Cassy sat in awe, as her mother never swore unless she had her temper dialed up to “10.” Maybe Cassy had been thinking about this the wrong way all this time. “Mom, I’m—”
Mandy cut her off again, face red with anger. “I liked my son-in-law just fine, Cassy. I only said that I thought you shouldn’t get married so young. Women these days wait until they’re thirty all the time, so what was the rush? But you were happy with him, and I was heartbroken when the cancer took him. Your choice of colleges took you away from me, and I wasn’t ready to let go yet, but I got over that, too. So are you fine, now? Can you get over your own hurt feelings and get back to the Clan? Because if you don’t get your head on right, then my granddaughter is in danger, and so is Aidan, and so is the Clan. So which kind of leader are you, Cassy? You can be self-absorbed or you can get the job done, and Momma didn’t raise no divas.”
The combination of her mom’s anger, her stony stare as she chewed Cassy out, and her admission of being insecure about some things when Cassy was younger—Grandma Mandy, insecure!?—and that last hilarious statement (with no understanding that it was funny) made Cassy’s anger flow away. In its place, it left a moment of shame followed quickly by a renewed focus on the Clan’s problems. She stifled a laugh that would only piss her mom off.
Mandy saw Cassy try not to smile, and after a long moment she released a long breath. Then, resigned, she smiled wanly. “You may have been young, sweetie, but I was young when I had you. Did you ever wonder where your middle name came from?”
Cassy eyed her mother warily. A joke at a time like this. Fine, she’d play along. Plus, she was curious. “Yeah, actually. ‘Elenore’ is not a family name that I know of.”
“I named you after a song your dad used to sing to me when we were practicing to make you. Ask Ethan to find the lyrics to Elenore by The Turtles, and try not to look too grossed out. You owe your life to that song.”
Cassy allowed a faint smile. “Sure, Mom. I’m dying of curiosity, now.”
Cassy was about to ask another question, when Mandy said, “So the point of this conversation—you need to sleep, and you need to delegate. More importantly, you need to do whatever needs doing to keep Brianna safe, no matter how distasteful the tasks may be. You’re struggling with something, but you need to knock that off. Make the right decision and then just get it done.” Then Mandy spun on her heels and walked away.
What the hell was that all about? Cassy didn’t have time to wrap her head around everything her mother had just said. There was an interrogation going on, and she needed to check up on their guest and Michael.
* * *
A guard showed Choony and Jaz into the waiting room of an office building on Main Street and politely asked them to have a seat and wait. Despite the late hour, the mayor wanted to see them immediately. Or rather, Head Falconer Stringfield, as the guard had referred to her, wanted to see them. An odd name, but what did that matter in these times?
Choony diverted his mind by casually studying their guard. He wore the BDUs, or cammies, that everyone seemed so fond of these days. Around his waist, he wore a duty belt laden with items including a rather large pistol. Normally—if you could call anything about the last few months “normal”—everyone wanted to carry a rifle, so the guard’s pistol was a bit of a puzzle. An affectation, maybe. Everything about the man shouted that he had been either a soldier or a police officer in the good old days. Or maybe he watched cop movies a lot.
Then a pin on the guard’s collar caught Choony’s attention—a rank insignia usually went there, if the Clan’s Marines were any indication. Instead of stripes or stars, their guard wore a pin the size of a nickel with a stylized black falcon on a white background. These people sure took their bird motif all the way. It might be amusing, but it would be improper to show it struck him so. It would only hurt the guard’s feelings, possibly earning them an enemy but definitely earning bad Karma.
Some ten minutes later, just as Jaz began to squirm with impatience—so full of life, that one!—the double doors to the right of the lobby opened. The guard showed no emotion on his face as he told them to please enter and be seated. Jaz practically bolted out of her chair and buzzed toward those doors, evidently relieved after having to sit still even for a short while.
Choony felt a brief moment of near-panic. What if it was an ambush? As he walked toward the door at a slower pace, he chastised himself for his foolishness. If they’d wanted to kill him and Jaz, they would have done it outside the town when they’d met up with their perimeter guards. He followed Jaz in, keeping his face carefully neutral.
