“Hold on. Staying on message is key. One: the situation is under control. Two: we’re doing everything we can for the people affected by this tragedy. Three: we are very proud of the men and women in uniform who stood in the breach to protect this great nation in our hour of need. Four: We are going to bring to justice everyone responsible for this catastrophe. Now you say it.”
The president ticked off the four points using his fingers to count along so that he didn’t miss any. Marty beamed as if the President of the United States was his star pupil. “Exactly right sir. I can’t stress enough that those four points need to be repeated on every channel all day long. Especially the last point. The people are angry and they’re going to want to blame someone and it can’t be us.”
“No, we can’t have that. Though I don’t see why they would. We did everything we could, right?”
“Yes of course, Mr. President, however people expect perfection. They’re going to want to know why we didn’t have ten army divisions in New York yesterday morning. And they’re going to want to know how we allowed this pharmaceutical company to develop such a horrible disease in the first place.”
For the first time, the president looked truly frightened, “And what are we going to say?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. The lapses on the military side will be blamed on the previous administration. We’ll make sure the reporters are briefed about how they were only concerned with foreign intervention and we’ll make sure to play those soundbites where you wanted to remake the military into something closer to the peace corps. And we’ll blame our friends on the other side of the aisle about the pharmacy fiasco, too. Remember: they are all about deregulation and this is simply the chickens coming home to roost.”
The president didn’t ask what regulations, if any, had been relaxed. He only bobbed his head so that his pillow-styled hair waved gently. “The situation is under control. We’re doing everything we can. Proud of our servicemen. Justice for the domestic terrorists and chickens coming home to roost. Got it. But what about federalizing the situation? You said Collins was surrounded. Doesn’t that mean more of those things will get out?”
“We have a conference call set up with all the governors involved and I can guarantee they’ll beg for you to swoop in and save the day.”
“And how do we do that? This has been one fiasco after another.”
Marty grinned and rubbed his hands. “Easy. Last night you put the 82nd Airborne Division on alert. Well, I did, in your name, actually. You also have elements of the 101st getting ready. So this is how it will go: at 6:30, you will issue a live statement. At 7:00, you will have a conference with the governors after which you’ll give another live statement addressing how the situation is perilous, but that you are using your authority as ‘Commander in Chief’ to save the country. At 8:30, we have the first parachute drops just west of Hartford; I’m getting camera crews in place ready to show it in all its patriotic glory.”
“Won’t it be dangerous?” the president asked. “I mean, everything else was screwed up with the army. What happens if the wind changes and it blows those chutes right into the quarantine zone?”
“Sir, the men drop from a height of about eight hundred feet and they’ll be nine miles from the old quarantine zone. So there’s nothing to…” Marty paused as he saw the old man’s confusion. “There’s going to have to be a new border of the quarantine zone. At least on the Connecticut side.”
The president’s eyes narrowed. “And what about all those soldiers who are surrounded? What sort of, uh, rescue mission do you have planned?”
Marty squirmed slightly as he answered: “None…at the moment. But we will be keeping them resupplied, once we get the air assault side of things complete. I’m thinking around noon we’ll set that off. Picture it, sir: eight hundred helicopters flying in one tremendous formation. We’ve been getting every helicopter we can scrounge up and sending them to Fort Campbell. At noon you’ll do another statement on the White House lawn and, as you finish up, the choppers will swoop by.”
“Eight hundred, wow,” the president said, envisioning the spectacle and not for a second considering the ramifications of stripping the army of their much needed copters, which were even then making themselves felt in the Zone.
“And that’s just the start,” his chief of staff said. “They’ll parade over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, half of New Jersey and finally New York City. It’ll be the kind of thing that will unite this country under your leadership, sir.”
The president grinned, his cheeks straining with excitement, while two hundred and six miles to the north east, the zombie that used to be Simon Moyer, Sunday School teacher and all around good guy, stumbled onto a little lane called “Lower Road,” six miles from the New Jersey state line. There wasn’t much to Lower Road or the land around it. Two lanes of empty asphalt surrounded by now abandoned farms and empty forest.
The road was of such insignificance that no one was manning the crossing from New York to New Jersey, which was marked only by a small sign that read: Welcome to the Garden State—Keep it Clean!
The governor of New Jersey had long before ordered his border closed, but since the quarantine lines were “officially” holding, at least on the western and southern sides, he had left it relatively unguarded. In truth, he had little choice. Most of the New Jersey National Guard was already in New York and the rest was spread out over a hundred miles of permanently fused traffic, and the state’s remaining police forces were busy everywhere trying to calm a panicked population.
There simply weren’t enough men or women left over to guard every single road, street, dirt track, stream, river, forest trail and highway between the two states. Simon Moyer had a straight shot into one of the most densely populated areas of the country.
Chapter 4
1—5:19 a.m.
