Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection

by Henry G. Foster

  “That’s great, Dean. I knew we could count on you.” Cassy saw the older man seem to inflate with quiet pride, all while maintaining his dour expression. “How about the bombs?”

  “Nothing doing. I can’t figure out how to make the planes into bombers like in them old war videos with the doors underneath. They’ll just have to drop ’em like we talked before. But,” he said, with emphasis on the last word, “I did something the pilots might like. We didn’t talk about this, but I didn’t reckon you’d mind. I mounted two more of them AK rifles on the left wings on all the planes. They don’t shoot straight, nope. Them things are pointed to shoot to the left. So while they’re circling like vultures dropping bombs, they can shoot at the ground, too. I think the Army had a plane like that in Vietnam.”

  Michael broke in. “They did, but it was a chain gun basically. It relied on a huge volume of fire to suppress the enemy on the ground. I don’t think it’ll be as effective with AKs.”

  Dean sniffed. “Who asked you? What are you, seventeen?”

  Michael smirked, but shut up. Cassy sighed. Thank goodness Michael humored the grumpy old man. Michael seemed to want nothing more than to keep such people safe. They were the ones who couldn’t protect themselves without help. Maybe that was a Marine Corps trait, maybe a general military trait. Maybe it was just something found in any good man. Either way, Michael’s affable good humor made her job easier.

  Cassy said, “I still think it’s genius. We’ll give them a try in the first engagement and if they’re effective, we’ll keep them.”

  Dean grunted and calmed down.

  “Thanks for the update, Dean. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we dismiss?”

  “Yeah. The missus says you’re doing this whole thing wrong, and you should have an ‘action council,’ on building more of them worm latrines.”

  The Clan’s outhouses drained into small cement cisterns, buried and filled with earth worms and shredded paper, at least at the start. Then, liquids passed into channels lined first with filtering plants before the resulting clean water dumped out into the ponds, where more plants continued to filter as part of the detoxification process. The solids got eaten by the worms and turned into worm castings, an even better source of plant nutrients than most compost. When mixed with regular compost, the castings greatly improved plant growth and made the most efficient possible use of both castings and compost.

  Installing the cisterns was difficult because they required the cement distributor boxes used by septic tanks—they were heavy and had to be transported by wagon from wherever they could be found. But keeping Dean’s wife out of Cassy’s hair without giving her something to do was even more difficult.

  “Okay, Dean. Please let her know that I authorized her action council if she will lead it and find people willing to join in the effort. Improved efficiency is always good. Tell her we’ll need about twice as many as we have now, and I thank her for thinking of a council to lead the effort. But it has to be volunteer hours—we can’t afford to take anyone off the farming tasks, especially this time of year.”

  Dean smiled then, and Cassy got the impression he’d be glad to get her out of his own hair for a few hours here and there. “I always did tell the missus that you ain’t as stupid as some folks say.”

  Some folks would be his wife, of course… Cassy grinned. “Thanks for that, Dean. I think.”

  She watched as Dean left, then turned to broach a more serious problem with Michael. “Do you think our victory on Liz Town’s doorstep will make a difference?”

  “With the Lizzies, it’s hard to say. At the very least, it will motivate the loyalists. Nothing inspires bravery like success. Those people lining the wall were definitely glad to see us still living up to our promises. Of course, maybe they’re just the local malcontents. We don’t know enough about Liz Town politics to tell if the current leaders really have popular support.”

  Cassy nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.” She’d have to think of some way to get better inside intel. Maybe they still had supporters lurking in the main town. One more thing, always one more thing.

  * * *

  Ethan sat with his sketchbook open on his lap. He couldn’t sketch worth a damn, but the pads were perfect for jotting down notes and writing out ideas to solidify them in his mind. Something about handwriting seemed to draw from a different part of the brain, and sometimes it helped for solving complex problems. Like the current one. How could he restore electronic communications with all the allies, securely and instantly? Secure email, especially, would be invaluable.

  Amber sat in the other desk chair in a pair of his boxers and one of his tee shirts. That made it harder to concentrate, but he wasn’t about to say anything that might make her go change. She had been watching him unconsciously rock back and forth in thought, knowing that she’d never completely fathom the way his strange hacker mind connected things up in new patterns. But perhaps it was fun to watch him doing it.

  When he finally looked up at her, she said, “So you found a way to get hundreds of computers networked? Why not just use wifi?”

  Ethan set his pencil down in the crease of his black faux-leather sketchbook. “Sort of. I think it’ll work. You’ve heard of those simple computer boards the size of an Altoids tin? Raspberry Pi?”

  “Yeah, they were in the news now and then, I remember.”

  “Well, we found a warehouse of something a lot like those. Each was sealed in mylar bags that acted almost like Faraday cages. Half of them still work, maybe more. Since I have computers that still work, down here, I could program the boards. The problem is telling them what to do. There’s damn little internet left, and satellites are still up there working but you need the guts of a sat-phone to connect them to a computer. Not many of those left working since when in use they were wide open to the EMP.”

  “So, you have half of this, half of that. Can you just run ethernet cable? There’s gotta be miles and miles of that stuff lying around.”

