The Apocalypse Crusade 2 (16 page)

“How was the Governor?” Colonel Hall asked. “Did he cave at all on the use of force guidelines?”

Collins shook his head and then sighed. “No. It was that damned video. It’s being aired every five minutes on CNN…or at least it was. The governor asked me what would’ve happened if the men had machine guns.”

“What did you say?”

“I told them we would’ve held that check point and not let two-hundred possibly infected people escape. He didn’t seem to care about that. The only good news is that the President is taking this more seriously. He’s already authorized an emissions blackout for The Zone and the surrounding area.”

“We know,” Hall said, shaking his head. “It’s making our job difficult to say the least. Many of these units either weren’t issued the proper communications devices or they were left behind in their hurry. The men were keeping in touch with their NCOs via cellphones. Now they’re in the dark and so are we. See these units with the asterisks? We have no way of contacting them other than to send men around in Humvees.”

The general shrugged. “Then that’s what we do until we can get them all linked up.”

“We would but we don’t have the man power yet. The traffic jams…”

“I know about the traffic jams,” Collins said, interrupting. He had never seen such traffic jams in his life. Flying south from Albany, the roads were like still rivers of metal and glass. “What about our cavalry support?”

“We have fifty-two Blackhawks and six Chinooks at our disposal. We need more and we need more fuel. They’re flying all over the state bringing in ten men per bird. It’s too slow for what we’re up against.”

What we’re up against
…the words hung between the two men. Collins was almost afraid to ask. “What sort of numbers are we looking at?”

Hall switched to a new view on the computer screen. It was an aerial view of Poughkeepsie. It looked completely unremarkable. “Before,” Hall said, and then switched screens again. “And after.”

Collins grimaced. “Son of a bitch.” Smoke blotted out half the shot, but what could be seen was ugly. Buildings were crumbled, bodies lay in the streets and cars were strewn about with glass like glitter all around them. Hall switched to a close up. It brought the carnage into focus. The bodies were mutilated beyond recognition and the blood streaks that ran from the cars were fine and red.

“This is what Newburg looked like; before and after. This is Pleasant Valley. Note the road out of town. The infected persons tend to travel on roads. We don’t know why, although Major Kim thinks…”

“Show me Kingston,” the general interrupted. The first shot was of a before of Kingston which the general waved away. The next showed the same picture, but with a small gathering of men and cars at the northern end of the town. There was no active fighting. “How old are these?”

“Two hours,” Hall answered. “There is a fire-fight going on now. Our best estimates have the op-for numbering about a hundred. Against them we have parts of Charlie Company, 2
nd
Battalion and elements of the 427
th
Support Battalion, along with some local law enforcement.”

“Support battalion?” Collins said with another grimace, this one even deeper than the first. “Oh, God! What sort of reinforcements are available?” At Hall’s surprised look, Collins said, “The intel is wrong. I just flew over Kingston. Our men are fighting opposition forces that are at least equal in number.” He didn’t add that they were also fighting at a huge disadvantage by wearing the masks. They had to wear them so there was no sense whining. Nor did he say that his men were fighting at a disadvantage in weaponry either. At two-hundred yards a 30-30 with a hunting scope was more than a match for the M4 carbine, especially in the hands of the hunters they had in the Catskills who were famed for their marksmanship. “From the air it looks like a zit about to blow. We need men there five minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, Sir, but we don’t have any reinforcements. We’ve been feeding men into the line just as fast as we get them on scene. We can order a retreat to this town: Saugerties. I think Esopus creek is deeper than it looks on this screen. That can be the southern flank and this highway here the western flank.”

The general’s eyes strayed to the dim figure of the bridge in the picture north of Kingston. “What about the men here? I saw at least fifty.”

Hall shrugged. They were what the other soldiers called REMFs: rear echelon mother-fuckers. Mostly this was due to jealousy. The headquarters units rarely went into the field, their physical training usually involved games of softball, and their motto was: if you can’t truck it—fuck it, meaning that road marches were kept at an absolute minimum. They rarely fired their weapons because that meant cleaning them to the army’s exacting science, something that was a giant pain in the ass. They did their jobs like professionals, but their jobs usually didn’t entail a shootout with a heavily armed populace of fellow Americans.

“I need two for guarding the prisoners,” Colonel Hall said. “And at least another twenty or so for manning the com-gear, and the aviation guys need to stay, but the rest are available. I’ll have them grab their gear.”

