The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here (17 page)

“So back to the original questions, what is your best estimate? Can we survive here? There have been some arguments in staff meetings about relocation of our forces and dependents while we still have the assets to move them to the Yakima Training Center. It would be a nightmare but I think, if we commandeer a lot of the eighteen wheelers and other big trucks in the area, we could get all of the people and most of the supplies away.”

“Andy,” said Chad somewhat guardedly, “if you stay, you have to will kill tens of thousands of American citizens, a lot of who will not be infected, just scared and out of options. If you decide to go it will have to be soon and you will kill probably as many and very likely more. Here is my wild assed guess on this. If you can’t pull the plug and leave in a week, while there is still some respect for the law and order, you should stay.

“There will be many that think that you have a cornucopia of supplies and will do anything to get into your convoys. They will build barricades and tear up highways to get at you, and these are just the desperate but uninfected folks.

“Those that are infected are irrational, but clever. I can’t even begin to think what they will do. I doubt the Congress and the President will cut folks around here off from your support any time soon. They will likely hide in their bunkers and continue to prevaricate and even a week is too long. Besides, how long will it take you to organize that kind of rolling circus? I reiterate, I think you should stay.”

Colonel Antonopoulos took long pull from his beer and starred out the window for a while, lost in thought.

“I think General Buckley needs to hear this,” said Colonel Antonopoulos. “I am going to postpone your departure for a day. If you thought that last meeting was long, the one I am going to call for tomorrow at 07:00 will be a cast-iron bitch. We probably need to go back to my office where you can formalize this and develop PowerPoints for that sort of meeting. I am calling General Buckley, I suspect he will want a private briefing before morning.”

“Geez, and I thought being an enlisted staff wienie was tough,” said Chad.

May 20
th
, Wednesday, 3:12am PDT.

Mary Strickland couldn’t sleep. She missed Chad and what with Dave Tippet hanging around all day and all the kids, she hadn’t had any time to herself to make sense of what was going on. Dave had relented after talking to Chad and they were allowed upstairs now but they had stayed inside all day with the shades drawn. The kids had watched movies on Netflix in the basement rec room, but by the end of the day, they were all tired, crabby and restless. When they finally went to bed, it was a relief. She and Heather had chatted aimlessly over wine until she headed downstairs to bunk with the kids. Only Dave remained awake.

After tossing and turning for an hour or an eternity, depending on your point of view, Mary got up and made a pot of coffee. She poured herself a cup and another for Dave who was sitting quietly in the living room with the lights out. He had his Mini-14 carbine in his lap and his father’s trusty .45 on his hip.

“Dave,” said Mary quietly. “I have some coffee if you want some.”

“Thanks Mary,” said Dave in a voice just above a whisper. “Keep the light out though.”

“Dave, tell me in small words what we are hiding from,” said Mary. “I get that Chad’s TV appearances have upset that man from Homeland Security, but do you think he will actually try to hurt us?”

“I hope not,” said Dave not taking his eyes off of the gap in the curtains. “But Chad said he thinks he has hired some local punks to stop him and that lawyer, Taylor.”

“That whole thing with the car chase and all,” said Mary. “I remember, but those guys are locked up. The Highway Patrolman, Sergeant Vaughn, made sure of that.”

He took the cup of coffee and sipped while still keeping his eye on the window.

“The truth is,” said Dave after a moment of thought, “that this guy Macklin is a spook; a spy or unconventional operator in civilian terms. Times are getting rough and he is used to getting results and only obeying the law when a bright light is on him. Chad said that he is in the dog house in Washington and that the security guy where he works physically pitched him out of a meeting.

“He is angry and has lost face. He is probably desperate so yeah, I think he might hire some more thugs and try again.”

“But what about …”

“Hush Mary,” said Dave urgently. “Go wake Connor and Heather. They know what to do.”

Mary set her coffee down and moved quickly to the stairs and looked down. Connor hadn’t been sleeping either and was awake in the rec room trying to read. One look at his mom and he knew. He got up wordlessly and tapped lightly on the door into the guest room where Heather was staying and then pulled the pump shotgun from the linen closet. He stayed where he was, the plan was for him to backstop Dave and protect the kids.

Mary drew her pistol and rejoined Dave who had moved to a crouch far enough from the window that the street lights didn’t shine on him but close enough that he could see most of the street out in front. Wordlessly he pointed out the window with his carbine. Mary saw a car driving slowly by.

