by Howard, Bob
One by one they discussed their locations, and sometimes there were ideas that could be referred back to each previously discussed shelter. Someone came up with the concept that there should be a decoy shelter somewhere nearby. That way people would never suspect there was something bigger and better only a short distance away. That worked for everyone, including the oil rig. It wasn’t hard to imagine that plenty of people would try to escape to the rigs. They just had to find ways to keep them from getting inside.
The meeting ended with a plan to return in a month with progress reports. Titus told everyone that he expected to hear that all of the shelters were at least habitable by the end of the year. With the exception of the shelter at Fort Sumter he was sure it could be done.
******
The next time Titus Rush visited his chosen shelter site he was surprised to see the amount of progress the Army Corps of Engineers had made. He had at least half expected to find there had been delays. Money would be tied up by some pending House bill, or some auditor had questioned the manpower and materials. Instead he found they were ahead of schedule. He seriously doubted they could be making the same progress on thirty-one more shelters.
When Titus had selected the site, he had been standing at a tree line on a narrow strip of ground that gently sloped down into marsh grass and mud. As he stepped from the trees he found himself standing on a sandy beach, and about twenty yards in front of him was a cliff. He eased forward and looked over the edge. Wooden framework was holding the beach in place, or it would have all collapsed into a trench that was at least fifty feet deep near the beach.
Toward the middle of the trench it was closer to one hundred feet deep, and at the bottom he could see men working on power cables. The far shoreline looked smooth and metallic, and a second group of men was working on metal fasteners for a pair of the biggest nets he had ever seen. The nets were stretched across the bottom of the trench, ready to be raised into place. The General hadn’t balked in the slightest when he had called to suggest the additional layers of protection.
An Army engineer walked up to him and said, “Mr. Rush, you’re just in time for the big show. We’ll be pulling back the men and equipment in a few minutes and the crews at the dams will be letting the water in from both ends. You might want to be back by the trees when the two waves meet in the middle.”
He watched as the crews finished in the deep trench and were hauled to the shore. He realized the only way they could have dug such a deep trench was to dam entrances at the ends of the island, and the nets were too heavy to put in place without cranes, so they would use the water to float them into place.
“Have you guys gotten much done on the shelter?” he asked the engineer.
He smiled proudly and said, “You won’t believe it, Sir. As a matter of fact, our crew is competing with the other crews to see who can build the best shelter.”
In the distance sirens started to wail, and everyone who was working on the island and the mainland got into position to watch the water fill the moat. It was as impressive as the young Army engineer had expected. The two waves crashed into each other, and for a few moments it looked like a raging sea in the moat. When it finally began to settle, there was a wide river where there had once been nothing but mud and grass.
A boat came around the northern end of the island and was making its way toward the shore where Titus was standing. The officer driving the boat let it turn sideways so it would drift up to the bank where the wooden framework was. He waved for Titus to jump aboard and immediately turned back toward the island.
“We’re going to build a dock on the mainland right where you were standing,” he shouted over the sound of the twin outboard engines. “The General said he wants the dock rebuilt every ten years. If you ever have to use this place, you’ll need the dock with a boat ready for the trip across.”
As they approached the northern tip of the island, Titus could see a dock already protruding out from the land, and the officer expertly coasted up to it. Titus was fixated on the stone jetty that sat across from the entrance to the moat, and all he could think was how quickly they had done the work. It crossed his mind that the people in Washington might have been expecting something big.
“Is the jetty already done on the southern end of the island?” he asked.
“Certainly is, Sir. It was better to have them both done before letting in the water. That way neither end would need to be dredged. As you leave the entrances to the moat the bottom gets much more shallow, but it’s still deep enough to draft big boats.”
Titus followed the man as they left the dock and began hiking along a rough path toward the center of the island. His ankles were a little sore from the constant changes in the ground, and he was just about to ask the officer how much further when they walked into a small clearing. In front of them, set neatly in a recessed wall of earth was the biggest bank vault door he had ever seen.
It was standing open, and the sounds of construction could be heard coming from deep inside the island.
“Can we go in?” he asked.
The officer smiled and made a sweeping gesture toward the door with one hand.
“Make yourself at home, Mr. Rush. It belongs to you.”
Titus felt like a kid again. He stepped over the bottom edge of the door sill and looked around. At first he was a little disappointed because the room was so small, but then he realized the construction noises were coming from somewhere below.
“The rooms are far from finished, Mr. Rush, but I’m sure you will appreciate them even more when you know what’s underneath the finished product. For now, we’d like for you to see some of the safety features and layouts. We’ve read your specifications and we think you will like what you see.”
For the next hour Titus Andronicus Rush roamed from room to room studying every little detail, thinking the entire time, “Oh yes, I really do like this…even though the master bedroom is in the wrong place.”
