by Ricky Sides
“All right. What are my options?”
“Mr. President, if I may, I’d like to point out that the Secretary of Defense omitted an important fact,” said the President’s Chief of Staff, who had already read all of the official reports.
“Which is?” asked the President.
“The zombies are multiplying exponentially.”
“I was coming to that,” stated the Secretary of Defense.
“Okay. Just how fast are these things capable of reproducing, or converting humans into more zombies?” asked the President.
“The Decatur situation began with a single patient. In less than a week, Patient Zero has resulted in the loss of the population of the city. That’s 56,000 people. Since then they have moved out into the countryside. You can add several thousand more to the total by now,” explained the Secretary of Defense.
“Athens will probably fall tonight. If that happens, then you can add another 22,000 to their number,” said Hubert Ryan, a retired Air Force General turned advisor to the president.
“Can we save the city?” asked the President.
“Mr. President, the Air Force is prepared to try, but frankly, I doubt it’s possible. Unlike a conventional army, these things don’t all stick to roads. Granted, most do, and I can assure you that we can eliminate those that do so, provided you authorize the missions, but that will still leave untold numbers in the surrounding countryside.” The aide shrugged. “We already know this began with a single patient.”
“Thanks for the bad news,” the President said sourly.
“Don’t blame me. I voted for the other guy,” the aide said with a straight face.
There were a couple of gasps in the room. The Chief of Staff cleared his throat and said, “Mind your manners. You are addressing the President of the United States.”
The aide laughed and said, “Do you think I’m worried about my career? In case you haven’t figured this out yet, none of the people in this room will have a career in a couple of months. Maybe less.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe that we can stop this?” asked the President.
“I am. There is only one way you can even remotely hope to stop this and I think most of the people in this room know what that means.”
“You want to nuke them?” asked the President.
“There’s no other way to be sure we can get them all. The radiation and blast wave won’t care whether they are on the road or crawling through the countryside. If they are in range, they are going to fry.”
“The civilian casualties would be horrendous,” the Secretary of Defense stated.
“They are going to die anyway. If we use our missiles, we are looking at under 2,000,000 casualties from the blasts, shockwaves, fallout, and the resulting lawlessness in the area.”
“And if we don’t?” asked the President.
“If we try to take this on in a piecemeal fashion, then we will lose ninety-eight or ninety-nine percent of our current population, possibly even more.”
“Very well. We’ll use our air assets. We are going to try conventional first. If that fails, then I will authorize the use of our nuclear arsenal to contain it.”
“But, Mr. President...”
The President held up his hand for silence, interrupting the aide. “I understand that this will probably mean using missiles on more areas, but I cannot in good conscience authorize the use of extreme measures before making this attempt.”
“Then you have my resignation, because I will not be a party to the needless death of hundreds of millions of people,” the aide said. He stood up to leave, but agents of Homeland Security stepped in front of him and blocked his exit.
“Do I have your word that you won’t go to the press about this?” asked the President.
The former aide laughed. “That would accomplish nothing. If I complained that you were refusing to use nuclear weapons against the contaminated zones, they’d laugh me out of their offices. They would agree with your assessment that conventional means must be tried first, and they would be just as wrong as you are to take that stand. No, Mr. President, I’m not going to the press. I’m going to get my family and take them to a place in the mountains where there are very few people. I think I can keep them alive there when the rest of the country falls, and it will fall. By the time you decide to do the right thing, it’s going to be too late.”
“You’re free to go,” the President said.
“See to it that his access credentials are revoked on the way out,” the Chief of Staff instructed the agents who were going to escort the former aide out of the White House. The man couldn’t have cared less. His mind was already reviewing the survival plans that he had developed years ago and was about to put in motion.
***
“Bennett, where are you?” Sergeant Shannon asked without preamble the moment he answered his cell phone.
“We’re on Highway 31 heading for Athens. We...”
“Shut up and listen to me,” the sergeant said. “The air force is about to attack the zombies with a large number of aircraft. You need to put as much distance between you and the zombies as you can. They will be attacking any minute. I’m surprised it hasn’t already begun.”
“Floor it, Randy. Don’t ask any questions, just do it,” Herb instructed his friend.
“Now fill me in on what has been happening,” Sergeant Shannon said. “It has been quiet here in Athens.”
Herb was explaining what happened at the house when Randy shouted, “Oh, my God, look at that!”
Herb glanced out the windshield. He saw rank upon rank of helicopters flying toward them along Highway 31. He leaned his body forward and tilted his head up to get a better view of the aircraft. There wasn’t time to get an accurate count, but he thought that there had to be at least thirty in the air group.
“We see helicopters,” Herb told Sergeant Shannon. “A lot of helicopters,” he added.