When he turned the corner, Jaz was smiling and shaking hands with the woman who was their leader, who also smiled. But when she saw Choony’s face, her smile disappeared like flash paper in a fire, and her expression turned just as black. Uh oh…
“Hello, Head Falconer Stringfield,” Choony said with hastily summoned calm, so that she would hear his American accent and nonthreatening tone before snapping to any rash decisions. He’d dealt with raw hatred for his race more than once since those from his family’s homeland had come with EMPs and death for so many Americans. “I am Chihun Ghim, but everyone just calls me ‘Choony.’ Thank you so much for taking time to meet with us as spokespersons for the Clan.”
Stringfield blinked a few times and clenched her jaw. Her nostrils flared once, and then she seemed to recover her politician skills. She shook his hand, but if her smile was forced, it was still an improvement over that black hostility.
“Please, call me Delorse, or Delo if you prefer. The honored guests from Clanholme are welcome here.” Still that rigid, plastic-looking smile. But when she turned to Jaz, her eyes crinkled as her smile became genuine. Probably genuine. “So, Jasmine, I assume Clanholme has business to discuss or they wouldn’t have sent you two out in the dead of winter, much less just the two of you.”
Jaz smiled again, and motioned toward the chairs with a raised eyebrow. Delorse nodded and sat, and Jaz and Choony quickly followed suit.
“You’re not wrong,” Jaz answered. “It’s not urgent—not yet—but it is something our Clan leader feels is best handled well before springtime.”
Choony added, “But they didn’t actually send us out alone. We had four of our warriors with us for protection, but we got separated when we ran into an unknown number of invaders. The ones who wear the black uniforms.”
Delorse leaned back in her chair. “Do you know if they are alive? I don’t mean to be so brash about it, but if they live then I will let my guardsmen know to look for them during their patrols, and at the gate.”
Jaz frowned. “No, we don’t know. We got separated when they ran a diversion for us. But they were professional warriors before all this started. They’re totally scary when they fight.”
“Speaking of fighting, I’m told you came in with a shotgun,” Delorse said and then turned toward Choony, “but that you came in without a weapon. Did you drop it when you were running?”
Choony thought he heard judgment in her question, though she was probably not trying to show it. Strike two…
“No, Head Falconer, it wasn’t dropped. I will not carry weapons. Violence on my part would damage my chakras. My balance of Karma, if you will.”
Abruptly, and surprisingly, Delorse grinned ear-to-ear. “Oh ho! A Buddhist. Here I thought you might just be… Well, Korean and a coward at the same time, chosen for this mission? I was prepared to dismiss the Clan. But now I see they’ve accepted you despite your heritage and your pacifism. Om swasti asu, Choony.” She then dipped her head.
Choony’s jaw dropped. American Buddhists, besides generally being condescending without meaning to, seemed to have some religious fervor for saying Namaste, which had irritated him as a child. She had used a term barely known outside of Asia, or the Asian community. “Om swasti asu, Delorse. Are you then Buddhist?”
Delorse shook her head, and Choony let go of the disappointment he felt. Not healthy or productive—she was wha
t she was.
“I ask because you use a proper greeting, which few here know. Where did you learn it? I am honored.”
“My sister is Buddhist, but she’s not your typical Yoga Buddhist. She studied in Thailand for several years. I picked it up from her. I respect her beliefs, because they were acquired through diligence instead of YouTube. She’s a great girl. Or was, perhaps.”
Choony saw the flash of pain in Delorse’s eyes and decided this was not the time to discuss the differences between northern and southern Buddhism. “I regret asking, and causing you pain. Please forgive me. But I honor your respect for your sister and her beliefs.”
“Nothing to forgive, Choony. I don’t share her beliefs, but I know she was—is—happy with her life. What could be more deserving of respect? Don’t apologize. The loss is mine, not yours, and I’m sure we’ve all lost people this year. And she may yet live. She was in Seattle when the lights went out, and I know they have a huge monastery there. I could never pronounce it—the ‘atayamana’ temple?”
