War of the Undead Day 5

by Peter Meredith

  He stood on shaking legs and left the little cubby he’d been using and wandered back to the palatial offices of Dr. Stephan Kipling, where the rest of his crew were busy trying to get some sort of understanding of the situation. It wasn’t good. So many moves had been ordered from the White House without regard to what was happening on the ground that disaster was imminent.

  In the north, two National Guard regiments had pulled up stakes, leaving a third made up of reservists supported by the local militia bogged down, in a battle that had flared up out of nowhere. It was in danger of being overrun, at least according to the commander on the ground. Air surveillance had been pulled and so there was no way of knowing what they were facing.

  “He’s going to have to retreat,” said Axelrod, saying what they all knew. “Tell him to cross…what’s that river?”

  “The Mohawk, sir,” Colonel Taylor informed him. “It’s a perfect place to hold and it was their fallback position.”

  Axelrod didn’t want to know, he just couldn’t help himself. “Was?”

  “Yes, sir. There are eight bridges and four wide crossing points that have to be manned in force. They can’t do it alone, especially since both of their flanks will be hanging wide open.”

  The general cursed under his breath. “They have to retreat somewhere.”

  Taylor started shaking his head. “The official word from Washington…” Axelrod groaned and Taylor chuckled. “Yes, exactly. The official word is for them to disengage, head north to regroup and cut across the top of this big lake before swinging wide around and back south. They’re hoping that Utica isn’t compromised by then.”

  “They’re giving up on New York entirely,” someone remarked in a sneer.

  “So, what do we do?” Axelrod demanded. “With all these fancy computers and phones, we know the problems we face. Now, how do we fix them?”

  The officers exchanged looks, hoping to see ideas forming in someone else’s eyes. Shrugging was normally frowned upon; Axelrod scowled as his officers could come up with nothing. “There are a few things we could do,” Courtney Shaw announced. She had made her calls to the various governors and to the higher-ups in the Canadian government, all three of which had been so hungry for any sort of news that no one questioned her stated credentials. Since then she had been taking down names and frequencies, building a data base.

  “We still have ways we can make a difference. A lot of these little battle groups haven’t actually moved yet, especially the air units. Dulles and Reagan have planes everywhere. Even Richmond is filled. We still have assets in Pittsburgh, Shepherd Field and Niagara. They could be doing all sorts of bombings and stuff.”

  Axelrod smiled with more patience than he would have if the suggestion had come from one of his subordinates—at least she was giving him something to work with.

  “Have you forgotten the political officers?” he asked her. “All orders have to go through them. No unit commander can make any decision without them.”

  “And have you forgotten that they have no idea what they’re doing?” She had a little smirk going that seemed to drive the weariness from her home-town pretty face. “They have no concept of radio protocol at all. They have no trouble dropping names and blurting out information that we can use. Let me show you. What’s the smartest place we can bomb right now?”

  She expected Axelrod to point to some hot spot in one of the many battles that were going on at the moment, instead he turned a lap top around and pointed. “Here.”

  “Really? That’s the most important?” She shrugged before pulling the computer closer so she could read the coordinates. “What sort of bombs do you want to use?”

  Taylor told her, “I think six GBU-15s would suffice, but it’ll never happen. That’s right outside D.C.”

  “That’ll make it easier,” she told him. “You guys make some noise, talk or something, like we’re in some sort of office.” They started talking, mostly about nothing, and for some reason they kept their eyes semi-averted as if they didn’t want to be associated with something so crazy.

  Courtney cleared her throat and dialed, when the line was picked up, she immediately began, “This is Miz Rachel Long, the political officer attached to General Stone. Who is this? Captain Lumburg? Good. We have a priority one mission.” She covered the phone and whispered to the room, “They’re all priority one.”

  She listened for a moment. “Two planes I think. What kind of bombs was that again, General?”

  “GBU-15s,” Axelrod said, pitching his voice low, afraid he’d be recognized and ruin the whole thing.

  “GBU-15s,” she repeated. “He thinks it’ll only take six. Let me pass this on to Mr. Berry to make it official. Mr. Berry? This is Miz Long, we have a priority one airstrike at latitude: 38.968703, longitude: -77.179183.” There was a long pause as he worked out where that was. When he did, he began to question the order. “We are aware of where that is. There are rumors of diseased individuals who have gotten through the Zone and the President is trying to isolate Washington. Make it happen.” She turned off the phone with her thumb.

  “There’s no way this is going to work,” Taylor said, shaking his bull of a head.

  But even as he spoke, the order was being passed on to the airfield at Richmond, Virginia. It wasn’t questioned. Too many insane things were happening at once to question them all.

  Courtney had no idea how many bombs the “average” plane could carry. Whenever she saw an Air Force jet, they seemed to be sporting all sorts of missiles and such. In reality, the GBU-15 weighed two-thousand pounds apiece and even a sturdy platform like an F-15 Strike Eagle could only carry one at a time.

  A flight of six was hastily prepared and sent up. Flight time was less than half an hour and the lead jet released its ordnance two miles from the target just as the sun cracked the horizon. As far as missions went, it was a cakewalk. The bomb’s forward guidance section had to make only minor adjustments since it was practically impossible to miss such a broad, obvious target.

