by Howard, Bob
Without another word, he slid the keycard into the slot, and a green light lit up the card. He gently pulled on the door, and it opened without a sound.
There was no rain of bullets, there were no Secret Service agents yelling to freeze, and there was no President sitting in a recliner with a brandy snifter in his hand. Of course it was a suite, and they couldn’t see all of the rooms, but it was very quiet. There was one thing they could see from the door, and that was a suit jacket on the arm of a sofa that had an American flag pin on the lapel. The President was rumored to prefer them over the Presidential seal, even though he had been seen wearing both.
Without a sound, the three men walked into the suite to see if the President was home.
******
McCarthy was definitely earning her pay. Captain Miller planned to promote her when they got home. She had searched the shelter database until she knew exactly where the Presidential suite was located, and the computer log told her the lock on the door had been opened with a keycard just thirty minutes ago.
It only took ten minutes for them to be in place surrounding the Presidential suite, and the plan was simple. Kathy would go in with Anne. No one felt like the men would casually shoot an attractive blond who happened to show up with one of their closest friends.
The door had drifted shut behind the men when they had entered, but once again McCarthy worked her magic by remotely unlocking it.
Kathy and Anne silently walked inside.
Kathy wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t what she saw. Anne stood beside her, and the two women didn’t know what to say.
Sim was sitting on a sofa with a glass of bourbon. Jon and Garrett were in separate recliners. Both were in the process of pouring themselves another round.
They weren’t aware of the two women at first, probably because their senses were somewhat dulled by the bourbon, but they almost dropped their drinks when they realized the women had come in so quietly they hadn’t even heard them. Then the reality sank in that the other woman wasn’t Susan.
Kathy and Anne were still staring at the main attraction in the room. The men could have jumped up and shot her, and she wouldn’t have been able to react in time.
The President of the United States was sitting on a straight backed chair facing them. Actually, he was tied to the chair, and he was infected.
What had been the President was now a corpse with the ability to groan, and if set free from the ropes holding him on the chair, the ability to kill.
Kathy walked over and sat down on the sofa next to Sim. She reached over and picked up a glass and held it out to Jon so he could fill it with bourbon. She took a fair sized swallow and let out a sigh.
“My name is Kathy, and I found Anne and Susan on that stage where you left them. There are a lot of people outside waiting for me to come out with good news. I’m not going to be able to tell them our President is alive, but it’s important for me to know that you guys didn’t do this to him. Some of the men out there are US Army, so he’s their boss, or rather he was.”
Garrett said, “I’m Garrett Carson, pilot of Executive One. We flew him and his family out of DC and then transferred him to Air Force One in Pittsburgh. We found him like this.”
Garrett gestured toward the infected dead tied to the chair.
“You found him tied to a chair?”
All three men were shaking their heads at the same time.
“No, we tied him up,” said Sim. “Even though he’s, you know, already dead, none of us felt like we had the right to finish the job. We’ve been sitting here trying to decide what to do.”
Jon added, “It’s a symbolic thing, like properly disposing of an old flag. There must be some kind of ceremony even if he did abandon us after we got him and his family out of DC.”
Garrett said, “Sorry we left you and Susan for so long, Anne. We’ve been kind of stuck.”
Despite everything they had been through to get to this day, Kathy felt their sadness. They would have been happy to find the President alive and well in the shelter.
“There’s an Army Captain in the hallway. Why don’t we turn it over to him. He’ll make sure that the President is properly honored and receives proper burial.”
They weren’t too steady on their feet when they got up, but they followed Kathy to the door the best they could. When they stepped into the hallway, the first person they saw was the Chief. There was something about his strong presence that made them feel like they could finally get some rest. He shook their hands and told them they would be safe from now on.
“So, you’re a flight crew. We’re going to be needing flight crews if we want to take back our country.”
“If you don’t mind, Chief, I’m going to go to International Falls, Minnesota and take up ice fishing,” said Garrett.
The Chief whispered to Kathy, “Is he serious or drunk?”
“Both, I think.”
******
Leaving the shelter in Columbus, Ohio was not like leaving the other shelters. We were striking back at an uncaring enemy, but the Columbus shelter was exactly what the flight crew of Executive one had thought it should be. It was a symbol. The President was a symbol. Both were gone, and it was going to be a long time before we would know who was next in line to be President. We didn’t even know who was still alive so we could put them in charge.
We spent the next two days going through the shelter and moving supplies to secure areas. We found pockets of infected throughout the levels, including the President’s family. His son wasn’t with them, so we either couldn’t find him or he didn’t make it to the shelter in the beginning.
Anything that may be needed in the future was locked away in places that would be hard to access. If we came back to Columbus, it would be great to have survival gear nearby. Weapons were loaded into Strykers, and we would take back as much as we could carry in the helicopters. As for the Strykers, we decided to drive them up inside a garage and try to cover them well enough that they wouldn’t be found. They would be nice to have on a return trip, too.
