Last Stand For Man

by Ryan, Nicholas

  “Any tanks… things like that?”

  “A dozen APC’s,” LeCat said. “No tanks.”

  “Are there other elements of the Gendarmerie in towns nearby?”

  “They’re not responding,” LeCat said abruptly.

  Tremaine clawed his fingers through his hair and turned to Captain Devaux. “Your men, Captain? How many members of the Police Nationale are there in your headquarters outside the city walls?”

  “One hundred… maybe a few more,” Benoit Devaux said, his voice a somber rumble.

  “How many on duty right now?”

  “Less than half that amount.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Tremaine looked grim. He turned back to Henri Pelletier and planted his knuckles on the polished tabletop. “Mr. Mayor, you need to step aside and give full authority to the Army and the Police to impose martial law here in Avignon, effective immediately.”

  Pelletier leaped to his feet, an outraged protest on his lips.

  “Never!”

  Tremaine cut the mayor off with a curt slash of his hand, his features hard as granite, his voice blunt and brutal. “You cost us twelve hours of preparation time because you’re a politician, sir. By considering your own position first, and the people last, you have jeopardized everyone’s lives. It is impossible to prepare Avignon for defense if these two men,” he thrust a finger at LeCat and Devaux, “constantly need to come to you to decide if a measure is politically savory. They don’t have the time to consider whether their actions will be popular. They’re not looking to get themselves re-elected. They’re practical men. You are not.”

  “I will not stand aside,” the mayor persisted, but his voice had lost much of its outrage.

  Henri Pelletier had seemed to wither under the searing heat of Tremaine’s simmering temper. The shape and poise went out of his body and his shoulders sagged. The tight lines around his jaw softened, blurring his features so that he looked suddenly aged. He shuffled his feet, looking uncertain for one more moment, and then silently capitulated. He nodded his head. “Very well,” he muttered. “It will be so.”

  “Immediately,” Tremaine insisted.

  “Yes,” Henri Pelletier said, suddenly just a sad middle-aged man in a rumpled suit. He steeled himself, formally handed control of the city’s defenses to the Police Captain and the Colonel of the Gendarmerie, and then sagged into his chair, his gaze far away, his eyes empty.

  Tremaine felt himself relax just a little. He took no pleasure from wresting control of the city’s defenses from the mayor. But the time for sensitivity had long passed. Now urgent action was required and if the consequences of saving thousands of lives were this one man’s bruised ego, then it would be an infinitely small price to pay. He turned to LeCat and Devaux.

  “Captain, call in your men. Order every police officer inside the city’s walls. Don’t tell them why. It will only cause unrest. They need to be assembled before 8 am. I suggest you get started.”

  Benoit Devaux nodded his head and snatched his cell phone from his pocket. He bounced out of his chair, went to a corner of the room, and began talking urgently and earnestly.

  “Colonel, LeCat, your men will need to fortify the town’s gates and will be responsible for the armed defense of the city against the undead infected. The police, under Captain Devaux, will maintain civil control. Does that make sense to you?”

  “It does,” LeCat came to his feet. “But two hundred men…?”

  “We will need the help of the civilian population, of course,” Tremaine conceded. “Once the gates have been sealed and the threat is real, I’m sure we will have no problem. But closing the city off from the rest of the world is the first, and most pressing challenge. We need to block each gateway completely with buses, APC’s… anything and everything you can think of. Can you do that?”

  “We have some engineering equipment,” LeCat said vaguely. “A couple of cranes that can be used. What about the buses?”

  “We’ll commandeer them,” Tremaine said bluntly. “That will be the police Captain’s responsibility. No bus arriving inside the walls will be allowed to leave again.”

  “This is going to cause great unrest,” Henri Pelletier mumbled a dire warning from his chair.

  “Yes,” Tremaine agreed. “But that can’t be avoided. “We need every gate – large and small – blocked off completely by 9 am. And we need supplies. How do we handle that?”

  “Food and water, you mean?” Pelletier asked.

  “Yes.”

