The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (27 page)

He responded by showing his palms to her and then facing them toward the ground. It was a signal they had used many times to say, “Wait.”

When the infected reached the edge of the dock the crowd had swollen to about thirty. There were more passing the Tradd Street sign, and there was no end in sight. More and more came around the corner.

Down on the deck Sam and Perry both looked up at the Chief wanting him to get them out of there, but Kathy told them not to worry. The Chief had his reasons, and the gap between the dock and ship was over six feet wide and getting wider. That was more than enough. They tried not to worry, but this was by far the biggest crowd of the infected they had seen in a long time.

“Aren’t you going to shoot them?” asked Sam.

“No reason to waste the ammunition,” said Kathy.

As the crowd grew bigger, it eventually filled the paved and concrete sections of the dock, and from the birds eye view of the wheelhouse, it didn’t look like there was room for more.

From the deck level view of Kathy and the boys, it looked like they were watching a slow parade coming straight toward them. Whitney had coasted to a spot just forward of the bow, and to her it looked like a solid wall of injured people in various stages of decay.
 

Kathy knew what the Chief was waiting for and told the boys again not to worry. They understood why when the wall of infected began marching over the edge, and once it began, it seemed like it would never end.

She jumped just a little, but then she started laughing when the Chief’s voice came through a large speaker above the wheelhouse.

“That’s it, you ugly, groaning jerks. Walk right out here and go for a swim.”

The loudspeaker agitated the infected, and the groaning did increase for a few minutes, but as more and more fell over the edge of the dock into the water, the noise began to subside.
 

Perry looked up at the Chief and held a thumb up in the air. He understood that the Chief had a golden opportunity to reduce the infected dead population, and there was no reason not to take advantage of that opportunity.
 

The Chief returned the gesture and then tried the ignition. The well tended engine turned over and the vibration rumbled through the ship, but the Chief didn’t pull away from the dock. He figured as long as the dead kept coming, it was worth it to see them go where they wouldn’t be any harm to living people.
 

 
Kathy got his attention and pointed at the starboard side. The Chief walked across the deceptively large wheelhouse and looked down at the water. There were infected dead popping to the surface on the other side of the Cormorant, but they weren’t staying afloat. After sliding over the surface for a few feet, they went back under for a second time. The Chief looked aft and saw bodies doing the same thing behind the ship, but instead of just popping to the surface, some were virtually launched into the air. Most were coming up in pieces. With more than a little amusement, he realized the twin screws were swirling the infected around under the ship and ejecting them.

Whitney saw the water was getting crowded and proved she had good sense by moving their boat to a safer distance. She also moved forward since most of the bodies were going aft.

They watched for close to thirty minutes as hundreds of infected dead walked over the side and fell into the water. Perry and Sam were worried that they could climb aboard at first, but they accepted Kathy’s explanation that they wouldn’t climb a ladder if you threw it to them. She also told them the bad news, and that was the infected dead were still dangerous in the water. She explained that they would sink, the current would carry them away, fish and crabs would eat them, but they could still bite you if you fell into the water with them.

“The crabs?” asked Sam in a higher than normal voice. “I love to go crabbing with my friends.”

“Well,” said Kathy, “I wouldn’t recommend eating blue crabs anymore.”

Sam looked a little sick, and that reminded Kathy of Jean. If there was ever anyone who got sick when she thought about the blue crabs eating the infected dead, it was Jean, and she was that way before she got pregnant. After getting pregnant, you could get her to turn pale just by mentioning blue crabs.

As the parking lot and ship loading areas emptied of the horde of infected that had swarmed into the base, the Chief continued to coax them forward over the loudspeaker. In the meantime, Kathy inspected the fifty caliber machine guns mounted on the bow. She was surprised to find there was no protection for the person firing the guns until she discovered they were remote controlled. That meant they weren’t aimed manually and were deadly accurate. She was also pleased that a third gun was mounted ahead of the other two on the bow. It was under a tarp, and had ammunition being fed to it from below.

Kathy found an interior communications microphone on a forward mount and keyed the switch.

“Chief, the hatches forward of the wheelhouse aren’t for passing ammunition to the machine gun operators. The fifty calibers are remote controlled.”

The Chief keyed the microphone to the loudspeaker and said, “Surprise.”

Kathy inspected all three weapons and thought about the Coasties and the parents who had gone topside to protect their children. They had told the kids they were going to fight to save them, and they should stay below. Maybe they had used the fifty caliber machine guns from the wheelhouse, but it was looking more and more like they had taken the fight to the infected dead out on the decks of the Cormorant. What they didn’t know, and what they could not have known was the extent of the crisis. They hadn’t known it was a worldwide apocalypse,
 

If they had known there was no way to win the fight, they could have sailed the Cormorant to safety. Then again, they would also have carried as many wounded as possible with them, so it was fortunate for the three survivors after all. If they had sailed out of Charleston harbor seeking the safety of the open sea, they would have been no different from the cruise liner that Kathy had escaped on. They would all have died from within.

The gap between the Cormorant and the docks had grown to yards instead of feet, and the last of the infected were falling into the water. There were a few stragglers, but they were still walking toward the sound of the ship as it was drifting away. The Chief called out on the loudspeaker to Whitney that he was coming to starboard, and she increased her distance ahead of the bow. Eighty-seven feet wasn’t a big ship, but it could do twenty-five knots and had some lethal firepower on its deck. The Chief found himself looking forward to running into the Cuban gunboats that had shot him down.

Kathy came through the door of the wheelhouse and was impressed by the spacious bridge and sophisticated electronics.

