by JK Franks
“That sounded like a woman,” Scott said.
“I’d say it was coming from those trees up ahead," Todd said, pointing. Both men knew it was decision time. Get involved or just keep going? “It could be another trap,” said Todd.
Scott knew he was right but didn’t respond. A part of him thought What if it was Kaylie out there trying to get somewhere? Their decision was made for them soon after Scott put the Jeep in drive. They saw the jerky motion of headlights coming out of the woods and a car pulling rapidly onto the highway heading in the opposite direction from them, the unmistakable outline of a patrol car’s lightbar on the roof.
Scott eased the Jeep down the road in the general direction that the other car had pulled out of. There was no undergrowth, and it was easy to see there were no other cars in the thin stand of pines. Scott could just make out a human shape, lying over a downed tree. They looked at each other.
“I’ll check it out. You stay here—with the motor running," Todd added as he opened the car door.
Shaking now, Scott nodded. He watched the ex-Navy man slip into the woods and slowly circle the scene. Todd looked at the thing on the tree and then at Todd’s figure, approaching on the far side. He stopped, stumbling slightly, then bent double and vomited. Scott opened the door to check on his friend, but Todd was already heading back, waving him to get back in the car.
As Todd opened the door and got in, Scott handed him a bottle of water, which he sipped then spat back out the open window.
“Drive. Don’t fucking stop for nothin’ in this county.” Todd shook his head, maybe in an attempt to escape whatever scene he had just found. Scott was not sure what his friend had seen, but it had them both shaken.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The two friends were finally approaching the outskirts of Tallahassee. It had been a challenging day, but, contrary to expectations, they were seeing fewer people the closer they got to the city. This was by far the largest of the towns they had been near, and their nerves were on edge. In normal times, this was a city of about two hundred thousand, with the large college accounting for about a quarter of that number. As they got closer, Scott and Todd began to notice large aid camps and what appeared to be makeshift tent cities. Besides the size of these aid camps, both men were shocked at the number of armed guards posted at every street and corner. This didn’t look to them like any FEMA operation.
Todd unfolded a map of the city as well as the single page campus map with Kaylie’s address penciled in the margin. Comparing it to the GPS on the dash, Todd did the calculations.
“It looks to be about eight miles ahead on this road.”
They’d decided after the incident with the law enforcement van, and what with all the armed guards around, that they would listen to Bartos and not take the main road all the way in. Better to try and avoid trouble, especially from guys with guns. Lots of eyes seemed to follow the vehicle as they passed. Some of these people had no doubt been stranded when their car failed or the airlines stopped flying. Now, surely, they wanted to get home by any means possible.
While those in the aid camps, at least, might be getting the bare basics, none of them seemed to be doing well. Both men imagined that many of the people watching them pass wouldn’t hesitate to kill them for a working car to drive out of there.
Scott saw the railroad crossing that they’d marked on the map up ahead. He slowed, Todd with his M4 at the ready. Pulling off the road, Scott climbed out and quickly unmounted the Cervelo racing bike. He knew he was faster on that than nearly anything other than a car, and it was more maneuverable in city streets. Scott handed Todd the keys to the Jeep and took one of the shortwave radios and an ear piece.
“Be careful, Scott. Call me when you find her, or if you need help.” Todd cranked the Jeep and dropped it into four-wheel drive. He guided it gently over the small embankment and found the nearly hidden two-track road that paralleled the railroad tracks. Scott watched the Jeep fade quickly out of sight. Then he clipped in and pedaled toward the campus ahead.
While on the surface it seemed foolish to leave the presumed safety of the Jeep, they had thought this through. As Scott expected, no one gave much notice to a guy whizzing by on a bike. Apparently, to most he passed, riding a bike was no improvement over walking. The fact was he knew he could ride steadily at around eighteen miles an hour, easily covering over a hundred miles in a day if he wanted. Even the best of these people walking could only do about six miles an hour and would be seriously fatigued after a fifteen-mile day. The click of the bike shifting to faster gears gave Scott some of the confidence he had not been feeling until now.
