The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  When the rumor of this circulated, there was a surge toward the border that resulted in hundreds of people being trampled to death. Warning shots seemed to be useless. Someone panicked and let loose with an M240 machine gun. In seconds, the entire border was alive with fire and when the smoke cleared, ten thousand bodies were stretched out.

  It was then that the inevitable seemed to strike the collective conscious of the mob.

  People began filing south, picking up any weapon they could find. It was predominantly men with families, but there were single men in the mix and some women.

  Gloria Snodgrass didn’t have children, but she was an aunt seven times over and a great-aunt twice over. She had waitressed at an IHOP for too many years, as her varicose veins and grey hair attested. She had been planning to retire in four months. She went with the others, her heart pounding, her tongue coming out to lick her dry lips, ceaselessly. When she bent over to pick up a hefty branch, she became lightheaded. Still, she didn’t pause.

  There were no orders given; they weren’t organized into regiments and no one knew precisely what was going to happen when the zombies came. They only knew that they would fight and they would die and maybe they would buy some time for the rest.

  When the first of the zombies came into view, filtering through the forest, there didn’t seem that many and some of the men tried to screw up their courage by screaming at them—but the beasts just kept coming. There was no end to them.

  “Stand your ground!” someone yelled, as a few of the men began to back away. This was the only order given. The fight began a minute later. Gloria was four ranks back and it was twenty minutes before the people in front of her were killed, torn apart by the fiendish teeth. When it was her turn, she didn’t flinch. With a battle cry that sounded more like a cry of despair, she waded in, swinging the branch and connecting with a grey, diseased head.

  “That’s one!” she yelled. Three million to go.

  3—Roosevelt Memorial Hospital, Baltimore

  Katherine Pennock had been tasked with “securing” a modern hospital complex where, on a normal day, three-thousand people would be working, healing, or dying. On the fourth day of the apocalypse, there were over five thousand people there and she and her Virginian driver, Private Second Class Bill Bramlett, were on their own to fulfill that task.

  “And that’s why God gave us the satellite phone,” she said and dialed the number to Cyber Command. “Captain Questore, please,” she said to the receptionist who had answered the phone. “This is a Priority One call from the office of the Director of the FBI.” It was…sort of.

  When Questore came on the line, his anger was obvious. “This is Captain Questore. I’m a busy man, what do you want?”

  “Oh, hey, Captain, it’s me Special Agent Katherine Pennock.”

  He snorted like a bull about to charge. “Well, well, well, isn’t this a treat? Katherine Pennock, Special Agent in charge of lying her ass off. You know I didn’t need to be so nice the last time we met, right? But you told me you were going to brief the President. That wasn’t true, was it?”

  “No. I had to…”

  “No, it wasn’t true. I give you access to my building and to my people and what do I find out? You’re throwing my name around left and right.”

  “Sorry about that but I needed…”

  He cut her off. “I don’t really care what you need. What I need is not to have some assistant to the assistant to the Director of the FBI all up in my shit, threatening me with jail time.”

  Katherine felt her stomach drop. “They threatened you because of me? That’s not fair. What did you tell him?”

  “What did I tell him?” Questore suddenly laughed. “I told him he could go fuck off. I told him that if he couldn’t keep track of his agents that was on him, not me.”

  “Oh,” Katherine said, wondering what sort of balls this guy had. Big brass ones by the sounds of it. But he wasn’t the only one. “I need a favor,” she said and then paused as he laughed into the phone. He laughed so hard that she could imagine the tears coming out of his eyes. “I found Anna Holloway and Shuang Eng,” she said, hoping this would shock him into sobriety.

  He snorted, again. “Why do I doubt it?”

  “Okay, I didn’t find them, but I found where they escaped from the Zone that you were supposed to be keeping secure.” She could tell he was listening now with more attention. “I have six eyewitnesses. They were manning a road block a mile from where Anna and Eng hijacked a truck. These soldiers took one look at their pictures and nearly crapped themselves.”

  Questore was silent for a few moments as he soaked all this information in. “And what do you want from me?”

  “I need soldiers, at least a hundred of them, to lock down Roosevelt Memorial Hospital. I also need an APB out on Charlie and Leticia Martin of Denver City, Texas. They are driving a 2015 Silverado, license plates: mike, tango, tango 634.”

  She could hear a pencil scraping like mad and then he asked, “You want an APB out on the truck, does that mean you don’t think they’re in the hospital?”

  “It’s unlikely. If I had just escaped the Zone, I’d want to put it miles behind me. And at the same time, they are both scientists who know their way around a hospital. They might have set Roosevelt up as a giant time bomb.”

  “Except it’ll explode zombies,” he said and then sighed. “Alright, I’ll move some people around.”

  Captain Questore had a hundred men at the hospital within eighteen minutes. The FBI had sixty agents there within twenty. The two sides immediately started to bicker. Katherine had expected exactly that and had to physically haul men around until she had them all in place.

  By then the hospital was in a state of escalating panic. With the entrances guarded, people tried to slip out of windows and shimmy down drains. The soldiers had set up a perimeter outside and although they appeared very menacing with their camo, their armored vests and their guns, they were tested. Two people were shot in the legs before the rest subsided.

