Exit Zero (Book 2): Nuke Jersey

by Neil A. Cohen

  “LaDonna was killed?” Shoshanna asked. “How awful, how did that happen?”

  “What can I tell you, she was always a bleeding heart,” Joel said with snark. “I guess you can hug a zombie, but just once.”

  Chuckles spread around the table.

  “Joel, you are not taking the long view,” Triston said. “Things are weird, but relatively calm right now. What about a year from now? Five years from now? Society will collapse, anarchy will reign. When that occurs, and we all agree that it is when, not if, we want to ensure the man leading the largest, toughest, most ruthless army of warriors is our man. You plan today to execute tomorrow. First in, first win.”

  Marcus cleared his throat. “Okay, so let me make sure I understand. In these books and movies you were talking about, there’s always some sort of grassroots army of hundreds or thousands of followers that run the land. These apocalyptic armies come out of nowhere, and are led by some tough guy or psychopath who guides them across the urban blight, destroying everything in their path like a swarm of human locust and growing their ranks.”

  “Exactly!” Tristan squealed, excitedly pointing at Marcus. “But we are not going to wait for someone to rise from the ashes. We need to carefully identify and choose this future leader.”

  “So we’re looking to find a military leader?”

  “Yes, but not necessarily the type you’re thinking of. Military training would, of course, be beneficial, but they need to also be able to instill passion in their followers, a Genghis Kahn meets Jim Jones meets Lady Gaga type.”

  “Why does it have to be a guy?” Shoshanna asked to groans around the room.

  “Okay, okay, sorry,” She relented “It’s hard to turn the gender grievance card off.”

  Triston uncapped a different color dry erase marker with his mouth. “Let’s get the creative juices going here. What would be some good names for this new army? Just shout it out, no bad ideas.”

  Shoshanna raised her hand. “I saw a movie on the plane over here, it involved a group of men who were lost in Alaska and were being hunted by a pack of wolves. That would be a pretty cool name. The Wolves.”

  Triston wrote it on the white board.

  “The Wolves?” Marcus sneered. “It sounds like the name for a Midwestern high school football team. It’s not intimidating. Why not the muskrats, or badgers?”

  Triston clapped his hands. “Hey, like I said, no bad ideas. Let’s keep it in the realm of sports teams. What would you name a football team if you owned one?”

  “The Yankees?” Joel said.

  “How about the Giants or the Raiders?” Marcus said. “Perhaps a synonym for Raiders?”

  Shoshanna, a Georgetown graduate, chimed in. “How about the Redskins?

  “Now, that name is just offensive.”

  “How about The Army of the New Savior,” Joel said in a hushed tone.

  Silence filled the room.

  “Hmm. Savior? Interesting, a religious-themed name,” Triston said, tapping the marker on his chin.

  “We’re going all-out religious here if we choose that type of name,” Marcus said. “I guess religion is a kind of sport, but it isn’t the one I was thinking of.”

  “Well, ‘savior’ has both religious and non-religions connotations.”

  “Why not then just call it the Army of Jesus,” Marcus said with a shrug.

  “Actually,” Shoshanna butted in. “We focus-group tested ‘Jesus’ for a different campaign I worked on last year and the name Jesus came across as ‘too pacifistic.’ It’s not aggressive or dominant sounding. So, I wouldn’t recommend it. The term ‘Christ’ tested better, had a stronger connotation, more oomph to it. Tested very well.” She paused. “But it was too religious. The term could be off-putting to many. We need that Goldilocks effect, not too hot, not to cold, just right.”

  Triston looked around the room. “Let me shake things up a bit, then. Why does it have to be an army? We’re planning for a time of anarchy; an army connotes organization. What about a gang?”

  “Nope.” Shoshanna shook her head. “Tested it. ‘Gang’ has a weak, almost comical association. Our Gang, KC and the Sunshine Gang, Hole in the Wall Gang. Not threatening at all.”

