West of all that, it was a different story. The map was outlined in the Empire’s light blue around Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan, Ohio, and western Pennsylvania. In some places they were only 100 miles away from Clanholme. They’d been stopped at Altoona by winter and survivalist groups, and could go no farther through the mountains that lay between the so-called “Empire” and Clanholme. That vast light blue Empire, loosely loyal to General Houle, resembled some perverse imitation of an old Roman Empire client state.
Chicago was only a necropolis now. Nothing good lived there anymore. Detroit was hanging on as a city, but most of its people had migrated south into the Toledo meat grinder. Toledo was as dead as Chicago now, but before it died it had taken most of Detroit’s people with it. Come spring, Detroit would probably get a pretty light blue outline of its own…
Enough. Ethan was just spinning his wheels, doing nothing productive. He went to the terminal and checked for incoming messages. He didn’t expect any, but there was one from Watcher One—the contact who, it turned out, had recruited him to the 20s in the first place, though Ethan (known as Dark Ryder, online) hadn’t known it at the time.
Ethan sent off the coded acknowledgement and decrypted the file. As usual, it was a series of simple text files that used a very old and very effective encryption technique. Once decrypted, the main message could be read:
Attn: Dark Ryder. Op Code 1216B.3 for confirmation. Hey buddy, how’s life at the farm? Got some urgent mission orders for you to send out. I don’t know how you get those to route, but keep it up! Someday you’ll have to tell me which servers you bounce through to get them routed. -W1
Fat chance. Dark Ryder was only needed because he was the only one who could make the communication channels work, from the Mountain out to the militia, survivalist, and rebel groups scattered all over the eastern U.S. Watcher One’s mention of the farm was the 20s’ way of reminding Ethan that they knew where he lived. He needed no reminding. He’d be a good little trained monkey. Or pretend to be, anyway, for the moment.
Before sending out the mission orders, he found the file that would go to Major Taggart, which he recognized by now from the header code. In a sandbox on his computer, in case the file was malicious or tracked, he deciphered it and opened the message. As he read, Ethan let out a low whistle. They were clear orders to go on the offensive against Ree’s New York City positions, and promised heavy drone backup. Other units would go on the offensive hours beforehand, hopefully draining away some of Ree’s increasingly limited forces.
Ethan pursed his lips and scanned the other files’ header codes. This made no sense. All of the other orders were going to units in other regions. They’d have no impact on an engagement in NYC. And if he hadn’t figured out how to decode Taggart’s orders, he’d have never known. He still had to send the orders out, as the 20s would know if he didn’t, but they didn’t know that he still had backdoors to a couple of old satellites. He’d send his own little note to Taggart, separately from the orders.
* * *
Taggart sat behind his desk and tried to ignore the stark concrete walls of the tunnel. He didn’t envy the guys who had to carry this desk down here. A small pile of cotton balls lay on the desk, grimy with the face paint he’d just finished removing as best he could.
Private Eagan sat in the chair opposite, but had been able to get his Army Makeup off sooner, somehow. “You look beautiful, sir.”
“Cram it, Eagan. When are you going to put on your damn Staff Sergeant stripes? You’re out of uniform. I ordered you to put them on before we went on this raid.”
“You were serious about that, sir?” Eagan wore an infuriating smirk.
“Shitbird, you know damn well… Never mind. How are the wounded?”
“All accounted for. Two died during evac, four crit, three ready for duty in a couple days.”
Taggart nodded. Eagan may have been insubordinate and infuriating, but he was like a kid brother to Taggart—his Brother From Another Mother—and he was damn good at being a soldier. As Taggart’s role in the war grew, Eagan had shown himself to be surprisingly effective in the role of staff sergeant as well, though getting him to put on the frikkin’ insignia was a battle.
“Not bad. But see if we can push their recovery a bit. This isn’t the Holiday Inn, and we aren’t in the rear with the gear.”
“Yes, sir. Taggart’s Titans are all combat, no play. Hooah!”
“I hate that name.”
