“Thank you.” Lucia’s eyes flooded with tears. “Thank you.”
“That doesn’t mean he’ll get out of the huge mess he’s in,” Strangärd added. “I can get some supplies to him. The rest is up to him.”
“Don’t worry,” said Lucia with a shaky smile. “He’s a born survivor. He’s gotten out of worst situations. I know he can do it.”
34
MILE 110,
LOUISIANA INTERSTATE 190
HEADED EAST TO MISSISSIPPI
Colonel Hong was furious. The convoy had stopped for the third time that day, and the current delay was lasting longer than the other two combined. A very long bridge over a swampy ravine was blocked by two eighteen-wheelers, which were sprawled across it. The driver of the first truck must have abandoned it when it ran out of gas. Then the second truck crashed into the first, resulting in a pile of twisted metal stretching across the bridge. The back end of the second truck’s trailer teetered over the edge.
After two weeks of traveling through the remains of the southern United States, even Hong’s steely nerves were frayed. They’d made pretty good time, but not without problems. Their strategy was to find fuel and keep moving. Unfortunately, most of the derelict cars littering the roads didn’t have a drop of gas in their tanks and were slowly falling apart. Their owners probably drove until the tanks ran dry, then got out and walked. At this point, many cars were just heaps of metal and broken glass.
Hong suspected the cars’ owners had fled their homes as the virus rapidly spread. He speculated that they were already infected. People contracted TSJ many ways, not just through a bite. Sex, the carrier’s mucus from a sneeze, or just a kiss could infect an entire family in a matter of hours. Most of the Undead were exposed in the early days of the pandemic. Every time Hong saw one of those wrecked cars, he pictured a guy speeding out of town with his family, his car loaded down, in a panic. As the hours went by, he felt worse and worse, until . . . Even the hard-hearted colonel found that image disturbing. The charred human remains with their grinning skulls lying by the side of the road proved his theory.
Hong and his men’s search for fuel had become a nightmare. To run on regular gasoline, the engines of their Soviet-era BTR-60 tanks needed filters, which eventually got clogged. Even filtered, the fuel took a toll on the engines. They’d had to abandon two tanks along the way. Their crew had to squeeze into the remaining tanks, which caused the army’s first casualties as they drove cross-country. Two soldiers had sat too close to the engine and died from breathing carbon monoxide.
Hong lit another cigarette and watched as the bulldozer rumbled over the bridge toward the wreckage. A soldier walked in front guiding it. They’d had to go through this maneuver at least twice a day.
How many cars were there in the US before the pandemic? Hong wondered. Judging by the number of cars on the roads, every American must’ve had at least three.
The colonel took a drag on his cigarette. One of the few good things about their mission was the American tobacco they’d found. It was so much better than the Chinese crap they were used to. Who knew what that stuff was cut with? Like most North Koreans, his men were heavy smokers. The smoke trail they left behind could have led a tracker right to them.
The bulldozer drove alongside the wrecked truck, raised its giant fork-like shovel, and started to push. At first there was just the roar of the dozer’s engine, but little by little, the truck slid along the bridge, amid a chorus of shrieks, scrapes, and the biting smell of burning plastic. The driver of the bulldozer lifted the cab of the first truck and pushed it over the edge of the bridge. The trailer dangled halfway over, swaying dangerously, but the cabin was caught on a steel pole connected to the railing and wouldn’t budge. The driver backed up and charged the twisted chassis, like a thirty-ton metal ram.
When the shovel struck the truck, it set off a chain reaction. The pole was torn loose, freeing the cab of the truck. As it started to fall into the void, its trailer spun around and hit the charred remains of the other eighteen-wheeler. That truck then shot forward and plowed into the bulldozer. Before the driver of the dozer could react, it skidded a foot and slowly tilted over the other side of the bridge.
“No!” Hong roared, flicking his cigarette on the ground and watching helplessly.
