Chapter 12

Year Two: Day Seventy-Eight: Monday

Although the military defeat of the renegades in Jacksonville was a three day operation it took us three weeks of careful scouting to make contact with all of the singles and small groups in that city. Many of them were hiding from that same group and were a bit skittish about meeting strangers. It took patience and some courage on the part of the militia to even initiate contact. No shots were fired but during several stand-offs the situation became quite touchy. Most of these loners were really surprised that we knew where to look for them in the first place. In many cases our offers of assistance were refused and the survivors seemed surprised when we didn't try to force the issue. Some of those who first refused our aid later approached us, having changed their minds.

The rather large group onboard the USS Eisenhower was a special case. They were friendly enough after they found we had rid the area of the renegades but were at the same time satisfied with their own situation. We were welcomed onboard that huge ship and then pumped for information on the situation in the outside world. We learned that the group onboard was mainly former Navy members and their families. Almost all had been members of the local motorcycle club which seemed strange since we had spent so much time fighting gangs of bikers. At that point many of us had begun to think of bikers and renegades interchangeably when speaking of the enemy. The group from Mayport provided a counterpoint to this way of thinking.

When the collapse occurred their club had been out on a peaceful Sunday excursion west of Jacksonville into the nearby Osceola National Forest. James Barlow, the leader of the group, told me they were mostly riding single file and had just exited the deep forest onto the highway where they found a car half wrapped around a large pine tree. "Hell, it looked to me like we should have heard the crash. I mean there was still steam hissing from the radiator. Me, John and Bill were a couple of hundred feet ahead of everyone else and seen it first. We pulled off the road and I had Bill flag down the rest of the group while me and John looked to see if we could help the survivors. It surprised the crap out of us when we found there weren't any. Only thing we could figure was that somebody else had stopped and carted the survivors off to the hospital. We tried to call smokies on the cell but none of us could get any signal. Shit, we've made that ride before and nobody could remember any dead zones in that area.

"Anyway we took to the road again figuring we'd call from a gas station which was on down the road a bit. Before we got there we found other wrecks. We stopped and tried to help the first few we passed but ... hell, you know what it was like. Then we got to I-10 and it got a lot worse. We had a hell of a time weaving between the accidents. A couple of members used to be really religious and started talking about the rapture. Figured if they had been in church they'd have gone as well. I told 'em to shut up and watch out for the broke glass and gasoline. There were some places where there were real fires that were hard to avoid. Couple of times we had to move over into the westbound lane to get by. Of course we didn't have to worry about any traffic coming that way either. I was wondering the whole time about my girl friend Mary back home. She'd been on her monthlies and stayed back at the last minute.

"Seems like when I started thinking about Mary everyone else who had left someone behind started having the same thoughts. I could see them flick their phones open. I did the same thing and didn't get any signal. Hell, I even stopped not fifty yards from a cell tower and still got nothing.

"Some people started getting frustrated then and a small group picked up speed and passed all of us. I knew how they felt but you had to be careful 'cause there was a lot of slick spots from oil and other debris. I hollered for them to slow down and hell, about that time Teddy, who was leading the group that was haulin' ass, hit something and went down. Poor asshole slid right into this hellacious fire around an overturned tanker truck. I thought we was lucky that more didn't go down the same way. Course that knocked some sense into those knuckleheads and most of them slowed up quite a bit. We couldn't do nothin' for old Teddy and so we mounted up again only nobody was shootin' the breeze any more. We all spent our time watching out ahead and thinking about what we was seein'. When we reached the base we broke up and all headed our separate ways. Hell, you know what we found. Didn't matter whether it was onboard this ship or in quarters, nobody was there. We all thought we was goin' crazy. We still don't know where they went.

"I couldn't stay home. I rode back out to the little building they let us use as a clubhouse. I ain't ashamed to say I spent most of the night cryin' and pulling my hair tryin' to think of somethin'. I started in on the beer after a while and then stopped. Figured I'd be no use to anyone if I got trashed. Some of us, well, a few decided it was too much. A couple took a bullet and a couple tried liquor and pills. Hell, I don't know how I would have stood it if I'd went to my neighbors house who was supposed to be watchin' my kids and found my kids toys and backpacks and no kids. I can't fault them for what they did.

