Chapter 2

That night I got invited out for more pizza. Pickings were awfully slim. We went to a house I'd not been to before. We had canned mushroom pizza on hand made dough cooked over a fireplace. I met Tim, Lisa, Tracy, Pete and Zeena. Tim was an EMT, Lisa a pharmacist and Tracy was a pathologist with oncological training. Pete was the head of a maintenance shift at the hospital and knew enough about diesel engines to just about grow one in a garden. Zeena was a fully qualified surgical nurse, just out of training. Carol had given 'em the gist of what we'd decided that weekend and they wanted in. I told the group about what I'd been doing and the talk I had with the army captain, including my ideas about taking over the air force base. Everybody liked that, but agreed that for the interim we'd better hunker down and wait for the screaming to blow over.

We discussed the issue of communicable diseases and what would happen if a cholera or mumps, much less chicken pox or encephalitis epidemic took hold. We needed immunizations and a future source of media. I started making another list. Medications and replacements for their aging out, especially short-lived ones like immunization media and insulin were pretty high on the list. I wanted to be able to gather and train a militia under the auspices of the US Government. I wanted to be able to seize goods and materials without fear of reprisal. I wanted to be able to relocate civilians without fear of reprisal. I NEEDED to be able to shoot to kill within adjudicated reason, that going up before a review board, not the courts martial. I needed help with decontamination, decommissioning the base, decommissioning any ABC munitions (atomic-biological-chemical) and training in quartermaster and fixed position defense considerations. I used to build 'em, not defend 'em. I couldn't even operate a crew-served weapons platform. Our ten-year supplies and rebuilding picture looked bleak, too.

Well, three days rolled around. Captain Miller must have sent up a flare because there were a hell of a lot more that one person on the other end of that radio Saturday morning. I had the base commander for Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a brigadier general and god only knows who else as staff. Those are the three I talked to. We discussed the bug at Warren AFB. It would definitely be dead in two months after initial exposure. That was a month and a half from current. We could hold out that long. We discussed the re-commissioning of the base and disposal of any ABC munitions. The militia issue was side-stepped by re-commissioning ME as a Colonel, reassigning my service from Navy to Army with a mission of recruitment and training of a minimum of one company in strength and providing for the safety and succor of all civilians in a 100 mile radius of Warren AFB that were amenable to our care, which would be my new base of ops as of two months from current date. They would helo up a decontam crew and two squads to help clean up the base and subdue and care for any students alive at that time. The base commander brought up the power issue, bless his heart. He mentioned a modular pebble-bed reactor and I brightened up right away. We were just sending some guys out for training in installing the modular reactors when I retired. That would solve a lot of problems if there was a coolant supply. There was. There was an open sweet water lake at Warren. We were in business.

With my newly minted virtual eagles, I grew another set of balls. We went scavenging with a vengeance. We found tractor-trailers all over town. We got 'em fuelled up at the armory and started raiding. We cleaned out every drug store and warehouse we could find. I started a long-term project of cleaning out the college libraries. I wanted all the strong acids, alkalais, polymerizers and oxidizers carefully lifted out of the chem. lab supplies, too. There wasn't a chemical supply house in town, but there was in Cheyenne. That puppy got a bookmark from me.

I also used my welder to put barred windows and bench seats in two semi trailers to transport the ex-students; my new troops.

I started a house-to-house campaign explaining what was going on, what we were doing and why. Winter was coming on, and I really didn't get much opposition. I even got a few retired swabbies and marines to join up. Hey, three squares were getting damned hard to find. My place was warm and dry, so I converted the whole place but my armory and garage to bunks, and we activated the armory downtown. We had to rig cisterns to fill the water buffalos, then 'commandeer' another generator and LP bulk tank, but we had another safe haven in a matter of days. I talked the cafeteria staff from the college into helping out so we wouldn't poison ourselves or (shudder) waste food. We knew that we couldn't keep them fed for long, so we started butchering the standing beef stock. The ranchers identified the various strains and reserved out a representative breeding stock for each. We discussed the long term viability of frozen sperm, in vitro blastocyte storage and bovine sera cross-contamination. We ended pulling in a couple of biologist head cases over the radio to plan out a way to keep the strains alive after the hay was gone. This was going to get complicated. Anything complicated fails. We were going to do it in triplicate. We--that is our site--were going to do it for beef, horses and pigs. Other sites would duplicate our efforts and expand to local strains and avians. Mighty technical folk, these modern ranchers.

