Fires were breaking out all over, as unattended stoves and appliances ultimately misbehaved… To make it so much worse was the constant howling, those dreadful shrieks of rage and need. Their blasphemous howls seemed to feed the flames of the fires and worse, the conflagrations burning in the minds of the human beings unlucky enough to be part of this tonight. This was the night the insanity began.
By this time there were over a thousand refugees boarded in the mansion or in tents on the ground. Another five hundred were anticipated or were being processed in long lines at the trooper’s gate. Behind the main buildings, trucks were being unloaded by SDF logistics troops and civilians. People for the most part, wanted to be part of helping themselves. Instinctively, they sensed it increased their value; at the spiritual level, perhaps it did.
To defend and care for refugees meant unloading boxes of rations, sleeping bags, tents and munitions. SDF Logistics troops had trained for this, but never on this scale…and not just here – not just Atlanta! All over Georgia. GEMA coordinated with them and struggled – working at less than half strength – so many people hadn’t shown up! After all the drills it was still barely organized chaos…
Heavily armed state troopers, State Defense Force infantry, and some Air National Guardsmen were patrolling the fences and gates when suddenly there seemed to be a half beat pause - then somebody screamed and a young fellow in a black coverall hollered, "Holy Shit! No!" Three of them, Zs, were racing toward the fence screeching their hatred and need.
One was naked with a dreadful ‘Y’ stitching up the front of its chest – it’s howling perhaps the worse for having so little left with which to howl – it whispered its rage and insane hunger in squishy sounding macabre gasps.
Additional muted howls could be heard now, in the background – mostly from the south.
Stop motion – it was as if time slowed down for another half beat. Because of the artificial lighting – it happened in black and white – almost as if it were strobed.
Governor Selvedge watched in shock as the Zs struck the fence so hard the SDF fellow standing there jumped back three paces, turned and ran for his life. Two more men in black coveralls ran up, one of them presumably an officer or NCO and caught the fleeing soldier by the arm and spun him around - then all three went to the fence and started shooting.
They didn't need orders or Rules Of Engagement - there was never any doubt about what those things were and what their intentions were – these men were terrified but they didn’t hesitate! They’d looked into the dead, raging faces of the things shrieking at the fence.
So had the governor. Her administrative assistant and jack of all sinister trades, Jane Miniver, passed Vera a Browning automatic pistol and extended the wire stock on her own primary weapon – a mini-Uzi; although within seconds they were surrounded by troopers and black uniformed SDF, and hustled off to the chopper, before they could even fire a shot.
On the way back to Roswell they could see from the chopper just a hint of the chaos in Sandy Springs as the local police and civilian militia were being swamped by the flood tide of re-animates coming across the beltway down from Pill Hill – the hospital complex.
The crew chief handed her a head set. “Vera – this is Harper. I’m moving my HQ down to St. Andrews on the river. It seems to be starting. They’re already at the bridges in some places. We have to hold them at the ‘Hootch – it has to stop there.”
The governor replied, “Alright Stephan – we’re landing at the Court House shortly and I want you to keep me updated. Don’t get killed.”
J
Jane Miniver
The helicopter landed on the circular parking lot outside the Greek revival court house in Roswell – the one with the pillars. There had been more shooting as they lifted off from the Mansion; more of those things…
Jane Miniver touched the governor’s arm lightly – “I’ll catch up.” Additional men in black coveralls and trooper uniforms surrounded the governor and she waved absently to Jane and said, “You’ll know what we need!”
Jane turned to a nearby NCO with a radio at his ear who’d been watching her and Vera make their way to the new HQ; “Where can we get some of these battle rifles?” She asked, pointing at his locally produced GK-47. “We need real guns.”
Jane looked down and realized she was still tightly clutching her machine pistol. Her finger was poised on the side of the trigger guard. She relaxed just a trifle and safed the weapon.
The soldier was surprised, but only for a second – he’d thought she was an administrative aide to the governor – and so she was. But he’d heard the rumors.
Administrative Assistant was just a very broad role and she was in fact, also chief bodyguard and master of whatever needed done for the governor. She was moderately tall for a woman, thin as a bean pole, hair dyed black with red streaks and spikes; her semi-metal sense of fashion both scandalized and amused the governor.
The soldier appreciated how tough Southern women could be – even if this one spoke with the quiet lilt of Ireland. He’d listened to the radio intercepts and had a pretty fair understanding of what Jane and the governor had encountered at the mansion. Of what they’d been through and what they’d seen.
In 2003 he’d been part of the relief force that came to the aide of Harper’s overdue engineers in Iraq…It had cost him, seeing what he’d seen in that ruined village. ”She is handling it pretty well actually – if she saw that,” he reckoned.
“Follow me, ma’am,” and he led her to the local armory they had set up to service the various military and local militia; and to handle routine weapons maintenance, over at the Cultural Center. Civilian volunteers and refugees were sitting at long tables in the entry hall – were once volunteers had sat, addressing envelopes for mail outs to the Symphony supporters. Now they were loading magazines and machine gun belts.
