The World On Fire Read online

  The World On Fire

  The World Burns Book 8

  Boyd Craven III

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  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

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 Boyd Craven III

  The World On Fire, The World Burns Book 8

  By Boyd Craven

  Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!

  All rights reserved.

  To be notified of new releases, please sign up for my mailing list at: http://eepurl.com/bghQb1

  1

  King, Michael, Chad, Rose and Anna Lewiston stopped their APC for the third time of the day. Diesel fuel was difficult to find and siphon, so they’d started finding all the small fuel cans they could and got it two to five gallons at a time and transferred it between stalled semi-trucks and the APC.

  “Do you think we’ll get there today?” Rose asked Chad, her hand snaking through his.

  “Should, as long as the last twenty miles are not like they were going through that last city,” he said in broken English.

  Michael smiled and called over his shoulder, “Can one of you radio them? I don’t know how close I’m getting and I don’t want drive right up and have them think we’re out to hurt them.”

  He’d gotten good at driving the APC, taking every chance he could to learn from Chad, getting to know everything about it. They’d left for the trip to Kentucky to ‘The Homestead’, but had stopped several times, the last time for three weeks.

  It wasn’t that they were far off, it was more that they had found people who had been in desperate need of help. Twice, Michael, King and Chad had used the APC to bust through roadblocks or run through houses where raiders, for a lack of a better term, had holed up and held the citizens hostage. Sometimes literally. Whenever they found problems like those, they couldn’t turn a blind eye. They had all been in the camps, and seen how bad it was.

  One of the surprising things they’d heard was that the FEMA camps they had been in in Alabama were some of the worst run. Lukashenko wasn’t just a sadistic bastard; he was also corrupt. If word of his and his men’s misdeeds hadn’t been handled by NATO, they would have hanged him. The biggest mind blower was the President coming on the radio and making his announcement. It was laced with some of the most outlandish opinions, information and good intel. If everyone was supposed to report in… King and Chad were already considered criminals for one reason or another… But King had wanted to go to Kentucky to help out.

  There was something restless about him lately and he wouldn’t talk to Michael about it.

  “I’ll do it,” Anna, Michael’s mother said and picked up the mic.

  “Homestead, this is Anna Lewiston. Do you copy? Over.”

  “Anna Lewiston, this is base security. We read you, over.”

  “Base security for Homestead Kentucky? Where Mr. Blake is? Over?”

  “Affirmative. What can we do for you Miss Lewiston? Over.”

  “We’re heading that direction with a captured APC. It does not have guns nor turrets. Our intentions are peaceful and we’d like to join the crowd. Over.”

  “Give me your markings.”

  She looked at King who wrote them down and she read them off.

  “Affirmative. We’ve been tracking your progress for twenty minutes. Please stop next to that blue trailer, over.”

  Michael was already acting on the instructions, but his eyes had gone wide. If they had been following their progress for this entire time…

  “We’re parked,” she said and hung up the microphone.

  “Pop your hatch, over.”

  King did and sat down. His bulk covered most of one bench seat and he made sure to put his hands on his legs, palms down. Michael was going to get his pistols out and put them down, but there was already movement outside and a face looked in at him through the viewing port, startling him. It was a young woman, clean, her hair tucked into a camouflage hat. A noise at the hatch had him spinning to see a form drop in, an M4 at the ready.

  “Hands in front,” she said in a friendly voice, but her eyes were everywhere, looking at everyone.

  They all complied, and Rose was having a hard time holding still. That had been a mild annoyance to King; the young woman was full of energy, and being cooped up in a hot metal box all day had done little good for her nerves. Now having an armed woman covering her had her almost wetting herself. It was fast and unexpected.

  “Anybody armed?” She asked as two more figures dropped in through the hatch.

  One of them immediately pressed the button to open the back door, and it started moving out slowly, the heavy armor preventing the hydraulics from going any faster.

  Everybody said yes except Rose, and they held their hands up, to show they weren’t going for weapons.

  “Good, it’s a rough world out there,” she said, putting her MR over her shoulder on the sling, “My name’s Corrine, I’m a member of the Squad, part of the Homestead’s scouting teams. You guys can relax. Let’s just step out into the light and talk a minute.”

  The other women didn’t say anything, and they’d held their M4s down low, but at the ready.

  “Slick,” King said, ducking as he exited.

  “Better than I expected,” Michael said, following the big man out and then stuttered to a stop as he realized they were surrounded by twenty heavily armed men and woman, some of whom had RPG launchers trained on them.

  “We’ve had our share of problems,” Corrinne said and then nodded to them.

  “Let’s put your guns down and then I can call everyone off here and we can talk. It makes everyone less nervous.”

  “If we don’t want to?” King asked.

  “We’ll ask you to turn around and head away from the Homestead.”

  “Fair,” King replied, and slowly disarmed.

