Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  So, when shit got real, and it was time for HHS to mobilize…there wasn’t any leadership. I take responsibility for that. If you were building a bonfire to burn down the world, a lot of those logs would have my name on them.

  I’d be in good company, though. I honestly watched the Secretary of State once ask for demographics on the infected, so that he could determine whether Republicans or Democrats were being hit disproportionately in order to prioritize relief. He literally wanted what few semi-competent staff members he had on hand to stop what they were doing so he could--in essence--allow opposing voters to die while giving aid to supporters. I’ll never forget the President’s response: “That’s a really good idea. That’s a really goddamn good idea.”

  About a month ago, I watched a frustrated General try to explain to the Secretary of Defense that the living dead could only be killed by destroying their brain. We were months into this shit-storm and the guy who was managing our rapidly diminishing military resources didn’t even understand how to kill the enemy. The last time I saw him, he was running to his car. When I asked his personal aide what was going on, she said that the marine platoon he had delegated to guard his family’s neighborhood had gone AWOL.

  When refugees started flooding in from every corner of the globe under the false assumption that America would manage the crisis better than their home nations, Homeland Security was still looking for terrorists. Plane-loads of Asian and European infected were just pouring into our airports, but as long as they weren’t on the terror list…they were welcomed in with open arms. Months into the shit, when the President finally asked if it would be a good idea to screen air travelers, the Director of Homeland Security hadn’t even thought about how to do it. By the time screenings started, commercial flights had long since been grounded.

  It wasn’t just the executive branch that was laden with incompetence. The House and The Senate were just as pitiful. Congress never saw a crisis it didn’t try to exploit, and the zombie apocalypse was no exception. If the parties weren’t already entrenched and oppositional, they were ten-fold now.

  “Need emergency funding for relief to metropolitan Chicago? Fuck you, we have to stop the spending somewhere!”

  “Cut my irrelevant ear-mark in a bill that gives the military authority to set up refugee centers in American cities? Fuck you! What do I get out of it?”

  “This bill makes sense, but makes the opposing party look good…fuck you. I’ll make up some reason to vote it down.”

  Some congressmen courted their base by toeing the line that the entire issue was a religious one. The rapture crowd was a vocal minority, but man, were they vocal. There was news footage of some representatives actually claiming that flesh-eating undead monsters had human rights, and actually floated federal bills that made it illegal to kill them. There were state and local governments that didn’t just put forth bills like that, but actually passed them.

  There was no end to the insanity. In the beginning, before we really understood the epidemic, there were some extremists within government that wanted to quarantine every town in the nation, and go door to door looking for infected, shooting them on sight. Draconian policies like this smacked of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and the backlash from the American public was so extreme that the CDC saw incident reporting drop like a stone. Conversely, CDC field agent casualties – a term that I had never before even seen in a report – skyrocketed. The last thing you should tell an American citizen, is that the government is going to come to their home and kill someone they love. We knew the epidemic was spreading, but now, thanks to a couple of career politicians who wanted to look like John Wayne to their constituency, the CDC was blinded and their people were being killed.

  When things started getting really bad, representatives went to their home districts so they could put their own face to their voters’ salvation. This is when things got much worse. Every senator and congressmen wanted to be the man or woman who saved The Empire State Building, the Lincoln Memorial, the public library, or some little old lady’s house. Hundreds of established and defensible military perimeters were moved and thinned, quickly became indefensible, and then failed. Hard choices had been made by the few capable people left in leadership. Sadly, those choices were immediately and directly undermined by politicians who didn’t just lack an understanding of the situation, but had a rooted self-interest in exploiting it however they could. These so-called leaders had spent so much time in Washington that they didn’t even know how to stop campaigning when their very survival depended on it. People were dying by the thousands and rising from the grave, and the people with the power to make a difference were worried about their next election. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’re a high-powered senator or a public school janitor. Your brains taste the same to the zombies. Way too many Americans and far too few politicians found that fact out the hard way.

  Still, the common people, the average every day schmoes, weren’t completely blameless. When the local grocery store runs out of food and families start missing meals, neighbors start shooting each other over a can of soup. Then neighbors’ families and friends get involved, and suddenly, there are millions of little Hatfield and McCoy style wars raging in every town and city in the world. The reality that the undead were beating down our door was bad enough, but we made it even worse when we did our part to add to their number. News footage of Miami and Seattle were looking like Baghdad after the American invasion drove home the sense that we weren’t in this together. We were on our own.

  America alone produces enough food to feed the entire world. With a little rationing and logistics, every man, woman, and child, would have enough food to last over a year – I saw the reports. Hell, I reviewed plans that the Secretary of Agriculture had written up to make sure not one fat-ass beer-drinking American missed a meal. Even if that meal wasn’t going to be a thick cut of prime rib or a greasy hamburger, it was still a meal. He was a good guy. The cabinet was an embarrassment, but the Secretary of Agriculture really stood apart from the rest of us. The only problem was, by the time we got past the petty arguments about whether it was a legal use of imminent domain to turn an abandoned skyscraper into a hydroponic tomato farm…we no longer had the manpower or infrastructure available to execute.

