by Howard, Bob
The last natural barrier protecting the Lowcountry and Charleston were the dense wetlands of the Francis Marion Forest. During the Revolutionary War, it was the territory that had given the famed military officer his nickname as the Swamp Fox. Over two centuries later, it was still unforgiving land and water that was proving to be the same trap for invaders. This time the invaders were an army that dwarfed the British forces that eventually forced the Continental Army to retreat from South Carolina, but history was repeating itself as the last survivors fled before the unrelenting infected dead. The countryside to the west of the Cooper River was swarmed as Moncks Corner became more populated than ever in its history. Soon they would be winding their way through Goose Creek and joining with the infected army as it engulfed Summerville.
The infected were forced to separate where the interstate was divided by safety barriers, but the deafening sound was amplified until it could be heard in all directions. Swarms going in the same direction heard the other swarms, and despite being apart from the main horde, they acted as if they were together. All roads leading to Charleston were filled to capacity.
******
It was strategy time at Fort Sumter. Regular meetings were being called by either the Chief or Captain Miller. Not since the first day of the infection had any of them seen so much activity out on the roads and even in the sky. Several small planes came and went from Patriots Point. When they took off, they always left to the north, as if they were avoiding the air space near Fort Sumter. When they returned, they did the same thing, not that it wasn’t expected by anyone in the island shelter.
The helicopters at Fort Sumter were kept ready for rapid response if there was ever a threat from Patriots Point. The Army mechanics even did some retrofit work to install heavier machine guns on each door. They were Navy helicopters best suited for transport or rescue, but that didn’t stop them from being converted into gunships. They were still hopefully just a deterrent against attack from their neighbors at Patriots Point, and the Army hoped they wouldn’t be needed for more than that. Captain Miller and the Chief had both maintained the belief that living people could be united in their common cause, and that was survival against an enemy that they knew would never relent. They could only be destroyed.
The increased strategy sessions were the result of their own long range reconnaissance toward Columbia. The helicopters had made regular flights toward the state capitol. It was only a little more than one hundred miles, but every day saw the helicopters return after less time because the horde had progressively drawn closer. They also never returned with encouraging news. The horde was so big that when the photos from above were shown to the survivors back at Fort Sumter, everyone had to sit down, and silence fell over the crowded room. Almost the entire population of Fort Sumter was present, and we could have heard a pin drop.
Captain Miller couldn’t have been more somber when he spoke, and the lump in his throat betrayed a small loss of composure.
“Comments?”
One of his Lieutenants was the first to speak, and her words were a reflection of what everyone else was thinking.
“There’s no way they can get across the harbor to us……is there?”
She searched the faces of everyone in the room, but all she saw was what must have been written on her own face.
Captain Miller said, “No, not a chance, Lt. Harrelson, and if you’re wondering if they can come in the back door, even a horde that size is going to be fragmented once it reaches the city. Charleston is a peninsular city, and much like Florida you don’t have to go far in three directions to reach water.”
The Chief accented the point made by Captain Miller by standing and walking over to a big map of Charleston on the wall of the conference room. He reached up and put his finger on a spot someone had already circled in red.
“This is the T. Allen Legare Bridge, also known as the Ashley River Bridge. It’s actually two bridges next to each other, as most of you know. We’re going to change the face of the map by opening both of them. Just to be sure, we’re going to open the bridge to James Island, and the bridge over the Stono River onto John’s Island.”
Captain Miller joined the Chief at the map and took over.
“There were some objections, but we’ve come to the conclusion that stopping this horde could turn the tide on the infected. We can’t even estimate how many infected are moving this way, but I think there were less people at Woodstock, and that was a half million.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re about to stun us into silence again?” asked Kathy.
Kathy had been a rookie police officer in the days before the infected dead. She wasn’t a seasoned officer yet, but her supervisor had written on an evaluation that her cool, level headed behavior made her appear to be more experienced than she was. She was also the best looking police officer any of us had ever known. Her full blonde hair made her stand out in the crowd.
“You know me too well,” said Captain Miller. “We’re going to blow up the fixed spans over the Ashley River where West Ashley connects to North Charleston and the bridge on I-526, the Mark Clark Expressway.”
He had been right. The room was silent again, and I saw that Kathy had her mouth hanging open.
I leaned back in my chair and took in the faces around me. I had known most of them for years now, but the faces I sought in the crowded room were the original Mud Island family. Some had been with us almost from the beginning, and some had joined us later, but the Mud Island group was a tight knit bunch.
I had a laptop open and was chronicling the events that would, as the Chief said, change the map of Charleston. It would no longer be connected to most of the surrounding area. Water would define where people went, and it would certainly decide where the infected went. The heading of my notes said, “The Journal of Ed Jackson, Mud Island Survivor.” It was a bit dramatic, but then again, my wife was always saying I was too dramatic.
My eyes found Jean where she sat with our son Josh and some of the children born at Fort Sumter in the last five years. She was still just as cute as the first day I met her, but like the rest of us, she was formidable with a machete when we went into the field. Jean wasn’t smiling, but I couldn’t see anyone in the room who was.
