EMP Resurgence (Dark New World, Book 7) - An EMP Survival Story

by J. J. Holden

  EMP Resurgence

  Dark New World: Book Seven

  by

  JJ Holden

  &

  Henry Gene Foster

  EVEN HEROES CAN FALL…

  Jaz thought settling down with Choony in New America’s capital would be safer than life on the road, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. When the invaders begin to stir back to life in New York and Maryland, Jaz is reunited with an old enemy. Will she be able to escape the violent clutches of her worst nightmare come true?

  When Ephrata, once the strongest member of the Confederation, distances itself, other members of the Confederation begin to reconsider their role in the alliance. Will Cassy be able to hold the Confederation together or will it fall apart in the midst of a bubbling war?

  The Mountain seems to be a sleeping giant but little does the Clan know, it’s stirring. After a failed attempt to take over the eastern states, they are hatching a new plan. A plan that one of their own is terrified of and is willing to risk his life to stop.

  Copyright © 2017 by JJ Holden / Henry Gene Foster

  All rights reserved.

  www.jjholdenbooks.com

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NOTE: This is the seventh book in the Dark New World series. If you are new to this series, be sure to check out BOOK ONE.

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  - 1 -

  0800 HOURS - ZERO DAY +599

  MARK BATES STRODE down the unadorned, sterile-looking cement corridor illuminated by glow strips embedded into the ceiling. With each step, his tasseled leather shoes clicked on the cement, echoing down the hall. He adjusted his silk tie with his left hand and held his reports in a manila folder in the other. When he reached a T-intersection, he turned left. He passed four doors on his right side, then stopped at the fifth and knocked loudly.

  There was no immediate answer, but Mark knew better than to knock again, so he waited with as much patience as he could muster.

  Thirty seconds later, the General’s voice came through the door, calling him in.

  Mark put his palm on the biometrics reader box next to the door, palm first, then he pressed down with his fingers, one at a time, in a particular order. The General didn’t mess around when it came to security—you not only had to have the right fingerprints, you also had to touch each finger to the pad in a specific order, like a PIN. It wouldn’t be enough to simply cut off his hand, if someone wanted to gain entry illegally.

  When Mark’s index finger joined the rest in touching the pad, a light on the door handle switched from red to green. He pushed down on the handle, the lever depressed, and the heavy steel door swung open. It glided silently and easily, despite its obvious mass, perfectly balanced on flush-mounted hinges.

  He stepped inside and saw the General’s room, immaculate as always, and a young woman lying naked in his bed. She was only partially covered by the blanket, but made no effort to cover herself when Mark came in. When his gaze met hers, she smiled at him while biting her bottom lip.

  The General stood by his writing desk in his boxers, pouring two shots of whiskey. At sixty, having spent almost the last two years sitting at a desk, Houle’s once-great physical conditioning wasn’t so superb anymore. The distances around his waist and chest had switched places. Mark tried not to shudder at the sight of the General’s pasty white, flabby body.

  Houle took a sip of whiskey, then handed the other cup to his visitor. Mark knew better than to insult him by declining. “General, thank you for seeing me.”

  Houle replied, “Of course, my friend. How’s the wife? And your son is, what, seven now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said. “Lucy is fine, as is Junior.”

  Houle nodded, then raised his cup to Mark and said, “So what news do you have for me? I assume you aren’t here to tell me the war is over.” The General chuckled.

  “No such luck.” Mark looked again at the woman in Houle’s bed. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Sir, listen—”

  Houle cut him off. “Psh. She’s got clearance. She’s in the Intel pool for God’s sake, and she probably already knows what you’re about to tell me.” He took another sip from his glass. “Hell, she probably knew it before you did.”

  “Of course, sir. I have a report from firebases Lincoln Four and Lincoln Seven. Both were raided again last night. No casualties on either side. Only minor damage to property, easily repaired.”

  Houle frowned. “That’s the third time in two weeks that a Lincoln base has been raided. Same M-O?”

  Mark nodded. “Before dawn, an unknown number of raiders opened fire on the wall sentries at both locations. At Lincoln Four, they somehow launched a propane-tank bomb at the main gate. Fortunately, that gate was made of steel so it didn’t burn, unlike Lincoln Two last week.”

  Houle replied, “What did the department chief say about why Louisiana is getting hit so much lately?” His voice was even, jaw relaxed, and he calmly sipped his whiskey.

  Mark knew better than to trust that image of calm. Houle could be unpredictable. “He says that, since most of the armored vehicles were stripped from the territory for last year’s… other campaign, they’re stretched thin on their patrols of the local settlements. He also says it’s only a distinct minority who resent your benevolent guidance at the local level.”

  Houle set his cup down and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, like a balloon deflating. “Why do they feel the need to kiss my ass and tell me what they think I want to hear? Damn civilians. But we placed bounties on rebels, and we do still perform patrols. If we’re getting raided like that, it’s only because the civilian populace is protecting the opposition fighters. And that means the problem will only grow.”