We were getting optimistic. I know, I know. Hubris. Setting myself up for a fall. We thought we had everything covered, moving the remaining 6,000 or so souls from Laramie to Cheyenne. Bullshit. Our goddamned bunch of rowdies discovered the Laramie airport and a couple of 'em knew how to fly. At least one knew rotary. Remember those four idiots that didn't get pureed on the first attack at my place? Well, they had big mouths. I got trick-or-treaters and it wasn't even Halloween yet.

One idiot tried to land a helo on my roof. I wired up my little cable surprise and let him have it. What happens when a large horizontal rotary propeller intersects twelve vertical half-inch steel cables? Even I didn't expect that much mess. When I blew the base charges under the cable around my roof, they stood up straight for just a second or so, then started to drop under their own weight. I triggered the charges just as he was coming over the wall. To say it was brutal was--so innocent. It was like a firefight, car wreck and earthquake wrapped up in one. It was dead silent for long minutes after that. Then, it was like mooning a rabid dog. It looked like a cut scene from Mad Max. Some climbed the wreckage to the roof, some fought the doors. I popped the latch remotes and let 'em force their way in against the weight of the doors without the benefit of the lift motors. When they were in, I locked the doors. First, to get rid of the roof rats I triggered phase two--the screws embedded in wax topping the Semtex. Imagine a 30x120 foot flat claymore mine. I think I overdid the Semtex again, even though we rolled it out paper thin. When I looked out, they were GONE. I looked around and everyone was looking at the building with their mouths open, or lying flat. There was a red fog kinda downwind, starting to come down. Screws were coming down like steel hailstones. Phew. Gotta remember that one. Fuck the screws. Shaped explosion front. Hmm. I wonder. If you made a 10-foot concrete dish on bearings to rotate it, lay two layers of thin semtex in the bowl separated by an inch of wax or clay and ran a 7 ms delay fuse between 'em, and popped the back one first. What would you call it? Fist of God? Hmm.

Oh well, time to put the shock troops to bed. I went back inside the roof access and buttoned it down. In the living room I wired and keyed the front access cell mine number one and triggered it. Thump. Nice. Much nicer than last time. The resonance in that small chamber must have pulverized things nicely, though. Now let's wire the back bay, key it and ... WHAM. Twelve 000000 gauge shotguns in a concrete room the size of two semi trailers wide and two semi trailers long. Shit. I bet I overdid the Semtex again. Crap. Well, let's go look. I unlocked the back bay door and looked in. I had to take pictures of this one. Yep, overdid the Semtex. It looked like a rave gone reaaaly bad. I cranked open the back door and started in with a squeegee, then a hose, then a pressure washer. I had to spray down the place with bleach to get the raw meat smell out of the concrete pores before it went bad.

The front access was pretty much the same with less spraying bits. Kind of like meat pudding. I love resonance effects. I can do more with three pieces of primacord and some timing straws than most can do with a kilo of Semtex. And a Kilo is a hell of a lot of Semtex! I took pictures of that one before cleanup, too.

On reflection, I should have saved the mess in drums for fertilizer, but then who wants to keep slurry of idiot around for ten years?

I'd drawn quite a little crowd by then, some my people, some city folk. I guess I had to say something.

"I guess their irresistible force met a better immovable object. Hmm. It's an object lesson here, somehow."

One wit came up with a good one.

"Prior Planning Proves Piss Poor Performance in oPonents?"

"Hey! Not bad!"

"How about enough concrete will stop anything?"

"Hmm, fair. You need something about a rabid water buffalo in there maybe."

Things got spirited for a while as people unwound. A big sword was gone from over their heads. The worst of the ferals had just taken themselves out of the gene pool.

I didn't sleep much that night. It wasn't my fault, I swear it. It just happened that way.

I ate with the group, showered and went to bed. I relaxed, figuring a good job done. I was almost asleep when...

"Art?"

"Hmm?"

"Move over."

"Mrph."

A different voice, also female.

"Hey, there's no room over here, now. Move over."

I started to wake up. Someone was pulling the sheet down to my feet, then I felt someone crawl up the bed over me.

