The Infected Dead (Book 6): Buried For Now

by Howard, Bob

  ******

  Year Six of the Decline

  Now

  Janice saw the twin engine boat coming straight for the oil rig long before it arrived. She had learned the control systems well, and she would decide when the time came if she needed to rid herself of the problem, or if it was going to be a problem at all. One of her options was the switch that sent electricity through the catwalks.

  This was likely to be the only oil rig that had a container ship parked next to it, but there were plenty of oil rigs that were being resupplied when the infection began. People escaping to the Gulf would be attracted to the ones that had the most food and water.

  Over the last few years she had seen several small boats racing into the Gulf. Some circled a few times but eventually gave up because they couldn’t find a way to board the ship or oil rig. She thought of them as being unprepared, but then again she and David didn’t have some grand plan in mind when they started circling. Because there was so much interest in the ship, Janice had gone outside just once. She realigned cameras to cover more of the deck and the containers, and the remaining cameras were aimed at strategic points on the oil rig.

  There was one group of survivors that climbed the port side of the container ship where she couldn’t see with a camera. They were a wild bunch, judging by the way they acted. It didn’t matter to her how they climbed on board, but apparently they thought the real prize was the ship. They never got around to crossing the container bridge onto the oil rig. Instead, they tore open containers and threw the contents out onto the deck as if there might be something hiding behind the worthless stuff. Some of it was thrown overboard, not that she cared, but she thought it was senseless behavior.

  It did bear a resemblance to bad reality TV, though. Six fools living together only because they had to. She found it entertaining and was waiting for one of them to do something really stupid like fall from the containers or throw something without warning and having it land on someone in their group.

  It finally happened when one of them slid a shiny casket from a container into the sunlight and let it drop to the deck. It wasn’t a direct hit, but pieces broke off and flew into the faces of two men below. The next time he appeared at the entrance, they shot the man. After he hit the deck, they picked him up and put him into the broken coffin.

  “Well, I guess I don’t need that container.”

  Janice waited patiently for the real fun to start when the lid would open, but they decided to move on before then. They went into the superstructure door that she had gone through years ago. From her angle it was still ink black inside. Nothing came out when they opened the door, but she didn’t expect there was still an infected hanging around in the stairwell. Whether anything had been there or not, she never saw the reality tv stars come out again.

  She wasn’t surprised when she saw another boat getting closer to the container ship.

  Maybe the new arrival would find out what was going on inside. As she was reminiscing about other visitors, the boat disappeared around the bow of the ship. When it didn’t reappear at the stern, she guessed the occupants of the boat had a way to climb the ship. She saw that she had guessed right when a head came over the far side of the boat. She expected another, but this one was a loner. He walked over to the coffin that still sat in the spot where it had landed a year or so ago. He knocked on the coffin lid with his knuckles and then leaned back and laughed.

  “This might be one to avoid. Better yet, he might be one to electrocute.”

  Janice doubted she would ever use the electric shock system unless she had a good reason, but she also couldn’t define what a good reason would be. Maybe it would be obvious when the time came, but something about this guy screamed dangerous. It could have been because he thought a coffin with an infected inside was funny.

  The man was leaning backward to see the bridge from the ship to the oil rig. He was taking in everything before deciding where to start, and his options were wide open if he could go back and forth from the ship to the oil rig. As far as she knew, he couldn’t get inside, so she didn’t really care what he did, but she didn’t think she would ever be comfortable with him around.

  He walked from the coffin to the open containers and grabbed the rope that still hung from top to bottom. He was strong and made it look easy as he climbed all the way up. She thought he was going to cross over to the oil rig, but something made him stop and turn his head toward the sky. He held a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun and stared intently in the same direction for several minutes. Even on a camera monitor she could tell his body had become rigid, and his free hand had balled into a fist.

  “This guy isn’t just escaping from the mainland. He’s escaping from somebody else.”

  There were cameras located on the other side of the oil rig facing toward the middle of the Gulf and toward the mainland. She checked the one toward the mainland but couldn’t see what the man had been watching. Her eyes played back and forth across the surface of the water, but there was no telltale white wake from a boat. She glanced at the view that showed the man again, and didn’t understand why she wasn’t seeing anything, because he certainly was.

  Something reflected light, but it wasn’t where she had expected. It was above the water, and it was coming down from a higher altitude at a steep angle. As it got closer she could see it was a bright yellow plane with floats on it. She turned back toward the man and saw that he had changed directions. He was on his way back down the rope, and he was being quick about it.

  The plane made a sweeping turn and passed the port side of the ship level with the deck. The man pulled a handgun from his belt and went into a shooter stance, but she didn’t see the plane waver from its course. It disappeared quickly, and the man ran for the open door of the superstructure.

