“So now we are going to lay this mess in the Council’s lap for trying to be a good steward of the City’s money?” the remaining Council member who had been quiet thus far spoke up.
This sent the room again into confusion with everyone talking over one another until George brought it back under control.
“Now, James,” George addressed the police chief, “What are we doing about apprehending the people responsible for the rioting and property destruction?”
“We have 30 beds at the station in the lockup and all of them are full. I have several non-violent suspects handcuffed to chairs until we can get space. Some of the more violent ones are in pretty bad shape but they won’t let anyone near them,” the police chief said.
“Can the county Sheriff help?” George asked.
“We’ve been in contact with Baldwin County on the mainland but they seem to be up to their necks in alligators. I don’t see any help coming from them very soon. They sent two deputies over at the beginning of the riots this morning to assist us but both have gone missing,” the police chief said.
“We found one of the deputies at the school this morning, KIA,” Stone pointed out.
“We’ll let the Sheriff know about his deputy as soon as we can get in contact with him. However, we still need to address what we are going to do with all these prisoners,” the police chief said.
“Ok, James, do what you can. When I can get ahold of the city attorney, I will ask if we can let some of the non-violent characters go on a summons to clear up some space. Tim, how is the fire department doing?” George asked.
“We’ve been strung out on emergency calls all morning and called in the off shifts and the volunteers. Before the 911 network crashed, we had gotten nearly a hundred calls in a two-hour period. Everything from car wrecks, to house fires, to medical emergencies. I am down to one paramedic and I have her at the Community Center. Nobody I’ve sent with victims to the medical center on the mainland has reported back. The clinic on the island is not accepting any more cases and most of their staff is gone. All of my units are out on calls except the big ladder truck and that’s just because I haven’t had any high rise fires yet,” the deputy fire chief said.
“Any word from the fire chief?” George asked.
“No sir, he went out to a vehicle fire by himself a few hours ago in his personal truck, and no one had heard from him since.”
“He was the city’s Emergency Manager; can you assume the duties of that post for this while he is unaccounted for?” George asked.
“Yes, sir, we already set up an incident command at the station but it’s swamped. All we can really do is to tell people to shelter in place until this thing blows over.”
“Thank you,” George nodded then turned to address the whole group. “Thank you all. I recommend that we get back to our tasks and try to coordinate the response to this. Let’s meet back here in three hours for updates, if you gentlemen will please leave me and the Council for a closed door session.”
After the chiefs and Stone had left, the council members and George exchanged grim looks.
“Well, I suppose we should issue a statement. Perhaps work out a curfew, post it at the Community Center, and make copies of it for the officers to post around town.” George said.
“Yes, go ahead and do that, I’m going home to my family,” one of the council members, a popular local pharmacist, said as he pushed himself away from the table and vanished.
The remaining two members seconded the first and left George alone with his thoughts. He stared at his steno pad where he had been taking notes, flipped to a new page and stared at it. He put his glasses on and picked up his pen.
— | — | —
ChapteR 12
“May I have your attention, please,” a balding older man with glasses and a suit called out over a police megaphone from the tailgate of the truck. The crowd he was addressing amounted to a few hundred men and women that had gathered in the open air of the Town Green. Most had come there to report crimes, look for loved ones, or just seek refuge. A few were curiosity seekers wondering what the crowds and excitement were. Before being interrupted by the Emergency Alert System, the local radio station had announced it as the location of a shelter. The crowd’s individual conversations, which formed a loud commotion at first, died down to a dull hum as people stopped talking and gave the man with the megaphone their attention.
“For those of you that do not know me, I am George Meaux, City Administrator. After meeting with the City Council and local police and fire chiefs, I am being told to release the following announcements,” the man said into the megaphone. The echoes of the device’s speaker bounced back at him from the concrete and brick buildings at every corner of the town green.
“Starting tonight at sundown, there is a 24-hour curfew in effect for the entire city. The Community Center behind me is staying open as a shelter of last resort for anyone who feels his or her home may not be safe enough to remain during this emergency. However, once the curfew is in effect, anyone staying here
will
have to remain here. In short, you need to stay here or go home, but no matter what you choose, you need to choose soon and stick with your decision. You will see National Guard MPs augmenting our own local people in their duties with agreement of your City Council. There have been some looters reported and I need to remind everyone that this will not be tolerated. Now we are all aware of how to pull together. We have all lived through more hurricanes and tornadoes than I can count, red algae blooms, an oil spill, and a recession. This latest crisis is just one more thing to endure,” he went on.
“What about the missing kids?” someone yelled from the crowd, which brought rumbles of agreement.
“We have people out looking for the missing children right now. When found, they will be brought here to the Community Center. We have a team from the school system here that is staying on-site to assist in family reunification,” George answered.
“How many people have died?” a woman yelled out. The crowd’s roar of questions soon drowned out everything and threatened to wash over the impromptu meeting.
George put his free hand in the air to control the crowd. “There have, unfortunately, been some deaths during the riots. We are turning an offsite location into a disaster mortuary until we can get the County or the State in here to help us transport them to the medical center. We are posting these announcements on the bulletin board at City Hall and the National Guard will be bringing flyers around town. Now please, if you excuse me, I have a meeting with emergency officials. We will pass on further information when we get it,” George said, handing the megaphone to a gasmask-wearing female MP with a shotgun slung over her shoulder and climbed down from the tailgate.
Before he even made it two feet away from the truck, the crowd began loud discussion about the announcement. This discussion was interrupted by the bark of multiple gunshots coming from the direction of the police station.
