If you haven't read "That's All Folks"--STOP!!!! PLEASE! Read that one first!
I moved this one up from "Writing", too...please forgive my impudence.
This hasn't been posted yet on the "Dead" site, so you're seeing it here, first! I would like some feedback on both stories, but especially this one, since it's the newer one. I hope you enjoy it.
That’s All Folks
2
~~Final Solution~~
Chapter One
The M-16 jerked with recoil as she pulled the trigger, spraying the crowd milling below with a shower of hot lethality. She leaned out of the broken window to see if her efforts were coming to anything, but there were so many of them that it was difficult to tell.
Thick, dark-gray clouds had gathered once more, as they had the previous night, and the fat raindrops of a summer storm were splatting in wind-driven sheets among the undead masses below and into the shattered windows of the school. Lightning pulsed and glared in wild streamers and thunder rumbled angrily above them, as they desperately fought to hold off the army of corpses.
Corporal Alana Hashbarger squeezed the trigger again, seconds later emptying the clip. She dropped the empty to the floor, stretching a fumbling hand to her right for another, which she slammed home, flicking her sweat-and-rain-damp, strawberry-blonde hair out of her eyes with a swipe of her hand. She also wiped away the rivulets of cool rainwater running down her face. Despite the horror of the moment, she had to admit that the wind and rain felt good; it cut the heat and humidity, at least a little.
As she stood firing her rifle, her body running on automatic, she allowed her thoughts to drift a little.
Her MOS was actually clerical but in these times, such help was somewhat less than in demand. The old political football about women in combat went out the door when the world was being turned upside down by the appearance of hordes of reanimated, cannibalistic corpses. Everyone and anyone who had qualified with a weapon was issued at least one standard issue M-16 and a .9mm sidearm and sent into the field.
She had come to this rescue station, in actuality a Middle School, in Wheeling, West Virginia with what was left of her Army National Guard unit from Evansville, Indiana. There was a lot of scrambling going on right now; things were rapidly falling apart.
They had been cobbled together from the remains of several other units and placed under the command of Colonel Mark Tucker, a regular-Army lifer charged with holding onto whatever semblance of order could be held. On the way here, they had absorbed other military personnel, including three Marines: Deaver, Fox and Webster.
Tucker had been given command of the tattered remains of units that had been decimated by confrontations with the undead hordes, and the demoralized leftovers of units that had splintered in the face of the impending loss of order, resulting in an epidemic of desertions. Tucker had taken these dregs and pulled them together into a disciplined, cohesive unit. He had managed, all within a couple weeks or so, to restore morale and unity among at least these troops, and was loved and admired for it.
Alana saw with sadness the sight of the colonel weaving his staggering, unsteady way amid the rotting mass of mobile dead. Colonel Tucker, now dead himself and his flesh torn open and partially devoured, was gnawing on the bloody, recently liberated lower arm of some hapless denizen of their violated rescue station. His face was smeared with rain-streaked gore, and as she watched, her stomach flipping with nausea, she sighted him in. His image trebled through the site as her eyes flooded with tears, which she blinked away with a sniff.
She was good, but she was no sharpshooter; the shot went slightly off, hitting him the neck. Torn flesh spattered the undead creatures around him; his head bobbed to the left, and he staggered from the impact, but, unconcerned, continued to eat. Seconds later, one of the snipers on the roof finished what she'd started, freeing the colonel to rest in peace.
She drew back wearily from the window and slumped to the floor. Her back against the wall, she sullenly began shoving live rounds into the empty clips that littered the floor around her. She was so tired. Gunfire filled the halls of the school building, as the remnants of the unit fought to keep the zombie masses at bay. The downstairs was filled with them now, she knew. And they knew they were up here; if they.........!
She inhaled sharply, eyes widening and, leaping to her feet, took off across the wide room, the school's library.
Pounding down the corridor past empty classrooms, rifle at the ready, she made a sharp right down the next hall. As she turned the corner to the left, she was brought up short and faced with several undead corpses shuffling their way out of the stairwell, coming onto the second level. She brought her weapon up and leveled it at the forehead of the zombie in the lead, a young woman with short, spiky hair and a torn, bloody, midi-cut t-shirt and short set. The woman's hands and face, blue with death, dripped with congealing blood. She opened her mouth, showing blood-smeared teeth, and lurched toward Hashbarger.
"Some help here, please!" Alana yelled, hoping at least one or two of her comrades-in-arms would hear her over the gunfire and the dwindling sounds of screams coming from the first floor. There was another stairwell several yards down the hallway behind her, and she heard the sound of stiff hands plying the bar on the stairwell side, as dead brains attempted to access once more the knowledge of how to open it. It would only be a matter of time before they realized that all they had to do was push on the bar. She jerked the trigger and dropped the lead girl, then the next undead form, an older man, freshly dead and in tattered, blood-soaked priest's, garb sporting a gaping chest wound.
The next was a child; she'd been perhaps twelve or thirteen, from the look. She might even have gone to this school. Her once-beautiful face was mutilated now, gnawed on; her cloudy, marble-like, dead eyes stared deeply into Alana's soul.
She found it difficult to pull the trigger on this one....until the child's mouth opened, and she stumbled toward her, arms outstretched and fingers grasping horrifically, like some corny B-movie monster.
Alana jumped back just as the girl touched her, and in reflex pulled the trigger after all; the round tore into the child's lower face, tearing half of her jaw away from the rest of her skull. She was staggered, but quickly righted herself and still came toward Alana, the remains of her tongue lolling, but, to Hashbarger's horror, still working, out of the splintered jawbone and cheek. She raised her rifle again and ended the child's agony.
"I'd like some help, please!" she yelled again, louder, now. She heard the door open down the hall behind her. She turned briefly to look in that direction, and her heart thumped sharply when she saw a rotted, ragged corpse, flesh dark with decay and obviously several months old, its hair and burial clothing caked with mud and filth, shamble loosely into the hallway.
As if to punctuate her startled reaction, bright lightning flashed garishly, briefly rendering everything into a negative image. A murderous clap of thunder roared from directly above, shaking the building. She stood, transfixed, staring in unabashed horror at this monster, quite literally from beyond the grave, advancing slowly on her. Vomit rose, in a spasm, to her mouth and she quickly squashed the reaction, swallowing the bitter wad.
The undead corpse opened its mouth silently, bits of maggoty filth tumbling to the floor, and stretched its arms out to her. The darkened flesh of its fingers and hands was torn and stripped away, the tiny bones of its fingers exposed and worn from the task of digging its way back to the surface.
Behind the rotted corpse were....how many? She couldn't tell. All she could hear, intermittently with the gunfire, were the sounds of untold pairs of shuffling feet on the cement stairs. They were undoubtedly coming up the other stairwells, too, she considered with a sudden shock of dread welling deep in her gut. "Damn......" she muttered, shaking herself from her momentary lapse.
She slammed her back to the nearest the wall and drew her .9mm, as well as the .45 automatic she'd liberated from the body of a looter they'd run into in Central Ohio. He'd had the .45 and eight fully loaded clips on him, along with a well-kept AK-47. Her Sergeant, Jim Tune, had taken that one.
Tune had led a patrol out a few hours before. She knew he had to be dead by now. A shame…he was a good man, and had shown himself to be a resourceful soldier.
"SOME MOTHERFUCKING HELP HERE, GODAMMIT!!!!!!!" she screamed this time, spreading her arms and proceeding to fire simultaneously in both directions. The older, rotted corpse took the first shot in the stomach and so did not even slow, even though the shot had split its rotted skin and the putrid contents of its gut were spilling out. The hallway filled with the bitter smell of decay. She gagged again and drew a bead directly on its head for the second shot, and let'er rip.
The near-mummified flesh covering its skull split like parchment, and the long-dead bone caved inward with an audible crack, creating more of a crater than a bullet hole. But, it dropped neatly to the carpeted floor nonetheless. She fired another several shots in the other direction, hitting two of the zombies and taking them out, but not without wasting several shots. The stairwell behind them was filling now, however, as the smorgasbord downstairs was undoubtedly beginning to peter out by this time, and they came here, attracted by the sound of the gunfire.
She could smell them, she realized. The stench was becoming overwhelming, a result of the summer heat and humidity. There were too many of them for her to tackle alone here, but she continued to fire anyway. At length, and to her vast relief, she finally heard the sound of several pairs of boots thumping down the hallway toward her. "Holy Shit!" a voice exclaimed, and she saw the barrel of a shotgun come up, its owner out of sight beyond the corner of the wall. The shotgun boomed, and the head of a leering old woman evaporated, her body slumping stiffly to the floor, pooling congealed, blackened blood across the carpet. The slide on the barrel was actioned, and the shell ejected into the air. Hashbarger watched this in slow motion, thankful that someone had at last heard her pleas for help.
"Coming across!" a voice cried. Alana bent her elbows, pointing her smoking pistols at the acoustic-tiled ceiling. A second later, two figures, Lieutenant Patrick Macintire and Private Walter Michaels, dashed across the hallway and into the row of lockers there. They began firing, one in each direction. Alana ejected and dropped an empty clip, reloaded, and continued to fire.
"Hashbarger; you okay?" Macintire asked, yelling over the gunfire.
"I am now!" she replied, somewhat harshly. There was gunfire coming from around the corner, as well, so there were at least three of them here with her. "Lieutenant Macintire!" she yelled; "As soon as we get this taken care of, we need to get two desks and block these stairwells! Pile as much stuff on them as we can; anything heavy!" He nodded in agreement, firing his weapon.
From the hallway beyond, a scream rose, and a large Marine, Deaver, one of the three that were a fairly recent addition to their little group, stormed out from the main hall and into the crowd of undead corpses staggering from the western stairwell, on the right. He barreled into them, knocking them around like billiard balls. His well-muscled arms were outstretched, clutching his shotgun and holding it before him; he pumped his legs furiously, screaming as he did.
At first glance, Deaver, physically, was the standard stereotype of the big, dumb Marine; six-two, blond and built like a superhero. He wasn’t dumb, though. Not brilliant, by any definition, but not dumb either. He was definitely a man of action, though.
"What the hell are you doing, man?" The lieutenant asked.
Private Michaels, however, saw and understood immediately. He leapt from his place between the rows of lockers and moved swiftly to aid the Marine, pushing into the odiferous mass.
Together, acting like the offensive line of a football team, they herded the clutching, grasping, undead things back into the stairwell, and held the double doors shut. The Marine turned and, leaning heavily against the door, faced the others.
"Get us that desk!" he yelled breathlessly, pumping two shots into the zombies advancing from the other stairwell.
Alana quickly stashed her pistols as she and Macintire made a dash for one of the side classrooms, kicking and shoving desks aside as they moved.
Hashbarger swept all the desktop detritus off onto the floor with a motion, and they hefted the heavy desk, carrying it awkwardly out into the corridor, where Michaels and Deaver fought a steadily losing battle to contain the undead. The desk was slammed into place. Other ways would have to be found to better secure the doors, but that was for later. This would do for now. Besides, according to the building plan she'd seen, they had at least three other stairwells to worry about here.
"They'll be coming up the other stairwells, too, I'd think," Hashbarger said, firing her rifle twice at the oncoming crowd of corpses from the other stairwell. One mutilated zombie, which had been an attractive older woman in jeans and an expensive blouse, dropped stiffly as a smoking hole appeared in her forehead.
Moving as one, Deaver, Macintire, Hashbarger and Michaels took the offensive and swept in to deal with the others. They pushed and shoved, shot and punched, finally forcing the ghouls back into that stairwell, also. Macintire and Michaels ran and grabbed another desk, which they slammed against the doors.
"Thank God these doors open into the hall instead of the stairwell; otherwise, this wouldn't work," Alana observed. They all nodded.
"Quick," Macintire said, "let's check those other stairwells."
They turned and dashed down the main hallway, the sounds of gunfire still issuing from the library, as the three men there at the windows continued to fire through the windows into the crowd outside. There were others at various other windows in the classrooms. Thunder boomed again, more distant this time….the storm was passing.
As they reached the end of the corridor, they were suddenly faced with a massive crowd of undead, which had made their way up the other stairwells. The halls were filled with the malodorous creatures, drawing slowly nearer. "Shit...." Deaver breathed, softly. Macintire stepped back to the library.
"Hey! Knock it off in there!" he yelled. "Give it up....we've got a situation here that requires our full attention!"
Understatement of the century, Alana thought, backing up slowly with her rifle raised. "What do we do, Lieutenant?" she asked tensely. "There must be two hundred or more of them."
Macintire came walking back up the hall, accompanied by the three men from the library, one soldier and the other two Marines. "Jesus Christ".....one of them, Alana didn't know which, said shakily. Others drew into the hallways from their positions, and gasped.
"I'll handle it....." one young man, a private, said softly. He stepped forward. Alana turned to look at him.
"You'll handle it?" Macintire said, his sarcasm clearly evident in his voice. "And just how, private Bensen, do you plan to 'handle it'?" Macintire's smile was surly. "You'll handle it." He chuckled wryly, with incisive derision, and shook his head.
Fox, one of the Marines, had once made the observation that Macintire was the kind of junior officer who you always hear about… the kind that got killed by his own men in Vietnam, for example. The kind who would insist that his troops stay polished and wrinkle-free, even in a jungle combat zone. The kind who wouldn’t flinch at sending them into the face of withering enemy fire to get himself a medal and commendation. Gung-ho and by-the-book; that described Macintire to a T.
"Yes, sir....that's what I said," the young black man said firmly. He set his rifle aside and drew, from the scabbard slung across his back, a glistening samurai sword. It shone dully in the flickering light given off by the overheads.
He moved to the front of the group, stopped and took his stance. He held the blade out, pointing its tip at a zombie he picked at random. The creature stopped, focusing its lifeless gaze comically on the tip of the blade before it. With a blur of movement, he took the creature's head cleanly off its shoulders. It fell to the floor with a thump, and rolled to the right, where it lay, still "alive". The eyes rolled horribly, and the mouth opened and closed, silent. The body, however, crumpled and lay still.
Bensen then jumped into the clutching crowd, his blade flashing, kicking and yelling as he moved. Heads and limbs were flying in all directions as the others watched in shocked disbelief.
"Fuckin’ Jedi Knight or somethin’;" one of the Marines offered, awestruck, and smiled.
"No shit..." one of the soldiers corrected. "More like Bruce Lee. The dude’s a master."
It was rather comical to watch, actually...like something out of a campy old Kung-Fu movie from the early 1970s. "Kung-Fu Theater" stuff.
The young private bounded forward and twisted in the air, delivering a roundhouse kick to the face of one zombie, then swung the blade around in a complicated move, beheading two at one swipe before thrusting the tip of the blade into the forehead of another. He continued in this fashion, moving like liquid grace itself, as the others watched in awe.
Bensen had made his way halfway down the hall in seconds, leaving a growing number of prostrate corpses in his wake. The others looked at each other and shrugged, then began making their way down the corridor, blasting the heads which lay scattered about like so much birdseed. They also shot the zombies he'd missed, scooting them aside with a shove as they fell. "I have to admit," Macintire, that master of understatement, said, squeezing off a point-blank shot at a head which lay at his feet; "he's making this much easier."
The sound from down the hall stopped minutes later as Bensen had seemed to have made it to the end. Gunshots now issued from there, as he apparently had decided to change tactics.
"Arms're probably tired," Gunnery Sergeant Webster, one of the Marines, offered.
They made their way down the hall, firing here and there at whole zombies and destroying the heads. At last the threat was nullified, and they had barricaded the stairwell doors with desks, trapping whatever zombies there may be in there. The sounds of the creatures thumping futilely against the steel doors echoed softly in the hallway.
They each then slumped to a place against the wall, too tired to move.
They sat, morose, and scanned the horrifying mess before them. The halls were piled with corpses, many-most, in fact, headless.
Webster, rubbing his neck, glanced at Bensen, who sat polishing his sword with a soft cloth. "That's a helluva penknife you got there, son; you're damn good with it, too," he said, his southern accent thick with his weariness.
"Thanks...." Bensen said quietly, nodding. "...it's called a katana, a Samurai sword. I've been studying martial arts since I was old enough to walk. My dad is....was.....an instructor. Had his own dojo, in fact. He was considered a master of several different styles...Karate, Kung-Fu, Jujitsu, Tae Kwon Do, some others. He was very talented; what you might call a natural. Studied two and three styles at a time. He started teaching me basic moves when I was a toddler. I always had a passion for the weapons, though; especially swords. I also took fencing lessons." He went on polishing his sword.
"Where'd you get it?" Webster asked. "I don't recall that being standard issue military weaponry."
Bensen was silent for several seconds, only polishing the blade. "I took it from a pawn shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, when we shot a couple looters there," he said at last.
Macintire stiffened, his voice taking on an unpleasant tone . "You realize, corporal, that that makes you a looter as well, subject to summary justice and execution under the rule of martial law."
Bensen said nothing, only went on polishing his sword. It was becoming mildly unnerving. "Corporal Bensen....what do you have to say for yourself?" Macintire pressed. Deaver rolled his eyes. Macintire could be such a regulations-reading dick. The guy had just saved them all, and almost single-handedly at that, for God's sake.
Bensen then said, his voice soft and neutral, never taking his eyes off the blade in his hand, "Taking money, furniture, TVs or stereos during a crisis or disaster....that's looting. If you take food, clothing or weapons....that's survival."
"I'm quite sure the military courts would be more than happy to hear your views or definition of piracy and looting," Macintire said with condescension. "Fortunately, what you think isn't the way the regs are laid out; they're very specific about crimes committed under martial law....if you-----"
"Do you see this?" Bensen asked softly, but somehow harshly at the same time, silencing Macintire and indicating a small mark etched into the blade near the hilt.
"Yes......" Macintire said. "...but I....."
"This", Bensen said, cutting off the lieutenant and pointing to the etching, "is the mark of a master sword maker who's been dead nearly four hundred years. I don't know who owned this sword before me, but I can tell you they didn't get it by sending in Cap’n Crunch cereal boxtops. This sword is probably worth more than all of us here put together have earned so far in our lifetimes. Do you know what the pawnshop had it priced at? A hundred and fifty dollars. A hundred and fifty bucks!" His moral outrage was clear in his soft voice. "This was a....a family heirloom of some kind....maybe a great-great-great grandfather or something had been a samurai. Who knows? It was probably pawned for 60 or 70 bucks of rent or drug money, and just lumped in a case with other swords....mostly reproductions and knockoffs or replicas of Hollywood movie swords. That's a crime.....a crime against the memory of the sword master who forged.....this." He swiveled the blade in his hand, and they all heard the soft "whoosh" as it sliced through the air.
"Very interesting, Bensen," Macintire said drily, "and very informative; but still, regulations clearly state that....."
Deaver rolled his eyes impatiently. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Macintire....lay off'im, would ya?" he asked roughly.
"I beg your pardon....corporal?" Macintire answered silkily. He was always good at reminding others of his 'superior' rank. "I believe that I am the one in command here. If I wish to enforce military law and discipline in the ranks, I will do so at my own discretion, thank you."
Deaver sighed. "There ain't no more military, you book-wavin' asshole...." he said, his tired voice hardening dangerously. "....look around you. If there is, it ain't here. It's in a bunker somewhere, waitin' for all this shit to blow over. It's only us, here.....and if you keep going------" he was beginning to rise from his seated position, his voice rising with him.
"---if you keep going the way you are," Hashbarger cut in, thrusting a thin yet muscular arm across Deaver’s chest, nudging him back into a seated position, but looking at Macintire. ".....it's only going to cause divisiveness, tension and anger and we'll never get out of here. We have to work together."
Deaver started to speak, his face screwed up in a mask of anger.
