“Ma’am,” Cobb said, softening a little. “If I had a helicopter, I would send it. We just don’t have enough men to go out after someone who doesn’t want to be found. We might be under attack by thousands of Muzzies by this time tomorrow and if we can’t save this town, your son may be the lucky one.”
Martha put an arm around Lacy and gently pulled her from the room, the maps, and the harried men. “I make tea,” she said. “It always help.”
Lacy allowed herself to be led away. She knew they were right, they couldn’t spare twenty or thirty men to go out on a wild goose chase, but her emotions had been on such a roller coaster ride these past few weeks. First, she had realized Jessie was alive and well and had made it home and she rejoiced, then that turned to sorrow and she buried him in her heart when she thought he was dead at the strip mall. Now, she knew he was alive again.
The town was a bustling hive of activity and it was days before she found out that a little kid was dropped off at the gate by a badly scarred boy whose name was Jessie. Phil let her know as soon as he found out. He had volunteered as a watchman on the wall, and he’d heard about it from one of the gate guards over beers at Pretty Boy Floyds.
“Yeah, his face was all messed up,.” the gate guard said, “and he was driving a sweet chop top Mercury. It was all armored up like Sammy’s Mustang. It looked tough, and he just dropped the kid off and left right when it was his turn to come in. I’ve never seen anybody just leave before.”
Lacy knew it was Jessie and he had Johnny’s car. It had to be. The little boy, Jimmy Jones, had described him to her a dozen times once Phil told her. Jessie had told him to find Sergeant Meadows. It was him, one hundred percent. But why had he left again? He had made it all this way on his own! A thousand miles through the zombie-filled wastelands, by himself. She went from sorrow, to anger at his behavior. One minute she was going to hug him and cover him with kisses and never let go and the next she wanted to strangle him for being so inconsiderate. For being such a… a… teenager! There was so much happening and it never slowed down. She was worried about Johnny, too. They told her he’d been in another firefight and some of his men had been killed. He was fine and on the way back, but they’d lost the train somehow. Now the Muslims were coming to attack them again, to mop up the few hundred survivors the zombie virus hadn’t killed. The world had gone mad last month and it didn’t seem like it was going to tilt back to normal anytime soon.
They sat in the diner and, true to her word, Martha had soothing hot tea and a sympathetic shoulder. Rosemarie from the recently opened beauty shop was there. She was a rawboned woman from Kansas who had run a little country kitchen, barber, and gun shop in her hometown. She and her husband, along with a truckload of others, had joined the convoy near Dodge City and had helped clear Lakota. She wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. She told Lacy she should come help the rest of the ladies load magazines and unpack guns. She had come in for more cookies and lemonade for the children, keeping them sugared up and full of energy because every one of them was helping, too. Little Jimmy Jones was keeping them busy. They were all gathered at the Masons Lodge with pallets of ammunition and magazines from the Ammo depot. It was like an old-fashioned quilting bee or corn shucking contest she said. Lacy should let Eliza run the office for a while, come over and try to think about something else. Nothing got your mind off of your troubles quicker than meaningful work, a gaggle of women, and all the latest gossip she insisted.
Lacy nodded and smiled. Rosemarie was right and so was Martha, who had quietly insisted that Jessie was no longer her baby. He was a man, walking in the shadow of his father. Doing the things a man does, even if their ways are a mystery. Just like a woman’s ways are a mystery to men.
“Yes, but we do things that make sense,” Lacy said.
“Only to us,” Martha had replied, her wrinkled, ageless face cracking into a gap-toothed grin.
Captain Wilson was going over the maps for the hundredth time, scrutinizing the markers labeled with the various heavy ordinance and troops, ensuring himself they were all in the best positions. He had seven hundred able-bodied men. Over half of those with some type of military training. He’d only had a few days to work with them, there were so many other essential projects happening that demanded their attention. They thought they had more time, he hadn’t dreamed the radicals would be hitting them so soon. They had hoped to send teams out to blow the walls of their compounds and send the zombies in. That would have reduced their numbers significantly.
