“You blame the French?”
“Yes,” McNab said. “If they had held firm, NATO would have held together. Now Europe is in danger of becoming a total fucking shambles. War seems imminent. Once Russia has got the Ukraine bedded down and smashed Poland, Germany could be next.”
“And we’re powerless to stop them.”
“Exactly. We can’t be the international cop while the police station is burning to the ground. We’ve got to sort out the crisis here at home before we can begin to project our influence internationally again.”
I picked up my sandwich in my fist and took a bite. McNab looked at me like I was something repulsive he found on the sole of his shoe. He stabbed his fork into one corner of his own sandwich and cut off a piece with his knife. He held the fork up as if to show me how the sandwich should be eaten.
Who eats a tuna salad sandwich with a knife and fork?
I dropped my sandwich back onto the plate and reached for my own fork. McNab looked grimly satisfied.
“With respect, sir,” I said, “but America has certainly contributed to global instability. I mean, what we did to Iran… and the implications of that action across the entire Middle East…”
“That is horse-shit!” McNab growled. He dropped his knife and fork and shifted his weight in his chair like he was itching to reach across the table and grab me by the throat. “What we did to Iran was exact revenge for the most heinous crime ever committed against America and mankind,” he said. “We got payback, and those fuckers deserved every bomb, and every bullet.”
We glared at each other across the table. I nudged my cell phone a little closer to the Secretary of State with my forearm. “Yes, but as a result of that action, the Middle East is now embroiled in war.” I held up my hand and counted off each point on my fingers. “Israel has been locked in conflict with the Palestinians for the last four months. Iran’s government has been destroyed, and now half a dozen different terrorist insurgent groups are laying claim to various parts of the country. Syria is in the grip of civil war. Egypt’s government has been toppled…” I rested my hand on the table, “and all these dominos have fallen since we attacked Iran to avenge the zombie outbreak. Surely we must accept some responsibility.”
“Horse-shit,” McNab said again. “Iran got everything it deserved. What happens there now isn’t our responsibility. Our duty is to America, and to protect the American people, by any means… any means deemed suitable by the President. We might not be able to protect the rest of the world at the moment, but we can damned sure protect ourselves, and the message to Iran and anyone else who wants to take a punch at America was sent loud and clear – fuck with us, and we’ll fuck you over.”
I sat back in my chair and drummed my fingers on the edge of the table. McNab took a bite of his sandwich and then stabbed the fork in my direction. “What else do you want to ask?”
“What about the United Nations?”
“What about it?”
“Well… why didn’t we go to the United Nations over what Iran did? Wouldn’t that be the normal way to deal with the kind of international act of terrorism they perpetrated? Sanctions could have been called for. Iran could have been pariahed by the rest of the world.”
“Sanctions? Fucking sanctions?” McNab spat the words at me. I was playing Devil’s Advocate. Personally I was delighted we had bombed the Iranians back to the Stone Age, but in the interests of journalism I wanted to put the question to the Secretary of State.
“Sanctions don’t work,” McNab said. “Never did and never will. You’re talking about trying to slowly strangle the life out of an Islamic nation that has vowed an eternal struggle against the West.” He jabbed a finger at me and his eyes took on a peculiar gleam of passion. “That’s the point here. Sanctions would have been a slap on the wrist. We wanted to punch them in the nose, and then kick them in the balls. That’s why we bombed the fuckers.”
“And the United Nations? Was there ever a thought within the Government to gather collective support for the attack?”
“No.”
“Why? We did that in the Middle East before.”
“Because we didn’t need anyone’s support, and we sure as hell didn’t need anyone’s approval. You fuck with us, we fuck you over,” he used the phrase for a second time.
I could understand why this man had become so popular across the country, despite – or perhaps because – of his confrontational, abrasive nature. He was a throwback to the glory days of America when men like John Wayne were film stars.
“Do you realize how close we came to total collapse?” he asked me around a mouthful of food. “Do you have any understanding of just how perilous our situation was when the terror of the apocalypse first broke out in Florida?”
I shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t really a question I could answer. I frowned down at my food for a moment. “How close?”
McNab pressed his fingers together like he was taking a pinch of air. “This close,” he said, giving the words and the gesture heavy emphasis. “We were on the very fucking verge of falling apart.”
“Until?”
“Until our President closed the border to Canada and Mexico and stopped everyone fleeing the country. When he went on television and gave his, ‘United we Stand’ speech, everything began to turn around.”
I leaned forward and pushed what was left of my tuna salad sandwich aside. “Closing the borders caused riots,” I said, remembering those frantic first weeks of utter panic that gripped the nation. “It was anarchy, and troops had to be posted. Troops that could have been used protecting the defensive line the Army had created against the spread of the zombies.”
McNab nodded. It was the first time he had actually conceded a point. “You’re right,” he said. “For the first few weeks everything hung in the balance. That’s why the President made his address. And that’s when everything began to settle.”
“Could you explain that to me?”
“You mean the why and the wherefore?”
“Yes.”