Choony nodded. This was good news for her sister. Most of the Seattle monasteries were small and in densely-packed neighborhoods. “The Atammayataram. It’s in Woodinville, actually, and the area is almost rural. My parents took me to visit it a few years ago when we drove across the country to see as many great monasteries as time allowed. Funny how such a drive irritated me then, but I miss it now.”
Jaz looked bored, but only because Choony knew her so well. She smiled, nodded, made “mm hmm” noises at all the right places. She shouldn’t have looked so bored, in Choony’s opinion—the discussion was welcome, certainly, but it also revealed much about their host and what kind of person she was. Useful information in a negotiation.
“I feel the same. Thank you for that information. You’ve given me a reason to hope that, even if I never see her again, she’ll be all right out there. But we’ve important things to discuss, I imagine. What does Clanholme want from us?”
Jaz said, “We had a trader come by recently. An honest-to-goodness traveling merchant. Cassy, our leader, says that’s a great thing because it means America is starting to level out, and because with good trade going on, two communities that lack something vital can trade for what they need. It’s the difference between two groups dying off or making it through this. The trader mentioned the Falconry in positive ways.”
Delorse raised an eyebrow. “I see. And do you happen to recall his name?”
Choony said, “His name was Terry, and he had a muscle-bound sidekick he named as ‘Lump,’ if you can believe it.”
“Do you remember those two?” Jaz asked.
“I should hope so. They’re Falconry people. Scouts, we call them. They’ll be back in spring, having scoured the region for survivor groups like ourselves, with notes on how they’re doing, what sort of government they put up, what they need, what they have. We don’t produce a lot locally, other than just enough food for ourselves, so we’re setting ourselves up as a trading post. With the big cities of Reading and Harrisburg to our east and west, we’ll be the only big gateway between central and southern Pennsylvania, and a good waypoint on any trade between east and west.”
“We could certainly use a friendly trading partner,” Choony replied, “as we don’t produce much except food at the moment. What happens if one of those settlements decides to take what your scouts have,” Choony said, careful not to call them spies, “or just kills them? Not all the survivor settlements out there are nice places to visit anymore.”
“True. That happened at Hershey to our first scout team, right before the second round of EMPs hit. Now the team is actually three people—one stays hidden, following at a safe distance. They all meet up shortly after leaving a settlement, to give the follower all the scout notes and some fresh supplies.”
“So if Terry doesn’t come out, the follower makes a bee-line home with all the notes?”
“That’s the plan. We haven’t had to use it yet, as Terry is pretty good at his job. He was a car salesman back in the real world and in the Army before that.”
“I see. Smartly done,” Choony said with a grin. “So, I formally invite you to send two or three people to us any time you wish to trade. We were rather proactive about requisitioning supplies from our neighbors who no longer needed them, to our disappointment. Farming implements and grains are what we have the most of. Oh, and more apple cider than we could ever drink in the coming year. But also some vegetables we’ve canned. We’ll need most of that to last us through to next harvest, but we can spare some.”
Delorse got a faraway look in her eyes. Unfocused as though calculating things, which she probably was. Choony waited patiently while Jaz looked back and forth between the two, fighting not to fidget. Then Delorse snapped out of wherever she’d gone and looked at her two visitors. “Maybe we could use the cider. We get fresh produce year-round with our array of greenhouses, but there isn’t much to spare. Grains, we have precious little of.”
So the negotiations had begun, Choony recognized. He wasn’t much of a trader, but Jaz was. She’d been negotiating with people her whole life, usually to get out of bad situations.
Jaz straightened, smiled, and spoke up. “Fresh veggies would totally be nice, but I’m afraid it’s not something we really need. Then again, neither is the cider and grain. I’m told you do have something else we might be able to trade for.”
Delorse wore a friendly expression that was no doubt meant to be disarming, reassuring. “Do tell. I’m always interested in a creative exchange.”