  That was another issue. When we did actually move on something, the labor required to do what needed to be done simply wasn’t available. It’s hard to blame the contractors and the government workers. What would you do? Your family is boarding up their home and stockpiling ammunition, and your boss calls you and asks you to drive to work through a zombie-infested neighborhood so you can fork-lift generators onto a flat bed. Hell, the flat beds didn’t even have drivers.

  When it finally became clear that the only way we were going to get anything done was to use the military, half the military had already deserted. Again, what would you do? Your orders are to “hurry up and wait” at some military depot in BFE, and the only thing coming through the news is how your hometown is being ravaged by the undead. Unlike a contractor, you’re a soldier with an M16 and access to a military Humvee. Hell, in your mind, it’s your duty as an American to get off your ass, get home, and start popping walking corpses. This duty becomes especially clear when you’re ordered to set up camp around some well-connected rich banker’s mansion, while the poor community down the road burns to ashes. Our soldiers are good people for the most part. My guess is that none of them wanted to abandon their post, but when we misused them—when we showed them our priorities were monuments and rich people, instead of red, white, and blue mom and pop Jane and John Smith—it became their responsibility to desert… and they deserted in droves.

  The military we had left would have been more valuable if it had been decommissioned, drained of its fuel and resources, and redistributed to cities and neighborhoods near military bases. What are you gonna do with a fully fueled and armed to the tooth B-52 Stratofortress? Carpet bomb New Jersey? It sounds absurd, but honestly, it w
as discussed. When Russia bombed Saint Petersburg, its own city, people in government started asking if maybe that’s something we should do. By then, New York City was a walking graveyard, so why not? Then when India—not their greatest enemy, Pakistan, but India –nuked their own city of Bangalore, a city of just under nine million people…those conversations stopped. The walking dead were the enemy and there were people fighting for survival in every corner of the country. Wiping a city off the map wouldn’t accomplish anything except to reduce the chances of survival from slim to none for anyone still living in that city.

  That’s right around the time the president was assassinated. The Secret Service is really good about being present without being seen. For months, those guys watched the situation across the country deteriorate, while simultaneously having a front-row seat to the buffoons in charge fucking up one thing after another. Those guys are loyal, but they’re also human. I don’t know if it was one guy, or if a bunch of them had the same idea, but the day Air Force One was loaded up to whisk the president off to some secret bunker, someone had enough of the injustice and hypocrisy. I once heard the president’s chief of security talking about some dark things he saw in Afghanistan. He said, “Sometimes there aren’t any solutions. Sometimes things get so fucked up, there aren’t any answers and all you have are bullets.” Some Secret Service Agent must have felt the same way.

  I guess that’s where we are now. The world’s been at war with walking dead for about a year, and we’ve lost.

  We lost for a lot of reasons, but maybe more than anything, we lost because we’re human. The undead, they don’t think, feel, or worry about their next meal, or how they are going to stay warm. Humans do, however, and cold hard objective facts say that that’s a weakness. If you saw your husband, wife, child, or parent get sick, die, and then reanimate to what (to you) looks like life, what would you do? Is your first instinct to bash their brains in? Because if it is, congratulations. You’re a soulless monster, but you may just be alive. If not, if your first instinct is relief and joy at what you perceive to be a recovery, then I have some bad news for you. You’re dead too, and now there are two more zombies in this world instead of one.

  When my son Ruben was bitten, I knew exactly what it was. I knew there was no hope and I knew what would happen when he died. Knowing that and accepting that are two different things, however. Even after he bit my wife, Melissa, it took a week of them locked in the bedroom clawing, scratching, and moaning before I got the nerve to put them down.

  So am I human or am I a monster? I don’t know. I’ve watched my neighborhood devolve from a nice upper class gated community into a boarded-up ghost town. I try to stay connected to whatever government is still functioning, but my generator is almost out of gas and my supposedly secure government wireless signal is growing more and more unreliable. I killed my own family. I’m afraid to leave my house. The dead are wandering about outside, and I think some of them know I’m in here. I’ve done very little to help with this apocalypse, and a lot more to contribute to it. I think that makes me a bad human being.

  Consider this letter as my resignation. The best person to replace me is Dr. Henry Damico – Assistant Manager to the Director of Health and Human Services in District Nine. He’s done a lot of good through all of this and he’s a smart man. If he had had my job, things wouldn’t be so hopeless.

  I’m going to go downstairs and drink a cup of coffee. Then I’m going to take my .38 special and join my wife and son. Sometimes, things get so fucked up there aren’t any solutions, and all you have are bullets.

  Secretary of Health and Human Services,

  Willard Clark

  Chapter 1

  “Almost home,” Sergeant First Class Carl Harvey whispered under his breath, as he accelerated his military Humvee through the dark, rubble-strewn city streets. The windshield wipers, moving at full speed, barely cut through the torrential downpour that was so uncharacteristic of San Diego weather. Carl leaned forward in the driver seat struggling to lead his convoy of military vehicles home. The interior of the hummer was a noisy cacophony of confusion. Terrified sobs and screams from the civilians who sat in the back of his vehicle, mingled with the constant squawking of communications across the combat network. The .50 caliber machine gun mounted above him drowned the havoc in sporadic thunder and death.

