The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now

by Howard, Bob

  Kathy was more than happy to let the Chief take over for her. She jumped across to a pontoon and grabbed a wing strut. The Chief said as he went by, “We have less than an hour to be out of here, and there’s no time to explain why.”

  Kathy gave him a nod as he jumped over to the boat. Her job was just to use a pole to steer the plane and to give them just a little push now and then. The current had picked up a bit, and so had their speed. Going out was definitely easier than going in to the plane.

  Over in the boat, the Chief told Tom that there had been a guard in the houseboat, and he had signaled the Russian corvette once per hour. Their timing had been good because the Chief had tied up the guard only minutes before they had arrived with the boat, but that meant they were going to have to travel two miles using nothing but the poles and the current.

  They would probably get to the mouth of the southern exit to the moat around the same time that the Russian crew was expecting to see another signal from the houseboat. When that signal didn’t come, there would be a few minutes of delay while the Russians decided how to deal with it, and then it would be a race to get the gear into the plane and get the plane into the air.

  The Chief felt the current picking up even more than he thought it would, and he realized with a sense of irony that the current was swifter because the jetty had been fixed, and the sandbar wasn’t slowing down the water that was coming into the northern entrance. The plane was gliding over the water so well that it wasn’t putting any drag on the boat, and it even felt like the plane was going to pass the boat a couple of times.

  Forty-five minutes later, they rounded the bend and could see the southern jetty. They had fifteen minutes to spare.

  Chapter 6

  The Mission

  It was a long couple of hours since the Chief had gone one way, and the Boston Whaler had gone the other. I had no way of knowing that the Chief was forced to wait for the guard to give his signal. I also didn’t know how well Kathy and Tom had done getting the boat from one end of the island to the other using poles. My biggest worry was that they would cross over the nets and get tangled up in the infected that were stuck in them. After almost two hours, I couldn’t stand to wait in the tunnel any longer, so I quietly pulled myself out of the upper hatch.

  The pair of legs that I saw in the darkness couldn’t belong to anyone I knew. The pants were torn and dirty, and the last I had seen of our group, they were all wearing new Navy blue coveralls. It had to be an infected dead, and he was standing just outside the camouflaged tarp that covered our secret garage. I figured I would use my machete to take out his legs at the ankles, and I was just about to swing when a second pair of legs came into view. These were in tattered sorts, and the legs were mostly decayed.

  I watched as the legs turned left and right, and when both turned to face away from me at the same time, I stepped out from under the tarp and swung my machete twice. One went down with the first swing, and the other went down with the second. I couldn’t help thinking how much I had changed. When we had been forced to make a mad dash across the beach through a group of the infected, I just aimed and swung. Now I watched for my opening and took it.

  I dragged their bodies over to the water and left them where the surf was just reaching them. If the tide came in higher it would carry them out to sea. If not, the crabs that were brave enough to come out in cold weather would be on them in no time.

  Just as I finished disposing of the infected, I heard something on the water at the exit to the moat. The Boston Whaler came into view, and the de Havilland DHC-3 Otter was practically on top of it. I saw that the Chief had traded places with Kathy, and he was really digging hard with the pole.

  As soon as the boat was beached, he and Tom jumped onto the sand and ran toward the plane. They each grabbed the plane by the wing struts and rotated it onto the sand. I ran back toward the tunnel to get Jean and Molly, and the others didn’t waste any time. Before we could get back they had the gear loaded in the plane.

  The Chief, Kathy, and Tom were standing in a tight circle, and Tom scooped Molly up in his arms. Kathy and the Chief blocked Jean and I from getting into the boat, and the Chief said he needed to do one last thing.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Jean, you’re staying here,” said the Chief.

  The protest was almost too loud, and the Chief cut her short. Jean said, “I’m pregnant, Chief. I’m not disabled.”

  “You can stop arguing before you get started, Jean. Think about it a second. The last time we didn’t know what we were coming back to. This time we’re only going to be gone a day or two, and we’ll know what we’re coming back to if we leave someone behind on the radio. You’re the logical choice.”

  The Chief didn’t need to say it twice. He told us we needed to get clear of the island and have the plane in the air within ten minutes, so we didn’t have time to discuss it. Jean needed to get back down through the tunnel, and we needed to see it sealed behind her. Jean wanted desperately to go with us, but she was too smart to deny the logic. If we needed to be warned to stay away, there had to be someone left behind in the shelter. She looked longingly at Molly and defied the Chief just a little by running over and hugging her while she was still in Tom’s arms.

  “You be a good girl for your dad, Molly. I already know you’re very brave, and I’m so happy you will be able to go home to your mommy,” she whispered. “I’ll miss you, but I promise we’ll see each other again.”

  Molly was crying just a little, but she was used to being strong for grownups. She hugged Jean back and whispered in Jean’s ear that she hoped Jean would have a little girl so she could be a big sister.

  Jean gave me a quick kiss. With tears streaming down her cheeks and her hand over her mouth, she ran for the tunnel just as the Chief said that we wouldn’t be leaving if we didn’t do it in the next few seconds.

