by Josh Hilden
But she was on the Council, nominally in charge of all the defenses of the town and valley. Jesus, if she had known that getting here would mean that she would have to become the region’s Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, she might have just kept going till they hit Canada. Today was the day that she was going to spring her idea about White River on them, if Chief Hall wanted her to support that scheme to move to the island, then he had better have her back on this.
7
7:45pm
Lisa and Nancy walked hand and hand down Main Street toward the small house that served as their home and as their personal offices. The house had been abandoned by people during the initial outbreak, and the council had given it to her to use because it was directly across the street from the old Silver Fish Lodge. The building they’d turned into the Militia Headquarters. Lisa sighed, the council meeting had been long and difficult, but a lot of the issues had been decided upon and the plans were in motion.
“What are you thinking about, Love?” Nancy asked. They were anxious to get back to Charlie. One of the teenaged Wolverines volunteered to watch him while they were away.
“That this operation is a giant clusterfuck in the making.” She said glumly, it’d been her idea after all.
“The Council agreed once you showed them the radio intercepts.” Nancy said and then squeezed her hand.
“Yeah I know, but once it’s done it might be 1000 years before it can be undone. If ever,” She said morosely.
“They agreed to sending people to White River because they need us here.” Nancy said, and now she was being matter of fact. “But they agreed with you about the bridge Lisa. It’s a funnel that will bring all of the Dead right to our doorstep. And if the things we have been hearing from the south are even half true, then this needs to be done quickly.” She looked at Lisa after she finished and didn’t like the look on her face. “What’s really wrong Lisa?” She asked and her voice was warm and calm.
Lisa felt the tears in her eyes building up, and she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to hold them back. There was a nearby bench, and she guided Nancy toward it and they sat down together. “I think that I am going to have to leave soon.” She said it so quietly that Nancy had a hard time hearing her.
“Well of course you are. You need to head for the bridge soon.” But Nancy thought Lisa meant something very different. She had been sharing her bed, and she knew that the dreams that her lover had been having were getting worse.
“No, not that,” Lisa said and she wouldn’t look at Nancy.
Nancy reached over and took the sides of Lisa’s face into her hands. Gently she tilted the tired and unadorned countenance of the younger woman up to look directly at her. “I love you,” she said. “Tell me what you are thinking. I will stand by you no matter what.” In that moment anyone who looked at her would have thought the attractive slim woman who was closer to 40 than 30 was a girl of 16.
The tears welled over in the lids and spilled down her face. Her heart stopped when she heard the words. They’d used terms of endearment since they’d come together, but neither of them had said those three words. Lisa felt as if a millstone had been removed from her back. “I love you too.” She said.
Nancy smiled and planted a warm and tender kiss on her lips. “Now tell me what you are worried about.” She said, and Lisa knew that she would never be able to be without her again in life.
“I have to find my sister, I think that if I don’t things are going to get a lot worse.” She then began to tell her love all of the things that she had seen in the shadow world between waking and death.
8
White River Federal Bio-Research Center
Outside White Harbor, Upper Michigan
November 12, 2012 AD (Day Twenty Six)
10:10am EST
The lights in the monitor room flickered as the giant diesel generator in the basement cycled down and the facility once again switched over to battery power. Brigadier General Ryan Hart watched the monitor and again cursed the short sighted fools who’d stripped his command of all combat troops.
When this started, he’d had a battalion’s worth of Army Rangers and their armament on hand. He could have sent them out there and they would have wiped the board clean of the horde of the Dead that occupied the ground level of White River. There were more than a thousand of them up there, prowling the grounds and the buildings in an effort to locate the prey that he was convinced they could sense in some way that his resident “Egg Heads” had not been able to explain.
They should be here any time now. The message from Lt. Colonel Sutton was clear, help was on the way. But until they arrived all he could do was watch and wait.
He kept coming back to one man on the surface. He was Master Sergeant Stephen Ramirez, now he was a walking corpse. The man had been the base’s senior NCO and was serving out his last year in the Army before retirement. He’d been in the Green Berets and when the Dead broke through the fences and swarmed the base, he’d volunteered to attempt a breakthrough with a dozen of the support staff who had real combat experience.
They had not made it.
They’d been slaughtered before they could make it to the motor pool and all but the Sergeant had been ripped to shreds. He’d hidden from the Dead and then expired from his wounds. He’d reappeared two days later and had attempted to access the underground facility. That had scared General Hart. It terrified him that the thing who’d been the Sergeant remembered where the entrance to the top secret portion of White River was.
