“I can’t,” he said, his eyes dropping away, but not before she saw the weak cowardice in them. “What if you’re wrong? What if…Look, if I stop those missiles, they don’t come back. If I stop them now, we lose them forever, and what if we need them later? What if tomorrow is even worse? Do you understand? What’s done is done.”
2-12:03 a.m.
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
Sergeant Tony Sindt had been the gunner for an M1A2 Abrams; a glorious position, probably the best job in the army. There was nothing more exciting, more wonderful, more manly than firing that gun and blasting targets into smithereens. And the grape shot he had been using against the zekes? Like the world’s best video game.
While in the tank, he had been impervious to the dead, and that included their infection. He could honestly say that the battle had been fun for him right up until the miserable Air Force pukes had started raining missiles down on their own side. One moment he was happily blasting the zekes, and the next he was upside down, blood pouring down his face, and sucking in smoke from a fire raging in the engine compartment. Had it not been for the automatic halon system kicking in, flooding the cabin with a mixture of carbon dioxide and bromine, he would’ve either burned up or blown up.
He was the only one to make it out of the tank alive and then, only partially alive. He was concussed, lacerated in three different spots, broken in two others: a wrist and his shin bone, and was bleeding like a spigot. There was no use complaining, however. The entire line was in such shambles that they were forced to retreat. Because he was wounded, he could have hitched a ride on one of the remaining tanks or Bradleys; he chose to limp in pain instead.
Everyone knew there’d be more missiles coming at them, and no one wanted to be anywhere near an Abrams if they could help it.
What artillery was left sent smoke rounds screaming down, and in the confusion, the 3rd ID fell back a little over a mile to a dinky place called Green Spring, where the hot place to hang out on a Saturday night was the local bowling alley. They held out for an hour and then the fucking Air Force came back in the form of great lumbering B52s that looked like black dragons. At least half the pilots risked a court martial and death by firing squad by dropping their bomb loads three seconds too late. The other half showed all the backbone of a snake and dropped right on their heads.
Untold thousands of bombs shattered the line and turned the sleepy little hamlet into a hell on earth. Sindt had never seen such misery and, in a rage, he screamed every obscenity, and every combination of obscenities he knew at the retreating planes.
The broken, dazed survivors of the carpet bombing fell back again, leaving behind those too wounded to walk. Sindt’s heart tore itself to pieces as he heard men beg to be killed before the zombies came again.
Only a bloody, ragged portion of the 3rd ID made it to the next line, and only the sudden arrival of the Kentucky Brigade saved them from being overrun as the zekes poured through the smoking ruins and came on again. Shippensburg couldn’t be held, even with the fresh reserves. More bombs came and, even though the men dug deep, the casualties mounted once again. The division was now a mob. Without orders, it retreated in a jumble to another of the pissant burgs, where they fell into positions that had been dug hours before.
They couldn’t go on much longer. Like everyone else, Tony Sindt fought the zekes, but always with an eye cast upwards. He fired his M4 until he was numb and mostly deaf, and as he did, he prayed with all his might. And for a while, it seemed that his prayers had been answered. No more planes came and once more the soldiers battled with the courage and tenacity they were known for—but in reality, his prayers hadn’t been answered. Sindt had been cursed instead. The flying fucks had backed off for a reason.
“We have incoming nukes,” a pallid, jittery major said, coming down the line. “Every tenth man will stay and fight so the rest can escape.” That was all the explanation he had time for and, without ceremony, he began to count off the men, one through ten. The tenth man always seemed to sink in on himself, while the rest took off at a jog heading south.
“Ten,” the major said, tapping Sergeant Sindt on the top of his helmet.
“Yes sir,” Sindt said, trying to stand. The major saw his injuries and wavered in indecision. It was only for a second; however, and then he was counting off the next group.
Sindt watched the others around him go. They were strangers to him and at the same time beloved comrades. “Sorry,” some told him before running off into the darkness. A few wished him good luck, which he found laughable. What sort of luck would help against a fucking nuclear bomb?
