The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  The captain snorted, “Wouldn’t that be something someone from the governor’s office would know?”

  Courtney was momentarily taken back, but she recovered in a blink, saying, “I know there’s drone coverage. They’re everywhere. I meant: do you have access to the drone coverage?”

  “That was a quick recovery,” he said, laughing, suddenly. The laugh was out of place and sent a cold wave sweeping down her body. He leaned over and opened her door. “You are such a good liar that if I hadn’t known better I might have been fooled. Oh, by the way, we know who you are. So, if you’ll follow me we can get this over with.”

  Just like that, John was disarmed and the two of them were professionally frisked. They were then cuffed and now Courtney had two rings of metal on each wrist. She asked for the one useless pair to be taken off, however the captain thought they made a statement and kept them on.

  “We’ll take your car,” the captain told them. “Or should I say, we’ll take General Axelrod’s car?”

  “Shit,” Courtney muttered. “Is he here?”

  A shit-eating grin was the only answer she received. She knew that he was there, regardless. It was her sort of luck. With a trail vehicle filled with troops behind them, the captain purred the Corvette through the airport and to a well-lit hanger. He escorted his two prisoners inside to where General Axelrod had set up the western command post. Although there were thirty other officers with him, mostly older men in camouflage. Axelrod stood out mainly because of his gleaming bald head, and because he was the only one who bothered to give them a second look.

  The captain presented the two and then stood aside, likely so as not to get anything on his uniform when the general vented his anger, which seemed volcanic and on the verge of exploding.

  “I don’t understand you at all, Ms. Shaw,” Axelrod said. “Do you think the people in the military are buffoons? That we’re all idiots? I know many people your age have no concept of duty and honor. They have no idea how soldiers fight to preserve your freedoms day in and day out. I’m guessing you’re one of these ‘protest without a clue’ types. Is that right? Is that why you keep turning up like a bad penny?”

  Had it been another day, she would have been intimidated by his bluster, but she had seen too much and faced to much real fear to be afraid of one old man. “No, I deeply respect the military, even when they make mistakes.”

  He lifted his chin and scratched beneath it with one hand. The way his face jutted and his jowls stretched beneath made him appear lizard-like. “You expect me to believe that? After all your lies, you expect me to believe the most blatant of them all? You expect me to believe anything from a criminal?”

  Although she had broken many, many laws in the last few days, she didn’t think of herself as a criminal.

  “You can call me a criminal if you want, but you’d be the only one,” she said, glaring up at him. “If anything, I’m a hero. I saved all those people. And I saved the 101st Airborne Division. Me! I did that. And I saved your state, too, by the way. I think you’re just starting to see that and you don’t know what to think about it.”

  Axelrod tried to keep up his glare, but he was old and tired. He hadn’t had a nap in three days; he missed his bed and his wife. War was a young man’s game and he was just too tired to deal with this. Whatever the woman’s excuses were didn’t matter. She had endangered the lives of five million people by her “heroic” actions, and there would be repercussions.

  “Only time will tell if you saved anything at all,” he said, his voice turning soft. He sighed. “I was wrong to order your execution without a trial. I rescind that order. But you have broken laws. You’ll be held indefinitely while you await trial. Your friend can go.”

  The captain came forward to unlock the cuffs on John’s wrists. The hick from Izard County only stared at Courtney, waiting for her think of something, but she was only standing there. He needed her to do more. “What about Dr. Lee?” he asked. “Y’all supposed to be hepin’ her, remember?”

  “I’d forget this Dr. Lee person if I were you,” Axelrod said. “No one else is getting across the border, and that’s final.”

  “Does it even matter anymore?” Courtney asked. “Your state is…I wouldn’t call it overrun, but I must have seen two hundred zombies driving over here from Becket. There’s got to be ten times that many wandering around. How are you going to get them all before they really do take over?”

