“You’re going to confront the soldiers?” the journalist frowned.
“Absolutely!” Tianna thrust out her chin. “And we’re going to keep protesting until we save what’s left of the world.”
*
Captain Ortiz stood with his hands propped on his hips and surveyed the stretch of steel fence and concrete wall that Delta company had been ordered to defend. He was not impressed.
About two hundred yards of the perimeter was twenty-foot high solid concrete, the earth around the slabs still disturbed from recent construction work. An eighteen-foot high steel fence that had been smeared with reckless graffiti barricaded the rest of the sector. The metal fencing was the color of rust. Ortiz could see through the fence to a second low wall on the Mexican side. Beyond it stretched the vast flat expanse of Tijuana Airport, shimmering in the heat haze.
Behind him stood the warehouses and perimeter fences of the business park, landscaped with trees and small patches of green grass that separated huge warehouse buildings and abandoned semi-trailer trucks. To the left and the right of where he stood, columns of lorries were delivering Marines to the border behind drifting clouds of orange dust. The entire sector of the wall was a hive of frantic, bustling activity. Shouts and revving engines punctured the eerie stillness. Ortiz scanned the far horizon but could see no signs of the approaching refugees.
The concrete wall sector worried him. It was impossible to see through. He had no idea of what lay behind that solid barrier. People carrying ladders could assault that section of his command and the first warning would be when the attackers clambered across the top and leaped to the soft dirt on the American side.
He had a sudden inspired idea. He turned to his lieutenant, shouting.
“Take some men and break open the gates to the business park,” Ortiz ordered. “I want half a dozen of those big trucks brought here. Make sure their container trucks. We’ll park them under the wall and use them as observation platforms. Tell the rest of the men to start digging in – and I want this entire area cleared of rubbish and debris.”
*
They appeared – not as the solid phalanx of a marching army – but as a straggle of exhausted and desperate refugees across the horizon. They were weary men and women with children in their arms. They came not in any kind of formation, but rather as a stream of humanity beneath a swirling sandstorm of dust kicked up by a quarter of a million dragging feet. The refugees from across Mexico and beyond were tired and thirsty. Flies buzzed in the air and the hum of their voices carried clear across the barren landscape to the soldiers on the American side of the border. It was the sound of a sports stadium crowd in the moments before the game; a noise and an energy of expectation and excitement.
Captain Ortiz saw the vast mass of people through his binoculars as they came clambering over low fences and spilled onto the airport grounds. They ran past an old concrete runway, past the parked cargo planes on the tarmac and their voices rose. The landscape was a brown dry dustbowl. Dirt clung to sweat and painted the people’s faces grey. They reached the new black tarmac of the airport’s main runways and kept coming. They swarmed towards the Tijuana Airport’s main terminals.
There numbers were impossible to count; the solid crush of bodies broke into ragged clusters. Some ran faster than others. Some were simply too tired and fatigued to run at all. Others stumbled in the dirt. Captain Ortiz heard children screaming.
He turned to his men and ran a critical eye over the company’s preparations. Most of his National Guard troops were behind low concrete walls, positioned about fifty yards away from the steel border fence. Others were standing on top of the high truck containers that gave them a view over the concrete sector of the wall. Every man in the unit stood armed and anxious. Ortiz let out the breath he had been holding.
“Hold your fire! No one is to shoot without my express orders!” he barked the warning. “Martinez? Get on the line to command. Tell them we’re going to need an ADS unit – pronto!”
*
Tianna thought it would be easier. In her mind she imagined the knot of protesters marching down the street with bystanders lining the road cheering them on. She visualized the protest march more like a triumphant parade, with their voices chanting and placards waving while the US troops barring their way fell back with shame and embarrassment. Tianna was convinced that the group held the moral high ground. They had right on their side.
What more could they need?
The reality was very different. The roads around the Ysidro Port of Entry were all barricaded and defended with armed soldiers. The ‘LifeRightsNow’ march reached the roadblocks and stopped, uncertain.
The cameraman and journalist marched with the group, filming snatches of footage as the marchers stood impotently at the barricade shouting and punching their fists. Someone set fire to an American flag and the protesters cheered themselves hoarse. Tianna led the group, marching at the vanguard of the procession with a bullhorn in her hand, firing up the rally every time their voices began to falter.
“This is a generational debate!” she turned flushed with excitement and reckless energy to shout into the lens of the camera. “This is about tomorrow’s leaders exerting their influence today. The old forces in our government that have controlled our lives and made our decisions for us for decades are falling. The Plague is the dawn of a revolution in America. Young people have the right to speak out. Every human has the right to life. President Austin’s border wall is just another form of racism.”
*
The refugees reached the high border fence. The sound of the crowd rose from a low rumble into a roar of shouts, screams and whistles. People pressed against the steel slats thrust their hands through the bars.
“Let us in! We demand to be vaccinated!”
“Save us from the plague!”
People swore bitterly. Someone used a hammer to smash the steel posts. The sound rang across the sky like a tolling bell. Each new assault on the barrier brought a fresh cheer of encouragement from the crowd. They broke into a chorus of strident shouts.
