Zombies vs Polar Bears: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 5 (11 page)

“I know all your military
strategerie
, General, and I
don't care. We need to show these people they have help out there or
they're going to revolt.”

“Wouldn't it be better if the infected never came within
their sight?” he thought. The rest of the room looked at him
with sympathetic eyes. He was in charge of the military operation,
yes, but the one thing made clear to him from above was that Elsa's
“department” had the final say on everything. Everything!

He forced himself to control his tone. She may be a stupid
bureaucrat, but he was a soldier. He respected the office—whatever
it was—rather than the occupant.

“Ma'am I can't have my own men shooting their fellow
soldiers in the back. If I pull resources back to the wall, we'll
effectively cede the battlefield to the infected. They'll be able to
walk or drag themselves up to your magnificent ditch and we'll have
to fight them from fixed emplacements on the levee.”

“So you
can
pull them back?”

“Just so we're clear—”

“Yes, dammit, we're clear. You don't want to pull back. I
do. I outrank you, so make it happen, sir.”

The town's leaders and military attach
é
s
in the room squirmed, though he was a stone statute. He'd just been
dressed down in front of all of them by a civilian woman who couldn't
identify an enfilade or defilade to save her life.

“Ma'am.”

“OK, now that we have that cleared up,” she sneered
once more at him, which he thought totally unnecessary, “we
need to discuss 'Operation Renew America' as they've named
themselves.”

John Jasper wished he were in West Virginia right now. He'd more
or less lost contact with CENTCOM, but his own intel people
maintained contacts with as many other units on US soil as they
could. Right now Third Army was plowing across the continent with the
equivalent of seven divisions. Two of them were armored. One was
Marine Corps. Because of overseas deployments and general manpower
shortages, they were all understrength, same as his paper battalion.

He leaned back in his chair, imagining for a moment the glory of
leading such a formation. It would probably be the last great modern
Army, before everyone was socked under by the Ebola Express train.
Outside, he could hear the Paladins hammering the fields beyond the
interstate. They were sitting in a nearby ball field, and he reveled
in watching his water bottle shake, just a little, as they sent
rounds downrange. He got lucky with those. They were being redeployed
to the East Coast when everything went to shit, and he had the
foresight to commandeer the train and bring it here.

“...isn't that right, general?”

“Say again.” He didn't apologize, he simply didn't
want to listen to her.

“I said, can you put those canons outside the wall, too?”

She wants it both ways, he lamented. A show of force, but doing
the least possible good. About what he expected.

The Paladin wasn't really made to get into firefights directly
with the enemy, it was more of a fire-over-the-horizon weapons
platform. However, that assumed the enemy was going to fire back.
These sick people only used their fists. Decision: Paladin by a
country mile.

“I can put anything you want
outside
the wall. I can
put my Paladins, my Abrams, and my Aladdins.”

“Good. Thank you. Make it happen.”

He snickered inwardly. He had nothing called an Aladdin. It simply
proved his point. The civilian leadership had no idea of the forces
they were playing with.

“And General, I need it done by tonight.”

“It shall be done.” His sing-song response was
dangerously insubordinate. It felt surreal, but his entire existence
in Cairo was happenstance. He was ordered to oversee the defense of
St. Louis, but at the last minute the Army brass called off that
operation and others handled the maneuvers in Illinois that stopped
the sick from crossing the river. While he was in limbo waiting for
orders that never came, he took things in his own hands after he
found the Paladins sitting on a siding out in the corn rows of
southern Illinois. He rode the first one into town himself. The first
real action of his career.

And his best assets were being used as propaganda toys by some
floozie from DHS.

