by J. L. Bourne
It was not long until we lost useful power to the rotors and Baham began autorotating down to the ground. The altimeter was spinning as if we were coming in for approach. The Gunny and the petty officer were strapped in side by side in the rear of the aircraft. I was strapped in the copilot’s seat. The last thing I remembered was an earsplitting noise and the sound of metal tearing and water and dust flying upward over the chopper and across my face.
I don’t know how long I was out. I was dreaming . . . it was a nice place. I was with Tara, but not at the compound. I was back in time, in the living world. It felt very real. Then came the light taps on my shoulder . . . then the pulling of my sleeve. Someone was waking me up from this feeling of tranquility. I started to feel my head. Intense pain shot through my temples. Every time my heart beat, I felt the blood surge through my head in spikes of pain. My vision was blurry. I was back in the helicopter, away from my fantasy.
Still blurry . . . I looked to my left in the pilot’s seat. I could see Baham looking at me, shaking my shoulder with his right hand, saying something. Why was he pulling on me? I looked back over my shoulder and saw Gunny and the engineer reaching out, as if trying to help me. I seemed to be looking at them through a pool of water. The pain spiked again and my eyes slowly came into focus.
I looked over at Baham. Fear shot through my body as I looked at his chest. A piece of the helicopter’s rotor blade was sticking through his breastplate. He wasn’t dying . . . he was dead. His taps, nudges and what I thought was him talking were not attempts to wake me, but attempts to kill. He was still stuck in his harness and unable reach me. I sat there stunned for a moment before looking back over my shoulders at the Gunny and flight engineer. I was the only living person on this helicopter. Reaching up to my forehead, I felt a sting. A piece of rotor shrapnel had pierced my flight helmet and was stuck in my head. I didn’t know how deep. I just knew that I was still alive and had cognitive function.
I reached down for my carbine so that I could take out the rest of the crew and safely exfiltrate this tomb. When I tried to yank the carbine up to my shoulder, I saw that the barrel had been bent at almost a ninety-degree angle and was caught inside the flight controls at my feet. Cursing, I threw the weapon on the deck and looked around the chopper for anything I could use. The Gunny’s MP5 was on the floor behind my seat.
I took out my knife and used it to snag the sling to bring the weapon close enough so that I could grab it. Charging the weapon, I first aimed at Baham. His snarling teeth and sagging old skin were enhanced by his current health status. He didn’t know me anymore; neither did the men in the back. I was going to save the Gunny for last.
I pulled the weapon up and Baham began slapping the suppressor around, as if somehow he knew what was coming. I wasted him. One second later I shot the engineer in the head. His arms went from Frankenstein to limp as if he had never been reanimated. I said some words for all of them and then paid final respects to the Gunny by shooting him in the forehead. I hoped he would have done the same for me. Looking out the window, I could tell that we had been here for at least a couple of hours, as the sun was already nearly at its apex in the day sky. We were in the middle of some sort of waist-deep small pond. A tinge of guilt stabbed me in the heart when I realized Baham had probably thought our best chance of survival was to put it down here. I had paid him back by quick-acting lead poisoning.
It was a good place to crash-land as the portside door was off its rail, exposing the aircraft to the outside world. There were numerous undead curiously circling the pond, somehow repelled by the water. I carefully surveyed the 360-degree area and noticed a gap in them. I grabbed my gear and whatever else I could carry. As I walked to the door to escape the wreck, I ripped the Velcro flag off my left shoulder and slapped it in the Gunny’s dead hand.
I made for the door. As I stepped off the chopper, I sank waist deep into the water. This made it difficult to quickly move to the open area for my escape. I was nearly swimming to the shore of the small pond. I made it to dry land and began running. I blacked out shortly after and woke up about four hours ago. I am sitting in a high school football stadium announcer’s box at the top of the home side . . . I think. It is nightfall and I am hungry and dehydrated. I had to perform minor surgery on myself an hour ago by removing the metal shard from my head with the needlenose on my multitool. Using the mirror from my camouflage paint kit, I stitched myself up with the sewing kit in my bag. The shard went more than an eighth of an inch into my head, above my left temple. I do not know at this time if this injury is life threatening. I have limited food and water but I am conserving as much as possible to prolong survival. This could be the end. I hear footsteps on the metal bleachers below.
