A moment later the tanks began, their long guns punching holes in the undead, the recoil from each shot shaking dust from the hulls and steel tracks. Shells fell like rain and explosions of smoke blotted out the sky and turned the sun red.
“Where are the helicopters?” Guo demanded, turning on his aides, his face swollen with fury.
“They are inbound, General. I can see them lifting into the air as we speak.”
Guo flung the binoculars up to his eyes and turned his back on the battle. On the western edge of Fuxin, three-dozen attack choppers were just lifting off. They hung in the air like locusts, then put their noses down and raced forward. Guo watched them come on, settling into ragged formations. The helicopters swooped overhead in a thunder of clattering noise and raced towards the horde. Guo heard the sudden rattling echo of machine gun fire and then a fireworks display of rockets was unleashed. The sky lit up in a detonation of spectacular explosions. The advance of the undead began to falter and slow, the bodies piling into gruesome hillocks and ridges of broken bones and gore.
“We must push them now!’ Guo sensed a moment of opportunity. “More helicopters.”
The clamor of noise became a deafening relentless roar that undulated and peaked but never ceased. It was the clatter of machinery, the heavy cough of artillery and the endless crump of explosions all melded into one numbing, desensitizing sound. It was the chaos of war, being orchestrated by Guo’s hand as skillfully as any conductor.
“Bring more tanks into the gap between those buildings.”
“I must have more helicopters!”
“Report! What is happening to our north?”
“Where are the helicopters I ordered?”
The infected horde rolled forward again, seeming to swell and hump like breaking surf. The helicopters drove them back, but they surged a second time and a third until they were within five hundred yards of the barbed wire.
Time and again the swooping helicopters and the barrage of tank and artillery fire forced the infected to pause. Time and again the phalanx of bodies seemed to ripple, then push forward inexorably.
In the early afternoon, the undead reached the tangle of barbed wire. The infantry and the troops manning the machine guns on the APC’s joined the fight.
The soundtrack of the battle changed, becoming higher in pitch and more frantic. All along the flimsy wire line the rifles coughed and the infected fell. But still the undead swarmed, mindless and insane. They threw themselves on the razor tangles and scrambled to reach the soldiers. The snarl in their throats became vicious and tormented. They howled like wild beasts, shaking their shaggy heads and flailing their clawed hands.
Guo sensed the battle had reached its crescendo – his fate and the lives of all his men – hung in the balance. He snatched the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the wire perimeter. The soldiers were fighting desperately, but Guo could see undead bodies hanging tangled in the wire like dirty washing. The perimeter fence was beginning to sag, on the brink of collapse. He turned to an aide and seized the startled Lieutenant by the collar.
“Mobilize the tank reserve!” Guo’s voice croaked with rising alarm, pointing to the eighty tanks he had held back from the battle. “They must rush to plug that breech near the railway crossing. Quick! Before it is too late!”
The aide hunched over his radio and snapped orders, but it took over a minute before Guo saw the first belch of diesel smoke from the tank engines. He stared at the tanks, silently willing them into action. He was still staring impotently when a savage animal roar of triumph rang out.
Guo turned, heart-sick. Less than a kilometer away the barbed wire fence had buckled under the weight of undead bodies and been crushed flat underfoot by the stampeding horde as it spilled through the gap. Guo wept with frustration.
The battle was over. The infected poured through the gap and turned on the soldiers in their trenches. They were merciless in their savagery. Snarls became screams of terror. The Chinese infantry broke and ran streaming into the streets of Fuxin, hounded by howling infected.
Guo felt himself physically sag, as though the great weight of defeat had crushed the breath from his lungs. His lip trembled. He felt himself on the verge of tears. “Retreat,” he said. “The battle is lost. Save yourselves if you can.”
Guo staggered from exhaustion to his command APC and the vehicle lurched forward. “Take me into Fuxin,” Guo insisted to the driver.
“But General – ”
“Take me into Fuxin!” Guo punched the steel wall beside him, smearing skin from his knuckles.
