Mitch Redford, call sign “Butcher” for the fact that his father worked in an abattoir, saw the number of undead below and was both elated and deflated. He knew he would have multiple targets for his Apache Guardian attack helicopter’’s 30mm cannon, but he also knew he would barely make a dent in their numbers. He wasn’t alone, there were three other Apaches with him, but the landscape below was filled with the swarming figures of the undead. They seemed to move together in one huge pack, ripping up everything in their path.
This wasn’t the first time he had unleashed his firepower against the undead, but now it seemed almost futile. At least there were no birds this time, the skies crisp and clear. It had been a risk that had grounded him and his kind for several days, a single bird strike into a helicopter’s tail rotor enough to destroy the multi million pound marvel he was flying. Now they were into the true desperation that the end brought, so everything was being brought to bear no matter what the risks they might face.
Banking left, he led the other helicopters to where they would be most needed, a fortified emplacement on the US-15. The army had built a combat outpost from high prefabricated concrete walls, with towers manned by fifty calibre guns. The hope was that the undead would smash themselves up against the small base’s perimeter whilst they were chewed up by the men manning the towers and the walls. That’s where this horde was heading now, the blaring music inviting them to the slaughter. Mitch wondered if the men in the outpost realised they were as good as dead?
Such defensive positions had been used before, some successfully, others not so, but never against such numbers. The strategy now was all about controlling the flow and the direction of the undead whilst whittling down the numbers, which only seemed to grow by the hour. Passing over the charging masses, Butcher fired off a long burst, mindful that his helicopter only had twelve hundred rounds to play with. Once that was all expended, and once he had dispatched his Hydra 70 unguided rockets, his helicopter would be useless for anything other than reconnaissance. Then he would need to return to base for rearming and refuelling, assuming there was still a base to return to.
“Butcher to Overwatch, we are one mile east of Hedgerow. Be advised, our impact on this horde will be negligible.” Overwatch, the call sign of the AWACs circling high above him. Hedgerow, the name given to the combat base that was minutes away from being engulfed.
“Roger that, Butcher,” came the response. “Do what you can for us.” Butcher fired again, dozens of zombies on the ground getting obliterated, only for their bodies to be trampled into the now muddy fields. He was twenty metres up, the ground below him seeming to move, the undead stretching for as far as he could see. This wasn’t even the most concentrated mass that had formed. What he saw in his night vision terrified him.
“Be advised, stay away from the ridge a mile east of your position. B52s coming in.”
“Roger that, Overwatch.”
He banked left again, heading for a bottleneck the terrain below had created, the undead getting squeezed, clawing and climbing over each other. Their actions seemed random whilst being strangely coordinated. Although he couldn’t hear it over the noise of his own helicopter, Butcher knew that someone on the ground would be able to hear the music in the distance. Pumped out over huge speakers, something to try and draw the undead into the killing field that had been developed. Without high walls to protect them, the US Army had quickly learnt that their troops would be annihilated. Unfortunately, not even high walls could protect anyone from what was below.
Out of his cockpit window, he saw the ground erupt in the distance, a wall of high explosive ordnance dropped by multiple bombers. High level, concentrated carpet bombing to try and thin the herd there. There were only so many planes though, and there were only so many bombs. The undead just appeared to be endless and unstoppable, taking everything mankind could throw at them.
What made it worse was that these had been people once. Sons and daughters, husbands and wives. Americans, the people he had sworn to fight and die for if necessary. They had lived lives, some exceptional, others humdrum. Some broke the law, others achieved great things. All of that was meaningless now, just bodies to spread the virus across the landscape, infecting everything they touched. History was made by the victors, and the undead had no memory of the great battles they had already won.
Whole cities were still burning from where man had tried to scorch the plague, sterilisation by destruction. Nobody believed for a second such actions would do anything to save humanity. And yet those missiles had still been sent flying, the huge mushroom clouds spreading their radiation into the stratosphere, poisoning the planet for generations to come.
Butcher fired off his rockets, body parts hurtling into the air. He would do what he could, they all would, but all they could do was buy time.
***
Hedgerow was a fortified combat base made from concrete and steel. Four days ago it had been an open field, and now it was a fortification manned by fifty soldiers. The size of a football field, it hadn’t been designed to face what was coming for it, more a place to deal with any stray zombies that might venture close by. The soldiers inside couldn’t hear the slaughter that was occurring out of their sight due to the heavy metal that was being pumped out of the speakers high up on the watch towers. Slayer, what better choice was there? They could see the battle though, the tracer rounds from the helicopters visible in the darkness above them, the eruption on the ridge briefly a beacon of hope. Many of those stationed here had protested the plan to draw the undead in, better to hide away and let them pass. But the officers hadn’t seen the self-preserving logic in that. They had a job to do, even if it meant the death of all of them.
The first defence was the flattened landscape a hundred metres all around it. That gave a good field of fire for anything that came within range of the guns, flares now descending from the heavens, illuminating everything as if it was daylight. Then there were the claymore mines ringing the base, as well as cluster bombs that had been dropped, waiting patiently for something to come and step on them. The problem with such defences was that they were a one-time affair.
