“Get in!” Thuy screamed. “Courtney in front! Jaimee Lynn in the back. Strap yourself down.” The zombie child couldn’t work the belt properly and Thuy had to kneel within biting range to get her secure.
In the cockpit, Bryan was flicking switches like mad. His normal startup checklist went out the window. Batteries were turned on first, then the generators, then the APU. Just as he was about to turn on the dual General Electric T700 engines, they were struck by a blast of howling wind. The air was blistering hot and churned-up within it was an insane assortment of debris: branches, body parts, rocks zipping as fast as bullets, flaming lawn furniture, squirrels spinning like plates and even a ten-speed bike.
The SUV took the brunt of the damage and was hit so hard by the powerful wind that it fell into the helicopter. As frightening as that was, it helped to pin the bird in place, otherwise, it too might have been thrown over. Inside the Blackhawk, Bryan threw the engine switches and the four rotors began to spin, slapping the turbulent air until they were invisible to the naked eye.
He paused as the bird took on a shudder. It almost felt like it was coming apart. “Please not yet,” he said, begging under his breath. Louder, he bellowed, “Hold on!” and yanked back on the collective. The ten-ton metal beast jumped up off the ground with sparks flying. They were immediately hammered by the shrieking wind and turned nearly side-on to the ground. He had almost no control of the Blackhawk and thought for sure that they were going to fall out of the sky. But the wind had them in its clutches and they slewed around. Fighting the cyclic for all he was worth, Bryan was just able to yaw the helicopter back over.
“Jesus Christ!” he screamed, unheard. The Blackhawk shook and trembled around him as he turned her so that she was no longer fighting the wind. The moment he did, it felt like an enormous hand picked them up and threw them across the sky.
In the seat next to him, Courtney was staring out in shock. The last nuke had exploded a half mile over the Tappan Zee Bridge, melting it in a millisecond and evaporating two miles of the Hudson River. The mushroom cloud was blooming ever larger and looked as though it was going to swallow them whole. She screamed for Bryan to go faster.
He already had the Blackhawk pegged at the Never Exceed Speed of 222 mph. “Fuck it,” he growled and gave her full throttle. She was going 261 mph when a W-88 turned Mt. Vernon into a desolation from which it would never recover.
When it went off, Katherine Pennock was standing on the top of the R & K Building, dripping red blood and willing the helicopter to fly faster. It was tiny now and growing smaller as the distance between them grew. How far away was it? Ten miles? Twelve? Whatever the distance, she knew in her heart that it would get away and she smiled knowing she had done something right, something actually good. The smile broadened just as an infinite pure light enveloped her from behind. The light was all-powerful and was so intense that it killed her, boiling the fluid from every cell in her body in an instant.
Epilogue
After
For all intents and purposes, the Apocalypse ended with Katherine’s death. Hers was not the last, not by far. Over a billion people had died in those five days and as terrible as that was, another five billion would die over the next six years, mostly due to famine, disease and terribly bloody warfare. Many countries simply ceased to exist as they dissolved in sad civil strife or imploded under the strain brought on by the new reality.
Gone were the days of geo-politics. Countries that had the means built immense walls along their borders and turned inward. The poorer countries were generally decimated as mass migration became the norm. It was not uncommon for huge stretches of land to be overrun and raped by half a million starving nomads.
While European borders crystallized even further, the rest of the word saw the rise of the “city-state.” Turkey became a desert, but Istanbul flourished. Sao Paulo grew into a cultural jewel at the same time Brazil became a by-word for cannibalism. In Mumbai, anything at all, from heroin to young boys, could be had for a price, while everything down to the last blade of grass had been devoured in Calcutta.
In North America, things were just as chaotic, although not nearly as bloody. While Russia and China ceased to exist for all time, the USA made a concerted stab at staying together. The country held together for eight years, until the President was assassinated and Texas broke off to form its own country(what became known as the Texas Unified Republic). After that, everything more or less fell apart.
California started the Pacific Coast League, which crumbled into eleven different countries within sixteen years. The southern states had more success, throwing up a huge wall along the Mason-Dixon line and founding the 2nd Confederate States of America. Without the slavery and the racism, it blossomed as a rural land and was one of the few countries that had the luxury to export food.
The Midwest, the mountain states and what was left of the Great Lakes region were essentially depopulated and immense areas reverted back to nature. The center of the country was dotted with city-states: Denver, Kansas City, Chicago and Minneapolis. Out east Boston, Buffalo, Long Island City and Washington DC were all that were left.
In between these eastern cities were frightening lands simply called the Dead Zone. Every city and every country had laws against setting foot there and yet there were those called Dead Eyes who took the risk, but that is a story for another time.
Before it can be told, this saga has to have an ending of sorts. But how can it? The crusade against the undead did not have a neat and defining boundary. Every person who made it out alive had a story that continued on and, since each could fill a library in themselves, only a brief summary will be given:
Trista Price: Trista stayed on in the administration until the first election was postponed due to unspecified threats. There were no threats and everyone knew it. Knowing that the shit was going to hit the fan eventually, she skipped town with a sackful of credits and a new name. Two years later, she bought a ranch in Texas, south of Abilene, where she raised cattle and married a good man. Trista died sixty years after the Apocalypse, a great-grand mother three times over.
