The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  Eng knew she was right and yet, he hated being corrected by a woman and he especially hated being corrected by this woman. She had grown more and more insufferable as the day progressed, and where before she had proved her usefulness in helping them to get across the border, now she was a liability.

  He no longer needed her because he already had a way across the border. All around them were fields and forest. He could cross anywhere he pleased. A plan began to develop: they would go on for another mile or two, he would shoot her, dump the body and then peel out, making sure to leave tracks. Next, he would find a good spot to turn around and double back. When he could safely ditch the truck, he would then take to foot. Once on the other side of the border, he would get a new vehicle and head west. To California maybe.

  “I lost my temper,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”

  Her look was the same as if she had sniffed sour milk, but she said nothing. The mile went by quickly, and surreptitiously, he eased his right hand off the wheel and laid it next to the console just inches from the grip of the Beretta which he had stuffed, barrel down, into the gap next to his seat. Now he just needed a spot where the road was open. He didn’t want anyone to miss the bait.

  Ahead was the perfect spot, farms on either side, a nice view of the faraway hills. It would be a good place to die. When he started to slow, Anna immediately began to suspect something, however her gun was in her jacket which had slid down to the right, next to the door, while his was inches from his hand.

  “Eng…” she began to say, but then something strange started happening around them, making her blink. There were barley fields on either side of the road and they began to bend as if pressed downwards from above. “What the hell is going on?”

  He saw the circular pattern in the barley, and he knew they were just about fucked. There was a helicopter above them. They had to get under cover of the forest if they had any chance. He stomped down on the gas so hard that Anna was thrust back in her chair; the sudden acceleration seemed to be pulling her eyelids back. She took a breath to scream out a question, only just then a tremendous shadow dropped out of the rain ahead of them.

  It was a military helicopter and there was a man with a machine gun pointed at them. Anna felt an immediate shock of electricity and then her muscles all sagged at once. They were caught. This was an unkillable machine; it was useless to do anything but stop and hope they didn’t get killed on the spot.

  Eng had other ideas. Without slowing, he turned the Silverado sharply left, bashing through a rusted wire fence and speeding into the barley. At the same time, the helicopter seemed to hop into the air, disappearing from sight, which Anna knew couldn’t be a good thing. She was sure she was screaming to Eng, but with the truck’s engine racing and the helicopter making a noise like an alien beast and the rain coming down in buckets, she couldn’t hear anything, especially not the gentle hum of Eng’s window coming down.

  It was the sudden influx of cold air that caught her attention; there was only one reason to lower a window in a situation like this. “Eng, no!” This time she screamed loud enough to be heard, but Eng wasn’t listening. His Beretta was in his hand and pointing out the window, just as the Blackhawk dropped into view.

  The helicopter was a tremendous, solid hunk of metal. A machine that defied gravity by hovering in the air, ten feet off the ground. The world around it was only a blur of flying grey rain, spinning blades and the shimmer of heat from the engines. When it started to shoot its lone gun, the fire was mesmerizing. Anna stared as the side of the machine suddenly erupted in flame and golden sparks started zipping at them.

  She couldn’t move as the first ten of these sparks stitched holes in the side of the Silverado just at the level of their seats. They hit, going from back to front. Bam! Bam! Bam! The truck shuddered as each 7.62mm round smacked home. Then the zipping golden sparks were missing, raking the barley, sending up little chuffs of dun-colored stems and fine leaves.

  Eng had his Beretta out and seemed to be taking forever to aim. He still hadn’t pulled the trigger when the gunner on the Blackhawk corrected himself and brought the zipping, glowing rounds back to bear, now on a slightly higher plane. The first dozen or so hit the hood, but just barely. Like stones thrown across the surface of a pond, they skipped right off the top, leaving grey streaks in the paint, but otherwise doing no harm.