“This is the third time they have been by in the last fifteen minutes,” whispered Dave.

The car, a late model, black, four door Chevy Impala, stopped in front of the house and three men in dark clothes got out. They wore ski masks and gloves which made you stand out in May in the Tri-Cities. As they got out, they looked around to see if anyone was about. Seeing that there was no one visible, two of them drew pistols and the other, who was significantly larger, drew a sawed off shotgun from under his overcoat and began moving towards the house.

“Show time,” said Dave quietly and reached for the remote control in front of him. This remote used the same technology you use to change channels or CDs but what it controlled was very different. David pressed the channel one button and bright flood lights mounted in the shrubs and on the roof lit up all the approaches to the house. The men from the car were momentarily blinded. The channel two button started the sprinkler systems that soaked and further disoriented them as they had been adjusted to spray the sidewalks, not the grass. Next, Dave pressed channel three started a recorded message played at over a hundred decibels in a loop.

“THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! LEAVE AT ONCE! ALL YOUR ACTIONS ARE BEING RECORDED ON VIDEO FOR THE POLICE!”

The men looked confused but they weren’t leaving so Dave pressed channel four. There was a very loud, almost sub-sonic blast from the speakers and car alarms in a two block radius started to go off. It didn’t get all of them, but nearly half did start beeping, which was enough. Lights up and down the street came on and people were rushing out to vehicles and saw the three men in the harsh white light emitted from the LED flood lights.

A Keystone Kops moment ensued as they all tried to get into the same door of the car. Dave set down the rifle, pocketed the remote, and gathered a handgun and camera that were prepositioned on a coffee table near the door.

With one hand on the camera and the other holding the gun, he began taking pictures as he headed out the door and got several shots of the men scrambling into the car, of the car itself and most importantly, two really clear shots of the license plates as the car roared off down the street.

As soon as they were out of sight, Dave holstered his pistol and thumbed the channel nine button and all the light and sound shut off, leaving his ears ringing in the silence that was only broken by the two car alarms that hadn’t yet been silenced.

Christi Howeland, a neighbor and the mother of Connor’s friend Amy came rushing across the street in her bathrobe and slippers. She had her cell phone in her hand and was giving her address to whoever was on the other end of her phone call.

“Dave, what is going on?” asked Christi breathlessly as she put the phone in the pocket of the robe. “Who were those men? We heard all the noise and we thought …”

“I think everything is Ok,” said Dave. “I have a pretty good idea who they were and that they weren’t very nice guys. If you see them around again, do call us ok?”

“Sure, OK,” said Christi uncertainly. “I called the police, I hope that is OK?”

“It was my very next move,” said Dave easily. “Thanks, not that it will do much good.”

May 20
th
, Wednesday, 7:45am PDT.

Colonel Antonopoulos’ meeting was late starting as General Buckley was engaged in a conference call with the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces, USNORTHCOM, along with perhaps forty other flag rank officers. When he came to the meeting, it was clear that while he had shaved, showered and was in a fresh uniform, he also obviously had not slept the previous night. In the room, there were the same commanders present at yesterday’s meeting. There were also several naval officers in the briefing room, one of whom was a rear admiral.

“Thank you all for attending,” said General Buckley. “I especially appreciate Admiral Turner and his staff from Kitsap Naval Base for getting here on such short notice. I’ll skip the preliminaries. In consultation with the Secretary of Defense and by direction of the President of the United States, I am declaring martial law within the state of Washington. After some discussion with the Joint Chiefs and Admiral Turner, I am assuming Command. I am senior, but the major consideration was the division of assets.

“Captain Strickland has outlined a couple of scenarios for the possible evacuation of this base to the Yakima Training Center and as an alternative, hunkering down and defending in place. Both will entail killing tens of thousands of civilians. I will accept neither of these options. We belong to the Armed Forces of the United States. We have all taken an oath. I will not be the architect of mass murder of American citizens just to protect my own pasty white ass!

“We are going to protect and feed as many as we can …”

“Sir,” said an Army Colonel named Hodges, who was in utilities and looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but from the logistics side, we don’t have enough food to last out the summer for our own troops, let alone all the civilians outside the gate.”

