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

  The colonel in charge was so anxious to question Pete about his research that he forgot that the poor man had been isolated on Manhattan since the bridges were blown, and he didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. The colonel offered a quick and concise summary of the dire straits down south, and in all the warm and temperate countries of the world.

  He then spoke specifically about the Hudson Valley and how it had been completely overrun –leaving only West Point as a beacon of hope in the resurrection of civilization. He failed to mention the brave and resilient bands of survivors who had been left on their own and had done the vast majority of fighting and dying, but overinflating military glory was certainly not something new, even in the era of zombies.

  The important thing was that thanks to bioweapons and a variety of treatments, the zombie tide—where the apocalypse had all begun—had been turned and life was returning and humans were making a comeback. There were clinics, schools, farms, some manufacturing, and marketplaces to buy, sell, and trade just about anything. Thanks to the Indian Point nuclear power plant, electricity was even returning to more and more communities every day. It was almost comical to watch people scream and react in shock and delight when a light suddenly came on, or they heard the hum of their refrigerator for the first time in over a year.

  Pete listened to all the news with a mixture of joy and grief, as well as hope and regret. Was it wrong to have stayed at Columbia, facing unspeakable hardships, while keeping Devereaux and his discoveries out of the hands of the people who could have been using them against the zombie hordes? But what if they had tried to extract Devereaux and had failed? And how could they have known what was happening in the Hudson Valley?

  Within 24 hours of the bridges and tunnels being destroyed, every ferry, yacht, barge, kayak, and inflatable raft on the island of Manhattan had taken off carrying those who either had the most money or the most guns. Thousands had died fighting for a spot on one of those vessels, and many more were lost as ships were sunk by severe overcrowding.

  In the days and months that followed, clever individuals built crude rafts, but if they were able to carry these makeshift lifeboats to the river without getting bitten, or mugged by the living, they were often in for just as much trouble on the New Jersey side, as things went downhill fast there, too. Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island weren’t any better.

  The most athletic amongst the Manhattanites were able to swim across the river in the warmer weather, and a few others used ropes and their mountaineering skills to traverse the collapsed superstructures of the bridges, but they also encountered the same undead welcoming committees wherever they went.

  Pete heard shooting as they drove past some houses about 100 yards from the highway, and he instinctively reached for his pistol, but the colonel just as quickly placed a firm hand on his arm to keep the pistol down.

  “Just doing some routine cleanup,” the colonel said calmly, as if he was talking about something mundane like the weather, but he realized that Pete’s look of alarm and concern demanded further explanation.

  Obviously, in order to declare any location safe and secure, every zombie needed to be eliminated. Gone were the days when it was acceptable to have zombies closed up in a house or car. Too many people had been infected or killed scavenging for supplies or looking for a new home to try to start their lives over. Now, unless a green checkmark was spray painted on the front door, you had to assume that nothing but infection and death awaited you inside.

  Teams had been organized throughout the Hudson Valley to go through every structure and vehicle on every square inch of land. It was painstaking and dangerous work, but when everyone followed the rules it became quite routine, and even boring—until those moments of terror when you actually had to open that closet door, or go into the creepy basement and pray that nothing jumped out at you. But that was the final step in the routine.

  First, you pounded on the front door and made a racket, and then looked and listened for any signs of the undead. For those places that were obviously occupied, a small hole—about 2 inches in diameter—was drilled through the door. Poisoned meat was then dropped into the hole and the date and time was written in red marker next to it.

  Only after the poison was given at least a full 72 hours to work, would the teams open the door to that building, but they still wouldn’t enter. Small drones with cameras were then flown through the structure, giving the team a heads-up on the layout, what doors were closed, and if there were any bodies, to make damn sure they were dead for good.

