The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now (9 page)

It was probably because he didn’t have any hope that he could locate Allison that he was so surprised when he bumped into her. She was free from her seat but unconscious, and she was drifting downward as he swam upward. The current made it difficult to swim and hang onto her, but he had to get her ashore as quickly as possible.

The fact that Allison was drifting downward was either good news or bad news, but the Chief wouldn’t know which it was until she was on dry land. A submariner had told the Chief that unconscious people had a better chance of not drowning than conscious people. If she was unconscious before going under the water, then she was drifting downward because she wasn’t making an effort to stay afloat. If she was awake when she went under, then she was drifting down because she had inhaled water. He hoped she had been unconscious, and he hoped that submariner hadn’t been just telling him a sea story.

When the Chief broke the surface with Allison in tow he began looking for the nearest place to get out of the water. The dock was closer than the end of the island that jutted out from under the bridge, but he didn’t know if the docks were occupied. He quickly decided the land that was hardly more than a mud plain with scrub bushes growing on it would at least be safe long enough for him to try to save Allison. He started swimming as hard as he could away from the docks.

Allison was totally limp when he pulled her body onto the sand, but there were no external signs of injury other than a bump on her head that was probably responsible for her being out cold. The Chief also didn’t see any obvious signs of broken bones. He did a quick visible inspection of her scalp, neck, rib cage, arms, and legs then began doing CPR.
 

Despite the nasty bump, Allison coughed and began spitting up water almost immediately. She would be sore, but unless she had an internal injury, she would survive. The Chief finally had a chance to take stock of his own condition. He took in a really deep breath of air to test his own ribs, and he moved his arms and legs around to be sure he hadn’t just been moving without pain due to adrenaline.

Satisfied that he was just going to be sore himself, he checked their surroundings. The docks were only about one hundred yards away, and there was no movement. He was a bit cold, and even though the day was pleasant, being wet and exposed was not the best thing for either of them.
 

Allison was still gasping and looked like she wasn't sure where she was. It was a good thing they were both wearing the Navy blue denim outfits they had found in all sizes in their shelter. The sun would dry them more quickly, and they blocked the breeze better than most clothing.

"Are you okay, Allison?" the Chief asked as gently as he could.
 

He wanted her to feel safe even though the only thing safe about their predicament was that they weren't being attacked by a swarm of infected dead. Even though there hadn't been an explosion, the sound of an airplane smacking the surface of the water was noisy, and the Chief kept looking at the docks to see if they had attracted any attention.

The longer the Chief looked at the docks the more he expected to see them coming their way, but it suddenly occurred to him that there was no safety railing along the concrete loading docks of the State Ports Authority. These were commercial docks for loading container ships, and the people who worked these docks would have seen a safety railing as a nuisance that was in their way as they worked. If there had been any infected dead on these docks, they would have walked off the edges a long time ago. The current was so swift most of the time that they would have washed out to sea or become fish food, and if any had walked up onto this narrow spit of land, they would have just walked right back into the water again.

Allison was finally able to speak in a raspy voice. Salt water down the throat could really burn.

"Where are we? We're alive?" she asked.

The Chief said, "It's a miracle, but yes, we are alive. Better than alive for now, but we need to get to the mainland and find a boat. First things first, though. We need to find a way to get from here over to there. Do you think you can swim if I help you?"

"I don't even know where we are, Chief. This isn't Fort Sumter?"

"No, Allison, Fort Sumter is over there." The Chief pointed at the other side of the harbor where the Ashley River and the Cooper River joined into one wide passageway for the huge container ships.

As soon as he pointed at Fort Sumter he realized it was a mistake. Even from a distance without binoculars he could see the tiny bits of color moving on the walls of Fort Sumter were people. If one of them was using binoculars to watch the Chief and Allison, they would be in a position to cross the harbor if they had a boat. By the Chief's logic, if they held Fort Sumter they must have boats in order to keep it supplied.

The Chief had a trained eye, and with the sun in the west he was able to catch the reflected light as several of the figures on the wall lifted their binoculars. It was like being naked in the middle of a football field, and it was a sell-out crowd. There was nowhere to hide, and the men or women with the binoculars could study them both closely.

Allison looked toward the fort, and before the Chief could stop her, she waved excitedly in that direction. A few of them started waving back and shooting their rifles in the air.

The Chief wasn't going to wait to see if the fort people took Allison's wave as an invitation to come get them, and he wasn't going to play twenty questions with her about whether or not she could swim. She hadn't even thanked him for saving both of their lives, and she was already putting them in more danger by waving at the people in the fort.

Without warning the Chief scooped Allison up off of the sand and ran into the water toward the docks. He was stronger than most men on dry land, but he was almost stronger in the water. He knew it would be a race to swim one hundred yards and get to safety on land before the people in Fort Sumter could get there with a boat. He didn't doubt the order had already been given by someone in authority over there.

Allison screamed at the Chief the way she had in the seaplane, and he was at least a little tempted to swim underwater. He resisted the temptation because he didn't have time to do CPR again if there was a boat heading their way.

With powerful strokes the Chief crossed the docks and aimed for a steel ladder that was bolted to the concrete and extended below the surface of the water. Allison had no choice but to hang on until he put her within reach of the first rungs. She didn't have to be told to climb, and she was waiting for him at the top just to give him a piece of her mind.

