by Bob Howard
The Chief didn’t miss much, but he didn’t let on like he noticed. He went ahead and explained the gravity of the situation to Tom and Bus.
“We could probably get into the harbor and get the cable laying boat under way, but they’re slower than a snail on a hot sticky road. We couldn’t sail it out of the harbor past Fort Sumter, and it would take a lot of fuel to use the route we took the last time. I doubt we would be lucky enough to make it half way.”
“Why can’t we fly in and land close to it, Chief?” I asked. “You could get it under way while Bus flies the Otter back out. The rest of us could come into the harbor from the Stono River and tow you back to Mud Island.”
When we had been fired upon from Fort Sumter, we were forced to travel down the coast to the Stono River. It was a longer trip, but it proved to be a safe back door into the harbor. There would be obstacles, but they weren’t as bad as getting shot at.
The Chief said, “That’s a good idea, Ed, but our boat wouldn’t be my first choice for towing a cable laying boat. I’d prefer a tugboat, but I don’t think we would have a very easy time liberating one of those.”
Dr. Bus asked, “Why don’t we just take control of Fort Sumter?”
No one answered him.
CHAPTER TWO
Fort Sumter
Anyone who knows anything at all about the Civil War knows Fort Sumter was the site of the first real battle. It was a Union garrison built to keep the United States from being invaded by a foreign power the way they had in 1812. Construction began in 1829, and it wasn’t even finished when South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860. In 1861 the Confederate army began shelling the fort and it was captured after only one day. Even though it became a national monument and a famous tourist attraction, very few people knew it was the site of another shelter.
Dr. Bus was on the short list of people who knew about the shelters, and he hadn’t told us yet where the other shelters were located. When we asked him where they were, he just said he would tell us in due time. When asked why he wouldn’t tell us, he said he wanted us to appreciate what we had and not be thinking about the other shelters.
The Chief and I had talked about it several times, and we always came to the same conclusion. Dr. Bus and Uncle Titus were both nuts. They were smart enough to build shelters, but they were nuts.
I asked Dr. Bus once if he knew who built the other shelters, and he just answered, “Of course I do.” He didn’t volunteer to tell me any names, and I knew he wouldn’t tell me if I asked.
This was what Dr. Bus must have meant when he said, “In due time.”
“Bus,” said the Chief, “the last time we got a close look at Fort Sumter, we were coasting past it on the Atlantic Spirit. It was populated entirely by the infected dead, and they were walking over the walls trying to reach us. The next time we were in the area, someone took a shot at us from behind those walls. Are you saying whoever that was also has a shelter like ours?”
Before the Chief even finished asking his question, Bus was shaking his head.
“No, Chief,” said Bus. “I seriously doubt the shelter was discovered. It couldn’t have been too hard for a boatload of men and women with guns to take the fort away from the infected. After that they would have built a small community just like the village above my shelter, and they would have survived until someone got in who had been bitten. By now they are likely to have suffered the same fate you saw when you flew over Green Cavern.”
“Or they were using the crabs as a food supply,” said Jean. Of everything gross we had seen, that was the one thing that turned her stomach the most.
Kathy asked, “So, you think we could take Fort Sumter to be sure it’s safe to sail the line laying boat past it?”
“Exactly,” he answered. “We take Fort Sumter, gain entry to the shelter, and when the time is right we can commandeer a tugboat. They couldn’t all have made it out of the harbor to safety when the infection spread.”
Tom said, “Chief, you could fly over the harbor and check it out first. If Bus is right, we could pull it off in one day.”
Allison was clearly uncomfortable listening to us talk about going outside, but she was even more uncomfortable watching Kathy and Tom join in on the planning.
“Why do we even have to do this now?” she asked. “I mean, we could wait another year and still have enough supplies to keep us alive. Maybe if we wait, there won’t even be any infected left to worry about.”
The Chief knew Allison was afraid. After what they had all seen, there was plenty of reason for all of them to be afraid. She had lost friends and relatives just like the rest of them, and she only survived because Dr. Bus took her in. We all felt sorry for her because she didn’t seem to have that instinct for survival we all seemed to have. I couldn’t help but think she would have just locked herself inside if she had inherited Mud Island. She would have just locked the doors and lived off of the supplies for the rest of her life.
“Allison, we talked about this before,” said Tom. “If this group was made up of the kind of people who would just bury their heads in the sand, Ed would still be here by himself. At the very least, they wouldn’t have risked their necks to get me back home to you.”
Tom reached for Allison’s hand using the same hand Kathy had touched moments before. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at his hand as if it had been contaminated. Tom had experienced her rejection back before the beginning of the infection, and he recognized it again.
The Chief was clearly uncomfortable with the display of emotions at a time when the group needed to focus on fixing a problem, so he was quick to redirect the discussion.
“Listen up, folks. We have several things to figure out. We need to know what or who blew up the Russian ship. I don’t like the idea someone even thought it was necessary to blow it up, and we could have used that helicopter. Now that it’s done, we have to get that power line across the moat, and there’s only one way to make that happen.”
