It didn’t matter. New Zealand had not a single combat fighter in the air to challenge the Chinese ‘Flying Sharks’.
The first rule of modern warfare was to ensure air superiority. By commanding the skies, an army could dominate the battlefield.
New Zealand was literally defenseless.
The first target for the Chinese fighters was the Devonport Naval Base on Auckland’s north shore, where two enemy frigates, an amphibious sealift vessel and three inshore patrol boats were moored. The two frigates were New Zealand’s only frontline fighting ships. From eighty nautical miles away the Chinese pilots launched their YJ-83’s and sent them racing towards their destination.
The missiles were sophisticated ship killers. The first three Chinese fighters fired all twelve of their YJ-83’s. Both of New Zealand’s frigates sustained multiple hits and sank beneath black roiling pyres of smoke and billowing flames.
The second flight of fighters released their own missiles on the remaining ships moored at the Naval Base. The amphibious sealift vessel erupted in a fireball.
After the initial twelve-fighter assault, New Zealand’s Navy had been completely destroyed. As the fighters turned back for the carrier, the second wave of jets lifted off the flight deck, each loaded with bombs beneath their wings. They howled over Wellington leaving white vapor trails in the blue sky. Eight bombs struck the Parliamentary buildings and reduced them to rubble. The block between Museum Street and Molesworth Street was devastated. The nearby Ministry of Justice on Mulgrave Street also took three direct hits. Massive explosions shook the ground. Ambulance sirens and fire alarms wailed as local emergency services were activated. People fled from the inner city, screaming in panic.
While the fighter jets bombed the city’s key buildings, the flotilla of Chinese destroyers launched CJ-10 cruise missiles from hundreds of miles over the horizon, guided to their targets by an inertial navigation system and TERCOM technology. The Terrain Contour Matching navigation system aboard the ship-launched missiles used a pre-recorded contour map of New Zealand’s terrain and compared it with measurements made in flight. The CJ-10’s flew low to the ground at subsonic speeds and devastated their targets. Within hours, every major military installation on the North Island was in flames. People hastily packed their belongings and fled for the countryside. Snarling traffic jams out of the cities stretched for miles.
In the afternoon, the Admiral of the Fleet reported the success of the assault to President Xiang. The naval officer was glowing with triumph.
“The attack has been a complete success,” he stood stiffly before the President. “We have met no resistance. The New Zealand Navy has been utterly destroyed and all the major targets we identified in our planning have been struck.”
“Collateral damage?” Xiang asked sharply. He was contemptuous of the military. Soldiers, sailors and pilots were full of bluster and egotistical boasts. Xiang would reserve his judgment until after he saw the intelligence reports.
“Our reconnaissance aircraft have not yet returned, Mr. President,” the Admiral said. “But the fighter pilots who flew the strike missions have a high level of confidence.”
Xiang grunted. He lit a cigarette. “When will the first troops be landed?”
“The day after tomorrow, Mr. President,” the Admiral said. “We will continue with airstrikes and cruise missile attacks throughout the night and into tomorrow. Our commercial ships are many nautical miles behind the fleet. Once they reach the Tasman Sea, we will commence the land invasion.”
SAN YSIDRO PORT OF ENTRY
SAN DIEGO
Most military leaders have a love and appreciation of history. Officers studied great battles of the past as part of their leadership education. From ancient tactical classics such as Thermopylae through to the Napoleonic Wars, the fearsome engagements of the American Civil War and the bloody battles fought during two World Wars; the pages of history taught lessons to be learned.
But to the General hovering high over the border wall aboard a Black Hawk helicopter, the view spread before him reminded him of a moment of legendary infamy.
“It’s the siege of Troy all over again,” he thought to himself.
The far curve of the horizon was smudged with a dark scar of smoke, and between that blurred line and the high concrete slabs of the US – Mexico border wall stretched an endless milling mass of humanity.
