Pandora 2: Death is not an Option

by McCrohan, Richard

  The out-of-control hydroplaning car now started turning again. As it did a complete 360-degree turn, the white-haired zombie was jerked from Mike’s grasp, slamming his head on the top of the door and disappearing into the mayhem outside.

  Bursting out of the pack of zombies, the vehicle was again on the asphalt. Because it was still traveling broadside, the drag of the two bare rims on the pavement flipped the taxi onto its roof. It continued down the road, sparks flying out like a welding torch. It veered right onto the shoulder berm, where it skidded through a sprawling mass of coccoloba shrubs that stopped it just short of landing in the Everglades marshes.

  Linda was watching the entire thing take place with her hands over her mouth.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” she kept repeating, wide-eyed.

  When the taxi crashed into and through the tropical bushes, Sean, Steve, Luke, Malik, and Manny ran down to the smoking, knocking taxicab. Steam was pouring out of the engine compartment, and the tires were still spinning.

  Tommy, Dill, Regina, and Paul aimed their rifles and started shooting at any zombies that were close enough to become trouble.

  The Stryker turned onto Route 75 and continued to smash through the growing mass of zombies. Kyle turned to look behind him, and his jaw dropped. The turnpike on both sides was covered with zombies as far as the eye could see. Eschewing protocol, Kyle yelled down to Kevin, “Step on it!”

  There was only one speaker left on top of the Stryker. The falling zombies had torn the other two loose. One was completely gone, and the other was hanging over the side by its wires. Still, the two played their siren call to the undead.

  Reaching the upside-down taxicab, Sean and Steve tried opening the doors. Three were crumpled shut, but they pried a rear door open. Malik and Regina dragged Carol out. She was dazed but conscious. Luke reached in for Mike. Hanging upside down in his seat, Mike had been knocked unconscious. When Carol was pulled out, they reached in and grabbed Jamal.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” said the feisty soldier. “See to Jack.”

  “I need some help here,” cried Luke.

  Manny got down on his hands and knees and looked in. Mike was still buckled in.

  “I’ll crawl in and unbuckle him,” Manny said, looking at Luke. “You make sure he doesn’t land on his head when the seatbelt disengages.”

  Sean and Steve ran around to the driver’s side. Jack was already unbuckled but couldn’t squeeze out of his window. The roof had caved in more on his side, and the opening was too narrow.

  “I can’t get out,” he called out to the two men.

  Meanwhile, Malik and Jamal had Carol standing and handed her off to Max and Linda, who had just arrived. She was regaining her senses now and was able to walk up to the highway virtually unaided.

  Manny was struggling to unlatch Mike’s seatbelt. It was stuck and wouldn’t budge. Reaching down to his waist, he drew his knife and grabbed the offending strap. As he cut through the nylon, Mike’s unconscious body was finally released. Luke and Manny guided him down. When he was lying on the top cloth of the roof, they grabbed him and hauled him out. Malik ran up, knelt down, and felt his neck.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  The three men gently picked him up and carried him up to the road.

  Steve stood up and said to Jack, “Cover your face.” Stripping his shirt off and wrapping his hands with it, he grabbed the sagging sheet of crumpled safety glass and started pulling the front windshield off.

  As Sean took a step back, he heard the coccoloba bushes rattle. Spinning around, he saw a zombie step out of the shrubs. The plants were six feet high and had hidden the zombie from them. Sean reached down and drew his machete. Freeing himself from the bushes, the zombie started toward Sean. Its milky eyes never left Sean’s face. Opening its mouth, it hissed at him. Black blood hung in long runnels down his chin. As he started raising his bloody hands, Sean took three quick steps toward him and swung the machete, two-handed, with all his might. The gleaming, silver blade swung in an arc and connected with the side of the zombie’s neck. With one mighty sweep, the ghoul’s head was separated from his body, and the decapitated creature collapsed in a heap. Looking out into the swampland, he saw two other zombies headed their way. Sean guessed that they must have chased some of the fleeing refugees into the Everglades. The ruckus of the crashing car drew them back.

