Chapter Twelve
LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT! [Signage posted in Los Angeles, CA, 4/3/05]
Nilla was sitting in the backseat when Charles and Shar arrived at the car. They stood there very close to each other for a while and then Charles climbed in.
“Damn, woman, you clean up nice,” Charles said, looking at her over the back of his seat. His eyes searched her face, looking for something. He didn’t find it.
Shar stood perfectly motionless outside the passenger-side doors. Nilla couldn’t see her face from that angle, just the fists she kept clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. Nilla wondered what the two of them had said to each other last night.
Eventually Shar opened the front door and got in. She buckled her seatbelt very carefully.
All citizens unable to reach the evacuation staging area at Loma are implored to stay in their homes and only open the door to law enforcement personnel with appropriate credentials. Please do not use your telephones: this will only tie up vitally-needed lines of communication. [Emergency Broadcast for Grand Junction, CO 4/3/05]
There was no time to go to Commerce City, even if it wasn’t denied territory. What would he find there anyway—some ruptured cyclone fencing? A latrine pit that had never been used?
“We’ve never seen organized behavior from them before,” Clark kept telling people. It felt like he was making excuses. He had to pass through any number of clerks and military police before he finally reached the Esplanade south of City Park. There was a high school there, a big brick pile with a clock tower. Alvin Braintree, the Adjutant General of the Colorado Army National Guard had turned it into a forward command post.
In a classroom set up for chemistry experiments—big black fiberglass tables, a row of sinks and exhaust hoods along one side, periodic table of the elements on the wall—Bannerman Clark stood at attention and waited while the AG received the same sitrep that Clark had heard twenty minutes earlier.
“The infected then formed what I can only describe, sir, as a human pyramid.” The chief warrant officer giving the report steepled his hands. “Some individuals went over the top, over the razor wire. Others simply pressed their bodies against the chain-link perimeter fence until it gave way. We attempted to contain the situation but we lacked sufficient force to subdue the detainees. They headed south-west, toward the downtown area. We gave pursuit but again, lacked the manpower to overcome them and eventually had to break contact. Had we been allowed to aggress on them I think we could have done something but we had strict orders not to endanger the infected.”
Clark felt the temperature in the room drop about twenty degrees. Those had been his orders, of course. The chief warrant officer was suggesting, in a not very politic way, that Bannerman Clark was personally responsible for what was happening to Denver.
Namely: it was being overrun. They had lost small towns before, all over the west. This was the first time a real city was endangered. It was the biggest setback of the Epidemic.
The AG put his feet up on the teacher’s desk and looked at the two soldiers before him. “That order is rescinded as of this fucking minute,” he said. His mouth, under the white stubble of a long day, was as straight as a ruler. “You will shoot the infected on sight and no more of this willy-wogging. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Clark shouted, his voice echoed by that of the CWO.
“You both need to hear me on this, because I’m putting you in charge of platoons today. It looks like I’m short on real officers.” It was a slight—a soldier of Clark’s rank should be in command of a full company, as many as two hundred warriors. Instead he was being given thirty. “Chief Warrant Officer, you’re dismissed. Go get your men and sort out what vehicles you can commandeer. Captain, you’re with me.” The AG stood up and headed for the door. Clark hurried to catch up, staying a step behind his commanding officer at all times. The AG was the highest-ranking member of the COARNG, answering only to the Governor. As far as Clark knew this was the first time in the man’s life he’d ever worn camo.
Now he wore the full battle rattle—body armor complete with shoulder-mounted flashlight, protective gas mask stowed at his belt, a tank commander’s CVC helmet with Nomex liner under his arm with a clip for his nods—and he clattered down the hallway lined with students’ lockers. “This is your mess, Clark. I don’t particularly care to know what you were thinking but I know you’re a real barnacle on the world’s backside, now, and at least that’s something. You were supposed to keep this thing contained in the prison. You were supposed to give us appropriate guidelines for how to proceed when that failed. You were supposed to find a cure. Have you done anything but watch this mess ignite right in front of your face?”
