To the Rescue; Surviving the Black--Book 2 of a Post-Apocalyptical Series

by Zack Finley

  From all indications, the crew abandoned ship months before. They cleaned out the galley of everything edible before they left. The cutter was cold and silent, other than the slapping of small waves against the hull. We tried the lights, but nothing came on, not even dimly. The boat’s batteries were dead. I wondered if the boat’s generator was operational, or if it was out of fuel.

  There were no gas cans left for the two ship’s boats. A few of the cabins were stripped of blankets and personal gear, but they weren’t ransacked. Just abandoned. This seemed like an orderly evacuation, by land.

  The wheelhouse was much different than the Tennessee River ferry towboat. For one there was no wheel, just two sets of short steel rods with plastic handles. More like a video game than controls for a boat this size. I surmised they controlled the rudders while the twin throttles controlled the two engines. I only believed that because there weren’t any other logical choices. The host of gauges that surrounded the console were a mystery, as were the multiple flat screens. All dead and lifeless.

  The possibility of taking this cutter downriver was starting to percolate in my brain. It was big enough, although getting it started and keeping it running was probably beyond our skill level. I assumed we could decouple it from the front end. That would make it more manageable.

  “Ferry is here,” radioed Craig. “Joel and Allie are trying to get it started.”

  “If they get it started, have them tie up to the Coast Guard cutter,” I radioed.

  I hoped they got it started, as that was probably a better choice than taking the Coast Guard cutter. With the ferry, we could bring the pickups. But with the cutter, we wouldn’t need to sleep people in tents on the deck.

  “Boss, we found another boat,” Ben radioed. “You will want to check it out.”

  I followed his directions to the large shed across the parking lot from the brick Coast Guard building. Inside was a large trailered boat. The vessel had a machine gun mount on the bow, an aluminum cabin, and two big engines.

  It looked like a bad-ass brother of our dive boat. I was still admiring it when we got a call from Joel.

  “Boss, we need a jumpstart,” Joel radioed. “Bring one of the pickups to the ferry slip.”

  “On it,” radioed Mike.

  “Take backup,” I radioed.

  “Roger.”

  The other items of interest in the building was a small portable generator, a battery charger, and a flammable storage cabinet. The generator was small, but I hoped it would at least power the radio. It had gas in it. I guessed the people at the Coast Guard station just forgot it was here. The flammables cabinet had several full cans of gasoline and lubes.

  The rest of the outbuildings were duds, most containing oil spill cleanup equipment, coils of absorbent boom, oil absorbent pads and mats, spill kits, and some floating boom. Much of the gear was on pallets, ready to be loaded either on the cutter or on a truck to take somewhere.

  The station had two above ground fuel tanks, one diesel, and one gasoline. Both appeared to still have some fuel in them. We couldn’t find the machine gun that went with the boat or an ammo storage locker. The only fuel cans were the ones were found in the flammable’s cabinet. I surmised those who evacuated, filled up their vehicles and all the fuel cans they could round up.

  Not finding much, other than the large boat and portable generator, we returned to the main office. Kurt helped me carry the portable generator up the stairs to the radio room. The other two guys split up to look for Mississippi River charts and area maps.

  I wasn’t sure what the Coast Guard kept in their offices that might benefit us this trip, except the charts. I’d brought an extension cord from the pickup truck and put the generator in an office close enough to use the extension cord in the radio room. I hated running the generator indoors due to the carbon monoxide hazard but had no place else to put it. Fortunately, the building was old enough the windows in that office opened.

  It took a few yanks on the starter cord, but I eventually got the generator going.

  Getting through to the Valley was a longshot. I had the designated radio frequency to broadcast on. We were about half an hour before the call time. Before we left Sally promised to transmit on this frequency at the top of every hour until we made contact.

  Kurt didn’t have night vision equipment, and this made it hard for him to keep up. I loaned him my flashlight and had him look for extension cords and power bars. It took him only a few minutes to find a power bar, which I promptly plugged into my extension cord.

  I used Kurt’s power bar to plug both the main radio and a scanner into.

  My own night vision equipment wasn’t optimal for reading frequencies especially after the units were powered up, so I took back my flashlight.

  My first order of business was to check for any broadcasts. I had Kurt listen on the scanner while I slowly moved the dial on the main radio. Getting nothing but static, I waited for the designated broadcast time. The Valley had agreed to broadcast three times at the top of each hour. I was supposed to wait five minutes after the third broadcast and answer. It would either work or it wouldn’t. I knew someone was probably monitoring this frequency for any transmission but our best bet to hook up was at the appointed time.

  As we neared the designated time, I had Kurt turn down the scanner and dialed in the assigned frequency, to wait. My other two teammates stopped by the radio room to drop off their finds and to witness whether we made contact with the Valley.

