by Rick Chesler
A sudden commotion, and one of the women—not quite dead yet—scrambled from under the table, made a break for the door.
The crylo swung its reptilian head over the table and caught her in a flash. It chewed off the upper half of the woman in one bite, and the lower section flopped onto the table, legs still kicking. DeKirk gave a nod, activating the mental and pheremonal ‘remote’ in his brain, and the other undead went crazy attacking her remains. Two members of DeKirk’s trusted shadow government flinched and turned from the sight, but the sounds were still beyond revolting.
“What in God’s name?” the ex-president spat. “You’re controlling them? You’re…”
DeKirk sent the reptile on to the next victim, the last one trying to flee the room. In the aftermath, he returned his attention to the fallen president, who had retreated into the flickering shadows. “Yes, I’m controlling them. Just as I’m now officially in control of us. Both sides of this war are now under my control. I’ll tell our forces where to go, what to attack and defend, and if I feel like it, I’ll have them disarm, stand down and…” He licked his lips. “…just wait for the end.”
The ex-president glared. “We’ll stop you, DeKirk. We will…”
DeKirk tilted his head to one side as if considering the statement congenially, but his eyes flashed yellow. “I highly doubt that, and I have no idea who you mean by ‘we’? Possibly our allies across the pond? The other world powers? Don’t hold your breath, I have plans for them as well. In the meantime, don’t expect this video feed to last. My first order of business will be to disrupt the communications satellites, to go dark with the exception of a few lines of communication only I’ll control.”
Without news, without the ability to coordinate, the fear and chaos would be augmented a hundred-fold. He wouldn’t be able to shut down everything, but could knock out enough of them to cause the desired effect.
Suddenly, they all heard shouting come from the ex-president’s end of the video chat. On screen, the ex-president looked over his shoulder as his people left his side and fled from something off camera but coming close, fast.
“Oh shoot,” DeKirk said. “I thought I’d have more time to gloat.” The screen flickered, and the ex-president was a blur, running for a back room, chased by a mob of undead… Then the screen went blank.
Sighing, DeKirk made a flicking motion with his finger that caused the crylo to retreat, back through the door and into the shadows of the larger bunker facility. The other undead, standing now, their meals finished, wobbled uncertainly, looking in his direction. Until he made a similar motion and they promptly obeyed, retreating out the door, single file.
DeKirk pulled out the main chair at the table, glanced back to the screens of devastation around the country, and let out a sigh.
“Gentlemen and ladies of my new cabinet. Congratulations on your positions. Now, sit, take a deep breath and relax. You’ve earned it. The hard part is over.”
He smiled as they all took their seats.
“This next phase at least, is going to be a lot more fun.”
Part 3: New World Order
27.
Alex lost sight of her chute in the mayhem, the smoke and the sea of bodies.
At first he thought they were both dead and they were landing straight in a crowd of undead, but then he breathed a sigh of relief—just before he hit ground and the air rushed out of him as a pair of guardsmen caught him.
“Hope you’re not infected!” he grunted as he regained his balance.
“No,” one of them said. “And we plan to damn well stay that way.”
“Welcome to Atlanta,” the other said, looking around the devastation and the eerily-quiet cityscape. “Such as it is.”
Alex shook off the straps and wriggled out of the chute. “My friend, where is she?”
“Saw her strike the side of Peachtree Center and drop into those trees there.” He pointed to a section of the street barely visible over the heads of more crowds and bottlenecked traffic.
Alex took stock of his surroundings. He saw several contingents of National Guard evacuating hundreds of people, masses carrying their children and a few precious possessions. Gunfire roared back a half mile from where they had been fleeing. He saw tanks and makeshift fences in that direction, a flimsy line of defense, but one that was holding—for now.
“We can’t keep them back much longer,” the one guard said as if reading his mind. “Too many side streets, and the buildings are infested. They’re coming out the windows, leaping from six stories high, and fucking getting right up.”
“Tell me about it,” Alex said. “Ok, good luck. Get everyone as far away as you can.”
“Then what?” asked the guard, again looking at the chute, then the sky, as if hoping Alex’s miraculous arrival was like some angelic portent, a sign that divine help had arrived.
“Then you pray,” Alex said, starting to head over to Peachtree Center, before calling back. “And tell me how to get to the CDC!”
#
Veronica found herself in a moment of panic, her legs dangling twenty feet over the ground where two zombies scampered, smelling her fear and her blood from the gash in her forehead where she must have hit the building wall before falling into the thorny and saving clutches of this tree. Her chute had caught, barely. One of the straps had torn loose, the other was sliding up her shoulder, and in another few inches she’d have nothing keeping her from dropping into the midst of the creatures that were even now leaping into the air, reaching higher than anyone should, but still coming up a few feet short.
It’s not going to end like this, she thought. Not when we just got here.
