Dying to Live (24 page)

When Lucy pulled the car to a halt they were parked between four enormous hangars, two on their left and two to the right. Lucy turned in the driver’s seat to explain.

“Alright, we can ignore those hangars there,” she said, gesturing at the ones on the right hand side of the car. “These two...” This time she gestured to the left hand side. “...Contain the vehicles. We’re going to be going into the first one. The second one just has the smaller land vehicles and I think we’ll be better off with an armoured personnel carrier. There are some pretty awesome custom vehicles. In fact, I’m thinking that we should take a Cyclone.” Lucy drifted off into her own thoughts briefly. She shook her head and snapped herself out of it, then looked at the rest of them. “We don’t know if there will be any of those things in there, so I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to be careful. When we get out, I’m going to have to key in the access code. Good job most of my work was done in these hangars. I know them like the back of my hand. Are we ready?”

“Let’s do this,” Frank said enthusiastically. He had barely been containing his excitement ever since Lucy had started the conversation about military vehicles.

“We get the vehicle, go to the armoury, stop off for food supplies at the canteen and then head back,” Pete nodded.

The moment they stepped out of the car they were on guard, weapons drawn and watching all directions. Pete held his favoured machete at his side, ready to swing it on a moment’s notice. Xin and Lucy had their handguns hung at their hips. Frank brandished a shotgun, as did Harry, although he preferred to use his own police issue shotgun.

Lucy made straight for the keypad that operated the giant mechanical doors. She had been explaining to them earlier how the power cut wouldn’t affect certain systems within the compound. The most important electrical systems had backup generators and some of the power sources were solar powered. Access to the buildings was vital at all times and as such was powered separately.

“Okay, 1... 4... 2... 6,” Lucy muttered under her breath as she tapped at the keys. There was a mechanical groan and the sliding doors squealed open.

“Eugene was always saying he’d get round to fixing that...” she said, rolling her eyes at the sound. “Keep an eye out, the zombies could have heard that.”

Inside were row upon row of armoured cars and vans. They varied in size, getting larger and larger the further back they went. Right at the back of the hangar were colossal shapes that towered over the smaller vehicles. The small windows in the top of the building let in just enough light for them to see by. Thankfully, it appeared that the building was devoid of life but the group kept their guard up just in case. Lucy walked past the smaller vehicles that looked just like sandy coloured jeeps. She carried on past the bulkier four wheel drive types and right to the back of the hangar.

“Oh please, tell me we’re taking this?” Frank pleaded, his eyes lingering lustfully on the immense tank that stood beside them. The tread of its tracks came up to his chest and he reached up to touch the avocado coloured metal of its body.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lucy laughed. “We can’t drive that thing around.”

“But why?” Frank whined.

“Because they’re difficult to manoeuvre and they’re insanely slow,” Lucy told him firmly. “Don’t worry, you’ll like what I have in mind.”

She led them along the row and stopped in front of two quite similar vehicles.

“These are a couple of the custom vehicles I mentioned. They’re both great. This one here...” She patted a jet black 4x4 with giant tyres and a gun turret. In all it stood about 10 feet tall. “This is the cyclone. It’s built to withstand ballistic assault, light mines and grenades. It’s actually a 2011 Ford F550 but trust me, with the work this baby’s had, its 9 tonnes of pure perfection.”

Pete breathed out a whistle of admiration and Harry nodded approvingly. Frank glanced back to the tank longingly.

“...Or there’s the Typhoon,” Lucy told them, moving to lean on another black 4x4. “This one is an F350, 16 tonnes; it has similar armouring but has the perk of being able to run over six hundred and twenty-some miles without refuelling. Considering we have over two thousand miles to drive, that could be useful.”

“But so could a gun turret...” Frank put in.

“It’s armoured up to the eyeballs, what are the changes of needing to shoot from it?” Pete asked. “It would be easy enough to just run over almost anything.”

“Not to mention that there is a sun roof on the other one and it’s possible to shoot from that, or the windows,” Harry added. Xin didn’t say a word, she was happy to let the guys argue this one out. To her both of the vehicles looked pretty hardy and she would have felt safe in either one of them.

