by Howard, Bob
She stood up and inspected herself, more out of habit than the concern that she had missed the bite or didn’t feel it. Hampton watched her and for the first time noticed that he had held his breath for a long time, but now his heart was pounding.
Colleen saw that he was still standing there watching her, and she blew him a kiss. Hampton found himself completely wrapped up in her every move, and he had only known her for a short few days.
“Whoa,” she yelled. “It must be the main supply ship. Look what I found.”
She held up a Glock for him to see and then checked its chamber.
“There’s a bag full of these things and boxes of ammunition,” she said. “You sure know how to shop, Chris. Every girl should have a boyfriend like you.”
Hampton felt like he was back in high school again. He couldn’t believe how much it affected him to hear her say he was her boyfriend. At least that was how he took it.
He thought to himself, “I must have really needed to get out more back before this stuff started. Here I am in the middle of something everyone said couldn’t happen, and I’ve got a crush.”
He shook himself out of the pleasant but dangerous standstill the thoughts had caused and checked the progress of the infected trying to come down the dock. He saw that they had made no progress at all, but it was a good thing they had found so many supplies in the first three boats because the walkways to the other two docks were becoming populated. It was time to move on.
Colleen made her way back to their pontoon boat, and they loaded the last of the supplies. She untied the mooring line, and Hampton steered them away from the dock. Open water was up ahead, and his hope was they would see the yellow plane within the next couple of hours.
CHAPTER SIX
Above Every Shelter
As the plane lifted from the water, the Chief thought for one moment he had heard something on the radio. It was only a burst of static, but he had learned in his long years at sea not to ignore the sound of white noise from a radio. There was too often something to be heard.
The Chief adjusted the dial on the radio to be sure it was on the frequency that he had been given by Captain Miller when he learned that Hampton was still alive and broadcasting from the Charlotte area. He listened for a moment, and he could tell Kathy was doing the same. She had placed her headphones over her ears as soon as she saw the Chief react. She looked over at him and met his eyes then gave a slight shake of the head. She wasn’t hearing anything in the static.
The Chief brought his eyes back to the view ahead while Kathy gave the dial a few tries, cycling above and below the frequency and then coming back to it. She heard something too, but it was still just noise. Eventually the plane had traveled too far for them to keep trying to hear what might not have even been there, and Kathy started thinking about how the Chief planned to get them into the shelter on Ambassador Island. They could hardly expect to just land at the front door. For one thing, they had to protect the plane, and they wouldn’t know if the area at the entrance was occupied without doing more reconnaissance first. Just because they didn’t see anything when they circled the island, it didn’t mean it was unoccupied.
“What’s the plan, Chief?”
“I think we have to take the long way around,” he said. “We can’t approach the front entrance and expect to avoid being seen. If you were the average survivor, that’s what you would defend the most because that’s where you would expect other survivors to come from, as well as the infected.”
“So, we leave the plane and try to cross the island from that stand of trees that pops up at the southern tip of the island. How do we get from the plane to the island?”
As soon as Kathy asked the question she knew it was an easy answer. She looked over her shoulder into the cargo hold and saw the big square bundle that would inflate into a raft in seconds.
“Okay, so we raft over. Are we going to try to stay out on the water and raft all the way to the entrance, or are we going to just raft to the tip and then cross the island?”
“Do you have a preference?” laughed the Chief.
“You mean between getting shot in the raft or walking the length of an island that’s either crawling with infected dead or is occupied by armed survivors? They might call it Ambassador Island, but I don’t expect anyone who lives there is looking to make friends.”
The Chief smiled just to keep it light, but he knew this was a deadly serious thing they were just about to do. They were going to be exposed in the open, or they were going to be in the middle of an island that could be a death trap.
“If there were four of us on this mission,” he began, “I would cover both options, but I’d still be worried that either way was a bad choice. I think our best chance is to take advantage of the daylight for several reasons.”
“I’m all ears,” said Kathy.
“We have to consider the concern that the Gulf storm has made landfall by now, and it’s going to start pushing the fallout cloud in this direction. We may still have some time before that happens, but we just don’t know. If we go in during daylight hours, we can’t raft the length of the island because we’ll be visible for too long, but if we raft up to the tip of the island we’ll only be exposed for a short time. Then we can cross the island with the same visibility the opposition will have. If the island is occupied by survivors, we at least stand a chance of getting to cover first. If it’s occupied by the infected, all we have to do is stay quiet and out of sight.”
“How do you plan to get close to the island in the first place? Anyone on the island can hear this thing coming.”
Kathy had been so caught up in the Chief’s plan that she didn’t notice he had changed his direction of approach to Ambassador Island. Just as she asked her question, he began descending and she saw that he was coming down on the water in a straight line with another island that was slightly larger than the one with the trees they planned to use as cover. They had approached at such a low angle that they were invisible to Ambassador Island.
