A stout defensive wall of steel shipping containers stacked two high formed three walls of the fort, topped with a barbed wire barrier along the outer edge and with fortified firing positions at regular intervals. Machine guns were mounted on armored platforms at each corner, extending outward to allow them to sweep the length of the wall in any direction. All of the firing points were connected with a three-foot-wide wooden scaffold hung below the inside edge of the top container and running the length of the wall, allowing defenders to quickly move from point to point without exposing themselves to enemy fire. The new walls were set well back from the original terminal fence, and the area between had been cleared of containers. No one could approach the walls now except by crossing fifty yards of asphalt or concrete, all under the guns of the defenders.
The fourth side of Fort Box was formed by the container berths on the river, currently occupied by a collection of container and grain ships. The ships were moored bow to stern, their high steel sides forming a fourth wall, also protected by machine-gun emplacements at both ends with fields of fire sweeping the river approaches. The river side was perhaps the least secure perimeter due to irregular-shaped gaps between the ships, which were impossible to seal, but the river was a strong ally. The open water offered much wider fields of fire than the land sides, and a coordinated waterborne attack was considered unlikely.
But it was the progress inside the walls that was most remarkable; a collection of travel trailers and RVs mixed with military tents were lined up in a bizarre but strangely orderly looking series of newly created ‘streets’ radiating like the spokes of a wheel from the terminal-building-turned-HQ. In the central area next to the HQ stood a series of large army tents serving as central kitchen, mess hall, and clinic, while on the dock next to one of the ships was a collection of covered aboveground swimming pools known as ‘Wright’s Waterworks’ in honor of the man who’d solved their water storage problem. And everywhere there were containers, stacks and stacks of containers: large brightly colored steel boxes crammed with a cornucopia of canned food, packaged generators, and other goods, the full scope of which was still undetermined.
Luke marveled at the controlled chaos as men and women scurried in all directions. The faint smell of diesel exhaust filled the air, and the sounds of generators and heavy equipment assaulted his ears as the fortunate inhabitants of Fort Box labored to secure their future. Luke nodded and entered the building, smiling as cool air washed over him. Air-conditioning and ice were two things that made Southern summers bearable, and he was glad he’d have a little of both, at least as long as he stayed.
He glanced at his watch. He was five minutes early, but he’d quickly learned Major, now Colonel, Hunnicutt considered ten minutes early as ‘on time.’ By that standard he was five minutes late. He hurried down the hall toward the conference room and the sound of raised voices.
“I don’t give a damn, Lieutenant Wright. You know—” Colonel Hunnicutt looked up as Luke entered. “Well, nice of you to join us, Major. I do hope it wasn’t an inconvenience.”
“Sorry, sir,” Luke said, slipping into an unoccupied seat and nodding at the dozen people seated around the conference table. Hunnicutt gave him a curt nod and turned back to Wright.
“As I was saying, Lieutenant, you know the protocol and so should your men. We CANNOT police areas outside of our tasking and still hope to provide any relief to the bulk of the refugees. These criminals piss me off too, believe me, but we just don’t have the manpower and resources to be diverted by a conflict with the gangs at this point. I thought I made that clear?”
“You did, sir. And I’ve reprimanded Corporal Miles for disobeying orders, but honestly, I don’t believe he did so intentionally. Our mission is providing relief to the civilians, so when they heard a woman screaming for help, he used his own initiative. I can’t fault him for that. So what exactly was he supposed to do when his patrol stumbled on a gang rape, say ‘carry on’ and drive away?”
Hunnicutt heaved a sigh and fell silent. “I suppose not,” he said at last. “Where is the woman now?”
“Miles’ patrol took her and her husband to the refugee camp. They didn’t much want to go, but he couldn’t leave them there,” Wright said.
“And the bangers?”
Wright shrugged. “Too many to do anything with, even if we had facilities. They just told them to scatter, all except for the one they caught,” he hesitated, “you know…”
“I get the picture,” Hunnicutt said. “What did they do with him?”