“I think the mileage is most important,” Pete said.

“You’re probably right,” Frank nodded. “Hey, Luce, earlier on you said you’d pick the cyclone. What was your reasoning?”

Lucy blushed. “It just... looks better. Oh, Don’t look at me like that! I am still a woman!”

“Oh my god,” Harry sighed, shaking his head.

“Well it looks like neither of us will be getting the ride we wanted,” Frank winked at her. “The Typhoon it is.”

Lucy rolled her eyes when she thought he couldn’t see her. He did and it made him chuckle as she walked to the driver side door of the Typhoon, opened it and leaned in to pull the keys from the ignition.

“Here, smart ass, catch,” she said, and threw the keys to him. Frank caught them nimbly and looked to the other guys, silently asking if they minded him driving.

“Go on,” Pete nodded.

Frank jumped into the driver’s seat like a kid at Christmas. Lucy climbed into the passenger side, leaving her door open. She leaned over and pressed a button which dropped a hydraulic ramp from the rear.

“Hop in guys,” she hung out of the open door to tell Xin, Harry and Pete. The three of them clambered in and the ramp silently rose back up and sealed shut behind them. The back was spacious, probably able to comfortably seat eight people but at a push it could no doubt handle more. The seats were padded and comfortable and ran like benches along either side. Lucy looked back from her seat in the front to check they were ready, and then gave Frank a nod.

The engine roared into life and then settled at a low purr. Frank manoeuvred the massive car out of the row and down the main isle with impressive ease. The vehicle was larger than any he had ever driven before, but he was used to flying much bigger planes and maybe that helped him somewhat. He pulled clear of the hangar doors and found that he was actually enjoying driving the thing already.

“Weapons next?” Frank asked.

“This could be interesting,” Harry said sarcastically, raising his eyebrows. “Frank, if you so much as look at a rocket launcher, I’m going to shoot you.”

Everyone laughed at this, including Frank.

“Jeez, you guys. Seriously? No tanks, no rocket launchers. Where’s the fun in zombie killing if you can’t do it in style”. He grinned.

“The problem is, pal, your style would get us killed pretty quickly,” Pete laughed.

“All jokes aside,” Xin said seriously. “Do you think maybe you’re all enjoying this a little too much?”

For a while everyone was quiet as they considered this. Xin was starting to feel bad for dragging everyone from their good spirits.

“Maybe we are...” Frank said.

“Perhaps,” Pete agreed. “But this could be one of the last times in a while that we have anything to laugh about or enjoy. It doesn’t hurt to make the most of it. In a few hours’ time we’re going to leave the relative safety of this place.”

“Relative safety?” Harry snorted.

“Yes,” Pete said unyieldingly. “Where we’ve been for the past few weeks or so is pretty secluded and out of the way. There are zombies here but it’s a limited number and we’ve been fairly sheltered from them by the base. We haven’t had to see what regular life has turned into, or what has happened to the rest of the world. When we head out there it’s probably going to be a huge wake up call for us all.”

“I’m sorry,” Xin apologised. “You’re right. Of course we should be making the most of any moment that we can enjoy.”

Lucy directed Frank around the base, which seemed to take longer than necessary with Frank seeming to mishear most of Lucy’s direction. When she finally flipped and told him, “Frank that is the second time that I’ve said right and you’ve gone left!” He looked at her guiltily, with a shrug and a smile he told her, “I just wanted to break in the new car.”

During the ride the other three chatted in the back.

“So, Xin, I hope you won’t mind my asking, but I’ve noticed you speak very good English. You barely seem to even an accent. Where did you learn the language?” Harry asked her curiously.

“It’s actually something that my parents were adamant about,” Xin explained. “They wanted me to learn it practically as soon as I could talk. We would use it around the house a lot just so that I could practice. I took English classes at school and by the time I left I was pretty fluent. I think with regards to my accent, it was when I moved to England to go to university that it started to level out. I learnt a lot of eye opening phrases there, and sayings that they don’t teach you at school,” She smiled.

“Wow, you went to university in England? That must have been scary for you,” Pete asked her.

