He snapped out of his thoughts when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked over and saw Jed next to him, concern etched on his face.
“You still with us, big guy?” asked Jed, quietly enough that no one else would hear. “Last night was tough as gristle to swallow, but we got plenty left to do, Lord knows. Come join us at the fire—we got some jawin’ to do, and it can’t wait.”
Frank nodded slowly, and took a deep breath to clear his mind before following Jed toward the fire pit. “Alright, Jed. I’m here, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, I reckon we’re more interested in what’s on your mind, Frank. We got ideas, but you always got a knack for shootin’ holes in ideas that are ‘all hat and no cattle’.”
“So what’s on the table?” Frank replied, trying not to grin. Jed wasn’t raised with a southern drawl as thick as the one he let on, but Frank thought it more amusing than irritating.
Jed ran his fingers through his hair, and said, “Well, me ’n Amber want to stay here. Figure out how to clean the tents, maybe put up some walls or somethin’. And Michael got it in his head to leave all this and tear off into the wild blue yonder, livin’ off the land like hillbillies.”
Frank glanced at Michael, who only shrugged. Short on words, that one, but apparently Jed had the gist of Michael’s idea. “Alright, give me a minute,” said Frank, and rubbed his temples. Sometimes it frustrated him that they always bugged him with their ideas, as though a simple mechanic with a green thumb knew anything more than they did.
Frank finally looked up, glancing from person to person. “Alright, here’s what’s what. Jed, your plan has no legs to stand on. We can’t stay here. More people will be coming, and soon. We can’t lay any roots here, and I don’t want my kids to die defending land we can’t lay use to.”
Jed frowned, but nodded. “That rings true, Frank. But wanderin’ around aimless doesn’t seem like a brilliant plan either...”
“I don’t think we ought to do that, either. No offense to you, Michael,” he said with a nod towards the other man, “You got skills none of us have, and I’m sure you can use ‘em just fine. But the problem is right there—none of us have those skills. Not yet. I don’t want to drag my wife and son away from here, only to die just as certain out there. We need a third option.”
Frank looked around the group, and saw them watching him expectantly. Damn it, he didn’t ask to be any kind of leader, but Michael was young and full of testosterone, and Jed was a good man, but dull.
“Alright. What we need is this: we take what we can carry, especially guns and water, and head west away from Philly and the hungry nightmare goin’ on there right now. Find us a farm or something, either vacant or a place that can use some able bodies with guns. Earn our keep, and do some good for others in the process. It’s both smart and the Christian thing to do, I think, though I’m no preacher.”
Frank thought Jed was doubtful, which he expected, but Amber wore a smile. Good, Jed would go with what his wife wanted if he ever wanted peace again. Michael was no surprise; he nodded, face set in that way he always got when he talked about his missions in Iraq or wherever. Determination, is what it was, and his own brand of honor. Tiffany only sat with her arm around Michael’s waist, head on his shoulder. She’d go along with it.
Then he turned to his wife, but Mary looked back at him with eyes narrowed, lips pressed tightly together, which surprised him. “Alright hon, speak your piece.”
“I’m with Jed,” she said flatly. “We should stay.” Frank couldn’t hear any emotion in her voice, which meant she was scared. “We can’t leave a perfectly good camp with fresh water, animals all around, just to take a chance some farmer yokel won’t shoot us rather than hear us out. It isn’t safe for Hunter.”
“Don’t bring our son into this like that, hon. You know very well I would never put him in danger. You think I’d send the boy up to the nearest looted homestead to ask pretty please, would you let all these extra mouths stay with you, Mr. Farmer? Hell no.”
Mary’s eyes flashed with anger, and she snapped her mouth shut so hard he could hear her teeth click together. She leaned forward and opened her mouth again, but was interrupted before she got started.
“Mary. Don’t be stupid with Hunter’s life,” Michael said, slowly rising to his feet. “You’re scared, we’re all scared, but staying here will get your boy killed right quick. If not last night, then tomorrow night. Do you understand me? I will not stay here where every instinct I got says my kids and my wife aren’t safe. You figure on staying here safe and sound without me? Without my guns, my traps, my tools?”
Mary sat rigid, and said nothing. To Frank’s eye, she looked ready to start sobbing any minute from fear and anger.
Michael continued, “I swear to you, Mary, I will put my life in front of Hunter’s. In front of yours. Any of us. I think we’d all do the same, given a second to think on it. Come with me, and we’ll do Frank’s thing. It’s as solid a plan as we’re going to get, Mary.”
Mary let out her breath all at once, and Frank knew she’d been unconscious of holding it. He saw her shoulders sag a little. She would be on board, even if she didn’t like it. Well and well, now they at least had a plan, which was better than sitting there waiting to die.
Another voice spoke up and everyone’s head turned to face the source, Jasmine, who had finally moved from her spot while everyone’s attention was on Michael. She said, “I, um, I think I know where we can go. I might not be welcome, but like, I think it’s our best shot. Your best shot, I mean. See, there’s this chick I met, right? And like, she has a farm, and years of food and stuff. She invited me to come, so I think she’s good peeps, you know? It’s just north of Lancaster, but she didn’t say exactly where, but it means there’s farms there, and good people.”
