Survival EMP (Book 3): Solar Dawn

by Lopez, Rob

  “Did everyone else make it okay?”

  “Yeah, but it looks like Chuck broke a rib.”

  “That’s going to slow us down. What do we do now?”

  “Relocate as soon as possible. The raiders know we’re here now.”

  They made their way up the slope.

  “How did the trip to Marion go?” asked Lauren. “We getting any help from them?”

  “No. We’re on our own.”

  16

  Connors rode through the empty streets of downtown Asheville to City Hall. Most of the inner city’s survivors had moved either closer to the French Broad where they could be better supplied by river, or to the wooded heights of Wind Oaks. When he got to the county courthouse, however, he found the place to be a hub of activity. Leaving his horse to munch on the shrubs at the entrance, he went inside to look for Jeffries.

  The governor looked to be fielding several meetings at once, with staffers coming and going, handing him scribbled notes, taking dictation and dashing off to deliver the latest missive to whomever it might concern. Jeffries was in his element.

  “Oh hey,” he said when he spied Connors. “I got your message about Biltmore. Can we really confiscate property like that? It is temporary, right? And I loved your idea about the Housing Committee. I’ve got people working on it now. Do you know we’ve only got running water in the lower part of the city? The pressure from the mountain reservoir won’t reach the higher elevations. That’s a serious sanitation risk.”

  “Uh huh. Listen, I’ve got something else we need to discuss.”

  “Sure. Oh, I’m convening the General Assembly tomorrow. I think we need to get working on some issues right away. It’s not exactly a representative assembly at the moment, what with a lot of people missing, but I don’t think we have time to run elections. Not yet, anyway. As an emergency assembly I was thinking we could bring in more local people, and it’s given me an idea for improving diversity. If we can bring in minorities and women now, they’ll become familiar faces for when people do get to vote. We’ll have an integrated assembly with full civil rights from the get-go, and it won’t have taken us years to do it.”

  “Sounds swell. Can we talk in your office?”

  “Absolutely. Come this way. Hey, do you know of any gay or lesbian groups we can reach out to? We could really use their representation.”

  “Can’t say I do, Governor. Could we have this talk?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  Jeffries led him into an office and shut the door. “This will be the one time we don’t get interrupted by phone calls. So, how can I help you?”

  Connors pulled three handwritten sheets of paper from a satchel. “I need you to sign and stamp these.”

  Jeffries read the first sheet. “Authorization to raise a hundred-man militia? Do we need that many?”

  “As a start? Yes. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  Jeffries picked up the second sheet. “You want to inventory every firearm in the city?”

  “Exactly. Anyone in possession of an automatic or semi-automatic rifle must register as eligible to serve in the militia. Anyone with any other kind of firearm has to report here to be issued a permit for the possession of said firearm. Failure to comply will result in confiscation.”

  Jeffries was taken aback. “That’s going to involve a lot of work. I don’t know if I have the personnel to handle that.”

  “Get the law enforcement guys on it. It’ll be their chance to practice real gun control.”

  “What about concealed carry? Do we need permits for that too?”

  “That’s not important. We just need to know what kind of firepower we’ve got available, and to put it to good use.”

  Jeffries read the third sheet. “Authorization to pacify and incorporate hinterland communities? What does that mean?”

  “All the communities that border Asheville. We want them on our side, and they need to be law-abiding. We need to end the chaos, and there’s people out there who require our help. Thus far they’ve been left to their own devices, prey to every roaming gang out there. They have the right to know that, when trouble looms, the cavalry will arrive to save them.”

  Jeffries whistled in appreciation. “This is ambitious.”

  “It’s a big omelet.”

  “And how many eggs do you plan on breaking?”

  “Only the ones that need it. By the time we’re done, your name will be a byword for peace in a blighted land. The first leader of the government of the Carolinas.”

  “Carolinas? You thinking of involving South Carolina too?”

  “It’ll take a while, but I daresay there’s folks down there who’d like to see some order and democracy too. You saw what happened at Raleigh. I don’t think they did any better down in Columbia. From our base here, we’ll be the first to rebuild. It’s our duty to do what we can for those around us.”

  Jeffries nodded thoughtfully. “It is.”

  “You kept the government together when you could have just skipped out like some of the others, thinking only of your own skin. You didn’t, and we’re here now with a chance to start over. To really do some good. Isn’t that the reason you ran for office in the first place?”

  Jeffries smiled nostalgically. “Seems like a long time ago.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Well, it looks like I’m being summoned,” said Jeffries.

  “The papers,” reminded Connors.

  “Oh, sure.” Jeffries signed and stamped each sheet and handed them over. “Don’t get carried away down there.”

  “I assuredly won’t.”

  Connors rode at speed back to Biltmore, laughing into the wind. Dismounting in the chateau courtyard, he went over to inspect the unloading of the flatbed trailer. The tarp had been pulled back to reveal boxes of ammunition, an M240 machine gun, grenade launchers and mortar rounds.

  “Are we good to go?” said Fick.

  Connors picked up an AT4 rocket launcher. “We certainly are,” he said with a smile.