Billy, who had been in the crowd halfway between the police station and the Community Center with Cat, grabbed her hand and pulled her back towards the center. The crowd seemed to part in every direction like many cockroaches scattering in a bright kitchen light, as the unmistakable sounds of the gunshots increased and spilled out into the Town Green.
Two police officers ran from the building firing handguns back into the entryway at an unseen threat. Billy pushed Cat ahead of him and into the Community Center door, almost bowled over by two MPs heading out into the Town Green from inside the refuge.
Billy peered back out the door at the scene evolving on the Town Green he had just left. He saw Spud running through the Green carrying the metal chair he was handcuffed to, upside down on his head like a hat, screaming, and yelling, “Don’t shoot!”
Three figures in city jail coveralls staggered out behind the madly running crook with fire in their eyes. Billy recognized the peculiar half-run of the inmates, the growls, the bared teeth, the mad twisted faces as being of the same type he had seen at the school earlier that day.
Two police officers on the Green had stopped to reload their empty handguns, only to be attacked by the inmates. More shots rang out from the gas-masked National Guardsmen running through the Town Green towards the police station. Billy saw police and infected alike lying motionless. More orange-clad inmates erupted from the police station and the MPs took a prone position to engage them with their M4s.
As he heard screams and yelling throughout the Town Green, he turned and pulled Cat close to him. “Go find your friends and get as far away from this door as possible. We’re gonna shut it. Do not come back up here no matter what. You understand?”
She nodded and turned away, running into the panicked crowd inside the Community Center.
Billy looked at the two volunteers at the table next to the door. They were motionless and wide-eyed. “We have to close these doors,” he said, pointing at the doors.
With that, one of the volunteers stood and moved around the table towards him. They closed the first set of doors and just as the volunteer took a step towards the second, a coverall-clad inmate burst into the doorway. The inmate’s face and neck were bathed in blood. He attacked the elderly volunteer and knocked her to the ground. When the volunteer hit the cement floor, her head bounced once like a basketball before the inmate started stomping up and down on her face with both feet in a gory game of hopscotch. Even over the horrified screams and gasps of the crowd in the Community Center behind him, Billy could hear the bones and cartilage of the volunteer’s face break apart under the relentless downward kicks of the infected inmate.
Billy brought his old .38 out from its hiding place in the pocket of the cargo shorts and thrust it at the inmate. The revolver’s muzzle was only three feet away from the inmate’s face and Billy hoped that when he saw it, the man would stop and surrender. All the inmate did, through a face that showed no inclination for mercy, pity, or fear in the slightest degree, was smile like a twisted jester and blow bloody bubbles through his lips.
Billy sent a 158-grain jacketed hollow point into the man’s left eye and his body was falling backwards as it exited through the rear of his skull, showering the doorway behind him in blood and bone. Billy jumped across the body and snatched the open doors, pulling them closed. His hand was slippery on the bloody handle and he ignored the feel of the hot stickiness as the door closed shut. He fell against the inside of it as he heard a cacophony of fists and bodies hit the door trying to get inside the Community Center.
Billy’s mouth went dry. His heart rate went through the roof as his blood pressure flew past 160. Auditory exclusion, the phenomena caused by being in a desperate fight-or-flight situation, blocked out the sounds of the fists and screams coming from the other side of the steel door that he just closed. He could not speak any more. He could not move.
He looked out across the crowd inside the Community Center and all eyes were on him. Every mouth, some covered by a hand in shock, was quiet. Billy saw his daughter looking back at him from thirty feet away with an expression he had never seen before. Her eyes were wide open and he knew she would never be the same.
He had the feeling he would not be either.
— | — | —
ChapteR 13
The
Fish Hawk
pulled away from the dock at Dauphin Island, her twin diesel engines in reverse. On the dock was the Coast Guard station’s Senior Chief, casting off her lines.
“How much ammo did we get from the station?” Jarvis asked Hoffman, who was busy at the ship’s throttles.
“They gave us four cases of 7.62 in ammo belts, plus a case of 5.56 and another of 9-milly. They didn’t have any .50-cal but we have a good bit of that in the small arms locker,” Chief Hoffman advised.
Jarvis watched the station grow smaller on the horizon before the cutter pivoted and moved back across the bay towards Gulf Shores. He looked out the bridge’s windows and saw the cutter’s two seamen busy mounting the vessel’s main armament, a pair of Mark II .50-caliber heavy machine guns, one on each side of the boat’s foredeck. The NOMEX-clad seamen were wearing flak vests and carefully feeding belts of gleaming brass ammunition into their weapons. The shielded guns mounted on the bow fired cigar-sized rounds almost two kilometers away and were capable of shooting down a low flying aircraft or sending just about any drug runner to Davy Jones’ locker.
“Mr. Jarvis, did you want me to arm up, too?” the Cook asked from the galley ladder-well below.
“Yes, grab a SIG, make sure you find a holster for it, and keep it in there,” Jarvis said.
“Aye, sir,” the Cook said before disappearing back down below the hatch.
Normally the only weapon not locked up in the small arms locker below deck was a lone M4 secured in the ready rack on the bridge. That rifle was usually not even loaded. The Coast Guard is geared toward saving lives, not taking them. It was only when the cutter was conducting a boarding that the 4-man boarding team would arm themselves with side arms. It was rare that the entire ship was armed, and rarer still that the Mark II’s up front were brought out and mounted. Some of the cutter’s newer crewmembers had never seen the vessel with her teeth in.