“Sweetie? You okay?” she asked hurrying for his room. “You ok…” She stopped in his doorway, her mouth hanging slack and her eyes bulging. The sound Faye had heard hadn’t been Ray-Ray falling. The screen from his window had been knocked inwards and now there was a monster, half-in and half-out of the nursery.
The thing was grey with black eyes and black gums. Its face had been mostly eaten away and a hunk of flopping scalp hung over the crib dripping black ichor onto little baby Ray-Ray. It was horrible and Faye recoiled momentarily as it reached into the crib with arms that had small teeth marks up and down the open flesh and hands that were missing fingers.
“No!” Faye screamed and jumped forward. She grabbed the near end of the crib and hauled back on it, accidentally dragging the monster…no the zombie into the nursery. Snatching Ray-Ray from the crib, she ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her and in seconds, she was out on the street running, her bare feet slapping on the pavement, the chill of the morning sliding up under the long t-shirt of Ray Senior’s that she always wore to bed.
She ran with no idea where to go. Everyone knew that the police were off fighting at the border and that most of the remaining emergency services were at the wall, helping out. Faye didn’t know if she would have called them anyway. Just as she came to the corner of her street, it dawned on her that if she told anyone about the zombie they would think she was contagious, which she was sure that she wasn’t.
The zombie hadn’t bitten either her or Ray-Ray, but would that matter? Everyone in Hartford was on edge. They were scared and Faye knew that scared people were apt to do anything. The idea of being kicked out of the city…literally thrown off the wall, had her in a grip of panic.
What she needed to do was find a way to clean up little Ray-Ray before anyone noticed the black speckles all over him. Then she would find her husband, because he would know what to do. He was smart. He would kill the zombie and bury its body in the basement and nobody would know.
The plan was sound except she didn’t take into account the fact that both she and Ray-Ray were already infected. As well, she had left her keys back at the house; she would have to walk the four miles to the bridge she had seen in the background of the news cast, which she was pretty sure was the bridge that crossed the Farmington River along route 44.
After using puddle water to clean her child, she set off, trudging on empty streets. It was an hour long walk and another half an hour of asking around in the area of the bridge before she discovered that she had missed her husband. He had left, thirty minutes before, saying that he would be back after checking on his wife and child.
Faye groaned. He was going home expecting to find her, but would end up finding a zombie, if it hadn’t figured a way out of the house by then. Suddenly exhausted and feeling ill, she slumped against a forklift that had been pushed aside after its battery had died. Her bare feet were bleeding from the long walk and her head was thumping like mad. What was worse was that little Ray-Ray was crying nonstop in a way that wasn’t like him at all.
Thankfully an ambulance sat parked just down the street. She limped over to it and found a very sympathetic woman in blue who was contaminated seconds later as she inspected Ray-Ray, breathing in the spores that Faye hadn’t spotted and which had matured with the warmth and damp of the sweaty baby.
The EMT made matters worse by stripping little Ray-Ray, placing his diseased onesie on the bench where the Com-cells spread and replicated. After another thirty minutes when Ray-Ray refused to calm, the EMT driver decided to take mother and baby to the closest emergency room where the staff was harried, running around in a controlled chaos and the wait just to be checked by a triage nurse was over an hour.
By the time Faye was ushered into a curtained off room, her dark brown eyes were substantially darker than they had been, but no one noticed. They were focused on the now listless baby who was stuck with needles and fed drugs through tubes.
When Faye complained about a headache, she was given white pills and when the nurse wasn’t looking, Faye stole more, chewing them without water, uncaring that her tongue turned white. The pills helped a little, just enough for her to think through the pain. Unfortunately, all of her thoughts were as black as her nerves which were being eaten up by the Com-cells.
She couldn’t get past the idea that the nurses kept taking her baby’s blood. “They’re vampires,” she said under her breath. It wasn’t a far-fetched idea, after all, if zombies existed, why not vampires? “But they ain’t gonna get my baby.” That was a fact in her mind. She would kill any of them motherfuckers to save her baby.
