by J. J. Fowler
“May I have a cigar?”
Tarte smiled and handed him a cigar. Murphy lit it and took a long, deep puff. Then he blew the smoke out coughing.
“Never inhale a cigar,” Tarte said with slight menace. “The smoke can kill you.”
Murphy lowered his head in shame and defeat. He felt trapped. He felt alone. He had no choice. “I’ll choose my team tomorrow.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The rusted steel door to the execution chamber opened. An enormous man with a handlebar mustache and blood-soaked uniform stepped into the corridor. He pointed to Drake.
The guards grabbed the tired and wounded soldier. A weakened Drake offered little resistance when they grasped him and dragged him into the chamber to meet his end. He saw a bearded and exhausted-looking man with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth raise the bloodied guillotine. He looked like death himself to Drake.
As they strapped him facedown onto the steel bench, an image appeared in his mind of himself as a young boy holding his mother. He looked into the blackened sky just as a ray of sunlight penetrated the Longest Midnight to illuminate their dark worlds. He grinned and accepted his fate. It’s over now, mother. Then Drake’s small world of the dark execution chamber abruptly flooded with light. A figure burst into the room and tore the heads off his would be executioners.
The straps were ripped off of him and Drake was flipped on his back. He wearily opened his eyes to see a familiar face looking down on him. “Captain, we must escape,” Chosin said.
“Chosin,” Drake said hoarsely and slightly confused. “You’re done.”
“No. I exist. You must, too. Come. They will soon be upon us.”
Drake leaned forward, and Chosin helped him to his feet.
“We need Murphy and Mifune.”
“Mifune was evacuated to the hospital. Murphy is gone, but we will find him. We must go. Guards are approaching.”
“Hold on,” Drake said. He walked without aid over to the severed head of the guillotine operator. A burning cigarette was still pressed between the dead man’s lips. Drake pulled the cigarette out and took a long, deep drag. Then he flicked it on the floor, crushed the severed head with one powerful stomp, and said to Chosin with enraged eyes, “Tarte must die.”
* * *
Colonel Jack Kaluma, savior of Alpha Base and an admirer of Captain Drake, shook hands with Colonel Tarte. They were outside the still-smoldering ruins of Alpha Base dressed in long winter coats since the cold rains were now a bitter freeze with snow starting to fall. Snowflakes of the coming harsh winter fell on Kaluma’s nose. He ignored them. A small group of heavily armed troopers stood shivering behind Kaluma. No one stood behind Tarte.
Tarte spoke with a shit-eating grin and a slight lisp because of the teeth Drake knocked out. “Jacky, things are wrapped up inside Alpha. The bitten are disposed of and my remaining brave lads are on their way to Beta. That was a fine show you did by the way—saved us all.”
Kaluma detested the nickname ‘Jacky’ almost as much as he did Tarte. “Thankfully, a group of our troopers saw the fighting from Beta and we knew it looked serious. My men are almost done mopping things up.”
Kaluma was a slight man with dark skin, grey eyes, and an ear missing from his days hunting deaders in the deep unknown. He was a good, honest man who deeply loved his men. He was also a man who could not stand incompetence and despised Colonel Tarte with unrelenting hatred. He never understood why Tarte was given the critical role of commanding Alpha when other commanders were so better suited. He suspected Tarte had strong connections within the Council and had maneuvered his way into the job. Politics disgusted him.
“I’ve lost a lot of men, Jacky.”
“Yes, you did,” Kaluma said. “You were a fool to send out your men like that and not communicate with us when Alpha got hit hard.”
Tarte was shocked. Did he just call me a fool? “Pardon me, Jacky, but you weren’t familiar with the situation. It was fluid and I needed to act accordingly.”
Kaluma wiped the snowflakes off his face and then spit out, “Cut the Jacky nonsense, you bastard; you were criminally stupid! You left Alpha virtually undefended and then didn’t say a word when Alpha was collapsing! Do you have any idea what would’ve happened had we not arrived?”
