by Bob Howard
I went back to where Bus had been working on the lines of the de Havilland Beaver, trying to pull it away from the dock if he needed to do a preflight check away from infected that would have been climbing onto the floats.
"Nice work, Ace." He flashed a pleased smile in my direction. "I guess I can do my preflight without rushing now."
"My thoughts exactly," I said. "And while you do that, I'm going to look for a radio in these boats over here. I shouldn't be long."
Bus gave me a thumbs up, and I started for the boats. As I did, I glanced up in the direction of the Cormorant and waved at the Chief. He used the bullhorn on the outside of the wheelhouse to respond.
"Are you okay with us heading back? Looks like you guys can handle it from here, and we can probably reach the Ashley River bridges before the tide gets too high."
I gave him a wave and a salute, and the Coast Guard vessel began a wide turn away from us. I only watched for a moment after exchanging waves with Tom and Chase, then I went in search of that radio.
The dock felt naked and exposed when I started with the first boat that was still floating. They were all fairly small, but someone was bound to have a working radio. In fact it was uncommon that our boat didn't. It was most likely stripped by the pirates who the Chief had liberated it from when he escaped from Charleston after he was shot down. I found what I needed in the third boat and went to work retrieving it as Bus checked out the plane. The boat was moored in its slip facing the three planes.
There were three big splashes in the water between the boat I was in and the bridge behind me. I turned around in time to see two more bodies hit the water. It must have been the same at every bridge in the country, and I couldn't help wondering if that would be how we could defeat the disease that had caused the end of the world. If we could get every infected dead in the world to fall into the water, sooner or later they would all be fish food. No one would ever eat seafood again, but no one would ever get eaten by a relative, friend, or neighbor again.
I heard the engine of the plane begin to turn over, and I looked over at Bus. It took a few revolutions of the big propellor, but it burst into life and let out a loud roar. It certainly was louder than it's younger brother, but I wasn't going to complain.
I hurried back over to our boat and jumped in. I didn't want to keep Bus waiting once he was ready to go. Hooking the radio up wasn't difficult because the Chief had shown me often enough how to make the wires under the dash of our boat look normal after he had disabled the ignition wires.
The Super Cub and the Cessna 180 were between me and the de Havilland Beaver, so I couldn't see Bus anymore, but the engine of the Beaver began to sound better and better. I knew from flying with him and the Chief in his beloved Otter that it was a good idea to burn off the fuel in the lines before taking off. That way you would learn whether or not the fuel pump was working. Sitting still at the end of the dock for so many months could have caused sediment in the fuel to settle in the tanks and then foul the pump. When the engine began running smoothly, it was obviously getting fresh fuel.
I keyed the microphone and said, "Testing, 1-2-3. Testing, 1-2-3."
"I read you loud and clear," said Bus.
"How's the seaplane coming?" I asked.
"Just for the record," said Bus, "you should get used to calling it a float plane. And those big, yellow things you've been calling pontoons are floats. It's ready to go. How's everything on your end?"
"I'm ready here. Let's see if we can catch up with the Chief," I said.
I jumped back onto the dock and untied the mooring lines to the Beaver. Bus cut the engine off so I could help him turn the plane away from the dock without bumping a wing against the Cessna 180 next to him. It was because we were watching the distance between the two planes that we saw the door on the Cessna open. When it was wide enough, the infected dead that fell from the opening landed flat on the starboard side float, and it immediately tried to crawl over to the port side float of the Beaver.
That's the problem with crawling on water. It's just so hard to do. As soon as it put its weight on its outstretched hand, it went head first into the river. Unlike the infected dead who were in the Guntersville lake under the planes, the current would keep this one from walking up the boat ramp and trying again.
I looked at Bus. He and I had apparently both watched the door of the Cessna open, and I imagined he was glad that thing had been inside the Cessna 180 instead of the Beaver. To add insult to injury, the otherwise professional Doctor Bus, gave the infected dead the same wiggling finger salute that he had given the Chief. I resumed rotating the plane by pushing its wing, and Bus restarted the engine. He throttled up and turned away from the dock at the same time and began his run to the center of the river.
The roar of the engine was attracting a larger than normal crowd on the bridge, and as Bus began his takeoff run downriver, the infected dead were pouring over the side.
It was a longer takeoff than I was used to seeing, but it was smooth. I could imagine Bus in the cockpit cheering like a school kid as he went to full power. The radio crackled, and his voice came through the speaker.
"How'd that look to you, Ed? Over."
"Looked good from here, Bus. Did the Chief give you orders to fly back to Mud Island or meet at our current residence? Over."
We had all agreed the radio contact shouldn't give out information that could be intercepted. No one would know where Mud Island was, but everyone would know where Fort Sumter was.
"Rendezvous at the current residence for now. I'll provide overwatch on the Mud Island run, over.”
"Copy that, Bus, over.”
