For all that I got lucky. I landed on my feet on soft grass. I went down into a crouch and pressed my back against the fence. Another violent rent of lightning tore the night apart and I saw a small clearing and then a patch of light woods. This wasn’t someone’s back yard. This was some kind of a nature preserve that the developers must have included when the suburb had been built.
I called softly back to Jed and Harrigan, and felt their weight coming onto the fence and then heard them landing on the grass nearby. Harrigan sounded like he was struggling. This was probably more physical activity than he got in a year. It was like taking on an army obstacle course – blindfolded.
I crept forward and found both men a few feet away.
“We’ve got a strip of grass – maybe thirty feet of clear ground – and then there is a fringe of trees,” I explained in a hoarse whisper.
I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated on the sound of the helicopter. It was closer now. The roar of the rotors seemed to be almost above us. I groped in the darkness until I felt Harrigan’s arm and pressed my face close to his.
“I think the helicopter is still on the move.”
There was a pause. “Sounds like it,” Harrigan agreed. “He’s definitely coming back this way. He’s definitely doubled back, or he’s circling,” Harrigan said with absolute confidence. “I think he’s lower now. The wind and the storm must be giving him hell.”
I thought about that for the first time. Up until now, I had only considered the plight of the pilot from a mechanical prospect; the terror of flying a helicopter that had some kind of mechanical fault, and the fear of crashing. Now I factored in the added danger of keeping an ailing helicopter in the air in the teeth of a howling wind and a night sky full of storm clouds and lightning.
Maybe the helicopter’s mechanical problems weren’t as severe as we had first imagined.
Or maybe the pilot was far better at his trade than I had ever considered…
I got to my feet and struck out across the open ground, moving in a bent-over crouch, counting my steps. I had guessed there was about thirty feet of open ground to the tree-line, and after twenty paces I paused and took a breath. Harrigan bumped into my back and then stopped.
“What’s up?” he whispered.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t know. But something other than caution had made me stop. Some instinct perhaps – or some sixth sense. I went perfectly still and my finger curled around the trigger of the Glock. Without turning my head – and without looking away – I reached behind me and pushed Harrigan back. “Down!” I said urgently.
I stared hard into the darkness before me. I knew the trees were somewhere close ahead, but I had also sensed movement. Maybe it was the trees, bending and swaying before the wind – but I didn’t think so. There was something else on the wind – something more than the electricity-charged air of the rising storm.
It was the stench of decay.
My eyes were useless – it was just too damned dark to see anything. I closed them and concentrated.
The wind swirled, and for a moment I could sense and smell nothing other than the heavy perfume of grass and earth. Then the pall of death came again, seeming to rise up from somewhere close ahead of me. I didn’t make a sound. I felt a lump of fear choke the breath out of me, and the Glock felt like a lead weight.
Slowly I reached into my pocket for the lighter with my left hand. The seconds dragged on. The rank, decaying smell seemed to coat the back of my mouth so that I felt myself begin to gag. I opened my eyes and stared directly ahead. I could see nothing. I could sense no movement. I tightened my finger on the trigger of the Glock – and struck the lighter.
The flash of orange glow in the night was like a bright, burning flare. Without my free hand shielding the light, the area ahead of us was thrown into dramatic relief.
I stared fixedly ahead, my gun hand extended, my finger tight on the trigger, and my whole body tensed and coiled, expecting violence. I gritted my teeth.
Nothing.
Nothing at all. The night was empty.
I stared, bewildered.
And then I looked down.
There was a young girl’s body lying in the grass at my feet. She might have been ten, certainly no older. She was wearing a floral dress. She was lying on her back, one arm flung out, the other still clutching the dirty, muddied shape of a stuffed teddy bear. The girl’s face was grey rotting flesh. Her eyes were gone, and the soft alabaster skin of her cheeks was crawling with writhing swarms of maggots. She had been shot once. Through the head. Her hair was crusted stiff with dirt and dried blood. She had been dead for some time.
