Siege of New Hampshire (Book 2): Siege Fall Read online

  Siege Fall

  (Book 2 of the Siege of New Hampshire series)

  by Mic Roland

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  Siege Fall

  ©2015 Wolf & Gypsy Design

  All rights reserved

  * * *

  To my wife, for her continued patience and encouragement,

  And my many pre-readers for their patience with my penchant for cliff hangers.

  _________

  This book may not be reproduced without permission from the copyright holder. This is a work of fiction. The names and characters are fictional. The shady characters and malcontents are not based on anybody you know and certainly not yourself, so fret not.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Awakening

  Chapter 2: The Lineman

  Chapter 3: The Pancakes of Damocles

  Chapter 4: Ruby Arrives

  Chapter 5: Sobering News

  Chapter 6: Temper

  Chapter 7: Temperamental Saviors

  Chapter 8: Dark Day

  Chapter 9: Questionable Calculus

  Chapter 10: Tin Man

  Chapter 11: Seeing Red

  Chapter 12: Difficult Meeting

  Chapter 13: To Concord

  Chapter 14: Canterbury Tails

  Chapter 15: Cauloff’s Farm

  Chapter 16: Recalculating

  Chapter 17: A Call to Arms

  Chapter 18: Return Home

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  Chapter 1: Awakening

  The faint clanking of spoon-on-bowl woke Martin up. He forced one eye open a crack. He was in the living room: in his chair. A slow fire rolled in the wood stove. Sun beams dappled the wall over the couch. Sunrise. Apparently, he had spent the night in his chair. That was not uncommon, but the pots on top of the wood stove were.

  His open eye stared at the pots, his mind still too sleepy to think well. What seemed like the fading wisps of a dream floated around the edges of his mind. He was running through a forest: chased by someone. There was a girl too.

  He noticed the old blue percolator among the pots. The only time the wood stove was topped with pots and the percolator was when the power was out. When did the power go out? More faint noises came from the kitchen. Margaret was working on something. He was glad to be done with his dream and back into the comforts of his regular life.

  Leaning against the dining room wall was his old gray backpack. That triggered his memory. His other eye popped open. He still had on his brown pants, complete with mud stains. He still wore his old flannel shirt. The events of the prior three days flooded his mind. He had been traveling through a forest. There was a girl. It was not a dream.

  “Oh. You’re awake,” said Margaret as she came to check one of the pots.

  Martin looked at her, but said nothing. The curve of her cheek, her full lips, her slate-blue eyes, that little streak of gray in her hair which she was alternately proud of and embarrassed by: it was great to see her again. He realized he was gawking.

  “Not awake enough to talk, eh? A cup of coffee should get you going.” Margaret poured a cup from the percolator. “Sorry about any floaty bits. You know how this old thing is.”

  Martin took the cup, but continued to stare. She was wearing her blue apron tied tight, which showed off her waist.

  God, she looks good, he thought.

  “You must have been really tired when you got home. You barely got your coat and shoes off before you were asleep in your chair. I decided to just leave you there. You looked so comfortable. I fixed your guest a little supper before she turned in. She told me all about your adventures getting home.”

  All about them? Martin felt a surge of embarrassment, or was it guilt? He was not sure why he felt guilty. There must have been something…something he could not recall at the moment. “Everything?” he squeaked.

  Margaret smiled a mischievous smile. “Hmm. Perhaps she didn’t tell me everything. That’s quite the look on your face.” She let him twist in the wind awhile.

  In his mind, he quickly replayed all he could remember, but old tube radios take awhile to warm up. What had he done? He tried to replay his recent past.

  The power went out Monday morning. He decided to walk home. He met Susan outside of the bank. His mind paused on the image of Susan’s face. Faithfully married or not, Susan was easy to look at. He enjoyed walking with her and talking to her too. It felt vaguely inappropriate. But was it? They were just talking.

  There was the fire, the hotels, the Walsh brothers. Nothing untoward there. Yet, there was that sudden hug during the gunfight on 93. Margaret would not have smiled at that. He touched Susan’s bare foot when she had her blister. Was that wrong? It was a doctor thing. Nothing more.

  There was riding with Isabel up to Lawrence and the bridge. Was it his falling on top of Susan beside the 495 bridge and looking into her eyes? Had Susan described that event in a darker light? He would explain. Could he explain?

  “I should just let you stew awhile longer,” Margaret said. “Your expressions are priceless. But I think you’re still just too groggy for any serious questions. Sip your coffee and wake up. I’ll warm you up a slice of toast.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  “She told me about her apartment burning down and you offering to help her find a hotel,” Margaret said from the kitchen. She returned with a slice of toasted bread and laid it on the wood stove to warm it up.

  “She was saying how you were trying to get her to a hotel, but each one had something wrong with it, a bunch of shooting on 93 and how you fell asleep behind some rocks, then spent the night under a bridge.”