There’d been intermittent communications with the Government in Cheyenne Mountain but they weren’t receptive to his request for help. With his reduced staff they had enough food and water to last a year, and with reduced power demands the onsite generators would continue to produce sufficient power for roughly the same amount of time. He’d been ordered to continue working on the problem of the Risen Dead. At first General Hart argued they were not equipped for the assignment, but when he was informed of the loss of the CDC in Atlanta he h stopped arguing. But his people kept telling him that they just did not have the equipment or the specialization to pursue the directed line of inquiry.
Still, even safe down in the subterranean fortress, they felt like prisoners. A joke was making the rounds that the Dead were lucky because at least they got to see the sun and feel some fresh air, even if it was air that probably stank of death and decay. He pretended not to have heard the joke but there’d been several times that a staff member and even some of the remaining support personnel, had asked to be issued a weapon and allowed to leave and attempt to make it home. He might have been faced with a full blown insurrection, but he promised them that when the temperature remained below 18 degrees for four days and nights, he would personally lead a party to the surface to check things out. That placated the more restless members of the base’s occupants.
“General, I think you need to see this.” The young man who’d been a MRI Technician before all the craziness said from the other bank of monitors.
Ryan hustled over and looked at what the kid had the cameras zoomed in on. There appeared to be a dozen heavily armed and armored vehicles heading down the main access road toward the fallen main gates. He did a double take and then looked at the tech, “Son I know that I’m getting a little long in the tooth but tell me something. Is that a giant fucking snow plow out there leading that convoy?” He needed to know, because at that moment he was unsure if he trusted his own senses.
“Sir, it sure looks like it.” He said, really there was nothing else he could say as the plow careened into the base’s main yard and began to systematically mow down the Risen Dead like corn stalks under the thresher.
Kyle reached for the main intercom microphone and keyed it. “All base personnel this is the General, please assemble in the entrance hall and prepare to receive visitors. Attention all personnel this is the General, please assemble in the main entrance hall and prepare to receive visitors.
Thank you.”
9
10:30am EST
One partially decayed and rotted form after another was pulverized underneath the Bitch’s giant tires and Patrick Rowland was having the time of his life. Pat spent the entire journey north being as careful as possible, they had to be careful because replacement parts for the Bitch were damn near impossible to find while on the road. But now they’d reached their destination, and he had an entire repair facility in White Harbor that he could use to keep the Bitch in fighting trim. Nothing short of a tank could match the ancient mechanical behemoth for raw power and durability.
Captain Rich Paulson was sitting in the passenger’s seat and holding on for dear life as the 60 odd year old man in the driver’s seat plowed through one corpse after another. Even in the almost freezing temperatures and with the windows rolled up, they could still smell the sickly rot of the corpses as they exploded underneath the massive tires and two tons of pissed off machine. He winced as the plow destroyed what had once been an Army NCO.
“Hey Pat!” he yelled at the older man, “Do you think we can slow down a bit? The boys in the back are looking a little green.” He gestured to the dozen Militia men and Wolverines in the bed of the plow.
Pat laughed and brought the plow to a full stop to allow the infantry to exit the vehicle and mop up the Dead. They used a combination of hand to hand weapons and small arms to accomplish the task, and were joined by another 20 men from the smaller vehicles. The other vehicles were loaded with the tools and supplies they would need to refortify the base from the Dead. They’d not come to extract the personnel and leave all of the priceless equipment behind.
They had come to stay.
It took a full 20 minutes for the ad hoc infantry to dispatch the Risen Dead inside the perimeter, and to begin the process of fortifying the perimeter to keep out any stragglers in the area. They weren’t professional soldiers, just a mix of civilians and National Guardsmen, but Rich was pleased with the way they’d risen to the challenge. He reasoned that anyone who made it this long after the dead had gotten up to eat them probably had a warrior sprit in them somewhere.
Off to the side of the open area, in front of the main gate, the bodies were being doused with kerosene. The count at the end of the engagement was 812 Dead and one of their own. She’d tripped during the melee and broken her ankle. In the distraction, one of the pus bags had taken a bite out of her. When everything had been finished, she’d put a bullet in her own head. Rich hated that worse than anything else about this war, there was no recovery for the wounded.
A 17 year old private from the White Harbor Militia came running over to Rich with a bulky field radio that was probably genuine Vietnam era surplus. Rich wanted to laugh, but he knew from bitter experience in Iraq that sometimes the older gear was a hell of a lot more reliable than the more modern stuff.
