Homefront: The Voice of Freedom (31 page)

He shook his head as he plugged in the transistor board. “If I had known folks would die—for
me
—I wouldn’t have done it. Why did I let Wally talk me into this Voice of Freedom bullshit?”

“It’s not bullshit, Ben, and you know it! Stop it! And Wally wasn’t the only one who talked you into it, remember? You’re upset, I know. I am, too. What, are you going to just lay down and let the Koreans take away everything? Are we giving up?”

As the radio kicked on, Walker sighed. “No. You’re right. Still …”

“I know.” She nodded toward the radio. “What are you looking for?”

“Those messages Derby told us about. See if you can find them.”

She fiddled with the tuner but uncovered nothing but static. “I wish he’d told us the frequency.”

They caught a little music, surprisingly, and then kept looking. A minute passed. Nothing.

“Keep trying.”

She turned the knob backwards, going over frequencies she’d already tried. And then—

A burst of noise. A human voice, terribly garbled.

“There!”

They listened hard, attempting to make sense of the words.

“
… We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars …
” And then more static. “
… nothing ever happened to us at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next …
”

Walker’s mouth dropped. “I know this! By God, I know this!”

“What? What is it?”

“Kelsie! It’s
Huckleberry Finn
!”

“What?”

“He’s reading
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
! Kelsie, that whole book is about the Mississippi River. Don’t you realize what this means?”

“That the broadcast is coming from the other side? From the east, like Derby said?”

“Yes, but not only that! It’s a coded message, Kelsie. Someone is trying to tell us—we
need to cross the river
!”

SEPTEMBER 25, 2026

Salmusa gave the signal to drop tear gas into the air vents. Without precious oxygen, the resistance traitors would be forced to flee their underground bomb shelter and grovel at the feet of their masters.

The KPA team had tracked the Voice of Freedom eastward, but Salmusa was frustrated with the lack of success. Just when he thought he had located the man and prepared to ensnare him, the rebel slipped away undetected. Following the locations of the insurgent’s treasonous broadcasts, Salmusa’s team traveled a zigzagging route between Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri, where they were at present. The Voice of Freedom apparently knew he was being pursued, so he cleverly avoided moving in a straight line across the state. After a transmission in Springfield, in southern Missouri, the next one was in Kirksville, in the north. Salmusa was certain the man was intentionally leading them on a wildly unpredictable chase.

KPA intelligence reported the discovery of a Columbia resistance cell hideout after a recent VoF broadcast in the area. Salmusa and his men immediately joined the Light Infantry there and were now in the process of exterminating the vermin. But first, he had some questions to ask.

The tear gas did its job. In pairs, sixteen men and women burst out of the bomb shelter door with guns blazing. The KPA opened fire and mowed them down as they came into sight. The scene reminded Salmusa of when he and Kim Jong-un were teenagers, home on holiday from their school in Switzerland; they amused themselves by hunting and shooting rats that congregated in some of Pyongyang’s poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

The Infantry had strict orders to aim for the rebels’ legs to disable them, not kill them. Each American now writhed in agony on the ground, helpless and frightened. It was exactly the way Salmusa liked them. He approached one fighter and pressed his boot on the insurgent’s wounded thigh, causing the man to scream from the torture.

“Who is your leader?” Salmusa asked.

A woman, also wounded and on the ground a few feet away, spoke up. “I am! Talk to me!”

Salmusa released the first rebel and approached her. “I am looking for the Voice of Freedom. Where is he?”

The revolutionary smiled through her pain. “You just missed him. He’s gone.”

“But he was here.”

“Yeah. He was here.”

“Where is he going?”

“To the east. He’s crossing the river. And you can’t stop him.”

Salmusa frowned.
Was the Voice of Freedom an imbecile? How did he expect to cross the Mississippi? It was impossible!

“He’s headed for St. Louis, isn’t he?” the Korean asked.

“No. That’s what he wants you to think. He’s going south into Arkansas. He plans to cross the river somewhere down there.”

Salmusa knew the woman was lying, but it was obvious she would do anything to protect the Voice of Freedom.

