The dead had all day to find and infect everyone. If there were people, there were zombies. He hadn’t seen anyone alive, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities, if someone had burglar bars on their windows and doors and had been inside.
Cobb went back to scribbling notes and Gunny took the opportunity to ask Tommy about his truck. He still wanted to leave, still had to try to make it home to his family.
“I’ve got some ideas,” he said. “After that fiasco with Tiny,” then paused, remembering the screaming, clawing, gnashing masses…Tiny being drug off of the hood. The unbridled fury and raw strength of those... Those…. Those monsters. The fear he had felt, the nearly incapacitating fear...
He realized he had stopped and everyone was looking at him. He gave his head a half shake and took the last swill of his beer. “Right, I need to armor up my truck, build a cowcatcher, and reinforce the windows,” he continued. “I don’t care how much truck you’ve got, if you run into a horde, they will overwhelm it. You need to be able to shunt them aside, not let them pile up and over the hood. That’s how we lost Tiny. They were up and over and smashing through the windshield, breaking their way in.”
“Like a snow plow,” Tommy said and flipped over a paper placemat and started sketching. Between them, with Tommy knowing what was practical with the iron pieces he had on hand, and Gunny having just been through a horde of zombies and gridlocked cars abandoned on the road, they came up with a pretty good design.
The weakest point was the front tires. If one of them blew from debris on the road, or from bouncing a car out of the way, the truck was stopped. No way around it.
“We’ve got some industrial tires we keep on hand for the local construction trucks, and there are plenty of old dump trucks out back with the oversized wheels on them,” one of his mechanics chimed in. “It wouldn’t handle very well at high speed, but they’re just about bullet proof.”
Tommy quickly added the oversized extreme duty tires to the drawing and erased part of the fenders so they would have clearance.
“Looks like Mad Max,” Scratch said. “How many can you build?”
“None tonight,” Tommy replied, “I’m going to bed. It’s going on two o’clock.”
Chapter Twenty
Gunny was asleep in his bunk. Just by the sheer dumb luck of pulling his rig in for a service, it was safe in the mechanic’s bay and he got all the comforts his truck had to offer. He’d told Cobb and Martha they were welcome to use it, but they’d refused. Scratch said he would use it, as a matter of fact he needed it, because of his arm and all.
Gunny just gave him the finger as he had walked toward his truck, and his comfortable bed. There was a knocking on the side of the sleeper. He was awake instantly, listening. It wasn’t a lot lizard, that much he knew. Not here inside the bay.
“Gunny,” he heard. It sounded like the British guy.
“What’s up?” he said. No drowsiness or confusion in his voice.
“That Wire Bender bloke needs you, mate.”
Geez. Doesn’t he ever sleep? “Tell him I’m on the way.”
When Gunny walked into the shop a few minutes later, fully dressed, armed and alert, Cobb and Griz were there, also. Wire Bender was the only one looking frazzled and red-eyed. Stabby was on one of the computers, loading up USB sticks.
“He’s here, Sir. Transferring the coms now,” Wire Bender said and slid the big silver table top Ham radio microphone over the counter toward Gunny.
He just looked at it and held his hands palms up in a “What?” gesture.
“It’s General Carson at NORAD,” Cobb said around his unlit Lucky Strike.
“Who? What’s he want with me?”
Cobb gestured to the mic. “Just answer the radio, Gunny,” he said.
Looking a little frustrated at the lack of answers, he hit the push to talk button and said, “This is Gunny. Go ahead.”
“Is this Sergeant First Class Meadows formerly of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment?” the voice came back through the mike.
“What did these guys want?” Gunny thought. The old anger in him rose up to the surface, faster than he thought possible. He went from frosty to insta-pissed in half a second. These officers and political appointees had ruined his life for a while, and being called by his old unit and rank brought it all back.
He and his wife had a long-term plan worked out, that included him retiring after 20 years, drawing a nice pension, and finding a quiet little town to live in. A place where he could get a job as a deputy or patrolman, and she could find work at the school.
There they would reap the benefits of a comfortable life after the grueling years of active duty. The long separations, all of the missed birthdays and Christmas’ and Thanksgivings. The constant danger he found himself in, obeying orders and doing ops all around the world.
It would have all been worth it with a small town life, where all he had to do was break up a few bar fights on the weekends, maybe catch a speeder every once in a while, and get in plenty of fishing. Hang out at the local café with the rest of the town folk. Maybe build himself an old school hot rod. But Uncle Sam was finished with him after he gave them fifteen years.
No benefits. No retirement. No Medical. Just Dishonorable walking papers. They had very little savings, and it went quickly. Lacy had finally landed a good job in Atlanta, while he floundered. He couldn’t go to the police academy with a dishonorable discharge. Hell, he couldn’t even find work driving a forklift in a warehouse once the background check was run on him.
He didn’t have the stomach to join up with some of the contractor outfits like Griz had done. He just wanted peace and quiet, and to be left alone. That’s when he stumbled on the idea of driving a truck. Money was good.
