Z-Risen (Book 1): Outbreak (15 page)

We were rising when it caught the strut and managed to hold on. The helicopter tilted once
again and suddenly I was looking down at about a hundred hungry mouths.

“Asshole!” I yelled and kicked the shuffler in the face. I did it again and he fell away into the crowd.

They hauled me in and all I could do was collapse as my heart thundered within my chest in rhythm to the blades above us.

After a few deep breaths I looked up into the face of a grinning Marine named Joel Kelly.

“I am not cut out for this fucking hero bullshit!” I yelled.

“Me either, man. But I love you just the same.” He clapped my shoulder one time then took a seat.

The old man looked us over appraisingly but didn’t say a word.

“Thanks for saving us,” I said after I’d managed to catch my breath. “I’m Jackson Creed and my gay lover there is Marine S
ergeant Joel Kelly.”

The man nodded at us.

“I’m not his gay...whatever, man. Thanks for picking us up.”

“You folks were about to be zombie chow.”

“Yeah. Not much choice. We were stuck up there until you came along.”

“I’d like to get real friendly but we gotta make sure you’re safe. This won’t take long so save the introductions. I’d hate to shake hands and then have to blow your brains out.” He grinned
, but there was no humor behind the gesture.

The guy nodded at the gunner. She slid a silver metal box about the size of a briefcase
out from under the metal bench. The guy took it from her and opened it to reveal a computer display. There was a camera attached by a bunch of wires. Shit looked like a science lab experiment.

“We just need a picture of your eye
,” he said and extended the camera.

“A picture?”

“Yep. We figured out how to spot the virus. Doesn’t always set in right away. I’ve seen guys walk around infected for three days before turning.”

“Damn
,” I said and submitted to a shot.

The flash was bright and left me blinking furiously for a few seconds.

We took turns opening an eye wide while he snapped a shot. After each picture he typed something on a keyboard and waited.

“Where’re we headed?” I asked.

“We have a base but it’s not much. Damn zeek’s nearly overrun it every day. All the ammo in the world and we can’t keep clear of them. Piles and piles of the dead. Never smelled anything so foul in my life.”

The sound of the rotor overhead was a constant throb against the cabin as I peered over the lid of the silver box to see if I could get a peek at the display.

“What’s going on out there?” I asked.

“Out there? Out in the world you mean? How long you boys been stuck out here
?”

Roz cleared her throat.

“Sorry miss.” He smiled in her direction.

“No problem.” She grinned back but it was just as empty of humor.

“Almost two weeks. Our ship crashed into the base. We’ve been on the run ever since.” Joel filled in the details.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on out there
.” He looked at each of us in the eye. “The worst things you can imagine. When you think it can’t get worse, it does. When you think that humanity can’t get any worse, it does. And when you think the damned Z’s can’t get any nastier.”

The man stared hard at the screen and then swallowed.

“They do.”

“Are we good?” Jackson nodded toward the screen.

Craig and Christy looked on with wide eyes. They were huddled together on the hard metal bench.

“Oh
, we’re good.” The guy smiled.

He moved toward the door opposite the machine gun and looked outside.

“Don’t be scared, kids.” He smiled at Christy and Craig. “Come here, bud. I’ll show you something that will make you feel better.”

Craig
had been slumped against the wall. He stared into space like she hadn’t heard the man.

“Here you go.”
The older man smiled and produced one of those juice boxes with the little plastic straw glued to the side. It was all I could do not to leap across the tiny space and tear it out of his hand.

Craig
made a little noise and slipped off the bench.

I slid my backpack off and pushed it into a corner and got a glance at our rescuer’s boots. Instead of military issue he was wearing something out of a cowboy movie. Were those snakeskin boots? Talk about an action hero come to life.

Joel had lost his assault rifle in the excitement and looked like his best friend had died. Glad that wasn’t true, since I was probably the closest thing to a best friend he’d ever had.

“So who are you?” I asked over the loud thumping of the rotor blades.

The smell of gas and oil filled the cabin but it was whisked away in a blast as air as the man that had rescued us slid the door open.

“Hey man, that’s loud.”

The guy didn’t say a word. He grabbed Craig by the back of the neck, and pulled him all the way off the bench. He looked at the guy in silent shock, but his silence turned into a scream as the man threw Craig out of the doorway.

“The fuck!” Joel Kelly came off the seat just as I tried to stand. He reached for a non-existent side arm. I went for my bag because I was going to haul out eight pounds of metal and bush his fucking head in!

The machine gunner pulled her gun but Joel did some Marine shit. He swiped her arm up and locked his hand over hers. She didn’t sit around for that and fought back.

Christy
hauled off and threw a poorly aimed punch but the guy slid aside and knocked the girl to the hard floor.

“Knock it off back there!” The pilot turned his head to shout at us.

I ripped my wrench free of the backpack but there was no room to swing it in the tiny cabin.

Roz stared on in shock and then covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

The guy who had just tossed Craig to his death pulled out a huge gun and pointed it at my head. My resolve deflated, as did my grip on the wrench. The fight went out of me. I was done. The days of running and hiding piled on top of the escape, combined with Craig’s sudden death nearly made me pass out.

“Stop this!”
the guy yelled. “Stop it now or there’s gonna be a lot more blood.”

“Ouch, bastard!”
the gunner said.

