Survival
Revenge of the Living Dead
Shaun Harbinger
Contents
The Undead Rain Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
The Undead Rain Series
Rain
Storm
Lightning
Wildfire
Survival
1
It was late morning, with the sun beating through the Big Easy’s portholes, when I rolled out of bed feeling like I’d just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
The cabin was bright and hot and smelled distinctly of sweat. I needed to get out of here and get some fresh air before the contents of my stomach—burgers and pasta mixed with a liberal amount of red wine and beer—came spewing out over the bed.
Groaning as a bolt of pain speared my head, I opened the door and stumbled up the stairs to the living area. It was no less bright or warm in here and the smell of greasy burgers and alcohol hung in the air. I pulled open the door to the aft deck and threw myself outside just in time to throw up over the side of the boat.
A couple of minutes later, as I spat the last remnants of acidic bile and bits of burger into the sea, I heard a chuckle floating over the waves. I looked up to see the Lucky Escape anchored off our port side and Sam standing on her foredeck. He wore red swimming trunks and a white shirt printed with large red palm trees. He also wore a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Dude, I told you to slow down last night,” he called. “You were chugging that wine like there was no tomorrow.”
“Well, unfortunately, there is a tomorrow,” I said, “and it has arrived.”
He chuckled again. “Alex, you need to take it easy, man. We’re going ashore later and you need to be on top form.”
“Top form isn’t achievable today,” I told him.
“Well then, you’ll be zombie chow.”
“Thanks for that, Sam.”
“Just telling it like it is, man.” He turned away from the railing and went below deck.
I sank down onto the bench that curved around the bow of the boat and willed my head to stop hurting. It didn’t work. Why had I drunk so much last night?
Deep down, I knew the answer. Since seeing my father and brother at Camp Achilles a month ago, I’d been in a funk that had been difficult to shake. I wasn’t moping around like a moody teenager or anything like that but every now and then, I’d feel so down that I wouldn’t know what to do. Everything seemed hopeless.
Last night, the four of us—Lucy, Tanya, Sam, and myself—had eaten together on the Big Easy and we’d all partaken of a case of wine we’d looted from a shop last week. After the wine had gone to my head, I’d foolishly decided that a few beers would be a good idea and had drunk at least four bottles of ale we’d taken from the same shop as the wine.
I’d been trying to forget, to banish the black dog of depression that had been hanging over for me ever since I’d seen Joe and my dad.
My plan had worked for a couple of hours and I’d spent the evening in a fuzzy cloud of merriment.
But it had only been temporary and now I was paying for it.
Getting gingerly up from the bench, I took a deep breath of salty air and walked through the living area before pushing through the door that led outside to the sun deck. As I’d expected, Lucy was there, lying beneath the beating sun in her yellow bikini with a pair of shades over her eyes. She was lying on a dark blue beach towel that she’d spread over the deck and her long blonde shone in the sun like a golden halo.
She was a work of art and I couldn’t help but appreciate her even in my less-than-optimal state.
“Hey, Alex,” she said, surprising me. I’d thought she might be asleep but her eyes were obviously open behind the sunglasses. “How’s your head?”
“It’s been better,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have had so much wine. Everything is bright and I feel hot.”
“Take your T-shirt off, then. It’s way too warm to be wearing that thing.”
I looked down at the ‘Sail to Your Destiny’ T-shirt I was wearing, aware for the first time that I’d gone to bed fully-dressed. As well as the T-shirt, I was also wearing my jeans. No wonder I was melting.
I took my jeans and socks off but left the T-shirt on. Even though I’d lost a lot of weight lately, I still felt self-conscious every now and then, even around Lucy. Feeling cooler in my boxers, I sat, cross-legged, on the deck next to her. The day was cloudless, the sea calm, and in the distance, I could see the south-east coast of England. A slight breeze cooled the sweat on my face and bare legs.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lucy asked.
“Talk about what?”
“Last night. The last couple of weeks. How you’re feeling?”
I shrugged. “I just keep thinking about my dad and my brother stuck in that camp, believing that the army is going to keep them safe. We’ve seen what happens to the camps once the zombies decide to attack.”
“You asked them to come with us and they refused. There’s nothing else you could have done, Alex.” She sat up and put a hand on my shoulder. “I know this has been bothering you ever since you saw your family but you have to stop beating yourself up about it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But It’ll probably just take some time.”
“Of course it will,” she said softly, squeezing my shoulder. “Now, why don’t you put some music on and we can chill for awhile before we go ashore?”
That sounded like a good idea. I needed some time to recover from last night’s excess before I tackled a food run. I went into the living area and turned the radio on, wincing as Def Leppard blared out of the speakers. Why was everything so loud? Grabbing a pair of sunglasses from the counter, I put them on and retreated to the aft deck, then climbed the ladder up to the bridge where the pulse of the music was still audible but wasn’t so deafening.
