Forces of Destiny

by Robert Maxwell

  He leaped up running for the aircraft as he reloaded the rifle on the run and released the charging handle on the rifle loading a 7.62 caliber round in the chamber. He pulled up the remote control car command smartphone screen and entered an attack collision course in the center of where he estimated the undead mob would be following him in twenty seconds. He ran until he was halfway to his aircraft and aimed his scope crosshairs on the front of the undead pack and shot the right cheek of a five foot tall undead in a Navy blue camouflage uniform. In the scope, he saw the group grow by another fifty as the undead streamed out of the airport terminal. The worst case scenario of being swarmed was unfolding in his mind. Matthew fired at an undead six foot tall man in a green flight suit hitting him in the cheek causing a mist of rotted flesh to fill the air as his head jerked back and his limp body fell to the pavement.

  Suddenly Matthew realized he had been drawn into a tunnel vision only on the threats in front of him. He quickly looked to his left and right and then turned around and saw two undead twenty feet away rounding the corner of the fuel facility building.

  He raised his rifle and shot the taller male in a mechanics overall soaked with blood by simply pointing the barrel at his chest at such a close distance. This slowed the mechanic down as Matthew walked up another round to his neck and finally a bullet hit his right cheek causing the zombie to stop and slowly fall backwards like it was still struggling to stand after its brain was severely damaged by the 7.62 caliber 173 grain lead bullet. Matthew instinctively backed up as the second zombie in a burned police uniform got within three feet of him. The odor of burnt decaying flesh was a putrid distraction flashing through Matthew's mind as he swung the rifle barrel shooting a round of ammunition every third of a second into the undead policeman. Four bullets violently impacted the upper chest but it was the fifth bullet that went into the tip of the undead policeman’s nose that pierced his brain causing him to drop forward with two hundred pounds of dead weight.

  Matthew turned back to the group to see the first remote car explode in the middle of the undead hoard blowing the legs and hips off twenty of the undead. A huge thunderclap of the explosion was visible as it kicked up dust and debris like a visible shock wave. Matthew could pick up the odor of decaying flesh and explosive smoke. He quickly keyed in the second remote control car to stop its attack run and he instead commanded it to stop fifteen feet in front of the undead hoard. The stench of the neutralized zombie policemen a foot away from him was going to make him throw up but he held his breath to focus. He keyed in the third and fourth remote control cars to do the same. They sped into place in a few seconds and Matthew waited another three seconds until the undead were in the kill zone of the anti-personnel warheads. Matthew ran backwards to the corner of the fuel center and detonated all three cars at the same command. In three huge thunderclaps, a half a second apart from each other eighteen hundred steel ball bearings exploded in an upward arc towards the heads of the undead ripping off the cheeks, skull tops and upper torsos of fifty undead and blew off the legs of a dozen more. A few of the ball bearings bounced off the concrete and flew into the airport terminal windows cracking them. A black cloud of explosive smoke blew into the air and the rest of the undead that could walk were thrown off their feet. One female zombie in a blue flight attendants uniform tried to stand back up but her right leg was blown off at the knee. She tried to stand again but fell. Yet again she got up and tried to walk again only to fall. Matthew then saw hundreds of more zombies from the airport terminal coming towards the noise.

  Matthew ran to the jet with the sole purpose of saving the plane from being swarmed by an undead mob that could harm the wing flaps or tail if too many got pressed again the aircraft or clog the jet intakes or landing gear with a mass of their bodies. He had a few seconds before the surviving undead mob grew again as undead emerged from the airport terminal a minute away. He pressed the emergency fuel pump stop in the open fuel pump panel on the side of the plane. Matthew disconnected the fuel hose and cranked the handle to reel it back. He stopped cranking for a second to shoot three approaching male zombies in torn and bloody army uniforms. He hit the first male zombie with a broken bloody jaw in the head but missed the second one's head so he slowed his breathing down and squeezed the trigger blowing the top of its blond haired head off. He then aimed his scope for the mouth of the third undead male with a tight marine haircut and military regulation mustache of black hair. He shot and watched the bullet pierce a hole through the zombie’s black mustache and blow the back of its lower skull out.

  Matthew dropped his rifle to his side letting the sling hold it and started reeling in the hose. Three seconds later he was finished but there was no time to close the panel so he ran up the stairs and into the cockpit to start the engines. Matthew then ran back to the door and saw a female zombie in a green blood-stained flight suit with blond long hair and dried blood on her mouth and chin less than a second away from the stairs. He raised his rifle in less than a second and shot right as the barrel neared her blond head. The bullet at such close range jerked her head back causing her long blond blood crusted hair to fly up into the air as her body slammed into the ground. The echoes of the muzzle blast filled the interior of the jet. Matthew glanced at what must have been two hundred new undead seconds away from the jet right before he slammed the door closed. He ran to the cockpit jumping into the pilot's seat. He pushed the jets to seventy percent thrust and the aircraft started to rise straight up as jet wash burned the rotting flesh of the undead slamming right up against the plane. An undead male in a gray bloody suit grabbed the front landing wheel as the plane lifted three feet off the ground but the zombie clutched to the landing gear.

