He walked into the tent and saw Ree on his stupid folding chair, and six of the ragheads lined up on both sides of the tent, sitting cross-legged and watching Spyder enter. He and Seb came to a halt in front of Ree, and Spyder gave the expected bow, but only a half-bow—enough to avoid risking Ree’s anger, but no more. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sebastian bow lower. Seb was dull as a hammer, but just as useful as one, and he was cunning. He knew how to inspire fear in Spyder’s soldiers and the civilians alike, and how to play some games Spyder was just bad at. Like this crap here, bowing and scraping to Ree.
“You called us, we came,” Spyder said simply, carefully trying to keep his anger out of his voice. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”
Ree’s eyes narrowed, and a chill went up Spyder’s spine. Ree said through his translator, “I will assume you have not heard the glorious news. I am now General Ree. My commander was killed in glorious action in service to the Great Leader, when a terrorist sniper slew him. I have been elevated to his position.”
Spyder understood immediately that Ree meant the Resistance, or those damn 20s, but whatever. If it made the puto feel better to call them terrorists, it didn’t matter to Spyder. He was only mildly curious as to why they changed it up. “Congratulations, General,” said Spyder with mock formality. Thankfully the interpreter must not have relayed that sarcasm to Ree, because he seemed to relax a bit. Asshole.
“I have been advised,” said Ree, “that the Resistance fighters who escaped the territory you occupied last week remain at large. Were you not instructed to find them, and to kill them?”
It was Spyder’s turn to tense up. This wasn’t a good start to the conversation. “Well, yeah, but every time we figure out where they’re at, they run and hide. It’s like they know we’re coming, yo. I mean, sir. But they ain’t bothering us no more. I think they bounced out, ran away for good. We don’t gotta worry about them, sir.”
All of which was true. Angel and his pendejo followers were pretty good at hiding, and running. They were probably long gone. Spyder would have been long gone, in the same situation.
Ree said, “That is not what my agents have told me. They are regrouping, rebuilding. So they will return and it will be more difficult than ever to locate their base of operations, next time. I do not wish to hear your excuses, American. I have given you instructions and if you will not follow them then I will be forced to reconsider our relationship. You are dismissed.” Ree’s face might as well have been carved from stone; Spyder couldn’t read it. But the edge of danger in Ree’s voice was unmistakable. Shit was getting out of control, and fast.
Spyder and Sebastian backed out of the tent like good little lapdogs, but once they were out of earshot Spyder turned to Seb. “We need to get this monkey off our backs, yo. Seb, get our homies ready. Maybe a day, maybe a week, but soon we’re gonna remind Ree what’s so dangerous about America. We gonna crash his party, you know what I’m saying? Him and his ‘sandy’ friends, yo, they gonna learn.”
Oh, yes indeed. Spyder thought about the coming “party” and smiled. Yeah, Ree and his sandy buddies were gonna learn alright. And Spyder was determined to make it a short damn lesson, yeah.
* * *
1500 HOURS - ZERO DAY +19
Ethan walked beside Frank as they left the meeting. Everyone in the Clan had been required to attend the emergency get-together, save for the Jepson family and the other half-dozen people who had joined them in the past week. Cassy’s brilliant idea had been to have these Clan meetings once each week or as needed, and it was a great idea. It reinforced Cassy’s vision of the group being like a real clan, where everyone who earned it had a voice, and where the leadership—Cassy and Frank, mostly—were only the “first among equals.” But, you had to prove yourself to the Clan to earn that privilege, and the Clan as a whole voted on whether to admit a newcomer to their ranks. They’d only been at Cassy’s farm for about a week, yet this system and the others Cassy and Frank had put in place seemed to be second-nature now. Ethan once read a book in which that dynamic, where early leaders had a profound effect on the society they began, was called the “Founders Principle.”
Ethan shook his head to clear his thoughts, and realized Frank was talking to him.
“…so I don’t think he’s a spy, but Michael disagreed about releasing the little guy.”
“Oh, the Asian guy the Marines knocked out, tied up, and dragged into camp? I don’t think we’re his favorite people after the handling he got from our noble defenders.”
Frank chuckled. “Still with the anti-authority crap. I get it, I guess… The more self-reliant a man gets, the less he tolerates other people telling him what to do. But you can’t blame our Marines. When you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail.”
Ethan nodded. “Yeah, but now if we don’t just kill the guy they found, we’ll have to work harder to get him not to hate us. I have a feeling he’ll be worth the effort to make him a friend. He’s the wrong race to get along with those red-raggers and he didn’t take part in the fight, he just watched. Didn’t struggle when he was caught, either, though he had to be scared to death at the time.”
“Well, that may be, son. But he’s one of those Monks, right? At peace with the flowers and so on? I don’t think he can hate us.”
“Buddhist, from what we know of him and the few things he’s said. They aren’t supposed to hate anyone or anything, but ‘people is people,’ as you like to say. Still, I’m told he didn’t run when they found him, and didn’t fight back when the Marines knocked his skull with a rifle butt. That’s promising.”
“Hey, Ethan… Do they have Buddhists in North Korea?”
