by James Cook
The ghouls topped the rise behind me and tromped steadily in my direction. The faster ones moved out front, outpacing the slower, more mechanically injured ones. If I looked down from a hundred feet up, the horde would look like a giant teardrop.
I brought up my M-4 and looked through the ACOG. It was clear and unbroken, the reticle sharp and distinct. I took a small pair of binoculars from my vest and scanned the horde. The first thing I noticed was most of the infected were Grays. That was bad. Unlike ghouls that had not yet shed their skin, Grays could heal. All they needed was a little meat. They were also somewhat faster than their non-alien looking brethren, and had denser bone tissue. Which meant they had thicker skulls than other infected. This was a problem up close and personal, but the 5.56 greentips in my M-4 would bust their heads with no trouble.
Shooting, however, was not my goal. I had a limited supply of ammo and I did not want to waste it on infected. I would be better served to follow Grabovsky’s advice and let the harsh landscape of the Cascade Mountains do the work for me.
To that end, I waved my arms in the air and let the vanguard of ghouls close to within sixty yards. It did not take long. Most of the horde was over the rise now, maybe a few hundred at most. I had dealt with bigger hordes under worse circumstances, but it did not pay to get complacent. One bite, and I was a dead man. Even a small horde could be lethal if I was careless.
I started down the ravine slowly at first, allowing the horde time to account for my change of direction. Rather than swing wide and enter the streambed the same place I had, they simply swiveled in my direction and lurched onward, oblivious to the drop they were headed toward. I backed off another hundred yards and waited.
Finally, the horde reached the edge of the ravine. I watched the faces of the first few Grays as they stepped into empty air and face-planted in to the ground four feet below. As they fell, their milky, lidless eyes remained fixed on me, mouths open, hands outstretched, fingers bent into claws. A couple went down and started trying to get up, but were stopped by additional skeletal bodies falling off the same ledge.
The pile of bodies grew taller and longer as other ghouls reached the ravine and fell in. The ones on top struggled to pull themselves in my direction while the ghouls beneath wriggled uselessly against the weight pinning them down. After a while, the pile was level with the ravine and a few ghouls managed to stand up and make their way toward me. I flicked the safety on my M-4 to semi-automatic and slowly backed away.
Over the next half hour, the horde slowly regained its feet as ghouls on top of the pile reached level ground and the ghouls pinned beneath them managed to get up. I realized I had not fired the M-4 I was holding and figured now was a good time to test it. Hopefully the zero on the ACOG was good.
The stock was adjustable. I have long arms, so I stretched it out to its maximum length. Then I pulled the rifle into my shoulder, grabbed the foregrip near its end to stabilize the barrel, peered through the ACOG, and centered the reticle on a ghoul’s sinus cavity. A slow squeeze of the trigger elicited a muted crack. The suppressor absorbed most of the report. The ghoul’s head snapped back and it slumped to the ground.
Then something unexpected happened.
Two ghouls behind the one I shot stopped, crouched over the fallen body, sniffed it like lions on a kill, and tore into it with their teeth.
“What the fuck…”
My hands and face went numb. My legs felt rooted to the ground. I stood and stared, uncomprehending, a river of ice-cold confusion washing over me. The ghouls ate perhaps a dozen mouthfuls each, then got up and resumed their march toward me.
Something important is happening, a voice in my head told me. Watch.
The ghouls that ate part of their dead friend were both Grays. The ghoul I shot was also a Gray. As I watched, most of the horde continued on past the corpse. But a few—ghouls with broken bones or wounds or sections of muscle missing—stopped, hunkered down, and feasted on the fallen revenant. Some ate only meat, while others chewed up chunks of bone and swallowed them down. After a while, there were so many undead surrounding it I could no longer see what was happening.
“This doesn’t happen,” I told myself aloud. “Ghouls don’t fucking eat each other.”
Well, now they do.
A howl hit me like a glass of water to the face. I looked up and saw a Gray reaching for me less than ten feet away. My hands reacted before my mind did, bringing the rifle up and firing two rounds. The ghoul went down, but there were more coming.
