Deadfall: Survivors (33 page)

Entry 50 – Possibilities
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It’s  been a busy week. Well, six days. We talked in length with Captain Rhodes the day after we arrived, over an amazing breakfast, I might add. I still remember it. Anyways, there’s  been some promising progress made this week, in many departments. I’ll  try to get them all in this entry, although I hope I don’t rush it, because I’ve  been informed that our good host has brought out some steaks that were just cut from some cattle they rounded up a few days ago. He’s  supposedly grilling the steak now on the beach.

I
’ll  try not to hurry.

We talked to Captain Rhodes about our request from the tower cities. We really only spoke about them briefly, mostly about their request for, I guess as it they put it, an alliance of sorts. When I thought about it, it really did seem odd. Here were a group of Americans
, asking for an alliance with other Americans. The request seemed just as silly to Captain Rhodes, but after all the discussions we’ve had, I’ve come to realize that to most of the survivors, completely excluding the military, the United States simply ceased to exist. If it ever does again, and that’s  always a possibility, I would bet that they would be the first to jump right in, but to those who had established, built and lived in their towers, there was no more government.

To the military though, especially the high brass, even though they had absolutely no contact with any form of American government, they still fully operated under the assumption that the United States still existed
, and that this was, essentially, just a war of liberation. Herein laid the basis of the main problem. Clearly the Navy knew about the existence of the tower communities, although it took our news to really show them the true size and complexity of that network. To them, the people in the towers were just survivors, trying to make do. Captain Rhodes told us that they had been offered relocation to Fort Fisher, and had turned down that offer. I hadn’t  heard about this offer from anyone at the towers.

What had been established was that the towers wanted their own kind of autonomy, the ability to do things their own way. They didn’t just want to be reintegrated back into the
little America that was budding off the tip of North Carolina. Instead, they wanted to trade, to have contact, exchange information. This was a concept completely foreign to anyone that held power within the military structure here on the Cape Fear.

You know, I could see a little from the Navy’s point of view. Evan had pointed out, that it had barely been a year since Deadfall, and these people had already completely given up on America as a nation.
So many of us had simply taken for granted the existence of our nation, that the idea that it no longer existed, hadn’t really taken hold in our thoughts. Here was the basic fact, though, the United States alone had about three hundred and thirty million people at the moment of Deadfall. We had estimated that of that amount, maybe one million were left on the entire continent, a number that could easily be going down faster than it was going up still. In history, when nations lose that much of their population, usually they are counted as not existing as a people anymore.

Captain Rhodes
had us meet a couple of his superiors that afternoon. We relayed our message to them, and even the thoughts that I have just talked about in the last few paragraphs. I would like to think that those higher ups, generals or admirals, whatever they may be, got to such positions of power and responsibility, because they were smart and able men or women. Some maybe still clung to the notion of a working nation, but whatever they thought, by the second day, it appeared that things were beginning to change.

We were informed
, late the morning of that second day, that the two admirals and one general had given the go ahead to establish communication with the tower communities. In fact, they had requested that any leaders or representatives of these towers come down to Fort Fisher and the Abraham Lincoln to hash out a legitimate deal between the parties involved. That was great news to us. We waited out the week, and with all the good news, I think we’ll  be heading back home in a day or two.

Some of the leaders began showing up the very next day. Silvio and Sammy were the first to arrive, as they were, of course, the closest. By the morning of our third day here, we had someone from each of the seventeen towers, or at least someone to represent them.
Maxie had come to speak for the towers in Fayetteville, and even Mr. Hubs made it. He was the next to last one to show up. Colonel Banders didn’t  come, though. One of his women (or was he theirs) came. Duty called, I guess.

The basic premise was simple. The residents of the towers were allowed to visit the ocean terminal, where a trade post of sorts would be created. There would be no restrictions in the visits, the only requirement being that the visits had to be communicated via the radio network. If and when the towers grew in numbers and quantity, that system would be changed.

Until the towers could begin to provide their own harvests, the Navy would help provide food supplies for any of the towers. The hope was that by this fall, and certainly the next, the tower’s main source of trade, would be crops and game or meat. At that point, each tower would provide a certain amount of extra food supplies, according to the population of the tower and their abilities to produce food. That number was being hashed out. In exchange for this extra food supply, the Navy would quite obviously, provide protection.

The story about the Goldsboro tower that had been massacred by, well, bandits or marauders, or as Tague whispered, hungry survivors, had been made very clear. There was also the issue of the Followers of
Inanna, although just what this group was actually capable of, was completely unknown at this point. Each tower would have two soldiers attached to it at all times. What the use of this was, I'm not sure, maybe it was the Navy’s own way of keeping a handle on things.

The
Navy had one immediate request. They asked that the towers find a way to provide secure landing areas for their helicopters. It was the Navy’s full intention of using the towers and forward bases. In reply to this requests, which most of the tower leaders easily agreed to, they asked that the Navy help them find train engines, and possibly provide the engineers or know how, to fix them and/or run them. Sammy especially was very gung-ho on that idea. Apparently, the Navy had already located several engines, so that plan was easily put into motion.

It appeared that those issues were the easiest to hash out. The hardest one was the issue of sovereignty, or to put it clearly, just who was in charge. It had been quite clear that the towers still wanted to be their own thing. Clearly, the nudists (who thankfully showed up clothed)
, wanted to be able to be nude still, just as the female reverse harem didn’t want to have its odd rights taken away. The compromise they came up with was that any soldier stationed at a tower, didn’t  have to follow their laws or rules, although they were also not allowed to intervene. Also, all visitors to the ocean terminal trade station, appropriately now being called Sunny Point, had to abide by the rules and laws of the Navy. And here was the interesting point, only those with strict permission were allowed to go onto Fort Fisher.

