Judgment Day (Book 3): Retribution Read online

  He had chosen a farmhouse near the tracks at Tangerine Road where it crossed Interstate 10. It seemed the ideal location – easily defended, secluded, surrounded by acres of open fields and a stucco wall. Several outbuildings on the property allowed each group their own separate quarters and mess. Dingane Soweta, the big black South African gang boss, was directing his gang to make the farm habitable while he and his troops secured supplies.

  Costco, a large food warehouse off Orange Grove, seemed the obvious choice to find what they were seeking. It was unlikely that hectic buyers would have emptied the store before the plague, and pillaging by small groups of survivors wouldn’t make a major dent in its inventory. They brought two trucks with them, but parked them a short distance away to avoid the sound of their engines attracting zombies. He could use his radio to call them in when they reached and secured the warehouse.

  They followed the road until they could climb over the retaining wall, cutting back to the tracks and following them north, and then cut across strip mall parking lots as they marched the two clicks to Costco. They passed scores of human and zombie skeletons, the rusted hulks of torched trucks and cars, and dozens of burned out businesses. Fires started by gas leaks, lightning strikes, or careless looters had swept unchecked by decimated fire brigades through large sections of the city, leaving behind blackened piles of rubble surrounded by scorched adobe walls. Though he had never been in a battle, Lacey could well imagine himself walking through a battlefield. The only thing missing were the bomb craters. The large parking lot at Costco was surprisingly empty, a good sign that the store had closed, rather than been left open to looters.

  “Higgins,” Lacey called out to one of his privates, a veteran of Afghanistan, “take four men and set up a perimeter on the southeast corner of the building where you can watch the front entrance and the side of the building.”

  Higgins nodded silently, pointed to the three men nearest him, and made a sharp downward motion with his hand. They trotted after him to a position thirty yards from the building and scattered. The storefront was intact, the overhead roll-type door closed. Working quickly, two men inserted a six-foot pry bar under the door and jumped up and down on the end of it until they had raised the door high enough to insert a hydraulic jack. With the jack, they created a space large enough for one of them to slip beneath the door, while the second shined a flashlight and covered the first man with his rifle. Safely inside, he raised the door.

  Lacey entered. “You two stay by the door,” he said. The pair looked relieved at their assignment.

  The yawning cavernous interior was dark and still bore lingering traces of the odor of rotten vegetables and fruit, spoiled milk and dairy products, and decomposing meat. Whether the meat smell was from shut down refrigerators or from corpses, he couldn’t tell and wasn’t eager to find out. Some shelves were nearly bare, while others remained untouched.

  “Spread out by twos. Stay sharp,” he cautioned. “Find canned foods, water, juice, first aid supplies, blankets, cooking utensils – whatever we might need for the next few weeks. Propane heaters would be nice if you don’t want to freeze at night. Locate pallet jacks, load it on pallets, and bring it all to the front of the store.” He checked his watch. “I want to be out of here in thirty minutes. Move out.”

  By pairs, they scattered into the darkness, the beams of their flashlights crisscrossing the store, one man holding the flashlight, the other covering with his weapon. Most of the food items were at the rear of the store and along one wall. He grabbed a shopping cart and headed to the pharmacy section, passing the long-dried remains of pretzels hanging from pegs inside a deli booth and bouquets of dried flowers, their petals littering the tile floor. Oddly enough, a faint scent of roses still drifted up as he crushed the petals beneath his boot. He swiped bottles of alcohol and hydrogen peroxide into the cart. He plucked boxes of cotton balls, bandage material, tape, cold and flu medications, anything that he thought might be useful, from the shelves and piled it in the cart. Razor blades, razors, shaving cream, soap, shampoo – all difficult to come by personal hygiene products went in with them. He heard a propane-powered forklift cranking up that one enterprising soldier had located. Its beeping backup alarm seemed incongruous in the dark, cavernous building. He checked his watch – fifteen minutes had passed. Passing a battery display, he grabbed all the ‘C’ and ‘D’ batteries and extra flashlights. His men had stacked five pallets of products by the front door before he heard the first shots from outside.

