The zombies swarmed over him, driving George to the ground while Bannon watched on, white-faced with abject helpless horror. For long, gruesome seconds there was just a sound of shrilling triumph, and then the tide of zombies swept on towards the helicopter, leaving the broken body of the soldier like something dreadful that had been washed upon the rocks. George emerged from the clawing, snarling atrocity, his body dismembered, his throat torn open – a pulped bloodied corpse almost beyond recognition.
Bannon leaned out through the helicopter hatch and vomited.
The whine of the helicopter turbines began to rise into a numbing wail of deafening noise. The big rotor blades began to thwack at the air with sudden urgency. Bannon felt the helicopter somehow become buoyant. Paul and John were kneeling just a few yards in front of the open hatch, and the heavy machine gun blazed its fiery breath over their heads as the special forces team made a last defiant stand against the remorseless tide of ghouls.
The fluttering deadly beat of the heavy machine gun dulled Bannon’s senses as the rotting writhing bodies twitched and jerked and bucked as the stream of bullets tore them to pieces.
“Will they ever stop?” Bannon felt the stomach sliding sickness of his dread. He shook his head and swallowed the taste of his own bitter despair.
How could there be so many?
Why hadn’t Chopper Two drawn these undead away?
He dropped down into the grass and ran to where John and Paul were firing with the grim resolve of men who knew death was inevitable. Bannon tugged the spare ammunition magazines from the chest rig and set them down.
He clapped Paul on the back to let him know he was there.
“Fuck off!” Paul turned and snapped. The man’s eyes were bloodshot, his face caked with gore and dirt. His eyes were hard but haunted. “Get out of here, now!” the soldier barked.
Somehow the hail of fire halted the undead for long seconds. The line flung itself against the guns and then recoiled, as if a shudder had run through the masses. They fell back, like a spent wave, then gathered and returned. The sound of the heavy machinegun was an assault on the ears – a remorseless judder of death and destruction, overlaid by the lighter, more sparing rattle of automatic rifle fire as the two surviving soldiers husbanded their ammunition, and made every bullet count.
The undead swept forward yet again, and Bannon saw the surge stumble over the litter of bodies that covered the ground. Many of the corpses lay still and unmoving – shot through the head, but many others lay writhing and growling, trailing shattered limbs and clutching at chest wounds that had torn out through their backs. They crawled and slithered towards the helicopter with the infected madness still blazing fiercely in their enraged eyes.
The range was point blank. Smoke and the gagging stench of death swirled in the air, only to be whipped away by the rotors of the helicopter. The ground beneath the bodies was turned to mud, thick with gore and guts. The grass was beaten flat by the churning surge, and still the zombies came on towards the guns.
Bannon saw Paul snap off three quick shots, the range less than ten yards. Three of the ghouls collapsed, like tenpins bowled over. Two of them were women, dressed in muddied ragged clothes that were brown with dirt and grimy with soot. The women were pressed shoulder to shoulder, and they fell backwards onto the heaped corpses around them, faces destroyed, skulls collapsed. The third was just a child, virulent thick clots of blood gushing from its mouth. It had already been shot – there was a gaping wound in the boy’s side, and one of its arms hung limp and wasted. Paul’s bullet struck the child in the left eye and it was flung round in a macabre dancing pirouette before falling stiff and still into the grass.
Bannon began to back away the few steps towards the open door of the helicopter. The undead tide was relentless, stealing inch after inch of ground against the guns until the writhing wall seemed to hang poised like an avalanche about to crash upon them.
Then, suddenly, Bannon’s eyes caught a flash of brilliant white, wavering on the far edge of the zombie horde. His gaze snapped round and he peered through the wavering smoke, shielding his eyes from the sinking sun with his hand.
The patch of white waved like a flag, like a battle flag on an ancient field, as a rally point for those who fought. The white cloth rippled and ruffled, then swung frantically from side to side.
Sully!
Bannon knew it was Sully, even before he spotted the tall shape of the man that seemed to tower over the milling mass of undead, the shaved head and broad shoulders like a beacon. He ran back to where Paul knelt and pointed.
