Suddenly I froze, then backed up what seemed like a thousand miles, even though it was just a few feet. “Honey, stay back!” I held up my hand to stop her.
Lucia stopped short, confused. “What’s wrong?” She took a step toward me, her arms wide. “You’re alive! Thank God!”
“Don’t take another step, please.” The words stuck in my throat. “I’m infected. I have TSJ. These open cuts could infect you too.”
Lucia looked at me for what seemed like an eternity. Very slowly, she walked over and took my hand. The world disappeared. It was just the two of us. No flames or screams or gunfire.
“I can’t touch you,” I stammered. “I can’t kiss you; I can’t hold you. I’m alive only because of—”
Lucia pressed a finger to my lips. She looked at me with the tenderest expression I’d ever seen, a mixture of love and commitment. I got weak in the knees. She didn’t say a word as she wrapped her arms around my neck and brought her face inches from mine.
“For days I thought you were dead,” she said, very slowly. “Every second of every minute of every hour of those days was hell. Worse than hell. It was like being dead in life. I never want to go through that again.”
Before I could stop her, she kissed me. The kiss was brief, gentle, and loving, but our saliva mixed.
“Now I’m infected too,” she said, calmly. “I choose it voluntarily. If that’s our destiny, so be it. I have to live the rest of my life with you, no matter how long or how short, until we draw our last breath. Now we’re joined forever.”
“Joined forever,” I repeated, overwhelmed by her devotion.
We kissed again, longer and more passionately this time. Never, no matter how many years passed, would I taste another kiss like that, there in the desolate ruins of Bluefont.
48
Bathed in sweat, the Reverend Josiah Greene woke up and felt for the lamp. Then his hand slid past his Bible to a bottle of Cladoxpan. His nightmare faded as he took a long drink.
He’d dreamed about that damn lawyer. He was riding on a mule, dressed like Jesus Christ with a halo encircling his head. Greene and the rest of the apostles were walking beside him, gazing up at him, but not understanding what was going on. The lawyer suddenly turned and said, “You are the weed in my vineyard, Josiah. You’re a snake in the nest. I must cut off your head.”
Greene protested and tried to defend himself, but the apostles surrounded him, grim-faced. The Son of God slowly trotted away on his mule. Perched on the mule’s withers was a huge orange cat that winked at Greene, smirking.
The apostles—all with Malachi Grapes’s face—turned into Undead and devoured him. A black shadow, dark as the deepest night, floated overhead, relishing the scene.
It was just a crazy dream, Greene told himself. But he couldn’t shake off the terror that had invaded his body. When he got up to take a piss, pain exploded in his right knee. The reverend screamed and grabbed his leg. It wasn’t the familiar pain he felt when something was about to happen. No. This was infinitely worse. A million times stronger. If the usual pain was the flame of a cigarette lighter, this pain was a nuclear explosion.
He dragged himself, cursing, to the bathroom. He lived on the top floor of city hall, in a space renovated to his specifications. There weren’t many luxuries: a twin bed, a wooden desk and chair, and a huge crucifix hanging on a wall. A safe was bolted to the floor in a corner of the room. That was all he needed. The Lord provided the rest.
He swallowed a handful of Vicodin to deaden the pain. Then he heard gunfire coming from the ghetto. He’d ordered the “cleansing of the ghetto” that afternoon. A voice told him it was the right time. Those who were not pleasing in the eyes of the Lord must die. Jesus Christ, in His infinite goodness, would allow him to save a couple thousand. They could atone for their sins by doing His work before they died. But that was all. The fire of the archangel Gabriel must lay waste to those sinners, and he was the archangel’s instrument. He leaned on the windowsill in the bathroom and waited for the painkillers to take effect, still trembling from his nightmare. It had seemed so real.
A dark foreboding flooded over him. Something really terrible was about to happen. His knee was never wrong. He yelled, louder than he had ever yelled before.
