Cobb just grimaced. “Hadn’t even thought about that,” he said.
“Wonder how long the dams will last?” Gunny asked. “I’d hate to be below the Hoover when it goes.”
General Carson started speaking again, probably mindful of the uproar he had just caused, but plowing on anyway. “Right now, our greatest concern is the reactors melting down when the generators run out of fuel. When this happens, there will no longer be any water flowing over the nuclear rods to cool them. They will boil off the water in their tanks and start melting through the concrete floors. There are 100 active reactors in the United States and 185 in Europe, so there will be nearly 300 Fukushima type meltdowns spreading radioactivity everywhere the wind blows.”
At every radio listening in around the world, there was quiet. Translators quickly explained what the American General had said. Everyone was speechless as it sunk in. It didn’t matter if they survived the zombies. They would all die of radiation poisoning. An unseen enemy that you couldn’t fight. Hair would start to fall out. Your teeth. Bleeding gums. Open sores. Death.
Gunny waited for him to continue, his mind racing. He said there were safe areas where the winds wouldn’t carry the radiation. He had to find out where and then get on the road to get his family. They were smart. He knew his wife was alive, and if she had survived the initial onslaught of the dead, she would stay alive.
That’s what killed everyone so quickly, the speed of it happening, the surprise of trying to render aid and then being attacked. Not knowing your enemy. But she had lived long enough to figure it out. She was a tough one. She’d shrugged off the difficulty of all those years of military separations, raising their son by herself.
She camped and hiked and shot a gun as well as anybody. She was fit and she was savvy. Once a person lived through the first hour of the outbreak, they knew what they were up against, knew not to run in to try to help a coworker who was having their face ripped off if you were unarmed. Knew not to get bit ,and knew if someone you were with did have a bite mark, that they would become one of the undead.
She had survived. He knew it. If he went in with enough firepower, he could blast his way all the way up to the roof and get them out. He was rolling at first light. Grab a bag of coffee to dip like tobacco, and hammer down until he got there. Maybe see if any of the drivers had a few California Turnarounds they could spare. That would keep him awake for however long it took. Remember to grab a pack of smokes, too.
Not that he liked smoking store bought cigarettes, he hadn’t had any in years. But they made a great alarm clock if your body absolutely had to take a nap. A lit cigarette, stuck between your ring and pinky fingers, would burn for about 10 minutes and then wake you up when the cherry started burning your skin.
You simply did not sleep through that alarm, no matter how tired you were. Too late now, but he should have stopped at an auto parts store while they were out and grabbed a bunch of off road lights to add to his rig. Maybe tomorrow. Then it would be easier to drive at night. Light up the road for a mile with some super bright halogens.
He stopped his rambling thoughts as the General came back on. “That is the worst case scenario,” he repeated. “It isn’t necessarily that dire. With this newest set of prints from the last flyover that happened just minutes ago, we have confirmed a silver lining in this disaster. I’ll lay this out briefly, so you understand how important it is for any of you out there not to take matters into your own hands and attack any mosques.
”We know this plan of theirs has been in the making for years. The purchase of the meat packing plants, the defenses in place to throw up overnight in the Middle East, the placing of many Muslims in high ranking positions in the Governments all around the world, the call for ALL Muslims to go to Mecca this year, and the list goes on.
“The data was there, no one saw it. By going through the NSA data of visas issued, there has been an inordinate amount of nuclear scientists and students flooding into the States over the past month. By checking shipping and purchase records, every Mosque in America has been quietly fortifying itself with massive amounts of food.
“People, we confirmed tonight that those same Mosques are all up and running. None have been overrun by the dead, and in their parking lots, they have similar heavy duty equipment that some of you near Reno have built. Except the trailers they are pulling appear to be modified tankers with external refrigeration units attached to them. We have no records indicating they are heavily armed, but our guess would be yes.
“They have been gearing up for this for a while, and from what we can determine, they are planning on removing the radioactive rods from the power plants. We don’t know what they are going to do with them, but if they planned this far in advance, I’m pretty sure they have a safe disposal site picked out. So that’s the good news. Our conquerors plan on saving the land for themselves, not leaving it uninhabitable for a thousand years.”
Cobb spat on the floor. Gunny felt the same. That word ‘conquerors’ didn’t sit well.
“This is why there has been no retaliation,” the General continued. “We must let them think they have won, that we are powerless. We must let them finish their plan of shutting down all of the nuclear power plants before we engage, because frankly gentlemen, if they don’t do it, it won’t get done. We can’t determine if any of the European Mosques have laid up supplies, but our guess is yes. We can see large tanker trucks near all of them so we would assume the same plan is being carried out there.”
“Don’t know if I can do it,” Griz said, his fists clenched. “I’d be hard pressed to drive by a hajji and not put a few rounds in him.”
