by JE Gurley
“They’re leaving,” Billy called out.
Sure enough, the zombies had retreated around the sides of the building. Only the male remained now, staring at the humans. With a final howl, it too left.
“Gracias, Madre de Dios,” Mendoza prayed as he crossed himself.
Harris walked out from beneath the canopy backwards, his rifle pointed at the roof, but no zombies waited in ambush. He shook his head in confusion. “I don’t get it.”
“Let’s go,” Mendoza urged.
Harris nodded. He could ponder the new zombie tactics in the car. “Yeah, we should be on our way.”
“Where to?” Mendoza asked.
Harris smiled. “Oracle, Arizona.”
4
To the casual observer, pre-dawn San Diego appeared unchanged. It is a vast, sleeping, west coast port city hugging the shores of San Diego Harbor, its roots creeping down into the serene water and onto the Coronado Peninsula. As the first fingers of the rising sun touched the city’s skyscrapers, the true devastation of the city became apparent. Unlike other major metropolises, San Diego’s tallest structure, One American Plaza, stood less than five-hundred feet high because of its proximity to the airport. Its obelisk-shaped dead hulk loomed gloomily over the city; blackened, gaping windows weeping blindly upon deserted streets and decaying skeletal reminders of past glory. Holes from large weapons’ fire pockmarked the building’s sides and bomb craters marred the once pristine asphalt of West Broadway.
The Elektra, Symphony Towers, the Manchester Grand Hyatt, and the twin towers of the Harbor Club were now crumbling concrete and steel tombstones reared over a dead city. The Gaslamp Quarter, once the city’s exciting and lively entertainment district, was dark and silent. Little Italy was a blackened scar. The naval base had become a ship’s graveyard with once powerful gray behemoths that controlled the seas reduced to rusting hulks moored to silent docks. Petco Park, home of the Padres, often teeming with adoring fans served as a funeral pyre for ten thousand bodies before the dead became too numerous to dispose of. Of the one and a quarter-million people who had once called San Diego home, less than two-hundred thousand survived the plague and less than a tenth of that number survived the zombies. Some hid in the rubble, scrounging what they could, but most fled into the country. As the sun rose higher, the dawn revealed entire neighborhoods reduced to char, schools, parks, factories, and warehouses swept away in a raging, man-made inferno.
At the onset of the plague, San Diego became a war zone, bombed by jets and barraged by artillery fire in an effort to stem the tide of zombies. Only on the Coronado Peninsula, jutting into the bay like a beckoning finger, was there any sign of life. Gun turrets, mines, and barricades guarded the only two bridge linked with the mainland. Armed guards patrolled the bridges and beaches. The San Diego Naval Station was now the west coast’s military hub, center from which convoys ranged the countryside in search of people immune to the virus for the ever-expanding blood banks of the research center. Homo mortuus venator, the hunting dead, rule the mainland, but civilization still clung tenaciously to the tiny strip of land off its coast.
If General Edmund Perry had his way, it always would. Strolling along the beach on the leeward side of the island, smoking his early morning cigar, he tried not to look toward the city. He limited himself to two per day to make them last. Once his little stash was gone, it would be a long time before he could enjoy another good Cuban Pantela. At eight bucks each, they had once stretched his budget. Now, they were priceless. He preferred the Pantela’s slightly spicy, medium strength flavor to some of the stronger ones he had tried in the past. At four and a half inches long, they were just the right size for his portly body – not too long to waste on a busy day, not too short to make him look like Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’ character.
He cast a quick glance out of the corner of his eye at his personal aide, Staff Sergeant Hasting Wills, who would not let him out of his sight, but stood discretely some distance away, armed with an M16, giving the general at least the illusion of privacy.
Good man, the sergeant.
