by Howard, Bob
“Can you come to us, Tom? I mean…is there a way for you to get home? Over.”
Tom looked away from all of us. The reality was that there was no way he would be able to cross about five hundred miles with so many of the infected roaming around the country. Not to mention the fact that Atlanta had about six million people in and around it.
We all looked at each other when Tom looked away. I don’t know what it was about our little foursome, but I could almost read their faces. They all three had this look that said, “Don’t worry, Tom. We’ll get you home to Molly’s mommy.” I think we all may be a bit crazy. Maybe we were all dropped on our heads when we were babies.
Tom keyed the switch and said, “I don’t know yet, Allison. If there’s a way, I’ll find it, but for now we just have to stay alive. We have to stay safe. Are you safe where you are? Over.”
“We’re safe, Tom. The place isn’t easy to get to, so we should be okay for a long time. Over.”
Tom looked like he was puzzling over something. “Allison, are you saying Bus did that thing he was talking about all those years? Over”
Allison said, “Tom, he wasn’t just talking about it. He was already doing it for years. Over.”
Four of us were looking at each other like they were speaking Latin, but the light finally came on, and I asked Tom, “Is Bus like my Uncle Titus? Did he build a bunker somewhere?”
Tom was practically laughing as he tried to answer. “Ed, your uncle was a genius to put a shelter on an island, but I think Bus may have done something almost as good. He owns a large piece of property outside of town, and a lot of it is along the water. Guntersville has some incredible lakes, and some of the lakes are isolated by mountains with some equally incredible cave systems. Bus was always talking about building a bunker in one of those caves you can only reach by water. If he started building it and stocking it years ago, it must be pretty safe.”
He keyed the microphone and said, “Tell Bus I always thought he was nuts, but we’re in a place like his, so now I know he wasn’t nuts. Over.”
“Tom, it’s hard to get here, so I don’t know how you can find us.” Before she could finish we heard Bus saying something to her. He took the microphone and said, “When you’re ready to try, Tom, you know what to do. Over.”
Tom answered, “Yes, I do, Bus. Thank you. Over.”
We drifted away from Tom and Molly so they could spend some time talking with Allison in private. Jean put her arm around Kathy’s waist as we strolled back to the kitchen. We all had a sense of satisfaction knowing that Tom’s wife was still alive and holed up just like us, despite Kathy’s secret disappointment. I could tell we all felt the weight lift off of Tom’s shoulders. The unspoken question was how we were going help them get back together again.
When we sat down at the table, Kathy and Jean handed out cold beers, and we all savored the feeling for a minute or two before the Chief broke the ice. He said, “Why do we always feel like we’ve got to do something? Why do we have to fix everything that gets broken?”
Kathy answered, “That’s just who we are, Chief. We’re wired that way.”
“Funny thing,” I said. “I didn’t know I was wired that way until I met you three.”
“So, just to be clear,” said Jean. “Are we talking about trying to help Tom and Molly get back home to Allison?”
I answered, “What I can’t figure out is how we knew that’s what we wanted to do all at the same time.”
“There’s something seriously wrong with us,” said the Chief. “We could keep this place up and running for years without having to leave.”
Kathy said, “You know the answer, Chief. Sometimes it’s not enough to just stay alive. Living isn’t just staying alive. It’s more than that.”
“Who wants to tell them?” asked Jean.
“Let’s break it to them gently,” said the Chief. “This is going to take a bunch of planning. Our little trip down the coast was a picnic compared to this. I mean logistically it’s not impossible. If nothing goes wrong, we could be back home in a few days.”
If there was one thing the Chief could have said that would have stopped us in our tracks, that last sentence was probably it. He earned an expressionless stare from all three of us.
“What?” There was that innocent look again, like he couldn’t possibly know what he had said.
“If nothing goes wrong?” asked Jean and Kathy at the same time.
Instead of answering them, the Chief looked at me as if I was going to bail him out. The cutest part was a man the size of a bear being stared down by two women.
“Don’t look at me, Chief. They were saying it, but I was thinking it. We have millions of infected dead between here and Alabama. It’s not like you just ask Google Maps to give you the best route. I know they would list road congestion, wrecks, and construction, but I don’t think their app will tell you where the zombies are gathering in large numbers.”
“They’re not zombies,” he said under his breath.
“Whatever,” I said. “Call them Numb from the Ankles Up if you want to, but I think we can safely say that something will go wrong.”
“I like that,” said Jean. “We could call them NAU’s for short.”
Kathy said, “Yeah, that would strike fear into my heart when someone would yell to watch out for that NAU.”
The Chief rolled his eyes. He finally caught on that we were pulling his leg. “Okay, Larry, Curly and Moe. I get it. We have to plan on something going wrong and then prevent it.”
I wasn’t done yet. I turned to Kathy and pointed at her top button. When she looked down I hooked my finger under her nose and flipped it upward. She swung at me, and I ducked, so she clobbered Jean in the left ear. Jean retaliated by pretending to spread two fingers and poke Kathy in both eyes. All three of us were going, “Whoop whoop whoop,” like the Three Stooges. The Chief was loving it, but he wasn’t going to admit it.
