Read The Day After Never - Blood Honor (Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller) for Free Online Page A

Asian banks, and vice versa – meaning that if one in the queue collapsed, it would take the rest with it. With the major industrialized nations incapacitated from the flu, derivative instruments in the hundreds of trillions of dollars had come due, and in a daisy chain, every economy and bank on the planet froze up as they were exposed as being insolvent. Once confidence was shaken, the next pedestal of modern finance to collapse was sovereign debt, and the American T-bill became unsellable overnight. The central banks tried turning on the money presses to counter the effect, but that had only resulted in a loss of faith in paper currency, and hyper-inflation that had made Zimbabwe look like a poster child for fiscal conservancy.
    When the banks didn’t open, credit cards stopped working, and nobody wanted to accept the government’s paper currency, then nothing could function, not even the military – nobody would work for worthless paper IOUs backed by the nonexistent faith and credit of a bankrupt regime. When a gallon of gas went from $3 a gallon to $30 to $300 in only two weeks, faith in fiat currency and the government’s continued ability to operate in perpetual debt collapsed – and faith was all the system had been running on for generations.
    Americans had quickly discovered that their prosperity was a fragile construct that could collapse in a matter of days, and watched in horror as their wealth was revealed to be a mirage, as was every other economy in the world where the same cartel of interdependent, privately owned banks had convinced the population that paper IOUs were a good exchange for their labor and land. When riots swept the cities, starting on the west and east coasts and working inland, the authorities had been unable to cope, and what had previously only been seen in brief flare-ups in Baltimore, Los Angeles, and New Orleans quickly went nationwide as the desperate turned on each other with the realization that survival was now a zero-sum game.
    Lucas was jarred from his reverie by Aaron’s arrival with the surgery kit.
    “Here you go, boss man,” Aaron said with a smile, and set the kit down beside Duke.
    Duke opened the oversized plastic tackle box and extracted a bottle of white lightning and a dizzying array of gleaming surgical instruments. He placed a tray near the woman’s head and filled it halfway with alcohol, and after a long look at the bottle, chugged two swallows and burped.
    Lucas regarded him with a neutral expression. “Sure you’re okay?”
    “We’ll soon find out.” Duke’s expression darkened. “Aaron, I need more gauze than this. And the soldering iron.”
    Aaron nodded. “Be right back.”
    Duke busied himself placing scalpels, forceps, clamps, spanners, and a variety of other instruments in the alcohol, and then turned to Lucas. “Let’s go wash our hands. Can you assist?”
    “Tell me what to do and I’ll try,” Lucas said.
    “First, let’s wash all the grime off. Then, go put on a clean shirt. Don’t need her getting infected from road dust.”
    “I don’t have an extra handy.”
    “Don’t worry; I do. I’ll put it on your tab.” Duke gave him a hard stare. “Hope you’ve got some real goods to trade, or you’ll be delivering white lightning for free for the duration.”
    “I’ve got a half dozen ack-ack guns. Maybe a thousand rounds. Some handguns. Don’t sweat it.”
    “What kind of rifles?”
    “AR-15s and AKs.”
    “Shape?”
    “Better than your liver.”
    Duke’s face cracked in a pained smile. “Man after my own heart, Lucas.”
    Lucas matched his expression. “No accounting for taste.”
     

Chapter 5
    An hour and a half later, Duke set down the soldering iron and wiped sweat from his brow. After inspecting his work, he turned to Doug.
    “Open some windows. Smells like a Texas barbecue in here.”
    The pungent odor of burnt flesh had filled the room as he’d cauterized the wounds, the round finally removed in three