Redemption: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival series (Dark Road Book 11), page 1
REDEMPTION
Dark Road, Book Eleven
Bruno Miller
Honest enemies are better than false friends.
Ben, Joel, and Ed find themselves in the belly of the beast. During a heroic mission to find Emma’s much needed medicine, the trio and Max, Ed’s highly trained canine companion, are captured and questioned. Ben learns a difficult lesson. Sometimes the person you’d take a bullet for is standing behind the trigger.
They must find a way to escape, rescue Max if he’s still alive, and get the medicine back to Emma. The only thing standing in their way is a blood thirsty gang of lawless extremists.
The Patriot Hooligans have plagued Ben and the others since crossing the state line, leaving gruesome examples of the gang’s blood lust in their wake. Ben did what he could to avoid the gang and continue on to their home in Colorado, but circumstances dictated otherwise.
Ben, his son Joel, and Ed must now face their biggest adversary yet, while at the same time struggling to come to terms with some hard truths about the post-apocalyptic world they live in and the people they trusted.
Redemption: Book Eleven
Copyright © 2021 Bruno Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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NEWSLETTER
Contents
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
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About the Author
Chapter One
Ben wished the figure standing in front of him was an apparition caused by the lingering effects of the drugs in his system, but it wasn’t. It was Vince all right, although he was having a hard time accepting this fact. And as the tranquilizer-induced fog cleared from his eyes, all he could do was stare.
“I’m sorry, Ben. I was afraid it was you when they told me about the men they’d captured over by the clinic.” Vince stood a few feet away, his features fading in and out to the rhythm of the lantern swinging from the ceiling overhead.
“I don’t understand. What are you doing here?” Ben’s voice steadied as he tried to swallow away the dryness in his mouth and throat. What he would have given for a drink of water right now. The only things taking his mind off the pounding headache and parched mouth were the zip ties cutting into his wrists. To alleviate the pressure of his restraints, he tried his best to subtly adjust his position in the chair he was tied to, but it wasn’t possible. Whoever’d secured him to the chair wasn’t concerned about his comfort or his ability to keep blood flowing to his hands.
“You’re wasting your time.” One of the armed men in the room sneered at him.
“Can you give Ben and I some time alone, guys? We’ve got some things to talk about,” Vince asked, although his tone of voice made the question sound more like an order. The two men glanced at each other briefly while mulling over Vince’s request.
“We’ll be right outside if he tries anything, Major.” The man who had previously warned Ben about struggling against the zip ties reluctantly headed out the door. His helper followed, only looking back briefly before closing the door behind them. It was just Ben and Vince in the room now—or at least the man that looked and sounded like Vince. Ben was still having a hard time believing this was the same man that had befriended them in Cloverdale.
There were so many questions on his mind that the room began to spin, although most of how he felt was due to the cocktail of drugs still coursing through his veins. Through the pain in his neck and the massive headache building around his eyes, it was hard to concentrate on any one thought. It was like being hungover, only ten times worse than anything he’d ever experienced.
But for all the discomfort, it paled in comparison to the worry gnawing at his gut. What had happened to Joel? Now that the room was emptied of everyone but him and Vince, there was no harm in asking about his son. He hadn’t wanted their captors to know who Joel was, if they didn’t already. These people were unscrupulous and would certainly use that information against him in one way or another if they could. But with Vince here, there would be no secrets, at least when it came to revealing what Vince knew about him. Ben thought back and tried to remember the details of what Vince could know. It was just him, Joel, and Allie when they’d last met.
“Where’s Joel?” Ben squinted, and it helped ease the throbbing in his temples.
“He’s nearby. The other guy and the dog are all safe for now, too.” Vince pulled a knife from his pocket and walked around to the back of Ben’s chair. Ben’s heart began to race. This was it; Vince had come to his senses now that the other gang members were gone. He’d cut Ben loose and they could all get out of here. But that wasn’t what happened. Vince used the knife to back off the zip ties just enough to let the blood flow to Ben’s hands.
“I don’t get it, Vince. What are you doing here? What about Cloverdale? Mary, Cy, all the others.” Ben shook his head in confusion. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Cloverdale… Cloverdale was never going to work!” Vince snapped. “It’s every man for himself these days and you’re a fool if you think otherwise.” He gradually lowered his tone but was still visibly irritated and began pacing the room while wiping the sweat from his reddened face. The question had clearly struck a nerve. Ben wasn’t sure what had happened in Cloverdale, but it wasn’t good; that much was obvious.
