The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  “How do you know?” the President asked, and then pointed at the largest of the monitors which showed almost the entire northeast covered in red. “They could be trying to destroy the entire nation!”

  “If that were true, could they accomplish that by staying in Baltimore?” she asked.

  He began nodding some more, shaking a finger in Katherine’s face. “You’re right. They’re coming here. They’re coming to the capital and we need to stop them. David, pull your agents out of Baltimore. Heider, get those national guardsmen moving south, right this second. And what about the 3rd ID?”

  General Heider, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been rubbing his temples where a migraine was starting to take hold. “What about them?”

  “Why can’t they get here faster?” the President demanded.

  “Because they can’t,” he replied, wearily. “As I’ve explained, it’s a big operation moving an infantry division eight hundred miles. I mean, if you want to do it properly, that is. I think after what happened with the 82nd and the 101st we’ve learned a valuable lesson about the need for planning.”

  The President glared. “I know for a fact that the 3rd ID has tanks. They can drive them.”

  Heider closed his eyes, which helped with the migraine. After a moment, he said, “You’ll ruin their operational range that way. And besides, North Carolina has closed its borders. Virginia, too, in case you didn’t get the memo.”

  “What about the Navy? We can just load them up and sail them north. This isn’t difficult, Heider.”

  “You’re right, it’s not. But it would take at least a week to get the right materials and the right ships together to make that happen. Of course, if I did that we wouldn’t have enough ships to patrol the coastal portions of the Zone.”

  “Not enough ships?” the President asked. “Every year since I’ve been in office you’ve demanded over a trillion dollars in spending and now you tell me that there aren’t enough ships?”

  Heider went right on rubbing his temples as if he were looking to hit bone soon. “Actually, I wanted more than that, but you shot me down. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Are you forgetting where all that money went? You wanted a ‘green’ navy and you wanted fairness in housing for our ‘beloved’ military and you wanted diversity training and anger management classes and a hundred other bullshit plans that did nothing but sap our strength and waste money.”

  The President went red in the face. “Enough! Heider, get the 3rd ID here by tomorrow. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.” He turned to Marty. “Get the Mass border open today. Assassinate that traitor, Clarren if you have to. Blow up his house, I don’t care. Get the border open, now! Or you’ll force me to do it and you know you don’t want that.”

  He meant nukes. The threat hung in the room like a poisonous cloud.

  Katherine was still trying to come to grips with the image of a nuclear war on American soil when the President turned to the FBI Director. It was his turn and Katherine shrank back, not wanting to get between the two men. She had been so focused on getting Anna and Eng that she had misjudged what was happening outside her little world very badly. Deep in her heart, she had thought that “things” would get better. She had thought that the military would stop the zombies and that, in time, the USA would get back to the way it had been before. Yes, she had been nervous about the talk of nukes, but hadn’t really thought it would come to that. She wasn’t nearly so sure about that now.

  “David, find the people who did this,” the President said, speaking quietly. “You will have whatever resources you need, including from a legal standpoint. From now until those terrorists are captured, there is no law when it comes to the FBI, do you understand? If you have to torture people then torture people. If you have to imprison them, then do that, too. If you have to execute suspects…well, the greater good compels you.”

  The President gestured to the door. They were being dismissed. All of them. Katherine, Marty Aleman, General Heider, the Director of the FBI and the Assistant Director for National Security went into the elevator in a stunned silence and, when they reached the main floor, they went their separate ways without speaking.

  It wasn’t until they reached the waiting Blackhawk that the Assistant Director whispered to Katherine, “Find them. Find them quickly.”

  2—Brunswick, Maryland

  The four of them had tried to pass into Pennsylvania at three different places and West Virginia at four. They had been turned away, time and again, despite Anna Holloway’s acting skills. “I’m a wasted talent,” she said, returning to the truck, pretending to help Leticia along. “I could have won an Oscar for that last performance.”

