Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  “Jim? What are we doing over there to help stop this thing?”

  Jim Poe glanced up from his notes and cleared his throat. “We’re doing all we can, Mr. President,” he gave the short answer. “We’ve mobilized everyone we can spare at Camp Humphrey, and the troops still at Youngsan Garrison are already on the streets, working with South Korean riot units and police. Our troops at Camp Humphrey are now reportedly under siege. USFK Command doesn’t know how much longer they will be able to hold out.”

  The President groaned. For the past several years US forces in Korea had been in the process of relocating out of Youngsan to the larger facility at Camp Humphrey, fifty miles south of the city. The infection was spreading like an out of control wildfire.

  “Virginia. What’s happening diplomatically?”

  “The South Korean government is in turmoil, Mr. President. They’re scrambling to keep a lid on this spreading outbreak and dealing with the fallout of the barrage on their capital. I’m waiting to hear back from their Ambassador, but we’re getting reports that the President has been evacuated from the Blue House.”

  “Evacuated? To where?”

  “I don’t have that answer, Mr. President.”

  Again, President Patrick Austin grunted, then frowned. He was about to say more when a uniformed officer of the watch team knocked discreetly on the closed door to the room. All heads at the table turned.

  The man was one of the National Security Council team that staffed the Situation Room in shifts around the clock. He stood in the threshold of the conference room doorway with a slip of paper in his hand.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said deferentially to the President. “I have an urgent message for the Defense Secretary.”

  It seemed incongruously low-tech, but no one in the room carried personal communication devices beyond the door. Everyone’s cell phones and Blackberries were in small lockers outside.

  The officer walked around the edges of the room and leaned over Jim Poe’s shoulder. The Defense Secretary read the note, and his eyes grew wide with horror. He reached across the conference table and thumped a button on a communication console. The hissing static of a phone line filled the room.

  “Are you certain of this information?” Poe leaned over the desk and spoke into the console’s speaker.

  “Yes, sir. We’re forwarding the transcripts of all communications to you now.”

  Poe cut the line and sat back heavily in his chair. His face was white, as though he had been bled from the jugular. His eyes had the vague, unfocussed cast of a man caught in a living nightmare.

  He stared at the faces around the table, barely registering their curious expressions until his eyes fell on the President. He blinked, and took a deep shuddering breath before he spoke.

  “Mr. President, it seems as though the aircraft carrying our evacuated diplomatic staff from Incheon International Airport has been somehow infected with the contagion. Someone boarding the plane must have carried the infection with them.”

  Vice President Lincoln Hallmeyer reeled back in his chair, as though he had been punched in the chest. President Austin’s shoulders sagged. An audible anguished groan seemed to suck the air from the room.

  “They… they’re all infected?” National Security Advisor, Walter Ford, asked the question everyone wanted answered.

  Jim Poe sniffed. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s the same gruesome stuff we’ve seen on the television, except on the plane. They’re not human any more. They’re trying to break into the cockpit.”

  “Oh, my God,” Virginia Clayton gasped. She clamped her hand over her mouth. She was friends with the Ambassador and knew several of the people personally. Tears of compassion and grief welled in her eyes.

  “Are you sure of this information, Jim?”

  “Sir, the transcripts of communications between the two pilots and ground controllers are being sent. We’ll have them within minutes.”

  “Do the pilots still have control of the aircraft?”

  “At this stage, yes. The aircraft is still under control.”

  “Mr. President,” General Lawrence Knight, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs cleared his throat and spoke delicately. “If everyone aboard that plane is infected with the contagion, that plane is a flying bomb, currently on its way to America…”

  “Oh, my God,” Virginia Clayton said again.

  Around the room there was a garble of hushed urgent exchanges, voices rising in alarm. On a separate screen built in to one of the side walls of the conference room, pages of typed transcript appeared, looking like screen-shots from a computer monitor. The people assembled around the table read the pilot’s chilling words in stunned, mortified silence.

