Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  The door was crumpled, and hanging at an angle off one broken hinge – but for all that, it was stuck. I hooked my hand inside the door and heaved. The door moved an inch or two – just far enough for me to see inside the dark cockpit. I could see the shape of the pilot. He was hunched against the straps of his safety harness, his head slumped forward, his arms limp at his side. He wasn’t moving.

  “Clinton!” I shouted. The big man was close beside me. There was a sliding door behind the cockpit. It was buckled and folded into the wrecked fuselage. He turned to me, and his eyes were wide and panicked. “Give me the crow-bar.”

  I braced the bar against the door and heaved. The sound of rending, tearing metal was suddenly loud in the night. The door moved a couple of inches. Harrigan elbowed me out of the way impatiently and hefted the bar. “Let me.”

  I stood back, hands on my knees, and sucked in deep breaths. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

  I heard Harrigan grunt and saw the strain contort his face as he put all of his weight against the door. It held for another long moment – and then groaned open, buckling in the center, as the thin metal peeled apart like opening a can.

  He threw down the crow-bar and wrapped his big hands around the door. It came all the way open in a final tear of metal and smashed back against the broken side of the machine.

  I dived into the cockpit. The air was filled with the smell of gasoline and smoke. The control panel had been driven against the pilot’s legs and lower body by the impact of the collision. I glanced through the crazed, shattered Plexiglas of the cockpit bubble. There were splashes of blood against the screen – and through it, I saw the nearest undead ghouls, approaching fast. I tore my eyes away and turned my attention back to the pilot.

  He was wearing headphones. I snatched them off, and when I did, the man’s head rolled heavily to the side. I felt under his jaw for a pulse, but my hands were shaking and my breath sawing so loudly, I couldn’t feel or hear anything. I slapped my hand hard against his chest and it came away wet and sticky.

  Blood. Oozing from a small hole in the man’s chest. I couldn’t see a lot in the gloomy darkness, but I used up a few precious seconds to explore the wound with my fingers before quickly moving on.

  It took me a moment to find the release locks on the pilot’s safety harness. The broken console of lights and gauges had been driven into his lap. I thumped the releases and the straps went loose. The man’s body slumped sideways against the far door of the cockpit. He didn’t move.

  I turned back to Harrigan. The big man’s face was framed in the wrecked opening. “He’s dead,” I said. “Dammit.”

  Harrigan seemed to deflate, like the last flickering light of hope had just been extinguished. He sagged against the side of the helicopter. I began to back quickly out of the cockpit. It was a cramped, tangled tomb and I was terrified by the smell of fuel. The helicopter was like a ticking time bomb.

  I got half-way out, my eyes fixed on the approaching undead, when I noticed a sudden movement in the corner of my eye. My head snapped round. Trapped behind the pilot’s seat within the fuselage of the crumpled machine were two other people.

  A man and a girl.

  The man was moving – moving his hand. It flopped on his lap in small desperate movements like a landed fish.

  “Jesus!” I swore. And then I started to shout. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

  I didn’t wait for any long-winded answers. The man’s hand flicked again, and I saw the girl beside him roll her head so that it slumped heavily to rest against the man’s shoulder. I backed out of the cockpit and shoved my face close to Harrigan’s.

  “There’s two people in there – alive,” I said tensely.

  Harrigan’s eyes widened in relief and shock. “Are you for real?”

  I nodded my head. “They’re in the cabin. We’ve got to get the back door open.”

  He grabbed my arm to stop me as I lunged for the sliding door. “Let me do it.”

  Harrigan attacked the door with the crow-bar, but when the helicopter had crashed, the closest side of the machine had taken the brunt of initial impact. The metal of the door had folded and creased within the frame of the dead machine, so that it was impossible to force it open. Harrigan looked at me heavily, and shook his head. “It won’t budge. I’m going to have to try the other side.”

  I felt an instant surge of alarm. I looked up, past the sheltering shape of the helicopter and the zombies were now much nearer. Maybe fifty paces. I could see them as clear figures; undead men and women moving hungrily closer through the grass, haloed by the red glow of the distant burning buildings on the hillside.

