Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Jed flinched. I saw angry color rising in his one good cheek, and his eyes narrowed until they were dark and dangerous.

  “What did you call me?” his voice rumbled.

  Behind Jed’s back, Clinton Harrigan picked up his heavy crowbar and hefted it in his hand. He looked me a silent question with undisguised relish.

  I shook my head – a sharp curt gesture. “I called you a dumb. ignorant bastard,” I answered Jed. “You think this is some heroic good-Samaritan gesture? You think I want to go out into the night – and into a storm – to find a crashed helicopter, knowing there’s maybe only a ten percent chance the pilot is alive? Jesus, Jed!” I snapped. “This is our best chance to save ourselves. Do I care about the pilot? Not really. What I care about is living through this apocalypse and I know that if we stay here we’re going to die – either from starvation, or from being forced to make a crazy escape with no idea where we are going, and no way of getting there.”

  For long seconds, the air in the room crackled with tension, and then Jed seemed to deflate. The bluster went out of him and he slumped his shoulders and prodded absently at his swollen cheek with his fingers. “Are we coming back here?” he asked at last. His voice was a flat, heavy monotone.

  I shook my head. “I doubt it,” I said. “There’s nothing to come back for. If the pilot is alive, and if he was flying towards a specific location, then most probably it’s to the south of here because that’s the course he was flying. There’s no point rescuing him and doubling back to this place. We’ll find another safe place to spend the night, and then work out a plan in the morning.”

  “If we survive until then,” Jed said gloomily.

  I nodded. “If we survive until then.”

  We weren’t well armed. Jed and I had Glock’s and a few boxes of ammunition to share between us. Harrigan didn’t have a gun. He had a crowbar. He reminded me of Friar Tuck from the Robin Hood legend – a big beefy holy man who somehow believed guns to be dangerous – but had no problem with cleaving the iron forked claw of a crowbar down into the skull of an undead attacker.

  We went through the house quickly. I stuffed a blanket into the bag, and the last few cans of beans from the kitchen. There was enough water to fill half-a-dozen plastic drink bottles, so we dumped them into the nylon bag, and Jed filled his pockets with the boxes of ammunition for the guns to lighten the load.

  We stood in the center of the living room floor like a trio of strangers waiting for a train, checking over each other’s preparations. Harrigan’s jacket was one of those long black woolen pieces that reached all the way down to his knees. It was thick and warm. He turned the collar up and rolled his shoulders as he took a test-swing with the crowbar. Jed’s denim jacket had some kind of gang colors on the back. He buttoned it up to his throat and forced a tight strained smile.

  My leather jacket was an old black thing I’d owned for years. It was like me – worn around the edges. But it was thick. It would give me protection against random bites, but just to be certain, I wrapped some shredded lengths of torn linen bedsheet up to the elbow of my left arm to give me added protection. Jed saw what I was doing and thought it was a good idea. He did the same. Then there was nothing more to do – except step out into the night and put our lives on the line.

  * * *

  The front door was bolted, and I had hammered four-inch nails into the frame during the first terrifying days of the zombie apocalypse. So we assembled in the small kitchen at the rear of the house. The back door had been chained, and we had heaved the refrigerator across the entry as a barricade.

  I stood with my back against the door and unfastened the latch. Jed stole a glance through the kitchen window and gave me the ‘thumbs-up’ sign.

  We had survived for three weeks through good luck and stealth. Every window in the house had been kept curtained. The doors had been bolted and blockaded. We burned one candle in the evening – and we stayed quiet. It had kept us alive. In the first few days of terror, the streets had been a screaming nightmare of endless terror and unspeakable horrors. The gutters ran with blood as the infection spread across the town. We had avoided death by avoiding being noticed.

  Now we were about to step out into a world we didn’t know any more. I was scared.

  I cracked the door open and stood for a long moment, scanning the darkness for an immediate sign of danger. A gust of sweet, cold fresh air slapped me in the face and my eyes watered. The air in the house was smoky and stale with the odor of sweat and fear. Suddenly I was keen to be clear of the place.

