Dark New World (Book 2): EMP Exodus (19 page)

Michael nodded and signaled the three Marines. When they had departed, she was left with Jaz, Mandy, Frank, Tiffany, Mary and Amber, as well as Ethan. “Mom, would you please take everyone but Frank and Ethan with you to the outdoor kitchen? Get them familiar with how everything works, how to light the rocket stoves, where the utensils are and so on?”

Amber cocked her head to one side. “What’s a rocket stove, Cassy? Is it safe?”

Cassy grinned and said, “It’s just a wood-burning stove that uses about a quarter of the fuel of other stoves. Bits of wood, even twigs, go into an opening toward the bottom and because of the chimney on the other side, the draft it creates makes the fire roar like a rocket. It burns clean, too, so once it gets good and hot, there’s not even any smoke on the other side. I have two, one that heats a cast iron griddle and one that has covers you can remove to use frying pans, Dutch ovens and so on. Both stoves vent around an enclosed chamber you can use as an oven, too. Mandy will show you all the details. She’s cooked here before.”

At last she was left with only Ethan and Frank, who looked at her with amusement. “Quite the queen bee, Cass,” Frank chuckled.

Cassy nodded without smiling. “This is a working farm. There’s work to do, and everything here is done a lot differently than any farm you’ve probably seen. Putting it all together was sort of a hobby, but I’m glad now I caught the ‘prepper bug.’
You
are the clan leader, Frank, I know that. But until I’m positive that everyone knows how to do everything there is to do here, I’m going to have my hands full teaching. I’m glad Mandy and Brianna already know enough to handle some of the teaching, and Michael and the jarheads know more about combat readiness and security than I ever will. But, enough.” She finally smiled. “I have something to show you guys that’s going to blow your mind.” Her smile broadened to a huge, mischievous grin that made both Ethan and Frank grin back at her in anticipation.

As they stood in the living room, Cassy gave a dramatic bow, then casually reached down to the bottom step on the staircase, and lifted. Much of the staircase rose, swiveling on hidden hinges halfway up the flight, and revealed another staircase going down into darkness. Frank drew a sudden breath, and Ethan wore a big sloppy grin as soon as he realized what she’d put together.

“This,” said Cassy, “is the hidden way into my Fortress of Solitude. I didn’t want those Marines to see it yet, but I had to share it with you guys. We’ve work to do down there, so let’s get cracking.”

Cassy led them downward, producing a flashlight to light the way. The stairs went down about ten feet, then turned right to go down another ten feet or so, and ended in a heavy-looking steel door with a large metal circular handle in the center. Next to the door was a keypad with metal buttons, and between the keypad and the door was a thick metal lever.

“Mechanical, not electronic,” Cassy muttered and typed in several numbers, and she heard the faint sounds of pushrods sliding inside channels. Then she lifted the lever, producing a heavy thunk, and spun the handle. With a grunt she swung the door outward toward herself, stepping around it as it opened. She stepped inside and pushed a button next to the door on the inside wall, and lights came on, one after the other, illuminating a bunker in a soft glow. Honest to goodness electric lighting.

“Twelve volt lighting, off batteries. This whole bunker is a giant Faraday cage.”

Ethan laughed out loud, then. “Amazing. How do you charge them? Didn’t the EMP take out the system?”

“Nope. I have a manual disconnect between the panels and the charge controller, with several surge suppressors and TVSs—transient voltage suppressors—in line with the controller. I disconnect it when I’m away, and I have two spares for everything. What that means for us is, once I flip the switch back on, my solar panels on the roof will start working again. Everything’s 12-volt here, or uses alternative power, so it’s enough juice for what little was electronic here—TVs, laptops, cell phones, lights, and a slew of battery-powered tools in the work shed.”

Frank let out a low whistle. “We’re in business, Cassy. You’re a godsend. Whatever made you do all this?”

Ethan answered for her. “Because she wanted to be prepared for the kind of crap that just happened. They called me crazy, too, but we’re all alive because I’m crazy. And we’ll stay alive because Cassy here is a nut job too.”

