by Jon Schafer
“What about the people who lived here?” Steve asked.
“When we got here, the whole place was deserted,” Rick told him. “Most of the buildings in this area are rentals, and with the dead coming back to life all around the world, I can say it was definitely off-season for tourists and vacationers. There were still a few of the locals around living at the golf course, but there were only a handful of year-round residents and they didn’t show themselves right away. They were probably waiting to see if we were friendly or not.”
Putting his hand on Steve’s arm to stop him, Rick asked, “Did you get to see how people acted when things started falling apart? I don’t know about where you were, but in the cities they were raping, looting and killing each other off in droves. Even out here in the sticks, it got pretty bad for a while. We had a lot of people come through here that were fleeing from someplace or running to another, and they were willing to do anything they needed to survive. There were also a couple halfway organized groups that stayed to the secondary roads and looted anything they came across that they thought they might need to survive.”
“I saw some of it when everything fell apart,” Steve told him as his thoughts wandered to his late night run through Pinellas County to safety. “We locked down right when things started to go bad, so we missed the worst of it.”
“Then you were lucky,” Rick said. “We had barely gotten settled in when a gang of about thirty came through. They saw the barricade we’d put up and must have thought we had a stash of food and supplies we were trying to protect. In fact, it was just the opposite. We were well-armed, but we all were living off fish we took from the lake and some canned goods we scrounged from the houses around us. No matter what it was, though, they wanted what we had.”
Looking him in the eye, Steve said, “I take it by the fact that you’re standing here that you won.”
Starting to walk again, Rick said, “Like I said, we were well-armed.”
As the group moved through the gate and into the fort, Steve was startled by the lack of structures. From where he stood, he could see the far wall.
“You said you had two thousand people. Where are they all?” he asked.
“Living in the houses all around the fort,” Rick explained. “There was no way we could build a wall like this to cover the whole peninsula, so we set up the two outer rings with barbed wire and mines and built Fort Redoubt as our fallback position in case everything went to hell. We used the roads and cleared what we had to for the outer fences.”
Looking at four separate barracks-like buildings surrounding a large, open drill field, Steve caught on that the fort was only used for the military arm of Rick Styles’ organization.
“Everyone from the age of thirteen on up is required to serve in the militia,” Rick explained. “We have about one thousand people living in the area surrounding Fort Redoubt, and they rotate every four weeks for one week of service. At any given time, we have about two hundred men and women on active duty patrolling the wire or going out on ambush. When they are not on duty, they are fishermen, farmers, hunters and scroungers.”
“What about the ones that are too old or can’t serve?” Heather asked.
“Did you see the groups of younger kids and old people outside the gate?” Rick asked.
Heather nodded. She had noticed a group of about a dozen sitting in front of large, stone spinning wheels, but their backs were to her, so she couldn’t see what they were doing. She remembered one of them was missing a leg, his stump propped out to the side as he bent to whatever task he was performing. There were similar small groups sitting in circles, but their work was obvious as they mended clothes and cleaned weapons.
“Everyone finds a way to serve,” Rick told her. “The ones in front of the grinding wheels are making darts and arrows. For the very old, we have a nursing home, but even there the residents are always volunteering to help in some small way. They are fed and taken care of until they die.”
Steve was impressed with the setup. Seeing a long, low building with smoke coming out of chimneys at each end, he asked, “Is that the chow hall?”
Rick laughed and said, “That’s our destination. We live on a diet of mostly fish and vegetables, but every once in a while one of our hunters comes across something that the Ds haven’t torn apart and stuffed down their throats. This morning, one of the teams to the north shot a deer, so we have venison for dinner.”
Rick turned and walked toward the door of the chow hall with Steve and his people in tow. When they entered, they found people eating at dozens of picnic tables, with more lined up to pass in front of a stainless steel serving line across the back wall.
“We took that from the local high school, along with all the trays and silverware,” Rick explained as he stepped behind the last man in line waiting to get fed. For a moment, Steve wondered at this behavior since Rick claimed to be their leader. Considering the man for a moment, he realized that he had enough humility that he wouldn’t cut in line or abuse his power. This was indeed a rare find in any individual, much less a leader.
Waiting to move through the line, Steve felt his body relax for what felt like the first time in years. They were alive, safe, and about to settle in for a much needed break. Feeling a hand laid gently on his back as he picked up a tray, at first he thought it was Heather.
This was until it started patting him as a low voice said, “Oh my God. Are you real?”
Recognizing the voice, but not sure if he was dreaming, Steve turned to find Ginny standing in front of him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Washington, D.C.:
General Eastridge walked the entire length of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial without being contacted by Admiral Sedlak. When the Admiral had asked in a hushed voice for the clandestine meeting after their daily gathering for the briefing by the Chairman Joint Chiefs, Eastridge had seen the dour look on Sedlak’s face and knew it wouldn’t be good news. He ran through the possibilities of what Sedlak would tell him, but with so many atrocities happening in the world, and the new ones that the Joint Chief proposed only moments earlier at his briefing, it was a toss-up.
