Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft

by Henry G. Foster

  Michael continued, “You must remember to fire and move. Don’t just stand there shooting. It’s dark out and your muzzle flashes will give these assholes a target, so once you shoot, whether you hit anything or not, quickly move at least ten feet away—and for God’s sake, not right to where your teammate was standing. Clear a camp before moving on if you can, but if they get their shit together before you kill them all then move along to the next—strike and fade, then strike and fade. We’re greatly outnumbered so do not slug it out.” He looked around at each group, to drive in that point, before he continued.

  “Next up—when you hear the whistles coming from behind you, that means it’s time to fall back to your individual retreat rally points, which we’ll give out before we attack. Any questions, yet?”

  No one spoke up, so Michael began to call out the units and assign their first targets and tell which fallback point they were to rally at. Once rallied, they would all hightail it into the woods north of them and get the hell out of the area. Brickerville’s available troops would meet up with two of the Marines somewhere else and then find their way to the unit, assuming anyone lived through this.

  Nestor nodded, but had other thoughts running through his mind. It would be a shame to die now, after surviving all this time despite the Other always messing up a good thing and all the bad things that had happened to him since the EMPs.

  Finally almost warm again, Nestor and his two teammates double-checked their weapons and ammunition, then moved to their insertion point. Nestor had no doubt it would be impossible to miss the go signal, not with the Liz Town toys starting the party. They settled in and waited, and nervous sweat dampened his forehead. He just wasn’t wired for combat…

  Boom… Nestor felt the thump in his chest a split-second before he saw the cause. Along hundreds of yards on the front “line,” such as it was, brilliant flares of light lit up the night. At this distance the brightest points were small but the tiny points still burnt into his eyes, leaving a ghostlike after-effect. A dozen screams from the front line encampments announced that the shrappenators had done their evil work quite well, and in an instant more screams from deeper within the enemy-held territory surprised him. Nestor took a moment to realize that all that shrapnel didn’t just stop just because it missed the nearest target.

  He wished the Marines were there with him, but the thought was fleeting. Then he was moving, rushing forward in a low crouch with his rifle welded to his shoulder, eyes sweeping in the dark looking for prey. His two companions were with him, and all along the line a dozen other teams like his would be rushing into the night with killing on their minds.

  He felt frightened, but not like he thought he would—nothing like the terror that crippled him when he hid in the toolshed during the Adamstown raid… No, now he felt like… a wolf among sheep. That was how it felt. The feeling confused him but he shoved it away.

  Move forward… Well duh, he was already doing that. His eyes swept back and forth, held wide open to try to gather as much light as they could, looking for a sheep, a human sheep. Ahead of him, the masses of thick smoke, visible for being blacker than the black of night, were moving in the same direction at about the same speed he and the others were moving. In a moment they were washing over the ’vader tents, preventing the enemy from seeing the wolves rushing toward them.

  He heard a sick noise from about twenty feet ahead, and as the smoke wall continued to advance it left behind three figures—two men on their hands and knees, and what was left of a woman. Her entire head down to her left arm were just gone, clearly having taken a direct hit from someone’s shrappenator. The two men were coughing, but it was a wet, bubbling noise like nothing he’d heard before—it must have been the gas attack that had done that…

  Good. Fuck them up, now. What the hell? Where had the voice come from? Well, it was right. Nestor fired one round into the first man’s head and he collapsed. The Indian woman beside him took out the other. They ran into the encampment and didn’t slow down. Another opportunity would be revealed ahead somewhere.

  More sheep to hunt. Nestor’s head snapped left, then right, looking for whoever was talking, but there was no one. He kept running, staying near his partners, and the cloud drifted ahead of them. It’s always darkest before I fucking kill you…

  “Shut up!” rasped Nestor without thinking. He glanced at the Indian woman, who was closest to him, but she hadn’t seemed to notice. Nice ass on that one.