  Two ghouls were chest deep in the murky waters. They both had their hands up and were already reaching for their prey. Sean started to walk down to the water’s edge, but one of the zombies disappeared under the surface. The other one didn’t notice and kept right on wading toward shore. It was then that Sean noticed what looked like a couple of logs floating toward the struggling zombie. Suddenly, the two “logs” disappeared beneath the surface, and moments later, with a huge splash, the second zombie disappeared beneath the surface. The water was roiling. At first, the zombie’s head and one arm shot out of the water and back under again. Then a huge, bumpy black tail broke the surface and, slapping the water, disappeared. Ripples spread out across the surface. There was no more movement.

  ‘Gators, Sean thought.

  Turning and climbing back to the car, he saw Steve pull Jack out from the now-empty hole where the windshield once was. Jack stood up and brushed himself off. Looking at his rescuer he said, “Thanks, uh…”

  Sticking his hand out, the man said, “Steve,” with a smile. As they shook, Sean came up and gave Jack a great big hug.

  “Jack,” he said, “oh man, I was so worried.” Sean looked back up the highway and saw Jamal, Carol, and, a now-conscious Michael being cared for.

  “Where’s the rest?” he asked, puzzled.

  Jack looked at him and just shook his head.

  “Dead?” Sean spoke in a whisper.

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “But…what about…Oh my God, Jack. Sue?” gasped Sean. Jack just nodded. “Oh, Mother of God,” cried Sean. “Poor Mike. He must be devastated. How did it happen? How did the zombies get her?”

  “It wasn’t the zombies,” Jack said angrily. “It was Carlos.”

  Sean just looked at him, confused. “Carlos? Carlos killed her?”

  “Yes, he did,” said Jack. “And Travis, and probably Hector too.”

  “Whaaat?”

  Shaking his head, Jack said disgustedly, “Turns out he was probably some kind of a psycho serial killer. You should’ve seen what he did to poor Sue. It was positively inhuman. I wouldn’t doubt that he was probably one of Bouchard’s men and pulled the wool over our eyes.”

  Sean was shaking his head, absolutely dumbfounded.

  “Hey,” called Dill from the highway. “We have to move.”

  Just then, there was a roar as the Stryker burst through the oncoming mass of zombies. Music still blaring, it drove up to the group on the highway, which were just staring up at the hulking, armored carrier. Kyle leaned down from the top of the olive-drab vehicle. “Do you have transportation?” he yelled down to them, trying to be heard over the death-metal din.

  “Not for everyone,” Tommy yelled back.

  “Tell the rest to haul ass and hop aboard the Stryker,” yelled Kyle. “We have to get the hell out of here mucho pronto.”

  The group quickly divided, with some going in the SUV and the rest climbing aboard the armored Stryker. After everyone was helped aboard, the large vehicle surged forward with everybody hanging on for dear life. Right as the zombies reached the SUV and started to pound on the metal and glass, it started up and took off down the highway, following the armored vehicle headed due west.

  The two vehicles drove on for another five miles. At last, the Stryker slowed and then stopped on a clear piece of highway. The SUV pulled up behind it. As the six people in the SUV emerged and walked up to the sound truck, Sgt. O’Rourke popped his head out of the top.

  “Listen,” he said, “we’re getting picked up here and taken back to the base. We are stationed out of MacDill. We’ve been doing this up and do
wn the west coast here, and we’ve been pretty successful. We just didn’t expect this many zombies to be on the east coast. Bad fucking intel, as usual,” he said, looking at the other soldiers. “Anyway, the bird is going to be a little late. Apparently, they lost the truck up in West Palm Beach. So all we have to do is hang tight here, and they’ll pick us up.”

  “Where will they land?” asked Ana.

  “They won’t, ma’am,” Kevin continued. “They’re sending in a Chinook…uh, a really big helicopter. We hook the Stryker up to it, and they carry us away, vehicle and all.”

  Kevin smiled as he saw the reality of the operation dawn on the woman.

  Tommy suddenly stood up atop the roof of the large armored vehicle and looked out to the west, using his hand to shield his eyes. It was late afternoon, and the sun was in the western sky. Reaching into his kit, he pulled out his folding binoculars and gazed out at the highway.

  “Uh, exactly how late are they going to be?”