Time to move.
I turned and ran, counting steps in my head. My legs are long, and I knew a running stride for me was about six feet. When I reached fifty, I looked behind me. The lead ghouls in the horde were fifty yards or more back. I looked around and realized the sides of the ravine were over my head now. Not good. In the distance, the streambed ended at a cliff with nothing but open air visible beyond.
I had passed the point where I should have climbed out of the ravine.
But there was nothing for it now. A wall of hungry, monstrous corpses barred my way back. I sincerely doubted they would step aside if I asked them nicely. My only option was to climb.
My first step on the loose shale bordering the streambed ended in a near fall as the rocks under my boot tore away. I ran to another section and tried again. Same result. My feet could gain no purchase, and anything I grabbed pulled free in my hand.
“Shit. Not good.”
I kept running and attempted to climb in other places, but the walls of the ravine were just too unstable. Rocks and dirt kept coming loose, sending me skidding to the ground. While this was happening, the ghouls grew relentlessly closer, forcing me to travel farther and farther toward the cliff. The walls grew higher and looser as I went. Finally I gave up on climbing and simply ran.
I stopped at the edge of the cliff and looked down. The ground fell away in a flat escarpment directly beneath me, worn away by flood waters. The walls of the plateau to my left and right swept outward more gradually. Far below, a thin line cut through the dry landscape as the terrain sloped southward.
At best guess, I was somewhere around two hundred feet from the base of the cliff. I had five-hundred feet of paracord in a bundle on my vest. A glance behind me revealed the horde less than a hundred yards away. Whatever I was going to do, it would have to happen fast.
“Come on, Hicks. Think.”
I looked left. The cliff face hung outward overhead, comprised entirely of the same loose scree I had been unable to climb elsewhere in the ravine. The wall on my right was no better. I looked back at the horde again.
Inspiration struck.
Moving quickly, I placed my M-4 on the ground, removed the paracord from its pouch, drew my fighting knife, and cut the paracord into a trio of roughly ten-foot sections. Then I tied slipknots in the ends of the sections and stretched them out so they formed wide loops. That done, I stashed the rest of the cord, picked up my rifle, and ran toward the infected.
When I was twenty yards from them I stopped, dropped the cord, took a few deep breaths, and scanned the horde for the biggest ghoul I could find. Near the front, I spotted a tall one that must have been a huge man in life, long limbed and broad shouldered. Now he was a gray, skinless monstrosity. I shot him in the head and sprinted toward his body. He lay only a few yards from several other ghouls, all turning to vector in on me. I grabbed both of his ankles and hauled backward for all I was worth. For his size, he was surprisingly light. When I reached where I had left the paracord, I bound one of the three line sections around his ankles.
Two to go. I selected another ghoul and repeated the process. The horde was much closer now. For the third one, I didn’t have even to run forward, just stood up and fired. As the ghoul went down, I emptied the rest of my magazine to give myself a little breathing room. This beat back the leading edge and caused the ones following to slow as they tripped over corpses, but it was only a temporary reprieve. Nothing short of a bomber strike was going to st
op the wave of undead marching in my direction.
With three ghouls tied at the ankles, I slung the M-4, wrapped the cord around my hands, laid it over my shoulder, and hauled. It took a few seconds and a lot of straining to get the things moving, but move they did. I pulled harder and we went faster, the loose, dry sand acting as a kind of lubricant. I managed to push myself into a slow run, torso almost parallel with the ground, lungs heaving and legs burning as I grunted and dug my boots into the dirt. Finally, I reached the edge of the cliff.
Glancing backward, I saw I had maybe three to four minutes before the horde would be on me. Not only did I have to get to the bottom of the cliff, I had to get down there and get out of the way. A little thing like a two hundred foot drop was not going to stop the ghouls chasing me. If I didn’t want to be flattened by falling corpses, I needed to be elsewhere when they began raining down.
