Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  “I agree, but what bothers me is that we can still smell the ammonia from their urine months later and after big weather changes. It must have been one crawling mass of rats.”

  Cassandra should her head like she was trying to get rid of the image.

  Behind us the rest of the group was cautiously picking its way through the cars that all tried to exit together. We were down to the second level, and I went over to the edge of the garage to see if I could locate our rendezvous point. I could see the tracks, and it felt weird to know that we were so close to another shelter. The soldiers from the other two helicopters were emerging from the first floor of the Marconi garage. They had made better time than we did, but we would have less distance to go from our exit.

  On the first floor of the garage we were surprised to see a group of infected dead standing ankle deep in a snow drift. They were doing what the infected tended to do when they had no prey to attack, and the cold weather was also slowing them down, but they were instantly agitated by the sight of living flesh.

  There were a dozen of them, and they started moving toward us. Their movements were stiff from the cold, but there was no hesitation. On a signal from Cassandra, everyone drew out their machete, and we spread out in a half circle as they approached. It was less of a battle and more of a minor skirmish as we went first toward their legs and then for the head blows.

  When it was all over, we didn’t form up immediately into single file again. Something was wrong. There shouldn’t have been that many of the infected in this area if the cold had done as we had expected, and there was also the clean up job done by the rats. These infected were either recently deceased, or recently exposed from a place where they had been trapped.

  The Chief and the pilot of the other helicopter were checking the bodies and confirmed what we were thinking. The clothing wasn’t as degraded as it should have been, and five of the infected were wearing similar neckties. Even more surprising was that they were wearing shoulder holsters.

  When we gathered around to see what the Chief thought about the similarities, he held out a wallet that folded open to show a badge and an identification card. It said the man had been Winston Griswald of the United States Secret Service.

  The Chief said in a low voice, “There may be more around, so let’s keep the noise to a minimum. His weapon is a SIG Sauer P229. Holds a big .357 round. All of them were armed, but all of them had their weapons holstered. They either didn’t know the threat, or they died some way other than being bitten.”

  “They must have come from the shelter,” I said. “The question would be why.”

  The Army pilot said, “I served in a detail that helped prepare a city for a Presidential visit. Prior to the President’s arrival the area was flooded with Secret Service personnel. These people may have had nothing to do with the shelter.”

  “Let’s all hope so,” I said.

  We had enough weapons, but shoulder holstered SIG Sauers were a bonus we couldn’t leave behind. The Chief collected the ID wallets from the agents. He explained that someday we might be able to show that they had died doing what they were sworn to do.

  Our rendezvous point was to our left on the other side of a low wall, so we took a shortcut and just jumped over the wall into the gray morning. The sky was so dark with low clouds that it was more like evening than morning.

  The Captain’s group had already reached the curve on Marconi Blvd, and had set up a perimeter. We only had to cross a double set of railroad tracks to reach them.

  It was an odd sight when we scanned left and right as we were crossing the tracks. The tracks to our left were clear, but to the right the tracks entered a tunnel that passed under the parking garage that had been too full for us to land. The huge locomotive that had been pulling a freight train behind it was blocking the tunnel, but it wasn’t sitting on the tracks. It was lying on its left side.

  We all stopped to stare at it, undoubtedly all wondering how a locomotive could wind up lying on its side in a location where it could not have been traveling at a high rate of speed.

  I turned toward the Chief, and his reaction was a shrug of the shoulders.

  “If you’re going to ask me how that happened, don’t bother. I can’t imagine.”

  Captain Miller crossed the street from the other garage and stared at the locomotive with his mouth hanging open.

  “Ever seen anything like that before?” asked the Chief.

  “I saw a bomb do that once in Iraq, or rather a surface to air missile. It hit one of the last trailing cars just right, and it caused the whole train to fall over on its side,” said the Captain.

  “Don’t ask me how I know this,” I said, “but that thing probably weighs two hundred tons.”

  “Any of your video games have trains in them?” asked the Chief.

  Before I could answer the Chief just held up one hand and said, “Never mind. I would have guessed around that, too. I don’t know if it will matter or not, but judging from the size of that thing, it must have been pulling about seventy-five cars. That means the caboose on this thing is somewhere past where we’re going. We’ll find out what happened in a few minutes.”

  We all fell in as one long patrol with Captain Miller’s men taking point. Everyone had strict instructions to hold their fire unless it was absolutely necessary, but half of the group had their rifles out instead of machetes. I can’t say that I blamed them because walking down Marconi Blvd. to the intersection with Nationwide Blvd. was like walking through a snowy canyon. The street would have been in the shadows on a sunny day, but it felt like a death trap with the wind blowing the snow into our faces.

  At the last building before the intersection we got our first glimpse inside a building that must have been rat proof. The lobby was separated from the outside by two sets of swinging doors, and every square inch of the glass walls of the lobby had a face pressed against it. Judging by the lack of coats on these infected, they had either been inside already or gone inside for safety when the weather was warmer, but they never got to leave.