McNab rubbed his chin. I caught another glance of the expensive cufflinks. They were out of character for the man, as was the suit and tie. He struck me as someone more comfortable in work clothes than dressed like an over-priced lawyer.
“Closing the borders made a statement. It said, loud and clear to the American people, ‘this is where we are, and we’re making a stand. If we go down, we do it together. If we get out of this mess it’s because we stand together’.”
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled. The Secretary of State had just quoted from the President’s famous speech almost word-for-word.
“And you think that made a difference?”
“I know it did,” McNab said earnestly. “I saw it in the way people responded, the way they reacted. They went from fighting to keep their family alive to fighting to keep America alive. People began to band together. We stopped being individuals and became united again. Men volunteered for duty. They stepped up, knowing that protecting America was the best way to protect their own families. We saw people begin to give and share again. We saw Americans at their finest. That’s what the President did when he gave that address. He reminded everyone of who they were, and he got us fighting for each other again.”
I picked up my glass and stared down into the contents like I was a fortune teller trying to divine some clairvoyant glimpse of the future. I looked up at last. McNab was staring at me.
“Will we ever recover?” I asked.
McNab nodded his head. “We will,” he sounded certain. “It’s going to take a lot of time. We’ve got to get the nation back on its feet and we’ve got to rid Florida of the infected, but we will recover,” the Secretary of State declared. “But we won’t be the same. We can’t be – not after all we have endured and the damage that has been done. When we come out of this, and when we’re ready to be part of the world again, we’ll be a different America… but better and stronger because of it. You mark my words.”
/>
THE ATLANTIC OCEAN:
SOMEWHERE OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA
The sky was a sullen endless vista of clouds the color of old bruises as the ship steamed north. I was standing on the port side, the wind blowing into my face. As the warship’s bow cleaved through the rolling swell, a fine mist of sea spray fell like rain. It was uncomfortable – not the ideal place for an interview, and yet the sailor standing beside me didn’t even seem to notice.
He was aged in his mid thirties – a man with a mop of black hair and one of those wicked smiles that flashed mischief every time he talked. His eyes were dark, his facial features animated. He had the stub of a cigar jammed into the corner of his mouth and there was a sense of world-weariness about him – as if he were an old soul in a young man’s body. He took a deep breath, like the smell of the salty air was invigorating.
Gunners Mate 1st Class, D.K Murphy swept his gaze towards where the distant Florida coastline lay, somewhere beyond the grey heaving horizon.
We were aboard USS Mahan DDG-72, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. The Mahan was one of the Navy’s guided missile destroyers that had been built around the formidable Aegis Combat System. The ship was a multi-role vessel, bristling with weaponry that included over ninety missiles.
“What was it like to be part of the Navy’s fleet during the apocalypse?” I asked the sailor. When we had first met he had insisted I call him ‘Murph’. The man frowned, as though he was rummaging around in his mind for the right words.
“We were part of the Navy’s bombardment once the dreads had been pushed back into Florida,” he explained. “At that stage the zombies were being crushed by the army, but there was still no defensive line along the Florida border. That was why the Atlantic Fleet was called in – we shelled the north of Florida while the army engineers threw up the final defensive trenches.”
I nodded. The ship nosed her bow into another wave and a wash of seawater came slopping along the deck.
“Do you remember what other ships were involved in that bombardment, Murph?”
He smiled easily. “Hell,” he rubbed his chin, “I think the whole damned fleet must have been out there. It seemed like you could have walked the entire coast of Florida from one bow to the next stern. We were just one long grey line steaming up and down the coast, raining hate, hell and discontent in its wake.”
“And what was your role in the conflict?” I asked. “I was told you were part of a gun crew. Is that right?”
Murph nodded his head. He snatched the stub of the cigar from the corner of his mouth. “I was Mount 51 gun captain of the MK45, 5in 54.”
I stared at Murph and he must have seen the utter bewilderment in my eyes. It was as if he had suddenly begun speaking in a foreign language.
“What does that mean?”
He smiled, and the expression twisted and contorted the rest of his facial features. “It means I was in charge of making sure the gun went ‘boom’ when it was supposed to, and kept on going ‘boom’ until it wasn’t.”
I turned and glanced over my shoulder, staring back along the superstructure of the ship. “Was it that gun?” I asked, pointing like a wide-eyed child at the forward weapon, closest to the bow.
Murph nodded. “The weapon itself is above deck, and the control and ready loader room sits just below it. It was Johnson and me on the control panel, and down in the deep mag Smitty was in charge of our ammo handler crew.”
“Deep mag?”
Murph nodded. I think it was then that he finally realized I knew nothing at all about ships or their weapons because from that point on in the interview he went to great pains to explain everything in more detail.
“The deep mag is the ammo load point for the weapon. It’s three decks down,” he said.
I made the kind of facial expression that showed I was impressed. I had no idea so many men and so much complex design went into the firing of a naval gun.