  “Probably, but the signal couldn’t carry that far. They weren’t designed for that. Those cables attract rodents, too, but I never knew why. I might try to connect to the fiber optic cables lying around everywhere, because they were designed for that, but I don’t know how to make the link between those and the computer. It takes hardware we don’t have.”

  “Nothing online?”

  Ethan shook his head. “There’s damn little ‘online’ left in the world. I haven’t found anything trustworthy on it so far, but don’t have endless hours to look, either. There’s no big search engine working, you know. It’s a matter of connect, look around. Connect, look around. It’s internet, but it’s not the Web.”

  Amber frowned. “I take it they aren’t quite the same thing. Well, why not ask the Mountain? They think you’re one of theirs, and they must have all sorts of useful knowledge stockpiled, just as part of their contingency planning.”

  Ethan started to shake his head, then stopped. Maybe she was right. They did think he was one of theirs, and even if they had their doubts, the knowledge he looked for couldn’t possibly harm them. He’d just have to come up with a plausible scenario to get them to take the time to search out what he was looking for and a good reason for them to give it to him. “Thanks. That’s not a bad idea. I’ll think about how to ask in a way that gets them to go look it up for me. If they have the knowledge stored somewhere, of course.”

  “Of course. Well, I need to go get dressed.”

  “Nooo!” Ethan cried out in mock horror. His cheeks reddened a little and he added, “I like looking at you dressed like that.” By now, she was wearing a very large smile.

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said around the smile, “but I need to go help get all the kids tucked in and so forth. And I’m hungry again.”

  “I wonder why,” Ethan said as he wiggled his eyebrows.

  Amber laughed, then stood, her long legs uncoiling from where she had sat curled up on the chair. He watched her leave and wished
they had more time together tonight. Maybe she’d sneak back later, if she could get away. Family obligations had to come first, of course, but that didn’t make it less frustrating for him.

  After she had dressed and left him with a kiss, he set down his sketchbook and opened up his laptop. He went through the motions, receiving information from the few places around the world where people could still connect to the internet. Then he went on the HAM radio and monitored for traffic, but nothing noteworthy came up.

  He was about to call it quits for the night when his computer chirped with an incoming message alert. He set up the virtual machine, the sandbox, all the usual precautions, and then opened up the chat box. It was Watcher One, of course. The cursor blinked for a moment, and a message popped up. It consisted only of a string of numbers, which Ethan realized were coordinates, a date, and a time. There was also a .txt file attached.

  He opened the attachment and found a brief note. It said only, “Supply run heading to our friend back east. Will support important offensive. Provide escort through the region. Top Priority, Urgent.”

  The date was two days away. What the hell could be so important as to risk an overland journey to the east coast, all the way from Colorado? Ethan’s curiosity was piqued. For whatever reason, he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling of doubt. No one risked that kind of a journey unless it was vitally important. They had to know he wouldn’t buy that story, but what was their game? Did they want to weaken Clanholme by sending people away just before the Empire mounted an attack? Or did they hope Clanholme would maybe lead them to Taggart’s current location? That business of promising drones but instead setting up an invader ambush had led Taggart to stay as invisible to “the Mountain,” as he called General Houle’s Colorado HQ, as he could.

  He’d have to tell Cassy about this and see if she or Michael had any ideas. And they’d need to arrange the escort to maintain credibility as allies of Gen. Houle. “Supplies, my ass,” he muttered.

  * * *

  0900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +251

  General Ree stood in the passenger side of the convertible “American muscle car,” a vehicle festooned with high-quality art airbrushed lovingly onto the 1960s drop-top. His advisors had told him the art was “typical of vehicles for high-ranking members of America’s Latino neighborhood mafias.” Apparently, in America every other block had its own mafia. Gang was a more accurate word for it. Now the car had a few bullet holes in it, mementoes of the battle with that Spyder gangster who had once been an ally of sorts. Ree smiled at the memory. Spyder had hated it when Ree talked to him as an officer to an enlisted man, so of course Ree had done that whenever possible. It had kept Spyder off balance.

  As the car slowly crested the hill, Ree put away those memories to focus on the task at hand. He had gathered all of his troops and coordinated with those in the City, and they were about to launch a two-pronged assault on the traitor, Taggart. It would end his threat once and for all, and send him scurrying into the wilderness. Ree relished the thought of General Taggart once again being only a Captain. The man had no vision, no concept of how glorious the future would be under the Great Leader, with America’s vanity, pride, and violence burned away. When Ree was done, America’s old culture would be nothing but rotting bones, just like all those self-important celebrities hanging from poles outside the Lincoln Tunnel.

  Ree looked down on the remnants of Hoboken, New Jersey. Like all cities, it was mostly vacant now. Clusters of houses with chimney smoke showed areas where survivors remained, though unlike most towns, Hoboken’s survivors were split up in several different compounds. Intel said the compounds all operated under one leader, but independently for their day-to-day tasks.

