The Chief mentally clicked off the main streets in his mind and estimated that they were about twenty blocks from White Point Garden, otherwise known as the Battery. Then they would have to go west for another eight blocks to reach the Coast Guard station. He could try to take a more direct route by turning onto Tradd Street and going straight for the Coast Guard base, but the houses were too close together, and the street was too narrow in places. He didn’t see how they could avoid getting caught by the hordes of infected dead he knew were wandering through the city the way they had been in the woods near Mud Island.
He also considered the possibility that there would be a boat at one of the many small docks along Concord Street, but that would have been the most likely place for the inhabitants of Fort Sumter to have gotten their boats in the first place. Even if boats had docked there from somewhere else, those docks were all too visible from Fort Sumter. They would be spotted by either the people in the fort or the people who had crossed the harbor in pursuit of them, and even if they weren’t, there was no guarantee that a boat would be just sitting there waiting for them to take.
The Chief had also considered the possibility that there would be no boats at the Coast Guard station. If there weren’t any working boats there they were still close to the Charleston City Marina, and they wouldn’t be in clear view of Fort Sumter.
Allison hit the chain link fence faster than the Chief expected. He thought she would need a leg up, but she went up the fence like a squirrel on a tree. She was half way to the top before he even got started. They managed to keep from falling over and breaking a leg, and they both ran stooped over to the other side of Charlotte Street where a few trees provided some cover. The trees were up against another fence that surrounded another power junction area. They were far enough ahead of the people from Fort Sumter to be safe, but now they had to cross a dead city to find a boat, and they had to do it before it got dark.
The Chief checked the position of the sun and didn’t like what he saw. If they could just walk along the sidewalks to the Coast Guard station, they could do it easily within an hour, but the last thing he expected was deserted streets or that they would be able to just walk. He expected a lot of running. If it took too long, they would have to find a place to be safe for the night. There were plenty of houses, but thousands of people had tried to stay inside when the infection spread, and that was where they had died. Finding an occupied house was going to be as easy as finding the infected dead out along the streets. Empty houses were more likely to be rare.
“So, how do we do this, Chief? Are we going to run down streets or climb fences the whole way?”
“Some of both, I’m afraid,” answered the Chief. “I was just thinking we should keep an eye out for a safe place to spend the night.”
Allison said, “If there is such a place.”
At first the Chief felt angry at Allison’s pessimism, but in her simplistic way she had summed up how hard it would be to find a safe place in downtown Charleston. The infection had spread quickly throughout the city. People on the streets were attacked, and if they died on the streets, they rose up and attacked more people. If they made it to safety inside, they most likely carried the infection inside with them.
“For the first time today, Allison, I’m inclined to agree with you. We can only keep moving and run faster than whatever we find out here. Let’s try to take the shortest path as often as we can.”
The Chief pointed toward the nearest corner and said, “That’s Washington Street. Let’s get this party started.”
Keeping low and close to the trees they crept along Charlotte Street until they reached the intersection. The Chief peered around the corner of the trees and fence, and he was surprised to see so many of the infected dead. There were dozens along the first city block. The closest was only a few feet away, and it appeared to be focused on something that was running along the street. A large rat came over the curb running straight at them, and Allison couldn’t stifle the scream in time. The infected dead down the entire block heard it, and there was no telling how many had heard it on other streets.
The Chief grabbed Allison by the hand and started running hard for the intersection in the opposite direction. It was a long block, so by the time they reached the corner, a quick look back was all they needed to see that the scream had gotten a lot of attention. The first of the infected was only barely able to follow them, but it was making such a racket with its groaning that it was bound to be attracting everything at least a block away in all directions.
The Chief let go of Allison’s hand as they got closer to Concord Street and said, “Get ready.”
She didn’t know what he meant until she saw him pull out his hunting knife. She drew her own knife from its sheath and held it out in front of her. If they were lucky she would run into something hard enough to at least knock it down.
They reached the corner and saw that it was bad but not as bad as the last street. The first infected was coming straight at them because it was being drawn by the noise a block behind the Chief and Allison. The Chief shoved the hunting knife upward into the bottom of its chin, and the infected fell backward out of his way. The next one was at least twenty feet away, and the Chief had time to prepare for the attack.
Allison was just tagging along at this point, but she wasn’t screaming, and she was watching how the Chief made short work of his targets. She saw that the Chief was letting the knife and his momentum do all of the work. He would run straight at the infected, and he didn’t extend his arm with the knife until he was within an arm’s length.
The Chief was moving toward a pair of the infected that were walking side by side at their typical shambling pace. It was going to be tricky because he would have to stab one and then immediately get the other. The problem was that they were so close together that one would be able to grab at him while he was taking care of the other.
To say the least, the Chief was surprised when he went for the one on the left, and Allison stepped confidently into the one on the right. She neatly pushed her blade upward just as she had seen the Chief do, and the infected dead dropped to the pavement.
Allison had made the decision to help when she saw there were two of the infected too close to each other. There wasn’t time to ask the Chief which of them she should try to eliminate, so she watched from a half step back to see which one he would take first. As soon as he committed to the left, she stepped forward and aimed at the soft spot below the chin.
Their timing was so good that both of the infected dead dropped to the street at virtually the same moment. Even though they didn’t have a second to waste, the Chief hooked him right arm around Allison’s neck and pulled her into a hug.
