Dark New World (Book 2): EMP Exodus (23 page)

Screw it. She needed comforting and clearly, so did Michael. With tears in her eyes she buried her face against Michael’s chest and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding on tight. If she just squeezed hard enough then maybe when she opened her eyes Angie wouldn’t be dead…

Michael put his arms around Cassy, held her gently and let her cry. He clearly felt much the same, but she knew he was the kind of man who would suffer on his own time. For now, he just stood and held her, shielding her however briefly from the horror. She cried it out. Cassy was grateful for his solid presence.

After several minutes Cassy regained her composure, let go of Michael and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Okay, there’s another family around here, but far enough away that they may still live” she said. “The Jepsons. If the raiders haven’t killed them yet by the time we get there, I don’t expect a warm welcome, but I just can’t leave them for the Red Locusts. We need to try to talk sense into them. They’ll be stubborn.”

Michael nodded. “Okay… Why won’t they give you a warm welcome? I thought you were friends with just about everyone around here.”

With a shrug, Cassy said, “We go way back, to when I first moved here. I tried to do things right, and get permits for the things I needed to build. But Mrs. Jepson was on the zoning committee. They declined a few things and it was Mrs. Jepson’s fault. She claimed my ideas were unsound, not based in real-world experience. My prepper design for reclaiming wastewater really bothered her. She said the building codes don’t allow that sort of thing and that the committee had no reason to grant a variance. So, I filed appeals and after a few months it went to trial. In the meantime I just built what I needed, and thumbed my nose at her because the court granted a stay on any action against me by the local government while they reviewed the case. Made her look impotent. Better yet, just about everyone around here hates big government, and they sided with me. Bringing in the government like that hurt her husband’s handyman business, too. She blames me, but it’s her own stick-up-the-ass fault.”

“Small town politics. Gotta love it,” replied Michael. “Seems you’re growing as a leader, Cassy. Frank ought to be happy about that. No matter how much you protest, the rest of us—including Frank—think of you as the Clan’s real leader now.” He smiled his crooked smile and added, “Frank says he knows just enough about farming to kill a house plant.” His smile broadened into an open grin as he added, “Frank doesn’t want people looking to him for advice when the green peppers start to molt, or whatever they do. He said that.”

Cassy again thought about how Frank had kept them all fairly sane and in focus during the dangerous trip, while Michael guarded them against surprise ambushes and the like. Cassy had stumbled onto the group as a late arrival, and she wasn’t sure she much liked her apparent promotion to “Clan leader,” whatever that meant. But the farm was hers so she supposed it had to be that way. Her house, her rules. The Clan went along with it, decent folk that they were, and she knew she’d been lucky to join them.

“Shut up, Michael,” Cassy smiled with a wink, her voice dripping with fake irritation.

Michael smiled to himself as their mounts wended their way down the hill. He always accompanied Cassy as protection on these outings, when she tried to reconnect with old neighbors. Their verbal exchanges were just how they bantered when no one was around, or the dark new world’s vicious insanity wore them down. He needed pressure relief too, from time to time.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said as they neared the Jepson farm.

* * *

Dean Jepson pulled another half-basket of berries off the bush. His homemade berry picking tool was working well, and he smiled. It was a simple thing, just a length of PVC pipe he’d split at the end, then used heat to spread the two halves apart. These he’d twisted with more heat until they curved upward, and then folded back. The result looked like a plastic pitch fork with tines pointing back at the wielder. When he drew it down a bramble, ripe berries fell like sweet, soft hail into the bucket he held beneath. It showed the kind of simple genius Dean was known for around here. At the rate his new tool let him pick berries, he’d have the whole acre harvested by the end of tomorrow. Pie for weeks, and goods to trade…

The loud
crack
of a rifle interrupted his thoughts, and his head whipped toward the noise. Sonovabitch, it had come from the direction of his house, a half mile away. Why wouldn’t everyone just leave his family and him alone? He dropped his tool, snatched up his rifle nearby—he never left the house without it, these days—and sprinted toward home.

