by Howard, Bob
“Anything,” said Phillip. “I’m sure we can be useful at something. Denise would be great in your medical center, or if you have plans for a school for the kids, she could do that. I can do anything you want. Just give us a chance to earn our keep.”
Marshall put on his reassuring face and used his best fatherly voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like there was even a chance you weren’t staying. I have something in mind for you. Something special that not just anyone could do.”
“Name it,” said Phillip.
“In due time, Phillip. For now I can use you both in a supervisory capacity. Take some time to get used to things. Get to know your way around the ship and get to know the people. When we’re ready, we’ll begin talking about your mission.”
That one word was both ominous and uplifting. Marshall had something big in mind for them, and they were going to do more than survive. They were going to be protected, and they were going to play a big part in their own survival. They didn’t know what part that would be, but Marshall knew what it was, and for now that was enough.
******
What had started out as a little spying by the Corrigans turned into a place for them to be. A place where they fit in with the rest of the people working for this unusual organization. They hadn’t known it was USAMRIID until they were officially given an orientation by Marshall. It seemed that Marshall Sayer had taken them under his wing. For whatever reason, he included them in his plans and made them feel like part of the family. Ted Atwater saw to it that everything they needed was theirs for the asking, and one of the rarest of commodities was news from the outside. They were far better informed than most of the people in the Yorktown.
In the early days, there wasn’t much news that was good, and that wouldn’t get better with time. There would just be less news. Any good news they heard was likely to be nothing more than a rumor. Before the Internet disappeared completely, they read more than once that a cure had been discovered and that the military was defeating the infected dead.
Locally, there was a report of the Navy evacuating the Naval Weapons Station at Goose Creek. A couple of Navy ships cruised into the harbor. One was a transport ship. The second was its escort, and Ted had identified it as an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. Ted told them it was like the business end of a rifle. You didn’t want one of them targeting you.
The two ships would normally have entered the harbor much more slowly, and they would have been accompanied by a harbor pilot. Denise asked Ted why they weren’t signaling the ships to let them know they were in the Yorktown. It just made sense for the military and USAMRIID to coordinate disaster relief efforts. He had explained that marshal law was in effect, and the country was essentially at war. The military knew they were there at Patriots Point, and if they needed anything from them, the Navy would let them know.
The ships showed no interest in the survivors on the Yorktown, and they appeared to be in a hurry. They used the channel on the other side of Castle Pinckney and cruised up the Cooper River past the former Charleston Navy Base. Ted told them that the base at Goose Creek had been overrun by the infected, and the Navy was pulling out while they could. The next morning the ships returned in a convoy with two other surface ships and a really big submarine.
The convoy was just passing Fort Sumter when someone opened fire from the old Civil War fort. The response was breathtaking. It had probably been one person with an M4 or an AR15 in the fort. The Arleigh Burke destroyer didn’t waste ammunition because it only needed to make its point. It responded with a short burst from one of its Phalanx 20 mm Vulcan cannons. The brick and mortar defenses of Fort Sumter disappeared in a cloud of dust where the shots had originated.
The only other shots that were fired were random rifle shots from the Marines stationed along the decks of the Navy ships. They couldn’t be blamed for losing their cool as they passed by the Battery. The infected leaned against the railings and stretched their hands out toward the living people who lined the decks of the ships. It was an insult to the proud Marines who wanted to personally strike back against a new kind of enemy.
When the news was discussed within the inner circles of the Yorktown, there was little doubt that the people of Fort Sumter were worth avoiding. There had already been guards posted at the stern of the Yorktown to give early warning if anyone from Fort Sumter crossed the harbor toward Patriots Point.
So it seemed the battle lines were drawn around the harbor. On one side was the city. It was ruled by the infected dead and the occasional people who ventured into a territory that was so dangerous that it was unlikely they survived their quests to locate supplies. On another side was Patriots Point. A safe haven to a small group of loyal citizens who had an equally small chance of saving the country for all Americans. They were willing to sacrifice comfort in order to stay alive long enough to find a cure for the infection. It was well known throughout the ship that the labs in the decks below them were close to that cure on the very first day. They just needed a little luck.
The other side of the harbor was Fort Sumter, and it became known as the enemy. Whoever they were, and no one ever knew for sure, they were ruthless and cared little for anything beyond their own survival. Fires burned at night, and according to people who knew for sure, there was almost always someone being sacrificed as the occupants of Fort Sumter lived out their lawless fantasies.
There was a rumor about a helicopter crash early in the first month before any of them had been allowed to go topside, but no one knew anyone who actually witnessed the crash. One part of the rumor was that it had been a presidential helicopter from the Marine-1 fleet, but neither Ted nor Marshall could confirm it.