General Perry walked the empty beach every morning to think. The early morning silence, eerie at first until the whispers of normal city sounds faded from his memory, allowed his mind to wander before focusing on the day’s current problem. There was always some problem or the other rearing its ugly head. He was a man of action, now thrust into the distasteful position of babysitting a group of civilian doctors. The entire base had dedicated itself to the procurement and housing of munies for harvesting their immune blood. Harvesting. He detested that word and the connotation it invoked in his mind of a sickle and a shock of wheat, but he could not escape the reality of the situation. His men needed Blue Juice. Without it, he would spend half his time fighting his own men who had turned zombie. He firmly believed that if America stood any chance of recovery, it was the military and the surviving government that would do it. A few lives inconvenienced or sacrificed was a small price to pay.
He hated zombies with all the indignation of a man who had watched impotently as his world died around him. Each time he sent a patrol out from the island, he wanted to sit in the lead jeep facing the enemy with his .45 in one hand and a flamethrower in the other.
Now, the bastards are breeding. The mental image of two of the olive skinned creatures mating sickened him. It was worse than if they were animals. These things had once been human beings. The scientists had informed him in their supercilious manners that they were mutating rapidly into a new species, a kind of superman, stronger, faster and more vicious than humans had ever been at their worst. Their wounds healed almost magically. It took a round to the head or decapitation to stop them. Anything less might weaken them, but left them able to take out their attacker. They infested the streets of fallen American cities like vermin. However, San Diego, at least the downtown area, was now zombie free.
He looked toward the dead city and saw a few signs of early life near the waterfront. By all reports, the Sarin gas had been very effective, killing the zombies who preferred living in basements and at ground level where the heavy nerve gas was most lethal. The cleanup of bodies had already commenced. Crews loaded bodies onto trucks for disposal outside the city. Once the new barricades were constructed, humans could spread out from the restricting confines of the Coronado Peninsula. He didn’t want to think about the countless innocent human lives lost during the gas barrage, people trapped by the surrounding zombies. He still held out hope that they would find survivors on upper floors where the gas could not reach. Now, the battle would move to Phoenix for its railways, airport, and its nuclear power plant. Thank God, he wouldn’t be in charge of that endeavor. He had seen enough death to last a lifetime.
The sun flashed across the waters of San Diego Bay, lying flat and silver like a serving platter, in stark contrast to the skeletal skyscrapers beyond. The water was so still it looked as if he could walk across to the newly reclaimed city. He chuckled aloud. The plague had bestowed upon him the mantle of power but he wasn’t Jesus H. Christ, not by a long shot.
In Salt Lake City, they faced a different threat – tens of thousands of zombies marching north, scouring the countryside for food, both human and animal. Gas wouldn’t work in the open deserts of Utah. It would take manpower, manpower and courage. He wished Colonel Schumer the best of luck.
Sergeant Wills quietly cleared his throat and pointed to his wristwatch. “It’s time, General Perry,” he said.
Perry grunted a terse, “Very good, sergeant,” and dropped the stub of his cigar on the beach. He looked down, bemused at the several identical cigar butts at his feet. He was becoming habitual in his walk and Wills was nothing, if not punctual. The general took one last lingering look at the city and headed directly to his office to face the day’s problems. He was sure Major Corzine would be one of those problems. The man was insufferable, but his intimate knowledge of the plague virus made him the logical choice to oversee the researchers. Every
time he met with Corzine, he came away feeling soiled. He didn’t know, nor did he care to know, details of the Major’s task in Europe for NATO, but someone higher up the chain of command deemed Corzine irreplaceable.
Corzine was also in charge of the mercenary Hunter groups bringing in munies. The general preferred that Corzine handle that particular messy problem, freeing his soldiers for fighting zombies. He had scheduled a sweep of the shorefront area just before those interlopers posing as Hunters had absconded with thirty of his munies, a precious Mi-17 helicopter and the CDC team from Colorado. His demands for the Corzine's removal had met with determined resistance from on high and Corzine knew it. Now, the smarmy bastard demanded, not requested, demanded sufficient men and materiel to hunt down his lost sheep. Perry didn’t doubt that soon such an order would reach him, but until that time, he would be damned if he yielded one man or a single helicopter.
