Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2

Storm Tide Rising
Blackout Volume 2

D. W. McAliley

Copyright 2016
All rights reserved
This is an original work of fiction.
Any resemblance of actual people or places is coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my mom.
For being with me every step of the way.
Thank you!
And to Nanny, who told me to write her something.

"I have told the whole truth in that....only dead men may tell the whole truth."

~Samuel Clemmons on The War Prayer

Table of Contents

Pt.1
Prologue
Caged
Ch. 1
Crowd Control
Ch.2
Unsafe for Travel
Ch. 3
The Daily Brief
Ch. 4
A Position Of Strength
Ch. 5
By Any Other Name
Ch. 6
The Beaten Path
Ch. 7
Rear Guard
Ch.8
Unasked For Answers
Ch.9
Historic Latta Plantation
Ch.10
Breaking Protocol
Ch.11
Three Days
Ch.12
The Way Back
Ch.13
First Light
Ch.14
Coming Home
Ch.15
Rise and Shine
Ch.16
Running Fence
CH.17
Wheels Down
CH.18
Downstream
Ch.19
Peace Offering
CH.20
Up To Speed
Ch.21
Unexpected Company
Ch.22
Footprints In The Sand
Ch.23
A Bird In The Hand
CH.24
Over For Dinner
Ch.25
Routine Inspection
Ch.26
Trouble Ahead
Ch.27
Where There's Smoke
Ch.28
Sacrifice
Ch.29
The Price That's Paid
Ch.30
Ahead of the Storm
Ch.31
Something Local
Ch.32
No One Home
Ch.33
First Light
Ch.34
Person of Interest
Ch.35
Dry Feet
Ch.36
Name and Number
Ch.37
Canning Tomatoes
Ch.38
Keep It Moving!
Ch.39
Authorized Personnel
Ch.40
Losing People
Ch.41
Need to Know
Ch.42
Eyes and Ears
Ch. 43
Strangers
Ch.44
Shots Fired
Ch.45
Changing of the Guard
Ch.46
Aftermath
Ch.47
A Quick Visit
Ch.48
Bottle Caps
Ch.49
Going Bad
Ch.50
Speechless
Ch.51
Gloves
Pt.2
Ch.52
Turning Seasons
Ch.53
Calculated Risk
Ch. 54
Mobile
Ch.55
Wheels
Ch.56
Never the Question
Ch.57
While It's Hot
Ch.58
Half Heard Words
Ch.59
Word Gets Around
Ch.60
The Sound of Silence
Ch.61
The Answer
Ch.62
Change the Watch
Ch.63
What’s Coming
Ch.64
Unexpected Guests
Ch.65
Sunrise and Smoke
Ch.66
Small World
Ch.67
Last Request
Ch.68
For Your Own Safety
Ch.69
Where There's Smoke
Ch.70
Doctor's Orders
Ch.71
Wrong Side of the Tracks
Ch.73
An Early Dinner
Ch.74
To Pass The Time
Ch.75
Just a Rental
Ch.76
Thanksgiving
Ch.77
Unlocking the Door
Epilogue
Storm Tide Rising

Pt.1

Prologue

Caged

When you hear something often enough, you tend to believe it. That's just how these things go, it seems. And it's even more true when you're young. Things just soak in and sink in, and they stay. That's why it hadn't really surprised Gauge when he'd been handed consecutive life sentences.

After all, he'd heard for years he was going to die in a cage. That maxim had been repeated so often that people had slowly forgotten that his given name was actually Gauge and not "Cage."  By the end, even his own mother had forgotten the name of his childhood.

At some level, though, he'd stubbornly clung to that name all these years, hidden deep in the recesses of his psyche. He'd held out hope that one day he would taste the sunshine without the sour shadows of prison bars marring it.

He'd prayed for that day.

Now, huddled in the darkness on his hard bunk, Gauge wept. He was tired, hungry, and so thirsty he hurt all over. His tears even felt thin and arid, drying around his eyelids rather than on his cheeks. Lightning flashed in the darkness, and the thunder boomed shortly afterward. The two were getting closer together, and that was bad news.

Memories of his childhood when he'd huddled in the darkness underneath an old plank-framed bed, weeping as a storm passed by leapt suddenly to his mind. It seemed almost silly for a man, a grown and old man, who had seen the things Cage had seen, and done the things he'd done to be afraid of a little thunder. But it was worse than that. The thunder Cage could handle.

It was the darkness that had always terrified him.

And now, here he was, dying of thirst, the stink of rotten death almost too thick to breathe. The cells were still locked, but the rest of the prison doors on the block and leading out were flung open. They'd been that way for days, since the blackout even, but it didn't matter. With the steel door between him and the open hallways, freedom was still as far away as it had been for more than forty years. He could see it, but he couldn't reach it.