  I pulled the back door open and stepped quietly out into the night. A flagstone path ran from the back door, around the side of the house to the driveway. I went along the path for a dozen paces and then stopped. I looked behind me and could see Jed standing in the doorway, watching me. I went down on one knee and waved to him. He came out through the door and crept to where I waited. I could hear him breathing, the sound of it rasping and loud. He had his Glock in his hand, swinging it in an arc of about ninety degrees towards the back fence.

  It was a small yard with a child’s swing set and a couple of stunted trees near the back fence. The grass had grown long and become choked with weeds. Jed swept his gun from side to side, as though he expected the dark gnarled trees to come alive.

  I waved to Harrigan. He came out through the door, and left it swinging open. He scuffled to where I was kneeling. There was an urgent look in his eyes. I pressed my mouth close to his ear and whispered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The sound of the helicopter has changed again. Can you hear it?”

  I frowned. We were protected from the wind by the bulk of the house so that the sound was just background noise, overlaid by the distant, steady beat of the helicopter’s rotors. I shook my head. “Sounds the same to me,” I said. “Sounds like he’s still hovering, maybe.”

  “But it’s moved,” Harrigan said in an impatient whisper. “It’s coming from further east, like he’s still looking for a place to set down.”

  I frowned again and listened harder, trying to isolate the noise of the chopper. The thumping beat of the helicopter surged and receded as the wind came in gusts and then fell away, like the crash of surf on the shoreline. Maybe Harrigan was right… or maybe it was the wind that was changing direction as the impending storm swept closer to the town.

  A rent of lightning ripped across the sky, and I looked up. Beyond the silhouette of distant dark trees, I saw the lingering flash backlight banks of dark ugly storm clouds. I got to my feet and tightened my grip on the Glock.

  I reached the corner of the house and glanced behind me. Harrigan was at my shoulder, and Jed was close behind him. We stood in a tight knot just long enough for me to take a single deep breath and crush down on my fear and panic.

  I stepped around the side of the house and into the teeth of the rising wind.

  I wasn’t prepared. The wind was demonic: a howling gusting blast of cold damp air that punched at my body and forced me to slit my eyes tight. The air was full of leaves and debris and dirt. I hunched my shoulders and threw my free hand up in front of my face.

  The driveway ran the length of the house and ended at a mailbox. I covered the distance as quickly as I could. The night was utterly dark. Storm clouds had overwhelmed the moon.

  When I got to the mailbox I glanced both ways along the street. The night was like a cloak, hiding the debris of crashed cars, smashed windows, overgrown lawns and burned, blackened buildings. But the darkness also hid the deadly danger of marauding zombies that I knew must be lurking in the night.

  I turned my back to the teeth of the driving wind and hunched deeper into the warmth of my leather jacket.

  “Across the street,” I said over the moaning wail of the wind. Harrigan nodded. Jed did the same. I turned back around and – before I had time to change my mind – I broke into a sprint.

  The wind punched at me as I broke from the last illusions of protective cover. It was swirling
between the buildings, driving a skirt of biting dust and dirt before it. I felt the strength of it push me sideways and tug at my body. I squinted my eyes and looked up into the night, scanning the sky above the dark shape of the roofline ahead. I caught a quick glimpse of the helicopter’s spotlight, wavering like a strobe in the distance. It was ahead, and further to my left. I made a mental note of its approximate location in the sky – and then it was gone completely – either obscured by the height of the houses I was running towards, or because the pilot had dipped so low to the ground that the spotlight was blocked from view.

  Or because the chopper had fallen from the sky and crashed.

  No. It hadn’t done that. Not yet at least. I could still hear the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the rotors, beating against the wind. The sound of it became louder, and then just as quickly faded again.

  I ran on, feeling hopelessly exposed and vulnerable. It was just twenty feet to the opposite side of the road and the shelter of the houses there – but it was the longest few seconds of my life. My arms pumped, and my chest heaved like a billows. The nylon bag was slung from my shoulders. It thumped against my back as I moved.

