Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America Page 5

  “You make it sound simple.”

  The man shook his head. “It wasn’t simple,” he said. “It was hard work and it involved great sacrifice. ‘Operation Containment’ wasn’t just about building this defensive line, it was about the missions our brave soldiers undertook in the course of the operation. The line gave us a base – a place to defend, but once we had that containment line built, we still ran operations in zombie infected areas as part of the initial response. America has a lot of heroes they don’t know about. That’s why I agreed to this interview. I want you to tell the people of this country about the heroic dedication of the men and women who pledged to defend them.”

  I nodded. I already had several more interviews lined up with combatants who had been actively involved in ‘Operation Containment’.

  I sat back down at the table and gathered my thoughts for a moment. I had a dozen pages of scribbled notes. I flicked back through the pages quickly. I realized my writing was so scrawled, I would be lucky to read the mess later.

  “What was the biggest challenge to ‘Operation Containment’?” I asked after a long moment. “I mean apart from the logistics of building the line. Was it in the operations that were conducted in zombie territory, or dealing with politicians…?”

  Danvers stared hard at me. Slowly he sat forward and thrust his face close to mine so that I could not mistake the gravity in his expression.

  “The numbers,” he said, like it was some secret that until this moment had never been revealed. “The sheer numbers of the enemy,” he shook his head and seemed to become lost in his own brooding thoughts for several minutes. Finally he sat upright, and pressed his palms flat against the tabletop. “By abandoning Florida, and conceding that we couldn’t defend Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia or South Carolina, we created an enemy army of about twenty eight million,” he said the words slowly, making sure I understood the significance. “Twenty eight million mindless ghouls that couldn’t be stopped, couldn’t be reasoned with, couldn’t be dissuaded, but could only be killed by a bullet to the brain. Think about that,” Danvers said, and then lapsed into pensive silence while I tried to grasp the enormity.

  I shook my head slowly. It was an impossible number to conceive. More than ten percent of the nation’s population had been infected. I knew too that southern parts of North Carolina and Tennessee had also been forsaken.

  “Look at it from a military point of view,” he went on with a kind of macabre relish to emphasize his point, “and you’ll understand better what we were dealing with.”

  He got up again and went to one of the blank multimedia screens on the opposite wall. He pressed some buttons and the screen filled with red towers, like some kind of a graph. Danvers stood before the screen like a college professor about to give a lecture.

  “The People’s Republic of China has the biggest Army in the world. Know how big?”

  I shook my head.

  “About two and a quarter million,” Danvers said. I blinked. He went on remorselessly. “The US Army is the second biggest in the world – about 1.5 million, followed by India and North Korea, both with over a million men.” He was pointing at each red column on the big monitor as he rattled off the numbers. “Russia has about a million, then comes Turkey, South Korea, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, all with somewhere around half a million men. Know what that means?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “It means that by surrendering those five states to the zombie infection in order to buy enough time to prepare a solid defensive line, we were confronted by an undead army that was three times the size of the world’s ten largest military forces, combined.”

  Danvers paused to lean across the table and pour himself a glass of water. He didn’t offer me one.

  “At the time of your appointment, the government had no idea that the zombie virus was in fact an act of terrorism perpetrated on the United States by Iran, right?”

  “That’s right,” Danvers said solemnly. “We thought we were dealing with something extraordinary – something we had never seen the likes of before, but we thought it was like an Ebola strain, or some other virulent mutation of virus. We had no idea until several months into the war that this was all some gruesome terrorism plot.”

  I was tempted to probe further, but I didn’t. Instead I kept the questions focused on ‘Operation Containment’.

  “You said you ran operations during those early stages containing the virus,” I began. “How many, and what was the nature of them?”

  “I didn’t run the operations personally,” he explained. “They were military, and – in some cases – civilian exploits. But to go into detail it would be better if you interviewed the combatants yourself.”

  I nodded. “Can you at least single out some of the main events that you felt were significant during the months that ‘Operation Containment’ was in effect?”

  Danvers nodded carefully, “Sure,” he said, like he was keen to merely get rid of me. I had the feeling that his patience was wearing thin. “Mission Warwax, Mission Hawk’s Wing, and Mission Exorus. When you speak to the men involved, you’ll understand the heroism of our troops on the ground, and the terrible sacrifices they made during those first few months when we held the undead back, and gave our military time to assemble and prepare.”

  Richard Danvers stood up, extended his hand across the table. Whether I liked it or not, the interview was over. I nodded my head, muttered something about being grateful for his time and cooperation, then turned for the door where a uniformed soldier had suddenly appeared. I was half way out the door when Danvers called out to me suddenly, “Oh, and see if you can find anyone willing to talk about the ‘Silverbacks’ and their exploits… if any of those men survived.”

  “The Silverbacks?”

  “A group of retired soldiers,” Danvers said sketchily. “They were from Georgia. They were kind of like a resistance group. We owe them a lot.”