Rats had gnawed their way through the fabric of her dress and torn the flesh from her abdomen to burrow into her stomach cavity. Ragged swollen entrails lay in the long grass beside her. I felt my stomach heave, and a scalding burn in the back of my throat. I turned to the side and retched.
Sheet lightning jagged across the sky and for an instant everything around us was lit. The trees before us were outlined as stark black shapes below the heavy belly of the storm clouds, and a trick of the sudden light seemed to make the dead girl’s body move.
I took a step back.
Then the night slammed down again, plunging the world around us back into solid darkness.
I reeled away from the body, my hands trembling, and a surge of hysterical relieved laughter leaped into my throat.
“You okay?” Harrigan’s voice from near by lifted anxiously.
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice was shaky. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “There’s a dead girl here. She’s been dead for a while. I…. I thought I saw her move. It scared me shitless.”
There was a rustle of movement from the others, and I heard Jed laugh softly.
I took a deep breath. My mouth was dry, my breathing too quick, and I could feel a flush of warmth beneath the skin of my cheeks from the fright. I cleared my throat. “The trees are just ahead of us,” I muttered. “Let’s go.”
We moved in single file, so close together that I could sense Harrigan’s bulky body right behind me. I moved with high, cautious steps, lifting my feet with exaggerated care and placing them gently back into the grass, like a man walking blindly through a minefield. I doubted the girl’s body was the only one laying nearby – and maybe the next one we stumbled across would rise up and lunge for us.
We reached the tree line and paused.
I felt the tension rise. It was in all of us. I could hear it in Harrigan’s and Jed’s breathing, and in their footsteps as we edged our way through the woods. I could feel it in the brush of Harrigan’s arm against mine, and in the occasional odor of their bodies that carried in the wind – the scent of anxious sweat and strung-out nerves.
Ahead of us, the heavy cloud bank was beginning to lift, and I could see the first hint of moonlight as it shone through shredded tatters of cloud. It was no longer utterly dark and we moved more quickly. There was a dull orange glow of light reflecting from the belly of the clouds that grew brighter and then faded – then brightened once more. I frowned, and kept my eyes on the clouds until we reached the edge of the trees and stood in a tight knot. I was breathing hard, and drenched in sweat. Not the healthy sweat that comes from strenuous exercise – this was the nervous sweat of someone right on the edge of terror. I could feel my shirt sticking to my back.
I turned to Harrigan and Jed and pointed wordlessly at the clouds. The orange glow was like a pulse of distant flickering light.
“Something’s burning,” Jed grunted. “Maybe a building. Maybe a whole street,” he shrugged. “But it’s not nearby. Maybe a mile or two.”
I nodded. It made sense. The glow from burning buildings reflected off the low clouds. But I was at least grateful for the light. It was the first lucky break we’d had.
Then it started to rain.
I felt the first fat drops of it splash against my face, and then an instant later the heavens opened up an
d the rain became a solid downpour – a veil of grey slanting mist that hissed in the trees and soaked us completely.
Ahead of us was another thin strip of long grass and then a suburban street that ran from left to right into the darkness. On the other side of the road was a cluster of one-story neat homes with the dark shapes of abandoned cars on the street and in driveways.
The rain detonated off the blacktop and drummed against the roofs. It crushed down on us like a physical weight and the sky seemed to fill with the boom of thunder that rumbled and rolled across the sky.
I looked up, through the thin canopy of leaves – and then I heard a new, more urgent sound.
The helicopter.
The noise of it was a shrieking assault on the ears.
The helicopter was practically overhead, hanging in the sky. It was swaying from side to side, and the percussive sound as it roared past seemed to undulate as the chopper veered and dipped like flotsam on a storm-tossed angry ocean.
I saw Harrigan’s face. I saw his mouth open. I saw him shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear above the roar of the rotors. Then the shape tilted onto its side, and a brilliant bright shaft of light lanced down from the underbelly of the craft, swaying wickedly like a flashlight in the hands of a drunken man.
