Lucy lay in a heap, folded over at the chest, in a puddle of blood that had soaked her dress. She opened her mouth. Congested blood spilled down her chin. Her eyes were cloudy, milky white like chill mist. Her arms were awkward and stiff as she attempted to push herself up onto her feet. She was having trouble, like she was learning to walk all over again.
Daoud picked up his pistol and stepped toward her. Mark blocked him, and then looked at the pistol. Daoud saw something in Mark’s expression and handed the weapon over.
Mark approached Lucy. She hissed at him, like a demon from hell. Mark put his boot to Lucy’s shoulder and pushed her back down. Her head turned to take a bite from his calf, but the angle was too sharp for her. Whatever humanity she’d had was long gone.
Mark leveled the gun at the creature’s head and fired. Lucy’s head snapped back, her brains splattering the tree bark. Her head fell forward, her chin resting on her chest, the back of her head blown out, a crater. Her brain tissue slithered down the tree bark like lava, as if the tree itself were bleeding.
“What about Jacob?” John said. “We sent him out into the forest with an army of those things out there.”
“With any luck he’ll be back at Fort Bragg already,” Mark said, though he didn’t believe that.
“We can’t leave him here,” John said.
“He can take care of himself,” Mark said.
“How can there be so many of those things out here already?” Eddie said. “We’ve only been here a day.”
“As we flew here in the chopper the major told us about an outbreak at Uwharrie,” John said. “That’s where they must have come from.”
“How are we supposed to beat these things?” Eddie said. “You can guarantee they’re going to follow us to the rendezvous point. Then they’ll spill out into the rest of the state! The rest of the country!”
Eddie was right. Mark had been so engrossed in the events on a microcosmic level that he hadn’t considered the larger picture. The undead would eventually – by accident or as some kind of fucked up providence – make their way through the pass and out into the world. The idea made Mark shiver.
“We should stick to the mission,” Mark said. “We get to the rendezvous and get out of here.”
“What makes you even think they’ll be there?” Eddie said. “We failed our mission. There was no virus.”
“No,” Mark said. “You’re right.”
He ejected a paintball from his rifle, washed the paint out, and filled it with Lucy’s blood.
“She’s infected,” he said. “This is infected blood. If we can get it to the scientists there might be a chance to stop it before it has time to spread. We get to the rendezvous. Our mission stays the same.”
“How can it stay the same?” Eddie said. “This was meant to be a training mission! Now we’ve got dead bodies walking around!”
“Do you have any better suggestions?” Mark said.
Eddie pursed his lips.
“I thought not,” Mark said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
With the zombie horde at their backs, out of view but very much in their minds, the team moved with some urgency. They peered with weary eyes at the foliage on either side of the road.
The radio antennae of the rendezvous point rose above the hillock like an alien’s finger. They climbed the mound and looked down at green flatland that wrapped around a temporary building in the center. The building looked flimsy and ramshackle, but it was the nearest thing to a fort they had. Vehicles were parked bumper to bumper in what were meant to be makeshift barricades, the apex of a natural pinch point.
But the team’s hopes quailed before the figures lurching across the wide open field. A pile of bodies lay before the building in an arc. When the undead got within range, there was a single flash of light, followed by a loud crack. The zombies fell to the ground. Heedless, the next wave stumbled forward, trampling their fallen comrades, and raised their arms toward the shooter, before their heads too exploded in a splatter of blood. The flash of the gun muzzle filled Mark’s heart with the warm fuzzy glow of hope.
“At least they’ve got live weapons,” John said. “Instead of this toy gun crap.”
“But they shouldn’t be using them,” Mark said.
“Sure,” Eddie said with a sneer. “They should just let the undead stroll up to them and say hello.”
“They can’t know the sound attracts them,” John said.
“Unless they’re doing it to cause a distraction?” Mark said.
“A distraction for what?” John said.
The helicopter blades thudded as they fluttered overhead, toward the temporary building.
“Woooo!” John said, taking off his cap and waving. “Down here! We’re down here!”
“Will you shut up?” Mark said. “They’re going to hear you!”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” John said.
“Not them,” Mark said. “Them!”
The undead arched their necks to see the helicopter as it sailed overhead.
“We have to get down there,” John said. “It’s our only way out of here.”
“How?” Mark said. “There’s a hundred of those things between us and the building.”
“Simple,” John said. “We run.”
The undead swarmed like ants toward the building, the hovering helicopter watching the event from its superior vantage. Mark peered back down the road they’d come. The horde was not yet visible beyond a long blind bend. He shook his head. It didn’t feel right to go running into a battlefield, planless, into danger, but he couldn’t think of anything better.
Mark nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
They unshouldered their backpacks, keeping only the barest of equipment on them. They took a deep breath, took in the labyrinth of mawing mouths and clawed hands before them, and descended the steep embankment.