“Jacky, calm down.” Tarte did not get to finish because he found himself suddenly pinned to the ground. It took his eyes several quick blinks to focus on the face before him. It was Chosin’s.
“Hands up,” said a voice behind Kaluma and his men. They turned and saw Drake pointing an assault rifle at them.
Kaluma cocked his head in amazement. “Captain Drake?”
“Hands up, Colonel Kaluma.”
“Raise your hands, men,” Kaluma ordered. They obeyed and dropped their weapons in the quickly accumulating snow.
Drake, still dressed in his tattered fatigues, showed no signs of the cold or snow bothering him. He cautiously moved around them with the gun pointed at Kaluma and his men until he got to Chosin and Tarte. “Lift him up,” Drake said to Chosin.
Chosin picked Tarte up by the throat with considerable ease. Kaluma and his men looked on in amazement. Other soldiers walking around the outside of the base saw the commotion and ran towards them. Drake and Chosin ignored the looming threat. They were there for Tarte. Nothing else mattered.
“Drake,” Kaluma began, “Tarte said you were dead.”
“Yeah. He tried and failed. This pile of human filth is a traitor who tried to wipe us all out by sacrificing his men and leaving Alpha naked to attack. He’s a madman who wanted humanity to die out in some twisted fucking notion of ending our suffering.”
“Is that so?” replied Kaluma. “That requires an investigation, as you know.”
“Fuck that, sir. It requires his death.”
Tarte tried to protest, but could not muster the words because of Chosin’s strong grip around his neck.
“You can’t do that, soldier.”
“Watch me, sir.”
Chosin threw Tarte down and Drake swiveled his rifle away from Kaluma and depressed the trigger. The bullet spun through the long barrel of Drake’s rifle and blasted through the falling snowflakes on a short trajectory towards Tarte’s pounding heart.
Tarte’s final thoughts were of cigars, fine whiskey, and UV lights, all of which whizzed through his mind as rapidly as the bullet screaming towards him. Then, one last image appeared in his mind: his sister—his beautiful, pale, deceased sister smiling at him. He felt at ease. The bullet finished its journey and Tarte lay motionless on the ground except for a slight death twitch in his feet.
Drake dropped the rifle into the snow. He looked around and saw that he and Chosin were surrounded by dozens of troopers all pointing their rifles at them.
Kaluma stepped over Tarte’s corpse to stand by Drake.
“You know I have to arrest you. Right?” Kaluma said.
“I know, sir, but I have a man out there this piece of shit sent out on another goddamned suicide mission.”
Kaluma gazed at Chosin for several moments considering his response. He had no idea what he was looking at.
“Who is he?” he said to Drake.
“A friend.”
“He’s strong and fast.”
“He is.”
“I suppose he’s so strong and fast, he could easily grab you and run off before I could arrest you. Right?”
“I suppose he could. Chosin?”
Chosin grinned, bearing his long, sharp, bright-white fangs.
“I take it he has more tricks up his sleeve, too.”
“That he does, sir. That he does.”
“Well, Captain, I wish you luck in finding your man. Officially, you’re a wanted criminal.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Good.”
Kaluma stepped back over Tarte’s corpse. When he turned around, he saw that Drake and Chosin were gone. His men stood motionless as if they were unable to process what they had just
witnessed.
“Okay, show’s over, sweethearts. Let’s finish this up and get moving. Alpha is dead now.”
Just then, zombie Tarte stood up and roared. Kaluma, waiting with his cocked revolver, waved off his men from shooting it dead. Drake had purposely left it for him to finish Tarte off. “You have no idea how good this makes me feel, Tarte.”
Tarte hissed at Kaluma just as he pulled the trigger. Tarte’s body fell into the snow, and within a few hours, his frozen corpse was no longer visible. When Alpha was evacuated, most of the fires inside were long gone.