"Deaver;" Webster, the Marine Gunny and Deaver’s superior, spoke softly but firmly, his southern accent coming through clearly. "That’s enough. Hashbarger’s right." This was, after all, just Macintire being Macintire. Deaver fell sulkily silent.
The lieutenant silently looked at him, then around at the others. "Do you all feel this way?" he asked. Slowly, warily, each head nodded.
He nodded himself, stiffly, "I see.....well, then.....I'll....bear that in mind....." his voice hardened, "...when this becomes a democracy. Thank you. As for now, I am still in command, and Corporal Bensen is going on report at the very least."
Deaver laughed sourly and shook his head. " You’re on crack, man," he said flatly. "And who, may I ask, will you file that report with, Macintire? Sorry----Lieutenant----Macintire---sir!" He sketched a snappy little two-fingered salute.
"Deaver…" Webster warned, his voice hard. "…last time; that’s enough, I said,"
Macintire's lips thinned bloodlessly, his eyes narrowing; "You too, Deaver," he said coldly. "On report."
Chapter Two
After resting for a while, they all at last took time to consider the bodies before them in the hallways.
"We can't leave them lay here," Macintire said needlessly. "What can we do with them?"
No one spoke for some time. They were just too tired. "Throw them out the window?" Deaver then piped up, his voice weary. He popped a chunk of beef jerky into his mouth, and chewed loudly; he loved the stuff.
Macintire thought this over. At last, he shrugged one shoulder. "Why not?" He waved to Michaels, who rose and grabbed a corpse by the ankle. He began dragging it toward the library, where the windows were smashed. A chorus of disgusted noises rose up as the rotted skin sloughed off in his hand, and the leg slumped back to the floor. All except for Deaver, who chuckled mildly, slumping to one side.
"Wait....Hashbarger said, rising to help. She bent and grasped the creature under the arms. "Hey;" she said, an idea suddenly illuminating her features; "there's an alley in back of this building. Let's toss them out there. If we throw them out front, the windows are smashed, and we have no way to close them. These bodies'll just lay there and rot; they’ll smell. We can close these classroom doors and seal them some way, so the smell won't be so bad," she said, indicating the doors.
"Okay," Macintire agreed, "That sounds good. Everybody...let's go, people.....pick it up. No....Bensen...grab her under the arms, like Hashbarger did....yeah, that's right.....Deaver....get that one------"
"You gonna help us.....sir?" Webster, interrupting him, asked. His voice was gruff. "Or are you just gonna stand there an' let us do all the work?"
Macintire gazed at Webster briefly, then bent and, with great distaste on his face, grabbed a body under the arms. Its head, still attached, bobbed and rolled backward on the limp neck, bumping Macintire in the chin. Its matted, filthy hair brushed his lower lip, and the young lieutenant made a sick sound in his throat. Webster smiled jovially, and hoisted a corpse of his own.
After three hours of steady work, most of the bodies had been dropped out into the alley behind the school. It was then that Fox, the third Marine, noticed the doorknob on a door down the hall moving slightly, as if being turned slowly, or worked on, from the other side. "Hey---- you guys..." he whispered to his comrades, motioning tensely at the door. "...look." The two other Marines dropped what they were doing and came over to his position, leveling their weapons at the heavy, metal door. The doorknob clicked softly in the silence of the corridor. It would do no good for them to fire now; the bullets would just bounce off the metal surface of the heavy door.
Fox swallowed thickly as the door opened a crack. He tensed, his finger on the trigger......and raised his rifle, ready to take the head off whatever might be coming out.
A gunbarrel, followed by a questing, wide-eyed head, poked slowly out of the door. The eyes widened when they took in the three M-16s aimed in their direction. The door flew open.
"Holy shit, man! Don't shoot!" The man, one of the soldiers assigned to sniper duty on the roof, said, throwing his rifle to the floor. The Marines relaxed and lowered their weapons, looking relieved, if a bit peeved. Webster bent and retrieved the rifle from where it had fallen.
"Pick up your weapon, soldier boy....we ain't gon' shoot you," he said wearily. He handed it back to the soldier, who took it. "Army asshole..." he mumbled under his breath, turning to return to the task at hand. Fox and Deaver grinned and chuckled after him as he walked off.
"What're you doing?" The sniper, a young guy who Deaver thought was named Pauling or Paulding, asked, looking around.
"Cleaning up a mess....care to join us? Now that we’re almost done?" Fox asked with a cockeyed grin.
The corporal, whose name Deaver could now read as Poling, missed or ignored Fox’s backhanded smartass comment and nodded absently, staring around at the carnage. "Who's in charge now?" he asked, his wide eyes coming to focus on Fox.
Deaver cocked his head, indicating some vague point down the hall; "Macintire," was all he said, as though tasting something mildly bitter. The corporal's shoulders sagged.
"Oooh, shit....." he breathed, concerned disappointment clear in his tone. "We're fucked."
Deaver and Fox both nodded in agreeement. As Marines, they had only grudgingly accepted the leadership of the Army officers, anyhow. Tucker, with his 30-odd years, had been a superb leader.
The newly-minted, West-Point graduated luey Macintire's style was not at all to their taste, however. Having never seen combat, he was trying desperately to make his officer's bones here. The fact that there was most likely no one to praise or promote him was lost on him. Leaders like that, as Fox had noted, got men killed in their quest for glory. "Anybody else up there with you?" Fox asked. There had been three snipers and two machine gunners.
Poling shook his head. "Only me....." he shrugged...."only me left, that is. Everybody else committed suicide; head shots, of course."
Fox and Deaver looked at each other, slight disapproval in their eyes; Marines would never have gone out like that. But then, under the circumstances, Deaver considered, perhaps it was best to do it yourself and make sure you didn't end up one of the enemy. Nobody wanted that.
So, Poling joined the effort to clean up the dozens of corpses still lining the corridors, lugging them, one by one, into the two classrooms and out of the windows into a growing pile down below, in the alley. As they tossed corpses out, many zombies came over to the pile, sampled the offerings, then stumbled away, the meal not to their taste. One zombie, that of an old man, both his legs gone in some horrific, probably automobile, accident, had pulled himself laboriously over to the pile. As he reached his goal, Poling took pity on him and shot him cleanly through the side of the head. "Nice shot," Webster complimented.
In that whole time, as Poling moved to and fro along with everybody else, Macintire never once acknowledged this new face among them, or "probably even noticed it," Bensen noted when Poling mentioned it to him. Such was the scope of their lieutenant's observational abilities.
At long last, after nearly five hours of cleanup time, the bodies were all out in the alley. The stench in the halls was slowly diminishing. It was silently acknowledged that something would eventually have to be done with the pile, as well, but that was for later. The doors to the classrooms were shut, and as soon as some way could be found to seal them completely against the odor that was sure to waft into the building, it would be done.
The unit collapsed, as one, into the chairs in the library, slumping down into the surprisingly comfortable furniture. No one said anything for a long time. Through the smashed windows they could hear the shifting sounds of the undead crowd still wandering up and down the street outside. In the silence of the building, they could hear the dead things worrying at the doors of the stairwells.
At last, someone spoke. "Now what do we do?"
"We sleep," Hashbarger said wearily, and snuggled deeper into the chair, coiling her left hand under her head and attempting to get as comfortable as possible.
"We eat," Webster said, removing an MRE from the fannypack around his waist.
"After all that;" Macintire said, incredulous, "the smell, the filth....you're hungry?"
Webster took a mouthful of something and began chewing resolutely. " Sir," he began, around the mouthful of food, " yes, I'm hungry...and, I grew up on a pig farm;" he swallowed. "I slopped'em, mucked out the pens and cleaned'em. If you can get through that, you can stand anything." Macintire shook his head in bemusement and watched as Webster shoveled in another mouthful.
"I can vouch for that," Bensen said in a tired, yet amused, voice. "My Uncle Frank and Aunt Melissa ran a pig farm in Western Ohio, near Lima. I spent a year there one summer." He smiled; chuckles went around the room, except for Hashbarger, who snored softly. "We used to pray they wouldn't come to the family reunions, because they smelled so bad of pigs...." his voice trailed off, "....they always did, though..." he said ruefully, and laughed softly.
Silence again held sway, and more sounds of snoring began to filter in, undercut, of course, by the sound of Webster's chewing and swallowing. Soon, however, even he had put away his dinner and slumped down into his seat and quickly began snoring, as sleep claimed its last holdout. The only sound besides rhythmic breathing and snoring, was the soft sound of the dead thumping futilely against the doors.
No one realized, of course, how long they all had slept, and a few were stunned to find they had slept around the clock. At last they began to stir, stretching and yawning. A few rose and stumbled toward the restrooms, and were pleasantly surprised to find that, by some miracle, the city’s water was still running. The power was out, of course, and was only kept on here by the generator on the roof.
Macinitre rose and stretched, yawning loudly, his jaw cracking.
"What do we do now, sir?" Michaels asked him.
"Well....." Macintire said, searching for a decision, "I think the first order of business should be to take stock of what we have as far as supplies," he said. "We need to know what we have and/or need," he added with great gravity, as though this wasn't obvious to all present.
Deaver, Fox and Webster glanced at each other. "Best decision I've heard from him yet," Deaver mumbled derisively to Fox.
"What was that, Deaver?" Macintire asked sharply.
"Nothing, sir. Just complimenting your decision-making skills, and/or ability, to my friend here, sir....." he said, with an innocent smile.
"And/or," Fox said, nodding forcefully.
Macintire scowled. He turned to face Michaels. "Michaels, you 're on ammo. I want to know how much we have at our immediate disposal." He turned to face Alana. "Hashbarger...you're on food. "MREs, water, whatever we have. Check it out. Bensen, check the generator and the gas."
Hashbarger nodded, then said "Sir, can I suggest that we begin going through the lockers? You never know what we may find in them."
"No...I don't think so, corporal. That would fall under the category of looting, and I won't have that in my unit," he said. Hashbarger sighed, but nodded.
After the results came in, it was apparent that their situation was not good. They had relatively few MREs, were not certain how long the water would last, and were getting low on ammunition. The only bright spot was that they had several hundred gallons of gas and, now that power consumption would be limited to the upper level, that would last longer. Of course, Macintire rightly pointed out, the lights were very likely still on downstairs. If that were to hold true, someone would have to go down and turn them off. The hands of the three Marines immediately shot up.
"We'll go;" Fox said. "I mean, the Corps is always 'First to go, last to know', right?.......at least now.....we know." He smiled.
"How are you going to get down there?" Michaels asked. "The stairwells are full of those things."
It was discussed, and then decided that all the stairwells would be checked. Staying in contact by walkie-talkie, someone went to each door to count the zombies in each well.
"Everybody in position?" Webster asked over his radio. A series of affirmative answers came over the air. "Okay, gentlemen....and lady, sorry....begin counting." He gazed through the narrow window, bobbing his head from side-to-side, attempting to see past the zombie staring stupidly, yet unnervingly, at him through the glass, only inches away. The gray flesh of its fingers and face slid smudgingly across the glass as it tried to get to him.
He spoke under his breath as he counted, ticking them off with his fingers. There were a lot in this stairwell. He lost count. Cursing softly, he started over. Seconds went by before an answer came over. "I can see thirty-eight," said a voice that sounded like Fox.
"I've got forty-three so far," said another voice. "And there's still more."
"Twenty-seven here," came Hashbarger's voice.
"Fourteen in this one, at least that I can see from here," came Bensen's voice. "I think we have a winner. Lots of room to move in there."
"Yeah;" Poling's voice. "I count forty-four here, and there's still more down below, out of sight."
"Which stairwell you at, Bensen?" Webster asked.
"North end of the building," he answered. In minutes, everyone had gathered there.
Chapter Three
The three Marines checked their ammunition and weapons, making certain that all was in order. Corporal Fox paused. "You know," he said, "if we can clear out the first floor, too, we could empty the stairs, barricade the doors that've been breached, lock the stairwells and we'd have the whole building to ourselves." All eyes turned hopefully to the lieutenant.
Macintire pursed his lips. He thought, to himself, that he didn't like the idea of his people being out of his sight and having all that room to, potentially, cause trouble. "Negative;" he said, "just go down and turn off the lights for now. We'll discuss any further action later." Deaver huffed, disgusted and angry.
"Do you have a problem with my decision, corporal Deaver?" Macinitre asked smoothly. The big Marine chewed his tongue and remained silent, glaring off in the other direction. "I didn't think you would," Macintire added, a mild condescension filtering into his voice. "Just do as ordered for now, gentlemen." The three Marines filed past him, angry. Webster tossed his rifle insolently from his right hand into his left and glared at Macintire as he passed. Stockier, older, an only slightly less muscled than Deaver, he cut an impressive image. But the lieutenant would not be cowed. Their eyes met and neither wavered. Bensen took position at the door, which, for some reason, opened into the stairwell, and prepared to open it. The undead beings in the stairwell began moving forward, drawn by the motion visible through the small window. "Ready, guys?" Bensen asked. The three nodded.
"Use as little ammo as possible," Webster reminded them tensely. "Go!" he said.
Bensen threw open the door, pushing with both hands, knocking several of the zombies into each other and tumbling some backward down the stairs. This had the desired result of giving the three Marines room to maneuver at the top of the steps. Bensen drew his sword, instead of using ammunition, and took out two of the closer targets for them. The narrow stairwell rang with deafening gunfire, the sounds echoing endlessly off the cinderblock walls and cement stairs.
The Marines moved slowly down the steps, maneuvering for the best positions from which to make their kills.
Most of the zombies fell with one shot, no ammo wasted, as the quarters were fairly close. It was rather hard to miss a target that was coming toward you, anyway. In short order, the stairwell was cleared, corpses scattered on the steps and landings. There were, in fact, seventeen in the stairwell. The three moved to the first floor landing, backs to the wall. Webster looked at his compatriots. "Know what?" he asked sharply, his tone righteous; "Fuck Macintire. If we can clear this floor and barricade the doors, let's do it," he said looking at Fox, whose idea it had been. Both Deaver and Fox nodded in agreement. Webster moved cautiously to the door, and moved his head slowly to gaze through the window. "Holy fucking shit......." he breathed.
"What?" Fox asked, his voice tense and wavering, as if unsure that he wanted to know the answer. Webster turned slowly, incredulously, to face the other two, and, placing his hand on the door handle, pushed it wide open. It opened onto a long main hallway, at the end of which, was visible the ruined office.
Except for scattered, disembodied limbs, gnawed bones, stains and blood on the carpet and spattered on the walls, the hallway was completely empty. Both Deaver and Fox's mouths dropped open.
"Where the hell are they all?" Deaver asked quietly, not wanting to attract them, wherever they were at the moment.
"Let's find out, Marines" Webster said, calmly replacing his depleted clip with a full one. Fox nodded and dashed out through the door, M-16 at the ready, taking position at the bend of the main hall, which turned off to the left. Deaver pumped the slide on his shotgun and took the right turn corner, which was several yards down the wide corridor, right across from the office. Webster swept into the main hallway, past his men, and glanced in both directions. Nothing. He lowered his weapon, scratched his head in puzzlement, and exhaled loudly. "C'mon, boys, let's look around."
The hallways were virtually covered with the remains of the massacre that had occurred here, as the undead creatures had waded into the overcrowded rescue station. Of course, there were no actual bodies here...they had all gotten up and joined their murderers not long after being killed. Only pieces remained.....and drying puddles of bodily fluids and sticky, congealed blood. The stench of urine and feces was strong; bodies evacuated themselves when they died, of course, as the muscles relaxed. There was also decay in the air, a reminder of who, or rather what, had done this. They made their way slowly down the hallway toward the cafeteria, stopping to glance into the classrooms on the right and left as they moved. At last they emerged into the cafeteria. It looked like a slaughterhouse, one which hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Deaver moved off to the left. "Sergeant," he said, all business now; "Look here."
Webster came over, leaving Fox to stare around in mute horror at the carnage around them. "What is it?" he asked. Deaver indicated the door. Webster moved to the window and stared in.
The stairwell was packed with zombies, all shuffling against each other and trying to make it up the steps, which were completely blocked, filled as they were with walking dead people. The undead forms were pressed against the door, faces mashing as they moved against the windows. "My God," Webster said. There have to be over a hundred in there."
"I think they're all in the stairwells, Sarge," Deaver said softly.
Could that be? Webster asked himself. Could they be that lucky? All they'd have to do is barricade these stairwell doors, as well, and all the creatures in here would be trapped, neutralized.
"Why aren't there any more coming in from outside?" Fox asked, his voice distant, coming over to the others.
Webster thought this over. He shrugged. "No activity to draw them?" he speculated. "We stopped firin' hours ago; nobody left alive in here to make a sound.....all the others have crowded themselves into the stairwells, tryin' to get at us upstairs." He took a breath and said, "Let's get us a desk." In ten minutes, all the stairwell doors on this level had been barricaded with desks, as well, trapping the creatures within. They then set to repairing the barricades on the doors leading outside from the caferteria and gymnasium.
Their radios crackled; Macintire's voice issued from them. "Webster....Webster....do you read? This is Macintire...do you read?"
"Shit...." Webster chuckled; "I forgot about him." He took the radio from its place clipped on his pocket. "Deaver.." he said hurriedly, "head for the office and turn off the lights; the breakerbox is in there." Deaver nodded and dashed off down the hallway. Webster put the radio to his lips. "Yeah, we're here." he said.
"Well? What is your situation?" came back the lieutenant's petulant voice. Patience was not even a nodding accquaintance of this dickhead.
"Everything is fine, sir. Situation is under control," Webster said calmly.
"We didn't hear any firing, Sargeant.....why is that?" Macintire's voice questioned from the small speaker.
"We'll explain everything in a few moments, sir. Webster out." In seconds, the lights went out in the caf and all over the first level. Mission accomplished; and then some.
Chapter Four
"...and so, we put desks against the doors, trapping the zombies inside. We then repaired the barricades at the outside doors. The threat is neutralized...at least for the forseeable future, at any rate," Webster reported, finishing up.
The others smiled at this report; Macintire, however, scowled deeply.
"Sargeant Webster," he began, seeming to making an effort to keep himself calm. "I admit that I do not know how you......stupid Jarheads.....do things in the Marine Corps, but in the US Army, orders of superiors are followed to the letter."
Webster bristled; he'd expected a dressing down, but he hadn't expected to be personally insulted and the Corps to be impugned, as well.
"You disobeyed my direct orders, Sargeant.....if normal conditions prevailed, I could begin proceedings for a court-martial-----"
"A court-martial?!" Deaver said hotly, moving toward Macintire. Hashbarger grabbed one arm, Bensen the other. Fox grabbed him around the chest. "Not now, Deaver...not right now;" he whispered.
"----or discomendation at the very least;" Macintire went on smoothly, ignoring Deaver's outburst. "However, you are fortunate in that normal conditions do not exist. Therefore, I will only insist on your confinement here until further action can be taken. Please hand over your weapons."
"Excuse me?" Webster said. He stood stock-still, obviously holding his temper in check by force of sheer will. He decided to attempt to reason with Macintire; "Sir," he said, his voice hardening, "the creatures had already shut themselves into the stairwells.....we simply barricaded the doors shut behind them. Anybody else would have done the same in that situation. It was the only logical thing to do."
"Nonetheless, Sargeant; your orders were to simply go downstairs and turn off the lights."
"Which we did;" Webster pointed out, his Southern accent becoming more pronounced and his voice growing dangerously sharp.
"Yes, you did...however, you also did that which I had expressly forbidden. That means that you disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer."
"Lemme tell you something, you fuckin' cockknocker!" Deaver said loudly, straining against the three others struggling to hold him, "you might be superior in rank, but you got nothing on him as a leader, or as a man!"
