Winchester: Over (Winchester Undead)

by Dave Lund

  Dorsey was brought crashing back to reality when the controller’s voice abruptly broke through the silence in his helmet, directing them to fly north immediately, over the Canadian border, to intercept a large flight of possible Chinese heavy bombers. Snapping the wings to the left, pulling back on the control stick, and pushing the throttle all the way forward, Dorsey and his wingman were now rocketing straight towards a possible threat to their country.

  Dread began building in the pit of Dorsey’s stomach. Usually, if they were sent to intercept another aircraft while on patrol, it was typically a private pilot who had violated a Notice to Airmen, restricting an area of flight privileges. Today, Dorsey was sure he would be intercepting enemy aircraft. Not only were he and Futch about to see their first air combat since serving in the first Gulf War, it would be the first time either of them had to engage an enemy so close to home.

  The White House

  The President sat at his desk in the Oval Office, reading over a bill he was hoping to introduce soon, one that was rumored within the political circles of Washington, D.C. to grant amnesty to any and all persons who were currently in the country illegally.

  Chris McFarland had heard the bill being planned and discussed long before this day, and it really bothered him. The consequences of such a bill being passed into law seriously jeopardized the security and sanctity of the United States. However, as an agent of the Secret Service, and as the head of the Presidential Protection Detail, not only could he not talk about what he knew was coming, there was also nothing he could do about it.

  Listening as a series of standard check-ins were conducted with all the agents currently on duty, McFarland began walking towards the Security Command Room to get a cup of coffee when a single word was heard firmly and clearly over the radio, and any thoughts of coffee instantly disappeared.

  He pushed into the Oval Office with four other agents, practically picking up the President and hustling him out a secret exit to the right of the desk. As the President began to protest, McFarland said, “Mr. President, we are under attack. You must evacuate!”

  In less than thirty seconds, McFarland and the other agents had emerged with the President onto the White House lawn, where they were met by one of the Secret Service Quick Response Teams. The QRT did not look like the other agents, who were wearing specially tailored suits—the QRT were dressed all in black with a full tactical load-out, looking to the casual observer like a police SWAT team. In reality, they were much more highly trained than most police department SWAT, even the fabled LAPD teams.

  Forming a protective formation around the President, the group moved quickly towards the Marine helicopter just landing on the lawn, and as they placed the President inside sans salutes and ceremony, the rest of the First Family were also escorted onto the helicopter. McFarland followed the President inside, buckling the seatbelt of the POTUS while talking into his radio to coordinate with the Secret Service team standing by with Air Force One, which was starting its engines on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. Less than twenty minutes after the code word had been spoken, McFarland smiled as the wheels of Air Force One left the runway. He had successfully evacuated the President.

  Northern Montana

  Lieutenant Colonel Dorsey scanned the sky ahead of the nose of his F-15C while pushing the fighter as fast as it would fly towards the incoming flight of heavy bombers. Before making the Canadian border, Dorsey was told by one of the controllers that the bombers had split into three groups: one headed for the West Coast, one flying towards the center of the country, and the last group flying towards the East Coast. Dorsey and his wingman, Major Futch, changed their flight path to intercept the group of bombers headed towards the West Coast.

  Twenty minutes after the change in direction, Dorsey looked at the display and the data from the AN/APG-70 radar, confirmed a lock, and was given clearance to engage the bombers. The plane shuddered as, one by one, he launched the entire complement of AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles) loaded onto his plane that morning. He heard Futch over the radio informing Control that they were Winchester, having spent their complement of missiles, but to Dorsey's surprise, Control ordered them to continue to engage with the plane’s mounted 20mm Gatling gun until other air assets could reach the threat.

  Surprised but willing, Dorsey and Futch continued towards the bomber threat. Approaching the flight, Dorsey pushed his fighter high above the large formation of bombers, and dove the plane with the sun at his back. Pulling up and away from their first engagement with the 20mm Gatling, Dorsey keyed his mic. “Did you see any windows?”

  “No, not a one,” replied Futch. “Couldn’t tell what it was, but there's something under their wings. Looks like the spray unit under a crop duster. Also, those pilots either have balls of steel, or there aren’t any pilots at all; not a single plane moved position, course, or speed.”

  “Okay Major,” Dorsey responded, “I’m coming back around. I’m going to come in slow and from behind the flight. If they're drones, let’s take our time and make each round count.”

  Over the next few minutes, Dorsey and Futch were able to down twenty aircraft, but another forty bombers remained in flight, never changing speed or direction as they continued south towards the major population centers of the West Coast. Out of ammo and dangerously low on fuel, the two pilots changed course towards the refueling waypoint, where a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker was on station and waiting to give them enough fuel to get home and re-arm.

  What neither of them saw was that, as they pulled away to refuel, the modified H-6 bombers began releasing a chemical spray from the apparatus under their wings, leaving a deadly trail in the sky to fall to the ground and onto the people below.

  NORAD

  Major Wright was monitoring the three flights of Chinese bombers over the country. Each flight had been engaged by various fighters and all had reported the same thing. The H-6 bombers appeared to have been modified to fly as drones, and they all appeared to have some type of spray apparatus under their wings.

