Taylor nodded, and the smile manifested again. “Fair enough. Has Master Sergeant Schardt brought you up to speed on the situation?”
“I’ve mostly spent my time getting up to speed on our personnel and equipment situation. We were going to get to the physical situation next.”
Taylor nodded again and gestured toward the door. “It might be simpler to show you.” She looked at Schardt. “The recovery operation has a problem.”
Schardt quickly stood up, alarm on his face. “Bad?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll get a squad.”
“Make it two squads,” she said and headed for the door. She stopped when Schardt didn’t move. The master sergeant was looking at Cobb for approval. She examined the situation critically, her eyes narrowing.
“Have them meet me…” Cobb looked at Governor Taylor for details.
“The gondola,” she said, her voice icy.
“Got it,” Schardt said.
“Make sure the men are informed of my arrival and assumption of command.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Cobb walked over to Taylor. “Ma’am, lead the way.”
Outside, a small, four-seated electric cart waited. A young man in immaculate khakis sat in the driver’s seat. When he saw Cobb, he looked surprised and confused. Cobb started to sit in the front, next to the driver.
“Why don’t ya sit back here with me,” Governor Taylor said, the same smile on her face. She gestured toward the other rear seat.
“As the governor wishes,” he said and sat.
“Now, you don’t have to be like that,” she said. Once they were both seated, the driver started the car and moved slowly on the improvised steel-plate road, careful to avoid the ever-present foot traffic. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see some military leadership arrive.”
“You seem a little put off, Governor Taylor.”
“Call me Ann,” she said.
“I think it’s best to keep it on a professional level.”
“Should I call you Colonel Pendleton, then?”
“That is my rank and name.”
For the first time, her smile faltered. Good.
“Something bothering you, Colonel?”
“I’m concerned,” Cobb said.
“About what, may I ask?”
“A casual observer would think you were using military personnel and assets for your own purposes, outside military leadership’s counsel.”
“We’re just trying to survive, Colonel Pendleton. This place was put together by some very smart men and women. When they picked me up, I said I’d do my best to help…guide their efforts.”
“This guidance include ordering military personnel around?”
“I’m sorry if it looks as though I’m giving orders,” she said, inclining her head slightly. “The situation precludes any sense of propriety. You must understand, I was unsure if you were who I was told you were.”
“And what do you think now?”
“Why, ah thank there’s a new sheriff in town,” Taylor said, making her Texas accent extra thick on purpose.
Cobb did his best to imitate her cool smile. “Rest assured, I will endeavor to give you whatever support you need, if we’re able to provide it.” She didn’t respond. Instead, she watched her driver navigate the many obstacles.
They arrived outside a building that was manufactured out of scrap metal. Many welds and cans of Rust-Oleum had obviously gone into its manufacture. It was surrounded by quick and dirty container modification jobs with clear weld marks and standard single-wide mobile homes and office modules. He was immediately curious about the purpose.
“Follow me, please,” Governor Taylor said coldly.
“Where are we going?” Cobb asked as he got out and followed.
“To the center of the empire, as it were.”
Inside the building were several rooms filled with people operating computers and large monitors showing images of the ground below them. In the center was a surprisingly ornate, wrought iron, circular staircase that descended to the area below. The governor headed down immediately, so Cobb followed. Nobody took notice of them.
As he went around in circles, Cobb wondered where they’d gotten a stairway like the one he walked on. Had someone made it on the spot? He hadn’t seen a metal shop, and he didn’t think they would have had time to create one. He thought it would be dangerous to have a metal shop on an aircraft, then he remembered the aircraft he rode on was anything but conventional.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a large, open space. He realized, though, as his eyes adjusted, it wasn’t really open. It was like a skybox in a professional sports stadium with 360-degree views. When his booted feet touched the floor, he saw he was below the hull of Shangri-La.
The hull spread out in all directions for hundreds of feet. He caught himself gawking at the sheer size of what they’d created. It’s a gondola, he realized. The room was hanging under the craft like the gondola on a blimp. Fitting. He went over and put a hand on the glass, which was slanted from the top of the ceiling inward to the floor. Each pane was at least nine feet tall, creating a spectacular view of the ground below, which he noticed was closer. They’d been descending.
“The glass feels substantial,” he said.
“It should,” a man said. Cobb turned toward the speaker and saw a middle-aged, balding man with dark hair, thick glasses, and a rather advanced paunch. “It’s armored glass we found in Houston.” His accent was…German?
“It was going on the new federal building there.”
Cobb recognized Clark’s rich voice. He was standing on the other side of the gondola with a pair of field glasses pressed to his eyes, looking almost straight down.
“It was just there, shame not to use it,” the first man said.
Something clicked, and Cobb snapped his fingers. “You must be Hans Daimler, mad scientist?”
“I thought of changing my name to ze Frankenstein, but it seemed too much, ya? You are ze soldier zat Clark tolt us about? Bisdorf found you in a building?”
“Surrounded by zombies,” Cobb added.
Hans nodded knowingly. “I think most of us have been there at one point or another, yes?”
