by Howard, Bob
The boats were almost at full throttle because they were approaching the bridge, and for once he was glad his five friends couldn’t see what was coming. The worst part was that he hadn’t been able to tell for sure if any of them were in the boat with the officer. There were four hostages riding behind the driver and the foolish officer, and they were about to have a terrifying experience. Bound, blind, unable to fight back or swim, and facing the possibility of an infected landing in the boat with them. If the Chief could do it, he would shoot them before it happened.
One of the boat drivers pointed toward the marshes that sat in the curve formed by the retaining wall at the base of the bridge. There were at least thirty or forty of the infected standing knee deep in the water. The officer had ignored his driver when he had pointed at the same place. The other boats all veered to the starboard to avoid what was about to happen because they all realized what the driver with the officer had been trying to say. The channel marker that warned of shallow water was gone, and their boat was racing into a spot that wasn’t more than two feet deep.
Things happen in slow motion in memories. That’s the way the Chief would remember what he saw. The boat hit the shallow mud bank at the leading edge of the marshes, and all six passengers from the boat were launched through the air toward the infected dead that had been standing shin deep in the mud, unable to leave the spot where they had fallen in.
The officer flew the farthest, and because of the way he had been standing as tall as he could and holding the top of the windshield with both hands, he was practically aerodynamic. He was saved the worst fate by virtue of the fact that he flew far enough to make solid impact with the retaining wall behind the infected, and he was most likely unconscious when he hit the ground. He bounced backward as much as a human body could and landed on top of the trapped group of infected.
The other people in the boat were luckier because none of them flew out of the boat without hitting something else first. Two of the hostages hit the backs of the front seats. The driver and the remaining hostages all hit the windshield. The driver got there first and took out most of it, but he left enough for the others. They probably all died from broken necks. The sick feeling in the pit of the Chief’s stomach was not knowing who they were. One of them looked too much like Hampton.
The Chief turned toward each of the other boats to see if he could tell for sure where his friends were, but they were moving too fast and bouncing too much over the choppy water. They were approaching the bridge, and somehow the infected were managing to get over the tall side barriers to make the long fall into the Cooper River.
The Chief watched as an infected did a perfect head first landing into the boat farthest away from him. With four more hostages and three crewmen in each boat, he could only hope the slim odds were good enough. When the infected dead hit the boat, the impact drove the boat deeper into the water just as they hit a small wave. The driver overcompensated, turned the wheel too far, and flipped the boat.
There were still four boats left with a total of sixteen hooded passengers, so the Chief was determined to will the odds to be in their favor if he had to. He was the kind of guy who leaned left or right when watching a football game and someone was kicking a field goal, so he felt like they would all be in the remaining boats if he just believed it.
Even though he felt like he had witnessed the tragedies in slow motion, everything happened so fast that they were past the Yorktown and past the bridge before he could think again about where they were going. Up ahead on the starboard side he could see the tall cranes at the State Ports Authority. Over the last six years he had flown over the area and passed it on the river, but he could never tell if there was any activity. Of course there had been at the beginning because there was activity everywhere, but the cargo containers were stacked so high and so close together that he couldn’t see past them from the water. When he had flown over them, all he saw was long rows of tents but never anyone out in the open. He had flown over once at night, and he thought he had seen a light inside a tent, but when he went back for a second look, the light was gone.
The lead boat was heading straight for a small boat ramp at the State Ports, and the driver of the Chief’s boat fell in line behind the others. The Chief knew this would be the true test of his ability to rescue his friends, because he needed to buy some time. Whatever these people had planned for their hostages, it most likely included interrogation. That meant separating them, so he had to keep track of where they were and form a rescue plan based on changing information. He considered that to be a moving target.
Something was happening at the first boat, and the Chief couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. Someone was sorting the prisoners. Two of them were pulled off to the side and two were led away by a guard. The Chief realized he had been thinking of them as hostages which implied they had trading value, although he didn’t know what they would be traded for.
Something about the way one of the sorted prisoners was standing seemed familiar. Military demeanor never leaves some people because it becomes a part of them, and that prisoner was standing like a soldier who had spent some time at sea. It had to be Cassandra, and the other one was a slender man who he had watched develop from couch potato to lean and quick. Ed could be lethal if he had to be, and at the moment the Chief felt like he was looking at a coiled spring ready to release its energy.
The other boats were empty by the time they tied up, and the sorting only lasted a short while before the man in charge separated Hampton, Colleen, and Kathy from the rest of the hostages. They were all shoved off to one side while the others were rushed away beyond the containers. Tucker came up next to him.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?”
In an unfriendly voice the Chief answered, “I don’t care. If we mind our own business maybe we’re done for the day.”
“You two.”
The man doing the sorting clearly pointed at Tucker and the Chief.
“Get a BATT-T and take these prisoners to the ship. The boss wants to talk with them.”
The Chief grumbled at Tucker like it was his fault they were chosen, but he saw his chance laid out in front of him like the yellow brick road. He had undoubtedly been picked because of his size, and Tucker just happened to be standing next to him.