  “Oh, Christ,” Walter Ford croaked.

  Vice President Hallmeyer shook his head. “Sir, that plane cannot be allowed to continue on its course to America. We can’t permit it to land.”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded his head in agreement. Jim Poe nodded, reluctantly.

  The President’s eyes locked with Virginia Clayton’s. The Secretary of State looked shocked.

  “Sir, I disagree,” she said softly. “This aircraft carries our diplomatic staff.”

  “They’re infected!” Poe snapped. “They’re not human anymore.”

  “If suitably isolated, they might provide the answers we need to fight this biological contagion. Given the right security circumstances…”

  “Hell, no,” Jim Poe interrupted. “We can’t take the chance. We would be putting the entire country at risk. We reached consensus in the Cabinet room, remember?”

  “We could use one of the intelligence community’s secure black sites,” Virginia Clayton countered. In the past, the American government had operated secret interrogation facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Romania, Morocco and Poland to imprison suspects during the war on terror. “Or Guantanamo Bay.”

  “Sir, I agree with the Defense Secretary,” Colonel Fletcher said respectfully. “Although my medical instinct says we should seize this opportunity to study the contagion, the fact is that the risk outweighs the benefits. In the absence of a cure, prevention is the only solution. At the moment the contagion is spreading across Seoul. It will spread further. China and Russia will suffer next. We’re isolated, and we should work to preserve that isolation in accordance with the measures you outlined in the Cabinet meeting.”

  “You don’t think the contagion could be contained in a safe laboratory situation, General?”

  “Sir, I don’t know – and that’s what scares me. USAMRIID deals with the most virulent biosafety Level 4 diseases known to mankind, but we have experience dealing with them and the facilities to manage their study. I’ve never seen anything like what we’re seeing in Seoul.”

  President Austin nodded his head gravely. He pushed himself up out of his chair and stood for a moment, swaying slightly with fatigue and crushing despair.

  “Thank you all for your comments. Jim, where is the plane right now?”

  “It’s over the ocean, sir. About a hundred miles north east of the coast of Japan.”

  The President nodded. “I need some time to think.”

  SAN PEDRO

  CALIFORNIA

  “Captain Ortiz?”

  “Speaking,” Ben Ortiz frowned, trying to place the vaguely familiar voice on the other end of the phone line.

  “Captain, it’s Colonel Harris from Battalion HQ at the 160th.”

  “Sir,” Ortiz blinked. He looked to his wife who had come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She had a puzzled question in her eyes.

  The 160th Infantry Regiment was a National Guard unit garrisoned at Inglewood – part of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. Ortiz was Delta Company Commander of the 1st Battalion, based in the San Pedro region.

  “The Battalion has been called up by the President,” Colonel Harris said bluntly. “The Title Ten orders are on their way from the Governor as we speak. I’m giving you a heads-up.”

&
nbsp; “What’s the mission, sir?”

  “Your company has been ordered urgently to the San Ysidro Port of Entry at San Diego. You’ll be working alongside units from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Pendleton. There will be other assets as well. It’s part of a major deployment stretching from the west coast to east codenamed ‘Operation Hold Firm’.”

  “An immigration issue?” Ortiz frowned. For several years illegal immigration had been a deeply divisive political issue for successive Federal Governments. Traditionally, National Guard units had only limited operational value and strict rules of deployment in such situations, working in the shadows of Customs and Border Protection agents to erect barriers and provide transport and logistical support. If this was a political stunt, it promised to be a boring and frustrating wrench away from his family.

  “No. It’s not an immigration issue. The President has ordered the Mexican border and the Canadian borders closed – immediately. Your company will be part of the military effort to enforce that order using all means available and necessary.”

  Ortiz had heard nothing brewing on the grapevine, which was unusual. Normally orders to mobilize were preceded by days of rumor, newspaper headlines and speculation. The call from Colonel Harris had caught him completely by surprise.

