by Gene Skellig
Winter Kill
War With China
Has Already Begun
2nd Edition (change to title only)
By Gene Skellig
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Copyright © 2011 Flea Circus Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0986883107
ISBN-13: 978-0-9868831-0-1
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my four children, to my future grandchildren, and to all the children whose future we sacrifice each and every day. If major decisions were in their hands, I doubt they would squander the air, water and life of our planet.
After all, they are going to need it.
DISCLAIMER
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real world events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental or used fictitiously.
FORWARD
Winter Kill was written as a military techno-thriller, which means that there is more detail provided than would be the case in straight commercial fiction or other genres. However, in this case, there are a couple of chapters (“Architect, Sewing Shop, Stocking Up”) which delve far deeper into the details than is strictly necessary for the story.
The author believes that many readers will enjoy going into these details about the design and construction of the HOTH facility, so rather than placing them at the back in an annex these details are woven into a few of the early chapters. This makes for a slow build before the accelerating action of the second half of the book. If you find yourself bogging down in details to an extent that you find annoying or distracting, simply skip ahead a few pages or even to the next chapter.
You may miss something, but at least you won't give up before the action really takes off. - Gene Skellig
CONTENTS
Prologue LAST THOUGHT
1 CULVERT
2. DEPRESSION
3. SETTLED
4. ARCHITECT
5. “h” RECESSION
6. FABRIC SHOP
7. GUNS, GOLD & GRUB
8. GUN CLUB
9. WOOD PATROL
10. CONSTRUCTION
11. 4-H CLUB
12. HABIB
13. SQUIRREL’S DEN
14. STOCKING UP - SOFT
15. FIRST TANK ON ME
16. O.P.E.
17. LETTERS
18. STOCKING UP - HARD
19. KUGLUKTUK
20. AMY
21. 1720Z
22. DR. SUN TINGTING
23. LITTLE DRAGONS
24. D.U.M.B. ONE
25. VOGEL SHELTER
26. INDIA
27. PRIME MINISER CURROTHERS
28. NEW NORMAL
29. MOONSTRUCK
30. LODGE DEAL
31. PROBE
32. CHERRIES
33. BEEP
34. ATTACK
35. OOBLECK
36. SNAKE HEAD
37. SCHNAPPS
Epilogue. ICED TEA
CONVERSION TABLE :
1 inch = 2.54 cm / 1 foot = 30.48 cm
1 yard = 0.9144 meter (metre)
1 mile = 1.609 kilometer
1 pound = 0.454 kilogram
32.15 troy oz gold = 1 kg gold
1 troy oz gold = 31.10grams (troy) gold
0.10 rem = 100 mrem = 1 milisievert
10 halving thicknesses = 1/1024th radiation level
RADIATION TERMINOLOGY:
The Roentgen (R) is now obsolete, however it has been used throughout this book due to the long familiarity which readers may have. The current Systeme International (SI) units are the Gray (GY) and the Sievert (Sv) as follows:
1 R = 0.119 Sv and 1 R = 258 microcoulomb/kg
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks go to my wife, Irina, for giving me time to write; to my ruthless editor, Ted Clarke, for helping me carve out the extraneous material and keeping all the details straight; to Zhamil Bikbaev, illustrationist, for contributing the cover; to my “Anvil Chorus”: Alan James, Tom, Sasha, Nikolai, Svetlana and others for reviewing and commenting on various aspects of the book; to my mother, Vera, for being my first and most enthusiastic reader; to my late father for using such big words around my childhood home, and to the many people who inspired and guided me along the way.
Thanks also to serving and former members of the Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Forces. To have served with you has been a precious gift. True, the military may not be a very good place for a philosopher, and I have put some of you through hell along the way, but I will always cherish the fellowship and “Team Canada” sense of purpose that is our bond. This can never be overstated, diminished nor forgotten.
I am grateful to everybody who has cajoled, encouraged, discouraged, inspired, frustrated, provoked and challenged me along the way. My life has benefited greatly from these experiences. A great many people have tried to shape me, whether as a pilot, an officer, a writer or as a person. At times it may have seemed fruitless; however, I appreciate the effort and patience of my original mentor, Gary (The Great Gatsby), bosses like Frank, Sharon, David and Merrick, and friends like Albrecht and Mark.
PROLOGUE
LAST THOUGHT
20 May Year 00 ANEW : Day of Nuclear Extinction War
After going back to look at the TV in the coffee room, Triona Hobkirk finally understood why the young woman, Amy Arnott, had rushed out of the office in such a panic. Feeling as though she was lost in a world that no longer made any sense, Triona made her way to the conference room and walked over to her husband. At first annoyed at the interruption, Mr. Hobkirk saw the look on Triona’s ashen face. She looked as though she was about to collapse, so he got up out of his chair and reached out to her.