Strangely, Faye felt like killing them even if they weren’t vampires…but that wasn’t right. She knew it wasn’t right and yet the idea persisted. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the thought of killing wouldn’t leave her. It was all she could think of. Killing and blood. Lots and lots of blood.
“I gotta git,” she whispered, frantically, taking a quick peek through the curtain. None of the hated nurses were near. “It’s now or…” Again the vision of blood came to her and threatened to overwhelm her.
She knew it was wrong, just as she knew that a large part of her didn’t care. Before she could do anything evil, she popped the IV out of Ray-Ray’s pudgy little arm. It bled, but it wasn’t the right kind of blood to satisfy Faye. It was dark and it smelled awful.
Before she could leave, Ray-Ray started to cry, sending waves of agony through her aching head. Viciously, she slapped a hand down over his mouth and squeezed with appalling strength. It took a half a minute for him to calm down and when he did he just lolled there, his head swinging about as if on a loose cord. She wasn’t concerned. He was asleep, that was all—or so she told herself.
Faye ran from the hospital and by the time she got back to the little, ranch-style house, Ray-Ray had awakened and was staring at her with eyes just as black and shiny as a beetle’s. She was reeling at that point; reeling and starving for blood, and yet her maternal instinct to get her baby home and safe, kept just ahead of the evil desire to kill and gorge herself on blood.
Her instincts failed her completely when she saw Ray Senior. He had found the zombie and after a tussle that trashed the little house, he had killed it with his bare hands. As his breathing calmed he discovered a new fear. It was a certainty that he had been contaminated by the zombie and that meant he was going to die. The only thing that gave him any solace was that other than the zombie, his house was empty. His wife and child were safe. He felt he could die knowing that—only, out of the blue, as he had been standing there in the midst of an hour long depression, he saw his loved ones coming towards him.
Tears of joy filled his eyes and he wanted to run to them but he knew he shouldn’t. He had to stay in the house and die there so that no one else would get sick.
“Stay back, darling,” he said, as she headed straight for the door. She ignored him and he backed away. “Stop, please. There was a zom…” His breath caught in his throat as he saw her up closer—there was black gunk in her eyes and more of it drooling from the corners of her mouth.
He had been able to slay a thin, ragged zombie without too much of a problem, but Faye Carter was a different story. She was in her prime and fully formed and altogether evil. Overcome with hunger for her husband’s blood, she dropped her child, and charged.
At first, love caused him to pull his punches, but after he hit her with a few stiff jabs and she didn’t blink, he was forced to really fight. He swung haymakers, breaking her nose and cracking bones in her face. She didn’t seem to feel a thing.
Eventually, she got her hands on him and her nails were like the claws of a wild beast and her strength was appalling.
A misstep on his part and they went down, wrestling on the carpet where she was all teeth and animal fury. No matter what he tried, he could not pry her off. He attempted a stranglehold to knock her out, however her teeth tore into his bicep and before he knew it she was drinking from his brachial artery.
The pain was immense, but the horror of it was mind-boggling and turned him limp. He shrieked, reaching into her mouth to pry her jaws apart. It was a mistake. With a grunt, she took off one of his fingers, sucked the marrow out and spat the bone onto the carpet, all in the course of three seconds.
Now he was down to fighting with one hand and soon she had his wrist in her mouth and latched on, sucking blood through her gritted teeth. The pain was too much. He opened his mouth to scream, but then saw his child.
Little Ray-Ray had crawled into the midst of the battle and now knelt over his father, his mouth open wide, showing off nine little teeth. The baby lashed in with those sharp little teeth, aiming for Ray’s right eye, but missing and latching onto his cheek instead. The pain was secondary to the horrible sucking that Ray was subject to. It was sick and was matched by the sound coming from just below his left ear. Faye had forgotten his wrist and was now at his neck and her teeth dug into his flesh with the sound of a crocodile feeding.