The command vehicle jerked to a stop in an empty street near the city’s train station. Guo heaved himself out of the vehicle. Troops fleeing the perimeter rallied about him. The infected were in the city too. Fires broke out and explosions rattled and echoed. Smoke boiled into the sky.
Guo surveyed the ground with a soldier’s eye. The street was wide with high buildings and shops on either side. There was an intersection about a hundred meters ahead, but no other side streets. Behind him the road ran for several hundred meters before being divided by an intersection.
“Here!” Guo stomped his foot. “This is where we make our stand.”
It was as good a place as any to die. Guo formed the fleeing stragglers into two ranks. He had twenty-seven men, but only half of them still carried their weapons. He grunted. At least the end would come swiftly.
Guo stood behind the lines with his hands clasped behind his back and waited. In the streets all around him he could hear blood-curdling screams of terror and the sounds of running, pounding feet. A sudden explosion shook the ground and the windows of a nearby building blew out in a hail of shattered glass.
“Steady,” Guo said calmly and quietly. In final defeat he had found peace.
The undead appeared like a crowd of angry rioters. They filled the end of the street and came in a running, howling surge. They were blood-spattered and smeared brown with mud and dirt.
“Fire!” General Guo Lingfeng said with his final breath.
SAN YSIDRO PORT OF ENTRY
SAN DIEGO
There were three men standing in the sun and Captain Ben Ortiz watched them work with silent frustration.
The midday heat was wilting, and the air was still. The men worked in grim silence while the sweat blistered from their pores, and the scalding air shortened their breath.
Captain Ortiz stood with his hands propped on his hips and wondered what the hell he was doing here in this dusty, god-forsaken hellhole of fences, wire and heavy machinery.
The three-man team was from his company, working with an army engineer in a crane to move a barricade into place. The concrete Jersey barrier had been rigged with a crude steel frame, twenty feet high. The frame had been laced with layers of whorling barbed wire.
The San Ysidro border crossing point was a jungle-like maze of concrete and wire, overrun by soldiers and heavy equipment. A hundred yards away Marines from Camp Pendleton were patrolling the wire perimeter with grim stony faces and their weapons at the ready as they swaggered further west.
Ortiz shook his head, and drops of sweat rained down from inside his helmet. It was madness; thousands of soldiers building new fortifications and hardening a border point – for what?
On the other side of the high fence from where the National Guard captain stood, Mexico was an unremarkable stretch of lifeless hot sand. The border had been closed, and no one on either side of the barricades seemed to care.
“Come on,” Captain Ortiz chided his crew irritably. The rest of the company was cooperating with engineers to lace additional steel frameworks with wire. They were working in the shade of a dusty factory complex, idling away the time, surly and short-tempered with boredom. “Get on with it.”
The busiest border crossing point in the world looked like a war zone. And amidst all the military and machinery, toiled hundreds of hard-hatted construction workers in ditches and on platforms. The laborers were laying foundations for the
network of buildings that were intended to expand and modernize the facilities.
Ben Ortiz’s thoughts turned to his wife waiting back in San Pedro, and his frustration became suddenly sharp focused. He was a newly-married man, and she was a dark-eyed beauty. He should have been with her, doing the things that young couples do – not trudging behind a barbed wire fence, protecting the United States from Mexico’s dust.
He cast one last forlorn glance at the high wire fence shimmering in the heat haze, and shook his head again.
He was bored.
He was frustrated.
And he was sure this whole operation was a vast waste of time and manpower.
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA
General Qin Xin was a cynical, morose man, vastly experienced in war, and deeply wary of politicians. He felt no great honor being tasked with the responsibility of defending the Great Wall against the marauding undead. To his mind the mission was a poisoned chalice.
