by Howard, Bob
They didn’t realize they had been holding their breath until they faced each other. Both of them exhaled in ragged fear, and if not for the alligator being between them and home, they might have turned back.
Making more noise than they wanted to, they both crossed the last inlet onto dry land. Unlike the marshes and mudflats, the inlets often had firm ground beneath the water, and they were relieved when their feet pushed against it.
The next mile was a crucial part of their plan. When they had studied the area on a map, Molly told Sam that her father and the Chief would expect them to hole up at Fort Johnson. That’s why they had to go further while they could. They would also expect them to stay somewhere close to the road, so Molly pointed out the way the shoreline ran along the edge of the last inlet. She was afraid they might run into another alligator, but if they could follow the shoreline far enough they could make it past the first of several chokepoints before dawn.
Now that they found themselves standing on that narrow strip of shoreline, they realized that their options were already chosen for them. They could see one narrow section of road that passed by the College of Charleston buildings, and it was heavily populated by the infected. They wouldn’t be able to use the road even if they wanted to.
Molly pulled Sam down next to her. She cupped her hands around his ear and whispered in something hardly louder than a breath.
“Where could they all be coming from? They’ve had years to die off.”
Sam shrugged silently in the dark. She sensed his movement more than she saw it.
He cupped his hands over her ear and breathed the words, “It doesn’t matter. They’re here.”
Molly sat back on her heels, and Sam had an idea what she was thinking. They had discussed the beginning of the infection for hours. They had speculated about how it began and if it was a man-made mistake or if it was a natural occurrence. They both believed it was a virus, no matter where it began, but the bottom line had always been the same. It didn’t matter. There was nothing they could do about it except try to survive.
Molly had argued with Sam, though. She told him that it did matter because understanding how it had started would always be the first step in stopping it. Now she sat quietly in the dark and thought the same thing about where they were all coming from. If the human population had been wiped out, there had to be a reason why there are so many infected here at Fort Johnson.
Sam felt her tug on his sleeve and knew it was time to leave that spot. Neither of them knew it yet, but they were both thinking the same thing. By leaving Fort Sumter, they were placing friends and family in danger by making them come to Fort Johnson. There were far more infected dead in the area than they had expected, and it was too late to go back.
Molly hesitated, and Sam froze where he was. They had watched the infected through the trees for too long, and they were surrounded. It didn’t look like the infected had noticed them yet, but they couldn’t move as a large group of them stumbled into a small clearing right behind them.
“Don’t move.”
Sam’s words were hardly loud enough for him to hear himself, but Molly was too afraid to move. She didn’t need Sam telling her not to.
In the darkness the young couple could have been anything to the infected dead as they aimlessly wandered by. They were so still they were nothing more than lumps of clothing. One of them actually staggered through the narrow gap between Sam and Molly. One leg dragged behind the other, and Molly held her breath when the infected snagged the trailing foot in some vines. If the rotting remains tripped and fell on her, there would be no way to stay hidden.
It seemed to take forever, but when the last of the infected walked noisily into the bushes, Sam and Molly turned away from the already crowded road by the college and hurried in a straight line the opposite way. When they got to the trees, Molly dropped to her knees and shook violently.
Sam didn’t know what to do, so he just knelt next to her and began turning his head to the left and right. He didn’t know if they would ever feel safe again.
“Want to go back?”
His voice was weak, and he knew it was more of a statement than a question, but he didn’t want to be the one to give up. He was surprised when she nodded yes. Out of reflex his head snapped around in the direction of Fort Sumter. It was his turn to start shaking.
Molly sensed his change and strained her eyes against the darkness that still blanketed the marshes. There was a slight drop from dry land down to the mud they had crossed, and the crest of that drop was as crowded as the road by the college. The infected were walking along the crest in single file. Molly and Sam watched as one lost its balance and tumbled out of sight. If they tried to go back the way they had come, they would have to get past that narrow rise and then probably outrun the infected.
Sam helped Molly up into a crouch, and they eased forward into the cover of the trees.
“We can go this way until we see an opening,” said Sam. “Then we can go back down to the marsh.”
Molly was still nodding in the darkness, but she wasn’t saying no to his plan. To Sam it was all about getting back to Fort Sumter.
They moved in a straight line parallel to the mudflats and marshes and kept their eyes on the gray patches between the trees to their left. The sun was still a long way from making its appearance in the east, but the light over the marshes didn’t seem to be as pitch black as the light between the trees.
Several times they had to stop and wait while the infected thrashed by in the brush. They were making so much noise that Molly and Sam wouldn’t give away their position unless they collided with one. They finally saw their chance and angled their way out of the trees.
The fall to the mudflats was only about ten feet, but it was one of those bone jarring landings. Sometimes the mud was soft, and sometimes it was hard. This mud felt like concrete, and Molly was trying to shake the white dots out of her field of vision. At least she thought they were white dots. They were swimming everywhere, and she couldn’t focus her eyes.
