The Infected Dead (Book 7): Scream For Now

by Howard, Bob

  A few of the bodies were pushed over the piles by the water, but they could be dealt with later. They were so waterlogged that they weren’t going to be a threat. None of them could walk, and they weren’t strong enough to lift their soggy arms and crawl. There was also enough water that the current under the bridge lifted some of the bodies onto the bridge. That was going to be more difficult to dispose of, but it could be done. The problem was that they also piled up under the bridge until no more could pass through. On the oxbow curve around the island the bodies were deposited in such large numbers in the first five minutes of impact that they clogged the river like a drain. A dam formed across the first curve in the oxbow, and that forced more water to cross the island instead of going around it.

  The colony members didn’t know how long they would need to stay in the trees, but they knew they couldn’t go down until the current decreased. From their places of safety, most of them couldn’t see that the oxbow had become blocked, so that meant the river would probably continue to build in height against the wall of bodies until it crested the island permanently.

  As they passed word from survivor to survivor, it was the watch captains who had to make the decisions. Jed was away from the island, and Ben had died, so the colony turned to the watch captains to tell them if it was safe to climb down into the shallow water to try to retrieve supplies before they were lost forever.

  It was impossible to work together to make the decisions because they were spread too thin. One of the best known and respected families in the colony was the Lee family. Two brothers, a sister, and two cousins made them one of the largest families. Needless to say, they had been more considerable in number when the infection began. When Jason Lee began to climb down, his brother and sister were close behind. Their decision caused others to do the same. Before long almost everyone, over forty people, were either knee deep in the rushing water or barely above it.

  Everyone thought Maureen Lee screamed because there was an infected dead in the water, and the instinctive reaction of her brothers, her cousins, and every other man was to rescue her from the infected. That was why they let go of their trees and rushed in her direction.

  Then there were more screams. Even the people who were still above the water screamed. They let go and fell into the water as other colony members mindlessly tried to climb the trees to escape the pain they felt on their arms, legs, backs, necks, and in their hair. They wildly scratched at their skin and tore away bleeding strips along with handfuls of hair. Many were already trying to breathe past swollen tongues. Some from the allergic response to spider bites, some from the venom, and some from the spiders that were biting the insides of their mouths.

  There was some cooling, momentary release from the fiery agony of thousands of spider bites as the victims fell face first into the rushing water, but it was short lived. When they tried to stand up again they found that they couldn’t.

  It was over in fifteen minutes. That was all it took for the screaming to stop. Then there was only the sound of the rushing water and the groaning from the piles of the infected on the upriver side of the oxbow island.

  Mark Howell had stayed in the tower after climbing up to join the watch who was the first to see the onrushing disaster. He could tell by the strength of the current that it was going to stay bad for a long time, maybe even forever. The water was rapidly changing the course of the river. The oxbow island was becoming nothing more than a submerged sandbar with trees sticking out of it. In a year, there would be no evidence that there had ever been an island there. Mark knew that was just the same story in the history of every river. The one thing that was different about this story was the webs that were forming so fast below his feet that his view of the water below was already blocked.

  Thirty minutes later the web was less than a foot below the tower platform, and Mark said a prayer of thanks for having brought his gun with him. One shot meant he wouldn’t suffer, and he wouldn’t become an infected dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rescues

  At dawn the gray sky and steady drizzle made their joints ache. Sim rolled over and lifted a corner of their makeshift tent. The light that filtered through the tall grass and shrubs was faint at best, but they had made it through the night undetected.

  “Why aren’t we wet?” asked Jean.

  They didn’t have a weather resistant tent and had used a tarp to erect their only protection from the rain.

  Tom mumbled something about baseball fields having really porous drainage so the fields would dry faster between games.

  Everyone else jumped. They had turned on a flashlight literally every fifteen minutes through the night to see if Tom had regained consciousness.

  Jean turned hers on again and aimed it near Tom’s head. She saw that his eyes were open, and he appeared to be lucid.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Tom made an attempt to talk, but his voice came out in a croak. Iris leaned over and lifted his head far enough for him to take a sip of water.

  “Glad to see you back with us,” she said.

  Tom gave it a second try, and this time he was able to get the words out.

  “I’m in a minor league baseball park. Wake me up when I’ve made it to the big leagues.”

  He shut his eyes again, and they thought he went to sleep until they saw the corner of his mouth stretch into a grin.

  “Jerk,” said Jean. “How about a big shot of sedative so you can really sleep? You can dream you got called up by the Braves.”

  He opened his eyes again and then tried to sit up on his own. The tarp was too low for him to manage it, so he settled for propping himself on his elbow.

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Kathy, Hampton, Cass, Colleen, and Ed went out to scout the ballpark because we don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here,” said Iris. “That was last night, and they haven’t come back.”

