The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (12 page)

I paired up with Tom, and we started our climb well in advance of the time to go out. The plan was simple. We would quietly go out through the tunnel, come up from behind the guard and bag him. The storeroom held a large quantity of supplies, and there were some really strong plastic bags that would be perfect.
 

When we had gotten to the part about how we would kill someone, none of us wanted to treat the living the way we had the infected. They were already dead, and even though it wasn’t an easy thing for us to get used to, we had been able to do it because we were forced to. In this case, the guard would start yelling, and then we would have to kill more than one or two people.
 

That got us around to a variety of suggestions. Cutting their throats was one way to kill them without having them yelling their heads off, but all of us had a problem with that. I guess we were still human after all. Someone suggested hitting them over the head hard enough to knock them out, but no one knew just how hard that had to be. Tom told us that he had seen baseball players hit in the head hard enough to knock them down but not out, and that was with a fastball going over ninety miles per hour.
 

It was our good doctor who came up with the most humane idea, and Bus said he hated the idea that his medical training was what made him think of it.

Bus explained that we only needed to control the guards long enough to give them a lethal injection. He said he had done an inventory of the surgical suite located in the Fort Sumter shelter and had found that they could do almost any surgery they wanted because they had everything they needed for anesthesia. He said he could mix a cocktail of propofol and morphine that would stop someone’s heart in seconds. All we would have to do is keep the person quiet long enough to give him the injection.
 

Since Tom had been a baseball player, my physical strength was no comparison to his, and he was much taller. He was the obvious choice to be the bag-man, and I was the obvious choice to give the shot. He jokingly said he would appreciate it if he didn’t feel a needle going into his arm by accident.

That didn’t produce any laughs, and we decided we had what we needed to do some practice runs first. He brought down Kathy with a pretend bag because we were sure he was strong enough. My goal was to give the shot into the neck, and I used a syringe without a needle for practice.

Tom was right. The first time we did it, he didn’t pull his hand back enough, and I plunged the syringe straight into it. We did it at least a dozen more times, and I got the neck every time. Then we had Bus give it a try. Even though he was a doctor, he got Kathy’s hand on the third try after missing it twice. He got to do it a dozen more times, but the most valuable lesson was that Tom and Kathy had to pull back harder on the side where the needle would go in.

Kathy and Bus had gone to their tunnel at the same time as us. We were all eager to get it over with. At 9:15 Tom gave me the signal, and we shut off the lights in the tunnel then eased the door open. There was a small shower of dirt, but the hinges on the door were silent.

There was enough light outside the door for us to see the guard standing about twenty feet away. His rifle was leaning against a brick wall and he was doing something with his hands that we couldn’t see. After standing watch on this old fort many times, he was totally relaxed and complacent.

As we eased closer to him, light flared on the other side of his head. He had been lighting a cigarette, and ironically this cigarette would kill him faster than if he hadn’t been smoking. He inhaled deeply, and Tom pulled the plastic bag over his head before he could exhale. The guard was so desperately trying to breathe that he didn’t even try hard to struggle. I had the cap off of the syringe and easily hit my target. The man slumped over and his legs went limp.

Tom held the plastic bag in place for about a minute while I watched for signs that anyone else was heading our way. He was just about sure it had been long enough when I noticed our door was really close to one of the cages we had seen on the security camera. It wasn’t more than ten feet beyond our door, and there appeared to be only one person inside it. It looked like the type of cage divers used to be able to safely study sharks.

I whispered, “Tom, can we get that cage open?”

Tom lowered the guard the rest of the way to the ground and pulled the bag off of his head. He felt for a pulse and told me to start timing how long it took for the guard to become an undead version of himself. I checked the time while Tom side stepped over to the cage. The lone figure inside moved away to the farthest corner.

“It’s just tied shut, Ed. I can cut it.”

He started cutting at the rope while I went to the side of the cage. I saw that the woman inside was an African American, and she was scared.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Just come with us, and we’ll get you to someplace safe.”

Tom made short work of the rope and opened the door. The woman didn’t move at first, obviously trying to decide if she was just going from the frying pan into the fire. Tom didn’t approach her. He just held out his hand. That did it for her, and she held out her own hand. Tom took it gently and led her out of the cage.
 

I got to the door ahead of them and held it open for them to go through.

“Be careful on the platform,” I said. “I’ll turn the lights on as soon as I have the door shut.”

Tom helped the woman through the door and then guided her hand to the railing on the platform. I squeezed through with them and closed the door.
 

I turned toward the woman and said, “I’m going to turn on the lights, and you’re going to find you are standing at the top of a tunnel about three stories high. I don’t want you to get scared and scream when you look down.”

I seriously doubted anyone could hear her even if she did scream, but I also didn’t want her to be that surprised by the height of the tunnel. I was glad I warned her because when the lights came on, she recoiled from the side of the platform so hard she almost rammed into the door.
 

“Are you okay?” asked Tom. “Do you think you can climb down a ladder?”
 

It the light I could see just how afraid she was, but she appeared to be unhurt. She was wearing blue jeans, running shoes, and a burgundy sweatshirt from the College of Charleston, but she looked like she had been rolled around in the dirt a few times.
 

She nodded at Tom and then at me and went to the ladder on her own. Tom and I went to the other two ladders and started climbing down quickly. I wanted to see how Kathy and Bus had done with their guard and be at the monitors in time to see how fast the guards would be back on their feet.

