Dark New World (Book 4): EMP Backdraft

by Henry G. Foster

  “Must be,” Taggart replied, and peered through binoculars but the car doors were closed. “Can’t see anything but about a dozen guards and an eight-pack of big-ass horses.”

  “They don’t come in packs, sir. But they’re probably real valuable to the ’vaders.”

  “Yep… Say, be a good boy and go get the troops ready. I think we got our lunchtime entertainment set. We got about five minutes, at the speed they’re going.”

  Eagan slid away down the hill, and Taggart soon heard the rustle and commotion of troops getting ready for action. His heart beat faster in savage anticipation. Whatever happened next, twelve damn invaders wouldn’t be getting back to barracks tonight and maybe Taggart’s forces would have their own big-ass horses when this was over. More importantly, now he knew something important—the rails could work again. Why had he not thought of pulling railroad cars with horses? It was called a “road” for a reason.

  If the ’vaders could do it, he could too. And if the trains were running, that meant train stations were back in use. It was enemy materiel on a grand scale. A chance to really hurt the bastards, get payback for thirty thousand enslaved, murdered Americans, and increase his own resources while he was at it.

  Taggart knew better than to try to rein in his troops this time. For those ’vaders down there, the whirlwind was looming.

  * * *

  1530 HOURS - ZERO DAY +171

  Cassy slammed her fist into the countertop, a long string of curses flowing out, and only the surprised looks on Michael’s and Frank’s faces made her stop. “So the invaders are pulling out of Adamstown?”

  “That’s right,” answered Michael, shifting uncomfortably.

  That shifting wasn’t normal for him, but neither was her cursing. The circumstances weren’t normal. “And they did what, again?” She felt the anger rise, and she barely resisted the urge to hit something again. Or someone.

  Michael clenched his jaw hard enough that Cassy worried he’d shatter a tooth. “Lined the civilians up and killed them all, one at a time. Cut their throats and left them where they fell, lined up along U.S. Two-Twenty-Two. They say the highway looks like they painted it red.”

  Frank said, “Then they burned the entire city, turned east, and they’re burning everything along their way. They left a note in Korean. Choony translated it, then went out back to throw up.”

  Michael spit—inside her house, but she let it go—and said, “It’s a contingency order issued before the invasion even started. If they are losing a territory, they are to kill everything and everyone, and burn everything they can. ‘Deny them to the traitors and terrorists,’ the page says.”

  “They were getting stretched too thin to hang on,” Cassy said with savage glee. “Between Brickerville’s revenge raiding with no quarter given, and these Night Ghosts we heard about slaughtering ’vaders anytime they venture out with less than a whole platoon, they’re too weakened to hang on. So they’re pulling back to regroup, and then they’ll come back through here like a hammer instead of like locusts. But we can stop them when they do, I’m sure of it. Frank, have Ethan alert everyone, and I mean everyone. We all need to be ready when the ’vaders come back, and then we’ll shove their hammer right up their backsides.”

  “You got it, Cassy,” Frank said.

  “Just keep your rifle with you. There’ll be action enough for everyone when it happens.”

  Frank hobbled back out of the room on his crutch, and she didn’t have the energy to spare appreciating how well he had recovered from having his foot cut off by an enraged Peter.

  “Michael,” she said after Frank left, “these bastards must be moving pretty slowly. Loaded down with their goddamn blood-bought loot, hurt by everyone in the area who can hold a gun but feeling pretty fucking cocky after they murdered all the turncoats at Adamstown. Those people were bastards, but they were American bastards, and the damn Koreans and their ISNA lapdogs did this to them after they had already knuckled under.”

  “So you want me to gather the fighters, saddle fresh horses, and get ready to kill some bad guys… Aye aye,” Michael said, snarling, and swept up his coat on one arm as he stormed out.

  Cassy grabbed her coat, too, and headed to the bunker tunnel to tell Ethan what was happening. She practically had to order him to stay in the bunker to man the comms and spread the word when she told him, but he eventually saw reason. He had no place on a battlefield anymore, not with his vital skills. They’d all be crippled without him.

