Austerity (3 page)

Then we heard the rumbling. Coming from the north, I saw a wave of humanity. They were running towards us. Many of them were holding the meat and limbs and other human remains. It is a sight I never wanted to see again in my lifetime.

We opened up with our weapons. We hit that initial first wave of flesh eaters. They went down. Then more of them came. We fire again. They go down. Still more were coming. We started to run out of ammo. They kept coming and coming. Panic hit all of us and we all started running for our lives.

Officer Ryan Hughes, NYPD

I started running and firing behind me. I didn’t look, I just shot blindly. I wanted to get into a tall structure, head to the roof and wait for a rescue. I run south on Madison until I hit 25th street over at Madison Square Park. I look towards the park and see another fucking wave of these flesh eaters. I make a run towards an apartment building in hopes of just getting the fuck off of the street.

I run to the doors. No luck. The residents barricaded themselves inside the building. The flesh eaters where mere feet in front of me. I close my eyes. Suddenly, I hear the barrage of gun fire come from the sky. A Blackhawk wiped out about a hundred of them. A hundred more were still coming at me. The Blackhawk moved directly ahead of me and hovered right over Madison Square Park. It seemed like the copter’s guns were pointed right at my face. I hit the ground. The Blackhawk fires. I thought I had died. When I opened my eyes, the flesh eaters were all cut to pieces. I felt around my body for any wounds. Nothing. I didn’t get hit. And for about ten seconds, I felt safe. Then I heard horrific screaming coming from two blocks away. So I started to run south towards Battery Park.

Frank Nermod, Reporter, Associated Press

I ran up to Time Square. I could feel the flesh eaters coming up behind me. What a fucking mess. When I get to the square, I could see thousands of people running for their lives. Then, out of nowhere, I see two Blackhawks coming up Broadway. They started shooting. They hit civilians. They his flesh eaters. They really didn’t discriminate. I hit the ground. I could hear the bullets flying all around me. I pulled the corpse of a young man over me as a shield. I felt I had seconds to live. Either I was going to be shot, eaten or trampled to death.

After five minutes, the shooting had stopped, the Blackhawks started moving towards the Hudson. I stand up to the sounds of moaning and screaming. The entire square was filled with dead and dying bodies. The flesh eaters where cut down. So were many of the civilians. You could not walk two steps without stepping into human remains.

I walk up to what appeared to be a living being. I lean over. I reach down to see if the person is okay. When I touched the person’s back, he launched up at me. I could see his bloody teeth. It was one of the flesh eaters. I pushed myself away and ran. But I will never forget the sight of those bloody teeth. That image will stay with me until the day I die.

Claudia McHenry, Murray Hill Resident

I lived on the tenth floor of my apartment building. After the attack happened, you could not find anything definitive on TV. The live TV feed as cut and the new reporters in the studios were saying that the riot was being suppressed by the National Guard. However, I could look outside of my window and tell that nothing was being suppressed.

I went on Twitter and began seeing this tweets about the cannibals eating people alive. Tweet after tweet. None of this was on TV. I immediately barricaded myself inside my apartment. I still had running water and about half a pound of dry noodles. I felt that could last me a week. I was not coming out of the house until the situation was under control.

Lt. Roland Gregg, Officer Ft. Lee Police Department

I could see the gun fire, smoke and Blackhawks all over the island. I immediately left my post and went to my house. I got my family and left town. I didn’t give a shit about my job or my pension at that point. I didn’t even care if they came and arrested me for abandoning my post. Frankly, I was only holding on to my job because it was the only way to guarantee that my family could eat. I am glad of what I did and I would do it again. I saved my family’s life.

