by J. Thorn
Pope paused before answering. “Handon spent most of his career hardening himself against all the killing he had to do. Came to think of terrorists as non-human. Operating with the Task Force, night after night, you almost had to. It was the only way to keep functioning. But these grandmothers, and these dead boys… well, they made him doubt his whole methodology. He found he was no longer able to just write Tangos off into some non-human category.”
“And now he feels the same about Zulus?”
Pope shrugged. “Who amongst us can prove him wrong?”
Henno had no answer to this.
* * *
Predator and Juice now emerged out on the flight deck, dressed out in physical training gear. They wanted to find the permitted running routes around this floating airport. They also wanted to announce themselves with a big Fuck you to the thousands of sailors onboard – their PT uniforms consisted of black shorts and gray T-shirts with “ARMY” in big letters across the front. (Juice had been an 18X Intelligence Sergeant with the Army’s Fifth Special Forces Group before being headhunted by the Activity.) With Predator bulging out of his T-shirt and shorts, and Juice displaying way too much curly body hair around his, they both looked like Bruce Banner halfway into becoming the Hulk.
As soon as they hit open air, they seated their ballistic Oakley wraps (Juice also wore his permanent reversed ballcap) and took off at a fast jog. The open air and sea breeze felt fantastic, even with the sky gray and overcast. They could also see that even now the JFK was putting back to sea. The gangway was in, the mooring lines cast off, and they could sense what felt like the Earth moving beneath them – a nuclear-powered supercarrier getting underway.
Predator also noted that only one of the other ships in the strike group was pulling out with them – one of the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers. That seemed strange – a carrier generally needed its support ships around it to survive. But Pred queued this factoid to investigate later. Anyone in the military, at any level, is used to not being told all kinds of things.
The pair of them settled into a good eight-minute-mile pace around the edge of the flight deck – figuring someone would tell them if they ran somewhere that might get them killed. While they ran, they also talked around their deep breathing. Pred and Juice, though they hadn’t known each other before being put together on the North Korea mission, were getting a bit like an old married couple now. Most of their conversation consisted of retreads of stories they’d heard a thousand times, or observations on the deep silliness of life under both the military and the ZA.
“Hey, man,” Juice said. “Remember all those zombie movies, back in the day, where no one had ever heard of zombies? Like they lived in some universe where George Romero had never existed? What a load of bullshit.”
Predator laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, now that you mention it… nobody ever knew what they were dealing with – the dead would rise up and try to eat them, and they’d all be like – ‘What the fuck!’ Whereas anyone not totally cut off from pop culture would be like, ‘Zombies! Shoot ’em in the head!’ Oh yeah, and they always had some other name for them – like ‘walkers’ or ‘infected’…”
Juice turned to look at him sideways. “…or ‘Zulus’?”
Pred chewed on that for a second. “Good point.”
“I don’t know.” Juice turned to spit off into the ocean. He chewed tobacco even when running. Amazingly, it appeared to make it all the way over the deck, and 60 feet down into the North Atlantic. “We probably should have predicted this. Between brain parasites… neurotoxins… mad cow disease and brain prions… neurogenic stem cells… we should have seen it coming. And with all the zombie fiction, it’s not like we can say it never occurred to anyone.”
“Maybe all the movies and TV shows and books were our way of getting ready.”
“Well, if it was, it worked out about as well as a dick sandwich.”
“True,” said Pred. “If there’d been just a few hundred guys on the ball, handier with axes and shotguns, at critical times and places, maybe all this could have been fucking headed off.”
That made Juice sad to think of it. All these months and years of horror, all the people gone, virtually all that humanity had built up laid low – that it might all have been unnecessary.
So he just ran, and enjoyed the feeling of still being alive.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Wesley sat in silence, and spent the time monitoring the ashen faces opposite and on either side of him. The hum of the truck’s engine offered a little comfort, but his thoughts were scrambled.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been sitting in his tiny office expecting just another quiet day, and now here he was drafted and on his way south to God knows where. They hadn’t even told him that much. He had been informed that their experience on the streets of Folkestone during last night’s outbreak would be invaluable to the people they were travelling to meet, but not much else.
Wesley looked across at Martin, who was also very deep in thought. The man looked like the shock of the previous night might be catching up with him. These military types, Wesley figured, are not all hard and stoic. They’re just people able to put a grim face on and do what is necessary. Nothing that most folks wouldn’t be able to, given the right conditions. Wesley supposed that the main difference lay in the training. He didn’t think that the training could prepare anyone for losing his entire platoon, though.
Of course, Martin wasn’t the only one to lose his whole team.
The other faces that stared back at him from the seats around him were not much different – quiet, contemplative, all deep in their own troubles.
The truck had come from London, so these were probably men and women leaving their families behind to go, well, wherever they were going. How long would they be away? From what Martin had said during their brief, pre-sleep conversation at the barracks, these postings could be for a few months, years – or forever.
“I was posted in the Outer Hebrides, for over a year, before this. That’s out in the middle of nowhere north of Scotland, if you didn’t know,” Martin had said.
