Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse by Nicholas Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

him.”
    My attention snapped back to the approaching shapes of the undead. They were like flickering mirages, moving quickly through the dark. I tried to calculate the angles and get a sense of how close the undead were – and how much time the pilot had before they would be upon him – and us.
    It wasn’t long. Maybe sixty seconds. If the pilot didn’t set the helicopter down right now, it would be too late – for all of us.
    At that moment a building on the crest of the distant hill seemed to explode in a huge colum n of flame, and in the flare of brighter light, the line of zombies suddenly took on sharp outline and solid form. Behind them, other dull drifting shapes were beginning to loom out of the night.
    “There’s more of them,” I said ominously. They were filling the dark streets, spilling from the nearest houses. A road ran parallel to the far side of the park, and I could see burned out vehicles and dark shapes laying on the blacktop like small broken toys as the undead gathered into a milling, swaying tide that began to uncoil and surge down into the long grass of the field behind the first line of hunters.
    “What are we going to do?” Jed asked.
    I didn’t answer for a long moment. The line of zombies on the edge of the field seemed to stop moving closer, but I knew it was just a trick of the poor light. They would still be moving – still stalking their way forward. I glanced up at the helicopter again, and as I did it seemed to swing directly overhead, and then tilt at an obscene angle. It veered back over the long grass of the field, but it was lower now. The shaft of the spotlight suddenly blinked on, and the patch of ground beneath the hull was turned bright as daylight. It lasted for only a few seconds – long enough to give the pilot a chance to sight the ground, and long enough to completely destroy my night vision.
    I turned my head away – but the flare of the light was burned onto my eyes. When I opened them again and looked back across the field, the wavering line of unde ad was blurred and indistinct.
    “We’ve got no choice,” I said with a sense of rising fear and anxiety. “We have to rescue that pilot – if he survives the la nding. There’s no other option. We’re dead men if we don’t.”
    The helicopter tilted up on its tail rotor like a rearing horse, and hung in mid air for a moment, its nose pointing towards the clouds.
    Then it just stopped flying.
    Stopped – and fell out of the sky.
    The big whining engine died – and for an instant the night was perfectly silent.
    But just for an instant.
    Then the helicopter dropped like a stone. The heavy weight of the nose fell towards the ground, but the helicopter was not high enough in the sky for the front-end to gather momentum, and so the craft dropped in a flat fall – the skids collapsed and the dead-weight of the machine crumpled the hull in a shattering collision that shook the ground beneath my feet. Grass and mud were hurled into the sky. The rotor blades flailed, and then tore off. Grinding, tearing metal shredded through the air as the machine ripped itself to pieces, and the sky was filled with a thousand flying shards of splintered death.
    “Oh my God,” I heard Clinton Harrigan breathe, and for long seconds we could do nothing more than stare, numb and dazed and appalled, until the dust cleared and the sound of the collision faded.
    At last, the night was silent.
    At last, t he helicopter was down.
    But the danger was only just beginning.

Chapter Two.
     
    “Come on!” Harrigan cried, and we went at the fence in a rain-soaked awkward tangle of knees and elbows.
    I went over in the long soft grass, feeling the weight of the nylon bag’s contents pushing me down like extra gravity, and I sank in the soft muddy earth to my ankles.
    The fiery glow of the distant burning buildings gave good light and we ran towards the crumpled wreck of the helicopter with no thought of stealth. It was a race against