Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  “Immediately,” President Austin said. “I want everyone on the front foot. I’ll make announcements later in the day, but we get to work as of right now.”

  Homeland Security Secretary, Travis Dellahunty, spoke up. “Sir, the border walls?”

  “I want the wall with Mexico built and reinforced immediately, Travis.”

  “And troops, sir?”

  “As many as you need. I’ll speak to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and get things rolling. That wall, and the bordering crossing points into Canada, are both crucial.”

  The meeting adjourned, the decision made. People in the room began gathering up their papers, talking in tight strained voices. The world felt as if it had just shifted off its axis.

  “One final thing,” Lincoln Hallmeyer raised his voice above the murmurs. Everyone stopped and looked up. The Vice President’s seat at the conference table was directly opposite the President’s. “It is critical that this Cabinet presents a united and committed front to the media. The President expects your unqualified stead-fast support. If you can’t give him your total loyalty, then perhaps you should consider your position in the cabinet.”

  FLIGHT 553

  INCHEON to LOS ANGELES

  OVER THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN

  “Jesus Christ, what was that?” John Sommerville heard the loud thump and his eyes instinctively went to the vast bank of flight controls and lights arrayed before him. He scanned them, frowning, then sat back, perplexed. He snatched off his headset and the sound came again; a hammered pounding like a fist against the cockpit’s locked door.

  Rosemary Hackett saw her co-pilot’s eyes widen in alarm and felt an instant spasm of apprehension. Terrified screams of hysteria suddenly sounded clearly on the flight deck.

  “Christ!” Hackett’s first thought was for the safety of the plane. The two pilots locked eyes. “Hijacking?”

  Sommerville leaned sideways in his seat and fixed his attention to a three inch square screen nestled amidst the myriad of control lights and switches. The screen showed a black and white video feed into the aircraft’s cabin via a concealed camera above the cockpit door. He gaped in horror.

  “What the fuck…?” On the screen he could see blood-spattered bodies lying in the aisles amongst a litter of rubbish and food trays. Many of the aircraft’s overhead compartments had been thrown open and luggage had been hurled about the cabin and ransacked. The interior of the aircraft looked like a battlefield. Kneeling with their backs to him, close to the lens of the hidden camera, he saw several passengers tearing savagely at the kicking, thrashing corpse of a female flight attendant.

  Sommerville swallowed hard and turned white-faced to his pilot. “This is worse…”

  Rosemary Hackett clambered from her seat and peered over her co-pilot’s shoulder at the gruesome images on the monitor. She shook her head with incredulous horror, then went to the cockpit door and stared through the peephole. Through the fisheye lens she saw a chaos of blood spatters and then the flailing disfigured face of a ghoul. The creature looked barely human; its eyes were wild with insanity and its face streaked with blood. The creature doubled over and retched blood and bile.

  Hackett threw herself back into her seat and snatched for her headset.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Sapporo Control this is EOA 553 747,” her voice was hoarse and strained on the radio. “Request vectors for nearest airport for immediate landing and law enforcement assistance. We are currently one hundred miles west of Obihiro and starting an emergency decent, leaving flight level 390 to flight level 300. Fuel onboard is 9 hours plus forty-five.”

  The delay in her headset from the Air Traffic Management Center lasted just two seconds.

  “Roger EOA 553, this is Sapporo Control,” the voice was calm and unflustered, and seemed to have no discernable accent. “Vectoring you now to Tokyo Narita Airport…”

  SITUATION ROOM

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  General Neuwirth’s head wavered and then shattered into a thousand pixilated fragments. In the situation room the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sat forward in sudden alarm.

  “General Neuwirth? Can you still hear us?”

  The silence lasted for several seconds before the teleconference connection from USFK Command corrected itself and the General’s face re-emerged, whole and intact on the large TV monitor.

  “I’m still here, sir,” Vince Neuwirth said from South Korea. In the background the assembled team gathered around the conference room table could hear the muffled ‘crump’ of explosions through the speakers.

