The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (32 page)

I pulled away to the port side of the Cormorant as the Coast Guard ship picked up speed. Within minutes we were passing White Point Garden again. This time it was beautiful in the noon sun of a clear April day. Everything was green and blooming, and it would have looked like the paradise that it was if not for the shambling infected dead that were walking along the railing of the seawall. They could hear our engines, and they were being drawn out of the trees, across Murray Blvd., and up onto the wide concrete sidewalk.

We passed the large L shaped dock at the Coast Guard base, and it was eerily still now. The hundreds of infected dead that had walked off the dock and were caught in the current of the Ashley River as it rushed toward the ocean had served one last purpose on Earth by washing in among the Cuban boats.
 

The James Island Expressway was coming up next, but it was so high above the water that we weren’t worried about it. We had passed under it not far from this same spot on our first trip down to Charleston, and it hadn’t posed a problem. If something fell from that bridge, we would have time to move out from under it before it reached the water. We all kept our eyes on the city marina to our starboard side and a smaller marina to our left.

Both marinas had their fair share of boats that were sunk right where they were berthed, and some were charred black from the fires that had spread from boat to boat. In among them were those rare boats that didn’t have a scratch on them. The Chief told us to watch for those because they were the ones that had arrived after those insane nights when everyone was trying to escape the spread of the infection.
 

Tom had told us how he had passed boat landings and marinas on that night when he and Molly had escaped first to Conway and then south on the Waccamaw River. His descriptions were so graphically clear that we could picture what had happened at these marinas. There would have been people running to their boats, and people running from the infected. There would have been screaming, and there would have been gunshots. Now the marinas were graveyards, and hiding in among the tombs were frightened people who were watching us go by, unsure of whether or not it was safe to hail us.
 

It seemed almost too soon that the moment of truth was on us, and we were approaching the twin Ashley River drawbridges. There were so many cars on both bridges that we couldn’t tell at first if there were any infected dead walking around between them, but as we got closer the engines began to draw them to the railings. First there were only a few, then they were lining the railings like people at a sporting event. They weren’t coming to watch us go by, though. They wanted to get over the railing that was blocking their way.
 

The Chief was coasting toward the bridge at a very low speed, but because the tide was going out, he was having to maintain his speed against a strong current. I was having to increase my power to drive against the current too, and the engine noise was whipping the crowd up above into a frenzy. There must have been more of them than we expected because we could hear them above the sound of our engines.
 

We were arriving over an hour before low tide, and the slow approach into the current was giving the Chief a good opportunity to measure the height of the masts atop the Cormorant. From our angle in the boat, it looked like the Chief was going to rip the masts off, but he had a much better view. Kathy was probably giving him advice, as well. The kept approaching slowly, and we watched as the masts cleared the underside of the bridge by less than a foot.
 

Bus and I heard Tom yelling at Chase to watch out above, and we saw the first body falling toward them. This one landed on the port side rail down on the main deck by the stern. It couldn’t have been planned, but it looked like a perfect head first dive…straight into the metal railing. Since head trauma was the way to permanently kill them, this one wasn’t going to be a problem. The body crumpled outward and fell overboard on its own. We started through with the Chief and watched nervously for anything falling in our direction.

The second one hit in a flat landing down inside the boat retrieval well. It wasn’t going to be able to climb up onto the deck from down there, so we were able to watch for the next one. Number three missed the boat completely, and by then the Cormorant was past the first bridge into the space between the two drawbridges. We didn’t see more flying bodies from the first bridge because they had all crossed to the side of the bridge when we approached. They didn’t have the reasoning power to know we had gone under them.

The crowd on the second bridge was falling over the rails before we got there. We could see that it was going to be much worse than the first bridge because they were raining down the way they had at Green Cavern when we had watched the bodies shower from above.
 

Our momentum had us moving closer even though it was into the current. To turn left or right between the bridges could cause either boat to catch the concrete supports of the bridge and rip a hole in the hull. We were going to have to go through whether we wanted to or not.
 

We were only a matter of a few yards from the bridge when I saw the three bow mounted fifty caliber machine guns point skyward in unison. They only blasted a short burst of rounds as they rotated slightly to the left and the right, but it was enough. The wall of bullets may not have killed the infected, but the force knocked them backward into each other, and there was a brief pause in the shower of bodies. The Chief increased his speed, and I did the same as soon as I heard his engines increase their output.
 

A body landed in the back of our boat right in front of the bench seats. It was still moving, but when we increased our speed, the bow rose, and the stern dropped. Bus took care of the rest. The infected was facing directly away from us when it stood up, and Bus kicked it squarely in the middle of the back. It tumbled over the stern and disappeared in our wake.
 

Several bodies missed or grazed the railings of the Coast Guard ship, but we were through the first hurdle of our trip upriver. The second hurdle was the baseball park, and it was coming up fast. Bus took over driving the boat so I could watch the shore with binoculars, He brought us up along the side of the Chief so we would be sheltered if there was a sniper on the starboard side at the ballpark.
 

Tom came around the port side of the wheelhouse and grabbed the railing. Chase joined him only a second later. He yelled down at us that there was someone watching us from the press box level. We didn’t know if they were friends or enemies, but it made sense not to give them a target.
 

