Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story

by Holden, J. J.

  Naturally, no one had given Wiley a gun. Dammit. He didn’t even know where his pistol had gone. Probably up on the front line, somewhere, and—

  Boom. The ground shook, and a fireball on the right flank vaporized an entire team and its mobile wall.

  “What the hell?” Boomer raised his binoculars. All his staff half-ducked and watched the mushrooming fireball.

  “Landmines?” Wiley said aloud, without thinking. “Where the hell did they get mines?”

  As the advancing battle line shifted, reflexively, away from the fireball, the scene repeated itself on the left. A chunk of metal embedded itself in the hood of Boomer’s command Jeep, twenty feet away. People ducked.

  Wiley considered striking. He could wrap up Boomer before anyone could even notice what was going on—maybe, depending on Boomer’s fighting skills—but getting away, that was the problem. Wiley stopped himself. Even if he could beat the giant, there were too many others around them.

  The battle line shrunk away from the left, as they had on the right, compressing them into the middle, where some of the shields began overlapping.

  Boomer called into his radio, “Advance, damn you. Stay close together.”

  Wiley fought a grin. He had an inkling of what might come next. At least, of what he would have done as the defenders…

  From behind the defensive works, a volley of perhaps a dozen glittering objects vaulted over the barricades, arcing through the air. Bottles…and they were on fire. When they struck, they shattered, and whatever was inside them ignited. A few of the people behind the shields caught fire, their screams audible even from the relative safety of being so far in the rear. But even where they hadn’t been engulfed along with their mobile shields, the fighters let go, backing up several feet. Wiley imagined the heat from those flames making the raw, metal shields too hot to handle.

  Boomer looked at Wiley, glaring. “You didn’t mention minefields and damned artillery.”

  Wiley shrugged. “They weren’t there when I left, or no one told me about them. Molotov cocktails and glorified slingshots don’t really count as artillery, though.”

  “Yeah, well, it stopped my advance. They’re delaying us. Can’t have that. We need to keep pushing forward.”

  “Probably.” Wiley nodded, cursing him silently. “I think I know what comes next.”

  Boomer grinned. “Ayup.” He clicked his radio. “North end, push up with the boxes. Move it,” he barked.

  “Boxes?” That was not what Wiley had expected at all. He scanned the area, waiting to see what happened next.

  On either side, from beneath camouflage netting that had been emplaced before Wiley and Boomer had arrived, people emerged. The boxes were metallic, made of the same corrugated metal as the shields, but these fully enclosed the top, front, and sides. As they moved into the field, the back ends came into view. Inside, groups of four or maybe five people walked, two of them hefting bars that extended to the front end, where the boxes attached to wheels. Sort of like upside-down wheelbarrows, those half-blind turtles would be immune to mere flaming booze or gas, at least for quite a while, though Wiley didn’t envy the people inside as they heated up…

  “Keep ’em centered,” Boomer said into his radio. “Keep those away from the damn landmines.”

  Wiley grimaced, imagining Weldona’s defenders facing so damn many enemies—ones they couldn’t see, so they couldn’t shoot, couldn’t burn them out… At least the townies had funneled Boomer’s attack, and that meant they could focus their fire better. Probably, any flanking positions they set up would have a better angle, too. But at the moment, there was nothing Wiley could do to help Weldona’s defenders—not yet. Equally disturbing, he wondered why he so badly wanted to.

  Christine focused so much on her breathing, on the rhythm of what she was doing, that she could forget that she was killing men and women, real human beings, not cardboard cutouts. Almost forget it, at least… Their screams, as she fired out through the opening in the corrugated metal HQ building, were a steady reminder of just how real they were. She’d have to deal with the horror—both of what was going on, and at her lack of horror—if and when they pushed the attackers off.

  So far, the raiders had hit the north end hard, and only the ultralight, high in the air, had revealed the true plan—the south bridge was only a diversion, though a powerful one.

