Edge of Valor: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller(41)

There was a moment of silence. It was intentional. The man on the other end enjoyed keeping people waiting.

The General didn’t have the patience for mind games. He preferred to orchestrate them himself and loathed when others attempted the ploy. “Don’t waste my time. What the hell are you doing?”

“Be more specific.” The voice was deep and resonant. Persuasive. Though he was essentially no better than a mafia don, the man’s English was perfect—clipped, impatient, implying a smooth, manipulative intelligence.

“Don’t play mind games with me, Poe.”

Alexander Poe gave a humorless chuckle. “At any one time, I’m planning a dozen moves on a dozen different boards.”

“I’ve received multiple reports that you’ve overrun South Bend and Mishawaka and are amassing your men at the Indiana border. Do not think that you can cross into my territory without dire consequences.”

Silence on the other end. “I do not appreciate being threatened.”

“Well, consider this a threat!” the General said.

He hadn’t expected the Syndicate to grow so strong, so quickly. Northern Indiana had been swiftly overrun. He had expected more resistance.

Perhaps he had underestimated the devastating effects of winter upon a weak and helpless population. Disease, hypothermia, and starvation had ravaged the ranks of those who might have fought back.

The General took a long swallow of cognac. It didn’t calm him in the slightest. “Remember who’s in charge here.”

“I remember who my benefactor is. I do not forget. Not for one single second.” Poe spoke evenly, without inflection, and yet the General heard the subtext—a savage resentment behind those few simple words.

The General drained his crystal glass and closed his eyes for a moment, thinking.

He had met Poe once at a fancy fundraiser dinner for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. A mob kingpin, but he was no tracksuit-wearing thug. He was educated and intelligent, poised and graceful as a leopard.

Poe wore expensive name brand suits and drank fine wines. He finagled underhanded financial deals and cut-throat business propositions in elegant restaurants, on high-brow golf courses, and during elite dinner cruises with lobbyists, politicians, and high-ranking city officials.

He smiled and laughed like other men, but unlike other men, his eyes were empty. He was utterly ruthless, with no family, friends, or loyalties. Ambitious and greedy.

Not unlike the General himself.

They both desired the whole world on a platter.

Poe had had the manpower—his Syndicate formed a wide network of thugs, gangsters, and criminals he’d built over two decades ruling the underbelly of crime in Chicago.

But he couldn’t do real damage without upgrading his weaponry.

He needed the keys to the kingdom.

Keys which the General had generously provided him.

For it was the General himself who’d supplied Alexander Poe with the resources he needed to gain control of Chicago. And from there, most of Illinois.

The locations of local armories. Access to certain clandestine storage facilities. Covert military shipments authorized to undisclosed classified recipients.

The Syndicate thugs carried long guns—mostly military-issued M4s—and wore BDUs, the name tapes and patches removed from their uniforms. They looked like soldiers, intentionally preying upon a civilian’s natural inclination to respect and obey American armed forces.

That, too, had been the General’s idea.

It had worked to spectacular effect.

Poe had spread like a cancer throughout the cities and suburbs, and then through the rural towns, sweeping through FEMA camps and exploiting their government-provided resources to feed his growing army.

Whatever he didn’t need, he often burned or killed, leaving large swaths of death and devastation in his wake. And fear.

It was that fear that the General had needed.

It was the fear he’d manufactured, then exploited to serve his own aims.

With the chaos in Illinois at a controlled boil, Governor Duffield and the remnants of the state legislature had capitulated to their own terror. The governor had willingly handed over the reins of power. After all, he who controlled the army held the government by the balls.

Poe had served a valuable purpose. But that purpose was now waning. He would soon outlive his usefulness.

“Byron, you sound upset. Did I piss in your Cheerios?”

The General clenched his jaw, seething. From the beginning, Poe had insisted on calling him Byron rather than by his title, a subtle slight that the General had overlooked.

He regretted that now. The General had Poe handled, but he was not an enemy to underestimate.

“Don’t forget your place,” the General spat.

Poe laughed. “I have many places. My favorite is the top of the dog pile.”

“Do not step foot inside the Michigan border. I gave you the FEMA camps. I gave you Illinois. Hell, I even let you have Indiana—”

“I have enough cornfields already. And I took Illinois and Indiana myself.”

“Do not make light of this!”

A pause. When he spoke, Poe’s voice was silky smooth. “I so enjoy these little chats.”

“I mean it. I can still cut you down to size.”

“Goodbye, Byron.”

“Don’t you dare—!”