Gauge lay on his back, a worn and weathered Bible in his hands, and stared at the ceiling lost in the darkness overhead. The flashes of lightning kept marching closer, and the thunder followed quicker, until the two were happening almost together. Gauge's heart began to pound so hard in his chest that it ached in his shoulders.

He knew he was dying, and somehow he couldn't find the strength to be worried about it. He closed his eyes to try and block out the flashes of lightning, and as he did, he whispered a prayer. "Lord, I know you suffered worse than this when you died for me on the cross. I done a lot worse things than you ever did, so if this is the price I gotta pay, then I get it. Take me now, and take me quick, Lord. I'm yours."

Gauge opened his eyes and listened to the roar of a violent storm hammering the prison. A sharp flash of lightning lit up the shadows of the hallway from the thin slit at the very top of his wall that passed for a window. In that instant Gauge saw the old fluorescent lights in the hallway flicker. A faint click reached his ears just before the thunder crashed so loud that it made his eyes water and his ears ring. He cupped his hands to his ears out of instinct, and then he sat up, his mind refusing to believe what his eyes were seeing.

As Gauge stared at it, the door to his cell swung slowly open.

Ch. 1

Crowd Control

Joe swatted a mosquito against his neck and felt the wet spatter of blood when the insect popped. A shallow creek ran under the main road into Bennett, and Joe was laying flat against the town-side bank, more than a little out of breath. Chris was behind him, peaking over the edge of the bank toward the dark town. Across the creek, Henderson and Eric waited for the signal to cross. For a brief moment, Joe stared up at the deep blue sky and just breathed.

"So who was he?"  Chris whispered from the top edge of the bank.

"I don't know," Joe replied honestly. "I've never seen that guy before in my life."

Chris was silent for a long moment before speaking. "This Price—do you trust him?"

This time it was Joe's turn to be silent. Finally, with a small shrug he answered, "I used to."

"Hold on," Chris said suddenly, his tone of voice sharp and focused. "I've got movement at the far end of the street. Small crowd outside a door on the main strip. Can't tell anymore from here, J.T. You might want to take a look."

Joe crawled up the bank and took the pair of binoculars from Chris as he slid away from the edge.

"Third door on the facing side of the strip," Chris whispered. "Looks like thirty to fifty people gathered. They don't look happy."

Joe inched his way to the top of the bank and scanned the edge of town with the binoculars, picking out familiar landmarks to get his bearings and to focus the lenses. He slowly scanned the buildings at the edge of town until he reached the row of shops lining Main Street. He could see only the store fronts facing him on the far side and the backs of the stores on his side. The crowd was gathered in front of MacPhail's Pharmacy, and it swelled out from the masonry store front and filled half the street. It was too far out to see individual shapes clearly, but he could tell it was a good sized group of people, and the entire mass of them seemed to seethe with barely perceived movement.

Joe slid back down the bank and handed the binoculars back to Chris.

"That's not good," he said. "Doesn't look like they've busted in yet, though. We're going to have to get closer without them seeing us, if we can. I wish we could pass by it, but that's the drug store and one of the main reasons we hiked four miles hip deep in that creek."  Joe gave the motion for Eric and Henderson to cross, then turned back to Chris. "I'll take Henderson with me, and you keep Eric. We'll sprint up to that Stop-n-Shop and grab a corner. Once we're set, you two follow us up. We'll be a couple hundred yards from the crowd, and that's close enough for now."

Chris leaned over to Eric and began whispering to him about how to run crouched with his rifle at the ready. He demonstrated the best angle to hold the barrel so it didn't bang the knees or snag on brush and that if he had to stop and shoot, it was always quicker to drop to his belly than stand. Eric learned quickly and was practicing his drop as Joe and Henderson inched their way up to the edge of the creek.

"You good?"  Joe asked the young Marine.

Henderson smiled. "Yes, sir," he replied, "I was never the quickest in Recon school, but I was always the quietest."

Joe took a deep breath and tapped Henderson twice on the shoulder. The two of them rose as one and slipped over the edge of the bank and into the open. They sprinted a hundred and fifty yards through tall weeds and sawgrass, past the faded town sign, and up to the back corner of the Stop-n-Shop. Joe dropped to one knee facing the front of the store, his back to Henderson's who was facing across the back wall.

Nothing moved, and there were no faint calls of alarm from the direction of the Pharmacy. After a moment, Joe turned and waved twice. He watched and was impressed with how well Eric moved, considering it was his first attempt at a tactical maneuver. He had a natural talent and, with proper instruction, could become valuable for his stealth. Chris paced himself to stay just a few strides behind Eric, scanning the threat just in case he had to cover the two of them or sprint off and draw their fire.