"Hey, Art. You did good. You know what heroes get?"

"Umm, laid?"

silence, then giggles. Honest to god giggles. I heard "That 'll do." The rest is, um historical, er, history.

I really didn't want to get up the next morning. My arms were sore. My back was sore. My legs were sore. My dick was past sore. My jaw and tongue were so sore I couldn't move 'em. But I had to piss. Damn. I just PROVED I wasn't 18 anymore.

I sat down to piss. I didn't care. Phew. No blood.

Looking back into the bedroom it looked like a naked bar fight. There were bodies everywhere. One, two, three, four ... Where the hell did the other three come from? I didn't feel so bad. Six innies against one outie and I was the first one up. Not so bad, old man. I snuck over to my dresser and found my camera. It took a while to get the right angle, then ... FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! I had evidence! I started running. Damn, but I paid later. It was worth it.

After that night, I started talking to the combat vets. We needed to get the kids under control. Some good ones could be getting killed by the scum and we'd never know it. It was time to take charge.

We got three squads of 14 men and women, mostly combat vets, some farmers and ranchers. We all got into fatigues and combat boots, Alice packs, helmets and weapons. Half with shotguns, half with M-16s. All those spotting lasers from the shotguns looked positively intimidating. I also was packing an S&W .357 in a belly holster. Fuck, if Patton could carry, I could too.

Itty-bitty little Jackie went Cro-Magnon on me. She was packing an M79 grenade launcher and a 20-round ammo vest. I think she was an adrenalin junkie. I purely didn't want to know what would happen if she fired that thing, but I wasn't about to try and take it away from her. I think she'd been practicing mean.

I found out that our mechanic, Pete, had watched too many Rat Patrol shows. He showed up in a WWII Jeep with a pintle-mounted FIFTY CALIBER MACHINE GUN and an ammo load-out that almost flatten the tires. One of the vets was his ammo man, and another drove. Shit, they looked ready for business.

Tim was on hand in a fully configured field ambulance, with Carol and Zeena attending.

We had another car, a hummer with a mounted .30 patrol the back of the building so nobody would slip away. Then, o'dark thirty (that's four thirty AM to you civilians) I had Pete lay down a strip of .50's across the first floor windows. Only lookouts would be there as the rooms were flooded anyway. That was to get their attention. I keyed my bullhorn.

"All you in the goddamned dorm! Wake up! Listen up! I am the local miltary commander, and you will comply with my demands or you will die, no second chances, no bullshit. Everybody, repeat everybody will stand against the wall farthest from the door of your current room with your hands extended fully above your heads and wait for a troop to evacuate you. If you do not comply you will be shot. If you give the troop shit you will be shot. If you attempt to harm the troop you will be shot multiple times. If you open your fucking mouth a barrel will be forced into it and will be discharged. You have one and only one chance to comply."

I turned to my squads. "From the top floors down, two squads. Third squad keep 'em coming downstairs and push 'em into the cattle cars. Any needing a medic I expect to see a red banner out the window. Any troop down, I expect to see a white banner. Any white banner or sound of gunfire, third troop reinforce with two troop. Any standoffs, HE grenade. No bullshit. GO.

We took out one slaver and a couple of wannabe militia. They got the grenades. The slaver tried to take hostages. Fucker didn't know that a pintle-mounted fifty with a new barrel can single shot a beer can at quarter mile. Heh. I guess Pete liked his new nickname-- Rat patrol!

Some of the girls had really been badly treated--little or no food, raped, beaten, you name it. We had way, way too many red banners. We had sixteen documented firing squads backed by photographic evidence and testimony. I am disappointed to say that they were all gut shot, but admit I would have done the same, seeing the condition of the girls and knowing that minimum care could have been provided. Ten of those shot were women.