* * *
2200 HOURS - ZERO DAY +146
The negotiations had gone well and Choony had no doubt the results would please Cassy. He grinned and said, “One gasifier now and another when spring rolls around. Well done, Jaz.”
“Always with the compliments. You’re a nice guy, Choony. I hope Cassy doesn’t mind the cost. Five barrels of apple cider and two tons of wheat and oats, and two more when we harvest the winter wheat. I don’t know about the other thing—leaving a radio here when we come through on our way back.”
“That one’s going to hurt, but I think Cassy will go along for two reasons. First, we have enough to spare one, even if we might have to take one out of storage when we send out more scouts in spring. Two, it might secure an alliance with Falconry sooner, and I understand that we need all the allies we can get. Cassy’s certainly pushing hard on everyone as far east as Ephrata to join her little confederation, and we’ll need that to be in place when the Empire starts pushing on our borders. That’ll happen as soon as the snows let up, I’m sure.”
“Don’t forget that even if we don’t get an alliance with Falconry, Delo herself said she’d alert us to any danger coming the Clan’s way, or going through the Gap,” Jaz replied with just the right inflection to show she’d started thinking of that description as being its name.
“The Gap. It’s as good a name as any for that road we took. Cuts straight through the forest. But on the other end of that road is our ally Brickerville, so if we’re lucky we’d be able to alert them before they get hit if raiders take the Gap, and if Delo really did warn us.”
“So are we going to Camp Whatsitsname, like Delo asked?”
Choony leaned back in his bed, one of two in the well-apportioned room they were given for their stay in Falconry. “Camp Lebanon. I’m surprised that one’s hard for you to remember.”
Jaz grinned. “I’m not even legal to drink yet, you ass. How is that supposed to be easy for me to remember? All that crap happened before I grew up.”
“I’m only a few years older than you! And no, it wasn’t all before you came along. It’s been going on forever, and will go on forever. I mean, the bomb that blew up the Marine barracks was before your time, but it has been in the news ever since then, too.”
“Really? Only a few years? I thought you were old, like, twenty-eight or something.”
Choony half-heartedly threw his pillow at her, and she feigned being knocked over to s
prawl out on her bed. She sure was adorable. Maybe more than adorable… He quickly squashed those thoughts. She wasn’t into him, certainly, or a young woman like her would have made her interest known. Choony suppressed a sigh.
“I think you’ll live, you ham. But anyway, Lebanon. It’s about the size of Lititz, from what Delorse said. They were remote enough, and enough people split town after the EMPs to go look for family, that the remaining people didn’t starve too much. Enough remained to draw a line in the sand to their west and keep the hordes of starving Harrisburg refugees at bay. But they are low on food now, and they know Falconry has it.”
“Hungry and bigger than Falconry. It’s a bad combination. Delo said they tried to negotiate instead of invading, at least, so they aren’t flat-out raiders.”
Choony’s lips pursed. “And they still are trying. Lebanon sends a new envoy about two times a week to trade for food. If they get hungry enough, Jaz, they will stop asking nicely. When children begin to starve, people will destroy their Karma with violence and looting.”
Jaz poked her finger into the mattress and fidgeted with the blanket by tangling her finger into it and then untangling it. She always fidgeted when she was uncomfortable with the conversation, a quirk he found charming.
“Don’t worry, Jaz. That’s why Falconry wants to trade with the Clan for food, even though they have enough for themselves, if only barely. I’ll ask Cassy if we can spare a pig to throw into the deal with our first delivery. Just to be neighborly, and assuage any doubts.”
“Ass wage? What the hell is that?”
“No—‘assuage.’ It means to make unpleasant feelings less intense. To calm someone’s fears, for instance.”
Jaz grinned. “Oh, got it. So you, like, totally ass-wage me, Choony. You have a knack for making me be all like, ‘I’m okay and everything will be fine,’ you know?” She plastered a silly grin on her face, turned her eyes to the ceiling and issued an ecstatically, dramatically happy sigh.
Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft Page 10