Leaning into her husband’s embrace, she told the men in the conference room what was happening. The men turned on the wall-mounted television and became transfixed by what they saw. While they argued about what to do, Triona quietly left the room.
She went into a corner office and then simply waited by the window. She could see people walking out on the tidal flats at Spanish Banks, windsurfers at Jericho Beach, and sailboats plying the waters of English Bay. With just a few puffy clouds in the sky, it could have been a beautiful day. But looking out over the water, she knew there was little time left.
Ground Zero was one km from the office. The fireball expanding outward tore apart all but the strongest structures and carried the contents of the shredded buildings along with it. Every volatile object within three km received enough thermal radiation to spontaneously combust.
In an instant, downtown Vancouver erupted in a massive sea of fire. Millions of tons of toxic smoke and radioactive debris mushroomed into the sky. Like a monstrous dragon spawned in the firestorm below, the obscene cloud reached fifty-five thousand feet before it began to settle on greater Vancouver. Over two hundred thousand people died instantly. Hundreds of thousands more received a lethal dose of penetrating radiation that would kill them within weeks.
Unlike the walking dead whose organs were slowly cooki
ng from the inside, and those who would soon inhale lethal particles of radioactive fallout, Triona Hobkirk did not have sufficient time to register any fear or pain. Before being flash blinded and then vaporized milliseconds later, her last thought was: Would Amy reach safety in time?
1
CULVERT
21 August: 3 Months After NEW
He had never been more terrified in his life. Wet, cold, and exhausted, ‘Boss Callaghan’ craned his neck so he could look back at the entrance of the culvert he had just scrambled into. He felt the icy cold water flowing past his hands, under his stomach and between his water-soaked legs. Beyond, he saw wet snow falling into the barren forest. Snow in August no longer seemed strange to Casey; so much had changed in just three short months.
Casey knew that it would not be long before the dogs led Constable Walker to his hiding place. He had to keep moving to keep the blood circulating in his numbing limbs. Over six feet tall and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds, Casey Callaghan barely fit inside the thirty-inch culvert. The corrugated steel pressing against him on all sides made him feel increasingly claustrophobic and panicky.
They had been on him since shortly after he left his meeting with Don Erickson, head of the Qualicum Beach Volunteer Fire Department. The Fire Hall had long since stopped responding to calls and had been thoroughly looted. Even so, Don was still a key member of Boss Callaghan’s network.
With the phone lines no longer working, Casey had been visiting Don every other week to exchange information. Casey would update Don on the global situation and Don would tell Casey what was going on in town. Each time they met, Casey would offer Don a place at The House on the Hill, or “HOTH” as it had become known; and each time, Don would refuse. Don wasn’t ready to give up on his community regardless how dire the situation had clearly become.
The weather had changed dramatically since the war began three months ago. From the weekly climate briefings at the HOTH, he knew that the skies over the Pacific Northwest had taken longer to darken than in other parts of the world. It took several weeks for the shroud of dust and smoke to spread across the Pacific Ocean. Now, with the atmosphere having settled into a persistent dismal gloom, there would be no more blue skies for years to come. Even knowing this, it was still strange to see snow in the middle of what should be summer.
The latest dump of snow had largely been washed away by another bout of unbelievably heavy rain. That made traveling a bit easier. But the constantly gray skies really dampened his spirits, especially when Casey thought about their implications.
On these trips, Casey always brought a full pack of food for Don. This time it was one kilo of corn-meal, a half-kilo of sugar, some salt, tea bags, a few cans of sweetened condensed milk, a couple of dehydrated meals, a small bag of dried fruit, three cans of Spam, several packets of dehydrated soup, the small luxury of a can of sardines, a dozen OXO cubes and a tin of tobacco for Don’s goofy old pipe.
Carrying this five kilogram load on his back for the four km hike down from the HOTH had not been too strenuous for Casey. He always got full value from the intelligence that Don provided and it felt good to help out a friend in need. That much food would be worth about 1 gram of gold or twenty liters of gasoline these days.
Don’s cupboards were essentially bare. His home had been ransacked more than once in the recent madness so the help provided by Boss Callaghan was a real lifeline. It supplemented the ration of durum wheat that Don collected once a week from the wheat distribution center at the French Creek Marina. A man can only eat so much boiled wheat, but the OXO cubes would give a tasty meat-flavor to the wheat-berry gruel that he had been living on for weeks.
The trip down to visit Don was best done on foot. Using anything motorized would draw too much attention. Casey had taken the normal precautions for going so far from the HOTH. He had set out early in the pre-dawn darkness, taking his time as he followed the forest paths to town. He had his Bowie knife on his hip, as always, and his grab & go pack on his back. He wasn’t carrying any fire-arms because he firmly believed that any trouble he couldn’t negotiate his way through would be made worse by being armed. But he did have the Motorola XPR 6500 2-way radio in case he needed to call for help from the HOTH. By moving stealthily and taking his time, he hoped to avoid unnecessary interaction with people. It was a strategy that had worked very well in the past, but not this time.