The Korean turned to his men and ordered, “Finish them off. Then we’ll move on to St. Louis. That’s where our prey is headed.”

The Light Infantry spent the next sixty seconds emptying their weapons into the Columbia resistance cell members and the next half hour stringing up the corpses from trees in the town square.

OCTOBER 12, 2026

Walker and Wilcox were exhausted. They had been on the run for nearly three months, attempting to stay one step ahead of the KPA outfit that was pursuing them. There had been too many close calls. Just to confuse the enemy, they backtracked several times—even gone all the way back to Kansas City for a broadcast—and back to the proximity of St. Louis, where they were now. Walker knew full well he was a marked man. Too many people with whom he had come in contact were murdered simply for having been in his presence. But he had continued the Voice of Freedom transmissions, gathering information from his various network associates, and delivering the truth to America. It was all he lived for now—that, and Kelsie. He could see, though, that she was tiring of the life on the road. Never staying in one place very long was hard on both of them, but lately it seemed to bother her more.

Despite the devastating contamination of the Mississippi River, pockets of humanity still lived in the far western sections of the St. Louis urban sprawl. People who had no way of leaving simply migrated away from the certain death of the eastern sections of
town, leaving behind a ghostly shell of a once thriving metropolis of life, music, and culture. Now it was a graveyard, covered by a layer of dense, toxic, gray fog emanating from the river. The Missouri River, which ran north and south between the suburbs of St. Charles on the west and Bridgeton and Maryland Heights on the east, was as close to the city proper as one could safely venture. It was still relatively unpolluted, but it wouldn’t be for long. The deadly chemicals in the Mississippi were spreading and had already tainted Missouri’s leg north of St. Louis, which ran from Pelican Island to the Mississippi. Instances of radioactive poisoning ran rampant. Thousands were sick and dying.

With the help of several underground resistance members with radios, Walker and Wilcox hooked up with a small cell in St. Peters, a northwestern suburb of St. Louis, approximately fifteen miles from the Missouri River. The group was run by a former history professor at St. Louis University by the name of Thomas Bendix. Consisting of only nine members, the cell was terribly understaffed and poorly armed. They got around on bicycles and lived in an abandoned motel on the I-70 feeder road. The group did possess a repaired radio, which was how Walker first discovered their existence.

After a dinner of fried eggs cooked over a generator-run hotplate, the small cell gathered in the motel’s lobby with the couple. Bendix left fourteen-year-old Sammy, an orphan, in charge of monitoring the radio in the motel office while the adults met. Only five men in the cell had weapons. One of them, Darrell Julian, was a Connor Morgan–type who had military experience and was gung-ho for the cause. A tattoo-decorated, heavyset, middle-aged biker chick named Martha Malloy also packed a 9mm Browning she
claimed once belonged to her husband, a casualty of the initial Korean invasion. Before the meeting, Malloy took Wilcox into her room to show off a restored 1978 Kawasaki Z-1.

“I’m keeping this fueled up and ready to go in case I have to skedaddle,” Malloy explained.

The woman also supplied the cell with never-ending liquor from a source she wouldn’t reveal.

Professor Bendix passed around one of Malloy’s bottles of vodka for everyone to sample and then began the meeting. “We welcome our friend the Voice of Freedom and his colleague. We’re all big supporters of your work and what you’re trying to do.”

“Thanks,” Walker said. “It’s really people like you who are keeping the Resistance alive.”

Malloy snorted. “Are you kidding? We’re one step away from being on life support. There ain’t much resistance going on in St. Louis, believe me.”

Julian scoffed, “That’s ’cause you’re usually drunk on your ass and not out on patrol with me and the boys. We see
plenty
of action.”

Bendix held up his hands, “Boys and girls, play nice. We have guests.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at Walker and Wilcox. “Besides, most of the resistance fighters are buried in Busch Stadium.”

Bendix nodded and explained. “The Koreans used Busch Stadium as a mass grave for executed ‘dissidents’ before the river was irradiated.” Before Walker could react to that news, the leader addressed the group. “Our friend has asked me about something for which he could use some opinions.” He turned to Walker. “Would you like to explain what it is you want to do?”