Frank coughed loudly, and heads turned toward him. “I must tell you all, actually, that I do know where to find such a place, a farm that will welcome us. We were invited, though we declined to go at the time. No need to talk about who invited us,” Frank said and locked eyes with Amber, then Michael. “But we’ll be welcome there, and fed, with good people. It’s up there north of Lancaster, like the place in Jaz’s story. That’s all I have to say on it. I can’t tell anyone what to do, but my family and I will go there. I hope you come with me.”
Frank cast a sidelong glance at Jaz. It occurred to him that his story had a lot in common with her story, which had to come from the woman she stole from. If the woman from his story and from hers were the same person, he saw no point scaring Jaz away; she was safer with Frank’s people facing Cassandra than she would be if she ran away. He’d have to talk to the others about where the homestead was. Cassy had only told him, and Frank didn’t want that knowledge to die with him, if something happened to him along the way. He was quickly learning just how abruptly a life could be snuffed out, and he pictured the man he’d killed inside his tent.
- 21 -
1200 HOURS - ZERO DAY +4
ETHAN MITCHEL LET out a long, slow breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and drummed the fingers of the other on the desk. “Yeah, thanks for the intel, Watcher One,” he said into the mic. “Dark Ryder out.”
He stood, reached for a box of thumb tacks, and dug around for a while to find a color he hadn’t already used for something else. Selecting eight white tacks, he methodically pushed them into the map. Two in upper New York. Two in western Pennsylvania. Two in Virginia. Connecticut. Vermont. And those were just the ones he knew about. These were the places where the enemy had bombed and sprayed vast areas of agricultural fields. Within hours, he had learned, anything leafy and green was dead, grains were wilting, and God only knew what it would do to the trees.
Ethan paced back and forth in his bunker, clenching and unclenching his fists, lips pressed tightly together. “Fuck!” he screamed, then stopped and took ten deep breaths. It didn’t help any more than screaming had. Those bastards were busy destroying the only hope that
nearly anyone within 100 miles of New York City could survive. First the EMP destroyed the food distribution network, but he had reports that Uncle Sam was starting to organize horse and bicycle convoys to the smaller towns around New York; there was no way to bring in enough to make a dent in New York City’s teeming hungry masses, and it had been written off.
But now the enemy was poisoning the food itself. Fuckers. He swore that if he ever saw these invaders, he’d go out in a blaze of glory, taking as many with him as he could. Of course, that would probably never happen. He wouldn’t leave his bunker again any time soon, now that things were fully underway.
There was some good news, though. Watcher One, whoever he was in reality, had been sending good intel about recent events. While that included the news about poisoning or burning the food supply, it also included a large number of small US military units that were converging on the invasion areas, especially New York City. Somehow Watcher had concluded, or been told, that the units were coalescing, and were working with the Resistance. Ethan had little information about them except that they were doing some serious damage to the enemy, and that a group of leaders from various criminal organizations were directing them. Apparently they were really good at smuggling, hit and run, and avoiding being caught... Who would have thought that was useful, just five days ago?
As Ethan sat thinking, a loud beep sounded from one of his computers. “What the hell?” he said as he scrambled over, grabbed the mouse and sat with a hurried thump into the chair.
A desktop alert notified him that “an update was installed,” and a spike of fear ran up his spine. He quickly found it; something called “AIR_RDEA”. By reflex he moved the pointer to another application that would remove the thing, but a dialog box popped up first. A green cursor blinked in the box. Half a second later, a string of text appeared in the box.
ATTN: Dark Ryder - We know you’re one of the 20s. They do not. Your service required. Ack.
“What the hell is this shit,” Ethan muttered. How did they get a connection to his box? Well, his satphone was Bluetooth-enabled, and had been set up as a satellite internet hotlink. His PC had Bluetooth connectivity. He hadn’t turned any of that off after the EMP, as it wasn’t a priority and didn’t seem necessary. But somehow, someone had used the satphone connection to get into one of his PCs. True, this wasn’t a big deal because he could shut the satphone off and bring up another computer, but it was damn upsetting.
Then he thought about just who might have the capacity and interest to contact him that way. Uncle Sam or the invaders led the short list, of course. Probably the good guys, but he couldn’t be sure. It would be best to string along whoever was on the other end of the connection. Ethan wanted them to think Dark Ryder was a good little compliant sheeple.
Ack, you hacked Dark Ryder’s box, DR responding. What service.
That’s right, he mused, they hacked a box. Better be white hats or he’d sure as shit return the favor.
DR: retrieve attached txt file AIR_RDEA 411.txt
Ethan got up and verified his other four computers were powered down and unplugged their Ethernet cords, before returning to his chair. He pulled up an app to run a virtual machine, a sandbox; whoever was on the other end would see it was downloaded, but Ethan could access it without letting any unwelcome visitors run amok in the real system. Click, he downloaded the file, and opened it.