“I was just informed that they are using choppers between Athens and Decatur to try to wipe out the zombie threat,” the sergeant said. “You men need to get as much distance between you and the coming battle as you can. It’s my understanding that they will be using some powerful ordinance.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Herb said as he watched the last of the helicopters race past.
“Come back to the armory. We’ll have a meeting to discuss the changes we need to make to our schedules,” the sergeant said, and then he hung up.
“Someday, I’m going to be the one to hang up first,” Herb said as he put his phone away.
“I hear guns firing,” Randy said.
Herb listened and he too could hear what sounded like machinegun fire, and then he heard the first explosion. “They must be using rockets too,” he said to Randy.
***
Flying along Highway 31, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopters came within sight of the leading edge of the zombies walking along the four lane roadway. Two of the helicopters in the lead fired Hellfire missiles that impacted the surface of the road and ignited, spreading fire across all four lanes, and engulfing the leading edge of the zombies. They opened up with their 30 mm chain guns and continued their attack run on the massed zombies below.
Other helicopters moved to the left and the right of the highway and added their fire to the assault.
Behind the leading edge of aircraft flew others that would open fire when necessary. The plan called for them to fly along the highway all the way to Decatur, where they would also attack the zombies in the city.
This was only one of several air groups committed to the annihilation of the zombies. The others were approaching the city of Decatur from the south, east, and west. Like the choppers approaching from the north, they were seeking the zombies as they flew in for the attack.
The initial attack seemed to be a huge success. Zombies were slaughtered by the hundreds. Unfortunately, many were only wounded, and had not received the all important kill shot to the head. It was
necessary for portions of the air group to fly behind the leaders and strafe the roads as well in order to ensure that the wounded didn’t escape into the countryside.
Decatur proved to be a nightmare to clear. Although thousands of zombies had left the city and moved toward all points of the compass, thousands more remained ensconced in the city. That meant sixty square miles of territory in which the air force was attempting to eradicate zombies.
It was an impossible mission, and the aircrews knew it. It would take a week of almost nonstop air strikes to even come close to accomplishing the goal of exterminating the zombies. Aircraft made their attack runs, depleted their ordinance and flew back to Huntsville airport where their spent munitions were replaced. They were refueled and then they took to the air for another sortie. At the end of their four hour mission, they informed their superiors that they had done their best, but that they had no doubt in their minds that untold numbers of the creatures remained in the city. It would have to be cleared by ground troops.
The air group that tackled Highway 31 to Decatur seemed to fare better, but even they informed their superiors that they had zero confidence that they had gotten all of the zombies. An examination of the camera footage from the attacks revealed that on several occasions, small clusters of zombies had eluded the lethal attacks of the Apaches and were making their way into the countryside adjacent to the highway.
***
“Now, what about the results in Nashville?” the President asked that night.
“Nashville seems to have contained their problem,” responded the Secretary of Defense. “The law enforcement down there did their homework. They talked to the Nashville unit of the National Guard and followed their advice as to how to deal with the problem. They managed to get the zombies boxed up in a small area, which they obliterated.”
“How did they accomplish that?” asked the President.
“They lured the zombies into a five block area that they had sealed off so they couldn’t escape, and then they burned it to the ground with the zombies in it. They called on civilian gun owners to come and help with the eradication. They surrounded the area with armed men and set it ablaze. Any zombies that made it out of the fire zone were met with gunfire. They say there were some problems, but overall, it worked well.”
The President, his advisors, and the Secretary of Defense, encouraged by the success in Nashville, discussed the issues and came to the conclusion that they would have to commit to a long term military action in Alabama. The nuclear option was off the table.
***
A flock of ducks gorged themselves on small fish in the Tennessee River, and then they took flight. They stopped at Goose Creek River in Kentucky to feed again, their bodies having metabolized the fish during the strenuous flight. Poachers took three of their number, which caused the rest of the flock to leave. They stopped again at the Ohio River, where another of the ducks was attacked by a forty-three pound pike. That pike was later caught by an angler who filleted, and then cooked and fed it to houseguests at his riverfront property. Some of the fillets were undercooked, but the guests didn’t complain.
The rest of the ducks continued their migration to the north. The microbes in their bodies continued to multiply, causing them to deviate from their normal route. They ended up at Lake Anna, Virginia, where they fell out of the sky due to the saturation of their bodies by the microbial parasites. Two fishermen in a large boat saw the flock fall. They gathered several of the ducks up, cutting off their heads to bleed them dry. They discarded the heads in the lake, threw the ducks in the bottom of their boat, and then headed for shore. They were sure that their wives would love the surprise they were bringing home.
They did, but they weren’t happy about the bloody clothing they had to wash that night, or the bloody footprints one of the men tracked on their carpet.
The parasitic microbes had now been spread to other states, and as of yet, the people of America still didn’t know that it was already in their food chain.
