The Infected Dead (Book 7): Scream For Now

by Howard, Bob

  “I don’t have time to wait over there, Sir.”

  “Then have a good day, Ma’am.”

  He didn’t even look up as he dismissed her.

  “I need to speak with Alex Reeves.”

  “Who’s stopping you? He’s standing right over there.”

  Grace glared at the officer and pictured herself grabbing him by his collar and dragging him over the counter, but the man he had pointed at was walking away toward an elevator. She didn’t want to miss him and get stuck dealing with the Desk Sergeant again, so she ran after him. Grace was beginning to feel like time was slipping away. The bustling crowd of people and the faces of the police officers were taking on a sense of urgency. She decided to cut to the chase as quickly as possible.

  “Mr. Reeves, I’m Dr. Grace Williams, and Marshall Sayer from USAMRIID said to talk to you. He said to tell you to look after me until he gets here, and he would repay you by giving you a seat on the bus.”

  It was apparently the right thing to say because his expression changed from indifferent to totally interested.

  “Right this way, Dr. Williams.”

  He took her hand and led her to the door of a stairwell. On the way he waved over an officer and asked him where they were putting people to keep them safe. The officer told him they had been putting them in offices and holding cells, but they were ready to start sending them down to the new evidence room.

  “See you there, Henry.”

  He gave the officer a light slap on his shoulder as he went by with Grace in tow.

  ******

  The Present

  The oxbow was exactly what they had hoped it would be. Hidden deep in the forest on an island in the middle of a river, they could go undetected for years if they were careful. They had an abundance of supplies unlike anything they had found ever since the Walmarts and grocery stores had been stripped bare. All this was theirs, but something was bothering Jed.

  More deer stands were built on the island so they could have a good idea of what was in the woods at all times. When they saw an infected on the other side of the river, they knew it was just a matter of time before it would go into the water and not come back out. From time to time they saw movement in the woods near the hanging bridge that connected their safe haven to the mainland, but if an infected came near the bridge, there was nothing to draw them across that was stronger than whatever it was that was calling them to the south.

  Despite the safety they enjoyed for the first time in years, Jed was sure something was happening, and he suspected it was the spiders. It finally came to him when he saw a spider fall from a tree. He didn’t recall ever seeing a spider do that before, and as he watched the spider run across the ground he noticed that it was moving in the same direction as the infected.

  Jed didn’t know what he expected to find, but he became restless and decided to go back to the Pinopolis Lock to see if the spiders had taken control again. It only took a couple of hours to get there because the southern bank of the Cooper River was free of the infected. Any that had been in the area had left weeks ago. When he had gone far enough to be able to see the railings across the top of the lock, he could tell even from a distance that the spiders had expanded their territory. The entire walkway and the railings disappeared under a gray and brown web that was so thick it could have been mistaken for smoke. He eased closer but didn’t plan to disturb the web. He just wanted to find out what was bothering him about the spiders.

  It was because he was being cautious that he stayed alive, but he almost walked straight to his own death. He was an experienced woodsman, and true woodsmen watched where they put their feet. Jed’s eyes were constantly moving between the ground and the huge web when he saw something move on the ground. Actually, he thought the ground moved.

  There was no breeze, but if it had been windy, there would have been a reason for the gusts of dirt blowing around like little dust devils. Jed took a few steps backward and watched with his mouth hanging open. Right before his eyes he saw the spider web from the Pinopolis Lock spreading across the ground, and it wasn’t just the web…it was an advancing army of baby spiders that were building the dirty web that was more like brown cotton candy being spread across the ground.

  “Millions…there must be millions of them.” He said what he was thinking out loud.

  Jed circled the growing mass of spiders and web that was doing something he had never seen before. There were so many spiders that he could see the web expanding, and he knew what that many spiders could do to a man. Forget being eaten by them. It would be a very painful death to be bitten by that many spiders at one time. It would feel like fire running up the legs and across the torso, and by the time they reached the arms, neck, and shoulders, the victim wouldn’t be conscious to feel them filling his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. Most people feel like there’s a spider in their hair if they see one hanging from a ceiling in their house. That feeling would be real in seconds if they stayed awake long enough after stumbling into this nightmare.

  Jed saw that an infected was getting to experience it firsthand. He thought this one must’ve had something wrong with its ears because it hadn’t been following the rest of the horde to whatever it was that was making them all go south. Jed had decided it was a foregone conclusion that something was calling the infected to go south to Charleston. He knew there were whistles that only a dog could hear, so why not whistles for zombies. It would be funny if it wasn’t so bad for everyone caught between the zombies and the whistle.

  The infected was already on its knees, rotating at the waist as if it knew where the attacks were coming from. It had been a woman, and Jed could tell she was a recent casualty judging by how intact her body was. There was nothing to show how she died that Jed could see, and the only reason he was sure she was an infected dead was the indifference she showed to the unbearable pain a living person would be experiencing. If she was alive, she would be screaming, and Jed was shamefully glad. He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from running into the middle of the web to help her, and he would be dead too.

