Jurassic Dead (19 page)

37.

“Run!”

Xander bounded off through the forest away from the zombie horde and the closing
T. rex.
Alex and Veronica took off after him. The going was tricky, with hiding tree roots ready to trip them up and random volcanic rocks poking up out of the soil. Head-high ferns whipped their faces as they ran.

The terrifying cacophony of the approaching zombie horde, that wheezing, fighting mass of former humanity crashing through the trees with no regard for its own safety, spurred them on. That, and the Tyrannosaur, which they could hear screeching somewhere behind them. They saw no animals as they made their way through the forest—no birds, no insects, nothing, as if every living thing knew that this was no longer a safe place to be. There were no longer living things here, except for them, and if they wanted to keep it that way they needed to keep running.

Alex patted his pockets as he ran, hoping to feel the outline of a spare AK magazine he had somehow overlooked, but he came up empty. All three of them were out of ammo. The only working weapon among them was Veronica’s Ka-bar, and a lot of good that would do against a seething wall of undead with a few rampaging dinosaurs thrown in the mix. They were alive, and when you were alive there was one thing above all others you wanted to do, and that was to stay alive.

“Shit! Shit-shit-shit-shit!” Up ahead, Xander stomped the ground in time with his profanity. He had run right into a natural alcove of sorts, comprised of a rocky hill and tangles of fallen trees and vegetation that had succumbed to a landslide in the recent rains. The peak of the smoldering volcano was visible over the lip of the amphitheatre-shaped formation Xander had led them to. Alex and Veronica came to within conversational earshot of him and stopped, looking right and left at the curve of the obstacle now hemming them in.

“We might be able to get up that way.” Alex pointed to a fallen log leaning up against the muddy hillside. It only reached about halfway up, but at that point a jumble of loose rocks looked like it might provide enough footing to make it to the lip of the cul-de-sac.

Xander eyed the log dubiously.

“It’s either that or we start running around this dead-end,” Veronica said, looking back toward the sound of the coming horde.

“Screw it.” Xander ran to the log and jumped up on it. He steadied himself and then began to walk up, arms outstretched for balance like a tightrope walker. He got about two-thirds of the way up and signaled for Alex and Veronica to start up after him.  “It’s good, we can make it, c’mon.”

First Alex, then Veronica began to ascend the log ladder. By the time Alex was almost halfway up the log, Xander was very near the upper end of it, but then the high end of the log began to sink into the muddy hillside. Xander started to fall with it. At first the movement was imperceptible.

“Once we get to those rocks right up here it’ll be smooth sailing.” But no sooner had Xander completed his sentence than the log began to sink under their weight into the muddy hillside. Once it got going it happened fast.

“Jump!” Alex warned, aware that Xander was about to be dragged inside tons of wet mud and could easily be trapped there and suffocate before they could get him out. If Veronica even let him get him out. Xander pushed off the log, extracting his lower half from the mud pile and tumbling down the hill to the forest floor below, passing Alex and Veronica with a disturbing glare and a breathy “fuck” on his way down.

“Let’s go.” Alex turned around on the log and was shocked to see the crowd of zombies approaching the open cul-de-sac. “Go, go, go! They’re almost on us!”

Veronica skip-hopped down the log and reached the ground by the time Xander had gotten to his feet. Alex was there a few seconds later, interrupting their I-wish-I-could-kill-you-right-fucking-now stare-down.

“Quick, which way?”

Veronica looked back toward the zombies and the beach beyond. “Back to the ship? Hide out and barricade ourselves in there until DeKirk arrives?”

“Then what?” Alex asked. “Take on his army of the living as well as the army of the dead?”

Xander shook his head. “Before even considering that, we’d need a working vehicle to make it back to the ship. Plus it’s a wreck anyway, probably on the seafloor right about now.”

“What about the airstrip?”

“Also too far. We’d be overrun before we got there—either those infected things or a dinosaur.” Xander pointed up toward the volcano. “According to the facility map back in the control room, there’s an old World War Two bunker at the base of the volcano built by the Korean to house munitions. Not one of DeKirk’s facilities, so it’ll lack modern amenities, but if we can get inside we can hopefully lock everything out and wait out the twenty four hours.”

“Could’ve mentioned a bunker earlier,” Alex grumbled.