Tom was sitting next to Kathy, and ever since we had gotten back from New Orleans, it was no surprise that Molly was sitting with them. I didn’t think Tom would ever get over almost losing Molly when she ran away. It was bad enough that her boyfriend, Sam, had died. Tom would have been destroyed if she had been killed too. Tom was a former baseball player. He was tall and muscular, and his jet black hair was a contrast to Kathy, but they made a perfect couple.
Speaking of perfect couples, Hampton and Colleen were sitting with Cassandra and Sim. Across from them were Olivia and Chase. No matter where I turned in the room, I saw perfect couples I would never have met if not for the end of the world.
Cassandra saw me watching them and waved. Then she winced a bit. She was still healing up from being shot by the madman who had killed Sam. I allowed myself a small amount of satisfaction in knowing that the Chief had disposed of him in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Chief’s voice pulled my attention back to the front of the room.
“When Charleston was established as a settlement, the people chose a site further up the Ashley River than the present day location of the city, but it was the need for bridges that kept it from expanding outward. There are plenty of them now, and destroying them will be turning back the calendar. If we could just open them all, that would be enough, but the fixed spans have to go.”
“What about the Don Holt Bridge on I-526?” asked Hampton.
Hampton was from Georgetown and had been living only a few miles south of my shelter on Mud Island. We met him on the road as we were trying to get back to the shelter from one of our less successful trips to Charleston. We had taken a bullet in our plane and were lucky to meet him and his friends. One of his useful talents was his memory f
or every road or waterway in South Carolina, and he also had some experience with blowing up bridges.
“I think you know we would blow that bridge up if we could,” said the Chief. “As a matter of fact we planned to ask you if it was possible, but there’s another problem. The people from Patriots Point have been using it. Their patrols have been keeping it clear of the infected by making routine sweeps.”
Hampton nodded his understanding of the answer.
“That would prevent us from planting enough high explosive charges to bring it down. It’s a solid bridge, so it would take a lot. Any chance we could use our heavy duty GROM or GROM/B weapons?”
Most of the people in the room knew those were weapons we had liberated from the Air Force Base, and the fact that we had them was something that had kept the people at Patriots Point from being too threatening toward us.
“How much of the horde will detour over that bridge?” asked Hampton. “The infected population along the coast was severely decreased when we cut off Georgetown from the Lowcountry.”
One of the helicopter pilots stood up and raised his hand to speak next. Even after over five years from the time they broke away from the remaining military forces at sea, Captain Miller’s men showed the discipline to be respectful.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lt. Harper.”
He blushed a bit when everyone laughed. There were a few good natured cat calls at Harper because he introduced himself. There were about three hundred and fifty people in Fort Sumter, and everyone knew everyone else by name.
“Anyway, we’ve been flying over the Georgetown area getting an idea of the infected population. We’ve seen them go in the water upriver and then wash up on the other side and start walking. There were also a few isolated pockets of people who somehow survived but then were overrun. We tried to reach a group of about twenty, but they were carrying wounded, so we had to back away.”
Hampton asked, “So, your assessment is that there’s still a sizable population of the infected between Georgetown and Mt. Pleasant?”
“Yes, Sir, and growing. I think a lot of migrating survivors are getting trapped in that area. They got flushed out by the big horde, and then when they holed up in the area south of where the bridges were blown up by your people they got caught.”
Even after five years, there were still survivors being flushed out of places that were safe for a while, but Titus Rush, the man who had left me with the Mud Island shelter, had said safe places were like oysters. Sooner or later someone figured out how to pry them open.
The Chief got our attention and drew the conversation back to the main topic.
“We’ve covered why we have to blow up the bridges, and why we can’t blow up some. It’s time to move on to when. We have good intelligence, thanks to our pilots.”
He gestured toward Lt. Harper, and there was some polite applause. He nodded appreciatively at the crowd.
The Chief continued, “What we know is that a horde has formed for whatever reason, and it’s moving this way. We have the safest place in Charleston to be, and no matter how we break it down, we don’t see a way for this horde to reach us. The only threat we see is that the sheer numbers will make some of them wash up on the mudflats around Fort Sumter. To keep them from getting behind us, we’re going to take out and open some bridges. Any questions?”
One hand went up in the middle of the crowd.
“Why don’t you call them zombies, Chief?”
Captain Miller tried to hide his smile by yelling, “Dismissed.”
The soldier who asked the question managed to lose himself in the mass exodus.
“Did you put him up to that, Jim?”
The Chief was staring down Captain Miller, but even he was grinning.
Captain Miller avoided answering by calling over the squad leaders who were going to fly out to the bridges. There would be a group briefing followed by a break-out session for each group. Everything had to be planned and then picked apart, especially since we didn’t know if the people at Patriots Point would try to stop us. The soldiers going along were well trained and could deal with the infected, but we didn’t know the Patriots Point people well enough to know if they were trained at all. Someone over there had to be experienced with combat, judging by how quickly they had set up a safe zone.
