Agony Of The World: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 9)

by Boyd Craven III

  “Irregulars,” John said, walking up and holding out his hand.

  “We rolling into town, setting up a perimeter watch while we’re there?” Stu asked.

  “Yeah, same as we did for the holding action in Abilene.”

  “Abilene? Texas? That was you folks?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  “You’re the boys and girls who are kicking the Caliphate in the nuts every chance you get, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” John said with a grin. “Now, let’s go see what we can do to help.”

  7

  Blake & Sandra, The Homestead, Kentucky

  It would be a weekend of rest and relaxation when Blake finally sat down with his entire family. He’d gone to Massachusetts as promised and made his recommendations. He had almost called for Silverman to go with him, but in the end, he didn’t. Tehn he’d regretted it as the governor and the local FEMA director had been almost as bad as what he’d had in Kentucky. He’d offered his opinion as such, and had also told the governor that his head had become swollen with power.

  Not that he expected the president to act on his recommendations, but he’d seen that the tough coastal people were chafing under the strict rules and curfews enacted by the government. Not everyone there wanted to work in the camps, building transformers or winding copper to rebuild components. Some wanted to take their fishing boats out, or even get them back. A lot of the boats had been first docked to prevent misunderstandings as the naval warfare heated up on the east coast in the early part when the New Caliphate was trying to launch their land campaign. Now, they sat at the docks under guard by order of the governor.

  The reason? Without the boats and a way to fish for themselves and others, they would have to remain working at the camps to get their rations. Forced dependence. Blake told the governor of Mass. what had happened to Boss Hogg and the ultimate shelling, and suggested that if he didn’t change his style and ways that he might find himself in the same sort of situation before too long. It boggled Blake’s mind that a higher densely populated state had been brought under the man’s thumb so easily. He made his suggestions to open the camps, allow the fishermen who wanted to fish to go back to work, and see if people outside of the cities would like to come in. It would do more for morale than anything else.

  Production levels would rise, tempers would cool and, although everyone knew that the components needed to be built, building them with a gun to their figurative heads didn’t exactly make products that met quality standards. Blake had been cussed out, threatened, and run out of town. He smiled at the memory of the governor’s face going almost purple. He’d scored points with the regional FEMA director who saw a lot of merit in what Blake was saying, but he doubted he’d get enough hands to work on the component builds without compelling people to stay and work.

  “What are you smiling about, sir?” the helo pilot asked through the headset.

  “That whole thing back there,” Blake said, pointing behind him.

  They were on their second leg of the journey, with one more refueling left to get him to the Homestead.

  “The governor? I heard about him. I thought you might have some fun,” he said grinning, but facing forward.

  “If the folks upstairs knew how I was going to react, they had to know what I’d suggest.”

  “Probably, still, maybe they are using you to gauge how bad things really were.”

  “Could be. I just don’t understand why they don’t get that you can’t enslave people and then wonder why they are unhappy. That’s the reason we fought off the British.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. I hear this is going to be one of your last trips with us.”

  “It’s my last,” Blake said. “I got it in writing.”

  “Yeah, I was retired too, got mine in writing. Now look at me.”

  Blake thought about that and leaned back, letting the straps hold him tight as he nodded off.

  “Daddy!” Chris shouted running to him as soon as he got off the chopper and it took back off.

  Chris launched himself into the air and Blake caught him. His leg and shoulder both spasmed in pain from the healed gunshot wound, but he had been getting stronger, and it bothered him less and less. Today he was sore from the long ride across the country.

  “Momma said she hopes you found her a horse,” Chris whispered into his ear.

  “What? A horse?” Blake knew they were gathering livestock, but if his wife wanted a horse, he had enough pasture and feed, so he’d get her a horse.

  “Yeah, she says she’s gonna eat it,” Chris said and cracked up.

  Blake put him down, laughing at the joke, and they walked toward the house. A lot of the training, guns, and hand-to-hand was still done on the Homestead, but he could see that more and more of it was being moved to Sgt. Silverman’s outpost, judging by the look of the emptying field near the barn. The barn had been once used in the underground railroad and had dorm style housing, and it was still used as such by the folks who had come to live there full time.

  “Well, then, let’s go see her. How’s your grandpa and grandma doing?” Blake asked, seeing Duncan lumbering out of the barn and heading toward him, a smile lighting up the pastor’s face.

  “Pretty good. Grandma has been making Grandpa eat his vegetables, so he says he’s wasting away to nothing. He’s still big, though. Momma said she’s stealing his belly.”

  Blake smiled. Sandra had gained at most twenty pounds so far in her pregnancy. She had been all baby when he’d left close to a week ago, and she was hungry all the time. He’d have to go hunting and do something about that, though there was plenty in the root cellar and even more stored in the barn and in the barracks. Fresh smoked bacon was what she had been asking for last time, and though they were starting to hunt out the immediate area, he knew he could find game.

  “Well, your grandpa needed to lose a little anyway. Are you eating your veggies?” Blake asked and poked his adopted son in the ribs.

  “Yes, Grandma and Mom are cooking them up all yummy like.”