I cast off my own lines and pushed off from the dock. I was amazed to see there were still infected dead walking down the boat ramp and still falling off the bridge as I turned the boat to go down river.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sub-Level Eighteen
Whitney finished her floor and went out into the stairwell. She looked over the edge of the railing first but didn't see or hear any activity below her. She went down one floor and saw a big P on the door, so she went down another floor and saw an S. She quickly took the steps two at a time to her next floor, determined to reach the bottom floor first.
Sam was bogged down and frustrated. He was sure he had gotten the short straw by getting the floor he had because it had been storage for all kinds of dry goods. He felt like he had to be taking pictures of a Walmart warehouse because there was something of everything. If it could be stored in a cardboard box, it was on this floor. He even searched for something that would tell him what the inventory was, because it didn't make sense that they would have this much stuff and not know where to find it. He gave up after a while and started taking the rest of the pictures.
Perry came out of his floor sure he had finished before Whitney or Sam. He went down one floor and saw the S on the door, so he took the stairs three at a time hoping to be ahead of Whitney. When he saw the W on the door he didn't bother to slow down. He sped past to the next floor, quickly put his letter P on the door and dove inside. The thrill of competition was cool, and he didn't want to lose to a girl. They were also finding some pretty neat stuff.
By the time Sam finished his first floor and walked out into the stairwell, Perry and Whitney had each finished two whole floors and came out into the stairwell somewhere below him. He looked over the edge of the railing and saw them dashing down another level. They were laughing, and he figured it had to be about him. As the youngest in their group, they were always telling him what to do. Just before Perry went through another door he hear him yell at Whitney.
"I'll get to the bottom floor before you do."
“No, you won't," she yelled back. Then she laughed again.
Sam wasn't even in the race as far as they were concerned, and he wanted to show them both what it felt like to get beaten. He started down the steps as fast as he could go, passing their P's and W's on the doors. When he got to an unmarked door he only p
aused for a split second, then he started for the bottom again. He would show them, and the mental picture he got of them arriving at the bottom floor and finding a big S on it was so satisfying.
*****
The Chief could almost hear the longest mast on the Cormorant scraping against the bottom of the bridge as he passed through. If he could complain to someone about the first span being at least two feet higher than the second one, he would.
When he pulled up to the first span, he watched the tide markings on the supports and did some mental calculations. From everything he had read about the height of the bridge, the height of the tide, the height of the masts, and the depth of the Cormorant's keel, he should have no problem passing through. He poured on the speed and was pleased to see his mental math had been accurate.
When he got to the second bridge, he did the same calculations while checking the markings on the support, and each time it came up as a big maybe. The height he needed to have was within six inches instead of several feet, and he knew it wasn't because the tide had risen that much more. It could only be because the navigation charts needed to be updated to account for seventy or eighty years of the bridge settling under its own weight.
At the last second he decided he wasn't going to sit between the two bridges for twelve hours and wait for the next low tide. He went ahead and rushed toward the center span and tried to will the ship to draft a few feet deeper.
Sometimes the Chief felt like gambling was the only way to beat the odds, and this was one of those times. He remembered a scene from a movie back in the 70's when a guy was playing blackjack. He had eighteen but was sure the dealer was sitting on twenty because he had a face card showing. He told the dealer to give him a hit, and when the dealer gave him a card, it was a three. The gambler looked at the dealer and said, "I'm blessed."
The Chief wouldn't go so far as to say he was blessed, but he would go so far as to say he thought he would make it. He just wished he was drafting a bit deeper. As the bow got within a few feet of the bridge, the horde of infected dead up above had grown because he had delayed for a few second to make his calculations.
The numbers swelled against the already damaged concrete and steel railing, and a mass of bodies tumbled over the edge of the bridge together. Tom and Chase had hung back toward the stern when they saw how many infected were threatening to fall, and it was a good thing they did. Forget being bitten...they would have been crushed.
What the Chief needed was exactly what he got. A pile of bodies, even though they were lighter due to decay, they were enough to force the bow down deeper into the water just long enough for the ship to make it through. It popped back up like a cork bobber, but the masts had cleared the steel deck of the bridge by that time.
The ship was rocking so much from the burst of forward speed and the bodies landing on the bow that it was hard for them to untangle themselves from each other. Tom and Chase had no trouble pushing them overboard as they stood up and tried to walk, and by the time the Chief was halfway to the Fort Sumter dock, the bow was clear again.
They had no sooner gotten the bow clear when a deep throated roar came up on them from behind and passed almost even with the wheelhouse. The yellow fuselage with red stripes looked so much bigger than the Otter, but the Beaver was just built like a workhorse. Bus was obviously enjoying being behind the stick of the plane, and the Chief obviously couldn't wait for his turn.
It was turning into the kind of day they were all hoping for. All they needed to do was go get the line laying barge, and they would be able to start for home.
