“Okay,” Enrique responded as he shoved the other end of the tube into a large gas can.
“Hit it,” DJ told Preacher.
“Let’s hope this works,” Preacher mumbled. He pulled a lever on the panel. The lever itself appeared as if they had rigged it themselves, rather than being a part of the original controls for the fire engine.
“It’ll work,” DJ said, though he sounded only partially confident.
Preacher winced as a small grinding sound came from behind the panel. It didn’t last more than a couple of seconds before a smooth pulsing noise replaced it.
“We have gas!” Enrique said excitedly.
“It’s not gas,” DJ corrected, “Its biodiesel.”
“Whatever,” Enrique smiled, “It make the trucks go. That all that matters.”
“He’s right,” Preacher agreed, his own grin spreading across his face. “I’m shutting it off.”
“Okay. Well, we now have a tanker.” DJ unfastened the tube as soon as the pulsing coming from the panel had stopped.
“What do you have here?” I asked, walking up to the three of them.
“Hey Christian,” DJ nodded as he rolled the black hose up and stuck it on a shelf inside of Big Red.
“We have a fuel truck now,” Preacher said, closing the panel on the fire truck.
I raised my eyebrows. “I wouldn’t think a fire truck could hold fuel in its tank.”
“It can’t. Well, it couldn’t, if it were crude oil or diesel. But this is Biofuel. We still had to make some adjustments and put in our own pump, but it seems to be working fine.”
I was about to ask why we needed a mobile fuel tanker when DJ’s radio crackled.
“XO,” Campbell’s voice spat through the receiver.
It had taken a while for DJ to accept the fact that he was second in charge of Camp Holly and its growing population. It wasn’t that he was humble, but during the first few weeks of our new organization you could see discomfort every time someone called him “sir” or “XO”.
“This is DJ, go ahead.”
“Meet me, Fish and Barry at the comms tent.”
“Roger that,” DJ replied.
“Try not to take your time,” the radio blared with Fish’s gruff voice.
“Asshole,” DJ mumbled under his breath.
“Aren’t you his boss?” I joked as I followed DJ into the camp.
“Try telling him that,” DJ chuckled.
Chapter 13
First Contact
June 15
th
Afternoon
“I guess you’re coming with me?” DJ commented as I tried to keep up with him.
DJ had lost a significant amount of weight in the past month. We were not a starving community, but I don’t think DJ felt right if he took more than his fair share. He was still a big man, but much of that had converted into muscle.
I jogged up next to him. “I wanted to see Fish. Since you happen to be meeting up with him, I figured I’d tag along.”
He nodded and continued his march toward the communication tent.
Just past the hydro generators along the river was Private Mann’s HUMVEE. It was the type with a small box office mounted on the back end. This specific vehicle was designed to cypher through intercepted transmissions and break encrypted codes. Campbell’s unit was, after all, Military Intelligence. There was only enough room in the vehicle for one person.
Private Manns had set up a tent off the back end of the HUMVEE to allow more room and equipment to be connected to the vehicle’s radio hardware. Next to the truck was a hundred and fifty foot antenna with multiple attachments to allow the interception of various radio signals.
HAM radios had the ability to reach across the world. With little power, they could bounce off the atmosphere to anywhere that could hear them, be it in China or the North Pole. I’m not a radio expert, and can’t tell you exactly how it works, but I do know that communication was dependent on anything from the time of day to weather conditions. This didn’t make them ideal for worldwide communication, which is why the Military no longer used them.
I followed DJ under the tent where Fish, Campbell, the civilian leader Barry, and Manns were talking. The four of them were huddled around a table that had a large radio on top.
“What did he say his name was?” Fish asked Specialist Manns.
The short, stocky soldier turned and grinned. “Todd. Todd Brown from Portland Oregon.” Manns appeared to be excited at the development.
“We’re talking to Portland?” DJ said as he marched up to the group. I quickly stopped next to him.
“Not yet,” Fish grumbled. “We don’t know if that’s where he really is from.”
Most of our refugees came from Melbourne and Palm Bay, however we did receive three individuals from the suburbs of Orlando. One man and two women had fled an awful situation.
The man was named Jamal. He was a prisoner who had escaped with others from the Orlando county jail. Led by a few extremely bad apples, they had commandeered some military equipment and weaponry. Using the cover of being Army soldiers, they would bring people to them or find out their locations by scanning the radios. After they fooled the poor survivors, they would take their supplies and, in most cases, kill all the men. I’m sure I don’t have to say what they would do to the women.
