Domain of the Dead (3 page)

“Bait, this is Angel. One Whisky Delta, seven o’clock, one hundred yards out.”

“Don’t start me!” Bates scolded. “Don’t call me bait! You know it makes me jumpy.”

“Is your name,” Angel answered back, with a tinge of sarcasm in her velvety voice.

“It’s Bate
sssss
—you leave out the S on purpose.”

“Bates, Angel, this is Lieutenant Cahzalid. You will observe proper radio discipline. Is that clear? No more horseshit!”

Sheepishly Bates replied, “Yes sir, confirm multiple Whisky Deltas one hundred yards out and closing.”

“This is Angel, multiple contacts all vectors.”

“What’s the count, Angel?” Lieutenant Cahzalid asked.

Before she could answer a shot rang out.

“Who fired?!” Cahz demanded, looking out the windows of the cramped helicopter.

“Me sir,” Bates replied.

Cahz looked down at Bates through the glass footwell of the helicopter. “What the hell was that for? I didn’t see any W.D.’s in your immediate vicinity.”

“No, there weren’t,” Bates said. “Caught one that looked like John Prage a hundred yards out. I just had to pop one in his head.”

“Who the fuck is John Prage?” Cahz suddenly realised he’d regret asking that question. “No, forget it. We don’t have time. Angel, say again. What are the numbers?”

Bates didn’t hear or didn’t care that Cahz didn’t want to know. “He was this prick I used to work with. If anybody deserved to get bit it was him.”

“Shut the fuck up, Bates, or you’re on report,” Cahz snapped.

Bates had the sense not to cut in.

Cahz repeated his question: “Angel, what’s the count?”

“Too many, sir. Suggest we abort and find clearer ground,” Angel reported. “There’s also smoke. W.D. must have set off something flammable.”

Cahz looked over at Idris, the helicopter pilot. “Spin us around to get a look.”

“Sure,” Idris replied, and the chopper dipped slightly and made a gentle turn.

Looking out over the ruined city, Cahz could see a torrent of grey corpses snaking their way around the derelict cars and other debris to the lure below.

Cahz craned round to talk to the last member of his squad. Cannon almost filled all three seats in the back of the chopper, his muscular square body uncomfortably wedged into the middle seat with his huge heavy machine gun protruding across the other two. Before Cahz could speak, the bear of a man piped up, “There’s too many of them, Boss.”

“Something must be drawing them in,” Cahz said, thinking out loud.

“But what boss?” Cannon asked. “World’s been dead a long time.”

“I haven’t seen this many in one place since that op in Norfolk.” Cahz looked through the view port at his feet, at Bates standing on the cargo net below. “It’s academic anyway,” he said, more to himself than any of his crew.

He flipped the radio on his shoulder to transmit to the two on the ground, “Angel, Bates, we’re bugging out. Angel, is your position secure?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Angel replied with her eastern European pronunciation.

Cahz addressed everyone over his microphone: “Let’s move before those W.D.’s and that fire give us cause for concern.” He looked out of the window at the rolling black clouds of smoke. “Okay then. Bates, you’re first up. Confirm your harness is secure and clean.”

Bates spoke into his radio, “Affirmative, Lieutenant. We’re good to go.”

All the time Cahz watched the pockets of smoke. As he watched, they grew, but they didn’t look like a normal fire. The smoke seemed to be concentrated into patches rather than carpeting an area as he would expect. He hadn’t seen anything on the way in, and now as he watched, a fifth distinct plume of smoke started to rise up above the buildings. He couldn’t see the actual fires behind the ruins and he had no time to investigate.

“Cahz!” Angel hollered over the radio, a tremor in her voice. “We’ve got live ones!”

Cahz, alert from Angel’s exclamation, looked around at the multitude of undead below. “Say again, Angel.”

“Multiple humans fighting their way towards Bates. Seven, maybe eight.” Angel’s voice dropped. “Ah jeez, they just lost one. Coming in on four o’clock.”