“You don’t understand. It got really bad after you guys left. The motorcycle gang, the looters…” Vince stopped and shook his head. “We never stood a chance being located that close to the interstate. There is no more Cloverdale,” he finished, his voice utterly deadpan.
At the risk of upsetting Vince and ruining his chances at convincing his old friend to cut him loose, Ben’s curiosity got the better of him. “What about the others?”
Vince sighed and found a spot to sit atop some wooden crates. “Let me tell you something. You can’t count on anyone, not even family. Honest enemies are better than false friends. You remember that, Ben Davis.” Vince leaned forward and pulled a pistol from his belt before resuming his reclined position. Ben hoped the removal of the weapon was for Vince’s comfort, not because he meant to use it. But the look on the old man’s face was dark, and Ben had the feeling anything was possible.
Maybe if Ben played the angle right and got Vince to open up about what happened, he could eventually reason with the man and talk his way out of all this. Vince couldn’t be that far gone, could he? It wasn’t just his attitude that had changed, though; he looked the part, too. Ben didn’t remember the man having that many wrinkles or looking anywhere near as old and tired as he did right now in the dingy light of the room.
“What happened?” Ben pressed. He didn’t have to fake interest; he genuinely wanted to know what had gone down and could push Vince to this point. In the meantime, he’d keep testing the limits of the zip ties behind his back.
“Gone. They all left. They all abandoned me one way or another.” Vince took a swig from the flask he’d seemingly produced out of nowhere.
“What about your son, Cy?” Ben asked.
“We got in an argument, and he took off, back to Washington, to look for his mother and girlfriend.” Vince drank again.
“And Mary? I thought you guys were close.” Ben tried to keep the conversation going.
“South, to her daughter’s place in Florida, along with a few of the others.” Vince settled into his makeshift seat even further as he drained the flask and began to go over the finer points of the last couple of weeks.
He told Ben about an elderly couple, Albert and Helen Kingsley, who stumbled into Cloverdale after their car broke down, much like Ben and his crew had. When Vince and Bill went out to retrieve the broken-down car, they found a ham radio in the trunk. They were unable to get the car running, but almost immediately after returning to town, they set up the radio over at the jail. Within a couple of hours, they began receiving transmiss ions from other survivors. The group was located near the Florida Keys, and they were broadcasting an open invite to any and all who wanted to join them in rebuilding a functioning society. With Mary’s daughter already in Florida, it didn’t take much to convince her that was where she needed to be.
A small group quickly formed, including Reese, the vet student who had patched up Gunner, and her parents. Not wanting to stick around and face an Indiana winter or the hard work it would take to survive one, they resolved to join Mary and headed south. Add in the constant threat from the biker gang, and the promise of a safe haven in Florida with over a hundred survivors sounded better with each passing day. They touted an established community with law and order, power, water, and protection, along with a sustainable source of food harvested from the ocean. They made it sound like paradise. But not to everyone.
Vince wasn’t convinced, and neither was Cy, who was still on board with the idea of standing their ground in Cloverdale at first. Vince mentioned some names of others that were also reluctant to leave. Ben recognized a few from his short stay in Cloverdale. Vince pulled out all the stops to try and get Mary to stay, but they weren’t enough, and he couldn’t compete with the possibility of a reunion with her daughter. Vince and Mary’s relationship deteriorated quickly after she made her decision to leave clear, and he ended up moving into a motel room of his own to avoid the awkward silence that plagued their evenings together thereafter.
A couple of days before Mary and her small group of “deserters,” as Vince called them, were scheduled to head for Florida, the motorcycle gang made their most serious attempt at breaching the town’s defenses. And while Vince and the others were mildly successful at holding the gang off, they suffered losses that would set into motion a series of events from which Cloverdale and the people fighting to preserve it would not recover.
Morale was already at an all-time low, so when Bill, Vince’s long-time friend and employee at the garage, was shot and killed in the skirmish, things snowballed from there. The fact that Bill’s wife laid the blame for her husband’s death squarely on Vince’s shoulders didn’t help matters any, as it began creating a rift in their tiny community of survivors.
To make matters even worse, later that night, one of the Meyer brothers succumbed to wounds suffered in the fight. And if that wasn’t enough, Tim Rice took a bullet dangerously close to the femoral vein in his right leg. The psychological impact on the others was too much to bear, and a few more of the group that were already on the fence about whether or not to stay in Cloverdale made up their minds to leave that night.
