Rob and Dave ran off after the boys at a full sprint.
Jim looked at everyone else who was running up to them. Briskly and loudly, he pointed at each person and said, “We need a tank trap behind the roadblock. Frank, get the excavator down there. Matt, take the bulldozer and start the hole. Get out of Frank’s way once the excavator is there. Susan, Samantha, Tim, Pia, Angie. Get the camouflaged tarps out the supply shed and cover the pit. We need the tank driver to not see it and to drop the tank right into it. Get to your positions when it’s done.” They ran to their tasks.
Jim addressed the rest of the group. “Everyone else to your positions. Be prepared to abandon the village if it’s overrun. We can’t handle an Abrams if it gets in. Get the kids to the hidden shelter and keep them there till you hear from us. Move. Now!”
Jim turned and jogged into the HQ building and went into the communications center to find Ann. “How are we looking?”
She keyed the mike, “What’s the story?”
Helen answered, “They’re about three miles out and slowing down. It looks like they’re looking for a place to unload the tank.”
“Copy that.”
They heard the sound of the chopper taking off. Ann looked over at Jim and said, “I think he’ll make it in time.”
“God, I hope so.”
ON THE BLACK HAWK
Luke and Ricky set up the .30 cal’s on each side of the helicopter and loaded them as they’d been taught. They put on their helmets and harnesses and secured themselves with straps, leaving the doors open. Rob jumped in, put on his helmet and started the chopper. Julio was right behind him and took the right machine gun. Luke took the left, while Ricky kept his M4 with grenade launcher pointed down and out of the aircraft.
They were airborne and Rob called for a weapons check. Three affirmative responses followed and he said, “We’re going in hot. Keep your heads and try to take out everyone on the bus before they can get out. Top priority is keeping the crew out of the tank. Once they’re in there, we don’t have anything that will touch them. Understood?” Again, three fast affirmative answers. “Here we go. I’m going straight up the right side to start. Don’t hit the chopper. And neatness doesn’t count.”
A moment later they were coming up to the two vehicles. Dave took out the cab of the truck first and it veered out of control and jackknifed across the road. Dave and Ricky shifted to turning the bus into Swiss cheese. Rob turned the chopper around and came up the left side, where Luke added to the maelstrom. The bus slowed until it drifted and hit a tree and rebounded off. If there was anyone left alive in there, it would be a miracle.
Rob made another turn and Dave further shredded the cab of the truck and the bus. “Rob said, hold your fire. Anybody see movement? “After a moment he asked, “Dave, you think you can secure that tank?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Luke, fire on the bus while I drop Dave”
Rob came to a hover while Luke pounded the bus yet again and Dave slid down a rope out of the other side of the chopper and onto the top of the tank. Rob pulled away quickly. Dave attempted to open the hatch of the tank as the tank’s engine started. Unable to open the hatch, he stayed on top of the turret and used his radio.
“The tank is active! The engine is running. It’s chained to the trailer, but there is no way the chains will hold if the driver knows what he is doing.”
Rob yelled into his headset, “Dave! Get off of there!"
Dave jumped down of the back of the tank and ran like hell for the nearest tree line.
Rob got back on the radio. “Jim, you heard that?”
Jim answered, “Affirmative. We’re evacuating.”
Rob said over the chopper intercom, “Let’s light them up boys. It’s just going to annoy them, but we might get lucky and blind them or get them to do something stupid.”
They opened fire with the machine guns. The turret started turning, looking for a target, while the tank itself started moving back and forth attempting to break the chains. It only took a moment for the chains to start breaking and the tank was soon worming its way off the side of the trailer. After a moment, the front right corner fell off the side of the semi trailer and the final chains broke.
Rob told the boys to conserve ammo and climbed to a higher altitude to monitor the tank’s movement. Unfortunately, once it was off the side of the trailer, the tank took off up the road at about 20 MPH.
Luke watched the tank and thought, What the hell do we do now? He and Ricky watched as the tank picked up speed.
Rob called in, “Jim, you have a matter of minutes. He’ll be on you any time now and he'll be looking for payback.” Rob could see the excavator slowly retreating up the road to the village. It would be okay as long as the pit worked.
Over the intercom, Rob said, “Luke, Ricky. I’ll need you to fire on the tank as soon as it looks like it will go over the embankment. You got that?” Both agreed.
As the tank slowed and turned toward the embankment, Rob dropped altitude and brought the bird in to one side and behind the tank. Ricky opened fire with the grenade launcher and Luke fired the machine gun. The turret was again turning and the tank's machine gun opened up on no particular target. Rob moved the chopper up out of range.
The tank started up the embankment, paused at the top, and fired its 120mm cannon into the village before starting down the other side muzzle first directly through the leaf covered tarp and into the 15 foot deep into the pit.
Rob watched as Matt drove the bulldozer up a moment later and started burying the tank under sand. The NAU girls were there covering the tank with rifles in case those inside tried to use the emergency hatches. Samantha had a rifle in one hand and was snapping away with a camera in the other. In just a few minutes those hatches were completely covered.
