The Apocalypse Crusade 3
War of the Undead Day 3
A Zombie Tale by Peter Meredith
Copyright 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9974312-6-1
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Fictional works by Peter Meredith:
A Perfect America
The Sacrificial Daughter
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three
The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1
An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2
Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3
The Punished
Sprite
The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1
The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2
To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3
The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1
The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2
The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3
The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4
The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5
The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One
The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two
Pen(Novella)
A Sliver of Perfection (Novella)
The Haunting At Red Feathers(Short Story)
The Haunting On Colonel's Row(Short Story)
The Drawer(Short Story)
The Eyes in the Storm(Short Story)
The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World
Forward
This is the story of the third day of the apocalypse as seen from the perspective of those who fought on the front lines of the Quarantine Zone and by those who were trapped within. Although there are easily ten-thousand stories from that time, few give us as full an understanding of the dire nature of the emergency as those depicted within these pages.
I have assembled a short list of the pertinent individuals mentioned within and they are as follows:
Dr. Thuy Lee—Lead researcher at the R & K Pharmaceuticals Walton facility. Using the innovative and inadequately tested Combination Cell Therapy, she discovered a cure for cancer, however her work was sabotaged resulting in the subsequent apocalypse. She is currently on the FBIs most wanted list.
Ryan Deckard—One-time security chief at the Walton facility, now a desperate survivor trying to find a way out of the Quarantine Zone
Chuck Singleton—A cancer patient and one of the few people to leave the Walton facility alive. He was late for the beginning of human trials and thus was not infected by the deadly Com-cells.
Stephanie Glowitz—She too is a cancer patient and one of the few people to leave the Walton facility alive. She was also late for the beginning of human trials and thus was not infected by the deadly Com-cells.
Dr. Samuel Wilson—Oncologist at the Walton facility. One of eight people to survive the destruction of the Walton facility.
Anna Holloway—As a front, Anna worked as a research assistant at the Walton facility. In truth she was as a corporate spy for a competing pharmaceutical company. She is in possession of a stolen vial of Com-cells and on the run in southern New York state.
Lieutenant Eng of the People’s Republic of China—Eng is a spy and saboteur. In his undercover role as a research assistant, he made changes to the Com-cells which had worldwide repercussions.
John Burke—A cancer patient who received only sterile water during the Com-cell trial. He believes that he is immune to the deadly effects of the Com-cells.
Courtney Shaw—A state trooper dispatcher who oversaw the initial quarantine zone around Walton.
PFC Max Fowler—Once a soldier in the 42nd Infantry Division, he is now simply one of many thousands struggling to survive on the wrong side of the line.
Marty Aleman—Chief of Staff of the President of the United States. He sees himself as a “king maker,” and runs the country using the president as a figurehead.
Jaimee Lynn Burke—Aged eight, she is the daughter of John Burke and the first person to escape the quarantine zone. She is thought to be partially immune to the Com-cells. She has become a deadly, unfeeling, sweet little killer, living and feeding in Hartford, Connecticut.
Chapter 1 The Hunger for Life
1–2:06 a.m.
Hartford, Connecticut
Jaimee Lynn remembered her name, at least her first name, and she had a firm image of her father’s face. She also knew she was from a place called Arkan-na-sas or Arkarassis or something like that, and at the very edge of her memory, where everything was quickly becoming grey fog, she recalled the part she had fought for in the school play when she had been in the fourth grade.
She had played a tea cup, and there had been rainbow streamers hanging from the rafters, and there had been a mean boy who had pinched her bottom in front of everyone and had thought that was so funny that he had pointed at her and got his friends to laugh along.
But how long ago that was, she had no idea. It seemed like maybe it had been two years since the fourth grade, but it might have been ten. Numbers were somewhat of a mystery to her, while time consisted of either “now” or “before.”
A lot had happened “before,” and it was all a blur. There had been a funeral with her mama in a box, and a hospital that burned up and there had been a cat that had got all stiff and wouldn’t meow or nothing. And there had been an ambulance with lights that turned the night dizzy, making everything two different colors: red then white, red then white.
And there had been blood. A shiver ran up her back at the thought of the blood. It was always so agreeably hot. She loved it hot. When it was cold it, it tasted like soup that had been left out to congeal and it made her stomach go icky. Jaimee Lynn would never drink cold blood. Never, ever, never…unless she had to. Unless there weren’t none other.
Thankfully there was lots and lots of blood around, nice and hot and clean. There was blood in the people who were in all the houses and buildings. She was in a city full of houses and buildings, but she had no idea what the name of the city was. Arkanasas, maybe? She didn’t know and she hadn’t spent a moment caring.
