Z-Day (Book 3): A Place For War

by Humphreys, Daniel

  “The order is given—execute Gateway. Burn zulu down where he stands. Vincent out.”

  “Sergeant Major for you, Sergeant,” Stahlberg called. Coop accepted the headset.

  “LoPresto, here.”

  “Got my song cued up, Sergeant?”

  “It’s ready whenever you are,” he assured McFarlane. He’d passed the Sergeant Major’s thumb drive off to Stahlberg, who’d taken on the role of disk jockey to go along with communications. Every member of the unit had scrounged tracks to form a truly enormous playlist. Considering the size of the horde, they were going to need every bit of it.

  There was an odd note in the other Marine’s voice as he spoke. “Don’t care much for the song, myself. My wife, though, she loved the classics. I used to find any excuse I could to not sit down and watch her musicals with her, but you know what? I think I’d give just about anything to do that right now. When we deployed before Z-Day, it wasn’t a big deal to us. We had it down to a science. She’d figured out the first few times that she and the girls rattled around in the house when I wasn’t around, so she was planning on spending a bit of time at her folks’ place. Last time I talked to her, she went on and on about the autumn leaves.”

  Coop hesitated to even ask, but he found the words spilling out nonetheless. It was a closed channel, just the two of them, and he got the sense that the senior NCO wanted to open up for some reason. “Where were they, SarMaj?”

  “’bout 15 miles west of where we sit, son. Go ahead and press play, and when it’s done, start up the real soundtrack so we can send those things back to hell.”

  Coop nodded at Stahlberg. The lance corporal flipped a switch. There was a bit of static in the recording, even though it was digital—dubbed from an analog source, no doubt. Coop was no big fan of musicals, himself, but he’d seen enough old movies to recognize the ethereal voice of Judy Garland as the music swelled and she began to sing. And even though it was a song of anticipation and promise, it was a sobering reminder that the civilization that had produced art such as this was no more. Theirs was a harder, more utilitarian world, a culture based on survival above all else. What little time they had to revel in entertainment was simply playing with relics of a dead past. There was nothing more of their own, nor would there be any chance to create more, unless they began to turn the tide here and now.

  “Meet me in St. Louis, Louis. Meet me at the fair…”

  She sang, and the assembled personnel listened in rapt silence. The voice echoed across downtown, the cobblestones running along the edge of the river, and up the staircase leading to the packed park. Though the rational part of his mind doubted it, Coop couldn’t help but think that the zulu horde filling it all became a little more still, if only for a moment.

  It wasn’t a long song, and when it was over, the echoes of the lyrics faded out slowly as though reluctant to go, until all was quiet once again. In the sudden silence, Coop turned back to Stahlberg. “Hit the music, Lance.” The other Marine nodded, making the necessary adjustments to switch over to the primary playlist.

  As the opening guitar solo of Iron Maiden’s 2 Minutes to Midnight screamed out of the speakers, Coop turned and bellowed, “Mortars! Range the shore!”

  “300 meters, Sergeant!”

  “White phosphorous—fire at will!”

  Months ago, their motions had been stilting and awkward, but this was old hat. For some, it was a return to an old specialty, for others a new skill entirely. All had drilled until every motion and shout had turned into precise, unconscious muscle memory. In the span of seconds, shells arced out from the barges and onto the leading edges of the zombie horde. White phosphorous charges glowed with heat, melting through infected bone and killing with direct hits. Those strikes might as well have not happened, but the intent was not to directly kill zulu—it was to ignite the vapors of the gasoline soaking the ground beneath their feet.

  The shoreline exploded into an inferno.

  October 18, 2026

  St. Louis, Missouri

  Z-Day + 3,287

  “… zulu down where he stands. Vincent out.”

  Miles twisted his neck to get a wider view of the city below. No matter how he changed his perspective, he couldn’t get over the sheer mass of zombies down below. They filled the park around the St. Louis Arch and spilled into the streets, stretching all the way past Busch Stadium and the downtown high-rises in a continuous, rippling mass.

  They’d been somewhat still until General Vincent’s speech—after that, every member of the horde became intent in pushing forward to the river. Which was kind of the point, Miles supposed, but it was still nerve-wracking even from half a mile up.

  “There goes the first gas boat,” Pete observed. A bright red craft shot along the riverfront and hosed down the leading edge of the horde with fuel. “Here it comes.”

  Shouted commands broke over the command channel, but Miles couldn’t make them out. Pete had turned the radio down for the moment—the better to take it all in, Miles supposed.

  Being up in the Orca was surreal enough. He’d flown in a few helicopters in the past months, but there was a sense of airiness and silence to riding in the blimp, and the quartet of nacelle-mounted props pushed it faster than he’d expected. Lightly-loaded, the thing was almost nimble. He supposed that made sense considering the designers intended the blimp to carry and offload thousands of pounds of cargo to soldiers in high-altitude environments. Pete, Sandy, Miles, Guglik, the copilot Darnell, and a half-dozen Marines were a drop in that rather large bucket.

