by Howard, Bob
The birds continued to fall over the camp that had stood longer than military bases around the world. They fell until the base was almost completely covered with the white feathered bodies that flapped in pain over the backs of the people who had lived in the camp. Before sunset the swollen bodies of the people who had died from spider bites began to stir, and where they could get their feet under them, they managed to stand. By morning the former occupants of the camp were still standing, but they were covered by a milky white blanket, and the spiders moved from one body to the next reaping the harvest of an endless food source.
Sometimes nature manages to do things that man couldn’t do, and it seems to do it with less effort. Outside the perimeter of the camp the water pressure against the dam of bodies finally grew until the dam moved. It moved a little at first. It shifted at one end as a great mound of bodies was pushed aside. The water from the Wando River forced its way into the Cooper River carrying tons of bloated bodies downriver toward the harbor.
******
The designers of Patriots Point wanted the maritime museum to feature different kinds of ships, and while the Yorktown was the showpiece, plenty of tourists wanted the opportunity to see the inside of an old diesel submarine. A tour of the USS Clamagore gave people an appreciation for the brave sailors who served on her.
At a length equal to a football field, its size was deceptive because only a small portion of it could be seen above water. Despite its size, it was packed with machinery, weapons, and all of the systems necessary to support a crew of eighty men, so space was a luxury. The crew had to become adept at movement throughout the cramped spaces, but they managed to do so with efficiency. It wasn’t meant for men the size of the Chief.
There was no light when he opened his eyes. None seeped through cracks or under doors. It was silent and cool, but it had a familiar feel to it. Not knowing what surrounded him, the Chief stayed motionless. As far as he knew, any movement could be deadly, and he wasn’t the kind of person who would panic just because he was disoriented.
That faint smell of diesel fuel was what made him sense familiar surroundings. He had spent enough time on ships to remember waking up to that smell. His first impression was that he was in an engine room, but there were other smells masking the scent of diesel. Fresh paint. Cleaning products. New lubricants. When he processed all of the information it came back as only one possibility. He was inside a ship that had its history scrubbed away as it was restored to new condition.
The Chief thought about the different ships at Patriots Point and which one would fit the profile described by his senses. He could be in any one of them, because they had all gotten facelifts before the public was allowed to see them. The air was breathable, so suffocating wasn’t his first concern. To most people the pitch black darkness would be suffocating, but the Chief was intent upon sensing another clue.
The silence would have also made the average person call out into the void to learn if they were alone, but the Chief didn’t want to find out that his isolation was shared with the infected. Instead, he listened for the slightest of sounds, and that included breathing. Somewhere in the darkness, someone was trying to hold down fear, but the breathing would be the hardest thing to hide. They would hold their breath for as long as they could, but eventually it would come out faster than they wanted, and they would clasp a hand across their mouth. The attempts to quiet their breathing made it that much more ragged.
The Chief didn’t want someone to panic in the darkness because someone could get hurt. If they were armed, they could shoot at the first thing they heard. The Chief lifted one hand and almost delicately explored his surroundings. He began with the surface he was on. Someone had deposited him in a sitting position with his back against a wall. He found the floor and felt the cool raised patten of metal decking that allowed sailors to keep a grip with their feet even when a ship was pitching at sea.
After a minute of searching with one hand, he felt comfortable with using the other, and even though he had never been in a compartment exactly like this one, he was remembering a training exercise when he had made an exit from a submerged submarine. The thought crossed his mind that he would be fine with the idea of being inside one now unless there was an infected inside with him. He had to find a way not to scare the other person to death and to protect himself at the same time, but he had been thoroughly searched on the Yorktown, and anything useful had been taken. He decided he only had one choice, so he lowered a hand to the metal deck, aimed a fingernail downward and tapped.
Part of their survival had been the shelters, and part of it had been what they taught each other. Morse code had been one of their most entertaining classes, and they even had days designated when all communications had to be in code. Not everyone caught on, but not everyone was as serious about survival as the Mud Island Family. The Chief decided to use a prosign, or an abbreviated form of a word that would allow him to say more with just a few taps. He tapped, “dash dot dash dot dash,” the one word that meant a message was about to be sent, ‘ATTENTION’.
He didn’t expect it, but he heard someone relax and exhale. As a matter of fact, more than one person exhaled. A dim battery powered light turned on, and the Chief was amazed to be in a compartment with so many people. He was also overjoyed to recognize their faces, and he wanted to hug all of them. They were just as eager as he was to get in a neck hug, and it was generally a lot of bumping of heads in the confined space. They exchanged hugs and a few kisses, and managed to each get in a few words of welcome. When it all began to settle down, the Chief noticed in the middle of it all there was an extra little person who he didn’t know, and she was clinging to Cassandra.
“We have a problem,” said Kathy. “Besides the obvious, things are worse than we thought.”
