Nation Undead (Book 1): Neighbors

by Ford, Paul Z.

  Further north, Port Authority personnel on the water attempted to link up with the military authorities setting up the overland quarantine of Midtown and Lower Manhattan ordered by the White House. The dreary and cold afternoon helped highlight the many fires burning throughout the city. Gray and black smoke billowed over the icy water, foglike and chilling.

  More hazardous, however, was the debris in the water and destruction caused by the drone attacks on the bridges. Concrete and twisted steel construction rose from the Hudson and East Rivers, creating new islands for the rescuers to avoid.

  Many of the boat rescuers had not seen the sheer number of infected massing together on the island. Military leaders, including those in the blockading Coast Guard, kept strict command of intelligence as it was passed down the ranks. Both civilian and military authorities were missing the luxury of basic information, however. Cell phones were useless during the crisis, and despite a secure wartime communication system only limited detail was making it through the armed forces chain of command.

  One of the details lacking from that morning’s communication about blockades and bridges and quarantines was the state of the infected, and how the infection spread so quickly. Initial police blockades of streets in affected areas had been overrun. People who escaped the city reported carnivorous, mindless automatons that used to be people. People who were bit intermingled among the medical facilities outside of the quarantined part of the city treating wounded refugees. The victims of bites acted like wounded survivors, escaping and being treated like any of the others. Nobody from doctors, police, or the victims themselves thought an infection that caused violence had been passed to them. Most felt lethargic and sick, increasingly unable to care for themselves as the hours since the bridge strikes closed off the island.

  Additionally, since the airstrikes, various watercraft had begun the gruesome task of picking bodies out of the water. Lifeless bodies and body parts floated throughout the waters and quickly began to wash up on the shores of New Jersey and the surrounding New York City boroughs. Boat crews launched small rafts to search for survivors.

  Reaching arms, bobbing just on the surface of the water, caught the attention of rescuers in dozens of instances. Boats approached the flailing bodies. Men and women with noble intentions of helping another human being traveled in vessels of all sizes.

  Citizens and authorities on the shores and overlooking the waterways watched as injured people washed up onto land. Many crawled out of the gray, cold water. Many were missing arms and legs, dragging themselves along and into parking lots, streets, and parks. Concerned, selfless people ran to assist the injured. Entrails sunk and dragged struggling figures down into the depths of the dark waters.

  Panicked, flailing limbs were thrown life preservers, but none grasped the lifesaving devices. Rescuers leaned over the edges of their vessels, reaching and grabbing for the moving bodies in the freezing waters. The same scene was repeated all around the southern edge of the island, people reached and pulled, bravely risking their own safety to help others.

  Damaged bodies met altruistic rescuers on land and sea. They tried to calm the injured, assuming shock or panic caused their behavior. Attempts were made to hold them down, wrap them in wool blankets, secure their wounds with tourniquets and bandages.

  Teeth met flesh. Screams of instruction morphed into screams of pain. Some crews pulled multiple of the infected onto the decks before attacks started, leaving the rescuers fleeing and hurt. A group of three men and three women pounded on the locked door of a Port Authority command bridge until the flimsy locks broke inward. The watch officer and bridge crew were helpless as the dripping wet creatures attacked. Arms and hands raised in defense were aggressively torn by teeth. More screaming rose from dozens of water-bound crew. Panicked runners jumped into the freezing water from which they just pulled the infected creatures overrunning their vessels. Ironically, many of the former rescuers were caught by grabbing hands they desperately tried to reach a few minutes earlier. The creatures grabbed hold and dragged the newcomers to the bottom of the icy waters, biting and drowning them.

  On land, similar acts of violence quickly overcame the first groups who came to the aid of the wounded shambling onto the shores. First responders ran toward waterlogged victims, recognizing their lack of response and shambling walk as symptoms of shock. Some were bitten immediately as they gently attempted to guide the figures standing and walking along the shore back to safety. Almost universally the bite victims ran and reintegrated into crowds of onlookers, medical, fire, and rescue personnel. Wounds were treated and wrapped in bandages even as more of the figures dragged their way out of the water and onto dry land.

  The entire area was a frenzy of activity. Despite curfew orders from the governors of New Jersey and New York, people continued coming to view the carnage. Sometimes it took a few minutes and sometimes it took a few hours, but bite victims started to inexplicably and rapidly deteriorate and die. Ship crews holed up from the violent biters on their decks sat together as dusk fell. As the injured among them died, there was nowhere to put them except in the rooms with the living.

  Makeshift refugee centers popped up in dozens of places across the water from Manhattan. Parks, church parking lots, fire stations, stadiums, and warehouses were converted into facilities to house the tens of thousands of people displaced before the drone strikes isolated the island. Among them, hundreds had bite wounds from the infected.

