by Howard, Bob
Maybank turned his attention to the ammunition cook-off out on the catwalks. The rounds blowing up were a guarantee that the fires would keep burning long enough to incinerate the bodies, but he was curious about whether or not they were dead.
He didn’t think there was anything that could get him to go out there and check, but he was seriously concerned when he saw one of them crawl under a rail and drop to the next catwalk. It resembled an over cooked roast with stumps for arms and legs, but the head swiveled to the left and right as teeth snapped blindly at the air.
A breeze kicked up and whistled through the metal jigsaw puzzle of pipes and catwalks, and the smoke swirled with clouds of ash and burning embers, but when it cleared Maybank could see that there were at least ten bodies that were still moving. None were recognizable as people, but they were moving.
Maybank decided there wasn’t anything that had to be done about the bodies. The first good rain would wash away the piles of black ash, and there wasn’t anything that could have been hit by a bullet that needed to be repaired.
From a distance the oil platform would just appear to be weather worn and dirty. The brief battle with Hector, who was most likely a drug lord judging by his armed guards, had done Maybank a small favor by keeping the rig from seeming to be too shiny and new. Hector didn’t have a clue what he was dealing with when he decided to take over this oil rig. Of the one hundred and seventy-five rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico, he had simply picked on the wrong one.
CHAPTER TEN
Pleasant Oaks
Six Years After the Decline
The Chief’s group heard the gunshots in the distance, and they knew Tom’s group had at least encountered the infected. He couldn’t imagine they would be shooting living people since there wasn’t any return fire.
One thing the Mud Island survivors had learned a long time ago was that gunshots only worked against the living when it came to giving away their position. When they heard a shot in the woods, they couldn’t always tell which direction it had come from, but for some strange reason the infected always seemed to know. If you wanted to draw a horde of infected away from somewhere, shoot off a round wherever you wanted them to go.
In this case, the Chief knew the group would draw the infected into the creek that surrounded the house in the woods, but there was bad news, too. The number of infected they were likely to encounter on their way back to the Sikorsky was likely to increase.
It had only taken them ten minutes to reach the intersection with Fort Johnson Road, but they ran into the first large group of infected as soon as they made the turn back toward the Department of Natural Resources boat parking area where they had landed.
Dozens of infected were already in the road, and more were trying to free themselves from the brush and trees lining the left side of the road. The first gunshots had started them moving into the trees along the right side, and some were already snagged on branches there.
“Too many for us to take on unless we move now,” yelled the Chief. “Single file straight through the middle while they’re spread out.”
The Chief led the way using his machete, but he pulled his Glock from his holster and had it ready with his left hand if the horde closed in on them too quickly. Some of the infected he simply pushed hard enough to make them fall into the others of their kind, and a wide hole appeared for the group to follow him through.
When there were only stragglers in front of him, he turned around and made sure everyone got through okay. Jean was covering them at the back, and the Chief could see the path was closing on her. He stepped back into the fight and cleared a hole for her while Hampton and Sim took his place up front.
From that point on it was a footrace with the infected. They could outrun any of them, but it was constant weaving and dodging until the entrance of the parking lot came up on their left. They only bothered to waste precious time on the infected that were too close to avoid, and many of those were only slowed down. A quick backhand with a machete to the side of the knee was a very effective way to remove their ability to stand upright.
The Sikorsky was surrounded by the infected, no doubt because of the ticking sounds the engine made as it cooled. They had been gone long enough for it to be completely cool, but their landing had been noisy enough to empty the surrounding woods into the parking lot. The gunshots were drawing some away, but they would have to fight their way to the doors of the chopper.
Hesitation would only allow the infected time to close in on them from every direction, so the Chief moved ahead.
“Hampton and Sim, up here with me on my flanks, blades only. Jean and Colleen, guns to the sides and behind us. I don’t want any stray bullets hitting our only ride out of here.”
They formed up on the Chief and began cutting a swath through the parking lot. Much faster than they could believe possible they found themselves at the doors of the Sikorsky. All five of them began firing their pistols at close range and then further back into the crowd giving them plenty of time to open the doors and climb inside.
As the rotors began to pick up speed, the wind from the blades began knocking over the infected. The clearance was high enough to keep the rotors from hitting them, but they were hoping to see what Kathy had described to them after the Chief had used the Sikorsky like a weed-whacker at the Air Force Base.
The Chief could guess why they had their faces pressed so close to the windows.
“Sorry, folks, but the Army mechanics told me not to do that anymore. They said that the specs for the blades are good enough to withstand direct contact with a crowd without getting bent, but they wouldn’t test the specs more than I already had.”
They were disappointed, but smart enough to know they had survived by trusting the talents of everyone at Fort Sumter, and they were lucky to have mechanics to keep the choppers in the air.
The Chief lifted the Sikorsky from the ground while watching the crowd on the left side. He gently rocked the chopper to the left and pushed the infected away from that side, then he did the same on the right.
