HVZA (Book 3): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse [Project Decimation] Read online

  Three more pieces of glassware hit the floor.

  At this point, Becks and the other researchers gasped almost as loudly as Phil had from running. She and several others had either taken his classes or attended some of Devereaux’s lectures over the years, and all of them knew of both his miserable reputation and astonishing accomplishments.

  “I knew it. He’s too mean of a son of a bitch to die,” muttered one of the Army doctors who obviously had firsthand experience with Devereaux, but the doctor immediately regretted his snide remark after Phil continued.

  “Well, Devereaux is dying, and he needs to get the details of his discovery out to the world and into the hands of the people who can use it. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but they are bringing this man and some files here, to West Point, to us. He should be here within the hour.”

  “That’s wonderful news!” someone exclaimed, as everyone else chimed in, until Phil silenced them in an ominous tone and then finished the story.

  “That was the good news. The bad news is very bad, I’m afraid.”

  Phil went on to describe the makeshift bridge over which tens of thousands of zombies, if not more, were crossing and pouring northward every day. Everything they had fought for to clear and secure the Hudson Valley could be lost if these hordes continued unchecked. The Army was dispatching a helicopter on a reconnaissance mission, but if the information was even half accurate, they didn’t have nearly the manpower or resources to combat those numbers of zombies. The spring offensive in northern New Jersey was currently well underway, and even if they pulled out all of those troops they would still be vastly outnumbered.

  Becks’ right hand reached under her lab coat so she could feel the reassuring grip of her Smith and Wesson 629 .44 magnum. No one else in the lab carried a weapon, but she was never without her pistol and a commando knife, even though she was at a highly fortified military base where just about everyone else was armed. She even hung her holster on the inside of the shower door in a plastic bag so it was always within reach, and both the pistol and the knife were under her pillow as she slept. Cam and Phil viewed this behavior as the obvious result of her PTSD, but she just saw it as common sense, or like extensions of her own body.

  The next hour was filled with wild speculation and intense anxiety as they awaited the arrival of the mystery man. The news that Devereaux was still alive was nothing short of a bombshell, and they all wondered out loud how the anti-ZIPs projects would have benefited from his genius—while silently all giving thanks he hadn’t been with them the last year to poison the comradery and esprit de corps with his acrimonious personality.

  Becks simultaneously admired and despised Devereaux, both the result of the one class she had taken with him. No teacher had ever inspired her so much with his brilliant insights and staggering intellect. And no teacher had ever pissed her off so much when he gave her a C on her term paper.

  Up to that point in her medical school career, she had never produced as fine a paper with such original and innovative research she had personally conducted, and she was crushed when he brutally criticized her methodology and conclusions—both of which were exemplary in the eyes of everyone else who read it. But there was no arguing with the high and mighty Devereaux, and that C remained the worst grade of her academic career, and it still made her blood boil whenever she thought of it.

  Obviously, there were more important things to worry about now, so Becks would have to let bygones be bygones, especially if Devereaux had a solution to the zombie apocalypse. Still, if it came down to Devereaux saving mankind, or apologizing for giving her a bad grade for a great paper, she would have to seriously consider her options…

  Chapter 5

  Sticky Pete was Devereaux’s obvious choice for the mission. Peter Hernandez was young, strong, and a former All-State track star. He had been a student in the biomedical engineering program at Columbia when the zombie shit hit the fan, and with no family to run to, he decided to stay with Devereaux, even when the university was being evacuated.

  Sticky Pete was no stranger to loss, even before the apocalypse. His mother was a bond trader killed on 9/11 in the south tower, and his dad had died in Afghanistan during Pete’s freshman year. His father had sustained numerous shrapnel wounds, any one of which wasn’t very serious, but altogether they proved fatal due to massive blood loss which couldn’t be staunched in the field. It was that day that Sticky Pete switched his intended field of study to bioadhesives, specifically designed for closing wounds until the patient could receive proper medical attention. His new nickname soon followed.

  Despite his being the youngest of the group of students and faculty that remained, he had become the de facto leader of the group. He was adept at scavenging for supplies, and no one was ever lost or bitten on a mission he led. Sticky Pete was a survivor’s survivor, and he even had the distinction of receiving the one and only compliment anyone had ever heard from Devereaux’s lips. After single-handedly killing more than two dozen zombies and running over 30 blocks while carrying 40 pounds of much needed food and supplies, Devereaux had actually said, “Nice work, Pete.”

  As Devereaux’s health deteriorated and the massive herds started converging on the George Washington Bridge, which was just a short distance from where they all worked and lived, plans emerged to construct something that would float on the river and could be propelled with a makeshift paddle. The craft also needed to be light and maneuverable enough to be carried 20 blocks north through heavily zombie-infested streets to get to the river bank past the collapsed George Washington Bridge obstruction.