  Janice had been listening to a lot of music lately, especially while she was working in the hydroponics garden or baking bread. Maybe because it was fresh in her mind, or maybe because it fit the occasion, but she started singing, “Welcome to the Hotel California.”

  The plane came back into view on the opposite side of the oil rig. She saw it was circling back and getting lower to the water. It appeared obvious that it was going to land on the other side of the ship where the strange man had left his boat, but it surprised her when it reappeared at the bow and circled toward the Wellbay Tower.

  Running on the surface with a black cable stretched behind it, the plane stayed clear of the massive support pole, but whoever was in the plane wanted to be where the man couldn’t see them. She got another surprise when she saw that the cable was pulling the man’s boat behind the plane. They didn’t plan to let him leave the ship on his own.

  Janice wondered which drama she was watching.

  “Is this a bad guy escaping justice, or is it the other way around? Should I stay out of it, or should I get involved?”

  She knew what she would do if there was a hostage involved, but for the time being she couldn’t assume the man in the boat was the bad guy just because he had a poor sense of humor.

  The coffin was still where it had been for a long time, but it had gotten the attention of the man as soon as he climbed onto the deck.

  “Aha,” she said out loud. “Let’s see what the new guys do when they see it.”

  Someone threw an anchor out of the seaplane, and she had expected that the water would be too deep for an anchor, but she saw an African American woman step out onto the float and draw the anchor line tight. When she gave it another moment of thought, she leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

  She had always wondered about the chute she had used to reach the shelter, and the best she could figure was that it crossed from the landing platform over to the Wellbay tower and then down to the shelter.

  “Did you guys just anchor to the top of my home?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Decline

  Year Six of the Decline

  Now

  A hu
ge man climbed out of the pilot seat and stood on the float. Janice didn’t have great magnification, but it was clear enough to see he was giving instructions to someone else inside the plane, so that meant at least three people. The plane was turning against a current that passes under the oil rig, so she could see if from the front. They were pulling the boat toward them.

  The woman held the boat steady while two men climbed from the plane onto the float, then she joined them. They started the engines and drove around to the other side of the plane, and the big guy jumped into the boat.

  Over the last couple of years, Janice had not only cleaned the shelter and made it livable, she had learned everything she could about how to operate it. There were still some things that she couldn’t figure out, but she was pleased with her progress. Making her own bread from crops she grew herself had given her a confidence she had never felt before. David would be proud of her, but more importantly, she was proud of herself.

  Somewhere along the line she had remembered the day they had arrived. The handholds on the tower had appeared out of nowhere. Either they did something out on the water, or someone had made the decision to help them. That decision had saved her life.

  The people in the plane didn’t seem like they were in a life and death situation, but the strange man in the ship had shot at them as they flew by. If they intended to go in after him, it was not a stretch to think he would be waiting to ambush them.

  She watched as they used something that resembled a rifle to shoot something the size of a baseball over the railing of the ship. A line trailed behind it, and the woman expertly tugged the line at just the right moment to make the weight on the end loop over the railing and wrap itself tight.

  The smallest man went up first with another, heavier rope trailing behind him. When he got to the top, he tied it off, and the others began to climb. She was so impressed by the way they went about their jobs that she wasn’t keeping an eye on the door to the superstructure.

  The strange man had moved quickly from the door and for a second time he climbed to the top of the containers. By the time the people from the plane had climbed onto the ship, he was crossing the container bridge onto the oil rig. Only seconds later he was on a catwalk level with the deck of the ship and very close to where the new arrivals would be soon.

  The four people moved in single file from the bow toward the superstructure without a clue that they were about to pass within a few yards of the man. He was in a shooter stance again hidden behind a large support beam, and before Janice could react, he fired.

  She saw the woman go down, and the three men were totally exposed. He fired a second shot, and she saw the next man in line spin into the side of a container from the force of the bullet’s impact. Her hand was on the switch before she could complete the thought, but she had already decided she was right.

  The electric current that hit Stokes was enough to kill him, but he didn’t make the same mistake most people had. He didn’t grab the railing in front of him. He jumped, kicked off the railing, and did a back flip from the catwalk. He hit the water feet first, but the last thing he expected was to land on something solid only a few feet under the surface.

  The big guy had been last to climb onto the ship, so he was the last one in line. Janice couldn’t believe how gracefully he dove over the railing to the water below. She only hoped he didn’t hit the top of the shelter.

  He must have felt like he had jumped through a manhole cover. He had entered the water straight down almost as if he suspected something was under the oil rig. He passed between the hull of the ship and the outer wall of the shelter. When he came up to the surface, the first man was floating not far away, and he was screaming for help. He still didn’t realize he was in shallow water.

