Crucifixion - 02 (19 page)

“OK, tell me your situation here.  Who’s in charge?”  He
just stared at me until Betty reached out and grabbed his arm, shaking him.

“I guess I am,” he said, looking at the other officers for
support.  They nodded agreement.  “We’ve lost a lot of people and the mayor,
the city council, the Chief of Police, they’re all dead, and I haven’t seen or
heard from my lieutenant in days.”

“OK, then.”  Time to take charge.  “What’s this road block
all about?”

“Uh, well,” he stammered.  “We’ve been hearing about some
crazy shit The Reverend is pulling so we thought we’d better set up here in
case he and his followers decided to come to town.”

“The Reverend is dead,” I said.  “What you need to be
worried about are the millions of infected that are headed this way.  We just
drove through the leading edge of the herd that’s coming up from the gulf.  How
many people are we talking about in town?  Can you evacuate?”

“No way!”  He shook his head for emphasis.  “We’ve got
refugees from all over the country side, women and children, and there’s no way
we have even close to enough vehicles to evacuate to Nashville.”

“What about the National Guard?”  I asked, waving at the
trucks blocking the road.

“They all got pulled out of here by the regular Army and
went south,” he answered.  “I heard rumors they were setting up a defense down
on the ‘Bama border, but that’s all I know.  These were trucks left behind at
the armory that we grabbed for the roadblock.”  Shit.  Was there any good
news?  These people were about to get overrun.

“What’s left in the armory?”

“I don’t know.  It’s locked up tight and we didn’t try to
get in.”

“Get me to the armory,” I said and turned to Betty.  “Miss
Betty, thank you for everything.”

“Don’t thank me, young man.  Save us.  That will make it
worth everything.”

Minutes later I was in the front seat of Sergeant Jackson’s
cruiser, Rachel and Dog stuffed in the back behind a wire barrier, and we were
screaming through town with lights and siren.  Behind us were the other three
officers, each in their own car and we made a very conspicuous convoy that was
attracting a lot of attention.  Everywhere I looked were people.  Mostly
families.  They were camping on the front lawns of homes, in the parking lots
of businesses and as we roared past a large park I could see a sea of tents
covering every inch of open ground.  Fuck me, this was just one big buffet
waiting for the infected to show up and select the all you can eat option.  I
glanced over my shoulder at Rachel and she met my eyes and shook her head. 
There were just too many people and the infected were way too close.  The
Sergeant was right.  There was no way to evacuate in the amount of time we had,
but we could still save a lot of these people.  Minutes later we flew past a
rail yard, the cruiser nearly catching air as we blasted over multiple sets of
rails embedded into the asphalt.  The rail yard was massive with a long row of
orange cargo cranes stretching away into the distance looking like skeletons of
dinosaurs in the dark.  I looked at the hundreds of rail road cars sitting on
dozens of tracks that crossed the area and had an idea.

“Sergeant, do the tracks from this yard go to the west?”

“Yes, they do.  Not quite sure where, but they head west out
of town.”  He glanced over at me as he drove.

“OK, we’re going to see what we can find at the Armory to
slow down the infected.  I’ll deal with that.  I want you to find whoever you
need to find to get a train hooked up and start loading people on it.  There
may not be enough vehicles to evacuate, but you can sure as hell shove a lot of
people into those livestock cars.”  For some reason my mind flashed on another
time in human history when men dressed all in black who thought they were the
master race shoved livestock cars full of people to haul them to their doom.  I
didn’t like the thought and shook my head, ignoring Rachel’s question of what I
was thinking.

Once past the rail yard Sergeant Jackson slowed enough to
make a tire screeching left into a huge parking lot that was full of civilian
vehicles that had been driven there by the National Guard soldiers who had been
called up.  He gunned the car down a long row of what was mostly pickups then
came to a tire smoking halt in front of a large building that looked like it
had been built during WW II.  A large sign read ‘Tennessee National Guard
Armory’ and under it was a large yellow sign with the radiological symbol that
advised the building was a fallout shelter, next to it another faded sign that
was white with the symbol for Civil Defense barely visible on it. 

