The Infected Dead (Book 7): Scream For Now

by Howard, Bob

  A guard appeared and immediately teased Jed about being afraid of little bug, but the man could see he was beyond afraid. He didn’t think he had ever seen a grown man become so frantic, but he was screaming that more were coming. The guard was in the process of getting the prisoner to calm down when he saw it for himself.

  Even though the cells were dimly lit, he could see something moving on the back wall of the corner cell. Until recently the doctors had kept the cells full of the infected, and there was never a reason to go in or out of the cell block unless it had to do with getting another of the vile smelling creatures for an experiment. He couldn’t see the web that filled the corner of the dark cell, but when the spiders erupted from the hole in the floor where it met the rusty bulkhead, their movement made it look like one animal climbing the wall. He shined his flashlight on it, and what he saw made him scream along with Jed.

  “Don’t try anything,” he yelled at Jed as he fumbled with the keys.

  “I don’t plan to, man. Just let me outta here. I don’t wanna die like this.”

  As soon as the lock opened, Jed was out the door and headed for the passageway out of the cell block. The guard was right behind him, but he was less concerned about guarding Jed and kept looking back over his shoulder as they ran. He could swear there were already spiders coming out of the cell he had just opened and running between the cells after them. Jed was going too slow for him and he decided no one would know that he had let him out of the cell. At the next turn Jed went straight, but the guard made a right and disappeared. Jed didn’t know, and he didn’t really care where the guard had gone. The guard made the mistake of going down a flight of stairs, and when he saw what was already filling that deck, he went back the way he had come, searching for a fire alarm pull station.

  Jed came to a door that he figured might be a way to the upper decks because it was so heavy, but when he pulled it open, he felt like he had gone into a different world. The lab was brightly lit with overhead fluorescent lights, and people worked at microscopes and other equipment he wouldn’t have recognized. In the far back corner he could see the isolation chambers, and behind the thick glass were rooms full of the infected. The lab technicians paused from their work and stared in his direction.

  “I think I saw this movie. First spiders, and now this. I’m on the wrong floor.”

  Jed didn’t even bother to close the heavy door, and this time he decided he would only go through doors that took him up. The main elevator opened as soon as he pressed the button, and he jumped inside. He furiously punched at the button that was supposed to close the door, and when it did and the elevator lurched upward, he backed into the far corner as if it would be safer there.

  Alarms sounded throughout the ship, and everyone did what they usually do. They turned to the person nearest to them for an explanation. The fact was, the security personnel on the ship never had drills, so they assumed it was either a fire drill or there were infected trying to board the ship. Either threat seemed to call for the same response, so everyone headed for the main flight deck. When the elevator doors opened, Jed came out of an unguarded elevator and joined in with the mass exodus to the outside.

  Below decks hundreds of people were already cut off by the spiders that were attacking instead of running. Their filaments trailed out behind them as they made their assault on the screaming people who were furiously running their hands through their hair to comb out the creatures that bit with such fiery pain. Within minutes the stairwells were blocked and the millions of spiders that had been breeding in the lower levels came out for food.

  Anton was inside an isolation chamber with Dr. Williams, and they didn’t hear the chaos in the lab until the alarm sounded and the revolving lights turned red. Through the glass they saw their assistants in their white coats slapping at their faces and inexplicably pulling out their hair by the roots. They watched from the safety of their hazmat suits and the closed isolation chambers as the people fell to the floor writhing in agony.

  They could stay inside the chamber indefinitely, but that was a bleak future at best. The spiders covered the lab personnel with webs so quickly that the room was blanketed in minutes. It was the fluorescent lights. The spiders didn’t like the lights, so they were building their webs to block out the light. It wasn’t long before the two doctors couldn’t see through the milky webs that covered their windows, but they could see all too well what moved inside them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  All Good Plans

  Contagion Extinction Level - Present Day

  None of us expected the submarine to move, but it was such a sudden lurch that we tripped or fell toward one side. It happened after we decided the answer to our escape had to be somewhere inside the boat. What if the people who restored her considered the possibility of someone being trapped inside? Stranger things could happen. When we talked about it, we realized what an insanely understated comment that had been considering the work was done on the sub before the infection. We agreed there had to be something onboard that would be useful, and we began our search.

  Two hours had turned up some interesting items that would come in handy later, like a hand operated generator with a solar panel. It would make a welcome addition to a survival pack, but considering the equipment we had in the shelters, it was like finding a book of matches. What we were hoping to find was an instruction manual labeled ‘In Case of Emergency’.

  We were spread out in the ship to keep from searching the same compartments as someone else, and we had found the sub to be much bigger than we had thought. We reported back periodically, but I think we were hoping to find someone had found the ultimate can opener. Once we regained our footing we all stopped and listened. There was nothing.

  We all made our way back to the control room under the hatch as if we expected the door to open next.

  “How much force would it take to make a ship this size move like that?” I asked.

  Cassandra and the Chief had the most experience with big ships, so we all looked expectantly at them for the answer. Cassandra shook her head, but it wasn’t because she didn’t know. It was because she couldn’t believe it had happened.

