by Howard, Bob
My paralysis ended just as Kathy finished hugging me, and I managed to get my arms around Jean next. I couldn’t think of what to say, or I wasn’t capable of speaking. I wasn’t sure which one it was.
I finally managed to croak past a big lump in my throat, “I love you, Jean”
The Chief, always looking for the right time when I would provide him with comedy material he could use, said, “I told you he can talk. You just have to wait for it, and by the way, what happened to Uncle Titus’ private stock of optimism?” That’s what Jean had called the big supply of condoms she had found in the infirmary supplies.
Jean answered before I could, “You know how it is, Chief. Sometimes enthusiasm is stronger than optimism.”
I was glad she answered so I wouldn’t have to take all of the blame for that enthusiasm.
Chapter 3
Jetties
It was somewhere near the end of the first week in January, and it was anything but a nice day for a stroll, but the fresh air was a welcome change. We were bundled up and armed. Tom was going with us, and it felt good to have a fifth person in the group. It felt safer.
I expected Molly to get upset when Tom told her she would be staying inside, but her separation anxiety didn’t show. Tom told us he had tried his best to help her understand what had happened to the world. At her age she was just past the stage where she had to look under the bed at night before she could go to sleep, and she was still young enough to have an irrational fear of losing her father. Of course these were unusual times, and if I didn’t have Jean in my bedroom with me at night, I would probably look under the bed for monsters. Molly also had every right to be worried about losing her father.
I looked around to see what Molly was doing as we were getting ready to go outside, and I saw both Jean and Kathy huddled around her over at the shortwave radio. They were showing her how to press the microphone key and rotate the dial until the digital numbers changed. Jean helped Molly to get the headphones over her ears without catching her hair, and then they adjusted the volume to where she said it wasn’t too loud.
I heard Kathy ask her, “Molly, what’s rule number one?”
Molly answered, “Do not tell anyone where we are.”
“That’s very good, Molly, now what’s rule number two?”
She answered, “Don’t tell anyone how many people are here with me.”
“You’re a very fast learner, Molly. Can you tell me what rule number three is?”
Molly looked like she was thinking it over for a moment, but then she said, “If anyone talks to me, ask them where they are and how many people live with them.”
I had to laugh at that, and Jean looked like she was barely keeping it in herself. She leaned over to be closer to Molly and said, “Do you remember rule four?”
Molly gave her head a nod first and then said, “Every time I talk, press this button. When I’m done talking say over and let go of the button.”
We all applauded Molly for answering correctly and watched as she situated herself in front of the dial. She turned it a little, listened, and then turned it a little more. Jean had told her she may hear nothing but noise, but we needed her to try.
The Chief and Tom were waiting for us in the decontamination room. I was surprised to see that the Chief was wearing a wetsuit and had a complete set of SCUBA diving gear at his feet. When he saw my expression, he said, “It’s about time we find out how deep the moat is and what’s at the bottom.”
“I hate to ask, Chief, but do you expect to find something at the bottom?” I wasn’t particularly fond of deep water, which meant anything that was deeper than my own height, and I didn’t want to think about why the Chief expected something to be at the bottom, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
The Chief said, “I’ve noticed when the infected go into the water, they just disappear, so we know it’s deep and there’s a swift current. Hopefully, the dead have just been carried right out through the southern exit to the moat, but if they are getting stuck on the bottom by the oyster beds, I want to see what kind of condition they’re in.”
The Chief was a big man, but the wetsuit made him look bigger for some reason. I had never asked him how tall he was or how much he weighed. It just didn’t seem like the polite thing to do for some reason. My guess was that he was an even six and a half feet tall, but I couldn’t guess the weight. He was mostly muscles and his workouts with the weights were impressive.
We all gathered at the door after checking the cameras one more time to be sure the area outside was clear. We stepped through the big vault door into a brisk wind and took a defensive stance in case there was something outside we hadn’t seen. I closed the heavy door behind us and gave the combination lock a spin.
Other than the quick trip outside to bring in Tom and Molly, we hadn’t been finding reasons to put ourselves in danger by opening that door. Uncle Titus had left messages for me, and the number one rule he had given more than once was not to leave the shelter. If he only knew how many times I had broken that rule.
The brush and trees of Mud Island had been turned brown by the cold wind blowing in off of the ocean. The leaves were thinner on the trees, and we could see further than usual, so there was less chance that any infected dead that had strayed onto the island could get near us before we saw them. It was a good thing we could see further, because the wind would cover the sounds they make as they shambled around in search of a victim to bite.
We moved in single file, and we moved fast. It was cold, and we wanted to get the job done as quickly as we could. Planning the move of the houseboat was easy. We would hook the bigger of our two boats to the stern and give it a tug. While one person handled the boat that was earning its keep as a tugboat, the rest of us would handle steering lines and just let the current carry the houseboat into position. The Chief would wait to dive into the moat until after we were done.
