When the Future Ended (The Zombie Terror War Series Book 1)

by David Spell

  From across the room, SEAL Chief Petty Officer Chris Norris spoke up, “That’s a good idea. I never even thought of that.”

  Several of the other commandos nodded their heads. “Even though we have the full authority of the White House behind us,” Chuck continued, “political climates change and I don’t want any of us to have to worry about anything but executing this mission.

  “That brings me to the second issue that we haven’t really discussed: rules of engagement. Our mission calls for us to ‘eliminate the cartel’s presence on US soil.’ We aren’t going in to arrest these bastards. At the same time, you’re going to have to use your best judgment if they start trying to surrender. Our ROEs are like most of the ones you’ve encountered before on the battlefield: self-defense of yourself or someone else. Any armed bad guys or gang members displaying aggressive behavior should be taken out.

  “We’ll be giving you some flex cuffs to take with you to secure prisoners. Admiral Williams has assured me that they will find room at Guantanamo Bay for any that we take into custody. They will be treated as enemy combatants and not as arrestees.

  “You guys know the score, however, and we’re going to be outnumbered at least four to one. Don’t get hurt trying to arrest these guys. The most important part of our mission is recovering the zombie virus. We can’t get distracted from that and the fewer of these scumbags we have to process later, the better.”

  “Sounds like my kind of ROEs,” Scotty quipped. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.”

  This got a laugh from everyone. The warriors seated in the room liked what they were hearing. They were being allowed to go and do what they did best without having their hands tied behind their backs by restrictive rules of engagement or politics. And the idea of being outnumbered only motivated them. These men and women knew that they were better trained than their opponents and there was no question in their minds that they would prevail.

  An hour and a half later, they were done. Everyone knew their job and they had all memorized the area around the cartel HQ. McCain would be overhead directing traffic as needed. His goal was to let each team leader do their thing with minimal interference from him.

  Buckhead, Atlanta, Tuesday, 1930 hours

  Janelle knew that she was going to have to make her move soon. The wounded gangster was slowly starting to recover his strength. The lingering effects of the concussion and his burst eardrums, however, still had Jorge feeling dizzy when he stood, the thug needing someone to help him walk to the restroom.

  Even though Quintero was getting stronger, the young woman also suspected that the wounds on his back were becoming infected. She had told Corona, and then Jorge himself, that he needed to have the shrapnel removed. At first, Antonio had ordered her to do the surgery.

  Washington felt a wave of nausea at the suggestion. She’d come close to fainting every time she changed his bandages, a combination of her repulsion for the man and her own weak stomach. Janelle could not begin to imagine performing any type of surgery on anyone.

  “Sir,” she appealed to Antonio, putting a subservient tone in her voice. “I don’t have the surgical instruments and I’m not a surgeon. I didn’t even finish the EMT school. He needs a real doctor or at least someone with more knowledge than me.”

  Corona finally relented, realizing that the woman might do more harm than good. Washington heard him telling one of his bodyguards to plan a looting trip for Wednesday morning to find a doctor or a nurse.

  The man had made the mistake of asking his boss where they were supposed to find a doctor in the middle of an abandoned city during a zombie apocalypse.

  Antonio had screamed at his subordinate, “I don’t know and I don’t care! Find a hospital and check there. Find a clinic, a doctor’s office. Anything. Just find me somebody who can get those pieces of metal out of Jorge’s back!”

  Washington saw that the cartel leader was much more on edge than normal. A couple of days earlier, she had overheard him telling one of his other bodyguards to increase the number of sentries around the building and add extra soldiers to their mobile patrols. He’d lowered his voice but she heard him saying that he thought they were going to be attacked any day now.

  That was good news, she thought, but Janelle also knew that if Corona’s looting team found a doctor, she would be sent back with the rest of the women, to be abused and violated once again. There was no way she was going to let that happen again. The tension was building inside of her, but Janelle had decided she would rather die than go back to being a sex slave for these animals.