A trench had been a third dug around the base, fitted with wooden spikes at the base. These weren’t designed to kill but to impale, hopefully trapping the undead. It had been hoped to create a series of trenches, to encircle the whole encampment, but the defenders had run out of time. There weren’t enough men or enough equipment to get the job done, and the undead had arrived long before anyone had expected them to. Nobody had really believed that Washington would fall, but the forces of man had never really had a chance.
Even the walls were incomplete. Too much wire, not enough concrete. No gaps in this perimeter but it was unlikely to hold off a sustained assault by the numbers that were approaching. The wise thing would have been to abandon the base and flee, but they were needed to slow this horde down so that greater numbers could be evacuated elsewhere. This wasn’t defence, it was sacrifice.
Some of those defending were again questioning the wisdom of them even being there, one private having even pulled a gun on the commanding officer, only for that private to have been shot by the quick actions of a sergeant. Any thought of rebellion was now forgotten. With the zombies now here, there was only one thing the guns were going to be pointed at.
Hedgerow was part of a string of such outposts, aimed at giving some protection to Frederick and Site R, a hastily drawn up plan to deal with a threat never before encountered. There was artillery support, but it was minimal. For an enemy like this, humanity could have come out victorious, but it would have needed the troop numbers last seen in the Great Wars. As advanced as the US military was, it wasn’t equipped to fight the army of the undead. As with every army across the globe, it consistently found itself outmatched at every turn.
The arrival of the undead was marked by a single explosion in the tree line. A solitary zombie, well ahead of the horde, had followed the enticement of the music blaring out ac
ross the landscape, triggering a claymore that had basically cut it in half. Still, it continued to crawl, pulling itself onto the field where, with its undamaged arms, it fell upon a cluster mine. Its devastated corpse was soon left crushed in the dirt and quickly developing mud as ten thousand rabid soulless demons charged over and past it.
The killing zone quickly filled as explosions erupted all around. The men manning the guns held off to the last second, knowing they had to make every bullet count. First, the snipers opened fire, their accuracy able to shatter skulls at long distance, their numbers too small to have any real impact. The undead came on like a wave, forming into a crescent as they erupted from the forest, mindless of the destruction that lay lurking beneath their feet. The music drew them on, as well as the hunger that craved some kind of release.
Closing the distance quickly, the withering fire from the base didn’t stop the undead reaching the wall. Hedgerow held out for less than twenty minutes before the perimeter was breached, zombies climbing over each other to try and scale the concrete, the horde finally discovering the weakest points that allowed them to penetrate. Butcher saw it all, saw Hedgerow fall, but by then he had used everything his helicopter carried.
There really was now nothing left to stop the undead reaching Frederick now.
27.08.19
Leeds, UK
“Wait,” Andy begged, his hand outstretched as if it could somehow ward off the impending bullet. To go out like this would have really pissed him off.
“Come on, Andy, you know it’s the only way.” Gary’s voice was grave, filled with the echo of resignation. “I expected better from you.” Seriously? thought Andy. You are seriously going to tell me you are disappointed?
“You don’t have to do this.” Andy slowly pulled himself to a precarious knee, one hand again wiping the gore away from his face. He was actually surprised that Gary hadn’t shot him already. “There’s something you don’t know.” Could he make Gary believe?
“Have some dignity, for fuck’s sake.” Gary actually sounded annoyed.
“Just hear me out,” Andy insisted without adding the fuck you he wanted to scream. “I’m immune to the virus.” There, he had finally shared his secret. At last, he had put it out there for the world to inspect.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Gary did nothing to hide the doubt that lurked in his voice, and his gun didn’t waver.
“I’ve been exposed to the virus before, and I didn’t get infected.”
“Don’t talk bullshit,” Gary fumed, his finger tightening slightly. Another few more grams of pressure and Andy knew that would be it for him. There would be no lucky escape as had happened with Mark. Andy wouldn’t wake up miraculously alive in a pit with the back of his skull half destroyed.
“I didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid of what it might mean for me.”
“Andy, you can’t expect me to believe you.” The words might have been sincere, but Andy was sure he saw Gary’s gun drop just a fraction, hesitation winning the battle. Maybe there was a human being in there after all.
“Look, it’s easy really,” Andy said, sitting on the road’s tarmac. For some reason, he felt strangely calm. “There’s no denying I’ve just been exposed to Lazarus,” Andy added, the evidence of that all over his face. “So if I’m lying, I’ve only got hours at best.”
“And I would spare you that.” Gary actually probably believed he would be doing Andy a favour.
“But what if I am immune? It will be easy to test. Stick me in a quarantine cage so I’m not a risk to anyone.”
“It’s worth considering,” the other remaining team member said. At the end of the street, a squad of soldiers had appeared, moving cautiously on the scene that was unfolding. Gary’s gun dropped another inch.