The bulldozer teetered on the edge, as if fate had reconsidered at the last moment. But the driver panicked, pushed open the heavy door, and climbed over the chassis, trying to escape what seemed like certain death. Had he stayed put, the bulldozer’s momentum would have righted it, but that sudden movement disrupted the fragile balance. With a screech of metal scraping on cement, the bulldozer dragged down its driver and the mangled wreckage of those two trucks, abandoned so long ago.
The tangled mass of bulldozer and truck crashed into the ravine with a roar that must have carried for miles. A huge plume of smoke rose from below. For a moment, all the soldiers froze and stared in disbelief.
“Sir.” Lieutenant Kim cautiously approached Colonel Hong. He knew that his superior was very dangerous when he was angry, and it didn’t take a genius to see that Hong was seething. “Although we lost a bulldozer, the road is clear.”
Hong took some deep breaths, his jaw tense. Losing a tank was bad, but losing one of their two bulldozers was a tragedy. They were specially designed to break through clogged roads. Their cabs sat up higher than normal and had reinforced glass to protect the driver from the Undead. They were invaluable to the operation.
Obsessing over it won’t do any good, thought Hong. Plus, we’ve got a deadline.
“We’re done here,” he said to Kim. “The person to blame is dead.” He waved his arm over his head, signaling to the drivers to start their engines. “Move out!”
The column thundered across the bridge single file, leaving behind a burning pyre in the ravine, consuming the bulldozer and its driver.
An hour later, Hong sighed and slumped in his seat. The trip was turning into a tactical nightmare. He’d decided to use secondary roads to bypass major population centers where he assumed there would be higher concentrations of Undead. Those alternative routes were also less likely to be blocked by wrecked cars. Satellite images had detected several spots where the main highways were completely impassable. In some places, the local authorities had blown up bridges and tunnels in a desperate attempt to stop the spread of the disease, just as they did in the Middle Ages to stop the bubonic plague. In other places, massive traffic jams of abandoned cars stretched for several miles. Some major highways crossed areas so populous that Hong and his men would have faced a battle just to gain a couple of miles.
So they drove on state or local roads. They even drove across fields. South Texas was flat and open, so they traveled quickly. Once they crossed into Louisiana, the trip got a lot more complicated and their progress slowed.
The most chilling part was the towns. The back roads passed through dozens of small towns. There was no way to skirt them. When they came to one, Hong gave the order to seal up the tanks and drive through the streets at top speed. The scene was always the same: tanks speeding down the deserted main street in tight formation, dodging cars, fallen trees, and trash. When the Undead in those towns sensed the presence of humans, they awoke from their stupor and blocked the tanks’ path. But since the towns’ populations were usually under a thousand, they didn’t pose a big problem. The convoy drove through the streets so fast there wasn’t time for more than a couple hundred Undead to gather. Only once did they have serious trouble, in the remote town of Livingston, Texas, near the Louisiana border.
Livingston, population five thousand, had been the county seat and the largest town in Polk County. Hong knew that but decided to drive through it anyway. Detouring would’ve taken them seventy miles out of their way. That was his first mistake.
His second mistake was to divide the group into two to search for fuel. That doubled the risk, but it also
doubled the chances of finding fuel. Since the side streets were narrower than the main street, Colonel decided to send the bulldozers with that group in case they got stuck. Hong knew he was taking a huge risk, but he had no choice. After speeding across Texas in just two weeks, their fuel tanks were very low, and they’d run out of diesel thirty miles back. Livingston was the only town for miles. If they were going to find fuel anywhere, it would be in Livingston.
The third mistake was not anticipating the large number of Undead they would find in the town. The colonel wasn’t to blame for that one. He couldn’t have known that most of the people in the area distrusted outsiders and the federal government, and had ignored the order to evacuate to the Safe Zones. Instead, they’d congregated where they felt safest: the county seat in Livingston.
When the North Korean convoy entered the town and separated into two groups, they had no idea they were driving straight into a hornets’ nest, where fifteen thousand Undead had been waiting for human victims for nearly two years.
