Tom looked around the inside of the APC, his mind flicking through every conceivable scenario. He shook his head. Somehow all ended with most of them joining the rest of the walking corpses outside.
“We could try to move at night,” he finally offered, trying his best to feign confidence in a plan he knew had little chance of success. “They seem to use virtually all of their senses to hone in on prey, so I’d say we make a move when at least they won’t be able to see us.” He shrugged. It was the best he could come up with.
“We could plot our route out of the immediate area using the abandoned trucks and other vehicles out there as waypoints and use them for temporary cover. Once we are further away from the lake, we can use the incline of the hillside to give us an advantage. If we move quietly and quickly, I think we may stand a chance.” Tom tried to garner enthusiasm for what barely passed for a viable plan.
To his surprise, the mere prospect of taking control of their impossible situation even motivated himself.
“I want to get out of here as much as the next guy, or lady.” Amadou winked at the only female survivor of the group. Faith was sitting towards the rear hatch, changing the bandage on her leg.
“It’s Faith, actually,” she asserted with a glance of contempt.
She had grown up in a society of male chauvinism, where men did what they did and got away with it because they were men and women were objectified at every turn. And she was not in the mood for more.
“Look how tightly these things are packed all around us. How do you suppose we make a run for it when there isn’t as much as a square inch of clear ground to put a foot on?” She was right, of course, but Tom couldn’t help but feel frustrated at Faith, pointing out the obvious.
“How about you come up with a better plan then, why don’t you?” He half barked. They needed solutions more than anything else.
“Look,” the old man spoke for the first time as his grandson played with some empty cans in the centre aisle of the carrier, “the two of you seem much more experienced at this than an old man like me, and I certainly don’t mean any disrespect, but there is no way this one over here and little David and I will be able to keep up, let alone keep these things away from us. That is if making a run for it is the plan.”
He wasn’t pleading, he was but speaking the truth even Tom in his new-found enthusiasm had come to realize: that not all of them would survive an attempt at escape on foot; probably and realistically not even the first few yards. Out of ideas, he slumped back in his seat.
“Grandpa, why don’t we just drive out of here?” The little boy’s voice cut through the silence. He looked up from his play at the old man, waiting for an answer.
“Of course! That’s it, little man. That’s it!” Amadou jumped up as if stung by a bee.
“Really, that’s it?” Tom gawked at him as if he had lost his mind.
“What are we waiting for? Why don’t we start her up then?” His sarcasm was lost on Amadou, who had retreated back into his own little universe where things appeared to make total sense.
He grabbed a pair of binoculars from the dashboard and began to scan feverishly every detail of their environment. Tom refrained from further comment and instead chose to sit back and watch what he was sure was lunacy at play.
Meanwhile, the others, mesmerized by the prospect of a way out whatever it was, scrutinized Amadou’s every move. After a few minutes of mumbling and shifting back and forth between staring through the binoculars and adding some invisible numbers with his fingers, he finally sat upright in the co-driver’s seat, giddily swivelled it around and presented himself with a broad smile.
“It will work!” Amadou announced with confidence, warding off the stares of anticipation.
“Don’t you see? Only one of us has to go!” He seemed disappointed at the others’ failure to mysteriously read his thoughts.
“There are a few trucks less than 200 yards from our position. Now, last I checked, they were abandoned before they could leave, which means they are likely to still have Diesel in them.”
Amadou’s last sentence piqued Tom’s attention.
“So one of us is going to walk through 200 yards of deadheads, siphon off enough fuel to get this piece of junk started, then strolls back here, fills up the tank and we are out of here?” As much as the Congolese now made sense, his proposition was just as ludicrous.
“Ah, Tom, you are a pessimist!” Amadou laughed. “Even Bruce Lee, with his speed and agility wouldn’t make it there and back.”
Tom smiled at the reference only he understood.
“This is why we only need someone to go one way.” Slyness was written all over Amadou’s face.
Tom had seen that look before.