  After checking her patient and finding him napping, Washington walked towards her bedroom. Snake sat on the couch in the living room, leering at her as she passed him. One of the plusses of being Jorge’s nurse was that she had her own room for the first time in weeks and no one had hurt her in several days. Guilt quickly rose up inside of her, though. I’ve got a private room, but all those other girls are down there being pawed over, raped, and forced to do all kinds of things.

  She would kill Jorge, and if she was lucky maybe she could take out Snake, as well. If God smiled on her, Janelle thought, she might even be able to go after Tony the Tiger before his bodyguards shot her. Of course, God hadn’t cared about how she or the other women had suffered for the last couple of months. He sure didn’t seem to care when Quintero raped Missy and beat her to death. Something deep inside of Janelle, however, still wanted to believe.

  A phrase popped into her mind. ’I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ What is that? she wondered. That sounds like a Bible verse from when Mama took me to church as a child. Obviously, that wasn’t true. If God was real, he sure hung me and all these other girls out to dry. I don’t think the good Lord’s even in my same zip code right now.

  As she sat on the edge of her bed, Washington resolved that the next morning, she would act. The previous day, she had found a metal letter opener in the back of a drawer in the small desk in her bedroom. Janelle had slipped it under her pillow, the little blade giving her the means to get her revenge.

  The small knife wasn’t much, but it should be enough to kill the man who had captured and enslaved her and murdered one of her friends. She had seen Jorge’s pistol sticking out from under a pillow on his bed. If I can take Señor Scumbag out, maybe I can grab his gun before Snake or anyone else knows what’s going on, she thought.

  The fact that she was contemplating her own death so nonchalantly had to be because of how much she had suffered. Her thoughts drifted to her family, wondering if they were even still alive. Her mother and grandmother lived together, just outside of the city limits of Atlanta. Her brother and his family also lived in the area. A tear dripped down her face as Washington realized she would never see them again, celebrate any birthdays or holidays together, or even have her own family one day.

  From deep inside of her, something prompted her to talk to God about her situation. The young woman hadn’t prayed in years and really didn’t want to start now. Why should she pray to a God who clearly had better things to do than take care of a group of defenseless women while a gang of evil men abused them?

  She wrestled with her emotions for a few minutes and then sighed, the words coming out in a whisper.

  “Look, I don’t know if you’re there or not. I don’t know why you’re letting all this bad stuff happen. I thought you were all about love. But if you’re even listening, I could use some help.

  “I know there’s something in your book about revenge being a bad thing, but these are really evil people. Would you help me in the morning? Help me to be brave and to kill that bastard in the other room. I’d love to kill Corona, too, and anybody else that I could. Maybe help me get Snake as well?

  “I know I’m asking for a lot, but somebody has got to do something to stop these animals. And…well, I don’t want to die, but if there’s a Heaven and a Hell, I’d like to be with you in Heaven tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Unleashing Hell<
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  Buckhead, Atlanta, Wednesday, 0407 hours

  The sound of rotors beating the air startled Corona out of his sleep. This was soon followed by automatic gunfire from the direction where their fleet of stolen vehicles was parked. Moments later, diesel engines roared down the street, coming to stop near the front entrance of the Peachtree Summit building, gunfire now coming from all around the cartel’s headquarters, the sounds of an intense gun battle shattering the night.

  A minute later, one of his bodyguards knocked and then entered his bedroom. “Jefe, we need to go. The gringos are attacking us, just like you said. We need to get you out of here.”

  Antonio threw on his clothes and stepped over to the window, carefully pulling the curtains back, trying to see who was assaulting them. He had been sleeping in this safe house for the last few nights, a two-story residence located on a quiet side street across from the captured condominium building. Tony the Tiger had had a feeling, a premonition that they were coming.

