“Me? It’s his mother.”
“I don’t care which one of you does it. Get her out of this building right this minute. I-I have to go talk to the governor.” She turned and sped for the elevators, her bare feet slapping. Once she stepped inside the elevator car, she had second thoughts. The walls were so close and the air was still and heavy and very much suspect.
What if one of them had been in here? she wondered. The scuttlebutt had it that the disease was airborne. If a “near” zombie had been in the elevator, it might have coughed and contaminated it, or it might have touched one of the buttons. She pulled her hand in to her chest and slipped out of the confining space before the doors could trap her. The stairs would do. She ran up four flights without touching anything with her hands, used the crook of her arm to open the stairwell door and started at a full-on sprint for the governor’s office.
The first thing she saw was Carla’s glare— Charlotte had been gone for ages in her search for the general. The first thing she heard was: “The planes are inbound with an ETA of thirty-two minutes.” This from the Secretary of State, who fancied himself some sort of military expert even though he regularly disparaged the military as a bunch of clumsy, uneducated brutes.
The first thing she said was: “There are zombies in the city!” She practically screamed this and it silenced a room full of officials in a blink.
“What?” Governor Warner asked. She’d been in the process of writing down a list of questions she had for General Arnold, the president and the state’s attorney general and now her pen was poised just above a yellow tablet.
Everyone seemed to have frozen. The most comical of all of them was the Commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, who had been about to go to the bathroom. He was caught by the sudden declaration with his wide ass in mid-rise sticking out a foot above his chair.
“There are zombies in the city!” Charlotte repeated in the same strident tone. “We have witnesses. An old folks’ home was attacked down on Cromwell. And…and one of them might be downstairs in the lobby.”
The commissioner plopped his fat ass back down in his chair with a thud, which seemed to trigger everyone to ask questions at exactly the same time. Charlotte was inundated and did her best to answer with her limited understanding of the situation.
Warner didn’t trust the “new girl” as she thought of Charlotte, and so she sent Carla to interview Ruth Lundy. Next, she had the Commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development call the Sun-Rise Assisted Living Center, the number of which was found readily enough; however no one picked up.
“We can send someone over there,” the commissioner suggested. By someone, he meant someone other than himself, of course. The problem was that there were very few “someones” hanging around the capitol building. Normally the place was packed with people, however, on that morning, the halls echoed vacantly and somewhat sinisterly, whenever anyone ventured outside the stuffy office.
“Get over there as fast as you can,” Warner ordered the commissioner. At the moment, 99% of all businesses in Connecticut had ceased operations and communities were now fortified cities, making the Commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development one of the most useless men in the room.
He began stuttering: “Buh-buh-buh,” however the governor waved him quiet with an irritable hand.
“Get down there, now! It’s imperative we find out ASAP if there are zombies in the city and if there are, we have to know how many.” When he just sat there, his jaw hanging open and his jowls quivering, Warner leapt to her feet and pointed at the door: “Go, damn it!”
He left, his eyes wide and fearful. In his wake the remaining officials were too stunned for their usual self-important blather. Only the governor kept her wits. “We should proceed as if the zombie threat has penetrated the city. What are our options?”
Eyes darted around the expanse of polished cherry wood. Like school children who hadn’t studied for a test, no one dared to catch the governor’s stern gaze. Eventually the Secretary of State worked up the nerve to say, “If it gets out it might cause a riot, and it’ll certainly cause a panic. Maybe we should keep this quiet until we know for certain.”
“But we do know,” Charlotte declared, coming to stand at the edge of the table. “I saw that old woman. Her eyes weren’t rheumy and they were filmy with cataracts. They were dark. Even the whites were dark. And her state of mind was…I don’t know, chaotic.”
The Secretary of State rolled his eyes. “As dramatic as that sounds, it isn’t proof. The old lady might be suffering from Alzheimers. If so, she might have imagined the entire attack. Did you ever think of that? And besides, how does a bunch of brain-dead zombie children get past the wall around the city? I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the people on the wall. They’re dedicated to protecting their city and what’s more, they’re fierce about it. I guarantee they haven’t let a bunch of stray kids in.”
Although Charlotte was cowed by the authoritarian bearing of the secretary, Governor Warner wasn’t. “The walls have not been thoroughly inspected. We don’t know if there is a hole somewhere along it. Perhaps a drainage pipe that was overlooked or a culvert or something. What we do know is that we have a report of zombies in the city. We can’t assume that it’s false. And nor can we fly off the handle. So what should our first step be?”
Again silence crept over the room until Linda Plano, the Commissioner of the Department of Health, raised her hand. “I think…I think maybe we should move the seat of government out of Hartford.”
Governor Warner looked at her in shock. Linda had always been fearless as a politician and public servant. “You want us to run away? That’s your first idea?”
Linda nodded, saying: “We need to preserve some semblance of government. You are the governor of the entire state, not the governor of Hartford. If there are zombies in the city, then a new quarantine zone will have to be built around it and everyone will be stuck here. You can’t be stuck. Your role is too important.”
