Medora Wars

by Wick Welker

  He suddenly missed the power plant back in Juárez, and for a brief moment, wished he were back there when he suddenly heard a cough in the distance. It was a single isolated cough that came from no apparent direction. Holding his breath, he waited to hear it again, wondering if it was just in his mind. He hoped there was someone he could talk to; someone he could sit in the desert with to discuss the fall of humanity. He wanted to talk about all the soon forgotten joys and follies of their ridiculous culture as the beast came from the south to overtake them. Waiting, he didn’t hear another hopeful cough in the distance.

  He wanted to keep sitting cross-legged, staring at the southern horizon, as his mind cleared. Suddenly, the vivid memory of having to clutch to a large antenna atop a Manhattan skyscraper filled his mind. He remembered the vicious faces of the infected that had snaked their way up from the streets to overflow the top of the building. He recalled the clarity of thought that he had at that moment. Only his own self-preservation held his thoughts, finally clearing away the monotony of his empty life. He grasped at that state of mind, trying to bring it into his consciousness, but he heard another cough that brought him back to his painful feet.

  “Hello?” he squeezed out from his dry throat. Only the wind answered. Waiting silently, he thought he heard the cough again just down the dry knoll where he stood. Walking blindly down the hill, he stepped quietly to listen, but only heard the crosswinds. Continuing in the same direction, he saw the bleached green color of the desert brush smearing over the sandy brown landscape. By chance his eye caught a dense green color pooled in a steep crease of the hill. He was about to keep walking when the green spot slightly moved. Staring for a minute longer, it looked like a long arm was reaching up to the sky, from the darkened floor.

  “Hey!” Dave yelled. “I see you. I’m coming!” He attempted to run but fell forward, skidding the heels of his hands on the rock shards beneath him. Understanding that his body was now entering starvation, he decided to walk slowly to the lonely figure lying alone in the desert.

  He imagined for a moment that he would miraculously find that the person was Dr. Stark. That somehow, after they had been separated inside a city full of twenty million of the infected dead, he would find him here now. He started playing the scene out in his mind but was quickly cut off when he realized that the person laying on the ground was actually him.

  “Dr. Stark!” Dave cried out, falling down in front of the doctor, whose lips and face were blistered over. The back of his neck was cherry red with white scales beginning to flake.

  “You...?” Stark turned his head up toward Dave. “You made it,” he stated.

  “We both made it.”

  “Do you have any water?” Stark said, squinting up at him while trying to rise.

  Dave helped him to a sitting position. “I have a little.” He unscrewed the lid and handed it to him. “Here you go. Are you hurt?”

  “No, no, just very dehydrated.” Stark grabbed the canteen and swiftly swallowed the warm water. “I’m glad to see you’re alive, Tripps.”

  “Barely.”

  “Did they attack you?”

  “No, no, it was just a complete maze trying to get out of the city.”

  “Oh, yes… could only follow the streams of them. Anytime I tried to wriggle my own way through them they would start to notice me and swarm me with their hands. They’re constantly… probing… gathering intel. They only care about big threats now. I saw them swarm a row of tanks in a matter of seconds. Once the horde identified a threat, it immediately dispatched itself to extinguish the danger.”

  “I noticed.”

  “It’s a whole new animal now. At least before we knew what they wanted—to just eat us. Now…” Stark stared at the ground.

  “How did you know they wouldn’t kill us?” Dave sat down next to him, suddenly craving a cold beer.

  “I didn’t. I just guessed. Believe it or not, I’ve never really known what I’m doing,” Stark said gravely. “I think I do now, though.”

  “But you’re… Dr. Stark.”

  “Did you know they built a statue of me in New Jersey?”

  “Yeah, I saw that on the news a few months ago.”

  “Just this huge, bronze statue that faces Manhattan,” Stark scoffed. “Tried to make me the token legend, even though I’ve been constantly guessing my way through this whole thing. It was Rambert just grasping at straws.”

  “You deserve the statue, Dr. Stark.”

  “Do I deserve it now?” He said, lifting his hand toward the southern sky. “My half-baked plan to wipe out the infected down there resulted in a… cybernetic form of human life. We have millions of people down there walking around with nanomachines running in their blood, making new body parts. I’ve got a severed arm in my bag that looks like a prop from a cheesy cyborg movie. None of this should be happening.”

  “Well, it is happening. So what do we do about it now?”

  Ignoring Dave, Stark continued, “And once any outbreak happens in any city that has an ATLAS-M, it’s going to create the exact same type of creature. At the rate they can infect, the Earth will be covered with them.”

  “ATLAS-M?”

  Stark snorted. “Don’t worry about it. Just something that seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Dave didn’t respond but looked up at the sky as the light twisted through the clouds, showing streams of a faint pink as the sun moved toward twilight. The stillness of the wilderness made everything happening in Juárez seem like a dream; no longer part of his reality. Douglas, Michaels, Jacobs and everyone else seemed like fictional characters from some book that he just finished reading.

  “Tripps, do you have a family?” Stark asked, looking over at him.

