Survival EMP Box Set | Books 1-4

by Lopez, Rob

  Saul got up from his chair and walked to the door, opening it and stepping outside. The gloom was almost total, and there was no sign of the gunmen. Ignoring the bickering behind him, he went to the pipes. They lay split or ruptured, except for the Black Mountain line, which Saul neglected to mention also linked to the Asheville Mains — though without enough pressure going through it, the water probably wouldn’t get that far. Surveying the damage, Saul was already calculating what it would take to fix the damage. With a bit of work, and a lot of help, he might be able to restore service to Asheville and the other little communities.

  A stampede of feet caused Saul to turn, and he watched as the unarmed guards ran out through the entrance and down the hill to the town. Not one of them looked back at what’d been done.

  Saul reassessed.

  With a bit of work, and no help, he might still be able to fix the problem.

  It would take more than a few days, however. Probably wouldn’t have all the lines open until high summer.

  *

  On the second floor of the Bachelor’s wing of Biltmore House, the games room was as opulent as it had been before the storm. The oak paneled walls retained their numerous paintings of hunting scenes, portraits and wild rocky landscapes. The herringbone-pattern wooden floor remained polished, and the leather couches, while showing a little wear, were still in good condition for the new generation of gentlemen to recline in while they discussed important matters in the absence of ladies. From the ornate plaster ceiling, a pair of lights hung low, their feeble orange glow throbbing in time to the distant generator’s thumping. Under the light was a magnificent oak-framed pool table, and lining up to pot the striped red into the corner pocket was Connors.

  Governor Jeffries walked into the room. As always, he was a little awed by the weight of history he found in every corner of the chateau, as if even his office was unworthy of the grandeur created by Vanderbilt. As a mere governor, Jeffries could only dream of the power Vanderbilt once had. On this day, however, his awe had to play second fiddle to his anger.

  “They’ve cut off our water,” he declared.

  Connors smoothly potted the striped red. “I know,” he said.

  “You assured me the outlaws were on the run.”

  Connors leaned low over his cue, aiming to pot a ball into the middle pocket. “They were,” he said.

  “Damn it, Connors. I gave you everything you asked for to deal with this problem. Isn’t your army supposed to be protecting the people? You can’t even prevent the bandits from destroying your train.”

  Connors hit the ball a little too hard, ricocheting it around the pocket and back out into the center of the table. He straightened up and glared at Jeffries. “I know,” he hissed.

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  Connors threw the cue onto the table. “I’m going to do my job, Jeffries. And you’re going to go back to City Hall and do yours.”

  Jeffries swallowed. “I’m your commander-in-chief,” he said, “and I’m ordering you to deal with this problem directly.”

  Connors looked at him for a moment. “Decided that you’ve grown a pair, have you? Well, Commander. Tell me exactly what I need to do. What strategy do you think I should adopt?”

  “Don’t be facetious, Connors. This is a serious issue. There are people rioting on the streets, and we don’t even know who’s responsible for this outrage. I need to know what you’re going to do about it.”

  “They’re rioting, huh?”

  “Well, not rioting exactly, but they’re angry.”

  “So you got frightened and ran all the way here?”

  “I’m not frightened, I’m furious. There is a difference.”

  Connors walked to the window and looked out. Three vehicles were parked outside, with militia standing guard and a couple of senators standing around, looking agitated. “It don’t look that different from where I’m standing. I’d say you can relax, though. We’ve got more than enough troops in the city to deal with civil unrest, and I don’t think the bandits are about to invade or nothing.”

  “But who are they?”

  “They’re the remnants of a group we’ve already defeated, but they’re led by an army deserter called Rick Nolan. We know this because he helpfully told the militia at the dam before he ran them off.”

  “But what does he want? Why is he doing this?”

  Connors gazed shrewdly at Jeffries. “He wants your job. He wants the removal of law and order so he can go about his raiding in peace.”

  “How big of a threat is he?”