About 20 people occupied the spacious deck of the gondola. Most were typing on laptops, using their own vision gear. Some were talking over headsets. It was an impressive operation. A loud Spang! sounded under his feet, and Cobb unconsciously jumped a little.
“Un zat is vy we have armored glass and titanium floors,” Hans Daimler said. Several people around the room nodded.
“Good Lord! Who’s shooting at us?” Cobb asked.
“Every idiot redneck with a gun,” someone said in what sounded like a Boston accent.
“Hey, I resemble that remark,” someone else said in a thick Louisiana accent. Several people laughed, including the Bostonian.
“It’s some of my former constituents,” Governor Taylor said. “I doubt they voted for me.”
“Why?” Cobb persisted.
“If you saw what looked like a bad sci-fi movie spaceship floating over you, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t shoot the fucking thing,” Cobb mumbled.
“Now say you saw this bad sci-fi movie spaceship during a zombie apocalypse?” she added.
“Okay, you have a point, Governor.”
She grunted and went to Clark. “Any more developments?”
“They found the cats,” Clark replied, not moving his glasses. “Only the zombies seem interested as well.”
“Mind bringing me up to speed?” Cobb asked.
“The soldiers are answering to him now,” Taylor explained.
“Not really a surprise,” Clark said. “You ain’t planin’ to leave, are you?”
“And do what, play Mad Max down there? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”
It was Clark’s turn to laugh. “You have to understand, we have a lot of guys and girls with guns and
stuff. Not many who really know how to fight. The men you’ve taken command of are all survivors of this shit storm below us. We need them.”
“Tell him vat we are doing,” Daimler suggested.
“Right,” Clark said. “So, we explained we’ve been harvesting containers everywhere we find them and rescuing people?” Cobb nodded. “Well, we’re kinda on a treadmill now. We have so many people, we have to continually get more stuff. Water filtration, waste management, food, food, food.”
“I see. And you use those cranes to hoist up whatever you find?”
“Pretty much,” Clark said. “Courtney Raines is our divining rod.” He gestured to a very petite brunette who was standing to one side, holding a large tablet. “She used to work for US Customs and Border Patrol.”
“CBP keeps an eye on every container that comes into the country,” Courtney said. Her speech was smooth and businesslike. “I was in charge of mid-American waypoints, but when the shit hit the fan I mirrored the bureau’s national database as best I could and got the fuck out of dodge.”
“How did you know the shit was hitting the fan, as you said?” Cobb asked.
“Colonel, please. Anyone in government knew it was bad. We’d just been ordered to keep our mouths shut. My daddy didn’t raise no fools. I read the writing on the wall. My boyfriend, a dozen others, and I ran for it. I was the only one who survived. These guys spotted me on a roof in Austin.” She gestured around. “Here I am.”
“What do you think the government would do if they found out you were giving out the data?”
“Colonel, there is no functional government.”
“We’ve been getting some atmospheric skip traffic from the ham radio,” Clark explained. “A naval flotilla is near San Diego. The president was trying to hook up with them, and her plane crashed.”
“Wait, San Diego?” Cobb asked, suddenly excited. “Do you know if any of the army unit I was with made it there?”
“We heard some crazy shit about a C-17 landing on an aircraft carrier,” Taylor said. “Figured it was bullshit.”
Cobb smiled hugely. General Rose had evacuated with a dozen helicopters and more than a few Osprey from Fort Hood. He’d also taken three C-17 transport jets. Cobb helped rescue one of the pilots. On board one of those planes was his recent girlfriend, Kathy Clifford. It was the first time, in days, he’d dared to think she could still be alive.
“So, the story might naht be bullshit?” Governor Taylor asked.
“Maybe not,” he replied. He took a minute to explain the evacuation of Fort Hood.
“I hope they’re still alive,” she said.
“Heading there would be the smartest move,” Cobb said. Most of the eyes in the gondola turned toward him. “They’ll have resources we don’t have. Plus, this technology, wherever its from, could save a lot of lives.”
“We’re already saving a lot of lives right here,” Taylor said. “My citizens’ lives.”
“You just said there was no government.”
“No federal government,” Taylor corrected.
“The distinction is tenuous at best,” Cobb countered.
“Maybe we can save the civics debate for later?” Clark suggested. “Right now, we have three teams on the ground, and they’re having a hell of a time trying to meet their objectives.”
“What are their objectives?” Cobb asked, moving over to the big roughneck.
“Look down,” Clark said.
Cobb searched around and found another pair of field glasses. There were dozens hanging on pegs all around the inside of the gondola. Another round bounced off the armored plates under his feet. He only twitched the second time. Using the glasses, he followed Clark’s gaze and focused down into the growing gloom.
“A rail yard?” he asked.
“Yes,” Clark confirmed. “A BNSF transfer yard. They take apart trains and put them back together. This one isn’t particularly big, but it has something we want. Several somethings.”
“What?”
Clark took the glasses from his eyes and pointed. “See those bright orange cables running down from the edge of Shangri-La over there?” He pointed.
Cobb found them and nodded. “Why orange?”
“Visibility.”
Cobb nodded; it made sense. He followed them with his eyes down toward the ground, then switched back to his glasses.