Cannon lent forward from the back of the chopper. “What do we do, boss?”

His question was serious. In all the years since the outbreak there had never been a straightforward answer. In the early days Cahz had witnessed dozens of people lost in vain on ill-conceived rescue attempts. More people had been lost than had been saved, for the most part.

But Cahz made his decision: “Angel, give them cover fire.”

“Be my pleasure, sir.”

Angel nuzzled her cheek up against the cherry coloured wooden stock of her sharpshooter’s rifle like she was cuddling up to her favourite childhood toy. One eye closed, the other firm up against the sight, she took her finger off the trigger guard and let out a slow exhale. The crack of a rifle shot splintered the moans of the dead city. Angel’s target collapsed to the ground, a large part of its head missing. Taking in a slow, measured breath, Angel scanned the mass of zombies for her next target and the process began anew.

Cahz cocked his rifle, placing a round in the chamber. “Bates, clear and hold the LZ. We’re coming down.”

“
Whoooee
! Lets rock!”

Bates flipped the safety catch off and set his carbine to semi automatic. Butt of the gun against his shoulder, head cocked to peer down the sight, Bates surveyed his surroundings. He slowly turned through three hundred and sixty degrees, assessing the number and proximity of the W.D’s. He drew an imaginary perimeter around his position, within which any corpse would be dispatched. The first corpse stepped over his imaginary line and as it did its head exploded. The decapitated body flopped to the ground, black ooze trickling from the stump of its neck.

Turning around again, Bates took stock and waited for his next target to cross the line.

* * *

Sarah punched out with the palm of her hand, knocking the cadaver off balance and sending it tumbling into the corpse behind.

She shuddered at the contact. To be so close to the walking dead was horrifying enough. A single scratch could be enough contamination to turn you. The revulsion of the physical contact and the fear of infection pushed Sarah to the verge of breaking down. There was something deeper, more primordial than a phobia that terrified her about becoming one of them.

The creature slumped to the ground, flailing as it went, knocking two others over on its way down. The gap was short lived as a new wave of zombies lunged for their prey.

Sarah knew if she cracked she would freeze up or run the wrong way or something as equally fatal. Her lungs heaved but she couldn’t suck in enough air to fuel her muscles. The stitch in her side competed with the burning in her thighs, the cramp in her calves and the numbness of her left arm as she held onto Jennifer.

Sarah had to fight both the macabre creatures swarming the street and the macabre thoughts in her own mind. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t be just her life that was lost.

Jennifer had her scrawny arms flung around Sarah’s neck, her head buried deep in her chest and her legs wrapped tight around her torso. Every time there was a jolt, like a boa constrictor gaining purchase on its prey, Jennifer would grip harder. The young girl’s breath was as deep and as rushed as Sarah’s. The trembling breaths billowed through her blouse, leaving a hot damp patch above her breast.

Sarah barged though the zombies, the pain of her unfit body drowned out by the fear of the animated corpses, these resurrected husks that had just one instinct. Driven only by their need to infect others, they crowded in on her, arms outstretched, mouths open, ready to bite. Her energy long ago spent, Sarah charged on, fuelled by an explosive mixture of adrenaline and terror.

Something snagged around Sarah’s ankle. She stumbled against the obstruction, carried forward by momentum and the extra weight of the child in her arms. Stumbling headlong, legs kicking in an attempt to maintain balance, she crashed face first into a zombie. Its brittle chest cracked from the impact and snapped further when Sarah landed on top of it.

In the fall to the ground the zombie had smashed its skull, fracturing it like an egg shell and causing enough damage to render it permanently inert.

Lying face down in the rotting cadaver’s chest, all Sarah could taste was putridity. The taste crawled down the length of her tongue and clogged up her nostrils with its stench. The nauseating mix of decaying flesh, excrement and the musty odour of damp rotting clothes made her retch. Sarah tried to spit out the rank musk but her fear-dried mouth spasmed shut. Choking and gasping, Sarah felt a hand snatch at the back of her blouse. It grabbed a handful of cloth and flesh and pulled hard at her.

