Chapter 23

Jaxport

We were finally on our way. Trika was navigating us out onto the open ocean. The swells are getting larger and my stomach was starting to get a bit queasy. I don’t know if I have ever actually been out on the ocean in a smaller vessel. Not that this boat was small, but compared to cruise ships which I had been on before it was tiny. I had made sure that one of the medications we packed was Dramamine for motion sickness, but I only wanted to take it as a last resort. It would be better if I could get my sea legs and not be dependent on drugs.

We finally made it out of the protected part of the port and into the real ocean and larger breakers and swells around 10 a.m. Jaxport our first destination was one of the large international shipping ports on the coast of Florida. It was about 175 to 200 miles away. That should be about 15 – 20 hours of boat time. That means a late arrival, anchor off the coast and then proceed in during the early hours of the morning. Captain Trika has the final call as if this will be a safe plan, but that is what I am hoping for.

Trika took turns showing each of us how to operate the tender in case of an emergency. Basically we learned how to start, stop, and turn. Much more than that and I did not want to know. During my “training” time she confirmed that we should arrive off of the coast of JaxPort around 3 a.m. or sooner. As soon as we set anchor we would lay down with the radar on for a six-hour wait. We will move in and scope out the port at around 9 a.m. tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a full and productive day of looting and then we can sail through the night to our next port of call.

Time continues to pass. Olivia and Michael show no signs of sea sickness and luckily I only had to empty my stomach once and then my body settles down. I am even able to eat a little in the afternoon. When 7 p.m. rolls around I turn on the satellite phone and try to call Gerald in Hilton Head. He picks up relatively quickly and we exchange greetings. I close the call rather quickly. We have limited resources and wasting them is not prudent. My family had not made it in that night. Gerald promised to send out a party to look for them tomorrow if they had not made it in by noon. Since I was already in the cockpit for the call I offered to take over for Captain Trika. She thought about it a second and agreed.

“Let the auto-pilot do its job. Only change if radar shows something unsafe. Wake me in 6 hours.”

After she finished her instruction in her customary clipped fashion she vanished, and I assume went to take a nap in her cabin. I wasn’t actually steering the boat. I was a glorified human alarm system. The auto-pilot kept us on course and my entire responsibility was to occasionally check the radar and scan manually with binoculars to check for any problems. This was a nice quiet time I can use to plan out what needs to be done. First thing though is to set up one of the laptops I acquired. I may not have internet anymore, but word processing is still available. 30 minutes later I had my new laptop ready to go. Alright, first thing is to create divisions and lists. My favorite.

On Andros Island we are going to need:

1 – Food and Energy Division

2 – Construction and Repair Division

3- Water and Sanitation Division

4 – Health Division

5 – Supplies Division

6 – Safety and Rules Division

Alright that should cover the major needs of our group for a long time. I need to break each one down individually into smaller chunks.

Division 1 Food and Energy:

Farms Fishing Animals Electricity Generation and Maintenance

Division 2 Construction and Repair:

New Construction Port and Dock Maintenance Housing Construction and Repair Equipment Maintenance General Maintenance

Division 3 Water and Sanitation:

Water Maintenance Storage and Distribution Sanitation Maintenance Sanitation Disposal

Division 4 Health:

Medical Checkups Emergency Response Medication Distribution Child Control Division

Division 5 Supplies:

Food and Material (small) Raids Weapons and Ammo Boats and Boat Maintenance Food and Material (large) Raids Distribution

Division 6 Safety and Rules:

Rules of the Colony Zombie Defense and Offense Human Defense and Offense Training and Fortifications

This should be enough to cover the new island for many years. Eventually we will need expansion and entertainment divisions. However, those can wait for now. Now do we hope that everyone can get along or do we need to have an elected leader. Probably elected, people are used to democracy. So let’s say we modify the constitution and have a main leader elected every five years with three term limits. That will allow them enough time to get actual change done if they can win three elections. Each island or territory will have its own leader that is elected. All rules are the same in each island and territory. There will be one Group Leader for every ten islands or territories. This will continue for every ten areas. So one Super Group Leader for every 100 islands or territories, and say a Mega Group leader if we ever reach 1,000 islands or territories. Each division has a leader over it and reports to the island leader.

As for laws I think we should keep it simple.

Law 1 – Everyone is created equal no matter their race, religion, creed, orientation, sex, age, or any other reason to discriminate.

