The two soldiers hunkered down, Jerome with his gun out, Sergeant Daggins, just sitting there, his cramp apparently forgotten. They waited, hoping that once again the smoke and the sudden silence would confuse the zombies enough to stop their attack.
Jerome inched up just over the top plume of smoke to watch the beasts as they tried to work out the unexpected turn of events. Some simply stood in puzzlement as the smoke rolled over them while others kept going, only now they didn’t have a destination in mind or a purpose, really. The sound drawing them on was gone and so they wandered. With the steepness of the hill, they tripped or stumbled back down, gravity pulling them away from the peak of the hill.
“Thanks,” Daggins whispered, his voice trembling. “That was close.”
“Just hang on until morning,” Jerome replied. “It’ll get better.” Somehow the rising sun would end their nightmare; he had the concept implanted in his head and to him it was a fact.
Daggins burst his bubble. “No it won’t be better, it’ll be worse. With the sun up, they will be able to see us. We won’t be able to take a leak without them seeing. And they will be stronger by then. They heal, like ten times faster than we do. That’s what everyone is saying.”
Jerome was stunned by the simple logic. He crept back to his spot on the line, almost overcome with a sudden depression. “It has to get better,” he mumbled to himself, just as an echoing gunshot rippled the air. He waited for a second one or a slew of them, but it was just the one and it made his depression all the greater. Someone had just killed themselves.
3— The Connecticut Bubble
Dr. Thuy Lee, a Mensa-level genius with two doctorates, found herself running ammo…when there was ammo to run, that is. She had started out as an assistant to PFC Cindy Austin, who had been hauling around magazines all night long using a little red wagon she had found the evening before when she and a dozen other soldiers had been running for their lives. Although everyone else had simply thrown away their masks, helmets, and MOPP gear, in order to run faster, Cindy had kept hers out of fear that she would have to pay for them later.
The army was always making threats about the cost of missing gear coming out of her paycheck and, as she barely had a hundred dollars in the bank, she took those threats very seriously.
She had come across the wagon in the front yard of some abandoned house in an abandoned neighborhood and had dragged it along for eleven miles with a swarm of zombies chasing after. When her little group had found the command post, she had cried real tears of joy and then, an hour later, she had cried in fear when they were surrounded and making their final stand.
As a trained soldier, she could shoot as well as any of the men, and yet when the call came for all hands to stand on the line she had eagerly given up her gun to a staff sergeant who had lost his. She could shoot and she could fight, but that didn’t mean she wanted to. With the wagon she could help while at the same time keeping the monsters as far from her as possible.
For two hours, she had hauled load after load of heavy ammo magazines around in a wide circle. But then Thuy came along and made her stop. “I’m the one in charge around here,” Cindy had said; she was after all a private first class and this Asian woman was a civilian and in this new world, a private outranked any civilian. “We’ll use the wagon, it’s easier.”
“It is easier and it’s also the cause of about ten deaths an hour,” Thuy replied. “In case you didn’t know, the wheels on that thing squeak loud enough to be heard from one end of the perimeter to the other. And they are getting louder. Haven’t you noticed that there are flare ups in the fighting every time you pass by? The creatures are attracted by the sound.”
Cindy glanced back the way she had come and saw the soldiers closest to her were firing, while the ones further back were hunkered down, trying not to be seen by the trickle of zombies still coming at them. “Oh,” she said, not liking the idea that zombies had been following her around all night simply because of the stupid wagon. “But…but I need it. The ammo is too heavy for me lug around.”
It took Thuy all of five minutes to fashion a two-person yoke out of discarded tent canvas and a pole. Together they could carry four times as much ammo as the red wagon and they could do so without making as much noise. They also didn’t need to follow along in the same circular rutted track that Cindy had created after two hundred trips around the line with her wagon. They could go from point to point from a central hub so that they weren’t so visible to the zombies.
The effect on the battle was immediate and gradually the firing slowed all along the line, and only just in time. Every time they went back to the supply point, the stacks of ammo crates dwindled.
Eventually the supply sergeant stopped them altogether. “No more. They’re just going to have to make do with what they have.” Thuy challenged what she thought was an asinine order and the sergeant pointed up at the night sky. “You haven’t noticed? There hasn’t been a chopper come by for almost an hour.”
Both Thuy and Cindy were exhausted from the long night and the hard fight and in truth, neither had noticed. Now, they both looked up and only saw the heavy, dark clouds hanging over them.
Thuy was the first to collect her wits. “But the soldiers need the ammo. How can they defend themselves without it?”
“I’m only telling you what I was told,” the sergeant answered. “The orders are for us to save what we have, just in case.”
Thuy and Cindy shared a look. “Just in case of what?” Cindy asked. The sergeant replied by shrugging which Thuy interpreted as: Don’t make me say the obvious. There looked to be about two-thousand rounds left, enough for a mass-suicide event or a mass execution.
It was a sick thought, as well as a logical one. Not only was a bullet in the head better than being eaten alive, it also would prevent the person from “coming back” to eat others and further spreading the disease.