The Quarantine Zone
An hour before, a bank of fog sitting in a low spot on the road had saved Deckard’s group. The zombies had been getting closer and closer, however the sudden swirling grey had thrown them into confusion, allowing the group to hobble away. But the fog hadn’t lasted and soon the chase was on again.
The six of them were at the end of their limits when they came across a tiny hamlet that sat all by itself on the lonely road. It was an odd duck of a place that looked as though it belonged in a bygone era. There was a gas station with sixty year old pumps rusting on a concrete island, a twelve-stool diner that had been a little ranch home at some point, a post office of red brick, a knick-knack tourist trap that claimed to sell antiques but looked like a second-hand shop, a church that was just as quaint as could be, and a used car lot that looked as though it sold rust on wheels.
Deckard pointed Max and Sundance into the first building: the diner. With its long front window, it was not a place in which they could make a stand against the hundreds of zombies that were following along in their wake. Even one zombie would have been enough to take down the window. Still, Deckard saw that the sick people on his team were steps away from the point of collapse or, in Stephanie’s case, past that point. Chuck was basically carrying her.
Lastly, came Dr. Wilson straggling up out of the dark, looking confused at finding himself all alone. Deckard ran out to him and shoved him towards the building. When they were inside, Deckard hissed: “Find bleach or ammonia or anything to cover your smell.”
He then ran back out, waving his arms at the horde that had been on Wilson’s heels. “Hey you guys! Come and get me! I’m right here!” The creatures leered with an evil hunger in their eyes—those that had eyes, that is. The zombies following them were the most wretched of their kind. Some looked like they were being held together by cat gut or odd white wire. All of them had been fed off of and mauled horribly so that they dribbled blood or pus and dragged ropes of intestine behind them.
And yet they came on and on, slowly but relentlessly, never tiring in the long chase.
When stronger, fastest zomb
ies joined the horde, Max Fowler or Deckard had taken care of them with well aimed shots. Unfortunately this had only attracted more of them. Now, they were coming from every direction, centering on the tiny hamlet.
“Right here. Look at me,” Deckard said, bringing up his weapon. He began plugging them one after another at a range of about twelve feet. The crash of his M4 rolled down the no-name street and echoed up into the hills. As he fired, he slowly backed away, leaving bodies in his wake. After firing off a dozen rounds, he turned to clear his six, where more were coming in long lines.
More shots gave him a hole through which he jogged away into the last of the night, pausing every hundred yards or so to kill a few more. Soon the gun was only a far off crackling sound and the streets were empty.
Fowler took charge the second the zombies disappeared from sight—no one else was capable. Chuck, Stephanie and Dr. Wilson had all collapsed. They had pushed themselves as far as they could and now that they were lying in heaps, they couldn’t get their limbs to move again. Even Sundance just lay there, panting, his ears drooping with fatigue.
Max slunk around the diner’s stubby bar, his feet crunching through spilt cornflakes. At some point, the place had been the subject of a very thorough looting. Besides the cornflakes lying on the floor like leaves on a forest floor, there wasn’t anything left that was edible. There were cleaning products, thankfully.
In seconds, Max had poured the contents of a bottle of bleach all along the doorway and then, as an added precaution, he traced a semicircle around the prone bodies of Chuck, Stephanie and Dr. Wilson.
“That’s not good for us to inhale,” Dr. Wilson said. He swatted at the air in front of his face, languidly as if he were a southern belle oppressed by a heat wave. It was all the energy he had left to expend.
“It’s a might bit better than getting your face eaten off,” Max said, pulling his camouflaged shirt up over his nose. The others did the same, coughing into their shirts, or wheezing, or looking like they were on the verge of passing out.
Amorphous black blobs hung in Stephanie’s vision, like strange balloons. She reached out for one with a hand that tingled and fingers that were numb, making contact only with air. This was disconcerting, but what was truly frightening were the hundreds of needles that stabbed her lungs every time she took a breath.
It was the cancer blooming like huge death roses in her chest. All during the night it felt as though the tumors had opened wider and wider. She knew that soon they would take over and turn her black from the inside out. Then it would be like trying to breathe through a clogged straw…and then, as they got even bigger, well, she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all and she would die.
“It’ll be aw-right, darlin’,” Chuck Singleton whispered and, as though his country drawl held magic, it suddenly was aw-right. She relaxed and gradually the pain in her lungs drifted into the background of her exhaustion as she fell asleep leaning on his phlegm-rumbly chest.
Deckard was gone for an hour and it took that long for Chuck to finally overcome the shakes that had been making him feel old. The crummy cough, which brought up ugly wads of grey tissue and snot, took longer to disappear. He was still dying, but at least he was dying at the pace he had been at the beginning of the week. Instead of his death being an hour away, it was now “only” a month or so off.
Of course that would be only if he were very lucky. There would be no more running for either him or Stephanie, at least not for a while. And their ammo situation, about two hundred rounds split between five people, meant that they were not going to do much in the way of fighting, neither.
And so that left dying as their only option.
“You were gone awhiles,” Chuck said when Deckard crept into the diner. “I didn’t think you was coming back.”