  Tom’s eyes darted between the others in the tent and he did a mental roll call.

  “You didn’t mention the Chief. Is he…?”

  “He’s okay, or at least we think he is,” said Jean. “He was hurt in the crash and made it all the way into the ballpark before he dropped over. He’s a tough one.”

  Iris added, “He had a bump on his head the size of an egg, but when the others didn’t come back he went to find them. Now we’re worried because he hasn’t come back either.”

  Tom could see the worry on their faces, but he also saw the way they were keeping their chins up. The last thing they needed was for Tom to react the way the Chief had after he regained consciousness. They knew there was no way to stop him from going, but they should have tried. Concussions could be a tricky business. The Chief may have found himself in a bad situation and passed out. Iris worried that she would never know.

  The wind picked up and Sim grabbed at the edges of the tarp to hold it down.

  “Wait a minute. Does anyone else hear that?” Iris had her head cocked to one side, listening to something. The steady thumping of rotors was a welcome sound.

  Iris didn’t know who else would be flying a helicopter near the baseball stadium, so she took a chance that it would be a Navy VH92A. Tom needed to be checked out at their hospital even though he was awake and more stable. It would be worth the risk even if it was someone else.

  She threw back the tarp and squinted her eyes at the rain that sprayed her face. The familiar shape of one of their Navy helicopters was just beyond the left field wall. The pilot was hovering over the wreckage of the executive Sikorsky, and he was letting his aircraft rotate on its axis so they could search outward. Iris knew that you have a greater chance of being rescued after a crash if you stay near the wreckage and that any search grid would work outward from that spot.

  She waved her arms in the air even before the helicopter was pointed straight at their location, and her heart almost leaped into her throat when the pilot stopped rotating. The nose dipped slightly downward, and he app
lied a small amount of power to nudge them the short distance to center field. The wind whipped the tarp too much to hold it in place, so Sim just tried to keep it over Tom.

  There were a few infected falling over the railings from the stands in left field. Where they had been for the last day was anyone’s guess, but it bothered Iris that the Chief was still out there if the infected were too. She tried to be positive by thinking that it was the infected that were at risk if the Chief was sneaking around the stadium, but one thing about being older was the way time helped to develop and refine gut feelings. She didn’t feel like the Chief was out there. She didn’t think the Chief would have abandoned them, but she didn’t feel his presence anymore. She tried unsuccessfully to push that feeling back, but when her eyes met Jean’s she saw the same thing Jean could see in hers.

  The side door of the helicopter was open, and several soldiers dropped to the ground with a stretcher for Tom. He waved off the stretcher, but he was happy to let two of them get under each of his shoulders. Iris signaled for one of the other soldiers to come to her, and she asked him to shoot the infected. He yelled over the helicopter noise that they didn’t need to, so she pulled him closer and told him the Chief was still out there somewhere. She didn’t need to explain what she meant. If he was somewhere in the ballpark, there would be less infected for him to worry about.

  As they lifted into the air, Iris leaned as far as she could from the door and tried her best to see anything at all that would tell her where the Chief had gone. She saw the pilot was waiting for her to give him a thumbs up, and Iris couldn’t do it. Instead, she twirled her index finger in a circle, and the pilot gave her a nod. The pilot put the helicopter into a steep turn with the open door facing downward. He would give her one last chance to spot the Chief. She hoped it would be like one of those movies where the rescuer looks back one more time and sees the lost person waving. Nothing alive moved below.

  ******

  Jed had never run so far and so fast as he did when the dam broke, but he knew the entire time that there was no way he would outrun it. The release of pressure sounded like a cannon or thunder rolling away from him. When he reached the thicker woods that hid their colony so well, he saw water between the trees long before he could see the hanging bridge, and if he guessed right, getting close to the water was a bad idea.

  He stopped running and searched the floor of the forest for signs that he shouldn’t go closer, and it didn’t take long to see the milky webs already draping the trees like Spanish moss. If anyone survived the onslaught of the flood or infected that washed over the oxbow island, there was no way they would survive the spider bites. He listened and didn’t hear any screaming, and in his heart he knew that it was all over for his friends.

  Only a day ago they felt like they had finally gotten a break. Food, weapons, medical supplies, and real tents to live in, but best of all they had a place where they felt safe from the diseased creatures that had one goal. Now Jed didn’t even know where to go. He was rooted to where he stood, unable to turn away, and definitely unable to go forward.

  Anger started to build. At first it was blame. He blamed himself for not being there. He blamed himself for not realizing this could happen. He blamed himself for putting the colony in the path of certain death. He saw the faces of his friends, and then he saw them again as they would have been at the moment when they knew they were going to die. Over forty people, many of whom died from spider bites, and by now they were infected dead washing away with the river. The anger became his flood.