Facing the Washington Monument, Eastridge knew that the first president of the United States had to be rolling over in his grave at what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had passed into law that afternoon.
First on his agenda was the order for the conscription of all able bodied men and women from the ages of eight to seventy-five. This was met with acceptance from the rest of the Joint Chiefs, as the reality of the situation was that they had no other choice. Even though everyone in the military had been pulled back into base, the losses that they had sustained up until this point had been high. The last surge by the dead, which had caused the order to retreat to be given, had decimated just under ten percent of their available field personnel.
What followed next, though, was less than acceptable.
Those under the age of eight and over the age of seventy-five were to be disarmed. Unless you were serving in the military, you were now banned from carrying anything more dangerous than a slingshot. The Chairman explained that this was a necessary order since lately there had been too many instances of civilians attacking patrols and raiding smaller camps for their supplies.
When asked if the relief camps were to be opened again so that the newly unarmed people could live in safety, The Chairman replied that they would remain closed. This sent a stir around the table that was silenced as the Chairman’s brow furrowed and his face turned red. Knowing he was about to erupt, the men fell silent and seemed to find things of interest in the paperwork in front of them and on the far walls, where digital readouts scrolled out the latest news from around the world.
The two still working that is.
When the Chairman finally got his temper under control, he explained that the decision to keep the camps closed may seem cold-hearted, but it needed to be done. Nothing had changed in the nation’s supply issues, so there was no way they c
ould support the masses that would be left unprotected after they were disarmed. These people were essentially useless in the fight against the dead and would only use up food and water that could be better used taking care of Americas fighting men and women. The older people would naturally be weeded out, and the younger would be strengthened by the trials of survival. When they turned of age, they would be perfect soldiers.
Or feral wolf-children, Eastridge thought.
The next edict handed down from the Chairman was the immediate disbanding of the Supreme Court. Of the original nine justices, only three had survived, so on the outside it didn’t appear to be that large of a usurpation of powers. But if you had been in on the dealings of government from the beginning of the crisis, you knew that no new ones had been appointed for a reason. What was not widely known was that the remaining three had served to make sure that the government didn’t overstep its bounds after martial law was declared. In the chaos of the dead coming back to life, they were figureheads at best, but they had managed to stop the Chairman from taking complete control of the country after the President was found incompetent to serve.
No mention of where the justices would now serve was given, and Eastridge shuddered at what their fate would be since they had crossed the Chairman. However, he did know that if there were spikes atop the main gate leading into D.C., their heads would adorn them.
The next declaration made by the Chairman was the disbanding of Congress. With their decreased numbers, neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives had convened in the last two weeks. The last time they had gotten together, they did manage to pass a bill on reopening the relief centers, but it was a moot point. When they were finished, they realized that there was no one to sign it except the man that had shut them down in the first place. The bill was passed to the Chairman, who promptly vetoed it. Congress promptly banded together to override the veto, but because of a sudden restriction in movement throughout the capital ordered by The Chairman, they had been unable to convene. Congress might have been a mere irritant to the Chairman, but they had openly opposed him and had to go.
More heads for the spikes, Eastridge thought.
After all of this, the final order from the Chairman was not surprising. Explaining to the men gathered around the table that since there was no longer an acting legislative or judicial branch looking out for the best interests of the people of the United States, he would take complete control until the crisis had abated and elections could be held.
Acting dictator and chief, Eastridge thought. Now that he has complete control, maybe he will install spikes on the gate.
Applause met this announcement. The men around the table knew that as advisors to what was now the most powerful man on the planet, the louder and longer they clapped, the longer they lived. Knowing he had to play along to keep his seat, General Eastridge clapped along with the rest of them.
The meeting finished with the Chairman giving a collection of orders ranging from the honor guard at funerals no longer firing their guns so as to conserve ammunition, to how they would divert some of the small creeks in the area to supply them with water.
Footsteps crunching through the leaves to his left brought him out of his reverie. Expecting to see the Navy SEAL again, Eastridge was surprised to see Admiral Sedlak coming toward him through the trees behind the memorial. The area around them was open, causing a bolt of fear to shoot through him. Looking in all directions to see if they had been spotted, he was relieved to see no one.
Holding out his right hand, the Admiral said, “I’m glad you could make it. I know it’s kind of last minute, but after the events at the briefing today, I don’t see that we have a lot of time to waste.”
Grasping the outstretched hand and shaking it, Eastridge said, “I kind of expected something like this, only not so soon. I expected The Chairman to strengthen his own position with troops loyal to him before taking over.”
“The way I see it, he has more than enough,” the Admiral explained. “He’s got four battalions of infantry that he’s been reinforcing for the last month. They’re almost up to full strength, with about a thousand men in each. He also has his Green Berets and his Rangers. Like my SEALs, the Green Beanies got chewed up pretty badly, but the Rangers are mostly intact. He’s got them billeted in a housing project near the east side of the wall. You have to remember that he also pulled what was left of Delta Force from the Gulf Coast and brought them up here last week for rest.”