Warrant Officer Blake Stowe, Blackhawk Pilot, U.S. Army

I was ordered to move right above the Brooklyn Bridge. There was so much chatter on the radio that I really couldn’t understand what was going on. I was just looking and waiting for some definitive order. Until then, I just started looking out on the ground. I began to see a mass of people running across the Brooklyn Bridge towards Brooklyn. That’s when I got the code “Flame! Flame!” over the radio. Flame was the code for fire at will. This was supposed to mean that I had carte blanch to shoot at anything I perceived as a threat. But I all I could see are people. At the time, I had no idea that the people on the ground were in effect, zombie, flesh eaters. I just waited and waited until I got the order. “Shoot those Goddamned motherfuckers now!” I started shooting. I hit everything. I hit flesh eaters. I hit civilians. I hit children. I really don’t know how else I can put it.

Emma Delgado, Resident Brooklyn Heights

I was on Twitter. All of a sudden, I started seeing messages that said, “Get out of Brooklyn now!” I knew something bad had happened in Manhattan. What ever it was, it was spreading into Brooklyn. At the time, I didn’t know it had anything to do with flesh eaters. I just sort of wandered out of my building and looked around. People started running and screaming. So I started running. I had no idea what I was running from. I ran with the pack of people. None of really knew where we were headed. Some of us turn a corner and I saw something that I will take to my grave. I saw a man ripping the face off of a young girl. She was maybe 8 or 9 years old. He ripped off her face until there was nothing but meat. Two big guys ran towards him. Big guido guys. The flesh eater had no fear. He was smaller. When the two gudios grabbed him, the flesh eater ripped the nose off of one of him. That first guy fell to the ground with a big hole in his face. The second guido frozen. The flesh eater jumped on him and started to tear the flesh off of his face. We all ran. I pissed myself. I still don’t know how I made it out of Brooklyn that night,

Martin Sterling, Secret Service Agent, Presidential Detail. Washington D.C.

The President went to the situation room. I was stationed out on the East Lawn. We knew there was a disturbance in New York City and it had spread through to Brooklyn and New Jersey. At that point, there was no fear for the President’s life in Washington D.C. We were more worried about “Fence Jumpers” and perhaps a “Lone Gunman Situation.” However, we had no idea what was coming for us.

Frank Nermod, Reporter, Associated Press

The National Guard had taken over one of the Staten Island Ferries. Civilians started running towards the boat but they would not let any of us on. They didn’t know if we were human or flesh eaters. I showed on of the Guardman my press pass but he said he wasn’t going to let me on. We saw the Guard leave the island. They left all of us to die. That’s when people started jumping into the water. That’s when I jumped into the water. We all just swam for our lives. I am sure no everyone knew how to swim. Those people probably preferred to die that way.

Anson Willis, Hedge Fund Manager, Moon Bridge Capital

We were on the forty-second floor of our building. I called all of the employees into the atrium area. There were about two hundred of us. As a hedge fund manager, my job is to have better information that anyone. So I knew exactly what was going on. None of us were going to be able to leave the building for a while. So I told everyone what was going on and laid down the rules. “They are eating each other alive down there. No one can go down. We have food up here. We will ration it out and stay in this building until I am sure the coast is clear. Absolutely no one is to go below the 38th floor. I will have security positioned on the 38th floor. They are under my direct orders to shoot to kill anyone that comes up from the 37th floor. Call your spouses, call your children. Tell them you love them. We will be here for a while.”

Captain Lisa McQuerrie, Operations Officer, Centcom

When the situation spilled out beyond the island of Manhattan, we knew this went from being a isolated situation to a regional situation. The entire Northeast from Pennsylvania up to New England went into “Enhanced Martial Law.” That meant that all authority is transferred to the U.S. military in those states. We started getting reports of local law enforcement abandoning their posts to be with their families. There were worries that military personal would do the same.

Major General William T. Soal, Operations Commander, U.S. National Guard

I made the direct order that any Guardsman who abandons his post will be shot on sight. I personally made sure that order went down to every unit. I was not going to have the situation deteriorate any further. However, that did not deter some Guardsman for making the wrong decision.