The refugees were squatted around campfires, huddled under makeshift shantytown tents, and milled idly in restless crowds. The stench of unwashed humanity and fear and desperation was a miasma of odor that seemed to shimmer like heat waves in the air. Flies buzzed around growing piles of filth. The wretched stench of open sewer pits reeked when the wind blew from the south. Grubby naked babies tottered in the squalor while their listless parents fretted with rising fear. Dogs yapped and fought over meager scraps. The sound of misery was the constant rumble of half a million surly voices in chorus; an endless wavering note of anguish that not even the thundering beat of the chopper’s rotors could quite drown out.
Between the vast encampment and the border wall was a no man’s land of dirt and sand that measured by the effective range of the army’s tear gas canisters.
The General shook his head. “Take me further east,” he told the Black Hawk pilot.
The sky too was full of activity. US military helicopters patrolled the border wall and higher overhead, a formation of A-10 Warthogs out of Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, circled. Between the helicopters and the fighter jets darted network news helicopters, hanging in the sky like big-bellied vultures, despite the strict no-fly zone. Every once in a while one of the freelance pilots would make a desperate dash over the San Diego skyline and encroach for a few seconds into military air space, capturing live footage for a ravenous media before scurrying hastily away.
The General’s Black Hawk put down its nose and thundered east. The Otay Pacific Business Park and the edges of Tijuana Airport passed beneath them. It was where a National Guard captain from the 160th had been killed by rioters. Now the scene appeared relatively calm, although there were dark clouds of smoke beginning to boil from the airport’s terminal buildings.
The General frowned. It made no sense to willfully destroy the vast structures that could offer shelter and shade. Then a ripple seemed to run through the milling mass of bodies camped across the tarmac and wide-open spaces of the airfields.
“Take me down!” the General snapped. “Put us over the airport.”
The people on the ground began to move. It was like a slow swell rolling in from the vast depths of the ocean – a ponderous fluid movement that gradually built momentum and energy until the people below the helicopter were no longer walking.
They were running.
And screaming.
“Sweet merciful Jesus!” the General gasped.
The NK Plague had reached the southern border.
A sudden violent explosion tore through the roof of an airport terminal building and bright orange flames licked at the sky. Smoke roiled, black and billowing across the horizon.
The hundred thousand people camped in the dirt had only one hope of survival. They fled towards the border wall, abandoning everything, their faces wrenched in terror and panic. The elderly and the infant were crushed in the reckless stampede. The cries of fear were like a harsh slash of discordant sound that sent a shiver up the General’s spine. The helicopter spun on its axis and hovered a hundred feet off the ground. A boiling cloud of kicked-up dust obscured the General’s view. He saw dark flitting shapes moving in the chaos. He heard shrill, blood-curdling screams. The stampeding refugees scattered like a vast school of fish set upon by sharks.
The General snatched for the Black Hawk’s comms and broke urgently across every tactical network.
“All units. This is Eagle Six. Alert! Alert! Prepare for an imminent attempt to breach the wall. We are weapons free! Repeat. We are weapons free. The use of lethal force has been authorized.”
*
<
br /> The infected tore through the refugees massed along the border wall like frenzied animals, spreading the contagion through savage snarling bites. They drenched themselves in blood as infection spread through the vast encampment.
The civilians that made it as far as the wall became trapped between an immovable object and an unstoppable force. They saw their own death coming, heard it in the savage snarls of the infected as they wreaked havoc amongst the massed bodies. The refugees clawed at the wall, tearing off their fingernails in sheer terror. Others tried frantically to climb the iron bars of the fencing. They clambered over bodies in a desperate last bid for survival. Thousands were killed in the sudden crush. They fell to the dirt and were trampled to pulp. Blood soaked the parched earth as the newly infected reeled away clutching at torn wounds until the contagion boiled through their bodies and the madness came upon them.
