by Dave Lund
Everyone back in the vehicle, Chivo drove past the pile of undead that Apollo had dropped about thirty yards in front of them. Fort Sumner passed by the windows, just as the other small towns did, Chivo dodging walking corpses and worrying only about the destination. Reaching I-40, Chivo took the on ramp and found that the Interstate was completely clear. Everything was pushed forward and off the road, all the signs were down, and dried blood painted the dented and crushed sides of the vehicles in the ditches.
Bexar smirked. “Well, we have that going for us, which is nice.”
“No mano, the vehicles are pushed westward, not east.”
Lindsey interrupted from the back of the Defender, “So we’re driving towards the undead surge. Fucking great.”
I-10 Las Cruces, NM
Jessie followed the signs and took the exit for I-25 from I-10, turning northbound. The vehicles on the roadway were sparse, but they were still in the road. Nothing big has come through here … yet. The yet that slipped into her thoughts gave Jessie pause. She didn’t mean to think it, but her mind just added it, as if she already knew what that meant; she hadn’t seen the worst of it.
Undead milled about on the surface streets on either side of the Interstate, but so far the walking corpses on I-25 were few and spaced far enough apart that she could maintain close to fifty mph, driving mostly on the shoulder. The farther north she traveled from Las Cruces, the more scattered and barren the landscape and road became. I wish the radio worked. She shook her head at that. Even if it did work, what would be left for me listen to?
The sun continued its constant march across the sky. The Interstate was practically clear of vehicles, and in a short time, Jessie saw a sign for Truth or Consequences. The frontier town names were always the best. The big green sign on the side of the road stated she was a hundred and fifty miles from Albuquerque. So three more hours, plus or minus, before I turn onto I-40.God, I hope I-40 is as easy as I-25.
Jessie stopped and fueled the FJ from the gas cans on the roof rack, then refilled the gas cans from two nearby pickup trucks. She only had to put down three undead during the time it took her to do all of this by herself, so with a full tank of gas, full gas cans, and feeling easier about the drive, she opened up the FJ to sixty mph. She just had to make it to Groom Lake. She felt so close to safety.
Jessie’s mind wandered as she drove, deciding to name the child either Malachi or Bexar if it was a boy, but she couldn’t decide on a girl’s name. She tried not to think about going into labor on her own; she had to make it to safety and help before that happened. The image occurred again of her dying giving birth while the baby made it just long enough to die next to her body. It made her shiver. Nausea swept over her and a tear streaked down her cheeks as she passed the southern outskirts of Albuquerque.
The sign said two miles to I-40. Almost there— finally almost to I-40. The dashboard of the FJ was a simple affair, but it still had gauges for the battery level and temperature. A soft thump came from under the hood of her truck; Jessie looked at the hood and didn’t see any obvious signs of a problem, so she kept driving, weaving from shoulder to shoulder, driving around vehicles, the undead, and other wreckage. A red light flickered to life on the dash. Jessie looked and saw it was a warning light for the temperature, the gauge below it climbing at a rapid rate. Oh shit, oh shit! What do I do? At the ramp for the flyover to reach I-40, Jessie rolled to a stop and shut off the engine. Around her were several cars and a gaggle of undead. Jessie climbed out with her rifle and picked off the three closest walking corpses before unlatching and raising the hood of the FJ. She looked at the engine. It looked like an engine to her. Jessie had no idea what could be wrong or how to fix it. Dammit Bexar, this is your job.
The increasing number of moans grew closer; a hand grabbed Jessie by the shoulder. She kicked hard and stepped away from the groping hand. The hood of the FJ fell closed. As she had feared, the hand was attached to a corpse. She raised her rifle and fired multiple times. The gruesome face exploded in a black mist. Hatred burned in her eyes. Fuck the dead, she snarled Looking left and right, Jessie realized how bad her situation was. She stepped on the bumper and climbed on top of the hood, then over the windshield and onto the roof rack. Standing on top of the roof rack, she could see an ocean of the undead, dozens and dozens of them shambling through the vehicles on the Interstate towards her position. Feeling panic rising in her throat, Jessie closed her eyes and counted her breaths, slowly regaining her composure. From every side and closing in, Jessie saw her fate. Her rifle hung limp on the sling across her body.
