Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (3 page)

The girl was asleep on a narrow cot when two of the martyrs burst into the hut. They dragged her naked into the glowing firelight and forced her onto her knees. The instructor executed her with a single bullet to the back of her head and she fell forward into the sand.

“Take a long look,” he raised his voice and clenched his fist. “Look at the cages and know this is what you will become – glorious killing machines to champion the Muslim cause against the infidels. Warrior lions who will take Allah’s Fist to America, and destroy it with a single mighty blow.”

The martyrs began to chant, raising their weapons and thrusting them above their head. The instructor listened to the sound of their voices swelling with the force of their fanaticism, and he knew they were ready.

“Allah be praised.”

At midnight the instructor began executing the infected. The cages were dismantled and each bloody body dragged onto the fire. Then the hut and tents were burned.

At dawn the next morning - just as first light was breaking across the rim of endless desert horizon - the Lions of Islam boarded the trucks and Land-Rover, and set out on a journey that would change the world forever.

TEHRAN.

The meeting took place in a secret underground command center that sprawled deep beneath the Abbas Abad district in the north of the capital. The area was the location for the offices of the state security forces and the Organization of Islamic Culture and Communications, and so he was surprised when the driver by-passed each building complex and drove on past several foreign embassies.

The vehicle turned, and then turned again, finally braking to a halt in front of a non-descript brick building on Mirzayeh Shirazi Avenue. It was dark. The instructor stepped out of the car. The night sky was brilliant with the light of a million stars, and in the cool still silence of the city he could hear the distant sounds of evening prayers, carried on the breeze from the Mosalla Prayer Grounds.

Three men were waiting for him on the footpath. They were dressed casually, but the instructor sensed the awareness of them. It was in the way they held themselves, and in the steel of their eyes. They were military, and he stood passively and allowed them to search him before being escorted through the heavy wooden door.

The building was a two-story empty shell. Inside was a foyer where four uniformed members of the Revolutionary Guard stood on alert. Each of the soldiers wore a black beard and was dressed in combat uniform. Behind the soldiers was a small, slim man, who stood beside a set of double doors.

The man was wearing a dark, western styled suit over a crisp white shirt and black tie. His facial features were classically Persian. The nose beneath the dark eyes was hooked, and the jet-black hair was closely cut atop a high-set forehead. He watched the instructor being searched by two of the Revolutionary Guard, and then nodded. A faint flicker of a smile touched his lips.

“Welcome captain,” the man said. His voice was almost effeminately soft, and cultured. “The mullahs have just arrived from prayers. They are waiting for you.”

The double doors were opened from within by two more guards, and the man led the instructor to an elevator. They rode down in silence, and when the doors whispered open again, the instructor was forty feet below the embassy district of Tehran and standing in a wide well lit passageway.

“This way,” the man said softly. He led the instructor into a vast network of tunnels, their footsteps echoing in the eerie silence of the cavernous complex, and finally came to a halt outside a wide wooden door attended by two more guards. The man nodded and the soldiers stepped aside. He pushed the doors open and led the instructor inside a conference room. There was a polished timber table in the middle of the floor with a dozen chairs nestled around it. The lighting in the room was softer than the flaring fluorescent light in the passageways, and the air carried the faint scent of tobacco smoke.

Standing, waiting for him at the head of the table was a black-robed Ayatollah.

He was a thin, elderly man, his expression made thoughtful and studious by the over-sized glasses that rested on the beak of his nose. He was dressed in a Palestinian
kaffiyeh
and a black turban. His long untrimmed beard was streaked with silver strands. In attendance at either side of the Ayatollah stood four heavily bearded
hojjat-el-Islam
. They were younger men, perhaps each in their sixties, the instructor guessed. They were dressed in black robes and wore white turbans.

“
Salam aleikom
, captain,” the Ayatollah said. He was softly spoken, yet his voice carried unmistakable authority. “You have performed your tasks most admirably.”

The instructor said nothing. He bowed his head and the Ayatollah summoned him closer with a wave of his hand. The instructor marched to the head of the table and stood stiffly.

“How many martyrs remain to carry the war to the Great Satan and its allies?” the old man’s voice took on a sudden edge.

“Three,” the instructor said. “One was killed during our time in the desert training and preparing.”

“And where are these jihadists?”

“Do Ab, your Holiness.”

The Ayatollah frowned. “The training camp?”

“Yes, your Holiness. It has been abandoned for some months. The martyrs wait there in secrecy for your order.”

The Do Ab Training Camp was a remote installation in the north of the country. Little more than a cluster of crude huts, the camp had been left abandoned since the beginning of the year.

The Ayatollah nodded thoughtfully. He turned and glanced at the clerics who stood around him.

“Have you preserved all secrecy?” one of the
hojjats
asked suddenly. He was the tallest of the four men, his eyes hooded beneath dark bushy eyebrows. He had a long drawn face, and his skin was grey as ash.

The instructor nodded. “There are no witnesses.”

The Ayatollah studied the instructor carefully, his expression suddenly darker, and made grave.

“Are they ready to take the holy war to the infidels?”

“Most ready, your Holiness,” the instructor said. “As are we all.”

The Ayatollah smiled and nodded benignly. The answer was as he had expected. “Good, my son,” he said and suddenly reached out and placed his hand gently on the instructor’s arm. “Because it has been decided that you will join your men as the last martyr, captain. In one week from now, you will go to America and lead the war against the Great Satan yourself.”

