by Mark Rivett
The Admiral interrupted the two men before their argument could continue. “Senator, while I appreciate your position and understand your reluctance to abandon Hawaii, unfortunately, the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan battle group is not equipped to wage whole-scale naval warfare coupled with an amphibious assault on Chinese occupied Hawaii at this time. When we are, I would like personally, to assure the civilian government that you will have the Navy’s full commitment to retake every inch of American soil.”
“That is satisfactory… for now.” Nostrum shot Henry a look of half anger and half admiration before retaking his seat.
“I’d like to move on to another topic of discussion – Moving the military and civilian fleet off the coast of Southern California.” Admiral McMillan continued. “As of today, the convoy runs have been suspended.”
A murmur of disbelief washed through the meeting.
“What about the civilians trapped in the DDCs?” Someone asked over the speakerphone. “We can’t just abandon them.”
“With our current food supply and fuel situation, we can no longer afford to sink resources into the mainland…” The Admiral replied.
Dr. Damico’s mind wandered. The words stuck in his mind, ‘What about the civilians trapped in the DDCs?’ His wife was in a DDC. The very last convoy mission was, among other things, responsible for retrieving her. Henry couldn’t help but wonder if he was abusing his power. Would the fleet be better served utilizing the convoy elsewhere? How many wives and husbands were trapped on land? If they had been lucky enough to know someone powerful in the fleet, would they have had a convoy sent to get them? If he was misusing his position and endangering lives, was he any different from the Senator?
“Most of the factors that give us the best chance for survival do not lie off the coast of Southern California,” the Admiral concluded.
The room fell silent, and Dr. Damico looked around. Everyone seemed to be staring at him. Tracy elbowed him in the ribs, and he grimaced in pain but was thankful for the cue.
“Ah! Oh, yes…” Dr. Damico cleared his throat, “the Gulf of Mexico.”
Everyone whispered as they pondered the prospect, and Dr. Damico stood to pass out folders filled with extensive research. He allowed everyone to take a look at what they had been given before continuing.
“In summary, the Gulf has the resources we need: oil platforms with existing reserves, on-shore refineries, and fisheries. Most importantly, it has access to water-based transportation into the mainland United States via the Mississippi River. Once we’ve secured the Gulf and established food production, we can mount expeditions into the mainland for supplies and survivors. Additionally, the location should give us the ability to more efficiently defend ourselves from eastward threats.” Dr. Damico outlined the key points of his strategy.
“Gulf of Mexico? Are you trying to get us wiped out by a hurricane?” Nostrum said with a chuckle.
“We can avoid hurricanes,” Dr. Damico countered. “We can’t avoid running out of fuel and food.”
“Doctor, you mention eastward threats? What about the west? Won’t Mexico be after the same resources we’re after?” A Navy ship’s captain asked the astute question.
Henry considered his answer carefully before speaking, knowing his next words would be unsettling to many in attendance. “Before I answer that, I should remind everyone here that the military fleet is running low on supplies and the civilian fleet is in far worse shape. We need to move quickly if we want to avoid the civilian fleet descending into food riots.”
“Are you the only expert on this subject? I’m not convinced you’re being objective. Are there any other scientific minds that can provide a second opinion?” Nostrum interrupted.
Dr. Damico ignored the Senator and continued. “There are no alternatives here. If we fail, we stand an almost certain chance that nearly every man, woman, and child in this fleet will die. The challenges we’re facing are serious, complex, and not just limited to food production and external security. Disease, internal security – crime, social challenges, fuel production, education, labor, and the undead are quickly becoming among the least of our worries. Even the Mexican attacks, futile as they may be, are costing us way too many resources. The world is in complete shambles, and everyone on earth is doing what they must to survive. Many will not be successful unless we embrace this reality. We need to be willing to cross lines we might never have considered crossing before…”
“What are you getting at, Doctor?” A congressman sensed the gravity of Dr. Damico’s tone.
“We have to execute a tactical nuclear strike against the Mexican nation with the goal of obliterating all remaining military threats,” Dr. Damico answered gravely.