“Sully!” Bannon shouted. “He’s over there!”
Paul got to his feet, weapon still pressed hard against his shoulder, eye sighted down the barrel at his next target. He fired a short burst, and then tried to look above the gnashing moaning heads of the horde.
“Can’t see him!”
“He’s over there!” Bannon pointed, stabbing with his hand like it was a blade.
“Are you sure?” Paul fired at an undead ghoul that had come running and stumbling across the battlefield of corpses. It was a man. He had been dressed in a business suit. The fabric was torn to shreds, the tie around his neck hung like a noose. His shirt was streaked with dried blood and his head lolled macabrely from the sinew and muscle that held it attached to his neck. The man’s throat had been gored. He ran at Paul with his arms outstretched, fingers seized into claws. Paul waited until the man staggered over the broken disemboweled body of a woman and then he fired. The weapon hammered against his shoulder, empty casings sprayed from the chamber and the roar so close to Bannon was like a hammer beating against a steel drum. The undead man was flung back. He staggered, lost momentum for a moment and then seemed to teeter on ungainly legs. Paul squeezed the trigger again, and the hail of fire obliterated the man’s head so that when he fell, he had been decapitated.
Paul squinted his eyes. He saw it then, like a ship’s sail, pillowed by the gentle breeze, wavering in the distance beyond the haze of smoke and the roaring clamor of noise.
The man frowned, his face a bleak snarl. “Fuck it!” he spat. “We’ll have to go and get him.”
“Fucking what?” Bannon shouted back, his tone horrified. His ears were still ringing from the deafening sound of gunfire. Paul grabbed him by the webbing of his harness and shook him. He thrust his blacked face at Bannon. “I said we’ll have to get him!” he growled in a voice that made it clear there was no choice.
Paul punched John in the shoulder. The soldier turned. Paul pointed, and there was sudden recognition in the other man’s eyes. “We’re going for him,” Paul shouted.
John nodded. Said nothing.
“Can you hold ‘em off for thirty seconds?”
John nodded again, fired a short burst at a writhing figure that was crawling in the grass on her hands and knees towards him. The ghoul’s hair was smoldering and her upper body was blackened charred flesh that hung in stinking flaps from her bones. John pulled a sidearm from the holster strapped to his thigh. He fired a single shot from the handgun and the undead ghoul’s head was flung back. She collapsed in a spreading pool of thick custard-like gore.
John thrust the pistol at Bannon. “M9 Beretta. Point and shoot,” the soldier gruffed. Bannon took the gun. It felt awkward and heavy in his hand.
“This isn’t a last stand,” Paul barked to John. He emptied his magazine into the crowd and reloaded a new one with a slap of his palm. “If we can’t get back, don’t wait for us. Get on the bird and get the fuck out of here.”
The helicopter crew chief traversed the heavy machinegun and ploughed a deep hole in the wall of undead with a withering burst of fire, sweeping the weapon back and forth until everything became shrouded in smoke and the ammunition ran dry. John retreated until he felt the helicopter’s hull against his back, squeezing off short bursts from the hip to hold the horde at bay. There was less than thirty undead now, staggering and slowed by the atrocious damage the special forces team had t
orn through their ranks. They milled amongst the carnage of the field, disabled and debilitated by their shocking wounds. Few had escaped the firefight without hideous injuries. Many were unable to walk. They crawled and writhed in the dirt, flailed and thrashed, but came no closer.
Paul ran.
He ran with his gun held high and sighted, firing into the throng of snarling faces, and close behind him followed Bannon, with the Beretta held stiffly out ahead of him and oily snakes of fearful sweat running down his chest. They climbed over the shapeless barricade that was the dead, scrambling over the slick bloodied grass until suddenly there were no more faces – and there were no more zombies. They were through the remnants of the horde, and standing face-to-face with John Sully.
