Resurrection America Read online

  RESURRECTION AMERICA

  JEFF GUNHUS

  SEVEN GUNS PRESS

  CONTENTS

  Untitled

  Foreword

  Part 1

  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

  Part 2

  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

  Part 3

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  RESURRECTION AMERICA

  A THRILLER

  Jeff Gunhus

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

  Copyright 2017 by Jeff Gunhus.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Seven Guns Press. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Extended Imagery

  Edited by Mandy Schoen

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gunhus, Jeff

  Resurrection America / Jeff Gunhus

  Visit Jeff Gunhus at:

  www.JeffGunhus.com

  www.facebook.com/jeffgunhusauthor

  www.twitter.com/jeffgunhus

  FOR NICOLE

  FOREWORD

  Many early readers of Resurrection America commented on the science used in the story. While I’ve certainly taken liberties, most are surprised to learn much of the technology I describe already exists in the world. For example, amputees already have prosthetic limbs controlled by sensors embedded in their brains, the Unites States Department of Defense is developing autonomous kill drones, and experts warn that the interconnectivity of our modern world has created an Achilles’ heel which, if attacked, could hobble the world for a generation.

  But it is the most outlandish events in this book that have people wondering if I jumped the rails from science to pure conjecture. You know, taken my creative license out for a spin only to crash the family car into a tree. Could, they ask, this actually happen?

  I don’t want to give things away, but I’ll share this with you. When you come to the science that seems to challenge credulity, just know that it too is based on reality. I’ll share more at the end of the book, but when you ask yourself whether the events here could really ever happen, the answer is yes. They already are.

  I hope you enjoy Resurrection America.

  JEFF Gunhus

  PART I

  1

  A crackling, static-heavy transmission blasted from the radio, filling the small-town jail with the frantic voice of Deputy Manny Garcia.

  “Sheriff? You there? Come on, Rick, pick up.” Then, as an afterthought a few beats later, as if to make it more official, he added, “Over.”

  Sheriff Rick Johnson heard the deputy’s voice all the way down by the bathroom where he was about to enjoy a long sit with that week’s Sports Illustrated. There was no one else in the jail since Manny was his only deputy and there weren’t enough evildoers in the town of Resurrection to fill up either of the two cells in the back of the building. It’d been a quiet morning, just the way Rick liked it, and he groaned at the thought of his eager-beaver deputy disturbing his day. Rick was only ten years older than the new recruit, but he felt like a father with a hyperactive kid on his hands.

  “Come in, Sheriff.” A pause, filled with static. “Rick. Where are you? You’re not going to believe what I just saw. It’s gonna blow your mind,” Manny said. “Shit, man. Answer the radio.”

  Rick frowned at the use of the swear word. He knew some of the old folks in town liked to use their own police scanners to eavesdrop on the radio chatter. At least they used to. With the Internet, they could easily tap into something with a little more action like the NYPD or Miami SWAT team, so he supposed most of them listened to those to get their fix. There probably wasn’t much risk that one of the town’s good citizens would have picked up the comment. Still, he liked to run a professional operation. Cussing on the official radio wasn’t part of the drill. He folded his beloved Sports Illustrated and tossed it on the small magazine rack outside the bathroom.

  “This better be good,” he shouted, even though he knew Manny wouldn’t be able to hear him without toggling on the radio.

  “Sheriff, you’re not gonna believe what’s going on up here,” Manny said, his voice lowered into a whisper. The interference was getting worse. The next words tumbled around inside a swirl of static. “It’s … huge … the old mine … c’mon man …”

  A high-pitched squawk burst from the speakers, loud enough to make Rick wince as he crossed the room to grab his handheld radio. He spun the volume knob down, the fingers in his prosthetic hand giving him a little trouble with the dial, but the ear-splitting sound just got louder. Then, suddenly, it went silent.

  The mine? What was the kid doing up there?

  “Manny,” Rick said into the radio. “Come in, over.”

  Nothing. Not even the usual static. He thought the battery might be out, but a quick check showed the meter on the radio’s side had five green bars. Full charge.

  “Piece of crap,” he mumbled to himself. He hit the button again. “Manny? Where are you?” He paused. Silence. “If you’re talking I’m not reading you. Move down the mountain to get a better signal. Do you copy?”

