by Jon Schafer
Hearing Steve call out for everyone to drop down, she watched as they disappeared into the long grass. Glancing to where the first of the herd had made it halfway across the bridge, she knew he had seen them, too, and had decided to take the risk of being too close to the blast.
Settling in, Heather sighted into the center of the mass of plastic explosives and squeezed the trigger, watching the carnage that followed.
The blast came as a bright flash, followed by a dull whump that sent splinters of wood from the bridge high into the air and down into the steep gully it crossed. Along with these, she could see the blown apart pieces of the dead that hadn’t been disintegrated by the explosion flying with them for a split second before the area was covered in a cloud of dust. Arms, legs and pieces of dead flesh rose into the air to drop down onto the Zs further out from the immediate blast radius and the six people caught out in the open before the scene was enveloped in a cloud of dust.
***
Easing the door of the storm cellar upward a few inches, she took a quick peek. Letting it down quietly, she returned to her companions and said, “It is mostly clear now, but we must make ourselves presentable first. I refuse to let us go out in the world looking like ragamuffins.”
Taking a few minutes, they brushed themselves off from the dust, soot and cobwebs that clung to them from the long crawl between the floorboards, down an old unused chimney, and into the basement.
When she deemed them presentable, she said, “There are a few out there, but nothing we can’t handle. We take them out quietly, and then move on. Time is of the essence. It’s not safe here anymore.”
She could see her assistants nod in the dim light of the lantern, so she turned and walked up the steps to the storm doors. Flipping one back to bang against the ground, she stepped up and into the light. Hearing a loud explosion from the direction of the bridge, she smiled as the noise attracted the attention of the few dead still scattered around the lawn. As she watched them turn away, she knew it would be child’s play to take them. It was almost poetic how she had done her part in keeping her children occupied before dropping into the escape hatch she had created months ago, and now Steve had done her the same favor in return.
With a smile, Delightfully Grimm unslung her scythe and turned to Thing one and Thing to as she said, “Come, my good friends, there is much reaping to do.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Washington, D.C.:
General Eastridge set his reading glasses down on the report lying on his desk and rubbed his eyes. A dull thud shook the building, letting him know that they had started the airstrikes again. While the dead had initially been pushed back when the Marines retook the capital, they were drawn in such numbers to the fresh human meat now clustered here that at least once a day, A-10 warthogs had to be called in to bomb the perimeter.
Thinking back to those first days after they had fought their way back into the capital, he marveled at the speed in which the Seabees had erected a temporary wall that ran from the river straight down K Street, turned on Massachusetts Avenue before turning again on Fourth Street, and then made its way to the 395 freeway before making a left at US One and ending again at the water. Being outside this perimeter, the Pentagon was secured by its own defensive barricade but was easily accessed by air and subway. While the creators of the D.C. wall thought that the Potomac would make a natural barricade, they were sorely mistaken and eventually the wall had to be lengthened to take in the entire shore.
Every time he looked at it, Eastridge was reminded of a barricade that circled the green zone in Iraq. The main difference here, though, was that the city outside of D.C.’s safe zone had been entirely reduced to rubble as far as the eye could see.
Checking his watch, he saw it was almost time for the daily briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A wave of anxiety washed over him as he wondered if he had been found out yet. After ignoring the direct orders of the Chairman, he knew it was only a matter of time before A talked to B and B said something to C, and word got back to the Pentagon about what he was up to.
Shaking off his worries, he knew he was doing the right thing. If there was another way to combat the dead that were coming back to life, it needed to be explored. The Malectron was a great weapon in the fight against the living dead, but it was just that, a weapon. Believing that the device would be used for more than herding the dead into remote areas where they could be dealt with, he was risking his life to seek out an alternative solution.
Standing, General Eastridge grabbed his jacket off the coat tree standing near the door and exited his office as the walls shook again.
***
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the meeting to order. After a quick briefing by the Colonel commanding the city’s defenses, he waved the man off and said, “On to new business, and it’s good news, gentlemen. Just half an hour ago, I spoke with Professor Hawkins and he is ready to move into his new lab.” Turning to the Naval chief, he asked, “And how is progress on the facility going?”
The Admiral cleared his throat and started to say that it would be ready by the end of the day, but seeing General Eastridge look him straight in the eye and shake his head slightly, he paused. Although they’d had their differences in the past, he knew the Marine Corps general to be a standup guy. He took the head shake as a cue to stall the development of the Malectron, and wondering what was going on, he decided to play along for now and see where it went.
Clearing his throat again, he covered his pause by saying, “Excuse me. Must have something caught in my throat.”
The Chairman threw up his arms and said in an exasperated tone, “Then take a drink of water and tell me what the fuck is going on with the work on the new facility.”
All the men stopped at this sudden outburst and stared at the Chairman. Ignoring this, their commander screwed up his face and asked, “Wellll?”
