On the other side of the airport was the McDuffie Point Coal Terminal where stacks of black-grey coal stood in giant twenty-story high hills waiting for shipment that would never arrive.
Past the bend of the coal terminal was Coast Guard Station Mobile. At the end of South Broad Street, the station was the homeport of the
Fish Hawk
, two other patrol boats just like her, the sector headquarters, and a 175-foot black-hulled buoy tender. In total, over a hundred Coastguardsmen were stationed there. Every eye on the cutter was glued to the bend when the station came into view.
The docks that should have held patrol boats and the buoy tender were vacant. Instead, a number of civilian recreational boats and a beaten-up tugboat were tied up. Bodies littered the grounds, but none wore familiar blue Coast Guard uniforms. Infected walked the grounds and stood watching the cutter approach.
“Where the hell is the
Stingray
, and the
Maybrity
?” the Cook asked.
“Or the
Cobia
?” said the Bosun.
Jarvis shook his head, “Not here apparently. They must have pulled out. Maybe for Gulfport or Venice.”
“Why didn’t Sector tell us to go with them?” asked the Cook.
“Our last orders were to stay at Dauphin Island. They may have sent them there to rendezvous with us while we were at Gulf Shores. When they didn’t find us, they kept underway,” Jarvis said, thinking aloud.
He did not know where the rest of his sector’s units were but they obviously were not there. Just a mile from downtown was the Station, it was within walking distance of a quarter-million people before the outbreak. It did not take a genius to see that it was indefensible in an urban pandemic riot.
Without orders to stop, the Bosun kept the cutter moving forward at nine knots past the shipyards where no workers toiled for the first time since World War II. The skyline of Mobile came into focus and the individual windows of the Battle House Tower, a bright blue in the sunrise could be seen. The high construction cranes of the shipyards along the docks stood still and quiet over downtown. In the calm water of the bay, the refection of the skyline mirrored the scene in tranquility. Peace had come to the metropolis. There were no industrial sounds, no cars honking on I-10, no crowds of talking people, no recreational boats zooming around, no planes, and no helicopters. The only motorized movement was the
Fish Hawk
. The only sound that of her diesels thrumming below.
A giant cruise ship, the
Gulf Festival
, sat at her moorings just before the bridge. Her lines were rigged with a hundred signal flags all flapping in the breeze. The leviathan must have been getting ready to set sail just before the outbreak started. Jarvis saw no one walking her decks and for that, he was grateful. The ship was not making any smoke from her stacks and doubtlessly her engine room was cold. He imagined the cruise ship soon would be low in the water as the Bay slowly seeped in through intake hatches and vents to collect in its lower decks and bilges. Before too long, she would roll and turn turtle like the old pictures he had seen of the French liner
Normandie
that sank at the dock in New York harbor in the 1950s. The fact that the
Gulf Mariner
, her 73,000-ton sister ship which was more than twice the size of the infamous
Titanic
and carrying just as many potentially infected passengers as that ill-fated ship, was out to sea somewhere within radio range chilled him.
“Look at all those infected,” muttered the Cook at the site of throngs and crowds that they could see just past the cruise ship terminal downtown. The steps along the Convention Center, Fort Conde, Washington Square, and the heart of the city held a pulsating jostling mass of undead humanity. A throng of battered and bruised infected, they pushed and fought among themselves. They pulled clothes off, bashed heavy metal trashcans into brick walls, and gouged window frames unproductively. It was a swarm of living dead with nowhere to go and nothing to do. In every direction, the infected saw only themselves in the noonday sun.
“It looks like Mobile is off the list of future vacation destinations,” Jarvis said. He tried to interject some dark comedy into the nightmare in front of them.
“I think they see us, sir,” the Cook said, pointing a short stubby finger out over the port bow.
Sure enough, a few of the infected had stopped and were looking directly at the
Fish Hawk
, the 87-foot long gleaming white Coast Guard cutter that had slowly sailed up from the bay. On the deck of the cutter, the two seamen were nervously watching the crowd from behind their machineguns.
The handful of walking dead that had seen the cutter started a chain reaction in the crowd and within just a few moments hundreds of eyes had turned to the bay. As the eyes turned, the feet followed and they began walking toward to shoreline. Like lemmings over a cliff, they surged forward even as some of them tumbled over the safety railings into the calm brown water of Mobile Bay below.
“Let’s keep moving and get across to the eastern shore,” Jarvis said.
“Aye, sir,” said the Bosun as he moved the joystick that controlled the ship’s rudders to the right and they came about. Soon Mobile began to fall back behind them as they moved down the eight-mile long Battleship Parkway Bridge across the northern shore of Mobile Bay.
The bridge was packed with hundreds of silent cars lined up bumper to bumper. Every square inch of the two-sided bridge was occupied by a car, truck, or van, as vehicles were crowded onto the shoulder and across every lane. They passed the old museum battleship
USS Alabama
, a grey, armored, ghost moored in the mud of the bay. Still the cars lined the bridge as they crossed the gap from Mobile to the eastern shore town of Daphne. An eight-mile long traffic jam with dead cars piled among dead and infected occupants.
“Strange how both sides are jammed solid. One group trying to get into town and away from the infection, the other trying to get out of town and away from the infection,” the Bosun observed.
The HF radio crackled to life with static and snippets of conversation. Jarvis picked up the mic and transmitted a reply asking to repeat. Again, only static and scattered broken voices of a two-way conversation back and forth were heard in reply.
“We must be too far away from them to transmit,” the Bosun stated, watching the radio.
