Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8) (19 page)

Foster tried to think of what his own father would say. “Well I guess you’d have to help them right? Show them the error of their ways and help them make the right decision.”

Leo nodded like that was the answer he expected his father to give. “What if they were unable to make the right decision? What if you couldn’t get them to change their mistake but could correct the mistake and tell them about it later? Like, what if you found out Mom wrote a deposit slip wrong but you were already at the bank?” Leo asked, finally taking his eyes off the book.
 

Foster smiled at his fifteen year old. “Leo that’s easy. Mom wouldn’t care, and that’s an easy mistake people make all the time. I'd fix it and let her know later.”

“Okay that’s a bad example. What if one of your fighters is about to bomb the wrong target based on bad intelligence? You can change the target on your own immediately, or you can let the bombs fall and hit the wrong place. What would you do then?”

“There are protocols for that Leo. But I’m able to call off the strike, change the targets and reissue commands if need be. Last thing we want is to kill innocents or to destroy a structure that doesn’t need to be destroyed.”
 

Leo chewed on this information for a good long time, digesting it. “That makes sense. Dad can you promise me something?” Leo looked at his father with hope in his eyes. He looked five years old again, and wanting a puppy for his birthday like his life depended on it.

“Of course.”

“If our bombers are ever going to hit the wrong place, make sure you stop it. I like knowing my dad helps innocent people from getting hurt.”

Foster smiled, happy to see his son be so compassionate. “Of course.”

Foster opened his eyes in the real world. His room was black, save for the red glow emanating from the alarm clock on the tiny bed stand next to his head. His skin was still prickly from the chill in Leo’s room in the dream. He lifted his arm and looked at his watch. Five hours had gone by in a blink.
 

Foster liked dreaming about his son. He just wished he hadn’t died ten years ago in a car accident. There was something positive to be had out of all these strange dreams after all.

*****

Foster sat with two Air Force technical Sergeants inside a command and control room deep inside the same government building the conference with the President was held in. It had been two weeks since the President had ordered an additional bomb run on the cities that were declared overrun. After several day long and grueling meetings via the video conferencing equipment, the President and his advisors declared that the idea of sealing off the cities was not the tactic that would serve the country best. He ordered weekly bombing runs on the cities nearest large military installations to give the forces that could be mobilized a chance to reclaim them. In the President's mind, winning the morale of the nation by taking back the cities was a goal that the government couldn't be seen walking away from.
 

Cities in the northeast, furthest from the largest of bases were abandoned. Boston, Hartford, Portland, Manchester, Springfield, New Haven, New York, and a dozen more were all left for dead. Foster couldn’t imagine the death toll in the cities, let alone the rural areas surrounding them. There would be no government assistance for them anytime soon. New England was forgotten, left to rot in the late summer sun.

Foster watched feed after feed streaming in with the two Sergeants. They observed, recorded and reported the information coming in. The two young men sat distracted, taking notes and interacting with the disintegrating world outside only as often as absolutely needed. It was very late in the day, and the repetition of bombing runs and the overall downtrodden and lethargic mood of the survivors in the bunker as a whole had caused hope and morale to steadily decline. Even Foster felt ambivalent at best about the mission he had been tasked with.

The older General hadn’t slept a wink in weeks. His gray eyes were bloodshot, and no matter how much he shaved, his face always looked shadowed and sunken. His dream in his house with his son had continued to recur to the point where it had become more of a nightmare. His son's request to him was now a challenge. The dream was a declaration to Foster that night after night, he couldn't escape. Foster felt deep inside that the dream was a subconscious reflection of his distaste for the President’s decision to continue to bomb the cities. His son kept asking him, night after anxious night to do the right thing and save lives. Foster knew these bombing missions were not saving lives. He knew the explosions obliterating increasingly smaller amounts of the walking dead were having no impact on the likelihood that anyone would survive the rest of this calendar year. Sure, the cities were becoming less dangerous with each fallen bomb. That wasn't the problem. The issue was that not enough resources were being dedicated to the support of the nation to survive the collapse of the infrastructure. Too much was being wasted on simply killing the dead.