  He hadn’t worn shirts much since the break out and rescue of the other FEMA camp. Instead, he wore a tactical vest loaded with all sorts of lethal goodies. He also carried a duffel, but he’d left that in the APC. He stripped out of his vest instead of going piece by piece, and then dropped his web belt with his pistols. Lastly, he pulled a stiletto out of his boot and put it in the pile. Seeing the big man disarm, the others followed suit. Michael slowly pulled out his father’s Gold Cups and lowered them to the ground.

  “A two-gun type of kid, huh?” Corrine asked.

  Michael just shrugged.

  “Cat got your tongue?” another woman asked.

  “No ma’am, just nervous,” he admitted.

  “Why you nervous, sugar?” a redhead asked him, “You got something to be nervous about?”

  “If what I heard on the radio is right, we’ve got twenty guns on us. I heard about the squad. You guys are supposed to be the…” he swallowed, “top dogs. Trained by Blake’s wife. So yeah, twenty guns in my face by hardened killers tends to make me want to piss myself.” The words came out in a rush and Michael, horrified, immediately wanted to take them back, but his mother burst out laughing.

  “That is pretty funny,” Corrine said and made a motion for everyone to lower their guns.

  “Truth is, we never know now a days who’s who. We were tasked with following your APC because it’s got the markings of some of Eastern Europeans who were running camps down south. Didn’t know if you were friendlies or not.”

  “Fair enough. I’m Corrine, thi
s is Melissa. Sgt. Smith?”

  “Yes Ma’am.” A young but competent-looking man stepped forward.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think we found the folks from Alabama and Louisiana,” he said with a grin. “Smith,” he said, holding out his hand to King.

  “King,” he replied and shook, and soon everyone was greeting each other.

  It didn’t bother anyone that the guns were within reach; they were outnumbered. When introductions were done they rearmed themselves and several people, including Corinne, got into the APC for the last part of the trip to the homestead.

  “The roads, how did you…?” Michael said after they had been on the road for almost twenty minutes.

  Like magic, the roadway had been cleared, with dead cars lined up neatly on the furthest edge of the shoulder, leaving the lanes open.

  “We’ve been working on clearing the roads in our area for a month now,” Sgt. Smith said.

  “Smart,” King told him.

  “He don’t talk much, does it?” Corrinne asked Rose.

  “No, not really,” she said.

  “Nyet,” Chad said, “unless it’s to show us something.”

  “Talk too much, mouth gets you into trouble,” King explained.

  “That’s the most I’ve heard him say in a while,” Anna said with a smile.

  Corrine and Smith talked into their radios quietly and they were stopped at the end of Holloway Lane by an armored APC with a 30mm cannon pointed at them.

  “End of the trip for now. Leave the keys in the ignition and we’ll hoof the rest of it,” Corrinne said, squeezing to the back and hitting the button to open the rear door.

  “It doesn’t— “

  “Don’t,” King said softly, his voice deep but calm, “They’ll have it for us when we leave.”

  “Yes, we just can’t fit it up the roadway,” Corinne said, “Trust me, it’ll be secure here.”

  * * *

  They were walking up the gentle slope of the two track, marveling at the canopy of trees. Michael and his mom talked about what they wanted out of this, and they were almost in agreement. Michael had wanted to head south and towards the fight when he was done, but Anna hadn’t. She thought she’d be more helpful doing what she could from behind the lines, at least a good couple of states away, and she had begged Michael to do the same.

  “I can’t do that, Mom,” he complained, “It’s just… I’ve changed. I can’t let something like this happen, not if I can help it.”

  “Save the world yourself?” King asked.

  “No, but I have to… I don’t know. I have to act, move, help. If I don’t, it’s going to drive me crazy.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, but you’ve pulled off some crazy stuff before. Lord knows I would have stopped you if I had known it, but I’m glad to have you back,” she said, pulling him close in a hug.

  King stopped walking, and in turn everyone else stopped to see what had caught his eye. He walked over to the side of the trees and put a large finger into several of the holes that pock marked them. He looked down and then across the way to the other trees.

  “Traps,” he said.

  “No, there used to be, but they’re all disarmed now. Blake did that back when the EMP first hit. Lots of people wanting to move to the country, eat a lot of peaches…”

  “Michael and Anna cracked up but King and Rose looked at her, puzzled.

  “Going to move out in the country, going to eat a lot of peaches,” Chad sang in an off-key, broken English accent, “What? It’s the Presidents of the United States of America. Is good song, you like?”

  Everyone stood in awkward silence for a moment and then busted up. King moved onto the next tree that had been peeled by buckshot and started walking again, trusting Corrinne, who was walking at the front of the group.