No one had a better plan, so they set off running out of the cul-de-sac and to the left. The dinosaur’s shrieking was louder now, coming from almost directly behind them, but at the moment that wasn’t their chief concern. As the unlikely trio reached the wall of the cul-de-sac they saw the first of the zombies. He wore a shredded crewman’s uniform, stumbling rapidly toward them with arms flapping. A long line of undead trailed after him, a thick, shambling horde, cracking branches and toppling plants in their wake.

Xander cleared the wall of the amphitheatre completely and squinted past it. “Volcano! C’mon.” he took off at a sprint. Alex and Veronica still stared back at the monsters heading their way, mesmerized by the deadly spectacle. Veronica tugged at Alex’s hand.

“We need to go.”

“Hold on!” Alex stared at one of the zombies in the front line. Its clothes were not a uniform, either military or ship’s crew, but rather normal civilian clothes.

Then, with mounting horror, he recognized the face.

His father’s face.

#

Even with the sickly pallor, the blood and gaping wounds, even with the sunken cheekbones and vacant, thousand-yard-stare from reptilian eyes, he could see beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was his father, Marcus Ramirez.

“Dad?
Dad
!” He shouted and the zombies ambled faster towards them. Alex started to run to the thing that used to be his father but Veronica grabbed him by the shoulder and held him back.

“Alex, no! He’s not your father anymore.”

“But—” His mind simply could not reconcile this hideous creature with the man he had known all of his life, the man who had in fact given him life.

“He’s dead, Alex! He’s dead! We will be too if we don’t get inside that bunker. Come
on
!”

She tugged him by the arm and together they ran after Xander toward the volcano.

38.

They heard Xander before they saw him, his voice sounding like it was echoing inside a tunnel. “I’m in here. Hurry up, I can see them coming!”

The air took on a hint of sulfur and a brownish hue as they neared the cone-shaped mountain. Veronica wrinkled her nose. “It’s like L.A. smog.”

Alex looked up at the smoky fumes belching from the volcano. “Yeah, it’s
vog
. Like a combo of smog and fog, but from a volcano. I’ve seen it on my surf trips to Hawaii.”

Veronica gave him a look that wasn’t all exasperation. “I hope you get to go on more trips after this one, surfer boy. I really do. Let’s get inside.”

They stood at the base of the rocky cone, unbroken except for the obviously man-made feature that stood before them. A sizable rectangular opening had been cut into the side of the smoking mountain. Rusty iron bracing framed the doorway, the door itself having been retracted or swung inward, they supposed by Xander, who called to them from out of sight inside.

“It’ll take some time to shut this big-ass door after you get in. Hurry the hell up!”

Alex took a glance back at the oncoming zombie mob (
my father is one of them!
) and then raced for the volcano entrance, Veronica bounding close on his heels. His calf muscles burned on the way up the short but steep incline, and then he crested the ramp and entered the volcano’s interior. Peering inside, he saw that it was a large, flat space, perhaps a square mile, roughly circular in shape. The ramp eased back down to a smooth dirt floor dotted with vegetation, and a few footpaths meandered in different directions. Xander stood at the entrance, fretting over the huge metal door.

“I don’t see how we’re going to get this thing shut.” Xander inspected the door where it retreated into the rock wall. Metal tracks above and below indicated that it slid back and forth.

“Didn’t you open the damn thing?” Alex asked.

“No, it was already open.”

“What’s that down there?” Alex pointed down to the volcano floor where an entrance of some sort was set directly into the ground.

Xander perked up at the sight of it. “That could be the munitions depot! Let’s head for that, maybe we can barricade ourselves in there. If we’re real lucky the zombies won’t even notice this entrance.”

“Think again.” Veronica stared out into the jungle. “They’re coming straight for us.”

Gazing out at the coming horde, Alex could see the flicking of tongues and the rapid up-and-down head movements, en masse as though at a rock concert listening to a beat only they could hear.

“Let’s move!” Xander charged down the ramp to the floor of the volcano, followed by Alex and Veronica. Thorny scrub brush dotted the reddish ground, but they avoided most of it by following the path. Xander reached the small door first and bent down to examine it.

“Looks like one of those old fashioned cellar doors,” he said, commenting on the twin doors slanting down at an angle into the earth. They had retained none of their original paint, but the color of the rust caked onto them blended well with the surroundings.

“The first ones just entered the volcano! They’re pouring in fast.” Veronica monitored the main entrance, the Ka-Bar clutched in her right hand, while Xander and Alex each flung one of the cellar doors wide. Alex turned his head to the side as a blast of cool, moldy air wafted out.