“I picked up some of it before they knocked me out,” said the Chief, “but I get a feeling you have worse news than mine.”
******
Ed
When the Chief had shown up out of nowhere back at the boats, it wasn’t as if we didn’t expect him to rescue us. He always did. This time it felt wrong, and just a little too easy. The boat ride across the harbor had been the worst ride of our lives, and we were all bumped and bruised by the time we were manhandled out of the boats. We still had hope, though, because having him there was better than not knowing where he was.
After we discovered it had been a trap, we knew we had no choice but to go along with whatever our captors had in mind, and it seemed inevitable that we would make contact with the people on the Yorktown sooner or later anyway. We had hoped it would be under better circumstances, but that ship had sailed.
We were split up as soon as we arrived at the carrier, and we were all questioned separately by Ted Atwater. He got right to the point with what they wanted from us, but it was clear to him that we weren’t going to be able to make it happen. There wasn’t much sense in guarding secrets they probably already knew about, so we answered his questions. If anything, it seemed to be more in our favor for them to know that we really did have as much power at Fort Sumter as they suspected. The bright side, if there was one, was that Mr. Atwater was the kind of person who didn’t like to be intimidated, so he was also free with his information.
The ‘bell’ was what they had been calling the device at the top of the bridge. I told him we called it the ‘zombie-whistle’, and I thought he wouldn’t quit laughing. He thought it was too funny for my tastes, so I chose that moment to call him a murderer because of the survivors who had probably been overrun by the horde they had created. His laughing turned to a sneer, but then he actually expressed regret and attempted to explain why it was for the greater good.
Atwater told me how USAMRIID had come to possess the Yorktown, and in his mind, who was better able to deal with this infection than them? They had all of the resources they needed to summon the infected to come closer so they could be exterminated. All they needed was the aerosol delivery system, and we had the helicopt
ers. He explained that they planned to release an agent that would produce death in seconds after contact with an infected, and the agent was effective in such a small amount that there would be enough to eradicate the entire population. The minor problem was that it would have the same effect on living people as it did on the infected.
When I challenged their right to kill the living in order to eliminate the infected, he tried to assure me that once they had eliminated enough of the infected, they would be able to more selectively control who they sprayed. He envisioned a time when living people could walk around with aerosol spray cans targeting the infected. Yes, there would always be collateral damage, but it was also a humane way to die. Atwater was practically excited at the implications when he explained it.
“Imagine it, Mr. Jackson. We could even use it after the infection is over. When someone would die of natural causes, we wouldn’t need to use blunt force trauma to ensure they stayed dead. We would simply spray them with the agent.”
Listening to him had been like sitting in the front row of a theater during a B rated movie. At least it was until he got down to business about how we were going to give them the helicopters, or we were going to watch them go to Fort Sumter and take them from our dead friends. That was when I knew we had a worse problem than we had known. He told me they had someone inside Fort Sumter who was ready to release the agent, and it would kill everyone within minutes. I thought about Jean, and I was numb from head to toe at the thought that I couldn’t do anything to warn her.
I was blindfolded again and practically carried to my new prison. When they dropped me down through the hatch and closed it behind me, I was glad to find Cassandra and Colleen were already waiting with our new addition, Matilda. She said to call her Mattie, but it felt too much like I had Molly here with me.
Cassandra and Colleen had learned the same things I had, but Atwater had given a little more information about his people inside Fort Sumter. He had laughed about how he and his cohorts had skillfully brainwashed an everyday couple into becoming deadly spies, and about how the Corrigans believed the people of Fort Sumter were the real bad guys. If they were asked, they believed us to be nothing more than brutal savages living off of what we took from other survivors. The very proof was evident by the fact that we had their helicopters.
Hampton and Kathy showed up next. Kathy was the most furious of the group because Ted Atwater found her so attractive he thought he could seduce her into helping them. She was untied and her blindfold removed to find he had arranged a hot bath complete with soap bubbles. She said there was an ice bucket with champagne chilling next to the tub, but the worst part was that there were two glasses. We considered it remarkable that he had survived the interview, but Kathy got some satisfaction out of describing it.
Despite our situation the encounter between Kathy and Atwater added some levity for a brief time. It lifted our spirits until Mattie told us she was worried about Mr. Jed. We listened intently as she explained through a child’s eyes how her parents had gotten sick and tried to hurt her. Mr. Jed saved her, and they were trying to find the bad people who had made the machine that was making the spiders crazy. Then she added, “Oh, and the ‘fected.”
My first thought was how much I hated the word spiders, let alone the way they seemed to crawl out of nowhere. Out of reflex my eyes glanced around at the maze of pipes and overhead conduits that snaked through the submarine, and I aimed one of the battery powered lights we had found mounted to the walls in each compartment toward a dark corner.
“Easy, Ed,” said Kathy. “The inside of this thing couldn’t be cleaner. Go on, Mattie.”