“You look sullen Foster,” a leathery older man’s voice said to him from a few feet away.
 

Foster’s heart stuttered. He was surprised the source of the voice had gotten so close to him, so quietly. He turned and saw the Department of State official named Lancaster. Lancaster was a spook. Ex-CIA possibly. He was one of the men that dealt with the government's problems that no one was made aware of. His name and paycheck didn’t appear on any payroll that the public saw. He didn't exist in any official capacity. Foster was creeped out by the man.

“I’m tired Lancaster. Don’t you have a house to haunt?” Foster said, not hiding the disdain he had for the DOS string-puller.

“Ha. I hate to break it to you Foster, but we’re all ghosts now. We’re just haunting an empty world. How’s the pogrom going? Hitting some large piles of our greatest nuisance?”

Foster sighed before replying, “Well. We’re hitting stuff but the return numbers are terrible. We’re wasting fuel like there’s no tomorrow. Sad thing is I’ve already said that if we keep wasting fuel like this, there won’t be a tomorrow. Waste of time. We're polishing the silverware on the Titanic when we should be using the tables to build more life rafts.”

Lancaster had this horrible habit of clucking his tongue when he was thinking. Foster’s lip curled into a tiny sneer as he listed to the old man’s bad habit.

“I read your report," Lancaster finally said. "There’s a lot of sense in it. If it makes you feel any better, I threw in some support for you at our last briefing. I think in another couple weeks we’ll be able to shift resources. Just need to be a little patient.” Lancaster took a seat at the swiveling chair next to Foster. The old man sipped on his trademark paper cup of cold coffee before putting his feet up on the counter covered in keyboards and controls.

Foster was taken aback by the man’s statement. It was uncharacteristic of the old man to share something. His eyes wandered to a monitor just behind Lancaster that showed a small unit of soldiers moving through an urban area near Charlotte North Carolina. Charlotte was one of the cities tasked to be cleared first. The tremendous amount of military bases in the region made it a good choice. Foster watched as the fire teams moved from door to door, taking cover, providing cover for one another. He laughed to himself as he watched them practice a useless tactic over and over. Zombies don’t have firearms. There’s no point in taking cover from them.

Foster looked away just as one of the soldiers was taken down from behind. A trio of mangled dead walkers had burst out of a small recess in a building, grabbing at him. The rest of the unit fired repeatedly, killing the undead as well as their own. Foster wondered how long it would take for the rest of the undead to swarm to the sounds of their fire.

“They aren’t rotting,” Lancaster said absently.

“What?”

“The dead people. They aren’t rotting. They should’ve started to disintegrate by now. Especially in the heat of the south. But they aren’t. They’re still pretty much the same as when they died. Of course, more and more are dying every day, so it’s hard to track, but DOD has some Onset Day bodies in quarantine, and they’re still fresh. Doesn’t make any sense. Breaks science.”

Foster didn’t know what to do with the information he was just given. It seemed like Lancaster shared it for a specific reason, but he couldn’t fathom why, yet. “What exactly does that mean?”

“In the light of the fact that they haven’t found any bacteria, virus, or germ in the bodies that’s unusual you mean?” Lancaster said, slowly raising his eyes to lock on to Foster’s.

“Yes. In light of that too I suppose.”

“It means there is no scientific cause for any of this. And it also means, these bodies are defying the normal progression of decay for no good reason. It means that with all our best remaining minds at work on trying to find out what's going on, we know no more about what's causing this than the moment it began. It means that there is a far larger power at work than a simple plague, my friend.”

Foster kept Lancaster’s gaze as long as he could, but had to look away. The old man’s eyes were intense, like blue daggers piercing into him. He shivered.

“That seems silly. We just need more time to get to the bottom of this.”

