We Go On (THE DELL) (7 page)

I tried to call Dave on the radio and, after three attempts,
he finally answered me. I asked if he was on the move yet and he replied ‘no.’
He said the volume of fire coming at him was stronger than he would have ever
thought. He said he already had three casualties, one fatal. My heart sank.

The fire fight had been going on for about ten minutes at
this point and Dave was pinned down, unable to move, and taking casualties. We
needed to do something fast or it was possible that 2nd platoon would be lost.
I called Darryl and told him we needed to increase the fire from 1st platoon.
Take some of the heat off of 2nd and give them a chance to withdraw. He said
he'd do his best.

The noise level was tremendous now. You couldn't hear
yourself think and I noticed another person climb into the back of the truck
with the machine gun mounted in it. I brought my rifle up and started firing.
The man stumbled and pitched over the side of the truck, landed on the ground,
and was still. I immediately turned to the Humvee beside me and started to
pound on the roof to get the gunners attention. After a few seconds, he looked
over the edge of the turret at me. I yelled for him to take that pickup out. He
nodded and went back to firing.

Half inch diameter bullets started to chew the old pickup
apart. Finally, it burst into flames and rapidly started to burn. The gunner
peeked over the rim of the turret and I gave him a thumbs up. He smiled and
went back to his deadly work. At least the Gang wouldn't get that gun into
action.

It appeared that the amount of gun fire across the road had
started to dwindle. I called Dave and he answered immediately. I passed along
my observation and he agreed. I told him he should try to withdraw. We would
cover him the best we could. He cut me off with a negative.

He said they were in position and could continue the
assault. I asked about casualties and he stated he had five now, two dead. We
were about fifteen minutes in to the fight at this point and I didn't want to
risk more dead or wounded. Dave kept stressing they could do it and that they
would run the same risk of casualties if they tried to withdraw. I finally
relented. He was the commander on the ground and I didn't want to second guess
him. I just hoped he was right.

As I watched the volume of fire coming from Dave's tree line
increased and I finally saw his people moving. I snatched the radio off my belt
and sent the message to shift fire. The assault was finally underway. About two
seconds later, Steve, the spotter, called on the radio. When I answered he told
me that large groups of Stinkies were coming across the field toward us. I
asked for an exact position and he said to our left and behind the Road Gangs
position. They were about one hundred yards away.

Ignoring the fire still coming from across the road, I
jumped up onto the back of the Humvee to get a look. Steve was right, about a
hundred, maybe more of the things were slowly moving toward the scene of the
fight. A few of the Gang had noticed them and were now firing at them instead
of us. As I watched, more and more of them poured out of the trees behind the
Gangs position, drawn by the noise and the prospect of a meal. They completely
ignored the bullets coming at them and continued to advance on the Gang. I got
on the radio and told Dave to immediately withdraw. They couldn't fight the
Gang and the Stinkies.

"You've got to get out of there, Dave."

"Roger that, we're moving. Get the gate open. We'll
come straight in."

I jumped down from the truck and headed for the gate. Still
on the radio, I told Darryl to have 1st platoon cease fire. I got to the gate
and unfastened it. As I pulled one side open I could see 2nd platoon running
across the road dragging their wounded. I called Jim and told him to send the
ATVs and the stretcher crews to the gate to pick up wounded and to alert the
Aid Station that casualties were coming in. He said he would and I went back to
trying to get 2nd platoon inside.

The last of 2nd platoon passed inside and Dave was the last
one. I asked if they were all in and he said yes, all except for the two dead.
I nodded and closed the gate. As I re-secured it, I noticed that all the gun
fire had shifted away from us toward the advancing line of Stinkies. The guns
were silent on our side of the road. Our people watched the scene unfold in the
Gangs camp.

The Stinkies rolled over the Gang like a wave. The guns
didn't faze them and their brains only had one thought on a continuous loop.
Food. As we watched the Gang was completely overwhelmed. They went down
fighting but they went down.

Dave looked at me."How 'bout that? Stinkies to the
rescue."

It wasn't over but we could take a short break. We had time,
time to get our wounded to the Aid Station, time to re-group. I knew we would
have to fight the Stinkies as soon as they were finished across the road. The
stretcher crews had left with the wounded and Darryl and Jenny were handling
their platoons. I finally got to ask Dave what happened.

"Shit dude. It was fucked as soon as we got over the
fence. There's an old creek back there and I thought it would be great cover.
You know, move down it out of sight until we were going to cross the road but
there was bunches of old wire from fences and it was overgrown. In the dark, we
had to fight our way down and the brush was just too thick to be able to climb
out.”

