Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America Read online

  Zombie War:

  An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America

  Nicholas Ryan

  Copyright © 2014 Nicholas Ryan

  The right of Nicholas Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  LG, A – PBS&ST

  This book is dedicated to my two sons.

  Acknowledgements:

  A great many people offered their technical skill, their expertise and their experience to make this book as accurate as possible. To everyone who helped – you have my most sincere thanks. A full list of everyone who contributed appears at the end of the book.

  PROLOGUE:

  The Fist of Allah…

  LUT DESERT, SOUTH-EAST IRAN.

  There were three men remaining and the instructor assembled them in a semi-circle near the tents.

  The midday sun blazed, and the air was still. The heat beat down like a heavy weight and the silent immensity of the desert enfolded them. The men sat in stony silence while the sweat prickled from their pores, and the scalding air seemed to sear their lungs.

  The camp was crude – just a dozen canvas tents daubed the color of ochre around the remains of a small fire pit, and a single wooden hut no larger than a prison cell, with a hessian sack hanging across the opening. The instructor stood before the men and withered them with his stare for long silent seconds.

  “What you are about to embark upon is a holy jihad that will change the world forever and unite all Islamic nations against the infidel,” the instructor said. He paced before the men, his boots dusty, his fatigues crusted with three weeks of grime and sweat. He stopped mid-stride and glared at each of the assembled men, measuring them with the force of his gaze. His beret was pulled down low but it did not diminish the intensity of his eyes. They blazed with the fanaticism of a true believer, and he saw the same passion reflected in the gazes of those men gathered around him. He hooked one hand inside the webbing of his belt and rested the other on the release catch of his pistol holster.

  They were all hard men, made harder by the intensive desert training. They were unshaven and unwashed, rugged and lean.

  They were the lions of Islam.

  “Tomorrow we will leave this place and return to Tehran. In seven days from now you will each embark on your journeys. God willing, in a month the world will be changed forever,” the instructor promised. “The cause you fight for is great – there can be none greater. Each of you will die a glorious martyr and be welcomed into Paradise.”

  The three men closed their eyes and bowed their heads as if in solemn silent prayer, or reflection. The instructor stood amongst them and began to recite short passages from the Koran, and his voice rang out across the barren empty desert as if his prayers might reach the very ear of Allah.

  *

  Before sunset, two Mercedes 911 trucks appeared from out of the undulating desert, driving at low speed. Their trays were covered with heavy canvas tarpaulins and the trucks jostled and swayed on worn springs as they came out of the dunes and onto the hard pan of sandy earth. The vehicles were painted in desert camouflage and their big round headlights were blacked out to narrow slits. The trucks pulled up at the edge of the camp and lurched to a halt.

  The driver got out of the lead truck. He was covered in dust and sand that crusted in his hair and clung to the sweat on his brow. He was a small man with dark nervous eyes. He saw the instructor striding towards him and he snapped to quivering attention and saluted.

  The soldier had a wad of papers clutched in his hand. The instructor ignored the man, his eyes narrowed as he carefully inspected the trucks. He grunted, and then turned back to the driver.

  “How many prisoners?”

  “Twelve. Sir.”

  The instructor grunted again. “Soldiers?”

  “Eight,” the driver answered, and there was a fearful tremor in his voice. The instructor was a big powerful man. The sleeves of his tunic were rolled up exposing huge muscled forearms. He stared down at the driver and his gaze was withering. “They are in the second truck with the cages.”

  The instructor nodded.

  “And our guest?”

  “He follows,” the driver offered.

  The instructor frowned. “You had orders to bring him with you.” His voice began to rise and there was a menacing edge to his words. The driver seemed to shrink before him.

  “He would not come in the truck,” the driver was suddenly defensive. “He refused. He insisted on being brought in a car.”

  The instructor reeled away, muttering darkly. He scanned the edge of the dunes searching for a telltale feather of dust but saw nothing. His lips compressed into a thin bloodless line and he snarled back at the driver.

  “Get everything set up. Now!”

  The driver spun away, relieved, and ran to the cabin of the second truck. A moment later eight soldiers appeared from under the canvas flap of the vehicle. They were dressed in rumpled desert camouflage BDU’s and carrying G3 battle rifles with collapsible stocks. The soldiers looked tired and ragged under their helmets. They bustled to the rear of the first truck and formed up in a semi-circle.

  “Out!” one of the soldiers shouted. He climbed up through the heavy canvas tarpaulin and barked a string of guttural insults.

  The prisoners came out into the soft dusk light, their hands and feet manacled like death-row convicts. There were a dozen men, each of them thin and gaunt, their steps shuffling and uncertain. The soldier prodded them with the barrel of his rifle and kicked at their legs until the prisoners were herded into a tight knot of cowering misery between the two vehicles.

  The driver ran back to the instructor and saluted.

