by Bob Howard
One thing was certain. If it was here, Uncle Titus had something to do with it. Another thing was also certain, and that was Uncle Titus would have solved all of the variables. There would be a power supply. There would be a transmitter. There would be a receiver, and that receiver was probably somewhere inside the shelter.
A smile crossed my face when I finally had an idea of why the houseboat was here, because it meant I was starting to think like a survivalist. It didn’t matter if I was right or wrong. It only mattered that I was finding answers, and I thought Uncle Titus would be proud. I still had to find the receiver to be convinced I was right about what I was thinking, but I was willing to bet the houseboat was a decoy. If someone found it, they were likely to think there was nothing else to find.
I remember seeing a TV show once about survivalists building shelters. This one guy had put his life’s savings into a buried shelter only to have someone steal the ventilation system he had above ground. This houseboat was the equivalent of leaving the ventilation system outside for someone to steal.
I searched more carefully through each room but didn’t find more cameras. There was an obvious risk that the camera would be discovered if there was more than one, but this one was so strategically placed that one was enough.
Using survivalist thinking, I took it one step further. If someone was using the houseboat, and someone else came along, they might try to take the houseboat from the occupants, but each new occupant would serve as a buffer for the shelter. There was only one thing to verify in order to test that theory. I climbed up into the wheelhouse and found the engine starter. I pressed the button and saw an indicator light up that said Check Engine.
Using the survivalist premise that the houseboat was a decoy, I decided that it wouldn’t be a very effective decoy if someone could leave with it. So, Uncle Titus had sabotaged the engine.
The best thing I could do was find the receiver on the other end and to use the houseboat the way Uncle Titus would have. Now……what about the seaplane? Somehow, I thought that would be overkill. The best use for the seaplane was exactly what it was intended for, and that was to get a bird’s eye view of what was happening to the rest of the world.
A quick check confirmed my suspicions. The plane powered up easily. I couldn’t fly the thing, but I was betting I could at least drive it around like a boat. I powered it back down and checked for supplies. It had a small cache of provisions stowed in the passenger compartment, and there was an inflatable raft in a big yellow bag. From what I had seen so far, I figured it would be a way to get back to the shelter if the pilot had to land the plane somewhere further up or down the coast.
If someone stole the plane, they were welcome to it. Since I couldn’t fly it, it would just serve as another way to distract people from the shelter. As long as I didn’t lose the Boston Whaler I could come and go from the island as I pleased, but I didn’t see a way to hide it. I decided at the last minute to drag the big yellow bag out of the plane onto the dock. I had everything I needed on the island, but I was not going to be stuck out here.
A movement out in the water caught my eye. It was there and then gone. I watched for a few moments, but the next time I saw movement, it was further into the strip of water I called my moat. A dorsal fin broke the surface, but instead of going back down, it skimmed along in clear view. The pointed shape was not something I would want to see if I was trying to swim to the beach. A second and a third fin broke the surface. They were moving toward the south in the direction of the part of the beach where my mainland dock was. I couldn’t see the dock from this end of the island because it was too far around the bend.
I hurried over to the Boston Whaler and grabbed a pair of binoculars from a hook over the steering wheel. The best view would be from the top of the houseboat, so I ran back over to it and climbed the ladder to the roof just outside the control room.
I focused the binoculars on the water and scanned back and forth until I found the fins. They were circling. That usually means there’s something in the middle of the circle that is about to be eaten. I was fascinated by the way the sharks were patiently waiting instead of moving in for the kill. There was a dark spot in the middle of the circle that was bobbing up and down, but I didn’t see any other movement.
When the first shark turned and struck, it was with lightning speed. The victim of the attack was lifted clear out of the water, and I got an unobstructed view of the basket weaver. She was looking directly at the shark that lifted her above the surface, and I was mesmerized by the look of indifference on her face. She was about to be eaten, and it didn’t matter to her. Somehow she had followed my trail from the road all the way through the dense undergrowth and past the alligators, but the last hurdle would prove to be more than she could survive.
Before the first shark could begin its death shake, the other two moved in with jaws stretched wide. I watched as the former basket weaver was ripped into several pieces, but there was only one thing on my mind. “What if the sharks hadn’t come along? Would the current have carried her out through the southern exit to sea, or would she have been able to float far enough to reach Mud Island?”
I felt like the odds were really in my favor that Uncle Titus had put enough barriers between Mud Island and this particular kind of apocalypse, but I would have to be careful. Live people would be lucky to survive all of the obstacles to get here, so it would be unbelievable for me to run into a mindless, groaning flesh-eater, but the survivalist way of thinking would be to expect it. I made a mental note to try to find a way to measure the depth of the water that ran between my island and the mainland.
