Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft
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EMP Backdraft
Dark New World: Book Four
by
JJ Holden
&
Henry Gene Foster
The Clan is reborn amidst pain and blood, scarred but stronger than ever, only to find that new threats face them from all sides. New friends also make their appearance, however, and Cassy must forge these into the beginnings of a greater alliance to have any chance of keeping their newfound freedom. The Clan must hurry because the looming Empire to the west may well be the least of their worries as the Dying Time continues all around them—America's invaders have made their way inland, threatening Cassy's alliance before it even really begins…
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 fourth 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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1400 HOURS - ZERO DAY +142
BRIANNA SHORES SAT beside her friend Kaitlyn at one of the small fire pits. The fires were for the few Clanners who didn’t yet have a shelter and had to camp out in what remained of Tent City. Her mother, Cassy, insisted on having small fires scattered throughout, instead of one big fire, saying that it was warmer than a bonfire and spread the heat better. She’d had been right.
Kaitlyn said, “I feel bad there’s still some people in Tent City. I can’t wait until the last house gets finished so they can move in.”
Brianna glanced toward the compound that had sprung up in only weeks, where there’d been only Mom’s house and an unfinished house when they had finally driven out the invaders-turned-looters from White Stag Farm. They’d been under the control of a psychotic named Peter, who saw himself as a new Moses and promised to save his White Stag followers from starvation. It had turned very ugly. Eventually Cassy killed him and his main henchman, Jim.
Now Clanholme had five new houses, all made of earthbags, with earthbag walls stretching between them. Arranged in a semicircle with the wall facing the exposed “Jungle” to the north and the opening facing the compound, it made for better defenses. Two spots remained without houses, but they’d be done soon—there just wasn’t much else to do around the farm in the onset of winter, and the construction work kept people warm.
Brianna poked the fire with a stick and gazed into the short flames. “Yeah, I can’t wait either, but it’s better than being out there,” she said, nodding her head to the west border of Clanholme. “But you know what I feel really bad about? No Christmas gifts.”
Kaitlyn nodded super-fast. “Why did your mom say no gifts this year? It’s stupid.”
Brianna proceeded to quote her mother in a mocking tone, “ ‘Just being alive and here with good people and food to eat is enough,’ blah blah blah. I still want Christmas.”
Kaitlyn huffed. “It’s still stupid. We should at least give a gift to Grandma Mandy. She’s sick all the time, but she’s up every day helping all the smaller kids, making sure we have snacks, playing games. All the other adults are busy running things, but not Grandma Mandy.”
Brianna laughed. Mandy was her real grandma, after all, but it was pretty cool that all the kids and even most of the grownups also called her Grandma Mandy. “Yeah, she totally deserves a present. Something to cheer her up and let her know we appreciate all the things she does for us. But there’s no stores, we’d have to make it.”
Kaitlyn’s eyes got wide. “Really? We could do that? Would we get in trouble by your mom? She said no presents. I heard her.”
Kaitlyn clearly didn’t want to get in trouble. Brianna almost laughed at the conflicted look painted on Kaitlyn’s face. “I think Grandma would give her a lecture on giving, if my mom got mad. Any ideas on what to make? Christmas is tomorrow. That’s not much time.”
“Mom used to make circles out of branches to put on doors. She’d decorate them with stuff and give them out for Christmas to the neighbors. They’re real pretty.”
“They’re called wreaths.” Brianna looked into the fire again. That could be a great idea, actually. Easy to make. And over the last month the Scouts had collected a dragon’s hoard of Christmas decorations. They’d used most of it at the complex, but a lot of it was still in boxes. There’d be no problem finding stuff to decorate the wreath. “It’s a great idea, Kaitlyn,” Brianna said with a grin. “But there’s no pine trees in the food forests. We’d have to go north to that big clump of trees. It’d only take us a couple hours, I bet. We’d be back by dinner and no one would know.”
Brianna saw that Kaitlyn was bouncing up and down with eagerness, and she smiled again. Kaitlyn was younger, but had become her best friend among all the Clan kids since her father had died on the trek to find Clanholme. “Okay, let’s go while we have time,” Brianna said. “No one will even know we’re gone. I bet I can get Aidan to distract the tower guard, and he’ll keep quiet for me.”
Aidan, always one for mischief, readily agreed. Brianna and Kaitlyn then waited for the right moment, and once Aidan had the guard distracted, the two girls scrambled to their feet and ran toward the food forest, laughing and racing. Once they got to the food forest—the areas on the south and north edges of the farm was full of trees that grew a huge variety of fruits and nuts, with an understory of shrubs and other useful plants—they slowed to a walk, the better to avoid the traps the Clan had scattered everywhere. Everyone in the Clan knew where they were, but they could be hard to see if you weren’t looking for them. Soon they came out on the other side and paused to gaze at the beautiful grassy flatlands out there, covered by a thin dusting of snow.