Mattie explained that Mr. Jed had noticed the spiders were angry everywhere, and he had pointed out the ‘white stuff’ that was hanging from trees and buildings. We had all noticed the abundance of webs but had chalked it up to a natural explosion of the insect population. More dead people meant more bugs. More bugs meant more things that ate bugs, and that was spiders. More spiders meant more spider webs. We had seen the same thing happen with rats, so we had expected it to happen with insects. What we didn’t count on was the theory from Mattie’s friend, Mr. Jed, that the zombie-whistle was also making the spiders crazy.
As a native of Georgetown, Hampton had spent enough time in the woods to learn the dangers of camping in the wrong place. He asked Mattie to describe the webs, and he heard enough to confirm that they were the most deadly species found in the area. He gave us a general description of their bodies and the violin shape on their backs, but he said you could almost always recognize them by their narrow legs. He gave us the bad news that it appeared they were the next population explosion as a result of the infection, and they probably would have kept to themselves until the population adjustment occurred if they hadn’t been disturbed by the zombie-whistle.
Out of instinct, we scrambled away from the compartment we were in when we heard it being unlocked. We turned off the lights and waited quietly. It was dark outside, so all we saw was a shape lowered then dropped into the compartment with us. We shrank into our corners and waited because we all thought the same thing. They had dropped an infected inside with us because we hadn’t cooperated, and they were using it as a way to get the Chief to give in. It might have worked on me even though I couldn’t have given them the helicopters if I had wanted to.
When we all heard the Morse Code prosign alerting us to an incoming message, I think we all thought it came from Kathy for a split second, but the collective sigh of relief from the group was the joint realization that we were back together again. We weren’t better off than we had been, but we had our most potent weapon assembled when there were enough of the parts present. We started working on a plan.
******
A flare from the Yorktown was supposed to tell Phillip and Denise whether or not to release the agent, but if they couldn’t be at a place where they could see a flare, they were instructed to release it no later than noon of their fifteenth day inside. The lockdown had taken away any opportunity they may have found to watch for a flare.
Going in on the first day they had learned that the outer doors were being sealed, and people wouldn’t be allowed to exit to the surface. They would be allowed to go outside through a tunnel that came out somewhere on Morris Island, but they had not reached that level of shelter access yet. They were given the opportunity to watch televised events on the harbor, but the televisions were only on for a few minutes at a time, and it wasn’t likely they would just so happen to be watching when a flare was sent up. They were told the broadcasts were only done as a way of keeping people happy with the confines of the shelter. Being underground could get to you after a while, but it was easier to accept when you were reminded of the situation outside.
The broadcasts were less frequent because they were so disturbing, and it was hard to watch as thousands more infected plunged over the edge of the bridge into the river. So, the Corrigans had counted the days. On the day of the planned release, they had anxiously worked on permission to get some fresh air outside, and the best they could do was hours behind schedule. That meant they would need to finish their shifts in the shelter, release the agents, and get out before it spread throughout the shelter complex. There were also far more people living in Fort Sumter than they had expected, and they hadn’t been the barbarians they were made out to be. They had their doubts, but they were set to carry out the plan until the announcement that had everyone frozen in place.
A detail of soldiers came into the laundry, and she wasn’t really surprised when they walked directly to her. She had already heard more than one person say that they had never seen the shelter go on lockdown before, and it had to be someone new they were looking for. They all knew she was the most recent addition to their work crew.
Denise was taken to the elevators and escorted directly to the command center. She had never spoken with Captain Miller, but she knew who he was. The tall, gray haired woman next to him was somewhat of a folk hero because she
was part of the inner circle that ran the shelter, but she couldn’t remember her name.
“Where’s your zombie-whistle?”
The question was delivered without preamble or courtesies, and she knew that they had found out about their plan. She also knew that Phillip was probably in position to release the agent and had only delayed because he didn’t know if Denise would make it out of the shelter in time.
As for Phillip, he knew that he wouldn’t. With an order for everyone to remain in place or be shot, he could still release the agent, but he couldn’t possibly make it from the shelter power plant to the tunnel without being seen. He could hear the soldiers not far from him. They were at the only exit to this part of the ventilation system. If he released the package of powder into the central air ducts in front of him, it would reach every room within the hour. Marshall Sayer had explained that there might be only one chance to destroy millions of the infected, and the lives of a few people were a small sacrifice. He wondered how it had come to this.
******
Jed didn’t need to see more than one of the spiders to understand what was about to happen. As he told the people at the picnic table so long ago, where you find one, you’ll find more. It had set up house in the corner of his cell, and for some reason it had crossed the confined space in the middle of the floor. Jed knew brown recluse spiders didn’t do that. He backed up to the door and screamed for someone to let him out, but if the spider hadn’t kept going, he would’ve stepped on it.
