War of the Undead Day 5

by Peter Meredith

  “I got nothing!” Matt practically shouted.

  Shit! Their role in the game of Here, kitty kitty was about to be reversed. Alvarez was sure that they would be painted any second—his pucker factor was now at an eight. “Roger that. Switching to GBU15s. Give me a target, Matt.” They would be on top of the SAM sites too quickly to set up a HARM strike.

  “Flight Five Zero out of Langley, your targets are three miles west of Newville,” a woman…the woman said. It was the same woman that had spoken directly to Alvarez earlier that morning. It was the woman who some called the Angel of the Airwaves and others bitterly called Pennsylvania Rose. “As the men of the 3rd Infantry Division are not your enemies, the M6s are unmanned. You may destroy them if you wish.”

  “This is Tango Zero One,” the radio barked, “disregard the previous broadcast. Proceed to the target.”

  Courtney sighed into the radio microphone. “It will be a waste of your bombs. And not only that, it will make it harder for the men on the ground to fight off the zombies. You can see the zombies, can’t you? There’s millions of them and every bomb you drop means there’s less…”

  “Ignore her!” Tango Zero One cried into the radio.

  Alvarez froze at the stick, indecision gripping him. He could see the zombies. He couldn’t miss them since they stretched as far as the eye could see. They were no longer coming in controlled waves as they had been earlier, and the fight along the line was becoming fierce and desperate.

  “Are we screwing up?” he asked, speaking to himself.

  His WSO heard; however, and muttered, “Pull it together, Stubby! Our target is at our ten o’clock. Fox three, Stubby, let’s go.”

  “It might be a trap,” Alvarez said, and throttled the engines as he pulled back on the stick. His Eagle soared straight up, showing her underbelly to the world, becoming the perfect target.

  “Stubby!”

  Alvarez ignored his WSO and continued going straight up, ready to shuck and jive the instant he heard the shriek in his ear that told him a search radar had locked on to him. His pucker factor should have been off the charts, but he knew deep in his heart that no one was targeting him. Those were Americans down there, not rebels. They were fighting the undead, just like he should have been.

  Up he soared, up and over in a glorious inverted loop. Had there been actual enemies below him, he could have been killed ten-times over. When he came out of the loop, he banked slightly, heading away from the line of M6s and towards the massive army bearing down on the 3rd ID.

  “Tango Zero One, this is Five Zero Five. There is no SAM presence here. I’m changing targets.”

  “Negative Five Zero Five. Continue with mission as ordered.”

  Behind him his weapons officer actually kicked his chair. “I’m warning you, Stubby!”

  Alvarez ignored him and spoke to the rest of the planes behind him. “Flight Five Zero, the SAM threat is neutralized. Engage high value targets. Follow my lead.” Both Control and Matt began screaming at him, but he didn’t care. Something had gone decidedly wrong with the military. It had been bad enough when they attacked Massachusetts, but now they were supposed to be bombing their own men? It was wrong. No, it was worse than wrong, it was insane. He saw that perfectly now.

  From where Alvarez sat, he had a perfect view of the battlefield and he saw that it was clearly insane to expect the 3rd ID to attack in any direction. It was a wonder they weren’t running away as fast as they could. They didn’t deserve to die.

  Feeling strangely calm, Alvarez drawled into his radio, “Control, those M6s aren’t going anywhere and I have just about a jillion zombies right in front of me. Dropping on targets now.” He brought his Eagle to eight-hundred feet, shot over the line of defenders like an avenging fury and began releasing his GBU15s one at a time.

  He could hardly miss and the explosions thrummed and roiled the air behind him. When his load was jettisoned he casually remarked, “Going to guns,” as he took a wide turn over the horde. He was banked far enough over that he could see behind him as the rest of his flight roared down the valley in wild confusion. Two planes were engaging the Bradleys; one with bombs, the other uselessly firing its AGM-88s. Without a radar to lock on, the two missiles soared off toward the setting sun.

  The rest of his flight was split, with half engaging the zombies and the other half loitering, going in circles.