All she really cared about was blood, hot and coppery. She cared even though she wasn’t hungry yet and wouldn’t be for a few hours. Her belly pushed out the front of the white gown she wore as if she had a baby growing inside of her stick-thin body. It was a blood-baby if it was a baby at all. Her belly sloshed liquid when she rolled over.
She was full and sleepy. Her eyes were heavy and her brain was addled. Her limbs seemed far away; maybe ten feet away or maybe nineteen. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She was too sleepy to care about inches and miles and all that.
What she really wanted at that moment of fullness and contentment was to be cuddled. Even before that school play about the tea cup and the rainbows, and maybe even before the ambulance with its lights, she remembered being cuddled.
It must have been a thousand years ago, back before that rotten boy had pinched her. It was long ago and that was for sure, and it had been her mother who had done the cuddling. Her mother had been the color of gold, like wheat or a sunrise. And she had been soft
.
Jaimee Lynn thought nothing could ever be so soft, and yet there was a brown woman with thick yarn for hair, lying not three feet away. She lay sprawled out with most of her insides spilled out on the ground. She was growing cold, but for the moment she was warmer than the grass where the pack lay in knots like cats in a sunbeam.
The pack were Jaimee Lynn’s children, sort of. They were ugly. Some were missing parts and pieces. One little girl was missing most of her hair. It had been ripped out in great chunks and her head looked like pinkish hamburger, except where the bone showed through white as chalk. It was ugly and she was ugly.
There was another boy who was missing one leg from the knee down. He moved around like some sort of pale spider on two hands and the one remaining foot. He was surprisingly quick.
One kid didn’t have a face and Jaimee Lynn didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, though it didn’t matter all that much to her. She wasn’t going to play with it no matter what it was. They were different. The other kids were all gross and stupid and couldn’t even speak except for a few words like “hungy" or “mama,” and everyone knew that even little babies could say those words.
Jaimee Lynn looked down her nose at them as they slept. The blood made them slow, like ol’ hounds, and she knew they wouldn’t budge for a few hours. They wouldn’t roll over or scratch themselves or nothing. They would sleep like rocks. It was dangerous to sit out like that, though Jaimee Lynn couldn’t remember why.
Remembering was hard, especially when she was full and sleepy. She was full, but cold and all she could think about was that the brown woman had soft, soft cheeks and that she was still warm. There was steam lifting up from her guts. Jaimee could smell the heat. It was a coppery sort of smell. She crawled to the woman and snuggled up into those warm guts, pulling a flap of skin around her like a blanket.
It was almost perfect, and she felt a bit like a baby herself, especially as she pulled the woman’s arm around her, taking her soft brown hand in her small white one. She brought the hand to her face, put the thumb in her mouth, bit down savagely and then fell asleep, sucking gently on that thumb, drinking sips of blood like a baby would from a bottle.
2–The Capitol Building, Hartford, Connecticut
In the dark of midnight, Jaimee Lynn slept, not realizing that all around her Hartford was being fortified to keep out creatures just like her. The people were building tall walls and digging deep ditches not realizing that they were trapping themselves in with a pack of monsters whose numbers were growing.
Even as Jaimee Lynn sucked on that thumb, there were others whom she had eaten off of who were coming back to life as the unholy virus began replicating and regenerating. Organs and bone and skin grew back just enough for a semblance of life to return. Only the brain did not regenerate. These others came back as half-formed, flesh-eating monsters who knew only eternal hunger.
For the moment, the people of Hartford were oblivious to the danger in their midst. Certainly the governor of Connecticut, Christine Warner, had no clue even though her office stood only four miles from where Jaimee Lynn Burke had been feeding all day.
The governor, safe behind bulletproof windows, drank cup after of cup of the blackest coffee. Her nerves were wired and yet she yawned endlessly as she waited for the latest reports.
So far, news had been sketchy on every front. The last she had heard, the Rhode Island border to the east was closed, being held by a scattering of police and local firemen who had their trucks heeled over, blocking every route into the state. Things were tense but, so far peaceful.
The same couldn’t be said of the border with Massachusetts to the north. Already there had been over thirty deaths—‘murders’ is how Christine referred to them. The boys up in Massachusetts weren’t playing around. The border bristled with guns and men with itchy trigger fingers.
Christine had already been on the phone with her counterpart in Boston and had dressed him down, letting him know that she held him responsible for each death. It was after two in the morning and yet she had a squad of lawyers preparing briefs on behalf of every family who’d been affected by the violence.