His martial senses demanded he go out the gates on his war horses
and die in glorious battle, perhaps in hand-to-hand combat with the
undead, but he was also a practical man. The vagaries of life had
tossed him to the one spot where there was a real defense against the
specific threat created by these sick people. Cairo, Illinois was a
finger of land now cut off by a watery sluice his men designed. To
leave, even to situate units outside the gates, was a tremendous
waste of manpower and as taught by the Russians during their big
war—real estate. The reason he wanted his men and heavy weapons
miles away on the interstate was that it kept the fighting far from
the town. They had great visibility up on the highway. They had long
firing lanes. And the infected just walked right into them. It was a
turkey shoot.

Giving up all that space was a travesty.

But, following orders was still in his blood. For all he knew, the
President could show up at his front gate tomorrow. He needed to be
ready. He needed to be seen as a team player.

2

After the meeting, Ms. Cantwell invited him to her private
chambers. She'd taken over the mayor's office inside the laughably
small community center. He had no idea where the sweaty man had been
sent.

“Sit, General. Thanks for coming.”

“Your welcome?”

“I know what you're thinking: I sounded all pissed off in
there so why am I being nice in private? Let me explain this to you,
politely this time.” She smiled as she offered him a chair in
front of the mayor's desk. He was tempted to stand, but there was no
point.

“Corn bread?” She offered him a piece from her desk.
He demurred, though he was hungry, because he didn't want to owe her.

“Plans are set in motion, Major General John Jasper, and I
need your help.”

“You've always had it, ma'am.”

“Do I? Do I really? I wonder.” There was a gleam in
her eye he found disturbing.

“I bet you think I'm a real dope. Ordering you to move
around silly trucks, or pull back here and push forward there, don't
you?”

He said nothing.

“I get it. I'm a civilian in sheep's clothing in a man's
world filled with zombies.”

Bingo!

“But I'm much more than that, John. And I want to show you.”

He became uncomfortable with her casual use of his name and at her
insinuation. The door was shut, the drapes were in front of the
window. Was she about to come on to him? Get him to do her bidding by
leaning on her feminine “charms.” A part of him was
flattered by it, as much as he would have to refuse…

She walked around the desk and pulled up the companion chair to
the one in which he sat. She scooted right next to him and leaned
over. Her perfume enveloped him.

He found himself moving to the far side of his own chair, away
from her gravity well.

“Now, John, you have me
all
wrong. I assure you, you
have no idea what I'm about to do.”

It didn't reassure him.

With lightning-fast reflexes she pulled out a pistol—from
where, he didn't know—and had it pressed against his temple.

“I know you think I'm a docile creature, John. I've got news
for you. I'm not. I could kill you twice before you thought about
screaming for help.”

He did not scream.

She pulled the trigger.

He winced as the gun clicked, empty.

“If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I could have had you
killed when you set up shop in my town, John. But it just so happens
I need you. We need to work together to hold off the zombies while I
do my job.”

He willed himself to breathe.

In. Out. Nice and normal, John.

“You aren't with Homeland Security, are you?”

“Ooh, now that's no fun. Asking questions with answers you
don't need to know.” She rapped him lightly on the head with
her pistol. “I can tell you my department trains their women
very thoroughly, and I know when I'm being bullshitted,
Mr.
Aladdin
, so keep that in mind the next time you want to insult me
in front of the civilians.”

Keeping his voice steady, he replied. “I thought I was
helping you. Spending my men on your precious defenses. Reeling them
in so the battle happens closer to town. That sort of stuff.”

“Oh John. I already told you. I'm not what you think I am.
If you believe I don't know what I'm doing by pulling your men back,
well...that just means I'm doing my job properly.” She let out
a bubbly laugh. “I'm just a girl, after all.”

He was coming around to what this was all about. He was right from
the beginning. “You want leverage over me? You'll tell people
we're sleeping together if I don't. That sort of thing?”

“Tsk tsk. You don't get it, do you?” She leaned in,
without the gun this time, and got right up to his ear, and
whispered. “There are over fifty kinds of zombies, John. Fifty.
Think about that, just for a second. I need you and your guns to kill
them.”