  There wasn’t much that needed to be done about that group of infected, Our plan was to eliminate as many infected as possible, but only the easy ones. If we wanted to try to destroy all of them, we would have to let them out first. That wasn’t our preference.

  Nationwide Blvd. was nice and wide, and visibility got better. As soon as the lead man reached the intersection, he raised one hand and gave the signal to stop. He also went down to one knee to indicate he had acquired a target.

  The second man behind him got a report from the man on point, and then he came back down the line to let everyone know what had caused them to stop. With the clear visibility ahead, the man reported there were multiple infected dead between us and our objective which was only three blocks away.

  “The rats didn’t do a thorough job,”said Kathy.

  Tom and Hampton had both grown up learning how to hunt from their fathers, and although neither had any formal military training, they were applying the same principles to this approach as they would hunting. Hampton heard what Kathy said as he eased up on the rest of the group.

  “The rats had their breeding and feeding cycles, but now they’re in decline, especially because of the freezing cold temperatures. The infected dead that survived the feeding cycle are coming back out into the open.”

  “I don’t buy it,” said Kathy. “You’re making it sound like they know it’s safe to come out now.”

  “I see what you mean, but that means there’s a new supply of them coming from somewhere. It would have to be somewhere the rats couldn’t reach before.”

  Kathy furrowed her brow for a moment. Something wasn’t quite right about what Tom said.

  “If the rats couldn’t get to them, how are they getting out of wherever it was they were before? Something must have changed nearby that let them come out of wherever they were trapped. How many are there?” she said in a low voice to the soldier on point.

  He lea
ned forward and remained motionless for a long time. When he slowly pulled himself back from the corner, he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  Captain Miller came up behind Kathy and said, “He isn’t even giving you a guess. Count on that meaning too many for us to cross the intersection without being seen. ”

  He went up to the corner and saw the situation for himself then came back to where the Chief and I had moved up next to Kathy.

  “There are several dozen, but they’re spread out. I think we can take them all with machetes by going down the street in two squads. Each squad will be followed by two soldiers with their M4’s ready if the lead soldiers are overwhelmed. If they have to open fire, the people in front should fall back on my command.”

  The plan of attack was passed down the line, and everyone shouldered their rifles except the last four. With almost two dozen machetes backed by rifle power it was manageable as long as the new infected dead weren’t coming out in larger numbers.

  Colleen nudged Hampton and whispered something to him. Hampton turned and did the same in the direction of the Chief.

  “Colleen wants to know if that coliseum up ahead could be the source of the new infected dead. If so, that building can hold thousands of people,” said the Chief.

  Captain Miller studied the large arena on the other side of Nationwide Blvd. and then shook his head.

  “I hear you people. This city went down just like every other city. People didn’t know which way to go, and maybe someone even tried to set up a shelter in that arena when the hospitals overflowed. But we can’t worry about every building between here and the shelter. If we get overwhelmed, our escape route has to be to the right at the nearest intersection, and then we’ll rally at the first pair of helicopters. As for the arena being a threat, the rats would have found a thousand ways to get inside a building that big. Now, let’s move out.”

  We formed up into two squads, and on the Captain’s order we went around the corner directly at the infected that were wandering around through a maze of vehicles that had been abandoned over a year ago. The first of them were only a few yards away.

  As a group we had learned that attacking the dead one on one was less effective than attacking in pairs. One person would take off a leg, and the next would go for the head blow that would destroy whatever it was they had that passed as a brain. As the first pair of soldiers engaged an infected, the next two would pass them and engage the next infected. If it went well, the first pair of soldiers would be passing the second pair before they completed their kill.

  It didn’t always go exactly as planned, though. Sometimes a machete got stuck, so a pair of soldiers would be delayed from moving forward. That was when the third group would step forward and join the fight.

  We probably made it to the eighth or ninth infected before the third pair had to move up, but the tangle of vehicles was making it harder to work in pairs than it would have been on an open road. A scream was all we needed to know that someone had their pattern of attack broken.

  We had to hold the line the best we could on our side, but we could see that the pair of soldiers to our right had tried to take out too many infected at one time, and someone had fallen between the cars.

  I heard someone behind us yell, “Down in front,” and I didn’t know or even care if they just meant that the leading soldiers on the right should drop. I didn’t want to be between the infected and someone with an M4.

  The four soldiers in the rear targeted the infected and laid down a withering barrage. Once we had given away our position to every infected dead in the downtown area it didn’t make any sense to stay quiet.

  The soldiers advanced as they fired, and as they went by, we sheathed our machetes and pulled our M4’s from our backs. Once we joined in, we were targeting the infected over two blocks away.