"I figured we was lucky that most of us old sailors had been through rough shit before and just got stinkin' drunk hoping things would be better in the morning. Course it wasn't and after a few days more and more guys started drifting over to the club house. We decided to look for others that might have got missed and we first searched the base. Then we went block by block through Mayport. We did find a few people there who were as confused about things as we were. They'd all been out on small boats, mostly fishin', when everybody went missing. They joined us and we found bikes for them and kept looking. We'd find one or two here and there and figured maybe we'd start finding our own folks.

"Shit we was doin' okay until we started searching Jax. Nobody had fought us or even acted mad we'd showed up. When we first got into Jax proper our luck ran out. We looked for two days and didn't find nobody. Some could have been hiding I guess but we didn't see a soul. After a while we stopped looking. After finding the few survivors that were found from the returning boats we had 50 of us, 38 men and 12 women.

"We moved onto the ship because we didn't seem to fit anywhere else. Base power was spotty and kept goin' off in the middle of the night and you know how hard it is to sleep here in the summer without A/C. When the transient quarters didn't work out we moved onto one of the small buoys anchored along the destroyer piers. Those had the same problems as quarters had cause ships systems were running off of base power. We got tired of babysitting that fickle generator over at the backup power station.

"There were some who wanted to get away from the base entirely but we finally agreed that the best thing was to move onboard the Ike. Some of us were upset at first that we'd have to live so close to the reactors since they'd been running with no people on board since that Sunday. Bud and Will over there were machinist mates and they inspected the setup and found the Ike had one reactor damped down while the other was cranking out steam for the turbines like nothing had ever happened. The whole shebang, the reactors and the turbine generators are mostly automatic. Hell, when you think about it, they'd just about have to be to keep going in a warship while the ship's under attack. We've had a few smaller parts break and we're always surprised when some backup system comes on line to carry us until we can fix things. Bud and Will and a few others are still studying the blamed thing and I figure they will be for quite a while yet."

Year Two: Day Eighty-One: Thursday

In the end we managed to work out a loose alliance with James' group and spent a couple of days exploring the ship. I was able to show them a few things from my days as a pilot onboard a similar carrier. While we visited, some of James' group told me they had run across the Mandarin group a few months back but had managed to slip away and get back to the ship without being followed. They had found several 50 caliber machine guns that were stowed in storage lockers near mounts on the ships railing and practiced repelling boarders in case they needed to defend the ship. They also stationed a sentry in a hidden location near the base gate with a radio to warn them of anyone coming aboard the base. It seemed strange to see 60 to 70 bikes on the hangar deck of the ship, some in various stages of repair. Some of those bikes had belonged to the group in Mandarin and had been brought back to the ship for extras.

One of the future benefits for James' group was our offer to help educate any children that might result. Although there were no children currently aboard the Ike two of the women in the group were about three to four months pregnant. James mentioned this and admitted that he had been worried as there were no doctors or nurses in the group. As a result Dr. Walling flew out from Whiting on the C-9 that was to take us back to Whiting on our last morning there. I kind of expected that Irene might come with him along but was as surprised as everyone else when Laura, Lana and Kari also got off of that plane. It may have been their not too subtle way of telling me it was time to come home. I hadn't mentioned my wives to James or anyone in his group; not that I was trying to hide anything but the subject had just never come up. As all of my wives deplaned near the small terminal onboard Mayport there were a lot of smiles from those in James' group that had drove over to meet the plane. Almost as if it was rehearsed each of the women came over to me and gave me a steaming kiss. James' eyebrows rose higher and higher with each greeting. Ryan Walling and his wife Olivia were almost laughing at James' reaction. When a hormone charged Kari tried her best to top the first three scorchers James curiosity got the best of him and he deadpanned, "Is there some benefit to joining this alliance that you haven't told me about yet, Steve?"