The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3

by Peter Meredith

  Suddenly remembering the traitorous girl, he pulled his gun up and stared about him, unable to find her. “Where is the traitress?” he asked the men he had left behind, just then noticing that they were a bloody lot and the blood was very fresh.

  3—Newark, New Jersey

  Donald Biggs had long before closed the blinds and pulled the curtains closed. When that still let in too much light, he pinned blankets over his windows and placed towels at the cracks of the doors. An hour later, after downing an entire bottle of aspirin, he retreated to his basement and screamed into a pillow until his liver shut down and he slipped into a coma.

  For anyone not under the effects of the Com-cells, the coma would have lasted a few days before an inevitable death. For Donald, the coma lasted long enough to turn his brain utterly black and to repair his liver just enough for it to function—not that he would need it much anymore. The Com-cells would take care of everything. They would keep him alive just so long as most of his brain remained intact.

  The moment he woke he found himself voraciously hungry.

  Due to some dormant memory, one of very few left to him, Donald stomped upstairs to his kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. “Fuh!” he cried as the light burned into his retinas. He wanted to puke and slam the door shut; however the hunger couldn’t be denied and so he squinted in where the “food” had always been kept. The only thing that appealed to him was the raw hamburger and even that tasted like plastic in his mouth. He spat it out onto his kitchen floor.

  He didn’t know exactly what he wanted, but he knew he needed something warm, something juicy. His endless hunger drove him, cringing out into the sunlight, where his eyes burned and his brain thumped in such a manner that he felt mad and he pulled at his thinning hair until it came out in quickly forgotten clumps.

  The hunger was too great to worry about hair. Donald stumbled to his neighbor’s house, a person, whose name he could not remember although he had talked to her every day for the last three years. All he knew was that the shade next to her house was good. Without the sun beating into him, he could see better but what he saw wasn’t right.

  The street in front of his house was empty. There were the usual number of cars parked, bumper to bumper and a couple of bikes fallen on their sides like dead horses, but there wasn’t anything to eat. Nothing moved, not even a stray cat.

  His mind was almost ninety-five percent zombiefied by then and that meant there was practically nothing going on between his ears. He craved hot, human blood but didn’t know it…not until the first wave of twelve C17s cruised overhead.

  They had been ordered to fly far lower than usual in order to awe the public and at two thousand feet, their four Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofan engines were loud enough to shake windows in their frames and to set off a few of the more sensitive car alarms.

  Just as the president had hoped, people began peering through windows, and many stepped out of their homes to get a better look. Most cheered at the planes in their long lines soaring overhead; some even cried.

  Mary Gainor didn’t cheer, but she did scream. At the first rumble, she went to her living room window, contorting her body to see the planes. When all she could catch was a quick glimpse of grey fleeting by, she hurried out onto her front lawn and stared up, completely unaware that Donald Biggs, her next door neighbor had suddenly realized what he was hungry for.

  The desire flared up in him, over-powering the hate and the pain. He even moaned with greedy lust, causing Mary to jump.

  “Donald? Is that…what’s with your eyes?”

  Of course he couldn’t answer and Mary really didn’t need an answer. She knew in an instant. She spun around and raced for her open door, screaming: “Run Caleb!”

  Her six-year old son ran, but not knowing which way to run or even why he was running, he ran to his mother, colliding with her right at the threshold of the front door. They both went down in a jumble of arms and legs and panicked shrieks. Donald was on them in a flash and for a second his fouled brain and dimmed eyes couldn’t understand what exactly he was seeing in the frantically squirming mass of limbs.

  That confusion only lasted for a second, and then he bit into a soft leg, Caleb’s. The boy screamed, a high note that could be heard up and down the block even over the sound of planes flying by.

  The sound energized Mary, all hundred and twenty-eight pounds of her. She went nuts on Donald, kicking and punching and scratching with the adrenaline-fueled strength of a man twice her size. She was able to yank her bleeding son out of his grip and race for the back door, slamming it in his face.

  Donald was truly gone by this point. The zombie that had taken over his somewhat soft body had berserker strength and he tore through the cheap door in seconds and, still mad for blood, chased after Mary.

  She ran around to the front, carrying her six-year old, a boy half her size. He was awkward in her arms and grew quickly heavy. She couldn’t run fast, but she didn’t need to. Neighbors had heard the screams and the commotion. Like villagers out of olden days they came in a swarm, carrying any weapon they could get their hands on. The first three men had clubbing instruments: two had bats and the third had his favorite golf club: an eight-iron.

  They saw what Donald had become and didn’t hesitate to attack. Donald came on, dumb as a bag of nails, thinking only of all the blood, and was knocked back and forth like a human piñata. Unlike a piñata it wasn’t candy that came out of him, but Com-cells. Along with the blood that poured from his wounds, the disease was sprayed liberally around.

  It took a dozen hearty whacks before he went down and it took another dozen before he ceased to be an overt threat. By that time the entire block had come out to either help or to watch. Many of them were infected as they shook hands with the men who were flush with victory, or who tried to soothe Caleb, whose chest was still hitching, or who helped Mary who had a lump on the side of the head and felt weak in the knees.