“What do you think would happen if I shot that bastard Corzine?” he asked Wills. He knew that the always-discreet sergeant would never divulge anything he heard.
“They’d send another smarmy bastard to shoot me and you both.”
Perry sighed. “You’re probably right, sergeant, damn you.”
“We’re probably all damned, general,” Wills replied as he hopped in the jeep and cranked it.
General Perry watched a boat entering the harbor, one of several searching the coast for survivors. He recognized it as the USS Firebolt, a 174-foot Cyclone class patrol boat. The Firebolt had been active in the Persian Gulf when the plague hit and had made its way back to San Diego. With a crew of thirty and armed with two Mk38 chain guns, two Mk19 grenade launchers, two-50 inch machine guns, and six Stinger missiles, the ship presented a formidable weapon in his floating arsenal. He had two such vessels, the Firebolt and the Thunderfish. With a dozen, he could reclaim the entire coast. Their assignment was to locate survivors, bringing back any munies, and leaving supplies for any others forced to fend for themselves.
He had a sudden impulse to greet the little ship as it docked, find out what they had seen. He knew it was just a way of postponing the inevitable, but he was a general after all.
“Sergeant, head for the dock.”
Wills glanced at the General out of the corner of his eye but said nothing. Perry though he detected a slight smile creasing the sergeant’s lips as he spun the steering wheel to reverse their direction. The Major could wait.
5
People who live in glass houses should not cast stones. Dr. Jeb Stone had heard the trite saying for most of his thirty-two-year-life, but only lately, had the truth of it become apparent. Life in the glass-enclosed Biosphere2 was not to everyone’s delight. One or two came in but left when faced with the prospect of work instead of a free handout. Of the thirty or so people rescued from the clutches of the military doctors in San Diego, and of the handful that had drifted in from the surrounding Tucson area, only two had proven a constant source of conflict – Janis Heath and William Sikes.
Young, lovely Janis Heath longed for her beachfront home in Venice, California, her surfboard and her parakeet. The fact that Venice was no longer there, consumed by a fire that had burned for twenty days, did not lessen her long list of imagined grievances. She hated her duty assignments, she hated her roommates, and most of all she hated Renda Beth Kilmer.
The two women had butted heads almost since the beginning. Janis used her beauty and pouting lips as other women use their wits to disarm most of the men and a few of the women, but Renda, who had been through hell and survived, was immune to such charms. It was an inevitable clash of wills, and just as inevitably, Janis always came out the loser, just as Jeb was certain she would on this occasion as he discretely watched from the spiral staircase outside the kitchen that accessed the small, private apartments on the second floor. He leaned heavily on the metal rail to support his mentally and physically exhausted body as he eavesdropped.
“You think you’re some kind of queen, don’t you,” Janis shot at Renda as the two prepared lunch for the group, “Shouting orders like I’m a servant.” As usual, Janis had appeared in the kitchen wearing a miniskirt and high heels in an effort to highlight her long, lean surfer’s legs. She constantly flaunted her beauty and chose her attire to stand out against the sensible, drab, workaday clothing the others usually wore.
Renda no longer made allowances for Janis’ ordeal at the hands of the military and cut her no slack now for her complaints. She stopped peeling onions from the pile in front of her, wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with the back of her hand, and glared at Janis. “Look, I’ve nicely asked you twice to bring some potatoes from the pantry. I’m through asking. Bring some potatoes or I’ll kick your damned ass.”
Janis eyed the knife in Renda’s hand. Renda grinned, spun the knife in the air, caught it by the handle, and slapped it down on the counter.
“I don’t need this, but if it’ll give you confidence, pick it up and see what you can do with it.”
The two stared at each other over the counter, Janis’ fury making her cheek twitch. For a moment, Jeb thought Janis might try for the knife. If she did, he knew it would be her last mistake. In spite of being three months pregnant, Renda had lost none of her speed and agility, and her raging hormones made her highly unpredictable, a deadly combination. Jeb knew he could not reach Renda in time to stop her. To his relief, Janis backed down.