Ethan grimaced. “Yeah, I’m certain they do, but they’d be well hidden I imagine, like a Jehovah’s Witness would have to be. They don’t like religion there. Opiate of the people, didn’t the Bolsheviks call it? But this guy seems like he’s American, which meshes with his story about his parents immigrating here from South Korea. Michael isn’t so certain, of course, but it’s his job to doubt everything. Which, I think, would be a terrible way to live.”
Frank laughed out loud at that. “Says the pot to the kettle! You doubt everything too, unless it’s a conspiracy theory.”
Ethan didn’t reply. He couldn’t tell Frank the things he knew, or suspected. And it didn’t seem like the right time to point out that he’d been right about a lot of things, as confirmed by their present circumstances. Well, one of his theories had been right. Not exactly Nostradamus.
With a wave, Ethan headed to his “comm center,” which currently was a bicycle with a car battery and ham radio strapped to it, and a big antenna sticking up from the back. Time to reach out and see how things were going in the bigger, wider world outside the farm.
A half-hour later, riding along a gravel road well away from the farm, he found a likely place with cover and rode toward it. Being away from the farm was riskier by the day due to the Red Locusts—those bastards needed to burn in Hell—but until it became impossible to ride out, he had to take the chance from time to time. Michael was at least a hundred yards behind him, on a low hill with one of Cassy’s bolt-action hunting rifles, covering Ethan just in case. The man was scary good with that rifle.
Ethan put the thoughts aside and lugged his gear to the top of another low hill with some foliage on it for cover, set up the car battery, inverter, and HAM radio, and flicked it to one of the “prepper” channels. He was rewarded with bits of communication, mostly in code like his own transmissions were when he broadcast for the 20s. He did that with the other network of bigger antennas, of course, and got much longer range than he tended to get with his bike setup.
When the chatter calmed, he went out. “Watcher One, Watcher One. Dark Ryder reaching out, conf 1-8-0-8-1-9-Delta-September-Romeo. Please respond. Over.”
A few seconds later he was rewarded with the sound of a familiar voice. “Dark Ryder, this is Watcher One, confirmation 1-8-0-8-1-9-Alpha-Sam-Tango. Over.”
“Good to hear your voice, Watcher. I’ve been off air a bit. What’s the latest?”
Watcher replied, “Can’t reply too much over air. Check Comm Protocol Beta for additional, over.”
Ethan frowned. Beta protocol meant logging on to his VPN maze and talking to the 20s via computer. Although it was easier and safer than ham, it also usually meant he had to do a scramble-cast with updated info for Resistance groups, which carried its own risks, not least of which was the need to broadcast from the big antennas. He reminded himself he had only three more broadcasts that he could count on to be relatively safe; after that, the invaders could figure out his general area by triangulation and process of elimination, assuming they were monitoring the radio waves. He figured they almost certainly were.
“Dark Ryder, Watcher One: Roger that. Will check that soonest. What can you tell me?”
Watcher One replied, “20s took a hit in the Big Apple but rebounding. Orlando OpFor, I mean, the enemy there, they’ve been drawn to a complete halt by 20s and Resistance operating from bases in the swamps all over the state. Invader buildup underway in Orlando, probable winter offensive coming.
“Mixed reviews coming out of Alpha-Kilo and November-Charlie, some say the invaders there are almost done consolidating, others say they’re like Orlando, and still others say there was no invasion of the West Coast. 20s think the first option is likely.
“Last thing, check your Protocol Beta. Some juicy Two Zero India there.”
Ethan felt a surge of excitement. 20s intel? Hells yeah. It was hard to sit there and finish logging radio chatter and so on—which he’d mine for intel and cross-collaboration of rumors later—when all he really wanted to do was ride like the Devil was after him, back to the farm to check his computer traffic. Also, Watcher One had just revealed, accidentally or otherwise, that he was tied into the 20s, himself. Ethan had suspected as much, of course, but now he was certain. Which, frankly, put a lot of their earlier conversations into a whole new light.
After a while, finally satisfied that he had enough chatter to dissect for the moment, he lugged the gear back to his bike in such a hurry that he almost fell down the hillside, and then pedaled like crazy back toward home.
When he got back, Ethan immediately pulled out his laptop and plugged in his USB drive, loaded with goodies. It took only moments to set up his randomized proxy chain through the satellite backdoor, using still-online VPNs and such, and the familiar text box popped up. It downloaded a small .txt file in seconds, and Ethan opened it in a Virtual Machine, sandboxing the file in case it contained spyware or other nasty surprises. He ran some of his tools to scan the file, then the output, and found nothing alarming.
But, the file was in code. Another tool—which had automatically downloaded to his machine the first time he’d made contact with the 20s after the EMPs went off—quickly deciphered it. Oddly, there was still a big block of alphanumeric characters that made no sense. None of his tools knew what to make of it, either, so he stared at it for a long time, for the moment ignoring the rest of the message content.
