“How’s it going senior chief?” Jeff asked when the man had huffed his way up the steep muddy incline.
“Well I was having a pretty pleasant day until I had to ride over here and climb up that muddy hill. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” The senior chief asked.
“We’re a unit out of North Carolina that was sent to see how far the rail tracks could take us. We got ambushed in Philadelphia and ended up crashing the train. Now we’re looking to get back and report what we’ve discovered.” Jeff answered. The senior chief didn’t look impressed.
“What kind of unit? Only real soldier here’s the one who keeps rubbing the back of his head. You have a title or a unit designation? Who do you report to? Maybe try and give me some information that doesn’t make me want to shoot you. Don’t take all day either. I want to get back to the galley before they run out of the cheese that we just got in.” The senior chief responded.
“I’m the director for the department for the continuation of the United States government. These men were all detailed to me for this mission. I report directly to the President.” Jeff answered.
“What happened to your hands?” The senior chief asked. The man didn’t miss much. Jeff hurriedly changed the subject. Ignoring the question about his hands he asked if they were going to be allowed on the base or not. He told them they could contact Weathertop to validate he was who he said he was. Mumbling something about wishing he’d just thought they were surgers and shot them the chief turned around and trudged back down the steep incline.
“I’ve got an expired can of raviolis that says he won’t be the one to climb back up.” Haywood said.
“Cheese or meat-filled?” Drew asked. Before Haywood could answer the third man in the boat started schlepping his way up to them. The senior chief was sitting on a box in the back talking on the radio.
“I’m supposed to search you for weapons.” The guardsmen said when he made it to the top of the hill. He was a skinny kid with freckles and a sunburnt noise.
“I’ll save you some time kid. We’re covered in ‘em. I’m not planning on giving mine up. Once the senior confirms we are who we say we are it shouldn’t matter anymore anyway.” Haywood said without moving. The guardsmen looked around at the ragtag crew. They had weapons hanging off them in every direction. The golf carts in the background were stacked with weapons and ammunition. Bristly beards, scarred faces and blood stained clothes were the norm. Yue had a weird witchy aura around her that made people want to look anywhere but directly into her eyes.
“Yeah. I’ll wait and see what he says.” The man said. He’d spent most of the apocalypse right there in Cape May. He was honestly horrified of the mainland. He’d patrolled the shoreline at night and seen dense crowds of the infected on the other side of the inlet. He knew they shouldn’t be able to see them but somehow, he sensed them watching him. It was like he could feel how bad they wanted to get at him. One time he’d been struggling to stay awake patrolling the beach. He’d closed his eyes for a second and then woken up in the middle of a horrible nightmare standing in ankle deep water. He’d been leaning forward like he was about to try swimming across the inlet. He was careful to get plenty of rest between shifts after that.
“They’re sending a bigger boat around to pick you up. Wait here.” The senior chief yelled the directions up over the fifty feet of space separating them. He waved for his man to come back down.
“We’re supposed to just stand out here in the open?” Lisa asked the intimidated guardsman. The guy just stood there with his mouth open.
“We have the sniper watching over us.” Drew said. He was with Lisa on not liking the idea of hanging out in the open.
“Sniper?” The guardsman asked. He was clearly taken by surprise. He started looking around to see if he could see a sniper.
“Never mind. We’ll be fine. Go on down and tell the senior chief we appreciate him calling us a bigger boat.” Jeff said.
“That guy really sold the sniper idea. The starlight scope was a nice touch.” LeBron said. They gathered around the golf carts to shift their gear back onto their bodies. The senior chiefs boat heading away up the inlet.
“They had me with the mounted fifty caliber. Those bullets can do all kinds of things to a man’s body.” Haywood said. It came out kind of creepy sounding.
Haywood’s comment effectively killed off the conversation until Harley finally spotted another boat headed their way. He pointed it out and Drew started climbing down to the water’s edge. He stopped when he realized no one else was coming with him. It took him a second, but he finally realized a bigger boat wouldn’t be able to pull in the same place that an attack raft could. He walked back up through the mud and weeds ignoring Lisa shaking her head sadly at him.
They drove the carts off the bridge and over towards the marina. That seemed like the logical place for a larger boat to pull in and pick them up at. They saw a couple of older looking boats in the backlots. Yue had them hurry right on past without stopping. There must be a few crawlerz that’d stowed away in the land bound vessels to ride out the light of day. No one else felt anything but they weren’t stupid enough to challenge Yue on it.
By the time they drove up to a large dock that jutted out into the inlet a Coast Guard response boat was passing them to pull up at the end of the dock. Not trusting the dock to hold the weight of the golf carts they got out and humped all their gear down to the end of the dock where the 45-foot boat was waiting for them. There were a few crew members on board driving the boat as well as two guys in camouflage BDUs responsible for guarding the boat. Other than a few words of greeting no other information was exchanged. They were shown where to put their gear and where to sit. When they were close to being settled in the crew cast off and they started working their way up the inlet.