Sitting on the pilot’s chair, I leaned my elbows on the instrument panel and put my head in my hands, silently pleading with my headache to go away.
I’d only been there for what seemed like ten minutes before the radio crackled and a voice came through the static.
“This is Echo Six. Does anyone copy? Over.”
I sat up in the seat but didn’t key the radio. This sounded like a military unit calling others in the area. Our past experience with the military had been both good and bad, but the bad had taught me it was best to stay out of their way. So I thought it best not to give away the fact that we were close enough to receive this broadcast from Echo Six.
After a couple of moments, the voice spoke again. “This is Echo Six. Does anyone copy? Over.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall and realised that what I thought had been a ten-minute nap had actually lasted an hour and a half. The headache was becoming duller but now my neck and shoulders felt stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
“This is Echo Six. We require immediate assistance. Is there anybody out there? Over.”
Echo Six wasn’t getting any response to his call for help. His voice, which had seemed calm when he’d begun broadcasting, now held a note of urgency. “Is there anybody out there? Anyone at all?” I heard another voice, someone in the same room as the speaker, say, “
It’s no good, Sarge. No one can hear you. We might as well accept that we’re not getting out of this.”
“This is Echo Six,” the original speaker said into the radio. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.”
I don’t know what it was about that broadcast—maybe the note of panic in the speaker’s voice, maybe the fact that the other person there seemed resigned to his fate—but something made me pick up my own radio and press the Talk button. “Echo Six, I hear you. Over.”
“Oh, thank God! We need immediate assistance. Our vehicle has broken down and we have a number of enemies approaching our position.” He reeled off a set of coordinates that meant nothing to me. I quickly scribbled them down on the notepad next to the radio. “Please,” he added after giving me the coordinates. “We need help.”
I opened the bridge door and leaned out, looking over at the Lucky Escape. Sam and Tanya were both on the sundeck, soaking up the sun. I called over to them. “Hey, someone’s in trouble.”
Tanya turned her head towards me, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, even though she was wearing a pair of large sunglasses that covered most of her face. “We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, Alex. A lot of people are in trouble.”
“No, I mean there’s someone on the radio asking for help.” I seized the notebook and read out the coordinates. “Is that far from here?”
“Up on those cliffs,” Sam said, pointing to the shore. The cliffs were vertical and rose at least three hundred feet from the sea. “There’s no way we’re gonna get up there.”
He was right. Without a helicopter, we weren’t going to get anywhere near Echo Six. The radio squawked again and now the soldier’s voice sounded even more desperate. “If the person I was talking to is still there, please respond. We need your help. Can you hear me? Over.”
I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the Talk button. I didn’t have the heart to tell this guy that there was no way I could help him, that his cry for help was futile. I wondered for a moment if I should tell him we were on our way but a false sense of hope might be just as bad as no hope at all. If I told these soldiers that we were coming to help them, they’d eventually realise it wasn’t true. What if their last moments alive were spent dealing with the crushing knowledge that they’d been lied to?
I pressed the Talk button, then released it again. What should I say? I pressed the button again and then let it go for a second time. I didn’t have the words. I couldn’t tell these people that I wasn’t going to help them.
The soldier’s voice came through the static. He sounded a little calmer. Maybe he was resigned to his fate, as his companion seemed to be. “What’s your name?” he asked calmly.
He knew I was here and that I was hesitating. Each time I’d pressed the Talk button and released it without speaking, he would have heard a telltale click on his end.
“Alex,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat but doing a bad job of it. I was trembling.
“Alex, listen carefully. My name is Sergeant Terry Locke. My team and I are in a broken-down army Land Rover at the coordinates I gave you. We’re armed but the amount of zombies advancing on our position is too great. Our ammunition will soon be depleted. We’re going down, Alex.”
In the background, I could hear gunshots and someone shouting, “Take that, you undead fuckers!”
My grip on the radio tightened; these might be Sergeant Terry Locke’s last words. I didn’t want to hear him and his team get ripped apart by zombies.
“I’m going to tell you something very important, Alex,” Sergeant Locke continued. “There are items in this Land Rover that need to get to Doctor Sarah Ives at Bunker 53. It is vitally important that these items reach her. Do you copy?”
“I…I don’t know where Bunker 53 is,” I told him.
“There’s a map in the vehicle.” He raised his voice as the automatic gunfire around him increased in intensity. “Listen carefully, Alex. These items are more important than any of us. My mission ends here but you need to continue it. The fate of what’s left of the world may depend on it. Over.”
“All right,” I said, determined to help. If I couldn’t save Sergeant Locke, at least I could take these items to the doctor he’d mentioned. “I’ll find a way to get to your vehicle. It may take some time but I’ll do it. Over.”
