Domain of the Dead

by Iain McKinnon

  “Must have happened when I fell,” Elspeth sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Ryan.”

  Ryan stood silent, his fingertips on the baby’s cheek. A solo tear trickled from his left eye and Ryan tried to swallow it back down.

  “Boss,” Bates broke in, “I’m out of ammo and they’re close.”

  “We don’t have time for this, Cahz.” Big Cannon’s deep voice carried more weight than usual.

  Cahz looked round at the approaching cadavers and back at the rag-tag group around him.

  “Okay, listen up. This isn’t an order but we’ve more of a chance down here than they do.” His eyes looked to Bates and Cannon. “I’m giving up my seat.”

  “Jesus, Cahz, we haven’t survived this long to get fucked by a handful of civvies,” Cannon protested, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Like I say, I can’t order you to stay,” Cahz said.

  “You don’t give much of an option, Boss. We’ve stuck together since this shit came down and neither of us would have made it without the other. If you’re stayin’ I’m stayin’.”

  Cahz smiled and looked over at Bates.

  “I’m taking my seat,” Bates said firmly.

  “I stay,” Angel volunteered.

  Ryan stepped up. “No, lady. Your arms busted. I’ll stay back.”

  Sarah started to protest but Ryan cut her off.

  “These boys might have the firepower but they don’t know the ground,” Ryan reasoned. “They’ve got a better chance with one of us to guide them.”

  “That’s that settled.” Cahz grabbed Sarah and lifted her up into the chopper before she could react.

  Sarah tried to protest but her voice was drowned out by the noise of the baby crying and the drone of the rotor blades.

  Shocked by the sudden pace of events, Sarah peered passed the soldiers at Ryan’s steely expression.

  Ryan stared down at the swaddled child, gently stroking its cheek. He was so engrossed with the child he was oblivious to the roar of the chopper’s engine, the bustling soldiers, and the zombies shambling towards him.

  Sarah’s view was blocked as Cahz grabbed Jennifer and tossed her on board.

  “Soon as you can, get back here and pick us up,” Cahz instructed Idris as he ushered Nathan into the middle seat.

  Idris nodded. “Keep yourselves safe and give me enough space to land.”

  Bates was stooped down, gathering up the last of his kit from the cargo net when Cahz stepped up to him. Bates swallowed down a gulp of saliva to lubricate his throat. He straightened up, but before he could speak Cahz stopped him.

  “Bates, leave that behind,” Cahz instructed.

  For a moment Bates was puzzled. He’d expected to be chewed out by his commanding officer for not volunteering his place. He followed Cahz’s gaze down to the ghetto blaster.

  “How much juice is in those batteries?” Cahz asked.

  “Not much, boss. They’re rechargeable and they’re pre-Zee. If you turn the sound down a bit you might eke out another fifteen, twenty minutes, but I guess about an hour is it.”

  Cahz nodded. “Okay.”

  “Boss!” Cannon bellowed.

  Cahz and Bates looked round.

  “Gettin’ a bit close.” Cannon, standing with his machine gun at his hip, pointed the barrel at a zombie just a few metres away. Clamping the butt of the gun to his side, he fired a thunderous volley of rounds that shredded the approaching zombie and a few behind it unlucky enough to be in the path of the stray bullets.

  “You looking for a decoy?” Bates asked.

  “Yep,” Cahz said.

  Bates smiled and produced a slightly curved, thin green rectangular box from a large pouch on his thigh. Embossed on the inside curve read the words ‘Face towards enemy’.

  “Set a timer on it for—what—five minutes?” Bates asked.

  “Make it twenty,” Cahz replied.

  When Bates looked puzzled, Cahz explained, “It’ll act as a distraction. Maybe pull a few away from us.”

  Bates quickly set the timer on the claymore mine before grabbing his kit and jumping into the chopper.

  “You packin’ any more useful toys?” Cahz asked him through the open door of the helicopter.

  “Yeah, sure.” Bates unclipped his two thigh pouches and tossed out his inventory. “Two more claymores, two flares, a smoke grenade and one MRE.”

  “Ain’t planning on staying long enough to have to eat army rations,” Cahz said, holding the pouches like they were a pair of freshly caught rabbits. “Maybe we can tempt those motherfuckers to eat these instead.”

