by Nick Cole
“Here’s how this is going to work. You will stay right behind me. I mean hand on my shoulder behind me. I’ll use one of these at a time. The other you’ll hold and reload. That means you eject the clip, here, push this button. The clip will slide down into the palm of your hand. You’ll tuck the gun butt under your left armpit, watch the barrel, it’ll be hot. Then you’ll reach down into your cargo pocket and pull out the bullets you’ve stowed there. You will then reload the clip with seven bullets. Then you’ll slide the clip back into the pistol, pull this slide back and let it snap forward. By that time, I should be out of bullets. I’ll hold the gun I’m using by the trigger guard, you’ll take the butt of the gun like so,” he showed her. “Then you’ll hand me the loaded gun and we’ll do it again and again until these things are all cleared out. You think you can handle that, sweetie?”
Ash’s eyes narrowed.
Sweetie. She didn’t like the way this Frank said it.
“Yeah. And don’t call me sweetie, ever again.”
Five minutes later, they exited the front door. Frank moved forward using a weaver stance in which he lined up the gun sight of his pistol with his eye and shoulder. Ash was close behind, the first gun already loaded. With a clean puff of air, Frank put a bullet through the first zombie’s head, dead center. The thing wobbled, gurgled, and fell over in the green strip of grass that ran between the orchard and the walkway to Frank’s house. It had been a man in a dirty blood-covered business suit. His filthy shirt was untucked.
Three more bullets, three more kills, got them out onto the main street. The day was already getting hot. Ash could feel sweat running down her back.
Frank put bullets in three more who wobbled away from a car they’d been butting up against. Their grey, blank faces became sudden masks of anger as they turned and snarled. Each one got a bullet in the skull. Usually dead center forehead. Occasionally an eye. Frank handed the gun over his shoulder to Ash as he maintained his focus on the next closest target. Ash swapped out the gun for the one she was holding, and set to reloading. The gun barrel burned the soft flesh under her arm. But she’d been burned before. She’d been under fire before. She’d been to the land of life and death before. She thumbed bullets into the clip as Frank’s other pistol whispered death in short whistling puffs above the gurgling moans that seemed to be coming closer. She ignored those sounds, as best she could, and kept reloading.
They moved silently, working their way through the random groups of zombie clusters that loitered throughout the complex. The silencers masked their lethal intent as they dispensed with each group of clustering zombies.
Monsters that were once people.
Chapter Twenty One
The morning became hot and muggy, the air thick, the sky indeterminate, all of it backlit by diffused sunlight that must have come from somewhere. Somewhere high overhead the sun burned away, glaring down on the zombies surrounding Holiday.
He could see them going in and out of the distant grocery store, another Market Faire like the one back in Viejo Verde. They were like customers who’d taken too many drugs and now seemed intent-less, purposeless. He watched them cross the sprawling parking lots only to stand in the middle of the street near abandoned and wrecked cars, careless, as if aware that no car would ever again come and run them down. He watched them suddenly emerge from the dense foliage that separated the wide sprawl of an upscale neighborhood from the spreading strip malls on either side of the main road. Nearer, he could see them wandering the football field and school walkways just below him, like students and returned alumni that just couldn’t bring themselves to leave ever again. And yes, some even seemed that young. A bloodstained and torn backpack. A shredded, gore-crusted logoed t-shirt from some arcane band. Blood-caked mouths, pale gray skin. Holiday crouched down as he walked the length of the roof. None of them seemed to notice him.
Distant layers of fog and morning mist began to burn away from among the houses and lush landscaping, and Holiday felt thirsty.
How long has it been since I’ve had a drink, he wondered. Of water, he added, when his mind thought of the liquor from the store the night before. He knew Ash and Frank would be wondering what had happened to him.
“Stupid,” he muttered. Below him the undead moved about, seemingly everywhere now, filling in the empty spaces, in no particular hurry to be anywhere other than the place he wanted to leave.
An hour later, he spotted the helicopter a few minutes after hearing its blades slicing the air, creating a staccato whump whump whump that bounced off the hills and walls of the nearby grocery megastore and the surrounding multi-pastels of California-Mediterranean houses. The sound bounced from place to place, and when Holiday was sure it might be coming from a particular direction, a moment later the sound felt confused, overlapping itself, throwing itself away. Even gone.
For a brief moment he wondered if he would even see the actual helicopter. Maybe it was too low to the ground, passing behind some of the nearby hills. Then it appeared over red-tiled housetops to the south and east.
It was low.
Holiday started waving.
Its engine didn’t sound right. He could hear a metallic clank as it passed quickly overhead, ignoring him, black smoke erupting from the turbines below the blade. The helicopter was painted gray. Like a navy helicopter, thought Holiday who’d seen them coming up from Camp Pendelton sometimes.
The helicopter crossed off to his left, losing more altitude, heading for the wide intersection he’d crossed the night before. Then it began to spin to the right. Still moving forward, it completed a circle and continued to spin as more and more black smoke billowed out from underneath the turbines. The side door slid back as it completed one slow revolution, far too near to the ground, its forward motion slowing, and Holiday watched as more black smoke pumped out from the inside of the chopper. A moment later, just before it descended behind a line of tall Eucalyptus trees back toward Viejo Verde, he saw a body spin wildly away from the gyrating helicopter.