  When Sticky Pete was a kid, his parents had taken him to see the incredibly huge Spruce Goose plane that Howard Hughes had built. He remembered that Hughes had filled the massive wings with inflated beach balls so the plane wouldn’t sink if there was a catastrophic failure as it tried to take off from the water. While Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons was fresh out of beach balls, the survivor group had amassed quite a pile of empty plastic containers, which when strapped to a couple of desktops and drawers that Sticky Pete had managed to glue together—to no one’s surprise—he had a lightweight and serviceable raft.

  If they could get it to the river, and if the water was calm, and if the tide was right and flowing north (one of their group knew that the Hudson was actually a tidal estuary which flows both ways), and if the glue remained intact, Sticky Pete just might be able to paddle far enough upriver for someone to notice him, or for him to find some sign of survivors on shore.

  The first stage of the mission was the most dangerous, as it appeared as if every undead corpse in Manhattan was headed for the upper west side. Of course, the zombies didn’t know they would be crossing the river into fresh hunting grounds, they only knew they were starving and would follow their herds anywhere for fresh meat.

  The Columbia group had often employed motion detectors to create a distraction, and using slingshots from the rooftops, they were able to propel the shrieking devices to strategic locations to keep the herds concentrated just south of their position. The seven raft team members, including Sticky Pete, then dashed out of a service entrance carrying the raft. The other six in the group were composed of the best shooters and fighters, and their skills were called upon almost immediately.

  Lone stragglers and small groups of three or four zombies were everywhere. The team would run 100 yards or so, drop the raft, and kill the zombies in their path. Avoiding gunfire when possible, their best weapon was “Mad Max” Rukowski, a little fireplug of a man with biceps the size of Christmas hams. He wielded a combination spiked club/axe he named Mama, after his overbearing mother, whom his father constantly referred to as the “Old Battle Axe.”

  Every time Mama cleaved a zombie skull in two, the cracking and splintering sounds made Max laugh like a maniac, hence his nickname. BZA, he was a semester away from graduating from the school of dentistry, but everyone agreed he had now found his true calling.

 
“I really would have sucked as a dentist,” Mad Max even freely admitted.

  Another deadly member of the team was Erin, who had been a second-year med student hoping to specialize in prosthetic limbs and rehabilitation. Since high school, she also had a penchant for creating odd mechanical devices. BZA, Erin had used her skills to make bizarre steampunk contraptions with profusions of whirring gears and ratcheting levers. She had made really good money on eBay and at the numerous steampunk conventions with her whimsical inventions, and had even considered giving up medicine to work on these gadgets full time—until zombies changed all of her plans.

  AZA, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to turn her talents into making weapons. Her favorite was “King George,” fashioned to look like a regal scepter, with a twist—a very deadly twist. By pulling back a sliding bolt mechanism, a powerful spring was cocked and ready to propel a solid, stainless steel rod, ground to a sharp point.

  Gracefully wielding King George as if she was about to knight a member of the undead, “Lady Erin,” as she called herself, released the bolt at just the right moment to send the rod crashing through the cranium with the ease and effectiveness of dropping a brick on an egg. The relatively quiet weapon could then be cocked again in a second and ready to “knight” the next victim.

  Then there was Margo, a stout, fair-complexioned girl who had been a sophomore at the onset of infection. She wasn’t the brightest student, but she was pigheaded enough to study harder and longer than anyone, and so had managed to get decent grades. She claimed that the trait came naturally to her, as she grew up on a pig farm in Iowa, which is also where she learned to shoot. Margo was determined to become a doctor so she would never have to go back to that stinking patch of mud called home. Now, AZA, she yearned to be back on the family farm.

  “Just give me one hour,” she often said with real emotion in her voice, which pulled on one’s heart strings until she revealed her motive. “It’s not that I care to see my crazy family or that dilapidated house again, I just want to butcher a few hogs and eat pork until I burst!”

  Unfortunately for her, and the rest of the group, rats and pigeons supplied their only source of meat. And even the rats were almost nonexistent now, as the zombie hordes had practically devoured the entire population.

  As the raft team stopped to confront a group of about twenty zombies stretched out across the street, Margo raised her rifle and methodically began to pick them off as if it was a carnival game, despite the plan to be as quiet as possible.

  “This little piggy went to market,” she said, squeezing the trigger for her first shot which echoed through streets, before continuing her nursery rhyme with each successive shot. “This little piggy stayed home—”

  “Do you really have to say that every time you shoot these things?” Max complained, an instant before swinging Mama down through the top of an elderly man’s head, clean through to his nearly toothless jaw, and then laughing maniacally.

  “Do you have to laugh like a hyena every time you split a skull?” she shouted back angrily.

  The two didn’t get along, and when it looked like they were more interested in fighting one another than killings zombies, Sticky Pete asserted his authority and got the team to focus on the task at hand. The long, cold winter had taken its toll on everyone’s nerves, and Pete was actually surprised there hadn’t been any homicides.

  Pete’s weapon of choice was a homemade spear, of sorts. He had welded a sturdy, large-gauge cannula—like a massive hypodermic needle—to the end of a metal curtain rod. He used it to great effect to pierce the eye sockets of zombies and poke a big hole in the network of ZIPs enveloping the human brains.