  She said, “I can’t think of anything that could have used that much force against the hull. At least not anything that could be out there.”

  “This thing weighs about fifteen hundred tons,” said the Chief. “The only thing I can think of that could move another ship like that would be a tugboat.”

  The Chief made his comment and directed it at Cassandra for confirmation. Her eyebrows went up.

  ******

  Jed worked his way free from the crush of bodies trying to get to the flight deck. There were too many people trying to get outside at the same time, and he had a different idea. He didn’t just want to get outside. He wanted to get off of the ship. The people climbing the stairs to the outside didn’t know what was chasing them, and they didn’t know it was already inside the ship with them.

  Everyone else was going up, so Jed chose to go to the back of the ship. There were still signs for tourists that pointed toward restrooms and gift shops or food courts, but for some reason he thought the one that said FANTAIL was the best choice. He was surprised to find himself outside on the back of the ship with the flight deck extended out over his head. The best part was the thick, two inch mooring line that was tied to the back of the fantail and extended all the way to the dock next to the old submarine parked behind the Yorktown. It didn’t matter that the two inch line had been added as decoration. It was something he could climb down.

  Jed had one leg over the railing and was reaching for the line when he was yanked back by the skin on the back of his neck.

  “Goin’ somewhere?” asked Clemenza. “How did you know I put that little girl in there?”

  He motioned with his head in the direction of the submarine, and Jed realized Clemenza thought he knew where Mattie was and planned to climb down the rope to rescue her.

  �
��You wouldn’t have anything to do with the alarms being tripped, would you?”

  Jed felt helpless, and at the moment he felt like everything was going right and wrong at the same time. He had no clue Mattie was in the submarine until Clemenza told him, but he had no way to help her with Clemenza holding onto the back of his neck. He had a rope that would take him right to her, but unless he started climbing really soon, he was going to die with the rest of these people.

  As if he needed confirmation, screams carried out to the fantail from the hangar deck. The big ex-SEAL didn’t put Jed down before he walked across the fantail and looked back inside. His eyes narrowed as he watched people falling where they were, fighting an invisible enemy. Comprehension dawned on his face, and he walked back to where he had caught Jed climbing over the railing. He put his face in front of Jed’s.

  “Can you swim, man?”

  Jed barely had the opportunity to answer before Clemenza threw him over the railing.

  “Whatever,” said Clemenza. “Not enough time to climb the rope.”

  Jed managed to get his feet under him so that he wouldn’t hit the water at an awkward angle, and as soon as he popped to the surface he was stroking toward the submarine. The big splash behind him announced the arrival of Clemenza, and Jed was willing to bet the big man would swim past him in seconds. When he didn’t appear on either side, Jed turned in the water and searched for him. He was already twenty yards away and swimming out of the cove reserved for Patriots Point. The area of water beyond the end of the dock where the submarine was parked was a marina and then the open harbor.

  It didn’t make sense, but Jed had other things to worry about. He wasn’t the fastest swimmer, but it gave him plenty of time to think about how he was going to get into the submarine. He didn’t have a clue if the doors were easy to open or not.

  On the fantail behind him, the railing collapsed under the weight of the people climbing over it. A group of at least thirty fell together, and most of them were either knocked unconscious, drowned, or were too badly bitten by spiders to recover. Those who were still alive thrashed wildly at the tiny creatures that were clinging to their skin. There was no more room for people to cross the fantail and make the jump, so they piled up through the doorway into the hangar deck.

  Jed climbed a ladder onto the dock at the bow of the submarine and turned back in time to see they were beginning to fall from even higher. The spiders had reached the flight deck, and despite the size of the ship, they came from all directions. Hundreds of people who had lived in relative comfort for six years made the jump, but none would survive.

  High above the flight deck in the tower that had become Ted Atwater’s favorite place to get away from it all, he was trying to get away one last time. He had never brought his boss to his private place, preferring to keep it all to himself, but this time he had led Marshall Sayer to safety. Always one to rely on favors, he was sure his boss would never forget this one.

  “Spiders, Ted. Why are there spiders on my ship?” Marshall couldn’t believe all they needed for this multimillion dollar operation was a better exterminator, and he had been giving Ted a lecture all the way to the tower.

  Ted assured him that he would look into it as soon as they all went away, but Marshall cut him off in the middle of his sentence when he got a sharp pain on his hand. He cursed and smashed the eight legged spider into a sticky mess right where it bit him. Ted was quick with a handkerchief to wipe it away, but Marshall screamed and pulled his arm away as if there were flames on it. The poison from the bite didn’t always hurt, but sometimes it was excruciating, and this was one of those times. Ted helped his boss the last few steps to get inside the tower then shut the door.

  He got Marshall into a chair and then opened a window facing the deck of the carrier. The screams made them both lean over the opening to watch, and they saw one of the people they had caught the night before. He was standing on the deck of the submarine, and for some reason the submarine was moving.

