The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (29 page)

During the massacre, the two boats that remained by Castle Pinckney had problems of their own. They had watched as the other four boats were gradually doomed by the floating horde of infected. When they finally decided to attempt a rescue, they found their propellors were so fouled by bodies that had drifted down their side of the river that they wouldn’t turn. They were busily pushing at the bodies with anything they could find when one of the crewmen screamed in pain. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew what had happened by watching his shipmates. They rushed to him as he pulled back a badly bitten arm.
 

They had entered the harbor at night with twelve boats and lost two in the first minutes. Now they had lost four more and had an injured crewman on one more. They had six boats, but two were still trying to get themselves free as they tended to the wounded man. The commanding officer had watched with growing anger and a fair amount of confusion. They had mocked the dead when they were examining a camera on a small island to the north, but now they were being beaten by the infected in the water.

He ordered his remaining four boats to move in at high speed to try to at least free the two boats by Castle Pinckney. If he had known the officers on those boats were too cowardly to assist the other boats sooner, he would have had them shot. Now he was having to rescue them.
 

I wished for about the tenth time that the others were awake to be watching this, but at least it was being recorded. I had no sooner made the wish when they all arrived, laughing and joking after a long night of safe sleep. Olivia and Chance had dropped all pretense of simple friendship. They had their arms interlocked and leaned into each other as they walked.

I was frantically waving at them to hurry up, and the laughing stopped as they ran over to my console to see what was happening. Tom and Bus got to me first with Olivia and Chance close on their heels.

The shock on their faces was obvious. Swarms of infected dead were out on the marshy mudflats to the left of the Fort Sumter dock. Four boats full of infected dead were only a short distance from the dock, and there was a man standing on the bow of one boat swinging a pistol like a hammer. The main view was a monitor that showed four boats racing at high speed toward Castle Pinckney where two other boats seemed to be just sitting in the shadow of the old fortress wall. Even as we watched, a group of the infected dead appeared at the top of the wall and began falling onto the boats below.

“Where are they all coming from?” asked Tom. The note of disbelief in his voice could not have been disguised.
 

“Beats me,” I said, “but they seem to be coming from upriver somewhere. There’s been a steady flow of them. I got it all on film, but trust me, I’ll never try to get away from them by driving a boat into the marsh.”

Chance said, “Hey, everyone, check this out.”

He pointed at a screen I hadn’t been watching, and when we turned to it, we got the surprise of our lives. A Coast Guard ship was charging toward the four boats at high speed, and it looked like it was all business with three fifty caliber machine guns mounted on the bow. Even before it seemed to be in range of the four speeding Cuban gunboats, the machine guns opened fire.

Remote controlled guns had the advantage of not placing men in harm’s way, but their biggest advantage was accuracy. They could compensate in a split second for waves or swells, and they began targeting sooner because the computer told the gunners when to open fire.
 

The fifty caliber rounds ripped through the gunboats as if someone had reached out and torn them in half down the middle. The lead boat that carried the commanding officer disintegrated first, and the others were shredded as they tried to turn away and run.
 

The crewmen of the remaining two gunboats thought better than to open fire on the bigger ship as it began a sweeping turn toward them. They had managed to toss the infected overboard and still had only one wounded crewman, and they wanted to keep it that way. They all climbed quickly onto the bows of their boats and got down on their knees with their hands behind their heads.
 

As the Coast Guard ship came across their bows, they watched the fifty caliber guns rotate together as one. We were sure they were going to be cut apart they way the other four boats were, but the ship cruised past as if it was slicing through the water and began another sweeping turn back toward Fort Sumter.

“That has to be the Chief,” I said.
 

“And Kathy,” added Tom. I noticed he had a trace of a smile on his lips.

“There’s another boat coming from upriver,” said Bus. “Looks like the boat the Chief and Kathy left with, but I can’t tell who’s driving it.”

The Coast Guard ship completed its turn and came up broadside to the dock at the deepest spot. The name on the side of the wheelhouse said it was the Cormorant. We watched through our cameras as Kathy and the Chief emerged from the wheelhouse along with two teenaged boys. The other boat was being driven by a teenaged girl, and she disappeared somewhere on the other side of the larger ship. We saw Kathy help her climb aboard over the port side railing.
 

“Smart,” said Bus. “They’re keeping the boat out away from the dock in deeper water.”

It wasn’t that we thought it could be anybody but the Chief and Kathy coming back with guns blazing, but this time we were all amazed. The Chief was always coming up with a way to beat the odds. He just didn’t believe in losing. No wonder he was so hard on himself when he came back without Allison.

They knew someone would be watching through the cameras, so Kathy and the Chief got the two boys and the girl to line up with them on the deck of the Cormorant facing the fort. On a signal we couldn’t hear, all five of them held hands and then did a deep bow for us. We started laughing and applauding at the monitors as if they could hear us.
 

I turned in time to see Tom disappearing through the door of the control room. At first I thought he was just doing what I would have done if it was Jean down there on the deck of that ship, but then the urge hit me too. That was a real Coast Guard ship down there, and it had the potential to have me back with Jean much sooner than I expected. I jumped out of my chair and caught up with Tom before he reached the tunnel to the surface.

We each hit the ladders at full speed, and if not for the fact that I almost beat him to the top, I wouldn’t have even paid attention to the fact that I was more physically fit than I had been in years.
 

Tom opened the door and was running as fast as he could. The sunshine felt good, but the place really reeked because of all the killing in the last couple of days. Since I had to stop to close the door, Tom put some distance between us. We were like two kids trying to win some sort of prize. At least we were until Tom stepped on something that made his feet fly out from under him.

