Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (33 page)

We’re surrounded by the undead. There is only enough ammunition for another day, then no more. We’re fighting at night now, heading up to the surface after it gets dark to take the war to the enemy. Each shot brings more of the undead down on us. Last night they almost found us.

No food left, but we still have water. Jerry thinks the zombies will move on, but they haven’t yet. Most of us want to make a last stand here and save a bullet for ourselves at the end. There’s no way we’ll go easy. There’s no way we will let them get us – we won’t be turned against our own troops and families. We’ll die with our boots on. All we have left to fight for is each other. There’s no escape. It’s too late for that.

I miss my wife and kids. I pray to God they got away in time. This will be hard on my little girl.

We’re all going to die here…

I handed the letter to the young soldier. He slid it back into the evidence bag and tucked it carefully into one of his pockets.

I turned away…

And smudged a tear from my cheek.

‘SEPIA’ RESTAURANT:

WASHINGTON D.C.

The Secretary of State eased his shirt sleeves far enough to reveal the diamond-studded cufflinks, and glanced at the face of his gold wristwatch. “I’m on the clock,” Vincent McNab said. “So don’t fuck around with formalities, okay?”

I nodded. This man had a reputation for being a hardline tough guy. His straight-talking approach to diplomacy had won him no friends internationally since the zombie apocalypse, but within America he and the President were seen as exactly the kind of team the nation needed as it had faced its most perilous crisis.

Personally, I liked him.

It was rare to find a politician who didn’t care for politics – and Vince McNab was one of those guys. He had no political ambition – just a desire to do his job to the best of his ability. He didn’t have one eye on his re-election prospects, or an eye on the Oval Office. He didn’t care for Washington, he cared about America. He was a man on a mission, and that mission had nothing to do with his own popularity, or a looming November election.

A waiter brought drinks. McNab bared his teeth in a fierce grimace that was probably his idea of a warm friendly smile.

“Are you gentlemen ready to order?” The waiter had menus tucked under his arm.

McNab ran his eyes quickly down the list. “I’ll have the usual,” McNab snapped. “And he will have the same.”

The young man retrieved the menus and scurried away. McNab stared at me across the restaurant table and set his hands down on the starched white tablecloth like a gunslinger ready to reach for his pistols. “So?”

I sipped at my drink to buy a few moments of time. The man was like a whirlwind, and I didn’t want to get swept up in his bluster. This interview was important to me. I needed to get it right.

“What did you order for me?” I asked.

“Tuna salad sandwich,” McNab said. “It’s all I’ve got time for. And I don’t think it’s right that the nation’s leaders are swilling alcohol and feasting on three course meals while the rest of the country is still struggling to survive. Do you?”

“I see your point,” I agreed carefully, “but why bring me to a restaurant at all? Couldn’t we have done this interview in your office?”

“No,” McNab said. He glanced past me, his eyes moving in his head. The restaurant was all but deserted. We were sitting in a dark corner, with the drapes drawn across the windows to block out the afternoon sunshine. There was only one other occupied table – a couple of dark suited men wearing sunglasses and sipping at bottles of water. The men were both young, with short neat haircuts. Secret Service, I guessed.

“I didn’t want this conversation to take place anywhere near the State Department.”

I didn’t pursue the matter. I shrugged my shoulders and took another sip of my drink. The Secretary of State picked up his glass and swallowed his bourbon like it was medicine.

McNab was a tall man with curly grey hair and the kind of soft pouches of skin under his eyes that made you think he was sleepy. He had a beaked nose, and deeply etched lines across his brow that formed a V between his eyes. His gaze was dark and hawk-like, his restless presence disconcerting.

“So?” he said again impatiently.

I took a deep breath. “You know I want to quote you, right? You know this interview will be on the record?”

McNab swatted the words away like they were flies with a flick of his hand. “I know that,” he growled.

I shrugged. I pulled my cell phone out and laid it on the tabletop. It was recording.

“During the height of the zombie apocalypse, America was vulnerable internationally,” I began. “Would you agree with that?”

McNab nodded his head. He sucked at his teeth for a moment, glanced down at the cell phone, and then he literally launched himself into a tirade.

“You don’t know the half of it,” the Secretary of State hissed. “Nor do the American people. But they should. They should know that the fucking Chinese and the fucking Russians have seized on America’s vulnerability and taken the opportunity to place the world right back on the brink of global conflict.”

I sat back, stunned. “Are you serious?”

McNab gripped the edge of the table. “Do I look like I have a sense of humor?”

He didn’t. McNab looked like the kind of man who never laughed. He was intense, bristling with energy and passion.

“Can you explain what you mean in more detail? They’re fairly inflammatory claims. I don’t imagine the Chinese or Russian governments would be pleased to hear your accusations.”

“Fuck ‘em!” McNab said like he meant it. He leaned across the table and fixed me with his hard eyes. “What I’m telling you now is exactly the same thing I have already told the Russians and the Chinese to their faces, and in exactly the same kind of language.”

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I don’t imagine the Chinese took the criticism terribly well.”

“Fuck ‘em,” McNab said again. “The days of delicate diplomacy are long gone. We’re in a different world now. For years America was the world’s policeman – we intervened in global conflicts and we exerted military and economic influence to maintain the peace. But this zombie outbreak changed all that. We were forced to become isolationist – we were forced to pull out of Europe and the Middle East to protect America from infestation.”

“And you claim the Chinese and the Russians took advantage of that, right?”