  As dusk turned to dark, and the temperatures dropped, the injured in the refugee groups began to die. Bodies were moved together, stacked in piles awaiting directives on what to do next. Authorities struggled with the violence caused by the infected coming ashore. Rescuers were replaced with armed and armored police forces who attempted to capture and restrain the affected before they could cause harm to others. Hundreds of biting, snapping, and flailing bodies were corralled together within makeshift quarantine fences. More continued to come out of the water even as the temperatures dropped below freezing, and the dozens of quarantine centers were quickly filled with the growing numbers of infected. Bewilderment over how the infected were still moving after any number of traumatic injuries rippled the confidence of those at the forefront, slowing the decision-making process. Hypothermia should have gripped those coming out of the water, but they remained aggressive throughout the freezing night.

  Silently, the dead began to rise. Those bundled with the living stood and stomped into the sleeping crowds. Dead rescuers on ships rose and fell onto their sleeping companions. Barricaded doors were thrown open and the welcoming maw of the infected closed upon the survivors. Floating coffins drifted, full of figures walking their decks, unaffected by cold. The Coast Guard blockade broke the same way, by approaching and attempting to stop or save the crews of the drifting vessels. Some vessels sunk, striking debris and flooding, and some spread the infection to the Coast Guard crews as they attempted rescue. Some of these boats of the dead drifted south along the coast, and would continue to drift. Days and weeks later ships would run aground in Delaware, Virginia Beach, North Carolina, and as far south as Florida, spreading the dead like insects onto a decomposing carcass.

  The overland barrier blocking Midtown and Lower Manhattan ran in a staggered line across a dozen city streets from one end of the island to the other. Military vehicles and checkpoints were placed on intersections through Hell’s Kitchen, Times Square, and down through Midtown East. Frightened soldiers stood armed and isolated on hundreds of intersections, with only their radios to keep them informed. The main command post was set up in the southern part of Central Park, too far to make timely decisions or see where the tens of thousands of infected individuals were massing. The line was hit in the center of town, units becoming surrounded or overtaken through the defensive positions in Times Square. The dead didn’t stop, and moved north in a mass. Soldiers wasted rounds and explosives trying to hold their ground, and the night sky lit and boomed with the effort of war against the undead. The f
igures flowed through the isolated units, pausing to eat the flesh of the fallen.

  Quiet groups of sleeping survivors in the refugee camps began to wake and scream into the cold night. Stampeding crowds fled the safety of the refugee camps, running down streets and into buildings. The dead staggered slowly and silently, grabbing and biting at any of the living they found. The police began to flee as well, heading home to escape the madness the infection was causing. Without adequate manpower, the makeshift quarantines began to fail. Fences were pushed over and bodies were trampled. The streets of Staten Island and Brooklyn flooded with the dead. The darkness of night wrought confusion and indecision at all levels, and the dead continued to walk and recruit others with their infectious bites. Hours passed and large groups of bodies walked together, farther from Manhattan and across bridges into New Jersey. Shadowy figures pushed through the fences at the international airport in Newark, walking slowly across abandoned runways toward the terminals. A massive group of the dead walked into traffic on I-95. People left their cars and ran, trying to escape the menace but more often being overwhelmed by the untiring mass of infected. Thousands walked together, flowing like a school of fish. They were herded by guardrails down the corridor of the highway toward Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. More walked north from Manhattan, crossing undamaged bridges and tunnels toward Hartford and Boston. It would take hours, even days, of walking to reach those cities, but the creatures moved without rest or fuel, eating only the flesh of the living who failed to flee.

  Chapter 10

  Homestead

  Kahn threw the case of water on the passenger seat, closed his door, and quickly started the store’s SUV. The little white Ford Escape had served the business well. It had the store logo and contact information on each side of the vehicle, and Ash used it as an everyday driver and for what he joked was “the most expensive free advertising possible” while writing out the monthly payment check. They used it most months, sometimes several times a month, to transport tables, banners, and product to gun shows and other events. With the seats folded down they could fit a couple small tables and all the accompanying boxes of product and marketing material they needed. As he swiveled to back out of the parking spot, Kahn saw that the seats were now folded down and the back of the vehicle was generously full of the weapons and ammo from earlier. Seeing it all stacked neatly on the flat surface the folded seats created made Kahn uncomfortable. He was driving with a platoon’s worth of weaponry within arm’s reach.

  As he pulled onto the highway he looked both directions for traffic and found none. No cars on this road in the middle of the day was not an unusual sight and Kahn was not overly troubled by it. This was a minor country-like highway, so there were businesses and homes here and there on both sides of the divided road. As he turned onto the road he snapped his fingers and clicked the radio knob from OFF to ON. Distinctive vocals and harmonica immediately blared from the speaker system.

  Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call

  Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall

  For he that gets hurt, will be he who has stalled

  There’s the battle raging outside,

  It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

  For the times, they are, a-changing

  Kahn reached forward when he recognized the song and snapped the preset button to change the station. Too much was going on for him to tolerate lyrical predictions about future times. He was determined to get home and get everything back to normal. Ash would come when he could, and the family would continue their lives as normal. Times weren’t changing, radical attacks unfortunately were not new. Senators and congressmen and presidents and generals were all working hard to fix this, whatever this was.

