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  Age of Revival

  Age of Survival Series: Book 3

  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 Revival (Age of Survival Series: Book 3):

  An EMP has sent the country into chaos, and the final battle for the small town of Bowman has begun.

  After regaining control over Bowman, Mayor Tom Grossman works swiftly to put the head infiltrator, Daniel Prange, on trial. But when one of Prange’s men escapes custody, it’s soon clear that the mayor must beef up defenses in anticipation of one final, full-scale attack. The enemy intends to not only extract Prange, but wipe Bowman off the map.

  Meanwhile, Peter Meier and those on his homestead work to harvest in preparation for the coming winter. But when armed, camouflaged men move into the area and engage in a fight with Peter and his crew, it’s quickly determined that a worst-case scenario is hurtling toward them.

  Will Peter ward off the attackers, or will he and his allies lose their homestead, and their very lives? And will Mayor Grossman and the rest of the residents of Bowman survive the final onslaught, or will they become nothing more than a vassal in the cartel’s growing empire?

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

  NOTE: This is the third and final 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

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

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  Also by JJ Holden

  JJ Holden Reader Group

  About the Authors

  1

  Late September in northwest Wisconsin had a certain beauty to it most years. The trees were not up to their peak fall colors yet, but still striking. The bright red and yellow early changers were mixed in with the deep greens of the pines and spruce and other trees that were still holding on to their summer foliage. There were usually a few days, at least, where the temperatures were still warm and the skies clear.

  It was on such a morning that Peter Meier sat out on the front porch of his friend Larry’s house. Even though the two had been football teammates since middle school, they were a study in contrast. Peter, being short and solid, had been on the defensive line. Larry was tall and lean, and had been the team’s kicker.

  Tom Grossman, the town’s mayor, was sitting with them. All three were drinking coffee, brewed weak enough that they could clearly see the bottoms of their mugs through the thin brew. He handed Peter a cane.

  “I’m not sure I want to take this,” Peter said.

  “Why not?” Grossman asked, looking disappointed.

  Peter looked at the gift. Unlike the utilitarian aluminum cane the mayor himself used, on account of an old knee injury, the one being offered up was made of dense, heavy wood, and was topped with a hand-carved badger head. “Last time you give me a gift that was just like one of yours, I found myself needing it way too much.” He tapped his wristwatch, a hand-wound analog model he’d gotten from Grossman the day before he was supposed to ship off for Army Basic Training. The day before everything in the world changed. “And, you know. I lost my dad within a few hours of that.”

  “Oh, believe me. The last thing I want to do is bring any more bad luck down on us,” Grossman said, looking down to the ground.

  Peter had just told Grossman about his father’s death the day before, and it was obviously still weighing heavily on the man. Grossman seemed to feel a sense of personal responsibility for Art Meier’s death, because it had been his estranged brother and a couple of his hunting buddies who had gone onto the property that first day, looking to see if there were any functioning vehicles they could commandeer. Realizing that his remark had cut Grossman deeply, Peter took the cane and held it with a good, solid grip. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to give this back to you soon,” he said.

  “As long as it goes back to the mayor, instead of getting passed on to me,” Larry said, seemingly oblivious to the seriousness of the moment between Peter and Grossman.

  Peter stood up and took a couple of steps with the wooden cane. The bullet wound to his right thigh had been superficial and was healing well, but it still hurt a lot to put weight on it. He’d also been advised to keep from moving the leg much for at least several more days. Peter was planning on heading home, a good mile uphill from Bowman. That would put him a full mile from Mark Thorssen, Bowman’s fire chief and head paramedic, and the only person for miles around with any sort of advanced medical certifications.

  The cane made it a lot easier to move about without stressing the stitches on his leg, and Peter took it as the tiniest silver lining that his other gunshot wound was in the left arm instead of the right. He wasn’t sure how he’d have walked if both hits had been to the same side of his body.

  “You guys know that I hate to see you leave, but I’m really glad to have you up top at your homestead,” Grossman said when Peter sat back down.

  “I do,” Peter said. “I just wish there was a better method for us to communicate with each other if something comes up.”

