“No, I have not been bitten,” Thuy said. “You are very perceptive, Mr. Singleton. How…how are you doing, Deckard?” Seeing that his jaw was clenched as if he were gritting down on a piece of steel and his large hands had the steering wheel in a death grip, she was afraid of his answer.
“A little pissed off, if you must know.”
He sounded it. “Is that right?” Thuy said, feeling weak. She was tired of the constant motion and the constant battle, and she was sure that if Deckard and Chuck were infected, they would be a hundred times more dangerous than Jaimee Lynn.
“Yeah, that is right,” Deckard answered. “It means I was lied to. Care to explain yourself before I kick your ass out of this Jeep?”
They were doing about forty miles an hour, shooting northwest on a street that was dotted with abandoned cars and crawling with zombies. Even if he slowed, there was nowhere to get out. The sight out of the window had Thuy’s stomach in a knot and all she could say was: “Uhh…”
The mayor started saying the same thing: “Uhh…I don’t know…I thought she was bit. It looked like she was, you know. Perhaps I made a mistake. It was dark and everything was happening so quickly.”
Thuy’s confusion evaporated in an instant and now it was her turn to grow furious. “He told you that I had been bitten? You snake! You…you…jerk-shit!”
Her attempt at cursing, although it stemmed from a place of volcanic anger on her part, actually diffused the situation to a degree. Eyebrows were raised and Chuck had to turn away to hide a sudden smirk.
“I’m sorry,” the mayor begged. “It was an accident. Y-you were surrounded and it was dark. How was I to know you weren’t bit?”
“You could have helped us,” Courtney snapped. “Like you said, we were surrounded and you ran right by like a fucking chicken-shit.”
The mayor began nodding, eager to please. “Yes, you’re right, I did. It was a mistake. I should have…”
“Oh, shut up!” Courtney yelled, right across Thuy’s face. There was a silence after this that lasted a block and a half, then Courtney realized something was not right. “Where’s Max and Sundance and that doctor?” Deckard and Chuck shared a look, one that had her stomach dropping. “They can’t be dead.”
“Yes, actually,” Deckard said, in a sad voice. “But they went quickly and they were both brave right down to the end.” Another silence gripped the Jeep seeing them almost to the wall. Deckard stopped just short of the dark, brooding mass of tangled steel. A few zombies ambled around, not enough to get their hearts racing.
Chuck sighed, a phlegmy, wet sound, and asked: “What about you? Where’s all y’all’s friends? Them dispatchers an’ all? Where’s John?”
“Some died,” Courtney answered, her eyes shifting down to rest on the pumps she had stolen hours before. Her friends never had a chance. They hadn’t been geniuses like Dr. Lee or warriors like Deckard. They had just been people…just like Courtney. It was a wonder she was still alive, just like it was a wonder Chuck and Stephanie had made it. They both looked awful.
In truth, the only one who didn’t look worn from their ordeal was the mayor, who was even then in the process of patting down his shiny hair.
“What are we going to do with him?” Courtney asked, pointing, distastefully the mayor’s way, as if even looking at him would coat her with the invisible slime that he seemed layered with.
Deckard’s glare returned. For the last few minutes, he had been concentrating on driving which was a far better alternative than thinking about the last moments of Max Fowler’s life. “He doesn’t deserve our protection, but I can’t just kick him out. Not out there.” He lifted his chin toward the window where the zombies were angling closer, limping along faster now that the scent of fresh, clean blood had hit them.
The others either grunted or nodded in agreement—all except Thuy. “If he stays, it’ll be as a corpse.” Her words were ice and her dark eyes were full of hate. “Mr. Singleton, will you please shoot him if he doesn’t get out of the car in the next minute?”
“I think that might be murder,” Chuck said, with a glance at Deckard, which was almost a cry for help.
The mayor nodded and pointed Chuck’s way saying, “That’s right. It would be murder. You can’t let her do this. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?” Thuy demanded, outraged. To everyone’s astonishment, she grabbed the gun from Chuck’s surprised fingers. “You were the one who attempted murder. Two counts of it. Get out now, or I will shoot you.”
3—Montrose, New York
Three blocks from the motel where Anna and Eng had held their hostages the night before stood The Hound’s Tooth. It had been a honky-tonk where, in a grand tradition that was as old as time, people danced and drank, fought and sang. At the bar, men spilled their beer on the girls they were one-lining, while in the bathroom others were mixing puke with urine in the foul smelling toilets.
General Phillips, the newly promoted commander of the newly designated 7th Army, sat at the bar. It was empty except for the three shots of cheap whiskey lined up in front of him. Though he could have upgraded to a slightly higher grade such as Johnnie Walker Black or at least Makers, he had chosen the cheapest whiskey because he didn’t feel as though he deserved anything better.
The surface of the amber liquid shook gently as the air pulsed. A thousand rifles were going at it a mile away, while overhead, Apaches and Blackhawks buzzed. There was even the thrum of seven artillery pieces mixed in—all he had managed to airlift in.