Second Lieutenant Richard Derris, U.S. National Guard

I was in a PC (Personal Carrier) with a dozen Guardsmen when one of them suddenly pointed his weapon at me and fired. I was grazed on the side of my helmet and fell to the ground. A huge fire fight went off in the back. The PC crashed and we were turned over onto our side. I was dazed but not completely knocked out. I crawled out of the vehicle and notice that most of the men were dead. One of them got to their feet and started to run away. I pulled out my sidearm and ordered him to stop. He didn’t. I shot him in the back. He fell to the ground. I ran up to him to see how bad he was hit. I had shot him through the lung and he was spitting blood out of his mouth. He was bad. He asked me to kill him. “Don’t leave me here for the flesh eaters.” He begged. The fucking coward. I show have just walked away. But I was feeling compassionate that day. I took off his helmet, aimed my sidearm at his right temple and fired.

Derrik German, Housekeeper, Darien, Connecticut

I was working on the grounds of the Pierce Estate when I started hearing about the uprising in Manhattan. I was thinking, “Well, it’s about time. People were hungry.” I was being paid in food. Which didn’t bother me because I was so damn hungry. The Pierce family are one of the richest people in the United States. They had all the food they needed. I got a free lunch while I worked. At the end of the week, they basically let me fill up a sack of groceries from their personal storage area. My apartment in Mt. Vernon didn’t have working electricity or running water. I would take the sack of food and barter for clean water, batteries and weed. Anyway, I started listening to the radio while I was working in the basement. The family comes down there and tells me to go upstairs. The head security guy hands me a shotgun and tells me to patrol the outside of the estate. Now, I am a 43 year old black man. I don’t exactly feel comfortable walking around Darien, Connecticut with a shotgun in my hands. He told me not to worry. Well, these people are putting food in my mouth so I don’t argue. I join the dozen or so housekeepers, landscapers and servants with weapons. We all started talking. One of the young people was on the internet and let us all in on what was happening. Fuck! We’re supposed hundreds of thousands of man eating people with a couple of guns. We all thought about leaving. But most of us live in New York. We thought it would be better to stay put in Darien.

Jim (LAST NAME UNKNOWN), Resident, Philadelphia Tent City, “Liberty Town”

I lived in Liberty Town for about four months. We had run out of food for three days when the uprising happened in New York. We heard about the starving people in Central Park resorting to cannibalism. Some of the people who had already lost their mind started running around like mad men. I heard screaming. They started eating some of the sick people. The tent city deteriorated fast. It was as though the desperation turned into madness. I knew then that whatever happened in Central Park would happen here.

Frank Nermod, Reporter, Associated Press

I made it to New Jersey just after sunset. From there, I knew I had to get out of the area quick. I knew my way around the area and knew that the only real reliable mode of transportation are the commercial and military rails. The military railways are heavily guarded. But I was hoping to ride a commercial rail in Greenville. I got lucky and found a ride. I climbed up to the top of a car carrying machine parts south. I checked my smart phone for the latest news on Twitter. That’s when I started reading about flesh eating incidents in Phily, Baltimore, Boston, Upstate New York. A horrible shiver went through me. This is spreading. There will be no place to run. That night I considered suicide. The only thing that stopped me was that I was so tired, I feel asleep right on top of the rail car.

Martin Sterling, Secret Service Agent, Presidential Detail. Washington D.C.

At 23:30 hours of Day Zero, we got our “Code Black.” The President and his family were immediately evacuated via Marine One and sent to Air Force One. I was in one of the chase cars inroute to Joint Base Andrews. I did not know if I would be assigned to join the POTUS on Air Force One. And frankly I didn’t know if I wanted to go with him. I knew I would personally be safe. However, my mother lives in Baltimore and I knew that all major cities were under siege from the flesh eaters. When I got to Joint Base Andrews, I was assigned to protect the President as he boarded Air Force One. Then I was ordered to secure the White House. I really wanted to abandon my post and help my mother. I called her and found out that her neighbor had taken her into his own house.