To make the marauders go elsewhere.
To save what was left of the city of San Angelo.
Within days every path in and out of the city was blocked in a similar manner.
The marauders still came, on foot or on horseback. A few on trail bikes.
But they were few and far between.
It was too much effort for them now, when there were other more accessible targets in the area.
And those who did come were watched closely.
If they were merely seeking help, they were generally given it.
For the citizens of San Angelo were for the most part good and empathetic people.
If they were looking for trouble, they got that too.
In spades.
After a few of them were shot by firing squads or hung in Courthouse Square, word got around.
San Angelo didn’t play.
And outsiders coming into the city slowed to a trickle.
That had been four, maybe five years before.
Mike wasn’t even sure himself.
Time was a concept that no longer seemed to matter much.
These days, Mike’s world was centered around a mind-numbing routine.
He’d help the citizens he could. He was still, first and foremost, a police officer.
But he was also a sentinel. And as such, he’d be on the lookout for strangers coming into the city to cause havoc or do harm.
The brown Hummer was within a hundred yards now.
Mike reached down and turned on his flashing lights.
He’d know within seconds whether the visitors were evil-doers.
One of the things he’d learned lately was that people seeking help went to the nearest police car.
Those with ill intent tried to avoid it.
After it passed the last of the abandoned cars, the Hummer slowly drove onto the shoulder of the highway and back onto the cracked and weed-spotted pavement.
It was driving toward Mike and his cruiser at slow speed.
That was a good sign.
But it could also be a prelude to an assault.
Mike unhooked the strap on his service weapon and took it from his holster, then opened his car door and stepped outside.
Chapter 17
Mike used his car door as a shield, and aimed his weapon through the open window.
He knew the door wouldn’t stop a hail of high-powered bullets. But he had nothing else. And it was better than nothing.
With his left hand, he keyed his collar microphone.
“Wesley, how close are you?”
“Two minutes. I should have you in sight after I come over the next rise.”
“Do me a favor, will you? Make some noise so these guys know I’ve got the cavalry coming.”
“Ten four.”
Wesley Maikin reached down and turned on his siren, then switched it to max volume.
He punched the gas pedal a little bit harder.
Mike could see two heads in the Army vehicle.
Of course, there could be more in the back, out of sight.
The Hummer stopped twenty feet directly in front of him.
He yelled, “Driver! Place both hands on the steering wheel!”
Inside the Hummer Bryan Too muttered, “What the hell?”
But he did as he was told.
“Passenger, roll down the window with your right hand. Keep your left hand where I can see it!”
Bryan said, “Don’t panic just yet. Maybe he’s just being overly cautious.”
He rolled down the window, keeping his left hand visible in the vehicle’s windshield.
Wesley was close enough now to cut his siren, having already announced his presence. He passed the stopped Hummer and made a U-turn fifty yards farther down the road. Then he pulled up in an adjacent lane, his front bumper even with the rear of the Hummer, got out and took a shooter’s stance.
Mike continued his instructions.
“Passenger! Place both hands out the passenger side window. Leave them there. If you place them back in the vehicle at any time I will open fire.”
Bryan did as he was told, then swallowed hard.
He tried to make light of the situation in an effort to hide his nervousness.
“I just hope my nose doesn’t start itching.”
“Driver! Keep your left hand on the steering wheel. With your right hand, turn off the ignition!”
The Hummer stopped running.
“Driver! Place your vehicle in gear and exit the vehicle. Very slowly! Keep your hands in plain view at all times!”
Bryan Too did as he was told.
Once he was clear of the vehicle, his arms raised high, Mike nodded to Wesley.
Wesley took over.
“Driver, you’re doing very good. Keep your hands high and walk backwards toward the rear of the vehicle.”
Bryan Too was even with his rear bumper when he got his next instruction.
“Driver, stop. Now, very slowly open the rear hatch so I can see if there’s anyone else in there.
“Good. Now keep your hands high and walk backwards toward the sound of my voice.”
As Bryan Too continued backwards, Wesley skirted the vehicle and came up behind him. He holstered his weapon and said, “Stop.”
Wesley pulled the young driver’s hands down one at a time and placed them in handcuffs.
Bryan Too was incredulous.
“Am I being arrested?”
“Probably not. But we have to be careful until we find out who you are and why you’re here.”
Once Bryan Too was cuffed, Wesley nodded to Mike, who removed Bryan from the Humvee in the same manner.
The two were frisked, and for several minutes were interrogated separately. Then Bryan was placed in back of Mike’s patrol car and Bryan Too in the back of Wesley’s.
The officers walked toward one another and met in the middle, between their two cars.
“Yours got ID?”
“Yes. Military ID. Active duty Army. Says he was assigned as a driver to the other guy, to see if they could find his missing wife.”
“He say why the Army was involved in a civilian search and rescue operation?”
