Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (20 page)

“Because some people are just murdering scum,” Wiggins said. “And with no law enforcement around, those assholes all crawl out from under their rocks.”

Tex nodded. “I saw other broken doors up and down the street as we rolled in. I’m betting whoever did this probably hit the entire neighborhood. Maybe even the whole town. That’s why there’s no one on the streets. They’ve likely run away, or they’re dead or in hiding.”

Wiggins nodded. “So what do you want to do, Tex? You want to stay here?”

She shook her head. “Definitely not here. Not after what … what happened.”

“How about other family? Anyone nearby?”

She shook her head again. “We weren’t the stereotypical big Portuguese family. Mom had a tough time getting pregnant, and I’m an only child. They had me late in life, and all of my grandparents died when I was a kid. I’ve got a lot of relatives in Newark, but no way in hell I’m going into a city right now.”

“Well then,” Wiggins said, “I guess you’re going to Maine.”

“You … you don’t mind?” Tex asked.

“Mind? Like I WANTED to travel all that way alone? You think I’m nuts?”

Tex smiled wanly. “Well, now that you mention it—”

“Very funny. Ha-ha,” Wiggins said. “Do you want to stay here until morning? Is there anything we can use?”

She considered it. “The place is ransacked, but I doubt they hit the attic. There may be some camping gear and other stuff up there we might be able to use, and it didn’t look like they hit the garden shed either; there might be something there.” She shook her head. “But I don’t want to stay in here. Not … not in the house anyway. Let’s just pull the SUV into the garage and close the door.”

“Understood. Let’s see what we can find, then make a plan,” Wiggins said.

***

The attic yielded a pair of old but serviceable hiking boots Tex had put away years before, and they found a pair of Tex’s dad’s boots that fit Wiggins well. They threw those in the SUV to replace their own rapidly deteriorating footwear. There were also a few odds and ends of camping gear. But the real find was in the garden shed, a nearly full five-gallon can of gasoline for the riding lawn mower, with another half-gallon or so in the mower itself. Wiggins drained the gas from the mower into the can and was about to pour it all into the near-empty SUV when he stopped.

“We should change cars,” he said. “We’ve been hiding way off the beaten path most of the time, but surely we can find another ride here. If we get stopped, a stolen FEMA vehicle previously driven by two dead people might be kind of tough to explain.”

Tex nodded. “Gas is more valuable than cars these days. I’m thinking we need to scour all the garden sheds and garages anyway to scavenge as much overlooked gas as we can find, so we might as well look for a car while we’re at it.”

They found one several houses down the street, a ten- or twelve-year-old Honda SUV sitting in a driveway. The hood was down, but not latched, and Wiggins opened it to find the battery gone.

“It figures,” he said, “but I can just swap the battery out of our car. I’m sure the gas has been siphoned as well. I guess we need to see if we can find the keys.”

Tex pointed to where the front door of the house stood open, and they started in that direction. A now familiar smell washed over them as soon as they stepped inside, and Tex’s face turned white.

Wiggins gently led her outside. “Stay here.”

He ignored the smell and moved through the house, hoping to find the keys before he found the source of the smell. He found a high-end kitchen, all natural wood and granite and stainless steel. A door led to a spacious mudroom and what he presumed was the garage beyond. On the wall by the garage door was a keyboard with multiple hooks, but only one set of keys. He confirmed they were Honda keys and then grabbed them and fled the house. Tex was still where he left her, staring at the open door.

He held up the keys. “Got ’em.”

Tex nodded and turned, almost running in her haste to get away from the open door.

They moved their car over, and Tex transferred gear while Wiggins swapped the battery. He sloshed a little gas into the Honda to confirm it started and ran, then grinned at Tex and dumped the rest of their newly discovered fuel into the tank.

Wiggins drove the Honda back to Tex’s house and parked it in the garage; then they grabbed the empty gas can and siphon hose and went scavenging. They pilfered garden sheds and garages and found enough gasoline in dribs and drabs to almost fill the tank of the Honda. Toward sundown they celebrated their good fortune by sharing the last of their MREs and leaned the front seats of the Honda back to settle in for the night. But sleep wouldn’t come, and they talked until well after sundown.