Lancaster looked away, back at the monitor feeding the Charlotte video. Now the entire unit was engulfed by dozens undead, surrounded on every side with no way to escape. The unit’s Lieutenant was calling in air support directly on his position. Lancaster and Foster listened as an Apache flight crew in the air nearby responded. Soon the terrible helicopter would rain down 20mm chain gun fire on the men, tearing the dead and alive apart with impunity.
 

As the explosive rounds began their awful work, Lancaster stood and pointed a stubby finger at the screen. “Foster, time is one thing I do not think we have a lot of.”

*****

Eight days later Foster sat at the same table, this time alone. The decision had been made the day prior to let non essential personnel go. The younger men that had sat here babysitting the monitors wanted to go home to their families, and Foster had let them do that. The bombing runs had been cut down to just once every three days, and today was one of those days. Foster dreaded the mornings when he knew the planes would take to the air.

Disorganization had taken over the past few days across the country. Rapidly deteriorating local conditions around military bases as well as local commanders making decisions to ensure that their personal commands would survive had slowly eradicated the larger government’s ability to achieve anything substantial. Instead of one voice, one mind, and one goal, it was now a hundred muffled voices crying out, a hundred muddled minds losing track of the world, and more goals than anyone could hope to keep track of.

Foster wasn’t in denial about it though. He’d seen the writing on the wall, and had already taken steps to ensure his nation would survive this. He had his country's best interests in mind. He wasn't the selfish one. The benefit of sending the sergeants away early was that he could make adjustments to the sorties with little to no supervision. Previous checks and balances were already abandoned, and today, as Foster sat in the room alone, if he issued a command directly to the plane, the pilots would take his order immediately. If he wanted an elementary school obliterated, he could make it happen, and no one would be the wiser until the pilots returned home. Even then it was unlikely there would be any repercussions for Foster. There were precious few who he answered to now.

Foster pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket. Last night as he avoided the dream of his son once more he’d gone through every major bombing sortie for today. He dredged up new coordinates for every single city being hit, and as he reached out to the first pilot with the new instructions, his instructions, he felt the room chill. The air around him became crisp and dry, as if the air conditioning units had fired up full blast again. They'd been off for weeks to conserve energy. Instantly Foster’s mind dipped back to the image of his Leo on the bed in the upstairs of his house. Fear was the first reaction he had, but then Foster felt vindicated, emboldened. In the dream Foster’s son had asked him to do the right thing, and now that he finally was, the very air around him was showing him that he was following the right path. It was as if his dream was coming true, and his son was watching him, approving of what he was doing.

Foster issued his commands to the pilots and watched his breath materialize in the cold air. He sat back, content at last as the steam disappeared. After today, the cities would be contained, and the rest of the country could have a real chance at making it through this apocalypse.

The first target he instructed his pilots to destroy was the largest bridge exiting Boston. The Lenny P. Zakim Memorial Bridge. The first bomb hit the bridge like a cosmic sledgehammer, smashing any chance of vehicles leaving the city heading to the north. The second bomb that hit ensured that the collapse of the bridge would be imminent. A few more bombs in a few more places, and Beantown would be crossed off the list of dangerous places. As the second bomb’s dust settled in Boston, the first bomb fell in Philadelphia. As the last bombs fell in the city of Independence, the first bombs fell in Albany.
 

Foster thought of his son and smiled.

From ten feet away Lancaster watched silently from the doorway. He watched as the bombs fell, removing the urban settlements from the nation's equation like a surgeon would remove a series of malignant tumors.

Anyone still alive in the cities were now on their own. Escape would be nearly impossible. He feared for the living left behind on the newly formed islands.

*****

No longer tormented by the cursed memory of the dream, Foster slept like a baby that night.

His son was sitting at the desk chair in his bedroom. “Wow Dad, great job. I knew you could do it,” Leo said to his father, as he looked at his collection of Foster’s handed down baseball cards. Foster knew there would’ve been some value there, if the world hadn’t gone fallen apart.