Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (7 page)

But I didn’t ask…

“You were appointed SAFCUR, and as such, you were the man responsible for fortifying and defending the Danvers Defense Line. Correct?”

He nodded. “Correct.”

“I’m interested to know how you went about that, especially in those early weeks when the zombie hordes were rampaging through the southern states,” I said. “Was there a sense of panic, or confusion? How did you pull the necessary armed forces together to man such a long line of fortifications?”

Horsham turned his head a little and I got the sense that he was glancing at the map of Old America. He sighed.

“The military response was incredibly professional and organized,” General Horsham said. “The biggest issue we had was dealing with the spread of civilian panic. Roads were choked with traffic all the way through Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri… so logistically there were difficulties getting our forces on the ground,” he admitted. “Initially we were able to man the trenches with National Guard troops, and almost the entire 82
nd
Airborne Division.”

“Almost?”

Horsham smiled thinly. I think he sensed right then that I had no idea exactly what an entire airborne division constituted.

“It was only the third or fourth time since the Second World War that nearly the entire 82
nd
Airborne was in the air with the majority of its equipment,” he explained. “A force so vast that it had to be airlifted into combat by around one hundred and fifty Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III’s.”

He fell silent for a moment, and I began to appreciate the enormous logistics of the operation.

“The 82
nd
Airborne Division has been called America’s fire brigade – they’re the guys we call on in an emergency. They’re based out of Fort Bragg… and that made them perfect. Bragg was on the southern side of the containment line, and when the Danvers Defense Line was initially approved, the Secretary of Defense argued long and hard to make Bragg part of the defense. It did no good. So the 82
nd
was re-deployed further north, and into Tennessee. But as you can see, having these guys so close to the conflict made their deployment a no-brainer.”

I nodded. I had read accounts of heavy equipment being left behind as the Division was re-deployed. Horsham saw it differently.

“We didn’t abandon any equipment,” he said pointedly. “We simply left the Air Defense Artillery and the 319
th
Airborne Field artillery behind. The plan was to pick up that equipment once the operation moved into the ‘Conquest’ phase.”

I scribbled quickly. General Horsham was opening up, and I sensed my best tactic was to stay quiet and let the man talk. I nodded encouragingly, and my pen raced across the page.

“We flew everything out of Pope Air Force Base, dispersing the 504
th
Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 505
th
along the Tennessee perimeter line, and the 325
th
into North Carolina. The 307
th
Engineer Battalion was sent to Memphis – the western tip of the line – to begin bridge demolition work. Their efforts were supported by the Air Force.”

“Were the engineers the only troops sent to Memphis?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We used the old Millington Naval Air Station as a staging ground when the Defensive Line began to take shape and we were funneling more troops into the trenches,” Horsham explained. “Twenty odd years ago Millington was a major military installation but it was downsized. When we moved in it was housing a smaller Personnel Center for the Navy, but it still retained most of its original facilities, and the old runway was still there. The runway had been transferred to civilian use. We took it back.”

“Did you feel prepared for the approaching conflict?”

The General paused and rubbed his chin. “We had a lot of men, but it wasn’t nearly enough,” he confessed. “And abandoning equipment, and aircraft goes against the grain,” he grumbled. “But we needed to deploy with great speed. Leaving Bragg and Pope in the dead zone was militarily stupid, in my opinion. If the Danvers Defense Line had been given into the hands of someone with a true appreciation of the military considerations, my guess is that it would have been drawn up differently.”

I sensed some friction, and like any good journalist, I tried to pick the scab off the General’s wound. “So you weren’t a fan of Richard Danvers? That must have caused difficulties, considering you were appointed SAFCUR.”

Horsham’s expression became frosty. His posture stiffened. He stared at me for long silent seconds and I could sense him bristling with a barely concealed flash of temper.

“Danvers did the job the President appointed him to do,” Horsham said carefully, like he was reciting these lines from some kind of a prepared, censored media statement. “As SAFCUR, I operated with the restrictions I was handed. They weren’t of my making – they were mine to make what I could with.”

I smiled wryly. “Spoken like a politician,” I said.

The General didn’t share my smile. He tensed. “No,” he said, and thrust one of his fingers at me. “Spoken like a career soldier who is accustomed to dealing with the idiotic decisions of politicians and bureaucrats.”

More silence. The interview had taken a confrontational turn and I tried to steer it back on course, back to aspects that were more comfortable for the General in the hope that he would once again be forthcoming.

“Sir, you’ve had an extremely distinguished career. You’ve seen action and led men in every major theater of operations for many years. How was the zombie war different to other military conflicts, in terms of attitude?”

“Attitude?”

“Yes. In terms of morale?”

Horsham hesitated and his broad face creased into a series of frowns. He stared towards the ceiling for a moment.

“I guess the closest I can figure would be to compare it to ‘Desert Shield’ and the defense of Saudi Arabia back in ’90-’91,” he said after a long moment. “From a purely operational point of view, both conflicts were the same – that period where we hastily assembled the men and equipment necessary to construct a cohesive defensive line. In every other aspect,” Horsham assured me with a steely gaze, “the zombie war was unlike anything I have ever encountered before.”

It was the kind of comment that deserved a significant moment of silence, so I kept my mouth shut and made notes. I flipped over to a new page.

“You were SAFCUR I,” I began, suddenly finding myself looking for a delicate way to pose the question I wanted to ask. “And yet, despite the success of ‘Operation Containment’ under your leadership, later in the war, another General was appointed to lead ‘Operation Conquest’, the second phase. Can you tell me why? Did you fall out of favor with Washington?”

