The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  “Holy shit!” one of the soldiers cried, covering his face and pushing his hands over his ears. His head rang from the concussive explosions that went on and on. Seven hundred of the huge bombs were dropped, enough to transform the highway and the green forest surrounding it into a nightmare of fire and black clouds and boiling black blood.

  Then the ten B-52 Stratofortresses rumbled away, heading west toward the setting sun, unheard by anyone on the ground. The people, and for just a minute or so, they were only simple people, not captains or soldiers or ex-mechanics or any of that, stood, curious to see if the world had changed.

  Their ears rang and many felt their insides shake involuntarily. Some grinned oddly, unable to think properly, stunned by the fantastic power that had fallen from the heavens. And some of the soldiers cheered, some stood gazing at the smoke and the flames, laughing foolishly, others thanked God in loud voices thinking that, just like in the movies, the cavalry had arrived to save the day and that the explosions were only the start, and that the war was basically over.

  Then the smoke and the dust began to clear and the true extent of the damage was seen. “Holy shit,” the one soldier repeated. The destruction had been cataclysmic. In the span of two minutes, everything had changed. The highway was gone; its signs were gone; its guard rails were gone; the stripe down the middle was gone. There were only craters and charred body parts. The same was true of the forest. It had morphed. Gone were the thick and lushly green trees. In their place were thousands of spindly trunks, their branches either blasted away or burning, filling the air with ash.

  “Holy shit,” the soldier said for a third time. He wasn’t the only one in awe. Many people uttered those same words. Pretty much the only ones unimpressed by the destruction were the zombies. Tens of thousands had been killed. The rest, an uncountable hungry, yearning mass stumbled over their burnt bodies as if the bombing had never happened.

  The grey wave came on and now the smiles on the soldier’s faces and the cheering and all the rest faded away.

  On the hill, one soldier said to the other, “We should chain her properly and get down there. They’re going to need us.”

  “They’re going to need more than…what the fuck?” The two soldiers had turned only to find that Courtney had decided not to stay and get chained to a tree with an unstoppable zombie army bearing down on them. The moment that first Super Hornet had shot past, she had made a run for it.

  With her hands cuffed in front of her, she had raced down the back side of the hill and through a short stand of trees. Then the B-52s started dropping their loads and the ground rippled. She was thrown from her feet, only to jump up again a second later. She ran and wasn’t the only one. Many were running and they were all faster than Courtney, who not only had her hands cuffed, but was also trying to go cross-country at a sprint in fancy dress shoes.

  Certain that she would break an ankle, she forced herself to slow down just as she came to a road. It was the same one that looped around the city of Webster. “I can go right into town or left into nowhere.” The road to the left went west. She could lose herself in the west. “West, then north,” she amended, remembering her Canadian plan.

  In her mind, she saw herself, tired and faintly dirty crossing into Canada, greeted by friendly Mounties. The imaginary Courtney did not have handcuffs on; the real one did. She wouldn’t get far in them and she wouldn’t get far on foot. Reluctantly, she turned to the right as the last of the bombs went off. By then her mind had adapted to the noise and instead of terrifying her as the first few had, it was more like background thunder during a rainstorm.

  “I need a cruiser,” she said, for what felt like the tenth time that day. Even before she got into Webster, which was a scarce half mile away, she knew there’d be no chance of finding an abandoned cruiser or any car for that matter. The same was true of scooters, bikes, mopeds or pretty much any form of wheeled transportation.

  All the vehicles had been taken. All the beds had been taken as well, and all the food and water. There was barely any room to walk in the town. Two hours before it had been a ghost town and now there were people everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. They lay flat out on the front yards of homes or were curled in balls sleeping in the bushes. Tens of thousands sat on porches and thousands more occupied the swings in playgrounds, and on the curbs lining the streets were so many of them that they reminded Courtney of an infinite number of magpies with dirty feet.

  In a way, Webster was similar to New Orleans after the flood, only instead of water sitting in stagnant pools, it was people, everywhere. Courtney went through them, fear running high within her. Although the people looked exhausted, she knew they could turn dangerous in second. The thought was vindicated a moment later when a huge sound erupted ahead of her.

  It was a unified scream of terror, as if an entire stadium filled with people screamed at once. Then there was a flurry of gunshots, which seemed weak in comparison.

  “Y’all better git outta the way,” a voice spoke into her ear.

  “Huh?” she asked, her mind very confused. The words the man had spoken had run together in such a thick accent that she was still trying to unravel their meaning, while in that same fraction of a second, she realized that she knew that voice. There couldn’t be more than two people in all of Massachusetts who had that hillbilly twang particular to Izard County, Arkansas. It was John Burke, looking, if it was possible, skinnier, dirtier and seedier than ever.

  Despite his wasted appearance, he took her by the arm with a grip of iron and pulled her out of the street as a new scream erupted. This one was louder and closer. It rolled at them and as it did, a horrible wave of humanity rolled along with it.

  Twenty thousand people were simply running and screaming. Maybe they knew why, maybe not. The people around Courtney and John certainly didn’t know why. They just upped and ran.