Dave shook his head. “We had to keep going till we found a
break in the brush. By then we were late. As we were moving into the assault
position, one of the bastards saw us and threw a shot at us. That's when all
hell broke loose."

I could tell he felt bad and he confirmed it by saying,
"It was my fault. The 2nd platoon did everything I told them. I just
picked the wrong route."

I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up.
We all did what we thought was right. I should have given you more time for the
movement."

Luckily there had been no casualties from 1st platoon. I
can't remember who it was that suggested we turn the semi-trailers on their
sides and push them up against the fence but they worked. There had been a
hundred or more of the trailers parked in the lot of the warehouse. We flipped
them onto their sides and pushed them up tight against the inside of the fence.
We filled them with dirt, rocks, and anything else we thought might stop a
bullet and they worked.

The Stinkies couldn't push against them hard enough to move
them and the trailers kept the fence from collapsing. They had also kept any
bullets from getting through to 1st platoon. They made a great barrier. All we
had to do now was secure the gate better and we'd be set.

We had an old semi-tractor that we'd been able to get
running. We used it to move the trailers around and for short supply runs. We
pulled it up against the gate. This would keep the Stinkies from being able to
force their way through. Now we just had to wait them out.

I went back to the warehouse to check on the wounded.
Organized chaos was the best way to describe the Aid Station. Doc and his staff
were working to save one of the worst wounded. Another had died and her body
was covered with a sheet and moved to the side.

I knelt beside the stretcher and raised the sheet. A young
girl, just out of her teens, lay peacefully on the stretcher. I knew her name,
Heidi, but didn't know anything else about her. I pushed her head to the side
and raised her hair. The puncture was already there at the base of the skull. I
straightened her hair and turned her face back toward the ceiling. I told her I
was sorry then pulled the cover back in place.

As I stood and turned I saw Doc looking at me. We nodded to
each other and I left the Aid Station. Back out on the main floor Jim already
had people moving taking care of the issues for the day. He appeared to have it
under control so I left the building and went back to the fence.

The Road Gang was gone. What was left of them had joined the
horde of Stinkies that now swarmed around the fence, trying to get in at us. I
stood at the gate, just a few feet from them and we looked at each other
through the chain link. They were pushing, reaching trying to get at me and I
just stood there looking back. The decomposed faces, the moaning and, of course,
the smell was horrid. Eventually, I noticed Dave standing beside me. I didn’t
look at him. "Put people on top of the trailers with the suppressed
weapons and get rid of these things,” I said.

"Already on it," he replied. "What’re you
going to do?"

"I'm going back and check on the wounded again." I
turned and started walking away before he could say anything else. I wasn't in
a mood to talk. I knew there were two more or our people outside. I wouldn't
get to tell them how sorry I was. They were most likely part of the crowd
pushing against the front gate right now but I tried not to think about that.

It took four days to clear the fence of the Stinkies. Two
days of near continuous suppressed rifle fire to put them all down, then two
more days to cleanup. There was no way we could leave that many bodies to
decompose just outside our fence. It was hard enough just to get out of the
gate. Thankfully, we had scavenged several boxes of Tyvek suits and heavy
rubber gloves. Along with respirators and goggles, the Tyvek made it possible
to haul away the bodies without getting contaminated. We took no chances with
handling the bodies. It was bad enough to run the risk of a bite or scratch. I
sure didn't want to send someone out to move the bodies and get them infected
from doing the job.

We used one of the pickups left by the Road Gang. We'd fill
the bed with bodies and then haul them about a mile away to a low spot dug
sometime in the past to handle rain runoff. It was more or less a pit and there
was no drain so we couldn't further contaminate the streams around us. The
bodies were dumped into the pit and burned. We couldn't accomplish complete
cremation but we hoped it destroyed whatever was in them that caused the Plague
and it kept the smell down to bearable levels. That’s one thing you had to get
used to in this new world of ours—the ever present smell of death.

Two of the five wounded in the attack survived. They would
be laid up for a while but they were going to make it. By the time we finished
with the cleanup we were nearing an emergency situation with supplies. We had
not been able to send out foraging parties for almost a week and Jim had to
start rationing our food and water. There’s starting to be some grumbling and
not just in our bellies.

