As the car passed through the shadow of the nearly empty 105-story pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, he noticed that people on the street looked more downtrodden than usual. Hong spotted two people rummaging through a garbage can in an alley. He knew that his country had endured a punishing famine since the nineties, but he’d never seen such deprivation in the capital, whose residents were mostly party officials.
Colonel Hong was about forty-five, above average height, lean, with streaks of gray in his black hair. Few could say with certainty what the colonel was like since almost no one knew him well. His fellow students at officer candidate school would say that Hong was battle-tested, a manic overachiever, but reserved and quiet. Those who served under his command called him a heartless tyrant capable of pushing you until you dropped. The enemies he’d fought against had nothing to say; they were all dead. Everyone agreed that Hong was a disciplined soldier. If they ordered him to jump out a window at the Ministry of Defense, they wouldn’t have to tell him twice. He’d jump with an impassive look on his face. His fervent adherence to the Juche ideology influenced everything he did—especially its motto: Duty first.
Colonel Hong belonged to the small, elite group of officers who were aware of the horrors of the Apocalypse. He’d taken part in the airborne mission that wiped out anyone who dared to cross the DMZ or North Korea’s border with China.
His car stopped at the ministry front steps; a young soldier hurried to open the car door. Hong got out and stretched. It wasn’t too cold yet, but winter snows would start soon. In about five weeks, he’d exchange his light summer cloak for his winter coat. He wondered how the extreme cold would affect the Undead on the other side of the border. Last year it didn’t seem to have much effect on them.
“Colonel Hong?” A captain in dress uniform saluted him.
“That’s me,” muttered Hong. He was a man of few words. He stared, unblinking, straight into the man’s eyes. Some swore he had eyes in the back of his head. His emotionless gaze made people very nervous. The captain was no exception.
“Please . . . follow me . . . sir,” the captain stammered. “They’re waiting for you in the minister’s office.”
The minister himself. This was new. Hong took off his hat and cloak as he entered the building, wondering why he’d been summoned. He hadn’t been to the capital since his team carried out that cleanup in the Sea of Japan. A messy job, but necessary. The worst part was the six hundred children, but what choice did he have?
He had no illusions. He knew leading that operation had made him a marked man. Even given all the horrors of the Apocalypse, if the details of what he’d done ever leaked out, people would look at him with terror. He made his superiors doubly uncomfortable since he knew exactly who had ordered the massacres and why. When they’d summoned him that morning from the remote base where he’d spent the last several months, he suspected something big was about to happen. Hong wasn’t very imaginative, but he guessed he’d end the day either with a medal on his chest or a bullet in his head. He was surprised to realize he didn’t care which.
“Wait here, please. I’ll be right back.” The captain rushed off to the minister’s office.
Hong let his mind wander as he looked out the window. The gray, half-empty city, dominated by Eastern Bloc architecture, stretched all the way to the horizon. He tried to picture Pyongyang filled with Undead but found he couldn’t.
The captain reappeared. “Please follow me.”
Hong checked to be sure his uniform was spotless, then entered the room.
Vice Marshal Kim Yong-Chun, Minister of Defense of the People’s Republic of Korea, awaited him at the head of a long conference table. Sitting beside him were three uniformed men Hong didn’t know. With a vague uneasiness, he realized that he was the lowest-ranking soldier in the room.
“Colonel, please have a seat,” the minister said in a friendly voice as an assistant brought him a thick folder. “Allow me to introduce Generals Kim, Chong, and Li. They are part of our Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un’s advisory team for this . . . special mission.”
Hong sat down, not paying attention to the names. He surmised that those men were just there to witness what was said. In the end, they didn’t matter, despite their rank. He just nodded and fixed his unblinking gaze on the minister.
“Allow me to introduce Colonel Hong,” the minister began. “He is an experienced member of our special forces, with a lengthy resume. He took part in three raids south of the DMZ and another off the coast of Japan. He carried out each mission with true revolutionary spirit. I am convinced he’s the right man for this sensitive matter.”