  The shore burst into flame down below, and everyone at the windows let out murmurs of appreciation. “Look at the horde in the park. The ones not in the fire,” Sandy said. Miles followed his pointing finger, and his jaw dropped. Space on the ground was actually opening up as the zombies in visual range of the fire rushed forward, piling up on top of each other and crushing their less-dexterous brethren underneath in their haste to reach the flames.

  On the river, the pump boat reversed course. Gasoline sprayed only intermittently as it moved. The conflagration burned spottily, and rather than spray on those sites, they dumped fuel on areas that had gone out, and those soon caught fire again, either from the ongoing shelling or from proximity to the other fires. Sheets of black smoke rose into the clear morning sky.

  Miles realized that the fires were going out because the horde was snuffing them in its urgency to reach the flame. “Why are they so single-minded?” he asked Sandy. “Is that intentional, or what?”

  The doc shrugged. “The core purpose of the nanites is to propagate the disease, so generally they’ll drive the infected to run any sign of life to ground. I don’t know if it’s an original trait, or something that evolved over time—where there’s fire, there’s life? I’m curious whether any of the enhanced or alpha infected are down there, and if they’re succumbing to the attraction or able to resist it.”

  “I’m fine right up here,” Miles said with a grin. “No need to get up close and personal.”

  “I heard that,” Sandy agreed.

  Pete had taken up station in the seat behind the pilots, next to the radios. He flipped a switch now and put on a headset with a microphone. “Blackfish-Two, Blackfish-Three, this is Gateway Six. Commence first attack along the north and south assault lines. Let’s set up our kill box.”

  The other two blimps appeared below them, each taking a course roughly over the edges of the park. Each was significantly lower in the air than the command Orca, but still well above the tops of the skyscrapers.

  Pete flipped a switch to mute his mic. “Those boys are sitting on enough napalm to barbecue Idaho. Makes my butt pucker just thinking about it.”

  As the bombers passed over the park, the crews inside opened bay doors and spilled bright-painted barrels out of the modified cargo capsules. The napalm canisters were, with the possible exception of the mortar barges, the simplest implement in today’s arsenal—metal 55-gallon drums with a drogue parachute on one en
d to orient them in a downward-facing position as they tumbled toward the ground. Once they hit, contact fuses ignited the detonators on each barrel, sending out a corona of shrapnel and liquid fire.

  Fire bloomed, and Miles felt the rapid-fire concussions go thump-thump in his chest. Most of the compartment cheered at the sight, and as he blinked his eyes to clear the spots from his vision, he found himself cheering, too.

  They’d walled in the long rectangle of the park around the arch with fire on three sides. The gray tide of the undead horde turned almost frantic to rush into the kill box, packing it tighter and tighter until no bare earth was visible through the heaving mass of dead flesh. Mortar rounds arced over the riverside firewall. The high-explosive blasts cleared open spaces that were almost immediately filled. Even if the zombies in the kill radius were only injured, their own kind would crush the fallen into the ground. All the while, the fire spread. Human bodies didn’t burn well. After nine years, most of the dried-out husks below were an exception to that rule, and even a close proximity to the raging lines of fire was enough to bring the nanites into temperatures exceeding their operational threshold. The mortar rounds were more spectacular, but Miles saw just as many zombies crest piles of bodies, approach the fire, and topple to the ground before coming into reach.

  “That’s our cue, Guglik,” Pete said. He turned back to the radio. “Trident—Gateway-Six. We’re commencing our mission, you have operational command until I return to relieve you.” He listened for a moment, chuckled, then replied, “Well, you worked hard for that bridge, lieutenant. I’d say you’re well within your rights to enjoy it.”

  Guglik gunned the rotors, and they banked away from the battlefield as she adjusted course. Pete racked his headset and swiveled his chair to face Miles and Sandy. “I’d love to stay and watch the A-10s do their thing, but I think we’ve put up a big enough alarm bell. Any zulu that sees the smoke is heading this way, so there’s no time like the present.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  April 24, 2018

  Taum Sauk State Park, Missouri

  Z-Day + 188

  When they stuck her in the trailer and locked the door shut from the outside, she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep. But fatigue overcame her. The only furniture inside was a dusty futon. Even without the comfort of a pillow or covers, Molly fell into a tormented rest, chased by vague shadows and night terrors.

  The bang of the door against the side of the trailer snapped her awake, and she blinked at the silhouette in the doorway until her vision cleared enough to make out the details. “Let’s go, kid,” the man said. She didn’t think he was one of the contractors she’d seen at Dave and Anne’s place, but he wore a similar outfit and had the same aura of cruel competence. As she pulled her sneakers on, she took a quick glance at him and the area behind him.

  Notice all the details, Dave had told her on one of their scavenging trips. The little things can be pivotal.

  He didn’t have a gun on him that she could see. Maybe this was her chance? She moved to the doorway to exit, but he stayed in place, blocking her path.

  She got a good view of his close-cropped black hair and the stubble on his cheeks as he did the typical head-feet-tits scan that all men seemed to think was so subtle. It was annoying but ignorable before everything changed. The effect was more chilling now. Finally, he retreated and stepped to one side of the door.

