Bradley interrupted, “Just consider it a bonus. Those coins are actually worth a lot. You bargained badly, friend. But a deal is a deal so don’t go asking for more. Still, I can throw in a bowl of soup. I’d hate for it to go to waste.” He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees.
Nestor slowly sat upright, taking his elbows off the desk, and his eyes narrowed at Bradley. “No thank you. Like you said, a deal is a deal, and this meal wasn’t part of the deal. Do me a favor, please, and take your hands out from under the desk.”
“Oh come now, I thought we were past all that. A nice, trusting—”
There was a loud bang and the sound of splintering wood. Nestor’s head whipped around and he saw his companions swarm into the room, weapons out and aimed at Bradley and his two companions. Nestor also saw that one of the servers had a knife in his hand. “Knife,” he said simply.
Two of his people disarmed the man, then shoved both servers to the floor. Then they slit both their throats. One of Nestor’s people aimed a pistol at Bradley. “Get up.”
Nestor calmly said, “What’s going on?”
Ratbone, wiping the blood from his knife on the pants of a dead server, said, “They kept insisting that we eat their damn soup…”
Bradley shouted, “You come in here, refuse my generosity, kill my people. We’re going to kill every last one of you little vermin. We’re going to—”
The man with a gun pointed at Bradley shouted, “Stand up or die.”
Bradley stood, and in his hand was a pistol. Nestor noted that his hand shook a little. Good, the asshole was scared. He should be.
Nestor said, “Ratbone, it’s time for Plan B. What a shame.”
Ratbone bolted outside and raised what looked like another pistol. Pulling the trigger, there was a burst of light and smoke that streaked upward, and then the area outside took on a red glow.
Bradley turned pale. “A flare gun? What—”
Nestor couldn’t hear the rest of what his “host” said over the deafening roar of several explosions, which added their own hellish light to the scene outside the window. Then the sound of weapons being fired, and screaming voices far away.
Nestor grinned. “You should have gone with rubble, Bradley. Dynamite is everywhere these days, and it just tears right through cargo trailers. You know, like your walls. Right now my people are swarming through the wreckage of your gates and walls.”
Sweat beaded on Bradley’s forehead and his knees almost gave out, he shook so bad. “You can’t… I have an envoy at Clanholme, for chrissake! We’re trying to be allies, damn you. The Confederation will hunt you down for this!”
Nestor coughed, then recovered. “Ha. You don’t know much, do you? I’m not part of the Confederation. Anyway, like that old movie said, I think they’ll just chew me out. I’ve been chewed out before.” He turned to the man who had Bradley covered with his pistol and winked.
Bang. Bang.
Bradley toppled with a look of shock and rage etched on his face, then hit the floor and didn’t move.
Nestor said, “Coward never did use his gun. Alright, let’s go join the fun out there, guys. Say hello to my little friend…”
About damn time. Now it’s my turn. Then the Other laughed out loud and pointed at the shattered door. “What are you bitches waiting for? It’s showtime.”
- 11 -
0800 HOURS - ZERO DAY +215
CASSY FOUND FRANK as he directed a crew expanding the Complex, adding more insulative, bullet-resistant earthbag domes and walls to the network of interconnected, walled small dwellings. Even when done, the Complex would only be large enough to hold half the Clan—another walled complex of small earthbag houses would eventually have to be built somewhere nearby before next winter.
She waited until he finished talking to his crew before intruding. “Hi, Frank. Got a minute?”
He smiled and nodded. “Sure do. What’s up?”
“We’ve got ten cars and a dozen old crop dusters, but only six gasifiers for the cars, and only half of the planes have been refitted or were already airworthy when we found them. Six more gasifiers are under construction or refit, though.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. What’s the question, exactly?”
“I need to know what our timeline is for getting the planes refitted, for one. Second, when can the rest of the cars be fitted for wood fuel?”
“Dean says he’ll have the other half of the planes done by spring. As for the gasifiers, he’s on standby.”