  Bates gave out a chuckle. “Smear it all over you, then no fucker will want to bite you.”

  “It’s gettin’ tight, boss!” Cannon called out.

  Cahz shut the door and called over to Idris in the pilot seat, “Get these people out of here!”

  Idris gave a solemn nod that was as good as a promise for Cahz.

  “Cahz, it’s at least an eight hour turnaround!” Angel shouted out from her position in the chopper’s front seat.

  “Quicker you go the quicker you get back!” Cahz hollered.

  “Good luck, Cahz,” Angel said as she passed him her sidearm and her last remaining clip of ammo through the small window in her door.

  “Are you sure?” Cahz asked, holding the magazine clip with the Cyrillic writing across it.

  “I want empties back,” Angel warned in a firm tone. “Since Izhmash closed, are bitch to get hold of.”

  Cahz nodded. He turned and tapped Ryan on the shoulder.

  “Okay, we need somewhere high and defendable,” he said as he passed Ryan the pistol. “Which way?”

  * * *

  In getting comfortable, the soldier beside Nathan pushed him back into the middle rear seat and blocked his view. He couldn’t see which way Ryan had taken the party, only the occasional glimpse of a rotting faces as the zombies pressed closer to the helicopter.

  Bates took a wistful look at the battered stereo sitting behind the mine. He grumbled, “Shit, I’ve got to make up a new mix tape.” He sat back in his seat and pushed out a long rush of air, relieved to be in the chopper.

  Drawing a breath of his own, Nathan caught the mixture of decay and body odour from the passengers next to him. Nothing unusual, but now it didn’t bother him. Now he was escaping it, leaving it behind, not trying to ignore it. Escaping. He pushed his shoulders deep into the back of his seat and let his eyelids fall closed.

  “Sarah.” Jennifer sounded worried.

  Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to muster a calm tone as she answered, “What is it honey?”

  Jennifer looked out the window. “They’re getting closer.”

  Sarah too looked out the window at the approaching zombies.

  Nathan opened his eyes, and bobbing his head, looked between Jennifer and Sarah. The zombies were indeed getting close.

  “I imagine the pilot has to do things before he can take off,” Sarah said, trying to reassure Jennifer without sounding too anxious.

  “Shouldn’t we be taking off?” Nathan called out nervously.

  Idris craned round from his pilot’s chair to see his passengers.

  “We’re going to sit here a bit,” he said casually.

  “Why?” Nathan asked.

  “To give the W.D.’s something to interest them,” Idris answered.

  Nathan looked at Sarah and then back at the pilot. “What?”

  There was a thump at the window and Jennifer screamed.

  Sarah looked round to see a decayed face pressed against the pane, a dark grey mass of loose skin and pitted chasms. The dry dead skin raggedly hung around the numerous, deep, ickier filled gashes. As it tried to bite through the glass, streaks of dark saliva were smudged across the window.

  “For fuck’s sake, take off man!” Nathan bellowed.

  “I say when we take off,” Idris said, unflustered by the swarm of zombies outside.

  Nathan was half out of his seat. “Wh
y the hell are we still sitting here?!”

  “Sit down. I’ll take off before it gets too dangerous.”

  Nathan was almost completely out of his seat when an arm reached over and firmly pushed him back down.

  Bates pinned Nathan to his seat.

  “It looks dangerous enough already!” Nathan complained as he watched a second zombie press up against the glass on the other side of the aircraft.

  “Just calm down,” Bates said. “This is the closest you’ll get to in-flight entertainment.”

  “So why are we waiting?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m playing decoy,” Idris said. “The more W.D.’s we entertain, the less Cahz will need to worry about.”

  “This is fucked up,” Nathan said, but he stayed back in his seat nonetheless.

  The daylight seemed to fade, sucked in by all the grey-faced cadavers shuffling towards the chopper. The undead now surrounded the aircraft and one by one they were pressing against the windows.

  The pounding of dead hands against the skin of the helicopter grew louder as more and more crowded against it. As they reached their goal they squashed their stiff faces against the glass. The chopper began to rock from the force of their pounding hands, and as they pounded the noise grew so loud that it almost enough to drown out the rotor blades.