  Eng, who thought of actors, even in China, to be overpaid pussies, only shrugged. He had the frail woman’s other arm. He gave it a hard squeeze, his nails biting into her flesh. “I don’t think this one has her heart in it. I think we should shoot her. It would make her acting more realistic.”

  Leticia began to whimper and Charlie started to shake his head. “Please don’t,” he begged. “She’ll do better. Or…or I could do it. I can be the one faking a heart attack.”

  “I say we give them one more try,” Anna said.

  “And I say we shoot one of them in the stomach,” Eng replied. “I guess we could meet somewhere in the middle. I could shoot the woman in the leg.”

  Anna didn’t see how that would be better than a faked heart attack. Leg wounds could sit for days before becoming critical. And yet, they were running out of fuel, and worse, running out of time. The longer they meandered around the relatively small state of Maryland, the more likely they would run into an over-curious state trooper.

  “One more try,” she insisted. When all of this had started, it had been about money. She had never thought that it would end in murder and even though that ship had long since sailed, she still wasn’t comfortable with shootings and blood and all the rest.

  Eng looked at her with his dead eyes and then shrugged. “One try, Grandmother,” he said to Leticia, “and then I will shoot your husband in the stomach. Consider that during your next performance.”

  Leticia tried her best. She moaned and groaned and shook and even cried when the dozen people at the next crossing discussed the matter. She had cried more when they told the four of them to try to cross in Morgantown where the “head honchos” were.

  The threat of her Charlie getting shot left her too weak to walk, so she had to be carried. “It’ll be okay,” Charlie told her over and over. “The Lord is with us. He won’t let anything happen.”

  Eng had smiled at this. The way he smiled was as if he had learned how by reading an instruction manual. “Maybe we try one more time.” He drove, heading away from Morgantown, earning him a look from Anna. “The further away we get from danger, the less pressing are the injuries and the more likely we are to be passed on to someone higher up the chain of command.”

  He was right. With each stop, the deliberations among the citizens and the citizen-soldiers had been shorter, the urgency less pronounced, and the suspicion in their eyes much greater.

  Anna checked the map. “How about Virginia? I think we should rule out Pennsylvania, and we’ve tried West Virginia. Maybe Virginians will be nicer.”

  “Sure,” Eng said. He smiled again and Anna had to fight the shiver that wanted to twerk her shoulders. He was going to shoot Charlie but like a farmer about to slit a lamb’s throat, he didn’t want spook his victim. It queered up the flavor of the meat.

  They took a little two-lane nothing of a road and passed through Brownsville, the very epitome of small town America. It looked oddly pristine and when Anna rolled down the window, the quiet was nostalgic, not eerie. Cows lowed in the pasture, and birds chirped, and in the forest, squirrels made a ruckus, chasing each other about.

  There was even an old farmer sitting on the back of a tractor as it snorted its way through a field, setting down perfectly churned rows of dirt. A hand with heavy calluses and
dirty nails was raised and Eng smiled his lizard-smile back, but from a distance it looked like a normal one. There weren’t many farmers working their fields and the streets were, for the most part, empty, but there were a few shops still open.

  Once Brownsville was behind them, they traveled along forest roads, heading southeast until the jets could once more be seen roaring their way through the skies. Once she saw the first one, Anna felt the urgency come back. She didn’t think the FBI was on to them and if she had, she would have shot Charlie two hours before. Still, there was that feeling, the overpowering need to escape.

  When they saw the sign for Brunswick, Eng calmly perched an elbow over the console and asked, “Are you two ready for one more go?” They both nodded, anxiously. “Good. Look out there. These are your people. These are Americans. They’ll believe you.”

  Dutifully, they had both turned to look at the town and Eng took advantage of their distraction to shoot Charlie in the gut.