  The warhead struck the American Legion Memorial Bridge dead center in the middle of the Potomac River, sending up a fireball two-hundred yards into the air and shaking the walls of houses for miles around. Two more explosions followed in quick succession sending the main bridge west of the nation’s capital into the river. No more were needed.

  General Axelrod listened to the pilot chatter in disbelief and embarrassment that the US military could be so easily compromised. The moment passed. There was too much work to do. His first job was to shore up the western portion of the zone. Once more, he called General Thomas Cannan. “Cannan, I think there’s been a change of plans. Your route around the city has been compromised.”

  There was a moment of silence before Cannan came on. “What did you do?”

  “What I had to do.”

  2-5:49 a.m.

  Grafton, Massachusetts

  Men went mad in the face of the horde and Lieutenant Ross couldn’t blame them. A person could take only so much and what lay in front of the thin line guarding the shallow river was impossible for the mind to comprehend. Ross had been at this for what felt like days and he had finally reached the pinnacle of horror.

  The camera lights had been a beacon to the dead. They came, not in endless waves, but in a storm, converging from every angle. The fight grew quick and hot. Soon everything was in short supply and the breakthrough Ross had worked so hard to stop was on the verge of happening.

  He threw in his meager reserve platoon, screaming for his troops to hold their ground.

  Twenty-two men were not enough and he could see his company wavering. It was then that the battalion mortars started thumping. Every man on the thirty-mile long line prayed they’d come down into the horde in front of them. There just weren’t that many mortars. Still, the explosions turned the heads of the dead and relieved the pressure in key areas that were close to falling.

  Echo Company’s respite lasted only minutes, then the surge swept down the far
bank. Ross grabbed the first man in reach. “Find the battalion commander! Tell him that we’ll be out of ammo in five minutes! We need ammo and we need more men. Go!” He shoved the man up the hill behind them and took his place.

  After four minutes, Ross’ M4 felt like it had been pulled from a fire and all around him brass glittered in the morning light. Once more, they were down to it and he started craning his head back upstream, his pleading eyes looking for help.

  “I’m out!” someone yelled, fear pitching his voice so high that he sounded like a rooster crowing. The man got up and started to back away from the line. He had his excuse to run away. How could he fight without bullets?

  Ross was on him in a flash and threw him back to the bank of the river. It was cruel, but he knew that all it would take was for one person to run and then his entire company would crumble. If they faltered, the line would fall, and Boston would be next. “We all stay, damn it! We fight together as one.”

  For how much longer? he wondered, throwing some ammo toward the man. He had maybe ten rounds left, himself. There was no getting around the fact that they couldn’t hold without help, and he was just looking for one of his staff sergeants to discuss some sort of orderly retreat when the runner came sprinting back, pointing over his shoulder.

  Both the brigade commander and his executive officer had been arrested, but the order had gone out already and the 3rd Battalion was streaming forward in an uneven line. Unfortunately, they had been called on too many times to stand alone and when they saw what they were facing, the line wavered.

  A colonel tried to scream them forward, but half broke and ran and the other half came forward skittishly, infecting the men on the river with a fever to take off. “They’ll be back!” Ross yelled out the only encouragement he could think of. The saving grace came in the form of the heavy weapons company which pushed through to the front. Three M240 teams threw themselves down right on the little slope above Echo Company. The two-man crews set up their medium caliber machine guns in seconds and began working a tremendous slaughter among the undead.

  As the guns fired only a couple of feet overhead, Ross scrambled around, grabbing the shaken reserves, and interspersing them among his men. “Spread the ammo around. No hoarding!”

  The machine guns could only give his men a five-minute break and when the river directly in front of Echo Company was cleared, the machine gun teams popped up and moved on.

  In the growing light, Ross could see that what had once been thirty yards of winding grey water, was now a hideous carpet of mutilated bodies five deep. Running in and around the corpses was a black sludge: a toxic stew of zombie blood and diseased body parts, mixed with just enough water to move it down stream.

  Beyond the river, as far as the eye could see, was the army of undead. The shock of the mortars and machine guns seemed to have thrown them into a confused state. And when the sun broached the horizon, they fell back, repulsed by the searing light. This was only temporary. The mortars were already running out of munitions and the machine guns couldn’t last much longer.

  Ross felt naked without the guns and even with the reserves, he was still without enough ammo to hold against any real attack. He had no choice but to tell his people to hide in the scrub, “And pray,” he added.

  His men had been praying for days already but the words must have fallen on deaf ears. There were so many tens of thousands of zombies that the pressure from the rear pushed the entire mass forward. A huge grey wall surged over everything in its path, houses were demolished and trees were bent over until their trunks snapped or their roots exploded out of the ground.

  Stunned and sickened, Ross stared at horde through binoculars. “We’re not going to make it.” In the face of the horror advancing on him retreat was the only option, but to where? With the reserves thrown in, they had no true fallback position and without one, the retreat would turn into a rout and there was no telling how far they would run.