  Yummy like, that usually meant battered and deep fried. One surprising thing about the new diet was that people were eating a lot of things that the former experts in the country would have called unhealthy. Red meats, fats rendered into lard to fry with, deep fried veggies, wild game, unlimited nuts, and berries. Blake remembered that some at the farm called it a paleo style diet, but it had been one he’d been eating for a long time. More out of being frugal, and living a life off the grid and blogging about it. Now that there was no blog, he had his informal radio show, one he’d been neglecting. Still, he’d requested and gotten some items on his trips through the country that he planned on using. One of them was a working iPod, loaded with music that he planned on using.

  If there were digital rights to pay, he’d send the President the bill, because he knew he wasn’t profiting on Rebel Radio one bit, and two, that the economy was effectively shot. There were rumblings of some kind of credit system, some grumblings about RFID chips, some talking about tattoos with serial codes. It was all bunk as far as Blake was concerned. Nobody was going to be willingly tagged… he hoped.

  “Blake?!” Sandra yelled, breaking into a run.

  He didn’t wait; he left Chris to eat some dust till the boy caught up as he embraced his wife warmly.

  “Lord, I’ve missed you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

  “You too,” Blake told her, kissing her deeply until wolf whistles sounded from the edge of the barn.

  More than one rebel yell broke the rest of the silence that wasn’t filled with the whistles and catcalls from the students but Blake didn’t care. He was caught up in the moment and overcome with love for his wife, his family, and his life.

  “Wow,” Sandra said, breaking the kiss before it became R-rated. “What got into you?”

  “I’ve missed you,” he said hoarsely.

  “I missed you too. How long do I have yo
u for this time?”

  “Till death do us part,” Blake said and gave her a squeeze again.

  “Easy, Dad, you’ll pop the baby out early,” Chris said, pushing himself between the grownups.

  Duncan’s booming laugh caught them off guard, and they turned to see him and Lisa walking to them hand in hand.

  “Do you mean it? You’re done?” Sandra asked.

  “I even have it in writing. A dozen states in over a dozen weeks. The rest of them can follow suit or shut up.”

  “I heard about what you had to say to the governor. Was he upset when you saw him?”

  “Which one? Ours or the one in Massachusetts?”

  “Ours,” Sandra said, dimples forming at the edges of her smile.

  “I think Silverman was about ready to have kittens when I said that, to be honest.”

  “I’m sure of that, but what did the governor say?” Sandra asked sweetly.

  “He looked embarrassed. I really think he’s worried that what happened last time would happen again if they forced our hand.”

  “What, you mean America’s last celebrity getting locked up in the pokey for not listening to him?”

  “Locked up in the Pokey?” Blake asked, grinning from ear to ear.

  “It’s an expression.”

  “He’s just worried that we have enough support to roll with a full division with armor, mortars, and artillery, maybe even some air support,” Duncan said coming to a stop a dozen steps beyond Sandra.

  “Oh, that I don’t doubt. We could totally do that,” Sandra said grinning, “if our Commander in Chief would come out of his bunker once in a while, and really talk to the people… make a difference… then maybe more people might listen to him. As it is, a lot of folks are questioning his motivations.”

  “How so?” Blake asked, feeling out of the loop.

  “Well, the rumors of the president being a Muslim or an ISIS sympathizer have been circulating for a while now,” Sandra told him, “and over half of his appointments have been folks of the Muslim faith, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “Yeah, but Christians aren’t strapping bombs to their chests and blowing themselves up in crowds,” Sgt. Smith said, and walking up he held his hand out to Blake.

  Blake broke his embrace from Sandra and shook hands with the guardsman who’d thrown in with their lot and had provided the first real fangs to what had amounted to a centrally located military unit in the country. They’d become fast friends, and he suspected Smith had more than a few female admirers, though he only entertained once in a blue moon and never the same lady twice.

  “We don’t know that, not right now,” Blake said.

  “You’re still a little out of the loop,” Smith said. “We’re starting to get information coming in from across the world.”

  “Anything new, or any rumors dispelled?” Blake asked.

  “Naw, the North Koreans are Satan, Israel nuked Iran in retaliation to them trying to nuke them, and the missile defense system we set up in Poland worked.”

  “That’s all?” Blake asked, somewhat sarcastically.

  “No, Santa Claus has determined that everyone from ISIS is on the naughty list this year and they aren’t going to be getting anything,” Lisa said.

  “Now that isn’t—” Duncan started to say.

  “Hey, is Santa going to come this year?” Chris asked, “He didn’t come last year. My other momma said we were too poor and didn’t have a big enough chimney for Santa to fit down.”

  The smiles went to choked silence and Blake turned, picking up his son. “He’s coming this year, buddy. I promise you that.”

  “How do you know?” Chris asked.

  “Because I was working for the government and NORAD assured me he could fly over the country this year. We might be in a war, but he’s got a special tracker on his sleigh that lets our Air Force know he’s a friendly.”

  “Yeah,” Sandra said, walking up and crushing Chris between her and Blake.

  “I don’t have a baby in me, but if you two don’t stop, you’re going to squish something other than a baby out of me,” Chris cried.