  The mayor shrugged. “There are supermarkets within the city…”

  Tremaine shook his head irritably. “That won’t be enough for us to sustain ourselves when this turns into a siege.”

  “There are several large food markets beyond the old city,” LeCat said. “They could be raided.”

  “Good,” Tremaine nodded. “Get all the men together you can divert from sealing off the gates and send them out in trucks, Colonel. Under the regulations of martial law, take all measures necessary.”

  “But…” Pelletier looked aghast. “That will encourage looting across the entire city, monsieur.”

  Tremaine shrugged. “If looting hasn’t already started, it was about to anyhow,” he said flatly. “The world has tipped over the edge. Civilization as we knew it no longer exists. It’s anarchy, Mr. Mayor. Only the strongest and those who are prepared will survive. You can’t think of this in any other way. We’re at war.”

  * * *

  They came out through the conference room doors, Henri Pelletier ashen and visibly shaken, Colonel LeCat and Captain Devaux grim faced, their jaws set and steel in their eyes. Tremaine felt exhausted, his tightly strung nerves beginning to fray as fatigue and tension took their toll.

  Deputy Mayor, Jacques Lejeune was coming up the stairs, still fastening the buttons of his suit jacket. His tie hung awry around his neck and his face looked rumpled and unshaven. He appeared to have slept in his clothes, and his hair hung disheveled, falling lank into his puffy red-rimmed eyes. He started up at the phalanx of men above him on the mezzanine foyer and paused.

  “I am sorry,” he said hastily. “My cell phone… I only just got the message.” A slow throbbing pain beat inside his skull.

  Henri Pelletier’s eyes narrowed with disapproval. Lejeune smelled of cheap perfume and stale sweat. He glared at his deputy and drew him aside into a quiet corner of the hallway.

  “Jacques, you are too late,” he said stiffly, examining his deputy closely. He saw that Lejeune was a physical mess. His eyes had a gaunt, hunted look. “I have handed over authority for the defense of Avignon to the Colonel and the Captain. Lejeune’s long drawn face reflected his shock, but secretly he felt relieved. The decisions that would have been necessary for him to make were simply beyond his ability and fortitude. He let out a long sigh of breath and then nodded. “Perhaps it is for the best,” he conceded weakly. “We are not fighting men, Henri. This is something extraordinary that is beyond our levels of understanding, yes?”

  Pelletier studied Lejeune’s expression suspiciously for long minutes, noting the shift in the taller man’s eyes, and the little tightening of nerves along his jawline. Lejeune’s long nicotine-stained fingers were fidgeting. Finally the tall man looked away, self-conscious under the intense scrutiny.

  “Yes…” Henri Pelletier said slowly, mistrust in his tone. “But I for one will do whatever I can to assist the Captain to maintain civil order. That is our responsibility, Jacques. And we do understand the fears of our people. It will be our task – yours and mine – to aid the Captain, and to sooth the people when calamity and death comes to our city’s door. Do you agree?”

  “Yes,” Lejeune nodded his head. “That is the least we can do.”

  * * *

  Tremaine came down the steps of the Town Hall and stood for a moment on the cobblestones of the outdoor plaza. Early morning sunlight was rising above the rooftops and filtering tranquilly through the trees. T
he city was silent, still asleep. Beside him, the police Captain and the Colonel of the French gendarmerie were talking urgently to each other, their faces earnest.

  And suddenly Tremaine didn’t know what to do with himself.

  He reached for his cell phone and dialed Maxime Boudin in Paris. The phone rang out, unanswered.

  “Come on, Max,” he muttered. If Paris had been overrun by the infected he wondered whether the Health Minister and the other members of the French government had escaped to safety or if they had died at their desks. He dialed again and stood clutching the phone to his ear for long anxious seconds, tapping his foot impatiently, until Colonel LeCat came and stood abruptly before him.

  Tremaine shut down his phone and looked up into the soldier’s harsh face. “Yes?”

  “You must come with me,” LeCat said simply. “I will need you at the main gates to supervise.”