  A hundred and fifty miles away, Courtney Shaw was monitoring the feeds from two different drones. She saw the hesitation of some of the pilots. “Flight Five Zero, if you believe there are two enemies down below you, kill the ones you think are the most danger to your families.”

  “That’s enough, Courtney,” Colonel Taylor warned. She had been broadcasting for too long in his opinion. They’d already had two close calls. Along with the Sentinels, there were two Reapers lurking somewhere above them. They could fly at 25,000 feet and launch their 500-pound, laser guided GBU-12 Paveways from miles away. In this case; however, since there was no danger from anti-aircraft weapons, they would probably get up close and personal to make sure of their kills.

  General Axelrod agreed. “We should move again,” he said, with a glance out the window. They were eleven stories above downtown New Rochelle, squatting in an abandoned apartment that smelled of old fried food. “Alright people, let’s pack it up.” It would be their third move in the last hour.

  “Just a moment,” Courtney answered. She cleared her throat, switched to the sat-phone and spoke in a sharp tone, “Flight Seven Seven, this is Tango Three Five, the SAM threat has been eliminated. Engage ground targets beyond Highway 233. Be aware there are friendlies on the ground.”

  “Tango Three Five say again. What friendlies?”

  Major Clay Palmburg began snapping his fingers at Courtney. He had managed to reach a friend who had contacts in the Pentagon and who was somewhere along the chain of command that stretched from Washington to Nevada and then back out to New York. “A Sentinel’s picked us up!”

  All around Courtney there was a flurry of activity as the officers slammed their computers shut, yanked cords from walls and began stuffing everything into their packs. She was the only one not moving. She flipped away from the window she had open on her laptop that showed Tony Alvarez dropping his Eagle down so low it looked like he was going to try to land in the midst of the undead. He flew at head-height and began to blast away with his 20mm M61 Vulcan. The six-barreled Gatling gun, along with the huge jet roaring inches above the undead, cleared a path fifty feet wide and four-hundred yards long.

  It was beautiful flying that Courtney missed as she brought up her unit map. “Flight Seven Seven, this is Tango Three Five; we have a newly arrived unit from Kentucky. It’s the 149th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade out of Richmond. They are unaware of the situation and, until we can extricate them, they cannot be fired upon. Please acknowledge…”

  Taylor shut her computer, nearly snapping her fingers in the process. He grabbed her bag as Major Palmburg took her by the arm and pulled her from the room at a run.

  “Hey!” she cried. “Those guys need me.”

  “They need you alive,” Axelrod yelled over his shoulder. It had been a surprise to him how true that had become. Courtney Shaw had an almost magical knack for finding the right person to talk to, or the right lie to concoct, or the right heart string to pull to get things done. Even with the full force of the government after her, she was making a mess of things for the President.

  She was like a casting director from 21st Century Fox, handing out parts to each of them: “General, you’re the junior senator from Virginia and you need to know what units are in the state and where—the muckety-mucks in the Pentagon will ask why. Just tell them you’ve seen soldiers with paratroop wings on their uniforms, and you’re worried about traitors.”

  “Taylor, your name is Rene Papadopolis. You own the Athena Cantina right there outside of Langley. Call this number; it’s the SP unit direct line. Tell them you saw someone with what look
ed like a bazooka slip into the woods west of the base. Yeah, I know no one would use a bazooka to shoot down a plane, but they’ll think it’s one of them Stingers.”

  “Major Palmburg, call this number. Tell them you’re an Eagle Keeper, but you want to remain anonymous. Tell them the number two fuel tank is sparking again and that you told your PO. He didn’t think it was a big deal, but you’re worried it will blow.”

  Eagle Keeper was a slang term for a maintenance crew chief of an F-15, but how she knew it, Palmburg didn’t know.

  And she had her own roles: “Shepherd control tower? Great. This is Melinda Hildago, I’m a political officer with DHS. Is there a Colonel Roberts there? No, I don’t want to talk to him. I need him arrested. Yeah, I don’t know for sure why. I just get names and we let the CIA sort out all the answers.”