  With all the info gathered, a plan was drawn up and every team member learned their role—and that’s when the scary part began. Wearing special protective armor—considerably more advanced than the forks and spoons Becks had duct-taped to her clothing when she was lost in New Jersey—teams would enter the building and methodically search everything. They always moved in pairs for safety and kept in constant contact with the team coordinators. Everyone was always on high alert during these operations, as you never knew where a zombie might be lurking.

  For example, thinking the house was clear, one man took off his helmet and opened a kitchen cabinet over the refrigerator to look for food. To his complete shock, an emaciated female zombie launched herself out of the cabinet and locked her jaws around his mouth. By the time his fellow team members had killed her and pried open her jaws, both of his lips were hanging by mere threads of flesh.

  As best as the soldiers could determine, the woman had hidden in that cabinet when the rest of her family had switched. She must also have been badly infected and switched as well, waiting for who knows how long for some poor victim to come along and open that cabinet door.

  Other unnerving attacks that happened far too often came when hands or teeth reached out from under beds to grasp unsuspecting people. Team members quickly learned to reinforce the armor around their ankles and calves, as it appeared that many people—particularly children—had hidden under their beds when someone in the household had turned zombie.

  Too terrified to come out, they died and switched there. One can only imagine what it was like to have a hand suddenly thrust out from under the bed and start clawing at your leg, or bending down to look under that bed and having a couple of zombie children lunge for your face. It wasn’t long before teams had started carrying mirrors on telescoping poles to search under beds, while maintaining a healthy distance.

  Basements were generally the most dreaded locations of any structures, as zombies tended to congregate in groups in their dark recesses. But even all the basement horror stories couldn’t hold a candle to the account that spread fast and far about the unfortunate man who had eaten the burritos.

  Early one morning, a team was clearing an apartment building in Haverstraw, New York. In one apartment, they found a box of freeze-dried burritos. One man, Jed, had missed breakfast as he had overslept, so he decided to take a quick break and reconstitute a few burritos. Even cold, they were quite tasty, especially drenched in hot sauce. Unfortunately, Jed’s digestive system was not used to such heavy, spicy food, and by the time they had started clearing the top floor, Montezuma was having his revenge.

  Pulling off his armor and running into a dimly lit bathroom, Jed dropped his pants, flipped up the lid of the toilet, and sat down. However, before his sphincter was able to relieve the mounting pressure, a tiny pair of teeth was sinking into his testicles. A zombie toddler had actually hidden inside the toilet bowl before he switched, and the rescuers responded to Jed’s shrieking screams with a mixture of astonishment, disgust, and amusement, as the terrified man danced around the bathroom drenched in blood and burrito excrement, with the toddler dangling from his scrotum.

  When Jed was fully recovered physically, he was mercifully given a desk job. Mentally, it was said he still wasn’t quite right, but had started doing better once all the toilet seat lids had been removed from his housing unit.

  Pete couldn’t believe how normal everything looked as the
y drove down Main Street in Highland Falls approaching the main gate of West Point. Stores and restaurants were open, and men, women, and children went about their business as if they had never even heard the word zombie, let alone ever encountered a ravenous corpse.

  The security at the main gate was tight, although the word “gate” was not quite accurate. Huge steel walls extended across the road, and only after a lengthy inspection of the vehicles, their passengers, and contents, did a section of that wall swing open to allow entry to the convoy.

  One thing Pete didn’t expect to see on the highly fortified military base was chickens—and not of the cowardly variety. There were literally flocks of chickens everywhere, as well as cows, goats, horses, pigs, and sheep. And wherever there used to be a grass lawn, there were now neat rows of a vegetable plants and fruit trees. Obviously, food production had become a top priority, as mankind could not survive forever on the pre-apocalypse canned food supply.

  After two more checkpoints, the convoy finally stopped in front of a nondescript, three-story brick building, which could have been a 1960s school.

  This is their state-of-the-art facility? Pete thought with great disappointment.