The hillside was steeper than Mark thought. He struggled to catch his feet as he raced down the side. His legs pumped hard and he swung his arms, using the speed to propel himself forward. They covered a quarter of the distance in no time, their legs already burning with acid.
They were coming up fast behind the zombies, who couldn’t hear them, their attention focused on the noisy flying thing above. But they paid attention when Mark’s team sprinted past them, reaching for them with outstretched fingers.
Mark was slower than Daoud, but only marginally. Eddie was a little faster than John, who carried a lot more bulk than the rest of them. He was slowed further by the swiping, waving desperate hands of the zombies, who screeched, growling in impotent anger.
The zombies ahead heard the desperate growls of their comrades and arched their necks to look back, some heads coming around too far, their skin twisted, piled folds of skin from an obviously broken neck. They groaned and reached for them. They were slow, but it would only take one to grab and keep hold of them until enough of the creatures could bring their teeth to bear.
Zombies ahead reached the barricade of dead bodies and ambled closer to the building. Mark looked up at the windows where, until a moment ago, there had been short bursts of gunfire. They were no longer present. The zombies piled into the building. That sucked, because that was Mark’s target too.
The helicopter turned majestically in the air, arching around like something only born to nature could do. The cockpit leaned forward, its propellers tilting accordingly. It pulled back.
The rotating blades kicked up grass and dirt, striking Mark in the face, stinging his skin. The view ahead was obscured by the rising cloud of dust. He couldn’t see what was inside it, so he slowed, squinting his eyes to block most of the particles. He caught sight of shadows to his left, then more to his right.
There was a hiss, and a rocket flashed from the helicopter’s underside. It slammed into the building, finding the front wall. A pair of zombie bodies exploded upon impact amid a shower of fire, heat and noise. The closest zombies were knocked onto the hard concrete ground, some unable to rise again.
Mark felt the air vibrate. He was knocked sideways, not off his feet, but unsteady. A zombie was quick to capitalize on the opportunity, but she was unsteady on her feet too, and fell down. She reached for Mark, who was being propelled forward, right into her leering mouth. His body reacted instinctively. He coiled his legs and threw his bodyweight forward, up and over the undead.
Mark fell into a roll, but was up in an instant, on his feet, running forward. He checked over his shoulder and found Eddie and John powering past the fallen undead.
The chopper loosed another missile, this one into the building’s flat front. It crumbled, falling forward, onto the undead just below, crushing them. The chopper unleashed the machine gun, tearing at the undead forms, stemming the flow.
They were providing cover, buying time for someone on the other side of the building. They would be getting into position, preparing to be lifted up and away from this hellhole. Mark’s team had to get to that pickup point or they were doomed. Get there, or risk losing the best opportunity his team had of getting away.
Mark plowed through the dust cloud, reinforced by the concrete granules of the fallen building. As it settled, smoke from an unseen fire rose up in its place. Daoud disappeared into its clinging enfolds, disappearing from view.
Mark had to trust Daoud knew where he was going as he followed his fleeing back. The helicopter’s propellers roared overhead, invisible through the dust cloud, but he heard the direction it was heading in. He followed it, trusting his ears to guide him where his eyes could not. The ground began to swell beneath his feet uphill. He raised his knees to climb it. The helicopter blew the dust cloud out, and Mark saw the chopper was indeed picking up soldiers, who rushed to climb aboard.
The helicopter kissed the ground. The updraft from its blades whipped empty cans and plastic bags through the air. The zombies rocked back, and then leaned forward and continued their assault on the helicopter.
Mark peered back. Eddie was lagging behind, undead shadows in his wake. John couldn’t be far behind him. Mark wanted to stop, to head back and help him, but stopping now when the chopper was so close to leaving was not an option. He had to get to the chopper and get them to hold on, to wait just a little longer for the slower members of his team. Despite Daoud’s revelation earlier, Mark didn’t know how he would react when he was in a place of safety. Would he wait, or forsake them all? Mark could rely only on himself.
A pair of soldiers turned and covered their rear. They moved their rifles left to right to mow down the approaching horde.
Daoud waved his arms. Mark could hear his voice, if not his words, over the engine’s roar. Then he dove to one side as the rifles spied him, mistook him for a zombie, and bit into the earth at his feet. Mark ducked his head down. The bullets didn’t touch him. The soldiers backed into the helicopter, unaware Daoud and Mark had ever been there. They climbed inside, firing on the humanoid shapes below.
The helicopter began to lift off, its objective complete.
“Wait!” Mark screamed. “Wait! Wait!”
But they either didn’t see him, or didn’t care to, and continued to rise. Mark stood beneath the helicopter’s undercarriage. It was twenty feet away and rising fast.
