The Infected Dead (Book 6): Buried For Now

by Howard, Bob

  It never crossed his mind that he had been alone on the oil rig for years before the apocalypse, and when it all ended, he had been alone for another year. He was much older than her, and even though she was probably dead, he couldn’t stop the fantasy that had begun to build up around her.

  The simple fact was that she wasn’t beautiful, but she was pretty. She was younger than him, but that wouldn’t matter because she was also certainly grateful to him for saving her. She would also be kind and understanding that he was lonely, so the age difference wouldn’t be a problem. As for the man who had been with her, he must have been her brother, and if he wasn’t, he was just someone she had run into as she tried to survive. She was unhappy that he died, but she would get over him.

  As each day went by, Maybank built on his fantasy, reviewing security tapes he had already watched, trying to see if he had missed anything moving at that closed door.

  He almost missed the arrival of the rats on the deck of the Titanic because he was so preoccupied with that single door. That’s what he had started calling the ill fated derelict even though it was a container ship.

  The infected dead that still roamed around on the upper decks were diminishing in numbers because the rats were taking them down at night. He just happened to glance at a monitor that showed a view of the ship when a large rat scurried across the deck dragging a snapping head with it. The teeth caught the rat’s tail, and the rat attacked the head more viciously than he could believe. He had never seen one behave that way, and he understood why he had to keep them from coming onto the oil rig again. If they did, and if the lady was still alive, they would get her. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her even though he didn’t know her name or if she was still alive.

  The sun had been down for an hour when he went topside with the rat poison. It wasn’t a difficult task. It was just time consuming because there were so many places he had to fill the sprinklers. Three hours later he skimmed the list of locations on a chart he had prepared in advance and saw that he had checked off each location.

  Standing on a catwalk by the Wellbay Tower, Maybank saw the tattered clothing clinging to the bones of the man that had been attacked by the rats. Some of the remains had fallen over the edge to the waters of the Gulf, but he recognized there was still a pair of jeans attached to the bones. Out of reflex, his own right hand reached back to his rear pocket, and he felt the lump of his wallet there. Even though he had been on the oil rig since long before the end of the world, he still held to the habit of carrying a wallet. Something inside him was convinced that there would be a wallet in those jeans.

  Maybank wasn’t motivated by a desire to know who the man had been. He was motivated to know if there was a picture of the lady that he could see more clearly than the grainy images of the security cameras.

  He crossed the short distance to the remains and didn’t hesitate. He had no feeling that he was committing an act of desecration. He just had to know.

  The wallet was right where he expected it to be, and he was smiling when he opened it. There were two pictures. One was a pose of the couple together. He saw that she obviously wasn’t his sister. The affection in the picture was palpable. The second picture was her alone. He held it in a beam of light and saw on the back was written “Jan in Texas”.

  “Jan,” he said out loud. “Janet.”

  Maybank glanced at the drivers license, but all he saw was the last name. His fantasy filled and lonely mind blocked out the rest. He tucked the picture inside his own wallet and made the long climb back down to the shelter, secure with the new knowledge that she was Janet Parker. He erased David Parker from his thoughts.

  Once he was sealed inside the shelter, his habit of checking the security camera footage didn’t change even though he had just been out there. He was horrified when the recording showed the darkness around the crew quarters interrupted by light from the straight line of the door.

  Sharp at first, it flared as all of the light spilled out through the open door, and a silhouette stood in the light. The dark shape with the light behind it walked to the railing at the end of the deck outside the quarters and stood looking down at the catwalks below…right at the spot where he would have been standing over the remains of the man. One hand came up and balanced the silhouette as she leaned forward to see what was happening below, and then suddenly the shape ran for the open door and shut it quickly behind her.

  He checked the timestamp on the video and looked at his watch. He knew instinctively that she had seen him going through her dead husband’s wallet, but he had to know for sure. He switched to a different camera that showed him standing over the body and saw the timestamp. There was no doubt about it. They were the same.

  “So, you survived the rat bites.”

  He was both excited and confused. He had seen it for himself, and she should have been dead by now. His thoughts were moving at a hundred miles an hour as he tried to sort out the facts from the theories.

  “Maybe she’s immune. Maybe not all rats are carriers. Maybe she found the antibiotics in the supplies and took them in time.”

  In his mind, which had already detached from reality, he rationalized that it didn’t matter what had kept the woman alive. She was alive because of him, and the woman would come to the conclusion that he had saved her life, and it didn’t matter what she had seen.

  ******

  Janice didn’t keep track of time, so she didn’t have a clue how long she had been inside the strange place with everything she needed except windows and David. Hunger made her check the kitchen for food, and what she found only made her miss David more. Dry goods in a large pantry, frozen food in a large walk-in freezer, and a refrigerator that was filled with nonperishable items that could have come from a grocery store. A coffee pot and enough coffee to last a lifetime.

  The kitchen was fully equipped, and there were dishes and all of the necessary utensils for cooking and baking. If that wasn’t enough, there was cold beer and the bar, and another storeroom revealed a supply of MREs that would last for years. This was the motherlode they had searched for, and it was in a relatively safe place. All she needed was David to make it complete.

