Kestrel had stopped bothering to taunt the damn thing. While he’d limped across the Great Hall he’d sent a text message to Hank telling him that there were only two Type Ones left, he was on his way to kill the one in the city and not to ask any questions about how he knew. He’d also told Hank to call Alistair Reston and let him know that the last remaining Type One was controlling the zombie army in the north. Reston would know how to pass the information along to the Army so they could begin searching for it and end this war.

  Kestrel flexed his fingers one at a time around the pistol grip of his MK-17 SCAR. The rifle felt perfectly balanced in his hands, almost as if it was a part of him. He’d fired thousands of rounds from the rifle over the years, but never as many in as short a period as he’d done in the past two days. That experience had made him even more appreciative of the weapon’s fine manufacturing.

  He took a ragged breath and the broken ribs all along his left side seemed to float on their own. The creature had hit him hard. Probably broke the bones completely away from my sternum. He wasn’t just tired now; his body was starting to fail him. He’d taken it to the limit over the past week and the hand-to-hand combat had simply pushed him over the edge.

  He glanced down at the next step that he planned to place his foot on and a shadow jumped from around the curve above. The creature landed on top of him and he crumpled into a ball before tumbling several steps with it locked onto him. The zombie brought both hands down onto the either side of his head and slammed it backward onto the stairs. He didn’t have enough time to react before it slammed his head backward into the marble again.

  Kestrel’s vision started to go dark at the edges and he flexed the muscles in his neck against the pressure. The zombie stopped trying to bash his brains in and bent down. He heard the creature’s teeth grind hard against the sharksuit on his forehead before he felt it.

  His rifle was trapped, so he had to rely on the HK45 once again. The pistol had been a lifesaver on so many close-combat situations—including today—that he couldn’t imagine any other secondary weapon. The Bowie knife was a very close third place. He placed the barrel of the weapon against the side of the zombie’s head.

  “So long mother fucker,” he grunted and squeezed the trigger. Black gore and chunks of brain matter flew against the bricks of the Smithsonian’s stairwell.

  He shoved the body off of himself and sat up gingerly. Blood ran down his neck and between his shoulder blades, the fucker had done a number on him before he’d been able to kill it.

  “You weren’t so tough after all, you stupid fuck,” he shouted at the dead zombie. “So much for the Chosen.”

  Why do you celebrate? The Master awaits.

  “Fuck! How many of these dipshits do you have?”

  We are like the stars.

  “Well, shit. Hold on, I’m coming.”

  He had to use the railing to pull himself upwards. He’d thought that his body was failing before that attack, but now he was sure of it. In addition to the flowing wetness from his parietal lobe, his neck had hit the stairs when the zombie landed on him. He pushed against the back of it; there was something spongy bulging out near where his spine crossed the line of his shoulders. That couldn’t be good.

  Kestrel’s head lolled from side to side as he used the railing to pull himself up each step. He felt like dog shit in a fire pit. He was falling apart and the only thing keeping him together was the sharksuit. The operator wondered what else was in store for him once he reached the Type One’s lair.

  He finally reached the top of the stairs and came to a landing with another of the heavy wooden doors. Kestrel sighed and prepared himself for another fight. He was tired of this shit. When he’d ensured that his weapon was ready to go and that the knife was within easy reach, he kicked the door hard. It slammed backward and impacted against something softer than the wall.

  That meant that the creature was hiding behind the door, probably planning to jump him when he went inside. He rushed through the gaping doorway and pivoted hard to his right. His broken ribs protested the sudden movement, but he didn’t pay any attention to them. This was almost over.

  The door began to swing closed once again and he fired two rounds into the head of the zombie that had fallen hard against the wall when the door hit it. The thing crumpled immediately. He wondered what the hell it had been thinking hiding behind the door.

  And then all thoughts ceased when the tip of a sword emerged from his stomach.

  The Master knew you would find the Follower. I am smarter than you.

  Kestrel coughed and blood dribbled down his chin. “Oh, fuck,” he muttered as his gloved hand slapped at the blade. He turned to see the Master, the creature that had just killed him.

  He tried to laugh, but the blade impaling him wouldn’t allow it. The zombie standing before him used to be a woman, only about five foot two. Her parchment-like skin had begun to peel slightly away from her mouth, revealing just a tiny bit of her jawbone, giving him the impression that she was frowning. His mind grasped at the notion that the Chosen really did look different than the other zombies, Hank had been right.

  “I just got whacked by a chick,” the operator mumbled with a bloody grin. Both of his miserable excuses for a marriage and the two women who’d recently shared his bed all coalesced into the creature before him. He’d always had problems with women; his entire life had been one failed relationship after another and now, the final moments of his life would be spent with another woman who’d just stabbed him through the back, severing the bottom of his lung and slicing his intestines open inside his abdomen.

  The Master reached for him and he was too weak to stop her from tearing the NVGs and gas mask from his face. You are beaten. You will now become a Follower.

