The Fallout

  Hunt

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Present-day

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

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  Prologue

  Six Months Ago

  One hundred feet below the surface of the pentagon was a situation room directly connected to The White House. The strategic location was completely secure from the outside world and acted as a nuclear bunker in times of crises should the joint chiefs and other high-ranking officials need to be escorted into a secure location to maintain the chain of command.

  General McGuire sat on the left side of the table, staring at the screens on the wall, which were split to show different locations. One of them was The White House.

  “General McGuire, how much longer until your men are in position?” President Hoyer asked.

  “Less than five minutes, Mr. President,” Hoyer answered.

  A team of Navy Seals was currently en route to engage a Russian sub that had moved from international waters to directly off the coast of North Carolina.

  “Are we sure this is a nuclear-grade submarine?” President Hoyer asked.

  “That’s what our intelligence is assuring us, Mr. President,” McGuire answered.

  It had been a tense morning. The White House had first attempted to contact the Kremlin when the Russian sub had appeared on their radar. The submersible had used a new type of cloaking technology to penetrate their defenses this close to the shore, but unbeknownst to General McGuire and the rest of the intelligence community, the sub had turned off its cloaking device.

  “I want all of our troops ready for deployment,” President Hoyer said. “And I want NORAD at DEFCON five.”

  “The orders have already been given, Mr. President,” McGuire said.

  All of the preparations had been made, but what McGuire couldn’t understand was why the Russian sub had come so close only to reveal itself? Not to mention the Kremlin’s silence. If anything, their usual go-to was denial, not evasion. None of the details added up and considering the stakes of what they were about to involve themselves in, McGuire was uneasy.

  “Secretary Hannigan,” McGuire said. “Have we attempted to backchannel through the Kremlin?”

  “We have,” Hannigan answered. “So far, our agents embedded in the capital haven’t been able to give us any information.”

  “Is it possible we’re dealing with defectors or a rogue operation?” McGuire asked.

  “It’s possible, but we don’t know for sure,” Hannigan answered.

  “General?” One of McGuire’s assistants leaned over from his headset. “NORAD has just confirmed the Russian sub’s missile system has been activated.”

  “Dear God,” President Hoyer said.

  “One minute till Alpha Team arrives, sir,” Hannigan said.

  The situation was a ticking timebomb. No one was communicating with each other, and if history had taught McGuire anything, it was a breakdown in communication that typically led to war. But what McGuire couldn’t understand, as he watched the deployed vessel of navy divers gearing up for a mission that would either escalate or prevent a nuclear war, was what Russia believed to accomplish with this stunt?

  Sure, the Russians had postured before, but never so aggressively. This was a clear intrusion on the United States’s sovereignty, and they knew such an act of intrusion would lead to a retaliatory response. But if war was Russian’s end goal, they also knew it would only lead to a conflict that would engulf the entire world.

  “Thirty seconds until Bravo Team arrives,” Hannigan said.

  McGuire tensed, wishing the Kremlin would pick up the damned phone, but just before the Seals arrived at the drop zone, McGuire received a text on his secure mobile. He glanced at it, frowning at the message he’d received.

  The night is long, but the dawn is bright.

  The number was unknown, but the ominous message was the last thing McGuire saw before the power cut out.

  “Five sec—”

  The screens on the wall went black, and the power in the room shut off. There was a collective gasp the moment they were all plunged into the darkness, but McGuire was quick to calm his staff’s nerves.

  “Relax, people, we have a generator down here that will—” The lights turned, and the screens came back online. But the president and the rest of the staff were completely lost.

  “Let’s get The White House back up online,” McGuire said. “What’s the status on our Seals?”

  All of the staff were staring at their laptops, typing furiously on their keyboards, but still, the room remained silent.

  “Let’s get some answers, people!” McGuire said, standing up.

  “Sir, we have system-wide failures,” the young assistant said as she removed her glasses. “According to what I see here, all of our servers from level one and everything above ground is offline. I can’t reach anyone from outside our location.”

  It was a consensus shared and echoed throughout the room, and as McGuire thought back to the message he had received just before the blackout, he stared at his phone.

  After years of speculation, it had finally happened. Someone had detonated an EMP.

  1

  Present-day

  “Deep breath in for me.” The doctor placed his stethoscope against Ben Riker’s back as he inhaled. “Again.”

  Ben sat shirtless on the examination table, which was nothing more than a flimsy cot that had been constructed in a tent with a privacy curtain. But the field hospital where he received his care was lightyears ahead of the medicine he’d had access to over the past six months, ever since the EMP had flipped them back to the stone age.