Law 2 – Age of Majority is 18 for voting

Law 3 – Everyone trains and serves in the ready defense force from ages 15 – 55 in times of emergency or defense.

Law 4 – Nothing is illegal as long as you do not harm others or their property physically or mentally. (Drugs Don’t Care as long as you are only hurting yourself. Theft harms people so is not allowed. Etc.)

Law 5 – Any change to the laws other than clarification has to be approved by ¾’s of islands or territories.

Law 6 – There is a flat tax of 12% of goods and money (if we ever have some) to help make everything run right.

Law 7 – A person or individual can choose to perform volunteer service to lower their tax rate. Every month of volunteerism decreases your tax burden by 1% up to 10%.

Law 8 – People on raids earn 10% of the value of what they find. The rest goes to the group. This law will be extended every ten years by vote or done away with once the world has stabilized.

This should be enough for now. I save my work and make a couple of back-up copies on some jump drives and head on down to wake up Captain Trika. Once Trika is back on the bridge I head down to my bunk for a nap of my own. I wake up to Michael shaking me gently. “Mark it is 8 a.m. and Jaxport is in sight.”

“Thanks Michael.”

I head over to the galley and put together a quick little sandwich. That will have to do for breakfast. I grab my regular gear so I will be prepared and then head on up to the bridge. The other three are already present. “How does it look?”

“One container ship is partly sunk at the dock, a warehouse looks to be smoldering after being burned down, but the rest looks okay. Not very many zombies, no more than a hundred in the entire port area.”

“What about the ships? Are there any zombies spotted on them?”

“A few, so there are probably some out of sight.”

“Okay here is what I want to do. If you spot any flaws in the plan or improvements that can be made please speak up. Captain Trika, I would like for you to get us in range of one of the container cranes and drop anchor. Olivia you will be on over watch with a radio. Michael you and I are going to head into the port quietly at first to look for a few things. We will first take a battery pack and look for the shipping and receiving office. Hopefully there will be paper copies, but the battery pack should start up any computer. If we can get a list of what is on each ship and container then we will head back here to the tender to regroup.”

“Okay Mark, say we find what we need, what is the next step.”

“We identify the location and area of the supplies we want and then it will be a matter of transferring them to a set number of containers. They have the smaller half containers here which is what we should fill up. We locate the backup generators and then fire them up which should allow us to use the smaller crane and transfer the containers we have prepped onto the tender. Trika, how many containers can we hold?”

“Two layers of half containers. Each container no more than 2,000 pounds. Total of 16 half containers on main deck.”

Right, the main dock crane could lift heavier, but our own crane is only rated for a ton. Glad she remembered that. It would have been embarrassing to have this work and then have to unload everything by hand when we arrived at the island.

“If this works, we can also prep containers of materials for the follow up group or for our future runs before we leave. We ignore all zombies except for threats. If everything works, we will perform the same operation down the coast of Florida at each major port until Miami and then head South East until we hit Andros Island. Questions or comments?”

Nobody had anything significant to say and operation JaxPort was underway. Trika brought us in to the perfect position. Olivia had a pair of binoculars and a walkie talkie on the bridge deck to watch over us. Michael and I used the secondary tender crane to load our small ship to shore boat in the water. We double check our supplies and then off to JaxPort land we go. I tie up the runabout to the ladder at the pier and then Michael and I cautiously climb up. Coast is clear. There are enough ambient sounds of creaking metal, waves and other things that the zombies did not react to our small engine.

I start heading in the direction of the closest office looking buildings I can see. Five minutes later and three melee kills of zombies the building is in front of me. Michael knocks on the door. Great, Michael remembered my little trick. This time it pays off as there is a moan from inside and the sound of movement heading towards the door. I grin at Michael and he grins back. He quietly counts down from three and opens the door and two different zombies stumble out into the light. I take the first one down with my axe-bar and Michael uses his favorite axe. It is actually bigger than a hand axe but smaller than a full one. More of a tomahawk really. I have no idea where he picked it up, but it works just fine.

On the inside of the door is a map of the port. We are actually at receiving. Shipping is a different building. Huh, I would have expected them to be together. Maybe the port is just that big. I make note of the area where the shipping building is. It is completely on the other side of the port. Probably 800 meters away. I guess that actually makes sense. You would need to keep the outgoing material separate from the incoming material. Well let’s see what we can find here.