  “We should call the authorities,” someone said.

  “We should get away from that body,” another added. “It’s infected.” The crowd moved away, many of them suddenly looking at their hands and arms. They dispersed seconds later, each person hurrying home to wash. A few saved themselves by stripping completely and scrubbing themselves head to toe with bleach.

  However, most of them worried only about their hands and face. Not including Mary and Caleb, sixteen people were directly infected by Donald’s blood. Another eight were infected by loved ones who tracked blood and spores into their homes on their shoes.

  No one knew what to do about Donald. The police were called but the response time was quoted at nine hours and so his corpse just lay in Mary’s yard. Dogs came to sniff it over and when they trotted away, they too carried the diseased blood on their paws or snouts so that at least four more people were infected when these dogs eventually went back to their homes.

  Mary and Caleb rushed to the nearest hospital and within eight seconds they had infected a friendly paramedic who hurried up with a wheelchair as he saw Mary struggling with her son. One little touch of an elbow was all it took for the Com-cells to transfer from one victim to another.

  The paramedic dutifully washed his hands but not his elbow. Donald Biggs had infected thirty-one people and within three hours, those thirty-one people would infect two thousand, and, just that simply, that is how Newark became the second American city to fall.

  Chapter 9

  1—8:29 a.m.

  The Capitol Building, Hartford, Connecticut

  An hour before, a harried and nervous Governor Warner had turned to her assistant Carla and whispered: “Where the hell is General Arnold?” When Carla only shrugged, the governor said through gritted teeth, “Well, go find him.”

  As always, Carla had turned to her own assistant. “Find the general and maybe put a leash on him. That guy disappears every five seconds.”

  The assistant to the assistant to the governor, Charlotte Abato scurried from the room, p
aused just outside the door to take off the high-heeled shoes, which had been blistering her feet since three-thirty in the morning, and jogged away to scour the building, looking for a man who was already miles away.

  At the same time, Jaimee Lynn Burke was just getting hungry once more. It had been an hour since her pack of fanged children had waylaid a very tired Mindy Copeland as she walked slowly home, stooped with exhaustion, after a very long night of hauling downed trees around.

  Mindy could honestly say she had done her part in helping to fortify the wall that ringed Hartford, and she had never felt so tired in her life. Her hands were raw and her muscles were numb and weak. She was so weary that it felt as though she were sleepwalking home. In fact, she had her eyes closed for good stretches of sidewalk. She was easy pickings for the pack that closed in from all sides.

  Jaimee Lynn let Mindy get close before she leapt out from behind a juniper bush and rushed at her. Then the other children raced forward, like jackals. They brought Mindy down and feasted.

  Mindy was still bleating and struggling weakly under the mass of children when an old man named Herman Green came rushing out of the house they were fighting in front of, waving a broom and yelling: “Shoo! Shoo! Leave her alone!”

  Three of the zombie children went for him. He squawked very much like a chicken, turned on his heel and made for his front door. The children dragged him down right on his own stoop. He was bitten a half-dozen times before his ancient wife took up the broom in her knobby, blue-veined hands and began screaming and jabbing it at the three children with the business end of the it.

  Seeing this wrinkled and grey being who smelled of urine and Ben-gay brought them up short, giving the old man and his wife enough time to scramble inside and slam the door. Mindy convulsed and died just as the old couple escaped out the back door and ran down the alley behind their house.

  Gasping for breath, their sprint turned into a shambling walk as they leaned on each other. They made it three blocks before each asked the other where they were going. “I dunno where we should go,” Mr. Green said. “To the police?”

  “I think we should get you to a hospital,” Mrs. Green answered, eyeing his bleeding back. She even touched the black smears around the wounds, not understanding their significance.

  “For these scratches? Bah! I’ve had worse. I was in Korea for seventeen months and that was before we ever heard of post-traumatic stress dis…”

  She had heard this a thousand times before and waved him to hush. “The police all lit out of town yesterday. You know that just the same as I do. Maybe we should go talk to Ruth over at the Sun-Rise. Her son works for the state and it’s not all that far.” For years, Ruth Lundy had gone on about her son even more than Mrs. Green’s husband talked about the war and that was saying something.

  It wasn’t far at all, one block east and two more blocks “up,” as Mrs. Green thought of north. At the assisted living facility they were among friends, who were all quite astounded by news of the attack and who fretted over the pair. In their devoted attention they managed to spread the Com-cells throughout the population of the facility.

  As none of the staff had shown up for work, Ruth Lundy took charge. The police were called, but that was a bust. Then the fire department and even the ambulance—no one would even pick up their phones.

  “Then I will do what has to be done,” Ruth said. “My son works for the state, you know.” She went to fetch her coat and hat. Even with the help of her walker, she moved at a glacial pace and her driving was a frightening thing since her reaction time equaled that of a sloth.

  An hour slipped past by the time Ruth arrived at the capitol building and it was another ten minutes before she could make it up the stairs and then came a thirty minute wait while her son was found and produced. In that time, she developed a headache that would not quit. It felt like her head was about to crack wide open and at the same time her eyesight grew dimmer and dimmer.

