Warner nodded to the commissioner. “Those are good ideas, thanks Felicity. I want to leave within the hour so get your family and get back here ASAP.” The room emptied in seconds. Carla was about to leave when the governor grabbed her. “Get the mayor over here as quickly and as quietly as you can.”
Although the mayor’s office was only two blocks away it took twenty minutes for the man to show up, his eyes bleary and red, with his tie hanging loose around his neck looking more like a noose than anything else. When Warner explained what was happening, the man plopped down in one of the chairs, too stunned for words.
“You’ll need to keep everyone off the streets and you’ll need to set up armed groups within the city limits to hunt down anyone suspected of being a zombie. They should have proper passwords so they can tell each other apart and they should march in formation. It sounds strange, but the infected would never do that.”
The mayor had nodded the entire time she spoke, but when she finished, he simply said: “I’m going with you.”
Christine was taken aback by the matter of fact way in which he spoke. It was almost as if he didn’t think she could do anything to stop him. The Christine Warner of three days before might have been at a loss. This version of her was now a leader more than she was a governor. She had discovered that she wasn’t just a pretty face and a fine public speaker. She had found that her soul wasn’t a flimsy bit of gossamer. It was a dry strip of leather.
She hadn’t blinked as she ordered men into battle, knowing that her forces were soft reservists and beer-bellied guardsman. She had known that many of them were going to their deaths, but she hadn’t blinked. And now she had ordered a security guard to put a bullet into an old woman.
“You will stay here,” she said, her voice soft and yet full of steel, “and you will defend the city that you were elected to watch over. And if you try to desert your post, I will have you shot. Is that clear?”
Chapter 11
1—9:06 a.m.
The Connecticut Bubble
The echo of the gun was still ringing in the camp when Colonel O’Brian’s eyes fell on Thuy. “That’s her!” he cried. He was minutes away from going full zombie and the sound of his own voice was like an ice pick in his head. He shuddered and groaned, but did not lose sight of the traitor.
However, he did lose sight of Cindy Austin whimpering and bleeding a puddle of beautiful blood at his feet. The Com-cells caused a narrowing and blurring of vision and he tripped right over her, falling on her without caring in the slightest about her pain.
The Com-cells also caused him to be nearly single-minded in his hate. Cindy didn’t even register as a person. Getting to his feet, he trampled her, charging across the open hill, looking to kill. The idea made him giddy…and hungry, and the only thing that would have made the moment better was if she ran. He had a strong desire to chase his prey before devouring her, but Thuy was paralyzed in fear.
Even her trembling was now limited to a vibration that shook her like an old time alarm clock.
O’Brian forgot his gun in his hunger and he rushed up with his mouth stretched wide, but he was brought up short by the stink of her. She smelled of piss. It was bitter and piercing, adding to the pain in his head.
“What is that? What the fuck? Did you piss yourself?” He stopped short, cringing at her in disgust. She had been only dimly aware that she had indeed wet herself. It had been a reaction to intense fear. As a scientist, Thuy understood reactions and she was seeing a strong one in Colonel O’Brian, one that could be exploited.
Her hands went to her wet crotch, felt the damp, coated themselves in it, and then ran themselves across her chest and arms, causing O’Brian to step back with a grimace. “Are you fucking crazy?” he demanded.
She was not crazy. She was thorough and systematic. Her hands went back for a second helping and more smearing—Thuy would rather stink of urine than get eaten alive. Her courage inched up along with the smell and she found her voice. “I-I am not insane, Colonel, I was just hoping to get your attention so that we might speak to each other, perhaps not as equals, since you are an officer and I am not, but as friends maybe. Wouldn’t you like that?”
O’Brian seemed almost mesmerized by the soft, slow way in which she spoke. His dark eyes held confusion and he swayed in place. “Huh?” was all he had the wit to say.
“I am talking about a discourse in which we both explain our positions concerning the-the new circumstances in which we find ourselves in. In that way we can internalize and understand those areas in which we disagree.” She was blathering, hoping to buy time. Not that she had a real plan in mind, she simply feared the gun in the colonel’s hands and was desperate to purchase a few extra seconds of life.
And a few seconds was all she got. The colonel’s look of confusion dissipated in a new grimace of pain and up came the gun. He began to pull the trigger, only just then there came a shout from all around them.
Soldiers were pointing into the air toward the east where thousands of paratroopers were jumping out of the C17s into the bright light of morning.
Marty Aleman had been correct in his understanding of the human condition. The green chutes filling the sky made for an awesome spectacle, Captured live on television, it was fast becoming the most watched event in history. Two-hundred and sixty million Americans sat glued to their screens as the paratroopers fell with all the gentleness of autumn leaves and when they began landing, most of America cried and cheered, thinking the worst of the horrible situation was over.
That wasn’t true for the men and women trapped in the “Connecticut Bubble.” The ones without the gunk in their eyes could see the chutes quite clearly and with even greater clarity they understood what the chutes meant in terms of the Quarantine Zone—they would no longer be protecting it, they would be within it and wouldn’t be allowed out.