Wesley nodded. He knew the place.
“After Europe fell, the islands became home to any random naval ship that stumbled into port. They have new docks all over the islands now. I’d been there once before when I was a boy, on holiday with my parents. It was so quiet and remote back then. Not so now.”
He’d seemed to pause for a moment, and Wesley could almost see the man’s thoughts drifting back to happier times.
“Two months of fixing APCs out of Hereford before that. And some shore duty up near Yarmouth for six months. No permanent post yet. I guess they need engineers wherever they need them.”
Wesley had thought his job at the tunnel was going to be permanent. But then everything had changed overnight.
“That area is restricted now,” he’d been told that morning by the pimple-faced clerk perhaps half his age. The boy had probably never seen action. Wesley had repeatedly asked if he would be guarding the entrance again, once the Harbour barracks division had cleared the way. Asking anyone he could find.
“Your orders are for a change of station.”
“Orders? I’m not military. I work for the UK Security Services.”
“CentCom, and UKSS, have both already approved this.”
“They can’t do that.”
“Yes, they can.”
“I’m not military,” he had repeated.
“Basically, you’ve been drafted. My instructions are to give you your next assignment, which is to report to the barracks down in the harbor.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“No, sir. Your previous position is null and void. Security at your old station will be performed by military personnel as of this morning. Of course, if you wish to catch a transport to London and go and work in the coalfields, that’s always an option.”
Wesley visibly wilted.
“Your rank in the Secu
rity Services will be carried over into your position in the military… corporal.”
Wesley was fuming. At least that had been his initial reaction, but he’d had the chance to stew over it all in the last few hours, just sitting in the back of the truck, staring blankly at the other distant faces.
Maybe this wasn’t so bad, he thought. But then he shook his head. This was bad, and he knew it full well. He wasn’t going to be sitting behind the lines guarding some quiet post that the military thought was dealt with already. He wasn’t going to spend quiet evenings just watching the night sky, sitting with a cup of coffee and listening to his two young charges babble away about all the weird stuff that the universe might throw at the world.
No. He would never hear their voices again. Not now that their brains were almost certainly washed away into the dirt, and their remains burned, probably only a few yards from the place where they had spent all those nights mulling over the state of the world.
Wesley was going to miss those two boys now. As much as he had groused and been irritated by their constant yabber, he had somehow found it comforting to listen to at the same time. It had reminded him of a world where there were no zombies, except in the movies and comics; a world where you could buy a four-pack of beer on a Friday night and chill out in your living room watching terrible repeat programs. Those programs wouldn’t be repeated again now that the TV stations were all but gone.
The last things Chambers and Addison had talked about were aliens and alien invasions. Wesley shook his head and even laughed a little when he considered the futility of aliens arriving on our planet now. They would get a hell of a surprise, he thought. Maybe some little alien guy on the mothership would get sacked for not researching the planet enough.
His laughter stopped when he heard Addison’s distinctive laugh, and that of Chambers, ring out in his mind. He thought of how alive they had been an hour before the attack, and how they had then changed so quickly. The burning glare in their eyes, the pale skin, the already blackened teeth and bloodshot eyes. How was it that those changes happened so quickly? Was that even humanly possible?
Now it seemed he was in the Army. And he would be going out to face those things, probably every day. Until last night, he had never witnessed the creatures en masse, but only heard tales from soldiers who passed through Folkestone. So many stories that had made his blood chill and his skin feel like something had crawled over him while he slept. Paris was overrun. The Americas were overrun. The tales of massive swarms of the dead all trudging along some insane and unfathomable path. Millions, no, billions of them now.
He’d been so sheltered in Fortress Britain. But the horrible reality outside was going to be part of everyday life for him now.
The truck shuddered and came to a stop, snapping Wesley’s mind back into the now. Voices outside called to the driver and were answered quickly, and then they were moving again, gates clanging shut behind them and the sound of gravel crunching under the tires. A sound just like that from under his feet when he made the circuit around the tunnel yards. The truck swung slowly around a winding road for a few minutes and they passed other trucks, groups of soldiers hurrying about. Finally they came to a stop and the back door fell open.
“Out you get, fellas,” barked the soldier, a man with a bright red beard and piercing green eyes. There was nothing pretty about the man, his face was scarred and weather worn, his insignia suggested… Wesley couldn’t think of it. He’d seen so many, but… wait. Sergeant. He was a staff sergeant and outranked him.
“Get a move on.”
Everyone filed out of the truck and fell into line along the side of the road. Wesley was in awe of what he saw. Everywhere around him was a buzzing mass of movement. Thousands of troops and vehicles came and went while he stood and stared.
“Okay,” said the sergeant with the red beard. “I need Corporal Wesley and Captain Martin. Step forward.”
Didn’t Martin outrank the sergeant? He stepped forward.
“I’m here, Sergeant.”
“Ah, good. Sorry about the hurry and informalities, sir. I was told to collect yourself and the corporal and get you to the helipad as soon as you arrived.”