  “Camp Humphreys is under attack from the infected,” the General kept his voice remarkably calm and casual. “The contagion is spreading so quickly, it is impossible to lock down.”

  In the Situation Room, SecState and SecDef exchanged ominous glances. They turned to Quentin Fletcher like they might to a doctor for a diagnosis.

  The USAMRIID Commander’s face was pale with shock.

  “Have you ever known an infection to spread so quickly?” Jim Poe asked discreetly.

  “No. Never,” Fletcher said.

  On the screen, General Neuwirth sat at his desk, his hands clasped tightly together like he was trying to restrain himself. His face was drawn, his attention divided between the monitor and the distracting sounds of fighting in the background that seemed to be coming closer. His answers were punctuated by a fresh series of explosions.

  “All our troops are engaged. We’ve set up a perimeter around the Camp, but I don’t know how long it will hold. The units we dispatched into Seoul to deal with the initial crisis are no longer reporting – I can only assume they have been overrun.”

  “Can you evacuate the Camp? Are you able to abandon your position and withdraw further south?” Virginia Clayton asked.

  “That’s not possible, ma’am,” Neuwirth said. “We’re surrounded now and heavily engaged with the enemy. Their numbers are growing. I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time…”

  SAPPORO AIR CONTROL

  NORTHERN JAPAN

  The controller at the Sapporo Air Traffic Management Center keyed his mic and peered hard at his display screen as he began to speak.

  The room was a sterile, uncluttered, windowless shell, with desks and monitors arranged along both side walls, lit by vast banks of fluorescent lighting. The atmosphere was tense, conversation at the nearby desks polite and business-like. There was nothing in the room’s design or layout that could cause distraction. It was a place of fierce concentration filled with serious people.

  “EOA 553, this is Sapporo Air Control. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

  There was an unsettlingly drawn out pause before the pilot’s voice filled the controller’s headset; her words racked with the strain of rising alarm.

  “Sapporo Control, I don’t know!” Rosemary Hackett’s calm composure had been shredded by fear. “Something has happened to the passengers. Something horrible. They’re covered in blood, rampaging through the cabin of the aircraft. They appear to have been overcome with some affliction that has driven them insane. Some passengers have serious bite marks and are bleeding profusely. They’re howling, Sapporo Control. They sound like wild animals, and they’re trying to break in to the cockpit.”

  “Roger, 553,” the controller’s face stayed expressionless and his tone calm and level. “Switch to private frequency 123.45.”

  “Sapporo. Switching to 123.45.”

  On the new frequency the Air Traffic Management Center could talk directly to the airliner on a confidential line. The controller took a moment to get his supervisor’s attention with a curt, urgent wave of his hand.

  “Do you need ambulances on standby when you land, 553? Will you require emergency medical services and stretchers?” The shift supervisor at Sapporo plugged his headset into the console to overhear the pilot’s response. He was a middle-aged man in rumpled shirtsleeves and tie.

  “Jesus, Sapporo!” Rosemary Hackett screamed into the microphone. �
�We’ll need men with fucking guns and body bags. Hundreds of them if I don’t get this plane on the ground immediately.”

  The supervisor’s calm face cracked into a wide-eyed expression of alarm. He snatched off his headset and dived for a phone.

  “Roger, 553,” the controller went on without pause or any discernable change in his voice. “Standby.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw his supervisor nod his head vigorously. The controller understood.

  “EOA 553, you are instructed to contact US Air Force on 118.15. You will receive all further instructions from them. We will continue to monitor 123.45 if assistance is needed. Good day and good luck.”

  “Sapporo Control, switching to US Air Force 118.15,” Rosemary Hackett began to shake like a patient in the grips of high fever.

  MISAWA AIR BASE

  JAPAN

  The sharp clamour of the alert klaxon was so unexpected that for a long moment Captain Lance ‘Supa’ Bernard stared into space at the blinking red light with a startled blank frown on his face. Then realization struck him and a shot of surging adrenalin sprang him from his chair.

