LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  “Hey, where’d your other man go?” the first one asked, pulling Kate through the fence.

  “God damn geek pulled him into the water!” shouted Rhodes, pushing me through the fence and running to where Clifton was standing. “All I saw was two arms and then he —”

  Then, he was on his back. As I turned, four arms and two heads were suddenly at his legs as he kicked and tried to bring his rifle around. I pushed through the water, bringing the shotgun around on its sling and detaching it as the first creature looked up, water and mud dripping from its face, hair matted to the skull like a waterlogged doll. I swung it forward quickly, using the Pathfinder’s attached blade for silence. The lips pulled back and the broken teeth smiled as the long, razor sharp blade severed its spine.

  A loud tearing sound met my ears as the second creature tore a small piece of Rhodes’ pants away near the ankle, the mindless ghoul looking momentarily confused as its bloodied hands held up a small metal plate.

  The large man wasted no time firing a quick shot to put the creature into the water, and frantically scrambling from the murky river. I reached down, pulling him up from the sucking, thick mud with one arm, and nearly tossing him into the boat. He glanced back once, eyes slightly wild. Whether due to the close encounter or my strength I wasn’t sure.

  “What the fuck, man? Those things have a navy now?” One of the coastguardsman was incredulous, and quickly revved the engine as we climbed on board.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” I said to Kate, staring at the water. Small, round protrusions in the water were visible, now.

  They looked like turtles on a log, or rocks in a shallow stream.

  But they weren’t.

  They were the tops of heads.

  More ripples were visible now, as the protrusions moved slowly toward the boat and the fog started to dissipate slightly. Hands emerged in short fits and flailed briefly above the water. The small, almost insignificant splashes as the hands broke the surface of the water, belied the danger beneath the water.

  Jesus. They were in the water now.

  It had to be a product of the herding impulse. It had to be the drive to join other groups.

  They couldn’t be learning new ways to hunt. They weren’t that developed.

  Were they?

  The engine hummed and we pushed away from the marshy shore, the faint new rays of sunshine stabbing at my eyes through my glasses.

  “Yeah. That’s definitely new…” Kate said, trailing off. The wake of the boat soon obscured the eerily silent following of half-obscured heads and flailing arms, and we turned to watch the water push past the sides of the small craft.

  My earpiece crackled with another broken signal, this time from a dispatcher in the Pentagon.

  “Seeker,” said the voice, and I heard our simple call sign, ready to respond. “This is Castle. Iron Eagle is inbound, approximately five mikes out. Patching you through to their channel. Iron Eagle, go ahead for Seeker, Castle out.”

  “Copy that, Castle,” I said, hearing significant static on the new channel. The boat’s steady hum didn’t help, and I moved forward, away from the motor. “Iron Eagle, this is Seeker, how do you copy, over?”

  Behind me, I saw Kate lean in and ask the younger of the two sailors something and then she signed to me: three minutes from the shore.

  “…-er, this… gle…inbound to your… significant… heading east. I repeat, significant… east toward your… Do you…”

  I pushed the ear bud as far as it would go into my ear as the boat began to catch larger pieces of clear visibility ahead. The hull slammed loudly over a larger wave, and I lost the sentence completely.

  “Say again, Iron Eagle, I did not copy.”

  In the distance, I could see the murky outlines of a control tower jutting from the mist. Beyond that, I knew that thousands of the undead waited for us.

  Static hissed through ear bud, and I cursed loudly.

  “Watch yourself, sir,” one of the sailors said as the rocky jetty on the tip of the runway appeared from the mist, and the boat slowed. I hit the transmit key on my collar again and repeated, softer this time.

  “Iron Eagle, we did not copy. Please say again. We are at the LZ and prepared for evac in five. Over.”

  Static again, and I stared into the unrelenting fog overhead until my eyes burned, hoping to catch a sign of movement ahead. Behind me, the sailor manning the motor bounded forward nimbly, despite the now gentle rocking current of the shallows, and jumped to the large rocks ahead, offering his hand to Kate as she hoisted her pack and her weapon.