  “Get the cages. I want them set up over there,” the instructor said. He pointed to a place on the edge of the camp that was in the lee of a sand dune.

  The driver turned away yelling instructions and six of the soldiers began unloading heavy iron pieces.

  Each length was like a section of iron bar fencing, four foot high and four foot wide with hooks and brackets at either end. The soldiers assembled the cages in a line, with two prisoners inside each box. There were no doors, and no locks. The prisoners squatted on the ground while the cage was built around them and fastened together with long iron spikes. They sat, docile, the fight and will to live long ago beaten from their bodies.

  They were captured Iraqi soldiers. They were naked, shriveled and skeletal. Their starved bodies were crawling with vermin that clustered around the pubic hair of their genitals and on the open wounds across their backs and legs. Some of the men were covered in dried faeces that had crusted to their legs. One of the prisoners began to groan softly. He clawed at the blindfold with his cuffed hands, but a soldier slammed the butt of his rifle into the man’s ribs. The prisoner howled in pain, exposing a ruined mouth full of broken shattered teeth
and bleeding gums. He cringed away to the far side of the cage and his whole body was racked with the slurred sounds of his sobbing.

  It took fifteen minutes for the cages to be assembled. When it was done, the three martyrs were summoned from their tents. The sun was setting behind the undulating line of distant sand dunes and a chill wind came hunting across the desert so that little dust devils kicked up around their feet, drifting across the sand like smoke. The men were carrying AK47’s. One of them scraped away the black ash of the fire pit and set about lighting a new fire.

  Night comes quickly in the Iranian desert. Within minutes the sunset was in the dying stages of its spectacular light show and the temperature plunged. The men fed more wood into the fire and a shower of sparks rose up into the starlit sky.

  The eight guards had gone back to their trucks. They huddled round the vehicles smoking. They were tired. The journey from Shahdad had been long.

  The instructor gathered the martyrs around the fire and his face was made demonic by the flickering golden light. He glanced pointedly over his shoulder at the soldiers and then back to the men around him.

  “None of them must live,” he said simply.

  The martyrs opened fire. The range was just twenty yards and the eight soldiers were caught in a withering hail of lead.

  One of the guards threw down his gun and tried to run. Two of the martyrs caught him in a crossfire of bullets that stitched a ragged line from his torso to the top of his head. The impact jerked him backwards like a puppet on a string, his arms flailing as he was slammed against the side of the truck and collapsed dead to the sand, leaving red streaks of his blood spattered across the canvas tarpaulin.

  The two drivers were asleep in the cabin of the first truck. Rough hands dragged them to the ground. They stared up ashen-faced. One of the martyrs put his boot on the first driver’s chest to pin him to the sand, then pressed the hot barrel of his AK47 against the man’s forehead and executed him. The second driver’s bladder emptied itself, and a dark stain spread across the crotch of his fatigues as he cried out in wide-eyed terror. The martyr who had dragged him from the truck forced the barrel of his gun down the man’s throat and when the driver’s cries had subsided to muffled whimpers, the martyr fired.

  It was over in a matter of seconds.

  The instructor walked amongst the dead, his face hard as granite. Blood had soaked into the sand so that it crunched beneath his boots.

  “Bury them,” he said. “Behind the line of cages.”

  They gathered the rifles up and tossed them into the back of the first truck, then laid the bodies out at the foot of the dune and dragged the loose sand down over the dead. The twelve caged Iraqi prisoners watched on with empty hollow eyes.

  As the last soldier’s body disappeared beneath the sliding desert sand, headlights suddenly flashed in the distance. The instructor’s eyes narrowed. The lights were close together and low to the ground. A car. Not a truck. He watched the twin beams flicker and jounce as the vehicle came towards them at high speed, groping for the hard earth of the ancient camel route between the shifting crests of the dunes.

  The Land-Rover’s engine howled as it crested the shoulder of sand. Pale dust boiled out from under its wheels. It braked to a screeching halt beside the trucks and there was a raucous, drunken burst of laughter from the back seat, followed by a high-pitched feminine giggle.

  Then the driver of the Land-Rover cut the engine, and for long seconds the silence of the desert returned so that the only sound was the ticking ping of the vehicle’s exhaust as it cooled.

  The instructor stepped briskly towards the Land-Rover. It was an old vehicle, the desert-camouflage paintwork scratched and gouged back to the bare metal.

  The driver saw the broad-shouldered figure approach, and even in the soft flickering light of the campfire he was soldier enough to sense the big man’s authority - and his simmering temper. The driver threw up a rigid salute.

  “You’re late.” The instructor said.

  The driver bobbed his head apologetically but said nothing. Instead his eyes flicked to his two passengers, as if that gesture was explanation enough.

  There was a man and a woman in the back seat of the vehicle. The man was slouched in one corner and the woman in the other. The woman had the hem of her dress rucked up around her milky white thighs and her legs were spread wide. The man’s eyes were glittering with hungry pleasure, and when he glanced up at the instructor there was a dark scowl of annoyance on his face.