Now, I have pointed out all these discussions rather vaguely
, because I wasn’t  present at any of them. I never even met the admirals or general. I gave my information, and that was that. I did meet with some other military folk, who wanted our information on the Followers, and we gave them all we could, without giving away our house. It was the same story we had stuck with from the beginning.

What I really wanted to have seen was just
what the Navy folk were going to do about themselves. I’ve been using Navy, Army, soldier, and military kind of interchangingly, mostly because I was never quite sure about what to call them. It’s  quite possible that they still hope to reestablish a United States, but in their current condition, they can’t. They would have to elect a civilian government, and it was clear that this sort of thing was not going to happen here. In my historical curiosity, I kind of wanted to stick around, to see just what would happen, but we all agreed that we just wanted to head back. Dawn must be bored, unless she got her rabbits.

All these negotiations were done in two days. It’s amazing what you can resolve when there is so much less at stake and you really only represent a few hundred people
, as opposed to millions. On the morning of our fifth day here, the leaders began to leave the carrier, where they had been hosted. Maxie did get permission to go on to Fort Fisher, where he met me. That afternoon, with or without permission, we snuck across the channel, and slipped into Wilmington. We drove a small dune buggy; the kind tourists would rent by the hundreds and annoy the locals with.

We only had to drive a few miles
, and avoid a small batch of zombies, which walked even slower on the sand covered roads. It hadn’t taken long for the wind to blow  sand over everything, covering up the paved roads. In one spot, we found a zombie buried up to his chest. We drove right by it, an odd solemn silence, well, other than the loud raucous motor on the buggy. It really wasn’t a good idea to drive such a loud vehicle around.

We got to our destination after driving through a small residential area
, and across a long pier or dock. At that point, I had an idea where we were headed to. His boat was docked there, as he had hoped. Ditching the buggy back at the beginning of the dock, we rushed out there where Maxie, calmly and cleanly, pushed the only two zombies out there into the water, where they became even clumsier than they were on land. We did stop to observe, though. They were easily under the water, yet no bubbles were coming out of their mouths as they sat there, thrashing about under the water at us, in slow underwater motion. Whatever made their brains work enough to move their limbs, wasn’t good enough to make them walk back to the shore and out onto the dock. Of course, if the zombies were that smart, we would all have died a very long time ago.

I had been under the impression that
Maxie’s boat required a much larger group or crew than just the two of us, but he said that both of us could crew it the few miles he intended to move it. Besides, he used the onboard motor to get us there easily without using the sails. He had gotten permission to dock it at a marina in Carolina Beach, not too far from where most of the soldiers lived.

As he did most of the work and I just followed orders, I was in heaven. It had always been my dream to sail on a real sail boat
, and here I was. As we sailed down the waterway that separated the main land from the coastal island and the Atlantic, we watched from the boat a couple of zombies attempt to walk out into the water after us. They had no chance, of course, since I had also not seen any zombie swim, but it made me wonder just how safe they were down on the island.

Anyways,
Maxie was going to be staying here for a few more days, and was going to take me out to show me the basics, just in case my weird plan about sailing to Haiti actually came to happen. It was probably best that we got back to the mountains. Dad is dead, and I think it’s time for us to start living. There are some things we need to do at home, especially to see what that search turned up. Besides, more than just plain negotiations for a new world order took place this week.

Ok, I must start out by saying that this was all predicated by the fact that on Thursday, Aaron and Lucy showed up and invited us all to witness at their wedding ceremony. Yes, the two decided to tie the knot. Horrible old saying
, as I prefer Velcro. Well, it appears that they had found the idea of starting a family very appealing. The Navy had as well. They had essentially ordered all single men and women, which was nearly everyone, to find their significant others, and get to making babies. I don’t know if they planned on making baby soldiers, but the idea was there. We were here, it’s time to regroup and regrow what we had lost. Now, it wasn’t all a massive orgy here, quite the opposite. The orders were really for weddings and marriage. Nice and old fashioned, but that stability was part of the whole equation.

It seems that Aaron and Lucy fell for that. I knew they loved each other, and not just because they had been thrust into an almost horrible situation. They knew each other’s spouses well
, too. Maybe it was that familiarity that had created the love, or maybe it was the comfort of actually having someone. In either case, they looked around at the possibility of an actual life beyond the end of the world, and decided to make what they had legally permanent. They aren’t staying here, though. They made it clear they want to live in the mountains, or more precisely, deep under a specific mountain.

So
, I told this bit of news to predicate mine. As you may have noticed, I haven’t  written any entries this entire week. That first night, we were quite tired, but the second night, Heather and I went for a walk on the beach, and that continued every single night. Yes, long walks on the beach. If there was ever a more corny, romantic, sentimental statement than that, there are few. We were uneasy, and yet addicted to that safety that was offered here. So we walked, and we talked, a lot.

Heather is here now, and I just showed her this last little bit. Her smile proves everything to me. She is asking me to listen to a song that she has found on my i
Pod. I’ll  finish up here, and then join her.

It’s safe to say that I love this woman. It may be all that attention she gave me, although she will now claim that it wasn’t entirely a survival mechanism. It may be that
she’s , quite simply put, stunningly beautiful to me. Her long brown hair has just that right amount of bounce, a liveliness that enhances her spirit, as defeated as it may have been not too long ago. Her eyes, just a hint of green amidst the hazel, show a spark that had nearly been extinguished by the violence inflicted on her. It may be the way she has grown, found strength, and found the way to spear zombies through the skull. It could be that I'm simply a fool.