“We demand to be vaccinated! Don’t leave us to die! We demand you share your plague antidote!”
A group of men, their faces hidden behind bandanas, rushed the fence armed with wooden clubs and saws. They hammered at the steel and tried to cut their way through. Captain Ortiz strode forward from his command position with a bullhorn in his hands. His appearance seemed to inflame the crowd. They punched their fists and cursed him.
“Move away from the wall!” Ortiz demanded. “Return to your homes. Do not attempt to break through the barrier or my men will be forced to shoot. For your own safety, move back!”
The fierce shouting from the Mexican side of the steel barrier drowned him out. A rock sailed through the air, thrown from someone deep in the crowd. It landed harmlessly in the dirt. Then a gunshot rang out.
Ben Ortiz felt a stinging pain in his chest – a white-hot needle of searing agony. He staggered backwards, wide-eyed with shock and bewilderment. His feet were heavy in the dirt. He clutched at the pain and his hand came away oozing bright red blood. He took another uncertain pace backwards then turned slowly to face his men. He opened his mouth to shout an order but a crippling knife of agony buckled his knees. He fell to the ground, then collapsed face-down in the dirt. Three more shots rang out from inside the mass of refugees. A window in the business park behind the soldiers shattered. Suddenly the sky was filled with flying rocks.
*
Tianna heard the distant echo of gunfire and her eyes turned huge with shock.
It was happening! It was actually happening!
The refugees had reached the border wall and were fighting for their right to enter America. She could hear a rumble of loud voices. She had to be a part of it! She had to join their fight for freedom.
She threw the bullhorn up to her lips and rallied the protest marchers around her. “Follow me! Join the fight for freedom!”
The crowd sur
ged against the low barricade and it collapsed. The soldiers manning the roadblock threw up their weapons, but no one fired. The university students swarmed down the road towards the wall, scattering into side streets and alleyways in small groups screaming with exhilaration and triumph.
The journalist and cameraman ran with them.
*
The National Guardsmen of Delta Company saw Captain Ortiz get shot and watched him fall to the ground. They ducked for cover as several bullets zinged past them. Then one of the soldiers impulsively opened fire at the crowd – and the struggle along the wall turned into a panic-filled chaos of gunfire and shouts and screaming.
Tear gas canisters and swirling smoke turned the stretch of border wall into a fog-like nightmare. Automatic gunfire punched holes in the smoke. People screamed in shrill terror and agony. A Mexican woman fell to the ground, shot in the back. Two children were caught in a cross-fire of bullets that came from both sides of the barrier. A man was struck in the face. He had been holding a wooden club. He died slumped against the bars of the fence, blood dripping from a wound between his eyes into the parched dry dirt.
*
Tianna ran blindly through the warehouse’s buildings, drawn by the sudden prolonged bursts of gunfire and the wail of terrified screaming. She burst into the open stretch of ground between the business park and the border wall with another puffing protester beside her. Both girls were panting, their hearts pounding in their chests. Tianna was trembling with fear and exhilaration. She coughed and felt her eyes begin to sting. Smoke swirled through the air. Close behind her the cameraman did his best to film the action. The scene along the steel fence was apocalyptic. People were howling with outrage and fear. Bullets and rocks hissed through the air. The sounds were nightmarish.
Tianna impulsively ran towards the fence. She saw a little Mexican girl through the thick steel bars. The child was kneeling in the dirt. On the ground beneath the girl, lay a woman on her back. The child was crying, tugging at her mother’s limp, lifeless arm, while a stampede of frenzied feet swarmed all around her.
Tianna sprinted across the open ground. To her the child seemed to represent everything the protest was about; innocence, futility, terror…
The cameraman ran alongside, filming the mad dash across the dead ground. The picture wavered in the viewfinder with every jinking step. The mic picked up his ragged breathing and then his sudden exclamation of shock followed by a single word.
“Fuck!”
A stray bullet, fired from someone within the panic-stricken crowd, caught Tianna just above her left ear. The impact snapped her head sideways, the girl’s skull seeming to expand like a rubber balloon for a tenth of a second before the skull collapsed and the grey contents of her head exploded in a cloud of blood and bone fragments.
The refugees were driven back from the wall and retreated to the far side of the airport. The gunfire became sporadic and then stopped.
In the dirt and dust a dozen people lay dead, and twice as many clutched bleeding wounds.
NATIONAL CRISIS MANAGEMENT CENTER
WELLINGTON
NEW ZEALAND
The evidence was irrefutable – and appalling.
In the basement of the ‘Beehive’ building that housed the offices for the executive branch of New Zealand’s government, Prime Minister Aiden Cowlishaw stared aghast as the Chief of the Defense Force completed his briefing.
The atmosphere in the Crisis Management Center was funereal. Cowlishaw got numbly to his feet and walked in a daze around the room. The Air Vice-Marshal gathered up his imagery and a folder of intelligence reports and tucked them under his arm.
