Shelter for Now

by Bob Howard

  A second medic slid into view with a stretcher being lowered on a separate line. As soon as he was on the catwalk he grabbed the stretcher and guided it through the door. They were the picture of efficiency as they went down the stairs from the lantern room.

  The first helicopter backed away to a safe distance as the second moved in closer. A soldier landed on the catwalk with a second harness line, and before Jean could object, he strapped her in and signaled to raise her up.

  One by one we were all lifted from the lighthouse. We all wanted to see them take Bus out first, but the medics insisted that they were stabilizing him and for us to go. As the last of us was pulled inside, the helicopter banked away from the lighthouse so the first one could move in closer for the medics and Bus.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BUS HAD A serious concussion, and there was no doubt about whether or not he would be making the trip to Columbus with us. X-rays revealed three broken ribs where he hit the steering wheel in the boat, so he was going to be hurting for a long time.

  The medic explained that the concussion was bad, but she didn’t think it was life threatening, and she said she expected him to regain consciousness at any time. Thanks to some really fine and well equipped medical bays in the shelters, the medics promised to have Bus back on his feet before we got back from our trip to Ohio.

  The helicopters had carried us back to Fort Sumter, and even though we had planned to take all of the medics with us, one would have to stay to take care of Bus. Doctors were scarce in the new world, and we wanted ours to recover.

  We had all been impressed by the helicopters, and everyone sat down to make some solid plans about our trip. Any pretense about the Army being in Fort Sumter had been totally abandoned, so we decided to leave the Beaver parked next to the Cormorant. Captain Miller had about one hundred soldiers under his command, so he would be leaving behind more than enough fire power to defend the fort.

  If there was someone watching from the Yorktown, the flurry of activity at Fort Sumter had to cause them great concern. That is, if they were hostiles. If they were friendly survivors, it was in their best interests to make their intentions known. Especially since there were now four helicopters, a seaplane, and a Coast Guard vessel at the fort.

  We also decided to grant Molly her wish by letting her stay at Fort Sumter while we were gone. Of course, she would have to take care of little Josh for us, but that wasn’t going to be a problem for her. There were plenty of troops who couldn’t wait to see a real baby in the shelter.

  Molly didn’t know it, but Captain Miller had already informed his troops that they were to each consider themselves to be her mother and father, and as such, they would be responsible for her every move. Molly was going to have plenty of chaperones, and Sam would be more likely to be kissed by the Chief than he would by Tom’s little girl. Not to mention Olivia and Chase. They had lived with Sam at the fort long enough to know he was head over heels in love with Molly, and raging teenage hormones were going to be under constant supervision.

  As a strategic precaution we decided to have a small squad of four soldiers stay inside Mud Island. They were given strict orders not to open the door after they were sealed inside, no matter what was happening outside. Their mission was strictly to be nothing more than an observation post, and they would otherwise remain undetected. They would stand six hours of watch and report anything unusual to Fort Sumter. What they did with the rest of their time was their business, but they were told to remember who they were.

  Now that we had transportation, we could plan the trip more easily. Until we had helicopters, it didn’t make much sense to waste time on the logistics, so we were almost starting from scratch. The Chief had been making detailed plans all along, but as usual, he was being forced to revise those plans.

  Bus had gone over locations for fuel with the Chief in the past, and it appeared we were going to be able to choose alternate refueling sites if things weren’t quite safe at the main sites.

  Just after noon on the day we were lifted from the lighthouse, the Chief spread maps out across the dining room table and traced our route with his finger.

  To make the trip easier, his plan was to take us around the mountains instead of over them. West Virginia weather could be pretty hostile when it got cold, and we could avoid the higher elevations by going northwest first.

  For those of us who had been there, we recognized our first stop at Guntersville, Alabama. We could refuel there and then fly north to Ohio without having to burn as much fuel as we would by going over the mountains.

  “Are we going to go by the Guntersville shelter while we’re in the area,” I asked.

  The Chief nodded.

  “The same strategy applies to that shelter as Mud Island. We’re going to leave behind a small contingent of soldiers to man it as a listening post. It’ll be nice to have eyes and ears in five shelters. That reminds me, someone be sure to check in on our friends at Lake Norman. Let them know that we’ll be leaving for Ohio tomorrow since we have transportation.”

  The Chief didn’t direct his instructions at anyone in particular, but we all knew that he was just as likely to be in the control room when the Lake Norman shelter was contacted. We could also see that he thought about Iris Mason from time to time, and he was anticipating the day when people could come and go from the North Carolina shelter.

  The excitement of the evening was somewhat tempered by the fact that Bus had been injured, but the mood lightened considerably when one of the medics came in with the word that Bus was conscious.

  The medic said he could have a visitor but only one. Then she had to get out of the way as the room cleared in the direction of the medical bay. There wasn’t a single one of us that would be left out.