Cassy frowned. “Damn. I know we aren’t getting half the parts we used to from Falconry, since they took away our preferential treatment. But we need those cars up and running. They’ll have the armor, the turrets, the guns… but we have no way to drive them until the gasifiers are working.”
Frank let out a deep breath. “Look, Cassy, I know how important it is. But you know what Dean is like. I can’t tell him anything. He says he can’t make them until we have the copper tubing, the drums for burning, all that. He can’t make them without parts, you know.”
Cassy looked down and clenched her jaw. Looking back up to Frank, she said, “Have we searched any of these abandoned farmhouses near us? Some of them have to have copper pipes for plumbing, and I know damn well there has to be fifty-five gallon drums at some of them.”
“Probably. We could strip them.”
Cassy nodded. “Okay, we had better get started. Send out scouts to find what we need. Get Dean to make a list. If you don’t keep your foot up his ass, he won’t get them done.”
He chuckled. “How will I get around if I leave that one up his ass?”
Cassy laughed. Then, with a thoughtful look, she said, “Let’s find out if Dean has enough helpers, too. If he doesn’t, we had better get him a crew to put this stuff together.”
“It’s going to be hard to spare the scouts and a set of workers for that right now,” Frank said. “You know Ethan has them running wild goose chases up north to look like we’re looking for the Night Ghosts.”
Frank was right. They were short scouts due to the decoy they had set up in the north while Nestor was busy wreaking havoc on the Empire’s fake settlements to the south. It was working out well since The Gap had just joined the Confederation, giving them a strong southern neighbor. Traders were even starting to make occasional runs that way since Fake Intercourse was out of the way.
“Take half the people Ethan sent out and put them on this, okay?” Cassy said. “It’s way more important than playing mind games with the 20s. Pipes, drums, fittings, and anything else Dean says he needs. Get him to make that list. And find out if he’ll need more helpers to get it done.”
“You got it.”
Cassy nodded, and the two went their separate ways. Frank was obviously irritated by the task, and she knew he’d run into some resistance at the change in people’s tasks, but she couldn’t help that. She really wished she could take people off the construction project, too, but that was critically important. Everything seemed critical, and there were never enough people or supplies to get everything done. But if she had more people, then she’d need to do more… A cycle of failure. She pursed her lips, frustrated. She’d just have to find a way to make do with what they had, as always.
She had an hour or so to kill before her next video conference with Taggart’s people on her duties as his so-called Secretary of Agriculture. Maybe she should go talk to Grandma Mandy about the problem of allocating people for all the tasks that had to get done. Grandma Mandy was a bit of a whiz when it came to organizing things. Yes. She had time…
But no, Cassy didn’t have patience to listen to her mom’s lectures about religion right now. Grandma Mandy meant well, and she was the nicest person ever put on this Earth. She taught the kids during whatever little schooling time people could spare for their kids, and led the team babysitting the littlest ones. But Mandy’s religious faith was absolute. Normally that was kind of a good thing, a steadying thing, and she didn’t mean
to cram her religion down people’s throats, but to Cassy that often felt like the result of a conversation with her.
Instead, Cassy found herself heading to the outdoor kitchen, but when she got there, she found the cleanup had already finished. She let out a long sigh. But then she saw a little girl sitting on her heels in the corner, between the rocket stove oven and the big drum where food scraps were kept, to be dumped later into the compost piles. It was Amber’s seven-year-old daughter Kaitlyn, peering intently at something on the dirt floor.
Cassy liked the little kids. They were used to her appearance and never seemed to even notice the scars on her face, unlike adults. Cassy was still a good-looking woman, but her scars were noticeable—mementos mainly of her battle with their former conqueror, Peter, and his psychotic rapist sidekick Jim, plus a few smaller scars from various other battles.
She sat down on a bench nearby, and Kaitlyn looked up at her and smiled. “Cassy, is your leg still bad?”
Cassy couldn’t help but smile back at that innocent, sweet girl. Well, not innocent—no one was sheltered the way they had been before the war—but hopeful and bright. It lifted Cassy’s spirits just to see this child. She said, “Oh, my leg is fine, honey. What are you looking at?”