“True, but we don’t have a unit designation, so what do you care? The men like it. Sir.”
“The troops. Not men. We’re equal opportunity, here.”
“They look like men.”
“For fuck’s sake, Eagan.”
“Sorry, sir. But the women appreciate the camaraderie, even if it is sexist. We still call coffee November Juliet—racist—so why does it matter if the women fit in how they can?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty racist. But the troops joke like that.”
“And so do the women troops. Sir.”
“Anyway,” Taggart said as he opened his desk drawer, “you want some of the good stuff?” Taggart pulled out an almost-full bottle of Wild Turkey, his favorite brand, along with two shot glasses.
“Don’t mind if I do. So the whispernet says we got new orders in while we were out fighting for mom and apple pie. Care to share?”
Taggart poured two shots and drank them one after the other while keeping his eyes on Eagan. It was fun messing with the boy sometimes. The man, rather. Then Taggart poured two more and slid one glass across the desk. Eagan kicked it back like he was in college, and set it on the table.
“Damn good rotgut.”
“I really hate you, Eagan. You know damn well Turkey is the best mass-produced whiskey in the world.”
“I believe you, sir. Totally.” Eagan’s face was completely straight, no hint of sarcasm.
“I haven’t had a chance to read it. Let’s see what it says.” Taggart pulled the two slips of paper out, and frowned. “Two orders? That’s unusual. I’ll read ’em by timestamp. The first one has some local intel and some orders. It says there’s rumors that Spyder is still running around causing gangbanging mayhem.”
“Just a rumor, sir. After what we started between him and his master, Ree, if it wasn’t Spyder we hanged then the real one still has got to be dead. I know his henchman is.”
“Maybe. The orders are more interesting. It says to launch an all-out at 0400 hours in two days.”
“That would be suicide, sir, and suicide is a sin. Pass.”
“We don’t get to pass on orders from the General, Eagan. Normally you’d be right, but this says we’re getting all kinds of backup. Dozens of those cool drones with the little gatling guns, a dozen delivering ammo, water, whatever, and militia all over the region should even now be causing lots of mayhem. It will draw Ree’s troops thin. Wouldn’t it be nice to push that smug little man back into the sea?”
Eagan didn’t answer right away and had a faraway look as he thought through the ramifications. Not that Eagan knew the word “ramifications.”
“Alright… Sir, I think it could work if we’re lucky, based on our own intel on the OpFor. We have a pretty good idea how many of them are there.”
“And it’s a lot more than we have, Eagan. We’re down to half-strength from our all-time high right after Operation Backdraft.”
“We still have about three companies’ worth of troops. Even if the Org Chart says we’re a regiment. Although they’re scattered all over the city. Organizing something that big in two days seems rough, sir. Let me think on it after getting some grub and a half hour of sack time.”
“Very well. Let’s see what the supp—” Taggart paused as his eyes caught the different timestamp and different source IP. That was his backchannel to the civvy spy, Dark Ryder, whom he trusted very little, but infinitely more than the 20s and the General.
“Sir?”
“This is secret squirrel, give me a momen
t…” Taggart skimmed the orders, which weren’t orders at all, and clucked his tongue. “It’s from ‘our special friend.’ He’s telling us the orders we received aren’t square. No drones, and definitely no rebels bleeding off Ree’s troops. That explains the radio silence, come to think of it.”
“Damn, sir. Should I tell the men anything?”
“No, not yet. I need to mull this over before we issue orders.”
“Yes, sir. Clock’s ticking, though. They’ll expect to see us in action, and I imagine they got those satellites watching.”
Taggart dismissed Eagan with a wave and stared at the two transmissions. With a sigh, he put the whiskey back in the drawer. He needed a clear head. He hoped this Dark Ryder was wrong, whoever he really was. For every raid Taggart launched, they hit back, and there were a lot more of them. Taggart’s people were on the ropes out there, and unless he could push them back into the sea he wasn’t sure he could hold out until spring. “But thanks for the heads-up,” he said to himself.
