by Howard, Bob
The C-17 was surrounded by the infected because the flight line was so exposed. Any movement or noise would attract more of them to the area, and as soon as they began their search, the infected began arriving. A large amount of precious ammunition had to be used to set up a perimeter around the C-17. Once the infected were eliminated to a safe distance, the helicopters could land and retrieve their cargo.
The Navy helicopters flew in relays between Fort Sumter and the Air Force Base until they had a sizable cache of missiles. We didn’t want the missiles stored near the helicopters because one lucky shot could destroy all of them at once. We also needed to be able to load the missiles easily without taking fire, so an armory was set up in the escape tunnel near the Morris Island entrance. It was out of the line of sight from Patriots Point, and it couldn’t be hit by anything that could penetrate the tunnel.
By the end of the day, Fort Sumter had become the closest thing to a super power that anyone was likely to become. If anyone tried to hit Fort Sumter, we could arm the helicopters in minutes and retaliate.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” said the Chief.
Captain Miller was nodding his head as if he knew exactly what the Chief was going to say. The rest of us waited to see if they were going to let us in on the secret.
The Chief gestured for Captain Miller to go ahead.
“The real power behind a weapon is in knowing that you have it and making sure that your enemy knows you have it.”
“Deterrence,” I said.
“Very good, Ed. If your enemy knows you can obliterate him, he might just decide not to attack you. As a matter of fact, sometimes it can lead to a truce or even peace.”
Kathy had a frown on her forehead that caught the attention of everyone.
“Wait a minute guys, are you saying they showed us what they’ve got so now we show them what we’ve got?”
Jean and Colleen both giggled and said at the same time, “It’s a man thing.”
“Call it that if you like,” said Tom, “but didn’t they put someone in a boat with a rocket launcher?”
“What are we going to do,” asked Jean, “put some of those missiles on the Cormorant?”
“No, I have something less subtle in mind,” said Captain Miller.
Our mouths all dropped open, and I wasn’t alone when I objected.
“We’re going to attack them,” I said. “That’s really not who we are, is it?”
“No, we’re going to tell them what we have,” said Captain Miller. “There’s bound to be some ex-military over there, so we’re going to start by running up an American flag over Fort Sumter. That will establish who we are and what we stand for. Then we’re going to hang a big sign on the wall of the fort that says GROM and GROM-B. If they don’t know what that means, they’ll find someone who does. In the meantime, it will give them something to think about.”
“So, they won’t attack because they probably can’t defend themselves against that kind of weapon,” said Kathy. “How soon will we know if they got the message?”
“Not long. While we’ve been talking it over, my men have been taking care of it. As soon as the signs are up, we should see some activity over there.”
As if Captain Miller had timed it, one of his NCO’s appeared at the door. They exchanged a few words, and when the NCO left, Captain Miller turned to us with two thumbs up.
“The boat in the marsh is gone. He pulled out less than five minutes after the signs were hung.”
“I have a question,” said Tom. “Why so subtle?”
“The message is only intended for them,” said the Chief, “and it wasn’t a threat, just information. Once we get done with our trip to the Gulf, we can start working on the peace part of deterrence.”
******
Our son was growing like a weed, and leaving him was never easy for me or for Jean. Molly told us she didn’t know what she had been thinking when she left the fort because leaving Joshua behind had been like leaving her little brother. Whitney stepped up and told Molly it wasn’t all on her. If she hadn’t forgotten how much Molly needed someone close to her age, she might not have turned to Sam as her only alternative. We weren’t too hard on her because to hear her tell it, the last few hours of Sam’s life had been nothing but fear.
Sarah Beth was still trying to come to terms with her part in it, but all of us had told her repeatedly that there wasn’t anything she could have done differently. In an area that was infested with the infected dead, anyone would have taken a swing at a body dropping in from above. If they had really been infected, she would have been dead if she had hesitated.
The atmosphere around the shelter became different every time we got ready to go out on the road. There was the usual planning that was handled by the Chief. He shared the details with us, but he seldom needed input when it came to fuel and supplies. Kathy and Tom were working on weapons and ammunition while Jean and I prepared rations.
Because we had the unique ability to fly to the coast of the Gulf, we could carry less food. If we needed more, we could get to it easier than survivors on the ground. We also had enough fuel to fly out to the oil rig rather than to find a boat, so we didn’t need to land before then. At least that had been the plan until the executive helicopter broke down.
To say the Chief was angry again was an understatement. Five years of routine maintenance on the Sikorsky hadn’t made it impervious to engine failure, and the first reports weren’t good. Even worse, getting parts for the repair wouldn’t be as simple as cannibalizing another helicopter, especially at the Air Force Base. The last trip up to the base for weapons had gotten them a good look at the infected population, and it hadn’t improved over the years. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Plan B made sense to all of us. The Chief and Kathy lobbied for one of their crazy missions, but the rest of us wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted to take the de Havilland Beaver with maybe two other members of the group, and fly to New Orleans. There were reasons why it would make sense, but there wasn’t one of us that wanted our group to get split up. Tom said he should go if Kathy did, but Molly almost went crazy when she heard about it.
