The Infected Dead (Book 2): Survive For Now by Bob Howard

bloated from their extended stay in the water, and we watched in sick fascination as a body came loose from the net and started drifting toward the surface. When it reached the top of the net, the current caught it and carried over the net and into the darkness beyond.
    “You can’t see it,” said the Chief, “but it looked like there was a second net about twenty to forty yards past the first one.”
    “What will this mean to us?” I asked. “As long as we stay out of the water we should be okay, right?”
    “For now it’s not a problem,” said the Chief, “but if the sandbar gets big enough to stop the flow of water through the moat, it will eventually all collapse to the bottom. How many tons of wet bodies do you figure those nets are holding?” he asked the group.
    Kathy was the first to understand why that mattered. “Chief, were you able to see the conduits that run from Mud Island to the mainland?” she asked.
    The Chief ran the video of the nets backward and then froze the picture. He said, “Look closely right across the middle of the net.” He put his finger up to the TV screen at the area he wanted us to look at. There appeared to be a straight line under all of the bodies.
    “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
    He answered, “If you think that might be a big pipe that crosses the moat, then it’s what you think it is. I think your uncle may have put up the nets to protect the pipes, but he couldn’t have guessed the nets would become dangerous if they got too heavy.”
    “Let me see if I understand you, Chief,” said Tom. “If the nets hadn’t been there, and the sandbar completely stopped the flow of water, the pipes would probably have become buried in mud over time. That would have been a good thing.”
    Kathy picked up the thought from there, “But the nets have been catching hundreds of the infected for months. If the water goes down too fast, the weight of all those bodies could crush the pipes that carry power to the island. We would have to start tapping our fuel reserves.”
    “How long can we live off of those fuel reserves, Chief?” asked Jean.
    The Chief had lived and worked on ships for a long time, and he was used to calculating fuel needs without a calculator. One hand went to his beard. That was his body language that meant he was thinking something through. It only took a couple of minutes before he answered.
    “If we begin a power consumption plan as soon as the landline fails, we could probably stretch it out for a couple of years. Hot meals could be decreased to one per day, and leftovers could be eaten cold. Hot showers can be on a schedule rather than every night the way we do it now.”
    I said, “We always knew that the power might fail just because of reactors going off line and hydroelectric plants needing repairs. It was just a matter of time.”
    “Any chance we can prolong the inevitable?” asked Kathy.
    “What have you got in mind?” asked the Chief. “I don’t think we can get a dredge and bring it here if that’s what you’re thinking. Dredges are usually not able to move under their own power. They get pushed and pulled into place by a tugboat. Besides, we can’t patch that hole in the jetty. Those rocks are too heavy.”
    “I wonder how the hole got there in the first place,” I said.
    “Something must have rammed it,” said the Chief. “Whatever it was, after it hit the jetty and knocked some rocks out of place, it must’ve gotten free and went back to open water around the jetty. It may have even sunk in deeper water. Those rocks would punch a pretty big hole in most ships. The point is that we have a hole in the jetty, and we can’t do anything about it no matter how got there. Any other ideas?”

We all looked at each other helplessly, but no one had anything to contribute. The Chief said, “At the present rate of sand build up, we could begin to see a drop in the water level within a month. After that it will move faster