The dots bloomed brighter and seemed to explode in front of her as something hit her forehead. Before it went totally dark, she only had time to tell Sam that it hurt. Sam didn’t hear her say anything because he was unconscious before she was. The fall had stunned him the same way as Molly, but it felt like he fell again as soon as he lifted his head.
******
“What did you do that for?”
The gruff voice was male and had a rattle to it that identified the man as a heavy smoker. His question was followed by a half cough as he tried to clear his throat.
“What did you expect? I thought they were ripe meat that wandered over the edge. Isn’t that what you thought?”
The second voice was softer. The woman had a heavy southern accent.
When Molly and Sam dropped in from above, the woman had swung her heavy flashlight out of reflex at their heads. They had been easy targets because they didn’t stay on their feet when they landed.
“That one said something,” said gravel-throat.
“I know, stupid. I heard her. Help me get them in the boat. We need to get out of here in case they were being followed by ripe meat or something.”
Both of them looked at the ledge above them as if the woman had just reminded them of how it felt to have two bodies drop in out of nowhere from above. They grabbed Sam by the feet and arms and lifted him from the hard mud into the flat bottom boat next to them.
“This one doesn’t have much meat on his bones,” said the man.
“Shut up, stupid. If ripe meat up there hears you and decides to drop in, I’ll just let you take care of them by yourself.”
She didn’t have to say it loudly to get him to listen. She knew his attention span was short, but it was long enough for him to not want to dodge falling bodies and maybe get bitten. He also knew that the penalty for getting the unwanted attention of ripe meat was that she would leave him behind if he was bitten. He would become ripe meat, too. A
fter that he would most likely become alligator and crab food.
He clamped his mouth shut so hard that it was an almost invisible line in the middle of his tangled facial hair.
Molly was tall for her age. Her mother hadn’t been short, but her father had been a baseball player with the body of an athlete. The man didn’t say it out loud, but he struggled enough lifting her to show that he thought Molly was heavy.
They gave the ledge above a final glance as they climbed into the boat and then pushed away from the shoreline. The creek was very narrow, so anything that fell from above could still land on top of them, but it meandered away after only a few yards. They felt better when they were farther out from shore.
“What are we going to tell Stokes when we get back?” asked Randal.
“What do you mean by that. There’s nothing to tell. These two came over the edge out of nowhere, and I thought they were ripe meat.”
She was getting tired of Randal. Of all the people she went out with at night, he was her least favorite. The problem was that no one else wanted to go out with him, either. That meant everyone got stuck with him sooner or later.
As they drifted slowly through the snake-like twists and turns of the tidal creek, Sarah Beth wondered how she had sunk so low. Her life as an upperclass Charlestonian seemed to be something she had read about rather than her own memories. It seemed like one day she had just finished prep school, and the next day she was hiding in a tidal creek swatting at mosquitos.
******
Beginning of the Decline
The invitation to go boating with friends was such an expected event that she didn’t even bother to acknowledge the invitation. Of course she would be there. If you didn’t invite her along, you could get dropped from the social circles that mattered, so everyone invited her. She showed up, but she had hesitated when she saw the size of the boat they would be using. It was hardly big enough for someone as popular as her.
By the end of the day, the small size of the boat had most likely been responsible for her survival. A bigger boat would have been out in the harbor with the other big boats where they were repeatedly overrun by armed and desperate people trying to save themselves and their families.
They were drifting near the Fort Johnson boat landing when they heard gunshots from across the harbor. They were far enough away from the Yorktown at Patriots Point to wonder what the sounds were, but when they didn’t stop, they started passing around a pair of binoculars to see if they could tell what was happening.
Sarah Beth saw people falling from the Yorktown, but it didn’t register with her way of thinking. It was the same reaction that people had when they saw the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York. It just wasn’t real to the civilized mind. She had turned to her friends in the boat for an explanation but only saw the same expressions mirrored back at her. Six young men and women who had lived pampered lives that included table manners and social etiquette stood on a small boat and watched hundreds of people die.
Paul, the son of a prominent Charleston lawyer, was the first to speak, but it was only to say someone was going to pay. He was still thinking in terms that would apply to the normal world. What was happening across the harbor and around the world was far from normal.
Warren said, “Shouldn’t we do something? We can’t just sit here. We have to go over there and see if we can save somebody.”
They reacted as a group, and his words spurred them into action. The small engine was started, and since they had been drifting without an anchor in the water, it was only seconds before they were moving fast in the direction of the commotion without even looking back toward Fort Johnson.
Just as quickly Paul cut the engine, and they were bobbing further out in the harbor where they had a better view of the entire scene. They were all holding onto the side rails and seat backs to watch, and the gunshots were louder.
