War of the Undead Day 5

by Peter Meredith

  “You have no air activity?” He told her that they hadn’t heard even a rumble from up top in the last hour. His relief was evident, while her fear began to ramp up. She gave him a quick goodbye and dialed a stolen number—the only number she had stolen from a friend.

  A sharp woman answered and Courtney began speaking in a stern voice: “Director Alexander, please. This is Special Agent Katherine Pennock. I have news about the cure. It’s urgent.” This brought on an intense flurry of activity in Courtney’s ear: papers shuffled, people yelling back and forth, a phone buzzing.

  It was only a minute though it felt longer. “You have a cure?” Alexander cried the second he picked up the phone. “Thank God! Oh, sweet Jesus, thank you! What do you need from us? A flight plan out of there? Ha! That’ll be no problem since everything’s grounded.”

  Courtney’s fear ramped up even more. “Why is everything grounded?”

  He hesitated before lying, “That doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. We’re trapped. We need helicopters, and this time some real support. We need a lot of men with guns, the whole nine yards.” A long silence drew out between them and she asked again: “Why is everything grounded?”

  His answer was completely expected and yet it still took her breath away. “The President is sending nukes. He’s going to fry pretty much the entire zone.”

  Courtney began to cry again.

  Chapter 24

  1-11:07 p.m.

  The White House, Washington DC

  The President was seven minutes late for his mid-ish night snack; his “rejuvenation” as he called his ice cream. He had become big with euphemisms. It was so much better sounding to “take a moment to rejuvenate himself” than to have it passed about that he was off stuffing his face, especially when there were missiles being launched.

  There’d be lots of missiles and most of them would take quite a while to hit home, and besides, he’d been present for the most important ones.

  Five minutes earlier he had sat perfectly straight and perfectly still, his hands in fists on the table, his arms held just right. He had set his face at a precise angle, listening as the first submarine reported it was ready to launch its flight of nuclear weapons. “This is a horror for us, but it will be a greater horror for them.” It was a prepared line that he gave with steely-eyed determination. “Fire when ready.”

  There was a pause before he turned to Matthew Dimalanta. “Was that good?”

  His new Chief of Staff thought the line was bloated with self-importance and better suited for a movie and not a president about to destroy a quarter of his own country. Of course, Dimalanta said nothing of the sort. He put on his shit-eating grin, stepped around the camera and told the President what he wanted to hear.

  “You were great, sir. A natural leader. The camera loves you.”

  “Good, now get these people out of here. I’ll be back in a few minutes and I want essential people only.” He pulled Dimalanta aside. “Make sure you get some footage showing the city as empty. Like Sunday morning footage. You ever see lower Manhattan on a Sunday? It’s a ghost town. We’ll give them the idea that it’s only buildings we’re bombing and not people.”

  Dimalanta knew there were still tens of thousands of people trapped in Manhattan and the Bronx, holed up in apartment buildings and skyscrapers. The President had just ordered their deaths and now he was off to eat his ice cream, leaving Dimalanta to scrub history clean of any guilt.

  “Of course, sir,” he choked out. The moment the President left the Situation Room, Dimalanta wilted into a chair. “No more filming, Rio. He wants you to find some footage of empty streets. We’ll intersperse it with a bunch of graphs and some shots of the infected.”

  “It’ll come across cold. People like people, Matthew. He’s always trying to cut out the human angle.”

  Dimalanta sighed and glanced up at the giant screen. Four submarines had already launched their missiles. “There is no human angle in this, Rio. That’s the point. It’s just buildings and that’s what we’re going to show.” And then it’ll be empty fields and empty beaches.

  The President was picturing the same thing as he strolled along, two Secret Service agents in tow. Casualty lists would be downplayed into manageable numbers. It would be as simple as finding “experts” who could be relied upon to explain how there were very few humans left in the Quarantine Zone. None maybe, especially if the infection rate was a hundred percent.

