The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

by Meredith, Peter

  The last man standing there was a Lieutenant named Dent. Having been recently transferred from 3rd Battalion, Grey knew the least about him and his fighting qualities. “Dent, I want to hold 4th Platoon in reserve. Keep them ready and rested but have them set to go at a moment’s notice until the situation firms up. They’ll likely have a long night ahead of them.” Grey nodded, his casual signal that his officers had their orders and, unless there were any questions, they were to carry them out as quickly and efficiently as possible. He even left the dismissal of the men in their hands.

  He turned and began jogging up to the Stanley Hotel, his mind completely focused on the distant rifle fire, the fact that they were at war, and a thousand possible scenarios centered around an attack from the Azael. He was on the broad stairs leading up to the lower floor ballrooms when he heard from behind him: “Hey, Grey, wait up.”

  Deanna, looking golden and fresh-faced was running up the stairs toward him. She was breathless from the thin air and her bosom heaved appreciably. He wished he had time to appreciate it more; however, the firing in the east was picking up and the scent of war was strong in his nostrils; he had the business of battle to contend with.

  Behind her, and looking as though he was on the verge of passing out from the short run, was Neil Martin. Had it been only Deanna there, Grey would have clasped her hand, told her not to worry and then said good bye to her with a kiss, but for some reason, the sight of Neil with his no longer innocent blue eyes, triggered something.

  “Come with me,” he ordered the two. “Don’t speak unless spoken to. Stay near the back and try to keep out of the way. I get the feeling that the general is going to want to talk to you, Neil.”

  “But not me?” Deanna asked. “Then why am I going?”

  Neil grinned his lopsided grin and answered for Grey: “Probably because Johnston is less likely to curse me out with you there.”

  Grey could only shrug since that was exactly the reason he wanted Deanna in attendance. Johnston was unfailing polite around civilians, especially women and extra-especially polite around women who held themselves with the poise and grace that Deanna possessed. “He’s right,” Grey said, turning from them and speaking over his shoulder as he advanced up the stairs. “I know it’s a bit chauvinistic, but your presence may keep hackles from being raised. We both know how prickly Neil can get.”

  “Me?” Neil said. He clearly meant for it to be an exclamation of faux-outrage; however, after the twelfth stair, he could only husk the word out.

  “Yeah, you,” Grey answered. “Now concentrate on not fainting. Johnston frowns on grown men fainting in his presence.” Neil could barely gather the breath necessary to heave out a quick: Ha!

  Deanna looked less than pleased with her role, but she kept a stiff upper lip over it and said nothing.

  The three of them passed through the lower ballroom and into a large, stately room, what once had been a sitting room for the rich and pampered crowd of the 1920’s. Now it was the general’s office and was wallpapered with maps of the valley and furnished with a single economical desk that seemed lost in the large room.

  Johnston sat on the edge of the desk facing one of the maps. On either side of him were Colonels Aramo, Carny and Meade of the first, second and third Battalions. The General’s adjunct, Major Sayer, stood off to one side next to Major Reynolds who headed up the reinforced heavy weapons company. Standing among the various company commanders and looking as though he was trying hide was the last of the senior officers. Major Gilbert Wyatt, who was the commanding officer of the headquarters “battalion,” which was comprised of little besides a tiny logistics section, the Civilian Admin platoon and the twenty-person medical corps. Wyatt stood in the back, almost forgotten; he was a fine administrator, but not so much of a warrior.

  The general opened his full-lipped mouth in what Grey knew was going to be a hard rebuke for his being a minute late for the meeting, but then he saw the general’s attention slide over to Deanna and his hard eyes softened. The glare crept back when he noticed Neil. He brought a hand up to his clean-shaven chin and rubbed it, taking the small man’s measure.

  There was a flash of something between the two men and then it was gone. “Thanks for joining us, Mr. Martin and Ms Russell,” the general said with his usual gracious manner. “I was going to call upon you and now you’ve saved me the trouble. I’ll be with you in just a minute. First I have other matters to attend to.” He glanced back at the map, his dark eyes pouring over its details, seeing nuances that few noticed.

