The Apocalypse Crusade 2

by Peter Meredith

  “Holy shit!” cried Renee, suddenly. “Courtney you got to see this.” She shoved her Smart phone into Courtney’s face.

  Twelve seconds later Courtney’s brown eyes flew open wide. “Where is this? We gotta find out where this is.”

  They couldn’t tell by the video and so Courtney’s eight-woman task force had to drop everything and begin calling the one-hundred and forty cruisers in the area. They had only just begun when General Collins called demanding, “Have you seen the video?”

  He understood the implications better than anyone. It was one thing for the National Guard to tell a frightened populace to stay indoors and that everything was going to be alright, it was another thing for them to be seen gunning down what looked like unarmed civilians. His adjutant had been given the video and he hadn’t wasted a second barging in on the General in the middle of a meeting with his brigade and battalion commanders.

  “I’ll find out,” Courtney assured him. In her other ear, the state trooper was still there and still complaining. “I have a wife and children who live in Stone Creek,” the trooper whined. “They’re too close. I need to get to them before….”

  “It’s eight miles beyond The Zone,” Courtney replied, tapping the map. Her own family had moved out to Buffalo a few years before and she had already sent out messages to her friends who lived nearby to get the hell out of Dodge. Really, if she had anyone to worry about it was herself. The trooper headquarters was on the Taconic State Parkway, only ten miles southwest of Poughkeepsie and only a mile from the Hillside Lake barricade—it was a little too close for comfort. And yet she couldn’t tell this unknown trooper that everything would be hunky-dory and then run herself.

  “Listen, I’ll keep an ear out for anything weird going on around Stone Creek. In the meantime, get your ass to Milton. The troopers there have a hundred or so civilians trying to slip past.”

  She cut the link and then groaned—it was all the rest she allowed herself before she joined the others and began calling the individual cruisers. Things were falling apart. People saw the video and now they feared the government as much as they did the zombies that were pressing from behind. When word of it spread, they took matters into their own hands. Fourteen troopers didn’t answer their radios when the dispatchers made their calls and others began to scream that they were under attack.

  Courtney stood up and shouted to the women in the room: “Send me the coordinates of every trooper who doesn’t answer. We have to plug every hole.” It took thirty-six minutes to figure out they were screwed.

  “I need more men,” she said, again tapping her computer screen, hoping that by some miracle more soldiers or troopers would get through the building traffic jams. She expanded the map hoping to see a river she could pull the men back to in order to strengthen their lines. When she did, she saw something peculiar. “Who are these guys at Poughquag?” On the map, twelve miles east of them was a marker indicating an army unit was loitering just south of the little town. “What’s M.B?”

  Tanya Miller covered her mike and said: “You don’t want them. It’s just the army marching band and some cooks.”

  “Do they have guns?” Courtney asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. She went on the army net and found the frequency for the 27thBrigade Support Battalion who were hunkered down far from the fight.

  “I need to speak to the C.O. right now,” she demanded in clipped tones. So far, this new authoritative voice of hers had worked like a charm. This time it hit a snag and worse she was about to discover an entirely new problem.

  The person who answered was quiet for a moment and said: “I’m Colonel Winthrop, I’m the officer in charge, and you are?”

  “I’m General Collins’ assistant. I am going to appropriate some of your men. We have situations developing that require reinforcements.”

  Winthrop was quiet again, before saying, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not the General’s adjunct and you won’t be appropriating any of my men.”

  Courtney tried clearing her throat as if she were startled that anyone would question her. “These are orders straight from the General. I am tasked with forming the quarantine perimeter. There is no higher priority than that. Now, I need to know how many soldiers you have available. I’ll even take the marching band.”

  “Who are you again? You didn’t mention a name or a rank.”

  “I’m with the office of the Governor of the State of New York. My name is Courtney Shaw.”

  “You’re Ms Shaw? Finally! I’ve been cleaning up your messes for the last two hours.”

  “My messes? What messes are you referring to?”