He regarded the waiting helicopter, perched on the tarmac on the outskirts of Beijing, with a malevolent, evil eye. He had no trust in the new technology of China’s modern army; he was a rifle and trench man who lamented the passing of days gone by when a soldier relied on his weapon and his comrades. The three aides waiting by the chopper were anxious; the old General’s brusque temper was legendary. They bowed with deep respect as he approached, walking awkwardly, his legs hobbled, his whole body withered and stiff with ancient wounds and arthritis. He had a gaunt, wasted face, with little creases beneath his eyes from squinting through dust and the sun’s glare at distant horizons.
“Take me up,” he pointed at the sky and growled. “We go east first, towards the Shanhai Pass.”
The helicopter lifted off the ground above a billowing skirt of swirling dust, climbing quickly. The old General sat, rigid in his seat. The cabin doors on both sides of the chopper were open. The frigid air came howling in. General Qin grumbled under his breath – but the view beyond the helicopter was spectacular. He peered out at the undulating landscape while his aides tried desperately to unfold and re-fold maps.
The Shanhai Pass was one of the major gateways in the Great Wall. The site where the wall spills into the Bohai Sea was nicknamed the ‘Old Dragon’s Head’. It was a three hundred kilometer flight east of the capital. General Qin closed his eyes – and fell asleep.
When the helicopter landed, the jolt of the skids hitting the ground woke the old soldier. His eyes blinked open, rheumy and disorientated for a moment. He made a surly face.
“Refuel,” General Qin demanded. “Then we can begin work.”
He clambered out of the helicopter to stretch his legs and smoke a cigarette while the chopper was quickly refueled. Qin stood alone, staring absently at the high ancient walls, but his mind was fixed firmly in the present. This section of the fortification remained sturdy. It was a start, he grunted miserably.
When the helicopter lifted off once more, General Qin sat forward in the co-pilot’s seat with a panoramic view of the landscape. He spoke into his headset, each comment noted by his staff.
“This section of the wall,” he gestured beyond the Plexiglass nose of the chopper, “is in disrepair. We will need several kilometers of barbed wire laid, and I want APC’s behind the line in reserve. Make the necessary arrangements.”
The helicopter followed the snaking trail of the wall in a series of gut-swooping plunges as it meandered along the spine of green forested ridges and plummeted down into shadowed valleys. In winter the Great Wall would be covered in snow, the highest watchtowers shrouded in mist.
“And here,” General Qin described another crumbled breach in the old stone wall with a sweep of his hands. “We will need a kilometer of wire and engineers to do the work. They will need to be dropped in by helicopters. The ridges make this area inaccessible to vehicles. Issue the necessary orders immediately.”
They flew on. General Qin was grudgingly satisfied. This eastern section of the wall was in generally sound repair, much of the surrounding terrain wooded and rugged. The stone barricades were high and solid, the watchtowers that punctuated the barrier still standing. He pointed out several more small breaches that would need fortification before the sky turned brown and hazy with the shroud of pollution that hung over Beijing.
On the ground, the old general kicked open the helicopter door and stood for a long moment, happy to be on solid ground again. He hitched up the pants of his uniform with his elbows and fished another cigarette from a pocket. His face was leathery, freckled and spotted.
The Great Wall was not one wall, but rather a collection of separate walls that had been built over the span of a thousand years by successive dynasties, that, when combined, stretched several thousand kilometers along a rough east-west line. It was a massive border to defend – too great a task for any one army.
“We will concentrate our efforts along the section of the Wall we have just overflown,” General Qin declared. “Tomorrow we will fly west. At the most, we can only hope to defend six hundred kilometers of fortification – enough to hold back the infected from Beijing temporarily. It is all we can hope to achieve. Any more and we will be stretched thin as rice-paper.”
“The infected might seek to circumvent the defended perimeter,” one of the aides fretted. He imagined a million infected ghouls sweeping through an unprotected, unrepaired breech in the wall. It would mean encirclement and the death of them all.
