Max Brooks - World War Z

I unclasped my chute-they teach you not to waste time concealing it-and headed in the direction of the other chute. It took me a couple hours, splashing through this cold slime that numbed everything below my knees. I wasn’t thinking clearly, my head was still spinning. No excuse, I know, but that’s why I didn’t notice that the birds had suddenly beat it in the opposite direction. I did hear the scream though, faint and far away. I could see the chute tangled in the trees. I started running, another no-no, making all that noise without stopping to listen for Zack. I couldn’t see anything, just all these naked gray branches until they were right on top of me. If it wasn’t for Rollins, my copilot, I’m sure I’da been a goner.

I found him dangling from his harness, dead, twitching. His flight suit had been torn open and his entrails were hanging… draped over five of them as they fed in this cloud of red-brown water. One of them had managed to get its neck entangled in a section of small intestine. Every time it moved it would jerk Rollins, ringing him like a fucking bell. They didn’t notice me at all. Close enough to touch and they didn’t even look.

At least I had the brains to snap on my suppressor. I didn’t have to waste a whole clip, another fuckup. I was so angry I almost started kicking their corpses. I was so ashamed, so blinded by self-hate…

Self-hate?

I screwed the pooch! My ship, my crew …

But it was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.

How do you know that? You weren’t there. Shit, I wasn’t even there. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t doing my job. I was squatting over a bucket like a goddamn girl!

I found myself burning up, mentally. Fucking weakling, I told myself, fucking loser. I started to spiral, not just hating myself, but hating myself for hating myself. Does that make any sense? I’m sure I might have just stayed there, shaking and helpless and waiting for Zack.

But then my radio started squawking. “Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there? Anyone punch outta that wreck?” It was a woman’s voice, clearly civilian by her language and tone.

I answered immediately, identified myself, and demanded that she respond in kind. She told me she was a skywatcher, and her handle was “Mets Fan,” or just “Mets” for short. The Skywatch system was this ad hoc network of isolated ham radio operators. They were supposed to report on downed aircrews and do what they could to help with their rescue. It wasn’t the most efficient system, mainly because there were so few, but it looked like today was my lucky day. She told me that she had seen the smoke and falling wreckage of my Here’ and even though she was probably less than a day’s walk from my position, her cabin was heavily surrounded. Before I could say anything she told me not to worry, that she’d already reported my position to search and rescue, and the best thing to do was to get to open ground where I could rendezvous for pickup.

I reached for my GPS but it had been torn from my suit when I was sucked out of my ship. I had a backup survival map, but it was so big, so unspecific, and my hump took me over so many states that it was practically just a map of the U.S.… my head was still clouded with anger and doubt. I told her I didn’t know my position, didn’t know where to go …

She laughed. “You mean you’ve never made this run before? You don’t have every inch of it committed to memory? You didn’t see where you were as you were hanging by the silk?” She was so sure of me, trying to get me to think instead of just spoon-feeding me the answers. I realized that I did know this area well, that I had flown over it at least twenty times in the last three months, and that I had to be somewhere in the Atchafalaya basin. “Think,” she told me, “what did you see from your chute? Were there any rivers, any roads?” At first, all I could remember were the trees, the endless gray landscape with no distinguishable features, and then gradually, as my brain cleared, I remembered seeing both rivers and a road. I checked on the map and realized that directly north of me was the I-10 freeway. Mets told me that was the best place for an S R pickup. She told me it shouldn’t take any longer than a day or two at best if I got a move on and stopped burning daylight.

As I was about to leave, she stopped me and asked if there was anything I’d forgotten to do. I remember that moment clearly. I turned back to Rollins. He was just starting to open his eyes again. I felt like I should say something, apologize, maybe, then I put a round through his forehead.

Mets told me not to blame myself, and no matter what, not to let it distract me from the job I had to do. She said, “Stay alive, stay alive and do your job.” Then she added, “And stop using up your weekend minutes.”

She was talking about battery power-she didn’t miss a trick-so I signed off and started moving north across the swamp. My brain was now on full burner, all my lessons from the Creek came rolling back. I stepped, I halted, I listened. I stuck to dry ground where I could, and I made sure to pace myself very carefully. I had to swim a couple times, that really made me nervous. Twice I swear I could feel a hand just brush against my leg. Once, I found a road, small, barely two lanes and in horrible disrepair.

Still, it was better than trudging through the mud. I reported to Mets what I’d found and asked if it would take me right to the freeway. She warned me to stay off it and every other road that crisscrossed the basin. “Roads mean cars,” she said, “and cars mean Gs.” She was talking about any bitten human drivers who died of their wounds while still behind the wheel and, because a ghoul doesn’t have the IQ points to open a door or unbuckle a seatbelt, would be doomed to spend the rest of their existence trapped in their cars.

I asked her what the danger of that was. Since they couldn’t get out, and as long as I didn’t let them reach through an open window to grab me, what did it matter how many “abandoned” cars I passed along the road. Mets reminded me that a trapped G was still able to moan and therefore still able to call for others. Now I was really confused. If I was going to waste so much time ducking a few back roads with a couple Zack-tilled cars, why was I heading for a freeway that was sure to be jammed with them’

She said, “You’ll be up above the swamp. How are more zombies gonna get to you?” Because it was built several stories above the swamp, this sec-tion of the I-10 was the safest place in the whole basin. I confessed I hadn’t thought of that. She laughed and said, “Don’t worry, honey. I have. Stick with me and I’ll get you home.”

And I did. I stayed away from anything even resembling a road and stuck to as pure a wilderness track as I could. I say “pure” but the truth was you couldn’t avoid all signs of humanity or what could have been humanity a long time ago. There were shoes, clothes, bits of garbage, and tattered suitcases and hiking gear. I saw a lot of bones on the patches of raised mud.

I couldn’t cell if they were human or animal. One time I found this rib cage; I’m guessing it was a gator, a big one. I didn’t want to think about how many Gs it took to bring that bastard down.

The first G I saw was small, probably a kid, I couldn’t tell. Its face was eaten off, the skin, nose, eyes, lips, even the hair and ears… not completely gone, but partially hanging or stuck in patches to the exposed skull. Maybe there were more wounds, I couldn’t tell. It was stuck inside one of those long civilian hiker’s packs, stuffed in there Tight with the drawstring pulled right up around its neck. The shoulder straps had gotten tangled on the roots of a tree, it was splashing around, half submerged. Its brain must have been intact, and even some of the muscle fibers connecting the jaw. That jaw started snapping as I approached. I don’t know how it knew I was there, maybe some of the nasal cavity was still intact, maybe the ear canal.