He answered the unspoken question from his group and said, “It wouldn’t help us to find one or two of them hanging from the chopper when we lift off.”
Sim and Jean let him know that he was all clear on both sides, and he eased forward while he banked away to the left. He quickly lined up with Fort Johnson Road and increased his forward speed, but almost immediately began to slow down. When everyone looked down to see why, they were surprised to see our group running at full speed down the middle of the road.
There were infected following us, but the road ahead was mostly clear. The Chief passed us and landed the helicopter neatly on the center line of the road.
Kathy had always been the Chief’s right hand man in a fight, even though she was Tom’s girl. She spoke for all of us and gave the Chief a quick summary of what we had found at the house. He was lifting the Sikorsky into the air as soon as she told him about the clue, the cemetery and the backhoe.
The urgency we had felt when we realized the significance of the clue was like a physical presence inside the helicopter. Even though it could cross James Island from Fort Johnson to Pleasant Oaks Cemetery in a matter of seconds, we were all filled with dread, and I had to admit there was a strong sense of pessimism. We didn’t expect to find them alive. We were only hoping we would.
The cemetery came into view, and the Chief came in for a fast landing. It was a cemetery that didn’t have headstones above ground. Bronze nameplates were arranged in neat rows, and the statue of one angel stood in the center. Chopper two was already on the ground, and the NCO in charge had radioed for chopper one to leave its position at a bridge on Harborview Road where it had been waiting in case the kids had tried to leave James Island by land. Nothing could have gotten by them at that spot.
Chopper one landed almost simultaneously with our helicopter, and the soldiers quickly spread out in a large circle to take up positions at a brick wall that surrounded the ce
metery. It was high enough to stop the infected from coming over it, but the iron gates in two places were old and not likely to hold against a large horde.
The NCO from chopper two was waiting for Tom at one gravesite, and a soldier was already driving the backhoe toward him. We piled out of the Sikorsky and ran to join them.
Jean and Kathy were already crying. The thought that Molly could be buried under the fresh pile of dirt was more than they could bear.
The NCO yelled for us to be careful as we ran to him, and he pointed at something on the grave. When we were closer we saw he was pointing at something white that was sticking out of the ground. It looked like a PVC pipe about an inch in diameter.
“I think it’s an air pipe,” said the NCO. “If someone is buried down there, they may be alive if someone gave them a way to breathe.”
The driver of the backhoe approached from the other end of the grave and carefully dropped the rear digging bucket into the soft dirt. He backed away and dragged a great scoop of dirt with him. He was good at what he was doing because the pipe remained where it was.
Tom hopped onto the pile of dirt and wrapped his hands tightly around the pipe. The next scoop could easily pull away the air supply. He nodded to the soldier, and the backhoe advanced on the grave again.
The big metal scoop came down dangerously close to Tom and pulled back for a second time. This time the jagged teeth of the bucket made a scraping sound as it slid across the outside of a coffin. The shiny surface of polished mahogany appeared as more dirt slid away.
We all began using our hands to scoop and throw the dirt as fast as we could while Tom held the air pipe in place. Tom started yelling across the open end of the pipe in hope that Molly could hear him.
“Molly, it’s daddy. Hold on, baby. We’re coming for you. You’ll be out of there in just a minute.”
We worked frantically, and gradually the entire casket appeared. It was just as the last of the dirt fell away from around the pipe that we saw something that made our hearts stop beating and our blood turn cold. The pipe ended at the casket. It didn’t go through a hole in the wood and provide air to the inside.
We only paused for a few seconds, but it was long enough to hear a sound from inside the casket. Tom jumped out of the way, and we began prying at the lid over the upper half of the coffin. The lid flew open, and the Chief grabbed Tom from behind as he started to reach for the struggling teenager inside the coffin.
In his haste to rescue Molly, Tom had not even considered that it would be Sam, and when he saw Sam squirming around in the narrow confinement of the smothering coffin, it didn’t even register in Tom’s mind that Sam was not trying to get out. He was trying to bite Tom.
The crying that had briefly stopped while we dug away the dirt began again, but it wasn’t just the women. Even the Chief had to turn away, and we could see his big shoulders shaking with grief as he fought back a tremendous sob.
There wasn’t one of us that was strong enough to recover quickly from the sight of the young boy we had watched grow up under our protective watch. He had survived so long on his own, and this was a horrible way for him to die. We were all momentarily frozen in time, and no one moved with the realization that there was another grave somewhere.
It was the soldier on the backhoe who recognized the catatonic shock that had paralyzed us all. He revved the engine making it roar even louder, and when our heads turned his way, his shout rose above the sound of the engine.
“Where’s the girl?”
We all turned to each other as if someone knew the answer to the question, and our heads began snapping left and right as our eyes searched the cemetery for another freshly filled grave.
From his vantage point in the seat of the backhoe, the driver could see better than we could, and he pointed excitedly toward the southern corner of the cemetery. He shifted the backhoe into gear and started driving it at high speed in the direction he had pointed.