She pulled back, speaking louder. “Let me tell you a story
about a very special lady in our town, and maybe that will help you
understand.”

“Two blocks down, in that feces stain of a motel near the
front gate, I have a prisoner who escaped from an unofficial Homeland
detention facility less than a week ago. She was listed in my records
as a medical test subject. A Ms. Peters. A volunteer who gave herself
up to science in the effort to find a cure. And do you know what the
results were?”

“I'm sure you'll let me know.”

“Of course. The results were: no results.”

“She didn't get tested?”

“That was my first thought as well, but I happened to know
the base facilitator, so I looked up his records. And do you know
what I found?”

The general feigned interest, though part of it was getting to
him. Watching her lose control of her people was gratifying in
itself.

“His records were gone, too. My administrator!” She
stood up from her chair, but stayed next to it. “So I used
secondary sources. My department flies drones around, everywhere.
Leftovers from ridiculous grants from after nine-eleven. Anyway, the
drone footage showed my administrator fleeing the scene in a
helicopter, and Mrs. Peters escaping the research facility with two
teenagers.”

She smiled down at him. “I'm sure you can understand how
much it hurts to have someone in your chain of command disobey
orders, and usually it can be corrected with a smart rap on the
bottom. What do you do when your star commander not only disobeys
you, but also kills your friend? What do you do when that
administrator kills U.S. Marines. Army units. You name it. What
do
you do?”

“Hunt him down and kill him.”

“Now you're getting somewhere. So this woman shows up in my
town, but the man who let her go is nowhere to be found...”

“With all due respect, this sounds like a local law
enforcement problem.”

A quiet laugh. “You misunderstand. I bring him up—his
name is Hayes by the way—because I want you to know what we're
up against. He's the man who cataloged all the different types of
zombies as part of his experiments. He's a very dangerous individual,
for so many reasons. That's why it's important you follow my orders
with precision and, if possible, good cheer when in front of the
others.”

He stifled a laugh.

“Oh, yuck it up. It sounds crazy, right? But there's
something I need to tell you about him. He holds the cure to the
plague.”

His face was blank.

“The cure, John. He found it.”

“How in the hell do you know that? You said he got away.”

“I'm very good at what I do. Better than you'll ever know.
I've found the person he infected. A person now sitting quite
comfortably—well, maybe she's a bit hot—and definitely
healthy in the hotel I mentioned.”

“She's here?”

“Yes, she's here, but my employee, and the cure, is not.”

He knew this punchline.

“And you want me to go out and find him.”

“See! You
do
get me.”

3

John got in his Humvee and drove away from the community center.
He would re-deploy his units as instructed, though he still didn't
understand the reasons. But first, he stopped in the old motel. His
truck pulled up to the black swimming pool.

“Fancy a dip, sir?”

“Nice try, Tom. Maybe after this all settles down I'll take
a long soak, and I don't mean sweating in this humidity.” He
wiped his brow. “Wait here for me, will you?”

The motel was decorated at one time with maroon paint, though most
of it had peeled and chipped away. It was the kind of place that
would be rented by the hour in Junction City or Pueblo. Here, during
a disaster of Biblical proportions, it was five star.

He sauntered along the walkway, searching for his target. Most
rooms were open and airy, as if management wanted to keep them on
display to prove they weren't as seedy as the place suggested.

It only took him a few rooms to find one with the drapes pulled.
He tried the door, not surprised it was locked.

He knocked. “Ms. Peters? Are you in there?” It seemed
a diversion from his primary duties, but the whole tone of Elsa's
exposition had infuriated him once he left her orbit. If there was a
prisoner who had defied her, he wanted to know why. He didn't believe
the nonsense about finding a cure. He saw exactly what was going on.
She was trying to get rid of him. In that regard, Mrs. Peters could
be a valuable ally.

“I'm locked in,” came a quiet voice from inside the
door.

“Do you need help?”