Kaitlyn scooted to the side with a funny little duck-walk, not rising from her crouched position, to let Cassy see better. The girl had been looking at a swarm of ants battling a beetle. Both sides were oblivious of the huge watchers above them.
Kaitlyn said, “It’s like the goons fighting the Confederation. See, the ants are like all of us. And the beetle is so big, but it can’t fight so many little biting things. It’s going to lose, and then they’ll drag it into their hole somewhere and eat it. Gobble it up and feed their little ant kids.”
It was unsettling to realize that this little girl framed her child’s play in terms of a war that hadn’t really even started yet. It was an outlet for fear, Cassy supposed. All the kids probably did it, just as a way to cope with their fear of an unknown future. She imagined them playing “Empire and Clanners,” and no doubt the Clan always won their version of Cops and Robbers.
Cassy said, “How do you think they can get something so big down their tiny little ant hole?”
Kaitlyn shrugged and immediately replied, “Oh, they’ll cut it up into little pieces and drop them down the hole and then all the little ant kids will be happy the beetle attacked them, and they’ll have lots to eat, and their moms will make armor from all the little shell pieces.”
The thought of these little ants having enough to eat seemed to fill her with joy. Cassy was happy too, but for another reason—if the ants were beginning to emerge again, it meant spring was right around the corner. Time for planting and celebrating warm weather and swimming in the ponds. A time of life returning.
But for Clanholme, it was also a time of danger. The Empire would come with spring, and who knew what the invaders planned? Spring could bring the invaders back, too. She wished she could take some joy without worry like little Kaitlyn, but Cassy knew better than to think that was in her cards.
* * *
Just after morning chores and lunch, Ethan returned to the bunker and noticed a message waiting for him via the popup chat box that Watcher One, his handler from the 20s, would sometimes use to contact him directly. He had located the bit of malware that allowed it, way back on his own farm, before the Clan and the invaders and all of this had even happened. He had left it in place, but had put it into a “virtual machine” as a type of “sandbox” so those on the other end couldn’t hack him—they’d only see the pristine fake system he had set up for them. He huffed in frustration and opened the chat box. As expected, it was from Watcher One.
Watcher1 >> Hi, need status on Night Ghosts location. Update?
Ethan frowned. He had been avoiding this particular issue, sending scouts riding north to Nestor’s old location since the Ghosts were now running around to the south. It was a dangerous game because the Mountain had at least a dozen UAVs armed with missiles, which could be as easily used on the Clan as on the Night Ghosts, and the 20s knew where Clanholme was.
Dark Ryder >> I have scouts going out into his last known op area performing grid searches. I have a file of the grid coordinates, patterns, and progression. Shall I send that to you via HAMnet?
Watcher1 >> Negative. He isn’t north of your position. Subject relocated to the south. Didn’t you know that?
This was a loaded question. If his 20s handler somehow knew that Ethan did know about Nestor’s migration, he’d be caught in a lie and proven untrustworthy. But Watcher1 didn’t seem to have spies in Clanholme… Best bet? Feign ignorance.
Dark Ryder >> We had heard a rumor but have not received confirmation from down there. Attention focused on area we last had confirmation of Night Ghost operations.
Watcher1 >> Check HAMnet, collect incoming file. I’ll stand by and wait.
Ethan grimaced. Beyond being a pain in the butt, he really didn’t want to see whatever they were sending. He had no choice, though, and ignorance in this case wasn’t bliss. He connected to HAMnet and a zip file began to download. Once it was done, he opened it inside another protective “sandbox” so that if it carried viruses or malware, they wouldn’t infect his system. Unzipping the file, he found a folder containing dozens of image files.
As he opened them in order, a chain of events became clear—Nestor and his Night Ghosts had gone to a settlement, sent some people inside, then blown the settlement walls and swarmed inside. They killed every man, woman, and child. Or, it looked like they were children judging by their size compared to the others.