“There is some good news,” I said.
It wasn’t that my input was usually the best. Kathy and the Chief were the real strategists. In this case it was my choice of words. We could all use some good news.
Jean put her arm around my waist and said, “We get to do some shopping in Charleston? Uncle Titus didn’t stock the shelter with baby things.” She gave me a smile that could melt me, and I imagined she could have gotten anything out of me with that smile under normal circumstances. I couldn’t even guess how we would have found each other if not for the infected dead, but I liked to think it would have happened.
I looked at the chief and said, “What do you say, Chief? Any chance we could hit a Walmart while we’re in Charleston?”
Jean reached up with one hand, and before I could stop her, she had grabbed a few chest hairs that were above the collar of my tee shirt. Talk about something that could bring a man to his knees in a hurry.
“Jean,” said the Chief, “I believe Ed said there was some good news? I’d like to know if this cloud has a silver lining.”
Jean released her grip and gave everyone a satisfied smile. I was rubbing the sore spot on my chest as I said, “When we pull the cable across, we might be able to get it under the hull of the Russian ship to protect it. If we don’t, it would just become the world’s biggest trip line. There would be all kinds of junk getting snagged on it.”
“One thing at a time,” said the Chief, “but it’s worth keeping in mind. That reminds me, we need to find out if the nets collapsed under the weight of the Russian corvette when it sank, or if the ship stayed close to the surface.”
“Why is that important?” asked Kathy.
Bus had apparently been thinking along the same lines, because he answered for the Chief.
“It would be better if it sank and took out the nets with it. There’s still a lot of explosive ordinance on that ship, and if it’s poking out of the water, there’s always a chance someone will be curious about the weapons and mun
itions.”
“For a doctor, you have some interesting ideas,” said the Chief.
Bus gave him a sly smile and said, “Chief, I wouldn’t be too worried if you told me you knew a few things about surgery.”
The Chief returned the smile and said, “Bus, let’s put our heads together and figure out how to get that line laying barge up the coast.”
Over the next few hours the Chief and Bus discussed a variety of plans. Jean decided to fix us a big breakfast, and Kathy was studying the camera views of the island. She was alternating between the ship and a sudden increase in the number of infected that had found their way onto our side of the moat. The only thing she could come up with that would explain the increase was that they were washing up on shore from something that had happened at sea.
Tom had followed Allison when she sulked away to the lower levels, presumably to talk with her about why she was mad. I got the impression he knew why she was upset, but it didn’t do him any good to start by telling her she was overreacting. I had never been an authority on the subject of women, but I was smart enough not to try to defend myself by telling a woman she was overreacting. That was right up there with saying to calm down or relax.
Kathy gave us the news that the ship was starting to disappear below the surface. There’s something so morbid about a sinking ship that we all had to stop what we were doing for a few minutes to watch. Maybe it’s the finality of it. There’s no coming back from it once it disappears from view. It occurred to me it was a lot like watching someone die. You knew it was over, and there was nothing you could do to bring them back.
I looked at Jean and thought to myself how I couldn’t bear to ever see that finality. She saw me look at her, and I could tell she was thinking the same thing.
The Chief, on the other hand, had a grim expression. When a fellow sailor sees a ship sink, even a Russian ship with a dead crew, they all become shipmates for a few moments. There is a measure of respect passed from the survivors to those who disappear below the surface with the ship.
We gave the Chief the few moments of silence he needed, and when it was over, he said, “We have our answer to one end of the problem, but now we have another one to solve.”
Any one of us could have asked him what he meant, but we waited for him to finish his thought.
“How deep did it sink?” he asked. “Did it take the nets with it, or did it get suspended on them? Before we pull the line across the moat we have to know.”
Kathy said, “I hope you aren’t thinking about going out there again, Chief. If you dive between those nets, you know what you’re going to find. Those things can survive under water, and by now there must be hundreds of them.”
As if to help Kathy make her point, we saw at least a dozen of the infected dead pass in front of our camera on their way toward the water. They were in varying states of decay, but I saw the dismayed look on the Chief’s face when we recognized the uniforms worn by the US Navy.
The parade of sailors moved unevenly toward the moat where we knew there were submerged oyster beds. They began tripping and falling on the razor sharp edges of the shells. They would push themselves back to their feet, leaving parts of their shredded hands and arms behind. They were beyond pain, though, and one by one they walked into the moat toward the sinking Russian ship. It may have already disappeared, but we could imagine the grinding and groaning sounds it was making as the twisted metal released trapped air.
Bus said, “Chief, there’s nothing like a thorough visual inspection, but maybe we could try lowering a camera into the water instead of live bait. When I checked the supplies in this shelter, I noticed Titus had included a couple of spare cameras.”
“I can live with that, but even if we get the line laying barge back to Mud Island, someone is still going to have to go down there to guide the placement of the new power line.”