  We’d only been gone a few days, but I shared the desire to connect.

  Just on time, the first broadcast came through. The transmission was fading in and out, forcing me to adjust the squelch and finetune the frequency. By the second broadcast, it felt like we weren’t hundreds of miles away.

  I told my audience, “now we learn whether they can hear us. Tom give me a countdown.”

  “At 20 after, right?” Tom asked.

  “Affirmative,” I replied.

  Ben was helping Kurt with the scanner. “This scanner is set more for law enforcement and fire rescue channels,” Ben said. “There is probably another monitoring marine or homeland security channels.”

  I nodded, keeping most of my attention on my radio, especially now the third repeat was finishing, “Five-minute countdown,” I told Tom.

  “Roger, I’ll let you know at 4 minutes 30 seconds,” Tom said.

  When I got the final signal, I keyed the mike, “Black sheep to Valley, do you copy.”

  I repeated, 30 seconds later.

  “Valley to black sheep, your transmission is weak. What is your status?”

  “Black sheep to Valley, Operational. Any change in objective?” I radioed.

  “Valley to sheep, no change. Any ETA?”

  “Sheep to Valley, three days plus or minus,” I replied.

  “Valley to sheep, what is your ’20? Use open mic protocol two,” radioed Sally.

  I spelled out Hickman using the prescribed code.

  We then signed off. Our next contact time was now 15 minutes before the hour and on a different frequency. I crossed the old one off my notebook. Whether this spycraft was needed wasn’t clear. We’d made Sally reduce the complexity by a lot, but it was still messier than just talking over the radio. None-the-less getting to phone home was a good thing.

  “Nothing new on the mission,” I radioed the whole team on our encrypted units. “I gave them a location and an ETA of three days plus or minus. Nothing new on the home front.”

  “Joel finally got this bitch started,” Craig radioed back. “Soon as Joel gives the okay, we’ll put the battery back in the pickup, and everyone will meet you at the base.”

  “Tie up to the barge part,” I radioed. “Just in case we decide to take the bigger vessel.”

  “Roger that,” Allie replied. “Snow is getting heavier, so visibility may become an issue if we can’t leave right away.”

  “Keep us apprised,” I radioed.

  We were going to take
the Coast Guard towboat, if it had enough fuel, and if we could get it running. A lot of ifs but with it, we could all go and come back together. We could even push barges out of the way if we needed to, somewhere down river. Everyone would be out of the weather. I hated leaving the pickups but there were so many abandoned vehicles we could replace them, we just needed a few cans of gasoline.

  Ben and Mike returned before the ferry. We put two of the pickups in the storage shed with the trailered boat. Tom parked our truck and boat on the river side of the main building. I hoped we’d either get more snow to cover our tracks or preferably it would warm up and melt.

  The snow was coming down harder, so it looked like we’d get some cover.

  I left two guys to monitor the situation at the main building, and the rest of us went down to assist with the barge tie up.

  Waiting for the ferry to arrive was a little spooky. The swirling snow muffled all sounds. The engine noise from the ferry tug was audible one second and silent the next. I wasn’t quite holding my breath, but I expected them to be here by now. NVGs weren’t very helpful in the heavy flakes. I realized this was my first-time using night vision gear in a snowstorm. Most of the places I’d been were dry and most of the time plenty hot. They didn’t work well in sandstorms, either.

  I flipped them up and used my flashlight to assist our errant boaters. I knew they were getting close when the sounds from the ferry became a constant rumble, no longer ebbing and flowing in the darkness.

  “We are getting close,” Allie radioed. “I’m turning on the spotlight to avoid ramming you.”

  Everyone waiting for the ferry flipped up their NVGs and waited for the light to penetrate the snowy darkness. The boat was barely creeping along, Allie was taking her time with the situation.

  The guys had thick ropes to tie it up with, and someone found a pair of fenders to minimize any damage.

  When the ferry got close, the towboat left its side and began pushing it toward our barge. I couldn’t see how it was attached, but it was now at a right angle to the ferry. The towboat rocked forward and then back to push the ferry tight against the barge. Once we secured the ferry to the barge, the towboat swung back alongside, and Allie shut off the engine. The ferry was a little longer than the buoy barge.

  I hadn’t realized how loud the rumble from the engines was until it stopped. The only discernable sounds that remained for a brief moment was the slap, slap of the river against the hull and the clunking noise behind me of the barge striking the pier.

  Everyone transferred cautiously from the ferry to the buoy barge.

  “I’d like to take the Cumberland down to pick up Andy and his crew,” I started, talking to Allie and Joel once they joined me on the barge deck.

  “Of course, you do,” muttered Joel, glaring toward the ferry.

  “It will be a lot more versatile,” I countered. “Especially once we separate it from this barge.”