  Larry leaned forward to look up the wall of the valley. “Especially with you worrying that Carter may come back. If his group or gang or whatever has really got themselves set up around Black River Falls, we’re just off their route to get here. We told you that they’d been up on our road looking around while they’d taken over the town, right?”

  Peter shuddered a
t the mention of Carter’s name. Hank Carter and Daniel Prange were involved in some sort of criminal activity and had briefly pulled off a soft takeover of Bowman, in the guise of a state emergency management official and National Guard captain in command of a small number of troops. They might have pulled it off if they’d done a better job of keeping up the act, but enough people had noticed inconsistencies that the town rose up to throw them out. It was in that fight that Peter had been wounded.

  “I know they were aware of you being up there,” Grossman said. “It’s safest to assume Carter hasn’t forgotten that information. Especially since I suspect Rocky ran off with them.”

  That was another name Peter hoped to never hear again in his life. Rocky had already brought violence to Peter’s land twice. The first time was on the morning of the EMP event, and the man’s hot temper had started a firefight that had killed Peter’s father. The second time, it had been a straight-up nighttime invasion. Peter did not doubt he’d see the man again, and if he was indeed with Carter’s criminal organization, a third encounter was likely to be a very hard fight.

  “We’ve been keeping extra patrols going while Peter’s been down here recuperating,” Larry said. “No sign yet that Carter’s been moving this direction.”

  Peter shook his head. “I think it’s only a matter of time. You get any useful information from Prange? Anything that can help?”

  “Not yet,” Grossman said. “Remember, I was an old tanker, not intelligence, when I was in the Army. If you need something flattened in a hurry, I’ve got you covered. Interrogations were outside my lane.” Grossman frowned at the last inch of coffee-tinted water in his cup and drained it. “I’ve got some more stops to make today. I’m guessing you two will be gone by the time I get back around these parts?”

  “Yeah,” Larry said. “I’ve got everything I came down here for, so we’re probably going to head back in a few.”

  After Grossman left, Peter and Larry made one more tour through the house. Larry and his mother had moved up to the Meier homestead a couple of days after the EMP event. Since then, whenever one of them made it into town, they’d grab another backpack full of stuff to migrate up. Clothing, mementos, camping gear, books, tools, and so on.

  Larry tightened the straps on his backpack and picked up Peter’s. “You ready?”

  “Yeah. Can’t wait to get home.”

  Parked in front of Larry’s house was a homemade go-kart with a mountain bike bungee-corded to the back. Peter dropped into the seat while Larry unhitched the bicycle and the two started the trek up.

  As they passed by the driveway to the Meier homestead, Peter was happy to see how well their job of camouflaging it had gone. The hand-cut sod, ferns, shrubs, and other underbrush they’d transplanted had taken root around some downed wood they’d hauled in. The house itself had been sited intentionally so it couldn’t be seen from the road, so with the driveway covered over, the cut in the tree line looked like it had once afforded access to some property but hadn’t been used in years.

  Peter knew that the problem was that Rocky was still out there, and he had been on the property twice, both times coming in through the woods. No matter how well they hid the house from the front, there was somebody out there with a big chip on his shoulder who knew exactly how to get to it from the back.

  The actual entrance to the homestead was now a few hundred yards down the road, where another cut in the tree line led to a soybean field. As Peter and Larry pulled off the road, Sally Roth immediately threw her arms in the air and waved. Like the Williamses, she and her husband Bill had moved out to the homestead shortly after the Event, feeling it safer to try their luck up on the ridgetop with the Meiers than down in Bowman.

  The go-kart lived in a makeshift garage at the back of the field, along with a couple of dirt bikes. All three vehicles had simple enough electronics that they’d survived the EMP. While Larry rearranged the dirty brown tarp to cover over the vehicles again, Sally walked over to grab Peter’s backpack for the walk up to the house.

  “How’s the harvest going?” Peter asked her.

  “It could be worse. We’re getting a decent haul, but the work itself is pretty hard.”