It wasn’t just the infected dead or other survivors they were up against. Molly spent a lot of time with Sarah Beth, and it was obvious that Stokes was one of those people who was just plain lucky. She said he should have died hundreds of times, but it was always the person standing next to him who died. He also had this way about him that made him always have someone else standing there. Sarah Beth had convinced Molly that Stokes would be expecting us to show up no matter how far away he got.
After so many years since that first day when I watched the police and paramedics getting bitten at the strip mall in Surfside, I knew that we had gotten a bit like Stokes when it came to luck. We had too many close calls, and we had seen too many people die. The Chief and Kathy couldn’t come up with a good defense in favor of their argument to take the seaplane because we knew they could be shot down. On our very first trip away from the Mud Island Shelter we had taken a bullet that had forced us to abandon our first plane. It was shot down over Charleston harbor the second time, with the Chief and Tom’s wife on board.
As much as we trusted the Chief, there was going to be a time when luck wouldn’t be enough to get us all home, and after so many years since our trip to Columbus, Ohio, this was feeling more and more like a trip we shouldn’t take.
That suggestion was put on the table, and this time the Chief and Tom were the ones who went crazy. The Chief wanted the madman who had buried Sam alive, and Tom wanted him for burying his daughter. There was no way we could convince them to just let Stokes meet his fate out on the road.
After debate that went on for hours, Captain Miller made a suggestion everyone could live with. He pointed out that their neighbors over at Patriots Point were used to seeing the helicopters leave for a few hours at a time. They had to assume we were foraging for supplies just like everyone else, because they cou
ldn’t possibly know we were sitting on enough food to last at least fifty years, even with the large number of people we had in the shelter. They also couldn’t know we were sitting on a power plant that could recycle water forever. They couldn’t have it as good on the Yorktown.
Captain Miller suggested that his men could fly us out about halfway and then we could travel the rest of the trip by ground. Traveling by water was also an option if we wanted to take the Cormorant around Florida to the Gulf.
The dining area was about as quiet as it could get with so many of us present for the discussion. We were all weighing the two options, and both had their good and bad points. No one wanted to cross the southeast by land. There wasn’t a town or city that was safe from the infected, and the problem with traveling around Florida was the open exposure. We didn’t know how many other ships were at sea, we didn’t have accurate weather reports, but the worst part was we would be forced to refuel along the way. There were plenty of places where we could find fuel, but they were all going to be hot spots for the infected or for other survivors.
“I have one other issue I’d like to resolve before we make a decision,” said Tom.
His voice broke the silence, and we were all glad to hear someone do it. We were surprised by his issue, though.
“We need to find out where we stand with Patriots Point before we go after Stokes. I think we should send someone over there under a white flag.”
“We tried that,” said the Chief. “I was convinced by their response that whoever was sitting under the flag was going to die. I don’t think there’ll be many volunteers.”
“I wasn’t planning to ask for volunteers. We have someone in a holding cell who could be given an offer he can’t refuse.”
Tom had a wry smile on his face that was anything but humorous. The Chief had a bigger smile.
“The dummy will think this is his chance to escape,” he said.
“How do we know he won’t just try to sell us out?” asked Colleen. “That’s what I would do.”
“We’ll give him a specific message to pass along, but we’ll tell him a few things that aren’t true,” said Captain Miller. “It’s the same principal that’s used to catch spies. Misinformation that the courier couldn’t possibly know to be true or false.”
The Chief picked up where Captain Miller left off.
“The written message will be sealed, but we’ll tell Randal he’s not the first courier we’ve sent over to Patriots Point. We’ll tell him we have a deal with them that either side will kill a courier who shows up with an unsealed message.”
“So, what will you tell him they would do if he loses the sealed message?” asked Hampton.
“Feed him to the infected,” said the Chief.
Jean raised her hand even though it was a formality we all tended to ignore just for fun. This time she had an expression that said she wasn’t kidding around, so we were all ears.
“We’re putting a lot of faith on assumptions here. Like, what happens if they just kill him? We would never know unless they shoot him while he’s on the water. Or he could make a deal with them and come back with some message that’s just a setup. We would be assuming either way. If he doesn’t come back it could mean they let him join them. If he comes back with a message, it could all be a lie by him or the people at Patriots Point. How do we know without assuming too much?”
Sometimes the Chief did joke too much, but Jean had known him before the apocalypse. When they served together on board the cruise ship, Atlantic Spirit, he was famous for making the ship run like a Swiss watch, but he was also famous for his sense of humor. This time he had a set to his jaw that said he wasn’t kidding around. As a matter of fact, his facial expression was similar to the day they had been forced to start disposing of bodies when people died in sick bay.
“Have you met Randal?” he asked Jean.