  ******

  Jed had been right about the hatch on the bow of the submarine. It was dogged shut so tight that he wasn’t getting it to budge, and he was running out of time. The cove between the Yorktown and the submarine was already half full of bodies, and if more people chose to fall off the stern of the Yorktown, the spiders would be climbing the sides of the Clamagore in no time. He kept throwing his weight into it as hard as he could, and when the submarine moved under him, he thought he had made it move. He fell over the hatch and stared at the dock. The distance between the submarine and the dock was two feet wider than it had been.

  The second time the submarine lurched, he fell over the hatch again, but when he turned his head toward the dock, the distance was still increasing. It was increasing, and so was the speed that the sub was moving away from it. Jed couldn’t believe his eyes, but the old submarine was sliding quietly out of the opening with the marina, leaving the bodies in the water behind.

  Jed picked himself up from the top of the hatch and got his balance. The submarine was moving slowly and smoothly, but it still bobbed a little and made him slide toward the sides. He wanted to see why the submarine had pulled away from its dock, but every time he tried to see past the sail, he started to slide again. He finally gave up and went back to work on the hatch. He laid his body over the wheel and gave it everything he had while he watched the distance between him and the Yorktown grow.

  He was past Castle Pinckney in the middle of the harbor when he felt the wind and spray begin to pelt him, and the water around the submarine began washing against the sub like he had entered a storm. He lifted his head and shielded his eyes against the stinging saltwater only to find himself staring at a helicopter only a few feet above him. Two men in Army uniforms were already lowering themselves toward him, and his first thought was how similar it was to the way the spiders dropped in from above.

  One of the soldiers fastened a harness under Jed’s arms, but he managed to communicate over the noise that there was someone inside the submarine who needed help. As far as he knew it was Mattie he was trying to rescue. He saw that they understood, and as he was raised into the helicopter, two more soldiers dropped by ropes to replace him. He cheered when he saw the three men use their combined strength to loosen the big wheel on the hatch and give it a spin. The hatch popped open, and he saw someone hand Mattie out to the first man. Then he watched as she was followed by a woman with flaming red hair. He didn’t have a clue who she was, but he hardly had a chance to wonder about her as she was followed closely by five more people. The last one he knew as soon as he saw his size, but Jed was on top of the world to know they had been saved.

  As the helicopter leaned toward Fort Sumter, Jed got one last glimpse of the Yorktown, and the unmistakable walk of the infected dead from the stern of the flight deck toward the bow was all he needed to see to know the fate of everyone on board. They were already walking over the bow as they tried to reach the beacon that called to them from the tower above the bridge.

  ******

  Ed

  There were only a few minutes for introductions in the helicopter, and we were already circling to make our landing on the back of Morris Island before we understood how we had escaped. We still didn’t understand why, but the crew of the helicopter at least knew how.

  Sergeant Graham told us they were still conducting searches for us even though there were problems at Fort Sumter. They spotted the USS Clamagore being towed toward the Ashley River by a tugboat, and there was one man on the deck of the submarine trying to open the hatch. They had seen plenty of unusual things in the last six years, but a diesel boat on the surface being towed was worth investigating. Besides, it was coming from the Yorktown and things were taking a turn for the worse over there from what they could see.

  When they dropped lower over the submarine, the operator of the tugboat cut the line and increased his speed up river. They didn’t understand why he did it, but it was obvious that the man on the bow of the submar
ine needed their help, so they stayed behind to help him. They were happy to see all of us, but they were really surprised when the Chief came out of the submarine, because up to that point they all thought the Chief was the man in the tugboat. If he would have had time to explain it he would have, but the Chief had an idea why Clemenza had done it, and it was enough for him. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.

  As the doors opened to let us out of the helicopter, Jean was the first one there, and I couldn’t believe we had survived to be together again. We had seen so many things and faced death so many times, but this was one time when we wouldn’t have made it without help. We had been together long enough for me to recognize that the expression on her face was a mixture of happiness to see me alive and sadness over something I didn’t know yet.

  The Chief was standing near the entrance to the tunnel that led to the back door of Fort Sumter, and judging by the way his shoulders dropped, we could tell he was getting bad news from the soldiers gathered at the door. I saw one of them point toward the other two helicopters as they were coming in for a landing, and as soon as they touched down he was sprinting their way. Iris dropped down from one and threw herself into his arms.

  I heard Kathy saying a quiet prayer of thanks that Iris had made it out too. Jean told us quickly that Tom was already at Mud Island because Captain Miller had her evacuate the patients and medical personnel first. Then he pretended to keep the shelter on lockdown and stalled Phillip Corrigan while everyone else got out. He learned from Denise Corrigan that he was going to release the packages of powdered agent into the air circulation system, and that it would take less than an hour to contaminate everything. Jim Miller couldn’t broadcast to everyone that the shelter was evacuating, or Mr. Corrigan would have released the agent sooner, but he wouldn’t let anyone else go in with him while he got people out. He got everyone out except twelve of his men and two dozen civilians, but he saved hundreds of people.