As he struggled through the frigid stream flowing through the culvert, he wished he had some of the high-energy food and change of clothes from the “grab & go”. But the pack had been lost in his frantic flight from the dogs.
Constable William Walker had ambushed him at a bend in the road. Casey had been surprised to hear Bill Walker’s nasally voice:
“So, if it isn’t my old friend, Boss Callaghan!” Walker was holding a shotgun and had the drop on Casey. Bill’s side-kick, Frank, was also aiming a hunting rifle. Knowing that he had no good moves at this point, Casey’s best option was to wait for them to make an error. So when Frank ordered him to slowly drop his day-pack on the road and to kneel down with his hands raised, Casey obeyed. After removing Casey’s Bowie knife and finding no other weapons, Frank yanked Casey to his feet and shoved him towards a foot-path leading away from the road.
Casey tried to look meek as he complied, waiting for a chance to make some kind of desperate move. Bill and Frank had by this time mastered the art of highway robbery. They kept Casey at a safe distance as they shepherded him behind a row of stumps and brush piled alongside the road. Casey knew he had only a few minutes before the situation became much worse. When they got to wherever they were taking him, they would search him and find his other knife, then bind his hands and probably beat him severely before getting into some serious torture. Casey knew how Bill felt about him, and why. He had to make a move soon.
For the moment, it seemed that Walker wanted to take him alive, for the intelligence value if not for the hostage value. After all, Bill Walker had some idea what Boss Callaghan had back at the HOTH. Bill had tried to get inside the HOTH during one of his phony “weapons security” inspections last winter, but had been turned away by Casey at the door. The damage was done, however, because Bill had taken in the smell of real food.
It was all about the food. Food had started to become scarce during the financial collapse of the previous winter, when the arrival of trucks became sporadic. With the dysfunctional supply chain, stores began to run out of goods. With only a few weeks of food on hand when the war began, people quickly turned to hoarding and, ultimately, to looting. Now, three months after the war, all the stores and warehouses were empty. The only “real” food available was what could be stolen from somebody else. No more trucks would ever come.
The ambush site was intended to pick up any vehicles or people coming down on foot from Coombs or off the Island Highway at the Highway 4 exit. Casey knew the danger, but had wanted to make good time getting back to the HOTH with the information Don had given him. He should have stuck to the forest paths and not taken the shortcut across the loop on Hillier’s Road. It was a mistake that had now become a matter of life and death as much for Casey as for everybody else at the HOTH should Casey be captured.
And then his chance came. They were walking past a pile of brush pushed up by a bulldozer years ago, making a wall between the trail and the road. Casey had gradually lowered his hands to waist level and Frank had not reminded him to raise them back over his head. A few meters ahead there was a small gap in the maze of branches, rocks and logs. Casey figured he could step lively on a few of the larger branches just firmly enough to get some momentum to propel himself to the crest of the brush pile, and then dive through the gap and roll down the other side. Just before he got to the gap, he snagged a root coming off a stump leaning precipitously on the pile beside him. He tugged on it just enough to start it tumbling down behind him.
By the time Walker realized what was happening it was too late to warn Frank, who had his rifle leveled at Casey�
�s back. As Frank turned his attention towards the sudden whirl of motion coming down at him, he didn’t see Casey gingerly tip-toeing his way up through a gap in the brush a few meters ahead. As Frank reacted to the tumbling stump, Casey stepped on the strongest of the branches as fast as he could without slipping in the process. Casey was almost as big as Frank, but Frank was much younger and fitter. In an open fight, it would have been no contest. But Casey had one advantage over Frank – he was truly scared for his life.
When Frank realized that the spinning monster was just a stump and saw Casey disappearing over the top of the brush pile, he knew he’d screwed-up royally. He was unsure if he should fire off a few rounds or start climbing over the branches.
In the second or so that Frank was frozen in doubt, Walker smashed into him, slamming Frank across the shoulder blades with his shotgun as he yelled at Frank, “Get moving! Get him!”
Frank sprang into action and started picking his way over the logs and branches. Just as he neared the top, Frank was startled by the sudden “BOOM” as Walker fired his shotgun, and the “shyuh-chung” as he cocked the shotgun for another blast - “BOOM!” Walker was shooting into the air to get the attention of the rest of his men, who were just a few hundred meters down the trail.
Walker’s shooting had two immediate effects. First, Frank was startled by the blasts so close to his ear. His right foot slipped on a wet log covered with leaves as slippery as soap. A sharply cut branch tore a deep gash in his calf muscle. He shrieked in pain and fell back. He wound up hanging backwards and upside-down. His right leg was stuck in the branches and his left leg was awkwardly bunched-up underneath him.