Soldiers began leaving their posts in droves. Many of the ones who were near the south and east edges of the camp where the forest was close, stole away thinking they could run the five miles between them and the drop zones before the new line was complete. Others ran to the interior of the camp, looking for guidance or permission to start marching east before the trap closed in on them.
Colonel O’Brian was still trying to puzzle out the meaning of the chutes when Thuy took off running. She wasn’t particularly fast nor did she attempt to zigzag or otherwise make herself a more difficult target.
The colonel jerked around at her first step and, due to muscle memory, ingrained training, and a new savage instinct to hunt and slay, his Beretta came up even before he knew exactly what was happening.
Then he saw the long black hair like a shadow made of silk and he knew that the traitor was attempting to escape. Even with his dimmed eyesight, it didn’t seem possible that the colonel, who was all of twenty-five feet away from Thuy, could miss his target.
Neither could Jerome Evermore. He had come running at the sound of the first gunshot and was just in time to see O’Brian treading over Cindy Austin. He was too far away to see the blood gushing out of the woman and it was a few seconds before he understood what was happening—and that was when the paratroopers began their jump, but unlike everyone else, he hadn’t turned to watch. Without thinking about the odds against him, he threw himself down in the dirt and drew a bead on the colonel and although he had never been the best marksman in his unit, at seventy yards with an M68 close combat optics scope, he might as well have been standing right next to the colonel when he pulled the trigger.
Thuy flinched at the sound of the gunshot, her muscles jerking and her skin flaring with an electric current as adrenaline shot into her system. She expected to feel a searing pain, but when it didn’t come she figured that the colonel had missed. Hoping to throw off a second shot, she lunged to her right, tripped, and fell into the dirt as suddenly a hundred guns opened up in a hellacious fury of gunfire.
Jerome’s shot had blasted out Colonel O’Brian’s throat, blasting away a chunk of v
ertebra and severing the spinal column. He dropped like a rock, paralyzed but still alive. The other infected soldiers who’d been gaping up at the parachutes heard the gunshot and saw the blood shoot out of their leader. They knew right away they were being attacked and they fought back without hesitation.
They turned their guns on everything that moved, anything in uniform and anything with a gun. In seconds, they had mowed down the soldiers who had come from the line looking for orders. Next, they began to riddled the tents and the Humvees.
Thuy dashed back to the Humvee and threw herself on the ground next to one of the dispatchers, who was strangely quiet and unmoving. When Thuy dared to lift her head a little, she saw that the woman was stretched out, staring with glassy eyes up at the blue sky. She had a small hole in her forehead and another bigger one over her right ear. Next to her, huddled in a ball, was April Lopez. She had caught a bullet below her navel and was too fat to see where it had entered. She only knew that the pain was immense and that her blood felt as slippery as oil.
“They shot me!” she wailed. “They shot me!”
Courtney turned her head and saw the dead dispatcher: Tamara Faustin, a woman who’d been her friend for three and half years. She also saw April and her bloody hands. For some reason, Courtney had more sympathy for poor dead Tamara—in life she had been sweet, and in death she had the good sense to keep quiet.
“Will you shut up!” Courtney hissed at April. From where Courtney lay, she could see beneath the Humvee. A soldier was heading for them. She could see grime covered boots and the black tip of a low carried M16. The feet had paused for a moment but at April’s cry they hurried for the Humvee.
“We got to run,” Courtney whispered to Thuy before jumping to her feet. She made it four steps before the soldier, a black eyed creature with a black-toothed sneer, shot her in the back. Thuy was utterly shocked as Courtney flung out her arms and fell face down in the dirt.
“Oh god!” April screamed, bringing her hands up to her face and peering at the man through bloody fingers. He shot her as well. Bam, bam, bam! It took three shots to stop her from squealing and three more before she lay still.
During this dreadful execution, Thuy did not stir or blink. She was so petrified that she could do nothing but lie perfectly still and play dead. Her heart pounded in her chest so loudly she was sure the soldier would hear it, only he was too busy smacking his lips and making ugly swallowing noises to hear.
For a long, dreadful second, he stood over Thuy and then she felt something hard jab into her back. With sheer force of will, she did not so much as twitch.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man go to Courtney and jab her with the end of his rifle, as well. It made a strange metallic “clunk” sound. He jabbed her a second time, harder and the sound was louder. “What the fuck?” he said, slowly coming to realize that she had on a back-mounted radio.
Courtney had also been playing dead, but she couldn’t a second longer. She spun and grabbed the barrel of the rifle just as the soldier pulled the trigger. A hole in the earth appeared next to her head. “Thuy! Help me!”
Thuy was unarmed and had the strength of a twelve year old boy. Nature had not provided her with the direct means to combat a man of the soldier’s size and strength and thus, the cold calculations of battle suggested that it made more sense to just lie there and let Courtney die.
And yet, Thuy was not the coldly calculating woman people thought she was. In the middle of a chaotic battle where friend fought friend and blood, both red and black, ran like water, she didn’t think about herself, but leapt up and cast about for a weapon.
The closest thing to her was a stone the size of her head which had been unearthed by the passage of Humvees. It sat with its damp side up not three feet away and she had it in a second and thumped the soldier a good one with it a second after that. His skull cracked like an egg and he fell twitching and drooling as his brain went haywire.
