Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America (9 page)

“It’s the home port for five aircraft carriers, just as many cruisers, seven submarines and more than twenty guided missile destroyers. And that’s just the main combat vessels.”

“It’s impressive,” I admitted. “Were all these warships employed during the blockade of Florida?”

The Petty Officer stopped suddenly and turned to face me. He was scowling, as though I had asked a sensitive question. We were standing outside a building that looked much like an office block. “The Vice Admiral’s office is on the fourth floor,” the man said instead. “Someone will meet you inside the front doors. They will escort you the rest of the way.”

I frowned. “He’s not on a ship?”

“No. He’s in his office.”

I was somehow disappointed. I had expected to find the man standing on the bridge of a huge aircraft carrier with binoculars slung around his neck.

I went through the glass-fronted doors.

Another Petty Officer looked up from behind his desk in the foyer. He set down his pen and came striding across the polished floor. “Culver?”

“Yes.”

“You’re late.”

“I know.”

“The Vice Admiral has been waiting for you.”

“I know.”

The man’s expression became almost sympathetic. He took my credentials and looked them over carefully, then handed them back to me with a sigh. “Brace yourself,” he muttered ominously.

We rode the elevator in silence.

On the fourth floor the Petty Officer knocked on a door at the end of the corridor.

“Come!”

The man pushed open the door for me and backed away.

I stood on the threshold of an office that was smaller than I had expected. The walls were lined with framed photographs and bookcases. There was a map of old America on one wall and a battered leather chair in a corner. There were shelves of naval memorabilia and a window that offered a view of murky grey warships far in the distance. A desk that looked like an antique dominated the floor space. It had ornate legs and a wide polished timber surface. It was covered with papers and the edges were scattered with small silver frames and a miniature model of an aircraft carrier.

It was gloomy in the room. The drapes had been partly drawn across the window. The air smelled of expensive cigar smoke.

The man behind the desk stood up.

Vice Admiral Walter Greenville threw down the papers in his hands and glared at me. He was of average height, maybe in his late fifties or early sixties. Beneath the uniform he looked like he still worked out. He had grey hair, parted neatly on one side and a ruddy complexion. His eyes were deeply set behind silver-rimmed spectacles and overhung by a heavy brow. He looked me over carefully and seemed unimpressed. “You’re late.”

“Sorry… sir,” I said. “I got held up at the main gates.”

The Vice Admiral grunted. We didn’t shake hands. He dropped back down into his seat and gestured for me to sit down. There was a straight-backed chair across the desk. I sat down and waited.

The Vice Admiral went back to reading his reports.

I sat in awkward silence for exactly six minutes – the precise amount of time I was late in arriving for the interview. Finally the Vice Admiral picked up a pen from his desk and signed the papers in his hand with a flourish. He snatched off his glasses and stared across the desk at me.

“I agreed to give you thirty minutes for this interview,” Walter Greenville said. He had a deep rumbling voice – the voice of a man who was accustomed to authority. “You wasted six of those minutes by arriving late, and making me wait. I have taken another six of those minutes making
you
wait.” He leaned forward and reached for one of the silver frames at the edge of his desk. He turned it around and I saw it was a small clock. “You have eighteen minutes left.”

I nodded, and reached for my notebook. I had planned to ask this man about his background. He had graduated from the US Naval Academy and had enjoyed a distinguished career. Now I only had time left for questions about the zombie apocalypse.

“You were overall commander of the naval blockade along the Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coast when the zombie infection first began to spread,” I began. “Could you tell me how you went about organizing an operation of that size?”

Greenville swayed back in his chair. He rested one hand on his hip and rubbed at his chin with the other hand.

“It wasn’t anywhere as difficult as people might have assumed,” The Vice Admiral explained. “The blockade operated under the name ‘Operation Vulcan’. It was our mission to create an iron-tight blockade of the waterways along the east coast and the Gulf to prohibit the possibility of infected victims making it offshore in pleasure craft or light aircraft.”

“And you say that was easy?”

“No,” the Vice Admiral corrected me. “I said it wasn’t anywhere as difficult as some observers might have imagined.”

“Why?”

Greenville shifted his weight in his chair. The soft leather squeaked. He had a file on his desk. He held it up for me to see and then set it down again.

“In 2008 we conducted a similar operation. It was called ‘Operation Brimstone’. It was a Joint Task Force Exercise, known as JTFEX 08-4. It commenced in July of that year of the Eastern US Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida.”

“You practiced a blockade against the possibility of a zombie infection as far back as 2008?” I was shocked, and a rush of outraged and alarmed questions bubbled to my lips. I found it incredible that the government had been aware of the possibility of a zombie-like infection for so many years and kept it quiet from the nation.

“No!” The Vice Admiral slammed his hand down on the table like he was crushing something. ‘“Operation Brimstone’ was a multinational US naval exercise that included British, French, Brazilian and Italian naval forces as part of a proposed plan by the Bush administration to conduct a blockade against… ironically… Iran.”

“Iran?”

The Vice Admiral nodded. “At the time there was a plan to blockade that country, and we conducted the ‘Operation Brimstone’ exercise to drill and train for operations in shallow coastal waters such as the Persian Gulf and the Straight of Hormuz.”

I sat back. I felt disoriented. The Vice Admiral was staring at me, his features fixed into a stone-like expression. “So… the training exercise is relevant because you actually drilled for a similar event in the same waters?”

