Neeta looked doubtfully at Pete. “Not that I want to question anyone’s manhood here, but one man on each rope? How will that work?”
“If you can use the steel frame to help you climb down, that will make our job a lot easier,” Jake said. “Is everyone ready?”
He looked pointedly at Pete, who put down his camera and picked up the end of the rope attached to Neeta.
Ellen switched on the torch that was fastened round her head and peered down into the lift shaft. Metal girders supported the lift, forming a crosshatch pattern that looked fairly secure to climb. A thick steel rope snaked out of the hatch’s concrete ceiling, down to the lift cage fifty feet below. “OK, let’s do it.” Ellen looked over at Jake, who grinned and waved the end of the rope at her.
She lowered herself down over the lip of the hatch. She stretched herself down, fingertips clutching the side of the hatch, until her feet found firm purchase on the first cross hatch. “OK,” she called out. “I’m going down.”
Neeta appeared over the lip of the hatch, lowering herself down the way Ellen had done. Ellen soon got into a rhythm of climbing: using the vertical beam to guide her hands, then dropping down to the next horizontal beam to support her feet. She didn’t look down, nor did she waste any breath speaking. Instead she focused on balance and keeping herself moving slowly, steadily, down.
Finally she felt the broad surface of the lift car under her feet. She let go of the beams and stepped out onto the roof of the lift. “OK, I’m down,” she called out. She looked up. She could see tiny pinpricks of light high above her, impossibly far away.
“I’m securing the rope to the hatch,” Jake called out.
Ellen pulled the elastic strap on the torch to secure it more firmly around her head. The beam was strong and steady. She inspected the top of the lift car as Neeta dropped onto it roof with a grunt.
Ellen looked up and called, “I see the service hatch. I’m going to unscrew it now.”
“Roger that,” came Jake’s voice from above.
Ellen undid her harness rope and then the climbing harness.
Neeta stared at the service hatch. “That’s a tiny space we’re opening up. How are we going to squeeze through there?”
“I guess that’s why Jake wanted you and me to do this. We’re the smallest.” Ellen picked up the bag of tools she had been carrying on her belt and selected a screwdriver, inserting it into one of the screws holding the service hatch in place. The screw would not budge. She tried turning it with both hands. Finally the screw, stiff after seventy years, began to move.
As Ellen struggled to remove the first screw, Neeta burrowed in the tool bag and found a second screwdriver, working on the opposite corner as Ellen finally got the first screw out and began work on the second.
Between the two of them, they managed to get the panel loose and lifted it together, setting it to one side.
Ellen stared down the hole that was created, the light from her head torch illuminating the bottom of the lift car about eight feet down.
“OK, here goes,” Ellen muttered and lowered herself down into the hatch, feet first.
It was a tight squeeze. In the end, there was no easy way other than to just let go and fall the short distance to the bottom of the car. As Ellen picked herself up from the floor and looked up, she did a double take. In the beam of the head torch, she caught sight of two decayed faces staring at her from the corner of the lift. The zombies grunted then attacked.
CHAPTER 31
Cold, slimy hands gripped Ellen’s shoulders. The zombie’s mouth opened and filled the car with a fetid aroma. She fumbled for her gun, bringing the butt of the gun up and ramming it as hard as she could into the zombie’s chin.
The gun went straight through its rotten jaw, covering her hand in black goo. She pulled on the gun; it was stuck fast. The zombie roared, and Ellen felt a fetid blast of air from the zombie’s mouth as she tugged desperately on the gun. When it finally came free, the jaw bone was still attached to it. The zombie stumbled back. Ellen aimed and fired the gun. The zombie’s head exploded in a mass of black goo and brain matter, spattering Ellen and the zombie behind it. Ellen gripped the gun and aimed at the second zombie, struggling to maintain her grip on a gun made slippery with ichor.
Before she got a chance to fire, the zombie exploded into dozens of pieces with a round from Neeta’s shotgun. Ellen dropped the revolver and dove to the floor, covering her head with her hands as pieces of bone and rotten flesh rained down on her.