  Colonel Winthrop laughed. “You have been sending the general’s soldiers all over the place, turning the perimeter into a mess. I’m still trying to find out who is where. I need you to know that this is going to stop right now. From here on, you are not to direct a single soldier. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I suppose, but I…you still need to move those men from Poughquag up to the line. They’re just sitting there doing nothing.”

  The Colonel scoffed: “Wrong. They’re manning the line right now.”

  Courtney made a face as though she was talking to a wayward three-year-old and asked, “How can that be? They’re twelve miles behind the furthest perimeter. I have the state police, in conjunction with men from Delta Company of the 1stBattalion holding a line stretching north to south on highway 82.”

  “Highway 82? That can’t be right. That would mean they are technically in The Zone.” There was a pause and Courtney heard fingers tapping at a keyboard and then Winthrop came back on, seething: "Do you realize what you’ve done? Those men are in the infected area and must remain there. The perimeter is supposed to be twenty miles from Walton in every direction, those were the orders I received, and I’m sure you received the same ones.”

  “Yes, but…” Courtney began but then a little dot caught her eye. It represented the trooper station she was seated in. It looked exceptionally isolated, sitting in the middle of nowhere—sitting in the middle of The Zone. “This is crazy,” she hissed. “You have a line outside a line. It makes no sense and neither does the Governor’s idea of the perimeter. Are you looking at a map? Your perimeter includes Kingston! There are fifty thousand people in and around that city. And it also contains Newburg. That’s another twenty nine thousand people. They aren’t going to sit still and let you cage them up. Have you heard what happened at the barricade south of Wappinger?”

  “Yes, and we are working on contingencies in case that sort of thing comes up again. Now, if you don’t mind I have work to do.”

  “You call what you’re doing work?” Courtney demanded. “Haven’t you noticed a complete lack of zombies or refugees coming your way? It’s because we’re already doing the job, damn it! Move your men up so we can contain this properly.”

  “I can’t,” the colonel replied. “And besides we have had incidences, so whatever you think you’re doing it isn’t a hundred percent effective.”

  “That’s because I need more men, damn it!”

  Winthrop was quiet for a moment and seemed sad when he replied. “I can’t. I have my orders.”

  “They’re going to change,” Courtney began, “Mark my word, I’m going to see…to…that…what the hell?” The map on her screen suddenly clicked off.

  She shook her mouse as Winthrop said, “Like I said, I have to go.” He hung up, but she wasn’t really paying attention. Her stomach was going suddenly squirrely. First, she was told by the army that she’s in The Zone and now her internet goes on the fritz? She didn’t think it was a coincidence.

  “My internet is down,” Renee said, wearing a look that Courtney was sure was matched by her own puzzled features. The other women all nodded along: a choir to the preacher. Renee tried her Smart phone next and her eyes went huge. “And my phone, it ain’t working!”

  The station phone lines were out as well. We’re officially in The Zone, Courtney thought to hers
elf and then shivered, feeling suddenly abandoned by the world. “Just calm down,” she said as the women looked ready to bolt. “Let me contact the general. It’s almost for sure nothing.”

  Easier said than done. The radio call was picked up by some colonel who let her know that the general was in another meeting and that all calls from the governor’s office were to be handled by the division communication officer, Colonel Herald Winthrop. “Hold on, Ma’am, I’ll get that frequency.”

  “Never mind,” she whispered and thumbed off the radio. “What the hell’s going on?” The only answer she could come up with was that the army was gearing up, putting its pieces in place, meaning that Courtney’s ability to make a difference was over. She felt useless, and worse, trapped. She looked out the window at the gloomy day and felt hedged in as if there was nowhere to run. The one question was: did she tell the others what was happening? Not just the other dispatchers, but did she tell the troopers who were putting their lives on the line for nothing? What about that trooper’s family in Milton? Or the entire city of Kingston. They were all fucked.