  Janice expected the big man to drown the guy who had ambushed his friends, but he half carried, half dragged the injured man back toward the plane. Janice knew he needed to get him out of the water so he could get back to his injured friends, and she made the decision someone else had a long time ago. She hit the switch that extended the hidden handholds.

  ******

  The Chief saw and heard the handholds come out of the side of the tower, and he threw Stokes over his shoulder to make the climb. Stokes tried to wrestle himself free, but the Chief ended that with a quick punch to the side of his head.

  Over on the ship, Tom had a bullet in his left shoulder that was bleeding bad, but he was able to apply pressure on the wound and still make his way to where Cassandra was sprawled on the deck. I was climbing over him to get to her, too. The bullet had hit her in the neck. I had to push Tom away to get pressure on the wound and slow the bleeding. There was so much blood that I was afraid she wouldn’t make it, and I couldn’t tell if it was the carotid artery.

  The Chief reached the catwalk that was level with us and dumped Stokes unceremoniously on the metal plates. When he turned to us, all I could do was shake my head at him.

  “It’s bad. She won’t make it back for Bus to help her.”

  The woman seemed to come out of nowhere. She was standing on a catwalk a few feet away from the Chief, and she was scared to death that she was making the wrong decision.

  “I can help her, but not over there. I need for you to go get her and then follow me.”

  The Chief didn’t have a choice. Part of him wanted to just go ahead and kill Stokes, but he didn’t have a second to spare. The woman pointed at the place where the catwalk held the container steady, and he raced for the ladder that would get him there the fastest. The woman followed as best she could.

  “I’ll show you a way back that will get us to the hospital faster.”

  The Chief knew he had heard her right, but he would figure it all out after he reached Cassandra. Despite his size he outdistanced the woman quickly. When he reached us, I had tied a shirt across the wound, but it would be hard for him to climb and keep pressure on it. I did my best to tie it in place without choking her, and after he took her from me, I turned to Tom.

  He was in a lot of pain, and I didn’t know if I should try to get him to the plane or over to the oil rig. He showed me just how tough he was when he reached for the rope and climbed up the same way as the Chief. I grabbed a line and went up with more difficulty than him, but I could hear him yelling something about breaking Stokes’ neck.

  When we crossed the container bridge there was a woman leading the Chief to a higher level where a hatch stood open. I wouldn’t learn until later that she had used a remote switch to unlock it before exposing herself to the Chief.

  The Chief handed Cassandra down through the hatch, and when I arrived I saw the Chief help to lift them both into a chute on the wall.

  “I’ll see you there,” she said.

  As soon as they disappeared, the Chief helped Tom into the chute and then followed close behind him. As I went downward, I could only think about all of the blood in the tube.

  It was a familiar sight to us when we reached the bottom. The woman had left the shelter door open so we wouldn’t be locked out, but then again, she didn’t know that we could have opened it.

  The Chief picked up the unconscious body of Cassandra and carried her inside right on the heels of the woman. When we got to the medical bay, she told the Chief to let her take over. Janice didn’t know if she could save her, but she knew how to close a wound.

  We had also gotten some experience over the years, and we knew Cassandra would need blood, so the Chief was already rolling up his sleeve to get ready for the transfusion. Tom brushed us off and said he could take care of himself for the time being.

  The woman worked fast, and she lifted her head once and told us her name was Janice. That was all she had time for. After what seemed like hours, she stepped back from Cassandra and went over to unhook the line from the Chief’s arm.

  “The bleeding has stopped, and I’m going to put some morphine in her IV. That’s all we can do for now. The bullet missed the artery and the spinal cord, so with one more mi
racle she could make it. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”

  To us her apology was the most ridiculous thing we had ever heard. We could tell from the lack of blood coming through the clean bandage that Cassandra had a very good chance of making it. Bus was going to want to meet this woman.

  She saw that Tom was about three seconds from passing out, so she got the Chief off the other bed and Tom onto it. I think he passed out as soon as his head was down.

  “Where’s Stokes?” asked the Chief.

  “There wasn’t time to worry about him,” I said.

  “Janice, how can I get back to that catwalk fast?”

  She told him where to go, and the Chief took off.

  “Ed, stay here and help Janice with Tom. That bullet is still in his shoulder, and she’s going to need help getting it out.”

  I didn’t want to stay behind, but I also thought the Chief might prefer to do this alone.

  ******

  The Chief arrived to find the catwalk empty, but the trail of blood went to the ladder that would get him closest to the container bridge. He wanted Stokes so bad that he didn’t feel an ounce of the exhaustion that would come later.

  He crossed over to the ship and had to figure out which blood trail was Stokes’, and it led back to the black door in the superstructure. It was a big ship, but if he had to guess, Stokes had never been on one like it, but the Chief felt right at home.