“Excellent,” Thuy said. “We’re in luck.” She pointed at a sign which arrowed them in the direction of the Hartford City Hall, which turned out to be a brooding, heavy, grey-stoned building that looked dead from the outside. Inside was another story. It was a beehive of activity. The mayor was a busy man. He and a hundred and forty of his closest friends and family members were hard at work, not with the people’s business, but with his own.
These friends were everywhere, hurrying about, stacking furniture, nailing windows shut and otherwise fortifying the building. They also kept anyone from getting past the doors to see the mayor. Thuy was not easily dissuaded and her story, told with such believability, bought her an interview with the mayor.
Mayor Donnie Perez, resplendent in a perfectly tailored, light grey suit, took one look at Thuy and before she even opened her mouth, said: “You aren’t with the governor’s office. I would have remembered you.”
With her exotic looks, there was no sense lying. “You are correct; however I do have information that needs to be brought to the attention of the government.”
Before she could go on, the woman who had driven them from the wall blurted out: “There are zombies in the city!”
“I know,” he said, dryly, gently touching his jet black hair as if feeling for anything that might be out of place. “If that’s all…”
“It’s not,” Thuy answered. “I need help finding some people. The first is a woman named Anna Holloway. She has more than likely escaped the quarantine. She is a corporate spy and is traveling with a Chinese national who…”
Perez put his soft, brown hand out so that his palm was inches from her face; it smelled of coconut-scented lotion. “I have more important things to do than hear about how one corporation tried to screw over another. But, you are pretty,” he said, coming to stand very close to Thuy. He looked her up and down, giving her a wolfish smile. “Perhaps I could offer you some protection.”
“I don’t need protection. What I need is for you to listen to me. This stopped being about corporate interests when my work was sabotaged and all my patients turned into flesh-eating monsters.”
The mayor stepped back, his soft hands drawn into his chest. “Your work? What work is that?”
“I worked for R&K Pharmaceuticals. I bio-engineered the cells that ultimately turned into this zombie disease, and right now there is a vial of those cells in the hands of two very dangerous people. They’re outside the Quarantine Zone and they aren’t afraid to release what’s in the vial.”
“Where are they?” Perez asked.
Thuy glanced back at Courtney, who paled and edged a step behind Jerome. “Th-the pilot of that B-Blackhawk said he let them off in Montrose.” When the mayor only raised an eyebrow, she added: “Montrose, New York? It’s about five miles north of Nyack, which is about five miles north of Yonkers, which is about four miles from New York City.”
This information only added to the mayor’s confusion. “A military Blackhawk gave a pair of saboteurs a ride? Why would they do that?” During the next five minutes, Thuy explained how the zombies came into being and the danger Anna and Eng posed. Surprisingly, Perez gave it all a shrug. “They were dropped off twelve hours ago? I’m afraid you’re too late. I think they have already released the virus.” A grimace creased his handsome features, aging him. “It sure explains what’s happening in Newark.”
Now it was Thuy’s turn to look confused. Perez told her a stunted and twisted version of what was happening in Newark. When Thuy asked how he had come by the information with all the phones were down, he explained: “A little bird told me,” trying to sound mysterious. His one link to the outside world was a CB radio which had once been part of the city’s communications equipment that for some reason had never been thrown away.
“By ‘bird’ do you mean a two-way radio?” Thuy asked.
Before he could answer, Specialist Jerome Evermore broke his silence for the first time since entering the city. “How many people live in Newark?”
“Too many to count,” Perez replied. He took a breath to go on, only just then a smattering of small arms fire erupted. “Find out how close that is!” he screamed. Then, in a blink, he was the calm politician again. “Like this woman said, there are zombies in the city, you know. Not a lot, just a handful.”
His frightened reaction made Thuy’s stomach drop. This was no leader. “It only takes one,” she said and then glanced at Courtney and Jerome. “We should get out of here before it’s too late.”