Macintire turned his maddeningly calm gaze to Deaver. "Would you care to join him, corporal? One more outburst like that, and you will." His eyes turned back to Webster. "Private Michaels, please relieve Sargeant Webster of his weapons and radio. Discipline in my unit will be maintained, Sergeant." He drew his sidearm and held it on Webster. A private named Henderson stepped quietly over to stand behind the lieutenant, smiling slightly and holding his rifle at the ready.
Hashbarger spoke up. "Sir...don't you think this is a bit...um...extreme? After all, we're going to need every free hand we've got, and he only......." she stopped, her voice drifting into silence as she saw that Macintire was ignoring her.
Michaels looked, wide-eyed, from Macintire to Webster. "Private...what are you waiting for?" Macintire asked Michaels. "I told to you to relieve the sargeant of his weapons and radio. Do so now." Another tense five seconds ticked by. "NOW, Michaels!" Macintire screamed. The private jerked forward, looking sick. The others in the group looked on with hot disbelief in their eyes.
"This ain't over, Macintire;" Webster said as Michaels took his rifle, sidearm and radio. The private whispered his apology as he did so, which garnered a withering glance from the lieutenant.
Macintire smiled softly, his voice hard. "For you it is, Webster."
Webster was taken by the lieutenant and a wary Michaels to an empty classroom and locked inside. Hashbarger later brought Webster a couple blankets, some MREs and a few bottles of water.
"We're all sorry for this, Webster....this is insane," she said. "Michaels feels worst of all."
Webster shook his head mildly and shrugged. "I been in worse jails;" he said with distant humor. "Lots of room in here, plenty of seating," he waved his hand, indicating the desks. "And there's readin' material right at hand." He cocked his head toward the bookshelf on the far wall. "Some of them classics I avoided readin' in Jr. High and High School. Now I got me a chance to catch up. I'll be okay." His tone became serious. "The rest of you, though; I worry about you." He gazed stonily at Hashbarger. "You listen to me, an' you listen good." He paused, accenting the gravity of what he was saying. "It should be clear to most of you by now that Macintire's off his nut."
Hashbarger dropped her eyes. "I.....guess he does seem.....a little unstable...." she said, her voice low.
Webster chuckled drily. " 'Unstable'......'a little'?" He laughed out loud this time. "Sweetheart, he locked me up, at fuckin' gunpoint mind you, for doin' what needed done. You think your Colonel Tucker woulda done that?"
Hashbarger shook her head. "No; I guess not."
"Damn straight he wouldn't," he said with force. "He'da given us, all three, commendations."
Hashbarger rose to leave. "I have to get back," she said. Webster nodded.
"Keep an eye on Macintire," he warned. "That nut's gonna crack, and it'll be sometime real soon. If you people need a leader, look to Fox or Bensen. Fox is a good man; Bensen seems pretty up on things, too. And you;" he nodded this time toward Hashbarger. "You'd do pretty damn well, too, if it came down to it." Hashbarger smiled stiffly; from the usually gruff Marine Gunnery Sargeant, this was high praise. She turned for the door.
"Tell Michaels not to feel bad....." Webster said. "I lay blame where it belongs."
Chapter Five
Macintire had not decided exactly what he was going to do with the Sargeant. He sat alone, behind a teacher's desk in a deserted classroom, glaring intently at the styrofoam coffee cup which Henderson had thoughtfully brought to him a little while ago, filled with water. He was breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, covering the desktop with a little snowdrift of styrofoam dots.
He was losing control; he could see that. He was losing control of his people. He was chilled to the bone despite the damned muggy West Virginia summer heat, and he started to shiver, but resolutely squashed the tremors.
Suddenly, as had happened many times in the last few days and weeks, General William Tecumseh Sherman appeared before him, his black riding boots, dark blue, wide-brimmed hat and uniform greatcoat covered in the dust of a ruined Georgia.
His hands were behind his back and his dark eyes, shining above the scruffy black beard and mustache, glared down at the seated lieutenant. Macintire leapt to his feet, saluting. "General!" he said, feeling guilty for his lapse and for not having seen the General come in.
"At ease lieutenant," the vision said. Macintire relaxed, staring in fearful awe at the great Union general.
"Just what in hell's name are you doing, lieutenant?" Sherman asked, his tone derisive.
"Sir?" Macintire squeaked.
"Your weakness is causing you to lose control of your men, Macintire; you're the one in charge now, dammit! Act like it! You have to take back command….of yourself, and of them. They very nearly sided with that jackass Webster.....you could have had a mutiny on your hands, lieutenant."
"Oh, I don't think it was that bad, sir......" Macintire said to the empty air in which he saw Sherman.
"Are you questioning me, lieutenant?" Sherman asked harshly.
"Oh...uhh...no, sir!"
Sherman nodded once, stiffly. "That's good....when you question the orders of your superiors, you begin questioning their authority, as well. That is when discipline breaks down; am I making myself clear? Discipline must be maintained at all cost! Is that understood, Macintire?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Very good." With that, Sherman vanished. Macintire stood in the empty classroom, considering the advice he’d been given, and wondering why he hadn't seen the General leave.
Chapter Six
"Man, this is bullshit;" Deaver, seated with Fox in the library, said. He thumped his hand on the arm of his chair, frustrated. "Why do we have to all stay up here? The whole downstairs is wide-the-hell open!"
"Because that's the way Macintire wants it," Fox reminded him for the umpteenth time. "Like it or not, he's in command." For the time being, and just to keep the peace, Alana gotten them all to agree to just let things lie and not take any action. Although, she did wisely leave the option open, if things got any worse.
"Well, I don't like it, " Deaver replied angrily. His voice dropped to a more conversational tone, but remained harsh. "He's gotten worse in the last couple days, you know."
Fox nodded. Since Webster's detainment three days ago, which gritted upleasantly on all of them but most especially on the two Marines, the lieutenant had grown much more stiff-necked and unreasonable than he was before. For example, he had insisted, despite all reasonable arguments, on two guards being posted by the generator on the roof. As if the zombies, still shambling stiffly around the streets below, would be able to climb the building and get to it.
This had the predicted negative effect of drawing the zombies back to the building, as they saw the men on the roof. Before that, they seemed to have been drifting away, as the number outside appeared to have been dwindling slowly.
He had also insisted on strenuous calisthenics and a three-mile run, which he had paced off himself in the halls, to "keep us all in shape." He had even taken an American flag from one of the classrooms and given it to Private Henderson to carry at the head of the pack, so they could follow a banner as they would in an on-base run.
Any suggestion of going downstairs, to begin a cleanup detail, was met with stony silence or outright, fiery dismissal. There was also the fact that crates of MREs were just waiting for them downstairs, as were other supplies and equipment; their supplies here on the second level were beginning to seriously dwindle. They’d have to go down there sooner or later. He tried steadfastly to ignore any comments along these lines. He stubbornly ignored or resisted any and all comments or suggestions on bettering their situation, and would continue to do so.
Along with all this, he was spending hours, his hands flying at an insane pace, typing memoranda and reports and filling notebooks with hand-written, detailed descriptions of their situation and events as they had unfolded before and since their arrival here. He insisted that, once someone came to "relieve" them, he would turn these reports over to the proper parties. They all let him be. As long as he was involved in his own mad little game, he was leaving them alone. The only thing that bothered them was the constant "tack-a-tack" of the electric typewriter he was using. If he'd only gone downstairs, Hashbarger had noted with annoyed sarcasm, he'd have had any one of a dozen or so computers to write on. The softer sound of the computer keyboard would have been infinitely preferable to the sound of the typewriter.
Chapter Seven
Deaver and Fox had drawn the next shift in the rotation, and stood morosely in the late-evening gloom, casting bored glances down to the zombies wandering stiffly around the street below. "Are there more of them, do you think?" Fox asked softly.
"Maybe;" Deaver replied. "Hard to tell in the dark. They might not have been there at all if our fearless leader hadn’t started these dumbass guard shifts. They might have all left by now."
"True;" Fox said, nodding slowly. They’d been over all this before…many, many times. He picked up a small piece of gravel from the roofing and dropped it into the black. It dropped toward the blurry, obscure shapes staggering in the dark below.
Deaver lit up a cigarette and chuffed out the smoke. He grimaced slightly; his smokes were getting stale. Oh well, this was as good a time as any to quit. With a scowl of distaste on his face, he crumpled the pack and tossed it over the ledge. It bounced off the head of a zombie below, which looked around, trying to find the source of the contact.
"So what are we doing next?" he asked, scuffing the sole of his boot thoughtfully on a longish, thick wooden plank lying on the rooftop.
"Who knows?" Fox answered, gazing off to the dark, undulating humps in the west that were the hills of Eastern Ohio. The moon and stars glistened brightly above them in the total darkness. It occurred to him that this was probably the first time in decades, or even a century or more, that the stars were this clear. The Milky Way was clearly visible. The faint, lacy veil of stars stretched off into the night sky. He absently ticked off several constellations there in the western heavens.
One of the aspects of their mission was to keep an eye out for lights that may indicate a generator in operation, or even a vehicle on the highway. For days, there had been a single light on a hillside there, across the river in the area along Ohio Route 7 known as West Wheeling. It had gone out two days ago, however, and had not come back, which did not bode well. "As long as Macintire stays in his little "office" typing up his reports and memos, we’ll be okay for a while, anyway."
"Yeah," Deaver agreed, nodding slightly, "but Hashbarger says we’re starting to run low on food, and the water could go at any time. That’s not good; we need to start looking around."
"Meaning?" Fox asked.
"Meaning…..well…..I think…maybe… a lot of these houses around here," Deaver waved the glowing tip of his cigarette around, indicating the houses nearby, "…could just about meet some of our needs."
"Yeah…." Fox nodded slowly. "And?" He smiled knowingly.
"And….maybe, we should undertake a little recon mission."
"Macintire’ll never go for that. That’d be looting," Fox advised, fulfilling his obligation to play Devil’s advocate.
Deaver smiled sourly. "Who says he has to know? What time is it?"
"0214 hours; we’ve got less four hours to go," Fox answered, consulting his wristwatch.
"Ya wanna?" Deaver asked.
"I wanna," Fox nodded. Deaver nodded in reply and twisted open the cap of the fuel tank on the generator. He poured in a few gallons of gas, bringing it up to "full". "That’ll keep it going for a few hours, at least," he said. Replacing the cap, he looked around.
"Now, how do we get off this roof?" Fox asked.
"Got it covered…here;" Deaver answered, and bent to pick up the plank.
He bent and hefted the long plank, which looked as though it had been left behind from some scaffolding, perhaps, from some other project. It was fairly thick and long, but would it reach across the alley? Deaver grabbed one end and they slid it off the back of the building’s roof, carefully nudging it across the open space over the alleyway. It was only twelve or fourteen feet across…..it was a long plank, but was it long enough? There were few options here, and it was clearly becoming necessary that this be accomplished, whether their lieutenant wanted it or not.
Suddenly, and with a soft thump, the plank lay cleanly across the alleyway, bridging the gap between the roof of the school and that of the house across the way. They pushed it another few inches, to stabilize it, and stood back. Now, would it hold? They played a quick game of "rock, paper, scissors" to decide which would try it. Deaver lost, Fox’s "paper" neatly covering his own "rock".
Deaver slung his rifle across his back, took a deep breath and lay on the plank; he began pulling himself across, inch by inch, listening for the telltale snapping or crackling of the wood. No such sound was heard, but the farther he got out into space, the more the plank began to vibrate, bouncing under his weight. He had to stop several times to wait for it to ease. At last, eight or ten tense minutes later, he dismounted on the roof of the house, and waved Fox over. "It’s okay, it’ll hold;" he whispered. Fox, full of tense misgivings, mounted the plank and soon slid off onto the roof himself, exhaling audibly. Heights were not a favorite thing of his; the only thing that kept him focused was the fact that the ground was lost in the darkness below him. If there had been even a single streetlight to show him the pavement, he would never have made it. The huge pile of bodies lay there below them in the alley, burned now; gallons of flammable chemicals had been poured on them and a flaming textbook was dropped from the roof. The pyre had burned for two days, filling the area with foul-smelling smoke, until a brief summer shower had extinguished it.
They quickly found an unlocked window, and raised it as silently as possible. They weren’t as worried about Macintire now, of course, as they were of attracting the undead crowd. Ducking into the window, Fox found himself in what was obviously, from the décor, the bedroom of a young girl. He turned on his flashlight, and played it across the walls, which were covered with posters and smaller pictures, probably culled from magazines, of handsome young actors and musicians. Small TV and stereo, dozens of CDs neatly racked and stacked. Stuffed animals here and there on the bed.
A few small pictures sat on the nightstand, beside a darkened lamp with lacy shade and a digital alarm clock. Some were obviously family; mother, father, mother and father, sister and brother, family portrait. One was larger than the others, however…..that of a young male, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old. Boyfriend, obviously, Fox thought. Sad.
Deaver came in behind him, and glanced around, waving his light, as well. "Let’s see what we can find," he said quietly. They made their way into the hall beyond the bedroom door.
They made their way down the dark hallway, past several doors, some open onto bedrooms, some closed. Fox opened one of the doors, and looked inside. It was a boy’s room….the usual décor…rock group posters, stereo, TV with videogame system hooked up, a couple of provocative posters of popular sex symbols of the day. It was messy, in contrast to the girl’s room. A large pizza box lay open on the stereo stand, the mummified scraps of pizza now a breeding ground for greenish-gray mold.
Fox closed to door and looked around at the walls of the hallway. "Place is decorated nice;" he said, nodding approvingly, taking in the tasteful décor and expensive carpeting, wallpaper and border.
Deaver paused and looked at him, askance, one eyebrow cocked. "Man, sometimes you worry me," he said, and stole quietly down the stairs. "You oughta be one of those "Queer Eye" guys."
"What?" Fox asked softly, following.
The small foyer of the house, at the base of the steps, had two rooms that opened off from it. Looking in from the front door was the dining room to the right, the living room to the left, a narrow hallway straight ahead. "I think we should go…" Fox began, but was cut off by the sound of a chair scraping the floor from somewhere back through the darkened, narrow hallway. They both snapped their heads tensely in the direction of the noise. "What was that?" Fox asked.
"The wind?" Deaver replied, nervously hopeful. Another scrape, accompanied by the sound of something falling to the floor.
"That wasn’t the wind," Fox whispered, eyes wide. "Unless the wind just pulled up a chair to have a snack." He swallowed and said "That’s probably the kitchen back there, and that’s mainly what we’re here for, right? We have to go check it out." His words came out in a tumble. They turned as one and looked at the narrow corridor, through which only one of them could fit at a time….one would have to go first, the other behind. They quickly turned back and presented their fists. "Rock, paper, scissors....SHOOT!" they whispered. Tie. Again. This time Fox lost, Deaver’s "scissors" cleanly cutting his own "paper". "Shit;" he hissed, and hefted his AR-15, a flashlight taped to the barrel. He brought it up, pointed into the pitch-black hallway, and started forward. Deaver shined his own light over the head of Fox. They entered the corridor.
Chapter Eight
"Hashbarger, where are Fox and Deaver?" Macintire asked. Since the incarceration of Webster, he’d been most troubled by what would be their reaction, and liked to keep tabs on them as closely as possible.
"They drew guard rotation, sir;" Hashbarger said, snapping to attention at the approach of the lieutenant. She wanted to keep the peace, so she gave him what he wanted, for now.
Macintire nodded, his lips pursed. "And they actually went up? My, my…..excellent…..I’ll make disciplined men of them yet." He turned away.
"Yes, sir…." Hashbarger said, rolling her eyes.
"Deaver and Fox are going to be a problem;" General George Patton said, his eyes fierce under his polished, 3-star-bedecked steel pot. The ivory-handled pistols at his sides quivered slightly as he moved. He was totally squared away; all creased sharp edges and glistening metal in his field jacket, riding pants and boots. "You need to keep those fucking assholes under your thumb, goddammit!" Patton yelled, slapping his palm with his leather gloves. He put his hands behind his back, and paced slowly. Macintire, at attention but cowering inside like a field mouse trapped by a hawk, simply followed him with his eyes. "Did I tell you that you could make eyes at me, lieutenant?" Patton hissed, coming to within inches of Macintire’s face. His eyes burned into Macintire’s.
The lieutenant kept himself from drawing back by sheer willpower alone, and squeaked out "N-no sir."
"Eyes forward." Patton said threateningly, and drew back, thumping one hand against the other. He nodded to himself. "You’re going to have to maintain discipline, Macintire…..nothing else matters now. Not a goddamn thing."
"Uh…uh…sir? General?" Macintire asked timidly. Of all the generals who could have come to advise him, why did it have to be this one, one he so feared? And yet admired, he had to admit, for sheer discipline and style. Patton whirled on him.
"What?" he asked angrily.
"Uh…h-how am I t-to do that? Maintain discipline, I mean? Sir."
Patton’s face screwed up into a leer of disdain. "You really don’t get it, do you, you miserable little asshole?" he asked. "You really don’t."
Macintire flinched under the words, but shook his head silently.
The general smirked shook his head, as if in disbelief of the lieutenant’s idiocy. "You need to make an example;" he said softly. "Execute Webster."
Macintire inhaled sharply, and started to reply, shaking his head, but was cut off by the hand of General Sherman, laying on his shoulder. The General came around his right, and stood beside Patton. He looked at Macintire and spoke.
"My profane associate is correct, Macintire." He advised calmly. "Discipline must be maintained. I concur with his opinion. Execute Webster with the utmost alacrity."
Macintire blinked, stunned, and was shocked to find himself alone in the room. How could they drop that bomb on him and then just leave? That was rather rude, he thought as he slumped slowly into the chair behind his desk. He had a lot to think about right now…..maybe they just wanted to give him the time to do so.
Webster sat behind the teacher’s desk, legs stretched out and resting on the left hand corner, and, deep in thought, picked at the remains of an MRE brought to him an hour before by Michaels.
He figured that he knew what the end result of this little sentence would be; with Tune dead, he was the only one left who could really challenge the Lieutenant’s leadership of the group.
Macintire saw him as a rival rather than a subordinate. He knew this for a fact. He had seen combat….Macintire had not. This was a big deal to the lieutenant and, in Macintire’s cramped little mind, he was jealous of this little nugget of truth. He saw Webster as an obstacle to complete domination.
But what, or rather how, would the situation play out? He speared a bit of the apple dessert with his fork and turned his mind to that question.
Michaels, whether he liked it, or even realized it or not, was Macintire’s bitch. That wasn’t entirely his fault; he was still green as grass, and Macintire represented the highest level of authority in the place. Webster figured he could count on Michaels siding with his lieutenant, even if it bothered his conscience to do so.
Another member of the group on Macinitre’s side would probably be Henderson. He’d seen lots of men like that over the years. Henderson was a toady, just an oily little shit who sucked up to those who could help him, unless of course it was in his favor not to. Macintire was the only real officer here; Henderson was on his side for just that reason, and that reason only. If it could be shown that the lieutenant was losing command, his attentions would switch to the new high card. If the world had continued on its normal course, Henderson would probably have made general someday. Webster, with cynical humor, chuckled sourly at this thought, and continued to think things through as he ate; he only hoped he’d have time to formulate some sort of plan.
Chapter Nine
Hashbarger sat, alone, in one of the small classrooms off the library. Letters made of gold and blue construction paper and taped to the wall proclaimed it the home of the Wildcats Jigsaw Puzzle Club.
