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  Age of Panic

  Age of Survival Series: Book 2

  J.J. Holden

  Mark J. Russell

  Copyright © 2020 by JJ Holden / Mark J. Russell

  All rights reserved.

  www.jjholdenbooks.com

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Christian Bentulan

  About Age of Panic (Age of Survival Series: Book 2):

  During the aftermath of an EMP attack, one town must fight for its very survival.

  Following a riot that ended in disaster, the residents of Bowman grapple to gain stability in an increasingly unstable world. But when Peter Meier and the members of his homestead spot an incoming envoy, it is soon suspected that the head government official is not who he says he is. Worse, there is speculation about a plot to oust Mayor Tom Grossman and overtake the town.

  Meanwhile, an unexpected ally approaches Peter at the homestead, with plans to work together to defend Bowman. Will they keep their property safe and secure while helping to expel the enemy? Or will they fail to ward off the infiltrators, allowing Bowman to fall into nefarious hands?

  Age of Panic is an exciting post-apocalyptic EMP survival thriller featuring regular people struggling to survive after an EMP.

  NOTE: This is the second book in the Age of Survival series. If you are new to this series, be sure to check out BOOK ONE.

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  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

  Want to help out?

  Also by JJ Holden

  JJ Holden Reader Group

  About the Authors

  1

  Peter Meier recalled another one of his father’s lessons. If you’ve got the time to think about something, even if it’s just a couple seconds, take it.

  He took his hat off and brushed his black hair back, scratching at the back of his head. It wasn’t a particularly warm day, but he was tired and tense, which made him sweaty and itchy. The sudden assault on his home in the middle of the night had blasted him with too much adrenaline to get to sleep easily, and then fretting over everything that could have gone wrong kept him up long after the crash had exhausted his body.

  Nobody in the homestead had died in the fight, at least. Nobody had been injured. He just wondered how much of it was their ability to work together when thrown into a violent situation, and how much of it was a combination of luck and a solid home-field advantage.

  That wasn’t what he needed to think about, though. What he needed to think about was the sight of two military-looking cargo trucks that he’d just seen heading up the highway. Other than an ancient pickup truck that one of the old geezers in Bowman had, old enough that it had no electronics in it sensitive enough to have been fried in the Event, Peter hadn’t seen a running truck or car in well over a week.

  Unfortunately, the vehicles had been too far away, and his look at them too fleeting, for him to get a good assessment of what they might mean. They definitely had the military look: tall with big tires, blocky bodies with canvas tops over the cargo beds, and camouflage paint jobs. He just didn’t know enough about the Army to know if they kept trucks that old in their inventory yet. Would they maintain a fleet of older rides in the case of just such an event, or were the more modern vehicles they fielded hardened or otherwise protected against an EMP? Peter just didn’t know, and he could hear his father’s voice in the back of his head telling him it was too big of an unknown to ignore. Whatever he was about to do next had to account for the possibility that those vehicles were not what they seemed.

  “Hey!” Peter called out from just inside the tree line.

  Bill Roth and Irene Williams, two residents of Bowman who’d moved out to the homestead about a week earlier, were on patrol. They startled at his voice, which was why he’d spoken up first instead of just walking out of the woods. He expected them to be jumpy after the night before, and wasn’t looking to take any chances.

  “You good?” Bill asked, aiming his rifle down and to the side.

  “Yeah,” Peter said, seeing the concern on Bill’s face. “It’s just, uh. I need to talk to you and Mom, right now.”

  “What’s going on?” Irene asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but it may be something real good. I’ll have somebody cover for Bill, and then we’ll let you all know what’s up.”

  A couple minutes later, Bill and Peter were sitting in the house’s office, with his mom, Nancy, pouring out mugs of coffee. The room was comfortable in an old-fashioned, lived-in way, with leather-upholstered armchairs, an antique wooden desk, and sturdy shelves crammed with books, binders, and magazines.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Peter said, taking a sip. “We need to hash something out fast.” He told them about the trucks he’d just seen out on the highway, first giving them just the facts he could positively swear to. After giving them a couple seconds to start absorbing those, he told them about that little hesitation to take them at face value.