We had a council meeting late in the afternoon after the
last bodies were disposed of. The shortages in our supplies were talked about
and I could see it would take several trips to get us back up to a level where
we had something to fall back on in an emergency. I could only see one
alternative. We had to send foragers out in the morning and we had to start
restocking our supplies. I told Jim and Dave to organize it and, with recent
events, I thought it best if they headed east out of Lebanon for the first few
trips. I didn't want to run the risk of running into more Stinkies or worse any
survivors of the Gang we had just fought. They agreed and it was decided to
head east on I-40 for a few miles and see what they could find.

The party that went out the next morning was the largest we
had ever sent. If it could drive, it went. Three of the gun trucks and fifteen
security personnel went along to protect them. I spent the day relaxing with
Kat in our room. I was still upset with myself over the way my plan had fallen
apart.

I thought it was a solid plan, simple yet effective. All it
had taken to ruin it was a few strands of old fence and some bushes. If we'd
had some type of night vision we would have been fine but batteries were a
problem. We could find night vision goggles. As a matter of fact, we had
several pairs but they used a particular type of battery and that battery would
never be made again. So we did things the old fashion way. We stumbled around
in the dark.

Late that afternoon, I heard the vehicles from the foraging
party coming back in and I knew I needed to go down and see how things went but
Kat and I were talking, I mean really talking for the first time in a long time,
and I didn't want that moment to end. I knew Jim would have things under
control so I'd go down later and check with him. See how things went.

I considered bringing up our son Alex. Kat had been talking
about her parents and I thought this might be a good time. Unfortunately, I
never got the chance. Outside our room, coming down the hall I could hear voice
and footsteps moving with purpose. I heard Dave yell ‘wait a minute,’ then more
talking I couldn’t understand. Kat and I looked at each other.

"Oh no, what now?" I said.

She shrugged her shoulders and I stood up as our door burst
open.

Dave and one of his security guys, an older guy named Bob
Thompson, came busting into the room. I was thrown off because both of them had
great big smiles on their faces. I couldn't figure out what kind of problem there
could be that would have them smiling like a couple of idiots. I didn't have to
wait long because they both started talking at exactly the same time. I held my
hands up. "Whoa, whoa, slow down. One at a time,” I said.

Bob looked at Dave." Go ahead
Bob,” Dave said. “You found it."

 Bob turned back toward me. "T-walls.
We found a bunch of T-walls."

I was confused and looked at Dave
for an explanation. "T-walls?"

His smile getting impossibly big. "Yea,
T-walls. Thousands of them.”

I stood in the middle of my room looking at these two guy's
smiling like a couple of kids and I felt like the idiot. "What’re you guys
talking about? What’s a T-wall?"

"It's a concrete barrier. The ones I found are twenty-foot
tall. They are about two-foot thick and about five-foot wide. They are designed
to be placed side beside and they interlock. The base is wider front to back
and they stand by themselves, like an upside down T. They make a hell of a wall,”
Bob explained.

"That's right," Dave cut in. We had them in
Afghanistan. You put them around a base and nothing can get through. They'll
stop a semi-truck. And these are tall, so the Stinkies can't climb them."

"Right." It was Bob's turn now. "I was in
Iraq as a contractor a few years ago. We had them there too. With T-walls we
could make this place a fortress. Nothing could penetrate them."

I started to see what they were so excited about but I could
see problems too. Namely, how to get them here. "If they are as big as you
say and concrete, they've got to be heavy," I said.

"Oh, hell yeah," Bob replied. "I'm sure they
weigh seven, maybe eight tons each. You can only put two on a flatbed
trailer."

"So how do we get them here and set them up?" I
asked.

Dave chimed in. "They’re already sitting on flatbeds
and we'd need a crane to lift them into place."

"Okay. So I ask again, how do we get them here and how
do we set them up?"

"All we need is one tractor to haul the trailers. We'd
have to make a bunch of trips but we could do it and the crane’s sitting there
on I-40 with them." Bob was really excited now. "You should see it. A
line of trucks covering all four lanes of I-40 as far as you can see. I bet
there are thousands of T-walls in that convoy. Enough to go around this place a
dozen times."

Now they had me thinking. Yes, we could harden this place
but we would still be stuck having to go out scavenging everything we needed.
If there were enough to go around this place a dozen times, there would be
enough to go around someplace bigger and better once. This idea had
possibilities. I looked at Dave. "You think we could do this?"

"Hell yeah! It would take some work but it's
doable."

I walked over to the desk and sat down deep in thought. I
needed math skills. How big an area could we enclose with a thousand T-walls?
If there’s a thousand could we find a suitable place that would support us?
There was some real possibility here. That thought about the pioneers kept
coming back. I looked up at Dave. "Pass the word. I want a council meeting
tonight at 7 p.m. and not just you and Jim. I want everybody we normally go to
for answers present."

