The rope slid through his gloved fingers. Then, gravity did the rest. His grip was gone. He landed on two corpses, their moldy flesh squishing under his weight. Laying atop of their twisting bodies, Carlson pulled his Beretta and fired into the crowd as they converged on him. Like an avalanche of rot, they buried him under the stink of hot breath and clanking teeth.
Holding tight to the rope, Reimer couldn’t see him. But his screams were evident, as was the splattering of blood. One of the ghouls stood up over the others, holding a string of red intestines like a lasso.
“Having a hard time here!” he heard the pilots saying through the headset. Looking up, he saw the black smoke billowing from the engines. Several feet above his head, Bolden, Bell and Gordon dangled from the rope, while Dunn, Cable, and Dallas hung from the other.
The chopper rocked back and forth, as though caught in an invisible raging river. Finally, the shaft was able to tilt, allowing the pilots to shift the gears from hovering flight. The soldiers held tight, hitting several pine branches as the chopper soared several hundred feet ahead.
Reimer spat as branches slashed his face, pricking the skin around his jaw.
“SHIT! GODDAMN!” Dunn yelled from the other rope as he endured the same punishment.
Reimer felt the rope slipping from his hands. With each blow he sank six or seven inches. Then, he noticed his feet were pressing into each other with nothing in-between. As the leg support vanished, gravity took full hold. His weight sank him down twice as fast. He barely completed a full breath when the rope went from his hands. He fell six feet, landing hard on his back. Hearing the footsteps of approaching ghouls, he fought against the haziness and pushed himself to his feet.
Bony fingers tugged down on his shoulders, and the open jaws closed in on his neck. Reimer yelled, throwing his elbow back. He clocked the ghoul hard on the nose, flattening it into its face. The ghoul staggered back from the force, only to lunge again. By now, Reimer turned. He put his iron sights on its wrinkly face, watching the skin peeling around the eyes in the split-second before he fired. Two bullets reshaped its skull into spade-shaped shards that folded out like flower petals.
A large group of the undead were moving in from his right. Reimer turned, spraying his mag across the front line. The wave of bullets spilled into a group of eight. Several bullets went low, striking numerous targets along the chest and shoulders. They jolted and spun as though struck by lightning, only to continue their march.
“Fuck.” Reimer aimed high and fired off the rest of his mag in semi-auto. Bullets crunched jawbone, spilling teeth and flesh into the dirt below them. Some shots hit their mark, piercing heads and their brain matter. Reimer backed away, only to find himself in the grasp of a towering ghoul. Yelling, he pulled away, throwing several punches and kicks at it. The corpse was large, fresh, and muscular, the skin still retaining much of its color. Its fingers squeezed around Reimer’s vest and pulled him in. Unable to free himself from its tight grip, he pushed his palms against its face to keep its teeth from reaching his neck.
The ghoul snarled, leaning its head back, then rolling its neck to angle its jaw. Its mouth gaped open, the teeth slamming shut on the ridge of Reimer’s right hand.
The Corporal yelled and pushed away with the might of a racehorse. The ghoul, fixated on what was in its jaws, had loosened its grip, allowing Reimer to pull away. His hand slipped away, leaving the glove in the corpse’s teeth. The ghoul shook its ‘meal’ wildly like a dog with a toy.
Reimer quickly examined his hand. Luckily for him, the glove prevented the teeth from breaking the skin. Unlucky for him, the ghoul was already pressing forward, as were the several dozen around it. Reimer let the submachine gun sling at his shoulder as he grabbed his Beretta. Gripping it with both hands, he fired a shot. The ghoul’s head jolted back, throwing its body into such a tight backward arch that Reimer could only see its chin.
It straightened its posture and gazed at him with white, blood-soaked eyes. The bullet had cut through the top of its head, splitting the skull literally down the center. The two halves leaned apart, stretching the skin across the face, and exposing the pink brain inside.
The ghoul yelled as it prepared to lunge, only for its head to disappear in a puff of pink. Several suppressed gunshots rattled off, reducing several corpse heads to puddles of brown and pink.