“Dan,” said Admiral Turner, the only person in the room that could get away with using General Buckley’s first name, “my naval personnel and installations are scattered all over Puget Sound and mainly guarded by rent-a-cops. The major elements of the fleet are currently deployed to include the USS Stennis and her battle group. Most of my sailors’ efforts will be focused on concentrating the fleet, personnel, and naval assets. I don’t have a lot to give to help you right away save for a few helicopters.”

“Dave,” said General Buckley, looking at Admiral Turner. “I wish I had time to have briefed you before this meeting but things need to happen fast if this crazy idea Strickland and my staff have cooked up last night is going to work. I am allocating a battalion of infantry to help you secure naval sites as well as significant transport to evacuate those sites that are not defendable. You need to work that out and get it done in three days tops. Then we are going to need everything you’ve got for Phase Two.”

General Buckley nodded to his aid who flashed up a PowerPoint with a bullet point outline of the plan.

“We are also requisitioning grain, beans, split peas and other crops that are in silos awaiting shipment overseas or on board ships waiting orders to sail. No ships are coming in and those that are here have no place to go, no matter what the cargo, as quarantines are springing up all over. This will entail requisitioning as many heavy civilian transport vehicles as we can find. Given the nature of the threat, it will mean heavily armed convoys to and from the waterfront. Given what Captain Strickland has told me, we will be under significant pressure from the infected in that area as they will likely be the bulk of the population in that area in a week or two if they are not already.

“At the same time this is happening, we are going to patrol, clean out, and as much as we are able, sanitize the whole training complex. Then we will fortify it.”

The silence was intense. Finally, Colonel Hodges spoke up.

“Sir, I am your G-4, I will state flat out that we can’t support that tempo of operations for more than three weeks tops. We will run out of fuel. If we can use the JP-4 set aside for Air Force operations as many of our vehicles have multi-fuel engines, then we will hit a spare parts bottleneck probably in two to three months. We will be well into our war stocks of ammunition by that time as well.”

“That should be plenty of time to get the ball rolling,” said General Buckley with a smile. “Hodges, you are the best damned Four in the army. I am slipping your leash. Get with Admiral Turner’s N-4 and get things rolling. From whatever source you can, beg, borrow, or steal anything we can use. Think big. By the end of the month, I want civilian machine shops on base to start building many of the spares we will need. I want us to be reloading our own ammunition. Take over the US Oil Refinery in Tacoma if you can. I know there are tankers in the Sound filled with crude and we can use just about anything you can come up with. Come up with a plan and force requirements. I’ll give you as much as I can. Make it happen yesterday.

“Then get all the training and staff personnel we have on base off their collective asses because I have got a job for them to do. Here is the really crazy part of my idea. We will accept anyone who wants to enlist in the Army, or if we have personnel needs, in the other services wherever else they are needed. Any relatively fit adult between the ages of sixteen and sixty will be allowed in. If they can bring their own weapons, then so much the better. God knows we don’t have enough small arms for all the folks currently under orders. Focus on military calibers for supply reasons but accept everything. Each newly enlisted member will be allowed to bring in their immediate family just as they would normally plus a set of parents or some such.

“All will be given as complete a physical as we can to spot infected inductees. Colonel Hill, that will be your department, but we will probably end up with some anyway so a quarantine facility will have to be set up. You will have priority on any civilian medical personnel that show up. Work the details. Housing arrangements will be primitive.

“We are going to open the gates to anyone who wants to come in. They will be housed in the training area, in canvas. We will also have to push some of Colonel Antonopoulos pretty planes unto the ramp because we will be housing folks in his hangers too. All of the staff personnel on base are going to be up to their eyes in work because we are going to in-process and begin training fifty or sixty thousand enlistees, if Captain Strickland’s projections are correct, which will mean over a hundred thousand extra dependents on base. We can use them to secure the perimeter with foot patrols once we get them a modicum of training to ease the POL issue and get them used to military discipline. Lots of staff and training NCOs and officers are going to find themselves commanding troops, some for the first time. Get them trained!

“This is a staff and planning nightmare that we will solve before the day is out. The plan doesn’t have to be perfect, just in place today because tomorrow we announce it to the public.”

“Sir, aren’t we being a little hasty,” said Brigadier General Whitely, the commander of the 191
st
Infantry Brigade, a cadre only unit for training the National Guard and Reserve. “Something like this will take a month to plan and weeks to implement.”