EMP Aftermath Series (Book 3): Retribution

by John Winchester

  Retribution

  EMP Aftermath Series Book 3

  By John Winchester

  Copyright 2017 John Winchester

  Edited by Jacqueline Pace

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and events are used fictitiously. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher and author.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter1

  Chapter2

  Chapter3

  Chapter4

  Chapter5

  Chapter6

  Chapter7

  Chapter8

  Chapter9

  Chapter10

  Chapter11

  Chapter12

  Chapter13

  Chapter14

  Chapter15

  Chapter16

  Chapter17

  Chapter18

  Chapter19

  Chapter20

  Chapter21

  Chapter22

  Chapter23

  Chapter24

  Chapter25

  Prologue

  Three years after the EMP

  A thick fog lay over the land, filling the valley below and clinging to the steep mountain slopes. The early morning air was crisp and carried with it earthy smells coming from the freshly turned soil in the fields that lay along either side of the road. A small caravan was parked in the road, made up of a hodgepodge of wagons drawn by teams of mules and horses. Each wagon was unique, maintaining resemblance to its old form and function. One wagon was made from the bed of an old pickup truck and had a canvas roof and tall sidewalls made out of plywood. Another wagon looked strikingly similar to an antique covered wagon from the old west. It was a landscaper's trailer that someone had modified by affixing fiberglass poles on either side of the trailer, bent over to create an upside down U-shaped frame. Several layers of translucent plastic painter's sheets were stretched tightly across the frame, providing a watertight area for cargo.

  Men and women loaded crates, boxes, and bags of their personal gear into the wagons. The amount of gear varied depending on the size of the family driving the wagon. Most of the wagons belonged to families; single men drove a few others. Personal items were tossed into the wagons with haste, however, they all showed great care when loading the bulk of the cargo. Large wooden crates labeled 'Wheeler Corn Whiskey' were placed beside others marked 'Wheeler Moonshine', and were transferred into the wagons from the open bay doors of a wooden building standing next to the road. Each crate was filled with glass and ceramic jugs and tightly packed with straw to keep the bottles from banging against each other on their journey.

  Four stern looking men in black leather jackets and biker clothes rode their horses up and down the road. Rifles in hand, they kept a watchful eye on the caravan and the goods being loaded into the carts, scanning the road and surrounding area in a cool and professional manner. Their leather jackets had large patches sewn onto the backs, identifying them as members of the Joker's Hangmen motorcycle club. Formerly an outlaw biker gang, they were now a part of Wheeler's standing security force.

  Kenny Miller lifted one of the heavy wooden crates and set it on the tail of a wagon, earning him a smile from the young brunette woman who stood at the other end of the wagon carefully stacking the crates.

  His pulse quickened as he returned her smile. Lost in the moment, Kenny leaned against the back of the wagon, awestruck by her beauty.

  A man behind him cleared his throat, causing Kenny to turn around. A crate of whiskey was shoved into his arms.

  "Are we loading the wagon or making doe eyes at each other?" the girl's father asked.

  The girl, Sarah, blushed and then went back to stacking crates.

  A firm hand gripped his shoulder and shook him playfully. Mr. Young loved to give him a hard time, but it was all in good fun. He knew he was fortunate to have a girlfriend with such an easygoing father. Kenny genuinely liked the man. Mr. Young was hardworking, honest, and fair, and also a good husband and father. Kenny would have liked the man even if he wasn't Sarah's father, which was fortunate because if everything went according to plan, the man would be his father-in-law next fall.

  "Make sure you spread the weight evenly when you stack those crates. There's going to be rough roads ahead. We don't want the wagon to tip, and we definitely don't want to lose any of that liquor," Mr. Young said.

  “Yeah, yeah. We all know dad.” Sarah’s brother, Andrew, rolled his eyes and tossed a pair of sacks into the wagon. “Think fast Kenny,” Andrew said, jabbing a playful punch in Kenny’s ribs and then leaping back as Kenny returned the blow.

  "Leave those kids be, James. They know what they're doing," a woman said. Sarah's mother, Jessica, was always quick to defend her daughter from her father's micromanagement. She squinted her eyes at him in mock irritation. Kenny laughed at their banter.

  Kenny lifted another crate and set it onto the wagon. They did, in fact, know what they were doing. The whole town did. Wheeler ran it's own distillery, after all, manned by the town's residents. Everyone moved with a practiced efficiency, demonstrating their familiarity with handling the delicate crates of liquor.

  Today was a very important day for the entire community, and many residents stood alongside the road, waiting to watch the caravan as it departed. This was the first time Wheeler would send a caravan out. They would make the long trip to sell their goods and then, with the returns from the sales, buy salt and return home.