  “Not very. He was seen with only a handful of guys at the dam. He’s more of a nuisance than a threat.”

  Jeffries thought for a moment. “Why does his name sound familiar?”

  “We’ve got his wife in a cell. She’s the one due to hang for murder. That’s the kind of guy that he is. Unsavory, but cowardly.”

  “And what are you doing about him?”

  “Patrols have been ordered into the mountains already. I imagine they’re on his trail. I’ll know more once they report back.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “I’ve put out a bounty on his head as well. He won’t be able to show his face without somebody talking. Without support from the communities, he’ll be cut off from supplies. If he’s in the mountains, we’ll starve him out.”

  Jeffries paused. “What if the people are on his side?”

  Connors dismissed the idea. “You saw the mob when they tried to hang his wife. That’s how popular he is. Don’t worry about it. You just let folks know that he’s the reason they no longer have water. Anybody with information about him will be happy to turn him in.”

  “Well, I trust you know what you’re doing.”

  “There are no worries on that front.”

  Jeffries saw himself out, and Connors watched from the window as he reassured the other senators and got back into the car. The governor’s motorcade left, and Connors paced the room, clenching and unclenching his fists. Grabbing the pool cue, he toyed with it for a while, then smashed it into three pieces on the table.

  18

  Rick focused his binoculars on a gap in the trees across the valley. A militiaman appeared, toiling over the ridge, head bowed and shoulders sagging. One by one, others appeared behind him, passing across the gap until Rick counted thirteen.

  Give or take one or two that he might have missed.

  Still more than his own squad of eight, but Rick wasn’t worried about being caught. Not by this group, anyway. What he wanted was intelligence about the kind of people he was facing. He’d left an easy enough trail for them to follow, though it had taken them longer to reach this point than he’d anticipated. They were slow, and the climb appeared difficult for them. That wasn’t much consolation as, given time, they would get used to mountain walking if they did it for enough days. This group, however, didn’t have much enthusiasm for what they were doing, so it was unlikely that they’d put in the time necessary to train themselves. In fact, none carried large packs, so they hadn’t brought bedding or food. Rick assumed they’d turn back long before nightfall. Their spacing was bad, with the patrol all bunched up, and the point man wasn’t far enough ahead to give them adequate warning of ambush. They didn’t watch their flanks and, having reached the top of the ridge, weren’t taking advantage of the increased view-range to survey the way ahead and look for sign.

  They were conscripts, pressed into doing a job they didn’t want to do, for a cause they didn’t believe in. Had Rick chosen to ambush them, they would have been massacred, even though they outnumbered his squad.

  But he wasn’t going to do that today.

  Slithering back out of sight, he rejoined his own men. With him were Red, Ralph and Ned, the ever complaining Clem, and his own son Josh. He also had a couple of guys who’d joined him from Marion. They all had their mountain bikes.

  Coasting down the track into the next draw was faster than walking, but bumpy as
they negotiated rocks and exposed tree roots. They were weighed down with packs and the extra rifles they’d taken from the dam, and the brakes got hot as they sought to prevent themselves from hurtling down at breakneck speed. It had taken them a while to get used to biking off-road, especially Rick, and none of them were experts, but even moving at jogging-pace increased their mobility three-fold, and on the downhill stretches, they conserved a lot of energy.

  At the bottom of the draw they hit the creek, and they followed it down, riding through the water to break their trail and throw off their pursuers. Once they’d gone far enough, they stopped, dismounting in the running water, and shouldered their lightweight bikes to head up the next slope. Rick acted as rearguard, making sure there were no signs for a tracker to pick up. That was difficult, as it depended a lot on the skills of the tracker, and he stopped frequently to crouch down and see things from ground level, as a good tracker would, spotting the faint indentations and the snapped fern stems. Diligently, he removed as much evidence as he could.