  We found Bus propped up on a bed in the room that passed as a medical ward. There were eight beds, and he was in the corner bed farthest from the door. A curtain had been drawn around him for privacy, but that didn’t slow down the gang of friends as we burst into the room. Everyone squeezed into the corner with him despite the somewhat amazed pleas of the medic. She finally gave up and sat down on one of the other beds to just watch.

  It was Bus who held up a hand and got everyone to be quiet for just a moment. He motioned for Jean to come a little closer to his ear, most likely because she was the shortest person in the room and already closest to him. He whispered something, and Jean understood what she had to do.

  She said to all of us in a low voice, “Bus said he has the world’s worst headache, and he needs everyone to whisper.”

  Everyone frowned at each other as if someone else was being too loud, and Jean held a finger to her mouth.

  “Everyone line up.” Jean took over for the medic. “You get ten seconds to hug Bus and tell him you’re glad he’s okay, then get out.”

  We all did as we were told, but it was clear that Bus wanted the Chief and Tom to stay when everyone else was gone. The two of them were huddled over him when the rest of us moved into the hall to wait.

  The Chief and Tom came out a few minutes later and explained that Bus was disappointed about not making the trip, but he felt better when they told him they would be leaving a few soldiers in the Guntersville shelter. He had remembered a few personal items that he hoped we would bring back for him, so he gave them a list.

  Tom said Bus had wanted to sleep then, but his parting words to them were how much it meant to him that they all came by.

  The mood did get better once we knew he was going to be okay. Everyone was more motivated than before, so we all began packing for the trip. Our best guess about the weather in Ohio was that there would be plenty of snow and freezing temperatures at night, so everyone packed cold weather gear.

  How long we would stay in Columbus depended upon a lot of things. Our main goal was to find the Presidential shelter, and our secondary goal was to kill as many of the infected as possible.

  We were already pretty good at our secondary goal, but we were hoping tha
t the cold weather would have an effect on the infected dead. If they could freeze, we wanted to find out what it did to them the next day. If it made them slower, we could hunt for them during the daylight hours as well as the hours between sundown and sunrise.

  The Chief and Captain Miller had spent long hours discussing how we would hunt for the infected. We didn’t need the supplies that were left behind in the houses and other buildings, so we decided we would only hunt for the infected that were out in the open. If we made good enough progress outside, then we could begin clearing inside the buildings.

  As for the Columbus shelter, it was our hope that we would find the President had made it to safety. If he had, then there would be the beginning of a government in place, and that would be the first step toward recovery from this disaster.

  When the hour was getting late I finished packing my gear and went in search of the rest of the group. Jean had finished faster than me and had gone in search of the soldiers who would be the primary caregivers for our son. They would be bringing Josh back with them in the morning when they dropped off the soldiers who were going to stay at Mud Island.

  It was a bit strange knowing someone would be living there without any of our Mud Island family, but the soldiers were constantly reminding us that we had saved them more than once. We knew they would take good care of our home for us while we were gone.

  I finally found someone who said they knew where my friends had gone. Apparently, they were making a rare visit to the surface of Fort Sumter to enjoy the cool night time air. January on Fort Sumter would mean no mosquitoes. I decided to join them for one of those rare times when we would be able to just enjoy each other’s company.

  I found them sitting along the wall of the fort facing the harbor. It was as cool as I had expected, which was a good sign for us. If it was freezing in South Carolina, it would be nasty cold in Columbus, Ohio.

  To get to the spot where they were sitting, I had to walk up a narrow set of stone stairs and walk the length of the wall that ran parallel to the dock, and I remembered how we had fought off an army of the infected from that same wall. I was close to breathing my last breath when the Chief had appeared out of nowhere and snatched up an infected dead that was just about to sink its teeth into me. I shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold.

  “Hey, everyone. Am I missing the party?”

  They all gave good natured hellos, but of course the Chief had to throw in a comment or two about them not being able to hide well enough.

  “I thought you said he never comes up here,” he said under his breath to Jean. Of course it was just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Honestly, Chief. He’s never thought to check up here when I’ve needed some time for myself,” she answered.

  I sat down on the wall next to Jean and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Anything happening over there?”

  I gestured toward the Yorktown over at Patriots Point, but everyone knew I was speaking in general terms about everywhere but Fort Sumter. That included Patriots Point, the big Arthur Ravenel Bridge, and of course the city of Charleston.

  “All quiet over by the Yorktown,” said Tom, “but we saw lights in the city.”

  I immediately spun my head to the left as if I would see something over there. It was pitch black and gloomy. The quiet that came from the city was unnerving.

  Jean pointed toward the left of the city and said, “It was almost as if someone was walking in White Point Garden with a lantern.”

  “It disappeared about ten minutes ago,” said Cassandra.