“I’m afraid it’s already too late to leave,” Perez said. “The 101st has cut us off in the east and the 82nd is moving to surround us. They’ll be here anytime if they aren’t out there already. Either way, where would you go if you could get out? No, you’re safer with me, and maybe we can parlay what you know and who you are as a way out of here.”
2—The New York Quarantine Zone
Without a shovel, the burial of Dr. Wilson took nearly an hour. It wasn’t a true burial at all. Deckard and Max Fowler used rocks to cover the body. It was strange to Deckard that the moment he wanted rocks he couldn’t find them. Tired and aching, he went back and forth trying to find them and secretly begrudged the rest Chuck and Stephanie were getting.
The pair sat under an oak, leaning against each other, letting the shade of the tree cool them. They held hands—something that Deckard noted with a twinge of jealous.
Where, in all this mess, was Thuy, he wondered. She was never far from his mind. The night before, as he run an endless race and fought countless zombies, he had pictured her face. Now, he hefted a rock and trekked back to the body of Wilson with it on his shoulder, and there she was, still lingering in his mind.
“It’s been ten hours, she’s got to be long gone by now,” he whispered. “Knowing her, she’s probably in Washington, advising the president.” A smile crossed his face as he pictured her raising a skeptical eyebrow at the fool of a man.
The smile slipped as he came up to the mound of rocks that covered almost all of Wilson. A man in fatigues holding an M4 with its barrel pointed Deckard’s way, stood just across from the body. He was as tall as Deckard, but lean as a reed with a face as sharp as a hatchet.
“I wanted to tell him sorry,” the man said. It was the hunter.
“Not a lot of good it will do him,” Deckard said, as he came forward and gently laid the rock down. A few more would finish the job.
“I guess you’re right,” the hunter admitted. He jerked a thumb behind him. “I dug up a few rocks when I was making my hole. You’re welcome to them. We’re going to be shifting the line it seems.”
“To where?”
The hunter took a long breath, before answering: “Hartford…it seems I killed that man for no reason. I-I don’t know what to say. We were supposed to defend this line, but now there doesn’t seem to be a line, or we’re all on the wrong side of it. We’re trapped in the Zone, same as you. That’s what I was told.”
“And there’s no way out at all?”
“Who knows? There might be some ways to get out, but I don’t know of them. If it was me, I’d strike out for Massachusetts, and hope to get lucky. But that’s me. Sorry to say, your little group doesn’t look to be all that lucky.”
Deckard eyed Chuck and Stephanie, who appeared wasted and cruelly thin, and he thought of dead Dr. Wilson, and he thought of everything he’d had to fight for just to get here, which was basically nowhere. The hunter was right, they weren’t lucky. “What if we were smart?” he asked. “Do you think a smart person could get out of here? Could they make it to Washington?”
“I doubt even a genius could. Planes aren’t flying and the trains aren’t running. Even if you could get a car out of the Zone, a lot of states have closed their borders. You might be able to slip out of the Zone on foot, but even then it’ll be dicey. This place is crawling with zombies and you have soldiers surrounding you. Hell, even the coast is being watched day and night.”
Fowler had come walking up
with a rock of his own. He tried to joke: “So the only way out is by tunneling?” It fell flat as no one even cracked a smile.
Deckard barely heard the joke. His mind was taken up by the fact that maybe Thuy wasn’t as far away as he had guessed. She had escaped the Zone the night before, but with the Blackhawks so short of fuel they couldn’t have gone far. Probably not even to Hartford and that meant she was likely still in the Zone as well.
Knowing her, Hartford would be her primary destination. Anyone else would have raced out of state as fast as they could. Not Thuy. Her first thought would’ve been to alert the authorities concerning Anna and Eng, and, knowing her, she might have even tried to turn herself in.
“I need to get to Hartford,” he said.
