Super Pulse (Book 4): Defect Read online

  Super Pulse

  4: Defect

  Dave Conifer

  Copyright © 2019 by Dave Conifer

  Cover Art and Design

  by Laura Moyer of thebookcovermachine.com

  Also by Dave Conifer:

  Throwback (2004)

  FireHouse (2007)

  eBully (2008)

  Snodgrass Vacation (2009)

  Wrecker (2011)

  Primary Justice (2011)

  Hard Lines (2012)

  Cold Cases: Man of Steel (2008)

  Cold Cases: Zodiac Rogue (2013)

  Cold Cases: Money Down (2014)

  Super Pulse: The Grid Goes Black (2016)

  Super Pulse: To the Barrens (2017)

  Super Pulse: Tabernacle (2017)

  One

  “Hold on!” Dexter Bailey yelled over his shoulder to his partner as they shivered in the perimeter guard shack at the far end of the lake, the southernmost such outpost in Tabernacle. “Linda! Where are you? Check it out! Did you see that?”

  Anticipating the end of their overnight shift in twenty minutes, Linda Brown had, in fact, seen nothing, because she was hunched over on the floor packing up her bag so she’d be ready to go as soon as the next guards showed up. When she heard the shouts, however, she dutifully let go of the bag and scrambled to her feet. “Where at?” she demanded. “What am I looking for, Dex?”

  Dex and Linda, the two Sec Forces on duty at that important post, hadn’t been partnered for very long, but there was an obvious comfort level between them. Linda was an original member from the days back in Cherry Hill, while Dex was a rising star in the Forces who’d emigrated to Tabernacle from Lockworth just a month and a half earlier. Thanks to the damp, raw weather, the overnight shift had been a tough one to endure. In just a few minutes, at nine o’clock or whenever their relief arrived, they’d shuffle back to the Village through the gloomy sleet storm and dive into their own bunks for some rest and warmth. At least that was the plan when it was just a routine guard shift. Now, all bets were off.

  “They’re gone now,” Dex answered. “But two men popped out of the woods. There’s not supposed to be anybody moving around back here, right? They’d have told us about it. And they were both carrying heavy loads.”

  “Did you recognize anybody?” Linda asked.

  Dex stared at her while scratching at his heavy beard, as if he was organizing his thoughts. “I think I did,” he finally said. “It was one of the men who came from my town. Only he didn’t get here until a few days after the rest of us. It was weird.”

  “I remember that,” Linda said. “He just showed up out of the blue. Him and his son, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Dex said. “Kevin Conners is his name. I didn’t know him that good, but I remember seeing him around town before we came here.”

  “Nick said he had some kind of dust-up with him,” Linda said, referring to her friend Nick Mercator, who’d played a primary role in the rescue mission to Lockworth. “I can’t remember the details. He was absolutely thrilled when this guy straggled into camp,” she added, rolling her eyes in sarcasm.

  “Conners was a strange bird,” Dex said. “He disappeared that last day up there during the battle. We thought him and his son musta’ got killed. His son’s name was Curt. I’ll bet that’s who I saw with him today, now that I think of it.”

  “They got here almost a week after the rest of us,” Linda said. “Funny how they pulled that off. Did they ever explain how they even found this place? Or how they got here?”

  “Not that I know of,” Dex said. “Me and my brother have been watching them real close ever since. And we especially will now.”

  “What were they carrying?” Linda asked.

  “Beats me,” Dex said as he reached for his rifle, which had been leaning against the wall. “But I’m gonna’ find out before they get out of sight. How about you stay here, and I’ll see if I can catch up with them. Or the other way around if you want.”

  “No, you go,” Linda said. “Give me a shout if you need backup.” She watched as he zipped his parka and pulled the hood over his unkempt mass of hair before picking up his rifle. “Wait a second,” she said suddenly. She put the bag down in the corner and reached for her own weapon. “This is an emergency. Our backup will be here any second to take over here anyway. I’m coming with you.”