  Damn that voice. The very tone of it, ringing in his head, made him shiver with contempt. It was evil, he could hear the devil in it, and if he saw who said it, he’d gladly kill them. No one who sounded like that could deserve to live.

  There! Left! Party time, man.

  Nestor looked and barely made out the brief glint of something metal. He swung his barrel that way and double-tapped—a cry of pain with the first shot, cut short with the second. The Lizzie on his other side firing, his shots dropping another ’vader emerging from their tent.

  Where’s the third little piggy? No time to deal with that. Nestor wouldn’t let himself be distracted.

  Movement just ahead to the left caught his eye, but his rifle was pointed to his right. In the almost non-existent night light he saw a man rushing at him. He had a long beard and a knife, and Nestor didn’t notice anything about him but those two things. A wave of panic-driven pins and needles swept from the base of his spine to his scalp—there was no way he would get a shot off before the man got to him.

  As Nestor opened his mouth to scream, a pure reflex, the scene abruptly slid to the right and back, like a camera shutter snapping open then closed. Suddenly, everything was covered in a sheen of blood. The man, his knife, the ground, the faint moon that hung in the sky behind him—all bloody.

  The next thing he noticed was his body moving on its own, a marionette with strings held by someone else. Instead of turning as he had tried to do, he ran straight at the invader. As the man tried to slash at him, Nestor did something he hadn’t even considered. He used his right hand to thrust the butt of his rifle forward while his left hand moved the barrel up and back, and the rifle butt thrust forward like a piston, smashing into the Arab man’s face with a sickening crunch.

  The Arab had momentum, but the rifle butt stopped him, so his feet flew out from under him and he landed with an audible thump onto the ground.

  Now kill him, pansy-ass.

  Nestor’s vision did the funny camera-shutter thing again, and the haze of blood over everything vanished. He realized he could control his movements again. The Arab’s right hand thrashed around seeking the knife he’d dropped, but Nestor wasn’t about to let him find it.

  Two shots, just to make sure.

  Nestor fired off two rounds, ending the threat. “Not because you told me to.”

  Twenty-six left in the mag. Don’t just stand there stroking your ego, fucking move it.

  Nestor heard the sound of bullets whizzing by, with the bang of being fired coming right behind them. He ducked and ran, heading north to put a low, rolling hill between him and the shooter. On the other side he found an already-cleared camp, five bodies sprawled out, so he kept running. He angled slightly easterly to head deeper into ’vader territory.

  Keeping the hill on his right, he rounded it and ahead of him sat a large wagon and three small tents. All was silent, and no invaders were around—must be one of the civilian wagons. He came to a stop, listened for a moment, then crept into the camp, keeping his rifle ready.

  Maybe we can find another actor for our show. Check the tents. Better yet, an actress.

  Nestor checked the smallest tent, but it was empty. Likewise with the 3-person dome tent. That left only a 5-person tent, and the door flap was closed.

  If you just stick your head in there, you’ll be the actor. Don’t be stupid.

  “I wasn’t,” Nestor muttered. He circled the tent, considering whether to just tell anyone inside to come out, but that probably wouldn’t work. Civilians inside w
ouldn’t answer, and ’vaders would shoot at his voice—not that they’d be hiding in a tent anyway, but you never knew.

  Click, the camera shutter again, and the scene looked like something from a horror movie. Blood drenched everything. Damn the Other! Nestor felt something pushing at the edges of his mind, gently at first but then with greater force. He shook from the effort of keeping the Other at bay, but it kept whispering in his mind to let go, let him handle it… Which was tempting…

  The instant he thought it, he felt a whoosh in his mind, and knew he’d just lost the battle. Nestor was again a passenger in his own body with the Other at the wheel. To the Other, Nestor thought, Why do I know you’re here now? Before, your time was just a bunch of blank spots in my memory.

