Cassie (Adrian's Undead Diary Book 8) (18 page)

Previously dominant in many a conflict across the world against conventional living targets, America’s enormous fleet of well-armed air craft and highly trained personnel were uniquely skilled at bombing runs very similar to what was needed now at home. The first runs today, the runs Lancaster watched live right then, were intended to hit the massive crowds of undead in the urban centers and thin them so ground forces could re-enter the cities and mop up, giving them a leg up on the hordes.

Boston was the first city where he watched the bombs fall. Not by much, Lancaster mused. Just a hop, skip and a jump away, D.C. was about to be pummeled and Charlotte as well. Lancaster watched with dry eyes as the B52s flying over one of America’s oldest cities lined up and took their final ordnance delivery corrections. Lancaster switched the Boston satellite feed to the C2 bird’s eyes just as the bombs left the bay doors of the massive bombers. The C2 plane was lower, and had a more detailed view.

He listened to the chatter amongst the air crew and the brass leading this particular bombing run as he waited for the massive MK84 2,000 pound bombs to impact the streets below. He didn’t have to wait for long to watch the results. The massive bomb’s initial ground impact was invisible to the naked eye. The instant after they hit the ground, they exploded, sending a visible shockwave into the air like a dome of energy released from a superhero’s hands. Trailing behind it a millisecond later was the deadly shrapnel and flame that would tear bodies, buildings, and cars apart. The intensely powerful camera on the command and control plane showed tiny human bodies flying through the air, end over end, spinning so powerfully limbs came off from the centrifugal force. If you forgot that each explosion was destruction and chaos, each bomb hitting looked like the flowering of a delicate rose, spreading its petals quickly to catch the fading light.

It was horrifying.

Lancaster’s stomach churned as he thought about the families of the already dead being torn and rendered apart below him. The bean counters estimated that as of the beginning of this week, the second week of August 2010, approximately fifty percent of the country’s population was dead. Somewhere around one hundred and fifty million people dead and looking to make the other hundred fifty million people dead just like them too.

How many bombs is it going take to us to kill that many people? A thousand? Ten thousand?
 

His eyes wandered from the Boston screen to the Charlotte screen where the massive explosions were starting. He looked to the D.C. screens and they too were filling with the dust clouds and shockwaves brought on by the massive bombs being dropped with precision onto enormous gatherings of the flesh hungry undead. It seemed that thirty seconds was the delay in the length of life for each city. No more, no less. Each of the cities targeted for “eradication” had a similar story pan out as the day went on. Bombs fell, and the dead were pulverized.

In all, fourteen cities were bombed the first day. It would take the analysts a few days or scouring the satellite photos and reading reconnaissance reports to figure out how effective the bombs actually were.

*****

“So explain this to me again. We dropped how many bombs the other day?” The President asked Lancaster and the group of military and civilian experts via video conference. The aged intelligence officer sat in the back of the room watching it all pan out. Lancaster knew a lot, but even he didn’t know where the President was. On the other side of the screen it appeared that the president was in a nondescript conference room nearly identical to the one he sat in. The President could be anywhere.

Lancaster replied to the highest politician in all his land, “I’m sorry Mr. President, we weren't able to find the exact number due to failures in the communication systems, but we believe it was approximately 500 to 550 2,000 pound MK84 bombs sir. Some of the birds left light and some of the planes were carrying mixed ordnance so the exact number is unavailable. We're trying to get a better answer.”
 

The President lifted some papers off his desk that had been faxed to his location earlier. It had much of the information the analyst team had just shared. The Commander in Chief didn’t look pleased in the least. He thumbed through the five or six page document as Lancaster and the rest of the group watched on. Even with the grainy video feed he could still see as the man in charge skimmed numbers on the paper he didn’t like.

“Correct me if I am wrong, but you’re saying the bombs only appeared to be approximately what? Thirty percent effective? What exactly does that mean?”
 

