Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (8 page)

“So we can survive here long term, but with a limited population, and in the short term we can accommodate extra people but have to find them some place to relocate, is that about the size of it?”

“Yes, sir, basically,” Butler said.

“I’ve spoken to Levi Jenkins and Vern Gibson,” Wright said, “they have pretty much all the farmers and landowners along the river out fifteen or twenty miles sold on the idea of a mutual protection network. I’m thinking we could build on that concept and turn the manned security stations we’d planned to establish along the river into small towns, each anchored around a fortified base. They could be mutually supporting and—”

“Whoa!” Hunnicutt said. “Towns and bases are a hell of a lot more intrusive than the security stations we were talking about, with much bigger footprints. How are the farmers going to feel about that?”

“I think they’ll go for it, under the circumstances. We’re talking fortified towns of up to two hundred people every mile or so on alternating sides of the river, each with maybe ten or twenty acres of land. A hell of a lot of that riverfront is undeveloped woodland anyway, sir, so it’s not like they’d lose productive farmland,” Wright said.

“So you figure everyone in these towns is going to live inside the fortified base.” Hunnicutt shook his head. “That’ll be a bit tight.”

“Not nearly as tight as it will be here, sir.”

Hunnicutt nodded. “Point taken. You think the farmers will go for it?”

“What’s not to like,” Wright said. “They’ll have an employable labor pool without having to actually house folks on their own places. Each town can have a militia unit, and they can all be mutually supportive. We can house mechanics, medical facilities, and other needed services in the different towns, all accessible by water. We can—”

Hunnicutt held up his hands. “Okay, okay, I think I get the picture. Get with Levi and Vern and see if you can sell them on the plan, and if so, ask them to start scouting sites and working with their friends and neighbors to get buy in. Then I want you and Butler, in your spare time, of course, to start figuring out what skill sets we’re going to need to start these towns from scratch. Grab anyone you need to help plan that, but make sure to include Levi and Vern. If we expect people along the river to buy in to us redesigning their world, it’s only polite to get their input.”

The pair nodded, and Hunnicutt muttered, almost to himself, “Then we just have to play God and decide which of these people get offered tickets to a decent existence and which ones we leave in Hell.”

“It’s going to be a tough call, sir,” Luke said, sympathy in his voice.

“That it is, Major, that it is. Which brings me to contingency planning,” Hunnicutt said. “We’re hoping for the best, but we sure as hell need to be realistic and plan for the worst. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention the odds are stacked against us.”

Everyone nodded, and Hunnicutt continued.

“We’re doing the best we can feeding and sheltering our growing refugee population, but we have to face facts. They’re living in squalor in cardboard and canvas shacks, with minimal sanitation. We’re essentially feeding them slop and providing them drinking water, and we’ll do our best to improve that, but chances are pretty good that every advance we make is going to be offset by a population increase. And it’s summer now; God knows how we’ll cope when it gets cold.”

Butler shrugged. “But what more can we do, sir? We’re trying—”

“That’s just the point,” Hunnicutt said. “We’re all flat out and working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, and we’re still falling behind. But I’m sure there’s not a single person in that refugee camp who thinks we’re doing enough. We wouldn’t feel any different if we were there, because that’s human nature. To those folks, we’re the privileged ones with guns who eat good food, crap in real toilets, sleep in real beds out of the elements, and even get to take the occasional shower. Major Kinsey’s suggestion to establish an exclusion zone, necessary though it is, will add to that resentment. I believe anyone in that camp who doesn’t hate us already probably will within a week, or a month max.”

Wright nodded. “Actually, you can already feel the resentment when you ride through the camp. But what can we do about it?”

Hunnicutt sighed. “There’s nothing we can do except continue to do our best. But we can’t ignore it either. That camp is becoming a powder keg of simmering resentment, subject to blowing up at any time. We need a contingency plan for rapid withdrawal of all our folks, including our civilian recruits like Dr. Jennings.” He paused. “And we have to be prepared for the possibility safe withdrawal may require use of deadly force. I want you to pick out your most trustworthy NCOs and come up with rules of engagement if we have to activate the withdrawal plan. I want that strictly need to know, and God help anyone who lets any mention of the plan slip to ANYONE.”