  Wheeler had done quite well for itself in the past couple of years. The town's distillery produced corn whiskey and moonshine, which they originally sold to other communities via the train that came into town once a week. Eventually, the railroad company had taken notice of their success and began to charge outrageous sums of money to transport their goods. Shipping costs were now an unacceptable percentage of their costs, eating deeply into the profit margin.

  Wheeler residents did the math and quickly determined that they would be far better off finding their own way to transport the liquor. The town began to search for alternatives to the railroad. A small caravan was the simple solution. They already had wagons and the draft animals. Labor to drive the wagons and provide security also was available and cheap. It was the middle of May and planting season was over, so farmers weren't needed until later in the summer. Transporting the liquor now seemed like an overlooked bit of additional revenue that had been left on the table.

  The caravan's first stop would be Huntington, where they would sell the bulk of the whiskey and moonshine all at once. Huntington was a small city on the Ohio River that had become a major regional trading hub. From there the liquor was shipped on riverboats to Cincinnati and Louisville or even further downstream.

  Once the idea took root, some enterprising citizen had the idea that the caravan should do more than ship liquor out; they could import materials and goods as well. Each year the town purchased a large amount of salt, most of it from the railroad company. In a world without artificial preservatives and refrigeration, salt was a requirement for keeping food through the winter. Everybody knew that the railroad inflated the prices, doubling or tripling the cost of the vital necessity. If they could bypass the railroad and eliminate the shipping fees on their whiskey and the salt they purchased, they could more than double their profi
ts. The caravan could kill two birds with one stone.

  After selling the liquor, the caravan would leave Huntington flush with cash, which was usually in the form of easily transportable hard currency such as gold and silver. Their return route would bring them close to Malden, which has a large salt mining operation. There they would purchase as much salt as the wagons would carry directly from the mine, eliminating the railroad company's cut as a middleman.

  That much salt would fulfill the town's needs for two or three years. It would also provide them peace of mind, knowing it was there when they needed it. Even after accounting for the salt purchase, there would be a tidy profit left over to pay the caravan workers and guards.

  The round trip would take around a month to complete: thirteen or fourteen days on the road from Wheeler to Huntington, followed by another fourteen days of travel to stop at Malden, pick up the salt, and then return home. The caravan had enough provisions for six weeks of travel, and if worse came to worst they could trade some of their cargo for provisions along the way.

  Kenny paused in his work, glancing over at Sarah as she stacked her belongings for the trip. His stomach knotted up. Three weeks without seeing Sarah. It was bad enough that he had to wait for Sundays after all of his work on the homestead was finished to go and see her. Now she was packing up to leave on a long and dangerous trip. He wanted to pull her aside and ask her to stay home from the trip, but he resisted the urge. It was selfish and shortsighted, but he couldn't stop himself from wishing she would stay at home and let someone else go in her place. What if something went wrong? The thought of her being so far away from him made him feel helpless, almost like when his father was out of town for business during the EMP. There had been nothing he could do but worry.

  "Kenny, are you all right?" Sarah asked, her brow creased. "You don't look well."

  Kenny shook his head, put on a brave face, and then lifted another crate into the wagon. "I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me. It's you I'm worried about. How are you going to make it three weeks without seeing me?"

  "Shut up, Kenny. You are so full of yourself," Sarah said, laughing.

  As hard as it was going to be watching her go, he knew that it had to be done if they were going to be married next year. They both scrimped and saved every penny they had. She could earn far more money working on the caravan along side her mother and father than she could if she stayed at home. Kenny was clearing a new field to plant grains he could sell to the distillery, and also worked odd jobs for money. Their plan was to marry next fall after the harvest was in and he sold the grains. Both of them wanted to start their lives off on the right foot and were doing everything they could to buy land of their own.

  Kenny had a nice spread picked out, right next to Wyatt's homestead. His family’s homestead, he corrected himself, although he didn’t think he could ever come to think of it as the Miller homestead. It would always remain Wyatt’s homestead in his mind.

  The tract he wanted to buy consisted of forty acres of fields and thirty acres of woods, all being sold for below market price by their neighbor. The neighbor was an old friend of Wyatt's and needed to raise money, but said he also wanted to make sure the land was sold to people he could get along with.

  Good neighboring had paid off. Each fall since he'd been here he had helped the old-timer split firewood, till his fields, and do other odd jobs, and so the land offer was made to him first.

  Forty acres wasn't a huge amount of land, but it was enough. More than he could plow with a good team of horses, anyway. Thirty acres of woodland would supply them with enough timber to build a small cabin and provide them with enough firewood. It wouldn't be anything fancy, but it would be their place to call home. So it wasn't easy to let her go, but it would be well worth the sacrifice of a few weeks together so that they could have a leg up on the rest of their time as man and wife.

  His dad had taught him the importance of making a sacrifice for what mattered in life. He had made it home from halfway across the country, venturing into the unknown, and sacrificed his health to be at home again with his family. With nothing more than his will to get through rough times, he and Wyatt gave up everything they knew and tossed the dice, leaving their future to the fates during the journey home.

