Without Law 17, page 1
Eric Vall
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Chapter 1
We’d been driving since early morning, just before dawn, but Norfolk was just over ten hours from home, and since we had a whole caravan with us, we had to be extremely careful. If we ran into some NK troops it could be very bad. We had all our people and supplies with us, and we couldn’t afford to get caught up in a fire fight at the moment. There was enough ammunition and plasma liquid packed in our vehicles to level a five mile radius, and if just one thing exploded, we were all fucked.
We were about an hour out of Norfolk, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the destruction we’d passed on the way down. We’d avoided the main part of New York, but seeing the outskirts of the city was enough to put me on edge.
I couldn’t be sure what destruction was caused by the general terror and panic of the citizens once the EMP hit, or what had been caused by either the Canadians or now the North Koreans. Either way, it was awful to see. The city was virtually burnt to the ground. There wasn’t a single home or shop we’d passed by that didn’t have its windows busted out. A lot of them were literally burnt to the ground, just ashes, and the ones that weren’t were completely torn apart with nothing left inside. The city streets had been littered with trash and bodies, and though there weren’t many, I’d seen a couple bodies of NK soldiers.
Washington had been even worse. We’d gone through the city to see if we had some troops hiding out there, but all we’d found was more destruction. The city wasn’t burned down like the outskirts of New York had been, but it was ripped to pieces in every other way.
The houses were boarded up, but the windows were busted out, and it was clear the place had long been evacuated. The shops were ransacked to the point where there was nothing left. We drove by the White House and found the gate completely torn down. We hadn’t looked inside, but the front lawn had been indication enough of what had happened there. From what I could tell, the riots had begun just after the EMP hit. I saw homemade signs demanding the president do something, as well as rubber bullets on the ground along with some bodies. It was clear things had gotten out of hand, and from there the Canadians and North Koreans had taken over.
The front lawn was covered in signs and bodies, but the White House itself was no longer standing. It had been bombed by the NKs. I could tell from the remnants of what was left, the plasma weapons they used left a specific blast pattern and burn marks that were undeniable.
If they’d taken the White House, it was possible the president was no longer alive, but the chances of that were small. He’d probably been evacuated the minute things got out of hand. It was standard protocol for the president to be one of the designated survivors in a serious situation like we were in. I was fairly certain the president had been relocated to an undisclosed location, and he probably wouldn’t be coming back out again until this was all over. I doubted the troops we had left were even in contact with him.
The guy would wait for the troops to take back America, then he’d take over once more.
“How much longer?” Anna, my beautiful redheaded second in command asked from the passenger’s seat. She wore a black tank top, black leggings, and a pair of black running shoes. Her foot was propped up on the dash, and her long red hair was pulled back into a thick braid. A few flyaway strands flew in the breeze of her window and fluttered around her face. Her green eyes watched the road in front of us, and she chewed on her thumbnail absentmindedly.
“About an hour,” Paige answered. The brunette sat behind Anna and looked at the map in her lap. Her chestnut-brown hair was pulled up into a messy bun, her thick glasses sat atop her nose, and she wore a pair of ripped jeans, hiking boots, and a red T-shirt. The brunette had been wearing more athletic attire lately, but for this mission she’d opted to dress like her old self, and I had to admit, I kind of missed my nerdy girl in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Ugh, we’ve been driving forever,” Tara said with an eye roll. “Seeing all these destroyed towns is really depressing.”
The platinum-blonde stared out the window behind me and crossed her arms. She had on a pair of denim shorts, hiking boots, a white tank top that showed off her ample cleavage, and a black zip up hoodie. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and the shine on her plump lips shimmered in the dimming light of the evening.
“It is really sad seeing all the destruction,” Bailey said with a frown. My sweet hippie girl sat in the middle of the back seat. She had on a pair of black skinny jeans with hiking boots, a dark green hoodie, and a grey knit beanie. Her shoulder-length blonde hair poked out from under her hat, and she chewed her lip as she looked out the front windshield.
I usually would’ve split the girls up into two vehicles. Anna was my second in command, and typically she drove one jeep while I drove the other. Bailey often rode with the redhead while Tara and Paige opted to ride with me. Paige was our navigator, so I liked to have her in my jeep, but Tara always joined in simply so she didn’t have to ride with Anna. The two loved each other, but they bickered like sisters, and they liked to play up their fake disdain for one another.
For this mission, though, I wanted us all together. We had nearly fifty people with us now, and it was nice to have the girls with me while the rest of our group followed. I knew if anything came up, the girls and I would be the first to see it, and we could handle whatever it was better than any of the civilians behind us.
I appreciated them volunteering to come with us and fight for our country, but the majority of them weren’t as strong in battle as the girls were. They would still do well, and I wouldn’t argue with having more troops in the fight against the NKs, but I trusted the girls above everyone. I’d personally trained them and gone into numerous battles with them.