  Then she headed back up topside, to the horses. Michael had all the Marines and thirty others, armed and already slinging their grab-bags onto their saddles. The bags had been Ethan’s idea. One for everyone in the whole clan meant they could all leave on ten minutes’ notice with a three-day supply of everything they needed. Cassy felt “grab-bag” sounded better than “but-out bag” but either way the bags were handy for a better reason.

  “Ethan told Taj Mahal, and they’re sending a half-dozen more people,” she told Michael. “And he’s getting Brickerville ready, too. They said they have a great surprise for us, and they’ll bring some RPGs, too. We’ll see what they have cooked up.”

  Michael nodded and mounted his horse. From somewhere in the back, a man shouted, “Regulators! Mount up!”

  Cassy might normally have grinned at that Old West quote, but not today. She only got up on her horse facing the troops and, when everyone was ready, wheeled her horse around and into a run. Her makeshift army flowed out like water behind her. A flood of revenge was coming for those ’vader bastards—at least for these invaders. They had earned it.

  Without the worry of ’vaders scattered everywhere, Cassy and her band made good time, arriving at Brickerville in only twenty minutes despite the rough terrain. Waiting there were another thirty or so troops, probably riding all the horses they had left. Most had odd boxes strapped to their horses’ flanks like saddlebags; the remainder carried the RPGs they had recovered from the burnt-out nutjob compound. Words were short—there was no need and it wasn’t a social visit. Five minutes later, Cassy began the real pursuit with almost eighty troops behind her. The enemy was on foot—they couldn’t escape. The radios Ethan had insisted on giving to the outlying major allies despite her initial resistance had paid off in bloody spades.

  The mass of troops rode fast, knowing this was not an endurance test. They needed to catch the bastards. Heading east on Highway 322, they galloped on the softer shoulder to save the horses’ hooves until it swung southerly at Clay, where they left the road entirely and cantered cross-country directly east. They crossed old, abandoned farms and disused watering arms and useless tractors, past burnt-out houses and dead cars in empty yards. They ignored skeletons hanging from windows or strewn across patios—there would be time enough later to deal with the dead. Cassy imagined them cheering her party on and who knew? Maybe they were watching, vengeful ghosts still awaiting justice.

  At Schoeneke Road they turned to follow it northeast as it shot straight toward I-76 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, trotting and cantering to eat up miles. She sensed her prey was close; it was that feeling she got when a deer was about to come into view, the instinctive part of her brain noting patterns for her unconscious mind to weave together as she looked around. She fought the urge to shout and whoop for bloody joy at what they were bringing the murderous invaders. No sense alerting them.

  And then they were there, close ahead—the enemy. The invaders. They murdered two hundred or more unarmed people at Adamstown alone, and Cassy swore they’d lose twice that number this very day. There had been no justice in the past six months, but justice was about to come down on them like a hammer. She was only outnumbered five-to-one, but they were already bloodied, in full retreat, exhausted from carrying their blood-loot. Their greed would be their undoing.

  “God,” she prayed, her words whipped away by the wind as she kicked her horse into a sprint, “be my shield, and let me be thy rod…” She didn’t know if there was a God, not the wa
y her mom did, but right now she felt as though she wore divine armor and nothing could touch her. “…and make these fuckers burn in Hell tonight!” she added, not caring what her mother would say about such a prayer.

  A cry rose from the invaders ahead, and they began to run. Most dropped what they were carrying except for their weapons, and a moment later, Cassy and the others were dodging backpacks full of looted gems and jewelry, even paintings the invaders had been carrying away. Cassy would be in shooting range in moments.

  Then a sizable group split from the clustered invaders, sprinting northeast toward Schoeneke Church and the dense woods behind it. Cassy yelled, “Michael, go!”

