’d kept a safe distance from the civvies and the soldiers’ guns.

  At least they’d reach Lancaster by noon the next day, thought Taggart, and that was as far as the Lt. intended to go with these sniveling, over-privileged civilians. After that, they would make much better time up Highway 222 to I-76, and onward to New York, where their real mission lay.

  - 10 -

  0600 HOURS - ZERO DAY +2

  AS THE FIRST mottled light of day broke through the canopy above her, Cassy stretched and smiled. She had slept great, feeling comfortable and safe. Though another day of walking lay ahead of her, she had Jaz for company and the time would fly by.

  Cassy slowly opened her eyes and sat up, smiling. “Mornin’, Jaz,” she began, but stopped halfway through. Jaz wasn’t in sight. Perhaps she had gone to relieve the call of nature, Cassy thought, and she stood to stretch again.

  “Jaz, hurry up,” she called out cheerfully while she stretched. “We need to make at least ten miles today, should be easy.”

  But when she reached for her backpack, it wasn’t where she left it. Her heart sped up and a cold feeling washed over her. “No, no, no... Please don’t do this to me,” she said as she frantically looked all around the area.

  Ten minutes later she knew. Her pack was gone, and so was Jaz. “That damn bitch,” spat Cassy, putting her hands to her hips in a rage. And there she felt the cool, comforting finish of her pistol. A smile crept over her face. “So, no food, no gear - but at least I was smart enough to take this out of my pack.” And of course, she still had her backup knife—the one she’d tried to neuter her would-be rapist with. It was small, but sturdy and sharp.