  Sarah held Jennifer in a tight cuddle, repeating calming phrases to her. Nathan sat, his face drained of colour, slumped in his seat as if he were trying to sink out of sight of the insatiable zombies.

  Sarah noticed that the pilot and the two soldiers onboard were sitting quite placid and silent.

  “All right,” the pilot said as he flicked a switch on the dashboard. “This is your Captain speaking. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  With that, he pushed forward on his stick and the faces around the windows started to drop away.

  The chopper rose into the morning sky with ease, unhindered by the mob that had surrounded it. Its pilot watched from his vantage point as the three men and one woman ploughed through the throng of corpses at the far end of the square. Beneath the chopper there still stood a multitude of zombies futilely clawing at the empty air.

  He turned the stick in the direction of home and within moments his view of those left behind was lost, obscured by the broken skyline.

  With the chopper gone, the zombies stopped groping for the sky and ambled their aphasic way around the town square, some lured by the music from the ghetto blaster, more still drawn towards the people fleeing on foot.

  Chapter 2: The Queen of Heaven

  For the longest time there was silence in the chopper. Everyone had donned headsets with attached mic’s which muffled the sound of the engine and allowed them to talk, but as they passed over the devastated land there seemed to be little to talk about. Beneath them was the husk of a world long gone. The motorways were clogged with the rusting carcases of automobiles. Where the road wasn’t clogged it was often washed out or carpeted in a blanket of green where nature had started to reclaim what was hers. Spindly saplings forced a home in parking lots and moss coated those roofs that hadn’t collapsed or been gutted by fire.

  It was a rotten world made all the more rotten by the aimless wanderings of the zombies that inhabited it. It seemed to Sarah that the dead had fashioned a derelict realm over which only they had domain. A dead world populated by dead people. She kept her gaze out of the window so no one could see her tears. She felt ashamed for crying. She had lost everyone close to her during the Rising and she had cried for them. Today she had lost all but two of her friends, but this time their deaths were her fault.

  Broken rail tracks and toppled power lines punctuated the feral pastures until a strip of lonely beach heralded the boundary between the land and the ocean. A finger of fresh water bled into the ocean, its lighter shade of blue pushing out against the overwhelming power of the sea.

  As the land disappeared behind them, the occupants’ attention turned away from the windows.

  Sarah felt Jennifer’s breathing relax as the young girl drifted off to sleep. It felt comforting to have this young child asleep on her lap. At least Jennifer had survived. Running a hand over the child’s hair, smoothing it down in a long stroke, Sarah wrapped her arm around her. Closing her own eyes, Sarah tried to drift off. She felt exhausted. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, her legs ached from the mad dash carrying Jennifer.

  In the darkness behind her eyelids, sleep wouldn’t come. All Sarah could see were the faces of the people she’d left behind. Ryan’s stoic visage as he stroked his infected daughter’s cheek. Elspeth’s apologetic eyes pouring out regret for her failure to protect Ryan and Sam’s child. Even though she had been bitten defending the baby, Elspeth had shown no concern of her own plight. Then there were the others. Ali, Ray and George. All left behind, lost in a sea of decay. A very small part of Sarah threw out a modicum of hope. She hadn’t seen them die. Them might have fought their way free and met up with the soldiers; they all might be safe back at the warehouse waiting for rescue.

  It was just a wishful thought and Sarah knew it.

  Nathan was the first to break the silence. “I’m Nathan. This is Sarah and Jennifer.”

  “Shit yeah,” Bates said in way of an apology. “Kind of got caught up. I’m Bates. Gideon Bates.” Bates lent forward and placed his hands on the seat in front of him. “And this is Angelika Chernov—or Angel as we like to call her, our team sharpshooter.” Bates drummed his fingers on Angel’s seat. “Expert shot and poker player, both because she never blinks.”

  “And you never shut up, Bates!” Angel retorted.

  Bates continued, his enthusiasm unabated, “And your pilot for this flight is Idris Hayder.”

  Idris raised his hand and gave a slight nod of acknowledgment at the introduction.

  “So what’s happening to the rest of the world?” Nathan asked.

  “How long you been out of the loop?” Bates said.

