He worked his drone controls…
In the sky, the large drone was high above the carrier. It flew up and gained altitude, and suddenly took a nosedive straight down for the Ronald Reagan. The missile compartments underneath the aircraft opened and two large missiles dropped out—they were bunker busters—the engines of both metal slivers ignited and they took off, outpacing the drone as they streaked towards the ship and rapidly increased their velocity to Mach four.
“It’s done,” Van Lee said. “Just a few seconds.”
“You hear that, you dead pieces of shit!” Hicks shouted to the dead at their doors. “You’re not gonna get us, you got a big surprise coming!”
He laughed and the rest of the men joined him, they had the last laugh…
The two missiles hit the flight deck amidship in a speeding blur, but they didn’t explode, they punched their way into the ship, through two decks, and down to the drone operations center where they exploded. The sailors’ laughter was cut off, forever, and all the dead within a couple hundred feet were vaporized. A large portion of the flight deck mushroomed from the blast within as the explosion then ruptured outward in a ball of fire, smoke, and undead flesh.
Out in the water, Ardent and Bear broke the surface and they watched the tail end of the missile attack. Then, in disbelief, they saw the drone come straight down out of the clouds and impact the carrier exactly where the missiles hit. The destruction was fierce and the listing carrier was engulfed in flames and smoke.
Ardent and Bear didn’t linger. They swam toward shore. They didn’t know where they were going, but they would push on…
DAY 45:
MILLA and DEREK
THE U.S.S. RONALD REAGAN, A ONCE PROUD AND MIGHTY VESSEL, WAS RUN AGROUND AND BURNING ON SAN DIEGO’S SHORE. Just a few miles from the carrier’s black smoke trail was downtown and it was in chaos. Hundreds upon hundreds of the rabid creatures were in the streets. Attacking anyone they could in small groups or large hordes, they were everywhere. Uninfected people were trying to get away. Many had to fight for their lives, and many died in the attempt. Even though some had guns, they were useless when groups overwhelmed individuals out in the open.
Undead numbers were thicker in the northern part of town because that’s where the infection came from—Los Angeles—and they moved like a swarm. There were people watching from rooftops and the dead burst onto some of those roofs and killed everyone they found. First responder vehicles were all over, but most were burning wrecks—others were fleeing town. There were also SWAT vehicles here and there; specially-trained police were fighting the ghouls, but their training didn’t help when they were attacked by mindless creatures that only wanted to feed . . . and feed they did. Little by little, the citizens of San Diego were either torn apart and eaten, or wounded and became one of them.
In the south part of town, where the dead were fewer in numbers, a car raced down the streets at breakneck speeds. It was a red crossover SUV and the driver was alone.
It was Milla Siln.
She was stressed out as she jerked on the steering wheel to zigzag her way through the obstacles in the streets. Some were other cars but most were people. And most of them were infected. At the speeds she was driving it was hard to tell which were which.
“Get out of the way, goddamnit!” she yelled at someone in her path.
The person turned out to be a slow moving corpse and she purposely ran it over. It blew apart into red chunks on the car’s grill and hood; some splattered the windshield so she turned on the windshield wipers. Red smeared in half circle patterns and she activated the wiper fluid, which cleared it up for her to see—
Another one appeared in her path and she dropped her foot on the accelerator, intent on destroying it. Just before she hit the creature—it turned, and she saw his eyes—they were normal. His body rammed against the hood and flipped over the car. He was thrown into the air.
“Fuck!” she shouted.
She looked in her rearview and saw his lifeless body hit the pavement, and then some of the dead feasted on the road kill. She couldn’t pick and choose anymore, if she tried to avoid hitting someone that she thought was normal, she could lose control of the SUV and crash, and that would be it for her. She decided that if anything else got in her way from this point forward, alive or dead, they were fodder. Up ahead, she saw some cops that were surrounded by the dead, fighting the best they could, but they were being overrun.
Milla headed right for them and she wasn’t slowing down.
One of the cops saw her coming and ran in the middle of the street to flag her down, but Milla didn’t reduce speed. She plowed through several of the stenches and then saw the cop; he was in her direct path. At the last second he sidestepped out of her way, and just missed being hit by inches. He fired his handgun at her in anger, hitting her back window, fracturing it into a spider web pattern. He took better aim to fire at her again, but before he could pull the trigger—a fast mover tackled him and ripped into his flesh—Milla didn’t look back. She had to be somewhere and she wasn’t going to fail. Her car moved at a solid sixty miles an hour and she checked each street sign as she zipped through intersections.
As she sped through another intersection, she looked to the right and was shocked at what she saw a couple blocks down…
“Jesus!” she gasped.
The street was completely filled by a horde of the undead, literally thousands of them, and they were headed in her direction. It was a large storm of decay, a fetid wave growing in size and consuming everything in its path. Milla increased her speed. When she reached the next intersection, she took a right at a familiar street sign.
A few blocks later she got to her destination—a police station—and it looked empty. Two police cars were parked in front, but they were destroyed, smashed to bits by rioting, regular people. Milla sped up then slammed on the brakes. The car slid sideways and she gunned the gas to enter the parking lot on the side of the building.
Except for three cars, the lot was empty, but Milla parked far in the back and hopped out of the vehicle. She had on skintight black jeans and a military green tactical jacket with multiple pockets—end of the world, no matter, she was hot—she ran as fast as she could to a side door and tried it. Locked—she pounded on it, but no one answered. She ran to the front of the building.