Cassy laughed too, then. “No, I really thought it was going to be a collapse of the dollar, not an EMP, but I figured if I just got ready for a zombie apocalypse then all the other stuff-hit-the-fan scenarios would be covered, too. Plus, people don’t look at you so funny if you say you’re prepping for zombies. Tell them the dollar will collapse and they call you a nut, but laugh and tell them it’s for zombies, and they just think you’re an eccentric hobbyist. Better eccentric than crazy. And I designed the whole place to look more like a retreat than a working farm, with the food forest and all. Actually, that might have saved it from being sprayed with that brown gunk, come to think of it.”

Ethan said, “So what all do you have down here? Rations, communications, medical, or what?”

“This bunker is made of five buried and reinforced forty-foot shipping containers. They needed reinforcement because, as I found out, if you just bury a cargo container it can buckle from the weight overhead. Anyway, the five containers are all interconnected. One is a sleeping bay, like on a submarine, with eighteen berths and tons of shelves. One holds my firearms, chemicals, electronics—including two HAM radios and a dozen handheld radios—and other miscellaneous crap. The third and fourth ones hold enough food for the whole clan for probably a couple years, if we ration it. And we’re in the fifth one, a living space and communications center. Two side tunnels lead to hidden escapes around the farm.”

Frank grunted. “What did that set you back?”

Cassy shrugged. “Money’s worthless now, of course, but when my husband died he left enough to get the farm mostly finished, and to put in my bunker. I think getting the containers and placing them came in under fifty thousand, and I had a lot more than that. The rest I spent on finishing out the bunker’s features and completing the farm, like getting the swales and berms dug in, the windmills and solar installed, the HAM radios set up. I have five each of .22 rifles, .308 rifles, AR-15s, 12-gauge shotguns, and .40-caliber pistols, along with some crossbows and about ten thousand rounds of ammo for each type of gun. Backpacks, med-kits, extra pots and pans, wool blankets, bathroom incidentals. Even a small prepper and intensive farming book collection. The works. Enough for all of us, and for the neighbors I’ll be inviting in—the ones I’ve made friends with and know they’ll be a good fit, and will contribute something to the group.”

Ethan looked Cassy in the eyes, and in a pleading voice said, “Please tell me you remembered to set up an antenna for the HAMs…”

“I do have one plus a spare, but we’ll have to set it up. We’ll also have to set up the solar panel system, get it checked out, and tie in the backup windmill generator. That isn’t hard, so we can get that done after breakfast. Anybody hungry?”

* * *

1000 HOURS - ZERO DAY +10

Why couldn’t this be as easy as crafting items in his online games, Ethan groaned as he tested his setup. The HAM antenna was in place, and he’d spent the last hour in the living room getting his programs installed on the laptop Cassy gave him. Soon he’d be ready to broadcast again, and also to connect to his hidden satellite connection. He was eager to see if the 20s had sent him anything since the last time he’d connected. One last test was running on the laptop before he’d consider it ready.

There was a noise from the computer, a “job finished” beep, and Ethan smiled to see that everything checked out. He was ready to go. He clicked on a desktop icon of an antenna, bringing up his comms program suite. He’d written most of the code himself. He watched with satisfaction as his backdoor satellite link connected, then ran a series of searches for VPNs around the world, many of which had been installed by malware on the PCs of unsuspecting people.

Most of his pre-EMP connections were greyed out, no longer operational. Still, within a few minutes he’d found six around the world, and stopped the program. Then he clicked another button, and the graphic display showed his satellite connection bouncing from one VPN to the next, a chain of links that would make it nearly impossible to track him in the time he’d be online. In a few seconds, the graphic display of the network changed from pulsing red to solid green. Show time.

The now-familiar dialog box opened on his screen after the last connection was made, and showed only one message.