  “Hey, Joel, don’t you run in a clique called ‘Hole in the Wall Gang?’” Marcus joked.

  “Low blow,” Joel shot back.

  “No shit, that’s the joke,” Marcus replied, laughing heartily.

  “Gloriously low!” Shoshanna added to the bawdy banter.

  “Okay, okay, I think we’re running into a dead end with names, so let’s table this discussion and the jokes for now before I have a human resources issue on my hands.”

  Shoshanna said, “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves here? This is like planning a wedding and we don’t even have a groom yet. You said the leader of this new post-apocalyptic army needs to be a very specific type. Brutal, yet charismatic. Strong, yet intelligent. Savior-like, but not overly religious. How do you suppose we’re going to find such a chap? Match.com?”

  Triston smiled and leaned forward on the table. “That’s the best part. We already have two strong candidates we’re currently tracking. They don’t even know they’re auditioning for the part of a lifetime. And, as if the fucking stars aligned to make it even more convenient, they are both already here in New Jersey, ground zero for the apocalypse. We just sit back and wait to see which of the two rises to the top.” Triston grinned. “So, who’s ready for lunch? Sushi anyone?”

  CHAPTER 35

  This is Dr. Zed with your Outbreak Update.

  It is currently mating season the common fox. During this time, the female lets out a high, shrill call called the Vixen’s Scream. Dr. Zed is familiar with this shrill vixen scream as he was once married.

  Just kidding folks.

  This call is how the female fox finds a mate, and will repeat this cry multiple times in a row. This will occur in the evening or just before dawn. The Vixens Scream is often mistaken for the scream of a woman or small child. Please note that if you hear this cry, you are asked not to go outside your home to investigate. Due to the current state of emergency, there are limited resources available for response, so please access the WALKR app on your data device and instead of taking a picture, click the emoji of the round yellow face shouting.

  This will notify PCRC Containment Teams that you have heard, but not seen, something. A team will arrive shortly to investigate.

  Thank you and remember: Infection control is everyone’s responsibility.

  CHAPTER 36

  Marifi sat beside Ivan Gold while he drove their stolen Toyota, traveling only on back roads, weaving through roads littered with abandoned cars and sometimes mangled corpses. He was increasingly paranoid, requiring them to stay off the main roads and to switch cars every few miles. Ivan had a plan, he always had a plan, but he was not sharing it this time. Obviously, there was some reason he was taking them to Cape May. They had not said a word to each other for hours and had barely spoken at all since they left the burning boarding school two days earlier.

  Ivan now knew that their courtship and marriage was a sham. That Marifi had been brought to the United States by Ivan’s father for the sole purpose of marrying, and spying, on his son.

  At least he did not know that, if given the order, she was to kill him as well. Perhaps he suspected. How such a father-son relationship could be so screwed up was beyond her.

  By age 13, Marifi and her grandfather had settled in a small province of central Philippines called Pangasinan. It had been nearly a dozen years since her grandfather had fled the Manila Islamic Liberation Front after his daughter abandoned her own newborn daughter with him and vanished. He himself had been sold as a child to MILF, and although he had given them nearly fifty years of his life before fleeing, it was not enough. He was a deserter and would never feel safe. There was no statute of limitations on a lifetime of terror organization membership and he would forever have a price on his head with the sent
ence of death upon capture.

  However, there in the small village of farmers, pigs, and goats, Marifi and her grandfather had settled into some sort of normalcy. Villagers did not ask too many questions as long as you kept to yourself and didn’t cause trouble.

  Due to her grandfather being raised in MILF since a child, he was basically illiterate, as his meager education consisted of the three R’s: Rifles, Ransom, and Roadside Bombs. He only spoke an obscure southern Philippines dialect of Yakan, which was rarely used by anyone outside of extremely isolated Basilan Islands—a region dominated by terrorist organizations. He did not even speak the Philippine national dialect of Tagalog. In an effort not to raise questions about his background, he stayed mainly to himself while Marifi worked the fields to support them.