CHAPTER TWO
Life Goes On
None of us really knew what it would be like to shut the door and actually have to keep it shut. It had always been an option to go outside, and the promise of fresh air and sunshine had made the shelter inside Mud Island feel like home. When the door was sealed, it felt more like a tomb.
It was too quiet in the first few minutes. We all looked at each other and realized the finality of our situation. We had no way of knowing how bad the nuclear incident was, so we also didn't know how long it would last. We didn't know what would be safe when we went outside, where we could go, and where the contamination would be. There were plenty of questions and very few answers.
No one spoke as we drifted off into our own private pursuits. Jean was experimenting with bread dough again, Kathy was looking through the supply of books, and the Chief had disappeared somewhere below, probably to the armory. Tom had gone in the same direction as he pulled on weight lifting gloves. Molly was sitting at the radio wearing the headphones that always looked too big on her head. Bus had already claimed his right to the computer and was reading an article about radiation exposure.
Not immediately knowing what I wanted to do with my time, I considered putting a video game on the main screen, but somehow I felt like being a little more productive. I switched on the outside video monitors and started scanning the different views. It didn't take me too long to realize there was a reason I had turned to what was happening outside instead of finding something to do inside.
Changes were about to happen again. What the changes would be were unknown, but they were coming. It slowly sank in that I was hoping to see the infected dead fall over and stay dead when the radiation dropped on the coast of South Carolina.
Bus was the one who had the foresight to put radiation monitors in several locations on the dock, all within view of cameras. He had even put one in the houseboat so we could judge how bad it got in a place that had minimal protection. All of them were still reading normal, which was good news. That mean
t the radiation hadn't arrived before we got inside.
I absentmindedly listened as Molly raised Fort Sumter on her radio. From what I could tell, she was talking with Sam. I remembered having a crush on a girl when I was about the same age, and it seemed to be that much stronger because we couldn't see each other whenever we wanted to. It was a long distance relationship, and the Internet was just beginning to be a way to shorten the distance. I imagined their relationship might be ready to burst by the time they were able to see each other.
My attention was drawn back to the outside views, and I watched a pair of the infected dead walk out of the trees. It slowly dawned on me that I wanted the radiation to arrive. I wanted to see it for myself and to know how the radiation would effect them. I wanted to see them double over and collapse into the sand. I held my breath and waited, but nothing happened. All they did was the usual lurching and stumbling through the sand until they eventually reached the edge of the moat and fell in.
I glanced over at the screen that showed the radiation monitors, and there was still no change. At least it looked like there wasn't. There were two different monitors at each location. One changed colors, and one had a needle that traveled along a calibrated arc. I wasn't entirely sure, but it looked like the needle wasn't sitting on top of the line that meant zero. It was starting.
"Uncle Eddy?"
Molly was holding the headphones away from her ears.
"Captain Miller said to tell you they were reading low levels of radiation. He wants to know if we are too."
"Tell him we are, Molly. Nothing big yet, but it's starting."
Molly nodded at me and turned back to the radio. I went back to scanning the trees on the mainland. There wasn't much breeze blowing, but I could imagine the radiation moving through the air. It would be even more deadly out there than what it had been when the infection started. Now there was just one more thing in the world that would start killing people who had somehow survived the teeth of the infected dead.
Jean came in from the kitchen and sat down next to me.
"Dough has to rise for a while," she said. "What's happening outside?"
I had expected her to say something funny, which is what she probably would have done under normal circumstances, but the gravity of the radiation falling unseen outside was having a sobering effect on everyone.
"It's starting. The radiation monitors are starting to react."
We both looked at the screens and saw the needles had all moved further along their arcs, and the colored monitors were a slight shade of pink. All we could do was sit and watch as if they were going to suddenly reverse direction.
"You know, Eddie, this is what your uncle really had in mind when he built this shelter. Someone was supposed to press a red button somewhere or turn a big key, and everyone who didn't get blown up was supposed to be killed by fallout."
It wasn't like Jean to be so negative, and I wondered what she was thinking. Maybe I was finally starting to grow up because I could see what was bothering her in her expression. It was the way she was looking at the monitors.
"Are you feeling guilty about being safe inside Mud Island?"
"A little. Someone else was supposed to be here, but they didn't make it. Look at the number of times we've managed to stay alive, and some poor slob couldn't even survive once by making it to the shelter."
"Do you think we don't deserve to be here?" I asked.
Jean was so caught up in her feelings, and I was so sorry to see her having a down moment that we almost didn't see the small boat that had pulled up to the dock.
There were at least six people, and if we weren't already feeling guilty enough, there were a couple of toddlers being carried by the adults. They were rushing to get inside the houseboat as if they knew something was wrong outside.