  As much as I wanted to comfort Jean, we didn’t ask why. We just turned the plane around and got into the boat. With three of us digging and pushing with the poles, we were across the moat, around the beached trawler that had crashed ashore on the other side, and heading south along the coast in about four minutes. We didn’t stop there because the further we were from the island when we started the engine on the plane the better.

  The Chief kept glancing back in the direction of the corvette. It was at least a couple of miles away, and if they were listening, they would hear the engine start, but they wouldn’t know where the sound was coming from immediately.

  “Okay, everybody,” said the Chief. “Get into the plane as fast as you can. Ed, stay with the Whaler long enough to cover it with the tarps and get an anchor down. Try to spot some landmarks so we can find it again.”

  Everyone scrambled over to the plane while the Chief helped me get the tarps spread out over the tallest part of the Whaler. It was dark, but I was sure I would be able to find the boat again. There were two trees up on the mainland that were larger than the others and were leaning toward each other. Even in the low light, they seemed to stand out.

  I got the anchor into the water and hopped over onto one of the pontoons of the plane. As I did, I saw lights flashing on the bow of the corvette. Before I could even get inside, the Chief started the engine and began to move forward.

  “Hang on everyone. I’m going to take off but stay low until I can turn inland. When I go for the trees, it’s going to be a hard right turn, so be ready,” yelled the Chief.

  The water was splashing over the pontoons and soaking me as I tried to get into the plane before we were airborne. I didn’t have the urge to be outside when the Chief banked to the right, especially since that was the side I was standing on.

  Tom reached out and grabbed me by my belt. He yanked me in hard, but I wasn’t complaining. The wind was beginning to pick up as the Chief increased the throttle, and I had to fight the door to get it closed and latched. Kathy was riding shotgun up front with the Chief, and Molly was in her lap. It seemed like ge
ar was stashed everywhere because we had to load the plane so quickly. I shifted back packs and supplies around until I found a seat behind Kathy and strapped myself in just as the plane started to lay over on one side.

  The Chief put us into a steep bank toward the mainland, and I was looking almost straight down at the water through my side window. Over the roar of the engine I heard Molly faintly asking for her daddy and Kathy telling her everything was going to be okay. We passed over water, marshes, and then trees in a matter of seconds as the Chief put distance between us and the Russian ship. I was missing Jean already, but I knew she would not have appreciated the take off any more than I did.

  As we flew between big trees, the plane rotated to a more level position and then began to bank to the left. I could tell the Chief was getting us behind trees and down range as quickly as he could, and if he was flying low it was because we were still close enough to the ship for them to shoot us down if they acquired a clear target. I looked out the window and couldn’t believe how low we were. For a moment I wondered if the Chief had forgotten that we didn’t have wheels.

  The last turn was a gut wrenching turn back to the right and then again to the left before the Chief finally leveled out. We were at least twenty miles inland before he began gradually increasing altitude, and looking over my shoulder at him I could tell he was beginning to relax a bit.

  He smiled at me and asked, “Are you still here? I thought we dumped you off back at the start.”

  “I’m still here, Chief,” I said. “By the way, is this your sleeping bag back here? I tossed my cookies in it.”

  Despite the tension involved with that take off, everyone was fighting back tears while laughing because Molly asked if she could have some cookies, too. Not to be outdone by me, the Chief said to give Molly some cookies.

  We were all quiet for a bit after the fit of laughter, just letting it sink in that we were in the air again, and that we had defied my Uncle Titus one more time.

  The man who had left his shelter to me in his will also left messages for me. His number one rule had been not to leave the shelter once the world came to an end. Despite the safety of the shelter which would at least add a few years to our lives, we had acted as if we were staging a prison break and had escaped into the night.

  Of course there was the Russian corvette sitting off the coast. If their reason for fixing the jetty was to make the waterway behind the island stay deeper, they must be planning to try to hide their ship. There was no reason to expect them to wait another day, so we had to leave while we could. Once the corvette would be behind the island, there would be no way to for us to fly the plane out of the area without being seen. They could shoot down a seaplane before it even lifted off of the water.

  There was also likely to be some drama when the corvette dropped its anchor. One way or the other, it was going to get hung up on something, and they would send divers down to see what they had snagged. I wondered what we would find when we got back.

  Kathy turned in her seat and got the Chief’s attention. “What happened back there, Chief? Why the crazy take off?”

  The Chief answered her loud enough for all of us to hear, explaining that the guard would be expected to signal the corvette in one hour, and that the hour was up. We were lucky the Russians had made it a one hour interval or we wouldn’t have had enough time to load our gear before flying away.

  The plane was gradually climbing higher, and all of us were glued to the windows. It was completely dark as far as we could see, and even though we knew why it was pitch black, it didn’t change our hope that we would see living people below. When entire cities are dark the world looks like a lonely place.

  Once we reached our cruising altitude, the Chief told Kathy to check in with Jean and then to start trying to get Bus on the radio. They needed to let them know they were coming and to find a way to get his coordinates without the wrong people getting them, too. He turned in his seat and told Tom that he should be thinking about places he and Allison had been to and maybe they could at least give a vague description of where they should land.