Cindy went green, looking at the few remaining crates of ammo. Thuy touched her shoulder as a big sister might and said: “Maybe I can do something. I have a friend who knows how to get things when no one else seems able. She’ll get us some ammo, I’m sure of it.”
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure of anything. Surely Courtney had to know already how dire their supply situation was. If so, what the hell was she doing about it? And what was she doing about sending choppers out after Deckard and Chuck and the others they had left behind at the trooper station?
Just thinking about Deckard hurt her heart and she was an anxious bundle of nerves when she ducked into the communications tent. A second later, she about nearly hit the roof.
Courtney was sleeping!
The bushy-haired dispatcher lay slumped over a table, her cheek resting in a puddle of drool, a radio next to her head spitting out what seemed like endless questions from a thousand frightened voices. Thuy reached out a barely controlled hand to shake Courtney awake, but before she could, one of the dispatchers who had lived through the debacle at the trooper station stopped her.
“Let her be,” the woman hissed. “She hasn’t slept in two days and besides she’s had it tough.”
“Oh, she’s had it tough,” Thuy said, her eyes flashing, making the other three women in the dim tent lean back from the expected explosion. Seeing as Thuy was wanted by the FBI on terrorism and mass-murder charges, and her career and her life had been ruined by sabotage, and she had been forced to leave behind the only man she had ever loved to die a certain death in a zombie-filled building, it was hard for her to fully empathize with someone who hadn’t had their full beauty sleep for the night.
“Yes,” the woman insisted. Her name was April Lopez and she had seen the miracles Courtney had been able work with only a phone and a will of iron. April, a large woman, twice Thuy’s size moved in front of Courtney. “Yes, she has had it rough. Now, how can I help you, ma’am?” She knew Thuy’s name, but didn’t much care for it and nor did April like how bossy Thuy always acted.
“For one, you can tell me
what’s the situation with the helicopter that Courtney promised me. It’s been three hours. Do you understand what that means? Deckard and the others have been out there alone for three hours.”
April, who figured that those sad few they’d been forced to leave behind had died two hours and fifty-five minutes before, tried to give Thuy a sympathetic smile as she said: “We are doing everything we can. Unfortunately, the army isn’t giving up any of their helicopters just yet.”
Despite the hundred-pound difference in their weights, Thuy stepped forward aggressively, saying: “Then we have to make them.”
“You can’t just make the army do anything, especially with their helicopters. Everyone knows that. There are channels you have to go through.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Get going through those channels.”
“I can’t,” April stated baldly.
Thuy stuck her hands on her thin hips and said in a louder voice: “Then wake Courtney up so there will be someone around here who knows more than the words: I can’t.”
April glared. “Would you like these words, instead? I won’t!” She had been loud and behind her, Courtney stirred.
“Looks like you just did,” Thuy said and then slid around April as she turned to see that she had indeed woken Courtney. Thuy greeted the dispatcher with a strained smile. “I’m glad you’re awake. We need to see about those helicopters you promised me. The line is holding and stable. The rate of attack has slowed. All in all, this is the perfect time to send out a couple of helicopters.”
Courtney blinked slowly for a few seconds and then mumbled: “What’s the reserve fuel situation look like?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell Doctor Know-it-all, the fuel reserves are gone,” April said, throwing Thuy a smug look. “And so are the reserves in Albany and the supply net at Newark is off the air. They’re not responding. We’re basically stuck without fuel until morning.”
“I’m not asking for much,” Thuy insisted. “With Ms. Glowitz and Mr. Singleton’s condition, I have roughly calculated their probable speed at 3.2 miles an hour, that gives us a search area of only two-hundred and ninety miles. I know that seems like a lot of land to cover, but there are five people out there who stayed back so that everyone in this tent could live. We owe it to them.”
She stared around as if daring any of the dispatchers to say otherwise. No one would meet her gaze and no one disagreed. “You’re right, we do,” Courtney said, “however, Colonel O’Brian has shut me down every time I tried, and believe me, I have tried Dr. Lee, maybe too much. He’s having some flunky run interference and I can’t get him to take my calls.”
“Then we go over there, together. There’s another reason we need those helicopters, we’re running out of ammo.”
A sigh broke from Courtney, long and sad. “I know, I know, I know. Damn it, Thuy, I’ve been trying to get more, but unfortunately the New York National Guard was not prepared to fight a war in the middle of their state. They’ve gone through at least a million rounds and there just isn’t anymore to be had.”
Thuy began: “What about the other states? What about…”
“I’ve tried them all,” Courtney said, interrupting. “Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey buttoned up their borders yesterday evening. Nothing’s going in or out. Pennsylvania closed theirs…” She looked at her watch. “It’s been closed for three hours and it’s making a complete mess of everything. It’s like the entire northeast is one giant traffic jam. And Connecticut…Connecticut is as bad off as New York. It’s turned into a hodgepodge of fortified cities, each one ready to kill anyone who tries to cross their lines.”
“What about Washington?” Thuy asked, with little hope in her voice.
Courtney grimaced. “I’ve tried. They think the situation has been contained. They’re delusional.”