  THE PENTAGON, ARLINGTON VIRGINIA:

  With a different school guidance counselor, Raymond ‘Tug’ Horsham might have ended up as a butcher, or maybe a school bus driver. He had a wide friendly face, a ready smile, and the kind of sparkling eyes that store owners look for when they employ their Santa Claus each Christmas. In short, he looked nothing like my impression of the hardheaded General who had been appointed by the President to oversee ‘Operation Containment’, and the man who coordinated the initial military defensive response of the nation.

  The original SAFCUR (Supreme Armed Forces Commander Undead Response) was waiting for me when I entered his Pentagon office. He looked me over carefully, and then gestured for me to take a seat on the opposite side of a large desk. An aide was running down a list of his other appointments for the day. Horsham dismissed the young man with a nod and a friendly smile, and held the expression right up until the door finally closed and we were alone.

  Not a second longer.

  “What do you want?” Horsham’s voice crackled like electricity.

  I was shocked. The transformation from the genial public persona to the private warrior was startling. He fixed me with baleful eyes.

  He was a big man – broad and solid in the shoulders with a bull neck and thinning grey hair.

  He put his hands on the desk and laced his fingers together.

  “Sir, my name is Culver…”

  “I know,” Horsham said. “I didn’t ask who you were, son. I asked what you want.”

  As a journalist, I’ve conducted interviews with all types of people. Some try to win you over with charm. Others become adversarial in the hope that you’ll be intimidated and shy away from asking the hard questions. But I didn’t sense that with Horsham. I simply got the impression that he was a no-nonsense man with limited time. I hoped I was right.

  “I want to know the truth about ‘Operation Containment’ and your role in the defense of the nation during the zombie war,” I said, and sat up straight, meeting his steely gaze and refusing to blink.

 
“The truth?” Horsham’s voice was a deep rumbling bass, the kind of voice that reminded me of thunder rolling across the sky. I was hoping he’d give me the clichéd “you can’t handle the truth!” and go all Jack Nicholson on me. He didn’t.

  “The truth is that a lot of fine young men and women died in defense of their homeland.”

  I nodded, and flipped my notebook open to a blank page. Horsham’s phone rang suddenly. I caught the man’s eyes and silently offered to step out of the office, but Horsham motioned for me to stay put. He snatched at the receiver and swung round in his chair so his broad back was to me. I heard his voice, low and muttering, but paid no attention.

  Instead, I gazed around the Pentagon office.

  There was a map of Old America on the wall behind him, next to an old American flag, still with the original fifty white stars in the top left corner. His desk was huge – like some kind of a barricade maybe, and there was a credenza against one wall. There was nothing on the man’s desk apart from the phone and a 49ers football helmet. Not even a framed photo of children or a wife. He had both.

  His uniform coat was on a hanger, pressed and immaculate, displaying a chest of military decorations and ribbons.

  The office had a sense of being temporary – as if Raymond Horsham was subconsciously preparing for a recall back to real soldiering. There was nothing here that the General couldn’t pack into a duffle bag and be on the next plane back to the front line.

  It was an unexpected insight into the man.

  Horsham swung round in his chair and dropped the phone back into its cradle. He took a deep breath, and then narrowed his eyes like he was making a judgment call.

  “Fire away,” he said at last. “Ask whatever you want and I’ll give you the honest truth.”

  I relaxed just a little. Horsham did the same. He leaned back in his chair.

  I had to ask about the flag and the map. I sensed that the relevance of those pieces would reveal a glimpse into the man’s personality and temperament. “The flag,” I gestured. “Is there any significance?”

  “Absolutely,” Horsham said. His shoulders went back an inch. “It’s still my flag, and it always will be – and America is still my country… and it always will be.”

  I frowned. I could understand the passion, but I struggled with the practicality – especially from a man with a reputation for being pragmatic.

  “The zombie infection broke out thirteen months ago,” I said gently. “Operation ‘Containment’ lasted several months, and then we transitioned into ‘Conquest’ and ‘Compress’. We’ve exacted retribution against the Iranians. The horde has now been driven back behind the Florida border. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t the war over – or as over as it’s ever going to be?”

  “No.” Horsham said, and his voice seemed to boom around the room. “The Middle East might have changed as a result of our wrath, but America has not, and will not. The war isn’t over. It’s won, but it’s not over – and it won’t be over until the last zombie is eliminated and driven from the face of the earth, and Florida is reclaimed as American soil.”

  “So you don’t support the new America? The re-drawn maps and the new flag?”

  “No,” he said again. “Too many proud men and women have spilled their blood in mud around the world for over a century fighting for that flag you see behind me, and defending all of the land on that map on my wall. We owe it to them to fight the fight until the world is right.” It sounded like a powerful slogan, and I wondered if he had ever used that speech to rally the troops he had led into battle against the zombies.

  But I didn’t ask…

  “You were appointed SAFCUR, and as such, you were the man responsible for fortifying and defending the Danvers Defense Line. Correct?”

  He nodded. “Correct.”

