by Howard, Bob
“Remember that movie about a Civil War officer who joined up with an Indian tribe?”
Sora didn’t wait for Iris to answer.
“They found the trail where a herd of buffalo had crossed the prairie, and the grass was so trampled that you couldn’t miss which way the buffalo went. It was about a mile wide. That’s what this reminds me of.”
Iris could see it for herself. After the place where the wire had been cut, the grass median had been flattened. To the left and the right of the median, all four lanes of blacktop had been cleared of vehicles. On both sides of the interstate, the cars and trucks had been pushed out of the way.
“Did someone actually clear the interstate?” asked Sora.
“Someone or something,” said Iris.
“What’s happening up there?” said Yuni.
Iris and Sora lowered themselves down to join the others.
“About a mile from here something happened to the interstate. Before I make a guess about it I’d rather see it close up.”
Further ahead the shoulders of the interstate were lined with cars. Piled on top of each other, upside down, even standing on end where they were pushed by something with a lot of force. Then they smelled it. The stench was overpowering even though it had to be days or weeks old.
Yuni leaned close to a car being careful not to touch it.
“They’re all like this,” she said.
Everyone gathered around the car she was examining. It was sitting upright with the driver side door facing her. The side of the car was curiously flat as if it had been inside a metal crusher. As a matter of fact, every car was flat along the side facing the asphalt for almost a hundred yards. They leaned in with Yura, and they could see that the gaps in the metal were packed with human flesh and clothing.
“A horde went through here,” said Iris.
George let out a low whistle.
“Would anyone like to venture a guess about the size of the horde?”
“Big wouldn’t describe it,” said Iris. “They came from the Charlotte area and got squeezed into this section of the interstate because of the concrete walls along the center and the thick woods along the right side. When they came to the place where traffic had backed up, they probably started to go between the cars, but the horde was so big that the ones in front got crushed up against the cars. The pressure from behind was so great that it literally pressed the bodies into the cars like putty.”
“No way,” said Sherry. “That horde had to be….”
Sherry couldn’t finish the sentence. Saying what she was thinking wasn’t something she wanted to put into words.”
“Yeah, that many,” said George.
“Are we talking about thousands?” asked Yuni.
“More,” said Iris. “Maybe hundreds of thousands. When they reached the end of the concrete wall down the middle, they spread out until they reached the retaining cable. It made them keep pushing cars out of the way like a bulldozer until the cable snapped.”
“Can you imagine what it was like when the cable snapped?” asked George.
Sora answered for him.
“Imagine a steel rubber band getting stretched to its limits. When it broke, all that tension made it whip around like a fireman’s hose with no one holding onto it. It probably chopped up thousands of the infected before losing that pent up energy.”
Iris picked up the description when Sora stopped.
“Then they pushed the cars out of the way on both sides of the road until there was enough room for the horde to pick up speed. Notice the cars are still flattened for about a hundred more yards, then they’re pushed out of the way but not flattened.”
“Are we following a horde?” asked Yuni.
Her husband put his arm around her shoulders and gave her the obvious answer.
“It would appear we have no choice. We happen to be going the same way.”
Sherry asked, “Why can’t we go across country to the coast and then go south?”
Iris said, “The Chief told me about the horde that marched down the coastal highway in South Carolina. He said they crushed each other into trees along the road, but the horde kept getting replacements along the way. They made so much noise that the infected that were scattered throughout the trees, forests, small towns, and wherever they had gathered were drawn to the crowd. If we go toward the coast, we’ll run into the infected that are trying to join the parade.”
“So we should just keep following them?”
Yuni didn’t like the idea of seeing thousands of infected up ahead.
“Better than the other way around,” said Sherry.
“Which reminds me.”
Iris was facing back in the direction they had come from.
“When the horde went through here they made plenty of noise that drew the infected from miles around, but not all of them would have caught up with the horde. We need to keep an eye on the road behind us from now on. When we stop for the night we have to consider strays that are still trying to catch up.”
“And we have to be careful not to catch up to the horde ourselves.”
Yuni sounded like she had a pretty good idea what it would look like when they finally saw the horde up ahead, but she also couldn’t shake the feeling that they were already surrounded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mission Plan
Year Six of the Decline
The Chief always made a plan before doing anything else, and he believed in making backup plans because sometimes things went wrong. This time was different, though. Somehow the man responsible for Sam’s death had gotten off of James Island before he could have the roads blocked. It was partially due to Captain Miller, and for the first time, we were seeing the two friends unable to make eye contact without a hint of anger.
The dining hall had become the informal conference room for strategy sessions, so the tables were all crowded when the Chief started to lay out a plan for going after Stokes.