  Matthew lifted the aircraft to a thousand feet and brought the landing wheels up but a loud alarm and red blinking light showed that the front landing wheel would not retract into the plane. He pulled up the camera bank showing the belly of the plane and the landing wheels. Matthew saw a male zombie in a blood-stained gray suit with a mangled right arm. Matthew thought, its body is jamming into the landing wheel compartment when I try to close it. Matthew strapped into his pilot seat with the six point harness, rose to another thousand feet over the Potomac river and violent rocked the jet to the left and then immediately to the right six times. On the seventh swing, the male zombie’s grip gave way from centrifugal force and fell off the plane falling two thousand feet into the Potomac river as its body broke apart from the impact on the water like it hit concrete. Matthew tried retracting the landing wheels which worked but he had a yellow warning light on the front landing wheel. He turned the jet to his next landing zone which was the White House visitor center building.

  ***

  Matthew flew over the Potomac River which hugged the west and south border of Washington, D.C. Soldiers and civilians were constructing obstacles out of cut down trees and barbed wire along the river bank. Dozens of sniper teams were shooting the undead that were walking from shore near the Pentagon into the dark brown water of the Potomac river. This explained to Matthew the source of the constant gunfire he heard from the airport. Looking over at the Pentagon there were hundreds of undead in the parking lot and surrounding highways. There was a burning Greyhound bus in the north parking lot of the Pentagon with several other buses near it. There was also zombies from Reagan airport he had drawn out of the airport terminal now walking into the Potomac river towards downtown Washington, D.C.

  Matthew thought, how well would the river act as a defensive perimeter against hundreds of thousands of undead? Can the undead walk across the bottom of the river and come out of the other side? Maybe that was why the sniper teams were shooting precious ammunition to kill the undead before they got underwater.

  Matthew flying north towards the White House looked down at downtown Washington, D.C., wondering how many people it could hold above its normal six hundred and fifty thousand person capacity. Four times that capacity would be two and a half million people but from what Matthew saw of
the military and civilian moving around the streets hardly anyone was visible. His years of military reconnaissance experience put his estimate there were only fifty thousand people down on the ground. He should have been seeing thousands of tanks and armored personnel carriers but there only two or three hundred here and there in the downtown defensive positions. Looking down at the city, Matthew wondered how many surviving military units and civilians were able to make it to this last stand. He did not have time since the beginning of his activation to absorb how hard the country had fallen. The active and reserve United States military should have numbered over two and a half million men and women with nine thousand tanks.

  The Washington Monument and the National Mall to the east of it were now a multi-helicopter landing zone. Helicopters from the east were landing every two minutes dropping off civilians who would be ran off the landing zone to the north into the Smithsonian Museum so another helicopter could land. There were what looked like abandoned helicopters parked off to the side which Matthew guessed was because of no more fuel was available. Conventional forces with mixed uniforms were setting up defensive positions around the National WWII and Lincoln Memorials using mortars and machine gun emplacements.

  Matthew looked off to the northwest towards Embassy row which had diplomatic embassies from all over the world that looked beautiful but they had built in defensive fortifications of concrete and decorative steel rod fences. Helicopters were landing in the courtyards of the Indian and French diplomatic grounds. Matthew guessed they were either dropping people off if they thought the United States was the safest country in the world right now or evacuating their staff to a transport somewhere to get them home if their countries military bases were still intact, which according to his last classified briefing, things in Europe, India, China, and Russia were worse than the United States because of the close proximity. Far to the west, Matthew saw an F-16 drop a two thousand bomb on the city of Arlington.

  Matthew could see the White House surrounded by a ring of concrete barriers and dump trucks encircling the whole grounds. There were four tanks and eight Stryker armored personnel carriers on the White House lawn. There was three Presidential helicopter parked close to the white house. Matthew counted six humvees with fifty caliber machines on turrets patrolling the street in a two block radius around the White House. He double check the blue force tracker was transmitting because he didn’t want to get shot down by the four Secret Service air defense details each with four shoulder fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles guarding the White House Air Space. Matthew switched the frequency to the Secret Service that protected the airspace around the White House.

  Matthew said, “This is Alpha two requesting landing zone alpha echo one cleared for hover jet landing, over”

  Secret service air control replied, “Authenticate Five Five Zero Seven Niner Alpha, over.”

  Matthew replied, “Tango Five Niner Eight X-Ray Four, over.”

  Secret service air control said, “Alpha two, you are cleared to land, out.”

  He hovered over the White House visitor center building a block east of the White House long enough for the landing computer on the aircraft to survey the courtyard of the building. The computer using visual recognition provided the recommendation the landing zone was only within emergency landing zone standards and a larger primary landing zone should be selected instead. Matthew overrode the recommendation to find another landing zone and commanded the landing computer to start the landing sequence. He wanted to land in the courtyard to keep the aircraft protected from the sight of others wanting to flee Washington, D.C., and from the undead in case things got bad and they got through the defensive perimeter. The Arc Light program had fought hard to secure this landing zone location and protocol for times of emergency.