When we got to the dock, the Chief jumped into the big boat and got it started. We were all happy to hear it start up so easily since it hadn’t gotten much use. As most boaters know, the best way to treat an outboard engine was to flush it with fresh water. That was a luxury we hadn’t been able to afford, and we hoped we could one day make a trip along the coast and find a dock with a fresh water supply where we could get it done.
While the Chief assumed his position, I went to the far end of the dock to get a look at the other side of the moat. I wasn’t happy with what I saw. There was a group of about a dozen infected dead just standing at the spot where the breach in the jetty had let the sand pour through. They were doing what the infected tend to do when there were no victims to pursue, just hanging around.
I yelled in their direction, and they immediately became agitated. Kathy, Jean, and Tom came over to where I was when I yelled, and we watched together as the infected tried to come to us.
“Why’d you yell at them, Ed?” asked Kathy. “They weren’t going to be a problem.”
I had to raise my voice a bit over the sound of the wind and the outboard engines as the Chief revved up the boat. “I wanted them gone when the Chief goes into the water, Kathy. By the time he goes in, they should be washing out to sea on the other end of the island.”
Once our visitors were all swimming, or rather sinking, we took our positions at the lines, and the Chief brought the boat around to the stern of the houseboat. We hooked him up, and he took up the slack on the lines. There was nothing at first, but with a slight jolt the houseboat began to slide along the dock. We played out the longest lines at the stern and keep the lines at the bow short. At the same time, the Chief started to turn inward toward the moat. The houseboat pivoted nicely at the end of the dock and neatly slipped into its new position. It was now behind the plane, but we would have an unobstructed view of the hole in the jetty with our camera, and it had been as easy as we had hoped it would be.
“Okay, kids,” said the Chief. “Let’s find out what’s on the bottom of the moat.”
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�Remind again me why we need to do this,” I said.
The Chief pointed at the spot where the sandbar was forming at the breach in the jetty. “If that grows enough to fill in the end of the moat, we could see a time when the moat is empty at low tide. At the very least, it could be shallow. One thing we need to find out is whether or not your uncle buried the power, water, and fuel lines, or if he figured the moat was deep enough. If they get exposed at low tide, they’re vulnerable……and so are we.”
Jean leaned over and looked into the water. “Are you going to be able to see down there, Chief?”
“I have some underwater lights, but I won’t be able to see too far in front of me, Jean. That’s why I need you guys to keep tension on the lines I’m hooking to my weight belt.”
“How will we know if you need to come up in a hurry, Chief?” she asked.
He lifted a very light but tough cord and said, “This is my emergency tether. If I give a hard tug on this, everybody get me to the surface as fast as you can.”
Every time I had ever seen someone SCUBA dive on TV or in a movie, they would either step off the edge of something and disappear feet first, or they would sit on the rail of a boat and just fall over backwards. The Chief laid down on the end of the dock near the stern of the houseboat with his upper body extended out over the water. He put his mask over his face and lowered himself until his head was in the water. We watched and waited as his head swiveled to the left and right.
When the Chief lifted his head, he sat with his legs crossed and took off the mask.
“Ed, did your uncle say anything about staying out of the water?”
I thought for a moment, but I couldn’t remember him mentioning it.
“No, Chief, he said not to leave the shelter. That was the only rule. Why? Is there something down there?”
“Seeing is believing, folks. When I go in, whatever you do, don’t let the lines play out too fast,” said the Chief.
Kathy said, “Chief, I brought my cell phone with me. Think we could put it inside a sandwich bag or something? You could get a few pictures or some video.”
“Good idea, Kathy. There’s a box of Zip-Lock bags in the houseboat,” I said.
Kathy went into the houseboat and rummaged around through the kitchen cabinets. As a bonus she found a roll of clear tape they could use to get a good seal on the sandwich bag. She dropped the cell phone inside and sealed it shut. Then she rolled the zipper end of the bag a couple of times and taped it shut.
As soon as she handed it to the Chief, he leaned back over into the water and aimed it at something. A few seconds later he sat back up on the dock and looked at the video. He handed it over to Kathy, and she watched for a moment. She looked like she went pale.
Jean, Tom, and I took our turn, and it was easy to see why the Chief was concerned about going in the water. There was an infected dead stuck under the houseboat.
We couldn’t tell why it was stuck. It probably had some piece of clothing or body part caught on a nail. Whatever was holding it in place, it was the fact that it was still moving and still reaching for the Chief that made us nervous. They don’t drown. We had suspected as much because of the people we had met on the Stono River when we went to get the seaplane, but we hadn’t seen it for ourselves.
“How long do you figure it’s been there?” asked Tom.
Kathy said, “Judging by the skin that’s hanging off of its face, I think maybe it’s been there a long time. Something has been eating him.”
In the video it just looked like loose flesh on the side of its head at first, but as it moved a bit, we could see that it was a small crab. Tom turned away from the group and retched. Jean knew the feeling since she had done the same thing once before, and she rubbed his back to help him get over it.
“Now I understand why you said not to eat the seafood,” said Tom. “I don’t think I’ll ever look at seafood the same way again.”
