Twelve feet of concrete and steel rose up behind the defenses with guard towers positioned at regular intervals, each tower boasting a machine gun and a sharpshooter. Between the towers, soldiers patrolled with grenade launchers mounted under their rifles, many of them also carrying LAW rockets.
A narrow gap allowed traffic to flow into town, and about a hundred yards down from us, another gate with a similarly tiny gap allowed traffic out. The intake side was much busier.
Attached to the wall itself were heavy doors on rollers welded from thick steel plates, each with a soldier standing by ready to close them. At both stations, I saw forklifts parked next to concrete traffic barriers, operators in the seats, ready to block the openings. I later learned the guards conducted random drills where they had thirty seconds to move the barriers into place, retreat inside the wall, and close the gates. I am sure the people waiting impatiently in traffic really appreciated that.
Lucky for us, they did not choose to run a drill upon our arrival. The line was much shorter here than at the highway junction, and there were no pedestrians, which meant the guards could focus on vehicle traffic rather than checking hundreds of refugees for contraband.
Ahead of us was a guard shack at the midway point of the perimeter defenses, and behind that, two Bradleys sat with their chain-guns aimed at right angles to each other. I imagined those guns spitting tungsten at the speed of sound, ripping through sheet metal and flesh like tissue paper, and felt sick to my stomach.
We wound through the defenses until it was our turn to stop at the guard shack, where a tall, brawny, well-armed private in full combat attire stopped us and coldly ordered Mike to hand over our entry pass. He did, then waited while the young man looked it over. “Thank you, sir,” the private said, handing the slip back. “Please proceed.” He turned away and waved at the car behind us.
Mike drove us the rest of the way through the perimeter, keeping his speed in check and examining the defenses. “I can’t imagine how much manpower it takes to patrol this wall,” he said. “If they plan on building this thing around the whole city, they’re going to need more people.”
As we cleared the wall and drove into the town proper, traffic ahead of us began picking up speed and turning off onto other roads. Sophia said, “Where to now?”
I pointed at a sign ahead of us that read: NEW ARRIVALS PROCEED SOUTH ON HWY 21 TO PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE. “Does that answer your question?”
She stared at the sign and did not reply.
I turned to Mike. “So what did you do with our grenades and machine guns?”
“Remember when we stopped last night, when I told you to get some sleep?”
“Yes.”
“There’s an electrical substation off the side of the road right where we stopped. I wrapped all the gear in trash bags and buried it a hundred yards away, due west. I’ll show you on a map soon as we get the chance.”
A flock of birds took flight at our passing, little black shapes turning and wheeling through the air, graceful and effortless, so many of them they blackened the sky. I craned my head to watch and said, “That was smart thinking. The guards probably would have confiscated that stuff at the gate.”
“Yep,” Mike replied. He stared at the birds as well. “And I doubt they would have stopped with the military gear.”
“You think they would have taken it all?”
“Likely so.”
“But that’s stealing.”
When Mike turned to look at me, there was a gentle contempt in his eyes. “Look around, Caleb.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, thought a moment, and closed it. I am a lot of things, but I like to think I am not stupid. Mike nodded, satisfied he had gotten his point across, and focused on the road.
*****
We learned a lot in the next few hours.
The first indication of the city’s condition was the people we passed on the streets: threadbare clothes, parents clutching children with dirty faces, hands close to weapons, haunted eyes with thousand-yard stares, hostile gazes peering around corners and from alleyways—people did not greet one another, did not even acknowledge each other, and gave everyone they passed a wide berth.
Then there were the buildings themselves. I could have counted the number of unbroken windows I saw on one hand and had fingers left over. Anything resembling a business of any sort had been broken into and thoroughly looted. Most of the houses we passed weren’t in much better shape, occupied or otherwise, and those were the parts of town not ravaged by fire. There were entire blocks burned to the ground, ruins of blackened brick walls and incinerated roof struts jutting toward the sky, piles of refuse left to molder in the open. In some places, there were craters that could only have been caused by bombs or artillery.
I looked at Mike and said, “What the hell happened here?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was bad.”
We continued following the signs until we reached another gate at the AFB, showed our pass again, and proceeded to the parking lot of a large, empty storage building. There were about a hundred other cars already there, a few more streaming in behind us. A wooden sign at the entrance read: NEW ARRIVAL ORIENTATION: 1130, 1400, 1600.
Mike glanced at his watch. “11:15. Looks like we picked a good time.”
We locked up the Humvee and walked toward the storage building. It was beige in color, four stories tall, and made of prefabricated metal. By its domed roof, I figured it must have been a hangar once upon a time. A polite airman greeted us at the door and directed us toward several dozen rows of metal chairs arranged in front of a low stage.
As tends to happen in uncomfortable social situations, the people who arrived before us had scattered throughout the room, putting no fewer than two chairs between groups. The front three rows were empty, and there were at least twice as many seats as people. Mike walked ahead of me and picked three unoccupied chairs a few rows forward of the middle. We drew looks from a number of people on the way in, Sophia especially, but no one tried to talk to us. It was strange to be around that many human beings in complete silence.
At precisely 11:30, a door behind the stage opened and a gray-haired Air Force officer took brisk strides up to the stage. A sergeant followed him out a moment later and began checking the sound equipment. He flipped several switches and fiddled with a few plugs before giving the old man a thumbs-up. “Ready to go, sir.”
The aging officer tapped the microphone eliciting a puffing sound from the speakers. He cleared his throat and said, “Good morning.”
No one said anything. The officer looked around to make sure he had everyone’s attention before continuing. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel John Sherman. Welcome to Colorado Springs.”
Another pause. More silence. He cleared his throat again. “I don’t want to keep you all in suspense, so I’ll get straight to the point. As you may have noticed on the way in, the city around us is in severe disrepair. I can only imagine what you all must have gone through getting here, and I understand if you’re a bit underwhelmed at the state of things.”
He got a few nodding heads. It was at this point I noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the tired stoop to his shoulders, the slight tremor in his hands, and I wondered how much of that gray hair had occurred during the last few months.
“Before you judge the place too harshly,” the colonel went on, “you need to understand that things were much worse up until a couple of weeks ago. You see, despite the best efforts of this city’s law enforcement agencies and emergency response services, as well as intervention on the part of the Armed Forces, the infection found its way into Colorado Springs.”
He stopped again to let his statement sink in. A low murmur of alarm rippled through the scattered audience. “Now let me assure you,” the colonel held up a hand, “at this point, we have the problem firmly under control. We removed the last of the infected four days ago. But as I’m sure you have noticed, the battle to take the city back from the infected was a bad one. Nearly two-thirds of the population died in the fighting, and much of the city was rendered uninhabitable. That’s the bad news.”