Jamal, a small time drug dealer, only went along with the brigands for the sake of self-preservation. His conscience could no longer take the deplorable things his cohorts were doing, so he freed what women he could and fled east. Only two females survived the journey to the coast, where they stumbled across our camp.
We all knew in the back of our minds that there would be those who would take advantage of the chaos that had engulfed the world, but that was the first time we had heard about it actually taking place. This had prompted the leadership of Camp Holly to take caution when both encountering new survivors and making radio contact. The HAM was only up and running for a few hours before Manns had received this message from ‘Todd Brown’.
“Alright,” Campbell breathed, “What has he said so far?”
Manns took a seat in front of the HAM radio and turned the volume dial up.
“Well, sir, I only got the tail end of his message. I heard his name and that he was outside of Portland. He said he is broadcasting every half hour on different frequencies. I’m tracking as many as I can.” The sophistication of Private Mann’s equipment allowed him to follow on multiple transmission frequencies, instead of just scanning one.
“How long until the next?” DJ asked.
“Should be any minute.” Manns leaned forward in his chair examining multiple strands racing across his laptop screen. One blipped, as if on cue.
“This is Todd Brown,” the speaker blared. Manns quickly cut back the volume a little. “If anyone can hear me, I am broadcasting out of Portland, Oregon.” The man’s voice seemed tired. Who knew how long he had been on the radio trying to reach other survivors. He could have been doing this for weeks, every day without any response.
“Well, sir?” Manns asked the captain.
Campbell glanced at Fish. “What do you think?”
“Can they track us?” Fish questioned Campbell.
“Not unless they have the right equipment in place. They’d have to have two or three receiving antennas spaced out to triangulate any incoming signals,” Campbell responded.
“Not to mention the right computers and someone that knew how to operate them, sir.” Manns added. He would know. After all, Manns was one of those people who was trained to do that very thing.
“Doubtful that many survivors out there have that ability, Fish. I think we’re safe.” Campbell rounded the table. “But still, keep our location down to the State of Florida. I would rather not take any chances. You take the mic, Fish.”
At first, I found it awkward that Campbell didn’t want to talk to the guy. In hindsight, though, it made sense. The Captain was an intelligence officer. He probably wanted to observe this man’s responses without having to focus on making conversation himself.
Private Manns handed the mic to Fish.
“Mr. Brown,” Fish said into the mic, “this is Master Sergeant Fischer, U.S. Army. Over.”
Private Manns softly counted along with a timer on the corner of his computer screen.
“Mr. Fischer! Err… Sergeant Fischer,” the voice known as Todd corrected. “Greetings from Oregon. I haven’t been able to reach anyone in a week,” he said desperately.
“How many others have you been in contact with? Over.” Fish asked, making no attempt at pleasantries.
“Over the past month, we—I, have connected with two other groups. One in Maine and the other in Australia.” I wondered why he changed from ‘we’ to ‘I’. I wasn’t the only one that was wondering.
“Ask him how many in his group,” Campbell ordered Fish.
“Mr. Brown, how many survivors are in your group?”
There was silence for a few moments, and I could see Manns checking his equipment to see if they were still receiving a signal.
“There… there were five of us,” he finally said. “We were doing pretty good up until a week ago. Lost one of our team on a run. Damn thing came back as a Howler and took out the rest of my friends.”
“Howler?” Fish peered up at the Captain.
“My guess would be that he’s referring to a Scab,” Campbell stated.
Fish pressed the transmission button. “Roger that, Mr. Brown. Were you infected? Over.”
“No sir. I-I put them down,” he said, sounding a bit guilty. After a moment, the man continued. “Where are you hailing from? Over.”
The man had picked up on Fish’s proper radio etiquette.
“Florida. And do yourself a favor, you should stick to just referring to the State you are in. We’ve heard stories about people taking advantage of others. Over.”
“Thank you Sergeant, I will keep that in mind. I am far away from any cities or towns. So far, I haven’t seen any… living in the area. Even the Howlers haven’t been out here as far as I know. Over.” Todd Brown was calming down some as the stress in his voice faded.
“Give him our call sign and ask him about the other people he’s been in contact with,” Campbell said. We had decided to use the name “Stallion” for our HAM and other radio communications. Usually, HAM call signs were given when people received their licenses to operate the radios and consisted of a group of letters and numbers. But Stallion worked for us, and I didn’t see anyone handing out fines for improper call signs any time soon.