  *

  The setup that the former residents of Old Fort had created on the mountain that loomed above the town was even more impressive than Packy had described. They called it Bergen Mountain and it rose to 2281 feet at its ridge summit. Rough wooden huts roofed with asphalt shingles taken from the town were scattered over a wide area, following the route of mountain streams. Ropes running along cleared paths helped with the ascent. Water collected from waterfalls ran through leaky pipes connected by duct tape to faucets for easy extraction. One had a crude filter attached. Overlapping trays lay in a line down the slope, vegetable plants tied in place as water ran along the roots. Small smokehouses dried and preserved meat, and they did indeed have a bee colony, housed in wooden stackable frame hives in a clearing. In spite of all this, the people they saw showed signs of malnutrition, with a variety of sores, skin ailments and infected cuts. Graves topped with crude wooden crosses dotted the mountainside.

  “A lot of people died,” explained Doug as he led Rick up the hill. “More so after the winter, actually. People are getting weak.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve got enough food to get by,” said Rick.

  “It’s not all for us.” Doug shifted uncomfortably. “The guys at Round Knob get a lot of it.”

  “You made a deal, then,” said Rick. “Your food in exchange for them leaving you alone.”

  “Be nice if they did leave us alone, but it don’t always work out that way. That’s why we keep a camp at the bottom, and the rest of the people scattered. The women stay out of sight near the summit. The raiders are too lazy to go too far up the mountain, and they don’t know how many people we’ve got.”

  Doug led him off the track to where two ramshackle huts had been built against a rocky outcrop.

  “These used to belong to the Robinson family. They’re buried farther down now. Your folks are welcome to stay here.”

  Rick peered inside at the dirt floors. There wasn’t a
stick of furniture and there were gaps in the walls he could pass his hand through.

  “They’ll do for now,” he said. “I won’t be defending you people, though.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Doug. “Is there more from us that you want before you help?”

  “No. I don’t do defense. The only way to beat the raiders is by taking the fight to them. How many of your people do you think will volunteer to form a strike force?”

  Doug was taken aback. “Uhm, jeez, I don’t know. Are you serious?”

  “Very. And I need to know now if you are too. That way, neither of us will waste our time. Sitting here and trying to defend this place against superior numbers won’t work. The raiders already think they have an advantage. They won’t see any point in negotiating.”

  “So you want to hurt them a little until they come to the table?”

  “No. I want to wipe them out.”

  The conversation clearly wasn’t going the way Doug anticipated. He scratched his head while he thought about it. “We’re not fighters. They already killed our best people. You can’t just take these guys on like that. I mean, hell, you just got driven away from your own position. What makes you think you can, uh, start a war? And win?”

  “It’s my job,” said Rick, “and your people just haven’t been trained yet. You’ve got one rifle. We can supply eight more. That’s enough to start a guerrilla campaign.”

  “A guerrilla campaign,” uttered Doug in disbelief.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Rick didn’t deny it. “It’s either that, or you let those people dictate how you live, where you go and what you do.”

  “You’re asking a lot.”

  “A hell of a lot, but that’s the way it is. I’m not forcing it on you. If you’re not happy with it, we’ll be on our way.”

  Doug gave him a hard look. “They’re going to know it’s us. They’re going to retaliate.”

  “That’s the risk, but when you asked me to help you, did you really think we’d be able to scare them off just by being here? They would have retaliated anyway. As punishment. Warlords and gangs don’t let people break the rules within their territory. You’re not the only group they’re extracting tribute from. They can’t afford to let one group defy them. The word might spread to the others, and then what? No, you’ve got a stark choice. If you want to speak to your people, that’s fine. You let me know how it turns out. If the answer’s no, we’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Doug pondered this a moment. “We’ve talked about it plenty. If we carry on like this, we won’t make it to next winter. There’s a few who want to fight. Maybe not eight. But a few.”

  “That’s all I need.”

  “After the show you put on today, they might come see us anyway, wanting to know if we had anything to do with it. Do we resist?”

  “No. We’re not ready. Just deny everything and give them whatever they want. When the time’s right, I’ll show you how to resist.”

  *

  They carried Chuck up the mountain on an improvised stretcher. His torso was wound tightly with bandages, but he still found it awkward to move. Sally wasn’t impressed with the huts that awaited them.

  “These need wooden floors,” she said. “Hygiene’s going to be a problem.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said Rick. “They’ll do for now.”

  “It doesn’t take long to catch disease,” said Sally. “This site needs a lot of improvement.”

  “Fine. I’ll leave you in charge of that. I’ve got other work to do.”

  “So, about our little war,” said Scott. “Did Doug buy your idea?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “How many people can we expect to help?”

  “I don’t know. You might get seven gunslingers after all.”

  “From what I’ve seen so far, that’s probably optimistic. How many have got military experience?”

  “None. You’re going to have to train them.”

  “Me?”

  “Can’t think of anyone better. Use the air rifles to make sure their accuracy’s up to scratch, and teach them some basic maneuvers.”

  Scott shook his head. “We should have gone when we still had the vehicles.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about that. Is the Blazer well hidden?”

  “Unless they accidentally walk into it, yeah.”

