The Wrath of the Just (Apocalypse Z)

by Manel Loureiro

  I went into the living room. Lucia was sitting on an overstuffed couch. The cat was playing with a sock at her feet. She had a book in her lap, but hadn’t read past the first few pages. She scowled and said in an icy voice, “You’re home.”

  I dropped into one of the chairs. “I was at city hall with Greene until a half an hour ago.” The sooner you tell her, the better. “He offered me a job.”

  “What’d you say?” Lucia stared at me, stunned.

  “He needs an intermediary with the helots who live in the suburb of Bluefont. It’s across the river, inside the Wall, but surrounded by barbed wire. Over half of those people are Hispanic, but no one in Gulfport speaks Spanish.”

  “You said no, of course.”

  I took a deep breath. Here goes. “Actually, I accepted his offer. I start tomorrow.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Lucia, I saved a lot of lives today.” Although, I thought bitterly of Mendoza’s comment about Lucia, if it were up to me, they could’ve shot one of them. “If I take the job, I can at least look after the helots’ interests and improve their living conditions.”

  “Look after their interests? Improve their living conditions? Are you going to get that loony preacher to stop treating them like second-class citizens so they don’t have to risk their lives anymore?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out.” I tried to stand my ground. How could I tell her that, as I’d headed off the slaughter in the Bluefont ghetto that afternoon, the old euphoria I’d felt for years as a lawyer rushed back over me.

  Before the Apocalypse, I’d had a real talent for closing deals and negotiating impossible terms. I’d felt invincible. Settling a dispute was like a powerful drug that had driven me for years. When the Undead arrived, all of that ended. I’d dragged myself halfway around the world, surviving by some miracle. It was quite a blow to discover that all my knowledge and skills were worthless in a society in ruins. But that afternoon, the old magic came rushing back. I’d done it again. For the first time in a very long time, I felt useful.

  I knew Lucia wouldn’t understand that. At least not right then. But I had to make her see that I was also revolted by Reverend Greene and the hate-filled racist society in Gulfport. And I was furious with myself too. I felt dirty for pandering to Reverend Greene.

  “Lucia, for better or worse, we’re here. We have to try to fit in.”

  “Why?

  “Gulfport may not be our permanent home, but we’ll probably be here for a while. If we leave, we’ll have a really hard time out there.”

  “Maybe.” Lucia took my hands and looked me in the eye, pleading. “But we’d land on our feet, like we always do. This place is sick—these people are sick—and you know it. Gulfport isn’t for us. We’re not like them. Let’s leave. Today. All three of us.”

  “Where would we go? We can’t just start walking. This is America, damn it. It’s huge. There’re millions of Undead out there. We have no choice. We have to stay.”

  “Well, if we stay, let’s confront Greene about the prophesies he rants on and on about!”

  “How do you propose we do that? He offered us his hospitality! He saved our lives! We owe him!”

  “We don’t owe him a thing! Are you blind? Do you see the way they treat those people?”

  “Lucia, you’ve seen the world out there! Haven’t you had enough of blood, death, and destruction? Aren’t you tired of sleeping with one eye open, always cold, afraid, and hungry? Aren’t you tired of being on the run? This is a safe place to live. They offer their hospitality and you spit in their eye!”

  “What’s the price of that hospitality? Living in an apartheid like South Africa? Watching them exploit those helots?”

  “It’s the price of staying alive!” I shouted, my face twisted. “Of having a future!”

  “I don’t want that future,” Lucia shouted back. Tears shone in her eyes.

  “We don’t have a choice.” I stood up and stretched out my arms. “Look around! We’ve got squat! Even your clothes were a gift, for God’s sake!”

  “We have the three of us: Prit, you, and me.”

  “Apparently you have someone else,” I said, jealousy gnawing at me. “A certain Carlos Mendoza said hello. You just got to Gulfport, and already you’ve got an admirer.”

