by Wick Welker
Douglas turned to the squad. “The assault will be with five shock tanks rolling in a single file line. The battery-shaped trailer that Dr. Stark has referred to will have the code name ‘Bunny.’ The Bunny will be attached to the middle tank, being protected by two tanks in the front, and two tanks from behind. As we begin our advance, each tank will be on scheduled EMP bursts. Each burst from each individual tank will have sufficient radius to cover the entire convoy. As I mentioned before, each tank takes eight minutes to charge a pulse. At the moment we deploy, every tank will be charged, and ready to go. If we get swarmed all at once and fire all charges in immediate succession, then we would be shit out of luck for another eight minutes while all the tanks charge, making us sitting ducks if another wave of the horde comes against us.
“For this reason we will not, unless as an absolute last resort, be firing all pulses in rapid succession. Instead, one tank will fire, and we will wait no less than two minutes until the next tank fires. It is because of this two-minute lapse of EMP coverage that we have a ground crew of thirty men and women armed with EMP rifles. They will be providing front, flank, and rear coverage in between the tank bursts. If we can maintain the two minute gap in between shock tank bursts, we will always only be two minutes away from another pulse that will make all of the infected drop dead within a fifty yard radius.
“Now keep in mind that we will have constant but periodic airstrikes clearing a path for us as we penetrate the horde. In between the airstrikes and the shock tanks, the ground crew will probably not have to lift a fucking finger. Am I making sense?” he yelled out.
“Sir, yes, sir,” the squad chanted in unison.
“Then let’s start making our ground team. Raise your hands if you want to be the first ones to slice these motherfuckers in half! Don’t make me start making assignments.”
Dave turned and looked at Michaels, who was already ready for him with a smile.
She grabbed his hand and raised it above his head while raising her other arm up. “Right here, Captain!” she yelled.
“Tripps and Michaels! Who else? We need twenty eight more.” One by one, squad members slowly raised their hands, and then gained momentum with every hand in the crowd going up. Douglas picked out the rest by pointing and yelling, assigning them into one front team, two flanks to span the length of the five tanks, and one to follow from behind.
“I need to make absolutely sure that everyone understands this plan. Do any of you have questions?” Douglas asked.
“Sir, no sir.”
“Then let’s fucking roll!” Douglas looked at Stark and patted him on the shoulder. “Sir, we will have you in the middle tank, carrying the Bunny. You will not be exiting the tank until we are at the power plant. Do you understand?”
“Uh, yes, yes, that will be perfectly fine.” Stark put his camouflage hat on with an unintentional slant. “I’ll get right in. Ready to go when you are.” He turned from the squad and looked out the opposite direction, past the double chain-linked fence, and into Juárez. The sun laid low in the sky near the west, casting shadows from the downtown buildings over the city. There were no traffic lights flashing or cars inching through rush hour traffic. The city lay dim and rotting from within, ceased of all normal human activity, and replaced by the constant squirming of millions of the infected pushing into homes and spilling over freeway overpasses. They had hollowed out grocery stores and bored into parks, leaving mounds of bodies that had been torn apart too quickly for the virus to reanimate. Stark saw there was a leading edge of the infected horde as they began to take notice of the army that had amassed against them in El Paso. Let’s see if this works, he thought.
Dave studied Stark’s profile from below and wondered if it was either strategic planning of sheer panic that was running through his head. It has to be one of the two, he thought. He watched as the legendary man lowered himself down into the tank and closed the hatch. Suddenly, all five of the shock tanks burst into life and rocked back and forth as they assembled into a single line formation. Douglas’ voice flickered into Dave’s headset, shouting at the ground team to take their positions. Dave checked his rifle and moved toward the front of the tank line, with Michaels running up at his side.
Michaels hit him on the shoulder. “Of course he assigns me and you right to the front.”
“I saw that shit coming,” Dave said. They ran up a slanted aqueduct and through a heavily weeded area that got trampled by the tanks. The rest of the front team, Wang, Jacobs, and Yen joined them from the behind. They ran along the length of the shocker tank convoy as it mobilized and drove through a large open gate into the outer limits of Ciudad Juárez.
“You ready to die with these assholes?” Michaels yelled out for the three of them to hear.
Yen looked at her and very carefully replied, “We’re not going to die. We’ve got Dr. Stark riding with us. They wouldn’t send a national treasure into a suicide mission.”
“Oh, no, we’re dying all right,” Wang yelled while tripping on a stone. “And I can’t believe I’m dying with you idiots.”
“Shut up, Wang,” Michaels said.
“Oh yeah,” Wang said breathing heavy, “you can’t die yet till you get with your boy Tripps over there.”
Michaels looked over at Dave. “No, Tripps will be long dead before that could ever happen.”
Dave gave her an awkward smirk and looked ahead as the sunset flashed in between the downtown skyline. They continued running along the tank line until the convoy stopped in single file with their large, clam-shaped EMP arrays humming loudly. The cylindrical Bunny trailer was positioned in the middle of the five with ten squad members flanking each of its sides. The forward team finally made it to the front tank and positioned in a front facing V shape, with Wang taking the very front spot.