  The gunshot was piercingly loud; a knitting needle in the eardrums. Leticia’s screams were an old echo from another time compared to the sound. Anna found herself working her jaw around, trying to clear her ears as if she had just got off a plane. When she looked back she saw Charlie, pale and trembling, trying to staunch the flow of blood that was coming out of him like a fountain.

  “It don’t hurt,” he said, in a whisper. Leticia didn’t believe him and neither did Anna. It looked horrible. And the mess! The amount of blood he was losing was shocking. It just kept coming and coming, bubbling up through his fingers.

  Leticia, unable to help the man she loved, seemed to grow stronger at this outrage. Her eyes bulged, but they were bone dry. “You killed him,” she accused Eng.

  “Not yet,” he answered, the cold, mechanical smile back on his face. “Not yet, so get smart.”

  Anna pulled her eyes from the bloody mess long enough to see that Leticia was no longer functioning like the whipped dog she had been. She looked ready to bite and scratch. She looked ready to do almost anything, including making a scene and ruining everything.

  “Hey,” Anna said, trying to sound as normal as she could. “If you want him to live, then act like you love him. You look angry, not sad.”

  “I am mad,” the old woman hissed, those eyes bulging so far out that Anna feared that if she sneezed they might go rolling around on the floorboards.

  Anna put out both hands. “Yes, you should be mad, but you should also be worried about Charlie. Do you want him to live, or what?” Leticia looked like she wanted to claw Anna’s eyes out, but her worry for her husband was a close second and when she glanced his way, the fight went out of her. She became small and weak again, overcome with grief.

  When Eng saw this, he settled in behind the wheel of the truck saying, “We’ll say that someone tried…no someones; there were four of them. They tried to hijack the truck. They shot poor Charlie and we were just able get away. We tried the hospitals on this side of the border, but all the doctors were tasked with working with the army. Leticia will be filled with sorrow and Charlie will be stoic as he awaits necessary care.”

  “Sounds good, but let me do the talking,” Anna said. “You sound a little stilted. It’s that smile. Stop it. There’s nothing to smile about. It’s..it’s just wrong.”

  He didn’t take offense. “My smile should not factor into this equation. What counts is how you look and how Leticia looks. These will be the deciding factors that give us victory.”

  Now it was Anna’s turn to mold her smile into something believable. There wasn’t going to be any victory. There would be survival or death and even if they managed to get away, what then? A life forever on the run.

  It began to rain as they entered the north end of the town. Ahead of them was a main street with the usual assortment of diners and gas stations, banks and salons. Cutting through the middle of the town was the western run of the Potomac River. On one side was Maryland and on the other, Virginia.

  It started to rain as they slowed to a sluggish twenty-five. Eng kept it pegged right at the speed limit and the smile was back as they passed a few lost-looking souls. They looked like beings trapped in purgatory, standing with a view of heaven but unable to cross the river of fire separating the two.

  As they headed for the first roadblock, a bedraggled woman with a wet mop of brown hair on her head and pleading hands, stepped right in front of the Silverado. Eng slammed on the breaks, skidding on the asphalt until he was inches away from her.

  The woman looked at Eng with dull eyes and there was a strange moment when no one seemed to know what to do next. The rain came in spurts; it sounded like children were throwing handfuls of peas onto the roof. The wind surged, blowing a plastic bag across the front of the truck, and still the woman just stood there as if caught in mid-thought.

  Eng looked back to warn Leticia against saying or doing anything foolish but then he paused. Anna seemed like the only person capable of action. She shooed the drenched woman away with a wave of her hand.

  “Eng, come on…” Anna nearly froze as well when she saw what Eng was looking at. Charlie was dead. He was slumped onto his wife’s lap. His mouth open wide, his cheeks stretched and already looking waxy and yellow. His eyes were open and staring right into Eng’s face.

  “You killed him,” Leticia said, flatly.