  “Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww,” Sandra said, backing off.

  They laughed. Things were getting back to normal.

  “What do you think of the new group?” Blake asked Bobby.

  “Pretty raw. I worry that they may not learn enough before they go out there to fight. Many of them know as much as I do, and I don’t want to go out there and fight the Caliphate.”

  “Not wanting to fight isn’t a bad thing,” Blake said, “I hate it myself. I’m better off doing my own thing than fighting, I think.”

  “Blake, since I’ve met you, you haven’t been doing your own thing. Heck, from what Duncan and Sandra told me about your blog and YouTube channel, you weren’t ever really doing your own thing. You were a born teacher and innovator. A backyard inventor and scrapper.”

  “You trying to make me blush? You know I’m married right?”

  Bobby bumped his brother-in-law’s shoulder with his own as he laughed. They were walking towards the back of the property where the old grain silo was. Blake had a notion of using it for what it originally was intended for, instead of a lookout point like they had been. It still gave him shivers, remembering climbing the silo the day after the planes fell.

  “What are you looking for back here?” Bobby asked.

  “I just want to get a feel for the game, and how much the added people have scared things away. Your dad still doing the foraging classes with the kids?” Blake asked, already suspecting.

  “Yeah, we’ve gleaned as many wild foods as we can put up. This winter might be a harsh one, but we won’t go hungry. Maybe bored with the food choices, but we’ll have enough.”

  “That’s good— “

  Blake saw a flash of brown and brought his .30/06 up in one fluid motion. A whitetail, at least a six-point was caught in the open as some does crashed through the underbrush. The rifle shot was loud, and the hasty snapshot was spot on. The buck kicked its legs out after the shot and, as Blake worked the bolt of his gun, the deer bounded into the thick stuff bordering the edge of the old hayfield.

  “Blake honey, was that you shooting?” Sandra’s voice asked sweetly from the handheld radio.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I know I said I wanted some fresh bacon, but what I’d really like is some tenderloin. A nice, fat deer would do if you would be so kind.”

  “So you don’t want tenderloin wrapped in salted, smoked bacon?” Blake asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t send the plate back to the kitchen if that’s how it showed up,” she said, both of them hearing the near laughter in her voice.

  “Well, I think we can do that, as long as there’s some bacon in the salt box.”

  “Goodie!”

  Sometimes, what he knew about his wife and how she acted were two different ideas that were hard to swallow. King, the massive black man who had trained her, said she had surpassed him in both ability and skills, which made her one of the top ten operators still alive in the world. She was also five feet nothing, a pixie-looking woman who wore her hair short and looked absolutely stunning. Somebody so petite and innocent and saying words like “goodie” just didn’t fit the mold of one of the baddest operators in the world.

  “It’s all for you, babe,” Blake said with a grin.

  “And the body snatcher! Sandra out.”

  “Blake out.”

  “I hope you killed this one,” Bobby said.

  “He’s down, I heard him thrashing. You want to gut this one?”

  “It still makes me puke.”

  “Good, then you need more practice,” Blake told him with a chuckle, enjoying his time on the property.

  He’d both lost a good friend and brother in Weston, but he’d gained Bobby, Lisa, and doubly cemented himself within Duncan and Sandra’s hearts. Life was great.

  8

  Michael & King, Nebraska<
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  “What you gotta do is put the squeeze on ‘em, boy,” King said, nodding to Michael.

  A man in a black uniform and a DHS patch sat between the two of them. A campfire was burning high in a small clearing between a wooded area and some corn near a power station. A dead to the world power station.

  “You mean, get his… you know?” Michael asked, pulling a pair of channel locks out of the fire with a damp set of pot holders.

  The metal glowed a dull red color and the dark skinned DHS agent seemed to almost pale enough to make Michael look like he’d been out of the sun for months, which he hadn’t.

  “You two are making a mistake. You can’t do this to us. Martial law is in effect, and the president has given us permission to— “

  “Commit treason?” Michael asked, opening and closing the pinchers close to the captured agent’s face.

  The heat coming off them was strong enough to make him close his eyes.

  “Taking too long,” King said, pulling a knife out and striding over to the agent.

  Michael pulled the big pliers back so the man could watch King walk up. With his hands tied behind his back, King lifted him to his feet by the neck with one hand and brandished the knife. He slit the belt in two pieces and cut a long tear down the black BDUs the agent was wearing, exposing a yellow stained pair of boxer briefs that may or may not have been white in the last decade or so.

  “You done now?” Michael said, “Or do you want me to cauterize it while he’s standing?”

  “Cauterize what?” The agent asked, the smug tone in his voice now gone.

  “Your wing wang, boy,” King told him. “I’m teaching the kid here how to ‘Lorena Bobbitt’ traitors and turncoats. Which one is you?!” King boomed, using his free hand to make air quotes.

  The question was a trap, and everyone knew it, yet the agent knew the knife was close to his groin, and Michael had put the channel locks back near the fire with the pot holders to let them heat back up.

  “Neither,” he said after a minute, sweat running down his cheeks. “I’m just doing what I was ordered to do. I’m not even sure if we’re answering to the government any more.”