Chapter 32
First Bahama Contact
I saw the blinds on the right hand side window move and Michael and I moved back like I promised. The blinds fell back down and after a short wait the front door opened. An adorable but dirty young lady, somewhere between six and ten years old if I had to guess, could be seen in the doorway. Olivia said something to her and the girl replied and then started crying and hugging Olivia. I took this a good sign.
“Mark and Michael do you want to meet my new friend?
“Of course we do.” I answered for the both of us.
Michael and I walked slowly towards Olivia and the young girl, who by now was hiding shyly behind her legs.
“Mark and Michael I would like to introduce you to Amanda. Her friends call her Mandy. Mandy these two are some of my bestest friends.”
“Hello.” Said a very shy girl still hiding behind Olivia.
“Mandy I need you to tell Mark and Michael where your Uncle Billy went so they can go look for him while the two of us take care of your Aunt Maddie. Can you do that for me?”
“Sure Miss Olivia. Uncle Billy said he was going to the base doctor to get medicine. He left this morning.”
“Very good Mandy. Now run along boys. It is time for us girls to get to work. By the way Mandy what is your favorite vegetable.”
“I like pickles.”
“Alright, not really a vegetable but it will work. When you two get back our super secret password to let you in to the house will be Pickles.”
I saluted Olivia and said with a straight face. “Yes ma’am, password is pickles. Permission to go explore and find Uncle Billy.”
The little giggle that came from Mandy was worth me looking like a fool.
“Oh quit joking around and go already.”
Michael and I both looked at each other and without any words being said we smartly turned and put our rifles on our shoulders and started marching off.
“Hup two three four, Hup two three four.”
As we marched away a little voice could be heard “Your friends are silly Nurse Olivia.” “I know but they are also lots of fun. Now let’s go check on your Aunt Maddie.”
“Psst Mark, where are we headed?”
“Well I have a sneaky suspicion that the large building in the distance with a big red medical cross on it is the base hospital. We are going to head over there and look for Uncle Billy while trying to stay safe. We clear out anything between here and there and then head on back.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Our little duo did precisely that. I estimated that the hospital was close to 800 meters away. As we walk towards the building we stop and kill around six more zombies that are “stuck” and were not able to get to the dock. Four of them were behind chain link fences. They seemed to be struggling to get out of a corner.
They would travel along the fence about ten meters in one direction and realize that they were getting farther away from the noise that was attracting them, which happened to be us, and then return the way they came until they reached the corner of the fence and then travel about five to ten meters the other way. When they realized once again they were getting farther away they would turn back around again. This lack of problem solving actually made me feel pretty good. It seems that either these zombies were dumber than I thought or maybe it was just little group of four.
Michael and I quickly put them down with silenced head shots and continue on. The next two zombies we ran into were actually caught in concertina wire. They would die on their own soon from blood loss. The closer we got to them the more they would struggle. The more they struggled the greater the concertina wire damaged them and cut them up. We put the two struggling zombies out of their misery and move on. While the barb wire was an effective deterrent to the zombies I foresaw a problem in the near future when we would have to try and remove the bodies from the same wire to deal with the stink and keep disease vectors low. So while it was effective it was also flawed for long term use.
We approach the hospital and see several relatively fresh corpses and a multitude of spent brass. These definitely could have come from Uncle Billy. Let’s see add up the number of corpses and we get 12. Alright Uncle Billy is a little bit of a Badass. That means that there is an actual chance of him being alive. Also we are going to have to be careful that he doesn’t shoot us first and ask questions later.
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“Michael we need to step up our search and be careful. I don’t want to have survived this whole time and then get shot by mistake.”
“I understand. Should we just call out? I mean we have cleared a huge portion of zombies off this base. Any that we still attract y shouting we should be able to handle. That will give this Billy guy a heads up and we should be safer.”
“Not a bad idea. Let’s give it a try.”
As we approach the entrance to the hospital we both begin to call out. Billy, we are looking for Billy. Don’t shoot we just want to help. We continue this for about five minutes as we slowly clear the bottom floor of the hospital. Soon enough we actually hear a reply.
“In here. I am trapped in here.”
I rush over the door that the voice is coming from. I line up on one side of the door and Michael lines up across from me.
“Billy is that you?”
“I assume you met Maddie and Mandy. They are the only ones who call me Billy. I am trapped under a shelf and don’t have enough strength to lift it myself.”