Chapter 3
1—3:42 a.m.
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Danielle Salmon stood in line at the A&P like everyone else. This was the first time in her life she had ever stood in a line outside the A&P looking to get in. And it was the first time she had ever gone to the grocery store armed. In the purse that she clutched to her chest was her husband’s hunting knife, seven inches of razor sharp metal.
She wished he was there with her. The man behind her had been crowding closer and closer and now was practically on top of her. He was thinking of cutting in line—she just knew it. Every time the line moved forward a few feet, he moved in toward her by an inch.
In the three hours she’d been there, he’d inched so close that she could smell his breath. Now they moved again, four feet this time and he moved slightly more than four feet so that he stood just over her right shoulder. Her hand stole into her purse to grip the handle of the knife.
It rattled against her phone as her hand shook. She wasn’t going to stab him, but she wasn’t going to let him cut in front of her, either. Her family couldn’t afford it. Their stock of supplies—only a day into this nightmare and they were already using the word supplies—was low, at least according to her husband, Trent who had pulled every single can, slice of bread, piece of cheese, and cracker out of their pantry, freezer and fridge.
“Nine,” he counted after he had stacked all the items in little piles. “Each of these represents a day’s worth of food and we only have nine.” His eyes kept roving, back and forth, over the piles, unblinkingly.
“That should be enough, don’t-cha think?” Danielle replied. “They are saying that it’s an isolated event and that it’s contained.” The day before, they had sat in front of the TV, watching the news, each channel basically reporting the same thing over and over again. They had been mesmerized, from the moment they had gotten up to just after two in the afternoon.
Danielle had allowed herself to be placated by the official government statements. Her husband, Trent had the opposite reaction. He had become a ball of nervous energy running around the house, counting rolls of toilet paper and filling buckets with water.
“He’s overreacting,” she had said to herself. After all they were over a hundred miles from the quarantine zone. She’d been relieved when he left, saying something about “getting to the bank.” He’d been gone for two hours and when he came back, he was white-faced.
“We need to get to the store, before it’s too late,” he said.
His over-the-top melodrama made her suddenly angry. “Don’t be like this in front of the kids! You’re going to scare them.” He laughed high up in his throat like a turkey gobbling. That made her re-evaluate her husband; he looked as though he might drop a load right there in his pants. “Did something happen at the bank?” she asked.
“They were closed…all of them.”
Confused, she glanced at the clock; it had been only 4:30 in the afternoon. “Wait…is this a holiday? Why are the banks closed so early?” Something wasn’t clicking. Something wasn’t right.
“They ran out of money, I think. So I tried the ATM, but it was out as well. They all were. I went to ten different banks and they were all closed and their ATMs were, like empty. Finally, I saw a bank that was open. The line went around the block. Everyone is pulling their money, babe. And you know what’ll be next.”
She knew. Instinctively, she knew: money, food, guns. They split up. Danielle took their youngest daughter, three year old Wanda to the store, while Trent went to buy a gun, only there were no guns to be had at any price in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and barely any food.
The local A&P was an utter mad house. People were hauling around two or three carts at a time and every aisle was jammed and the shelves were being picked clean. This frightened Danielle worse than any news story.
It took her three hours to fill half a cart and by that time there was almost nothing left to buy. When she finally paid for her five meager bags, she went to her car and cried until Wanda started crying as well.
After that, she went to another store and bulled her way about, nearly getting into
a fight, but managing to get two loaves of bread, three jars of marmalade, a box of granola and two pounds of hamburger; this last item she actually pilfered from an old lady’s cart when she wasn’t looking.
But that was all she could get. By ten that night, she was worn out, but had managed to increase their supplies to about sixteen days. Although Trent hadn’t been able to find a gun, he had managed to fill both cars with gas, a feat that had taken him the better part of four hours.
They were exhausted and yet they both had what-if scenarios playing endlessly in their heads. What if the army massacres continued? What if the zombies couldn’t be stopped? What if the Quarantine Zone expanded to take over the entire northeast? What if the banks remained closed and the family ran out of money…out of food…out of gas?
What couldn’t be imagined the day before was suddenly very real. States were closing their borders, they were shutting down airports and stopping ships from docking in their ports. The government was force-feeding reporters the “news” and internet service had been suddenly and suspiciously discontinued.
People were panicking and now at 3:42 a.m. Danielle was right there with them. Her husband was at a different store waiting in his own line, while their two children were home alone, hopefully asleep. “Oh, please let them be asleep,” she whispered, as the line edged forward another three feet.
She had a thousand what-if scenarios concerning leaving the kids alone, most having to do with fire. The frightening images in her mind were eating her up, making the nervous thrill inside of her that much worse. She was a live wire and the next time the man behind her moved, actually touching her now, she jumped.
“Get back!” she screamed, the knife from her purse suddenly in her hand and pointed at him. There wasn’t much to see of him: faded jeans, a dark coat zipped up to his chin, and a baseball cap with the word: CAT emblazoned on the front. “Get back,” she screamed, a second time when he froze at the sight of the knife.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 4