  Tremaine held up his hands and shook his head. “Colonel, I’m not an engineer, and I can’t drive a crane. I wouldn’t be any help to you.”

  The Colonel’s expression did not change. “It’s your plan,” he said simply. “You must see that it is carried through.”

  “What about the western wall? I was told that the city had boards of some kind and doors that were used to block the gatehouses during flooding. Do you know anything about them?”

  LeCat nodded. “Captain Devaux has men enough to complete that task,” he said dismissively. “It has already been decided. It is the other gates we must worry about, monsieur. They will need to be barricaded, and the longer we stand here in useless discussion, the less time we have to complete the task.”

  * * *

  There were eight buses parked at the Avignon bus terminal by the time Tremaine and LeCat pulled up in a jeep-like Peugeot P4 four-wheel-drive. Tremaine got out of the unarmored, camouflaged vehicle and looked around him, taking in everything in a matter of seconds.

  Behind them stood the imposing grand edifice of the Avignon Post Office, and ahead were the wide open gates he remembered being driven through under police escort when he had arrived in the city. The buses were parked at awkward angles and the drivers were protesting in loud agitated voices with police officers. On the sidewalk a crowd of disquieted and confused bystanders had gathered. LeCat glanced around quickly and checked his wristwatch. “This is the largest, most used gate on the south side of the city,” he said. “It will also be the most difficult to obstruct. We need to block the entire expanse of four lanes. We have these buses to do it.”

  Tremaine frowned, deep in thought. It was just after 7 am in the morning. Traffic off the road network beyond the walls was still light. He flicked a sideways glance at LeCat. “When will the crane arrive?”

  “We have one at our barracks on Boulevard Raspail,” he said. “It is on its way here.”

  “Where is that?”

  LeCat pointed northwest. “Just a few minutes away,” he assured Tremaine. “And we have a civilian crane being brought in from a nearby construction site.”

  “Will it come through these gates?”

  “Yes. It should be here within the half-hour.”

  Tremaine strode towards the gates, crossing the wide expanse of the bus depot and walking towards the nearest battlement. There were stone steps inside the structure and another set of narrow steps connecting to the firing platform that ran the length of adjoining wall. He turned back to LeCat and pointed. “We’ll need ladders,” he said. “Lots of them. Once we get men up onto the upper level of the wall, we’re fine. But there’s no other way to access the firing platform.”

  LeCat arched his eyebrows, and his mouth pressed into a thin pale line, aggravated by his own oversight. “Yes,” he said grimly. “This was unforeseen. I will attend to it.” He turned on his heel and reached inside the driver’s seat of the P4 jeep. Tremaine heard the Colonel in the background barking orders over a two-way and shut the sound out of his mind. Instead he went and watched the passing traffic with a rising sense of unease.

  There was something in the air; something intangible that was just an instinct – a sense of foreboding that seemed to vibrate. It was as if the world were trembling, the ground softly rumbling under his feet. It was in the harsh sounds of the passing traffic, and it was on the faces of the drivers.

  It was unholy fear – not expressed; not given voice… but lurking like a sinister shadow in the depths of men’s souls.

  Tremaine shivered and something cold and creeping slithered along his spine.

  Behind him he heard a snarling rumble of heavy engine noise and Tremaine turned to watch the Army’s crane come trundling along the main street of the old city. Following it were three truck loads of French soldiers and two police cars, their lights flashing. The sound jarred the eerie hush of early morning. Two of the Army trucks did not stop. Instead they drove out through the gates in a surging cloud of black diesel exhaust. Tremaine propped his hands on his hips and watched the camouflaged trucks join the traffic streaming past the open gates. In the distance, moving against the grain of vehicles heading east, approached the high hanging arm of the other crane LeCat had promised. Tremaine grunted and glanced fretfully at his watch.