  I turned toward the back of the boat and gave it one more try, but my finger paused on the transmit button. Behind the small craft, the movement of the water was different, and more erratic. Something briefly emerged from the water and went back under.

  More gently rounded protrusions.

  Hands broke into the air again, as the water roiled.

  Shit.

  “Sir…” the sailor in the boat began, but as I turned and sprinted to the front of the craft, I heard Rhodes shout. I didn’t pause. I grabbed the young man with both hands and heaved as hard as I could, tossing him awkwardly onto the rocks ahead and yelling.

  “They’re in the goddamned water!”

  A blast from Kate’s shotgun split the morning air, and we bolted up the uneven rocks, Rhodes in the rear, the soft spitting of his silenced weapon a quick, airy staccato behind us. As we reached the top of the short incline, and our feet hit the wet gray pavement of the runway, I heard the decoys.

  Someone was feeling cute.

  The “Ride of the Valkyries” blared from somewhere in the ether ahead, fading and then cutting out, just as another speaker blew repeated bursts of random voices, and yet another the sounds of engines.

  It was a cacophony of sound that faded away in shifts, cut out, and then restarted closer to us, and faded away again. They were clearly flying away in shifts.

  And it had been working. Only a single corpse was within view, shambling away from us despite the noise of Kate’s shotgun and our rapid footfalls.

  But it was also attracting the creatures from the water—a threat from our eastern flank that we hadn’t expected.

  We were now between two herds, and could only move one direction.

  “How many?” said Rhodes calmly in his microphone.

  I just shook my head.

  “Too many.”

  My ear bud exploded with sound and I swatted at it through my head cover before I remembered it was there.

  “Seeker, this is Iron Eagle, please acknowledge.”

  Fumbling for the transmit button, I stammered quickly, “Iron Eagle, this is Seeker. We are on the tarmac and ready for extraction. We are plus one, over.”

  The voice was quick to reply. “Five-One, be advised, you have a massive group of hostiles inbound from the East. They are at the river and… well, Seeker, they are not stopping. There are thousands of them—possibly tens of thousands. They appear to be in the water. Iron Eagle on final approach, on the ground in three mikes. Suggest you move to the west end of runway three three. Over and out.”

  I looked at Kate, and then at Rhodes. The original plan was to rendezvous on this end and take off to the West. Meeting the plane at that end was a huge risk. The noise of the landing airplane would drown out the drones, and the herd would turn toward us just as the plane set down and taxied—the noisiest part of the extraction. Without cover from the snipers, and in the thick fog, they could be on top of us before we knew it.

  My head was throbbing with the action, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

  Behind us, at the water’s edge, I watched as the fog turned into movement, and the movement turned to bodies.

  “Copy, Iron Eagle. We’ll see you in three.”

  I had been inside too long. I needed a release.

  “You go. I’ll buy a little time.” I walked forward, not away. Toward the creatures mustering at the shore, feet stumbling
for purchase on the slippery rocks. Gripping my Pathfinder in one hand by the modified stock, so that it was essentially an axe, I drew the machete with the other hand. Beside me, Kate’s form materialized.

  “Not going to let you play alone,” she said, staring at the mist and gripping her weapons tightly.

  The blood was pounding in my head, and I needed the rush. But I smiled at her attitude.

  Rhodes and the others moved toward the end of the runway.

  There were nearly fifty of them onshore already, more clamoring behind. The bulk still struggled to find footing on the uneven rocks. Those that had emerged were awkward, as if unused to walking. Trails of water dripped behind them as they struggled forward.

  We met them halfway.

  I swung the modified shotgun as if it was nothing, and it felt like nothing. It was weightless in my hands. I heard, rather than saw, the head hit the ground, even as I pivoted instinctively to the next body. The torso split in two as I aimed low, and I saw Kate’s machete claim another head as I ducked the arms of the next creature, slicing up with my left hand and severing the arm at the armpit, and taking the head from below. The blade vibrated slightly as it sheared through the spine at an angle.