  “I assume you want me to determine whether it is even possible to start this thing up?” Joel asked. Allie was silent, but I could feel her uneasiness by the way she went suddenly still.

  “It is smaller than the ferry,” I said. “But it has bunks for at least 20 people, plus a galley, dining area, even a weight room. I just don’t know if it will run or if it has enough fuel.”

  Joel turned to Razor, “Come with me down to the engine room, let’s see what we have.”

  “We found a small functioning generator and a battery charger,” I added, helpfully.

  “Have someone set the generator up on the deck near the engine room, I’ll see if we can get the batteries charged. I’d like to get the boat’s generator going first. I bet it has an auxiliary tank that might be low. Someone bring my toolbox, the battery powered fuel pump and a battery from one of the trucks.”

  “I guess I’ll go up to the wheelhouse and see what we have up there,” Allie said. “I hope they have an operating manual or something. This thing looks a lot more complicated than anything I’ve tried before now.”

  Once Joel had his gear, I assigned Ben to figure out how to separate us from the barge. I went up to see how Allie was coping.

  “How is it coming?” I asked, sliding into the wheelhouse and closing the door behind me.

  “No wheel,” Allie said, gesturing at the helm. “I bet the view is excellent when it isn’t pitch black and snowing.”

  “I found a helmsman training manual,” Allie said, “So it won’t totally be trial and error. The cutter is 75 feet long and 22 feet wide but only draws 4 feet of water. It has twin 600 HP diesel engines and with a full fuel tank can go about 3,000 miles. So that is good news since it is only 260 river miles to Helena. I will take about 26 hours to get there. I’m not sure how comfortable I am traveling at night, who knows what kind of obstacles we’ll find. I’m not hugely worried about going aground, but just from what I’ve seen in this harbor, there are a lot of loose barges floating around.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t you take a nap until first light? By then we should know if Joel can get things moving. Take the captain’s cabin, and someone will wake you when we think everything is ready.”

  “I can help,” Allie started.

  But I cut her off, “We will need you as rested as possible when we start down the river. During the day, most of us can catch up on our sleep, but you will have to be alert. I’m planning on towing the dive boat and the new bigger one we found with us. That will give us some scouting capability and may give us a way to travel some at night. Get some rest and be ready to hit it in the morning.”

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 10

  It was a long cold night for most of us. We were lucky, the crew must have topped off their tanks before the CME. The generator just needed a jump start to get going, to give us power. Everything was bigger and more complicated, but in true Coast Guard fashion, they had left things in good condition. Joel was thrilled to find a machinist training manual in the engine room. They must have been cross training people all the time because things were well labeled and corresponded to the manual.

  The charts showed a boat ramp only a few blocks up Obion Creek from us. We had to pick a lock, but it just took us an hour to get both boats launched and tied off to the cutter. We also unloaded everything from the pickups onto the cutter deck. We filled every fuel can we had, just in case. We pulled a full set of Mississippi River charts and several tributaries. I didn’t think we would be going up the Arkansas River, especially with the locks not working but we took the charts anyway. It wasn’t like anyone would be making any new ones.

  With no GPS, we’d be using the charts for navigation instead of the main nav screen. No one seemed to have considered using it with the GPS out. It would still display the river, but it would have to scroll manually. After several months of changing water levels, I suspected the river navigation buoys would be missing or in the wrong places. I hoped our depth finders would keep us off of the shoals.

  When the heaters finally got going, the cabins and common areas warmed up nicely, another plus for taking this vessel down the river. It was an hour before dawn when we tucked the last pickup into the service building. We were bringing all three batteries downriver, so the last item loaded onto our new ride was a battery. We locked up all the buildings and clambered aboard.

  Thinking of the trip back, we emptied the life jacket locker from the ferry, storing them in an empty cabin. Each cabin had two bunks. Everyone was assigned their own cabin, at least for the trip downriver.

  The bunks did double duty for storage. There was barely room in the cabins to walk between the beds, but it was better than a tent on the ferry deck.

  The mess area had seating for 20, but the lounge area was designed for half that number. The weight room had a treadmill, a set of weights, a mat, and a bench.

  We’d be crowded on the way back, for sure.

  The snow subsided before dawn, leaving about 2 inches on the ground. If anyone came around before it melted, we left plent
y of tracks behind. Kurt swept them as best he could to disguise our activities.

  We weren’t waiting for the snow to melt, so we were just going to chance it. I had no interest in exploring the town, either. I doubted anyone had died of hunger, here, with all the soybeans and grain, but who knew what defenses they might have in place. I wasn’t even sure we would return to Hickman. The only things drawing us back was the radio and our pickup trucks.

  When Joel had enough moving parts functioning within basic parameters, we were ready to go with the sun. Ben found the undocking manual and had everything disconnected from the front barge except the final link.