01 Oct
Time: Unknown
It’s coming back to me in flashes. I vaguely remember fighting three of them. They must have seen me make for the top of the bleachers and followed. When I woke up, I was flat on my back lying in a pool of blood and broken glass in the center of the floor of the press box. As I tried to lift my head up and check the door, I noticed the shatterproof glass. From the looks of it I shot through the glass to kill the things but missed, as the bullet holes are accompanied by larger holes. The edges of the larger holes in the broken glass hold pieces of skin and clothing, indicating they tried to reach inside. There is also a diagonal line of bullet holes starting from the doorknob and trailing down to the bottom left part of the door. After checking my weapon, I figured that I had shot between fifteen and twenty rounds.
Forcing myself to my feet, I stumbled over to the door. Looking through the broken glass, I saw four dead bodies strewn on the bleachers. In the distance I could see another two beyond the goalpost, milling about in search of prey. My memory is still spotty but I remember shooting at least one of them at point-blank range right through the glass, killing it instantly.
02 Oct
Approx. 1600
Woke up this morning to the sound of a dog howling. It could have been a wolf, but with the lack of living humans in North America, I’m certain all the domestic dogs are becoming feral. I’m curious if they would remember me as a living man or attack me on sight as they do the undead. I have seen a canine’s resentment of them. Reminds me of how some dogs despise uniforms. Annabelle dislikes the creatures, and the hackles on her back stand up the instant she smells one of them drawing near. I have dried blood all over my face and I continue to inhabit this crow’s nest above an overgrown football field. The only evidence that remains that it was ever a playing field is the goalposts and the bleachers on either side.
I am beat up and sore. The crash may have injured me seriously. My kidney area is extremely tender and I find it difficult to stand for very long. In the packs I grabbed from the helicopter, I salvaged three hundred 9mm rounds, five MREs and a collapsed roll of rigging tape. I’m somewhat encouraged by the fact that I had the forethought to grab my pack with my multitool, two gallons of water and NVGs along with other survival odds and ends.
I will try to keep myself to one quart of water per day. If I don’t overexert myself, I feel I may have enough water to get healthy enough to move. I also have the equipment that was strapped to my vest under the harness when we crashed (pistol, survival knife, flares, compass). The stitches in my head are very uncomfortable and I wish that I had had something better than sewing thread. A bottle of vodka or any hard alcohol would really help. I have a handheld PRC-90 survival radio that I have been using to try to communicate with Hotel 23 on frequencies 2828 and 243. No joy. Either I am out of range or the radio isn’t operating properly. John knew our intended flight path but even if every Marine were dispatched with all vehicles and weapons they wouldn’t make it as far north as my location. There are simply too many undead between us. I don’t think I’ll be making it back at this point.
03 Oct
Approx. 1900
It is time to begin formulating a plan. I’m down to 1.5 gallons of water and the number of undead in and a
round the field seems to be increasing. I find it difficult to think with the pain I’m experiencing. I keep telling myself to bring it back to basics. I need food, water and shelter. In today’s day and age, that isn’t enough.
As of this very minute, I can see six of the creatures from my vantage point. They don’t seem to know I’m here, and not one of them has made an attempt at the bleachers. With the range and accuracy of the MP-5, I dare not make any attempts to take them out, especially by the grainy green picture provided by my goggles. The pain in my head is driving me mad. I’ve thought on a couple of occasions of just leaving the box, going down to the field and killing them all from behind with my knife. Then the pain subsides and I go back to reality and realize what a shit plan that is. When I urinate, I can see small amounts of blood. I figured this out when I accidentally pissed all over my hands today. I must have really socked my kidney when the helicopter autorotated to the ground.