The big crewman threw down the makeshift flag. He was shirtless, his jeans torn and ragged. His chest was laced with shallow scratches that ran in criss-cross patterns, dribbling trickles of brown thick blood. His face was carved of stone – a set and impassive expression, and there was bitter malevolence blazing behind the peculiar yellow eyes. He glared at the elite special forces soldier, and then turned his simmering gaze to Bannon.
“You didn’t turn back for me,” Sully said, his outrage quivering in his voice.
Bannon threw back his head and sucked in a mouthful of rancid cloying air. “I tried,” he gasped. His breath sawed across his throat. “They thought you were one of the zombies chasing me.”
Paul cut Sully short, glaring at the man with grisly fascination. There was a gaping ragged wound clawed out of the stranger’s throat, shreds of flesh rotting from the gouge, and his skin hung grey and deathly from his body like a shroud. “We’re back now,” Paul snapped.
Bannon’s face was frantic. He gripped Sully’s arm fiercely. “Maddie!” he rasped. “Have you seen her?”
Sully shook his head. His expression was tight and restrained. Something malicious passed like a shadow behind his terrible infected eyes. “No,” he said flatly, his voice coarse and parched. A burnt voice.
Bannon seemed to shrink, deflate. The last breath of hope escaped his drawn lips in a hollow sigh.
Suddenly the world went unnaturally silent, and the relative stillness was an eerie premonition of doom that Paul sensed before he understood.
The soldier turned… and saw everything in a slow motion nightmare.
The helicopter was surrounded by the last of the undead ghouls. They were pressed tightly together.
There was no gunfire – only the rising wail of the zombies and the screaming beat of the helicopter’s massive rotors. John, the last man on the team, was clambering back into the open cargo door of the Black Hawk, thrashing with his legs at the flailing, clawing hands of the undead. The heavy machine gun was silent. The crew chief had a sidearm in his hand, firing into the point-blank faces that snarled at roared with the insanity of their infection. Paul heard John scream, and then the man turned his head and spat into the face of a zombie that had lunged and bitten his leg. The ghoul was like a rabid dog, gnashing its jaws and growling as it worried the man’s thigh with its teeth until a gush of bright red blood spilled down the zombie’s chin. Paul saw John smash his fist at the ghoul’s head… but it was too late.
The first of the ghouls crawled aboard the helicopter just as the wheels of the big bird lifted off the ground. Three more of the undead scrambled into the cargo area. They were hideous, blood-drenched wraiths, snarling and howling as they tore at the crew chief. The man tumbled out through the cargo door and fell a few screaming feet to the ground.
He fell amongst the howling horde of undead.
The crew chief cried out once – the nerve-shredding shriek of a piteous soul suffering the final torture of a gruesome death and then a solitary shot rang out like the peel of a bell.
The helicopter leaped off the ground, rising twenty feet in an instant. It hung there, rotors thrashing the air, and then the tail of the Black Hawk seemed to twitch and swish from side to side. The chopper tilted over and swung away to the east, clipping the tops of the trees as it got clear of the rocky coast.
Paul watched, horrified.
The Black Hawk began a slow leisurely turn, still flying low above the crests of the ocean, quickly shrinking in size. Sunlight winked off the cockpit windshield and fuselage windows. Then suddenly the machine seemed to shudder and rear up, almost in a vertical climb. It hung there, suspended for an instant like a great black bird shot in flight… and then fell back, and plummeted tail-first into the ocean.
For a few brief seconds the sea was churned into a foaming frothing maelstrom as the rotors flogged at the crests. Then the great blades splintered apart and tore the helicopter into pieces.
Bannon stared, appalled.
“Run!” Paul shouted suddenly. He shoved Bannon hard in the middle of his back, pushing him towards the slope where the burning shops and businesses of Grey Stone lined the crest.
Bannon ran, staggering and grunting with every step, his jaw hanging slack as he tried to suck air across his swollen tongue. Sully ran beside him.
Paul shouldered his weapon and followed. At the lip of the gentle rise, he paused suddenly. They had reached the road.
