by Howard, Bob
She was thinking of Jean as she walked around the next corner. She seemed to be the most worried because her husband was missing, but she was determined to have Kathy come back to find Tom on his feet, so Jean kept herself busy by nursing his wounds. It was like Iris didn’t have her eyes focused on things close to her as she thought about people far away, so she didn’t even try to stop as she walked straight into someone going in the opposite direction. The couple Iris ran into seemed almost frightened by the collision with her, but she recalled they had just been brought in a few days ago. Maybe they were still jumpy from being out in the open for so many years.
Iris made her apologies, and they did the same. Everyone said they weren’t watching where they were going. Then they excused themselves and went their separate ways. It had happened every day back when the world was normal, so she wondered why it was bothering her now.
She shook it off and continued on her way to the command center in the communications room. She was checking again to see if anyone had anything new to report. A radio call, a sighting by a search party, anything that would give them a clue. The only news they had in the last few days was about the wrecked boat that had appeared on the same morning the helicopter had picked them up at the ballpark.
A wrecked boat was only news if it was a wreck they didn’t already know about. There were wrecks everywhere, but the Army had sufficient resources to monitor changes around the harbor. This one had a bright red hull that stood out in the morning sun, and it had to have wrecked during the night. Iris couldn’t think of how it might be connected to the Chief, but he was somehow bigger than life, and she felt like he was involved in everything that changed if there was no other explanation.
Captain Miller saw her come in and walked toward her. It gave him the opportunity to make eye contact and answer her question before she asked him. He was at a loss for words that could make Iris or anyone else feel better. He had all of the helicopters in the air, and there was so much happening where the horde was making contact with the bridge that he needed to have at least one of them monitoring the situation.
He was just about to give her his best ‘good news bad news’ report when Sim appeared behind Iris. Iris had been so intent on her thoughts that she not only ran over those people in the corridor, she hadn’t heard Sim calling out to her.
Sim had his forehead so furrowed that it looked like someone had drawn lines across his face with a paint brush. He obviously had something on his mind other than asking for updates about Cassandra, which was what Captain Miller would have expected if not for his expression.
“Do you know those people? The ones you ran over back there?”
He hooked a thumb back in the direction of the hallway.
Iris almost shook her head, but the names came to her just as they always did.
“Just their names,” she said. “They were picked up on Johns Island a few days ago. Why?”
Sim shook his head and asked, “How long have I been here at Fort Sumter?”
Iris and Captain Miller were both confused by the way the questions went from one thing to another, and Sim appeared to be just as confused.
“Slow down,” said Captain Miller. “What’s up? What’s that couple have to do with how long you’ve been here?”
Sim shrugged his shoulders and said, “How come I never knew that a Senator had died here, but they did?”
The death of Senator Thornton wasn’t exactly a topic of conversation around the dinner table, especially because his actual death had happened before they had come to Fort Sumter, but mostly because it was accompanied by the death of one of the kids being watched over by the Mud Island Family. It was painful to lose anyone, but the kids were beyond comprehension. Whitney and Olivia didn’t need for it to be a topic of conversation around Fort Sumter, but Captain Miller was confused about how the topic connected with the newcomers. He couldn’t have made his voice sound more deadly when he got Sim to stop talking.
“Don’t ask me about that again, Sim, but I need to know in as few words as possible what they said.”
Between the expression on his face and his choice of words, Sim knew he had walked into a minefield, and he did what almost anyone would do. He stopped talking and stared into Captain Miller’s eyes. What he saw was something dangerous.
He hesitated as he searched for the right words, and he knew his friend wanted him to cut out everything extra and get to the bottom line. They had said something about the Senator who died at Fort Sumter.
“They asked me if I knew when the Senator died, or how long ago he died. Something like that.”
Sim wanted to ask Captain Miller why the question had him ready to self-detonate, but he could see his answer didn’t make him any happier.
Iris had never learned the details. She only knew enough to know the Chief considered it to be one of his biggest failures, and there was nothing she could do to make him feel better about it. It was just left alone as one of the tragic losses that came along with the infection. She put a hand on Captain Miller’s forearm, and he looked down at it like he had forgotten she was standing there. He also didn’t realize that he was squeezing Sim’s wrist so hard it had to hurt.
“Sorry,” he muttered and seemed to shake something off. “Sim, I’m sorry, I have no right to do that to anyone.”
Sim could see something new in the Captain’s eyes, and he wasn’t sure what to say, but he didn’t need an apology.
“Jim, I’m sorry, man. There’s obviously more to this than I realized.”
Captain Miller held up his hand in a gesture they had used on patrol together when he wanted to let everyone know it wasn’t safe, and he swiveled his head to see who might be close enough to hear. Sim stopped talking and leaned closer to Captain Miller and Iris so the Captain could speak in a lower voice.
