The Apocalypse Crusade Day 4: War of the Undead

by Peter Meredith

  “What the fuck is this!” he cried. “Get me the governor on the phone.” A sat-phone was brought to the general and Courtney could only gape as a lieutenant began dialing the number. For some reason, the idea that the general and the governor were still in communication wasn’t something Courtney had imagined.

  It was a blunder that could get her killed. “No! Wait.” The lieutenant stopped as ordered, his finger hovering over the buttons. “I-I was told that you shouldn’t use the sat-phones for this. Th-They’re bugged. I mean, the other side can hear what you’re saying.”

  “No shit,” Axelrod snapped. “But I think it’s something they’re going to find out about anyway, so who cares.”

  “The governor does,” Courtney answered. “He cares.”

  “He doesn’t know shit if he thinks surrendering will do us any good,” a colonel said, speaking both to the general and to Courtney. “What does he know about the military? And why send a—no offense—but why send a girl? Look at her, all dressed up…and that car?” He shook his head in disbelief and raised a hand to the window. Right outside the bar, in full view, was the stolen Corvette. A man in a bloody jean jacket had been laid on the ground next to it. He was stiff and staring blankly up at the sky. As she watched, a fly crawled out of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” the colonel went on, “but you look like an idiot driving a Corvette through the middle of a war. This isn’t the fucking prom or a trip to the mall. You’re driving a target with wheels. Did you ever think about that?”

  Courtney turned away embarrassed, her cheeks going so hot that she was sure they matched the color of the Corvette. Everyone in the room was staring at her. She could feel their eyes burning into her, condemning her, making her feel small and stupid. She didn’t think she’d be able to turn around again and confront them.

  Then her eyes fell on what was pinned over the bar: a massive map of the New England states. There were pins stabbed into it. One was in Webster, another in Woonsocket, another in Ashley Falls and Stockbridge. There were some in Connecticut as well: Danbury, Torrington, Hartford…she knew all these places. In a manner of speaking, she had been to each and taken part in the fighting of each, sometimes in a pivotal manner.

  It was more than any of the people in the room could say.

  “We don’t need to be so harsh,” the general said, his voice, low and gravelly. “This isn’t the young lady’s fault. I’ll straighten out the governor and we’ll carry on as though…”

  By his tone of voice, she could tell that the general had slipped into a “father knows best” role. His dark eyes had seemed almost kindly, reminding her vaguely of General Collins. Of course, Collins hadn’t needed to “act” fatherly. It hadn’t been an act with him.

  Thinking that Collins would not have wanted her to back down, Courtney spun, slowly, saying, “You’ll do no such thing. Our orders are specific whether you like them or not. Whether you think I’m competent or not, which I am.”

  By the way Axelrod’s eyes turned hard and sharp, Courtney could tell that he certainly did not think she was competent. She’d have to change his perception quickly if she was going to have any chance at changing his mind. She pointed at the Corvette. “That is a perfectly camouflaged vehicle. Two miles from here I ran into an Apache. It had me dead to rights and could have ripped me up, but it didn’t. Tell me, Colonel, if I had been in a Humvee would it have let me go?”

  The colonel who had tried to embarrass her said nothing, however the major who had blocked the entrance was standing beside her; he snorted out a, “No.”

  “And since you seem to have a problem with my, uh, attire,” Courtney said, continuing, “would it have been better if I had showed up here in an army uniform?” Again, the major snorted. Courtney gave him a smile and said, “Exactly. You would have scoffed at me. You would have said I was ‘playing’ soldier.”

  To his credit, the colonel gave a half shrug. Courtney read the move as: You’re right, but I’m not going to admit it out loud.

  “As for the governor,” Courtney went on, “Clarren knows what he needs to of the situation.” She went to the map and pointed to a little spot on the map sixty miles north of New York City. “This is where everything started. The Walton facility of R&K Pharmaceuticals. Four days ago, at eight in the morning, the first of the IPs were infected. Local police, state troopers and the CDC were called in to contain the problem.”

