by Howard, Bob
The two helpers both backed away from it at the same time while Stokes and the young man just stood as still as statues and stared at it. The coffin had only been partially raised, so it was just level with the pile of dirt on the other side of the grave.
It was safe to say they were trying to decide who was supposed to lift the lid. Stokes shook his head to the unspoken question, but the young man had mastered the expression that conveyed authority, and Stokes knew he was going to be the one who was going to open the coffin.
The next few minutes were somewhat fuzzy in Stokes’ memory. He remembered stepping down from the seats to the edge of the hole where the coffin seemed to be hovering in place. He remembered reaching for the hole in the side of the coffin with the key that would turn the locking mechanism. The rest of it he wasn’t totally sure of. Despite everything that had happened since that day, he had never been able to completely wrap his mind around seeing the pale old man trying to sit up as he raised the lid.
There was the screaming, the blood, the people tearing holes in the bodies of other people using their teeth. It seemed like it would never end, yet somehow it did. The two nitwits had followed Stokes as if he had a plan, but all he did was run.
Somehow he found himself at the secluded house a few miles away. The people who had lived there were dead, and all he had to do was take over. Over the next few days he let survivors join his ranks as if he was the ruler of a kingdom. One of his official acts as the lord and master of the home in the marshes was to rescue the young lady in the boat. She was swinging a pole at a young man who was trying to climb into her end of the boat. His shirt was covered with blood, and he was making a groaning sound.
******
Sarah Beth remembered that first day like it was yesterday, but her best guess was that it was close to six or seven years ago. Gervais was still with her, and of course Stokes and Randal were just stupid enough to live forever, but the rest of the faces were gone. A few of his trusted officers were all that were left.
Supply runs, never-ending close calls with ripe meat, and friends being bitten and keeping it secret from the others were all things that took their toll. It had been a long time since they had seen another real, living person, and she regretted taking them as prisoners for Stokes. She realized too late that she should have used them as a means to finally escape from this house that had become a prison.
Now that Stokes knew they were from Fort Sumter, there was no telling what he would do with them. He had set his mind on escaping to the Gulf of Mexico, and if she had been smarter, she would be in Fort Sumter right now and not about to be dragged off by those morons.
Sarah Beth was sitting with her back against a wall outside, just thinking about what she could do to change things. She saw the dark shape coming her way and readied herself for the attack, thinking some ripe meat had made it through the woods.
The years had taught her that nothing could sneak up on you if you had your back against a wall, and you always got to prepare for what was coming. This one stopped and lit a cigarette, and she relaxed. Only Randal was that stupid.
He walked straight up to her, and she was just about to comment about how dumb he had to be to light a cigarette at night, but the words didn’t make it past her lips before he punched her.
The blow caught her between the eyes, and she was unconscious in the next second. Randal pulled a cloth bag over her head and tied her hands and feet. He picked her up and carried her off to dump her limp body with the others.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Desperation
Six Years After the Decline
Our search party wasn’t having any luck. There were signs that others had been in the buildings looking for food or other useful items, but it had been a long time since the infection began.
Evidence of scavengers was subtle at first, but we had all become experienced living in this new world. In the chemistry labs we saw the fuel canisters that were used for portable Bunson burners were gone. Of course the labs had their own gas lines for the equipment, but these labs were part of the field training for Marine Biologists, and it was expected that they would want to run some experiments while camping along the coast on the barrier islands.
Field packs were gone, as were the dissecting kits. The blades in those kits would be invaluable to survivors who didn’t have a shelter like ours. Cast nets, fishing gear, SCUBA gear, spear guns, and tents were probably the first to go, but those things were also likely to be the cause of the high infected dead population in the area.
On the first day, survivors would have scattered into the woods, but hundreds of survivors in the same area was also a guarantee that hundreds of the infected would be in the woods following the sounds of the injured, the frightened, and the desperate.
Some of the injured would have been bite victims. As a matter of fact, the majority of the injuries were likely to be bites. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see classmates, boyfriends, and girlfriends bleeding from bite wounds and not knowing that those wounds would be fatal.
There couldn’t have been much information available even on a campus with so many open lines of communication and a college safety office with armed security officers. They knew the same thing everyone else did, and the information about the bites being infectious had to have come after the population of the campus had become scattered. Those who remained within the fenced perimeter of the campus weren’t prepared for the onslaught that would come within the next two days and would go on until they were all counted among the victims.
After the fences were breached, the campus had become a walking cemetery, a graveyard for the infected dead that couldn’t find their way back out of the enclosures.
The woods on the other side may have been populated by survivors even longer than the secure buildings of the campus, but one by one the small pockets of the living were consumed by their friends who died in their arms, unaware that the danger was within their own camps. By the time the mistake was learned, it had already been made too often, and survivors who returned to scavenge for supplies suffered tremendous losses for a few precious items.
