The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  “So, what do I do?” she asked her bushy-haired reflection in the rearview mirror. “Do I leave it to them to get out on their own? Or do I stay and muddle through?” She had no clue what to do and a part of her wished that Dr. Lee was still with her. Right from the start, with people turning into zombies all around her, Thuy had always seemed so composed and a part of Courtney wished she could be that way, too. “Maybe the question should be, what would Dr. Lee do?”

  Courtney’s lips pursed and little lines creased her forehead as she thought and thought and thought until minutes went by and she realized that she had no idea how a genius saw the world or how they were able to think the way they did, or even what they thought about. She assumed they spent the day pondering tremendous, world-altering concepts, while Courtney, who had never considered herself anything but average, usually spent her free time thinking about how she needed to get her gutters cleaned out, or what was going to be on TV that night, or if she was going to her mother’s house on Sunday night even though all her mom ever did was badger Courtney about who she was dating and when she would get married.

  Thankfully, her mother was safe in Vermont with her sister. It was one less thing for Courtney to worry about.

  “Maybe the better question is what would Dr. Lee think that I would do?” That was easier. “Thuy would expect me to help get her and Deck out of the Zone, like I promised. But how?” That was the question and as she thought about it, she watched a plane rip across the sky just a few hundred feet over head. It shook the Corvette on its springs.

  The one thing she wasn’t going to do was get near any communications equipment. Those jets were probably hunting anything emitting a radio frequency above a certain strength. Nervously, she shifted her gaze down to the scanner. Were they hunting her? Had they heard her broadcasts?

  Almost on cue a second grey jet roared by, half a mile away

  Her hands itched to reach over and turn the radio off even though she knew that just sitting there it wasn’t emitting any signal whatsoever. It was probably safe to broadcast as long as she changed positions frequently. But did she have the guts to do it over and over again with the jets overhead?

  “No.” It would be suicide. No, what she had to do was end the fighting as fast as possible, and then save Thuy and Deckard.

  Chapter 14

  1– 12:36 p.m.

  —Warfursburg Road, Maryland

  As Thuy and Deckard slept and Courtney sprinted east as fast the Corvette would go, Katherine Pennock was setting down in a Military Blackhawk, smack in the middle of Warfursburg Road, a hundred yards south of the border separating Pennsylvania and Maryland.

  “Keep her running,” she yelled to the pilot.

  The pilot, Warrant Officer Joe Swan nodded, but rolled his eyes behind his aviator sunglasses. She wasn’t the only one who had things to do and missions to accomplish. It had been bad enough that he’d been tasked with one taxi ride to the White House, but now he was supposed to be at this chick’s beck and call? He wasn’t a limo driver for goodness sakes, and it really chaffed his ass to be sitting there while others were out bringing down zombies by the score or lighting up those stupid Massachusetts morons who thought they could mess with the real army. He was just dying to load up a dozen Hellfire missiles and go against their tanks and teach them a lesson in manners and obedience.

  Unfortunately, all the weaponry he had was a single port-side door gun and even that had nearly been pulled off the bird by one of the armory punks. The punk, who only held the rank of specialist, had already taken his starboard M240 and most of his ammo and had the balls to say, “According to this, you’re just on taxi duty.”

  “We’re hunting domestic terrorists who are presumed armed and dangerous,” Swan had snapped. “The gun is staying.” He had to resist the desire to throw himself over the gun. In the end, he signed for one M240 and only a hundred rounds of ammo. It wasn’t an auspicious start, made worse by the fact that his co-pilot was pulled to take part in operations in Massachusetts.

  Swan was still grumbling when they landed down the road from the border. “We should be taking this bird north,” he said tohis two-person crew who also shared his desire for actual combat when there was a war to fight. “We should be kicking ass like we’re trained to. Didn’t those Massachusetts pinkos say the Pledge of Allegiance when they were growing up like everyone else?”

  Katherine walked away from the helicopter pretty much clueless as to what Swan was thinking. Her mind was spinning on a different mission. It was simple: hunt down Anna Holloway and Shuang Eng, and save America. With this whack-job of a President, you couldn’t do one without the other.

  She had a few good clues to go on: a white Silverado with Texas plates, an old and very average white couple, an Asian man who looked anyhwere between twenty-two and forty-two, and a young, pretty blonde.

  But what would happen if Anna colored her hair, they ditched the truck, and killed the old couple? What if Anna and Eng went their separate ways and both released their viruses in different parts of the state? That was pretty much the nightmare scenario and there was no way to know what the President would do. If she had one true fear, it was that of the President using nukes on American soil.

  The threat from the zombies was very real and frightening, that was a given. However, the possibility of the civil war expanding to other states and possibly tearing the country apart was more sad than scary to Katherine.

  But if the President tried to solve the problem with nukes, there was no knowing how far he would take it. If one zombie showed up in Chicago, would that be enough to irradiate all of Illinois? What if one showed up in Ottawa? Would he declare war on Canada?

  Katherine was still worrying over a North American war when a voice snapped, “Stop. Go back the way you came. Pennsylvania is closed.”