The Chief didn't give her a chance. Before she could get out more than four words, he had her over his shoulder and was running for cover. A quick glance toward the harbor told him he had won the race because the boat was only half way across, but that was just the water part of the race. If they were armed and had been coming to the mainland for supplies, then they knew this terrain pretty well. There was no place to hide that they hadn't already been, so the Chief decided he wouldn't try to hide until they were away from the waterfront. That meant they would be forced to cross the downtown part of the city. It was either that or try to cross the Ravenel Bridge, and there was no doubt in his mind that they couldn't be more exposed if they had targets painted on their backs.

Allison was struggling enough to be slowing them down, and he had to stop for a minute. As soon as her feet were on the ground and she started to verbally assault him, he pulled back his right arm with his massive fist where she could see it. Her eyes went wide, but she stopped talking.

Chief Joshua Barnes had never hit a woman in his life, and he wasn't going to start now, but he needed her to pay attention long enough to understand what kind of trouble they were in, and they were really short on time.

"Do I have your attention, Allison?"

She nodded her head, but her eyes stayed glued to the fist.

The Chief lowered his arm and took her hands in his. His grip was urgent but reassuring at the same time.

"Allison, those people at Fort Sumter are dangerous. They weren't excited because we survived the crash. They were excited because they saw a pretty woman waving at them. They're coming after us, not coming to rescue us."

The Chief's words were well put for such a short amount of time, and Allison understood they were in really big trouble. She looked toward the harbor and could see there were now two boats crossing the harbor. Her head turned back the other way and she saw that they were surrounded by cargo containers, and they would run out of hiding places in a hurry.

"What are we going to do?" she asked barely above a whisper.

"First we run,” said the Chief. "Then we need to make it out of the cargo storage areas and cross the city. Our only hope of getting out of here alive is to get a boat, and the nearest place I know of where we can find one that isn't in their clear view is the Coast Guard base. If there isn't one there, we have to make it to the city marina.”

Allison looked toward the city that was beyond the tall chain link fence surrounding the cargo containers. It was an old city dating back to the original settlement in 1663, but even though it was old, it was always a shiny kind of old. It was clean and colorful. Now, after long months with no loving care from its residents it looked old and worn, and it looked foreboding. The buildings looked dirty, and more than one fire had ravaged entire neighborhoods. Smoke was still drifting upward from somewhere not too far away, and they could smell something in the air that could only be decay.

“We have to go, Allison. There’s no time to think about it. We have to be on the other side of that fence before they reach the docks.”

Although they knew what would be in the city, the alternative left no choice. The people in the boats had weapons, while the infected dead had to get up close and personal. They would have to take their chances in the city.

This time the Chief didn’t need to carry Allison, and they both broke into an all out run through the containers. It was during that run when the Chief remembered they had very little in the way of weapons. They both had large hunting knives on their belts, but the guns and machetes had gone down with the plane. He took the lead from Allison just in case there were any infected still within the perimeter. There was always a chance that there was a hole in the fence somewhere.

He led Allison on a diagonal path that would take them to the fence. He reasoned that the people coming from Fort Sumter would probably tie up at the docks where they saw them climb the ladder. If he was right, that would put them at a greater distance from their pursuers, but he also wanted to move as far along the city as they could before they no longer had the protection of the fence. Once they got past the fence, they would face an unknown number of the infected.

They zigzagged through row after row of stacked containers. Some stood open, and the contents were spread around the open doors. Colorful containers full of electronics shipped to stores like Best Buy and Target were mostly full, but containers of packaged foods like Ramen Noodles were almost stripped bare. It was no surprise that this had become the private shopping center of the people in Fort Sumter. There were probably skirmishes with other groups that were holed up in other places, so this wasn’t the safest place for them to be even if there were no infected.
 

The Chief saw the first of the infected dead only about twenty yards beyond the fence. It had already spotted them and was weaving in their general direction. At first the Chief figured they would just outrun it, but one groaning infected would attract the attention of others, and it wouldn’t be long before they were noticed by their pursuers.

The Chief pulled his hunting knife from its sheath and ran straight toward the noisy infected. Allison stopped and watched with a look of disbelief on her face, but became obvious what the Chief was doing when she saw his knife was already in his hand. It didn’t take more than that for the infected dead to rush up against the fence. The Chief quickly silenced the groaning with his blade and just as quickly began running again.

As he passed Allison he said in an urgent voice, “The reason there aren’t any infected on this side of the fence is because those people cleared them out and then secured the fence. We won’t find any holes to escape through, so we have to find a good place to climb.”

“I was raised around tall trees, Chief. I can climb just as good as you.”

Somehow the Chief doubted that, but he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. He at least needed for her to believe she could climb as well as him. It would be a good thing if she could climb that well.
 

They reached the border of the container storage area and looked at the tall fence that stood between them and the city. The fence didn’t end at a perfect corner but in a long curve that went around a power junction like the one Tom had told them he had encountered near Simmonsville. A police officer from Conway, South Carolina had heroically destroyed hundreds of the infected dead by drawing them into the fenced perimeter of the power junction and then blowing it up while he was still inside. If not for him, Tom and Molly might not have survived.
 

“No explosions today,” thought the Chief. “Today everybody lives.” The sign on the nearest corner said they were at the intersection of Charlotte and Washington Street. That meant they were already parallel to East Bay Street, the main street that would take them most of the way to the Coast Guard station.