Shaun Harbinger: Survival: Revenge of the Living Dead

I opened the bridge door and leaned out, looking over at the Lucky Escape . Sam and Tanya were both on the sundeck, soaking up the sun. I called over to them. “Hey, someone’s in trouble.”

Tanya turned her head towards me, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, even though she was wearing a pair of large sunglasses that covered most of her face. “We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, Alex. A lot of people are in trouble.”

“No, I mean there’s someone on the radio asking for help.” I seized the notebook and read out the coordinates. “Is that far from here?”

“Up on those cliffs,” Sam said, pointing to the shore. The cliffs were vertical and rose at least three hundred feet from the sea. “There’s no way we’re gonna get up there.”

He was right. Without a helicopter, we weren’t going to get anywhere near Echo Six. The radio squawked again and now the soldier’s voice sounded even more desperate. “If the person I was talking to is still there, please respond. We need your help. Can you hear me? Over.”

I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the Talk button. I didn’t have the heart to tell this guy that there was no way I could help him, that his cry for help was futile. I wondered for a moment if I should tell him we were on our way but a false sense of hope might be just as bad as no hope at all. If I told these soldiers that we were coming to help them, they’d eventually realise it wasn’t true. What if their last moments alive were spent dealing with the crushing knowledge that they’d been lied to?

I pressed the Talk button, then released it again. What should I say? I pressed the button again and then let it go for a second time. I didn’t have the words. I couldn’t tell these people that I wasn’t going to help them.

The soldier’s voice came through the static. He sounded a little calmer. Maybe he was resigned to his fate, as his companion seemed to be. “What’s your name?” he asked calmly.

He knew I was here and that I was hesitating. Each time I’d pressed the Talk button and released it without speaking, he would have heard a telltale click on his end.

“Alex,” I said, trying to keep my voice flat but doing a bad job of it. I was trembling.

“Alex, listen carefully. My name is Sergeant Terry Locke. My team and I are in a broken-down army Land Rover at the coordinates I gave you. We’re armed but the amount of zombies advancing on our position is too great. Our ammunition will soon be depleted. We’re going down, Alex.”

In the background, I could hear gunshots and someone shouting, “Take that, you undead fuckers!”

My grip on the radio tightened; these might be Sergeant Terry Locke’s last words. I didn’t want to hear him and his team get ripped apart by zombies.

“I’m going to tell you something very important, Alex,” Sergeant Locke continued. “There are items in this Land Rover that need to get to Doctor Sarah Ives at Bunker 53. It is vitally important that these items reach her. Do you copy?”

“I…I don’t know where Bunker 53 is,” I told him.

“There’s a map in the vehicle.” He raised his voice as the automatic gunfire around him increased in intensity. “Listen carefully, Alex. These items are more important than any of us. My mission ends here but you need to continue it. The fate of what’s left of the world may depend on it. Over.”

“All right,” I said, determined to help. If I couldn’t save Sergeant Locke, at least I could take these items to the doctor he’d mentioned. “I’ll find a way to get to your vehicle. It may take some time but I’ll do it. Over.”

“There isn’t much time,” he said. “There’s a squad of soldiers on our tail. Now that we’ve broken down, they’ll reach this location fairly soon. They must not be allowed to retrieve the items from the Land Rover. If they do, our efforts were wasted and we will have died for nothing. Over.”

“What do you mean soldiers on your tail? I thought you were soldiers? Over.”

“We are. But we went against our orders and stole these items from Camp Victor. We couldn’t let them continue what they were doing. We tried to stop Operation Dead Ground. Don’t let them get the items back. If Operation Dead Ground continues, it could mean the end of the human race.” I heard a loud crash and a scream. “This is it,” the Sergeant said. “Goodbye, Alex, and good luck. Over and out.”

The channel went dead and the radio transmitted only static.

“We have to help them,” I said. The four of us were sitting at the table in the living area of the Big Easy ; Lucy next to me, Sam and Tanya opposite us. I had called the meeting and told everyone about the radio transmission from Echo Six. It was now ten minutes since the radio had gone dead.

“Sounds like it’s too late to help them,” Sam said.

“But what about the items in their Land Rover? Sergeant Locke said if they fell into the wrong hands, the human race could be in danger.”

“We have no idea what it is,” Lucy said. “And retrieving it will be dangerous. Haven’t we faced enough danger to last us a lifetime?”

I couldn’t argue with that. Since the outbreak of the virus that had torn our world apart, we’d fought zombies, soldiers, and Patient Zero. We’d risked our lives to get vaccines to military camps, and we’d fought our way inland to a radio station. We’d seen our fair share of trouble but did that mean we were supposed to stop fighting?

After seeing my dad and brother cowering in a survivors camp, I’d made a pledge to not be like them, to stand up and fight against the zombies whenever I had to.

“We can’t just ignore this,” I said. “What if the items in the Land Rover really could destroy everyone? Whatever Operation Dead Ground is, it doesn’t sound good. The clue is in the name. Sergeant Locke and his team were willing to risk court marshall and even death to stop it.”

“Alex is right,” Tanya said. “The Land Rover and whatever’s inside it is sitting just up there on those cliffs. And a group of soldiers—maybe bad soldiers—want to get their hands on it. I’m willing to grab this item before they do and screw up their plans.”

“But what makes you think this situation is survivable?” Lucy asked. “If the Echo Six team got killed by nasties, why do you think we’ll fare any better?”

“They were trapped inside their vehicle,” I told her. “It sounds like their Land Rover broke down and then they suddenly had a swarm of zombies surrounding them. They were immobilised. We won’t have that disadvantage.”

“We can find a car,” Tanya said. “That way, we’ll be able to keep moving while we engage the nasties. We might even be able to lead them away from the Land Rover and then double back when it’s safer.”

“So we’re agreed?” I asked, looking at Lucy. “We’ll do it?”

She shrugged and said flatly, “Sure, why not?” Her heart didn’t seem in it but at least she’d acquiesced.

“So how are we going to get on top of the cliffs?’ I asked, looking at Tanya and Sam for answers. If anyone knew about rock climbing, it was those two. But we didn’t have any climbing gear and even if we did, I couldn’t see myself scaling those cliffs. I’d probably die half way up, either from exhaustion or vertigo.

“We don’t need to climb the cliffs,” Tanya said. “There’s a village with a harbour a few miles north of here. We get ashore, hotwire a car, and drive to the location the soldier gave you. Simple.”

We all looked at each other. The village was probably going to be infested with zombies; it wasn’t going to be that simple.