LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (16 page)

I pulled the hook up slowly, maneuvering it carefully around the twisted metal and chunks of concrete below. Suddenly, I felt resistance on the line.

Shit.

It was caught on something.
 

I pulled hard and it didn’t budge, pulling the flesh from my hands as I cursed loudly.
 

Beneath our feet, the deck had moved to a thirty degree angle, and I was the only one standing. Kate kneeled precariously, sighting her weapon and training her aim on the closest creatures.

“Should I start shooting?” she asked, voice calm.

“No, just … wait,” I grunted, managing to dislodge the hook and pull the rope the rest of the way up. “The noise will pull them in. Save it for when you’re on the ground.”

Wasting no time, I wound up and threw the hook again, this time finding the distance and watching the rope arc over the telephone line. The hook traveled down, clanging loudly into the concrete roadway and attracting a single zombie, who broke away from a small cluster and kneeled over the metal object. The creature was massively fat, rolls of cellulite hanging in gray folds from its torn and rotting torso. Strings of dirty, bloody hair fell in front of its face as it pulled on the hook.

I pulled back quickly as the ship shifted again. The hook came up fast. Too fast.

The prongs of the small grappler embedded themselves in the creature’s head, dropping it like a sack of moldy potatoes and adding nearly three hundred pounds of dead flesh to the line.
 

“Balls,” I muttered. “Kate … I got you a target. You need to remove …”

The crack of the shot echoed against the mountainside as the head of the creature detached from the body, the single round passing neatly through the spine and leaving me only flesh to contend with as I yanked the rope as hard as I could.

“Nice shot,” I said, pulling the rope securely against the wire and tossing the other end over the railing.
 

“Kate, you first,” I said, even as she shouldered her rifle and a large duffel. “But help me with this first,” I said, referring to Romeo, who was standing awkwardly, trying to retain his feet on the sharply canted surface.

The rope secured to the railing, I loaded the dog into its makeshift harness on my chest and ignored his whimpering. Kate removed a large carabiner from her pack and looped it over the rope as the ship turned again.
 

“See you on the flip side,” she said, shooting me a smile before pushing off. The rope bowed down quickly as her weight hit the line, but it held.

“Get ready,” I said to Ky, even before Kate’s feet hit the ground. She nodded, securing her weapons and pack and pulling a carabiner from her vest. Attaching it quickly to the harness around her chest, she watched as Kate hit the ground, moving into a crouch immediately, rifle held at low ready.

“Don’t fall,” I said simply, helping her move to the edge. “Be a shame to waste you on the river when all those zombies could eat well on you for a week.”

She shot me a withering look.

“Well, you should be safe. Haven’t you heard? Zombies eat brains.” Smiling, she pushed off and flew down the line.
 

The popping clatter of rifle fire was loud in my ears. We couldn’t help it. We had to fire to stay clear, and firing would bring more of them. We just had to be faster.

“I hope you’re ready for some running …” I started to say to Romeo.

And then the sky exploded.

***

There are many active volcanoes throughout the Pacific Northwest. Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood and Mount Rainier are, of course, some of the largest and most conspicuous.
 

But these are just a few of the dangerous peaks in the region.
 

These mountains—part of the “ring of fire” that extends into the Pacific Ocean and all the way through Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia on the other side of the great ocean—are numerous and deadly. The quiet peaks in the region are no exception.
 

Mount Baker, one of the five largest active volcanoes in the region, and one of the most glaciated—covered with a thick carpet of ice and snow—sits close to the border of Canada and the United States. Mount Baker had last erupted, by modern accounts, more than two hundred years ago. But as one of the most-watched mountains in the district due to its thermally active crater, it had never been unforeseen that it would repeat this performance some day soon.

And on this day, it confirmed that suppression, joining its brothers in making in its presence known.

As the geological and thermal forces built up to a devastating crescendo beneath the surface of the planet, Mike struggled to cast his line across the telephone wire.
 