Then the chopper went down behind the tree line.
Silence now.
Even the sound of its engine was absent.
He could hear the zombies below him, groaning in that brief space when the badly clanking engine noise ceased and the helicopter disappeared.
Then he heard the metal rending groan of a crash.
He watched. Waiting for smoke. Waiting for fire.
Nothing.
Below him, the zombies were already lurching across the high school blacktop toward the football field’s edge, heading for the collapsed fence and the downed chopper.
In time, Holiday knew, they’d be all over that crash site.
Some part of his brain screamed that what he was already thinking was madness, as Holiday lowered himself down off the roof. He dropped down onto the top of a metal gate post and climbed down onto the blacktop. The zombies were streaming toward the fence that surrounded the football field.
That fence will slow them down a little, he thought. He ran toward the side parking lot. A place he’d seen fewer zombies and a couple of school buses.
A muddy-faced cheerleader missing a hand lurched toward him as he broke into a run across the hot blacktop. His ankle throbbed but he ignored it. He briefly considered checking the big yellow school buses for keys, but he knew any one of the zombies could trap him inside one of those buses.
This is a race, Holiday thought as he sprinted hard across the brilliant green grass leading out of the parking lot.
No, it’s a marathon. The winner gets the laurel crown…
No, the winner gets to make it to the helicopter crash to see if there’s someone who needs help, or can help. Maybe even someone with the government who knows what’s really going on, or even better, where there’s someplace safe to run to.
He ran. His ankle hurt but he ran anyway. He ran hard.
He poun
ded across the parking lot, turned alongside the fence that would eventually block the zombies crossing the football field until their sheer numbers would collapse the rest of it. He guessed there must be a thousand of them in the nearby area. Maybe more. He could hear his boots on the sidewalk, slapping in quick cadence as he ran toward the overgrown fields beyond the school. Off to his left, a neighborhood, single story rancheros purchased because of their nearness to the school, waited forlornly, their shattered windows like gouged out eyes. Front doors torn from their hinges, the darkness beyond, a gaping mouth making a silent, forever horrified, scream.
He made the overgrown field and ran down the dirt trails one finds in such places. Dirt trails the high school track team must have run on days they were being punished. Or used by kids ditching, making good their escape to a liquor store down the road where a clerk was known to sell cigarettes and not ask for ID.
The scent of sagebrush rose heavy and thick in the morning heat. Holiday was hot, but he wasn’t sweating. He stumbled and fell forward into chalky white dirt. His only thought, as he went down in a dusty plume, centered on not breaking anything. If he did, he was dead for sure.
He stood up.
Nothing seemed broken.
He continued at a jog, watching for gopher holes, as he crossed the overgrown field heading in the direction of the downed chopper.
He knew to watch for gopher holes. They were sure to break a horse’s leg in a moment. And he knew that meant death for the horse. But how he knew that, he didn’t know. He’d never ridden a horse.
He pushed through tall razor grass and red feathery bushes that smelled medicinal. When he was out of their clutch, and onto a cracked and broken sidewalk, he gasped for air in the thick heat.
Behind him, he could see the dark shapes of the clustering dead piling up along the fence on the hill. It collapsed in sections as he watched, spilling zombies out onto the wild field he’d just crossed. He turned away from them and started across the big road called El Toro that led up from the 5 freeway. He crossed a perfectly manicured center divider of soft green grass and feathery willows planted at calculated intervals. The grass felt spongy and wet.
The sprinklers are still running, thought Holiday, and crossed into the westbound lanes of the wide road. Across another field and up a small hill of wild sagebrush, he could see the tall stand of eucalyptus trees where the helicopter had disappeared.
He entered the field, jogging now, watching the ground, weaving through the razor grass, climbing the hill, hearing his breath catch in wheezy, ragged gasps as he pulled at the hot, heavy morning air for more oxygen.
There should be a fire, he thought in the back of his mind. If the thing, he said to himself referencing the helicopter, had crashed, it should have exploded. All that fuel would have caused an explosion.
Except, he countered. What if they were out of fuel?
He reached the crest of the small ridge, smelling the thick scent of eucalyptus in the brown carpet of slender curved leaves he churned up as he stumbled for one of the massive peeling trunks to rest against.
Slimy sweat reluctantly crawled from his pores. It smelled of bourbon.
I’m not sweating much, he thought. That’s because there’s nothing left for me to sweat, he answered.
He thought of water. Of the sprinklers. Of anything wet to drink.
Below him, in a little dip amongst the rolling hills of wild sagebrush and cacti that separated Viejo Verde from the older community of Forest Lake, lay the downed chopper. It was on its side. Wispy black smoke crawled away from the turbine where a small fire burned in the engine housing. Two bodies lay in four places a short distance from the helicopter. Each of the bodies was connected to its other half by trails of blood and gore soaking darkly into the white chalk of the hills.
Chapter Twenty Two
“Hello,” Holiday called out, in case there was any other passengers who’d made it out alive.
