19
Daniel
He made his way over the piles of corpses and through the shattered front doors, rushing toward the maintenance bay and the Humvee they had driven in days ago. It was fully fueled, if he was careful, he should be able to catch up and follow the scumbags. He didn’t have a plan and wished he had a sniper rifle, but he wanted to see where they were going. Who they met up with.
He sped after them, dodging the slow-moving undead still left in the parking lot. They had gone west out of town and he found the path they had taken easily enough. By the time he was nearing the outskirts, the undead chasing them down the road had clogged it completely. They were turning to attack him so he tried paralleling on the side streets, but this was Pennsylvania. They didn’t go in straight lines, they branched off in other directions.
He tried the main road again, but there were just too many of them. They were way too thick to force his way through and when the first crack showed on the windshield, he spun the wheel in frustration for the next side road. He had to let them go, or die in a stupid attempt at revenge. He jagged the wheel left and right to shed the hangers-on and finally threw the last of the gibbering wrecks of humanity tumbling into a mailbox. Its back wrapped around the pole and ribs popped through the drying skin as bones snapped and crunched. The feral intensity, the drive to bite, never diminished and it started dragging its way after the Hummer, its useless legs dragging behind.
Daniel drove through the hilly back roads, torn between apoplectic rage one minute and nearly overwhelming grief the next. He’d been training with some of those men for years and they’d all been used, betrayed, and murdered. His brain burned with fury and black thoughts of revenge.
Hours later, after wandering half lost for a hundred miles, he found a gas station at a crossroads near the Maryland border. He hopped out and a few of the undead came roaring at him.
He answered with lead.
He made quick work of the two inside the store and then gathered up a bag of junk food and energy drinks. He tossed it in the minivan that had the pump nozzle still stuck in the tank. The keys were in the ignition and it fired up on the second try. Full tank of gas. It should take him a lot farther than the Humvee did. It should take him at least halfway to Oklahoma. He saw the first of his followers coming into view and took off again, now knowing the secret to survival in this new reality. Keep moving, avoid the big towns, have a plan to kill every living person he saw.
Lakota was only a thousand miles away, running the secondary roads. That is where he needed to be. The van wasn’t his first choice of vehicles to use, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. As long as he kept his foot on it, kept away from population centers, and stayed alert for any wandering hordes, he should be okay. He rummaged through the bag of goodies he’d grabbed from the store, found what he was looking for, then chugged one of the energy drinks. It was going to be a long trip.
20
Madame President
President Edmund stared out of the windshield of the armored Humvee as they sped through the East Tennessee hills, her driver silent and concentrating on the road. This nightmare journey would be over soon if they could make it to Atlanta before the train got turned around. At the slow speeds it was going, they should catch up to it if nothing else happened to delay them. Once she found out about the ridiculous refugee rescue run they were making, a plan had been quickly formulated. It was too bad about the marines, she had wanted to send them in to clear the train. One of her guards had found the walkie-talkie hidden in the planter. Undoubtedly by that sneaky Lieutenant Cobb. They had to go, but her guard said they would lose too many men if they tried it in the mall. They just needed to bide their time, wait for reinforcements.
“But there are fifty of you!” she had retorted.
“Yes, but they are Marines,” was his all he would say about it.
The timing of Colonel Shakoor and his rescue had been fortuitous because she was getting the feeling that the marines were going to try something. She hadn’t been able to keep them isolated in the mall and they had learned too much. She silently cursed the incompetence of her guard. When she demanded a break, a real break, they had assured her it would be fine to take one at the mall while they refueled. She had been tired of riding, wanted to get out and stretch her legs somewhere indoors, where it was safe. To use a bathroom with some decent privacy.
