Z-Volution (14 page)

22.

Alex said nothing, his eyes darting to the mirror and back to the road. He drove the Hummer the rest of the way to the air base in stunned silence without major incident. Veronica only fired the gun a couple of times the rest of the way.

Once there, though, it became apparent that accessing the facility would be anything but easy. A veritable war zone greeted them, but not any normal theater of war. Here, men waged battle against near mythical beasts. Pterodactyls wheeled in the air above the facility while crylos rampaged across the ground, intermingling with human zombies who attempted to breach the facility gate. A few of the crylos had zombie riders atop their backs, their dull eyes fixed ahead as their slacked and rotting jaws drooled syrupy fluid. A full contingent of soldiers fought against this hybrid army from a fleet of vehicles as well as a guard post at the entrance to the compound. Beyond this gate a paved road continued about a quarter-mile until it branched out into an assortment of low-lying buildings.

Veronica stepped away from the gun and held up her CIA badge high. She saw a loudspeaker mounted on the front of the truck and asked Alex to use it. He picked up the radio transmitter, handed it back to Veronica, and flipped on the PA switch.

“This is CIA Special Agent Veronica Winters. I have been ordered
to report here to board a plane along with my associate. Our orders are to fly to Atlanta.”

The reply came in the form of a clipped male voice over a PA system of their own. “Agent Winters: glad you made it. Proceed at once
with extreme caution
to the main guard post.”

Alex wasted no time speeding off in the Hummer before a group of coordinated zombies could reach their vehicle. Veronica blasted out intense bursts from the 50-cal into groups of undead as well as a dive-bombing ptero that came too low for comfort. Bullets shredded one of its wings and the bird-like reptile fell into the ground, unable to glide, where it collided with a crylo that promptly and inadvertently stamped the ptero’s skull open.

Under cover fire, Alex skidded to a stop in front of the gate, clouds of dust billowing up from the Humvee’s wheels. Veronica blasted one more group of oncoming zombies with the mounted gun, and then she and Alex ran the few steps to the guard house, where a tall soldier in combat fatigues held out a hand to Veronica—not to shake her hand but to inspect her credentials. She extended the card on the lanyard but did not remove it from her neck. The soldier eyeballed the picture and his eyes bounced from the card to her face and back.

“Agent Winters, the plane is waiting for you inside the gate on the airstrip. Hop in the Jeep, I’ll take you—short ride to the end of the field over there.”

Alex and Veronica looked to where the soldier pointed and were dismayed to see a battle playing out there as well. A small airplane sat on a paved airstrip with a battalion of soldiers fighting a
T. rex
(the one already riddled with 50 cal bullets) as well as a horde of remotely controlled zombies. They were keeping the enemy at bay for now but to Alex it didn’t look like they could hold out for much longer before the plane would be damaged or completely destroyed. The pilot-side door was open too, Alex noted.

Veronica grabbed him by the hand, urging him to get in the Jeep.

“He’s with you?” the soldier asked, giving Alex a cautious look.

“Yeah, is that a problem?”

He finished his appraisal and shook his head. “You’re cleared for two passengers besides yourself.” With that, Alex and Veronica hopped into the back of the open vehicle. The soldier got behind the wheel while his associate in the guard post pressed a switch that started the entrance gate closing. Alex asked how the zombies had already gotten past the gate.

The soldier turned his head sideways from his position behind the wheel while they bounced along toward the waiting plane. “The pterodactyls dropped the humanoids inside, and the
T. rex
…well, we’ve learned a
T. rex
pretty much goes where it wants to go.”

As Alex took in the crushed perimeter fence, topped with razor wire that now lay on the ground, he knew exactly what the military man was saying. Urgent-sounding, jargon-laced chatter burst from the Jeep’s radio as they braked to a stop in front of the plane. Alex recognized it as a Beechcraft Baron, a four-seat twin turboprop with a decent range.

“This thing fueled for the trip?” Alex asked.

“You bet. Topped off and ready to go. Mechanic gave her the blessing just a couple of hours ago. That plane is probably the only thing you
don’t
need to worry about.” He pointed to the aircraft, making it clear that he would not be getting out of the Jeep. “Get going and good luck!”

Alex eyed the towering
T. rex
that stood maybe two hundred feet from the plane, surrounded by a contingent of soldiers peppering it with automatic weapons fire that seemed to have little effect. Alex watched as one of the men shouldered a rocket launcher and aimed it at the beast.

“Where’s the pilot?” Alex eyed the empty cockpit, wondering if he’d be called upon once more to show off his flying skills.

The soldier pointed off to their left, where a man in an aviator’s jumpsuit backpedaled as he fired a pistol at a pursuing zombie group. “He’s ready, don’t worry. Just board the aircraft.”

Alex and Veronica took off running to the plane, Veronica squeezing off a couple of rounds at a pterodactyl that had crash-landed on the ground between them and the plane and snapped at them on broken bones as they sidled past.

