Chapter 24

For two days, Greg and his men made their way towards the coast. The fire road had to be cleared in places, to allow the vehicles to pass. Once, they even had to construct a temporary bridge, to replace an older wooden bridge that had collapsed.

The first night, they camped after only making thirty-seven miles. They came upon a clearing that had good run off, in case it rained again. The men set up tents, and Greg was soon sitting in his GP Small (General Purpose Small tent. Despite it's name, it would be very comfortable and roomy, for a man alone. Two could sleep comfortably inside, even using cots. Generally, a small stove was included during winter months. It was usually issued to senior NCO's, and low ranking officers.)

The second night, they were just eight miles short of the shoreline, when Greg called a halt. Again, they'd had to clear roads. In some cases they'd had to go overland, where roadways had been washed away.

Just two hours after breakfast on the third day, they arrived at the Atlantic Ocean. It was a truly awe inspiring sight. The water was rough and choppy. The wind came in off the Ocean, at 15 miles an hour. They didn't know if this was the norm, as a daily occurrence, or if the wind was just from a windy day.

Greg had spent time at the ocean before. Where he had been the air had been calm, with little wind, and he had gotten a sunburn. That was just a few years ago. Greg quickly had teams going up and down the beach, and a little inland, looking for the best place to start heading South.

During the last day, Greg had seen evidence of the tidal wave that had smashed onto the East coast. Broken and snapped trees had laid everywhere. Fragments of boats and houses were strewn across the earth. No one had made any effort at clean up. He doubted anyone lived here, or if they did, they scavenged for a living.

"Sir! There's a ship run aground!" came the voice of one of the southern scouts over the radio.

"Where are you at?" Greg asked, interestedly.

"About half a mile south of you, just past that big rise. It's in pretty bad shape, Sir," responded the voice.

Greg and the rest of the people drove down, and were stunned by what they saw. Greg identified it as a Destroyer. It was upside down, and it had been battered savagely. A huge section was broken off, and was missing.

It had been there for some time. Greg got the numbers off it, so when he reported in later that day, he could give Cheyenne an update on this particular vessel. He ordered his people to dismount their vehicles. He asked for volunteers to go into the wreck, and see what they could find.

He had more volunteers than was sensible to send in. After setting a perimeter guard, he had Sgt. Langford pick two teams of three men each, to explore the wreck.

They went in and one of the first things discovered was that this ship had been under water at one time. Some compartments and low places inside were filled with water. They only way these sections could have been filled were if the ship had been sunken originally.

Altogether they counted only 47 bodies. Greg didn't know how many people crewed a destroyer, but 47 was hardly even a minority of the crew for a ship of this size. They recovered as much in the way of identification as possible, and that too would be transmitted when Greg made contact.

Finally Greg called all his teams back out. While finding this ship had been interesting, it was not their job. Slowly they made their way further south. It took them the rest of the day to make 15 more miles. They had to keep doubling back, to find different ways to proceed south.

Finally, they had to leave the beach altogether. They traveled inland a couple miles to find a way around a large empty place. The road ended abruptly. It looked as if a huge child had gouged out a large chunk of earth, and left a mile wide gap. It was incredible.

Ocean filled the mile wide gap, and at least a mile farther inland, in a little cove. All the signs were, that was a new cove. Greg filmed this, as he had done the ship they had found. The digitized information would be in the report he made, this evening.

They finally found a good place to camp. Although it was early, Greg had everyone pitch camp. According to the information that had been received last night, the cargo ship that was steaming to meet them, was only about a day and a half south of them.

It was during the night that Sgt. Langford woke Greg up.

"Sir? The southern perimeter guard has spotted lights in the distance."

"Lights?" Greg looked at his watch. 11:30 PM. "How come they weren't noticed before?" Greg asked.

"Could have been they weren't there, or the weather wasn't right to let us see them. I sent a team in to check it out." Langford said.

"Great, now I am wide awake. Is there any coffee on?" Greg asked plaintively.

The recon team that was sent to investigate, moved in slowly. They were using NODS (Night observation devices) and were confident in their training and equipment. They came to within 100 feet of the light sources and stopped. They were still concealed from any casual observation.