Chapter 8
Sniper duty
Herb and Randy stood on the overpass on Highway 72 that overlooked Highway 31. Highway 72 was closed in their area in order to permit the National Guard to use the overpass to protect the city from any zombies that had survived the air strikes. Traffic had been rerouted to avoid that section of the highway.
The members of the unit on duty had been there since late afternoon. Their mission was to keep zombies that might be travelling Highway 31 out of the city that night. The next day, an eradication and cleanup campaign would begin, but tonight, the squad would be pulling guard duty.
Herb was exhausted. It seemed to him that he hadn’t had a real opportunity to rest since the zombie outbreak began. Most of the men were in a similar state. The six men had been taking turns napping, with two sleeping for an hour while the remaining four stood guard. It wasn’t much rest, but Herb was glad to get it when his turn came.
It seemed to Herb that he had just fallen asleep when someone woke him to resume duty so they could sleep. He glanced at his watch to see if the man was early, but noted that, if anything, the man was a bit late.
The sun was going down when he got to his feet and stretched. “Anything to report?” he asked the man who was guarding from the center of the overpass.
Randy turned at the sound of his voice. “Not really. A couple of people came up the highway from a subdivision on Ridgedale Road, out near Hatfield Lake. Other than that, it has been pretty quiet. No sign of any zombies yet.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Herb replied. Then he said, “You get any sleep?”
“No. One of the other guys asked to swap times with me. I wasn’t sleepy, so I agreed. I get the next shift, if luck holds out.”
“Let’s hope it does. We could all use the extra rest.”
“We’re due to be relieved at midnight. I can make it till then, if I need to, so I’ll be okay.”
Herb didn’t say anything, but he knew that if the situation were bad enough, none of them would be leaving when relief showed up to take over the duty. Instead, he said, “The sun is going down. We’ll have decent visibility where the street lights illuminate the highway, but away from those zones, it’s going to be pitch black. Remind the others at the ends of the overpass not to overlook those darkened sections.”
“Sure. I’ll grab you a cup of coffee as I come back.”
“That’d be great,” Herb responded. “I’ve got the duty here until you return, and then I want to take a look at the situation at each end of the overpass.”
“Just don’t go poking around in the dark. Law enforcement down below seems pretty skittish. I think they heard about what happened to the State Troopers out on Highway 31 earlier today.”
“Yeah, well, that made me more than a little skittish,” Herb responded as he took his position on the bridge.
Herb stared out at the highway. It seemed so strange to see that section of the city bereft of traffic. Movement in the distance caught his eye. Something was moving out there, but it was too far away for him to make out any details. He looked through the scope of his rifle in an effort to get more detail, but the scope lacked the power to magnify the image sufficiently to reveal specific details.
Herb went over to the spotter’s scope that was set up on a tripod a few yards away and zoomed in on the figure of an old woman walking along the edge of the road. According to the built in range finder, she was 321 yards from his position. She looked normal enough to him. Her floral print dress hung from her gaunt body in such a manner that she reminded him of his grandmother who had died several years ago. She was walking with a pronounced limp.
Herb zoomed in even tighter on the woman in an effort to determine if she was still human, or if she was a zombie. Her eyes seemed normal, but then, so had the eyes of the zombies he had encountered at close range.
As he was watching the woman, she stopped walking and turned to face the road behind her. Herb was moving his hand to adjust t
he zoom on the scope in order to see what she was looking at when he stopped and stared at the back of her right leg. Something had taken several bites out of her calf muscle. He zoomed in even closer for a better view of the wounds. They were deep. Sections of muscle had been ripped away, leaving her leg with multiple horrendous wounds. Herb knew the woman shouldn’t even be able to stand on that leg. Walking down the highway, even with a limp, would be next to impossible.
He zoomed back out to see what had captured the woman’s attention and saw a boy standing in the road crying. He couldn’t hear the child, but Herb thought the boy was calling to her. The woman took a step toward the child.
“What are you looking at?” Herb heard Randy ask behind him.
“Look,” Herb said, and then he stepped away from the spotter’s scope and ran toward the end of the bridge where the Humvee was parked.
Corporal Bennett was starting the engine when Randy opened the passenger door and got inside. “Go!” he said. “We’ve got to get to the kid before she does.”
Herb put the vehicle in gear and drove down the access ramp. As they leveled out and merged with Highway 31, he floored the accelerator, sending the Humvee hurtling toward the woman and child hundreds of yards away. He was blowing the horn as he drove, hoping that the sound would distract the woman’s attention from the child.
He couldn’t be certain, but he felt it unlikely that the woman wasn’t a zombie. Still, the wound was such that it was possible a person could survive it. There was also a possibility that she could have been wounded in a traffic accident or by some means other than a zombie attack.
Herb slammed on the brakes before they reached the woman’s position and cut the wheel to the left as they moved past her. The Humvee slewed to a stop, diagonally, between the woman and the child. He opened his door and jumped out.