I’d trained most of the civilians as well, but they hadn’t seen nearly as much battle time as the girls had. If we ran into some unwanted company, I wanted my girls with me above anyone else.
We were nearly to Norfolk now, the only problem was we weren’t sure where we were headed once we got there. We knew, based on the NK orders we’d intercepted, our troops were there, but we didn’t know where they were exactly.
We’d have to search the area and figure out where we needed to go. I doubted our troops would leave any sort of indication as to where they were. I was sure they were all that was left of our boys in the area, and I just hoped the NKs from Boston hadn’t gotten there first and surrounded our forces.
We’d left soon enough that I didn’t think we’d run into the NKs. Not yet, at least. If we beat them to Norfolk, then we might have a chance to take back America after all.
“Any more ideas where we might be headed?” I asked Paige.
“Not yet,” the brunette said, and she leaned in closer to the map on her lap.
“Shouldn’t we check the naval base first?” Bailey asked.
“That’s too obvious.” I shook my head. “They won’t be there. The NKs would have bombed it into oblivion.”
“I suppose it is obvious.” Bailey chewed her lip. “But where else would they be? Wherever they are, it needs to be well-fortified.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “If our boys are trying to lay low then all they really need is a place to sleep and store things. The main goal would be to not let the NKs know where they’re at.”
“Should we check the base to see if there’s anything left at all?” Tara asked. “What if some badass stuff got left behind?”
“I don’t think that will be a problem.” I shook my head. “If our boys are around here, then they definitely took everything useful from the base. There would be no point in leaving it behind.”
“Alright,” Anna said. “So if we’re not going to the base at all, then where are we headed?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I said, and I pursed my lips.
“I still don’t see anywhere super promising on the map,” Paige informed me. “I’m not really sure which way to send us.”
“I say we just head into the city and go from there.” Anna shrugged. “We’ll find our troops eventually, or they’ll find us.”
“That’s a good point,” I said.
“What if they think we’re the enemy?” Bailey asked.
“I doubt that,” I said. “We don’t exactly look like NK soldiers.”
“True,” the blonde chuckled.
“They might think we’re just civilians passing through,” I said. “But they’d have no reason to hurt us.”
“Unless they’ve gone full dickhead like the National Guard did,” Tara pointed out with an eyebrow raise.
The platinum-blonde was right. We’d seen some messed up military groups since the EMP hit, and I couldn’t be certain the boys left in this area were any different. If they were, then God help them. A good majority of my team had been saved from corrupt military men using them as slaves of all kinds, and I doubted they would be too keen to see another group doing the same thing. I had a handle on my team, but if that was the case, we’d have to take this group out. I couldn’t have another troop of assholes running around, not when we had the NKs to worry about.
I hoped it wouldn't come to that, though. We had enough on our plates without having to worry about the American troops, too. The North Koreans were headed down to Norfolk to try and take out part of the little resistance we had left, and the
I needed to find whoever was in charge at Norfolk and see what they had going for them.
“I’m sure they know the North Koreans have planes,” Bailey said. “I bet they’re somewhere where they’re hidden from above.”
“Good point.” Tara nodded. “Like an old factory or something.”
“You think the planes have come looking for them already?” Paige asked with a frown.
“No telling if the troops from Boston know where they’re at exactly,” I said. “But they know they’re here, that’s enough. If they can’t find our boys, I wouldn’t put it past them to bomb every abandoned building in the area.”
“Or every building period,” Tara scoffed.
I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Tara was right. The NKs had enough firepower to level the whole city. I knew they wanted it for themselves, so that wasn’t their main goal. The main goal would be to take out the American troops, that way they could continue to make their way down to the Appalachians where our boys held off another group of theirs.
The NKs were planning to slowly eliminate every American troop they could, and once they did that, then the country would ultimately be theirs. I was sure they’d already taken the western and most of the central United States, but the east coast was hanging on by a thread.
That would be the thread I choked them with, though.
The sun was low in the horizon as we neared the city. We’d taken 295 down and gone around James River in the hopes of going undetected. The route we’d taken would bring us up from the south into Norfolk, but I didn’t want to risk going over the larger bridges that we would have to take to get there from the north. Whenever it came to bridges, things got tricky. Bridges were easy to secure, and even easier to ambush someone on, and I wasn’t going to be that person.
The smaller bridges I was less worried about, so we’d taken the way that was a bit longer, but it was safer.
As I got off the interstate near Norfolk State University, my heart sank. The city was completely destroyed.
Structures barely resembling buildings were all around us, and I wasn’t sure what to think. Had the citizens of Norfolk done this after the EMP hit? Was it the Candians when they’d come through? Or was it the NK troops that had been there before?