“We’re going flying?” asked Martin, puzzled.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, but I have no further details. Only your immediate priority to get into the air.”
Martin nodded. “Understood.”
And he did, thought Wesley. Martin understood something that Wesley had not been able to figure out yet.
Martin flashed him a look that said, Odd. But he didn’t question the sergeant further. Wesley wished that he had. He didn’t much like all this foreboding secrecy.
Twenty minutes later and Wesley was soaring through the air, feeling quite sick, the bone-trembling roar of the blades and engines gripping him, as he tried to calm his nerves and keep his stomach straight. He watched the coastline of the British Isles disappear into the distance, and then there was nothing below them but miles upon miles of endless Atlantic sea.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked, looking at Martin.
Martin glanced back, taking his gaze away from the ocean.
“Oh, you don’t look so good. Not used to flying?”
“Not in a helicopter,” replied Wesley, shaking his head.
Martin looked back out to sea.
“We’re going nowhere at the moment,” he said, frowning.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing this way, not for thousands of miles, unless…” Martin’s frown deepened.
“Unless what?” snapped Wesley, unable to suppress the irritation in his voice. Martin turned back, and looked like he was going to snap back in return, but then his eyes softened.
“There must be some sort of sea platform out here. Maybe a rig. Or a ship.”
Wesley absorbed that in silence. He couldn’t decide whether this fact made things better for him, or worse.
CLOSE! STAND CLOSE TO ME, STARBUCK
Homer found it all too easy.
Basically, he just made as if he were having a nice evening stroll around the outer edge of the carrier flight deck. Most of that wasn’t a total no-go area, unless flight operations were actually going on right then. And with the aviation fuel situation, flight ops now happened only as often as needed, and not much more. He carried with him only a modest-sized duty bag. Then it was just a question of waiting until a couple of the flight deck crew in their brightly colored shirts passed by, shielding him for two seconds from sight of the control tower, or “island.”
That was all it took to tie off on the railing, hurl the rope bag over, clip onto his own D-ring, and leap overboard. A single bound, and he had rappelled himself down to the center of nowhere. The sweet spot for solitude on a Ford-class supercarrier turns out to be a little side-deck, two levels below the top, facing out to the sea, and nestled between the Sparrow missile launchers and the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (an electric Gatling gun and radar array used mainly to shoot down anti-ship missiles). Basically, unless there were maintenance issues with one of those two weapons bays, this deck was virtually guaranteed to be empty. It also sat out of view of everyone else onboard.
The only problem was, of course, that the ship’s ID keycard they gave the Alpha men – for access into their team’s suite, the mess hall, a few common areas, and up top via direct ladders – didn’t allow Homer access to it. But never try to keep a SEAL out of someplace he wants to go on a boat – or under the water, or across a desert, or up a mountain, for that matter… Pretty much their whole job is gaining access to places they aren’t supposed to be. And it’s by popping up where they’re not remotely expected that they are able to wreak such havoc with such small numbers.
But Homer found it all really funny. No sooner had he been sitting around Hereford reminiscing about the solitary joys of shipboard life than here he was, in the blink of an eye, aboard the largest warship ever built by man – and almost certainly the mos
t formidable. With literally about a billion individual parts, it was also probably the most complex machine ever built – or, on current trends, ever would be. But it seemed that anything could happen to you in this world, even in the ZA.
Ma’shallah, Homer thought, and as he knew his Muslim brothers to say. What wonders God hath wrought…
* * *
As he sat watching the light fail over the North Atlantic, listening to the wind and the rush of water against the hull, he thought about all the changes that he’d seen in the last two years. Many mornings he’d still wake up and say his wife’s name – assuming it had all been a horrible, displacing dream. Then the reality would come back to him in a sickening rush.
Homer supposed, in many ways, the ZA was a lot easier for warriors than for civilians. And he didn’t just mean their weapons and training and much greater ability to survive. To a great extent, the zombies were the least interesting thing about a zombie apocalypse. What was really gripping, and wrenching, and awful, was what it did to the survivors – what men do to each other, and to themselves, when the structure all around them, and upon which they’ve relied all their lives, catastrophically fails.
But military personnel, especially SOF, had been operating in catastrophic vacuums of order and structure for most of their careers. Think Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq during its civil war. Being able to be effective in such wretched, menacing places was much of what it meant to be a special operator. Homer supposed the end of civilization really just supercharged what had always been the main human problem – working together to survive. The civilians had been shielded from that for a long time.
But Homer and his brethren hadn’t.
After the virus reached the tipping point, most people went down before they even knew what to be afraid of. It raged out of control that quickly. By the time the dead outnumbered the living, it only helped marginally to know what the hell was going on. It was too late then. And when the delicate latticework of civilization failed – the daily food deliveries to grocery store shelves, the constantly pulsing power grids, the free-flowing clean water, police and ambulances that came when you called – well, at that point, the other survivors started to become as dangerous as the dead. Survival became as much a matter of competing with the living for resources, as about battling zombies. And that’s where things got really tricky.
