Undead Rain Trilogy Box Set

by Shaun Harbinger

  The army would probably kill me eventually but how many innocent people would I tear apart before they managed to catch me?

  I sat staring at the trees around me, letting my thoughts zone out. When I checked my watch later, the countdown told me that I had been sitting there for over an hour.

  I was wasting precious time. If I was going to end this on my own terms, then I needed to get on with it.

  A distant sound caught my attention. Standing up to stretch my aching muscles, I saw the Chinook coming over the hills, probably bringing more personnel to the camp.

  As I watched the chopper’s approach, a shout went up near the building.

  Recon One had blown the main door off its hinges when they had gone inside earlier but no one had thought to seal the doorway afterward, and now dozens of zombies were shambling out into the camp, attracted by the noise and movement.

  Shots rang out as soldiers began firing on the creatures. As zombies fell by the doorway, others stepped over their bodies, arms outstretched as they lurched toward the soldiers, their hungry moans filling the air.

  Chaos reigned as soldiers and zombies went to war. The soldiers were in possession of enough firepower to take over a small nation, but the zombies were among them, making it difficult for them to shoot without hitting other soldiers. The large number of personnel in the camp was a drawback when it came to fighting at such close quarters.

  Some of the soldiers, seeing the futility of fighting a large number of zombies when they were unable to fire for fear of hitting their comrades, ran for the gate. Others tried to use their weapons as clubs. Some must have thought it better to risk shooting a fellow soldier if it meant they had a chance to kill a zombie and they fired their rifles. Soldiers and zombies dropped to the ground as shots rang out in the morning air.

  The Chinook had reached the compound. It hovered uncertainly above the fence for a moment before flying to the grassy area at the back of the building, the pilot obviously deciding it was safer to land there. As it descended, I broke cover and ran for the gate, seeing an opportunity to get into the compound. The guards who had been stationed at the gate were running toward the melee in the camp to help their comrades, their posts abandoned.

  Sprinting past the security guard station and across the parking lot toward the grounded Chinook, I saw the rear ramp descend to drop off a group of soldiers. They ran around to the front of the building to enter the battle raging there.

  I crouched behind a blue Nova while they passed me. Their attention was focused on the chaos in front of them. No one even glanced in my direction.

  As the last soldier ran past, I sprinted for the rear of the Chinook, taking the Desert Eagle from its holster. When I got to the top of the ramp, I ran up to the open doorway that separated the cockpit from the rear of the helicopter and leaned through, pressing the muzzle of my gun against the pilot’s helmet.

  “Get us in the air,” I said.

  The co-pilot looked at me with a look of astonishment.

  “Do it,” I said, “or I’ll blow his fucking brains out.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  They both began to flick switches on the control panel. The rear ramp lifted up and closed.

  “Get us up!” I demanded.

  They complied, taking the Chinook up until it was above the height of the building.

  “Now what?” the pilot asked. “What do you want us to do?”

  “I want you to do exactly as I say. We’re going to pick up some precious cargo.”

  19

  I told them to take us over the building to where the fight was raging. The situation on the ground had gotten worse. Bodies of soldiers and zombies were strewn everywhere. It was obvious that some of the soldiers had been shot by their colleagues, their blood staining the grass around them.

  The ones that had been bitten were staggering toward the gate and into the woods, muttering the words, “Leave me alone” as the virus combined with the vaccine in their blood and compelled them to seek a quiet place to turn into hybrids.

  Still more zombies were coming out of the building. There was such chaos in the camp that the creatures were able to get outside through the doorway without even being shot at.

  In the mass of olive-green uniforms and white lab coats, it was easy to spot Sam, Jax, Tanya, and Doctor Colbert. They were fleeing the fight, heading for the gate.

  “See those people?” I said to the pilot, the Desert Eagle still pointed at his head. “We’re going to go down there and pick them up.”

  He shook his head. “There’s nowhere to land down there.”

  I pointed at a small area near the parking lot. If we got there quickly enough, we would be there before my friends made it out of the gate. “There,” I said. “Land there.”

  “There are zombies everywhere,” the co-pilot protested.

  “We only need a few seconds,” I said. “Now do it, or I will shoot both of you. Believe me, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  They must have detected the desperation in my voice, because they took the Chinook down to the exact spot I had indicated.

  The helicopter’s side door was located just behind the cockpit, so I could open it while still keeping the pilot in my sights. I was never going to shoot him or the co-pilot, but they didn’t know that, and I probably seemed crazy to them, which was enough to make them comply.

  I opened the door and shouted, “Sam! Tanya!”

  They saw me and changed the trajectory of their run, heading for the helicopter at full speed.

  A zombie that had been in the area when we landed came around the side of the Chinook, moaning at me, his arms outstretched. I used the Desert Eagle to dispatch him, aiming between his eyes and pulling the trigger. The gun recoiled in my hand like a striking snake. The zombie fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving.

  The sound of the gun spooked the pilot. He began to lift us back into the air. I whirled on him, pointing the gun at his face. “Don’t you fucking take off until I tell you.”

  He removed his hands from the controls as if they were suddenly hot. “Okay, just stay calm.”

