(Author's note: This is a prequel to the story: "The Vile Little Secrets We Keep". Both are zombie stories without the usually required undead. I did this strictly for fun because in this story I got to kill a real life, but never directly named, parasite on the butt of our nation. As you may already be accustom, excuse the typos.)
General Nathan Macey ears still rang
from the sound of the pistol he had just fired. Always a man of
determination and action, the crime he had just committed left him
paralyzed, his mind running in circles at the implications, both the
immediate and the far-reaching. A dedicated American soldier from the
moment he started his career at West Point, he had long since become
desensitized to all the smells and sensations of such mundane things
as firearms. But the residual odor of cordite hanging in the air from
firing his weapon had left him severely nauseated, like some fearful
private away from the safety and familiarity of his home for the
first time.
Surrounding Macey were members of his
staff looking for him to offer guidance on just what in the hell they
were supposed to do now. Macey knew he had only seconds to collect
his wits and do something to save both the nation that he loved and
human civilization itself. Despair welled up inside his soul, because
on the laying on the floor just a two feet away was the body of the
President of the United States.
The perfectly circular entry hole of
the round Macey fired had impacted on the forehead of the narcissistic
real estate developer/reality star turned politician but the exit
wound had blown apart whole chunks of his skull and brains. The
office Macey and his men stood in was deep inside
the revamped doomsday bunker of the Mt. Weather Command Center, near
Ashby Run, Virginia. Until the election of the bastard whose remains
were even now dripping blood onto the expensive carpet, Mt. Weather
had been deactivated and declassified at the end of the Cold War with
some sections open to tourists.
After the insane, self destructive
spasm of the 2016 presidential campaign was over, one of the the
newly elected president's first actions was to have Mt. Weather
reactivated and upgraded. The office reserved for the president,
originally a spartan and cold place, had been redecorated to look
like a whorish version of the now lost Oval Office. Obscenely bright
24 karat gold fixtures were everywhere along with the the trophy
heads of scores of exotic animals mounted on the walls. Instead of
the dignified portraits and landscape artwork that hung in the Oval
Office, here in his Doomsday redoubt hung garish semi-erotic
paintings.
The weirdest addition to the
redecorated room were the installation of huge video screens that
simulated the Oval Office's south-facing windows. The justification
being that it created a sense of normalcy for the president and
anyone else inside the room. It didn't take Macey long to learn that
the fake windows could be changed to show a variety of scenes
including tropical beaches and even the busy insides of an
Atlantic City casino. The three long screens were now blank except
for the dead president's blood and other bodily fluids splattered across them.
General Macey, who was the commanding
officer of the facility before the start of the bizarre plague, could
only look on in disgust as the progressively worse alterations
continued to be made. His job had been to again prepare the facility
for the unthinkable, which included living quarters for an full
infantry division, including their families, along with a nearby
satellite facility for two tank brigades and one combat aviation
brigade, including all their families as well. The space created for
supplies ranging from food to ammunition had staggered his
imagination. Any semi-intelligent individual could discern many
things from the facility plans that had come across his desk, and for
Macey that had meant nothing but a long series of nightmares as he
tried to sleep. It was almost as if the new president and his inner
group of sycophants knew something quite bad was on the horizon.
“Get this bastard out of here,”
Macey surprised himself by suddenly speaking out loud. “And nothing
we've done leaves this section of the facility, we still have bunch
of troops that don't know the extent of that bastard's treachery.”
Macey said further letting the disposition of the president's family
and entourage go unsaid.
Macey's staff remained in place, either
still stunned at what they had been forced to do or in shock that
their commanding officer had finally spoke. “I said move people!”
he screamed. “We have almost no time to save something of our
country and the world!” His outburst had been enough to spring them
all into action leaving him alone except for a three bodyguards
standing in the adjoining room.
General Macey remained in the office
watching as a pair of Special Forces troopers placed the president's
remains inside a body bag. “I want it dropped into the incinerator
with the system flushed afterwards.” He told the men who grimly
acknowledged his order.
Macey couldn't remember the last time
he had slept for more than a few minutes. Feeling what remained of
his energy leave his body, he dropped down on one of the leopard
print couches the now dead President considered tasteful and began
thinking of how the world had all went totally to shit.