  “Scramble!”

  Bernard’s iPad fell from his lap and clattered to the ground. He ignored it, sprinting out through the door of the small maintenance office that was the base’s temporary alert shack. While the Japanese JASDF were transitioning into flying their new F-35 Lightnings, the USAF squadrons at Misawa were handling air defense duties and alerts, operating out of a temporary alert shack because the hardened aircraft shelters that housed the F-16s weren’t designed for the task.

  As Bernard ran towards his fighter, his mind became a whirl of possible threats. He had to suppress his first instincts of excitement and force himself to run through the most likely mundane scenarios.

  Pilots were never eager to see their name on the squadron’s flying schedule for alert duty. Most would be happy to do just about anything else on any given day because it was virtually guaranteed to be a dreary waste of a pilot’s time that rarely included actually flying. Bernard could count on one hand the number of air defense alerts that had been scrambled to since he had been posted to Misawa. Usually the threat was a Russian Tu-95 Bear bomber provoking the JASDF or USAF into a response by flying in international airspace close to Japan as part of the relentless strategic cat-and-mouse game between the world powers.

  Bernard was one of two pilots assigned to alert duty on Misawa Air Base that rotated in eight hour shifts around the clock. The pilots were expected to get their fully-armed Vipers airborne within five minutes of the alert sounding, and a long-established routine of advance preparation had gone into shaving precious seconds off that deadline.

  The pilots and maintenance officers prepared the aircraft for alert by performing all the pre-flight checks, pre-aligning the aircraft’s internal navigation systems, and setting up their personal gear in the cockpits. Bernard was already fully dressed as he dashed across the tarmac, with his G-suit and parachute harnesses hanging from a peg on the boarding ladder attached to the side of the waiting fighter and his helmet already connected to the Viper’s oxygen system and perched on the side of the cockpit. The helmet was the first thing Bernard’s eyes fixed upon as he ran into the hardened shelter. Then, as always, his breath was taken away by the hunched sleek menace that was his aircraft. It was a sight he never tired of; and once again an irrepressible child-like thrill surged through him as his eyes roamed over the needle-nosed fighter, crouched on the ground like a tethered bird of prey.

  The F-16C Block 50 was loaded with a full complement of air-to-air missiles, with four AIM-120D AMRAAM radar guided medium range missiles, and two AIM-9X short range IR-guided missiles. Bernard scrambled up the ladder as maintenance officers swarmed about him. Despite his calm façade, his heart was pounding in his chest. One of the support crew fumbled at his harness and the moment of clumsiness annoyed Bernard unreasonably. He bit his lip, inwardly fuming. Split-seconds mattered and he was impatient to be in the air. He knew his every action was being monitored.

  There were two F-16 fighter units based at Misawa, and the squadrons shared alert duty on rotation. The 14th Fighter Squadron, the ‘Fighting Samurai’ had drawn today’s duty.

  Bernard had been with the 14th for over a year, and although still young, had impressed his peers and leaders enough to upgrade to Flight Lead early. As a ‘baby flight lead’, the squadron schedulers were elated to have yet another qualified pilot to put in the alert rotation, but it meant pressure for Bernard. He had to be better than the next man; he had to prove himself alongside the seasoned veterans of the squadron.

  In the HAS next door, Bernard’s wingman for the alert shift was Lieutenant Colonel Kathy ‘Spike’ Arnold, the Director of Operations of the 14th. Arnold had put herself on the alert schedule as a last-minute fill in for a pilot whose wife was sick. As the second in command officer of the Samurai, she had other things to do, but pulling alert got her out of the office and away from the numerous line of sight taskings that might come her way.

  The alert siren had surprised Arnold, too. She bolted into action instinctively, beelining the thirty feet from where she sat to the stairs of her Viper and quickly zipped on her G-suit. The frantic footsteps of maintenance and weapons troops running toward the aircraft echoed in the metal-lined interior of the shelter. They swarmed over the jet, pulling safety pins out of missiles, closing access panels, removing wheel chocks, moving with the calm co-ordinated efficiency that only comes from discipline and practice.