Tears streaked down her face; she placed both her hands on her rounding belly. Her fetus was only a peanut clinging to life within her body, but a life it was, a child, her child. She wouldn’t give up, she had to win; she had to win for her child. Clutching the rifle, Jessie took a deep breath, angry at God, angry at fate, but she had to try, she had to fight. With each pull of the trigger, she began killing the undead about twenty yards out. The ones nearest couldn’t reach her; she would worry about them later—she would figure out a way. Stepping across the cases and gas cans lashed to the roof rack, Jessie continued to fire, changing magazines when the bolt locked back, determined to survive. If she had to kill every last zombie in the city with her bare hands and a knife, she would. Her child demanded her best.
I-40 Albuquerque, NM
The Interstate well-cleared of all obstacles by the mob of undead preceding the convoy, Chivo kept the Defender’s speed up as they neared the middle of the city. He cocked his head to the side.
“You guys hear that?”
Lindsey shook her head, but Apollo responded, “Sounds like small arms fire.”
Bexar couldn’t hear it; the crushed windshield made too much noise in the blowing wind.
“I don’t see anyone ahead of us ... Apollo, anything following?”
“Nope.”
All four of them scanned the scene outside their windows. Bexar saw the overhead road sign pass by. “Chivo, next exit right, that’s I-25. Take it; keep right, and head north.”
“Got it. Man, I can really hear the shots now. Someone is really getting after it, and it sounds light, like an M4.”
All of them kept scanning, but they didn’t see anything.
Chivo took the off ramp and kept right to take the flyover ramp to I-25.
I-25 Albuquerque, NM
The bolt on Jessie’s rifle locked to the rear on her last magazine. She let go of the rifle and let it hang on the sling while she transitioned to her pistol, continuing the constant cadence of scan, breathe, shoot ... scan, breathe, shoot. She looked down at yet another walking corpse limping close to the FJ. Scan, breathe, but before she could squeeze the trigger its head exploded in a black mist. Half a second later the deep crack of a rifle filled the air. Jessie froze. One by one the undead around the FJ lost their heads in a grotesque combustion followed by a distant rifle report. She used the pistol to put down the few undead pressed against the FJ, which was smeared with dark blood, skull fragments, and the black pus of undead brain matter. Moments later, Jessie could hear the rattling pop of a motorcycle’s exhaust. Jessie’s ears were ringing from all the gunfire, but she could tell it was getting closer.
Shit ... again? More bikers? Goddammit! Jessie turned towards the sound of the approaching motorcycle and raised her pistol, steeling herself for a hard battle against another gang. An ancient-looking bike rolled up alongside the FJ. The rider pulled the filthy bandanna down and said, “You might as well lower your pistol, sweetheart. My daughter has you in the scope of her rifle and you saw how good she is.”
A woman? My daughter?
“If you want to live, you should climb down and get on; otherwise, we’ll just let you sit on your perch, but we won’t help you with the dead anymore.”
Jessie blinked hard. Long, dirty blond hair stuck out beneath the knit cap the rider was wearing and trailed down the back of the worn leather jacket she had on. All Jessie could do was nod
, climb down from the FJ, and climb on the back of the motorcycle. She wrapped her arms around the rider’s waist. The bike threaded through the vehicles, avoiding all the headless corpses, and accelerated sharply before driving down an entrance ramp and off the Interstate.
CHAPTER 23
SSC
March 7, Year 1
“Amanda, I have a link up. We have contact with Groom Lake again.”
