Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (19 page)

How the hell can I get my hand through there to get the damned catch?
he thought… when he saw the hand of the dead pilot twitch instead.

Kinemortophobia

Kent Downs - Crash Site

Grews was not a man prone to panic. It just wasn’t his way. To be in command of such a large contingent of troops took a level of control that few people possessed. In his earlier years, before the ZA, he had been in combat many times, and his stoic, deeply embedded calm was one of the reasons he rose so quickly through the ranks. He didn’t falter under pressure, even when he did raise his voice.

But something had changed with the coming of the dead that walked. He would never admit it to anyone, but they terrified him, and he had avoided close contact with them at all times. He had been fortunate with his command in the south until the last few weeks. Even though it was the section of the country closest to the continent, and there were always the occasional floaters drifting in to the shore, his border patrols dealt with them efficiently. Only now, days into the biggest incursion of the dead into his territory, was he exposed.

And now he was trapped in the shattered cockpit of his command helo with a pilot who was turning on him. As he hung there, pinned to the side of the airframe, he watched the previously skilled and agile aviator struggle to articulate and move. The man was now missing his legs and lying on his back, clawing toward Grews, but unable to get to him. The seats the other dead officers had occupied, which currently stopped Grews from escaping, were also protecting him as a barrier.

And of course it wasn’t just one, now. To his right, still hammering unceasingly on the window, was that other dead bastard. Grews just hung there, trying to control his fears, his heart rate and his breathing, trying to see some way out of the situation, but nothing was coming. He was trapped.

He looked around, searching for anything useful within reach. There were four handguns in this aircraft, one per passenger, but the pilot’s was in a shoulder holster underneath his grasping arm, his own was pinned behind him, and the third officer’s weapon was nowhere in sight. As for the fourth, Grews could actually see it, but it was too far away, strapped to the dead man’s waist and covered in blood.

Then there was more movement near the hole in the cockpit glass, and a face appeared through the massive gap, its mouth and chin covered with blood. Now Grews knew where the pilot’s legs had gone, and how he had been infected in the first place. The newcomer, a dead woman now grimacing at him through the hole, had eaten them. With the pilot’s body in the way, it had been all she could get at.

The pilot continued to reach up, and every time he did Grews took a deep breath and tried to push himself further back. But there was nowhere to go, no escape, and it hit him with a stark certainty – one of these things was going to get to him eventually. And he would not be able to fight them off. If he didn’t figure out how to escape from this trap soon, then he was going to be eaten alive, right there.

As the dead pilot finally managed to grasp onto the metal bar at the bottom of the seat, Grews suddenly knew which of the dead would be his downfall. The pilot bared his teeth and pulled hard, clawing with the other hand, inches away, then again, closer. Grews tried to use his free arm to bat the creature away, to delay the inevitable, but his flailing backfired, and the pilot’s clawing hand grasped the sleeve of his shirt and pulled.

Grews screamed and pulled back, flailing, even though his body could barely move. There was a loud crack and a snapping sound as something gave way – the seat itself. The weight of the pilot and Grews struggling finally unwedged it, and it fell and rolled, landing on the pilot and knocking him down, leaving the dead man writhing under the metal frame.

Grews’ heart somehow beat even faster now. He found he was now able to move, except his other arm didn’t respond. Broken, or worse, he thought, but he quickly used his working hand to reach over and unclip his safety harness. He fell free, tumbling to the side away from the window and the incessant hammering of the thing outside. Hitting the side of the fuselage and struggling into a sitting position, he turned just as the dead woman managed to climb halfway into the cockpit. She lurched forward, but stopped – something was holding her back, and as Grews desperately reached for his handgun he saw that her shirt was caught on the sharp edge of the window frame.

