The Romero Strain (31 page)

Our second foray into our lost world was to be a cautionary surveillance expedition around the Grand Central area. It was also another mission of acquisition. We weren’t going to walk around the city leaving ourselves exposed or carrying needed supplies in backpacks, so we sought transportation, the kind that would help protect us.

We rose at 6:00 a.m., showered, dressed, and went to the mess hall for a quick light breakfast. There were no more eggs, no more bacon, and the coffee was nearly gone. It was cereal, canned fruit cocktail, and canned orange juice for breakfast. We departed without Kermit at 8:00 a.m. after we geared up and got our rifles out of lock-up.

We loaded our backpacks with the bare essentials: two bottles of water, some individual size cans of peaches that Kermit took from the pantry, extra ammunition, and medical supplies that I added to my pack. This time Joe voiced no objections.

It was dark as we emerged from the old freight elevator onto Track 61. I immediately took point. I activated the lights and gave the team the all-clear. I stepped across the archway of the M 50 door and activated the lights. We headed south with me at the lead, turning on the lights as we traveled along.

The terminal, like the day before, was cast in a ghostlike glow. However, the early morning sun greeted us and revealed a beautiful and clear fall day, as I lead my team onto 42
nd
Street.

Acquiring a vehicle was the easy part; finding one that would run was another. Sam informed us that all vehicles appeared mechanically sound, except for a few with low battery power. Most were out of fuel. Evidently the U.S. Army lets their vehicles idle.

The corporal wanted to try repairing two Stryker ICVs with slat armor, even going so far as to bring a toolbox and a siphon with him. However, when I asked if he or Joe knew how to operate one, neither had any clue. I told him to concentrate on getting two Humvees running, which we could drive, but Sam strongly urged me to reconsider.

He began a recitation on the
Stryker ICV’s specs, and when he started to explain the variants—apparently there were ten—I interrupted him and asked why we needed the vehicle. Was it because it looked really cool?

He said, “The ICV has a shoot-on-the-move Protector Remote Weapon Station, with a universal soft mount cradle, which can mount either a M2 .50-cailiber machine gun, MK19 grenade launcher, or MK240 7.62mm machine gun that is operated from inside the vehicle. It is also armed with four M6 smoke grenade launchers. It has the ability to carry nine-man infantry, the CBRN Warfare system—that’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear—keeps the crew compartment airtight and positively pressured, the fuel tanks are externally mounted and designed to blow away from the hull in the event of explosion, and the tires are of a special design so they can run flat.”

He continued excitedly, sparing little detail in regard to the vehicle’s description, pointing out its exterior features. He informed us that the armor provides integral all-round 14.5mm protection against machine gun rounds, mortar and artillery fragments, though I doubted the living dead would be shooting at us.

Of course, there
was
Bub in
Day of the Dead
who was able to shoot a machine gun; I hoped
that
was just a movie.

The ‘cage’ of slat armor, which surrounded the vehicle, roughly eighteen inches from the main body, was designed to disable the high-explosive anti-tank warhead of a RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) by squeezing the angled sides of the metal nose cone and shorting out the conductors between the detonator at the tip and the explosive charge at the back.

He concluded with the armor being constructed of components of ballistic steel and appliqué panels of lightweight ceramic/composite armor, with additional undercarriage protection against landmines and small arms.

“That’s why we need one,” he said, ending his sales pitch.

I agreed with him that he made a strong argument, but the fact remained that no one knew how to drive it.

“It should be easy to drive, just like a Cadillac!”

“Looks more like two Cadillacs,” I told him. “Like a two Cadillac ESVs end-to-end, since the Stryker is twenty-two feet long, nine feet wide, and nine feet tall.”

He questioned me. “I guess you missed the show
Anatomy of a Stryker
on the Military Channel?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Did they give driving instructions?”

“Actually, one of the drivers said it was just like driving a Cadillac, except you have three periscopes and an AN/VAS-5 Driver’s Vision Enhancer for navigation instead of looking through a windshield. Then there are the seven periscopes and the thermal imager display with video camera the vehicle commander has. Or the port if you want to stick your head out.”

I conceded, on the condition that he had thirty minutes to figure out how to operate it, or we’d all be crammed into the Humvee together, with Joe and him sitting in the back on the floor. I wasn’t sure who was happier with my decision, Sam with his truck to play with, or Joe who wanted to be the gunner.

By the time Sam managed to get the two vehicles up and running, and being barely able to navigate the Stryker using a monitor—he refused to use the view hatch to look out of—it was two in the afternoon.

Our presence attracted several undead. They were gaunt, their skin stretched tight, and their motion slow and confused. It was easy for David to eliminate the stumbling, befuddled walking corpses before they got within one block of our position. It was his way of testing out the machine gun mounted on top of the Humvee; David was
my
gunner. The Stryker had been actually easier to repair than the Humvee, and it was more stealthful in the noise-producing department; the Stryker was nearly silent. The Humvee sputtered, choked and then roared to life, churning out billows of black smoke. The noise was loud enough to literally wake the dead, and as we pulled away from the building, David thought he saw several undead running toward us, but the Stryker was blocking his way. As we rounded the corner he could no longer see their location. He swore to me, as he stood perched in his gun turret that he saw them, and I had no doubt that he did; however, I questioned his visual observation to their reported hurried approach. David again affirmed that they were running.

