“What about the Russians?” a man in the crowd asked clearly.
Reynolds sighed before she started, “We have received reports of periscopes off Oyster Bay this morning, and while this cannot be verified, it is very unlikely that there are any submarines in that area, much less Russian ships. I have been advised that the water there is not deep enough for submarine operations of any sort. Nevertheless, the
Fish Hawk
will continue its quarantine of the port and, coupled with the beach patrol, will be on watch.
“The National Guard and the remnants of the City police force have been merged. All guardsmen have been appointed city police officers and all officers have been sworn in as guardsmen so that there will be no legal issues in the enforcement of either local laws or of national defense. Today, Captain Stone swore in almost fifty new qualified volunteers and you will see an increased presence of these men and women moving forward. I would like to have him come up and say a few words,” Reynolds concluded as Stone was already making his way to the stage.
The tall Captain covered the distance over to the podium with the loud clunk of his desert boots echoing through the center and out across the crowd. He had removed his usually present SAPI plate carrier vest, TA50 gear, and Kevlar helmet, but his pistol still hung at his side as a badge of office. He made a sharp half turn and took the podium with a stern look on his face that would make George S. Patton proud.
“This guy thinks he’s a total stud,” Billy said to Mack with a wry look plastered across his face. Mack’s only response was to put a finger to her lips to silence the angler.
“Good afternoon. My name is Captain Eric Stone of the United States Army National Guard. My unit is your local National Guard men and women of the 1183rd. We earned the nickname
Road Dogs
when we conducted convoy operations on our last tour in Iraq. We date back to the Korean War, but carry the traditions of the 66th Alabama Infantry Regiment which fought right here at the Battle of Mobile Bay. In that regiment was an adjutant by the name of Arthur C Stone. He was my great grandfather’s great grandfather. My family has been on this island for two hundred years. I will not desert you. This is my home. My men and women are almost all from the local area. They are your husbands, fathers and brothers, sisters, daughters and mothers and we are here for your protection,” Stone delivered with paced precision.
The crowd erupted in cheers, whistles, and even a few rebel yells that lasted for nearly half a minute. Reynolds looked at the council and then at Jarvis and George who were all nonplussed. Billy fought the urge to make fake vomiting noises and quickly ruled that out. He had to hand it to Stone; the man was something of a born leader.
Stone raised his hand and thanked the crowd on behalf of his unit and his MPs before continuing with his announcements.
“Even though we have added significantly to our roster today, we cannot be everywhere on the island at all times. Therefore, each block needs to set up a neighborhood watch against looters and the infected that may remain. Make a roster and take down everyone’s name that lives in your block. Wear armbands so that if you see someone strange in the neighborhood, you can spot them quickly,” Stone explained.
From out in the crowd a heckler came back, “Can’t we just arrange for the looters to wear armbands instead?”
Stone continued, “Each block needs to set up an on-watch schedule and some form of communication. Elect a block captain, rotating for a month at a time, to make the schedule and make sure it is filled. All block captains will get a radio from us to help keep in touch with the TOC so that we can send reinforcements if you get in trouble. We’ll have meetings with the block captains every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9am at City Hall to keep everyone organized and informed,” Stone said before he motioned Reynolds back to the podium.
No sooner had she came back than the crowd, enraptured by Stone, began to turn against the Major as the spell broke.
“Why can’t we just radio for reinforcements? Don’t you guys have radios in the planes and ships?” a heavyset man in a NASCAR racing hat in the crowd asked.
The Major cleared her throat, getting ready to spin the situation. “My aircraft had an array of communication equipment. However, it was destroyed during the outbreak. I have a small survival radio with a beacon signal that I had broadcasting until the battery died so that anyone within a hundred miles would know that the Air Force is here. The National Guard has a few radios but they are ‘line of sight’ meaning the higher up the air it is, the longer the range. Since these radios have short antennas and low power, their range is only 50-100 miles at best. We have been broadcasting off and on, but have not gotten any responses. Lieutenant Jarvis of the Coast Guard would have to explain his cutter’s capabilities.”
Jarvis was ready for his turn, “The
Fish Hawk
is a small cutter. She is meant to work inshore or close-to-shore, not in blue water with the Fleet. We have VHF radios up to 25-watts but they are not much more advanced than the standard marine radios on the local fishing trawlers and charter boats. We do talk extensively on that band with many other boats but so far, they are all local craft based here on the island or refugee boats. Our equipment just does not have the range to carry much further than that. We have a handheld satellite phone but it has not worked since the outbreak. The cutter has an HF transceiver with which we can talk to large naval and merchant ships, but its range is only in the 100-mile radius depending on atmospherics. We have heard chatter from a few passing merchant ships deep in the Gulf but haven’t been able to communicate with them.”
A short man with glasses stood up from the crowd and ran away with the Coast Guard Skipper’s announcement. Billy thought the man looked extremely familiar and it took a minute for him to remember the man’s face as the telephone technician he had met at Cat’s school on Z-day.
The man spoke just loud enough for the crowd to make out parts of what he said. “Most of the small radios are just semiconductor junk. They are used in conjunction with repeater systems to extend their range. I have an old 100-watt ham station with antennas built into a large array. To push 100W I have to have my generator running but I could easily talk to Japan or Europe—that is, of course, if someone is listening. With some add-on gear, I could push data packets or slow-scan video. I don’t have the gas to use it like I want to, but if I brought the equipment here we could set it up and I could show someone how to work it,” the man said to the crowd and speakers alike.
Reynolds took the mic. “We would need a crew of a few people to rotate a radio watch,” the Major interjected. “Would you be willing to work with a group of volunteers who have experience with electronics and hopefully we can have it up and running in the next few days or so?”
