The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now (17 page)

“This is the 17th Military Police Detachment at Fort Jackson, sending out a big thank you to the people in the seaplane. Over.”

Kathy had it set on the speaker instead of the headphones, so we all got to hear it. She keyed the microphone and said, “For the history books, Fort Jackson, credit goes to retired Navy Chief Joshua Barnes for the idea, over.”

“I read you, Miss. Please give our regards to the Chief. I hope we get to return the favor someday. I’m Captain Miller, and I have a long memory for heroics like I just saw tonight. We have incoming transport, so we’ll be out of here soon, but we wouldn’t have made it without you. I’m going to spread the word about you, Chief. Every living soul on the East coast is going to know who you are. Over.”

The Chief was blushing because he never wanted or needed credit for anything. He did what he did because it was the way he was wired.

Kathy keyed up again and wished the Captain luck getting back to his people. She wanted to ask where they would be, but as grateful as he was, she would have been putting him on the spot by asking, and she didn’t want to make him feel bad if he had to say it was a secret.

She had just signed off when the Captain’s voice said quickly, “Twenty clicks southwest Norfolk Canyon. Over and out.”

We all looked at each other without understanding. Everyone but the Chief, that is. He smiled at us and said, “The Captain may get an earful from a Major when he checks in next time, but I’m betting that’s all he gets. He just gave a location within landing distance of a fully fueled helicopter out on the continental shelf. If anyone heard that message, they probably are thinking there aren’t any canyons in Norfolk, but there are if you go out to sea. They probably have carriers off the coast receiving military, and you can bet they’re screening them better by now.”

“We only lost about thirty minutes of time and a little fuel to save maybe about two hundred soldiers,” I said. “Not a bad day’s work, Chief. What’s next?”

No jokes this time. The Chief looked more at peace with life than I had ever seen him. When he had escaped from the Atlantic Spirit cruise ship, he had only been able to save himself and two other people, Kathy and Jean. Our gratitude wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that he had never left five thousand people to die before, and this was his chance to earn some of those lives back.

We settled in as the hum of the big turbine engine caused Molly to drift off to sleep. Kathy put on her headphones and started listening for radio traffic. From time to time she would key the microphone and just ask, “Bus, do you have your ears on? Over.” Then she would turn the dial to a different frequency and listen.

Once she listened intently for a moment and then took off her headphones. “Remember that preacher we heard near Goose Creek? There are still people out there like him.”

Tom hadn’t been with us, but we had filled him in about the radicals who managed to survive. He had told us that Darwinism always had a way of working things out. The nuts might survive for now, but they would find themselves on the trail to extinction sooner or later.

I asked the Chief where we were. I didn’t know how he was navigating without being able to see landmarks and without air traffic control towers.

“We’re almost to Atlanta,” he said. “I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a few lights coming from the tops of tall buildings. There would have to be some survivors in a big city like that.”

We all started watching the ground below. It wasn’t like we could do anything to help if we saw someone, but we felt more connected by knowing there was someone else out there. The tall buildings started to stand out in the darkness, and the Chief was right again. There were fires on top of buildings, probably oil drums that had been hauled up by survivors.

A few would improvise with the wrong thing, and then they would have a new problem on their hands. That would explain the smoke we could see even through the darkness. We had seen the same thing on our first trip away from the shelter. Homeowners didn’t think before lighting their barbecue grills inside their garages. If the carbon monoxide didn’t kill them, the fire would.

Tom said, “I’ve spent a lot of time in Atlanta. Some of those buildings would have tons of food in them if you could get to it. The OMNI Hotel has a convention center and a bunch of restaurants. If anyone survived in there, they might live through this, but if it was anything like the hotels in Myrtle Beach, it was a death trap.”

I said, “Can you imagine how many buildings had survivors in them who are just trying to get to the supplies, but they’re just out of reach?”

“Yeah, that’s irony for you,” said Kathy. “You live through a zombie apocalypse, and your apartment is across the street from a grocery store.”

“Or a Walmart,” I added. “You could have all the supplies you need right there in your apartment, but you would still have this crazy urge to go to Walmart.”

We saw dozens of small fires on rooftops. Some were buildings close together, and when the lights were just right we could see ropes and even dangerous looking walkways made out of anything that would work. We couldn’t see the streets below them, but we could guess what was happening down there.

On the edge of the city we saw headlights from a speeding car. By the way it was turning, we guessed that the driver knew what to expect on each road. The survivors wouldn’t just get in a car and drive around the city. It had to be someone who knew where they were going. The car passed behind some buildings and disappeared.

There were no surprises as we skirted around the edge of the city. Even at our altitude we didn’t want to tempt fate by giving someone an easy shot. If anything, we were probably the surprise for people on the ground, and we couldn’t imagine how it made people feel when they saw the luxury and freedom of an airplane as it passed them by.

With the city receding behind us, the Chief adjusted our course slightly to the northwest. Guntersville was less than an hour away, and Kathy hadn’t been able to get Bus on the radio. Our Plan B in the event that we hadn’t made contact by the time we were over water was to use the satellite pictures Tom had been studying to find a possible fuel truck. The relative peace and quiet was disrupted when he almost shouted that he had found one.

“How can you sound so sure?” I asked.

He put the picture in my lap and shone a flashlight on it. I stared at it for a moment. First, I wasn’t sure of what I was looking at, but then I was laughing because of the absurd good luck we seemed to have.

Tom showed Kathy the picture, and it was her turn to laugh. “I think that’s the result of paying it forward,” she said.

“What’s that mean?” asked Tom.

Kathy said, “That means when you do something good for someone just because you want to, something good happens to you. We helped back at Fort Jackson, and this is our reward.”