She winced with the pain from her head and shook some blood out of her eye as she reached into her jacket pocket for the 9mm. Fumbled for it, but suddenly the tree shook just as she registered hearing breaking glass, some of which fell past her, slicing through leaves and off branches. Above her, something crashed and broke through branches, hissing and screeching, scrambling and desperately pushing through the foliage to get to her, having jumped out of a higher window.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding!” Veronica pulled the gun free, tried to take aim, but the branches’ motions and her precarious balance on the parachute strap caused her to swing back and fire wildly. The zombie thrashed and dug its way through the branches, gaining, reaching…
She fired again, thinking she couldn’t miss, but just heard a sickening thump as the bullet went wide, maybe punching through the monster’s shoulder. She fired four more shots, wildly blasting as she started spinning. Something had leapt high enough finally and caught her foot, yanking her down. The strap was about to break and the grasp on her ankle was beyond crushing. Screaming, she looked down and aimed, fired—and this time didn’t miss. The female zombie that had been trying to climb up her leg for a big bite suddenly had its skull punched through and brains scrambled. It dropped and landed on two other zombies.
Veronica swung her arm back around and aimed up. The other attacker’s head thrust through the foliage, snarling and drooling blood. Those wicked yellow eyes locked on hers and as she swung back up after the weight’s release, she aimed between them and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Her heart sank, and the thing fell the last few feet onto her, claws out and mouth open with blood-stained teeth.
She had nowhere to duck, nothing to do except flinch, and pray…
Gunfire from below echoed at the same time she felt suddenly weightless.
Falling! Someone had shot her strap.
She turned in mid-air, saw a familiar face in the alley, then fell into a crowd of zombies.
#
With no time to think it through, Alex had two choices: shoot the tree-hugging zombie about to pounce on Veronica and risk the blood from the headshot getting in her mouth and eyes (whether or not that was the mode of transmission), or fire a volley over her shoulder, and blast through the chute strap holding her in place.
&
nbsp; In hindsight, he should have shot the zombie, not realizing that having her fall out of its reach only meant that if she survived the drop, she’d be served up right in the midst of four other slavering monstrosities eager for their next meal.
Stupid! He thought it even as he held down the trigger on the M5. On the first swipe, he had the barrage cut through the restraints and set her free, but then he aimed lower and sideways, ripping the airborne zombie across his spine and hopefully up through its head, although he couldn’t tell.
Then, still running, he shifted his aim, yelled ahead to distract the crowd, crouched and opened fire, sweeping left and right, at about head level. Fighting the recoil, he kept the automatic fire spitting out lethal violence, tearing through flesh and bone, skulls and jawbones. Teeth flying, shoulders and chests pierced.
“Veronica!”
He saw a leg kick out from the pile, sweeping two other pairs and toppling one attacker—a former national guardsman by the outfit. In a flash, Veronica was up on her knees and thrusting a knife into the zombie’s forehead.
She screamed in the next instant as the tree-bound zombie fell right where she had been. Headfirst—what was left of its head, at least, after a random round from Alex’s M5 struck home.
She got up, tenderly favoring one leg, but put some weight on the other, happy it held without much pain.
“Soft landing?” Alex asked, breathing hard, eyeing the fallen zombies for movement.
Veronica nodded. “Nice of them to break my fall.” She glanced up and down her arms and legs, looking for bites. “Clean, too. Now…”
Suddenly another window shattered above and behind her, on the second floor, and a teen girl in all black with spiky hair leapt through, landing in a shower of glass two feet away from Veronica.
She flinched, but rolled her eyes at Alex, then shifted her grip on the knife handle, spun around and struck with sideways precision into the zombie’s left temple just as the girl rose, snarling and about to leap.
Veronica’s arm trembled, but she held the pose, locked in to the girl’s skull until the ferocity in those yellow eyes dulled and the body went limp.
“Damn you’re good,” Alex said admiringly as she let the body drop and pulled out her knife.
“Not a skill I’d want to brag about on my resume. Unless the world’s gone completely to shit.”
Alex glanced around and back up to the building, expecting more windows to shatter any second, releasing more of the converted, who had until only this morning been normal work-going schleps, showing up to meetings or getting their coffees.
Now they were eating their colleagues and leaping out onto unsuspecting and incredulous people who still couldn’t fathom what was happening.
A goddamn zombie apocalypse, Alex thought.
“Can there really be a way to stop all this?” he voiced, as distant explosions rocked the street, and the building shook and screams of the living and the shrieks of the dead echoed off the concrete corridors of Atlanta.
“Got to try,” Veronica said, reloading her 9mm and eyeing his M5. “Any more of those?”
“No doubt we’ll find ‘em along the way,” Alex said. “Lots of soldiers and National Guard among the converted. They’ve all been dropping their weapons for us.”
Nodding, Veronica took his arm. “Thanks for the rescue, now let’s go. Do you have any idea where we are?”
Alex motioned down a side alley. “I think so. Not the best with directions, and of course GPS is shot.”
“Satellites are down?”
“Yeah.” Alex had checked his smart phone along the way. Nothing but a spinning circle and a blank map. “Don’t know if the system’s just overloaded, the power’s out, or if all cell service was jammed as part of the attack. So I had to do this the old fashioned way.”
She gave him a sideways look. “You, a guy, actually asked for directions?”