  A big clearing came up on our left after we crossed Front Street, and I realized we had picked up speed as we fired. Getting to our goal fast was important now that we had made so much noise, but as cold as it was, we were facing far more of the infected than we had anticipated. We planned on being able to eliminate frozen bodies, but these things were almost fresh compared to what we had seen in South Carolina or Alabama.

  The clearing turned out to be the same clearing I had spotted from the air and thought it could be a good place to land, but from the sky I hadn’t been able to see all of the debris on the ground. What should have been a flat park was instead a mass of twisted metal scraps with sharp, blackened edges.

  There were two things that became apparent at almost the same moment to most of us. There were still a few sporadic shots being fired, but most of us were stunned by what we saw once we had a clear view across the park.

  North High Street had been the hub of Columbus railroad traffic since the early nineteenth century, but that part of Columbus had disappeared under towering buildings and sprawling hotels. The tracks were still there, running below North High Street, and the trains still carried freight through the heart of the city, but something in the recent history of the place caused a drastic change.

  The first thing we saw was the massive black crater that appeared to be exactly on the spot where North High Street crossed over the railroad tracks. The cause of the crater was obviously related to the large wing with an engine still attached to it. The second thing we saw was the source for all of the infected that had not been exposed to the elements.

  The tail of the airplane had sheered the facade from the front of a large hotel sitting next to the place where the plane had crashed. Several of the lower floors were exposed, and even as we watched, more infected were dropping from openings in the walls. It didn’t matter to us how they had survived the feeding cycle of the rats. It only mattered that we had to survive with so many infected in the area. Our guess was that the front of the hotel had waited until now to fall off.

  The Chief caught up with Captain Miller and pulled him to one side.

  “Jim, we have a problem. By the map that Bus prepared for me, I would guess that 737 went nose first right into the spot where the shelter is located. Must have been one hell of an explosion.”

  Captain Miller nodded.

  “Remember that locomotive on its side? This is the other end of it, and whatever it was that blew up, it was powerful enough to twist the whole train until it flipped over.”

  The Chief mentally calculated the distance the explosion had thrown the tail of the airplane and how it had sheared off the front of the hotel, and all he could imagine was that the train had been carrying something beyond the definition of hazardous.

  “Well, this does present a bit of a problem for us,” said the Chief.

  “Just one problem?”

  “I imagine more than one, but the biggest problem on my mind at the moment is that Bus told me the nearest emergency entrance for this shelter is under the big hotel sitting on the right side of the tracks. I think he must have meant that one.”

  Both men stared at the hotel and the steady stream of infected that were falling out of blast holes from the lower floors like sacks of flour.

  “You mean we have to go in there?” asked Captain Miller.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SEEING THE HELICOPTERS pass overhead was a sign that made them optimistic and wary at the same time. They had lost their trust in organized government when they were abandoned, essentially exiled to the airport terminal. They had made life better for themselves all on their own. Government did it to them, but they had taken matters into their own hands to make it better.

  Still, they were drawn to what they had seen. Four helicopters traveling together spoke volumes about someone. Whatever the organization was that orchestrated the survival of the people in those helicopters, it had to be powerful, and the crew of Executive One knew they needed to find them.

  The rats were gone. They didn’t know why they were gone or where, but if they were correct in their thinking, the only danger from the rats was that they could carry
the infection that led to death. Otherwise, they would behave as most rats do and avoid humans unless they invaded their space, which was exactly what they were about to do.

  No one could sleep, so everyone spent the night getting their bug-out bags packed for a second time. All available rations they could carry were packed for the trip. Their hope was to never return to John Glenn International Airport. They were either going to find the President or the people in the helicopters, or they were going to move on to International Falls, Minnesota. Of course there was the less cheerful possibility of giving up the safest place they could have hoped for when so many had died on the runways.

  After the bags were packed, the crew of Executive One finished dressing in layers that included duct tape around arms and legs as insulation against the cold and rat bites. They even joked a bit about being more afraid of rats than the infected dead, but the joking didn’t last long. The rats may have diminished the population of the infected, but they knew it would be dangerous to take for granted the possibility that they wouldn’t see any on their journey away from safety.

  Just to be sure everyone understood what they were doing, Garrett had asked the group if anyone had any reservations. Some of them, especially Anne and Addison, felt that they should just stay above ground and head north on the long trip to Minnesota. Everyone understood, but they were outnumbered when it was put to a vote. Sim reassured them that the one thousand mile trip would be hard for them all, and the trip down through the floor of the hangar would be much shorter. When Anne argued that the rats would be down there, the others convinced her that the President’s security staff would have ensured against such a mundane problem as rats. The passage to where ever it went was probably air tight against such things as rats.

  At sunrise they were climbing down the ladder to a tarmac that was covered in white. There were no blemishes in the snow, and Sim was quick to point it out to Anne and Addison. The rats had done them a favor, and now the rats were gone.