The Infected Dead (Book 3): Die For Now by Bob Howard Page B

sources started checking in as shelters were occupied, but no one heard from this one."
    The closest door was logically the first one to check, so Kathy opened it. The interior was a theater that could seat about three or four hundred people. It wasn't what any of us had expected, so three of us looked at Bus for an explanation.
    He shrugged his shoulders. "Your guess is as good as mine," he said. "My guess would be that important people need a stage to stand on, and they need people to make speeches to."
    The realization hit me that this shelter would have some of the more sophisticated communications equipment if it was going to be some kind of command and control center. I squeezed past Kathy in the doorway and hurried down an aisle that had a slight downward slope. I passed rows of empty seats that had never been used until I came to the steps that led to the stage. A row of switches were on the wall by the steps, and I put them all to the on position.
    Lights came on around the room and curtains parted from the center of the stage outward. There was a podium set off to one side of a massive TV screen, and I was sure I would find the power button in the podium.
    Kathy, Tom, and Bus were all trailing behind me, but instead of coming up on the stage, they filed onto the first row as if they were going to sit in the front row of a movie.
    I went around behind the podium, and like a true computer geek, I was immediately in my element with the controls. I pressed the familiar button with a partial circle on it, and I could hear a hard drive spinning up. At the same time the huge monitor began to glow with a faint bluish tint. I was so excited that I didn't realize at first that the image forming on the screen was a panoramic view of Charleston harbor. The others stood transfixed by the beautiful sight of the Ravenel Bridge that connected the peninsular city of Charleston on the left to Mt. Pleasant on the right.  
    From the bridge, tourists would point at Fort Sumter and marvel at the sight of the first shots of the Civil War. From the ramparts of Fort Sumter, tourists would marvel at the beauty of the Arthur Ravenel Bridge. Even now there were probably people with binoculars on both sides eyeballing each other suspiciously.  
    The others all came up onto the stage and stood right in front of the screen. It was so big and so high resolution that it was like standing in front of a big plate glass window. I pointed over to the left side of the screen. It was partially blocked from view because the camera feeding this big screen must have been hidden somewhere along one of the walls. There was a piece of a wall in the foreground.
    "Isn't that where your cruise ship was docked, Kathy?" I said.
    "As a matter of fact, Eddie, it is." She stared at the spot remembering that frantic day when she had coordinated the efforts of a few people to help her put up a blockade along the dock that led to the cruise ship terminal. Then came the escape of the Atlantic Spirit from the terminal and out of the harbor to the open sea.
    Kathy remembered passing by Fort Sumter and how the infected dead were walking off of the walls that now stood directly above her. Thousands upon thousands of people had died on that ship and in the city, and she had survived because of sheer, stupid luck. She had met the Chief and Jean on the Atlantic Spirit, and then she had met Ed when they had been forced to abandon ship. Now she stood with Ed and two new friends looking at the place where it had all begun for her. The difference was that there were no signs of life. There were no cars or people moving on the bridge or at any of the familiar landmarks of the city she had called home.
    As a Charleston City Police Officer, Kathy had been along the waterfront areas to her left many times. She had crossed that bridge and visited the Patriots Point Maritime Museum where the World War II aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown, was parked. She stood there just soaking in the