“No. This isn’t your decision to make, Doc. This isn’t Rick’s decision to make, either. If you tell them, we will have problems HERE and we will have them TONIGHT. People will begin arguing and panicking. They will start trying to decide who goes. No, we’re not doing this. The RSO put me in charge. That means the Ambassador put me in charge. Furthermore, the Admiral put me in charge. I have the radio and I have the plan. There will be no committee, and there will be no early warning. I want you to give me all the keys. Furthermore, I will be the only person with the elevator and stairwell lock down keys tonight. They can hate me tomorrow, but we can’t afford panic tonight. Talbot, go with Rick and bring back the keys. Remain under arms and direct anyone outside of their apartments that we are under curfew. You have first watch.”
“No problem, Dillon.”
Dillon “Doc, let me walk you back to your room.”
Dillon tried to be casual about it, but he had just moved from leader to dictator.
Though the night was tense, it passed quickly enough. Dillon took a four hour watch shift, but nothing happened. Morning brought complaints that there was no cold milk for cereal. Gas still worked, and he watched Hannah go from unit to unit showing people that gas burners still worked if you had a lighter. Mikey brought a paper plate heaped with scrambled eggs and diced ham and buttered toast out to Dillon.
“Hi, Daddy. Are we going to the airport today? Do you know where we’re going yet? I hope it’s somewhere new.”
“I’m sure it will be, kiddo. We’re going tonight. Are you all packed?”
“I am. Mom wanted me to pack more clothes, but I thought I might need more food.”
“Well, I’m thinking the Navy will have plenty of MREs, Mikey. What they won’t have is clothes your size. You should also pack some books or your iPad. We might not have power here, but they will wherever we end up, I bet.”
It was more of a hope than a bet. Dillon had no idea what the new world was going to look like. He hoped that, at least in the safe islands, life would continue on much like before the virus, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Things are going to be different, Mikey. I don’t think you’re going to see America anytime soon. I don’t know if you’re going to grow up speaking Greek or Italian or what. But I know that I love you, and I’m going to keep you safe.”
“I love you too, dad.”
Dillon sat with his son for the next hour, saving his toast for last. He let Mikey talk about just about everything, answering when he could get a word in edgewise. Dillon realized that he had not been the best father during the past few days, or even weeks. He had certainly not been the best husband either. He had been distant, but that morning and afternoon he spent some time with Mikey, and hoped he would be able to spend more with him later.
Later in the afternoon, Dillon did a little rooftop reconnaissance, checking out the streets between the compound and the Nile River. He noted which boats were large enough for a hundred and ten people, which boats would have fully stocked kitchens, and where the refueling stations were along the river. From the roof of a four story building, he couldn’t see at least half of what he needed to see, but he could see enough. There were two possible riverboats. One was smaller, and would hold twenty or thirty people. It didn’t have a kitchen or sleeping rooms. The other was larger, built in the style of the old steam powered paddle boats. It was a three deck affair and was likely to have sleeping rooms and a kitchen. It could hold 200 people easily.
It would be a bit difficult to get there. Dillon could see at least a hundred infected on the two streets between them and the river. He doubted that this group of survivors would move very quietly, and there would be noise loading them on board and getting the engines running. During that time, the infected would be swarming to their location. Still, perhaps they could untie and push off a bit before warming up the engines. It would be risky to do so. What if they engines didn’t work? However, it would keep the zombies away.
Dillon laughed and shook his head. They weren’t zombies. No matter what, he couldn’t start thinking that way. Perhaps future generations, living in a world no longer lit by electric lights, would call them zombies. He wouldn’t.
Dillon finished his sketches of the area and headed downstairs to get ready. The sun was going down, which brought with it the flurry of activity as other survivors went on supply runs or made attempts to get from one place to another. This almost always brought on the sound of engines and gunfire, which usually brought a rush of undead to a location. Tonight, it sounded like a military unit was doing something a few miles east of Maadi. The rate of fire was heavy and lasted for at least a half hour, then faded until it was intermittent. By seven o’clock, there was no gunfire from that direction at all.
Dillon grabbed Talbot and Doc and they started going door to door based on their list. Once they had seventy-two people, including themselves, they started loading into vehicles. Dillon gave everyone who could use a weapon an MP-5 and four magazines. When he saw Rick, he went over to apologize and say goodbye.
“Rick….I…”
“Shut up, asshole. You were right, okay?”
“I was going to apologize….”
“You don’t need to.”
“I was going to apologize for being right….” Dillon said with a smirk.
“Jesus….”
“Hey, buddy, I have five MP-5s and about 30 loaded magazines in my unit. Here’s the key. They’re sitting in the living room.”
There were too many people around to say more.
“Right. Hey, I’ll see you back here in a couple of hours.” Rick said, lying. “Don’t lose any vehicles.”
“We won’t, buddy. See you soon.”
“Sure you will.”
Dillon made sure that Hannah and Mikey were in the car with him. Doc and his wife, Marla, were in his vehicle as well. Lauren had proved herself as a good driver, so Dillon had her throw her bag in the back and drive his duty vehicle. They would be the lead vehicle, which meant they would be the ones nudging cars out of the way and making first contact with mobs of infected or angry citizens. Hannah had his USP Compact and an MP-5. She had emptied almost everything out of her purse except bottles of water, a stripped down MRE, a flashlight, and four magazines. She had four others in the pockets of her cargo pants. Doc had his medical bag and Hannah’s. They were as ready as they would ever be. After performing a radio check between vehicles, Dillon pressed the talk button and spoke into it as calmly as he could.
“Open the gate.”
Everyone watched as Rick ordered the gates open. He covered the entrance with his MP-5 as two men quickly and quietly pushed it open.
