Chapter 38

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you reconnect us. I think I should have a little talk and see exactly what you have planned here."

He dropped the rag he had been using as a flag and put his hands up. I told him to cut it out because I only wanted to talk to him. I did warn him if there was anyone inside armed he had better go tell them not to do anything foolish.

"I will be very disappointed if we have to use force against the building. It will probably damage our hopes of recovering our information. We can live without it though."

It was plain he understood his position much more clearly now. I asked him to go back inside and talk things over with any others who might be in there. He headed inside at once and was back in ten minutes saying everyone was at the entrance and would come out now.

When he signaled them one other man and ten women came out with their hands raised. I told him to make them stop it.

"We aren't taking you prisoner and we aren't going to hurt any of you. I don't want to take your women even though they are obviously beautiful. I already have nearly twenty of my own. I only want to talk to you and I want the connection restored. If you have some difficulty which is causing you to want to keep me disconnected we will see what provisions we can make to minimize the problem."

After everyone was calm and collected I told Brenda I wanted her to circle and make sure no trouble was about and the other girls could land and save fuel. She put things in motion.

I went inside with our new acquaintances and we settled into a lobby. My original contact introduced himself as Frank and his younger brother was Bob. The women introduced themselves, but I couldn't keep up with all their names. I apologized for my shortcomings.

Frank, Bob, and some of the women had worked at the data center before the sickness. Frank had been the senior network engineer. They all lived here now, but not because it was especially convenient for survival. They were staying here because they were trying to save the information the data center held. They weren't having trouble finding food and they had a few small arms to protect themselves. We were the first people they'd seen since they'd moved in here.

Frank felt tied to the data center. Bob wasn't as committed to the center, but he was committed to Frank. Some of the women had also worked here and the others had been college students.

Their main difficulty was keeping fuel in the generator's tank. A large diesel generator located in the basement provided the emergency power. There were two separate units but only one ran at a time.

They used about fifty gallons of diesel a day, but they had been requiring about ninety gallons a day when the air conditioning had been set to seventy-six and a lot of the lights and other office machines had been plugged in. They tumbled to this fact and turned off everything they could and set the thermostat to eighty-five.

Frank thought it was cool enough so it wouldn't be a problem for any of the servers or other equipment and it significantly cut the fuel use.

He also told me the center had just ceased to be staffed the morning after the government and business leaders died. He and Bob stayed on to keep it going. He hadn't known why at first, but as he realized most of the population was dying he felt it was his duty to try and save some of the hard won knowledge of the human race.

I agreed with him and asked what type of progress he'd made. He said on the second day he and Bob had taken over he started gathering information which hadn't been here originally. He'd kept machines transferring data from the library of congress to machines here and had cleaned off many of the large servers which had belonged to commercial web sites and had used their disc space to store the new material.

He said there were still terabytes of now useless commercial sites he could use if he had other information to store and he felt sure he had managed to save everything from the library of congress and had also been able to obtain a couple of university libraries which hadn't been here already.

The new stuff was currently hard to retrieve since it had been stored without putting into place a sufficient organization of the data. He'd felt it was more important to secure the data than spend time at first worrying how to easily retrieve it.

They didn't have any sources left now to retrieve so they'd shifted their focus to organizing what they had. It was most of his story in a nutshell.

I asked him how much fuel the generator's tanks could hold and he said it would actually hold a little over two thousand gallons. They hadn't been bothered with getting additional fuel for very long. I asked him if the work they were doing now could be done remotely so they wouldn't have to stay here.

"It could be but there aren't any functioning connections now." He said.

"There was one yesterday until you shut it down. Would it be sufficient to do your work?"

"Well sure. It wasn't just one connection. There were actually ten direct lines to your location," he said.

"Well why don't you simply join us. We have plenty of food and plenty of room and we would like the information saved as much as you. We can protect you and provide for you. All you'll have to do is work on this and maybe do a few small chores around the house. We won't make you do anything you object to."

"Where is this place?"