On the Battery there were sirens and cars crashing violently into each other. There was automatic rifle gunfire down by the State Ports Authority, and smoke was rising from the city. Being born and raised in Charleston meant each of them knew precisely where the fires were. Then they saw the fate of the larger boats that were being swarmed by people in the water. The original occupants were shot or just thrown overboard.
Paul started the engine again, and he turned slowly back the way they had come. They were filled with resignation, not because they understood what was happening, but because they understood they would die if they kept going.
Paul aimed for the dock at Fort Johnson. He shouted to the others that they could get help there and maybe even a ride home. Those plans lasted about as long as their rescue attempt had.
At Fort Johnson hundreds of people were jumping into the water. Some were fleeing and some were attacking people at random. It still didn’t register as they watched a heavy man and a skinny woman dragging a gray haired woman to the ground. They were biting her as she collapsed under the attack.
Hands were already reaching from the water and gripping the side rails of their small boat, and it began rocking furiously from side to side. Paul had the presence of mind to power up the engine and cut the wheel hard to the left. The right side of the boat rose high out of the water as the speed increased, and the hands began letting go.
He heard Sarah Beth screaming, but he didn’t have time to find out why. Paul was focused on a small inlet that had appeared when the tide had come in, and he knew it would disappear when the tide went out. All of them had been to Fort Johnson, so they knew the inlet was a tidal creek that led to the homes of people wealthy enough to find the sort of privacy and isolation only money could buy. Some were clients of his father’s law firm, and they would help.
The small boat raced dangerously close to the shallow banks of the submerged inlet, but Paul didn’t have time to worry about hitting them. He knew if he missed the entrance to the tidal creek while it was deep enough to enter, he would hit the mud, and they would most likely be killed by being thrown from the boat.
He cut the power a little as they passed between the steep banks on the right and the mud flats on the left. There was a straight section for about thirty yards, but then the creek would start zigzagging to the left and right every few feet. They would be moving at hardly more than a crawl, but they would be moving away from the mayhem behind them.
It was when he began his first really slow turn that he had a chance to check on Sarah Beth and his other passengers. Sarah Beth had stopped screaming, but she was making some kind of wailing noise that he wished she would stop. He was surprised to see that she was the only passenger in the boat with him.
“Where’s Warren?”
His girlfriend, Patricia, was gone, but he asked about Warren first. Somewhere in his disorganized thoughts he had a vague feeling that he had gotten that wrong, but Warren had gotten permission to come along today only on the promise that Paul would bring him home in one piece.
Linda, Brad, and Robin were also missing, and Paul’s mind wasn’t filling in the blanks. He had plans to become a lawyer, and he would probably have been a good one, but surviving the beginning of a pandemic apocalypse wasn’t something he was prepared to process. He had kept himself and Sarah Beth alive, but he had failed to consider the other four people in the boat. They had gone over the side when he had unexpectedly increased power and cut the wheel hard to the left. They were somewhere behind him and over a hundred yards away. Even if he wanted to go back for them, the creek was too narrow to allow him to turn around. Sarah Beth was huddled in the stern and wailing.
He wanted to go to Sarah Beth, and more than anything he wanted her to stop that noise, but his motor was already kicking up silt from the bottom that was only inches from the spinning propellor. Paul knew he had to keep his forward momentum. If the boat came to a stop and settled deeper, they would be stuck where they were. He no sooner had the thought when that was exactly what happened. The motor connected with a slight rise in the bottom of the creek, and they came to
a stop. When he increased the power, a plume of mud shot out behind them.
Sarah Beth quit wailing at the same moment that they stopped moving, and it seemed too quiet out on the wide tidal basin. On one side he could see the back of Fort Johnson. In the far distance to their left was Morris Island and Fort Sumter. They were less than fifty yards from a private dock, but that was as the crow flies. For them to reach it by boat, they would have to wait for the next high tide and then hope to get the propellor free. Then they would follow about two hundred yards of meandering tidal creeks. Personally, Paul was for crossing the fifty yards of marshland to the dock, but he didn’t know what Sarah Beth would be willing to do.
Sarah Beth was regarding Paul as if he was an axe murderer when he approached her.
“Stay away from me.”
She drew herself deeper into her corner of the stern.
“I didn’t know,” said Paul.
He knew his voice was making it a poor defense, but he really hadn’t known. All he could think about at the time was getting away from the hundreds of hands that were going to pull them all into the water.
“We have to try for that dock,” he added.
Paul gestured toward land.
Sarah Beth either didn’t hear him, or she ignored what he said, so he held out his hand to help her up. The violence that erupted from her came as a total surprise. She slapped his hand so hard it felt like a hundred bee stings, and she lunged at him with her other hand.
Paul wasn’t a jock in school, but Sarah Beth was no match for his size and strength. When Paul overcame his initial surprise, he blocked her swings and then threw his weight on top of her.