Wright hesitated. “He was killed resisting arrest.”
The room grew deadly quiet as the meeting participants awaited Hunnicutt’s reaction.
“Boo fucking hoo,” Hunnicutt said, and the room erupted in laughter.
“But seriously, folks,” he said, “we can’t afford to get entangled with these bastards. We just have too much to do. Any expectations this will escalate, Lieutenant Wright?”
Wright shook his head. “We have them outgunned and they know it. If anything, they might try to lure a patrol into an ambush as payback.”
Hunnicutt nodded. “My thoughts exactly. Make sure not to answer ANY calls for distress, and double both the size and frequency of the patrols between here and the relief station until we’re sure this isn’t going to escalate.”
“Already done, sir,” Wright replied.
“All right,” Hunnicutt said, “let’s move on. Chief … I mean Lieutenant Butler, can you give us a quick SITREP on the facilities?”
Mike Butler, formerly chief boatswain’s mate, USCG, now first lieutenant, Wilmington Defense Force, nodded. “Our defensive perimeter is complete, though I’d still like to improve on the gate arrangement. Our snipes, along with the engineers from the merchant ships, have nearly solved our water problem. Between all the ships, we have multiple water distillers, and they rigged up a way to triple process the river water and basically heat the hell out of it to kill any bugs.” He looked over at Lieutenant Josh Wright and grinned. “They tell me by this time tomorrow, they’ll be producing enough water to keep Wright’s Waterworks topped up for the foreseeable future.”
“Great news,” Hunnicutt said, “but how’d they manage that?”
Butler shrugged. “They didn’t say and I sure as hell didn’t ask, sir. Else I’d have had to listen to a two-hour lecture explaining the process in great detail.” He paused to let the laughter die down before continuing. “But it gets better. They plan to use Wright’s swimming pools as reserve water storage for excess production, but they seem confident they can tie the shore facilities into the potable water system from Maersk Tangier and use her water pumps to pressurize it all. Her tanks are more than adequate to supply our needs on a day-to-day basis. They’ll have to dig up and disconnect the old supply from the city system, but after that, we’ll have running water in the terminal again. They said two or three days max.”
“That’s good news. We’ve been wasting a lot of manpower hauling water, and I for one will gladly give up the joy of flushing with a bucket.” Hunnicutt grimaced. “As long as the sewage lines aren’t plugged up, anyway.”
“Actually, there’s good news on that front, too,” Butler said. “The treatment plant’s only a mile or so downriver, and the snipes figure if we’re the only ones with running water to flush, it will take a while before we top out the storage capacity, even if the plant’s not running. And if we can get a generator and some fuel down there, they figure they might be able to restore the plant to at least limited operation. They think it will be more than enough to meet our needs.”
Across the table from Butler, a petite, dark-haired woman sat up straighter in her chair. “So does that mean if we can get water restored at the country club, we can establish some basic sanitation for the refugee camp? It’s horrific there. The port-a-potties you brought in were overflowing by the second day, and people are back to doing their business behind any bush. The stench is overpowering and it’s only going to get worse
.”
The request caught Butler by surprise. “Maybe, Doc,” he replied, “but I don’t think there’s any way we can get water pressure back there and—”
“We could use the toilets in the clubhouse and swimming club. I think there are even some toilets over by the tennis courts. You told me yourself you’ve got a container full of portable generators from China, and we could pump the flushing water out of the small lake there. It’s fed by that little creek, so we should have plenty of water and—”
Butler held up both his hands in a stop gesture. “Whoa! Doc, slow down. I know you want to get things done, but you’ve been here less than a week, so I don’t think you fully appreciate how stretched we are. We can’t do everything at once and—”
The woman’s eyes flashed. “And I don’t think you fully appreciate what those people are going through, Lieutenant Butler. But I was in that hell for three weeks and I can’t forget. Just because I was fortunate enough to be offered shelter here, I’m not going to turn my back—”
“We’re not turning our backs on anyone, Dr. Jennings,” Hunnicutt said, “and we recruited you from among the refugee population not only because we needed a doctor here, but to form a medical team to help the refugees as much as we can. But Butler’s right. We have to use what resources we have wisely, or else we won’t be able to help anyone.” He turned back to Butler. “But the Doc’s right too, Butler. The camp’s already turning into a cesspool; can we get sewage service reestablished, and if so, how long?”
