Humanaty's Blight

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The sun went down as more clouds moved in. The gunfire decreased as the targets became invisible or at least, harder to see. Hopefully, that would help the SEAL and the kayakers, too. The major found me and said that he’d heard many more people had arrived or were in transit. The motorcycles had splint up onto small groups were spreading the word.

They were riding into every part of the city and even the small towns nearby. I wondered if they had recruited the same guys on motorcycles in Marysville who had chased us. And the Indians guarding their reservation. Even those in Darrington would come if the word reached them—and if they were sober enough.

He said, “When the survivors heard about what’s happening here, they got so pissed some are running on foot to reach us before the main attack.”

“There are still ten-thousands of the those on the ships,” I said. “They are better armed and trained, so don’t get your hopes up that we’re going to win. Issue the order that unless told otherwise, we all leave here at midnight.”

He snorted, then straightened. “Sir, not to attempt to correct you, but I think you’re wrong. From what I hear, nobody has refused to help. They insist on it. And despite what you say, nobody is leaving.”

Steve, who hadn’t said anything for quite a while, leaned closer. “How are you going to feed all of them?”

Major Dundee said, “I forgot to mention it in all the excitement. When we broke into the armory, there were pallets of MREs. We loaded case after and case into that second duce-and-a-half truck, a hundred-and-forty-four dehydrated meals in foil packs in each. Should we distribute them?”

I knew the letters stood for dehydrated meals in foil packs. Meals, Ready to Eat, MREs. Those video games were coming in handy. “One per fighter. Honor system. We don’t have the resources to control who takes more. Pass the word.”

“The people up on the hill, too?” he asked.

Without hesitation, I said, “They’re here to fight with us and just as hungry.”

He turned and gave orders to pass out the meals, one to a person, to everyone who had come to help us. He sent men with cases balanced on their shoulders up the roads and to the hill where folks were located. It was up to them to find water to mix with the meals, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Many carried water bottles or canteens.

People kept coming to me for orders. Oddly, they already knew most of the answers and just wanted confirmation. Sue and Steve responded to many of them for me, as they shielded me from making hard choices. They kept me from making stupid ones, too. I walked to the radio tent and entered. To my dismay, all five operators leaped to their feet. It startled me to look around for what had caused their reaction.

The answer came in a hot flash of understanding. It was me. I ordered them to sit and continue, as I asked questions. Yes, they’d all reached others, and those who were within thirty miles or so, should arrive by daylight to provide help. None could provide an accurate guess as to how many that might be. All were bringing whatever weapons could muster.

What was more important, one radio operator with a bad leg and a bandage with blood seeping through told me, the Paul Reveres were still out there passing the word to others and beyond that, others had taken up the call. We now firmly suspected the flu, or blight as it was beginning to commonly be called, had been inflicted on us by another nation, not nature. The reaction was instant hate. People demanded revenge and wanted to be part of it.

A radio operator said he had spoken with another one in Seattle and the word was spreading there. They had already formed a convoy of pickups, SUVs, and motorcycles, amounting to more than three hundred vehicles, each loaded with men and weapons heading up the interstate. They were only a little more than an hour away. There was no gang along the way that would attempt to stop them, but some might hear the story join up with them.

Sue whispered in my ear. “That is probably over a thousand people, right there.”

I hadn’t realized she had slipped up behind me. Another radio operator said there were at least, two other convoys forming, and all would arrive by morning. Sue gave me a jab in my ribs. When I didn’t say anything in response, she raised her voice and said loud enough for anyone nearby to hear, “Captain Bill should have told you how much he appreciates what you’ve done.”

“I-I do,” I stuttered.

The radios we used were CBs and the like. All with a limited range, often measured in single-digit miles. However, there were others out there with radios that reached another five or ten miles, and a few short-wave radios that reached thousands of miles were reporting in. The word was spreading rapidly. Instead of fighting to survive a faceless disease, we began to understand that the blight that had rotted the bodies of our families and friends had been introduced. That knowledge created deep anger in us in a way I’d never seen before nor even begin to comprehend.

My working premise of the events made sense. The flu had been released and had spread the blight nationwide within a few short days. It was preprogramed to last a week before it died off. The blight had a built-in factor that limited the life of the infection or the biological agent that spread it. No new cases. That should have been the clue all along.

