Suddenly he heard a moan followed by some shuffling, and Austin whirled around, gun raised and ready to shoot. A soldier in an NWO uniform stumbled out from some bushes between them and the abandoned playground. He had blood on his uniform and clutched one arm against his chest. Austin froze, searching the area behind him for more soldiers, but it seemed he was alone—and he didn’t make it far before falling to his knees and collapsing to the ground. Austin walked towards him slowly, motioning Ezra to keep his eyes on the move, looking for trouble.
The soldier himself had stopped moving, and Austin prodded him with his boot, pulling another moan from him. He’d been badly burned all up and down one arm, and his leg was bleeding.
Reaching down, Austin disarmed the soldier without any fight, handing his sidearm and knife back to Ezra. “What happened here?” Ezra asked, speaking up before Austin could. The man just groaned into the ground, and Austin prodded him with his boot again, repeating Ezra’s question.
“Infection,” the soldier muttered. “Burned it out.”
“Bad enough to burn a whole town?” Austin couldn’t believe that an infection could have hit that quickly, but a part of him wondered if maybe it had been manufactured. It wouldn’t have surprised him, all things considered.
The soldier nodded before asking for water, but they’d left their packs with the others. Austin gestured to the small pack on the soldier’s back and the man nodded as if he’d forgotten it. Austin used a knife to cut the straps off and then placed the pack on the ground in front of him. Opening it, Austin pulled out a small canteen, popped the drinking spout, and handed it to the soldier, who managed to drink some of it before dropping it to the ground.
“Shouldn’t we keep that for ourselves?” Ezra asked quietly, but Austin shook his head. He did pick up the pack, though.
“Let him have it,” Austin said. If there’d been infection around, they didn’t want that water, and there hadn’t been much in the canteen anyway. Rooting through the pack, Austin pulled out a couple of 2-way satellite messengers. Turning one on, he saw that the batteries were dead. If the solar charger for the laptop would recharge them, though, these could be handy if he and Amanda had to separate the group into teams again. On a whim, he tried to turn on the other one and was surprised to see that it still had some juice. A message popped up, and he looked at what appeared to be a date, accompanied by a countdown.
Grabbing the soldier’s shoulder, he gave him a shake. “What’s this date?” The soldier flinched at the contact and Austin jerked his hand away as the soldier began to gasp. Not ready to let him go just yet, he got over his surprise and grabbed him again. “Don’t you dare die yet. What. Is. This?”
“Countdown,” the soldier finally answered before laughing out loud suddenly and rolling onto his back.
“Countdown? Countdown to what?” Austin grabbed the soldier again, gripping his bad arm and making him cry out. “Answer me!”
“Doomsday,” was all the soldier said before passing out. Austin looked at the countdown and then tried to wake the soldier. He got no response, and the man’s pulse was slow. Too slow. He’d be dead soon.
Realizing the soldier wasn’t going to say anything more, Austin stood up and showed the message to Ezra. “We have to get back to the others.”
“What do you think happened here?” Ezra asked as they cut toward the group.
Austin took a deep breath. “I have no idea. It could have been a hoax meant to scare people and it got out of hand, or it could have been something as serious as Ebola. For all we know, the NWO could have introduced some sort of biological warfare as a test on this town.”
“Why would they leave their own behind?”
“He’s a grunt; probably expendable once he got hurt. There’s no point in trying to guess, Ezra. We need to get out of here. We can’t take the risk of it being the real deal and contracting some horrible virus. I don’t want to touch anything in the town. I’m going to wash my hands in that creek we passed just from touching that soldier, but I think he’s dying from injury anyway, not illness. Even if there were supplies to be had here, it’s too risky.”
“I guess that means we struck out. I hope Amanda and the others fared better,” Ezra replied.
“Well, we have the messengers, and a date, but what that date means, I don’t know. ‘Doomsday’ sure as hell doesn’t sound good, though, does it?”
“And just under a month away, from the looks of it,” Ezra commented.
Austin paused for a moment; something about the other man’s speaking the timeline aloud brought it home to him in a way that the countdown message hadn’t. But there was nothing else to say. After a moment, he kept walking and caught up to Ezra at the stream.
After washing as best they could, they met up with the group and gave them a quick rundown before deciding to head back to the meeting point. Going any further would delay their return since they’d have to bypass this town, and Austin didn’t want to be walking at night.
By the time they reached their camp for the night, they were all exhausted. Austin sat down under the lean-to they’d built from branches they’d hacked down; one of the few things they still had from the prepper house was a hatchet, which had come in handy over and over again. The weather looked to be holding, which meant they wouldn’t get rained on. Keeping the laptop dry had been a priority—at least for him. It was probably the only working laptop in the civilian world.
By light of the laptop, Sarah examined the messengers; she also hooked the dead one up to the charger to see if they could get it working. Then, with nothing more to do but wait to see if it charged, she went back to work on the laptop, where it created a soft glow in the lean-to.