It had become a heated exchange almost from the start. Kathy and Jean had been with the Chief the longest, and they had told me before that they had never really seen the Chief get angry, but it seemed like he was going to lose control when Captain Miller said they couldn’t afford to send the military helicopters after one man. The threat from the people behind the Yorktown had become much bigger when we saw the plane land at Patriots Point, and the munitions we saw them setting up were not to be taken lightly. It was clear to him that the people were fortifying their area and that they considered Fort Sumter to be unwelcome.
The Chief had reacted with a fury that scared everyone except Captain Miller. He dwarfed all of us in size, but when he got mad and stood up, he seemed even bigger than before. He went so far as to call Captain Miller a coward, and the only reason punches weren’t thrown was because Bus got between them. Bus may have been old and short, but he was muscular enough to put a stop to it.
I don’t think anyone could ever say Captain Jim Miller was really a coward. He had managed to break away from the military with about a hundred soldiers not long after the apocalypse had begun. He wasn’t a deserter in his own eyes, nor was he a deserter in the eyes of the men and women who served under him or our group of survivors.
His reasons for breaking away were good enough for us. When his senior officers ordered him to capture the infected and return with them to the ships where the military had set up their headquarters, it was a recipe for disaster. The plan was to experiment with the infected to find a cure, and even though it was understandable, attempts to contain the infection on ships hadn’t always gone too well.
When Captain Miller questioned the orders, he was informed that they were also assigned to capture survivors and bring them back for further study under laboratory conditions. Miller never felt that the military should be used against the citizens of his country, so he took as many men and women as he could and escaped to the mainland.
Miller had eventually teamed up with us because we had crossed each
other’s paths once before, and on that occasion the Chief had sacrificed a large amount of our reserve fuel to rescue Captain Miller and his soldiers.
They were pinned down with no way to escape and likely to be overrun by the infected within the hour. Chief Barnes expertly flew in low over the heads of the infected and sprayed them with fuel. Once it was ignited, it consumed the infected while the soldiers escaped.
If not for the debt of gratitude, and Bus getting in between them, Captain Miller would probably have given the Chief a black eye. If I knew the Chief as well as I thought I did, when he cooled down he was probably going to ask Miller to give him two black eyes because he was the kind of guy who would regret letting his emotions get the best of him.
But that was going to take some time. I didn’t think it would take too long, but like I said, I had never seen the Chief this angry.
When Bus separated them, the Chief stormed out of the room. I could see Jim Miller finally relax, but his shoulders slumped further than normal. He was clearly deflated by the cross words they had exchanged. For the most part he had maintained his even disposition. It was one of his character traits that made his troops so loyal to him. He didn’t like being called a coward, though, and he had responded with something along the lines of the Chief thinking he was Rambo. The fact was, he cared enough for the Chief that the insults had hurt both of them.
Miller had hit a sore spot with the Chief, and he knew it because we had found Rambo to be one of the movies in the Fort Sumter video library. The Chief had joined in with all of the good natured jokes the soldiers made during the movie. They loved the movie and the actor, but whenever one of the men acted too bold or too tough, the others jumped on the chance to call him or her Rambo. Just as I suspected the Chief would apologize for calling Miller a coward, I expected Miller to apologize for calling him Rambo.
The room stayed silent for a few seconds after the Chief left. Miller stayed on the same spot, likely to be unsure of what to say to the rest of us.
“Does anybody else think I’m wrong?”
He didn’t say it in a voice that made us feel like it was a challenge.
One by one we met his gaze and told him basically the same thing. We understood, and the Chief would eventually come around.
“You know he doesn’t think you’re a coward,” I said.
Everyone else seconded the comment, and Miller gave a half grin to no one in particular.
“I know. Do you think he’ll get over the Rambo insult?”
Kathy said, “Yes, but I’m going to edit the movie credits and put his name in there instead of Stallone’s.”
“I heard that.”
We all froze because the Chief put just enough of an edge on the comment to keep us from being able to tell if he was still mad. Then one corner of his mouth went up.
“You came back sooner than anyone expected,” said Jean.
“If you need more time to defend my point of view, I can leave for a bit.”
“Chief, I think the Captain has a point,” said Kathy. “What if Patriots Point attacks while we’re gone? Whoever is still here could seal the shelter shut, but those people would occupy the surface. Not to mention the possible loss of life.”
“I know he has a point. That’s what I’m mad about. I just have to catch up with that lowlife who buried the kids. Sam had to feel alone before he ran out of air, and I need to make that guy pay.”
Chief Barnes had a special bond with all of us, and we had been through a lot together, but his bond was undeniably the strongest with Kathy. Even though she had become Tom’s girlfriend and Molly’s new mother, the things they had done since the beginning of the infection made them closer than most blood relatives. That was why he slumped just like Miller had when Kathy walked over and hugged him.
Captain Miller opened his mouth to say something, but the Chief just held up a hand and said, “No, Jim. You don’t need to say it again. You’re right with one exception.”
Miller wasn’t sure what he had missed, but he was willing to wait for the Chief to finish.