  Peter looked over the field. He couldn’t see exactly where Sally had been working, which was probably what made the work so hard. If she had come out with a scythe or weed cutter, chopping wide swaths of plants to pluck the bean pods from later, it would have left obvious signs that somebody was working the field. Instead, she had a long-handled garden claw she’d been using to pull up single plants here and there.

  Sally led Peter up a series of switchbacks that climbed a short, steep ridge at the edge of the farm field. At the top, there were a couple dozen yards of trees, and beyond that, the side yard of his house. He hadn’t expected to feel so choked up at the sight of it, but he had to pause and put a hand on a tree to steady himself as joy and happiness nearly overwhelmed him.

  “You all right?” Sally asked.

  “Perfectly. Just glad to be home.”

  He had to force himself to carefully pick his way through the undergrowth. Between the cane and his hurt right leg, his footing was unsteady enough. With his left arm bandaged and in a sling, a simple stumble was likely to become a solid faceplant.

  “Oh my God, Peter. It is so good to have you home!” his mother, Nancy, said, throwing the shirt in her hand over the clothesline and dropping the laundry basket on her hip. Peter was amazed at her ability to still look like a prim, middle-aged schoolteacher right down to the ironed pleats on her blouse and shorts, under the conditions.

  “You would not believe how happy I am to be back up here.”

  “Looks like they took good care of you since my last visit down?” Nancy asked. She’d managed to pull away from the homestead every other day while Peter was convalescing. He’d spent his time at the school building with the rest of the lightly wounded people from the fight to eject Prange and his cronies from town. The more seriously injured were staying at the firehouse, where Mark Thorssen could keep closer watch on them.

  “Food wasn’t as good as up here, but they did all right otherwise.”

  “There’s a part of me that hopes your two little reminders of your foolishness there will keep you up here next time there’s a fight in town. Sounds like they had it well in hand without you guys going down.”

  Peter decided to leave his mother’s words be. She was right, after all. Once the small cadre that Grossman had formed in secret went into action to eject Prange’s gang, a lot of the townsfolk grabbed whatever hunting and home defense weapons they had, and they went to work. Even with Prange’s men having fully automatic M-16s, the odds were a couple hundred to twenty or so. The outcome would have been the same whether he and a few other folks from the homestead had gone down or not.

  There was no way he could have stayed away, though. He knew it, and his mother knew it as well. Peter had spent his entire life on the ridgeline overlooking Bowman. He’d gone to school there, played football with the guys, dated some of the girls, complained about how long it took to get to Eau Claire or Black River Falls for the kind of fun you can’t have in a town of just a few hundred people.

  Bowman was as much his home as the house he lived in, and the people down there were as much his family as his own father and mother. There was no way he could not have gone down to help when they needed it.

  “Speaking of better food,” Peter said, stepping up to give his mother a big hug. “Can I help you get lunch ready?”

  “Sure,” Nancy said. “I’m sure you noticed we’re getting a healthy harvest of soybeans. We’ve only been able to find field corn nearby, but we can use that for deer bait. There’s a small plot of wheat, but it’s a pretty good distance out.”

  “Wheat’s pretty labor intensive to process, too,” Peter said.

  Nancy nodded. “Irene’s been a godsend, though. She’s been taking us all out on foraging trips. There’s a lot of wild fruit growing out in the wooded
areas she’s been able to find for us. We’ve got some cans of raspberry jelly put up now.”

  “That’s great. I know some of the properties up around Jerry Grossman’s place have apple trees. While I was cooling my heels in town the last few days, I gathered that nobody’s living up on any of that property now.”

  “Might be worth sending somebody out to see.”

  “Somebody other than me?” Peter asked.

  Nancy busied herself with mixing something in a big bowl.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m just having a hard time thinking of you running out into the unknown. It’s hard enough knowing that you’re going to keep going into town and back and knowing that all Tom Grossman has to do is give the word and you’re going to grab a gun and go. The thought of you just going up the way to see if some apple trees you remember from hanging out with summer kids back when you were in middle school are still there…We don’t know if those places are indeed empty right now. Was Jerry lying? Has somebody wandered up that road and decided to move into one of the cabins?”

  Peter took his own turn at focusing on the cutting board in front of him.