She closed the roll gate of the parking lot and when she got to the sidewalk, she could hear the horde approaching. Only a few blocks away. She rocketed to the main entrance and tried the doors, but they were locked too. She banged on them, but no one came. She cupped her hand over a window and saw movement. There were three or four cops and they were in the middle of reinforcing the windows and doors. One of them placed a sheet of plywood over the window she was at and began to nail it down. “Hey!” she shouted and slapped the glass. “Let me in!”
The cops inside ignored her.
“I’m a recovery agent, goddamnit, open the door!”
One cop, an overweight white guy, came to the door, but didn’t open it. “What’ya want?” he asked through the glass.
“I’m here to pick up my fugitive.”
“Are you fucking serious, Lady? Are you nuts? The world is over!”
“Listen, I know he’s in there. Please, let me in!”
The cop huffed, then opened the door.
“I let you in and you’re not coming out for a while,” he said.
Anxiously, “Okay,” she answered as she looked over her shoulder for any sign of the horde.
“Come on, get in! Get in!” the cop said and pulled her in by the arm.
He slammed the door and locked it tight.
“Damn it, Mark, why’d you let her in, man!” another cop said.
“Shut up and keep hammering!” Mark snapped back.
“Are you for real? You’re here to pick up a skip trace?” he said to Milla.
“Yeah, I’m for real, can you take me to your holding cells?” Milla said and held out some paperwork to him.
“Wow, really? You wanna give me paperwork in the middle of this shit?”
“Force of habit.”
“Yeah, well, you can forget about that now,” the cop said and went back to boarding up the windows.
“But you do have him here, right?” she asked.
“I don’t know, lady, and to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit about a few drunks and junkies that we have back there, okay?”
“Then why do you still have anybody in custody?”
He smirked, “Force of habit and we’ve been a little busy, in case you haven’t noticed,” he said sarcastically.
It was then they heard——and
felt
——what was coming, the horde. They stopped what they were doing and froze in horrified anticipation.
“Oh . . . fuck!” one of the cops muttered.
They moved away from the doors and windows. Milla went to one of the desks in the back of the reception area and started looking through drawers. The windows vibrated from the oncoming power and then the first of them arrived—fast movers ran by out in the street. Blood red, brown, and gray distorted streaks blurred by the windows as phantasms, their screeches piercing the officers’ ears, thinning out as they moved on.
A moment later the main body arrived, the street filled with them and all they could see were countless stenches moving as one. Some banged up against the station windows—the cops flinched, but stayed still. One cop actually pissed himself and dropped behind a desk to hide.
One of the dead saw him move.
The thing burst into a rage and banged on the window like a dead maniac to get in.
“Oh Jesus!” Mark sputtered.
A second later, more followed the first one’s lead and lunged at the windows and doors. A moment later, more of them joined in until dozens and dozens were slamming against the building in unison.
The front doors
cracked
…
Some windows
splintered
…
“No, no, no!” Mark shouted.
Milla glanced at the deathly shadows at the windows as she scrambled through drawers, searching…
The cops raised their weapons but, at the sight of so many undead, they felt as though their hands were empty. Their fearful eyes confirmed the fact they were about to die…
Milla still couldn’t find what she was looking for. “Come on, goddamnit!” she mumbled as she went through the drawers of another desk.
The first window shattered and the plywood burst apart by the dead falling over the windowsill. The cops fired, nervously missing the sweet spots as they mowed down the first cop, Mark.
The front doors broke open and all of them rushed in; the last two cops were ripped apart as they screamed and gurgled in agony. Milla finally found what she needed—a set of jailer’s keys—and ran to a back door with the dead several feet behind her. She got through the door and closed it before they could get their rotten hands inside. They slammed against it and, judging by the way it was buckling, Milla knew it wouldn’t last very long.
She ran frantically down the corridor, quickly turned down a second, and came to another door. It was locked and she began trying the keys she had to open it. The first key didn’t work, nor did the second—behind her, she heard the first door she had come through break down—they were in.
“Shit! Shit!” she blurted.
Squeals and shouts of the dead filled the corridor and actually hurt Milla’s ears. She did what she could to block them out as she concentrated on the door lock, tried a third key—it would be her last as the dead rounded the corner behind her—it turned the lock. She was through the door faster than a gale force wind and slammed it shut on the bloody faces rushing in behind her. With her back against the thumping door, she looked at where she was—a holding cellblock—a barred metal door before her. Beyond that were the holding cells, six of them in two rows of three. She could see that most of the cells were occupied with about fifteen men or so. All of them were frightened.
“Derek!” she shouted and started working the keys on the barred door.
“Get us out of here!” one drunk yelled at her.
She tried the same key she used on the previous door. It worked.
“Derek!” she screamed.
“Milla?” a voice called from one of the last cells. “Milla, is that you? I’m here, back here!”
The bottom hinge on the door behind Milla snapped off from the ramming of the dead; the door would fail at any moment.
She raced through the barred door and locked it behind her. She ran down to the end of the cells, and found Derek with his head pressed against the bars. He was in a cell with an old biker sporting a long, gray beard that rested stiffly on his beer belly.
“Shit, baby, what’re you doing here?” he said.
“I came for you, you idiot!” she answered and began to unlock his cell door.
“You shoulda got away from here!” Derek spat.
“Shut up!” she said and concentrated on the door.
The cellblock door burst off its last hinge and the dead stormed into the small secure area, only the barred door holding them back. It was the last door before they would get to her.
“Shit, baby, hurry up!” Derek said as he looked at the dozens of dead.