by Howard, Bob
“After only a few seconds it became easier to identify shooters because the unarmed people were all hitting the ground or diving for cover. The really smart ones were the people who jumped into the river. We knew they couldn’t be shooting at us. The gunners from eight boats opened up on the boat landing, and the shooting from there was quickly stopped.”
“Once we were clear of that landing, I saw that the boats on point were slowing down and waiting for us. I didn’t know it yet, but there was a large, natural cove up ahead that went in behind a big island. Someone in the boat with the Captain told him it would be a good place to set up a floating triage center. Boats could enter on one side of the island then exit the other side after everyone was checked.”
Jean said in a low voice, “Nothing can go wrong here.”
“We didn’t know,” said Tom. “We just didn’t know how far people would go to protect their families by hiding the bites. We weren’t likely to be beaten in an armed attack, but we were as susceptible as anyone to an inside attack.”
Jean said, “I promised a long time ago that I would jump over board with the infected if one of them bit me, and that promise still stands. As bad as it may sound Tom, we have to look out for our group. If you want Molly to survive, you have to make that promise, too.”
She was looking him straight in the eyes, and he could see how serious she was. He said, “If I get bitten, I won’t hide it from you. I would only want you to protect Molly after I’m gone.”
“You have our word,” said Jean. “Now, what about Molly? What if she gets bitten? Will you hide it from us?”
Tom looked like he was thinking it over for a minute, but then he said, “I don’t know, Jean. I honestly don’t know.”
Kathy said, “If you had answered without a doubt that you were sure you would tell us, Tom, I don’t think any of us would have believed you, and that would have damaged our trust in you. Take some time to think about it, and after you’ve reached a conclusion you can let us know. If you still aren’t sure, then we will give you some supplies and a ride up or down the coast, whichever you prefer.”
“You’ve got to be sure,” said the Chief. “There’s no in between.”
The conversation had taken a really dark turn because Tom was honest and admitted that he didn’t know if he would tell us if Molly was bitten. I decided to get us back onto the topic of Tom’s escape until he had a chance to think it over.
“Tom, what happened when you pulled into the cove?” I asked.
“It looked perfect, even at night,” he said. “We had two boats take up position at the mouth of the cove, and the rest of us moved into the center of a lake that was about two hundred yards square. Down river we could see the next boat landing on the west bank, and it looked crowded.”
“The Captain gave the order to have two other boats go around the island to the only other entrance to the lake. He told them to keep the back door closed to traffic. If anyone tried to enter from that direction, they were to be told to come up to the entrance we used, and that they would be protected. The red running lights on our bows were perfect for showing people where they had to go.”
“The next thing he did was to have the eight remaining boats form two straight lines in pairs,” he continued. “There was a gap between the lines of the four pairs they could use for inspection of civilian boats, and they could inspect four at a time. The idea was to have four boats enter the gap between the two lines of military and police boats and come to a stop. The crew of one boat would stand guard while the crew of the opposite boat would inspect the passengers for bites. We were in the first of the boats that was guarding people.”
“The first four boats entered between us, and the Captain used a loudspeaker to explain to the people on the boats what was happening. The first four civilian boats were inspected without a hitch, and they were told they could either exit and wait on the river, or they could drop anchor behind us on the lake,” he explained.
“Four more boats entered for inspection, and after a few hours there was a huge floating colony of about a hundred boats filling the lake. We had to start sending everyone else out the exit to wait on the river.”
“I’m not exactly sure who began shooting, but it came from somewhere in the middle of the civilian boats. They were all anchored close together, and there were screams first. From what I could hear, there was an infected man trying to bite someone on a boat that had tied up alongside his boat.”
Tom reached over and picked up a pad of paper and a pencil from a shelf across from the dining room table. He drew a big rectangle with two openings at both ends but on the same side of the rectangle. He made eight dash marks the length of the rectangle. They looked like the lane markers on a three lane highway. Then he filled in the entire area of what looked like the third lane with dashes. “This is what it looked like,” he said, “and one whole row of our boats had their backs to the civilian boats. When the screaming started, and someone began shooting, people started trying to get out. Some made it because they were waiting near the entrance and exit, but it was chaos in the middle.”
“What about your boats?” asked Kathy.
“We were surrounded, and to make matters worse we had a row of civilian boats between ours. The passengers on those boats started trying to climb over into our boats.”
Tom told us that he could see boats trying to force their way out of the cove, but there were too many trying at once. More shooting started, and the inevitable happened when a bullet hit a fuel tank. The explosion destroyed every boat close to it, but the fireball shot out in all directions and hit the four military and police boats that had their port sides facing the civilians. The crew on Tom’s boat went into action quickly because they knew their boat was close enough to the exit to break away from the inspection line and head for freedom.