  “I wish I could tell you something useful, but you know how your dad was about military stuff,” Nancy said. Peter’s father had had very complicated feelings about his time in the Army. On the one hand, he had always been proud of having served and was very clear that he had learned a lot from it. On the other, the never-ending stress of constant deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, without any real sense on the ground that anything was truly getting resolved, and the wounds he’d suffered, physical and otherwise, had left him with a desire to keep the military at arm’s reach after he’d finally left the service. His father had very rarely spoken about the military in general and seemed to not care about what it did after he’d left it, as near as Peter could tell.

  “I’ve got nothing, either,” Bill said. “Never been on my radar.”

  “I know we’ve got a lot to handle here,” Peter said, “but I would really like to get to town and see what it’s all about.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” his mother asked.

  “It’s information.”

  “Pretty relevant, at that,” Bill said, backing him
up. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “I’m not too keen on splitting us up right now,” Nancy said. “We’ve got one, maybe two people still out there somewhere. We don’t know if they’re still watching us, if they plan on coming back. We don’t even know if we got one of them last night. One of the things we need to do is go check those woods where the other shots were coming from, see if we can’t figure it out. That’s not going to be a one-person job. If one’s looking for shells and maybe a blood trail, they need extra eyes to be looking up and out.”

  “I understand,” Bill said. “I’d feel safer knowing more about the situation close to the property here. But I’m going to go with Peter’s gut on this one. If there’s a functioning government and it’s reaching out to us, we don’t know what that means, either. It could be a good thing or a really bad thing, but it’s a much bigger thing than one or two stranded hunters.”

  “The guys that came at us last night are closer, but even if I run to town and bring somebody with me, that’s four people here,” Peter said. “Worst case is that there’s still a couple alive and out there. We’ve got a numbers advantage, and we’ve got the house and our defensive positions. We’ve got the advantage still.”

  Nancy said to Peter, “You cutting off with somebody and heading to town is two people, against maybe two other people, out on the road without the advantage. You’re a prime target for an ambush on your way down or back. You know I can’t lose you.”

  “I know, Mom. And I can promise to be extra careful, but that’s not going to put your mind at ease. I get it.”

  Nancy nodded and reached over to him, taking his hand in hers.

  “Would you feel better if someone other than me went down?” Peter asked, then he looked at Bill. “Not like I’m trying to volunteer others for a risky task.”

  “You want to lead, you’ve got to lead sometimes,” Bill said.

  “I’m not sure I actually want to lead.”

  “You’ve already stepped up. You’ve been doing it, and we’ve been following. If you think the right thing to do is tell me and somebody else to go into town and see what’s happening, do it.”

  Peter put his head in his hands. He knew people deferred to him because he did have leadership experience, as captain of the football team. He had also been willing to take on the tasks of organizing people and being first in line when there was work to be done, because that was the way he’d always done things. But there was a big difference between corralling and cajoling a bunch of high-school football players and taking on the mantle when people’s lives were literally on the line.

  He also knew that he didn’t have time for an existential crisis about the burden of command. There were things to be done at the homestead, and he really did feel it was critical that they find out what those vehicles coming up the highway toward Bowman were all about.

  Whether he had wanted it or not, whether he was truly fit for it or not, Peter knew that he was, for all intents and purposes, one of the prime decision makers for the household. Bill was straight-up telling him that he’d go where Peter led, and he’d do what Peter said. That alone was a ton of weight on his shoulders.

  Another lesson from his father came to mind. If you don’t know what else to do, remember that the only wrong action is inaction. Do something.

  “Larry and I can move the fastest,” Peter said. “We’ve stomped all over this place since we were old enough to leave our yards on our own. We’re going to grab bikes and move too damn fast for anybody to ambush us, and we’re going to stick around town just long enough to at least identify the right questions to ask. Then we’re going to come home by a different route, in case anyone saw us go out and wants to get us on the way back.”

  Peter could barely take a breath in after spitting all that out. He watched his mother’s face as she stared at him, a dozen different emotions clearly fighting for control. Beside him, he could feel Bill’s support for the plan and silent approval.

  Finally, his mother swallowed and said, “Okay. We’ll hunker down while you’re gone, stay inside with eyes outward, and we can deal with the…one…” She waved her hand toward the side of the house where the one dead intruder still lay. “And we’ll assume the ones we scared off will stay scared for a while, at least.”