As the mountain began to shake with anticipation, Kate flew to the earth below and began a valiant attempt to forestall the onslaught of living dead that approached her.
 

And as Mount Baker released a surge of energy that rivaled the explosive power of several atomic bombs, pushing millions of pounds of snow, ice and ash into the already thick and powdery air, Mike was trying to attach his carabiner to the zip-line and join his friends before he was trapped aboard the falling ship.

But Mount Baker didn’t care.

Kate fell to the ground hard, her teeth rattling as her gear dropped to the broken concrete. Immediately, she pulled her M-4 around, resting it against her shoulder as she scanned the terrain. Cursing, she took several quick shots on semiautomatic as several desiccated corpses emerged from the forest nearly on top of her, lurching into the road and toward where she crouched. The bullets slammed into the misshapen forms, taking large chunks of flesh and bone from the their torsos and heads as she reacted in surprise, finding her targets somewhat clumsily.

As the last body fell, she scanned the area. Broken and shattered trees and rocks littered the cracked roadway. The forest that stood between the rapidly widening river behind them and to the left, and the steep hillside to her right, was thick and dark, fallen limbs sitting at awkward angles within the shadows. The line above her tightened and strummed against its restraints as Ky started her descent.

“This should be fun,” she muttered, watching as the first line of the dead appeared around the curve of concrete, marching like a phalanx of soldiers. Rotten hands extended into the air in front of them, eyes staring ahead.

She knew their vision was poor, and that they had likely been drawn forward with eagerness by the sound of the gunfire from within the ship. She lowered herself slowly to the ground, taking a knee as she listened to Ky removing the carabiner from the line above them.
 

Seeing her large bag of gear to her left, she assessed the threat, glanced at the forest to her left, and made a snap decision, tossing the large pack of supplies into the thick green foliage and throwing several thick branches on top of it. They couldn’t move quickly through the woods with the large bags on their shoulders and they could return for them later if they made it out of here alive.
 

As Ky fell to the ground next to her, the ground exploded around her. The earth was shaking again, and her knee swept out from beneath her body, pushing her to the side. Ky grunted as Kate’s shoulder took the young woman in the belly and they both rolled to the side of the road, grasping at gravel and dirt to arrest their movement.
 

Kate pulled herself over Ky’s body, trying to protect her as the cable above their heads snapped, whipping into the darkness of the tree line. Leaves and dirt sprayed them both as they tried to keep their tenuous positions on the ground—with the herd of creatures firmly in their lines of sight, and the rising river to their left.

Ky lifted her head under Kate’s arm, eyes wild. Kate cursed and felt her hand reach up in vain at the retreating line.
 

“Mike!” Ky screamed, pointing at the wilding thrashing cable above them. A small rock, dislodged from the hillside above, tumbled past both of them, barely missing Kate’s head as she tightened her grip on Ky and pulled her down again. A tree along the side of the road only feet from where they huddled cracked at its base and fell forward onto the roadway, meeting a new line of earth and gravel that had sprung from the cracking cement.

A surge of despair hit her as she watched the ship lurch, Mike nowhere to be seen on the side of the hull where he had been perched only moments ago. The huge vessel swayed like a sick whale in a strong ocean current, buffeted by the forces of the increasing water pressure.

“He’ll find a way down,” Kate said to Ky, not believing herself, even as she shielded her face amidst the barrage of foliage and dirt, praying that they wouldn’t get trapped by a downed tree or crushed by rocks.
 

“We have to worry about them,” she pointed at the approaching herd, all of whom had been flattened temporarily to the earth by the moving ground and falling debris.

As she scanned the roadside again, she quickly realized there was no better place to take shelter. Thirty feet in front of them, a stalled out Chevrolet truck bounced on the undulating concrete; beyond that, only a quarter mile away, the approaching herd lay on the concrete, limbs writhing in confusion. Several had been gruesomely injured by the falling rock and spear-like descent of tree limbs, but most were just waiting for the earth to calm so that they could pursue their targets.
 