He watched the whiskey dance as his staff of fifteen men waited for him across the street in an abandoned diner. They didn’t know it, but they were waiting to hear that their fearless leader had decided to give up on Connecticut altogether. Already, the 82nd had been hung out to dry. For the last eight hours, he had given them excuses instead of the supplies they had begged for.
They were dead men in his eyes and dead men didn’t need supplies—and yet they still had a mission to complete. They were the first line of defense against the wave of creatures that had begun pouring out of Hartford. The 82nd had been buying time for Phillips to gain control of the situation. It was why he had lied over and over to Frank Frazer, telling him that he was doing everything he could, and that it would be just a matter of time before help arrived.
There was no way he could have told Frank the truth. If Phillips had told ol’ Frank that the President had ordered him, in essence, to cast aside the division, he would have pulled his men back, circled them as if they were in “indian country,” fought in an ever-shrinking perimeter, and, knowing him, would have lasted out the remainder of the war. That was the kind of man Frank was. He would have done it, knowing that if he lived he would have been court-martialed and shot for treason…to him that would have been a tiny price to pay for saving his men.
Phillips wished his choices were so simple. Gallantry was an easy thing when the choices were so obvious. What wasn’t obvious was the “big picture.” The big picture was horribly frightening. Quite simply, nothing was working the way it was supposed to, starting with the very concept of a federal government.
The president had begun the day forcing patriotism down the country’s throat. No matter what channel a person turned to, they were inundated with scenes of planes and paratroopers, helicopters and tanks, fierce camo-covered men and stern women in uniform. Perhaps it had been necessary at first, then it had become cloying to the point a person could piss red, white and blue.
Sometime after the first fires began in Newark, it became menacing. Marty Aleman had leaned on his contacts in the media to keep what was happening in Newark quiet, but, amazingly, they had gone from lapdogs to attack dogs in a matter of hours. Fearless reporters were suddenly all over TV demanding answers—what they got instead were guns shoved in their faces.
Just when Phillips was finally getting his fuel situation under a tiny bit of control, priorities were changed. Hundreds of desperately needed helicopters and thousands
of his best soldiers were “re-assigned” to a new combat group, operating under orders directly from the White House.
This force, composed of about three thousand Rangers and Special Forces personnel, literally descended from the skies like dark angels of an evil god to enforce the President’s notion of unity and brotherhood. At the cost of wreaking havoc with Phillips’ tenuous supply line, the seemingly countless cable TV channels were brought to heel at gunpoint and in no time—once the bodies were removed and the blood cleaned up—the news shows were back to running what felt like endless loops of the morning’s parachute jump or delivering prewritten statements that spun everything in a positive light.
“Goodbye freedom of speech,” Phillips said and took one of the shots with a shaking hand. The cheap whiskey burned going down. “Goodbye freedom of the press.” He took another shot and grimaced, the long age lines on his face becoming ruts in his flesh.
For over a minute he stared at the third shot, wondering what he would do with it if it were poison. He liked to think he would have downed it without hesitation. Slowly, he reached for it, brought it to his lips, and whispered: “Goodbye 82nd.”
It was a doomed division. In spite of his promises of a second “Berlin Airlift,” it had been impossible to keep them supplied. Their expenditure of ammo was fantastic. For the last five hours, they had been using a wall of lead to defend themselves and, although it had worked so far, bullets were being used up at an unsustainable rate.
Phillips had admonished General Frazer and ordered him to restrict the number of rounds carried by each soldier, but he had been politely told to go fuck himself by his subordinate. Frank was catching on and now Phillips’ empty promises carried the same weight as his threats.
Thankfully, General Milt Platnik of the 101st, still had hope in spite of the trickle of supplies getting through to him. Of course he had begged for more, but there wasn’t any more of anything to be had.
It wasn’t just ammo that was an issue, it was everything. The amount of supplies needed to sustain an army in the field was amazing and yet, of all the thousands of items that were necessary, Phillips would never have guessed that plain old water was what would break him. In this land of disease, no water source could be trusted.
In their haste to do the president’s bidding, Phillips’ divisions had been forced to leave certain things behind and that included every water purification system in every single division.
This put them in tough straits. Boiling water in mass quantities was out of the question in the middle of battle and there was a strange lack of iodine tablets. Phillips guessed they were being hoarded. One way or another, the lack of iodine meant clean water had to be flown in—along with everything else. Because the northeast was basically closed to ground traffic, supplies were being air dropped where they were needed. And this too was unsustainable.
The president thought he had an original idea when he said: “Just parachute what you need in.” As if the army had an endless quantity of thousand linear foot chutes just lying around. They had many but over half had been used in the last ten hours of the operation and they couldn’t risk using up the last of them on an isolated division.
The 82nd was withering on the vine. Logistically, they were screwed. There were only so many planes and only so much fuel and there was just too much need. Priorities had to be made and the 82nd was not a priority.
According to the president, the last strip of Connecticut wasn’t a priority either. He was fixated on New York City almost to the detriment of the other fronts, forcing General Phillips to begin “shading” the truth in order to help the Pennsylvania National Guard hold back the growing menace from New Jersey. Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult to fool the president since the man had zero military sense and not much in the way of common sense either.