Heads nodded all around the table. Everyone there expected to be able to leave with the governor, abandoning a city of a quarter of a million people to a horrible fate. Warner’s first inclination was to run far away and not look back, however she hadn’t been elected to run at the first sign of trouble.
But to stay meant what? Would they barricade themselves inside the capitol building and try to coordinate things while the city went to crap around them? That was no kind of plan.
She didn’t know what to do and was saved from making a decision by the sudden appearance of her assistant Carla who rushed in breathless, pale and shaking.
“That lady downstairs is one of them. She is getting meaner and meaner and her eyes…they’re dark and all gunked up.”
The governor felt her heart skip a beat at the news. “And what about General Arnold? Has anyone heard anything from him?”
Carla nodded briefly. “The guard told me he left hours ago, supposedly to deal with the zombies. He told the guard that we already knew about them, but he never said anything to me or Charlotte, I swear.”
“He’s run away,” the governor said, breathlessly. She suddenly felt the need to run screaming from the building, herself. She bit down on the feeling and forced herself to do her job. “And the lady? Is she dangerous? I mean…is she contagious? Should she be killed?” Carla nodded without looking up.
The room grew dead quiet as everyone stared at the governor. It was all on her. “That’s…that’s, I don’t know. I guess we kill the woman, I think.”
The Secretary of State’s lip curled. “You think? I’m sorry Christine but you don’t get to make wishy-washy statements. You have to act and you have to act decisively. That’s what real leadership is.”
“You don’t need to remind me, Harry. I know what it means to be a leader.” She took a breath, steeling herself. “The lady should be…has to be killed and her body burned. And…and we will move the seat of g
overnment to New London. We’ll have the mayor run things here. He’s to have full leeway in dealing with the infected people. Carla, go and let him know.”
“And what about the paratroopers?” the Secretary of State asked. “They can’t land where they’re supposed to or they’ll be behind the lines the moment they touch down, which is supposed to be in twenty-two minutes.”
“We’ll warn them off. Charlotte, get the president on the phone.”
2—The White House Washington D.C.
Charlotte, the assistant to the assistant, was slow in finding the number and four minutes were wasted right there. It took another three minutes to get connected to the president and five more to instill in the man the urgency of the situation, leaving him more than enough time to make a command decision and call off the jump or at least postpone it—the C17s had plenty of fuel and could have flown immense circles around Connecticut for another hour if needed.
The first problem: the president was not command decision material. He liked making decisions only after intensive polling and after focus groups had given their reactions. In his mind, difficult decisions were best put off for another day and another administration.
The second problem: no one seemed to know where Marty Aleman was. The president had never made a decision without Marty’s help.
“Let me call you back, Christine. We, uh I mean, I will figure things out and, uh, we’ll get back to you.”
“Get back? Sir, you don’t understand…”
He hung up on her and stared frantically around the Situation Room at the twenty-four men and women seated in high-back leather chairs. The more important of them, his cabinet secretaries as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their finery sat at the long table. The less important of them, such as the vice president, who was texting one of his six mistresses, sat in the smaller chairs that lined the walls.
None of them could be trusted.
Marty had instilled that into the president from day one. They were all politicians, which meant that they were all practiced liars. “Where’s Marty? I need him.” No one knew. His phone was called and his office checked. As the minutes ticked away, the president had aides running around screaming his name, while at the table sat military officers who would have unanimously told him to postpone the drop.
The first planes were flying over Connecticut by the time Marty was found talking to a New York Times reporter who was being given an exclusive, “inside scoop” on the planned paratroop landings.
Right away, Marty knew that trouble was brewing when he bustled into the Situation Room. He saw it in the president’s fearful eyes. “What is it?”
“There are zombies in Hartford!” the president cried, sounding like a child declaring to his parents that there was a monster in the closet. “What do we do?”
Marty’s eyes went directly to the news feed playing on the seventy-two inch flatscreen. CNN, with Marty’s urging, had managed to convince a dozen local Hartford camera crew to brave leaving the city in order to capture the historic landings live. The crews were just picking up the first of the planes, mere grey dots, looking like distant birds.
Then, in disbelief, he looked at the large screen which sat on the wall opposite the president which showed a large map of Connecticut with the drop zones marked in red and the new perimeter of the Quarantine Zone marked in a friendly blue. It was the same map that had been released to every news outlet in the country. Hartford, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, was clearly visible fifteen or so miles on the wrong side of that friendly blue line. Marty had chosen the blue personally for its calming effect
In his heart, he knew they had to abort the jump; however he saw that they would never be able to stop the lead planes. They would end up with a few planes dropping their loads on camera and then the country would watch live as the rest of the planes peeled away. It would be a fiasco and instead of instilling awe, it would demonstrate that the federal government was as incompetent as the state governments.
