Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Ryan, Nicholas

  Harrigan got to his feet slowly, moving like a man entranced. He turned so that he was facing back down the road, and he stood, rooted to the ground, and raised one big beefy hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the glare of sunlight.

  I realized the enormous danger an instant too late – one single second of carelessness that I could never get back.

  Two shots rang out, clear as bells in the still morning air, the sound of each one separated by no more than a breath. The first bullet zinged off the roof of the car in a jagged blade of sparks. The second shot struck Harrigan in the temple, an inch above his ear. The contents of his skull blew out through the side of his head in a pink cloud of blood. He dropped like a stone, dead on the grassy lawn even before I could reach him.

  “No!” I shouted. Harrigan’s body hit the ground and the ruined shattered remains of his head lolled to face me. There was blood everywhere and his features were no longer recognizable. His jaw hung loose, his skull collapsed. “God, no!”

  I knelt in the long grass staring down at Harrigan’s body. I reached for his hand. It was heavy and still warm. I wrapped my fingers around his, and I felt a sudden fierce inferno of fury burn through my soul. The anger came like a fire-storm – a blaze of hatred and vehemence unlike anything I had ever known.

  Rage blinded me. I groped for a gun. The Glock was in the grass beside Harrigan’s body. I snatched at it, and above the rising storm of my anger, I heard myself screaming.

  I got to my feet, the gun clenched tightly in both fists, and fired at the house across the street, blazing gunfire and crying out in anger. The gun slammed back in my hand and the air seemed to shake with the snap of each shot. Tears welled in my eyes and stung like sweat. I fired again and again until suddenly my legs were taken from under me in a tackle that punched up beneath my ribs and slammed me hard on my back to the ground.

  Jed’s face was twisted in anger, pressed right above mine, the weight of him driving the wind from my lungs. “Enough!” he spat. “We’ve got to get inside the house!”

  He shook me. He grabbed the front of my shirt and smacked the back of my head into the ground. “Understand?”

  The fight went out of me, replaced by something cold and hollow – something that gnawed like acid in my guts. I blinked away tears. Jed rolled off me and I sat up, despairing and desolate, and looked about me numbly.

  “You’ll have to carry Walker,” I said, but the words were flat and listless. “It will take too long dragging him on the blanket.”

  Jed rubbed his chin and his eyes got hard.

  “Leave him,” he said. “That’s what he wants anyhow. Leave him a gun and take the girl.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “Harrigan is dead. Walker we are going to save.”

  Jed scrabbled close and his words were harsh and brutal in my ear. “He’s as good as dead already, fucker! He just hasn’t stopped breathing yet. Leave him here.”

  “I said no,” I glared back at him.

  Jed’s expression transformed slowly, darkening with insolent defiance. His eyes narrowed to vicious little slits, but not enough to hide the malevolence that lurked there in the shadows of his mind.

  I felt my fingers tightening around the Glock. I felt the cold ice in my veins begin to harden.

  The moment hung on a knife-edge.

  And then there was a roar in the distance – a wailing, keening sound, prehistoric and primeval that shredded the tension, and replaced it with something even more primitive – the inherent instinct for survival.

  The undead had reached the gentle rise in the road. They came sweeping across the crest in a wall of dark seething death, lured towards us by the insatiable thirst for blood, driven to frenzy by the scent of Harrigan’s murdered body and the furious roar of echoing gunfire.

  I grabbed for the girl’s wrist and pulled her close against me. Jed scrambled to his haunches. He took hold of Walker’s arm, ready to heave him up and over his back.

  “This will probably kill him,” Jed grunted. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. Jed grunted and struggled until Walker hung like a sack of potatoes across his broad shoulders. He was straining to stay under the cover of the car. His jaw was clenched, the muscles in his chest and biceps bulging under the enormous strain. Then he started to run.