  Molly took the first step, prepared to bolt, but by the time she took the second step, she realized that would have been a bad move. Another, taller man with the mottled complexion of a sun-burnt redhead stood on the opposite side of the door, and he grinned as she flinched at his appearance.

  “This way,” the first man said. He pointed in the direction of the block building and allowed her to take the lead. Molly didn’t know what time it was, but there was still a chill in the air. Wisps of fog shrouded the top of the mountain, muting the sounds of the camp coming to life. “Told you she wouldn’t run for it, Kelly.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I think I’m still up a couple of hundred on you, Jenkins. For all the good it’ll do you.”

  Molly stumbled in the gravel, and a hand seized her by the bicep and kept her from falling. Startled, she met the first man—Jenkins’ eyes. “I got you, legs.” He released her arm and let her take a step away, but before she got too far away he swung his arm down and gave her ass a squeeze. “Put a little strut into it, why don’t you?”

  Indignation rose, and before she could catch herself, she snapped, “I’m seventeen, asshole!”

  Kelly laughed, but he sounded uncomfortable. “C’mon, Jenkins, stop screwing around.”

  The other man waved a hand. “Whatever. If ignorance is bliss you must be one cheerful motherfucker. Take a look around, brother—the old rules no longer apply. It’s all the law of the jungle now, baby, and I say if there’s grass on the field, play ball.”

  “You can say whatever you want, but Connelly won’t like it, man.” Kelly pitched his voice lower. “And what about Dr. Evil? He wanted her alive, remember?”

  Something dark passed over Jenkins’ face, and Molly realized she was just standing there. She turned her back and started walking, hoping the two men had been too invested in their confrontation to notice she’d been watching. Details, girl.

  “It’s your lucky day,” Jenkins called out. “It’s look but don’t touch until I hear different.” Both men broke into laughter, and she hunched her head between her shoulder blades. The instinct to run dueled with her reluctance to leave Hatcher, and by the time she reached the side of the building, it became a moot point. Another hard-faced man opened a door centered in the wall, waving her inside. She waited for the inevitable comment from her first two escorts, but the new guy must have been senior to them because they remained silent.

  “Down this hall,” he instructed. “First door on the left.”

  The interior was cool and well-lit. She realized with a start that it was the first time she’d been in air conditioning since October. If anything, it felt too cold. It was odd how quickly you adjusted to some things, while others remained foreign.

  The indicated door was gray-painted metal and seemed to stick as she pulled on it. Beyond lay a small cubby of a room with bare walls with an identical door directly across from the outer one.

  “Step inside,” the third man said. “When this door closes, wait for the click, then open the second door.”

  She stepped inside and turned to ask a question that slipped her mind as soon as she saw the expression on his face. He looked at her with something close to pity, though the closing door cut off her view before she could analyze it any further.

  The clicking noise was subtle, but the room was quiet enough that she had no trouble hearing it. The question, of course, was what was the system for? No answers were forthcoming, so the only approach left to her was to open the next door.

  A voice greeted her as soon as she stepped through. “Welcome!”

  The way the mercenaries whispered about him, she wasn’t sure what to expect from the mad scientist. But the reality was nowhere close to her imagination.

  He was tall and slender, towering at least half a foot over Molly, who was no shrinking violet at five-ten. The white lab coat and faded blue jeans were fresh and clean. A pair of reading glasses perched on the aquiline bridge of his nose. Upon seeing her, he smiled warmly, and the expression seemed out of place amid all the horror of the past hours.

  Dazed, she thought, aren’t bad guys supposed to have goatees?

  “You must be Mole!” He hooked his fingers into air quotes around the nickname.

  She blinked, put even more off balance by his chuckle. “I—uh, yeah, I guess.”

  “You’re all the young man has talked about. In between sleeping and crying, of course.”

  At once, Molly understood. The words were jovial, the smile friendly, but there was a strange disconnect between the two, as though this were some deadly monster in a human suit, mimicking a part
ial understanding of what it was to be friendly. A giant praying mantis, perhaps.

  She glanced around the lab. From the shape and size of the room, it took up the center section of the block building. The only way in or out was the door she’d just stepped through. Workbenches and shelving lined every wall, but the middle of the room was open save for a single table with a shiny aluminum top. The doctor leaned casually on it, as though waiting for her to make a break for it—but there was nowhere to run. The contractors were behind her, and they’d run her down or shoot her even if she made it out of the facility.

  For now, she had to bide her time and hope for an opportunity. And pray that if one presented itself, she’d have the courage to take advantage of it.

  Molly took a deep breath and tried to stand a little taller. “Wh-where’s Hatch, Doctor?”

  “Come and see,” the doctor said, stepping away from the table. “And no need to be so formal. Call me Henry.”

  Her legs shook for the first few steps, but she pushed the fear down and moved to the opposite side of the room to follow the mad scientist’s pointing finger.

  It took everything in her not to cry out and attack him in the sudden rage that burned through her. There was a cage under the table—nothing fancy, and most likely taken from a pet supply store. It was the kind of place you’d coax a larger dog into before leaving for school or work for the day. Claire’s family had owned a big golden retriever, with the incongruous name of Einstein, and she’d had to help her friend crate the affable—but spacey—dog on more than one occasion.