The hunter shook his head. “No you don’t. There are zombies in Hartford, it’s why we’re going. Besides, they’ve put up a wall, so getting in is going to be an issue. And if you could get in, you won’t be able to get out again. We’re not letting anyone out, no matter what.”
“What if I told you that the only person who has a shot at finding a cure and ending this plague is in Hartford? The woman…the scientist who invented the Com-cells is in Hartford and it’s imperative that we find her.”
This only brought a wry smile to the hunter’s lips. “If you were to tell me that, I would ask the same thing my platoon sergeant would ask: Where’s your proof? And then you’d turn out your pockets and tell me that you have none, and I would have to conclude that you managed to lose a girl you love and you might be willing to do or say anything to find her.”
“You’d be both right and wrong,” Deckard said. “She is a scientist and she did have her work sabotaged and…and I do love her.” It felt odd admitting this to a stranger when he had only said it once to Thuy.
“Love is nice,” the hunter murmured, taking a moment to think about Deckard’s words. It made him sad. “Love or not, I’m sorry, but the outcome would be the same. If you go in, they’re not going to let you out again. Either way, I wish you guys luck.”
He left them staring at each other over the body of Dr. Wilson. Chuck Singleton, who was idly turning Stephanie’s short brown hair around one callused finger, asked: “Whatcha gonna do?” Deckard was slow to answer and so Chuck answered for him: “If it was Stephanie trapped in that city, there isn’t much that would keep me out.”
Fowler seemed surprised at this. “According to that guy, getting in isn’t the problem. Getting out is the problem. In fact, it looks like a huge problem.”
Stephanie grabbed Chuck’s hand and kissed it with pale lips. “I’m with Chuck on this one. I’d go in for him, even if I didn’t have the strength for it.”
“Do…do you have the strength left for anything?” Chuck asked; his worry for her making him choke on his words. She had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was like chalk. Even her smile was weak and short lived.
“Not much. I’m so tired I could fall asleep right here and maybe never wake up. But I can’t. I can’t rest. I have to go on and on and on. Maybe we’ll escape and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll die, maybe we won’t, but I’ll be with you one way or another.”
Chuck wiped the worry off his face with a genuine smile. “Then I figger we go to Hartford. If we have any chance at whippin' this cancer, it’s with Doctor Lee. I like ta-think she might be able to brew up a new batch of them Com-cells.”
Fowler looked as though someone had knocked him on the head. “All of you are going? Really? You don’t even know if she’s in Hartford. She could be anywhere. And you heard that guy, they won’t let you out once you get in.”
Deckard gestured at the forest surrounding them and said: “She’s got to be somewhere and if she hasn’t escaped the state, she’s more than likely in Hartford. We’re going and you should, too. Being out here isn’t all that great if you ask me. We have limited ammo, and no food or water. It would be a miracle if we survived the rest of the day.”
For a full seven minutes, Fowler stood, staring at nothing and really thinking of nothing. His body was one big ache and he was tired like he had never been tired before. Concentration came with difficulty, but he was sure of only two things: going to Hartford would likely be the death of him, and secondly he really didn’t want to be alone. Being alone and dying alone scared the crap out of him. Finally, he said: “I’ll go.”
It took a few minutes to finish Dr. Wilson’s burial and then it took a few more for Chuck and Stephanie to stand. It felt as though their bodies had turned to rust in the hour they had rested. Slowly, they began working the kinks out of their joints until they felt they could go on.
The men of the 82nd Airborne had double-timed it east to the city. For them, a four mile run was nothing. For Chuck and Stephanie, four miles was another torture to endure. They could not run. The best they could do was an excruciating tortoise-like pace that hurt Deckard as much as it did them.
He kept envisioning the thousands of terrible things that could be happening to Thuy while the minutes ticked by.
They moved so slowly that, once again, they were menaced by zombies coming up from behind. It became a race of cripples, one that Deckard couldn’t win, even if he got to the city first. Ahead of them in Hartford, the multiplying zombies were beginning to reach critical mass.
