Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 3): March Read Free Page B

somebody that he had found us.
     
    A few seconds later, The Colonel almost flew into the room.  It was pretty clear she hadn't slept in a while, perhaps not since we made it back from Melbourne.  As our little scout group gathered ourselves together, she told us that she had inspected the missile we had discovered.  A neutron bomb it was, indeed, and though the arming system was still intact, there was no targeting system available, having been stripped when this part of the facility had been abandoned, perhaps twenty or more years ago, by The Colonel's estimate.
     
    Foreman bolted past the doorway, a few others that I vaguely recognised as being newcomers following in his wake, and we heard them marching down the fucking long stairs to the fucking long corridor that led to the grate from which we had seen the fucking large carpet of Dead.  They carried with them a few spare doors, that they had clearly torn from their hinges on this level.  The Colonel told us to get back up to The Think Tank and wait for her in the main computer lab with Smart Girl.  Smart Guy was busy inspecting the interior of the missile silo itself, in an effort to figure out why exactly the lake was just hanging up above the warhead, rather than flooding the entire place.
     
    noon
    We made our way up to the top of the silo, hearing the muttering from Smart Guy as he obliviously wandered out from the catwalk at warhead level.  I could make out little, something about pressure differentials, but nothing that made any sense to me.  I am hardly a scientist.  As it was, Redbeard very nearly trampled him, and would have if not for The Twin yanking him out of the way at the last instant.
     
    The Smart Guy accompanied us to the elevator, and while we awaited the lift's imminent arrival, he mentioned that the only thing he could see that the nuke could be used for was to “sterilise” The Think Tank.  Apocalypse Girl asked him why on earth he would even think of such a thing, to which he replied that the Dead might get in, or The Family might overrun us.  There were no doubt any number of other possible scenarios that might result in such drastic action, but The Smart Guy assured us that he was in no particular hurry to detonate the thing.
     
    Eventually the elevator descended, the doors opening to allow ingress.  The ride up was interminably slow and painful, I just wanted to get the fuck upstairs to the computer labs, in order to see the situation I had created for everybody here.
     
    evening
    Firecracker sat in the main computer lab with The Smart Girl, Sister and Junior joining them.  Apocalypse Girl, Archer and I sat down with them, Apocalypse Girl asking one half of our resident geniuses to bring up the satellite view of the approaching army, and horde of Dead.  The smudge that I had spotted exiting Melbourne the last time I was in this room had actually been the leading edge of what seemed to be every shambling corpse left in the city and surrounding suburbs coming out to meet, greet and eat us.
     
    Firecracker looked at me with a worried expression, asking what, if anything, we could do about the oncoming mobs of approaching trouble.  I shrugged, as I really had no fucking idea at all.  Dropping into a chair, I slouched, Apocalypse Girl seating herself much more delicately beside me.  The Smart Guy told Firecracker and his female counterpart about the limited potential of the warhead.  He even went on to state that it must be activated manually.  Whoever did that was most certainly not going to survive the experience.
     
    The Colonel stormed in at that moment, flatly stating that nobody was going anywhere near that fucking bomb any time soon.  Apocalypse Girl asked just what had brought all of the Dead out of Melbourne, Sister saying that she wasn't sure, but she thought it was the grenade that Redbeard had thrown at the bandits that had been chasing us into the storm-water system.  The noise coupled with the vibrations