Then the helicopter jolted to one side, something having struck the spinning propeller blades. Meaty lumps fell, legs on one side, torso on the other. The helicopter straightened up, returning to an even keel. Mark turned to see the origin of the attack.
Awkward figures launched themselves off the temporary building’s roof and sailed onto the helicopter. Severed heads and limbs rained from the sky. Some found their mark, latching onto the helicopter struts.
The helicopter spun around to shake the figures off. Soldiers pounded at them, but they held on tight. They reached up, clawing at the men inside. Some got their teeth to the soldier’s flesh. A soldier lost his grip and fell. A gang fell upon him the moment he landed. His scream rivalled the whirring of the engine for volume. More undead climbed into the helicopter, which bucked and weaved in the air. Its tail spun one way, and then another.
Mark, Daoud, John and Eddie watched from the ground, their chance of escape rocking precariously through the air.
Black smoke rose like a plumed hat from the helicopter’s propellers as it made its final twist and plummeted toward the earth. Mark’s team ran instinctively away from the falling lump of metal.
The helicopter smashed into the earth, digging it up like the hand of God, crushing the slow meandering undead figures. The cockpit rolled end over end, the blade snapping and flying off at dangerous angles.
Mark’s team dropped and covered, with no greater defense than blind hope.
The clouds drifted overhead, uncaring and unresponsive to the battle taking place on the ground, as they had done for millions of years. Mark stared up at them, making out recognizable shapes and patterns. There was a turtle, a bird, a baby wrapped in swaddling… We only ever saw what we didn’t want to see.
A hand reached down. It was torn and bloody. Mark didn’t know if it belonged to a zombie or not, and frankly, he didn’t care. If he was going to die, then let it happen.
The hand gripped his collar and exerted pressure, pulling him up onto his feet. John checked Mark’s pupils, and then his body. Finding no major injuries, he dusted off his uniform.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said.
He grinned, his moustache singed and shortened on one side of his face. Mark was inflicted with a tiredness so thick it had seeped into his bones.
“The others?” Mark said, still in a daze.
“Still in one piece,” John said. “Unfortunately.”
Eddie was assisting Daoud with a fragment of propeller blade embedded in his leg.
“Head’s up, fellas,” Eddie said. “We’ve got company.”
The remnants of the undead attackers were still several dozen strong, a fraction of the huge force they’d smashed through in their jeep.
The soldiers seized poles and lumps of wood that protruded from the decimated building. They tucked them into their pants. They squared up against the undead army, forming a line, giving each other plenty of swinging room. They were exhausted from their run, having put everything they had into getting to the helicopter on time.
The wall of gnashing teeth and torn flesh approached.
The team aimed their guns and fired paintballs into the zombies’ faces. They exploded into a rainbow of color, smothering the zombies’ vision, sometimes slamming into the zombies’ eye sockets, pulping the eyeball so it dribbled down their cheeks.
Paintballs spent, they reached for their hand weapons, swinging until their arms hurt, until they couldn’t swing anymore. And then they swung some more.
The bodies hadn’t been dead long, and hadn’t had time to rot and weaken. It took every ounce of strength to smash their heads in, to knock teeth out of their jaws. The undead bodies crumbled to the ground. The soldiers slipped on the bloodied mud. The zombies crawled over their fallen comrades to get at their fresh meal, always reaching out, always stretching.
John slipped. A momentary mistake. A crawler seized the opportunity. He crawled up John’s body. John grabbed the beast by his hair and wrenched hard. A handful of greasy strands tore from the creature’s scalp. The half handful John still gripped held, but as the monster pressed his weight down, the strands of hair snapped. Its teeth were an inch from the bare skin of John’s neck.
“Get off me!” John cried. “Get off!”
He looked to the side, but found Mark, Daoud and Eddie engaged in their own battles.
The monster had no understanding of John’s desperation. It wouldn’t have listened even if it had. Its teeth gnashed, and drool dribbled from its distended lips. John held it in his hands, but it was wriggling and writhing and he barely had the strength to keep it at arm’s length. It pressed its head closer, its strength reinforced by John’s terror. The strength such a creature had when driven by hunger was incredible, every fiber of its being driven toward that one goal. John cried, resigned to his fate.
Crunch!
John scrunched his eyes shut tight, displacing the sensory perception of his skin. Had the creature bitten him? Would he become another one of them? He opened his eyes.
A pole was jammed in the side of the zombie’s head. The pole was swiftly retracted, and a thick viscous liquid leaked from the creature’s skull. John pushed the thing off like it might reanimate again, crabbing backward on his hands and feet.
A hand reached down. John looked up.
“Well, I’ll be,” John said, taking the hand.
It was Jacob.