“Slow roll. Lights out. Stay close. Everyone remember their vehicle number. Sound off. LEAD.”
Dillon listened as the four armored vans and two other Suburbans counted off “ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, and REAR.” Talbot was in the last vehicle with Donnie. Overall, they had 76 people in the convoy. Though Lauren had to bump a few infected, the area was fairly clear, as most seemed to have headed for the gunfight to the east. They encountered two barricades in Maadi. One was large and manned – they steered down a few side streets and avoided it as quickly as they could. The other was small and abandoned, obviously overran days ago. Once LEAD pushed the debris away slowly with the front bumper, it was easy enough to maneuver through. They were on the Ring Road Highway leading to Cairo West Airbase by a quarter before eight. But what they saw from the highway was horrific.
The whole city was smoking or burning, especially to the north towards downtown. Nothing seemed to stir. In the few areas where the Ring Road Highway touched the city proper it was elevated a hundred feet in the air over neighborhoods that had stood for a thousand years. Those areas were, as best as Dillon could see through the lights of buildings on fire, swarming with infected.
It made sense, actually, though the stark horror of it had never truly sunk in. Cairo was a city of fifteen million people. Maadi had been different, an affluent suburb of gated apartment complexes and large villas. Most of the population there had the vehicles to run or the walls to hide behind. In Cairo, it had obviously been very different. Burning barricades were everywhere, almost as prevalent as the infected. It seemed that the locals were lighting the barricades on fire if they were in danger of being overrun. While that may have fixed the problem temporarily, many of the barricades burned out and were compromised. Still more started building fires that spread through the close alleys of the city quickly. It was tragic, but Dillon didn’t have time to process it all.
“Mikey, come away from the window.”
Hannah had seen horror, but not like this. Her first instinct, God bless her, was to shelter Mikey from it. Marla was crying, and Doc was transfixed. Dillon was very glad that the highway ran a hundred feet above street level. He noticed that the Lauren had slowed almost to a stop.
“Lauren, you need to keep going. Not too fast, not too slow, just like I showed you. No sudden gas or break. We want to keep the engines at a quiet hum, okay?”
“Okay.” Lauren said, slowly increasing speed to around 15 miles per hour.
“Good that’s perfect. Keep going straight. Remember, the closest on or off ramp is almost two miles from here, outside the city proper. And we just keep going on this road for another half hour and we’ll be there. You’re doing great.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not, Lauren. You’re driving by firelight and leading a convoy full of survivors through the apocalypse so I can keep my head on a swivel and keep radio traffic going. I think you’re doing great.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.” Dillon felt Hannah’s hand squeeze his shoulder and turned to give her a weak smile. Then, he turned his mind back to the task at hand.
“Convoy, this is LEAD, check in.”
“ONE. TWO. THREE. FOUR. FIVE. REAR.”
Dillon had the convoy check in every minute or so until they were out of the area and into the eastern desert, just to help everyone keep their mind off of what they were seeing. He knew that he would never forget it.
If the view from the highway was horrific, the airport was hell itself. Evidently, the military was still trying to hold out here, though Dillon doubted they would do so for long. The fences were down, and burnt cars had been hastily plowed to the side of the road to form a barrier. It looked like the Egyptian army had used cars and concrete barriers to create funnels and were drawing the infected towards them and into large areas where they could be murdered quickly and efficiently by crossfire. It looked like it had worked for a time, but the infected had obviously either climbed the barriers or simply climbed the piles of dead. Now, there were a few pockets of resistance remaining. The east concourse seemed hard pressed by the infected but was still shooting. The air traffic control tower also seemed to be safe. The rest of Cairo International Airport was swarming. Dillon was sure that they would have been unable to proceed if they had been driving on the west side of the airport. It seemed like all the infected of Cairo were headed west. Dillon knew that Cairo West Airbase was only two miles from Cairo International. The infected would be there soon enough, if they weren’t already.
A quarter of a mile from the main gate, the convoy ran into a barricade of concrete barriers, hastily parked military vehicles, and razor wire. Dillon hopped out and looked around. Nobody was manning the checkpoint. That was the good news. Moving back to the convoy, Dillon spoke into the hand radio and gave everyone the bad news.
“It’s the end of the road, everyone. No lights and no talking. Everyone get out of their vehicle except the drivers. Everyone else come to me, quickly and quietly.”
Once everyone moved to his location, a small clearing near an opening in the maze-like barricades, Dillon started giving instructions to the drivers.
“Lauren, You need to move off road and park with your front bumper ON that concrete wall. Now, vehicle one will park directly behind you, touching your bumper. That’s right, everyone, form a solid wall in front of these barricades.”
It took a few minutes to do, and it was far from perfect, but it would slow the infected down a little more. After it was done, Dillon put Talbot and Donnie in charge of the main group. They had been rear vehicle and now they would be the rearguard of the group. Dillon went ahead by himself, not wanting to juggle up the order or have Hannah in harm’s way. He dropped a few chem-lights in areas that were narrow or where people risked tripping or cutting themselves on the razor wire. The maze of barriers, vehicles and wire was only about fifty feet deep. There were three ways to get in but only one way to get out the other side. As he popped out the other side, he held a chem-light at chest level and slowly waved it side to side in case someone was looking to shoot infected. Dillon radioed back to the group to start moving, and asked Talbot to bury each of the chem-lights after the group passed them. It was the only way to make sure the infected wouldn’t be attracted to the earie glow.
Dillon knew that he had ruined much of his night vision by holding a chem-light. He also knew that it was the only way he could be sure his people wouldn’t be gunned down by someone waiting for them. It was a devil’s bargain, at best.