He drew his weapon just as the pilot rolled from under the seat and grasped at his ankle, teeth baring as it started to clamp down. The noise almost deafened Grews as he shot the pilot in the head: blood and brains splattered across the interior, but Grews had no time for disgust. He simply turned, aimed, and fired at the woman, and then turned again, aimed through the window, and cranked off a third shot into that incessantly banging son of a bitch.

The knocking finally stopped.

Grews sank to the floor, his breathing strained and his chest heaving, and listened to all the movement outside. They were coming now, and he wouldn’t have much time. Shadows crossed the light as the dead closed in around the downed helicopter. The gunshots, although saving his life, had drawn many more, and he knew they would be swarming over the crash site in seconds.

He tried to judge those other, distant gunshots he could now hear – those of the Paras and his own remaining troops – and decided they were at least a kilometer away. He was behind enemy lines, and about to be swarmed, if he didn’t get out fast.

He looked up at the side door above him. It was already wide open, probably having swung that way when the helo hit the ground, popping out of its frame. He hauled himself to his feet, quickly searched the interior of the devastated aircraft for pistol magazines, finding two, and then pulled himself up and out the side door, emerging into the open air outside.

He looked around, keeping his head down and hopefully out of sight, not that these things needed sight to home in on him. Across the field, hundreds of dead were staggering or running toward the north, where the gunfire was coming from. He was relieved that most had not been attracted to the sounds of his struggle in the helo, but dozens closer by had heard, and were now drifting slowly toward the downed bird. Some had already reached the area and were only a few meters away, reaching out for him now. There were no runners among them, and certainly no Foxtrots, or he would be dead already, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t spot him.

And there was simply no opening in their ranks to run for.

Grews ducked back inside and scrambled toward the controls. He crouched down by the pilot and carefully peeled off his radio headset, but as he pulled it away he found its cable hung free, shredded and useless. He looked around again, stabbed at the controls, wondering if there was a way to use the radio without the headset. But he had no idea, and the damned thing was dead anyway – no power, no radio.

He turned and crawled over the debris to the back, searching for his own headset, but had no luck. The interior was completely trashed and he couldn’t even find his personal radio. Then he finally spotted it, a battery-powered handset, covered in blood and gore, lying between the dead officers at the back. Grews shuddered, but grabbed it anyway, flicked the knob to an emergency channel, jabbed the button, and held the radio to his ear.

“All call signs, this is Helix Actual, message, over.”

Nothing came back. He waited less than a second.

“Any call signs, this is Helix Actual, you fucks. This is an emergency tra—” But he was cut off before his cursing escalated.

“Helix Actual, this is Central, send status, over.”

As he was about to speak again, a cracking noise erupted from near the front screen, and Grews spun around and looked straight into the eyes of a frantic, flailing runner as it shoved its way through the gap in the glass and started to haul itself inside. Grews raised his handgun and didn’t hesitate before blowing the creature’s brains back out the window, spraying them on yet another one trying to crawl in behind it. Grews nearly screamed into the radio, but he took a breath and steadied his voice first.

“I am down inside the hot zone. Aircraft is a total loss. Crew dead and I am in heavy contact. I need immediate extraction. I repeat—”

“Geolocating you now, Helix, wait one.”

There was a long moment of silence. Grews aimed the handgun at the second, brain-spattered zombie, which was now pushing past the destroyed one in front, and pulled the trigger. The noise of the gun going off in such an enclosed space made his ears ring yet again, but the result was satisfying enough. The zombie lurched backwards and fell, vanishing from view, leaving another splatter of gore alongside the first.

“Helix Actual, Central. We have your grid coordinates.”

“Thank God. Now get me a fucking CSAR bird here ASAP or we won’t be having this conversation in the next few minutes.”

“Roger that, Helix. We have scrambled a CSAR mission and it should be inbound within a few minutes—”

“Minutes? Get them here now! There’s a goddamned field full of dead converging my position!”

“Copy that, Helix. Wait out.”

Another interval of silence, stretching out even longer.