  Lucia turned pale; her eyes glowed like embers. I instantly regretted what I’d said. It was unfair and mean, but I was tired and angry. The trouble with words is you can never take them back.

  “At least Carlos Mendoza has the self-respect to despise Greene to his face,” she said slowly.

  “That’s because he doesn’t have to worry about keeping a woman, a cat, and a crazy Russian safe.”

  “Don’t worry about the woman. I’ll take care of myself from now on.” She stood up, picked up the cat, planted a big kiss on his forehead, and then plopped him on my lap. Without a backward glance, she walked out of the room and slammed the door.

  Lucullus looked surprised—his face was wet with Lucia’s tears. And I was miserable.

  18

  Colonel Hong stretched. He had a throbbing headache. The Ilyushin-62 was one of the most uncomfortable aircrafts ever made. The engine noise filtered through the fuselage. It was so loud, he had to wear headphones during the trip. The only way to have a conversation was to yell, and even then it was difficult.

  After thirteen hours in the air, the colonel felt as if someone had stuffed his ears full of cotton. When he stood up to stretch and clear his head, a folder slipped off his knees and fell to the floor. Hong picked it up and locked it away in a steel case. Inside were an envelope with detailed instructions and cyanide pills to pass out to the men when they landed.

  As Hong walked slowly down the center aisle of the plane to the flight deck, he thought about the report the commander had shown him. He hadn’t been allowed to bring it along because they couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands, especially the Yankee imperialist enemy’s.

  “The Undead are dying,” the defense minister had said at the meeting. Hong thought he’d heard wrong. But the generals sitting around the table hadn’t flinched when the minister repeated that statement, so it must be true.

  When he asked if they’d found a way to kill them, the minister replied, “No, it’s not that. You can’t kill something when it’s already dead. Every effort we’ve made to develop an antidote or vaccine for the TSJ virus has been a failure. The thing’s a marvel of genetic engineering. However, the virus’s success has become its downfall.”

  Then he placed the folder with the words “Top Secret” in front of Hong.

  Over the next half hour, Hong learned more about the TSJ virus. TSJ was a laboratory mutation of the Ebola virus combined with elements of other viral strains. It spread very rapidly and was so highly contagious that there were documented cases of people infected just by coming into contact with the Undead’s saliva. But TSJ had a weak spot. Simply put, it was too good at its job.

  The researchers who wrote the report estimated that only about thirty million people had survived worldwide, twenty-three million of them within North Korea’s borders. The TSJ virus had wiped out six billion human beings in less than thirty days. As viruses went, it was hugely successful.

  The problem was that TSJ eventually colonized virtually all the available humans, its only carriers. Since it could only survive outside a human body for a few minutes before it turned into protein soup, the virus was effectively trapped inside the Undead.

  The Undead’s bodies had no blood circulation, no way to breathe, and very little electrical or neuronal activity. The clever TSJ virus inhibited the bacteria responsible for putrefaction, preserving dead bodies as if they were in a freezer. It could stay in those bodies for years or centuries, waiting to pounce on another host. But in a strange twist, nature complicated matters. Even though TSJ
nullified the action of bacteria, it was defenseless against fungus, one of the oldest multicellular structures on earth. Those fungi found a perfect breeding ground in the billions of Undead roaming the world. The huge slabs of walking flesh became the fungi’s new homes.

  The secret report included dozens of photos of Undead in various stages of fungal invasion. Over seventy percent of TSJ infections occurred within the first four weeks of the pandemic, so most of the Undead were likely to deteriorate along the same time line. At first, the fungal colonies weren’t visible, except for some small patches of yellow or green fuzz in the corner of an Undead’s mouth or eyes sockets. As the months went by, though, those fungal colonies expanded. Hong saw images of Undead so covered in fungi they looked like something out of a horror movie.

  The report estimated that, in two years, most of the Undead would be so consumed by the fungi they’d collapse under their own weight and rot where they fell, reduced to piles of yellow bones. In fewer than four years, the report said, there would be no Undead left on earth.