An hour later, they arrived at the copse of pine trees. Everyone in the Clan knew about it, of course. It was where Choony, a courageous young Korean-American pacifist they had all come to respect, had hidden when he first escaped the White Stag invasion. Brianna shuddered at the memory of that horrible time and shoved away her rising thoughts of all the people who died under Peter’s rule. This Christmas there truly was something to be thankful for—being alive, and being free. That, and the few flakes of snow falling lazily, promising a white Christmas overnight.
A glimpse of movement out across the snow caused her to whip her head around, peering intently. Kaitlyn saw it and looked as well, trying to find what had caught her friend’s attention.
“Are those deer?” Kaitlyn asked. Brianna thought her voice sounded as tense as she herself felt.
“Too small. What are… Kaitlyn. Those are dogs.” For a moment she was excited at the thought, but then remembered what the scouts had reported. Packs of feral dogs now ran around, they said, and could be dangerous if they were hungry, or if there were enough of them.
Images flashed through Brianna’s mind, pictures of what Cassy would do in this situation. She’d take charge and do something rather than nothing, all while keeping people from panicking. “Kaitlyn, get behind me and stay there. I’m bigger than you. We’re going to back up to the trees so they can’t surround us, but do not run. If you run, they’ll be on us fast. Let’s try to get to that big branch over there…”
* * *
Nestor Lostracco plodded over the light snow dusting, half aware of his surroundings. He was too busy thinking over the past few months of his life to focus on anything else. He wasn’t even really sure what direction he was going—only that he was moving away from the town of Waymart as fast as he could. They’d done fine after the power grid went down, after residents strung up the local government figures for getting all dictatorial, until the bicycle hordes from Scranton made an organized push to confiscate the supplies of everyone within 50 miles. There were a couple skirmishes with Scranton’s “citizen deputies,” and that’s when Nestor realized it was time to bug out.
A good thing he’d left, too, because he later heard that Scranton had simply rolled in with hundreds of people and took what they wanted, killing everyone who resisted—which had been just about everyone in Waymart. Nestor was thankful that he was free and alive, even if the rest of Waymart wasn’t. Good enough for him, but sad.
And since leaving two weeks and over one hundred long miles ago, he’d been wandering southwest and dodging militias and invaders alike, surviving off what he could scrounge up. He’d left Waymart with a rifle, but ditched it when he ran out of bullets. It was heavy and useless, at that point. He had since scrounged a pump-action pellet rifle along the way. The box had said “1,400 FPS,” which he assumed was a lot, but it used .22 ammunition. Not bullets, like he’d expected, but good-sized pellets that still weighed nearly nothing and yet made short work of even some bigger things like raccoons. Maybe it would even work on people, if needed, but he hadn’t yet had to try that out.
Nestor had more pressing matters, he realized. Flurries of snow had again begun to fall, but this time the wind had changed direction and the air had that smell, that winter smell of a bad northern storm coming. It wasn’t safe to forage and hunt during a storm even if the animals wouldn’t all be hiding, and then the fresh snow would leave a dead giveaway of his passing. No, he’d have to find shelter, and soon, or spend the next week either starving or risk going out and drawing attention to himself.
A blur of movement caught his eye and he whipped his head toward it, trying to identify the source. It took only a moment to realize it was a pack of dogs. Feral dogs, and they had surrounded some prey or another. At least he wasn’t their prey… Damn, yet another danger to look for. He wondered what a pack of dogs was doing so far from any city, but of course, it had been months since the power went out. Long enough for fleet-footed canines to get anywhere they damn well wanted to go. Nestor felt sorry for whatever critter they were about to eat, shaking his head in mute acceptance of the inevitability of what would happen over there, and turned to continue his journey to nowhere in particular.
A small girl’s shrill scream pierced the air, bouncing off the trees. That was no mere animal being hunted. Nestor froze, unsure what to do. His mind raced, trying to convince him he should leave well enough alone—it wasn’t his problem. Then for a second he thought it could have been his own daughter out there, so much did it sound like her at the end, just before her final moments. But of course it couldn’t be his princess. He shook away the grim memory.
There was simply no way he could just walk away and let some child get eaten alive. No one deserved that. Death should come by accident, or peacefully in one’s sleep, or even quickly at the intimate hands of one’s own killer—not slowly at the fangs of Man’s Best Friend.
He unslung his air rifle and pumped it three times in as many heartbeats, then scanned through the scope to find the girl in danger. Damn, there were two girls. The older one stood between five feral dogs and a younger girl curled up against a tree in fright. The brave one held a branch and used it as a spear against the dogs as they crept toward her. Nestor began to run toward them, keeping the air rifle up and aimed as he rapidly closed ground on the girls.