The first deaders appeared soon afterwards to conquer what was once unconquerable. They took a base where tens of thousands of young and old men had served Freetoria and where many of those same men met their deaths. It was a ruin now, just like everything else from the old world. The struggle for Alpha was at an end, all for naught. The struggle for humanity’s survival, however, went on, as did the Longest Midnight.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Convoy 19
Chapter 1
“Almost home,” Sergeant First Class Carl Harvey whispered under his breath, as he accelerated his military Humvee through the dark, rubble-strewn city streets. The windshield wipers, moving at full speed, barely cut through the torrential downpour that was so uncharacteristic of San Diego weather. Carl leaned forward in the driver seat struggling to lead his convoy of military vehicles home. The interior of the hummer was a noisy cacophony of confusion. Terrified sobs and screams from the civilians who sat in the back of his vehicle, mingled with the constant squawking of communications across the combat network. The .50 caliber machine gun mounted above him drowned the havoc in sporadic thunder and death.
A swarm of living dead was close behind. Carl had often wondered at the horrifying phenomenon that drove undead to gather in groups. Individually, they were dangerous, but easily dealt with. In groups, however, they could work themselves into frenzy. Hundreds, even thousands of rotting cadavers sprinted after the convoy like a ravenous marathon.
Agitated for long enough, a boiling swarm of zombies might pursue prey for miles until they were distracted. Carl knew that if he were to stop driving, the howls of the hungry dead would raise to a crescendo as they engulfed the convoy. He blinked away the mental image and pressed on the accelerator.
Harvey’s responsibilities as point driver – the lead vehicle of the convoy – were measured in split seconds – instantaneous judgment calls that led the convoy through the mayhem of a city consumed by the undead. A wrong turn, break down, even a flat tire, would cost lives. Having grown up in northern Michigan, he had learned to drive in an unforgiving crucible of weather that was encouraged and supported by a culture and family that loved everything about cars. Now, as the country struggled to survive a living nightmare of death risen to devour the living, he couldn’t help but remember the blizzards he had experienced in his youth. A relentless, high-intensity storm, where no one respected the law, cars being abandoned and debris littered every inch of the road. On top of all that, an armed hostile civilian or flesh-eating monster could, and often did, jump out at you at any second.
Carl Harvey was in his late-twenties, but the stress of the last year had aged him. His dirty-blond hair was cut military short and was beginning to show flecks of gray. His jaw was always covered in stubble. He walked and talked as if he was half soldier, half truck driver, and extended a cool aura of confidence that made him a natural leader. He was the kind of man that made other soldiers believe that, whatever shit the world threw at them, Sergeant First Class Harvey knew what he was doing, and he would get you through it. Aided by the obscenely high attrition rates among the convoy teams, he vaulted quickly through the ranks.
“Approaching Interstate 8, five miles east of US Naval Station. We’ll be home in no time boys.” Specialist Pamela Grace sat in the passenger seat speaking into her headset-mounted microphone. A laptop computer sat on a dashboard-mounted tray in front of her. Her words seemed to calm the civilians somewhat. As point vehicle communications expert, she was connected to an extensive network of communications, satellite feeds, and minute-by-minute reporting. This gave her a picture of how to get the convoy where they needed to go, without leading it straight into a roadblock, hostile civilians, or a swarm of flesh-eating dead who would stop at nothing to consume the living.
With a gentle spin of the wheel, Carl expertly turned his Humvee up an onramp onto a yellow-lit highway that would lead them to their destination. The machine gun fire gradually dropped from a sporadic thunder to a periodic rattle.
“What’s that?” Pam covered her microphone and sat up abruptly.
“What? SHIT!” Carl quickly pushed down on the accelerator before he slammed into a dozen figures huddled on the highway. Gore and body parts launched in every direction, smearing the windshield with thick gouts of blood. The civilians in the back screamed in horror.
Convoy drivers had been trained to neither slow down nor swerve, but rather to accelerate when something – living or dead – crossed the path of their moving armored vehicle. Swerve and you risk losing control or crashing; a very bad thing in the best of circumstances, a death sentence in most. Slow down unexpectedly, and you risk being rear-ended by the Humvee on your tail, ending up with a carcass on your hood, or giving an armed attacker with nothing left to lose that extra second he needs to put you in his crosshairs. It was best to use the Humvee’s kinetic energy to plow through anything that didn’t have the wherewithal to stay out of the convoy’s way.