There was only one place we had time to go to and it was the place which held the highest priority, the 69
th
Regiment Armory that lies on the west side of Lexington Avenue between East 25
th
and 26
th
Streets. The armory was last utilized as a functioning military base during 9/11, where it served as a supply depot and for logistic support. Though it still functioned as an army reserve facility, it was largely utilized as an event space.

If it were anything like the days following the attack on the World Trade Center, the armory would have been secured along with the surrounding area with barriers and a heavily armed military presence. During the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy, it had been a restricted area with high security, and if you lived in the zone that had been cordoned off and you didn’t have identification proving you lived within the borders, you weren’t getting in.

II. Life without People

We drove down Park Avenue at a moderate pace. I expected to find cars blocking the roadway, but there were no civilian vehicles on the road, and the only military vehicles we saw were the Humvees that guarded the exit and entries to the Murray Hill Tunnel.

Park Avenue was not as heavily littered with bodies as I expected, not to say there weren’t corpses. Parts of the avenue were flooded, for there were no city workers to clear the debris from the sewer drains, and no city engineers to make repairs to waterline breaks. A few buildings had become burnt out shells. Fires had run rampant without the FDNY to put out the blazes. New York City had begun to look like a war zone.

I thought about all that was gone, all the things I enjoyed, like the carousel at Central Park, the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, all in a state of motionless decay. Then there was food—the foods I enjoyed. No more fresh raspberries or cherries… no more Ben & Jerry’s
cherry vanilla ice cream, or Heath Bar Crunch. No more Cap’n Crunch, Rice Crispies, or Grape
Nuts cereals; the rats and mice had most likely devoured those. Organic milk chocolate––I wanted a bar of Green & Blacks Organic milk chocolate, with or without toffee.

I spotted a UD––UD was the designation Sam had given the undeads as he watched them from the GCC command center––near the intersection of 32
nd
Street on the northbound side of the street. It was lumbering near the crosswalk of the meridian. It was slow in its approach onto the street. A moment after we passed I heard an explosion. I looked in my rear view mirror only to see that Joe must have been trying out his new gun, but had missed his target and blown apart one of the planters, which lined the center of the meridian. At 30
th
Street I crossed over onto the other side of Park Avenue.

As I slowed my approach to the intersection of 26
th
Street, I could see that the entrance had been barricaded by a tall chain link fence, preventing vehicle traffic. I pulled up slightly south of the intersection, allowing room for the Stryker to pull up behind us. There was barbwire on top of the gating and along the buildings that stretched down the street on the southern side and long the Park Avenue side. I stepped out of our vehicle. David, from his gun perch, kept careful watch of the surrounding area as I made my approach to the barricade.

I was amazed at the depth of security that had been established. Long concrete barriers, accompanied with twelve-foot fencing, had been extended across the street and secured onto the adjacent buildings, topped with razor wire. There was one small gate that led onto the side street, which was for pedestrian use only, but it had been pulled off its top hinges and bent outward toward the street. Its padlock was still secured to the anchoring poles, but the large bent section certainly could have allowed the living dead to climb through. There were two Humvees with mounted machine guns. As I peered down the block, I could see a small tanker truck and more fencing. I stood transfixed at the end of the block where I could clearly see the fencing had been torn down.

For some reason I remembered a quote from
South Park
. Officer Barbrady, from the episode “Chickenlover”. It was the line about moving along, because there was nothing to see.

I missed that show. I wanted to retrieve the DVDs from my home.

It was time to move along.

As we passed 25
th
Street it was the same––no vehicle access, only pedestrian with two Humvees guarding the fenced off street entrance. We continued south to 23
rd
Street where we turned left and then left again, heading north on Lexington. We immediately saw military vehicles partially blocking the avenue at 24
th
Street. The army had set up what appeared to be a checkpoint. We passed in between them, which led us to concrete barricades and fencing across the road. I slowed down as we approached; there were many bodies near the perimeter. I wasn’t sure if they had been the living or the undead. It was mass carnage. We were forced to stop our vehicle before we could get to the corner and walk to the armory. There were hundreds of bodies stacked up along the perimeter of the fencing, one atop another like someone had intended to make a wall out of the dead bodies. At some points the corpses were nearly chest high. There were more bodies inside.

There had been initial armed checkpoints at both ends of Lexington Avenue at the approaches from 24
th
and 27
th
Streets, with a secondary inner defensive perimeter at the intersections of 25
th
and 26
th
Streets utilizing Strykers. The infantry carrier vehicles, strategically placed inside the perimeter to prevent unwanted and unauthorized access, didn’t stop the hordes of undead from breeching the large Lexington Avenue security gates used for vehicle access. The concrete barriers, which secured the tall chain link fencing and barbwire, had been torn apart. The gates were completely ripped from their mountings and lay bent and twisted on the ground.

Large holes in the ground riddled the street as we made our way behind the twisted and toppled fencing. Sam said it looked like grenades had been used. Bodies were everywhere, too many to count. Dismembered bodies were scattered around, torn apart from grenades and machine gun fire. A cursory scan, as we made our way through the once highly secured area, showed that the bullet-riddled corpses were those who had become the living dead. The dismembered were mainly soldiers.

Once formidable, strategically placed weapon systems inside the defense perimeter had been useless against the raging undead. Light
m
edium tactical vehicles for moving troops and cargo, Humvees equipped with heavy caliber weapons, and Strykers for easy maneuverability in close and urban terrain, would one day become the relics of the past in man’s final battle of survival, all standing as a ghastly memorial to the destruction of the human race, silent and as motionless as the corpses that surrounded them. All were reminders of the mass carnage that we had escaped.