She had drawn a chair up to a long table, and was in the process of assembling a rather large jigsaw puzzle, her second. There wasn’t much else to do around here, after your duties and the strenuous daily routine of PT were expended; everyone had taken to finding small things to occupy their time. Bensen, for example, was making his way through the library, in between martial arts practice sessions in a room from which he’d cleared all the desks. He read everything; science, history, encyclopedias, the classics….everything.
Poling, a chemist in civilian life, had taken to making the science labs at the end of the second floor hall his private chemistry set. What he was making, if anything, no one knew.
Michaels had taken to drawing chalk murals on the blackboards in the classrooms; he gathered all the colored chalk he could find into one classroom, and began working on what he said was an intricate, beautiful mural. He wasn’t allowing anyone to see any of his work yet, however.
Poling, stretching, came into the room and looked down at Hashbarger’s puzzle. She had most of the edges finished already. "Got another one going, huh?" he asked.
"Yep," she said. "Finished the first about an hour ago."
"How long?"
"Four days."
"Cool." He nodded his head stiffly. "Cool," he repeated. ‘Umm..listen, Alana, I wanted to talk to you about something."
"And that might be?" she asked, not looking up from the scattered puzzle pieces before her. She knew why he was here, but affected, as was her decision on the matter, an attitude of disinterest.
He sighed. "Dammit, Alana, we need to talk about it," he insisted. She sighed.
"It" had happened a little over two weeks ago; Tucker had ordered their convoy to stop at a relatively small burg along Ohio 30 called Crestline, toward the middle of the state. He had determined, after surveying the area for a time, that they should hole up in a motel for a day or two, as a reward for their service thus in the crisis. They were in no real hurry at the moment, anyway; they were essentially on an extended patrol. This sort of thing was one of the things that made Tucker so admired. He knew how to treat his people.
They soon found a small, clean-looking motel and picked rooms. There were even enough rooms for each member of the unit to have their own room, if they wished. Most wished. As Hashbarger was the only female in the group, it was determined, by the colonel himself, that she should have her own room, regardless. Chivalry was not dead as long as men like that were around, she had considered.
The motel office, centrally-located, was turned into an ersatz command center. The satellite-linked radio was set up there, and that was about it.
They had had a small run in with several "mobile corpses" as they came into town, but it seemed, on a brief patrol of the town itself, that the area was more or less zombie-free. A quick radio check with a nearby unit of Marines and they were able to determine that the area had been cleared several days before; the smaller areas were the easiest to check off the list, after all. The few they had dispatched coming into town were probably "newbies" as newly zombified people were being referred to, or perhaps were "walk-ins", a more or less self-explanatory term.
As they settled in to the motel, Tucker called Tune and two other men into the office for a word. The three men left the motel on some mission, piling into a Humvee and driving off into town. When they returned, they were carrying a small generator, several dozen DVDs, along with a DVD player, a large plasma screen TV and several plastic grocery sacks full of sodapop, chips and various other types of snacks. Tucker obviously didn’t have the same attitude toward looting as did Macintire, who joined the group several days later.
Tucker announced that that evening was movie night, and Tune cut in with another announcement that a cookout was being held in the motel’s central courtyard in two hours. Baker, a corporal from Illinois, gleefully produced three large plastic shopping bags of steaks, chicken, hot dogs and ribs, liberated from a home whose owner had thoughtfully left his electricity, which in turn meant his deep freezer, hooked up to a large solar-powered generator. Tune pulled a shiny new charcoal grill and a bag of charcoal from under a tarp in the back of the Hummer, to the cheers of all. A CD player and several CDs had been taken, as well, from the same store as the other electronics, and would be put to good use.
The cookout was a rousing success, of course. The colonel had been the cook, wearing a faded, barbecue-stained apron (liberated from the same house as the frozen goods) that sported a fat chef saying "Kiss the Cook", and humbly serving all his charges.
The music blared loudly and echoed in the courtyard. A squad of the Marines showed up, coincidentally, just as the food was being dished out, and the colonel waved them over to the grill for some dinner. Hashbarger, being the only female, was quite popular as a dance partner. Three Marines, young black men from urban areas, put on a dance routine, and five of the group, Army and Marines mixed, performed a line dance to a popular country song. Both groups were cheered and applauded by all.
Only one thing served to mar the day’s festivities; a lone zombie, a young teen boy in Goth-styled garb and with half his face torn away and an arm missing from below the elbow, wandered onto the motel’s front lawn, drawn by the sounds of the party. He was quickly taken out by one of the Marine sharpshooters, on a bet with one of his Army counterparts.
That evening, couches and chairs were brought in from the rooms, and the Marines and Tucker’s people settled into the motel’s surprisingly large conference room for movie night. Tucker had insisted on mostly comedies and action movies. Drama was okay, but nothing too emotionally stressing. No horror movies at all. There was enough of that to go around, he’d said.
The wide-screen TV was set on two barstools from the redneck beer joint adjacent to the motel, and leaned slightly against the wall. The evening opened with a series of Three Stooges shorts and some old Warner Brothers cartoons ("Looney Tunes", as someone had mentioned; Tune had been prepared for it, though). Next was a Jim Carrey comedy, and continued with a campy Godzilla flick (Tucker had balked a little, but Godzilla movies were sci-fi, not horror, Tune, a longtime Godzilla fan, had insisted). It was the old kind with the guy in the rubber suit, not the more recent abomination with the CGI monster.
The "Star Wars" series was voted on and voted down, at least for the moment. Another movie was voted in, a recently-released romantic comedy-drama with the accent on comedy. Adam Sandler starred, in his patented role of an irresponsible man-child in his late thirties. In this tale he had two months to woo and marry his recently-divorced, fiercely man-hating college sweetheart in order to inherit fifty million dollars from his dying great-grandfather. Tune considered that it was just an extended, glossy, reworked rip off of the classic Stooges short "The Brideless Groom", in which Shemp has just hours to marry so he can inherit five hundred thousand bucks. From five hundred grand to fifty million; talk about inflation.
At length, the crew had begun to drift off to their respective rooms, making small talk about how much fun the day had turned out to be. The Marines left, after finishing "Die Hard 3", for their base at large a farmhouse six miles to the west.
Hashbarger had gone back to her room and begun to undress for bed, when there was a knock at her door. It had been Poling, who had come to bring her boots, which she’d left behind in the conference room. She let him inside and they talked a little, facing each other in the dim moonlight shafting in through the window. Both were from Indiana, it turned out, Hashbarger from near South Bend, Poling from Fort Wayne. Small talk faded, and one thing, as they say, led to another, and soon they were kissing. Suddenly, their clothes were on the floor, and they were, quite passionately, making love.
Poling left for his own room sometime before dawn, and had somehow managed to avoid being seen (and no doubt razzed to no end) by the guards Tucker had posted.
Neither had mentioned the incident since. It was just one of those things. Two ships in the night, or so Hashbarger had thought.
"What should we talk about?" Hashbarger asked, seemingly unconcerned.
"You know what I’m talking about;" Poling said, squirming inside. "What happened that night….I just don’t want you to think I…"
Hashbarger looked up from her puzzle. Her expression was serious. She sighed again and said, "Look Eric, what happened between us happened….under normal conditions, yes; I might have been pissed that I didn’t get at least a call or flowers or something. Under normal conditions, I never would have let it happen in the first place. Conditions aren’t normal. What happened that night was two people under a lot of stress who found in each other something they could relate to and hold onto. That led to…..other things that maybe shouldn’t have happened. They did, though."
She stretched, mildly embarrassed herself, but also not a little flattered, she had to admit, by his continued fixation with that night. "Just let it drop, Eric…..it happened….it was sweet and nice…let’s just not worry it to death. Don’t think about it anymore. There isn’t time for anything else, anyway."
He nodded, unsure, but relieved, as she could tell from his posture and expression.
He was a good guy, this Eric Poling, who wasn’t into the "wham-bam-thankya-ma’am" thing. There were some men here in this little group, she knew, men with darker aspects to them. Men who might think nothing of grabbing a quick piece, welcomed or unwelcomed, and hopping off down the trail. In fact, she was beginning to worry about her position as the only female among this many men. If things turned ugly and got out of hand, she could definitely come out on the losing end. Everyone here, even those men she most mistrusted, however, so far seemed to accept her as an equal. That was an attitude she tried hard to foster by carrying her share of the load and more.
Poling placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, smiled sadly but gratefully, and walked away.
Chapter Ten
25 June 1435PM
Vice-President Frank Tulley sat back in his chair, wearily removed his glasses and dropped them to the desktop beside him. They thumped atop a pile of documents, increasingly ragged reports from the various, though few, bases and outposts that they still held and could communicate with. For the moment, at least. How long that luxury would last was anyone's guess.
He sighed and jammed the heels of his hands deep into his eyes until he saw glittering fireworks spread behind his lids. He rubbed his burning eyes very hard.
For the last two weeks, he’d been living like a damn rock star; hardly any sleep…what he’d had had been induced by downers prescribed by his attendant physician; he was then given uppers to counteract the downers; to wake up. Add incipient exhaustion to the mix, and you had a bad thing going here. The pills had the advantage of keeping the bad dreams at bay, though.
All the drugs were not conducive to strong decision-making abilities, however…..and the decision before him now was momentous, even Biblically epic, in its import. He sighed again as the thought of it washed over him like a wave, and he felt once again the belly-drop of trepidation.
"Mr. President…" the soft, yet deep and commanding at the same time, voice came from behind him, at the door to this relatively small office.
Barely as large as the master bedroom in an average-sized home, the office was now the Oval Office, the office of the President of the United States of America, a position in which Tulley now, reluctantly, found himself. The voice belonged to General Henry Parker, USAF. Tulley still hadn't gotten himself used to the change in title.
It occurred to Tulley that, if things could be held together, Parker and that voice might make for a nice run at the Big Chair someday. "…we need a decision, sir, and soon. We’re running out of time. Contact could be lost at any--"
Tulley heaved a sigh without turning to look at the blue-uniformed general, and said, his tone weary and down-hearted, "I’m well aware of that, Hank. Thank you. As soon as I come to my decision, you men will be the first to know. You'll have to be." At last he turned. "Any word from Alan?" he asked, no hope in his voice. The general cast his eyes to the deep-blue carpeted floor, and silently pursed his lips. "Negative, sir," he said quietly. Tulley sighed and nodded, resigned.
Nothing had been heard from President Alan Harper or his family in over two weeks. Last they’d heard, Marine One was stopping at a National Guard facility in Arkansas, to refuel. Nothing at all since then. The President had not arrived here, at this hardened facility two miles under the Rockies, as scheduled. He was assumed lost. The chopper perhaps had crashed, or maybe had been overcome by the hordes of undead beings now roaming the Earth, or both. Who knew? God, certainly, but no one at this facility.
Harper had gone before the last joint session of Congress, three days before Washington was evacuated, asking for Martial Law to be declared and for the activation of the regular armed forces within the US borders. He and his family had then left Washington for this, the last bomb shelter of the Cold War. The Speaker of the House had sworn Tulley in as President a week ago, when it was finally decided to assume Alan Harper and family as lost.
When he’d signed on, six years ago, as West Virginia Republican Senator Alan Harper’s running mate, Tulley knew full well what the implications might be. If they won the vote, he’d be a heartbeat away, literally, from the Presidency.
Harper, however, was nearly ten years his junior, an ex-Army Ranger and former amateur boxer who’d taken his athletic and military training to heart, and still took care of himself as though he were an active duty Ranger. He usually forsook the White House gym, preferring, to the constant dismay of the Secret Service, to pay, out of his own pocket, for membership at an aged YMCA gym in DC. There, four times a week, he worked out and sparred with "real people", as he put it (albeit "real people" who had been cleared by his Secret Service bodyguards). He said he liked the worn, gritty feel of the gym, and claimed it kept him in touch with the public and his own roots, and that it helped keep him grounded. At any rate, Tulley had, for the last five years, felt certain that he was safe….he had never thought that it would come down to his actually having to make the big, "presidential" decisions.
"I’m not the kind of person who should be making decisions like this, Hank," he said, his voice tired. "I’m just an old man; if I were in the private sector, I’d be overripe for retirement."
That was true; he was 67, and had been a competent Republican Senator from Southern Indiana for three terms. He had an admirable, if somewhat unremarkable, record. He’d sat on several committees, though never as Chair.
He secretly felt that this record was one of the main reasons Harper had chosen him. No one wants to be upstaged by their second banana.
Tulley knew government, though; how it worked, the ins and outs, and played the game and fulfilled his duties well. However, he was not the decisive, commanding kind of leader Harper was. Harper was "presidential"; he was not.
The only reason, when you got right down to it, that he’d taken Harper’s offer to join the ticket was so that, someday, he could tell his great-grandchildren how he’d once been Vice-President of the US. The fact that he actually believed in much of what Harper had to say was another factor.
Alan Harper had been a rarity in Washington political circles; a real person. Slightly corrupted, perhaps, by the power, perks and lifestyle, it was true, but who among them could claim otherwise? Still, he had remained above the worst of it, actually working to do what was best for the Nation, rather than just himself and the Special Interests. This made him somewhat unpopular in many circles, but the American people had thought enough of him to give him a second term in the White House. Harper had even managed to win over a few Democrats to his side, in the fashion of one of his heroes, Ronald Reagan. He would be missed, especially now. Tulley missed him very, very much. Especially now.
He waved the general to have a seat. Parker nodded and came in. "Coffee?" Tulley asked.
"Sure;" Parker said. Tulley rose and went to the stand behind his desk, where a coffee dispenser, hooked up to a larger machine in the kitchen, ran night and day. He poured himself another cup, and then one for the general. "One sugar, no cream, right?" he asked.
Parker smiled. Tulley returned to his chair and handed the general his coffee.
"How’s our story holding up?" Tulley asked, perusing one of the files before him, labeled "Classified, Eyes Only" in huge, bold, red typeface. Not that the cover story really mattered anymore…there were no more functioning media outlets. He liked Parker, and was just making conversation. It may be lonely at the top, he considered, but he didn’t have to like it.
"The news outlets were still broadcasting it when they went down," Parker replied, blowing on his coffee. "Far as anyone knows, radiation from the probe caused it all."
Tulley nodded and sipped his steaming coffee. The Venus probe story was the "official" reason given for the reanimation of the dead, but in fact, they had utterly no clue as to why it was happening. Best guess was some sort of virus. This seemed facetious to Tulley though; how could a virus penetrate six feet of dirt and a sealed metal casket?
The probe story had been concocted months ago, in fact, long before the present crisis had emerged, in the event, you might say, of a potential crisis.
High-level Air Force and NASA officials came up with it, in the event of an accident that may cause the probe device to crash, uncontrolled, to Earth.
Tulley read from the file, squinting without using his glasses. He read that that this was done because, on its return voyage, the probe’s video and standard cameras and sensing devices took several dozen close-up, detailed images and extraordinarily clear readings of a rather large vessel that had approached it in interplanetary space. A decidedly non-terrestrial vessel, you see, causing the boys with stars on their epaulets, and those who live to keep secrets, to have fits. The president smiled slightly and shook his head.
Those transmitted images and sensor results were officially classified, of course, but the originals were still stored in the machine’s on-board computer memory. So, when it became apparent that the probe was, indeed, going to crash, due to a meteor collision, the story of the weird radiation was put into circulation to keep people away from the wreckage. The thought of someone, some skilled civilian hacker or techie, with the knowledge and ability to access the information, getting hold of the hard drive and getting the information out to the press and general public had caused seizures in the Pentagon.
Tulley saw little reason to believe that the hard drive might even have survived an uncontrolled reentry (not to mention the explosion, since the vessel was caused to self-destruct just inside the atmosphere), but the chance of such things had to be accounted for, he supposed.
The appearance of the corpses, by pure coincidence, had begun not long after the probe had disintegrated and crashed, falling across Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and some of Northern West Virginia. A house in Carnegie, Pennsylvania and two in St. Clairsville, Ohio had each been damaged by pieces of the falling debris. They thought they were lucky that that was all. But the reports of the appearance of the corpses soon began, and concern with the damage caused by the errant probe was quickly lost. People were clamoring for answers to explain the current crisis, and there were none to be had. So, the radiation story was utilized there, too, to explain the reanimation of the dead.
Tulley closed the file with a sharp motion at tossed it back to his desktop. "General Parker, I want you to level with me about something;" he said, staring pointedly at Parker. "I don't see how it would matter now, anyway, and if anyone should know the answer, I'd think it would be you, the Air Force representative to the Joint Chiefs."
"Yes, sir?" the general asked, knitting his brows, holding his coffee cup and leaning forward in his seat. His loosened tie fell outward from his chest and bumped against the cup.
Tulley leaned back in his chair, which creaked loudly in the quiet of the room, and asked, firmly, "Did we really find Martian bodies at Roswell in 1947?"
Parker's eyes swung away, amused. He smiled, but cryptically.
"Well, general? Your president asked you a question. Did we find Martians at Roswell, yes or no?" Tulley prodded with mock-seriousness.
Parker looked at him, askance, and dropped his eyes. He seemed to think it over. "Ummmm.....Martians?" he said at last. His eyes rose to meet Tulley's. He shook his head, "No, sir...no Martians." He smiled a bit.
Tulley nodded. "Okay....then what did we find? Really."
Parker's tone suddenly went from amused to mildly serious. "Mr. President, are you asking this General Officer to reveal to you the details and information of classified documents? Because if so, I will require your reasons for asking, as well as your strict and official assurance that nothing I say will leave this room."
Tulley crossed his arms and smiled. He sucked at his front teeth and said, "Okay....forget I asked."
"Yes, sir;" Parker said with a firm nod. With a soft smile, he added, "Don't ask questions you might not want the answers to, Frank." Tulley chuckled.
Talk turned to the decision at hand. Several ideas and opinions were tossed back and forth.
Tulley remarked again that he was not the one to make this decision. He would have to stop it, he admonished himself; it was bordering on whining.
He had served in Vietnam, as a combat medic, and had achieved the rank of corporal. His military record, as in the Senate, was unremarkable. He had not been a leader of men, as Harper was.
"I’m just not the kind of guy who makes decisions like this…." he said again, his voice drifting off.
"Well Frank," the general said with a soft, sympathetic smile, "you are now." With that, he drained his cup, set it aside, rose, turned and walked off down the hall.
Tulley sighed, and picked up the top folder from a stack of reports spread on the desk before him. Retrieving his glasses, he opened the folder and sat back, reading it again.
According to the file, the majority of the undead corpses, for some reason, had found their way to the major cities. Many cities the world over had been all but abandoned by the living; London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing….the dead ruled in all of them by now.
The plan before him was this: in order to tilt the balance back to the side of the living, something had to be done to radically reduce the number of the dead. The remaining members of the Joint Chiefs, on recommendation of a group of scientists culled from a think-tank at MIT, were in turn recommending nuclear strikes on all major American cities. And, if it worked, perhaps even on foreign cities, as well.
So basically it was being suggested, Tulley considered, that we do to ourselves what we avoided having done to us in 40 years of Cold War. He sighed again.
It would destroy our cities….but cities could be rebuilt…..hundreds of thousands, even millions, could die…..if nothing is done, they’ll die anyway, and then come back and kill even more, until…maybe there’d be no one else left. But there would be fallout, and more would died from that, and quite probably come back….as irradiated zombies. Radiation---yet another problem; what was left of the cities would be unlivable for years, and….God! He sighed again, rubbing his forehead. The problems just went round and round in his head.
There really only was one choice here, he knew, and it was to use their nukes. He glanced to the pictures on the desk….his family; grandchildren. Both alive, he knew, at another facility. One of the perks of being second in line to the throne was that your immediate family got seats on the ark.