  Then it will be our turn, Hong deduced. Without the Undead, the whole world would be at the mercy of the People’s Republic of North Korea. The estimated six million survivors scattered across the globe outside of North Korea wouldn’t pose a serious threat to the glorious North Korean army.

  He and his countrymen just had to tough it out for another four years, but without oil, they’d never make it. How ironic to survive the Undead only to starve to death.

  Hong walked past a dozing soldier whose protective headphones had slipped down around his neck. He carefully placed the headphones back over the man’s ears and headed to the cockpit. His men were afraid, of course, but they knew that he was the best officer to serve under and that he’d zealously take care of them. The colonel had handpicked all three hundred soldiers in his company. They’d follow him to the gates of hell, if he ordered them to.

  When he walked through the cockpit door, a peaceful silence engulfed him, isolating him from all the noise. The Soviets clearly had their priorities straight when they designed the Ilyushin-62 back in the seventies.

  “Colonel.” The pilot saluted as Hong lowered himself into the empty navigator’s seat. Only one of the six Ilyushin-62 on that expedition had a navigator. The rest were following his lead to the west coast of the United States.

  This was a one-way trip, no return planned. None of the Korean People’s Air Force planes was authorized to fly back to North Korea, so additional navigators weren’t necessary. Of course, there was the remote chance they’d locate enough fuel for a return trip. That option had been studied for weeks, but finally discarded. The available information was very sketchy, obtained months or years before the pandemic had begun. The commanders knew there were oil reserves near their objective, but they had no idea what condition they were in—if they even still existed. In the end, it was too risky and uncertain to count on refueling, so the colonel’s orders outlined an even riskier alternate plan.

  “How long till we get there?” Hong asked.

  “We’ll reach our first destination in less than an hour. Twenty minutes after that, we could make it to destinations two, three, and four. Destination five . . . well . . . ” The pilot swallowed.

  Hong nodded as he did some mental calculations. The Ilyushin-62 was the longest-range aircraft in the North Korean air force, but it could only make it as far as the West Coast. The plan was to land at any airport where the runway wasn’t obstructed or occupied by Undead. From there, he and his men were on their own.

  When Hong heard all this for the first time, he protested loudly. They were asking him and his men to cross the United States with no backup plan. “That’s madness! We don’t even know what condition the roads are in. We’ll be driving blind for thousands of miles through an infested country.”

  “We know, Colonel,” one of the generals responded patiently.

  “I think we can be more practical,” Hong proposed. “Let’s load extra fuel into a couple of the aircrafts’ holds. Then, once we land, we can transfer it to the fuel tanks and fly to Gulfport without risking our lives. Plus it would be much faster.”

  “That’s impossible, Colonel,” replied the minister. “I already told you that our reserves are critically low, but I don’t think you grasp how desperate the situation is. We only have two percent of the fuel our Air Force needs under normal conditions. We’ve already diverted most of the fuel from industry and the civilian population, but our reserves have almost dried up. We can provide you with enough fuel to fly to the West Coast, not one liter more.”

  “But we’re only talking about a few thousand liters!” Hong implored.

  “There’s nothing we can do.” The minister stood firm. “Our Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un, in his eternal wisdom, has ordered us to reserve enough fuel to keep our fighter planes in the air for at least two consecutive days, in case of attack. We need every last drop of fuel, Colonel. Do not insist.”

  Hong shook his head. Had he heard correctly? Keep our fighter planes in the air? Who would they be fighting? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. His mind was racing, but he kept his mouth shut. A direct order from Kim Jong-Un, no matter how absurd, could not be debated under any circumstances.

  He made one last stab. “It will take weeks to reach Gulfport on the ground, and the journey will be exceedingly difficult.”

  “That’s why we chose you, Colonel. Complete your mission successfully and, upon your return, you will be rewarded in ways you can’t even imagine.”

