by Howard, Bob
“Molly, could you get in contact with Captain Miller?” asked Tom.
Molly immediately started calling Fort Sumter on the shortwave radio, and it only took a minute to get Captain Miller to the microphone. Molly switched him to the speaker so we could all hear what was being said.
“Captain Miller, this is Tom. Most of us are here, and we have a situation. Do you mind if I ask what it was you and the Chief discussed last night?”
“I know it sounds lame, but we talked about the weather. The Chief was happy to hear about the tropical storm coming in from the Gulf of Mexico because it was likely to push most of the radioactive fallout to the north. Why, Tom? What’s the situation?”
I described how the Chief had left without explaining to the rest of us where he was going, and that Kathy had forced her way on board the plane at the last minute. Captain Miller listened and then asked if I had heard the question that the Chief had asked him at the end of the call. I told him I had heard the Chief say he was meaning to ask him something, but Jean had called me out of the room.
Captain Miller said, “Yeah, I thought he seemed a bit worked up after I answered his question, but he didn’t say why.”
“What did he ask you?”
“He wanted to know what happened to our source near Charlotte who had warned us that the Oconee Nuclear Reactor had blown up. He said something about the source being lucky that the normal dispersal pattern for the fallout would be a ten mile radius with a heavy concentration for about fifty miles to the southeast. He said we were only going to get a dusting that would kill people over time if they were caught out in the open, but the Charlotte area wouldn’t get anything unless there were strong winds from the south.”
We all looked at each other, slowly putting two and two together. The change in the weather, the extra suit, the rush to go. It was all starting to make sense, but we couldn’t quite figure out what would make the Chief so worried about the source in Charlotte.
“Tom, are you still there?” asked Captain Miller.
“Yes, just trying to get a handle on everything.”
“Well, if you asked me, I would guess that the guy in Charlotte was a friend of his. He acted surprised when I told him the man was named Hampton.”
CHAPTER THREE
Georgetown Survivor
It didn’t take us long to sort out the details. When the Chief realized who the contact was and that he was about to catch a heavy dose of radiation, the Chief had asked Captain Miller if he had any details about the man. Captain Miller had told him Hampton had flown out of the Georgetown area and made it as far as the North Carolina border west of Charlotte when he had engine trouble. Hampton told him there were a lot of people trying to make it to the mountains to get away from the infected. He said there were caravans of wagons and trailers being towed by anything that could make it past the logjams of cars and trucks that had been abandoned back at the beginning.
“There are still people on the move?” asked Jean. “I would think the only survivors are the ones who have managed to find permanent shelters.”
Captain Miller heard Jean over the microphone and said, “Hampton said people started to abandon their shelters because they didn’t have enough supplies, but the one thing they have plenty of is guns. He said they have a small army moving with them, and they’re cutting a path through the infected.”
“That won’t work,” I said. “Thousands of people would have tried to make it to their bug-out cabins in the mountains, but most of them would have found one of two things waiting for them when they got there.”
“You mean if they got there, don’t you?” asked Jean.
I tried to imagine what it was like on I-77 through Charlotte when the infection started to spread. Driving through there toward West Virginia where the mountains would be impossible for the infected to climb was probably a bigger nightmare than Thanksgiving weekend.
“Yes, I mean if they got there, Jean. If they made it to their private shelters and cabins, they were likely to find someone else had already staked a claim to their places, or they were just as likely to find someone with the infection got there ahead of them.”
Tom shook his head.
“No, the infection was there ahead of them, and people were running from it back down the mountains straight into the people going the other way. That’s what we ran into when we headed west. Thousands of people were trying to go east.”
“So,” I added, “the ones who lived were the ones who were already somewhere safe, but not safe for long enough. Now, they’re going to try to take the mountains from the infected.”
“It won’t work,” said Bus. “It sounds like too many mouths to feed and too many chances for the infection to get behind their lines.”
We all agreed because we had seen it happen already. The larger the group, the more likely it was that someone would get bitten by a stray infected dead, and they wouldn’t tell the rest of the group. Unless they were stopping from time to time and checking each other for bites the way Captain Miller’s soldiers had, someone would cause them to fall apart.
“That doesn’t explain why the Chief went out of here like his rear end was on fire,” said Tom.
“Maybe I can help with that,” said Captain Miller.
We all turned and looked at the shortwave radio as if Captain Miller was inside it.
“Hampton said he was worried about how large the army had become, and that some of the people with guns had started taking supplies from the people they were protecting. He said he was going to try to break away from them to the southwest and make it on his own.”
“I don’t suppose Hampton gave you a way to contact him, did he?” asked Jean.
“No, he was having to abandon his plane. He has a short range radio, but you would need to know his frequency to talk with him. I gave it to the Chief, but that won’t do him much good unless he’s practically on top of him.”
