Feral Recruit (Calm Act Book 5)
Page 39
“And any Resco can do this to their own people?”
“If they have the markers to pay for it, yes. General Hoffman, down in Jersey, can request pretty much anything. He’s top Resco for Hudson, and New England now, too. Soon PA as well.”
“Penn – PA – is becoming part of Hudson, too?” Ava boggled. There was a war. The broken chapel at West Point was from Penn artillery. Penn tried to stop Project Reunion, prevent Hudson and New England from ending the Starve.
“They’re still talking. But PA applied to join Hudson, yes.”
“So you provide these – services – to PA and New England, as well as Hudson?”
“My territory extends beyond Hudson, but yes. Let’s not go into that now.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Cade is one of my best field agents. He’s done a few ops with older men, ones I inherited from Canber. But Cade doesn’t like them. Doesn’t trust them. I don’t, either. We work with a lot of groups like White Rule, some even uglier. They’re not all bad. The gran caravan folks are really quite nice. It’s a mixed bag. But basically, Cade could really use someone his own age, to watch his back. So you’d be a field agent, too, with him. Sometimes other people.”
Ava huffed out a laugh. “I work for Cade again. As his assistant.”
Skull grinned. “No. You work for me, not your boyfriend. Partners with Cade.”
“And we travel around, setting people up to die?”
“That. Spying. Checking up on our operations, and black ops groups like White Rule. The first assignment I have in mind for you– No. First I need to ask you, are you still willing to do this? Or, just shack up in the cabin a few days and head back to the city? There are other cabins, if you need space.”
“And if I break up with Cade?”
“That was a sticking point, from my perspective. But it’s been, what, eight months since you broke up? And you’re still bonded. You grew up a lot at West Point, matured emotionally. Cade has, too. So, I’m willing to give it a try. If you don’t partner well, we can find you someone else. I hired twenty from your class. I expect business to pick up this year.” He sighed.
“Why would business pick up?”
Skull waved a hand at the waving tree tops. “No rain. Strong winds. Running about ten degrees too cold this spring. The tsunami disrupted weather patterns world-wide. We don’t know what to expect this growing season. Hudson is preparing as best it can. Speaking as a Resco of Hudson now,” he assured her. “Hudson has sound plans. Others, not so much. Virginia–Del–Mar is a basket case.”
He rose. “We should go see what Cade’s got for supper.”
“Yes,” Ava said hastily. “The answer was yes, Skull. I still want to do this.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I want to be on the side that knows what they’re doing.”
Skull tilted his head briefly. “Honestly, Ava. The Rescos in the Apple Zone? They absolutely know what they’re doing. They might not explain it to you. As militia in Soho Ville? You’d know what you’re doing there, too.”
“I trust Cade. I don’t know you very well yet, sir. But I think I trust you, too. Cade does.”
He met her eye and smiled. “Thank you. If you’re sure, welcome to the team.”
“I’m sure.” As they stepped into the building, Ava added, “So can you tell me what my first assignment is?”
“Nope. Because we don’t talk work over supper.” They turned from the hallway into a beam-vaulted party room, complete with kitchen, small stage, and dance floor, with tables scattered around. “So Cade, what’s for dinner? He’s a much better cook than I am.”
Ava laughed. “I never knew you could cook!”
“I’ve cooked for you,” Cade said. “You ate at my apartment in the Village a few times. Before Ebola.”
“Ooh! I thought your mom cooked that! You’re right, Skull, Cade’s an awesome cook.”
“Dad and I were the cooks in the family,” Cade informed them. “Dad, fresh seasonal gourmet. Mom, frozen dinners, take-out, and cornflakes. Tonight, a quick omelet Florentine with home fries. I’m hungry. Skull, could you handle the drinks? Ava, maybe you could set the table.”
Skull chose a bottle of chilled white wine for himself. Cade recommended Ava join him for some local craft beers. Ava lit the candles on the sole table with its chairs on the hardwood floor instead of racked on top. Giant French doors ran beyond the dance floor alongside the table. The last high shreds of bright pink and purple dimmed in the indigo sky through the trees beyond.
“Skull, tell me you powered up the hot tub,” Cade said. He handed Ava a basket of molded corn-shaped cornbreads, fresh from the oven, and a tub of soft butter.
