by J. W. Vohs
Zombie Crusade IV:
Eastern Front
J.W. Vohs
Copyright © 2014 J.W. Vohs
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9 781496 145123
ISBN-13: 9781496145123
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my family and all the fans of
the Zombie Crusade series.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Mark Matson for his knowledge of hockey as well as his inspiring vocabulary and scientific expertise. Thanks also to Sarah Matson for putting up with him. Very special thanks to Gretel Johns for proofreading out of the kindness of her heart, even though she prefers her fiction non-violent and zombie-free. Thanks to the newly adopted Kira Vohs for her need of early morning walks and tendency to sleep on the feet of whomever is diligently typing on a computer keyboard. And finally, thanks to all the fans who keep asking when the next installment of Zombie Crusade will be released—you continue to provide inspiration and motivation on a daily basis.
CHAPTER 1
For the first twenty minutes of his flight, Jack Smith couldn’t help but be reminded of the many times he’d been carried into battle as a Ranger in Afghanistan by Blackhawk helicopters identical to the one that now propelled him southward over the ripened autumn fields of central and southern Indiana. The hum of the rotors through his headset lent an almost hypnotic effect to his thoughts as he rehashed recent events, most especially the sat-phone conversation he’d had with General Barnes. The former commander of the U.S. Army’s Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was now the self-proclaimed president of what remained of the United States. It had been five months since the deadliest pandemic in history had swept across the world; Jack estimated that over ninety-five percent of the American population was now dead or transformed by the infection. Anyone unlucky enough to “survive” after falling victim to the virus was now a black-eyed monster, hunting down flesh for the protein their new physiology demanded for sustenance and growth. Technically speaking, the term “zombie-virus” might not be a scientifically accurate label for the disease, but Jack still couldn’t think of a more appropriate characterization.
The infected hadn’t been transformed into some type of Hollywood-style, walking dead, though initially they’d all appeared to be stumbling, slow-moving, flesh-eating machines focused entirely on consuming any person who crossed their paths. In a matter of weeks, many of the well-fed infected were obviously growing stronger and faster, and they began to travel in small groups as they continuously evolved into super-hunters of humans and any other flesh they could obtain to fuel their new bodies. As the months had passed since the outbreak was first reported, the surviving infected had developed into leaner, stronger, and faster “hunters” with physical abilities surpassing those of most humans. Homo Sapien was no longer at the top of the food chain on planet Earth, but the human race still had an important advantage in the struggle for survival—the ability to out-think its deadly non-human enemies.
Jack and the other members of his group had faced an evolution of their own as they focused on surviving the madness and eliminating as many of the infected as possible near their Midwestern stronghold. Experience had reinforced the importance of protective clothing and the value of medieval weaponry in hand-to-hand combat with the creatures, but expertise with firearms and coordinated battle strategies were also needed to kill substantial numbers of the infected. The passing of the summer months had seen a Darwinian struggle occur within the infected population in which the weak had withered and died, while the strongest had thrived and grown into fearsome predators. They began travelling in packs where coordinated action and primal leadership ensured a steady food-supply. As the helicopter continued south over what was left of Indianapolis, Jack estimated that there were at least fifty million of these hunters running across the apocalyptic landscape of a fallen North America.
The reality of fighting flesh-eaters was difficult enough to accept, but now Jack knew that the monsters had actually been created by scientists working at USAMRIID, under the direction of his old nemesis and boss, General Matthew Barnes. When Jack was serving in Afghanistan, he’d been assigned as Barnes’ driver for a special operation that landed them on the outskirts of a remote village where some sort of outbreak was being monitored by the general under a well-protected blanket of military secrecy. It was there that Jack and the man who would become his lifelong friend, Carter Wilson, first encountered the infected. They’d barely escaped with their lives, and the danger posed from knowing too much about the effects of the virus made their survival all the more impressive. Carter’s commanding officer and fellow Rangers provided a defensive buffer for both Carter and Jack, and eventually Barnes seemed satisfied with their signatures on a confidentiality agreement forbidding either man to speak of the incident as a matter of national security. Jack had always suspected that Barnes was the real threat, but he was a well-connected officer, respected for his medical expertise, with a spotless service record. There was no way to know if Barnes was deceiving his superiors or simply following orders in Afghanistan, but either way, what Jack had experienced there changed him to the core. After his discharge, he’d devoted a great deal of time and energy to what many in his family saw as “survivalist nonsense.” Even though he still relished one-upping his siblings from time to time, Jack found no satisfaction in “I told you so” under the current circumstances. The world was being devoured by flesh-eating monsters who were once normal human beings, and, in Jack’s mind, one man was to blame for it all: General Matthew Barnes.
