The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now (25 page)

I said, “By the way, Bus, could we try to get Jean on the radio? We’ve been gone a couple of days, and I’d like to let her know we made it here.”

Bus was more than glad to accommodate me. He led me up to the study and switched on the radio. “We get better range at night,” he said. “It’s called skip distance. The atmosphere is thinner and higher at night, so you can send a signal farther.”

I sat down at the microphone and gave it a try, but all I got was static and something random I couldn’t understand. I tried for about thirty minutes while Bus began working on a decent meal in the beautiful kitchen. Kathy and the Chief were given the go-ahead to explore the shelter while Tom, Allison, and Molly went off to get some family time. I couldn't say that I blamed them. I was really missing Jean, and we weren't even family yet. I was sure I'd be the same way once our baby was born.

The thought of a baby hadn't sunk in yet. In a private moment I had asked Tom when it had sunk in with him, and he told me it wasn't real until the day they brought Molly home from the hospital. Our baby was going to be born in the shelter, and he or she was going to be home already. I guess for me it would be the moment I became a father. I looked at the microphone and wondered for the thousandth time in the last thirty minutes why Jean wasn't answering. She had to be waiting to know if he was alive and if we had made it.

"Lunch is ready, folks," Bus announced from the kitchen. Something smelled really good, and I decided it would tear me apart if I let myself worry about Jean. We were over five hundred miles from each other, and worrying wasn't going to make it any easier. Besides, Jean would probably be on the radio soon.

Everyone climbed the steps to the kitchen and crossed into the dining room. Bus had put out a nice spread, and even though we had been eating well enough in our shelter, it had still been a couple of days since we had a good, hot meal.

Over lunch we talked about everything and anything. The topics went all over the place because there was just so much to tell each other. Tom told us about how he and Molly had holed up in the fire station for a long time, and they could have stayed there longer, but as the infected dead moved out of the area, the scavengers had moved in. People who only prepared for an apocalypse of any kind by stocking up on guns and ammunition began to look in the obvious places for supplies, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that fire stations would be a good place to find what they were looking for.

After Tom had retrieved Molly from the top of the fire truck, he made her comfortable and then went from room to room clearing out the bodies. It was bad at first because the only way to get the bodies out of the building was to carry them upstairs and then drop them out the windows. He had considered trying to open a lower window and quickly shoving out a corpse, but the outside of the building was surrounded. As soon as he parted the curtains at a window, a dozen or more infected dead had started for the fire station.

After clearing out the bodies, Tom spent some time covering all of the windows. He wanted to let Molly have some light inside when he could to keep her from becoming too afraid. By the time he was done, Molly was already sound asleep. At least he felt like she would have a good night of safe sleep for one night. He had found a large supply of flashlights that had strong batteries, so he spent a restless night searching through the FEMA supplies that were stored in the fire station. There was a huge supply of food and bottled water. He didn't know how much cooking he would be able to do, but he figured without power, the only way he was going to be able to do hot meals was to build a small fire on the floor of the empty engine bay.

Molly slept well, and by the time she woke up, Tom had found powdered milk and powdered eggs. There were lots of things like rice and instant mashed potatoes, and he only had to find a way to boil water. He was sure he would find something sooner or later, and it turned out to be sooner. The stove in the fire station kitchen used natural gas, and it meant Molly could have a hot breakfast. He found some pancake mix and syrup, and they had a real feast. He remembered telling Molly that she would be able to have chocolate milk again one day. Tom looked at the rest of us and told Allison and Bus that we helped him keep that promise.

Tom and Molly worked together to make the fire station a home, at least for a while. They cleaned it as best they could, and they carried a fair amount of the supplies upstairs. Tom figured there could come a day when they would be trapped upstairs, and if that happened, they would need food for a few days.

It turned out Tom was right. When the scavengers came along, they came in through the downstairs windows. Tom and Molly had no choice but to go out through the bedroom windows using rope ladders they had ready. Fire stations had some useful things, and Tom had made up some impressive bug-out packs for the day when they had to leave in a hurry.

Tom was just telling us that living in the fire station was a temporary thing right from the start when we heard something on the radio. I hadn't realized I had left it on receive and speaker settings, or maybe I had done it on purpose in case Jean called us. Whatever I had done, it was making noise now, but it didn't sound like Jean.

As a group we hurried from the dining room and crossed the kitchen, the living room and finally to the radio. It sounded like a distress call, and everyone recognized the European accent, but we couldn't tell what was being said. The only thing we knew for sure was that something terrible was happening, and a final scream came from the speaker just as we tried to speak to the person on the other end. There was only static coming from the radio.

"I wonder what that was all about," said Bus.

The Chief said, "I hate to say it, but it sounded like it could have been our Russian friends back at the island.”

I said, “Have a seat, Bus. We need to be talking about getting back. Jean is there, and there's a boatload of Russians practically in our back yard.”

Bus pulled at his beard and sat down across from the Chief. He had a thoughtful look on his face, and there seemed to be something bothering him.

“Chief, so far you haven’t asked the obvious question,” he said.

The Chief had his best poker face on, which meant no expression at all. He said, “I figured you would get around to telling us in your own time, but if you want me to ask, I will.”

Bus said, “Allison is the only person I let in even though the whole town found out about the shelter and tried to get in. I knew a lot of those people out there, and I didn’t open the door for them.” He looked like he was ashamed of himself.

“How did you wind up letting Allison in?” asked Tom.