Fish keyed the mic. “Mr. Brown, please refer to us as Stallion when making radio contact in the future. What have you heard from these other groups you have made contact with? Over.”
“Got it, Stallion,” Brown confirmed. “The group in Australia has moved into the Outback. I guess just like where we are at, the… stiffs… are sticking to the cities. At least, they are for the time being. The Australians told me that they have a pretty big group. Last I heard, they had broken a hundred people. Over.”
“Roger that, Oregon. And Maine? Over.”
“Maine is a different story. The last I heard from them was a week and a half ago. They were about to get hit by a bad storm and haven’t heard a peep since. I figure they lost either the power source they were using or their antenna. Over.”
“And their numbers? Over,” Fish pressed, showing annoyance.
“I only spoke with a man named John Ivanison. He told me they had over thirty in the group and had set up in the mountains, near the Canadian border. Over.”
“Poor guy is all alone now. Kinda glad we were able to reach him,” DJ commented. “Sir, how about we get whatever contact information we can on these other two groups. Maybe we can radio them ourselves?”
“How about we have the Private here do that,” Fish jabbed his thumb towards Manns. “As exciting as this is, I have shit to do.”
Campbell nodded. “Manns, take over.” The captain peered at his watch. “It’s noon now. Fish, you, Barry and DJ meet me in my office at sixteen hundred. We’ll go over this then.”
“Captain,” Barry said, cleaning his thin rimmed glasses and putting them back on, “I’d like to stay with Private Manns.”
Campbell observed the civilian for a moment. It wasn’t that the Captain distrusted Barry, but the former councilman tended to stray away from proper protocol from time to time. I don’t think Barry had any delusions about his position with our community. Campbell saw Barry as more of an advisor than a leader and by no means could he give any soldier here orders. That included the runners, who were considered more or less the soldiers of Camp Holly.
“Alright,” Campbell said, and then looked at Manns. “You remember the standing orders on communication, Private?”
Of course Manns knew the procedures we had come up with for making contact. I think Campbell was just passing a silent message to him, reminding Manns that Barry was not to influence him while he gathered more information on Mr. Brown and his contacts.
“Yes, sir.” Manns said, and grabbed the mic. “Mr. Brown, this is Stallion.” The private continued the conversation as the rest of us, minus Barry, peeled off and left the cover of the tent.
Fish said his goodbyes to DJ and Campbell as the two of them headed off into the camp. Then he turned to me.
“How was your hunting trip?”
“Chad shot a wild pig,” I reported as the two of us walked towards the shack we had been staying in since the day we had moved into Camp Holly.
“Guess he is good for something,” Fish snorted.
Fish, like Cecil, still regarded Chad as nothing more than a convict. I had been trying to smooth out those feelings, reporting the positive things Chad would do on our runs to the city, but Fish seemed to be set in his opinion.
“Well, there’s more,” I continued, ignoring his comment. “We were attacked by another pack of dogs. This time there were at least a dozen of them.”
“Hmph,” he breathed. “Damn mutts are becoming a real problem. Yesterday Kolin reported that he found a half-eaten deer west of the Camp. He said it looked like dogs. We may have to hunt them down. It’s one thing if they attack us, but another if they start consuming our food.”
“I think they’re starting to see us as just another food source,” I sighed.
“There are enough things in this world trying to eat us” Fish grunted. “Anyone hurt?” he asked as we approached our shack.
“Boomer wrestled with one. He got bit, but nothing too serious I think. Karina took him to see Daniel.”
Fish opened the door and the two of us entered our home.
“I hope your flea bag is okay. Hate to lose that asset.”
I grimaced. Fish had been complaining about Boomer sleeping with us since he and I took up camp in the tool shed. I decided to change the subject.
“Hey, any chance you could get Cecil to back off of Chad? Chad thinks he’s trying to kill him.”
Fish chuckled. “Heh, can you blame him? Cecil has had to deal with trash like Chad for years. Now he finds himself teaming up with him. Not much I can say to the guy.”
“You’re his boss, though. I mean, it’s hard enough making runs into the city having to worry about dead-heads and scabs. Chad shouldn’t have to have Cecil up his ass too. He’s doing his best to fit in.” I was trying to make my point to Fish, which was like trying to ask a bear to tell a lion not to eat a gazelle.