As if fate heard his cries, explosions erupted in the ghetto. Grapes must be having trouble taking out those helot bastards.
Grapes. He was getting too hard to control. He was very smart and fanatically loyal, but a streak of madness made him unpredictable. He’d been an effective instrument for the Lord, but his time was coming. Greene told himself he had to get rid of that man. Maybe an accident. Or poison. The Lord would show him the way.
As Greene pondered this, a massive explosion shook the building. A huge fireball rose in the sky over the refinery, sending glowing chunks of steel into the air.
Reverend Greene’s testicles shrunk into balls of ice. His knee throbbed with a steady beat he’d never felt before. Thump, thump, thump. Like drums at an execution.
Greene shook off those morbid thoughts and went back into his room. He threw on clothes and ordered the guards in the hall to be on alert.
Still half-dressed, he opened the safe. Inside, along with a file crammed with photos that were for the reverend’s eyes only and a couple of sacks of precious stones, lay his Colt M1911 and two cartridges. Greene loaded the pistol and stuck it in his jacket pocket. Time to defend his kingdom. The moment had come to be the instrument of the Lord. The black shadow asleep inside of him stirred uneasily.
Hong’s tanks made their way through the town like a hot knife cutting through butter. The convoy came up against just a few scattered groups of militiamen in the crossroads. They were no match for the colonel’s disciplined troops, who decimated them with insulting ease. Defending themselves wasn’t the problem. The damn problem was—they were lost.
In the dark, the city was a maze. They couldn’t stop to get their bearings because civilian snipers were firing on them from every direction. Little did those civilians know, a few minutes later, they’d face a far worse threat—wave after wave of Undead.
When his convoy reached an intersection, Colonel Hong grunted in satisfaction. At the end of a long, deserted street flanked by houses, he spotted the ocean. Anchored in port like a sleeping giant floated a huge oil tanker. Its lights were on and sailors prowled the deck. He’d located his target. But that wasn’t enough—not anymore.
“Kim, take half the men and attack the port. Seize that ship intact. Capture at least one crew member who can tell us where they got the oil. Start the engines and be ready to sail as soon as the rest of us are on board. We may have to fight our way there, so stay on high alert.”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Kim mumbled, worried about the responsibility that suddenly fell on his shoulders. Avoiding the colonel’s icy stare, he dared to ask a burning question. “Where are you going, sir?”
Hong held up the bottle of Cladoxpan as if it were a priceless jewel. “I’m going to find the source of this.” The colonel could hardly contain his excitement. “When I find it, we’ll be celebrated for all eternity.”
The helots’ convoy sped toward the inner wall. Prit and I were crammed into a garbage truck with Mendoza. At the south bridge into Gulfport, a powerful spotlight shone down on us from one of the massive towers. A figure stood up and shouted into a megaphone. We couldn’t make out his words over the roar of engines and the explosions dotting the city, but you didn’t have to be a genius to guess what he meant. From the other tower, bullets rattled down on our tanks.
“Let’s get ’em!” Mendoza yelled into the radio.
The driver of the tank answered him by ramming the vehicle into the gate that separated Gulfport from the Bluefont ghetto. Unlike the outside gates, it wasn’t reinforced. With the first blow, one of its hinges flew through the air, but the second one held fast. From the towers, frightened
militiamen started lobbing grenades. One of their grenades slid through the air vent of the tank in the lead. The tank exploded like a piñata full of firecrackers, bringing down the gate. Flames shooting out from the tank sent up thick smoke that curled around the tower, blinding the guards.
That’s when panic spread among the militiamen. Grapes’s convoy had just whizzed past them in the opposite direction, and they could hear explosions and gunfire coming from the other end of town. On top of that, two hundred armed and angry helots had just blown up their gate. The militiamen took off, racing home to protect their families. Ignoring the four Green Guards in charge, they scattered in a disorderly mess.
In all the confusion, the rest of our convoy crossed into Gulfport. It was the helots’ first time on that side. As for me, I was heading back into the lair of those Aryan cocksuckers.