  Tom asked, “You mean something like a place without naming it and then a distance and direction?”

  “Yeah, something like five miles east of that place where we had our picnic the last time,” said the Chief.

  “Got it,” said Tom. He pulled out a map of northern Alabama and started studying it with a flashlight. Guntersville had a large number of lakes and caves, and they had gone on plenty of picnics with Molly and her friends.

  Kathy was tuning the radio through the frequencies and finally said, “You’re coming through loud and clear, Jean. Is everything okay back there? Over.”

  She unplugged the headphones and put her on the speaker so everyone could hear. “I’m fine, Kathy. Tell Ed I love him, and tell the Chief I’m going to kick his butt the next time I see him, so he’d better come back in one piece. Over.”

  Kathy said, “They can hear you, Jean. I put you on the speaker. Over.”

  “She could do it, Chief,” I said. “Don’t underestimate her.”

  He could have laughed, but the Chief knew how to play the game. “I’ll be sure to get us all back in one piece, Jean. I haven’t had my butt kicked in a long time, and I could probably use it. Over.”

  “Hi, Aunt Jean,” said Molly.

  “Awwwww, hi Sweetie. I miss you already,” said Jean.

  Jean also knew when to get serious, and she said, “Your Russian friends are mad, Chief. I saw the deck guns turning back and forth. Were you zigzagging or something? Over.”

  “You could say that,” said the Chief. “That bow gun isn’t very powerful, but it’s accurate almost to the horizon. I figured they wouldn’t be able to track us too well on the other side of the trees, but I wasn’t going to fly in a straight line for them and find out if they could hit us. What are they doing now? Over.”

  “They sent two Zodiacs full of people over to the houseboat. Did something happen over there that I should know about? The lights are all out, so I can’t see anything through the camera inside. Over.”

  Jean was going to be completely safe inside the shelter, but she was sounding more worried than usual. I guess that’s because this was the first time Mud Island was crawling with angry Russians who were probably looking for the Chief.

  “I had to punch a ticket for someone they had hiding in the houseboat,” said the Chief. “I didn’t kill him, so they can’t be too mad. They just wonder where I went and probably figure the radar contact they had was me. They also don’t want me telling anyone else where they are. Over.”

  Jean said, “I’ve switched all of the cameras to night vision. I forgot they could do that. I can see armed men in the field of every camera except the one at the front door. Over.”

  I leaned toward the microphone and yelled over the engine, “Don’t worry, Jean. Even if they find the front door, they won’t be able to get in. Over.”

  The Chief added, “That deck gun of theirs would probably sound bad to you inside, Jean, but I’ve seen the specs on that door Uncle Titus had installed on the shelter. He wasn’t kidding when he said it could probably take a direct hit in a nuclear war. Everything else might be gone, but that door will still be there. Over.”

  “That’s reassuring,” said Jean. “But I’d rather not find out. Over.”

  “Jean,” said Kathy, “we don’t know if they’re listening or not, but it doesn’t really matter. They can’t get to you. Just stay inside, and stay quite. We’ll be back in no time. Just listen for our broadcast. We have to sign off for now and start trying to contact Bus. Over.”

  Jean said, “I hear you, Kathy, and bring back the father of my child for me, okay? Over.”

  “Will do, Jean. He’s in good hands. Over and out,” said Kathy.

  Kathy switched off the radio and looked over her shoulder at me, and it was everything I could do not to get choked up. I could see in her look that Kathy knew what we all did. This was a dangerou
s thing we were doing for Tom and Molly. It was a unanimous decision to do it, but it wasn’t the brightest or safest thing to do.

  The hardest part wasn’t getting away from the island, and the hardest part wasn’t the trip anymore. The hardest part might just be getting back into the shelter now that the Russians were searching the island. If they searched long enough, they would find the door. They might not be able to get inside, but it wasn’t going to be easy for us to get back in with them camped outside.

  Tom said, “I’ve got it, Chief. There’s a place where Allison and I were when we got the call from Dr. Bus about Allison being pregnant with Molly. It was during the off season, and I was back home. Our team didn’t make it to the post season that year, so I was back home early. It was a cool day, so we were enjoying the fresh air down by one of the campsites. It wasn’t far from Bus’s property, as I recall.”

  “Okay, Kathy,” said the Chief. “You know what to do. If my estimate is right, we should be in that area by two in the morning.”

  Tom said, “Not that it really matters, Chief, but they’re Central Time Zone, so it will be one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Even better,” said the Chief. “If anyone else is around, I want them to be sleeping for as long as possible while we’re there. Maybe we can drop you and Molly off, top off our fuel somewhere, and be gone before people even know we were there.”

  “Hey, Chief,” said Kathy, “you ever consider the possibility that Bus has fuel?”

  Tom answered for him, “Bus was always talking about being ready for anything. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Did he have a plane or a helicopter that you know of?” asked the Chief. “If not, I wouldn’t expect him to have the right fuel. The Otter 3 has a turbine engine that takes a specialized blend of aviation fuel. It’s basically a really pure type of kerosene with additives.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have just kept some on site?” asked Tom.