George sidestepped his way back into the microphone to address the technician. “Doug,” George said to the short little technician, “you always were pretty good at this stuff. Do you think you can get the old AM station back online to do some public radio?”
“If we have enough power I’m sure I can.”
George nodded and boomed out to the crowd, “I suppose we are going to need some sort of script written and we can have the broadcaster read the script, listen for a response, and repeat, maybe have volunteers who can man the public radio, too.”
“I did some student radio in college,” Mack called out, and then to Billy quietly, “or at least I did until I dropped out.”
George smiled, “Yes, ma’am, thanks for volunteering. I will leave you and the technicians to get together and make some magic happen. And I guess this is as good as a time as any to announce that we have a plan for the electric grid to run it.”
This statement caught the crowd short. While many people had generators, almost everyone was running short of fuel, and increasingly people were spending their nights alone in the dark with their fears.
“Some of you may have noticed offshore all summer the oil platform a mile from the marina and the activity on it. I have some people from the University of Alabama here that I would like to introduce. They have been marooned since the outbreak but are determined to help us in our time of need. Gentlemen…” George said to the five average white guys walking up from the crowd.
As the twenty-somethings took the stage in their dirty graphic t-shirts, sneakers and khakis, Billy immediately recalled them from the charter gone badly on outbreak day. They looked dirtier, a little thinner, and all now sported beards. But then again, the Taliban look was in these days.
As the group took the podium and began talking, all Billy remembered was Ted, the leader of the pack, gagging and hurling breakfast burritos all over his shoes. While Ted explained to the crowd that there was an experimental power cell windmill, set up by the renewable energy project at UAB for testing, and was within days of going active, all Billy could remember was Lance’s face as he cleaned the deck. As Ted spoke of how they could feed 1500-kilowatts into the power grid if everything goes right, enough to light up about 800 houses, Billy laughed as he remembered giving Lance a hard time.
It took the crowd’s wild applause to snap Billy out of his trip down memory lane.
Billy looked around at the crowd and took stock. He was not a Gulf Shores native and he could not claim to know every full-time resident, but there were many new faces around. New faces meant new mouths to feed.
Conserving diesel or not, he realized that he was going to have to go out to deeper water when his name came up next for fishing duty. Deeper water meant the big fish. Nevertheless, no one had ventured outside the sight of shore since the outbreak and he was not looking forward to being the first.
— | — | —
ChapteR 29
Gulf Shores sat at the end of Mobile Bay between Pensacola, Florida and Dauphin Island, Alabama on a continental coastal shelf. These coastal waters were great for redfish, sea trout, drum, snapper, and any number of other great gamefish around dozens of artificial reefs, sunken ships and oilrig platforms. However, Billy was going after the big boys. For 60-70 miles due south in almost all directions, the water remained less than or right at 100-feet deep. That is unless you headed for the Nipple.
A deep hole on the edge of where the continental shelf dropped off sharply to 700 feet below, the big round dot on the chart looked like, well, a nipple. Geographically this sweet spot was only 25 miles southeast of Gulf Shores and was the closest deep-water within an hour of the marina. Charter captains along the emerald coast lined up to hit it when their anglers wanted a stab at a ‘picture fish’ without running all day out to the Desoto Canyon.
“Watch your step out there, baby girl,” Billy called from the control station in the tuna tower fifteen feet in the air above the
Fooly Involved
.
“I’m fine,” Cat mouthed back to her father as she clung like a monkey to the ladder heading back down to the deck. They were trolling with a half dozen lines in the water; pulling big plug lures nearly a half-foot long behind the boat. Cat had come along on a few of these trips before and was a natural at it, bounding around the boat in her bare feet as if she had deckhand in her DNA sequence.
On the deck, the two Fort Morgan cousins sat eagerly watching the lines for any sort of strike. They had never been tuna fishing before but Cat had carefully explained to them their roles. The little expedition had left out with another charter boat, the
Tide in Knots
, but their partner boat had to turn back with a faulty GPS. They had not even made it to the converted oilrig with its experimental windmill a mile from the marina before they were alone on the water.
“Okay guys, here we go!” Billy yelled below as he pointed to a flock of seabirds humming excitedly over a rough patch in the water a few hundred yards away. “They are pointing out a school of tuna for us over there.”
In seconds, the lures starting hitting, one, two, and three. The outriggers gave way and line whizzed out of the reels as large fish bound down on the hooks in their mouth and went crazy. Billy throttled the boat back and was down on deck just as the fourth line hit. He took a line as Cat and the two cousins began reeling and tugging like mad on their respective poles, dancing gingerly around each other so as not to cross lines. Billy plopped down in the fighting chair while the other three braced themselves for their fights.
Tuna do not have air bladders and this means that they are one of the few fish that will fight you all the way up from the deep to the surface, and then fight you all the way back down again, just for the hell of it.
Billy’s arms burned and muscles ached as he struggled to get his fish in so he could help with everyone else’s. He had not been expecting to hit multiple fish at once, but it was too late to think of that now. He watched as Cat bit her lip and held on for everything her sixteen year old body was worth—on a fish likely larger than she was. The two cousins were out of shape and already breathing heavy. If they did not watch it, the tuna would snatch their poles out into the water.
After twenty minutes, he finally brought his fish to the surface, a big-eye tuna about the size of a coffee table. The big fish swayed back and forth on the line just under the surface and looked almost as spent as Billy felt. He rigged the pole in the chair and gaffed the big fish, almost unable to pull him in by himself. The beast weighed at least fifty pounds.