Shaun Harbinger: Survival: Revenge of the Living Dead

I leaned forward in my seat. “Easy? Those men back there are trained soldiers. If we get in a firefight with them, I don’t like the odds, whether we ambush them or not. And should we even be trying to kill them in the first place? They’re probably innocent military personnel following orders from someone higher up the chain of command.”

Sam frowned at me in the rearview mirror. “Dude, you’re the one who said they’re evil.”

“I never said they’re evil.”

He looked at Tanya. “Did he say they’re evil?”

“Not exactly.”

Turning his attention back to me, he said, “Well if they’re not evil, we should just let them take whatever’s in that Land Rover back to their base so they can continue Operation Dead Ground. Because that definitely doesn’t sound evil to me, dude. Sounds to me like they’re trying to save the human race with a name like that.”

“Turn here,” Tanya told him.

He turned left and we were heading north again, on a road that ran parallel to the one we’d just been on.

“So we’re going to ambush and kill them?” I asked. It didn’t feel right to me that we were planning to murder these soldiers just to get whatever they were taking from Echo Six’s Land Rover.

“Do you have a better plan, Alex?” Tanya asked.

I tried to think of something— anything —that would mean we could recover the items from the soldiers without any loss of life but nothing came to mind. Where Sam, Tanya, and Lucy were the gung-ho action heroes of our group, I was usually the planner, the thinker, the ideas guy. But right now, I felt totally useless.

Staring out of the window, I wondered if I could aim my gun at an innocent man and pull the trigger. The fields of grass undulating in the slight breeze and the distant shimmering sea had no answers for me so I turned away from the window and focused on my two companions.

Tanya was studying the map with emotionless dark eyes and Sam was staring at the road ahead.

“Hey,” he said, catching my eyes in the rearview mirror, “We’ve had run-ins with the military before and you’ve fired a few shots. Why is this time different?”

“Those other times, it was self-defence.”

“So think of this as self-defence as well. If that guy on the radio was right, there’s some bad shit in that Land Rover and those evil soldiers are going to take it back to their base where it’s probably going to be used to end the world or something.”

“I didn’t say they were evil,” I reminded him.

He threw his hands up for a moment before returning them to the steering wheel. “Whatever, man. The point is, stopping these soldiers is self-defence against whatever shit they’re going to pull with the items on that Land Rover. And we’re not only defending ourselves; we’re defending the world.”

I sat back in my seat and let out a long sigh. I wished Sergeant Locke had given me more information about what his team had stolen from Camp Victor. As it was, we were simply taking him at his word. What if we had it wrong?

“What if Echo Six were the evil soldiers?” I said. “What if they stole something that the guys at Camp Victor were using for good? We might be about to kill the good guys.” But even as I said the words, they rang hollow. Locke had told me the items needed to get to somewhere called Bunker 53. That sounded like a government installation to me. If Locke and his team were trying to disrupt military operations, they wouldn’t be trying to get whatever they stole to the government unless they thought that what they were doing was right and they were trying to warn the people in authority about Operation Dead Ground.

“Come on, man,” Sam said. “We all know that doesn’t make sense.”

“Alex,” Tanya said, turning to face me. “We need you to be with us on this. The ambush isn’t going to be easy. We need to be at the top of our game, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Okay.”

“And don’t forget, you’re the one who dragged us here,” Sam reminded me. “So don’t wimp out on us now.”

“I won’t,” I told him. “Don’t worry about me, I’m one hundred per cent on board with the plan.”

“Turn left here,” Tanya told Sam. “The crossroads is just ahead.”

He turned the car and I saw the four-way intersection in the distance. This was it. This was where it was all going to go down.

Sam brought the X-trail to a halt before we reached the crossroads and got out, surveying the area with his hands on his hips.

I opened my door and slid out. The day was really warming up now and I felt the sun burning my skin even after only a couple of minutes exposure. I reminded myself to get plenty of sunscreen the next time we went on a supply run.

If there was a next time.

“Any ideas?” Sam asked Tanya.

She nodded and pointed at a field on the other side of the crossroads. “If we get someone set up in that field over there and someone in this field here, we can create a crossfire with the enemy Land Rovers in the middle.”

“How do we make sure they don’t just drive away?” Sam asked.

“We use the X-Trail to block the road.”

“I’m not so sure that will work,” I said. “As soon as they see the X-Trail blocking their way, they’ll probably suspect something’s up and turn around.”

“Do you have a better idea?” she asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah, but it’s risky. Someone needs to wait on this road in the X-Trail. As the Land Rovers are about to reach the crossroads, that person needs to drive the X-Trail into their path. By the time the drivers react, the two people stationed in the fields will have the vehicles in their crosshairs.”

“Sounds good, man,” Sam said. “So who volunteers to be the driver?”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “You two are the best shots anyway. I’ll make sure they stop and then you and Tanya open fire.”

“You’re going to have to act quickly,” Tanya said. “And once you’ve blocked the road, you need to take out the driver of the lead vehicle, as well as anyone else sitting in the front seat. You’ll be putting yourself directly into their line of fire so they offer the most danger to you.”

Suddenly, driving the car didn’t seem like the best job after all.

Tanya looked at the road along which the Land Rovers would be approaching. “We need to get into position. It may take them some time to deal with the zombies and load the items from Echo Six’s Land Rover into their own but we can’t afford to be caught out. We need to be ready for them.”

“I’ll take the far field,” Sam said. “I should be able to get into position behind the wall.”

“And I’ll set up in this field,” Tanya said. “If I position myself a little farther back along the road, I should be able to make sure the rear Rover can’t escape by reversing and I won’t be directly across the road from you, which could be dangerous.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to shoot each other, man.” Sam turned to me. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry about my end. I’ve got it covered.”

“Good man.” He grabbed his weapons and set off towards the field across the road. Tanya did the same and climbed over the stone wall by the side of the road. She waded through the long grass as she looked for an ideal hiding spot.

Shielding my eyes from the sun, I watched them as they found their positions and ducked down below the stone wall that lined the road the Land Rovers would be coming along.

I climbed into the X-Trail and dialled the air conditioning up to max. The vents blasted frigid air over me and I tried to imagine that the icy blast was freezing my emotions and making me into a cold-hearted killer. After all, that was what I was about to become, wasn’t it?