  A man with a rifle cleared the courtyard. Matthew started landing the V55 jet which slowly descended sampling the wind speed as it maintained a tight vertical vector to ensure it would not hit the walls from any turbulence on the way down. The landing wheels touched down. Matthew set the autopilot and alarm system on the aircraft and exited the jet with a backpack with a three day combat load, two satellite phones, and an FN SCAR-H 7.62 caliber sniper rifle.

  A six foot four man in his forties with red hair in suit pants, a dirty white dress shirt and a black armor plate carrier on his chest with a secret service badge walked up. He was carrying an M-4 assault rifle that looked new with no scratches. In his other hand, he held a portable retinal scanner. The man said, “I am secret service agent Clay, can you please confirm your identity through a retinal scan.”

  Matthew took the retinal scanner and pressed it to his right eye. His eye watched a red dot blinking for several seconds and then it turned green showing the words ‘Scan Complete’. Agent Clay looked at the screen on top of the scanner and said, “Thank you General Knight, I will take you to the Secretary of Defense's bunker.”

  Matthew could see the eyes of the Agent Clay distracted like his thoughts were not totally focused on the task at hand. The White House was two blocks away but Agent Clay didn't lead Matthew to the street, instead they walked down the stairs to the basement of the White House visitor center building where Matthew hid the jet in the large courtyard. Agent Clay Inserted a badge into a keypad and entered a password. The next thick gray steel door had an armored camera that he looked up into it. Matthew realized Agent Clay was being visually identified by guards watching the camera feed. The heavy door then automatically opened. They walked downstairs for five levels. The stairwell was hot and smelled of dampness. Matthew from his past Delta Force training understood the security strategy for the President and needed to understand the security plan for himself ahead of an emergency instead of following a running crowd.

  Matthew asked, “In case of an emergency in the bunker what is the fallback plan to our secondary defensive position?”

  Agent Clay said, “I have no idea sir. I am not on the President’s personnel detail.”

  Matthew said, “The Secret Service Agent in charge is supposed to brief the whole security detail both Secret Service agents and attached military assets. Their secondary mission is to ensure key personnel of the cabinet and their staff are secure in the Presidential bunker.”

  Agent Clay stopped and looked at Matthew hesitating to speak. Matthew now started to better understand Agent Clay’s distracted eyes earlier, it was a man used to control and poise of a representative of the President that was now fighting back overwhelming fear he didn’t realize was slowly overtaking his thoughts.

  Agent Clay finally said, “There have been constant losses to the infection. The Agent in Charge had to be replaced four times. Each one became infected. Two of them went into comas and two eventually turned into violent undead and had to be killed. The remaining agents not in the immediate Presidential security detail are not getting any direction, we are on our own to figure out our duties. The Defense Secretary’s chief of staff and I have never met before. He pulled me aside and told me to get you.”

  Matthew looked into Agent Clay’s eyes long enough to capture his attention and said, “Humanity is at extreme risk of perishing. Men that are healthy and have been trained to fight like you are the only thing holding humanity by the hand from falling over the cliff of extinction. I want you to figure our your primary, alternate, contingency and emergency defensive positions. Then I want you to compare those plans with whoever is in charge and whoever will listen to you. Then I want you to brief anyone that will listen. If you are scared and feel out of the loop then there are other men like you. You as a survivor are a rare commodity so start bringing your ‘A’ game strategically, tactically, and leadership wise to those around you. Don’t argue with the chain of command or complain about them but fill in the gaps that are going to arise during a crisis.”

  Agent Clay looked at Matthew trying to figure out who he was but before his mind could figure that out, his emotions felt a strength in this man’s look and guidance that he would follow
. Agent Clay did not realize how bad the situation was for the world or how valuable he had become in helping the world survive. For the first time in weeks, he felt hope and true purpose. He would stop worrying and constantly keep thinking about the bunker’s defensive plans. Agent Clay took out a notepad and wrote down Matthew’s orders before his tired mind forgot them.

  After Agent Clay put away his notepad he led them to a security scanning room with an explosive body scanner, a medical scanning station, and an x-ray machine like the airport for equipment. Matthew and Agent Clay passed through the checks for bombs and infection. They looked at the four specialized square half pound grenades on Matthew’s assault vest which could be joined together like legos for a more powerful explosion, manually detonated with the pull of a pin, or remotely detonated by a radio detonator. They allowed hand grenades in the military section of the bunker so they let Matthew keep them. Matthew thought, the Secret service are looking for large explosive bombs. They then made their way to the command bunker’s front office entrance.

  They entered into the White House command bunker entrance. There was a cherry wood desk with the seal of the President of the United States facing the entrance. Indirect lighting illuminated the whole room. It smelled of sweat and mildew with the slight whiff of bleach. There were four secret service agents dressed liked Agent Clay guarding the front entrance that looked tired but pushed themselves to be professionally alert.