Most parts of the city seemed relatively calm and had very little car traffic. He turned down one street to take him in the direction of Kaylie’s dorm and found he was quickly in a much poorer section of town. Scott saw an area ahead with more people crowded in front of several closed banks, and he had to dodge what appeared to be a broken and battered ATM in the middle of the road.
He noticed young men, even kids, looting everything from beer to big screen TVs out of the many darkened and broken storefronts. He could understand why someone might steal to survive, but a flat screen TV? What a bunch of dumbasses, he thought. It has only taken a few days to come to this; human nature on full display, in all its glory. He knew the people in these neighborhoods were less prepared for a disaster than anyone. They could be doing something constructive to prepare, but most would not think beyond the moment. One of the dumbasses caught sight of the man on the bicycle coming toward them. Stepping back into the street directly in Scott’s path, he raised a pistol.
"Get off the bike, white boy,” the young man said loudly. Scott saw the pistol at the same time he heard the command.
In all his years of cycling, he had encountered hundreds of dogs chasing him and numerous close encounters with cars unwilling to give him a lane to ride in.
Only once before had he encountered another person standing in the road wanting to do him harm. That one didn’t have a gun. But Scott had acted on instinct then and did so again now. Using the speed he had built up on the slight downhill, he tucked down presenting the smallest area possible to the punk. He lined up as straight at the thug as possible. His heart was pounding, and fear was close to overtaking him. He scouted ahead, looking for another street he could possibly take.
Scott could see now that the guy was only a teenager. He was holding his pants about half way up with one hand, the silver pistol in the other. Scott glanced quickly down at the GPS. He had the speed creeping close to forty miles an hour and was in a flat-out sprint heading straight for the kid. Although it felt like minutes, the actual time of the encounter was mere seconds.
The gunman seemed to realize, too late, how fast Scott was coming toward him. He yelled, but it was too late, the bike was on him. He went to move to the side but his untied shoes and loose pants tripped him, and he fell sideways into the street, barely avoiding the crazy man and his bike. As Scott went by, he blasted him with the can of bear attack spray he had in his jersey pocket. The stream of pepper spray hit the kid right in the face.
"Arrrghh! Mother fucker!” the boy wailed in pain, firing blindly. Scott saw people ducking back into doorways as he leaned the bike at an extreme angle to take the next side street. He was out of that neighborhood entirely in just another few seconds.
He heard occasional shots from off in the distance. They came from most directions.
He was getting close to the campus and decided to stop and try to calm his racing heart rate. He pulled the small radio from his jersey pocket and called Todd. The familiar voice came back nearly immediately.
“You okay, man? I heard a lot of shooting.” Todd’s voice was anxious.
“I had a little scare, but nothing we hadn’t expected. I’m at the edge of the university. This campus looks normal. Just going to spin around the area for a few minutes to see how safe it is.”
“Roger that,” came the reply.
Scott was within a block of the main campus entrance when he saw roadblocks, security vehicles and a Humvee parked to the side of several armed troops in digital pattern gray camo. Dismounting the bike slowly, he approached the checkpoint. He made sure to keep both hands visible on the handlebars and was careful not to make any threatening moves.
“Stop!" came a loud command from thirty feet away. “Do not approach any closer, sir!” came another bark. Not overly anxious to see what the response would be if he kept going, Scott stopped immediately. He was pretty sure he had just slightly wet himself.
“I just need to find my niece,” Scott said.
“Sorry, sir, I’m under orders that no one is to be admitted into or out of the campus. The campus is on lockdown for security reasons, one of the soldiers said.
“Why?” Scott called.
No response.
“Do you have an active shooter threat? Something else?"
Still no response.
The men kept their rifles at low ready, and several stood, focused only on him. Scott could see people walking around the campus. There seemed to be no signs of anything unusual there, other than the armed presence.