“No, I got a look at him when he was brought in, but he was blindfolded and didn’t speak. All I know is he’s fat, so he hasn’t been missing meals.”
“He has been since we brought him in,” said the Chief.
“We sent him some soup,” said Colleen. “I understand you broke his jaw, Chief.”
The Chief didn’t react other than to give a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say it was no big deal.
Captain Miller said, “I think what the Chief means is that Randal is too stupid to pull off anything on his own, Jean. If we tell him what to do, he’ll do it.”
“So, it’s decided then. We’ll send Randal over to Patriot’s Point and hope they respond to a message,” said Kathy. “Next, we have to decide how we’re going after Stokes.”
Colleen asked, “How long would it take us to circle around the tip of Florida? I mean, wouldn’t that be a lot faster than traveling on foot?”
Everyone turned toward the Chief because that was a logical question he could answer the best.
“If we could cruise straight there without any stops along the way, only a couple of days. It’s about a thousand nautical miles, but I would prefer to go around the Keys, so add a hundred. That’s two days at max speed, but the Cormorant only has a cruising distance of a little more than nine hundred miles. That means we have to risk stopping somewhere.”
“Where?” asked several of us at the same time.
“That’s not an easy answer,” he said. “I’ll have to spend some time with a few maps. Am I understanding everyone correctly? You’d rather go by sea than by land?”
A few of the group had been quiet. Olivia and Chase had always been better as support staff at home, but Sim would be a valuable navigator and Cassandra was undeniably a good shot from long range. Her military training wasn’t as intense as the Chief’s SEAL training, but she had proven herself to be a quick thinker and fast on her feet when the Mercy Mission ship had been overrun by the infected and then boarded by desperate survivors. Not many people could have survived one of those obstacles, but she had survived both.
“If this is a vote,” said Cassandra, “I’ll pick going to sea over mosquitos and humidity any day.”
Sim said, “I’m with her and not just because she’s pretty. I almost stayed up north when I had the chance just because of those same two things.”
That earned him a smile from Cassandra and probably scored him a few points with every woman in the room.
“I guess that’s settled,” said the Chief. “Give me a day to study the maps, and in the meantime we can be getting the Cormorant ready to go home.”
“Home?” asked Tom.
“She was built near New Orleans,” answered the Chief.
“I’ll take that as a good omen,” said Sim. “I don’t know if you people are superstitious, but I watch for the good signs whenever I can.”
Hampton said, “You’ve been with us long enough to know this group believes in luck, but we also believe in each other. Right, Bus?”
Bus had been quieter than the rest of us and seemed to be a million miles away. He snapped out of it when he realized all eyes were on him.
“Don’t mind me, guys. I was just thinking how good it would be to see Maybank again.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dead Tide
Year One of the Decline
In those first days after the apocalypse, Maybank understood this had been what Titus Rush had been talking about. He watched news reports while they lasted and did his daily routines. Inspecting the shelter wasn’t on the list for the rest of his life, but Titus had told everyone in the survivors club that they should look for things in those early days that they hadn’t anticipated. Since they didn’t know what kind of apocalypse they were going to face, they couldn’t possibly anticipate everything.
By the end of the first month he knew that he had thought of everything that fit with this particular apocalypse. Or at least he felt like he had, although he had to admit he had never put much emphasis on getting ready for a zombie apocalypse.
“Or did I?” he asked himself.
> Maybank noticed he was talking to himself more than before, and that was one thing that had come up in their survivor meetings. Everyone was planning to survive in shelters with important people. Some would be sharing their quarters with a lot of survivors, and some with a few. Titus was the only one who was planning on riding it out alone, and as far as Maybank knew, he not only wouldn’t have any dignitaries staying with him, he also wouldn’t have any family.
When Maybank and the other survivors all brought it up, he advised them to keep a journal. At first it was like keeping a log on a ship, then as technology improved, it became an audio and video record. He told them it would keep them from going crazy. After what he had seen so far, he didn’t think keeping a record would stop him from going crazy. Maybe he already was.
The rains came so often that Maybank would have lost track of the seasons if not for calendars. He expected tropical storms and maybe even some hurricanes, but he didn’t expect the heavy seas that were more like the North Atlantic than the Gulf of Mexico. They went on for so long that he was surprised when he finally woke up to weather he could enjoy.
It had done its job, though. The constant wind, storms, and high seas had washed the charred remains from the maze of catwalks, and the temperature was so comfortable that he decided to break the number one rule of survival. He was going topside.
Titus Rush had pounded it into all of them. Once you were inside, stay there. There was no reason to leave your shelter that was worth more than your life. Maybank wished Titus was around for him to talk to. He would tell him that he had found a reason to leave the shelter.
“Because I want to.”
He didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it was such a powerful feeling that it was almost a shout. Maybe it was because his reflection was looking back at him from the mirror, and for a moment his reflection was scolding him the way Titus would have.