“With you on the way? Of course I did. Do I get to join you? Or leave you two alone to honeymoon?”
“You join us,” Cade insisted. “You spend too much time alone, man.”
“You do know I run six counties, right?” Skull countered. “Closest I get to alone is with you.”
Cade handed Ava the platter of potatoes, and carried the omelet to the table himself. “Skull’s wife and kids stayed behind in Albany,” he said softly, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Ex-wife,” Skull clarified. “That was happening whether I took this job or not.”
“Divorce sucks,” Ava sympathized. “Sorry about the kids.”
“They’ll like it here in summer,” Skull said. “But Cade’s right. It’s a nice break to talk to intelligent people who know who I am. By whatever name. To a good harvest!”
“Amen,” Cade murmured, clinking his beer bottle to Ava’s, and then Skull’s wine glass. Ava followed his lead, though she smiled at the thought of toasting the harvest before it was even time to sow the seed.
The food was excellent. Ava had nearly forgotten what intelligent dinner conversation was like. The hot tub was heavenly. Ava wasn’t used to drinking full strength beer, and staying up late partying. She fell asleep while Cade was brushing his teeth. That was OK. There was plenty of time to make love in the morning. After, they worked out together, followed by a luxurious swim in the indoor pool.
Cade didn’t live here, he cautioned her. This was their retreat between jobs. It was an awfully nice retreat, though.
Due to a local feral pig infestation, they needed to go armed for a hike in the woods. Ava and Cade considered this a fun bonus. They bagged one. Skull referred them to a nearby homesteader willing to butcher their carcass for half the proceeds.
Ava couldn’t contact her friends from West Point from the campground HQ, ever. That violated their security. Every time Cade had contacted her, he’d been on the road, and in Hudson.
Before Skull left to return to his public job, he sat down with them to sketch out their next month or two. They’d touch base with ‘contractors’ through Pennsylvania, then hook up with a gran caravan for safety before passing into Virginia–Del–Mar. Skull suspected most of his operatives down there were out of commission. They were certainly out of communication. And he wanted eyes on the reality to cross-check reports from the local Rescos. Their recovery estimates sounded like moonshine and wishful thinking to Skull.
After a few more days playing and preparing, Ava and Cade set off south. They brought along their homework. Ava would help Cade bone up for the math portion of the GED, and he’d help her prepare for English. They would study college freshman Western Civilization together, about the only subject their degree programs had in common, other than freshman writing.
Ava wasn’t enthused about the choice of subject. Actually, she said it was pointless. Skull promised to hire a grader open to new perspectives.
FREE EBOOKS
Sign up for my newsletter, and get free copies of Dust of Kansas and Civilly Disobedient.
If you enjoyed Feral Recruit, please leave a review on Amazon. Reviews help other readers choose this book. But also, I’m energized by feedback, to write more, faster, better. Reviews tell me that people care. So plea
se leave a review and help me create the next book.
APPENDIX – HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Readers new to the Calm Act Series might be wondering how the world reached this point. Several things converged into a perfect storm.
First, climate change accelerated sooner than expected. Storms like hurricanes and tornados, and new freaky weather, became more severe. Forest fires and floods raged out of control in the South. The drought-prone desert southwest, California, and the high plains all fell into multi-year drought. Aquifers ran dry. The Dust Bowl returned.
Meanwhile, a new GMO blight emerged to destroy the corn, soybean, and cotton crops. Whole states needed to burn the industrial mono-culture plantings. Another season was lost to replacing the seed stock. Food prices skyrocketed. The U.S., the world’s largest food exporter, stopped exporting. The Middle East and Africa, overpopulated and already struggling with climate change, devolved into chaos. Refugees flooded into Europe, to increasingly violent backlash. Russia and China killed them at the border. The world economy went into free-fall. The U.S. military was summarily withdrawn from international engagements. The U.S. barricaded itself in, to defend its resources for its own people.
Back home, the Dust Bowl rendered a stack of states uninhabitable. The federal budget collapsed under demand for emergency relief. Domestic refugees tried to flee, but neighboring states couldn’t help them, only be overrun. Stopgap borders arrested migration. The media helped downplay the crisis, voluntarily at first.