Dunn led the charge, followed by Keegan, Gordon, Bell, and Cable. They formed a firing line and blasted the incoming horde. Decaying faces indented back into their skull cavities as the bullets made their marks.
The chopper teetered back and forth over the trees as the pilots attempted to stabilize. The minor damage to the starboard engine was worsening as the effort strained the mechanics. Now, smoke was swelling from both sides of the aircraft. Bolden and Dallas had made their descent, with Lowry now halfway down the rope.
The group huddled, keeping their backs together in a tight circle as they fired off into a forest full of corpses. Their numbers seemed infinite, constantly moving between the trees.
“Come on, kid!” Bell called.
“I’m hurrying,” Lowry called back. He was still thirty feet in the air. A fall from that height was more than enough to break bones.
“Pilots!” Keegan yelled into his mic. “Once Lowry’s complete, get the hell out of here and find a place to set down. Then radio for pickup!”
“Working on it, Staff Sergeant!” Heard said.
The group moved back under the chopper, blasting the corpses that bunched under the rope. Lowry was almost there, only about fifteen feet from the ground. Reimer and Gordon reached up to help him set down.
“Almost there,” Heard said. His eyes went back to the fog that whipped over the tops of the trees. He looked dead ahead, seeing the fog stirring nearly two-hundred yards out. The draft wouldn’t have that far of a range.
“The fuck?”
The mass of black burst through the fogbank. With the force of one enormous titan, the vehement flock of birds torpedoed into the nose of the chopper. Hundreds of bodies collided at once, bursting the windshield into the cockpit.
Birds swarmed the interior, driving their beaks into the fresh meat inside. Heard and Zucco screamed for dear life as they felt their skin being shredded. Twisting back and forth, Heard jolted the joystick, banking the chopper hard to starboard, towing Lowry underneath him.
The marine screamed as he was lifted away at forty miles an hour. A thick branch in his path cut that scream short. Lowry felt his ribs cave inward as his body folded over it. The ropes tore from his hand and he fell thirty feet down onto the forest floor.
Blood streaked from his mouth as he hit down.
“KID!” Reimer yelled. He and the team dashed toward him, striking down any corpses that stood in their way.
Heard and Zucco threw their arms wildly, unable to keep the birds off. Their beaks pecked through their glasses and pressed deep into the soft tissue below. Heard screamed, feeling the sharp rigid beak of a raven twisting within his eye socket.
The raven yanked its head back, holding Heard’s eye impaled on its beak. It darted off, as several others dove in at the scent of blood. In seconds, the bones in their fingers were splintered, their faces left unrecognizable. The birds continued lashing with beaks and claws, tearing sheets of skin from the pilots’ faces, exposing muscle and bone.
The chopper went into a wild tail spin, whipping up fog and smoke above the trees.
Reimer pulled his knife and plunged the blade between the eyes of another walker that intercepted his path. His fellow soldiers raced alongside him, smashing heads along the way, bringing their snapping jaws to a permanent halt. Reimer quickened his pace, trying to find the location where the rookie fell. He had promised Lowry he’d watch his back, and he wasn’t going to back down from that.
A deep yell from Lowry swept through the forest. Reimer stopped, seeing a large group of corpses thirty yards out. They were amassing near the trunk of a huge tree. Laying along the ground was the kid, his spine an
d stomach distorted from the fall. He was squirming in place, clearly in agonizing pain, attempting to fend off the horde that assembled around him.
“HELP! HELP!”
Every muscle in Reimer’s body tensed as terror struck him. Yelling, he started to run to Lowry’s aide, only to be stopped by Keegan.
“We can’t help him,” the Staff Sergeant said. Reimer looked at him, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth clenched. Lowry’s screams intensified as bony undead fingers prodded through his flesh and slipped between the ribs. Like pulling a tent stake from the ground, they yanked the loose bones free, tearing blood and muscle tissue along with them. As they munched on the bones, others dug into the gaping cavities, tearing the organs from place. The grey fog suddenly turned a shade of red as Lowry’s blood sprinkled the surrounding forest.