“With respect, Mr. Prime Minister,” the Chief said. “There is nothing we can do to prevent the Chinese if their intention is armed invasion. This is the biggest armada of ships and men ever to set sail. Our frontline naval force consists of two Anzac class frigates. Our Army numbers less than five thousand full-time troops, and our Air Force hasn’t had air combat capabilities since we retired our A-4 Skyhawks almost twenty years ago.”
Cowlishaw nodded and made a sound like a sob of physical pain. The CDF went on grimly.
“The harsh reality, sir, is that for many years we have relied on our geographic isolation and our alliances with America and Australia to give a hostile force pause. We need our allies now. The Chinese fleet is in the Coral Sea. The lead elements of their strike force are six hundred nautical miles east of Brisbane and about four hundred nautical miles southwest of New Caledonia. It seems clear that the Chinese are sailing towards our North Island.”
Aiden Cowlishaw frowned, still reeling in stunned disbelief. The moment seemed like a scene from a monstrous nightmare. He looked around the Crisis Center like he was searching for an escape. The faces of the staff that stared back at him from behind their computer monitors were pale with fear.
“America,” Cowlishaw croaked. “I need a call put through to the White House – immediately.”
He prowled the room while he waited. He gnawed his lip, clenched his fists. The minutes ticked by inexorably. The Prime Minister’s head felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. He tried to calculate the time difference. Wellington was twenty-one hours ahead of Washington.
When the administrative assistant set down her phone and rose from her desk in the communications room, the Prime Minister looked up expectantly.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young woman apologized. She seemed on the verge of tears. “The President of the United States is unable to take your call at the moment.”
“What?” Cowlishaw reeled and swayed on his feet. “Why?”
“He’s unavailable, sir. That’s all the White House would say.”
Cowlishaw blinked and then a cold chill of foreboding froze the blood in his veins to ice. “Oh, Christ!” he gasped the oath. Realization struck him in the chest like the blade of a dagger. The enormity of the conspiracy and betrayal began to dawn on him. He shook his head, blinked, like a boxer on the wrong end of a murderous beating. A wave of hollow despair washed over him.
“Put… put a call through to Canberra. I need to speak to the Australian Prime Minister.”
It couldn’t be true – could it?
*
Paul Redrup looked up from the file on his desk as the office door swung open. His secretary leaned across the threshold.
“Mr. Prime Minister. I’m sorry for the interruption, sir, but you have an urgent phone call from the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Should I put the call through?”
“Urgent?”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul Redrup sat very still for a long moment. He felt his heart pounding in his chest. A nauseating hot wave of guilt washed over him. He felt like Judas – but the devil’s deal with the Americans had been agreed to.
“No,” he said softly, with a sickness churning his stomach and the sweat of shame running down the back of his shirt. “No. Don’t put the call through. I’m busy. I can’t be disturbed for the rest of the day.”
HEADQUARTERS CMN (CABLE MEDIA NETWORK)
NEW YORK
There was no fanfare, and no dramatic stab of music. Instead TV screens around America cut suddenly to a studio where an ashen-faced anchorman sat. He had a typed sheet of paper in his trembling hand. Behind his shoulder was superimposed a large map of South America.
“This just in,” the reporter’s voice sounded grave. He stared into the camera. His eyes were dark and unsettled.
“The NK Plague has reached Brazil, with several reported outbreaks near the coastal city of Maceió. The news comes following the collapse of Europe and Great Britain, and has raised alarm in Washington where government officials remain locked in a crisis over security issues relating to our southern border.
“Maceió is the capital city of the state of Alagoas and has a population of nearly a million people. Normally the destination for sun-loving tourists, the idyllic metropolis on the east coast is now an infection disaster zone. In just the past hour, autho
rities have reported twenty-nine outbreaks of the contagion, and Brazilian officials fear that number could rise to thousands before tomorrow.”
The anchorman paused for a moment and laid down the notes he had been reading from. “Viewers are advised that the footage you are about to see might be distressing. Parental guidance is recommended…”
It was gruesome. It was horrific.
The amateur film had evidently been recorded from a cell phone. The picture shook. The sound crackled with distortion – but nothing could detract from the appalling horror that flashed across the screen.
People were shouting in Spanish. They were running down a narrow lane. Between them they dragged the body of an adolescent boy. The child looked like he had been mauled by a pack of savage dogs. His right arm was splashed in bright red blood and seemed attached to his shoulder by just a few shreds of sinew and tissue. It had been bitten through. He was screaming in agony. The people around the boy were white-faced, their eyes enormous with shock. They carried him in their arms, looking frantically over their shoulders as they emerged from the shade of the alley into the bright sunshine of a busy city street. Then someone screamed.
The camera jerked away. Half-hidden in the shadows could be seen flailing, snarling shapes. They were human-like, thrashing their arms above their heads and growling like animals. They burst from the alley soaked in blood, and charged into the bystanders that had gathered around the wounded boy in macabre curiosity. The crowd broke apart and fled, screaming shrilly with fear. The infected ghouls ran amongst the people. Two of the zombies dragged a woman down to the dirt and pinned her body while they savaged her. No one came to her aid. She screamed in abject terror and kicked her feet while the ghouls began eating her alive. The graphic footage cut abruptly.
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 70