  18

  The sound-truck strategy was turning out to be a successful idea. Not as easily executed as in Australia, but it still was working out to be a good idea. It was in dense, heavily populated urban areas that the tactic proved to be a little more problematic. Getting hordes of undead to follow a blaring sound truck was not difficult at all. Sometimes, it was too easy. Once you had them all together following you, there needed to be an open space to lead them to—the larger, the better. The problem was that because of urban sprawl, there often wasn’t a large vacant area to take them. Often the only place was either a warehouse district, a large, relatively undeveloped area (as if the urban United States still had any of those), a large shopping mall, or (as no one in government would ever admit to) a poor, depressed area. The idea was not to let the whole city burn down to the ground. If the incendiary missiles could be contained to one zone, then that area could eventually be rebuilt. So obviously, they picked either places that could be rebuilt easily and cheaply with a minimum loss of valuable property and real estate or places that wouldn’t be missed. The rationale was that with fewer people, you need less housing anyway.

  The other problem they found in big cities was lack of a feasible exit strategy. With streets and highways winding in and around each other so frequently, the sound trucks sometimes wound up getting set upon from all directions at once. For the undead, there were no lanes and right of ways, no one-way streets, and no controlled traffic flow. They would just walk right in and converge from all directions at once. That was what happened in West Palm Beach. The truck was supposed to move through the city and out to the west. Unfortunately, it drew so many zombies from so many directions at once that it found itself surrounded and overwhelmed. The Chinook moved in and dropped the anchoring hooks to attach onto the vehicle’s body, but the men inside couldn’t get out of the hatch to secure them. After waiting past its time, the decision was made to turn around and leave the Stryker. Minutes later, the Harriers came in to turn the entire area into hell on earth. That was why the Chinook was late to pick up the sound truck in the Miami area, which was now waiting in Alligator Alley for rescue.

  19

  “What do you see?” Kevin asked Tommy.

  Tommy handed the glasses over to the other sergeant and said, “Take a look. There is another mass of zombies heading toward us from the west.”

  “Zombies on two sides of us,” remarked Max, “and the Everglades and alligators on the other two. We are officially surrounded. What now, General Custer?”

  “We wait,” said Kevin O’Rourke with finality. “What else can we do?”

  “Let’s get the weapons out of the SUV and put them and all the ammo up on top of the Stryker,” Tommy instructed.

  When the preparation was done, they sat down and watched anxiously as the undead from both ends of the highway slowly made their way forward. “Do you think we could turn that damn music off now?” asked Sean. “It’s bad enough waiting around here to be eaten without having to be subjected to that.”

  O’Rourke chuckled, went inside, and turned the CD player off.

  “Thank God,” sighed Ana.

  “I wonder if we could escape into the swamp,” mused Luke.

  Thinking of the two zombies he had seen in the water earlier, Sean stated, “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  Carol started to sniff, so Jack sat next to her and put his arm around her.

  Everyone was quiet, lost in his or her own private thoughts. Without the loud heavy-metal music blaring, it was actually quiet. The crickets and night frogs were starting up. Occasionally, a bird would call out, maybe an owl. If it weren’t for the constant droning sound of the moans from the zombies drawing nearer, it would have been quite peaceful.

  Leaning back, Mike look up at the setting sun. He smiled to himself and said aloud, “I wonder if Jake made it to Antigua.”

  “Hmmm. Yeah.” Sean nodded. “Yeah, he probably did.”

  “They’re probably sitting around right now,” Malik said, “drinking piña coladas and sipping native rum.”

  “What a life.” Jack smirked. Several chuckled at that, and then they got all quiet again.

  As the south Florida sun sank slowly in the western sky, the peach-colored clouds turned a vibrant pink and then a rich purple as the fiery-orange sun lit up the brilliant horizon.

  It really is a beautiful sunset, Mike thought as a tear rolled down his cheek. I wish Sue was here to see it.

  After five minutes, Dill stood and walked to both sides of the highway. Walking back to the group, he said softly, “I think we should all start getting on top of the Stryker now. They’re almost here.”

  As they mounted the armored vehicle, Kevin said, “We could fit about seven people inside. It’s tight quarters, but the fewer outside, the better it’ll be for defense.”