An Air Force general a few seats down spoke up. Lancaster noted that he had three stars on the shoulder of his impeccable uniform. He hadn't skipped out on decorum. ”Mr. President this is Lieutenant General Foster. Thirty percent effectiveness means that of the rough number of estimated targets in a given environment, after visual assessment post-bombing, compared against visual assessment pre-bombing, about thirty percent of those potential, available targets appear to be destroyed.” Lancaster noted that this Foster guy appeared knowledgeable. Well spoken too. He watched as Foster organized piles of papers on the large conference table they were arrayed around. Everything seemed to have a place in front of him. He was meticulous.
 

“So one hundred walking dead in a pretty, green city park pre-bombing, seventy walking dead still moving around after?” The President asked easily, already knowing the answer.
 

“Correct sir,” Foster replied.

The President's face went sour, and he sighed. “That’s damn terrible. How could the bombs be so ineffective?" The President picked up a stack of photographs and rifled through them. He held several up for them to see, "I can see on the follow up pictures there are holes in the streets ten feet wide. How could they get up and walk away from that?”

Foster replied once more, “Well sir to be honest it’s pretty easy to understand when you look at it scientifically. Bombs typically kill with mixture of shockwave pressure and shrapnel. As we know, these things are only killed by fairly large scale trauma to the brains, and the likelihood that the bombs would send lethal shrapnel into the brains directly and consistently is fairly low. The pressure created by a bomb explosion as well typically kills living people by rupturing organs, and as you already know, these things have no need for their internal organs. If I may speculate sir, I'd suggest that the targets have their bodies riddled with shrapnel, and are liquefied on the inside in many cases, but if we don't hit their brains dead center, all we're doing is poking holes in them or throwing them around. I would like to point out sir that a thirty percent destruction rate is actually fairly good. It may not seem like it right now, but if you look at page four of the document you’re holding, we’re estimating that the bombing runs three days ago destroyed somewhere between one and one point three million targets. Not to mention crippling injuries. They might not be dead, but I’m sure we took the legs off a large portion of the targets, and that'll help our ground forces considerably.”

The words ‘destroyed’ and ‘targets’ had replaced ‘killing’ and ‘the dead.’

The President flipped through the document as the gaggle of aides surrounding him did the same. They all digested the information and murmured amongst each other, waiting to see how the President would react. It reminded Lancaster of parrots.

“Where do we go from here?”
 

“If I may, sir?” Foster asked the President politely.

“You may General, go ahead.”

“Sir, it is my strong belief we as a nation are beyond the tipping point here. We have lost this country’s urban areas already. Bombing them now to make them easier to recapture I believe is futile and a waste of our country's dwindling resources, both civilian and military. We already have so many other problems to deal with in the rural areas in regards to maintaining the nation’s ability to survive past this summer. Frankly I think we need to turn our efforts away from military actions such as this week’s bombings and shift to a more defensive and preparatory tactic. We need to build fences, secure croplands, sources of fresh water, and critical manufacturing facilities. The missions need to be fortify and secure sir. If we continue to commit to more bombings in the near future, they need to be done in such a fashion that they are supporting our efforts to make it through this summer and winter sir. I’ve drafted a document detailing everything. My office can send it to you if you’re interested in giving it consideration.”

The President asked a question quickly, without hesitation, “What kind of bombing action would support your strategy General? Give me an example.”

“Sir, at this point it is my firm belief that we need to make the cities that are overrun by the dead islands. Cut them out surgically like a cancer. I think we need to bomb surface roads and bridges to prevent the exit of these things and give the suburban areas nearby a chance to move into more rural locations where we can support them. Population centers are lost sir. We need to make safe what we can, while we can, with what we have at our disposal.”

“Your ideas are duly noted General, thank you for your suggestions. Have your people send your plan to my aides and we'll look at it. Right now we’ve got several plans to go over. In the meantime let’s continue with this plan for one more run on our tier one cities. I think there’s little harm in one more large scale bombing run to thin. Thirty percent more eliminated while we sort this out will come in handy at some point. Ladies and Gentlemen thank you."