  Someone had caused this, and he suddenly wanted to get even with them more than ever. He might never find out where the infection had started, but he suspected that the person who knew how to summon the infected might also know something about how it all began. Regardless, if they weren’t calling the infected to them, the infected wouldn’t have filled the Pinopolis Lock with bodies. The spiders wouldn’t have found such a fertile breeding ground. Whoever was calling the infected should have to pay.

  Jed backtracked out of the woods and decided to follow the infected to wherever it was they were going. He had seen them going south to southeast for long enough to guess they were going toward Charleston. Whether it was to Charleston or somewhere further down the coast, he wouldn’t know until he got there.

  When he had left for the Pinopolis Lock earlier in the day, he would have taken supplies with him if he had guessed that he would be leaving for Charleston.

  “Hell,” he said out loud, “I would’ve taken the whole colony with me.”

  The ringing in his ears was incessant, and even though he had known people who swore they listened to church bells or symphonies that weren’t as loud as the ringing they had heard for years, Jed felt that it had gotten louder. It wasn’t just him, and it wasn’t just a normal case of something called tinnitus. It was a shrill sound that was coming from somewhere, and Jed wanted to know who was responsible for the deaths of his friends.

  The anger and adrenaline made Jed push himself hard for the rest of the day. It was strange to travel so far away from the territory where the colony had lived for years. They weren’t on the oxbow island for very long, but he had been in the woods above the Cooper River for his entire life. It was also strange to go so far without seeing any infected walking with him. His eyes moved left and right with every step. There were signs everywhere that showed the great horde had passed through before him, but he hadn’t gained on them yet.

  Jed heard a horn honking somewhere in the distance, but he didn’t know if it was in front of him or behind him because he wasn’t to a place where he could even see any roads. It was somewhere off to his right, but he was traveling as the crow flies, and not intending to just go west until he reached the interstate. After about an hour he could tell that he was closer and maybe not even as far away from the horn as he had thought. It was possibly a state road that he could use to walk the rest of the way to the interstate.

  He found the state road only a few minutes later, and the car was sitting on a spot where the road crested a hill. Even from a distance he could see infected crowding up against the car on both sides. Whoever was inside the car honking the horn was probably hoping someone would hear it and come to their rescue. The problem was that the few infected remaining in the area were being called to the car too.

  Jed checked behind him and didn’t see anything following him, so he slowed his pace a little and stayed on the road. When he was only about a hundred yards from the car, he picked a tree that had plenty of big branches and climbed. As he went up, he checked for branches that would allow him to cross to other trees if he was spotted by the infected. If they ever got you up a tree, they wouldn’t leave unless they were distracted by another victim or they couldn’t see you anymore, so you had to be able to travel across the treetops.

  He stopped climbing long enough to use his binoculars and saw there was definitely someone inside the car. What he couldn’t tell was whether or not the person inside the car was alive or an infected. Then again, he didn’t recall ever seeing an infected use the horn.

  Ben had been fooled by that once on Highway 17. He thought he was rescuing someone who was trapped in a car because there were infected pawing at the windows. He learned the hard way that the infected were drawn to the movement inside the car, and that they didn’t know the person inside the car was one of them.

  Jed made his decision when he saw the person inside this car try to get out, only to desperately struggle to get back inside and close the door. It was a kid. Jed wasn’t able to tell how old the kid was, but his guess was the kid couldn’t have been more than a baby when the infection started. That was an awful way to start your life. This kid had never known a normal world.

  It wasn’t an impossible shot from where he was. He only had to be careful to hit his targets accurately and not have one of the bullets go through an infected. If it did, it might take out a window on the car. A broken window meant they could get inside, or even worse the ki
d could be hit. Jed decided to aim for the infected on the other side of the car first. There were four on that side, and most of the time he could only see their heads anyway.

  His tripod was useless in a tree for keeping his rifle steady, but he used it anyway, and he was surprised that it helped with the weight of the AR-15. He exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. It was a better shot than he expected, and now there were three on each side of the car.

  While Jed studied his targets for the next shot, an awful thought crossed his mind. The kid tried to get out of the car once. If he shot the infected on the other side, the kid might try to make a run for it. If he did, Jed wouldn’t be able to cover him if he got too far from the other side of the car.

  He realized he was thinking of the kid as a boy, but he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look to tell if it was a boy or girl. The hair was long and shaggy, but kids didn’t get a lot of haircuts anymore.

  “Okay, kid. Let’s see if I’m right about you being a runner.”

  Jed took aim at the head of an infected on the side of the car that faced his tree. His second shot was as good as the first, and he switched to another target. He was happy with the way he had sighted in the scope on the rifle because he easily switched to the remaining infected on the driver side of the car and disposed of it.