The Undead fell on them from all sides. The first sign of trouble was a crowd of nearly a thousand Undead gathered at one end of the main street, blocking the path of the group without the bulldozers. The tanks charged the crowd, but the lead vehicle had to stop when a mutilated torso got stuck between the front axle and the chassis. The street was too narrow to go around the vehicle, so the whole convoy was stuck.
The terrified soldiers, locked in their tanks, heard the huge crowd moaning and beating their fists on the sides of the tanks. Even more frightening were the cries of the poor guys in the first tank who’d disobeyed orders and abandoned their BTR-60. At first they fired wildly and pounded on the other tanks for help. Hong kept a tight leash on his men so they wouldn’t help their comrades. If they opened the hatch, the Undead would swarm the vehicles in seconds. The men’s cries grew weaker, then stopped altogether.
Hong ordered the tanks to push each other, like a huge, armored caterpillar. With the combined strength of their engines, they pushed the first tank to one side and made their way slowly through the crowd, crushing the creatures under their wheels. Once they were out of town, they waited half an hour for the other group, who made it out unscathed but hadn’t found a drop of fuel.
Late that afternoon, they finally found a gas station on a deserted stretch of highway. There they encountered just four Undead, the station owner and his family, who didn’t pose a problem for Hong’s men. The owner must have been a member of the National Rifle Association and a gun fanatic; they found an impressive arsenal in his house. He’d also been very cautious and had installed a complicated locking system on his gas tanks. For the average traveler, that system would’ve been insurmountable, but Hong’s men got it open with a combination of ingenuity and brute force. Within half an hour, they were able to refuel and load several barrels of extra gas on top of their BTR-60s.
As the trip continued, the Koreans began to notice changes in the Undead. They saw fungus slowly eating away those creatures, although not always in the same way. Crossing dry and dusty Texas, the Undead had looked fairly normal, or as normal as a resurrected person can look. In wetland areas, the fungal growth was much more pronounced on the Undeads’ open wounds.
As they got closer to Mississippi with its extreme humidity, the creatures’ appearance changed drastically. Every Undead they saw was infested with fungus. Nearer the Mississippi River, the infestations got worse. Their condition was horrifying: human bodies so covered by green, blue, or orange fuzz—or all three—that they looked like they were wrapped in colorful chiffon scarves. Some had a layer so thick their bodies were barely recognizable as human. A growing number of fungus-covered Undead lay rotting in piles and would never rise again.
Looking at those decaying mounds, Hong understood, with a chill, that their trip would have been impossible just a year earlier.
One small town was entirely deserted. No humans or Undead. Not even any animals. As the convoy crept through it, the fearful soldiers looked all around and whispered among themselves. They felt like the last men alive on earth.
When they came across a group of living people five days later, they were shocked.
The convoy had stopped to refuel under the shade of some massive trees. They parked in a circle, the way settlers in the Old West had circled their wagons. Inside the circle, the men built a bonfire and boiled rice. Half the soldiers tried to sleep; the other half stood watch. Hong was sitting at his table under a tree filling out the daily report when he heard the shots.
At first he thought they were under attack. Hong dropped his pen, grabbed the Makarov pistol holstered at his waist, and jumped to his feet. More shots rang out.
“Kim! Kim!” he bellowed as he buttoned his tunic and raced across the camp. His assistant appeared beside him as if he’d popped out of a magician’s hat, silent as ever.
“The shots seem to be coming from southwest of our position, about four miles away, Colonel,” he said quietly as he checked his rifle’s magazine. “But it’s hard to pinpoint. Sound travels really far in this silence.”
“Send two tanks to check it out.” Hong was not going risk his entire column by rushing blindly into the unknown. But then he snatched the rifle out of Kim’s hands. “No, I’ll go. You stay here in radio contact.”
“Colonel, I don’t think that’s wise,” Lieutenant Kim dared to interject, but Hong’s poisonous look stopped him. “Yes, sir.”
