Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (5 page)

A man came running from one of the nearby cars. He had a gun in his hand. He stopped ten paces short of the zombie and spread his legs, throwing up the weapon and clasping it between both hands. He fired once into the air, and the zombie turned its head towards the gunman.

“Back away!” the man shouted. His face was twisted in shock and fear. His hands were trembling. The dead woman was lying in a pool of her own blood. The zombie had severed her head with its teeth. It looked up into the man’s eyes and then vomited blood down its chin. The man backed away. He aimed the gun and fired, accidentally shooting another woman who was fleeing the terror. The victim went crashing to the ground in a sprawl of arms and legs. The zombie rose slowly from its haunches. It was awash with the pregnant woman’s blood. It stalked towards the gunman and he turned and ran.

The zombies slashed and tore into the press of bodies, infecting some with the virulent spread from their own bloody wounds, and turning other victims with the savage bite of their teeth. To be touched by them was to die and rise again. To be bitten by them was to die and rise even faster. The zombie plague erupted across the city of Miami like a series of staggered detonations, as some people were reanimated within just minutes, and others who had merely been scratched became the undead with agonizing slowness.

TV news reports from the stadium were broadcast live across the city. What had begun as a routine weekend sports broadcast became a shocking real-life horror story. People spilled from the nearby buildings and ran panicked into the streets. Cars jammed the roads. Families overloaded the cellular phone networks and landlines to call friends and relatives. People frantically packed memories of their lives and weapons and blankets into their vehicles, and choked the highways. There were thousands of traffic accidents. Cars collided and caught on fire. The sky began to fill with smoke. Buildings burned down and power poles went crashing to the ground, cutting electricity to large sections of the city.

It was Sunday.

Bloody Sunday.

The day America died.

TEHRAN.

The young man came into the conference room of the underground bunker and bowed deeply and respectfully. The Ayatollah greeted the man with a kindly inner peace touching at his lips.

“It is done,” the young man said as he straightened. He handed the Ayatollah a piece of paper. “It is the beginning of the end for the Great Satan.”

The Ayatollah cast his eyes to the heavens…

And he smiled.

Thirteen months later…

PART 1: ‘OPERATION CONTAINMENT’

The Interviews…

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE:

Richard Danvers, the architect of the Emergency Homeland Defense Plan, was a tall man with a lean and wiry frame that bristled with a kind of restless energy. I guessed him to be in his sixties. He had a long, drawn face that was darkly tanned and a close-cropped head of grey hair. His eyes were sharp and penetrating, set amongst a fine web of wrinkles. He sat back in a chair near the end of the long wooden table and regarded me carefully.

“Take a seat,” the man gruffed. I had the feeling he was resentful. He watched me like a hawk, his eyes drawn to the folders and notebooks I had in my hands.

“No recording devices,” Danvers warned. “I’m giving you this interview because our Commander In Chief has ordered me to, but you’re not leaving here with anything on tape.”

I frowned, sat down across the table and fixed him with a stare. “That’s not how I understood this interview would be conducted,” I said.

Danvers’s expression never changed. His features seemed carved out of stone. He leaned forward slowly and propped his elbows on the polished wooden tabletop. “I don’t give a shit,” he said mildly. “That’s how it’s going to happen. I talk, you write, Mr. Culver. No recording.”

“Sure,” I said. I flipped to a new page in my notebook and snatched a pen from my pocket. Danvers sat back in his chair and swiveled, casting his eyes around the room.

The subterranean meeting room below the White House looked oddly colonial. The low ceiling was elaborately molded, the dark wood wall panels divided by arrays of multimedia screens and maps of the world. The lighting was subdued. It was quite a small room, dominated by the big table we sat on opposite sides of. There was a pitcher of ice water on the table, and a couple of tall glasses.

Danvers waited until he was quite sure I was settled and then steepled his fingers together like a high-powered corporate executive. He narrowed his eyes.

“Tell me what you want to know,” he said warily.

I sighed. I actually didn’t know where to start. I shrugged. “Why are we meeting here, at the White House?” I asked.

Danvers smiled, but it was a bleak, grim expression devoid of any humor. “It’s where I was first handed the job of coordinating America’s response to the outbreak of the zombie virus,” he said. He sat back and the leather chair squeaked as he shifted his weight. “The President sat in that seat right there,” he pointed to the chair at the head of the table, “and called me over.”

“Over?”

