John listened as Michael Jackson finished his conversation on his cell phone with a string of profanity. Mike threw the mobile phone against the dashboard, smashing it into a few pieces.

              “Well, that sucks. They know we’re coming now.”

              “Who?” asked John. “The zombies?”

              “No,” he replied. “The government.”

              “You mean the Feds,” said John. It was more of a statement than a question.

              “Yup.”

The convoy of Humvees pulled off the freeway at Vallejo. For about ten miles, John had watched the Bay roll by. The bridge across the Carquines Strait was the first time he had seen the bay since he’d been locked up. The column stopped at a vista spot and rest area just above Vallejo to regroup before heading into the city itself, and it gave John the chance to both stretch his legs, and get his first view of San Francisco in three years.

Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been very kind to the city’s skyline. The infamous Transamerica Pyramid was gone, and more than a few of the buildings downtown had fallen with it. It had the surreal appearance of some kind of movie representation of a city after a huge disaster. It was impossible to tell more from this vantage point about the city, but John could very clearly see the bridges and how they had been demolished to return the bay to its natural position as a barrier to entering the city of San Francisco.

Now the convoy was parked at the edge of an old ferry dock, and John could see a couple of the guys talking to some military personnel managing the gates they’d just passed through. Suddenly John thought of something he’d never thought of before.

“Hey Mike, zombies are dead – why don’t they just fall into the bay and walk across the bottom?” he asked.

“Probably because of the sharks,” said Mike.

“Sharks? I thought that was an old rumor,” said John.

“Not anymore,” said Mike. “It seems that sharks like zombie flesh, and there are a lot of zombies that actually do fall into the bay. So now the sharks hang out by the city, waiting for zombies to fall into the water.”

              “You have to be kidding me,” said John.

              “Nope, cross my heart and swear to die,” said Mike.

              “But if the zombies bite the sharks, don’t you think it’ll make a zombie shark?” asked John.

              “Hmmm,” said Mike. “Hadn’t thought about that one.”

              “But what’ll we do?” asked John.

              “We’ll hope there aren’t any zombie great white sharks, I guess.”

              The crew watched as two extremely old looking ferries pulled up to the dock. The men running the ferries got the lines tied off, and lowered large steel gates that turned into ramps. The boats shook visibly as the Humvees rolled onto them.

              “So, where are we going to go ashore at?” asked John. “There isn’t exactly a good place to dock these by the Ferry Building anymore.”

              “Same place the sister to these boats is docked,” said Mike. “Hyde Street Pier, the beach there.”

###

Lloyd admired his new cache of weapons and ammo, while Sam busied herself trying to clean the blood off of them. The pair checked Lloyd’s opium field earlier that day and had found the remains of a large group of men who had apparently been ripped apart by zombies. Their weapons, med-kits, ammo, radios and shredded uniforms were lying all about the floor of the buffalo pen, and even though there were no zombies around Lloyd insisted on driving through the fence in his giant bomb squad truck to retrieve the stuff. Sam suspected that the sheer testosterone embodied in the truck had clouded Lloyd’s mind, but then she remembered that this was the way Lloyd always was except that now he had a big truck and a city full of zombies to contend with in his everyday life.

“What the hell do you suppose these were doing out there?” asked Lloyd.

“Someone tried to parachute in,” said Sam.

“I didn’t hear any airplanes,” said Lloyd. “Don’t you have to be flying rather low to parachute?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sam.

“Maybe someone saw my opium field and wanted some,” said Lloyd.

“Yeah, what the hell are you doing with a field full of opium poppies anyway, Lloyd?” asked Sam. “Got any habits I don’t know about?”

“Nope,” said Lloyd smugly. “Purely for medicinal purposes.”

“You smoke opium to deal with the pain of existence?” asked Sam.

“No, I make fresh laudanum in case I have any serious injuries I need to dull the pain from.”

“Laudanum?” asked Sam. “You mean like Shelley and all those consumptive poets, what they were whacked out on?”

“The very same,” said Lloyd.

“I didn’t know you knew how to make opium from poppies,” said Sam.

“I don’t know how to make it,” said Lloyd. “The poppies make it. All you have to do is slit the seed pods and let the sap ooze out. The sap is pure opium.”

“Wow,” said Sam. “And you make other things from that?”

“Yep,” said Lloyd. “Laudanum is just opium and wine.”

“How much opium?” asked Sam.

“About two ounces of opium to a pint of wine,” said Lloyd. “I prefer merlot.”

“You would, you damned redneck,”  said Sam. “Won’t that much kill you?”

“Of course it would,” said Lloyd. “That’s why the active dose of laudanum is measured with an eyedropper, in a glass of water.”

“What if you can’t keep anything down?” said Sam.

“Then I’d just drop it under my tongue,” said Lloyd.

“Does that work?” asked Sam.

“Always does for me,” said Lloyd.

“Great,” said Sam. “You’ve become a hophead, but at least you’ve taught me just about everything I know about making drugs.”

“Next week I’ll show you how to make meth,” said Lloyd.

“No thanks,” said Sam. “This town makes me jittery enough.”

###

“We have several situations to both report on and developing,” said the man in uniform. “Mr. President, I would appreciate it if this goes no further than this room.”

“Is this more classified than we would normally encounter?” asked the President.

“It’s a matter of national security,” said the man. “Actually, it’s a pretty good sign that we are losing control of the country.”

The President instantly perked up and paid attention.

“Good,” said the man. “I was starting to fear that you didn’t care about tearing the country apart.”

“Get to the point,” said the President, visibly irritated now.

The man in the uniform touched a panel on the conference table. A screen on the far wall blinked away from the presidential seal to a satellite photo of California. He clicked a couple of times and it zoomed in to a freeway north of San Francisco. The freeway had a column of cars on it roughly a mile long.

“According to satellite photos, a group of Humvees belonging to the 49th Military Police Battalion of the California Army National Guard is heading down Highway 80 towards San Francisco. They were not ordered to do so, and have ignored orders to turn back.”

The President felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“They’re ignoring orders?” asked the President.

“Well, if you would give any orders that made sense, they might actually follow them, sir,” the man in uniform said with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“There’s no need for that,” said the Vice President.

“The hell there is,” said another man in a different uniform.

“Sir, we inserted a mixed team of Special Forces into Golden Gate Park and never heard from them again,” said the first man in uniform. “I don’t think a battalion of men whose only experience is personnel admin and military policing would last for any amount of time in there.”

“We sure as hell can’t chance anything getting out of there,” said the second man in uniform. “Remember those guys we’ve got at the secure facility.”

              “What guys,” asked the President. “What secure facility?”

              “Sir, the casualties of the operation to fence off the peninsula,” said the second man.

              “There were no casualties of that operation,” said the President stoically.

              The second man got visibly angry.

              “They sure as hell aren’t alive!” he said.

              “We will find a cure,” said the President. “I’m going to need access to those men.”

              Both men looked a little shocked.

              “We can take you to see them, but I don’t see any way you would…”

              “I am going to give you a direct order now,” said the President.

              Both men stiffened visibly, and straightened up in their chairs involuntarily.

              “Prep Air Force One, and prepare those men for transport. Deliver them to Area 51. I will meet them there.”

              The President stood up and walked out, leaving the two men with the very bad feeling that the President had called the little green men for help.

Chapter 5>>