Collins looked around the tent before adding: “And any officer who is not absolutely necessary. Sometimes it’s like I could carpet the tent in lieutenants. And direct all incoming choppers to drop their men off in Kingston. You see that bridge? I need it at all costs.”

The colonel looked at the map. He saw the bridge and he knew the need. He also saw that there were parts of the perimeter that were thin as the skin on a balloon. “But sir, the eastern border of The Zone is dangerously, perilously thin.”

Collins tapped the screen at Kingston. “That’s where I want them, at least for now. We have three main hotspots: Kingston in the north, the southern zone above the academy and Middleton in the western zone. The other lines will have to hold for now.”

Hall made a face as if the words hurt him. “Yes sir…but Middleton? With all due respect we should be reinforcing this entire eastern line. Hartford is thirty miles away. A million people live there. There is nothing beyond Middleton.”

“There is the rest of the state of New York and Governor Stimpson thinks it’s important. Look, John, I said the same thing to him and you want to know what he said? Let Connecticut look after Connecticut.”

Hall gave him a sickly smile

Twenty minutes later, a diverted squadron of Blackhawks unceremoniously dumped their payload of ammo and fuel, and then lifted off with seventy ill-at-ease soldiers and headed for Kingston. When they were gone, the land was eerily silent. In the tents, thirty-eight men, doing the job of a hundred, worked to keep seven hundred fed, watered, reinforced and supplied with enough ammo to kill the hundred thousand men, women, children, and zombies in The Zone.

Three hundred yards away from the tents was the eastern edge of The Zone. Its line had been stripped of men and now there was only one man for every two-hundred and fifty feet. In the areas with forest, the men felt virtually alone, but so far it had been quiet.

So far.

The red Volkswagen Beetle bogged down on an unpaved and brambly logging road. The rains from the day before had made a swamp out of a low point and Courtney Shaw, with her mind on more immediate fears had driven right into it. The forest on either side of the road had been thick and close, and she had been afraid of zombies coming at her from under the shadowy trees. Her head had been swinging side to side and she hadn’t been paying attention to what was right in front of her and didn’t see the bog until she was halfway to getting stuck.

As quietly as she could, she revved the engine, only to have the rear of the car slew around to the left and settle lower into the mud. “Oh, please, no,” she whispered, the lines of her face twisted and she was practically unrecognizable in the extremes of her fear.

Shifting into reverse and trying to back out of her predicament only dug her even lower into the morass. Next, she tried rocking the car back and forth; shifting into drive for a second, then into reverse and back again. Other than spraying mud in an arc and digging a rut so deep that her axles were buried, it didn’t accomplish a thing. She was stuck, completely and utterly stuck.

And she was afraid, completely and utterly afraid.

She killed the engine and then sat listening with her head cocked. The engine ticked as it cooled and somewhere a crow made an angry sound. Nothing stirred in the forest and yet her fear mounted, threatening to overwhelm her. Her grip on the steering wheel was such that she had to will her fingers off.

“Ok. I can’t stay here,” she said to herself, hoping to goad her body into action; she could feel it stiffen, almost as if her insides were collapsing in on themselves. With a creaking of her joints, she picked up the Glock that sat on the seat next to her and for a second time checked the load; she even pulled the slide back part way to make sure there was a round in the chamber. The copper winked a dull eye at her and she covered it over again, hiding it as though it was a secret that she didn’t want anyone to know about.

Still she didn’t move. As an excuse to stay in the relatively safe confines of the Bug, she glanced around the interior. The car was her most prized possession. It was the most expensive thing she owned—three-quarters owned actually. There were still fifteen payments left before it was fully hers…and now she was going to have to leave it half-buried in the mud, deep in zombie country. The thought made her ill.

She finished her inspection and it had been a waste of time, as she secretly knew it would be. The Bug was spotless, the inside at least, and there was nothing in it except an emergency kit. It held little of immediate use: a set of jumper cables, some glow sticks, a tiny first aid kit that would do nothing for her if she came in contact with a zombie, a space blanket that was as brightly silvered as aluminum foil and two road flares. All useless, except to call attention to herself, which was the last thing she wanted to do.

Taking just the gun, she climbed out and immediately sank calf-deep into the bog, nearly losing one of her comfortable pumps in the process. The sludge sucked at it and she had to flare her toes to keep it on as she grunted and strained to pull her foot out. To get one foot out she had to sink the next just as deep and she was quickly trembling with the effort of walking and with the fear that a zombie would come along when she was stuck and vulnerable. 