  I leaped the gutter and landed badly. I felt my left leg go from under me and then I was falling. I went down in soft grass, my momentum hurling me end over end until I felt cold concrete under my back. I got up quickly and checked myself for injury. My legs were trembling and the surging adrenalin made my hands shake. I stood gingerly and took a couple of steps.

  Nothing broken. Nothing sprained.

  The night was so dark that it was impossible to see more than a few feet in front of my hands. There was no ambient light. There was no light at all. I heard my brother’s heavy footsteps as he pounded across the blacktop and then he was rasping and gasping for breath beside me. Harrigan came across the street last. He was a big beefy man. I didn’t imagine he would be fast on his feet. I heard him well before I saw him – heard his ragged gasping breath as he came closer. He must have been running with his arms outstretched because I felt the slap of his palm against my shoulder as he almost crashed into me.

  We didn’t wait.

  A dark solid shape loomed ahead of us – the silhouette of a house. I knew this place because I had stared anxiously through the curtains a hundred times in the past few weeks, scouring the neighborhood for marauding zombies. It was a two-story home, directly across the road from the house we had been hiding in. I remembered there was a row of low hedges that served as a fence-line across the front of the property, and I groped my way forward until I felt the brush of small leaves and branches. I kept my hand extended, and began to pace tentatively until I came to a break in the foliage. I felt more concrete under my feet – the path that led down the side of the house. I turned and waited for Jed and Harrigan to find me. It took a moment. We were like three blind men, the task made all the more difficult by the howling wind that moaned and shrieked like some mournful lament of the damned.

  And maybe that’s what we were.

  “Stick close,” I pressed my mouth close to Jed’s ear. “Keep each other in sight.”

  I went along the path, and sensed the shape of the house overhanging us like an avalanche of black. The path was narrow, and I kept my hands outstretched, feeling my way. The path was flat. I could feel long grass and low scrubby thorns snagging at my jeans. I pushed on, moving in a cautious crouch as we suddenly walked into a hole in the wind.

  We were walking close against the side of the house. The building was buffering the force of the gale. We could still hear it howling through the trees and rooftops, but suddenly it was calm enough that I could open my eyes fully and rub the grit and dirt from them. I took a chance.

  “Jed, give me your lighter.”

  I needed to get my bearings. I knew where we were – but I had no idea what lay beyond. The view of this house from the living room window of our hideout showed this path that lead down the side of the home… but then what?

  I sensed Jed rustling through his pockets, and then felt him press the cigarette lighter into the palm of my hand. We crouched down, making ourselves as small a target as possible and I flicked the lighter. I cupped my hand around the tiny orange glow. It threw off just enough light for me to see the faded green clapboard siding of the house, a few feet of concrete path – and Jed and Harrigan’s taut, strained faces, cast in a ghostly orange glow that deepened the shadows of their features so they looked like undead apparitions.

  The glow from the lighter also turned every tree, hedge and fern into ghastly nightmarish shapes. I flicked the lighter off.

  “I think this path leads all the way around to the rear of the house,” I whispered. Jed and Harrigan leaned closer. “There has to be a back fence. We find it, and we go over it. It’s our best chance of avoiding trouble,” I explained, hoping I sounded calm. “The Zed’s won’t be wandering around suburban back yards in the middle of the night – they’ll be roaming the streets – so we stay low and we stay close to cover. Okay?”

  I must have sounded confident. Jed and Harrigan simply nodded. Then I felt Harrigan’s big meaty hand – a hand the size and shape of a baseball mitt – on my shoulder. “The chopper,” he said cautiously. “It’s moved again. I think it’s coming back this way, Mitch.”

  I propped my head to the side and tried to focus my attention. The sound of the rotors was still a constant noise, but it had been the same for so long now that I had to focus in order to separate the sound from the undulating howl of the wind that carried it. I shrugged. It didn’t sound any different to me, but I wasn’t prepared to doubt Harrigan’s verdict. “What do you think that means?”

