Jurassic Dead

by Rick Chesler

  She didn’t even think, couldn’t respond. She heard them arguing that maybe the gunfire had ruptured the gas tank and that’s why they were now dead in the water, miles between them and the airstrip, miles between any cover except for some woods on their right, leading up the way to the volcano.

  All she could do was line up the best shot she could, before the T. rex could get any closer, and fire.

  The recoil slammed her back hard against the metal frame. She had the immediate fear that she had let the launch push her aim too high. Then a concussive roar blasted back at her, and a shotgun-like burst of blood, bone and gristle exploded past her and all over the Jeep. She dropped the RPG and covered herself with her arms, but with the ringing in her ears and the wave of nausea she at first assumed to be from the gore, she didn’t realize the Jeep had gone partially airborne—its rear wheels lifted off the earth and the entire back half of the chassis spinning to the side. The proximity of the explosion tossed the decelerating vehicle sideways and around, and as it came down it crunched hard on the driver’s side, tilted and—

  “Oh nonono!” Xander yelled.

  —The Jeep rocked hard on its side, stalled, then tipped onto its roll bars. Xander grunted as he fell hard on his left shoulder, but quickly recovered and scrambled out. Alex fumbled with his seatbelt, and then finally got it loose and wriggled free, bleeding from a few more cuts.

  Dazed, Veronica lay on the ground, her neck at an awkward angle, the Jeep’s cargo bed above her. She fought a rush of unconsciousness, but a nagging voice in the back of her head—one that sounded like Alex’s voice—urged her to ‘get the hell up!’

  She blinked and actually let out a chuckle. Why? What was the point? It wasn’t like they had anywhere to go. It wasn’t like they weren’t being hunted by an army of zombies racing after them down the road from the facility, hungry for their flesh, and it wasn’t like the T. rex she just shot was dead, right?

  Blinking again, she turned her head and dared to look.

  “…get out, get out!” came the diminishing voices outside.

  She laughed again, looking out the gap, right into the eyes of the prehistoric monstrosity, the beast that pulled back, revealing that she had indeed, missed its head.

  It trilled at her, loud and piercing, yet full of frustration, and she saw why a moment later, when her gaze moved down and she saw it was lying on its left side, struggling to get up. Its right side was a different story, a sight to behold: from the initial chest cavity there was now an enormous smoking hole.

  It roared, and its neck lunged forward, snapping at the Jeep and missing by a foot.

  “Get out!” Alex hollered, this time closer, and followed by a barrage of gunfire. Bullets tore up the road, and then ripped into the beast’s snout, between its eyes to scatter off the ridges on its skull.

  The T. rex shrieked at them, shook its head and rocked side to side until it flipped—and started to rise.

  Veronica finally cleared her head and got moving. She scrambled out, snagging her AK-47 at the last second, then—with a glance back at the struggling T. rex, ran after Xander and Alex, already bounding for the meager concealment of the woods.

  She risked a backwards glance, just as the T. rex righted itself. It called out again as it sniffed the air and its head turned from the Jeep to the rain forest. Behind the beast, the road suddenly filled with movement.

  Before the trees obscured her view, she saw the rush of blood-soaked bodies, the reptilian skin and diseased eyes that locked onto her with such hunger that her blood went cold.

  As soon as Veronica had caught up to the others, leaping over brush and fallen trees as well as the odd volcanic rock, Alex yelled ahead to Xander: “What the hell is Plan C?”

  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 ab
out 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.