Little Marina….only 7 last August, smiling shyly and holding a daisy…..Kevin, 12, with a…..Marina and a daisy…..daisy…he stopped, something poking through the cotton in his head. Suddenly he sat up, and his eyes widened. "DAISY!" he said aloud, a joyful note bursting through in his tone. "Daisy…." He picked up the phone and dialed hurriedly, his hand trembling. "Daisy..."
Chapter Eleven
The darkened hallway closed in on either side as Fox, weapon raised, moved forward. Deaver walked behind, his flashlight and rifle held above the shorter Fox’s head. The irregular blobs of yellowish-white light played on the walls. They trod slowly on the carpeted floor, tensely, trying hard not to make any noise. At last they came into the kitchen, and Fox’s finger tightened on the trigger. They stepped from the carpeted hallway onto the tiled kitchen flooring, and Fox stepped sideways to admit Deaver. "Holy shit….." Fox said, his hushed voice disbelieving.
"What?" Deaver, whispering, asked. His eyes searched in the dimness.
"By the sink…..it’s a dog." Deaver’s light found its way to the floor below the double sink, where a scruffy, brown and black mutt of probable cocker spaniel, Jack-Russel Terrier mixture nosed through the rotting garbage.
"Is it alive?" Deaver asked. It was, and must have been hungry, because it was utterly oblivious to their presence. Deaver slung his rifle over his shoulder, squatted and clapped his hands softly. "Here, boy;" he said, his voice barely a whisper. At this, the dog at last took notice of them. It backed off and began to snarl, protecting its food.
"Don’t let him start barking;" Fox said. "That’s all we need." Deaver nodded and took a piece of beef jerky from his pocket.
"Here, boy…come on, now…that’s right," he said, holding the large piece out and keeping his tone light. The dog stopped snarling and sniffed the air. Deaver broke off a piece, and tossed it lightly across the room; it landed perhaps two feet in front of the dog, who sniffed it briefly, then gobbled it down ravenously. Deaver tossed another chunk, larger this time, to the dog, which quickly ate it. He held out another piece and said "C’mere, little guy…come on."
"Maybe he’s thirsty," Fox said, and opened a cupboard, rummaging in search of a dish. At length, he pulled one from the shadowed innards of a cupboard by the fridge. Reaching into the fanny pack on his hip, he withdrew a bottle of water and poured perhaps half of it into the bowl. He then scooted the bowl across the floor to the dog. The sloshing water was sniffed cautiously, then drunk in a series of loud slurps. The dog looked up at the Marines, licking its chops and obviously wanting more. Deaver produced another piece of jerky, which he held out. The dog came over and sniffed the dark, dried meat, and took it. It stood there, chewing and allowing Deaver to scratch behind his ears. "Good boy," Deaver and Fox both said, simultaneously, and chuckled softly. "Jinx," Fox said; "buy me a Coke." Deaver smiled and stroked the dog’s back.
Chapter Twelve
25 June 1533PM
As he walked through the enormous underground structure, accompanied by two Secret Service bodyguards (even here, they felt the need to keep him under guard), Tulley marveled at the complexity of this place.
Construction here had begun in the mid-1970s, and had continued through the 80s. The facility was at last opened for business in 1990, and was then made virtually obsolete by the fall of the Soviet Union the next year. It was still maintained, however…one never knew what might happen, after all. The Russkies, though now officially considered our friends, still had over half the nukes in the world. Accidents happen. So do differences in political agendas.
A series of fresh-water springs that ran from a subterranean river miles under the mountain fed the water-treatment plant. Large hydroelectric generators, powered by that same river and protected from the EMP of multiple nuclear blasts, provided electricity to the entire base. Large auditoriums were hewn out of the rock, to house the assembled Houses of Congress, or at least those members that made it this far. Living quarters were provided as well, of course….not luxurious, by any standards, but at least private and very livable.
Food was stockpiled by the hundreds of tons, and fresh vegetables could be grown under special lights in a large garden in a room on the very bottom level. Also on the bottom level, a vast arboretum, kept alive with 12 hours of artificial sunlight (the same method used on the vegetable gardens) , fed into the fresh air ducts.
Military operations could be carried on from a large war room and communications center on the third level. It was here that Tulley was headed, for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This was the Big One…the meeting he’d been dreading, where his decision would be rendered.
Tulley entered the room, and the assembled men rose as one, their once-crisp and sparkling uniforms looking slightly rumpled and dull after the last few days. "Please be seated," he said, laying a file folder on the tabletop and pulling out his chair. He took his seat at the head of the long, glistening, polished wood table. All eyes were on him. He spoke, his firm voice masking his nervousness. Or so he hoped, at least.
"As you all know," he began, "it has fallen to me to make the decision as to whether or not nuclear weapons will be detonated on American soil, used as weapons in the present crisis." He took off his glasses and looked each man, in turn, in the eye. "I have decided that they will not……"
One or two uniformed men around the table exhaled in mild exasperation. One, Admiral George Kloss, USN, spoke. "Mr. President," he began, deliberately and obviously making an attempt to control his frustration at having to deal with a man he considered to be little more than the president’s stooge. "….you know perfectly well that we have to----"
"…however;" Tulley continued, calmly plowing over Kloss’ annoyed tone and cutting him off, "I have, perhaps, stumbled onto an alternative that, in the confusion and heat of the moment, has been overlooked."
"What alternative, Frank? To nukes?" Kloss asked, his skepticism clear in his voice.
Tulley had never especially cared for Kloss, and ruminated for a second on how, were his grandson Kevin here, he would very likely have tagged the Admiral with the appropriately deserving yet mildly, if deceptively feminine, moniker of "Sandy Butthole". He continued, nodding.
"Yes; now, when I was in Vietnam, I know that we sometimes used enormous bombs against enemy positions, bombs that had to be delivered by cargo plane rather than a standard bomber. They were called, if memory serves---
"Daisycutters….." Parker said in disbelief, his voice distant. "My God!" he said quickly, "….why didn’t we think of it before?" He sat forward, his mind racing, and put his hands around his head, smoothing back his iron-gray hair.
Heads around the table started to nod slowly, as the men considered this approach.
"The Daisycutters have been outmoded," Parker went on quickly, excited, "by an even larger version we code-named MOAB, ‘Mother of all Bombs’. Weighs over 18,000 pounds and is the next step down from a tactical, or "battlefield", if you prefer, nuke. Biggest and most powerful conventional bomb made; in fact, it’s almost as powerful as the Hiroshima atom bomb. They have to be delivered by C-130 cargo planes and even look like a nuke when they go off." He thought it over for a few seconds, then, "Yes! It would be possible to lay our hands on some! I even know where we can find some old Daisycutters that haven’t been scrapped yet, if we can get to them. Getting them all, though….that’ll be the trick."
"But Hank, do we even have enough to meet what we’ll need?" Kloss asked. "I mean, we have over 12,000 nukes…." He was always the Negative Nelly.
General Phillips, the Army representative here, looked at him and asked, "You’d actually prefer to use nukes instead?" Kloss said nothing.
"I’ll have to do some checking," Parker said, "but we might be able to get to at least a few. We can hope to fill out what we can’t get to with the older Daisycutters we still have warehoused. That’s a long shot, but it may be able to be pulled off. Good thinking, Frank." He patted Tulley on the shoulder and smiled. Tulley just nodded and exhaled, relieved beyond any reckoning that his idea might pay off. Parker left the room at a jog, headed for his office. Tulley needed a drink.
Chapter Thirteen
"So, what do we do with her?" Deaver, cuddling the dog and rubbing its belly, asked Fox. The animal had been determined to be a female. "I know Macintire wouldn’t let us keep her. Shit, he’d put us in lockup, too, for leaving our post." He grinned at the dog and rustled her fur playfully. The dog gnawed on his hand, growling softly, equally playful.
Fox nodded silently, sipping a warm Pepsi he’d liberated from the disused fridge, which stunk from rot. The sodapop was warm, yes, but it tasted like the Nectar of the Gods. He’d taken as many of them as he could fit into his fannypack. They had a little more than an hour to get back to their post before the next rotation. "We can’t just leave her out here….she’ll starve, and even if she doesn’t, they’d probably get her before too long. I’ve seen them eat raccoons, groundhogs, whatever they could lay hands on that was warm. I don’t think a dog would be something they’d stop and think twice about." They sighed as one, faced with this dilemma.
‘Gee dad, can we keep her?’ didn’t seem to be the way to go here. "We’d better be getting back, anyway," Fox said, draining his Pepsi. The two men spend several minutes rifling through the cabinets, taking various canned goods and such, things which would be of use, yet small enough to be kept from Macintire’s notice.
They went back up the stairs with the dog following. Still unsure as to what they were going to do, they passed by the closed doors off the hallway. As they reached the girl’s room, beyond the window of which was the plank, they stopped and looked at each other. "If we get caught with her, Macintire’ll shit a gold brick. Sideways," Fox said with emphasis. "That’ll be the end for us."
"Maybe he’ll have a stroke or something, and give us a break," Deaver replied, draining his own Pepsi and placing it on a small stand to his right.
"That was cold, man…." Fox admonished. "We’re taking her with us, huh?"
"As far as I’m concerned, yeah;" Deaver, having made his decision, said, his tone matter-of-fact. "But we really should be in agreement, here."
At length, it was decided, somewhat against Fox’s better judgement, that the dog would, in fact, be coming with them.
Dawn was just shaking hands in greeting with the new day as Deaver clutched the animal to him and slid precariously across the plank to the roof of the school. As Fox dismounted the plank and set nervous foot back onto the roof, he said, as they replaced the plank to its place lying on the rooftop, "You just remember that you wanted to keep her…..you have to clean up after her."
"Gotchya, mom," Deaver replied jauntily, with two thumbs up and a smile. As they turned, the door opened, and Poling and Henderson came onto the roof for their turn.
"Uhh..where the hell’dya find that?" Henderson asked, pointing at the dog. "On the roof?" he asked with clear sarcasm.
"Don’t ask;" Fox warned. "Her name’s….." he looked at Deaver, who paused for a moment, in thought, and said,
"Phoebe. I always liked Lisa Kudrow."
"….Phoebe," Fox said, turning back to the soldiers…. "Take good care of’er. Little Timmy here’ll be back up to feed her in a couple hours," he said, jerking a thumb at Deaver.
Deaver, for his part, moved to stand over Henderson, who swallowed reflexively, and shrank back a little. "And the two of us," Deaver said slowly, "would be really, really unhappy if Macintire found out about our new pet," he said, teeth gritting, his voice tensing with open threat. Henderson said nothing, and only glared at the towering lump of muscle fiber before him. Poling struggled manfully to stifle a grin.
Deaver turned away and motioned to Fox, who nodded once in supportive affirmation.
The two soldiers stood staring at the dog, which stared back, panting in the already muggy heat and seeming to grin, as the two Marines went in through the access door.
"Your pet;" they heard Fox say as the door closed.
Chapter Fourteen
At 0100 that morning, 26June, as Deaver and Fox were trying to decided what to do about the dog, a plane carrying a team of highly-trained Special Forces operatives, under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency, left a military outpost under the Rockies. It was a top-secret facility not even known to the president. Even General Parker was not aware that he was actually talking to a man not a mile away from him as he stood there in the war room.
The team was actually an arm of the Delta Force; classified activities and anti-terrorist, but their skills were needed now, for certain. This team was , for purposes of the operation, designated as "Team One".
Their destination was a small air base in Missouri, and another team, "Team Two", most likely Marine Corps Force Recon or Navy SeALs, according to the plan, would be going on a separate but related mission to another base. The whole trip was risky, of course; the undead things virtually ruled the world out here now, and things weren’t getting any better. According to their briefing, however, this mission could potentially turn the tide back into humanity's favor.
They were to hook up with the other team after they, if all went well, rescued a group of technicians and pilots from the base in question. The base had, unfortunately, lost communication with the war room at the Rockies facility. The generals there had no way of knowing if there was even anyone still alive at the base, or if it had, perhaps, been overrun. The mission was a gamble, a roll of the dice with everything, including the baby’s shoes, on the table.
If there were survivors there, with the needed skills, the team was to then shuttle them to the other base, where they were to assist them with the loading of extremely high-powered, conventional explosive devices onto the military’s huge cargo planes. As many as could be loaded before the dead could not be kept at bay and claimed them as victims. This was then, essentially, a suicide mission. But no matter, if they could get the devices loaded and evac without losing any or many, it would be done, just like anything else.
"Four hours to target," the pilot advised, and the men of the Delta team settled in, checking and rechecking their gear.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The other team, "Team Two", this one Army Rangers---rather than the hoped-for Force Recon or SeALs, neither of which could be located or contacted. A few regulars with certain needed knowledge and skills were thrown in to fill them out, and they were just barely able to leave another ruined base at nearly the same time. Team Two’s destination was a large military warehouse facility, where they were to secure the few remaining outmoded Daisycutters and begin loading them onto cargo planes. As to whether they would make it, well, that was up to fate.
Captain Paul Cutty, C.O. of this Ranger squad, looked out the window of the plane as it rose, banking to the west. On the interstate below, he could see, four or five cars were stalled or wrecked. He doubted that any bodies were there to be found, even if there had been fatalities. Lifeless bodies these days, after all, tended not to stay in one place.
He was not actually the real commander. Colonel Braun, the actual commander, was dead, having been killed while intervening in an altercation between two soldiers, one of whom was seriously losing it from the pressure. Wayne had been shot through the head at point-blank range by the crazy, who’d apparently seen him as a zombie.
Major Barris, the next in line, had himself been killed during in an accident on the east side of the base, working with a team of engineers to fix holes in the fencing. Inexperienced, he’d fallen off the cherry picker, over the fence, and into the mass of hungry corpses outside. At least, that was the story…..Barris had been something of a hardcase, and in times of crisis, the half-life of a hardcase could be short.
Cutty had taken the call from General Phillips, the Army’s representative on the JCoS, last night at 2207 hours. It was a miracle that the comm system was still operational; little else was working.
They were hunkered down, as they had been for over a week, in an underground shelter, the rest of the base virtually overrun by the corpses. There was one runway they had managed to keep open, though, in anticipation of a call. They’d had to drive through, around and over dozens of wandering dead to reach the hanger, but they’d made it, and somehow without losing anyone getting there. One of those among the undead flattened by the armored personnel carriers, Cutty had noticed, was Barris.
The plane leveled off, cruising at a low altitude, heading west. These orders, the General had stressed, came directly from the President. General Phillips had said that this mission was the most important they had, or would, ever undertake. He went on to explain why.
Cutty, buckled in and tensely said a silent prayer for their skills to be sharp, their eyes to be keen, their minds to clear and quick. "God help us all," he muttered. The fate of humanity might well, he knew, rest on the abilities of one team of Delta operatives and one ragtag team of regulars cobbled together with Airborne Rangers. "God help us all."
Chapter Fifteen
Deaver and Fox had decided to make it a regular thing, whenever they drew the overnight watch, to go on recon missions off the roof and into the neighborhood beyond. They would bring back with them whatever they could carry. It had been two nights since their first excursion, the one in which they had rescued their new mascot, Phoebe.
So far, Phoebe had turned out to be a well-trained, well-behaved animal; she could fetch, roll over and shake. "Speak" had never been attempted, lest Macintire hear. Henderson had, wisely, chosen to keep quiet about the animal’s presence here.
That night, at a few minutes after eleven, they silently slid the plank across the chasm and onto the roof of the house; carefully they each made their way over to the house and then down to the foyer. They went to the door, checked the street beyond carefully for "pedestrian traffic", as Deaver jokingly called it, saw none within range of concern, and dodged out onto small the front porch. They both looked toward the school, where dozens of zombies still wandered in the street, attracted by the guards positioned on the roof. One or two pawed at the side wall, vainly attempting to reach them.
It had occurred to Fox sometime ago that the number of undead killed during the initial siege must have been very low, as the amount of corpses lying in the streets around the school was not very large. Probably a testament to the panic of the defenders.
They jumped off the porch and ran up the street to a house there. A nice, ranch-style dwelling, they broke the lock and stepped cautiously inside. They made their way into the kitchen, only to find it in a shambles, the back door battered down and torn from its hinges. Someone had beaten them to this one, and some time ago, from what they could see. They checked, but there was precious little of use to be found. Whoever had done this had been thorough. They moved on to another house, and another, only to find the both of them in a shambles, as well. The mystery glutton, whoever it had been, had been busy. Their night was proving to be a bust. They stole silently down a side street, not much more than an alley, truth be told.
They broke into a house, an old, tumbledown heap of a house, really, that had seen better days perhaps a million years ago. "Before the advent of HUD," Deaver joked.
Living room furniture, dirty and worn, was arranged on the crumbling porch (a sure sign of high-class tenants, the big Marine had noted sourly) the virtually grassless yard tamped down into a dusty lot dotted with filthy toys and litter. Sure enough, Deaver giggled softly….there was a disused, rusty car parked in the yard on the other side of the house, and a van in similar shape, up on blocks, out back.
In the cluttered, filthy living room, however, along with the only slightly dirty, yet higher-quality and better-maintained furniture, they found a state-of-the-art big screen television hooked up to an expensive home theater system and a digital-cable receiver. Hundreds of DVDs and CDs lined shelves and racks along the wall.
"Look at this shit," Deaver said, disgusted "….they lived on food stamps," he said, taking up a book of the stamps left sitting on the dusty coffee table, "….and yet they have shit like this." He pointed to the TV and it accessories. "My brother and his family could barely afford to wipe their asses, and these people had all this…." He sighed. "Democrats."
"Maybe they were drug dealers," Fox offered jauntily, his tone joking.
In a small utility room, however, they indeed found the workings of what had been an active Meth lab. Deaver, unsurprised, grunted and shook his head. "You know, maybe all this zombie shit happened for a reason, know what I mean? Clean things up. Clean US up." he said.
They checked out the kitchen and found it cleaned out, as well, but probably by the owners who had vacated the area, and had taken it all with them for their journey to points unknown. "Probably their bungalow in Tijuana or Cozumel, or maybe the Hamptons…." Deaver remarked, only half-joking.
They walked down the alley, finally fetching up at a shut-up garage, the sign on the front of which, in chipped and faded-red letters two feet high said, "Bryant’s Mufflers and Brakes." And, in smaller letters, clearly added later, "Auto detailing and General Repairs".
"What do you think, wanna try?" Fox asked.
"Why not?" Been kind of a dry night," Deaver replied. "Might find something of use."
They played at the handle on the office door, and found it locked, as expected.
Deaver, the larger of the two, stepped back to get a small start, at last throwing his weight against the part of the door nearest the jamb. The door gave after two thrusts, and they stepped inside the darkened garage office, shining their lights around and surrounded by the acrid smell of years of dust and oil, gasoline, grease and cigarettes.
An ancient, rectangular pop machine stood off to one side, a black monolith in the featureless dark, with "Coca-Cola" across the top front. Beside the pop machine was smaller vending machine, this one with snacks (both machines had been smashed and raided, they saw), and then several chairs surrounding a flimsy table, which held a few crumpled magazines, some three years out of date, Fox saw. On the wall opposite the pop machine, beside a small window, was a small stand with a coffee maker.
The greasy, cluttered, beat up desk sat in the middle of the worn tile floor, file cabinets and such lining the wall behind it. On a small stand all its own to the right of the desk was a newer computer and monitor, both yellowed, though, with cigarette smoke and smeared from the touch of untold numbers of greasy hands. Atop the file cabinets sat year after year of Chilton’s manuals and parts catalogues. Posters of cars and from parts companies, some with calendars printed on them, and many of which featured scantily-clad female models posing alluringly beside or astride the hoods of various types of cars, decorated the walls.