  “Wait…uh, wait here,” she said to the now quiet room. “I’m going to go talk to Pemberton. Maybe everyone should take a break.” She left the call center and stopped just outside the door, feeling her heart pound and her breath like a rabbit’s, speeding in and out so quickly that it didn’t feel as though any of the oxygen was catching in her lungs. It was as though she were breathing out faster than she was breathing in, or that perhaps there was a fire of fear eating the air inside her. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

  She was beyond afraid. She was straight-up petrified. She was trapped. Death on one hand from the guns of the military. Death on the other from the diseased teeth of the zombies. Standing in the hallway seemed the best thing she could do. It was the safest thing to do, that was for sure, and it was the easiest. She was running on fumes.

  A huge yawn gaped her mouth but a sudden roar caused her to gulp it back. A squadron of Blackhawks cruised overhead, each crammed with soldiers and supplies. From the direction of the sound, she knew that they were going to Poughquag. They were adding men to the wrong perimeter. The trap was closing.

  “Pemberton!” she shouted as she marched down the hall to his office. She found him clicking his keyboard and wearing a look of complete befuddlement. “We’re trapped,” she told him. It just came blurting out and she had to fight her eyes to keep tears from doing the same. “The army has a new line twelve miles east of here. It’s…it’s crazy! They act like they don’t care about us or the troopers or even their own men. Hell, they’re not even using natural barriers. They’ve given up the Hudson! I can’t...Pemberton? Are you listening?”

  “My computer…the internet’s not working at all,” he said, still with his face squinched and his eyes blinking slowly in a dull manner. He looked as though ten years had been splashed across his face in the last day.

  “It was the video, I bet,” Courtney said. “The one on YouTube; that thing is poison. It’s going to turn people against everyone in uniform. It was that or all the news people shooting off their mouths about stuff they don’t know…not that the truth is any better.”

  “Did you say we’re trapped?” he asked.

  He pulled out a Rand McNally Road Atlas and flipped its wide pages to New York. She pointed out Poughquag to the east, halfway to the Connecticut state line. “They’re setting up the new line here and if I had a guess they’re running it up highway 55.”

  The lieutenant stared at the map long after Courtney lost interest. He looked as though he were trying to find meaning in it. “We should try to get out of here,” Courtney said. The lieutenant’s staring continued for another minute as another flight of helicopters thumped overhead. Courtney tried again, “I mean we’re not doing anyone any good here, and if we stay, they’ll get us eventually, the zombies I mean. That or we’ll run out of food. I say we gather up as many troopers as we can and get out of here before the Army’s perimeter is fully closed. I know a few ways out of…”

  Pemberton interrupted: “No.” He wiped gently at the map as if clearing away nonexistent crumbs; he smoothed it at the edges. “No,” he repeated. “Our duty is to the people we helped trap. We should stay and fight.”

  “We can fight once we get clear of the edge of The Zone!” she cried.

  “And who would we fight? Our troopers on the other side of the line? Our soldiers? Don’t you see we’ll be just like all those other people? They killed to get out and just made things worse. We know better, Courtney.”

  She wanted to pull her hair out. “Staying means dying. You know you can’t fight all the zombies; even if we could get all the troopers in The Zone here, it still wouldn’t be enough. We will die!”

  Pemberton pushed the map away and then went to the window. He knocked it hard with his knuckle. “We’ll fortify the station. The walls are brick and the glass is thick. I don’t think zombies can get in here. We can hold out a long time here, maybe long enough for the government to straighten things out.” He went to his desk and pulled out a short-barreled Glock, and checked the load.

  “I think I want to leave,” she said. “Now, before it’s too late.”

  He grinned in a fashion that suggested mental instability rather than mirth. “All morning I was thinking the same thing, but about a half hour back I saw that.” He pointed across the parking lot where a run of woods was shading the edge of the asphalt. A zombie stood there, swaying. Because of the shade, Courtney couldn’t make out its features beyond the fact that one of its arms looked to be dangling longer than the other, but she knew it was one of them.

