Behind These Eyes-Short Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter 2. Brooklyn..

There was mass panic as the news broke, people in the urban centres fleeing for their lives as the infection spread. Roads became congested, trains stopped, airplanes grounded. All measures were taken to try and stop the spread but nothing worked, the stupidity and ignorance of the general populace prevented them from working. People turned to religion for comfort and protection and paid a high price for their beliefs. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for religion because everyone needs something to believe in, whether you worship God, Allah or Buddha, but when "something" is spreading from person to person with horrible consequences and your religion incites you to go sit in a small building huddled shoulder to shoulder with the person next to you is when it becomes a very bad idea.

By the time we were officially told to run for it the military had tried to stop the spread and failed. Travel restrictions were enforced and cordons erected but I don’t think that they fully understood the nature of the beast, hell they didn’t even believe in actual zombies until they came face to face with them, then again neither did I. You could set them on fire, try to drown them, nothing but destroying the brain worked. Once word got out that you had to shoot them in the head things got a little easier but not by much.

Our first major loss to the undead horde came about because my superiors in the military refused to believe in zombies, that the events unfolding was just mass hysteria but we didn’t have enough men or ammunition for the sheer numbers involved. The grand plan was to retake Manhattan Island from the rabid masses for use as an island fortress, a large safe haven that was easily defended. It was surrounded by water on all sides and only a few entrances and exits, it actually made perfect sense it couldn’t easily be assaulted and the depths and currents of the rivers kept a water assault out of the question. We were on the Brooklyn Bridge and our orders were to barricade the bridge and send in fire teams to do a street to street sweep. The teams had lost before they even began quickly becoming overwhelmed and consumed. Thirty minutes after the last radio went silent we knew there was trouble brewing. Forty five minutes after the fire teams had vanished without a trace the zombies shambled up the bridge on ramps and headed for the barricades, our own fire teams part of the shambling horde. The sniper teams opened up at long range and dropped as many as they could but there were too many, we opened fire with everything we had. High command figured this would be a cakewalk and didn’t bother to provide any vehicle or naval support, so we ended up fighting for hours to try and stem the tide, the bridge running red and the bodies piled four or five high but eventually we started running low on ammo. Imagine 20 million zombies all massing at 5 or 6 points, no one in the world has enough ammunition to stop that sort of nonsense.

As a last ditch effort we retreated back to Brooklyn and blew the bridge, finishing off any zombies that managed to survive the blast. Thank god for C4, we heard over the radio nobody else was having much luck either, blowing their assets not long after us. Once word finally got to high command about what had happened they knew we were all in deep shit without a spoon to dog with and still they didn’t learn. I don’t know if it was arrogance or ignorance on the part of everyone in charge but it seemed that nobody wanted to believe what was happening or maybe they had George Bush Syndrome – they sat around with their fingers in their ears refusing to listen to what anyone was telling them and making snap decisions with only half the facts. Either way it led to our second biggest loss, the massacre of Battery Park. Most of the survivors you meet will try to tell you it was the "Battle of Battery Park", however this is technically incorrect as there was no actual fighting, just lots of dying.

This was the military’s second attempt at retaking Manhattan Island. Luckily I had kept all my equipment and heard the orders filter out from the commanding officers. I imagine no one could quite believe what they were hearing, I couldn’t but orders are orders. Their brilliant idea was to erect barriers walling off a large section of the park then set up camp using the soldiers on the inside of the barrier as bait and simply wait for the zombies to arrive. Once plenty of zombies turned up for the show or meal depending on how you look at it, then simply use navy destroyers to shell them from offshore. I don’t know how the hell they thought this idea would work any better than the last one. I witnessed the whole thing from New Jersey, having deserted not long after the first disaster. I was making my way south towards Florida, no one could survive a New York winter without proper shelter and proper shelter meant zombies clawing at the walls. I watched from a hill hidden by a copse of fruit trees as the helicopters lifted the gigantic concrete blocks into place one by one. I didn’t have too much to worry about as the army was more interested in the zombies than deserters and I doubt they could keep track of everyone lost during the battles anyway.

Once everything was sealed off the navy landed a small team of marines in to the "secure zone" that appeared to be well supplied. It worked spectacularly, everything going off without a hitch, no casualties and eventually no survivors. By the time the destroyers were in position in the rivers there were millions of zombies at the walls trying to claw their way through the five inches of concrete the army had placed across the park.

At nine a.m. precisely the gunboats opened fire, the thunderous hundred and twenty millimetre guns pulverising everything outside the walls into a fine red mist. It rained down for almost an hour, infecting everything it touched. The newly infected inside the wall finishing off anyone smart enough to get into their hazmat gear before the barrage occurred. I shook my head in disbelief at the stupidity of it all glad to be leaving all that behind me. Do you blame me for believing I would be better on my own after that?

Once a large portion of the populace was infected airborne infection rates dropped dramatically, zombies not breathing or coughing couldn’t spread the virus by that means. Strangely enough animals weren’t affected by the virus. Once I was walking through a park on the outskirts of a large city, it was dusky evening after a beautiful sunny day and about time for me to find some shelter for the night and I came across a tree full of birds chirping and nesting all for a small audience of zombies silently watching the commotion from the base of the tree.

It was beautiful in its sadness, to see all that was the human race reduced to staring at a bunch of birds hoping for a snack. All of the secondary infection zones were soldiers, survivalists or weekend warriors who thought they could take on the entire mindless horde. Once I deserted from the army, I became one of those people I speak so disdainfully about. I foolishly believed I could survive better alone after the disaster the army turned out to be. I gathered a small pack, plenty of ammo and set off in search of a place to call home, preferably a place without zombies.

In my travels through the wasteland that used to be the United States I came across several home made fortresses, a lone zombie or a small collection of zombies clawing away at the inside of the fortifications. Too many video games and movies the action hero hacks his way through the infected throng, blowing them to bits with grenades as he passes. Too bad nobody was able to warn these poor souls before the televisions and radios went dark that blood contact was enough, they may have taken greater care, adopted different strategies and they may have still been alive today.

I saw far too many of these lonely bastions as I passed from place to place that I finally realised it was going to take a group effort, not a large group mind you but a group none the less. After the massacre in Battery Park it was generally accepted that the best option was to form pockets of resistance and try to retake the United States piece by piece rather than mass a large force and try to sweep the country clean but that effort didn’t get very far either. Once everyone had broken up into small groups a lot of them lost communication with each other and simply vanished into the night.

Things started to degrade very quickly after that news could only be spread by radio or signals and once the batteries went flat and the power finally went out everyone lost communication. The only way to talk to the nearest group was to send a runner, half the time they disappeared never to be seen again, sometimes we were lucky and could put them out of their misery as they shambled towards the walls.

I stumbled upon a small group of these survivors as I was travelling through South Carolina and decided I might settle down for a little while. They had inhabited one of the many old forts left behind by people long past. It had high walls, deep trenches, could be repaired with the local sand and had plenty of room for everyone. There were 30 people there, all rough survival types from all walks of life and that’s also where I met Katherine. After the disaster at battery park the army started to disintegrate, soldiers realising that survival might be easier as a single unit rather than as a large group.  I was eventually a member of one of these pockets and I was also a former soldier. As things broke down and central command was lost things got real bad. No supplies were coming in so we had to head out during the day and forage what we could find, we did manage to grow some food but it wasn’t nearly enough. We heard stories from nearby groups that some people farther north had turned to cannibalism and were raiding the surrounding countryside for "food".