Manel Loureiro - The Wrath of the Just

“Is everything ready?” Hong asked Lieutenant Kim. The stern-faced soldier nodded as he climbed up the tree where the colonel was scanning the town through binoculars.

“At daybreak, we’ll enter over there,” Hong said, pointing to a section of the Wall near the refinery.

Fewer Undead were gathered at that section of the Wall due to the pools of water from the swamp and the refinery. Even so, a couple thousand monsters swarmed the area. Half were in such a pitiful state that the colonel doubted they could go more than fifty paces without falling on their faces. The rest, however, were still active and very dangerous.

“The explosive charges are in place, Comrade Colonel,” Kim said quietly, pulling out a small pad to take notes. “The patrols reported very few guards on the Wall.”

“Strange,” Hong mused. He’d assumed they’d have to take out a lot of guards around the town, but so far they’d only seen a few.

Suddenly the staccato of gunfire sounded in the distance to the right of them. The sound of gunfire grew louder, and then an explosion shook the air, followed by three more in rapid succession. On the far side of town, several fires glowed on the horizon.

At first, Colonel Hong thought they’d been discovered. But the shots sounded far away. Nothing broke the silence of their damp, smelly corner of the swamp.

“What’s happening, sir?” Kim looked confused.

“I have no idea, but I don’t like it,” Hong replied, startled. Fighting was going on inside the town, but he didn’t know who was fighting or why.

A more powerful explosion lit up the sky in a giant flash.

“That explosion was inside the Wall, Colonel!” Kim whispered excitedly.

The Undead ambled off toward the shooting. Some took a couple of steps and collapsed, but those in better shape moved along at a steady pace.

“I saw it,” said Hong. He had a terrible hunch that someone else was attacking the town. Someone was getting the jump on them. Could it be the Russians? The Chinese? A European imperialist country? If we found Gulfport, so could they.

Horrified, the colonel realized someone might cheat him out of his success when he was so close. He had to strike first.

“Kim! Get everyone ready. Rush to that section of the Wall. We’re going in now.”

“Now?” Kim asked. “But, sir, entering an unfamiliar town at night—”

“If we don’t attack now, it’ll be too late!” Hong yelled, and scurried down the tree. He knew the risks. What else can I do? The Politburo might accept a failed mission, but they’d have my head if another power seized the town from right under my nose.

As the colonel climbed into his tank, his troops fired bombs into a section of the Wall, sending up a muffled explosion. Chunks of concrete and twisted metal flew in every direction. Hundreds of pieces of red-hot iron shot at least fifteen hundred feet over the fence enclosing the refinery. One piece hit a huge storage tank that contained thousands of gallons of refined fuel, piercing the tank’s steel and anodized aluminum lining as if it were butter. In a heartbeat, a second explosion rocked the air, engulfing everything within a five-hundred-foot radius in a gigantic fireball.

The fireball didn’t reach the North Korean army, but the shock wave rocked the tanks and uprooted the trees they were hiding behind. The Undead twisted and turned in a macabre dance, wrapped in flames.

Now we’ve lost the element of surprise, Hong thought. We’ll have to rely on our combat skills.

“Forward, comrades!” he yelled into the radio. “For our glorious country!”

Their tanks thundered across open ground toward the Wall and through the breach. Minutes later, the first Undead showed up. With no one to stop them, hundreds of Undead filtered into the compound in a relentless drip. The last inhabited city in the United States was about to fall.

It took us only ten minutes to make our way, unopposed, through the double gates in the Wall and into the city compound.

At the Wall, a couple of terrified militiamen ran off when they saw us. Two helots scaled the Wall from the roof of the truck and got the outer gate open in less than a minute. The tank at the rear of the convoy kept the Undead from gaining access to the town.

After closing the outer gate, the helots tried to open the inner gate.

“Open it, for fuck’s sake!” Mendoza shouted. We heard shooting inside the ghetto. Every minute meant dozens of lives lost.

“We can’t!” yelled one of the helots. “The guards destroyed the controls!”

Mendoza let fly a string of curses. He knew charging the gates wouldn’t do any good. They were built to withstand a tremendous impact.

“We gotta blow it open,” he said, resigned. “We’ve only got a few plastic explosives.”

“If you’re gonna do it, do it now!” Prit urged, visibly worried.

I was worried too. Lucia was somewhere in the middle of that inferno.

Mendoza barked orders, and two helots wedged a small package of C4 into the door’s huge hinges. They ran back toward us, unwinding a thin wire behind them. Once they reached our position, they connected a detonator cord and let fly.

The bombs exploded with a dazzling flash, visible for miles. The hinges flew off in pieces. The shattered door staggered like a drunken giant, then fell inside the perimeter of the Wall with a deep groan, sending up a dense cloud of dust.

“How’d you know the door would fall in?” I asked the triggerman, a kid way too young to be fighting.

“I didn’t,” he said with a shrug.

I sighed, discouraged. The helots had courage and determination, but their experience and training were nil. I hoped they wouldn’t be put to too big a test.

Our convoy drove full speed into the city. The scene was devastating. Houses were burning and sidewalks were littered with dozens of bodies. In the shadows, we spotted groups of people fleeing from us, terrified we were Greene’s men.

Mendoza muttered, “Look what those fucking pendejos did.”

We drove on. A group of militiamen came around a corner. They stared at us for a moment, wondering who the hell we were and where we’d come from. We answered their questions with a hail of bullets. A few survivors fled, but we took out most of them.

“Prit! There!” I shouted as the truck lurched dangerously over a mound of blackened remains.

We entered what had been the central plaza in Bluefont. Flames consumed all the houses on the north side. On the south side, a sea of gleaming copper shells in the road marked the site of some horrific shooting. In the midst of those shells lay two bodies. Someone was kneeling between them—someone I knew well.

I bolted out of the truck before it came to a complete stop and limped as fast as I could toward her. Lucia’s expression changed the moment she saw me. She jumped up and ran toward me with the wildest joy I’d ever seen on a human face.

Suddenly I froze, then backed up what seemed like a thousand miles, even though it was just a few feet. “Honey, stay back!” I held up my hand to stop her.

Lucia stopped short, confused. “What’s wrong?” She took a step toward me, her arms wide. “You’re alive! Thank God!”

“Don’t take another step, please.” The words stuck in my throat. “I’m infected. I have TSJ. These open cuts could infect you too.”

Lucia looked at me for what seemed like an eternity. Very slowly, she walked over and took my hand. The world disappeared. It was just the two of us. No flames or screams or gunfire.

“I can’t touch you,” I stammered. “I can’t kiss you; I can’t hold you. I’m alive only because of—”

Lucia pressed a finger to my lips. She looked at me with the tenderest expression I’d ever seen, a mixture of love and commitment. I got weak in the knees. She didn’t say a word as she wrapped her arms around my neck and brought her face inches from mine.