After the ballpark passed from view, we had a long stretch of river ahead of us with no real threats except small docks. There could be people at them waiting for boats traveling on the river, but the weapons on the Cormorant would make anyone think twice. Tom and Chase moved from the side of the wheelhouse to deal with the infected dead that had fallen into the boat well. When they got there, they were surprised to see it walking out through the stern of the boat straight into the churning wake. The stern bulkhead could be raised and lowered to open the well when the Coast Guard needed to launch or retrieve a boat, and the Chief had simply raised it when he increased speed. The infected dead took the open door as an invitation.

Two hundred rooms at least, and what seemed to be going so fast at first was taking way to long. The three kids started out together at first, but they eventually decided they were just photographing the same things from different angles. They discovered that Sam was taking pictures of things that Perry had already done.

“There’s only one way to get this done faster,” said Whitney. “We need to do different floors, and we need to put an X on the door of each room we do.”

“I think we should put an X on the door of each floor, too,” said Perry. “We should put the mark on the door as we go in. That way, the other two can pass right by the floor to the next level.”

“Let’s use the central stairwell. It has a door at each floor,” said Whitney.

When they entered the central stairwell, they each went to the railing and looked down. It seemed to go on forever, and even though there was a light on every level, they couldn’t see the bottom. They went down one flight. Whitney put a big W on the door and looked at the two boys.

“I like that better than an X,” she said.

Sam and Perry halfheartedly smiled at Whitney and then went down to the next level.

“Who gets this one?” asked Sam.

“I’ll take it,” said Perry. “Go on chicken. There’s nothing down there you haven’t seen before.”

Before Sam could put an S on the door, Perry marked it with a big letter P. Sam reluctantly went down the stairs. He could feel the fine hairs on the back of his neck moving on their own. He looked at the door, put an S on it with his marker, and pulled it open.

******

Before the virus began to spread, before the government began to scatter, Harold J. Thornton III was an important man. Over thirty years in the Senate had made him powerful and influential. As the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, he was third in line to the Presidency, and that meant he was so influential he had been given a first class ticket to safety.
 

Officially the government had called it an extinction level contagion, but since they had a way of saying things in reverse order like Yoda, it was called, “Contagion: Extinction Level,” or CEL for short. In the remaining few days of the government evacuation, they had called it CEL Day, then CEL Day + 1.

On CEL Day, Senator Thornton was at the White House when the first reports started coming in. There were attacks within a block of the place where he and the President were watching TV. A Marine helicopter had landed on the White House lawn for the President and his family within minutes of those reports.
 

The Secret Service wasn’t going to mess around. They had already shot one infected dead that had walked right up to the east entrance. When they ordered her to stop, she just kept coming toward them. The Agents were trained to shoot for the heart, and they did repeatedly. The shots punched her backwards, and she fell down once, but she got back up and started toward them again. It was a single shot to the head that stopped her, and after that the Agents didn’t bother with the center mass training.

There were also the people who were trying to get away from the infected that were following them through the streets of Washington. When they reached the fence around the White House, it was the symbol of safety. Scores of people jumped over the fence, not running toward the White House, but away from the infected. Training is training, and the agents trained to protect the White House had received training for all out frontal assaults as well as lone gunmen. To them this was just another scenario for which they had trained.

Their shots to the chest were effective. One by one the people who were running across the White House lawn were eliminated until there were only a few late arrivals to deal with. As they were reloading and showing a bit more nerves than they would have expected, one of them noticed the first of them getting up again. They sat dumbfounded and watched as more and more rose to their feet.

Late arrivals jumping over the fence thought they were jumping to safety, and before they could be shot, crowds of previously eliminated threats turned on them. The snipers on the roof of the White House had to shoot the same people all over again, and just as their fellow agents at the east entrance had learned, it took a single shot to the head.

Harold Thornton had watched the shooting through a window as he waited for his ride away from Washington. His normal bearing with his full head of silver hair made him look fit for his years. His height added to the illusion. He had been given word that the Vice President and his family had also been taken to a secure location at a bunker somewhere in upstate New York. He was also told that someone was locating his family, and they would meet him at their secure location.

When Senator Thornton boarded the Marine helicopter he was given the message that his family had been successfully retrieved, and that the President had arrived at his secure location. It was confidential, but he knew it was somewhere near Columbus, Ohio. He figured the President had that arranged from the start since he graduated from "The Ohio State," as he liked to call it.
 

Senator Thornton was told his helicopter was heading to Charleston, South Carolina. He didn’t know what the shelters were like, but he liked the restaurants in Charleston better than Columbus. It was a Sikorsky UH-60 helicopter, and the flight would be about three hours, so he made himself comfortable.

The helicopter was smaller and less accommodating than one of the big Sea Kings the President and Vice President were traveling in, but it was getting him away from the CEL. An intern had brought him updates until he was ready to leave the White House, and the Senator had secured passage on the military flight for the attractive young lady. She sat across from him in the helicopter, and the Senator thought things could be worse.
 

The pilot gave them updates from time to time about the spread of CEL. It seemed the entire world was in chaos, and no one even knew where it had started. He wondered if someone had been experimenting with a viral agent, and it had escaped. They weren’t even half way to his secure location when they received a message that every major city in the country had evacuated their mayors. Where they were evacuating to was a good question.