The special forces soldier dropped to his knee. Bannon and Sully went to ground beside him. Bannon was panting. He still had John’s Beretta in his fist. He tucked it inside the waistband of his jeans.
Paul cuffed sweat from his eyes. His face was caked with dirt. He stared hard at the closest buildings, his instincts heightened as though he was trying to sense danger. The smoke was thicker now they had crested the rise. Many of the buildings were smoldering, but he could see nothing still ablaze. All that could be burned had already gone up in flames.
There were a couple of abandoned cars slewed across the blacktop. It was a narrow road. One of the cars had mounted the curb and crashed head-on into a tree. The car was blackened and burned out. The trunk of the tree had shattered on impact and the tree had crashed down, crumpling the roof of the vehicle and effectively barricading the road.
The other vehicle was a red SUV. It was lying on its side like a broken toy in a scatter of smashed glass. There were rubber scorch marks on the bitumen and a scar of dull paint. The body of a dead woman hung suspended from her seat belt in the passenger seat. The woman’s head was turned so that Paul could see her in profile. She had mop of long blonde hair that was daubed in blood. The woman had been dead for some time. Her face was gruesomely bloated, the skin purpling to black as it rotted away.
Beyond the SUV, almost directly across from where they crouched, was a bakery. The shop front was thick plate glass, cracked but intact, as though something heavy had been hurled against the window. There was an open doorway between the windows, hung with long colored streamers that flapped gently in the breeze. The inside of the shop was strewn with overturned tables and chairs and the ransacked debris of panic or maybe conflict. From the corner of his eye Paul saw Bannon was watching him closely. He made an imperceptible shake of his head, and shifted his gaze.
The building next to the bakery was two stories, with just a narrow door on the ground floor, and a row of three windows directly above. There was some kind of lettering painted onto the door – perhaps an accountant, or a lawyer’s office, he guessed. The building was brick. The door looked solid. The building was on a corner. Paul’s eyes scanned the side road, but he could see nothing through the swirls of lingering smoke. He narrowed his eyes and pointed.
“That door,” he muttered, then turned on his knee and glanced back down the slope, staring at the killing ground that was the sporting field.
There were still some undead, staggering aimlessly in the long blood-drenched grass, milling around the pathetic crumpled shape of the crew chief’s remains that lay in shreds at their feet.
The rest of the field was strewn with corpses; broken clumps of rotting flesh that had been shot to the ground in gruesome attitudes of horrible death. Around where the chopper had landed, the grass had been trampled flat an
d it was there that the most bodies lay, heaped upon each other like cords of firewood.
Overhead a dark pall of crows wheeled lazily in the setting sky. Paul watched as one of the ghastly big black birds dropped with a raucous screech and flurry of flapping wings. The bird landed on the body of one of the zombies. The figure lay on its back with its arms flung wide. The crow hopped onto the chest of the corpse and dipped its beak into maggot-riddled flesh.
Paul turned back to Bannon and crushed a finger to his lips.
Silent!
The special forces soldier got stealthily to his feet.
Chapter 3.
Long shadows stretched over the ground as Bannon and Sully crept quietly across the road, following the footsteps of the special forces soldier who led the way. Bannon kept his eyes on the broad of Paul’s back, not daring to glance around, not risking even a breath until they had reached the far side of the blacktop and stood huddled in the shade of the doorway.
Paul narrowed his eyes and stared at the door for a moment. It was solid wood, with a sign for a natural health therapist painted in neat white lettering just above waist height. He tried the handle. The door was locked.
That was a good sign, and bad news.
It was good, because it suggested the interior was secure. Maybe the business had been closed when the zombie infection broke out through the population. Maybe the owner had left town before the infection spread. The bad news was that entry would require the risk of noise.
Paul took his KaBar from the sheath strapped to his thigh and jimmied the point of the brutal knife into the timber adjacent to the lock. He heard the soft splinter of wood. He gave the blade a twist, and shoved against the door with his thigh at the same instant. It swung open several inches on silent hinges.
The soldier let out a strained sigh of relief.
Dead Rage Page 14
