The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now Read Online Free Page A

River but further south than Conway. If things had gone as we expected, the bridge over the Waccamaw River where it passed through Georgetown, South Carolina was in the water rather than above it. The mudflats around that bridge were probably packed full of infected dead.
    Tom continued without noticing that each of us had retreated into private memories of our attempt to rejoin civilization by flying down to the Naval Weapons Station in Goose Creek. On our way back from there, we had to leave the plane parked at a dock a few miles south of Georgetown because a bullet had clipped a hose in the engine compartment.
    The police car Tom was following braked to a hard stop at the bottom of a boat ramp, something else we were familiar with because we had two boats and a seaplane. That wasn’t something everybody could say these days. It also seemed like everywhere we went, we wound up at a dock or a boat landing.
    Tom said he expected to see boat owners at the bottom of the ramp, but all of the boats were either military or manned by the police, and there were a lot of them. There was also some serious firepower mounted on the bows of the military boats. The officer he had followed from the crowded highway came over to his window in a rush and told him they had to hurry. He told Tom to leave their luggage in the car.
    They had listened to the officer because they didn’t know what else to do, but also because of his sense of urgency. When they got out of the car, Tom saw that the officer kept glancing upward. He followed the officer’s eyes and saw that they had a good view of the bridge over the Waccamaw River.
    What he saw made him feel a chill. The bridge was bathed in the bright lights on poles, but there were also hundreds of cars sitting still with their headlights on. Shadows were rushing in and out between the cars, and everything was moving. People seemed to be attacking each other, and the attacks were coming from the other side of the river moving rapidly toward the spot where Tom had pulled out of traffic only a few moments ago. He took Molly’s hand and started to follow the officer to the boats. Like everyone else, he kept glancing up toward the chaos that was moving like a wave from car to car.
    As the wave of infected dead moved along the stopped cars, people would try to get out and run, but there were so many infected already mixed in with the living that it was too late to escape. The mob of attacking infected dead and the helpless victims appeared to be moving in a swirling motion, and eventually people began to jump from the bridge. Many of them fell with their attackers still hanging on by their teeth.
    The police officers and soldiers in the boats couldn’t do anything to help. Part of the bridge was still over solid land, and it was more merciful than landing in the water because the fall would either kill the people trying to escape, or it would at least knock them unconscious. As much as the police and soldiers wanted to help, they knew that to do so would place everyone in their boats at risk. No one falling was likely to be unbitten, and even if they weren’t, there was no way to sort them from the infected who fell with them, at least not until they hit the ground. The infected would be the first to rise from the ground, and if the shocked people on the boat landing waited long enough, they would see the victims begin to push themselves into a standing position, too.
    Tom scooped Molly into his arms and ran with the police officer to the last of the boats that were casting off from the ramp. It looked to him to be about ten or twelve boats, and each was carrying six or seven heavily armed men and women in uniform. There were no other civilians who had made it to the boats, and Tom felt guilty, but he had to keep his daughter safe. He would deal with the guilt later if he had to deal with it at all.
    He handed Molly up to another officer in the boat and then climbed aboard himself. Tom said he was