“C’mon kid, smells like air freshener compared to those things out to get us. Down we go.”

Xander produced a small flashlight from a pocket and shone the beam down a rickety wooden staircase. “You two get down there first.”

Veronica stepped inside, the knife passing dangerously close to Xander’s throat. He ignored her, encouraging Alex to hurry by waving an arm at him. When all three were crouched on the stairway, Xander and Alex reached out and started to pull the doors closed. Alex took a last peek at the zombie pack now shambling en masse into the volcano. They moved through the brush directly toward the cellar doors, ignoring the paths. Then, as he and Xander were about to slam the doors down, they saw something that stopped them cold.

The main volcano entrance door slid shut all on its own, slicing a couple of zombies in two as it slammed into its frame, sealing the volcano’s interior with a resounding metallic clang. The head of another zombie, leaning awkwardly backward as if in a limbo pose, was crushed and separated from its body, dropping its now truly lifeless corpse onto the floor. One of the half-zombies managed to clutch the shirt-tail of a former doctor and was dragged across the dirt, his open entrails smearing the reddish earth as he bounced along, snarling and snapping his jaws as he went.

“How did that happen?” Alex gaped at the closed volcano door, now smeared with gore.

Xander shook his head, and then muttered, “DeKirk.”

“Nice of him to wait for the zombies to get in here with us before he shut it.”

“Somehow I doubt
that
was an accident,” Veronica said, eyeballing the ravenous monstrosities as they made their way toward the ground door.

“Forget about DeKirk,” Xander said, gawking at the rag-tag horde of undead invading the volcano. He slammed the doors closed and flicked the rusty deadbolt. “That’s not going to hold them long. We’ve got to find another way out of here.”

39.

“They’ll be on us in a couple of minutes!” Alex shouted over the clang of the doors banging shut in front of him. Xander’s artificial beam was now their only light. He directed it down the stairs, where a few long-gone steps gaped like missing teeth in a smile, but overall the stairs looked passable.

The doors behind them jarred with multiple impacts and the clanging of flesh on metal as the first zombies bombarded the entrance to their shelter.

Xander shone his beam back down the stairs. “Better go one at a time down these, not sure they’ll support all of our weight. Veronica, you go first, you’re the lightest. I’ll hold the light.”

“You’re the light of my fucking life, Xander.” She descended rapidly, not resting her full weight on any of the steps for more than a split second, and then she was on flat ground, looking off to her right.

“Looks a like a tunnel goes off this way for quite a ways. Can’t see any detail.”

Xander held the light for Alex to descend the stairs and then he made the trip himself. With all three of them on the bottom, Xander aimed his beam down the tunnel, comprised entirely of natural volcanic stone, with no bracing or mining supports of any kind. The obvious threat of a cave-in, of being entombed in this place for eternity went unspoken.

They moved down the passage, the sound of zombies banging on the doors receding as they went. At the end of the long tunnel a door was open on the right while the passageway curved out of sight to the left. Xander shone his beam into a room and took tentative steps inside. He flipped a light switch on the wall with an audible
clack
that echoed throughout the room. They were all surprised to see a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling flicker, then catch, bathing the room in dim but steady illumination.

They cast their gaze around the space, taking in the sheer sense of history about it. Clearly, it was an old room, filled with dusty metal shelves lined with crates and cases. Large pieces of military and industrial equipment lay about the floor, some covered in now shredded tarps.

“Munitions room!” Xander exhorted, moving deeper into the space.

“Let’s see if there’s anything we can use.” Veronica set her weapons down on a wooden table and began slowly walking about, examining items. Xander did the same, picking up a case of shells, plucking one out to look at it and dropping it when he saw it was the wrong size for his gun. He found an old rifle and picked it up, tried the action and found it jammed.

Alex, meanwhile, headed to a far corner of the room that had been partitioned off with what looked like plywood crates. At first, he thought it formed an uninterrupted walled-off area, but then he found a small gap where one side didn’t quite reach the actual room wall, which was itself carved directly from the volcanic stone. He felt something liquid splash on his scalp and looked up to see water dripping from the ceiling, having percolated through the soil above.

He passed through the narrow opening into the walled off section of room, and caught his breath.

“We’ve hit the jackpot.”

Bombs.