The force of the impact jolted the rain-soaked gunner out of his mount. Sergeant Miguel Ramos dropped down into the cab from his position and cursed. “What the hell?”
“More dead. Civilians know not to cross into the street by now,” Pam assured them both. As the situation across the country worsened, one of San Diego’s main arteries, Interstate 8, had been blocked off for strictly military purposes. The road served as a valuable pipeline connecting the various pockets of survivors scattered around the city to the US Naval Base. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, Nimitz-class supercarrier, and its accompanying battle group floated offshore collecting supplies and refugees. For over two months, the battle group had been filled with survivors from every reachable corner of California. The convoys were an essential component of a much bigger picture, whose focus was to survive an Armageddon no one had anticipated or planned for – the rise of the living dead.
“There comes a point when the threat from the walking dead is greater than the threat from us,” Miguel grumbled curtly. He made the sign of the cross over his chest, pulled his stocky body back into the gun mount, and resumed scanning for targets. As the lead gunner, he was responsible for defending the convoy from constant onslaught – a job that seldom lent itself to looking at the bright side of things. No one knew how many unlucky innocent civilians found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when a convoy passed by. The saying “from behind a .50 cal everyone looks the same”, was common among gunners who would return to the Naval Base with the gnawing guilt in the back of their mind about something they had seen on a mission. Was that shadow an animated corpse or some teenager running for his life? Was that an attacker or someone trying to flag the convoy down for help? There were millions of questions like this that were probably best left unanswered.
The six-vehicle convoy had been making trips to and from the Naval base all day and well into the night, each time loaded up with civilians and supplies from Defensible Detention Centers. DDC’s - as they were called - had originally been set up as medical screening clinics all over the country when the outbreak first hit. As the outbreak grew, the clinics became more like detention facilities where those that had been screened were urged to remain to avoid infection. When the centers began to overflow with desperate people, the military had stepped in to provide security and supplies. Now that the entire country - indeed the world - was beset by the incomprehensible epidemic of cannibalistic undead, the decision had been made to
evacuate the North American continent. Every convoy trip into the hell-torn streets of San Diego had cost lives, but had also saved countless more with the food, medical personnel, and supplies they brought to the fleet.
“Control, this is convoy nineteen. Entry code: Alpha, Alpha, Tango, Alpha. We’ve got supplies and about thirty civvies that need offloaded, ASAP.” Grace’s voice always sounded monotone when she spoke through the communications network to the command center. The sandbag fortifications, gun towers, and bright yellow lights of the naval docks slowly loomed into view through the blurry windshield, and the sounds of the Naval Base defenses echoed off the buildings.
“Negative, convoy. Entry code rejected. Do not pass checkpoint or you will be fired upon.” The casual voice of an officer in some comfortable office somewhere came back through the Humvee speakers. The civilians in back shuddered in terror at the thought of their struggle for survival within the DDC’s, meeting a violent end mere walking distance from salvation.
Sergeant First Class r Harvey slammed on the brakes and the screeching tires of every vehicle behind him could be heard above the rattle of gunfire. His heart thumped into his chest. He knew his drivers were good, but rain-slicked streets made stopping on short notice a roll of the dice. Two Blackhawk helicopters hovered into position to block their entry to the docks. The menacing war machines looked like birds of prey, hungry to strike a defenseless target. A glance in the side mirror confirmed that the ravenous silhouettes of their pursuers had not given up the chase. Time was a valuable commodity.
“Repeat, Control, entry code for convoy niner one. Alpha, alpha, tango, alpha!” Pam spoke clearly back through her headset.
It was moments like this that he was reminded how lucky he was to have Pam as his communications expert. Had it been him speaking to Control, he would have screamed obscenities in impotent frustration, until the entire convoy was buried beneath a mountain of zombies. Despite the gravity of the situation, Pam always maintained a calm demeanor.