With teeth-snapping frenzy, she found the fat carotid artery and drank hot blood right from the source.
3—Hartford, Connecticut
Ray Carter’s screams had people for half a mile around locking their doors. With shivers running up their spines, they went back to their TV sets and watched as the president made his statement: The situation is under control. We’re doing everything we can. I’m so very proud of our servicemen. And there will be justice for the domestic terrorists who started this!
He went on longer than this of course, it would have been unnerving to the nation as a whole if he hadn’t. In the manner he was known for, he spent ten minutes basically repeating the four statements in various ways, and the people were reassured, all except those who could hear Ray Carter’s screams.
They weren’t comforted. They were afraid because those screams and more like them had split the air periodically all night long. They were afraid that there were zombies in their midst and they were more afraid that someone would find out. They figured they’d be trapped in the city forever if anyone from the outside were to find out.
For Jaimee Lynn, who was just stirring, blinking at the hated sun, the screams had her tummy making a rumbly sound. The other children, mutilated and disgusting, turned their black eyes to Jaimee and started mewling: “Hungy, hungy, hungy!”
“Alright! Hush up and we’ll get some food.” She glanced down at the woman they had killed the night before, the same woman she had slept in for warmth. The woman was “alive” sorta. She moved her mouth and stared at Jaimee Lynn with one big, black, spore-filled eye.
“We cain’t use you no more,” Jaimee Lynn said and then turned away.
The pack followed her, many of them hardly limping at all and Misty actually talking: “Jamy. I uh is hungy. I uh is hungy!”
“Hush up!” Jaimee Lynn said and then pushed Misty down. She felt like kicking Misty and did so with a sneer. “Now hush.” Jaimee stared around at the city of Hartford. It was quiet, much quieter than it should be. She knew it on a gut level. There had been screams, really juicy screams and yet no one had come running and there hadn’t been any sirens. The city felt hollow. There was fresh blood but most of it was locked away behind doors and windows. On that same gut level, Jaimee Lynn knew that the people had been warned. They suspected that there were monsters in their midst. And that meant it was time to move on to fresher hunting grounds.
Looking back at her pack, she saw some were straying, sniffing the air, letting their hunger overcome their simple minds. “Hey!” Jaimee Lynn snapped. “Get on over here. Iffin you wanna eat, y’all will come with me.”
As they straggled back, Jaimee Lynn took a moment to sniff the air like the others had and decided south was best. They were on a slight rise and she could see houses by the thousands. Nice homes where the families would be plump and juicy; their skin soft from lack of “real” work as her daddy would have said.
She started marching along, making sure to keep to the shadows and the smaller streets. These too, were strangely quiet, though from time to time, she caught sight of people hiding behind boarded up doors and windows. They were afraid of her and that was no wonder, she led a gaggle of black-eyed and bloody children that were straight out of a nightmare.
The people hid. Despite that the Colt Corporation manufactured guns right across the river in West Hartford, the capitol had never been much of a “gun” city and after the Sandy Hook massacre it had become even less of one, with strict new laws being rushed into place. The few people who owned guns were now at the wall, brandishing them haughtily as if they alone they had known something like a zombie apocalypse was possible.
This left the interior defenseless and the people could only cower. Jaimee tried a few doors and found that she was too weak to get through them. The grown-ups on the other side of the doors were too big, anyway, she told herself. They might not have guns, but they had bats and knives.
Discouraged, she turned away from these mini-fortresses, leaving behind black mold and spores that lingered on door handles. After an hour of walking, even she was beginning to whine in her throat from hunger. She wanted to give into the urge and simply fling herself at the next house, tearing at the wood and brick with her fingernails.
But she held back, knowing that something better was coming—that something better was just down the next street.
