Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

“If a few officers take over the locals—”

“They couldn’t!”

“They could with enough armed men behind them.”

“I know what happened to the National Guard the night of the waves,” Kirstie retorted. “They got slaughtered.”

Don shook his head. “It wouldn’t happen again. The army would come in ready for anything.” He looked unhappy.

South of Point Reyes, almost at the Golden Gate, Rachel hove to. The sea had calmed, and a dense fog hung in the windless air. With the radar dead and the radio direction finder unreliable. Bill decided to wait for the fog to lift.

The radio still worked, but so poorly that Einar was sure another solar flare must have hit. He picked up frantic messages from Bay Area locals and ham operators, and occasional broadcasts in code. The details were vague, but it was clear that military units were trying to take over in San Francisco and the East Bay, against strong resistance from the locals.

After a day and a night in the fog, Einar picked up a conversation between a ham operator working for the Berkeley local and another one in San Francisco. Army units from Sacramento were occupying Richmond and El Cerrito and attempting to break through into Berkeley. The push had been stalled, but missiles had begun falling all over the East Bay, killing scores of people and disrupting the defence of Berkeley.

“ The missiles seem to be coming from the west . Has the army in San Francisco got that kind of hardware ? Over .”

“ Not that we know of But we heard a cruiser was off the Golden Gate a couple of days ago . God knows where it came from . It’s all socked in out there now , but maybe they’re the ones . Over .”

“ Christ , I didn’t think they had things like cruisers any more . Listen , tell your people we’re hanging on , but it’s rough .”

Kirstie turned away, not wanting to hear any more, and paced furiously across the wheelhouse. “Those bastards — those bloody navy bastards. Bill, we’ve got to get in there as quickly as possible.”

Bill Murphy snorted. “What for? So we can get shot up?”

“So we can help! Those are our people. Don, shouldn’t we go in?”

He had walked to the wheelhouse door and stood looking out at the fog.

“Listen,” he said.

Kirstie, Bill, Morrie and Einar followed him outside. The air was damp and grey. Off to starboard, something hissed and faded away.

“It’s the cruiser,” said Don. “It can’t be more than two or three kilometres away. I’ll bet their radar is as dead as ours; they’re just firing blind.” His face was grim. “Morrie, I need to put Squid in the water. You don’t have to come with me.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Morrie.

Don shrugged and shook his head. Kirstie thought he looked scared and determined. “I’m going to try to sink them.”

As soon as reports of the mutiny at Fort Ord reached him, Mercer set up a defensive perimeter on the crest of the ridge between Carmel and Monterey. Then he sent word to Allison. An hour later, Allison was at Mercer’s headquarters in the principal’s office of Carmel High School.

“Man, I can’t believe this,” Mercer said through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “We got the word yesterday about the president being arrested and the Joint Chiefs taking over. I figure, big deal, we been on our own for months here. But, man, the troops went apeshit. They figure their hitches are over ’cause their commander-in-chief is locked up. I hear General Miles was pretty drunk when the men started liberating trucks and heading for home — he ordered the MPs to open fire on some dudes driving off the post, and they told him to forget it. So he shot at ‘em himself, and the MPs wasted him.”

“Christ,” Allison whispered. On the wall behind Mercer’s head, photographs of the president and the state governor beamed down.

“Well, it’s been getting worse ever since. The troops started fragging officers, trashing everything they could reach, getting bombed and stoned, and taking off. They started comin’ out of Ord around dawn. Half of ‘em still shitfaced. Couple of ‘em drove jeeps and started shootin’ up Alvarado Street just for a smile. When they get tired of that, some of ‘em gonna head here.”

“Can we handle them?”

“Sure we can handle ‘em. They’re mostly kids, you know? No organization. The smart ones are already long gone. Going home.” Mercer sipped hot coffee. His sunglasses were propped on the bill of his olive-green baseball cap.

“If any of them come this way, will your guys fight their buddies?”

“Course we will. Man, we own this place, this is our home now. We’ll wax ‘em, they ask for it.”

Allison nodded. Mercer’s army was over three hundred now — mostly army kids, with some civilians and a handful of retreads. The force was in charge of the whole Carmel Valley and down the coast to the northern fringe of Big Sur. Monterey, until now, had been policed directly from Ord. Allison didn’t like thinking about the sudden insecurity on his doorstep.

“Next question. Can we take over Monterey ourselves?”

“Ho-ho.” Mercer grinned. “Maybe. Sneak in, pick up a few dudes and find out what’s going on down there. Then we could go in tonight, when they’re getting drunked up again. Lock ‘em up overnight and work on ‘em tomorrow.”

“What does that mean?”

“Uh, that means shoot and recruit. There’ll be a few real assholes, you know, rapists and like that. We get them identified really quick, shoot ‘em, and then tell the others they can re-enlist in the Carmel Valley Army.”

Allison shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust the bastards.”

“Hey, come on! What do you want, girl scouts? Or you want to kill every swinging dick we find in town?”

“All right, all right. How many men will you need?”

“All of ‘em. Pull in the guys up the valley and down by Big Sur.”

“Now, goddamn it, Odell, you know that’s impossible. Frank Burk’s still out there, and if he even guesses we’re all in Monterey he’ll kill everybody on Escondido Creek. Uh-uh, that’s out.”

“You have really got a thing about Burk, you know that? A thing. Sure, he’s out there. But we don’t know where. Ain’t even seen a trace of him lately. Maybe he even left the Zone to find his people.”

“My ass. The son-of-a-bitch is up in those hills, waiting for a chance.”

“And a couple hundred sons-of-bitches are in Monterey, man. Now think: if you throw all your men into town tonight, this time tomorrow you got double the men we have now, and Burk is through. You send in just a few squads, they get shot up and you’re worse off than before.”

“I want two squads stationed at the ranch. Minimum.”

“Okay. But you stay at the ranch too.”

“What the hell for?”

“You’re my insurance, man. You think everybody in the valley likes me? Uh-uh. They like you, the big movie celebrity with the private army. You get shot, man, and we’re just another bunch of dangerous blacks, far as these folks care. They’ll hide their food and start pickin’ us off.” Allison drew in a breath and slowly let it out. “All right. I’ll stay at the ranch.” He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted: Mercer had said, in effect, that Allison was only a figurehead. But Mercer had also admitted that — for all his firepower and tactical cleverness — he felt alone and vulnerable in a white community. Then perhaps being a figurehead wasn’t so bad after all.