The Last Handful of Clover - Book 3: The Stone in the Stream

3.47 Containment

June 16, 4:37 pm

Perhaps the military occupation of the university campus was a sign that Salt Lake City had not been completely forsaken by the outside world. But if so, it was a sign that few of the survivors witnessed. For although small crowds still flocked to places such as the university, hospitals, and police stations, the vast majority of those who had made it through the first day of the onslaught had gone to ground.

Closets across the city were full of terrified survivors, huddling alone. Bedrooms in dark houses had their doors and windows nailed shut from the inside. Dank basements and stifling attics were full of quivering men, women, and children, often barricaded behind boxes of old Christmas decorations or unused furniture. Single people and couples lay in bathtubs or under the beds, praying that the madness stalking their city would somehow pass them by.

Despite the warnings from the now silent news media, most of those who had weapons still held them close, not believing that those weapons could easily be turned against themselves and the people they loved.

And many who had the nerve, or the lack of sense, were still attempting to flee.

Mostly, they were not only hoping to save their own lives, but the lives of those they cared about. A large number actually got as far as the blockades and were sent back. Most submitted to the authority of the men with guns and turned their cars around, praying that they would find some other safe refuge.

Those that tried to bluff or reason or run their way through the blockades met an end just as violent as what they were fleeing.

The quarantine of Salt Lake City was not perfect, and many escaped—especially in the early hours. Those heading north and south had by far the best likelihood of slipping past the Army and National Guard forces that were trying to shut down far too many roads with far too few people. The soldiers there had almost given up hope they could hold their lines, and they already knew that if what was causing the situation truly was a virus, then it had escaped the city long ago. And yet still they persisted, out of a sense of desperation, loyalty, or duty.

There were only a few ways out of Salt Lake to the east, as the Wasatch formed a huge and imposing wall along the city's edge. Those canyons had been effectively covered, but some back roads and trails still provided a way out, and there had been more than one family who had, Sound of Music style, put on their backpacks and climbed their way out of the city.

Of all the escape routes, the easiest to control was to the west.

There was really only one major road that linked Salt Lake City directly with the Nevada desert, and that was Interstate 80. To the north of the freeway, passage was impossible because of the huge and sprawling Great Salt Lake; a body of water so brackish and salty that nothing more than brine shrimp could survive in it. To the south of the lake, the Oquirrh mountains were spare and inhospitable, with no civilization and few passable roads. And even if refugees had somehow, miraculously, made it past either of those two obstacles, they then faced hundred of miles of barren desert. Cars would get bogged down in the sand or mud of the Salt Flats, and unless you had a dune buggy or motorcycle, your chances of getting through that way remained slim.

So, to get out of Salt Lake City to the west, there were few options other than Interstate 80.

Several platoons from the army base at Dugway had been dispatched overnight to seal up the freeway, at the choke point between the Great Salt Lake and the Oquirrh mountains. They arrived with a caravan of nearly a hundred vehicles, including assault trucks, Jeeps with stable gun mounts, and two HEMTT A2 M977 Mobility tactical cargo trucks.

The principal commander on the ground was Sergeant Gerry Anderson, who led a team of over two hundred soldiers. It was an assault force worthy of any mobilization in Iraq or Afghanistan; two combat theaters in which Sergeant Anderson had served over his nearly thirty years in the service of his country. But no matter how he tried to square it in his mind, Anderson couldn't shake the disgust that they had asked him to dig in and hold his ground, not against a hostile enemy force, but against American citizens.