  The roadblock was an improvised affair with cinderblocks, tree branches, a few garbage cans and three cars—two Honda Civics and a grocery-getter that Katherine couldn’t name. She already had her badge out and now she raised it up. “I just need to talk. I’m with the FBI.”

  “The FBI, the Federal butt-fuckers in charge,” someone joked and although it was a weak joke, the seven men and two women at the roadblock laughed uproariously.

  Another elbowed his friend and said, “Are you with the Federal Bureau of investigating my junk? If so, you can come on over to the good side.” More laughter. Katherine just waited until it was out of their system.

  “Hey, hey, I got one,” one man cried. He was very round, probably as round as he was tall, and despite the coolness of the day and the threatening rain clouds hanging over them, he was sweating. There was even a sheen in the bags beneath his eyes. He started laughing even before he could say, “The fucking butt investigators! Oh, that’s a good one.”

  No one else laughed. “That’s dumb,” one of the younger men in the group said. “You killed it, Jeff.”

  “Nuh-uh, no I didn’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” Katherine told him. “It was pretty much dead to begin with. I’m Special Agent Katherine Pennock. I need to know if anyone has tried to get through this road block. Specifically…”

  Jeff interrupted with a snide, “Only like a million people, special agent in charge of investigating my special butt.”

  Katherine acted like she hadn’t heard him. “Specifically, a caucasian couple, man and wife in their seventies, an Asian man, thirty-ish and slender. And lastly, a pretty, blonde woman about five foot six inches tall and a hundred and ten pounds.” They started looking back and forth to each other, all except sweaty Jeff, who was thinking of some new and even funnier joke. He was stuck on the F and the I since B had to stand for butt. That was certainly logic as far as he understood the word.

  “I have pictures,” she said, reaching into the black leather handbag she carried across her shoulder. She took only one step before she froze.

  At least two members of the little squad had brought their weapons up. They both had p
lenty of grey in their hair and looked like they were a couple who had been picking out window treatments the week before. Just then, it looked as though they were more than willing to fire those guns and wouldn’t bat an eye if Katherine died in the street.

  “No one has passed through,” the woman said, “and no one will, not even you.”

  “I didn’t ask if anyone passed through, I asked if they had tried,” Katherine said. “These two,” She held up the pictures of Anna and Eng, “are responsible for all of this. They are carrying vials of the plague with them. Look at their faces.” She wasn’t asking. They looked, leaning over the hoods of the two Civics and the grocery getter.

  The woman shook her head; her husband looked indecisive, and Jeff blew a raspberry and dismissed the pictures with a wave. She thrust the pictures toward the rest and received only negative responses. “What about just him?” she asked, holding up just Eng’s picture.

  “The fucking bureau of Chinamen investigations,” Jeff said, trying again to get someone to laugh. No one did.

  “Let’s see the young woman again,” one of the others asked. “There was a girl who tried to get through with her mom, but, but, no that’s not her.”

  One crossing down, five hundred to go, Katherine thought. And that was if they hadn’t crossed on foot through some field or forest. These were being guarded as well, but she guessed that there were ravines or thick forest or endless curtains of Kudzu that a determined person could slip through. Of course, they’d have to steal a car once they were on the other side of the border but that was another danger and another point of contact.

  She thanked the little group, walked a little way off to a storm bent elm that offered some shade and took a map from her purse. It was already folded and creased, open to a panel which showed a section of the northern Maryland border that sat to the northwest of Baltimore. It had been her first choice because it was close enough to get to quickly, but not so close that it was obvious. It was just a guess.

  “Did they try further away?” she asked herself. “Or closer? A bigger crossing point? A smaller? One with more women?” She was certain that they had crossed, or were in the process of trying to cross into another state. But where? There were so many different factors that could have swayed the fugitives.

  She had chosen the Pennsylvania border because she figured it would be easier to cross as the state was currently embroiled in a life and death struggle, but judging by the reaction she had received she had been wrong about that.

  She worried over the map as precious minutes went by. Each passed like it was part of a countdown and at the end was the President’s finger looming over a red button. Five minutes passed in indecision before she pulled out her sat-phone and dialed Cyber Command.

  “Lieutenant Commander Brockett?”

  Dawn sounded less like a naval commander and more like a harried mother trying to do three things as once. “This is she. Who is this? Special Agent Hancock?”

  “It’s Pennock. Do you have anything for me?” Katherine wondered if she sounded like she was begging, because it sure as hell felt as though she was. “I know it’s only been fifty-seven minutes, but I…”

  “When I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know,” Dawn said, inadvertently reinforcing the picture Katherine had of her as a mother, with her hair sticking up in all directions and that night’s roast thawing in the sink.

  Before Katherine could say a word, Dawn had cut the connection, leaving Katherine staring at her phone. “I deserved that,” she said. “These things take time.” She knew that. She knew that leads developed slowly, they didn’t hatch, fully formed in minutes or even hours. Calls had to made, people had to be talked to, areas and incidents had to be investigated. Only she didn’t have time.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” she corrected herself, and then turned and ran for the Blackhawk, twirling her hand in short circles above her head, giving the crew chief, Mark Rowden, the universal signal for “get the bird ready.”