  Something interesting happened. The infected stopped rotating at the waist and faced directly at Jed. Even though it meant putting her hands into the smokey colored web and millions of spiders, she used her hands to push herself from her knees to her feet. Then she stumbled in his direction. Jed was confused until he remembered that the infected didn’t feel pain even if they were being eaten. This one was bringing more than the threat of a single bite to him, and he couldn’t wait for her to get that close.

  Jed wasn’t one to waste a bullet, but if he ever needed an infected dead disposed of beyond his reach, it was this one. He unslung his AR-15 and carefully put a single bullet into the woman’s forehead. When he lowered his rifle, he saw the web at his feet was approaching as if it was crawling. This time he backed away further and faster, but he still had to know one thing.

  He ran in a big curve until he was almost parallel with the lock that he and his colony had cleared of the webs only days before, and he saw more than he expected. The web wasn’t spreading in all directions. It was only spreading in the same direction that the infected were all walking. Whatever was calling the infected was also calling the spiders.

  “A zombie whistle and a spider whistle?”

  From where Jed stood, he could see the dam from the side, and the web overflowed the dam and hung down toward the water in the canal. It was like a kitchen sink that had been filled too full with water and dishwashing suds.

  “No,” he said. “It looks like the dam grew a gray beard.”

  He wished he could see over the edge of the lock to see how full it had gotten. There must still be infected falling into the lake and then washing up against the lock, especially if one had made it this far to Jed’s side. He kept an eye on the web that was still spreading across the ground and worked his way toward a small cluster of buildings. One of them was tall enough to give him at least a little better view of the inside of th
e lock.

  When he was closer to the buildings he saw a sign that said it was a training center for firemen, and the tallest structure was used to test their skills running up and down flights of stairs wearing their heavy gear. It must have been built just before the beginning of the infection because Jed never knew it was there. He knew the other side of the two huge lakes better than anyone, but he hadn’t spent as much time on this side. It was a good thing that the tower was to the west of the Pinopolis Lock. If there were any spider webs on it, he wouldn’t take the chance to climb it.

  He was winded by the time he ran up the tower stairs, and he had a new admiration for the men and women who had done it for a living. If there were any left alive and he had the chance to meet them, he would have to tell them about this.

  When he reached the highest platform, Jed pulled his binoculars from his backpack and focused on the lock. What he saw made him want to be sick. He felt his stomach acid rise in the back of his throat. Something had gone wrong at the lock, and if he was right, there was about to be a terrible disaster.

  If it was six years ago, he would have found a computer and searched for anything that would tell him how much pressure the gates of the dam could withstand. Everything raced through his mind at once. How deep is the water? How much pressure is there on the dam? How many millions of gallons was he looking at? Most of all, he wanted to know what would happen if the dam broke? How far downstream would the water travel?

  One thing he was sure of because he had seen it for himself. The water level of the lake was higher than he had ever seen it in his whole life, and as he watched he saw it lapping over the top of the dam. Worse yet, it had already broken through the first gate, and the place he and the colony had crossed that was full of bodies of the infected was now full of water. Science was never Jed’s strongest subject in school, but for the first time in his life he wished it was.

  He shut his eyes and thought about something that made him feel tired, like he wasn’t sure he could take much more of the deaths that he had seen. Watching his best friend eat a candy bar and then dying minutes later was something that seemed to be sitting at the front of his mind, and every waking moment since then he had been forced to look past it. Forced to ignore it because his life and the lives of others had to go on. What other choice was there? Jed knew that he had taken it personally, and he knew he was taking responsibility for all of the people in the colony. That’s why he felt so much dread at the moment. Something told him he was about to lose someone again.

  When he opened his eyes, he knew instinctively what he would be able to find if he could search the internet. The dam was going to break, and it was going to break soon. Millions of gallons of water would be released with more pressure behind it than he would be able to calculate even if he knew how. And the worst part was that he didn’t need to do the math to know it would send a raging torrent of water and bodies speeding downriver toward the colony. Water and bodies…and spiders.

  If he was winded when he reached the top of the tower, he would normally be winded running down so many flights of stairs, but he didn’t notice. He made the last turn on the stairs and took so many at the same time that he could have sprained an ankle or even worse, broken a leg. He gave the ground covered with spider webs a wide berth and ran as hard as he could, and he prayed that he could get there in time.

  He heard the sound of the dam bursting long before he felt it. It sounded like a massive cannon or the explosion of a large bomb. Even after the initial sound waves rocketed past him, the rumble of the water escaping in such a vast quantity was enough to make him feel it in his chest. The vibrations reached his feet not long after, and it was strong enough to make him change course away from the river of water that grew like a huge fist getting ready to smash everything in its path.