  He nodded to himself as he entered the little out of the way room he used for his moments of rejuvenation.

  “What is this?” he asked one of the staff. His ice cream was in its proper place, set directly in the middle of an eight-chair conference table. Next to it was a cloche covering a plate.

  “The young lady said you wouldn’t mind,” the waiter said. “She made it seem like she was expected, sir. I can remove it if you wish.”

  Before he could ask: What young lady? Trista Price came in, her arms raised to the two agents as if she were surrendering to them. “Me, Mr. President. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I thought you wouldn’t mind a little company. It’s a New York Strip. You’re welcome to some. Sixteen ounces is a lot. They already cut it up.” She pointed at the silver covered plate just as one of the agents turned towards her.

  “I was just talking with Kazakoff,” she added significantly. She had just come from his torture room. They had said very little to each other.

  I’m having dinner with the President.

  Okay.

  I just wanted to let you know.

  They had locked eyes, his tray of “tools” between them, both wondering the exact same thing: did she want him to stop her or join her? The intense desire for either choice was in such perfect balance that neither knew which way to choose. He turned his back on her and yet did nothing when he heard the scrape of metal.

  Now she had sweat dripping down her back. It was hidden by her stylish black jacket.

  “I was talking to him about the Vice President,” she added when the president failed to say anything. She took advantage of the lag and stepped past the agents, who didn’t know whether she was staying or leaving. She uncovered the steak, showing them the pre-sliced meat, the innocent mashed potatoes and the spears of asparagus. Instead of handing the cloche to the waiter or setting it aside, she gave it to the closest agent.

  “Yes, I guess that’s fine, Trista,” the President said. “Though I normally like to separate work from pleasure.”

  “Normally, I would agree,” she replied, seating herself and taking up her fork. She heaped it with meat and potatoes. “But…” To get the bite into her mouth she had to practically unhinge her jaw. She gave her head a jerk towards the waiter and the agents.

  He shooed them out the door, which he ordered shut behind them. Trista swallowed with a grimace; her throat was constricting and her hands began to shake, making her fork rattle against her plate. She set it aside, saying, “Thanks. I hate eating with them watching over me like a couple of vultures. I also agree with you about mixing business and pleasure.”

  “Especially our business of late.” He shook his head and addressed his bowl of ice cream. “People can be so upsetting. So nasty.”

  Trista caught herself staring at him in such shocked disbelief that had he turned, he would have arrested her on the spot. Quickly, she arranged her face into a bland, neutral look; it was the best she could do. “Yes, it’s true. So nasty.” Unable to come up with anything else—her mind had suddenly gone blank—she took another bite, hoping that he would say something.

  He commented on his ice cream and she mentioned her food, saying it was delicious, even though it tasted like cardboard. She was running out of time. Hanging on the wall opposite of them was another TV, this one with a colorful map of America. Red, arcing lines denoting the trajectories of the missiles fired from all the ballistic submarines within firing distance. It was strangely entrancing.

  “I never thought it would be me,”
the President whispered. “I always thought it would be one of those war-mongering fools.”

  No, just an ordinary fool, Trista thought. I have to do this now, before it’s too late. The steak knife—the one forgotten knife in Kazakoff’s collection—was nestled, point down, in her bra. With her shirt buttoned extra high, the handle was hidden in her cleavage. She needed a good three seconds to unbutton her shirt and pull it.

  “So…what’s with that sub?” she asked, pointing at the TV. Thirty-two miles northeast of the Azores was a dot with the tiny words: USS Wyoming (SSBN-742) set next to it. It was sitting by itself doing nothing as far as they could tell.

  The President’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know.” He reached for a phone.

  At the same moment, Captain Alan Davidson stepped into the missile control center. With his rubber soled shoes, he walked softly, Like a thief, he thought. No, an assassin was closer to the mark.

