“But what about Australia?” the President railed. “They have an alliance with the New Zealanders. They might feel compelled to go to the defense of the Kiwis.”
“Not if we speak to their government first, sir,” Walter Ford said. “If we make the situation understood and promise the Aussies we will set up permanent naval base facilities along their east coast against any future Chinese threat, they will comply. We could also vow to ensure their northern coastline remains free of the ‘boat people’ problem that has plagued the country for years. Right now, I imagine they have every ship they can spare in the waters off Darwin searching for refugees trying to flee Asia. We could police the waters for them. It would be in both country’s interests.”
President Austin felt cornered – but he also knew there was no other choice.
The dire decision had been made…
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE (MAIDAN NEZALEZHNOSTI)
KIEV
UKRAINE
They came to the Maidan in their thousands, travelling on early morning busses and trains. Some arrived the night before and slept cold on the streets. Others had walked for miles to take part in the protest march.
They were mainly young activists in their twenties and thirties – understanding of social media and brimming with the entitlement of their generation. They were doctors and lawyers, university students and factory workers, as bright eyed and ebullient as people about to see a concert.
Throughout the morning their numbers grew until over fifteen thousand swelled the streets that surrounded Independence Square. On Architect Horodecki Street someone lit a blue smoke flare. On Kosciol Street a dozen of the protesters wore marching band drums strapped to their chests. The crowds continued to grow until every route to the Square was choked and blocked to traffic.
In the middle of the morning the sun finally broke through the grey overcast. Kyrylo Hütz put a bullhorn to his lips and called the crowd around him to action.
“Brothers and sisters of the Revolution! It is time we marched. It is time we showed the puppet government that we will no longer be oppressed by Moscow or their Kiev cronies. We march for freedom!”
A spontaneous eruption of cheering and applause rang out, surging through the crowd as the word spread further along the street. Drums banged and a trumpet blared. A smoke flare bloomed a billow of orange smoke.
Kyrylo felt the intoxicating thrill of power.
“What do we want?” he inflamed the crowd.
“An end to the puppet government!”
“What do we want?”
“Protection from the undead hordes!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
The protesters clenched their fists and thrust them into the air as they marched, winding through the wide central streets of the city, converging on Independence Square. On other streets in nearby parts of the city, more delegates took up the cry of the revolution. The sound in the air was the menacing rumble of an army on the move.
In a hotel room overlooking Independence Square, Yuriy Lyachko sat at a curtained window and watched the approaching human tide through binoculars. At his side lay his cell phone. He heard the roar and clamour of the crowd before the crowds appeared. They burst onto the Square as a solid wall of waving banners and crying voices. It was an organised chaos of color and noise.
Yuriy watched on, grimly satisfied.
On the rooftops of nearby government buildings, SBU Security Officers stood watch with sniper rifles. Other SBU officers had infiltrated the swelling crowds, singling out the ring-leaders who could be identified by their red organiser armbands.
At a secret facility on the outskirts of Kiev, the Berkut were assembling.
The Berkut were Ukraine’s ‘Special Police Force’; a paramilitary unit charged with maintaining civil order. They were brutal and ruthless. Every problem to the Berkut was a nail… and they were the hammer.
They paraded in full riot gear wearing head-to-toe body armor, wielding heavy rubber batons and riot shields. Their commanders ordered them aboard buses where they sat, poised, while the sun rose higher and the day began to turn hot.
When the wave of protesters reached the northern side of the Square and began spilling across the open plaza, Yuriy Lyachko reached for his cell phone and called Kyrylo.
Noise swirled around the Square in deep rhythmic chants of protest. Giant placards and banners bobbed above the heads of the crowd as the marching phalanxes funnelling along each street began to join into one huge coalescing entity.
“Don’t let the momentum of the march stall,” Yuriy insisted.
Kyrylo had to clamp his free hand over his ear to hear the instructions. The sound around him became like the undulating roar of a storm sea.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You must find a place to make a speech,” Yuriy urged the big, bearded man. “Go to one of the statues and use the bullhorn to address the crowd. They need to hear the message of the revolution. They need to be inspired by words that will unite them into action.”
“Yes!” Kyrylo said. “I understand.”
Yuriy set down the phone and smiled slyly. Kyrylo’s vanity was well known. He was a low-level local Kiev organiser of the movement, but Yuriy had seen the envy in the bearded man’s eyes when he had arrived at the restaurant the night before. He had seen the pathetic hunger for respect on his face when the woman had offered her body to him. Kyrylo wanted to be a ‘big man’ too. He wanted the adulation. He wanted the glory and the trappings of power.
Kyrylo strode to the pedestal of the Independence Monument and raised the bullhorn to his lips.
The monument was a two hundred foot high column in the center of the square that had been erected to commemorate the independence of Ukraine. At the top of the column stood mounted a figurine of a woman with guilder-rose branches in her arms. The bronze statue alone weighed over twenty tons. It was a symbol of freedom – the perfect backdrop to his speech.
“Citizens of Ukraine!” Kyrylo cried, his voice amplified a hundred times by the power of the bullhorn. “Listen to me. Listen to the call of the revolution.”
He looked out on a writhing sea of chanting, cheering faces. The crowd punched at the air with clenched fists. Banners waved. Bright plumes of colored smoke swirled into the sky. Kyrylo felt carried away, uplifted by this glorious moment that had made him the center of attention.
“The undead are massing across the border. They have infested China and now Russia lies in their path. We are next, and yet our government does nothing!”
A deafening chorus of cheers rang out but within the heart of the massed crowd, the tone began to turn outraged.
“The government must go!” Kyrylo urged, feeding the discontent. The protest had begun with smiling faces and a sense of adventurous good cheer; a peaceful protest to demonstrate the will of the people. Now the true face of the beast began to reveal itself. People were scared. People were in fear of their lives. They wanted action before the infected horde swept through Ukraine.
“We must take up arms!” Kyrylo sensed the changing tone of the protest and threw gasoline on the flames of their fear. “We must overthrow the puppet government and take up arms against the undead!”
In the front ranks of the crowd, an undercover SBU officer raised her fist in the air and chanted with the rest of the crowd. She was wrapped in a thick anorak jacket and wore a scarf pulled tight around her throat and a cap on her head to hold the bundle of her long blonde hair.
“We must take up arms!” the SBU officer shouted, her voice just one of twenty thousand that repeated the mantra. The sound of the chanting grew so loud that the sudden retort of the pistol in her hand was muffled.
Kyrylo sagged suddenly with a shocked grimace of pain on his face and his shirt splashed by bright red blood.
In the aftermath of the public assassination, chaos reigned.
Watching on from a nearby rooftop the SBU Commander reached for his radio.
103RD ROCKET BRIGADE
ULAN-UDE
NORTH OF MONGOLIA
“Verify the target coordinates,” Colonel Pevtsov’s face was grave.
“Verified and confirmed,” Major Rodchenko said. His mouth felt dry. He could hear the racing beat of his heart beneath the stiff tunic he wore.
“Get Operational-Strategic Command Eastern Military District on the line.”
There was a momentary pause before Rodchenko said, “Command is standing by, Colonel.”
Pevtsov grunted. “Get the Defense Minister on the Blue Phone.”
This took longer. The Colonel waited, staring at the bank of monitors along the wall. Some showed maps of the Mongolian region. Some displayed live video feeds from where the Iskander missiles stood, mounted to their 9P78 transporter erector launchers. The missiles were vertical, their nuclear payloads ready for release.
“The Defense Minister is on the line. He is standing by.”
Pevtsov went to a small safe in the wall above his desk. He came back with a plastic card, the size of a cigarette packet. It was red on one side and yellow on the other. He picked up the phone to Operational-Strategic Command.
“Red. Four-One-One-Five-One-Nine,” the Colonel spoke into the phone, enunciating each number carefully and precisely. Then he flipped the card over and listened, checking off the letters being relayed to him to confirm they matched the yellow side of his card. Satisfied, he broke the connection and snatched for the Blue Phone to the Defense Minister in Moscow.
The command bunker was eerily silent, as if each man at their control panels sat holding their breath.
The Colonel read the letters on the yellow side of the card over the phone and then listened carefully as the Minister repeated the red numerical sequence. When the process was finished and the verification complete, the colonel said a brief, “Thank you, Minister,” then hung up the phone.
He turned to Major Rodchenko.
“Verification is complete,” he stated formally. “The launch of tactical nuclear weapons has been authorised.”
Around each man’s neck hung a key on a chain. They inserted them into the master control console and turned their keys simultaneously. The panel instantly lit with a bank of red buttons. One by one, Colonel Pevtsov flipped up the plastic covers and crushed all six buttons under his thumb.
“Launch complete.”
“Good launch,” a control panel operator confirmed thirty seconds later, reading the data on his display screen. “No faults. All six missiles are inbound to targets.”
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE (MAIDAN NEZALEZHNOSTI)
KIEV
UKRAINE
From his hotel room overlooking Independence Square, Yuriy Lyachko saw the convoy of buses roar towards the Maidan and felt a sick lurch of fear tie his guts into knots.
There were eight vehicles in the motorcade, their windows blacked out, their exhausts belching great oily slicks of diesel fumes into the smoke-filled sky. The buses slowed to a stop in a long line, and from the doors spilled hundreds of dreaded Berkut riot police.
The troops were dressed in camouflage fatigues, wearing black chest guards with ‘Berkut’ written in white letters across their backs. Each man wore a full-faced black helmet and carried a heavy rubber baton and a white riot shield. The sound of their stomping boots on the pavement was unnerving.
An officer of the Berkut climbed onto the top of a bus while his men formed into two long lines facing the enormous crowd.
“You will disperse immediately!” the officer spoke to the protesters with the aid of a bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly. If you do not leave the Square you will be arrested and thrown in jail. The government has not authorised this march.”
At the mention of the despised Ukraine government, the milling sea of protesters roared their disapproval. They began chanting, calling for the removal of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.
Smoke flares filled the sky – and then a rock was thrown.
It flew in a high parabolic arc, hurled from somewhere deep inside the press of protesters. It was the size of a baseball. It hit the side of the Berkut commander’s bus, just a few feet from where he stood as he continued to bark instructions into the bullhorn. The impact of the rock sounded like a gunshot.
“Advance!” the Berkut commander gave the order.
The two lines of riot police came forward, stomping their boots and drumming their batons menacingly against their raised shields. They advanced as a solid wall. The Berkut were the government’s feared storm troopers, loathed by the population for their notoriously heavy-handed methods of law enforcement. The crowd began to back away warily. The cheering died in their throats and became something wavering and fearful. The Berkut came on, relentless and formidable.
The closest ranks of protesters tried to melt back into the crowd, but the press of bodies in the Square behind them was solid. They had nowhere to run.
“Attack!” the Berkut commander gave the merciless order.
The two lines of riot police raised their batons and charged the helpless protesters, roaring in triumph and anticipation as they advanced. The Berkut came forward wielding their batons, their shields locked together like a wall. They fell upon the front ranks of the wailing crowd and flailed them with their weapons.
A great cry of blind panic rose up. People attempted to turn and flee. They screamed in fear. They tried to scatter beyond the reach of the batons, but the Berkut were well-drilled and disciplined. They used the broad of their shields and the heels of their boots. They used their momentum and the rise and fall of their batons. The Square ran red with blood.
Most of the protesters turned, screaming, and fled into the streets surrounding the Square. But hundreds were caught with no escape. The Berkut beat them bloody. Young men and women alike were knocked to the ground. Many suffered head wounds from the savage batons. Jaws were broken, lips and noses crushed. The Berkut drove into the crowd for thirty savage minutes.
One young man stumbled as he turned to flee the crashing batons. His heavy backpack, filled with university textbooks, dragged him to the ground. A Berkut trooper struck the man with his baton, crushing his nose across his face. The man screamed in pain, his mouth filled with blood and broken teeth. His teenage girlfriend tried to drag him to safety, but the Berkut struck her across the back of the head. She fell, draped over her boyfriend’s prone body. The Berkut stomped on them with their heavy boots as the riot line drove deeper into the crowd.
Some protesters in the shadows threw rocks at the riot police. One man threw a Molotov cocktail that burst in a pool of orange fire around the closest bus. Others threw empty bottles and broken pieces of brick. By the flickering flames of the spreading blaze, the Berkut cleared the Square of protesters, leaving a battlefield of bleeding crumpled bodies in their wake.
Through the lenses of his binoculars, Yuriy Lyachko watched the Berkut go about their grim work with rising horror and a sudden sense of peril.
“Lyudmyla! Lyudmyla!” he called the girl from the hotel bathroom. She had been showering. She came into the bedroom startled, her blonde hair damp and tangled, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Get your fucking things packed!”
Yuriy leaped back from the window. He did not notice the girl was naked. He was overcome with fear. It gripped around his throat like a cold clammy hand until he could barely breathe.
“The Berkut are in the Square. Soon the SBU will come searching for me. We must get out of Kiev now.”
The girl threw on jeans and a t-shirt, and packed her other belongings quickly. Yuriy stood by the hotel room’s doorway, dancing from foot to foot with impatience, lashing the girl with his tongue until she was dressed and ready. Yuriy led her down the stairwell to a fire door at the back of the building that opened into a trash-filled alley. At the far end of the narrow side-street waited a parked car. It was a non-
descript sedan, dented and sagging on tired suspension. Yuriy ran to the vehicle, dragging Lyudmyla by the hand. “Nowhere is safe for us. The SBU will hunt me down like a dog. We must get to Odessa,” Yuriy choked. “I have friends who work on the Harbour. They are loyal to the revolution. They will get us to safety.”
SITUATION ROOM
THE WHITE HOUSE
The SDO leaned discreetly through the door of the conference room.
“Your call is being connected, Mr. President. President Xiang of China is waiting on the line.”
Patrick Austin glanced at Jim Poe and Walter Ford, then punched the console button to put the call on speaker. The atmosphere was fraught with tension and crackling nervous energy. Despite the high stakes, Patrick Austin’s voice sounded remarkably composed and controlled.
“President Xiang. Thank you for taking my call.”
“What is it you want, President Austin?” the Chinese President’s English was heavily accented. He sounded surly and belligerent.
Walter Ford scribbled a quick message and slid it across the desk.
He’s still stinging from China’s forced back-down and the destroyers we sank. His pride has been bruised. HWC – handle with care!
“I’m calling to discuss China’s future, Mr. President,” POTUS went on after a brief pause. “I’ve been in consultation with my advisors, and it’s our belief that your initial plan was to keep your armada in the South China Sea until the infection burned itself out. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” President Xiang said.
“Mr. President, the latest intelligence we have suggests that the contagion is much more resilient than first suspected. We had hoped the infected would decompose within a few days or a week. We now believe the plague will continue to rage across the world’s population centers for many months…”
“Yes,” Xiang said. “My people have arrived at the same conclusions.”
“President Xiang, our intelligence services assess that your fleet cannot sustain itself with enough food and fuel to outlast the plague. We estimate that within ninety days your fuel supplies will become critical and food will be in shortage.”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 49