You were your own boss so there were no embarrassing questions about your past and the inevitable, “I’m sorry, sir, but our policy…..” He and his wife were used to separations, and at least it would only be for a few weeks at a time, not months. And most important, nobody was shooting at him. Now they were calling him by his old rank, the one they had stripped from him.
“No, Sir. That would be Private Meadows. But I’m not even that. I’m sure you have the paperwork right there in front of you, General. If you need a military man, may I suggest First Sergeant Cobb or Sergeant First Class Grizzwold. Both fine men.”
The General wouldn’t be deterred that easily. “Funny thing, Sergeant. I’m looking right at your file. I have page after page of glowing performance reports, awards, medals, a few purple hearts, bronze stars, a silver star…. Hell, son. You’ve got a Distinguished Service Cross. I don’t even know anyone that has one of those. Then I have a one page DD214 where it shows your rank as private, with a dishonorable discharge and that’s it. No reason given. Everything redacted. Can you clarify?”
Everyone else was staring at him now. Griz stroking his beard and looking quite impressed. Stabby asking, “Is that good, all those stars and thingies? Are you like a hero or something?”
Gunny didn’t like to talk about his military life. None of these men knew much about his former career except what little they had gleaned over the years. They knew he had been a grunt and had seen some action. A lot of guys who had seen too much over there were like that. Quiet. Observant. Rarely talked about their tours. They knew not to pry. Everyone had secrets, some darker than others.
“I punched a General,” Gunny said and released the button. “That ought to shut him up,” he thought.
There was laughter in the background when the microphone came back to life, “Well, if you did, I’m sure he deserved it,” General Carson said. He knew Gunny wasn’t being honest. There would have been a court martial in there for that, and some jail time, but it didn’t matter. Everything else in his jacket told him this was the man he wanted. And he had a strong hunch this was the man he needed. “But I didn’t wake you up to talk about that. Sergeant, I’m going to put you on speaker here. My counterparts in Russia, China,
and Germany will be listening to us. Unfortunately, these are the only governments that any of us have been able to raise. We’ve contacted a number of ships at sea and most of the submarines, but as far as friendly governments, we four are it.”
The General paused for a second where they assumed he was patching in the others, then finally got to his point, “Tell us how you came to the determination that the Muslim extremists were behind this attack through infected meat products.”
Gunny was taken aback. “I… I don’t know if it was,” he said, trying to adjust to the change in the direction of the questions, and suddenly aware there were a lot of people listening to him. “It was just a logical conclusion I came to and asked Sergeant Kowalski to see if there was anything on the news about it, to see if it was even within the realm of possibility.”
“You hadn’t had any inside information, something leaked to you by any of your former military associates?” The General asked
“No, sir. Just a deduction with the few facts that I had,” Gunny replied. “I was guessing.” Did they think he had something to do with this? That he was discharged because he had terrorist ties? That he was still pissed and had decided to kill the whole world because of it?
“If I may…” came an Asian accented voice over the microphone.
“Of course, go ahead General Feng,” Carson said.
“We were not affected as severely as much of the rest of the civilized world,” he said, his English spoken slowly and very clearly. “Our military bases did not partake in the gifts from our Islamic neighbors. When we learned of this theory from Sergeant Kowalski, we immediately began to investigate the possibility of such an act. We sent entire companies of soldiers into the town to bring back a sampling of the Salaam meats. Many of my men died, but the packages they returned with, that were not labeled halal, were very much infected with a most disturbing contagion.”
“Those bastards!” Gunny thought. It was one thing to think you knew something, something else entirely to KNOW you knew something. “Is it reversible?” he asked.
The Chinese general came back to answer. “No, we do not think it is. The reanimates are truly dead as near as we can determine, in the short time we have had. No heartbeat. They do not breathe. It seems that the very essence that makes one alive, makes one human, is gone. Their spirit. Their soul, if you understand. This appears to be a virulent mutation of a serum many nations have been trying to perfect over the years. A super soldier injection, if you will, that would help a wounded soldier heal quickly, ignore his pain, and continue to battle in a hyper-aggressive manner. Apparently, the Islamic scientists gained a sample to alter, or perhaps even created their own.”
“Now what?” Gunny said. “They won. They kept it out of their countries. Now all they have to do is defend their borders until these things die off, and they own the whole world.”
“This will not be happening,” a Slavic voice said, heavy with menace and barely controlled rage. “They will not take the world as easy as that. They have released the zohmbee on us, we will be releasing Mother Russia’s fury on them.”
The conversation went on until near dawn, when everyone finally signed off. Gunny made his way back to his bunk, hoping to get a few hours of sleep, bone tired and weary from all of the things he had learned. It all seemed hopeless. Worse than he could have imagined.
The conversation replaying in his head. Iran had nuked Israel and was already in a mopping up extermination campaign. From the satellite images, it was wholesale slaughter. Door to door murder. The Israelis had used the Samson option and had sent their own nukes flying, but there were a billion Muslims and even the moderates were caught up in the frenzy.
This year’s trip to Mecca was the largest ever recorded. It seemed nearly every Muslim that was able had made the trip to Saudi Arabia. Did most of them even know what their leaders had done? Had they known what was coming and went to a safe area, or was it just a general demand from Imams this year that all believers must go?