Danvers nodded. “I was in the room. It was a crisis meeting of the National Security Council. There were only seven people in attendance, plus me. The Vice President had invited me. I wasn’t sitting at the table. I was standing against the wall, feeling completely out of place.”

“Who was at that meeting?”

Danvers shrugged. “The usual,” he said. “The President, the Vice President, the Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy, and General Wallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… and the Director of National Intelligence.”

I made a face. “That’s a high-powered meeting. Did you know why you were invited to attend?”

Danvers nodded. “I had a good idea,” he said. “The Vice President had filled me in beforehand. I just wasn’t prepared for the kind of authority I was about to be handed.”

I nodded. “So that was the meeting where the President nominated you as ‘the Architect’, right?”

The man across from me looked almost embarrassed. He nodded his head slowly. “It fell to me to devise the Emergency Homeland Defense Plan.”

I hesitated for a moment and then took a chance. Danvers was a formidable presence, almost intimidating in the way he seemed to fill the room with his energy. “That must have pissed a lot of those people off,” I said.

Danvers blinked, and then slowly smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “It did. General Wallace was furious. Almost everyone in that room saw the zombie outbreak as purely a military issue – a war that had to be fought on American soil. Naturally they thought the best qualified people to co-ordinate our defenses was one of their own.”

“But the President didn’t agree.”

“Not entirely.”

“Meaning…?”

Danvers closed his eyes for a moment like maybe he was assembling his thoughts, and the room became absolutely silent. I could hear myself breathing and the gentle hum of the air-conditioning. Finally he fixed me with narrowed eyes.

“Let’s get one thing straight before we go on,” he said. “The reason we are alive today – the reason America still exists – is because we had a President at the start of the zombie outbreak who was a man who believed in his convictions. Our President was the kind of man the late great Ronald Reagan would admire. He believed in the might of America, and understood our rightful place in the world. He knew we had to be decisive, regardless of the protesting left wing sympathizers who called the outbreak a humanitarian disaster. It was – but it was also a fight for survival. The President understood that.”

“How did that understanding affect America’s response when the first cases of the outbreak were reported in Miami?”

Richard Danvers got out of his chair and went to a large map of the United States spread across the far wall. It was a hugely detailed map, almost ten feet wide and about six feet high, set within an ornate dark wooden frame and hung on the wall like it was a seventeenth century masterpiece. He beckoned me over with an abrupt wave of his hand.

“By the time that NSC meeting was convened – just ten days after the first cases of the outbreak were reported, we had already lost the southern sector of Florida,” the man explained, sweeping his hand across the map and covering an area northward from Miami to Cape Coral. “The local police forces had been overwhelmed. The National Guard got swept away. Panic was quickly becoming a pandemic. The President acted swiftly.”

“By appointing you.”

Danvers shook his head. He turned to face me and we were eyeball to eyeball. He was taller than I had first thought. His eyes were like daggers. “The President’s plan was in three stages,” Danvers explained, and then began counting off his fingers. “Containment, Conquest and Compression. He tasked me with the role of coordinating the Containment phase. The rest of the plan was passed on to more suitable leaders.”

I shrugged. “Why you?” It was a simple question that had puzzled so many commentators around the country. The answer seemed veiled in as much mystery as the man himself.

“The President knew of me,” Danvers said evasively. “I was an engineer, not a soldier. My expertise was in global disaster relief. The President saw the outbreak of the infection as a disaster, not a war. That’s why he chose me for the job. It was felt that the country needed someone who could step back from the natural impulse to respond with immediate military action, and instead, build a defense.”

“Which is why you were called the ‘architect’.”

He nodded. “That name came along because of the defensive line I designed.”

I frowned. “Then why are you so secretive? You’re a national hero, and yet there is just one photograph of you circulating in the media – an image that’s about ten years out of date. Why aren’t you standing next to the President with a chest full of medals and giving press conferences?”

“Because I’m not a fucking politician!” Danvers suddenly sparked, and I got my first glimpse of the man’s famous temper. “I don’t kiss babies, and I’m not trying to get elected. I’m not a film star, and I don’t need celebrity. I’m a patriot, Mr. Culver, not a glory seeker.”

There was a pause. I saw something move behind the man’s eyes – the shadow of some emotion that passed in an instant. When he spoke again, his voice was once again calm, restrained.