  It was a technique Becks had perfected in New Jersey with the spears she had made with a broom handle, a hockey stick, and infomercial knife sets. They allowed for silent kills that saved precious ammunition, but there was nothing quiet about the raft team’s desperate journey to get to the Hudson River.

  The three remaining members of the raft team, Jiang, Josh, and Arjun, were the relatively more athletic individuals in the DNS—Devereaux’s Nerd Squad. They weren’t as eccentric and flamboyant as Mad Max, Lady Erin, and Margo, and they carried simple homemade spears and clubs for their quieter kills. They also had a full complement of various handguns, rifles, and shotguns for when circumstances called for raw firepower. In the beginning of the zombie crisis it was all completely overwhelming, considering their previous academic lifestyles, but it was remarkable how survival instincts quickly turned unassuming bookworms into efficient and ruthless killers.

  There was a very close call about a block from the river when the team encountered a pack of about three dozen zombies. Arjun tossed one of their diversion spheres—a fanciful name for a tennis ball in which they had embedded flashing LED lights and a beeper, duct taped to a battery—but the ravenous zombies would not be distracted from the prospect of seven walking meat feasts.

  Normally, Sticky Pete would have called for a V-formation to fight their way through the weakest section of the line and then run like hell, but the bulky raft changed the game. Directing Max and Erin to cover their flanks, the rest of them shifted positions and used the raft as a battering ram to punch a hole on the far left side of the street, where some cars helped slow down the other zombies’ pursuit. One lanky zombie wearing a New York City sanitation department uniform managed to grab Pete’s ankle after the raft had knocked his decaying body to the pavement, but Erin jumped to his defense and King George quickly shattered the back of the zombie’s skull.

  Once past the pack, they all resumed carrying the raft and made it safely to the water’s edge, where no zombie cared to be without a really good reason. Of course, the living humans were the best reasons of all, and slowly, but relentlessly, every straggler in the neighborhood was headed their way.

  “Hurry, we only have a few minutes,” Pete shouted, as they struggled to maneuver the unwieldy raft down a steep embankment covered in foul-smelling muck.

  Both Josh and Jiang tripped and fell to their knees, but kept their grasp on the raft. However, the last few feet were deceptively slippery and they all slid and tumbled into the river. Fortunately, the raft landed upright. Regaining their feet, they all waded out into waist-deep water and carefully examined the raft for any signs of leaks. When it appeared as if the special waterproof adhesive Sticky Pete had formulated was holding, he pulled himself up into the surprisingly seaworthy craft and unstrapped the makeshift paddle from his back. By this point, dozens of zombies had gathered at the top of the embankment, and he hesitated to start paddling.

  “I can’t leave you guys like this—” he started to protest, but the other six team members responded by giving the raft a mighty shove with all their strength, sending him on his way.

  “Paddle like hell, Pete,” Max yelled. “And don’t look back.”

  “DNS can take care of themselves!” Josh shouted, although there was far more fear than conviction in his voice.

  “Get the hell out of here and go save the world,” Arjun added for good measure.

  Pete started paddling as fast as he could, and after a few minutes he did stop looking back. His team had tried wading further up the river where there weren’t as many reanimated corpses waiting for them, but the sounds of gunfire still spoke to the fierce fighting that ensued. The shots eventually became sporadic, and then stopped altogether, but he had no way of knowing if that meant that the DNS team had escaped or perished.

  He paddled even harder, tears filling his eyes, determined to make this mission a success. Passing along the beautiful, steep cliffs of the palisades that lined the west bank of the river, he wondered why he never took the time to enjoy the Hudson Valley, but pain soon engulfed his thoughts. Blisters swelled up on his hands, but he kept paddling. Even after the blisters had torn open and his hands were raw, he paddled through the night and into the next morning.

  Around midday, he stopped long enough for some water and a bag of trail mix—and to reli
eve himself into the river—but at that instant he realized the current was now flowing back down toward New York City, so he started paddling furiously again, using strips of his T-shirt as bandages on his hands. Finally, mercifully, as evening approached and every muscle in his body was wracked in searing pain, he heard voices from a long pier jutting out into the west bank of the river.

  Praying they weren’t scavengers, he turned toward them, stopping within shouting distance until he was able to ascertain that the men were part of some patrol and wanted to help. An hour later, he was sitting on a velvet settee in the parlor of a lovely old Victorian home in Piermont, New York. His hands had been properly bandaged, and his stomach was full of canned ham and fresh vegetables. While eating, he had told his story three separate times to people of increasing authority, and was then assured that West Point had been contacted and someone would be picking him up shortly.

  It was all so surreal—almost as though the world hadn’t changed here—and Pete wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t hallucinating, until a convoy of Army Humvees came roaring into the driveway.

  Chapter 6

  The ride up the Palisades Interstate Parkway was like something out of a crazy time machine story. The convoy passed futuristic-looking, anti-zombie weaponry on the backs of flatbed trucks, several farmers with horse-drawn wagons, and even a couple of soccer moms chauffeuring kids in SUVs.

  “Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked the Humvee full of Army officers. “Do you still even have zombies here?”