  The 9mm bullet from Eng’s Beretta had been aimed perfectly. Charlie had enough of a layer of fat that a bullet shouldn’t have been able to do more that rip up some intestines, a bit of muscle and not much else, but fate had intervened. The bullet had taken a weird spinning turn and cut an almost perfect diagonal swath through Charlie, heading for the abdominal aorta and smashed the shit out of it.

  “You killed him,” Leticia said, again. “And now you’re gonna kill me.”

  “We won’t have to if…” Anna began, only just then the old woman reached for the door handle.

  Eng was fast. Like an old west gunfighter, he pulled his gun and shot her in the back of the head. Her hand on the door handle spasmed, releasing the catch and out she spilled, falling dead in the middle of the street.

  Chapter 13

  1– 11:41 a.m.

  —Auburn, Massachusetts

  Full of piss and vinegar, Jason Bernard and three of his oldest friends had piled into his fourteen-year-old Mustang and driven down from Boston the day before to do their part. It had been an almost spiritual calling, a compulsion etched into his genes which had been egged on by foolish boasts and a strange need to prove himself. Feeling like a man for the first time in his young life, Jason had explained to his teary-eyed mother, “It’s just somethin’ I gotta do, Ma.”

  Her begging for him to stay had only cemented his desire to leave. Squaring his jaw, he had kissed her once on the cheek and breezed out of the house, stepping loudly, importantly.

  The machismo was still running strong when he had locked up the Mustang on a side street in Webster and pocketed the keys. Jason could have fought a hundred men right then. The lust for battle running like an electric current through him, making him feel alive and powerful.

  As he, and what felt like thousands of others, had marched towards the sounds of guns crashing and men yelling, and in some instances screaming like women, he gradually began to feel anxiety and perhaps a little fear, but the battle lust was so entwined with his fear that he could barely tell the fear from the electricity. That was a good thing. If they had been separated, he probably wouldn’t have stepped one foot out of that old Mustang because there in the sky were jets streaking back and forth, and black helicopters wup-wup-wupping about full of menace and deadly venom in the form of blazing lead. And all around him were rippling explosions that sounded like ceaseless thunder if thunder came from a clear blue sky.

  Then he was under the cover of the woods and his fear began to amp up. It made him hesitate but, like it was a red brick, he gulped it down and went with his friends deeper into the forest toward a war that he had no business being in.

&
nbsp; He was just sixteen and had shot his daddy’s rifle twenty-three times over the course of two camping trips. Jason mistakenly thought that he was a pretty good marksman. After all, those soda cans he had sent spinning hadn’t been all that big and at forty yards, they had looked smaller still. He knew that if he had a clear shot at a stationary target, he was pretty sure that he could kill the crap out of it.

  But there wasn’t anything clear except those jets and helicopters, and what was more, the fight hadn’t been stationary at all. The enemy had shifted to the right and then before things could settle down, they shifted to the right some more. “They’re just probing us!” a burly sort of man yelled over the hellacious sound of the firefight. He was big-bellied and big-bearded, and had a cheek full of chaw. When he yelled or even just spoke, brown spittle would fly. He looked like a tough kind of man, a mean kind of man, someone that Jason would have been more than a little nervous about approaching a week before.

  Despite his toughness and his brown tobacco spittle, he seemed scared and that had Jason’s fear ramping up so that it began to eclipse whatever battle lust he’d been feeling. A man next to him threw up in the dead leaves, coming up white and shaking, a long string of greenish-brown drool hanging from the corner of one lip.

  This display seemed like a permission slip for Jason’s fear to come completely out of hiding and he was just about shitting his pants as the battle rolled down at him.

  And he wasn’t the only one with a puckered sphincter. All the men and boys who had been tramping towards the gunfire stopped and waited. More and more of them were shaking and cringing, less and less were boasting as they had been. The battle seemed to Jason to be like a terrifying creature that roared and shook the ground and moved in an undulating way more or less like a living wave, washing here and there, chewing up men and breathing out flame and smoke. Birds and small animals fled from it, and instinctively he wanted to flee as well.