Hong was lost in thought. As they sat around a table in the minister’s plush office, his past missions sounded so honorable. The truth was that each of them had been a hell awash with blood. The three forays into South Korean were spy missions. On the last one, he’d been shot in the hand and lost half of two fingers. The wound still ached from time to time. The mission into Japan was dirtier and darker. The goal had been to kidnap Japanese citizens and bring them to North Korea as language instructors in schools for spies. That mission almost ended in failure. Of the three men and three women he captured, he’d only brought back the men. One of the women had cried out when a Japanese patrol passed by; he’d strangled her with his bare hands. It upset the other two women so much he’d had to cut their throats to shut them up. He hadn’t blinked once. Duty first.
“Now to the situation that brought us here today,” the minister said as he opened the file in front of him.
Brace yourself, thought Hong.
“This afternoon at half past three local time, the Hangeul 9 Long-Range Listening Station picked up a radio transmission two minutes and twenty seconds long. The message was broadcast in English and repeated several times. You have a transcript of it in your file.”
For a few moments, there was just the sound of shuffling papers. Then the minister continued. “The signal came from a few miles off the African coast and was transmitted by an American ship.”
“Military?” asked one of the generals in alarm.
“No, a civilian tanker, judging by the message.”
“Does it have a military escort?” asked another general, who looked old enough to have fought during the Dark Ages.
“We don’t know, but that’s not important,” said the minister. “It’s too far away for any ship in the People’s Navy to intercept it.”
“Why would we want to intercept it?” Hong asked cautiously. All eyes turned to him, then quickly looked away. No one could stare into the Colonel’s lifeless eyes for long.
The minister cleared his throat and glanced at the generals. The oldest one nodded slightly. Minister Kim mustered up his courage and looked straight into Hong’s eyes.
“Colonel, the situation is complicated. In spite of our Dear Leader’s wise, shrewd counsel, we’ve reached a critical juncture. The Apocalypse has affected us much less than it has the decadent imperialists, including our southern neighbors. Thanks to Kim Jong-Un’s sensible tactics, not one of those monsters has crossed our borders, so the disease hasn’t spread into North Korea. In that sense, we’re safe.”
The same gibberish, but not a word about the real problem. He’s a typical bureaucrat covering his ass, thought Hong. He decided to take the direct approach. “What is the problem then?”
“That, regrettably, we aren’t entirely on our own in the world. Our policy has always been that we manufacture all our consumer goods and try to depend on only our own resources. Despite all our efforts, though, some things keep us from being completely self-sufficient.”
Hong slowly folded his hands on the table. It was an open secret that their system had failed. North Korea had been a rural country for decades. After years of poor harvests, the famines were devastating. Years ago, they’d been humiliated when they had to accept US grain and medicine to rescue entire regions f
rom starvation. Millions of lives were saved, but the shameful insult was hard to bear. The colonel firmly believed that North Korea must sustain itself, wholly apart from imperialist influences.
“I fail to see the problem, Comrade Minister. We can certainly live without Chinese cigarettes or contraband Japanese beer.” The look on his face remained passive.
“No doubt, Colonel. But without oil, we’ll be on our knees in three months.”
The damn oil, of course. “I understand. How bad is the situation?” he asked slowly.
The minister looked nervously at the elderly, bald general, who again nodded almost imperceptibly. He reminded Hong of a very old, very ugly turtle.
“Catastrophic. Our Chinese comrades used to supply the People’s Republic of Korea with all its oil, but since the Apocalypse, we haven’t received a drop.”
“Did the Chinese cut us off?”
“Not exactly.” The minister’s voice trembled.
“What is the problem then?”
“We believe there’s no one left in China, except for a few scattered groups. And the Undead, of course. What’s more, the oil refineries were destroyed when Beijing detonated nuclear bombs in an attempt to contain the plague.”