With the weight of the heavy radio on her back, Courtney got up with little more grace than a turtle might. Her face was pasty and her mouth was twisted as if it had frozen in mid-scream. She didn’t seem to notice the battle going on around them.
Thuy grabbed her arm and dragged her away, heading for the western perimeter. A bullet whizzed through the air near Thuy’s neck and in response, she flinched, squinching her shoulders in an attempt to make herself a smaller target. She could do nothing else to protect herself.
The two women were caught out in the open where the grass had been beaten down and the land was flat. They had to keep moving or die. A second bullet passed right between them. They both cried out and let go of each other just as more bullets zinged between them.
“I give up!” Courtney cried, running with her hands over her head. “We surrender!” Although it slowed them down somewhat, Thuy followed suit and put her hands up as she ran. No one seemed to care where their hands were or what they were saying and more bullets continued to whiz all around them.
“Over here!” Jerome Evermore called from the tree line. He waved to them frantically for a few seconds until they turned and ran at a diagonal straight across the battlefield. The black-eyed soldiers aimed for them, but now their course wasn’t so simple for their diseased brains to follow and their bullets zipped behind Courtney who was the slower of the two. It seemed to her as if the bullets were chasing her and she ran harder than she had ever run in her life.
The two ran straight into the forest and dove behind trees, both in tears—at first, but then they caught each other’s eye and they began laughing and crying at the same time.
Their hysteria went on until Thuy saw the great grey cargo planes that had just disgorged the paratroopers, heading back south. It was a stately sight, however it also had an air of finality to it. It seemed as if they were going and would never come back.
2— The Quarantine Zone
Gamet Corners was too far away with too many intervening hills for anyone in the little village to actually see any parachutes. Ryan Deckard gave PFC Max Fowler a look. “It’s a jump, isn’t it?” Deckard asked.
“I don’t know. I was never a paratrooper, but if I had to guess, I’d say: probably. I’ve never seen so many planes like that before. I bet they are jumping in half the 82nd.”
Deckard kept his dark eyes sharp on the C17s. “That’s a bet you’d lose. Each one of those planes can hold a hundred paratroopers and cargo. I’d bet that’s the entire division, which means we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Time for what?” Stephanie Glowitz asked. Just then, time felt like an exceptionally funny bit of business. Time for Dr. Wilson, with his gaping shoulder wound, was being measured in hours. Chuck Singleton had weeks before the cancer shriveled him up and spat him out. Twelve or thirteen, sure, but they were only weeks. Stephanie figured she had at least three months to live and that was if she wasn’t eaten alive, first.
“We only have so much time to get out of the Zone,” Deckard answered. “A jump of that size means the perimeter in the east didn’t hold, or it’s in tatters. Either way, we have to hurry if we want find a way to get through before all the holes in the line are filled.”
Dr. Wilson waved a soft hand, beckoning for Deckard to come close. “Maybe we should stay here. You know that it’s possible we’re all covered in the disease and I don’t want to be the guy responsible for destroying the world.”
Deckard grimaced. There was no time for a lively debate. “We’ve been around this from the start and so far, those half-diseased guys haven’t been all that contagious. And besides, we’ve taken every precaution we could. We’ve washed ourselves down with bleach and we’ve changed our clothes. And if…”
Wilson interrupted: “You’re being foolish and wrong. If you go, you’ll risk the lives of everyone in the world.”
“I wasn’t done!” Deckard barked. Wilson flinched back and then grimaced in pain. “Sorry about that, but I need to finish. We are going to get through. One way or another I will get u
s through, however…” He paused, looking into each of their faces. “However, if one of us shows the first sign of the disease, we will stop immediately. We will disarm him or her and monitor their status. If it progresses, that person will be shot in the head and no amount of pleading will keep me from doing my duty.”
A heavy silence hung over the Gamet Corners’ diner until Wilson raised a weak hand. “I’ve had a headache for a while. I didn’t want to alarm anyone, but it hasn’t gone away.”
“And you’ve had it since when?” Deckard asked.
Wilson tried to shrug, which brought out a moan. “Since sunrise I guess. But it has been persistent.”
“You’re not infected. You would have turned into one of them by now if you had the disease. You’re probably just dehydrated which we will take care of as soon as we can. Okay, we got to roll. Chuck grab the doctor’s belt and I’ll get his good arm.” Together they heaved the man up and leaned him against the wall before shuffling him out the back door where a hunk of rust sat on four bald tires.
It was a venerable Ford Bronco that had been new when Reagan was president. For the last five years, it had been nursed along, held together by duct tape and prayers. Steep hills gave it fits, making it chug and lurch. During afternoons in July and August, it was apt to stop at a red light and not start again until the sun went down. And whenever the temperatures dipped below twenty, it simply refused to come out of the barn.
It did have three things going for it: the keys had been sitting right in the ignition, it had started on the fourth try, and there were no other options left in town.
Sundance was the only one of the group who wasn’t skeptical when Deckard pulled it around. With his tail thumping mightily, he jumped up into the front seat and sat there with his dog grin stretched wide.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 16