  “No, no, never. No kids.”

  “Oh. Probably better that way now.”

  “It’s still not too late,” Dave said, feeling oddly content. He wanted to talk more. He wanted to let the anxiety of his past life ooze out from him.

  He felt the undying sense of self-preservation slip away from him as he and Stark suddenly stared out into the eternity of the bleeding sky.

  There was no sound at first.

  The curtain of the sunset was suddenly cast from the sky as a large plume of gas and smoked sprouted up from the southern horizon. As a pillar of white smoke thrust upward into the sky, a sudden flash of light shot out over the desert floor. The stack of smoke ascended farther, gathering bulk and fire underneath itself as a lofty crown of blackened fire frothed at the head.

  “Oh my god,” Dave let slip from his mouth.

  “Shh,” Stark said, resting his hand on Dave’s shoulder.

  All at once, a clap of thunder rolled out toward them, slapping their eardrums into a deafening ring. They watched as the smoke shaft continued to rise toward the ceiling of the sky, with an unseen energy driving upward. The massive explosion screamed outward at the Earth and sky with the wrath and destruction of a falling country. Its fires scorched the undead with the fury of desperation and exhaustion.

  “They finally did it,” Stark said quietly.

  “I can’t believe it… they’re all... dead.”

  “Someone finally pulled the trigger. It’ll help, but it won’t stop them.”

  They watched in silence a while longer as the large mushroom finally stopped building upward and only lingered at the edge of the horizon. It stood triumphant and somehow permanent as a watchman over the dead. Dave remained cross-legged and silent, torn within himself about what he should say or do. Part of him wanted to run back south and wrap himself into the rays of radioactive decay, to never have to think about the smoldering planet ever again. He knew, however, that a new era had only just begun and that he wanted to be a part of it.

  “I wonder how many of these are going off all over the planet right now,” Stark said, standing to his feet. “It’s all over.”

  Dave stood and looked at Stark, who walked toward the mountains. “It’s not over,” Dave said at him.<
br />
  “Come on. Let’s make it into town, Tripps. I think we’re only a few miles off from whatever city is by those mountains. I’ve got a lot of new work to do,” Stark said.

  Dave thought about Michaels. “It’s not over,” he said. “We just stepped into a new universe.”

  Epilogue

  Not only had his sunken temples and boney hands plumped with life, his skin had glossed over with a healthy, almond hue. His eyes radiated with energy as his smile tied his face together with friendly understanding. The man was getting on into his mid-seventies, but his appearance would easily have someone guess that he was decades younger. The shackles that tethered his ankle to the metal frame of the bed were only a ruse now that his charm had easily won over every guard that had the delight to check in on him.

  He looked up from a large, opened book on his lap, and gasped when he saw his visitor. “It’s you,” he said, smiling under his glasses.

  Stark stared down at him. “What… what happened to you? You look so different. You look… good.”

  “As if what has happened to me is a bad thing?”

  Stark looked back down at the five-inch thick, manila folder in his hands to make sure he had the right prisoner. “How are you… getting along in here?”

  “Oh, very well, my dear Dr. Stark. The guards are very nice to a poor old man.” He smiled and took off his glasses. “What brings you here?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly.”

  “I am,” he said, closing his book. “I know why you’re here, and I must say, I’ve been waiting quite a while for you.”

  “Tell me why I’m here,” Stark said.

  “Because it’s our time now, Dr. Stark.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nuclear blasts, crumbling governments and the army of the… new dead marches across the globe. The world rots around you, doctor. It’s time for a new approach.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was once an immoral abomination now… doesn’t quite seem so abominable.”

  “But what are we talking about exactly?”

  “We’re talking about me and you and the glorious things we are going to create now that the floodgates have opened.”

  Stark stepped into the warmly lit room and walked up to the desk. “Maybe I say you’re not that crazy.”

  “Or maybe, Dr. Stark, you’re just as crazy as I am now.” Beckfield smiled at him.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Convoy 19: A Zombie Novel

  Prologue

  How did we get here?

  That is a simple question with too many answers. I’ve been staring at it on my computer monitor for hours, wondering where to begin. My house is very quiet without Melissa and Ruben. It’s difficult to stay focused, and I haven’t slept in days.

  It’s a blessing that television and radio have stopped broadcasting. The day-to-day carnage and slaughter that had been dumped into everyone’s houses for months was bad enough, and those horrifying images bear no small level of responsibility for the panic and paranoia that pushed us over the edge. But the talking heads: the pontificating blowhards, raging wall-bangers, and self-righteous assholes that drowned out anyone with a real solution in the pursuit of ratings… that was just too much.

  That’s probably not a good place to start. The failure of media to inform the public is a piece of the puzzle, but it isn’t the biggest piece. Their biased finger pointing and brinkmanship helped to drive the political climate, but our leaders still had the ability to make the right choices. Only they didn’t.