“I’m tired of this piss hole,” she bitched as her high heels clicked across the white and black tiled floor toward the pantry for the potatoes.
Renda looked up at Jeb and smiled. “It’s okay, no harm. She’s all mouth.”
Jeb sighed in relief. “I wasn’t worried about you. I didn’t want lunch delayed. I’m hungry.”
Renda, a twenty-eight-year-old dishwater-blonde, who had been a waitress in her previous life, did not look like a cold-blooded killer. Her bright hazel eyes and ready smile belied her proficiency with both firearms and her Gung dao, a six-foot, double-blade Chinese long knife. When Latino gang bangers had attacked Jeb’s Tucson Foothills home eight months earlier, he, Mace and Renda had killed them all. She had nursed him back to health from the gunshot wound he had sustained, and she had pulled her own weight during the hazardous trek to San Diego, dispatching zombies as efficiently as he or Mace.
“If you’re looking for Mace, he’s in the generator room with Sikes.” Her frown revealed her opinion of William Sikes, their resident mechanic.
Jeb shared her low opinion of Sikes, but tried to play diplomat for the disparate group. Of the forty-five people now living in Biosphere 2, called by most the Crystal Palace, Janis Heath and William Sikes presented the biggest problem to stability and required his maximum diplomatic effort to smooth ruffled feathers.
It was a shame. Sikes would have been a valued addition to the small commune. His mechanical genius at keeping the group’s small fleet of vehicles running was first rate, but his quick temper and slow wit were quickly ostracizing him from the others. Already, he had picked one fight that had resulted in another man’s broken nose. One more such infraction and Jeb doubted he could keep the others from banishing him from the dome, or keep Mace from killing him outright.
Mace Ridell, another of the original group and Renda’s forty-five-year-old lover, was a hard man, patient but unforgiving. A hunting guide by trade and a survivalist by disposition, he had taken the unreality of the zombie plague in stride and had taught both Renda and Jeb how to survive in a world gone mad. His hatred for the new military order and their mercenary Hunters matched Jeb’s. Without him, they would not have reached San Diego and rescued Jeb’s wife, a feat for which Jeb would be forever in Mace’s debt.
Those hectic days of the journey to San Diego, the rescue, and the return seemed like a distant memory to him. They had rescued Karen, like him immune from the plague, a munie. She was recovering slowly, still confined to short walks until her strength returned. She had been in captivity the longest of the group. Their son’s death had ch
anged her, probably more than her capture and subsequent confinement. The military had ripped their infected six-year old son Josh from her arms at the Marana FEMA camp and had put him down like a rabid dog before the plague virus could change him into a zombie.
Jeb had been able to channel his rage and his hatred for the military into the killing of zombies. In his opinion, the military and the government had forsaken their duty to the American people in a time of extreme crisis by concentrating on their own survival and the needs of the few surviving political leaders. Karen had no such outlet. Sedated and bled like an animal for her precious immune blood, she had awakened months later with her memory of Josh’s death only days old. The rage still boiled within her like her own personal Big Bang waiting to rework the universe in her blighted image. Jeb had seen the dark anger lurking just behind her once bright emerald green eyes, now turned almost gray.
Her opinion of Jeb had changed as well. In her opinion, her long captivity was her husband’s fault. It did not matter that she had gone to the hospital against his wishes, or that he had battled zombies, gang bangers, and the perils of three hundred miles of desolation to reach her. She had focused her anger on him as well as the rest of the world. His entire motivation for the last four months had been seeking redemption in her eyes.
On his journey to the generator room beyond the main dome, Jeb passed several familiar faces on their way to complete the wall around the central buildings. A glass building, even one with one-half-inch glass panels as strong as those comprising the linked Biosphere2 habitats, could not withstand a concentrated attack. Mace had proposed building a six-foot high wall of double sandbags protected by layers of intertwined wire mesh. The wall would be both bullet proof and zombie proof. Many did not see the need for such an elaborate defensive structure, but most of them had not fought zombies.