  Axelrod had no fucking idea. His forces were stretched too thin and the outcomes of the battles were too close to even think about trying to put together a state-wide zombie hunt in the middle of the night. Platnik knew the situation and was just as clueless. He had kicked it up to Lieutenant General Phillips, who had hissed into the radio: “No matter what, do not mention this in anything official. Anything.”

  The writing was on the wall and the threat of nukes was still on the table. Axelrod couldn’t blame the President. Nothing was going right. “That’s no longer any of your concern, Miss.”

  “What if I told you that Dr. Lee could fix your problem?” Courtney cried as she was being dragged away. “Remember the lights? Remember how she told you about the photo-sensitivity? She can help you with this, too.”

  On his own volition, the captain ceased yanking on Courtney’s arm. The general pointed at him, but it was a confused, half-hearted gesture. Dr. Lee’s advice had been extremely useful. Axelrod had sent the idea up the chain of command and now lights were being used everywhere to ferret out potential zombies before they could become a threat.

  “How could she possibly help with this?” he asked. “And even if she could, I can’t spare the fuel to go searching for her.”

  “She has a hot air balloon,” Courtney told him, hope flaring up in her. “All she would need is permission to cross into Massachusetts airspace. Please, give her five minutes. If she can help you, then let her come over if not…well, she’ll have to figure things out on her own.” Because I’ll be in jail, she thought.

  It showed just how screwed they were that Axelrod called for a radio and had Courtney uncuffed. With an audience of thirty, she tuned the radio and asked in as controlled a voice as she could manage: “Deck 1 this is Dispatch 6, over?”

  Seconds later, Deckard answered in a low tone. “This is Deck 1. Please, tell me you have some good news because we are in a world of hurt over here. We have them all over the fence and we haven’t even started inflating the balloon yet. Thuy says they can smell us so she is cooking up something.”

  “I need to talk to her, Deckard. It’s important.”

  The way she said: It’s important had Deckard staring nervously at the mic. There was a finality to the word and all he could think was that Courtney hadn’t been able to come through. Deep down where his guts were churning and his heart raced, he really hadn’t expected anything else; they had asked her to do something that was, on the face of it, impossible.

  He was leaned into the truck, sweating despite the cool night, the M4 across his back wedged against the seat, his mask pulled down, dangling at his neck. “I’ll get her,” Deckard whispered into the mic. Although the word “important” was still lingering, he didn’t rush over to Thuy. She had been hoping for a miracle. She had been counting on it. And now she’d be crushed.

  Thuy was crouched in the grass, forty yards away, mixing ammonia and bleach in a bucket. There were eight other buckets arranged in an arc that was very close to becoming a circle. The air shimmered and stank with what she had called chloramine vapor. “Don’t breathe it directly in,” she had warned a few minutes earlier.

  “No shit,” he had replied with a smile that was phony and a wink that was forced. He had been thinking that skulking around in the dark and trying to hide their scent with a deadly gas was all well and good, but what were they going to do when it came time to light the burner? It would light the night and the zombies would come by the thousands, gas or no gas.

  Only now it seemed they wouldn’t have to worry abo
ut the light. “Thuy!” he hissed, “It’s Courtney. It’s important.”

  Behind her mask, Thuy’s brows came down. She didn’t like the word ‘important’ either, but unlike Deckard she didn’t immediately fear the worst. She guessed correctly that there would be stipulations or obstacles to their escape plan, otherwise Courtney would have just told Deckard that they would have to think of something else.

  “This is Dr. Lee,” she stated bluntly in the radio.

  Courtney was momentarily taken back by the lack of radio procedure, but the pause wasn’t a long one. “Um, this is Dispatch 6. We are a go on the plan, with one little change. The military is requesting assistance before they allow you to cross.”

  “What the hell?” Deckard seethed.

  Unruffled, Thuy waved him to be quiet, before saying, “I’m always prepared to help our fine military. What can I do for them?”