  To his surprise, however, they went inside and entered an elevator that seemed to go down at least ten stories. Finally, the doors opened up on a long, central hallway lined with pairs of glass doors bearing big, bold, biohazard warnings and names of the branches of science and medicine they were researching in that particular lab—many of which had names Pete neither recognized nor understood. He caught brief glimpses of masked occupants in lab coats doing god-knows-what with equipment he had never seen before, as they passed quickly to the end of the hall to a large conference room.

  At least 30 people sat squeezed around a table and dozens more stood along the walls. Everyone applauded when Pete entered, and he stopped short in amazement—not because of the applause, but because he hadn’t been in a room with that many people in a very long time.

  Pete was ushered to the head of the table, and only then did he remove the backpack of precious notes and data he had been willing to risk his life to deliver. From an old metal coffee can, he removed a zip lock bag filled with flash drives. Then he pulled out stacks of well-worn file folders, all overfilled with handwritten pages of notes, formulas, charts, and diagrams. His nerves and the bandages on his hands made him a bit clumsy, and one of the folders slipped from his fingers, its pages scattering across the table and floor.

  “Uh, we didn’t know what level of technology was left out here,” Pete began, trembling slightly, as several people helped retrieve all the pieces of paper. “So, we figured that in addition to the digital files, we would go ‘old school,’ too.”

  Asking for a moment to get organized, and for glass of water, Pete was clearly intimidated by the brainpower in the room, until the colonel leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  “If you can handle Devereaux, these people are a piece of cake.”

  Clearing his throat, twice, Pete finally began by holding up a red file folder stained with coffee rings.

  “I’ve been told about your Eradazole, so you probably won’t need our EBG files, although they are worth looking over. Our latest batch of EBG is at least effective up to ten days after infection, completely killing all eggs and larvae,” Pete said nonchalantly, not realizing how impressive it was that such a small group with limited resources had developed and produced something to prevent infection after bites or exposure.

  “What does EBG stand for?” someone asked.

  Pete actually blushed and stammered for a moment before replying.

  “Eggs-Be-Gone,” he said, as the room erupted in laughter.

  Pete was going to explain that it was just a silly name one of the students had given the unpronounceable compound, but he decided to minimize his embarrassment and just continue. Holding up a yellow folder, you could hear a pin drop as Pete explained Devereaux’s work on the chemical cocktail he had created which inhibited the ZIPs’ ability to produce a pheromone that kept zombies from attacking one another. He then surprised everyone when he said that Devereaux had abandoned that work.

  Pete raised his hands when the uproar began, to quiet everyone so he could explain.

  “The chemicals had to be directly injected into the zombie at various intervals over the course of two days, and then it would only have resulted in that single zombie being killed by the other zombies,” he stated with the resolve that only comes with gained confidence. “However, we realized that if you could inhibit a zombie’s ability to sense that pheromone, blocking its sense of smell, so to speak, then it becomes a weapon against all other zombies. And because it is still producing the pheromone, it will not be attacked, even as it attacks others.”

  A tense stillness hung in the room as Pete slowly raised the purple folder.

  “You’ve done it!?” Phil asked, practically bursting at the seams of his lab coat.

  Pete couldn’t resist a few seconds to savor the moment before he simply replied, “Yes.”

  The room again erupted, this time with congratulations and wild speculations about the zombie army that could be created. The colonel let the boisterous chatter continue for a minute or two before he shouted the room to order.

  “Before we all conquer the world, let’s hear what he has to say, shall we?” the colonel said with an air of authority not to be questioned. “Please, Mr. Hernandez, continue.”

  “Devereaux calls it Project Decimation, after the ancient Roman practice of killing every one in ten soldiers as punishment for a group that had deserted or mutinied. He believes that if just one in ten zombies loses its sense of smell and turns against the others, it will be sufficient to eliminate the herds.”

  “But how?” someone else asked, impatient for the facts, and just the facts.

