Bus also needed something, but more than anything he wanted to be alone. He had known Allison for a long time, and it wasn’t surprising that he needed to grieve her loss privately. He said good night more quickly than usual and went to his room.
Olivia and Chase seemed a bit self-conscious about the fact that they were leaving the table with me and the Chief. All of our rooms were on one floor of the residential section, and they had been given separate rooms, but they clearly wanted to spend a little bit of time together. It looked like they were trying to find a way to get away from the rest of us without being too conspicuous. The Chief was picking up on it too.
“When’s the last time you two saw a movie and had a good laugh?” he asked.
They looked at each other almost as if they were checking to see if they had seen a movie together, and we were surprised to find that’s what it was. They had both gone to a free movie at the student center on the college campus. Neither was with a date, and they kept trying to sneak looks at each other. Needless to say, they kept catching each other in the act.
When they told us the movie had been a romantic comedy named The Wedding Planner, the Chief and I knew exactly which movie they would like. Every room had a big TV and an even bigger movie library, but besides the huge auditorium we had found when we had arrived at Fort Sumter, we found several smaller lounges and theaters that were meant for relaxing as a group. We took Olivia and Chase to one intimate little theater and picked out their movie. We figured Hitch would be just right for them.
The Chief and I drifted down the main corridor after getting the movie started, both feeling satisfied that we could make our new friends happy in a small way. The movie would be good therapy for them.
“This place is unbelievable,” said the Chief. “It must be ten times the size of Mud Island. Did you guys have any trouble getting in?”
“No, there was a golf cart in the tunnel, so we got here faster than expected. We knew you wouldn’t be back for a long time, so we went ahead and checked the place out. We didn’t think you would be gone as long as you were.”
I think my voice may have croaked just a bit when I remembered watching the plane crash into the harbor.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we didn’t even have the chance to explore the whole place yet. There’s so much more here than we need.”
The Chief said, “This place was obviously intended to be occupied by heads of state and a military detachment. There’s no place to hide a plane or a helicopter, so I think the designer of this shelter planned on it being a little more obvious than some of the shelters. Mud Island and Green Cavern are well hidden compared to this.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Chief. How did they design shelters that could keep salt water out so well? This shelter goes deeper than ours, and I think it’s a miracle that ours keeps the water out as well as it does.”
He laughed a little at the question, but not because it was a dumb question. I think he was just amused that I could find something else to think about under the circumstances. We had enjoyed many conversations like this one over the last year, and he had remarked once that he never got tired of hearing me pick apart a problem. I had explained it away as a gamer trait, but he had given me more credit than that. He said I had the mind of an engineer, and I should train it by digging into the library of textbooks we had in the shelter.
He said, “I had a ring that I lost at sea some years back. That thing is probably sitting on the bottom of the ocean without a barnacle or coral growing on it. Countless numbers of fish and bottom dwellers have been drawn to it because of the shine on the metal, but the jeweler that sold me the ring said nothing could ever scratch it. It was some kind of alloy, and as hard as I tried while I wore it, it never showed a single scratch. The walls of these shelters must be made of that alloy. Yes, you may be looking at nice wood paneling, but behind it is something really tough.”
We reached the turn that was more or less the central hub of the shelter, and I didn’t really care where I went just yet, so I followed the Chief when he turned toward the control room. He had taken a quick look at it when we came down from the surface, and he said there were a few things he had noticed that were different.
When we walked into the room, I expected him to go to the monitors to see if anything was happening on the surface. I also expected him to find a way to make radio contact with Mud Island.
“Don’t bother with the radio, Chief. It doesn’t even give you static to listen to.”
“I figured as much,” he said, “or you would have given me updates on Jean and Molly.”
I wasn’t as worried about Jean this time, so I had put the lack of radio contact out of my mind for the time being. I was more concerned that we were down to the one boat that the Chief had arrived in. Without it, we would be stuck on Fort Sumter. I went to the monitors while the Chief went to a different console. The lights were still on outside, and I brought up a camera view of the dock. The boat sat unmolested right where the Chief had left it.
“Ed, have you wondered at all about why this shelter is so exposed yet it has no boats or other means of escape?”
“You read my mind, Chief. I was just checking to see if that nice boat you brought back was still here.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“Right where you put it. Why’d you ask if I was thinking about that?”
I walked over to the console where he was sitting and looked at a display. I couldn’t believe it, but it was a real-time display showing Charleston harbor from a satellite view. It was dark for the most part, but there were small circles of light here and there. There was no way to know if they were people or just lights that were still connected to a power grid. Still, there was much more light than I had expected.
“Whoa…that’s not your typical camera view, is it?”
“No,” he said, “that’s part of the defense system for this place.” He moved the screen the same way I would have scrolled a map on Google or Apple Maps, but this time he was changing the view from a real satellite, and not from a computer app or an Internet page. Fort Sumter looked tiny and insignificant compared to the rest of the harbor, but it was blindingly bright in the middle of the surrounding water.
“How do you hide something?” asked the Chief.
I answered, “In plain sight.”
He looked pleased by my quick answer, but I had a question of my own.
“You said this is just part of the defense system. Where’s the rest?”
The Chief said, “I think this satellite was supposed to be the targeting system for something nasty. Too bad they didn’t finish it. Check this out.”