  “Packy, I’m going to need you to get us some supplies. We need ammunition. Trade whatever you can for it. We also need sulfur and fertilizer. And bleach, or anything with chlorine in it.”

  “Explosives?” said Scott.

  “That’s right. This is going to be a very short and dirty campaign.”

  “Dirty with bleach?” mused Packy. “You guys are strange.”

  “Lauren, I want you in charge of site security. We need trenches and OP sites, routes out of here and suitable rendezvous points with backup supplies and defenses.”

  Chuck groaned from his cot. “You guys wouldn’t need to do this if it wasn’t for me. It was my fault and I’m real sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Rick. “It’s not you that’s going to be sorry. I can guarantee that.”

  17

  Dee’s dream was always the same. In it, she stood in front of a burning farmhouse. A farmer is on his knees, begging her to spare his family. She stabs him with an impossibly long knife. A woman cries, and Dee stabs her as well. A little girl wails as her parents die, and Dee steps forward, the knife raised like a sword …

  That’s the point at which Dee always woke, her heart pounding. Jacob, asleep on her chest, stirred, sensing her anxiety. Bodies pressed against her in the little hut, and for a moment she feared she was back with the prisoners of Boss’s gang. She would be summoned once more to betray another homestead.

  Dee stifled a sob, the anguished faces of her dream still hovering. Then she realized it was all over, and she was safe now.

  But it wasn’t over. Every night, the past returned to her, taunting her. And safety was an illusion that never seemed to come. Seeing the tied women in the back of the pickup drove that point home. What happened before could happen again.

  Dee left the hut and stood outside. Rain had come and gone in the night. The air was filled with the odor of damp wood, and the sound of water dripping from branches. The cloud shredded overhead, revealing bright stars and the crimson gases of the Milky Way. Dee tipped her head back, wishing she could fly. Anything was better than being trapped here on the ground, the gravity sucking her down and dragging at her heart.

  Jacob, fully awake, squirmed and began to cry. Dee fed him, rocking back and forth to calm him. Swaying her hips, she remembered the times she used to dance with the microphone on stage. Releasing herself to the music, she would sing and lose herself in the song. On really good nights, when the band connected with the audience and everyone kind of morphed into one loving entity, she would soar through the emotions of the song, dipping low with the verse and then shooting upward for the chorus, singing her lungs out. It was a glorious feeling.

  And it felt now like she was remembering someone else. It didn’t seem possible that it had once been her. Staring at the shadows and listening to the rain dripping from the trees, the gap between the past and the present was too large to bridge.

  For all the good it did, the past might as well have not happened.

  “Are you okay, Dee?” came Lauren’s voice in the night.

  She was on guard duty and she must have heard Jacob’s crying.

  “Yes,” said Dee sullenly, dragged deeper into the present than she wanted.

  There was a hesitant moment when it appeared that Lauren would reply, but then her footsteps moved away, rustling the wet undergrowth.

  Dee knew Lauren didn’t like her. She felt the older woman’s resentment at her pitiable weakness, and of the fact she didn’t pull her weight within the group. She sensed that, one way or another, everyone felt that way toward her. Even Apr
il’s overtures were suspect, her charity wrapped in the notion that Dee was some sort of child. Dee didn’t trust any of them.

  Because trust meant opening herself up. It meant becoming sensitive again – to the feelings of others, and to her own. And that brought the pain back.

  And the guilt.

  People died because of her. When Jacob was born, she’d brought life into the world. In Boss’s gang, she’d brought death. That hurt, and she raised her walls and deadened her feelings, because the pain was too much to bear otherwise. But her nightmares wouldn’t let her go. They wanted to punish her, to remind her that she could be a killer too.

  Softness was a trap, and she fought it every waking moment.

  But she needed these people, because she couldn’t survive on her own. That was a reality she hated, and she resisted it with a bitter passion that broke through the depression sometimes, causing her to run.

  But the passion betrayed her just like the dreams did, and when she was away from everyone, a bleak world laughed at her futile efforts, and she had to stop.

  There was simply no place to run to.

  *

  Camp Grier nestled in the cove between Bergen Mountain and Jerdon Mountain. It used to be a summer camp and retreat, and it boasted beautiful log cabins and a lake. It would have made a good home for Old Fort’s survivors if it wasn’t so accessible. That accessibility was a problem now as Rick watched the solitary vehicle moving below along the Camp Grier road. The day before, he’d watched as the raiders combed Old Fort, looking to extract some vengeance for their losses. Finding nothing, he predicted they’d come here. The vehicle stopped, and four raiders got out. It would take them a while to make their way up the winding mountain-bike trail that led from the summer camp.

  Rick hiked up the hill until he got to what Doug called the “reception camp” - the same camp Doug had brought Rick to when they first met. It was a Potemkin village of huts that looked even more ragged than those higher up the mountain – a fake settlement that had just enough life in it to convince the raiders they didn’t need to look farther. Squirrel meat cooked over a smoky fire, and a shirt hung out to dry. Six guys occupied the camp in shifts. The many empty huts, with a few personal effects left in place, were explained away as belonging to others who were perennially out hunting or scavenging. Offerings to placate the raiders’ demands were stored here.