“This is very important, Sim, so I want you to think about your conversation with them. Did it sound like they knew it was a long time ago?”
When Sim thought about it, he knew exactly what his impression had been at the time.
“No, as a matter of fact, I felt like they thought I had actually known the Senator here at the shelter. I got to meet the President up in Ohio, but I didn’t know anything about no Senator.”
Captain Miller was about to say something else, but it was Iris who signaled for quiet this time.
“I know what’s been bothering me about those two,” she said. “Forget the obvious clues like the condition of their clothing and shoes, their recent haircuts. The man didn’t need a shave when we found them, and he didn’t have a used razor in his backpack. All of those things can be explained away, even the fact that they don’t appear to be starved. But one thing is different about them than anyone else we’ve brought in. They ask the wrong questions.”
“How did they react when you said you didn’t know about the Senator?” asked Captain Miller.
“Now that you mention it, they suddenly remembered they had to be somewhere,” said Sim.
“Who processed them?”
This time the question was to both Sim and Iris, but they both answered together.
“Jean.”
******
The third phase of the plan to destroy as many of the infected as possible had turned out to be the most difficult despite the fact that the construction of the container wall on the bridge and the installation of the huge dish required the most manpower. Finding something that would eliminate them, besides blunt force trauma, was hard enough, but once it was discovered there was the question of the delivery vehicle. Dispersing it in a way that would make it reach enough of the infected would require ingenuity, because they didn’t have the luxury of finding and testing their weapon on a large enough population of the infected.
If they had discovered a sound wave that summoned the infected and then destroyed them, they would have done so from the start, but the only thing Anton Mikhailov could isolate was a nerve agent that worked the same way on the living as it did the
infected. One microscopic grain of the toxic powder was enough to turn the brain to jelly. When he demonstrated it for Marshall Sayer and Ted Atwater, they weren’t impressed. As a matter of fact, they told him the only reason the Russians didn’t know the US already had that nerve agent in their possession was because it was an illegal weapon. Mikhailov was fairly sure the Russians already had it in their arsenal too.
The problem wasn’t just dispersal in combat. It was safe handling and storage of the agent. A few ounces were enough to contaminate a million gallons of drinking water, and Marshall wasn’t too happy to have it on his ship. He told the scientists to find another way to eliminate the infected.
Several weeks of research on the tissue extracted from the bodies of the infected always led back to the same conclusions. The brain tissues were producing neurotransmitters that shouldn’t be produced in a dead person, and muscles were responding that shouldn’t be. Those were not conclusions that could be used to eliminate them, and the first of the infected to respond to the summons were already arriving. The camp at the SPA reported that the infected that usually hung on their fence had left, presumably in the direction of the Yorktown. As they arrived, most of them found their way into the current of the river, but many stumbled up the Arthur Ravenel Bridge and pushed against the steel walls of the containers.
The infected pushed on the containers and Marshall Sayer pushed at Anton and Dr. Williams, but the scientists were as immovable as the steel walls. Their problem wasn’t a lack of understanding. It was a lack of time, and they told their boss he had to either get on board with helping them find a way to disperse the agent, or he could get himself a hammer and go back to blunt force trauma. It was Ted who persuaded him not to feed them to the infected. For one thing, they needed the doctors, and for another, Ted knew he was likely to be the next one in line after the doctors were gone, probably being blamed for not stopping Marshall from killing the doctors.
Marshall finally gave in and met with them to talk about what would work, and they explained their best plan. The agent would be effective over a large area even if it was windy. It was so potent that it could be dispersed as a fine spray that the victim wouldn’t feel it on the skin. The brain would be destroyed in seconds. The problem with spreading such a potent agent was that the persons given responsibility for spreading it wouldn’t know if they were being contaminated until they began dropping over, so they had to be wearing protective gear, and hopefully dispersing the agent from above the infected in order to maximize coverage.
The picture began to become clearer that the scientists were talking about using something Fort Sumter had but they didn’t. They needed the helicopters, and getting them wasn’t going to be as simple as asking for them.
******
Captain Miller had been a career military man, and he wasn’t one to sit around and wait for the next bad thing to happen. He didn’t realize how much he had depended on the Chief’s input until he didn’t have him to share his thoughts with. The Chief was able to balance the military and civilian needs so well that Captain Miller was able to focus on the military logistics. Right now he was torn between those needs, but he knew he had to move fast. He didn’t know exactly what he was dealing with, but he didn’t have time to worry about feelings being hurt.
His first order went out through the entire shelter, and he commanded all civilian personnel to remain exactly where they were. The stunned population stood in silence as they listened to his very stern warning that any civilian moving within the shelter would be considered an enemy combatant and shot on sight. The soldiers on duty were armed, and the second command was directed to them to draw their weapons and hold all civilians in place. Off duty personnel were to arm themselves immediately and assemble with on duty soldiers.