I felt Jed grip my arm savagely as the helicopter yawed and spun again, seemingly out of control.
Jed crammed his face next to mine. He pointed.
“The house across the street!” he shouted. “He’s going to crash right into it!”
We stood, transfixed in horror. The helicopter lifted on a gust of wind, and then plunged back down, dropping dangerously low to sagging power lines. Then it seemed to pivot on its axis and fly directly toward the rooftops of the houses. It dropped like a stone, falling at a sharp angle, its bubbled Perspex nose almost in a vertical dive. I felt myself tense. I felt my body bracing itself for the impact – the shattering, explosive collision as the helicopter disappeared into the building and they both went up in a horrific fireball of death and destruction. The searchlight swayed back and forth, lighting up the house like broad daylight. I saw a porch, entwined with twisted green vines. I saw blank, empty windows, like vacant eyes. I saw a Japanese hatchback hunched low on the driveway – and then I saw the dark twisted shape of a man appear in the open doorway, his head turned up to the night sky, his movements jerky and unnatural – everything cast in brilliant white-light.
The man stumbled out onto the porch. The searchlight swung away haphazardly, and then veered back a moment later. I saw the man moving, alert. The man seemed to snarl up at the sky, his expression crazed and vicious. An instant later we were plunged back into darkness as the spotlight moved away. I felt a sudden sense of fear and alarm. The man was undead – of that I was sure – and he wouldn’t be the only ghoul drawn to the rising sound of the helicopter. I tightened my grip on the Glock and took a deep breath. I told myself I had expected this. Finding the helicopter and rescuing the pilot was always going to be a deadly dangerous risk.
But now I wasn’t so sure I was prepared for the reality of fighting off the undead, armed with just a couple of pistols and a crow-bar.
I hunted the darkness, my eyes searching the lawns and driveway for any sign of movement, my sense of alarm and unease rising. The man had disappeared.
But to where? He could be anywhere. He could have gone around to the rear of the house – or he could be shambling his way across the street towards me…
The whine of the helicopter’s engine tore my attention back up into the night sky. The chopper was plunging towards its destruction.
But at the last possible moment, the helicopter seemed to gather itself like a horse about to meet a fence. It lifted, surged. I heard the engine screaming in protest and the helicopter seemed to hang on its tail, maybe just fifty feet in the air. It went over the roof of the house directly across from where we watched, and then disappeared from sight in a wind-whipped cloud of dust and leaves and rain and noise.
I felt Harrigan beside me, his body brushing past my shoulder as he stepped impulsively out from the shelter of the tree line and into the long grass that fringed the road. “Come on!” he said, his voice a ragged hiss. “He’s going down behind that house. We’ve got to get there– fast!”
I reached for him – too late. In an instant, Harrigan was half-way across the street.
Jesus!
I punched Jed in the shoulder. “Come on!” I said. “But keep your eyes peeled, for God’s sake. I saw a zombie come out of the house. It was a man. He could be anywhere.”
We went out into the open night, chasing after Harrigan. The big man seemed to have grown wings, moving like an Olympic sprinter. I scrambled in the long grass and muddy ground and then my feet hit the hard surface of the tarmac and I plunged after him. When I knew I couldn’t catch him in time, I risked everything – including our lives.
“Wait!” I shouted, knowing that single word would be enough to draw the zombie’s unrelenting attention.
Harrigan seemed to freeze in mid-stride. He was standing on the home’s front lawn. His body seemed to cringe – as though shocked by the desperation of my cry. He turned, his expression blank, and yet somehow his tension radiated in the way he held his body.
He was suddenly scared.
I ran on towards him, hunched under the driving onslaught of the rain and with the nylon bag pounding against my back and slowing me like an anchor. I heard Jed right behind me, but I didn’t take my eyes off Harrigan. As I ran I thrust out my arm.