******
When I closed the door to the shelter, I felt an incredible rush of well-being. I felt safe for the first time in the last two days. I had seen people die. I had seen people get back up again and kill other people, and I had seen them close up. The safety of the big door closing behind me washed over me, and I knew I had work to do.
The first thing I had to do was take a closer look at some of the rooms. There had to be something I missed because the camera on the houseboat had to be sending an image to a monitor somewhere. The living room seemed like the best place to start, so I looked for the remote to the TV. I didn’t get it at first, but the TV was a really nice flat screen mounted to the wall, and I thought about the ratty little portable TV and VCR in the houseboat. This was Uncle Titus making people think there was nothing but low-tech around the island in order to better disguise the high-tech. If someone did find the houseboat, they wouldn’t expect anything sophisticated to be nearby.
I sat down on the sofa across from the TV and discovered it had one of those fold down middle sections where you could put your drinks and snacks, but instead of a cup holder, there was a keyboard, a mouse, a bunch of controls, and the power button. I pressed the button and the monitor lit up. My cell phone may not have been able to locate a server, but this setup could, and I got my first real look at what was happening on the mainland.
I used the mouse to bring up the sound on the TV and listened as a tired and totally defeated sounding reporter tried to explain what I was seeing. At first it was like a movie. Someone had just lowered the lights and the first previews were starting. It was unreal because I hadn’t heard a live voice since yesterday. It seemed like a hundred days ago, and I was glad to hear it. I wondered how I would feel when it was really one hundred days ago.
The reporter was saying the military had ordered all of its forces to pull back from the populated areas and to establish safe perimeters where they could. He said the TV station where this broadcast was originating was one such secure perimeter. That’s why he was still able to get the word out to any survivors who might be watching. He went on to say that anyone lucky enough to be watching should try to stay where they were. Once the military had established secured perimeters around key sites, they would begin trying to locate and rescue survivors.
Someone was showing some common sense. I had to admit it.
Every book I had read, and every TV show or movie I had ever seen about this kind of craziness made the military look pretty bad. Mistakes were always made, and the infected got inside the perimeter. Someone always gets bitten, and then they start biting other people, but whoever was making the decisions knew that communications was the key. They got to the TV station and made it a safer place to be.
The reporter was getting some camera feeds from people in the real world, and he was doing his best to describe their locations and the events happening near each camera while he still had live people operating those cameras. He had a large screen behind him that had multiple views. Most were moving in jittery bursts, first running and then panning back and forth. A couple of the views were from cameras laying on theirs sides on the ground. Their operators were not alive to run and pan.
One camera was down a main street somewhere. It could have been anywhere. I wasn’t sure because nothing looked familiar. There was smoke, fire, and total chaos. I saw people trying to escape mobs of the injured, wild-eyed groaners like the few I had seen. Each time someone looked like they were going to get away, they would run head first into another. The dead, flesh-eating mobs outnumbered the living, and it wasn’t long before the scene changed from chaos to an eerie slowness. As the living disappeared, the dead began wandering aimlessly. Then they noticed something, and for a moment it was like they were looking straight at me. Then they began moving in my direction.
I heard the reporter on the anchor desk saying something about getting out of there. He was saying over and over, “Chuck, leave the camera! Run while you can! Get back to the station!”
The camera stopped moving around, but this time it wasn’t on its side. Chuck apparently knew there would be no Pulitzer for this story, so he had put the camera down. The dead kept moving in the general direction of the camera but not straight at it. I could tell which way the cameraman had run by the direction the infected were going. I could also see groups of the dead gathering around unlucky people who couldn’t get away but didn’t die quickly.
“This, Mr. Weintraub, is what Uncle Titus was talking about when he said he hopes the end comes quickly.” I said out loud. “You don’t want to be one of the people out there who weren’t lucky enough to die before those things started eating you.”
One of the dead shambled into the camera and knocked it over. The screen went blank, so I focused my attention on another screen. This one must have been from somewhere inside the TV station perimeter. It showed armed soldiers standing guard while other soldiers rapidly built up fortifications inside a tall fenced in area. These soldiers were stringing the modern day version of barbed wire along the bottom and the top of the fence. I knew it was called concertina wire from some movie I’d seen. It had razors spaced out along the wire, and the wire itself seemed to resist being pulled straight. It was like watching someone pull on a dangerous slinky, and I couldn’t imagine anything getting loose from it once they got tangled in its grip.
A soldier raised his rifle and took a few random shots through the fence. I couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but the soldiers who were pulling the concertina wire into place doubled their efforts. They kept glancing at something out of view from the camera, and more soldiers came up to join them. Some started shooting while others grabbed the wire and started pulling.
The reporter at the anchor desk asked someone about the view, and the camera started moving to the left of where it had been located. I was glued to the screen when the view to the right became clear. All I could see was a crowd of people, and they seemed to be moving as one toward the soldiers inside the fence. They walked with a swaying motion, not hurried, but focused on the living, breathing bodies who were gathering inside the fence to meet them.