The strategy session exploded into an uproar. Dr. Damico knew that this linchpin of his plan would not go over lightly. The zombie apocalypse sent the world flying out of control, and some countries with nuclear capabilities executed strikes on their enemies. Tragically, some strikes were against their own cities…overrun with the undead. The United States had, thus far, elected not to use nuclear weapons, and many had taken that fact as a point of pride.
Nostrum sat grinning at Dr. Damico – a bizarre grin that made Henry uncomfortable. Nostrum then stood to impose his presence on the meeting. “Ladies and gentlemen!” the Senator spoke over the discussion until it quieted. “Now, Dr. Damico and I certainly have our differences – I have my reservations about the Gulf of Mexico, but I’m prepared to review these reports and make my decision about them with due diligence, but these Mexicans…” Alan Nostrum paused for effect, “these Mexicans have been harassing us for months now! We’ve lost civilians, soldiers, ships, and these are losses that we cannot sustain much longer. Am I right, Doctor?”
Dr. Damico hesitated before he answered. “That’s correct, Senator.”
“We should have nuked these bastards long ago.” Nostrum put on an air of gravity. “If one or two bombs can solve our Mexican problem, I say we push the button. Last night a military ship was sunk. Am I right, Admiral?”
“The Chancellorsville: Eight hundred people and two thousand tons of worth of supplies. It was a lucky hit, but it cost us,” the Admiral acknowledged.
“It was a lucky hit,” the Senator nodded. “Any one of us, any one of you could have been on that ship and next time, it could be your ship that takes that ‘lucky hit’.”
Debate erupted again, but this time, Admiral McMillan interrupted. “Everyone! Everyone! Listen, you have your report, and we have some decisions to make. Go back to your ships. Think about this, and we will reconvene in two days. Whether we do this or not, we’re going to want everyone’s input…so please consider all the details carefully.”
The meeting adjourned, and the prominent figures shuffled out of the room with a din of discontent. Tracy lingered for a few minutes before wheeling herself out of the room, a box of papers on her lap. Eventually, only the Admiral and Dr. Damico remained.
“Ed, you know I wouldn’t have made this recommendation if I wasn’t certain that it’s the only way.” Henry used the Admiral’s first name to take a personal tone.
“I know, Henry, but this isn’t a simple choice,” the Admiral responded. “If we do this, it’s something we’re going to have to live with…and it’s not going to be easy. It’s bad enough we’re fighting the WDs, but what does it say about us that we’d consider wiping out an entire country?”
“It doesn’t matter what it says about us,” Dr. Damico answered. “We’re close to the brink here, Ed… really damn close… and not as a country, but as a species. I’m sorry I put you in this position, but I don’t see any way around it.”
“History may paint us as monsters, Henry,” Admiral McMillan replied solemnly. “That’s a legacy that we’ll be carving in stone – that when the claws of the living dead gripped our throats and snarled in our face, we turned on each other first.”
“If there is any history to be written at all, it will be because we have done o
ur jobs, Ed.” Dr. Damico responded somberly as he looked down at the table, the weight of his burdens growing heavy. “Frankly, I don’t care if I’m depicted as Satan himself so long as we survive this.”
“That’s a slippery slope, Henry. Keep that in mind,” the Admiral responded.
The two men made eye contact, and a chill rose up Dr. Damico’s spine. The Admiral was a man who walked that dangerous line every moment of his life. He could have sent a dozen nuclear missiles anywhere on earth if he had wanted.
“I’m sending some men over to the U.S.S. Boxer to help with cargo. Your wife should be landing there shortly. How’d you like to greet her when she lands?” The Admiral suggested, knowing that the Doctor badly needed a reprieve from his 24/7 pressure.
Henry’s eyes lit up. “That’d be… that’d be amazing.”
Admiral McMillan stood up and gestured for Dr. Damico to follow. “It’ll be at least two days before this fleet will be ready to go anywhere. Spend that time with your wife while we give everyone here some time to think about things. If you still think hitting Mexico is the only option when you get back here, let me know. I can’t promise that’ll be my choice, but this vacation will give you a little time to clear your head.”