  Her days were filled with odd jobs for pesos: clearing jungle brush, cleaning butchered hogs, and climbing trees to cut down green mangos and coconut. She enjoyed retrieving mangos and coconut the most, especially when she was able to work with her one friend, Gina.

  Gina was a year older, but small in size due to a lifetime of malnutrition. The two would talk for hours, which made the menial labor in the heat go by faster than usual. It was a particularly humid day when Gina suggested they end their work early and walk the half mile through the jungle to a small clearing that housed some shops.

  As they made their way, Marifi swung her Golok—a cross between a machete and a sword with a flat tip she used to retrieve mangos—to slice through the dense brush. They arrived in the clearing to see a Sari-Sari store, which was a family house with a metal shutter on one sidewall that could open to sell salty snacks, candy, and soda served in plastic bags. The vendor would pour the soda from a glass bottle into the plastic baggie and offer it up with a straw so that they could keep possession of the bottles for a refund.

  Next door was a small shop selling flip-flop sandals, cheap plastic kitchen utensils, and straw hats. Across the street was a bar where dangerous men drank questionable liquor.

  The two girls walked past three drunken men sitting outside the bar, and while no words were exchanged, the look in their eyes screamed foulness and obscenity.

  They ignored the men and walked straight towards the soda. Gina ordered a bag.

  “Do you have money?” The fat woman behind the counter asked with a rude, squinting look.

  “Yes, we have money,” Gina shot back, not intimidated by the woman’s size or attitude. Gina was loud and confident, which Marifi admired.

  The woman handed her a clear plastic baggie of soda with protruding straw and told her it was 50 pesos. Gina handed her the money. Marifi stepped up next and the woman handed her a soda bag, which Marifi consumed in nearly a single gulp.

  “100 pesos,” The woman snapped at Marifi.

  “What?” Gina shouted. “Why is it more than mine?”

  “There was more soda in hers,” the lady replied.

  “That is a lie!” Gina shot back.

  Marifi reached into her pocket and pulled out 75 pesos. “This is all I have.”

  “You drank the soda, you owe me 100 pesos,” The woman demanded.

  “I don’t have it.” Marifi responded. She felt nervous. She didn’t want this attention.

  “Give me your Golok, then,” said the lady, pointing at the large knife.

  “No, this is my grandfather’s. I need it for work.” Marifi handed the woman her 75 pesos and hoped she would back off.

  The woman yelled, waving her hands at them. “Get out of here you street cats!”

  “We are leaving, and your soda was flat,” Gina yelled back.

  As the two turned to walk away, they realized three of the men from the bar had quietly positioned themselves directly behind them.

  The fat woman slammed down the metal shutter of her shop.

  A man with rotting teeth said, “Girls, where are your parents?”

  The girls lowered their heads and began walking away, but two of the men positioned themselves to prevent escape. “Whoa, don’t run away. We are friendly.”

  It was only then that the girls noticed how heavily armed the men were, each with a pistol in his waistband and rifles slung over their shoulders.

  “Come with us, we have cold soda, you don’t need to buy from that fat pig,” another of the men suggested.

  “Thank you, sir, we are fine, we need to get back to work,” Gina said meekly.

  “Please don’t be rude, girls. You will be safe with us. Let’s go,” commanded the man with bad teeth.

  Gina held her ground. “No thank you, sir, we must go.”

  “Girls, I will not ask again.” He spoke without any of the fake kindness he initially used. He removed the gun from his waistband and made sure the girls could see it. “You are coming with us.”

  The three men herded the girls in front of them. One of the men grabbed the Golok from Marifi’s hand and used it to point the girls in the direction they should begin walking, directly into the jungle, opposite the direction the girls came from and were familiar with.

  As they headed into the jungle, Gina began to cry quietly. Neither knew what would become of them: raped, murdered, or both.