“They did,” McNab said flatly. “America is on the brink of financial ruin. Our economy has collapsed. Wall Street, our industries… everything broke down when the apocalypse spread through Florida. People left their jobs to protect their families. Others tried to flee north to Canada. We had martial law introduced. Everything ground to a halt, and then collapsed from under our feet. The Chinese… the fucking Chinese… what did they do? Did they offer to help? Did they extend any aid to America? Of course not. They called in their fucking debts! They sent a delegation to Washington insisting that we repay all loans immediately,” McNab’s face was twisted with his rage and loathing.

“And naturally we couldn’t,” I prompted gently.

“Of course not!” McNab was seething. “We were on the brink of Armageddon.”

“So you think the Chinese demand to repay the loans was what… a ploy?”

McNab nodded. He waved his hand at the waiter for another drink. “When we met the delegation, they had a compromise,” the Secretary of State smiled bitterly. “They would forgive all loans – wipe the slate clean. All we had to do was turn our back while they invaded Taiwan.”

“They used the loans as leverage?”

“They blackmailed us,” McNab said. “And there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t defend Taiwan because we had every piece of American military hardware fighting to defend America. So they bought tacit permission to invade Taiwan, knowing we couldn’t do a damned thing to stop them.”

My mind leaped ahead to a frightening thought. “Are we still vulnerable, Mr. McNab? Is America at risk of a Chinese, or maybe a Russian invasion?”

“No,” the Secretary of State said emphatically. “The bastards wouldn’t be game.” His drink arrived. He moved the glass away to the side of the table. “The Chinese aren’t interested. Their focus is on Asia. Now they have Taiwan, and the North Koreans are massing on the border to South Korea. They’re backed by the Chinese – but they’re keeping their expansion plans firmly in the Asia region. The Russians… well they’ve swept through the Ukraine and they’ve also taken Poland. They have troops on the border to Germany, but that’s as far as they’ll go until next spring. They wouldn’t dare try to invade America.”

I raised my eyebrows at that. “Really? Given America’s current position?”

“
Because
of America’s current position,” McNab corrected me to make his point. I didn’t understand.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

The Secretary of State glanced down at his watch and then stared back into my eyes. “When the apocalypse swept through the southern states of America, civilization
as the American people know it
collapsed. We have power supply problems, blackouts and brownouts. We have food shortages, no exports, no economy. We have no social media, limited cell phone capabilities. We have drinking water problems and in some states we have riots in the streets. We still have martial law.”

I nodded, but I didn’t see the man’s point. If anything it seemed like he was making the case
for
the very real prospect that America could be invaded by Russia.

“The point is that America has changed,” McNab went on. “Americans have changed. We used to be the wealthiest, most envied nation in the world. We used to be financially the strongest nation in the world. Not any more. Now we have become a nation of gun-carrying survivalists. We’ve become like Sparta.”

“Sparta? You mean ancient Sparta?”

McNab nodded. “The Greeks and Romans were the affluent cultures in the ancient world. They had art and civilization. They had philosophy and literature. The Spartans were warriors. They were no-frills fuckers who terrified the ancient world because their focus was solely on their own survival. That’s who we have become. We got king-hit by the zombie outbreak, and when a man gets hit he tucks his chin onto his chest and regains his balance. That’s what America is doing. Then the guy gets back up off the floor and he fights back,” McNab enthused, and there was a rising tone of passion and fire in his voice. “That’s what we’re going to do when the time is right, only it won’t be the old America, it will be the new America swinging punches – a tougher, leaner nation filled with people who haven’t been made lazy and apathetic by everything they have been blessed with. It will be an America filled with warriors who know how to survive, and know what it’s like to fight for their life.”

I was about to ask another question when the waiter arrived with our sandwiches. He was a nervous young man. He set our food down on the table and fussed over how the plates were arranged. The Secretary of State gnawed on his lip like he was stifling his temper. When the waiter had disappeared, McNab took the top off his sandwich and examined the filling.

“NATO has collapsed,” McNab said as he prodded a piece of tomato with the tip of his finger. He pushed the slice to the side of his plate and replaced the bread. “The fucking French – the chicken-shit bastards have pulled out of the organization, and maybe Belgium will do the same. They don’t have the balls to stand up to Russia without us propping them up.”

“And what does that mean, do you think?”

“I know what it fucking means!” the Secretary of State’s voice rose and took on an edge of frustration and temper. “It means the fucking French are a useless pack of cowards who haven’t won a fucking fight since the time of Napoleon. Now they’re trying to hide from Russia because they don’t have the guts to stand and fight. They left NATO, and that means they’ve abandoned their European partners.”

“Which means…?” I kept prompting gently. I felt like a kid poking an angry snake with a stick.

“It means we now have Germany and Britain left on their own to man the Fulda Gap against Russian armor. We can’t help them, and no one else from NATO is coming to their aid. The fucking French have seen to that.”

“You blame the French?”

“Yes,” McNab said. “If they had held firm, NATO would have held together. Now Europe is in danger of becoming a total fucking shambles. War seems imminent. Once Russia has got the Ukraine bedded down and smashed Poland, Germany could be next.”

“And we’re powerless to stop them.”

“Exactly. We can’t be the international cop while the police station is burning to the ground. We’ve got to sort out the crisis here at home before we can begin to project our influence internationally again.”

I picked up my sandwich in my fist and took a bite. McNab looked at me like I was something repulsive he found on the sole of his shoe. He stabbed his fork into one corner of his own sandwich and cut off a piece with his knife. He held the fork up as if to show me how the sandwich should be eaten.

Who eats a tuna salad sandwich with a knife and fork?