“If you say so.” He sat back and watched as the Congolese grabbed a pile of Molle netting they had used to sleep on.
The sun had finally set, not a moment too soon for the survivors inside their metal box, sweating and suffering the stifling heat throughout the day, constantly torn between letting in air through the hatches above and the gut-churning stench of decay each bit of breeze brought with it.
Temperatures had dropped a little since sun-down, and the fresh gusts that had kicked up across the water did their part in making things more bearable inside the confined space.
Amadou stood in the dark, donning a pair of scavenged night vision goggles, NVGs, in front of him a pile of improvised rope made from netting and shredded tarp.
“Ready to go?” Tom whispered while the others readied themselves to assist.
Amadou nodded and swallowed with an audible gulp. The old man and Tom both supported his legs as he heaved himself through the top-hatch and onto the roof. Nimble and silent as a cat, he crawled forward and lay flat, as Faith fed more rope to him from below. Teeth clenched, he unbuckled one of the empty jerry cans on the roof. The holding strap gave way with a metallic click, instantly making him wish he could become one with the still-warm metal below him.
There was movement within the ranks of the dead nearby, but in the dark, the creatures struggled to pinpoint the source of the noise. Quickly regaining composure, Amadou tied the end of the rope to the jerry can’s handle before slowly turning onto his back and lifting it onto his stomach. Down below, the others looked up through the hatch and held their breath.
The shuffle of thousands of walking corpses blanketed the area, an occasional cacophony of moans completing the minacity of the sinister soundscape. Here and there, dull thuds echoed across the lakeshore as the dead bumped into objects and each other, stumbling around aimlessly in search of living flesh.
Using the heels of his boots, Amadou pulled himself forward until he reached the edge of the carrier’s roof. Slowly but deliberately, he sat up, taking great care for his silhouette to remain low and dark against the hills behind him. The moon had begun to rise, and it would not be long before the increased visibility would give away his position.
He rummaged around in his pocket, and a second later retrieved an empty food can. Down below, he could make out the dark shapes of the dead as they swayed and knocked against each other so close to the vehicle that their heads almost touched his legs dangling over the side. Amadou pushed himself up slightly with his left arm, readying himself for the jump.
For a moment, he sat still, letting the lake-breeze wash away the palpable stench of the corpses around him, his lungs welcoming the fresh air and energizing him for what he was about to do.
”One…two…” His body tensed as he began the count.
Amadou threw the empty can over his head and into the dark forward of the vehicle. He heard it connect with a corpse's skull with a loud clang, before hitting the ground and rolling around, its clattering lid making enough racket to wake the dead. Several corpses below him instantly moved towards the source of the noise, creating just enough of a gap. Without wasting time, Amadou jumped.
Half sliding down the side of the APC, he was careful to keep the jerry can away from the ch
assis. One mistake now and his plan would fail before he even had a chance to begin its execution. Nimbly, he hit the ground low and soft, his knees and the sand below absorbing most of the impact and allowing him to duck and roll under the vehicle; ever mindful of the virtual drum he was carrying and the disaster it could spell for him if he wasn’t careful.
Inside the APC, the others held their breath, their eyes following the movement they could hear on top of the roof and then the faint impact as Amadou hit the sand. The dead, still focused on the racket of the tin can he had thrown, seemed to pay no attention to the dark shadow that emerged from under the vehicle and swiftly began to exploit every possible gap between them.
Slaloming, occasionally brushing against rotten flesh, Amadou moved through their ranks like a snake, low enough to stay out of reach of their ever-probing hands, but just high enough to maintain balance and momentum. Some, feeling the warmth and movement of a living body nearby, turned and grunted and raised their arms in search of that elusive meal. Only to find each other instead, they angrily tore into the corpses next to them.
On occasion, they would close ranks as he approached, and he found himself shuffling sideways like a boxer, shifting his angle of attack, using even the smallest gaps in the horde to manoeuvre. Worried that the green glow on his face would make him an easy target Amadou had left behind his NVGs on top of the vehicle; a decision he now regretted as the path through the dead, at least as he had plotted it from above, shifted and changed with every passing minute as they shuffled about and changed direction towards even the smallest disturbance.