  I noticed two hybrids break from the pack of shambling zombies and begin to chase Doctor Colbert and Jax. Doctor Colbert was the slowest runner, and Jax was hanging back to encourage her to move faster.

  The hybrids were both ex-security guards at the facility, dressed in dark uniform, but both without their caps. They had once been a dark-haired woman, and a bald man with a moustache and beard. Now, they were monsters. They fixed on Doctor Colbert like a pair of lions selecting the slowest gazelle from the pack.

  I knew there was no point in shouting at Doctor Colbert to run faster; she already looked like she was about to collapse. She was sucking in air like crazy, her face red and sweaty. Her legs were weak and unable to keep the pace Jax had set.

  Tanya reached the Chinook and ran in through the door, closely followed by Sam. “Watch the pilots,” I said. “Don’t let them take us up.”

  I ran out of the chopper, the Desert Eagle in both hands like I had seen on cop shows. But I was no cop, and this wasn’t television. I didn’t dare fire while Jax and Doctor Colbert were in the way.

  But if I didn’t shoot, the hybrids would definitely catch them. Even now, they were only ten feet behind their prey. “Get down!” I shouted.

  Jax looked at me as if I had gone crazy. She knew they were being chased, so why would they stop?

  “Trust me and get down,” I said, trying to hold the gun steady.

  For a moment, I thought Jax was going to ignore me and keep on running, only to be brought down by the hybrids. But she must have decided to trust me because she grabbed Doctor Colbert and pulled her to the ground. Unable to slow their momentum, they crashed and rolled in the dirt.

  I fired my first shot, hitting the bearded hybrid in the chest. Unlike zombies, hybrids were alive, so a shot that could kill a living person would kill a hybrid. The bullet stopped this one dead in its tracks.

&nbs
p; Jerking the gun sights to aim at the other hybrid, I pulled the trigger just as the creature reached Doctor Colbert. Its head was flung back as the bullet tore into its skull.

  Jax scrambled to her feet, pulling a huffing and puffing Doctor Colbert along by her arm. When they reached me, Jax whispered, “Thank you.”

  We got on board the Chinook and I told the pilot to take off.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  I grinned. “Have you ever heard of a place called Apocalypse Island?”

  “No.” He looked at me as if I had asked him to fly us to Middle Earth.

  “It’s not on your maps,” Sam said. “I’ll give you the coordinates.” As he stepped past me to talk to the pilots, he put a hand on my shoulder. “Good work, man.”

  I nodded and went back to the seating area where the others were recovering from their ordeal.

  “I knew you’d come for us,” Tanya said. “Even though we only had a few hours left, I knew you’d try to rescue us.”

  “It’s like Sam said in the lab,” Jax said, “You’re an optimist, Alex. You don’t give up.”

  I didn’t mention the fact that I had been about to take my own life when I had seen an opportunity to get into the compound and seized it. Maybe I would never tell anyone that, not even Lucy.

  I took a seat next to Jax and said, “Thanks for trusting me.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  Her face was drawn into a grimace of pain, the skin beneath her eyes dark and blotchy.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “I will be. Once I get the antivirus. The stomach pain is still there, and I’ve been having… strange thoughts.”

  “Strange thoughts?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re on our way back to the island. Everything will be fine.”

  I smiled at her but I wasn’t going to relax until we’d all been injected with the antivirus. My optimism only went so far.

  Only when the antivirus was pumping through our veins would this nightmare be over.

  20

  Apocalypse Island looked different from the air. I had gone up to the cockpit, impatient to get to the island, and unable to sit on the seats because I was full of adrenaline. Through the windshield, I saw the island, sitting solidly in a rough sea beneath the sun.

  When we had approached it in the boats, it had seemed a dangerous place, surrounded by lethal spurs of rock that would tear up any boat that came too close. The cliffs had looked daunting and impenetrable.

  From the air, Apocalypse Island looked neat and green, the woods covering almost the entire area except for the central grassland where Site Alpha One stood. From up here, you would never guess that zombies and hybrids lurked in those woods.

  Sam pointed out the area where the two Chinooks sat by the hangar. One of those choppers was supposed to come and collect us from Site Alpha Two tomorrow. It would have been much too late by then.

  “Take her down over there, man,” Sam told the pilot.

  We descended gently, the rotors kicking up dust and flattening the surrounding grass as the pilot took us down. I opened the side door. Doctor Colbert and Jax climbed out, followed by Tanya and myself. I heard Sam say to the pilot, “Remember, man, this place doesn’t exist. You were never here,” before he climbed out to join us.

  The Chinook took to the sky, turned toward the mainland, and flew out of sight. I wondered what the pilot and co-pilot were going to tell their superiors when they returned. I was sure they’d come up with a plausible story that didn’t involve being hijacked and forced to fly to a secret island.

  The hangar door opened and Hart came walking out with a handful of his men. He didn’t seem surprised to see us at all. He had told me before we’d left here that he thought we were resourceful. Our presence here now simply proved him right.

  “Alex,” he said, standing with his hands on his hips. “You’re early.”

  “We have the H1NZ1,” I said, handing him the backpack. “The scientists need to work on the antivirus right now. We don’t have much time.”