"I won't tell you right away. It's about eighty miles from here. It's a former government facility, but it isn't like any you've ever seen or heard of. It has excellent security equipment and the most important rule I have is no women are forced to be with a man they don't want to be with. I don't allow women to be forced to pay with sex for their protection or care and I don't allow any man to hold women against their will.

"There are three men and a thirteen year-old-boy there beside me. If your women want to leave you and take up with one of them it will have to be their decision. The same goes for any other women there.

If they want to leave their current man and be with you it will also be their prerogative. I don't allow any man to try to persuade another man's woman to leave him though. There will be no courting of other men's women. The women will have to think of it and do it on their own."

Neither Frank nor Bob had any problem with it. They did say they'd like to talk about it among themselves. I told them no matter what their decision I was going to provide the fuel for them from now on and I told them they could expect a fuel tanker this afternoon. This seemed to cheer them up a lot so I said my goodbyes and left.

Gloria, Helen, and Aimee got aloft after I told them we were heading back and Brenda set down for me, then we left. We'd only been airborne about fifteen minutes when Sharon called us.

"Jack there is some type of jet buzzing the house," she said.

"Has it fired at you?" I asked, scared shitless.

"No. It is acting in a threatening manner though. It seems to be buzzing the airstrip mainly," she said.

"We'll be there in a few minutes." I said, though I didn't feel very confident.

The others all heard and Brenda turned on something. After staring at its readout she reported the jet's IFF said it was an F16. She told the others to be ready to try some stingers.

Brenda told me if it was an F16 with a full crew of two and a normal load of ordnance we might end up loosing a bird or two if it was really hostile. She said we wouldn't have a good chance with the stingers since the normal air-to-air weapons on an F16 could take the helicopters out from a much greater distance.

"Our best bet is to get on the ground and away from the helicopters as quickly as possible if it attacks. Keep good separation girls," she said, over the radio.

They'd all gone to maximum speed with Sharon's announcement and we were approaching home already. We saw the F16 almost at once.

It made a guns only pass on the Cobra which was sitting off by itself. The F16 was down below a thousand feet and Brenda said it was traveling at a very slow speed for it.

When they saw it fire its cannon they all launched a stinger and bore down on it trying to get closer to launch more. Brenda was closest and as the jet discovered the danger and pulled up for altitude Brenda laughed and launched two more stingers.

"That pilot must not be very experienced. Maybe he hasn't actually been fired on before. He was flying so low and slow he nearly stalled it when he put the nose up," Brenda said, explaining for my benefit.

The last stinger she'd launched hit it and I saw the explosion, but it didn't seem the plane was seriously damaged at first. Then black smoke seemed to boil out of it and suddenly something came flying up from the plane as the canopy flew off.

It had to be the pilot. He had ejected and the plane careened away from us and I was glad. We saw it hit the ground four or five miles away. It sent up a huge fireball but we stayed with the ejected pilot. When he hit the ground he just lay still.

Brenda landed near the downed pilot while the others circled. She and I got out with weapons ready to go to the downed pilot. I saw he was a she when we got there. She was beautiful of course, but she was also a hostile one.

She was pointing a semi-automatic handgun at us as we approached. We stopped well out of range and leveled our M4s at her. She threw the handgun well clear and when we got to her I could tell she was injured. I had Brenda tell the others and Gloria left to fetch the civilian helicopter and one of the doctors while Brenda informed Sharon we would need their services. She said she'd tell them.

We were over a mile from the house. I asked the injured pilot if she was in pain, but she ignored me. She wouldn't say anything. Gloria was back with all three doctors in just under ten minutes. She told us Beverly was bringing the ambulance and Jana was coming with her.

The injured pilot still didn't say anything. Karen cut off the leg of her coverall to examine the obviously injured leg. I could see a small bulge just four or five inches below her right knee. Karen asked her if she had any other injuries, but she was still determined not to talk. I walked back to the helicopter to see if I was the cause of her silence. I don't guess I was because she still wouldn't communicate.