Shaun Harbinger: Wildfire: Destruction of the Dead

“I’m just wondering where all the people are.”

She looked at the village. “Maybe they all went to the camp.”

“Maybe,” I said. Then something caught my eye in one of the windows. I was sure I’d seen movement. I brought the binoculars up to my eyes and tried to find the window, my senses disoriented momentarily by the sudden magnification.

I found it and adjusted the focus on the binoculars.

As the image sharpened, I felt a chill along my spine.

Looking at me through the glass was an undead woman. She stood partly in shadow but her hateful yellow eyes were easy to see. They were locked on our boat.

Then another zombie appeared next to her. This one was a man. He was dressed in a dark blue sweater that was tattered and bloody. He stared out at us with the same malevolent expression on his face.

Movement in the house next door caught my attention. I swept the binoculars across to the windows there to find more zombies, all of them watching us with their yellow eyes.

“They’re everywhere,” Lucy said. Even without the binoculars she could see the zombies that were appearing in every window of every house.

“They must have heard us coming,” I said.

“And they’re all inside because of the rain.” She looked up at the dark clouds. “If we’d arrived when it was sunny, they would have been out on the streets.”

“Probably.” I lowered the binoculars. “So what do we do now?”

“It’s simple,” she said. “We pray it doesn’t stop raining before we find a vehicle and get out of here.”

Iwent below deck and changed quickly into combat boots, trousers, and jacket. When I got back up to the living area, Lucy was sitting at the dining room table. On the table, she had placed two M16s, the Desert Eagle, and a pair of small handguns. There were also stacks of magazines and an array of equipment. Boxes of the vaccine waited by the door.

I noticed that Lucy had put five boxes there, enough to vaccinate all of the soldiers and civilians at Camp Apollo.

“Do you think we’re going to need all this stuff?” I asked, pointing to the guns and equipment.

“It’s better to be prepared,” she said. “When the rain stops, those zombies are going to come flooding out of the houses in search of prey.”

“Let’s make sure we’re not here when that happens,” I said.

She nodded and pushed one of the small handguns toward me. “You might want to take this instead of the Desert Eagle. It’s a Walther PPK, and much easier to carry and handle than that cannon.”

I picked up the small gun. It was lighter than the Eagle, that was for sure. And the name was familiar. “Walther PPK,” I said. “The same gun James Bond uses.”

Lucy nodded. “Now, let’s get sorted. We’ll take an M16 each and divide the magazines equally.”

I put one booted foot on boxes of vaccine and posed with the Walther. “Harley. Alex Harley. License to kill zombies.”

She groaned and said, “Technically, you can’t kill zombies; they’re already dead. Come on, put these magazines in the ammo pouches on your belt.”

“I was just trying to lighten the mood,” I said, detecting her annoyance at me. I couldn’t blame her. We were both frightened and running on adrenaline. In my case, that made me try to make light of the situation. In Lucy’s, it made her more serious.

I decided to keep my mouth shut.

We went out on deck and untied the Zodiac before lowering it into the water, loading the boxes and guns, and climbing aboard. Lucy started the engine and piloted us toward the Escape .

Sam and Tanya were waiting on the aft deck, dressed in military clothing and holding M16s.

When they had climbed down into the Zodiac and Lucy was taking us toward the harbor through the drizzling rain, I felt a familiar feeling of being out of my depth. I might be dressed like a soldier and armed to the teeth, but I had no military training. I was just an ex-gamer-turned-survivor.

Sam had worked with the survival expert Vigo Johnson and visited hostile environments all over the globe. Tanya had been a journalist in the Middle East and other war zones. Lucy had shooting experience and had spent her life staying fit.

And here I was, the odd one out. Dressed like a Call of Duty player at a cosplay convention.

Lucy tapped my shoulder. I turned around to face her.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I nodded, then turned around again to face the front of the boat, watching the harbor loom larger as we approached. I had to squint to keep the rain out of my eyes. I wished I had brought my diving mask.

I couldn’t tell Lucy what was bothering me. She would say I was being stupid and remind me that I had saved her life. That was true, and I had faced some overwhelming odds at Site Alpha Two.

Lucy would say that counted as experience, but I had the nagging feeling that I had only survived this long because of sheer luck. I didn’t feel any more able to deal with the zombie apocalypse now than I did when we were in Wales with Mike and Elena and first heard about the outbreak.

“Those fuckers better stay in their houses,” Sam said, his voice breaking me away from my thoughts. There seemed to be zombies at every window, watching us quietly. They weren’t going crazy or clawing at the glass or moaning with hunger. I almost wished they had been, because their watchful silence was creepy.

The only sounds were the humming of the engine and the splash of the Zodiac cutting through the water.

Lucy guided it around the fishing boats to a small pebble beach and then killed the engine, allowing the front end of the Zodiac to scrape over the pebbles before we all climbed out. Sam took the mooring line and tied it to a metal stake that had been driven into the ground.

“Let’s find a vehicle and get out of here,” Tanya said.

“What about the boxes?” I asked, pointing the barrel of my M16 at the wet cardboard boxes in the Zodiac.

“We’ll get a vehicle,” she said, waving her thumb to indicate Sam and herself. “You two bring the boxes.”

I nodded. That made sense.

The gray clouds were parting, showing clear blue sky beyond. The rain was barely more than a drizzle.

I didn’t have to tell the others that we needed to hurry. Sam and Tanya jogged across the beach to the road that led from the harbor to the village. Lucy and I followed with the boxes, our army boots crunching over the pebbles.

“This is so creepy,” Lucy said, watching the faces in the windows. “They look so calm, standing in their houses and looking out, but they can’t wait to come out here and kill us.”

“Let’s hope they don’t get the chance,” I said, quickening my pace a little.

“They were normal people once,” she half-whispered to herself. “Just like us. They probably loved living in this quiet village.”

“I’m sure it was a nice place when there weren’t zombies peeking through the curtains,” I said.

We reached the road. It led up to the rows of stone houses and wound through the village. I couldn’t see any vehicles parked outside the houses.

Sam and Tanya were standing by the village pub, which was named The Kingfisher according to the wooden sign above the door. They seemed to be waiting for us, so Lucy and I increased our pace until we reached them.

“Got a problem, man,” Sam said as we set the boxes on the ground. They weren’t heavy but their bulk was awkward and my arms ached a little from carrying them.

“What is it?” I asked, leaning the M16 against the pub’s low wall and shaking my arms to get the blood circulating again.

He pointed along the street. The narrow road was littered with vehicles. Cars, vans, and trucks had been parked so that they blocked the road, the only way in or out of the village. And all of the vehicles had been disabled. Their tires were flat and it looked like their engines had been destroyed. Engine parts and wires lay scattered on the road.