  She touched another spot on the map, north of the first. “This is Poughkeepsie, New York. Cases of the disease began turning up there in the late afternoon and by midnight, it became obvious that the quarantine around the city had failed. Governor Stimpson called up the 42nd Infantry Division soon after. Because of presidential…”

  Courtney struggled to find the right word and the major suggested: “Weakness? Interference?”

  “Let’s say both,” she said, giving him a smile. “Because of presidential weakness and interference, the situation was not nipped in the bud as it could have been and containment was once again lost. The line fell numerous times until, at eleven that night, the remnants of the 42nd was surrounded on this hill, just east of the Connecticut border. And…and at exactly 12:06 a.m. General Collins was shot in the head at point blank range.”

  Axelrod and Courtney locked eyes. “You can’t know that for certain,” he said.

  “Actually, I can because I was there and he asked me personally to shoot him. You see, he was a true warrior. He fought until he was dragged down and he fought even after he was infected.” Murmuring stopped her. Some believed her, some didn’t. So far, she hadn’t lied but she would need to in order to tie things up and end this stupid war.

  Taking a steadying breath, she began her lie: “Governor Clarren asked me to assess the situation. I was there during that fight. I took over the general’s communications unit and coordinated Apache gunship strikes, air assault reinforcements and Coast Guard flights that kept the battlefield illuminated. If you wish to use that sat-phone, dial up the Joint Base at Otis. The number is 011-880-508-672-1518. Ask for Lieutenant Commander Holt. Tell him Courtney Shaw says hi.”

  As much as she wanted to use a fake name, no had ever heard of Eva Mansetti. The officer with the phone was given a nod by General Axelrod and in a couple of minutes, Courtney’s alibi was proven at least partially true.

  “And that brings us to yesterday,” she said as soon as the lieutenant hung up. “I was with General Frazer outside of Hartford as he drew up his defensive lines and I was in Hartford City Hall with Mayor Perez when it was finally over run. If you wish to verify, I have a FBI number you can call. We were trying to set up an extraction for the lead scientist who had created the Com-cell. Governor Clarren and I think she was…is our best hope in creating a cure for the disease. The number you want is 011-8…”

  “That’s not necessary,” Axelrod said. He was quiet, struggling with indecision. The woman seemed sincere, that wasn’t the problem. “Everything you’ve just said points to why we have to resist. So far, the only line that has held is ours. It doesn’t make sense that the governor wants to just throw that away.”

  It made a lot of sense to Courtney. There were other maps around the room and they showed a dozen major battles being fought along the state’s border. On the edge of the maps, where the ocean was depicted in blue, were more pins. These were naval forces, all of which were currently enemies of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  “You are surrounded on all sides,” Courtney told him. She went to the map and pointed to the long, jagged shoreline. “And not just by the zombies. The Navy has a Marine Expeditionary Force; it can land anywhere, and you don’t have anything that can stop it. And even if you did, the Air Force has knocked out eighty percent of the bridges in the state.” It was a number she had pulled out of thin air. “Think about that. Eighty percent.”

  “Eighty?” the general asked in astonishment. “We knew it was bad, but eighty percent? Why would the president do that?”

  That w
as a good question…almost too good of a question. Courtney’s ability to lie had to be based in some sort of reality. “We don’t know if he’s really in charge of his own faculties, and, and, uh, there has been talk of him resorting to a nuclear option.”

  She knew the idea wasn’t out of the realm of possibility when it came to this president and just threw it out there. Unfortunately, she followed it up with, “It’s why we don’t dare use the sat-phone. Not until we’ve managed to get the majority of refugees across the border.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” the general said.

  “I know,” Courtney said, thinking furiously and not coming up with anything that would make sense of something that didn’t make sense. It felt like she had backed herself into a wall.

  The major who had been standing next to her looked just as confused, offered, “Maybe it has to look as though they won. That way the president isn’t ‘cheated’ out of his victory. It’s sort of like playing checkers with a toddler. If you want the game to end, you can’t just quit, you have to find a way to lose that’s not obvious.”