  * * *

  With the police parked across the main highway outside the gates and all traffic halted from entering the old city, LeCat ordered the first bus to be driven between the two battlements and then overturned. The huge vehicle went crashing onto its side, with the roof of the bus facing out at the world and the ugly black chassis facing into Avignon. Glass windows crashed, upended tires spun on their axles. The two cranes worked like prehistoric monsters picking over the carcass of dead prey until the bus could be dragged into place. Then the second bus was overturned and the gateway made impassable to traffic. Tremaine stood back, looking on critically. He went to each battlement to be sure the buses overlapped the old stonework and then windmilled his arm at LeCat. The next two buses were overturned and then hoisted precariously into the air. The first bus swung like a pendulum while the cranes inched it into position. Then it was dropped onto the broken shell of the bus below it. When the second bus was finally in place, the barricade stood two buses high; a wall of crumpled broken metal that reached twenty feet above the road.

  “It looks good,” Tremaine admitted. He dragged the sleeve of his shirt across his brow. Even in the cool early morning air he was sweating.

  “There is one way to find out,” LeCat grunted. He sent a man at a run along the inside of the wall until he reached the next gate and then ordered him to try to escalade the barricade of buses. The soldier came back fifteen minutes later, red faced and dripping sweat through his fatigues. He shook his head in defeat. LeCat allowed himself the faintest mirthless smile.

  “Very well,” he agreed with Tremaine. “Now we will move on to the next gate.”

  * * *

  “Preacher, you must come and see. Satan is at work!” a man came into the abandoned warehouse gasping and out of breath. He stood in the darkened doorway, staring through flickering candlelight and swirling incense smoke to where an imposing man dressed in a flowing black robe stood on a raised platform.

  The tall man on the stage stared venomously for a moment, outraged at the interruption to his sunrise sermon, and then his face lapsed quickly into a benevolent mask. He combed his fingers through the silver pelt of his beard, and then his gaze shifted to the crowd that had assembled, kneeling on the cold concrete floor, to listen to him speak.

  For months his dire doomsday predictions had drawn just a dozen faithful lost souls. Now his flock counted into the hundreds, each of them driven to find God and salvation since the Raptor virus had spread around the globe.

  The man on the stage closed the bible he had been reading from.

  “Speak,” his voice rumbled like thunder across a storm-filled sky. “Why do you interrupt God’s word?”

  “The Army and police are on the streets,” the man’s voice became querulous and intimidated. “They’re sealing off t
he city’s gates.”

  * * *

  Two buses were driven to the Porte Saint Roch gate with one of the cranes trundling awkwardly along the narrow road that ran inside the wall, following close behind. Several civilian cars had to be moved from the roadside and the whole operation took a frustrating hour before the crane could overturn the first bus and wedge it into place across the open gatehouse. Tremaine drove in the P4 with LeCat, while a police car raced ahead of the procession to block off traffic. LeCat was furious – precious minutes ticking away. He barked threats at his men and threw his arms about, red-faced and seething with impatience. The first bus crashed onto its side in a rending screech of broken glass and crumpled metal, but beneath the clamor came suddenly another sound – a noise like waves crashing on a beach.

  Tremaine turned, frowning and puzzled. The sound became a muted roar. Tremaine felt a slow leaden weight of fear fill his legs. His mouth turned dry. He turned and saw LeCat narrowing his eyes warily, his soldier’s instincts prickling the fine hairs on the back of his arms. LeCat had just six armed men with him, the rest of the troops sent to seal another gate with the civilian crane. Suddenly he wished he had not been so blasé. He reached slowly for the sidearm holstered to his waist and drew the weapon, just as a crowd of angry people came spilling across the intersection of a narrow road, surging with their fists clenched towards the soldiers. They came as a solid phalanx of people, swarming past the houses that lined the street like a river in flash flood. They were chanting, their faces distorted and swollen. There were men and women and children, all of them incensed and outraged.

  “Get back,” LetCat told Tremaine levelly. “Get the men into a line and keep them calm. No one is to open fire without my orders.”

  LeCat kept his weapon lowered by his waist and strode out to meet the line of protesters. Behind him, the soldier in the crane and half-a-dozen troopers shuffled themselves urgently into positions. There were two policemen standing by their vehicle. They drew their weapons and took cover behind the car, guns raised and pointed into the mass of protesters.