We could still see air bubbles breaking the surface, but Jean had breakfast ready, and we needed to take our eyes off of the grisly sight of more infected dead walking into the moat. The Chief was the last to sit down at the table, and we all ate in silence for the first time I could remember. Tom joined us in time to get his meal, but he said Allison wasn’t hungry. Jean took down plates of food and a cup of chocolate milk for Molly.
When we were finished with our meal, I helped Jean do the dishes while Kathy and Tom joined the Chief and Bus at the table where we usually spread out the charts and maps. Bus was explaining where the entrances had been hidden when the shelter had been dug from the mud and bedrock under Fort Sumter. It was mostly soft earth, so the shelter had to be fortified with steel walls. He explained it had been made airtight just like Mud Island, presumably to withstand the one type of apocalypse everyone had expected.
I heard the Chief ask Bus, “Why Fort Sumter? I can think of dozens of better locations. That place is too open and too easy to hit with almost any kind of weapon.”
Bus explained it in simple terms by asking one question, “If you were someone important to the preservation of the US government, and you had to get somewhere really safe and really fast, can you think of a better place?”
Kathy may not have been the first to think of it, but she was the first to ask.
“Did someone important get there Bus, and will they let us in?”
Bus looked down at the table and said in a low voice, “There were at least six political leaders in the line of succession to the Presidency who were attempting to reach the shelter at Fort Sumter. We had a system of coded messages that would tell other leaders and shelter owners who had made it to safety and who was still trying. It took only four days for the coded messages to stop, and there were only a precious few that indicated there were survivors. I listened for a broadcast from Mud Island even though I knew Titus had died.”
“What did you hear from Fort Sumter?” asked Kathy.
“Only the messages that people were still trying to reach the shelter. There were some that broke protocol, and in their panic they openly said they were going to try for the shelter. That may have been an incentive for people to go there, and the more people who went there, the more likely it was they would have the infection spread into the fort.”
“But the entrance wouldn’t have been out in the open where anyone could find it,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Bus. “There are three entrances to the Fort Sumter shelter. Two are the direct entrances they would have used if they had landed a helicopter there. Unconfirmed reports said several political leaders tried that way, and they all ended up the same. Then there’s the entrance from Morris Island. It’s a door like yours, but it’s buried in the sand dunes. It enters into a tunnel that runs the length of Morris Island and then passes underwater for a short distance. The shelter under Fort Sumter is larger than the fort above ground. You would have to know the entrance was there to find it, and it was the primary construction entrance. The Army Corp of Engineers worked with a private company at night so the public wouldn’t be aware of what was being done.”
“Wait a minute,” said the Chief. “Are you trying to tell us the government has been involved with the building of these shelters?”
The question seemed to amuse Bus a little. I liked Dr. Bus, and he had saved Jean, but he was acting like the Chief had asked him a dumb question. The Chief didn’t like anyone acting like he was naive, and it showed in his skin color. There was just a bit more red in his complexion than I had ever seen before.
Kathy said, “Bus, if you haven’t noticed, the Chief was being serious when he asked you that question.”
Since the first time there was more than one person in the shelter on Mud Island, there had only been a sense of belonging. Everyone was important to the group. This was not just the first time I had seen the Chief get really mad. It was also the first time I had seen anyone act like they were superior toward another member of the group.
The tension wasn’t lost on Bus, and he looked around at all of us helplessly.
“Chief, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I thought you knew. The cost of the shelters wasn’t the biggest barrier to building them. It was getting permission from the government to put them in the safest places. Building the shelter on Mud Island had a tremendous impact on the environment, and Titus had to agree to provide shelter to some important people to get the permits.”
“So what happened to them?” I asked. “They weren’t exactly beating down my door when the world ended.”
“They probably tried to reach you,” said Bus, “but there was only a short list of people assigned to each shelter. I guess they just didn’t make it.”
Jean had been watching the reactions, and she decided it was time to cool the tension. Everyone was still an important member of the group, and we needed to keep it that way.
“Chief, I think Dr. Bus really thought we knew. He apologized, so kiss and make up.”
The Chief looked at Jean, and she had such a deadpan expression he had to laugh.
“Okay, Bus. I’m sorry I got mad. Was there something that would have given us a clue that an important guest was going to drop in?” he asked.
Bus looked thoughtful and said, “I don’t how you could have known, but Titus knew. I guess he didn’t mention it in his will when he left the shelter to Ed.”
I thought about it for a minute, but I couldn’t think of anything I had missed. The lawyers said I had an island, and that was pretty much all there was to it. I started to say as much to Bus and the Chief when Kathy interrupted.
“Guys, check out the camera view where the corvette sank,” said Kathy.
We all looked over at the screen and saw that the surface was covered in bloated, waterlogged bodies. When the corvette sank it must have shaken the infected dead loose from the nets, and many were being drawn to the surface.
Bus said, “Decaying bodies build up tremendous amounts of gases, and even though they have been remaining animated even after sinking in the moat, they are decaying. After the gases escape, they’ll sink again.”