He nodded and said he’d get it done.

Dave and Bob turned to leave and I called Bob. "You did
a great job and I want you at the meeting tonight. There may be questions about
these things and how we're going to move them. You know more about them than
anybody else."

That brought another smile to his lips. They both started to
leave and as an afterthought, I added, "And Dave, find me somebody that
knows math."

He looked confused. "Math?"

"Yeah, you know, add, subtract, the size of an acre of
ground. That stuff. Math."

He still looked confused but said ‘okay’ and they both
headed out the door. I continued to sit at the desk, thinking. Kat had been
watching me. "What’re you thinking?" she eventually asked.

"I'm thinking we need a Real Estate agent."

I only had an hour before the council meeting and I wanted
to make sure I had my idea developed. I grabbed a pen and my notebook and
started making notes. How big an area would we need to support the
approximately two hundred survivors we had? I would have to get the exact
number from Jim at the meeting.

Could we, with a suitable location, grow and raise enough
food to sustain us? What would make a location suitable? Were there enough
T-walls to contain said location? What other support would we need to be able
to live? I knew that farmers had lived this way in the past. Surviving off of
the vegetables and animals they raised. I knew in the years before the Event
there had still been communities of Amish and Mennonites who lived without the
conveniences we had taken for granted. So it was possible, but could we do it?
Did we have the knowledge among our group to make it work?

Those were just some of the questions that came to me. I
knew I wouldn't be able to think of everything. I hoped that between all of us
we could come up with the answers.

The hour before the meeting flew by and I arrived late to
the big conference room upstairs we used as a planning room. As I walked in, I
noticed several more people than the regulars at council meetings. All the
chairs at the large rectangular table were taken and people lined the walls. I
saw Dave at one end of the table and thought about asking him if he had anybody
watching the fence. I decided against it and started into my presentation as
soon as I reached the head end of the table.

I didn't bother to sit, I just started talking. "Okay,
I wanted this special meeting because we have several things to go over. So I'm
going to dispense with the way we normally do this and get right to the point.
I've been looking at this for a while and the fact is we can't continue to
survive here."

I watched the group as they considered what I said. A lot of
hushed discussions were going on along the wall and the people at the table
were looking back and forth at one another. For most of them, except Dave and a
couple of others, this was the first they'd heard of doubts concerning our
survival.

I knew I could always count on Jim and he didn't let me down
when he asked, "So what’re you planning to do about it?"

I smiled; this was the opening I had hoped for. "I'm
glad you asked, Jim. I received some information today that might make it
possible for us to move locations and increase our chances of surviving. While
the foraging party was out today they located a bunch of T-walls. I've got Bob
Thompson here to explain what a T-wall is and I'll let him talk in a minute.”

I took a couple of breaths before continuing. “It’s
important to find a suitable place that can sustain us for the long term. We
knew when we settled this place it was only temporary and it appears that our
time here’s coming to an end. The foraging has gotten more difficult. We have
to travel further to find the things we need and it’s becoming much more dangerous
because of the Road Gangs. The Stinkies we can handle, we haven't had a problem
with them that we couldn't handle in a long time. The events of this week with
the Road Gang go to show we need a more defensible place. A place that can
provide us most of what we need so we can limit the amount of foraging
trips."

I paused to let that sink in and see if there were any
questions. Immediately, hands went up around the room. Doc Groves sat at the
other end of the table, nearest the door. I hadn't seen him enter. He was
apparently later than I was but he had his hand up and I picked him first.

"Scott, if I'm hearing you right, what you'd like to do
is move us lock, stock, and barrel to a new location." I nodded my head.
He continued, "This new location I take it, would be somewhere that we
could either move in or build to suit our needs and then you see us starting to
grow our own food. Is that right?" Good old Doc. He had nailed my idea
right from the start.

"That's right Doc." Immediately the room went
crazy. Everybody started talking at once and I could hear comments both for and
against my idea. I had to get control back or we wouldn't get anything
accomplished. I held up my hands and called for quiet. Dave finally stood up
and yelled for everyone to settle down and let me speak.

I thanked him and continued. "The pioneers did it a
hundred and fifty years ago. People lived that way right up until the day of
the Event. We have been able to overcome everything this new world of ours has
thrown at us. We can do this too." The room quieted down and I could see a
few people nodding their heads in agreement.