Time was too short now, there was no way to drill the men. He could only hope the teams who had organized themselves and told him what they could do would be enough. They had trained themselves on the weapons systems they weren’t familiar with, all of them putting in twenty-hour days. This wasn’t like training in the Corps, with a lot of downtime and grab ass and “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.” These were out of shape men for the most part, who couldn’t pass a PT test to save their lives.
They might not be able to do fifty pushups or run two miles in sixteen minutes, but they hadn’t forgotten Uncle Sugar’s weapons training. They knew what the enemy was capable of, that he was real, and would be there in a day, maybe two at the most. They still knew how to zero the rifles, daisy chain Claymores, set the headspace and timing on Ma Deuce. The ways of war aren’t so easily forgotten and they moved with a sense of purpose. With fear tingling in their veins, but intestinal fortitude, quiet rage and a strong sense of purpose driving them to master things they needed to know. A fast class from a twenty-year-old kid to a bunch of old-timers in the new weaponry wasn’t met with resentment or false pride. They paid attention, disregarded the old ways on obsolete weapons systems, and applied past knowledge to the new arsenal. Those same gray-bearded men brought the youngsters up to speed on things they had taken decades to learn about the mayhem of battle, how to swallow your fears, and a few tricks about combat that wasn’t in the manuals and was frowned upon by the Geneva Convention.
The whole town worked together, Sheriff Collins and Captain Wilson darting in and out of the War Room, double checking supply lines and training. Hot Rod was stringing extra concertina wire through the reservoir so any swimmers or boat propellers would be caught up in it. Carl was putting locomotives on the rail lines, ensuring they were blocked, so the Muslims couldn’t just plow right through the wall. There was a month’s worth of work to be done in only a day, maybe two.
There wasn’t much time for any last-minute trips for things they might need, but there really wasn’t anything they were lacking. Captain Wilson had made a second run to McAlester and had more ammo and heavy weapons than they could possibly use. There had been a convoy a few days ago by a dozen trucks to a grocery warehouse outside of Oklahoma City and they had enough provisions to outlast an extended siege, if it came to that. No one thought it would, though. Not from the living, anyway. This battle was going to be fast and decisive. They still had an element of surprise on their side. As far as they knew, the radicals didn’t realize they had all the machine guns. They had mounted a few on the barrier wall, but the rest they kept out of view, ready to be deployed when the time came.
A few days ago, one of the scouting parties had come across evidence of someone watching them from a grove of trees a good half mile beyond the barrier. They weren’t sure at first if it was Casey and his goons looking to cause trouble, or the Muslims. After digging around in a few of the mounds that had been used as a latrine and not finding any toilet paper, they assumed it was the jihadis spying on them. From this distance, even with good field glasses, they wouldn’t have been able to tell much. From the woods, the only thing that could be seen was a few guards walking their post on top of the wall.
The scouts really needed some dogs, the Muslims could be a hundred yards away in a hide, watching them, and they’d never know. They could have crosshairs trained on them and the three men quickly left the area to continue their rounds, radioing in what they’d found.
Jimmy Winchell and Sammy were still working on the moat, but it was a long way from being finished. They had started it a hundred yards from the container wall and with the imminent threat of the attack looming over them, they’d stopped trying to dig deep, they just wanted it all the way across the little peninsula where Lakota was situated. Shoreline to shoreline. It didn’t have to be full of water to be a stumbling block for the undead, or any trucks the radicals would have. If they could get it two or three feet deep all the way across, it would stop any wheeled vehicle long enough for them to turn it into swiss cheese with the .50s. Same for the undead. It wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down enough to cut them to shreds. The dozer was making passes, Jimmy taking it down as quickly as he could, and Sammy was in the excavator digging up any large chunks of rock they came across.
General Carson told Cobb to let President Meadows know the plan in the Middle East had worked as they expected and all ships were in a holding pattern at the moment. They had met with little naval resistance and it was quickly eliminated. With the American, German, and Chinese subs and the armadas of ships, they’d sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea. They’d circled up through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, shelling the land-based battlements and flying the flags of their nations proudly. They had a “fire at will and at your own discretion” command given to all the commanders, and they had laid waste to the entire Libyan Navy. Most of the Turkish ships were at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and all of their waterfront bases had been shelled. A volley of five-inch high explosives raining down on them probably didn’t do a lot of extensive damage, but it let them know they were not in control anymore. The world hadn’t been crushed and brought to its knees by the Caliphate. The world was punching back and they were pissed, sending over-the-horizon missiles to batter Cairo, Tripoli, Istanbul, and Dubai. It wasn’t strictly necessary and the deaths only counted in the thousands, but it was damn satisfying to send just a little retaliation their way.
