Dead Man Running (59 page)

"I need to talk to the man now," he said.  He smiled.  "I don't care if he is in a meeting in the Oval Office.  Interrupt him.  He needs to hear what I have to say."

Why would anyone make a zombie out of the Cake Boss?
  Manchester Lee kept asking himself that question as he rolled down I95 in one of the Carlo's Bake Shop vans heading south in a caravan.

He had found the Cake Boss, TLC superstar Buddy Valastro, making large cakes featuring human body parts in his shop in downtown
Hoboken
.  Using reverse zombie bombs manufactured in the resistance's newly created
lab
in
Quincy
Massachusetts
, he quickly converted Buddy and his cake wizards to the side of the good. 

They were a bit disappointed –
Manchester
found that recovered zombies were a depressed lot generally – but willing to help end the scourge of Ben Wiley.  After incinerating the unfortunate dead bodies in their kitchens,
Manchester
told Buddy and his crew of his plan.  Enlisting the assistance of his ever present TLC film crew after bombing the zombified technicians to their senses, Buddy began to
prepare
the cakes, the most elaborate of his career.  They were miniature models of Air Force One
, the 1940's propeller
version
flown by FDR to
Tehran
– a fleet of ten, each capable of flight. 

One sat in the rear of the van in which
Manchester
rode.  If he had the sense of smell he could smell the fondant icing, rice crispy treat platform and pound cake airplane frame.  What he could not smell
– even if he still possessed the ability - were
the dozens of reverse bombs secreted inside the plane
's belly
.

Jan Sugerfoot
hung up the phone, felt her belly.  She rubbed her stomach and the child growing inside her responded in kind, gently pushing against the protective walls of the womb.  She felt she knew the child now and he knew her.  She even named him – Alonzo Jesus Sugerfoot.  She spoke to him often and he spoke to her, in his way.

She knew,
now
more than ever, that she could not fail.

Her plan:
On the day of Wiley's flight to
China
, u
se the weapons delivered by her
aunt
to destroy her 'bodyguards' minutes after their first check-in of the day, the 6AM call to Wiley's security center in DC.  Drive to
Harlem
Hospital
where her
zombie
gynecologist Dr. Reuben Carter would perform a cesarean.  Following her recovery her
aunt
would bring enough weapons to blast her out of the hospital and into freedom.  Of course her
aunt
would have to be killed.  No loss there –
surely she had been aware of
little Jannifer
's
abuse
at the hands
of
several men.
  There could not be any loose ends, no threads that Wiley could follow.

Jan knew that she was on her own – there's been no follow-up with Elias Turnbull.  He must have been converted to one of them as she saw his face often on television, one of the most prominent surrogates for the Obama-Wiley
team
.

She had
just
hung up with Carter's scheduling nurse. 
She had successfully postponed her C section unti
l November 27.  The bitch had refused to put Dr. Carter on the line, merely
agreeing
that the later date was well within the baby's optimal birth window.
  She didn't trust that the bitch wasn't giving her so called husband an update on the change.

She had no idea what those zombies were up to, but she decided to hedge her bets.  She dialed her
aunt
's number. 

Aunt
s are allowed in the delivery room, aren't they?

She would be there, armed to the teeth, and ready for anybody looking to fuck with Jan and little Alonzo.

The Carlo's Bake Shop vans drove into the
colossal magnitude of Hanger B deep inside Andrews AFB.  The huge space was jammed with people,
at least a thousand,
gathered for the celebration of presidential air flight. 

As brought to the attention of the base commander
,
General Goldsby Turner
,
by
a
well known flight historian, and reformed zombie, Hunter McLeish, former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the first president to fly in 1912.

With one of the three Air Force One's as a backdrop, the entire base, including all those who supported the AF1 program, were gathered for brief speeches and celebratory cake, as prepared by the world famous Cake Boss himself.

Having off loaded the airplanes, the bakery vans zoomed out of the hanger to park.  Unknown to the participants, the vans would be parked strategically to block all exits, their drivers and assistants armed to prevent base security from getting inside.  That is, if base security was still viable. 
Manchester
's
Vodou
confederates by now had secured the main base command center, effectively white noising any outgoing communications –
Internet,
landline, fiber, sat, or cell.

The cake airplanes were wheeled by Buddy and his
minions
to a prominent place in fro
nt
of the raised platform occupied by Turner, several members of the Air Force and Army command and, of course, Colonel Thomas Jackson, President Obama's personal pilot, and the pilot selected to fly Benjamin Wiley to China and Russia. 

The smiles were wide on that platform – zombies all, except for Turner.  How Wiley and his
undead army
missed him,
Manchester
couldn't figure.  It didn't matter, though.  Pretty soon they would all not be zombies.

Oh, it would kill Turner, the reverse bomb.  As
Manchester
had observed before, the tiny nanobots did not discriminate
,
they attacked everything that looked like a human.  Real humans were killed, changed to zombies,
and
then converted back to human by unexploded bots lingering in their bloodstream or in the atmosphere.