The Chief was listening but had no idea what Tom had spotted below. “What did you find, Tom? Is there a sign on top of a building that says aviation fuel?”

Tom held the picture over in front of the Chief. I expected the Chief to roar laughing, but instead he just got a quizzical look on his face. He turned and looked at me and asked, “Ed, did your Uncle Titus know any other bunker builders?”

“Not that I know of, Chief. Then again, I didn’t know he was building one. Why are you asking?” I said.

Kathy made the connection before I did, but I was right behind her. I took the picture back from the Chief and borrowed Tom’s flashlight. When I looked up, Kathy asked, “What are the odds that there would be a clear satellite picture that has a building that has Aviation Fuel written on top of it and a row of seaplanes parked along a dock?”

“I’m going to make a leap of faith here,” said the Chief. “These survivalists all shared their information with each other and no one else. I’m going to bet that your Uncle Titus and Bus were both members of the same fraternity, and one last thing. Bus probably has a seaplane, too.”

We knew why Bus hadn’t told us over the radio that he had a seaplane. It was for the same reason that we didn’t tell him about ours. If people were listening, we wouldn’t want them looking around every drop of water for the planes, and we didn’t want them hanging out by the fuel pumps. What we couldn’t figure out was how the different shelters planned to stay in touch and realized it had to be some sort of code. Either Uncle Titus had taken the code with him to his grave, or it was in the shelter on Mud Island all along.

We were all so dumbfounded by this epiphany that we were surprised by Kathy holding up one hand to get our attention.

“Say again, over,” she said as she keyed the microphone. “I hear you, Bus. Over.”

Kathy pulled her headphones aside and said it sounded like they were having some kind of problem at Bus’s shelter. She put them back on and keyed the microphone.

“Bus, we’re looking for a good place to eat. Any suggestions? Over.” Kathy was trying to let Bus know they were in the area without coming right out and saying it.

Tom leaned into the front and said, “Kathy, tell him we’ll settle for a good place for a picnic near where Allison found out she was going to be a mother. We told him where we were when he called us.”

Kathy repeated what Tom had suggested and listened. She whispered that the sound was a bit messy, so she wasn’t going to put it on the speakers.

She said, “I hear you Bus. Stand by. Over.”

She took off the headphones and told the Chief that Bus had said there used to be a good place to eat about two miles south of that campsite that was called the Catfish Grotto. It used to be a great place to eat, but now the customers don’t eat catfish.

“What do you think he’s trying to tell us?” I asked.

Tom said, “I think he’s saying his shelter is usually a safe place, but there are more of the infected around than usual.”

“Well, I think we need to take a look anyway,” said the Chief. “Can you locate that campsite at night?”

“It’s perfect,” said Tom. “Look at the picture of the building labeled Aviation Fuel. That building is a resort area now. That’s why there are so many sea planes. Straight south is the entrance to a huge cave that can only be accessed by water. That would be where Bus would have built his shelter because he owns all of that land.”

“Can we get a big landmark, Tom? I need to find that building in the dark, and that land isn’t flat down there. One rule of thumb for caves is to look for them in mountains. These aren’t really high mountains, but there’s a lot of shadow down there.”

Tom concentrated hard on the pictures, looking back and forth between them and his window. He finally spotted what he was looking for.

“Okay, Chief. We’re really close. Bring us in lower and look for the most populated area straight ahead. Just after you pass over it you’ll see a big bridge. That’s Highway 431 North. About two miles up 431 we’re going to make a sharp turn to the east. If we’re lucky, it will take us straight at another bridge. You should come at it from the side. When you cross over the bridge, hug the shoreline on the right and get ready to land as it narrows. We’re going to coast straight at a dead end, and that’s the entrance to the cave. Believe me, you can’t miss it.”

“Where’s that fueling station from the landing spot?” asked the Chief.

“That’s easy,” said Tom. “Go back toward the last bridge and cross it at an angle going straight north. Only about a mile across some land and water is the resort. It’s just as easy to spot as the cave.”

Despite the darkness below, the Chief could make out enough detail to tell when he reached the town of Guntersville. There weren’t any really tall buildings with survivors camping on top, but here and there he spotted lights. He knew he had to be careful. This was definitely deer hunting country, and people were probably tired of shooting the infected dead. They were slow, easy targets, but above all, there were too many of them. Angry, desperate people with guns and no supplies would be very jealous of someone in a seaplane. The Chief didn’t agree with their jealousy, but he understood their frustration.

As the plane got lower and closer to the buildings, the surrounding mountains seemed to close in. They weren’t tall mountains, but they were bigger than hills. They were heavily forested even for this time of year because they were covered with ancient pine trees. The area was a fisherman’s paradise, and for those who liked to live dangerously, there were massive caverns.

The shadows from the mountains made it difficult to spot the bridge that Tom had told him to look for, but the Chief spotted it and made a minor course correction to line up with it. Once he had the bridge in his sights, he increased power to get out of rifle range if someone had been taking aim at him.

The sudden burst of power would have been enough to make anyone miss, but the Chief didn’t think anyone had taken a shot at them the way someone had in Goose Creek. When they were clipped by a bullet that time, they were forced to leave the plane behind and make their way back home in cars. If it happened this time, it wasn’t likely that they would be able to drive home past Atlanta.

The bridge flashed by, and the Chief followed Highway 431 as it veered more to the northeast. Tom started hanging over the Chief’s shoulder to watch for any familiar landmark, and the Chief was grateful for his help. This was seat of the pants flying at its best. At his present speed two miles would go by fast, so the Chief anticipated the tap on the shoulder when it happened. He banked hard to the right across the water and increased his speed even more. There was no reason to take his time now, and he knew he could either slow down quickly or come around for another pass if he had to.