  While that was happening outside, Katherine and the FBI were going through the hospital floor by floor, room by room. There was no sign of Anna or Eng and thankfully no sign that any zombies had been made.

  They were just finishing up when a helicopter landed on the roof and Katherine was told that she was wanted. With a sinking feeling, she mounted the stairs, fearing the worst. When she got to the top, her fears were justified. There was John Alexander sitting in the back of an Army Blackhawk. Even though he wore mirrored sunglasses, she could tell he was glaring at her.

  Ducking under the whirling blades, she went to the side door and had to shout over the engine. “Yes, sir? You wanted me?”

  “We need you to debrief the got-damned President, like you were supposed to. The Chinese just launched a major nuclear strike on their own soil and now the Director is afraid the got-damned President is about to do the same. It’s going to be your job to talk him out of it.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Remember, he likes his debriefers pretty? It also helps if you know what you’re talking about. That other blonde agent didn’t do much but flirt. We need you to focus the President away from the idea of using nukes, especially in Baltimore. We found Eng and Anna’s prints all over that camper. They were the ones who escaped from Long Island last night, just like you thought. And now they’ve escaped Baltimore to boot. You need to drill that into his got-damned head. So, put on some makeup and doll yourself up on the way because we’re meeting him as soon as we land.”

  Katherine nodded slowly. She was in shock and slightly sickened to think that the fate of millions was in her hands.

  Chapter 12

  1– 11:41 a.m.

  —Washington D.C.

  Marty Aleman sat in front of a window in the library as rain beat silently against the three-inch thick glass. It was bullet proof and thus the rain was silent. As he waited on the coming helicopter, he sipped Mylanta. The president was being dangerously unma
nageable and Marty’s stomach was in an uproar.

  Up to an hour before, the President had sat in the Situation Room, brooding over the maps. He had begun to fancy himself as some sort of Napoleon, an emperor/god who could have won the war twice already. It was easy when he was able to dismiss the facts of the situation as blithely as he did.

  He gave no consequence to basic realities such as logistics, infrastructure, or even human nature.

  Marty had sent him off for his nap, early. Marty could have used one as well, but he was waiting on call. He had made calls everywhere to practically every one of consequence, but, alarmingly, he wasn’t getting calls back.

  The cascading military debacles of the last few days were beginning to take a toll on the President’s image as a decisive leader. That image had always been more of a mirage than a reality. It had been foisted on the American people by a fawning press who had been happily spoon-fed a sticky pablum of information and lies by Marty. He’d been doing it since before the election.

  He didn’t regret it. He was too tired for regrets. Besides, regrets were for people who lived in the past. A yawn was stretching his face into a caricature of itself when a Blackhawk came into view; it was flying very low, moving fast.

  His phone finally rang, but it was only the secret service giving him a heads up on what he already knew: the FBI was coming back for another confab. Supposedly, there had been a breakthrough, but he feared that it would be just another useless meeting. What he desperately needed was a call from General Phillips telling him that they had finally cracked the Massachusetts border. Or better yet, a call from that treasonous Boston fuck saying that he had relented and was willing to open his border, at least temporarily.

  He needed that call, badly. Half of the other governors were testing the limits of the constitution. Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Vermont had all thumbed their noses at the President and closed their borders the day before. Now it was Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio. It was really making the war effort a tremendous headache.

  If any more states followed suit, Marty was going to pack his bags and head for Tahiti because the President had not been shy talking about a nuclear option, including using one in Baltimore of all places.

  “A couple of warheads will tidy that mess right up,” he had said, sending a cold shiver right down Marty’s back.

  “So fucked up,” Marty mumbled, gulping down the last of the Mylanta and heading for the stairs as the helicopter flared and landed on the White House lawn. He met the three-person FBI team right after they cleared security and groaned at the sight of the new blonde. The last one they had brought had been useless, or rather what she had to say was useless. They had been looking to cover up failure with a pretty face.

  Marty didn’t need a repeat performance. He needed answers to keep Armageddon from being added to an apocalypse. Holding up his hands, he looked the Director of the FBI right in the eye and said, “Sorry Dave, the President is in a meeting and we have more lined up around the corner and halfway down the block. I hate to be this blunt, but give me good news or go away.”

  The Director’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t used to anyone talking to him like this; not even the President’s puppeteer. “Okay, Marty. We found out who blackmailed their way off of Long Island last night. Shuang Eng and Anna Holloway. They were two research assistants from R&K. They landed in Baltimore last night as you know, but escaped just before sunrise.”

  “And your proof?”

  “Their fingerprints on a camper within the Balt-Zone and six eyewitnesses from soldiers who accidentally helped them to escape.”

  Marty stared at the Director. “Soldiers helped them to escape? Why is that so fucking believable?” He didn’t expect an answer to the question, but the woman stepped forward.

  “Hi there, my name is Special Agent Katherine Pennock. I’m the lead investigator on this aspect of the case.” She didn’t know who the lead was on any part of the case, but this was a career-making situation and if anyone could make the claim of lead investigator, it was her. She had put her ass on the line and the gamble had paid off and now it was time to rake in the chips. “The two perps took an older couple hostage and probably threatened them. The soldiers thought that the woman was having a heart attack. They acted out of compassion.”