Piling out of the car I trotted to the double front doors
which were locked tight.  The doors were steel and built to the specs one would
expect from a cold war era fallout shelter.  I rushed back to the car where my
pack sat on the front seat and dug through until I found the remainder of the
plastic explosive breaching charges.  Back at the door I pulled out the rope-like
charge but my hands couldn’t work the material and remove the waxed paper from
the adhesive side.  Thrusting it into Rachel’s hands I talked her through how
to set it up and where to place it, where to insert the detonators and we all
moved away from the doors and took shelter behind Jackson’s car.  Thumbing the
remote I involuntarily turtled my head into my shoulders when the explosion
ripped through the night with enough force to shatter the windows on the side
of Jackson’s car that was facing the building as well as the closest row of
parked vehicles.

Standing up I rushed into the dust cloud and up to the
damaged doors.  The right door was still hanging by part of a severely damaged
hinge and the two doors were still attached to each other by the padlocked
chain that had been fed through each handle.  A swift kick on the right door
and the overstressed hinge gave completely, the heavy doors falling to the
ground with a loud bang.  I stepped quickly into the building, Dog at my side with
Rachel and the cops following.  Moving through the structure I came to an area
in the back that was fenced off with a heavy duty chain link fence that went
all the way to the ceiling.  The double gate was reinforced but was only
secured with a standard duty padlock you could pick up at any hardware store. 
Inside the cage I could see row after row of older weapons, older defined as what
appeared to be 20 year old M16 rifles which would have been passed on to the
National Guard as the regular Army upgraded to the M4.  Stepping back I waved
everyone around a corner and fired two bursts from my rifle into the padlock
which shattered and fell away.

“Sergeant, get on the radio and get those Deuce and a Half’s
- the military trucks at the roadblock – on the way over here.  Also have
someone start rounding up able bodied men.”  I moved into the cage as Jackson
started making radio calls and issuing orders.  Besides the rifles lined up
neatly in racks I found dozens of crates of loaded magazines, more crates of
bulk ammunition and another rack of pistols.  Yanking cabinets open I was happy
to find uniforms, boots, belts, vests, and more goodies.  Grabbing replacements
for what I had lost I quickly changed clothes, laced up a new set of boots and
loaded my new vest down with magazines and a shiny new Ka-Bar knife.  My Kukri
was strapped horizontally to the small of my back in the new sheath that Rachel
had fashioned for me from the vinyl seat material from the bus.  I took a
moment to look for a pistol to replace the one I’d lost when captured by The
Reverend, but all I was finding were the new 9 mm pistols the Military had
switched to.  Not my preference, but you fight with what you got.  Outfitted
again I went to check up on the loading of the rifles into the truck.

Jackson had worked quickly and a veritable mob of men and
women had showed up, quickly forming a bucket brigade that was passing rifles,
crates of magazines, ammo and grenades out to the waiting truck.  As I was
watching a couple of crates at the back of the cage caught my eye and I walked
over, very happy to find two M60 machine guns.  Both looked well used but well
maintained.  Stacked next to them were thousands of rounds of ammo, ready to
go.  I whistled to get the attention of the work gang leader and pointed at all
the crates I was standing next to.  He nodded and immediately sent half a dozen
men in my direction to start grabbing and loading.

Dog and I followed the chain of frightened looking people
who were passing the crates along to the waiting trucks and squeezed our way
out the doors into the night air.  Rachel stood at the edge of the parking lot,
watching men load the truck.  Another truck turned into the lot while we stood
there, pulling up behind the first one and waited to start loading.  I looked
around and saw hundreds of people streaming into the parking lot.  I didn’t
have a watch but I’ve always had a good internal clock and knew we’d already
spent half an hour of our three hour window before the infected arrived. 
People kept pouring in as word spread amongst the townspeople and refugees that
a fight was on their doorstep.  Watching the people file in I looked up to the
horizon where the cranes in the rail yard were faintly visible in the moonlight
and had another idea.  Looking around I spotted Jackson and trotted over to
him.

“I need the guys that work in that rail yard,” I said,
pointing in the general direction.  “Preferably a foreman.”

“Jim Roberts,” he said without hesitation.  “He’s inside on
the bucket brigade.”

“Get him,” I ordered, pushing Jackson towards the doors and
turning back to look at the rail yard, my head whirling with ideas.  Less than
a minute later he returned and tapped me on the shoulder.  I turned around and
found myself looking at the top of the head of a skinny, balding man.