  A swarm of living dead was close behind. Carl had often wondered at the horrifying phenomenon that drove undead to gather in groups. Individually, they were dangerous, but easily dealt with. In groups, however, they could work themselves into frenzy. Hundreds, even thousands of rotting cadavers sprinted after the convoy like a ravenous marathon.

  Agitated for long enough, a boiling swarm of zombies might pursue prey for miles until they were distracted. Carl knew that if he were to stop driving, the howls of the hungry dead would raise to a crescendo as they engulfed the convoy. He blinked away the mental image and pressed on the accelerator.

  Harvey’s responsibilities as point driver – the lead vehicle of the convoy – were measured in split seconds – instantaneous judgment calls that led the convoy through the mayhem of a city consumed by the undead. A wrong turn, break down, even a flat tire, would cost lives. Having grown up in northern Michigan, he had learned to drive in an unforgiving crucible of weather that was encouraged and supported by a culture and family that loved everything about cars. Now, as the country struggled to survive a living nightmare of death risen to devour the living, he couldn’t help but remember the blizzards he had experienced in his youth. A relentless, high-intensity storm, where no one respected the law, cars being abandoned and debris littered every inch of the road. On top of all that, an armed hostile civilian or flesh-eating monster could, and often did, jump out at you at any second.

  Carl Harvey was in his late-twenties, but the stress of the last year had aged him. His dirty-blond hair was cut military short and was beginning to show flecks of gray. His jaw was always covered in stubble. He walked and talked as if he was half soldier, half truck driver, and extended a cool aura of confidence that made him a natural leader. He was the kind of man that made other soldiers believe that, whatever shit the world threw at them, Sergeant First Class Harvey knew what he was doing, and he would get you through it. Aided by the obscenely high attrition rates among the convoy teams, he vaulted quickly through the ranks.

  “Approaching Interstate 8, five miles east of US Naval Station. We’ll be home in no time boys.” Specialist Pamela Grace sat in the passenger seat speaking into her headset-mounted microphone. A laptop computer sat on a dashboard-mounted tray in front of her. Her words seemed to calm the civilians somewhat. As point vehicle communications expert, she was connected to an extensive network of communications, satellite feeds, and minute-by-minute reporting. This gave her a picture of how to get the convoy where they needed to go, without leading it straight into a roadblock, hostile civilians, or a swarm of flesh-eating dead who would stop at nothing to consume the living.

  With a gentle spin of the wheel, Carl expertly turned his Humvee up an onramp onto a yellow-lit highway that would lead them to their destination. The machine gun fire gradually dropped from a sporadic thunder to a periodic rattle.

  “What’s that?” Pam covered her microphone and sat up abruptly.

  “What? SHIT!” Carl quickly pushed down on the accelerator before he slammed into a dozen figures huddled on the highway. Gore and body parts launched in every direction, smearing the windshield with thick gouts of blood. The civilians in the back screamed in horror.

  Convoy drivers had been trained to neither slow down nor swerve, but rather to accelerate when something – living or dead – crossed the path of their moving armored vehicle. Swerve and you risk losing control or crashing; a very bad thing in the best of circumstances, a death sentence in most. Slow down unexpectedly, and you risk being rear-ended by the Humvee on your tail, ending up with a carcass on your hood, or giving an armed attacker with nothing left to lose that extra second h
e needs to put you in his crosshairs. It was best to use the Humvee’s kinetic energy to plow through anything that didn’t have the wherewithal to stay out of the convoy’s way.

  The force of the impact jolted the rain-soaked gunner out of his mount. Sergeant Miguel Ramos dropped down into the cab from his position and cursed. “What the hell?”

  “More dead. Civilians know not to cross into the street by now,” Pam assured them both. As the situation across the country worsened, one of San Diego’s main arteries, Interstate 8, had been blocked off for strictly military purposes. The road served as a valuable pipeline connecting the various pockets of survivors scattered around the city to the US Naval Base. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, Nimitz-class supercarrier, and its accompanying battle group floated offshore collecting supplies and refugees. For over two months, the battle group had been filled with survivors from every reachable corner of California. The convoys were an essential component of a much bigger picture, whose focus was to survive an Armageddon no one had anticipated or planned for – the rise of the living dead.

  “There comes a point when the threat from the walking dead is greater than the threat from us,” Miguel grumbled curtly. He made the sign of the cross over his chest, pulled his stocky body back into the gun mount, and resumed scanning for targets. As the lead gunner, he was responsible for defending the convoy from constant onslaught – a job that seldom lent itself to looking at the bright side of things. No one knew how many unlucky innocent civilians found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when a convoy passed by. The saying “from behind a .50 cal everyone looks the same”, was common among gunners who would return to the Naval Base with the gnawing guilt in the back of their mind about something they had seen on a mission. Was that shadow an animated corpse or some teenager running for his life? Was that an attacker or someone trying to flag the convoy down for help? There were millions of questions like this that were probably best left unanswered.