“That’s correct,” Greenville said. “In 2008 we drilled with the
USS Theodore Roosevelt
and its Carrier Strike Group Two. The same aircraft carrier operated as part of the blockade against the zombie infection. We also had a second Carrier Strike Group built around the
USS Harry S. Truman,
which operated in the Gulf of Mexico. Both aircraft carriers were supported by Aegis class cruisers, as well as destroyers and several frigates.”

“What did each component contribute to the blockade?” I asked curiously. “I mean I can understand the aircraft carriers, I guess. You needed the aircraft. But what about the cruisers and the smaller craft? How did the whole operation work?”

The Vice Admiral planted his hands on the desk and pushed his chair back. He got to his feet and stepped towards the map of old America he had on his wall. It was a large map broken into two parts – one showing the eastern coastline in particular detail. He swept his hand over Florida.

“Imagine three rings,” the Vice Admiral said,” and drew a circle with the tip of his finger like the outer atmosphere of a planet. “That’s where the carriers were stationed. Here, and here,” he pointed at a spot in the Atlantic and then at another place in the Gulf, up near the Panhandle. “Inside that circle was another, closer to the coastline. That’s where the Aegis class cruisers were stationed. Those warships have radar systems that can track hundreds of air and surface targets simultaneously. We used them as our eyes and ears, supplemented by AWAC aircraft that were launched from the aircraft carriers. Every air and surface movement along the coastline was monitored and investigated.”

“By the fighter planes aboard the carriers?”

The Vice Admiral nodded. “Sometimes,” he said. “And sometimes they were picked up by the vessels we had operating inside the inner ring – the one closest to the shore. That’s where the frigates and destroyers were on active patrol.”

I stood back from the map thoughtfully. It seemed as though the blockade had been comprehensive. But had it been effective?

I turned to the Vice Admiral. “Were there many incidents?” I asked tactfully.

Greenville made a kind of pouting expression with his lips, like something was suddenly distasteful.

“The first few weeks of the outbreak were a real test for us, both in terms of light aircraft traffic and sea traffic,” Greenville explained. “It was decided to destroy the A1A causeway to isolate the mainland from Key West, and then we routed all aircraft to the Naval Air Station on the island. The carriers were flying air combat patrols around the clock, and every aircraft was treated as hostile. It was chaos – the Naval Air Station at Key West was never set up for that kind of heavy traffic – but every aircraft had to land there for clearance. Any plane that refused was shot down.”

There was a moment of heavy silence. “Was there?”

“Was there what?” the Vice Admiral wanted me to spell the question out. I did – delicately.

“Was there any light commercial aircraft that were shot from the sky by your fighters because they refused to land at Key West for clearance?”

“Two,” Greenville said. “Both aircraft were intercepted by fighters launched from the flight deck of
USS Theodore Roosevelt
and terminated.”

Another long heavy silence.

“And were there any incidents on the water? I know Florida has a huge recreational boating fleet. There must have been hundreds of thousands of people trying to escape the apocalypse in speed boats.”

The Vice Admiral nodded. “We had several incidents in the Gulf, but most of the issues were along the east coast. And not only from within Florida. One pleasure craft off the coast of Georgia had to be sunk when it refused to yield to a destroyer that had been dispatched to intercept it.”

“How did you manage all of that ocean traffic?” I shook my head incredulously. I could visualize thousands of small boats in the waters off Florida, racing out to sea, packed with frantic survivors trying to flee the terror.

“Each and every boat was intercepted and boarded,” the Vice Admiral assured me. “No boat was permitted to pass through the inner-most circle of our blockade without being cleared by our inspection teams.”

“And you were able to enforce that?”

He nodded. “As I said, the first few weeks were intense. After that the air and sea traffic along the east coast and into the Gulf all but ceased.” He shrugged his shoulders. “By then, no one was left alive.”

I frowned, looked at the map again, and then down at my notebook. I had pages of scribbled notes that would have to be deciphered after the interview ended. “Just going back a step,” I puzzled. “What happened to the boats that refused to yield to the blockading frigates and destroyers? You said you shot two planes down. There must have been at least as many incidents with boats – probably a lot more.”

Greenville nodded. “A
lot
more,” he agreed, and there was emphasis in his words. “And it was an altogether more dangerous situation for us. When a plane would not detour to Key West, we were able to prosecute an attack from a safe distance with the fighters. But when a boat refused to give way to the frigates, we had the choice of either firing at the vessel or somehow forcing it to stop.”

“So you opened fire?”

Greenville shook his head. “We didn’t want to do that. We knew a lot of those boats would be filled with good people in terrible fear for their lives.”

“So you risked the boarding parties lives? Surely there must have been some concern that at least some of the fleeing boats carried people who might be infected.”

“We used patrol boat drones,” The Vice Admiral said.

I flinched. “Pardon?”

Greenville smiled bleakly. “Patrol boat drones,” he said again. “At the outbreak of the zombie infection it was still considered experimental technology – that’s why you haven’t heard of them in operation before. But the Navy had developed a system where small boats – almost any small boat – could be operated like a drone aircraft. They were guided by a remote-control system.”

The Vice Admiral went back to his desk. I went back to my chair. Greenville reached out for the scale model of the aircraft carrier and plucked it up into his hand.

“Imagine this model is a patrol boat,” The Vice Admiral said, turning the little ship over in his hands,” and imagine this clock is an aircraft carrier, or even a cruiser.”

I nodded. The Vice Admiral set the framed clock in the middle of the desk and put the tiny model beside it. “The unmanned boat drone is designed to leave the vessel it is protecting and attack an enemy threat. The idea is to have a swarm of these unmanned drones close to the key vessel. When a threat appears several of the drones will swarm towards the enemy, encircling it and keeping it well away from the cruiser or carrier they are protecting.”