Douglas’ voice blared into the ears of the entire squad team. “Ground teams, finish assembling into your positions. Each tank team is prepping their generators, which are now fully charged for pulses. We will begin our assault in six minutes after an airstrike approximately two thousand feet at our twelve o’clock. As soon as you see the bomb flash, that’s when we move. Godspeed everyone.”
Dave looked ahead, over the shoulder of Wang, and could make out faint movement in the distance across the flat desert of Mexico. He saw the edge of the large crowd that meandered toward them. The army of our living dead, he thought. They stumbled and pushed toward the convoy at a constant pace, like a hurricane approaching the land with no means of stopping it. We’re just the sandbags, he thought. Taking the brunt of the waves only to be swallowed up after.
The horde inched closer, and Dave made out men in white shirts and ties, a mechanic in a one piece jumpsuit, women in shredded dresses, and children crawling between the thousands of rotting legs. There was no one person whose body was entirely whole; most had several missing limbs; some with most of their faces gone or their bellies eviscerated. Others crawled on their hands and knees, while at the same time an entire ceiling of bodies rode on the heads of the horde, until they stumbled off the edge to be absorbed once again into the mass.
Dave dropped a pair of goggles over his eyes, and was going to double check his rifle, but was paralyzed by the overwhelming stench of rotting bodies. The smell moved over them like a weather front, absorbing them in a suffocating fog.
Jacobs bent over and vomited, while Yen, and Wang frantically fitted their faces into the small gas masks from their packs.
“Gas masks, now!” Douglas yelled out.
Dave held his breath and fumbled through his pack, until Michaels came over and took it off the end of the bag, where Dave had forgotten that he tied the mask. He dropped his face into the mask and brought the rubber straps over the back of his head.
“Thanks,” he said through the muffled muzzle of the mask.
“Me and you are sticking together, okay?” Michaels said.
“Yeah, I’ll have your six.”
“No, no, if we get swarmed, cli
p your tether to my belt so we don’t get separated. We stand a better chance if we’re defending together.”
With her gas mask on and a black helmet covering her forehead, Dave couldn’t make out her face beneath the gear. “Yeah, yeah good idea.” He looked out again and saw that the horde had approached much faster than he thought possible. “Are they going to drop that airstrike any time soon? They’re probably just a little more than a football field away.”
Michaels responded with muffled nonsense as an orange flash erupted in front of them and sent a shockwave of air into Dave’s chest. He shielded his eyes for a moment, and then looked out as a cloud of body parts flew upward into the sky, mixed with black smoke and clouds of fire. For a small moment, the desert lit up with the light of a noonday sun, with shadows of falling bodies.
As the billows of smoke subsided, black droplets and chunks of charred remains rained down on top of them, splattering onto the tanks, and smacking onto the helmets of the ground teams. Dave breathed slowly and ducked as a blown-out ribcage with half a spinal cord attached to it flew over his head.
“Forward team, move out!” Douglas yelled.
Dave got to his feet as Michaels picked a scalp with hair attached off her shoulder, and kicked away what Dave thought was half of a pelvis, split down the middle. The shocker tank behind them lurched forward, prompting the forward team to move. Their boots stepped over terrain that had been instantaneously transformed from a desert into an outdoor butchering floor, with body parts strewn about as far as they could see ahead. The ground team picked up their march, maneuvering in between bodies as the entire convoy moved in a single file line toward the crater left behind from the airstrike.
“Let’s pick up the pace!” Douglas shouted out. The convoy picked up speed from behind, and the forward ground team began a brisk jog through the body parts with their boots splashing through the bloodied mud that had pooled across the terrain. They reached the edge of the airstrike impact and ran down a slope into the wide crater that was free of any human remnants. The shocker tanks followed from behind, bumping up and over the edge of the crater. The rest of the ground teams surrounded the tanks, with their EMP rifles pointing out.
“No stopping, keep moving!” Douglas said.
The ground beneath Dave’s boots was soft and unearthed from the blast, vibrating with heat. At the bottom of the crater there were no signs of the infected, only freshly churned dirt. He momentarily lifted his mask off his face and brought in a deep breath of fresh air. The forward team started to climb their way out of the other end as the first shocker tank reached the bottom, with the second arriving at the opening ridge. Dave stumbled after Michaels and Wang as they scrambled up the slope, with their rifles pointed upward.
Wang reached the ridge first, and paused to look over, then quickly fell backward.
“Oh, fuck me!” Wang yelled out.
Michaels ran up from behind him only to be tossed backward down the crater hill as bodies of the infected stumbled down from above. One by one, the infected tumbled down, clutching onto dirt and plant roots. One man rolled down sideways, knocking Dave to the ground. Frantically, he grabbed at his EMP-57 from beneath him and fired it up the hill, bringing several more of the infected to the ground, which caused them to roll on top of him. As an obese woman knocked into his chest, Dave unclasped his blade from behind, unsheathing it from his back. He got to his knees and brought the blade down onto the woman’s back. He looked up as Wang struggled to lift his rifle from beneath a man.