  “Move it!” he yelled, leaving his full cart and racing for the entrance.

  Two men from the four-man squad were already down, buried beneath a swarm of attacking zombies. The remaining two walked backwards toward the store, firing into the zombies pressing them. Nearly fifty zombies surged toward them. A dozen more lay dead on the asphalt.

  “Set up a defensive perimeter,” he ordered, pointing to a brick wall used to house shopping carts. He pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt. “Victor Charlie to Victor Foxtrot. Victor Charlie to Victor Foxtrot. Bring in the trucks. Be warned, zone is hot.” He didn’t wait for a reply. If they didn’t come, he and his men were dead. He unslung his M16, crouched on the ground, and began picking targets with slow, carefully aimed bursts.

  Private Higgins dove for cover behind the wall with two zombies on his tail. He came up huffing for breath and shot one zombie in the face at point blank. Its head exploded, splattering the wall with blood and brains. Lacey put two bullets in the second one’s chest. The dense muscle and fused bone of the zombie’s modified sternum could stop a bullet at twenty feet, but from a distance of ten feet, the 5.56 caliber slug tore out half its back. Pearson, the other survivor, turned to fire one last parting shot, but went down as two zombies grabbed him from each side. He screamed as one ripped his arm from his shoulder as easily as one would twist a leg from a cooked chicken. Both died in a hail of bullets from the defenders, but not before one of the zombies had ripped out Pearson’s throat with its teeth, ending his screams.

  Now, twenty dead zombies lay scattered across the parking lot, but the remainder did not relent in their attack. They came at the soldiers relentlessly. Two more of Lacey’s men died as zombies clambered over the chest-high wall, flailing at them with inch-long claws and assaulting them with teeth as sharp as knives.

  As Lacey’s rifle clicked on empty, he pulled out his .45 automatic and placed three rounds in the back of a zombie’s head as it bit into the neck of one of the downed defenders. Blood splashed across his face and mouth. He quickly wiped it off with the back of his hand but not before tasting the bitter blood. The sound of the two two-and-a-half ton diesel GMC cargo trucks rounding the corner turned a few zombie heads. The canvas top of one had been thrown back, revealing a .30 caliber machine gun. The heavy weapon swept through the massed zombies like a red-hot scythe, exploding skulls and dismembering limbs. Zombies fell to the ground, either dead or writhing in agitation if not pain. The noise more than fear of the weapon, forced the remaining zombies to retreat. To Lacey, an avid hunter from Iowa, they scattered like a covey of flushed quail.

  He quickly assessed the damage. Five of his men lay dead. A sixth held his injured wrist almost severed from a zombie bite. He knew the horrible fate that awaited him. He stood stoically at attention and closed his eyes as his companion shot him in the head. Lacey shook his head. Six men dead and he would be getting no more replacements anytime soon. They had their supplies, but the cost had been too high.

  “Load the trucks,” he barked, taking out his anger on his men.

  They rushed to load cases of food and equipment into the back of the two trucks while one man stood guard with the .30 caliber. Lacey returned for his shopping cart of toiletries. When the task was finished, he ordered the door of the store resealed for a future, hopefully less costly, salvage operation. As the two trucks loaded with supplies and men roared away from the Costco, zombies peered from behind abandoned autos and overgrown hedgerows of oleander. Lacey res
isted the urge to place a bullet between the eyes of one particularly curious zombie, the Alpha male, for fear of unleashing another attack. The Alpha male stood defiantly beside the road glaring at the departing troops, its red eyes fixed upon him as if it recognized him as the leader. Lacey noted the creature’s long hair, the dark olive skin, and the wide shoulders. It wore no clothing, its genitals dangling free, seeming inured to the chilly temperature.