  “Sir... is this somehow connected to the news we’re seeing on television coming out of Korea?”

  “Probably,” Colonel Harris gruffed. He was a huge, imposing giant of a man who has spent most of his twenty-one year career as an infantry specialist in the active Army, completing deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He had been nicknamed ‘The Rock’. He wasn’t the kind of soldier to chat idly on a telephone with his officers. But the orders from the Department of Defense had startled even him.

  “Get your vehicles pre-tripped and a convoy plan to me for approval before midnight. Delta Company is expected to be in San Diego and ready for action within twenty-four hours.”

  WQZT-TV TELEVISION STUDIOS

  WASHINGTON D.C.

  The Washington news program began with a fanfare of music and a graphic of the White House that faded to reveal the show’s anchors sitting side-by-side behind a wide desk. They were a middle-aged man and woman – he a veteran news anchor with the conservative classical features of a ‘50’s film star, and she a woman in her late forties with short blonde hair and a take-me-seriously face. In the artificial, cosmetic world of television, she was an aberration; a respected journalist rather than a pretty young network pinup.

  The date appeared at the bottom of the screen, followed by a scrolling ticker-tape of the day’s headlines. The opening graphic was replaced by a map of Asia in flames with the headline, ‘Our World in Crisis’.

  The fanfare ended and the two hosts turned to stare down the lens of the studio camera.

  “We come to you today at a time when unprecedented peril sweeps across Asia and Eastern Europe, with reports that millions of people have been infected by the NK Plague,” the man said. He ran through a summary of the most recent horrific headlines, and alerted viewers to a special news bulletin that would be broadcast by the network later in the evening.

  The woman anchor picked up her cue seamlessly and carried the narrative forward.

  “Meanwhile, in America, we understand the President is set to officially announce a series of emergency measures later today, including a plan to urgently reinforce and fortify our northern and southern borders. The Mexican border, in particular, will be heavily defended. Joining us to discuss the issue further are Senator Wilfred Watson and Texas Governor, Jed Brown,” the picture on screen split to show two politicians. “And in the studio alongside us is Bernard Buttersworth, author of ‘Don’t Fence Me In’. Mr. Buttersworth is also an Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Morton Institute. Welcome, gentlemen.”

  The guests nodded acknowledgement. Bernard Buttersworth smiled thinly. He was one of the regular ‘talking heads’ who appeared on the news magazine programs circuit. Known for his outspoken criticism of the Austin government, he was a man in his seventies, with a full shock of silver hair and a bland, forgettable face. Sometime in the past he had undergone vanity cosmetic surgery. Now the flesh around his eyes appeared unnatural. He stared into the camera.

  The male anchor had been listening to the introductions, feigning interest. He directed his first question to the Texas Governor.

  “Governor Brown? These measures the White House has announced seem almost draconian. Is President Austin over-reacting?”

  “No,” the Governor said bluntly. He had a sun-browned face and the friendly, amiable expression of a good neighbor. He was a veteran of the political scene in Texas. “I think the President has acted forcefully. The measures announced make a statement. The guy is telling the world that America is taking all measures to defend itself from the catastrophe of the NK Plague, and that the Government is serious about our survival.”

  “You don’t think sending tens of thousands of armed National Guard troops to the border is extreme?” the news anchor prompted.

  “No,” Governor Brown shook his head, then made his face into an expression of frustration. “What you don’t have is context. And in the context of the situation, these measures are not extreme at all.”

  “Context?” the female anchor joined the questioning.

  “The US-Mexico border is over nineteen hundred miles long, running all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico,” Jed Brown said. “Over twelve hundred miles of that border runs through Texas… but we have only one hundred miles of man-made barriers.”

  “But the troops, Governor? Surely that’s an over-reaction at this stage?” the female anchor tried again to manufacture some controversy.