In a short period of time much of the sand that had been removed from the pit was pushed right back in and there was no longer any possible escape for the tank crew. Shortly thereafter, a mound of dirt covered the tank completely. They would have to reroute the entrance road to the village, but the satisfaction of burying that beast was entirely worth it.
Rob thought he couldn’t be prouder of all three of his kids today. He breathed a sigh of relief, keyed the mike and said, “Jim, they took out the tank. We eliminated the bus and truck. No one made it out of the vehicles, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more out there. I’m heading out on recon, but will be close enough to get back in a few minutes. Dave will call for pickup when he’s ready.”
“Copy that. Good work, guys.”
A few minutes later they found a new camp of RV’s and buses at a ranch about 10 miles from the village. There were bodies in a field behind the ranch, most likely those of the ranch owners. Rob said angrily to the boys, “I want to finish this now. These folks will be with the group that was on its way to kill us all. We need to finish them off now. Can you do this?”
Both of the boys said, “Yes.”
“We’ll go in fast and take out all the vehicles first. Then we move to the house. Make your shots count.”
They flew in at several hundred feet and fired down on the vehicles. When Luke saw people running, he mowed them down with the .30 cal. They fired at the ranch house, tearing up the roof and walls, but it didn’t catch on fire. After a few minutes, both of the .30 cal machine guns were out of ammo. Ricky emptied the grenade launcher into the house as well.
Rob flew straight back to the village, calling ahead for more ammo. When they landed, Will and Julio loaded up the .30 cal ammo, their sniper rifles and gear. Ann joined them and took the copilot’s seat. Fifteen minutes later they were approaching the ranch house.
Rob flew fast and low enough for Julio to fire an incendiary grenade into the wood structure. It was instantly in flames. No one ran out of the house, but they assumed that whoever was there would have bailed by now anyway. They flew over the surrounding area, finding nothing. Rob didn’t expect to. He would fly back over after dark and
find them with infrared.
He flew back to the ranch and let the bird have a rest.
The fire started by the tank had been put out by the time they got there. Rob wondered, How the hell do you miss with an Abrams?
LATER THAT EVENING
The chopper had been fueled and reloaded earlier, and was ready to go. Jim took Rob aside and said, “Are you sure this is the right call? I’m worried that we’re kind of getting into war crimes territory here.”
“Look, Jim. Those assholes are surviving by killing and taking from others. Any of them who are left will continue to do so. We can get them now. By tomorrow, they will have spread out too far and the risk of hitting innocents will be too high.”
“But you don’t know that everyone with them was involved.”
“It doesn’t matter. They were with them, even if they were just providing support. We’re going to nip this thing in the bud. We were just lucky those assholes didn’t know how to use a tank properly.”
“Just know that I don’t like this.”
“That’s why you’re the Mayor. You're supposed to be bothered by stuff like this.”
“Just be careful, Rob.”
This time Rob flew with only his own crew. They tracked and quickly eliminated all the survivors they could find. A group of around fifteen had made it five miles out before setting up camp. Rob dropped a flare and the machine guns made short work of them. Good riddance, Rob thought.
MAY 21ST
They decided to leave the truck and bus in place as an effective roadblock to any more traffic and as a warning to all. It was their second massacre in weeks and Jim felt sick to his stomach.
Rob reported the incident to General Whitman’s staff and was told that some military bases had been wiped out by the flu and military equipment had been misappropriated by any number of groups and individuals. He was also told that a vaccine was expected soon. Jim thought, Now where have we heard that before?
Julio and Will took a truck down to the destroyed vehicles the next morning and tossed two incendiary grenades into the bus and ran like hell. It effectively torched the bodies and cooked off any remaining ammunition in the vehicle. They had to put out a couple of small fires in the nearby woods afterwards, but they were prepared for that.
Jim arranged for as much of a day off as was possible for everyone and they had a mini fishing tournament and fish fry. From the laughs and joking around, it was hard to imagine that they had killed who knew how many people just the day before. It’s more than a little creepy, thought Jim. Still, he worried about Luke and Ricky. They are way too young for this crap, if you ask me.
He talked with Robert over drinks after dinner. “This latest incident worries me. If Helen and Julie hadn’t seen those vehicles, we would have been in deep shit. We were beyond lucky that the idiots were so inept.”
Rob said, “I would have liked to interrogate some of them, but it just wasn’t worth the risk. It may be worthwhile expanding our perimeter and recruiting some more people who have had the disease and are immune. We can set them up in surrounding areas.”
Jim thought for a moment and said, “We can talk to Jake and his boys. I think they’ve been hoping to do more to prove themselves. I just want to make sure we can keep them safe.
“More than that, it’s time to start rebuilding. Do we have the equipment to repair an AM radio station?”
“I don’t know. Frank and Manny are our communications experts.” Rob looked around, spotted Manny, and waved him over.
Manny walked up and asked, “What’s up?”
Jim answered, “Can we get a radio station up and running?”
Manny said, “If you want to reach far we need to take station, fix it, and run it on generators. We can do that. It will be lot of work. I won’t do it if you let those fucking teenagers play that rap crap.”