“On one of the trains, you’ll see several bright yellow things.”
Cobb searched for a moment, following the orange cables until he found the yellow, cube-shaped things. “Got ‘em.” He could immediately see hundreds of infected around them. He also saw that the cables ended at a square platform and men were standing on it a short distance above the yellow cube. The platform was swaying back and forth. “What are they?”
“Those are three big, beautiful Caterpillar C175-20 generator sets.”
“Generators?” Cobb asked. “Why are they so important?”
“We have over 2,000 men, women, and children,” Taylor explained. “Refrigerated food containers, air conditioning (y’all might notice Texas starts getting hot in late April), not to mention lights, stoves, and many other things.”
“Bisdorf said you have generators.”
“We do,” Clark said. “About two dozen of them, the biggest being 40 kilowatts. Those down there are 4,000 kilowatts. Each!”
Cobb whistled. Four megawatts was a lot of juice. “What about fuel, do they use a lot?”
“At peak output, over 1,000 liters an hour,” Daimler said, then looked at Cobb. “Zats about 300 gallons for your yankees.”
“I keep telling you, southerners ain’t yankees,” the man with the Louisiana accent said.
“You all sound ze same to me,” Daimler retorted.
“Fuel not a concern?” Cobb asked, getting back to the matter at hand.
“A lot easier to get than generators,” Clark said.
“You can’t just hook up the generators and lift it?”
“No,” Clark said. “We have light shipping cranes we took from Houston. They can handle the load, no problem, even with 500 feet of cable. Problem is, we’re so high, the connection cradle is waving like a tree in high winds. If there weren’t any fucking zombies, my team would just jump off and use cables to control the cradle.”
Cobb again focused on the generator and saw that the infected were not only swarming around it, but also on it. He guessed there were a few hundred, at least.
“We always operate in early morning or at dusk,” Clark said. “Tends to draw less of them. Of course, it greatly shortens our operating window.”
“Can’t you go lower?”
“Too risky,” Taylor explained. “The gondola is only lightly armored. We almost lost a window once when we got really low to try and get a whole string of diesel railroad tankers.”
Cobb looked around the gondola and spotted a window with a nasty impact spot. The glass was white and spiderwebbed badly. “Must have been a .50 caliber.”
“We don’t stay anywhere more than a night,” Clark remarked. “I had a friend with a 20mm WWII anti-tank rifle. We used to take it to Kentucky and shoot it every year at the Knob Creek shoot. Anyway, I bet there are others out there. A 20mm would go right through this glass or the floor.”
“And just rattle around in here,” Cobb agreed. “Okay, what can we do?”
“We need to figure out how to give my crew time to get the generators. One would be okay, but I want them all. We don’t need four megawatts right now, but at the rate we’re growing, we’ll need more soon, and a backup would be priceless.”
“Where do all the infected come from?”
“The zombies?” Taylor asked, then gave a dry mirthless chuckle. “Amarillo used to have 200,000 people.”
“Not anymore,” Clark said, the glasses welded to his eyes again. “Jumping Jesus!”
Cobb lifted his own glasses and saw what the other man was cursing about. The infected were piled so high on the generator closest to th
e suspended cradle and the men on it, Cobb couldn’t see the generator at all. And they were starting to pile on top of each other! This is crazy.
He used his own glasses to scan the rail yard. There weren’t many good places to set a force down. He could see several big cranes, but it would be difficult to provide stable fire from another crane. And if random yokels were popping shots at the big, floating city, a group of dangling soldiers would be at even more risk.
“Have salvage crews been fired upon?” he asked.
Clark looked away from his glasses to Governor Taylor who looked back at him. “Yes,” he said. “We lost three men yesterday.”
“Thanks for being honest.” He looked through the field glasses again. “Do I have comms with my men?” Someone handed him a small VHF radio of the kind you could buy at any store. He examined it and shrugged. “This is Colonel Pendleton.”
“Sergeant Zimmerman here,” came the immediate reply.
“We need to assist a salvage operation. Have two squads stand by. I’ll be there in a minute.” Turning back to Clark, he said, “Can someone show me back to the military trailers so I can get some gear?”
“You going down yourself?” Clark asked, the surprise on his face obvious.
“You don’t tell a soldier to do something you won’t do yourself.” Something about the way Clark looked at him struck Cobb as peculiar. But when he looked at the other man, Clark looked away.
* * *
Cobb climbed onto the platform they’d use to descend below Shangri-La. It was spacious, even with 20 men on it. He glanced around at his new command. Two nine-man squads, one Marine and one army. The Marine contingent was led by a corporal they called Tango. The army had Sergeant Zimmerman, who preferred to go by Zim. When Cobb had drawn gear, he’d met the warrant officer they mentioned, WO1 Boca. The young, Asian man was an armorer and seemed to spend all his time tending to the military weapons in a secure trailer. He barely seemed to notice Cobb, who wondered what was going on.
He’d elected to draw an M4, just like every other man under his new command, so they were all using the same ammo and magazines. He’d added new body armor but kept his BDUs, despite how well-worn they were. They fit, while new ones often didn’t.
Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live Page 16