Free Zombie War: An account of the zombie apocalypse that swept across America by Nicholas Ryan Page A

imagined he reserved for journalists and politicians. “The ordnance we dropped were JDAM Mk 84 bombs,” he explained brusquely. “They’re two-thousand pound bombs. We allocated two weapons for each bridge and each of the aircraft carried sixteen bombs. Do the math.”
    I did, and then asked another question quickly.
    “Can you tell me how long the actual procedure took, from start to finish?”
    The Lieutenant Colonel smiled amiably enough. He grabbed at his nose and tugged at it, then stared up into the sky for a moment as if he could hear an aircraft overhead. “We flew the missions over two consecutive days, right at the very outset of the infection,” the man said. “This would have been around the same time the President approved the plan for the Danvers line. We had the job of securing the west flank of the perimeter. Most of the work was done on the first day of the operation. On the following day a three-ship cell went back over the targets to re-strike any bridge still standing.”
    There were over two hundred and twenty bridges along the Mississippi River. Seventy-two accounted for roughly a third of those. I stared at the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and made a face to express my confusion.
    “What happened to the rest of the bridges?” I asked.
    Pike was a tall man, and when he smiled, it reached all the way to his eyes and left little dimples in his cheeks. He was immaculately dressed in uniform, his regulation-length hair neatly parted on the side and just beginning to turn from black to grey. His eyes were bright, and he had that peculiar far-away gaze I had seen in other pilots – the look of a man who was accustomed to staring at far away distances. He had a high forehead and perfect white teeth.
    He smiled again, as if to show them off to me.
    “The smaller bridges were left in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers,” Pike explained. “They were demolished at the same time, and the ferries that operate on the Mississippi as far north as Memphis were all moved to the west bank and placed under the control of elements of the Arkansas and Louisiana National Guard.”
    “Do you know why?” I asked.
    “Why do you think?” The Lieutenant Colonel fixed me with a stare. He folded his arms across his chest.
    “To prevent opportunists from operating the ferries during the outbreak?”
    Pike smiled, and nodded his head. “Exactly,” he said. He glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. “Are we done here?”
    “Not quite,” I said quickly. Pike sighed and shuffled his feet. “Look, I was told this would be quick,” he said, and there was a grumble of aggravation in his voice. He didn’t want to do this interview.
    “Can you tell me what it was like to fly those missions?” I asked. I wanted to know how they were different from other similar tasks the B-52’s might have been called upon to perform in overseas theaters of war.
    The Lieutenant Colonel suddenly became more serious, as though this question was at least deserving of his attention.
    “It was surreal,” he said, like he was confiding something personal. “It was the most poignant mission I have ever been a part of.”
    “Poignant?” I frowned. It was such a powerful word, and so unexpected. “In what way?”
    Pike unfolded his arms and wrung his hands. “It was on home soil,” he said. “That was the first thing. In my life I never thought I would see the day when war came to America… when we were fighting to defend our own nation, rather than protect another.” He shook his head. “It really hit home – flying over those bridges and knowing we were destroying history and infrastructure because war had come to the USA. It still gets me…” his voice trailed away and for a moment he was silent and lost in a rising tide of his own emotions.
    “And in other ways also?” I prodded gently.
    He nodded. “The B-52 is the mother of all killing machines,” he said with a pilot’s passion. “For over fifty years those