It defied all rational thinking but the
world had been hit with a zombie plague that seemingly raised the
newly dead to become a ravenous, mindless horde out to spread their
inflection by biting normal people. In truth, elements of the plague
that finally emerged had been around for decades. Various illegal
narcotics were individually known to cause insane rage, increased
strength, and in the case of the drug “Krokodil” cause human
fresh to become gangrenous and fall off. Someone had found a way to
include all those characteristics in a neatly designed virus that was
easily transmittable through bodily fluids.
The first cases had appeared almost
simultaneously across the planet, but were discounted by a media more
preoccupied by the usual trivial stories that kept their ratings up.
The fault wasn't entirely on the media talking heads, it pretty much
defied sanity that a zombie plague could be real. If anything about
the strange incidents were mentioned, they were immediately
discounted by rightly skeptical newsreaders. This allowed the
comfortable middle class to chuckle and continue on with their usual
activities.
But with the homeless and the
hopelessly drug addicted as fuel, the plague acted like gasoline and
within weeks the situation could no longer be ignored. Isolated cases
quickly spread to regional outbreaks that defied all efforts at
containment. The truth of the matter was that the U.S. Public Health
System had been so underfunded for decades its personnel never had a
chance at even slowing the outbreak. Two months after the first cases appeared the President reluctantly declared martial law and instituted
procedures that were first developed during the Cold War. But it was
too little and much too late, barely a week later all local, state,
and federal authority in the country had collapsed forcing the key
members of the federal government to facilities like the newly
revamped Mt. Weather.
Much to the chagrin of General Macey,
on his first night at Mt. Weather the President threw a dinner party
for his family, the few members of Congress that had accompanied him,
and his civilian friends who had no apparent function. Macey, while
invited to the dinner, was spending his hours trying organize all the
extra troops that kept arriving on what seemed an endless series of
military convoys.
As the weeks passed, General Macey
learned that the president, nor his advisers, had any plan on
fighting the growing chaos. When Macey confronted the chief executive
he was quickly told that there were long range plans, but that he did
not have clearance for what they entailed. More to the point, the
President's advisers reminded Macey that he was only a high paid
flunky that could easily be replaced, so it would be best if he kept
his mouth shut.
Running the Mt. Weather facility took
almost all of Macey's waking hours forcing him to make life or death
decisions on almost an hourly basis as casually as someone orders
their lunch. That didn't prevent him from see the reports, or hearing
the radio broadcasts of literally billions of human being dying as a
result of the plague and the chaos that followed in its wake.
General Macey played the good soldier
until word got to him the vice president had died in a helicopter
crash leaving his own reinforced doomsday sanctuary. What finally
broke Macey was when he learned that the President was going to
appoint one of his sons to fill the empty VP slot. The President
himself had been a comical, narcissistic buffoon with nothing in the
way of redeeming qualities or abilities with the exception of a
low-grade cunning that had allowed him to fool the simpleminded
hordes enough to be elected. His son though made the chief executive
look like a modest but wise scholar.
After the first family's arrival at the
site it hadn't take Macey long to learn the President's offspring as
the worst possible form of sociopath. After returning to his office
upon learning of the President's decision, he had sat at his desk
unable to breathe for a couple of minutes because of the insanity.
That was when Macey knew the unthinkable would have to be done, and
that he would have to literally pull the trigger.
The operation to eliminate the
President had amazingly gone without a hitch due to his arrogance. He
had actually believed the entire nation loved him even though just a
few months before the outbreak riots had broken out in many cities in
the southwest as he attempted to implement his plan to deport
millions of illegal immigrants. So deluded was the man that even
though his own disgraced political party was writing up impeachment
proceeds he seemingly ignored all the news from his advisers that it
would be best for him to resign. Once inside Mt Weather and safely
cocooned in his personal section of the facility which he never left,
the President had continued to feel so secure that he had ordered his
Secret Service detail to stay in their quarters.
Once Macey had a plan on how to act, as
well as an endgame, he had kept the number of people in his
conspiracy to less than thirty. With the President, his family, and
his entourage disposed of everything now rested on the two
interrelated elements for which luck would play the most important
part. The first being timing with the second finding a workable
replacement that could rally the troops on site and begin to pick up
the pieces of civilization.
Macey was startled back to the present
with the arrival of one of his most trusted men, Colonel Jonas
Cortes. “We have him,” Colonel Cortes said visibly relieved. “He
and his family were exactly where Homeland Security said we would
find them, in their mountain cabin one-hundred twenty miles to the
west of here.”
“What does he know about the
President?” Macey asked rushing over to greet his longtime friend
who was still wearing his body armor and helmet.
