Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  “Die Trying”

  Nicholas Ryan

  Copyright © 2014 Nicholas Ryan

  The right of Nicholas Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is dedicated to a fine man: Jim Gilchrist.

  I would also like to make special mention of my friend Mike Maynard who has served as beta reader, military advisor, language consultant and zombie technical advisor.

  Chapter One.

  It was Clinton Harrigan who heard it first – but I wasn’t particularly surprised. It was always the devout Christian who seemed to catch the slightest, softest sounds on the air. I had been nodding drowsily in the corner of the room reading by the pale flickering light of a candle when I saw the big red-headed man lower his bible and sit motionless, as though God was whispering in his ear. Then, quite deliberately, he carefully folded down a corner of the page he was reading and tucked the little book back into the pocket of his pants. He heaved himself up from the sofa and went to the window across the room, pressing his face close to the heavy curtain, his eyes vacant and remote. The big man listened for long silent seconds and then turned back to me.

  “Helicopter,” he said.

  I sat up urgently. “Helicopter? Are you sure?”

  Harrigan’s expression remained as impassive as a carved block of granite. “I’m sure.” He ran a meaty hand through the red curls of his hair and even in the gloom of guttering candlelight, I could see the steady glint in the gaze of the man’s eyes. “It’s coming closer. Still a long way off, but definitely coming closer. Come and listen.”

  I pushed myself out of the chair and went towards the window.

  In the twenty-three days since the zombie apocalypse had devastated the United States, the sounds of military defiance had become less with every passing day. In the first week, the army had been on the streets, and the sound of gunfire roared through the night. Aircraft streaked high overhead, and vapor trails criss-crossed the blue sky as air force jets flew missions further to the north. But as the days had become weeks, the sounds of resistance had grown less frequent, and less determined; like the gasps of a strangling man, choking on his last few precious shallow breaths.

  I went quietly across the room and Harrigan stood aside. I twitched the heavy curtains an inch apart, and turned my head. I felt the cool of the night air radiating through the glass.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Jed appear in the doorway that divided the room from the tiny kitchen. He had a cold can of beans in his hand, scooping the food into his mouth with his fingers. He leaned casually against the door-frame, his eyebrows raised in a silent question, but his attitude unreadable.

  I turned back to where Harrigan stood.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Wait,” Harrigan said. “The sound is drifting on the wind. It comes and goes. Be patient.”

  I frowned, and wondered vaguely what the sound of an approaching helicopter might mean for the three of us. Did it mean the military were back on the offensive? Was this the start of a concerted effort to win back the south-east of the country? Or was it an evacuation? Was the helicopter a last desperate flight to freedom before the entire country was over-run? What sort of helicopter could it be? Maybe it was transporting supplies and equipment. Maybe it was on a reconnaissance mission. The questions and possibilities were impossible to stop – and equally impossible to answer.

  Then I heard the sound for myself. My eyes flashed with recognition. God alone knew why a helicopter would be flying over this desolate little town in the middle of rural Virginia – let alone flying at all. We hadn’t seen a single sign of life in over a week; man woman or child. So a helicopter was cause for hope – and utter confused incredulity.

  “You hear it now, right?” Harrigan asked grimly.

  I nodded, my ears straining to keep the ethereal vague sound in contact as it eddied on the night air. “I hear it,” I whispered.

  Harrigan looked satisfied. His face was a craggy collection of features that had been assembled with no real care. His nose was the shape of a ripe plum, and laced with the tell-tale veins of a man who had once been a heavy drinker. His eyes were dark little things that seemed to get lost between the pale flesh of his cheeks, and the overhanging ridge of his brow. He went to the next window in the room and leaned close.

  “It’s definitely coming closer,” Harrigan announced softly after another brief silent pause. “But it doesn’t sound right. It sounds to me like there’s something wrong. The turbine – it sounds – irregular.”

  I couldn’t hear any of that. All I could hear was the very distant thump of a helicopter, the sound without any definition, or any sense of its location. But I didn’t doubt Harrigan’s judgment. I turned around and stared at Jed.

  “It might be military,” I said.

  Jed pushed himself casually away from the door and left the empty can of beans on a side-table. He wiped his hands on the front of his denim jacket and then dragged the sleeve across his mouth. He winced suddenly, and then said, “So.”

  “So it might be a way out for us.”

  Jed grunted, and then belched. He got the taste of it on his breath before he went on. “And it might not.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood like a big muscled-bouncer in the middle of the living room floor. There was a sour, bitter look on his face. Then he scratched the bristled stubble of his beard, and winced again. The whole left side of his face was terribly swollen, distorting his features and pulling the skin tight around a lump that reached from his cheek, all the way to under his jawbone. “Unless it lands on the road right outside the door.”

  I turned my head and pressed my ear back close to the window. The sound was still there – and maybe it was a little louder now – a little more detailed. I thought I could hear the clatter of the rotors as they beat on the dark night air. The sound became clear for a second – and then was washed away.

