John Cooper rode in the passenger seat beside Michael Jackson in the lead Humvee. He quickly realized that this was a full-on military Humvee when he saw it. The civilian version had branding marks all over for “Hummer,” and this one had a purposefully stark interior. The final test was passed when John looked at the steering wheel column – he’d heard somewhere before that military Humvees didn’t have a “park” option on their automatic transmissions. This one didn’t either.

“So we’re going to Vallejo?” asked John.

“Yup,” replied Michael Jackson. “To hell with trying it by bridge. They blew those years ago. We’re going to use an old ferryboat.”

“Will it carry all of these Hummers?” asked John.

“Humvees” said Mike. “These are Humvees. A hummer is a blowjob.”

“Right”, said John. They’d told him this before.

“It’ll carry us,” said Mike.

John thought over the plan again. They were going to use the old ferryboat dock at the Ferry Building to launch their assault into the city, and then gun it straight up Geary Street towards where the old house would be. John wondered what became of the landlord. That nasty bastard was probably still alive, having a grand old time.

The drive to Vallejo from Sacramento gave John a bit more time to think about the state of the world since his release from prison. They’d passed the correctional facility he’d been in. Things were starting to get weird out here – there weren’t very many people as folks started to move away from the perceived danger of living near a town filled with hordes of the undead. Oakland was strictly the province of extremely low income people who couldn’t afford to move away. To say that zombies drove down the property values of the neighbors was an understatement. Most of the peninsula had become a military reservation, a military buffer between the zombies and the civilian population.

Somewhere in the middle of all those zombies were his former roommates. John didn’t know what to think about this little fact. He was pretty sure that the landlord’s book had something to do with all this. In fact, he was pretty sure that he knew how to reverse the entire thing. He still didn’t think what they were doing was the right thing to do.

“Mike, can I ask you a question?” asked John.

“You already are asking me a question.” said Mike.

“Well, what do you think about the government that’s running this country?” asked John.

“Sucks dead donkey balls,” said Mike.

“Why do you say that?” asked John.

“Well, after all that terrorism, we started invading countries and stuff,” said Mike. “A lot of my customers didn’t come back. When the zombie thing happened, the government just threw a lot of men at it, and lots of those guys got turned into zombies. Sure, they built the wall, but they used that zombie thing combined with the terrorists as an excuse to declare martial law. So it’s starting to look like we have these guys forever.”

“They can’t undeclare it?” asked John.

“They should, but they aren’t.” said Mike.

“Oh,” said John. “Well, why doesn’t anyone go against them?”

“Against the U.S. armed forces?” said Mike. “Do you know what? It’d take a coup by the armed forces to get the real buggers out, and it just might happen soon.”

“Really?” asked John.

“Look, son,” said Mike. “These people with us – they are the military. They are the people that defend us. They are behind you, every single one of them, because you are an American and you happened to pick the right guy to talk to. If need be, they will decide things – but they will probably vote on it. They voted on whether or not to help you, you know.”

“They did?” asked John.

“They did.” said Mike. “Government on the local level still works, but the Federal system? That’s broken. The great state of California may have always been a bit weird, but we’re always up for a good zombie shoot.”

John considered this. He remembered a spell that he’d seen in the landlord’s spell book, and wondered if he could conquer the United States with an army of zombies.

###

Lloyd Stark finished checking the speakers and the floodlights poking out of the top floor windows of San Francisco City Hall. He adjusted them towards the plaza, crossing towards the library. He had pointed the floods at the other end of the City Hall at the library, so that their paths crossed approximately in the middle. He actually did this months ago to play his favorite game.

He came back to the middle of the top floor and found Sam. She was in his sniper’s nest, looking dubiously at the weaponry he’d assembled there.

“This is what we call target practice,” said Lloyd, popping a beer.

“My God, you’re a redneck,” said Sam. “I never would have guessed.”

“Hey, I live in a metropolitan area,” said Lloyd. “We have a city hall and everything.”

“What’s up on the playlist?” asked Sam.

“Metallica”, said Lloyd, popping a CD into the player he’d wired up to the speakers.