This time Jean read my mind and said, "They must have a radio. That has to be how they know about the radiation, but if they do, then they already know it's too late."
I reached over to the controls and turned off the monitors to the inside of the houseboat. We knew what was going to happen to the people, and there wasn't any sense in watching it happen. Jean squeezed my hand and got up from the sofa.
"I'm going to go do something to keep busy, Eddie. I can't let myself think about what's happening out there."
I couldn't do anything to help Jean or the new arrivals, and there really wasn't anything to be learned from watching them slowly die from the radiation poisoning. I didn't know how wrong I was.
******
We gradually got used to the idea that we were going to be locked inside Mud Island for a long time. Routines began to take shape, and schedules became normal. It wasn't that we sat down and decided what would get done and when. We just started doing the same things at the same times until it became expected.
Kathy started a running club, and within a few weeks we were all doing our time on the treadmills as a group. Even Jean, as pregnant as she was, managed to keep up for a while.
We got daily reports from Fort Sumter, and the Army had the same dismal updates we had for them. As expected, people moved into the fort above the shelter, and someone had taken up residence in the Cormorant, the Coast Guard ship that had saved our lives. It wasn't long before people started to show signs of radiation sickness.
Captain Miller usually took care of the call himself, seeming to draw strength from knowing his rescuers were safe inside their own shelter. I overheard him saying to the Chief that he owed him for his life twice now. If not for the Mud Island group, they would have been stuck outside in the radioactive fallout. Of course the Chief didn't want any part of the credit. He told Captain Miller we didn't do anything they wouldn't have done for us.
Jean started turning out some pretty good fresh baked bread, and the supplies were holding up better than we could have hoped. Time started slipping by without monotony setting in. There just seemed to be enough to keep us busy.
It was over breakfast when the Chief was in the middle of a conversation with Tom, and I was working on a stack of pancakes without much thought for what they were discussing. That was when he decided to have a little fun with me.
Jean was setting Molly up with a fresh glass of her beloved chocolate milk, although it was being poured from a can, and Kathy was having a dispute with Bus over the merits of coffee because Bus preferred tea. The Chief brought the room to a standstill.
"So, Ed, when do you plan to make an honest woman out of Jean?"
True to his usual form, he covered his grin by putting his coffee cup to his mouth. The mischief was still there in the pair of eyes above the steaming coffee.
Not to be outdone, and I have to give myself some credit, I had gotten pretty good at defending myself from the Chief's sense of humor.
"Jean's a very honest woman, Chief. She just happens to be an honest pregnant woman."
Wrong answer.
The last time the topic of marriage came up, I had done a reasonably good job of making myself look good. This time I had focused too much on beating the Chief in the smart remarks department, when I should have just rolled with it.
So began the longest cold shoulder I had ever gotten from Jean, which in its own way served as a distraction from the world outside. It also gave everyone else something to do as they set about trying to repair the damage I had done.
It took about two weeks to set things right again, but the Mud Island family finally got Jean and me to sit down to a candle light dinner for two, and I was able to formally propose to Jean. A date was set for the following weekend, and Kathy presented Jean with a wedding gown artfully crafted from the excess of linen tablecloths we had in storage. It was easily decided that the Chief would perform the ceremony since he was the closest thing to a ship's captain, and Bus would give away the bride. Molly would be the ring bearer and the flower girl, and Tom and Kathy would be the witnesses. We didn’t have one more survivor who could be my best man so Tom did double duty. The Chief said it was perfectly leg
al, and there were no objections from the population of Mud Island.
The wedding was great, considering we were in an underground shelter with a world changing event outside that was threatening the end of the human race. Maybe I'm slow sometimes, but I finally caught on to the Chief's motives. He wanted the group to avoid becoming too scheduled and even complacent. He wanted us to stay a little spontaneous because he knew we would want to leave the shelter sooner or later. He just wanted it to be because we could go back outside, not because we were going crazy being inside.
When I asked the Chief if that was what he had done, he never answered directly, but he explained that people don't live from moment to moment. They live from one big moment to the next. Weddings, births, high school and college graduation, landing a big job, they were all part of living. So much of that had been taken from us that he wanted to give us at least one of those big moments, and it had worked. The birth of our baby was going to be the next big event, but the Chief hadn't wanted us to miss the opportunity for the first one. It had taken our minds off of the world outside, and it had kept our routines from becoming boring.
If not for the fresh new role I had as a husband, I might have become unconcerned about what was happening in the houseboat, but I felt like something had opened my eyes again. I found myself back on the sofa looking at the world outside with the idea that there might be something to learn. I switched on the camera inside the houseboat and looked into the eyes of an infected dead. It was one of the adults I had seen carrying the toddler from the boat.