  “What do we know of the Azael?” he asked rhetorically. “They can corral the stiffs, that we’ve known for some time, but what else? They have declared war on us? Why? They claim we’re harboring fugitives, but to attack with such a force for a few lost pilgrims? I hardly think so.”

  Neil surprised Grey by answering before anyone else could: “We pilgrims as you call us are simply the excuse for war.” Grey shot him a look to which the smaller man gave only a tiny shrug before continuing: “Yes, we are the excuse, not the cause. But the answer is obvious to me. Why do any strong men resort to war on their neighbors?”

  When General Johnston turned his dark eyes on subordinates, they usually quailed under the fierce gaze. Neil, who had stood up to men and women of purest evil, didn’t blink an eye. Grey couldn’t help but smile. Johnston had an altogether different response: at first he tried to wither Neil with a hard eye and, when that didn’t work, he turned to Grey and, upon seeing his open smile, said: “Answer his question, please.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Grey said. “History suggests that there’s only one reason for unprovoked offensive warfare: the one nation perceives the other as weak.”

  “Exactly!” Johnston exclaimed. “And yet weakness is relative. From every perspective we can hardly be considered weak. We have a strong force of experienced and trained soldiers. And we are very nicely situated within a valley that is easily defended. So what does that suggest? That the Azael are either fools or they possess a force far stronger than we know.”

  “It could be both,” Neil said. Grey gave him a little nudge that he hoped conveyed: Time to zip your lip!

  Johnston pretended not to have heard. He looked over the room full of officers and asked: “What makes the Azael so confident?”

  Colonel Aramo gave a shrug and answered: “For starters, we know the Azael have a large force of zombies.”

  “And?” Johnston asked, his annoyance at the obvious answer clear on his face.

  Grey knew the answer as he was the one who had been debriefed under the razor sharp eyes of the general himself. Addressing the room, Grey said: “One of the Azael we were with let slip that: quote-We have some cool toys, too, unquote. I saw a few hundred canisters of Napalm, a few fifty cals and some mortars, but that was at a small depot. If I had to guess, I’d say they could also have some artillery, maybe a few gunships. Possibly some TOWs or worse, some MLRs.”

  Napalm was enough to shiver the guts of the toughest veteran, but it was only slightly more terrifying than a normal artillery round. The M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, on the other hand, was on a totally higher scale of fright. It could drop 2500 grenades over the size of a football field with pinpoint accuracy from thirty miles away. It could literally wipe out every living thing around any of the barricades in seconds.

  “My fears exactly.” Johnston glanced over at Major Reynolds and said. “Activate the radar systems. I want our anti-air up and running…”

  Just then the door of the office shot opened. Grey, Neil and Deanna spun, reaching for weapons, each still subject to reflexes honed by the constant danger of the last year. The other officers, though all tough men, had grown complacent in the last seven months. Their walls and out of the way location had made the zombie menace a nuisance only and their reflexes weren’t as finely honed as they had been.

  The person barging in on the staff meeting was one of the general’s admin people; a woman without rank on the faded and baggy ACU
s she wore; she was a civilian.

  “I’m so sorry for interrupting but we just got a call from the Red Gate,” she said, breathlessly. “There are stiffs coming up the Big Thompson.” She held out the brick-sized radio she was carrying to the general.

  Before taking it, Johnston glanced at the map; everyone did. They saw the winding river as it curved in and out along Highway 34, sometimes running next to it, sometimes looping around this or that range of hills. The area of the river adjacent to the Red Gate was two miles from the leading edge of Estes. It was perilously close.

  “Red Gate, this is Temple. How far down the river are they?” Johnston asked into the radio. “And what sort of numbers are we looking at?”

  The radio crackled static for a few seconds before it spat out: “The leading edge is just even with our position.” In the background, there was a chatter of small arms fire, lending urgency to his words. “As for the numbers, well...that I don’t know. The recon was carried out by a civilian. She claims a number that is not feasible.”

