Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4) (2 page)

“This is a bad place and time to debate this,” Lucas said. “Let's get back on the road. We can all think it through as we drive.”

Trev nodded and followed his uncle to the back of the truck to haul some diesel up and refill the tanks. While he did that his parents and aunt got everyone up into the back of the truck, leaving him, his dad, and Mary in the cab for the next leg of the trip. Both had gotten enough rest that they thought they could take over if he started to get too tired to keep driving, and they also looked more than a little eager to be sitting on the slightly more comfortable stiff leather front seat for a change.

In just a few minutes they were back on the road, Trev behind the wheel doing his best to reacquaint himself with driving a vehicle for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. He also didn't have the most experience with stick shifts, and embarrassed himself by riding the clutch and jostling them all the first few times he shifted gears.

At least he didn't kill the engine, and no one called him out on his bad driving. Even Mary, who might've hummed a teasing song in other circumstances, kept quiet as they drove, eyes straining into the blackness beyond the headlights.

They breathed a sigh of relief when they crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota less than two hours later, although there was a bit of worry that the bridge might be guarded. Trev approached cautiously in the darkness with the headlights on and had everyone duck low in the seats.

There was no point trying to be stealthy since the engine would've given away their presence anyway, and it was likely any Gold Bloc sentries would have night vision. So the only way to make the best of a bad situation was to keep their eyes open, and be ready to get out of there fast if there was trouble.

There wasn't. Either the invading forces hadn't made it this far yet or the confusion of the previous day had disrupted their security. Either way Trev crossed the bridge at a safe but fast speed and barreled on into the night.

With no food, water, or real need to rest just yet there was no reason to stop, and in a way it was a tremendous relief to see the miles rolling away under the truck's tires. Each minute that passed meant they were that much farther from the troubles behind, and that much closer to home and an end to the insanity they'd fled.

Since his dad and Mary were sleeping there wasn't much to do to fill the time but think, so he did. Mostly about Newtown, since the alternative was thinking about the Gold Bloc invasion and the global thermonuclear war mankind had finally succumbed to earlier that day. He'd already been thinking about that for most of the drive, so it was a relief to focus on their immediate future instead.

For Trev it wasn't so much an issue of whether they should visit the town as how they should approach it. There was no question they needed to stop somewhere, at least for water, unless they wanted to drive straight through to Utah for more than a full day. Whatever his uncle might claim, thirst and exhaustion would make driving hazardous well before then, especially after the frantic time they'd had escaping the internment camp and the stress it had put on their minds and bodies.

Newtown was the only safe place Trev knew about, and it was a realistic goal to set. They'd have to drive another fifteen or so hours to reach it, but they could manage that without putting themselves in too terrible a position. Which left the main question whether they wanted to risk revealing they had a truck, or just go in on foot at first.

Trev honestly wasn't sure, although he did know that eventually they'd probably have to give away the fact that they had a vehicle; if they did visit the town it would be stupid not to buy as much wheat as the truck could carry, since the good it could do for the family and the rest of Aspen Hill couldn't be argued.

Lugging several thousand pounds of grain out of town would be suspicious enough that only an idiot wouldn't see what they were doing, at which point they may as well not insult their hosts by trying to hide the existence of the truck. Of course that risk depended on Trev's assurance of Vernon's integrity, which he couldn't be completely confident about.

They'd either have to cache their AK-47s or check them in to the sheriff, leaving them at his mercy with a very tempting target. Trev could understand his family's concerns, and he shared them. But at the same time at the end of Trev's first visit there Vernon had returned the silver rounds the barflies had shaken him down for, as well as his checked gun.

A few ounces of silver and a .45 couldn't come close to comparing to a truck with enough fuel to travel hundreds of miles. That might tempt even a saint these days. But could they afford not to take the chance, when so much good could come from it?

Trev mulled that over as he drove on, through the first faint predawn glow until it was light enough that he could turn off the headlights so the truck would be harder to see. He considered it lucky that they hadn't run into any roadblocks or ambushes up to this point; while in Gold Bloc territory the enemy would've kept the roads safe for their own vehicles, but now that he and his family were back out in territory that was still firmly US there was no telling what they might run into.

He'd need to be more cautious than he had been.

Just after dawn they stopped for another bathroom break, this one not causing quite the stampede the last one had. Afterwards they huddled together around the hood to seriously discuss whether or not to risk Newtown.

Almost everyone was against the idea, but they were also for it. There was just too much to be gained, and lost, from the risk. Finally, as Lucas began getting antsy about getting back on the road, they agreed to drive in that direction and make a final decision once they got closer to the town.

His dad took the wheel, and Trev settled back in the passenger seat to get what sleep he could on a padded leather bench that didn't recline and only had one armrest.

He couldn't wait for the trip to be over.

* * * * *

April 26
^th
, the day the world ended.

On the radio they'd already settled on calling yesterday's nuclear war the Retaliation. Lewis wasn't sure the name worked for him. It seemed too simple, too . . . plain, to properly describe the horror that had taken place the day before. The unimaginable loss of life and certainty of future suffering caused by a few hundred of the most fearsome weapons humanity had ever produced.

But he supposed it was human nature to reduce the scope of the unimaginable down to a simple term, something people could bear to say and think about.

It had been nearly a full day since the nukes fell. He'd spent most of the morning trying to put the event from his mind by working hard on the coop, rabbit hutch, his traps around the gardens, and other projects. But his curiosity had finally gotten the better of him when Chauncey radioed in about good, solid information about the previous day's events coming over his shortwave.