>
Attn: Dark Ryder - Update and Instructions

>
Well done, DR. We see you have stopped moving in an ideal location for a base of operations. Advise if this is final location. Attached is a file to download latest data for broadcasting. Be advised, satellites show few enemy patrols in the region. Intel says area deemed too sparsely populated/farmed to be of interest at this stage. However, at least two groups numbering approx. 20 each active in the area. Base camps appear to be east and west of your current loc. in forest to north. They are confirmed raiding local homesteads/houses for supplies. Taking people back to basecamp. Suspect for sustenance, as victims not visible on next satellite pass. Good luck.

Ethan cringed. Could things really be that bad out there already? Yes, he supposed they could. By the Rules of Three, people could only survive about three weeks without food and even accounting for most peoples’ pantries, the food had been gone for a week. That was a long time to go without food. Not fatal, but not everyone was going to let their kids go hungry for a week when human “long pig” was everywhere for the taking. Disgusting. The good news was that there weren’t many enemy soldiers in the area. That was something, at least.

He replied in the dialog box,

>
DR responding. Confirm location final. Thanks for intel update. Will grok attachment and broadcast later. Need to figure out how to broadcast without drawing enemy attention to location.

The response came quickly.

>
DR: We ack. Fear not. Solution ready. We have several repeaters set up in your region; will pick up sig and bounce them around. Enemy will not know which one. They’ll eventually check out all of them, recommend relocate to broadcast then bugout, change loc each broadcast. Avoid pattern such as circle around base. Notify us and receive ack 5 min before each broadcast so we can bring them up. Please ack.

Ethan acknowledged, and then the window closed on its own; his 20s contact must have closed the connection remotely. So, he could broadcast in relative safety, but would only be able to do it a few times before they pinned down which one was the live connection, just by process of elimination. If he broadcast too many times they’d probably send a drone to blow him up, and that would be the end of transmission. Worse, he’d only know when he’d hit that magic number when he saw a drone-launched missile rocketing toward his face. Super.

Ethan pulled up the file attachment, decoded it, and began reading. It was in the same format as before, listing enemy unit, estimated manpower, location as of last broadcast, and current last known location. That was followed by a list of supply cache coordinates, along with the categories and quantities of supplies each one contained.

At the end of the document was the intel summary. It seemed mostly the same; the enemy was solidifying control on the areas they already occupied and were struggling in New York and Florida though making headway despite significant casualty rates. Then something grabbed Ethan’s attention: “
Operation Backdraft is a go
.” Whatever that meant. But if the 20s were coordinating an operation-level action, that could only be a good thing for America.

- 23 -

1300 HOURS - ZERO DAY +10

PETER RAN ON foot. He’d been eating a lunch of freshly-foraged berries and plants when a group of nearly two dozen people stumbled onto him.

Peter slowed to a walk and cursed himself a fool for letting them sneak up on him. It wasn’t really his own fault, he fumed. He was tired and foggy-headed from not eating enough the last few days. Not for the first time he wished he still had the horse he’d left the Farms with, but at least he had his important gear in his backpack, along with his notebook, and he’d grabbed his rifle.

It occurred to him that perhaps he’d made a mistake letting his Scout companions go home without him. It would be a dangerous journey, and some extra muscle would be nice. Water under the bridge, though. Now he had to get home fast, and the faster, the better. He decided to take the road, trading safety for speed. He hoped the hungry mobs had given up on the roads by now, and his way would be mostly clear.

He came upon a large road, Highway 322, which would take him south all the way to West Chester, close to home. Fifty miles to go. A quick calculation with his most recent pace count told him it would take about two full days to walk that far in his current state, but at least it would be on level ground, and fairly direct.

An hour later, still on the road, he trudged up a low hill. Reaching the crest, he looked ahead for any movement and then saw, at the base of the hill maybe a hundred yards away, a half-dozen people surrounding a red car. They were pounding on its windows, which were tinted to the point that Peter couldn’t see into it. Near the car were a single sleeping bag and a backpack, but with the amount of debris scattered around it looked like the pack had been emptied. Peter didn’t see any rifles among the attackers.