  She didn’t have her helmet completely on her head, before she was yelling, “Take her up to three hundred feet and shift west.” Katherine hoped that from three hundred feet she would be able to get a feel for what Eng and Anna had seen. It just looked like trees and forest to Katherine.

  They flew for a quarter of an hour before she had the pilot set down at another roadblock. She chose it because there were only three people standing guard behind a huge tree that someone had butchered with an axe.

  The pictures went unrecognized and Katherine sent the bird aloft once more. Ten miles later, she had Snow set down again, thinking that this shouldn’t be as hard as it was. If they had crossed, it probably hadn’t happened on the first try. If she could just find one spot where they had tried and failed, she could really narrow her search—on the flip side, if she could find where they had crossed, she would be on them so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Two more attempts were a waste of fuel, or so Swan hinted strongly, giving her a running count of either their current fuel levels or their range in miles or in minutes. “Just set us down!” she had yelled, losing her temper.

  Rowden gave the junior member of the team, PFC Jennifer Jackson, a knowing glance that Katherine read as: Who does this bitch think she is?

  She ignored all of them and concentrated on the next roadblock. From any perspective, this crossing was the same as all the rest: half a dozen locals holding their deer rifles or their shotguns in sweaty hands, looking at Katherine in a dubious manner.

  Over the course of the flight, with the near hurricane force wind that washed over her every time she climbed in and out of the chopper, she had been losing the crispness that the FBI was known for. In short, she looked like a complete mess. Her blonde mane, once the envy of her friends, was a frizzy bush with what appeared to be several self-styled bird’s nests spun into the mix.

  Had it not been for the Blackhawk and her badge sitting in the waist of her black slacks, the locals would have either laughed her off or sent her packing to the nearest looney bin. They looked at the pictures she presented and, at first, all of them shook their heads. One woman, older and looking a little tired and washed out as though she were finding life a little too much of a hassle lately, stopped Katherine just as she was about to turn away.

  “Was that the little group what had the lady with the heart condition?”

  Katherine answered faster than the others, “Yes! That was her. She was faking a heart attack, right?”

  “I don’t much know about her faking anything,” the woman answered. “I just know what I saw. She was about ready to up and die right where you are standing. We sent her on to Morgantown. They got a fine hospital, ‘cept they couldn’t save my mother, but I can allow that wasn’t their fault.”

  “But that group didn’t have an Asian guy,” one of the men said.

  “There was someone driving that truck, Chet. I didn’t get good look at him but there was someone in the driver’s seat, I know it.”

  Katherine’s heart jumped. She hadn’t even mentioned the truck yet. “Which way did they go…right, the hospital, forget that. Which way did they come from?” Everyone in that little group pointed to the left. They pointed east.

  She yelled, “Thank you!” over her shoulder as she ran back to the helicopter. In her excitement, she had forgotten to ask when had they been there, but that was immaterial. They weren’t going to a hospital, especially one still within the border of Maryland. Chances were they would try to cross again further west and she wanted to be there when they did.

  “The fuel…” Swan started to say.

  “I don’t care about the fuel! They were here. Get us up.” She marked the spot on her map as they shot upward. Three miles later, they dipped again, and again found a spot where the fugitives had tried and failed to cross. Now Joe Swan was hot into the chase as well, and he didn’t even give her time to strap in before he lifted off.

  They struck out twice more, got lucky twice
and then went on a dry streak that had them turning back east. By then, they had crossed the entire state and could see West Virginia as a hazy green run of hills. After forty minutes of going up and down without finding anything, Katherine was getting tired and sloppy. “Do we go back to the last place and try closer?” she asked the pilot.

  “I don’t think so. Their pattern suggests they were putting a few miles between tries. What about south to Virginia? Maybe they went south this time. It’s not that far.” She agreed and Swan ran the Blackhawk south into a rainstorm that spattered on the windshield and turned the cabin cold. Rowden handed over his jacket and pretended not to be affected by the spray.

  Katherine watched out the window, feeling lost, feeling unsure and a little nervous. They didn’t have but a few more tries at this before they really would run out of gas. A town was coming up and she saw that it straddled the border. She didn’t like it as a crossing point and neither did the pilot. They rushed past it until PFC Jackson looked down and saw a crowd of people waving at them. They were waving and pointing.

  “What the hell are they pointing at?” Swan asked. From his side of the chopper he couldn’t see anything. “What’s over there?” he asked the crew chief.

  Rowden tried to see through the rain and the gloom. “I don’t see nothing. The rain is pretty…wait, what is that?”

  Katherine hadn’t really been listening to the conversation. They’d been waved to from one end of Maryland to another, but when Rowden said, “I think it’s a body,” she jumped out of her chair.

  Even from three hundred feet, the blood was a stark red against the white dress and pale flesh of Leticia Martin.

  3—Brunswick, Maryland

  “That was a mistake,” Anna said, her eyes coolly appraising Eng. “You didn’t need to kill her. Yes, I know she would have talked, but who would have believed her? She would’ve looked like, I don’t know, some old biddy off her rocker. Now, they have a body and how quick do you think it’ll be before someone comes after us?”