Walker nodded and said, “I want to cross the
Mississippi and get on the other side. It’s been too long not knowing what’s going on over there. I’ve received some radio transmissions from persons unknown over there, but they don’t tell us a lot. I’ve never engaged in an actual conversation with anyone in the East. Every broadcast I’ve heard seems to be a recorded message. I’ve piddled around over here far too long. It’s time to do something about it.”

“How are you going to get across?” Julian asked.

“That’s why I want your opinions. How would you do it if you had no choice? What are the dangers?”

Bendix answered that one. “You can’t get within five miles of the river without wearing a protective suit. By that I mean a full-body rubber suit that’s iron-lined. Even then, it’s dangerous to be in close proximity to the water. I reckon that even with a suit a person couldn’t take more than four or five hours of exposure. Everything is toxic the closer you get. The air, the ground you walk on, the objects you touch. And the true horror of it is that it’s the same the entire length of the river, from Canada to Mexico. I would say the only way to get across is to fly, and the only folks who have planes are the Norks.”

“What
about
the KPA? Where are they located? They can’t be in the city, can they?”

“No. They’re all stationed in ad-hoc camps along the Missouri River. There’s a checkpoint at every crossing. They keep anyone from going farther east. They shoot first, ask questions later. And they’re well-protected. I think you’d have to have a tank to get past one.”

“I wonder where I could get one of those protective suits,” Walker said.

Julian replied, “They have ’em at most of those checkpoints.”

“Do the soldiers use them?”

“Sure. I imagine they don’t like going into the city any more than we would. But they’ll put ’em on if they have to.”

Malloy spoke up. “They also set fires on the city outskirts every now and then. That drives even more people out of the only livable areas around here.”

“Man, I’m all for you getting across the river,” Julian said, “but pardon me for saying so—it’s a suicide mission.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Wilcox said suddenly. Walker looked at her with disappointment. She met his reaction with, “Well, it’s true. Do you want to die of radiation poisoning? You saw those people we passed on the road. Their exposure was minimal, too.”

Walker wasn’t happy that Wilcox had made their bone of contention public.

Sammy interrupted the meeting by popping his head out of the office. “Professor, there’s a transmission coming in. I think it’s stuff we’ve been waiting for!”

Bendix rose, saying, “Excuse me.” He disappeared into the office, leaving Julian to outline his plans for an attack on a Korean supply truck when it made its monthly deliveries. “It comes around once a month,” he explained to Walker. “Brings food and water and more to the various checkpoints.”

The professor returned and said, “Our shipment will be here in an hour. We need to get to the rendezvous.” For Walker’s benefit, he elucidated, “Every three months we get a supply of stuff from resistance cells in Kansas City. They’ve managed to find all kinds of ways to get them to us. Last time someone drove an old ice-cream truck—without the ice cream, unfortunately.”

“I hope for God’s sake they sent more weapons this
time,” Julian said. “How can we fight the enemy if only six of us have guns? Oh, wait a minute, Martha don’t count. Make that five guns.”

“Shut up, Julian,” Malloy snapped. “You know as well as I do I’m a lousy shot and would probably end up killing one of our own.”

“Then why don’t you let someone else have your gun?”

“Because it’s all I have left of Boogle.” She leaned over to Wilcox. “Boogle was my husband.”

Bendix, Julian, and two other men donned empty backpacks.

“May I join you?” Walker asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Why don’t I drive? Might be able to carry more stuff in the SUV.”

Julian looked at Bendix for a say-so. The professor shrugged and nodded. “Bring your M4.”

   Wilcox elected to stay at the motel. She gave Walker a quick kiss on the cheek and asked him to not get killed, and then disappeared into Malloy’s room. He was well aware that things were tense between them, so he was glad to get away and go on the supply run. The rendezvous point was a two-level parking garage in a tiny deserted community called All Saints Village, located three miles from I-70 at the southern end of St. Peters. The building still had cars sitting in it from the EMP blast, but Bendix assured Walker that no one ever ventured into it. Walker parked the SUV on the first floor and they all poured out to wait outside. Julian held binoculars to his eyes and scanned the roads in all directions. It was so quiet and desolate that they may as well have been the only people on the planet.