“There isn’t much time,” he said. “There’s a squad of soldiers on our tail. Now that we’ve broken down, they’ll reach this location fairly soon. They must not be allowed to retrieve the items from the Land Rover. If they do, our efforts were wasted and we will have died for nothing. Over.”
“What do you mean soldiers on your tail? I thought you were soldiers? Over.”
“We are. But we went against our orders and stole these items from Camp Victor. We couldn’t let them continue what they were doing. We tried to stop Operation Dead Ground. Don’t let them get the items back. If Operation Dead Ground continues, it could mean the end of the human race.” I heard a loud crash and a scream. “This is it,” the Sergeant said. “Goodbye, Alex, and good luck. Over and out.”
The channel went dead and the radio transmitted only static.
2
“We have to help them,” I said. The four of us were sitting at the table in the living area of the Big Easy; Lucy next to me, Sam and Tanya opposite us. I had called the meeting and told everyone about the radio transmission from Echo Six. It was now ten minutes since the radio had gone dead.
“Sounds like it’s too late to help them,” Sam said.
“But what about the items in their Land Rover? Sergeant Locke said if they fell into the wrong hands, the human race could be in danger.”
“We have no idea what it is,” Lucy said. “And retrieving it will be dangerous. Haven’t we faced enough danger to last us a lifetime?”
I couldn’t argue with that. Since the outbreak of the virus that had torn our world apart, we’d fought zombies, soldiers, and Patient Zero. We’d risked our lives to get vaccines to military camps, and we’d fought our way inland to a radio station. We’d seen our fair share of trouble but did that mean we were supposed to stop fighting?
After seeing my dad and brother cowering in a survivors camp, I’d made a pledge to not be like them, to stand up and fight against the zombies whenever I had to.
“We can’t just ignore this,” I said. “What if the items in the Land Rover really could destroy everyone? Whatever Operation Dead Ground is, it doesn’t sound good. The clue is in the name. Sergeant Locke and his team were willing to risk court marshall and even death to stop it.”
“Alex is right,” Tanya said. “The Land Rover and whatever’s inside it is sitting just up there on those cliffs. And a group of soldiers—maybe bad soldiers—want to get their hands on it. I’m willing to grab this item before they do and screw up their plans.”
“But what makes you think this situation is survivable?” Lucy asked. “If the Echo Six team got killed by nasties, why do you think we’ll fare any better?”
“They were trapped inside their vehicle,” I told her. “It sounds like their Land Rover broke down and then they suddenly had a swarm of zombies surrounding them. They were immobilised. We won’t have that disadvantage.”
“We can find a car,” Tanya said. “That way, we’ll be able to keep moving while we engage the nasties. We might even be able to lead them away from the Land Rover and then double back when it’s safer.”
“So we’re agreed?” I asked, looking at Lucy. “We’ll do it?”
She shrugged and said flatly, “Sure, why not?” Her heart didn’t seem in it but at least she’d acquiesced.
“So how are we going to get on top of the cliffs?’ I asked, looking at Tanya and Sam for answers. If anyone knew about rock climbing, it was those two. But we didn’t have any climbing gear and even if we did, I couldn’t see myself scaling those cliffs. I’d probably die half way up, either from exhaustion or vertigo.
“We don’t need to climb the cliffs,” Tanya said. “There’s
a village with a harbour a few miles north of here. We get ashore, hotwire a car, and drive to the location the soldier gave you. Simple.”
We all looked at each other. The village was probably going to be infested with zombies; it wasn’t going to be that simple.
“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said.
I couldn’t think of any other way we were going to get to the broken-down Land Rover so I nodded. “Sure, let’s do it.”
Lucy sighed. “Yeah, whatever.”
“You can stay with the boats if you like, Lucy,” Tanya said. “There’s no need for all four of us to go.”
“You can both stay,” Sam suggested. “Tanya and I will handle this.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m coming. I’m the one who answered the call.” I knew this mission was going to be dangerous but I felt that if I didn’t go to the Land Rover personally, as I’d promised Sergeant Locke I would, I’d be letting him and his team down.
“Okay, man,” Sam said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “You can come too.”
“I’ll wait with the boats,” Lucy offered.
“Great,” Sam said. “Let’s head north and find the harbour.”
Five minutes later, I was sitting on the Zodiac with Sam and Tanya. Sam was in the stern, using the outboard motor’s tiller to steer us towards a small harbour in the distance. Tanya was kneeling in the bow, scanning the shoreline through a pair of binoculars.
Sitting on the floor by Sam’s feet was a small box known as a Magpie. Military drones patrolled the coast and they’d take out any vehicle or personnel they detected. The Magpie emitted a signal which told the drones we were friendly.
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