Harrigan must have thought I was pointing at him. I saw his expression transform into one of bewilderment – and then everything seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.
From behind Harrigan, a ghostly grey shape appeared through the driving curtain of rain. It was a drifting, shambling shadow that attacked from behind the black shape of a garden shrub.
The zombie lunged at Harrigan. I saw its face become a twisted mask of rage. I saw its undead eyes widen. I saw the dark blood that streaked the ghoul’s shirt, and the fingers – seized into claws as it struck.
Obliterated by the sound of the storm, and the desperate whine of the helicopter’s rotors, the zombie’s attack was silent. Its mouth was open – maybe it was growling. Maybe there was a blood-curdling roar in the back of its throat. I heard nothing of it – and I was certain Harrigan would hear nothing either.
I wasn’t pointing as I ran. I had the Glock in my hand, arm extended, and I squeezed the trigger once. The retort of the shot was a snapping punch of sound that split the night for an instant. I fired as I ran. I fired with my arm swaying, and my hand trembling, and in hindsight, I was lucky I didn’t shoot Harrigan accidentally.
The zombie lunged from behind Harrigan and to his left. My shot went wide. I heard the sound of breaking glass and figured I had probably just killed a window. I fired again and missed again. Harrigan glared at me in horrified alarm.
“Behind you!” I gasped. My breath sawed in my throat.
The zombie lunged. It was like a scene from a horror film; a huge hulking ethereal shape appearing from out of the darkened grey mist of the storm, snarling with rage at an innocent man’s unprotected back.
There was nothing more I could do except run. I didn’t dare fire again.
I saw the instant my words registered. I saw the flash of recognition and alarm in Harrigan’s eyes. I saw him turn, spinning on his heel in the slick muddy grass, and the menacing shape of the crow-bar suddenly seem to become an extension of his arm. He spun like a dancer; incredibly lithe for such a big man, hunching instinctively as he pirouetted, so that the zombie lunged at the place he had been standing just an instant before. It clawed into empty air, and Harrigan rose to full height again in one fluid move, thrusting up from his legs and using his momentum and his bulk to swing all of his weight behind the arc of the crow-bar.
The sound was dreadful – something I will never forget. It was the sickening sound of bone shattering, and
the meaty slap as the heavy metal crow-bar claw buried itself into the zombie’s spine. The ghoul cried out but did not fall. It was thrown forward by the force of the blow. It took three staggering steps and the crow-bar was torn from Harrigan’s hand. Then the ghoul turned and hissed at Harrigan. The big man flinched. The ghoul lunged for him again. Harrigan swayed his head aside, like a boxer ducking inside a jab, and then he lost his footing in the grass and fell backwards into the mud.
By then Jed and I were across the street. Jed snapped his wrist and his Glock seemed to appear miraculously in his hand. Jed didn’t wait. He fired a shot from just a few feet that tore into the ghoul’s chest and sent it staggering backwards on the lawn. The sound of the bullet seemed to echo off the low clouds. Jed fired again, this time taking a hundredth of a second to aim. I saw the bullet tear into the ghoul’s heart, and Jed’s arm flung high by the recoil of the weapon. The zombie spun in a tight circle, its arms flailing like it was on fire – but it didn’t go down. I stared on in rising terror. The ghoul turned on Jed and lunged towards him.
Jed fired a third shot from so close that the muzzle-flash of the weapon seemed to reach out and touch the undead. The bullet smashed through the zombie’s eye socket and splattered us with flesh and thick ooze. The ghoul was flung backwards, falling into the long grass.
It didn’t move again.
Jed stood over the body. He was breathing raggedly. I saw him wipe the rain from his eyes and scrape his hands down the side of his face. His fingers were trembling. He stared at me for long seconds of disbelief, and I stared back. Then he took an almighty swing with his leg and kicked the heavy shape in the ribs. The corpse was rolled onto its side, and Jed crouched down in the grass and retrieved the crow-bar.
Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse Page 3