It wasn’t a question requiring an answer. Clark stayed at attention and fought the urge to explain himself. He and the AG stepped aside to let a file of enlisted get past, their sergeant keeping them in step with obscene jody calls. “Don’t feel too bad, Captain,” the AG said to Clark as the men stomped past, even their footfalls in unison. “You’re going over Niagra Falls for this, yes. I have my own career to consider. But maybe your friends at the Pentagon can find you a job when this is all over. I think you’d make a perfectly capable dog catcher.”
Clark clamped his teeth shut, ashamed more of the AG’s lack of professionalism than his own complicity in the breakout. He didn’t say a word as he was lead into an impromptu armory set up in the gymnasium. The AG selected a sidearm for him, an M9 Beretta, the standard weapon for the officer corps since the mid-eighties and a definite step up from the old traditional Colt .45. It felt heavier than Clark remembered—he hadn’t hefted one since his last visit to the pistol qualification range, nearly a year past. He fed his belt through the weapon’s holster and checked the safety before putting it away.
“You’ll at least have a chance to redeem yourself,” Braintree told him. Clark kept his eyes front so he didn’t have to look at the man. “That’s more than I can say for the three troops who were eaten alive during the breakout.”
Clark felt his knees turn to water and he consciously forced his spine to stiffen. He hadn’t heard about those casualties. He had dozens of questions to ask—what were their names, had their families been notified, were they weekend warriors or heroes from the fighting in Iraq—but he hadn’t been given permission to question his superior officer.
Vikram was waiting for him in the school’s lobby when he was dismissed. The Major belonged to the Regular Army and had no standing in the command post and in the interest of base security he shouldn’t have been allowed inside at all but Clark was truly glad to see his old friend.
“He chewed out my fourth point of contact,” Clark said, surprising himself a little. It was a euphemism he hadn’t heard or used since the earliest days of his career. “I’ll be lucky not to be court-martialled after this.”
Vikram shook his head to brush away the negativity. “We can do good in this world, or we can be miserable over the bad that is already done. What would you have me do?”
“Get up to Florence. Sit on the prison, clamp it down. We cannot let the work there be delayed, no matter what else happens. You may receive new orders while you’re there—I can hardly ask you to counter them, but make sure before that happens that Florence is airtight.”
Clark dismissed him and headed down to the parking lot of the school where a convoy of RTD buses was headed out, stuffed full of civilian evacuees. A motor pool staff sergeant assigned him the last military vehicle in the lot—an enormous lumbering eight-wheeled M977 HEMTT (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck) that was built for hauling cargo. Before Clark could even inspect the two man crew he had his platoon, too, a scared-looking group of warfighters who fell into ranks behind their platoon sergeant without a word.
“Sir, platoon reporting for duty, sir!” the platoon sergeant barked. He looked like a prospector with a bushy white non-regulation hair spilling out of his helmet and eyes like embers set at the bottom of dark pits. He had his men in line, though, there was no question of his ability. He gestured and a specialist ran up holding a soft boonie hat—a fisherman’s hat in desert camo—as if it were a crown. Clark understood the gesture and knew he should not outwardly acknowledge it. These were veterans and they were acknowledging that he was one of their own. He put on the boonie hat and handed his peaked uniform cover to the specialist in return. He had no doubt he would get it back dry cleaned and reblocked. The sergeant major nodded discretely and turned to face his platoon. “Attention to orders!”
“Drive on, chief,” Clark said. It was the traditional order to keep up the good work. The platoon leapt like synchronized swimmers into the HEMTT’s boxy cargo compartment. Clark rode up front with the crew in the much more comfortable shovel-nosed cabin. The driver got the prime mover roaring and shuddering out onto a deserted Colfax Avenue, threading the needle between big tent churches and peepshow parlors, fast food franchises and gas stations.
Everything had changed.