“This fucking sucks,” he said, miserably. He had been afraid before, but at least he’d had a chance then. Now he would just die. Unbelievably, he found himself crying. “Shit. Fuck.”
The zekes were lurching and stumbling toward the thin line. They came in a broken wave; many had stopped to feast on the banquet provided by the Air Force. Sindt only saw them as shadows until they were up close and their full horror was revealed. They were demons. Their eyes shone with unholy light. Their white teeth gleamed in black mouths. They came for Sindt with outstretched claws, and he killed them one after another without any hope. He killed them with stiff movements, afraid that every moment would be his last.
Twenty-two minutes went by this way before the battlefield was lit by the first of the nuclear bombs.
It was something of a shock that it went off miles behind him. Still the light was a brilliant strobe that displayed the horde to its fullest; it was uncountable. The monsters went on, rank after rank, each of them staring fixedly at the great night sun that had erupted into being. Slowly, Sindt turned to look back and as he did, a second sun appeared and a third and a fourth. Despite their brilliance, they seemed far away. Seven or eight miles, at least.
“They didn’t make it,” he whispered, realizing that the 3rd Infantry Division was somewhere beneath those mountainous balls of fire. The counting hadn’t mattered. None of it had. All the fighting, and the death, and the pain had been for nothing.
In the light of the new suns, he could see the earth lifting and moving like water…like a tidal wave. It was coming toward him and would sweep him under. “Fuck that,” he said before turning the M4 around and pulling the trigger one last time.
3-12:08 a.m.
New Rochelle, New York
The stairwell was cold and quiet. “I cun smell y’all, Doctor Lee.” Behind the words was a faint and fleeting echo of bare feet, slapping on cement. The little demon was coming at a run.
“I have a gun!” Thuy cried. The sound died away. “And I’ll use it if I have to. But…but I don’t want to, Jaimee Lynn. I w-want to be friends. I want you and me to be on the same side.”
There was a dark pause as Jaimee Lynn tried to figure out what that meant. “Y’all wanna be like that there Chinaman? Y’all want me to bite y’all just a little?”
“No. I just want to be on the same side. Bombs are coming, Jaimee Lynn. The Air Force is coming to kill both of us. You know what bombs are, don’t you?”
She had seen the effect of bombs on the zombies; they turned the monsters to black goo. “Yeah, I knows ‘bout bombs. Ever-body does. But how do I knows y’all tellin’ the truth? Y’all lied to me before.”
“And I’m sorry about that. It was wrong to lie, and to show that you can trust me, I’ll put down my gun and come down there and talk face to face. You’re going to want to attack me, but don’t. I’m the only one who can save you. I’m working on a cure, Jaimee Lynn. I can make you like you were before. Do you want that?”
Jaimee Lynn’s memory of her life before was sketchy, filled with fleeting glimpses of her father and their grubby little rented house in Arkansas. She remembered laughing but didn’t know what that was about, except it meant happiness.
She told Thuy, “I reckon so.” This was about the best Thuy thought she was going to get. Slowly, she came down three floors until she and Jaimee Lynn were only seven
steps apart. I can still run, the foolish, irrational part of her mind whispered. She could run, but it wouldn’t save her. It would only postpone her death by a few minutes. No, if she wanted to live it would be going through Jaimee Lynn.
“I’m unarmed.” Thuy lifted her arms and spun slowly. “The bombs really are coming. That’s the truth. And I really will do everything I can to save you and to make you the way you were before. Do you believe me?”
“I guess so.” But she also wanted to eat Dr. Lee very, very badly. Her stomach growled in agreement. And really was it her fault? Dr. Lee somehow retained a deliciously beautiful quality even after so many days of fighting. Unlike everyone else, her hair was still silky and black, her soft flesh a golden tan, her lips full and large.
A shiver of anticipation ran up Jaimee Lynn’s back. Bombs were something of a distant threat. Her hunger was here and now.
