by John O'Brien
Robert, Bri, and Craig soon emerge with others that are coming out of the doors in both large and small groups. On seeing Robert, I open up and do a quick sensing of him. He gives me a look and I shrug, sending him, “It’s going to happen. Deal with it.”
Before we head out for our training mission, I gather the others we found that were bitten and survived. I want to see whether there is the same sensory perception that Robert and I share. After some explanation, I open up but don’t seem to sense any of them. I talk them through how to mentally open, to find that compartment that seems to be part of the mind, yet separate. In the parking lot, we experiment and, at first, I can vaguely sense one of them. With practice on their part, I am finally able to sense them in the fashion that I can Robert.
With Bri and Craig looking on, we spend some time working on opening up and shutting down. The crazy old man is wary but goes along with it until he becomes a believer as well. He was always wont to think it was him going crazy, but he eventually comes around. I show them the difference between us and the night runners; that we can shut that, or any part, down.
I send Robert and the others over to the outer gate and we test it over distance. I can sense their presence, meaning their exact location, but the ability to sense their nature, emotionally and physically, appears to be limited by distance. They are about a mile away, and I can only vaguely pick out their feelings and physical state. I push farther outward to see if this makes a difference, but the vagueness remains. We can, however, communicate clearly.
I have them drive to the edge of the Nisqually Valley several miles distant. The hints that I felt of their physical and emotional nature vanishes altogether but we can still communicate clearly. With the others, it’s not as distinct as with Robert, but it’s clear nonetheless. Perhaps it has something to do with the genetics or the bond we share. Who the hell knows?
With no teams available to provide security, that’s as far as I feel comfortable with them traveling. Perhaps after our training flights, I can ask Lynn to spare a couple and continue testing. Robert and the others return, their eyes filled with wonder and amazement. I have one other test that I’m not particularly looking forward to.
I ask Robert to go see if his mother, Julie, would mind helping us out. She’s the only one I know that may have actually been a night runner and changed back. There is still some debate on that, but I know what I saw and heard. The experiences I’ve had since then only seem to validate it. Robert hesitates and then goes to see. I can pretty much picture that conversation now.
“Um, Mom, Dad wants your help to see if he can see into your mind.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much not going to happen. I feel Robert make his way through the building.
“Robert. Better yet, you show her how to open up and see if you can sense her. I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to be fond of me doing that,” I send.
I can hear his mental chuckle. “I think that’s a better plan.”
The others gathered near me, with the exception of Bri and Craig, chuckle.
Awesome, I’m in a group conversation. Good to know, I think facetiously, shutting them out.
As Robert tries to locate his mom, I experiment to see if I can shut the others out and communicate only with Robert. Within the overall compartment in my mind, I can sense smaller ones that are the others. I work on shutting individual ones out while keeping the one I sense as Robert open.
“Can you hear me?” I send to him.
“Yeah, Dad,” he replies.
This is going to take some getting used to, and I’ll have to be careful. We’ll all have to be. The implications of what we can do are large, but there is no way I want to broadcast my thoughts. No one would want to hear those. If they did, I’d be committed immediately, and more than likely shot.
Robert returns after a long while, to the point that I was about to go and fetch him. There is a lot to do and, with the days growing shorter, we don’t have as much time available to us. He brings the news that he wasn’t able to sense his mother at all. I figure the amount of time was spent with his mom asking him a multitude of questions and Robert hemming and hawing his way through them.
I ask him if he tried to open up in the way you’d sense night runners; was he open in that manner when he was telling her how to open up? He looks at me, shocked.
“No, I…uh, didn’t think of that. Really? As a night runner?” he asks.
I shrug as I sense how uncomfortable the question made him. I may have him try again with her, but not in that way. I’ll open up without him knowing and see if I can sense her in the manner of the night runners. It could be that she wasn’t one at all. Or, it could be that, with the transformation, the ability was lost. I’m pretty sure we’d know by now if she was able to sense the night runners. She would have exhibited, in some form, that she thought she was going crazy. As it is, we’ll just work on what we have and continue experimenting when time allows. For now, there’s a crash course in low-level flying to do.
Thanking the others for their time, and with the promise to continue at some point, I shut out everyone. Gathering Robert, Bri, and Craig, we adjourn inside to go over low-level route planning. I teach them how to pick update and turn points, ones that will be easily identifiable, the methods for correcting course and speed for wind, and other things that are mostly just academic. The important factor, considering we really won’t be doing time-on-target flights, is to study the terrain along the route of flight and to identify landmarks that will help keep the aircraft on track.
We spend some time developing a low-level route and going over the details. Close to noon, we pack up and head to the 130. While the original plan was to make it look like supply runs, we will now attempt to make the flight look like we’re scouting the area and then drop into our low-level. It may or may not fool anyone, but we’ll give it our best shot. In succeeding days, we’ll set patrols in different sectors with other low-level routes planned.