  Actually mass-murderer was the proper analogy. He tried not to think about it, but it remained, lurking in the back of his mind and kept bubbling up whenever he paused to catch his breath. He was strangely breathless. The same feeling had come over him on the day he had taken command of the Wyoming. He had gone down into the missile room and stood in the middle of the vertical silo-like tubes, absolutely staggered by the weight of responsibility. The boat…his boat, had been made with one purpose: the killing of humans on a tremendously grand scale; on a Godly scale.

  And he was no god. Unlike the President, Captain Davidson knew he was only a man with a man’s failings and weaknesses. He knew he was about to commit mass-murder, which was terrible even when it was applied to enemies, but the idea that he would be killing his own people felt a thousand times worse.

  “Are we in the green?” he asked his executive officer.

  Commander Sowell had sweat running down through what had once been laugh-lines; he didn’t look as though he would ever laugh again. He held up a brass key. “Yes, sir. All systems are good as per protocols.”

  Davidson was sure that everything had been checked, and double checked as well. And Sowell hadn’t been the only one going down the launch list. Every single person on the boat had been doing the same thing and most of them were hoping to find a problem.

  A crack in just one of the solid-propellant missiles or perhaps an overlooked drop of nitrogen, or a short in one of the navigation systems could scrub the entire attack; and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  There were one hundred and fifty-four souls on board, and by some weird quirk of fate a hundred and three of them were from the northeast. The USS Wyoming was being tasked with destroying their homes and perhaps their families. It was heart-rending for each of them and literally sickening for many.

  Captain Davidson took another deep breath and slowly let it out, giving the powers that be, just one more second to change their minds. He couldn’t stall another second. “Initiate launch sequence.” It was almost entirely automated from this point. The on-board MARK 6 navigation systems had been activated long before and the specified mission trajectory for each Trident II (D5) UGM-133A missile had been loaded into their flight computers.

  The sub was at the correct depth and the tubes flooded. Another deep breath. “Fire in sequence,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  A button was pressed and an explosive charge was ignited in the container beneath the first of the missiles. Water in the container was flash-vaporized to steam, creating a pressure spike strong enough to eject the missile out of the tube and give it enough momentum to reach the surface of the ocean. The sixty-five-ton missile popped up out of the water, hung suspended forty feet over the surface for what seemed like an impossibly long second before its first stage rocket ignited.

  The Wyoming shuddered from the launch, rolling slightly before leveling a few seconds later. Every eye went to the status board—all green.

  “Fire,” Davidson said again.

  It was the seventh Trident that was aimed at Mt Vernon, New York, two miles from New Rochelle and the R&K Research Facility. It was part of the President’s plan to save what he could of New York City, namely: Long Island. Sixteen warheads were destined for Staten Island, Newark, Manhattan, the Bronx and on northward until White Plains. Nothing was expected to live.

  “There it goes,” the President said, when the first red arc stretched from the dot that represented the Wyoming. “Better late than never, I guess. I swear, if I get stabbed in the back by one more person, I don’t know what I would do.”

  “Yeah?” Trista said, frozen in place. She had both hands clutched to her white button-up shirt. One on the handle of the steak knife, the other holding closed her shirt. In her rush, her shirt had practically flung itself open.

  Seeing this, the President leaned back from her, his eyes widening in surprise. “Miss Price, I’m flattered. And I’m sure if the situation was different.” He glanced back at the door, half-expecting it to be open a crack with a spying eye peeking in on them. “Well, you know. Maybe we could talk in the morning.”

  “Oh, right,” she replied, not knowing what else to say. How could he think she would want him? He was wrinkly and old. And he was evil. The thought was repugnant and, if anything, made her want to kill him even more. “Sorry, I should go.”

  The President was old and slow. She was up and moving past him before he could turn. In fact, he had to turn the opposite way, to his right and by the time he got his head around, she had the steak knife out, holding it by its thousand-dollar springbok horn handle, its forged Sandvik steel blade glittering.