  ‘Spent the night’ sounded terrible when she said it. “Yes, but we were only resting…I never…I mean, nothing ever…”

  “I know, Martin. I know. Relax. She said you were the perfect gentlemen during the whole trip, and I believe her.”

  “You do? I mean, of course you do, because nothing…”

  “Of course not. We’ve been married a long time, Martin. I know you’re not a lech: out to paw other women. You’re a nice safe man. Here. Eat your toast.”

  Somehow, ‘a nice safe man’ sounded synonymous with ‘boring’, but he resisted the urge to argue the point. No good would come of that. Instead, he crunched on his toast. Martin did not realize how hungry he was. He knew he had done nothing untoward during his three-day trip, but still worried about wrong impressions. He remembered how Kevin quickly saw an implied seamy side of him and Susan traveling together.

  Kevin. He might have been killed by those carjackers. That sobering thought pushed Martin out of his worry over Margaret’s feelings or his own reputation. There were more serious issues to face.

  “This outage is something really different,” he said gravely. “We need to get ready…as ready as we can.”

  Margaret’s impish smile faded. “Ready? Like what? We have the wood for heat, the hand pump on the well, plenty of oil for the lamps and the generator for the fridge and freezer. I even got it running myself. We’ll be fine until the power comes back on. What else were you thinking of?”

  “I’m still thinking.” He sat up and gulped down some coffee. “This is going to be more than just a few days without cable TV and keeping the fridge door closed.”

  Margaret nodded. “I was over at Lance and Miri’s yesterday. They’re worried about this lasting a long time too. They can’t take the cold all that well. They need to start using their old wood stove again. I’m worried about Jess and Nick, too. I’ve been hauling over five gallon jugs of water to them since Tuesday. Their well pump doesn’t work with Nick’s generator. They’re worried too.”

  “Coul
d be that people will be our biggest…”

  “Good morning everyone,” said Susan with a yawn. “I wanted to sleep in more — I was soooo tired — but that room is so bright.” She stood in front of the wood stove, basking in the radiant heat. “Oh. Is that coffee?” She started to ask Martin, but quickly shifted her focus to Margaret. “Could I have some coffee, please?”

  Margaret nodded, then went into the kitchen and returned with a mug and another slice of bread. “I see you found Lindsey’s old robe. It fits you pretty well. While your bread is toasting, you’d probably like to freshen up.”

  “Oh yes, please. I only washed up a little last night.”

  Margaret tested the water in one of the pots atop the stove. “Here’s some warm water. The basin is on the counter beside the sink. Mix in as much cold water as you like from the white bucket. I’ll show you where the wash cloths and towels are.” She looked over her shoulder at Martin. “We could use another bucket of water.”

  While Margaret led Susan into the bathroom with the pot of hot water, Martin slipped on his boots and barn coat. He picked up the empty gray bucket, the jug of priming water and headed out the back door. His muscles were stiff and sore. The cold morning air bit his cheeks.

  On his way around the chicken coop, the hens began to cluck and coo, expecting treats. “Not right now, girls,” he said to them. “But, I see your food hopper is almost empty. I’ll tend to that soon.” One of the hens was almost scolding with her loud buk-uk-uk call. “It’s not totally empty Red. You’ll be fine. Don’t be such a drama queen.”

  Martin positioned the bucket beneath the pump spout and poured a few glugs of water from the jug into the top of the pump. After a few cycles of pumping, water surged out into the bucket with each stroke. He had to trade off pumping arms after awhile. Filling a five gallon bucket by hand was a bit of work, especially after just waking up.

  He set the full bucket on the kitchen counter, next to the filter and the white bucket.

  Margaret placed a fresh pot of water on the wood stove to heat. “She’ll be awhile getting cleaned up. Come over here, finish your coffee and tell me more of what you meant by ‘get ready’. You had such a serious look on your face.”

  Martin warmed his cold hands on his coffee mug. “As you said, we’ve got wood. We’ve got the well for water too. Other stuff, though, maybe not so much.”

  “Like?”

  “No one seems to know what’s going on out there, but it sounds like the power grid has failed all over the country — maybe even overseas. It could be down for several months. Traveling up here, I started to see what a widespread failure means. No power to pump fuel means no trucks delivering everything from gasoline to groceries. What we have right now, might be all we’ll ever have. When people start to lose hope that the trucks will refill the stores, they probably won’t take it well.”

  “Surely people can rig up other ways to pump some fuel,” Margaret protested.

  “They probably will, but it won’t be anywhere near the quantity it takes to keep all those trucks running seven days a week. Then there are the refineries behind the pumps. Those will likely be shut down for lack of power. Maybe they can rig up one or two to run on alternate sources, but again, nowhere near enough to sustain what we had.”

  Margaret stared into her coffee cup, her brow deeply furrowed. “We have that ten gallons of gas in the shed. How long would that last in the generator?”

  Martin worked through some mental math. One gallon gave them about eight hours of run time. That would be about eighty hours of generator time. Four sets of half-hour runs a day: two hours of runtime per day. “We have about forty days of generator fuel — assuming we didn’t use any of it for the chain saws or wood splitter, or anything else.”