  John pulled Courtney to an elm with a dual trunk and put his back to it, holding her against his chest as the river of people flowed past. John stank of three-day old sweat. It was bitter in her nostrils, but not completely so. There was also a minty aroma to him that was a puzzle to her until he turned his head and spat a stream of brown fluid, hitting a young boy as he ran past.

  Although Courtney grimaced, she said nothing and, in truth, felt nothing. A normal reaction would have been disgust, however the time for “normal” was long gone. She had seen too much to be overly bothered by a little Wintergreen Skoal spittle, especially since John had kept her from being trampled to death.

  “So, what sorts a trouble y’all been gettin’ into?” he asked. He could feel the cuffs and gave them a little shake.

  “The usual,” she answered.

  He laughed in disbelief at her curt answer. Her fancy clothes and the way she was dolled up told him that she was up to something that he wanted to be a part of. Probably escaping. The handcuffs told him she had screwed up somewhere and that was alright with him. She needed his help.

  “Iffin’ you come clean, I’ll get y’all outta them cuffs.”

  She had given him the abbreviated answer more out of weariness than as an attempt at dodging the question. “Okay, sure. I was trying to get the Massachusetts National Guard to surrender before the zombies killed us all. It worked, too.”

  “And the cuffs?”

  “I guess not everyone was happy about it,” she answered. Actually, it seemed as though nobody was happy. The wave of stampeding people had petered out and everyone went back to their places. Some fell asleep in seconds. One young woman, only steps away from Courtney, had fled her home in Newtown, Connecticut the day before. She had walked eighty miles in the last thirty hours. Her blisters had blisters and she was bleeding through two pairs of socks. She wasn’t going any further; somewhere along the way she had lost the will.

  John took a long time to consider not just Courtney’s words, but also Courtney herself. He was a little surprised she had made it this far. She had seemed soft to him. A good communicator, sur
e, but not a good fighter or survivor. “What about Dr. Lee? You seen her?”

  “Still trapped in the Zone.” She lifted up her wrists. “Well? You promised.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  He gave a quick look around, not at the people, but at the houses. They were “yuppie” houses and John had to spit out more Skoal juice just looking at them. “Rich fucks,” he mumbled and started towards the nearest. Every house on the block would have the right tools. They’d be Craftsman from Sears and they’d look practically brand new, even if they were years old.

  For the most part, the hammers hadn’t been used for much other than to hang a few pictures on the walls and the screwdrivers’ only function was to open the battery compartment on the TV remote.

  Yuppies were famous in John’s mind for being useless fucks. Still, they had nice tools. The first house he came to was a human hive. Just like outside, there were people everywhere and he had to step carefully to keep from tripping on any. It wasn’t easy. The night had not yet come and the sun was still up, and yet there was so much ash and smoke in the air that it seemed later than it was. The bombs had started a hundred fires that burned out of control.

  It made everything dark, especially the two-car garage. There were people here as well. Although most were lolling in a stupor, four men were scrounging, looking for food or weapons. They gave John hard looks as he shouldered them aside to pick over the tools. One of them started to get riled. John told him, “You betta’ git, for I make you cry like a pussy.” John wasn’t the biggest of men, but he had a mean streak in him. It showed in his eyes.

  They backed away. John spat a brown wad at their feet before turning to the tools. He chose a claw hammer and a hacksaw. He then smiled at the group that he had singlehandedly intimidated, showing the tobacco in his yellow teeth. “It’s all yours, ladies.”

  Courtney followed John out of the house, thinking that although John was clearly unsuited for the real world, with its rules and its insistence on personal hygiene, he seemed ready made for a world where zombies roamed the land and only the fittest or the smartest or the meanest survived. Courtney didn’t think she was any of these. The best she could say about herself was that she was a pretty good liar, something that would have offended her the week before.

  “Aw-right,” John said as they came back out into the gloomed-over evening and went back to the elm. “Let’s see dem chains.” He had the hacksaw in his hands.

  “I thought you were going to pick the lock,” Courtney said, pulling her wrists back.

  “Y’all thought wrong,” was all he said.

  With no other choice, she laid her hands out on a low branch and he commenced to saw. Back and forth the saw went in a blur. John coughed and sweated and cursed through fifteen minutes of sawing before the blade cut through the short chain.

  “Now, y’all got matchin’ bracelets.” He chuckled, coughed some more and then asked, “Soooo, now what? You gotta plan?”

  She didn’t. Or rather her original Canadian plan was out the window. She wasn’t going to walk to Canada and she wasn’t going to remain a part of this huddled mass of humanity. They were calm now, too tired to be aggressive, but what would happen in the morning when they were hungry and thirsty? What would happen if there were infected individuals among them?

  There was danger in Webster and she knew for sure that the army was making plans to deal with it. So, where did that leave her? She couldn’t run and she couldn’t stay with the herd, and she was wanted by at least half the soldiers defending the line.

  But what about the other half? She had saved the 101st, shouldn’t that get her something? The honest answer was no. In the middle of battle, it would get her a pat on the head and a boot in the ass. If she wanted the army’s protection, she needed to be an asset to them. She needed them to want to keep her alive.