Wright hesitated. “Ah … what about the folks we have to evacuate? I mean Dr. Jennings—”

“Especially don’t tell Jennings,” Hunnicutt said. “She’ll be appalled at the very idea, and advance notice won’t make extracting her any easier. It will also likely mean endless arguments with her and guarantee everyone will know about the plan. If it comes to an emergency evacuation, just plan to hog-tie her and bring her along. In fact, make forced extraction of our civilians part of the plan if necessary. If things go to hell, we’re not going to have a debate. After they’re safely inside Fort Box, they can leave if they want, but at least they’ll have an option at that point.”

Hunnicutt’s subordinates nodded in unison.

“Understood, sir,” Wright said. “We’ll get on it.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Hunnicutt said. “If there’s nothing else, I think we’re done.”

The three nodded and began to rise.

“Oh, Major,” Hunnicutt said to Luke, “a word, if you don’t mind.”

Luke settled back into his chair with a quizzical look and waited for the other two to file out. Hunnicutt waited for the door to close before speaking.

“Thank you, Luke. Have you given any more thought to your longer term plans?”

Luke shook his head. “I appreciate your confidence and the promotion, Colonel, and I’m not going to leave you while things are obviously as critical as they are, but I’ve always been up front with you. I want to join my dad and the rest of the family, which means they either come back here or I go down to Texas. Since there’s only one of me, it makes more sense for me to go there. It would be near impossible for my dad to make it back up here with my sister and my aunt’s family.”

“You know my hope with the promotion was to make you second-in-command—”

“Yes, sir, and you know I declined. I’ll stick around awhile and do anything you need me to do, but when the time comes, I’m leaving. That would be a great deal more difficult if I was in a leadership position.” He paused and looked Hunnicutt in the eye. “And I think you know that, sir.”

Hunnicutt smiled ruefully. “Busted. Okay then, any idea when that time will be?”

Luke hesitated. “I can give you six months, with the understanding if my dad needs me before then, I’m going.”

Hunnicutt nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll take what I can get. Thank you, Luke.”

“You’re welcome, sir. Now if that’s all, I suspect Lieutenant Butler may want to talk to me about a little recon trip down to the Military Ocean Terminal.”

Chapter Four

M/V
Pecos Trader

Sun Lower Anchorage

Neches River

Near Nederland, Texas

Day 26, 6:35 a.m.

Captain Jordan Hughes felt the heat of the rising sun on his neck as he stood bent at the waist, his forearms resting on the ship’s rail, studying the curious operation unfolding on the water below. Some distance down the deck, Chief Mate Georgia Howell was also at the rail, her eyes glued on the river’s surface and her right hand raised, signaling the bosun in the cab of the hose-handling crane as he lowered a strange-looking contraption to the water.

Hughes heard a slap and a curse and looked around to see Matt Kinsey, formerly chief petty officer, USCG, staring at a large blood spot in his open palm, a dark blob in the middle of it.

“I don’t know whether this is a mosquito or a frigging bat,” Kinsey said. “I may need a transfusion.”

Hughes laughed. “Well, they’ll be worse in bayou country. But I anticipated you.” He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out a small bottle and held it out to Kinsey. “Polak has some insect repellent squirreled away somewhere, consider it our contribution to the mission.”

Kinsey grinned. “Outstanding! Thank you, Captain,” he said as he slipped the bottle in his pocket and stepped closer to the rail. His grin widened as he looked down.

“But not the only contribution. That chief engineer of yours is a pretty smart cookie. I’d been driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to get the boat around those locks. This is terrific!”

Hughes nodded. “Well, maybe. Presuming it doesn’t fall apart on the way there. It’s not exactly the sleekest craft in the fleet.” He watched as Georgia Howell lowered the subject of their discussion the last few feet to settle on the river’s surface. It was a sturdily built aluminum boat trailer outfitted on either side with two large and ungainly-looking pontoons, each constructed of four fifty-five-gallon oil drums held in rigid alignment by a skeletal structure of lightweight angle iron. A sheet metal cone was fitted at what was apparently the ‘bow’ of each pontoon.