* * *

Cassy and Michael heard a shot fired up ahead, and both spurred their horses into a full gallop, ignoring scrapes and bruises from brush and young trees they whipped by. They came to the top of a small rise, stopped, and looked down at a house just beyond the foot of the hill, a couple hundred feet ahead. Cassy saw four people in a rough semi-circle facing the front of the house, each behind a tree or shrub for cover or at least some concealment. From a front window of the small house, Cassy saw protruding the barrel of a rifle. A woman inside was shouting, but at this range Cassy couldn’t tell what was said. She could imagine, though. The four raiders took turns shooting at the house and then ducking back behind cover. Another shot rang out from inside the house.

Cassy said, “That’s the Jepson home.” Her voice was a flat monotone, because damn if she was going to lose her composure just now. Time enough for that after these bastard raiders were strung up and gone straight to Hell. “Let’s kill these assholes, Michael.”

Michael only nodded, slid off his horse with rifle in hand, and moved forward into cover. Cassy again marveled at the former Marine scout’s ability to almost disappear into the background when he wanted to. He seemed to glide as he prowled in battle mode, she thought. Then she dismounted and stepped forward as best she could. At the crest, she took aim at one of the raiders who, being between her and the house, all faced away from her. She lined up the center of his back in her M4’s scope.

She was starting to squeeze the trigger when a dark mass burst from bushes nearby and plowed straight into the man Cassy had been sighting in on. A gleam of metal flashed in the sunlight, and Cassy watched as Dean Jepson plunged a knife into the other man’s throat. He bolted to his feet, bloody knife in hand, and whirled to face the others. It all happened so fast that Cassy hadn’t had time to redirect her aim.

Michael was faster, however; as the three remaining raiders turned to swing their rifles around toward Dean, Michael fired a single shot and the raider closest to Dean flopped over, most of his head missing.

Cassy again marveled at Michael’s ruthless efficiency in battle. She’d seen it before, during the Clan’s violently dangerous trek to the hoped-for safety of what her mother called her “prepper farm.” As she watched in her scope, Dean took a step toward the other two raiders. Another shot rang out from within the house, but missed its target.

The other two raiders briefly stared at the mostly-headless body of their companion, and then turned and sprinted away into the patchy woodlands nearby.

“Nice shooting,” said Cassy, and then climbed back atop her horse. When Michael mounted up again as well, she clucked her tongue against her front teeth,
tsk tsk
, and the horses began to walk down the hill. “Let’s go see what kind of welcome we’ll get.”

* * *

Peter Ixin pursed his lips in frustration. He’d returned from tailing Cassy to her farm to White Stag Farms, or what was left of it, and taken over the place with a little bit of violence and a lot of solid promises. The supervisors who still lived, after Peter’s demonstration of authority removed one of them from their midst, were compliant, showing no signs of resisting. Good, because he’d kill every last one of those morons if they ever showed the least bit of spine. No sir, Peter wasn’t gonna take any of their crap. Not anymore.

But despite their compliance, getting his people ready to move out was taking longer than expected, and his irritation grew. How the hell could he lead them to the promised land, like Moses before, if these lazy bastards wouldn’t work harder to get ready? Damn it, Moses never had to deal with people this lazy, why should Peter? It wasn’t right. Selfish pricks.

Next to him his right-hand man, Jim, muttered, “Okay boss, we got twelve carts salvaged with enough horses to pull ‘em, along with our own mounts, and enough left over for a couple Scouts to take point while we travel. And we managed to get all the chickens that lived through the bombing caged up and on the wagons. We got enough flour and rice and shit to make the journey. So why aren’t they ready to go yet?”

Peter grunted in agreement. “Seems they want to pack up their mementos. Sentimental bullshit. They need to make new memories in the place I’m leading them to, right?”

Jim chuckled for his boss. “Far as I see, the memories here sucked. Better off forgetting.”

Peter knew he was just being a toady and he relished his new power over Jim and everyone around him. Now that he had the power, he’d been able to whip everyone into action despite the losers who didn’t want to go. Too fuckin’ bad. Peter wasn’t going to leave one damn lazy sumbitch behind. Not alive, anyway. He would need all the hands he could get to take over that sweet little farm they would journey to. More hands meant more guns, and an easier time killing that bitch spy and all her jerk-off followers.