It wasn’t long before she came across that something that was indeed better than uselessly clawing at heavy wooden doors: an old woman walking a blind cocker spaniel. Neither of them cared much for what was going on in the world. The old lady and her dog had their routines and stuck to them come hell or high water. The little kid zombies fell on them with such savagery that there wasn’t enough left over for the Com-cells to reincarnate.
They ate her right on the sidewalk under the shade of a willow and although her cocker barked its little pea-brain out, the old lady barely squawked.
A Mini-Cooper came by the slaughter, seeming to drive by itself as the man in the front seat, Jerry Byrne, stared at the scene as if hypnotized. Only when the Mini bounced off the bumper of a Lincoln Navigator did Jerry come to his senses.
“Those were zombies,” he said, peeling away. “I got to tell someone.”
Chapter 5
1—6:23 a.m.
Hartford, Connecticut
General Arnold had been trying to get away for the last three hours, but there was always somebody near asking questions, or demanding answers. But even if there hadn’t been, Beatrice had failed him. She’d had one job and that was to pilot the boat fifteen miles down the coast, a trip that shouldn’t have taken even an hour and yet here he was still waiting.
In the meantime, he had been practically chained to his phone by generals in Washington and at Fort Bragg and Fort Campbell. They were still operating under the delusion that the situation was salvageable.
They were planning an airborne operation along a wiggly line that went from Torrington down to Bridgeport. Although they had maps and plenty of resources, they plied him with endless questions concerning weather conditions, the topography of the land, the road system, the crops they might find in the fields and whether poison ivy was an “issue.”
He answered, sitting at his desk with his chin in one hand, his eyes rolling at the ceiling with every stupid question.
Next he was briefed on the actual operation, which had been named: Operation Swift Stand. The name, chosen in order to reinforce the president’s dedication and “quick” reaction to the zombie problem, didn’t make much sense to Arnold. The two words were almost contradictory, but in truth he didn’t care because it wasn’t going to work whether it was properly named, or not.
The initial airborne force of four thousand men was to be dropped along a line forty miles long. It worked out to only a hundred men per mile. He had laughed when he heard this and had been barked at by some general with more stars on his collar than brains in his head.
“What’s your problem, Arnold? Do you hav
e a better plan? If not, keep your trap shut. You act like we have a hundred C17s just sitting down at Pope, ready to jump off any old time.”
General Arnold had swallowed his pride and said: “Of course not. I’m just tired, I guess.”
“Pull it together,” the four-star general had growled and then went on to finish his briefing. Arnold listened politely, didn’t bother asking any useless questions, and at the end, he was properly respectful. He then went to tell the governor of the plan—this really was his entire job. He was a major general with thirty-five years under his belt and he got paid to act as a go-between.
Of course, Governor Warner wanted everything broken down. “It’s really a rather simple operation. That first echelon will drop at these LZs. LZs are Landing Zones.” He marked them on her map, numbering them one through twelve. “They’ll spread out, linking the LZs in a single long, very thin line. The following waves will come every three and a half hours, just enough time to land the C17s, refuel them and send them out again. At first the men will be supplied by air, but once we get Bradley airfield secure and operating, then we’ll fly in reinforcements and supplies. Your western border should be secure by about noon.”
It all sounded great when General Arnold explained everything in that calm way of his and the governor foolishly relaxed. She thanked him for his service and was going on about all of his good work when the phone rang.
“It’s the president,” she said and shooed him out.
The first thing General Arnold did when he stepped out of the governor’s office was to check his phone—still no call! Turning to the side, he thumbed Beatrice’s number only to have it go to voicemail. Had she drowned? Had she managed to sink the boat? Or had she forgotten her phone?
Maybe she had left a message in his office, he thought to himself. It could be disastrous if she had. Hurrying, but trying not to appear as if he were hurrying, Arnold slipped into his office and listened to his messages while huddled in his seat. He had dozens of messages, almost all of them from frightened servicemen’s wives asking about their husbands, who they hadn’t heard from all day and night.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 7