  “Okay, you can put your shirt back on,” the doctor said.

  Ben reached for his clothes. His chest and back were covered with scars and a few lingering bruises. Life had been difficult since the power had gone out, and Ben had found himself in more than his fair share of scrapes along the way. But there were two scars on Ben’s stomach which had been left by the same person.

  One scar was from a bullet his brother had accidentally shot him with over twenty years ago, and the other was a bullet wound his brother had intentionally placed in his stomach three months earlier.

  “I don’t hear any fluid in the lungs, and your heart rate and blood pressure are normal,” Doctor Stevens said. “No swelling in the leg or around the abdomen.” He nodded, staring at the new scar along Ben’s stomach. “I’d say you’re in the clear now.”

  Ben slid off of the cot, glad for the clean check-up. “Good to hear.”

  Doctor Stevens was the resident physician for the military unit Ben and his family had attached themselves to after losing their home. It had been a tumultuous time since the EMP was detonated, but three months ago had no doubt been the most chaotic.

  “I’ll still want to see you next week, but it’s just a formality,” Stevens said. “You finished your last round of antibiotics?”

  “Last week,” Ben answered.

  “Good.” Doctor Stevens jotted down a few more notes into Ben’s file and then placed it on his desk. “Anything else bothering you?”

  “Not unless you have anything you can prescribe me for dealing with four kids under the age of ten living in a cramped tent,” Ben answered.

  “One glass of bourbon before bed,” Stevens said. “To help calm the nerves.”

  Ben smiled and finished getting dressed. “Thanks, Doc.”

  Finished with his check-up and glad for the all-clear on his recovery, Ben stepped out of the medical unit tent and into the morning sun.

  Fall was starting to take hold of the area, and Ben had always loved North Carolina this time of year. The weather was crisp, the scenery was beautiful, and there was an ease that filled the air, almost as if everyone recognized the fact that they had made it to the end of another year and people were exhaling after the stress they had gone through. But there was no breath of relief in the air this fall, only more worry.

  The entire military base that had risen from the mountains outside of Asheville hadn’t been here more than a month ago. But it was already the biggest gathering of military personnel in the Southeast.

  After the EMP strike had crippled the country, the government and military had begun the slow and frustrating process of rebuilding what they had lost. It had been difficult and challenging, but the sight of such force gave Ben hope that they would be able to turn things around.

  The fight against

those responsible for the attack was a crucial tipping point. The New Order, led by a man referred to only as Supreme Leader, had a significant fighting force spread across the country.

  The moment the EMP was detonated, disrupting communications and isolating millions without food, clean water, or access to medicine, the New Order unleashed a coordinated attack against large metropolitan areas, unlike anything the people had seen before.

  Tens of thousands had died the first day of the EMP, gunned down by extremists who had fallen under the spell of one madman. And in the subsequent days, weeks, and months that followed, hundreds of thousands more died from famine and disease. The fabric of society had been cut in half, and while certain individuals sought to capitalize on this new weakness as an opportunity, Ben had done what he could to help rebuild. But even his own efforts ended in failure.

  New faces arrived at the military post every day, soldiers hanging out, everyone eager to get back into the fight and face an enemy who had largely remained elusive. And no one was more eager than Ben.

  The New Order was more personal to Ben than most because Ben had family who had joined the New Order’s ranks. The same brother who had put a bullet in him was the right hand of the Supreme Leader.

  The sadistic expression on Ben’s brother’s face was all he had been able to think about since he was brought here. A mixture of anger and sadness had plagued him, and he knew the only way it would leave him would be to find his brother again and face him.

  But with all of the anger coursing through him, Ben didn’t know how he was going to react once he finally saw his brother. Ben had already resented Mark for leaving him, and now that he had chosen a side as evil and vile as the New Order, knowing the things Mark had done, Ben no longer saw the man as his brother.

  Now, Mark was Ben’s enemy.

  Ben didn’t believe he had any forgiveness left for the man. And his obsession with finding his sibling and stopping the New Order had taken its toll on his family as well. But it was more than just finding the guy he’d grown up with, and it was about stopping what the New Order had planned.

  When Mark had put a bullet in Ben’s belly, Ben had been carrying a piece of weaponry used in a nuclear bomb. He and Colonel Jackson had stolen the piece from the New Order to prevent them from building a nuclear bomb. But the New Order was now in possession of the piece, and it was only a matter of time before they completed the weapon and used it to change not just the course of the war but the future of the planet as well.

