by Bob Howard
I aimed my binoculars toward the tree line beyond the dock. I didn’t see anything moving. The good news was that we were not in a populated area. The bad news was that people headed for the rural areas when the shit hit the fan on the first day. I guess I was living proof of the thinking that it was safer out in the sticks if they didn’t go to the same rural areas. We had heard on a news broadcast that most people tried to reach the mountains.
The dock was a long one that ran from the water right to the trees. It reminded me of my own dock because it seemed to just disappear once it reached the trees.
“Ok, folks. We’re going to be pretty exposed as soon as we get out onto the dock. I need a few minutes to see if I can find a bullet hole. That will give us an idea about whether or not we’re going to be coming back for the plane,” said Chief Barnes.
Kathy jumped out onto the dock and tied us off. As soon as she had the rope in place, she laid prone on the dock and took aim at the trees. Jean laid down next to her and began searching the terrain with her binoculars.
I jumped out onto the left side pontoon and scanned the opposite shoreline. It was all marsh and mudflats, so there wasn’t much chance that anything would reach us from that side, but I would be covering the Chief’s back in case there were any living people in boats. Right now they were as dangerous as the infected because guns were as common in this area as toothbrushes.
Chief Barnes inspected quickly and found a bullet hole on his first pass. “We’re walking, everyone, but we can come back with some oil and hoses, and I’m pretty sure I can get this thing in the air again. I didn’t fly it too far after we got hit, so I didn’t burn up any cylinders.”
“Movement in the trees,” yelled Jean. She pointed for Kathy to see where she had spotted movement. It wasn’t far from the end of the dock, and Kathy zeroed in on at least four infected dead. The shambling, jerking way of walking was a dead giveaway that they were infected dead and not living people.
Kathy took aim at the first one but waited to shoot. There was no sense in shooting them from so far away. A missed shot was wasted ammunition.
I went back through the cabin of the plane and laid down next to Kathy and Jean with my rifle aimed down the dock. Kathy said in a low voice, “Hold your fire unless I have a problem, Ed. Unless the woods are full of them, this should be like shooting fish in a barrel. You can help by getting a head count so I know what we’re up against.”
I laid my rifle aside and got my binoculars out, too. Jean was already scanning other gaps in the trees making sure there weren’t more threats. I located the infected at the end of the dock and was surprised by how revolting they looked. They had a variety of injuries and looked like they had all been eaten to some extent.
“More coming up from behind the first row,” Kathy. “I count eight, so far.”
“Movement on the left,” said Jean.
I shifted my binoculars to the left and found what Jean saw. “They’re not using the dock,” I said. “They’re going to try to walk across the mud plain to get to us.”
“Good luck with that,” said Kathy. She had a really big smile on her face. “They’re going to get stuck in the mud, and when the next high tide comes in they’re going to have a lot of company. They may go slow by crabs finding them, or they might go fast if the alligators get to them first. The area really has a lot of gators.”
The eight infected dead were making progress coming down the dock, but the ones in back were trying to push past the slower moving ones in front. The end result of a little pushing and shoving was that two went over the edge into the mud. They immediately sank deep enough to be stuck.
Kathy centered her crosshairs on the forehead of the infected dead that had pushed his way to the front. “I’m going to drop Mr. Aggressive, and the others behind him will have to either go around him or trip over him.”
She exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. Kathy had been a good shot at the police academy, but the rifles they had brought along were great for this kind of shooting. They didn’t have much kick, so it was easy to stay on target.
The first of the infected dead fell perfectly in the middle of the dock. There was a neat pile up as the others began falling over each other. Two tumbled over the side and weren’t going to be a problem again. The remaining three were trying to get their feet back under them as they crawled over the first one.
Kathy took careful aim and shot the second one. She immediately switched targets and took out one, then the other of the remaining dead. They were piled up in one general area and would serve as an effective barrier if more infected came along. That would give us a chance to unload our gear without being rushed too much.
Jean said, “I’ll keep watch while you guys unload. I don’t think we have to worry about people ambushing us since there were so many of the infected out here.”
We were ready to start walking a few minutes later. The Chief had mapped out the best route to get back to my island. It looked like we were going to be walking a four lane highway most of the way, and there was only one town that would have a population large enough to cause us any concern. It looked like we were facing a sixty to seventy mile trip.
When we walked from the plane to the trees, we stepped carefully over the bodies of the infected that Kathy had shot. The ones that had fallen into the mud and the ones that had walked straight into the mud from the trees were all groaning loudly.
We all started exchanging looks at each other, all thinking the same thing. We needed to get clear of the area before more were drawn to us.
The Chief caught our attention and said, “We’re only a little over a mile from Highway 17, but we’re less than a mile north of the Paradise Boat Landing. There were probably a lot of people at the landing when the shit went down. The woods south of here might be full of infected, and we have to get by them to get to our road. If they have been keeping to the road, they may be between us and Highway 17.”
“And we just announced our arrival,” said Kathy.