  As Arnold climbed the ladder and slid herself into the ejection seat, one of the enlisted maintenance troops followed her closely. She grabbed at her helmet while two men clipped her harness to the parachute risers of the ejection seat and fastened her safety belt. Arnold flipped the battery and JFS switches and the Viper began to come alive, lights flickering, needles on instruments moving, and engine slowly growling to life.

  Bernard, in the other HAS, sat in the narrow confines of his cockpit staring at the same scene, as his F-16 quickly awakened beneath him like a beast stirring from hibernation. Adrenalin had his heart pounding, and blood sang in his ears. He was excited and apprehensive. He gulped a deep settling breath before keying the radio.

  “Samurai, check Victor.” The two pilots would be known as Samurai One and Samurai Two today.

  “Two!” Spike Arnold replied on her jet’s VHF radio.

  “Samurai check,” Supa Bernard repeated, this time on his jet’s main UHF radio.

  “Two!”

  Supa signalled to the crew chief standing in front of his jet, twirling his finger to indicate he was ready to taxi from the shelter. He nudged the throttle forward with his left hand and the heavily-loaded Viper began to roll. Spike’s jet emerged from her HAS at nearly the same time, and joined Supa on the long taxiway that ran parallel to the main runway at Misawa.

  FLIGHT 553

  INCHEON to LOS ANGELES

  OVER THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN

  “US Air Force, this is EOA 553 with you at flight level three hundred,” Rosemary Hackett switched frequency to 118.15 and spoke in a breathless rush of words. Her hands were shaking. She could hear passengers pounding furiously on the cockpit door, and their insane howls and snarls as they raged through the blood-spattered chaos of the aircraft’s cabin. “We need urgent assistance.”

  “Roger that,” the voice at the other end of the transmitted reply was unflustered and impersonal. “EOA 553, please confirm you have changed course to the new vectors.”

  “Confirmed!” the pilot’s voice became shrill, bordering on hysteria. The last vestiges of calm, composed propriety disappeared in a shriek of terror. She looked, terrified, over her shoulder. John Sommerville stood with his back against the cockpit door, bracing it against the impact of the hammering fists with his body. Rosemary could hear the man gasping to restrain his own sobs of fear. His face was ghostly white, his mouth gaped open and his eyes wide with terror.

  “Roger that, EOA 553,” t
he sterile voice was unmoved. “Please repeat the nature of your Mayday.”

  “I already reported that information to Sapporo, Air Force!” the last threads of Rosemary Hackett’s sanity began to unravel. Her voice became a strident splinter of panic. “Something has happened to the passengers. They are bleeding. They are covered in bites and wounds. They are pounding on the cockpit door, for God’s sake! They have attacked one another and rampaged through the cabin. There is blood splattered everywhere and now they are trying to break in to the cockpit.”

  “Roger. Standby.”

  SITUATION ROOM

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  The display map on the screen showed symbols on the streets of Seoul where clashes with security forces were occurring, each marker glowing with color-coded lights to indicate the current status. All the lights were red, and even as the faces around the conference table looked on in grim despair, new markers appeared in Gangnam-gu, south of the Han River, and at Hannam-dong, an exclusive area on the north side of the river, popular with foreign diplomats.

  The President looked bleak. “The infection is spreading,” he said heavily. “It’s broken beyond the Army’s containment lines.” Even as he spoke, another hot-spot lit the screen on the south side of the river. “Christ!”

  “Sir, it’s going to get much worse,” Colonel Fletcher said. “If this contagion had broken out in a small village, then perhaps it could have been isolated and contained, if it were possible to act swiftly enough. That’s not practical in a city the size of Seoul.”

  The President closed his eyes and massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers. His face was haggard, his eyes underscored with the dark purple bruises of fatigue and tension. He set his eyes on the Defense Secretary.