“Yeah. He said a friend of your guy was in an Army helicopter that went down. They were working the recovery when the wife went missing. Since they were on the scene anyway, the Army offered to assist.”
“Well, that checks out. My guy doesn’t have ID. Said he stopped carrying his wallet years ago. Saw no sense in it. But everything he says pretty much matches up with your guy.”
“Why do they think the wife came here?”
“They said she was lost in the woods up by Kerrville. That she was injured, and left a blood trail behind. Then the blood stopped at an isolated roadway, and they think someone picked her up and took her to get treated. They say they’re making the rounds of all the area hospitals and clinics.”
“Well, that checks too.”
“What’s your feel?”
“I think they’re legit. There’s nothing in the vehicle that looks to be stolen, and except for the two M-16 rifles in the back, they’re not armed. The rifles are unloaded and secure and don’t appear to have been fired in awhile.”
“Okay. How do you want to proceed?”
“Let’s uncuff them and see if we can help. Then I’ll escort them back out of town.”
“Sounds good. I’ll stand by just in case.”
Mike called in to SAPD dispatch to report that the threat had been neutralized while Wesley pulled Bryan Too out of the back of his cruiser and walked him over to Mike’s car.
Bryan was relieved to see Wesley remove Bryan Too’s handcuffs.
But not as relieved as Bryan Too was.
Chapter 18
Mike returned to his cruiser and opened the rear door.
Wesley sat behind the wheel of his own cruiser and watched. Just in case.
“Go ahead and step on out and let me get those cuffs off.”
&nbs
p; “Thank you, officer.”
“I’m going to escort you to the clinic to check on your wife. I can almost guarantee she’s not there. We haven’t had any vehicles make it into town in several days, and an injured woman on foot or horseback would have gotten our attention.
“But I realize that you probably want to make sure for yourself, so we’ll go to the clinic just to be sure.”
“Thank you. But what about the hospitals? And the other clinics?”
“There’s only one clinic. It’s all we need for four hundred twenty people.”
“Four hundred twenty people? Is that all that have survived?”
“Yes. The city council takes a count every couple of weeks to report to FEMA.”
“But… how can that be? I lived here before Saris 7 hit, over on Piedmont Street. There were, like, a hundred thousand people here.”
“Not quite. I think it was more like ninety one thousand.”
“And only four hundred twenty left? What the hell happened?”
“Well, the meteorite happened. That’s how it started. Then the long freeze. People started killing themselves in vast numbers. The ground was frozen hard as a rock, so we couldn’t bury anybody. And the air temperatures were so cold we couldn’t burn the bodies either. The cold temperatures just wouldn’t let the fires generate enough heat.
“We tried using the crematoriums at the cemeteries, and then the fuel ran out.
“Marauders came in and looted and murdered a lot of people. So we blocked the roads to keep them out.
“But it turned out that was a mistake. It made San Angelo like an island. No one could get in, no one could get out.
“Everybody thought it would be better when the thaw came and we could all go outdoors again.
“But the thaw just brought more misery. All of the bodies thawed out and started to rot. We collected as many as we could and burned them in big piles, but the rotting flesh created a plague which swept through the city. That’s what wiped out most of the survivors.
“Blocking the roads turned out to be our undoing. FEMA was making the rounds in trucks delivering antibiotics for the plague victims, but they couldn’t get to us so they passed us by. The same was true of the seed trucks. They distributed seeds and seedlings to all of the other communities, but not to us. They just couldn’t get in here. We finally got one of the smaller Farm to Market roads to where it was passable, but that was long after FEMA came and went.
“The Army finally was able to fly us in some penicillin by helicopter, but it was too little too late. By that time penicillin was in short supply and they only had a little bit to give us. And they were run pretty thin themselves. They said they had hundreds of helicopters sitting idle, but only a handful of pilots survived. And there were many other cities like ours they had to service as well.”
Bryan was almost in shock.
“All my friends? All my neighbors? All my co-workers, gone?”
“In all likelihood, yes.”
Mike returned to his cruiser and led the Hummer through the streets of San Angelo.
Everywhere Bryan looked he saw misery and despair. All of the houses were abandoned, their windows shattered and their yards overgrown with waist-high weeds.
Here and there, piled in the streets, were piles of human bones. They were all that was left of the funeral pyres. The ashes had been scattered by the winds and the unburned flesh picked away by rodents.
Bryan desperately looked for any signs of normalcy.
A stray dog barking at them as they drove past.
A bunch of children playing in the street.
Anything.
But he saw none of that.
In fact, it was at the very end of his journey, a full mile into the heart of the city, that he was struck by a very hard truth.
They had traveled from the outskirts of town to the downtown area. Other than officers Mike and Wesley, they hadn’t seen another living, breathing thing.
Chapter 19
Bryan was surprised at how hard the sight of San Angelo’s devastation affected him. By the time they arrived at their destination, he was quite literally speechless.