The General went on for a few more minutes, detailing more of what they knew, but it basically boiled down to leave any Muslims you may see alone, do not interfere. Let them decommission the power plants first, then we would do our best to annihilate them. After the big news, the General told the rest of the world they should go to the European, the Russian, or the Chinese channel, whichever one was the closest to them. They had all been working on computer simulations for their areas and would share any more information they had about safe locations.
He was going to spend some time with the North American groups he was in contact with, relay what little bit of information he had that affected them directly. When he finally got around to answering questions from the Three Flags group, making them wait until last, Gunny found out that the satellites hadn’t picked up anything from the roof of the Hartwell Tower, or any sign of live people at the high school.
The General said the GPS units would work for another five to ten years, as those satellites were in high orbit, but the spy satellites would all be down in 18 to 24 months. That’s how long they had an eye in the sky. By then, if the Chinese guys were right, most of the zombies wouldn’t be so agile and fast, and they could start rebuilding instead of hiding out and surviving.
He’d rather fight some shambling thing any day, over a raging monster twice as strong and fast as him. He’d also learned that, just going by rough estimates, there were a lot more people in the world than just the handful on the ham radios. For the few hundred or so they had been in communication with, they figured there were at least another ten thousand the computers had spotted from the flyovers, once they started them searching for certain parameters.
As the last of them at the Three Flags that had given Cheyenne Mountain an address to check on finished their questions and headed back to the dining room, Wire Bender said, “That’s the last, Sir.”
When Gunny got ready to leave, Cobb told him to wait. There was more. Gunny looked at him quizzically, but the old man’s gnarled face gave nothing away.
“Take it down to the secondary channel, Sergeant Kowalski,” came the General's curt reply.
As he adjusted the dials with his left hand, he slid the microphone over the counter toward Gunny.
“Sergeant Meadows, do you copy?” his voice came back.
Gunny sighed. Now what? Still wanting to kn
ow why I got kicked out? Still think I know more about the Muslim's plan?
“Private Meadows here, Sir,” he replied.
“Is the room secure?” came the General’s query.
What? Gunny glanced around. Just Cobb and Wire Bender were left.
“First Sergeant Cobb and Sergeant Kowalski are present,” he replied, unintentionally dropping his smart-ass attitude and falling back into his military bearing at the unusual question.
He heard the tail end of a heavy sigh as the General came back on. When he started talking again, he didn’t sound like his professional, unflappable self, didn’t sound like a General in the Army who was always in control, who always knew the answers.
He sounded like an exhausted man who had watched his country, and the world, fall apart in the last two days. He sounded like a man who had been run ragged trying to gather all of the information he had just spent the last few hours disseminating. A man utterly worn out from trying to help the only survivors in the world they were in contact with. Gunny wondered if he had slept at all in the last 48 hours, then felt like an ass for giving him a hard time. He needed to lighten up. This guy wasn’t the enemy, and was going above and beyond to help everyone.
“Sergeant Meadows,” he began. “I don’t even know where to start so I’m going to just ask you a few questions so we can ascertain a few things. It may not make much sense at first, but it is important, so I ask you to bear with me. I would appreciate sincerity in your answers.”
Well, that was a polite way of telling him to stop being a smartass. Gunny looked up at the clock. It was going on midnight. He wanted to leave in a few hours and needed to get some sleep.
“Yes, Sir. I’ll do my best.” Here it comes, he thought. Why did you get booted from the service? What the hell did it matter now to this guy, he wondered? If he thought he was going to draft him back into active duty, have him running around doing rescue missions of VIP’s or something, he had another thing coming. He was still trying to figure out what his angle was when the General asked, “Are you familiar with the order of presidential succession?”
Well, that came out of left field.
“Um, sort of,” he replied, wracking his brain, trying to recall high school Government classes. “It goes to the Vice President, then the Speaker of the House, then to senior cabinet members. I think.”
“Right,” the General said. “And if all cabinet members are presumed dead, including the Designated Survivor?”
What was all this about? What did his opinion on anything matter? He was a disgraced soldier, and now just a truck driver.
“I don’t know, Sir. I guess the highest ranking military officer.” Was this guy making a play at becoming president? Was he actually campaigning for votes? And really, what did it matter? Who cares who the president is? President of what? Three hundred million dead people?
Cobb and Wire Bender both had big grins plastered all over their mugs and Gunny knew the joke was on him, but hadn’t figured out what it was yet.
“No, son,” the General replied. “It has to go to an elected official. A person that holds, or has held, public office. The Constitution is clear on the separation of powers, and the Commander in Chief has to be a duly elected civilian. If a military man just decides to take over because there is an absence of power, that would make this country no better than some third world banana republic.
“The succession of power starts at the Vice President and then goes all the way down to the lowliest dog catcher in the smallest municipality. The one requirement, other than being of age and a natural born citizen, is that they are a public official, chosen to hold office, and elected to that office by their peers.”
Gunny waited for more, not knowing what to say. He’d never held public office, so the General wasn’t hinting at him to be a president. That was laughable.
When he didn’t reply, the General went on.