  Zombies were a mystery to him. He knew how to kill them. He knew how they attacked. He even understood the basics of their spectacular transformation from dying human to a flesh-devouring creature, but not the mechanics involved. He, like many, found it difficult to believe that such an abrupt mutation could come about solely through an act of nature via a lowly virus. Nature operated more slowly, a slight change here, a modification there, not a wholesale restructuring of the human body. Someone, some group, some country had wrought this apocalypse upon the human race. He hoped it had not been his own country.

  He relaxed slightly when they reached the Interstate and the trucks picked up speed. He saw that his men were in a subdued mood after the loss of so many of their comrades. He had no cheerful words for them. He had seen too many men die. They all had. Death was something they had learned to expect and to live with its consequences. The trauma was too recent, the blood not yet dry on their fatigues. By morning, they would revert to their old selves, the memory of their fallen comrades fading as the sun brightened on a new day in which they had survived. It was not callousness or selfishness. It was life.

  His mind drifted on the journey to more pleasant moments in his life – his farm near Des Moines, his ex-wife on whom he had cheated with her sister, his bird dog, Rascal. He wasn’t sure which he missed most. They all seemed to meld together in a quasi-unreal daydream in which zombies threatened everything. He awoke with a jerk as the truck turned onto the access road near their base.

  O’Malley was waiting for them, his ubiquitous half-chewed cigar resting in the corner of his mouth as if his lips had developed a permanent pocket for it. He immediately sensed the mood of the returning men.

  “How many?” he asked as the soldiers began unloading the bodies of their fallen comrades from the rear of the truck.

  “Six,” Lacey answered taking off his cap and slapping his thigh with it. “Too damned many.” He turned to Higgins. “Divide this stuff up – half for us, half for the snipes. Then, dig holes for the dead.” He checked his watch. “Services at sixteen hundred.” Returning his attention to O’Malley, he added, “Damn things were everywhere.”

  O’Malley nodded. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and waved in the general direction of Tucson. “Same with my crew. Soweta radioed in that his men had fought off a small party not far from you, near downtown. I told him to bring them in.”

  Lacey frowned. “Bring them in? It’s barely fourteen hundred.”

  O’Malley spat on the ground, jammed the cigar back in his mouth, and shrugged. “Two o’clock. I know. They couldn’t do much more until we receive supplies from Phoenix. We’re out of rails. No reason to risk them just for survey work.”

  Lacey realized that O’Malley was right. He rummaged in the back of the truck and withdrew a box of cigars. He grimaced; then wiped a spot of blood that had come from one of his dead soldiers. “Merry Christmas. White Owl Blunts. Hope you like them. I never see you light them anyway.” He tossed the box to O’Malley, who caught them and smiled. He ignored the hastily wiped smear of blood.

  “Fifty count. Thanks. I didn’t get you anything.” He removed the much-chewed stub from his mouth and dropped it on the ground. Ripping the plastic wrapping from the box, he opened it and inhaled deeply. “Ah. Still fresh.” He jammed a cigar in his mouth, moved it around experimentally, and smiled. “Very nice.”

  Lacey eyed the dropped cigar butt and discarded plastic, and frowned. He would have his men police the area later. A clean camp is a happy camp. It would give them something to do besides dwelling on today’s fiasco. “Glad you like it. You can finish the damn railroad for my present. When’s the train due?”

  O’Malley shrugged. “Tomorrow. The day after. Who knows?”

  The gang pusher’s lackadaisical attitude annoyed Lacey’s sense of military discipline, but he understood. In a normal universe, he wouldn’t have to lose six men to resupply the rest. “I bet Dingane appreciates the break.” Lacey had lately begun to appreciate the brusque Zulu. Soweta had explained that his first name, Dingane, meant ‘One who searches.’ He had further explained that his name had been one of his reasons for coming to America, to search for a land in which blacks were not considered inferior, unlike in his native South Africa. Until the plague struck, he had failed. Now, his skills made him indispensible.

  O’Malley shook his head. “Not him. Soweta’s not happy without a hammer in his hand pounding spikes. Railroad rust runs through his veins.” O’Malley jerked his head toward the tracks. “Speak of the devil.”