Jaimee Lynn’s pack had grown to thirty malformed children and adults who she could barely control. Not that there was much of a need anymore. At eight in the morning, the few hundred infected people creeping around in the alleys had seemed like few in such a large city. By eleven the number had grown to a couple of thousand; enough to be alarming to Thuy when she entered the city. Now, at one in the afternoon, the few thousand had become thirty thousand with hundreds more turning every few minutes.
The people in the center of the city: the old and the weak, were also the unarmed. Those who fought with bat or knife, died. Those who hid were unearthed, pulled from their hiding spots and eaten. Those who ran, went from one danger into the arms of greater danger.
As the big zombies battered down front doors, she and her pack would lie in ambush in the back. It was Jaimee Lynn’s favorite method of hunting. When she leapt out to attack, frequently, her appearance alone was enough to make her prey freeze. She was a horror to look upon. She was so utterly caked in blood that she was a sight straight from hell.
Wet, red blood glistened over the tacky maroon of earlier kills. She had blood rimming her nose and in her teeth. Her blonde hair was now a dull brown and the black deposits beneath her nails had come from thirty different victims.
When people saw Jaimee Lynn, they inevitably screamed a lunatic’s scream.
Eventually, the cries and shrieks of those being slaughtered became too much for those still in hiding. Filled with terror, they ran around assembling their belongings for a flight. Those fortunate enough to have garages, stuffed their cars with the obvious: food, water, jewelry, blankets, and extra clothes. They also loaded up on the not-so obvious: televisions, fine china, gravy boats, computers, make-up, and photo albums. Essential or not, not a cubic inch of car space was wasted.
People without garages were forced to grab what they could carry and make a dash for their cars. Sometimes they tried to run back for more; sometimes they didn’t make it back.
The predictions of panic became a reality as tens of thousands of people in tens of thousands of cars made a mad break for freedom from a city that had been, not just walled off, but sealed. Every street that led to the outside world had been painstakingly blocked and there was no way they could be unblocked quick enough.
Every street that pointed toward the wall became crammed with cars as traffic jams bloomed and, when a few zombies from the center of the city came to investigate the fear-filled honking and the desperate yelling, people abandoned their cars and fled. This only made things worse and soon the streets were impassable.
It was in only three spots that the wall was taken down quickly enough to keep the traffic jams from forming and a tota
l of eleven thousand people managed to escape, in a mad, helter-skelter rush. Another twenty-seven thousand climbed down from their posts on the wall. With nothing but the guns in their hands, they charged out into a state that simply crawled with the undead.
Once the 82nd arrived and plugged the holes, the civilians begged to be let out of the city, but their pleas fell on deaf ears and it wasn’t long before desperate battles broke out between soldiers and civilians.
The soldiers were outnumbered twenty to one and at times they were close to being overrun by sheer numbers; however General Phillips proved correct in his assessment of both his men and his opponents.
Lacking a central command, the civilians made numerous unsupported and sporadic attacks. Although carried out with amazing vigor, each began and ended in a piecemeal fashion with the bravest going forward in a rush and fighting for as long as they saw fit. Rarely were these attacks driven home with the same determination that a trained soldier would show.
Demonstrating that communications and leadership were as important as firepower, General Frank Frazer shifted men from threatened point to threatened point. Calm and cool, more like a man playing chess in the park on a sunny afternoon than a blustering general, he concentrated his forces exactly where they were needed for exactly the right amount of time, and no more.
He broke the back of each attack and his line bent but did not break. His victories were not celebrated. He and his men were sickened by what they were forced to do. After one battle, Frazer glassed the carnage with a pair of binoculars. Sixty men and women lay sprawled in the street while another two hundred or so crawled back to the walls of their doomed city leaving trails of blood behind.
“In the short run, we’ve won a battle,” he said to himself. “In the long run we’ve made it permissible for soldiers to slaughter the very people they were sworn to protect. Even in victory, we have lost.”
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 23