  There was a small, short argument about who would enter the vehicle for safety, but it was decided that Max, Linda, Ana, Luke, Regina, Malik, and Carol would go inside. Malik, Carol, and Regina were furious as they didn’t want to abandon the rest. However, it was already decided.

  The others checked their weapons and stuck ammo into their pockets. Kevin mounted the .50 cal. machine gun. They were as ready as they could ever be in this dire situation.

  The hatch opened again, and Ana stuck her head out, panicked.

  “I can’t do this,” she said in a terrified voice. “I’m claustrophobic. I can’t stay down there. Please!”

  “Okay,” said Sean, pulling her up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I…I just can’t.”

  “Put your weapons’ selectors to single shot. Aim for the head only. We can’t afford to go wasting ammo,” lectured Rube.

  Sean watched as the first zombies came up. These were some of the more newly turned. They were much faster, and some were almost running. Sean focused on a young girl in front of the pack. She had on jean shorts and a blue Lynn University T-shirt. Her left arm had most of the flesh peeled off it from midforearm on down. The white bone showed through, and only two fingers remained. He lifted the M15 and took careful aim. Slowly, he pulled the trigger until the rifle fired, and her head exploded in a corona of fine, red mist. All of the faster zombies were taken out by head shots before they got near the Stryker.

  At last, the main body of zombies closed in from both sides. Sensing a meal, they were more animated, reaching out and grasping the air, snarling and groaning. When they neared the vehicle, Kevin opened up on them from the turret. From this close, the fire was devastating. The ghouls were literally torn apart. Bodies and body parts piled up in heaps. Still, the undead pressed on.

  Steve, realizing he was a horrible shot even at this range, gave his rifle to Tommy and reached for a crowbar he had found in one of the many abandoned cars. Kneeling down for stability, he started smashing the heads of any creatures that grabbed onto the sides to pull themselves up. This seemed to go on forever. Finally, the unmistakable sound of helicopter rotors was heard in the dist
ance.

  “They’re coming!” Kyle yelled joyfully.

  Kevin dropped back inside to get on the radio, and Kyle stepped into the turret to take his place. The noise of rifle and side arm fire mixed with the horrible din of the thousands of zombies. It was deafening. A male zombie with a long, bushy beard matted with dried blood climbed up onto the hood of the Stryker. He somehow found the footholds to stand. Kyle swung the .50 cal. around and fired point-blank. The zombie all but disappeared from the waist up. Wobbling back and forth, the two legs fell back into the crowd. An unusually tall zombie that looked a lot like Chris Bosh grasped the rail of the turret and started to pull himself up. Steve saw this and swung the crowbar hard onto the top of his skull. The zombie stiffened and then fell back. As he did, he yanked the crowbar out of Steve’s hand.

  Rube ran out of ammo for his rifle. Dropping it down on the roof, he drew his side arm and continued shooting, switching his aim from one head to another.

  The Chinook finally hovered overhead. The backwash from the blades made it difficult to stand normally. As they hastily lowered the tethering hooks down, Ana, looking up, stepped to the edge of the roof. Without warning, a rotting hand thrust forward and grasped her ankle. As she spun her head around fearfully, the zombie gave her leg a tug. With a short scream, she fell into the mass of hungry zombies and was covered by their bodies.

  The large helicopter, trying to make up for lost time, was a little too low, and when the tethering hooks lowered all the way, some dropped down almost to the ground.

  “Hook them up to the four U-bolts on the edges of the roof,” yelled Kyle. “Quickly.”

  They succeeded in dragging all the hooks up to the roof except for one. That one had caught on something in the undercarriage and was stuck.

  Manny yanked and yanked but to no avail. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Cover me,” he yelled. “I’m gonna drop down and free the cable.”

  Tommy, Sean, and Dill turned their fire to Manny’s side and started spraying concentrated fire at the zombies on the ground in front of his position. They managed to cut a swath in the crowd of undead, enough for him to jump down. Manny hit the ground and immediately crouched down and reached for the hook. The three shooters on the Stryker’s roof picked off any zombie that stepped forward to reach for Manny.