by Lee Thomas
The base brig wasn’t designed to hold too many people, as it was more like a police station than a jail. It was a basic concrete block office building, with four holding cells capable of holding up to four people each, a couple of interrogation rooms, and office spaces for the officers. There was also a small bunkroom for the officers, for when they were on duty and needed a rest. It did well for times like this, and when we had the occasional spat between people, but for the most part it went totally unused, which I was thankful for. I didn’t like having to lock people up, as everyone was valuable to both the safety and continuity of this place, but exactly for that reason was why sometimes it had to be done.
I waved to the kids I saw playing, and as I passed some of the smaller gardens, there were a few older kids and teens tending them, supervised and instructed by some of our older residents who couldn’t handle the rigors of the northern venture. They were good at gardening though, so they had been tasked with teaching the younger ones, which gave them something important to do, and made them feel useful, which they were. Some were older vets, and they didn’t like the idea of being glorified babysitters, but when they were told it was now their mission to train the next batch of recruits, they got the idea and went with it. I received waves and greetings from most of them as I rolled down the street, eventually hitting the road that ran next to the airfield. The brig was on the far side of it, so I followed the road around until I saw the turn off for the shore patrol station. Shore patrol was the Navy version of police, or MP’s that most people were familiar with. Since there had been a retired cop in one of the survivor group that found us, she became the unofficial leader of what we considered a police force. There was no real organization to it, just Jenny, and a few volunteers that kept the peace in case of fights, and was the other contact for the guard detail in case myself, Dave, or Heath, the guard Captain was unavailable. I parked the cart in one of the spots out front and walked up to the door. Even though it was essentially a police station, the front wasn’t locked and I walked right on in. There was a reception desk there, and the man behind the desk waved at me and buzzed me in. As I walked back towards Jenny’s office, I saw her coming out of the restroom and head back towards her office.
“Jenny, a moment please?” I asked, which made her stop and turn around.
“Sure, does it need to be in the office?” she asked, waiting for me to reach her.
“No, no. I was just wondering if anyone had talked to our two guests, and if so had they gave us any information?” I answered. We kept walking down the hall towards the break room, which was apparently where she was headed before I stopped her.
“We have tried, but neither one of them are talking. Lance simply ignores us outright, or gives us total bullshit answers, and David is willing to talk, but he won’t give us any pertinent information.” She informed me, grabbing an apple out of the fridge.
“That’s kind of what I expected from dealing with Lance earlier. I had hoped that David would be more cooperative since we patched him up, but I guess he didn’t appreciate it as much as I hoped he would. Have they given you any problems, or just been uncooperative?” I asked.
“No problems, just not helpful. I gather from the men who brought them in that they are not going to be joining us?” she replied as she led me out of the break room and back down the hall. “Did you want to talk to them?”
“No, not really. I already tried before, and if they haven’t seemed like they are going to change their mind yet, then I’m not going to try to force it. We will just let them heal up a little, then give them some supplies and send them on their way. I will probably come see them before that, but I just wanted to make sure they weren’t giving you any trouble.” I answered. We then chatted for a little bit about how things were going, ideas she had about finding a good-sized police station or jail up north to have some form of centralized police force. I didn’t think that we would need something like that, or even have the people to man something like that, but I didn’t want to burst her bubble, so I shelved it in my mind for now, and would revisit it later, as we would eventually need a police force of some kind as we grew. After a bit longer, we said our goodbyes and I headed back outside to my cart.
Glancing at the sky, I saw it was late afternoon now, probably around five or so. After last night, and not getting much sleep, I wasn’t up for doing much more today, so I decided to head to my kids’ house and see them for a bit. I figured Kenny would be off riding his skateboard somewhere, so I was surprised when both he and Katelyn were home. I hung out with them, just talking and laughing for a couple of hours, until the sun finally was almost fully set. After leaving them, I went to visit Michelle and see if the girls were home, but apparently, none of the girls were. Michelle and I talked for a while about various things, how she was holding up, how the girls were doing, and what plans she had for after we all moved north. I figured she would probably start helping her sister with the hydroponics more, as they were close, and it would be something Michelle could do to keep herself occupied and useful. Once our conversation started winding down, I realized it was almost midnight, and I was exhausted. Michelle offered me the spare room, which I gladly accepted, and we said our goodnights and headed to bed.
Chapter 8
Oct. 2nd, 2020.
I woke up early with the sun shining in through the window, swung my legs out of bed and stretched. I slipped my boots back on and loosely tied them before heading out. I knew Michelle would be still sleeping, as she never woke up early. I left her a message on her kitchen counter and shut the door softly behind me, heading once more towards the ship to see what news the evening brought. I was glad for the fact that I had key people in place so that I was not necessarily needed, but I did want to keep in the loop as much as possible. It also kept the military minded folks thinking there was a chain of command in place.