“Do you know how to operate all of this stuff?” she asked the Chief.

“Most of it is pretty basic. I’ll show you where the remote controls are for the guns in a minute. As I recall from a ship this size out in Alaska, they could single target or they could all be aimed at one target. If you’ve ever played a video game, it’s pretty much the same thing.”

“Eddie should really enjoy that part,” said Kathy.

“That’s what I was thinking a minute ago,”said the Chief. “Eddie’s going to get to play his video games after all.”

After they shared a laugh, Kathy asked the Chief why the Cormorant had three of the remote controlled fifty-caliber machine guns. She said she had seen plenty of the Coast Guard ships when she was a police officer in Charleston, and that they usually only had two guns.
 

The Chief, being a wealth of information when it came to ships told her the Cormorant must have been assigned to patrol near one of the Navy submarine bases at some point, maybe Kings Bay, Georgia. He explained that they typically were equipped with three guns to make them just a bit more deadly, and he wasn’t going to complain.

As the Cormorant turned to starboard and pulled away from the dock, Whitney powered up their boat and moved to the port side. She matched their speed and waved at her two friends who were still out on the bow. Kathy and the Chief could see all three kids were happy to be free of what had been little more than a prison for almost a year.

After everything the Chief and Kathy had seen so far, the sight of Whitney cruising between the Cormorant and the homes along Charleston’s historic section was beautiful and somewhat surreal. The Chief almost let the beauty of the city make him forget just how dangerous it could be, and he used the loudspeaker to get Whitney’s attention.

“Cruise to my starboard side, Whitney.”

Over the drone of her engines Whitney heard the rather curt message and guessed the meaning immediately. She increased her speed and passed the Cormorant, taking up a position on the starboard side where she was protected by the larger ship.

Kathy said, “Did you know this type ship is known as the Marine Protector Class, Chief?”

“Pretty appropriate for what we have in mind. I’m looking forward to seeing those guys who shot me down. I think the reason I’m still so mad about it is because they didn’t have to shoot me down. They just did it because they could. I don’t have to sink them now. I just want to.”

After the Chief and Kathy had gotten far enough away, and the lights had been turned off over the fort, the rest of the group began to feel the stress of the day taking its toll. There wasn’t anything we could do about the gunboats, and there wasn’t anything we needed to do yet. We would have to decide after the Chief and Kathy returned.

Chase took Olivia’s hand and led her out of the control room leaving me, Tom, and Bus. Of the three of us, Bus appeared to be to most down.

“Are you okay, Bus?” I asked.

I didn’t have to spell it out for him. There had been enough distraction for all of us to avoid thinking about Allison, but now that the day was over, and there wasn’t anything left to do about the threats outside, there was only time to think.

“I’ll manage,” he said. “I was just thinking about Molly.”

It was easy to see the effect that had on Tom. He was holding his head up as best as he could, but telling Molly was going to be hard.
 

“I think it’s time to get drunk,” said Tom.
 

Tom put his arm over his old friend’s shoulders and walked him out of the control room. I was left to watch over the dead world outside, but I couldn’t forget about the fleet of small gunboats that were floating not far from the jetties. I could see their shapes in the wide angle view from the satellite, but for some reason I couldn’t get the satellite to rotate for the view that would allow me to see far enough up the coast. It had been nice to see Mud Island, but maybe the satellite could only do so much before it ran out of fuel.
 

I knew enough about satellites to know this one was geosynchronous, meaning that it stayed in one spot, orbiting at a speed that matched the Earth’s rotation. Changing its view the way the Chief had done would require fuel for small rockets, and maybe it had already been low on fuel when the Chief had turned it.

Whatever was wrong, it was nothing but a small disappointment, and I had been learning how to deal with disappointments in the last year. At least the Chief had come back from the dead…not as an infected but as the living, breathing leader of our group. I smiled despite the loss of the satellite angle.

My eyes drifted over the monitors, and I saw there was nothing moving in the fort above us, and the gunboats had apparently dropped anchors. The tide was coming in, and the two that were trapped in shallow water were beginning to make some progress pulling themselves free of the muddy bottom.
 

I must have dozed off because the next time I looked at the screen, the two boats were almost gone from sight. They had undoubtedly gone out to deeper water than the rest of the boats, not wanting to be embarrassed by getting stuck in the mud for a second time.

The sun was coming up behind the fleet of intruders, so the lights weren’t going to be a deterrent until it got dark again. I zoomed in with the satellite camera, and I could see people in several of the boats had binoculars aimed toward Fort Sumter. They had to be trying to decide how to approach the fort, and they had no way to gather more intelligence. They could see bodies on the rocks, so they could tell there had been a recent battle. What they couldn’t tell was whether or not the battle was over. Fort Sumter looked quiet, but there could easily be a trap.

Putting myself in their shoes, I figured their best bet was to pass on this target, but they must have been hoping to find something of value, or maybe they just didn’t like losing two of their boats because someone had turned on the lights. I also considered which boat was the leader of the others, guessing that the others would be less organized if they lost their commander.

I watched for a sign and saw similar behavior from the crews on all of the boats until I saw the man with the binoculars in the closest boat signal with hand gestures for the second boat to come closer. When it pulled alongside the lead boat, the man pointed in the general direction of the harbor, but I was certain he was telling them to circle around to the other side of the fort.

The boat immediately increased its power and sped across the harbor until it came to a stop near Castle Pinckney. It was a relatively small island, and the remains of the fort were nothing more than a single wall and some sand, but it afforded cover for the boat from a possible attack from the rear.