Sitting straight up in his chair, the Admiral said, “Sorry, sir. The new facility for Professor Hawkins is coming along well. There are some electrical problems due to the draw required on the generators, but my people should have it worked out within the next three days.”
Originally, he was only going to give a one-day delay, but with the Chairman acting like he could talk to him like he was some half-assed midshipman at the Academy, he’d decided to make it three.
The Chairman paused for a second, his face turning red as he stammered out, “Three days? Three fucking days? I thought your Seabees had their act together. I need that facility to be ready by tomorrow. I have choppers ready to lift Hawkins, his equipment and his people here at 0600 the day after tomorrow. Are we going to drag them all the way here from Bumfuck, Arkansas, to tell them that they don’t have power? They’re also going to be living in that compound, so how is that going to work? Should I give them your room at the Watergate hotel instead until you get your shit together?” Looking up, he added, “Or maybe move you all out and turn your suites over to Hawkins and his people?”
General Eastridge almost laughed out loud at this. He had been to his room once since it had been assigned to him, and that was just to get the key card. He rotated its use between his officers on weekends and the enlisted under his command during the week. For himself, he found the couch in his office suited his needs.
Gaining confidence, the Admiral said, “It can’t be helped, sir. The requirements on our electrical supply for Hawkins’ lab will be tremendous. We’re already having to reroute power from two different grids in the safe zone, and even that might not be enough.”
Pounding his fist down on the table, the Chairman screamed, “Then reroute all the power if you need to. Shit me some power if you need to. Tie a fucking key to a kite string and hope for lightning if you need to, but get that facility ready to run by tomorrow, or it’s your natural ass.”
Standing, the Chairman straightened his jacket. Looking around the table, he made eye contact with each man before saying, “Now, on to the matter of our forces stil
l stuck overseas. I know that we’ve managed to bring some of them home, but we have to focus on getting all of our military personnel back on United States soil. Once they have the Malectron issued them, we can begin our campaign.”
Picking up a remote control from the table, he pressed a button. The lights dimmed, and a map of the world appeared on the screen behind him.
Pointing to Taiwan, he said, “Once we are done with the United States, this will be our jumping off point in the taking of Asia.”
***
On his way to a meeting about the defense of all the safe zones across the country, General Eastridge paused in the hallway when he heard his name called. Turning his head back and forth as he looked through the throng of people moving past him, he searched for a familiar face but couldn’t see who had hailed him.
Shrugging, he started off again, almost walking into a seaman first class. Waiting for the enlisted man to excuse himself, Eastridge was surprised when he said in a low voice, “The Thomas Jefferson Memorial at 2100. It’s on your normal route tonight, so no one will get suspicious.”
Eastridge was about to ask what this was about, but the man had already disappeared into the mob of clerks, enlisted men and officers that streamed past him.
***
General Eastridge waited at the Memorial until 2115 before giving up. Deciding that what he thought he had heard the seaman say was just his mind playing tricks on him, he started walking to where he’d parked his Humvee.
Wishful thinking, he told himself dejectedly as his feet hit the walkway. Despite Admiral Sedlak catching on to my signal to stall for a few days, it would be too farfetched to believe he would set up a clandestine meeting.
A clicking noise made him turn, but seeing nothing except the dark shape of the memorial, he spun back around to continue to his vehicle - and almost walked into the same man that he had almost run into earlier that day. Seeing him now dressed in tiger stripe fatigues and fully armed, Eastridge guessed he was a Navy SEAL. While most of them had been wiped out by the president when they were recklessly thrown into combat in the dead cities, Eastridge knew that a few had survived.
The SEAL motioned for him to follow and walked off the path between two large clumps of brush.
After looking around to see if anyone was watching, Eastridge followed.
With essential areas receiving electricity first, the only light was that of the moon as the General followed the shadowy figure across a piece of uncut grass and into a small copse of tree. The seal stopped and said quietly, “Here he is, sir.”
Thinking the man was talking to him, Eastridge opened his mouth to ask what this was all about but was silenced when Admiral Sedlak emerged from the shadows to say, “Sorry for all the cloak and dagger stuff, but I had to make sure that you weren’t followed.”
***
PFC Quintana adjusted the surgical mask over his face to try and block out the rotting, dank stink of the dead. Noticing that his partner’s hung around his neck, he asked, “Doesn’t the smell bother you?”
“Been doing wall duty for two weeks now,” the man replied. “I’m used to it.”
Looking over the ruins of Washington, D.C., Quintana wondered if he would ever be. As far as he could see, the city surrounding the wall had been reduced to a smoldering pile of rubble that still burned in a few places. These hot spots tended to be further away from the wall since most everything close in that could burn had long ago done so due to the constant bombing. The A-10 Warthogs used napalm when they had to work close to the wall, but further out they used high explosives. Either way, it destroyed the buildings and the dead with equal success, but the napalm left their charred remains behind to create a stink worse than when they were zombified.