  This was why she was so valuable. She was almost singlehandedly keeping the 3rd ID from being destroyed and the Army of Southern New England supplied.

  What she hadn’t been able to do was crack the communications or chain of command of the drone pilots flying out of Nevada, and now the hunters were closing in.

  Ahead of them, Major Palmburg held the elevator door open; it kept lurching into his back as its electronic brain demanded that it head down to the first floor. He leapt in the moment Courtney was thrust into the little box—as the door shut, they heard a distant rumble. Everyone stood with their heads cocked, as the elevator began descending.

  “Was that a plane?” Courtney whispered.

  “Yeah,” Major said, feeling a touch of relief as the seconds ticked away and they weren’t vaporized in a gigantic explosion. What he failed to realize was that the drone whooshing by was an unarmed Sentinel still in hunting mode. What they should have been more afraid of was the Predator that came sweeping in behind it, five-hundred pounds lighter.

  The GBU-15 slammed into the building, striking an eighth-floor living room window, passing through the apartment, and blasting through the far wall, before its warhead detonated in the central hall. The explosion that followed blew out every window in the building in the blink of an eye, shivered the entire support system and opened huge cracks right through the foundation.

  A second later, the building began to implode as the top floors caved in on one another. The weight of each crushed downwards, further and further, until the bottom floors were buried.

  Then came the fires. What was left of the building would burn for many days.

  3-6:49 p.m.

  North Highland, New York

  The explosion could be heard for miles, and in the dying light of the fifth day, the fire engulfing the building could be seen as a beacon twenty miles away in North Highland.

  It brought Jaimee Lynn out of a lassitude so deep that it felt as though she’d been in a waking coma. And it roused in her, not hunger exactly, for she had eaten enough for two Thanksgivings, but the reminder that she’d be hungry again soon enough.

  Eating the family had put her pack in a stupor that Eng had joined in, much to Jaimee’s disgust. “Get up, China!” She kicked him in the kidney; he barely felt it and only growled at her. “Where’s ya’ll’s pills?” They were in the pocket of his coat and as she dug them out, she realized for the third or fourth time that she was naked save for the old blood that coated her, as near as she could tell, from top to bottom.

  “Eat these, China,” she said and rudely shoved a small handful of pills into his mouth. He was almost all zombie now and just laid there with a blank look to his eyes and his mouth hanging open.

  “Y’all so dumb,” she griped, and began working his jaw up and down. Chalky grey drool seeped from the corners of his thin lips. She scooped it up with her cupped hand and shoved it back in. “Doctor’s orders,” she told him before grabbing a stick and using it to shove the mush deeper down his gullet.

  When he bit down on the stick, she felt she had done enough, sure that he would come back from being a complete zombie. Once he did, they would get back into the truck and get going. In the meantime, she decided that she didn’t want to be naked when she found Dr. Lee again. Jaimee Lynn didn’t care what the scientist thought about anything, but the idea that her daddy would be with her made her want clothes.

  “An’ he wouldn’t want me runnin’ all over the place all necked.” She wandered up to the house the little family had been hiding in and found that it had been a house for old people. All the clothes were too big for her scrawny little frame. Going back outside, she looked down at the remains of the people they had eaten. Two of them had been kids—my, how they had howled and screeched.

  “They was like stuck pigs,” Jaimee Lynn said with a little growl in her tummy. “Yummy stuck pigs.” There was little left of the two kids, and the clothes that had been torn from their thrashing bodies were now only rags. Undeterred, she squinted up and down the block until she saw a house with a litter of toys in the front yard. Toys meant kids.

  Again, her tummy growled. “Ain’t no kids ‘round here,” she told her tummy. If there had been any, they would have run away during Jaimee Lynn’s three course meal. She just hoped that they had left a proper outfit for her. In the dim light, she fumbled around in the house until she found the bedrooms. The first had been home to a creature far more malignant than she—it had been a boy’s room, and she turned up her nose.