I cautiously open the door and peer inside. It looks just like Billy said. There is one person moving, but they are trapped and being crushed under several shelves of medical supplies.
“What on earth happened here?”
I signal Michael that everything is okay and start to move things with his help off of the trapped man underneath.
“Man am I glad to meet the two of you. I was afraid this was the end of me and what a stupid way to go. Are Maddie and Mandy ok?”
“We left our nurse with them so they should be fine. We got the envious job of heading out to look for you. By the way my name is Mark and this is Michael.”
“Like I said before I am glad to meet you both.”
As we were clearing the debris to free him Billy told us his story and gave us a little background on the situation of Andros Island. It seems that since there was a decent airport on the base that Andros Island became a secondary evacuation point for several of the nearby islands. This swelled the population and caused things to spiral out of control once more and more people started to turn into zombies from the virus. It seemed that for some reason that more people survived the transition into zombiehood here in the islands than on the mainland. Where we had between two or three for every ten people turn into a zombie, the island was experience a rate of four or five conversions out of every ten people. Well that explained the abnormal numbers of zombies we had been seeing.
Billy was an honest to goodness STO, Special Tactics Officer. He was here visiting his brother and his family along with his girlfriend Maddie. They were on a little mini vacation from his base in Florida and had gotten trapped here on the island during the mess. Mandy’s folks did not survive virus, but the little girl herself was an immune. Both Maddie and Billy came down with a mild version but were also okay. Maddie however had cut her leg deeply a few days ago scavenging for supplies and the resultant injury had become infected. Billy had made his way to the hospital today for antibiotics and anything else that they might need from the medical supplies.
After dealing with the zombies outside he had made his way into the hospital where unfortunately his gun jammed. Ducking into this supply room he tried to fortify the door before trying to clear the jammed bullet. Murphy had come calling at that point and the set of shelves and supplies had come crashing down. He was pretty sure they knocked him out for a while, because the next thing he remembers after falling to the floor with tons of supplies on him was zombies pounding on the door. He figured he was a goner when suddenly the zombies left. The strangest thing was he swore he could hear music playing as they left and for a good thirty minutes after that.
Michael and I laughed at that point and filled him in on our dock clearing strategy with noise and rifles. He was relieved that the music he heard was not the result of head trauma. It was at this point of his story that we finally moved enough things to get him free from the debris. Billy quickly grabbed his rifle and cleared the offending jammed round. The three of us then continued on his original mission and started towards the pharmacy to pick up and gather supplies. Once we reached the pharmacy it dawned on me that none of us knew what exactly Maddie needed other than some antibiotics for an infection.
I pulled out the walkie-talkie and contacted Olivia for advice.
“Bring some amoxicillin and some Keflex just in case. If possible I would also like you to bring lots of fresh bandages, gloves, and even an IV and saline solution if you can find it. Maddie is very dehydrated.”
“All right, we should be back in a little less than half an hour. Make sure that cute girl is ready to open the door when she hears the password.”
“Gentleman, why don’t we finish our little shopping trip and then escort Billy back home. We still need to finish clearing some buildings so we can bring everyone else onto the base in relative safety.”
We gathered up the medical shopping list and just over twenty minutes later we arrive back at the house that the girls were in. I solemnly walk up to the door and knock three times very loudly.
I could hear a little giggle from inside. “What’s the secret password?”
“The secret password is PICKLES.”
“You remembered.”
With that announcement the door opened and a little angel flung herself at her Uncle.
“Uncle Billy you are ok. I was so worried. I met a real nurse and she helped Aunt Maddie, and I found out I am a secret princess of the island, and I made the password pickles, and ….”
Once she started this little girl just did not stop. What happened to the shy little girl who was so quiet and adorable just an hour ago? This chatterbox seemed like a completely different person. Billy was obviously used to this though as he weathered her onslaught of storytelling with appropriate comments and somehow managed to invite us in at the same time.
Once inside I saw Olivia standing behind a couch where a tired and weary looking lady in her twenties was lying down. This must be Aunt Maddie. Introductions were soon given and I soon had to explain to an almost crying little girl that we would be back very soon, but we had to leave right now to finish our job. She stopped tearing up when I explained that there were even more people coming and soon she would have some friends her own age to play with. After she heard this that little girls basically pushed the three of us out the door and told us to hurry, because she needed new friends so we needed to be fast okay?