There isn’t much of the flight itself other than acquainting both Robert and Craig to the subtle differences of low-level flying. The first thing they quickly learn is that it’s a lot more difficult to keep track of their position with the line of sight distance being drastically reduced. I teach them to rely on their heading and speed, backing it up with the coordinates in the computer. We could set up the entire route in the computer and fly it with our nav instruments but it’s important to be able to fly it by hand. So that’s the way we do it. On our actual mission, we’ll be using the nav computer, but it’s vital to know how to manually fly a route in case the computer malfunctions. Another thing they find out about is the turbulence. Wind is affected by terrain and only with altitude does it smooth out. On hot days, thermals will affect the amount of chop but we won’t have to worry about that for some time, if ever again.
We return after a few hours, tired and in need of rest. There is a meeting to attend and then another night of trying to keep the night runners at bay. Robert seems to be fine, which he repeatedly tells me as he catches my questioning looks toward him. As we are shutting down, I try to sense him again. I feel nothing, not even the partial openness I felt previously. With the props winding down, he looks over at me and smiles, having felt my attempt.
Lynn and the teams are still training, so I’ll have to put off any further experimentation until the next day. Besides, the lack of sleep is beginning to catch up with me and I’d much rather find my pillow than play a long-distance game of cans and string.
Later, Lynn wakes me from a deep slumber telling me that the group is ready to meet. Initially, I just moan something and roll over.
“Oh no you don’t, Jack,” she says, shaking me again.
It takes her a few tries before I understand what she is trying to tell me, but it eventually penetrates my fog-filled mind. I stumble to the meeting, trying to erase the last vestiges of sleepiness.
Lynn begins the meeting by telling everyone that the team training went moderately well
for the first day but more is needed. They spent the greater part of the morning setting up part of the hangar to mimic the other group’s equipment bay layout, only on a smaller scale. She then gives a brief summary on the Phase One and Phase Two training programs currently underway.
“When will the people in Phase Two be ready to be molded into teams?” I ask.
“Three days,” Lynn answers.
“And how long do you think until the current teams will be ready to go?”
“Five days, minimum,” Lynn replies.
“Okay, if that’s true, and if no one has any objections, then let’s set a departure date for Portland six days hence,” I say.
Frank talks more about his concerns but concedes that he can’t think of a better option. He admits that it’s not the plan that he’s worried about, it’s just that we seem to be throwing a lot on a long shot. He comments that he’s onboard, that he knows what the end result will be if we do nothing, but that he’s just anxious. We spend the next little while going over the plan again, talking about scenarios that we may encounter and how to deal with them. Specifics of the plan are talked about in greater detail with some fine-tuning. Bannerman reports that he has some of the supplies and will send crews out to find the others over the next couple of days.
“Lynn, I’d like to borrow a couple of teams for a few hours in the morning if you can spare them,” I request after we finish with the mission planning.
“What for?” Lynn asks.
I tell her that I’d like to conduct several tests with Robert, myself, and the others we found who had been bitten. Seeing the confusion on everyone’s face, I detail what happened to Robert. Silence engulfs the group as they all, with the exception of Lynn, Bri, and Robert, look on with shock registering on their faces. It takes a few moments for them to recover and I go over the experimentation with the others we brought back.
“What about Julie?” Frank asks.
“Robert tried with her and felt nothing,” I respond.
I leave it at that, wanting to test that farther if possible. The late afternoon is heading into evening and, frankly, I’m tired of sitting in the chair, but we still have the night runners up north to cover. Our latest foray there didn’t show us anything comforting. That’s a threat we’ll have to deal with as well.
“What about the bridges?” I direct my question to Frank.
“I looked over the footage earlier, and it does appear that the four you identified are the only ways across the river for twenty miles. The railroad and old highway bridges look like they can easily be taken out with the Spooky’s 105s. The interstate bridges may prove to be a bigger challenge with their superstructure. You’ll have to blast through that first before you can hit the spans themselves. And, with their size, it’s hard to tell if the river is deep enough that the spans will sink. We could just be creating a footpath for the night runners to cross,” Frank briefs.
“If that happens, we could just blast the debris,” I state.
“True, and we have enough ammo. There is no doubt in my mind that we should do this, but the real question is when. If we blow the bridges, we’ll lose access to anything in the north. That means the distribution centers and bases,” Frank says. “What do you think, Bannerman?”
“There are other distribution centers to the south of us. We can bring in more storage containers and pull everything from the northern DC and the bases. We’ll have to make doubly sure we bring everything we want before blowing our only access to them. The one worry I have is the fuel. We can still get to it if we cross the bridges twenty miles to the east, but that will add almost two hours for each fuel run. However, with that said, it’s doable,” Bannerman answers.
“Frank, in your estimation, how long do we have?” Lynn asks.
“That’s a tricky question. I can only hazard a wild guess as we’ve yet to see any pattern that the groups of night runners hold to,” Frank states.