They reached the plane and Alex opened the rear door and helped Veronica up inside, then got in after her. He glanced over at the
T. rex,
which now looked like it was about to collapse at any moment under continued assault of heavy arms fire. Then the pilot came running up to the plane, still firing his pistol.

A middle-aged man sporting a buzz cut and mirrored aviator’s sunglasses, the pilot jumped behind the wheel and yanked the door shut. His hands flew over the controls while he spoke to his two passengers without turning around.

“Name’s Atkinson, call me Skip. Buckle up, next stop Atlanta.” That was the extent of his introduction. He continued throwing switches and pressing buttons in preparation for takeoff as the whine of the engines increased in pitch. As he reached up to press a button on the ceiling console, Alex tapped Veronica’s leg and nodded his head toward the pilot’s bare arm.

A nasty-looking chunk of flesh was missing just below the elbow, the surrounding skin smeared with blood. Before Veronica could react, the pilot’s hands were on the wheel and the plane was turning slowly as it taxied into takeoff position on the runway.

Veronica pointed. “Pterodactyl, incoming! It’s diving on us!”

The pilot gunned the engine and the plane hurtled down the airstrip, rapidly gaining speed and momentum. The passengers bounced in their seats as the aircraft approached takeoff velocity while the radio erupted with base chatter.

Veronica took Alex’s hand and squeezed it as a ptero dashed across the plane’s forward path, missing the nose by scant feet. The pilot picked up the radio transmitter and shouted into it that he was taking off. Veronica turned to Alex, nodding at the pilot’s arm wound.

In a muffled voice in his ear, she asked: “Can you fly one of these?”

23.

Washington, D.C.

From his position inside the M1A1 tank, Major Casey Remington surveyed the devastation on Pennsylvania Avenue on a monitor displaying a live video feed of what transpired outside. He’d never seen anything like it, that was for sure. A full-on war zone raged on U.S. soil—in the U.S. capital city, no less.
Unbelievable.

Yet his monitor didn’t lie. The pain-addled screams of his soldiers didn’t lie. The firefight raging outside the White House fence didn’t lie. Most of all, the hellish menagerie of prehistoric animals with their cohort of zombie-like humanoids Did Not Lie.

For just a moment he thought of his daughter, of Olivia who hadn’t even been named a few short days ago. He thought of his wife, thought of the millions of Americans glued together with the common emotion of fear. Not since 9/11 had so many the world over been focused on the same thing, but he knew this was it, this was different. This was potentially the End of Everything.

He didn’t know what he, just one fighter, could do, but he had to try. He ordered the tank gunner to launch another mortar at the
T. rex
loose on the avenue. The 120mm smoothbore projectile impacted on its shoulders, exploding and severing the head so badly that it flopped loose against the body although the creature continued to walk about. “Again!” he rallied his gunner. The second shot hit the rib cage and detonated, blasting the head off completely; it dropped from the body to the street where it lay with its yellow eyes open, gnashing its ridiculously long teeth at a passing military truck.

An entire convoy of armored vehicles currently blasted away at an army of zombies all intent on breaching the White House fence. They didn’t have the ability to free climb it, but once enough of them had been killed so that the bodies were piling up, the still living zombies were able to use the corpses as a crude step ladder. One zombie managed to jump from the top of the pile to reach the fence’s top crossbar, one of the spikes passing through its wrist. From there, it pulled itself up while the shooters riddled its body with lead.

“Tell those guys to go for the head! The head!” Remington snarled into his radio from inside the tank.

The adjustment was made, but not before that particular zombie earned the distinction of being the first of the undead to land on the White House lawn before its cranium was shattered by a Marine’s armor-piercing round and it dropped dead, once and for all, on one of the most heavily guarded properties on the planet.

It would not be the last.

Remington ordered the tank to start rolling again. It made him nervous to remain stationary for more than a few minutes. He scanned the digital data map and tried to analyze all the intel and the rush of data scrolling on his screen. Orders and counter-orders, a confusing, rapidly changing list of priorities. The sheer speed with which everything had gone so wrong had been dizzying. A series of staccato beeps was heard in the tank and the communications operator tapped Remington on the shoulder.

“Delta Team reporting in that Bravo has fallen back. They couldn’t hold the Washington Monument, sir. They were overrun, numerous casualties and many of them are now…” The operator hesitated, apparently seeking the right words.

“Are now
what
, soldier?” Remington regretted asking as soon as he did. He knew, and shouldn’t have made the poor soldier speak it aloud, but maybe the truth would harden his resolve.

“Are now part of the opposition, sir.” He took a breath, then regained his composure, and gave an update that Remington hadn’t heard before. “Prelim reports indicate that the newly infected dead don’t have the coordination abilities of those in the initial waves. Medical teams report that some of the dissected field specimens indicate circuitry components that the newly dead won’t have, but they’re still…zombies, for lack of a better word, sir, that spread the contagion.”

Circuitry. Jesus, then this is all directed, a massive terrorist attack of pure calculated evil.
Remington fought off a wave of nausea. Every time he thought he was making an inch of progress, he found out that they had just lost a mile. He tapped a monitor that currently displayed diagnostic information about the tank.