“I spotted this island on the way over to the other side of the lake. It’s less than fifty yards from the sandbar that leads to that stand of trees. If anyone hears us right now, they can’t figure out where the sound is coming from. After we cut off the engine, they’re going to listen for a while, and they’re going to be on heightened alert, but by the time we need to cross the last piece of water, they will have forgotten about us.”
The Chief expertly sat the plane down on the water in a whisper smooth landing, and since the water wasn’t like a river or the ocean, there was almost no resistance that would make noise. He cut the engine while they were in a perfect glide straight to the island where they could hide the plane, and at just the right moment he turned the wheel on the steering column to make the plane slide sideways the last few feet. The sideways slide put them at exactly the right spot.
Kathy had watched as her side of the plane drew closer to the trees. She didn’t think there was ten feet of space between the wingtip and the trees that reached out over the water. She had seen him do some skillful flying in the past, and had even seen him survive a terrible crash landing in the Charleston harbor, but this landing was as smooth as parking a car.
“We need to drift a few feet back away from the trees and then get a good anchor in the water. We can’t have the wind pushing us up to the trees and getting a bent wing,” said the Chief.
They could feel the plane starting to drift, and when the Chief felt like it was far enough, both of them opened their doors and dropped anchors. With one anchor from each side, the plane would stay in one spot and wasn’t going to rotate with the direction of the wind. Kathy immediately climbed into the back of the plane and dragged the raft to the door.
It didn’t take three minutes for them to have the raft in the water, and they were loading it within four. Unlike the bright yellow or orange rafts they were used to, this one was a dark green color that matched the color of the water. When the Chief loaded
the plane, he apparently felt like he wasn’t going to want the raft to be seen from a distance. This was a covert mission from the start, but Kathy was surprised by how quiet and serene it was on the lake.
“Only weapons, ammunition, and water,” said the Chief. “We’re not staying any longer than we have to. I’d like to get inside, find whatever tech there is that will help us to locate Hampton, and then get back out.”
“Are you that sure we’ll be able to find him, Chief?”
“According to Bus, the guy who had this shelter tailored to his own personal needs was really into his high tech detection equipment. If he lived, and if he’s in there right now, he not only knows we’re here, he knows where Hampton is.”
“If he knows we’re here, how would he know that we’re friendly?” asked Kathy.
“The biggest problem is getting to the front door, but if we can get there and get it open, I don’t think he’s going to shoot us without warning. First of all, he will want to know how we knew the combination, and second of all, you’re going in first. Who would shoot a beautiful blond?”
Kathy looked at him to see if he was kidding and saw that he wasn’t. She started to object, but reconsidered. It made sense. To accent the point that no red blooded male would shoot her without warning, she pulled the rubber band from her ponytail and let her hair fall over her shoulders.
The Chief said, “Works for me. I wouldn't shoot you.”
Kathy tried not to smile, but it was a losing battle. She dropped from the plane into the raft with the Chief close behind her, and they started paddling around the left side of the island. If they were correct, they would be out in the open for at least one hundred yards, but they would be blocked from view by the trees on the island closer to Ambassador Island.
“Stay low in the raft and use long, slow strokes when we paddle. That way no one will spot us because of motion. Sometimes it’s movement that looks out of place even if you’re practically invisible,” said the Chief.
Kathy knew that the Chief’s SEAL training was what would get them through this, and that she wouldn’t want to have someone as skilled as him sneaking up on her. She remembered the story about how he became known as The Bear of Kodiak Island when he had braved freezing cold water without a weapon to overcome North Korean soldiers. If he got them onto the island, she had no doubt he would get them into the safety of the shelter.
They covered the distance over the open water much faster than she would have expected, but with the Chief’s powerful strokes, they didn’t need a motor to do it. They came up on the left side of the long sandbar, and the closer they were to the stand of trees on the small island the less chance there was that they would be seen. When they beached the raft behind the trees they laid down in the bottom and just listened for anything that would indicate they had been spotted.
The Chief moved forward and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Let’s move,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
They climbed out of the raft and slipped in among the trees. They found that the small island was more densely overgrown than they had expected. It made for slower movement through to the other side, but it also meant there was less chance for them to be seen.
“Watch out for snakes,” whispered the Chief.
Kathy looked down at her feet and saw that she could barely tell where they were.
She moved into position directly behind the Chief and whispered back, “You watch out for snakes.”
Despite the dense brush and tightly packed trees, they were through to the other side in minutes. The last few yards they crawled to the edge of the trees, and both pulled out their binoculars.
