by Howard, Bob
“Stop,” he yelled.
He was about to add something about the people hearing them when he realized there were people. Hundreds of them.
The dock he was hoping to reach, the shoreline beyond the dock, the mudflats, Fort Johnson, the water…everywhere there were people running, swimming, and pushing the motors of their boats to their limits. Most of all, there was the screaming. Whether it was screaming for help, screaming in pain, or screaming in anger, the air was filled with voices raised to a fever pitch.
Sarah Beth and Paul had stopped fighting and just sat in the bottom of the boat watching the people as if it was a movie. A cruise ship was drifting away from the port over by Charleston, and smaller boats were dashing ahead of it for open water. There were more gunshots, some close by.
On the dock less than fifty yards away, an elderly couple had retreated as far as they could before reaching the end of the wooden sidewalk that extended out into the marsh. The man had a huge hunting rifle in his hands and appeared to be fumbling with bullets. Paul had seen one rifle like it and was fairly sure it was an elephant gun. The man lifted the stock to his shoulder and sighted through the scope.
Paul turned his attention to the other end of the dock where over a dozen people were all trying to walk on the dock at the same time. Even though there was a railing on both sides, they managed to jostle and push against each other so hard that one of them tumbled over into the marsh grass below. The others didn’t seem to notice or even care.
“This can’t be happening,” said Sarah Beth.
Paul didn’t see the point in disagreeing with her. He just watched as the old man took careful aim at the people on the other end of the dock.
When the rifle jerked in his hands, Paul’s head snapped back to the left, and he saw the head of the man leading the pack explode. The powerful bullet of a .460 Weatherby Magnum went through the man’s head and then through the neck of the man behind him. Paul would normally have been shocked beyond belief to see someone’s head explode, but he was too confused by the reaction of the second man.
The bullet had removed most of the flesh and bone in the neck that held the man’s head in place. The head laid over at an angle and was resting on his left shoulder where Paul could still see his face. At fifty yards, he couldn’t make out the details, but the sun was glistening on the red blood that had erupted from arteries, and one muscle that was being drawn tight by the weight of the head. Paul’s mouth had already dropped open when the man kept moving forward, so it didn’t drop open when the man’s head rolled backward off of his shoulder until it hung onto his back.
The gang of people indifferently moved forward toward the elderly couple. The old woman was behind the man with the rifle trying not to fall into the water. Many of the docks had small boats moored below them, but some had nothing beyond that point. They had fished for flounder and tossed cast nets for shrimp from the end of the dock, but they had apparently never seen the need for a boat.
The rifle bucked for a second time, and another man went down. This time the others behind him began to mindlessly trip and fall over the body, and the man with the head pointing in the wrong direction fell with them. The fall made the head snap free from the last of the muscle connecting it to the body. Sarah Beth moaned when the head rolled over the side of the dock. Paul felt like the eyes were staring straight at them as it disappeared in the marsh grass.
The rifle fired at a steady pace as the old man got his nerves under control. He had undoubtedly been hesitant to shoot a living man at first, but once he had fired the first two shots, he was resigned to finish what they had started. He had to stop to reload after each shot, but he wasn’t fumbling anymore. One by one the pursuers fell onto the pile until there were no more advancing toward them.
Paul lifted his hand and waved.
“Hey, can you help us?” he shouted.
He felt the blood rush from his face when the rifle turned in their direction, and out of reflex he ducked into the bottom of the boat, pulling Sarah Beth with him.
There were shots fired, but no holes appeared around them. The big bullets of the .460 Weatherby Magnum would have ripped a hole through both sides of the boat if they had been lucky enough not to be hit, and it was possible that the bullet would still make a second hole in the boat.
Paul lifted his head and saw that the shooting was by Fort Sumter. The big white hull of the cruise ship was broadside to the mudflats, and he could see that someone at Fort Sumter was firing at them.
When he turned his attention back to the old man with the elephant gun, he saw that the elderly pair was cautiously approaching the pile of bodies in an effort to free themselves from the narrow wooden dock. The old man poked and prodded at the bodies until he was satisfied that they could cross over them. A few tentative steps into the pile a head lifted up at him, and the teeth began snapping at his legs. The rifle fired at point blank range, and the couple went back to making their escape.
Paul didn’t want to get shot, but he still intended on making it to the dock. He was just going to let the man with the cannon for a rifle go his own way first.
Sarah Beth had begun to let their situation sink in. She didn’t understand why any of it was happening, but she was aware of what she was seeing. She was still in disbelief about losing four friends so quickly, but something made her understand it had not been because Paul had wanted them to die. She wasn’t really believing he had been reckless when he had powered up the boat so fast that they had fallen overboard. She had felt that way at first, but once the shock had worn off, she remembered seeing her friends extending their arms toward the people in the water. Now her gut was telling her that would have been a bad idea.
She lifted the cushion on the starboard seat to see what was in their cooler and pulled out a bottle of water.
