Shoving the full jerry can between him and the approaching crawlers, Amadou retreated until halfway down the undercarriage he felt Tom’s wriggling body. Back to back, they tried covered their arches, front and rear as best as they could, but the strain of repelling one corpse after the other in the ever-shrinking space beneath the vehicle began to show. Tom swung his fist into the face of a nearby cadaver about to descend on Amadou’s leg, but the blow but startled it. Its head snapped back, blood-caked hair flapping like a shredded rag, but it recovered with speed and almost immediately went in for another bite.
It was at this moment that for a split second, Tom’s and Amadou’s eyes met. No words were needed. Soon they would have nothing left to give. There would be no space left to fight in, and the dead would have their pound of flesh, just as they had the day before and wherever else they lay siege, and that would be that. They nodded at each other in sombre understanding and turned back to hold off the inevitable for as long as their bodies would let them.
Tom and Amadou grunted and hissed, spitting hatred and anguish as they desperately tried to evade chomping teeth and beat to a pulp whatever decaying face was next in line. Dozens of cold fingers clutched and tore at their clothes now. The dark, the wails, the sweat, and the battle cries of the men blended into a vortex, a black hole consuming the last remnants of hope and sanity.
Tom felt a set of jaws close around his left boot, and pain shot through his leg as the creature’s teeth started bruising his shinbone through the thick leather. He tried to kick it away with his other leg, only to be pinned down by a crawler that had managed to blindside them. Kicking up his left leg, he rolled to his right, bringing the corpse still attached to his boot between him and the new arrival about take a bite beneath his knee. Tom was wedged in, with nowhere left to go.
More teeth followed the first two, snapping at his thighs in an attempt to join the virtual plait of dead limbs and living legs. He brought his head back and, casting a last desperate glance back at Amadou behind him, let out an angry roar.
“It’s been a blast…” Amadou’s replied through clenched teeth, struggling to turn as he drove his knife into the skull of yet another creature ready to feast on his shoulder.
“See you on the other side!”
Their fight was all but over. The dead grinned, about to taste their victory.
CHAPTER 20
The sudden burst of light was blinding. Tom’s vision went white, and between the noise and the pain, he already knew what would come next. He felt a warm glow all over and a sense of elation as time distorted and auditory exclusion set in. He relaxed, feeling as if lifted by giant hands, dissolving into nothingness beyond the chaos. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of Amadou and the wriggling mess off corpses on top of him.
A blur of blood and guts exploding, then the bright light that had doused everything around them in a white so pure and intense that it threatened to sear his optic nerve, disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. A giant shadow came over him and Amadou and everything else around them, and he welcomed the darkness just as he had the light.
“You two plan on letting me do all the work?” A booming voice cut through the chaos. Tom felt a giant hand yank him away from the grappling hands.
He struggled, trying to break free from the iron grasp pulling him by the scruff of the neck, but its force only grew the more he tried to resist.
Somewhere a .50 calibre top gun exploded into action. He felt the fiery burn of metal against his skin as a round impacted the truck bed, sending superheated shrapnel in all directions.
The ground around him erupted as projectiles hammered through everything in their path, exploding walking corpses like puss-filled Piñatas and filling the air with a shower of blood and brains. Through it, Tom looked up at the silhouette of a man the size of a giant. He seemed to yell something, but his voice was drowned out by the deafening staccato from a Squad Automatic Weapon the man wielded with one hand, while with the other yanking both him and Amadou towards the bright light.
Tom’s legs kicked furiously as the hulk dragged him across a sea of body parts, his feet slipping in the gory sludge. He felt himself thrown up into the air and onto a platform where another set of hands shoved and pushed him through an opening and into a dark space below. He dropped hard onto the metal surface, almost dislocating his shoulder and his ankle hitting the sharp edge of a square object.
Before Tom could recover, Amadou came hurtling through the hatch above and, still screaming, landed on top of him with a belly splat. They both lay still for a moment, bruised and in and out of consciousness. Outside the thunder of the .50cal and the rattling of its smaller cousin went on and on, reverberating around inside the walls of the metal hull.
“What the hell?” Tom was the first to regain his senses.
Amadou grunted and rolled off, holding his head with both hands.
“You bit?” Tom asked into the dark, patting himself down at the same time.
His clothes were soaked in sweat and gore, and his lower leg hurt where minutes earlier dead teeth had clamped down. To his relief, though, the skin seemed unbroken.
“I think I’m Ok, …more or less.” Amadou’s voice barely cut through the noise.
Tom looked around the interior, his ears ringing from the gunfire above.
“Looks familiar…” He yelled over to the Congolese, who had begun to pull himself up on one of the benches running along the back of what appeared to be another troop carrier.
Amadou, too, started checking himself over for bites.
As suddenly as the guns had erupted, they fell silent. The smell of spent ammunition and burning diesel wafted. Flames from nearby flickered through the front windows and shadows danced in the interior of the carrier. A face appeared in the hatch, glowing orange in the light of the flames. Large enough to almost fill the entire opening, it belonged to the man who had pulled them from the grip of certain death.
“All Ok down there?” The man bellowed, still deafened by the gunfire.