“All I told him was that the Vice
President was dead and POTUS was looking for a replacement. At first
he told me to go to hell, that he'd never serve under such a petty
asshole. It took my five soldiers and me to drag them all to the
waiting helicopters.” After a moment of hesitation Cortes forced
himself to speak again, “This guy better play ball General, I had
to leave one of my guys behind to provide cover from a horde of
ghouls advancing on our LZ.”
“Colonel,” Macey said, “this
individual is apparently the only one of the potential targets left
alive. All the others are dead or so lost they're effectively the
same thing. If he doesn't go along with our plans we're be playing
out a twenty-first century version of the fall of Rome with a dark
age that will make the last one look positively enlighten.”
Macey asked his friend to bring in the
last best savior of the United States before leaving the office. As
he waited the general found himself wondering just what do you say to
someone to get them to take a position whose predecessor died in a
military coup.
Former senator from Virginia, Jonathon
Webb appeared in the doorway looking at Macey as if he was completely
disappointed. The last time Macey had seen Webb was years before as
the two jousted at a senate hearing on the budget for military black
projects. That particular day the senator had been wearing an
expensive suit while sporting a clean and neat haircut that probably
cost more than most people spend on such services for a year. That
was a lifetime ago, before Webb had left political life in disgust
and returned home to continue his career as a writer. He was now
dressed in filthy and torn camping clothes and looked like he hadn't
had a bath in months, which was a real possibility.
“Where is that son of a bitch,
general?” Webb roared. “I'll kill him with my bare hands if he
makes the mistake of coming within my reach.”
“Please sit down senator,” Macey
said again taking a seat on one of the garish couches, “I
personally shot the President not long before the helicopters that
brought you and your family here lifted off from their pads. Both him
and his entire damn entourage are now being burned in the facility
incinerator.”
Webb, now totally stunned once he
realized Macey wasn't playing some sick joke, walked over and sat
across from the man on the opposite couch. “Senator,” Macey
began, “I didn't commit this traitorous act on a whim, I watched
the President let the country burn to the ground. Even worse as the
situation outside the facility went totally to shit, I began to
believe he was part of some horrific plan involving people and
organizations outside the government.”
“What plan?” Webb asked
incredulously.
“That I have no idea, whenever I
demanded to know why he and his advisers weren't working to save the
country all he told me that there were long range plans being
implemented but I didn't have the clearance to know them. In all
honesty, I should have shot the man right then but it wasn't until
the death of the Vice President that I decided to act.” It was then
that Macey told Webb about the President's idea to have his son
become the new VP.
“So you want me to become President?”
Webb asked after learning of how Macey wanted him to become the chief
executive after an accident was arrange in the Presidential quarters
of Mt. Weather resulting in the deaths of everyone living in that
section. “What's to stop you from disposing of me General Macey
once I order you to do something you don't like?”
“For decades I watched this country
destroy itself, all I can say to you is that I still believe in what
it means to be an American. Yes, we're often a bunch of self-centered
hypocrites but unfortunately fate or simple stupid luck has given us
the task of keeping Western Civilization alive and I will fight to my
last breath to see it doesn't die because of fools like the one I
killed today. Call me naive but I believe there is more good in this
country and world than bad and I refuse to let that slip away back
into darkness. So will I obey your orders as my Commander-in-Chief
without hesitation? Yes, but not because I believe in you personally
but for the symbol your office represents, the rule of law, liberty,
and the idea that even though the people may stumble that the best
government is the one where we all get a say in how it is run.”
Twelve days later...
The walls of President's living
quarters deep inside Mt. Weather were charred black and in some areas
had almost melted due to the intense heat of the initial explosion
and the fire afterward that had consumed everything that could burn.
Several platoons of soldiers searched the labyrinth-like passageways
looking for the remains of the President, the first family, and
everyone else associated with the executive branch. Grizzled NCO's in
charge of the soldiers knew their task was hopeless, absolutely
nothing recognizable remained, everything was a sickening mixture of
ash and water.
On the surface in full view of most of
the troops assigned to Mt. Weather, Vice President Jonathon Webb was
being sworn in as the new President of the United States. Next him
stood the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of what was left
of the American armed forces, General Nathan Macey. For both men, the
old Republic had died back in November of 2016 with the election of a
man who epitomized the absolute worst not just of the dark side of
democracy but humanity itself. After Webb finished reciting the oath
of office both men silently made a promise they would make sure a new
Republic would take its place and not make the same mistakes as the
old one.
.png)