“It was scary leaving my home and everything that I knew, but I was really excited too. I was accepted into Cambridge, which was a huge achievement in my family. It gave me so many opportunities that I was really grateful for. I wanted to see new places and make new friends. England was the obvious first choice for me because it has some of the best universities in the world. The Biomedical Research Centre campus that I studied at does some incredible work.”

“That’s really impressive,” Harry congratulated her. Pete didn’t say anything, he was astounded. This small and unassuming woman really was something else, so brave and committed. He was beginning to see a theme within her, that she didn’t do anything by half. Once she set her mind to something she dedicated herself to it entirely and saw it through. Whether it was the English language, her university education or a deadly outbreak of a contagious zombie infection, Xin would stick around ‘til the very end.

“This is it,” Lucy informed them. “We’re here.”

19.

‘It was plain to see that it was going to be dangerous, even before we saw the building. It was suggested that as soon as the attacks had begun to occur on the base, this would’ve been the first place that people would have headed to in order to arm themselves. I hoped that my police training would come in handy but I had only minimal experience of armed raids. Whilst we were sat there, parked in the new armoured vehicle, I wished that Rodger was there with me, at my back as he always had been. The thoughts of Rodger recalled to my mind the nightmares that I’d been having every time I slept recently. I suppose everyone had been suffering from them in one way or another, but I was trying to avoid sleep as much as possible as a result. Every night those things got me and every night the monster was wearing Rodgers face, only twisted angrily with blood around his mouth. So, of course, I wasn’t looking forward to another encounter with more zombies. Looking out of the window did not instil me with hope.’

“Wow...” Frank said under his breath, as he slowed the vehicle to a halt outside the white concrete building.

“I don’t have a great feeling about this,” Lucy whispered. Her face had gone a little pale and made the passengers in the back scramble to the windows.

“Yeah, that looks grim,” Harry stated.

The five faces were all greeted with the same eerie sight. The glass double doors were shattered and only a few angry shards were left in the frame. The scattered broken glass was interspersed with spatters of dark blood. The old dried blood also smeared the white concrete of the walls. Trails of it were left where some poor soul’s fingers had clawed along the building. Any sounds that might indicate that they weren’t alone were inaudible inside of their vehicle, but there were no signs of movement either.

“I think the girls should stay here,” Frank said, his eyes not leaving the scene outside the window.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you need me to show you were everything is,” Lucy argued.

“I’m sure we can find it ourselves,” he countered.

“Look, I don’t want to go in there,” Lucy told him. “But we all have to toughen up, learn to take care of ourselves and we do things we don’t want to do, even girls. Though I appreciate you trying to protect us, we have to fight for our own survival rather than letting everyone else risk themselves for us.”

“It’s in everyone’s best interests for us to come with you. The more of us that go inside, the more there are to carry things,” Xin offered.

Frank knew when he was defeated. He turned to look at the other guys, who just shrugged at him. “Fine,” he sighed, throwing up his hands. “What’s the plan?”

“Inside there is just a straight corridor. The different kinds of weaponry are in separate rooms directly off that main corridor. There are about six rooms, three on each side. Each one has an access panel that is opened with a key card. There is always someone on duty that has a card and armed security patrol the corridor. There’s a window at that you can go to for clearance if you don’t have your own card, that way they can come out and open the doors for you. Obviously that won’t be the case for us, so we have a couple of options. If we’re really lucky we’ll go in and the doors will already be open. If we aren’t that lucky then we’ll go in and be able to find the key. If our luck has totally deserted us then we’ll have to break our way in,” Lucy explained.

“Okay, say we have to break in...?” Pete questioned.

“Well, if we can force the access panel off the wall. Then I can play with the cables a little and voila.”

“Will that work?” Pete wondered.

“If I’m any good at my job it will. These fancy panels never work as well as people think. Ultimately they’re all hooked up with the same wires and you only have to know the right ones to work with. Hopefully it won’t come to that, though. It’s time consuming and probably not a safe environment to work in.”

“Can’t we just use explosives?” Frank asked.