  Now Colonel Hong and his elite soldiers were flying over the US in six Ilyushin-62s, their fuel tanks nearly empty.

  “Red light!” exclaimed the pilot. “We now have a range of only thirty minutes.”

  “How far to the first destination?” Hong asked anxiously.

  “We should see it in . . . There it is!” the pilot shouted in excitement.

  The backwater airport had just one runway. Sprawled across it was the charred skeleton of a large commercial jet, making it impossible to land. The six aircraft circled around, then continued to the next airport on the list.

  They couldn’t land at destinations two, three, or four. The runways were blocked either by the remains of crashed planes or dozens of Undead.

  “Land in the middle of them,” Hong ordered.

  “Impossible, sir,” said the pilot. “If one of the Undead got sucked into the turbines, the engine could explode and we’d go up in flames.

  Anxiety and fear of failure gripped Hong as they headed for runway number five.

  19

  The airport a few miles outside of Titusville, California, had never been a major hub. Its runway was one of the longest in the state, but few travelers wanted to land in a small town at the edge of the desert. The army built it during the Cold War, but for years it had only been used for local flights and the occasional drag race.

  It hadn’t changed much since the Apocalypse. On one side of the runway sat half a dozen wingless DC-7s propped up on cinder blocks, surrounded by piles of junk that were once bolted to them. On the other side of the runway, a dilapidated control tower, under a thick layer of sand, teetered dangerously in the wind.

  The Titusville runway was about to have its busiest day—and its last. First came the rumble of far-off engines. As the noise grew, the dirty glass in the tower’s windows rattled like decayed teeth in diseased gums. Then a huge transport plane with a red star painted on its belly appeared on the horizon. Five more followed, each staggered by five miles.

  The North Korean pilots faced a difficult challenge. They had to land just a couple of minutes apart, with no ground control to guide them, on an unfamiliar runway covered in sand. The entire operation had to be synchronized like a ballet.

  The first Ilyushin-62 skidded as it landed, but the highly trained pilot managed to bring the plane to a stop. He rolled to the far end of the runway a
s the next plane began its approach. Following his lead, the next four aircraft landed without a hitch. However, each time one of them landed, it kicked up a huge cloud of dust and desert sand. Under normal circumstances, the next plane would have overflown the airport for a few minutes to let the cloud settle, but the sixth plane didn’t have enough fuel to wait, so the pilot took a chance and came in for his landing.

  The big plane hit the runway at the wrong angle, at least sixty miles an hour too fast. The landing gear snapped like a twig and the nose of the plane dragged along the pavement, sending up a shower of sparks. One wing caught the base of the tower and upended the rotting structure. Then the plane cartwheeled three times and exploded in a fireball.

  From the cockpit of his plane, Hong looked on helplessly, cursing a blue streak. The generals hadn’t had enough jet fuel for their return flight, but they’d supplied diesel fuel for the tanks and trucks. Now, some of that precious fuel was burning in huge, hot waves.

  This complicates things. We’ll have to find fuel along the way. No use dwelling on that now. “Kim!” he bellowed.

  Lieutenant Kim Tae-Pak was one of Hong’s most trusted men, a veteran of many missions into South Korea.

  “Unload the tanks as fast as you can. You could hear that damn explosion for fifty miles. I want to be far away from here if anyone—alive or dead—comes snooping around.”

  The lieutenant saluted and rushed off. As he walked down the runway, Hong studied the surroundings. He picked up a handful of sand, then let it sift through his fingers.

  American sand. We’ve invaded our country’s most hated enemy—what’s left of it—and no one can stop us. A shiver ran down his spine. He didn’t know how this mission would end, but they were making history. For the first time in two hundred years, soldiers from an enemy country had set foot on American soil.

  Twenty minutes later, a convoy of fifteen tanks and two bulldozers headed east out of the Titusville airport. Behind them, flames engulfed their planes. Hong had burned his ships. The ruins of the United States were all that lay between him and Gulfport. That and millions of Undead.