Chapter 25: Always Ready
One of the men in BDUs came into the hold and sat down with them. He introduced himself and told them they’d be reaching the base shortly. Once he’d given them that information, he offered them some water out of a gallon jug like milk comes in. No one jumped forward to grab one of the cups he was offering to pour water in, so he excused himself and left the way he’d come in. He left the jug of water and the cups behind in case they changed their minds.
LeBron asked if anyone knew anything about Cape May. Haywood said that it was the Coast Guard boot camp. It was where anyone who wanted to join the Coast Guard went to get their basic training. Jeff was able to supply a little more applicable information. The base had sent all recruits home when the outbreak started. Their training had been put off indefinitely. They’d then set about securing the point the base was located on. Jeff remembered working to make sure the base was well stocked to survive the coming emergency.
To secure the base they’d erected large fences with guard towers placed along them. Machine guns had been installed along with gigantic spotlights. They’d destroyed the bridges leading to the island after advising anyone who wanted to leave to go ahead and do so. They’d been very proactive about sending patrols out into the civilian parts of the island to immediately put down anyone who showed signs of infection. Another thing that’d helped immensely was enlisting the aid of the civilians who remained.
A large portion of the people living on the island who chose to stay were in some way associated with the Coast Guard. They were either retired or had family who were retired or actively serving. The people who didn’t have weapons were issued weapons. People who had their own hunting rifles and such were issued better weapons. With all of that preparation they came very close to avoiding the mess the rest of the country went through.
All it’d taken was one crawler who’d jumped off the bridge towards the island full of people to end up dragging them down though. Dead crawlerz washed up on the beach constantly. The patrols were used to seeing them. They’d stop long enough when they found one to pile driftwood on top of it. Once they had a decent pile of wood, they’d dump some gas on th
e kindling and set the body ablaze. Some mornings they’d be stopping every twenty feet while others they wouldn’t find a single body.
The one crawler that made it just got lucky. It washed up on the beach only mostly dead. It crawled into the dunes and buried itself in the sand where it slowly recovered over the course of the day. By the time night came around it’d been ready to wreak havoc. Which was exactly what it did. The crawler had slipped right through the patrols that roamed the neighborhoods and ended up in the backyard of a woman with a couple of yorkies and a golden doodle. She’d let them out to pee thinking it hadn’t been dark for long enough for it to be dangerous outside yet.
Her lapse in judgement ended in a ravaged forearm. The crawler had left her and jumped the fence to look for more victims once it felt the change coming over the woman. The woman’s husband had come out of the house to check on her when he heard the dogs barking. He got outside just in time to see what his wife looked like fully turned. He only got to see her for a second before she was chewing on his face.
The crawler had continued around the neighborhood stealthily locating people who should’ve known better. People who had a false sense of security. They thought the inlet and their weapons kept them safe. It was a big community of ex-military types. There were a lot of people who smoked. They’d either cut way back at night or started smoking in their houses. The ones who smoked in their houses were fine as long as they had a spouse who was ok with that. The night the crawler came to visit you didn’t need the surgeon general to tell you that smoking was bad for your health.
It was a good hour from the time the first victim was turned until an alarm was raised. Gunshots were heard from a home where a woman had barricaded herself in a closet. She’d hidden in there to escape her husband. He’d tried to break in and kill her after a smoke break. She’d tearfully opened up on him with the shotgun they kept in the closet. Shooting through the door she’d managed to miss him with her first four shots. She got him with the fifth as he ripped open the door. She got him but he got her right on her pudgy white ankle when she walked over to see if he was still alive or not.
People heard the gunshots and jumped on their radios to spread the alarm. The trucks full of the fast response teams immediately scrambled in the direction of the woman’s home. One of the trucks never even got there. The original crawler jumped right into its windshield causing the driver to swerve right into a group of people who were gathering in the street for a ride to the base. The rest of the night and much of the next day was pandemonium. Most of the survivors of that night had migrated to the base after all of that. The suburban homes were now oversized mausoleums housing the dead. They were a reminder of all that’d been lost.
To get away from that reminder a lot of the civilians had opted to go with the Navy ships when they pulled in and requested volunteers. The rest either stayed to help with the base or joined the scavenging crews that would go out into the cities and neighboring areas looking for supplies. Good scavengers could literally scrape by a really good living. Bad scavengers were the cowards who wouldn’t take chances or the ones who were unlucky enough to try and snag loot from somewhere a crawler happened to be hanging out.
The boat they were in drifted in to tie off on the large dock jutting out into the water from the training center. The same guy who’d brought down water earlier offered to escort them to see the duty officer. It wasn’t really an option to follow him or not. He waited impatiently on the dock while they gathered all their gear. Seeing how much they had to carry he told them to walk down to the edge of the dock and wait. He jogged off ahead.