  The bombs or missiles that had killed his men and wounded Jorge let the cartel leader know that the Americans had gotten serious. He had never expected the gringos to use that kind of firepower on their own soil. Now that they had, however, he sensed that his headquarters would be their next target.

  Martina Drive and the surrounding streets were part of a large community on the opposite side of Piedmont Road. His men had cleaned the neighborhood out of people and supplies, three of the cartel’s women coming from homes in which the residents had chosen not to flee when the zombies came through. Of course their husbands or boyfriends had received a shot to the head as the captives were forced to watch.

  Antonio had chosen one of these homes as his fallback location. It was less than two hundred yards from their high-rise building, but it looked like their attackers were only concentrating on the tall structure. The cartel leader had also spread his soldiers out, hoping to create a surprise for any gringo federales or soldiers that came for him, putting groups in structures on either side of the HQ. An office building and a smaller, three-story apartment location housed some of his best gangsters.

  The residence that Tony the Tiger was using wasn’t a mansion but it was a nice, American-style home. The hefty cartel leader had also liked having another sleeping option if their generator went out again and he didn’t feel like climbing fifty floors of stairs. The home’s garage was spacious enough to store his personal humvee in case he ever needed to make his escape. Like now.

  At 0401 hours, the three National Guard hummers had roared towards the corner of Peachtree and Piedmont. The three Mexicans guarding the parking lot with the pool of stolen vehicles were slumped in their chairs, sleeping soundly, an empty Tequila bottle sitting the middle of their folding table. The diesel engines jarred the squad leader, Julio, awake.

  Julio tried to sit up, not wanting to get caught sleeping. He assumed the approaching vehicles belonged to the cartel’s patrol, returning from making their rounds. Judging the sound of the powerful motors, he could tell the vehicles were almost upon them.

  “Wake up, amigos. The patrol is coming back.”

  One of the other two men started snoring, the other reached blindly for the table, grabbing the empty bottle and putting it to his mouth. The squad leader saw two of the big humvees continue by the intersection, the third one stopping near his position. A sudden realization rushed into his brain, panic stabbing him in the gut. We don’t have any more of the American hummers. The gangster groped for his M-16, laying just in front of him on the table.

  Corporal Corey Whitmer was standing in the open hatch of the military vehicle. He fired a two-round burst from the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun, both of the six hundred and fifty-five grain bullets catching Julio in the chest. The thug was knocked backwards out of his chair, his left shoulder and arm severed and sent flying by the force of the rounds. Whitmer swung the muzzle of the Browning and blasted the other two gang members before they could wake up and reach for their own weapons, their bodies similarly destroyed.

  “November Golf One to all units,” Lieutenant Colonel Clark transmitted, “intersection secure.”

  Clark’s driver, Private Joe Thompson, maneuvered the humvee to provide covering fire to the units three hundred yards down Piedmont Road at the cartel’s HQ, as well as to keep an eye on the area around the large intersection. With their parking lot full of stolen vehicles now in American hands, the cartel members would only be able to flee on foot. The other two National Guard hummers continued down Peachtree Road, turning left onto Maple Drive, which ran parallel with Piedmont Road, behind the cartel HQ.

  Sergeant Thomas Jackson positioned his hummer, armed with the M249 light machine gun, on the backside of the fifty-floor building. First Sergeant Ricardo Gonzalez had his driver, Private Lawrence Long, continue down another five hundred feet to the intersection of East Paces Ferry Road, where his gunner, Private Dan Merchant could bring his Mk 19 Grenade Launcher to bear on the side of the high-rise and cover the Marines in the front.

  McCain couldn’t hear the gunfire over the Pave Hawk’s engines but he could see the muzzle flashes below him as the assault force engaged the cartel soldiers around their captured HQ. The night vision goggles on Chuck’s helmet illuminated gang members trickling out of the front entrance of the Peachtree Summit, being cut down by the accurate fire of the Marines, SEALS, and SAS commandos positioned nearby.

