The helicopter and its gun crew were immediately notified and within minutes were airborne and headed for Becks’ position. Thousands of zombies were still pressing one another toward and over the cliff, but with Becks fading they had to try to clear the section right above her. Getting as close to the cliff as he dared, the pilot turned the craft sideways so one of the gun crews could lay down a clear and almost level field of fire. Becks covered her ears as the impressive, large caliber automatic weapon carved a bloody path of destruction twenty feet wide and at least thirty feet deep. Even with all of the mutilated bodies and body parts that the other zombies now fell upon to consume, it wouldn’t be long before the thousands behind them surged forward, so they had to act fast.
Once again, the pilot got into position, and lowered the harness, only this time a former member of search and rescue was in that harness. When he reached Becks and found her semi-delirious, he didn’t hesitate to smack her in the face and shouted at her to focus. With wildly shaking hands, she was able to help him attach another harness around her torso and legs. Then she found the strength to use her combat knife to cut the rope that had saved her life.
“Get me the fuck out of here, please,” she whispered, and then collapsed into his arms while the helicopter veered up and away.
Phil practically knocked the original private—now back on duty—right out of his seat with a vigorous slap on the back when the pilot radioed HQ that Becks was safely on board. He then ran over to the hospital to inform Cam, but word had already spread and celebrations were taking place everywhere at West Point. It seems that despite all that was going on, everyone was anxiously following every minute of the ordeal of Dr. Rebecca Truesdale.
Chapter 19
Across the hallowed grounds of West Point are statues and monuments representing people and events that have shaped American history. For example, George Washington astride his horse, Sylvanus Thayer, the “Father of the Military Academy,” and the stately column of the Battlefield Monument at Trophy Point dedicated to the brave soldiers of the Civil War. Then there are the statues of World War II legends—MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton.
Arguably, however, none of these symbols of our country’s freedom, and the people who fought and died for it, will draw the attention of cadets and visitors in the coming generations more than the newest monument, lovingly placed atop a platform of stones carried by the hands of hundreds of Army regulars, volunteer soldiers, and ordinary citizens. This tribute to the “Battle of the Palisades” is unlike any other, and indeed, given the nature of the enemy, it should be different than anything throughout the millennia of military history.
In a place of honor at the edge of the parade ground, perched on its crude base of rocks, now rests the famous ice cream truck. After the battle, people banded together to upright the truck and tow it out of the woods and back onto the PIP, where the grandson of the man who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, proudly drove it to West Point.
Along the route, cheering people lined the roadways as the battered vehicle rumbled along. Its iconic ice cream music, which had proven to be capable of drawing to it both the living and the dead, echoed through the Hudson Valley as the procession was broadcast via radio by the Voice of the Hudson as part of the celebration of the victory in the Battle of the Palisades, preserving the fragile renaissance of civilization throughout the region.
Hundreds of thousands of zombies from the New York City herd had plunged over the cliffs along the Hudson River. What used to be one of the most scenic vistas in the country was now a junkyard of corpses piled in towering heaps stretching for miles. While the countless bodies that had tumbled into the river would soon pass out to sea and disappear beneath the waves, the mountains of flesh along the riverbanks were another story. These rotting masses may be there for years, perhaps even decades. But the zombies were now dead and gone forever, and no longer a threat—unlike the tens of thousands of fellow herd members that still tried to spread out through northern New Jersey and southern New York.
Once the last of the eastern and southern sections of the herd had gone over the cliff, their companions had to be dealt with before they could wander too far. A thousand new PDZs were created to be the first wave of what had been transformed from a desperate defense to a carefully planned offense. Experience now taught everyone how best to use the Project Decimation zombie soldiers, which was primarily to disrupt consolidated herd movements, and distract and splinter large groups into ever smaller, more manageable sections.
Not that there was anything manageable about 500 or 1,000 ravenous undead corpses headed straight for you, but at least with the many thousands of volunteers who had come from far and wide, they now had the firepower to slowly, but constantly, chip away at the zombies. Still, it was very dangerous business, as too many people were to discover.
A militia group of seventeen men and women from Ontario had followed about a hundred zombies down a dead end street lined with chain link fences. The Canadian fighters thought they would box in the zombies and pick them off in a matter of minutes. What they didn’t know was that over 300 zombies had followed the Canadians to that location and they were the ones who became boxed in. Their terrified cries for help over the radio slowly dwindled to a lone voice whispering, “It’s too late…”
Some boys from Red Hook, New York, who had come of age during the apocalypse, had done more than their fair share of hunting and killing zombies, and thought they were capable of handling anything, so they decided to go off on their own. They started pursuing some stragglers through the woods and after a while it seemed almost like a video game, as they were all excellent shots and in superior physical condition.
None of that mattered, however, when they found themselves near the edge of the cliff with more than a thousand “stragglers” all headed their way. Only one of the boys somehow managed to fight his way back to the main body of troops. Although severely bitten, he would survive, but he would never be able to erase the memory of witnessing the blood and screams of his friends being slaughtered and consumed.