At least he assumed it was Nestor, or else Watcher One wouldn’t have sent the images. So the Night Ghosts had sacked a settlement. That was new, they had never done that before…
Ethan also noticed that the images were from a satellite. A chill ran down his spine as he had a sudden realization—if the 20s didn’t know where Nestor was, that meant they’d had satellites covering the settlement already when Nestor attacked, rather than having tracked him there. It stood to reason that they had birds covering other major viable survivor enclaves, not just over Clanholme. Thank goodness he had been sending out actual scouts like clockwork to “look for the Night Ghosts.”
His chat box dinged with an incoming message, and Ethan switched screens.
Watcher1 >> That was done by Night Ghosts. By luck, we found and tracked from your last confirmed area of operation. Unless they’re Clan, then they have to be Night Ghosts. The only known motive for this mass killing is looting. Last images show Night Ghosts looting the settlement and the bodies.
Ethan opened the last couple of images and saw definite looting. Both were moderately zoomed in, so many details were clear. The first showed a guy kicking in a door, his muzzle flash caught on camera as he shot up whoever had been inside. A woman pulling boots off a body. Two men pulling a tarp off a pile of salvage, revealing wooden crates. The second showed the raiders moving out of the settlement in a column, heavily laden with loot. Ethan flipped back to the chat box. He paused before replying because he was about to risk antagonizing Watcher One, but the answer would tell him a lot that he didn’t know right now.
Dark Ryder >> The UAV strike would have been timely just then, since their coordinates were known.
Watcher1 >> The images have a delay, only retrieved once or twice daily, and then take time to review. By then, they were out of bird’s searchable grid area. They’re sacking survivor groups now, not just lone homesteads. Need to deal with this before invader OpFor returns to your region.
Dark Ryder >> Affirmative. We will shift search grid south. This must be stopped.
Watcher1 >> Agreed. Why have you not found them yet? It seems like a large group of people would be easy to find in such a small region. Perhaps motivation is the issue. We can arrange additional motivation if you think it would help.
Ethan froze. That was definitely a threat. Maybe it was time to double do
wn on his efforts to backtrace Watcher One. Long ago, Ethan had pinged him as being in Virginia somewhere, but since then he had appeared to be coming from all over the world. Those first few pings, though—the ones from Virginia—were probably from before Watcher One had time to better scramble his location. Ethan felt almost sure of it. Not that it helped him right now, but someday he’d want to get this monkey off his back…
Dark Ryder >> As you said, he relocated from our search area. We will transition grid pattern search to the south.
Watcher One then logged out from the chat. Ethan spat curses at his monitor, wishing he could reach through the damn thing and strangle whoever was on the other end. It took him ten minutes of pacing and a cup of coffee before his pulse was down to normal and he didn’t feel like destroying his own stuff in a fit of rage.
As he calmed down, however, a new thought struck him. Maybe Nestor had gone rogue. Maybe there was another explanation. But the part about killing children, that was too much. Nestor had been kind of creepy when he was at Clanholme, actually. And the way he had taken to the nomad life of a guerrilla, rather than settling into Clanholme when he had been offered a spot, it all just raised more doubts about the man as far as Ethan was concerned.
Very well. If Nestor really was sacking settlements now, he truly did need to be stopped. Ethan loaded an overhead map of the sacked town’s region and began drawing out the grid for the pattern search, highlighting a few of the most probable areas. Time to find the man.
* * *
General Ree enjoyed the fresh afternoon air blowing past him as he motored south from his fortress in the City, heading toward the bridges into New Jersey. There weren’t any other running vehicles and the roads had been cleared. His driver couldn’t go too fast due to occasional road hazards, but if his driver went too slowly he risked surprise raids from bike-mobile guerrillas who could swarm out of nowhere by the dozens. Guerrillas began seizing all the bikes they could about a month ago, and Ree had cursed himself for not thinking of that himself. Still, he now had four cars running and if an ambush came, he could speed away to safety.
Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection Page 15