“Never better!” Tom managed to shout before falling back onto the cold hard surface of the cabin.
He heard a thud as if something or someone had been thrown overboard, hitting the ground outside with a wet smack. The interior darkened again as two huge legs squeezed through the hatch, followed by the rest of the bulky man, struggling through what was already a sizable opening.
“My gunner…” he strained as he managed to finally get one shoulder and then the other through the hatch, “…he didn’t make it.”
His boots came down mere inches from where Tom was lying. The man exhaled and then rose to his feet, keeping his legs bent to keep his head from colliding with the roof.
“But, I am glad to see you two are Ok.” He reached down and extended his huge paw-like hand, the instrument of Tom’s and Amadou’s sudden rescue.
“I am Papillon,” the man said, his big fingers wrapping around Tom’s as if squeezing a child’s hand, almost lifting him off the ground as he shook it.
“Thanks…for helping us out,” Tom said with a hint of sheepishness. He rubbed his throbbing shoulder, and the man let go of his hand. “I am Tom, and this is Amadou.”
“Papillon?” Amadou snorted, trying hard not to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Tom glared back at him, not at all amused.
This was not the time to anger their rescuer, much less the giant towering over them.
“Papillon….It means butterfly!” Amadou chuckled. The man looked back and forth between them in bewilderment.
“Sorry, it’s just…Never mind. We are very grateful.” Amadou extended his hand with some trepidation, and the giant gave it a cursory tug.
“I think we better get out of here.” Papillon held on as the vehicle began to rock and sway under the waves of undead pounding against its exterior.
He turned and squeezed into the driver’s seat. With his large frame almost filling the entire front, he barely fit behind the wheel. Hunched f
orward, his enormous torso looked like an over-sized airbag, taking up every inch of available space. He revved the engine, and a shudder ran through the chassis, whipping the dead crowd outside into another frenzy.
“Hold on guys, this will get bumpy.” Papillon half-turned his head, and for a moment, it looked like an excited smile flickered across his face.
“Wait!” Tom shouted, and the APC's nose dipped as Papillon slammed on the breaks. “There are others. They are still trapped in one of these things a couple of hundred yards away.”
“Ok,” Papillon shrugged with indifference, “then we better get them, no?”
“You bet. Turn right past the nose of the truck next to us, and you will see the other APC coming up in a few.”
Papillon’s nonchalance both baffled and fascinated Tom and he tried his best to reply in the same manner, but at the same time found himself wrestling with a kind of fear unlike any he had ever known before.
He had always been good at controlling his emotions and at compartmentalizing the things he had had to do during his tours of duty. Julie had once said he had turned numb, but his detached exterior belied the battle that was often raging within him. Now, it seemed, the events of recent had opened the floodgates for something to surface, something he had kept under lock and key for so long. And he didn’t like it one bit.
Papillon put the APC into gear and put his foot down hard. The vehicle roared, its bow lifted, and its tires screamed as it heaved over the first wave of undead, their unfortunate existences coming to an instant end as their bodies disintegrated under the large wheels.
Like a ship ploughing through choppy seas, the vehicle rocked precariously as its movement turned into a constant stop and go of running into, churning through and finally overcoming wave after wave of corpses. Tom winced. The adrenaline of their rescue slowly wearing off, his shoulder now screamed in agony.
Amadou and Tom clung the cargo netting covering the walls just above their benches as best as they could, tossed about like socks in a dryer, trying hard not to lose their grip.
“Your friends better still be alive,” Papillon grunted, clutching the wheel with his giant hands, his knuckles white from the strain and his jaws protruding as he clenched his teeth with every new wave of corpses that threw itself against them.
The vehicle swerved, narrowly avoiding the burnt-out remnants of an abandoned army truck. Bodies popped like grapes beneath the large tires. Tissue splattered the APC’s lights, bathing the carnage around them in an apocalyptic garnet-red glow and making it hard to see more than a few yards ahead.
Papillon stomped on the breaks, and both Tom and Amadou had their grip torn from the netting and crashed, first into each other, and then into the reinforcement of the driver seat. The APC had reached their intermittent stop. Tom grimaced and managed a peek through the windscreen. Bar for the density of corpses forming a mushy buffer, it was nothing short of a miracle they hadn’t run straight into the other carrier.
“Looks like we have arrived,” Papillon shouted, nursing a bruise on his forehead where it had impacted with the visor.
Behind him, trying to get his wind back, Amadou let out a grunt. At first, nothing moved in the vehicle in front of them. It sat there, bathed in the dim red glow of blood and guts dangling from the vehicle’s nose like fleshy vines. As if avenging the death of their crushed brethren, new waves of the undead were already throwing themselves against the hull.
“Lucy, we’re home!” Papillon grinned in a vague attempt at a Ricky Ricardo impression.
“This guy is nuts,” Tom whispered to Amadou, who was piecing himself back together, yelping as he tried to put weight on his injured leg.
“Nuts, yes, maybe. But my hearing is excellent!” Papillon turned around and gave Tom a wink.
“There!” Amadou straightened up and pointed at the vehicle in front of them.