General Horsham cut across the question brusquely, waving his big hand in the air like he was swatting away my words.

“Horseshit,” he said, his voice like gravel. I sensed it was a question he had been asked privately more than once, and that it was an issue that irritated him.

“Son, the military isn’t full of the same ego-driven characters that populate Capital Hill,” he said. His voice leveled out, losing some of its sting. He glanced around him and his eyes fastened on the 49ers helmet. I saw a glint come back into the big man’s eyes. The General smiled thinly.

“I was picked to run ‘Operation Containment’ because I have a reputation for playing good defense,” he said, slipping into a football analogy. “My job was to hold the line, and I did that. “But a good team is also made up of a strong offense, and special teams. When we transitioned into ‘Operation Conquest’ and ‘Operation Compress’, the President called on men who had reputations for their offense. Make sense?”

It did. I nodded.

“And when we finally discovered the whole zombie war was initiated by an Iranian terrorist plot, well… the President decided it was time for the special teams to take the field. One man can’t run every play – each task required the leadership of the best man for each individual job.”

“Have you ever actually met ‘the architect’, Richard Danvers?”

“No,” the man’s voice snapped like a whip.

I changed tack again. Interviewing the man was like walking through a thorn bush.

“Was there ever a time during those first few weeks when you were pulling together America’s military resources behind the Danvers Defense Line that you were worried?”

General Raymond Horsham stared at me, and for long seconds he said nothing. The room was deathly silent, and I began to wonder if it was a question he was simply unwilling to answer. Then, slowly, the set features of his face seemed to crumble just a little and I got a brief, haunting glimpse of the man behind the soldier.

“Every night,” he said, his voice lowered to little more than a whisper, but somehow was made more powerful. “Every single night I worried that the infected would spread north and press against the line before we were prepared.”

“Because…?”

“Because we weren’t ready,” he confessed. “We would have been overrun. The scenario haunted me right up until the first major conflict when the undead horde crashed against the line south of Asheville, North Carolina. It was the first time the defense had been tested.”

“The Battle of Four Seasons, right?”

Horsham smiled, a drawing back of the lips that was without warmth or humor. “Hendersonville,” he said. “They called it the city of four seasons. That’s where the name came from,” he shrugged.

“That engagement was the first organized conflict of the zombie war. It must have given you some confidence.”

The General shook his head. “I always had confidence in the men under my command,” he said. “American soldiers are the best trained in the world, and remember, we were fighting on home soil. They were committed and dedicated… and brave. What troubled me was that I was leading them into war when we were under prepared. I didn’t know how broad the front would be. I didn’t know whether we could hurl the undead back. I didn’t know if the tactics would work because we’d never fought such a primitive and unique enemy before.”

I seized on the General’s last comment because it was one aspect that had troubled the military in the frantic weeks leading up to those opening battles. I cocked my head to the side and looked quizzically at Horsham.

“You know, that confuses a lot of people,” I said.

“What?”

“That comment you just made about the enemy being so primitive,” I went on. “General Horsham, the common misconception from commentators when the war first began was that the American Army had an enormous technological advantage.”

Horsham shook his head emphatically. “We did have a huge technological advantage,” he said. “But it was fundamentally useless.” He leaned way back in his chair and then reached into a drawer or a shelf beneath his desk. He tossed a stack of folders onto the polished timber tabletop. They skidded across the surface.

“We have the most advanced weaponry in the world,” the General grumbled. “We have the kind of technology that out thinks, and can out smart every other major military force on the planet. But it’s useless when your enemy has no technology at all. You’re not countering their capabilities.”

I shook my head. I didn’t understand. I went to flip open the cover of the top folder, but the General slapped it closed with a thump of his fist like it was full of state secrets. The sound of his hand was like a hammer. I flinched.

“Those reports are not for you to read,” he barked. “They were merely to indicate the huge amounts of intelligence we were able to generate in the first weeks of the conflict – satellite images and the like. All of it useless.”

I was still shaking my head. “I don’t follow.”

The General sighed. “Smart bombs, missiles… even artillery was no direct match for the undead, because the only way to kill them was to destroy the brain,” he grunted. “Sure, you might get a few kills from missiles or shrapnel, but you’re laying the entire southern part of America to ruin for no real advantage – turning it into the kind of wastelands we saw in World War I between the trenches.” General Horsham made a tight fist with his hand and his words suddenly shook with passion. “This was a dirty war – a close range conflict that we hadn’t fought for a hundred years. There was no remote control killing, no combat fought beyond the horizons… it all came down to our men on the ground with rifles and automatic weapons face-to-face with a relentless, mindless enemy.”

I had filled the rest of my notebook, but I sensed there was more here to be discovered if I could only ask the right questions.

“You mentioned tactics just a few minutes ago,” I said thoughtfully. “Do you mean the tactics you employed leading up to the Battle of Four Seasons?”

The General nodded. “Hendersonville was the location of one of our forts, straddling the I26 south,” he explained. “But further south of that fortification, I also had armored convoys – light mobile units of Humvee’s that were scouting the terrain, and Black Hawks flying constant reconnaissance patrols. They were our whiskers.”

“Whispers?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Whiskers – like a cat. We used them to ‘feel’ for the enemy. At the time we were frantically pulling troops into the defensive line, but I wanted eyes in the dead ground, sensitive to the spread of the infected, and also capable of rescuing any refugees that were fleeing the carnage. The Humvee patrols had strict orders not to engage – they were merely scouts, tasked with rescue. When the zombies began coming into contact with these units, we knew we had run out of time.”