“Out of every name I have, of every known, living citizen in the United States, you are the only one that has ever held public office. You, by the best guesses of everyone here at NORAD, are the only person left alive who is legally qualified to be President.”
“Um,” Gunny said. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve never held any kind of office. I think you have the wrong guy.”
“It’s not an offer, Sergeant. It’s your duty. You swore an oath to the Constitution when you raised your right hand to join the service. That oath didn’t end when you got out. Weren’t you on the Greater Woodland School District Board?” he asked.
Gunny wracked his brain for a minute before remembering. “Yeah, but that was just a fluke. One of the board members moved out of state and they needed a fill-in until the next election. My wife was there for a PTA meeting and volunteered me as a joke. Since I was the only name presented, they told her I was it. Nobody wanted that job. I never even went to a single meeting!”
“That doesn’t matter,” General Carson came back. “It is an elected position, you were duly assigned a role in local politics. As near as we can determine, you are the next in line for the presidency.”
“Is this a fucking joke?” Gunny asked, incredulously.
Cobb and Wire Bender both were quietly laughing, knowing what had been coming as they had discussed this with NORAD earlier in the day.
“No, Sergeant, it is not,” came the reply, starting to sound annoyed. “You do, of course, have the right to refuse. But keep in mind, you are the only eligible person for the job that we have been able to find.
“Anybody could take over, claim to be President, but it wouldn’t be lawful, and that would make the United States, as we have known her for over two hundred and forty years, null and void.
“Someone is going to be in charge, and as we start to recover from this, there needs to be a clear and undisputed lawful leader. If not, any jumped up warlord can claim he’s the president, the king, the emperor, or the Grand Poobah!”
The General was starting to get worked up and was becoming more forceful.
“Essentially, this country will no longer exist and we will become another defeated state that has passed on into history. They will have won. The Continuity of Government is important, Sergeant! The longest America has ever been without a president before this was when JFK was killed. It took 99 minutes before Vice President Johnson could be sworn in aboard Airforce One. We haven’t had word of the President, or any Cabinet members, for almost 42 hours and we know they were all at the Friendship breakfast the Salaam Corporation had sponsored. This country does not exist without a government, without a president!”
The General was really getting passionate, starting to sound more like a pissed off First Sergeant. “So if you refuse the job, this nation as we have known it is over. Admiral Harris will assume the position as Commander in Chief, but the old America is defeated and we will be starting a new one.”
Gunny didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t right, dumping this on him and then throwing a guilt trip on top of it. It all seemed so pedantic, so unnecessary. He wasn’t a politician. He didn’t want the job. He didn’t know jack squat about how to be the leader of a nation.
Hell, he could barely take care of himself. Besides, what did it matter? There were only a few thousand survivors left. It would be a hundred years before there were enough people to care about electing someone for office. It seemed like a waste of energy to even think about it. There were much more important things to be worried about.
Cobb was serious all of a sudden. “Gunny,” he said. “You’ve got to do it. It’s just for show, it’s only on paper. It keeps this country a country, not just a bunch of enclaves trying to do what’s best for themselves. If you don’t, them goat-humping bastards won the war.”
“He’s right,” Wire Bender said. “It doesn’t change anything, man. Just name General Carson as your Vice and let him do all the heavy lifting.”
“I can do that?” Gunny asked, his mind racing, trying to find a way out of a bunch of responsibility he d
idn’t want to shoulder. The last time he had people depending on him, they all wound up dead.
“You can do anything, man. You’re the Prez,” Wire Bender replied. “You can find out what’s in Area 51, or if we really landed on the moon. You can even order them to help you save your old lady and your kid.”
“It’s only for a year, election is next November. Besides, if they do find someone else, a mayor or something,” Cobb said. “You can resign, let him take over.”
“Sergeant Meadows?” General Carson said.
“Yes,” Gunny replied almost instantly, hitting the press to talk button, grasping at Wire Bender’s last words before he could come to his senses and change his mind. Before he could tell them to keep looking, surely they had missed somebody. “I’ll take the job. And I’m naming you as Vice President.”
Carson balked, then started rattling off names of various people who would be a much better choice. Gunny had never heard of any of them and he already knew the General was a tireless man, with a good head on his shoulders.
“I think you’d make a great number two. You’re it. In addition to your current position. Um, Sir,” Gunny said.
“Now let’s get this whole swearing in stuff over with, I’m tired and I’ve got to get up at zero dark thirty. And please keep looking for somebody that’s actually qualified for this job.”
26
Lacy
Day 3
Twenty-Eighth Floor
They waited.
And waited.
One day turned into two.
Two into three.
They never saw a single airplane or helicopter out of the windows. They never saw the Army or the National Guard come, the streets never changed. The jammed roads were never cleared, the freeways remained impassable.
The fires raged and consumed whole neighborhoods, entire swaths of town. They had eventually burned themselves out, with the help of the thunderstorms, on the third day.
The Zombie Road Omnibus: The Road Kill Collection Page 22