Our only problem was finding out how to get them out of the underground garage. We were stuck with that problem until someone discovered that the north wall of the garage was fake. A Stryker could drive right through it.
Kathy and Captain Miller took a small squad with them in a Stryker, pushed down the wall, and began exploring a maze of tunnels that were most likely intended to keep anyone from ever finding themselves on the other side of that fake wall. As a matter of fact, they wondered how many of the dead-ends they came to were really dead-ends. We had to give Uncle Titus and his friends some credit. They knew how to build some unusual shelters.
They checked in every time they made a turn, but about an hour after leaving the garage, they radioed in that they had found this shelter’s equivalent of a houseboat or village on top. There was a hollowed out cavern that held a dozen mobile homes. One of them was stocked full of canned foods and sealed cases of MRE’s. They had running water, and electrical cables snaked away down a dark tunnel.
No one was living in the mobile homes, and it didn’t appear that anyone had ever found them. Maybe the rats had been responsible for that, or maybe it was just the bad luck of the survivors in this part of town that they didn’t find the mobile home park.
Whatever the reason, Captain Miller told us he thought they were somewhere near their exit because the so-called distraction villages and houseboat were all somewhere near the shelters. He was surprised how right he was when he saw they were at the end of the tunnel before he even ended the report back to us.
This time it was a simple garage door. The squad took up positions where they could avoid another fiasco like the one in the shelter kitchen, and they raised the door.
The rest of the radio call didn’t make sense at first, but we had been tracking their movements based on their turns and had been drawing their path on a map of Columbus. Sim had been showing us his skills as a navigator by creat
ing a map we could use when we all left the garage, or for when we returned.
“Captain, this is Sim. Did you say your path is blocked by steam pipes and ductwork?”
“That’s right. There was a big garage door, but when we opened it, the thing isn’t wide enough for a vehicle. There must be another exit.”
“No, Sir. The map I’ve made of your trip puts you directly under the campus of the Ohio State University. The pipes are fake, and I think you can drive right through them.”
Captain Miller talked it over with Kathy, and they both had their doubts until Sim told them that the building he figured they were under was reconstructed with modern heating, air, and plumbing around the same time the shelter had been build. He had been talking with McCarthy about shelter construction files she had found on the computer.
“So, we should just drive right through the pipes?” asked Kathy.
“I guess so,” answered Captain Miller.
They closed up the Stryker for safety and drove into the tunnel of pipes. The cardboard plumbing and ductwork parted as easily as tall grass, and when they came to the end of the tunnel that only had a regular door in the wall, it wasn’t hard to figure out that the wall was made to make people think it was the end of the road. It was actually framed wood, and the Stryker went right through it.
Kathy reported that they were sitting on a snow covered lawn facing something that had to be a park. She wasn’t sure, but it was shaped like a football.
“They call that The Oval,” said Sim. “You’re in the heart of the campus, and I can navigate you to the highways that will bring you back into Columbus. I got pretty familiar with the roads when I was out there on my own.”
Now that we knew how to drive out of the garage under the shelter, we could send out raiding parties to eliminate the infected. They mostly occupied the massive hotel that sat on the rim of the collapsed overpass that hid the shelter. Further from the city, the rats that had swarmed through the streets, the suburbs, and the noble university had been thorough.
We didn’t want to waste ammunition on the infected, so Captain Miller told his men to come up with a creative idea that would guarantee they were disposed of in large numbers and as quickly as possible. He also told them to find a solution that presented the least amount of risk.
I went outside to watch the operation when they said they were beginning, and it was creative, effective, and safer than setting the whole building on fire, which seemed to be the most offered suggestion.
Hooks were thrown over balcony railings and then pulled by ropes attached to a Stryker. The railings around the balconies were easily pulled away. Once every balcony was cleared, the soldiers scaled the walls and shattered the glass doors as they went. The infected walked out of the rooms and dropped to the ground below.
One of the soldiers suggested it would be quicker to rappel down from the rooftop, but the obvious flaw in that thinking was that they would be dodging the skydiving infected before they rappelled to the bottom. Captain Miller said he didn’t want any of his men to be crushed by bad luck or good aim when the infected fell.
It rained bodies for over an hour, and while they were clearing the rooms, another squad started at the top floor and went down the stairwells, propping open the doors as they went. The infected trapped in hallways took the opportunity to follow. Before long they were piled up on the landings, and when they crawled free of the tangle of bodies on one floor, they fell another flight into the pile on the next landing.
It took another two days to be sure all of the infected were properly destroyed, and Captain Miller had asked his men to be sure to do a headcount. They found that between the shelter and the hotel, there had been over two-thousand infected that had escaped the swarms of rats.
We considered that a slow start, but if we attacked the infected dead when they were worn down by the elements, we could gradually take back our homes outside of the shelters.