  I rolled forward, throwing both arms out to the sides, and taking the legs from two more as they moved forward. Both bodies fell, as their momentum carried them, toppling toward me, teeth gnashing and arms still searching. I threw my arms wide and caught each by the chest with my forearms as they fell. Their heads whipped toward my own and I completed the motion, smashing their torsos together with a tremendous effort and hearing the satisfying crunch of ribs and sternums. Turning quickly, I pushing both bodies away and took the heads with one swipe of the Pathfinder, even as I spun to meet the next wave.

  Kate’s movements were far more graceful. She danced and spun, her movement reminiscent of a ballet dancer, when mine was far more direct. I flung and crushed and stormed and thrashed. She pivoted and twirled and jumped. Not a single creature touched her as she moved through them, like a dancer at a ball.

  She was magnificent.

  My own style, as unattractive as it may have been, was just as effective.

  Within minutes, bodies surrounded us. We had bought the others some time.

  Hundreds more were climbing from the water.

  It was time to leave.

  This was my head talking. My body screamed for more.

  “Better move,” said Kate, and I nodded. We started to run, even as the sound of four massive propellers cut through the fog, a low drone on the horizon.

  SEVEN

  The mist was a blessing and a curse. We couldn’t see more than fifty feet ahead, but we knew that it shrouded our movements as we shadowed the herd of corpses that shuffled along ahead of us. The engine noise grew louder, competing with, and ultimately overpowering the music and acoustic clatter from the overflying drones, now focusing on providing a musical target farther to the west.

  The tarmac was filthy with pieces of clothing and other matter, the exact nature of which I could only imagine, seeing that it was the leavings of a herd of thousands of living dead. In the near distance, a small commuter jet was off on the grass between runways, canted slightly to the side, one wing sticking slightly further into the fog. An open door led to an inflated escape slide.

  A bloody smear ran the length of the now dingy yellow rubber, and a single suitcase lay at the foot of the ramp.

  I followed Rhodes, whose gun remained up and trained forward. Kate followed, and the two sailors, armed only with pistols, looked around frantically, not having expected to be suddenly thrust into a land war from the relative safety of their vessel—a vessel that now stood vulnerable, anchored in the middle of a river once assumed to be safe ground.

  Behind us, the fog was breaking, and as we sprinted forward, I turned, making out the green and red landing lights of the massive plane. Guns protruded from the belly and sides like a giant pincushion, and its massive engines roared in the fading mist.

  It was an impressive sight.

  And an even more impressive sound.

  My eyes fell to the ground, and I groaned.

  In the fading fog, they were coming.

  Dripping, covered in flotsam and debris, matted hair clinging to rotted faces. Eyes protruding sickeningly, and arms outstretched, pleading. Wanting.

  They came. Thousands upon thousands.

  The gunship roared over their heads, barely missing the first ranks of the crowd, wheels extended. The screech of rubber hitting damp concrete coursed in the air, and the propellers cycled down loudly almost instantly, seeking to arrest the large machine’s momentum.

  We had almost reached the end of the runway, and in the distance ahead of us, to the left, where a group of cargo hangars abutted the access road underneath road signs for the nearby freeway, we could see the other herd, clustering near the fence line and flowing between buildings in a fruitless quest to find the origin of the offensive noise.

  They had turned back at the sound of the massive airplane, and they saw us as clearly as we saw them.

  And them both groups—the dead and undead—saw the frantic forms of the adolescent girl and her dog sprinting toward our group and the now taxiing airplane that was quickly turning back to the east, edging in a circle like a beached whale.

  “Ky!” shouted Kate, raising her hand and shouting.

  God damn it.

  How the hell was she here?

  I turned away from the group and toward the girl, yelling as a zombie appeared from an overturned luggage bin and shambled in her path.