And so the next week was decided.

*****

Air Force Lieutenant General Foster rested his head on the thin white pillow in the bed he had slept in since the world came crashing to a halt. The thin mattress gave his old warrior’s back little support, but such was the lifestyle he’d chosen so long ago. No sense complaining about hardship when a hard life was the one he’d chosen. His small bedroom was more of a cell than a place of rest. The only difference between the room he now lived in and a convict's was which side of the door the lock was on. Like the old warrior he was, once he’d achieved a safe place to rest, he fell into the comforting embrace of deep sleep.

Foster’s dreams since the world came crashing down were strange. Before the end of the world he would dream almost exclusively about the things that were happening in his life that day, or that week or that month. If he was struggling with what to make for dinner the next day, he’d dream about grocery shopping. If he and his wife had just made love, he dreamt of resting in her arms, spent, sated, and sweaty. If he had just chewed one of his assistant’s asses out, he’d dream about doing it different ways.

Not anymore. Foster dreamt of dead relatives, and memories long since forgotten. He dreamt of shooting and killing the dead. Just that very morning one of his men commented that he too had been dreaming of similar things. Strange coincidences previously laughed at were now considered seriously. When the dead walk the earth eating the living, the impossible becomes very malleable. Reports were being turned in daily by people who analyzed their dreams now.
 

Foster’s dream that night started out with him resting in his home in the D.C. suburbs. He had a nice house. Not ostentatious or excessive, but a nice home his military salary afforded him in good neighborhood. In the dream Foster was armed with his service pistol, his finger extended straight alongside the trigger, and he was walking about in his living room looking for the zombie he knew was there, somewhere. The pale orange light cast by the street lamp just a dozen yards outside his front bay window turned the interior of his house into a toxic environment. Normally his curtains were pulled shut, but for some reason they were cast open, illuminating the room in the caustic electrical glare. In the distance, he heard something moving upstairs. He moved through his living room and began to walk carefully up the carpeted staircase. He'd done the carpet installation himself just a year before the first attacks.

At the top of the long series of steps Foster stood silent, listening to where the noise might still be. Still unaware he was in a dream he felt his heart race. He thought it was strange that the temperature upstairs was so cool. Normally in August his house was an oven upstairs. He needed central air, but he couldn’t afford it just yet.

Foster’s ears twitched when he heard something come from the end of the hall in his son’s bedroom. His mind bolted like a racehorse out of the gate as he tried to remember where his son was. Was he alive still? Was he in school still? Would he be just getting home from baseball practice? He couldn’t remember, but he knew there was something ominous in the home, and it was his duty to protect his house and his son. Where was his wife?

Foster pushed the bedroom door open and stepped inside, his pistol sliding back and forth in the air searching for a dead body to shoot in the head. His weapon’s sights froze on the form of his teenage son resting in bed on his back, flipping through a bible. Foster thought it was strange his son was reading a bible.

“Hi Dad. I’m glad you came up. Do you have time to talk?”
 

Foster’s mind wandered in the dream, confused. He suddenly couldn’t remember quite why he was even in the room in the first place and the memory of the living room was already gone like a morning fog lifted. The pistol in his hand was gone. Foster smiled, already unaware that he'd even had a gun in the first place, happy to see his son. The Air Force man pulled out the desk chair across from the bed to have a seat. “I have time for you Leo, where's your mother?"

Leo answered with an unsure lift of his slight shoulders. He was still lanky, and growing into the adult's body that he would own for the rest of his life.

"What’s on your mind pal?” Foster asked his son.

“Well Dad. I guess I’ve been thinking about what I would do if I knew people were making mistakes?” Leo said, never taking his eyes off the well worn bible. Dimly, Foster couldn’t recall Leo even having a bible, let alone a used one.