Rolling through the base, the silence was still as eerie as ever. Even with all the people we had saved so far, there were few left here, and few even of those out this morning. I was concerned with what was happening both at the wall, and of course I knew that search and clear operations were still going on. Since I had ordered one of the helicopters back north, that left two from the Nimitz to search, and two more from the Port Royal that had been outfitted with the FLIR units. We also had FLIR units installed onto a couple of the trucks, so the search efforts were more focused now. I hoped with this new method that we could finish clearing land and call it good by Thanksgiving. If we could pull that off then the winter could be spent setting things up for spring, preparing the ground, and setting up a system for food delivery.
Once we confident enough that the land was clear of infected, things like a power grid, running water, trash removal, and the little things that we all took for granted before could be worked on. The engineers did a wonderful job at the base, but this was a much larger scale. We would have to start with the areas around our first landing areas, and spread from there. Not everyone would be able to be hooked up at first, but we could start small, just like we did on the base. Solar panels would probably be utilized first, while we set everything else up. We would have to find water pumping stations to get water flowing again, as well as check sewer and storm water drainage systems for obstructions. That would be a massive undertaking, and probably one that would take us years to accomplish, so setting up a system for everyone to have drinkable water and showers would be a priority. We would more than likely have to utilize the ships for that for quite some time. Thinking about these type of things, I rolled through the streets, wondering how we were going to pull it all off. The stress was exhausting, trying to keep this large a group together and focused, while making sure we had food, water, space, and that no one was taking advantage and hoarding supplies or trying to organize their own group.
As I approached the ship, I tried to put all other thoughts out of my mind for now and focus on the situation at the wall. I had to make sure that everything we had built and f
ought for was protected. We had fought against the infected for around three years now, and if we could overcome that, we could overcome whatever these people could throw at us, I hoped. That needed to my only priority right now, and trust that all my team leaders up north would finish that project on their own.
Parking the cart, I started trudging up the stairs to the elevator, not sure what news I would hear when I got to the bridge, and not sure I wanted to hear it. I knew Tony was keeping the response team nearby in case they were needed, and I hoped to not hear anything bad from there. There was not a guard at the podium this morning, which worried me slightly, but if the base and pier were secure it wasn’t needed, either. I walked over to the nearest stairwell and headed up, moving slow and taking in the smell of the ship, the sounds, and reliving once again my Navy days. I finally made it to the bridge and saw Jeff there, with two others, looking at something on the counter. One of the other two spotted me and greeted me as I walked up.
“Good morning, any news this morning I should be aware of?” I asked, stepping around Jeff to see what they were looking at, which turned out to be a map of the surrounding area, one of the ones we had demarked the wall on.
“The group that took up residence looks like they left in the middle of the night, so we are trying to guess where they might turn up next. We are looking at various routes that they could take to get close without being seen. Since we weren’t planning on any attacks like that when we set up the roadblocks, it’s quite possible from several routes, mostly thanks to our stalled cars.” Jeff informed me, running his finger over several areas of the map as he spoke. Unfortunately, he was right; when we put those cars into position, it was to keep the infected from having a straight shot down the street. If they had to zigzag to get here, most times they would get confused and end up turning around, or impale themselves on the spear tips we installed on some cars. The ones that did finally make it through we could take out easily, which allowed us to conserve ammo and resources. Now that we are under attack from humans, what we used as defense has turned against us as it allows them to get close without being seen, and gave them some cover from us.
“So what’s the plan then?” I asked.
“With most of our staff gone for the land clearing up north, we are stretched very thin on the wall.” Adam answered.
“We still have the cameras, though, right?” I asked. I remembered we had setup night vision cameras early on to help watch the wall at night when we couldn’t see very well.
“Yes, and the feed was re-directed here to the Jefferson when it was determined that the Nimitz was going north. We have been watching them as well, hoping they will give us a little warning. We have several empty watch towers because we just don’t have the men to keep them all staffed.” He replied. I knew the wall was short on people since we had most of them up north, but when we planned this out, we had no idea that we would have to defend ourselves against other humans.
“I know we are stretched thin, just keep doing your best. Once the northern area is done we can bring men back down here to guard the wall. We won’t need very many up north on the gates, so we can focus our attention on the wall again. Just hang in there.” I told him. I knew the remaining guards were pulling extra time on the wall without much relief, and there wasn’t a set end in sight.
“What about here.” Jeff suggested, pointing out another area on the map. He was pointing to where the wall road used to go under highways 564 and 64. We had demolished the overpasses before we built the wall, and some of the concrete had been repurposed to weigh down some of the cars so they couldn’t be moved anymore. That meant that they couldn’t just go above us, and we had destroyed far enough out that they wouldn’t be able to drive a car off and damage the wall either.
“I’m thinking maybe more here.” Adam pointed out, a little further west.
“What’s there?” I asked.