Lewis had hurried to the storehouse, joining a few dozen people clustered around the retired teacher, who sat at his usual place behind the counter tweaking the feed on his radio. No one seemed to notice his arrival as he made his way over to stand next to Matt and Rick near the counter, all too intent on the message coming from the old shortwave.

From what he was able to gather through context, it seemed to be a rebroadcast from Hill Air Force Base up in northern Utah, where the remnants of the military in the area had retreated after the Antelope Island camp riots the previous fall. They'd hunkered down there for the winter, struggling to keep themselves and a handful of refugees alive with limited success, and then in the spring had tentatively set out to restore order in the immediate area.

The base was glowing dust now, after being the target of a nuclear strike, but before then they claimed to have been in direct contact with the President's bunker in the hours before the missiles flew.

It turned out that the President and his cabinet, who'd seemed to disappear in the first week after the Gulf refineries attack as riots spread across the nation, had been around all along. They'd retreated to a secret, safe location, and from there spent the next several months coordinating with the remnants of the US military, FETF administrators, and the civic leaders of any remaining pockets of civilization big enough to notice via satellite surveillance, for as long as possible as their resources ran out and riots tore apart their efforts.

After that the President and his remaining staff had turned their focus away from domestic crises, to address the increasing threat of the Gold Bloc and the deal they were strong-arming Canada into. As his position steadily weakened he did his best to find diplomatic solutions that would prevent the failing US from being invaded, and give them some hope of being able to rebuild in the near future.

It had been his decision to keep the troops in Canada guarding the crude oil being produced there, held ready in the event of the US finally restoring refining capability. He was also the one who'd overseen the construction of those refineries until those efforts, too, fell apart. Then at that point he'd scrambled to prevent the incomplete structures from being looted or vandalized, while trying to negotiate help for the construction projects from other countries with ever more generous promises of shares of the refined gasoline and diesel.

Most importantly, he was the one who'd kept up peace and trade negotiations with the rest of the world, searching for aid and trying to keep the vultures from circling. The threats to the Gold Bloc, with all out nuclear war as the only card the nation had left to play, had all come from him.

If the rebroadcast from Hill Air Force Base could be believed, yesterday's catastrophe had all started when the President issued yet another ultimatum. This one held the same message as the others, ie “do what we say or we'll nuke you”, but the tone had been far more dire.

The US's final threat to the Gold Bloc had given them one day to pull their forces out of the US entirely, or at least make a convincing enough show of it that the US could trust they'd be gone before too much longer. The President had made it clear that even though the Gold Bloc had called his bluff the previous instances, with the country being invaded and his citizens in the northern states suffering mass incarceration he could no longer afford to bluff and this time he
would
carry out his threats.

As part of his ultimatum the remaining US satellites would be watching the withdrawal of invasion forces carefully, and lack of compliance or any sign of foul play would see every single warhead the US possessed launched in a full spectrum strike at Gold Bloc countries to wipe them completely off the face of the earth.

The Gold Bloc response had been to claim that their forces were engaged in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, and they flat out didn't believe that the US would trigger global thermonuclear war as a reaction to their presence. They considered the failing country's position to be far too weak.

Their leaders were so dismissive of this newest ultimatum, in fact, that they didn't even bother to broadcast it to the world, and prevented other sources from reporting on it as well to avoid drawing attention to the Gold Bloc forces invading the US and forming massive prison camps. For their part the US government in exile did their best to spread news of the ultimatum, but they didn't have the resources with the Gold Bloc hampering their efforts.

What had followed was a 24 hour period of heated debates as the President held firm on his stance, making it clear that this time he would be ignored at peril to the world. The US literally had nothing left to lose, with what little they had being snatched up by an invading force estimated to number in the millions, or even tens of millions if Gold Bloc settlers were included in the count.

The Gold Bloc leaders, meanwhile, kept confident in their assertion that his desperation showed he was only moments from folding, and that after he failed to live up to his threats following the deadline then real negotiations could begin. For the unequivocal surrender of the United States and the President's aid in calming the populace in lieu of a total takeover by Gold Bloc forces.

Only it hadn't been a bluff. When the deadline arrived the Gold Bloc leadership watched in horrified surprise along with the rest of the world as hundreds of US nukes flew. They hadn't given even the slightest hint of pulling their forces out, and if they'd prepared for an actual nuclear strike beyond launching their own nukes at any worthwhile US targets their preparations hadn't been enough.

The rest was, tragically, history.

The rebroadcast ended, and a subdued voice came on to add the few details that he'd managed to gather since Hill Air Force Base went silent. By all accounts the President's bunker and several other remaining military targets had been obliterated, along with every single nuclear silo, just in case the US had held any of their nukes back. Any remaining population centers of over ten thousand people, mostly along the coasts or in the South, had similarly been targeted. The estimated loss of life was in the tens of millions, and roughly ten percent of the nation was now uninhabitable due to radiation from fallout.

The broadcaster continued on to list losses on the Gold Bloc side, and collateral damage to neutral targets, and here the tally was far more horrific. Unimaginably so. The list of destroyed capitol cities alone seemed to last forever.

To his credit, whoever it was on the other end of the radio hadn't gone the lazy route of just looking at a map and reading off locations; he actually seemed to be giving information he'd gathered over a day of painstaking effort, after getting in contact with anyone he could who knew anything at all. A lot of it had been passed on from other sources, but his report was still an impressive example of careful fact finding.

Such as it was. It was too soon afterwards, and things were far too chaotic, for anyone to have a complete picture on exactly how great the devastation had been. Also there probably wasn't anyone left on the planet who had the sort of birds-eye view through satellites and other communications equipment to give a detailed report.