  Marty gave her a long look, liking what he saw. She had short blonde hair, a pert nose, and long, slim legs; just the sort of woman the President liked, but she also had intelligent blue eyes and confidence. It made him think that this woman might actually be what she claimed to be, unlike so many others.

  “We don’t pay them for compassion,” Marty said, after the pause. “They aren’t trained for it. Damn it. Okay, I want you to brief the President, Pennock. I know you might be nervous, don’t be. He’s just a man. You’ll see.”

  Marty signaled for a uniformed officer. “Please send for the President. We’ll be in the Situation Room.”

  As confident as Katherine appeared, her insides were shaking as they marched through the White House. She couldn’t stop thinking: Holy shit! I’m in the White House! I’m in the White House!

  They entered a cramped elevator where everything was gleaming brass and the carpet under her feet was so thick that her heels sunk. The ride was so smooth and quiet that she was still waiting for it to move when the doors opened again and Marty escorted them to a rectangle of a room that held a long table, dozens of chairs, eight television monitors and one snoring general. It was General Heider, leaned back in a chair with his feet up in another, and his head thrown back, his mouth open, showing a mouth full of discolored teeth and a white-coated tongue.

  Had it not been for his snoring, Katherine might have mistaken him for a corpse.

  “Excuse me, Heider,” Marty said. “We’re going to need the room. I’m sure we can get you a bed upstairs.”

  Heider opened bleary red eyes and, perhaps out of habit, he stood. He wore a crumpled green suit that was decorated with little multicolored rectangles. His grey hair was roostered, jutting in the middle. “What? No, not with His Royal Shit-breath acting the way he is. Who are these…oh, Director. How’s it going? You get the people who did this, yet?”

  “Almost,” the Director said, putting out a hand.

  The two men shook hands and chatted with the Associate Executive Assistant Director for National Security, John Alexander hovering, trying to look as if he belonged there with the big boys. Katherine knew she didn’t belong…at least not yet. When she caught Anna and Eng and ended this particular threat, then she would be fast-tracked. She would be a name. She’d be famous within the bureau and perhaps out of it as well.

  She was still picturing the glory of it all when the President came in. He looked just like he did on television, all except his eyes. His eyes gleamed with a strange fever.

  Everyone came to attention when he entered, even Katherine though she didn’t know if this was proper protocol or not. The President didn’t seem to notice. “There’s news?” he asked. “You get the fuckers who did this, David?”

  The Director of the FBI, Davis Blaise nodded. “We’re hot on them. Here, let me introduce Special Agent Katherine Pennock. She’ll fill you in with what’s going on.”

  The gleam in the President’s eyes turned cold. “Didn’t we go through this earlier? You parading some young thing in front of me so that you can influence me one way or another? That’s not going to work anymore. This situation is real. There are real lives at stake. This isn’t about legislative shenanigans or backroom deals. If you got something to say then tell me right to my face. Leave the floozy out of it.”

  This took the Director by surprise. It took Heider and Marty by surprise as well. Over the last couple of days, the President had been getting crankier and crankier as he was forced to adjust his habits and his way of thinking to this new paradigm in which things were actually expected of him beyond smiling at the cameras and giving speeches.

  Even more than usual, he had been feelin
g lost and, as always, he had looked to Marty to save him. Then, a few hours before, as he looked at the maps in the Situation Room, he had come to an odd and startling conclusion: They were losing.

  How? he asked himself. Hadn’t he done exactly what Marty had told him to do? Marty had said do this and say that and, dutifully, the President had done exactly that and had said precisely this, and so far it hadn’t worked. Marty’s advice and the advice of everyone around him had proven to be demonstrably shitty.

  It was then that the President had decided to be his own man. The situation they found themselves in called for a leader and wasn’t he the leader of the free world? That’s what all the news people said and they were usually better informed than Marty.

  There was something the President understood and that was the real leader of the free world should not be swayed by a pretty face.

  Katherine wasn’t just a pretty face, however. Lines etched themselves around her eyes as thunder clouds formed on her brow. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, her voice very loud in the small room. “I am no floozy. I am a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and as such you will treat me with respect.”

  He turned on her, his anger building. Marty tried to intervene, “Look, sir, the FBI has an obligation to report directly…”

  “I know what their obligations are, Marty!” he snapped. Looking back at the young agent, his demeanor softened. “Please, do your duty. Have you caught the bastards who did this?”

  “Almost,” Katherine said and then went on to explain her hunch about Anna and Eng and how she had hunted them to the edge of the Baltimore Quarantine Zone.

  The President listened, nodding gently. When she was done, he shrugged. “That’s it? They could be anywhere. Hell, they could still be in Baltimore for all you know.”

  He had blame in his eyes, as if it was Katherine’s fault that Anna and Eng weren’t standing on a corner holding signs that read “Domestic Terrorist!” She stared at the President in shock. “No,” she eventually said. “You’re wrong. They’re not in Baltimore. Their motivations are obvious. They are looking to escape.”