I clung for the ship’s rail. The sea was becoming more agitated. The swells were rising. I heard the distant sound of rumbling thunder and the wind became biting cold. I looked longingly back towards the shelter and warmth of the ship’s superstructure again and then sighed wistfully.
“What exactly was your task during the bombardment of the Florida border?” I asked. My teeth were starting to chatter.
Murph wedged the end of his cigar back into the corner of his mouth before he answered. Remarkably it made no difference to the way he spoke.
“We were tasked with drawing away and destroying as many of the undead from where the engineers were building the fortification lines as we possibly could,” Murph said. “The Marines and Army artillery units were doing the same sort of thing from behind the lines.” He paused and shrugged his shoulders. “We were in a much better position to accomplish the task. Every round we fired not only killed dreads, but also drew them towards the sea and away from that line.”
“How did you draw them away?” I asked.
Murph smiled. “Nifty tricks,” he said, and winked at me. I waited.
“We started our first barrage at 0300hours, well before sunrise. We did it on purpose, you see. We began firing starshell illumination rounds.” He gestured with his hands to help me understand. “They’re kind of like a giant flare. They make a shit load of noise and explode in bright colors. Like a firework,” he decided the word was more descriptive than ‘flare’.
“We were trying to lure the dreads – so we were firing all kinds of shit we knew would attract their attention.”
I help up my hand. “Can we go somewhere else?” I asked impulsively. My lips were turning blue and I was sure I was losing feeling in my feet. Murph looked at me quizzically.
“You cold?”
“No,” I muttered the lie. “I just need to write this all down. I don’t want to miss anything,” I shrugged apologetically.
Murph stared at me for another long moment and then nodded his head reluctantly. He pulled the cigar from between his lips and glanced at it with regret. He tossed the stub over the rail with an expression on his face like he was burying a close friend at sea.
He led me along the deck and through a door. We walked through narrow passageways lined with steel pipes. The air smelled faintly of stale sweat and engine grease. Murph led me to the mess deck and we sat on opposite sides of a small table. I found my notebook.
“You were saying?” I looked past the blank page. Murph leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head.
“We lobbed the flares as far inland as we could reach – that was about thirteen miles, and we set ‘em to go off high up, so the dreads would be sure to see and hear them from even further away. That went on until sunrise. Every hour or so, we’d drop some Willy Pete a little closer to the coast.
“Willy Pete?”
“Phosphorous rounds,” Murph explained. “They burn bright and long. We kept dragging the zombies towards the shore. Every time we fired we were shortening the range.”
“To lure them towards the coast, right?”
Murph nodded. “Just like a carrot on a stick.”
“And you said you kept these flares and phosphorous rounds firing until sunrise?”
Murph nodded. “By dawn all the dreads close enough to hear or see the initial cannon fire were piling up on the beach. That was when the frigates opened fire on the fuckers,” he said with sudden relish. “There were special boat units and SEALs just off shore – a little past the breakers. They were in fast boats. They were spotting groups of undead and then calling in fire missions.”
I wrote all this down as quickly as I could while Murph watched me with a curious kind of fascination. I glanced up and he was still watching me.
I blinked. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
Murph shook his head. “Just wondering how you do it,” he said.
“What?”
“Your job. Being a journalist. Is it hard?”
“It can be,” I admitted. “But not as hard as serving your coun
try like you have done.”
Murph smiled again. The darkness seemed to drift away from his expression. I had the sense that the Navy was not just a job for this man. It was his life.
I steered the conversation back to things that mattered. My work was not one of them.
“What happened at sunrise, Murph? Did the artillery barrage continue?”
The man shook his head. “Come daybreak the carrier started launching unmanned recon drones. They flew inland at high altitude, but flew back low as possible. You see we were doing everything we could to keep the dreads moving towards us, and away from the engineers digging the trenches. Every time the drones spotted a big enough group within our range we’d shower the area with high explosive – high frag rounds. The shells were armed with mechanical time fuses so they would go off in the air and rain shrapnel.” Murph’s gaze became distant for a moment. He shifted his weight on the chair trying to make himself more comfortable. “Every once in a while the drones would catch sight of a big group way inland and one of the cruisers in the flotilla would send a missile down range.”
I flipped over to a new page and then stopped suddenly, my pen poised, as a question came to me. It was spontaneous. It just spilled from my mouth in a moment of curiosity.
“Were you scared?”
Murph looked at me like he didn’t understand. He shrugged his shoulders. “No…” he said slowly, his voice kind of guarded.
I shook my head as though I wanted to erase the question and replace it with a better one. “I mean were you scared about your own role in the bombardment? There must have been some pressure on you when it came to firing and being effective, right?”
Murph straightened suddenly, and in that moment his demeanor seemed to change. He had been a laid-back and casual since we had begun talking, but now there was a flicker of some deep and significant passion in his eyes. He stared at me.
“This was the Navy’s time,” he began, his eyes fixed and unwavering. “We hadn’t performed a major bombardment since the Vietnam War. It has always been the missile men or the flyboys for as long as I can remember.” He clenched his fist. “This was the hour of the gun.”
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