On our final day in Columbus, we assembled for a special service in the section of the shelter that had been discovered by the crew of Executive One. It seemed fitting that the last known President of the United States should be laid to rest in a place designed to honor his predecessor, Ulysses S. Grant.
The decision about how to properly dispose of the infected dead that used to be President Freeman was resolved privately and with as much dignity as possible. After all of the times that the Mud Island group had destroyed the infected, this felt singularly different. The crew of Executive One had killed the infected by setting their heads on fire, but as much as they had come to dislike President Freeman, they too were unable to bring themselves to take part.
Captain Miller said that martial law was still in effect and ordered all civilians to leave the section of the shelter that held the private quarters of the President. An hour later a group of his soldiers arrived at the shelter with a coffin they had removed from a funeral home. They returned from the Presidential suite with a flag draped over the coffin.
Later that day we found ourselves standing in the small museum intended for President Grant, attending the funeral of President Freeman. It was simple, but it was honorable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE CHIEF DID his best to convince Garrett Carson to agree to return to Charleston with us. He even threatened to kidnap him and his crew, but Garrett said he already knew what kind of man the Chief was, and he wasn’t the type to force them to do anything against their will.
We went to work on the rest of his crew, but the only one we recruited was Sim. Terrance Simmons would be an asset as a navigator on future trips away from Mud Island, but the main reason he wanted to come back with us was that he was from the south, and he hated the snow. He also said you could get the best sweetened iced tea in Charleston. That much we could promise him, but we also noticed him taking an interest in Cassandra. He wouldn’t feel like the odd man out around her.
There was plenty of room for our new friends in the helicopters, and we debated whether or not we should fly them to International Falls and just drop them off, or if we should fly all of the helicopters north. The fuel was an issue, but Sim told us he knew where the fuel trucks were parked at John Glenn International Airport, and he even knew which ones had the special blend they needed in their helicopters.
In the end it was decided that all of us would go because we didn’t really know what we would find that far north. We knew what the rats had done, but there were other animals. We needed to see for ourselves if there were larger predators and if the infected had survived the cold.
We also didn’t know what the local population would be like. If they had survived the epidemic, they may not welcome strangers. If that was the case, a show of force would be a good idea.
It was snowing when we lifted off from the tops of the parking garages. It had been a long drive through the maze of tunnels to the Ohio State University and then back to the city above ground, but there were enough Strykers to carry everyone. The ammunition and the weapons had been transported back the previous day, so all we had to do was leave.
Once the engines were warmed up enough, we lifted off with snow flurries blown by our rotors and banked away to the east. Fuel would be first on the list, and then it would be nonstop to International Falls.
From the warmth of the passenger cabin of the Sikorsky, Garrett and Anne stared out at the terminal that had been their home for almost two years. Kathy asked them what it felt like to see it again, and we were surprised to hear them say it was like seeing a prison where they had been incarcerated, but it was also like seeing home again because it had saved their lives. The rest of us couldn’t take our eyes off of the tail of Air Force One still protruding from the hangar where it had parked so long ago.
Anne pointed out the plane that had been known as Executive One, and we could see an almost loving softness in her eyes. Garrett was also glued to the sight of the plane.
Fueling the helicopters was routine because there was so much ice and sno
w. Other than a few falls, there were no problems because the infected were virtually nonexistent. Between the rats and the cold, no one would know what was out there to fear until everything thawed.
The airport faded away below us and was lost in a cloud of gray mist. It was a wet snow that would freeze hard through the night. It was cold, but we were going somewhere colder. We expected the temperature to be between minus six degrees and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Sim had even volunteered to wait in Columbus until we got back, but we assured him he would stay warm in the helicopter. He was riding with the Army in one of their Navy helicopters, but we made sure they had plenty of coffee on board.
The trip was about the same distance as it had been from Charleston to Columbus, so we settled in for the ride and got to know our new friends a little better. We were going to be pretty far from each other, but maybe that was how we would survive the infection and not become extinct. We had already seen what happened when too many people got put together in one place.
Garrett and Anne told us about Addison and Mike and how much they missed them. Jon, Sim, and Susan were undoubtedly reliving their experiences with the Army crews in the other helicopters. The soldiers all felt drawn to the small group that had beaten the odds with no outside help.
We tried more than once to get the other four to change their minds, but we were not surprised by their will to get as far away from it as they could. We were surprised, though, that they knew exactly where they wanted us to leave them.
International Falls only had a population of just over six-thousand people, and they were definitely spread out, but our friends didn’t want to be near them at all. They had poured over our maps and the maps in the shelter, and they found what they considered to be the perfect place.
The area was dotted with lodges along the banks of Rainy Lake. Most of them were on the United States side of the border, and all of them would be comfortable. On the Canadian side of the border they had found their home. It was one lonesome lodge on the southern banks of Last Island.