  “Wind?”

  Harrigan nodded. “There’s a storm on the way,” he said. “I can feel it. And you can see the wind through the trees out on the sidewalk.” He pointed through the crack in the curtains. I looked out into the blackness through the window in front of me. The shapes of the night were apparitions – everything turned into a nightmare by the ghostly light of a thin slice of moon and wind-swept black clouds that scudded across the stars. The path from the front door was a vague silhouette, but beyond the fence, I could see nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. The night was a dark zombie terror, filled with fear and death that marauded through the blood-drenched streets of America like packs of predatory animals.

  “The engine sounds okay to me,” I turned back to Harrigan and screwed up my face.

  “Me too,” Jed said suddenly from behind us. He had his face lifted up to the ceiling, his head tilted to the side, like he was inspecting the paint and plaster work. Then he made a long explosive hacking sound, and hawked a glob of green slimy phlegm onto the carpet. He winced again.

  I watched as Jed
carefully pulled one of his last precious cigarettes from a crumpled pack in his coat pocket and lit it. He inhaled a lungful of smoke and breathed out a cloud of blue haze with a contented sigh. “Sounds like any other helicopter.”

  Harrigan shot Jed a malevolent glare, and then he turned back to face me. “It’s not,” Harrigan said with absolute conviction. “Mitch, the helicopter has some kind of engine trouble – and it seems to be coming closer. And lower.”

  “Circling?”

  Harrigan shook his head. “I don’t think so. But maybe.”

  “Looking for something?”

  “Perhaps. Or looking for a safe place to land.”

  Behind me, I heard Jed hiss. “You’re fucking kidding,” he snorted derisively. “First, what makes you so sure the helicopter is in trouble, big-boy? It sounds perfectly normal to me. And,” he stabbed a finger at Harrigan like he was thrusting with a pointed blade, “what makes you so sure it is dropping lower, or looking for a place to land? Did God tell you that? Did you just get the word from the Big Guy in the sky?”

  Harrigan’s lips drew into a thin bloodless grimace, and bit down on his frustration. His policy of turning the other cheek left him an easy target for ridicule. It had been the same from the moment the quiet gentle man had appeared outside the house a week before, covered in someone else’s blood, his eyes wild and crazed with terror as he had pounded on the front door and pleaded for shelter.

  “I lived near an executive airport in South Carolina for three years,” Harrigan said with measured restraint. “I know.”

  I shot Jed a glare meant to urge him into silence. He ignored me. He took a step closer to Harrigan and reached for the Glock that was tucked inside his belt.

  Jed was a big man – a huge, muscled giant. He was the kind of man who had always gotten what he wanted by the sheer size and weight of his presence. He was like a man-mountain of pumped, buffed muscle. He was three inches taller than me, and fifty pounds heavier. His chest and arms were covered in awkward tattoos that rose all the way up to his neck. And there were scars. Ones he had never told me about, but ones he didn’t need to talk about either. They criss-crossed the bridge of his nose and the broad flat of his forehead. He was a one-man muscled wall of violent destruction, unhindered by conscience, reason or logic.

  He was my younger brother, and he had done time.

  Hard time.

  “You religious bastards are all the same,” Jed chambered a round into the Glock and glanced down at the weapon casually as he spoke. He used the short barrel of the gun to scratch under his chin. “You think God is going to save you, even when you’re standing knee deep in a living hell,” Jed said. His words were slightly slurred. If there had been beer left in the house, I would have thought him drunk, but I knew it was the terrible pain of an infected tooth that was distorting the sound of his words. In a strange way, the slur seemed to add menace. I felt myself bracing. It wouldn’t be the first time in the last week the two men before me had been on the brink of a confrontation. I could see it in Jed’s eyes; he wasn’t used to anyone challenging him, or questioning him. Harrigan’s stoic, resolute quiet confidence rattled and unnerved my brother in a way he wasn’t sure how to deal with.

  Harrigan stared, and then turned his back without a word. At first I thought he was deliberately provoking Jed into violence – but then I realized it was the sound of the approaching helicopter that compelled his attention. All of a sudden the roar of the rotors was like a deafening thunder that sounded as if it were directly overhead.

  I looked up in sudden alarm. I could feel the force of the noise and tremendous downdraft of the rotors seem to shake and beat at the building. The windows rattled in their casements and the floor beneath my feet seemed to shudder. I saw Harrigan press his face close to the window again, his eyes narrowed slits against the night.

  He was waiting.

  I stared up at the ceiling. The roar of the helicopter rose to a swelling thunder – and then it was past us – seemingly flying directly over the rooftop. It was low. The sound was deafening. The air shuddered, and over the scythe of the huge rotors, I could hear the high-pitched whine of the turbine.

  I heard Harrigan shout, and I snapped my eyes to where he stood at the window.

  “It’s searching for something,” Harrigan confirmed, still with his face pressed hard against the glass. “He’s using a spotlight.”