Jane got a better look at him when they entered the large, lighted room that had been designated the armory. Boxes of weaponry and ammunition were stacked against the walls and there were rifles and a machine gun disassembled on an improvised workbench.
“We’ll be needing some weapons, Sergeant Perkins, for the Governor’s party…” He growled. He was a bit older than she’d thought, and wore his experience like he wore his equipment - confidently.
The slightly overweight logistics sergeant (Perkins from his name tag) – managed an auto parts store in Sandy Springs in what many still thought of as real life. He was now a military man because that was what his community needed – he picked up his tablet. “Anything for ‘Black Vera!’ – just let me know what you take so I can reconcile my inventory.”
He looked over at Jane and added respectfully, “Ma’am…” There was a virtual tipping of the hat and Jane smiled at him, and reflected on how she loved these Southern men with their good manners and their seemingly endless good will.
The governor was immensely popular with the Georgia military and Armed Citizens. The regular army had drawn the line though, when the 108th Georgia National Guard Cavalry had started calling themselves, “Black Vera’s Own!”
Jane Miniver was so formidable a personality that it was easy to miss how slight in stature she actually was – not short as much as slender, at 130 pounds. She was fit and could run ten K without getting too winded. She looked up at the soldier – his name tag read ‘Norvel.’
He was a sergeant major, just a hair over six feet and an inch tall with the look of someone to whom fitness had been a way of life for a long time – probably a professional soldier. Like many career NCOs he had that permanent stern look that comes from ‘encouraging’ too many often clueless recruits into getting over what the warrior’s poet called, “doing things, rather more or less.”
He immediately began selecting the weapons he thought they’d need – and she noticed he supplemented his own ammo supply stuffing six additional magazines into the wide pockets on the sides of his uniform trousers.
He’d heard the shooting in
the distance – a fight was coming their way.
Norvel glanced over and noticed her grinning at him. She knew as well as he did – you could never have enough ammunition when the guns start popping. He winked at her.
Norvel had not yet been issued the black coveralls of the State Defense Force and still wore the digital camo of the National Guard. Jane noted that he’d already affixed a ‘Whispering Death’ patch to the uniform.
His name was Sgt. Major Jean-Pierre ‘Pete’ Norvel late of the Georgia National Guard. She learned that despite his French Canadian background and deep black hair he barely spoke the French patois and had grown up mostly in Georgia. His English was a pleasing, articulate growl that rarely varied in pitch but sometimes varied significantly in volume.
His current assignment was on high level order of Director of Public Safety Stephan Harper – as company sergeant major and executive officer with Captain Alice’s Posse – now officially E Company 1 Battalion Georgia State Defense Force. The first SDF battalion to wear the ‘Whispering Death’ patch.
Jane looked at the tough, experienced fighter – nothing of the bully about him – just one those men that that had long gotten over that need to prove anything to anyone. She sized him up as a man who’d been there when it mattered; but it had seemed to matter so often, maybe too often.
She’d known men like him before; men that weren’t really all that afraid in a fight – even when they should have been. They just kept functioning and pulled the others along. Jane Miniver shuddered as if someone had walked over her grave. She had indeed known a man like that.
Yet there was something about this Norvel character.
#
Captain Alice’s late father Justin McBride had been one of Harper’s officers when he commanded the 11th Engineers in Iraq so Director Harper wanted McBride’s daughter to have first class mentoring. Equally, he wanted her Posse integrated into the battalion as quickly as possible. He still wasn’t sure just how that was going to shake down.
Jane had heard of some super-duper soldier being assigned to help Captain Alice get through the military minutia of the SDF and give her some guidance dealing with other officers who were often older than her and more tuned in to military procedures and jargon.
There was this subtext – he was to keep her from getting killed if he could, “…without jeopardizing your honor or hers.”
Jane had not realized until now that this fellow was that soldier. She took a hard look at him and saw a man who would complete that mission if he possibly could. It made her sad in a way but she admitted to herself that she had problems trusting people who weren’t like that.
Captain Alice (now an actual captain in the Georgia State Defense Force) had sent him up to the clinic at the HQ complex to get some stitches in his hand after a minor accident – and to get a feel for the situation. The Posse was in a reserve position at the police station, just south of the Court House complex.
“You...are under command of a 19 year old girl with a talent for mayhem?” They looked at each other and broke up laughing.
Captain Alice had earned her title the hard way; she’d been way ahead of the curve on this outbreak business and recruited her own team of vigilantes she called ‘gunfighters’ and ‘spooks’. She probably had as much experience fighting Zs as anyone in Georgia. Now that her Posse was part of the SDF, Sgt Major Norvel had been assigned to show them the military way of doing things and provide guidance.