  That was the slowest part of their trek. Once they reached the ridge, they mounted up and coasted down the next draw, over the creek and on northward, rather than east toward their camp. Rick wanted to hit the Blue Ridge Parkway before nightfall.

  They reached the road in the early evening, and by now they were starting to flag, pushing the bikes up the last hard, steep slope. Behind them lay a wide vista over the Black Mountain range. Rick called a halt, short of the road, and they lay down to rest, tired but alert.

  The Blue Ridge Parkway was 6000ft above sea level at this point, winding through the Blue Ridge mountains from Virginia to just shy of Tennessee. Built purely to be a scenic route, it provided stunning views in summer and icy, treacherous going in the winter. There were no settlements at this elevation, and with the tourists long-gone, the snaking road was deserted. Rick remained cautious, however. At this altitude, the wind blew strong, messing with his hearing, but something didn’t sound right. Crawling up to the bushes below the lip of the road, he lifted his head, straining his ears.

  There was a low, barely audible drone that didn’t fit with their location, but he couldn’t identify what it was until he saw movement just over a mile away on one of the hairpin bends that hung over the valley. The drone changed to a hollow growl as an old Ford Bronco ascended the long gradient. It had a pearlescent blue paint job that would have made Packy salivate, and a militia crew of four.

  Rick had seen the vehicle before. He knew that, close up, the paint was a little faded, and there was a large dent in the fender that would have seriously damaged its resale value. It patrolled the parkway regularly and, as far as Rick could see, it had been ordered to drive back and forth pointlessly, in the vain hope of finding something. The occupants, probably tired of the view by now, looked bored.

  Rick ducked below the level of the road as the Bronco rumbled by, heading toward Asheville. Rick knew they were done for the day. He’d never heard the vehicle out at night. Waiting for the vehicle noise to recede, Rick roused the others and got them moving again, carrying his bike onto the road. With darkness creeping across the valleys, they coasted down the gradient and rode for four miles until they reached Deep Gap. From there, they left the road, plunging back down the wooded slopes and riding through the increasing gloom until they reached Camp Charlie.

  Camp Charlie was one of two forward operating bases that Rick had established. It was manned by five guys whose job it was to keep the camp secure and forage for food until Rick’s strike team returned. Taking point, Rick dismounted and pushed his bike to a ridge that overlooked a narrow cove. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other coves and draws in the mountains, but Rick put his fingers to his lips and whistled once. From the darkness, a coded whistle replied.

  Rick relaxed and descended into the cove. The others followed.

  A guard spoke from a hidden position. “That you, Jeb?” he said.

  Rick responded with the coded reply. “Jeb won’t come around here no more.”

  “Welcome back, man,” said the guard, emerging from a bunker hidden in the undergrowth. “How’d it go?”

  “It went well,” said Rick.

  The camp consisted of a handful of bunkers dug into the slope of the cove. Stowing their bikes, the squad walked into the largest bunker. In an earthen hearth at the end, a fire was being kindled. A roughly hewn table and benches occupied the center. Along one wall a line of bowls had been laid out. On the table were piles of fresh towels and clean underwear. Rick dumped his gear and undressed, pouring water from a container into a bowl and passing it to the next man. Numb to the point of not caring, the entire squad stood naked, splashing water onto themselves and cleaning off three days of grime and sweat. Drying themselves and tossing the now dirty towels into a pile, they put on fresh underwear, then donned their dusty fatigues again, sitting gratefully at the table.

  “What’s on the menu, Watson?” Rick asked of the man tending the fire.

  “Chicory-smoked raccoon, fresh liver, nettles and wild mustard,” said Watson. “Things go okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Rick.

  Watson said nothing more. He knew nobody really wanted to talk. They were hollow eyed and tired from having lived rough. Their limbs ached, and simply sitting without the load of their rifles, packs and ammunition made them feel light-headed. Rick glanced once at Josh, and in the dim, flickering light he looked exactly like the others, with the same thousand-yard stare. Rick closed his eyes and waited for the food.