  The gunner didn’t seem to care. He kept on firing, walking the bullets right across the hood and toward the windshield. Anna’s reaction when the glass started flying wasn’t even to cringe. Her mouth came open and her eyes went as wide as they could go. She had a fleeting thought that she was going to get glass in her mouth, but still she didn’t close it. All she could do was sit there and await the bullet that would end her life.

  Eng finally fired three quick shots that all sunk home, hitting the door gunner squarely in the chest. Eng then turned slightly, aiming into the crew compartment and had the pleasure of seeing people scramble for cover. There was one target in white that just stood out, begging to be shot. He centered the pistol and fired at Special Agent Katherine Pennock.

  Chapter 15

  1– 1:41 p.m.

  —Brunswick, Maryland

  Warrant Officer Joe Swan, pilot of the Blackhawk, had always flown with instinctual precision. He saw Eng and his pistol, the barrel sparking. A second later, he felt the vibrations from the M240 cease. Fear spiked in Snow’s gut, not for himself but for Crew Chief Mark Rowden, who had been working the gun in the window right behind him. They had been best friends for the last two years and it didn’t take a genius to know that something very bad had happened.

  Before anyone could even think to blink, Snow shifted the cyclic to the right and pressed the right yaw pedal, causing the bird to turn and pitch slightly over at the same time, so that the armored undercarriage of the bird was presented to the terrorist.

  Katherine Pennock was thrown off her feet, just as Eng fired, aiming for her white blouse. The bullet rippled the fabric as it blasted by and Katherine felt the heat of it, thinking that it was like someone had pulled up a fiery zipper next to her flesh.

  She tried to stand, however in the front of the bird, Swan increased the throttle which added to the steepness of the angle of the deck and before she knew it, she was tumbling out of the aircraft.

  The last crew member, and the youngest, a PFC named Jennifer Jackson, who had been surfing the rain-slicked deck without effort, dove for Katherine, catching her by the wrist. For a brief second, Katherine dangled by one hand from the helicopter, her feet swinging in the open air, her heart in her throat. Jennifer’s position was only slightly less perilous. She had one foot hooked on a temp seat and the rest of her weight was pulling her face-first off the edge of the bird.

  “Hold on!” she screamed, over the roar of the engine. Too much was against Jackson to keep a grip on the agent. Although she had two hands on Katherine’s one, the acceleration of the Blackhawk coupled with the rain slicking everything up sent Katherine sliding right out of her grip.

  The agent fell, though luckily, they weren’t far from the ground, which was a marshy, muddy mess from the downpour so she wasn’t hurt when she landed. She wasn’t even stunned. Katherine hit feet first but her momentum sent her sprawling backwards into the mud with a splash. Around her was a barley field, grown to nearly four feet in height.

  From the ground, all she could see was the barley and the helicopter lifting away, leaving her very alone. With a thrill of fear starting to get a firm grip on her, she rolled to her left side so she could pull her Glock 22. The weapon helped to ease her fear.

  “This is Special Agent Katherine Pennock of the FBI!” she yelled through the barley, doing her best to sound tough and competent and not as if she was only one young, frightened woman who had just fallen out of a helicopter like an idiot. “Throw down your weapons and no one will get hurt.”

  “Throw down your weapon,” Eng countered, sliding out of the truck and gesturing for Anna
do so as well, “and we won’t hurt you. You’re the one who is outgunned.” He wasn’t wrong. The Blackhawk had pulled out of sight behind the trees.

  Katherine pushed herself up into a kneeling firing position, her gun out, the barrel shaking along with her hands; she didn’t notice. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve already called in back-up. In no time, this entire area will be blanketed by a Special Forces team we have tasked for this very mission.”

  “I’m very certain that is a lie,” Eng said. “Your voice is shaking. You are afraid. Why would you be afraid if you have these so called special forces coming to your rescue?” His voice had shifted to the right, while at the same time there was swish of grass from the left. They were flanking her; a frightening prospect, made all the worse because he was correct; she was lying. There wasn’t a Special Forces team within three hundred miles. They were all up north. Everyone was up north.