- 3 -
0900 HOURS - ZERO DAY +144
CASSY, LIKE MOST of the Clanners, was mostly trying to stay warm. There wasn’t much actual work to do around the farm this time of year, other than feeding the livestock and occasionally fixing fences and maintaining buildings, so most people took up a craft to avoid going stir crazy, and to take advantage of the unaccustomed brief periods of free time. Grandma Mandy and some of the other women quilted. Frank whittled bowls, platters, and other useful little items. Michael split wood or busied his day checking the traps and riding fences.
Cassy stayed in the outdoor kitchen most of her free time, canning everything she could get her hands on. She kept several rocket stoves going, which vented into pipes under the kitchen to warm it before going up a chimney pipe. Virtually no smoke escaped, everything having been burned up efficiently by the rocket stoves before reaching the air flow exhaust vent, but the underground pipes radiated a pleasing warmth once the stoves had been going for a while. They’d tarped up the sides to keep out the wind and keep the heat in better, but the tarps also made it a dark place to work.
That day she was packing vegetables into mason jars, then putting them into the pressure cooker—a homemade affair that Dean Jepson had rigged up out of a 55-gallon barrel plus several pressure valves salvaged from dented pressure cookers they’d found throughout the region during scouting trips. The contraption would pressure cook a couple dozen quart-size jars at once, saving both time and wood fuel, and the canned food would then keep for years as long as the lids didn’t malfunction or get opened along the way. Cassy added melted beeswax to the rims of the jars to improve the seals, a trick she’d learned from her mother but had no way of knowing if it worked better.
She heard a horn blast—the guard in the tower had seen something. She waited, tense, hand on her ever-present rifle, for a second blast signaling an attack or raid. No second blast came, and Cassy relaxed. A visitor, then. She wiped her hands clean on her apron and put on her coat and gloves before heading out into the cold morning air to see who had arrived. Several other people were coming out of the homes in the Complex looking curious, as well. Visitors made rare, welcome breaks from the monotony of winter life at the farm.
Scanning the area, she saw the visitor approaching. In a pickup truck! A working vehicle, a black, late-model Ford F250 and not some pre-fuel injection muscle car. It belched black smoke from an odd contraption in the truck bed and pulled a trailer made from the severed bed of another truck.
Michael came up from behind and stood beside her. Cassy didn’t hear anyone talking—everyone was frozen, staring in awe, probably trying to figure out how that truck could move.
The truck came to a stop a safe distance away, the doors opened, and out stepped two men. A burly white guy emerged from the passenger side, moving with the same fluidity that Michael always had. He carried a shotgun, the barrel of which he rested on his shoulder. So he’d be the bodyguard, she surmised. From the driver’s side stepped a wiry, short black man with a pistol holstered at his side and a smile stretching across his face. He kept his hands well away from the pistol and walked toward the knot of Clanners. The bodyguard remained by the truck, alert and wary.
As the wiry man approached, Cassy heard muttered conversations from the people assembling behind her, which only made the man smile more. “Hello, Clanholme,” he said. He walked up to Cassy and held out his hand. “You must be the Clan’s leader that everyone talks so much about. Cassy, right?”
Cassy shook his hand, but her mind raced. “How do you know us, mister? Or my name?”
The man shrugged. “Everyone in these parts is talking about the Clan and its leader. They say you killed off the Red Locusts and stopped an army of ranchers who were plundering everyone around these parts. To hear the story, I’d think you did all that by yourself, with nothing more than a knife.”
Of course. Tales would get around, and grow in the telling. Damn. That would mean anyone and everyone out there could know about the Clan and where its home was. “I’m sure they exaggerate—”
Michael interrupted her. “Cassy’s being modest. All that is true, except the part about doing it alone. The Clan sticks together. But she did kill both the leader of the rancher army and his monster of a sidekick by herself, with a knife. Where’d you hear all that?”
Cassy resisted the urge to correct him. Peter had killed more Red Locusts than the Clan, and she’d had help killing Peter during the uprising, even if she’d supplied the final cut, and she’d used Jim’s own pistol to kill him. Whatever Michael’s reason for stretching the truth, it must be good.