  She opened her mouth and he watched in a daze as her teeth closed in on his face. From somewhere deep inside, he felt a rage grow. He was not going to die without completing his mission. He still had all of his weapons and he was a goddamned SEAL. SEALs don’t quit.

  “Fuck you, bitch,” he said and head-butted her across the nose. The force of the blow was enough to send her staggering back a few paces, allowing him the room to bring the rifle up.

  Burning gases blew out of the end of the silencer, bathing the room in white light.

  The Type One—the Master—that he’d came to Washington to kill, fell backward with a neat little hole just above the bridge of her nose. The back of her head would be a disgusting mess as the 7.62-millimeter round exited the skull at more than 2,300 feet per second.

  Kestrel grinned drunkenly and reached behind his back. It took him a few tries, but he finally grasped the handle of the sword and pulled it out. The rusted metal cut him even more as he pulled it awkwardly to the side and once it slid free, he felt a large amount of blood and other fluids spill down his ass.

  Pulling the blade from his body sent him over his pain threshold and he collapsed on top of the Master’s body.

  “Dammit, I left my Band-Aids downstairs,” he choked with a laugh. Even in death, I can’t take anything serious. No wonder I….

  The darkness took him and he passed into the light.

  *****

  01 November, 1729 hrs local

  Boger Concrete Building

  Jonestown, Pennsylvania

  The Leader felt the passing of the Master. It knew that it was now the last of the Chosen. It was now the most powerful of all the creatures in existence. Nothing would stop it from achieving victory now that it had become the Master.

  The Followers advanced further every day and destroyed more of the humans that stood against them than they could afford to lose. Before long, the Followers would finally smash the humans into the ground and live in peace.

  The Master sent a call to the Followers in the area to attend to it. They must learn that it was the new Master, that it would lead them to victory and the end to the human occupation of their lands.

  Within minutes, a massive crowd had swelled around the buildings where the Master stood. The Followers needed to be able to see their new Master. With considerable effort, it climbed to the top of a pile of broken concrete rubble and looked upon the mass of its Followers, reveling in their adoration and desire to carry out its every order.

  The large crowd of zombies attracted the attention of several intel analysts in Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. They were part of the United States Strategic Command, charged with watching the zombie army’s advance from satellites high above the earth. They zoomed the lenses of several high-resolution cameras mounted in the satellites and saw the creature climbing up the mound of broken concrete while the others stood watching, more swelling the crowd every moment. This event was something new and unexpected after weeks of catching only fleeting glimpses of the horde except when they were too close to the human defenders to hit them with large-scale attacks. It was an opportunity.

  Several rapid phone calls occurred and all Air Force jets in the vicinity were redirected immediately from their previous bombing missions to the small town outside of Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. Planes lined up like they were sitting in traffic and pounded the site to dust. The zombie that had distinguished itself from all the others by climbing high above them took a laser-guided GBU-16 Paveway II 1000-pound bomb directly through the top of its head to begin the airstrike.

  In the end, eight jets dropped a total of thirty-three 500-pound bombs and six 1,000-pounders in and around the strange gathering of zombies. The analysts compared the size of the gathering to a college football stadium and conservative estimates said that eighty thousand creatures had been incinerated or so badly broken that they’d never move from the area again. Other analysts placed the loss at much higher; pointing out that by the time the planes got there, the zombies had been so tightly packed in a half-mile circle around the creature that satellite imagery couldn’t determine individual targets.

  It was a major victory for the humans who’d been forced to hunt and destroy small pockets of zombies, all the while knowing that there were millions more hidden from view above. The sense that they’d passed a pivotal moment in the war was palpable at the command center in Offutt. This was the opportunity that they’d been waiting for.

  Not long after the airstrike was over, one of the analysts noticed a massive movement along the highway. The creatures that weren’t killed in the strike headed directly toward the defending army that was only a few miles away. The analysts’ celebration stopped and they began passing the information to their Air Force brothers and sisters.

  The zombies were done hiding; they were out in the open, prime targets for the jets and bombers flying above.

  FOURTEEN

  07 November, 1202 hrs local

  Appalachian Defensive Line

  Somerset, Pennsylvania

  Mike surveyed the sea of humanity in awe. It was insane how many people and cars attempted to flow through the gates for processing into the holding area before being allowed to continue on to safety in the west. The fighting was heavy up in the mountains—terrain that was impossible for tanks to be utilized effectively—so the decision had been made to move Chaos Company all the way to the defensive belt instead of trying to use them in the mountain passes. The company had relocated to the Appalachian Defensive Line the previous night and set up their tanks on the eastern side of the walls with several other battalions of tanks. They were just a cog in the wheel of Big Army now.

  Even with all of the floodlights and vehicle headlights the night before, he hadn’t appreciated the sheer scale of the defenses that had been erected over the course of the last month and a half. They’d used whatever material they could find to build the new wall, but the primary components were the large forty-foot shipping crates, stacked two high, stretching as far as Mike could see. The engineers had welded massive bars of steel across each container to help keep them from being pushed apart and allowing the line to fail.