Then an inspiration hit him; all the number in the jumble ranged from 0 to 26. What if this was a stupidly-simple cipher? He pulled up one of his tools, which he’d coded himself after putting together a framework made of snippets of open-source code available on the internet, and instructed it to offset each letter by a number of positions equal to the previous numeral. If a string of letters and a number read “3BHV,” each letter would be offset by three positions, and decoded as “YES.” When coded, Y would become #Y>Z>A>B
Bada bing, money shot! The decoded message popped up. As Ethan read the hidden message, his eyebrows rose, and then rose again. So. Surprise, surprise… The 20s had a leader, and he was American. Apparently, a Lt. General with black ops experience. That was worthwhile news. Moreover this general, named Adam Houle, was putting out a call for hackers and crackers to compile and improve on chunks of Unix code. It didn’t say why, but Ethan suspected that, when all the chunks were improved and sent back, they would comprise some new program to use in the war against the invaders. No doubt related to the cryptic references earlier about “Operation Backdraft.” Hot damn! Better than online castle raids. Almost. For the moment he put aside his curiosity about why Lt. General A. Houle had revealed his identity at this time. Heh, General A. Houle—that had to be a fake name, or the man’s mother hated him.
“Well then. Let’s get this show on the road,” Ethan muttered with a smirk, and opened a second attachment. As he suspected, it contained a large, discrete chunk of code for him to work on. Finally, something useful and fun to do. Sometimes, being in the 20s was worth the hassle. Even if he was now certain that he was working for The Man, any disappointment in that revelation was lost in the excitement of a new challenge to conquer. One that didn’t involve digging dirt, tending to crops, or getting shot at.
* * *
1900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +19
Out of breath and covered in bruises and scratches, Peter straddled the man, who lay on his back with fear in his eyes. With his knife held blade-down, Peter gave his last ounce of strength to deliver a solid right-cross to the man’s jaw—the blade left a deep slice in the other man’s chest.
Then, face twisted with rage, Peter brought the knife point-first back across to his right, driving it deep into the other man’s neck. Peter wrenched the knife hard and to his right, and the knife sliced its way out of the man’s neck, showering Peter with blood and gore. The victim, whose blood now added to the crimson color of the shirt he wore, twitched and convulsed for half a tick, then fell still.
Peter struggled to his feet and looked around. Surrounding him were the bodies of the fallen; two from White Stag Farms, but most were these red-clad bandits. Peter and his two scouts had given far better than they got when, while scouting, they were leapt upon by half a dozen half-naked men painted in red warpaint and wearing red bandanas, red shirts.
But Peter was alive. Damn right, alive! No way God was going to let him fall, any more than He had let Moses fall. Not when his mission was incomplete. Then the sheer joy of being alive, the last one alive, overtook him and he raised his knife high into the air, heedless of the blood that dripped from it onto his face and hair, and let out a terrible cry of victory and rage. Fuck you, raiders! God was on his side. Who the hell could stand against that?
Peter saw the rest of his group, now numbering almost seventy people if the stragglers he’d picked up were counted in, approaching. Their eyes wide with fear, anger, or a dozen different reactions that played across their faces, Peter’s followers watched him with something approaching awe.
He liked the way they made him feel. This was Peter’s moment. This story would grow in the telling, and could only enhance his image and reputation. So much the better. Let’s give ‘em a show, he thought, and reached down, dipped three fingers into the hot blood still seeping from the dead man’s neck, and reached up to paint three stripes across his face. He watched as his followers either looked away or stared, eyes wide. Let them look. He’d written his victory in blood for all to see.
Jim separated himself from the crowd and approached just as Peter heard a rough burst of coughing from his left. Reflexively, he lowered into a half crouch, knife between him and the source of the noise, lips pulling back into a savage grin. But there was no real threat, Peter realized. One of the red-clad men was regaining consciousness. His whole body shook from coughing, and despite a bit of blood bubbling from the man’s mouth, Peter had no mercy or pity in his eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, Peter turned his head to face Jim. “You see? God has provided, and has been my shield and my rod, if you believe in such things. Jim, take this man far aside and get answers any way you want, but do get them. Find out how many of his people remain, where their camp is, and whatever he knows about their leader. If we can talk to their leader we will, but if he’s not the talking sort, I need to know that.”
Jim would pretend to hate the task, of c
ourse, but whatever. He was the only one Peter could trust to do the job right, and not to keep the info close to his vest—he’d tell Peter, no matter what the guy spilled to him. Jim was mostly a good man, pretty damn bent but loyal, and easily convinced that the unsavory things Peter tasked him with were necessary in this freakin’ hell of a new world. He seemed to need the excuse, and Peter had no qualms about providing him one. Well, Jim’s kind of loyalty was hard to find even before the shit hit the fan. It was more valuable than gold these days. As long as Peter kept giving Jim the noble excuses the twisted bastard needed to indulge his inner self, he would probably die for Peter if he asked him to.
Jim nodded, lips pursed as he mentally prepared himself for the task ahead, which might well get very unpleasant. He was good at this. He could be very, very persuasive when Peter ordered him to be. Peter knew he wouldn’t have to wait long for the information.
Peter turned again to the growing crowd of his people, raised his knife into the air once more, and screamed his bloody, victory roar. None now dared return his gaze, and Peter allowed himself a satisfied smile. Why not?
It was all going the way it had to go. And he’d be a legend before this was over.
# # #
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