The Russians had demanded the honors of taking out Mecca. They shelled it relentlessly until the black rock that had been used to encourage so much hatred for so many centuries was a smoking crater in the ground. They pumped missile after missile into the area, killing millions of worshippers who were still there in the tent cities that had been erected for the pilgrims. They didn’t use their nukes, Carson was pretty sure they didn’t have launch codes, but they sent wave after wave of cruise missiles with conventional warheads. They dropped thousands into the places the naval armada couldn’t reach. Tehran, Riyadh, Damascus, and the major cities surrounding Israel. The men under the Yamantau mountain in Russia had a use it or lose it mentality. The bombs would be worthless in a few years without proper maintenance, and what better way to get rid of them? They were relentless, sending the entire Middle East into a tailspin of fear. They targeted power plants, dams, and anything else they could to cause hardship and mayhem. They paid particular attention to the border walls that had been erected, and walked the cruise missiles in, mile after mile, decimating the barriers far too badly to be repaired.
The Germans led hordes in with their drones to get them through the smoking borders before some plan could be organized to seal them again. Once a few thousand were rampaging through the towns, it was over. The spread would be slower, since the people knew how to fight them, but it was inevitable. The dead would keep coming and multiplying and spreading. They would never stop.
30
Hasif
It had been two weeks since the meeting where nothing was settled. Hasif, Fariq, and their wives and children had joined together and formed a pact. They knew what was coming, they knew starvation was only months away. He hadn’t been able to contact his friend in the United States, Sergeant Meadows, but he hadn’t needed to. The radio transmissions from the new capital of America had started a few days ago and he could read between the lines. He knew they were aware of the jihadi threat against them. Everyone that heard the broadcasts that came in faintly on the AM band marveled at how fast they had bounced back. They were living in luxury in a walled city with plenty of food, water, and electricity. The Americans didn’t know how to give up. Hasif knew there was more going on. He knew much more about the Americans than most people did, he had lived with them for over a decade. He knew their military structure and how it worked. and if his hunch was right, their army hadn’t been eliminated like the Mufti was declaring. They had submarines that didn’t surface for months at a time. There was no way any of them were infected and he knew some of them had nuclear missiles aboard. If the American people were forming a town with radio stations and flushing toilets only a few weeks after most of the world had been killed, he believed there was a significant military force behind it. Probably with Shaytan in charge of them. If Hasif knew Meadows, he had ordered the submarines to make their way to the now famous barriers holding the zombies out of the Middle East. They would blow them to pieces and the hordes of undead would come screaming through. There was no way to stop them, and no one to tell. He’d probably just lose his head for being a non-believer if he tried.
They knew time was short when the American radio station came online. A pompous man was broadcasting for many hours of the day, playing music and old radio plays. He hinted at retribution coming to them, and most who heard it scoffed and laughed openly. What could a tiny little town ten thousand miles away do to the mighty armies of the Caliphate? Nothing, except sputter in indignation at their long fall into insignificance. They were fleas on a dog. Soon, the soldiers of Mohammad would be putting the men of that village to the sword, enslaving their women, and broadcasting calls to prayer on their radio station that would be heard around the world. Allah laughs at their childish defiance.
Hasif would have been less concerned if the man was making wild blusters and angry promises of revenge. He would have taken that as impotent rage, a broken man making idle threats. But the pompous man didn’t make threats, and he knew the Muslim countries were listening. He spoke to people in Europe and Africa and the Far East as if he were sure they were receiving the broadcasts. He gave information about how to live, how to fight the undead, and many other useful things to know, and only on occasion did he hint of anything they would do in retribution. The man had said only this morning to his friends and family in Israel that help would soon be there. No threats, no fist shaking or saber rattling. Just a quiet assurance that things were about to change. A statement of fact to Hasifs’ ears. Something to be scoffed at by the people in the market. They assured themselves there was nothing the Americans could do, but tried to buy a few extra pounds of rice or fruit, nonetheless.
