The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now (3 page)

What he saw made him feel a chill. The bridge was bathed in the bright lights on poles, but there were also hundreds of cars sitting still with their headlights on. Shadows were rushing in and out between the cars, and everything was moving. People seemed to be attacking each other, and the attacks were coming from the other side of the river moving rapidly toward the spot where Tom had pulled out of traffic only a few moments ago. He took Molly’s hand and started to follow the officer to the boats. Like everyone else, he kept glancing up toward the chaos that was moving like a wave from car to car.

As the wave of infected dead moved along the stopped cars, people would try to get out and run, but there were so many infected already mixed in with the living that it was too late to escape. The mob of attacking infected dead and the helpless victims appeared to be moving in a swirling motion, and eventually people began to jump from the bridge. Many of them fell with their attackers still hanging on by their teeth.

The police officers and soldiers in the boats couldn’t do anything to help. Part of the bridge was still over solid land, and it was more merciful than landing in the water because the fall would either kill the people trying to escape, or it would at least knock them unconscious. As much as the police and soldiers wanted to help, they knew that to do so would place everyone in their boats at risk. No one falling was likely to be unbitten, and even if they weren’t, there was no way to sort them from the infected who fell with them, at least not until they hit the ground. The infected would be the first to rise from the ground, and if the shocked people on the boat landing waited long enough, they would see the victims begin to push themselves into a standing position, too.

Tom scooped Molly into his arms and ran with the police officer to the last of the boats that were casting off from the ramp. It looked to him to be about ten or twelve boats, and each was carrying six or seven heavily armed men and women in uniform. There were no other civilians who had made it to the boats, and Tom felt guilty, but he had to keep his daughter safe. He would deal with the guilt later if he had to deal with it at all.

He handed Molly up to another officer in the boat and then climbed aboard himself. Tom said he was amazed by how calm Molly was. With the exception of her pink sweatshirt, she seemed almost to be a smaller mirror image of the people around her. They were all grim faced, knowing that they could have tried to help the people up on the bridge, but they also knew it was a lost cause. It was worse than a lost cause. It was certain death.

One of the officers raised both hands in the air and waved them across each other. One by one he got the attention of someone in each boat. They, in turn, got the attention of their companions. When everyone was looking in his direction, he spoke just loud enough for them all to hear.

Tom said that he told everyone to stay as quiet as possible. No one was to shoot their weapon unless it was absolutely necessary. He said they were going to go downriver to the South and try to join up with other military and police units that were trying to fortify positions and make a stand against the infected.

His last instructions made Tom realize just how lucky he had been to have the police officer recognize him. He said the man in charge told the others there would be people on the riverbanks wanting to be rescued, and there was no way to know who had been bitten. He told them to keep their boats in the center of the river and to keep plenty of distance between themselves and private docks. There were to be no rescues, and he made sure someone on each boat answered that they understood.

One of the soldiers called out in a low voice and asked what they should do if they encountered other boats with people who were escaping. It was a logical question because there were hundreds of boat owners in the area. Some of them had escaped by water, and many could be seen on the river already.

The man in charge answered that private boats were to be told to let them pass and then to follow. When they were far enough downriver away from the populated part of town, they could try to set up a screening process. Anyone who was not bitten could remain with the group. Any boat that was even carrying a bitten passenger would stay behind or be sunk.

The officers in charge on each boat then tuned their radios to the same channels and did sound checks. They were given call signs by the officer in charge and one by one they idled their engines a little higher and steered toward the center of the river.

They kept their speed low at first, and all of the boats were dark with the exception of one red running light on the bow. The river was eighty to one hundred yards wide and was fairly deep even along the banks. If they stayed in the center, they should be able to see trouble before trouble saw them. That was when bullets started flying over the boats. Tom said he didn’t know where they were coming from until two of their boats began returning fire.

The crew told Tom that the boats were armed with the Ma deuce, or M2 .50 caliber machine guns. They and the M134 mini guns were spitting out four thousand rounds a minute and quickly silenced whoever was shooting at them.They were also using tracers, so he could see the eerie glow of every fifth bullet as they streaked toward the boat landing.

Tom said that he and Molly were just trying not to be in the way, and there were no words to describe the gratitude he felt to the men and women who had snatched them from the jaws of death. He told us he remembered having that thought, and the phrase seemed so appropriate to describe the hideous creatures that were shambling toward families on the bridge. The screams had blended into one high pitched sound that didn’t begin to die down until they were out of sight from the bridge.