  * * *

  Sandra and Blake had been waiting for the new arrivals. They had managed the growth of the Homestead, and set up incubator operations in four parts of the state. With Blake being the Director of FEMA for Kentucky, he’d used his position to educate and show by example. It was a good program and it was working well. By wintertime, many families would be saved instead of maybe freezing to death or being picked off by lone wolf raiders.

  “John told me about these guys a while back,” Sandra said putting her arms around her husband’s side and hugging him close.

  “Yeah, I remember hearing it on the radio. The break out. That was them?” he asked.

  “Some of them. I’d like to meet them.”

  “He kicked again,” Blake said, feeling the baby moving in his wife’s swollen stomach.

  “He has been for a while now,” she murmured, “I just don’t… Oh, my God!” She broke off.

  Walking up the hill was The Squad with the travelers. They were well fed and armed for bear, but it was the giant-sized black man that got her attention.

  “KING?” She yelled and started running as fast as her body allowed her.

  2

  Near Brackettville, Texas – Brad Palmer

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” the voice began, and everyone sat up straight as the 44th President of the United States, the one believed to be dead, spoke. “I come here tonight, as your President and as a fellow human being, to talk to the citizens of our great nation.

  I’d like, first and foremost,” he paused for a moment, “to talk about the attack. There have been several points of misinformation circulating. We were not attacked by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, despite what others have reported. They do not have the information that I do. It is true that the nuclear talks were going badly, but it wasn’t a single country that did this to us.

  Elements of ISIS and North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon over the United States of America in the guise of a satellite launch, using a mobile sea platform. The resulting EMP has destroyed key critical infrastructure throughout most of the Continental United States, sparing some regions in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Our Canadian friends have suffered as well, in regions of Ontario and Quebec.

  The regions of Mexico that have been touched by the EMP have already been experiencing destabilization from cartel violence, but they have not experienced the losses that we Americans have. It’s brutal, it’s horrible and the reason you are not seeing the United States Military take more action within the country is because we are now fighting a war on two fronts.

  First, the war against North Korea has begun once again, as the Korean Armistice Agreement has been nullified. They’ve launched attacks against Washington DC, Maryland, and other parts of the Eastern seaboard. Even now, their subs try to sneak through our defensive networks. As we recall our military from around to globe to help in the naval battles, our country is being attacked from within.

  There were elements in several cities, Dearborn and Ann Arbor Michigan for example, where there were radical religious factions that acted with the knowledge of the coming attack, and destabilized the region. Those citizens and immigrants are being dealt with by a large force that has come down from Camp Grayling and from all over the Midwest. Acts of violence, terrorism and hate crimes are running rampant throughout the country. The racial violence in the States is staggering and, if there was ever a time for Americans to pull together, now is that time. Remember, neither race nor religion is a good enough reason to take up arms against your fellow humans.

  There are, of course, more militant factions within the country; those who are born with radical conservative views who have openly refused orders and even attacked government agents and their leadership.

  “These factions will be stamped out and their leadership brought to justice. We will not tolerate former members of our armed services openly mocking and attacking the government in their own homes and cities,” he paused for a moment before continuing.

  “As some of you may have already realized or heard, each Governor of the State has had the National Guard activated. All current and former service
members between the ages of 18 and 65 are required to report for duty or evaluation at the nearest National Guard outpost. I have heard reports of units going rogue and how things were settled, as the intelligence comes in to me slowly… but it will not be tolerated. Military members will report for duty, or be prosecuted per executive order. Those men and women who betrayed their oaths… You will be dealt with as well.

  Law Enforcement – I know many of you, like so many of the National Guard Units, have had to go home now to protect your families. It was your duty as a husband, wife, parent or guardian. Now it is time to guard our country, our cities, and our way of life. You are to report back to your stations and precincts where you will be resupplied by the FEMA emergency managers, who report to the Governors and myself. Martial Law is in effect until lifted by Executive Order, and all elections have been suspended.

  “I…” the President paused again, “I really hope to suspend Martial Law as quickly as I can, because my advisors now tell me that over 80% of the country has died off in four separate waves. Those very sick or on life support, the ones taking life-saving medications, further more from disease and starvation and lastly from human predation. I am asking everyone to assist with the rebuilding efforts, and for your cooperation with the Governors of the State.

  For those of you still in FEMA camps, I urge you to stay and continue the work. Some have told me that they’ve been called the equivalent of labor camps, or even concentration camps. I do not agree with that assessment. The horrors of a few isolated instances does not paint the picture of the entire effort of FEMA and NATO to help our nation getting kick started again. Without the labor to build critical components, we cannot pull ourselves out of the ashes. Instead of going to work, we’re asking the people we’re taking care of in the camps to do their part in contributing to rebuild our country.

  Again, attacks against those camps will not be tolerated, and those who instigate or support them will be brought to justice.” The words chilled everyone in the room. “I want to stress to you; those in the camps are not prisoners, they are there to help with rebuilding key infrastructure, designed to help the population out.”