  Her one skill: Advanced Lying wouldn’t cut it. “Maybe I don’t have to lie,” she said to herself. She had at least one very valuable truth on her side. She knew who had the cure.

  “Let’s go,” she said to John and then shocked him as she set off towards the sound of battle.

  “Hey, slow down. I think y’alls goin’ the wrong way.”

  Courtney kept marching, her new bracelets jingling. “No. As long as the line holds, the safest place to be is with the army. They need us. They need our knowledge of the Com-cells and where Dr. Lee is.” John walked next to her, shaking his head in disbelief. Finally, she said, “We have the cure, John. Dr. Lee can make one. That’s got to be worth a helicopter ride somewhere safe, don’t you think?”

  “That’s the least they could do iffin you ask me.” He started dreaming of a soft bed and a belly full of food, but then the image of his daughter Jaimee Lynn cut through all of that and he told himself that, one way or the other, this was the right direction. Jaimee Lynn was somewhere in Connecticut and she was likely still alive since she was mostly immune to the disease.

  That had to be worth something to the army, he thought to himself. And he was all the way immune and that had to be worth even more.

  With much more determination, he marched to the southern edge of town where the sound of fighting took on a magnified quality so that the air fairly hummed and vibrated.

  General Platnik’s command post was much closer to the border than Axelrod’s had been. He was set up in a bakery that had a fine view of the battle. Not that anyone had a moment to spare to look up.

  He was running a skeleton crew, having sent everyone who wasn’t absolutely essential to the front lines. That included the usual MPs attached to divisional HQs. The situation was too desperate and his need for live bodies on the line was too great.

  Platnik didn’t think he would miss them and then in breezed the woman who General Axelrod had ordered to be executed. With her was some scraggily piece of trash with a hammer tucked into a belt loop. They paused in confusion when the bell above the door let out its merry sound.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he told her, before she could introduce herself. He pointed to his S2. “Get them out of here.”

  The intelligence officer was a big man, but he wasn’t going to use his fists, not when he had his pistol. He pulled it and pointed it, his finger within the guard. He wasn’t playing around. “Turn and leave, or I will shoot.”

  “Wait!” Courtney said, putting a hand out to both out the S2 and General Platnik. “You need us.”

  “Yes, I need you to get out,” Platnik said. “We’re busy.” He had just inherited a force ten times the size of the 101st, spread out over nearly two hundred miles. He was currently running three different battles. He had Axelrod running six others, all on the west side of the state. None were more important than the one taking place a quarter mile away. It was epic and nothing this lady could say could take precedence over it.

  “I have the cure!” she practically screamed.

  Other than that, Platnik thought. “How? Who are you?”

  So much for not lying. “My name is Courtney Shaw. I, uh, worked with R&K Pharmaceuticals at the Walton facility. It is where the disease broke out to begin with. We were developing a cure for cancer, only it was sabotaged…”

  “Oh, shut up,” someone snapped. All heads turned to see a major advancing around the bakery’s counter. Courtney recognized him immediately. He had been the same major who had tried to keep Courtney from seeing General Axelrod back in the bowling alley.

  For once, Courtney was speechless, her lies lodged in her throat. She hadn’t expected to see one of the officers from the Massachusetts guard in Platnik’s command post.

  “She’s no researcher,” the major said, walking right up to her. “She’s a liar. She told General Axelrod that she was with Governor Clarren’s office, but that wasn’t true. They never heard of her. She also lied about being on the front lines with General Collins and she lied about having connections with the FBI and about being in Hartford yesterday.”

  “It’s true,” another officer s
aid. “She was spinning bullshit.”

  Platnik had a hundred balls in the air and really didn’t need this—but a cure! “Tell me about this cure and make it quick. You say you have it? Where?”

  “Back in Walton,” she answered. “The cure is back in the hospital. I need a helicopter just for a few hours. We need to pick…”

  “No,” he said, suddenly. “I can’t help you. I don’t have a single helicopter left and if I did, I don’t have any fuel. And besides, Walton burned down. There’s no cure there. Now get out or I will have you arrested.”

  Courtney wanted to argue her case some more. How could he throw away a chance at a cure? How could he listen to men who had been his enemies only a few hours before? It didn’t make sense that…

  The major broke in on her thoughts saying, “She should be arrested right now. General Axelrod had her detained, under guard. This guy must have helped her escape.”

  John Burke had heard enough. In this new apocalyptic world, “detained” was the short time between being arrested and being shot in the back of the head. He grabbed Courtney’s hand and ran from the bakery. The highway was to the right and the woods to the left. He chose the left, while she chose an altogether different route.

  Courtney ran straight for the parking lot where there were three Humvees, two Volvos and a racy red Corvette.

  “Good i-deer,” John said, heading for one of the Humvees. She raced for the Corvette. “Don’t be stupid,” he hissed. “That ain’t prolly got no keys in it.”

  She was betting her life that it did. The Corvette had been backed into the parking space with exact precision; only a military man would do that. And she knew that in war time situations soldiers left the keys in the cars so there wouldn’t be any confusion searching for them in the event of an emergency.