On two different occasions, she half-fell, covering herself in slime. The slips were made all the worse because she went to great lengths to keep the Glock out of the mud. Although she had fired guns on occasion, she was no expert, still, she knew that the shit-thick mud would jam up the works if she wasn’t careful. For that reason she carried the gun as if it were the Crown Jewels and she allowed herself to be mucked head to toe rather than let even a speck of dirt get anywhere on it.

Finally, making it to the edge of the forest where the roots snaking out of the earth provided a firm base, she stood, shaking in her pumps, her navy blue pant suit now an ugly brown. She was close to panic; she could feel it in her every fiber. Her breath came in short, quiet gasps, her grey eyes were wide and spooked, and her ears twitched, overly attuned to the smallest sound. She was as skittish as a mare straight out of her pasture for the first time; she was within a whisker of bolting and if she had known of a safe place to bolt to she might have been running already.

Holding the Glock close to her chest made her feel a slight bit better. She didn’t have her wits, or her bearings, or any idea where she was, but she had the gun. It was reassuringly heavy in her hands. It was solid and real when everything else felt like a nightmare.

With the Glock as her spiritual totem held up to her face, she fought to control her breathing—in and out, in and out, slowly. It was just a forest around her, an empty forest, in and out. A minute passed before she could accomplish the minor feat of not passing out from hyperventilation.

Minor though it was, it helped to calm her and she was able to look around the forest, not as a girl about to go screaming off in a panic, but as a woman who was lost, but would not remain so. She had become turned around somewhere east of where she was. The Beetle had been creeping down the oddly named Jack Elbow Road when she had come across a pair of zombies standing just beyond an intersection. They had charged and she had taken a turn without looking at the name of the road.

There had been more zombies and more turns. It all became a haze of black-eyed monsters and dirt roads that all looked the same. She had managed to lose the zombies, but also lost herself in the process. Now, she was stuck with only two options: forward or back on the boggy road. Taking to the zombie-filled forest was simply not an option. Against all reason, she found the strip of dirt that cut through the woods safer. Of course, this made no sense, and she knew she was being foolish. She tried to tell herself that the road had been built by man, and that it would eventually lead to man.

The only question was forward or back. As the sun was just off center high above her, making a squat toad of her shadow beneath her feet, it was of no help clueing her to the direction of the road. Before she became lost, she had been on the southeast corner of the quarantine zone; she had no idea how many miles ago that was, she only knew that she was probably near the edge of The Zone, unless the people in charge had expanded it again.

It had been a colossal mistake to expand it the one time, and because of that mistake, she knew that The Zone would have to be expanded again and again. Without enough men to cover the outrageously long perimeter there would be leaks, which would need to be encapsulated. This would lead to a further expansion of The Zone and a need for more men. It would be a vicious cycle until something gave on one side or the other.

There, alone on the road, Courtney shuddered to think what that something would be. On the zombie side, it would mean a breakout of immense proportions: Hartford invaded or New York City, or maybe The Zone would simply continue to expand north and west, taking over enough of the country towns and hamlets to build an unstoppable momentum of zombies that would be able to wash over any barrier.

On the human side, it meant enough media coverage and enough collective fear to force the President into doing something stupid: perhaps he’d allow the use of napalm or he’d call for carpet-bombing half the state, or when things really got out of control, nuclear weapons. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, in fact she was sure there was some military guy right then drawing up plans, just in case.

“Which means, I have to get my sweet ass out of here,” Courtney whispered. Again, she was struck by indecision: forward or back.

A gun shot down the road in front of her decided the issue. Guns meant people. Perhaps they were people in trouble. Perhaps they were people about to be submerged under a mound of zombies. She didn’t care. She needed to be around people just then, even if it meant danger, or even if it was the army looking to keep her locked up in The Zone. That was understandable. It was sane and at that moment she needed a touch of sanity in her life.

With the Glock held in both hands, she swiveled it back and forth, pointing it at every leaf dropping from the sky, every bird chirping, and every cricket jumping. She made her slow way down the sunken road until the forest drew back like a curtain to reveal the open world. Above, the clouds had returned heavy and thick, while in front, the road flowed down a hill, cutting through acres of newly sown carrots.