“How far back to the AT?” Tex asked.

“About twenty-five miles if we head due west,” Wiggins said. “But I still think heading north and angling back toward it is a better idea. We’ll pick up a full day at least, and this whole side of New Jersey seems pretty rural.”

Tex put her hand on Wiggin’s forearm. “And it will also put us a hard day’s walk from the trail and exposed, with no exit strategy for a full three days if we have to abandon the car and run for it. I know you want to get home, Bill, but there are still plenty of bad guys around. Levi was right; we need to stick close to the trail, even if it is longer.”

Wiggins sighed and nodded in the growing gloom. Nine hundred more friggin’ miles at fifty miles a day. He did the mental calculation and stifled a curse.

Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant

Cape Fear River

Near Wilmington, North Carolina

Two Days Earlier

Day 28, 10:00 a.m.

Rorke sat behind the plant manager’s desk and looked around the spacious office. It was a far cry from his luxurious new office at Mount Weather, but it would do for those occasions when he had to be ‘in the field.’ The uniformed man across the desk from him shifted nervously in his chair, focusing Rorke once again on the task at hand.

“We need to get this plant up and running as soon as possible, Saunders. Give me a SITREP, just the high spots,” Rorke said.

The man nodded. “Everything is going according to plan, sir. We’ve got the area fenced off for the family residence camp, and the communal tents are going up today. The barracks tents for the workers are already finished. We should have everyone at work in two days, four at the outside.”

“How did they take the separation?”

The man shook his head. “About like you’d expect, sir. But a few beat downs and a little armed intimidation took care of it.”

“They’ll fall in line,” Rorke said. “Allow them all daily family visits at first until they get used to it. Then we’ll make the standard weekly visits as long as they’re on good behavior. Daily visits will be conditioned upon how much progress we make getting the lights back on. Make it quite clear to them those visits must be earned, and their families’ well-being depends upon their full and enthusiastic cooperation.”

“Yes, sir …” The man looked hesitant. “But about the single guys—”

“What about them?”

“A few of them are getting mouthy. You know, making noises about this ‘not being what they signed up for.’ That kind of stuff. And they have no families we can use as leverage. Should I pick one or two and make examples of them?” the man asked.

Rorke fell silent, considering the problem. He shook his head. “Only as a last resort. There aren’t that many of them, so let’s try a more positive approach. Let them know in no uncertain terms their behavior won’t be tolerated, but couple that with inducements. Better food perhaps, and set up a few small ‘recreation tents’ and round up some local women to staff them.” Rorke smiled. “Food and sex are the best inducements we have in our brave new world.”

The underling nodded, and Rorke changed the subject. “What about the terminal, is everything in hand?”

“Yes, sir. I sent a ten-man force in by chopper yesterday, carrying a copy of secretary Crawford’s order. There were only three guys there, a major and two sergeants. The major gave our boys some lip, so I had them arrest him and one of the sergeants. We’re holding them here, but we had to leave one of them back at the terminal to show us around.”

“How about security? Can we spare ten men?” Rorke asked.

“Possibly, sir, but we can always use them elsewhere, and truthfully, it’s a waste of manpower. The place is huge, and we couldn’t guard the perimeter adequately with a hundred men. They relied heavily on electronic surveillance, which obviously isn’t working now. Realistically, I think we should leave a small force in radio contact, just to establish our control and begin an inventory. That’s all we really need at present. The terminal’s only a couple of miles away, and we can have additional boots on the ground there in less than five minutes by chopper. I took the liberty of establishing a four-man force there and pulling everyone else back here. Subject to your approval, of course.”

Rorke nodded, satisfied. He sensed an unasked question. “Something else, Saunders?”

“What about those people upriver, sir?”

The general smiled. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them much longer. Our friends at Fort Box will soon have their hands full.”

Chapter Eleven

Cape Fear River

Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point

Near Wilmington, North Carolina

Day 29, 1:35 p.m.