“No, Frank.” Lucy rolled her eyes. Before he could ask why, she continued. “If we start blowing doors off, we risk blowing up entire stocks of explosives. Not to mention it could jeopardise the structural integrity of the whole building. I think some of the explosives in there might even be enough to blow up the entire base.”

“They don’t do things by halves here, do they?” Pete asked rhetorically.

“Well, this is the biggest military base in the whole US. Pretty much anything you can think of is kept here. It’s useful because nobody knows its true size, most of it is underground after all.” Lucy sighed, “So, are we ready?”

“No, wait,” Pete said. “When we get in there we need to have a plan. I suggest that, unless all the doors are open, we all head to the clearance room and search for the key while Lucy checks out the control panels. We should probably expect to encounter a lot of... those things,” He stumbled over the words. It still felt surreal to have to call them zombies, it seemed too ridiculous. “Once we get into the right lock ups, I say we grab anything we can. Be careful with everything and don’t pick anything up that looks like it could explode by accident. Lucy, will it be easy to get everything back here?”

“Hmmm...” Lucy’s eyes drifted upwards as she thought about it. “There are some crates or containers, whatever you want to call them, and like, baggage trolleys to load them onto. I think realistically we can fit three of them lined side by side behind the front seats here. There could be some canvas sacks too, military ones. We can use those, they’ll be in the cabinets.”

“Okay. Well, Harry, I think it would be best if you cover Xin and help her with one container. Frank, you will obviously do the same with Lucy. I’ll work on a container by myself. If need be we can resort to bags afterwards,” Pete suggested.

“That sounds alright to me.” Frank nodded to Lucy.

“Let’s go.” It was the last thing that Harry wanted to do, but he tried to sound enthusiastic as he said it. “Watch each other’s back’s and keep safe. I wanna see each one of you back here afterwards.”

“Catch you on the flip side,” Frank said, drawing a deep breath and opening his door.

Lucy hit a button and with that the ramp flipped out of the back of the typhoon again. Everyone raised their weapons and guardedly stepped off the vehicle. Frank looked at Lucy as she climbed out, before quickly following suit. The group gathered in front of the glass doors, each checking a different direction for signs of danger. There was a chilling silence that was broken only by the crunch of glass under their feet. From a few feet away, Pete, who was stood at the head of the group, could see the fluorescent tube lighting was still glowing inside the building. Obviously, since this building had access pads that needed to keep functioning, it had its own generator. The suns glare on his face meant that he still had to squint to see inside.

“I can see two open doors, more broken glass and a few shapes on the ground. They look like bodies,” he hissed to the others, giving them a heads up. “I can’t see very far in, though.”

At that moment every head whipped towards the doors, as they heard a shrieking, scraping sound. After a pause, they heard it again.

“I can’t see what it is,” Pete whispered.

No sooner had the words left his lips than a wailing, angry scream filled the air. The sound was followed by a figure that, at lightning speed, projected itself at Pete. He barely had time to process its twisted face as he swung his machete up to defend himself. The smooth arc took its head clean off of its shoulders, surprising even Pete himself. The body slumped to the ground at his feet and the head rolled away, still gnashing its teeth. Pete glanced quickly at the others, wide eyed and shocked but still determined, before turning and taking the few steps over to where the head lay. With only the briefest hesitation, he steadied the snapping head with his foot and pushed downwards with the machete, slicing straight through its cranium. The eyes stilled immediately in the ruined head and when Pete pulled his machete from where it was wedged, a slick trail of discoloured goop came with it.

After the first encounter, the others were too afraid to make further noise but exchanged similar worried looks. Pete gestured with one finger towards the door and started forwards, his machete readied for another attack. Once out of the sunlight, their eyes adjusted to scan the interior. There were indeed three bodies on the ground amongst the debris. There were empty ammunition shells dusting the floor and a section of the ceiling had fallen in. It was anybody’s guess what had happened there, but clearly the three bodies were completely dead. Two had obvious gunshot injuries to their heads and the third was pinned beneath the rubble of the collapse.

