World War Z_ An Oral History of the Zombie War ( PDFDrive )

the road no matter how many people were on it. Mukherjee responded angrily that he had to wait
till it was clear. If we blew it now, not only would we be sending dozens of people hurtling to their
deaths, but we would be trapping thousands on the other side. The voice shot back that the road
would never be clear, that the only thing behind those people was a raging swarm of God knows
how many million zombies. Mukherjee answered that he would blow it when the zombies got here,
and not a second before. He wasn’t about to commit murder no matter what some pissant
lieutenant…
But then Mukherjee stopped in midsentence and looked at something over my head. I whipped
around, and suddenly found myself staring into the face of General Raj-Singh! I don’t know where
he came from, why he was there…to this day no one believes me, not that he wasn’t there, but that
I was. I was inches away from him, from the Tiger of Delhi! I’ve heard that people tend to view
those they respect as appearing physically taller than they actually are. In my mind, he appears as
a virtual giant. Even with his torn uniform, his bloody turban, the patch on his right eye and the
bandage on his nose (one of his men had smashed him in the face to get him on the last chopper out
of Gandhi Park). General Raj-Singh…
[Khan takes a deep breath, his chest filling with pride.]
“Gentlemen,” he began…he called us “Gentlemen” and explained, very carefully, that the road
had to be destroyed immediately. The air force, what was left of it, had its own orders concerning
the closure of all mountain passes. At this moment, a single Shamsher fighter bomber was already
on station above our position. If we found ourselves unable, or unwilling, to accomplish our
mission, then the Jaguar’s pilot was ordered to execute “Shiva’s Wrath.” “Do you know what that
means?” Raj-Singh asked. Maybe he thought I was too young to understand, or maybe he must
have guessed, somehow, that I was Muslim, but even if I’d known absolutely nothing about the
Hindu deity of destruction, everyone in uniform had heard rumors about the “secret” code name
for the use of thermonuclear weapons.
Wouldn’t that have destroyed the pass?
Yes, and half the mountain as well! Instead of a narrow choke point hemmed in by sheer cliff walls,
you would have had little more than a massive, gently sloping ramp. The whole point of destroying
these roads was to create a barrier inaccessible to the living dead, and now some ignorant air
force general with an atomic erection was going to give them the perfect entrance right into the
safe zone!
Mukherjee gulped, not sure of what to do, until the Tiger held out his hand for the detonator.
Ever the hero, he was now willing to accept the burden of mass murderer. The sergeant handed it
over, close to tears. General Raj-Singh thanked him, thanked us both, whispered a prayer, then
pressed his thumbs down on the firing buttons. Nothing happened, he tried again, no response. He
checked the batteries, all the connections, and tried a third time. Nothing. The problem wasn’t the
detonator. Something had gone wrong with the charges that were buried half a kilometer down the
road, set right in the middle of the refugees.
This is the end, I thought, we’re all going to die. All I could think of was getting out of there, far
enough away to maybe avoid the nuclear blast. I still feel guilty about those thoughts, caring only