Thuy saw the fiendish desire plainly. Still, she had no choice but to go on with her spur of the moment plan. “If you want to be saved, you’re going to need to clear out the zombies. We need a straight path to the SUV out front. Can you do that, Jaimee Lynn? Because I won’t come down until the zombies are away from here.”
That was fine with Jaimee Lynn. I won’t have to share, went through her mind and she had to fight a smile. “I cun do that, no problem. Y’all wait right here.”
Thuy did not wait; there was no time. As quietly as she could, she followed Jaimee Lynn to the first floor. It was not easy since there was a pile of trash filling the lowest part of the stairwell. Jaimee Lynn went through it as only a fearless kid would, surfing across it without a care. Thuy went through it as if she were trying to cross a landfill. Midway across the imperfectly balanced heap, she was pleasantly surprised to see a set of golf clubs. Whether it was the same set she had taken a 9-iron from earlier, she didn’t know. She had lost the club at some point and now replaced it with a 1-wood with a huge ball of a head and added a smaller putter.
Thuy alternated between holding the clubs like a Spanish fencer and an Alpine skier. Either way made her feel absurd.
At the bottom, she felt the irresistible urge to check her watch: Twenty-three minutes left. There was no time for fear. Boldly, she stepped out into the main lobby and saw Jaimee Lynn and three of the other children in front of the building, pushing around zombies far larger than they were.
“Git y’all’s stupid heads outta here!” Jaimee bawled. “Go on! Git!” She treated them like cattle, smacking and kicking them. Once a few started away, the rest followed mindlessly. Thuy thought she was alone in the lobby and started to hurry toward the elevators, thinking she could pry back the doors and call to Katherine and Anna, but she was stopped short as another of the little creatures came sniffing around the corner. It was naked, blackened, mangled and hideous.
Thuy hefted the 1-wood in one hand, holding it high above her head, while holding the putter out in front of her. “Stay back!” Thuy ordered. “Jaimee Lynn’s in charge and she said I wasn’t to be touched. You have to do what she says.”
“I hungee,” the thing mewled, coming closer.
“That doesn’t matter. Rules are rules.”
It didn’t care about rules and advanced on Thuy, who didn’t know what to do. If she smacked the beast on the head, what would Jaimee Lynn say? And she wasn’t about to offer a tasty morsel of her flesh to appease the thing either. The only thing she could think to do was jab the putter at the child to keep it at bay. It was faster and stronger than Thuy could have imagined, and it snatched the club from her hands and threw it aside, nearly hitting another of the children.
Now there were two of them. Thuy backed to the elevator and swung the 1-wood in wide arcs, wuffing the air. “Get back! Jaimee Lynn and I have a deal. We’re going to save you guys. Okay?” It wasn’t okay at all. The children’s bellies were empty sacks that gnawed their insides painfully. They kept getting closer and Thuy was forced to give one of them a hearty smack over the head with the club.
The force of the blow drove the little thing to its knees, dented its cranium, and snapped the head off the club. It suddenly felt light and useless. She jabbed it as she had the putter and, as before, the little thing grabbed the broken end. Thuy held on tighter this time and yanked it back, just as a gunshot filled the lobby.
Black blood sprayed from the child’s extended arm as he was spun around. Thuy threw herself back as much to avoid the blood as to get out of the way of the next shot. She assumed that it was Anna who was coming to her rescue; it was Eng, and he fired at Thuy, barely missing her left eye. The bullet passed so close that she felt a whisper of hot air on her cheek.
“Don’t shoot,” Thuy begged, holding the broken club out. “Please, Eng, I wasn’t lying about the missiles. They’re coming, I swear. You can leave with us. You can escape.”
“Liar!” he seethed. “There are no missiles and there’s no cure. You’re just trying to trick me.” He held the gun low, at waist height, and when he fired again the bullet caromed off the elevator door next to Thuy’s slim hip.
Run! her frightened mind screamed. She turned to sprint away but saw the shadows move. The two children that had tried to get at her were both very much “alive” and were skulking in the shadows to her left. In front of her, Jaimee Lynn and two of her pack could be seen slipping through the smashed-in front doors like jackals looking to snatch a carcass from a leopard.