  Margaret did mental math while she flipped over the toast on top of the stove. “That would take us up to Thanksgiving or so.”

  “True, but there aren’t forty days worth of food in the fridge and freezer. We have more gas in the car and truck if we really needed it, but we’ll run out of fridge food long before we run out of gas to keep it cold.”

  “Hmmm. Food,” Margaret mused to herself.

  “Right. We’ve got what we’ve got, but how long will it last without getting more? You went shopping last Thursday, right? Coming up here, I saw stores picked clean. By the time we run low, there won’t be any more out there to go and get. On top of all that, running out of food might not be the most difficult problem. Almost everyone else is going to run out too — some sooner than others.”

  Susan emerged from the bathroom, brushing her hair. “Boy, it’s amazing how getting cleaned up makes you feel better.” Margaret handed Susan her toast and refilled her coffee cup.

  “We’ll talk later. My turn to get cleaned up now,” Martin said. “We need to take a trip into town as soon as we can.”

  “Oh?” said Susan and Margaret in unison.

  “Yesterday, Holly Baldwin was saying that the Market Basket in Londeville was going to re-open at 9 o’clock today. I was going to tell you about it last night, but apparently I just fell asleep. This might be our last shot at a grocery run for a long time. We’d better take advantage of it. The line will probably be long, like what we saw in Stoneham, so the sooner we get there, the better. Besides, we need to get my truck and it’s not far from Market Basket. You two get ready to go while I clean up and shave off this stubble.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll make up a list.” Margaret strode into the kitchen. Susan was left alone, looking a little lost for lack of anything to do.

  Martin emerged from the bathroom, patting his face dry. It felt good to be rid of his three-day stubble. “We’ll need some cash too. I’m sure no one will be taking credit cards. Might not take checks either since banks are closed.” He pulled a book from the bookcase and flipped it open. He pulled out three small envelopes, handing one to Margaret, one to Susan, and himself pocketing the third.

  Susan looked in her envelope. “You keep this much money in a book? Aren’t you worried someone would find it?”

  Martin held out the spine of the book for her to read. Strong’s Hebrew, Chaldee and Greek Dictionary. “I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who’s going to be opening this book.” He smiled.

  Margaret handed Martin and Susan each a slip of paper. “From what you said about stores setting dollar limits, I figured we should each concentrate on part of the list. Above the line are things we need, in order of priority. Below the line are alternates in case you can’t get what’s above the line.”

  “Okay, good. Let’s dress warm. We might be outside in a line for a long time,” Martin said. They each turned to get coats and gloves. Martin stepped into the extra bedroom and opened his gun safe. Having seen trouble several times, up close and personal, he thought he should be ready for trouble this time.

  “What are you doing?” asked Margaret. She lowered her voice. “You’re going to bring a gun shopping?” Her tone implied absurdity.

  “People have been acting crazy out there,” he said. He recalled the fights, the shootout and the carjackers.

  “We’re just going shopping at Market Basket, Martin, not Chicago’s South Side. People aren’t like that up here. The worst thing that’s ever happened in Londeville was that stink over the school lunch program.”

  Martin stared at the 9 mil for a moment. A crowded store did not seem like the place for an ambush. Outside of a few pockets in the bigger cities, New Hampshire was a pretty uneventful place. He put it back and closed the safe. Perhaps she was right. “Yeah. It’s not like Boston, or anything.”

  “What’s with this traffic?” Margaret asked rhetorically. A steady stream of cars flowed down South Road, past the intersection that was “downtown” Cheshire. The trendy SUVs and crossovers had bundles and boxes lashed to their roof racks. Others, without roof racks, had back seats packed high, or trunks too full to close. Margaret spotted a gap in the traffic and chirped the Focus’s tires as she turned left onto South
Road.

  Martin leaned forward and fussed with the radio. “Maybe while we’re out, we can get some news.” The Seek feature on AM found nothing but static. Seek found a weak signal on FM.

  “…massive breach of the road closure on 93, Mass State Police managed to re-close the highway as of 6:30 this morning. Dozens of cars out of the hundreds that had been stopped at the border since Tuesday rushed through the gap before troopers could regain control. Governor Baylach issued a statement this morning, promising to increase staffing at the checkpoints to speed up processing of eligible citizens. He urged travelers to remain calm during necessary emergency procedures, but tempers are flaring in the crowd at the border.”

  “New Hampshire State Police officials are urging people not to attempt to drive south until the situation can be properly assessed and brought under control.”

  “In other news: Governor Vincent’s spokesman tried to calm concerns that the Governor might follow actions taken in Massachusetts yesterday. Despite some isolated pockets of unrest in Concord, Manchester and Portsmouth, law enforcement officers from nearby towns will NOT be ordered to report to urban departments. Vincent remains confident that the cities can handle the recent increase in crime through other means.”