For the hundredth time since the night began, Grapes asked himself, Is this a nightmare? What started as a simple operation had turned into a disaster. The “cleansing of the ghetto” was a fiasco, and now some unknown group was demolishing the eastern part of Gulfport. What else could go wrong? With a shudder, he realized he no longer had the upper hand.
He’d positioned a hundred men along the inner wall to monitor the helots’ movements. He was sure that the towers on the bridge and the beating he’d given those fucking helots would keep the rest quiet and confined in the ghetto while he dealt with the intruders.
He was counting on one key element to work in his favor: he knew the city better than this new threat, whoever they were.
Redemption Avenue (named Fourth Avenue before Greene arrived) was one of the main roads into town. Grapes knew that the mystery army had blown up the refinery. From there it would have to travel down Redemption to reach the center of town. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.
He stationed four hundred men along both sides of the wide street, hidden behind hedges and on rooftops. Residents were scared shitless when the heavily armed men, covered in dirt and sweat, rushed in and transformed their living rooms into machine gun nests. Down the middle of the road, they placed antitank mines they’d taken from the Seabees’ storehouse. And then they waited.
Hong’s convoy sped through the streets of Gulfport, sweeping away the weak resistance in its path. It was a very risky blitz; their flanks were completely exposed. But Hong was heeding the call of battle. He’d bet everything on speed. Hit like lightning, destroy the enemy, and get out before the enemy could react. So far, that strategy was working.
A wide street stretched out before them. In the background, he could make out a large, brightly lit building with a giant white flag emblazoned with a green cross. Hong’s smile grew wide. That had to be his goal.
A rumble alerted Grapes. He stood up and peered out the hatch of his Humvee, which was hidden behind some tall bushes, and spotted the source of the sound. At the end of the street was a column of heavy vehicles headed up by a tank with a bright red star painted on its side. In the flickering streetlights, the star looked like blood.
The convoy was advancing at full speed. One hundred feet, fifty, twenty, ten . . . Then the first tank ran over a mine in the street.
Hong’s BTR-60 shook like a matchbox when the tank in the lead blew up in a blinding cloud of fire and dust.
“Mines!” the panicked driver shouted and swerved.
The BTR rocked violently as it sped around the burning wreck of the first tank. Then another tank ran over a mine and disappeared in a huge flash. Bodies and twisted metal leapt skyward in grotesque pirouettes, and a violent, mottled fire licked at the sides of the other tanks.
“It’s an ambush!” Hong shouted. “Circle up and return fire!”
The colonel cursed himself. They couldn’t keep going at full speed if they were in the middle of a minefield. They’d have to battle their way through.
The militiamen howled with excitement when the first tank flew through the air. They roared even louder when the second tank set off another mine.
“Kill ’em!” Grapes roared, feeling his confidence reborn. “Kill ’em all!”
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Kim’s group made it to the port without a hitch. They entered through a single gate, which stood wide open. The militiamen who should have been guarding it had fled when they saw the convoy of tanks. The BTRs roared up to the ship. Meeting no resistance, Kim and half his soldiers jumped out in the harbor parking lot.
Kim studied the Ithaca for a few seconds, mesmerized by its size. He spotted three ramps leading up to the ship, so he divided his men into three squadrons. He led the first group as it stormed the tanker.
The moment he set foot on the deck, he came face-to-face with a very young, very confused red-haired officer.
“Hey! What the hell’re you doing here? You can’t—” The young officer didn’t finish his sentence. A bullet from Kim’s Makarov pierced his chest and he collapsed, dead before he hit the deck.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Move it!” Kim urged his men.
Shots rang out throughout the ship as the Korean squadrons fought their way into the bowels of the Ithaca. The lieutenant had no choice but to divide his squadron into smaller groups. It was the only way to gain control of the entire ship and its miles-long corridors. He had more than one hundred men and the element of surprise in his favor. A handful of sailors were no match for them.