When we reached the bottom of the ladders, I told the woman we had rescued that we would explain everything later. We told her our names, and she just stared in numb silence as we reached out to shake her hand. Her reaction must have been how we would have felt if at one moment we were in a cage, and the next moment we had fallen down the rabbit hole into safety.

“Olivia. My name is Olivia Rutledge,” she said.
 

“Pleased to meet you, Olivia,” said Tom. “I know you have a thousand questions, but right now we have something important to do. Just follow us, and when it’s all over we can have a long talk.”

Olivia looked like she was somewhere between thirty-five and forty years old, and she kept herself in good shape. She nodded again like she did at the top of the tunnel, but she looked like she still couldn’t believe what was happening, so she wasn’t ready to talk. It occurred to me that there was something I could say that might shake her loose from her catatonic state.

In a soft voice I asked her if she used to believe in zombies. She thought about it for a moment and then shook her head from side to side. Then I asked her if she does now. This time she nodded her head.

I said, “Then you shouldn’t have a hard time believing that we’re real or that you’re safe now. This is all real, and those men can’t get to you anymore.”

“Let’s go,” said Tom. “It could be starting already.”

By the time Tom and I got to the control room, Kathy and Bus were already there. Our new friend came in with us, and she was still looking like it was too much for it to all sink in, but I saw her smile a couple of times as we crossed some of the more impressive rooms. She stopped for a moment as we passed the dining room, and I told myself not to make her wait too long before we fed her.
 

Kathy and Bus didn’t look totally surprised when they saw Olivia, and they said a quick hello when I introduced them.

Olivia said, “Hi,” in a barely audible voice, and made a little halfhearted wave with one hand.
 

Kathy smiled at her and said, “It’s okay, Olivia. You’re with friends now. Give us a few minutes and we’ll take you to the kitchen for something to eat.”

It was already more than Olivia could absorb, and she very slowly started to shake and cry. She looked like she needed someone to hold her, and Kathy was quick to get to her side. She helped Olivia into a chair and explained to her that we were really the good guys, and that she was going to be okay. Then she told her we had to take care of some business and asked if she would be all right by herself. Olivia nodded, so Kathy gave her a hug and then came back to the monitors.

“How did things go with you guys?” I asked.

“We didn’t rescue anyone,” said Bus, “but taking out the guard was a breeze. The guy got comfortable for a nap as soon as the last guard was out of sight.”

“We were paired off right,” I said. “Our guard was bigger and stronger, but Tom’s timing was perfect. He caught him right in the middle of lighting up a cigarette.”

“It’s starting,” said Kathy. “Look at the guard you guys took out.”

In the monitor we could see the guard slumped over against a wall, but his legs were starting to twitch. It was faint at first, but then it became more pronounced. It was like his feet knew where they were supposed to go, but they weren’t sure how to get there.

Olivia slowly came over to the monitors as if she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to. Kathy put one arm around her and brought her into our little fold so she could see the same things we were seeing.

Kathy said, “This isn’t going to be pretty, folks.”

On another monitor the guard that was taken out by Kathy and Bus rolled over onto his stomach and then pushed himself to his knees. He did it so naturally that at first he looked like he was just shaking off the effects of being drugged, but then he face planted right where he was.
 

Almost as if nothing had happened, he pushed himself up for a second time, and he didn’t stop until he was standing upright. Then we could tell he was really dead, and he was starting to be attracted to the other noises in the camp.

Our guard was also making an effort to get his feet under him. He fell over backwards and was lost from our camera view for a minute. When he showed up again, he was shuffling off in the direction of a group of men who were arguing about something. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but two of them were pushing each other and pointing fingers.

We watched the dead guard shuffle up to them unnoticed until it was too late. He came up behind one of the men and firmly gripped his teeth into the muscle between the neck and shoulder. The bitten man screamed. Even though we couldn’t hear it, we could imagine the gut wrenching pain as the infected dead tore away a mouthful of flesh.

The fighting men froze in mid-finger pointing to look at the man who was screaming and then went right back to arguing.

“What could be so important that those guys don’t know what’s going on?” asked Bus.

Kathy said, “I don’t know how many times I saw that kind of thing in the short time I was a cop. People get so mad they become oblivious to what’s happening around them.”

The bitten man went down face first into the dirt, It was either the bleeding or the shock, but the bite had been deep enough to kill him. He was getting back up on his feet even before the first infected dead had a chance to close the gap between it and the arguing men. That was our first time witnessing some people died and got back up faster than others. It was much quicker than the ones we had drugged to death.

Over on the other side of the fort, the previously sleepy guard had found a tent where some of the men had turned in early. The infected dead clumsily pushed through the flap of the tent and disappeared.

Seconds later the walls of the tent started getting pushed outward in a random pattern, going from one side to the other as people were trying to keep from being bitten. A man fell out of the front of the tent and then jumped to his feet and ran. He was holding a badly bloodied hand against his body.
 

We watched in fascinated horror at the process we had started. We had all seen this scenario play out when the infection first appeared, but this was like watching it in a lab, like it was some controlled domino effect. One by one people went down, and one by one people got back up as infected dead and then went in search of new victims.

Tom said, “Check out the view by the boats.”

We all looked and saw there were boats pushing away from the docks, and some of the men being left behind were mad enough to shoot at the people in the boats. Needless to say, the people in the boats were shooting back, and since no one was trying to take cover, everyone was getting shot. It wasn’t long before the boats and the dock were a horde of infected dead. Newcomers to the dock who were trying to get to a boat were being attacked and bitten as soon as they arrived.