  He felt dumb for asking. If the kid could tell him that he copied the message, then he’d be able to talk to him. He stared at the radio, waiting for something to happen. But it was dead.

  There were two backup radios on the charger station. Chances were that the radio just blew out on him. Part of the Get America Working Again program, GAWA for short, meant that all of the electronics that used to be manufactured over in Asia were now made right in the good old US of A. Rick liked supporting the labor unions as well as anyone else, and GAWA seemed like a good idea on paper, but he missed having technology that actually worked. The stuff from the revitalized factories of the rust belt was good, but it wasn’t China good.

&n
bsp; Rick grabbed a spare radio off the charger. “Manny. Come in, acknowledge.”

  Nothing.

  He tried the other one.

  “Dammit, Manny. Are you there?”

  Dead air.

  Rick suppressed a shiver as cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He braced himself against his desk and took a few deep, shuddering breaths, trying to regain his composure. He closed his eyes and focused. This was Resurrection, Colorado. It wasn’t a barren desert in a foreign land. There were no Jihadis stalking his men, waiting for him to make a tactical mistake and send them to their deaths. Silence on the radio meant a malfunction, that was all.

  He opened his eyes and felt back in control. Manny had probably seen a big ten-point buck or a grizzly bear. That would explain the excitement in the kid’s voice. He felt himself settle down even more.

  “Manny? Come in. Come in.”

  When he didn’t get an answer, he grabbed his keys and gun holster and headed to the front door. “If you can hear me, I’m coming your way. I’m heading to the mine on the main service road.”

  As he left the building, he knew he wasn’t being honest with himself. He really didn’t believe his deputy had called about spotting some game animal.

  Sure, the kid had been excited, but there was something else in his voice too. He wasn’t sure what his deputy, an ex-Marine and gun-wielding law officer, had seen up by the mine, but whatever it was had done more than get the kid excited.

  Something had scared the hell out of him. And that wasn’t good.

  2

  The fence wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Rick stared out through his windshield of his Chevy Blazer, leaning forward so he could see all the way to the top of it. The damn thing was at least twenty feet tall, with razor wire coiled across the top to add another two or three feet. A heavy fabric lined the inside, blocking his view of the mine. The dark green color of the fabric made the yellow signs posted down the length of the fence stand out. Each of these was emblazoned with a lightning bolt and the promise of seven thousand volts to anyone crazy enough to get too close.

  “What in the hell…” he whispered.

  He’d been up to Resurrection Mine a thousand times in his life and never seen anything like this barricade. As a kid, he used to visit his dad at work back when the place was in operation. Even then, there was no more than a chain-link fence around the work yard in front of the mine’s entrance. Even after the mine closed, the security had never been anything special. As a teenager, he and his buddies would break in to explore the old shafts, drink beer, and talk about conquering the world. Outside of some big warning signs and a padlocked gate on the mine itself, there had never been much effort to secure the site.

  What was really strange was that he’d come up to the mine as recently as a month ago to take a look around and make sure none of today’s teenagers were as dumb as he’d been when he was younger. On that trip, he hadn’t seen any sign of activity in the area. And on the drive up, there’d even been a tree down across the access road that’d required him to take the old Blazer off-road just to get past it. With the main access road cut off, the place ought to be abandoned.

  The fence wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Rick parked on the steep slope right before the spot in the access road where he knew it flattened out into the mine’s parking area. The spot was so steep that his Blazer slid backward a few inches on the gravel before settling in. He turned off the engine, put on the emergency brake, placed his hand on the door handle … and hesitated. Every alarm bell was going off inside his head. The first thing he’d taught the new guys in his unit back in the day was that if something doesn’t belong on scene, then it was put there to kill you. The first time you second-guess yourself is the time you lose either your life or a limb. He flexed his prosthetic left hand, then let go of the door handle and grabbed the radio mounted on the dash.

  “Manny, this is Rick. You copy?”

  Nothing but static.

  “I’m up at the mine. Main road. In front of this weird fence. If you can hear me, make your way over to my position. Over.”

  Static.

  He considered the chances that Manny’s radio was receiving but couldn’t send. It was possible. The last few years spent using American-made electronics had proven there was no end to the ways they could malfunction. He hoped his deputy just had a flat tire or some mechanical problem and that’s why he wasn’t at the mine where Rick had expected to find him. But another look at the fence told him there was more than a flat tire at work. He hoped there was a simple explanation for it all. The fence. Manny’s absence from the spot of his last radio transmission. But his gut told him he was hoping for too much.

