The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (28 page)

It was in position for only a moment when a second boat followed it, and as soon as it arrived the two boats left together. They sped away from the small island to where the Ashley River marshes came up to the left side of Fort Sumter. I was thinking about how much fun it would be to see them get stuck in the mud. It was deceptively shallow in some spots, and I could see by the channel markers that they were very close to making that mistake.
 

A second pair of boats sped past Castle Pinckney and joined the other two, so that made four boats trying to reach the dock to Fort Sumter by skimming along the edge of the mud flats on the left. Two more boats entered the harbor, but they stopped at Castle Pinckney. There were ten boats all total. Four were on the left side, two were more or less toward the front, and four were still on the right side by the jetties. I wondered if those morons had read some American history. Fort Sumter was surrounded during the Civil War and easily captured. In this case, there wasn’t really anything to capture. There were still weapons scattered among the dead, but it wasn’t like we really cared if they found them. There wasn’t anything sophisticated, and since they wouldn’t suspect a hidden bunker to be under the surface of the fort, there wouldn’t be any strategic value for them to occupy it. They were more of a problem to us as long as they were in their boats. If they were inside the fort, we could always consider doing the same thing to them that we had done to the last occupants.

I watched for almost an hour as the boats on the Ashley River side of the fort slowly inched their way forward. It certainly appeared they were aiming for the dock. Zooming in with the camera I could see that one of the crewmen was using a pole to test the depth of the water, and my best guess was they were only clearing the bottom by about a foot. It would get deeper as they got closer to the dock, but they were trying to skim along the marsh much closer inland where the mud was thick. I wondered how they would feel if they knew all they had to do was just drive straight up to it. Since tour boats had docked there before the infection, it had to be deeper water.
 

The sun had risen well above the horizon, and I had all the camera angles I needed. The harbor was probably more beautiful than it had ever been. The morning air was so clear that I could make out details in the shallow water, and because there hadn’t been any big container ships stirring up the mud on the bottom I could see deeper than ever. I saw shadows moving that looked larger than sharks or alligators. From above it looked like dark clouds under the surface of the water. I aimed a camera toward the sky just to be sure it wasn’t a cloud blocking the sun, but there was nothing but blue sky.
 

When I brought the camera back down, I saw that the first boat trying to reach the dock was directly in the middle of the shadow under the surface of the water, and the shadow appeared to be growing. The crew of the second boat was slow to realize that the first boat had stopped moving forward, and the man with the pole was pulling on it like it had become stuck in the mud.
 

The second boat moved over the growing shadow to join the first boat, and the second pair coming down the Ashley River behind them was following the same path as the first two.
 

I suddenly remembered that I could record the events from the console where I was seated, and I hit the red button. I had a feeling that I was seeing something that could be important later, and I also had a feeling that we had been seriously lucky that what I was going to see hadn’t happened to us already.
 

There had been so many times in the last year that we had been out on the water, and sometimes it had been shallow water. I wondered how many of those times we had moved away just before disaster was about to strike. It was like we had walked through the alligator pits at the zoo, but we weren’t attacked because we didn’t make enough noise.

The two boats were practically touching each other at the bow and stern when they started to rotate in unison. They both began to turn clockwise as if they were synchronized. The shadow under the boats had also turned darker, and it looked almost like an oil slick. There were four men in each boat, and they were all looking for something to hang onto. One man on the lead boat jumped onto the bow and grabbed the fifty caliber machine gun. He pulled back on the handle on the side of the weapon and aimed as low as he could at the water. The weapon sprayed the huge bullets into the water at the shadow as the boat began to turn faster and rock from side to side as it rotated.
 

The scenario on the second boat was strikingly similar, with the exception of the man with the pole. I watched as he struggled with something trying to pull it from his hands, and he didn’t know when to let go. He lost his footing in the rocking, rotating boat and was pulled overboard.
 

I remembered when we had docked our seaplane at a marina near Guntersville, Alabama, and we found that the bottom of the lake near the shore was crowded with the infected dead. There had been no current to push them away from the place where they had entered the water, so they had just been standing there on the lake floor just waiting for unsuspecting prey to pass too close to them. The difference there had been that the lake bottom had been about ten feet below, so they were unable to reach high enough to grab us. There had been some close calls, but the depth of the water had kept us relatively safe.

Here in the harbor along the marsh that lined the Ashley River, there was a treacherous bottom of mud that that could suck your feet under and never let you go. The depth that you would get stuck depended on what was under the mud. If there was an old oyster bed hidden below, you would get sucked down and left standing knee deep in the mud. When the tide would go out, your head might rise above the water, but you would never leave that spot.

The shadow I had seen growing under the boats was simply more and more infected dead joining their unfortunate brothers and sisters as they became stuck in the mud. Unable to move and unable to pull themselves from where they were held in place, all they could do was reach up and touch the bottoms of the two boats. I could see arms from the elbows to the fingers reaching, trying to find something to grasp. They couldn’t reach into the boats, but hundreds of wet hands slapped against the hulls.
 

The rotation began to slow, but both boats were pointed straight toward the shoreline and the marsh grass. The second boat had also opened fire on the infected dead that were holding the boats in place. The flat surfaces of the stern on each boat presented more area for the slapping hands, and the boats began to be pushed toward the shallower water.
 