“Just making sure those zombies were far down the road.” Deckard leaned his black assault rifle against the door and groaned his way into a sitting position. Wincing, he pulled off his shoes one at a time. They were patent leather and expensively fancy—and not meant to be worn running marathons. Each step of the last hour had been a trial.
When his socks came off, he saw the blisters that had formed during the long night of running for his life. Half of them were open and weeping clear fluids, while the other half were bulging balloons that were on the verge of popping.
“Either of you see any Band-Aids?” Deckard asked. Only Max and Chuck were still awake. Stephanie looked exhausted even in sleep and Dr. Wilson was slumped against a booth, his head on the cushion.
“No, sorry,” Max said. “But I wasn’t really looking.”
With a new grimace, Deckard stood and limped toward the counter, making sure to stay low just in case there were any zombies out front. Movement drew his eye, not out front but to his left. Across the diner’s bar was an open area where the cooks used to sweat over the food they were preparing.
Now there was a strange man, dressed all in blue denim, making the black shotgun in his hands look like nothing more than shadow. Deckard knew better, especially when the shadow was pointed right at him. He turned to shout a warning, only just then he saw something moving outside as well.
Two more men, both with weapons drawn. One angled for the door, the other had his gun trained on Max, who was turned away and didn’t see what was going on. Deckard had a perfect view of the man. The early morning light was shining across his face at just the right angle to highlight the darkness in the man’s eyes—the unnatural darkness.
2— Hartford, Connecticut
The work of two-hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children laboring like ants all through the night had turned Hartford into a fortified city. For the most part, the walls were built of cars and trucks, but in some places felled trees were hoisted one on top of another like giant Lincoln Logs, and in others the walls were little more that massive mounds of dirt and debris with a hand-dug moat in front.
The work was a spontaneous event with little help or guidance from the city. For the most part the offered help was rejected. Without asking “permission,” the people had already appropriated every school bus, fire truck and Department of Transportation vehicle in the city limits and by dawn the forty mile, meandering and amoeba shaped perimeter was complete. The city was a hundred percent contained.
It wouldn’t be able to withstand an assault such as the one that had occurred thirty miles away on the western border of their state, but most people felt that the walls were strong enough to repel an attack by a few hundred or even a few thousand zombies. And it would certainly protect against the strays.
Every avenue of approach was watched over by weary people, some with guns, some with bats and clubs. One fifteen year old boy had constructed his own flamethrower and was eager to test it out on one of the living dead.
The wall was, in fact, too well protected. Every gun in the city was pointed outward while in the interior where the streets were still gloomy with shadow and the buildings were crammed in on themselves, things were beginning to come “alive.”
They were, for the most part, sorry excuses for zombies. Jaimee Lynn’s pack of zombie children were voracious feeding machines and when they were after hot blood they attacked in a wild frenzy, leaving their victims in tatters. It was hours before the Com-cells could repair these bodies well enough for the dead to rise and it was just as the citizens of Hartford were congratulating themselves on their fine wall, that the first of these new beasts crawled out from the basement of an abandoned building.
It had been a woman once, a mother of three. Now its sex was unrecognizable. It was a horrid thing with flesh hanging off it like raggedy, dripping scarves of grey. Slowly it came up into the morning light. The sun burned into its eyes and so it turned away and headed west where there were more shadows.
The beast could only walk at the speed of a drunken stumble and, Com-cells aside, constituted a threat only to the very, young or the very, very old.
Two blocks away, twenty-four year old Faye C
arter had been up since the crack of dawn when her one year old started making chirpy, happy noises in his crib. Normally Faye would have let little Ray-Ray babble for a few minutes so that she could fully wake up, however, on that particular morning, she had been fully awake from the second her eyes popped open.
Her husband’s side of the bed was cold. He had gone out the night before to volunteer with building the wall and he hadn’t returned. The first thing she did was reach for her cell phone—no service.
“It’s all good,” she whispered. “Ain’t no zombie attacked Hartford.” She would have known if they had. Faye had slept with one ear cocked and the windows open, listening for the first sound of gunfire. There had been none.
She’d also kept the TV on all night, the sound turned down so as not to wake little Ray Junior. There was a live feed showing the wall and the people on it. Faye went to the end of her bed so that she was a foot from the screen, searching the faces, looking for her husband.
Fifteen minutes later, when little Ray-Ray began to get upset, beginning to cry, Faye couldn’t pull her eyes from the television. She had seen him! Ray Carter was a strutting, big black man who couldn’t be missed. She spotted him the instant the cameras panned over him, though they did so for barely a second.
Ray Junior sent up a lusty howl. “I’ll get you a bottle in just a moment,” she said. “Keep your diapers on.” Still, she lingered, hoping for another shot of her man.
Then there was a muffled thud from the nursery that burned through her desire to see her husband—nothing in the nursery could have made that sound except Ray-Ray falling out of his crib.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 6