A nudie calendar held by a magnet kept its place on a file cabinet beside the desk, atop which sat the phone. Deaver and Fox quietly nosed around the place, looking in drawers and rifling through cabinets and shelves. A well-stocked medicine and first-aid cabinet had be gone through and picked over; too bad. They might have been able to use some of what it held.
Suddenly, a soft moan came from the back, in the garage area. The two Marines looked at each other, startled. "Did you hear that?" Deaver asked. Fox nodded. Another moan.
"Dead-heads don’t moan," Fox said quickly, his husky voice hushed. Deaver nodded. They hefted their rifles, just in case, and each stepped toward the door leading out into the wide bay, and took up position with one on either side of the door. As per their habit, they played a quick game of rock, paper, scissors to see who would have the honor of plunging through the door first, and into the dark unknown. Deaver lost this time. Oh well. It was fair.
He took a deep breath and swung around the doorjamb, finger tensing on the trigger, and jumped into the repair bay.
Fox fell in behind him, and jumped to the left. His eyes widened. "Oh my God….." he breathed, shocked. "Tune."
Chapter Sixteen
26June, 0616AM EDT:
The plane drew into a holding pattern above the relatively small air base, only six or seven miles across, the ruins of which spread out below. It had taken them an extra hour, because of a storm front had cropped up in their path, and they had had to skirt around it.
The pilot searched for a likely spot onto which to drop the Delta operatives. There was no way of knowing exactly where in the base the techs might be holding up, if indeed they still were.
Wandering hoards of the corpses could be seen, even from this altitude, as masses of black in the early-morning dimness, moving like herds of buffalo across the ground.
"Let’s play a little ‘Marco, Polo’;" one of the men said, and opened the door of the plane. Hefting a few grenades and standing in the roaring wind of the slipstream, he anchored himself to the door and forcefully threw one grenade to the ground far below. A bright explosion blossomed seconds later in the early-morning light. "Marco", he said. The mobs of undead quickly shifted in response to the sound, and, wheeling around, began moving in that direction. He smiled wickedly. Another grenade was released, and another explosion blossomed to draw them off to the east, well away from the main group of buildings. "Polo."
After a few minutes, a large patch of ground had been opened for a landing zone for them. Just for good measure, he dropped another grenade, then prepared for jump.
The Delta team dropped quietly from the plane and landed on the cleared ground, parachutes falling around them. They made every effort to be utterly quiet, as they well knew that the undead were attracted by noise and activity. As they moved off, the plane nosed downward toward the runway, perhaps two or three miles behind them. Getting back there would be a problem, they knew, and they could only hope that the zombie masses could be held off while they searched. There’d be no going home, otherwise, and the mission would fail.
They hustled across the grounds toward the cluster of buildings to the west; dark, squarish bulks only now being illuminated by the early-morning rays slanting over the horizon.
The officer in charge of the operation motioned for halt, then dropped to one knee and took out a map of the base compound printed, in haste, on a few sheets of regular computer paper, then stapled together. He consulted the printout for their best options, nervously chewing his lips as he did. Silently, using hand signals, he motioned to the team to move out.
The team headed deeper into the compound, and moved silently among the buildings. As they moved, they did come upon a few wandering corpses staggering among the buildings.
One young operative, looking around a corner, was shocked to find himself literally face-to-decayed-face with the remains of an old man, who reached out, stumbling hungrily forward to grasp him. The young man’s silenced weapon chuffed, and the old man, his blackened brains exiting through the back of his head, slumped to the ground.
The team’s search, after nearly two hours, had been futile thus far, but the main crowds of zombies had, at least, kept away. That was a plus.
They entered a larger structure, which resembled, from the outside, a small hangar. Their flashlight beams played across the inside, which was revealed to be a series of small offices and workspaces… laboratories and computer centers. Unfamiliar, odd-looking equipment sat under plastic tarps or disassembled atop worktables.
One of the larger rooms was a cleanroom, with bright red biohazard warnings on the clear, thick Lexan walls and door. Who knew what arcane shit might have been going on here, the team leader thought to himself, shaking his head, eyebrows knitted. Maybe the whole zombie mess might have started from a facility not too unlike this one, who knew?
The public’s attention was always focused on the sexy, exotic image of Area 51 and its infamous "so-classified-it-doesn’t-even-exist" reputation.
That flashy diversion allowed other, more open and well-known facilities to have the advantage of working on classified things right under the noses of the public and press.
There was, the printout said, an airlock in the rear of this building, leading down a flight of stairs to another door, a large stainless-steel blast door. Beyond that was a series of rooms kept for emergencies.
They weren’t in any of the other such areas that had been checked thus far. They would perhaps be here. If not, more time would have to be spent in continuing the search. The team seriously hoped that this one would be the winner.
On the map paper, written in ink (another sign of the haste in which this mission was conceived), were the access codes for those doors. They moved across the floor, between the clustered offices and work areas, and were finally able to locate the airlock in the back of the room, behind a row of large shelving units. They gathered at the thick, metal door, watching tensely as the team lead tapped the keys on the small pad mounted on the wall next to the it. A loud hiss, which caused them all to jerk back and look around, and the door swung aside, into the room.
Team One moved fluidly into the small room beyond. Two bodies, partially decayed and flyblown, their heads blown off, lay on the floor.
"Looks like they got chased in;" Team One lead said, taking this as a good sign. A regular-sized metal door, just like any other door you might see, knob and all, was to the right. Moving to the door, he was surprised to find it unlocked and opened it. They gazed down into the dark.
"Is anybody there?" he called, and shined his light down into the stairwell. He jumped when the beam illuminated the maggoty face of a corpse in uniform left lying on the stairs, a large hole in the side of its head. He sighed, and waved the team to follow him.
The team, lights concentrated downward, descended the stairs to the massive blast door at the bottom. "If they’re not here, we’re done," the lead said, and keyed in the code. The blast door roared, massive gears turning and klaxons blaring, and began to rise slowly. As the door rose, a group of men and women in torn and dirty military garb stood facing the team, weapons at the ready. "There you are," Team One leader said quietly, and smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
Macintire, keeping to himself in his office and lost in his fog of concentration and growing madness, drew up the papers accordingly.
His desk was a picture of order and organization, except for the growing pile of crumbled styrofoam in the exact center, the remains of unlucky cups torn asunder in his haze of madness flecked with brief dashes of reality. Even that pile, however, was neat….each dot brushed with care into the pile. He had gone through twelve cups in all, one right after the other, as his psyche warred with itself over the issue of Webster’s fate.
The Generals had paid him several more visits in this time, berating him for his lack of fortitude and leadership skills. Strangely, other great military leaders had paid him visits, as well.
Omar Bradley had argued for Webster’s continued incarceration rather than execution. But then, he was known as "the soldier’s general", so that attitude from him was not all that surprising.
Erwin Rommel, in his gray Wehrmacht dress uniform bedecked with his medals and Iron Cross, and Alexander the Great, standing resplendent in his embroidered robes, had both advised quick execution, as well. Bradley had then returned and argued persuasively in favor of simply keeping him locked up. Pershing, Eisenhower, Marshall Foch, Erich Ludendorf and Macarthur also made appearances, each at various intervals, to argue for execution. Each time, Bradley, like the angel on Macintire’s right shoulder, appeared and advised against it. It was Washington, the greatest of all American generals and statesman, who had driven home the final nail in Webster’s coffin, or rather, loaded the final round.
The papers he typed documented, in the meticulous detail only the truly mad can accomplish, the severity of Webster’s offenses and his coming punishment. This punishment would be carried out with all due haste and, with the lack of proper facilities and legal channels, would adhere as closely to military law as possible here in the field.
In just a short while, Webster would be taken, under guard, to the roof and executed by a firing squad made up of himself, Henderson, who he knew he could count on, and Michaels. Webster’s remains would then be thrown to the undead in the street below and left to them for disposal.
The document, as per regulations, was drawn up in triplicate, each page hand typed in the absence of carbon paper, and even given that lack of carbon paper, each page was an exact duplicate of the page it copied.
Macintire might have been insane, but he was neat.
Chapter Eighteen
Deaver and Fox stood staring, mouths agape, into the far corner of the repair bay, their flashlights trained steadily on---
"Tune," Deaver said again, breathless with disbelief.
The dirty, shirtless form of Sergeant James "Looney" Tune ---squinting against the bright lights in the dimness--- goggled blearily back at them, his rifle, wavering madly, aimed at least somewhat in their direction.
"Wh--Who…goes..there?" he asked and swallowed heavily, seemingly delirious. His head lolled limply to one side, then came back up, unsteady. His eyes widened, then narrowed, as he struggled to focus.
The Marines lowered their weapons and showed their hands. "It’s us, Sergeant Tune," Fox said soothingly. "….Deaver and Fox. Let us help you." Tune looked at them for a moment, then, cautious recognition filtering slowly into his face, lowered his rifle and nodded. They came over to his position, lying on a pile of dirty blankets, greasy work mats and cushioning blankets piled on the floor.
"Are...are you guys...real?" Tune asked breathlessly.
"We're real enough to help you, sarge," Fox assured him gently.
"Man…we never thought we’d see you again," Deaver said, kneeling next to the prostrate form. He held Tune’s head steady as Fox poured a drink of water into his mouth.
He slurped in down, obviously thirsty. "Me…neither," he replied haltingly, swallowing.
Fox, gently pulling aside the torn, filthy remains of Tune’s camo bottoms, looked at the large bite marks in his shin and calf. They were purple-red and angry-looking with infection, not surprising from the surroundings, but seemed to be healing. "Look at this, Deaver…." he said, indicating the puckered scabs that were forming. Deaver looked at it and shrugged….it meant nothing to him.
"Don’t you see? He was bitten…" he looked to count, but the nicks and cuts and wounds were myriad.
"… M ultiple times, by probably at least three or four of those damn things, and it’s healing… he’s STILL ALIVE. He didn’t die." Fox’s voice was mildly incredulous.
Deaver stared at him, uncomprehending. Fox rolled his eyes, frustrated. " Think about it! Anyone we’ve ever seen who got bit died within a week of receiving the injury, and became one of them. Tune didn’t…he’s been here for almost two weeks now, and he’s still alive. He must be….immune, or whatever you’d call it, to whatever it is that creates them."
Deaver nodded, getting it, but unimpressed. He shrugged. "A lot of good it does anyone else," he said.
Fox sighed. "You know Deav," he began, his voice solidly infused with ire, "sometimes you can be a real fucking moron, you know that?" Deaver looked at him calmly, unaffected by this outburst. "Look," Fox explained, as if to a third grader; "…if he’s immune, then there would be at least a few others who would be, too. If they could be located and gathered together someplace where they study this stuff, maybe a cure, or more likely a vaccine by this time, could be made. This could all be over."
At last, the lights came on in Deaver’s face, and he smiled. Bingo at last, Fox thought dryly.
"…so, what happened then?" Deaver asked, munching on a length of beef jerky. With their attentions, Tune had slowly come back to a mildly soggy form of reality, and was relating his tale.
"Well," he began, chewing his own jerky stick, "the zombies closed in around us and Baker, Phillips, Merckle and the rest were lost. I fell down, and was attacked by a whole crowd of them, one of which bit me in the leg. I shot him, but they started dragging me away, pulling at me. I jumped up and staggered around, stumbling, but another one bit me on the same leg and I went down again. As I fell, I shoved one, a woman, away, and she tripped on the curb." He paused, brows knitting, searching his clogged memory, then nodded. " She fell, and knocked some others out of the road, and that opened a small hole in the crowd;" another pause. "…I…took off through the hole, running as best I could down this alley, and managed to stay ahead of them. I dodged some others on the way, got in here and…." He shrugged. "…they must have bypassed me, because I haven’t had any problems from them. Not that I remember, anyway." He took a drink from the bottle of water Fox had given him. "Soon as I got in here and checked it out, I broke into the first aid locker and took a tourniquet, all the alcohol and peroxide bottles and set to work." He waved a hand at the discarded bottles lying here and there on the floor of the repair bay. "I cleaned out the wounds as best I could, poured on the peroxide, then the alcohol, screaming into a seat cushion the whole time so as not to attract them, and have been trying to keep them clean….but as you can see, in here that’s been tough."
"How have you been living? Eating?" Fox asked.
Tune nodded his head to the bay’s recessed vending area, which consisted of two sodapop machines and two snack machines, the fronts of both now shattered. There was also the machine in the waiting area.
"Well…. the water isn’t running here, for some reason; line break somewhere, maybe. Been living on rationed chips, cheez doodles, candy bars and pop. My piss is almost orange," he said with a smile. "Been using the bottled water for my wounds. And I’d kill for a steak, chicken…even a hamburger."
"Yeah, so would we," Deaver observed drily.
Tune nodded and smiled slightly. "I…kept waiting for ‘it’ to happen, you know? I figured, when I thought it was happening, I’d just do myself, if I could. I kept waiting. It just never happened, thank God." He looked between the two of them. "But, what’s going on back at the station? It was being overrun last I saw. What happened?"
They gave him a brief overview of their present circumstances, at least as they knew them. He nodded. "So, I saw Tucker….who’s in command?" he asked cautiously.
"Macintire," they said in unison, distastefully.
Tune slumped. "Shit," was all he said. Not even Tune had liked the by-the-book lieutenant. He shook his head. "Inexperienced and inflexible is not a good combination. I’m surprised you’re still alive," he said.
"No thanks to him," Fox said "….he’s gotten worse as things have progressed." He told Tune about Webster’s incarceration, as well as the changes in routine and the bad decisions.
Tune sighed. "Yeah, that sounds like Macintire….see, you have to understand what makes him tick." Tune thought for a moment, his weary, fever-addled brain seeking the right words.
"I know he grew up in a military family, as I’ve come to know him from the few things he’s said about it. He probably spent his boyhood reading and rereading the biographies of generals, and the military history of the world, instead of Dr. Seuss and Batman comics. He spent his schooling years, according to him, in a military academy, then went on to West Point. Discipline, authority and order are the only things he knows….the only things that matter to him. Those things are in short supply right now, and are getting scarcer. This means his world is coming apart in not just the literal sense, but the figurative, too. He’s fighting to hold on to anything he can of that old sense of order; any little bit, even if he has to force it."
There was silence in the room as the two Marines thought over Tune’s words.
"He’s still an asshole," Deaver gruffed at last. Tune laughed painfully, the laugh ending in a subdued cough.
"Can you get me out of here?" he asked, taking up his rifle.
"Our pleasure," Deaver said. He quickly slid his hands under Tune’s back and legs and picked him up as one would a baby. Of course, Tune was somewhat larger than the average baby, and Deaver’s muscles bulged a little with this effort. But he hefted the wounded Sergeant, adjusting his grip, and nodded slightly to himself. "Ready?" he asked Fox.
"Whenever you are, Deav."
Deaver turned and moved out of the repair bay and through the office/waiting area, carefully turning and maneuvering so Tune wouldn’t be jolted or further injured. Tune, for his part, clung tightly around Deaver’s neck, dodging his head past and around potential obstacles. At last they moved out into the alley and turned north, back toward the school. It would be a long walk.
Chapter Nineteen
Macintire solemnly left his office and motioned to Private Michaels.
Michaels, seated in the library with Bensen and playing paper football like a couple goddammed kids, Macintire noted, looked askance at his friend, but rose and followed without question.
They moved to the classroom that served as Webster’s cell; Macintire motioned for Michaels to unlock the door. The door opened, and Macintire read, aloud, from the documents in his hand. Webster stood in the doorway, looking disheveled from his time "in stir".
"Gunnery Sergeant Malcolm Webster," Macintire began, "the charges against you are as follows….." he read through a rather lengthy list of charges, most of which were obviously drummed up in the lieutenant’s progressively crazed mind, but focused mainly on the fact that he had disobeyed the direct orders of a superior. The others in the squad came into the hallway. Henderson, rifle in hand, slid silently in behind his lieutenant. The litany of madness concluded with "…that you are to forthwith be executed by firing squad, as per recommendations of military law." At this, Michaels, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, goggled. Voices were raised in protest; Macintire drew his sidearm and leveled it at the group, standing to his right. He moved the weapon slowly from left to right and back, across the chests of the assembled soldiers. "Any dissenting views," he said in that arrogantly silky tone, "can be addressed to me in writing….after this procedure has been carried out. Anyone who wishes to interfere now will be summarily dealt with," he warned. "There need to be witnesses…you will all follow this procession to the roof, please."
Webster waved the others down….this was no time for heroes. His mind raced…this crazy asswipe actually meant to kill him. He was shoved roughly on up the hallway by Henderson, after Michaels had failed to comply quickly enough. They stopped at the access door to the roof, which Michaels opened, silent tears streaming down his face. He stared in abject apology at Webster, who, though equally worried, winked and grinned at him.
What to do? He could try to turn and fight, but Macintire held his sidearm shoved painfully into his back, and Henderson was nearby as well, so that precluded any action on his part; he’d be shot before he could turn completely around. No, he thought to himself, that kinda shit only works in the movies anyway.
The ten steps up to the roof rose before him, terminating (funny word to think of here, he thought) at the outer door. He placed his foot on the first step and began to climb, moving slowly and attempting to take as much time as possible. Macintire shoved him, causing him to stumble on the stairs, and hissed "Stop stalling, Jarhead." Webster turned and glared at him, but was met by the gun’s barrel, pointed at his nose. He turned and continued to climb.
Fox and Deaver, carrying Tune, moved cautiously up the alley. Fox held his rifle at the ready, in case any stray member of the undead should show itself.
"They’re mainly hanging around the school, thanks to Macintire’s brilliant decision to put guards on the roof to watch the generator," Deaver explained. "If he hadn’t done that, they probably would have all moved off by now."
"Well," Tune said, his tone light, "for my part, that decision seems to be a good one. Otherwise, you two wouldn’t have been so free to roam around and to find me." The two Marines smiled sourly.
Suddenly, as they came to an intersection in the close-quartered alley, a somewhat large crowd of the zombies emerged from the right, and descended on them in as much of a rush as they were able. Fox began firing into the crowd, felling several; Tune raised his M-16 and fired twice, but missed due to the movements of Deaver, who quickly slung the sergeant over his shoulder and began firing as well, with his free hand. The rifles spit harshly, the sharp sound of gunfire echoing off the buildings around them. A shot ricocheted loudly, zinging off the cinderblocks of a newer residential garage, and slammed into the skull of one zombie, which jerked and collapsed in a heap. The two Marines dashed through the stinking creatures and up the alley at a run, leaving the remaining undead behind. Close behind, but behind.
The sound of not-too-distant gunfire echoed across the neighborhood, cutting sharply into the quiet of the night. Poling, in the stairwell with the others said, "What was that?"
Chapter Twenty
26June, 0825AMEDT
"Man, we hoped someone would come get us, but we didn’t really…wow. Are we glad to…." one of the techs behind the blast door began, relieved, smiling
Team One leader cut him off. "Save it….we haven’t got time. We gotta get you outta here. You have a mission."
"A what?" the tech asked, puzzled.
"I’ll fill you in on the way," came the answer. "Let’s get back to the plane first."
They all ran out of the building. "Which way’s the motor pool?" The team leader asked, attempting to consult the map on the run.
"This way," one of the rescued men, a sergeant, said, and veered off to the left. They all turned, but stopped with a lurch. The undead hoard had returned to the cluster of buildings, and were slowly threading their way through, blocking the way. There were hundreds of them. "Shit…." One of the Delta team, the one who’d tossed the grenades from the plane, said.
"Any other way there?" the leader asked.
"Uhh…well, yeah;" the sergeant said, "not as directly, but yeah. It’ll take a little more time. We might be blocked that way, too, by that time."