“Allison got separated from the her relatives and friends who were going to try for Huntsville, and I guess I just always had a soft spot for you and Molly. It didn’t seem right to let Allison die outside when I never doubted for a minute that you would survive.”

“Were you outside when it all started to happen?” I asked. “I had left the shelter to go buy some……supplies, and I almost didn’t make it back.”

“Your Uncle would have been disappointed in you. Didn’t he tell you to stay inside? Besides, what kind of supplies could you have possibly needed?” Bus gave me a stern look that made me feel like I was at the principal’s office again.

“Yes, he did, but can you honestly tell me you were expecting a zombie apocalypse?” I asked. I probably sounded more defensive than I should have been, but it seemed like everybody knew there was going to be an apocalypse but me.

“To tell the truth,” said Bus, “I was outside because I was still stocking my shelter. I was coming back when I ran into Allison, and I brought her along.”

“Chief,” I said, “what about us getting back to Mud Island?”

The Chief reached over and gave my shoulder a squeeze and said, “I think Bus has something he wants to tell us. Let’s give him a few minutes to speak his mind, and I’ll use a higher speed getting you home to Jean.”

We all sat down around the radio to hear what Bus wanted to tell us, and to be able to listen for more contact at the same time. He had the look of a man who had a big burden on his broad shoulders.

“I built that stockade with cabins above us like it was my shelter, and everyone bought it. The whole town of Guntersville thought that was where I was going to go when the world ended. There were plenty of people who made fun of me or called me crazy, but when the infection showed up here, you can bet everyone was trying to get up that winding road.”

“How did you and Allison get back in with everyone else trying to get in?” asked Kathy. As soon as she asked, she guessed the answer to her own question. “Everyone else was going up one side of the mountain, while the two of you made your way around to the real shelter door.”

“Exactly,” he said, “and my reward for outsmarting them was that I had to watch them die. The camera system here is like the one Titus put on Mud Island, and I was starved for local news. I needed to know what was happening out there, and once the Internet went down and the news channels went off the air, I only had the stockade to watch.”

“Did they die from within?” asked the Chief.

“If you mean, did they have infected inside but didn’t know it, then yes, they died from within,” he said.

“And you feel responsible for that,” I said.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “You should have seen them fighting to get in, and then they were shutting the gates on people when the place was full.”

“How long before an infected person started attacking other people inside the stockade?” asked Kathy.

He thought for a moment and said, “I think it was the third day, but I’m not sure. Time started to run together because I couldn’t stop watching the news, searching the Internet for something encouraging, and watching the people inside the stockade go into a state of anarchy over the smallest things. A candy bar could get you killed if the wrong person saw you eating it.”

Allison had been listening quietly, but she saw Bus was starting to relive the guilt she had already witnessed when it was happening. She stepped over to his side and said, “I’ve been telling Bus that he isn’t responsible for what happened. How could he  guess they would turn on each other so fast?”

She continued on for him, “Most of the people who got to the stockade first didn’t bring anything but their guns. When people showed up with supplies, the people with the guns just took what they wanted. There were a few people who tried to assert themselves and establish order.”

“What happened to them?” asked the Chief.

“The people with the guns put them out the front gate,” she said. “They put whole families out when they had to. Then it got really bad when they figured out someone would have to go down to the lake for drinking water.”

Bus said, “Titus was ahead of me building his shelter. He got his power, fresh water supply, and everything else done before me. I was going to put a well up on the mountain. Running a pipeline from the lake up to the stockade wasn’t a problem. I just didn’t get it done in time. I decided I should get the shelter done first.”

The Chief said, “That worked out for you in the long run because you accomplished what you set out to do, right? You didn’t have to save the world, just yourself.”

Bus had his face in his hands when he answered, “But I’m a doctor. Now I know why Titus chose to put his shelter on a coastal island instead of the mountains. I’ll bet you didn’t have to watch people die on your island.”

“I was lonely after only a few days,” I said. “When Jean, Kathy, and the Chief came along, I felt like I had won the lottery for a second time. Then when Tom and Molly took up residence in the houseboat, it was a no-brainer to bring them inside.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Bus. “You were able to stay inside with your head down. If it had been one family up there, I would have brought them in.”

“That would have been a mistake,” said Kathy. “A family could have been protecting someone who had been bitten. When we brought in Tom and Molly, we got it out in the open immediately and dealt with it. If it had been a whole family on the houseboat, we would have watched them for days first, and we would have left them outside if one was infected.”

Tom tried to brighten the mood by adding that the Chief told him he had to get naked if he wanted to come inside. That wasn’t entirely accurate, but it did earn a small grin from Bus.

Molly had been sitting down below in the living room watching a movie on an iPad, but it turned out that the acoustics were good in this shelter, or she had exceptionally good hearing. She giggled and said, “I got a bubble bath and daddy got a shower.”

I asked, “What happened up there in the stockade?”

Allison took over again because Bus was being overcome with grief. “When the first infected person died and attacked other people, the ones with guns started shooting. Children were shot like they were nothing but animals.”

“How did the hole get punched through the back of the stockade?” asked the Chief.

“Someone had a chainsaw,” said Bus. “There were infected dead making it to the top of the mountain at the front gate. The people still alive inside figured they could go down the back side of the mountain without running into anything that was likely to eat them, so they cut a hole. Of course they found out that wasn’t such a good idea.”

Allison said, “People who fell out the back were stranded on the plateau, and people who were bitten were tossed over the edge with them. It wasn’t long before there were more of the infected on the plateau than uninfected. Because it was completely fenced in, there was nowhere for them to go.”