  Nestor watched in horror as the Other raised the rifle and fired into the tent with one smooth motion, and there was a scream from inside. Keeping the rifle to his shoulder, the Other slid to the right, toward the door, probably in case they shot back…

  “Come out now or I burn you alive in there. Get the fuck out. Five… Four…”

  From inside the tent came a woman’s sob, and a man said, “Wait! We’re coming out, I swear.” The voice was perfect regional American English.

  The Other backed up but his aim never wavered. “Three.” Obviously he wasn’t going to give the occupants time to think of something stupid to try, Nestor noted.

  The zipper rose and the flaps opened. With their hands up came out three women and a man—inside was the corpse of another man, blood on his chest. The four survivors filed out and looked scared. They were dirty and bruised. One of the women had a black eye, and another had a split lip, obviously where someone had struck her hard.

  Of course they’re scared, Nestor thought to the Other. They have to be slaves. Free them.

  “Shut up.”

  The American man, hands up, drained of color. “I didn’t say anything, I swear,” he said, voice cracking with fear.

  Nestor realized the Other was about to shoot the man and thrashed out, trying to regain control of his own body. The Other abruptly froze, and for a second their body shook as he resisted Nestor.

  Not going… to let you… do this!

  Click-click. The camera shutter snapped again, and Nestor found himself once again in control of his body while the Other howled in rage in his mind, practically drowning out the noise of everything going on around him, but a second later he quieted.

  You gotta sleep sometime, asshole.

  Nestor ignored the voice. “Who are you people and why are you here with them?”

  One of the women dropped to her knees and put her face into her hands. Sobbing, she said, “They caught us outside Adamstown. Those… bastards, they use us for their… For their entertainment. And to carry their stuff. We’re captives. For the love of God, don’t kill us, please. We’ll help you!”

  Nestor watched them all closely, but they made no hostile moves. They were frozen like statues, no doubt eager to hear whether they’d live or die.

  “Damn. If I leave you here, you’re going to get yourselves killed. The ’vaders will think you’re collaborators, or a risk at the very least. Grab your gear and let’s get the hell out of here. I know a safe place.”

  Nestor paused, but they didn’t move. “Did I stutter? Freakin’ move it! We have to get out of here. Their whole damn army is coming this way.” That was, after all, the entire reason for this raid, but they’d shoot the hell out of any Americans they saw.

  “To the right… that’s it. Now forward. See those trees way out there north of us? Head there. If you try anything or startle me, I apologize now for what I’ll do to you then. Understand?”

  The people muttered agreements, and moved out. Nestor told them to move faster, and they did. He trailed some twenty yards behind, a safe distance if one turned on him. They hadn’t carried anything with them except for one backpack, which the man wore, so they wouldn’t have a problem keeping that pace until they reached relative safety.

  But what the heck would he do with them? They were kind of his responsibility now.

  Kill them and get back to the script, you diva.

  “Shut up. You’re not welcome here.” The Other was the cause of all his pain, the reason people always turned against him throughout his whole life. The reason he’d been locked up in that big building for years over a crime he didn’t commit—because he had. It just hadn’t been him doing it.

  Now that he knew the Other was there, maybe it could be useful. Somehow he had gained an upper hand over the Other. But the Other was better suited much of the time, here in this “dark new world,” as Cassy put it. Could he ever go back to the Clan, knowing what he now knew? The Other could escape at any moment, and what would happen then? The Clanners were good people and didn’t deserve to have a time bomb among them. And Cassy would want to help, but would she? She’d either let him stay, which would be moral but foolish, or she’d kill him to protect the Clan. That’d be the smart move, as far as Nestor was concerned. Maybe it was time for a new plan.

  - 16 -

  1145 HOURS - ZERO DAY +163

  LTC TAGGART WIPED some of the grime off his face with his sleeve and stretched his back. Eagan was going from body to body, finishing off any who survived. They’d bury or burn the bodies later, to help control the battlefield stench. He hadn’t expected to get hit by ’vaders here in his field HQ, and it had been a bloody affair. Of the platoon with him, most of whom were used as runners to bring orders to the units down below during the battle, maybe twenty still lived. That was bad, but finally they’d taken out almost every one of the attackers, some forty of the bastards.