  “And what is that number?” Johnston asked.

  Again the radio crackled. “We believe that there may be some overflow from the highway. Possibly a few thousand.”

  Johnston squinted again at the map. He was just opening his mouth to make a reply when the radio crackled louder than before and there was a strange ruffling noise and a cry of: “Give me that!”

  This was followed by a voice Grey knew well. “Temple, this is Sadie Walcott. I saw a few thousand, yes but there are more, I guarantee it.”

  “And you base this on what?” Johnston asked.

  “On common sense.” Sadie’s tone was just as snotty as a teenager could manage. “What else but a butt-load more zombies could get the ones I saw moving upstream against the tide of the river? Is Captain Grey there? I should speak to him.”

  Grey felt suddenly lonely as his fellow officers drew away from him and cast cutting looks his way. Johnston let out a sigh, but didn’t offer the radio to Grey. “How about I talk to the soldier in charge there?” he asked.

  A second later: “Temple this is Red Gate Leader, over.”

  “Red Gate, do you have the manpower to do a proper recon?”

  “Negative Temple. We have stiffs on the hills to the south of us. There is a deer trail that they are using to flank us. We have a few thousand crawling like ants all over the place, but we are holding our own for the moment. Can I get an ETA on reinforcements?”

  Before the General could answer, Grey said: “Five minutes, sir. I have released two of my platoons to the area, and the third is following with munitions.”

  Grey’s commanding officer, Colonel Carney, glared with his eyes, but forced a smile and a nod as if the idea was his. As usual, Johnston saw the truth. “Without orders? Bold and dangerous, Grey. You can’t make such assumptions.”

  “I can when I don’t have orders to the contrary,” Grey replied. “I felt that the situation warranted a quick response and I knew that I could recall my men if I was given orders that contradicted…well, common sense, sir.”

  Johnston grinned, saying: “Had I been a young and daring captain of men, I would have done the same thing. It’s a wonder that more of you didn’t do something along the same line.”

  The assembled officers shifted from foot to foot at the suggestion that they weren’t also daring and bold—no soldier worth his salt wanted to be cast in a cowardly light and yet each knew the danger of overstepping their bounds. A false move could doom their men and sink their careers. And yet the rewards were in proportion as well.

  “Go, Captain Grey. Lead your men. Give me a proper recon on the situation at the river and stop those stiffs, if you can.”

  Grey paused only to grab Deanna’s hand and look into her beautiful blue eyes. She was afraid for him; he could see it in her face. The sound of the gunfire over the radio had been frightful and Sadie’s words had been taken as utter fact by her, Neil and Grey. He was going to pit his hundred or so men against tens of thousands of zombies and there wasn’t going to be a wall between him and their endlessly hungry teeth.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said, knowing that being careful wasn’t part of his orders. He was to lead his men and stop the horde with his handful of men, pitting their living flesh and blood against their eternal evil.

  Chapter 4

  Jillybean

  If facts were discarded and reality ignored, Jillybean was doing just dandy. Eve was under control. King Augustus and Duke Menis had not called on her in a few days and she had a friendly adult companion who looked out for her.

  Jillybean went around with these lies carefully overlooked and unexplored. She smiled at the Azael when they looked in her direction, and she pressed her lips tight when Eve laughed something horribly inappropriate into her mind, and she acted as though Kay wasn’t always walking about on the verge of hysterics with her hair hanging lank and untended and a tic working nonstop next to her right eye.

  The truth would have made her life unbearable. The truth was that the Azael spat on her and blamed her for the deaths of their friends. The truth was that Eve was like a time bomb…a nonstop, talking time bomb that was only waiting for Jillybean to show the smallest crack before she would pounce. The truth was that Kay was a quivering, blubbering bruised–up manikin that went about huffing under the weight of a twenty-five pound dumbbell.