  “The key is gold nanoparticles,” Pete continued, with words that made Becks’ back stiffen and her eyes grow wide. “Specifically, spherical gold nanoparticle conjugates between eight to ten nanometers in size.”

  Pete went on to describe how tiny particles of gold had been used BZA to attach to chemotherapy drugs for highly-efficient delivery to tumors. He used terms such as “increased binding affinity,” “targeting selectivity,” “low immunogenic response,” “long circulatory half-life,” and “size-dependent receptor mediated endocytosis.”

  Most of the doctors understood some of what he was saying, several of the scientists in the room had a glazed look in their eyes, but all were fascinated. Throughout the entire explanation, however, Becks just grew increasingly agitated.

  “Devereaux developed a compound that crippled the ZIPs’ ability to sense their own pheromones, but the problem was how to get the ZIPs to absorb it. Realizing that gold nanoparticles could be just as effective with parasites as they were with cancer, he attached this compound to the nanoparticles. Injected into a zombie, they quickly and easily entered into the ZIPs and started the reaction. Within hours, these test subjects had completely lost their ‘sense of smell,’ and started attacking other zombies.”

  “Fuck me! No, FUCK Devereaux!” Becks finally blurted out, unable to contain herself any longer.

  “Dr. Truesdale!” the colonel yelled, as he turned an ominous shade of crimson. “Is this your unique way of expressing your professional enthusiasm, or do you have a problem?”

  Before Becks could answer, Pete turned to her with a stunned, but elated, expression.

  “Truesdale!? Rebecca Truesdale!?” he asked, with unrestrainable excitement.

  “Yes…that’s me,” Becks replied suspiciously as she stood up, still highly agitated. “And I am quite familiar with using gold nanoparticles against parasites because—”

  “You wrote the paper that gave Devereaux the idea!” Pete interrupted, as even the jaw of the colonel now hung open.

  Chapter 7

  A lone AH-64 Apache helicopter took off from the Picatinny Arsenal. Scouting flights had recently become routine, but t
here was nothing routine about this helicopter, as it was bristling with Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rockets.

  West Point had relayed a message that had caused the top brass at the arsenal to scramble a crew within minutes. As they raced to the northeast, they passed over the same suburban neighborhoods where Becks had fought for her life over the winter. Now, the spring offensive was well underway and little ribbons of smoke curled upwards across the horizon in every direction, as heavily zombie-infested structures were simply burned to the ground, rather than risk the personnel and waste the time clearing every building. They were draconian measures to be sure, but AZA, there weren’t likely to be any housing shortages.

  The pilot of the helicopter made a low circle at a sharp angle around a column of troops and armored vehicles advancing down the main street of a town. He didn’t do it to check on their progress, but to wave to his buddies who were part of the offensive. A cheer went up from the column as they all waved back, but a flurry of small arms fire up ahead caused them all to quickly refocus and assume defensive positions.

  Pulling up sharply, in case some crazy survivors started firing at them, the pilot continued on his course. Just a few minutes later the potential target was in view. The superstructure of the George Washington Bridge with its missing center span was not a pleasant sight to see, as it was a glaring and monumental reminder of all that had been lost, and just how far civilization had literally fallen. But it wasn’t the snapped steel cables and crumbled concrete that made the pilot and copilot of the Apache gasp.

  What at first looked like a line of ants from Manhattan slowly and inexorably invading a picnic in Fort Lee, New Jersey, resolved into a hideous conga line of zombies streaming across the makeshift bridge of debris. Enough zombies had fallen and added their bodies to the debris to create a path wide enough for the undead horde to cross three or four abreast. Horrified, the copilot immediately radioed the arsenal to report on the mass exodus. While some of the newly escaped zombies filtered off to the west and south—possibly endangering the ground troops in the spring offensive—the vast majority were heading north along the Palisades Interstate Parkway. The herd, which had to number in the hundreds of thousands, was the largest the crew had ever seen. Though it moved slowly, it would be certain to engulf anything in its path.