In the silence that followed, Ellen raised her head in time to see Neeta lowering herself down through the hole in the lift car, the shotgun strapped to her back. She dropped the short distance to the floor, slipping on the gore.
“Thanks for that.” Ellen got to her feet. “They took me by surprise.”
“No problem.” Neeta appraised the lift’s closed doors. “This is going to be the difficult bit. Getting these doors open.”
Ellen extricated the crowbar from the webbing securing it to her back. Between them, she and Neeta wedged it between the doors, and with the two of them putting all of their weight on the end of the crowbar, the doors started to open.
The gap was small. The force required to fully open the doors and hold them open, was beyond them. “Just go,” Ellen said. “I’m right behind you.”
Neeta squeezed through the small gap. Ellen followed, keeping her foot down on the crowbar as she squeezed through. She pulled her foot back just as the lift doors slammed shut.
Ellen climbed to her feet, Neeta directly in front of her. “Are you OK?” she asked.
Neeta, her back to Ellen, froze, staring ahead. “Oh shit.”
They were in hangar lit by an eerie green glow coming out of the walls.
A World War two fighter plane dominated the hangar, a swastika painted on its tail fin. It was on aquaplanes, not wheels, on a ramp that sloped down, its nose pointed towards massive doors. Between the massive doors and the ramp was Arctic sea water. The rest of the floor was covered in a thick carpet of ice. There was a small concrete bunker – a store room perhaps – up against the far wall.
But none of these things immediately registered with Ellen.
Twenty zombies lurched about on unsteady rotting legs. They moved slowly, ambling aimlessly. One by one, they swivelled what was left of their eyes to focus on the two women who had just stumbled into the room. They moved slowly but purposefully towards Ellen and Neeta.
Ellen grabbed Neeta and pointed towards the store room. “Quick. Over there.” She ran, pulling Neeta along after her. They were much quicker than the zombies and reached the door way ahead of them. Ellen grabbed the door, and pulled. The door opened. She ran inside, pulling Neeta in after her and closed the door behind them.
The room was small and smelled of metal and gunpowder. The eerie green light illuminated everything in here, too. It was stocked with small aeroplane parts, tools, and a few tins of axle grease. There was a stack of grenades on one shelf and what looked like a rocket launcher on another. A small steel shelving unit held boxes of ammunition.
“At least we don’t have to worry about running out of bullets,” Ellen said, picking up a box of 9mm cartridges.
“Yes, but we’ve trapped ourselves in here,” Neeta said. “How are we supposed to get out? Even if we manage to fight our way through to the door, and by some miracle it turns out to be open, we know we can’t get back to the others because the other door is sealed shut.”
“We’ll have to take out those things.”
“There are too many of them.”
“And you’re an outstanding shot. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
Neeta shrugged. “I told you, my uncle was a farmer. I used to spend summers on the farm. My uncle thought anyone growing up on a farm needed to know how to shoot, and he used to take me to the shooting range. I never understood what he meant until the night a fox attacked the henhouse in the middle of the night.” She shuddered. “I still remember a
ll the dismembered chickens lying on the ground, blood and innards scattered everywhere.”
“That’s awful,” said Ellen. “How old were you?”
“Twelve,” said Neeta. “But my uncle got the fox, with his shotgun. From that point on I made a point of learning how to handle one. I understood then how important it was.”
“I’m surprised you grew up on a farm,” said Ellen. “You don’t really strike me as a country girl.”
“I’m sorry, I’m babbling,” Neeta said. “It’s not important. We need to figure out how to get out of here.”
“I’ve got a plan.” Ellen shoved several boxes of ammunition into her backpack. “That plane has a gun turret. I want you to cover me while I run to it. If I can get to the gun turret I can use it to take out the rest of the zombies, but I need you to pick off as many as you can in the meantime. Best to stay here while the firing’s going on. This structure is reinforced concrete. It will provide shelter. Once all the zombies are taken out, you run to the door and try and open it while I stay in the plane.”