Lots of them. Old-looking ones, with big bulbous metal bodies and little stabilizing fins, stacked not just ceiling-high, but in actuality even higher than that. A circular opening had been bored into the floor and Alex could see that the bombs were stacked well down into that, farther than he could see, deep into the volcano’s innards. Even more troubling, an assemblage of wiring and little metal boxes was integrated among the bombs. Alex was no explosives expert, but even to him it looked suspiciously like a trigger mechanism.

“What the hell is DeKirk planning with all this shit?”

“What do you—?” Xander was there in a flash, looking over his shoulder, eyes scanning, taking everything in. “Holy…” He whistled, and then looked up and around the chamber. “I wonder if he’s planning a little failsafe of his own…”

“Guys!” From behind them, Veronica’s voice was fraught with worry. “I hear them coming down the tunnel!”

Xander threw a case of 50-cal machine gun bullets down on the floor in aggravation. “This old ammo isn’t going to fit our guns. Gimme some 9mm rounds. Shit!” He looked around the room in desperation, eyes alighting on a metal gas can against the wall. He went to it and hefted its weight, feeling liquid slosh inside. Unscrewed the cap and sniffed, recoiling at the sharp tang that assailed his nostrils. Satisfied it was some kind of fuel, he picked up the can and carried it to the doorway, where Veronica’s eyes grew wider by the second.

The sound of the zombie horde grew louder, their feet scraping the floor as they transited through the tunnel toward the munitions room. Xander eyed Veronica. “Got a light?” She shook her head. He looked over to Alex, who was still out of sight behind the walled-off area.

“Hey, kid, what’re you doing over there? Find anything else we can use? Because it’s decision time. Make a stand here or run for it to the unknown at the other end of the tunnel. Could be a dead end for all I know. Literally.”

“I’ll go check.” Veronica dashed from the room out into the tunnel.

“I’m still thinking about this.” Alex said, staring at the bombs.

“Kid, that’s not helping now—”

“No, really. I think we can use this…”

Xander unscrewed the gas can cap and dumped the liquid out into the tunnel, opposite the direction in which Veronica had gone. Shining his light down the passage, he spotlighted a sea of red eyes moving his way, glowing orbs sunken into heads that gasped, moaned and screamed senseless utterances that reverberated around the tunnel, making it sound like a carnival funhouse on Halloween. He ducked back inside the room and ran over to Alex.

“Lemme see again.”

Alex withdrew from the bomb space and pointed inside. Xander slipped through and Alex heard him take the lord’s name in vain several times as he took in the inventory in more detail. “So DeKirk was probably thinking, set these off… maybe start a volcanic eruption in the process…the volcano has been getting hotter lately. An explosion could really disturb the geothermal stability of this thing...” Xander let a smile form. “If we can blow this place up—and escape—we’ll take out a lot of those freaks in one fell swoop.”

Alex backed up. “I like it, but if something’s wrong with the trigger system, we could die right here.”

“Kid, there’s no time to sugarcoat it for you. We’re probably either dying quick, like this...” He stared up at the mountain of antique incendiary devices, then down into the bored hole full of more bombs, before cocking his head out toward the hall, where the jarring cacophony sounded like it was about to reach them. “Or die relatively slow, out there, and become one of those things.” He focused some more. “This mechanism here has got to be the timer.”

Suddenly, Veronica burst into the room. “What the fuck are you guys doing? If it wasn’t for your gasoline slip’n’ slide out there those things would already be in here!”

Xander’s voice came from behind the partition. 

“Veronica, is there a way out from that end?”

“Yes. There’s—”

He cut her off. “All I need to know. You ready to run?”

The first of the zombies made its way into the munitions room.

“Hell yes.”

“Yeah.” Veronica’s and Alex’s responses overlapped.

“Go! Go! Go! Five minutes to boom!”

Xander exited the bomb area, now wearing a heavily loaded canvas backpack, and saw the zombie, still wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope around its neck. Veronica held her trusty Ka-Bar at the ready, still hoping she could slip past the threat to the tunnel outside the room. Alex followed her.

Xander picked up one of the smaller warheads, maybe eighteen inches long, with a skinny end and a fatter, spherical one. He gripped the thing by the thin end like a club and made his way to the exit. The zombie followed, almost cat-like in its movements while in a burst of speed, but then slowing once again to an uncoordinated, rambling walk as it neared Xander for a bite. Xander swung the warhead and caved in the side of the zombie’s skull, forcing its grayish tongue far out of its mouth in the process. He let go of his impromptu weapon and sprang for the door just as three more zombies reached the munitions doorway.