“Wang, hold on!” Michaels yelled out as she got to her knees and lifted her rifle. Before she could fire, a man in a police uniform fell on top of Wang, biting him on the neck. Michaels fired her rifle but not before Wang and the man stumbled backward down the hill, clear from the rifle’s pulse. They slid together until hitting the bottom of the crater where the infected man chewed on Wang’s neck, who cried out for help as bright blood burst forth.
“Forward team, retreat back to tank one and prepare for burst. We’ve reached the part of the horde out of the airstrike blast zone,” Douglas ordered into their earpieces.
Row after row of bodies fell down the ridge of the crater in front of the forward team. Dave lunged over several people toward Michaels, who grabbed onto his pack from behind, and thrust him down, making him summersault toward the tank.
Jacobs and Yen fired rifle pulses, from their knees, and fell backward as the bodies fell into them like a waterfall.
“Get down to the tank!” Michaels yelled over to them. The three ran down after Dave, who had already rolled to the tank back at the bottom of the crater.
“Tank One, fire!” Douglas yelled.
Dave dug his boot heels into the dirt, pressing himself against the hull of the shaking tank as the infected encircled around them, getting onto their hands and knees, with their eyes circling and jaws rattling.
Chapter Sixteen: Merida, Mexico
Malik sat at a small coffee table and took a lid off a jar that puffed with white powder as he tipped it into a bottle. He lifted the bottle up and inspected the level of powder within, filled the rest up with water, and stirred it with a spoon.
Carter, a young man in Army fatigues and buzzed hair, stared at him from across the room as a streak of sunlight shone over his face. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“It is of no concern to you.” Malik did not look up from the table.
“It worries me that you seem overly concerned about… petty things,” Carter said.
“This is none of your business—please go back to… whatever it was that you were doing.” Malik rummaged in the front pocket of his shirt for a nipple top and twisted it on top of the bottle. He got up from the table and went into an adjacent bedroom that was empty save for a single cardboard box in the corner. He knelt beside the box and opened a cardboard flap where a baby was bundled in loose newspapers. He lifted the baby out of the box and into his arms. He brought the bottle to the baby’s lips, making him slightly open his mouth to receive it. The baby sucked on the nipple for a moment, and then pushed it back out of his mouth.
“Malik,” a voice from behind said. “Come with me, please.” It was Atash.
Malik turned and saw Atash standing in the doorway. “Yes, yes, okay,” he sheepishly said, laying the silent baby back down into the box.
“Follow me out to the patio,” Atash said and walked out of the room.
Malik left the bottle at the side of the box and followed Atash, who walked by Carter, and moved out onto a concrete patio that overlooked the city. Malik rested his back against a cinderblock wall and looked out, concentrating on his breath. He imagined an empty, square room deep in the back of his mind that held no objects or emotions, and completely void of consequence or meaning.
“Tell me your thoughts, brother.” He heard Atash say from his side.
Malik opened his eyes and saw Atash smiling at him. “I have no thoughts.”
“That, my brother, is a beautiful thing.”
“Yes.”
“And why is it beautiful?”
“Because, when there is a vacuum in my mind and in my heart, I am free of preoccupation. It is impossible for me not only to have feelings of… regret or sadness if there are no thoughts to provoke those emotions.”
Atash spoke, “That concept is so easy to talk about but so very difficult to obtain. I believe I am finally seeing it within you. I’ve seen you grow in the fact that you recognize that growth is not necessary at all. Personal development is an illusion of the ego. There is no difference between your being and that wall behind you. As soon as you discover that, you will know that it doesn’t matter what happens to you. Live or die, it makes no difference, and I believe that you know that now. You know it deep inside of you, not just on your tongue.”
“You believe that?” Malik asked.
“Yes, I do. You’ve shed yourself of the man that you once were, and you know that you are merely an object. This is what our brotherhood is about, and
it is why we are bringing this supposed… destruction to mankind. They see it as murder or genocide or whatever label they feel justifies their indignation, but we know it is relieving human beings from the dream of living. They will wake up and know that to have a tangible body is no privilege, but that it is indeed a trap. They will then know what it is to be unified with what they now believe to be God, but what we as brothers now understand, to be a beautiful nothing.”
“Thank you, brother.”
“Regret, fear, and guilt are foreign ideas to you now that were created by your Earthly body.”
“I know.”
“You’ll soon learn the ‘I’ in you, the person that is thinking your thoughts right now is also your enemy, and will eventually need to be purged. That, however, is for after your body is gone.”
“I understand,” Malik said.
Atash walked in front of Malik, obscuring his view of the city, and turned to face him. “I have news for you.”
“What is it?”
“We are going to meet the Sirr.”
“We are?”
“He has been impressed by our loyalty and that someone like you, previously so entrenched into the U.S. government, would become part of the brotherhood. He told me that he admires you.”
“I…” Malik stopped.
“What?”
“I’ve been wondering this whole time if he really even exists.”
“Yes, I thought that had been running through your mind. You’re not the first amongst us who has had similar doubts. It took me quite a long time and much patience to believe in him.”