  He fist-bumped her before leading the way out the side door and into the sleet. Normally, leaving the post un-manned was a no-no, he knew, but normal was out the window at this point. In the eyes of their supervisors, allowing unidentified intruders to roam free, even if it did turn out to be Conners and his son, would be far worse than leaving their post. He felt sure they were doing the right thing.

  “Over there!” Linda shouted, pointing toward the shoreline at two figures trudging along the edge of the lake. “Should I fire away at them?” she asked as she raised her rifle.

  “That’s a tough shot in this light,” Dex said. “I know I couldn’t hit anything at this range.”

  She nodded. “You’re probably right. And we’d only be letting them know we’re on to them.” Her face wrinkled in thought. “On the other hand, it would let the rest of the camp know something’s gone wrong, too. That might not be a bad thing.”

  “We don’t know for sure that they’re doing anything wrong,” Dex argued. “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but it might not be time to start shooting yet.”

  Linda scowled. “Gimme’ a break. I know they’re from your town and all, but come on. They’re not supposed to be here. They’re sneaking around in the woods, practically in the middle of the night. Who are they? And where do they get off, pulling a stunt like this?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Dex answered, but Linda had already stowed her weapon and started the chase. Dex yanked at his collar to cinch up his hood before following behind.

  The terrain was too sloppy to run in, but she found a way to move quickly enough in pursuit that Dex didn’t catch up until she stopped halfway to the opposite shore and waited for him to catch up. “They’re almost at the Field!” she said as she tried to catch her breath. “They must be heading into camp. It doesn’t make sense. The first person they see is gonna’ ask what they’re doing, and what’s in the bags.”

  “Whatever’s in those bags is what worries me the most,” Dex said. “We have to warn somebody.”

  “How?” Linda asked, turning to face him. “They’ll get there before we do at this rate.”

  “Maybe not,” Dex said, gesturing across the lake with a lunge of his head. Linda looked and saw that the two men had stopped just beyond the remains of the Garage, which had been burned to the ground in a previous invasion. “Let’s go!” she whispered.

  “What are they doing in the Field?” Linda asked a few minutes later, when she was almost around the lake. She knew Dex wasn’t close enough to hear her. It took him another minute to reach the felled log she was perched on. Like her, he squinted into the dim morning light at their prey, who’d managed to make their way around the entire lake without shedding their heavy loads while maintaining their lead.

  The lakeside lot known as “the Field” was far more significant than it sounded. Once the Garage had been destroyed, it became the de facto home of Tabernacle’s entire fleet of motorized vehicles. After head mechanic Hal Loder had perished in the fire that had destroyed the Garage, the vehicles were maintained by his daughter Carly, who was proving to be just as good under the hood as her father. Given that mobility was among the greatest assets at Tabernacle, and a tremendous advantage over enemies, some of their most valuable property was in that field. Dex wasn’t sure what would be worse: the men stopping i
n the Field, or continuing toward the camp where they could surprise the unwitting residents.

  “Hey, wait a second,” Dex asked. “I know I’m new around here, but does something look different over there?”

  Judging by her face, he knew Linda was noticing the same thing now that they were closer. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Where’d all the trucks go?” Normally packed with an assortment of cars, vans and buses, the Field was largely empty except for three or four vehicles.

  “Was it like that when we came in?” Dex asked. “It was so dark that I didn’t notice.”

  “It wasn’t like this during the day yesterday,” Linda said. “I know that for sure because I was down here shooting the breeze with Carly.”

  “Something’s definitely going on,” Dex said. “I think we can take the safety off our guns now.”

  “We have to get there before they can do any damage to what’s left,” Linda said, as if she’d been reading his mind. When they resumed their pursuit, lumbering through the weeds on the shoreline, they could see the two men wandering through the remaining vehicles, inspecting each as though they were shopping in a used car lot.