It had been a beautiful community. That much was obvious despite the overgrown yards and random bits of debris. The homes were huge, rambling structures that could only have been affordable to people used to the best of everything. In the end, money wasn’t going to save them if they didn’t have a plan for what happened, and from what they had seen, there were only about thirty-two people who had really been prepared.
The house nearest to them didn’t look like it had even been touched by the end of civilization. Other than the neglected landscaping, there were no bodies, no broken windows or doors, and looked otherwise undisturbed.
“I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news for it to look so empty over there, but we can’t wait around here all day.”
“I’m going in, Kathy. You stay here and keep watching all three houses that are within our direct line of sight. If I was going to guard the island from the houses, I would have someone in that house on the right. So, pay more attention to it.”
The chief pointed at the biggest house. It was also positioned so that it had an unobstructed view of over two hundred and seventy degrees of arc. The only thing that blocked any of the view was the house to the left. The Chief pointed at it next.
“To cover the rest of the island on this end, keep your eyes on the left side of that house. It has some windows up high. Whoever would be watching from up there wouldn’t be watching this side of the island as much as he would the big open area to the east.” The Chief pointed at a wide open field that led straight to the heart of the island.
“For some reason I’ll never be able to explain, people on watch keep closer tabs on places without much cover. Unless we were doing a frontal assault with a few hundred soldiers, I would never take an assault team through there.”
Kathy listened without interrupting because she knew the Chief was one of the best the military had ever trained. In her mind, she would be more afraid for anyone on the island than she was for him. Then a thought occurred to her.
“Chief, we haven’t seen many good people in our travels, but what if that’s what you find? What if there are real survivors on this island with women and children? I mean, all they might be doing is the same thing we are, staying alive.”
He thought it over for a minute, and he knew she was right. There were other people who deserved to live too, but they were hardly in a position to do interviews. He was just about to answer when he saw movement across that wide open area. He raised his binoculars in time to see a slow moving vehicle drive by the first house on the left and disappear behind the trees in front of the second house. It was a pickup truck, and it looked like it had at least six armed men and women in the back of it.
“Friendly or not,” he said, “this is not going to be easy.”
He told Kathy what he had seen, and her only feeling was that they needed to rethink their plan. The Chief wasn’t convinced.
He said, “Numbers was never the real issue, Kathy. One thing about them having numbers that may have escaped your attention, and that’s the obvious lack of infected walking around. They must have cleared the island.”
She saw something in the way he said it that she found hard to believe. The Chief really didn’t believe he could lose. She wondered briefly if he was a fan of Star Trek.
He continued, “I just don’t know if they should be treated like friendlies or enemies.”
“Sorry I brought it up, Chief.”
He chuckled a bit and said, “Well, I’m glad you did, and we don’t have the right to kill everyone we meet. Even if they’re bad guys, they’re only in our way. They haven’t done anything to us, at least not yet. Now we just have to find a way past them.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes while the Chief studied the houses. When he sat up and started taking off his clothes, Kathy knew he had a plan.
“Want to share the plan with me, Chief?”
“Okay, I’m going to go conduct a little interview. I’ll let you know if they are good guys or bad guys.”
******
Kathy watched the Chief slide gracefully from the trees directly into the water. There was hardly a ripple despite his massive frame. All he told her before going was to stay where she was until she got a signal from him, and that he was going to go for the middle house instead of the biggest one on the right
. If someone was on watch from there, he would find out if they were dangerous.
From time to time she saw bubbles appear along the path he had taken, and she worried that those bubbles were from him or something else. They had seen enough of the infected dead on the bottom of lakes to know they could be down there. Fortunately, Lake Norman was big enough that you weren’t likely to run into one every few feet.
She spotted something in the water not far from shore and then saw it disappear again. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it might be the Chief getting his bearings.
There was a really large dock connected to the house he was going to. It was shaped like the letter H, and it was turned sideways to the shoreline so that either open side could be used as a slip. Boats were moored in each slip, and she wasn’t surprised when she saw the Chief surface for a second time at the stern of the boat on the left. Using it for cover, he was able to climb out of the water and sprint to the cover of the trees directly below the windows he had pointed to earlier. There were no gunshots or warning shouts, so Kathy hoped that meant he hadn’t been spotted. From there she didn’t know where he went.
******
The Chief always went into a different state of mind when his training kicked in. Every sound was important. Everything that moved needed his attention. What he heard first was a woman’s voice, and it came from where he wanted to go.
He had decided that the back of the house would be more heavily guarded than the front, so he stayed against the wall directly below the windows and headed inland. He knew Kathy wouldn’t be able to see him, but no one else would, either.
The side of the house was over two hundred feet long, and judging by the overall shape of the house, it was his guess that it was the garage. The windows above it were probably a furnished guest house. Luckily for him, the side of the house had trees all the way to the front, so he was able to get close enough to hear the voices, and he settled in to listen for as long as he could.