  “We have an issue on this side of the border,” Courtney said. “People are turning, if you understand me, and with the battles going on and the need to man the lines fully, we have a containment issue.”

  Thuy’s mouth fell open. “What are you…what are you saying? There are zombies inside the border of Massachusetts?”

  “Yes. Not a lot. A few hundred. Maybe a thousand at the most. The commanding officer is asking for your help in-in-in, uh taking care of them.”

  Deckard and Thuy shared an incredulous look. “He wants me to help, militarily?” Thuy asked. “Is that what they need?”

  “Roger that.”

  “I doubt this is something I can accomplish from here, however I will assist in any way I can once we’re on the other side.”

  General Axelrod shook his head defiantly at Courtney. She relayed the reply. “No. Sorry, but you’re going to have to help from there if you want any assistance. They’re not cooperating.” This earned Courtney a glare from all thirty officers.

  Forty miles away, Deckard hissed through gritted teeth, “Mother fucker! This is ridiculous. This is absurd. How on earth do they think you can help them from here and even if you could, I don’t see why you should. If there are zombies in Massachusetts, why would we want to go there? We should try…”

  Thuy took his hand, calming him in an instant. “A few thousand zombies are better to deal with that a few million,” she said, guessing that the real number was being understated since they were using an open frequency. She keyed the mic and asked, “What sort of assets are available?”

  Axelrod glanced over to his operations officer, who shook his head and answered, “Not much. General Phillips hinted that we could have the use of a few Delta teams and maybe a ranger company. It’s nothing when you consider they’d have to clear out roughly four hundred square miles in one night. It’s not possible.”

  “What about hunting the zombies from the air?” someone asked. “It’d be safe and reduce the chance that anyone else would get infected.”

  “We don’t have the fuel,” the Air Force liaison said. “We can either hunt the beasts or continue to make bombing runs. Not both.”

  Axelrod didn’t have time for his men to sit around, spitting out what-if scenarios. There were battles still raging and his staff was the glue holding everything together. “We have an expert,” he said. “We’ll give her a chance and then we’ll get back to work. Tell her what she has to work with.”

  When Courtney explained the few assets, Thuy was actually puzzled. Military jargon wasn’t something she understood and she thought that when Courtney said ‘Deltas’ she was talking about some sort of fraternity. She knew what a ranger company was, however. “How many men are we talking about?” she asked.

  “Somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred,” Courtney said. “But that’s sort of a dead end. There’s too much land for them to cover.”

  “And they’re good fighters?” Thuy asked. “Even the Deltas? They’ll have guns as well?”

  In the hanger, someone groaned at the question. Courtney felt her cheeks going pink with embarrassment. “Yes, they’re all very good fighters and they’ll all have guns, but we need a new idea. Maybe a chemical that we can spray by plane. You know like a crop duster? Is there anything like that which could kill the zombies?”

  “If there were, they’d kill the normal people, as well,” Thuy said. “No, we’re going to use the soldiers and it’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  2–8:58

  The Situation Room, White House

  The President rubbed his hands together. They were winning. Finally, they were winning. The lines had stabilized. “And now we roll them back. Right Marty?”

  Marty’s smile was strained, but the President didn’t notice. “Yes, sir. That’s the plan.”

  “We start right here.” He pointed at Manhattan. “You see why? No? Well, I’ll tell you. With the 3rd Infantry Division we can split the Zone square in two! We keep our left flank on the Hudson and go straight up to Albany. From there, we’ll clear out Connecticut and Rhode Island. Then we’ll wheel around and drive them out of Jersey and Pennsylvania! I suspect this will all be over in a month.”

  He was delusional. It was true that everyone was lying to him about the true state of things—the maps and video footage he was seeing had been doctored—but even taking that into account, he was out of his gourd. There was no way the war would be over in a month, and there was no way any of the generals would march their men deep into the Zone where they could be surrounded and attacked from all sides.