He thought, “Maybe this is what she needed to get herself to feel like part of the group. The way she had insisted on coming along couldn’t have all been because of Tom.”
Allison was pleased with herself and gave the Chief a big smile. They turned together and charged the next of the infected that were coming their way. As soon as those were down, they moved on to the next ones.
Eventually Allison and the Chief reached the next intersection on Concord Street. The sign on the corner said it was Aquarium Wharf, and the Chief saw an opportunity to gain some advantage.
The infected that had been drawn to Allison’s scream had been attracted to Charlotte Street, and it had ironically provided just enough of a diversion for them to escape around the other end of the block. Since they were unable to think through a problem the way a living person could, the infected were still drawn to the spot where the scream had come from. It was almost as if they were determined to reach that spot while the Chief and Allison escaped around the other end of the block.
The opportunity the Chief saw was a park that occupied the entire block just ahead and to their left. It had a heavy growth of trees surrounding it, and they would be able to run an entire block without having to leave the cover of those trees. He caught Allison by the sleeve of her denim jumpsuit and led her to the left into the trees.
They were able to drop to their knees out of sight long enough for Allison to catch her breath. It wasn’t that she was out of shape. She just wasn’t used to having her adrenaline so high for this long. She had survived a plane crash and was having to run an obstacle course within the same hour. The Chief had to give her credit for eventually coming around, and it made him regret deciding to take her back to Mud Island.
“Well, you can’t live in the past,” he said.
“What was that, Chief?” Allison asked in a low voice.
She was either too winded to be loud, or she really was starting to understand how bad things were for them. He didn’t have the heart to tell her, but the chances of them living long enough to get a boat were pretty slim. It just wasn’t in his nature not to try. On her own Allison had a zero percent chance of living. With him, the Chief figured they had about a ten percent chance at best.
“Nothing, Allison. You did good back there. You keep that up, and we might just clean out the whole town and move here.”
He gave her his big, broad smile and she visibly looked like she was ready to go the distance.
“Let’s get going and see if we can’t have you safe with Tom some time tonight.”
They stayed in the trees until they reached the end of the small park, and then they took a chance and crossed the middle of the street to get to a much larger park. It didn’t have much cover at all, but it gave them the advantage of being able to see what was ahead. By crossing the wide open area, they would be able to cover the distance of three city blocks more quickly. Plus, the park was so wide that any infected that saw them would be so far away that they could change course long before the infected could reach them.
The streets around the aquarium and the park were relatively clear considering what the Chief had seen so far in other cities, but the more distance they covered, the closer they were getting to the more heavily populated part of Charleston. There were more cars in the streets, more damage to buildings, and more human remains. Everything was starting to look like what he had expected it to be. Overgrown patches of grass and weeds choked the sidewalks, and the city looked as dead as it could be. He doubted that any survivor groups had managed to reclaim any part of the city.
The Chief could see something beyond the park that looked familiar, and he felt like he had come full circle. If he was right, it was a place he had seen before but from the other side. It was the Charleston cruise ship terminal where the Atlantic Spirit had been docked during the outbreak of the infection. If he was correct, the cable laying barge would be at anchor just up ahead and to the left down Laurens Street. It would be great to see it still there, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to get it under way and past Fort Sumter.
For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of thinking about his friends who had hopefully gone into the tunnel on Morris Island. He also hoped they had gone ahead to Fort Sumter and found that the new inhabitants of the fort hadn’t discovered the shelter. If that was true, the Chief didn’t doubt that they would find a way to liberate the fort as they had planned. With Kathy leading them, they could be a dangerous group of people.
When they reached the corner of Concord and Laurens Street, there was a nice little hiding spot among some trees where they were able to plan their next move. They were also able to see the docks at the end of Laurens Street, and the cable laying barge was still there.
“That was half of the plan right there, Allison.”
“What do you mean, Chief?”
“Well, if the cable laying barge was gone, all of this would have been for nothing,” he said.
Allison looked like she was thinking it over for a second, and she said, “I hate to tell you this, Chief, but we lost the plane, and getting that boat back to Mud Island is going to be a tough job if that jerk that shot us down is still out there.”
“I have a score to settle with him, Allison. If he’s still out there, I’m going to make him sorry for what he did. I liked that plane.”
Allison got a chance to see the side of the Chief she had been missing all along, because for a moment he had her going. He had fooled her by reacting the way most people would have, but when she looked at his face more closely she saw the faintest of grins at the corners of his mouth.
“Chief,” she said, “were you just pulling my leg?”
The grin spread a little wider.
“What makes you think that, Allison?”
“You know what I mean, Chief. You’re not the kind of person who would go looking for revenge.”
“You figured me out, Allison. The fact is, we can get another plane, and those guys in the boat will probably be crab food within a year. You ready to get moving again?”
She nodded, and he pointed at the huge paved areas south of Laurens Street. There were burned out trucks and cars everywhere, but he didn’t see any infected moving around between them.
“We’re going to cross that mess until we get past the cruise ship terminal. There were a lot of people here when the attacks started, and a lot of people tried to escape through here, but it wasn’t really a populated area. Most of the infected would have found a way to walk into the water by now, so it shouldn’t get bad until we reach Market Street.” He left off the part about expecting Market Street to be crowded with the infected.