“Sails! Enough!”
the man with the huge gun pointed at me said.

Joel Kelly managed to get the gun away from the gunner, Sails, and none to gently. He got a look at the big barrel pointed my way and he relaxed his grip on the woman and lowered the gun.

She must not have taken too kindly to Joel’s rough handling because she slapped him.

“He’s trying to help. You don’t know what’s going on here, asshole
,” she said and rubbed her wrist.

“What about what’s going on here? He just tossed a teenage
boy out the goddamn door. That’s what’s going on here. I don’t know how you people are used to dealing with civilians but you don’t just kill them.”

“You don’t? Is that right, son? How many have you killed since this all began?”

“I killed Z’s. The dead. I didn’t kill innocent people.”

He kept the gun pointed at my head but turned the box to face us and lifted the lid. A laptop screen was set into a hard foam backing. The screen had an image of the inside of an eyeball. I’d seen something like this when I got my eyes checked a few years ago.

“What the fuck are we looking at?” Joel rubbed his face where the gunner had smacked him.

“This is your friend that I just tossed. See the dark spots? Those are dead cells. A lot of dead cells. In a few more days or maybe hours – hell, could be minutes,
he would have turned. You want a Z in here? You wanna be stuck with a monster in this tiny little box? No you do not.”

“
Craig was fine!” Christy went crazy.

Sh
e lashed out and caught the guy across the nose with the back of her fist. It wasn’t a great shot, but it got the job done. The man fell back and a shot rang out in the cabin. I sucked in a breath expecting a bullet to be lodged in me, but it wasn’t. The shot went high and punched through the canopy.

The man
pushed Christy against the wall hard, and she collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

Joel wanted to go nuts; I saw it in his eyes and the way his fists clenched on the bench seat. The gunner ripped her gun tight then put it to Joel’s head.

“Listen to him. He knows what he’s talking about.”

Something coughed and the helicopter shuddered. A light flashed in my periphery and then alarms sounded. I didn’t need to
, but I followed everyone’s eyes to the top of the chopper where a hole whistled air. What were the chances?

“Oh shit!” Sails said.

The pilot punched buttons and swore. Our ride swayed one way and then the other. I got slammed against the door and then went flat so it wouldn’t happen again. When the chopper tilted to the side I got a look at a huge stadium filled with white tents. Figures moved around the location, but from their wobbling, I assumed none of them were alive. I wasn’t sure, but thought it was probably the old Balboa stadium.

Joel held on for dear life as the chopper went into a slow spin.

The pilot did something because we managed to straighten out for all of two seconds before our craft hit the ground. Hard.

I was lifted into the air and smashed into the deck. Breath left my body and I had a hell of a time getting it back.

The gunner had been smashed against the side of the craft and lolled in Joel’s lap. The man who’d saved us seemed to be the only one unharmed. He grabbed Christy’s form and ripped the door open. The pilot swore, hit some buttons and then ditched.

“This way!” The
guy yelled to us as he kept his hold on Christy.

I struggled to my knees while Joel got Sails out of the door. The pilots fell out one after another and then they were on our feet.

I snatched up my backpack and hit the ground right behind them, staggering on my already aching ankle.

No time to rest.
No time to worry about the pain shooting up my leg in waves.

“There. It’s not far!” The guy picked up
Christy and shrugged him over his shoulder. He pointed at a fence

Joel smacked Sails
, none too gently. She stirred, looked at him and snarled. Jeez. She looked like one of them for a second. Girl would be cute if she wasn’t pointing guns and hitting people.

On the run again? That could mean only one thing.

I looked back and there they were.

There were at least fifty of them. Maybe more. Howling, screaming, and moaning
, they walked, crawled, and dragged body parts. They were covered in blood and filth. They were the worst of the worst and they all wanted us.

Not only that
, but two shufflers came at us.

I had a vague sense of where we were in relation to the base and San Diego itself
, and if I wasn’t mistaken, the huge buildings ahead of us were part of the naval medical center. There was a bunch of activity around it as military trucks, transports, and gun-toting HUMVEEs moved around the perimeter of a huge metal fence.

If I were lucky I’d have time to marvel at the construction later. For now I had to actually make it.

We ran our asses off.

If we were in good shape, fresh off the rack, it might have been a cake walk to sprint to the finish line. Not today. I was running on empty. Joel was in bad shape and he had Sails to carry. Roz looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach. The only one that seemed capable of moving was the asshole and he was carrying
Christy over his shoulder. I had the urge to sprint and bash in the fuckers head and leave him for the Z’s but my ankle barely left me room to stagger at a half sprint.

We might not make it anyway. None of us.

The first of the dead were on us.

Joel slung Sails to the side and fired her gun. He hit a Z right in the chest, dropping him for now. The guy carrying
Christy turned and fired a couple of shots dropping a zombie that snarled in our wake.

Roz paused but I motioned her on. There was no point in here trying to be a hero with no weapon.

A shuffler jumped.

I ripped the wrench up in an arc that terminated with the bastards head. He went down
, but it was a temporary respite. There were dozens of dead on our heels.

More gun shots and I used what little energy I had left to sprint forward until I reached Roz. I touched her shoulder.

“Just like last night, eh?”

“Fuck this!”
she said in reply.

It wouldn’t be long now and I didn’t even have a gun to finish me and Roz off before they got us. The horde
was going to rip us apart.