  There probably wasn’t a single police officer or state trooper anywhere close to them either. The governor had called everyone he could north to the border near Philadelphia. The best she could hope for was some old-timey deputy dawg or an elected constable who kept his only bullet in his shirt pocket and drove his own Plymouth station wagon with a bubble on top as the town’s only police cruiser.

  “It’s no lie,” she lied. “I-I called them myself when I saw the Martin’s Silverado.” The movement on her left stopped immediately, while at the same time, there was a sharp intake of breath from the right. Katherine could almost guess what they were thinking: If the FBI knew about Charlie Martin’s Silverado, what else did they know?

  “Didn’t you two know that you are on the FBI’s Most Wanted list?” she asked. “Yep, number one and two: Shuang Eng and Anna Holloway.”

  For a second, the barley field was silent save for the rain pattering down as the ramifications of what she had said sank in. Generally, there was no way to judge how people would react when they were told they were on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Katherine guessed that Eng and Anna would choose a violent response.

  Eng fired his gun first, spraying 9mm slugs through the barley. Anna fired next, aiming with far better precision than Katherine would have guessed. Thankfully, Katherine had dived back into the mud and hunkered down as bullets whipped above her. When there was a pause, she fired in Eng’s direction, but only twice. She couldn’t waste bullets, not when she only had three magazines of fifteen rounds a piece.

  Anna fired again. Her ability to aim through hearing alone was frighteningly precise. Two bullets sped into the mud right in front of Katherine’s face. The agent could only duck her head as a third whipped through the screwed-up bird’s nest of hair on her head. She looked up as she heard a squishy, splashing sound as the two fugitives ran. One of them was firing over their shoulder as they ran. She could tell because the bullets zinged in all directions.

  Ignoring these bullets, Katherine jumped up and chased after Anna and Eng, keeping low, letting the spring-planted barley hide her as she ran on a parallel course. They were heading for a lone outbuilding, a small barn with a silo attached. It was the kind of building that would be a hard nut to crack if the FBI wanted to take Anna and Eng alive—which Katherine did. They had to be taken alive in order to find out if there were still missing zombies on Long Island, locked up in basements or garages. Even more importantly, there was also the question of where were the vials the two fugitives were carrying when they boarded the chopper the night before.

  Had they made more zombies? Did they have the vials on them? Could the vials break open in the middle of a fire fight? Would Anna or Eng coat themselves with the zombie blood before they gave up? This last idea put a damper on Katherine’s enthusiasm and she slowed, cursing under her breath. She had no protective gear, not even latex gloves. It seemed ridiculous, but she could get infected from a sneeze.

  “I-I will just have to be careful,” she said, steeling herself and forcing her feet to go on. It wasn’t just her feet that were struggling to behave; she couldn’t seem to be able to get her breathing under control, either. She was gulping down air and no matter how deeply and rapidly she breathed, she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. This was her first shootout, the first time she was using her weapon in a real situation. She was supposed to have her training to fall back on, only she was a little lost since she must have missed the day they taught how to fall out of a helicopter into a bio-hazardous environment, and take on two terrorists without backup.

  To go along with the dog pant she was affecting, her heart was racing at over a hundred beats per minute as she detoured far to the right so she could come up to the outbuilding without being spotted. She went for the silo, which was a windowless, jutting, tube.

  When she made it, she put her back to it and now all she had to choose was to go left or right around it. This seemed simple enough, but with two people hell-bent on killing her, it was harder to choose than she could have believed.

  She inched around to the back of the building, the Glock poised, ready to fire, her breathing still completely out of control. There was a wide set of double doors that were partially open in the center of the building. The structure itself was aluminum and resembled more of a pre-built warehouse than a real barn. The tempo of the rain picked up, coming down harder and harder, making more of a thrumming ruckus that drowned everything out.