  They’d also included a lot of cage-like turnstiles that each had to be triggered manually to turn. He’d seen the same simple technology used at high-security military installations worldwide and thought it was a good way to allow refugees through the defenses while still maintaining the proper measure of security. The Army could allow people to move through into the secondary line of security behind the line made out of the shipping containers.

  Beyond the first line, he’d been told that there was a holding area comprised of several layers of fencing where every person moving through was physically checked for bite marks. It wouldn’t do any good to blockade the eastern third of the country if somebody got sick on the other side of the defenses. There were mobile guard towers erected both inside the holding area and ringing it as well. Behind the first holding area was a third, heavily guarded layer of fencing and likely, there were more beyond that one, the government wasn’t taking any chances.

  Mike had never seen anything like the defensive line before. It made him proud to think of the sheer level of ingenuity and cooperation that it had taken to design and build the structure in such a short time. He briefly wondered how far north and south that these defenses went, but it only made sense that it stretched from the Gulf all the way to the Great Lakes and that the Canadians had done something similar on their side of the border.

  Chaos Company was on the far right of what had been described to him as a defensive bubble. All along the Appalachian Mountains, defensive belts had been built. They’d blocked and canalized the roads through the mountains down to a relative few major routes that each fed into the massive “bubbles” where they now sat. Each of the bubbles spread out around large open areas to allow the maximum use of weaponry at the farthest distance. The other areas were simply blocked, forcing the refugees—and eventually the zombie horde—into kill boxes.

  The number of people made it impossible for the soldiers in defensive positions to move in order to get their supplies, so everything was delivered via drone to the company area. The medium four-engine drones flew nonstop over the area, climbing and descending in vertical flight patterns to drop off cases of food and water as well as ammunition when needed. It was another example of American ingenuity and he was positive that they’d win this fight because of simple innovations like that.

  On the engagement side of the defensive barriers were the soldiers like Mike and his men. The tanks, each a miniature fortress of its own, were positioned to provide firepower at the maximum distance possible. Dismounted soldiers patrolled the mountains, intent on finding and fixing the enemy at the greatest distance possible from the line. The Russians had eagerly volunteered to be the force that fought in the mountains. They were inserted by the hundreds of helicopters—military and civilian—flying all over the place.

  As far as Mike knew, the main force of zombies was still far to the east. The last definitive contact that they’d had with the creatures was in Newville, Pennsylvania. He’d been there, fighting the creatures yesterday morning to protect the last major evacuation of the civilians before the Army jumped again.

  The fighting for the last week had been frantic and non-stop. The brief lulls in battle and nighttime reprieves from the zombie attacks had ceased. They came on relentlessly and were killed in even greater numbers than any of the engagements during October, but they had the numbers to continue to press forward and overwhelm the defenders.

  Rumors spread like wildfire that the special zombies who’d controlled the masses had been killed in a covert raid on Washington. They all started with the general statement, “So-and-so works in the headquarters and he overheard some bigwig saying as much.” Now that the control was gone, the zombies just attacked whatever they saw instead of the careful moves that the horde had made before.

  Real, solid intelligence, however, indicated that the southern group of zombies had been stopped cold. They’d been moving virtually unmolested through Virginia, but a combined pounding by the Air Force and Army units from North Carolina and Georgia smashed them to smithereens. Now the Army was combing through the state to kill the stragglers using large speakers to call them out of the woods.

  Mike used binoculars to scan the crowd for signs of infection. Unless there was an obvious outbreak or panic, it was useless to watch the crowd from this distance, he thought. The tank’s guns would kill hundreds of people if they tried to fire them into the crowd, so his main job was to simply observe and report while his men glassed the crowds through their scoped weapons.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with the crowd, so Mike took a few moments to relax and call his family. Trinity and the girls were still doing well in Hawaii, but they were ready to come home. Home, what did that even mean anymore? It would be a long time before the East Coast would be habitable again. Even after they destroyed the zombie horde, months—if not years—would be needed to seek out and destroy all the zombies. It would take even longer to collect the millions of bodies and burn them to avoid the rampant spread of disease.

  Mike didn’t know what the future held, but he knew that it would be full of challenges and the zombie scourge would remain a threat wherever people happened upon the creatures across the vast expanse of the east. Plus, there was the threat of the creatures that had floated out into the Atlantic; those things could end up anywhere in the world given enough time and they’d probably be dealing with small, localized outbreaks from time to time for decades.

  The more he thought about it, the better moving to Hawaii full-time sounded. He was done with the Army; the past month had been too bloody, too taxing on his spirit. The family had plenty of money from his days working on the New York Stock Exchange and his skills transferred to just about anywhere. Yeah, flowered shirt and shorts year round and zombies thousands of miles away, he mused. Hold on Mirandas, daddy’s got a little bit more work to do, and then I’m coming home.