They tried out an assortment of weaponry on the zombies. None of this stuff was any good in a street fight, so Lloyd figured the only thing to do would be to pop it off in a constructive way, like target practice. He’d collected an arsenal that he carried in a long wooden crate. He’d never had two people to carry it before.

“These zombies are pretty weird,” said Lloyd. “They are total cannibals. You shoot one, the rest of them smell the blood and jump on him. It’s like shooting them in the head releases them from this hive-mind thing or something.”

“I noticed that,” said Sam.

Lloyd started loading a muzzle loading rifle. He’d found the thing in a private house, and he was fairly sure it was a really old gun. Lloyd started by measuring out 60 grains of gunpowder, two measures from the Civil War era gunpowder flask. Next, Lloyd took a small piece of felt and placed it over the muzzle of the gun. He then produced a projectile called a mini-ball. It didn’t look like a ball at all, but rather looked like a traditional bullet shape and was about as big around as Lloyd’s finger. Sam watched him as he did it.

“What the hell are you loading up?” asked Sam.

“This is a Hawken fifty caliber buffalo rifle,” said Lloyd as he finished ramming the mini-ball home. “It does fun things to bodies.”

Sam grabbed a pair of hearing protectors as Lloyd leaned out of the window. He cocked the gun, then held it with one arm as he fitted a small brass percussive cap to the nipple beneath the hammer of the gun. He searched around for a good target and found one crossing the street directly in front of City Hall.

The roar of the gun was deafening even with hearing protectors. Lloyd lurched as the recoil pushed him back, but he still scored a direct hit – the zombie’s head disintegrated in a spray of blood that seemed to fly high enough to be even with their heads.

“The effect would have been the same if I’d hit him in the chest,” said Lloyd. He’d have a huge hole in him. If you hit someone in the hand with one of these things, it’ll rip their arm off.”

“You really know how to wow a girl,” said Sam. “What’s next on the agenda?”

“Next, we have to check the poppy fields,” said Lloyd.

“Where’s that?” asked Sam.

“Out in the park, by the buffalo fields,” said Lloyd.

###

The President of the United States sat behind his desk in the Oval Office. He assumed it wasn’t the same one that Richard Nixon had used, but then again it might be. The recording devices had given way to an interior made up of information serving and gathering devices. The latest computing power was in his desk. The red phone to Moscow and one to Beijing right next to that one. There was a whole row of switches dedicated to activating the various communication devices in his desk, and he’d used every single one of them except for the last one. That was the one he’d had the special briefing on. Almost the instant after he’d been inaugurated, they’d given him the briefing. He remembered it like it was yesterday. His dad had told him all about it.

“I knew about it a long time, son,” said his dad. “Remember, I headed up the CIA for a while. I had to know about this stuff. I know it sounds incredible, but believe me it’s true.”

“How do I know you’re not just pullin’ my leg?” he’d asked. And then they showed him the survivor and had him encode his voiceprint into the thing. His dad treated the survivor very respectfully, and deferred to him while trying to explain the device.

“Here’s how you work it,” said his dad, nervously glancing at the survivor.

The President of the United States threw the switch to start the thing up. As the viewer glided up and unfurled itself, he thought about the technology used to create it. He’d had many emergencies in his tenure as president – terrorism, war, hurricanes, floods, and now zombies. He had not used the device during any of the other calamities, as per his father’s instructions.

“Don’t use it. That’s my advice. And if you do use it, make it a good reason. Like the earth is being destroyed by a force from another planet, or world, or dimension, or any of that other stupid science fiction crap. Use it if the human race is in danger, but not if there’s a comet or an asteroid. They seem to think that extinction timetables on a universal scale need to be observed.”

The President of the United States remembered staring at the survivor, and the survivor staring back at him. He wondered if he were up to staring into those black, soulless eyes again. He had to remind himself that there was a soul there. He was still reminding himself when the crude subspace radio his scientists had constructed flickered to life, and the face of the survivor materialized on the screen. He looked into those eyes and felt a chill as he recited the alien words of greeting. He prepared for the rigorous questioning and reminded himself that the face wasn’t really the face of the survivor.

It was just that all these damned aliens in this race looked alike to him.

Chapter 4: Read it Now >>