David Kazakoff: Just seconds ahead of arresting agents, Kazakoff fled the White House and the capital, eventually finding his way to Canada. During the 1st Quebec Revolution, he was hung as a spy by the government in Ottawa and buried in a mass grave.
Governor Dean Clarren: The ex-governor became Boston’s first Premiere, a position he held for nine years until his death from pancreatic cancer. His wife, as well as more than a hundred thousand others, followed him to the grave the next year with the same disease. Relentless in his outlook, Clarren rebuilt and reordered Boston, and was known as the “First Father of Boston.”
General Troy Ross: The general headed the works project that built the “Forever Wall” around Boston. Later he was elected as Boston’s fourth Premiere, and served for twenty-three years. The “Second” father of Boston built a strong and prosperous city which sadly did not last. Within twenty years of his death, corruption took its toll and the city started to fall into ruin. Boston went from being a shining example of a city-state to a slum-state as the first underground sweatshops opened up a decade later and not long after, the term “serf” came into use once again.
Courtney Shaw: Arrested briefly after escaping the zone, she became a “king-maker” and was the woman behind many successful political campaigns in the over-crowded city-state of Long Island City. She became rich by the standards of the day simply by knowing who to call if there was something that was desperately needed. She married twice, each time for love, and gave up both husbands and two of her five children to cancer. Still, she died happy, knowing that she had done all that she could with her days.
Dr. Thuy Lee: Arrested briefly after escaping the zone, she gave birth to a son, Ryan Deckard Jr, while still in prison. She created the Semi-vax for the zombie virus. It was neither a cure nor a vaccine. It was a serum that could only mitigate the symptoms of the disease and limit its commu
nicability. Since even a word of the disease could spread untold panic, the Semi-vax was hidden from the public’s eye, although it eventually found its way into the black market. She was also responsible for re-discovering a cure for thirty-two different types of cancer, specifically lung and skin cancers; however the costs involved were such that only the richest people could afford the cure. Dr. Lee never married. She tended to her work, and to her son and then to his son. Dr. Lee died of heart failure on the day she became a great-grandmother.
Jaimee Lynn Burke: The child zombie drank a quart of human blood every day until the day Dr. Lee died. On that day she drank four quarts, all that Dr. Lee had in her. She did not kill Dr. Lee; it was a gift. Three days later Jaimee Lynn attended her funeral and, as she always did when she went outside, she wore dark glasses and gloves. Her hair was just as yellow as it had always been and her skin was an unblemished, unwrinkled alabaster. She was seventy-years-old and those around her thought she was seven or eight. After the funeral, Jaimee Lynn slipped out of her cell using a key that had been willed to her and disappeared into the world. It would be nice to say that she disappeared forever, but that would not be true.
The End
Author's Note:
Thank you so much for reading the Apocalypse Crusade series. I certainly hoped that you enjoyed it. I liked the story so much that I decided to write a sequel to the series, the first book of which is tentatively called: Dead Eye Runner. It’s about half-zombies(much like Jaimee Lynn, Eng and Von Braun, hiding in the midst of the over-crowded slum-states of New York and Boston. Their existence is denied by the corrupt governments, who are afraid of what will happen if the word gets out. Dead Eye Runners, gritty men with few moral qualms about anything at all, hunt them down for the bounties paid. I expect it will be a lot of fun!
But before I write that book, I have to finish the Generation Z series. I will begin book 6 immediately and it should be ready by mid-2019. Luckily, there is a way for you to read Book 6, chapter by chapter, before anyone else! All you have to do is go to my Patreon page (Here) and support my writing. The tier levels are exceedingly generous with freebies running from autographed books, video podcasts, free Audible books, signed T-shirts, and swag of all sorts. At a high enough tier, you will even get to meet me in person as I take you and three friends out to dinner.
Patreon is a great way to help support me so I don’t have to go back into the coal mines…back into the dark.
Another way to help is to write a review of this book on Amazon and/or on your own Facebook page. The review is the most practical and inexpensive form of advertisement an independent author has available to get his work known. I would greatly appreciate it.
PS If you are interested in autographed copies of my books, souvenir posters of the covers, Apocalypse T-shirts and other awesome Swag, please visit my website at https://www.petemeredith1.com
PPS: I need to thank a number of people for their help in bringing you this book. My beta readers Joanna Niederer, KariAnn Morgan, Kari-Lyn Rakestraw, Monica Turner, Michelle Heeder, Mindy Wilkinson, Amber Carrol, Marinda Grindstaff, Amber Powell, Shamus McGuigan—Thanks so much!
Fictional works by Peter Meredith:
A Perfect America
Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2
Generation Z
Generation Z: The Queen of the Dead
Generation Z: The Queen of War
Generation Z: The Queen Unthroned
Generation Z: The Queen Enslaved
The Sacrificial Daughter
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Five
The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1
An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2
Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3
The Punished
Sprite
The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1
The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2
To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3
The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1
The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2
The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3
The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4
The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5
The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8
The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World 10
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One
The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two
The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World
Jillybean’s First Adventure: An Undead World Expansion
Tales from the Butcher’s Block
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 42