“Get up!” Ryan shouted as he hoisted her to her feet.

Before she could thank him for the save, a zombie was at his neck. As it rolled back its lips to bite, there came a tremendous cracking noise and its head flew apart, the explosion sending chunks of scalp spraying into the air.

Neither Sarah or Ryan paused.

Sarah bundled up the young girl she had been carrying and started running again, towards the sound of gunfire.

Ryan looked back at the rest of the survivors. They were getting too strung out. Behind him, Nathan was hauling Elspeth through the melee. The old woman struggled to keep up the pace of her younger companion. In her arms she carried a small bundle close to her bosom. Way behind them was a knot of zombies where Ryan had last seen Ali, Ray, and Grandpa George.

He hollered, “Ray! Ali!”

“Keep going!” Ali’s nasal voice cried out.

Ryan didn’t keep going. Instead he ran back the way he’d came.

A knot of ghouls pushed their way in front of Nathan and Elspeth. Nathan swung out the fire axe he’d been carrying and the blade imbedded itself into the skull of the first zombie. Nathan’s grip sheared as the creature collapsed. The cadaver crumpled to the ground with Nathan’s only weapon still wedged firmly in its head.

A second cadaver stretched out its bony fingers for Nathan, clawing and grasping at him. Instinctively he let go of Elspeth so he could fend off the creature with both hands. Elspeth screamed as two zombies grasped at her. For a heartbeat, she stared into the milky eyes of her attackers. Broken teeth bared from behind split, festering lips. Black putrid drool dripped from their rank maws as they lent in to consume their victim.

With a loud whoosh the closest assailant’s head disintegrated. The force of the bullet’s impact carried the cadaver’s body away from Elspeth. A second shot rung out and chunks of flesh and bone erupted from the second zombie’s temple. The shot had grazed the side of the cadaver’s head, obliterating a wedge of skull and exposing the wet brain matter underneath. Undeterred by the wound, the zombie sunk its reaming teeth into Elspeth’s clavicle.

Pain burst through Elspeth’s mind. Her legs buckled and she fell to the ground, still clutching the bundle in her arms.

The zombie fell upon her, clawing, scratching and biting.

Nathan shoved the shriveled husk he was wrestling with out of the way and turned to help Elspeth. With one swift kick he dislodged the attacker and dragged Elspeth to her feet.

“Hurry!” Ryan bellowed as he grabbed Elspeth’s arm, adding his own strength to Nathan’s.

* * *

Sarah dodged and barged her way through the shambling corpses. Some of the bodies yielded to her momentum with sickening squelches. Occasionally decaying lumps of flesh would fly free as she shoved past. She could taste the decay halfway down her throat, dry, rasping and musty. It lingered in just the part that made her want to gag.

All the while, shots were ringing out with a steady pulse as if set by a metronome. Sometimes the corpses in front of her would sink to the ground with a round to the head as an unknown marksman cleared a path for her. Like throwing salt on snow, the zombies before her were melting away. But Sarah knew it wasn’t enough to hold back the blizzard.

She turned onto the town square and ran hard into a body. A gloved hand steadied her.

“Get to the chopper!” Cahz used his hand around the girl’s arm to propel her onwards to the waiting helicopter. He said, “Cannon, watch my six,” but knew his old friend would have already anticipated this.

“Sure thing, boss.” Cannon positioned himself a few paces away from his commander and readied his huge machine gun.

Cahz raised his carbine and started placing shots into the zombies.

Shot after shot rang out as Cahz, Angel and Bates fired into the horde of undead. Dozens fell only to have their place filled by dozens more. From all over the lifeless city, more and more of its former inhabitants were drawn out by the noise.

Bates swept round, casting his gaze around his imagined borders. He felt the wind from the chopper’s idling blades against his back. His means of escape sat just a few metres away, but he wouldn’t let himself become complacent. He focused his attention on the approaching zombies. His line of death was denoted by the corpses he had dispatched, a neat circle around the landing zone.