  She thought she was dying of a stroke. Finally, when she couldn’t see or even stand, her son Willard Lundy, assistant state comptroller, came hurrying through the near-empty lobby.

  “Oh, Ma, what are you doing out of the home?” As always, he felt a touch of embarrassment. She escaped the home at least once a month to inform him of one “disaster” after another: a stopped toilet, squirrels on the power lines, loose girls in halter tops.

  “There are zombies in Hartford,” she said clear as day. “Abigail Green’s husband was attacked about two, um…” she tried to make out her watch, but it was only a glint of metal peeking out of a dark background. “It’s been about two hours now.” It was actually two and a half at that point and Mr. Green was just lurching out the front door of the Sun-Rise facility with a great hunger working in him for some blood, fresh and hot.

  Unaware of this, Willard guessed that his mother had finally gone off the deep end of senility and was just about to humor her, when the guard—Barry something, Willard could never remember his name—suddenly rushed over. “You say there was an attack? Where?”

  “Do you mind?” Willard asked, giving him a haughty look. “Don’t give in to her. She’ll just draw it out. Ma, seriously, you need to go back to the home. I’ll visit this weekend. I promise.”

  “They were attacked right smack dab on their front stoop,” Ruth said. “They live off of George Street, just before you get to Cromwell. There used to be a drive-in just down the street from them.”

  The guard stepped back, perplexed, his eyes shifting to the floor as he pictured how close George Street was. It was far too close in his book and it didn’t jibe with what he’d been told by General Arnold a few hours before. “Wait here,” he said, before hurrying back to his desk. He was in the process of ringing the general when the assistant to the assistant to the governor, Charlotte Abato, came up barefoot, breathless and looking nervous.

  “Hey, excuse me have you seen General Arnold? The governor is looking for him and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve checked his office twice and the kitchen and all of the offices and everywhere. And he’s not answering any number we have listed for him.”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to say, but…” The guard shot his eyes left and right and leaned in close. “He is supposed to be taking care of the zombie issue here in the city, but I just heard from that lady, there was one spotted at George and Cromwell.”

  Charlotte looked over at Ruth Lundy and then back at the guard and said: “Huh? What zombie problem? Are you saying there are zombies in the city?”

  “Yes, there are, but the general said that it was being taken care of and…you didn’t know? Really? But you’re with the governor’s staff, right? He made it seem like you guys all knew.”

  A sudden numbness began to spread to her limbs; she felt as though she were bodiless and floating. So far the zombies had been a distant threat and there were soldiers and cops between her and them. That was how she’d been able to deal with the insanity of it all. But now…

  “The governor doesn’t know. No one knows. H-how many zombies are we talking about?”

  “I dunno. The general acted as though there were only a few and that it was a manageable number, but now we have this lady. My guess is that it’s not many or we would have seen them or people would have called.”

  People had been calling by the hundreds and not just about zombie sightings. They called about power outages, food supplies, a fire at the hospital, criminals looting empty shops and all sorts of things. The problem: there was only one person answering phones in the capitol building. The normal operators had left the night before and hadn’t come back, and probably wouldn’t, either.

  “Let’s ask her what she saw,” Charlotte suggested. “Maybe it was nothing.” Although Willard Lundy tried to stop them, Charlotte and the front desk guard questioned Ruth. It took five minutes of shifting blather for her to get to the nub: a “pack” of children with black eyes had killed and eaten an unknown woman and then had gone after a man named Mr. Green who ha
d just managed to escape.

  “There was another pack of them at Quaker and Fern a few hours ago,” the guard said. “Do you think they’re the same zombies?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe, I guess, but does it matter? There are zombies here, in Hartford! That…that shouldn’t be possible. And, and what’s it mean? How are they getting past the wall?”

  The guard could only shake his head, while next to them, a dawning look of understanding finally stole over Willard’s face. “There really are zombies, here? In Hartford?” The guard bobbed his head and Charlotte said that chances are there were. “Then we have to get out of here,” Willard cried, all in a panic. He reached for his mother’s hand.

  “Don’t touch!” Ruth snarled, raking him with her brittle claws and drawing blood. “You didn’t believe me. You thought I was lying. You thought I was just someone you could stick in a home and forget about. So fuck you! Fuck you, Willy, you little shit-stain!”

  Willard stepped back quickly as if his mother were a rabid terrier. The thought of zombies in Hartford had him terrified, but now his heart felt as though it had turned to cold brass. His mother had never spoken to him like that before and her eyes had never looked so dark. “D-did you get bit by one of them, Mother?”

  “Did you get bit by one of them?” she mimicked, a nasty glare to her darkening eyes. “No, of course not, you putz. Do I look like I’ve been bit?”

  “No, of course not.” Willard stepped further back, planting a greasy smile on his politician’s face. He shifted his eyes to Charlotte and said out of the corner of his mouth, “She’s not normally like this. She’s different.”

  Now, both the guard and Charlotte stepped back from the old woman whose face had begun to pucker. Charlotte nudged the guard. “You need to get her out of the building right now.”