  When the food arrived, they ate slow, in spite of their hunger. It wasn’t from a desire to savor the meal, it was just that they were still unwinding from being under constant tension.

  “Got some moonshine to wash that down with, if you want,” said Watson.

  Nobody said no, and he poured clear liquid into seven shot glasses. He hesitated before pouring one for Josh.

  “What about the boy?” asked Watson.

  Rick looked across at his son, who looked back at him. “He’s not a boy anymore,” said Rick. “Ask him if he wants some.”

  “You want some?” said Watson.

  Josh picked up one of the filled glasses and gave it a sniff, wrinkling his nose. “Just a little,” he said.

  Watson poured him a touch, and Josh drank it in one go, pulling a face. The others downed their shots and grimaced as well. It wasn’t good stuff, but it cleaned the palate and cleared the head a little.

  “How long do you think it’ll take for them to get the pipes fixed?” asked Red, stretching his back.

  “Don’t know,” said Rick. “Doesn’t matter. I only wanted to send them a message.”

  Clem stared into his empty shot glass. “Fucking waste of time,” he murmured.

  “What was that, Clem?” said Red.

  “I said we’re wasting our time. Nobody gives a crap about pipes.”

  No one wanted to feed his appetite for complaining, so they said nothing, but he carried on anyway.

  “If I wanted to join a kindergarten, I’d have said.”

  Rick, thinking he was referencing the presence of Josh, lifted his head.

  “You got a problem?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Clem. “I’m tired of pussyfooting around and being all nice. You let those guys go at the dam, you wouldn’t ambush that patrol and you didn’t want to hit that vehicle either. It’s been over a week and we haven’t killed a single one of them yet. What the hell are we waiting for?”

  Seeing as it was the usual complaint, Rick lost interest, staring into space instead.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Red to Clem. “The strategy’s been explained.”

  “It’s a dumb strategy,” grumbled Clem.

  “Only to them that’s too stupid to understand it.”

  “Are you calling me stupid?”

  “Damn right, and your bellyaching don’t change nothing.”

  Clem stood up. “Do you want to fight?”

  Rick turned his
head lazily to Clem. The harsh look in his eyes was anything but lazy, however. “Sit down,” he said, his growl adding weight to each word.

  Clem swallowed, unwilling to confront Rick. “I just want to know when we’re going to get them back for killing my brother. Is that too much to ask?”

  Rick looked at him for a moment. “Your brother’s dead. Killing someone else won’t make the pain go away. We’re not here for revenge. We’re here to win.”

  Clem welled up, struggling with his emotions. “We’re not winning anything,” he suddenly exclaimed before turning around and storming out.

  There was silence around the table, then Red spoke up. “What’s our next move?”

  “We wait for intel,” said Rick simply.

  With nothing else forthcoming, the others nodded and began filing out until there was only Rick and Josh left.

  Josh toyed with his empty shot glass. “I don’t understand how any of this is going to get Mom back,” he said quietly.

  “No,” said Rick.

  “What are we doing, Dad?”

  Rick gently removed the shot glass from Josh’s fingers and lined it up with the others. “Waiting for the odds to swing,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we have to be patient.”

  “I still don’t get it. How does hitting a train and a dam help Mom in any way?”

  “Because it weakens Connors. Shows people that he can’t provide for them or protect them, so they lose faith in him. We need to undermine him and his schemes, to show people he’s not invulnerable. If they lose their fear of him, we’ll have more chance of support when the time comes. It’s just basic tactics.”

  Josh didn’t look convinced. “It’s just like you’re trying to get back at him. You said we weren’t here for revenge.”

  “It’s bigger than that.”

  “No it’s not. I saw you the day we lost Mom, and every day since. You wanted to hurt Connors so bad, and he wants to do the same to you because you said he set a trap for you. He used Mom as bait. Why’s he doing this, Dad? Why does he hate you so much?”