  “You are interrupting,” the man said in heavily accented English.

  He was hugely obese, maybe sixty years old, wearing a rumpled linen suit stained with sweat beneath the armpits. His hair was grey and his face angry red, burned by the harsh unrelenting sun. He had a grimy handkerchief in his big pudgy hand and he mopped at the sweat on his brow as he glared up at the instructor with black eyes that were almost lost within the folds of paunchy skin.

  The instructor’s eyes flashed with annoyance and his expression darkened. He bit his lip and flicked a glance at the girl. She was thin – maybe nineteen – certainly not older. She had dirty blonde hair that cascaded down to her shoulders and a pale face, artfully concealed beneath heavy makeup so that her skin on her cheeks seemed to glow. Her eyes were huge and dark, framed by long artificial lashes. She had one hand down inside the elastic of her panties, and in the other hand was a half-filled glass. She met the instructor’s gaze and in her eyes was a brazen challenge.

  The instructor’s expression turned to disgust. He turned back to the man. “You can play with your filthy whore when the test is complete,” he said.

  The man raised a mocking eyebrow. “My whore?” he laughed, but the sound was bitter and resentful. “She’s not my whore. She’s a Polish prostitutka your government provided for my comfort and pleasure. A fucking Polak! They couldn’t even find me a good Russian girl, so they bought me this diseased little wretch.” He wrinkled his nose, and then sighed heavily, as though he had made the same protest countless times.

  The Russian’s eyes lingered between the girl’s spread legs for a moment longer, and then he heaved himself from the Land-Rover and glanced around the camp, taking in everything in an instant. The girl slid across the seat and stood beside him. She saw the three dark dangerous men clustered around the campfire, and then the prisoners squatting in their cages, and she smoothed her dress back down her thighs with her fingers and tottered on high heels in the soft sand, swaying slightly. She reached out for the man’s shoulder to steady herself, but he brushed her away.

  “Why do you people insist on everything being done in the fucking desert?” the Russian complained. “You would rather live with the camels?”

  The instructor’s expression stayed blank, but there was rage simmering behind his eyes. The Russian pig was an offence to Islam, and the instructor’s mind played across the pleasure of killing the man: sliding a knife up under his ribs and watching the life drain out of him. It was enough for him to keep his voice controlled.

  “We like secrecy,” the instructor said flatly. “You should know that by now.”

  “Da,” the Russian nodded sagely. “After seventeen months in this stinking hell-hole I should know.”

  The instructor smiled, but there was ice in his eyes. “You could always leave, comrade. You could always return home to your mother Russia.” He knew that wasn’t true. The man would never see his homeland again. In fact he would not see the next sunrise.

  The big man looked pained and sad. He knew the Iranian was taunting him.

  “To face life in prison? My government does not look highly upon its scientists who sell their skills, even to the camel-loving desert nomads in your government, my friend. I would be killed if I return.”

  “I am not your friend,” the instructor said with an icy smile. “And I would kill you right now if I were able to. If you were a Muslim, you would have been dead long ago for your blasphemies. It is only while you remain useful that you live
, Russian. Remember that. Once the entire world has learned to embrace Allah and the faith, men like you will be ground into dust.”

  The two men glared at each other, the Iranian instructor’s face intense with his hatred, and the Russian scientist’s face bemused. The scientist nodded in concession, but then waved a fat finger under the other man’s nose. “But you can’t kill me,” he said. “Your government still needs me. That’s why they bring me vodka and whores and turn a blind eye as I commit every offense against your blessed Allah. Because they need me.” His expression suddenly turned malevolent. He shoved his finger hard into the instructor’s chest. “And as for Allah? You camel humping apes have been promising Allah’s wrath against the world for hundreds of years. And what? What have you achieved? Nothing,” the Russian spat contemptuously. “You live in the dirt like animals, and you smell like unwashed pigs. You are uncivilized, and that will never change,” he said with the defiance of a man who had long ago realized he was doomed to certain death. “You beat your women, you think fucking is a sin and even drinking is evil.” He shook his head “You are a backward race of thieves, nothing more. Now, get my fucking bag from the Land-Rover and show me my quarters. I will be ready to commence in an hour.”

  The instructor jerked his head at the driver, and the man snatched up a leather briefcase off the passenger seat. The Russian shoved his way past the instructor and the girl followed.

  “Soon,” the instructor’s rage seethed like lava, although his face remained expressionless. This man was not the only Russian scientist in Iran. The Supreme Leader employed many of the Godless pigs as whores to service the Islamic struggle. Some were employed in the nation’s nuclear program. Others were hired for gold to train and advise the military – but the instructor had never met any of them. He had only met two other Russians, and they were buried in the shifting sand on the edges of the camp.