by Howard, Bob
She was halfway up the Wellbay tower when she finally remembered the container ship. She felt sick when she saw how close it was to the oil rig, and she wasn’t sure David was going to make it. She knew for sure neither of them would make it if she didn’t climb faster.
David saw her turn above him, and when she started climbing faster, he instinctively picked up his pace, too. He only took the time for a glance to his right, and all he could see were the sides of the stacked containers. They were a wall in front of his face, and it was coming closer so fast that it felt like the oil rig was speeding towards it instead of the other way around.
To David and Janice they were sure the container ship was moving at a speed high enough to crush the tower they were climbing. Janice flipped from the ladder rungs and threw herself flat on her back on a catwalk. David fell over her to shield her from the impact. The sound of metal bending and things being shattered was deafening, but they didn’t really feel the bone jarring crash they expected. They shook and they swayed, but something was missing. They should have felt it deep in their bones.
There was a long drawn out sound as the rig and the boat settled back to their places in the water, and the two rubbed hard against each other. Waves washed across the entire area of the oil rig, and one really big wave led the charge. It hit the bodies that remained from the dead tide and the thousands of rats, dead and alive. They were all carried free of the rig, and for the first time in what seemed like forever to Maybank, there was clean water under the rig. He was elated, but the feeling was short lived. Now he wondered if he would be staring at the container ship for the rest of his life.
The people outside from the small boat had made it most of the way up the Wellbay tower before he took his eyes off of them. He wanted to see if they made it, but even more important to him was the test his oil rig was facing.
In the years that were spent designing and building the shelter, the engineers talked about making the shelter indestructible and the oil rig as indestructible as possible. He wasn’t really worried about the shelter surviving a collision with a container ship, but he wasn’t so sure about the oil rig. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the ship ripped the rig apart, and he watched while holding his breath.
The engineers made a list of possible dangers to the rig. A nuclear bomb would melt it like ice, but the shelter would survive. They said it would be a rough ride, but if he was inside with the doors closed, he would be in one piece afterward. They had a long list of other disasters that were possible, and they were prioritized according to severity. Collisions were expected with all sizes and types of ships from pleasure craft to aircraft carriers, but container ships were far enough down the list to be considered survivable.
Maybank wanted to believe with his whole heart that the engineers were right, especially as he watched the ship grow in size as it approached. It filled the view completely of one monitor because the camera was on the Wellbay Tower. He braced himself when the impact smashed the camera. His hands were clamped onto the arms of his chair so hard that his fingers turned white.
He didn’t feel a thing at first, but then he began to sway gently from side to side. The big crash and crunch he expected were missing, and his microphones out on the rig only relayed the sound of the ship’s hull collapsing at the level of the deck. The ship bent inward along the starboard gunwales, and some of the containers continued on a collision course with the tower, but they were cracked open like eggshells when they hit.
Maybank heard the long sighing sound as metal rubbed against metal and the water rushed in again to fill the gap between the oil rig and the ship. He heard it all, and he swayed gently, but the engineers had been right. There was no hint of the dreaded breach in the tower.
The ship seemed to be bobbing on the surface next to the massive Wellbay Tower. Containers had been cracked open, and unknown contents had fallen like a landslide onto the deck, but other than the bent gunwales, the ship appeared to be ready to stay alongside the oil rig for a long time.
“Another houseboat,” Maybank said out loud. “Complete with a crew of the infected.”
He panned cameras around to the last place he had seen the people from the small pleasure craft. Panning upward he saw that they had gotten high enough that they had a front row seat to the collision, and they had to be wondering how a ship that size could hit an oil rig, and the total damage wasn’t anything more than a bent gunwale and some spilled goods.
On the camera he could see they were approaching the edge of the catwalk that was now above the deck of the ship. From the way they were studying the damage, he could tell they were more than interested in the tower. Even the contents of the shattered containers didn’t seem to be drawing their attention. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it wasn’t right for a container ship to hit anything made of metal without leaving a scratch.
The man was running his hand along the tower where it continued up to the next level. It ended at that level, and the catwalks surrounding the fake Drilling Module were perched on top of it. What he was undoubtedly trying to understand was how the drilling module didn’t fall over from the impact. It should have done the same thing as the stack of containers on the ship, but it had stayed perfectly upright as if it had been nothing more than a nudge by the ship. As a matter of fact, the man was going to realize sooner or later that he and the woman should have been launched through the air onto the deck of the ship.
While the man was inspecting the tower, the woman was turning in a slow circle taking in the metal and cables on the towers. Her eyes fixed on the building that resembled a large mobile home on the highest part of the rig. From her position on the Drilling Module, Maybank knew she couldn’t tell that the platform above it was a helicopter landing pad. He also knew she would get around to finding that out for herself. They didn’t appear to be injured, so they were going to be around for a while with plenty of time to explore.