When Hong climbed up on one of the tanks, its engine was already running and his men were at their posts, weapons drawn. The colonel’s men were battle hardened and didn’t need to be told what to do in combat.
Adrenaline roared in Hong’s veins. “Men, feel Our Beloved Leader breathing courage into you. Now charge!”
The two tanks pulled out of the circle and rushed down an idyllic, tree-lined road that ran along a brook toward the source of the shots. The trees’ red leaves formed a pleasant canopy, but to Hong it was like they were driving into battle through a blanket of blood. There must be humans nearby, and humans were a more interesting foe than rotting corpses. Plus humans had information—exactly what Hong needed.
As they approached, the gunfire grew louder. There were a few explosions, which Hong’s trained ear identified as hand grenades. He was reassured by that. If they’d come up against a heavily armed platoon, they would’ve had problems since his tanks had no heavy weapons.
The small convoy stopped at the top of a hill. Hong eased the hatch open, peered through his binoculars, and spotted the place where the shots were coming from—a town with about forty houses a couple of miles away at the bottom of a valley.
The colonel carefully scanned the streets. He could make out about two dozen figures, dressed in camouflage, swarming among the houses. At one end of the main street, half a dozen vehicles, including trucks and tanks, formed an impassable barrier. Some of the figures entered homes and came out carrying supplies, which they loaded into the trucks. Another group walked slowly through the town, killing the clumsy, fungus-ridden Undead.
Hong lowered his binoculars and thought for a moment. It was a raiding party. And what few Undead there were posed no challenge. The colonel wondered whether it was an isolated group or a detachment from a larger base. Gulfport, for example.
That made sense. They were only about a hundred and twenty-five miles from their objective. If Gulfport’s population was as large as they suspected, raiding parties would have to go farther and farther to get supplies. There was just one way to find out.
“Sergeant, roll your tank to about a mile from the east side of town and wait for my signal. We’ll enter on foot at the same time. Those imperialists are in for a big surprise.” He smiled, savoring the thrill of the hunt.
“Should we call for backup, sir?” the tall, gaunt sergeant asked cautiously.
“No time for that.” Hong dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “They’re loading thei
r trucks and could leave any minute. If we bring more men, they’ll spot us. We have to seize the opportunity now.”
The sergeant saluted and drove off with his five men. Hong ordered his tank with the other five soldiers to roll slowly down the hill. About half a mile from the town, they parked in a weed-choked cornfield, climbed out, and approached on foot.
The raiding party’s idling engines and the shots they fired covered up any noise the Koreans made. The colonel stealthily led his men to the first house. He split his team into two squads, then entered the empty house through the back door. The looters outnumbered them, but Hong had the element of surprise on his side. On top of that, his soldiers were very disciplined—and very brave. Their unit’s motto was: No risk, no victory.
The colonel crawled up to a window for a direct view of the street. His shoulder bumped a table next to an armchair. He grabbed the framed pictures on the table before they crashed to the floor. A wry smile came over his face. In one photograph, a stern-faced Marine from the ’50s looked straight into the camera. He and three of his buddies were posed next to a milepost that read “Pyongyang, 115.”
The Colonel was struck by the irony of the situation. A Korean War vet. As a young man, that bastard traveled thousands of miles to kill my countrymen. Fifty years later, I’m here in his house to kill Americans on their home turf.
He looked up and saw a group of the looters headed for the house where Hong and his men were hiding. Hong noticed that they were all black, Latino, and Asian. The colonel didn’t care about their skin color. They were all his enemies.
One of the men pointed to the house and shouted, “Hey, Luis, go to the house on the corner with Randy and Joseph. Charlie, Fernando, and I’ll take care of this one. Everyone else can go to—”
A hail of bullets from Hong’s AK-74 hit the guy squarely in the sternum and sent him flying backward as if he’d been punched by a giant fist. The guy next to him opened his eyes wide in disbelief. Another burst of fire blew away his head. Splinters of bone and blood splattered in every direction.
The Wrath of the Just (Apocalypse Z) Page 19