First off, I need to figure out exactly where I am. After I do that, I need to figure out where I can go to get some better gear and try to communicate with Hotel 23. At this point I’m positive they know the aircraft is down. I will rest and recover until I get down to half a gallon of water. I have decided that at that point staying could mean death. It’s getting cold here at night, especially when you’re only wearing two layers of clothing and have a door with as much unintended ventilation as mine. Damn myself for getting so used to being around others.
My watch is busted, only showing the day under the dead hour and minute hands. I suppose I can just kill one of those things and take its watch. I need to know the exact time of day so that I can monitor sunrise and sunset. It’s been about nine months since a watch battery has been manufactured. I’m sure they have a decent shelf life, so I might as well get a digital watch with a timer and chronometer while I can still use one. It’s a shame I have to think of shit like this in my condition.
04 Oct
Approx. 0200
Another one of those things found its way up the bleachers at around midnight. I slid on my NVGs, trying to make sure when I turned them on that no green light would spill out around my eyes. I watched the corpse for five minutes as it stood there in front of the door at the top of the bleachers . . . then the batteries on my NVGs slowly started to fade out. I didn’t have any more AA batteries in my pack so I was forced to sit there in terror as the thing slid its hand in and around the broken glass.
Every piece of glass that hit the floor sounded like thunder to me. I came very close to turning on my flashlight but kept the urge at bay, knowing that it would attract more of them. It reminded me of the scene from a dinosaur movie when the girl just couldn’t bring herself to turn the flashlight off to avoid being eaten by a Tyrannosaur. The only difference was, I was the scared girl who couldn’t turn the light on.
Now my species was becoming extinct.
After about thirty minutes of mental torture, the thing slipped and fell backward down the steps and hasn’t come back up since. I thought the sound of its falling would bring more, but so far this hasn’t happened. I should really pick up some batteries the next time I go shopping. For now, I have a tiny red LED light that I keep attached to my flight suit zipper. Writing this down in red light doesn’t seem to affect my night vision and the red light does not attract them. It is such a low-power LED that the creatures have not reacted to it as I sit here writing this.
Approx. 0600
The sun is peeking up above the trees. The glow of the morning is lighting up the area and revealing the undead milling about below around where the fifty-yard line should be. The windsocks on the goalposts are floating on the morning breeze. I didn’t get to sleep until about three hours ago and even then I woke up to every sound, every expansion and contraction of the bleachers heated by the morning sun.
This press box is starting to smell very bad. The bucket in the corner is filling up fast and the smell is starting to really fuck me up. I’ve noticed that the blood in my urine went away. My kidney area is still sore but not as bad as two days ago. I miss home. Was it the smoldering and burning San Antonio? Was it Arkansas? Was it Hotel 23? This is all cloudy to me right now. I just want to go home . . . somewhere happy, somewhere devoid of death and destruction. I wish that I could have good dreams, because that is the only way I can escape this.
Caller
05 Oct
Early AM
Water is all but gone. I maybe have the bottom eighth of a gallon left. When the chopper went down, we were headed north from Shreveport. I don’t know my exact location but after careful consideration I have decided to head southwest back in the general direction of Hotel 23. I need clean water to cleanse my head injury. Pus is seeping out of the open wound and I have to squeeze it every few hours to relieve the pressure. It’s also very hot around the laceration. At least I know my body is fighting the infection. I would normally move at night, but my water situation has forced me out into the dead world again. There are about a dozen creatures below and I know they will see or hear me when I leave the press box, as I’m not about to attempt to climb down behind the bleachers and risk a broken leg.
I’ve been thinking a little more about writing down what has been going on. I think I might ditch this for the time being as I am busy trying to get back, and writing in this situation could prove unhealthy (fatal). I must confess that I tried to stop but it didn’t last long. I write when I can and it makes me feel better. It may be sporadic or it may reflect my boredom at times but I stay more sane putting all this shit on paper.