Chapter 23
The cracked and broken stairwell door barely hung upon one hinge, its frame splintered. Bloody claw marks on one side implied that things within this DDC had gone badly. A dark-haired woman stood at the top of the stairs, gesturing for the team to hurry. “Come on. Up here!”
The soldiers ascended to the second floor quickly, but Miguel hesitated. His sense of caution, the obsessive compulsion that had kept him and his convoy alive through Walk-ins too numerous to count, forbade him to follow. Instead, he surveyed the derelict DDC – ruined furniture, shattered windows, and blood-covered walls. His eyes fell upon an odd collection of objects; a pile of clothes heaped around a stepstool sitting against a door. Metal pans sat in a clear plastic tray atop the stool.
“Come on!” Pam called after Miguel.
Reluctantly, Miguel followed his comrades up the stairs and into a hallway where a group of people greeted them with cries of relief. Two dozen survivors – most of them children—stood huddled together as a desperate rag-tag group. A lone DDC Private was not yet willing fully to embrace the possibility of rescue. He leaned against a wall, watching the convoy team suspiciously.
“Are you…” Pam produced her requisition list, “Dr. Thomson?” Whoever had inserted the black and white identification photos in her file had failed to label them.
The dark-haired woman gave orders to the people around her. “Everyone, start filling your packs with food and supplies… whatever you can carry. Private Stenson, start dumping all the medical provisions you can into boxes, please.” She then addressed Pam’s question. “I’m Dr. Kelly Damico. Unfortunately, Dr. Thomson is dead, so I’m in charge. I want you to know that I’ve personally cleared everyone in this room… At this point, anyone who can, needs to take an armful of supplies. If you could assist us, we can begin the evacuation immediately.” She gestured to boxes that were stashed in various corners and nooks throughout the DDC.
“I’m Private Stenson.” The young soldier stepped forward, nodded, and gave a half-hearted salute to Carl before limping off to collect supplies.
Soldiers and civilians fanned out and began grabbing boxes. Pam scanned her requisition orders and continued talking to Kelly. “What happened to Dr. Thomson?” She eyed her list carefully, and Pam saw that Dr. Thomson and Dr. Damico were the only two ‘Skill Assets’ on the list – a politically correct term for people who were of value to the fleet. Everything else on the list consisted of medical supplies and food. The two dozen others, even the lone soldier…the military had not intended on taking them as refugees. Pam inched her way to Carl, showed him her list, and shook her head.
Carl frowned. The thought of leaving two dozen innocents—nearly half of them children—behind was banished from his mind instantly. “Fuck the list.” He sighed. “Tear it up.”
“Okay, kids, line up on me.” Kelly squatted down as the children got in line in front of her. She began systematically to check each to ensure they were ready for the journey ahead. She filled Pam in on what had transpired. “Last night, we were compromised. Before we knew what had happened… Everyone started...” Kelly’s eyes began to stream with tears. She turned a young boy around and checked his Super Hero backpack for a change of clothes, antiseptic, and some non-perishable food. “Dr. Thomson used himself as bait to pull all the ghouls into the connecting music store. He drew them off us…we’d be dead without him.”
“A truck punched a hole in the side of the building,” Private Stenson said dryly. “We were overrun.”
“How did you clear the building?” Miguel asked, examining the stairwell door. The look on his face read that he was amazed that it was still hanging on the frame.
A metallic crash of pans came from somewhere downstairs and everyone looked around confused. Kelly went wide-eyed and pale at the sound.
“We didn’t clear the building…” Private Stenson sighed, set his box of supplies down, and picked up his rifle. “We thought with all that gunfire that you had cleared it.”
“Where are the dead now?” Pam asked. Her heart thumped in her chest, and Pam realized that in the group’s haste to get into the clinic and back out, they had made some assumptions about the security of the DDC.