“How long do we have?”
“Heavy industry is practically at a standstill and light industry is operating at only a quarter of its capacity. Gasoline is severely rationed, even in the People’s Army. We are stockpiling for winter, but there still won’t be enough. In three months—at most—our reserves will be completely depleted. This winter, many people will freeze to death.”
“Our top priority is capturing that ship and its crew, Colonel,” said General Turtle in a brittle voice. “We have to find out where the oil came from and get that area under the control of the People’s Army right away.”
“If we could get a reliable source of oil, Colonel,” the minister chimed in, “our situation would change radically. It would guarantee the viability of the People’s Republic of Korea and further our Dear Leader’s master plan. We’d be invincible.”
“Invincible?”
“Think about it, Colonel. North Korea is the only country in the world that survived the Apocalypse.” Here the minister got choked up, and his face grew increasingly red. “Once we have a fuel source, we can move our ships, tanks, and planes wherever we want. Conquering the world will be child’s play. Those bands of frightened survivors scattered here and there, clinging to their ragged flags, will be no match for our glorious forces. Our Dear Leader, Comrade Kim Jong-Un, will realize his Manifest Destiny: to be the first to rule a world united under the Juche ideology. We Koreans will be the driving force in that world!”
The three generals pounded on the table and applauded, their eyes shining with excitement. Their plan was ambitious, but if they pulled it off, the result would be staggering. For the first time in history, there would be only one true superpower: North Korea. Kim Jong-Un would achieve what Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler only dreamed of—he would rule the world.
“Colonel, you will spearhead the mission. From the radio transmission, we learned that the ship is headed for Gulfport, a town in the southern United States. You and three hundred men will fly there, capture that ship and its crew, and find out where their oil is from. After that, nothing will stand between us and our heroic destiny.”
“I will carry out my orders, Comrade Minister, but there is one thing I don’t understand.” The Colonel chose his words very carefully. “The Undead. They’re everywhere. Billions of them. The People’s Army is unquestionably the most glorious army, but even we can’t kill all the monsters. What is our Peerless Leader’s plan for conquering the world with all those things roaming around?”
The elderly general looked at the minister and nodded again.
“The truth is, Colonel,” Minister Kim said as a satisfied smile spread slowly across his face, “those things—those Undead—aren’t long for this world.”
“What do you mean?” Hong, stupefied, blinked for the first time in the whole meeting.
“The Undead are dying. All of them.”
11
“Lucullus! Come here right now! Damn cat!” Lucia was furious as she tried for the umpteenth time to grab the big Persian cat, who studied her with a gleam in his eyes. During the first week on the Ithaca, Lucullus became very popular, since few cats had survived the Apocalypse. Officers and sailors alike were immediately won over by that mischievous orange fur ball. No place was off-limits to him, except for the front of the ship where the helots were housed. At least, that was the case until three days ago, when Enzo caught him lying on the captain’s bed, sprawled across Birley’s dress uniform. After a stroll through the engine room, he’d left a large swath of motor oil all across the jacket, which upset Enzo and, of course, Captain Birley. After that, Birley ordered that Lucullus’s movements be “restricted.” Lucia was delegated to rein him in.
“Come on, Lucullus,” Lucia said sweetly as she waved a little piece of meat in front of the cat. “Come here, handsome, come on . . .”
Lucullus did what any cat would do in that situation. He turned, scampered a few feet across the deck, and then jumped up on a porthole, just out of reach. He was having a great time.
Lucia sighed. The afternoon sky was overcast. It could rain any minute. The last thing she wanted was to chase after the cat in a downpour.
“Come on, Lucullus. Be a good boy . . .”
Lucia slowly inched up to the orange cat, but each time she got close, Lucullus skittered a few feet away and waited, swishing his tail. Lucia had never owned a cat, so she didn’t understand that, sometimes, a cat doesn’t want to be caught. Lucia didn’t know that if she just feigned disinterest and walked away, Lucullus would come trotting behind her. Instead, she slowly inched across the length of the ship behind the little orange beast until he reached the fence that divided the ship’s two groups.