  I looked back at Harrigan and nodded. “I’ll come with you. Be quick about it.”

  We skirted the broken tail section of the helicopter and ran around to the far side of the fuselage. I felt completely exposed – like hapless prey. Harrigan attacked the door with every last ounce of his remaining energy – and I went down on one knee and carefully aimed the Glock at the closest undead.

  It was a man. He seemed taller than the others in the line. He was wearing some kind of a jacket. It seemed to hang off his lanky frame. His movements were jerky – as though his undead body was overcome by repeated convulsions. His head swayed from side to side and his arm and leg movements were awkward ungainly jerks, so that he looked like some kind of mechanical robot with bad wiring.

  I aimed the pistol at the man’s head, remembering our earlier near-death encounter on the footpath. The gun felt heavy in my hands, and I could feel strain and tension in my shoulders, and all the way down to my wrist. I held the weapon steady, took a long deep breath – and waited.

  Behind me Clinton Harrigan was using words that Christians would never find in the Bible, of that I am sure. He cursed vehemently and I heard the clang of the crow-bar as he attacked the cabin door with the desperation of a man about to die. I heard a high-pitched squeal of metal against metal that set my teeth on edge.

  “How are you going?” I shouted over my shoulder at Harrigan without taking my eyes off the figure of the tall zombie approaching. I tried to keep my voice calm, but I had to shout over the sound of the drumming rain, and the God-awful thump that was my pounding, racing heart. My voice came out, sounding unnaturally loud in my ears, like a desperate squeak.

  Harrigan said nothing. I heard him grunt, and then he cursed again. I heard the crow-bar clang off metal.

  I felt like I was kneeling under a spotlight. There was no shelter on this side of the helicopter – no shadow to hide in. Harrigan and I were totally exposed by the glow of the distant fires. I stole a glance sideways to where Jed had taken position at the nose of the helicopter, but I couldn’t see him.

  A sudden sense of isolation swept over me. I should have been able to see Jed. He had propped his gun arm on a piece of wreckage near the crumpled front-end of the helicopter. I felt a sudden sense of unease.

  “Jed…?”

  Nothing. No answer.

  I called again, this time more urgently. “Jed.”

  There was another long moment of silence. I flicked my eyes back anxiously to the line of undead. They were just thirty yards away.

  “Jed!”

  I heard a scuffle of movement, and then my brother’s voice, tense and harsh from somewhere behind me. “Shut up, jerk weed, and get ready to drop the fuckers!”

  I heard Harrigan groan and strain, like the sound a man makes when he lifts a great weight. The sound went on for long seconds – and then I heard a mighty slam of metal. Harrigan gave a ragged shout of triumph, and I couldn’t help myself – I turned back to stare at the helicopter.

  Harrigan was slumped against the broken fuselage of the craft, his chest heaving like a bellows, his face turned up into the rain and the storm, his eyes screwed tightly shut as though racked with some great pain.

  Beside him, the cabin door was open – a dark space that held our last hope of survival.

  I stuffed the Glock down the waist
band of my jeans and turned back to the open cabin door. It was gloomy inside. The man was slumped against the mangled internal frame of the hull, leaning heavily against the safety strap of his safety belt. Beside him, was a teenage girl. She had dark hair. Her eyes were closed and her face was white as marble.

  I glanced at the man’s face. He was about my age – maybe a few years closer to forty. He was a big, broad-shouldered man wearing a dark suit. His face was wide, his features unremarkable. He had a buzz-cut hairstyle, shaved very short so that my first impression was that he could easily be military. He had that look about him. I reached for his face and cupped my hand under his jaw to feel for a pulse. As I did, the man’s eyes flicked open, bright and clear and sharp. He blinked at me – and then made a slow, low groaning sound. His hand came from his lap to feel for a bump I saw on his forehead that was the size of a golf ball. I gently trapped his hand and eased it back to his side.