Each of the girl’s thrusts caused one dog to leap away, but then the other four would inch in closer. Rinse and repeat. They were gaining ground, albeit slowly. She could never keep that up long enough to save them, but thankfully those weren’t wolves. If they’d been proper wolves, the feasting would already have begun.
Nestor slowed to walking and squeezed the trigger. A puff of noise, and then the dog closest to the girl yelped and limped a few paces out of the girl’s reach. As he kept walking, another puff of noise and the second dog squealed; it tried to use its front paws to drag itself away, rear legs collapsed and useless. Spinal shot!
As he pumped the rifle again he saw the younger girl now looked around in confusion, and the older girl screamed and swung her branch like a baseball bat. It connected with the third dog’s ribs and sent it skittering across the ground, and when it tried to get up it only limped once and then collapsed, whimpering.
The two remaining dogs barked at Nestor then fled, leaving their injured packmates behind. He wasted little time putting the wounded ones out of their misery, while black clouds rolled angrily toward them. After having to kill those dogs, the churning clouds fit his mood perfectly.
He nodded to the girls. They huddled together, pale and shaking, with the older one shielding the younger with her body. He could hear the little one sobbing in fear.
“Are you all right?” Nestor asked.
The girls remained in a fearful stance.
Nestor surveyed the downed dogs, his expression as overcast as his mood. The girls obviously did not find it reassuring, so then he looked at them directly and his frown disappeared. He smiled and raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Do you live close to here? I want to make sure you get home before the storm hits.”
* * *
Cassy, founder and leader of the Clan, knocked on the third door. In the distance she heard Amber shouting the girls’ names to the north. Tiffany, Michael’s wife, was winding her way all through the Jungle, or what was left of it as winter began. Beyond, in the southern food forest Ethan would be doing the same as Kaitlyn’s mom, Amber, though Cassy couldn’t hear him shouting from so far away.
The door opened. A brief, frantic conversation, which was as fruitless as all the others—no one there had seen her daughter or Kaitlyn since lunch. On to the next door. But as she drew back her fist to pound on the door, she heard a wild shout from the guard tower. Cassy sprinted toward it, praying the guard saw her daughter and not yet another refugee.
The guard pointed south toward the food forest. In the summer, it wasn’t possible to see it through the Jungle’s foliage, but at this time of year she could make it out well enough. She put her hand up to her brow to block the setting sun from her eyes and searched in a near panic. There! Three figures emerging from the food forest. The girls, and Ethan—no, wait. That wasn’t Ethan. She felt a perfectly rational fear jolt through her. If the girls had been alone, they could be being held hostage for food or supplies… Cassy drew her pistol from behind her waist, racked it to load a round into the chamber, and sprinted south. If anything happened to the girls…
It took her only two minutes to run the whole distance, pistol in hand. Breathing deeply she came to a halt some twenty feet away, just at the distance a person could get to her with a knife in the time it would take her to bring up her pistol and fire. Relief flooded her as she saw that his rifle was slung over his back and that Ethan was creeping up toward the stranger from behind.
Brianna sho
uted, “Wait, Mom, he saved us!” She took a step toward the man, which would complicate Cassy’s shot if this went down that way.
“Get out of the way, Bri, until I figure this out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. God, Mom, we were in trouble and he helped us. Why are you always so paranoid? He’s just one guy anyway.”
Damn teenager. Brianna seemed to always feel like she knew everything there was to know about any topic, apparently including strangers with guns. “Yeah? And why did he help you?” Cassy’s gaze never left the man. “What do you want, mister? Step away from the girls.”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but jumped when the clack of Ethan racking his pistol rang out from behind him. His eyes went wide for a moment. “Holy crap. Please don’t kill me! I’m just a refugee, and these kids needed help. Was I supposed to just leave two kids? I had a daughter the little one’s age. All I did was help.”
The man stepped away from Brianna and Kaitlyn like they were pit vipers. He looked properly afraid. That was good.
Behind her, Cassy heard the clamor of Clanners approaching as well, reacting to the guard’s alarm too. These days the whole Clan could turn out armed in the middle of the night from a dead sleep in two or three minutes, thanks to their fear of being surprised by another Peter. She suppressed a shudder at the memory of that sociopath dictator’s brief time as slavemaster over the Clan.
The tower guard was among the approaching Clanners. Cassy didn’t take her eyes off the stranger, but shouted, “Whoever the hell was on tower duty is going to have hell to pay for letting these girls go. They could have been killed, dammit. We can’t take these kinds of chances anymore!”
Brianna stepped forward, posture defiant but lower lip quivering, and said, “Mom, it’s not his fault. I had Aidan distract him. He can’t really ignore the Clan leader’s son, can he? This is my fault, not his.”