Not in the entire existence of the colony inside the Fort Sumter shelter had there been such orders, but that was likely to be the reason why it worked so well. Everyone knew that something extraordinary had happened to cause such an event. Throughout the shelter the soldiers did their jobs, and the civilians who had come to know the soldiers as their protectors were frightened.
Captain Miller desperately wanted to key the microphone and offer assurances to the people who were hearing his voice. He didn’t have to see their faces to know that they reflected their fear, but most of all the betrayal. As a struggling outpost of humanity, relationships had grown between the two groups. There were marriages, and some of the older civilians had practically become parent figures to the youngest soldiers. It was a close knit community, and right now they looked at each other with suspicion. The worst part was that they didn’t even know why.
Captain Miller continued his announcement with instructions for the medical staff, military and civilian, to evacuate the shelter. It was painful to single out anyone to survive while leaving others to die, but Captain Miller knew one of the first rules of engagement with an unknown enemy was to ensure your medical support system was in place to minimize the extent of casualties. As he finished that part of the order he lifted his eyes to the clock in the command center and wondered how much time he had, or if he was already too late.
The next order that was broadcast over the shelter’s intercom system was given with the fear that he might already be too late. Everyone could tell he was out of breath when he spoke.
“Effective immediately, do not eat or drink anything. I repeat, do not eat or drink anything. If you have something in your hands that can be consumed, put it down.”
He probably didn’t need to say more, but for added effect he yelled, “NOW.”
There were plenty of people in the mess hall being watched by armed guards, but they had already stopped eating when their appetites had disappeared with the first order. The people waiting for further orders behind the serving lines backed away from the food as if it was going to attack them. Throughout the shelter, there were similar reactions, but the gravity of those first orders had largely stopped people from doing anything that involved movement of their hands.
An hour earlier he had his revealing conversation with Sim and Iris, but he had moved quickly in sixty minutes. He located Jean and the team of processors assigned to monitor the couple that had been brought in from Johns Island. They all agreed the Corrigans had walked a fine line between suspicion and believability. They were smart enough to have survived, but they had failed some of the tests that were given to survivors at times when they didn’t even know they were being tested.
It was easy to catch someone off guard with a test because there were so many jobs being performed around the shelter at any given time. All new people were given small chores on their first day, and everyone who had already been processed knew about the tests.
Denise had been given kitchen duty and because they were found on Johns Island, the processors knew exactly which test to give her. All smiles and trying to fit in with the rest of the survivors, she had arrived in the kitchen and tied a crisp white apron around her waist. Expecting to open a can and prepare food from storage, she was handed a rabbit that had been trapped that morning. Anyone who had survived six years in an area with dwindling supplies would have had the opportunity to clean a fresh kill. She stared at the rabbit as if she didn’t know which end was which. One of the other women stepped up and showed her how it was done, but her revulsion wasn’t something she could hide.
The processors notified Jean, and she added the information to their profile folder. Jean had just received the report about a similar test given to Phillip. Captain Miller found her in the infirmary, and she was scanning the report. It said Phillip Corrigan was taken on a routine run with a boat because their story said they had escaped from Mt. Pleasant by boat. He had failed every aspect of safe boating, and if it had been a normal world he would not have survived as a recreational boater. When Captain Miller appeared at her door, she somehow knew why.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet. It depends on one thing. Did
you read their property inventory?”
Jean realized she had glanced at it, but maybe things had gotten too easy for them since they had returned from New Orleans. She should have viewed everything as a potential threat, but unlike the time she had risked her life trying to disarm an explosive device on a dock, she hadn’t listened to any silent alarms that should have rung when they brought in the Corrigans. She thought about their inventory and heard the alarms now.
Every survivor they found had something personal they clung to as a token of their former lives. A picture, a cross, a wristwatch, a pocket knife, or anything else that had played a part in their survival. There was always something, but the Corrigans had nothing of sentimental value. Some people still had their wallets with their drivers license in it, but the main thing was there was always something that meant they had clung to humanity, clung to their survival.
Jean slipped the list out of the folder and held it where she and Captain Miller could both see it together. The Corrigans had both been carrying backpacks, and there were the expected survival items everyone tried to find, but the processors who listed the items had done a good job making notes in the margins, and several things were obvious. Jean was embarrassed to have ignored them.
Each backpack had contained a box of matches, and the Sergeant who itemized the inventory had taken the time to note that each box was labeled to hold fifty matches, and each box contained exactly fifty matches. The odds against having two unused boxes of matches were unquestionably high.
Jean scanned ahead on the list, her eyes searching for one thing. She found it and checked the note next to it.
“Why didn’t I see this?” she asked as she put her finger on the note.
Captain Miller saw that she had found they carried a bottle of aspirin. A survivor in the infected world would treat aspirin like gold because there were so many bad things that could happen without it. The note said the bottle still had its original plastic seal around the top.