Public confidence in the president’s ability to stop the zombies would utterly tank, which would lead to his poll numbers tanking as well. This would lead to an increase in looting and murder throughout the country, which would mean more instability…
General Heider held up a phone. “I have General Phillips, the Eighteenth Airborne Corps commander on the line. I’m giving him orders to abort the mission.”
“No!” Marty snapped. “Don’t. The mission is still a go. We’ll just have to reshape it. Tell him to carry on.”
Heider’s mouth fell open and he pointed at the map with the phone. “They’re going to drop west of Hartford. That’s what those red circles mean. You understand that they’ll be dropping into an area that is already infected?” He asked this of the president, who dutifully turned to Marty.
“Of course the president knows this, but it’s too late to stop the lead elements anyway, and we don’t know the extent of the issue in Hartford. It might not be that bad.”
“You’ll be trapping an entire division behind the lines,” Heider growled.
Marty steepled his fingers beneath his chin in a show of complete calm. He had never been one for the military because they were so terribly inflexible. “It’s not that difficult to understand. The entire country is depending on this one operation. If it fails, people will lose faith in their government. There will be mass riots, mass looting and mass death. And do you think we’ll be able to stop it once it starts?”
Heider’s only answer was a twitch of his shoulder. Marty answered his own question: “No, we won’t, because each state will be too busy protecting their borders against zombies and refugees. Mass transit will shut down, highways will shut down, and basic services will shut down. All that corn in Iowa will just rot, because the oil wells in Texas won’t be running, because the needed parts to keep them running will be sitting in a boat at a peer in Long Beach, because some schmo is at home taking care of granny, because the services for her are no longer being provided. Do you see how all of this intertwines?”
Sufficiently cowed, Heider nodded, making Marty smile his cold politician’s smile. “I want you to trust me, General. We won’t forget about your boys. We’ll extract them when we have a handle on things and in the meantime, we’ll keep them supplied, warm, happy and fed.”
Marty had no idea how that would happen, exactly. He figured that the details would fill themselves in, not realizing that things were already at the breaking point in logistical terms.
“Now that we’re all in agreement, General, we’ll need another division to take the place of the 82nd. If you could scare one up, that would be great.”
Chapter 10
1—8:45 a.m.
The Connecticut Bubble
“Find her!” Colonel O’Brian ordered, his eyes like two blazing hunks of coal in his pale face. “Find her and kill her.” Thuy had straight up vanished from the tent almost sending him over the edge—and there was definitely a looming edge. It sat like a cliff in his mind. Down in the gorge was black madness and blood feasts. He could feel that edge coming closer and closer.
Two men braved the pain of the sun to search for Thuy, while the rest grew edgy and restless. Nearby, a hundred others with eyes growing darker by the minute, lolled around the command tent, glaring at everyone who came by.
Thuy had managed to escape the tent easily enough. When the gunshots had rung out and the men in the tent had rushed to the door, she had pulled up a steel peg and slithered out from beneath the canvas. Without hesitation, she had rushed to the comm tent where she found Courtney Shaw, two of her police dispatchers, PFC Cindy Austin, and Jerome Evermore, nervously waiting.
“What the hell happened?” Jerome demanded. “The colonel just shot somebody for deserting or trying to leave the lines.”
“He also k-killed a captain in cold blood, right in front of me,” Thuy answered, her voice breaking. She was shaking all over and couldn’t seem to catch her breath properly though she had barely run
forty yards. “They’re infected. Everyone in that tent was infected. And if they’re infected there has to be others who are as well.”
Courtney took a step back. “How do we know you aren’t?” Now everyone stepped back.
“You don’t know, and neither do I. For all we know everyone in this camp is infected. That being said, I do not have any of the symptoms: no headache, no vision loss, no impaired faculties and no alteration in mood or personality. We should keep an eye on each other, careful to watch for those signs.”
“What we really have to do is get out of here,” Jerome said, going to the door and peeking out. “We have to find an officer who isn’t infected and warn them. Hopefully they’ll be…” Just then the first of the C17s could be heard approaching in a dull thrum that grew to become maddening in its intensity. It meant that they were minutes away from being trapped once more within the Quarantine Zone.
Thuy went to the door and gaped as the first plane grew from a tiny grey spec into something far more impressive in size. She had to tear her eyes away and focus on a more immediate problem: the leering, ill-tempered soldiers who were far too close to the comm tent.
“O’Brian’s going to start a war,” she said under her breath. She turned from the door to address the others. “If we have any chance to escape, it has to be very soon. It’ll take the paratroopers some time to organize a line and we have to be through it with as many clean individuals as possible. I can’t go out there to round them up. I’m too recognizable. Since you two, Mr. Evermore and you, Ms. Austin, are soldiers, you will be able to blend in. Find people who are clear-headed, explain the situation, and move on. They’ll either join or they won’t and we don’t have time to beg. Send them to the west side of the perimeter. There’s a little dell where you can’t be seen from the rest of the camp. Any questions?”
The Apocalypse Crusade 3: War of the Undead Day 3 Page 14