“Apartment building, right at the wall. They could potentially hole up there, and stay in apartments on the far side so we couldn’t spot them, and fire at us from the near side apartments. The third story would give them the height to see over the wall, especially if they get on the roof. That would probably be a good vantage point for them. We could try to stage the response team there, see if this group tries to set up there, and take them out.” Adam answered.
“That’s a possibility, but why haven’t we considered that they could go around south here and try to cross the river? That would put them behind the wall, maybe without us even knowing it. Do we have cameras watching the water?” I stated.
“I’ll check with Erica, she is still in charge of the tech crew, she will know how many cameras we have and where they are.” Kelley asked, the other man there spoke up for the first time. I nodded to him in understanding, and we continued to discuss options, and possible locations for them to attack us. We made several markings on the map and tried to think of several plans to offset the potential attack. There were just so many options it was impossible with our current manpower to watch the entire wall. Five miles was a long distance to cover, and gave plenty of options for them to play with.
After another hour or so of brainstorming, I stepped away and poked my head into the radio room to see if anyone had replied to our messages. I was told no, but as soon as I asked it, I thought, what if that’s how the other group found us? We were so far away that random patrols wouldn’t have found us, so that had to have been a deliberate trip. Why else would they commit so may resources to come this far, and then attack an obviously stronger opponent? Unless they thought it was all a recording and we didn’t have that many people to defend it. If that was what they thought, then maybe the timing of their attack and us being short-handed at the base could work in our favor. Maybe we could attempt to talk to them one more time, see if we could convince them to get their leader here and negotiate a peace. If not, we would take advantage of their presumption of a stronger position and take them out. If they slipped up, even a little, we could easily take them out and go back to focusing on more important things, like clearing the land.
I headed back down to my office to think and try to plan our next steps. I wanted to track how far along we were on the land clearing, as well as make backup plans for this new threat. I was probably going to let Tony take care of the wall situation, and head back up north to help with clearing the land. I would be more effective there, and Tony didn’t need my input to deal with raiders. I knew how far we had gone in our location, so I first made my marks on the map there, which once it was on the map, it didn’t look like as much as I thought. I had been receiving reports from the other locations, so I pulled them over and stared matching them up to the grids on the map. It looked like they were not faring much better in terms of how fast they were spreading out, but at least everyone was safe so far, and we were finding some signs of human occupation, so hopefully we could find the humans that belonged to them. A knock at the door brought my head up as I looked towards the door.
“How’s it going?” Jeff asked, stepping into the office. We hadn’t had a lot of time to hang out or talk since this whole thing started, other than our leadership meetings, and I did miss that some.
“Not as fast as I hoped, but at least everyone has stayed safe so far. How’s things down here?” I replied.
“I don’t know why you liked the Navy so much, this living on the ship sucks. I have been staying at the house, and that’s much better for me. I don’t think too many people are actually staying onboard anymore for that matter.” He answered me. I figured that much was going to happen sooner or later, as living on a ship wasn’t easy, and even I got tired of it after a while.
“Yeah, it takes a special kind of crazy to want to live onboard for a long period. How’s things been running here? Anyone giving you any trouble?” I said.
“No, nothing like that. A few maintenance issues, but nothing serious. Light bulbs are going to start being an issue soon though. We’ve had a few go out, but we just bo
rrowed them from rooms that aren’t really used much.” he answered.
“Good, one less thing I need to worry about then. With this group of raiders attacking us, I’m trusting that you and Tony can take care of it, while I go back up and help with the clearing some more. I’ll be of more use up there, and neither you or Tony need my input on combat. I brought two ground crews with me earlier so we have a rapid response team available. We can make do without them up there for now, they would be more useful down here. Watch the raiders, if they attack, I want them taken out. We are not going to play cat and mouse with them.”
“You got it. When is all this shit going to slow down?” he asked with a sigh.
“Hopefully soon, man, hopefully soon. I’m hoping enough will be searched and safe by Thanksgiving, and I would love to have a bonfire, just get everyone together and relax. I want to go sailing on the skiff, or even find a schooner to acquire.” I said, sighing myself as I sat back in my chair. We just sat in silence for a while after that, both of us thinking about what we could, or would rather, be doing instead of running this freak show, trying to survive in a world gone crazy. There were still enough people in shock about what happened, even all these years later, that when they were occupied they were fine; but if they were ever confronted with the hard truth again, they almost panicked again. I could understand when they felt that way, as it was still hard to comprehend, even now.
We continued to make small talk for a bit, just telling stories and talking, talking about our kids, what we wanted to do, things like that. Finally, around three in the afternoon, Jeff stood, we bumped fists, and he headed out, presumably to check in with things on the bridge. I went back to my maps and reports for another few hours, then decided to go walk around the ship, talk to anyone left, and just try to clear my head. So many different thoughts were rolling around, I couldn’t even think straight to sort them out.