  Axelrod looked far from happy. He didn’t like to lose, either. “But nukes? Nukes are fucking cheating,” he grumbled.

  Chapter 18

  1– 4:21 p.m.

  —Webster, Massachusetts

  The fight to open a hole in the Massachusetts’ border had started aggressively enough with a two-pronged attack. On paper, it looked like a sure thing: one regiment of the 101st would pound north through the town of Webster, while an air assault force would be dropped in at the highway junction in Auburn and then head south, linking up in the town of Oxford, which was an equal distance for both.

  The 2nd Battalion of the 327th was tasked with punching through the line just south of Webster. Instead of punching through, they got bogged down in a slugfest as the weekend warriors from Springfield and the preppies from Cape Cod rushed with suicidal courage into the fight. The 2nd never even cracked the first of the defensive lines.

  This left the Sergeant Ross and the 1st Battalion of the 327th stranded in enemy territory where they were mauled so badly by counterattacks that it essentially ceased to exist as a command structure. At four that afternoon, the 1st battalion had only three officers still alive and one had been targeted by so many snipers for so long that he was now little more than a twitching, life-sized doll that had to be pulled from cover to cover, where he would immediately roll into a ball.

  Sergeant Ross was one of only seven NCOs still on his feet. A part of him understood what the catatonic officer was feeling. The first time he felt the air swish across his skin as a bullet missed his eye, but not his eyelash, he had laughed in a panicky way. Next, he felt a tug on his blouse and thought that one of his soldiers had tried to get his attention when it really was a thirty-thirty round the size of his index finger tearing a hole in the fabric of his shirt. He had cursed and grew angry thinking that someone was trying to kill him on a personal level.

  Now, whenever he paused to reload or bark orders, he would subconsciously rub his arms and chest, feeling for holes and blood. One of his troops had asked him if he was cold and Ross didn’t have an idea what the guy was talking about.

  The 1st Battalion had suffered so many casualties that when they were reinforced with soldiers scrounged from every unit at hand and untrained civilians, some of whom actually thought that they were being choppered to safety, the battalion wasn’t exactly a mob, but it was very close.

  Sergeant Ross had been put in charge of the heavy weapons company. His first act was to throw out every heavy weapon they possessed, except for a single M240 machine gun. It made sense since the mortars platoon had no mortars left, and there weren’t any targets for the anti-aircraft squad. The M2 .50 cal was too heavy to lug about when speed was needed, and there wasn’t enough ammo for the SAWs.

  “Everyman is a rifleman,” he had said to the grumblers. There wasn’t a lot of grumbling as they headed south. The men were too busy fighting for their lives as they went from house to house, or crawled through fields, or charged through forests under what seemed like endless sniper fire.

  The 1st Battalion was being subjected to a modern-day version of Lexington and Concorde. Just like the Redcoats from two and half centuries before, they had found that getting into Massachusetts was far easier than getting out again.

  They were swarmed by soft civilians. Men, women and teens, speaking in their God-awful accents were still streaming down from Gloucester, Manchester by the Sea, and Marblehead. They were not infantry by any measure: they couldn’t stand up to a charge of any size, they couldn’t maneuver and they lacked cohesion. They were the mob. However, they could shoot their rifles reasonably well and, as the afternoon wore on, through endless practice, or so it seemed, their aim got progressively better.

  Although it couldn’t have been true, they seemed to have unlimited ammo, while at the same time, Ross was screaming at his company to save their bullets. He couldn’t exactly say: “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” because the militiamen wouldn’t ever allow them to get that close.

  Their march south, what had begun with a triumphant charge by Ross and the bloody remnants of his original company, had started with nearly twelve-hundred soldiers and civilians in an even mix. 1st Battalion was half that size now with the civilians taking shocking losses.

  Ross, who had been fortunate enough to be anchoring the battalion’s right wing, which was bordered by the marsh-filled French River, was able to see what was happening in the neighboring company. The civilians would clump together. They would charge without preparation or covering fire, they would shoot from the same spot over and over again. And, oddest of all, they had a bizarre desire to “see” what was going on. He didn’t know how many times he would spot some idiot standing up and squinting around.