I had left my climbing harness with my rucksack, so I was going to have to do this the hard way. I took the three sections of paracord binding the ghouls’ ankles and tied them in a modified water knot, two cords on one side and the third on the other. A hard tug and the knot was secure. Then I took the remaining cord from my vest, grabbed the bitter end, and tossed the rest down the cliff. Working as fast as my arms could move, I doubled the cord until the second end was a few feet from the bottom. Good enough. Using the doubled cord, I tied a bowline knot around the cord binding the ghouls and cinched it. A bowline probably wasn’t the best knot I could have used, but I knew it well and could tie it fast. As my father had once told me: when in doubt, go with what you know.
I looked up. The horde was less than fifty yards away now and closing fast. Moment of truth. I picked up the doubled paracord, stepped toward the edge of the cliff, and leaned back. The three ghouls tied together shifted a little, but didn’t move. It would work.
The next part was going to hurt. I was wearing shooting gloves, which were better than nothing, but not designed for what I was about to do. I wrapped the doubled cord around my left hand, lay down on my stomach at the edge of the cliff, and slowly slid my legs over. Every nerve ending and synapse and sentient aspect of my mind screamed at me to STOP! STOP! STOP! But I didn’t. A sense of vertigo hit me as I let my hips slide down the edge of the mountain and caught a glimpse of the void beneath me.
Goddammit, don’t look down. You’ve done this kind of thing before, plenty of times.
When I was a kid, my father insisted I learn mountaineering. He told me I might never need the skills I learned, but if I did, I would be glad I had them. As usual, he was right.
I was completely over the edge of the cliff now, clinging desperately with both hands and dangling in open space. The ghouls’ corpses held my weight, the force of my body pulling on the cord insufficient to overcome their static inertia.
No wonder the rotten bastards were so hard to drag.
I wrapped my boots around the cord and let my weight settle onto them. They would be doing most of the work now. Finally, I unwrapped the cord from my left hand and allowed it to pay out.
The side of the cliff slid past my face as I descended, slowly at first, then faster. Ten feet went by. Twenty. Thirty. My grip was beginning to cramp around the narrow lines and I did not know how much longer I could hold on, so I let myself down even faster.
Heat flared against my palms as friction rapidly warmed the pads of my gloves. I knew the thin sheep-leather protecting my hands wasn’t going to hold up much longer, and when it gave way, the nylon cord would cut directly into my skin. Still, I went faster.
I bumped and bounced off rocks and boulders as I went down and down, falling debris pelting me on the head and shoulders. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was escaping the burning in my hands and the cramping in my muscles. My jaw ached as I grunted in pain from between clenched teeth. The last few layers of leather were giving way. Soon my flesh would be the only thing keeping my descent at a survivable pace, and I had no idea how much further down the bottom of the cliff was. I refused to look. Instead, I focused on maintaining my grip and not letting go of the thin cords. It didn’t matter if I fucked up my hands. As long as I survived, I could heal. Death, however, was a permanent injury.
Just as the cord cut through my gloves and laid directly into my palms, I hit the bottom hard enough to collapse my legs and fall on my ass. I let go of the lines and flapped my hands frantically to cool them, the sound of my own guttural cursing loud in my ears.
Congratulations, Hicks, you made it. Now get up and run!
With the heat in my hands subsiding, I felt the M-4 digging into my back and hoped I hadn’t broken the ACOG or damaged the suppressor. Groaning, I rolled over, lurched to my feet, and risked a look toward the top of the cliff. For a second there was nothing, and then a foot stepped out and a thin, sticklike body hurtled over the edge.
“Shit!”
I ran as hard as I could parallel to the cliff face. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to go far. The ravine above was narrow, only about thirty feet across, and I was directly in the middle. It only took me ten frantic, half-slipping lunges to get a safe distance from the falling ghoul. Behind me, I heard it hit the ground with a sickening thud. When I looked over my shoulder, there was a plume of dust rising up from where it landed.