  He must have heard, because she saw him swing away from the group, a dozen Marines riding with him. The other sixty-five Clanners and their allies stayed hard on the heels of the main group until the retreating ’vaders reached a huge limestone quarry to the left of the road, where they scattered like the roaches they were. They practically fought one another to get into positions behind the towering line of machines once used to process the limestone. The rest, for whom there was no room, fled into the quarry’s interior. Cassy grinned like a wolf about to bring down a meal. There was no way back out of that quarry but the way they came in. Once the massed troops at the machinery by the entrance were dealt with, it would be time to go hunting for survivors. Those who survived this fight would die soon enough of hunger, having abandoned their bags at the beginning of the rout.

  None would leave this place alive if she had anything to say about it. These people might have destroyed America and killed thousands without mercy, but there were still Americans here and Americans fight, she screamed in her mind. They were going to learn their mistake today, right here. Right now.

  As she approached the quarry, Cassy saw that they had caught up too late to prevent a sizable group of invaders from taking cover behind the machines. She swerved east away from them, out of immediate gunshot range. The invaders scattered fire at the Clan army, but none hit, and Cassy continued away until the enemy stopped firing. Her frustrated army milled around her, chomping at the bit to get to the prey like a dog whining and barking at game they had treed. She screamed her own rage, like a hawk stooping to a kill, but held up her hand in the time-honored signal to stop.

  “Spread out,” she ordered. “If they try to escape, I want to see them drop!”

  The unit stretched away north and south, forming a semicircle facing toward the quarry and its machines. Cassy paced back and forth feeling as if she was about to lose her mind with frustration. She hadn’t remembered that assembly line, and damn, she did not want to delay her gratification on this hunt. For it was, no mistake, a hunt, and sometimes the hunter had to wait. “We’ll starve them out if we have to,” she called to her troops, and swung down from her saddle.

  After a moment, still struggling to control her frustration, she let out a long breath. To the Brickerville man next to her she said, “They won’t get away. They’ll starve in there. Hell, they’ll drink the quarry water first, and that’ll get them. And more of us are on the way—Ethan’s spreading the word. This will end here.”

  The man, a stranger to Cassy, clenched his jaw and said, “Yes it will, and sooner than you think.” His lips curled back as he said it, baring his teeth.

  She paused mid-step. “What do you mean?”

  “Those boxes we brought are the drones—”

  Cassy cut him off. “Great, but what can the drones do against them?”

  “Our leader, Josh, had this idea to use them on the ’vader encampments, but they left before we had them all ready. Then we found even more.” He grinned again, “We have twenty set to go now, though, and they’re special. Plus we brought some RPGs that they won’t much like either.”

  “Yeah, so what did he come up with?” Cassy asked, trying to sound calm, but knew she was coming across as too eager. She took another deep breath. Damned adrenaline.

  “We rigged the dynamite—we have stacks and stack of the stuff. You know the shotgun shell darts that kids make? Rubber cap for weight, nail sticking through—throw the shell and it lands, with the nail acting like a firing pin.”

  “Can you please get to the point?” Why do technician types always get so lost in the how-it-works?

  “Right. Well, we rigged up dynamite to the darts and glued-on fins. We got boxes of them with us. We rigged cages on the drones we got, too—they’ll hold the dynamite darts. Fly the drone up, tip it and the dynamite falls out, basically a small impact bomb like in the World War Two movies. A nice little nitro-and-sawdust hello to them.” He was still grinning.

  “But… with drones?”

  “Yep. We may not even need the RPGs—just have everyone ready to rush in when things start blowing up. It’s going to freak them out.”

  “Damn, that’s brilliant. And it’s dusk. They won’t see the drones coming even if they hear them. Alright, now we’re banging on bacon!”

  The man looked confused so she added, “Permission to gloat, you guys earned it,” and grinned at him. She’d explain her daughter’s slang some other time, if she ever figured out what it meant herself.

  Cassy walked down the line of fighters, passing on the news and the plan, and more than one laughed or cheered. It’d be like watching a movie, one commented.

  Twenty minutes later it seemed dark enough to risk the drones, which had been laid out and prepared. Each carried four “dynamite bombs,” and it was clear the Brickerville people with their controllers had practiced because they seemed confident their plan would work. They did seem to know what they were doing so she didn’t interfere, but watched closely as they readied their air force. “Ha! The new Confederation Air Force.” She laughed, and a few people nearby laughed with her.