“You predicted they would eventually leave the big cities, and that’s what is happening,” Lynn counters.
“Well…yes…but that’s a no-brainer. So, from what we’ve gathered so far, my best guess is that we may have a couple of weeks before they start wandering out of Tacoma and the urban areas north of there. Given that their migrations, concentrations, and honestly, most of their observed activities, seem to be focused around food, they’ll stay where they are as long as the area can support them. I’m guessing there should be plenty for a while. After that, they’ll more than likely begin heading south again.
“Another factor is them leaving an urban area. It could be that they’ll hesitate coming too far south without knowing whether they’ll have shelter during the day. I don’t pretend to know their thought processes regarding this, but the valley between us and the southern end of Tacoma may hold them up for a while. Eventually, though, I see them pushing south in search of food, with a few remaining depending on the renewal of food sources. If we blow the bridges, there’s a big chance that they’ll swing east and go around us,” Frank comments.
“Do you think they’ll fight for the resources north of us? Meaning, will their number deplete as they compete for a dwindling food supply?” I ask.
“That’s hard to say. I suppose if we were dealing with normal predators in the wild, then yes. However, we can see by the numbers coming out of Seattle, this may not be the case. With that in mind, I don’t think we’ll see much of a decrease in their population. If the pattern holds true, I think we’ll see them push outward rather than compete,” Frank says.
“What will happen if they reach us?” Robert asks.
“Again, that’s hard to say. As I said, anything I mention is a wild-ass guess. It could be that they push past us seeing we’ve cleared the area. If there’s not any food to be found, they should move on. That will take a considerable period of time in order for all of those we saw on the video from last night to move through, meaning, it could be harder for us here. They’ll smell the livestock if not us. I’m sure, at a minimum, we could see several packs make a concerted effort to get over the walls,” Frank expresses. “The chances of them getting inside will be low depending on how many make the attempt. I don’t see them getting over the walls, and we have the perimeter mined, so it could be that they circle the walls trying to find a way in and give up.”
“They got over the walls around the hospital,” I comment.
“Well, that was different. Unless they bring chairs and tables all of the way from Tacoma, or downtown Olympia, I don’t see that kind of thing happening. It’s possible, but not likely. At any rate, our best strategy is to detour them by blowing the bridges,” Frank states.
“Good point,” I say.
“What if we—” Bri starts to say and clears her throat. “What if we dropped food? I mean, if we were to push some out from the back of the 130, would that delay them?”
I look to Bannerman. He thinks over Bri’s suggestion for a few moments before replying.
“We could do that but, one, it will deplete our stores, at least until we are set up with the other distribution centers, and two, given their numbers, I seriously doubt that we could drop enough to keep them there for long. That’s a lot of night runners to feed. We’ll definitely run out of food for ourselves if we attempt that.”
“Okay, what about if we drop some in a line leading to the east. That is, after we drop the bridges. Would that help guide them around us?” Bri inquires.
“That could work, or it might not. If we understand the night runners at all, or if they thought like us, I’d say that would have a small chance of working. If you ask me, I’d say the odds are slim and we should keep the supplies for ourselves, especially as we are most likely losing the DCs to the north. However, what do I know? We could try something to see if it works after we blow the bridges and after we establish a supply line with the DCs to the south,” Bannerman says.
“Okay, let’s look at what we need to do in the immediate future. During the day, we’ll
gather as much as we can from Lewis and the DC with the timeline set for completion being ten days. By that time, we’ll be back from hitting the compound and we’ll hit the bridges. Bannerman, if we can spare the crews, we’ll have more teams available in three days. They can escort crews down to locate and begin establishing what supplies the southern DCs have. Also, see if we can set up a safe fuel farm here with pumps to stir the fuel. I know there are at least large fuel bladders for remote refueling at McChord. If we can’t set up a fuel farm within the allocated time, then load up what we can with the bladders and we’ll just have to make the extended trip around for more fuel. For security, we’ll be relying on the ones coming out of Phase Two, of which I believe Tim and his group are a part. We can also ask Miguel if he and his group can help.
“Another option, if we have the people to spare, is to begin burning as much as we can between the night runners and us. At night, we’ll hit the southern fringes in the hopes that it will delay any further advances south. That and our ongoing preparation for hitting the bunker is going to keep us pretty busy with little rest. We have to make sure we get some, though, as we can’t hit the bunker tired. We’re going to need every faculty we can bring to bear. When we return, we’ll see where we sit and blow the bridges,” I say, attempting to bring all that we’ve said into a larger plan.
“You’re pretty confident about us taking out the bunker,” Lynn states.
“Is there any other way to be?”
The next morning, before the teams head off to their training, and before we head to conduct another low-level, Robert and the others who were bitten drive away with two teams providing security. Lynn and the remaining teams stand nearby on the edge of the parking lot, making it look like some stunt or circus show. I feel a little uneasy with so many around watching, but most of this will be done in silence which eases my self-consciousness some.