*****
Sam didn't like the bottom floor. There was something wrong with it. From the moment he put his S on the door and went inside, it didn't feel right. All of the other floors had a different feel to them. He was too young and inexperienced to recognize what his senses were telling him. The upper levels felt sterile. They felt clean, and above all, they smelled clean.
The bottom floor didn't feel or smell clean. There was a rotten odor that he couldn't identify because he had lived with that odor for so long that it had dulled his sense of smell. He was well inside the maze of rooms on the bottom floor before he recognized that smell, and he didn't know if he was recognizing it too late. Worse yet, he was lost. He had been so distracted by that eerie feeling you get when you know you aren't alone that he didn't pay attention to where he was going.
He had passed the elevators when he had first reached the bottom floor, and he considered just getting in one and riding it back to the top, but he didn't want to hear Perry and Whitney saying he was a chicken. To make matters worse, one of the doors opened while he was standing in front of it giving it some serious consideration. When it opened, a bell went, “Ding".
Sam looked into the empty elevator and was totally creeped out by the idea that the elevator car was even on the bottom floor. Something in the back of his mind told him that elevator cars stayed on the last floor they went to unless someone else summoned them to a different floor.
It was also a little darker on this floor, and up ahead there were several open doors that had no lights on in their rooms. So far, Sam hadn't seen anything like that in the shelter. Every room had lights on like the electric bill didn't matter. The storerooms and stairwells all had lights, but some of these rooms were darker than midnight.
If Sam had paid any attention at all to where he had already been, he decided he would go back to the elevators, but he had already lost track of them by making a couple of turns to avoid the dark rooms. By the time he decided he was scared and should take the easy way out, he didn't know if he should go left, right, straight, or backwards.
He decided going backwards was most likely the right choice, but when he went that way, he found himself standing directly outside one of the open doors of a pitch black room...and he was sure something moved in there.
Sam backed away from the open door wanting desperately to close it, but to do so he would have to reach inside and grab the handle of the door. He couldn't see a thing inside the room, but whatever was in there had to be able to see him, and he wasn't about to go in there with it.
He kept backing away, keeping both eyes on the door, hoping to put some distance between himself and that dark rectangle before something came out of the room. His main hope, though, was to find the elevators again. He would even be happy with the stairs at this point. Sam didn't realize that he had begun talking to himself out loud, and that the sound was able to carry as far as it did.
The thing that Senator Harold Thornton III had become didn't know anything about what was happening in the world, and it didn't really know the difference between a room with the lights on or off. What it did know was that there was something alive nearby. There was something that made noise when it walked, and sometimes it made other noises that drew it in that direction. Above all, there was this deep urge to bite into the flesh of the thing moving outside of the room.
Sam's eyes widened as he saw what was coming out of the dark room. He didn't know if it was one infected dead or twenty. He just knew it was coming out of the dark room he had backed away from moments ago. Sam suddenly recognized that smell, and knew he just hadn't expected to find it here.
The thing he feared the most stepped into the hallway, and Sam didn't know if it could see him, smell him, or was just aware of him being a living person, but it started in his direction just as he had seen them do for almost a year. All Sam knew to do was run.
*****
Olivia became bored watching the monitors. When the Chief had explained her role to her, she had accepted quickly. If she didn't have to go outside, it was all fine with her. The first couple of hours were sadly interesting to her because she was able to sit and study the inside of the fort. It was an ugly sight. Flocks of seagulls were landing on the bodies, and some much bigger black birds. She had seen her share of vultures, both human and birds, and she didn't care for either.
As the day passed, there was no other activity out in
the harbor, and she could only sit and watch the birds feeding on the bodies for so long. She didn't want to think about what those men had done to her, nor what they would have done if her new friends hadn't come along.
Olivia thought about the group of people who had saved her and Chase. Up until the moment they appeared out of the darkness, she wouldn't have believed there was any chance she was going to live.
She rotated one of the cameras a few degrees to see if there was anything on the harbor that was moving. Nothing was there, so she went back to thinking about her rescuers. Her feeling was that it was all too good to be true, but she couldn't help the fact that she was already starting to trust them completely. She wondered how long it would be before she quit waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If she was wrong about them, she knew it would be an awful surprise, and a worse price to pay, but she was starting to think she would make all the same choices again. After all, they had not only rescued her and Chase, they had rescued the kids, and then they had kept her safe by giving her this job instead of dragging her along.
They had explained everything to her about Mud Island, but she still didn't see why they couldn't just stay where they were at Fort Sumter. There were enough supplies to last for years, and there was so much room she didn't think they would even have to bump into each other if they didn't want to. She wondered for a moment how they would feel if she asked to stay behind when they went home. Of course, she wouldn't mind if Chase wanted to stay too. That brought a smile to her lips. The thought of the two of them being all alone in a perfectly safe underground hotel was inviting.