  Mark shrugged. “Yes, sir. I’m sure you’re right. They’d like to receive updated orders when you next meet with them.” He drank the last of the whiskey in his glass, as there wasn’t any to be had from commissary. He hated to be wasteful. “Thank you for the drink,” he said, giving Houle his most winning smile.

  The General grinned back. “Yeah, you’re welcome. If you want a bottle for yourself, or anything else, you let me know.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Houle nodded. “I don’t consider most people worth calling a friend, Mark, but you’re a straight shooter and loyal.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Houle nodded, and waved a dismissal as he poured himself another shot.

  Mark set his empty glass down on the small table by the door and left with a grin. When the door closed behind him, however, his smile instantly vanished.

  He hadn’t told the truth about the extent of the raiding, but he had said enough to avoid trouble, or raise any doubts in Houl
e’s mind about his loyalty, when the real extent of the problem was discovered. He could just say he didn’t understand the raids’ true importance.

  The longer it took Houle to deal with Louisiana in the meantime, the more out of control things would get, the weaker Houle looked, and the more resources the General would have to spend on ultimately pacifying the area. That meant troops would be busy in Louisiana, in territory already controlled, instead of off trying to conquer what was left of America again.

  Of course, the war wasn’t over. Houle had made sure of that, Mark felt certain. He didn’t yet have proof enough to go public with his suspicions to NORAD’s many civilian and military residents, but he was gathering evidence, and felt like he was on the right track.

  Mark hustled toward his quarters to mull over how to help the Louisiana situation develop faster. His private brainstorming sessions had be crucial to his success at this little Fifth Column campaign he’d been running against Houle.

  “Time to get to work,” he muttered as he raised his hand to the biometrics box at his door.

  * * *

  1230 HOURS - ZERO DAY +599

  Cassy smiled at Frank as he came in for their usual lunch meeting. In truth, the “meeting” label just gave them an excuse to shoo away anyone they didn’t want to talk to over lunch. Days were busy, after all, and since spring had sprung, the pace was quickening every day from the slow winter doldrums. The Spring Equinox Festival had been a huge success with entertainers and traders from all over the region, games, and of course, the uncorking of the first barrel of autumn’s apple cider production.

  Frank grinned back at her and set his tray on the table. They now used a much nicer plastic table and chairs from a restaurant, which replaced the old wooden picnic tables. Those, they had given to some newer Clanholds.

  “You look spry,” Cassy said. “How’s your new foot working out?”

  Frank pulled up his pants leg to reveal a hammered, welded collection of metal strips, springs, and gears. “Really well. I don’t need the crutches anymore, which is fantastic. I’d forgotten what it was like to walk through the Jungle without tripping on everything.”

  Cassy chuckled. “Dean did a bangup job on it. It looks like something out of the Road Warrior movies.”

  “Kind of appropriate,” Frank replied before sitting and taking a drink of cider. “So how are you doing?”

  “I’m hanging in there. I still miss her, of course. Bri and Aidan are holding up, too.”

  “They were lucky to know her before she passed. We all were lucky to have Grandma Mandy.”

  Cassy smiled, and let the moment of silence linger comfortably between them. They both seemed content to just enjoy each other’s company. Together, they could sympathize with each other’s problems and the stresses of the work they did. They were both leaders, and faced similar pressures. It was nice to talk to someone else who understood, and she suspected Frank felt the same.

  He finished the last of his lunch, then set his fork down. “Lunch gets better and better every week, it seems.”

  Well, he wasn’t wrong about that… Cassy knew it was the greenhouses that kept them in lots of fresh produce. It was nice how much they extended the growing season. She said, “I think the new fish are the key to it all.”

  Frank laughed. “Who knew keeping fish in those cheap above-ground swimming pools could make such good salads? And the herbs… Better than any supermarket stuff we used to get.”

  Cassy looked at her plate and raised one eyebrow. “You mean we’re eating fish-poop vegetables?”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Oh please, the whole thing was your idea. What did you call it?”

  “Aquaponics. Hydroponics with fish and worm tea instead of chemical fertilizers. Not as healthy as the dirt-grown produce, but we can keep the aquaponics going year round. It’s nice. Remember when that constant stew, looking more like tea than stew, was all we had to eat?”

  “Ha! Don’t ever mention constant stew again. Although at the time, as I recall, we counted ourselves blessed to eat that food-flavored water.”

  Cassy raised her cup of cider. “To the end of the Dying Times.”

  Frank returned the gesture. “So how are the Clanholds doing? Any big changes?”

  “Nope. We’re still building the earthbag dome complexes as fast as we can. We’ve got each new complex down to a routine now. Like a blueprint. Michael says that with the way they’re scattered and how they’re so defensible, Clan territory is almost completely castellated.”