“How much is in there?” asked Paul.
“It’s full.”
She didn’t ask him if he wanted some, so he got it himself. He stayed low as he did so, not really concerned about the old man anymore, but not wanting someone to see them exposed in the tidal creek.
“At least we won’t die of thirst,” he said.
He sat with his back against the front seats and watched the cruise ship clear the jetties beyond Fort Sumter. He only absently wondered if those people were any better off than he was with Sarah Beth. Eventually, the sun dropped below the horizon as they drank their water in silence.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dignitaries
Beginning of the Decline
It wasn’t hard for Maybank to know it was a helicopter coming his way. It was catching the morning light reflecting off of it at just the right angle, and even though it was little more than a black dot on the horizon, he had seen the way helicopters appeared to hug the water until they were closer. Then they popped free of their background and took on a familiar shape.
This one was having problems. It was straying off course and then overcorrecting. The trail of black smoke was only visible from a distance when it strayed far enough off course. Maybank hoped the pilot decided to ditch the helicopter in the water rather than to land while burning. It would be better to pull the passengers out of the water than out of a fire.
He had a momentary pang of guilt when the helicopter strayed off course and didn’t attempt to correct. It was still a few miles away, so he was sure the pilot wasn’t ditching the craft, but there was no doubt that it was going into the water. He would probably never know why it crashed because it wasn’t even close to being a controlled landing.
It was a strange feeling watching the crash without sound because the pilot had lost all control by the time the helicopter hit the water, and it was violent. It was almost upside down, so the blades hit first, and the craft disintegrated.
Maybank didn’t expect survivors, but watching the helicopter had taken his eyes away from the horizon long enough for him to miss the arrival of a pair of pleasure boats. He saw them when they changed course for the pla
ce where the helicopter had gone down, and he was surprised when they began throwing life preservers into the water. Someone must have survived the crash.
For a moment Maybank wasn’t sure what to do. The helicopter was most likely bringing people that he was supposed to protect, but the boats weren’t part of the plan. He opened his laptop and looked for the manual the Army had given him. It took a few minutes, but he found a direct reference to the situation. He read it twice to be sure, but then he packed up his gear and headed for the Wellbay.
The contingency manual said the surviving dignitaries could only arrive under the protection of their personal escort and were considered to be compromised if they arrived in any other manner. In other words, don’t let them in.
The shelter was already sealed from the outside world. All Maybank needed to do was get inside and shut the door. Once that was done, he turned on the monitors to watch the two pleasure craft approach the oil rig. He had come to the rig by helicopter more often than by boat, but he remembered how he had felt when he arrived by boat the first time. The sight was breathtaking.
Maybank could see it on the faces of the people in the boats. They were awestruck by the size of the rig. Seeing it from above, it appeared big. Seeing it from the water made you feel small. It probably felt to them like they were floating next to an ugly cruise ship, and that meant they would live.
The boats circled together. They were moving to the west in search of a way to climb onto the rig. Maybank knew they were trying to find metal rungs, a ladder, a hatch, or anything that was used to board the oil rig. They paused for a long time at the cargo receiving area. The huge crane above them could lift their boats completely out of the water, and Maybank could almost read their lips as they shrugged their shoulders at each other. They had to be asking if anyone knew how to board the oil rig.
Unlike operational oil rigs, everything about this one was different. To the average person it was just another oil rig, but to the experienced eye of someone who had worked on rigs, there were some very odd differences. The people on the two pleasure craft didn’t have an experienced eye.
Maybank did his best to count heads on the boats, and his best guess was that there were eight people on each. He could see wounded people being tended to that were wearing military uniforms, and one guy was wearing a suit. They were likely to be the guests he had been waiting for. He was surprised anyone made it out of that crash, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of one injured man who was still wearing his flight helmet. There was something about the way he kept trying to sit up that reminded Maybank of the news broadcasts.
The boats gave up at the supply tower and moved toward the Hull. They picked up speed because it was already obvious to them that there was nothing on that tower. The boat in the lead made a sharp turn and drove toward the Process tower, but the second boat kept going straight. Maybank zoomed his camera in on that boat and saw that the injured man who was trying to get up had succeeded. He had already begun his attacks on his unsuspecting rescuers. The white deck of the boat was covered in dark blood, and bodies littered the lower end of the boat. Some of those bodies were trying to stand up while the boat rocked on the swells from the leading boat.
They began falling overboard as they tried to walk to the living bodies on the lead boat. It had turned toward them to investigate why the other boat had gone off course. Within a few minutes, almost everyone had gone into the water, and Maybank could only see two people in the boat. Whether they were really alive or not, he couldn’t tell, but the boat was traveling away from the oil rig at low speed. It was moving away toward the open water of the Gulf, and the first boat was slowly following.
Maybank could only watch, and a part of him felt a tremendous amount of shame for not helping. He was also tired. He was alive, and he would survive, but for the first time he wondered why he should. He had grown old waiting for this day, and now that it was here, he would have a front row seat to the end of the world, but he wasn’t sure why him and not others.