My instinct was to stop and stare, but my training reminded me that in my current situation, I was not necessarily safe. Just because I had escaped one horde did not mean I hadn’t just dropped into another one. Not wanting to go from pan to fire, I unslung the M-4 and scanned my surroundings. I was in a clearing about a hundred yards across, dry grasses and small shrubs underfoot and tall pines ringing the edges. I dug out the small binoculars on my vest and looked through them, scanning for movement. I saw none. For the moment, I was okay.
Now I looked. The ghouls in the ravine above were coming down faster, one after another, each one stepping off the cliff and hurtling face-first to smack hard into the ground two hundred feet below. After a few minutes, the bodies began to form a pile. As the pile grew, I realized that with the number of ghouls in yon lofty horde, they might just pile up high enough to allow some of the undead base-jumpers to survive. Maybe even a lot of them.
“Time to go, Hicks.”
I went.
TWENTY-TWO
Lacking a map and not knowing exactly where the others were, I had only one option: follow the base of the mountain and keep my eyes open for sign. Eventually I would cut across our backtrail and could follow it to the others.
But before that, I needed to check a few things. I was back in the shade of the pine forest at this point, having trekked a couple of kilometers from where I left the horde. There was a fallen tumble of boulders nearby, left there by a long-ago rockslide. I took a seat on one of them and removed my gloves.
The damage was not as bad as I had feared. A thin, diagonal line of burned tissue seamed each palm. There was raw flesh showing in the creases, but the wounds were not deep. Hurt like a bastard, though. Burns always do, especially on the palms where there are lots of sensitive nerve endings. I cleaned the wounds with iodine from my first aid kit and bandaged them with gauze and tape.
Next I examined my shooting gloves. Each one had a slit cut into the palm exactly mirroring the burns on my hands. I slipped them back on and patched the slits with more medical tape. Not perfect, but field expedient.
After stowing my medi-kit, I did another sweep with my binoculars. Nothing to see. Not yet, anyway. I hoped there were no ROC patrols in this region. If there were, and they came anywhere near this mountain, my team and I were in for a fight. Our trail was obvious; the swath of crushed shrubbery left behind by the infected pursing us was pretty hard to miss. If they followed the trail, they would find the pile of dead bodies I had left behind at the cliff. Logic dictated if they did, they would climb the mountain and find the corpses on the plateau that had unmistakably been killed by gunfire. Not to mention the paracord I had left behind. Some secret mission this was turning out to
be.
I checked my rifle. The ACOG and the suppressor did not appear damaged. I looked through the optic and picked a spot on a tree about fifty yards away and fired a shot. The zero on the ACOG was good, and the bullet did not strike the baffles within the suppressor. Things were looking up.
Still, I had no food, no water, and hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. The sleep deprivation I could deal with. Military life is not kind to one’s circadian rhythms. Hard experience had taught me how far I could push myself in that regard.
No food wasn’t much of a problem either. Life had been good when I was stationed in Hollow Rock, but before that, the First Recon had spent years roaming the wastelands looking for survivors. I came along for the last year of it. Our platoon stayed constantly on the move and was always short on everything: food, ammo, medical supplies, even clothing. We scavenged most of what we needed, even though technically, as a matter of regulation, we were not supposed to. Whoever wrote the no-salvage rule had never marched for six days straight with nothing to eat. I had, so I knew I could go a long time without food. That part did not worry me.
What did worry me was not having any water. Life on the march had taught me how quickly my body uses up fluids when I exert myself. Sweating and urinating is bad enough, but the body also loses a great deal of water through respiration. Up here in the Cascades, the air was dry and hot. Not a good recipe for moisture retention.
I did not recall seeing any water on the way out here. No streams, no rivers, no ponds or lakes, nothing. And from the look of the landscape, it had not rained in quite a while. Which meant my best course of action was to get moving and find my way back to the others as quickly as possible.
I headed north. Several miles passed under my boots, the sun grew higher and hotter, and toward midday, I still had not detected our trail. The terrain remained unfamiliar. I needed a break, so I climbed a tree and scanned with my binoculars. I spotted a small herd of deer about two hundred yards away and quite a number of birds and squirrels, but no infected and no people.