By the time they’d gotten to the end of the dock they could see him coming back. He’d run ahead to grab a pickup truck. The truck would’ve easily fit on the large dock. Drew shifted the heavy pack around on his back and looked at the truck. Then he looked at the dock and back at the truck.
“What the hell man. This idiot couldn’t have told us to wait by the boat?” Drew asked. He looked like he was puffing himself up to tell the guy what he thought of him. Haywood moved over next to him. The truck pulled up next to them.
“Hey sorry I made you walk to the end of the dock. We fish a lot and even with policing the dock when we’re done, we still seem to get hooks in tires left and right. Rule is no one drives on the docks anymore. The chief said it seemed easier to enforce than not letting kids fish anymore.” The man bellowed out of the truck before putting it in park. The man got out of the medium sized white pickup and walked past a speechless Drew. Lisa was once again shaking her head at him with a little grin playing on her lips.
Their escort drove them around a couple of streets then parked beside a few other cars in front of a large government building. It looked like it’d been a nice building back in the 1970’s maybe. The guardsmen had put some time into crawler proofing it. Plywood covered all of the windows. Each piece of plywood had nails sticking out of it. Any crawler deciding to ram face first into that window covering was going to get the point really quick.
“You know they can beat right through the plywood, right?” LeBron asked their driver.
“For every window we did the nails on the outside with the plywood, then there’s a piece of sheet metal, then on the inside of the window we have a section of chain link fencing. We know those things can still get in, but it slows them down big time. Slows them down and makes a whole lot of noise. Gives us time to make sure we’re standing in the room waiting for them when they do finally make it.” The man said proudly.
“What if a bunch of them come through that window? Do you have a fallback place in every building?” LeBron asked.
“Yeah. Something like that. The OD might give you a tour if you ask nice. You’ll get one at some point if you’re staying here for very long. We like to run drills to make sure everybody knows what to do if it hits the fan you know.” The guard had such a thick Jersey accent it was hard to follow what he was saying but they all got the gist of it.
They stopped in front of a set of doors labeled officer’s mess. Their escort knocked a couple of times then saluted when an older man opened the door. The older man dismissed their escort but told him not to go too far. He then opened the door a little wider so they could all enter the mess.
Inside a couple of men were sitting around with cups of coffee talking. A radio in the corner periodically went off as patrols reported in on their rounds. The uniformed men in the corner wound down their conversations and turned their heads to acknowledge the newcomers. One of them asked if they’d like some coffee. Jeff had obviously been waiting for them to ask. He took off like someone had been holding him back in a slingshot.
“You’re Jeff, right? The director for continuation?” One of the officers over at the table asked.
“Yes sir. That’d be me.” Jeff answered. The officer got up and walked over towards him with his hand extended to shake.
“Good to see you made it. I’m Commander Scott. I’m the XO for Cape May. Captain Kate’s been notified you’re here. She plans on swinging by once she’s dealt with another issue.” Commander Scott said as Jeff carefully shook the commander’s hand while trying not to spill his coffee. For an organization that chugged as much coffee as the Coast Guard did, they had ridiculously dainty mugs in the coffee mess.
“Thank you, commander. Have we met?” Jeff asked.
“No. Kate’s met you though. She was in on tons of meetings with homeland security when everything was going to hell. She said you were a calm and steady voice in those times. A lot of the people alive today owe you a debt of gratitude. She also shared the plans you’d written for how we come out of a mess like this. I read them cover to cover. I bet you never thought any of that stuff would ever see the light of day, did you?” The commander asked with a grin.
A steward interrupted the conversation by entering and setting places for each of them. He had them all sit down then busied himself getting their drink orders. He told them what was available for food and took those o
rders as well. He disappeared promising to come back with food.
“The military really loves to eat.” Lisa said with a grin.
“Armies travel on their stomachs. That was Alexander the great or somebody. Known fact since forever.” LeBron said,
“I think it was Napoleon actually. Although who’s to say he didn’t get it off Alexander.” Commander Scott said joining in. LeBron decided he liked the man even if he had just corrected him. It wasn’t like he could argue the point either. With no more Siri on his cell phone he’d have to run down to the local library to do the research. No one was going to sit around for his ‘I told you so’ if it took him like three days to get back with the answer.
“Well thanks for the compliments.” Jeff remarked. “To be honest you’re right that we never expected most of our plans to be taken seriously. We weren’t sitting around waiting for the world to end you know. We were sitting around coming up with ways to deal with cataclysmic hypotheticals. The closest we got to anything real was when FEMA asked us to help them come up with the best places to stash supplies for massive storms and such. We actually used a lot of that work as the foundation for the supply depots we did end up doing.”
Crawlerz | Book 4 | From The Ashes Page 21