To the pair’s right, the hillside of grass and exposed granite rose more than five hundred feet, tapering off to an unreachable summit. Even with superpowers, it wasn’t an option.

The dying throes of the large ship assaulted their ears with shrieks of twisting metal as they shuddered through the last of the earth’s tremors. They looked behind them, where the huge carcass of the ship—still appearing so out of place as to be almost comical—was beginning an unstoppable roll to its keel. The water raging past was relentless, thousands of pounds of pressure pushing the huge machine down, into the river and away from the banks.
 

Mike had to have made it off. He had to be clear. Involuntarily, Kate tried to move toward the ship, but stopped herself, knowing it was out of her hands. Wiping a single tear from her face, she turned back to the phalanx of zombies beginning to shake themselves out of the quake-induced stupor.

The earth began to quiet, and Kate made the only decision they had left.

“Toss your pack here,” she said, watching the prone forms of the zombies ahead slowly and clumsily rise from the roadway. “Bring what ammo you can carry, but leave the packs. We can’t pull them through the woods.”

Ky looked at her like she was crazy. “The woods?” She glanced into the shadows, where a labyrinth of branches and broken wood created a host of obstacles to quick movement. “We can’t get through there. We have to …” Her voice faded as she scanned the scene and took in their options.

“Shit,” she said. “We have to go through the woods, don’t we?”

Kate cocked her head to the side and smirked. “Looks that way, don’t it?”

Ky groaned and stood unevenly as Kate turned back to the approaching herd, now fitfully stumbling toward them with hunger in their eyes. The M-4 came to her shoulder and she allowed herself several quick shots, taking the closest creatures through the face and forehead as she backed up slowly. The noise would bring them closer faster, she knew. But if they moved fast enough through the trees, the debris within the thick woods would gain them valuable distance from the slower, clumsier creatures. Once they were back behind the herd, they could hide and double back for their packs and, hopefully, for Mike, once the herd had moved on.
 

Worry again entered her consciousness, quickly stamped out by reality. He was nearly indestructible. He’d be fine. 

At least he wasn’t being chased by a herd of the undead. As if on cue, the group of deformed bodies stumbled faster, egged on by the sound of the living. Time to leave.

“Let’s go, kid,” Kate said, her nose full of the scent of their attackers. Errant rocks continued to fall from the hillside above, slamming into another creature as it passed the lonely truck. Ky moved away from their packs, left forgotten on the ground, but spared a quick glance back .

“Are you sure we should …?”

Kate shook her head, shouldering her rifle and turning her back to the approaching herd. “Can’t fit the bags in the woods. Too bulky and those branches are going to be unforgiving. We’ll come back for them.” She sighed once and looked to the river. “And for Mike.”

The sound of the raging river met their ears as they skirted the edge of the water, inserting themselves carefully between the thick trees. Almost immediately, they were stepping over fallen branches and weaving their feet between downed trunks. Ky’s breath came out in a huff as a branch slammed into her chest.

"Quiet," Kate said, her voice low. "We need to try to lose them in here. They won't be able to follow us quickly over this debris."
 

She glanced back to where several of the creatures had reached the edge of the woods, looking confused into the dense foliage. One started forward and promptly tripped over a fallen branch.
 

Ky grunted again, speaking softly as she pulled her leg over a large log, muttering. "Lemme come over there and punch you in the boob. You can practice your quiet ..."

A harsh look from Kate ended the exchange as Ky pulled herself to the other side of the obstruction. Kate followed, her eyes sharp and scanning. If there were any of those things in here, they would most likely be crushed by the debris and buried, or so disoriented that they wouldn’t know where to look if they heard something. That was good. They had to use the chaos to their advantage.

Ahead of her Ky cursed in a whisper and Kate caught up, sparing glances behind them. As she expected, the thick green and brown cover was obscuring their trail almost immediately behind a screen of branches and broken wood. The few creatures that could still track their movements in the dim light were held up indefinitely by the maze of jagged wood and deadfall.