It took Ethan quite a while to read through the lengthy text file, but from what he could see it appeared internally coherent, direct, and actionable. Holy crap, he thought, what the hell had he gotten involved in? A knot of anxiety formed deep in his gut, and the walls felt a little tighter than they had before... He frowned, and replied at the terminal:
Ack receipt of file. Will respond in 24H after review. Go screw yourselves, btw.
Message sent, he pulled out his satphone and powered it down. He needed to think, and had precious little time to do so.
* * *
Cassy needed to check her bearings. She stopped, pulled her map out of a cargo pocket and quickly narrowed down her location. She was just west of something called the Edgemont Country Club. Damn, she was farther from her family than when she’d met the soldiers on the road. Highway 30 lay ahead, less than a mile away. She could try to head north, skirting the east side of West Chester, but she ruled that out. The entire region would be unsafe, what with starving urbanites to the west and those farmer-scout-marauders to the east. No, she decided bitterly, she would have to go around West Chester’s south end, before heading north again. It would add a couple days to her journey. Thankfully, she had MREs courtesy of Uncle Sam’s finest, so she wouldn’t have to slow to forage and hunt along the way.
As she folded up her map, images swept through her mind of the woman she shot. Oh sure, she had probably killed James and had definitely left him for dead, and did so happily, but James was a bad dude. He had lost any shred of civilized behavior before America’s corpse had even cooled. That woman, though, had only been defending her home, doing what Cassy herself would have done. It was Cassy or the other woman, she knew, but she didn’t feel any better about it. She shook her head to clear her mind and once again stuffed the terrible memories and feelings deep inside. That mental box was getting full to bursting, and Cassy thought she’d have a meltdown eventually. She just hoped it would happen after she found her kids.
Cassy took a good look around. Just west of her lay another preserve, and she was certainly not going to risk going into one of those again even if it had more trees than the last one. North looked great, but she didn’t want to run into those scout-marauders again. Due south was the only option. From her vantage it looked sparsely populated, which was good. Better yet, after about three miles it ran into a densely wooded area that then stretched off to the west well past West Chester, with only occasional residential areas to break it up. If she travelled quickly enough, she could be well into the woods by the time dusk arrived.
Alrighty, then—decision made.
* * *
Moving west for the last hour, Cassy paused to wipe sweat from her forehead. It was maybe about 3 PM, she guessed, and she had made it to the woods without any new troubles. She had arrived at a tall, forested hill, and now decided to climb it for a good look around. If it looked promising, she’d camp there in the lee side, without a fire to draw attention to herself.
She scrambled up the side of the hill, and was having a difficult time until she realized that she could grab on to the young trees that forested the hill and use them to pull herself up. Progress slowed, but was safer and easier. After another twenty minutes, she made it to the top and found a pond. That struck her as odd until, from her new vantage, she saw that the hill was nearly circular. Man-made, then, but the pond made fresh water available and cemented her plan to camp there for the night.
Shortly, as the sun in its descent neared the horizon, the breeze shifted. She moved to the lee of the hill to shelter out of the wind, and set about making a simple lean-to with branches and leaves. Some fresh boughs made a bed of sorts. Then she sat, letting out a sigh of relief to be off her sore feet and weary legs. It was pretty up there, she mused, gazing out over the southern view her camp gave her.
To the south it looked mostly agricultural, interspersed with wooded areas. There was also a small village she figured had to be Glen Mills, judging by her map. Sure enough, she saw a school far to the south that must be Glen Mills Middle School, north of the village proper. She felt relieved to have been able to use landmarks and her map to fix her actual position. That would make the next stage of her journey safer, as she had a reliable way to avoid stumbling into any residential areas. Those would be terribly dangerous by now, especially to an outsider unfamiliar with the terrain.
Something bothered her all of a sudden. She shrank into her lean-to and looked around, but could see nothing that might have triggered her instincts so strongly. She sat still, listening and looking, but after perhaps thirty seconds she realized what w
as bothering her. She became aware of a faint, low hum in the distance. Airplanes, her mind made the leap. More than one. She listened carefully until she could tell from which direction the noise came: the planes were due east. Searching high and low, she spotted three dots low in the sky, moving fast.
As the dots approached she saw that they were some sort of fighter craft. Not the jet fighters she had seen strafing the soldiers, but larger. Smaller than bombers or airliners, but definitely jet powered. She watched as they banked to their left, shifting bearing to the south west, and started to lose altitude.
The three large fighters—or whatever they were—leveled out at an altitude of maybe 1,000 feet, and continued to the southwest. The two outer planes then began spraying something, the spray spreading out into a thin, wide cloud that drifted down over what had to be farms. The third plane, in the center of the formation, launched rockets one after the other. She counted six rockets, which all went in different directions before striking various buildings that looked small from her vantage, but might have been grain silos or processing plants. Once out of spray and rockets, the three planes banked left in a swooping arch and flew off to the east from where they came.
By the time the sun truly began to set, a couple hours later, the lush green and tan farmlands had turned an ugly, reddish-brown or had even blackened. Cassy realized the enemy was targeting food supplies, not people. As if the EMP that destroyed food distribution wasn’t enough, they were going after the food itself.
Dark New World (Book 1): Dark New World Page 11