“I’ve got you now, you little bugger,” Lucia muttered, cornering him. The cat realized the game had changed and looked around for a way out. He spotted a gap the size of his pudgy body in the tightly strung barbed wire and shot through it, leaving orange fur behind.
Lucia lunged in a desperate attempt to catch him, but came up empty-handed. She kicked a pipe in frustration, cursing like a truck driver.
“Damn cat! Your owner’s going to have to take care of you from now on—”
Lucia stopped midsentence. On the other side of the fence, a man in his thirties, wearing US army fatigues, materialized out of the shadows. He calmly lit a cigarette, stuck his hands in his pockets, and, limping slightly, walked over to the cat. He bent down and ran his hand along the cat’s back. Lucullus purred and stretched every muscle.
The soldier gathered Lucullus in his arms and walked over to the fence, still scratching the cat behind his ears. He carefully passed the cat through the hole in the wire and placed him in Lucia’s arms.
Lucia stared at him. He was tall and swarthy, with black hair and dark-brown eyes. He looked part Native American, so Lucia was surprised to read “Dobzhansky” on his nametag. “Thank you . . . uh . . . Mr. Dobzhansky. If weren’t for you, I’d never have caught this troublemaker.”
The man froze for a moment, then burst out in hearty laughter. He gave Lucia an amused look and threw his cigarette on the ground.
“My name’s Carlos, Carlos Mendoza,” he said in Spanish with a Mexican accent. “I don’t know who Dobzhansky was. They gave me this uniform when I got to Gulfport. Either that damn güero has been dead for a while, or he’s one of those fucked-up lost souls wandering around out there. Pardon my French. Who are you, señorita?”
“Lucia. I’m from Spain,” the girl muttered, mesmerized by the soldier’s eyes. “Our boat sank in the storm and the Ithaca rescued us. I was chasing Lucullus, but he got away and wouldn’t mind me and then—” Luci
a realized she was babbling. She always did that when she was nervous. She cursed inwardly. “What happened to your leg? You’re limping.”
“This?” the Mexican man replied nonchalantly. “It happened the other day, when we went ashore to connect those damn hoses. Nothing serious.”
“An Undead attacked you?” Lucia took a step back.
“Yeah, but it’s OK, señorita. It’ll heal in a couple of weeks. It wasn’t a very deep bite. The bastard jumped me from behind while I was shooting. Never saw him coming. Luckily he was missing half his jaw.”
Lucia stared at him. Was she hallucinating? She knew that the TSJ virus was terribly infectious. She’d seen infected people turn into Undead in minutes. Yet the man in front of her was alive and well, casually telling her an Undead had bitten him.
“Are you immune? The TSJ virus didn’t infect you? I don’t believe it!”
The soldier laughed again, this time bitterly. His deep voice reminded Lucia of Benicio del Toro.
“Of course not, señorita. Don’t I wish? The fucking truth is nobody’s immune. That virus is the worst kind of bastard. You know that. Once it infects you, you’re fucked.”
“So, how the hell—?” Lucia started to ask, but then she heard a voice behind her.
“Miss, please step away from the barricade. And you, you fucking helot—more than six feet from the fence. You know that. Don’t make me tell you twice, or I’ll blow your brains out. Now get moving.”
Lucia turned. Behind her stood two sailors and an officer in a pristine navy-blue uniform, all three wrapped in raincoats, armed with M16s. Lucia noticed that, although they weren’t pointing their rifles at the man, their fingers were resting on the triggers.
Carlos Mendoza slowly raised his arms and backed away, never taking his eyes off the sailors. His expression was a mixture of pride, contempt, and anguish.
“Don’t get all bent out of shape. I didn’t touch her or her fucking cat. We were just talking.”
The Wrath of the Just (Apocalypse Z) Page 6