City of the Dead

Chapter Six

The huge black helicopter hovered forty feet above the street as long nylon ropes dropped out like silk from a hovering spider. One by one, soldiers rappelled down the ropes and landed warily on the street, assault rifles strapped over their backs. They wore green and brown camouflage fatigues, not much use in an urban environment, with red and white umbrella patches on their shoulders.

Carlos Oliveira unlatched his rappel line and shouldered his M4 carbine assault rifle. The team was being dropped off in the middle of a residential area, a friendly neighborhood with streets full of small homes with well manicured lawns and family cars parked in driveways. The hovering chopper made the trees bend and shake, creating constant movement for Carlos to watch, his index finger resting nervously on the trigger.

He carried a small pack filled with spare ammunition, grenades, and other extra equipment like night-vision goggles. He also carried some emergency medical supplies, but those would probably not be useful. If anyone in the squad was wounded by the target of today’s mission, first-aid would not help them very much. Carlos, like all the soldiers in the UBCF unit, were fully aware of the dangers of a biological outbreak, and knew exactly what it was they were dealing with.

Carlos wore body armor to protect his torso, and the heavy fabric of his uniform was resistant to both tears and punctures, giving him reliable protection against anything that might try to bite. Black fingerless gloves were on his hands, and he wore a snug black combat helmet with a chin strap. Desert Eagles were holstered on each thigh. Short brown hair poked out from under the helmet, and his almond skin glistened with sweat.

“Calm down, Carlos,” a thick accent said from behind him.

His squad Captain, a burly Russian named Mikhail Victor, stood beside him, looking up as the helicopter rose into the air and flew away. Six other men crowded around, forming a tight circle to scan the entire street. Like Carlos, they were all from countries other than the United States. Marco from Cuba, Timon from Nigeria, Yuan and Chen from China, Yuri from Russia, and Kovald from Sweden.

Mikhail merely waved a hand at the row of houses in front of them. “You know the procedure. Check each house. Look for infected ones,” he grunted. His red hair was tinged with gray and his pudgy cheeks gave him a deceptively friendly appearance. He pursed his lips and scanned the street, lifting his gun.

The soldiers spread out, each man going to one house. Carlos walked up a smooth asphalt driveway and to the front door of a small blue house with rose bushes out front. He swallowed hard, glad for the gloves on his hands. They were sweating so much the gun would have slipped right out of his grip.

He tried the door and found it locked. He took a step back and then kicked hard with his booted foot, kicking the door open with a crash. He walked inside, his gun against his shoulder, aimed straight forward.

He heard a scream. Not from an adult, but from a child. He rushed forward through the middle-class living room, his boots stomping across the beige carpet, passing pictures on the wall of a husband and wife and a young boy. He turned down the hall and stopped.

Two people approached him. A man wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, his feet bare. Slimy blood smeared across his face, and his bright blue eyes stared forward with manic intensity. Beside him was a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair, her throat torn out. The entire front of her blue nightgown was soaked with blood, sticking to her body. Her hands were coated with blood as well, from when they tried to stop the flow of blood from her own neck.

Carlos took a deep breath and opened fire. His M4 carbine roared like a cannon in the narrow hallway, and the two zombies flew backward with the impact, their heads blowing apart, spraying the hallway with gore.

The screams continued, and Carlos made his way down the hall to a door at the end. Bloody hand prints from the woman were all over the door, and it was half broken off its hinges. Carlos could hear the young boy inside crying hysterically.

“Hey!” Carlos said. “Hey, get out of the way, okay? I’m going to open the door.”

He slammed his shoulder into the door and it buckled. One more time and the latch broke, letting the door easily swing open. Inside was a typical boy’s room, with a few sports posters and action figures all over the floor.

A young boy wearing pajamas was crouched inside his closet, his hands over his ears. He looked up in terror, tears streaked down his cheeks. Carlos slung his gun over his shoulder, keeping his voice calm. He could only imagine the horror the boy had gone through, hiding in his room as his parents went mad.

“Listen, I’m here to help you, okay? I’m a soldier. I’m gonna help get you out of here.”

“My ... my parents ...” the boy mumbled.

“It’s okay, they’re gone now. They ain’t gonna hurt you, okay?”

He picked the boy up and carried him out of the room. “Listen, just close your eyes, okay? Keep your eyes closed and I’ll take you out of here.”

The boy’s body trembled uncontrollably as Carlos carried him out, stepping over the corpses in the hall, trying not to touch either of the walls, which were coated with infected blood.

Back when he joined the UBCF two years before, Carlos did not know exactly what kind of work they did, but they paid well and offered advanced military training, so he said yes without asking too many questions. After being kicked out of the Mexican Army, he thought he had run out of opportunities to fulfill his dream of a military career. He had no job skills, no high school diploma, and was basically a twenty-year-old washout. He almost accepted a low-paying job as a security guard when Umbrella contacted him with an offer to join the UBCF.

Carlos recognized the organization for what it was, a mercenary outfit. But his recruiter said that Umbrella was looking for ambitious people with a military background, and Carlos fit the bill quite nicely. He never figured out how his name wound up on their contact list, but he accepted their offer immediately. They offered decent pay, international travel, specialized combat training, and all they asked in return was that he sign a non-disclosure agreement so iron-clad that he felt like he was signing over possession of his soul.