The four of us picked up the pace, but we moved quietly with our weapons up. At the end of the dock, we came into a circular clearing and were immediately spotted by another group of the infected.
“Keep moving,” said Chief Barnes. “We have to go down Wando Farms Road. We don’t have another choice.” He sounded more calm than he felt.
We went straight toward the infected, and when we were in a comfortable kill zone, we came up along side each other and took aim. It didn’t take seconds, and we were moving again.
Forty yards away we could see a barn, and to the right of that a big house. We veered toward the house, and Jean was the first to put into words what we were all hoping.
“Do you think there’s a car?”
“If there is, and if we can find the keys fast enough, we can be back to the shelter by tonight instead of six days,” I said.
“Let’s get inside the house,” said Kathy. “If we can get to the garage from the inside of the house we can look for the keys and be a bit more secure at the same time.”
We all ran straight for the back door that was up on a small deck in the corner of an L shaped part of the house. Kathy told us to form up on her and follow her lead. She had been trained on the proper procedures for clearing rooms, and we had no problem letting her training pull us through this. That’s why we were such a good combination. “The police officer, the pilot, the nurse, and the video gamer,” I thought.
Kathy tried the door knob, and it was unlocked. She didn’t waste any time, and she quickly cleared a family room. To the left was a large kitchen and dining room. At the back corner of the kitchen was a door, and she signaled for us to head that way.
When we got to the door, she gave hand signals that positioned us to the left, right and center. She pushed the door open and was ready to shoot immediately, having switched from her rifle to her pistol.
It was the garage, and there was a car, but the garage was literally crowded with infected dead. Kat
hy got off one shot, dropping the infected nearest to her, but she had no choice but to pull the door shut again.
Another of the infected had gotten close enough to grab her sleeve, and Kathy almost got pulled back into the garage, but she pulled so hard as she slammed the door that she wound up severing the arm of the infected at the elbow. The fingers were clenched shut on her sleeve, so Kathy had half an arm dangling from her wrist, and she was trying to shake it off.
I lunged for the swinging and swaying arm and tried to pull it off of her, and that probably saved my life. In the mayhem that had followed when Kathy opened the door, we hadn’t seen the infected woman who had come from the hallway that led back to the bedrooms. We hadn’t cleared the rest of the house because we weren’t planning on staying. It was supposed to be find a car, find the keys, and hit the road.
The infected woman followed my movement as I went for the swinging arm. I changed directions several times, and so did she. I caught the arm at the exact moment that she grabbed me, and probably at the exact moment that Jean put a bullet through the side of her head.
Once I pulled the arm off of Kathy’s sleeve, I turned and heaved it across the kitchen. It was then that I realized what had gone on behind me. I had actually thought Jean had grabbed me from behind instead of an infected dead. I felt faint when I saw what was laying at my feet.
In the meantime, Chief Barnes had moved into position to help Kathy get the door shut and locked. We could hear the infected pushing on the door, and I reminded myself of my mental note that it was safer to be in a room with the door opening outward instead of inward.
I looked at Jean who was still pointing her gun at the infected woman who had almost bitten me. It was the first time I saw real fear on her face, and it was because she knew we had almost lost each other.
“Ok, everyone, we have work to do,” said Kathy. “We have to get those things out of the garage. We need to figure out how we’re going to do that, but at least we can find the car keys first. Let’s clear the rest of the house and see if we can get lucky.”
I asked, “What if the keys are in someone’s pocket out there in the garage?”
“We’ll deal with it if that’s how it goes down,” she answered.
We formed back up on Kathy again and went toward a main hallway. The first turn on the left was the entry into the living room at the front of the house. It looked as if the residents had just walked out and left.
Kathy led the way toward the first bedroom. The door was open, and it had probably been where the infected woman had come from. A quick check of the room told us it wasn’t the master bedroom, so we kept going.
There were two smaller bedrooms, one set up as an office of some sort. Both were closed and empty. The master bedroom was occupied.
As Kathy pushed open the door and stepped into her shooter stance, she saw a foot disappear under a king sized bed. At the same time, she thought she saw movement near the master bath. She kept her gun aimed into the room with her left hand, but she raised her right hand in a fist for us to stop. We all knew she saw something. Kathy was thinking, “The infected don’t try to hide.”
We all waited for her to make the next move, but I have to admit, I jumped more when she spoke than if she had pulled her trigger.
“Police. Come out from under the bed,” she said. “You in the bathroom, get out here, too.”
There was a brief pause before a girl’s voice said from the bathroom, “Don’t shoot. I’m coming out.” At the same time that she hesitantly came out of the bathroom with her hands up, a man’s head appeared from under the bed.
Kathy kept her eyes on them, but she said to us, “For some reason, I thought that would work better. Most people just automatically do what a police officer says when they need help.”
The man raised his hands above his head after standing up. “Please don’t shoot,” he said. “You can have anything you want. Just take it and let us go.”
“Are you bitten?” Kathy asked in an authoritative voice.