  I dashed to a window, but in the instant of time it took me, the helicopter had already flashed out of sight, disappearing behind the trees and houses on the opposite side of the road. The clattering avalanche of noise began to fade as the rising wind tore the reverberating sound to shreds.

  I turned to Harrigan. “What did you see?”

  “It may be military, but I don’t think so,” he said carefully, as though he were assembling his thoughts as he spoke. “The shape seemed to be more commercial – like a Bell JetRanger. But it was painted a flat dark color.” He screwed up his face like he was dealing with a particularly puzzling problem. “Like a night-flying camouflage.”

  That made no sense.

  “That makes no sense,” I said. “Why camouflage a helicopter from prying eyes. There are no prying eyes – everyone is dead, or undead. They could paint it bright pink with yellow flowers. The point is – who are they hiding from?”

  Harrigan had no answer – because there was no answer.

  “Did you hear the turbine?” he asked me.

  I nodded.

  “It was straining –almost like the pilot was using every ounce of power just to keep the thing in the air,” Harrigan said. He huffed, and chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “I think the pilot is looking for a place to crash land, Mitch. I think he’s got to set it down before it falls from the sky. That’s why the spotlight was on. He’s looking for somewhere to land.”

  My God.

  I stared back out through the window. I couldn’t see the helicopter, but I could still hear the roar of the rotors. But what I was visualizing then was not the helicopter – I was seeing the pilot, hunched over the controls and desperately struggling to keep the ungainly bird in the air. Were there passengers? How many? I couldn’t possibly guess – but I could imagine the moment when the helicopter finally lost its fight to fly and fell in a screaming horror to the ground. If the pilot lost power before setting down, the impact of the collision could be catastrophic; tearing the rotors from the helicopter and shattering them into a thousand scything blades as the metal shell around the man crumpled, and he sat dazed and dying harnessed into his seat…

  The clatter of the helicopter’s percussive beat came again, louder for an instant and then fading once more, like a punch of violent sound. I turned away from the window and stared into Harrigan’s eyes.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked me.

  I nodded. “I heard it.”

  “He’s trying to land. The sound isn’t fading anymore. It’s constant, and he’s not too far away – somewhere beyond those houses across the street.”

  I figured as much. I visualized the helicopter, rocking and pitching a hundred feet above the ground as the pilot juggled the controls and tried to find a clear area to land. In my mind’s eye I saw a console of flashing indicator lights, buzzing emergency alarms, and a man perhaps only moments from death.

  “Thoughts?”

  Harrigan rubbed hard at his face, like he was trying to rearrange his features to create something more handsome, and then he sighed heavily. “I think we should.”

  I nodded. “I think so too.”

  I spun on my heel, filled with sudden tense energy. Jed was standing right behind me. I brushed past him and reached for the black nylon bag that was on the sofa. It was packed with spare ammunition for the Glocks, and some of the emergency supplies I had been able to throw together before the world went to hell in a hand-basket. The bag wasn’t very heavy.

  “We’re going to rescue the pilot,” I said calmly. I slung the strap of the bag over my shoulder and che
cked the Glock tucked down inside the waistband of my jeans to make sure the magazine was full.

  For long seconds Jed’s face remained blank and impassive – and then the realization struck him.

  “Like hell,” he snapped, suddenly bristling with defiant outrage. “I’m not going anywhere.” His eyes were wide and wild.

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said. “But that doesn’t change anything. Harrigan and I are going.”

  “Jesus!” Jed growled from the center of the room. “Are you out of your mind? Even if the pilot lands that thing, he’s still dead, Mitch. Every zombie within ten miles is going to be drawn to the sound of the helicopter. They’ll be all over him. Whether he survives the crash or not – he’s still dead.”

  I threw a couple of empty plastic water bottles into the bag, and snatched my leather jacket off the back of the chair. Harrigan was shrugging on a long heavy overcoat.

  “You’re probably right,” I said to Jed. “But we’re still going.”

  “Then you’re dead.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I agreed. “But so are you.”

  He bristled, and shook his head. Jed wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Sometimes things took a little longer to register – and sometimes things needed to be explained.

  “What do you mean by that? I told you I ain’t going with you.”

  I let the bag slide off my shoulder and I sighed. “Jed, we’re just about out of food. There’s maybe enough water for another day or two, but after that… nothing. If we stay here, we’re going to die. If we make a break for it, we’re going to die – because we don’t know where any other survivors are. We’ve been isolated for over three weeks. So either way, you’re a dead man if you stay here.”

  Jed frowned. I let my words sink in. “This pilot is our only hope,” I explained patiently. “If we find him, and if he’s alive, he’ll know where other survivors are. Based on the direction the helicopter flew in, he has come from somewhere north of here – and he’s in a helicopter. That means civilization still exists – somewhere. He’s our only chance of getting through this nightmare. So we have to go out and try to save him – because we’re trying to save ourselves, you dumb ignorant, stupid bastard.”