by Howard, Bob
“The stuff is really bad for the environment, Tom. I doubt he could have gotten the permits needed to store it in a cave,” said the Chief. “We’re more likely to find aviation fuel in a truck parked by one of the convenience stores. There are probably a lot of seaplanes used on those big lakes, and the trucks would have to drive down to fill them up.”
I said, “Do you really think Uncle Titus got a permit to have a fuel pump on his island, Chief? I didn’t see any fuel trucks parked out by the dock.”
The Chief thought it over for a moment and looked at me. “Ed, you never cease to amaze me.”
“I lull everybody into thinking I’m not too bright, Chief. That way they never expect much out of me, and they’re surprised when I think of something they didn’t.”
The Chief put on a really awestruck expression and said, “You mean that’s all been an act?”
I was trying to come up with something witty to lay on the Chief when Kathy said, “Hold up on the manhood contest for just a moment, boys. Check out the view outside my window at about three o’clock.”
We all looked in that direction and saw light, and not just a little of it. It looked like spotlights, most of which were facing outward around a series of barricades. I guessed the area in the center of the lights was a couple of miles across in all directions.
“That looks like Fort Jackson,” said Kathy. “That’s the Army Basic Training Center in Columbia. I wonder how they circled their wagons so well. Is that a wall around the entire perimeter?”
“Looks like it,” I said. I had dug through the supplies and had a big set of binoculars pressed against the window. “Can you make out people, Kathy?”
“There’s a lot of activity along the walls,” she said. Then she just added in a low voice, “Oh, my god.”
The Chief was trying to get a look past Kathy, and Molly was climbing into the back to be with Tom. Kathy and I had the best view, and what we saw was incredible. Outside the wall was a series of barricades. Concertina wire, concrete vehicle barriers, spiked personnel traps, and tank traps were spread all around the wall. It looked like each barrier had been overwhelmed one at a time by the sheer numbers of the infected dead.
Once the razors on the wire barricades had become completely full with trapped bodies, the infected started crawling over them. The vehicle barricades had slowed the infected better because they weren’t climbers, but as more and more pushed from behind, the infected began to be literally pushed over the barriers by those behind them. Some were severally mangled by being crushed against concrete, and they didn’t get up and walk toward the walls, but they still crawled. The area in between the vehicle barriers and the final line of defense was a mixture of crawling and walking infected, and the number was growing.
There was a bright flash of light along the western wall, and Tom asked, “What was that?”
“They’re using flame throwers from the top of the wall,” said the Chief. He had his own binoculars aimed at the drama taking place below, and he steered the plane to stay parallel to the base. We didn’t need to pass too close and pick up a stray bullet. Besides, there wasn’t anything we could do to help.”
Kathy said, “Chief, I can’t really tell from this high up, but I think those walls are nothing more than concrete lane dividers like the ones you see on highway construction sites. They’re just stacked on top of each other, and the soldiers are using bayonets between the gaps.”
“Where did they find that many lane dividers?” I asked. I knew it was a dumb question as soon as I asked. “Wait, don’t tell me. Every interstate is under construction somewhere.”
“They probably ran low on ammunition a long time ago and are having to do whatever they can. The flame throwers are probably the most effective things they have,” I said.
As we got closer, we could see that there was a long line of helicopters warming up in the center of the base. Troops were climbing aboard in large numbers, and one by one they were lifting off from the tarmac and banking away to the East. There were clearly not enough helicopters for everyone.
“Kathy,” said the Chief, “we have way more fuel than we need, and we have to give those guys a fighting chance. There’s a knob up under your console. Turn it to the SPRAY setting. Then pump that red lever next to it until you feel it resist.”
Kathy did as the Chief said and began banking the plane toward the base. He turned toward us and said, “I’m going to make one pass as fast as I can, and we’re going to spray those suckers outside the walls with a little high octane hairspray. When the guys inside hit them with their flame throwers again, it should give them a chance.”
We already knew that the infected were drawn to flame, but if everything outside those walls burned long enough, it was going to go a long way toward burning up all of the infected in the area.
“The helicopters could have done this themselves, couldn’t they?” I asked.
The Chief said, “They were probably wanting to save their fuel to get as many people out as they could. For all we know, they may have a regrouping site somewhere, and they’re coming back for more soldiers. We can buy them some time if that’s what they’re doing.”
The Chief lined up the plane with the western wall of the Army base and dropped at high speed toward the dense crowd of the infected that was just beyond the reach of the soldiers. The idea was to wet down the ones coming up from behind those who had already breached the barriers. When they caught fire, it would spread toward the walls and away from them.
When we reached the thickest part of the horde below us, the Chief hit a switch and a fine spray of fuel went out behind us like a crop duster. We reached the first turn in seconds, and he threw the plane into a steep bank to the right. I practically rolled up the wall of the plane, and my face was against a window looking straight down at the huge horde of infected. There had to be well over a hundred thousand.
As we completed our turn and sprayed the infected approaching the northern wall, I caught a glimpse back toward the western wall. Someone had used a flame thrower and the effect was spectacular. The fire spread in all directions and engulfed the infected that hadn’t even reached the concertina wire yet. I yelled at the Chief that it was working, and we all let out a wild cheer.