The drone of rotors above the forest overtook the dying screams. All eyes went up to see the Super Stallion spiraling in the air like a car on an icy highway. Sparks zipped from the engines as they ceased to function, slowing the rotors to a stop.
“Take cover!” Keegan yelled. Forty-five thousand pounds of aircraft and equipment plummeted between the trees, landing into the horde. Flesh, debris, and fire tore through the forest in one enormous ball of destruction. Corpses flailed as the shockwave tossed several of them through the forest like confetti. Now the fog was a fiery orange. The air smelled of fuel and charred meat.
The team emerged from behind a wall of pine trees. Several of the undead moseyed toward the crash, having been drawn by the sound, while many others converged on the feeding frenzy several meters to the northeast.
“Shit! Where do we go, Staff Sergeant?” Bell said.
“Cable!” Keegan yelled out.
“Here, sir!”
“You got that map?”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Get it out! We’re walking from here.” Keegan pointed east. “The crowd of undead has thinned this way. Let’s go while most of them are distracted by the crash. Everyone on me!”
Keegan took point and ran through the forest. The men followed, weaving between ghouls as they disappeared into the forest.
As he ran, Reimer took one look back where Lowry’s body was being consumed. Looking back was a bad habit and he knew it. But the guilt of failure was overpowering. And he knew he had failed Lowry.
He turned his eyes away and pressed east, following his team down a steep hill while the undead gathered behind him.
CHAPTER 12
With the fog and canopy blocking out the sun, it felt as though they were moving in the dead of night. The mist carried a vile smell as it lingered in thick clumps of fog. Secondary explosions crackled in the distance, drawing the attention of stray zombies in the area.
Discolored skin stretched along yawning jowls as they stumbled toward the orange flow. Distant moans from hundreds of their herd members resonated through the trees. They were the sounds of feasting and hunger. Recognizing these sounds was the only problem-solving intelligence the ghouls contained in their decaying brains. Whenever it was heard, it was a call to arms, alerting others, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
A dull whistle zipped through the air, ending with the splattering of brain tissue. Reimer watched as the headless ghoul dropped, spilling blackened tissue into the mud below. He aimed his crosshairs beyond its corpse, seeing numerous others moving his way in unison. There were maybe a dozen, and they were spaced out well enough from each other, meaning the team wouldn’t worry about being overwhelmed. By the looks of it, they couldn’t see him in the thick fog. That’s the way he would keep it.
Down on one knee, he carefully placed the next ghoul in his crosshairs. It wore a ballcap with a badge, possibly having been a park ranger in life. The hat, and the head it covered, erupted into bits as the .308 round cut through it.
Keegan flanked the group along the left. Armed with his AK-9, he fired individual rounds into a faction of three. Each round landed perfectly through the nose, spraying blackened matter out the back of each head.
Dallas, armed with an Accuracy International, picked off two that lingered in the back. Their corpses hit the ground, generating splashes of mud that attracted the gazes of the remaining walkers. Bell and Bolden advanced, quietly shooting three that stumbled in from the right. As they did, Reimer and Dallas sniped the remaining two. Dallas’ round cut through temple-to-temple, taking the whole top of the ghoul’s head off above the ears.
Reimer saw a spatter of decaying matter ripping from his target’s head. It stumbled to the left, dropping down to one knee as though sucker punched. Yet, it still moved. It stood up, thick blood dangling from its face like black saliva. He had fired low, taking off its entire jaw. Its tongue dangled freely as it began to march toward them.
Finally, it fell backward, its forehead opened up by a shot from Dunn. The PFC stepped alongside Reimer and waved a hand in front of his face.
“You still with us, buddy?”
“I’m fine,” Reimer said, brushing his hand away. He stood up and hustled down the small hill. The team branched out, confirming that they had eliminated the presence of undead in the immediate area.
“Cable, get your map out,” Keegan said.
“Aye aye, Sir,” Cable said.