Phillips simply could not understand what purpose there was trying to keep New York City safe when the wide open land north of the city stank of disease and decay and to the west New Jersey was a giant walking graveyard, while to the east, most of Connecticut was barren devastation surrounding little pockets of humanity.
“No good at all,” Phillips said, the whiskey poised at his lip. “Fuck New York.” Losing New York City would be hard on the war effort, but it wouldn’t mark the end; however, if the Pennsylvania border was compromised, that would be that. The Keystone State was simply too big to contain. There were thirteen million people in a state with a border that was almost a thousand miles long. How could that possibly be defended with so few soldiers?
“It can’t be,” the general whispered and downed his third shot. With a sneer at the bitter taste, he pushed back from the bar and headed across the street before the alcohol kicked in. He didn’t seem to matter much in the great scheme of things, but appearances were appearances and it wouldn’t do to stumble into a meeting.
The men in the room snapped to attention as he strode in. “At ease, at ease. Let’s get on with it.” The diner had been chosen because the grill was still operational and there was plenty of grub. One of the many lieutenants, who seemed to always flutter about his staff, had been busy whipping up a steak dinner, and a plate was set in front of Phillips seconds after he sat.
The steak wasn’t bad, which only made his guilt all the heavier. There were men of the 42nd who hadn’t eaten in the last 48 hours.
As he ate, sitting across from a seventy-two inch retractable screen, his staff gave him their evening report—they would give him another one just before taps. He doubted if he would sleep that night. The men in the field certainly wouldn’t.
“The good news first,” LT Colonel Granderson stated, and pointed to the northern border of the New York Zone. “The10th Mountain Division has fought off every threat and, unless there is some wholly unexpected development, should be able to maintain their lines through the night. As per your suggestion, we have explored the idea of transferring men from the 10th to help shore up the Pennsylvania Guard, unfortunately the numbers are suggesting that a shift would cause more problems than it would solve.”
He flicked to another screenshot, this one a picture of the Adirondack Mountains. “The 10th is holding the entire northern portion of the NYZ. It’s a hundred and fifty mile length of the Zone. It is all forest and mountain with very few surfaced roads, so shuttling men from one hot spot to another is a slow, complicated affair. General Renalt has created a number of small reserve groups but that’s at the cost of a dangerously thin line. They only have about one man for every seventeen meters of front.”
Granderson switched the image on the screen to a scene of a highway that was blackened, pockmarked, and strewn with corpses. “Now, for the not so good news. This is Highway 202, approximately a mile and half north of here. According to General Stolberg, he will abandon it in about forty-five minutes. He has prepared a fallback point here…”
Another image, that of a map showing the lower third of New York State. The colonel pointed at a lake that crossed a good portion of the map. “That is New Croton Reservoir. It stretches almost nine miles and, according to Stolberg, it will cut his front in half.”
“Yes, but it also puts them a mile and a half closer to the city,” Phillips said.
The colonel made a face as if what he was about to say next pained him. “Yes sir, it is, but at the same time, the general has finally given us a casualty list. He only has forty-two hundred men left and they are dog-tired. Most haven’t slept in two days.”
“Forty-two hundred,” Phillips said, breathing out slowly, wearily. At one point, he’d had eleven thousand soldiers, police and civilians fighting for him. “Tell Ed he has my blessing to shorten his lines. Alright, what crap do you have for me next?” He tried to smile as if the false face would lessen the blow he knew was coming.
A second colonel stood. His name was Evert Lloyd and he had drawn the worst assignment as liaison between the 82nd and the 7th Army staff. “General Frazer is again asking for supplies and reinforcements. Attacks out of Har
tford have picked up. He is also reporting an increased tempo from IP attacks from the suburbs. He has built lines of circumvallation and contravallation, but says that it’s only a matter of time before his lines are breached in one direction or another. He’s requesting permission to pull back.”
Lloyd didn’t need to add: Again. Frazer had been begging to save his men for three hours now.
“Tell him that with the dark we will be able to get him more air support. The president has agreed to carrier strikes.”
In truth he had agreed to limited carrier strikes. The president’s precise words had been: “They should be used to knock out bridges and such.” The words “And such” were so ambiguous they could mean anything and for Phillips that included bombing runs against the zombie hordes.
Lloyd went on with his report: “Things are picking up with the 101st, which is making the planned withdrawal a might bit touchy, but General Platnik says the first phase, the shift to I-395, should be completed by midnight and the move into Providence completed sometime by tomorrow morning.”
Pulling the 101st out would be the death knell, not only for Connecticut, but also for most of Rhode Island. Still, the move would hopefully save Providence and about a million people, as well as the 101st Air Assault division. What was better was that Providence had a fine seaport which would allow Phillips to shift some of his logistical burden onto the US Navy.
“And New York City?” Phillips asked. “What’s going on there?”
Chapter 20
1— 7:22 p.m.
New York City
The packed subway car rocked side to side, lulling Anna into a stupor, her eyes growing heavier and heavier until it was a struggle to keep them open. Desperately, she wanted to sleep. She wanted to give in to the demands of her exhausted body and her stressed out mind.
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 30