  But Marty only said, “Yes, sir.” The President couldn’t be trusted with the truth and everyone thought he was nuts, however the Attorney General, who knew even less about warfare than the President, did not consider him mentally unfit. This meant that they couldn’t strip him of his power, all they could do was continually lie to him. They were playing a very dangerous game and Marty felt like shitting himself.

  “Where the hell is Heider?” the President asked, finally turning away from maps he’d been staring at. “He keeps disappearing, not that I care, but isn’t he supposed to be here, you know, to be kept in the loop? I guess I should be happy that at least he’s here.” He indicated the Secretary of Defense who was sleeping, slumped on the desk with his head in his crooked arms.

  “Heider is dealing with logistics,” Marty said, just as he’d been told to. Logistics was something the President didn’t understand and steadfastly refused to learn. He thought it was all “mumbo jumbo.”

  General Heider was really in the West Wing doing his actual job, and things weren’t nearly as hunky-dory as the President supposed.

  In Massachusetts, the 101st had been driven from their lines south of Webster by sheer weight, while in the center part of the state huge tracks of land were practically overrun by zombies that had seemingly come out of thin air. In western Pennsylvania where civilians were doing the brunt of the fighting, it was a grind of constant battle, but they were at least being reinforced as people from as far away as Colorado were racing in to help.

  The battle for southern Pennsylvania had officially ended an hour before and it had ended with a loss. Philadelphia had fallen as had its suburbs and in the confused retreat a combined civilian-soldier regiment holding a valley west of Wilmington had been left unsupported for too long and eventually it had crumbled.

  This left the hard fought positions around Wilmington untenable and now the battle for southern Pennsylvania had become the battle for Maryland, west of the Chesapeake Bay. Everything east of it was considered lost. Only a few thousand men and women were left to fight the zombies surging into Delaware, and they fought only delaying actions so that all of the Delmarva Peninsula could be evacuated.

  Despite all this, the 7th Army was in a difficult situation, not an impossible one.

  Of course, none of this could be even hinted at to the President. He was becoming scary. Marty had caught him whispering to himself about The Ultimate Solution.

  But now the President was on the high side of his new bipolar personality. “You know
what we should do, Marty? We should tour the front lines. What better way is there to instill fighting spirit in the men than a visit by their commanding officer? And we can bring some of the press along. It’ll give them something positive to talk about for a change.”

  He gave Marty a close look, searching his face. “It’s odd that you didn’t think about this. It’s what I pay you for, after all.”

  “I guess I’m just tired,” Marty answered. “Sorry.”

  “It has been a long few days,” the President said with more grace than he’d shown in two days. “Why don’t you get this set up and then go lie down? We’ll need all the major players: ABC, CBS, hell even invite those dicks over at Fox. And make sure we have Marine Corps 1. We’ll probably need a fleet of them. Talk to Heider about that.”

  Marty actually bowed as he backed to the door. “Yes sir, I will. I’ll get it all ready to go. It’ll take some time but…but you can count on me.” The moment he was out the door, Marty took off running for the West Wing. He was out of breath by the time he found Heider sitting in a cramped office with dozens of men and women in uniform surrounding him. “I need your help! He is talking about a tour of the front lines.”

  Heider was quick to jump up and hurry from the room, dragging Marty along with him. “You have got to stall him.”

  “For how long?”

  The general shrugged weakly. “A few days? If the 3rd ID can finally get their butts in gear, we might be able to push the zombies back.”

  “And if they can’t and he finds out that we’ve been lying to him?” Marty asked, licking his lips. “It’ll be treason. He’ll arrest us, I know it. He might even have us killed.” It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

  “He won’t find out as long as we keep him in the White House. Make that your main priority. No matter what, keep him from touring anything.”

  This was easier said than done. When Marty got back to the Situation Room, he found the President talking to a reporter from the New York Times. “Of course you can have a window seat, Bob. I’ll have Marty set that up. Hey, here he is. What did Heider say? When can we go?”