Judging by the lack of footprints and campsites out on Morris Island and in the marshes, the students had either chosen to stay on the mainland or had been forced inland away from the beaches. Either way, the population of infected dead grew steadily in the area.
As we moved from room to room we cleared the infected we encountered using blades. The plan was to move quickly and quietly to the upper floors in case the kids had become trapped up there. We had drawn too much attention getting into the building, so we hoped to work our way out the other end.
Cassandra was in the lead at the moment, and despite her tough exterior, she was finding it difficult to be the witness to the loss of so many people. She wasn’t seeing the infected as the monsters they had become, but as the future they used to represent. She said it best when she stopped and asked how we were ever going to replace so many bright, young minds. Creativity would be gone for a century.
“Stairwell is clear,” she said from above, and we hurried up to the landing outside the door to the second floor.
We cleared the second floor as quickly as the first, and we saw no fresh evidence that the floor had been visited by survivors. A quick meeting at the last room resulted in the decision to move on to the next building since we were all in agreement that it was unlikely that Molly and Sam had been in the first one. We had two more buildings to search, and the Chief wanted to take a look at the docks where the Marine Laboratory kept its boats.
As we had hoped, a sizable crowd of infected had gathered at the other end of the building, and it was far enough away for us to move unseen into the second one in line. It had its fair share of infected in the classrooms and offices, but not nearly as bad as what we had already seen. The students had probably known there were more labs in the first building and more lecture halls in the second. There wasn’t much survival value in the computer
s and desks in the lecture halls.
The last building was more like a warehouse inside, but the contents were useless to survivors. Large aquariums and breeding ponds filled the building, and the second floor was lined with faculty offices.
That left the campus docks. We had ignored the docks for years because we could see them well from the air and from the deck of the Cormorant when we would cruise by. They had fallen into ruin on the first day when burning boats had tried to dock at the campus. Explosions from fuel supplies had destroyed the other boats, and the slips had all become clogged with debris.
We had an unlimited supply of boats at our disposal because we could fly to the marinas along the coast, or we could use the Cormorant to carry small invasion forces to the boat centers. We had talked about bringing more boats to Fort Sumter, but so far we hadn’t determined a strategic reason to do so.
Tom and Hampton led the group out the back door of the last building and were cutting a hole in the chainlink fence before the rest of us caught up. They held back the wire for everyone to go through, and we made our way to the docks in a hurry.
It was as bad close up as it was from a distance. The remains of clothing and bones in the boats told the whole story. Fire had melted the entrance to the main dock, and it was obvious that no one had escaped from the campus by boat. To make matters worse, people had tried to escape to Fort Johnson as others tried to leave it behind.
There was a row of buildings on each of the two docks. Kathy found a door on the dock on the left that was unlocked and led to a single room. There were visible sight lines in all directions, so we wouldn’t be trapped if the infected discovered where we had gone. It was an excellent place for us to have a group discussion about our next moves, and we were in desperate need of a plan.
Once we were all inside, we took up positions at the windows to keep watch while we focused on what to do next. Hampton led off the discussion by stating the obvious. It didn’t appear that the kids had come to the college campus, possibly because they knew how easily they would have become bogged down. That would have given a search party the chance to gain ground on them.
We still didn’t believe the kids could have gotten off of James Island before we set up a blockade, so Tom set up a radio and checked in with the helicopter that had flown ahead. The crew answered immediately and confirmed that the infected population was high across the island, so travel would have been slow. If they had gotten out of the area, it wasn’t by any of the main roads.
The Chief turned over a large table that had been flipped over and used as a barricade over a broken window. He spread out his map of James Island and began marking key points.
“Where are we?” I asked.
The Chief drew a circle around the dock.
“We’re here, and this is where we landed the Sikorsky. We used this road to reach the building we cleared. This is where the search crew in chopper three is waiting, and here’s where we left number two.”
He located the place where the kids were likely to have come ashore and then stood back from the map.
“What am I missing?” he asked the group.
Cassandra had the most combat experience other than the Chief. She leaned in and put a finger on the map where the marshes met with the trees.
“If this was a combat mission instead of search and rescue, I would be worried about this flank. It’s totally uncovered. Can we get chopper two to give us a flyover as soon as they’re done checking that little island?”
“They should be done by now,” said the Chief. “Somebody get them on the radio and tell them where we need a quick look.”
Jean had taken over at the radio while Tom joined the Chief at the map, so she hailed chopper two. It only took a few seconds for her to get confirmation from them that they were airborne and proceeding to the coordinates Cassandra had given her.
The report came back almost immediately.