“Sir, should we attempt to make a SAT call out to Headquarters?” Dallas asked.
“Already tried,” Cable said. “Canopy’s too thick. We’ll need to move to higher ground.”
“Just get that map out,” Keegan said. “And for chrissake, keep it down!”
“Sir, if I may…”
“What is it, Bell?” Keegan said.
“Sir, I just want to point out that it might not be safe to travel in these woods. If those birds attack, we’re screwed.”
“Not much we can do about that,” Keegan said. “We will proceed with the objective.”
“What the hell was that back there?” Gordon said. “There’s been no reports of zombie birds anywhere else.”
“I’m not even sure they were zombies,” Reimer said. “You’d think, waiting here all this time, their wings would’ve decayed to the point they wouldn’t fly.”
“All I can say is that birds don’t go around attacking helicopters in swarms,” Gordon said.
“What did I say about keeping it down?” Keegan said, his voice low, but forceful.
“Yes, sir,” the marines said. Cable unfolded the map and held it to the Staff Sergeant.
“Sir, we’re about three clicks northwest of our objective,” Cable said. “When the pilot tried avoiding the birds, he ended up almost taking a mile off our travel time. Not trying to put a light spin on it, just saying instead of four—”
“I get it, Sailor,” Keegan said.
“We’re gonna have to cut through this way,” Cable said, pointing his hand toward a dark patch of forest. All eyes turned toward their new route. The trees looked black, and it wasn’t a distortion from the fog either. The pines and branches were sickly in appearance, with strange veiny vines growing along the trunks.
“We sure we want to go in there?” Dallas said.
“We don’t have a choice,” Keegan said. “We’re in Level 10 territory. If we wait here, we’ll die.”
“Something tells me that Level 10 doesn’t only account for the population of corpses,” Dunn said.
“What do you mean?” Gordon asked.
“Just pointing out what I’m observing. The birds, the trees... if this is one of the first places to be hit hard by the plague, I’m wondering if there’s more than just reanimated tourists we have to worry about.”
“Staff Sergeant,” Reimer said. “May I offer a suggestion?”
“What is it, Corporal?”
“Our plan is to get to the bunker, retrieve the VIP, and bring her to the extraction point. I would suggest we try to find an alternate location close to the bunker for extraction.”
“If they’ll even have a bird that’ll make the trip,” Dallas said.
“I’m
just saying…” Reimer looked back to the burning glow in the distance, his face twitching at the thought of Lowry being eaten alive. His eyes then went to the black forest. “I’m not sure we can endure two trips through this place. Hell, we might even lose the Doctor on the way back.”
“Understood, Corporal,” Keegan said. “I was already thinking the same thing. Alright, men. Reach down and reattach your balls. All of you. We’re going. Cable, put that map away and hang tight to that SAT phone. Bell, you still have those C4 explosives?”
“In my pack, Sarge.”
“Good. We might need to use them if we come across a herd too big. Bolden, you take point. Put that deep voice to use. Let us know if you see anything.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Bolden said.
“Alright, let’s move.”
The team pushed off into the black section of forest, keeping their movements quiet as they entered a landscape filled with rot and stench.
CHAPTER 13
Mud squelched under their boots as the team moved in deeper. The air was almost black as night, with thin streaks of sunlight making it down to the ground. The fog and canopy gave each visible sunray an essence of twilight. The darkness forced the soldiers to turn on their flashlights, keeping them dim to avoid attracting attention. They had only encountered a few wandering ghouls so far but knew that could change any second. Their lights beamed over the discolored bark along the trunks of pine trees. Their branches hung low, the pines taking on an ash-colored shade.
Even the Staff Sergeant couldn’t help but occasionally stare at the strange mass that accumulated on each tree like vines. They seemed organic, like octopus arms, twisting up from the roots and wrapping around the tree. The outer layer looked leathery in texture. He wasn’t even sure if it was a plant, or something else. But whatever it was, it was a functioning organism. A strange secretion dripped from pores in its “stem” down into the mud where it was absorbed into the ground.
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