“Thank you Private,” He said as he took the unit.
“Yes Sir!” The kid said, and Rich wanted to recoil a little. He’d never wanted to be an officer. He’d done his hitch in the Navy so they would pay for college, and he had gone out for the SEALs because they were the baddest mother fuckers around. But he never wanted the responsibility of command, and now he had it.
There’d been some tension between the 1st Michigan and the White Harbor Militia until they started going out in mixed hunting parties to stop the dead before they reached the town. Now the two groups had developed a lot of mutual respect for one another. Of course everyone respected the Colonel. Hell there wasn’t a fighter amongst the Wolverines that wouldn’t die for the Colonel.
“White River this is Captain Richard Paulson of the 1st Michigan ERB, authentication code TEA CUP. The Wolverines have arrived! Over,” The Colonel and General Hart worked out a series of code phrases a few days earlier. But the final statement was pure Rich.
His radio popped and hissed for few seconds and then a strong man’s voiced responded in the clear. “This White River counter code SAUCER, I say again SAUCER.” There was a pause and then the voice continued, “Captain Paulson this is General Hart we are opening the main doors and coming up. It’s real good to have you and your people here son, over.”
Rich handed the unit back to the young private and turned to look at the men and women under his command. They were good soldiers, and he was gratified to see that the body of their downed comrade had been set aside for burial. They would not sully her honor by burning her with the dead. There was a lot of work to be done and not much time to do it if the Colonel was right, but they’d get it done. After all, as a wise man had once told him while his face had been squashed in the mud, “The only easy day was yesterday.”
Chapter Three
1
Outside of Hession, Michigan
October 31, 2012 AD (Day Fourteen)
12:01am (Midnight) EST
Ken Michener once again sat in the highest crook of the tallest apple tree south of The Compound. The air had gotten really cold, and he was bundled in long johns and heavy winter clothing. There’d been a few scattered flurries over the last three days, but the first real snow of the season had yet to fall in the Hession area.
The population inside The Compound was growing by leaps and bounds. The latest census numbers put them neck and neck with what the population was on the morning that the dead had started rising. There were finally more than enough people in The Compound to do the all the jobs that needed doing and allow for people to get a good eight hours of sleep. Of course all of the new people meant that more and more of the leadership roles had to be filled by the Hession natives.
It was there town after all.
Yesterday, in a ceremony conducted at city hall by the mayor and Estelle Landry, Ken was made a Second Lieutenant in the Hession Spotters. Mrs. Landry herself pinned the gold bars, taken from a local surplus store, on his shirt collar. It was exciting and more than a little scary for Ken, he was now in command of a dozen other Spotters watching the southern approach to The Compound.
They needed everyone watching that they could get.
The stories of the “Army of God” had gone from a trickle of rumor when the Wolverines set out from Hession to a flood. Three days ago when a group of terrified and half crazed survivors from the Lansing area stumbled into Hession, they’d given a graphic description of the fall of the state capital, and of what had happened to the survivors. Those who’d chosen to join this “Army of God” received some sort of brand on their heads. The ones that agreed to serve the Army were in some way made safe from the assault of the Dead as long as they stayed loyal. But those who refused were fed to the Dead that followed the Army by their own friends and neighbors.
Ken wasn’t sure of how much of this he believed. He’d seen too much that defied explanation since the dead had risen, and he would be damned if he would dismiss the stories out of hand. Of course despite the survivor accounts and the radio broadcasts, there were many in The Compound who refused to believe that there was an Army of the Dead marching and devouring its way up the glove.
The people from Lansing claimed that the Army of God was only a few days from Hession. That made the residents pause. They dispatched a squad of Spotters to scout the area, but they had yet to return or report back in. The Compound was on heightened alert and all of the defenses had been drawn up and put into action. They’d been continually broadcasting for help from anyone that could hear them, but all they were greeted with was silence and derision.
They were all scared.
Ken was trying to stay awake. He’d been there for five hours and it would be another three before the relief squad came to give him and his people a rest. Just as he was thinking it was time to walk the perimeter and check on everyone, his radio squawked to life.
“This is Eaglet Three to Mother Bird, over,” he cringed at the code words that somebody back in town had thought were funny when they had assigned them.
“This is Mother Bird, go ahead Eaglet Three, over.” He said back into his radio.
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“Sir, one of our people has just returned and…uh, Ken, she looks real bad.”