  One fighter pilot on the East Coast had just reported that the bombers had begun spraying some sort of substance into the air, when Technical Sergeant Arcuni yelled across the room, “Major, missile launch detected off the coast of California!”

  Twenty miles off the Southern California coast

  Lieutenant Commander Boyd moved the collective of the Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin he was piloting towards the projected path of a speedboat headed towards the coast. A fishing vessel had radioed a sighting on the Coast Guard frequency, and his Dolphin helicopter had been sent to intercept. The technology war between the Coast Guard and drug smugglers was at a fevered pitch, with drug smugglers now using high-powered speedboats to run drugs, boats that could outpace the ships currently in the Coast Guard inventory. But his Dolphin could keep up with the speedboat, and once they found the boat, could disable it with the mounted 50-cal machine gun.

  Boyd smiled, but wasn’t overly excited. This was the third intercept this month, and he could only expect more with the new year.

  A large missile suddenly erupted from the blue ocean directly in front of his flight path. Boyd pulled hard aft on the cyclic and yanked the collective into his armpit, over-torqueing the engines, but it was too late. With too much speed and too little altitude to avoid the impending impact, Boyd’s copilot never even had a chance to transmit what they had seen before the forty-three-foot-long JL-2 missile slammed into the speeding Dolphin helicopter.

  The helicopter exploded in a large fireball, in turn piercing the fuel tank of the nuclear ballistic missile and creating an even larger explosion. The other three missiles had cleared the explosion made by the helicopter and were quickly gaining altitude, but pieces of the first missile, and what was left of the helicopter, fell to the surface of the water.

  Fifty feet below, the captain of the Jin-Class ballistic Chinese submarine wasn’t exactly sure why one of the missiles he had launched had failed and then explode
d, but the tremendous shockwave created by the explosion had caused significant damage to his boat. The captain would never learn the fate of the new world he was helping to create, for his submarine was fatally damaged, taking on large amounts of water and descending quickly towards the ocean floor.

  CHAPTER 3

  NORAD

  “Major, missile launch detected, approximately twenty miles off the coast of Southern California!” Major Wright looked up at the main screen on the large wall of displays as Technical Sergeant Arcuni typed the command to put his display on the screen.

  “Major, three inbound, computer projections put one traveling towards the East Coast, possible target New York City. Second is projected for Little Rock, and the third is … DETONATION! We have a high altitude detonation! Possible EMP attack over the West Coast, approximately ten miles above Las Vegas!”

  Major Wright engaged his handset and grimly informed Colonel Garnett that the Midwest, as well as the East Coast, had been targeted for an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack from the sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

  Lake Elsinore, California

  Just landing from an Accelerated Free Fall instruction skydive, Bill pulled the Motorola handheld radio out of his jumpsuit pocket to start talking his student down under canopy. After trying to key the radio three times, switching it off and back on, he realized it wasn’t functioning about the same time he heard a pop and felt his parachute container shift.

  Looking over his shoulder, he could see that his reserve pilot chute had deployed, and realized that the pop he heard was probably the Automatic Actuation Device firing and cutting the closing loop for his reserve parachute.

  Bill looked back at his student and saw that the student’s reserve parachute was beginning to deploy behind the first student jumper, giving the first jump student a two-canopy-out malfunction. From inside the drop zone office, someone was yelling that they had lost power, and as he looked to the runway approach he saw that the Twin Otter that was landing had lost power to its engines.

  Within seconds, everything had simply stopped working.

  In the meantime, Bill's student had not reacted to the two-out scenario as he had been taught in the First Jump Course, but had let the canopies pull apart and rotate into a down plane. He was plummeting straight down towards the ground at seventy miles per hour.

  Shrugging out of his parachute harness, Bill began running to where his student had impacted the ground. The student was still alive, but barely so, with obviously broken bones in his legs and arms. Bill began trying to stabilize the student’s neck, yelling to Steven, the drop zone manager, for the trauma bag and to call 911.

  Bill looked back up at the other tandem pairs still in the air and saw that they were fighting their own two-out malfunctions. He then noticed three large, high-flying aircraft passing overhead in formation, each trailing a thick, dark cloud that looked nothing like a contrail.

  Steven came running with the trauma bag and began stabilizing the student, but they were suddenly covered by a thick, oily substance raining down from the sky.

  Distracted, they paused for a moment, then looked back at the student only to see his body shudder with a dying breath. Steven checked for a pulse, checked for breathing, and, finding neither, closed the dead skydiver’s eyes.

  Bill cursed, and Steven began gathering the medical supplies he had dumped out of the trauma bag. As they both stood to walk back to the hangar, the dead student suddenly sat upright and grabbed Bill’s jumpsuit, pulling him off his feet and onto the ground.

  Steven could only scream as the dead student, moaning loudly, grabbed Bill and bit violently into his throat, spraying blood across the three of them. Now covered in oil and blood, Steven dropped the medic bag and ran for the hangar.