“Who the fuck asked you?” Gary swung his head around to look at the man who had dared to just pipe up. Andy had a brief moment where he considered leaping up at Gary to claim the gun, but he kept that madness hidden to himself. There was only one way a man as hardened as Gary would react to such a threat.
The other group of armed men came closer down the road. What the hell must they be thinking witnessing this confrontation?
“What do you say, Gary?” Andy asked expectantly.
“I say you’ve been pushing your luck since the first moment I laid eyes on you.” Gary jerked the gun, indicating that Andy should stand up. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. But just remember I offered to save you. What happens now is on your own head.”
“What’s going on here?” one of the soldiers demanded as they approached.
“Team member has been contaminated. I’m dealing with it.”
“By dealing with it, I assume you will be putting a bullet in this man’s head?” The soldier was clearly an officer, thought Andy. He still wasn’t out of the woods it seemed.
“No,” Gary stated. “This man claims to be immune to the virus.”
“Bullshit,” the soldier said. “Just shoot him and be done with it.” Ah, thought Andy, a humanitarian.
“It’s true,” Andy pleaded. “I’ve been exposed before.” Andy watched as the lead soldier’s hand twitched on his gun.
“What do you plan to do with him?” the soldier asked. Gary seemed to hesitate as if he hadn’t made a decision on that yet. Finally, he gave his response.
“We are close to the school,” Gary said. “We’ll lock him up in one of the containment pens. If he is immune, there might be something about that the scientists can use.” Andy didn’t think he liked the sound of that, but it was better than having a bullet in his skull. The officer turned to one of his subordinates.
“Go with them,” the officer said. “Make sure they don’t fuck this up.”
Spared again. How many more chances was Andy going to get?
26.08.19
Frederick, USA
John stood in the ad hoc operations centre and felt his mind filling with despair. The undead were coming, the satellite images he was watching showing three huge hordes. One was south of them, being held up by two battle groups of the Third Infantry Division. The largest was being engaged unsuccessfully near Gettysburg, north-east of them, whilst the last was heading directly from the east. You didn’t need to be an army veteran to know that the line wouldn’t hold.
The undead were hours away.
The commander of Fort Detrick had already ordered its evacuation and had long since departed. The challenge with that was the number of people here and the infection that was still bubbling away in hundreds of untested individuals. Most of the men and women would need to go over ground by truck to have any chance of escape, and just one infected individual could go on to pass the contagion onto thousands. There also weren’t enough trucks or vehicles to save the thousands that were at risk.
A thought came to John as if as a revelation. By trying to hold the surface against the undead, instead of just retreating underground as was possible, the soldiers stationed here were just meat for the zombie hordes. Those created by the contagion were rapidly gaining dominance over everything above ground. America’s only chance now was to hold the myriad of installations that existed below ground.
When it came to evacuating, there was always the tunnels, but they were limited in how many could be quickly transported that way. The monorail trains weren’t designed for moving large numbers of people, and the other tunnels would mean a long walk. Only the most important would thus be spared the risk of moving above ground. What was left of the vaccine had been transported away as a priority, going by armed guard on the monorail about an hour previous. The men guarding it had all been inoculated, there to ensure it got to Site R safely. They weren’t there to protect it from the undead, but from those in the base who might decide to take matters into their own hands. Military discipline only went so far, and it was already starting to crack. Desertions were rife, though where the deserters fled to was anyone’s guess.
The logistics of the evacuation was a difficult de
cision to make. The military had reinforced the base with the intention of defending it, but it was now obvious that none of their defences stood any hope of withstanding the undead for long, not with the huge numbers marching towards them. The other pressing problem was where would the army retreat to? Wherever they went, the undead were likely to follow, and with thousands of soldiers, researchers and admin staff stationed here, that was a lot of people to keep safe. Then there were the children. Common ethics demanded that they would be moved first, but John knew that wouldn’t happen. The children might have been the future, but they were of no use in defending the present.
Fortunately, the substructures of Fort Detrick would hopefully be difficult for the undead to penetrate, the place an underground bunker. Once the doors above ground were closed, those dwelling underground would be theoretically safe. That would hopefully give Doctor Rosenbaum and his fellow researchers the time they needed to pack up and flee, which was already happening. There was still research on the vaccine being performed, so it was likely going to be a last-minute affair.
It occurred to John that the best plan was to abandon everything above ground and let the undead just wash over this place. With nobody alive on the surface, those underground would have been of no interest to the zombie menace. If Major Carson was still alive, maybe that could have happened.
John himself would be one of the last personnel to leave, his position demanded it. He didn’t have a problem with that. He had assumed Major Carson’s role, protecting the research that was humanity’s last and best hope, research that would now need to be done elsewhere. And that wasn’t an easy thing to transfer, because nowhere else had the facilities that were contained in Fort Detrick. Losing this base would hamper the fight against Lazarus on the American continent immeasurably. He would ensure that whatever was salvageable was made safe, much of it and the people in charge of it already en route to Site R which was Fort Detrick’s designated fall-back facility.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last Page 17