He had planned his route and memorized the direction where they had spotted one of the larger trucks that had carried troops and which now towered above the sea of the dead, the perfect landmark and likely holding the biggest fuel reserves compared to anything else they could see in a 200-yard radius.
Now though he found himself moving sideways more often than forward and like navigating a swamp, openings between the rotten limbs would close no sooner than he had passed, swallowed up by the shambling crowd. Panic began to rise in him as he felt himself going off track. Soon, he knew, the rope he was dragging, diligently fed to him by the others back in the carrier, would run out, and with it, his plan would die.
The thought of drowning in the ocean of rotten cadavers, of eviscerated bodies, of shredded tissue and gnashing teeth, suddenly became almost as overbearing as the stench that invaded every pore of his skin and fibre of his being. He began to sweat and pant as his eyes darted back and forth, trying to get a glimpse of the target, but like looking through a human forest, all he could see were legs and stumps and hands and arms and fleshy trunks, swaying and undulating as if moving to an inaudible melody.
He knew he had to keep moving, his path no longer his own, but instead directed by the dead. He could feel the rope being tugged now, picked up by shuffling feet in passing, briefly ensnaring their owners and toppling them over, causing yet more confusion among the dead. His time was up, and he knew it. Within minutes, perhaps even seconds, he would literally reach the end of the rope, and the noise and commotion of falling corpses would cause the crowd to snap out of its relative inertia, close in all around him, and tear him limb from limb.
He glanced back at the APC and, for a moment, thought he could see Tom’s shadow appear on top, but his view was almost instantly blocked by a grotesquely swollen corpse, its lacerated, spongy tissue pointing towards the demise it had met in the lake’s waters.
Amadou stopped, dropped, and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he could again see his brother and sister as they had been before the tragedy and the evil that had invaded their family and then become his way of life. He felt their warmth. A warmth he had longed for, for so long. A smile flickered across his face as, now standing alone in a mass grave of the walking dead, quietly conversing with loved ones that had gone before him, he thought about the irony of it all.
The ranks of the corpses in front and behind him were closing in, and Amadou felt their blood-soaked clothing lap against his head and arms. The forest or legs had become a curtain wall, advancing with all the indifferent persistence of a vice.
There was nothing left to lose now. He had nowhere to go. He should have died on the hood of that truck the day prior. He had been ready for it then, but now, as much as his loved ones beckoned, he somehow felt ill-prepared. They would have to wait. With the comforting prospect of an afterlife spent with his loved ones now rose the kind of strength reserved but for the desperate. A 3 am courage which in the sobriety of daylight would shrivel and dissipate, but here in the moonlit night, forced his senses back into reality and his body into defiant action.
Amadou rose up and, like breaking lengths of heavy chain, extended his arms and rushed the first rows of the dead. The stumbling figures collided with their peers, and momentarily created a space barely big enough for him to regain momentum for another assault.
No sooner had he pushed the corpses on one side, the dead on the other etched forward. He felt himself pulled and pushed, one moment beneath their reaching arms and the next catapulted forward by invisible hands, in a clumsy dance with death.
“Come on, you move like an old man!” Tom’s living voice was easy to distinguish above the moans.
Amadou felt himself dragged by his vest and then yanked downward just in time to duck beneath the reaching arms of a muscular corpse in torn military fatigues. Unable to turn, Amadou complied as Tom, moving on nothing but instinct, pressed him on. Both threw elbows and short kicks, and dead jaws shattered, and bowels split open as their boots connected with the decaying torsos of the relentless mass. The sound of teeth chattering as jaws missed their target, and of fingernails scratching across the men’s clothes, dead hands trying to get a grip on the unseen prey.