He heard Alex shout, “Look out!” then saw the spark of a Zippo lighter in Alex’s hand. As if in slow motion, he watched his arm wind up for the pitch and release the weighted flame. It flew over Xander’s head and landed with a
click
that was drowned out by the
whoosh
of erupting flames as the gas went up. In a tunnel of flame the advancing zombies shrieked, thrashed, and caterwauled while the three still among the living sprinted down the unlit portion of the subterranean passage. Almost as an afterthought, Xander stopped, shrugged off his newfound World War Two backpack and tossed a handful of 50-cal rounds into the fire.

By the time he shouldered his pack and was running down the tunnel again, he heard the snapping pops of the shells being forced from their projectiles, knowing that the brass casings were flying around inside the fire. When he reached the end of the tunnel where Alex and Veronica had already made the left turn—the only available option—he turned back for a look down the hall.

A zombie completely engulfed in flames from head to toe continued to walk toward him, arms outstretched, screaming, screaming, wailing as though it were in unfathomable agony. Yet still, it kept coming, driven through its fiery anguish by the insurmountable urge to consume raw human flesh. Others like it burst forth from the flames.

Xander felt palpable relief when one of them toppled and thudded to the ground, its brain having been boiled inside its skull, its cranial lining drooling from its charred mouth. They could be killed by fire. Then it was trampled over by a procession of burning zombies, a few dropping as their brains cooked, but many still forging ahead, alight, shrieking hopelessly out of their shapeless, melted faces.

Xander turned the corner and ran into another room—a cavernous area serving as another storage zone, full of crates and boxes. There ahead of them…Veronica was behind the wheel of a lone Jeep, turning the key, letting loose a little holler of joy as the engine cranked to life. Alex was hefting a rocket launcher and lugging it over to the Jeep, followed by one more. He stuck them in the back of the vehicle like they were a couple of snowboards for a weekend trip. He found a luggage-sized case of extra rockets for the launchers leaning up against a wall and tossed that in the Jeep, too.

“Not long before it all blows, if it’s going to blow.” Xander checked his watch.

Suddenly, a charred zombie staggered into the room from the tunnel, still smoldering.

“Little help here!” Xander called. He faced off against the zombie, preparing to fight it hand-to-hand. Veronica left the Jeep idling and stepped out while Alex went to a roll-up door and reached down to pull it open.

The zombie lurched but Xander evaded it. Veronica circled around the dead one’s backside, blade at the ready.

Two more smoldering zombies entered, one leaning over to chew on the other’s burnt shoulder meat despite multiple swats to the face as they walked. Xander continued to circle until he was between the Jeep and the zombie he squared off with. There was a rushing sound of metal on metal as Alex threw the roll-up door open. Veronica slashed at the first zombie with her Ka-Bar, missing its neck and slicing it under an armpit. The creature pounded a blistered hand that was missing all of the fingers onto her back, knocking her to the floor.

Xander looked over at her, beneath the zombie with two more undead a few steps away, and then out the roll-up door to the outside. The view surprised him. It wasn’t merely the inside of the volcano, but actually led outside to the rest of the island. The way out.

Alex, now carrying a tire iron he’d picked up somewhere in here, ran over to the melee. He cracked the zombie falling over Veronica in the skull, dropping it on top of her. She yelled for him to get it off her. While he did, Xander slid into the driver seat of the Jeep and quietly put it into reverse. He rolled the vehicle out of the garage and put it in park, got out and walked to the entrance.

Alex and Veronica had dispatched the first zombie but now battled two more, and Xander could see a whole gang of them—some still on fire—about to pour into the room from the tunnel. He reached up and grabbed the handle on the roll-up door just as Alex looked up from the fracas.

“Help us!”

Xander smiled back at them—a devilish grin. “Actually, I’ve got a better idea!”

He proceeded to pull the door down, slamming it hard. Then he took a chain he’d seen in the Jeep and used it to wedge into one of the tracks just above where the wheels were on the track, fastening it tight, effectively blocking the door from rising. Trapping Alex and Veronica inside the bunker. There was no way in Hell they’d be able to fight their way back through that burned-out tunnel.

Smiling at his ingenuity, Xander hopped back into the Jeep, honked the horn, and sped off.