  I waited until Jed was half-way across the lawn, holding the girl like she was on a tether, while she squirmed and pulled against me in a desperate panic to flee. As soon as Jed’s feet hit the concrete path that led to the front door, I sprang to my feet and pushed the girl ahead of me, using my body to shield her, carrying the heavy nylon bag in one hand and my Glock in the other.

  I heard a single shot, and I felt my body tense – felt every muscle clench, expecting to be thrown forward by the crushing impact as the bullet slogged into the broad of my back. But it never came. The shot went wide, and the gun fell silent.

  I snatched a glance over my shoulder. The undead were splintering apart, as those that moved more fluidly began to break away from the hunting pack. They were pounding towards us, clawing at the air as if it might speed them on, straining with the mindlessness of a raw thirst for blood.

  I turned and hurled myself through the front door of the house.

  We were standing in a small square living room full of furniture that looked like it had been bought second-hand. There was an armchair and a small television set on a chipped and worn timber table. At either end of the table was a bunch of religious statues. The room was hot and airless. I could smell grime and dirt in the carpets. Jed looked at me and then started to ease Walker from his shoulders.

  “No!” I said. “We’re not staying.”

  “We’re not?”

  “No. Keep moving. Out the back door.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?”

  I didn’t have time for long explanations. “Once they tear Harrigan’s body to shreds, they’ll come looking for us. We need to put space between the body and us. Now move it!”

  We went down a mean narrow hallway. There were plenty of doors on either side, but we didn’t stop. All the doors were hanging open. At the back of the house was an eat-in kitchen that smelled of grease and grime and stale cooking odors. I flung the back door open and went down three wooden steps into the yard. The girl was close behind me. She held the door wide open and Jed came out like a wounded bull, still with Walker hanging from his shoulders, and his face wrenched into a grimace of agony.

  The yard was a riot, overgrown with grass and creeping vines. It was what a garden becomes after years of neglect.

  I went left towards a fence. It was sagging against its upright posts, the palings stained and brittle like a mouthful of old teeth. I kicked out with the flat of my foot and the timbers shattered with a sound like chicken bones.

  “Get through,” I snapped at the girl. She ducked through the gap obediently and turned, ashen faced and shaking. I pulled two more of the palings off with my hands and then went through the gap. I turned back and Jed lowered Walker from his shoulders and I helped him get the big man into the next yard. Walker’s body was unnaturally hot, the heat burning through the fabric of his clothes, and his face was glistening with the perspiration of a man in the grips of fever. I thrust my fingers under his jaw and felt a fluttering pulse that was thin and reedy and uncertain.

  Jed came and slid his big hands under Walker’s armpits and I took up the weight of his legs. Walker groaned and stiffened in pain, but I ignored it. I clamped his ankles together and we carried him like that through long grass and over rock bed gardens to the back fence of the property.

  There was a speedboat in the yard, tied down to a trailer and covered with a grimy canvas tarpaulin that had been daubed with bird droppings and fallen leaves. The fence itself was like something from a farm; a row of treated wooden posts, strung through with thick wire. Beyond the fence I could see the back of another house.

  “There,” I said in a ragged breath. “We need to get him int
o that house.”

  We heaved Walker’s prone body over the fence, and I had to screw down tight on my rising panic, fearing the sight of marauding undead as the seconds dragged inexorably on.

  When we reached the back door we set Walker carefully down.

  The house was low and sprawling with dark cedar siding and insect screens on all the windows. All the windows were dark, curtains drawn. I could see a thick stone chimney rising through the roof. Insects buzzed around my ears and I felt flies crawl across my face. I swatted them away. The heat beat down on my shoulders like a steelyard furnace.

  I glanced at Jed. He drew the Glock from inside the waistband of his jeans and pulled back on the slide.

  “We go in hard and fast,” he said, inflecting the words with a savage snarl. “No mercy. If there’s anyone inside, we shoot to kill and ask questions later.”

  I nodded. I turned quickly to the girl. “Stay here with Walker.”