With Tom frantically fighting the advance from the rear, Amadou delivered well-placed kicks to the legs of the creatures in front. Shins and femurs snapped like twigs, and dark shapes collapsed as corpses lost balance. Amadou glanced back at Tom struggling, striking and kicking like a wild animal, aching muscles already threatening to cease altogether.
A few more feet and the two would run out of energy, or the dead advance would roll over them in a breaking wave of claws and teeth. Amadou wanted to scream, to howl, to curse the powers that be, seemingly hell-bent on making each of their endeavours all but impossible and the very fight to survive one of futility. But instead, he gritted his teeth and grunted under the strain, any other sound of the living only likely to expedite their impending doom.
At that moment, out of nowhere, the dark outline of a truck rose before them. Amadou winced as with one final push Tom threw him beneath it, his head connecting with the undercarriage and sending both men and the jerry can into a rolling heap. As they hit the sand, a chorus of excited moans let them know their move would not go unpunished.
Amadou and Tom continued rolling to the centre underneath the driveshaft, and arms immediately reached into the space behind them. A few bodies, with their legs eaten away little more than trunks, began their slow but deliberate crawl towards their intended meal, breathing heavily right in front of them. Ignoring them as best as they could, Amadou himself crawled until he reached the area rear of the cabin, where a set of large diesel tanks were mounted below the truck bed. Tom did his best to cover the rear, but in the confines of the space beneath the undercarriage there was little he could do other than watch the approaching dead and ready himself for the kicks to their skulls he planned to deliver with all the force he could still muster.
The moans reached fever pitch, and corpses fell on top of each other as they tried to get beneath the truck, in an instant forming a wriggling barricade of crushed limbs, mangled bodies, and disfigured faces. Bones cracked and snapped like twigs as more and more bodies threw themselves atop the heap. Arms, legs, ribs, and necks popped and crunched as creatures tried to claw their way through their mound of dead comrades, their greedy fingers shredding rotting tissue into a
slurry of human remains. The first crawlers were now almost close enough to touch the heels of Tom’s boots.
“What are you waiting for? Get a move on, Amadou!” Tom hissed, delivering the first kick to the half-eaten face of what had been a young man, collapsing the bridge of the thing’s nose and driving the bone deep into its skull.
The head fell forward into the sand, and its body sagged, forming a brief obstacle for the rest to get across. Up ahead, Amadou drove his knife deep into the bottom of the first tank. Diesel gushed as soon as he withdrew the blade, dowsing him and everything else in fuel as he tried to position the jerry can. Behind him, he could hear a heavy thud as yet another creature’s head, driven upwards by a well-placed kick delivered by Tom’s boot, connected with the drive shaft above, cracking its skull open like a watermelon and emptying its mushy contents all over Tom’s legs.
“We don’t have much longer if this is still supposed to work!” Tom yelled at the top of his voice. Stealth was out the window.
Every dead thing out there had caught onto where to find them.
The first tank ran dry, and Amadou immediately punctured the second. He dug in his heels as the rope, still attached to him, was being pulled and tugged to breaking point.
“Any ideas?” Tom strained, frantically fighting to hold back the dead, crushing heads with his heels in a flurry of kicks.
Their plan had been simple enough. One man would make his way to the truck, siphon the fuel and tie the canister to the improvised rope, while the others would reel in their catch of Diesel from the safety of the APC.
Now, even just making their way back was impossible, as was alerting the others to the fact that the mission, at least as far as the fuel was concerned, had been accomplished. Instead, the two now found themselves stranded and outnumbered, with the vice of the living dead relentlessly squeezing the life out of them.
Amadou gasped as he, too, was about to be overrun by corpses that had started to make their way from the front of the massive truck. Pulling themselves over and across each other to be the first to come away with a bite, mere inches away, their foul breath made his head spin. With a well-aimed stab, he drove his blade through the remaining eye of the nearest creature, putting it down for good. Its teeth shattered as its face impacted with a rock protruding from the ground below, splintering into green and yellow pieces with the sound of nails on chalkboard.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere Page 22