They both shook their heads vehemently, obviously aware of the consequences of saying yes. “No, no, we’re fine. We’ve been stuck in here in the bedroom ever since that one zom……thing got inside.” He got stuck on what to call the infected dead, and for a moment it sounded like he was going to say, “Zombie”.
Chief Barnes stepped in with Kathy and said, “Strip.”
Both of them looked at him like they didn’t understand at first, and then the man looked at the woman and back to the Chief.
“If you think you’re going to……,” he managed to stammer out before the Chief interrupted him.
“Do you think we just plan to get our jollies with you two? I’ve got news for you,” he bellowed. “You’re not my type.”
Jean was grinning a little when she stepped in front of the Chief. She put one hand onto the Chief’s massive chest and pushed gently as she said to the man, “From the way you reacted, I’m guessing you two are married?”
They both nodded their heads and edged a little toward each other. “Yes, we are. Mark and Becky Harrison. This is my parents’ house. We don’t know what happened here, but we came out here from Charleston to get away from those things. When we got here we found everyone in the house was dead and walking around like that. We trapped them in the garage, but that’s where we parked our car, so we couldn’t leave.”
Jean held up one hand to stop him and said, “We’re pressed for time, Mark, so let’s get down to business. You cooperate, and maybe you leave here with us. You don’t cooperate, and maybe we leave you right here.”
Becky Harrison wanted no part of staying in the house and stepped forward. “We’ll do whatever you say.”
“Then strip,” said the Chief.
Jean and Kathy both gave him a withering look, and for the first time I saw who was really in charge in our group. I guess I should have known after the way Kathy had handled the pier in Charleston.
Jean said, “I’m a nurse, and before we go anywhere together, I’m going to examine both of you for bites. If you think it’s giving me a thrill, you’re wrong. The Chief and Ed can wait in the hallway. Now, do as the man said and strip.”
The Chief and I backed into the hallway, but as we did, I said, “Ask them about car keys.” Then he turned to me and asked, “What kind of idiots would trap them in the garage with their only form of transportation?”
About ten minutes later, Kathy and Jean emerged with the good news that they were bite free. Kathy had holstered her weapon, and she had a set of car keys that fit with the Chevy Suburban in the garage.
“The gas tank is almost empty, but Mark said his father always kept a few twenty-five gallon gas cans in the barn. That means we’re going to be stuck with going outside, but it beats stopping for gas on the way home if there’s a problem and we have to take a long detour,” she said.
“We need to figure out how to get the car out of the garage, but we also need to start thinking about what we’re going to do if we aren’t on the road soon. I don’t want to try making it back after it gets dark,” said the Chief.
He looked at Mark and Becky and asked, “Other than the infected in the garage, how have things been around here?”
Mark answered, “We were trying to figure out how to do exactly what you just said when that one thing got into the house somehow. Then we got cornered in the bedroom.”
“I’m going to go check for open windows,” I said. “We might have missed something.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the Chief. “The rest of you stay back here where Kathy can pick your brains about how you would get to the car.”
The Chief and I set off on our search and found a sliding glass door that was behind curtains. Because it was on the front of the house and not the back, everyone had assumed it was a set of windows. I slid the door shut and locked it. We both exchanged looks that sheepishly said we were going to have to do better, and that we had been lucky.
When we got back to
the master bedroom, everyone was sitting on the bed. Kathy said, “Mark is a contractor. He says the wiring for the garage door opener can be reached by going through a wall near the door. We can open the garage door, draw them outside, then lower the door again.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” said the Chief, “but first we need to get the gas from the barn. While we’re doing that, someone figure out how we can lure them out of the garage.”
“How do you plan to get to the barn?” asked Jean.
“I think we have to make a run for the barn. Two of us can carry gas cans while two can provide cover,” said Kathy.
I said, “Wait a minute, Kathy. What are we going to do with them while we’re getting the gas? We don’t know them well enough just to believe they’re going to open the door when we get back.” Mark looked like he was going to say something, but Kathy cut him off.
“Mark’s going with us,” she said. “As a matter of fact, he’s in the lead since he knows the fastest way in and out of the barn. He also knows where the gas is. When we get back, Becky will open the door.”
We gathered at the back door and got ready to make the run. Kathy said in a low voice, “Mark will be in the lead without a gun, so Chief and I will flank him. We’re not trying for quiet, we’re trying for fast, but we’re also not going to shoot unless we have to. Everyone get your machetes out, and we’ll switch to pistols if it gets populated. Any questions?”
“One last thing,” she said. “We don’t have to kill these things. We only have to incapacitate them long enough for us to get by them, going out and coming back.”
Kathy pulled open the door, and Mark slipped quietly onto the porch. We were still blocked from the view of the barn, so we wouldn’t know until we rounded the corner if it was going to be good or bad. We could see the trees back in the direction of the dock, and the nearest infected we could see was at least fifty yards away.
When we rounded the corner we only had about thirty or forty yards to go, but there were at least six infected between us and the barn. Kathy and the Chief moved slightly ahead of Mark, and with precision I didn’t believe possible, they took out the legs of the infected.