“Oh my God! Didn’t you clear the ground floor? What the hell was all that gunfire?” Kelly rushed the children over to an adjoining office that overlooked the front lot. “In here!” She yelled, as she upended a cot, stripped the bed sheet, and began tying them together.
Private Stenson followed, but he stopped to take up position just inside the office door, fix a bayonet to his rifle, and wait.
“That gunfire was us just getting here, lady!” Miguel growled. He dropped the box he had picked up, drew his rifle, and knelt down at the top of the stairwell.
A chorus of gut-wrenching moans from the foot of the stairs echoed up to the second level, and someone screamed. Miguel took aim, and he began pouring shots from his M-16 down the staircase.
“SHIT!” another soldier yelled, dropped the box he was carrying, and joined Miguel.
“Jesus Christ!” another soldier shouted, and all nine crewmen who had entered the building rushed to defend the second floor. Pam took her place next to her comrades, and she swallowed hard when she saw the solidly packed crowd of undead crawling up the stairs. Their hungry eyes were fixed on prey.
It became instantly apparent that the rate at which the soldiers could deliver headshots was far slower than the rate at which the undead wall advanced. For each shot that felled a bloodthirsty ghoul, two more writhed and wriggled over its corpse to take its place. Bullets cut through grasping claws that felt no pain and thudded into torsos that had no beating heart. The headshots needed to bring down the undead were never easy, even for a trained professional. The undulating mass of cold flesh and broken teeth that crawled over itself up the stairwell to devour the living was unstoppable.
Pam emptied her clip, threw her rifle over her shoulder, and rushed into the office that overlooked the front lot. “In here!” she shouted. “We can’t get out that way!”
Kelly secured her bed sheet rope to a desk and flung it out the window. It was only a one story drop – doable in a pinch, but it would hurt, possibly injur, and there were children who could not be left behind. “Go!” She yelled.
A father hoisted his young daughter onto the ad hoc rope and began to lower her to the ground. Kelly grabbed more linen and began crafting a second rope.
In one synchronous motion, Carl, Miguel, and the other soldiers broke away from their position in the hallway and rushed into the office. One soldier grabbed the stairwell door and slammed it shut, but a split-second later, the crash of weight against the other side sent it exploding into slivers. Two snarling ghouls burst into the hallway and dove afte
r the soldier. He tripped, rolled onto his back, and roared in anger as he emptied his rifle into the relentless horde. In the blink of an eye, he was swept beneath the voracious onslaught.
Carl whirled. Every muscle in his body wanted to send him charging headlong into the fray to pull out his man, but he stopped himself. “Damn it!” He growled, slamming the office door and leaning against it to keep it closed. “God damn it!”
“Gunners four and five!” Miguel shouted through the communications network to the crews outside. “I need you to pull the Hummers away from the building, get on the heavy guns, and pour everything you have into the ground floor. We will be exiting from the window on the second floor directly above your target, so watch your fire.”
“Brace the door!” Carl shouted. Thud after thud slammed against the only thing that separated everyone from a gruesome death: the door to the office. The soldiers and DDC survivors struggled to hold the door from swinging open as wailing and moans from the other side incited the swarm into frenzy.
Private Stenson looked out the broken office window. He scanned the area with his rifle and watched the first two DDC refugees, the father and daughter, proceed cautiously through the parking lot toward the Humvees. The middle-aged man held the petite girl’s hand tightly, but also gently. A flailing ghoul burst through the front door of the DDC with a screech, and it ran at full speed after them. Calmly, Private Stenson took aim, exhaled, and fired. The monster fell, and red-black gore pooled on the ground. A second monster came charging out of the DDC, and Private Stenson fired. It also fell, and Stenson took position to cover the civilian escape.
A loud splintering sound filled the room, and several gray arms stretched through a crack in the door to thrash wildly at whatever was within reach. “Keep it closed!” Carl ordered. The soldiers redoubled their efforts, and the heavy door shut with a snap and a sickening splatter of dark and half-congealed blood. Rotting, severed limbs thudded to the floor.