Reese was able to get Tim stabilized and stop the bleeding with a tourniquet. She did her best to make him comfortable with the remaining Percocet from their pharmacy haul. But things went from bad to worse the next morning when Cy discovered his cold, gray body lying in a pool of blood on his cot. He’d removed the tourniquet at some point during the night and bled out.
Vince struggled as he told this part of the story, especially the part about how he and Tim had grown up together and known each other for most of their lives. The loss of Tim’s family during the initial EMP strike was too much for the man to endure any longer, and as far as he was concerned, there was no point in going on any further or wasting any more of the dwindling supply of medicine on him. The man had given up, his will to live drained from him along with too much blood. Vince knew these details because Tim had taken the time to write a short note apologizing for letting Vince and the others down.
Vince took the news hard, but Cy took it worse than Vince anticipated. Cy and Tim had become good friends over the last couple of weeks, and at times, their relationship caused Vince some feelings of jealousy, he had to admit. He quickly dismissed his emotions as selfish, though, happy that Tim had found someone to confide in. It was also good for Cy to have someone to talk to, although Vince wished he could have filled that role.
Needless to say, Tim’s death had a devastating effect on the remaining survivors as well. Whatever resolve remained among the group was buried, along with Tim, Bill, and Richard Meyer that day. They weren’t the only casualties, though. The dreams and hopes of establishing some semblance of their former lives in Cloverdale were also laid to rest.
It was at this time that Cy started talking about heading back to Washington. Vince knew Cloverdale was done, but they also started receiving another transmission on the radio that afternoon from the Fort Wayne area. It was another group claiming they were doing well and had assistance from FEMA. Plentiful supplies and stability sounded good to Vince, in spite of his distrust of the federal agency that was supposedly helping them.
Unfortunately, Cy didn’t see things that way. The recent deaths had obviously shaken him to his core, and he was determined to find his mother and his girlfriend, even if they hadn’t parted on good terms. Cy was convinced that Kate was alive and well with her family in the mountains of Washington. Vince could tell the guilt was eating him alive, and it probably would have been a no-brainer to join his son on the trek back home, but that wasn’t to be.
To say the previous weeks had at times been tense between Vince and Cy would be an understatement. The two usually found themselves unable to communicate without the conversation leading to an argument. Cy accused Vince of being overbearing, demanding, and unreasonable when it came to trusting others, especially his own son.
In hindsight, Vince admittedly escalated the situation by calling Cy out on what he perceived to be immature and spoiled behavior. Pointing out that it was his wealthy mother’s fault for raising him without rules or responsibility didn’t win him any points, either. Even with the world falling apart, Vince found it increasingly difficult to arrive at any common ground with his son. Ben couldn’t help but wonder if Vince had turned to the bottle for answers around that time as well. That was the type of thing that would only add fuel to the fire.
Vince continued explaining in a way that begged for sympathy for his point of view, going on about how he began losing the respect of the others in town but couldn’t force himself to care. Vince confessed that he’d given up hope well before Tim’s death. He was just going through the motions for the sake of his son and Mary.
Nothing really mattered anymore, and that was never truer than the morning Mary and the others headed out for Florida. If losing more than half the town’s inhabitants wasn’t a hard enough pill to swallow, Cy had taken off for Washington in the middle of the night. Tim’s Bronco was missing, along with some supplies. Vince later found a letter and Cy’s keys to the garage on his desk.
Vince didn’t go into detail about what the letter said, but Ben could tell that whatever it contained was what ultimately broke the man or at least finished him off. Not only was Cloverdale gone, but the man he’d met there called the Major was gone along with it. This wasn’t the person who had helped Ben and his group get back on the road, gave them a place to sleep, and fed them. This was an alcohol-fueled, empty shell of a human being who had given up on life and those he loved. And based on the people he was keeping company with these days, there was no returning from the personal hell he was living in.
Vince had gone from being one of the reasons Ben and his crew had made it this far to potentially the biggest obstacle they had yet encountered on their way home to Colorado.
Chapter Two
It was hard to believe that Cloverdale was gone. Ben imagined the place overrun with looters. Would they destroy the town and all Vince and his group had accomplished, or would they build upon the infrastructure already in place? He knew the answer to that. He worried for Mary and Reese and some of the other faces he could still recall. They were out on the road somewhere right now, probably headed south. He hoped they found what they were looking for in Florida, but more importantly, he hoped they made it there. But he had more pressing matters to concern himself with now.