  It was as ugly as it was unnecessary. To keep his own company from being as decimated, Ross conducted an on-going class in the art of combat as they moved south. “Stay low! Lower! Act as a unit. Three firing, three moving. Spread out, you morons!”

  It made him a target and Ross spent as much time crawling through the mud or under sticky bushes, or crabbed up against parked cars as he did leading or teaching his men. Still, two hours into the attack, his was the most intact unit. On one level, this was good. On another, it was horrible.

  “Captain Spencer needs you,” a private from the headquarters platoon yelled from across a pretty little street where the lilacs were in bloom and the houses had roses bushes set in their window boxes and the snipers had a perfect lane to shoot down. The runner wasn’t going to chance crossing the street when he could just as easily yell and tell the entire world exactly what was happening.

  Ross thought it wouldn’t have been a waste of a bullet to shoot him. “I’ll be right there,” he said, wishing he had a bullet to spare. Crossing the street took three minutes. Two minutes and fifty-five seconds of which he just sat there against a white painted fence that came to waist height.

  He didn’t look to see if there were any bad guys, because he knew that there were plenty of bad guys. After the long pause, Ross jumped up and ran across the street as if the entire state militia was gunning for him. Twenty-three bullets zinged in his wake as he dove behind a wrecked Peugeot, breathing in gasps.

  The Peugeot suffered some more, while Ross gave himself a quick checkup. Once his subconscious was assured that he had no extra holes in his skin, Ross slowly crawled the remaining two hundred yards to the command post, and didn’t give a rat’s ass who was waiting for him. The CP was located in a savings and loan, and for the first time that day Ross actually felt safe.

  He spotted a decorative bowl filled with Dum Dums and before he reported to the C.O. he filled his cargo pockets.

  “What the hell are you doing, Ross?” Captain Darren Spencer of Charlie Company demanded. As the highest ranking officer, he was the acting battalion commander. Ross didn’t know it, but he was fourth in line for the job
.

  “Just picking up some supplies, sir. They’re for my guys, you know, a treat for doing such a good job. Some of them have been doing…”

  Spencer held up a hand and Ross stopped talking, noticing for the first time just how hairy the captain’s hands were. Thick, black arm hair crept down out of his sleeve and down across the back of his hand. Ross wondered if the same hair carpeted his entire body.

  “I’m sure they are doing great,” Spencer said. “How many effectives do you have?”

  It wasn’t as easy a question as it might have seemed. Ross hadn’t done a count in half an hour. He could have lost twenty men in that time. Even if he hadn’t, some of the civilians were so ineffective that he couldn’t exactly count them. “I’d say about seventy-five, sir, give or take.”

  The captain rubbed his hairy hands together. “Great, we’re going to need you to pop this open again for us.” He spread out a map and pointed to a light green patch. “The assault led by Charlie Co hit a wall in this graveyard. I thought we’d be able to outshoot anyone trying to hold it but those fuckers turned those, what do you call them, tombs?”

  “Mausoleums?”

  He snapped his hairy fingers. “Mausoleums, right. They turned them into fucking pillboxes. Each overlapping the next. It’s a fucking nightmare. I sent Delta to relieve them, but you see this forest? It’s not a forest anymore. It’s a fucking, what do you call it? It’s a fucking solar farm. Or it was. We had a couple Warthogs fly by to help out and they turned that fucking place into a fucking mess. There’s glass everywhere. I mean everywhere. Everyone’s all cut up.” As proof he held up his left hand, and there was a bandage on his palm.

  Ross was in a weird mental spot. He was safe in a brick-walled bank with a pocketful of Dum Dums and all he could think was that Captain Spencer was probably just using the bandage to cover up his hairy palms. He had to grit his teeth to keep from laughing at the idea.

  Spencer sobered him up by saying, “Here’s what we need from you.” He started tapping a forested area, west of the town. Ross felt his stomach drop.