We could only imagine what the soldiers on the walls were thinking. Many of them were probably just praying that the troop carrier helicopters were going to make it back in time, while others were sure they were going to die. Suddenly, there was a seaplane with yellow stripes coming out of the darkness and passing the front wall, lit up by the flood light and fires, and it was spraying the monstrosities approaching the wall. When a soldier shot out a burst of flame toward the advancing horde, it was like someone threw lighter fluid on the barbecue grill, and the soldiers knew instantly what the seaplane had sprayed. They didn’t know who we were or where we had come from, but more than a few were waving their thanks at us with flags and anything else they could find.
It was probably going to be warm inside the walls of the base, but warm was better than dead. We made our second turn at the eastern wall and then back along the southern wall again. We could see the soldiers along every wall turned toward us with their hands pointing to the right sides of their heads in a perfect salute. The Chief wagged the wings to return their salute as we finished our pass and began climbing again. He flipped the switch back to the off position and turned in his seat to look at us. We were all smiling.
He said, “Damn that was fun. I wish we had enough fuel for a second pass.”
I’m not sure how long we cheered, but it was a good feeling to strike back for once. We were still overflowing with emotion when a brief burst came over the radio.
“This is the 17th Military Police Detachment at Fort Jackson, sending out a big thank you to the people in the seaplane. Over.”
Kathy had it set on the speaker instead of the headphones, so we all got to hear it. She keyed the microphone and said, “For the history books, Fort Jackson
, credit goes to retired Navy Chief Joshua Barnes for the idea, over.”
“I read you, Miss. Please give our regards to the Chief. I hope we get to return the favor someday. I’m Captain Miller, and I have a long memory for heroics like I just saw tonight. We have incoming transport, so we’ll be out of here soon, but we wouldn’t have made it without you. I’m going to spread the word about you, Chief. Every living soul on the East coast is going to know who you are. Over.”
The Chief was blushing because he never wanted or needed credit for anything. He did what he did because it was the way he was wired.
Kathy keyed up again and wished the Captain luck getting back to his people. She wanted to ask where they would be, but as grateful as he was, she would have been putting him on the spot by asking, and she didn’t want to make him feel bad if he had to say it was a secret.
She had just signed off when the Captain’s voice said quickly, “Twenty clicks southwest Norfolk Canyon. Over and out.”
We all looked at each other without understanding. Everyone but the Chief, that is. He smiled at us and said, “The Captain may get an earful from a Major when he checks in next time, but I’m betting that’s all he gets. He just gave a location within landing distance of a fully fueled helicopter out on the continental shelf. If anyone heard that message, they probably are thinking there aren’t any canyons in Norfolk, but there are if you go out to sea. They probably have carriers off the coast receiving military, and you can bet they’re screening them better by now.”
“We only lost about thirty minutes of time and a little fuel to save maybe about two hundred soldiers,” I said. “Not a bad day’s work, Chief. What’s next?”
No jokes this time. The Chief looked more at peace with life than I had ever seen him. When he had escaped from the Atlantic Spirit cruise ship, he had only been able to save himself and two other people, Kathy and Jean. Our gratitude wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that he had never left five thousand people to die before, and this was his chance to earn some of those lives back.
We settled in as the hum of the big turbine engine caused Molly to drift off to sleep. Kathy put on her headphones and started listening for radio traffic. From time to time she would key the microphone and just ask, “Bus, do you have your ears on? Over.” Then she would turn the dial to a different frequency and listen.
Once she listened intently for a moment and then took off her headphones. “Remember that preacher we heard near Goose Creek? There are still people out there like him.”
Tom hadn’t been with us, but we had filled him in about the radicals who managed to survive. He had told us that Darwinism always had a way of working things out. The nuts might survive for now, but they would find themselves on the trail to extinction sooner or later.
I asked the Chief where we were. I didn’t know how he was navigating without being able to see landmarks and without air traffic control towers.
“We’re almost to Atlanta,” he said. “I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a few lights coming from the tops of tall buildings. There would have to be some survivors in a big city like that.”
We all started watching the ground below. It wasn’t like we could do anything to help if we saw someone, but we felt more connected by knowing there was someone else out there. The tall buildings started to stand out in the darkness, and the Chief was right again. There were fires on top of buildings, probably oil drums that had been hauled up by survivors.
A few would improvise with the wrong thing, and then they would have a new problem on their hands. That would explain the smoke we could see even through the darkness. We had seen the same thing on our first trip away from the shelter. Homeowners didn’t think before lighting their barbecue grills inside their garages. If the carbon monoxide didn’t kill them, the fire would.
Tom said, “I’ve spent a lot of time in Atlanta. Some of those buildings would have tons of food in them if you could get to it. The OMNI Hotel has a convention center and a bunch of restaurants. If anyone survived in there, they might live through this, but if it was anything like the hotels in Myrtle Beach, it was a death trap.”
I said, “Can you imagine how many buildings had survivors in them who are just trying to get to the supplies, but they’re just out of reach?”