Kinsey watched the makeshift craft bob on the water. “It floats well enough,” Kinsey said, “and I watched Gowan and the boys put those pontoons together. They’ll hold up just fine. I figured we had no more use for that trailer. It was a stroke of genius to make it water-mobile.”

“Think it’ll work?”

“Well, we won’t know that until we try. If we’re lucky, Calcasieu Lock at least will be open. It’s only a salt water control gate to keep tidal water out of the agricultural area. There’s no water height difference across the lock and they keep it open much of the time. If we luck out there, we won’t have to use the trailer until the Bayou Sorrel Lock.”

“How fast can you tow that thing?” Hughes asked.

Kinsey shrugged. “No clue. Those sheet metal fairwaters will help, but it’ll still slow us way down. I’ll start slow and see how she tows. I hope to tow her at ten or fifteen knots, but even at ten we’ll make Calcasieu Lock before noon. God knows what we’ll have to deal with there, but I’m hoping we can get clear of the lock and be well up the Intracoastal by nightfall.”

Hughes nodded as he watched the Coast Guard patrol boat edging in to put a towing bridle on their new seagoing trailer. “I still don’t like you going off shorthanded. Sure you don’t want to find a car? It might take you a couple of days by boat, especially towing that thing. You could make it there in three or four hours by car, and we could send more people—”

Kinsey shook his head. “Pinch points are not our friend, Cap. We’d have to worry about the bridge at Lake Charles, to say nothing of twenty-plus miles of the Atchafalaya Basin Causeway with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. And even if those places aren’t compromised, I can almost guarantee you someone is sitting on the Mississippi River bridge into Baton Rouge. We couldn’t send enough people to force a crossing in any of those places if someone is holding them, and if they decide to come after us, we likely couldn’t outrun them long enough to break contact either.” He nodded down at the Coast Guard boat. “But with that baby, we can outrun anyone on the water. We’ll lose the tow if we have to.”

Kinsey continued. “Besides, I don’t want to leave YOU shorthanded. For sure those cons will be looking for some payback after the beat down we gave them last week. My family, my problem. Bollinger and I will be just fine.”

“And my family was my problem, but y’all helped me get them on board. C’mon, Kinsey, at least take more of your own men. I know every one of them volunteered.”

“They did, and I appreciate it,” Kinsey said, “but everyone except Bollinger has dependents aboard, and I’m not going to let them leave their own families in possible danger to save mine. It was different when we went after your family; they were close by and we didn’t fully appreciate how big a threat the escaped convicts were. Now we do, and we have to figure that into the equation.”

Kinsey continued before Hughes could protest further. “Besides, as you may have noticed, our boat’s on the small side. I have to pick up my daughter and my sister-in-law’s family plus God knows who else.” He sighed. “My wife has extended family all over Baton Rouge, and knowing Connie, they probably all went to her house. Which brings up another question, Captain Noah. Are you okay with me bringing everyone I find back to your rapidly filling ark?”

Hughes sighed. “How can I not be okay with it? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and your guys. It’s your ark as much as mine, so of course I’m okay with it. We’ll make it work somehow.” He hesitated. “I just hope … I just hope your trip is successful.”

Kinsey cocked his head. “I hear a ‘but’ in there, Cap. If you have a concern, now is the time to voice it.”

“Just thinking of the longer term. Everyone we take in has to pull their weight one way or another. We can’t very well turn away immediate family members, but—”

“But we can’t take in everyone without thinking how they can contribute to the survival of the group. Believe me, I get it.” Kinsey grinned. “I figure having a small boat will be an advantage. I can be selective as to the passenger list.”

Hughes nodded. “Good. We’re on the same page, then. Now, about equipment. You sure you have everything you need?”

“Pretty much, but I’m still not sure about taking two sets of night-vision gear; you guys might need it. We can get by with one. I mainly figured to use it to run the canal in the dark if need be,” Kinsey said.

“You might need it for more than that, and we’ll still have two sets here, and some of the rifles have NV scopes. We’ll be fine. And I wish you’d reconsider about taking one of the machine guns—”