In fact, four of the doors were open already and a fifth was totally inaccessible due to the heavy concrete that sloped down from the ceiling in front of it. The final door, which was also the closest to the entrance, looked totally untouched. Upon closer inspection, beneath numerous warnings and cautions, a sign on the door read ‘W395: Propellants. Incendiaries. Pyrotechnics. Liquid, Rubberized and Nuclear explosives. Detonators.’

Taking tentative steps closer to the first open door, the crunch of glass seemed too loud to avoid further attention. Sure enough, they heard a gurgling howl and the heavy-footed, clumsy sounding movements of multiple attackers. The group readied their weapons and seemed to be taking in much shorter and sharper breaths. From around the door came three hostile nightmares. The first blast of Frank’s shotgun seemed to shake the building. Dust fell from the precarious ceiling and the roar of what sounded like a hundred zombies echoed in its wake.

“Shit,” Frank cursed. He took better aim this time and blew the head off of the first staggered zombie. The group moved back a few paces as more unnatural beings poured in from all angles. There were now at least twenty of them, looks of comprehension sneaking slowly over their mangled faces. Harry and Pete quickly came to their senses and joined Frank at the head of the group, blasting into the surging bodies. Frank tossed aside the empty shotgun and pulled out a lethal looking knife. Harry was putting his handgun to use and Pete his machete. The girls were pushed back behind them as the bodies surged forward, running to beat the others to their latest snack. The guys moved fast spearing and shooting and hacking at the crushing horde. Frank’s knife went quickly from shining silver to glistening brown. He jammed it into whatever part of the head he could get to, above an ear, down through the top of a head, up through a chin or straight through an eyeball. The bodies fell at his feet. Harry shot cleanly, through a forehead where he could and up through a chin if the quarters were too close. Pete hacked into skulls, frenzied but never faltering.

Xin felt sure that this was not going to end well, as she tried to take aim with her gun. The guys had left her no room to get a clean shot and she lowered her gun in frustration. Lucy’s hand found hers and pulled urgently. The guys were still grappling with a mass of zombies. Turning to Lucy, Xin saw that she was pulling her towards the first door. She followed unnoticed through the door. Its sign read: ‘W392: S.A.L.W – Small arms and light weapons’.

“Look out!” Lucy yelled, alerting Xin, who was still staring back at the fighting men, to two further zombies lurking inside the room. Lucy already had her gun pointed at one of them and Xin reacted quickly. In a matter of seconds their way was clear once more.

To call the cavernous area they had stepped into, a ‘room’, was definitely an understatement. It was longer than it was wide, stretching backwards and lined with lockers, wall mounts and glass fronted cabinets. Everything about it was grey, except from the matte black weaponry and mounds of small, white ammunition boxes.

“Be careful opening anything that’s big enough to hide a person, you never know!” Lucy said hurriedly, as she scurried over to the right hand wall. The closest corner housed a small bank of trolleys, similar to the ones found at airports, only bigger. Alongside them were a number of large, reinforced, square boxes, maybe three feet each way. “Help me with this.” She indicated the nearest of the cases. The two of them struggled to haul one onto a trolley.

The men rushed into the room in panic and frowned angrily at them. They were blood splattered and sweating, their faces bore grim determination.

“You couldn’t wait?” Pete asked.

“Just help us with this,” Lucy winced under the weight. With some assistance they managed to get it in place and rolled the trolley down the room. All of them took to throwing open lockers and snatching up boxes that tinkled as they moved them, or heavy guns that they didn’t even have time to take note of. Between the five of them it didn’t take long to pack whatever weaponry and ammunition was left into two of the cases. It looked as though roughly a quarter of it had already been liberated before they arrived.

“Harry, Frank, can you take these outside and load them up? Xin, Lucy and I will check the other rooms. I think we got most of the zombies before, but be quick,” Pete instructed.

Harry and Frank took a trolley each and wheeled them quickly from the room. Pete and the girls paused in the corridor, there were so many bodies slumped on the ground. Upon seeing them, guilt trickled into Xin’s bones that she had not stood alongside them and fought.

“Which one should we check next?” Pete asked, reading some of the signs on the doors.

“Find one that mentions anything to do with body armour,” Lucy said quickly. “The weapons we have should suffice and the rest won’t meet our needs, but extra protection would be a bonus.”