The soldiers all lifted their weapons and let loose a withering burst of fire. The mob went down quickly, and I noticed the soldiers were aiming for the heads. Someone had apparently spread the word. You could shoot for the heart all you wanted, but the only way to stop these things was to shoot them in the head.
The reporter kept saying, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe this.”
I answered the TV with, “You don’t have to believe it. You just have to accept it.” I sounded a little like Uncle Titus.
The first few rows of infected dead went down, and for several minutes the crowd couldn’t advance because the bodies piled up to block their advance. The next few rows fell over those bodies and began crawling toward the fence. I watched the soldiers take down more of the standing dead, but it was one soldier who saw the mistake in the making and ordered the others to begin shooting the ones who had fallen but were still crawling over the bodies.
They just kept coming and coming, but the smart thinking of the brave soldiers inside the fence was starting to pay off. It became more and more difficult for the dead to crawl over the pile of bodies in front of them. The tide of movement on the other side of the fence began to shift to the left and right. I couldn’t guess how many there were, but the soldiers were forced to split into two groups, following the sea of infected dead as it tried to surge around the piled up bodies instead of over them.
One group stayed in the field of vision while the group on the right once again moved out of sight. I could tell by the hand signals between the two groups that they were trying to build a ‘body fence’ outside of the wire fence, but they had to drop the shambling, stumbling corpses at a steady pace, or a group would eventually reach their perimeter.
I watched in stunned disbelief along with the reporter as the numbers of dead trying to reach the fence gradually dwindled, and the shooting stopped. The soldiers had won this round, but as they reloaded their M-16’s, I could see them exchanging looks. They weren’t sure if they could keep it up as long as they had to.
I didn’t know how many soldiers were inside the fence, but wherever this scene was being played out, I didn’t think they were going to run out of things to shoot. I also couldn’t help but wonder how anyone who had survived outside the fence was supposed to reach safety inside. It was supposed to be a place where people could go for protection, but they were under siege, and throughout time people under siege had to be prepared to outlast whatever it was that was trying to get to them. This was like watching someone shuck an oyster. Sooner or later the oyster always loses and gets eaten. I would have to keep that in mind and not become the oyster.
Another camera view came up on one of the blank screens. This time it was the pandemonium at the cruise ship terminal in Charleston. I recognized the view of the Holy City as the camera panned toward the historic buildings. The cameraman was somewhere high up on the cruise ship and was able to get a clear view of the wide pier that was the only way to get to the terminal.
In the near distance was a beautiful city that had survived earthquakes, hurricanes, and the Civil War. Black smoke was rising from an area that I knew was beautiful historic homes along White Point Gardens. The locals called it The Battery. On a typical day, tourists, joggers, horse carriages, and Charleston residents flocked to The Battery just to enjoy the breeze coming across the water. It was sad to see such a beautiful place facing yet another tragedy, but judging from the way this thing was spreading, it could be the last tragedy the city would have to face.
Natural disasters kill people and destroy property, but this was what I would call an unnatural disaster. It was killing the people first and then destroying the property because there was no way to stop the spread of the fires that were ravaging the city.
There was a red and white ticker running across the bottom of the monitor that said the fires were already spreading in all directions outward from Tradd Street, which literally bisects the peninsular city. The ticker message said fire departments that had responded to the spreading flames had come under attack from citizens who were attempting to bite the firemen. Their thick protective gear had saved them from the vicious bites at first, but unknown to the firemen, their truck sirens had drawn the infected like flies. The truc
ks had weaved through already crowded streets at a crawl just to reach the fires, and the slow moving dead had no trouble following them. They had become Pied Pipers for the infected.
The firemen, not knowing why they were being attacked, were eventually dragged down by the shear numbers of the infected. A few were able to gain the safety of their trucks, but just like any good fireman would do, they pulled their wounded comrades to safety with them. It was much too late to stop what happened when the firemen began to die and then turned on their friends. The ticker said there were reports that there were no longer any fire stations capable of responding to calls asking for assistance. While the fires burned unchecked, the brave firemen joined the infected dead looking for more victims.
Above the ticker, the camera had gradually panned back to the terminal and was capturing the decks of the cruise ship from its vantage point high above. The ship looked huge, and I wondered how many people could be safely carried on it. I was sure that they would put more than the normal number on it for this last cruise, but I couldn’t help thinking about supplies. If they could get safely out to sea, maybe the Navy could help with that problem. When the time was right for military ships to return, they would come back with a plan.
The camera panned downward toward the rest of the ship. People who had already boarded were being directed to the left and the right in an orderly fashion, being told how to get to each deck and which room to look for. This was an entirely different scene than the ones that were playing out in the streets and at the TV station where the soldiers were shooting through the fence.