"We might," a Delta operative answered, motioning somewhat impatiently for him to show them the way. He nodded, and moved off in another direction. They all followed as one, the techs and pilots carefully closed into a pocket with the Deltas surrounding them protectively.
The man led them past another set of buildings…barracks, offices and smaller structures. Some Deltas paused here and there to blast nearby zombies, mainly for target practice, really, and then continued on. At last they reached a large building, the words "Motor Pool" printed in black on a white plaque beside the office door. There was a large garage area to the left; the door was padlocked, but it was quickly opened with a small wad of C-4. The door was pulled up, and the group entered the dim garage, where there were parked several vehicles; a large supply truck was at the rear, and would do nicely, the team leader supposed. "Hop in, quick," he said indicating the vehicle. The group obeyed, and piled into the rear. He and another Delta, a somewhat swarthy young man named D’Amico leaped into the front. The younger man took the driver’s seat, and quickly started the vehicle by hotwiring it. "Learned that on the block," he said with a smile.
"Lessons of a misspent youth?" Team lead asked, and was greeted with a sly but proud smile. The vehicle moved with a lurch, and plowed out of the garage door, running down several of the dead things as they did. D’Amico kept his foot on the gas, working the clutch furiously with his right. He didn’t even concern himself with the brake.
The crowds of zombies moved in closer, trying to get at the moving truck; Team leader fired out the passenger-side window, and could hear gunfire coming from the bed of the vehicle as well. The vehicle jerked and lurched and flattened dozens of the putrid forms. Some of them, their bloated insides suddenly and so violently ripped open, splashed their stinking contents across the windshield of the larger vehicle. D’Amico vomited out of his own window and simply hit the mists and the wipers, clearing the windshield of its mess. It wasn’t long before they had cleared the buildings and were in the open, tearing across a field toward their plane sitting on the landing strip, waiting. The truck jolted across ruts and rocks, almost tipping at one point, but D’Amico was a talented driver, and kept the vehicle aright.
At last they drew onto the tarmac and approached the plane. The two men’s hearts leapt into their mouths, however, when they saw four of the undead wandering around the aircraft, each holding a bloody body part. "What the hell….?" D’Amico asked. "You don’t suppose they left the plane, do you?"
The team leapt from the truck and ran around to the plane, and were utterly nonplussed to see the door opened in the side, the stairs extended. A gray-faced zombie in camos, his chest and stomach ripped apart, came out of the darkened interior, munching what appeared to be a hand. One of the Deltas popped him and he fell down the steps to the tarmac. It was their pilot. The hand he was eating probably had belonged to their copilot. This didn’t look good.
Silenced weapons discharged in the sunny, wind-whistled stillness, and the errant zombies, staggering toward the group, were felled. One of the Delta team looked off into the distance behind them with a small pair of binoculars. "They’re coming sir," he said. "It’ll take them a while, but they’re coming."
Team One leader nodded distractedly, and said "The things must have come messing around the plane, and they opened the door to get them off…..who knows what happened after that," he offered half-heartedly, disgusted and frustrated. He turned to the techs and pilots. "I know some of you can fly…..that’s why we’re here. Is any one of you here qualified to fly this particular aircraft?" he asked.
One young woman, her dirty blue uniform bearing the insignia of the Air National Guard, raised her hand. The tall, athletic-looking brunette gazed at the Team Lead. "I can fly it," she said confidently.
"You’re up," the Delta leader said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Webster opened the door and stepped into cool of the night, squinting into the dimness as he did so. The gravel on the roof crunched underfoot as he walked, nudged roughly from behind by Macintire. He was pushed to the edge of the roof, and, looking down, saw several dozen zombies on the street, stiffly moving to and fro. Some looked up and clutched at the air, greedily trying to reach the warm flesh above.
"Where are Deaver and Fox?" the lieutenant asked. No one had an answer, but he nodded, a satisfied look coming to his face. He’d deal with them later. A snarl came to his ears, from off to his right, and he boggled as his eyes took in a scruffy dog. They’d obviously left their post more than once. He fired once toward the dog, which shied away at the sound. He then went to the alley side of the roof and, smiling, pulled the plank back onto the roof. When they returned, he’d have a surprise for them. And would relish every second.
"Turn around," Macintire said harshly, returning to Webster. The sergeant, his hands up, did as told.
He saw Henderson, a coy smile on his quivering lips. Macintire motioned to the private, and he came over quite willingly, standing loyally beside his C.O. Michaels was pulled into position beside Henderson.
"Present arms," Macintire said, aiming his sidearm at Webster. Henderson’s rifle instantly came up, pointed at Webster. Michaels, however, balked and stalled, openly weeping by now, from guilt.
"Sir! This is----" Hashbarger, her voice choking from fear, began, but was cut off when the lieutenant’s gun swiveled smoothly around to stop, aimed at her. Tears of helplessness welled in her eyes. Webster looked at her and nodded.
"Present arms, I said, private," the lieutenant warned, his voice hard but maddeningly calm.
Michaels dropped his rifle and backed off. "No sir, I-----" In an instant, Macintire’s pistol barked, and a chunk of Michaels’ head disintegrated. He dropped to the rooftop, dead. Hashbarger screamed.
"I said," the lieutenant began, with a sweet, calm mildness, "…present arms."
Deaver and Fox, hauling ass as fast as they were able with Tune in tow, yelling the whole way to be left behind, entered the front door of the house beside the school. They took a few moments to barricade the door, then dashed up the stairs. They thumped their way down the hall toward the girl’s bedroom and freedom, the dead soon pounding the on the door and windows behind them. Glass crashed in the foyer. They got to the bedroom window, got Tune out and…..were stunned to see a crowd of silhouettes on the roof of he school. Thusly, they were not surprised to see the plank gone. They stood on the edge of the roof, straining to see into the darkness. The NV scopes and goggles were all downstairs, you see.
Deaver yelled, "What the hell’s going on over there?"
A thin silhouette that could only have been Macintire turned and came over to the edge of the roof. "Missing something?" he called sweetly, and picked up the end of the plank, illuminating it with his flashlight. "You’re going to be missing your Sergeant soon enough;" he said, his voice hard; "you’re here in time to act as witnesses to his execution." Deaver and Fox bristled futilely. "I was going to get to you two soon enough, but you’ve saved me the effort by leaving the building as you have. Thank you." He turned and walked back over to Webster, and the task at hand.
Macintire aimed his weapon, and Henderson followed suit. "Ready…." the lieutenant said mildly; Webster stared him down bravely, but inside was quivering. "…aim…"
A single shot rang out, cutting into the early morning stillness. Macintire grunted as if punched, and stumbled forward. Webster, suddenly spattered with blood, saw his eyes bulge as his chest exploded outward.
The lieutenant looked down and for a moment couldn’t quite conceive what he was seeing; a large chunk of his chest, bloody and ragged, had somehow been ripped open. There was no pain, his mind registered from somewhere within its small, and ever shrinking, circle of sanity.
On the opposite roof, smoke drifted up from the barrel of James Tune’s rifle. He lowered it, his face a grim mask. He still had a night vision scope on his rifle.
Macintire, stunned, saw that his blood had soiled the grayish gravel of the rooftop. What had happened?
It was then that, high and clear, like a note carried by a single flute in a massive concert hall, came the realization that one of his own charges had shot him. His face clouded visibly at this thought.
Why? he wondered, puzzled. He was only doing his best to lead them; he was doing what he saw as the only way to bring to them the order and discipline that was needed in any good military unit. "Why?" he whispered aloud.
His dimming eyes looked around, and saw none of the familiar faces of those in his command; they were dark shapes only, lost in an odd, gray mist.
Macintire saw only the generals.
Sherman and Patton, Bradley and the others; they stood in disorder, at various places around the roof. They were all staring at him with expressions of vast, horrific disapproval; Washington shook his head. Rommel scowled and turned away from him.
Macintire’s eyes filled with tears. He had failed himself, his unit….he had failed THEM, his heroes. "I’m sorry," he mouthed, breathless, to Sherman, his favorite of all. The General’s expression did not soften.
Macintire nearly stumbled to one knee, then righted himself and stumbled forward.
Webster instinctively reached out to steady him, to stop his forward momentum, but was met by the crack of Macintire’s pistol. The lieutenant’s arm quavered limply, however, and the shot went far wide. It passed directly through the gut of Alexander the Great, who stood firmly and without, seemingly, even noticing.
That was Leadership, Macintire thought dimly and with a sad smile….that was Discipline. Those were his last thoughts as he died, his body sprawling over the side of the roof and into the open air. The creatures in the street set upon his body the instant it hit the pavement. There was a moment of quiet among those on the roof; only Alana’s soft sobs could be heard.
Webster exhaled in relief, then stepped forward and roughly snatched the rifle from Henderson, who cowered at his approach.
He glared at the private, then moved to the edge of the roof, took aim and, his hands shaking, fired downward thrice, the third time hitting Macintire’s remains squarely in the head.
The dead would feast for a while, but their number would not grow. Not today.
Tune was brought over to the roof and greeted as a long-lost hero; his wounds were examined by Poling, who had experience as a volunteer EMT in civilian life. He decreed that Tune’s wounds were indeed healing, and well, at that.
Deaver took out a piece of beef jerky and tossed it to Phoebe. The group returned to the inside of the building, where Fox discussed with Webster his impression that Tune’s seeming immunity, to whatever it was that caused the death and reanimation, could be an important item to consider. Poling's opinion was sought, and he concurred with Fox. Things were about to change, for the better.
Chapter Twenty-Two
26June, 1004AM
The plane was in the air, and they hadn’t lost anyone. Except their pilots, of course.
But they were up and away. The mission, for the most part and at least this leg of it, was successful. That much was right with the world, at least.
They were now headed for another base where the team would load the massive bombs onto cargo planes, which would then drop them on certain, pre-designated American cities. The techs were stunned to hear about this plan, but when it was noted that it was either the MOABs or nukes, it was agreed all around that the bombs were the way to go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
President Tulley had left the war room and headed for his quarters, to take a nap. He needed it, after the last few days. It would be hours before they heard anything from the teams, and he had left word to be awakened as soon as any peep at all came from them.
Tulley nodded to his bodyguards and entered the large apartment. He gently kissed his wife, the new First Lady, still asleep on the couch, where she had fallen asleep while reading. He hoped her sleep had been sound.
He had a feeling that his own would be easier….and he forsook the pills for a change.
If all went well, this crisis might soon be under control, and things back in their hands. As sweet sleep claimed him, he whispered a brief prayer for the men he’d had dispatched, and for their success. It was all up to them, now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
26 June, 1231PM
Team Two, Cutty in command, had made it to the warehouse facility at Wright-Patterson Airbase near Dayton, Ohio. The dead were virtually unseen here, for some reason, and it had been a relatively easy thing to make it to the enormous warehouse and truck the large, squat bombs out to the huge cargo planes on the tarmac. It was, however, as the saying goes, too easy.
Attracted by the activity, the dead things wandered from wherever they had been out to their position on the runway. A short confrontation resulted in the loss of three of the team to the zombies before they could all be put down. There were more coming, and Cutty ordered a redoubling of efforts.
Using the comm system in the plane, he informed General Phillips that the operation had been a success, albeit with three losses. He was informed that a plan was in the process of being formulated, and that he should sit tight for as long as was feasible. He said that they could see more of the dead moving in their direction, and he was unsure as to how long it would be before things got out of hand. The general assured him that word would be soon forthcoming.
A plan was quickly drawn up, based on the number of explosives, both MOABs and Daisycutters, they knew they had in hand. It was then presented to Tulley, who had earned a new respect among some of the more skeptical military men.
According to the plan, all major cities in the country would be hit with at least one; two, if there were enough. The larger cities, Chicago, New York and LA, for example, were designated with two at a minimum.
One of the cities on the list, for purely strategic purposes and due to its position as a prominent city on Interstate 70, was Wheeling, WV. It was alotted two Daisycutters. That should be sufficient to level at least most, if not all of the city, it was felt. Columbus, OH, another, even larger, population center on I-70, was alotted two MOABs. It would likely be utterly leveled. Tulley approved the plan in its entirety, contingent upon how many other of the bombs could be located and secured.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Webster was more or less in command now, with Tune wounded and incapacitated. The first thing he did was to order the first floor to be opened, and a cleanup operation there to be begun. A cheer went up; they now had the run of the building.
Macintire had, Webster noted, giving credit where it was due, secured the second-floor doorways very well. Gray duct tape had been placed over the small windows to keep the creatures within from seeing movement on this side, and thus calming them, and also to keep the living from having to see them. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.
Another thing he ordered was for Fox and Deaver to start breaking into lockers. One never knew what might be found inside. Bensen and Poling were detailed with the first floor lockers. Hashbarger smiled.
Tune had a suggestion that was a little more creative. He advised, since the transmitter on the radio in the office had been found to be smashed, that the brightest-colored textbooks they could find could be arranged on the roof to spell out a simple message, along with the date, for anyone who might be flying over. The textbooks, he explained, would be heavy enough that they wouldn’t easily be blown away.
The date could be changed daily, so that those in the plane or chopper would know that they still were there, and alive.
It was done. Hashbarger and Poling took dozen of orange science and red math books up to the roof and spent nearly two hours spelling out "We are here", and adding the date.
Webster had set Henderson, who had offered to atone for siding with Macintire, to work on the transmitter. He had been an amateur HAM radio operator, and so had some knowledge of the things, or so he said. Webster had been reluctant, but what harm could really it do? Henderson was just sucking up to him, anyway, as was his habit.
As it happened, there was nothing he could have done to fix it; if the school had had an electronics lab, he said, there might have been more to work with. As it stood, there were things he could have cobbled together, perhaps, but he had neither the knowledge nor the tools for such advanced stuff.
Still, he returned to the office every day, and set to work. Webster, against his will, was growing to admire him for his tenacity.
"You know," Deaver said, cutting the lock off another locker, with the bolt cutters, "if this had all happened a week or two later, these lockers would have been empty." Fox shrugged and nodded in agreement.
Inside the locker were the usual things…books, a rotten lunch, gym clothes, a light jacket. The lunch bag was opened and its contents perused for anything useful. It had not just a moldy sandwich and blackened apple, not usable, obviously, but also a can of soda, a pre-packaged snack cake and a bag of potato chips, all usable. Thank God for the American predilection for pre-packaged foods. The goods were added to the box they carried. They moved on to another locker, and another. The box was beginning to get a little awkward, Fox said.
They opened the next locker and Deaver said, "What the hell is this?"
"What?" Fox asked, maneuvering for a better look. "Wow;" he said. "Jackpot."
The locker did not have just the usual stuff inside...along with the coat and books were two medium-sized boxes, one stacked atop the other, and a mesh bag suspended from one of the hooks at the rear of the locker. Inside one of those boxes were several dozen small plastic sandwich baggies of dehydrated fruits and meats, each with a price, along with the contents, written on a paper label stuck to the bag. Beef and turkey jerky, dried apple and orange slices, banana chips and strawberries. The box was near full.
"Check it out----" Deaver said, delighted, " homemade beef jerky!" In the other box were several loose cans of various types of sodapop. The mesh bag contained small bags of chips, snack cakes and candy bars, each meticulously priced.
"Man," Fox said admiringly, "this kid was out to make his fortune….this jerky and stuff is homemade, and he charged a dollar a bag for it." He chuckled. "He was probably cleaning up. Look at this; he was even underselling the machines in the teacher’s lounge for the pop and candy and stuff." They filled their box with the contents of the locker, grabbed another container, and moved on.
Downstairs, Bensen and Poling made a similar discovery, this one somewhat more illegal. What they stumbled across was a locker full of burned CDs and movies pirated off cable TV and the internet, each selling for five bucks a copy. "Wow," Poling said, "this guy was on his way to prison. If he’d been caught, man…whoa…I wouldn’t have wanted to be him."
"Check it out," Bensen said in disbelief "….he even had porn!" He showed the movies to Poling, who laughed.
"I love porn movie titles," Bensen said, "especially when they make fun of real movies." He shuffled through the small stack of pornos.
"How do you know they’re porn?" Poling asked slyly. "You an expert on that shit?"
Bensen looked at him cockeyed, and grinned. "I know they are," he began, "because I don’t remember ever going to the mall multiplex to see flicks called---" he looked down and shuffled through the stack in his hands---"Horny, Horny Ho" or "Slutty Cheerleaders # 15". He laughed and said, "Listen to these-----" he cleared his throat dramatically, and, lowering his voice, said;
‘The Sperminator’," and laughed again. ‘Sperminator 4: Sluts Men Lay’, and last but not least: ‘Sperminator 6: Rise of the Sex Machines’. How ‘bout this one; ‘Rambone: First Time, part 12’. Gotta love it." He shook his head and laughed again, looking at the last three he was holding.
"Oh, yeah….here we go---classic:
‘Night of the Giving Head’," he said moving his hand as if seeing the title on an old-fashioned marquee.
"And of course, its imaginatively titled sequels: ‘Dawn Loves the Head’, and ‘Faye Loves the Head’." Poling smiled and shrugged. There were other, mainstream movies in there too, of course, dozens of them. They might come in handy if the school proved to have a DVD player.
Three days passed; Deaver started working out on the weight machine in the locker room below the gym. Bensen rolled out the mats and practiced his martial arts, teaching Fox, who’d begun to show an interest, a few basic moves to get him started. Basketball was a nice time-waster, too, for the whole group. Games were won and lost by the dozens. Tune started doing laborious laps around the gym, exercising his leg, though gingerly. He’d never have full use of it again, but he wanted as much as he could get. Poling holed himself up in the wood shop for a several hours, eventually emerging with a beautifully-carved cane for Tune, replacing the broomstick he'd been using.
The dog, Phoebe, though officially Deaver’s dog, had become the property of the group. She was well-fed, getting fatter, in fact, and just generally hung around, enjoying the company of live people once again.
Some of the group had gathered one evening for movie night, using the burned DVDs found in the locker. Some were okay, but most were of course pirated by using a videocam to film the movie in the theater. Some were so laughably bad, however, that you could see the heads of the people in front of the camera. One guy was heard to say "I gotta pee", and rose, blocking the camera for an instant. The cameraman’s curse word was heard, too.
Poling, chuckling, said that, with the darkened heads in front of the screen, it was like watching "Mystery Science Theater 3000".
Someone had the idea to check in the school’s kitchen to see what could be found there. Two racks of canned vegetables, fifty pounds of hot dogs and thirty of ground beef, both still in the freezer, which had still been on, powered by the generator. It was apparently on the same circuit as the lights upstairs. Lucky.
Now free and able to use the things they found at hand, the straining generator was further relieved by the fact that one of the teachers apparently had sold candles, and had a large display in her classroom which contained several dozen. Unneeded lights were shut of, and candles were used instead. This was actually in the nick of time, as their supply of gas was getting low, Hashbarger warned.
As Webster sat eating dinner, out in the sunshine on the roof, Tune came hobbling up though the access door and dropped himself painfully down beside him, settig his cane to one side. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Tune began tapping his cane on the gravel surfacing. "We need to be thinking about getting out of here," he said at last, gazing off toward the green, haze-shrouded hills in the west. A glimmer of sunlight bouncing off the shifting waters of the Ohio River could just be glimpsed, through the trees. A bird twittered in a tree across the street.
The Marine nodded. "I know," he answered, swallowing. "I been doin’ some thinkin’ along them lines myself. Things are startin’ to run low."
Tune agreed, and pointed to a car sitting in the school’s parking lot across the street. "We could use that, if we could get to it."
Webster looked askance at the vehicle, then, shaking his head, said "It’s sittin’ on two flats; besides…all of us ain’t going to fit in that one car."