Probably all of them, but it was still an incredibly sad sight. The windows on every building were busted out, and some of them were crumbling from the top down. It seemed they’d been hit with some serious impact, and I wondered what exactly had caused such a dramatic situation.
Perhaps another NK troop had already been here, gone up against our boys, and lost. If that was the case it made sense that some of the buildings had huge holes blown in them. Our troops had probably used the largest weapons they had to take out the NK troops.
I looked to my right and saw a gas station. Or rather, what was left of one. The large sign out front was bent in half on the pole, and the gas pumps were nothing more than charred metal. Whatever had happened here, it had been bad.
“Jesus,” Paige breathed.
“Right,” Tara agreed. “I thought New York and Washington were the worst we’d seen, but this is just as bad.”
“Are we sure there are any survivors?” Bailey asked with a frown. “The place looks totally messed up.”
“The orders told the NK troops in Boston to move out to Norfolk,” Anna said. “They wouldn’t have done that unless there were American troops here.”
“Anna’s right.” I nodded. “There has to be a resistance somewhere.”
I sincerely hoped my redheaded second in command was, in fact, right. However, I was starting to grow unsure. When I looked around at the destroyed buildings and the huge cracks in the street, along with all the bodies, I wasn’t sure what we were going to find anymore.
Still, we had no choice. Even if the American troops were all gone, the NK army was headed here, so we knew exactly where they were going to be. We might have to take them out ourselves if it came to it, but we’d get America back if it was the last thing I did.
Paige navigated us through the city, and the further in we got, the worse the situation seemed to become. Rubble from buildings littered the road, there was a terrible stench from the rotten bodies on the ground, and there was blood, glass, and trash everywhere.
“This city is disgusting,” Tara sneered as we drove along.
“It’s not great,” Paige agreed with a grimace. “Some of these bodies must be fresh.”
“I saw a couple of NK soldiers a ways back,” Anna remarked. “They looked pretty fresh.”
“Gross.” Tara wrinkled her nose.
“But that means the American troops have got to be here somewhere,” Bailey said. “I haven’t seen any signs of them yet, though.”
“How could you with all this trash around?” Tara asked. “I mean, seriously. Pick up after yourselves, people.”
“Somehow, I doubt that’s their top priority at the moment,” I chuckled.
“Fair enough.” The platinum-blonde shrugged. “We’ll get it back to its former glory once this is all over.”
“Have you ever even been here before?” Anna asked with a raised eyebrow.
“No.” Tara shook her head. “But it’s got to have been better than this.”
“It was,” Paige agreed with a nod.
“Of course, you’ve been here.” Tara rolled her eyes.
“We came down for a school trip,” the brunette explained. “I’m surprised none of you went.”
“I went,” Bailey said quietly.
“You did?” Paige asked with wide eyes.
“Yeah, I think I sat behind you in the van,” she said.
“Van?” Tara asked.
“It was a pretty small group,” Paige said, then she turned back to Bailey. “I can’t believe I didn’t know you were there.”
“I never thought about it until just now.” The blonde-haired hippie shrugged.
“You two had a class together, and you didn’t even know it?” Anna chuckled.
“Well, I wasn’t actually in the class,” Paige said, and she looked down.
“What do you mean?” the redhead asked. “You went on the field trip?”
“Yeah.” The brunette shrugged. “I asked the professor if I could go.”
“Hold on,” Tara laughed. “You’re telling me you went on a field trip for a class you weren’t even in… for fun?”
“I never said it was for fun,” Paige said, and she crossed her arms.
“Why else would you go?” Anna chuckled.
“You totally went for fun,” Tara teased.
“To be fair, it was a pretty fun trip,” Bailey said with a smile. “We went to the botanical gardens and stayed the night.”
“That actually does sound kind of fun,” Anna said. “And that’s way less nerdy than I thought.”
“Right?” Tara chuckled. “I totally would have thought it’d be to go see some museum or something.”
“We went to the museum, too,” Bailey said.
“Shh!” Paige hissed and hit the blonde on the arm.
“Sorry,” Bailey chuckled. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“Called it,” Tara said, and she and Anna high fived.
“Whatever,” Paige laughed. “It was a fun trip.”
“The city was really nice,” Bailey added with a frown.
“Not anymore,” Tara muttered as she looked around. “Maybe one day.”
Suddenly, the radio Kimmy fixed for us crackled.
“Hello?” Jeff, one of the civilians who’d chosen to come with us, asked.
“Hey, Jeff,” Paige said as she picked up the walkie talkie.
“We were just seeing if we knew where we were headed,” he said.
“Not quite yet,” the brunette said with a shake of her head. “We’re looking for any signs of our troops.”
“Keep your eyes peeled,” I said, and Paige held the radio up so he could hear me.
“Roger that,” Jeff replied, and the radio went quiet.
“Kimmy really is amazing for that,” Tara said.