*

When the instructor had been escorted from the underground complex, the small man in the western business suit returned to the conference room. The Ayatollah was waiting for him, alone.

“It is time to begin the immunization,” the Ayatollah said. “All soldiers and important religious and political members will be the first to be immunized against the virus. Once this has been done, the Army will go into the cities and towns and will immunize all men aged between thirteen and fifty. After that you may immunize the women – but only those of a suitable and useful age. The rest will need to trust their fate to Allah.”

The young man nodded gravely. He bit his lip, as if to stifle the futile protest that leaped to his throat. The Ayatollah saw his expression and nodded benevolently. “Speak your mind, Ahmed.”

Still the young man hesitated. He had raised the matter before. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Your Holiness, might we consider an alternative plan for the martyrs?” he offered cautiously. “Sending them all to just one destination within America…? Might we not be better served if they were separated? This would cause the virus to spread more rapidly, yes?”

The Ayatollah smiled beneath the dense bristles of his heavy beard. “It is necessary,” he said patiently. “The touch of a finger does little to cause pain, and yet those fingers together and bunched, Ahmed… become the fist of Allah.”

MIAMI, FLORIDA.

The man came in through the door of the convenience store wearing a brown jacket that was worn at the cuffs and frayed around the collar. He had a crop of black hair and dark sunken eyes. He went to the refrigerators along the side wall and reached for a bottle of water. When he came back to the front of the store he set the bottle down and lifted his eyes to the cashier behind the counter.

“You are Mohsen Gheydari,” the man said.

The attendant flinched. He had never seen the man before. He bobbed his head and smiled with polite caution.

“And you have a family,” the stranger said ominously in stilted, faltering English.

Mohsen froze. He felt an ice-cold chill of dread run down the length of his spine. He stared at the stranger. The man’s eyes burned with an intensity like fanaticism. Mohsen had lived in America for fifteen years. He was an American citizen with a wife at home and two sons who played soccer and attended school.

“Yes…” he said softly.

The strange man smiled – a flash of brilliant white teeth, made all the brighter by the dark olive of his skin.

“I am here to remind you that you are still a son of Iran.”

Mohsen felt his hands begin to tremble, and the blood seemed to drain away from his face. The stranger reached into his coat pocket and laid a photograph down on the counter.

Mohsen Gheydari felt his knees buckle beneath him.

The photograph was an image of an elderly lady and two younger women, perhaps aged in their thirties. All three of the women were on their knees. Standing on either side of them were black uniformed men, their faces concealed by balaclavas so that only their eyes and mouths could be seen. The men were holding automatic weapons to the heads of the cowering women. In the photo, Mohsen could see the old lady’s face was slick with tears of terror.

“Your mother is not well,” the stranger said. “Nor are your two sisters, Mohsen,” the man’s voice lowered and filled with menace. “They wish you would return to Tehran to care for them, but you have made your life here, in the West. This is very bad, but still you can save them from a terrible, terrible death.”

Mohsen stared up into the hard eyes of the stranger. He could feel himself on the verge of weeping. He licked his lips nervously and then impulsively reached out for the man’s hand.

“Please!” he pleaded. His face was wrenched into a rictus of distress. “Do not harm them!”

The stranger pulled his hand free of Mohsen’s grip. “They will be safe, provided you fulfill the task you have been set. Your homeland needs you.”

Mohsen Gheydari nodded his head, a gesture of submission and defeat.

*

“You will hire a fast boat and you will take it offshore tomorrow night. Do you understand this?” the stranger asked.

Mohsen jerked his head. The stranger laid a map out on the counter of the convenience store. The doors were locked, the store closed for the night.

“You will take the boat to this point,” the man stabbed at the blue coastal waters with the tip of his finger. There you will wait. Just before dawn the following morning a freighter will meet with you. It will come from the south. Do you understand this?”

Again, Mohsen nodded his head. The stranger looked satisfied. He folded the map and handed it to Mohsen. He left the photo on the counter.

“Four men will disembark from the freighter. They are our Iranian brothers. You will bring them back here to Miami.”

Mohsen frowned. “Is that all?” he asked incredulously. Somehow he had expected that much more would be demanded of him.

“That is all,” the man said. He smiled then – a warm charming smile that sparkled in his eyes. “Do this, Mohsen, and your mother and sisters will be safe. On this, you have my word.”

Mohsen stared at the man for a moment, then the blaze of the stranger’s eyes compelled him to look away. “Very well,” he said. “Where shall I take these men?”

“Bring them into the city to the place where you hire the boat from… but do not speak to them, Mohsen. Do not utter a word or even look at them unless they first speak to you. It is best if you do not see their faces, or befriend them. They are soldiers of Allah.”

*

The four men came down the side of the freighter’s rusted hull, swinging from a rope ladder as the ship rolled gently in the offshore swell. Mohsen conned the speedboat closer. The water foamed white as the big outboard engines growled. One by one the men leaped aboard the boat. The last man had a canvas bag slung over his shoulders. When all the men were safely aboard, Mohsen opened the throttles and the speedboat lifted up onto its plane and dashed away into the dawn.

“Slow down,” the Instructor from the desert camp growled. “Bring no attention to us.”

Mohsen obeyed. He stood at the wheel of the boat, his legs braced against the rolling ocean swells and nudged the lever to ease power to the engines. The sleek hull dropped back down into the rolling crests and the Instructor grunted.