Tom looked like he had reached his limit for one night, and all of us could see it. The man looked completely exhausted. I had a feeling that one more beer would put him under the table.

“Tom,” said Jean, “you and Molly both need sleep. Finish your food while we get a room ready for you.” She mussed up Molly’s hair as she left the table, and Molly gave her a little giggle.

……

Once we had our new friends settled in for the night, the four of us returned to the living room. We had gotten into the habit of spending time talking over the daily events. It was usually just a social gathering because there hadn’t been anything significant happening for a while, but we also used the time to talk about strategies and the future.

We had a roof over our heads, weapons, clean clothes, and food, but we always remembered what Uncle Titus had told me about thinking like a survivor. We had to continually remember that it could all be taken from us if mistakes were made. We also had to remember that our supplies, while plentiful, were not infinite.

Taking in a child and her father was not going to impact our supplies to a great extent, but we had been toying with the idea that we could hide our heads in the sand and ignore what was happening in the real world, or we could be proactive and prepare for the time when we would be forced out of Mud Island. As I had said to my friends before, it’s like shucking an oyster. You have to pry at them to get them open, but sooner or later the oyster gets opened and gets eaten. That was one reason why we had also started monitoring the shortwave broadcasts continually.

Tonight’s social gathering was like putting closure on the idea that we could just sit tight and wait until this all blew over, but we needed to know more from Tom about what was happening on the mainland. He wasn’t in any shape to go on, though, and we were all left with the same question. How bad was it if a dozen boats carrying well-armed men and women didn’t make it through safely with Tom and Molly?

The Chief broke the silence as we settled in on the couch and a couple of recliners. When you considered what was happening in the rest of the world, we certainly couldn’t complain. We didn’t have the opportunity to give Tom a complete tour before showing him to his room, but there was no doubt he would be amazed when we showed him the rest of the place.

“So,” said the Chief, “anyone want to take a guess about what happened? How did they wind up here?”

“I don’t follow you,” said Kathy. “I’m sure Tom will have a lot more to tell us when he wakes up. Something must have gone terribly wrong for over seventy police officers and soldiers to not make it out, but one man and his child did.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at, Kathy. How did they get here, not how did they survive?”

Now it was my turn to be confused, and Jean didn’t look like she was doing much better. She had deep frown lines on her forehead and was eyeing the Chief like he was an alien.

I said, “Chief, you’re getting all of us worried. Are you having a stroke or something? You sound like you’re saying the same thing twice. How did they get here, and how did they get here?”

“Oh, now I see why everyone’s looking at me like that,” he answered. “I’m asking, how did they get from the Waccamaw River, which is to the west of Highway 17, over to the east of Highway 17? The last time we saw Highway 17 it was the Infected Dead Memorial Highway.”

All of us were intimately familiar with the coastal rivers and the main highway that ran parallel to the Waccamaw River. The four of us had made two insane trips by plane and boat away from the safety of Mud Island. We made it out and back by a combination of crazy luck and teamwork.

The Chief continued, “The Waccamaw River is about one hundred and twenty miles long. One hundred of it is in South Carolina, and it goes past us right through Georgetown. So, Tom and Molly either got off the boat before Simmonsville or after Georgetown, but there’s no way they could have gotten off in between and then made it across Highway 17.”

“I can’t imagine how they could have gotten past Simmonsville on land,” I said. “The accident that blocked Highway 17 had those infected dead backed up through Simmonsville. That’s one town that had a population increase after the infection started to spread.”

“And,” Jean added, “if they went as far as Georgetown, how did they get turned around and come all the way back up to Mud Island? As a matter of fact, I can’t wait to hear how they got across the moat to the dock.”

“I imagine the most interesting part of Tom’s escape with Molly is yet to be told,” said the Chief. “Breakfast should be interesting.”

The Chief got up and walked over to a corner of the room where he had been keeping rolled up maps and navigational charts. He searched through the collection until he found the right one and took it to the dining room.

He didn’t say anything, so the rest of us followed out of curiosity. He moved a few things off the table and spread out the map. Kathy sat heavy bowls on two of the corners and passed a matched set to me to do the same on the other end.

The map was longer than the table, but the Chief had everything he needed to see in the middle. He sat a salt shaker on one spot and said, “This is Simmonsville.”

I put the pepper shaker on the map and said, “Here’s Georgetown.”

The Chief reached over and moved it from the city to the bridge over the Waccamaw River. He said, “I think whatever happened, it had to be somewhere between these two places. Here’s the Waccamaw River running parallel to Highway 17.” He ran his finger along the river starting at Simmonsville and ending at Georgetown.