Jumping slightly at a small screeching noise that was abruptly cut off, he heard his partner say, “Something got something. At least the food chain is still intact.”
“The only problem is that we’re at the bottom of it now,” he answered quietly.
This got a small laugh.
Turning away from the destruction of what had once been a thriving city, Quintana ran his tongue over his teeth. Grimacing at the buildup in plaque, he asked, “What’s up with the toothpaste we were supposed to get on the last resupply?”
His partner shrugged and said in an offhand manner, “Same thing that happened to real toilet paper, tailor made cigarettes and coffee. It’s a thing of the past. They’re giving out baking soda from the chow hall. You can use that or a pine cone.”
“Where in the hell am I going to find a pine cone?” Quintana asked.
After another shrug, his partner said, “You can try around one of the parks or memorials. Not many people know that trick, so you should find something.” With a snort, he added, “You’ll be lucky if you see real toothpaste again in your lifetime.”
This suddenly hit home with Quintana. After being stationed in Japan for the last eighteen months, he had been brought back only two days before and was trying to adjust to his surroundings. When the HWNW virus had broken out in Tokyo, the natives had managed to quarantine all of the infected and stop its spread. Japan was one of only two countries completely free of the dead. There, the trains ran on time, the shops were open and it almost seemed like business as usual except for the occasional blackouts and brownouts that plagued the country. The country might only be running at partial capacity, but at least you could still buy toothpaste there.
Looking over the ruins of D.C. again, Quintana wondered if the U.S. would be able to recover to even half of what the Japanese had accomplished.
***
As his boots thumped on the wooden parapet built along the inside of the wall, General Eastridge’s head spun from his encounter with Admiral Sedlak. His mind turned over the possibilities of what he could accomplish now that he had an ally. Wondering if they could get any of the other Joint Chiefs to join them, his thoughts were interrupted by a voice that called out, “Halt, who goes there?”
Remembering this morning’s briefing on passwords, he replied, “Scooby Doo.”
“Advance and be recognized,” called the sentry.
Walking into a small pool of light cast by a flashlight pointing downward, Eastridge asked, “Are you men doing okay?”
“Doing great, sir,” the first man said.
Looking to the second sentry, Eastridge only received a nervous nod.
“Any movement tonight?” he asked.
“A few stragglers, sir,” the first sentry replied.
“Let’s take a quick look then, Corporal,” Eastridge told him before climbing onto the top of the wall and leaning over to gaze down at its base.
In the dim light of the moon, he could see more than a dozen dead clustered below him. They looked up with hungry faces, their mouths whining softly as if to say, “Jump.”
Turning to the Corporal, Eastridge asked, “This is all of them?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. “There was about two hundred last night, but the airstrikes thinned them out some.”
Nodding, Eastridge jumped down onto the parapet and said, “Carry on, then,” before continuing on his way.
When he was nothing more than a faint shadow, the new sentry asked in awe, “Was that just the fucking Commandant of the Marine Corps?”
“Sure was,” replied the Corporal. “He walks a section of the line every night. Usually he comes by a little earlier, though.”
Shaking off his excitement at his brush with greatness, Quintana cursed at himself as he ran his tongue over his teeth again while thinking, Maybe I should have asked the old man if he had any toothpaste.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The John H. Kirby State Park:
Tick-Tock slowly duck-walked through the waist high grass to where Steve knelt at the edge of the firebreak. Stopping next to him, he scanned the area for threats before saying quietly, “I don’t know how much longer everyone’s going to last if we keep this pace up.”
“I know,” Steve replied. “Go
ing through the woods has cost us a lot of time and energy. If we hadn’t have run into that herd on the path, we’d be a lot further along and in better shape.”
Tick-Tock nodded. They had been making good progress until they came across a clearing with a small house in the middle of it. This wasn’t the first they had encountered, the two other shacks they had come across had been abandoned, but this one must have still had living people in it since it was swarmed by hundreds of the dead. The group wasn’t spotted, but they had to make a big detour to get around it. This shouldn’t have been a problem, but when they tried to regain the path, they found it populated by a steady trickle of Zs moving to join their brethren circling the shack. Knowing that a trickle could turn into a flood within minutes of the dead spotting food, they had been forced to go through the woods.
Turning to his friend, Steve asked, “How’s Denise?”
Tick-Tock grimaced slightly before saying, “Not good. My guess is that she’s got a serious concussion or a skull fracture. She can’t even keep water down now, and it’s gotten so bad that we have to carry her most of the time.”
Steve nodded. He had been leading the group, so this was the first he had heard about her worsening condition. Patting his friend on the back, he said, “Then we need to find a place to hole up for a little while.”