Butler rubbed his chin. “I expect the country club area is served by the same treatment plant since it’s on this side of town, but I don’t know how long it will support us here and thousands of refugees. The engineers figure there’s probably enough room in the facility’s holding ponds to last a while before we have to get the treatment plant running. But they weren’t considering several thousand folks from the refugee camp. If we dump that output into the system, I think the plan goes out the window; they’ll have to get the plant running sooner rather than later.” He sighed. “And they have their hands full now. They were hoping to hold off on addressing the treatment plant for a couple of weeks.”
Hunnicutt nodded. “Okay, let’s think about this. If we flush everything in the system and don’t get the plant running, the holding ponds overflow and things get nasty, am I right?”
Butler shrugged. “I guess so, sir. I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest.”
“So that means if they CAN’T get the plant going in time, we have a stinking mess a mile or so downstream of us in the middle of an industrial area. It seems to me a stinking mess there where no one is around is much better than a disease-producing mess in the middle of several thousand refugees, wouldn’t you agree?” Hunnicutt asked.
Butler nodded, and Jennings beamed as Hunnicutt continued, “Okay then, let’s get the good doctor her flushing toilets, and tell the engineers to do the best they can on getting the treatment plant running, but not to let it override other priorities. This situation is going to throw new challenges at us every day, folks, and we just have to be flexible.”
“Yes, sir,” Butler said, and made a note on the pad in front of him.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Jennings said, “but it’s still going to be tough. We have toilets in the club house and the swimming club—”
Luke cleared his throat loudly, earning him a glare from Jennings. “I don’t think we should allow the ’fugees—”
“DON’T CALL THEM THAT!” Jenning snapped.
Luke colored and nodded. “You’re right, Doctor, I apologize. But as I was saying, I don’t think we should allow the REFugees uncontrolled access to the swimming club facilities. We set up our container wall around the swimming club so we could clean the pool and cover it to use it as drinking water storage, and that whole facility is now our forward base and defensive strong point. We have absolutely no way to vet the refugees, and if we allow them free access in and out of our fortified area, we don’t really know who might come in.” He paused. “From a security standpoint, it’s a very bad idea.”
“Agreed,” the colonel said, turning to Jennings. “You’ll get your sewage system, Doctor, but the swim club facility remains off-limits to all but authorized personnel.”
“But there are ten toilets there! Maybe we could reposition the wall between the clubhouse and the pool—”
“Jesus Christ,” Butler muttered, unable to contain his irritation, and Jennings whirled on him, obviously intent on dressing him down.
“ENOUGH!” Hunnicutt said. “The issue is settled. Flushing water will be restored to all country club facilities, but the swimming club is off-limits to all but authorized personnel. We’ll look at the possibility of finding portable toilets that can be tied into the fixed system. Now, next issue.” He looked down at his notepad. “Mr. Van Horn, how are we coming with getting food to the refugees?”
A slender man with wire-rim glasses looked over at Hunnicutt and shrugged. “We’re starting to provide some calories, Colonel, but I can’t call it more than that.”