Tucker said something about sending one BATT-T without an armed escort, and the Chief had to stop him from making the suggestion to the man in charge. He caught Tucker by his collar and pulled him close to his face.
“How well do you know me, Tucker?”
Tucker looked up into the Chief’s face with wide eyes and said, “I don’t. I don’t know you at all except for what I’ve heard.”
He sounded like he was ready to cry. The Chief had a way of doing that to people when he needed, but apparently the man he was impersonating was somewhat of a legendary threat to the health of anyone he didn’t like, so the Chief didn’t have to do anything except play the part.
“Do you know what I did before CEL Day?”
The Chief was using the opportunity to get Tucker in line and to get something useful about his new identity if he had to use it later.
“I heard that after you got out of the service you delivered pizza in Utica.”
Tucker’s voice was shaking, but the Chief had gotten something at least, so he let Tucker go and told him he was going to get the BATT-T. The man in charge asked if everything was okay as he went by, and he gave him a quick nod.
“Just taking care of some personal differences.”
The Chief knew exactly which BATT-T he was trying to find. There were two models. He wanted the one that had the wall separating the driver and passenger seats from the back of the vehicle. That way he could ride in back under the pretense of keeping a closer watch on the prisoners. They were lined up at the gates to the State Ports, and it didn’t take long to find the right one. The keys were in the ignition, and he guessed there weren’t many car thieves around a place like thi
s.
While he selected the right vehicle, the Chief didn’t miss out on his opportunity to study his surroundings. He thought back to the times when he had passed the area on the water and in the air and could see the measures they had taken to prevent outsiders from knowing what went on inside the cargo container compound. There were thousands of containers, and only a fraction of them were needed to create a barrier around the entire compound. It was a good plan that had to have been made before the infection began, so the Chief had to wonder who would’ve had that kind of power. He didn’t doubt the possibility that this was another government operation separate from the one that Ed had fallen into through his inheritance.
Some of the containers stood open, and he saw that some were empty while some were in the process of being unloaded. Since there were tens of thousands to begin with, he imagined that they must’ve had enough packed with supplies to last for years. Maybe even more than his people had in the shelters.
Empty containers had also been converted to buildings. The containers that were stacked on top had windows cut in the sides, so the perimeter was well protected. If he and his friends had ever tried to infiltrate the ports from the water, they would have been spotted well in advance. He thought back to those times when the Mud Island Family had talked about sending someone in to see what, if anything, was going on here, and he could tell it would have been a one way mission. The only way into this place was the way he had gotten in, and that was disguised as one of them.
Everything was going his way so far, so the Chief didn’t press his luck by taking too long. Even though he had gathered some useful intelligence, he couldn’t wait to get his friends into the personnel carrier and get on the road. He started the engine and pulled the vehicle out of line. It didn’t take more than a minute to drive back, and as he got out of the driver seat, he tossed the keys high in the air in Tucker’s direction.
Tucker was caught off guard and dropped his M4 rifle. He was so excited about the opportunity to drive that he didn’t really care. The Chief felt sorry for Tucker. He wasn’t meant for the way the world had become, and the Chief could see a bad day in the man’s future. It was going to be far too easy to overcome him on the road.
“You drive, Tucker. I’ll ride in back with the prisoners.”
“Why can’t you ride shotgun, man? What if I come up on a crowd of those things?”
“You need me to hold your hand too?”
The menace in the Chief’s tone of voice was enough to keep Tucker from asking twice. He went around the vehicle and climbed into the front. The Chief took advantage of the opportunity and leaned closer to the prisoners as he opened the rear door.
“Five more minutes, and we’re home free. Everyone just climb in and leave it to me. No heroics.”
“I knew it,” said Kathy.
The Chief gave her upper arm a little squeeze as he guided her into the BATT-T. He climbed in behind her and pulled the door closed. He slapped the wall between the front seats and the back two times, and the truck lurched forward. The Chief kept his balance and immediately pulled the bag off Kathy’s head.
Kathy blinked against the light, but she was almost breathless when she saw it really was the Chief. It had seemed too good to be true with the bag over her head even as he had spoken to them behind the open doors, but now that she could see him, she was overjoyed beyond words.
“How? I mean, you were unconscious the last time I saw you, how’d you get here?”
“Long story for another time. Let’s get everyone untied.”
******
Ed
There isn’t much that makes someone feel more helpless that taking away their ability to see, and from the moment the bags were pulled over our heads to the moment they were removed by the Chief, it had been terrifying. The bumpy ride in the back of some kind of truck had us all feeling sick to our stomachs and sore with bruises, but it was nothing compared to the boats. We knew they were boats, of course, but from what we could hear, the luck of the draw for some hostages was that they were in the wrong boat.