  They made a path through the dense brush. Marifi felt like her feet were made of stone—she could barely lift her legs to walk. She thought of her grandfather. Would he ever know what became of her? Would he think she ran off and hate her?

  The group reached a clearing. The men stopped. The two girls raised their heads to see five heavily armed men in front of them. Were these new men their destination?

  But the two groups of men did not seem to have expected each other. The men did not seem to like each other, either. Both gruff groups began to yell. Marifi recognized the uniforms of the new arrivals, if you could call them uniforms. They were with MILF.

  She did not know which group would be worse. The drunken criminals might rape and murder them. The terrorists might make them child brides or behead them.

  “Drunken infidel, pig eater. Give us your guns and your girls and go!” One of the five men commanded.

  “This is my country, go back south to your islands, you Muslim filth!” Responded one of the three captors.

  No more words were exchanged. Only bullets.

  The first shot rang out. Both girls ran into the jungle as fast and as far as they could. The exchange of gunfire increased and the girls huddled behind a thick tree trunk and prayed. They prayed and cried and prayed some more. The minutes felt like hours. Then the shooting stopped. They stayed put and listened, but neither side seemed to be searching for them.

  After some time, they chose to emerge from their hiding spot. There were no sounds of men walking through the brush. Nobody yelling for them. Could the men have moved on?

  The two girls had to backtrack towards the makeshift town in order to go home. They came to the clearing, the scene of the confrontation, and found eight dead men. They had all killed each other.

  It seemed some prayers really are answered.

  Marifi rummaged through the dead men’s pockets, pulling out what money she could find.

  Gina pleaded. “What are you doing? They’re dead, that is a sin.”

  Marifi found the man who had been holding her Golok and pulled it out of his dead hands. “We need the money, go through their pockets, take what you can, hurry,” Marifi commanded.

  Gina reluctantly reached down to the dead man closest to her and dug into his pocket. She removed several coins, and as she held them up to count, a bloody hand grabbed her wrist.

  She screamed and Marifi shushed her as loud as she could. There might be more men coming, if not drawn by the gunfire, they would be drawn to a girl’s screams.

  Gina continued screaming as the dying man held his grip on her arm.

  Marifi slammed her Golok into the prone man’s skull. It took only one strike to still him, but Marifi swung the blade down again for good measure, splitting his skull in two like a coconut.

  Gina stood there, shocked a
nd silent.

  Marifi went through the pockets of the remaining men, relieving them of what money they had. She took only money, no personal belongings, nor guns, as she realized if the guns were missing, people would come looking for the culprits.

  As the two girls reached the town, Gina offered Marifi the money she had removed from the dying man.

  Marifi refused. “It’s yours, keep it.”

  “I don’t want it!” Gina cried, throwing it at Marifi’s feet and running off.

  Marifi realized then that their brief friendship was over.

  She walked over to the shopkeeper woman who had again opened her window for business.

  “Give me a soda!” She told the fat lady.

  The woman, surprised to see her back, alive, said, “You have no money.”

  Marifi threw 100 pesos at the fat woman.

  The woman looked down, and saw the blood and gore on the blade of her large knife. She quickly handed Marifi a soda, then another. “They are only 50 pesos each,” the woman said as she handed the girl a wrapped rice cake. “For you,” she said. “For you to eat.” The lady spoke with some fear as if Marifi was suddenly to be respected.

  Marifi took the soda, the cake, and she made her way back to her grandfather.

  It was time to move along again.

  CHAPTER 37

  Walter pulled up to the private garage of his office and rolled down the driver’s side window to punch in the five-digit code that opened the garage door. When the barrier lifted, he drove forward into the underground parking structure. He noticed that there were fewer cars in the lot than yesterday, and yesterday had fewer cars than the day before.

  The curfew was lifted during daylight hours, and this area had been cleared of the infected, so people shouldn’t feel apprehensive about coming back to work, but it seemed they did. It seemed that Jersey would become the nation’s leader in telecommuting, though he did also notice fewer emails and calls during his workday as well.