The helicopter hummed, as though some power generator was still running inside the wreck. Debris lay scattered about. A narrow backpack, a dusty gray and green digital camouflage pattern, stitched Red Cross medical symbol in muted tones, lay in the dust near one of the bodies. Holiday picked it up. It was stuffed with bandages and supplies. As he zipped it back up he noticed the stitched bold letters across the top of the pack reading TARRAGON CORPORATION.
“Hello,” he called out again.
The sun was at its zenith, bleaching color out of the dry and dusty landscape. Inside the downed helicopter the generator wound down, dying slowly into a thick silence.
How much longer do I have, thought Holiday. How much longer before they cross the road and start up the hill?
Who?
The zombies.
He climbed up onto the side of the downed chopper and looked down into the open side door.
“Hello,” he said again, hearing his voice fall flatly against the metallic insides of the aircraft. He smelled burning rubber, burnt ozone and dry canvas. There was a pilot, but he was dead too. His body was crushed by the collapsed front of the chopper as it had slammed into the ground.
There were weapons. A large machine gun hung from a strap in the roof, resting against the other side of the chopper that had now become the floor. Three more rifles lay down there against the door panel, two assault rifles and one oversized, camouflaged hunting rifle. Holiday lowered himself down inside the chopper and retrieved each of the rifles, reaching up and placing them on the side of the chopper that was now the top. He looked around for anything else that might be of value. But there was nothing. No water bottles. No canteens. Nothing. He was moving fast, but without being able to see what the zombies were up to, it didn’t feel fast enough.
I need some water, he thought, feeling dry and hot as he hoisted himself back up onto the side of the chopper, feeling the metal turning to hot as the day beat down on its side. Written in dark subdued letters, barely readable against the digital gray camouflage paint of the chopper, he saw the word TARRAGON again, followed by two numbers, 2 and 6.
He scanned the line of Eucalyptus trees. Three zombies stumbled through the cool shadows, arms already reaching for him. One looked like a ragged bum. Like he’d been a dirt- covered bum before all this had started. Now, he was a blood-covered zombie, still wandering the streets just looking to cadge a free meal. The other two were men. Normal men. Men with jobs. Men who wore their phone on their belt. Slacks, loafers, button down shirts. The go-getter types that Holiday had seen inside the coffee house, always on their phones or meeting some new client for coffee. Adults, Holiday always thought of them. Now the slacks were shredded. Bloody even. The loafers were gone. The button down shirts untucked and bloodstained. The business cut hair, wild. The eyes also wild. They lunged down the small slope toward the crash site.
Holiday reeled the heavy machine gun up and out of the chopper by its thick canvas strap. He’d seen this kind in movies. Linked ammo, a belt of large, slender bullets fell away. There seemed to be a lot of bullets.
Holiday grasped the front of the long barrel with his left hand and shouldered the butt of the gun on his right shoulder. His right hand found the trigger and he pointed it at the bum, who scrambled, moaning all the while, toward one of the eviscerated helicopter crewmen.
Holiday pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The two businessman zombies shambled forward, glazed vacant eyes somehow intent on Holiday.
I have no idea what to do, thought Holiday. He lowered the large gun and looked at it. There was a small lever on the right side. He remembered some action hero pulling that back. Pulling it back just before he’d said something cold and clever, and then shot a bunch of bad guys. Holiday sat the butt of the gun in his lap and pulled the lever back. He felt the ammo belt advance ever so slightly.
He shouldered the gun and aimed at one of the businessmen.
The light machine gun jumped sharply, and Holiday watched the chest and arm of a zombie businessman explode. Then he was firing wildly into the dry blue sky above their heads.
He stopped.
The zombie businessman had fallen down, sat down really, will a dull thud. Its mouth opened silently. And then it began to rise.
Holiday tightened his grip on the gun and fired again. This time, the ground around the zombie erupted in chalk white explosions as Holiday fought to drag the aim of the gun, as it jumped wildly, back onto the rising zombie.
A moment later, he heard a dry metallic chunk and the gun stopped firing. All the bullets in the belt were gone.
The business zombie rose, its arm missing, a gaping bloody hole in its chest, one of its bare feet disintegrated by one of the three bullets Holiday had managed to put into the thing. It took a step forward and fell over into the dust. It looked up and began to crawl toward Holiday, its face caked in dusty chalk. The other businessman careened downslope the last few feet and slammed into the upright belly of the chopper. More zombies were appearing in the tree line now. Soon they would fall downslope and arrive at the crash site.
Holiday looped the strap of the sniper rifle across his back. Bending to pick up one of the assault rifles, he felt himself begin to black out. The assault rifle dropped down inside the chopper where it clanged against the cargo door at the bottom.
Forget it, he thought, his mind feeling distant and unconnected.
Other zombies were joining the bum at his meal, while others seemed intent only on Holiday. He grabbed the other assault rifle and leapt down from the chopper on its far side, away from the zombies. He felt his ankle threaten to shriek when he did so, even as he cushioned the impact with a roll through the soft chalky dirt.
“Move!” he gasped to no one, his voice a croak in the hot dry air, and set off upslope, out of the dip in the ridge line, off toward the northwest.