Sure enough, a dim light filtered through as its top hatch reluctantly opened. At first, a hand, then the head of an old man appeared.
“They're alive!?” Tom exclaimed, half surprised.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Papillon shrugged.
“Long story.” Amadou, as always, was already focusing on the next step at hand.
The old man was now in full view and soon followed by his grandson and, after some struggle, Faith.
“That’s it?” Papillon asked, almost disappointed.
“Who did you expect? John Rambo?” Tom quipped.
“Who is John Rambo?” Papillon asked in earnest.
“Again, long story,” came Amadou’s reply.
“You guys have a lot of long stories,” Papillon laughed and extruded himself from the driver seat, cursing as he manoeuvred past the dashboard and again his head on the visor.
“So, what’s the pl …?” Tom didn’t get to finish his question.
Papillon had already flicked open the top hatch and begun to squeeze his enormous shoulders through the opening.
“Gives the term one-man army a whole new meaning, doesn’t he?” Amadou watched on in amazement.
“What the…?” Tom looked on through the windshield in disbelief.
In an instant, Papillon nimbly sled down the nose of the vehicle halfway. Ignoring the undead hands competing for a grip of his lower legs from below, he covered the distance to the other APC in a single leap, the impact of his mass on the roof right next to the survivors sending a tangible ripple through the air.
Papillon grabbed Faith by the scruff of her coat. She struggled in vain and screamed like a banshee as she was flung through the air, across the tangled mess of corpses and the hands reaching from below, onto the nose of his APC. Her hands clutched at the upper window frame, but her feet failed to get a hold on the sludge-covered metal.
Inside, Amadou watched in horror as she slid down the glass, right into dozens of greedy hands. She let out a scream. The first shredded fingers tightened their grip around her ankles, and the teeth drew near her soft, warm flesh.
“Oh no, you won’t!” Out of nowhere, Amadou appeared, and his grip closed around her flailing arm and pulled her towards him.
Hooking his feet into the rim of the hatch, he pulled her onto the relative safety of the APC’s roof.
“You’re not as slow as you look!” Tom joked nervously from below.
Amadou lowered a puzzled Faith down through the hatch, just in time for the next living body to hit the carrier’s windscreen. The boy cried out on impact, but to everyone's surprise, maintained composure and even smiled as he recognized the familiar faces that greeted him. Last was the old man, who, showing agility that belied his age, managed to clamber up the front of the vehicle without any help at all.
Reunited in the belly of the operational APC, hugs were exchanged, and thanks given by the three. Papillon stood by and scratched his head as he watched the ragtag assembly of survivors.
“Any objections if we leave now?” He grinned, and everyone braced against the hull of the swaying vehicle, steadying themselves against the renewed endeavour of the corpses outside.
Papillon once again squeezed into the driver seat and put his foot on the accelerator. The engine responded dutifully, and the rest of the group dropped to the benches. Much to Papillon’s surprise, reversing the APC away from the stranded carrier turned out much easier than driving forward.
Its flat vertical rear seemed to make for an excellent ram and, instead of bending corpses over the nose, which created a gory build-up, its back just smacked into them front-on, knocking them down like dominoes. After a few minutes of driving backward, Tom made his way to the small armoured window recessed into the rear hatch and started yelling out directions from there.
“Watch out, a little to the left…” His instruction came as they were about to collide with another abandoned vehicle.
“Your left or mine?” Papillon quipped.
He knew full well what Tom had meant and skilfully manoeuvred around the obstacle.
They had first intended to trav
el south past the former military checkpoints and into the more open and accessible countryside. As Amadou had rightfully pointed out, though, the road had been a critical supply line even before the dead had begun to walk. Now that Lake Albert had become a major food source for the walking corpses, it stood to reason that more were coming, using the path of least resistance or at least one that maybe still resided somewhere in their decomposing minds. It was therefore decided to go back the way he and Tom had made their initial approach. A little more arduous and time-consuming perhaps, but wrought with less risk. After all, risk was one thing none of them, including Papillon, were too keen on taking more of at this very moment.
Papillon, making good use of the terrain, natural and man-made obstacles, managed to cover the distance to the hills in shorter a time than Tom had thought, leaving a trail of mangled corpses, some of them now damned to crawl with broken spines for the rest of their rotting lives, in the wake of the APC’s heavy tires.
Inside the carrier, the cheer of reunion quickly turned to an exchange of the experiences of the night, with Papillon keenly listening in from the driver’s seat, accompanied by Amadou as his co-pilot. As soon as the throng of infected thinned out, they turned the APC around and carried on driving forward, giving Tom a reprieve from his role as navigator through the small, blood-smeared window in the back and Papillon and Amadou an opportunity to chat more casually, without having to strain their necks to keep the vehicle going in the right direction.
It was into the early morning hours when the heavy carrier rounded the top of the slopes towards Lake Albert, leaving behind the nightmare and carnage they had all witnessed up close and all-too-personal, with nothing but a dark bobbing fleece of the dead, both onshore and off, in the rearview mirror as they negotiated the rocky, gate-like formation at the hilltop above the bloodied beaches, where countless corpses still fought over the remains of the fallen.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 1): Dead Hemisphere Page 23