  “No, it’s not,” Jed Brown stood his ground. A flush of color came into his cheeks and his brows beetled. “In 2006, George W. Bush sent over six thousand National Guards troops to southern border states, and in 2010, Barack Obama sent over a thousand.”

  “Do you feel these measures are legal?”

  “Of course,” the Texan’s irritation was beginning to show through his amiable façade. “They’re perfectly legal, and necessary. We’ve had the ‘Secure Fence Act’ in place since 2006, and that piece of law authorizes more barriers and surveillance equipment. President Austin is well within his rights… and even if he wasn’t I’d back him anyhow. We need to protect America from this infection. High border walls are essential.”

  “We already have fencing,” Senator Wilfred Watson interjected, sounding bored. The male anchor’s eyes narrowed, sensing a spark of controversy. Jed Brown spoke over the top of the interruption.

  “We have just seven hundred miles of fencing. It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. In 2017, over three hundred thousand people were apprehended crossing the border – and they’re just the ones our Customs and Border Patrol people caught. That might be fine with some people, but we’re now talking about a situation where just one person,” he held up a finger to emphasize his point, “just one person crossing that border can potentially bring death and plague to the entire nation.”

  The two anchors worked together, playing good-cop, bad-cop.

  “Senator Wilfred Watson? You disagree?”

  The image changed to a split-screen to show the female anchor and the Senator from New York side-by-side.

  “Of course,” Watson said. He was a man in his fifties with wavy black hair and a mouth that turned down at the corners. “But more importantly, the people of America disagree. Border walls have been political poison for more than one President in the past, and Austin is headed down the same path. It’s a waste of billions of dollars, and it’s an extravagance America cannot afford in these troubling times.”

  Again the image on screen changed to a wide shot of the two anchors and their in-studio guest, Bernard Buttersworth. On the polished tabletop was a copy of the man’s book.

  “Mr. Buttersworth, let me go to you. You’ve been an outspoke
n critic of this President. Do you agree with Senator Watson?”

  “Yes,” the guest said. He had his hands clasped in front of him and looked awkward on television. He suddenly realized he was facing the anchorwoman. He jerked around in his seat until he stared into the camera.

  “President Austin has misread the global situation, and he has misread the will of the people.”

  The male anchor smiled wanly. “I want to play a clip for you and get your reaction, Mr. Buttersworth. This is an exchange in the White House Briefing Room that took place just a little earlier. It’s a moment between Homeland Security Secretary, Travis Dellahunty, and one of our WQZT-TV family of journalists who was seeking clarification of the President’s pending announcement about the border wall.”

  The scene cut to the muted purple shades of the Briefing Room. On the left of the screen hung the draped folds of the American flag. Behind the podium the Homeland Security Secretary was addressing a journalist who stood off camera.

  “We are going to replace current sections of wall, and we do plan on building the rest of the wall – immediately,” Dellahunty said.

  “How soon will this be happening?”

  “I said immediately,” Homeland Security smiled tightly. “Troops will be deployed to the border and Army engineers are already on their way. I expect the President to have more details later tonight, and in the days ahead.”

  “So this wall is being funded from the military budget?”

  “Those details haven’t been hammered out yet, and it’s not my role to pre-empt the President. I can’t tell you about the funding. But I can tell you about the action we’re taking. America will have a solid, defendable, impassable wall along the Mexican Border and we will be using the considerable resources at our disposal to make that happen immediately.”

  The image cut back to the studio. The male anchor raised his eyebrows as he looked across the desk.

  “Your comment, Mr. Buttersworth?”

  “Clearly the Homeland Security Secretary has been caught off-guard by this announcement, as has – I suspect – the entire Austin government. There is a sense of scrambling panic in the way they’re reacting to the NK Plague. From the outside, the White House seems to be chaotically reacting with knee-jerk measures,” he gestured with his hands as he spoke, still making small irritating shifts on his chair.