We no longer say sick and skinny people leaving the park. That next day, after the bonfire, no one came out. But the chants continued. The screaming was intense. They did not let up. Let me tell you something, I have reported from the worst war zones on the planet. And I had never been so scared in my life. In a war zone, you could understand the danger. In that park, we really didn’t know what was going on. This was an unknown fear that froze the blood in my veins.
The stench of the cooking flesh made us realize that we were no longer in an American city or in a protest area. We are in a war zone. Everyone took the safety off their weapons. We were all ready for anything to happen.
After dark, you could sense that the people inside of the park were watching us. I put on the night vision goggles and saw thousands of eyes staring at me. When I patrolled the perimeter of the Park, you could see an endless array of eyes. They were silent. But they were watching. I knew that these people were no longer the scared, hungry masses. In effect, they were the hunters and we were the prey.
It was the morning of DAY ZERO. Of course, none of us knew it would be Day Zero. But we knew about the cannibalism in the park. We knew about the strange behavior. But the overall calm in the park told made us feel that this would be any other day.
I went over to City Hall. The Mayor got his daily briefing about the situation at the current situation at the park. And then we went over to Lincoln Center to meet with neighborhood leaders. The Mayor seemed to be almost resigned to the fact that the situation was out of his hands. He really just wanted to finish his term and have his reputation intact. The thing is, we were all working for food right now. And the Mayor just wanted to keep all the powers that be happy so he could still have his political connections which was the only real access to food, energy, and security.
Day Zero really started off calmly. You could still hear the chanting and the screaming. But we were used to it. We were used to the smell of the cooking flesh. I can’t believe I am saying this but, standing a few thousand feet from eight hundred thousand cannibals started to feel like business as usual. And to be more honest, I was more concerned about getting a new allotment of food for the day. No one really knows about this but Washington was feeding the reporters in return for favorable reports. And I hate to say this, but I would have read off a White House script if that would insure that I got my food.
Well, the lunch truck didn’t show until about 5PM. And when it did, there were only “half rations” available for the press reporters. We knew then that things were getting really, really bad. Not even the government was able to keep a steady flow of food coming.
The sun started to set over the Manhattan skyline and I began to get anxious. I knew that they would start staring at us again. I kept my weapon at the ready. I even told my squad that they should be prepared for something to happen tonight. I just had a feeling that there everything was about to come to a head.
Sunset on Day Zero was 18:20 hours. At that point, I noticed movement away from the center of the park to the outskirts. Unlike the night before, the movement of all the occupants seem to be coordinated. It was all very strange. And extremely disturbing, as I relayed my information, I was wondering what I was supposed to do if thing went bad. My Blackhawk was not armed. Remember, we had no reason to believe that the people in the park were going to be violent. Just a few days ago, they were mostly at the edge of death.
Darkness fell. Everything around us was silent. Then we began to hear the chants. No one had no idea what that meant. But the chant was growing louder and louder. Everyone in that park was chanting the same thing in unison. That set off something in me that was purely instinctual. To me, that was the sound of eight hundred thousand animal growling, preparing to strike.
I got on the radio and said to my squad, “You see anyone come out of those trees, you shoot to kill. I don’t care if you see the face of your own child, you blew their fucking heads off.” The chants grow to a uniform scream. Then silence. All of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.
I was standing behind a police barrier The National Guard were on the frontline, about one hundred feet from the park’s treeline. All of a sudden, I see a mass of humanity emerge from the darkness. Pale white skin. Red eyes. Red mouths. A wall of flesh. They came out of the darkness so fast, everyone was caught by surprise. I heard a hail of machine gun fire. But the sounds of that horrific screaming drowned everything out.
Within ten seconds, the entire park was clear of occupants. They emerged from every direction, right into the Guard frontline. The Guard could not shoot their weapons fast enough. It looked like a mass of ants overrunning the poor souls on the ground. I could not do anything. The Blackhawk had no weapons. I could only watch. And pray.
I may have been the only soul on the Westside of the park with my weapon pointed and ready to fire. We I saw the first sign of flesh, I did not hesitate. I opened up. That’s what saved my life. I emptied my weapon into every living thing in front of me.
I could feel the ground shaking. I knew then that there was only one thing I could do, as a solder, in order to survive. And that was to run. I didn’t need to do the math to realize that I would run out of ammunition before that park ran out of flesh eaters.
After the initial shock of watching so many blood shot eyes and bloody mouths, I ran. I pissed my pants. I shit myself. I run faster than I had ever run in my life. After two blocks of running, I no longer heard machine gun fire. But I did hear screaming. Lots and lots of anguished screaming. It was the sounds of thousands of men being eating alive.
The reports coming in from the Blackhawks were not completely clear. But you really could not put to words what was happening. I was at the operations center in Ft. Lee and we lost our live feeds about twenty seconds after the attack. However, I was able to quickly determine that three things had happen —The Guard had been overrun at the park, thousands of my men were being killed and there was nothing standing between the flesh eaters and the twenty million people who lived within 30 miles of the park. That’s when I ordered the armed Blackhawk attack into Manhattan. I knew we would get some of them. But we would not be able to get all of them. That scope of the situation, frankly, was now officially over my pay grade.
At that point, this became a U.S. Military operation. I didn’t realize it at the time. But this was the first time that the United States military was engaged, in combat and on American soil, since World War 2. The National Guard nor any Law Enforcement Agency could not engage what was essentially 700,000 to 800,000 enemy combatants on American soil.
The order from the Pentagon was to engage the enemy and “Kill at will.” At Centcom, we became the “eye in the sky” for all ground and air forces. This was an extremely tense moment. This operation, remember, was not urban combat in Iraq nor Kabul. This was in Manhattan. We had to find a way to kill several hundred thousand of these monsters with minimum collateral damage.