  How did we get here? This is a country with enough guns to arm every man, woman, and child. The United States military budget is larger than every other country combined. How is it that the dead not only rose from the grave to attack the living, but we also failed to manage that horror to the point that it got the better of us? This is a country that survived small pox, cholera, World War Two…how the living hell did we get here?

  The dead rose from the grave to attack the living…that’s the first time I’ve written those words. You’d think that the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the President of the United States of America would have a clear and honest grasp of this crisis, but my staff and I, went to astounding lengths to obfuscate it behind politically correct jargon that had been thoroughly watered down and sanitized for public consumption. “Dissociative Psychotic Fugue”, “Antisocial Analgesia”, “Neurotic Cannibalistic Syndrome”, “Infectious Cotard Disorder.” These are just a few of the ridiculous euphemisms that served no purpose beyond lying to ourselves about what was really happening.

  Of course, even we didn’t understand that we were dealing with the living dead initially. Now, months into this disaster, it’s pretty damn clear to everyone. Yet, this is the first time I’ve directly addressed it. Reminds me of what a bunch of dumb cattle we (not just myself, but everyone else who’s supposed to be in charge) really are.

  Maybe that’s a good place to start: government. The government failed in so many ways that it’s absurd. I could write a book about it, and it would be equal parts tragedy and comedy.

  Let’s start with me. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Texas. What the hell am I doing as Secretary of Health and Human Services? I’ll tell you – I rubbed elbows with a lot of people in the administration’s campaign. I don’t have any real skeletons in my closet and I was rewarded. Jobs were rewarded not for skill or merit, but for political cronyism. Of the ten HHS districts, not one of my directors is a medical doctor, psychologist, or sociologist. They are business people and lawyers. They are men and women who knew the right people and could navigate their way around an office, but when it came to solving real health epidemics or addressing social issues, they may as well have been walking corpses themselves. I never realized there was anything wrong with that…until now. That was simply how the world was run. Brilliant guys like Dr. Henry Damico who had the talent but no connections…they had mid-level desk jobs writing reports to dumb-asses like me…who couldn’t even understand them with a translator.

  So, when shit got real, and it was time for HHS to mobilize…there wasn’t any leadership. I take responsibility for that. If you were building a bonfire to burn down the world, a lot of those logs would have my name on them.

  I’d be in good company, though. I honestly watched the Secretary of State once ask for demographics on the infected, so that he could determine whether Republicans or Democrats were being hit disproportionately in order to prioritize relief. He literally wanted what few semi-competent staff members he had on hand to stop what they were doing so he could--in essence--allow opposing voters to die while giving aid to supporters. I’ll never forget the President’s response: “That’s a really good idea. That’s a really goddamn good idea.”

  About a month ago, I watched a frustrated General try to explain to the Secretary of Defense that the living dead could only be killed by destroying their brain. We were months into this shit-storm and the guy who was managing our rapidly diminishing military resources didn’t even understand how to kill the enemy. The last time I saw him, he was running to his car. When I asked his personal aide what was going on, she said that the marine platoon he had delegated to guard his family’s neighborhood had gone AWOL.

  When refugees started flooding in from every corner of the globe under the false assumption that America would manage the crisis better than their home nations, Homeland Security was still looking for terrorists. Plane-loads of Asian and European infected were just pouring into our airports, but as long as they weren’t on the terror list…they were welcomed in with open arms. Months into the shit, when the President finally asked if it would be a good idea to screen air travelers, the Director of Homeland Security hadn’t even thought about how to do it. By the time screenings started, commercial flights had long since been grounded.

  It wasn’t just the executive branch that was laden with incompetence. The House and The Senat
e were just as pitiful. Congress never saw a crisis it didn’t try to exploit, and the zombie apocalypse was no exception. If the parties weren’t already entrenched and oppositional, they were ten-fold now.

  “Need emergency funding for relief to metropolitan Chicago? Fuck you, we have to stop the spending somewhere!”

  “Cut my irrelevant ear-mark in a bill that gives the military authority to set up refugee centers in American cities? Fuck you! What do I get out of it?”

  “This bill makes sense, but makes the opposing party look good…fuck you. I’ll make up some reason to vote it down.”

  Some congressmen courted their base by toeing the line that the entire issue was a religious one. The rapture crowd was a vocal minority, but man, were they vocal. There was news footage of some representatives actually claiming that flesh-eating undead monsters had human rights, and actually floated federal bills that made it illegal to kill them. There were state and local governments that didn’t just put forth bills like that, but actually passed them.

  There was no end to the insanity. In the beginning, before we really understood the epidemic, there were some extremists within government that wanted to quarantine every town in the nation, and go door to door looking for infected, shooting them on sight. Draconian policies like this smacked of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the backlash from the American public was so extreme that the CDC saw incident reporting drop like a stone. Conversely, CDC field agent casualties – a term that I had never before even seen in a report – skyrocketed. The last thing you should tell an American citizen, is that the government is going to come to their home and kill someone they love. We knew the epidemic was spreading, but now, thanks to a couple of career politicians who wanted to look like John Wayne to their constituency, the CDC was blinded and their people were being killed.