  Brazos County, Texas

  Bexar leaned forward over the tank of his motorcycle, rolling the throttle back as far as it would go. The LED emergency lights were flashing, the siren was blaring, and Bexar had his motorcycle accelerating well over one hundred miles per hour as he rounded the curve leading to the entrance to his neighborhood.

  Bexar brought the motorcycle upright and stood on the brakes hard enough that the ABS caused the tires to chirp and the bike to shudder. Scrubbing enough speed, he pushed the handlebars and, as he let the bike lean over to make the turn into his neighborhood, the motorcycle suddenly lost power, the siren quit blaring, and the LED lights stopped flashing.

  The LCD display for his radio and video recording system were also blank, and Bexar was surrounded by silence as he rounded the corner and let the motorcycle coast into the corner gas station. Bexar noticed that all the station lights were out, and the clerk was walking out the front door, looking bewildered.

  Bexar stopped the bike. As he looked back at the intersection he saw that the traffic signal was dark, and the cars on the road were rolling to a stop. He needed to get home, but he still had another mile to go.

  Pulling off his helmet, Bexar opened both saddle bags and retrieved the medical trauma pouch containing a CPR mask, two tourniquets, Israeli bandages, and a Quick Clot pouch. He also grabbed the box of spare CR123A batteries that powered his weapon light and tactical light. The last thing he retrieved was the most important item in a motorcop's saddle bag next to his ticket book—his water jug.

  Starting off in a slow jog towards his house, made difficult by his knee-high leather motor boots, Bexar heard a low rumble coming from the west. Glancing over, he saw a plume of smoke rising from the direction of Texas A&M University. The smoke wasn’t unusual, since the Brayton Fire Training Field was over in the same direction, next to the Easterwood Field airport, but the rolling sound of an explosion, followed by a second and a third, was.

  Grayson County, Texas

  After receiving Bexar’s text message, Malachi changed into a pair of Triple Aught Design, or TAD, tactical pants, with a rigger’s belt holding up his XD .40 caliber pistol in a Blade Tech holster. Malachi's long beard completed the look of a mall-ninja with his tactical gear, but the gear actually had purpose.

  Malachi and his wife Amber were quickly loading their old International Scout with their Get Out Of Dodge bags, their bug-out food, some spare MREs, water, and all the ammo they could load. Most of their GOOD load was already packed in their AT Chaser off-road camping trailer, since they had planned to leave in a hurry to make the rendezvous with the other two families.

  Amber put the last of the Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) and the last case of .223 ammo in the Scout before making a final sweep of the house with her GOOD checklist. She had to make sure they weren’t leaving anything essential; they had a long trip ahead of them.

  Malachi cursed himself that they hadn’t completed a practice load-out like Jack had told them to; he was quickly running out of room in the little Scout and trailer. Luckily, he had installed overload springs on the old 4X4, and had upgraded the axles to DANA 60s the year before, but hadn’t had the chance to change out the old straight-six for a 350 V8 as he had planned. At least the old motor had been rebuilt a couple of years ago and ran reliably.

  Amber came back out to the driveway after finishing her GOOD checklist, and was pushing the button on the garage door opener to close the garage door, but it was not responding. Malachi looked across the street and noticed that the neighbor’s Christmas lights had gone off. He then realized the whole neighborhood had lost power.

  “Pull the cord and drop the garage door by hand, I’ll get the truck started. We need to get out of here.” Malachi took his cellphone out of his pocket to pull up the GPS route to the rendezvous point, but the phone wouldn’t turn on. The new Pioneer stereo he had installed in the Scout last month also wouldn’t turn on, nor would the iPod in the center console.

  At least the truck had started, Malachi thought, before it dawned on him. “Amber, I think we just had an EMP event. No wonder Bexar called 'Winchester.' Pull out one of the ARs and get some spare mags loaded; this trip might get interesting.” Af
ter a few moments, Amber was in the passenger seat of the Scout, the rifle in her lap, and Malachi was pulling out of their driveway, thankful that his old Scout still ran a vacuum-advanced distributor with points, and that he hadn’t upgraded to an electronic ignition.

  Arlington, Texas

  Jack and Sandra finished their GOOD load-out in about the time they had expected. Over the past two years, Jack had insisted that they practice loading the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ45V with their gear so they'd know if the gear would fit. He had purchased the old FJ about six years ago and started restoring it. The birth of their son Will had slowed the project due to money and time, but Jack had at least rebuilt the old straight-six to be tough and reliable.

  He had also sprayed the truck with Line-X inside and out, instead of using a traditional paint job. The roof had a full length roof rack, and Jack had fabricated a rack across the back bumper that held their full-sized spare tire and six, five-gallon “jerry cans” of gas. The axles and suspension had been beefed up from stock, and Jack was happy with what he had built, especially when he and Sandra had gotten interested in prepping with their friend Bexar.

  It had been two hours since Jack had received Bexar’s text, and in that time the power in the house had gone out and both of their cellphones had stopped working. But now with their GOOD load-out complete, Will was strapped into his seatbelt in the back seat, and the family was heading out towards the rendezvous cache site to meet Bexar and Malachi.