Steel City 2

Finally the last piece of the wall was ready. "Drop it Jimmy, over" he said over the radio and it slid easily into place and was locked in place with a turn of lever. Now everyone could get some sleep, it had been over 3 days since anyone got more than thirty or forty minutes of sleep and everyone was dead tired but they were still alive and he intended to keep it that way. His thoughts drifted to his little brother, and he let out a little chuckle, because his little brother Randy was his twin brother and was born exactly 1 minute and 9 seconds later and had been trying to beat him at everything ever since. He probably would have finished the wall in 2 days and 23 hours just to say he did it faster and it would have been perfect too. Maybe today he could get through and talk to him, it had been two days since his cell got a signal but no one answered when he called, but that was still a good sign because it meant someone somewhere was working to keep the cell grid up and that meant people were still alive and fighting. He snapped back to reality when the radio crackled to life "Ray, Ray come in " He grabs the radio on the way to the crane and answers "Yeah I’m on the way"

The wall looked imposing because it was. Made of shipping containers that were 8 feet wide, 9 feet high and 40 feet long that had been placed side by side and stacked 3 containers high it was almost 30 feet tall , 16 feet wide and almost a mile long stretching across the entrance to the shipping yard. It was one of many yards here in Galveston Bay but this one was one a finger of land that extended out into the bay and easily blocked off and easy to defend and what made it even better was the private air freight company that had a hanger with four turbo prop cargo planes in it. That was why he picked this yard and every one on the crew agreed. They still needed to cut an opening in the wall to move in and out easily but that could wait a couple of days because they had everything they needed here, for now anyway.

Bam,Bam,Bam the sound of the clean up crew had been getting closer all morning but they had done there job and kept those damn things away from the wall crew long enough to get all the work done. "All clear, I repeat all clear" "We got all of them" said Chavez on the radio. Cheers and whistles were coming from the radio as the others celebrated, but Ray didn’t want to cheer just yet. "Hey Chavez make another sweep and make sure that no more got in or got by us". "Ok Ray ,one more look" Chavez answers . As he rode the crane back to the freight office he heard six more shots ring out, then two more. When he got to the office five more bodies were ready for the burn pile. "Did you finally get them all" he asked Chavez. "Yeah, but not before they got two of ours" she said .That’s when he looked closer at the bodies and recognized two of the them, one or them was Dale the red head who he didn’t really know, but the other one he did know, it was Chavez’s little sister Carmen. She had been bitten in the neck and had bled out in less than a minute. "At least she didn’t suffer" Chavez said

Everyone was taking it hard but they all knew Chavez was taking it even harder. She had been taking care of her little sister since they were abandoned by there mother when Carmen was 8 and Chavez was 13. They had walked and hitched and ridden trains for 3000 miles from their home outside Cali, Colombia avoiding thieves and rapists along the way before finally making it to Texas and finding an aunt that took them in. For years Chavez had worked hard and sent her little sister to school and kept her away from the gangs and drugs that were so easy to get into but so hard to leave. It had finally paid off when Carmen got a full scholarship to Rice University and Chavez got her real estate liscence, but fate would never let these girls ever succed . For one sister the suffering was over for the other for the other it would never end....