Captain Miller knew what he was saying even as he said it, and he also knew it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. He felt bad for us and the way the Chief had left on a rescue mission, but before he signed off he said he knew why the Chief had to try. He also understood why the Chief hadn’t wanted us to go along. Jean was due to have our baby, and it made sense for me and Doctor Bus to be here. It was a risky trip, so he wanted Kathy to stay with Tom.
Tom wished he had seen Kathy sneak out when the Chief left, but Molly needed some stability and less worry. All we could do was stay in radio contact with the Chief and Kathy for as long as possible.
We signed off from Captain Miller, and Molly immediately began trying to get through to the Chief.
******
Charlotte had been as bad as most cities that were surrounded by a bypass. They were intended to allow travelers to go around the cities rather than through them, but when the interstates became clogged with people trying to leave, I-485 became a prison wall around the city. First responders couldn’t get to the fires and accidents, and just like other cities it was too late once they realized there was nothing they could do to help even if they did reach the scene. It didn’t take long before traffic came to a complete standstill, and families began fleeing on foot.
Smaller towns fell within minutes as living victims ran straight into the arms of the infected, but the big cities like Charlotte were like a movie on a continuous loop. Traffic came to a grinding halt as the sun rose on thousands of vehicles flowing in from the suburbs during rush hour. To most of the drivers and passengers sipping their Starbucks or munching on a breakfast biscuit, it just seemed like any other miserable day in traffic. There were the mandatory fender benders blocking a lane, and everyone else had to get a good look. There were the drivers with their cell phones at the tops of the steering wheels so they could text, and they undoubtedly thought they were good drivers because they were leaving a five car space between themselves and the person in front of them. A space that was inevitably too great of a temptation for people in other
lanes to pass up.
All of it seemed to stop at the same time, and when it did, it wasn’t so unusual that anyone thought it would be any different from yesterday. People finished their coffee and their biscuits. The texters enjoyed a few minutes of texting without having to stop and go, and the women who needed an extra minute to finish putting on eye liner didn’t really mind the interruption.
People closer to the front of the endless parade started getting out of their cars to see what was happening. Then they joined the tidal wave of people who ran toward them, bleeding and screaming. Some tried to get back into the relative safety of their cars. Some abandoned their passengers who sat helplessly watching as people with purple, bruised looking faces attacked their drivers.
The wave of attacks rolled through the stopped vehicles as thousands of people toward the back of the parade caught on just minutes too late. Even as the new infected dead pushed through the abandoned vehicles looking for new victims, people started honking their horns to get the idiots in front of them to move faster. The horns drew the infected forward, and angry drivers got out of their cars to confront them. Some waved tools in the air at the crazy looking people coming toward them. Others who had always carried a loaded gun under their seats were finally getting the opportunity to exercise their right to defend themselves, but for some reason their targets were getting knocked down by the bullets but getting back up.
That was Charlotte on the day it began, and that was Charlotte as the sun lowered toward the western horizon. People who had been trapped in their cars all day had finally given in to their hunger, thirst, or need to go to the bathroom, tried to sneak from their cars to safety. One by one they found themselves face to face with groaning creatures that used to be humans who, like them, had been simply driving to work.
A charter bus with heavily tinted windows had been the safe haven for a group of forty tourists who were traveling south to a gambling casino. When they came to a stop in the lane closest to the side of the road, most of them were comfortably napping or watching movies on the tiny TV screens above their seats. When they saw the people running toward them, the driver yelled for everyone to get down as low as they could in their seats as he got down on the floor of the center aisle.
The hours went by as the tourists remained hidden. They pooled their homemade lunches and snacks and shared water bottles. The bathroom in the back of the bus gave them extra time to figure out what they were going to do if they ever got the chance. There seemed to be no end to the screams and to the wandering, wrecked bodies that searched for new prey. Most of them had been able to contact relatives and friends, and they all got the same bad news. It was happening everywhere. The news broadcasts were calling them infected, and one bite from them would be fatal. The Emergency Management broadcasts were telling everyone to find a safe place to hide and to stay there.
The driver quietly opened two overhead hatches that let air into the bus, but it was still uncomfortable. There were also new smells that came in with the normally fresh air. Fires were spreading from vehicle to vehicle on the other side of the freeway, and the smoke was heavy with the smells of burning flesh and odors that accompanied violent death.
As darkness began to fall, the driver stood on top of the seats and eased his head slowly through the hatch. All around him he could see something that looked more like a battleground than a highway full of commuters, but as his eyes adjusted to the twilight, he saw that the stumbling creatures moving between the cars were being drawn toward the fires. He looked to his right and saw nothing but woods, and there was no fence or retaining wall to stop them from leaving the road.
He dropped back to the center of the bus and risked the light from his cell phone long enough to check a map of the area. He saw they were sitting on the edge of a large expanse of woods west of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and there was nothing but a few miles of woods between them and the Catawba River.
The passengers listened as he explained to them that their only chance of escaping from the bus was to reach the woods and keep going. They had to do it while the infected were gathering close to the fires. He told them he saw the infected literally catching fire when they got too close.