The tiny creatures were single minded – they wanted to convert zombie to human.  The fact that they first had to create a zombie in order to fulfill this imperative didn't seem to bother them.

The only humans the nanobots turned up their collective noses at were those they had already converted from zombie to human.

Of course, as a zombie created outside of the
Hidar
universe of magic,
Manchester
was unaffected by it all.  He had enough bots floating around in his dead blood to convert a tiny city of zombies, yet they were unable to bring him life.  If he could feel, he would feel sad about that fact.  Here he was, saving the world but he himself was lost to
permanent
walking
death.

There were no chairs and the crowd fidgeted as Turner, McLeish and
White
House flak
Harper
Jennings gave brief speeches commemorating the occasion.  Their words were less than memorable.  What happened next was slightly more so.

Buddy Valastro, he of the excessive BMI and hair grease, climbed
up
to the platform.  He thanked General Turner for the "honor and privilege" of preparing the commemorative cakes for this event.  He apologized because he had not served his country in the armed forces – his father forced him to take over the lucrative bake shop – but this felt "just like I was serving my country as a member of the US Air Force,
America
's greatest fighting force."

This drew applause from the multitudes, most of whom fought more with rush hour traffic or a cranky
laptop
mouse than
America
's enemies.

"As a special surprise, my bakers have
outfitted these planes for
actual
flight," Buddy announced.

With that, the propellers of each plane fired up and soon the planes, each one controlled by a member of Buddy's team, were using the vast empty space as a runway.  One by one the planes took flight.  To the cheers, claps and hoots of the astounded crowd, the planes circled high above.

"We have one last surprise," the Cake Boss announced.  The crowd turned their smiling faces upward, awaiting their treat.

The bellies of the planes opened and, to the horror of those below, silver globes began raining down on the crowd.  Some of the globes, their nanobot occupants sensing the presence of multitudes of zombies, engaged before hitting the ground.

Of course they tried to escape but most were stopped by the bots before they could even make it to the exits. 
Manchester
, the Cake Boss and his crew watched the transformations unfold – death then life – nearly a thousand times.

After
ward,
enlisting his new army of ex-zombies,
Manchester
assumed
control of the entire base.  It was totally cleansed of zombies and enough reverse bombs were left behind to convert any personnel on leave or off base for any reason.

He met with Turner, his command staff and Jackson.  They were the military – making bombs
to embed in the three versions of Air Force One was
second nature.  The base bomb sweepers had been converted, so detection would not be a problem.  Neither would
be
the Secret Service, which maintained a hand's off attitude toward Air Force One's physical security when the airplanes were on base.

No, they assured Manchester Lee, all would be prepared just as he requested.  "We love our country," Turner intoned.  "We don't want no stinking zombies taking over." 
He looked square
ly
at Manchester Lee. 
His resolute face then broke into a smile.  The smile spread around the table until
Manchester
felt he had landed in a sea of pearls.
 

Air Force One was going down.  He just hoped that
Mira
Hidar
was successful.  Unless she ended the life of
her grandfather
Hamid
, all this may be for naught.

Ben Wiley, Manchester Lee knew, was one determined fellow.  If not dismembered by the exploding plane he would eventually swim to shore. 

If Hamid didn't die Wiley may
yet
realize his terrible vision for the planet.

THIRTY-
F
IVE

GEORGETOWN
WASHINGTON
DC – DECEMBER 2012

Jan Wiley listened as Geathers – HNIC among her captors – made his check-in call to Wiley's command center.

As he hung up the phone she stepped into the library, fiberglass H&K machine gun pointed at his chest.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Your death," she replied.

He smiled another one of those horrible zombie grins.  "You are too late for that," he said,
Brooklyn
accent still prominent.

"Then I'll make you more dead," she said as she pulled the trigger. 
H
e leaped for her but it was too late.  The powerful weapon tattooed across his chest and legs, dropping the creature to the ground.  She then aimed at his head
and kept her finger on the trigger
until his cranium disintegrated.  She was about to turn away from the body when a powerful arm clamped around her neck.

"Must not hurt the child," said Grace Wilhite, Jan's maid.  Jan struggled against the zombie's prodigious strength.  The thing shook her violently until Jan dropped the weapon.  "Must not hurt the child," the
zombie
repeated as the vice like arm increased its pressure on Jan's throat.

Jan fought to stay conscious but she knew she only had moments left before all was lost.  They would carve the child out of her, probably right here, right now.  She would lose her
life, her
baby.

With her strength waning and with many footsteps fast approaching, she managed to reach into her side pocket, retrieve a grenade, arm it with the press
of
a single button, then show it to the 'woman'.

The creature immediately dropped Jan to the floor and backed away.  Before she could
fast walk
out of the room she slammed into a gang of zombies trying to enter. 

Jan tossed the bomb in the direction of the zombie
s
and dove back into the kitchen.