  “I’m interested to know how you went about that, especially in those early weeks when the zombie hordes were rampaging through the southern states,” I said. “Was there a sense of panic, or confusion? How did you pull the necessary armed forces together to man such a long line of fortifications?”

  Horsham turned his head a little and I got the sense that he was glancing at the map of Old America. He sighed.

  “The military response was incredibly professional and organized,” General Horsham said. “The biggest issue we had was dealing with the spread of civilian panic. Roads were choked with traffic all the way through Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri… so logistically there were difficulties getting our forces on the ground,” he admitted. “Initially we were able to man the trenches with National Guard troops, and almost the entire 82nd Airborne Division.”

  “Almost?”

  Horsham smiled thinly. I think he sensed right then that I had no idea exactly what an entire airborne division constituted.

  “It was only the third or fourth time since the Second World War that nearly the entire 82nd Airborne was in the air with the majority of its equipment,” he explained. “A force so vast that it had to be airlifted into combat by around one hundred and fifty Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III’s.”

  He fell silent for a moment, and I began to appreciate the enormous logistics of the operation.

  “The 82nd Airborne Division has been called America’s fire brigade – they’re the guys we call on in an emergency. They’re based out of Fort Bragg… and that made them perfect. Bragg was on the southern side of the containment line, and when the Danvers Defense Line was initially approved, the Secretary of Defense argued long and hard to make Bragg part of the defense. It did no good. So the 82nd was re-deployed further north, and into Tennessee. But as you can see, having these guys so close to the conflict made their deployment a no-brainer.”

  I nodded. I had read accounts of heavy equipment being left behind as the Division was re-deployed. Horsham saw it differently.

  “We didn’t abandon any equipment,” he said pointedly. “We simply left the Air Defense Artillery and the 319th Airborne Field artillery behind. The plan was to pick up that equipment once the operation moved into the ‘Conquest’ phase.”

  I scribbled quickly. General Horsham was opening up, and I sensed my best tactic was to stay quiet and let the man talk. I nodded encouragingly, and my pen raced across the page.

  “We flew everything out of Pope Air Force Base, dispersing the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 505th along the Tennessee perimeter line, and the 325th into North Carolina. The 307th Engineer Battalion was sent to Memphis – the western tip of the line – to begin bridge demolition work. Their efforts were supported by the Air Force.”

  “Were the engineers the only troops sent to Memphis?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We used the old Millington Naval Air Station as a staging ground when the Defensive Line began to take shape and we were funneling more troops into the trenches,” Horsham explained. “Twenty odd years ago Millington was a major military installation but it was downsized. When we moved in it was housing a smaller Personnel Center for the Navy, but it still retained most of its original facilities, and the old runway was still there. The runway had been transferred to civilian use. We took it back.”

  “Did you feel prepared for the approaching conflict?”

  The General paused and rubbed his chin. “We had a lot of men, but it wasn’t nearly enough,” he confessed. “And abandoning equipment, and aircraft goes against the grain,” he grumbled. “But we needed to deploy with great speed. Leaving Bragg and Pope in the dead zone was militarily stupid, in my opinion. If the Danvers Defense Line had been given into the hands of someone with a true appreciation of the military considerations, my guess is that it would have been drawn up differently.”

  I sensed some friction, and like any good journalist, I tried to pick the scab off the General’s wound. “So you weren’t a fan of Richard Danvers? That must have caused difficulties, considering you were appointed SAFCUR.”

  Horsham’s expression became frosty. His posture stiffened. He stared at me
for long silent seconds and I could sense him bristling with a barely concealed flash of temper.

  “Danvers did the job the President appointed him to do,” Horsham said carefully, like he was reciting these lines from some kind of a prepared, censored media statement. “As SAFCUR, I operated with the restrictions I was handed. They weren’t of my making – they were mine to make what I could with.”

  I smiled wryly. “Spoken like a politician,” I said.

  The General didn’t share my smile. He tensed. “No,” he said, and thrust one of his fingers at me. “Spoken like a career soldier who is accustomed to dealing with the idiotic decisions of politicians and bureaucrats.”

  More silence. The interview had taken a confrontational turn and I tried to steer it back on course, back to aspects that were more comfortable for the General in the hope that he would once again be forthcoming.

  “Sir, you’ve had an extremely distinguished career. You’ve seen action and led men in every major theater of operations for many years. How was the zombie war different to other military conflicts, in terms of attitude?”

  “Attitude?”

  “Yes. In terms of morale?”

  Horsham hesitated and his broad face creased into a series of frowns. He stared towards the ceiling for a moment.

  “I guess the closest I can figure would be to compare it to ‘Desert Shield’ and the defense of Saudi Arabia back in ’90-’91,” he said after a long moment. “From a purely operational point of view, both conflicts were the same – that period where we hastily assembled the men and equipment necessary to construct a cohesive defensive line. In every other aspect,” Horsham assured me with a steely gaze, “the zombie war was unlike anything I have ever encountered before.”