  Linda had seen enough. “I’m shooting,” she said. “If they know we’re here, they’ll take off again. We need them to go. We have to protect what’s left in the Field. And firing some shots is the best way to alert the rest of the camp that there’s trouble.” She raised her rifle and fired a few rounds in the direction of the field. It didn’t matter if she hit anything, or anybody. It was the message that was important. The heads of the intruders jerked with surprise before ducking out of view. Now they knew they hadn’t gone undetected.

  When Linda and Dex reached the dock, just across the mound of scorched lumber that had been the Garage, there was no longer any sign of the intruders. Hope surged through Dex, who’d now admitted to himself that Conners and his son, if that’s who the men were, had malicious intentions and needed to be stopped. Maybe he and Linda had saved what remained of the fleet.

  His hopes were dashed moments later, however, when the men reappeared. As he and Linda watched helplessly from behind the heap of blackened timber, the men opened the side door of a van and threw their loads into the back. His heart sank when he heard the roar of an engine as it came to life.

  “Now we know it’s an inside job!” Linda said as they ran around the pile, weapons now at the ready, only to see the van lurch through the mud and out of the Field. They ran up the road just in time to see the van turn toward the archway at the camp entrance. The thieves were fleeing.

  “Look on the bright side,” Dex said. “At least they’re not attacking the camp. We better report this. Just in case they didn’t hear the shooting.”