  When the drones launched into the air, they sounded like a swarm of bees. They took off cleanly, without any collisions, quickly gaining altitude and speed. Yes, the Brickerville people had practiced. She lost sight of them in the growing darkness but the controllers each had a monitor for the drones’ cameras, and the pilots didn’t seem concerned, so she turned back to watch whatever would happen next.

  She didn’t have long to wait. Although she could no longer see the drones, the effect they had was astounding. All along the 200-foot length of the lined-up machinery, some forty sticks of dynamite exploded within a few seconds of each other, on both sides of the line.

  “Go, go, go!” Cassy screamed, and along with the others, she sprinted toward the enemy. The machinery was only just becoming visible amidst the fireballs as they got close enough to engage any survivors. The few surviving soldiers near the machinery fled toward the quarry itself, and those few already inside provided covering fire. In only a few minutes, Cassy and her army had taken the smoking wreckage of the quarry machinery and now faced across it toward the quarry opening, firing at the backs of the few straggling invaders.

  All eyes turned to Cassy, awaiting the inevitable orders. To the two fighters next to her she said, “Spread the word—I want a third of our forces on that south embankment, for elevated coverage. Tell them to rally along the ridge and then fire at will until all the easy targets are dropped.”

  The two ran off to pass the order along, crouching to stay as low as they could. Cassy didn’t blame them. These few invaders were in a defensible position, and it was almost a tragedy that the north rim of the quarry looked too unstable to put thousands of pounds of weight along it to get some crossfire. “It is what it is,” she muttered, fuming. She wanted nothing more than to charge in there and exact blood revenge on these foreign troops who’d slaughtered so many of her fellow Americans.

  Cassy’s remaining troops were by and large gathered up behind the machinery with her, three deep because it wasn’t long enough for everyone to have a spot. “Listen up,” Cassy bellowed, and noticed that her ‘command voice’ was improving. Soon it would be as good as Michael’s, she hoped. “When the ridge opens fire, we’re going in. We’re going to hunt th
ese bastards down while the ridge keeps them pinned. Grab a buddy, and stay with your buddy. I see anyone wandering alone, they’re not getting cake tonight for dessert!”

  A cry went up, cheering her as her troops chomped at the bit every much as she did, psyching themselves up for the coming assault. As much as she wanted to go in and get her hands bloody, there was another reason for her to lead this charge—she had a mystique now among the allies, and the more she bolstered that image, the stronger the Confederation would be. With luck, it would survive after she was long gone, but the confederation needed time to solidify. She was going to have to risk her life for the Confederation to buy it time to gel so it would outlive her. Maybe if she slowed down mid-assault so her wave of soldiers made first contact? A catch-22, but it would be fine so long as she didn’t die here. That would be tragic…

  A couple of minutes later, the troops along the south ridge opened fire, and a few cries of pain rose from within the quarry. Her troops cheered. Then Cassy was up on her feet. She sprinted forward, waving the others to follow. As a wave, they rose up and charged after her, dozens of fighters running. They entered the mouth of the quarry, which would have been the Kill Zone had she not put troops on the ridge. As it was, resistance was minimal so far. A few ’vaders were struck down where they hid, surprised looks on their damn faces as they died.

  Cassy slowed, and most of her troops flowed past and around her like a wave on a beach moving around some rock. As they ran by, Cassy grabbed two men near her. “Follow me,” she shouted over the din. They moved from rocks to rocks, what little cover there was. She’d thought about following the spiral-cut walls, but there would be zero cover there. Instead, they skirted the northern wall.

  Maybe she wasn’t the first into battle, but there was enough fighting to go around, and she spotted movement. Ahead lay a pile of rubble large enough to hide a couple people, and she could just see the tip of a rifle extending above it. Someone on the ridge kept a steady beat of fire on the crest of that mound, keeping the enemies’ heads down. Boom-one-two-three-Boom went the cycle. Cassy put her left hand out, restraining one fighter beside her.