The President of the United States stood over Clint’s shoulder wearing utility trousers, a brown t-shirt, and no bra. Not the sort of working clothes that most Presidents wear while in office, but she didn’t care. Besides, Brooks Brothers was probably unavailable for a tailored fitting.
“The satellites are back online?”
“No, but the Secure Terminal is up. It’s secured VoIP.”
“Voice over Internet Protocol ... but how on earth is the Internet still up?”
“It isn’t. Well, the civilian one isn’t. The major installations are connected via fiber. Off-site communications is made using an Enhanced Crypto Card (ECC), and then a satellite link. This facility and Groom Lake are connected.”
“What about Apollo and his team?”
“They’re still in the dark. At this point, if they can get to Colorado then back to Groom Lake, they’ll be contactable.”
“Why didn’t we do this yesterday?”
“I tried. My ECC didn’t work; I had to do some major work to get anything to run.”
Groom Lake
In the radio hut, a phone rang with a strange electronic warble. The Air Force team and the civilian radio operators all stopped and stared at the phone at the end of the room. Bill, nearest to the phone, picked up the receiver.
“Uh, hello?”
“Who is this?”
“Umm, Bill. Who is this?”
“Clint. Get me Major Wright.”
Bill cupped his hand over the receiver. “Get the major in here!”
SVoiP
“This is Wright.”
“Major, this is Clint. The SSC is still secure, but we’ve lost all satellite access. What is your status?”
“We’re nominal, but having the same access problems. My team is working on the tracking to figure out what happened to them—what sort of failure it was, and whether or not we can fix it.”
“Major, have you ever heard of Have Dragon?”
“Have … no. What is it?”
Clint took a deep breath and waved to Amanda to sit next to him.
“Have Dragon is a deep black project to design launch-ready objects that will disrupt satellites. Satellite killers. It began as a proof of concept program with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but actually went into real production about eighteen months ago because China launched their own version of the same device.”
“OK ...”
“Do you know about Blue Skies?”
“Yes, well sort of; I know there are about a dozen Air Force officers in orbit, or were in orbit at least.”
“Do you know what those Air Force pilots were actually doing in orbit?”
“No.”
“They were sent to capture the Chinese satellites and bring them back for study.”
“So, are you telling me that we have lost access due to a deliberate act of sabotage?”
“Yes. Well, most likely.”
“But, early imagery showed that China was overrun by the dead.”
“Before the attack, one of the scenarios tossed around was that China might sacrifice nearly half of their population as part of a “false flag” operation and as a means to regain control of their rampant overpopulation problem.”
Amanda listened to the exchange; all of this was news to her. Clint had brought her up to speed on a lot of the secret programs, but the incredibly large number of projects made it hard for him to cover them, if he even knew all of them. Some database somewhere might have information on most of them, but she didn’t even know where to start looking. It didn’t matter; her first priority was protecting the surviving citizens, followed by trying to create a safe place for society to restart from. Some place with access to navigable waterways, farmable land that didn’t require significant irrigation efforts, and that had available raw materials, primarily lumber. Amanda wasn’t sure such a place still existed in modern America. That was the United States of 1840, not the United States of the twenty-first century.
“But that is an act of war!”
Amanda’s attention was drawn back to the conversation.
“It is, Major, but so was the EMP; so was spreading the virus.”
“The U.S. has maintained biological warfare be met with the nuclear option.”
“That’s true, but we don’t have access to those assets now, even if they are still available. This isn’t the 1980s; we don’t have crews on standby like that anymore. There is our sub fleet, the surface fleet, and a small handful of Minutemen sites left. So, assuming that a B-52 crew doesn’t materialize out of thin air, those are our only assets with nuclear weapons. So far, all my attempts to contact any of these units have failed. We can’t use Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) communications because we can’t make contact with the transmission station in Clam Lake or Michigan. All we can hope for is that one of our subs surfaces and uses High Frequency; then if we have the right conditions maybe we can pick it up.”