“Do we have drones in the sky?”

The operator nodded.

“Patch me in the video feed from it, can you?”

“Will do, sir.” He set about completing the task while Remington turned and peered into the viewer, adjusting its optics for a direct view of the tank’s immediate surroundings. It had infrared sensors for night time, but he certainly didn’t need that option now. Zombies were everywhere, including, he noticed with a taste of bile in his throat, some of whom only minutes earlier had been his own fellow marines.

He heard a screech and turned his attention to the sky, where a pterodactyl zoomed in low over the White House fence with a zombie rider on its back
.
One of the tank’s gunners took a strafing run at it but missed, and the ptero deposited its undead payload deep onto the White House property from a few feet above ground.

“Major, sir! I’ve got that drone feed up now.”

Remington shifted his attention to the monitor that showed an aerial view of the greater D.C. environs, and felt his breath catch.

It was unfathomable, the number of undead and dinosaurs, and the organization with which they moved—
marched
—on the capital. This wasn’t a mere army, it was an invasion force from another world. Reminiscent of medieval warfare tactics, a boxy phalanx of perhaps a thousand zombie soldiers, flanked on all sides and in the air by a squadron of reanimated dinosaurs, made its way toward the Capitol Building.

One of his officers alerted him to the monitor that visualized the environment just outside the tank. “Sir, more pterodactyls, incoming!”

Remington broke away from the scope. “Where are the remaining Apaches?” He had seen from the support logs that additional air support had been ordered thirty minutes earlier.

“On the way, sir. I see one of them on the way now.”

“One? Where are the others?”

“Diverted to the main force at the Monument, sir, or…lost in battle already.”

Remington eyeballed the live feed again. Before today, he didn’t think it was possible for any living thing to give an Apache trouble, but as he watched two pteros launch themselves—apparently with deliberation—into the main rotor assembly of the helicopter, he changed his mind. The chopper exploded over the White House itself, raining flaming debris onto the roof of the presidential residence.

“Goddamn it!”

The two surviving pteros flew across the White House lawn, over the fence and out over the tank, where strafing fire shot one of them down. It landed in a crumpled heap of shattered bones and torn membranes on the street. The other ptero managed to avoid fire and hit the ground running, where two zombies jumped atop its back. Then it took off again, turning back over the fence toward the White House. When it neared the porch of the historic building, it came in low and its riders dropped off onto the ground, where they fanned out in opposite directions around the house.

The ptero was cut down on the ground by automatic weapons fire from the White House roof. The reprieve didn’t last long, however, for alarmed shouts soon warned Remington of a new aerial attack.

“More pterodactyls, inbound—high and fast!”

“Mortars, strafing runs, fire at will. Hit ‘em with everything we got!” Remington balled his hands into tight fists while he consulted a radar screen depicting the six new targets approaching the White House. Then, on the video feed, he watched as an object fell from one of the pteros. It was small, but it gave Remington a big chill.

“Take cover! Possible bombardment.”

Outside, a scuba-tank-sized canister fell from one of the pteros into a military staging area on Pennsylvania Avenue. The object exploded and soldiers nearby were cut down, hit by shrapnel.

“Bomb!” came the report over the radio from the staging area commander.

Remington watched in disbelief as five more of the bombs were dropped by the other winged reptiles. “More incoming!” he shouted in reply.

The pteros were all shot down but it was too late. Their deadly payloads dropped and multiple explosions rocked the famous street, releasing a storm of metal fragments into the soldiers and emergency personnel who fronted the White House.

“Multiple friendlies down, casualties confirmed,” came the initial report.

But that was not the worst of it.

Minutes later, while still reeling from the attack and while Remington and his tank crew were busy pounding at distant targets and softening up the army of approaching zombies, the first of the dead soldiers rose from the ground.

Remington again had to doubt his senses. “These marines…they weren’t bitten. They’ve only been dead for a few minutes, How is this possible?”

The operator beside him took a look. “Sir…I don’t know! I’ve had them in visual the whole time.”

“Those frag bombs…” said the radar tech, “they must have been already infected with the contagion.”

The words hung there with all of the smoke in the air above the tank. The notion was uncomfortable as hell.

“Biological warfare,” Remington muttered. Before he could say anything else, a new scene of bloody carnage unfolded on the live feed. The newly dead soldiers began biting those charged with tending to the dead and wounded, turning on their own so fast the medics couldn’t even react. By the time the others realized it and began fighting back, it was too late. It only took a single bite to spread the prion infection. Soon, many more soldiers were dead men walking, right in the midst of the defenders who now had to contend with the external attack as well as internal. The newly initiated zombies were not under remote control influence, but were deadly free-ranging disease agents all the same.

A new directive came over the radio, addressed specifically to Major Remington:
get to the Capitol Building and defend it before it falls.

With great regret, Remington took a last look at the soldiers taking messy chunks of meat from their associates—mindless, primal, beyond animalistic—and gave the orders to his men to move the tank out.