  Kenny wanted to go with the caravan. He had planned to, but those plans had been canceled. His father had left town the week before. Jack was one of several volunteers from Wheeler to go and help a small mountain community thirty miles away that was in a desperate battle against a forest fire that threatened their homes and fields.

  His dad was sorely missed on the homestead. Kenny needed his help. He, Danny, and his mother were hard-pressed to keep up with everything that needed to be done around the homestead. His father did his duty, though. He placed a great amount of importance on helping others and being part of the larger community beyond the borders of their small town.

  Kenny knew it was easy enough to talk about sacrifice. It was much harder to actually make sacrifices. It was a dangerous world beyond the borders of Wheeler. Diseases, criminals, and even simple misunderstandings could spell disaster and end a person's life in an instant. Recently there were rumors that people had gone missing, never to be heard from again. And those were just the readily acknowledged dangers. There was still the slim chance of a hundred other dangers and disasters that he'd never even considered. Having lived through the EMP, such an unlikely event, it wasn't so easy for him to casually dismiss them.

  Deep inside, he was worried that he might never see Sarah again. He had a sense of foreboding, a sinking feeling about the trip, but he wouldn't let her see that he was afraid and give her cause for concern. She had enough to worry about in the coming weeks. Besides, her brother, Andrew, her father, and four of the Joker's Hangmen enforcers were going along with them. And then there were all of the other men and women going along on the caravan, all of them armed. He was most likely worried about nothing. Wasn't he?

  One month later...

  Chapter 1

  Chief Bud Howell sat down in a wooden swing chair hanging from the branch of an old maple tree in his back yard. He leaned back and closed his eyes, letting his momentum and the stiff wind blowing through the valley rock the chair. The wind shook the leaves in the tree canopy above him and provided a small amount of relief from the sweltering heat of the July midday sun. He brought a paper up to his face, re-reading the first few lines of the handwritten report several times over before he folded it up and shoved it into his shirt pocket. The report was important. It detailed the planting schedules of local farms and family gardens, giving him an insight into the community’s food output for the year.

  That box of seeds Jack had brought with him from Baltimore had meant a world of difference in the types and amounts of vegetables and grains they were able to grow, ensuring they had a good yield as they experimented with different varieties. Howell knew it was critically important, but he just couldn’t seem to concentrate on it this morning. His mind was preoccupied with other things.

  He was getting old and was starting to feel it in his bones. He felt like he was losing his edge. This morning he’d woken up at dawn, roused by the crowing of a rooster, only to lie back down and sleep the better part of the morning away. It seemed to be happening more frequently these days. This malaise was only getting worse. It was time to hang up his hat as Wheeler’s chief of police and let somebody younger do the job.

  He had just the person in mind for the job, too. Somebody who was a perfect fit for the position, even if the man didn’t see himself that way yet. At the next town hall gathering, when everyone was there to hear, he would announce his resignation, followed by his stump speech for the next chief of police. The announcement would come as a surprise to everyone, including the candidate, who he knew might need a little shove from the community to accept the position. There was nothing like putting somebody on the spot in front of a large group of people to force his hand.

  That would have
to wait, though, until Jack Miller was back. Right now he was volunteering as a firefighter, helping to put out a massive forest fire half a state away. It was just the kind of sacrifice Jack made without asking for anything in return. He was a good man. Weeks ago the town of East Fork had sent word in every direction, requesting help with the forest fire that threatened their community. Jack had been the first to volunteer. Jack was still there, although he wasn’t sure if Jack was still fighting the fire at this point or had stayed on to help rebuild.

  Chief Howell couldn’t think of a more fair and honest person to take the position. He needed someone who everybody in Wheeler knew, liked, and respected. He also needed someone that had worked with other nearby communities. After Jack's issues with Shane, not everyone in Long Branch liked him, but they damn sure respected him.

  Lost in his thoughts, Chief Howell didn't hear the man walking up behind him.

  "Chief Howell. Sleeping on the job I see," the stranger said.

  Chief Howell jumped up, startled out of his daydream. He turned around, relieved to see that he knew the speaker. Cursing himself, he realized he really was losing his edge if a man could walk down the gravel driveway without alerting him.

  "Sheriff Sutherland!" Chief Howell said, surprised to see his old friend. "How the hell have you been?"

  "Oh fine. Just fine. It's good to see you. Let's dispense with the titles, Bud. Hell, it hasn't been that long, has it? What's it been? Three years now?" the sheriff asked.

  Three years. It was hard to believe that so much time had passed. The past three years had seemed like an eternity. Post-EMP life went by fast. It felt like he'd aged ten years in the past three.

  "Can I get you something to drink, Jerry? Wheeler makes a pretty mean corn whiskey. I've got moonshine, too, if that suits you better.