  Jed took two paces back then launched the heel of his boot at the door, aiming at a place an inch below the old lock. The door exploded inwards, smashed back hard against its hinges, the wood around the handle splintering.

  His momentum carried him in through the door. He disappeared into dark gloom and I leaped into the gap right behind him, Glock drawn. I expected to be overwrought with tension and fear – but I wasn’t. Somehow, something had altered. Somehow, Harrigan’s death had changed me. I was detached, and remote, my gun hand steady, my breathing deep but regular.

  We stepped through a laundry, into a kitchen and then down a short hallway to the living room. The house was silent. Not quiet – not like someone was sleeping.

  It was deadly silent.

  The house looked like it had been extended some time in the past because beyond the central core of rooms that seemed quite orderly, we suddenly stepped into a new hallway with a warren of small rooms branching out from it in unpredictable ways.

  Jed and I checked every room and did it in two minutes flat. The house was empty of life, and empty of dead bodies.

  The house was abandoned, but not in a ransacked, panicked way. It was as if the owners had left on holiday and simply never returned.

  We went back out through the laundry and carried Walker inside. The change in temperature was immediate and dramatic. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler indoors. We carried him through to the biggest bedroom and laid him out on the mattress.

  We had put distance and direction between Harrigan’s body and us, but I sent Jed back through the house to barricade the front and back doors. He came back wincing, clutching at his ribs, a few minutes later.

  “Done,” he said. “They won’t get through the back door. I’ve blocked it with the washing machine, and it weighs a ton. And I put a chest of drawers across the front door.”

  I nodded. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  Walker’s eyes fluttered, his eyelids heavy like he was drifting off to sleep – or maybe worse. I slapped his face with my open hand and shook his shoulder.

  “Leave him!” Jessica said suddenly. She flew at me, and clawed at my arms, but I pushed her aside and then turned on her venomously.

  “Stand right there,” I hissed. “Because you’re next.”

  There must have been something in my voice, or maybe in the cold dangerous way I glared at her. She shrunk away from me, backed into a corner of the bedroom and all the defiance went out of her like a gasp of breath. I turned back to Walker and shook him again. His eyes came open, dull and unfocussed. They searched across the ceiling uncertainly, then settled on my face, leaning over the bed.

  “What’s your name?” I demanded. “Your real name?”

  “Walker,” he said.

  “And you’re Secret Service?”

  He swallowed and then nodded.

  “And who is the girl?”

  “I told you,” he said, his voice straining.

  “Tell me again.”

  There was a long pause, but I didn’t feel he was stalling. I felt like he was summoning the last reserves of his strength. “Jessica Steinman,” Walker said. “She’s the Vice President of America’s daughter. I was assigned to get her out of Washington – to get her to safety.”

  “Where were you flying to?”

  “Pentelle,” Walker said. “Like I told you. There are navy ships off Norfolk. Her father is there, and a couple of the Joint Chiefs.”

  “Where is the President? Where is the rest of the government?”

  “Dead,” Walker said. “There is no government.” He started to shiver. The head wound was seeping fresh blood, soaking through the thin bandage of his shirt. I didn’t know what else was wrong with him. Maybe broken legs. Probably internal injuries. Jed shredded a pillow case into long strips and I bound the rags around Walker’s forehead.

  I snatched a bottle of water from the nylon bag and held it up to his lips. He drank thirstily.

  “The helicopter was flying us to Pentelle,” Walker went on. “It got into trouble.”

  “That’s why it was painted black, right? Because you were carrying the Vice President’s daughter.”

  Walker nodded – a barely perceptible movement of his head. “There was no pilot charging thousands of dollars for flights, was there?”

  “No,” Walker admitted. “We were one of the last flights out of the Capitol. It was done in secrecy. I was under direct orders from the Vice President to get his daughter to safety. It was covert.”

  “And the pilot?”