Rob asked, “Can you handle it?”
“Only if I get my show, Blue Hawaii Mondays with Manny,” he said with a far away smile. But everyone understood that he meant it.
Rob cringed, and said, “I think we can manage that.”
Manny replied in a poor Asian Elvis impression, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Before long, several of the adults were in the common room planning a radio station. Jake and Deepak were thrilled with the idea, and volunteered Zach who was busy elsewhere. Probably entertaining one or another of the young ladies, thought Jim. Enjoy yourself you lucky dog, before you’re old and responsible like the rest of us.
When asked for suggestions, Jake said, “It’s FM, but what about KNAU? You have a green energy experimental site and a radio station. It would seem to make sense. The campus was out when things went down, so there won’t be a lot of people there. I think it could work.”
“And that would give us access to the library, said Susan. That would be useful.”
Will asked, “Can we defend it?”
“No need. If you have food, I can get you an army,” said Jake.
Jim said, “You know, he’s right. The flu survivors are the ones who have to start to rebuild the country while the rest of us wait for the vaccine. We restart radio, internet, TV, smoke signals, whatever we have to do to communicate how to band together and get the food production up and running. Fifteen percent of previous years’ production is more than enough because we don’t have as many people. Whoever saves the most lives and stops the inevitable takeover attempts will influence everything. It means we can keep it going. It will work.”
They talked late into the night and had the beginnings of a reasonable plan by the time Jim closed things down shortly after two in the morning. We’ll see if it still looks as good by daylight, he mused.
MAY 26th
Luke loved flying in the Black Hawk with the side doors open. When the doors were closed it felt like riding an elevator, but with the doors open, it was an entirely different experience. It felt like he could see forever.
They flew high over Flagstaff and directly to the Northern Arizona University campus. When they landed in an empty parking lot, his dad told everyone vulnerable to the flu to keep their masks close. Helen, Julio, Will, Samantha, Luke and Manny all had the masks into place on their WEB gear. Jake, Zach, and Deepak all knew that the order wasn’t meant for them and left them off.
The flu had hit after the fall semester finals were done, but still, they didn’t expect to find the campus so empty. When Luke asked about it, Helen told him, “Any place without a supply of food and water will be empty by now. The stores were picked clean in the first few days, after that most people would have had just a few days’ supply of food. Even most of the people who prepared well will only have had a few months’ worth.”
They found the radio station locked, so had to use a lock pick gun to enter. Manny quickly went to work on evaluating the equipment. Most of it had been fried by the EMP, but the antennas were available for use, at the least. Some of the others explored the campus, looking for signs of recent habitation. They were pleased to find a garden that had been planted on one of the lawns, but whoever had planted it was either hiding from them or was not around.
After just a few hours, they took to the air to look for survivors in the city. Here and there they would have people come out and wave. Several times they hovered low and dropped out a case of MRE’s with notes about their intention to set up a camp at the NAU campus and a request to spread the word. Overall, the day was deeply disturbing.
Before going home, Rob made one more stop at the Airport. He was pleased to see that there were small planes and helicopters remaining. With some luck, they should be able to get some of them flying. It would be good to have a plane for reconnaissance.
They returned home in somber mood about an hour before dark.
That night at dinner, Rob addressed the group grimly. “From what we saw today, the loss of life over the past four months has been severe. I’m guessing that we are over the 90% that we expected. We will have to remain diligent, but I
believe that it is likely that the flu has burned itself out in our area and starvation is now the larger problem.
“Tomorrow we will go back and start work on a camp on the college campus. The dorms will provide all the living quarters we could need. We’ll take in the survivors we can handle and put them to work growing food and rebuilding. A second team will secure the airport and evaluate the possibility of using some of the aircraft.
“General Whitman has promised a few planeloads of food and equipment, including what we need to run a radio station, so we will have enough to work with shortly.
“There is still not a vaccine, but we haven’t hit the six month estimate yet. We’ll take all necessary precautions, but it is time to start rebuilding.”
MAY 27th
A work crew tackled rerouting the private road, then clearing the hardtop in the morning. The semi and bus were not much a problem. By using two of the big rigs and a lot of chain, they were able to drag the wreckage to one side of the road. They left the remains inside.
The two teams took trucks loaded with supplies to the university and the airport. A third team was on standby with the chopper to provide security reinforcements. Rob planned to fly to the airport and remain there unless needed at the campus.
By midday, the teams were well into their work. Deepak and Jake were there to greet the first survivors who rode up to the NAU camp on bicycles. There were five of them, all college aged and all were gaunt. They pounced on the food that was offered. The two men and three women all had survived the flu so would be immune.
Helen had coined terms for the people who had survived the illness: The forgiven and the fallen. The ones who acted half way civilized were the forgiven and those who threw away their incredible luck to act like criminals were the fallen. She also came up with a name for those who had not caught the disease, the forsaken. The titles worked to remind people of the role of luck and choice in their current status and gave those who had suffered the most the benefit of having that fact recognized, small comfort that would be.
The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken Page 12