  “You’re okay,” I said with conviction I did not feel. I wasn’t a doctor. I had no medical training at all – but it seemed like the right thing to say, and I doubted there was any point in telling the man otherwise. It wasn’t going to make any difference…

  He stared at me for long seconds, his expression blank, but I sensed there was plenty going on behind his dark eyes. The lump on his head was swelling and turning dark red. I thumped the release catch on his safety belt.

  “Do you think you can move?”

  The man nodded – and then winced painfully. He turned his head very slowly, as though it were some fragile precious thing made of delicate glass. “Check Millie,” the man said. His voice was croaky. He licked his lips, and then said in an unnaturally loud voice, “she’s my daughter.”

  I nodded. The man leaned himself aside and I reached across him. As the man adjusted his position, the girl’s head rolled from his shoulder, and I caught her cheek in the palm of my hand. Her skin was smooth, her face warm. I eased her head back against the padding of the seat and felt for a pulse: faint and racing, fluttering under the soft flesh of her jawline.

  “She’s alive,” I declared. “But I need you out of here so I can help her. Understand?”

  The man nodded again – this time very carefully. I heaved myself back out of the mangled wreckage and the man reached for my shoulder to support his weight. He groaned painfully, and I felt his big fingers dig into the muscles of my forearm. I reached out with my free hand to help him and he came out of the helicopter into the pouring rain on shaky, unsteady legs.

  I left him.

  I leaned back into the helicopter and perched myself awkwardly on the narrow bench seat beside the girl. I was soaking wet. Rain dripped from my hair and my face, and my fingers were stiff and trembling from the cold. She was dressed in jeans and a dark sweater. I reached for the girl’s arms and moved them slowly and carefully. Then I ran my hands all the way down to her wrists, feeling for anything that might be broken. She was wearing some kind of a chunky, decorative bracelet. I saw her eyelids flutter. I reached for her legs and felt from her ankle to her knee, squeezing each one gently and watching the girl’s face for a reaction.

  Nothing.

  In hindsight, I was probably doing all the things that would have given any medical man worth his salt convulsions of alarm, but I simply didn’t know what else to do. From my rudimentary inspection, the girl seemed to have no obvious broken bones – and that was a good thing.

  I felt the back of her neck, and then ran my fingers lightly across her forehead and temple. I could feel no bumps, and sensed no bleeding. I slid the heavy bracelet up her arm a little and checked the pulse at her wrist. It was still erratic – and then I heard a gunshot.

  My head snapped round and I stared out through the opening of the cabin. The man and Harrigan were standing in the way so I couldn’t see much past their big frames. I sensed the line of undead was gathering itself like a mighty wave that curls over bathers at the instant before it breaks, and pounds them under the crushing impact.

  I turned back – and got the shock of my life. The girl’s eyes were open and she was staring at me. Staring at me like I was some fascinating specimen at a zoo. Her eyes were enormous dark, dazed pools, set against the drawn pale complexion of her face. Her lips moved – she opened her mouth and exhaled a ragged uncertain breath.

  “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, inflected with neither fear or alarm – merely idle curiosity, as though she had just woken from a deep sleep and enquired about the weather.

  “I’m Mitch,” I said gently. “I’m here to help you.”

  I sensed the doorway behind me darkening, and I glanced over my shoulder. The man was standing there, blocking out the fiery glow of the night, his suit already soaked and clinging to the silhouette of his muscled frame.

  “Millie’s my daughter,” the man said – and again I noticed how unnaturally loud his voice was, and how pointed his tone. I wondered absently if he had suffered damage to his hearing in the crash and that perhaps the sounds around him were somehow muted so that he felt forced to speak so loudly – like someone singing with headphones always sings louder than they realize. But I had no time then to ponder the problem. I leaned over the girl and gently wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “We have to get you out of here,” I said, and then, like a fool, I added, “there are undead zombies close by, and there is a fuel leak. The helicopter might explode at any moment.”