  A glance back toward the river made his heart sink. He saw it pass by in the narrow canal that fed the Cooper River, and it was like seeing a tsunami from the side. It rose into the air higher than any wave he had ever seen as it rushed downstream. He knew he would never make it in time. His only hope was that the people of the colony would hear it coming and evacuate the oxbow island. Better yet, if they heard the explosion in the watchtowers they had built and everyone was warned in time, they would have plenty of time to get everyone across the bridge and away from the riverbanks. They could even gather up some of their new supplies as they evacuated.

  As he became more and more winded, counting the seconds and the minutes since he had seen the wave go by, he started to understand that it had probably already reached the island. He was still close to a half hour away from the bridge, and the wave only had to travel in a straight line. His mind pushed him on, and it even created scenarios in which the water crested and dissipated before it reached the island. He could visualize it so well. The water would crest the banks on both sides of the river. It would lose all of the energy that had built up as it pressed against the dam. By the time it reached his island, it would be nothing more than a river that was running at a faster pace.

  Then his mind filled in the painful blanks. All of those bodies in the water…all of those bodies would be carried like dangerous debris, some being pushed ahead at high speed and some being carried along in the current. When the bodies reached the oxbow, they would fill up the place where the water passed under the hanging bridge, the river would swell in the curve of the oxbow, and the wave would wash over the island. Even if it didn’t totally flood the colony, it would deposit how many millions of spiders, and how many of the infected? They would be dead, but just like the spiders, they would be biting.

  Ten minutes from the island he was still trying to find a place where he could turn north to head for the hanging bridge. Before the dam broke he would have been able to go straight for the bridge, but now he was being forced to run his parallel course because the water had crested so far above the banks that it had flooded fields almost a mile from the river. If it was flooded a mile away, what was it like at the center?

  He instinctively knew that he wouldn’t reach them in time to warn them.

  ******

  The colony had all three watchtowers manned, and they were concentrating on the wooded areas on all sides of the river. The newest tower was the tallest, and the man seated at the top had a view for miles to the south where he could see smaller hordes closing in behind a larger group that had already been formed by small groups catching up with the others. He thought it was absolutely great that they were all leaving the forests.

  To his left he had a clear view downstream on the Cooper River. The only real reason to watch that area was to keep track of traffic. They needed to know if there were still many infected walking out of the woods and falling into the river. To his right he had an equally good view upriver. He tended to check that direction more often than downstream because anything that fell into the river could wash up onto the island. The bank of the island on that side had been fortified with sharpened stakes that were buried in the mud. If something washed up, it was likely to become impaled on the stakes, and they could dispose of it before it could reach solid ground.

  There was a boom in the distance upriver, and the watch immediately focused his binoculars on the river to his right. The watch heard it in the second tower too, but he didn’t have the angle that would let him see the water too far upriver. They got the attention of the man in the third tower and all he could do was raise his hands and shrug his shoulders to let them know he had no idea what it was.

  Anyone who lived in South Carolina before the infection when there were the occasional earthquakes knew that it was common to hear a booming sound rather than to feel the vibrations, and the watch pulled out a notebook and checked to see what time it was. He made a brief note about what he had heard, put the notebook back in his pocket, and put the binoculars back to his eyes.

  When he saw that the water was cresting the banks of the river, he knew something was terribly wrong. They weren’t experiencing heavy
rains, so there was only one reason the water level would be rising. He realized that the level wasn’t just rising, it was rising very fast. There was also a large number of bodies in the leading edge of a wave that was moving ahead of the rising water, and he felt the blood rush from his face when he saw that the wave was growing in height. Judging by the speed and size of it, the wave would reach them in five or ten minutes at the most.

  Among their newly discovered caches of supplies they had found flare guns. For obvious reasons they couldn’t be used for many situations, so the watch captains had agreed on the meaning of different colored flares. If the flare was green it meant living people were coming, and they would send armed squads to the bridge. If the flare was blue it meant infected were near and to send the squads to the bridge with the likelihood that they would need to shoot the infected. If the flare was red, it meant to climb a tree as fast as possible. The watch chose red.

  The flare would have been more visible at night, and the reaction time of the colony was slowed by the canopy of trees blocking the view of the sky. Word of mouth wasted precious seconds while members of the colony were forced to convince the others that they saw a red flare. People reacted much faster when the other two towers also shot red flares. Over forty people found trees and climbed. Some climbed the watchtowers because they had ladders and the platforms could hold several people. No one was left on the ground by the time the wave washed over the island.

  They were like people on news programs back in the days before the infection, and even on the first few days when people thought they could climb to get away from the chaos. They gasped with surprise when they saw the water cross over everything below, their supplies, camp sites, tents, food, stoves, and everything they had so gratefully uncovered on the island. Those people who could see the upstream side of the oxbow watched with shock as the bodies of the infected piled up against the dozens of sharpened stakes that had been shoved into the mud. The stakes did their jobs, and as bodies were added to the growing piles, more bodies were stopped against them. Hundreds of the infected squirmed and wrestled to free themselves from the tangle. Their arms and legs waved in the air, and their jaws snapped at each other.