  Frank nodded, and looked as happy to hear that news as she had felt when she heard it. “And the weekly Clan Days were genius, Cassy. Getting everyone available together at a new Clanhold to build houses, or teach how we farm… It speeds everything up and gives the new holdings exposure to Clan culture, if you can call it that.”

  “I do call it that. It’s important for us to have a unified culture, though it will take time to really grab hold. Still, we’re successful at living and they’re desperate refugees, so they seem highly motivated to imitate what we do. Ethan’s so-called Founder’s Principle at work. It speeds up their assimilation.”

  “Do you trust them?” Frank eyed her, face expressionless.

  Cassy frowned. With a frustrated huff, she said, “I don’t trust them fully, but we’ve been careful so far. There are always some issues when you ask self-important people to give up their authority, but mostly the new Clanholds are policing themselves in that regard.”

  “Kind of your job to govern that mess, isn’t it?” Frank swirled his cup around, though Cassy suspected it was empty.

  “Frank, don’t start that again. I’m the governor of the Confederation, the secretary of agriculture for New America, and a mother. You’re the Clan leader. Clanholds report to you.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “Calm down. I was just kidding.”

  “Well, what’s left of the Gap is now a new Clanhold, so we’re expanding southward again.”

  “Isn’t everyone else expanding, too?”

  “Yeah, including New America. They have spread to cover everything from our east border to the coast, and from Scranton down to just before the outskirts of Philadelphia. Superior cultures absorb the inferior ones.”

  “Still worried we’ll get swallowed up in New America?”

  Cassy nodded. “Yeah. We’re a part of New America now, so we can’t rely on distance to keep our newborn culture separate long enough for it to stand on its own.”

  “Unless it happens to be the stronger of the two.”

  “True. But New America isn’t the only possible way we could get swallowed up. The Mountain still controls a huge swath of the U.S., from Utah to Louisiana, and eventually they’ll spread their own version of culture.”

  “Most of Houle’s control is tenuous at best. I’m more worried about the north Pennsylvania ’vader enclave. They’ve been silent for a year, other than that huge lot of supplies they sent us to help fight off Houle’s troops. We’ll eventually get some blowback from that, you know that, right?”

  Cassy frowned. “It’s been six months. Who’s going to tell Taggart? Besides, it worked. We defeated the Mountain.”

  “Yeah, well, the Pen-York ’vaders are at least as strong as New America.”

  “I guess the only saving grace is that they don’t have anywhere else to expand, so the more we expand, the more we’ll eventually grow larger and stronger than them.”

  “On the downside,” Frank said, “that means they might look to expand in our direction before we’re ready for them.”

  “It seems to me that, so far, they are content to just rebuild in their own territory, ever since their failed invasion of Brickerville.”

  “You don’t really think that was their best effort, do you? That was something weird, something we can’t explain, but it wasn’t an invasion. It was a migration, at worst. We were small so they were dangerous, but those troops were a drop in their bucket.”

  Cassy sighed. It was an old
argument. “Anyway, I can’t wait for elections. Taggart is looking forward to stepping down as president, I know.”

  Frank shrugged. “General Taggart shouldn’t be president anyway. I figure the new Constitution will crystalize that idea, though. We’re pushing hard to make sure there is no election until we all have something ratified. I gave our envoys very specific instructions to stand fast on that issue.”

  Cassy pursed her lips. “Speaking of envoys… I miss those two.”

  “The warrior street girl and the Buddhist chemical engineer immigrant.”

  “Second generation immigrant,” Cassy said. “I could talk about those two all day, but I have to go—I have a meeting with my farming instruction team in a bit.”

  Frank smiled. “I need to meet with the Council anyway, to go over a tribunal. That man who didn’t do his assigned work last week demanded a tribunal instead of accepting ten hours of extra duty.”

  “Dumbass.” Cassy laughed. The Dying Times missed a few who needed culling, she mused. She rose from her seat and bid Frank farewell.

  Heading toward her house, her mind turned to the meeting coming up—dull, but important, like so much of life since the Confederation had defeated General Houle, the so-called Mountain King. At least that asshole wasn’t a threat anymore, since he had lost all his war machine toys last year.

  * * *

  0900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +600

  Ethan wandered through the Clan bunker’s barracks bay. As he passed through, he leaned over Amber and kissed her on the forehead, then continued onward to the expansion chamber. A select, loyal crew had dug it out over the winter, so now the “living room” didn’t contain all his radio and computer equipment, freeing it up for actual living space. Amber had sure appreciated that.

  He entered the new chamber, which had walls and a floor lined with cinder blocks. The ceiling was shored up, reinforced, and strong, but from the inside one only saw the drywall they’d stapled to the joists. He turned on his HAM radio and downloaded a couple of HAMnet files from friends, mostly logic puzzles from other geeks like himself, a few more of whom had made it back online over the winter.