  Harrigan was silent for long seconds. “He might not be able to find a safe place to set down,” Harrigan speculated. “We’re in the suburbs. There are power poles and wires everywhere. Maybe he’s trying to use up fuel – like planes do before they crash. They try to burn up fuel, or they dump it to reduce the risk of an explosion.” He shrugged again. “All I know for sure is that he’s edging his way back towards us.”

  “He might be circling,” Jed offered. “He might be waiting.”

  No one commented. Jed’s words got whipped away by the wind. The truth was – we didn’t know.

  But we were going to find out.

  I got to my feet and cast another glance skyward. The night was a heavy blanket. Somewhere in the sky was the moon – but the banks of storm clouds were so dark and so low to the ground with the weight of pending rain, that not even the faintest night glow seeped through. Nor could I see the helicopter’s spotlight. Either the pilot had switched it off – or he was still too low for us to see it.

  I took a deep breath. It was cold. I felt the air bite in my lungs, but my body was drenched in a nervous adrenalin-fueled sweat. I could feel the perspiration wet in my hairline and on the back of my neck, trickling down inside my tee-shirt. I wiped my palm on my jeans. The handle of the Glock was slippery and damp. Then I started down the path towards the back fence with Jed and Harrigan shadowing me.

  I went slowly – unsure of exactly what I might be walking into, and doing my best to keep the concrete path under my feet as it seemed to meander its way past small gardens and rock features. Then the sky was ripped apart by a jagged blue flash of lightning, and for a split second everything ahead of me was frozen and burned onto my eyes.

  There was a retaining wall ahead of us and another garden that fringed the back fence of the property. The fence was made of wooden palings. I went forward slowly.

  I waded into a barrier of rose bushes and thorny shrubs, then felt the rough timber of the fence. I crouched down and waited for Harrigan and Jed. The fence gave some shelter from the swirling wind. I could hear it moaning through the tree-tops, and a flurry of leaves rained down on me. Somewhere overhead I heard a branch snap – the sound like the retort of a gunshot.

  Jed squatted down in the garden beside me. We waited another minute. Nothing.

  Clinton Harrigan had disappeare
d.

  I cursed under my breath. Overhead, thunder rumbled with a sound like artillery fire, and the wind shrieked. There was no point calling out to Harrigan – he wouldn’t hear me unless I shouted, and I didn’t want to do that.

  I fumbled Jed’s lighter from my pocket and lit it. The glow was a weak puny spark in the impenetrable depth of the night. It cast a small glow that showed me Jed’s face and the fence. Nothing more. But I wasn’t expecting to miraculously see Harrigan wandering around, lost in the darkness.

  I was expecting him to see the glow, like a lighthouse in the middle of the night.

  A few moments later I heard him, clambering for a foothold on the retaining wall, and then he was next to me, his breath ragged and his eyes wide and wild with the remnants of his panic.

  I felt the big man’s weight slump against the fence. “Sorry,” he muttered bitterly. “I lost you for a moment. One minute I was following Jed, with my eyes on his back – and the next I was bumping into God-knows what and starting to panic.”

  I said nothing.

  I hadn’t been afraid of the dark since I was a kid.

  But I was now. The night terrified me. As a child I had believed the darkness was filled with horror and monsters. Then I grew up and realized my fear was merely a child’s imagination.

  But not now. Now the terror was real. Now the night really was alive with monsters.

  And horror.

  And death.

  Harrigan had been on the verge of blind, terrified panic. I could see that in his eyes, and I could hear it in his voice. And I understood and sympathized.

  I slapped him on the back and flicked off the lighter. “It’s okay,” I said. “From now on, you stay in the middle. Jed, you bring up the rear.”

  I got to my feet and took a grip on the fence. It must have been old. As I heaved myself up, I felt it begin to sway. I scrambled to the top, and pushed myself out into the dark space – and then realized, too late, that I was a fool. I had no idea what was on this side of the fence. I should have used the lighter again. I should have taken the extra moment to be sure. But I didn’t.