The call from Barnes last night had been unexpected. When Jack’s aide, Maddy Johnson, interrupted a planning meeting with the news that the rogue officer was on the line and wanted to talk to him, Jack had no idea what to think. He’d told Maddy to tell the general to call back in the morning for a couple of reasons, even though he was secretly chafing to hear what Barnes had to say. First of all, Jack knew the man’s ego and just how much the general hated to be kept waiting for anything. It was a head game to annoy Barnes and maybe throw him off balance. But Jack also wanted some time to prepare for the conversation—every word would need to be recorded, and he wanted to ask the necessary questions in the right way in order to optimize the opportunity for gathering intelligence. Barnes was no fool, though his arrogance could be used against him by someone who understood how to manipulate his blind spots. Jack had forced himself to wait twelve hours before talking to his former boss, and he’d felt more than ready when the call had come in just before dawn.
The phone call had begun with a veneer of geniality, both participants willing to engage in a bit of small talk in an effort to get a read on the other. Jack had answered the call himself, waiting for the third ring so he wouldn’t appear too anxious. Now he replayed the entire conversation in his head:
“Jack Smith here. How can I help you?”
Barnes chuckled and sounded genuinely pleased, “Sergeant Smith, I am so glad that you’re available to speak to me today.”
Jack gritted his teeth, but managed to sound amiable, “It’s been a long time since anyone’s called me Sergeant. Call me Jack. I just wish Maddy could have located me last night—I must say I’m very curious about why you’re contacting me.”
“I think we need to be pleased about coming across any old friends these days, don’t you?” Barnes didn’t wait for an answer. “I understand that you’ve managed to organize quite an impressive little refugee camp.”
“Impressive? I wouldn’t call it a refugee camp, but I appreciate your compliment. I know it isn’t easy to impress you.”
Barnes hesitated for half a beat, “You fla
tter me, Ser—Jack. But you didn’t answer my question.”
Jack smiled to himself. “About coming across old friends? I thought that was rhetorical.”
Barnes grunted. “So would you consider us old friends, Jack?”
“I think that would be presumptuous of me. You were a colonel, and I was a peon. We did spend a good deal of time together, but I’m sure our relationship was entirely professional.”
“Professional? Do you think it was professional when you left me to die in that infected Afghan village? Jack, you were MY driver, so it isn’t unreasonable to think that I might have a bone to pick with you, even after ten years.”
The tone of the conversation had definitely shifted, and Jack argued against the general’s revisionist view of history. “No sir, you and the rest of USAMRIID deliberately infected those villagers, then ordered Rangers to fight the monsters you created after you lost control of the situation and fled the scene. You abandoned us, not the other way around.”
Barnes was nonplussed by the assessment, “Even if all that’s true, you and your Ranger-buddies were extremely rude to me and my men when we showed up to debrief you and that Carter Jones fellow.”
“More than rude, General,” Jack explained with some satisfaction. “One threatening move by you or those private-security goons you brought along and we would have shot all of you down and tossed you in a ravine somewhere in that God-forsaken country.”
“Exactly,” Barnes agreed. “You held all the power that day, and I’ve never forgotten about it. I guess you could say that I still need some closure regarding how our relationship ended.”
“I don’t think you’re contacting me for closure about something that happened more than ten years ago. Can you be honest about anything? Are you responsible for this pandemic, or are you just reacting to the chaos like the rest of us?” Jack knew that it would be difficult for Barnes to turn down an opportunity to look like the most powerful man in the world, whether or not it happened to be true.
The general sounded very pleased with himself when he responded, “Do you seriously think that I could manage such a thing?”
Jack tried to sound sincere. “I suppose not; I doubt any one person could—”
“I may have a support network, but no one else knows what I know; no one else is indispensable. I’m no longer just the power behind the throne, so to speak. I am the throne, and you would be wise not to forget that.”
“What good is it to be the king of a destroyed world? That doesn’t make any sense.” Jack went for the direct approach, “Why in the hell did you unleash this virus?”
“C’mon, Jack, don’t you remember some of the conversations we had over shots of Wild Turkey? I seem to remember that you agreed with me that modern culture was eventually going to collapse. We both knew it was just a matter of time before a super-virus, or environmental degradation, or nuclear war, or financial crash, or some other disaster took humanity back to the stone-age.”
“Drunken speculation isn’t exact science, and you must know that most grunts, even drunken ones, aren’t foolish enough to disagree with a superior officer.” Jack labored to keep his voice from rising, “Even you must have known that there was always hope that the people of the world would figure out solutions to their problems. Did you really decide to play God and take that possibility out of their hands just so you could call yourself President Barnes?”
“Oh please,” the general snorted, “who exactly do you think would have been capable of solving those problems? The idiots in charge of the masses of morons weren’t going to solve any problems while texting call girls from behind the wheels of their Lexus sedans. The rich and the poor and everyone in-between were consuming the world’s declining resources at a prodigious rate, poisoning the atmosphere as they did so, growing increasingly fat and diabetic as they gobbled chips and fun-sized candies while watching Netflix. Think about it: I just introduced the most effective diet-plan in history! Have you seen how lean and athletic the infected have become since contracting the virus?”