Mike had pulled his cruiser in front of a six-story building with boarded up windows. In four foot letters emblazoned on its side, it said:
SAN ANGELO GENERAL HOSPITAL
Bryan numbly walked toward its doors, until Mike called out to him.
“That’s not it. We’re going across the street.”
Bryan looked across Main Street to a tiny building. It once housed a doctor’s office. Now, it served another purpose. Someone had taken a can of black spray paint and marked its wall with the words:
FREE CLINIC
The woman behind the counter smiled broadly as the men walked in.
Somehow the smile seemed grotesquely out of place.
“Good morning. May I help you?”
Mike spoke for the group.
“Hi, Stacey. This is Bryan Snyder. His wife has gone missing, and he has good reason to believe she was injured. He’s making the rounds of all the hospitals and clinics in the area to see if someone brought her in for treatment.”
“Oh, my. I’m sorry. We haven’t had any strangers come in for quite a while. Most of them can’t get past the roadblocks. But I’ll certainly keep an eye out for her. What’s her name?”
Bryan spoke for the first time.
“Sarah. Sarah Anna Snyder. But she was wearing a jogging suit with the name Sarah Anna Speer on the tag. She always labeled her clothing, and she never changed the tags when we got married.”
“Do you have a radio frequency where we can reach you if she comes in?”
“106.47. We monitor it twenty four hours a day.”
Mike cut in.
“Stacey, aren’t you in radio contact with some of the area hospitals and clinics? You might be able to save him some time and trouble.”
“Yes. I was just going to offer to do that. Why don’t you guys go in the break room and have some coffee. I’ll go to our radio room and make some calls.”
Over coffee, Bryan had the chance to ask Mike some more questions.
“Where is everybody? It looks like a ghost town.”
“Well, it essentially is, except for a handful of holdouts.”
“Holdouts?”
“During the plague, people stopped associating with each other. They knew people were dying all around them, and they thought it was spread by human contact.
“But FEMA came in on a helicopter and told us it wasn’t spread by human contact. It was an airborne virus. It was spread by the winds. So even with families boarding themselves up in their homes and isolating themselves, they were still getting the disease and still dying in vast numbers.
“Finally, the dying seemed to stop. Stacey got our FEMA representative on the phone and they said it had run its course. That the people who survived did so because they were incredibly lucky. Or because there was something in their immune systems that fought off the virus. In any event, what’s left of us are huddled together on the old Goodfellow Air Force Base.”
“You’re living with the Air Force people?”
“No. The Air Force people are all gone. The Air Force closed the base right after Saris 7 hit the earth. They said they couldn’t operate it in constant below zero temperatures, and there was no need to anyway. That the threat was no longer communism or Russia or China. The new threat was surviving the cold itself.
“So they abandoned it. Just left all of their airplanes on the tarmac and boogied. The Air Force people were given their walking papers, and most of them went back to their hometowns to be with their extended families. A couple of hundred stuck it out with us, but most of them didn’t make it. Out of our current population now, maybe a dozen or so are Air Force people.”
“Why did you all move onto the base, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“It makes security easier. They were already set up to be secure, with high chain link fences toppe
d with barbed wire. All the gates have guard shacks with heaters so our sentries didn’t have to freeze to death. It was actually the mayor’s idea. He moved into the house of the general who used to command the base. Nice house. I’ll tell you what, those generals lived large by military standards.
“Anyway, the enlisted housing was only so-so, but most of the officers’ houses had fireplaces and were well insulated. So that’s where most of us are living.”
“Does anyone ever leave the base?”
“Oh, yes. Every day. Five of us are still police officers and still keep an eye on the city. Mostly to keep an eye on who’s coming and going and to protect the stragglers and workers. You see, there are nine people who rejected the idea of moving onto the base. Mostly old people who were comfortable where they were. So we helped them fortify their homes and make sure they have enough fuel oil or firewood, and take them food and water and whatever else they need.
“And then we have people who tend to our crops. We’ve turned several of the city parks into farmland and grow food there in the warm weather months.
“We have other crews who are gatherers. People go to them and say, ‘I need a new microwave, or my kid needs a size 12 coat.’ And the gatherers will get everybody’s requests and look through the abandoned stores and houses in the city to try to find them. That keeps six of our people busy on a full time basis.
“Others, the ones with the strongest stomachs, collect what’s left of the bodies. Most of them are just bones now, but they gather them and bury them in mass graves and say a prayer over them.
“And lastly, we have a crew who has started to clear the roadways. It’s a long process. They have to drag each vehicle as far as a mile until they can find a section of the shoulder that’s clear. Then they simply use a bulldozer to roll it off the road.
“It’s a very long and very slow process, but they should have Highway 87 north of town open within a month or so. Unfortunately for you guys, they started on the north end of town. You guys came from the south. It’ll be at least a year, maybe two, before they get that end cleared.”
“So this clinic… It’s set up mainly to support your people who are in town working, and who get sick or injured on the job?”
The Search Page 6