  She didn’t even hesitate. A crossbow bolt instantly protruded from the creature’s skull and she hopped over the obstruction as she passed. Romeo was easily pacing her, head whipping to the sides as if nervous and anxious to be running. She wore black clothing, much like ours.

  Very much, in fact.

  Kate followed me as Rhodes and the other two men slowed in front of a parked airliner bearing the name of the carrier that I had last used to get from the West Coast back to New York the night of Maria’s death. I fought the flashbacks as I caught the young girl in my arms and rushed her toward the group.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I yelled over the noise of the propellers, sparing a glance for the two herds that now bracketed us on either end of this runway.

  “You can’t leave me behind, I told you!” Her voice was nearly triumphant, and I just pushed her ahead of me in anger, even as a tide of relief washed over me.

  On the tarmac, the warplane was slowing as the massive herd approached from the west. The nose turned ponderously as we all sprinted the last hundred yards.

  But as we passed the tail of the abandoned airliner, we heard the familiar sounds of slow footsteps clanging against metal, and looked up. The ramp to the rear door of the huge plane was full of the dead, emerging from the packed 747 en masse, as if they had been waiting there all along.

  The sailors bolted away from the plane, even as Rhodes started taking out the lead creatures strategically, trying to trip up the ones behind by laying out bodies on the stairs in front of their clumsy feet. As I watched our airplane turn, nose pointed back toward where we had come, I realized that we had a problem. The runway we had planned to use to take off was blocked. Thousands of creatures were in our way and our planned escape was cut off. More pulled themselves out of the river each second.

  “Iron Eagle, you are going to have to pull around. We have to take off to the South, do you copy?”

  “Copy that, we’re just waiting for you to jump on.” As he spoke, the hatch on the side of the plane dropped down, and a man in a flight suit waved his hand.

  The two sailors bolted toward the plane immediately, but the man in the lead fell suddenly to the pavement, twisting his ankle as he fell over a small discarded child’s toy laying on the tarmac.

  I didn’t want to think about why the toy was laying there. Or to whom it had belonged.

  Kate mov
ed to help the fallen man, but she was too far.

  A group of fifteen of the dead from the plane had escaped Rhodes’ covering fire and were within mere feet of the hapless youth. He scrambled on all fours as his friend backed away, stricken with terror. They had clearly never been face to face with these things.

  Four of the creatures were on top of him, teeth flashing and arms pin wheeling through flesh and blood. Kate’s gun fired, and I raised my own, careful to aim high. But it was too late. As the bodies fell back onto the pavement, the mutilated corpse of the young man bled onto the ground. A crossbow bolt flashed into another row of the creatures and I turned to Ky.

  “Save it, we need to leave, now!”

  She backed up, and Kate grabbed her arm, pulling her forward to the waiting plane. The second sailor was running, arms pumping furiously as he made for the plane.

  They were coming at us from three sides, now. The massive herd from the river was within five hundred feet, while the even bigger group from the terminal side was dodging luggage carts and parked planes, returning to the runway from the cargo terminals. The drones continued their cacophonous assault, swooping overhead and toward the west, while from the abandoned 747, they were crushing each other to get to the ground. And there were many that had succeeded.

  Rhodes was still focused on trying to stem the tide of bodies flowing from the metal staircase, but he was failing. The airplane was full, and these creatures hadn’t eaten in a long time. I saw the door hanging awkwardly from the fuselage, realizing that it had just been broken down—likely the noise from the landing aircraft was finally enough to push them over the edge, and against the door in enough numbers to push it from its warped hinges.

  They streamed out onto the tarmac, and he finally stopped firing when his magazine emptied. He turned toward me, and we ran together toward the open door and the airman inside.

  The warplane had turned to the south, and was facing away from the two herds converging on us.

  But the first row of creatures from the abandoned plane was too close. I turned, trying to buy Rhodes some time. They were everywhere, and I couldn’t take them all myself. But the plane needed time to complete its turn, and taxi into position without getting zombies jammed in the blades.