As I write this, I’m trying to remember all my bank pin numbers and email password from before. I’ve had an account at my credit union for over ten years with the same pin and I can’t remember it! I had to really concentrate to remember my email password, the same one I used every day for years until the shit hit the fan.
I’ve packed my go bag, loaded the MP5 and put all the frequently needed items at the top of my bag for speed and convenience. Using a collapsed roll of rigging tape, I taped my knife sheath and survival knife to the left shoulder strap of my pack with the handle down. I want easy and quick access to it if I need to get personal with one of those things. I’ve rested enough that I think I can make it somewhere and maybe with luck hold up for a bit. I’m going to leave in one hour.
Late PM
I went to battle at the football field today. I stepped down out of the press box after gulping down the last bit of water. My pack was full and tight against my body, making my lower back hurt a bit. The first contestant on “The Headshot is Right” was a young male wearing one sneaker and a fucked-up green 7-UP T-shirt. He saw me come out of the box and immediately stumbled up the stairs. I still wasn’t sure of myself with this weapon so I let him get pretty close before the action chambered back and the top of his head flipped open like a cookie jar lid. He fell backward, making the bone in his leg snap louder than the bullet that ended him. More witnessed what I had done and came for me.
Again I had to deal with the talented tenth, a very different talented tenth than W. E. B. Du Bois. In my recent travels and travails, I’ve noticed that about one in ten of these things is either smarter, faster or both than their compatriots. I picked her out immediately. She was more aware and came at me with more coordination than the rest. She stood upright and walked briskly to me, while the others just stumbled. I gave her no quarter and shot her in the neck and head. She went down just as easily as the others, but she probably came from a hot zone. She wasn’t as radiated as the horrendous creature on the Coast Guard cutter, but I knew the odd effect radiation had on them. It kept them on a more level playing field with the living—me.
I didn’t take care of all of them at the field. I just killed enough of them to keep the threat at a manageable level. My plan was to kill the ones I needed to, fall back to the far side of the field and circle around and retreat. I killed four and kept an eye on the other eight. I tried to get a good look at their wrists because I would be willing
to make two passes if on the second pass I could pick up a watch from one of them. I couldn’t get a good look and quite frankly I was a little scared to linger on that field.
I made one pass and evacuated the area, heading southwest by compass until I came upon a sign that said “Oil City 10 mi.” I was at an intersection of the rural road and a two-lane highway. I walked a ten-yard offset to the road to avoid being seen by anything. In my experience in this world I’ve noticed the most lethal enemies are not the dead. From my vantage point at the crossroads I could see an old roadblock set up on the southbound side of the highway and a forty-car pileup on the northbound side. A small creek trickled from a drainage pipe near the road. I decided that my need of water temporarily outweighed my need to remain invisible, so I ventured over to the sound of the water.
As I approached the barrel-sized drain, I could swear I saw movement near the distant roadblock. I stood there for a full minute, just to make sure. Whatever it was, it didn’t move again. I bent down and drank water until the sound of something caught my attention. I picked up my head so fast I hit the back of it on the top of the drain, temporarily causing me to see stars. I shook it off and kept listening. I made out the sound of an engine, cycling in a rhythmic pitch. It wasn’t unlike an electric lawn mower. I tried to look in the direction I thought it was coming from, but I couldn’t see it no matter how much I strained my eyes. The sound vanished as quickly as it had come. I sat for a while thinking of what it could be. Motorcycle? No. It didn’t seem like that at all. It was something familiar.
I drank until I couldn’t anymore, filled up the water reservoir in my pack and moved on, keeping the thirty-foot offset. I saw all sorts of things that a man should never see along the way. Rotting corpses were strewn in and around the roadblock. They seemed to lie in a bed of expended brass, as if an army had attempted to dispatch a horde of them here months ago. There were dead men standing on the highway in a hibernating daze, presumably with nothing to motivate them. I suppose they conserve energy that way. In the distance I could see a pack of dogs running across a field. I was downwind, so I’m pretty sure they didn’t know I was near. There were no signs of human life whatsoever.