  “I agree,” Peter said. He remembered that one of the lessons from the night before was a lack of contingency planning. He knew that he had to address his mother’s fears that something might happen to him while he was away from the house. His mother wasn’t going to want to hear what he had to say, but he needed to stop burning time and get things moving. He looked at his watch. “No matter what the info situation is, Larry and I will be sure to be back by two this afternoon. If we’re not back by then, start taking care of the things here that need to be taken care of.”

  Nancy nodded, and very flatly said, “Yeah. Please be back by then.”

  A couple minutes later, Peter and Larry Williams were on bicycles, headed down the steep and winding road toward the town of Bowman. Larry was the picture of a beanpole—tall and thin, all angles and limbs. He was the football team’s kicker, and had been Peter’s closest friend since grade school.

  They pedaled with purpose and took full advantage of gravity to tear down the road as fast as they could, while still keeping control. As they came up to the last switchback before the road leveled coming into town, they braked hard to take advantage of the last bit of concealment, where a stand of trees shielded the road from direct view of the town.

  “Just in case things aren’t what they seem,” Peter said to Larry as they crept into the wooded patch to take a look. He was surprised to see that there were no big, camouflaged trucks in town, but there were an awful lot of people congregating in little knots, looking toward one of the blocks at the edge of town.

  “Your trucks maybe parked behind some building over there where we can’t see ’em?” Larry asked.

  Both of them pulled binoculars out of their day packs to take a closer look at the clusters of people. Peter noticed that there were a few long guns out, but it didn’t look like anybody was aiming at anyone else. He did notice that the people were in tense, tight little knots, separated by good amounts of empty space, but there didn’t seem to be any overt threats or animosity between the groups. It did strike Peter as odd, though, the way everybody he could see had clumped to watch whatever it was, instead of forming one larger curious mass.

  “To the right, the yellow house,” Larry said.

  Peter panned the binocs over, just in time to see somebody coming down the front porch steps with his hands on his head. Frank Miller. Nobody else in town had that kind of bright white hair. “What do you suppose that’s all about?” he asked.

  “I know him and the mayor have always hated each other.”

  “Yeah, but Tom Grossman’s not the kind to just go about busting people he doesn’t like. Even under the circumstances.”

  “Then maybe he’s given him a reason. But where are those Army trucks you said were coming up this way?”

  “That’s the other thing I really wish I knew,” Peter said, lowering his binoculars to get a wider look at the town again. He couldn’t imagine that the trucks had just driven through town without stopping. It just didn’t make sense. Even if they were on some sort of mission and needed to get somewhere, Peter assumed they’d have at least taken a little bit of time to share some information and news about what had happened and what they were doing about it.

  “We couldn’t have gotten down here before them, could we?” Larry asked.

  “Not a chance. I mean, I tried to make it quick with Bill and Mom, and we didn’t waste any time, but damn. I’m sure it was a good ten minutes between the time I saw them down on the highway and when we hit the road.”

  “You said you hadn’t seen anything that would guarantee they were government. What about that?”

  “Yeah, about that. I just can’t think of what else they might have been. And even
if they were something else, the damn highway is right there. They’d go right through, and it just doesn’t look like anybody in town is reacting like I’d expect them to if two trucks had just blasted through.” Peter looked through the binoculars again, trying to puzzle out more of what was going on. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, it can’t be.”

  “What?” Larry asked.

  “Find Frank. The guy right behind him that’s also got his hands up, dressed for hunting.”

  “Yeah, I got him,” Larry said slowly.

  “He was one of the three guys. The first day. When Dad…”

  “Really?” Larry asked. “So he was up at your place last night, now he’s down here getting arrested? Was Frank with him then?”

  “I don’t know. This makes even less sense than the missing trucks.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  Peter looked at his watch. It wasn’t even ten yet. He and Larry had plenty of time to come up with a plan before walking into whatever the situation in town was. He knew that he wanted to stay well away from the stranger that had been on his land. Peter didn’t want the man recognizing him. He had a sense that if he could get his account of things to the mayor and police chief, that would be the source of truth, and the other man would need to react to it. As it was, Peter couldn’t imagine he was volunteering any information about having twice gone onto the Meier property and being on the side that shot first.