The two boats kept moving further away, and he watched until they disappeared over the horizon, never aware that he had been watching. He snapped out of the daze when he heard one of the proximity alert sensors broadcasting that something was going to collide with the Wellbay tower.
He brought up the image from that sensor and saw that he had guests after all. There were at least three people in a raft and maybe two more under a tarp that was intended to protect occupants from the sun. It resembled a floating pup tent, but it had WSS printed in big letters on the side of it. Maybank had heard of Worth Security Service. They were a private company that did a lot of contract work for the military. A man in a paramilitary uniform was keeping the raft steady against the tower, but one of the hazards to inflatable rafts was the chance of being punctured.
Years ago it was decided that there would be no attempt to remove the barnacles from the towers. There were several reasons why barnacles were a good idea to have around, and the main reason was that they would make it dangerous for anyone to approach the oil rig in a raft. Even SCUBA divers wouldn’t find it easy to avoid being sliced by the sharp growths.
It seemed almost ironic that one of the best thought out defenses was likely to be what prevented the people from reaching the shelter. When the towers were erected using the strange new metal that the military said was indestructible, the barnacles didn’t grow. Even they couldn’t penetrate the metal enough to maintain a purchase, and that made the towers stand out too much. If they were to blend in, they needed to be painted, they needed to rust, and they needed to allow barnacles to grow below the waterline.
The military grew a measure of respect for Maybank when he suggested a layer of sheet metal wrapped around the towers. Compared to the elaborate construction of the underwater shelter, it was a minor detail and a minor expense. Of course it meant the hidden ladder rungs had to be modified, as well. They were each covered with a thin sheet of steel and had to fit into the wall of the tower so seamlessly that no one would guess their function.
One of the designers who was drawing the plans for the shelter commented that the little “trapdoors” that covered the rungs were obviously handholds when seen from a distance. Maybank asked him what they would look like if there were hundreds of them drawn on the sides of the towers. They painted hundreds of them on each tower, and when they were done, no one thought they were obviously handholds. As a matter of fact, when inspected from close up, people tended to push on them and then disregard them completely because they didn’t appear to do anything.
Maybank reached for a switch and sent power to the handholds. The paramilitary man who was holding the raft in position fell backward into the raft as a row of handholds popped out of the side of the tower. The row ascended upward and disappeared at the top of the tower, but the man had recovered quickly as he understood someone had just put out the welcome mat.
He was already climbing when Maybank turned back toward the monitor. The man went up by himself while another took over the job of keeping the raft steady. When he reached the top, he smoothly unslung his M-4 from his back and was rotating left and right. It didn’t take him long to realize that there was no way he could know if the area was clear. The top of the Wellbay tower was a nightmare of walkways, ladders, stairs, pipes, and doors. It seemed like every pipe had a wheel valve attached to it, and there were gauges everywhere. If someone had asked him later, he would have sworn the ladders had wheels and gauges, too.
Maybank watched him return his rifle to his back and stand up straight. He didn’t doubt that the man understood he would be dead already if someone was going to shoot him.
The man continued to rotate where he was standing as his eyes scanned the maze of metal searching for something familiar. He spotted what he was trying to find only a few feet away. It made perfect sense to have a rescue locker close to the edge of the tower. The red cross on the white background was a welcome sight.
He retrieved a rope and a harness f
rom the locker and hurried back to the ladder. Maybank continued to watch and wished he could do more to help the man. There was a metal stretcher with a winch not far from the Wellbay tower, but the man had searched for rescue equipment rather than a communications station. If he had communicated with Maybank, he wouldn’t be trying to lift the full weight of an injured man by a rope.
After what seemed like an hour, two injured people, a man and a woman, were being tended to by three uniformed men at the top of the tower. Both were having open wounds treated, and there was a considerable amount of blood coming through the bandages before they were even done.
One of the security detail finally found an interior communications phone. Maybank had insisted on the old fashioned telephone equipment with the pigtail cord because they would give visitors the impression that everything was low tech on the rig. He didn’t want anyone to guess what was really behind all of that metal.
The phone rang in Maybank’s control room. When he answered, the man immediately launched into a tirade unlike anything he had ever heard. Maybank couldn’t get a word in between the profanity and the yelling, so he quit trying and hung up the phone.
He saw the man on his monitor holding the phone out in front of him like it was personally responsible for hanging up on him. He showed it to one of the other guys, then he turned and started slamming it against a metal rail.
“That’s going to help,” said Maybank.
Maybank wasn’t sure if he would answer when the man called back, but he was sure that he would hang up again if he started yelling.
When it rang and he answered, the man said, “If you hang up again, I’m going to…”.
That was as far as he got before Maybank hung up, but he didn’t hang up because of the man’s behavior. Maybank wasn’t even listening to him. He was watching the monitor and what was happening behind the man.