  Janice took the antibiotics, and the wound would heal. Hunger more than appetite drove her to eventually push the guilt back far enough for her to eat. The smell of meat cooking in a pan made her dizzy. She thawed potatoes and green beans in a microwave and savored them with the forgotten flavor of steak. When she finished, she was surprised to find she had the strength to stay on her feet and clean up the dishes. She left the kitchen spotless and wandered to the bedrooms.

  She hadn’t noticed there was an entertainment system in each room, and the movie collection was as good as walking into a DVD store. Even better, when she turned on a TV set, the menu showed there was a central movie channel that was a lot like having cable. She scrolled the menu and felt like she would never be able to watch every movie that was listed. It was the same for music. There was an endless supply that would satisfy all tastes.

  Besides the one where she had collapsed, there was only one room that appeared to have been slept in. The other rooms all had beds with covers stretched tightly across them, but this one even had a pillow that was still dented in the middle. Janice wondered who the previous occupant had been and what had happed to him or her.

  Another rifle just like the first one leaned into the corner where a writing desk met the wall, and she realized there hadn’t been any other weapons in the rooms besides the two she had found. It must have belonged to the person who had stayed here before. She instinctively hefted it with her good arm to check the weight.

  David would have claimed the rifles if he had been there, but he had taught her a few things when they were lucky enough to have weapons. He had shown her the difference in weight of a full magazine from an empty one, and he had repeatedly drilled into her the importance of knowing the difference. She had gotten good enough to tell when one was half full.


  She couldn’t help but wonder why it had been left here in the room. The fact that it was abandoned here spoke volumes to her. Whoever had owned the rifle had gone out and not come back. Either that, or they were still on the rig somewhere, perhaps wandering around as an infected dead.

  There was something else different in this one bedroom. There was a pad of paper on the desk, and someone had left a note. She turned the pad and tried to understand the poor handwriting.

  “Someone is here. He talked with me on the phone a couple of times, but he wouldn’t open the shelter. He said something once about Jones having the infection and that he wasn’t sure about me. He also said something about us not being authorized to be here. Jones is getting worse, but I don’t know when he could’ve been bitten, so I think it’s something else. I’m going to try to reason with the guy and get him to let us in.”

  That was all there was to it, and it didn’t make sense to her.

  “Let them in where?” she asked herself.

  She suddenly felt sleepy after the long day and the hot food. This time she chose the bedroom at the far end of the hall, and she took the rifle with her. She laid down on the bed and immediately started to settle down in the soft pillow, but something tugged at the back of her mind.

  Janice switched on the light and took in every detail of the room. There wasn’t a telephone anywhere that she could see. She tried to recall if she had seen one out in the main room or the kitchen, and she didn’t think she had, but she had been so focused on the injury to her arm and everything else that happened after that. Alexander Graham Bell could have been out there, and she might not have noticed.

  She giggled at her own joke and bitterly remembered it was the same giggle that David sometimes liked, but there had been times when he had told her it was immature. Part of her was angry at him for dying and leaving her alone like this, but the best part of her said he was only hard on her so she would survive. Maybe he was right, because she was alive, and he wasn’t.

  Sleep took over for her a few minutes later, and she stayed in one position for over four hours. She woke up with that nagging feeling first of not knowing where she was, then of someone watching. When she rolled over, she cried out at the pain in her right arm, and then there was the stiffness in her neck and left side of her body. Nonetheless, it was a clean and comfortable bed, something that they hadn’t found in over a year, and whatever was left to be solved she could do the next day. She took more antibiotics and went back to sleep.

  There was no alarm clock, but she wasn’t counting the ache in the back of her right arm and the stiffness in her hand. Combined, they were as good as any alarm clock. It was strange to feel so much pain but be happy that her hand hurt more than it did the day before. The numbness was gone, which meant less nerve damage than she first thought.

  “Given time, I’ll play the piano again. Not that I could before.”

  Janice had some unfamiliar cramps in her stomach and made a right turn for the bathroom instead of the front of the quarters. She had forgotten what that much fiber and red meat could be like the next day.

  She hadn’t noticed she had her choice of showers and bathtubs, which was a great relief. The shower would have played hell with her bandaged arm, but the idea of soaking in a hot tub was beyond imagination.

  There were already towels in the big bathroom where everything appeared to be stainless steel, and she decided between hunger and how much she craved a long, hot bath. She stripped standing next to a large tub with seats in it and climbed in before it was even half full. A row of switches confirmed it was a whirlpool, and she leaned back to let the jets of water pummel her body.

  Time had no meaning as she floated neck deep in the hot water, but time healed wounds faster than she had known. There were a million thoughts going through her head, and most of them went from life with David to life without David. That had been before, and this was what her reality had become.

