by Bob Howard
I told him about our group, and in particular about how I had met Jean and knew what it was like to fall head over heals in love with someone in a short time. I told him not to wait until it was too late to let her know how he felt. It was funny, but that simple comment seemed to make us feel like old friends. The defiance and fear out in the corridor when I saw him limping just seemed to melt away.
After his first bath in longer than he could remember, I found Chase a set of coveralls that fit, and he looked like he had always been a member of our group. The supplies in the bunkers were remarkably similar when it came to clothing and weapons, so we stayed with what worked, and the thick denim of the coveralls afforded some small protection from the teeth of the infected dead. Of course I didn't know yet that it had failed Allison.
Where the similarities between the shelters ended was in the quality of the food and other amenities, such as liquor and desserts. By the time Chase and I arrived in the dining hall, Kathy and Olivia had prepared a meal fit for kings. Chase hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks, so hotdogs and hamburgers would have satisfied him, but the deep freeze units in the kitchen had vacuum sealed cuts of beef that thawed quickly in the microwave. Whoever was supposed to stay here was also supposed to eat well. I thought Chase was going to cry when the smells hit him, and the rest of us were also starving.
I noticed that the Chief made sure Tom was sitting next to Kathy, and there seemed to be an agreement not to talk about Allison yet. The last thing the Chief wanted to see was Tom distancing himself from her because he had feelings for Kathy before Allison died. Kathy was being more or less forced into normal behavior by Olivia who couldn’t get enough of having another female around and getting the attention of a handsome younger man. It wasn’t long before the smiles became infectious, and even Tom began to feel the effects of good company.
We told our stories to each other. I told about how I came to have a shelter that was perfect in so many ways, and I explained to Olivia and Chase how Kathy, the Chief, and Jean came into my life.
When we told them about some of our trips away from Mud Island, Olivia asked, “If it’s so safe there, why do you keep leaving?”
“I think we leave Mud Island because surviving isn’t enough,” I said. “Surviving is also fighting back, and it’s also finding a way to make it last. You know, the future isn’t just being alive. It’s knowing that you will still be alive next year and the year after that.”
“Well put,” said the Chief. “This time we need to get power restored to Mud Island, and after that, believe it or not, we have to find another backup system and put it in place. We can’t just go on believing the power supply will last forever.”
The discussion went around the table until it got to Bus. Olivia and Chase were really wrapped up in his story because he was an insider of sorts. Someone had given him the knowledge about the other shelters, and he had shared it all with the Chief. As long as there was another shelter to go to, there would be a place for them to be safe.
“Have you considered giving up on Mud Island and moving to a shelter that hasn’t lost its primary power source?” asked Chase.
“It could come to that eventually,” said the Chief. He glanced at me because he knew how much that island meant to me now. “But each shelter has its own positives and negatives. Tom said once that a shelter had to have three qualities.”
Tom was distracted, but he had been listening, and he picked up where the Chief left off.
“It has to be safe from the infected, safe from the living who would want it for themselves, and safe from natural disasters or the elements. You can haul supplies into a shelter until you don’t have room to move, but in the end, it comes down to those three things.”
I added for Tom that he and his daughter moved into the houseboat we had tied to the dock at Mud Island, and he immediately knew it was only safe from the infected, and even the infected could walk right up to the door. It was easy enough to knock them off the dock, but it wasn’t safe to go outside.
“So, Chief, where to from here? Now that you’ve lost your plane, you’re limited to the boat and walking. Walking doesn’t appear to be safe anywhere,” said Chase.
“Flying didn’t turn out to be the safest thing in the long run,” said the Chief.
He regretted it as soon as he said it, but at the same time it had to be said. In a world where people were still dying from infectious bites from other people, you couldn’t always be sensitive, even if you tried to be.
Tom looked up from the food he had been just pushing around with his fork and gave the Chief an understanding nod.
He said, “We need to figure out who shot you down, Chief. Whether we go back by boat or by plane, we’re going to be facing some opposition on the water. Have you given any thought to how we’re going to get by them?”
“No, I haven’t really been able to process it, Tom. We still have to get the line laying barge up to Mud Island, and that means we have to tow it. To tow it we need a tugboat that’s completely fueled. That much I think we can handle if we don’t run into more trouble, but nothing seems to come too easy these days.”
“It’s not all on you to figure out,” said Kathy.
“I know,” said the Chief, “but it’s in my nature.”
I sensed that the conversation at the table was starting to sound like defeat even though there were two people with us who had every reason to celebrate. To them the world couldn’t have gotten much worse. There wasn’t a need to ask what had been done to them while in captivity. It was enough to know that they were in the hands of madmen and had suffered. Now they were sitting at a dining room table in a shelter that would defy entry and protect them from harm. There was good food in front of them, and judging by the looks on their faces, they were happy.