It felt like a waste of time, but she needed to do something. She needed to occupy herself, or her eyes would slip up to the big map on the wall. It showed quite clearly that her state was hemmed in on three sides and worse, it showed the smattering of forces she had guarding the western border.
Her shoulders slumped and her chin dropped, but, as if the map were a magnet, she glanced up again for the tenth time that hour. All she had were a few thousand part-time soldiers holding back a horde of zombies a hundred thousand strong. She had seen footage of the unrelenting fury of the horde and it was sickening. The endless mob roared over everything in its path, killing and feeding like piranha.
At first contact, her soldiers had broken and fled. They had rallied and formed a new line, but that had been shattered by sheer numbers, and so too had the third line and the fourth. There were always too many of the beasts and too few soldiers, and that was partially her fault. For the last six years, she had grumbled over the cost of the National Guard units and until the day before, she had seen them as an unnecessary drain on the budget. Happily, she had stepped on their requests for greater spending because, well, who knew this was going to happen?
Who could have known a zombie apocalypse was even possible?
Now these weekend warriors were all she had. Four nearly useless militia companies, two companies of engineers, a medical support group, and an infantry battalion that was spread dangerously thin over seventy-five miles. At least she hoped she still had them. There had been only a few frantic messages from the front in the past couple of hours.
The last, a blunt response of: “We’re holding, so stop asking. If you want to help, send all the reinforcements you can and stay off the damn radio!” Although terse and rude, the answer had been reassuring to the governor simply because there had been such authority in the way the woman spoke. There was a refreshing lack of fear in her voice; she’d been all business.
But that had been thirty-three minutes before.
Warner hit a button on her phone. “Carla, get Arnold in here!” she barked. Carla then barked at her own assistant, an unpaid intern named Charlotte.
Charlotte who at one time had bragged to everyone who would listen about how she was helping to sculpt the future and that she was an integral part of this or that piece of legislation when all she ever really did was fetch coffee and take lunch orders.
Now, she regretted having taken the unpaid position. While she was virtually imprisoned in Hartford, her family and friends back in Putnam, had slipped across the border into Massachusetts. That had been the day before, after Carla had placed a number of discreet calls, warning everyone she knew to get the hell out of Connecticut before it was too late.
Those had been illegal calls. No one was supposed to know how poorly the border was defended. “We can’t be the cause of a large scale panic,” the governor had said.
“Well, fuck that,” Charlotte replied, under her breath as she hurried to the bathroom to begin texting and calling everyone she knew. If she could have, she would have left as well, but the doors were being watched and the guards were stopping people from leaving.
Fear rippled throughout the building until a lower floor window had been kicked out and everybody with any sense had fled. Charlotte had been stuck in another of the many long and boring meetings and before she knew it, the place was empty—by then it didn’t matter. The borders were closed and the capitol building was as safe as anywhere else in the state.
It was safe, but scary as hell. Charlotte found herself hurrying through the empty halls of the expansive capitol building searching for General Arnold and it was no lie to say that she was freaked out. Her steps echoed in the shadows, coming back to her as if they belonged to someone else—perhaps to one of them.
No real news from the western border in the last two hours meant an army of zombies
could even then be creeping past the barricades the citizens had put up around the city. In Charlotte’s mind the zombies were insidious and sly, slipping through culverts or sewers to sneak up on the unwary.
The ugly image made her hurry, holding her arms drawn in, seeing ghosts in every shadow until she practically screamed when she caught sight of a leering pale face in a nook of the kitchen. It was General Arnold hunched over a half-eaten turkey sandwich with a cup of very Irish-smelling coffee at his elbow.
The assistant to the assistant of the governor reverted to her snooty pre-zombie mentality in an instant. Charlotte raised an eyebrow at the smell of alcohol. “She would like to speak to you, sir,” she said, trying not to look down her nose at the general’s rumpled uniform and bloodshot eyes.
He had been on the phone, which he quickly covered up. “Tell her I’ll be right there.” To Charlotte, he sounded somewhat like a teenager being ordered to “hang up the phone,” by an overbearing mother.
General Arnold waited until the girl and her snide look left before turning back to the phone. Holding a hand over his mouth, he asked: “Are you still there?”
“Yes…but you know I can’t work the boat. I don’t know the first thing about sailing.”
“It has a motor. You know that, Bea. All you have to do is turn the damn key and point the boat where you want it to go. When you get to the marina, don’t talk to anyone. And don’t call your sister; she’s safe where she is.”
“She’s in Bridgeport and that’s even closer to the New York border than I am. I could pick her up on the way. It’s not tha…”
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