Jack began to realize that his old Army boss had lost a few more of his already odd-marbles. The man was too crazy to merit being called a genius, but somehow this lunatic had managed to devastate the entire planet. Jack was still hoping for a semblance of logic, so he tried again, “General, what is it exactly that you are hoping to accomplish by releasing this virus?”
Barnes sighed deeply, clearly frustrated by Jack’s redundancy. “You know, a few months ago the president asked me a very similar question just before he succumbed to the infection. I told him the same thing I’m going to tell you: To save the world, of course.”
Jack’s sarcasm was automatic, “You saved it all right . . .”
“Actually, I did. All along the east coast and parts of the south I’ve organized survivors into self-sustaining, agricultural communities. November’s just around the corner and crops are rotting all over the country, but everywhere I’ve reestablished order the last of the harvest is coming in as we speak. I intend to see the same procedures carried out across the entire continent as soon as possible.”
“We’ve spoken with some of the refugees from one of your organizational procedures in Buffalo.” Jack didn’t know how much Barnes knew about his group’s interaction with other survivors, but he didn’t see any risk in letting the general know that news had spread regarding the phony government’s resettlement tactics. “They turned down your offer of unconditional surrender, and you sent an army of thousands of hunters to destroy them. You have a way of controlling these monsters you’ve created, probably through the helicopters that always accompany a mass-gathering, and you’re using them to kill any survivors who don’t want to go along with your plans.”
A long silence was finally broken when Barnes coldly stated, “I’m the head of what remains of the government, Jack. Any group that won’t submit to federal authority is deemed to be in a state of rebellion and therefore subject to the use of all necessary force to bring them back under government control.”
Jack laughed without humor, “You know, General, I eventually earned a Ph.D. in history, and nowhere in the Constitutional line of succession in the event of the president’s death does it mention the commanding officer of USAMRIID. You and I both know that you have no legal authority over any groups of survivors.”
“You’re wrong, Jack, I have the ultimate authority: The power of life and death. The last few hundred years have led people like you to forget that virtually all of human existence has been lived under a system of ‘might makes right.’ I now have the might, so it stands to reason that I have the right. All power now rests in my hands, and everyone should be thankful that I have a plan to save mankind from itself.
“You’re the history professor, you know that food is everything. Land that produces food is the most valuable commodity on earth. With that in mind, my forces are simply organizing the best agricultural land in North America as quickly as possible so survivors won’t starve after existing food stocks spoil or are used up. Sure, my methods can be a bit brutal for those who refuse to play along, but not as brutal as starvation.
“How many people were here when we won the Revolutionary War? Two or three million? More than that have survived this pandemic, Jack, and we still have the knowledge to quickly bring plenty of our infrastructure and existing technologies back into use. In a century or two we will have tens or hundreds of millions of people in North America again, but this time they’ll know how to live in a way that won’t destroy the planet. Also, the rest of the world will still be crawling with what you call hunters so the global population will only be a fraction of what it was before I introduced the virus. Oh yes, my friend, I have saved the world.”
“Since you seem to think you have everything under control, why are you calling me?”
“As I mentioned earlier, I just need some closure.”
Jack sighed, “Which I suppose means that you’d like to see me dead?”
Barne
s chuckled before responding, “You know me so well; a shame to lose you, really.”
“So if I give myself up to you, you’ll leave the people who live with me alone?”
“Of course,” Barnes purred, “at least until my operations expand into Northern Indiana. But I will stop sending armies of infected against them once I have you. At some point they’ll be forced to decide whether to join us or face the consequences, but why concern ourselves with that possible unpleasantness right now?”
“So what happens if I don’t surrender to you?” Jack wondered.
A small voice of wisdom briefly whispered from somewhere in Barnes’ diseased mind that he shouldn’t answer the question, but the desire to gloat over his rival overwhelmed any sense of caution. “I will march an army of infected your way that dwarfs anything you’ve faced up to this point. Nothing can stop us. They tried to stop us at an impressive fortress built between two loops of the Cumberland River in Tennessee. Thousands of fighters behind twenty-foot-high log-walls, just ask them what happened. Oh wait, you can’t; they’re all dead. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and all of the settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky are surrendering to us in the wake of what happened to their friends who resisted. If you defy me, everyone you care about will be eaten alive while cursing you for failing them.”
“Wow,” Jack replied, “you make a pretty compelling case for surrender. I suppose that you have something really special in mind for me once I’m in your custody?”
“Actually, I don’t know what I’ll do with you, Jack. I may try to convert you to the cause, or I may tie you spread-eagle to a cross and watch the infected eat you alive. If I had to guess, I suspect that after I fail to convert you I’ll feed you to the flesh-eaters. But who knows? Maybe you’ll see the light and decide to join me. I could use a man of your talents and abilities as we form a new world.”