Mike Butler stood at the wheel and idled the Coast Guard patrol boat in the current, just north of the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, the world’s largest military terminal. Luke Kinsey stood beside him in the cabin, and Washington, Long, and Abrams from Luke’s old unit stood on the small deck outside. With possible hostile contact in the offing, Butler and Luke agreed the mission should be long on combat experience. Like Butler, they all wore Coast Guard overalls. If they encountered Special Reaction Force troops, there was no point advertising they were SRF deserters.

Butler studied the empty wharf through the windshield. “About what I figured,” he said. “Deserted. Most of the workforce is civilian. I figured if anyone came to work to start with, they would have stopped coming by now. There may be a few Army types around, but even that’s doubtful.”

Luke looked skeptical. “So we just tie up and look around?”

Butler shrugged. “What the hell else are we gonna do? The place is huge. I guess we could come up an inlet and approach from the far side, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have a clue where we were. We’d just end up tramping around in the woods.”

Luke sighed. “I guess you’re right, but it still feels hinky.”

Butler chuckled and eased the throttle forward, moving their boat down the length of the northernmost of three long concrete wharves. At the downstream end of the high wharf, a ramp led down to a floating dock that accommodated a number of service boats. Butler eased up to an unoccupied stretch of dock, and Long and Abrams jumped out to tie up. Butler studied the little marina, eyes resting on a pair of small patrol boats.

“Hmmm. A lot of good stealin’ material here,” he said. “We might go home with more than we figured.”

Luke nodded absently, eyes on the wharf looming above them. “Tell me again how this is gonna work?”

“We’re just the US Coast Guard come to visit to see if there’s any interest in mutual assistance. If we run into the Army, we won’t have a problem. And if we run into those SRF assholes, I don’t think they’ll shoot on sight and we can play it by ear.”

“I wish I was as sure about that ‘won’t be a problem’ part as you seem to be,” Luke said as they climbed out of the boat onto the floating dock.

“I’m not sure about it.” Butler grunted. “I just think it’s our only real option.”

They climbed the ramp to the towering wharf then spread out as they walked toward shore on the concrete pathway. The wharf accommodated a two-lane road, and train tracks ran down the left side for the length of the structure. Luke turned and looked back down the wharf. Any structure built to bear the weight of a fully loaded freight train was one stout piece of work. There were three of them spread down the riverbank at regular intervals.

Butler took point, with Luke on his right some distance back, and the others spread out behind at intervals. They reached shore, and a paved road ran right and left through a thick stand of trees, paralleling the riverbank. The railroad tracks continued straight ahead, down one of the many rail sidings spread throughout the terminal.

“The road to the left will take us to the terminal offices,” Butler said over his shoulder, turning in that direction through the trees.

They were a quarter mile down the road when it happened.

“HALT!” barked a voice from the trees. “GROUND YOUR WEAPONS, AND PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS! COMPLY IMMEDIATELY, OR WE WILL FIRE.”

Butler looked at Luke and shrugged before following the order. Luke turned to his men and nodded before following suit. When all their weapons were on the pavement, the voice rang out again.

“YOU MEN IN THE REAR, CLOSE RANKS. I WANT YOU ALL TOGETHER. THEN I WANT YOU ALL TO FACE THE RIVER AND DROP TO YOUR KNEES. KEEP YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS.”

They did as ordered, and soon heard movement behind them. A black-clad figure came into view, his M4 trained on the group. He wore a black uniform and was trailed by another man, an Army sergeant, who appeared to be unarmed. The frigging SRF.

“Don’t even think about moving, or my friend behind you will light you up in a heartbeat,” the SRF thug said.

“Hello, Hill,” Butler said.

“Hi, Butler. It’s been a while,” the Army sergeant replied.

The SRF thug looked back and forth between Butler and the sergeant. “You girls know each other?”

“It’s like I told you before,” the sergeant said, “they’re just Coast Guard. They come here all the time to help us with riverside security. It’s just routine.”