“I saw what the Army didn’t see,” he said softly. “I saw a swarming enemy that was unlike anything America had ever fought against before. In the history of our military conflicts, we had never faced an enemy like the undead horde. Normal tactics, even our technology, were absolutely useless. It called for a different kind of thinking. The President appreciated that.”

We stared silently at the map for long moments. My eyes were drawn to the dark line that stretched from the Carolina coast all the way across to the Mississippi River: The Danvers Defense Line.

Richard Danvers must have sensed the direction of my gaze. He studied my face for long moments, as if he was trying to read my thoughts.

He sighed. “Once the President appointed me, I went to work immediately,” he said. “I drew up a plan that would contain the infected.” He swept his hand across the map. “Ever heard of the ‘Maginot Line’?”

I had. I was a student of twentieth century history. But I shook my head.

Danvers’s expression turned blank. His eyes became distant like he was recalling information. His voice became flat, almost conversational without the underlying barb of aggravation.

“The Maginot Line was a line of concrete
fortifications
, obstacles, and weapons installations that
France
constructed along its borders with
Germany
way back during the 1930’s,” Danvers intoned. “The line was a defensive response based on the French experiences in
World War I
and was constructed during the years leading up to
the Second World War
.

“The whole idea behind the French plan was to create a fortification that would provide time for their Army to mobilize in the event of attack.”

Danvers paused for a moment. “Follow so far?”

I nodded.

“You see the French looked back at World War I and saw the success of static, defensive combat and figured the same kind of tactics would likely be employed if war ever broke out in Europe again. Military experts extolled the Maginot Line as a work of genius. It was – it just wasn’t the right tactic for the times. The line was an engineering feat of brilliance, but it came too late. The world, weaponry and tactics had move on.

“While the fortification system did prevent a direct attack, it was strategically ineffective. Ultimately, the Germans simply went around the line, outflanked the entire defensive installation, and swept through France regardless.”

“So you used the inspiration of the Maginot Line as a template for the Danvers Defense Line?”

The man nodded. “It was perhaps the most difficult, most painful decision I will ever make,” he said. “I had to accept surrendering the lives of Americans in five states, in order to keep the rest of the nation safe. It weighed on my conscience – it still does – but there was simply no other way, no other alternative. We had to build a line that could be defended, and that meant we needed time.”

“Thirty four days, right?”

Danvers nodded his head. “You’ve done your research.”

I said nothing. Danvers filled the silence.

“In thirty four days we constructed a line that stretched from Wilmington, in North Carolina, through Raleigh and Durham, across to Knoxville, Tennessee and into Nashville. The western leg of the border ended in Memphis, and used the Mississippi River as a natural barrier all the way down to New Orleans.” He stared at me for long silent moments, trying to see if I understood the significance of the achievement. I did, but it was hard to get a sense of proportion.

“Over eight hundred miles of trenches and fortifications,” he explained. “One of the most incredible engineering feats this country has ever witnessed, given the urgency.”

I stared back at the dark line on the map, seeing the bulge of it through half of North Carolina and the undulations that linked the major cities across Tennessee. “Trenches, right?”

“No,” Danvers shook his head. “To call the defensive line merely a trench is to minimize the significance of what we created. It was more than a long line dug into the ground.”

I had seen photographs of sections of the Danvers Defensive Line. The trenches that had been dug were wide tracts, with coils of barbed wire that were reminiscent of historic images I had seen in books about the Great War a century earlier.

“What we did was mobilize America’s construction industry and the Army’s engineering corps into one vast orchestrated machine that dug trenches twenty feet wide and eight feet deep. We then built firing platforms for the troops to operate from, and laid thirty feet of barbed wire ahead of each trench.”

I looked puzzled. “Barbed wire? Surely that wouldn’t have been a deterrent to the infected?”

“It wasn’t,” Danvers admitted. “It was a hindrance. It slowed them down so that as they pressed against the defensive line, they were snared. That gave our troops time to take head shots.” He grinned, but it was unconvincing. His mouth twisted out of shape leaving his eyes haunted.

“And the forts you built? How crucial were they?”

Danvers looked pleased. I sensed the installations that had been sprinkled along the defensive line were something he was proud of.

“The forts,” he sighed, like he was recalling a particularly fond memory. “Each one was a mile square built of high chain link fence, topped with barbed wire,” he explained. “And each fort had several observation towers for snipers. There was one gate in, and one gate out.” He went to the table and snatched at one of my pads of paper. He had a pen in his pocket. He leaned over the table like a general explaining tactics to a subordinate.