“Chopper two says this area is flooded with the infected, and they want to know if we need to be extracted,” said Jean.
The Chief thought about it for a moment before he shook his head.
“Too many of us to extract without drawing them all into the area. The parking lot outside is the only place to land, so we can either have Captain Miller send the Cormorant to get us, or we can go out of here on foot.”
Tom was objecting before the Chief could even finish.
“That would take too long. It would also be like starting over.”
Kathy was running her finger along the beach to the east of Fort Johnson, and then she followed a curve along a tidal creek. She didn’t stop until she had traced a line from the college campus all the way to a heavily forested area that also had inlets that surrounded it.
“Do you see this big shadow inside the trees?” she asked all of us. “It has to be a house, and these inlets don’t look like they dry up at low tide. If we stay along the marshes, we would be able to retreat if it gets too bad. The choppers could pick us up on the mudflats. Once we reach the house, it looks like we can double back to our chopper without running into that big horde.”
“You think the house stays surrounded by water all the time?” asked Colleen.
I added, “A smaller version of our moat at Mud Island.”
“There’s a driveway coming out of the trees way over here to the west,” said the Chief. “It has to be the only way to get to the house without crossing the water, but it’s too far away. We’d lose too much time.”
“Then we have to cross the water,” said Tom. “We’ve already lost a lot of time by searching this area.”
Everyone knew Tom was worried about Molly. She was all he had left from his life before the infection killed most of the world population, but there was also an accusation in between the lines. He felt like it was someone’s fault that they searched an area where Molly and Sam didn’t go.
The unspoken blame hung in the air between Tom and the Chief, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing the Chief’s eyes with that level of smoldering anger.
“You need to get something off your chest?” he said.
Tom was about to say something when Kathy took a chance and put one hand on his arm.
“Tom, it was my idea to search the campus first. If we had passed up the chance to check it, and they were trapped here, we would never have forgiven ourselves. Besides, that’s the Chief you’re talking to. You know how much he cares about Molly and Sam.”
It wasn’t easy for Tom to let it go, but we could all see he was embarrassed for making it sound like the Chief was somehow at fault for their delays. As for the Chief, a vein had popped out on the side of his forehead, and I could literally see it disappear. I told myself to remember that vein.
Tom opened his mouth to say something to the Chief, but the Chief stopped him.
“Let it go, Tom. We don’t need to waste more time rehashing the obvious. They weren’t here, but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing they didn’t get trapped in the campus buildings. They wouldn’t have survived a single night.”
“I just wanted to apologize.”
“Apology accepted. Now, let’s move out and work our way around to that spot that looks like it might be a house. If they made it to there, then we’re likely to find out they’re safe.”
Getting to the trees that lined the edge of the marshes and mudflats was harder than it looked on the map. Almost immediately we ran into a swarm of the infected that had followed us to the docks, and we were forced to use our handguns to break through.
The good news was that we would be doing an end run. The infected would be drawn to the place where the gunshots made noise, and we would be crossing behind the infected as they converged on the docks. Plus, our combined firepower was undeniably effective.
As soon as we cleared a big gap in the advancing crowd, we began running back toward the Ashley River. We reached the place where the trees met with the water and ran across the wet sand to get to the other side of the trees. As f
ar as we could tell our plan was working because the infected we could see in the trees were still heading in the wrong direction.
The tide was out, so we were able to jump across the tidal creeks and run along the sand at the base of a steep bank. The footing was firm close to the bank, but it made all of us nervous to be directly below the tree line. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it would be like if the infected fell from the woods above us.
“Hold up.”
Jean didn’t really have to yell it, and she was just as worried about the infected dropping in from above as everyone else, but she had to get us to stop. She had tripped over something that made her look down. She gave an evil eye to the driftwood that she had stumbled over, but there was something next to it that was familiar. She picked it up from the sand and held it out where the others could see it.
Everyone recognized the sterling silver chain that Molly had worn as a reminder of her mother. Allison had given it to her when they had been reunited at Mud Island. It had a little trinket hanging from it that was nothing more than a souvenir from the state park at Guntersville, Alabama, but it had meant the world to Molly.
We all looked up at the bank a few feet above our heads and wondered if Molly had passed by above, or if she had run along the same bank that we were using. At least we felt closer to Molly for the first time since we arrived at Fort Johnson.
Sim had been quiet since they left the helicopter. Even after five years, he was still trying to get used to this group of crazy survivors. His perception of us was that we weren’t afraid of anything. Ever since we had shown up at the President’s shelter in Columbus, Ohio, he had marveled at our determination. This time it was one of our own we were searching for, and our level of determination was well beyond what he had seen before. He felt safe with us, but at the same time he felt like we could be dangerous.