  The dumbbell, as well as the handcuffs, was the Azael’s way of keeping Jillybean and Kay from running away. Jillybean was handcuffed to Kay’s right hand and the dumbbell was handcuffed to Kay’s left. Kay was a thin woman with arms like sticks. When she was forced to walk with the weight she could only move at a shuffle with her back bowed and her body quivering. Frequently, she was forced to stop even if she was just going to pee behind a bush. Kay thumped it down every chance she got.

  On top of all of this, the pair was stuck, riding in the same bus as the traveling whore-house. The sex slaves were so utterly cowed by the constant abuse that any attempt at escape was screamed from the rooftops. Kay was beaten only once for a supposed escape before Jillybean learned her lesson. She had been tired of the cuffs, which were in truth very simple devices, and decided to take them off for a spell. The little girl had the cuffs off the dumbbell in half a minute using a little flick of metal she had broken off a pen. A woman sitting in the next seat saw and raised an alarm.

  After an ugly brute of a woman, who doubled as both the driver and the guard, beat Kay with a stick, Jillybean gave up the little fleck of metal. From then on, Jillybean kept her secrets just that, secret. Still she longed for escape. She knew that she could, she just needed to get Kay alone in order to do it; this was a tall order now that they were winding with painful slowness up into the mountains.

  Jillybean had never been on a real mountain before. Sometimes the views were spectacular and sometimes they were altogether terrifying, but mostly they were imprisoning. The walls of the surrounding cliffs were almost always unassailable and even when they weren’t sheer they led only upward to scraggy, desolate peaks, all of which were freezing even though it was still July.

  This was a fact she had trouble wrapping her head around. Since the women on the bus were of little help and wouldn’t talk to her, Jillybean could only conclude that Colorado was in Australia, the land down under, where it was a well established fact that everything was a bit topsy-turvy.

  She knew only a handful of “facts” concerning Australia: toilets ran backwards down there and they had Christmas in the summer and went to the beach in January. It was all quite exciting and she looked forward to seeing her first kangaroo and her first Tasmanian devil, which she understood to spin like a tornado instead of running on its four legs.

  So far she hadn’t seen any animals except for birds and these stayed high up in the air and followed them as if they were lookouts for the invading army. The Azael army was very big, bigger than anything Jillybean had ever seen. Two days before, the king had pulled his fleet of trucks and army vehic
les over at a town called Lyons. It wasn’t much of a town and there weren’t any lions in view, much to Jillybean’s disappointment.

  The only things to see that were of any interest were the two “tanks” that the Azael had and the gobs of monsters being herded along. The tanks had very sharp angular noses, machine guns instead of big cannons and wheels instead of tracks. The Azael called them Strykers. More impressive than the tanks were the gazillions of monsters. A hundred Azael on their horses prodded the monsters forward, following a road that crept up through the foothills going north-west. The monsters marched past them for hours and hours. The afternoon wore away and still they slogged by in an endless parade.

  The king had summoned Jillybean to watch with him for part of the time. Kay was an afterthought who knelt down next to the dumbbell and did her best not to be noticed. The little girl was very nervous to be around the giant of a man, but she fought against the feeling—Eve grew stronger when she was afraid and there was no telling what she would do if she ever got free again.

  With difficulty, Jillybean swallowed her fear, and spoke first: “How many of them are there?”

  A shrug from Augustus was followed by: “This herd? Maybe a quarter of a million. It’s hard to tell, but hey, you’re the genius, you should be the one telling me.”

  Jillybean wrinkled her nose. “How would I know that?”

  “Some sort of math-shit, I suppose,” the king had said with a grunting laugh. The men around him laughed as well. Jillybean didn’t understand vulgarity as humor and only raised a dismissive brow and looked out over the marching zombies. She didn’t like their laughter; it was creepy and made Kay shake all the harder.

  “It’ll be ok,” Jilly said to the woman. How it would be, she didn’t know and she was glad that Kay didn’t ask. If she had, Jillybean would have been forced to confront the very real possibility that it wouldn’t be ok. Then she would be afraid and, slowly, Eve would take over, which would be horrible.