  The preset station was chattering news updates with no new information from the authorities. New information only seemed to come from social media. Users were posting photos, videos, and updates about what they were seeing and hearing even as the government remained markedly silent.

  Currently, the hosts were discussing a disturbing live video that was posted by a user and then removed by Facebook for graphic violence. The video was shot from one side of a tall fence made of metal rails outside of a popular lunchtime bar in downtown Oklahoma City. Whatever channel this was had several people on a discussion panel, and they all saw the video earlier during the broadcast. Diners noticed someone on foot approaching the restaurant and started filming. As the person approached slowly they saw that it was a shirtless woman whose torso was covered in blood. Instead of running, they connected to Facebook and started filming the disturbing live video. Other people in the diner noticed the bloody intruder and fled in alarm out to their cars. The video creator walked out into the cold and kept his cell phone camera pointed at the woman as she got closer and closer to the restaurant. When she was about ten or so feet away the details of her face became visible. She was biting and grinding her teeth and a low breathless growl began to rise from her chest. No cold cloud of breath was coming out of her, and she had a large tear in the flesh of her left shoulder and neck. The wound had bled down her bare torso and soaked her skirt with vibrant color. Her ragged skin hung loosely from muscle that was damaged and torn down to the bone. She looked pale-skinned, but her body had began to turn a shade of grayish-brown or tan, like a bruise covering her exposed flesh. She raised her arms and the torn muscle from her wound pulsed and bled. The cameraman and his partner backed up and filmed as the woman slammed into the wrought iron fence.

  Her arms stuck through and her hands opened and closed, grabbing at the air. She pushed her body and head frantically into the metal and slammed her head and arms through the gap between the rails. She beat and battered the fence over and over until she broke her own nose and shattered her front teeth. He got a close zoom of her shattered and bleeding teeth and gums as she frantically fought and reached for him. His partner suddenly yelled for his attention. The camera blurrily panned over to where his friend was pointing to reveal a group of about a dozen slowly walking figures who were now visible down the perpendicular cross street.

  That was the point where the alarming video ended, as described by the radio commentators. This wasn’t the only video evidence being shared around the Internet. The government had not addressed the fact that their declaration about a biological attack in New York City yesterday was, within a few hours, now seemingly happening in thirty or forty other American cities. Although, one commenter added, the incoming president-elect said in a tweet that he was cutting his much anticipated “Thank You America” tour short to remain to Washington, D.C. and stay up to date on the national security implications of these awful terrorist actions.

  Kahn was fascinated but turned the volume down on the radio. He checked his cell phone and tried dialing Aisha but his service was still not working. There still weren’t many cars out, and as he turned onto the minor highway that led to his house he saw that the small strip mall and Wal-Mart had a flurry of activity. There were people rushing in and out of the store with carts full of items, and he saw cases of water and boxes of food chiefly among them. There were cars scrambling for space in the large parking lot as the shoppers conducted their anxious business. Kahn drove slowly by, craning his neck back to watch the insanity outside the big box store. The look of fear in the eyes of the people here made him even more determined to get home to his family and out of the madness of the city. He was fifteen minutes away now, with little traffic on the wide road. The quicker he got home, heeding the president’s order, the quicker the authorities could get things back under control.

  For the rest of the way he thought about what they had in their pantry. His wife liked to bake and cook a variety of food. They were fortunate that she kept them well-stocked on raw materials like flour, sugar, and canned goods. He even called her a hoarder more than once, poking fun at the neat rows of beans and vegetables she kept in their pantry. They also had a small garden that they kept most
of the year. It had been cold this winter, but there were still potatoes and some of the perennial trees still had fruit. Her homemade breads were good even if they did dry out after a few days. Images of the Wal-Mart shoppers fighting over goods flashed in his head as he thought through how they might stretch their supplies. He thought they’d be better off than most for the next few weeks if it came to that. He felt a tug of regret not loading up at the store now, early, before anything drastic might happen. But he trusted the system, and his wife’s small stockpile, to keep the three of them safe. He suppressed the urge to go back to the Wal-Mart and join the fighting crowd.

  He drove down the gravel-covered country road to his gate and kicked up a cloud of gray dust as he skidded to a stop just inside the property. None of his neighbors were visible and nobody was around as he hastily closed the sliding metal gate over the rocky driveway. He drove forward to the house, parked on the concrete pad in front of the garage, and rushed to the front door. When he flung it open he found Daniel on the couch watching cartoons on his tablet.

  “Aisha!” he yelled loudly. She appeared down the hallway from the master bedroom with a confused look on her face.

  “Hi honey, I didn’t expect you back for hours.” She noticed he was more agitated and unkempt than usual and felt a tinge of panic that something wasn’t right. She asked, “What happened?” in a flat monotone. Kahn rushed down the hallway and grabbed her in a tight hug, and then quickly released her and held her shoulders.