  She knew that she had to grieve, but she had gone through a tremendous amount of grief already even before they had arrived at the oil rig. Even before David had died. She understood when you get used to grief, you almost lose perspective about how long you should grieve. So, she gradually came to the conclusion that grieving for David was only going to stop her from recovering, and perhaps stop her from completely relishing the comforts of her surroundings. She didn’t want to ignore the good things happening to her out of guilt.

  Despite sleeping well the night before, the hot water and the whirlpool jets put her into a slumber that lasted three more hours, and she felt so relaxed when she went back to her room. There was no way she was going to put those old clothes back on her clean body, and since there was no one else to see her, she enjoyed the freedom of walking down the hall with just her towel.

  The closet and the dresser in her room had a surprising collection of unisex clothing. There was something like a navy blue jumpsuit that fit comfortably, and the cleanliness alone was a dream come true. Add to that the cotton socks and women’s underwear in one of the drawers, and Janice felt like her good fortune was the reward for David’s sacrifice. The grieving fell away with every new comfort and every remembrance of how he had kept her feeling helpless without him. She mentally closed the lid on his coffin when it crossed her mind that he would have taken credit for all of this if he had survived.

  Revived by the sleep and the long bath, her appetite had returned, and she went to the kitchen on a mission. Powdered eggs tasted pretty good when you hadn’t eaten eggs in a year, and a stack of pancakes smothered in real maple syrup gave her a sugar rush that would make her smile for a few hours.

  When she finished eating, she explored every room again, examining the contents of every drawer and making a mental list of the supplies. Each room seemed to offer something she needed. There was a laundry room through a side door of the bathroom. She had missed it the first time, but that told her she could have clean clothes for the rest of her life.

  That made her think for the second time about something that had no explanation.

  “Power…where’s the power coming from?”

  Janice found a picture of the entire oil rig among the stacks of paperwork in a desk. Probably left there by someone who had built the oil rig, it gave her reason to hope that the power was no fluke. She saw that one of the structures was labeled as the Power Module, and it undoubtedly supplied the power to the drill, the oil processing tower, and everything else. As long as the power module kept working, she would be okay.

  When she was done exploring, she went back to the common room that had served as a social gathering place and found herself wondering what to do next. She was rested, medically repaired, clean, and well fed. Now she had to think about what that meant to the rest of her life. She could see herself doing all of the same things tomorrow, minus the stitches, but she couldn’t imagine doing them for the rest of her life. Especially since there were no windows.

  The thought of going outside and being confronted by rats was enough to deter her from opening the door for the time being, but she wasn’t sure how long she could go without seeing the outside. Sometimes seeing the sky meant she and David hadn’t been able to find a safe place to spend the night, so sleeping under a roof in a room without windows wasn’t going to be a problem. The daylight was what she would miss.

  The big flatscreen television mounted in one corner where it could be seen from anywhere in the room was a good place to start, but when Janice found the remote and turned it on, she was disappointed to find it was only linked to the library of movies and TV shows. Not that she expected to find any live broadcasts, but she had hoped to at least see snow on the screen where the stations used to be.

  The bonus, besides catching a few movies she had never seen, was the DVR setting. Someone had set the DVR to record news broadcasts at the end of the world. She saw by the menu that the storage drive was full, so someone had recorded everything. She had been there for some of it, but she knew she had to see th
e reports with her own eyes. It had been bad in her little corner of the world, but she imagined it had been ten times as bad in places like New York, Paris, and London.

  She noticed there were smaller tv screens strategically placed around the large room and had assumed they were all linked to the main screen. That way everyone could see what was on without having to face in the same direction. She thought it was like any sports bar she had been to, and then she remembered the screens in sports bars weren’t always on the same station.

  There weren’t remotes laying all around the room, so Janice assumed there was a control panel somewhere. If not, the bartender probably controlled them from his station. When she checked under the bar, she was rewarded for her thinking when she found a stack of labeled remotes in a box. She sat them on top of the bar and started figuring out which one went to which tv.

  She was distracted by the bourbon she had left sitting on the bar and couldn’t help herself.

  “This could become a bad habit, but I think I deserve to indulge myself for a day or two.”

  She poured a glass and enjoyed the warm feeling of the drink as it reached her stomach.

  The drink also cleared her head, and she realized all she had to do was press the power buttons on the remotes to identify which one went where. She pressed the first one and saw a screen light up. She laid the remote on the bar so that it was pointed at the screen. She kept going until they were all on except one that seemed to be situated at a private wall table. Under the bar there weren’t any remotes she missed, so she walked over to inspect the screen more closely and found it wasn’t a tv. It was a computer monitor.

  Janice stuck her head below the table out of habit. That’s where she expected to find the computer’s CPU. There wasn’t anything there that resembled a CPU, but on the way back up she spotted a thin cord that led her to a mouse.

  She went low-tech and ran her fingers along the edge of the monitor until she found a power switch. When she pressed the button, she was surprised when the screen lit up and showed her a grid of small screens. They weren’t big, but they were clear enough for her to see they were security cameras at various locations throughout the oil rig. One of them showed the bright blue, clear sky beyond a flat platform that she guessed was a landing pad for helicopters.