  We all sat without speaking for a few minutes, and although we were enjoying the solitude, it was likely that each of us was having similar thoughts. The city of Charleston used to be so beautiful at night. The lights along White Point Garden were usually from the streetlights and slow moving traffic, but the park had been there for hundreds of years and had seen everything from the hanging of pirates, Civil War, hurricanes, and now the infected dead wandering along its sidewalks.

  “Do you think it was someone?” I asked to no one in particular.

  “It had to be someone,” said Jean. “We all saw it.”

  The Chief was usually the one to jump on an opportunity to tease me, and I half expected him to say something about an infected dead carrying a flashlight, but he was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Chief? No comment?” I asked.

  The Chief leaned back on his hands and let out a sigh, but his eyes remained fixed on the dark city.

  “We’re going to have to deal with someone over there sooner or later,” he said in a serious voice. “Whoever that was, if they can walk around over there at night, they must have been able to take control of the city without us even knowing it. I can’t help but wonder what they think of us, and I hope whatever it is they have planned for us can wait until we get back from Ohio.”

  ******

  We had many mornings like this one. Every time we decided we were going to go off and do something crazy, it began this way. Breakfast that was more like a Sunday morning get together of a big family. We had plenty of food, plenty of laughter, and some interesting topics of discussion. One thing that was being avoided was discussion about failure. We had come to believe that we would succeed. Oddly enough, though, the Chief’s comment the night before about the inevitable contact with whoever was carrying that lantern seemed to have me unnerved.

  The world was still a big place, but there were less living people. The problem was that the living people could now be sorted into a handful of categories. There were those who had plenty and were willing to share. That category described us, and before they were forced to hole up in the Lake Norman shelter, it also described Iris Mason and her band of survivors. There were close to one hundred of them, but they were stuck underground for the time being. When the day finally came that they would be able to leave their shelter, they would be a powerful ally.

  The next category of people were those who took from others and had no rule of law. I guess those people have always existed, but in this new world there were fewer people who could stand up against them. So far, we had run into far too many of those type people, and so far we had managed to reduce their numbers. Over this breakfast, my mind was drifting back to what the Chief had said, and I was wondering which category described the unknown person with the lantern.

  I caught just a piece of a conversation that seemed to be gaining interest, or at least a fair number of opinions. Someone had asked the question, “Do you think this disease will ever be cured?”

  Opinions ranged from the absolute positive to the absolute negative, but no one differed in their opinion about what would happen if it was cured. Everyone agreed that there was already too much damage done, and that civilization had been set back a long way.

  “Cassandra, how close would you say those scientist friends of yours were to finding a cure before they became infected?” asked Kathy.

  Cassandra didn’t have the right words for what she had seen. It had been so hard to watch them all die as they worked on the cure. She opened her mouth to speak, but then she stopped and started over again.

  After a few tries, she said, “They thought they were close, but something tells me it was wishful thinking. They always felt like they had the answer, and they were always scribbling out these weird formulas, but then they would argue, change the formula, and then erase the whole thing. I think they died with wishful thinking but were no closer to a cure than they had been at the start.”

  That was the only time I had ever seen our big breakfast before a mission become so quiet.

  “So, you’re saying there’s no hope?” asked Olivia.

  “I didn’t say that. I said the doctors on my ship didn’t find the cure. All they really proved was you can get the virus by eating some infected species in the food chain. I suspect it has to be a species that eats the infected as a main source of food in order to increase the content of the disease in their own bodies.”
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br />   “Makes sense,” said the Chief. “That could also mean that people who eat the infected wouldn’t necessarily be able to infect other people until after they die.”

  Colleen put her elbows on the table in front of her and buried her face in her hands. She let out a low groan that caught Hampton’s worried attention.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s what the Chief just said. It hurts my head just trying to keep up with the way he thinks sometimes.”

  There seemed to always be that moment when the tension in the group was released by one comment, and Colleen had found it this time. Everyone laughed until they cried, and of course the Chief was trying to innocently explain what he had said. It fell on deaf ears, though, because everyone wanted to move on from a topic we didn’t really want to think about until it actually happened.

  A few people, myself included, began clearing away their breakfast dishes, and it was like the signal had been given. It was time to go again.

  We began gathering our gear at the shaft that led to the surface, and Captain Miller’s men took over hauling it up and loading the helicopters. One helicopter pulled away from Fort Sumter to carry the four lucky soldiers to Mud Island and to bring back Molly and Josh. It amazed me to think of how far we had come that we were able to make the transfer of people in such a short time. Compared to our first trip away from Mud Island, it was no more difficult than going to the corner grocery store.

  The trip to Ohio was another matter. It was a long trip that was at the outer edge of the range of the Navy VH92A’s which could travel just over five hundred miles without refueling. On a positive note, they could make the trip in less than three hours if they had to. The executive helicopter was just a bit slower than the big Navy birds, but it could still make the trip in about the same amount of time. The plan was to let the Chief set the cruising speed for the group.