Finally, the radio crackled once more and the words, “Highway 49,” and, “HET Route,” were heard clearly, before the transmission ended in static.
“Can we get a DF bearing on that?” Jarvis asked the Bosun.
The Bosun motioned for the Cook to take the joystick and throttles as he moved across the back of the compartment to the radio rack. Homing in on the radio signal using the direction finding, or DF, feature of the transceiver, they could tell from what direction the transmission was coming. It was part of the Rescue-21 program that the Coast Guard had implemented to help take the “search” out of search and rescue work.
After a few seconds of punching and calculating into the key pad of the radio the Bosun said, “160 degrees relative, or about south by southwest of here but it’s a pretty weak signal.”
“Directly towards Gulfport from here,” Jarvis said looking at the chart.
“Aye,” the Bosun agreed.
They all listened intently for the sound of further transmission for several minutes but it never came. By the time they reached the eastern shore of the bay there was no contact left. As they moved down the coastline back towards Gulf Shores, they watched the shore. Past the small suburban towns of Daphne, Fairhope, and Point Clear, they moved silently, repeating their experience of what they had seen on the western shore of the bay. Scattered, abandoned cars, the occasional walking infected, and the random body scrolled by on repeat.
Jarvis had sent the Cook below deck to make dinner and assumed the task of watching out the windows of the cutter’s bridge by himself. Alone with the Bosun as they passed the Middle Bay Lighthouse once more, this time on the opposite side and kept up the voyage back to their new home.
Jarvis pulled his fleece jacket back on as the sun grew low in the sky and the weather started to grow cooler again.
— | — | —
ChapteR 36
Reynolds stood and took the armory building in, trying to observe as much as she could before Stone found out she was there. Painted on the wall at the entrance to the Armory was a ferocious cartoon bulldog with an MP brassard, crossed flintlock pistols behind him, and the inscription
1183rd Military Police Company—Road Dogs
under him.
To the side of the painting were three citations awarded for the company’s service during its deployment in Iraq. From left, the Presidential Unit Citation was the highest award granted to military units that have performed an extremely meritorious or heroic act. Reynolds understood that it was extremely rare that any unit, much less a reserve unit would receive a Presidential Unit Citation for its service in combat.
In the middle of the three awards was the Valorous Unit Award, which was awarded for extraordinary heroism. On the right was the Meritorious Unit Commendation, awarded for performance of outstanding service.
These MPs must have really seen some shit overseas, Reynolds thought to herself.
Just inside the entry to the Armory, the company had erected a billboard made from four sheets of plywood and a fifteen-foot wide slab of broken grey marble. The origin of the marble was theorized to have come from the lobby of one of the luxury condo complexes by the beach. An Alabama state flag and a US ensign bracketed the marble. At the top of the cracked marble was painted the unit crest in full color the size of a manhole cover. Under the crest was a carefully written list of names.
They had been written by hand with someone using a black Sharpie marker, but you had to look closely to see that a machine had not applied them.
Never Forget
was arched across the unit crest. Written above the List was:
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know.
There were dozens of names with (KIA) in parenthesis. Then a longer list with (MIA) next to it.
“First Sergeant Reid said we should go ahead and write everyone’s name on it—then just update it with the dates. I had to overrule him on that one,” Stone said as he walked up to the Major from the side. He had found her within minutes of her entering the compound.
“Good idea,” Reynolds replied.
“Who’s—the Top’s, or mine?”
Reynolds grimaced, “Yours, of course.”
The National Guard Captain reminded her of dozens of cocky young male officers she had come across in her career. Half of the time, she ended up seeing those same cocksters leapfrog over her on the promotion announcements. It may have been a modern military, but it was still a man’s world.
“Glad to have you come by, Major,” Stone said. “To what do we owe this pleasure, ma’am?”
“You said you had a Russian speaker in the company?” Reynolds said, holding up the thick logbook from the Ukrainian chicken boat.
He reached out and took the book from her, “Yes we have a volunteer who is a retired MI Russian linguist. I’m sure he can make something of it.”
“I also wanted to see how you were coming along with the ground forces.”
“Ah, yes. Isn’t much of a ground force left, but what we do have, we are working with. Let me show you around,” Stone said as he extended a hand down the hallway.
They walked into the center of the Armory. More than a hundred soldiers had set up beds, cots, and sleeping bags. Most of the beds were empty, but signs of habitation were fresh on all.
“The company is supposed to have 183 MPs when at full strength. We started the outbreak with 91 that made it to the island. Of that original cadre, I now have only have 44 left.”
“What about the new volunteers?”
“We’ve added 42, doubling our numbers, but are still less than half of what we should have. Some of the new guys are questionable, but they are working out.”
“What are these MPs doing?” she asked as she counted about twenty guardsmen racked out on their bunks.
“Most stand post tonight and are off duty. Five of them are a rapid reaction force and are sleeping with their boots on; they can be awake and anywhere in town in fifteen minutes.”
“I see. What about arms and equipment? How are you set up for that?” she asked. The walls were lined with hundreds of lockers made of grey metal mesh, each the size of closet. Inside each hung camouflage gear and uniforms.
“Before the outbreak, everyone kept their TA50 here including their armor, helmet, and web gear so I’ve got enough personal gear for almost two hundred MPs. On weapons, we have plenty of M4s and M9s as well as two dozen M240-bravo machineguns, but almost no ammo at all,” Stone said.
“
No
ammo?”
“I had a full count done and until yesterday we had exactly 9 rounds for each rifle, 3 for each pistol and 20 for each machinegun.”