  “We stopped picking up radio broadcasts, what, about three years ago? Things were in bad shape when they went off air.”

  “Yeah, it’s the same all over, W.D.’s all over the place,” Bates answered, rubbing his cheek. The straps from his helmet had obviously irritated him but not enough for him to remove his protective Kevlar helmet until the helicopter was safely away from the infected mainland. He ran a hand through his cropped blond hair, rubbing the spots matted flat by the pressure.

  “Double-you dee’s?” Nathan asked.

  “Whisky Deltas.” When Nathan stared back at him blankly, Bates elaborated, “Walking Dead.”

  “Ah,” Nathan nodded.

  “The dead fucks have taken over the planet. Nowhere’s safe,” Bates said.

  “Well, almost nowhere,” Idris chipped in.

  Nathan lent forward, more to show interest than to hear better. The noise in the cabin would have been overpowering if it weren’t for the headsets. “So what’s left?”

  “There are a few places, mainly islands like Ascension, Hawaii, the Falklands,” Bates said.

  Idris’ matter-of-fact voice cut over Nathan’s headphones, “I hear Greenland is nice this time of year.”

  Again Bates filled in some of the blanks. “Yeah, lots of places in the arctic circle are still safe. The Scandinavians are doing better than most.”

  “Why’s that?” Nathan asked before thinking.

  “W.D.’s don’t like the cold,” Angel said. “They freeze solid.”

  “Of course.” He remembered back to the winters where they had gone foraging in the comparative safety of the frozen city. “So where did you guys spring from? You seem well equipped, well organised…”

  Bates jumped in, all too happy to pass the time with small talk. “We’re assigned to Ishtar.”

  “What’s an Ishtar?”

  Bates smiled. “Ishtar is a research ship. Got some fancy scientists on board lookin’ for a cure.”

  “So is that government funded?” Nathan asked.

  “Ain’t no
government,” Angel added, her Russian lilt rolling over the words.

  “No social security cheques either,” Idris said.

  “Well, there’s a government of sorts,” Bates corrected. “Whole world—or at least the bits we have left—is under martial law.” He paused, thinking. “So how did you guys last so long on the mainland?”

  Nathan was about to answer when Sarah spoke up. “We got lucky.”

  Surprised that Sarah was awake and listening, Nathan shrugged in grudging agreement. True, they had worked hard, but he had to admit much of their success was down to good fortune.

  “Suppose we did,” he said. “I mean if Sarah hadn’t been up on the roof when you flew past, we might never have heard you.” He smiled over at Sarah. “Yeah, lucky. I take it you couldn’t sleep and went for a wander?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah.”

  She turned and looked out the window to hide her face. She didn’t know if Nathan would spot the lie but she didn’t want him to question her. She didn’t want to explain the real reason for her being there, standing on the ledge looking out, her mind full of the urge to step off.

  What made her cry as she looked out over the ocean was the cruelty of it all. Bereft of hope a few hours ago, she had been about to kill herself. She put her fingers into the pocket of her jeans and felt the now crumpled corner of her suicide note—the note she had left at Nathan’s bedside before she went to watch one last sunrise.

  Nathan could see Sarah was crying from the way the silent sobs rolled across her shoulders.

  Bates was still looking at him, waiting for the rest of Nathan’s story.

  Nathan decided not to press Sarah. After all, they were both upset at losing their friends. He turned back to Bates and explained, “A few of us found our way to a groceries warehouse. We met up by accident in the first few weeks.”

  “How’d you keep em out?” Angel asked.

  Nathan tried to sum up the last few years for his saviours. “Luckily...” he heard himself start. He ticked off a mental note that he had agreed with Sarah and they had just been lucky. He continued, “Luckily for us the warehouse was in a bad neighbourhood. Place was built like Fort Knox. When we got there the place was still buttoned up tight. We broke through the main gates and Sarah suggested we barricade them after us so that we didn’t meet any surprises on the way out.” He looked across at Sarah to see if he could pull her back into the conversation, but she was still staring out of the window. “We got into the main building looking to scavenge what we could. The place was a goldmine, far more than we could haul away in the van. It was Sarah who saw the potential. She suggested we clear it out and stay.”