She hadn’t wanted to leave the safety of the underground mountain, but with the deplorable state of it, the lack of supplies, and that traitorous General Carson working on manually targeting her with some of the nukes, she had to get out before he launched on her. It seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong in the past six months, had. Yes, she’d used her influence to ensure the formula for the super soldier reanimate serum was stored on her private servers a few years ago. Yes, certain people were informed it had been placed there. Of course, those same certain people knew when the security would be accidentally disabled during an update. Naturally, they were informed of this after a very, very large donation had been deposited into her tax-free charitable foundation. The release of the virus couldn’t be traced back to her, and even if somehow it was, she had plausible deniability. A hacker stole it.
But those back-stabbing pricks had altered it somehow, made it ten times worse than what she had given them access to. She knew they were going to put it in all the meats. It was a genius plan. She’d been preaching hard the value of being a vegetarian every time she was in front of a camera these past few years. She didn’t want her people, her voters, to get infected. The formula she’d let them steal had a 48% reanimation rate so her spreadsheets had shown her that, initially, only a small percentage of people in the States would actually become raging flesh eaters.
She’d used her influence to help the Salaam conglomerate acquire nearly every packaging plant in America and all of their subsidiaries overseas. Overnight, millions of people would be infected. All of the military and, of course, all of the politicians she didn’t warn.
The treaty with Israel was ready to be signed and terrorist attacks around the world had nearly stopped. What the genuinely peaceful Imams couldn’t do to make the radicals end the killing, big business had. There would be global peace by Christmas and everyone was onboard. That is what she preached from her position on the Senate floor, using every ounce of charm, calling in every favor, and resorting to blackmail and the occasional forced suicide when necessary, to get the bills passed. She played dirty because as soon as the virus was unleashed, she’d be safe in her bunker, beyond the reach of any investigations. All of her political enemies would be dead, along with twenty or thirty million Americans. Without the military to put down the reanimates quickly, they would spread and all the living would be left to their own devices to fight them. They would win, they would outnumber them a hundred to one, but the country would be left reeling with a vacuum of power. She would step in when the time was right, maybe after a few months, and restore order with the Muslim army she would start airlifting in once chaos was rampant.
She would rule the entire Western Hemisphere, from the tip of Argentina to the top of Canada. The Grand Mufti could have his Caliphate on the other side of the world. He could have Europe and Africa, China, Russia, and Australia, too. It was an equitable plan but something had gone wrong. They had made the virus so potent it killed everyone that ate it, and they were a thousand times deadlier once they came back. Within days, she didn’t have a country to rule. Everyone was dead except a handful of people making their way to Oklahoma. The plan to get the nuclear football had failed and when she ordered the General to launch on Turkey in a fit of rage for screwing up her plans, he had figured out what had happened. When she had finally calmed down and realized what a dire predicament she was in, she tried to talk to Carson, to warn him about the Muslims, but he saw right through her carefully concocted story. He said he was going to rewire the nukes and vaporize her mountain. The only saving grace was none of the elite guards
had heard her order him to destroy Turkey. She didn’t need them to turn on her, too.
She had to get control back. The Grand Mufti claimed they hadn’t planned on total annihilation. Something must have happened to make the virus more potent when it was cooked, he had insisted. “Hadn’t they tested that? Did they assume people ate raw meat?” she had screamed at him. In the end, it was only a setback, she told herself. Adapt and overcome. It was a little like losing an election. Just because you weren’t in office didn’t mean you were out of power. She didn’t really know what went wrong, but she had a plan to fix it. But first, she had to take Lakota.