Were they afraid not to rejoice and celebrate, and do victory dances in the streets, even if they secretly didn’t agree? Afraid of being targeted, themselves, by the extreme religious fanatics that had taken control of their religion, while they had sat back and done nothing? Too late now. The Russians had control of their nukes and they were pragmatic about it. They couldn’t maintain them. If they didn’t fire them off, they would eventually be a danger to everyone in the vicinity. They could have shot them off into space, or the ocean, Gunny and a number of other voices had argued, but General Carson had told all Hams to maintain silence, or they would be shut out of the one-sided conversation completely.
He, or one of the other commanders, would occasionally ask a specific question to various individuals around the world, but that was the only input allowed. So the last living representatives of humanity had to shut up and listen while four men discussed and decided the fate of millions.
It seemed that a lot of conversation had happened before the Hams were privy to it because the Generals were uncannily honest with each other. No posturing for position. No ambiguity about how much firepower they could bring to bear. They all knew there were no more backdoor channels to negotiate through. No months of waiting for answers to questions. They all laid their cards on the table.
China and Russia had control of their ships, nukes, and subs. America had no access to nukes at the moment, but it was a possibility within a few weeks. They still had the military fiber optic networks, links to the NSA databases, and control of their satellites. Germany only had contact with their Navy. No one else. Russia was pushing for full nuclear annihilation of the entire Middle Eastern region. Scorched earth. Glass parking lot.
Gunny got the feeling they were going to do it whether anyone agreed with them or not, but they were at least going through the motions of trying to have a consensus. By next week, another billion people would be dead. They hoped to completely destroy all things Middle East, eradicate everyone who practiced the “religion of peace.” By their reasoning, then the rest of the world would have a chance to rebuild, without being slaughtered as infidels or forcibly converted.
The deciding factor for all of them, aside from the Russian General who seemed pissed off the entire time they were in on the conference, was the latest satellite imagery. It showed barriers along the borders of the peninsula of northern Turkey, completely sealing it off from Europe. By going back through the previous satellite photos, they could see the materials for it being amassed months in advance.
The Turkish Government had known it was coming and were prepared. In Egypt, the Suez Canal was heavily guarded and all crossings of it were thoroughly blocked. To the east, massive fortifications had gone up overnight in a well-planned action that sacrificed some Muslim territories, but protected most of them.
There had been unprecedented movements of people into the guarded areas. Basically, the entire Middle East, and all of the Muslim countries, had been walled off. The people responsible for noticing these things in the various governments throughout the world must have chalked it up to the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. It was a strange few hours, discussing killing that many people.
It left Gunny with an empty feeling, knowing there were good people over there and he found it hard to believe that they didn’t try to warn anyone, that an operation with so many involved, didn’t have anyone who disagreed. That their Caliphate was so important to them, they would write off everyone who didn’t believe as they did.
The remaining governments had all agreed to wait at least another week before retaliating, so the Americans could gather as much information as possible from their eyes in the sky. Even though there was irrefutable proof which nations had either done it, or been privy to the information and let it go forward, there were still millions and millions who had nothing to do with it.
They would all die for what a handful of their leaders had done. Guilty by association. Gunny guessed all wars were like that, though. It just see
med so BIG now. Push some buttons, a billion people die. But those same nations had banded together to send out deliberately contaminated food, and it worked perfectly. They didn’t deserve mercy or leniency. Four or five billion people were dead because of their actions. Still walking around, but dead, nonetheless.
After the other command centers had signed off, General Carson asked if anyone in the Ham radio audiences had ever held elected office in America. No one had. He tried to get everyone’s names and most gave willingly, although a few of the survivalist groups were hesitant at first. They gave the number of people in their group after some cajoling and being reminded that a census was Constitutional, so Cheyenne Mountain could try to guess how many people remained.
Did we still have a nation if there were only a few thousand survivors left? The General offered them the only help he could. He said if they would give him their addresses, he would give them the latest satellite information of their areas when they spoke again. They still had access to NSA computers and all of the imagery, as it updated, but he didn’t know how long that would last.
He would let them know what the areas around them looked like, if there were any huge hordes moving in their direction. Cobb had given the address of the truck stop and Gunny gave his wife’s work address, specifically the rooftop, and his son’s high school. That’s where he was heading as soon as he got his truck welded up the way he wanted. It took a while to get the information from everyone, but the General pointed out that it was his job to keep the American people safe.
That usually meant big things, but if it were down to individuals now, his men would do everything they could to help. They weren’t going to abandon their post in this time of need.
Gunny tossed and turned. Dead tired, but not sleepy. His mind still racing with the horror of what he had learned. What had happened and what was going to happen. The Chinese had the most complete labs and personnel, and they hoped to know more about the infected by tomorrow… today…. when they would once again have a virtual meet up. There seemed to be more the General wasn’t saying. But that was military men. He just hoped it wasn’t more bad news. And he hoped Jessie would stay at the school and not try to make his way home.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 17