“Sir, you will need to leave now,” one of the men said. “The campus is closed.”
“Listen,” Scott pleaded, “I’ve come a long way to check on my niece. Her parents are worried sick about her. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
The man who had been speaking eyed the bicycle suspiciously. Scott knew he wasn’t buying the fact he’d come a long way on that.
Scott was genuinely confused. Nothing about this situation felt right. The campus on lockdown was somewhat plausible as shots had been fired recently, but people were calmly walking around inside the supposedly ‘secure’ area. Seeing how long the troops seemed to have been here and how ready they appeared to use lethal force—on someone as clearly non-threatening as Scott, no less—all seemed odd. Strangely still, none of the men had any insignia that Scott could identify, just a combat patch on their sleeve. The patch was a scorpion and what looked like a sword sticking through the middle. The camouflage pattern of the uniforms did not look familiar either. And no name patches on the chest. Something began to tickle the back of Scott’s mind.
An older man in the same gray camo walked forward with a tablet. “Who are you here to see?”
Scott sighed with relief. “Oh, thank you, sir—m- my niece. No one’s heard from her since all this began. The—”
“I need a name, sir!” The tone of his voice among the other irregularities kept Scott’s paranoia on high-alert.
“First, um, could you tell me what this is about?”
The man with the tablet looked at Scott again. “What is your name, sir?" his demeanor seemed to be growing increasingly agitated.
Scott looked back at the man “Donald. Donald Jacobs,” he lied, pulling the name of his high school history teacher from a random closet in his memory.
“And your niece's name?” Scott noticed the guards paying even more attention to him now. Several had taken up positions behind him. Opening up new firing lanes, huh, guys?
Taking his paranoia to even higher levels, he lied again and said with a slight stutter, “Ch…Cheryl Reynolds. Umm. She’s from Hattiesburg.”
The man ran his hand down a list on his tablet and then tapped it several times to change pages. He began nodding and looked up smiling. "Ms. Cheryl Reynolds left the campus with a bus pass to Mississippi three days ago,” he said, “She should be home anytime now. I hope that’s what you needed. Please leave the perimeter now, sir."
Stunned at the blatant lie, Scott considered challenging the man’s nonsense, but eyeing the men and their guns, thought better of it and turned to leave. But after a few steps, he turned back.
“Excuse me,” he said to the man with the tablet who was also walking away. The man stopped and turned back. “Thank you for the information, just… could I get your name and unit so I can let my brother know exactly who I spoke with?”
The man turned and walked away. Another armed guard moved toward him. “Have a nice day now, sir.”
Sir, my ass, Scott thought. He was furious, but he knew better than to let it show. He duck walked the bike a short way before remounting and pedaling away.
“Todd, did you get all that?” Scott said into the tiny Bluetooth microphone now clipped on his cycling helmet.
“Fuck yes…Did you not hear me yelling for you to get the hell out of there?”
Scott had linked the wireless microphone to the two-way FRS radio when he’d spoken to his friend earlier. He had taken his helmet off when talking to the soldiers, though, so he’d not heard Todd’s warnings; not that he would have listened.
“Do you believe what they said about your niece?” Todd asked.
“Is my name Donald?" Scott responded sarcastically. “They fucking lied. I gave them the name of an old classmate of mine, and he responded with bullshit just to get me out of his hair. Are you close yet?”
“This is some shit man. Yeah… I just pulled the Jeep up near the spot we marked on the map. The railroad passed within about a mile of the campus, just like we thought. I found an old logging trail to get it in even closer. I should be about a quarter mile from the dormitory. We need to regroup to decide how best to handle this. Can you get over here to meet me?”
Scott thought about it. The campus was huge but only had a limited number of roads in. Why in the hell did Kaylie even live on campus? Didn’t she know every college student gets an apartment by the third year?
“I can get to you," Scott said into the radio. “I just want to check out a few more things first. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Roger that," came Todd’s reply through the headset.