Grews crawled over the debris and looked down through the gap in the window. There was no movement down there, and anything that wanted to get in now would have to crawl under the smashed blades and torn metal, and around the two bodies blocking up the hole. He looked up at the open door above him, stood up, and pulled it carefully shut. He hoped to hell there wouldn’t be something crawling on it when the time came to climb out himself, but he would have to risk it. If one of those runners jumped up and came through the opening, he would have almost no time to react. And the thought of one of them inside that tiny space there with him…

“Helix Actual, Central, be advised: rescue mission is inbound, ETA three minutes, over.”

Grews huddled down and listened to the moans rising and falling outside. The structure of the helo rocked slightly, and he felt his stomach lurch. How many of them were out there now? How many were trying to crawl under the wreckage to get at him? There was nothing he could do but wait it out, and hope his ride out of there would arrive soon. Very soon.

For, all around him, his greatest fears approached.

Now he was truly among the dead.

Run the Gauntlet

Kent Downs - Crash Site

Three minutes was a long time to wait when you were sitting in a downed helicopter, surrounded by the dead, who were angrily pounding on the thin fuselage that was the only thing between you and them. Just inches away from Grews’ face, was a young man who would have been alive a few hours ago. He was dressed in a torn and muddy suit, and had probably been on his way to work when he was attacked and turned. To Grews he looked like one of those young, high-powered arseholes who hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on in the world around him. Still wearing suits, still trying to look smart, with the dead in their billions devouring the planet.

The young man had probably looked dapper a few hours ago, with his hair combed, and nice white teeth gleaming. Now half his face was missing, and as Grews irritably watched the thing thudding its broken and bloody hand against the window, he wished he could put the gun to the man’s face and silence him, but he knew that doing so would only break yet another window, one that was more easily accessed from the ground outside. In fact, he thought, he was lucky another runner hadn’t come by in the minute or so that he had been hunkered down in the cabin. One of those probably would have had no trouble breaking a window, or pushing through the bodies blocking the way. The young dead man was a slow mover, though, what Grews thought of as
the dull ones
, and all it was capable of was continually smacking that bloodied stump of a hand against the glass.

Grews looked at him more closely and noticed that the gaping hole in the man’s face actually had teeth marks in it, and that made him shudder.

He looked at his watch. Two minutes had passed. Another minute to go, if the rescue turned up as promised.

Yes, three minutes was definitely a long time to wait when you were in the company of the dead.

More movement by the broken window, and Grews lifted his handgun and took aim. He had killed four more of them in the last two minutes, and he thought there had to be quite a pile-up going on outside, maybe even enough to block the damned hole up completely if they kept coming. Only one had been a runner, fortunately. The ones that followed were slow, and gave him plenty of time to draw a bead through the hole in the glass, as they started to crawl inside.

This one was no different, coming arms first, then the head. Another young man, also suited up, and as Grews aimed and fired, he wondered again why these men were wearing suits. Canterbury had become an agricultural center in the ZA, acting as a marshaling yard for the output of all the farming projects that had sprouted up around it, and farmers didn’t get dolled up like this. Another place nearby, maybe?

And then he finally heard the low thrum of an approaching helicopter, and his heart leapt. They were here, he thought, and he stood up and peered through the intact windows, scanning the sky for a glimpse of his rescuers.

The thrumming grew louder as the Puma approached, and eventually the huge beast flared in to hover over the crash site.

“Helix, this is Delta Nine Zero, over.”

Grews jabbed the button on the radio.

“Delta Nine Zero, this is Helix. Is it damn good to see you.”

“We have an issue with your extraction. Your position is completely surrounded, and it’s impossible for us to set down. We need you to make your way to the highest point of that wreckage, and we will lower a line, over.”

Grews took a deep breath. This was it. He was going out there. From the cockpit, with the dirt and smashed machinery all around, he couldn’t see clearly how many of the dead were around him, but he knew that this could be nasty.