  Only the best for the President of the United States, she thought, before she slammed the knife into his throat. The steel passed through the right carotid artery, the windpipe and sliced the left jugular. She was surprised how easily the blade went in. It was almost too easy. Was it a killing strike? Would he linger and cough, or call out for help? It was an odd thing, but that first strike only fed her fear and she yanked out the blade and slammed it home again with even more force.

  This time there was a good deal more crunch. She had sheared through bone. The President’s eyes bugged almost out of his head. They grew wider and wider, and as they did, hers did as well. And together they drew in a long, sucking breath. They were in sync for half a minute, then his eyes grew dim and his shoulders seemed to wilt back from his torso.

  He died and she lived.

  2-11:19 p.m.

  New Rochelle, New York

  Courtney Shaw was only two miles away and yet she came across small and tinny, as if she were speaking through a tube that stretched out to the bottom of the ocean.

  You’ll have to rescue us, she had said.

  “Okay, of course. That’s no problem,” was Thuy’s insane reply. They had both hung up in dead silence.

  Thuy couldn’t look Katherine in the eye and she refused to even glance at Anna. The elevator was stuck between the sixth and seventh floor. She pressed the button for the seventh floor. The machine whirred obediently and opened its door seconds later.

  “What are you doing?” Anna demanded in a croaking voice.

  Thuy ignored her and walked across to an east-facing window, wondering if they would be able to see the missile coming. Katherine came to stand next to her. “What did I tell you? We’re all living on a timer. We just didn’t know it.”

  “Stop talking like that!” Anna snapped. “Do something Thuy. Hey! I’m talking to you. Do something. Get us out of here.” She shoved the point of the gun into Thuy’s midsection.

  “How could that possibly scare me, now?” Thuy pushed the bore away. “I’m smart, but I can’t invent wings and fly away. I can’t wish away a ballistic missile. I can’t make a cure and spray it out onto them.” Eighty feet below them, a mob of undead milled about, making the night shadows undulate and look like waves. There were probably four hundred in sight, which was four hundred more than she could handle.

  Anna looked down, and even though she had known they were there, she still felt
fear squeeze down on her chest. “We could still try. Come on, Thuy. We know where there’s a helicopter. If we could get past them, we could be there in ten minutes. Yeah, none of us knows how to fly it, but I’d rather crash in the ocean than get blown up by a nuke. Come on, what do you say?”

  “I say what I always say: you’re an idiot. Have you forgotten Jaimee Lynn and Eng? Do you think they’re just sitting around waiting for us? Have they ever done that before? No. Right now, they’re blocking exits and they’re filling the stairwells with zombies. We are trapped.”

  Katherine rubbed her eyes. They felt gritty even through her gloves. “I guess I don’t need these anymore,” she muttered and pulled them off with a snapping sound. “I’m with Dr. Lee on this. You are an idiot, Anna. Let’s say we can get out of here alive, and somehow dig out Courtney and the others, and make it back to the helicopter. We’ll never be able to learn to fly it before we get vaporized, and it would crash long before we got to the ocean. They’re not like airplanes. Not that we would do better in one of them. What I’m saying is that they’re very complicated. They tilt and yaw, and can fly up, down and backwards.”

  “No duh. They still have a pilot. Yeah, he’s hurt but maybe he can suck it up long enough to fly us somewhere safe. Thuy, please. I know you can get us out of here, just like I know you can find a cure. You’re the smartest person I know.”

  Thuy cackled at this, sounding a lot like her mother. She turned and leaned against the window, her arms folded across her chest. “Keep going. Tell me how great I am. Tell me something that’ll make me disbelieve my own eyes, because what I see out there is…”

  “Is all Eng’s fault,” Anna said. “You did something great and he ruined it. But you could fix it. You know everything there is to know about this stuff. And if we get nuked, this building and the labs and all the computers are going to be blown to bits. You see now why you have to live. You’re the only chance of a cure.”