“Why can’t we just stay here until they all burn up?” shouted one angry tourist.
Another spoke up and said, “We would have a better chance trying for the airport. We can see it from here, and they’re bound to be organized against whatever this is.”
“I vote that we stay here and wait to be rescued,” said a woman in her fifties. She didn’t look like she could outrun any of the infected even though they moved at a slow pace.
Someone asked for everyone to be quiet, and the driver said, “In a couple of minutes I’m going to open that door. By then I want everyone to decide which group they want to be in. I’m heading for the woods. Anyone who wants to join me, just follow my group. Any of you who want to cross the highway and try for the airport, go for it. Those of you who decide to stay on the bus and wait to be rescued, pull the door shut behind you, but take my advice and don’t open it for anyone who tries to come back.”
He studied the faces he could see in the growing darkness. He wasn’t sure how many would go or stay with each group, but he knew they couldn’t hang around for a debate. He just turned and went down the aisle to the front door. He opened it far enough to stick his head through and didn’t see movement between the bus and the woods. A quick glance to the left and right convinced him that it was all clear.
If Mack Brown, the veteran driver of charter buses, had been able to see an aerial view of the devastating spread of the violence through traffic during the early morning rush hour, he would have thought it looked like someone had scattered a nest of insects. There was no herd mentality as people ran between or climbed over cars. Thousands had small, superficial bites, and they ran off of the roads wherever they could. Some ran for the high fence around the airport, reasoning that the fence would protect them. They were cut badly on the concertina wire at the top of the fence, but they were at least free from their attackers. Many of them would be inside the airport, and most would be dead by the end of the day. So would the population of the airport.
Planes that made it into the sky had nowhere to go, and some of their passengers had concealed bites. Even before dark, planes had begun to attempt emergency landings on congested roads and runways of overrun airports. Some of the biggest fires near the bus had been massive explosions from planes looking for a place to land.
Mack Brown would also have seen how many people had run for the shelter of the woods, disappearing from view. Hundreds would climb trees, and hundreds more would keep going. Those who were bitten were carried along by their friends and families who didn’t know they were carrying the infection through the woods. It was almost as if the infection was being spread by a sneeze instead of a bite. The infection carried on the spray of the sneeze was distributed evenly, because some of the commuters would die clinging to tree branches, and some would die as they ran. Then they would bite the people who had tried to save them.
The group that decided to stay in the bus argued that supplies should be left behind with them, and there was random pushing, shoving, and pulling on personal property. Some punches were thrown, but gradually people who wanted off of the bus made it to the door. They split into two groups with only whispers as one group ran down the slope toward the woods with Mack Brown in the lead. The other group ran for the back of the bus and began the long trip between the cars to the other side of the six lane freeway.
As soon as the last person to leave the bus had gone through the door, it was closed behind them. The remaining ten or twelve people ran to the windows to watch the progress of each group and gave reports to the other side of the bus. It was too dark to tell what was happening, but they lost sight of the group that ran toward the airport. They just disappeared between the vehicles. On the other side of the bus, the group led by Mack Brown was also disappearing
into the woods. To the remainder of the people on the bus it looked like the woods had been a better choice. To Mack Brown it felt like he had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
******
Months later and about thirty miles north of where the charter bus ended its journey, a large force of heavily armed men and women moved ahead of hundreds of survivors who had taken their chance to come out of hiding and join the group. As their numbers grew, the new survivors were inspected for bites. If they were bitten or had an injury that could be a bite, they were summarily executed. Hampton heard more than once that it wasn’t personal as people were shot.
Some of the survivors were carrying guns, and more than a few times it was a gun carrying bite victim. Sometimes more than the bite victim would get shot, but the force couldn’t do any better sorting out the infected when they were still alive. Their primary goal was to target as many of the infected dead as they could while they moved north, and they were very effective with that goal. Staying on the road and keeping an armed cordon around the unarmed survivors allowed them to shoot anything that approached.
The force had stopped moving several times, so progress was slow. Each time, though, there was a good reason to stop. Scouts into neighboring areas would return with reports of heavy concentrations of the infected dead, but sometimes they would return with survivors and reports about locations of sporting goods stores and caches of ammunition. They had to stay resupplied if they were to continue advancing north toward the mountains.
Hampton didn’t like what he was seeing. Too many people had joined the exodus, and he looked suspiciously at anyone who appeared as if they didn’t feel well. He also looked suspiciously at some of the armed guards who seemed like they were enjoying themselves just a little too much. He wasn’t entirely sure of who was in charge because he had always stayed near the outer edge of the group on the western side. If someone stepped out of the heavy woods to the west and waved at them, they were told to come closer. If someone came out of the heavy woods and just shambled toward them, they were shot from a distance. Hampton preferred that job because he was sure of what he was shooting. He hadn’t gotten as bad as the rest of them, and he didn’t like playing judge, jury, and executioner. He saw one guy get shot who probably only had a head cold.