Tom walked in and watched the last part, and judging by the smile on his face, he really enjoyed it. Molly was peeking around him and started giggling.
“What did we miss?” asked Tom. “Looks like you guys found something to cheer you up.”
Our foursome shared that knowing look we sometimes do when there’s an insider secret, but there seemed to be this natural connection we had that made us pick a leader with our eyes. We voted for Kathy this time. Maybe we were subconsciously helping her to get by her earlier disappointment.
“Have a seat, Tom. You can join us, too, Molly. We have something we want to talk with you about,” she said.
Tom sat in a chair and the Chief handed him a beer while Jean poured the chocolate milk. Tom reached for the chocolate milk and Molly lightly slapped his hand while letting out a single, “Whoop.” We were such a good influence on kids, and of course we made it worse by laughing.
“Tom,” Kathy began, “we were thinking about the possibility of trying to get you and Molly home to Allison.”
Tom’s expression stayed neutral, but Molly kept looking back and forth between Tom and Kathy. Some little kids have a way of knowing when to wait for something. Molly seemed to know it better than most. She knew it was up to her dad to answer, and his face was as unreadable as it could get.
“We just started talking about it,” said the Chief. “We haven’t filled in any of the blanks if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“You can’t do it,” said Tom. “I won’t let you risk your lives. I’d rather stay here with Molly and see all of you be safe.”
Jean said, “So, what you’re saying is that you don’t think we could do it, right?”
“No, Jean, I’m saying I know you couldn’t do it,” Tom said. “There’s a big difference between wishing we could go five hundred miles and actually doing it.”
“Why couldn’t we do it?” I asked. “We’ve gone out twice and made it back each time.”
Tom said, “You admitted there were close calls, Ed. How far did you go the last time? Les
s than two hundred miles round trip?”
“The point is that we made it, Tom, and the difference is we have a plane,” said Kathy.
“Which took a bullet and had to be abandoned,” said Tom. “What would you do if you had to leave it behind again? Do you think you could go back for it a second time?”
Like it or not, Tom was wearing us down. Our desire to help him and Molly get back home was greater than our common sense, and we had to admit, we did feel like we were invincible. Maybe we needed Tom for the reality check.
Tom could see that we were disappointed by his reaction, so he said in a voice of total calm and reason, “When we left Conway, there were a dozen boats filled with seventy to eighty well-armed, well trained, brave souls. They were police officers and soldiers, and I couldn’t have felt safer. We lost most of them when we stopped to try to help other civilians. It was in their nature to help, just like it’s in your nature to help. I can safely tell you that every one of them felt good to know they were helping me and my little girl, but that didn’t stop a single one of them from dying. When we made it to Simmonsville, there was only one of them left, and he gave his life for five civilians. When we reached the fire station, there were only two of us left. I’m not going to see anyone else die for us.”
We couldn’t argue with Tom about the facts, but for some reason I wasn’t swayed, and I was sure my friends weren’t either.
“Tom,” I said, keeping my voice at the same level he had used. I wanted to come off as sincerely as he had.
“The soldiers and police officers made the same mistake repeatedly. They didn’t think they could be taken down. They thought there was safety in numbers, and they expected civil obedience. The reason Kathy, Jean, and the Chief were the only survivors on a ship with five thousand people was because they knew something with certainty that everyone else ignored. They knew families would lie about who was bitten in order to protect loved ones. They got it then, and they get it now. This group knows that we survive together, but we don’t take someone else down with us. That’s why we’ve survived.”
The Chief wanted to get his turn, too, and he quietly reminded Tom of what Jean had said when she had come within an inch of being bitten when they were dumping an infected dead off of the floating dock of the cruise ship. She didn’t need to convince them that she was telling the truth when she said she would jump overboard with the infected that had bitten her before she would endanger someone else.
Kathy added, “Tom, there are still people out there, and plenty of them still think they won’t die if they get bitten. No matter how many times they’ve seen it, they still think it won’t happen to them. The difference between them and us is that we get it. We aren’t ready to die, but we know we will die if we’re bitten just as surely as we would know if we jumped from a plane without a parachute. That’s what keeps us alive. We get it.”
Tom asked, “And that’s why I should believe that we have a chance of making it from here to Guntersville?”
The Chief said, “The only times we have to land are when we get there, and to find fuel for the trip back. I’ve played it really cautious with the fuel and had alternative fueling sites in mind when we flew to Goose Creek, but the de Havilland DHC-3 Otter can carry a payload just over a ton and still travel over seven hundred miles on one tank of gas. The combined weight of five adults and the Munchkin would leave us close to twelve hundred pounds of payload. Like I said before you came in, this is going to take some planning, but if Bus has fuel, we could go to the maximum cruising altitude of eighteen thousand feet for most of the trip, so we wouldn’t be getting shot at. To economize fuel we could cruise at about one hundred and twenty miles per hour. That way we could detour for fuel if we had to. My best guess is we would have enough fuel for an extra one hundred and fifty miles.”
Tom’s eyebrows were raised at the thought of being with Allison in just over four hours. We could see that the Chief was beginning to sway him.