Savannah was lying on her side, facing into the lean-to but not really looking at anyone. The others were cleaning up at the stream near the clearing, where the horses were settled. With his reluctance to search the town, they hadn’t found any food or supplies they could use, and the messengers might well turn into paperweights if they couldn’t get them to charge. That meant the day had very nearly been wasted. But, at the same time, he worried about what the soldier had said about the countdown. Doomsday? Sarah hadn’t said anything much when he’d mentioned it, though her face had gotten even grimmer, if that were possible.
“Have you gotten anywhere on that?” Austin asked Sarah suddenly.
“Of course, I’ve gotten somewhere,” she snapped, not looking away from the screen.
“What does that mean?” Austin asked, settling onto the ground beside her.
“It means I’m still working on it,” she said, clearly irritated.
Savannah half-turned her eyes to him as she interrupted, lost in her own thoughts. “Tell me again what he said,” Savannah said, bringing up the topic of Nash yet again.
It was something she’d been doing almost nightly, and it wasn’t healthy. She was dwelling on Nash’s death instead of letting herself move past it.
Austin could only sigh in response. He wished there was some way he could help her move on. Grief was a fickle beast, and everyone handled it differently, but he wondered if it was the amount of grief she’d endured in a relatively short amount of time that was making it especially hard for his daughter to move on.
“He didn’t say much, sweetie. Just that same word. Amanda said it was all she got out of him, as well,” he said gently.
“I told you I knew what he was talking about, or at least a good idea of what he was trying to tell you,” Sarah said.
Austin looked at her. “What? Who? Nash?”
“Yes,” she said, still tapping on keys and not looking up.
Austin reached out and stopped her hand, unable to understand how she could be so blasé. “Sarah, stop! You’ve told us almost nothing about Blackdown. Nothing useful, anyway. I’m tired of it. You tell me everything you can. Now.”
She quit tapping and looked up at him. “I only knew what I suspected. I never had concrete proof until now, until this countdown you
found. It was a lot of theory and speculation, Austin. Callum wasn’t the only one who realized something was going on. He was just more brazen about his digging.”
“But now you know more about Blackdown? Without a doubt?” he questioned. “And you know what to make of this countdown?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I still don’t have all the information on their plan; that’s why I haven’t said anything tonight. I didn’t want to present the information until I could give you all of it. Saying their plan is called Blackdown only does so much good if we don’t understand their intentions.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, searching for patience. “Tell me whatever it is you know now. I don’t care what you don’t know. Tell me what you do know.”
Intrigued, even Savannah sat up. They both stared at Sarah, waiting for her to speak.
“Blackdown is nothing more than their term for a series of codes for the US missile defense system,” she said. “The question is why they matter.”
Austin glared at her. “I don’t understand.”
“The missiles could be used to shoot down the satellites that are hovering above the earth, ready to detonate another EMP—or worse.”
“Worse?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes going to Savannah and then back to him. “Worse, as in total annihilation. Those satellites are holding nuclear warheads.”
His mouth went dry as he stared at her. “They would drop nuclear bombs on us? Doomsday?”
She shrugged. “They could, but I don’t believe that’s their end game. The nuclear warheads detonated high in the atmosphere would create another EMP. The satellites are strategically positioned to disable the entire country—possibly the world, should our government make headway in restoring the power grid. However, the NWO is clearly a group of narcissistic individuals, who’d very likely drop nuclear bombs and destroy everything if things didn’t go their way. ‘My way or the highway’ and all that nonsense. I’m sure they have a bunker they could live in until it would be safe enough, in their minds, to emerge and start the world anew with them at the helm,” she said, her lip curled with disgust. “Those codes could keep that from happening.”
Austin swallowed. Why were they only hearing this now? “You have the codes and can stop them from dropping bombs on us?” he asked. “Or triggering another EMP?”
“Yes, but much more than that,” she said.
He looked at her, waiting for her to tell him more. “Sarah, explain it to me as if I were a five-year-old,” he said through gritted teeth.
She took a deep breath. “The codes could prevent them from initiating a nuclear attack or more EMPs, but won’t fix the damage that’s already been done. Those satellites are the NWO’s plan B. In case the government gets back up and running against them.”
Austin nodded, thinking. “We have to assume someone, somewhere, is already working to restore our electrical grid. There’s no way our government wouldn’t have some kind of countermeasures to this type of thing. We know they’ve trained and prepared for an EMP strike for decades. It’s probably already in the works!”
Sarah rubbed her face. “Yes, they have, and they are, I’m sure. Right this minute, there are people at work trying to right this. Those satellites are positioned to knock out the grid again if it should come up. The NWO is watching and waiting for the right time to strike, and these codes can keep that from happening. But the NWO knows the government is already working against them. They have to. So, their plan has to be setting off another EMP just when it will do maximum damage to the grid and what supplies the government had stockpiled separately. Killing the government’s back-up plan, so to speak.”
“The date that was on the messenger we got from NWO soldier. Could that be it? When they plan to set off another EMP?”
Sarah nodded, grimacing at the laptop in front of her. “No doubt coordinated to do maximum damage based on whatever they know of what the government is doing.”
“So, we shoot them down with the missiles you were talking about,” he reasoned. “We don’t let them set it off.”
Sarah looked up from the laptop with a frown. “It isn’t that easy. You have to get to the silos to launch the missiles, and I haven’t been able to unencrypt the file. I know the codes are there, but I don’t actually know what they are. And while I’m getting close to the codes, we also don’t know everything we need to. That’s why I haven’t said anything.”
“We just head to the silos, right? Where are they?”
She shrugged. “There are silos all over the country. I have to believe those silos are going to be heavily guarded, though. The NWO will know if you manage to get in.”
“So, we’ll be prepared!”
“There are more files I need to get through, Austin. I think Callum knew where the back-up computer centers would be. If I can find them, we can cut off the head of the snake,” she said. “Shut down their control so that, when we fire those missiles, the NWO won’t be able to counteract anything we do—it’ll be too late for them and their back-up plan will be in the wind.”
“You mean we can take down the NWO?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. They’ll have some kind of technology center where they can man the satellites. They’re likely communicating with one another here and across the world with that same technology. We find where the center is, use the codes, and we remedy the threat of any forward progress being destroyed. Otherwise, finding the missiles could just be delaying whatever they do next, if even that, and there’s the potential that they could interfere with our directing the missiles at all. Countermeasures against our strike, essentially. Our first strike option is taking out their control of the satellites with those codes before firing any missiles at all, which means finding the computer centers and shutting the NWO out for good.”
“Can we track them with the messengers?” Austin asked.
“Those aren’t like cell phones or tablets. You can send limited texts, like if you’re lost or in an accident, but you can’t send files,” she said.
“So, we can see what they’re sending?”
“In theory, if they send out a message and we’re on the right frequency. Assuming we can get them charged.”
Austin refused to be deflated. They were further along than they’d been yesterday, and that was something. “We have a date, which is more than we had before.”
“You mean we can end this? We can win?” Savannah asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Austin smiled. “I think that’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Sarah held up a hand. “No, I’m saying there’s a chance, a very slim chance. I have to work on these files. I have to find the computer center where the NWO is manning those satellites. That date and the codes mean nothing if we can’t get to the missiles. There are a lot of moving parts, and everything has to fit together perfectly. We can’t have one piece of the puzzle and get anywhere.”
“I understand. There’s hard work to be done yet,” Austin said.
She scoffed. “It isn’t necessarily hard work. I would have arranged these files differently. Callum’s method is messy. He should have known better,” she said tightly.
“I think Callum was under some pressure,” Austin retorted, feeling the need to defend the dead man who’d given his life to pass them the information.
“If he really wanted to help, he could have simply said what all this was,” she argued.
“Can you prioritize getting a bead on locations? We only have so much time. If you figure out where we need to go, we can head in that direction while you keep working on the codes.”
Sarah seemed to consider it for a moment, looking between him and the computer. “There are limited options…” she began, and then cut herself off. “Let me work on it tonight and think about it. If we’re moving anyway…”
“Right,” Austin said. “And we are. Try, alright?”
After a moment, she nodded, and Austin grinned when the woman went rig
ht back to typing.
The snapping of a twig outside the shelter drew Austin’s attention. He looked up to see Wendell slinking away.
The man had obviously been eavesdropping. Austin didn’t trust the guy, not at all, but he thought it best to keep his enemies close. He could keep an eye on him better that way. He didn’t trust him to watch Amanda’s back. It was better to have Ennis looking out for her.
It wasn’t long before the others came back to set up makeshift beds around the lean-to. The warm night meant they didn’t really need a fire. They wanted to avoid drawing any attention to themselves anyway, and had opted to skip dinner for the night, saving their few provisions for when the full group of them would be reunited. Austin volunteered to take the first watch, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
Sarah’s revelation about Blackdown changed everything. There was a way out. He could see an end in sight, and felt willing to do just about anything to take out the NWO and make a better world for his daughter.
He looked up at the moon where it hung high in the sky, the night crystal clear with what looked like a million stars. He thought about the satellites mingling with the stars. The satellites that were threatening to keep the world under the thumb of some very bad men. He wished he could personally shoot down the darn things while the people behind the NWO watched. He wanted to see their faces when he destroyed their little experiment to run the world. He wanted to make them pay for all the lives they had cost and the destruction their propaganda campaign had caused. There was no punishment that would ever feel like it was enough.
6
Amanda’s heart beat so fast it hurt. There was a sharp pain in her side, too, making it difficult to draw breath. They had to keep running, though. She’d been doing her best to keep track of everyone, but the dodging and weaving and diving behind dead cars made it extremely difficult. All she knew was that they had to keep running for the hills—literally.
Small Town EMP (Book 3): Survive The Conflict Page 5