“I’m Jim Roberts.  You needed something?”

“That rail yard.  Lots of freight in there in those big
metal shipping containers?”

“Yeah.  We’re the busiest freight yard east of the
Mississippi except for Chicago.  Why?”  He was looking at me like I was an idiot
wasting his time.

“You have forklifts big enough to move them around?”

“Yeah.  So what?”  He was getting irritated but curious
too.  Jackson and Rachel were pressing in to listen and I saw realization dawn
on Rachel’s face.

“Grab as many men as you need and start moving those
containers to set up a wall south of town.  Place the containers end to end. 
When you get a wall say a half a mile long you’ll need to start stacking them
up.  I’ve seen the infected come up against buildings and start piling on top
of each other until they made it all the way to the roof.  Can you do that?” 
He got the idea and smiled.

“Use Forrest Avenue,” Jackson interjected.  “It’s four lanes
wide and there’s not any residential areas south of it.  It runs perfectly east
and west.”  I nodded and looked at the foreman.

“Hell yes I can do that!”  He turned and started to run off
but I stopped him for a second.

“You’ve got to work fast.  That wall is our only chance to
slow them down long enough to get people loaded onto the train.”  I said.  He
looked at me for a moment to see if I was serious.  Realizing I was he ran back
into the building yelling names at the top of his voice.  A minute later he ran
back out the door with three men on his heels.

“I need some military vets,” I said to Jackson.  “Preferably
Army or Marine, but I’ll even take a Coast Guardsman if he has experience with
an M60 machine gun.”  An older, grizzled man wearing jeans and a Hank Williams,
Jr. T-shirt was standing not far away and spoke up when he overheard the
conversation.

“Wilbur James, USMC.”  He said.  “Vietnam in ’67 and ’68. 
Reckon I know an M60 about as good as anyone around here.  What do you need?”

“I’ve got two M60s and need gunners that know how to use
them.”  I said.  “Know anyone else?”

“Yes sir.  My grandson.  He served two tours in Afghanistan
with the Corps.”  He turned his head and shouted towards the crowd.  Moments
later a much younger version of him pushed through the press of bodies to stand
next to Wilbur who gave him a five second version of what was going on.

The M60s and their ammo were just starting to come down the
bucket brigade and I pointed the James boys at them.  Wilbur assured me he had
it under control and he and his grandson set off to intercept the machine guns,
redirecting them to waiting hands that carried them across the parking lot to a
couple of battered Chevy trucks.  Meanwhile the first deuce and a half was
fully loaded and started to pull off so the second could pull forward and start
loading.

“I’m going to the wall.  Find someone to take over here and
start getting that train put together and loaded.”  I said to Jackson and
thumped on the door of the first truck.  The driver braked and I pulled open
the passenger door and waved Rachel and Dog inside.  Cab full, I shut the door
and climbed up onto the running board with an arm hooked through the heavy
bracket that held the side mirror.

“Hang on a second.”  I said to the driver who nodded.

“Hey!”  I shouted out over the heads of the crowd.  A few
people looked my way but there were still dozens of conversations going on and
I didn’t have the crowd’s attention.  I looked at the driver and he leaned on
the truck’s horn and held it there for 10 seconds, stopping every side
conversation and drawing the crowd’s attention.

“There are thousands of infected on their way, not much more
than a couple of hours away.” I deliberately understated the size of the herd
that was bearing down on the town.  “We’re building a wall on Forrest Avenue to
slow them while we get a train loaded up to evacuate the town and we’ve got a
lot of rifles we’re getting out of the Armory with no fingers to pull triggers. 
I need anyone with military experience first, then anyone that knows how to
shoot to meet me on Forrest Avenue.  We have to defend the wall.  We can slow
them enough to save the people in this town, but I need every able bodied
person that can help.  People looked at each other, some frightened, some
determined.  From the back of the crowd a small, young woman shouted out over
everyone’s heads.

“I was in the Army in Iraq and can shoot.  I’ll be there!” 
Everyone cranked their heads around to look at the woman, then a young man with
only one arm spoke up too.  Soon the whole crowd was shouting their support.  I
waved to them and told the driver to get us to Forrest Avenue as fast as he
could.