“Listen, Tom,” said the Chief. “We want to do this or we wouldn’t be talking about it. This group isn’t a bunch of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts even if Molly is getting lots of cookies.”
Molly grinned at the reference and glanced at Jean. I don’t know if it’s some kind of mother radar or what, but Jean produced a box of cookies for Molly like magic. For some strange reason, that small gesture seemed to sway Tom over the tipping point. It was like Jean showed him that helping was our signature. His shoulders slumped a bit because he wanted to give in so badly. He just didn’t want us to pay the price for it.
Kathy said, “You know what? We didn’t talk about it this long the first time we went out.”
We all laughed, but it was true. When we decided to go, we practically just went. The second time out we did some real planning, and we learned the rivers inside and out. This was going to be the same thing in some ways. We would need to get Bus’s exact location without giving it away to anyone else, and we would need to have back-up plans for fuel. That would be the Chief’s department.
“One last thing,” said Tom. “I think you’re forgetting about your problem back here? What about the water dropping in the moat and the nets collapsing your power cable?”
“We have two issues,” said the Chief. “One of them is the power cables, and the other one is getting you home. The way I see it is that one of the issues we can do something about, and the other issue we can’t do anything about. So, let’s take care of the one we can do something about, and let’s just hope for the best with the other issue.”
It was settled, and by the looks on the faces of my friends, we were about to do what made us feel good about ourselves, and it was time to start planning. It had been a long day, and we could wait to hear the rest of Tom’s story about the fire station. For now it was time to have a late meal and get then get some rest……but that wasn’t exactly how it worked out.
What started out as a simple late meal quickly turned into an all-out celebration. No real plans had been made, but the mood was the first thing that told us this was what we really wanted to do. To be honest, there was at least a small amount of selfishness. We could live a long time in the shelter even if we lost the mainland power lines, but the four of us who had brought Tom in didn’t want to spend our remaining days hiding from the world. I was the least likely of the bunch to be a hero, but I was all in when it came to what my friends wanted.
Not that I always thought women should do all the cooking, but Kathy and Jean were wizards in the kitchen. They could make anything taste good, and we had more than enough in the way of quality food stashed in the deep freezer. Tonight they brought up a rack of prime rib that had been moved to the refrigerator to thaw. If any of us was thinking of it as a last supper, it didn’t show. There was laughter, friendship, stories from the past, and more than a little love.
Kathy told us what it had been like at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Academy on the good days. She told how everyone got close and felt the bond that can only really be explained to another police officer or a comrade in arms. She didn’t dwell on the days when she had to pay the price for being one of the prettiest officer cadets they had ever had. Those days were hard, but she rose above them and earned the respect of her peers, not only in the classroom, but in hand to hand combat training and small arms skill.
She told us that one of her best days was when a group of the male officers approached her during supper. She said it made her a little nervous because they came up to her at her table all together and didn’t speak immediately. She thought it was a confrontation of some kind, but for the life of her she didn’t know what she had done to earn it. Kathy said one of them spoke up for all of them and asked if she would consider running a study group. He explained that they were falling behind in some of the classes and they knew she was doing well. She remembered thinking there was a time when some of the big egos would have accused a woman of sleeping her way to good grades, but these guys weren’t giving a hint that they felt that w
ay. They really needed her help. So, she ran the study group, and every one of them gave her the credit for them passing.
She said that every graduating class nominated one person from their ranks for a special award. It was nicknamed the ‘wingman’ award, but it was officially for outstanding support of your fellow officers. She was nominated by her class, and she said she would have given up all of her marksmanship and academic awards for that one nomination. Kathy had one sad moment when she wondered what had happened to her friends in that class, but she shook it off and said this was a time to celebrate life because Tom and Molly were going home to Allison.
She passed the conversation baton to the Chief and asked him how he got started with his love for the oceans. Of course the Chief gave us an ‘aw shucks’ attitude at first, but he really did like telling sea stories. He said one of his favorite stories was our trip down to Charleston to bring back our plane, but we all knew that one.
Chief Joshua Barnes was six and a half feet tall and skinny as a rail when he went to Boot Camp at the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes, Illinois. None of us had ever been able to pry his age out of him, but the popular guess was around fifty. He kept his beard full but trimmed, and nothing ever seemed to faze him.
Kathy said, “Hey, Chief, how many times have you been in love?” She gave him a sly smile, and the rest of us kept quiet to hear the answer.
The Chief looked like he was thinking it over, and once in a while he would say something in a low voice like, “No, that’s not right. Let me start over again.”
I finally asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I’m trying to count the number of different cities where I’ve made port.” He said it with a straight face, as usual, but we rolled laughing.
The Chief said, “Seriously, I fell in love with the sea, and I never met a woman to take her place.”
The truth was, it was where he fit in the most. Navy food is healthy because they have limited storage space on ships. They don’t waste space with things that aren’t good for you. The end result was a bigger, healthier Joshua Barnes. He also loved the job, and he learned anything they wanted to teach him. He rose through the enlisted ranks as a machinist, and he was a natural leader when he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer.