Medora Wars

by Wick Welker

  “Well, tell your fancy President that, because World War Three is happening out there right now.” Douglas continued looking up at the sky as if he were daydreaming.

  “Isn’t he your President, too?” Dave said, long ago dropping the military formality with Douglas.

  “As soon as he gets a country back, then I’ll start calling him the President. What is he now? President of an underground lair somewhere like fucking Lex Luthor?” Douglas said.

  “I am going to call him. I’m going to tell him to get us the hell out of here, and to nuke this place back to hell.” Stark swiftly turned around and lowered himself to the building below, leaving Douglas and Dave in silence.

  “Hey, wait!” Dave yelled out as Stark disappeared past the floor of the roof. “What are they doing with us? Why don’t they just overtake this place and kill us?”

  After a small pause, Stark’s voice echoed up from the hatch, “I think we’re hostages.”

  *****

  The new host of Ciudad Juárez was clustered in between a main military front that lined the almost twenty mile span of the border between El Paso and the rolling, dusty hills on the west side of the city. The horde curled and rippled, constantly moving in incremental steps. An arm of the horde moved northward from the border, feeling out how far the U.S. military front extended. It pushed slightly up the small mountains in the west, understanding that the enemy was accumulating in the foothills and valleys there as well. It expanded and then circled back in on itself, cycling its outer membrane with the infected from the center of the city to restart the reconnaissance once again.

  Men and women soldiers crouched behind walls of infantry fighting tanks, with their rifles pointed toward the dirt, waiting. Behind them laid the El Paso streets filled with thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of even more soldiers who waited underneath deadened streetlights and a dry wind. They all breathed with a quickened panic, uncertain of the strength of their modern enemy. They had known how to fight terrorists in foreign hills and desperate factions in the deserts, but they had never before had to face an enemy whose soldiers had no sense of self-preservation. They felt like they were about to battle with an actual hurricane, whose winds and rain didn’t understand the horror of pain or fear of death.

  The only sound was garbled radios and gunfire in the air. There was always a tank sputtering out a slug into the horde to the west. The senior officers, who watched from the downtown El Paso office buildings, learned quickly that they had to fire into the horde at random. When they tried to fire in one location to pound out a large mound of the infected, the horde would quickly recede from the impact, and move toward the source of the firing to overcome the squads whose tanks were making the assault. It took them several hours to realize that they weren’t fighting an army of individuals but a single entity that could react to an attack from a great distance by flooding a previously empty and unguarded area, in seconds.

  The U.S. tried an attack from the south of Juárez. The neighborhood buildings had become exposed like old bones as the horde moved up and northward to face the main U.S. border assault. Slowly, twenty thousand troops moved through the crushed streets of blood that were left behind. Every single home, market, or office building was completely collapsed into mounds of bricks and thin sheetrock from the weight of the infected that had crammed into each building, looking for live human flesh. The trees that once stood erect had all been digested by the horde. The city had been stomped out by millions of feet that had churned all the city blocks into a humidified, organic crater.

  The troops vomited as they crept along, choking down their horrors, and waiting until they could catch the back end of the horde and attack. As they filled the lower end of the city, they only saw the backs of the soldier in front of them, wondering. Once night came, the commanding officers told them to stay put in the streets and rubble until morning, when they would have better visibility. It wasn’t until the early morning that they felt small stirrings in the road beneath them. They felt their boots slightly vibrate as they heard crumpled street signs rattling against metal posts.

  As the ground hummed with vibration, the officers told the units to advance at dawn, as they could now see the back edge of the horde pushing farther north into the U.S. border at the other end of the city. The soldiers stretched their legs, and the tanks sprung into life as early sunlight stretched through the battered neighborhoods. As they advanced, flooding through the streets, some men at the frontline saw the crowds of the horde at the far end of an open park. The infected moved in parallel lines to each other, running in concise rows that cycled up into the horde like a clan of penguins in the arctic trying to stay warm.

  Thousands of troops marched into the large park with a row of tanks behind them. Several soldiers set up mortars and ground machine guns in the muddied field, as the senior officers directed specific units into varying patterns as they prepared to attack. The horde continued to push north, away from the league of soldiers that was lining up behind them. The men and women eased themselves into the routine of war, suddenly not so fearful of the mindless movements of the infected mothers, fathers, and children before them. They laughed within themselves, feeling ridiculous at the fear that set with them throughout the previous night.

  It wasn’t until all the infantry tanks had lined up neatly for an even attack across the horde, and all twenty thousand soldiers had evenly filled the large park, that the reconnaissance Apache helicopters told them to hold off. The dawn light had now slanted enough into the shallow valley that they could finally understand the trap. They would’ve seen it sooner at night with infrared cameras, but the walking dead don’t glow with infrared.

  What they didn’t see until daylight was something they didn’t think a horde of the mindless infected was capable of: deception. As the main horde moved northward, there were two flank arms of the horde that moved south around the soldiers. They filed down through the streets, several miles away from the main military assault. The northern horde kept creeping up through the city, drawing in the army from the south as the flanking arms inched closer and closer in on them.

  It wasn’t until a row of tanks shot their first rounds into the northern horde that the senior officers told them to stop and to pivot all units in the opposite direction. As the men and woman scrambled, and the tank turrets turned outward, the flanking hordes filed into the park and streets where thousands of soldiers waited. The infected spun in like a swarm of bees, moving swiftly in circular patterns into the soldiers. The horde moved like a spinning cloud of arms and legs, with no one individual moving in a straight line as to avoid a clean shot from the gunfire.

  The tanks shot blindly into the crowds, and the soldiers fired from the hip, scattering bullets into the torrent of raw human flesh that broke over them. As they aimed and fired at a plume of infected bodies that moved into their unit, another line of the infected would burst in from another direction, completely overtaking the soldiers. The entire assault force was soon engulfed on all sides by the horde, with no way to back out, and only a wall of millions of the infected north of them. As they were swarmed on all sides, it became clear that the only reasonable attack was to pull all the pins on their grenade belts, and run into the horde. Their kamikaze blasts burst open a pocket of momentary space into which a tank could fire, which would open up even more space. This strategy worked for several minutes within a unit until all the soldiers were spent, leaving just a lone tank that would soon become a prison for its inhabitants to starve in the coming days.

  As the devastation in the south overtook the Army, the infected swarmed the western mountains of Juárez, where tens of thousands of ground troops snuck onto the soft dirt toward the city. The horde rose up from the wide valley of the city, and washed down the small dips of the foothills, where the soldiers were stashed. Waves of the horde billowed up from above, drowning the men and women before they could even raise their rifles to shoot. Jet fighters constantly screamed through the sk
y, dropping pinpoint bombs in the heart of Juárez, now uncertain of their targets.

  Finally, at the El Paso border, the horde moved into the assault front in a synchronous lunge of millions of bodies falling onto gunfire and suffocating infantry tanks. They stacked around each tank, heaping up human bodies so quickly that when the tank tried to fire, the bodies dampened the blast, throwing flames into the cockpits and setting its occupants afire. The horde grew in numbers as it went, sensing when it needed recruitments. It would bite down on any given soldier to turn them toward their cause.

  The horde pulsated and inched forward; feeling for weakness, timing for attacks, and spewing its converting message of dominion and death toward the New Mexico border.

  Chapter Twenty Five: Medora, North Dakota

  A single black SUV drove down a wide road. The asphalt had cracked and splintered open. Thousands of dandelion heads poked through. The SUV had to zigzag around stalks of weeds that had grown several feet high during the last two years. The sun draped along long hills that sloped upward toward flat plateaus. Each hill sprawled out down toward the small homes, with colorful layers of rock and sediment that had caked on top of each other over thousands of years. They stood as silent giants over a small deserted town that was blackened out and gutted by the government over two years ago. A barb-wired fence fifteen feet high surrounded the entire town, with small patrol stations established every two miles. Not a soul had stepped into Medora until Mayberry, Novak, and Rambert rolled past a patrol gate as the Army soldiers stared at them in bewilderment.

  Mayberry had been holding his tongue for a while, waiting for Rambert to finally say something after the completely silent plane ride into Bismarck. They drove through part of the town that was built to resemble an old western street, with long sidewalks made of wood planks that jetted out from each small store. Charred homes and stores with littered glass scattered throughout the area as they drove. Mayberry rolled his window halfway down and heard only the crackling of glass and pebbles under the tires. There was no movement or sounds from the empty streets.

  Novak drove as Mayberry sat uncomfortably in the front passenger seat. He kept trying to catch a glimpse of Rambert’s face from the back seat in the side mirror. Rambert hadn’t said a word since the airport.

  “Uh, Mr. President?” Novak said gently, looking at Rambert’s face in the rear view mirror.

  “Yes, Mr. Secretary?”

  “Sir, I really think we should discuss the reports that we’ve been getting from El Paso.”

  “What about them?”

  “The horde is on American soil,” Mayberry added.

  “Oh that…” Rambert said.

  “Are we going to do anything about it?” Novak asked.

  “Mr. Secretary, I’m going to leave it in your capable hands for the moment,” Rambert said from behind them.

  “But… I can’t…”

  “Mr. Secretary, we have much more important matters to take care of here, in Medora.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Novak said.

  There was a small pause in the conversation as the SUV turned a corner at a collapsed church. Mayberry then erupted, “Larry! What are we doing? You can’t send three of the most powerful men in the country into an abandoned shit-hole town during the apocalypse of the, of the four horsemen!”

  “Mr. Director of the CIA, are you upset?” Rambert replied with a cooled tone. “You’re suddenly so… biblical.”

  “Of course, I’m fucking upset! You’re a disgrace, and you’re letting the greatest country that has ever been just wither away right in front of you.” Mayberry turned in his seat and sputtered more words at Rambert, who simply looked back at Mayberry’s frustrated eyes. “You shouldn’t even be the President anyway. You just fell ass-backward into the Presidency by default. What were you, twelfth in line? Can’t believe we have the Secretary of Health just going to let us fall into the hands of a bunch of terrorists.”

  “You don’t treat cancer until you find its primary source, Larry. Dr. Stark would’ve probably said something like that. We’re going to find the cancer here.”

  “The cancer is in Mexico!” Mayberry yelled.

  “Maybe…” Rambert looked away from Mayberry’s gaze and out the window.

  Mayberry continued, “And why don’t we have anyone with the CDC here with us, huh? Where are the lab people who are going to collect samples of the virus that we need?”

  “They’re coming in right behind us, don’t worry.”

  “I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to… go,” Mayberry yelled again, turning back in his seat to look out the window at a one-story building that stretched far down the block. The building wouldn’t have been so peculiar if it weren’t draped in a gigantic tent with biohazard signs all over it. “Well, I guess we’re here! Novak, stop the damn car.”

  “We’re going to figure it all out soon. If you leave, I will immediately remove you from your position as CIA director,” Rambert said as he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door.

  “This is insane. We’re not going to find a damn thing in there,” Mayberry said to Novak, who intentionally didn’t make eye contact.

  “Novak, stay here and keep your eyes and ears open,” Rambert said as he got out. “Me and Chuck are going to check things out first. You’ll know if I need anything.”

  As Mayberry and Rambert left the SUV and walked toward the building, a swift wind blew by them, rattling the hundreds of ropes that tied down the extensive canvases that draped over the entire length of the abandoned research facility.

  “It’s strange that I’ve actually never come out here myself,” Rambert said as he took a pocketknife from his suit pocket. “Considering that the entire catastrophe that is the United States, Mexico, Israel, Seoul… now Berlin all started right here. Right behind these walls, and it is behind these walls that we’re finally going to get some answers.”

  “Are just me and you really the only ones that are going in there?” Mayberry asked.

  “Yes, Chuck, I need your help. And it can only be you.” Rambert walked up to a wall of canvas that hung in front of them and stabbed his pocketknife in, dragging the handle all the way down to the ground. He ripped the hole upward with his hands, creating a wide space for them to pass. “They told me it should still have power.” He put his knife away. “Well, it should have power now that I told them to turn it on.”

  They stepped through into a darkened cave in between the canvass and the glass doors of the building. Rambert produced a single key from his pocket, opened the door, and walked into the dark foyer that swirled with dust as he entered. Mayberry reluctantly followed behind as Rambert flipped on a flashlight and searched a nearby wall for a light switch.

  “I’m allergic to mold, Larry. I’m going to have a coughing fit in about five minutes.” Mayberry brought his sleeve to his mouth and sneezed.

  “Just help me find a light.”

  They managed to find a light switch on the wall, which resulted in a few light bulbs popping, and the small sound of something sizzling in a distant part of the building, but a few lights did turn on.

  “Hey, look at that it worked.” Rambert put his flashlight away and looked around the receptionist’s desk. The entire floor and every surface were free of any objects but set silently covered in a thick layer of dust. “Well we certainly cleaned up after ourselves after we picked this place apart.”

  “Yeah, picked this place a part. Exactly, there’s nothing else to see. What are we doing here?”

  “What was it you were saying about Julius Caesar the other day, Chuck?” Rambert asked, walking over to a hallway that led away to a long corridor.

  “What are you talking about?” Mayberry asked.

  “You know, like a week ago when I brought up something about Caesar, and you said he was a… piece of shit or something to that degree?” Rambert said through squinted eyes.

  “Yeah, I didn’t like the warmongering dictator, is there something wrong w
ith that?”

  “No, no, not at all.” Rambert sneezed and walked into the hallway. “Let’s go this way.”

  “Fine.”

  Rambert flipped on more lights as they went, passing by dozens of small administrative offices. He went into one office and opened all the filing cabinets and desk drawers, which were completely empty. There was nothing in the room except furniture.

  “I’m telling you, we have everything from this facility locked up at the Pentagon. If you wanted to investigate something, we should’ve just gone there.” Mayberry walked out of the office and stopped in the hallway. “Why do you ask, anyway?” His tone changed from sarcastic to inquisitive.

  “Ask what?” Rambert said as they continued walking down the hallway.

  “About what I think about Julius Caesar?”

  “No reason, you just seem to be a man of… clear cut opinions. I’d be interested to hear more about what you think.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Oh… politics, global economics, American history, international interdependency, World War Two, native Americans, the New York outbreak, eugenics…”

  “Eugenics? What the hell are you talking about?” Mayberry tapped Rambert’s shoulder from behind.

  Rambert turned around and looked back at him in the stale light. Mayberry’s face had tightened together like a drumhead. “What?” Rambert said.

  “Hey,” Mayberry shrunk his lips together and raised a finger at Rambert, “why are you asking me all this?” He kept this finger high, almost up to Rambert’s eyes.

  Rambert gave him a slight smirk, an expression Mayberry had never seen before. “You just seem like an interesting person.”

  Mayberry dropped his finger. “Let’s find what you need and get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be your CIA director any more, okay?”

  “Hey, hey, don’t be so hasty, jeez.” Rambert walked down the hallway and turned a corner, disappearing from Mayberry’s view.