I caught the Chief’s attention as he was working his way toward Iris Mason. She had missed part of the meeting because she and Bus, our best doctor, had been wrapped up with some information that had been brought back by one of the patrols. A helicopter had dropped the patrol off on a long distance reconnaissance near Atlanta, and they had managed to reach the Centers for Disease Control. No one could stop the rumors from circulating throughout the shelter that they had been on the right track toward finding a cure. The men had come back with several computer hard drives, and the Army doctors couldn’t hide their excitement. Captain Miller had dished out some reprimands for loose talk, but even he understood. He just expected discipline.
I had to practically shout over the crowd that was filing out.
“Chief, I have a suggestion. I’d like to arrange the evacuation of nonessential personnel and children to Mud Island until this is over. The horde isn’t moving that way, and as far as we know the Patriots Point people don’t know about that shelter.”
The Chief had an expression on his face that he couldn’t hide. I had gotten to know him well enough to know I had struck a nerve about something.
“As far as we know,” he said. “It’s hard to miss from a plane because of everything we have parked at the dock, and their Cessna’s have been coming in from that direction. Jim speculated to me just this morning that he thinks they’ve been keeping tabs on Mud Island.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I would feel better with Josh and Molly somewhere else when the horde arrived.
“Maybe we could send a few people to Guntersville,” I added. The reports we had from the shelter in Guntersville, Alabama were that the settlement above the shelter had been operating well with a little support from the Army. They hadn’t lost anyone to the infection for three years at least.
“Not a bad idea, now that you mention it. We can kill two birds with one stone. Bus and the Army doctors want to make a quick stop at the CDC to be sure nothing was missed. We can take the kids to Guntersville and then hit Atlanta on the return trip.”
I was relieved to hear him agree, and I knew Jean would be too. Even though it was tough to be away from Josh, knowing he was safe inside a mountain five hundred miles from Charleston was a relief.
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll get it arranged,” I said. “Thanks, Chief.”
We had named our son after the Chief, so he was the last person who needed to be thanked, but he gave me an understanding smile anyway.
******
Bus left for Guntersville with the children in his trusty de Havilland Beaver. Radio contact was spotty at best, so we might not know for sure that they had reached his shelter safely, but the plane was sturdy, and they were going to an area that was surrounded by deep lakes. The survivors in Guntersville would be sure they were well protected, and it was still better than having them here with so much happening.
All four helicopters left at the same time, and even though we were always concerned about what Patriots Point would do while our defenses at Fort Sumter were depleted, we didn’t have time on our side, so we didn’t have the luxury of keeping helicopters at home. We had to get the bridges blown or open before the horde got too close. As a matter of fact, they were too close for comfort already. The helicopter that was sent to blow up the bridge over the Mark Clark Expressway reported back that the leading edge of the horde was only about six miles from that exit on I-26. The Chief had one of his usual good ideas when he got the news.
When the crew got the call from the Chief to set the charges but wait to blow up the bridge, they were surprised, but they knew he always had something in mind. Some of them had been th
ere when he had used the Sikorsky like a giant weed-whacker on the infected at the airport. He was quick to explain, and they were relieved that his idea wasn’t quite that crazy.
The Chief told them to wait until the horde was entering the interchange from I-26 onto I-526 and then blow the high explosives. Even though there was some distance between there and the bridge, there was a chance that some of the horde would break away from the main group to follow the sound of the explosion. The crew of the helicopter liked the idea enough to ask if they could stay behind to see if it worked. They were given the go ahead as long as they had the fuel and could stay out of harms way.
The other crews weren’t having any real problems because they only had to deal with small groups of the infected that were drawn to the sound of their rotors. Even though there were plenty of them, the infected had a long walk up the bridges. At the two drawbridges the mechanics worked quickly to set up power lines to the controls, and within minutes they were raising the bridges. A few of the infected had reached the spot where the Folly Road bridge met the asphalt. Two went up with the bridge and then fell with predictable results onto the pavement after the bridge had reached its maximum height. The rest that reached the span that had lifted into the air before they arrived just walked right over the edge.
The helicopter that was sent to demolish the West Ashley bridge had the hardest job. Even though they could land in the middle of the bridge, it would take a lot of explosive charges to bring down the fixed span. They were carrying two squads of men so they could cover both sides of the bridge for the infected that were sure to make the long walk up to the middle. The bridge was so elevated over the water that it would take them a long time to make that walk, but there wasn’t a good reason to make the demolitions experts rush the job. It would be bad news if the bridge blew up but didn’t become impassable.
The Navy VH92A helicopter wasn’t the fastest or most agile craft for this type of mission, but it had plenty of room for troops and a high reliability track record. The pilot sat the aircraft down quickly to give the men more time to complete their mission, and instead of lifting off, he stayed on the bridge with the rotors turning on idle. The noise was guaranteed to draw the attention of infected dead on both sides of the bridge, but the soldiers were happy to see the nearest of them was at least thirty minutes away. There was no need to waste ammunition at that distance, but the soldiers would have been glad to practice their sharpshooting skills. They decided to take up their positions closer to the infected, eliminate them, and then withdraw to higher ground as the number of infected increased, but only if they had to.