I stood up from my seat and asked everyone for their attention. First I raised my glass and said a toast to the Chief for getting us this far. Then I said a toast to Allison and reminded everyone that this wasn’t a game we were playing, but I had a proposition to make.
Everyone was wondering where I was going with my speech, or if I had gotten myself drunk.
“If we’re going to do more than survive, then let’s take the fight to the infected,” I said. “Let’s do more than just fix the power problem on Mud Island. Let’s get to work on the long term goals. Let’s decide what we’re going to do with the other shelters, get people living in them, and get them organized. Let’s build up the defenses around them and then when we decide to just kick back and let the world go by, let someone else keep the fight going.”
I sat down expecting them to all cheer my little outburst, but everyone just sat there staring at me. Maybe I was drunk, because I was suddenly sure I had just made a total fool of myself. Then they started cheering.
The Chief was the first to speak, and what he said made everyone laugh until they had tears running down their cheeks.
“My friends,” he said, as he rose from his seat at the table, “I believe young Eddie Jackson has just given me the first and biggest wedgie I’ve ever had.”
The idea of anyone giving the Chief a wedgie was right up there with believing in zombies, but the visual image was enough to make everyone stop licking their wounds.
Kathy stood up along with the Chief and raised a glass in my direction.
“To Eddie Jackson, the man who gave the Chief a wedgie and lived to tell about it.”
She had downed her fair share of wine and giggled, but with her beautiful blonde hair hanging loose over one shoulder she managed to be the leader we knew she could be.
“Ed has it right,” she said. “I think Doctor Bus would be able to back me up if I said the builders of these shelters had a plan in mind. They weren’t supposed to just survive on their own. They were supposed to be part of a network, and someone needs to get that network up and running.”
Doctor Bus was solemn when he stood. He looked at each of us and raised his glass to everyone at the table one
at a time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I guess I should have been more thoughtful about my peers who built the shelters. I have to admit. I was so caught up in the gravity of this unprecedented world disaster that I forgot that was the original intent of the shelters. We had meetings. We talked about each type of disaster, and we planned for how we would hold on by our fingertips in our own shelters, and then how we would save our country. What none of us expected was this type of disaster. If it is now left to us to begin picking up the pieces, then let’s talk about fixing the power problem on Mud Island, let’s get it done, and then let’s start planning how to get every one of the shelters populated with good people.”
Chase looked around and said, “Wow, you folks have forgotten how to celebrate.”
That earned him a round of laughter and even some applause. It wasn’t like us to sit around licking our wounds, but it had been a busy day. Everyone agreed that it was time to turn in and get some rest, feeling a bit better after Bus had given his speech. He was right. We had to get started with a long range plan, even if it meant going into a city block by block until the infected were cleared, but it logically should begin with the shelters.
Kathy caught Tom by the arm as we drifted away from the table and asked if he could spare her a few minutes to talk. He was reluctant at first, but he gave in when she looked hurt. They headed for one of the exits that would take them to a room that resembled a library. It had big, overstuffed furniture in it and looked like something suitable for long, private talks. That was what they needed.
Bus also needed something, but more than anything he wanted to be alone. He had known Allison for a long time, and it wasn’t surprising that he needed to grieve her loss privately. He said good night more quickly than usual and went to his room.
Olivia and Chase seemed a bit self-conscious about the fact that they were leaving the table with me and the Chief. All of our rooms were on one floor of the residential section, and they had been given separate rooms, but they clearly wanted to spend a little bit of time together. It looked like they were trying to find a way to get away from the rest of us without being too conspicuous. The Chief was picking up on it too.
“When’s the last time you two saw a movie and had a good laugh?” he asked.
They looked at each other almost as if they were checking to see if they had seen a movie together, and we were surprised to find that’s what it was. They had both gone to a free movie at the student center on the college campus. Neither was with a date, and they kept trying to sneak looks at each other. Needless to say, they kept catching each other in the act.
When they told us the movie had been a romantic comedy named The Wedding Planner, the Chief and I knew exactly which movie they would like. Every room had a big TV and an even bigger movie library, but besides the huge auditorium we had found when we had arrived at Fort Sumter, we found several smaller lounges and theaters that were meant for relaxing as a group. We took Olivia and Chase to one intimate little theater and picked out their movie. We figured Hitch would be just right for them.
The Chief and I drifted down the main corridor after getting the movie started, both feeling satisfied that we could make our new friends happy in a small way. The movie would be good therapy for them.
“This place is unbelievable,” said the Chief. “It must be ten times the size of Mud Island. Did you guys have any trouble getting in?”
“No, there was a golf cart in the tunnel, so we got here faster than expected. We knew you wouldn’t be back for a long time, so we went ahead and checked the place out. We didn’t think you would be gone as long as you were.”
I think my voice may have croaked just a bit when I remembered watching the plane crash into the harbor.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we didn’t even have the chance to explore the whole place yet. There’s so much more here than we need.”
The Chief said, “This place was obviously intended to be occupied by heads of state and a military detachment. There’s no place to hide a plane or a helicopter, so I think the designer of this shelter planned on it being a little more obvious than some of the shelters. Mud Island and Green Cavern are well hidden compared to this.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Chief. How did they design shelters that could keep salt water out so well? This shelter goes deeper than ours, and I think it’s a miracle that ours keeps the water out as well as it does.”
He laughed a little at the question, but not because it was a dumb question. I think he was just amused that I could find something else to think about under the circumstances. We had enjoyed many conversations like this one over the last year, and he had remarked once that he never got tired of hearing me pick apart a problem. I had explained it away as a gamer trait, but he had given me more credit than that. He said I had the mind of an engineer, and I should train it by digging into the library of textbooks we had in the shelter.
He said, “I had a ring that I lost at sea some years back. That thing is probably sitting on the bottom of the ocean without a barnacle or coral growing on it. Countless numbers of fish and bottom dwellers have been drawn to it because of the shine on the metal, but the jeweler that sold me the ring said nothing could ever scratch it. It was some kind of alloy, and as hard as I tried while I wore it, it never showed a single scratch. The walls of these shelters must be made of that alloy. Yes, you may be looking at nice wood paneling, but behind it is something really tough.”
We reached the turn that was more or less the central hub of the shelter, and I didn’t really care where I went just yet, so I followed the Chief when he turned toward the control room. He had taken a quick look at it when we came down from the surface, and he said there were a few things he had noticed that were different.
When we walked into the room, I expected him to go to the monitors to see if anything was happening on the surface. I also expected him to find a way to make radio contact with Mud Island.
“Don’t bother with the radio, Chief. It doesn’t even give you static to listen to.”
“I figured as much,” he said, “or you would have given me updates on Jean and Molly.”
I wasn’t as worried about Jean this time, so I had put the lack of radio contact out of my mind for the time being. I was more concerned that we were down to the one boat that the Chief had arrived in. Without it, we would be stuck on Fort Sumter. I went to the monitors while the Chief went to a different console. The lights were still on outside, and I brought up a camera view of the dock. The boat sat unmolested right where the Chief had left it.
“Ed, have you wondered at all about why this shelter is so exposed yet it has no boats or other means of escape?”
“You read my mind, Chief. I was just checking to see if that nice boat you brought back was still here.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“Right where you put it. Why’d you ask if I was thinking about that?”
I walked over to the console where he was sitting and looked at a display. I couldn’t believe it, but it was a real-time display showing Charleston harbor from a satellite view. It was dark for the most part, but there were small circles of light here and there. There was no way to know if they were people or just lights that were still connected to a power grid. Still, there was much more light than I had expected.
“Whoa…that’s not your typical camera view, is it?”
“No,” he said, “that’s part of the defense system for this place.” He moved the screen the same way I would have scrolled a map on Google or Apple Maps, but this time he was changing the view from a real satellite, and not from a computer app or an Internet page. Fort Sumter looked tiny and insignificant compared to the rest of the harbor, but it was blindingly bright in the middle of the surrounding water.
“How do you hide something?” asked the Chief.
I answered, “In plain sight.”
He looked pleased by my quick answer, but I had a question of my own.
“You said this is just part of the defense system. Where’s the rest?”
The Chief said, “I think this satellite was supposed to be the targeting system for something nasty. Too bad they didn’t finish it. Check this out.”
The Chief rotated the view from the satellite until it showed more of the entrance of the harbor. He zoomed out, and we were seeing the coastline going north. I was amazed as I watched him gradually bring Mud Island into the frame of the monitor, and then it began to zoom in. It was dark and remote, but something wasn’t quite as dark as it should be. There was a lantern glowing brightly on the southern tip of the island.
“How close can you get, Chief?”
“Pretty close, and if that’s what I think it is, I want to get that guy. That looks like the SOB that shot me down.”
“How can you tell at night, Chief?”
“I got a good look at the fifty caliber mounted on the bow. They aren’t state of the art, but if you know what you’re doing with one, you can target a slow moving seaplane. My problem with this guy is that he didn’t have a reason to shoot my plane out of the air, but I have a reason for shooting him out of the water.”
“Maybe you’ll get your chance one day Chief. Right now we have an advantage, though. He won’t expect you to come back after him. He thinks you’re dead, and we know where he is for now. Any idea how long that satellite will transmit?”
“I don’t think it’s got much chance of staying up there without a ground controller adjusting its altitude, but believe it or not, I don’t know for sure. I have some experience with drones, but not so much with satellites. As a matter of fact, changing its view probably already had an effect on its speed and position.”
“That reminds me,” said the Chief. “We need to work on our plan for moving the line laying barge to Mud Island, and if our friends are still between here and there, we should find a way to arm the tugboat.”