“Moses is coming for you, bitch,” Peter muttered, but he knew that Jim wouldn’t ask what he meant, or let anyone else ask without giving ‘em a proper ass kicking. “Jim, if they aren’t ready in the next hour, start showing them the folly of their ways, yeah?”

Jim grinned, and tightened his grip on his baseball bat. It was covered with dark brown stains from previous teaching moments. “Me ’n my move-faster-stick got you covered, boss.”

An hour later some people still dawdled, not ready to move out. A couple of kids cried, begging to stay. Mothers wasted time pampering their little brats. Ungrateful shits, all of ‘em. Peter checked the magazine on his rifle, almost casually, and said, “Let the teaching begin, Jim. I don’t want anyone really hurt, they’d just slow us down. But you know… Get my point across.”

Jim showed none of the humor he had earlier. He pursed his lips. “Boss, I hate this part. You know? But they gotta learn. It’s a new world now, and we have no time for the weak, the sentimental, the slow. So yeah, I’ll do what we need to do—it’s for the greater good.”

Peter nodded once, and wondered why it was important to Jim to be
right
about these punishments. It was sometimes amusing to see the man try to figure out how to justify doing what he wanted to. Still, Jim was a good man, a trait he’d have to keep an eye on. Good people sometimes lacked the foresight to see the
greater good
that Peter was leading them toward, especially if reaching it required sacrifices. But for now, Jim was on board. And as long as Jim was part of the program, Peter would let him bask in his reflected glory. The man certainly had no qualms using the privileges of his rank to take his pick of the pretty little fillies among Peter’s people, willing or otherwise. Peter was more than happy to turn a blind eye to Jim’s “eccentricities” so long as he remained an effective bulldog, and as long as Peter could continue to feign ignorance of Jim’s less savory “punishments” among the womenfolk. It was small price to pay for the glory of the lands they would soon settle in.

He watched Jim move among the people like some medieval Inquisitor, judging each person’s preparedness, being present and making them anxious. As a management technique, it worked. Peter, the Boss, watched Jim as he nodded at one man, then at a woman (but with a glower at her rambunctious child), frowned at a sweating man who had paused for a sip of water. Apparently, those people were packed and ready.

But then Jim came to a family still struggling to tie their possessions to what little room remained on one of the wagons. Their teen daughter was bent at the waist struggling to tighten a length of rope. Jim asked, looking at the man of the household, “Foreman Peter ordered you people to be ready an hour ago, mister. What’s the delay?”

The other man had to be nearing fifty. Peter decided he didn’t care what happened to him. Get in line or get what’s coming, it didn’t matter. Old horses had better work if they wanted to eat, right? Jim’s posture was relaxed, open, friendly. But Peter saw that the older man wasn’t fooled; he tensed immediately, and his gaze darted left then right, looking for friendly faces. The other people, however, found conspicuous reasons to turn their back to the unfolding scene. Good. They were learning.

The man, who Peter remembered was named Eric, looked at his feet, shoulders slumped. “Jim, we’re trying, but my arthritis won’t let me tie up, and my wife don’t know knots. My daughter’s working the line, but she’s not strong enough. Too much other stuff on the wagon. She just needs another minute, I swear, Jim. I’ll help her, okay?” he said, holding both palms up toward Jim placatingly. It didn’t work, of course.

Jim snarled, then stormed toward the girl. She was no more than fifteen, and squealed in fear when Jim approached. He snatched her arm, and Peter knew she’d have bruises when her squeal of fear turned to a screech of pain.

Her father, Eric, moved in a flash, leaping at Jim. “Get your hands off my daughter, you freak,” he screamed. He led with a clenched fist, and struck Jim in the back of his head. Eric’s momentum carried him forward and he smashed into the man hurting his daughter. They fell to the ground, Eric on top, and Jim’s bat went flying away. Eric quickly straddled him and raised his fist to smash it into Jim’s face. Jim snarled, but it wouldn’t do him any good; Eric had the look of murder on his face, and Jim had let him get the upper hand.