  The bright yellow crane truck pushing a flatcar loaded with men rolled down the tracks, stopping on a siding. Men spilled off the flatbed and headed for the farm. Soweta’s tall form stood out in their midst. Unlike Lacey’s men unloading the trucks in silence, the track crew moved with the swagger and bluster of a winning football team, laughing and joking as they crossed the open field.

  He turned to O’Malley. “I can’t wait around. I have to wash up, and see that these goons don’t screw things up.”

  Turning his back on the approaching work gang, he entered the metal barn recently converted to a military barracks. His eyes immediately were drawn to the empty cots of the six dead men. Tomorrow he would have them removed. They were a reminder of his failure and bad for morale, his and his men’s. A shoulder high makeshift wall built from two-by-fours and corrugated metal divided his quarters from the main space. The ten-feet-by-ten-feet space held his cot, a low table, and a Coleman lantern. His extra uniforms hung from a nail driven into the wall. Its sparseness reminded him of how much he had lost, some from his own poor decisions, but most because of the plague. After his divorce, he had enlisted in the National Guard, mostly for the extra cash to supplement his dwindling income from his failing farm. The Apocalypse had made him a full-time soldier and, in his estimation, had made a new man of him.

  Two of the men set up propane heaters at each end of the room and lit them. The day was not cold, but the metal building held onto the chill of the night. All they needed now was a shower with hot and cold running water and a working toilet. Alone and in pairs, his men returned to the barracks, exhausted by their labors and disheartened by their recent ordeal. Conversation was minimal, the general mood poor. He filled the washbasin with cold water and washed the blood from his face. The cold water invigorated him and removing the blood acted as a sort of mini-catharsis, re-instilling in him a sense of purpose. He had a job to do. More men might die doing it, but it was necessary. He was U.S. Army and believed in what he was doing. He was rebuilding his country and he wouldn’t let a pack of mindless zombies, or a few deaths, stop him. He stripped off his blood-spattered shirt and replaced it with a clean one. First thing tomorrow morning, he would visit the underground Red Rock facility and secure the nuclear warheads for transport to Phoenix. The thought of being near such powerful weapons gave him an erection. He glanced around nervously to make sure no one had witnessed it.

  10

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  Bahati and Colonel Schumer arranged to meet once or twice a week at the Z-Bar. Miklos Zacharenios, the bar’s owner, began preparing her martini and poured his beer as soon as they sat down. She took this as a hint that Zacharenios approved of their relationship. Her roommate, Elise, was ecstatic that she had found someone to, as she put it, “To do the nasty.” Their relationship had not reached the sexual stage, though Bahati did find the Afro-American colonel attractive. For his part, he made no advances, steered their conversations away from anything of a sexual nature, and behaved like the perfect gentleman.

/>   The weather was growing colder with snow often covering King’s Peak in the Wasatch Range, so they remained inside drinking and talking, often about his or her childhood. Hers had been an upper middle-class family – the best girl’s school, servants, vacations, and a good college – while his parents had struggled simply to keep food on the table. He had risen to his present position through hard work and resolve, something she had yet to learn. Before the plague, she had vacillated between college majors. Now, she simply drifted with the tide, working at the cannery, no thoughts on what she wanted to do with her life. It was during one of these conversations that he made a surprising proposal to her.

  “Do you remember our conversation a few weeks earlier when you suggested we resist those in the military trying to impose a new order on society?”

  “Of course,” she replied, curious as to why he had broached a subject she had thought long dead.

  He smiled. “Well I’ve done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “I contacted President Hastings and demanded a return to civil law. No more citizens being treated as test subjects or killed as collateral damage.”

  “What was his reply?”

  He waved his hand in the air. “Oh, he agreed in theory, but insisted that the military was working in the best interests of the civilian population.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I contacted the commanders of several other bases who think as I do, and we formed a cabal of sorts. We decided to refuse any order that harmed the civilian population under our care, whom we swore an oath to protect.”