Someone on boat number two decided the engine propellor would be a good idea, and they increased the throttle. Their mistake was only that the propellor was in the water, so they succeeded in driving the boat straight into the mud flats only inches below the surface. They were safe from the infected dead because they couldn’t flow the boat through the sucking mud, but the boat wasn’t going anywhere for a long time.

The crew of the first boat apparently decided that stuck was better than dead, so they engaged their engine and drove up alongside the second boat. The shadow stayed just out of reach for the time being, but then I saw something I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

With growing horror, the crews of the two boats saw the same thing I was seeing. There were more and more infected dead coming in from upriver, being carried along by the current. Hundreds of infected that were not stuck in the mud began piling up on the infected that were stuck below them. They made slow progress, but using the dark mass of infected below them, they were crawling from body to body in the direction of the two boats.
 

Less than twenty yards upriver from them, the crews of the next two boats were watching helplessly as their friends had become mired in the bodies. The crews felt something bumping against the hulls of their boats but were too late reaching the conclusion that the bumps were more infected dead coming from somewhere upriver.

I figured the huge shadow in the water had been the dead that had fallen from the dock on the previous night, but I couldn’t imagine where all of the new infected were coming from. The last time I had seen the Chief and Kathy was when they had gone up the Ashley River to the Coast Guard base, and I wondered if they had anything to do with it. If anyone could be responsible for hundreds of the infected being washed out of Charleston in the river it would be those two.

The crews of the second pair of boats could have turned toward deeper water and raced away, but they were too slow to react, and they were pushed by the growing tide of bodies moving with the current. Their hulls were being slapped hard from the port sides, and they were quickly forced into the shallow water of the marsh grass just like the first boats. Their fate was determined more quickly than the first two boats because the mud wasn’t as deep. The boats were stuck, but the infected dead were pushing themselves into standing positions and beginning a slow walk toward them.
 

The gunners on the two boats began firing at the infected, but they were panicked. The bullets were wasted on bodies and even thin air with very few heads being hit. They succeeded in knocking down the growing army that was closing in on them, but it wasn’t long before they ran out of ammunition, and the infected were pulling themselves onto the stern. All eight crewmen went over the bow and were trying to cross the marshy mudflats between the river and the mainland. It wouldn’t be long before they found themselves in the deeper pockets of mud that dotted the flooded marshes. There was nothing predictable about where the mud was solid and where it was a deathtrap, and one by one there were eight living people immobilized to the knees by the mud.

The infected dead that followed them were moving at a much slower pace, and many of them became stuck in the mud just as the living had done, but whenever they became stuck, it forced those that were coming from behind them to take a different path. Gradually the mud pockets were filled, and the infected were almost walking unimpeded to their prey over more solid ground. They bumped into their fellow infected. They fell and were sometimes knocked over again before they could even get back up. They even got stuck when others fell on top of them, but they kept coming.
 

The eight crewmen were spread out across the mudflats standing between patches of green grass, but the wall of slowly advancing infected dead had grown to dozens. I could see the crewmen twisting and turning, trying to pull themselves free. One of them broke free from the suction of the mud and found himself on a patch of solid ground. For the first time, I saw that crewman show some common sense. He began moving carefully in the direction of one of the other men until he could grip the other man’s outstretched hand. They were far enough from the others to take their time, so they worked together to get the trapped man free.

For a moment they moved toward a third man who was facing in their direction. Even though I couldn’t hear them, I knew the trapped man was begging for their help. I also knew from experience that the slowly advancing horde of infected dead was increasing the pitch of their groaning when they advanced on a victim. Then I could tell the two free men were telling the others how sorry they were that they couldn’t help. One of them did the sign of the cross as he turned from the others. Even as they turned and began cautiously finding solid ground between the patches of mud, the first of the infected dead reached one of the living men. He seemed to be sucked up in the swarm of bodies just as he had been sucked in by the mud.

The two escapees were holding onto each other and making steady progress toward the mainland. If they didn’t panic, they would make it.

I shifted my view a little and zoomed in on the first two boats. It was like seeing a logjam of bodies, and it reminded me of when we saw the mass of bodies pop to the surface behind Mud Island after the Russian ship had blown up. The difference was these bodies weren’t swollen and bloated from being in the water for months. They weren’t covered by blue crabs and unable to move because of the extra water weight. These infected were able to grab at the growing mass of bodies and begin crawling forward.

Crewmen who jumped from the bows of the first two boats became stuck immediately. There were fewer patches of solid ground available to them once they were closer to the dock. Those that stayed in the boats had a choice between trying to fight off the infected dead or joining their living friends. Then there was the third choice. I saw one crewman put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Yet another crewman went up on the bow of the first boat, took aim, and mercifully shot a crewmen who had become stuck in the mud. I saw him put the barrel of the gun to his own head, and then he pulled the gun down and studied it for a moment. He didn’t have a bullet left for himself.
 

I looked at the monitor view that faced the mudflats just in time to see the two crewmen exiting the marsh grass and disappearing into the woods. For now they were safe, but I had no idea what it would be like for them where they had found safety.
 

The six crewmen who had been with them were all vague shapes in a sea of swarming bodies. I hadn’t seen if any of them had taken the fast way out by eating a bullet, but it didn’t matter anymore.
 

The man who had run out of bullets was standing on the bow doing a good job of clubbing infected dead with the empty pistol. If he couldn’t shoot himself, he was at least going to take as many of the infected with him as he could.