I took this as a good sign so I went on. "If, and
that's a big if, if we can find a suitable location, preferably not too far
from here, it would be easier if it were relatively close. Anyway, if we can
find a suitable location with land we can use to grow crops and feed our
animals. A location that we can secure with these T-walls Bob found today and
we can move there and find a way to feed ourselves. Well, it's the chance we've
been looking for. A chance to be free of fear, maybe even a chance at a more
normal life. I know it will take a lot of work. Maybe more than we can handle
but I think we have to try. Surviving here day to day is only prolonging the
inevitable. If we stay here, eventually we will fall apart as a group. We will
run out of supplies. The Road Gangs will pick away at us and we will all
eventually die, and the Stinkies, let's not forget that they are here to stay.
Whatever we do it will have to be done knowing they will present a constant
danger.”

I paused to catch my breath. I hadn't talked this much in
years and I was surprised that the room stayed silent. They were waiting for me
to continue. I had their attention, now I just needed to drive home the
necessity of my plan. "The fear you’re feeling right now listening to my
idea’s the same fear that the western settlers felt when they were trying to
decide if it was a good idea to move west. They knew they would face hardship
and privation. Indian attacks and starvation. We have already been through most
of that. We've faced attacks, we've faced starvation. This is a chance to be
free of all that for the first time in five years. So, I'm asking, can we do
this? Shouldn't we at least try?"

The room remained silent as everyone considered my comments.
Toward the front of the room a big guy with a beard and a barrel chest stepped
away from the wall. I knew his name was Lawrence Davenport but everyone called
him L.B. He was a quiet guy, big and burly. He'd been a HAM radio operator
among other things and was the one that had talked to some of the other
survivor colonies scattered around the country. I didn't know him that well but
what I did know, I liked. L.B. stepped up to the edge of the table and cleared
his throat, preparing to make a comment. "It's muy bueno. Hell yes, we can
do it."

At once, everyone started trying to talk again only this
time I heard many more positive comments than negative. I let them discuss
among themselves a few minutes then got them quieted down again. "All
right. There’re a lot of issues to work out before we even begin to try
something like this. I'd like to start by having Bob tell us about the
T-walls."

Bob stood up and explained what T-walls were and how they
were used. He described their resistance to car bombs and rocket fire and how
they interconnected so nothing bigger than a mouse could squeeze past them. He
told of finding the trucks on I-40 about fifteen miles east of us and that they
were already pointed west. I wondered where they had been headed before they
had stalled on the interstate. If there were indeed a thousand of them that
would mean there were five hundred trucks parked out there. That was five
hundred trips to haul all of the loads to our new home, where ever that
happened to be. Not a small undertaking.

After Bob finished with his explanation, I asked about the
math expert I'd ask Dave to bring. A lady named Meredith Glenn stood up and
said she had been recruited for that job. I asked the question that had been
one of the foremost in my mind since I started with this idea. "Thanks for
coming Meredith. The reason I needed you is to answer how big an area can we
enclose with a thousand T-walls?"

Meredith considered my question a moment then turned to Bob.
"How wide are these things?" she asked. Bob spoke up, saying that
they were about five-feet wide. Meredith turned to me. "Well, at five-feet
wide, a thousand would permit a perimeter of approximately five thousand
feet." She did some calculations on a pad she had with her, then added,
"Depending on the shape, a square, we'll say. That's one-thousand-two-hundred-fifty
feet a side. That gives a square footage of about a million and a half square
feet. An acre is forty-three-thousand-five-hundred- sixty square feet. So it
would give you an area of roughly thirty-six acres." With her explanation
finished, she sat.

That was not as big an area as I'd hoped. "The question
now is can thirty six acres support us?" I looked around the room hoping
someone would have an opinion.

Jim raised his hand and I dreaded asking him to go ahead but
his opinions were valuable. I indicated for him speak. "While thirty six
acres is not a large farm, by properly managing the space we could make it work,”
he answered.

I asked what he meant by properly manage the space.
"Well, yards for example. Before the Event we had large yards around our
homes that were mostly ornamental—for entertainment. We don't need that and
wouldn't have the ability to maintain it for aesthetic purposes anyway. That
space could be used for individual vegetable gardens. That would increase our
productivity,” he said.

I nodded, thinking he had a good idea. He continued, “Larger
spaces could be used for larger crops and to provide grazing for our animals.
Some crops could be raised outside the enclosure and keep the animals inside so
they are protected. The Stinkies don't care anything about crops so the only
risk would be from Road Gangs vandalizing the fields. This could be minimized
by keeping them close to the walls and under surveillance by our security
folks. It's not ideal but it could be made to work." I wanted to kiss him.
After all the shit he had given me about other things, he came through on this.