Everything was very exact. The road was a line as straight as the edge of ruler. The trees that bordered the perfect rectangular fields were abreast of one another like continental soldiers. Even the carrots were plotted just so. It was all so flawless that the jumble of cars at the end of the road was unsettling. They seemed carelessly thrown together, abandoned and forgotten, as if a giant boy had been playing with them and had just been called home for supper, leaving them a higgledy-piggledy mess.

The glass windshields winked and the metal shone, but they were dead quiet. Nothing moved among them. At the far end of the field, just beyond the hundreds of cars, the forest began again. At first, nothing moved there either. Then came another gunshot and she saw the flash of its barrel among the trees. Someone was there. It was a moment before she saw what it was they were shooting at: A zombie or she hoped it was a zombie, was pulling itself along through the carrots.

From that distance, she couldn’t see what was wrong with it. Not that she cared, really. All she cared about was that it was a zombie and not a human. No one should shoot a human like it was a dog. Another shot finished the zombie, however the sound of the gun had attracted more. Six more came out of the woods. They didn’t come out all at once or in a neat row. They straggled and the gunfire that greeted them was ragged, a shot here, two there.

Courtney was once again struck by indecision. Should she head down the road and risk getting shot? Or did she sneak back into the forest and hope to find only trees and friendly chipmunks? The forest frankly scared her to no end. It seemed endless and hidden and she was sure that every step would bring her closer to a waiting zombie. Just look how they came from every direction! It would be like that and worse in the deep wood.

Here she had a road at least and soldiers who might be persuaded to help her. In a crouch, she kept low on the sunken road, crimping along. A hundred yards the road went before she came to the first of the abandoned cars: a Subaru Outback, piled with someone’s belongings. The car was cold. The next: a Jeep Laredo was the same. Three cars down the line she finally found life. In the driver’s seat of a full-sized truck was a German Shepherd. It barked crazily, spraying the window with saliva, as Courtney edged past.

The dog frightened her worse than the zombies; not its barking, but the fact that it was there alone. A person could be convinced into leaving their car but not their dog. The window wasn’t even cracked! A chill ran up her back.

Ahead, the cars disappeared as the road dropped down toward the forest. She resisted the temptation to stand higher to see what was to come. With a weird fear crawling in her belly, she walked hunched over until she came closer to the slope. At first, all she saw were the tops of abandoned cars, then she saw their doors and their tires and next to the tires in heaps were bodies. These hadn’t been zombies. Their skin was pale and their eyes were clear and glassy, as they stared up to the clouds forever unblinking. The bodies hadn’t been feasted on in any way, except by the flies. Courtney could hear the flies even if she couldn’t see them. They hummed hungrily.

It took a moment for the scene to filter from a picture in her mind to understanding: these people had been massacred. Quickly, she slunk back, hiding behind the bumper of a car. She felt like she was about to get sick all over the gleaming bumper; people had been massacred! Real Humans. She could imagine the screams and the confusion, the flying blood, and the explosions of machine guns as they were mowed down. It was a horrible noise in her mind and yet it could not block out the horrible rational word that drowned it all out: So?

That was followed by: So freaking what? What did you expect would happen?

She hated that voice, even though it made sense. If people, possibly infected people got past the military, there was no knowing what would happen. She knew the disease spread quickly and easily. The day before, it had burned through the CDC men in no time and they were trained to deal in germs. If one person got out the entire country could succumb to the disease in weeks or months.

The voice again: But you think you should be able to leave?

“I’m not sick,” she reasoned. She felt fine. She felt perfectly healthy except for the pain around her heart. It was fear and self-loathing. If she had known the night before, what was going to happen, she would’ve told her troopers to kill everyone at the Walton Facility, and if she had been in charge of the barricade right down the hill, she would’ve been the first to shoot.

It was sad and it was sick, but it was the right thing to do. And yes, she was going to try to get through to the other side of The Zone.

To get there she would need a sturdy truck…and a dog. She practically crawled back to the truck, stopping once at an Audi, which had a cooler on its front seat. Inside she found sandwich fixings: sliced turkey meat, cheese, mayo. She grabbed the turkey.

The shepherd again went nuts, right up until she stuck the turkey up to the window and then out came a tongue that looked a foot long. It licked the glass, turning it into a bleary mess. “Here you go,” she crooned softly, opening the door a crack and holding out some of the meat. She almost lost a finger as the dog snapped up the food. He then wagged his head all around. The scent of turkey was strong; there was more meat but he couldn’t see it.