  Something had to be figured out or someone greater than himself had to see this. Once more he started looking around for the nearest staff sergeant, only to realize the man had run away sometime in the last hour. Ross’ frustration mounted to a Vesuvian level and when he saw a soldier beginning to creep away, he erupted.

  “Get back on the line, you fucking pussy!” he seethed.

  The venom in his voice stopped the soldier, who crouched in the undergrowth. “I-I was just going t-to use the bathroom,” the person whispered.

  “There’s a tree right next to you, piss on that.”

  “I-I can’t.” The answer was unbelievable to Ross and before he knew it, his rage got the better of him. He charged over and was about to throw the person down the bank and into the black bog when he realized that it was a girl he had by the shoulders, his nails digging into her coat and crushing down on her flesh.

  She was a tiny thing in an over-sized hunting coat and the dark braids running along either side of her chin made her look shockingly young. She’s not even seventeen, he thought and then quite forgot himself and quickly apologized—had she been a man, that would have never happened.

  “Go if you need to,” he added, thinking she was just making an excuse to run away.

  Her name was Rita McCormick and she was only sixteen and felt like a terribly young and useless sixteen just then. “I do…and I’m coming back. I just can’t, you know, with so many men around. I wasn’t expecting it to be like this.”

  He was about to let her go when he realized something: if she needed privacy, she’d be halfway to the battalion headquarters by the time she found any. “Do what you have to do, but when you’re done, run over to the HQ and tell whoever’s in charge that I need to talk to them. We need to know where we’re falling back to from here.”

  She nodded and was gone in a swirl of camouflage and braids. When he turned back to the river, he caught one of the men grinning at him. “Why didn’t you just ask her out?”

  “It’s too late now,” another whispered. “You’re never going to see her again.” But he was wrong.

  Rita was pluckier than she seemed and did as she was told. Because of her lack of understanding concerning military procedures, she marched up to a circle of Humvees and looked for the oldest person among the men squatting over the maps and arguing into bulky sat-phones. Breathlessly, she gave the message and then asked for a bathroom.

  “Was it Sergeant Ross?” the oldest of them asked. “Tell him he’s in charge of 1st battalion now. Everyone at brigade’s been arrested. I’m moving up and none of the company commanders have shown me dick in the way of initiative. Tell him it’s him or no one.” He reached into his pocket and fished out a little silver leaf and gave it to her.

  “And tell him we’re not falling back. This is it. The new governor is demanding that we make a stand.” The colonel turned and spat.

  Rita still had the echos of moans playing in her ears. “Can we say no to him?”

  The colonel smiled without any humor. “Not unless we want a quick trip to the firing squad.” She swayed at this, looking like she was about pass out. She was a baby in his eyes.“Here’s what I want you to do, give Ross the message and then disappear. I’d go north if I was you. Forget about Boston and whatever you have there. Just go straight north.”

  Rita didn’t want to run; it seemed beneath her. Ross, on the other hand, wanted to run the moment he accepted the new insignia and the orders from the colonel. He looked down at the silver leaf like a condemned man. The orders were the equivalent of a death sentence.

  3-5:41 a.m.

  The Walton Facility

  The ungodly pain in Eng’s head had eclipsed the pain of his gunshot wounds an hour before and as the sun came up, the hideous light had finally drove him down out of the tree. He no longer cared about being attacked by the demon children. They were little nothings compared to him now. What he wanted…no needed, was something or someone to vent his anger on.

  He was sure that if someone came by he would have lost him
self in an orgy of hate and fresh blood and would have forgotten all about who Lieutenant Eng was. But with no other target, his hate turned inward and hung on the memory of Dr. Lee.

  “She did this to me,” he snarled, pushing away one of the little half-creatures that had rushed up. It mewled petulantly when it smelled him and he turned aside to kick it.

  Jaimee Lynn watched without emotion or comment. She too held a special hate in her black heart for Dr. Lee, but her hunger was beginning to override even that. “We’s gonna git that truck, now? Hey, Mister Chinaman, wait up.”

  He didn’t wait. He had long legs compared to her and he was striding off, heading for what was left of the hospital. All that time in the tree, he had kept his main goal squarely in the forefront of his mind. If he was going to get his cure, he needed to keep his mind functioning and there was only one way to do that. He had to get drugs—opiates to be precise.

  “Ain’t no truck in there, Mister Chinaman,” Jaimee Lynn remarked crossly. Her memory of two hours before was fairly patchy, but she was pretty certain he had mentioned a truck. She liked the idea of riding in a truck. It made her think of something…something important. That something was just out of reach when they reached the building and she caught a familiar scent.

  It was an odd mixture of sour sweat and old Walmart dungarees. Anyone else would have called it unpleasant; it reminded Jaimee Lynn of home. “My daidy. Wus he here? Hey, Mister Chinaman, wus my daidy here?”

  Eng didn’t answer. He was close to turning now. A filthy film had covered his eyes, and everything was shrouded in darkness and hate. The girl was a nuisance, easily ignored. The blood craving was full upon him and he even slowed his quick steps as the scent of John Burke’s cold corpse struck him. The only thing he found unpleasant about the smell was the stench of zombies that hung over it like a cloud.