Once the blight had killed off eighty or ninety percent of us, and the country descended into chaos, our unknown enemy would simply arrive on our shores and take over our lands, buildings, roads, water, natural resources, and industries. Done correctly, they would probably have powerplants up and running in days. In a year, they would control the entire country and everything in it. The survivors would become slaves for the invaders.

After the ships brought troops, they would bring the immigrants, the new owners of the land, buildings, and roads. Farms were ready for them to harvest, orchards ready to pick, and cattle ready for slaughter.

The outrageous audacity contrasted sharply with the ease of the plan. Right now, we were the only ones holding things up, unless there were more landings up and down the coast. I chastised myself. Of course, there were. Troopships were probably landing at dozens of west coast ports.

I turned to the radio operators and said, “Are any of you in contact with short-wave operators?”

“I am,” one said.

As I explained my thoughts, his face tinged red with anger and he ground his teeth. He said, “I will get the word out. In hours, I’ll have pickups loaded with red-necks and their guns heading for everywhere on the west coast. The radio operators in the ports where the enemy has landed will direct our people where to go.”

Sue said, “They might have ten thousand men at each port. And the east coast and Texas.”

The operator spat, then said, “When I’m done here, there’ll be a hundred thousand of us to push them back into the sea anywhere they land.”

“Do it,” I said as I placed my hand on his shoulder and stood.

The eyes of the men and women began following me wherever I went, like a Rockstar walking a crowded street. Sue and Steve had to order them to stay back several times, so I could move ahead. Each wanted to talk, some to thank me, and others to simply touch my shoulder or my bare arm.

They didn’t understand I was nobody, an accidental hero who happened to be in the center of an emerging action. If I walked down to the shore and walked on the water, they wouldn’t have been surprised. For me, I waited for a real leader to appear so I could avoid the attention.

I also feared what would happen when they discovered I was a sham, a pretender like my cousin and his over-sized bike. The more I’d tried to evade leadership, the more it had been thrust on me. I turned and saw Truant’s mast in the distance. I longed to be back aboard with my two friends. Maybe that could still happen.

Steve touched my arm and when I paused in my idle walking, he leaned closer and whispered, “It’s almost midnight. Time to make a decision about withdrawing.”

At midnight, I was supposed to send everyone away to prevent them from being slaughtered in the morning. So far, we’d held our own with the minimal number of troops that had landed on either side of us, but I suspected the enemy was not supposed to attack in force until dawn when more boats had shuttled additional troops to shore under the cover of darkness. When that happened, they had their foothold.

With the heavy cloud cover, and the gunboats were operating without lights, they were going back and forth, ship to shore, each of them ferrying twenty or thirty soldiers with each trip. If my guess was right, at dawn they would attack our position from both sides of the pier and in an hour or two, they would control it. Then they would pull the first ships in and unload their men and equipment.

At that time, we would be lost. Ship after ship would unload at the pier, two or three at a time, and there might be many more on the way. If that happened, the ensuing war would be long and difficult to win.

I said reluctantly, “I know I said we’d send everyone away at midnight, but if we do, then what? Tomorrow? The day after? When those ships unload and set up here, the majority of us may live a week or maybe a month, if we withdraw. But in the end, they will win and all of us will die.”

Sue said, “If you ask them to, everyone will agree to stay. No matter what the outcome will be. Just tell them the truth.”

Steve said, “If you try to send them away, they won’t go. I’ve overheard them talking. They may not know all the details yet, but they understand and are spreading the word. This is our last stand.”

I sat on the fender of a trashed Ford with four flat tires. Sue tried to get me to sit inside the tents where I was not such an easy target if one of the invading soldiers managed to get within rifle range. I didn’t want to be inside. I wanted to fight. Without forethought, I said, “Steve, can you get me a rifle?”

He didn’t question the request out loud. He simply slipped into the dark and returned a short while later, an automatic rifle in his left hand, and two more carried on straps over his right shoulder. He wordlessly handed one to Sue and then one to me. He ejected his magazine and when satisfied, he shoved it back in and slapped it home with the heel of his palm.

I saw the time on his watch on his wrist. A quarter of an hour after twelve. Sue sat in the fender to my right, and Steve stood to my left. We held our weapons balanced across our knees. At daylight, we’d be fighting for our lives.