  David had already redirected the defenders, shrinking in number, while the attackers seemed to have a limitless supply of bodies to throw at the bridge.

  She’d demanded to go north, but David refused. Couldn’t leave his HQ, he said. Middle of a battle, he said. Well, no kidding, but the real battle was on the far end of town, up north. If they pushed through, if the invaders swarmed the town and slaughtered everyone at Fran’s homestead, and—

  She pushed the thought aside. Half-breath. Hold it. Squeeze. Breathe. Repeat. The mantra echoed in her head, and she started to think she was saying it out loud, and that her voice sounded hysterical. Or was that her imagination? She didn’t have time to test the imagination theory. Bang. Dead… Bang. Missed…

  The radio crackled, and Christine’s head whipped up. More bad news? Only, it wasn’t any of the walkie-talkies on David’s command table. The chirp was too high, too soft. She felt something vibrate in her back pocket.

  “Oh yeah,” she muttered. The tiny handset chirped as she clicked out. “What is it, Fran? A bit busy, here.”

  What came through was definitely Fran’s voice, but the words hardly sounded like English. Christine’s heart beat even faster. Were they in the town, already? Were they attacking the farmstead?

  She clicked again. “Stop. Breathe. Are you okay, Franny?”

  She hardly realized she’d used Fran’s preferred nickname, even.

  Fran’s voice came back, “Chrissy… Hunter.”

  Her stomach dropped.

  Fran continued without pause, “He’s gone. He kept arguing to go fight; he said he was a man, and he had to protect the family like a man, and he wouldn’t stop, and I turned my back for only a minute, and Darcy said he ran out the door, and Chrissy… Hunter, he’s gone—”

  Christine stared at the handset as the torrent of sound, meaningless words, continued to pour from it. A monotone sound droned in the background that sounded remarkably like David’s voice, but if he was using words, they didn’t register. Or maybe she just didn’t care to listen, right now.

  She snatched her ammo pouch with its four remaining magazines and flung it over her shoulder, then bolted for the door, heedless of David’s cries behind her. She darted out the door—a hinged hatch made of the cargo container’s siding, cut square—and down the ladder zip-tied upright. She slid down it, because steps would only slow her, and ignored the dull ache in her knees when she hit the ground over thirty feet below.

  Leaving the raging firefight behind, she ran north, into town, and the entire time, she screamed Hunter’s name, but his voice, her reason for living, was silent in return.

  75

  Two of the “turtles” Boomer had sent forward made it all the way to the wall, the stacked debris and vehicles that barricaded the north entrance into town. Wiley squinted to see them better, wondering what would happen next, and frowned when he saw long poles extend through the front walls, somehow. No… Not poles. Spears. They glinted in the sun as they thrust like sewing machine needles.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t doing much good. The defenders were fighting them for the poles, grabbing them. One raised a pistol and fired at point-blank range; the spear his companion had grabbed came free, disarming the turtle.

  Boomer turned to Wiley. “Watch this, and be glad you surrendered like they should have.”

  Wiley cocked his head, and watched as the bandit leader pulled a device from his pocket, about the same size and rough shape as a stapler. He moved a dial, then squeezed the open end together—

  The turtles were replaced by fireballs bigger than a car, forcing Wiley to shie
ld his eyes. When he could look out again, Boomer was on the radio screaming for the bandits to charge. Wiley quickly saw why. The bridge barricades were destroyed, tossed around like toy cars that burned heavy, black smoke, and bodies—many burning—lay all around, defender and bandit alike.

  “What the hell?”

  Boomer grinned as his army rushed into the gap. “We’re inside. Cost some lives, but I have more. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make. I was kind enough not to tell them the real plan with those boxes, too, so they didn’t even know it was coming. Dynamite is awesome, isn’t it?”

  Wiley grunted. He didn’t dare give a real answer. This guy was insane. But it had worked—Weldona was now a running battle, though the elementary school seemed to be holding them off well enough. No one was attacking it, or any other building, in an organized fashion.