  “Secret Service,” Walker said.

  “You shot him.”

  Walker’s eyes suddenly went wide with surprise. He said nothing.

  I leaned over him and stared into his eyes. “I checked the pilot’s body when we reached the helicopter,” I said, and my voice took on an edge of menace. “It was the first thing I did, Walker. He was dead in his harness. He had a bullet hole in his chest. I felt it.”

  Walker held my gaze for a few more seconds, and then nodded. “When the chopper crashed, the first thing I did was check Jessica, and then the pilot. He was already dead,” Walker said. “So I shot him through the back of the seat.”

  “Why?” I was incredulous.

  “Blood,” Walker said. “There were zombies coming from the houses on the hill. We could see them backlit by the fires. I knew my only hope of getting Jessica to safety would be if I used the pilot’s dead body to distract them. So I shot him. Then I saw you and the others come running from one of the houses. I hit myself on the head with the butt of the gun and threw it aside.”

  I looked up at Jed and saw my surprise and shock reflected in his expression. I stared back down at Walker.

  “That’s why you came alert so quickly when we reached you in the wreckage. You were faking.”

  He nodded.

  “And that’s why you were shouting,” I suddenly realized. “When we pulled you from the helicopter you were shouting about your daughter.”

  Walker nodded again. “Jessica was unconscious. I knew when she came too, she would need to know the cover story.”

  “The story about her being your daughter.”

  Walker nodded.

  I sat back again and stared up at the ceiling, then glanced malevolently over my shoulder at Jessica Steinman. “And you were in on this? You played along every inch of the way.”

  She said nothing. I took a deep breath.

  Walker coughed weakly and bloody spittle trickled from the corner of his mouth. I suddenly didn’t care.

  “And the story about your wife?” I asked through a rising sense of outrage. “The story about your poor wife being trapped in your house by undead. Was that fake too? Were the tears faked, Walker?”

  He nodded. “I made it up,” he said. “All of it.”

  For some ridiculous, illogical reason, this betrayal enraged me more than any other deception. Perhaps it was because Jed and Harrigan and I had all lost precious loved ones. The pain was real and raw for us – and this Secret Service assa
ssin had cheapened their deaths with his deceit.

  Like I said, it made no logical sense – but the sudden hatred that overwhelmed me was so intense, I felt my hands bunch into angry fists.

  I pressed my face close to his until just a few inches separated us. I glared at him hatefully. “I hope you die, you bastard,” I whispered.

  I got up from the bed and turned to Jessica Steinman. “Come with me,” I snapped.

  I took her out into the kitchen. I wanted her away from Walker. She followed me like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. I pressed her up against a wall and stood over her, my arms folded, simmering with a poisonous cocktail of emotions.

  Jed drifted into the room casually but kept his distance. The girl stared up into my face, her enormous dark eyes like twin pools of fear and despair.

  “What happened just before the helicopter crashed?” I demanded.

  She frowned, like she didn’t understand the question. “The helicopter was spinning out of control,” she said softly. “There was smoke in the cabin. The pilot was screaming at me to hold on to something.”

  “And when it hit the ground – did the pilot die instantly?”

  Jessica shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was knocked out. I don’t remember anything until the moment I saw your face leaning over me.”

  I backed away a pace and lowered the intensity of my voice. “Are you really Vice President Steinman’s daughter?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “And is he really on a warship off the coast?”

  She nodded again. “He came back with the fleet from the Middle East,” she said. “He had been on a diplomatic mission to Afghanistan and Iraq through most of June.”

  “And you stayed in Washington? Why didn’t you go with him? I see the President’s kids on the television all the time travelling on Air Force One. Why did you stay behind?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I had studies, and I was helping my step-mother with a fundraiser for returned veterans…”

  “Your mother?”

  “Step mother,” Jessica corrected me pointedly. “She’s dead. She died when the Capitol was overrun.”

  “I’m sorry.”