“Yeah, that’s irony for you,” said Kathy. “You live through a zombie apocalypse, and your apartment is across the street from a grocery store.”
“Or a Walmart,” I added. “You could have all the supplies you need right there in your apartment, but you would still have this crazy urge to go to Walmart.”
We saw dozens of small fires on rooftops. Some were buildings close together, and when the lights were just right we could see ropes and even dangerous looking walkways made out of anything that would work. We couldn’t see the streets below them, but we could guess what was happening down there.
On the edge of the city we saw headlights from a speeding car. By the way it was turning, we guessed that the driver knew what to expect on each road. The survivors wouldn’t just get in a car and drive around the city. It had to be someone who knew where they were going. The car passed behind some buildings and disappeared.
There were no surprises as we skirted around the edge of the city. Even at our altitude we didn’t want to tempt fate by giving someone an easy shot. If anything, we were probably the surprise for people on the ground, and we couldn’t imagine how it made people feel when they saw the luxury and freedom of an airplane as it passed them by.
With the city receding behind us, the Chief adjusted our course slightly to the northwest. Guntersville was less than an hour away, and Kathy hadn’t been able to get Bus on the radio. Our Plan B in the event that we hadn’t made contact by the time we were over water was to use the satellite pictures Tom had been studying to find a possible fuel truck. The relative peace and quiet was disrupted when he almost shouted that he had found one.
“How can you sound so sure?” I asked.
He put the picture in my lap and shone a flashlight on it. I stared at it for a moment. First, I wasn’t sure of what I was looking at, but then I was laughing because of the absurd good luck we seemed to have.
Tom showed Kathy the picture, and it was her turn to laugh. “I think that’s the result of paying it forward,” she said.
“What’s that mean?” asked Tom.
Kathy said, “That means when you do something good for someone just because you want to, something good happens to you. We helped back at Fort Jackson, and this is our reward.”
The Chief was listening but had no idea what Tom had spotted below. “What did you find, Tom? Is there a sign on top of a building that says aviation fuel?”
Tom held the picture over in front of the Chief. I expected the Chief to roar laughing, but instead he just got a quizzical look on his face. He turned and looked at me and asked, “Ed, did your Uncle Titus know any other bunker builders?”
“Not that I know of, Chief. Then again, I didn’t know he was building one. Why are you asking?” I said.
Kathy made the connection before I did, but I was right behind her. I took the picture back from the Chief and borrowed Tom’s flashlight. When I looked up, Kathy asked, “What are the odds that there would be a clear satellite picture that has a building that has Aviation Fuel written on top of it and a row of seaplanes parked along a dock?”
“I’m going to make a leap of faith here,” said the Chief. “These survivalists all shared their information with each other and no one else. I’m going to bet that your Uncle Titus and Bus were both members of the same fraternity, and one last thing. Bus probably has a seaplane, too.”
We knew why Bus hadn’t told us over the radio that he had a seaplane. It was for the same reason that we didn’t tell him about ours. If people were listening, we wouldn’t want them looking around every drop of water for the planes, and we didn’t want them hanging out by the fuel pumps. What we couldn’t figure out was how the different shelters planned t
o stay in touch and realized it had to be some sort of code. Either Uncle Titus had taken the code with him to his grave, or it was in the shelter on Mud Island all along.
We were all so dumbfounded by this epiphany that we were surprised by Kathy holding up one hand to get our attention.
“Say again, over,” she said as she keyed the microphone. “I hear you, Bus. Over.”
Kathy pulled her headphones aside and said it sounded like they were having some kind of problem at Bus’s shelter. She put them back on and keyed the microphone.
“Bus, we’re looking for a good place to eat. Any suggestions? Over.” Kathy was trying to let Bus know they were in the area without coming right out and saying it.
Tom leaned into the front and said, “Kathy, tell him we’ll settle for a good place for a picnic near where Allison found out she was going to be a mother. We told him where we were when he called us.”
Kathy repeated what Tom had suggested and listened. She whispered that the sound was a bit messy, so she wasn’t going to put it on the speakers.
She said, “I hear you Bus. Stand by. Over.”
She took off the headphones and told the Chief that Bus had said there used to be a good place to eat about two miles south of that campsite that was called the Catfish Grotto. It used to be a great place to eat, but now the customers don’t eat catfish.
“What do you think he’s trying to tell us?” I asked.
Tom said, “I think he’s saying his shelter is usually a safe place, but there are more of the infected around than usual.”
“Well, I think we need to take a look anyway,” said the Chief. “Can you locate that campsite at night?”
“It’s perfect,” said Tom. “Look at the picture of the building labeled Aviation Fuel. That building is a resort area now. That’s why there are so many sea planes. Straight south is the entrance to a huge cave that can only be accessed by water. That would be where Bus would have built his shelter because he owns all of that land.”
“Can we get a big landmark, Tom? I need to find that building in the dark, and that land isn’t flat down there. One rule of thumb for caves is to look for them in mountains. These aren’t really high mountains, but there’s a lot of shadow down there.”