I looked at the land between the river and the highway, and I could see there was no possible way that anyone could have survived trying to walk from the Waccamaw River to Highway 17. There were only three roads going from Highway 17 toward the river, and they didn’t go all the way to the water. The closest of the three was the dirt road that I had traveled to reach Mud Island. It went in the other direction too, but just like on my side of Highway 17, it was a dead end.

The problem was that even if they could have made it from the river to Highway 17, they couldn’t have crossed that highway. It was just too crowded with the infected. As for the woods, they were worse between the highway and the river than they were on our side of the highway. The woods were so dense on that side that a person could be lost in there for days without food and water, and they wouldn’t be able to go more than two feet before they were tangled in the brush. It was that bad even without the infected trying to get through there themselves. It really was no wonder that the infected stayed on the main roads. They were following the path of least resistance.

“That’s only about a ten mile stretch of road,” said the Chief, “but any open ground gets you spotted by the infected dead, and trying to go through the trees would be impossible.”

“So, that leaves going around, either above Simmonsville or below Georgetown,” said Kathy.

Jean added, “And Simmonsville is the capital city of the infected dead, so it had to be Georgetown.”

I was listening to them, but I was really stuck on the question of crossing the moat more than I was on how they got to our side of the highway. Regardless of which way they had come, they had managed to breach our best security barrier.

“Guys,” I interrupted, “we have a problem. I know Tom just got to sleep, but we need to find out how they got across the moat. If they could do it, then somebody or something else could do it, too.”

“When was the last time any of us went out to the end of the dock?” asked the Chief.

We all looked at each other as if we needed confirmation, but we all knew there was a blind spot on the other side of the houseboat, and the last time any of us had gone that far down the dock was a long time ago.

One of our trips away from Mud Island was to bring back the plane, and we had also wanted to bring back a boat trailer so we could tow the Boston Whaler out of the water and hide it. In the process we had gotten lucky and brought back another boat. It was parked in line with the seaplane across from the houseboat.

When we parked the boat and the seaplane, we had passed behind the houseboat, and as far as I knew, none of us had been near the end of the dock since. We didn’t even go that far out on the dock when we brought Tom and Molly inside.

Kathy said, “I think we can wait until morning to find out, Ed, but you’re right. We have a blind spot behind the houseboat, and we took it for granted because the current was too strong through the entrance of the moat.”

The Chief went back to his stash of charts again and started rummaging through them. He came back with one and rolled it out on top of the first map.

“That’s a navigational chart of Mud Island,” said Jean, “but there’s something different about it. Is there something missing?”

“You’re right, Jean. This chart was made before the jetties were built.”

The Chief put one finger on the map and showed where the jetty would be built across from the northern tip of Mud Island. Where the land ended on the other side of the moat, there were markings and depths that showed there had been a large sandbar pointing straight at the island.

“I’m almost afraid to say it,” said the Chief, “but I think Uncle Titus had all of this dredged when he built the jetties. The moat probably didn’t even have water in it at low tide.”

The moat was what we had unofficially named the body of water that separated the island from the mainland. Most of the small islands along the coast have tidal pools or marsh between them and the mainland, but we had something that looked more like a river. The only way to cross it was by boat, and we had seen countless infected dead disappear under the surface when they tried to cross it.

Jean looked at me and asked, “Did your Uncle have any pictures of the island before the work was done?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “If he did, they weren’t on the island.”

“Chief, are you saying you think they walked across on a sandbar?” asked Kathy.

“If they did, it means the jetty didn’t keep the sand from getting deposited across the mouth of the moat, and if that’s true there will come a time when the moat won’t be as effective keeping us safe,” said the Chief.

Jean may not have been the technical genius that the Chief was, and she tended to be quiet when we started brainstorming, but she didn’t get through nursing school by being dumb.

She said, “We need to move the houseboat so we can see that blind spot, and I think we might need to move the plane and the boat to the southern tip of the island so they won’t be landlocked at low tide.”

She didn’t notice that we were all looking at her until several moments of silence passed.

She finally looked up and said, “What? Isn’t it obvious to everyone?”

Kathy said, “I don’t think we need to wake Tom up. We know what we’re going to find out there, and it’s just a good thing that we found out before it became too shallow to move the houseboat.”

“That bigger boat we brought back last time out should be able to tow the houseboat, right Chief?” she asked.

“Yeah, but that oyster Ed’s always talking about is one step closer to being pried open and eaten.”