“Wow,” John said. “It’s shaped like a star.”
“Yes, that’s the way forts were built then.”
“What is it doing here?”
“It has been preserved as an historical landmark,” Jake said. “This very fort is considered the finest example of military architecture in the Western Hemisphere.”
“It sure looks old.”
“It is old. Well over one hundred fifty years old. It was a very important fort during the Civil War.”
Jake made a wide circle out over the sea, nearly as far out as the old Mobile Point Lighthouse; then he turned back toward the fort, setting up a 500-feet-per-minute rate of descent. He made a long, shallow approach to the fort until he cleared the walls. Then he arrested his forward motion, moved into a hover, and finally made a vertical descent for the last fifty feet. The rotor wash blew up bits of grass and some of the sand that had been blown in by the recent hurricane. He touched down, then killed the engine, and the blades coasted down until they stopped.
For a long moment after the aircraft sat down and the rotors stopped, nobody got out. They all sat there in awe and silence, listening to the descending hum of the instrument gyros as they spun down.
“And this is where we are going to live?” Julie asked.
“This is it. You can consider this place your home sweet home,” Jake said. He loosened his seat and harness. “What do you say we step outside and have a look around?”
The ground inside the fort was amazingly green with well-nourished grass. The sandstone walls were high, and gray, and foreboding looking. There were several sally ports that led from the field to the outside of the walls, and into the walls of the fort itself. They looked around for a bit. Then Jake pointed to one of the sally ports. “What do you say we take a look in there?” he suggested.
They walked across the grass, then stepped up onto the paving stones and walked in to the arched passage way. Once out of the sun, it became much cooler. Coming off the sally port and branching off to one side was a large, all-brick room.
“What do you think this was?” Willie asked.
“My guess would be that it was an ammo casement,” Jake said.
“Casement? You mean like casement windows?” Julie asked.
“No, a casement is also a secure room for storing arms and ammunition.”
“Secure, huh? Well, you can’t get much more secure than this,” Marcus said. “Look at this thing.”
They left the first casement and began exploring the others. The brick rooms were large, dank, and dark, lit only by the door off the sally port and tiny slits that were more for ventilation than for light.
“This looks like a dungeon,” Karin said. “I can almost close my eyes and see someone hanging from the walls.”
“Oooh,” Julie replied with a shiver. “That’s a pleasant thought.”
“Ah, hang a few pictures, put up some curtains, throw a carpet on the floor, and we’ll have it looking really homey in no time,” Jake said, and the others laughed.
“Is this really going to be our quarters?” Marcus asked.
“Until we can come up with something better,” Jake replied. “And we can grow a garden. Did you see how green the grass is?”
“It’s too late to plant anything now, isn’t it?” Willie asked.
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t get cold down here until mid-December. That leaves us almost five months, if we get the garden in soon.”
“We’ll get it in soon,” John said. “What else do we have to do?”
“I’d like to take a look at that gun on top,” John said. “It doesn’t look like a Civil War cannon to me.”
“It isn’t,” Jake said. “It’s an eight-inch coastal artillery gun.”
“What’s it doing here?”
“This fort was manned until the beginning of World War Two,” Jake said.
“Ha! Did they think the Germans were going to attack us by ship?” John asked.
“They did attack us by ship. Or at least, by submarine. There were fifty-six ships sunk in the Gulf by German submarines. Some of the people who lived on the coast then could actually watch the attacks.”
“So, that big gun up top was used, huh?”
“No, it would have only been good against surface vessels, and if any of the German surface ships came into the Gulf, they never came close enough to the coast to be seen. Only thing to come this close were the submarines, and there were an awfully lot of them.”
When Jake and the others went back out into the open area of the fort, they were surprised to see three men standing there by bicycles. All three men looked to be in their late sixties and none of them were armed.
“Who are you?” Jake asked.
“My name is Bob Varney, and we were about to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m Jacob Lantz,” Jake said.
“What are you doing here, Jake?”
“What business is it of yours what we are doing here?” Willie asked.
Jake held his hand out. “They aren’t armed, Willie. I don’t think they mean us any trouble.” He turned back to Bob Varney. “It got a little too difficult to stay where we were, so we decided to come down here. We’re going to live here for a while.”
“You’re going to live here? In the fort?” one of the men with Bob asked.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“My name is James Laney. Bob, Jerry Cornett, and I live here, with our wives.”
Jake looked surprised. “You live here, in the fort?”
“No, not in the fort. Just back down the road a ways, to the first bunch of houses.”
“It looked to me like nearly all the houses were destroyed by the hurricane,” Jake said.
“They just about were.”
“Are you the only ones out here?”
“We always were the only ones who lived here full time,” Jerry said. “Then, when the economy got so bad, nobody else could afford to come down here, so for the last few months we’ve been here all alone.”
“Do you have any idea about what’s going on in the rest of the country?” Bob asked. “Since there is no radio or TV, we are completely in the dark. But we heard that there were some nuclear bombs dropped.”
“They weren’t dropped,” Jake said. “They were smuggled in on board cargo ships.”
“Damn. So, what’s being done about it? Are we under martial law?” Bob asked.
Jake shook his head. “You would have to have a military in order to have martial law,” he said. “And thanks to Ohmshidi, we no longer have a military. We are all military—or at least as close to the military as you are going to get. Also you have to have a government to declare martial law, and we no longer have a government.”
“And you are?” Bob asked.
“Sergeant—that is, John. John Deedle.” John introduced the others in the group.
“We call ourselves Phoenix,” Julie said.
“Good name.”
“Bob’s an author,” James said.
“Bob Varney—yes, Robert Varney,” Jake said. “I’ve read some of your books.”
“Don’t hold that against me,” Bob said with a self-deprecating smile.
“No, I enjoyed them. Seriously. You are a very skilled writer.”
“Perhaps, but you can understand, I am sure, that of all the skills needed for survival, a writer’s skill contributes the least.”
“What are you planning to do here?” James asked.
“We are establishing our base here,” Karin added.
“Firebase Phoenix,” Bob suggested.
Karin smiled broadly. “What a great name!” she said. “Yes, this is Firebase Phoenix.”
“All right, so tell me. What happened to the president? What happened to Congress?”
“As far as Congress is concerned, Ohmshidi dismissed Congress, and the Supreme Court, so they were already long gone,” Jake said. “And as far as the president is concerned, that cowardly bastard is hiding out