Kathy said, “Brace yourself, Tom. We came across an entire floating community that was using the infected as crab bait. We had to leave our plane behind on our first trip away from the shelter. When we went back for it, we had to go by boat, and the mouth to the Charleston harbor was a death trap. Armed survivors in Fort Sumter shoot anyone who tries to go in that way. So, we had to use the Stono River to get in. The people at the Stono Marina had managed to separate themselves from the infected, but five hundred people got hungry and started to eat the seafood.”
“They were using the infected as bait?” asked Tom. “How did they catch the infected?”
“There was no shortage of infected in the water. As a matter of fact, they were still falling into the river from a bridge by the marina. The people were hooking the infected and just lowering them back into the river. An hour or so later they would pull them back up to harvest the blue crabs hanging on for their own meal.”
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” I said. “The people at the marina had to cook the crabs in something, right?”
“People usually boil blue crabs, Ed. Why do you ask?” said Kathy.
“Well,” I said, “they didn’t have a fresh water supply. That means they were boiling river water. I imagine you would have to boil it a long time before it was safe to drink, so they were really poisoning themselves.”
Jean had been listening to us talk about the marina. Even though she was a nurse and had seen her fair share of trauma, the thought of eating the infected crabs had hit her particularly hard. Jean walked over to the end of the dock where the Chief was waiting for Kathy to bring him the cell phone.
“Do we really have to do this, Chief? I don’t think I could take it if something happened to you.”
The Chief looked up at Jean and said, “I’ll be okay down there as long as I know I have you guys up here worrying about me. Let’s do this, Kathy.”
Kathy brought him the sandwich bag with the cell phone in it, and he started the video recording.
“I don’t want to be fiddling with this when I should be looking at what’s in front of me,” he said. He flashed that big smile of his, and turned back toward the water.
I tied the main lines we would use to retrieve him to his weight belt, and Kathy tied the lighter line around his right wrist. She said, “If you give any sudden jerks on this line, be ready to get yanked out of there even if it’s a false alarm.”
“I’m counting on that,” he said. “I would rather get yanked out on a false alarm than to have you guys up here debating about whether or not it was a signal for help.”
Jean looked sick as the Chief eased himself head first into the deep water at the side of the dock that pointed inland. This time he didn’t stop with just his head submerged.
Jean looked at me, and I could see tears in her eyes. I hadn’t really been worried about the Chief until I saw that look on Jean’s face.
I started concentrating on what was happening to the ropes that were attached to the Chief. I had one of the main rescue lines, and Tom had the other. Kathy had the signal line and was already focusing closely on the tension of the line. She had to play the line out carefully so it would be just tight enough for her to tell his normal movements from a signal that he was in trouble.
The bubbles from the Chief’s SCUBA gear were moving further from us toward the center of the waterway that we called the moat. It completely surrounded the island that hid the shelter inside it, and it had proven to be a good defense again the infected. We had seen plenty of the infected walk into the moat and just disappear under water. The beach on the mainland side didn’t slope into the water. It just dropped straight down like a ledge. On the island side, there were massive beds of oysters that would shred the flesh of anyone who tried to cross through them, infected or alive.
There was an added bonus of sharks swimming in the moat when the weather was warmer. Thankfully, there wouldn’t be any sharks in this area in January. If the sand managed to come through the hole in the jetty enough to block off the northern entry to the moat
, there wouldn’t be sharks in the moat on a regular basis for a long time.
The Chief was making good progress and had gone so far that he was likely to be able to see the widest part of the moat between the island and the mainland. The cold water was a bit more clear than usual, so visibility might be better where it was deeper.
The main line I was holding was a bit slack, so I pulled it in a bit. I saw that Tom was doing the same with his line. Kathy’s brow was furrowed as she focused all of her attention on the signal line.
Jean was alternating between the bubbles and looking at the lines. Her head was going back and forth between them.
“Somethings wrong,” she said. The urgency in her voice made all three of us look at her. The rescue lines weren’t moving much, and the signal line wasn’t pulling hard enough for Kathy to get concerned.
“What makes you think he’s in trouble, Jean?” I asked. My voice was probably an octave higher than I would have liked, because it made me sound a little panicked.
“The bubbles have moved all the way over there,” she said. She pointed in the general direction of the bubbles which were at least ten yards farther away from us.
“I’ve been watching your lines. Kathy has been playing out signal line, but you guys haven’t been playing out rescue lines.” Jean’s voice made mine sound calm.
Tom and I looked at each other and at the coils of rope by our feet. She was right. Kathy had played out much more line than we had. I tested my line and felt movement on the other end, so I knew I was still hooked to the Chief’s weight belt. Tom tested his and shrugged his shoulders.
“Feels the same to me,” said Tom. “See what happens if you retrieve him a bit.”
I pulled on my line and felt it go tight. It felt like when you go fishing and a turtle grabs your bait. The line gets tight, and then you feel like you’re dragging something, but you gradually get the turtle out of the water. Tom’s line wasn’t getting slack as my line was being pulled in. We exchanged looks again, but this time we both saw the same urgency Jean had shown.