Tom said he saw one man trying to pull a woman out of the water into his boat. He almost had her over railing when she turned her head and bit him on the cheek. He let go, and she fell back into the water, tearing half of his face off as she fell. The man disappeared into the boat, but there was no doubt about his fate.
There was another boat that was starting to sink because it had been rammed by a larger boat. The passengers were all gathered on the bow trying to jump onto the deck of a third boat. What they didn’t see was that the passengers of that boat had already died from the infection and were waiting with open jaws as the people jumped to the deck of their boat.
He said the worst thing he saw was a mother handing her child to a man on another boat because her boat was sinking. She didn’t see that the stranger was an infected dead, and Tom didn’t need to give us the details of what followed. The mother realized her mistake too late and tried to pull the screaming child back, and in the process she fell into the water. He lost sight of her, and he couldn’t watch what was happening on the boat. The child had stopped screaming.
The water in between the boats was a sea of bobbing heads. The infected that fell in just sank out of sight because they didn’t have the sense to shut their mouths, but many of them fell on top of people who were not infected. Before they sank, they managed to catch hold of flesh with their teeth. Many more people would die from the infection as they reached for the safety of boats and were pulled aboard by friends, relatives, and strangers.
The fire continued to spread, and there were more explosions. Tom said he had a fleeting thought that it would be a blessing to blow up rather than to be bitten. He saw the fireball take out the four boats from their convoy, and Captain Marchant was on the lead boat. Most of the crews jumped into the water, but the fireball started to light off their munitions. As cases of ammunition began to explode, bullets were flying everywhere. The four civilian boats that were in between the two rows of military boats acted as a buffer and protected the remaining four military boats.
Tom looked behind them to see if they were being followed by the three boats that had been lined up behind his. They were there
and moving forward, but he watched with a sinking feeling as a boat crossed the path of the military boat that was closest to their stern. All three of the military and police boats crashed into each other as they hit the civilian who had cut them off.
On the far end of the cove where boats were entering for inspection, the two military boats broke free and started downriver at high speed. They passed by the exit just as Tom’s boat and the two boats at the exit entered the Waccamaw River. They lost all seven boats that had been in line doing inspections with Tom’s crew. Almost fifty of their companions were dead, including their commanding officer. In a matter of minutes they had gone from being a formidable power of twelve boats on the river down to five. They had lost over half of their boats and people because they were trying to help survivors.
As they sped away and passed the crowded boat landing on their right, they saw their mistake. The infection had already reached this far even though the landing was in a remote area. People who were escaping in boats had seen the row of armed military and police boats turn into the cove, and they naturally expected that rescue had arrived. Unfortunately, plenty of those boats were carrying bite victims. It was only a matter of time before there would be a repeat of what had happened at the bridge.
When they started down the river in a row of five boats, they were at their maximum speeds, and they quickly overcame the civilian boats. Each of their boats were equipped with twin outboard engines while the civilians typically had one. The result was that they passed them and the last of the private homes on the west bank of the river.
Tom said, “Our lead boat was being driven by a crew that was from the Conway area, and they knew that we weren’t far from a major section of the river that had no boat landings or roads for a very long stretch. Once we reached the turn we would be able to reduce our speed to save fuel. In only a few minutes we made that turn. Five minutes later, the radio call came through to cut speed.”
“We stayed at low speed for about two miles where we came to a campground that had no access by road. There were a few boats already anchored near the bank, but not too many. If there were no bite victims among the boaters, it would be a good place to spend the night. I know we were a welcome sight to the campers when they saw the Army and Conway Police emblems on our boats.”
“Our five remaining boats pulled up to the bank and tied mooring lines to trees. There wasn’t a dock or any facilities. It was just a place where people had stopped to camp so many times that it had become a place to escape from civilization.”
“It felt good to have my feet on firm ground again and for the first time since Highway 501 I got to meet face to face with the officer who took a leap of faith and let us come along with them. His name was Ron Barrett, and he looked like he was from New York. You know, jet black hair and a bit of an accent. I found him and shook his hand, thanking him over and over again.”
Tom told us that Officer Barrett looked at him at first as if he had no idea who he was. It never occurred to him that the officer was looking around at the survivors and seeing not just who was still there, but who wasn’t. So many of his friends were gone.
When Officer Barrett snapped out of whatever dark place he had gone, he remembered helping Tom and Molly escape from the death trap on Highway 501. He smiled at Tom and started looking around for Molly. When he saw her clinging to my knee, he pulled her to him and gave her a big hug. His friends had died, but he had saved a little girl and her father. It was at least a small consolation.
“I know how I felt about my teammates in baseball,” said Tom. “You would get close to someone, and one day they would be gone. Sometimes it was good news because they got called up to the big leagues, and sometimes they got traded. That was okay because at least they were still in the game. What hurt was when you found out someone was cut. It was like getting fired from a job when you don’t have any other skills.”