“Yeah, well. I still have a few reminders of that battle,” Cassy said and pointed to the scars on her face.
The man chuckled. “Still impressive, Cassy. I’m Terry, by the way, and the big musclehead there is Lump. I figured I might have something you want in my trailer, and maybe you have something I can use or that I can trade off later. Thought I’d see if we could talk about it and run a swap. Do some business.”
Cassy raised an eyebrow. This was startling news. The guy was a wandering trader? That meant the wilds between settlements weren’t as dangerous as they used to be. Of course, winter might have a lot to do with that. Still…
“Depends on what you have, Terry,” Cassy said. “You didn’t answer my friend’s question, though. Where did you hear about us? I didn’t know there were many who knew us.”
Terry nodded, eyes smiling. “Heard about you everywhere I’ve been, really. Everything from the towns—you know, Manheim, Lititz, even the Adamstown Confederation—down to even a couple of the small settlements like you guys. Dozens of those around here, lately. Even as far north as the folks at the Falconry, which used to be called Cornwall. The survivors there renamed it and you’re a legend to them.”
That got Cassy’s attention. More small settlements? Dozens? She’d have Frank and Jaz pump the two visitors for more information about those while this guy was here. “So how is it that you got an almost-new pickup to run, Terry? You some kind of genius?”
Terry grinned again. “Yeah, it’s pretty awesome, right? I traded two hundred pounds of salt for it at the Falconry. They got a guy who makes that gizmo in the truck bed. It’s called a ‘gasifier,’ if you can believe it. Runs on wood, not gas, and I get about five hundred miles off the wood I can fit in the truck bed. Something about piping ‘woodgas’ into the engine’s air intake. If you’re interested, I could probably bring you one next time I come through, in the spring. I had to modify the engine and other things a bit to bypass the old, fried electronics but power was the hard part. The gasifier solves that.”
Cassy saw that Terry kept hawk-like eyes on her as he said that, no doubt gauging her reaction. He was a merchant, after all. “That’d be something we could use, for sure. But you said you knew where to get salt?” His mention of salt had piqued her interest. Amazingly, people needed salt to live. With the sodium-infused garbage that passed for food before the
EMPs, people got more than they needed. Not anymore.
Terry nodded and said, “Depends. It’s a long run to get it, and everyone around here wants it. But you seem like nice folks, and it couldn’t hurt to have a living legend owe me a favor. Am I right, or am I right?”
Cassy knew this game. She’d been in marketing before the lights went out. She shrugged and said, “I don’t know about owing anyone. The Clan pays its way. I’m sure we have something you can trade out for a profit. We already have salt from all the salvaging we’ve done, of course, but I’d love a bigger stockpile. Peace of mind, you know? We got some nice bolt-action rifles to spare.”
“What kind?” Terry asked.
“Remington Seven Hundreds. How many do you think it would take to make it worth your while to stop here first, on your way back next spring?”
Terry looked like he was lost in thought for a moment, right hand stroking his scruffy beard. “Well… I see your guard up there has an M4. Is it semi-auto or the real deal?”
She fought the urge to grin. Those, they had plenty of. It would be better to lose the hunting rifles, but they’d get a better deal if he wanted M4s instead. “Auto. Well, burst fire. Oh, but those are so hard to come by. I could spare one for say, three hundred pounds of salt. I’d rather trade for four of the Remingtons, though.” It wouldn’t take long for the word to spread that the Clan had firepower to spare, which could only make them safer.
For a moment, Terry’s eyes widened but he covered it with a nonchalant shrug. “Eh. I could probably do two hundred pounds, for two of the M4s. But that’s almost break-even for me.”
Cassy put on her sad face and shook her head slowly. “Wow, that’s a lot to ask for salt. I couldn’t possibly make that trade. My own people would string me up if I did that. Maybe I could spare two, but it’d take three hundred pounds of salt to keep the Clan happy.”
Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft Page 4