  Next, she found a room painted in dusky pink. It was a proper little girl’s room. Without much hope, she looked under the bed and in the closet, thinking that finding a tender young morsel would be a nice little snack. The house was empty. Disappointed, she gazed into the closet with her black eyes. The vibrant colors were lost on her. Everything was tinged grey.

  She chose a canary-yellow dress that was two-sizes too big and hung on her like a gunny sack. She didn’t care. With her fine blonde hair and her year-round tan, yellow used to look good on her and she figured it still did. She was wrong. The pretty dress made her look more like a monster than ever. Her hair was no longer blonde. It hung in thick black tangles with pieces of human flesh caught up in its knots. And the soft flesh of her face lacked its past perfection; she was coated in layers of dried blood. Her gums were black as were her eyes, which dribbled black tears.

  Jaimee Lynn was such a horror that Eng, who was a monster in his own right and could only think past his desire to feed when he was filled with pills, gazed at her with a disgusted sneer as she came back to kick her pack awake.

  “What’s with the dress? It doesn’t seem right.” His head was spinning in confusion and pounding with hate. He fumbled at his bottle of pills and didn’t have the sense to be shocked that they were mostly gone.

  “For y’alls information, my daidy likes me in dresses. He says I’s pretty. Like the spittin’ image of my momma.”

  One of Jaimee’s pack touched the dress and said that she wanted one, too. Jaimee Lynn pushed her away. “Dresses are only for little girls who still gots their daidies. Mine is with that Dr. Lee. She stoled him and did spear-i-ments on him. We’s gonna kill her.”

  “And eat her?” the little creature asked, hopefully.

  That was most obviously the plan and only a stupid Chinaman zombie would ruin it. “No, she’s going to fix us, remember?” Eng told them. “She’s going to make us normal again. And she’s going to fix all of your mommies and daddies, too.”

  The pack liked the idea of their parents being fixed, although most of them equated that with being clean, and being clean meant they could eat them. Jaimee Lynn, superior in all ways to her minions, declared, “My daidy don’t need fixin’. He’s too strong to get sick. But I reckon, I could let Dr. Lee live for a whiles. Ya know, long enough to fix y’all’s mommas and daidies.”

  With the plan a certainty in their minds, the pack piled into the SUV. The sun had set and in the twilight, Eng was blind. He had to turn on both the interior lights as well as the exterior ones to see anything at all. Compared to the darkness that filled the Quarantine Zone, they were a brilliant nova that attracted eve
ry eye.

  Thousands of moaning creatures saw them and followed after in a gruesome parade that stretched for miles. And it was not just the dead who saw the police cruiser driving slowly southward. There were still living people in the Zone, hiding, afraid to do anything that might call attention to themselves.

  There were also mechanical creatures that took notice of the vehicle. Its lights were picked up by one of the Sentinels circling New Rochelle while it was still miles away. The drone pilot kept track of the SUV as it weaved through stalled cars and around the remains of roadblocks.

  “Holy shit,” the pilot whispered, as zombies came charging at it from a church. He was sure he was about to witness a massacre, instead, after only a few seconds, the zombies simply just stood there, staring into the vehicle as it drove away. “What did I just see? Control!” he cried, leaning back in his chair.

  The door to the “cockpit” was open and sometimes it was easier just to yell out instead of going through the usual back and forth. “Take a look at the last two minutes of my feed.”

  “Why? You got eyeballs on our targets?”

  “Just do it.” There was a long pause followed by a muttered curse. “You saw that too, didn’t you? I’d send that to the colonel if I were you.”

  “No shit,” the control officer yelled back down the hallway. “Just keep your cross on that SUV.”

  The pilot gave him a: “No shit,” right back. He watched that SUV all the way into New Rochelle, marking each time it was attacked. The last of these strange events occurred just after Colonel Bell arrived, smelling of old sweat and stale cigars. He stared at the grainy video from a range of five inches.

  “Are those children in there?” There were six others in the virtual cockpit, watching the feed in real time. They all agreed that the small figures were indeed children. “How the hell are they doing this? Do they have zombie repellent or something?”