  “The heck with that,” Linda replied. “We can tell them later.” She fished a set of keys from her pocket and ran toward the few vehicles that were still in the Field. “Are you gonna’ just stand there, or are you coming with me?” she yelled back at Dex.

  ~~~

  “They definitely went this way,” Dex said from the passenger seat as Linda drove out of the Field moments later. “I can see the tracks.” As he spoke, both sets of eyes traced those tire prints to a sharp left turn towards the camp entrance. The thin layer of fallen sleet made it easy to detect the van’s path in the muddy road now that full daylight was coming on.

  “Good thing I never got around to turning these keys in,” Linda said. “I’m always so busy.” They were driving the purple pickup truck that Nick had scrounged up in Lockworth for the rescue effort at Fort Dix. In truth, it wasn’t just Linda’s busy schedule that prevented her from surrendering the keys. She almost felt like there was nobody to surrender them to. Between Hal’s death and the loss of the Garage, management of the fleet was in disarray. Carly had so much on her plate that Linda couldn’t bring herself to add even this one little thing. And now she was glad of it.

  “What did you mean back there about this being an inside job?” Dex asked.

  “I mean that even if it wasn’t Conners and his son,” Linda explained, “we know they had help from somebody in camp.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Simple,” Linda said. “They knew they could get in that van and drive it away. How would they have had a key for it if they’d just stumbled across it?”

  “Oh, okay, I get it,” Dex answered.

  “Carly and her dad modified all the vehicles to use the same blank,” Linda continued. “Except this one,” she said, tapping at the ignition. “They had to, because none of them came with keys when they got them. But how would these two jokers have one of these special keys if nobody gave them one?”

  “They could have stolen it,” Dex said. He thought for a moment. “But all things considered, yeah, I think you’re right.”

  “It’s the simplest answer,” Linda said. “That’s the one I always go with.”

  Dex wasn’t sure they were authorized to follow the tracks instead of reporting what had happened to their bosses. In fact, he was sure they weren’t. But it didn’t matter; he wasn’t the one behind the wheel at the moment, and he’d already learned during his short stay in Tabernacle that Linda wasn’t somebody whose mind was easily changed once it was made up. He could relate to that. He and his brother Con were a lot like Linda. He was all for chasing that van. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Two

  “Okay, does everybody know why you’re here?” Nick asked the group of about twenty campers that surrounded him.

  “All I know is there’s gonna’ be fire,” came a voice from the back. “That’s why I’m here. It’s been a cold winter!” The rest of the group laughed.

  “Yeah,” Nick said, smiling. “That and because The Committee told you to be here, right?”

  They were assembled in the newly-cleared space across the road from the Blacksmith Shop. Like everything else in Tabernacle, he fully expected this area to have a name soon, one spelled with a capital letter. In front of the group were twenty sets of paired barrels and cans. Behind them was a large heap of small to medium-sized logs and tinder that had been rescued from the firewood stocks. Nick hoped they didn’t need these clues, however. They’d surely been told what their new jobs were.

  He wished there were more familiar faces in the crowd. He only recognized three or four. A few days earlier he’d lobbied for Sarah McElligott-Cohen to work with him, but had been turned down. She was too valuable to the Sec Forces as a shooter. He hadn’t gotten his hopes up, but sharing the job with Sarah would have been nice. Along with Dewey Bishop, Sarah was his best friend at Tabernacle now. It’d been that way since December, when Tom Hellikson had been shot to death up in Lockworth. It hadn’t been much more than a month since that happened, but it seemed longer. He already had trouble remembering Tom’s face. That was something that bothered him.

  Before Nick could continue he noticed Mark Roman, his supervisor on the Construction subcommittee, approaching from the direction of the Warehouse. When he saw Nick, Mark waved him over for a conference.

  “I’m glad I ran into you,” Nick said before Mark could get a word in. “What’s going down at the Garage? The Field, I mean?”

  Mark’s brow furrowed. “Nothing that I know of. Why?”

  “I just came from there,” Nick explained. “Carly left me some equipment in her new shed that I had to grab. The Field’s practically empty. Are we keeping the trucks someplace else now?”

  “If we are, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” Mark said. “Maybe they’re out on a pickup. I’ll ask around.”

  “No big deal,” Nick said. “Carly isn’t one of the secret-keepers around here, so I thought it was weird that I didn’t know anything about it.”

  I’ll check it out,” Mark promised. “Anyway, I just had a quick meeting with Roethke. He told me to come by and ask you where your buddy Matt is. Sounds like trouble’s brewing at the Water Plant, and they need him to get over there. You know Roethke. He was snapping and snarling about why Matt was
n’t already there in the first place. You have any idea where he’s hiding?”

  Matt was Matt Shardlake, who had taught himself the vitally important process of providing clean water for the hundreds of people that lived in the camp, and had thus become one of Tabernacle’s most important residents. Like Tom Hellikson and his family, the Shardlakes had lived with Nick in the Cherry Hill neighborhood of Crestview for years before the life-altering EMP had driven them east into the Pine Barrens. With his mild personality and seeming lack of inclination to work with his hands, Nick would never have picked Matt out to survive past six months at all, let alone emerge as the master of the most important trade of all. In a way, Nick was trying to follow Matt’s lead by mastering another such trade, maybe just as important in the long run, in the Blacksmith Shop across the street.

  “No clue,” Nick said. “I’m as surprised as Roethke is that he isn’t already there. Especially if there’s trouble. He lives for that place. I haven’t seen him all day that I can remember. Was he around at breakfast?”

  Mark shook his head, palms up. “Don’t ask me.”

  “I’m sure he was,” Nick said, answering his own question. “Nobody can disappear for too long around this place without getting noticed. But I haven’t crossed paths with him since then.” He paused. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any of the Shardlakes since then.”

  “Yeah, well, why would you?” Mark asked. “Matt and Ellie should be at work, just like the rest of us.”

  “I’m sure they’ll show up at dinner,” Nick said. “Then Matt can go fix whatever’s broken at Water, and the rest of us can eat.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Mark said. “I’ll let you get back to barbecue class.” He clapped Nick on the back and walked away as suddenly as he’d arrived.

  Nick turned back to the group that had been waiting patiently. “We’re here to make charcoal,” he said, answering the question he’d posed before Mark had shown up. “Most of it for the Blacksmith Shop, which I intend to have up and running soon. Assuming we can develop a system and start cranking charcoal out, we’ll start using it for cooking and heating, too. It’s more efficient than wood.”