“That’s why there’s so much activity in Dog town,” Eastridge said aloud, referring to a section of town populated by bars and whorehouses. It was a legendary area that had sprouted up about fifteen minutes after D.C. had been secured, but it was ignored due to the present circumstances. Who was going to order a soldier that was more than likely going to be dead within a few days not to go out to drink rotgut moonshine and get laid?
“Delta’s been lying low in Dog town there since they got here,” Eastridge told him, “and the Rangers are spitting distance away. I doubt any of these men know exactly what’s going on, so they must be getting fed a line about keeping the integrity of the United States intact. Either that, or they think they just got lucky by getting R and R. The one thing I do know is that The Chairman is keeping them isolated so they’ll be ready to do his dirty work. He can spin whatever story he wants, and they’ll jump to do his bidding.”
“So, who do we have besides you and me? No one else in the Joint Chiefs stood up to him,” Eastridge commented. “He walked into the meeting today and basically took over the United States without firing a shot. What does he need all the troops for?”
“He knows that people will eventually oppose him,” Sedlak said. “And he knows that if anyone tries anything that he can send his special forces in. Once they’re engaged, he can order his infantry in and they will fight for their own.”
Eastridge saw the wisdom of this. In a combat situation, men didn’t fight for politics or patriotism, they fight for the guy next to him. Add on top of this that they were facing an opponent that was against God, America, Mom and apple pie, and it was a wrap. Killing other Americans might cause them to hesitate, but they would shoot first and ask questions later if told that they were fighting against someone trying to overthrow the standing government.
“How did you find this all out?” Eastridge asked.
“I might have lost most of my ground combat men in the war against the dead,” Sedlak explained, “but my intelligence services stayed mostly intact, along with my Naval forces. I don’t have a whole lot of combat troops to call on, but I know that you have two understrength battalions inside the wall totaling fourteen hundred men, and another two of about the same size at Quantico.”
“So you want me to order my people at Quantico to march almost forty miles through a land full of dead things trying to eat them, and then have them assault the D.C. wall because the Chairman will know that they’re coming since they’ll be kind of hard to miss as they move through a city that’s been bombed flat, and then have them pull off some kind of half-assed coup?” Eastridge asked sarcastically.
“No,” Sedlak answered, “getting your men here is where my Navy comes in.”
Eastridge immediately saw the possibilities. His men guarded the wall along the stretch that faced the Potomac, so it would be easy for them to let his Marines into the city. Getting them out of Quantico and onto boats without being spotted might be a little tricky, but he had an idea on how to get around that. If he played it right, he might even have the Chairman’s approval.
Having been trained all his life to plan everything through from beginning to end, a thought came to him. Suddenly finding himself in a Machiavellian plot orchestrated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he wondered if he was being drawn into another one. With this in mind, he asked Sedlak the most important question of them all.
“When we pull this off, who takes control?”
Without hesitation, the Admiral said, “We form an a
d-hoc committee made up of each of the Joint Chiefs, along with the remaining leaders of the Republican, Democratic and Independent parties. A jury decides on the basis of twelve, so I think that there should eventually be twelve members. To be honest, I haven’t figured out who those twelve should be, but if we start with a solid foundation, we can build it from there.”
The General watched Sedlak closely as he talked but could see no subterfuge in his answer. He knew he was a good judge of character and felt that the Admiral had answered honestly.
“And what about the Malectron?” he asked.
“We use it in the way it was meant to be used,” Sedlak answered, “to push the dead into isolated areas where they can be dealt with.”
“You mean eradicated?” Eastridge asked.
“Completely,” Sedlak assured him. “We also need to push forward in finding a cure, but the Malectron will at least give us some breathing room to do that. We need to work together.”
After hesitating for a moment, General Eastridge extended his hand to where it was grasped firmly by the Admiral’s. The two men looked each other in the eye as they said in unison, “Done.”
***
General Eastridge took off his coat as he entered his outer office. Cursing when he saw that his aide was absent from his desk, he made for his own. If they were going to pull this coup off, he needed to get working on his plan. Seeing the door to his office slightly ajar, he called out, “Jim, get your ass out here. Something’s come up, and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Instead of hearing his aide’s voice in reply, Eastridge’s blood ran cold when he heard the Chairman call out, “Don’t worry about him, I told him to take a break. I need to speak to you privately.”
Dread flooded through him at hearing this, his first thought being that he had been found out in the plot to depose the Chairman. Jim was probably in custody right now. The man might not have done anything wrong, but guilt by association ran strong in the new head of the United States. After the meeting of the Joint Chiefs, they had been informed that along with the remaining senators and representatives, their staff had also been rounded up for questioning. The excuse was given that they needed to be debriefed, but if it was a simple debriefing, why take them under guard from their homes and offices to an undisclosed location?