Twenty-eight minutes later, Scott popped through some brush about twenty yards from the Jeep. Todd was sitting on the bumper with the M4 aimed at him, but he quickly lowered it when he saw his friend. Scott eased up to the Jeep and remounted the bike on the rack.
“You’re eight minutes late; any luck finding a way in?” Todd asked.
“Yeah,” Scott answered. “Only the main routes in are heavily guarded, then there are roving patrols all over the campus. We should be able to slip over a small wrought iron fence and some thick hedges to get to her dorm.”
Todd nodded mutely. “Kudos on how you handled the guards at the gate, quick thinking there. So, who do you think those guys were? The ones guarding the place? And why are they here?”
Scott shook his head, “I’m not sure, they weren’t National Guard, and they didn't look regular army either. They were too relaxed and…professional. They looked menacing to me. If I had to guess, they were elite soldiers or some form of Special Forces. I might even assume they’re the paramilitaries for Operation Catalyst—part of that ‘Praetor5 unit’ thing.”
“Or maybe they’re fighting against them like the naval brigade off the coast of Tampa,” Todd suggested.
Scott shrugged. “Not sure the ‘who’ matters right now, but the why does interest me. What makes a college campus more valuable an asset than a hospital, or an airport—or a port? Shit, even a bank? I mean, they may have many of those under guard as well… It just seems odd that they’re here in such force…” he trailed off. “—The other thing is, it wasn’t just swagger…they weren’t bluffing. I fully believe they would shoot with very little provocation.”
Scott looked nervously at his friend. “Todd, I can’t let you go in there.”
“Try and stop me,” Todd said with a grin.
Scott put the Cervelo bike on the rack and pulled the cycling jersey off, swapping it for an FSU T-shirt he had brought with him. “Look, I can maybe pass for an old grad student.” Todd looked hurt for a second, then conceded with a shrug. “You look too much like the guys with guns,” Scott said, rigging his EDC pack to look more like a messenger bag and slipping on some non-prescription, skinny framed glasses.
Todd had to admit he had a point; Scott now looked
like pretty much every other uber-geek college nerd on campus. Todd unclipped the Bluetooth headset from the bicycle helmet and handed it to Scott. “Wear this and keep it turned on. Keep me posted at least every five minutes. I’ll shadow you as close as possible to the dorm but out of sight. If you run into any problems, just whisper, and I’ll be there."
Scott put the device on his ear and checked his direction with the GPS from his bike. Giving a nod, he began walking toward the dormitory looking more confident than he felt. Todd quickly packed up the last of his gear. He knew he would need to leave some things along the way; he couldn’t cross a street into a college campus with assault weapons hanging around his neck. He slung on his pack and headed down the same path that Scott had taken.
Scott’s heart was hammering as he climbed the small iron fence and hid briefly in the hedges on the edge of the manicured green lawn. Getting his bearings, he saw the Thornton Hall dormitory building just ahead. He looked to the side of the brick building to see Todd slip into the shadows against the far-side wall. Not seeing anyone in the immediate area, he mustered his courage and began walking briskly to the dorm, then up the steps and through the front door, just like he belonged there. The power was out as expected, but he’d memorized Kaylie’s room number and its basic location the night before.
He could see what must be the building’s commons—durable looking sofas and a large screen TV—but the large space was empty. Taking the stairs up one floor, he quickly found his niece’s room. He knocked on the door firmly, looking both ways down the darkened hall as he did so. He heard no sound from inside, so he knocked louder and whispered her name…nothing. The door had an electronic lock like a hotel room, but the number pad and lights were dark. He reached down and twisted the knob. Scott knew that these worked with battery backup for a while but normally stayed locked after that. Since these were student rooms, though, someone may have overridden the default feature. He tried the knob and to his relief he heard a click as the lock cleared and the door eased open. Scott clicked on his tactical light and quickly swept the empty room.