Terry Van Horn, ex-chief steward on the Maersk Tangier, had been appointed ‘food czar’ by acclamation and over his own strong objections. When Hunnicutt scoured the skills inventory of his small but growing group within the confines of Fort Box, he hadn’t neglected either the American or foreign merchant ships. Between the ‘culinary specialists’ (aka cooks) of his own National Guard unit and the steward’s departments of the various ships, he had no shortage of people who could cook for large groups, with a ‘large group’ defined as twenty to a hundred or so. Feeding thousands of refugees was a different matter entirely, and when it came out that Van Horn had regularly volunteered for various Third World famine relief efforts, putting him in charge was a no-brainer.
Van Horn continued. “That many folks, all I can hope to do is get some calories down ’em. I pulled one cook and a couple of stewards from each of the ships to work with me, along with most of your culinary people. We stripped the ships of every big stew pot we could find, and we been using your field kitchen to boil corn from one of the grain ships into a gruel and throwing in some of the canned seafood and meat from the containers for protein. I got no seasonings to speak of, especially not for the volume of food we have to put out. Even at that and workin’ almost round the clock, we can only manage to get out one meal a day. As more people come in, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to maintain that.” He shook his head. “It’ll keep ’em alive, but quite frankly, it looks like crap and tastes the same. I’d be ashamed to serve it if it wasn’t the best we could produce in bulk.”
“We know it’s tough and we appreciate the job you and your people are doing,” Hunnicutt said, to nods around the table.
Van Horn shook his head. “Thank you, Colonel, but the truth is, this isn’t gonna work much longer. We got plenty of grain, but as the population grows, we don’t have the manpower, equipment, or time to cook it fast enough. Yesterday we started running low, but one of my guys spotted it in time, so they started cutting down on the portion size and just made it to the end of the line. The day the food runs out before the line runs out is the day we’re likely to have a food riot. I’ve seen it before and it ain’t pretty.” He paused and said softly, “Never thought I’d see it here though.”
The room grew quiet a long moment as the others considered the possibility.
Wright broke the silence. “This sucks! We have so much grain in the ships and grain terminal it’s likely to rot before we can get it distributed, and we’ll be starving people we likely won’t be able to feed for lack of resources.”
“We need more manpower,” Hunnicutt agreed. “How’s recruitment coming?”
“No shortage of people who want to join us,” Butler said, “but vetting them to make sure they have the skills they claim is a full-time job. I mean, they’re desperate, boss. Ask for crane operators and everyone raises their hand. Same with mechanics or forklift drivers. I doubt it would be any di
fferent if we asked for nuclear physicists.”
Jennings sighed. “That’s true, I’m afraid. Of the five ‘nurses’ we took in yesterday, I doubt half of them had so much as ever emptied a bedpan. They’re all willing workers, but not knowing who I can trust makes it hard. Fortunately, we got two more docs yesterday, but—”
“Then there’s your answer,” Hunnicutt said. “If you didn’t have the docs before, they’re a bonus and won’t be missed, so re-task one. Put him or her in charge of vetting all the incoming medical personnel. Either that or spread vetting duty over your qualified medical staff as it grows. Butler, you do the same in the other areas. If you need crane operators, put a crane operator in charge of finding them. The people doing the job are the most qualified to decide if the new recruits are blowing smoke, AND they’ll be the most motivated to resist bringing in screwups, since they’ll be working closely with the new folks.”
Everyone nodded and Hunnicutt looked over at Van Horn. “And perhaps you could find some cooks to help you from among the refugees, Mr. Van Horn.”
“What we’re doing isn’t exactly cooking, Colonel, so warm bodies to help shouldn’t be a problem. But manpower isn’t my real problem. What I need is big-ass pots and burners to put ’em on,” Van Horn said.
Hunnicutt turned toward Butler, but the man was already scribbling on his notepad. “I’ll have someone search the bills of lading to see if there’s anything of use in the containers, and ask the engineers if they can figure out some way to expand your kitchen facilities,” Butler said to Van Horn, who nodded his thanks.
Hunnicutt glanced at his watch and down at his notepad. “Anything else?”
When everyone shook their heads, he nodded. “Okay, folks, let’s get back to work.”
Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) Page 5