Then the Calm Act was passed. This legislation entrenched the internal borders, decomposing the U.S. into super-states, like New York–New Jersey, and New England. Civilian travel and commerce between super-states stopped, in a crash program to localize agriculture and cut emissions, and prevent failed regions from bringing down others. To maintain ‘public order,’ the media was gagged. Additional ‘epidemic control’ borders ringed the big metro areas. The currency collapsed, and martial law took over.
The part they didn’t tell the public at first, was that the immediate goal was to cut the population below 200 million. Because the new climate-changed world was severely overpopulated. To save the planet, they needed to reduce the population and the damage people caused as quickly as possible. The shadowy individuals charged with this goal were the ‘death angels.’
Stories are about people. The Calm Act books are about people who live through these changes, and try to make the best of things.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply grateful to my test readers. My beta readers put up with reading the manuscript while I’m still writing it, to let me know where credibility fails, or the pacing goes wrong, and which plot threads they’re most interested in. The hard-working team for Feral Recruit included Beth Grem, Brett Jarman, Ron Kaminski, Bonne Kelley, Karen Reinertsen, Mike Ryan, Suella Tucker, and Cheryl WMH. Thank you so much for your time and insights. And most importantly for your friendship, and urging me on.
Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to let me know you care. I needed the encouragement! Without you, I couldn't do what I do, so I really appreciate that you give my work a chance. Please feel free to contact me about anything. I personally respond to all messages!
I offer my wonderful newsletter subscribers the chance to be Tuckerized – donate their names for use as characters. The Tuckerized in Feral Recruit were: drill instructor Sergeant Alyssa Weinzapfel, Bonne Kelley of the Brooklyn militia, platoon leader Sergeant Clarke, Randy Hone and Victoria Palmer of the Soho Village militia, Soho Village inventory chief Dennis Horner, ex-boyfriend Frosty, company XO Lieutenant Janette Mattey, friend Kat who died of typhus, salvage crew boss Larry, dance partner Mario Aguilar, drill instructor Corporal Mark Icenogle, recruits Matthew Ryan and Becca, gang leader Maz, Hudson Army recruiters Sergeant Michael Callahan and Specialist Nicci, Oska of the building demolition crew, Soho Village librarian Samantha, and death angel Skull. Thank you for playing! Please note that the characters bear no resemblance to the people who offered their names.
If you volunteered and your name hasn’t been used yet, don’t worry. You’re still on the list!
I’m also grateful to all the advance readers, who read the almost-final manuscript, ready to write reviews for book launch day. I can’t list your names at this writing. But your efforts help sales. Thank you!
And thank you, for reading my book. Especially if you’re so kind as to leave a review on Amazon, or to tell someone else about it, or drop me a line. Books take a long time to write. Feedback is the fuel that powers the next story.
BOOKS BY GINGER BOOTH
Calm Act series:
1 End Game – time ran out on climate change
2 Project Reunion – daring plan to save the dying New York City
3 Martial Lawless – martial law vs. religion run amok in Pittsburgh
The Calm Act Books 1-3 – box set of the volumes above
4 Tsunami Wake – sea level rises faster
5 Feral Recruit – gang rat joins the Army
Calm Act Genesis prequel stories:
1 Civilly Disobedient – Dee Baker attends a riot in Philadelphia
2 Dust of Kansas – Emmett MacLaren at the birth of the Calm Act
Nonfiction:
Indoor Salad: How to Grow Vegetables Indoors
CALM ACT TIMELINE
Years counted from the enactment of the Calm Act. Most books cross a New Year, so the year given is at the book start.
-1 : Civilly Disobedient – food prices skyrocket due to Dust Bowl and GMO blight, rioting begins
0 : Dust of Kansas – U.S. withdraws from foreign involvement, air travel banned, internal refugee crisis
1 : End Game – Calm Act begins; severe censorship, inter-state borders; NYC Ebola outbreak
2 : Project Reunion – northeastern states band together to relieve NYC survivors, Penn attacks New York
3 : U.S. officially disbanded in March
3 : Martial Lawless – nation of Hudson established, others follow
4 : Tsunami Wake – East Coast tsunami, sea level rise, Hudson and New England merge
3-4 : Feral Recruit – overlaps Tsunami Wake, Hudson Army trains recruits
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Free Ebooks
Appendix – How Did We Get Here?
Acknowledgments
Books by Ginger Booth
Calm Act Timeline
rethis-inline-share-buttons">share