“How do you know the gun turret will have ammo?” asked Neeta.
“I don’t,” said Ellen. “I’m praying that it does.”
Neeta extricated the shotgun from her back and checked the cartridges. “Is there any more ammunition for this thing?”
“Here.” Ellen tossed her a box of cartridges, which Neeta caught nimbly.
They heard low groans outside the door. “I think they’re right outside,” Neeta said. “They’re waiting for us to come out.”
“Then we give them a surprise. Ready?” Ellen readied the pistol and looked at Neeta.
Neeta hefted the shotgun and pointed it at the door. “Ready.”
Ellen poised her foot by the door and gave it as hefty a kick as she could manage. The door flew open on half a dozen zombies who immediately tried to crowd through the door. She kicked the nearest one hard enough to topple it over.
She heard Neeta yell, “Duck!” just in time to hit the ground as a blast from the shotgun exploded right above her head.
The noise was deafening in the small space. The gunpowder cleared to reveal an empty doorway, the zombies knocked to the floor. Ellen jumped to her feet and sprinted across the hangar, deftly avoiding the zombie body parts that littered the floor. She focused on the plane, which seemed impossibly far away.
She tried not to overthink the groans and guttural noises around her. She just focused on running. She knew she was fast; she could out-run anything that came after her. Another three shots rang out in the hangar, one after the other, resounding loudly. Each one was followed by a wet flopping noise.
She risked a glance towards the zombies. They were closer but they were all focused on Neeta, who stood in the bunker’s doorway, firing.
Ellen put in a final sprint to reach the ramp, not daring to look around again.
She reached the plane’s underside as another gunshot resounded through the hangar. Standing underneath the plane with her arms outstretched, Ellen could only just reach the undercarriage. She tugged on the hatch, fervently hoping it wasn’t locked. It wasn’t, but it was stuck.
She pulled the rifle free of its webbing and used the sturdy grip end to bash the hatch loose. As she worked, she glanced around.
Zombies littered the floor. Smoke swirled around Neeta as she fired again. She hit a zombie in the shoulder, its arm flying off but the creature kept coming. Half a dozen of them were closing in on Neeta, but then Ellen saw three zombies nearly on top of her.
They were too close for the long-range rifle. The pistol was tucked in her belt. By the time she got it free they would be on her. She hefted the rifle by its barrel. The closest zombie was only five feet away from her. It came at her, arms outstretched, thick black ichor oozing from its open mouth. It wore a filthy cap instead of a helmet. Its skin was grey, black with frostbite in parts. One of its eye sockets was empty. The remaining eye was fixed on Ellen.
Ellen brought the rifle up and used the butt to thwack the zombie as hard as she could on the side of its head.
It was like hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat. The zombie’s head exploded, sending black and grey matter everywhere, including all over Ellen. She gagged on the smell. The headless zombie toppled forward. Behind it, the two others kept on coming.
Ellen dropped the rifle and tugged the revolver out of her belt. The second zombie was at point blank range. Her hands shook. She pointed the gun directly at its nose. Then she fired.
The zombie toppled, a hole punched right through the centre of its face. The third one came into view behind it. Ellen focused. It worked last time, it has to be a head shot, she told herself as she aimed and pulled the trigger. The third zombie fell. With the immediate threat removed, Ellen picked up the rifle and used it to bash the hatch in the plane again. It fell open, revealing an interior swathed in darkness.
With no ladder in sight, Ellen grabbed the edges of the hatch with both arms and began to haul herself up. Her arms screamed. With all the running she did, her legs were strong, but her arms not so much. The muscles trembled and protested as she hauled herself up through the hatch.
But she did it. Once her backside was perched on the hatch, she pulled her legs up and rolled over, her arms feeling like they were on fire. “If we get out of this alive I’m going to start bench pressing at the gym,” she muttered.