  As the return fire slackened a few minutes later, the SAS and the SEALs broke for the entrance to begin their mission. Chief Norris tossed a fragmentation grenade into the lobby, the warriors ducking below the level of the five steps that led into the building. The explosion blew out most of the windows, forcing every one else in close proximity to take momentary cover behind the light armored vehicles.

  The commandos swarmed inside the tall building, firing bullets into the heads of criminals who had already been shot or who had been injured in the blast. Confident that the lobby was secure after a thorough sweep, Norris waved the combined American and British team towards the stairwell.

  “SEAL One to CDC One, lobby secure, we’re proceeding upstairs for mission objectives.”

  “CDC One clear,” McCain acknowledged.

  Another of the Air Force’s helicopters darted in, hovering fifteen feet over the top of the high-rise building. The flight engineer and the gunner tossed ropes out of both of the open side doors. Andy and Tu each grabbed one and fast-roped to the roof, taking up cover positions until the rest of their teammates were down and ready to go to work. Fleming let McCain know that they were starting their mission at the top of the structure and moved for the door on the other side of the roof, giving them access to the high-rise.

  Three minutes after making entry into the penthouse suite on the top floor, Andy called his boss again. “CDC Two to CDC One.”

  “CDC One,” Chuck answered.

  “This top floor belongs to Corona, but he’s not here, “ Andy Fleming reported. “Two of the girls were locked in one of the bedrooms. They said he was here earlier in the evening, and he, well,…this guy’s an animal, boss. He keeps two of the prisoners at a time, using and abusing them until he gets tired of them. Then he’ll grab two more. They have no idea where he’s at, just that he’s slept somewhere else the last few nights. They also confirmed that the rest of the prisoners are on the ninth and tenth floors.”

  “CDC One clear. See what other info you can get from the women and then continue your search for the virus.”

  Chuck felt the anger rising inside of him towards Antonio Corona and his gang of criminals. Unfortunately, he was circling at fifteen hundred feet, watching and listening to the events play out below him. Hopefully, one of his shooters would get the cartel leader’s head in their sights.

  On the ground below, the gunfire coming from cartel members began to pick up in its intensity. Corona’s men who were housed in smaller buildings on either side of the skyscraper were firing from the windows and doors of their hideouts. McCain cou
ld see that the cartel forces were trying to get organized so they could get back into the fight. They didn’t have the training of the American forces, but the gangsters understood that they were fighting desperately for their survival.

  “Marine One to CDC One.” Gunnery Sergeant Eric Gray’s voice was calm, but Chuck could hear the rattle of gunfire as he transmitted.

  “Go ahead, Marine One.”

  “We’ve got heavy fire coming from these two structures on either side of the target location. There appear to be at least twenty or thirty guys in each one. Do we have any intel about hostiles using additional buildings? Any chance there might be hostages anywhere other than the main structure?”

  “Negative, Marine One. CDC Two advises they’ve had contact with two hostages on the top floor. Those ladies confirmed that the main group of captives are housed inside the high-rise, the ninth and tenth floors.”

  “Roger, CDC One. In that case, I’m going to light these scumbags up!”

  The gunnery sergeant directed the gunners of his two light armored vehicles to turn their M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain guns loose on the gangsters. The high explosive rounds ripped through the windows, doors, and walls of the structures, decimating the cartel soldiers inside. In a matter of seconds, over fifty of the Tijuana Cartel had been killed or severely wounded.

  The gunfire from around the outside of the Peachtree Summit slacked off to nothing. Now it would be up to the warriors on the inside to complete their mission objectives.

  As the SEALs rushed up the stairs, bypassing uncleared levels to get to the hostages, and as the SAS started clearing the first floor, a group of cartel fighters huddled just above them on the second floor. The twelve Mexicans and four African-Americans could hear the gunfire from outside and from below them inside the building, interspersed with an occasional shout or scream as bullets struck home. They knew that in moments they would be fighting for their lives as well.