We were right behind him as he lined up with the second grave and dropped the teeth of the scoop into place. This time he moved more quickly, and even though the air line had been a decoy on the first grave, Tom hadn’t given up hope. He gripped the pipe as hard as he could, hoping beyond hope that it meant Molly was still breathing.
Before long we were shoveling with our hands for a second time, and the casket was quickly uncovered. This time when the bottom of the PVC pipe appeared, it went through a neat round hole that had been drilled through the wood.
We pried at the lid and flipped it open, and the sunlight outside shone down on the face of a pretty blond girl who started screaming and sobbing at the same time.
Our shock at finding someone we didn’t know was only partially paralyzing because she wasn’t trying to bite anyone, and she had started screaming for help. The infected didn’t do that. We all reacted together and opened the rest of the coffin to allow her to be lifted to safety.
Doctor Bus moved in to take over while Kathy and Jean comforted the girl. The catatonic state that had held us all frozen in our tracks earlier didn’t hit us this time as was obvious from the fact that each of us was standing in a circle around the grave and scanning the cemetery.
This time it was Hampton that burst into a sprint like a runner coming off of the starting blocks. We didn’t need to see what he had seen. It was enough for us to follow him, and that’s what we did. Behind us the backhoe was turning away from the second grave, and within seconds it was rumbling as it drove alongside us.
******
It was like a dream to Molly. A dream that she kept trying to wake up from but couldn’t. It was dark, and she wasn’t sure if her eyes were open, so she kept blinking them just to feel them move.
Sometimes she thought she could smell a change in the air, and sometimes there was a tiny pinprick of light above her, but it kept disappearing, replaced by darkness and a rank smell.
She was having a hard time breathing, and it didn’t help when the smell got so bad that she threw up in the darkness. That was when she hit her head hard against a ceiling that was only a couple of inches from her. She had grabbed at her stomach when she retched and tried to sit up as she doubled over to one side. Her vomit was sour, and the smell made her gag repeatedly.
Wherever she was, she knew it wasn’t the closet anymore, and now there were two lumps on her head. One was on her forehead. That was the new one. The other was bigger, and it was on the back of her head. It hurt when she touched it, and her hand came away with something sticky on it. It had a smell like copper pennies.
Molly saw the pinprick of light for just a moment, and she got dizzy when she tried to focus her eyes on the spot where it had appeared. She didn’t know if she was looking at the light, or if she was looking at the spot where the light shined off of her chest. She gave up after a moment and almost gratefully drifted off into unconsciousness. As she drifted away, not knowing that she was very close to running out of air, she thought she heard someone yelling something at her.
******
We weren’t inclined to become experts at opening graves, but practice does make perfect, and the third grave opened even faster than the last one.
Kathy and Jean couldn’t stand to be left behind as we dug Molly out of the ground, so they had enlisted the assistance of a couple of soldiers to help them and Bus carry the girl with them to the third grave. Since she was also a victim of the maniac who would bury kids this way, they wanted her nearby to answer questions as soon as Molly was found.
Uncovering the grave and finding the air pipe going into the casket for a second time lifted our spirits with hope, and once again the lid was pulled open.
We pulled ourselves back from the snapping jaws and clutching fingers of a young man we didn’t know. He looked like he was in his early twenties.
Each of us felt the energy in us dry up. Adrenaline can give you plenty of strength when you need it, but afterward the price of that extra strength was the total opposite. Strength leaves you, and hope leav
es you. All we could do was sit back and look at the young man, not really feeling anything.
The young girl from the last grave began to scream, and none of us was spared from the instant terror we all experienced. Those screams in these days and times always meant someone was dying or very close to it.
We all braced ourselves for the attack we were sure was coming, but all around us was nothing but the quiet cemetery. There was no infected horde charging down on us. No one was being bitten. Instead, the pretty girl with the dirt streaked face was on the ground and crawling toward the open grave.
“Gervais,” she sobbed. “No, not Gervais.”
We were tired. The entire day had taken its toll on us, so we were slow to understand that this young man had been the girl’s friend. She was as heartbroken as we were when we found Sam, and as glad as we were to have rescued her, at the moment we would have gladly traded her for Molly. That’s how mentally and physically exhausted we felt.
Bus moved in front of the crying girl and gently turned her away from the grave. We all felt guilty as the NCO stepped down into the grave and used a knife to end the existence of the infected who had been known to the girl as Gervais. It was only then that we realized that in our rush to find Molly, we had left the NCO to do the same merciful act for Sam.
We turned one by one in the direction of the open grave where we had found Sam. It was silent around the mound of dirt.
Somehow we began to move. We stood one by one and surveyed the cemetery, but as hard as we strained our eyes, we couldn’t spot a fourth grave. We began to turn to each other to verify that we had failed Molly.
The NCO radioed the soldiers along the walls, instructing the platoon sergeants to have their men join the search. One of the men took it upon himself to climb the brick wall that surrounded the cemetery. It was risky, but it gave him a much better view of the cemetery from above.