She switched on her head torch. The plane was still well equipped with parachutes and the usual accoutrements one would expect to find in a war plane. Ellen climbed to her feet and hurried to find the gun turret. She knew that the plane did not have to be powered up to fire the gun. She just hoped that after all these years the gun would still fire.
CHAPTER 32
Neeta got into a routine with the gun: aim; fire; repeat. She was reassured to discover she was still as good a shot as her uncle had always told her she was. She held her position, ducking into the doorway of the bunker and then popping out to fire rounds. Having the gun in her hands made her think of Uncle Eric and Aunt Rana and the happy summers she’d spent on their farm as a child. Her father had never approved of Uncle Eric; he didn’t like the fact his sister-in-law had married a white man. He’d never trusted anyone who wasn’t Asian.
Firing the shotgun over and over again, watching the seemingly endless stream of zombies topple over, Neeta saw her father’s face in her mind and was suddenly overcome by sadness. The last time she’d seen him they’d had a blazing row. Her father had disapproved of her dating a white boy. She’d accused her father of being as racist as he was accusing the white people of being. She’d broken up with the boy in question a couple of months later, but she hadn’t spoken to her father since. If she got out of this alive, she would go see her father and try and mend the rift between them. Maybe he did drive her crazy with his prejudices and out-dated views, but he was of a different era and this was just the way he was. Somehow, she’d find a way to work around it. She didn’t want to leave this life not speaking to her father. Life was too short for such petty grievances.
Neeta poked her head around the door of the bunker. Still more zombies were coming for her. But then a ratcheting shriek rattled through the hangar. The gun turret on the plane was slowly turning.
Neeta ducked back into the concrete bunker just as a thunderous round of gunfire erupted from the plane’s gun turret. Great chunks of concrete and ice were gouged out of the walls and floor. The remaining zombies were blown to pieces with the force of the gun, pieces of rotted flesh and stray limbs scattering everywhere.
Neeta huddled in the corner of the bunker, head down, hands covering her ears to muffle the incredible din. When the noise finally died down, she risked peering cautiously out of the door.
Not a single zombie remained standing. Chunks of ice and concrete littered the hangar floor, amongst the gore from the zombies. The steel door in the east wall hung off its hinges. Neeta crept cautiously out of the bunker and stood on the ice, anxiously searching for Ellen.
She appeared from the body of the plane, sliding carefully down the ramp and back onto the solid floor of the hangar.
“Handy trick with that gun turret,” Neeta said. “It took out all of the zombies.”
“Let’s not relax yet,” Ellen said. “We still need to see if there are any more of them out there.”
Neeta pointed at the destroyed door in the east wall. “Thanks to you at least we know that door’s open.”
“Let’s go, then.” Ellen raised the revolver in front of her and cautiously approached he ruined door.
CHAPTER 33
Ellen pushed at the door. It leaned drunkenly, hanging on by one remaining hinge. The door was buckled, damaged by the barrage of gunfire from the plane’s turret. But the gap was big enough to pass through. Ellen ducked her head inside, pistol at the ready. The corridor was clear.
She moved cautiously into the corridor, Neeta following close behind. To the north, the corridor ended in a large door that, according to the map of the base, was a boathouse. To the south, it ended in a blank wall about twenty feet down. There was a door in the east wall. The door was closed, but a greenish light leaked out from cracks, bathing the end of the corridor in an otherworldly glow.
“What’s that?” Neeta said, peering out into the corridor.
“I don’t know. I think we’re going to need to check it out.” Ellen was aware that she was whispering. She felt like there was a presence in the room at the end of the corridor. A presence she did not wish to disturb.
She walked cautiously towards the door in the east wall, her boots softly thudding on the concrete. Behind her, she heard Neeta’s rhythmic breathing and the sound of her footsteps.
She paused just before she reached the door. It was slightly ajar, the brilliant green light seeping through the crack almost blinding. Shading her eyes from the glare, Ellen positioned herself beside the door with her back to the wall. She stretched out a foot and gave the door a kick. It creaked inwards.
Outpost H311 Page 15