The weeks passed slowly at first until time began passing in months. Routines became modified as supplies arrived from the depot USAMRIID had established at the State Ports Authority. A supply route between the port and Patriots Point had been established. The infected still arrived in large enough numbers to require an armed escort with every convoy of supplies, but gradually the USAMRIID compound at the port became the garrison it needed to be for the real mission to begin. The containers were emptied of their precious cargo, and plans were revealed about how they intended to strike back at the infected.
It was a three part plan, and every inhabitant of Patriots Point knew that each part had to work or the entire plan would fail. Part one was to eliminate all threats around the Yorktown. That included the infected dead and the living who would interfere with their endgame. The second part was the beacon. The beacon was discovered and developed in the labs of the Yorktown. When the discovery was made, the news spread like wildfire through the ship, and the survivors who lived and worked on board were allowed to celebrate for two full days. The beacon was essential to the third part of the plan. It would call the infected dead from hundreds of miles away, and they would stop at nothing to answer the beacon. Then, when all of the infected were within a few miles of the source of the beacon, the heroes on the Yorktown would release an agent that would destroy them all.
The agent was developed in the same laboratory where the beacon was discovered. Only a few members of the crew could go there, but everyone knew who was behind the work. The man responsible for the breakthrough that would save the remainder of mankind was Anton Mikhailov. The Corrigans were introduced to him once at a meeting, but the man remained aloof and distant from his fellow survivors. They were told he was a genius and to expect him to look down his nose at them. As far as they were concerned, he was entitled to be a snob. If he saved mankind, he deserved to be made king.
At the end of the first year, Denise and Phillip found themselves to be content with the way things had developed for them. They couldn’t believe the rest of the world had died around them while they had become part of the organization that would take back the planet. They strolled along the deck of the Yorktown enjoying the night air and discussing the meeting earlier in the day. Marshall had unveiled the pl
ans, and they were excited to be playing their part, but the timeline was hard to accept. They were ready to go now, but they had been told to expect it to take another five years, and that was without more delays.
There had been setbacks. Parts of the plan were dependent upon goals that were somehow in place before the outbreak of the infection, and that had bothered the Corrigans. They only spoke about it when they were alone on their nightly walks, and it had been hard to wait. They were both solidly behind the plans, but they hadn’t been part of the political establishment before the infection, and they didn’t just accept things on blind faith.
Phillip asked, “How could they have a plan for this so far in advance?”
“I asked Ted about that, and he said they had a list of possible disasters. One of them was a pandemic.”
“I’m sure they did,” he said, “but a pandemic that created zombies?”
“I saw the list, and it was on there, but Ted said they didn’t actually think there would be a zombie disaster. Ted said that planning for one would make them ready for a lot of things they hadn’t included on the list. He called it a generic plan.”
Phillip wasn’t totally sold, and Denise wasn’t either, but one thing they could agree on was that their doubts about their hosts didn’t change the world. They would still wake up tomorrow in a world dominated by zombies, but at least they would wake up.
******
Shootings became a nightly event at Fort Sumter, and many of the survivors in the Yorktown sat in the dark and watched as if they were at a drive-in theater. Firefights became so spectacular that it sounded like armies were waging war. It was a piece of real estate that had very little value because it was so difficult to resupply, but it was a place where the infected couldn’t go. The fighting escalated one night until there was a prolonged battle that was followed by total silence. It seemed that someone had won.
The official report given by Marshall Sayer was that two well armed gangs had fought over the fort and that the winners had somehow dug in and would be hard to dig out. He made a point to everyone that it wouldn’t change their plans. It just meant they would have to be watchful.
It seemed that the conflicts at Fort Sumter were not quite over as a convoy of Cuban gunboats attacked Fort Sumter at night. For the survivors on the Yorktown it was one thing to watch rival gangs fight for sovereignty over the little island, but it was still US soil, and the flag that flew on the gunboats wasn’t the stars and stripes.
Marshall Sayer surprised everyone when he wouldn’t allow his men to intervene. Patriots Point didn’t have the weapons it needed for a prolonged battle, but there were RPGs in the armory that could eliminate the gunboats with ease. Even Ted Atwater urged him to use the weapons, but Marshall told them he didn’t want to show their hand so soon. When the Coast Guard ship arrived to defend the fort, the spectators at Patriots Point had cheered for their fellow Americans, but Marshall ordered the Yorktown to go into lockdown just like it had for the first month.
Anger and frustration set in among the survivors at Patriots Point just as it appeared there was a celebration at Fort Sumter. Only Ted Atwater seemed to understand what was happening with his boss, but he didn’t share what he knew. All he would say was to be patient. When the helicopters arrived, everyone could see that Marshall was the last person who could be called patient, but Ted knew better than to say it to Marshall.