The Chief rotated the view from the satellite until it showed more of the entrance of the harbor. He zoomed out, and we were seeing the coastline going north. I was amazed as I watched him gradually bring Mud Island into the frame of the monitor, and then it began to zoom in. It was dark and remote, but something wasn’t quite as dark as it should be. There was a lantern glowing brightly on the southern tip of the island.
“How close can you get, Chief?”
“Pretty close, and if that’s what I think it is, I want to get that guy. That looks like the SOB that shot me down.”
“How can you tell at night, Chief?”
“I got a good look at the fifty caliber mounted on the bow. They aren’t state of the art, but if you know what you’re doing with one, you can target a slow moving seaplane. My problem with this guy is that he didn’t have a reason to shoot my plane out of the air, but I have a reason for shooting him out of the water.”
“Maybe you’ll get your chance one day Chief. Right now we have an advantage, though. He won’t expect you to come back after him. He thinks you’re dead, and we know where he is for now. Any idea how long that satellite will transmit?”
“I don’t think it’s got much chance of staying up there without a ground controller adjusting its altitude, but believe it or not, I don’t know for sure. I have some experience with drones, but not so much with satellites. As a matter of fact, changing its view probably already had an effect on its speed and position.”
“That reminds me,” said the Chief. “We need to work on our plan for moving the line laying barge to Mud Island, and if our friends are still between here and there, we should find a way to arm the tugboat.”
“We have more immediate problems, Chief. We only have one boat, and we need to get a tugboat running before we can arm it.”
The Chief started to say something but stopped short. I looked in the direction where he was looking and saw another light next to the first one. Then there were several lights all converging on the same spot. They were all gunboats of the same style, and they all had the familiar gun mounted on the bow.
"Do you think Jean and Molly are okay?" I asked.
The Chief laughed.
"Ed, I don't think Jean is ever going to open that door for someone, and I know she isn't going to go outside on a crazy mission again. I think she learned her lesson the last time."
He pointed at the screen and said, "Check this out. They're coming back down the coast."
The gunboats had formed a straight line and were moving south at a high speed. They apparently thought their old bow mounted guns were the baddest things on the water because they were traveling with running lights on. They would be easy targets for almost any South Carolinian raised around hunting rifles, but the fact that they weren't being shot at from shore was a testament to how few people were left alive along the coast. Once they were strung out in a line, we could see there were twelve of them. If there were three or four men in each boat, we were looking at about forty armed people.
"Chief, at the speed they must be traveling, they could reach the harbor before sunrise. What if they see the boat?"
The Chief was probably already thinking the same thing because his brow was furrowed, and he didn't answer at first.
"I hate to do it, Ed, but I have to leave with the boat. If they come into the harbor and decide to stop here, we'll be stuck in this shelter for a long time. They'll either sink our boat or take it. I can't picture them just leaving it here, nor do I want to take the chance that we could be that lucky."
"You don't have to go by yourself, Chief. You could take a couple of us with you. If you have to hide somewhere for a day or two, you would at least have someone watching your back."
He thought about it for a moment then said, "First let's shut off those stadium lights over the fort. Then I'm going to get Kathy. I know Tom could use her company right now, but she knows the city better than any of us."
"You're going to the city?"
My surprised look made the Chief grin. When he grinned, everyone around him got a sense of well-being. If everything wasn't all right, it would be soon. That's how he made people feel.
"That's where the tugboat is, Ed. Not to mention the armaments we need for the tug and the line laying barge."
I wasn't too happy with the idea, but we had to hide the boat, and the Chief and Kathy were the right people to send. Going back to the city would have been the last thing to have on my bucket list.
It didn't take long to find the power to the exterior lights since almost everything was labeled. As soon as I hit the switches the monitors went dark. I found the night vision mode, and they all turned bright green.
"Looks a lot different now than it did before," I said. "You should have seen what it looked like up there. That was a real army of crazies."
"You guys had a good idea getting the infection loose in the middle of them," said the Chief.
"It wasn't exactly a novel idea," I said. "Isn't that what happens sooner or later inside every big group like theirs?"
As soon as I said it, I had a sick feeling that I was describing an inevitable outcome for our group. It must have shown on my face because the Chief clamped a big hand down hard on my shoulder.
"Don't start thinking like that, Ed. The difference between them and us is simple. We care about each other, and we care enough not to risk the lives of anyone else in the group. Now we have two new members in our group, and we have to get them to drink the same Kool-Aid. They have to believe in the survival of the group, or they won't be able to stay with us."
"You mean they have to be willing to take care of it themselves if they ever get bitten, right? How do we get them to buy into that kind of group mentality, Chief? I think we're all wired that way. That's why we would do it. If they aren't wired the same as us, then they'll be just like that couple who tried to strand us on the road when we had to leave the plane."
"Exactly, Ed, but they didn't give us a chance to work with them. Tom gave us a chance, maybe because of Molly, but he still gave us a chance. Then he saw that if something happened to him, he would be leaving Molly in good hands. If we can get Olivia and Chase to work with us, to trust us, then maybe we can get them wired the same way as us. It's all about caring for each other, and if they feel like we care about them, then they'll become loyal to the group."
"Nice speech, Chief. Ever think about running for public office?"
The grin was a dead giveaway for the smart remark he was about to deliver.