  Wiley watched as two men grabbed a man with a rifle, stripped his weapon as they kicked him on the ground, and then shot him in the head. Heavy, random gunfire was spreading even while he watched.

  Boomer grabbed his shoulder. “Come on, meat-bag. Time to move up. We’ll make their bunker behind the bridge our new command post.”

  Wiley flinched at the raw strength in the man’s grip, feeling his shoulder and collar bone cry out, though he stifled his own cries, as Boomer merely grinned at him and dragged him from their former command position.

  As they crossed the bridge, walking while streams of bandits ran past them into town, Wiley looked at the mangled, blackened bodies scattered across the bridge, and hoped he hadn’t known any of them. Some were too mangled to ever tell for sure.

  David ran alongside the reinforcements he could gather, two-dozen men and women stripped from the southern barricade and observation-and-sniper posts along the way. A terrible roar sounded, up ahead, and over the house roofs ahead, two fireballs mushroomed as the ground shook.

  He put his head down, and ran faster. He continued looking around, as they ran, trying to spot Christine. Where had she run off to? Damn her, he did not have time to waste on worrying about her, but he couldn’t help it. But when he found her, boy, he was going to—

  Three bandits ran out into the road, a hundred feet ahead of them. Even as it registered, just what he was seeing, several of his “troops” fired, and the bandits dropped dead where they’d stood, stopped, and stared. As he ran past them, he spared a glance, and shuddered. Just dead meatbags, now...

  At the intersection, he shouted to turn right. The sound of fighting was heavy in that direction. They came upon a dozen bandits, firing heavy at the occupants of one of his hastily-erected cargo container “guard towers.” He and his reinforcements had the enemy’s flank, though.

  He grabbed two men. “You two, get in the tower on that house,” he said, pointing to an odd, almost bell-tower-like addition on a house. Made of wood, it would not offer much protection, but it gave a great vantage. Once they were at the house, he said to the rest, “Open fire!”

  David grinned as half the unit attacking the metal tower fell to his people’s bullets, then dove for cover at the survivors’ return fire. The next minute, or maybe hour, was a blur of noise and movement, but in the end, all the bandits lay dead or dying, to his two dead, and two wounded. Maybe, if they could keep up that exchange rate, Weldona would stand a chance.

  The fury of an intense gunfight, just to his east, distracted him from gloating. He began to organize his twenty remaining uninjured reinforcements into four-person teams. The school lay in that direction—his heart raced faster. Only the injured, sick, or elderly were still inside there…along with half the town’s supplies…

  The edge cover on the green siding sent vinyl slivers in all directions as Christine ducked back, just in time to avoid the bullet. She popped out, rifle butt planted to her shoulder, and pulled the trigger. As she ducked back, reflexively, she caught sight of a crimson spray against the slate-gray siding of the house across the street. Poking her head out once again, she spotted her would-be killer’s corpse, crushing Mrs. Peamont’s prized rose bushes, or what was left of them without being watered half the summer.

  Two blocks down, the school. If Hunter would have gone anywhere to “be a man,” it would be there. She hoped. But damn him, he wasn’t a man. Not yet. He was just a kid. It seemed only yesterday that he’d danced with her by standing on her shoes, grinning as she did the dancing for them both heedless of the pain from his toes digging into the tops of her feet…

  She cleared that thought. Focus… She sprinted across the street, expecting to catch a bullet every second, but she made it without incident. She’d been lucky so far, and there hadn’t been a lot of gunfire on that block. But ahead, by the school, the firefight was only growing. The bandits must have breached the north bridge, somehow. That thought only added to her sense of urgency.