“Yes,” General Qin admitted. “But there are not enough men and not enough time to do any more. The east flank will be solid once the repairs have been made. That is where we will concentrate our force. By loud demonstrations and missile fire, the infected will be drawn to the commotion and contained. We must be loud and bold!” he punched his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Boldness and bravery will draw the undead like maggots to fresh meat. That is how we will hold the line and defend Beijing until the leadership can complete their plans.”
The aide nodded obedience, but his expression was watery. The general’s ‘fresh meat’ analogy had been a poor choice.
WHITE HOUSE
SITUATION ROOM
Nick Blakely was… well… disappointed when he stepped into the Situation Room. He had expected something much grander; something commensurate with the awe and mystique that veiled this room in secrecy and speculation. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had anticipated – but it certainly wasn’t this rather small, unimpressive basement space of dark wood paneling, low ceilings and stark lighting.
An area had been cleared for him in one corner. Copies of the handout he carried had been distributed around the long table. In front of every chair was a glass of water and a notepad.
Most of the people were already gathered in the room, talking amongst themselves in hushed, intense tones. Blakely recognized the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Secretary, the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State, noticeable by the bright color of her dress in a room filled with crisp uniforms, sober suits and stern faces.
Blakely was nervous; his hands were sweaty, and he could feel his legs trembling. A lectern against the corner wall gave him something to lean on, and a place to set down his notes. Thoughtfully, a glass of water had been left for him. He gulped it down.
“Blakely, right?”
The analyst turned, surprised to hear his name. “Yes, sir,”
The man before him was Admiral David Mulligan, Chief of Naval Operations and a member of the Joint Chiefs, dressed in full uniform. Mulligan had a surprisingly friendly, open face and a warm voice. He smiled, and the corners of his mouth turned up until the pleasantness reached his eyes. But behind the affable exterior, Nick Blakely sensed a man of formidable presence. They shook hands. The Admiral’s grip was cool and hard, and in his eyes was an unsettling rigidity of determination.
“Scared?”
“Very, sir,” Blakely confessed.
“Don’t be,” the CNO leaned in confidentially. “From what I hear, you’re doing some good
work. You’re one of Mark Bowen’s best and brightest, right?”
Blakely didn’t know how to answer. He smiled his gratitude and the moment became awkward. Fortunately, the President arrived. Everyone straightened.
The President went to his chair at the head of the table and gestured people to their seats. While he waited for the room to settle he leaned across the table and spoke briefly to Walter Ford.
“Thank you, lady and gentlemen,” Patrick Austin acknowledged his Secretary of State with a polite nod as he brought the meeting to order. “I don’t have a lot of time in the schedule, so let’s not waste any of it. The National Security Advisor has new information about China he wants to share with us.”
Walter Ford stayed seated but leaned forward so his elbows rested on the polished tabletop. The gesture lent urgency and significance to his words. Everyone around the room listened avidly.
“The Chinese are up to something,” Walter Ford said, telling the room what everyone assembled already knew. “The movements of their navies and their merchant shipping fleet have been a cause for concern because we haven’t been able to figure out their end-game. Today, I think we got a far better understanding. I’ve asked Mr. Blakely from the Near East and Southern Asian Analysis Office at Langley to give today’s briefing. He was the man who solved the mystery – it’s best if the information comes directly from him.”
All heads turned expectantly to where Nick Blakely stood beside his lectern. He felt himself inwardly quail. Everyone’s gaze was like the double-barrels of a shotgun being swung onto a deer caught in the headlights. His mouth turned dry as sand. He could feel cold sweat trickling down the back of his shirt. He took a shuddering breath and tried to compose his features.
“Thank you, sir,” his mouth barely moved. He took another breath. Someone in the room cleared their throat. It sounded like impatience.
“As we are all aware, the Chinese have been making some extraordinary Naval movements since the spread of the NK Plague,” he looked out across the room, his gaze an inch above everyone’s head, not daring to make eye contact with anyone lest he see disapproval. He leafed open the cover page of his report and caught the movement being repeated around the table by those who watched him.
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 33