  She shrank back from the glass and now Pemberton’s smile was a bit more lively. “She can’t see you because of the glass. You want to know something strange? I know her. She was a waitress over at the Roadside Inn off of Vassar Road. I used to think she was so cute and now I should go over there and shoot her in the head.”

  “You’d be doing her a favor,” Courtney said, and then repeated, “I think I want to leave.”

  Pemberton checked the load of the Glock a second time. “I won’t stop you, just do me a favor first, call back the boys. What they’re doing is a waste of…of everything.” He left to kill the waitress and Courtney ran back to the call center where she explained the situation. A single gunshot was the exclamation to her story.

  “Don’t worry, it was just a zombie. Now, recall everyone! Pemberton wants to make a stand here. He thinks the doors will hold.” She didn’t leave yet, she joined the others working the radios and telling the troopers the bad news. When she had gone through her list, she tried to locate General Collins, reaching him in the Governor’s office. She lied her ass off in order to speak to him.

  “General? This is Courtney Shaw, I need your help.”

  “Courtney, you are out of line!” he snapped. “I’m in a meeting with the…”

  She interrupted: “I-I know but I think I’m trapped. I think we’re all trapped. Someone authorized a shift in the lines and no one told us.”

  Collins heard the fear in her voice and despite the fact he had a host of dignitaries staring at him, including the Governor, he asked: “Where are you, exactly?” When she told him, his eyes went to the map on the wall and he felt his heart sink. “I’m sorry, Courtney, I didn’t know. If I had…” What? What would he have done? Zombies had gotten through the porous initial line on the eastern edge of The Zone—the line had to be shifted. It was pure, painful logic and there had been nothing he could have or would have done to change it. War was hell and a war against zombies was even worse than that. There was no way he could help her. He didn’t have the time or the man power. “Try to hold on as long as you can, we’ll figure out something.”

  He hung up and Courtney sat staring at the satellite phone much as Pemberton had stared at the map. Finally, she decided not to bet on the army. She whispered to Renee: “I’m taking off, now before it’s too late. I think I can get through the new lin
es. Will you come with me? You’re the only one I trust here.” Renee was thirty—the same age as Courtney, and both went to the gym, sometimes together and chatted as they walked a few imaginary miles on the treadmill; the other six ladies were older and most were shaped like soft bowling pins.

  “Ok, but not yet,” Renee said. “Let’s wait until some of the troopers get back. You know some will want to take off. We’ll go with them.”

  Courtney glanced around quickly before saying: “If a trooper is going to go AWOL they aren’t coming back here first. The ones that comeback are the ones who are going to stay.” Renee took one look outside at the parking lot where Lieutenant Pemberton stood a few feet from the body of the waitress, and quailed. She wouldn’t go no matter how much Courtney pleaded.

  With Renee huddled at her desk, Courtney asked the other women if they wanted to chance going out and was turned down by everyone. “Then I’ll go alone,” she said, to the quiet room. No one said a word.

  Before leaving, Courtney went to the armory; all the shotguns were gone and the three M16A1s were as well. She picked out a Glock, much like Pemberton’s and added four full clips. She would’ve taken more but the lieutenant stood watching her.

  “This is a mistake,” he told her. “We can hold out.”

  Her gut told her they wouldn’t be able to. Maybe there was a chance they could live for a day or two, but what would happen when the food ran out or the water? What would happen if there was the tiniest mistake? What if they let in someone with the disease? It had happened at Walton and she was sure it would happen again.

  “Sorry,” she said. “When I find the army, I’ll let them know you’re still here and alive, Ok?” She scurried out of the station with a scarf wrapped around her face to keep out any stray germs, the Glock in her left hand and the keys to her Volkswagen Beetle in the other. The bright red Beetle may have been the worst car ever to attempt to take through the hills and forests on the edge of the Catskills. In fact, it barely made it out of the zombie engulfed town of Hillside Lake.