  I regretted my words instantly. The girl went from dazed and relaxed and compliant, to near hysterical with fear. She threw herself at me, flailing arms and hands and knees in a desperate attempt to get out of the helicopter. I tried to help, but the girl was suddenly near-crazed. I backed out of the helicopter and the girl came at me like a caged lion.

  No broken bones – that was for sure.

  We stood in a tight knot beside the helicopter. The man went to the girl and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him – not overcome with affection, but rather like someone who takes shelter behind a large boulder. It was instinctive. Then I saw the man snap to full alertness. “My gun!” he said.

  I stared at him. “Where is it?”

  He was padding down his pockets, becoming frantic. Maybe he was from the military, or maybe ex-military. For guys who have served, I guessed their weapon was an extension of their body. “It must still be in the helicopter,” he said – and scrambled head-first back through the dark opening.

  I turned back to the line of undead. I saw Jed now. He was inside the broken cockpit of the helicopter, firing through the shattered Plexiglas. He was concealed behind the dead body of the pilot, aiming carefully at the dark looming shapes of death.

  I heard the roar of his Glock, tearing through the hissing sound of the rain, and then snapped my eyes to the line of undead. I saw one of them suddenly double over and clutch at its stomach. It was a woman – I think. The figure had long straggly hair and was thinly built. It was about fifteen yards away. It froze for a split-second, and then slowly toppled backwards into the grass. I heard Jed give a ragged cheer. “I got one!” – then the sound was cut off by another rumble of thunder that boomed overhead.

  And then a remarkable thing happened. The line of undead stopped. Froze. They were close enough to see physical details now – close enough to hear the sound of them shambling towards us in the long grass as the noise of the rain ebbed and flowed. I sensed the hunched, prowling way they held themselves, like mad dogs that drop their heads and bunch their shoulders when on the scent of prey.

  For a second nothing at all happened. I saw undead heads turn towards the place in the line where the woman ghoul had fallen. Then I saw the attitude of the others seem to change. I heard one of the ghouls growl – and it was a chilling, terrible sound, quickly imitated by others. The cry went up – and then the zombies nearest the woman lunged towards the place where she had fallen. They were snarling and roaring – gnashing teeth and clawing. I saw one of the undead rise up, and he had a f
orearm in his bloodied hands, gnawing at it with rabid madness.

  I heard fabric tearing, and then the horrific sound of bones cracking and flesh ripping. Another of the ghouls reeled away into the darkness and his hands were full and heavy with dripping bloodied organs that slithered in his fingers like tentacles.

  I heard Clinton Harrigan’s voice behind me, and his words were numbed and slowed by incredulous horror.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God…”

  And then a louder, more urgent voice that could only be my brother’s, shouting the words that my brain was shouting at the same instant.

  “Run! Now!”

  I didn’t turn away from the horror. The ghouls were in a frenzy, dismembering the corpse in the grass. I saw only hunched shoulders and flailing arms beating the grass into maddened swishing tails, but I could imagine the gory detail. Snap-shot images of the slaughter-yard scene in the backyard came back to haunt me.

  Jed fired again. And again.

  I drew the Glock from my jeans and fired into the dark mass of bodies. I don’t know if I hit anything – I just fired. Then I fired again. I heard a sudden new sound – the sound of different gunfire, the noise of it slamming in my ears – and without turning I guessed the man had recovered his weapon from where it had fallen.

  I sensed that Jed’s words had culminated into panicked action behind me. I heard heavy footsteps, pounding in the sloshing mud, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I was alone. Harrigan, the man and the girl had disappeared round behind the darkened, shadowed shelter of the broken helicopter. I wanted to run after them. Cowardice and regret compounded. I wasn’t made of the right stuff for a heroic last stand. I wanted to run too.

  I fired twice more. The gun leaped in my hand and I saw one of the dark savage shapes roll away from the milling gnashing pack.

  “Jed?”

  I knew he was still nearby. I had heard one of his shots rip the night apart, just a moment after I had fired. His voice came back to me, clear and close.