He had gone through the tunnel and was making the turn on the dock when it happened, and it looked like he was airborne forever. He sailed out over the mud and landed not far from the first gunboat that had been stranded near the dock.
 

No one could have been more surprised than Tom, but all of us felt equally helpless. Tom was closer to the boat than to the dock, and all we could do was yell at him to climb. We were all so focused on Tom and the infected dead that were trying to reach him that we hardly noticed the obvious. One of the hands that was reaching for him was the crewman on the boat who had been fighting the infected with an empty gun. Tom reached up and grasped the man’s hand in his, and made it to the bow of the boat just ahead of the snapping jaws of an infected dead.
 

The bow of the gunboat was separated from the main section by a windshield that had managed to stay intact despite the infected that kept trying to climb over it. The man that had pulled Tom up with him was leaning over the windshield and cracking heads as fast as he could, but Tom didn’t have a weapon. All he could do was watch.
 

The sound of the bullhorn on the side of the Cormorant was much louder than the Chief had expected, but the results were what he had hoped for. The infected dead in the back of the gunboat turned toward the sound and also made themselves easier targets for Kathy. The Chief yelled into his microphone for Tom to get down on the deck and to take the other guy with him.
 

At first the Cuban sailor misunderstood what Tom was trying to do, and he resisted, but when Kathy began firing the fifty caliber machine guns in their direction, he didn’t need more explanation. Kathy kept the shots as high as she could and shredded the infected that she could target. There were still a few left standing, but the Chief was already in a position on the dock where he could shoot effectively.
 

When it was all over, Tom helped the rather uncertain sailor to his feet. Even though he had rescued Tom, he wasn’t sure how they would treat him. What he didn’t know was that the Chief already admired him for putting up such a good fight. He still had a grudge against the Cubans, but this one sailor might not have had anything to do with shooting him down.
 

Getting them from the bow of the gunboat to the dock was a bit tricky because there was still a dark shadow under the Cormorant that was growing. More infected dead emerged from the water and crawled over the bodies that accumulated there. Kathy and the Chief took turns shooting them as the infected crawled closer and closer, but they were never in danger of losing control of the horde. It occurred to the Chief that the number of infected was much larger than normal, but then he started to laugh. Kathy looked at him like he had lost his mind.

“Care to let me in on the joke, Chief?”

As he sighted in on another infected he said, “I just figured out where all of the infected dead went after we walked them off of the dock back at the Coast Guard base.”

“You have to be kidding me,” said Kathy. “We did this?”

“I guess so. We must have emptied out the city. If there are any survivors left in Charleston, they’re going to have a quieter night than usual.”

I threw ropes over to both men so they could be pulled loose if they got stuck, then I lowered a rope ladder from the dock. Tom came up first, and the Cuban sailor followed. When they reached the dock, Kathy was there to hug Tom. The Cuban stood off to one side and wasn’t sure what he should do next.

When the Chief walked up and looked down at the man, I thought he was going to jump back over the side. The Chief had a stern look on his face, probably remembering what it felt like when his plane was crippled by one of the gunboats, but he held out his right hand to the frightened man. The Cuban looked at the size of the hand compared to his own then tentatively shook the Chief’s hand.
 

The Chief said thank you to the Cuban in Hispanic then said something I totally didn’t understand. The man answered and gestured toward the harbor. The Chief explained to us that the Cuban said his commander had bragged about shooting down a seaplane. The Chief asked him a series of new questions and then told us we had one last chore to take care of. He said we were going to do the right thing and take the Cuban sailor back to his remaining friends who were still stranded at Castle Pinckney.
 

Tom and Kathy walked back down the dock still holding hands, and that’s when I remembered the kids. The three of them were still standing on the deck of the ship looking like they didn’t know what to do.

Kathy introduced them to Tom and then to everyone else. One at a time they shook hands with the adults who were beaming at them like they had never seen a kid before. Tom sized up the boys and figured they were in their early teens.
 

He was big when he stood next to them and he said in a fatherly way, “I have a daughter who’s just a little younger than you guys. You know what that means?”

They weren’t sure what he was getting at, so they both said in unison, “No, Sir.”

“That means she’s too old to date. You follow me?”

“Yes, Sir.”
 

Kathy stepped in front of Tom and said, “Don’t pay any attention to him. You’ll get to meet Molly when we get back to our shelter.”

Up to now the kids hadn’t been told everything. It had been enough to feed them and protect them fro the scavengers at the Coast Guard base. It might have been difficult for them to told they were going to be leaving home behind, so Kathy and the Chief hadn’t mentioned the shelter.

“Are we going to live here now?” asked Whitney.

Kathy said, “Let’s go, guys. We can explain everything when we’re all safe inside.”

The Chief signaled for Tom and me to come with him and our Cuban friend. He explained that we were going to drop off the sailor with his shipmates, but we were also going to be faced with making them understand they couldn’t keep anyone alive who might have been bitten. The way the infected were dropping in from the top of the wall, it was possible someone had been a victim.

Kathy started for the fort as we pulled away. I was hoping to see the reactions of the three kids when they went down the rabbit hole. I was sure they would be as surprised as we were, but I would just have to wait to see their faces when we reached Mud Island.

Kathy told us later that the big difference for the kids was when they entered the tunnel into Fort Sumter. We had no reason to clean up the mess we had made when we had first killed the scavengers and then disposed of the infected dead that were left behind. Bodies were everywhere, and the smell was beginning to be overpowering. Kathy hurried them along as quickly as she could to get them away from the stench. She said they were more than grateful when she pushed them through the hidden door that led to the shelter below.