Phillip and Denise were as close to Marshall Sayer as anyone could be with the exception of his two old friends, Ted Atwater and Dr. Grace Williams, but the helicopters made him unapproachable for weeks. When he finally came out of his shell, he said he was better because he still had a plan. He called together his senior staff and told them he had hoped to use the helicopters in the final phase of his plan to stop the infection, but there was only one way to get them back. He announced that he wasn’t prepared to tell them how they would get the helicopters, but there was plenty of time over the next five years for that part of the plan.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Discovery
Contagion Extinction Level - Six Years Later
Somehow the years had gone by, and their beliefs had never wavered. Still, these people of Fort Sumter weren’t what they had expected. Everywhere Denise and Phillip went, all they saw were friendly smiles. There had been children at first, but for some reason they had left Fort Sumter. When Denise had asked where they had gone, an unassuming young lady had told her they were taken somewhere safer. There had been no attempt in the pleasant response to hide the truth, although the lady hadn’t volunteered why they were safer somewhere else.
There was an undercurrent of seriousness around the shelter that hadn’t been there before. They were still allowed to go almost anywhere, and they still felt like they were being watched, but part of that could easily have been their imaginations. After all, they were on a mission.
It had been easy to allow themselves to be found by a patrol from Fort Sumter. There was a small runway on Johns Island that was overgrown with weeds pushing themselves up through the asphalt, and it was a bumpy landing they would prefer not to repeat. The pilot assured them it was routine, and he had done it plenty of times. They were willing to take his word for it but glad they would only have to do it once.
From there they only had to avoid the infected while staying in the open, but in their briefings they had been shown maps of the flight paths most often flown by the helicopters. It was obvious that the helicopters were avoiding the Yorktown and their landing strip on the fairway of the golf course at Patriots Point. Johns Island was southwest of Fort Sumter and directly away from the Yorktown.
When the plane came to a teeth jarring stop in the tall grass, they barely had time to get clear of its wings before it was circling away and lining up for take off. The patrols from Fort Sumter had undoubtedly spotted the crushed grass from previous landings and knew that the Yorktown was using the small airport. They could have laid a trap for them, so the plan was to land and get some distance between themselves and any evidence that they were somehow connected with the airport.
Phillip had doubts about the plan when they saw how many infected were in the area. At first they thought the infected were drawn to the sound of the plane, but soon enough they saw the infected were all moving in one direction. The beacon was doing its job. These particular infected were never going to reach the source of the beacon, but they didn’t know where they were going or why. The irony wasn’t lost on the Corrigans that they were going in the same direction as the infected.
They found a barn that had been used for heavy machinery, and the ground was packed hard and bare in a large area around the front. It gave them some cover where they could hide from the infected while they waited for the sound of a Fort Sumter patrol.
Just as they hoped, it was only three hours before the unmistakable thumping of helicopter rotors pounded the air. They were moving quickly, and it seemed they would go right past them before they could even get out of the barn. When they came into the open with their arms waving over their heads, they didn’t count on finding over a dozen of the infected standing in the open area where they had hoped to be seen.
Denise turned to run back into the barn, but it was too late. They had practically knocked over several infected that were right outside the barn door, and the dead had already moved into position behind her. Phillip didn’t know if he should wave his arms at the advancing helicopters or try to help Denise. That was when they understood how helpless they had been. Neither of them had focused their training on hand to hand combat with the infected, and it showed. Denise was pushed over backward onto the ground and resorted to kicking frantically at the infected. Phillip was busy trying to get an infected to let go of his shirt. As he fought with the groaning creature’s rotten fingers, it advanced on him with its mouth stretched open.
Phillip went down when he backed straight into the infected that had caught Denise by her right foot. His weight all but crushed the fragile infected i
nto the ground. He found himself on his back, and Denise was kicking the infected that was on his legs in the side of its head. They hadn’t been this close to something trying to bite them since the first day, and when her kick snapped the head of the infected off of its shoulders, it landed squarely in Phillip’s outstretched hands. He caught it out of reflex and cradled it just like he had caught a football.
The teeth closed with an audible clack on the front of his shirt, and he felt the searing pain on his chest. Denise was on her feet and had jumped across the bodies to catch a handful of hair on the back of the creature’s head. She pulled the head backward and threw it in one motion, and Phillip screamed at the pain again.
Both of them had been so busy with their mistake that they weren’t aware of the heavy wind and the sound of urgent voices shouting instructions. Someone scooped up Denise from behind and practically carried her through the reaching arms of the infected that were drawn into the fray.
Two uniformed men had Phillip and were escorting him through, and several others were expertly clearing a path with machetes. The helicopter lifted away from the ground like a high speed elevator, and the Corrigans felt themselves being pulled to the floor by the force of gravity.
Denise saw the big red splash of crimson across the front of her husband’s shirt and immediately screamed because it was a death sentence. She tried to go to him, but there were still arms holding her back. Someone slid the door shut and the wind that had buffeted at them was gone, but she still couldn’t go to Phillip because another group of men had pinned him to the floor on his back.
What happened next had been so confusing and so out of place. While they held him down, one of the men gripped Phillip’s shirt in both hands and ripped it wide apart. Buttons flew away and Phillip screamed for them to stop. Denise just generally screamed with every ounce of energy she could muster.