“It is time,” Fariq told his wife, as Hasif and his family came bustling in. “We think the message to Jerusalem means whatever they are going to do is going to be soon.”
Fariq’s wife was a devout woman who believed in the Grand Mufti when he said they had conquered the world. She was one of many who rejoiced at the destruction of the West in the first hours, until her husband had started talking quietly of famine. She had refused to believe him at first, telling him the Imams wouldn’t let that happen. Allah would provide.
“I trust in Allah,” he had replied. “But I also tie up my camel.”
By the end of the second week and there was still uncertainty in the air, she had started to believe him and become afraid for her family. Cooler heads were denouncing the destruction of the world, and people were starting to listen, not shout them down as infidels. The surge of joy at the long promised dominion over the planet slowly faded as reality set in.
Both men had started quietly gathering supplies the day after the meeting, weeks before the rest of the people began noticing the bare store shelves and empty market stalls. Hasif’s wife was a guide at the Great Pyramid of Giza, giving tours in English and French to sunburnt vacationers. She had been with the tourism council for many years, and was the first to arrive to unlock the offices and attractions every morning. Since there were
no more tourists, the Pyramids had been closed. Every day she and Hasif had made trips in, telling the occasional curious official who bothered to show up for work that they were doing minor renovations, getting rid of all the English and foreign language signs. Many people in Cairo didn’t have a job anymore, and by the time the celebrations had finally waned and people started realizing their world had changed, too, not just everyone else’s, it was almost too late to make preparations. Hasif and his friends had been implementing theirs from day one. Now they were going to find out if they had done enough.
Rumors were circulating about the walled fortresses owned by foreigners, that had been built deep in the deserts, at various oasis locations, away from prying eyes. They had been there for years and everyone assumed they were a pet project of oil-rich sheiks or internet billionaires. A rich man’s folly to carry out whatever sort of debauchery rich men carried out when they were beyond the reach of any laws. Now people were saying the private helicopters had been taking families and soldiers to guard them for the past few weeks. Quiet grumblings were happening at the markets when the only fruit available was overripe and half spoiled. The rich people would have food, you could bet on that. Probably years and years of it, stacked up in underground vaults. If things got really bad, they might have to drive out there and find them. Ask for some of it.
Hasif had changed the locks on all the doors leading in through the Robber’s Tunnel, the only entrance used to gain access to the interior of the Pyramid. There was so much uncertainty, so many conflicting rules and laws all of a sudden, all they had to do was act confident and arrogant in their mission and they were left alone. Every day they squirreled away hundreds of pounds of food and water, no one paying attention to what they were doing, or why. Only a small handful of people were preparing, and everything was plentiful at first. The masses were too busy at daily prayers, believing the party line that everything was wonderful and going according to plan. The only news was on state-run radios, and it was all lies. Egypt was one of the least radicalized places in Northern Africa, they had successfully overthrown the Muslim Brotherhood when they had managed a short-lived coup years ago. Hasif knew that wouldn’t save them, though. He knew if Russia or China put together a plan, it would be the annihilation of the entire region, Egypt included. The people hadn’t known what was happening and the radical governments had left them to fend for themselves. The Suez Canal blockage on day one was proof of that. The thousands of miles of deserts south of the population centers in Egypt and Libya and the other North African countries was the only protection they had. They had no walls. They had no barriers. They were Muslims, but not the right kind of Muslims, otherwise they would have been in Mecca, like they were supposed to be. The same old Sunni versus Shia division that had plagued the religion for centuries was still alive and well. Hasif just hoped they wouldn’t nuke Cairo. The rest of world probably wouldn’t make the distinction between the “good” Muslims and the “bad” Muslims. To them, they were all the same. If the surviving militaries of the world did start dropping nukes, their plans for survival were useless. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. No place where a man could escape. He was betting their lives on this one wild plan. To ride out the apocalypse inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Zombie Road Omnibus Page 83