Too many of these fatal incidents occurred until Captain Lennox took overall command of all the soldiers in the field—volunteers and regulars—and set down the rules of engagement. Essentially, if you wanted to stay alive, you followed orders and didn’t go rogue. Under Lennox’s command, there were less casualties in two weeks than there had been in those chaotic first few days.
At the end of those two weeks, victory was declared and the biohazard teams began the unenviable task of clearing the bodies. There was no way they could bury all of those corpses, which in many cases were just dismembered limbs and piles of guts. Cremation would have consumed way too much precious firewood, on which the majority of people in the Hudson Valley still relied for cooking and heat.
As the riverbanks beneath the cliff were already like the depths of hell, it was decided to scoop up all of the remains and dump them over the edge, as well. All of these rotting, contaminated body parts would create a major ZIPs’ breeding ground in the Hudson River, but West Point scientists had already begun new projects to kill ZIPs’ eggs and larvae in the river, and sterilize mature parasites.
Phil’s obvious choice to head these projects was Dr. Rebecca Truesdale, as she was one of the leading authorities on the ZIPs, and it was the only way to keep her from going back out in the field to fight. When they had brought Becks back to West Point she was in pretty rough shape, but three days of nothing but sleeping and eating brought back her strength—although it would take another week or so for all of the swollen spider bites to subside.
Cam had been in much better shape, and after he was re-stitched and had a good night’s sleep he was doing well—but still in no shape to go back down to the fight. After a few days of grumbling, he was officially appointed as the “Commander of Survivor Tactics and Methods,” a new post created to teach everyone—from the general staff to the kitchen staff—how to find food, make shelter, and most importantly
, fight.
This latest crisis clearly illustrated how unprepared so many people were, even after all that had happened. It was obvious that many people had survived just by tagging along with more capable companions, while others survived simply by sheer dumb luck. Even those who had fought and scavenged their way out of quarantine discovered that they were not prepared to face something like the New York City herd. Cam’s job was to bring every man, woman, and child in the area up to a level of training and preparedness to deal with whatever the future of the apocalypse may throw at them.
The Columbia students now headed the Project Decimation teams and were already hard at work designing and implanting “kill switches” in PDZs, which actually were not just meant to neutralize a zombie soldier. The function of these electrodes implanted in the back of the skull was to stun the PDZ by remote control to prepare him for transport without the need of getting close to it. If a PDZ was threatening people, or had outlived its usefulness, a greater charge was applied, frying its ZIPs’ brain network.
It didn’t take long before they had Jaws fitted with a prototype and had been field testing him in New Jersey. The troops down there all wanted to know when they were going to get their own squads of Jaws. The main holdup to wide scale deployment was trying to find a sufficient power source. They had literally bolted a small solar panel to Jaws’ head to keep his kill switch powered, but that clearly wasn’t practical in the long run. The team was supremely confident they would figure out something, as they had both experience and the optimism of youth on their side.
Other changes also appeared destined for the area. After World War II, many of the soldiers who had passed through Camp Shanks on their way to battlefields across the world, decided to return to the Hudson Valley to live and raise their families. Likewise, many of the volunteers who had left their isolated communities for hundreds of miles around found it very appealing to have farms, and real towns—with running water and electricity!—not to mention a functioning military base. And other than the festering piles of zombie corpses along the palisades, it was a beautiful area.
More than any of that, though, was the feeling of being part of something again. Humanity had lost more than their homes, businesses, and lives—they had lost their humanity, and what it meant to be part of the human family. A few former realtors from Rockland and Orange Counties volunteered to start a housing program, matching new arrivals with suitable, and safe, homes and property, of which there was an abundant supply.
This would all mean that more schools would be needed, and more medical facilities, farmland, factories, etc.—basically more of everything, but these were good problems to have—very good in lieu of the fact that just a short time ago a massive herd of death and destruction was threatening to obliterate everything in its path and turn the Hudson Valley into a merciless and hopeless killing field.
Chapter 20
One warm, sunny day, Becks actually sat by the river with a cup of tea and a book. Of course, the book was on parasitology, but it was still out of character for her to work outside the lab. Although she was much better, every morning she still asked Cam to get her clothes out of the closet, as she couldn’t even stand that much of a confined space. The crevice and falling zombie nightmares were as vivid and terrifying now as they were a few weeks earlier, but with all she had suffered, Becks never expected to sleep well ever again.
Any normal person would not have been able to endure all of the physical torture and mental anguish she had been through since the start of infection, and indeed, there were special rest homes springing up for survivors who had simply lost their minds. But nothing was normal about Becks, and while she hoped to never again encounter the many horrors she had suffered, she knew in the core of her being that she would be ready to face any challenge with both her brains and strength.
As her mind wandered across the wrecked landscape of her life since her days as a nurse, a researcher, and a student, her focus suddenly centered on a solitary object floating down the river. It could have been just a piece of driftwood, or it could have been the corpse of the zombie or a person.
As she closed her book and headed back to the lab she thought, All I know is it’s not me, and I’m going to continue to do everything in my power to keep it that way.
The End
HVZA (Book 3): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse [Project Decimation] Page 18