Maybank had a sudden feeling that he had jumped to a conclusion when he assumed they would be around for a while. If he didn’t know about the shelter in the oil rig but had escaped the carnage on the mainland, he would stay as long as he could, but he didn’t know anything about them. For all he knew, they may have come from somewhere better than here. After all, they had to have been surviving somewhere since the spread of the infection.
He panned his camera downward toward the place where the people had grabbed the rungs to the ladder, and he searched for their boat. There was some big debris in the water from a container that had gone over the edge, but it wasn’t hard to recognize the pieces of the broken hull. Their small boat had been caught between the metal of the hull and the tower and crushed to bits. They wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.
When he panned back up to the people, he saw they had just come to the same conclusion. The man was alternately pointing down at the spot where their boat used to be and gesturing with both hands at the oil rig. Just for good measure he broke up the routine by pacing back and forth a short distance from where the woman stood. If he was lamenting their predicament, Maybank wasn’t sure what he was asking the woman to do about it.
******
Janice Parker leaned against a metal railing at the end of the catwalk and looked down onto the deck of the container ship.
“How can a ship that size hit an oil rig and just bounce off like that?” she asked her husband.
“At this moment, I don’t really care,” he answered. “I just want to know how we’re supposed to get off of this oil rig now.”
“Maybe there’s a boat around here somewhere.”
“Really? Do you really think we’re going to be that lucky?”
It wasn’t actually a question. It wasn’t really like him, but so much sarcasm dripped from his tone of voice that she felt like pushing him over the side.
Janice pointed at the deck of the container ship and asked, “What do you think that is?”
David followed her finger with his eyes and saw a p
erfectly good boat hanging from a pair of davits, and it had a fair sized engine.
“I guess all we have to do is go down there and launch it.”
“If you don’t drop the sarcasm, you can go down there and launch it by yourself for all I care.”
He was caught off guard because he wasn’t used to her standing up for herself. When he counted the number of infected walking around out on the deck, he knew that he would never be able to do it without her help. The only area that was free of the infected was the part of the ship that had hit the oil rig. The containers had fallen over onto the infected that were in that area, and he saw that they would be able to climb down there, but they would never reach the boat hanging from the davits by themselves. One of them would have to distract the infected while the other one lowered the boat.
“We didn’t chase this ship around all day just to try to steal a boat from its deck,” said Janice. “I think we were trying to board the thing up until it hit the oil rig, but look at this place.”
She made a long sweeping gesture with her hand.
“There’s something up there that has to be some sort of crew’s quarters. It looks like someone took a mobile home and fastened it to the top of this thing. And what about that place up there?”
Maybank could see that the woman was pointing at the sealed off area above where his apartment had been. He had no idea what she was saying to the man about it, but if he was them, he would feel pretty lucky to have been stranded on an oil rig. If they took the time to explore it, they would find out just how lucky they were.
“This place had people working on it. What happened to them after the infection broke out? If they lived out here, they must’ve had some supplies. They couldn’t have just left and taken everything with them?”
She didn’t give him the chance to answer. She brushed past him and went to the nearest ladder that went upward and climbed. Maybank knew what would happen next. She would take one look inside the crew’s quarters, and he would have company on the rig for a long time.
Maybank sat back in his seat and watched her climb the ladder. It took a few moments to sink in, but it dawned on him he was watching her as a woman, not as a survivor who just happened to reach his shelter. He had been alone on the rig for months, maybe a year. For some reason he wasn’t keeping track of how long, but when he considered events he had witnessed, it had to be somewhere right around a year. The infected showed up, the dead tide of bodies washed out to him, they stayed for about six months.
“Yeah, it’s been about a year, I guess.”
He said it out loud as if someone had asked him how long it had been since he had seen a living person, especially a woman.
Her hair was long, but she had it pulled back into a ponytail that swayed from side to side as she climbed the ladder. She reminded him of a teacher he had in high school. He had such a big crush on her that he almost didn’t pass her class. He would have done anything to get a better grade, but he was too distracted to learn.
Maybank’s trip down memory lane was interrupted by the man. He was climbing the ladder behind her and gaining. He was right behind her when she made it to the top, and he caught her by one arm. She tried to pull away, but he pointed at the door to the quarters and said something that made her pause long enough to listen. He was undoubtedly telling her she didn’t know what was inside there.
There was something moving near their feet. After all of the electric shocks he had sent through the rig, rats had survived, probably by clinging to insulated wires. They were bigger than the others, and Maybank saw the rats weren’t too happy about the intruders. The woman jumped away from one as her husband timed a perfectly aimed kick at a really big one that was closer to him. The rat sailed over the railing, and judging by the way all of the rats in the area ran for cover or jumped down to a lower level, the rat must have squealed when it was kicked.