When I heard the Chief laugh, I finally began to hope for the best, but I don’t think I started feeling physically better until I could see again. It was either the light, even in the back of a truck, or it was the Chief’s smiling face. He was all business, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
I felt like I wanted to hug him, but I left that to the ladies and settled for a knuckle bump. Still, it was the best knuckle bump I ever had.
“I can’t wait to hear the rest of your plan, Chief. So far it’s as good as it gets.”
“Thanks, Ed, but you’ve seen all my cards. If you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.”
“Well, to start with, you have a gun. We have that guy up front to get by, but I think we have him outnumbered. What more does the plan need?”
The smile faded from the Chief’s face, and his eyes became unfocused, like he could see something in the distance. Cassandra, Hampton, and Colleen were the picture of restraint. They had all been freed and their hoods removed, but the expression on the Chief’s face made everyone postpone the celebration. The anticipation hung in the air like smoke, but we were five people who knew the Chief well enough to know when not to interrupt his thoughts.
“You’re right,” said the Chief. “This has all been too easy. I was okay with running into an ex-SEAL who was my size. That was good luck, and I believe in luck. But getting you guys all together in a safe vehicle and given the chance to escape, that’s too much. Someone wanted us together in here.”
The Chief tried the lock on the back door. He wasn’t really expecting it to unlock, but he had to know for sure. It didn’t budge, and it wasn’t the kind of door he could expect to kick open. The entire vehicle was armored, and the door looked like it belonged on a bank vault. In the center was a rearview window with a sliding panel that was in the closed position. To the left and right sides of the door were two more windows with the same sliding panels that were also closed. He slid the one on the door to the open position.
“I just walked right into a trap.”
Behind them were two more personnel carriers that were matching their speed. Their headlights shone brightly through the tiny window. He had to admit, someone had been a quick thinker. If they had tried to take him as soon as the boats were unloaded, there’s no telling how many people would have died. They let him think he was escaping and caught him without firing a shot. He still had his M4 and a sidearm, but they weren’t going to just open the door and let him shoot them.
“Ever feel like a fly stuck in a spider web?” asked the Chief as he unloaded his weapons and piled them up by the door.
With nothing else that could be done, we all just sat back on our seats and waited for the inevitable…whatever that was.
******
By late morning Jed and Mattie caught up with the back of the horde a few miles from Charleston. Mattie was too young to understand what was happening, but Jed knew. When the horde got so big that it couldn’t stop moving once it got started, it was like some kind of perpetual motion machine. When an infected stumbled and fell, it wasn’t like the ones behind it were going to lend a hand to help it keep from being trampled. They got stepped on, they were crushed, and they tripped more of them as if they were getting even at the ones that tripped them. At first they spotted a few infected crawling on their bellies. They dragged their legs behind them, and they weren’t making much progress, but they all crawled in the same direction.
Jed steered Mattie away from them and wondered what had produced this phenomenon. It wasn’t readily apparent what had happened, and he mentally worried about it the way a dog worked on a bone. He knew there had to be an explanation, especially since there were more and more ‘crawlers’ as they got closer to Charleston. At first there were a few, then dozens, then hundreds. They were unable to walk because they were too damaged, but they fought to move forward with their sick will to bite another victi
m or to answer the summons of whatever was calling to them.
At first he thought the horde was dying…really dying. He actually began to hope that whatever it was that had reanimated the dead had run its course. After more than six years of misery the apocalypse was over. The thought made his heart pound as he believed he was witnessing the real death of the infected. Something was killing them. He even went so far as to say it out loud once, and as he saw more and more of them crawling instead of walking, he became convinced. His elation almost walked them right into more of them than they could avoid, even though they were crawling. Jed had to lift Mattie from the asphalt and focus his attention on where to put his feet. Stepping away from one was the same as stepping toward another.
His disappointment came when he stood near the junction with I-526. There were so many infected crawling on the road that they climbed over each other. The ones that weren’t crawling weren’t moving at all, and there was a logjam across the interstate. He wasn’t sure how they were going to get around the mass of writhing bodies, but he could tell that whatever it was that was making the infected crawl toward Charleston, it was still doing the job. For what must have been the thousandth time, he tilted his head to one side and listened, hoping he would hear whatever it was that was calling to them.
A wet slap on his foot made him jump, and he saw one of the crawling dead had reached for him. He was lucky it hadn’t been more patient and waited to make a grab after getting closer. There were too many for him to stand still, and there were too many for him to keep going forward. His only choice would be to work his way to the Cooper River and then find a boat.
Still carrying Mattie, Jed backtracked across the lanes of infected that reached for him as he went by. That was when he noticed that many of the infected that weren’t moving at all had head wounds that were obviously the result of being shot with bullets. As a matter of fact, there were more of them at the spot where the logjam began. From his higher elevation, he could see down into the place where the interstate lanes branched left and right forming figure eights cut in half by exit ramps. The interchange that formed the connection between I-26 and I-526 must have been the place where shooters had taken a stand and greeted the horde as it came over the crest of the hill where he now stood. He imagined it must have been quite a thing to see.