She had to work with what she had, and it was a lot more than General Carson and his pathetic little city of survivors in Oklahoma. She had thousands of dedicated jihadi soldiers. All she had to do was get to Lakota with them and pull a surprise attack. That was phase one of her new plan. It was simple but it would work. Her men in the field were giving her reports about the train, on how slow it was going. On how it was supposed to be picking up survivors. All they had to do was hijack it and kill most of the people on board. They’d get one of them to show her men how to operate it and radio Lakota. They’d say they’d found a large group of survivors, they were coming back in. They’d do something so the radio wouldn’t work properly after they set the plan in motion, and just drive right into their welcoming arms. The perfect Trojan Horse. Carson wouldn’t dare do anything to her once she was established among all of the civilians and her army far outnumbered the handful of soldiers he had there. From her spies, it looked like the same twenty or thirty people guarding the wall. When she came through the gate and a thousand men jumped out of the cars, they would surrender quickly. They would adapt to the new way of things. Conquered people always did. Confiscate all their guns and there would be nothing they could do, no matter how much they complained around the dinner table. Nothing would really change, anyway. They’d see that after a few weeks. They’d still do the same jobs, still eat the same food. After a while, they wouldn’t care who sat in the president’s chair and lived in the presidential mansion. They would get used to wearing hijabs and following the new laws. It was human nature, she told herself. They would fall in line, kicking and screaming, but after a short time, it would all be just fine. After a while, they would even thank her. The world had been so overpopulated and with the threat of man-made climate change, all those OTHER people had to go. It was for the good of them all and for the good of the planet.
21
Gunny
They were nearing Munson, Alabama as the sun was rising in the eastern sky. Griz came up with a couple of cups of coffee, wearing his usual outfit, including the body armor. He always had it on, it was second nature to him. Same as strapping on his sidearm, he felt naked without it when he was outside the wall. A few of the others had started following his lead. There was enough for everyone, Wilson had brought back pallets of them from one of his raids. The old veteran knew a thing or two, and if he thought it was prudent to wear the cumbersome vest on the train, maybe they should too.
“You want this, or a shot of something stronger to put you to sleep?” he asked, indicating the flask of Johnny Walker sticking out of his pocket.
“I’m good,” Gunny said reaching for the steaming mug. “I slept a little on the back-tracking runs.”
Griz nodded and sat in the jump seat, throwing his feet up on the console. He glanced at the rail maps Gunny had marked with their route.
“Tuscaloosa doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “Birmingham might be fun. We’ll probably get a chance to try out the mounted machine guns for real.”
“Yeah,” Gunny said. “Give Bridget a chance to play with them. She learns quick. Hard to believe she’s the same girl that played Clooney’s daughter in that Paris Nights movie. Did you see it?”
“I don’t watch chick flicks,” Griz answered a little dismissively.
“Lacey made me go,” Gunny replied with a half-smile. “You’ll be watching them soon enough, if Collins wants to see one. You never know, maybe she likes musicals, too.”
Griz grunted, made a face and slurped noisily at his coffee, shutting that unpleasant subject of conversation off.
Gunny sipped at his own cup. The coffee was good. The strong, bitter taste was what he needed. He’d relived sixteen years of memories that long night. From the day he got the phone call telling him ‘they’ were pregnant, to the last sobbing words from Lacey about how she had just missed getting home in time to stop the kids from leaving. They had both placed blame on themselves. They could have made it if they had tried a little harder, driven a little faster, taken a few more chances. They had done the best they could, though, in the circumstances that had been thrust on them. His quiet anger wasn’t at himself anymore. Coulda, shoulda, woulda didn’t help anyone. He would finish this slow run to Atlanta, pick up any survivors and then hammer down all the way back to Lakota.
Gunny suddenly sprang forward and Griz was instantly alert, automatically reaching for his .45.
“Sheets,” he said and pointed.
Hanging listlessly in the still dawn air were sets of white sheets tied to the rail crossing bars, the light posts, and on cars.
“Survivors,” Griz said, and hustled back to the dining car to roust everybody as Gunny started applying the brakes.
“First survivors!” he bellowed. “Everybody up on the roof, man your machine guns! The undead are gonna come running at us, too!”
They were only rolling along about twenty miles an hour, so the train came to a smooth halt not even a quarter mile from where they saw the first of the bed linens. Gunny grabbed his M-4 and went out the front door, looking for people from the deck. There were a few zombies already dead, heads blown apart and sprawled out around the tracks. Gunny wasn’t surprised, these southern boys had plenty of firepower at their disposal.