  “Eagan, you shitbird, stop slacking and get on that radio. We got privates for that.”

  “I am a private, Sir, Sergeant Lieutenant Colonel General, Sir.”

  Taggart let the wiseass remark go. Eagan was his staff sergeant whether he wanted to wear the insignia or not. “I need updates to adjust the map,” Taggart said with a motion toward the wooden picnic table. The map laid out on it was held down by dozens of colored bits of wood that represented various units. It was about as old-school as you could get, but in this day and age it still worked. “So get runners out to the units without radios.”

  Taggart looked back toward the map, then down to the city below, visualizing the details on the map as they would look in the real city it represented. The Battle of Hackensack was brutal, no doubt about it, and had lasted a full day and a half. Comm problems had jeopardized the whole battle in the first few hours, but he had adapted on the fly and come up with the runners. Reinventing basic command skills of a century past was rough, especially when any mistake could be deadly. It would have been nice to go through OCS for the bits of history that officer training would have given him, but his “field promotions” hadn’t allowed for that. Necessity, meet invention.

  Eagan sat back at the radio station and fumbled with the headset. “Once we liberate the slaves in this city, you’ll be a Full Bird. Who would have thought you’d be a colonel someday? Not me. Sir.”

  “Nor me, believe that. Uncle Sam doesn’t care what rank we want, though. Isn’t that right, Staff Sergeant? Let me know when we’re all caught up.”

  All joking aside, Taggart didn’t much care for the rank-inflating effect this war had on him. Life was a lot simpler as an NCO, but someone had to command and, until he found someone better, the job was his out of necessity. He had managed to keep this show running without any of the tools that were considered critical only six months ago, when the world was nice and bad things happened somewhere else. He had once defended a nation that had the luxury of debating whether the military was really necessary and had taken pride in standing between them and the bad things in that world so they’d have the privilege of chattering about such topics over lattes and croissants.

  Taggart let out a long, frustrated breath. While Eagan was coordinating runners and getting everything updated, Taggart went to look at the map again to wo
rk on planning an attack on the slave compound. Three thousand slaves were down there waiting for liberation. By recent experience, he figured half would join him, doubling his command to two brigades. Almost a division. Half of the rest would wander off in twos and threes to go guerrilla, and probably sink into banditry, but he could worry about that later. The remainder would either want to go try to find lost loved ones, were too afraid to leave, or were too worn out to be of use even to themselves. And then there were the sick and the dying left untreated by the invaders. It was a moral headache he had come to dread, and he felt like a mass murderer after every conquest when he had to order his units to move out. He couldn’t leave much food behind—combat effectiveness was his first priority—so those hundreds, the lost and the lame, would likely die, a fact that invaded his dreams many nights.

  He suddenly noticed Eagan standing beside him, silently. When Taggart raised an eyebrow, Eagan said, “All updated. We’ll have the map updated shortly but it’s moot. The enemy is on the run, and we’re seizing their assets faster than the IRS. Our boys and girls are having a party splitting up the loot.” Taggart felt Eagan’s hand on his shoulder. “The only knot of real resistance left is the one you’re standing there dreading, my friend.”

  “I should be more careful about being so easy to read,” Taggart muttered, his unfocused gaze still on the map. “Bad for morale.”

  “Screw that,” Eagan said. “You’re still just human like the rest of us. But don’t worry, the others don’t know that and can’t read you like I can, sir. We’ve been fighting together too long.” Eagan shifted his weight. “Command has got to suck. I know I hate the stripes that have been forced upon me but I do the job because somebody has to do it. And guess what? You aren’t a special snowflake. You’re in the same boat. But you do your best.”