“Don’t start.”
“Okay Mr. MapQuest, how long ‘til our destination?”
They started off down the deserted alley, where smoke from an upstairs window billowed thick and black into the sky, blotting out the sun.
“If there aren’t any distractions, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Distractions meaning ravenous zombies, flying mutated dinosaur corpses or—”
She stopped suddenly pulled back on his arm.
A shop—a Starbucks—in front of them on the corner of Peachtree Ave, at the end of the alley, crumbled into dust and debris, shattered concrete and blasted windows, just crushed by an enormous…
“Is that a foot?”
Veronica pulled him aside, into a doorway where they could just peer around the side.
Something made a horrific, warbling bellow, and then a dark form strode into view. Just a portion of the form—a body and a long twisted neck, and through the smoke rising from the crushed store, they caught just the hint of a huge horned skull and wicked jaws opening and snapping at the air. A head that moved this way and that, as frightening dragon-like eyes sought out prey in every direction.
Veronica’s whisper was barely audible. “Dear God, what the hell is that?”
“That,” Alex said, “is the freakin’ largest dinosaur ever discovered. A dreadnought. Thought to be larger, heavier and more frightening that a T.rex, although… fortunately not carnivorous, and this one doesn’t look as big as they could get.”
“What? Then… wait, it sure looks like it wants to eat us.”
“I’d say with this virus prion thing, all bets are off. It may not have the razor sharp teeth of a T. rex, but what it does have, coupled with its size, speed and ridiculous hunger, can more than make up for its former vegetarianism.”
“Great. DeKirk really brought in the muscle.”
“Right, as it’s doubtful this thing is going to leave many people alive after being chomped on, not to be transformed. So it’s here for intimidation, and pure destruction.”
“Or a distraction,” Veronica guessed, hearing helicopters somewhere up there, and hoping they were fully armed with an array of missiles.
The hulking behemoth grumbled, bellowed a cry up to the sky as it tilted its head, then it continued on its path, picking up speed toward the sound of desperate, sporadic gunfire. Someone was giving it a valiant go out there.
“Not our fight right now,” Alex said. “We’ve got a mission.”
“True,” Veronica said as she watched the last of the dreadnought lumber by and noticed several humanoid forms clinging to its hind quarters, even grasping on to the enormous tail as it swayed back and forth, knocking over street lights and breaking storefront windows. “Stay on target.”
28.
Washington, D.C.
Major Remington, along with a force of six—all that remained from the defenders of Pennsylvania Avenue—including the shell-shocked radar technician with barely any combat experience—left the tank and ascended the steps to the East Wing of the White House Complex with a cautious expectation of dread.
They looked to the left, to the main building, half in ruins, with flames licking out from the upper balcony windows. The second leftmost pillar was shattered by a stray 120mm round, and all the windows to the East Room were broken. Fire raged from the drapes inside, where screams punctuated the crackling fire.
The president would have been escorted to the PEOC—the President’s Emergency Operations Center—a bunker designed by FDR, below the attached East Wing and behind ten feet of reinforced concrete, designed to withstand all but a direct nuclear hit.
Remington paused at the top of the stairs, right hand raised in a fist to stop the others. He took a moment and looked up at the smoke-filled sky, where no more air support was in sight, and a lone ptero circled aimlessly as if awaiting orders, perhaps to see how they fared inside. At their backs, the barricades had broken, and a swarm of zombies pushed through, most continuing on the avenue, a few sniffing the air, hearing the screams, and heading this way.
“About to have comp
any,” Remington said, turning back to the front door, which was broken on its hinges, leaning open. “This may be a one-way trip, but we have our orders. Get down to the bunker, clear the path and secure the POTUS. Marcus and Harrison: get up to level two and man the turrets, buy us some time.”
White House defenses were up there, but whoever operated them was likely dead or transformed, and Remington didn’t have a lot of confidence that those two brave men rushing in ahead of him, firing a few rounds on their way to the stairs, had any chance of survival.
Do any of us?
He brushed off the thought, but then had a passing moment’s reflection of his daughter, back home in Kansas. He wouldn’t let himself wonder at her fate, only hoping that the contagion hadn’t spread anywhere near there, and if possible, a miracle would save her before then. If not…
He clamped down on the line of thought. They were coming, and fast. Shrieking, hissing, starving, racing up the stairs toward them.
The undead.
He rushed in, leading his men, with just a fading image of his daughter’s smiling eyes in his mind before visions of true Hell took her place.
#
The next minutes were a blur of mind-numbing violence, of shocking visuals and utter fear as Remington’s team went from the lobby to the hall to the East Room, clearing the way of former aides and hapless tourists who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a moment of heart-wrenching grief as they discovered a group of school kids and their teacher holed up in a pantry beside the kitchen, cowering for their lives until they saw Remington as a savior.
He was anything but that now, though, and insisted they stay put, stay hidden and quiet. His was another mission, and in all likelihood, this poor group would never make it out alive. If he secured the president and somehow reinforcements arrived to retake the capitol, there might be a chance for them, but for now he had to press on.