  Rick put the radio back and tried his cell phone. Coverage was spotty on a good day up on the mountain, and today wasn’t shaping up to be good at all. Sure enough, zero bars.

  He sat there, the wind whistling in the Blazer’s dried and cracked window seals. The noise only added to the feeling of isolation as he stared at the fence. He considered his options, not really liking any of them. He couldn’t go get backup; Manny was his only deputy. He couldn’t call anyone; all of his coms were down. That left only one real option: to get out and take a look around. But he didn’t like that option either.

  Because the fence wasn’t supposed to be there.

  He looked around the Blazer. Nothing moved outside except the pines slowly bending in the breeze. There were no squirrels on the ground. No birds flying between the trees. He stretched to look out of the passenger window, and then twisted to look out the back. Looking for anything alive. Anything at all.

  Nothing moved.

  It was dead outside.

  At the thought, he felt his throat tighten and his heart thump in his chest. He closed his eyes and, just that fast, he was standing in a farmer’s field in Afghanistan, the faceplate of his bio-chem suit fogging up as he spun in a circle, surrounded by dead livestock in every direction. Cows. Pigs. Horses. Birds that had dropped right from the sky.

  He jerked his eyes open, gasping for breath. It’d been a while since he’d had that particular flashback, but he didn’t need a reminder of what came next. The Pashtun village, mostly women and children, dead just like their animals.

  Rick shoved open the door and climbed out, gasping for air. He stumbled a bit and settled himself, his hands on his knees, getting his balance, getting right with himself. As he stood there, a bird called from the trees to his left. A second bird answered. And the simple sound made him grin and shake his head.

  “Get your shit together, Marine,” he said. As the words came out, he spotted a set of tire tracks on the gravel road. It’d rained the night before, enough to smooth out the surface of the road, but it’d been sunny all day. Even in the cool, fall temperatures, the road was dry, which was why he hadn’t spotted the tire tracks earlier. They were Manny’s, had to be. He’d said he was at the mine, freaking out about something he’d seen. A massive fortified security fence, erected without anyone in town knowing about it, fit that bill. Rick’s own little trip down Jihadi memory lane was testament to the power of the fence to cause fear. He followed the tracks up the hill toward the gate and then stood there, staring at the ground.

  The tire tracks continued right up to the gate and disappeared inside.

  He didn’t like that at all.

  To the left, next to an old tree stump so that it wasn’t immediately visible when approaching from the road, was a sturdy metal post topped with a video camera and a speaker. Rick fought a sudden wave of anger at being watched, hating the thought that someone might have seen the way he’d stumbled out of the Blazer. But he pushed the anger back easily enough. It was his fault for being sloppy and not noticing the post earlier.

  He waved at the camera. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

  No answer. He bent down to see if there was some kind of call button next to the speaker. There wasn’t.

  “Hello?” he said, louder. “I’m
Sheriff Rick Johnson. I need to speak to whoever’s in charge in there. Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  Rick crouched down to see if there was any space under the gate so he could get a look inside. The fabric and the fencing went all the way to the ground. He wasn’t sure if that part of the fence was electrified too, but he wasn’t about to take a chance.

  He stepped back and looked for a way to get a glimpse over the fence. The mine entrance was at the back of a little draw in the mountain face, at the end of the V in the rock. The fence stretched across the entire length of the mining operation, nearly four hundred yards from end-to-end, connecting the two sides of the draw.

  He knew, from lazy summer afternoons, that trying to climb the sheer rock face at either end of the fence line was impossible. And that had been with two good arms. Although there was an argument that his prosthetic was more powerful than his original equipment, he still didn’t think climbing the face was an option. There was a second entrance to the mine, an old emergency shaft, but that was over in the next valley. Judging by the amount of security in front of him, he didn’t think an unplanned appearance at the back door was the way to go.

  The fence poles were positioned on a steep incline so that any trees growing downhill from the fence weren’t tall enough to give a vantage point into the area in front of the mine. He looked around for any nearby ridgelines he might be able to hike to, but the draw was positioned in a way that made getting a look in nearly impossible.