What do you do with almost 180 displaced teenagers under martial law? Simple! Conscript them! We used the high school as barracks and cafeteria as mess hall. Uniforms were hard to come by, but we made do. First, everybody, repeat everybody, including me, got immunized. All health care workers got immunized. Hepatitis, Cholera, Yellow Fever, you name it. The armory had a globulin freezer and we used it all before it went bad. All vets, cadre, everyone I could justify before the globulin ran out. We kept shot records, too, in case we could be restocked by our upstream command. It seemed brutal, but I had everyone's blood type tattooed inside their wrist along with their SSN. When you can't talk seconds count. Then I got smart. Instead of depending on military staffing models and ASVAB tests, we sat everyone down and found out what they'd done. Naw, not their criminal records, WORK records. Who'd poured concrete? Who had done summer house construction? Who did time on a summer road crew? Who rebuilt cars? Who helped Uncle Ed rebuild a tractor? Who sewed? Who baked? Who did cowboy action shooting? Who hunted for the table? Who had butchered cattle or elk or deer or moose? We found plumbers, electricians, shoemakers, tailors, draftsmen, toolmakers, press men ... the list went on and on. We asked everybody to do what they could when it was needed. We got near 100 percent compliance. The kids were in a locked down barracks except for the ones under medical care and six others-we had a small ROTC group! They were mostly juniors and seniors. Instant cadre! That helped. It also helped that they knew most of the others and could identify the assholes immediately. It saved us a lot of tears down the line.

Soon enough, the day arrived that a small fleet of Sikorskys landed at the local airfield. I bunked everyone the first night willy-nilly, then got things cleaned up the next day. I needed more staff for this shit. At least everybody got bedded down in a warm, dry bunk with a hot meal in their gut. Just ask any ground pounder--happiness is a dry everything and a warm meal. Ooh Rah be damned. After an "are we on the same page" meeting the next morning, the decontam/decommissioning team headed east, while I talked things over with the two 'gift' squads left over. It seems that I had made a lot of waves. If this project went over it could be repeated elsewhere. If I asked nice, I might be able to get nice things, hint hint. Example, the reactor was due to be installed in a week. To get organized, I asked for and got a current high- definition satellite map of the Warren AFB and ten miles in all directions.

Now, Cheyenne was a city, with everything from slums to swank neighborhoods, libraries, art galleries and museums. I wanted to preserve it all. Pthppp. I know, no way, no how. Well, I wanted to survive. I also wanted to survive as better than a cave man. I wanted to stay in the 20th century if possible. External combustion engines worked perfectly fine. They were just a little less efficient due to more mass and thermal loss. I'll bet they'd last longer, though, with modern alloys. If we went back to horses it would be a shame. Enough of that. We started with the phone book. I started our meeting with the troop--

"Remember, Rape, Rob, Pillage, THEN Burn!" I almost got a laugh.

"Our goal is to first, safety the base, second, move the Laramie civilians and troop, third, move the Laramie resources, fourth, notify and consolidate the Cheyenne civilians, fifth, identify and attempt the recommissioning of the Cheyenne troop, sixth, consolidate the Cheyenne resources, Seventh, consolidate our perimeter to support and succor any we can to the limit of our resources. Repopulating any ranches and farms within 100 miles would be a very good thing. Remember, the ranchers and farmers are our friends. You piss them off, you piss me off. Don't piss me off. That's our six month plan. We may be here for ten years before we can plant a crop. We just don't know. We have to preserve anything and everything we can. If something looks like a seed, SAVE IT. Even if it's weeds, we'll need ground cover to keep the soil from eroding or just blowing away.

Damn, it was hard. It was scary. But in the long term, it was satisfying.

I asked for, and got another powow with the general.

"Boss, I've got to let my hair down. I know that Warren's primarily an ABM site. I don't expect that to change. I need zone maps so that we can fence off the dangerous parts and assign permanent guards to any sensitive, read launch, facilities. We're going to have civilians, children and teenagers out there and if they can get into anything by God they will. Help me out here, hoss."

"Okay. You can stop twisting that arm. You'd better razor wire off everything but the south east quadrant of the base.

Silence.

"I'll need about six boxcar loads of razor wire. I'm gonna put in a triple defense perimeter with five to seven hundred feet between the lines, then mantrap and tank trap the inner perimeter. I'd like to run a 5 KV eight foot fence down the middle of the whole mess."

"You don't fuck around, do you?"

"Nope. Do you realize how long it could be until we can plant a viable crop?"

"I've heard five to six years batted about."

"Try almost twice that. The soil has to thaw and stabilize, the ecology has to ramp up and the weather has to stabilize. I don't know how the hell we're going to make it, and quite frankly, I'm terrified. We might have food for three or four years. Most of Cheyenne is going to have to die off, and that means local war. We're going to be the bad guys, make no bones about it."