“We need people on the coasts.”
“Sure. There’s a lot that we need, but we have to focus on what we have.”
Amanda ignored the conversation again. Nuclear war … I’m the first woman President and I might be the first to order a nuclear strike post-WWII … God help me.
Cortez, CO
Cliff reviewed the notes he took during the recon mission. The more he thought about it, the more the church concerned him. Why would the group keep women and young girls away from the school? The school had protection, people, patrols … the church had nothing. It stood alone and out of their direct control. He didn’t know why, but the church really bothered him. Clint had learned to trust his intuition over the years. He couldn’t do anything about the situation yet. Before he could deal with the church, Clint needed to organize another recon mission, this time to two more schools, including the middle school the survivors were using.
CHAPTER 24
Albuquerque, NM
March 7, Year 1
Chivo stared out the side window, looked forward and slammed on the brakes. The Defender skidded across the pavement and into an overturned semi-truck.
“Everyone OK?”
“Just fucking dandy, Chivo, thanks,” Bexar answered, shaking his head to clear it.
The windshield was truly done now. The four of them climbed out of the Defender and looked at the damaged front end.
Apollo kicked a front tire. “Well, at least the tires didn’t flatten. I don’t think we’re in that much trouble here. The headlights are fucked but we weren’t using them anyways.” He then climbed into the driver’s seat, backed the Defender away from the tractor-trailer, and turned the engine off so he could inspect the vehicle.
“You two take guard. Chivo, why don’t you walk around the damned thing and see if there’s a way through.”
Lindsey stood near Apollo, her rifle in hand. Chivo walked north and around the overturned semi-truck. Bexar walked south a ways, looking into car windows to see if there was anything worth scavenging.
The sound erupted like a tornado—like a hundred roaring trains coming straight at them. All four of them looked west and saw nothing but a dark cloud, a wall of dust headed closer by the minute.
His leg still sore from being shot, Bexar limp-jogged to the west side of the roadway and peered over the concrete barrier. “Holy shit. It’s a solid mass of fucking undead.”
Apollo ignored Bexar; it didn’t matter to him. As long as they weren’t on the bridge with the four of them, it didn’t affect him. All that mattered now was trying to bend the radiator support out so the engine-mounted fan didn’t c
ontact the radiator anymore.
Chivo watched the approaching wall of fumes from the other side of the semi-truck uneasily. At least it looks like they’ll pass through … we’ll be safe up here.
The cloud preceding the undead swept over the group. The smell was worse than Bexar had ever experienced; rotting flesh with excrement, like it had cooked in a hot car for days. Bexar gagged and threw up on the pavement. His mouth hung open trying to catch his breath; he then accidentally swallowed a handful of flies. The massive black fog was partly dirt kicked up by the mass of bodies, but mostly flies, heavy black flies feeding on the flesh of the walking corpses. Maggots wriggled their bloated white bodies into the putrid skin and flesh, growing to become more flies, leaving their own larva behind. Bexar threw up again and fell to his hands and knees, dry heaving. He pulled his shemagh over his face, wrapping it around his head to block his mouth, nose, and ears from the flies. The ground shook violently; the vehicles on the road vibrated and shimmied down the sloped roadway. Pieces of the concrete barriers began to crack and fall off, the Defender with them.
Bexar yelled at Apollo and Lindsey, but as loud as he yelled, he couldn’t even hear himself. The noise of the thousands of undead passing below drowned out all other sound. Bexar felt it happen more than he could see it; the dust and flies were so thick that he could only see a few feet in front of his face. Scared to run blindly, Bexar crawled on his hands and knees until he saw the edge of the cracking roadway.
The bridge, the semi-truck, the Defender were gone, fallen into the mob of undead below. Seconds felt like hours, minutes felt like lifetimes. Eventually, the dust began to clear, the entourage of flies following their mobile feeding and breeding grounds.