The sound of tortured screaming rang against the still air. US soldiers standing their post watched aghast as the horror played out right before their eyes. They saw babies on the other side of the fence snatched away and mauled. They saw women fall to their knees, somehow silent and serene as if waiting for the headsman’s axe to fall. Thousands lifted their faces to the sky in futile prayer. Others tried to fight back and were brutally slaughtered. A pink mist of blood stained the air. Children thrust their hands through the iron bars pleading for mercy. Marines and National Guard troops watched on, weeping futile tears until the refugees were overwhelmed.
The sounds of the wailing carnage gradually became overwhelmed with guttural snarls and hideous howls. Billows of dust obscured the last minutes of the slaughter. The air took on a peculiar choking smell; the stench of something fetid and primal. A soldier dropped to his knees and retched in the dirt.
“Open fire!”
The humanitarian crisis became a desperate battle for American survival. Half a million undead surged along the wall. They were incensed by the sight of the soldiers on the far side of the fence. The blood-lust fueled their insanity. The infected dashed themselves against the steel bars like a crashing wave against rocks.
“Open fire!”
The undead tried to force their mangled bodies through the narrow bars. They scrambled onto the backs of those beneath them. They beat at the steel with their bloodied fists until the undead flesh had turned to pulp and the bones in their hands were broken. They seemed to feel no pain. The insatiable madness for savagery drove them to ravenous feats of insanity. But still the wall held.
“Open fire!”
The concrete slabs of the new border wall thrown up by the Army engineers became painted with a gruesome graffiti of bloody smears. The infected beat their heads against the concrete. They charged in packs trying to throw the slabs down with the sheer weight of their numbers. They scrabbled in the dirt like dogs, burrowing with their clawed hands, howling and snarling their fury.
“Open fire!”
A stutter of automatic gunfire sounded like the rattling cough of an old man. It was the spark that ignited the firefight. Suddenly, all along the steel fenced sections of the border wall, the US soldiers began pouring concentrated fire into the densely packed mass of blood-drenched undead bodies. The infected fell and got back to their feet. They staggered away clutching chest wounds and shattered shoulders. The M4’s cut bodies almost in half; still the undead crashed against the wall. The ghouls that took shots to the head fell heavily and did not move again. The gunfire dashed the custard-like contents of their brains against the ground and splashed it over the others pressed close by.
“Head shots!”
Gradually the soldiers understood. Long chattering fusillades of roaring gunfire turned to short concentrated bursts of carefully aimed head shots. The range was close. The undead began to fall in droves until the bodies piled against the wall. The soldiers came cautiously from their cover and sniped with impunity.
“Kill them all!”
The windrows of infected bodies turned into holocaustic stacks of broken corpses that other infected used to climb. Soldiers armed with flamethrowers hosed the mounds. The sky filled with smoke, and the sickly gagging stench of charring flesh carried on the breeze until the entire city was draped in the foul odor. Military flamethrowers had voluntarily been withdrawn from US weapons arsenals in 1978. Upon the outbreak of the infection commercial hand-held trigger-activated models had been discreetly purchased and issued to troops on the southern border. They were close range devices, typically used by firefighters to ignite undergrowth during back burning missions in woodlands.
“Call for air support!”
Six AH-64 Apache attack helicopters lifted off from San Diego airport and came in from the west in line astern. They flew just above stall speed, seeming to creep across the sky in a majestic procession of awesome arrogance. Then the pilots opened fire with each aircraft’s thundering M230 chain gun from a height of just thirty feet.
Fires broke out. Abandoned cars on the Mexican side of the border burst into flames. Dozens of new fires smudged the sky with fresh eruptions of black smoke.
When the Apaches peeled away from the border wall, their chain gun ammunition spent, they swung south and fired AGM-114 Hellfire missiles into the mass of undead still swarming northwards. Marines behind the concrete wall lobbed mortar fire into the frenzied hordes. The ragged crump of each blast carried on the air a split second after each explosion until the crescendo became a deafening blur of noise and swirling smoke.