She was trapped.
Drawing herself up, she cried: “Stop!” The children all froze, but Eng came swaggering closer, a terrible smile playing on his black lips.
“I don’t think so, bitch. You are no longer the queen bee. You don’t give the orders, I do.” Behind him, Jaimee Lynn hissed and he pointed the gun in her direction. “Do you have something to say? Hmm? I didn’t think so.” The gun swung back to Thuy. “I came here for a cure, but if you don’t have one, I’ll take your blood.”
“All for yourself, I imagine,” Thuy said. There was already a divide between Eng and Jaimee Lynn, but one was as dangerous to Thuy as the other. She needed them fighting each other, not her. “You don’t like to share, do you? Did you share Deckard’s blood?”
Confusion blinked in and out of his black eyes, then, “Oh him. Your boy-toy. No, I never got to taste him. The others took all of his blood for themselves.”
“Okay then, like Private Jackson? She was the crew member on the Blackhawk. You killed her, remember?” More confusion and fluid as dark and rich as oil dripped from his eyes. He remembered the sour-faced girl, but couldn’t remember eating her. Ever since he’d become infected, his memory was hazy about minor things like killing strangers. As he began to shake his head, Thuy asked another question, “What about John Burke? You killed him, right?”
That he remembered. “Oh, yes. I killed him. When I told him he wasn’t immune, the look on his dumb, slack-jawed hick-face was priceless. And then when he screamed as he died, that was something I’ll never…”
He was jarred out of his reverie by a new scream. Jaimee Lynn’s one clear memory of the world before her unquenchable hunger was of her father and she loved him with every bit of her now shriveled heart. “Kill him!” she shrieked, and charged Eng with her jaw stretched wide open.
Surprised at first, he shot too quickly and missed. His second shot struck her in the side and sent her sprawling. Eng’s training kicked in and he pivoted smoothly, firing calmly, blasting the child zombies that were attacking from Thuy’s left. Even with the dark and the small size of his targets, he didn’t miss. Two shots dropped them. Then he turned the gun on Thuy and pulled the trigger, but the bolt was back.
His magazine was spent. He started to fumble in his pocket for another when he was struck from behind by a boy with needle-like fangs. Those fangs sunk deep into the back of Eng’s left knee. It was an altogether painless bite. Eng glanced down in annoyance before driving the butt of his rifle into the boy’s forehead. The boy was like a pitbull and his iron jaws refused to let go. A second crack with the r
ifle dashed in his brains, while at the same time tore out the tendons behind Eng’s knee.
“You little shit!” Eng cried in Mandarin and hit the boy again. His mind was red with rage and he hit the boy once more, giving the two other children time to race in and clamp their dirty teeth down into his flesh. With only one properly working leg, he wavered, his arms flailing. Jaimee Lynn came flying at him, and the four went down in fury of blood and screams.
This was Thuy’s chance to get away; she was forgotten by the zombies inside, and the zombies outside were only just starting to flood back to the building. The SUV called to her—she could be in it and driving away in seconds. And what was stopping her?
Katherine was going to die one way or the other, and Anna…Anna deserved to die.
Truly, the only thing stopping her was guilt. It held her in place and, instead of running, she repeatedly jabbed the button for the elevator until she heard a distant ding! She stood with one hand on the door, listening for the sound of whirring machinery; however, Katherine and Anna were still in between floors with the emergency stop button pressed.
A high whine of fear escaped Thuy as she took the golf club and jabbed the broken end in between the elevator doors and began to work the metal up and down until there was just enough of a crack to shove the club further into it. Prying back the doors turned the whine into a grunt and when there was just enough room, she stuck her foot in the crevice and yelled up into the dark shaft: “Let’s go! It’s clear!”
Not fifteen feet away, Eng was still battling the three little creatures. He had one dangling from his left wrist by her teeth, another on his back, tearing his left ear off, while the third was in the process of getting up after being thrown. There were splashes of black blood everywhere.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 40