  What he didn’t see was an open military presence. Taggart had turned this area into his headquarters after conquering it and the areas south of Hoboken, so Ree had expected to see thousands of troops in a cantonment. Ree raised his binoculars and examined the scene methodically, right to left, far to near. He could see open areas that had clearly been in use recently, but they were vacant now. Bits of paper blew across these open areas, swept along by a breeze coming from the river as the ground warmed up faster than the river waters.

  Then Ree saw another large open area littered with pallets. They were in neat, orderly rows, mostly, but a few were tossed aside or smashed up. That area should be full of Taggart’s troop supplies, but the pallets were eerily vacant.

  In the driver’s seat next to him, Major Kim said, “My general, what do you make of this?”

  Ree grunted noncommittally. After a long pause, he let out a frustrated breath. “Somehow Taggart must have known we were coming. One doesn’t clear out a base of this size in an hour—he had plenty of forewarning.” Glancing over, he saw that Kim was recovering from an inadvertent flinch and was careful not to show his satisfaction.

  Kim finally replied, “What if he didn’t know, but relocated somewhere recently?”

  Normally he’d play the master-and-servant game with Kim, but he lacked the energy. He felt like an old schooner that had the wind knocked out of its sails. He had neither wind nor current to guide him. Shaking off the discouragement, he answered Kim. “Either way, it’s more important to find out where he went and what he’s up to than to wonder why he left. Order Third Regiment to take Hoboken. Third has the best interrogators. Their mission is to find out all the intel we can regarding Taggart and where our old enemy went.”

  Ree felt a sudden chill of fear. He wasn’t used to fear. Normally, he was the master of his world. Even when losing in battle, things proceeded in an orderly, nearly mathematically precise fashion, but this was an uncontrolled variable and he didn’t have a solution for it. It was the unknown. The sheer oddity of it all—the strangeness—had Ree spooked and, to an extent he would never reveal to anyone, bewildered.

  When uncertain, choose any direction and go. He had learned that as a teenager. Within a few hours, Ree had given orders to his regiments. Targets to take, towns to reconquer or burn, bridges to secure, everything important throughout the region. It had been his to begin with, until Taggart forced his units out, but now he had returned. It should have been a triumphant return, a parade across the corpses of his enemies, but instead Taggart was gone and Ree had no idea where. Yet the enemy undoubtedly knew where Ree was. It was a vulnerable position and the orders he had issued focused on reducing that vulnerability.

  His officers finally gave the signal that it was safe for him to enter the town, and he told Kim to proceed. In the town’s largest open area, long ago cleared of buildings, his troops had lined up the people still living in Hoboken. Those who didn’t resist lined up in rough formation now, well guarded, while those who had resisted were lined up in a neat and orderly stack of corpses that needed no guards. The command elements of his units arrayed themselves in formation nearby, those not in the field to implement his orders.

  The civilians, he noted as he drove slowly through the plaza, sullenly eyed the pile of corpses and the rows of officers. Let them eyeball their betters all they liked. These people needed to see the result of resistance. He otherwise ignored them.

  Ree’s car drifted to a stop facing his rows of officers, and he got out, climbed atop the car’s hood, and with his hands behind his back, he let them see his gaze sweep over them all. Finally, he said in a loud voice that carried with the ease of a practiced battlefield commander, “Welcome back, gentlemen.” He had no women higher officers—too much of a traditionalist for that.

  He paused for the few Arab officers to receive the translation from their assistants, then continued. “The enemy has fled before us,” he said, and had to pause as his commanders applauded. He never knew whether it was genuine applause or self-preservation, but it didn’t matter. So long as everyone applauded, no one would know who was loyal and who wasn’t. “They took as many supplies as they could and abandoned or burned the rest. They abandoned their civilians, as we knew they would.”

  One of his officers bowed
low, and Ree waved his hand for the man to speak. He said, “My general, your victory is at hand. Our survey shows they left behind tons of vegetables, growing in makeshift greenhouses, or ‘cold frames,’ as the people call them. Shall we harvest these?”

  “Of course,” Ree replied. “Those glorious farmers who know about these cold frames should be consulted, so that we can expand that program.”

  Another officer, wearing the Korean emblem of an engineer, bowed and then said, “Sir, they’ve done extensive earthworks since we… left the area. We don’t know what they’re for, but—”

  Ree cut him off with a raised hand, palm toward the officer. “Yes, I saw those. I don’t know what they’re for, but think about it. No one wastes effort these days, so you know it isn’t for a park or a memorial. It must have something to do with food production. You only have to find out what. Question the liberated People’s Worker Army for answers.”

  “And if they aren’t eager to answer, or say they don’t know?”

  Ree forced himself to wear a smile as natural as the summer sun, but inside he wanted to smack the fool. “It was a huge project. Someone here knows what the ditches and mounts and patterns are for. If they don’t want to answer, then… ask harder.”

  The officer bowed and said nothing further. Ree then looked up and down the line of officers and said, “They have used strange ways of farming, unlike what we’ve seen elsewhere. But we see it already raising food, unlike the more familiar farms, so I know that we will all have enough to eat, enough for our troops, and enough for your civilians. And when harvest time comes, I expect a bounty unlike anywhere else, because they wouldn’t do all this for nothing. We will find out why, and copy it.”