  Doctor Colbert stepped forward and explained that we only had a few hours left. She volunteered to help the scientists, some of whom she knew, to produce the antivirus.

  “You’ll have to be isolated,” Hart told us. “It’s purely a precaution. Now that we know the real speed at which the pure virus works, we can’t take any chances. We’ll have the antivirus ready in an hour, so you won’t be waiting long.”

  We were taken to the rooms downstairs and locked in. I paced around my room, but I didn’t feel anywhere near the level of anxiety I had felt the last time I was in here. Then, I had thought that I had nothing more than a slim chance of saving Lucy. Now, she was hours away from a cure.

  I sat in one of the chairs and folded my arms, letting my chin rest on my chest as I closed my eyes. I was tired. Stress had built up inside me over the past couple of days and now that I had a chance to relax, my mind and body seized that opportunity by making me sleepy. My eyelids felt too heavy to keep open. My arms and legs felt as if they were made of lead and moving them was too much effort. The sound of my own heavy breathing and footsteps in the corridor outside the door were all I could hear, and those sounds seemed to fade into the distance as I fell asleep.

  * * *

  A loud clanging alarm woke me. I opened my eyes and pushed the chair back from the table. Through the panel of frosted glass in the door, I could see shadows of people running in the corridor, their boots drumming on the floor.

  The door burst open suddenly, and three guards came in with rifles leveled at me.

  Surprised, I raised my hands. “What’s going on?”

  Hart entered the room, accompanied by the same scientist who had injected me with the pure virus.

  “He looks okay, sir,” one of the guards said.

  “Yes, I can see that,” Hart replied tersely. He looked angry and drained.

  “What’s happening?” I asked him. Outside the door, guards were still running along the corridor, weapons in their hands.

  “Sit down,” he said, “We need to inject you immediately.”

  The scientist came forward with a syringe of clear liquid. I sat in the chair while he injected me. The needle stung as it pierced the skin of my shoulder at the same spot where they had injected me with the virus.

  “You’re now fully vaccinated,” Hart said, waving the others out of the room. “That antivirus will combine with the vaccine in your blood and halt the transformation you would have gone through. You can’t be turned now, no matter what happens. If you ever get bitten, you need not fear about turning into a monster.”

  “What about Lucy?” I asked.

  “She’ll be fine. We’ve administered the antivirus. It’s just a matter of time before she regains consciousness and awareness. It’s the same for Kate, my wife. I owe you a great deal of thanks, Alex.”

  “What’s happening out there?” I asked, pointing to the corridor beyond the door.

  He paused for a beat before telling me, “I’m afraid we didn’t get the antivirus to one of your friends in time. For some reason, she reacted to the pure strain of the virus faster than the rest of you.”

  “Jax,” I said.

  “Yes,” Hart said.

  “What happened?”

  “She’s killed three of my men,” he said. “Ripped out their spines. And she’s escaped the facility. We have teams out in the woods hunting her down.”

  I couldn’t believe it. My brain could hardly comprehend that Jax was a monster like Vess. This had to be a mistake. Surely Jax must be sitting in a room just like this one farther along the corridor. Something else had killed those men. Not Jax.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Hart said, probably guessing my thoughts from the look of disbelief that must be on my face. “I’ll leave you alone for a while so you can come to terms with it.”

  “No,” I sai
d. I couldn’t bear to be left alone any longer. “I want to see Lucy. Right now.”

  21

  I spent the next four hours sitting at Lucy’s bedside in the hospital room, watching her gradually awaken. The first thing that changed was her position. She had been curled up in the fetal position when I’d first entered the room, but she gradually straightened her body beneath the covers. Her breathing, which had been ragged, slowed to a normal pace. By the third hour, she looked as if she was simply lying there taking a nap. There were no outward signs of the battle raging inside her body between the virus and the antivirus.

  While I waited for Lucy to wake up, I thought about Jax. In the short time I had known her, she had been a good friend. We had talked about the world before the apocalypse, and she had told me about her fears for her boyfriend’s safety. She had shown me the engagement ring he had given her, and told me that she regretted not accepting his proposal. Her experience had highlighted a simple truth for me: time is precious.

  Now, Jax’s time was done. She had become a monster, and all of the thoughts, hopes, and dreams that made Jax the person she was were gone. If Hart’s men found her in the woods and killed her, they would be doing her a favor; Jax had never wanted to be a monster. The old Jax, the woman I had spent time with, would be appalled if she knew she would murder at least three innocent people someday, ripping out their spines as Vess had done to Johnny.

  I wondered how Sam and Tanya were taking the news of Jax’s transformation into a monster and escape into the woods. They had known her for a long time. I guessed it was hitting them hard.

  Lucy opened her eyes and blinked at the overhead lights. She turned her head slowly to face me. “Alex?”

  I grinned at her and nodded, unable to speak because I knew that if I did, I would start to cry. While sitting here waiting, I had feared that when Lucy finally opened her eyes, they would be yellow zombie eyes, staring at me with malevolence. I had been afraid that the antivirus might not work. But her eyes were the same clear blue they had always been. I let out a sigh of relief.