One rat took advantage of the distraction and ran along the railing straight for his bare hand. When the man had delivered the kick he had reached for the railing to steady himself. To the rats, the only difference between these two people and the infected dead that had been a food source was that they walked upright and faster. These rats were accustomed to people who flailed their arms and legs but were unable to make a coordinated effort to prevent the rats from feeding on them.
It reached the bare hand quickly and took a big bite from the exposed flesh on the back. The rat was probably surprised by the hot blood that spurted from a vein. It was more accustomed to the cold, thick blood that didn’t spurt at all when the rat had bitten the infected. Maybank didn’t have to wonder what the rat thought of this discovery, because instead of running when the man screamed and then backhanded the furry creature from the railing, it attacked again.
Shock isn’t the same for everyone at first. Some people get so angry that they keep carrying on as if nothing happened. That was this guy.
The cameras had a good view of the deck outside the crew’s quarters, so Maybank saw the man’s face and the woman’s in one glance. Her eyes and mouth were wide, most likely because there was so much blood. His face was twisted and full of rage. The nerves in the back of the hand have very little protection, so it had to hurt badly, but the blood and pain made him mad before it made him smarter.
He should have run for the crew’s quarters and tried to wrap something around his hand at the same time, but he wanted a piece of that rat.
She saw the rats coming, and her flight response kicked in. She ran for the door of the crew’s quarters as he ran after the rat. With only one hand working right, he shouldn’t have gone back to the ladder, but when several rats converged on his left ankle, that’s where he was as the woman pulled the door shut.
It would have been better for him if the fall had killed him, or if he had missed the catwalk below and fallen all the way to the water, but he landed flat on his back on the catwalk. If Maybank had wired the entire rig with sound, he would have heard the man’s back break. His head moved from side to side, but his arms and legs were spread heavily away from his body.
The rats jumped easily from the top level down to him, and as if they knew he would taste better than the cold bodies of the infected dead, they poured over him.
Maybank had seen plenty of death already, and he stayed detached from what he saw enough that he was able to ask himself one important question.
“If the rat had only bitten him, would he have been infected by the rat?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Evolution
Year Six of the Decline
It was really an amazing feeling to be on the Cormorant again and traveling over open water. We had been out on her plenty of times over the last five years, but traveling on the Ashley River or making a run up to Mud Island was different. Riding her decks on the Gulf Stream made me feel like the world was a better, safer place. Of course that was all an illusion because nothing had been done to change the world. There were still strongholds of people, pockets of civilization, but the world still belonged to the dead. As long as it wasn’t safe to travel between those strongholds, the world didn’t belong to the living.
I had picked up Molly’s journal again when we decided to make the trip on the Cormorant. We knew more than a lot of people did about the world, but we didn’t know enough. It occurred to me that the journal wasn’t just for us and our children. It was for anyone who might read it. If something happened to us, someone still might find this journal and they would learn about the Mud Island survivors. It was important for them to know what we had done.
It was important for them, whoever they were, to know what had happened to the President. I made a detailed entry by interviewing Terrance Simmons about how his plane had been used to get the President out of Washington. I also made a long entry for Cassandra Gibbs, a security officer on a hospital ship who had survived a trip across the Atlantic with no one but the infected dead on board. She and Sim, as we liked to call Terrance, had been drawn to each
other instantly.
It had become quite a project to bring the journal up to date. Tom and Molly’s escape from Myrtle Beach and how they found Mud Island, Hampton and Colleen and their rescue from Lake Norman in North Carolina, and of course there was the best story of all. That was how the Chief, Kathy, and my own wife, Jean, escaped from Charleston Harbor on a cruise ship in the first days of the infection. What started as a journal was now a history of the survival of a large group of friends. If something happened to us, at least the world would know what we had done until our end had come.
******
Planning for the trip had been fast but thorough. Everyone did their part to get the Cormorant ready to go to sea. We loaded our supplies at night under the cover of darkness, not even using flashlights. We didn’t want anyone to suspect that one of our most powerful weapon systems was going to be gone for a few days, and the amount of gear being loaded would have been a sure giveaway.
Three days before leaving the Chief and a squad of Captain Miller’s men sailed her up the Ashley River to the Coast Guard Station for refueling. We wanted to start off with a full tank and we hoped to refuel when we were about eight hundred miles into our trip. We would refuel sooner if we saw the opportunity, but we didn’t want to refuel too soon and be forced to find another fuel supply before getting to the oil rig. Maybank would be able to top us off for the trip home, but we were hoping to avoid making too many port calls. Bus told us the oil rig shelter held enough fuel for an aircraft carrier. We all took that with a grain of salt, but we didn’t need that much fuel, anyway.