Overseeing the battle, the General aboard his command Black Hawk darted restlessly along the perimeter, fretting over the integrity of the wall. For mile upon mile the undead were pressing at the barrier, their numbers incalculable. The General was appalled at the slaughter, and the relentless madness of the infected. As he watched the battle unfold, National Guard UH-72 Lakota choppers hovered at higher altitude, frantically calling in ground fire and directing air traffic. The nimble light utility choppers buzzed in the air and the sky became like a crowded highway at rush hour – until the undisputed kings of close air support arrived on the battlefield and an ominous air of awe and anticipation temporarily lulled the firefight.
The A-10 Warthog was universally revered for its lethal firepower.
The aircraft did not have the sleek lovely lines of an F-35 Lightning or the menacing profile of an F-15 Eagle. The Hog was essentially a gun with an aircraft attached, purpose built to bring fearsome firepower to ground battle where friendly troops were in danger.
Four of the lethal beasts streaked in from the desert to the west, loaded with a thousand rounds of 30mm ammunition that could be fired at seventy rounds per second. The Hogs were also carrying bombs from their Triple Ejector Racks – pylons mounted close to the fuselage. Each TER bristled with three five-hundred pound bombs.
The A-10 pilots understood the value of their presence and the importance of their role. They wasted not a round, not a single bomb.
They howled across the Mexican desert at low altitude and opened fire into the writhing heart of the undead horde.
Each aircraft became shrouded in its own gun smoke as the lethal guns fired. The noise from the American side of the wall sounded like a heavy piece of canvas tearing. One by one the Warthogs unleashed their fury and then pointed their noses up into the clouds, turning in a wide lazy arc. They swept back westward, dropping their cluster of bombs. The impact of each explosion shook the ground with tremulous aftershocks.
It was as if the battle had paused for the Warthogs. Now they were just specks in the distant sky on their way to re-arm. The UH-72’s came swarming back like flies to feast on a carcass.
*
“Gillmeister!” Marine sergeant Blair snarled. “Grab that toy cigarette lighter, boy, and come with me.”
The two Marines dashed forward to the steel fence in front of them carrying small handheld flamethrowers. The sudden fury of machine gun fire along their sector of the battlefront stuttered to a halt.
The undead bodies piled against the thick bars
of the fence were stacked head high. Corporal Gillmeister gagged at the sickening stench of rotted flesh and clamped a grubby hand over his mouth.
“Light ‘em up!” Blair snarled. He leaned close to the bars and triggered the device. A tongue of thin orange flame leaped three feet from the nozzle. The peculiar smell of gasoline temporarily blotted out the cloying stench of death and decomposition. The two Marines set fire to the crushed bodies on the far side of the fence. The ground had turned to blood-soaked mud. Gillmeister touched the flame to an out-thrust blood-smeared arm and the fire caught instantly to the body’s clothing. The corpses ignited with a ‘whoosh’ and began to twist and writhe a macabre dance in the inferno. Skin charred and blackened. Smoke choked the air.
A refugee still alive inside the crushed pile of corpses began to scream.
It was a gruesome sound; a shrill tortured howl of agony. It went on for a long time and in the end the only thing the Marines could do to block out the agonised screams of the victim being burned alive was to resume firing on the undead.
Still the sound persisted.
*
By sunset the battlefield had fallen into a restless lull. The undead still hurled attacks at the wall, but the initial shock of the terrifying assault had worn off. The weary troops defending the perimeter were rested and replaced by National Guard reserves that had been rushed forward.
The General overseeing the sector knew the battle had been won, but there remained a long war still to be fought. He knew that in the days ahead millions more infected would appear on the southern horizon.
The troops had passed their first bloody test.
Tomorrow would bring fresh challenges.
But the wall had stood firm and for now, at least, America was safe.
WELLINGTON
NEW ZEALAND
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 72