Although Umbrella fulfilled their promises of training and travel, Carlos wondered if maybe he should have learned a bit more about the company before signing his life away. If he had known beforehand about the kind of work Umbrella did, maybe he would have said no. But probably not. Working as a mercenary soldier for an international chemical company was not exactly what he had in mind, but it was the closest thing he could get to being a real soldier.

And now, being dropped off into some random American city to help fend off an invasion of the living dead? Well, he hadn’t exactly planned on that either.

He heard more scattered gunfire as he carried the young boy out of the house, and someone shouting in Russian. Not Mikhail though, it was Yuri, the other Russian member of the squad. Carlos went out the front door to the sound of several guns being fired all at once in the houses around him. None of his fellow squad members were outside.

“I’m gonna put you down now, okay?” he said to the boy. “Just sit here. I’m gonna have a look around.”

The boy sat silently on the porch, his hands still over his ears. Carlos looked at the boy nervously, and then lifted his gun as someone came stumbling around the side of the house.

It was an elderly woman wearing a shabby dress with yellow flowers on it. Blood dripped down her bare legs under the dress, and one side of her face was missing. Carlos squeezed off two shots, blowing off the entire side of her head.

The boy screamed frantically and ran back into the house. Carlos tried to grab him, but the boy slid out of his grasp and ran inside. He turned the corner to run back to his bedroom, but stopped and screamed hysterically at the sight of his dead parents.

“Carlos!” someone screamed. “We need help here!”

Leaving the boy behind, Carlos ran across the street to see two of his squad members barreling out from behind one of the other houses. There was more gunfire from two houses down. The soldiers turned and opened up with their guns, spraying bullets all across the side of the building.

Carlos was half way up the driveway when he saw them coming. There were too many to count, but he guessed at least a hundred of the zombies were shambling across the back yard, coming from the next row of houses on the other side of the block. No fence separated the two adjacent back yards, and the zombies came across like an invading army.

“Mierda,” he whispered.

He raised his gun but hesitated. He didn’t have enough ammo to take them all down anyway, and he had the feeling that wasting ammo might be a bad idea. He quickly ran back down the driveway to the street.

Mikhail came out from one of the other houses, shouting into the small microphone wired into his helmet. Regular radio and cell signals had already been jammed throughout the whole city, but the UBCF used special communications hardware linked with satellites. “Where is the next squad? There are too many of them here! I said there are too many! Hundreds of them! We need to join the next squad!”

Their squad had seven men, not including Captain Mikhail, but now Carlos could only see five others. Each of them had his gun ready, facing a different side of the street. Carlos looked around nervously, sweat dripping down the sides of his face.

The last squad member, a Chinese man named Yuan, stumbled out the front door of a nearby house, gripping his hand, which dripped blood. He grimaced and came across the lawn to the sidewalk, shaking his head bitterly, his face a mask of anguish.

Mikhail looked at the soldier’s arm impassively. “You are hurt?”

“Yes … yes, sir. I’m sorry. One of them bit me.”

“You know what it means.”

“Yes.”

Yuan looked away and took a deep breath. Carlos watched him in disbelief, knowing what it meant as well. Their uniforms were supposed to protect them, but Carlos suddenly realized that being resistant to punctures didn’t mean that much against the threat they were facing. One bite on the hand was all it took, and the zombies unerringly went for the hands or the face.

“Look!” one of the others shouted, pointing down the street.

Carlos turned to see a crowd of people materialize, seemingly out of nowhere. It was like a huge mob of rioters, only instead of bricks and molotov cocktails, they wielded bloody fingernails, gory mouths, and insane eyes. Men in business suits, women wearing nightgowns, one man in front wearing just a pair of underwear, a young boy in jeans and a flannel shirt, a teenage girl wearing a tight t-shirt with the word “Sexy” written on it in glittering letters. They came forward as if in slow motion, the trees at the end of the block casting a shadow across their bloody faces.

Carlos looked back to see the first few zombies from the other crowd making their way coming around the side of the house. They were trapped in between two growing mobs of the undead.

Yuan let go of his wounded hand and flexed his bloody fingers. He winced in pain but gritted his teeth and let his gun slide off his shoulder. He gave the other squad members a final nod, and walked away toward the oncoming mob from behind the house.

“Let’s go,” Mikhail said.

Carlos and the others ran off down the other side of the street. Two zombies appeared from behind a house and Mikhail shot them both down with barely a sideways glance. Carlos looked behind him just as Yuan opened fire on the crowd of zombies. He stood in the driveway and aimed head high at the crowd, mowing them down with a sweep of his arm. When Yuan’s carbine ran out of ammo, he pulled out a pistol and continued shooting.

Mikhail led his team down the street and around the corner. Carlos didn’t know where they where going, but he hoped Mikhail had some kind of plan. With a sickening thought, he realized that they had lost two men already. How long could they survive out in the open, with an entire city of zombies to deal with?

Carlos stopped at the corner and looked back toward Yuan. He watched Yuan take down several more zombies with his pistol, and then use the last bullet on himself.

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