Something hot whizzed past his ear. Kim ducked as a second bullet struck the bulkhead behind his head. The Korean looked up and saw a stocky man with a thick white beard and a captain’s uniform leaning over the gunwale on the bridge above him. The man was firing with homicidal rage.
“Look out!” the lieutenant yelled to his men, but the captain’s next bullet pierced the head of the soldier next to him.
“Climb up, Lieutenant!” A sergeant pointed to a metal ladder bolted to the tanker’s wall.
Kim raced up the ladder to the bridge, followed by a handful of soldiers. As they climbed, the captain picked them off, one by one, and they fell back on the deck.
The lieutenant’s lungs felt like they were going to explode. Fear and anger propelled him around the limp bodies and up the last blood-soaked steps.
When Kim broke into the bridge, the captain turned, gripping his rifle. His weapon was unwieldy in such close quarters, but he still opened fire. A bullet hit Kim in the hip, throwing him against the gunwale. The lieutenant grabbed on to anything he could as the captain struggled to load the next bullet.
Kim raised his pistol and fired twice. The first bullet struck the captain in the stomach. The second entered his chest, right below his name tag. The man doubled over, let out a long moan, and collapsed on the deck.
Kim limped over to him. He realized he was the only survivor from his small squadron.
The captain looked up, anger glowing in his eyes. “You . . . yellow . . . bastard,” he muttered, his lips stained with blood. Then his head dropped onto his chest and he stopped breathing.
Kim checked the captain’s pulse to make sure he was dead, then looked around. He was standing in the doorway to the bridge. He wished he’d taken the captain alive, but he was sure that the ship’s charts and a map of its last route were somewhere on the bridge.
The lieutenant was euphoric despite his wound. They were going to make it.
His gaze drifted to the ship’s deck. Shooting was heavy at the back of the tanker, but the front of the ship was under their control. The lieutenant saw the soldiers on the bow advancing to the back to take out the sailors who still resisted.
They stopped at a fence that stretched from one side of the deck to the other. Even from atop the bridge, the lieutenant detected his soldiers’ confusion.
The commanding officer rammed the fence several times, but it held tight. Then he made a decision. Kim watched helplessly as the officer placed an explosive charge at the base of the fence and ordered his men to back up.
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“Noooooo!” Kim yelled, waving his arms in desperation. But it was too late.
About half of the thousands of tons of oil the Ithaca had transported to Gulfport were still in the bowels of the ship. Highly flammable petroleum gases took up the rest of the space in the hold. Normally, inert gas filled that space, but the ship’s gas exchanger was damaged and there were no replacement parts for a thousand miles.
The charge ripped out a section of the fence. It also blew up a hose connected to a hold filled with petroleum gas. The fire reached that hold half a second after the explosion. The gases, concentrated under enormous pressure, flared like a match, generating a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees.
Before Kim’s desperate cry had faded, the Ithaca flew through the air in the most gigantic explosion Gulfport had ever seen.
49
Grapes fired with maniacal fury. Although he and his men had the assholes in the convoy (Were they Chinese? Japanese?) pinned down behind their tanks, they couldn’t get a clear shot at them.
Grapes had to admit that those yellow assholes were very good. They rebounded quickly from the mines, falling back in an orderly line, returning fire, never wavering, always hitting their target. A tall, gaunt officer moved behind them, shouting orders rapid-fire. Grapes tried to take him out several times, but he was too far away and didn’t stay in one place for long.
Those Chink soldiers had tried to flank Grapes’s men, but he’d outsmarted them by stationing his men on the side streets to ambush them. But both sides were equally matched at street fighting. They fought dirty, with knives, bayonets, even their fists. Nobody gave an inch.
A burst of bullets hit the Green Guard next to him in the back, and the Aryan fell dead without a word. Grapes’s jaw dropped. Where the hell did those shots come from?
The Wrath of the Just (Apocalypse Z) Page 28