He’d been thinking during the long hours at the controls, about setting up other towns. With the success of the trains and how unstoppable they were, they could set up outposts all over, using the same principles as Lakota. Now that the nuclear threat wasn’t hanging over them, anywhere that had plenty of resources and was on the rail line could be fortified. There were a lot more survivors than initially thought, the satellites were picking up signatures of the living all over, even in the big cities.
“See anybody?” he yelled up to Evans, who was setting up the forward machine gun and locking it into place.
“Not yet,” he hollered back down, scouting the area.
The town was tiny, only a few thousand people at the most. From the looks of the bodies spread out all over the place, most of them had turned into the undead.
Maybe they’re trapped in one of the buildings, Gunny thought.
Maybe they’d been caught out in the open when they were hanging the sheets and run low on ammo.
Maybe…
Gunny stopped.
Maybe the aliens came down and got them, or maybe they’re all sitting on the front porch sipping buttermilk. There was no way to know unless they got off to look. The train was impregnable, a refuge of safety where nothing could harm them and they had everything they needed. The second they set foot on the ground, all bets were off. There were no guarantees once they moved away from their rolling fortress.
There were a few short bursts from the 60s, a few undead eliminated, then it was quiet again. Gunny waited a few more minutes, watching for survivors. Waiting for the shouts of greetings from people running toward them. They had to have heard the train rolling in, and if they were trapped, surely the thunder of the locomotive would draw the zeds away. They scanned the tiny town, but nothing else moved.
“You boys see anything?” Gunny hollered up again and the message was repeated all the way down the train. It came back negative. Nearly the whole crew was up on the roofs, manning the 60s and looking for the survivors. There was nothing to see. The town was dead.
Gunny made a decision. They had to find out what was going
on. Somebody had flagged them down.
“Everybody come on back down,” he yelled up to the roof. “Half of you gear up, the other half stays with the train. Stabby, take it back out the way we came in for a few miles, eliminate any followers before they come running in. We’ll do some recon.”
Fifteen minutes later, the sound of the train long since faded in the distance, they found what they were looking for.
The former survivors of the town.
There was an old cotton warehouse on a rail spur standing huge, solid and probably the reason this town was founded back in the day. They had turned it into a fortress, but the doors were ajar and they hadn’t been forced. The people had opened them and came out without a fight, thinking help had arrived. Now they were stacked up across the street, in the parking lot of the Methodist church. It had the black Muslim banner flying on the flagpole, the Stars and Stripes wadded up and laying on the ground. Most of them had been beheaded and their grisly skulls tossed in a haphazard pile, the crows pecking away at the soft parts. There were two nuns among them, but they were nailed upside down to the church doors. They had been crucified alive and left for the undead to tear into. Both of the Sisters snarled and struggled to free themselves, tried to rip hands and feet out of the railroad spikes holding them suspended, when they saw the living.
There was a bus in the parking lot, Saint Sophia’s Orphanage stenciled in black along the side. Many of the corpses were children, and from the state of their bloodied bodies and torn clothes, the girls had been used hard before they were killed. Or maybe even after. A mob in a frenzy didn’t care.
Griz and Gunny had seen massacres like this before, but that didn’t make it any easier. Lars had seen similar things in South America, the handiwork of the drug Cartels. O’Neill was pale around the gills but had a hard look on his face. This was a first for Bridget, though. She fell to her knees and retched, last night’s dinner soaking into the red Alabama sand. She’d gotten used to the zombies, accepted they weren’t human, just mindless killing machines. She pretended they were creations from the special effects department, but this was different. These were people who had survived a month of chaos and uncertainty. Dozens of kids that had come through the worst times in human history and were finally seeing hope, a future. Then this happened. How could anyone be so cruel?
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 11