Tune nodded sadly, and shrugged. "Well, we’ll have to think of something soon," Tune said. "I just came from the Men’s room, and the water finally gave out."
Webster grunted and shook his head.
He’d had everyone fill anything they could find with water, against this eventual occurrence. It was inevitable that it would go sometime, he’d said, and stupid of Macintire not to have done that sooner. Of course, Macintire, the whole time, had been completely convinced that someone would soon be coming for them.
They had filled a few milk jugs and some plastic-lined garbage cans, too, and a lot of soda cans and bottles. Some large glass jars from the science labs. They had water, but it would run out. And there was none for bathing; it was going to get smelly there, soon. They had also put a can on the roof, to catch rainwater. So far it hadn’t rained.
Another subject they discussed was the fact that the members of their little group were growing edgy and annoyed with each other. Tempers were beginning to flare, often over nothing. This was because, Tune surmised, they had all lost their common enemy; Macintire was dead, so they had no one person on which to focus their anger and frustration, and were beginning to turn on each other.
Webster grinned. "How the hell do you know all this shit about people?"
Tune paused, and answered, "I used to tend bar." They laughed. Something had to be done, he said, and soon. Even Deaver and Fox had been seen being unnecessarily short with one another, and it was getting worse. Two or three fights had already been broken up.
They had set two other large metal garbage cans on either side of the "We are here", and filled them with textbooks, wood scraps and other flammable items, as a sort of signal fire. Tune rose and, leaning on his cane, staggered over to the garbage cans and threw a few large hunks of wood in each. "We can’t stay, Gunney; you know that."
"I know," Webster replied, his southern accent highlighted by weariness. "But where would we go, anyway, Tune? This happened everywhere in the world."
Tune considered his own thoughts on that day that now seemed so long ago, standing in the street beside his men. They could run, yes, but where? "That’s the question, isn’t it?" he sighed.
Chapter Twenty-four
27 June 0237AM
The Delta team and their charges had made it to their second destination, Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, with little of the expected muss or fuss. They had located the massive bombs, and were assisting the techs in loading the huge weapons onto the cargo planes. The planes would be flown to Wright-Patterson, where they would rendezvous with the other team. From there, it would be up to the president and JCoS what happened next. Within hours, a fleet of nine of the large C-130s was soaring northwestward, towards Ohio. The Deltas had taken another plane, piloted by their Air National Guard member. They came through a storm over Tennessee and Kentucky, but otherwise nothing else, and the flight was uneventful from there.
They landed at W-P and made contact with the Ranger team. Cutty shook hands with the Delta leader, and informed him that general Parker was waiting to hear from him on landing.
All the Delta leader said to him was "We made it, sir." A cheer went up in the war room. In Dayton, The two C.O.s smiled at the sound.
Tulley lowered his head and offered a brief prayer of thanks. Now came Phase Two.
"Very good, Team One. Excellent, outstanding;" Parker said, working hard at holding his glee and relief in check. "We have worked out a list of targets and instructions as to the means to be used to take them out. Listen carefully….."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Henderson had been less than forthcoming about the actual condition of the radio. Using parts scavenged from all over the school, but mainly the computer center, he had managed to repair both the satellite uplink and the standard transmitter; the device was fully operational again, even if it did look like something from the mind of Victor Frankenstein. Or better yet, Rube Goldberg.
He turned it on, and began cycling through the frequencies. He had no way of knowing what frequency or channel he may find someone on. The radio remained silent as he worked his way through, speaking quietly so he wouldn’t be heard. No one responded.
Switching to the satellite uplink, he was at last able to contact the only operational military base in the country: the Rockies facility.
He soon found himself talking to a young radio operator there who seemed very excited to hear from him. He was asked his whereabouts, and told them, fighting a smile, that he was in Podunk, Oklahoma. The operator took this information down. He informed them that he was being held here by a group of military deserters who had started their own country. He didn’t know how long he had before they found out he wasn’t "one of them" and killed him. He then broke off the conversation in the middle of a sentence. He sat back, smiling to himself, and switched off the radio.
At the Rockies facility, the radio operator informed the general that he’d had time to triangulate a position on the transmission, and that it was coming from Wheeling, WV, not Oklahoma. Why would he lie?
"Wheeling?" Parker had said. "Oh shit…"
Chapter Twenty-six
27 June 0717AM
Webster and Deaver were in the gym, playing a little one-on-one, when Bensen came over to interrupt. "Sergeant Webster," he said, his face troubled. Webster waved to Deaver to wait, and came over the Bensen, wiping his face with a towel. "What’s on your mind, Bensen?" he asked, breathing heavy.
"Sir, I think something’s up with Henderson; he’s been spending a lot of time in the office the last few days, working on the radio."
"Yeah," Webster said, nodding, "he’s been trying to get it operational once more, but hasn’t been having much success."
Bensen shook his head slowly. "Uh….I wonder about that, sergeant; I’ve come by there three or four times in the last couple days, and heard him in there, talking in a very low voice. It sure sounds to me like he’s talking to someone."
Webster’s face clouded. "Is he in there, now?" he asked.
"Yes, sir." Bensen answered.
He turned and motioned to Deaver to follow. The big Marine nodded slowly, and came along. They walked out of the gym and up the main hallway. Turning left, they stopped at the office door, listening.
Sure enough, Henderson was in there, and he was talking to someone on the radio. They couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the tone he was using was frightened and harsh. They all made out "…don’t how much longer! You have to get me out of here!" Webster, glowering, stepped into the office and walked over to where Henderson sat, his back to them. He turned the madly grinning private around, and asked "Just what the fuck are you doing, Henderson?" The young man’s eye bulged. "Don’t kill me!" he screamed, his smile fleeing.
"Hello…hello?!" came a voice from out of the speaker. "Private Henderson…..this is general Parker. Respond, please!"
Webster threw Henderson aside and grabbed onto the mike like a drowning man. "This is Gunnery Sergeant Malcolm Webster! To whom am I speaking? Over!"
Silence from the other end…..silence that stretched into eternity. At last: "This is General Henry Parker; say again…who are you?"
My name is Malcolm Webster…Gunnery Sergeant, USMC. We’re stationed here, at Wheeling, WV; at a Middle School…it was a rescue station….it was compromised. We were under Colonel Mark Tucker, now deceased. We’ve managed to hole up here pretty well, sir, but we’re running low on supplies…"
In Colorado, Parker motioned to an aide to call up Tucker from the database. "Sergeant Webster, for the past two days, I’ve been speaking with a young man named Henderson. He’s been telling me something about his being held against his will be a group of deserters who’ve formed their own nation. Is any of this true?"
Webster, Deaver and Bensen glared in rage at the man huddled on the floor.
As Webster prepared to speak, Henderson screamed "They’re gonna kill me! You have to----!" Bensen, the martial arts expert, delivered a harsh kick to Henderson’s face, silencing him.
"What was that?" Parker asked.
"Nothing, sir….Henderson is somewhat deranged, it seems. I had put him in charge of repairing the radio, and it looks like he was more successful than he led me to believe. I apologize"
In Colorado, the results of the data search turned up a Colonel Mark Tucker whose last official posting was, indeed, command of a rescue station in Wheeling, WV. After several minutes of going back and forth, the three men in the room were able to give their serial numbers and be verified as US military personnel. Webster also related the story of Tune and his apparent immunity, and the need to get him to the proper facilities. After perhaps ten minutes, the conversation ended. Webster exhaled, and looked at Henderson.
"Why?" was all he asked.
"Why not? Just fuckin’ with’em is all." Henderson shrugged and grinned.
Chapter Twenty-seven
0600AM 27June
The teams had managed to secure fourteen cargo planes in all, from both bases. They secured 29 of the Daisies and the larger MOABs in all. That was barely enough; plans would have to be changed somewhat, but it would do. Besides, it was noted, they could always continue the operation when conditions were more favorable.
The planes were loaded down with the heavy, powerful engines of destruction, and took off for their intended targets.
The first to reach its destination, ironically, was the plane heading for Washington, DC.
The huge bombs were primed, the rear doors of the plane opened, and the bombs were dumped out over the city at two positions, perhaps three miles apart.
There was a terrific roar and a bright flash, and the plane shook violently with the force of the blast. Seconds later, another blast shook the plane as the other bomb detonated. Two mushroom clouds, looking for all the world like those created by nuclear weapons, grew slowly, boiling up out of the burning, smashed city. The pilot sincerely hoped that nothing was alive down there; if there was, it was likely dead now. He turned the plane back for base and to be, he hoped, loaded again for another mission.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
0734AM 27 June
Henderson’s efforts had been effective; Parker had been unsure at first if he could trust Webster. It had been a little difficult to convince him that they were, indeed, military personnel and that they were not deserters. Besides, Webster had argued, persuasively, that if they were indeed deserters, would he be talking to the general now?
Parker had grudgingly agreed, instructed Webster to listen carefully, and related the overall plan. There was a plane coming to Wheeling with the intention of destroying the city. Webster, wearing the headphones, had started at this news. Tensely, Deaver and Bensen looked at each other when his eyes widened.
Colorado Base, as it was being called, had not been able to contact the pilot, and so they were assuming at this point that something was wrong with the comm system aboard the plane. There was no way to tell the pilot to turn away. They had to get out. Webster related that the school was surrounded by the undead. Parker grunted, thinking. Was there anyplace two choppers could land?
Yes, Webster had replied, and described the football/baseball field across the street. Outstanding, the general had replied. There would be choppers coming.
Webster hurriedly prepared his people for evac. It was unclear as to which would arrive first, of course, the plane with the bombs or the rescue helicopters, but they had to be ready, just in case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The huge, bomb-laden cargo plane, designated as "Flight #5" continued on toward its target at Wheeling. The pilot was unaware that the comm system was damaged, and did not bother to check in when he heard nothing from Colorado Base. The mission was too important anyway, she figured. Besides…there was nothing alive there, anyway. Any surviving military forces had been ordered to withdraw two weeks ago. She estimated that it would be perhaps forty-five minutes before one of the loads would be dropped over the center of the city, the other a few miles to the east, on the other side of what was apparently known as "Wheeling Hill". It was estimated that, due to its position in a valley, Wheeling and the surrounding area would be utterly destroyed by rebounding shock waves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Parker had decided to err on the side of caution and order their evacuation as per the president’s instructions. On orders, in reality from the president himself, two choppers were dispatched to Wheeling from the airbase at Dayton, in the hopes of rescuing the personnel stationed at the school. The pair was unlikely to make it in time, it was true, but the effort had to be made.
In this time, Tulley had earlier admonished his generals, he wanted to hear no talk of "acceptable tactical losses". It was a phrase he’d always hated anyway. There had been too much death, and now destruction, he’d said, to simply allow people to die.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The group stood quietly tense at the main doors of the school, just outside the office, waiting in the cloudy daylight. If the choppers arrived first, they all knew, they would have to fight their way past the dozens of undead still wandering in the street and out on the football field. That would take some time. If not, well…at least they’d go quickly, and would not return. Cold comfort, indeed….but comfort.
Webster had informed them of the plan concocted by the JCoS and the president. He had then told them to gather their gear, as they would be leaving soon.
The two sergeants had approved a last-minute celebration, and much of the remaining food and drinks (mostly chips, sodas and snack cakes gleaned from the lockers, and a few MREs) had been consumed in the fifteen minutes or so of the "party". Hashbarger had proposed a toast in memory of Colonel Tucker and the others who had died since their arrival, especially Michaels, whose death had been so unnecessary.
Deaver and Fox stood by anxiously. Phoebe, whose evacuation was approved by both Webster and Tune, lay beside Deaver’s right foot, panting. He bent and gave her a quick scratch, to which she responded by licking his hand. He slipped her a piece of turkey jerky.
Webster then gave Henderson, positioned purposely at the front of the group, a rifle.
"The weapon has one clip in it," he said. "That clip is half-loaded. That should be enough to get you to the LZ over there. If you should decide to begin firing at any of us, remember…..there are more of us than you…." the sentence drifted off threateningly. Henderson shrugged, sullen, and turned away.
Anxious minutes passed, then Hashbarger said, "Do you hear that?" They all strained to listen. It was the distant sound of chopper blades, clearly audible in the imposing stillness of the summer morning. They were growing nearer. They watched as the choppers cleared the western hills.
In the office, the radio crackled. "Sergeant Webster, do you read? Sergeant Webster? This is Captain John Petrucci; do you read?"
A cheer went up----the choppers would be the first to arrive! They would be saved! Webster ran to grab the headset, and answered in the affirmative. They were instructed to be on the football field when the choppers landed, which would be in minutes. They group set themselves for what they hoped would be a brief fight, and ran out of the door and down the stairs to the street, Phoebe keeping pace with Deaver, and Henderson in the lead. The zombies closed in immediately, of course. Tune had refused to be carried, as this would slow someone else down, so he, with his cane, hobbled along behind them all, firing his rifle in all directions.
No one took time to consider the nearly-devoured, skeletal remains of Macintire, lying on the sidewalk, other than to dodge around them. They were just another rotted corpse, among the others laying here and there in the street.
Henderson’s gun jammed, and he stopped in the middle of the street to work at it, shoving away the creatures that quickly surrounded him; Webster ran past him and smirked, doing nothing to help. The badly decayed remains of an old woman bit him in the back of the neck, and he dropped to his knees, screaming, clutching at the blood-soaked wound….other of the creatures quickly joined in his death. No one noticed he was gone until a head count was later taken. Even then, he wasn’t missed.
Poling was set upon, as well, but was fighting bravely, shooting some and butting others with his rifle.
Hashbarger was grabbed from the left by a large male zombie, which moved quickly to take a bite out of her shoulder. She swiftly brought up her .45 and opened his head. Tugging free as he fell, she dashed toward Poling and shoved his assailants aside, firing as she did, dropping several. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him toward the grassy field, felling three more zombies as she moved.
Deaver and Fox lagged behind to help Tune along, despite his repeatedly shouted orders to them to run. They moved along, virtually at a snail’s pace. The dead were quickly moving in.
"Come, on you stubborn fuck!" Deaver, annoyed, said at last. He blasted a closeby zombie, a younger man in a retro, torn and filthy Smiley-Face t-shirt and cargo shorts, then scooped Tune up, and slung him over his shoulder as he had in the alley. They took off at a quick trot.
As the first of the straggling group reached the grassy area, a low droning sound could be heard over the approaching choppers.
Webster, feeling the familiar vibration in his chest, looked slowly to the northwest. "Oh my God," he said, his words drowned in the clamor. Hashbarger, following his fearful eyes, saw, too.
The plane was coming overhead. It would drop its load in seconds.
The two choppers settled to the overgrown, grassy field perhaps forty yards away; the tall grass whipped in the propwash, and Tune, seeing the soldiers moving toward it, was weirdly reminded of news footage he’d seen from Vietnam.
The pilots began using the mounted .50 caliber guns in an effort to hold at bay the approaching undead. One zombie, violently severed at the waist by the powerful rounds, fell and disappeared into the tall grass. Its clutching, grayish-black arms moved eerily up out of the waving green mass.
The pilot leaned out and, yelling, motioned for them to hurry it up. He pointed to the northern sky, motioning frantically.
The group dashed for the choppers, fighting their way through the undead.
Bensen tripped on some object in the long grass, fell, and was instantly attacked. His screams carried clearly over the sound of the chopper blades. Fox stopped and turned to help him, but Tune, having also seen the low-flying plane silhouetted against the clouds, reached awkwardly out and grabbed his arm. "Leave’im!" he yelled. "There’s no time!"
They reached the choppers and started to pile in just as the plane dumped its first load, perhaps a mile or two to the north. Hashbarger drew in a sharp breath and braced herself, loudly warning the others to do the same, as she watched the squat, cylindrical object slide from the rear of the huge plane and begin its uncontrolled descent.
The choppers shifted under the weight change, bobbing slightly as the pilots maneuvered to take off. They were barely clear of the ground, swinging back to the west, as the blast erupted.
A bright, orange-red flash was followed by a flat, violent roaring sound, like all the thunder in the world had been gathered into one enormous clap. The shock wave followed quickly; it shook the choppers, rocking them harshly as the pilots fought to keep them straight and in the air.
Street by street, Hashbarger could see as she looked down and behind them, houses and buildings were blown apart like toothpick models in a hurricane as the wave progressed in all directions. Fires erupted in its wake, spreading like water welling up from underground. Zombies wandering in the streets below, she saw, were lost in the blast, crushed and torn asunder and blown away like the buildings.
"That something you don’t see every day," Fox, awed, said softly, and so was unheard by those around him.
The wave hit the school, and bricks flew apart, filling the air like leaves in a fall breeze and pushed southward by the wave. The shock wave was actually visible, filled as it was with debris and large objects like crushed vehicles and such.
The downtown area, to the north, was overshadowed by a large, growing, angry black-gray mushroom cloud; it already was flat and so covered by flames that, from this height, it looked like a lava pit.
Another blast went up, this one more distant.
The choppers, having just cleared the river and passed into Ohio, shook again, but less so, this time. Another black mushroom cloud boiled up and drew slowly skyward in the east, behind the hills, as the second bomb, another old, but still potent Daisycutter, did its work.
No matter, though. They’d made it out…..alive. The smoke and fire that devoured Wheeling, WV slowly receded into the distance.
Tune exhaled in one long breath, unable to believe that they’d made it. Unable to believe HE’D made it. He reached over and clapped Deaver and Fox each on the shoulder. "Good work, Marines;" he smiled, shouting over the blades. "Thank you." The two smiled back, and nodded.
Deaver stroked the nervously whining Phoebe’s back, contentedly. Only one thing grated on him, as he now thought it all over; Macintire had been right. There still was an active military and someone had come for them. The crazy son of a bitch had been right. He smiled sourly and inwardly shook his head.
As the choppers flew off into the west, Alana Hashbarger snuggled up to Eric Poling, who smiled softly and put his arm around her.
There might be time now, she mused to herself. There might just be time now.
The choppers headed steadily into the skies toward Dayton and Wright-Patterson. They would have to stop and refuel, but plans had been made for that, their pilots told them, so it was nothing to worry about. Each member of the beleaguered team of refugees sat in their chopper, listening to the blades turn, lost in their own thoughts. Those thoughts centered, of course, on the horrors of the past weeks.
They also dared to consider, however, many for the first time since early June, the future.
Chapter Twenty-eight
President Franklin Tulley sat alone in the light of his desk lamp in the Colorado "Oval Office", drinking a glass of Kentucky bourbon, straight and neat. He stared into the dim brown shadows beyond the circle of light provided by the lamp, and sighed contentedly.
Word had reached them that all the flights but one had returned safely from their missions.
One plane, the flight returning to Dayton from Wheeling, had had instrumentation problems and had crashed in Central Ohio. The pilot, an Air National Guard member rescued from the base in Missouri, was still alive, however, and had been recovered by the Rangers and returned to Wright-Patterson. She had then flown a second mission, this one to Detroit.
The major, and many smaller, cities of the United States were now in ruins. New York, Boston, DC, Chicago, LA, San Francisco….so many others. If need be, they could now secure more of the bombs and make more runs. The estimates were, however, that now the undead "population" could be contained by the remains of the military and some state militias, consisting of whatever remained of the civilian population could be mustered.
Sounded like a return to the Civil War days; the Ohio First Rifle Division….the Chatanooga Zombie-Killers. Tulley smiled.
It would be a bold new world, rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, but the most important part of the old order, at least to them, remained; the nation itself was still intact.
Other countries? It remained to be seen how well the rest of the world had fared after this trial. He hoped for the best. He prayed for the best.
Maybe they could make it better this time, Tulley mused, and sipped his drink. It burned pleasantly as it filled his mouth and throat.
There might be a future after all.
THE END