Pappa Zulu – Chapter 43
“In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.”
-Xun Zi
A cold wind was beginning to whip through the building. The large hole in the north-facing facade had seen to that. At this height, on the second story, all the cold northerly winds that were blowing into the valley were focused and funneled into the command building. Graph stood as close as he dared to the edge and watched, letting the seasonal winds push past him and cool him in his dress uniform.
In the next room, the gents were pouring over the Major General’s maps, hoping to gleam something of the man’s larger strategies. Though he was safely tucked away, they knew he still had many elements deployed that could harry their forces in the days and weeks that were to come. He hadn’t exactly left notes, but any indication of what his troops considered to be strong points and safe havens was being assessed.
He took the moment to be by himself before he would need to join them.
What did it for you, Thur? He asked himself, looking out at the peeks and forested hills in the distance. What does it take to make a man turn?
He could picture with little effort what it must have been like, arriving here those many months ago to a land being overrun by monsters. It was no secret why he had established his base of operations here, tucked away in the valley between the major highways and cities. Graph knew from all the records of note that Thur had arrived to find the state in complete disarray.
East and West were already being overrun by the infected, and the major cities to the south were already succumbing due to their positions at the crossroads. To make matters worse, more waves were pushing up from Mexico, the infected having scoured the major cities of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez and moving north in search of more food.
With all points of intersection under siege, he had had no choice but to fall back and create a fortress, a secured presence from which to protect those that were still salvageable and then begin pushing out again. But in that, he knew, the treason had already been borne.
The communiques between himself and Washington attested to the fact that he refused to simply dig in and wait for a cure. In his own words, fortifying and waiting were acts of “defeatism”, the kind of thing one did when they had resigned themselves to defeat. From that, his adventurism only grew, from sending his men and women in uniform out to fight the infected where they now lived, to trying to seek a cure for himself.
And that, Graph knew, had been the last straw. There were others, he knew, that seemed to think that Thur was on the right page, who wanted to follow his lead and adopt a bolder strategy. Hopefully, they would see the error in this soon. One thing the First Wave had not destroyed, contrary to what men like Thur insisted, was the chain of command. If they did intend to win this war outright, order needed to preserved, otherwise they were truly lost…
“Colonel?” a voice called to him from the adjoining room. Graph looked over and spotted the roundtable discussion, Montag standing prominently in the middle. All eyes were now upon him, his private moment now over. “Care to join us, sir?”
“Gladly,” Graph replied, stepping from the aperture in the north wall and heading into the side room to join them. The cool wind was immediately gone, the stifling sense of contained air and the musk of soldiers standing in close quarters. He looked down at the table they were standing around, the large map in the center marked up in various places. Montag’s hands were resting against several points on interest, his fingers tracing the features beneath them.
“Our best intel places the 2nd Battalion’s BCT here,” he said, pointing to Albuquerque. “The city was recently cleared, according to the General’s own records. It has an airport facility, so we can expect air defenses to be put up, and the soldiers have had the run of it for a few weeks, so we can expect them to be dug in. Their supply trains, however, will be compromised if we focus here,” he pointed to Santa Fe. “All our intel points towards this city as their main source of food, fuel and ammunition, since much of their stores were moved here in the last year. Mopping up will require that we hit both cities simultaneously, thus removing the chance of a counter-attack.”
“Sir,” said one of the Battalion commanders. “What about the vaccine we were told about? What’s our intel on that?”
Montag stood up and crossed his hands behind his back. He looked to his left, to where Bracho was standing in the background. A testament to the man’s training, he was even able to disappear in a crowded room. Some of the men looked surprised when he stepped forward.
“My men scoured the basement level, there was no sign of the patient. The only infected person on the premises was dead, and image recognition indicated that it was not him.”
“What’s more,” Montag added. “We have it on good authority that the patient were looking for stands about…” he put his hand to his neck, raised it to the top of his head, “this tall. A head, and nothing more.”
A quiet murmur went through the room. Even amongst hardened soldiers, some things could still be expected to cause disquiet.
“So then…” the same man asked. “If it’s not here, where they could have moved it?”
Montag looked at Graph expectantly. He stepped forward and made himself a place between two Captain’s.
“My conversations with the doctor are proceeding apace. However, he insists he doesn’t know where the General moved it to, just that he had personnel take it with them when the base came under attack.”
“There weren’t any evacuations taking place in the course of our offensive,” Montag added decisively. He leaned forward and placed his hands back on the map. “But our forces did not a number of vehicles moving from this location to the west end of town. What’s more, all resistance has been concentrated in that sector since our ground forces began to roll.” He looked up again, a glint in his eyes. “Which means it’s still here.”
Graph smiled too, though he didn’t share the Colonel’s optimistic appraisal of the situation. And he was not the only one given the question that came next. Another Battalion CO was the one to ask.
“Sir? What if they disposed of it, or it’s just not useable. What then?”
“Then, gentlemen, we had best hope that Doctor Ross is fit for travel.” He looked at Graph again, the message in his eyes coming through quite clearly. Yes, if indeed they found no trace of Pappa Zulu, there orders were quite clear.
Prep the doctor for travel to the capitol. Bring whatever resources and materials that he deems fit and prepare to star over on the vaccine.
As for the rest, well… As Graph had been told many times before by his own commanders, treason could not be tolerated. The war was not just with the infected, but with chaos, panic and disorder itself. Men who disobeyed, men who went rogue and sought their own agendas, they would not be suffered in the company of such pandemonium. If they were to win, no one could be allowed to break their oaths and take matters into their own hands.
Yes, on that, their orders were quite clear. The Mage, as his men called him, could not be allowed to survive this offensive. He would not being coming back to the capitol.