“You need to do something about the birds on the surface. If Patriots Point does a preemptive strike, you’ll have helicopters that don’t fly. They weren’t intended for combat, but whoever those people are, they don’t know that.”
“What do you suggest?”
The Chief turned to our group as he answered.
“We have an idea where this guy Stokes is going, and if we leave soon, we’ll get there ahead of him. If Bus can convince his old friend on that oil rig to let us visit, we could land on the rig while his friend will be forced to use a boat. Before we go you could rotate the birds to the Air Force Base and retrofit some weapons.”
“What about the Cormorant?” I asked. “I know those machine guns are deadly, but we’ve got to get something that packs a little more punch.”
“The Cormorant might be why they haven’t attacked us yet. They may be interested in taking her from us,” said Tom. “I imagine they would take the helicopters if they could.”
It was easy to see that the entire group was unnerved by the prospect of being attacked by this unknown enemy. Whoever they were, they had built a strong fortress from the top of the bridge all the way to the other side of Patriots Point. They had weapons, and they had small planes. The one thing they didn’t have that we knew of was an ally.
“There’s still the military,” said Captain Miller. “I could let them know where we are.”
Even though it wasn’t being put up for a vote, it wasn’t a secret how everyone felt.
“No way,” said Kathy. “They might treat you like a deserter, and at the very least you know they would take over the shelter.”
It sounded like we didn’t trust the military anymore, but the simple fact was that we had survived for five years without them. As a matter of fact, other than the rare sighting of a ship in the distance, there had been no military presence that we were aware of. Wherever they were, we hoped they were making progress against the infected, but we had gotten used to being on our own.
The Chief and Captain Miller had a silent exchange that was a combination of eye contact, nods, and some hand motions that indicated they wanted to talk about something in private. I saw Miller hook a thumb toward the wing of rooms where he had set up an informal command center. The Chief took the invitation, and they both slipped out of the room.
There was more than one sigh of relief, and we left it to them to figure out the plan. In the end, they decided that Plan A was for the Mud Island survivors to go after Stokes, but we wouldn’t leave until the Army felt like Fort Sumter was ready. If the people at Patriots Point saw one helicopter leave, they weren’t likely to think much of it. They might wonder where we had been after being gone for more than a day, but they wouldn’t think the Fort was vulnerable just because the executive chopper was gone.
Communications with the oil rig was the problem. We hadn’t been able to get Maybank on the radio, but that was likely to improve once we were in closer range. If it didn’t, we figured we could at least land on the rig and then convince him to let us in. That’s where Bus came in. They had aged, but Bus could convince Maybank it was really him if they had a chance to speak. Bus said the oil rig has some serious armament. We just had to be sure Maybank didn’t see us as a threat before using his defense system.
*******
When we acquired our fleet of helicopters from the Air Force base, we found that North Charleston was saturated with the infected. Even over the years that had passed since that time, the city surrounding the Air Force Base had remained untouchable by survivors who weren’t as well equipped as we were.
We had weapons, manpower, and flight capabilities, so we could get in and out in a hurry. We could approach by water when we wanted but only if we used the Ashley River. Whoever that was on the Yorktown, they controlled the Cooper and the Wando Rivers. Even the mouth of Charleston harbor was within their range, but so far no one was reacting when we sai
led the Cormorant or our smaller boats out to sea.
We decided to fly into the Air Force Base in search of the munitions that could be most effective if Fort Sumter was attacked. Even though the base had been the home of the C-17 transports, there was an avionics maintenance squadron on the base that was used to repair and resupply fighter jets. If we were lucky, they would also have weapons that could be adapted for use on helicopters.
The Chief and Captain Miller agreed that we would only need one day to find what we needed and to bring it back to Fort Sumter. As soon as that was finished, we could head for the Florida panhandle to find Stokes. If we couldn’t locate him, we would settle for meeting with Maybank at his shelter. If Stokes was really unlucky, he would pick the oil rig that was home to Maybank’s shelter, and Maybank could settle the score for us.
We knew we were being watched by the people on the Yorktown, so only one of our helicopters was deployed to the Air Force Base with enough troops to search for weapons.
They hit the jackpot when they checked the cargo hold of a C-17 on the runway. It was apparently transporting munitions to a First Air Cavalry unit because it had a variety of door operated machine guns, rockets, and grenade launchers. They were all designed to be integrated into the navigation systems of specific helicopters, but they could be adapted to operate manually.
The biggest discovery was a guided missile system called GROM and GROM/B. It was all Greek to us, but Miller’s men were really excited by the weapons. They did a lot of damage, but the best part was they were intended for surface to air defense, but they could be fired from helicopters. With the increased altitude, they could fire them a long distance from the target. One of the soldiers told us that they could almost hit the Yorktown from the Air Force Base. Captain Miller said he preferred that the unknown force across the harbor would never need to be hit by those weapons, but if they had to use them, the fight would be over in under an hour.