Tom lowered his eyes to the table and said, “I’m not saying getting cut from baseball is as bad as dying, but I knew how Officer Barrett felt. His friends were gone in the blink of an eye, and he hadn’t been given the time to process it. When he let go of Molly, I gave him a hug, too.”
“We spent the night at the boat landing. It didn’t take long for us to check out the campers who had arrived there before us. They were as anxious as we were to be sure no one was in our group who had been bitten. There were five civilian boats with families on each of them, so there were men, women, and children. I felt like the odd man out being the only civilian with the soldiers and the police, but they didn’t act like I wasn’t supposed to be there. We had already shared an experience that created a bond.”
“Tom,” said Kathy, “are you okay with going on?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. It’s just that I didn’t even know most of their names before they died, and as you can guess by us showing up on your doorstep, things didn’t get much better. At least for a few hours that night Molly got to be a kid again. The campground was so remote that it was safe to let her play with the other children. I thought they were playing tag or something, but it turned out to be a variation. The child who was trying to catch the other children was pretending to be an infected dead.”
Tom said the new man in charge was Sergeant Gathers. He wasn’t an officer, but he had combat experience in the Middle East. He was an African American who was much like the Chief. Deadly serious about his job, but able to find a bright side to almost any situation. He considered this campsite to be the bright spot in our day.
Even though we posted watches, the area wasn’t accessible by land, so we didn’t have to worry about those dead things stumbling into our camp at night. If a boat approached, we would all hear it coming long before it got there. Sergeant Gathers figured we would have a chance to catch our breath and to make some plans.
Some reasonable sized tents were set up, and people pitched in to help get a meal cooked for the survivors. Sergeant Gathers had the senior people from each boat around a folding table, and they had maps spread across its surface. I could hear him talking about their possible escape routes, and he was making it clear to everyone that it was an escape from behind enemy lines.
The Sergeant told them there were three sets of combatants in the area. There were the infected that were not capable of reason, there were the armed forces and police, and then there were the civilians who were capable of digging in for the long haul. At this point, he considered them to be just as dangerous as the infected.
The group discussed the options we had, and it seemed clear to everyone that we should work our way to the coast. Sergeant Gathers said he thought their best bet would be to try to make contact with a Navy ship that could extract them. He traced his finger down the Waccamaw River which meandered through largely unpopulated areas until it reached a stretch just before Georgetown. There was a muddy looking island in the river that looked like it had a small marina behind it where they could leave the boats. It was about forty miles downriver, and it had a road that would lead directly to the coast. Tom heard the Sergeant say it was Butler Island and Rice Bluff Road.
The Chief looked over at me and said, “Does that sound familiar to you, Ed?”
“Sure does, Chief,” I answered. “That’s the extension of the road from Mud Island back to Highway 17 just below Simmonsville. There’s no way they could have known what a hotbed that place had become, but if they got there before it became really bad, they could have made it across through there.”
“Well, as it turned out, there was no way we were going to get there before it became bad,” said Tom. “What should have been a few hours turned into weeks. We were fairly safe from the infected unless we got out of the boats, but the river became a good place to get shot. People set traps at the narrow spots, and they guarded fuel stations at marinas. We had to fight every inch of the way.”
When they left the camping area the next morning, the civilian boats left with them. They alternated the five civilian boats with
the five military and police boats, and even though they were still a well-armed force, they were easy targets for survivalists who had dug in along the river.
“We spent a lot of time camping along the river, and we even became more and more like the survivalists, fighting for fresh water, food, and fuel. We lost people and boats and made very slow progress getting down the river.”
Tom went on, “One of the worst days was when we reached a place called the Bucksport Marina. We were down to five boats again, partially due to a fuel shortage, but also due to damage taken during attacks. It was a great place for a trap, and we lost three more boats. One of them was carrying Sergeant Gathers.”
The boats had just come out of a large bend in the river when they were faced with a big island right in the center. They passed to the left of the island and didn’t even see the civilian boats that came out from behind the island into their wakes. The boats closed in and started firing small arms at them, but they were having to drive straight at the Bucksport Marina, which was apparently the base of operations for the river pirates.
“Someone at the marina had an RPG, a rocket propelled grenade, and they opened up on us. Since our boats were full of ammo, the RPGs were effective, and no one survived on the boats that were hit. My boat and one other outran the attackers, but we were down to twelve people on two boats. I was grateful to see my friend Officer Barrett was still with me and Molly.”
“We limped into the small marina behind Butler Island several weeks after leaving Conway. From what we could tell, we were less than five miles from the ocean, and we felt like we could cover that distance on foot in three hours if we didn’t run into any trouble. We didn’t know that those five miles were so populated by the infected dead.”
“We considered going through Georgetown out into the ocean, but decided we had lost too many people on a desolate stretch of river. If we met any serious resistance we wouldn’t be able to defend ourselves, and a more populated city like Georgetown was likely to have more people with weapons.”