  Katherine was moving towards those doors, thinking that if she could lock it, she’d be able to trap them, only just then the door began sliding back. She froze as out of the door came a black pistol and then a head. Short black hair; it was Eng, whom Katherine foolishly considered far more dangerous than Anna.

  Finally reacting like a true FBI agent, Katherine stepped forward and touched the back of Eng’s head. “Drop the weapon,” she said, just loud enough to be heard above the din.

  Eng flinched; hesitated; then took a deep breath. These were not the reactions of someone about to drop their weapon. Katherine slide-stepped back a foot. She was in her element now and her training began to take over. “Don’t even try it,” she said. “You aren’t fast enough. I’ll put a hole in your head before you can blink. Now, drop the gun.”

  He turned the barrel to point up, but didn’t drop it. “You won’t kill me. I know where the bodies are buried and I know when they’ll dig themselves up. It won’t be long, so be careful, Special Agent.”

  “Drop. The. Gun.” Katherine ordered through clenched teeth. “I only need one of you alive. It could be you, Eng, or it could be her.”

  Slowly, he raised his hands, the gun still in his right. He then began to turn. Somehow, he was able to ignore the Glock pointed at his eye; he was a cool customer, but he had lost. “You don’t think I’ll shoot you in the face?” Katherine asked, a small smile on her lips. “After everything you’ve done, I’ll happily do it. You have three seconds before I pull the trigger. One, two, thr…”

  He stopped her count by letting the gun tumble from his fingers. It splashed into the mud at his feet. “Satisfied?”

  “Yes,” she answered, curtly. “Now, face the wall; hands behind your head and get on your knees.”

  He smiled and was so smug about it that she wanted to thump him with the butt end of her Glock. She should have known that the smile meant something more than him being a dick. Through the thrum of the rain, she heard a metallic click behind her head.

  It was Anna or so Katherine guessed. “It’s your turn to drop your gun,” Anna said. “Nice and easy and no one will get hurt.”

  Now it was Katherine’s turn to smile. “No,” she replied around the smile, a strange feeling of calm coming over her. “You, ma’am are a liar. You will kill me but not before you use me. Perhaps it’ll be as a hostage; perhaps you’ll turn me into one of them, but one way or another you will use me for your own selfish desires, and in the process, you’ll endanger the world. So, no, I won’t put down the gun. If you shoot me, by reflex, I’ll shoot Eng and you wouldn’t want that.”

  Anna snorted laugh
ter. “Actually, I do want you to shoot him. In fact, I’d prefer if you shot him first, that way you won’t miss. I’ll wait.”

  By the look on Eng’s face, Katherine could tell Anna wasn’t lying. “You really want me to shoot him?” This was so far from expectations that Katherine chanced a glance at Anna. She had never seen such cold, flat eyes in her life.

  “Yes, I do. Now would be good, before he opens his mouth and spins his lies.” Eng had indeed opened his mouth. Anna shifted the gun towards him. “This is your fault,” she hissed at him, the cold look replaced by fury. “All of this. He was the one who sabotaged the Com-cells. He raped me and he…he made those zombies in Long Island. He did it all. I just went along to get out. You have no idea what it’s like in the zone. It’s hell. It’s life and death in there.”

  “And now you are pointing a gun at a federal officer,” Katherine said. The gun had slid back to point at her. “If you wish to be taken seriously, you’re going to need to drop your gun, too.”

  Eng snorted. “She has all the innocence of a serpent. You’ll see. I would bet good cash that she doesn’t drop her weapon.”

  Katherine glanced back at Anna and saw that the gun was still pointed at her head. Anna wasn’t going to drop it. “And I guess that puts us at an impasse.”

  “There’s no impasse,” Anna said. “Pull the trigger or I will.”

  2—The Quarantine Zone, New York

  It was the smell that woke Thuy. It was rancid and ugly. It was the smell of death and along with it came the crunch of gravel and a chorus of low moans. There were zombies nearby. Carefully, nervously, she cracked an eye, but saw nothing; the windows were fogged over and only indistinct shadows shown through.