Director Harper made it clear he wanted this done without all the shouting and abuse some thought made for good military instruction. Actually that sort of nonsense was useful to teach young recruits to handle stress – but these kids were way ahead of that curve. The young, sometimes very young, men and women of the Posse weren’t much good at saluting but had already proven themselves the hard way – they had tracked down and terminated zombies before the police and military even acknowledged there was a fight going on.
For some reason the two of them had gotten past an initial rocky start and bonded very tightly. Norvel was protective of Alice and got her orders carried out – translating them into jargon when needed. Alice looked upon the Sgt Major as almost a second father and called him, “Uncle Jean”.
Jane thought, “Well…”
“So you were some kind of snake eater perhaps then, before the guard?” She asked.
“It’s hard to remember back that far sometimes…” He replied. “And you? You didn’t just fall out of the apple tree…”
“Like you said, Sgt Major, memory dims after a time.”
Somewhere along the line they had gotten rid of the formality and became Jane and Pete without quite knowing how that transpired.
Norvel turned and glared at Sgt Perkins, “You’re grinning like a cat eating shit out of a hairbrush! You never seen anyone load up magazines before?”
Sgt Perkins was saved when Norvel turned back around to Jane.
He handed her a GK-47 and a magazine. She cleared the weapon, released the trigger and then inserted the magazine, chambered a round, and reset the safety on the side of it. Norvel nodded approvingly and passed her a magazine carrier with six more. He glanced at the weapons he’d set aside for the governor and her staff, “Nobody should walk alone on a night like this, why don’t I carry these guns up to HQ with you?”
“Thank you Pete – it seems quite a trek up there tonight somehow…” They shared a long look. Sergeant Perkins made a point of being intensely interested in his tablet.
She saw a deep sadness in Norvel’s eyes even as she felt him looking into hers, and she cringed slightly in embarrassment. For a moment the supremely confident Jane Miniver thought in a flash of despair – “I’m just a middle aged Euro trash shooter with badly dyed hair and some secretarial skills…”
Norvel looked at her kindly, took her hand and said calmly – “Let’s go, Jane.”
Leakers from the Mill area threatened the command center in the Courthouse and the people working in the Cultural Arts Refugee Center and the Medical Station at Smith Plantation with its numerous outbuildings.
Additional Zs had made their to the north shore of the ‘Hootch just west of the 400 bridge – killing or turning everyone that got in their way. There had simply been too much green foliage to do more than create fields of fire on ‘best case’ target areas. Where there was no fire the Zs made their way ashore and began slaughtering human beings.
Had the Zs been less thorough in the devastation they inflicted upon their victims and just concentrated on turning them – Roswell might have fallen that very night.
Sgt Major Pete Norvel found himself barricading doorways and helping Jane Miniver to organize what was starting to look like a last ditch stand. There were barely enough people to cover all the windows on the sides and back of the building, which doubled as city hall. The main entrance was at the top of the formal marble stairway to the wide columns at top – and a rather narrow entrance from which it was going to be difficult to generate enough fire in a pinch.
As many men as possible were holding forward positions behind improvised barricades out in the front of the building. He was bemused to overhear one of Jane’s troopers and learn that Mrs. Miniver held officer rank in the both the State Troopers and State Defense Forces.
Norvel contacted Captain Alice who had most of her Posse in reserve at the Police Station, “One Echo Six this is One Echo Seven, over…”
“Hold tight Uncle Jean, and keep your heads down – we’re attacking in your direction. Alice out”
Governor Selvedge was in the comms room coordinating with Director Harper. He was deeply involved in the battle for the river bridges at his forward HQ at St. Andrews on the river - while trying to control his limited reserve forces across the North Atlanta area. They talked over blasts of static.
“Stephan – I’ve sent your ‘D’ Company to rescue Blackman up on Hembree, and some of ‘E’ Company to the Mill – some leakers came up Vickery Creek. Tom Darling is in the fight of hi
s life in South Atlanta and the CDC is under heavy attack.”
Tom Darling commanded the 48th Infantry Brigade of the Guard and was battle commander for South Atlanta.
“What’s your status there Vera?”
“Oh that – it’s somewhere between the Alamo and Custer’s last stand. We’re barely holding on - there are more of them out there than there possibly could be by our calculations – well anyhow – our Captain Alice is bringing the rest of her Posse up here to bail us out. We’ll be fine. Just hold those bridges.”
The field hospital had been set up at Smith Plantation in the historic area of Roswell, just behind the Court House. Doctor Paul Rabinowitz was in charge and he was pretty much covered in blood. This was something that would take getting used to. He was an allergist for God’s sake – he was reminded of why he hadn’t wanted to be a surgeon – but tonight that just didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because there was no time for it for it to matter.
No longer a young man, slight but fit, Rabinowitz wore a long, badly stained white lab coat. Underneath that he had a handgun somewhat awkwardly strapped to his hip. He’d practiced with it of course but still wasn’t really used to carrying weapons.
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 18