  She crossed another block, taking a potshot at a fleeting glimpse of a bandit, and halfway across, a single bullet whizzed by her, but when no second bullet came her way, she decided it was a stray bullet. Those things didn’t stop just because they missed their intended target, after all. Lord, how she hated guns—but never had she been more thankful to her mother for teaching her how to shoot, as a kid. Or for teaching Hunter behind her back…

  When she got to a position across the street from the school itself, she peeked around the corner of a light-blue house and scanned the area. Down the road, it seemed bandits had taken cover in the row of houses directly facing the school. The elementary school itself consisted of a square layout of cinderblock buildings, arranged around a “quad,” with a few outlying buildings for the administrative offices and supplies storage. These had been sandbagged and were occupied by people shooting at the bandits.

  She frowned. It seemed unlikely Hunter would have crossed that fire zone to get to the school, so she scanned the outer buildings. Actually, he probably couldn’t have gotten to them, or wouldn’t have tried, under so much bandit fire. Maybe he went to the town hall?

  The flash of a lime-green baseball cap appeared in the firing position of the nearest office building, behind the sandbags. Lime green? “Hunter!”

  It couldn’t be. How’d he get inside, under fire? She raised her rifle and peered through the simple, low-magnification scope, and watched.

  Two seconds later, the lime-green cap reappeared. The face just below it sent a triumphant roar coursing through her. He was alive! She gasped, though, when he turned his head—he wore a white gauze bandage on his neck, on the right side, and it had blood on it. That blessed, rash child. He was hurt, and every fiber of her wanted to rush to him.

  She stepped out from behind her building before she realized what she was doing—and immediately had to duck back as a trio of bullets punched holes in the siding, only a foot in front of her. Oh man—she’d come so close to getting herself killed. She had to be careful, now. Hunter was trapped, and she would save him, but not if she got herself killed.

  She crawled to another position, behind a hedge, and slid her rifle barrel across its top, taking aim at the side of one bandit’s head, as he faced the school, and fired.

  Surrounded by half a dozen of Boomer’s henchmen, not to mention Boomer himself, Wiley found himself being swept through town at a dizzying pace. Knots of gunfire rang all around them, but most of it lay to the south, at the bridge no doubt, and east, from the school’s area.

  Boomer led them through a house that had its back door hanging open from one hinge. Inside, it was darker, and took a few seconds for Wiley’s eyes to adjust. It must have taken Boomer a moment, as well, because he paused before barking at the occupants for a situation report. “What are we dealing with?”

  “Booms. We got half a squad moving toward that office building, circling around to the back, while a dozen more keep the town people pinned down. We’re keeping, what do you call it, overwatch? Ready to snipe anyone who peeks their head out.” The man kept his cheek welded to his rifle’s stock, watching the office through its scope.

  Boomer n
odded. “Not anymore. We’re charging. If we can get that building, we got cover to shoot at one end of the school from two directions. We can pin them while those other six move up. Get ready to charge—grab your gear, whatever you brought, because we’ll need it.”

  “No way. Sorry, Booms, but I ain’t running across that field. You couldn’t pay me enough to commit suicide—”

  Bang. Boomer’s pistol deafened Wiley, and the man slumped over, dead, while the others stared in horror. “Anyone else want to tell me ‘no’? You all got three seconds to start picking up your shit. If you don’t, you can forget about what those assholes are going to do to you, because I’ll freaking kill you my damn self. Now, move.”

  They scrambled to pick up magazines and canteens and whatever else they had set around them.

  Boomer looked at Wiley and grinned. “Sometimes, they just need the right motivation. Anyone can be brave when their lives depend on it. Now, get ready, and stay where I can see you.”

  Wiley grimaced as he nodded, then moved toward the front door, facing the school’s parking lot, and it felt like the room had grown suddenly blisteringly hot. Boomer’s vice-like grip presented a tempting target, but suicide was not a high priority at that moment, so he let Boomer herd him out the front door. A dozen men and women scurried to nearby cover, or at least concealment, and haphazardly shrank the distance between the unit at the outermost school building.

  Thankfully, Boomer let go to take cover, as well, leaving Wiley free to put something between himself and the bullets coming from within the school’s fortified office building, once a mobile structure of some sort.