  As Ben navigated the camp, he was amazed at how much the military presence had grown. Ever since Asheville had been occupied by New Order troops during their last engagement, more soldiers arrived every day.

  The small outlet mall off the highway, which once provided shoppers a plethora of options, now housed soldiers. Clothes, shoes, and sporting equipment had been exchanged for guns, ammunition, and artillery. But even with the massive size of the facility, it was filling up quickly, and Ben wondered how many more units would arrive before McGuire was confident enough for them to engage the enemy.

  In the center of the outlet mall was a large field that had once been used as a picnic area but was now tented for any civilians the military rescued or people who had come to seek shelter. Ben and his family lived out in those tents. It wasn’t as nice of accommodations as what they’d had at the fire facility, but after what they had escaped, Ben was simply happy everyone was alive and healthy.

  Ben paused on the outside of the tent belonging to his family. He shut his eyes, getting in the right mindset before he saw his children.

  The EMP and collapse of society had been difficult for adults but even worse for children. Their world was just as shattered as his, and their futures were in more peril than his own. It was a father’s job to provide a better future for his children, and after the EMP struck, millions of futures had been stolen or paused, and no one knew when, or if, any kind of normal would return.

  Ben entered the tent and was surprised to find it empty. The beds were made, but he spotted toys scattered about the floor. He picked up a few of the items they had scavenged over the past few months and returned them to the box in the corner.

  The tent was six hundred square feet of space for seven people. Some of the other civilians had it even worse, but the confined quarters were beginning to take their toll and there was no end in sight.

  “Hey.” Liz, Ben’s wife, entered the tent. She was dressed in some of the clothes the military had loaned them since they only had the clothes on their back when they had arrived. She had always been a petite woman, and while she had been athletic, the past six months had hardened her, toning and building muscle. Everyone who was still alive had grown stronger. It was the only way to avoid death.

  “Where are the kids?” Ben asked.

  “Sarah took them to get breakfast this morning,” Liz answered. “I went to check on Cole and Rachel.”

  Rachel was Liz’s sister, and Cole was the biological father of Liz’s daughter, Sarah, who Ben had helped raised. Cole and Rachel had gotten together before the EMP, and while it had been an adjustment for everyone, the family had come to terms with the relationship.

  “How did it go with the doctor?” Liz asked.

  “I’m all clear,” Ben answered.

  Liz exhaled relief. “That’s great. That’s really good news.” She hugged him and kissed him again.

  Ben allowed Liz to enjoy the moment because he knew she wouldn’t enjoy what he said next. “General McGuire won’t approve a mission into Asheville to take back the fire facility,” Ben said. “It’s not deemed a priority for the war.”

  Liz’s smile slowly faded, but she didn’t shout, and she didn’t scream, no tell-tale signs she was gearing up for a fight. What Ben saw was far worse than any of that. She sat down, stoic, and shook her head. “I should have never trusted that woman,” Liz said. “You were right.”

  Ben joined her on the edge of the cot and put his arm around her. “You and I both know the situation was more complicated than how you remember it. We made the best possible decisions with the time and resources we had. We kept our family alive.”

  Liz tensed. “They all turned on us, Ben. Every last one of them. People who had been our friends for years and after everything we did to keep them safe.”

  The betrayal at the fire facility had been a hard pill to swallow. Ben knew they hadn’t been without error in their decision-making, but he never believed they would be run out by people they had known for over a decade.

  “It’s over,” Ben said. “Our family is safe here. They made their choice, and that’s something they’ll have to live with. It’s not our burden anymore.”

  Liz nodded. “I know. It’s still hard to put it behind me, though.”

  Because Liz had been left in charge when the coup happened, Ben knew how much she blamed herself. But Ben doubted the outcome would have been any different if he’d been at the helm.

  The Percys were much smarter than people gave them credit for. Once they set their mind to something, they’d burn anything to get it.

  “Listen,” Ben said, clearing his throat. “There is something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Liz shifted toward him, worried. “What happened?”

  “There is a conflict coming,” Ben answered. “The military is going to be making a move against the enemy, but I’m afraid they might be too late.”

  Liz became pale. “You’re talking about the bomb.”

  Ben nodded. “Those people are one step away from being able to blow us all off the face of the earth and extend this conflict for another twenty years. Even if the military pulls a victory against the bulk of the New Order’s forces, it won’t matter when they set off a nuclear bomb.”

 

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