Mother Russia

Chapter Sixteen

Hunk squinted and turned away as the helicopter lifted into the air, loaded with another group of civilians. So far it was the third such group to be evacuated to safety, and things were going better than Hunk could have anticipated. Their perimeter extended over a block in each direction and at the moment they were not under any major threats. They had evacuated almost forty people, taken down a grand total of seven infected hosts, and lost none of their own team members.

“Twelve minutes,” Captain Darby said, glancing at his watch. “It takes about twelve minutes. It looks like these folks are the last.”

Eleven more civilians were waiting to be evacuated, most of them clutching bags or suitcases. The first load of survivors was taken away with little more than the clothes on their backs, but the later groups had more time to prepare and were bring some of their belongings with them.

Campbell and Lambert came jogging over. “We pounded on the doors of the last four houses,” Campbell said. “No answer.”

Darby nodded. “All right, that’s every house checked. Once these folks are loaded up, we’ll move six blocks west and set up a new perimeter.”

They were unable to communicate with the other two squads. According to their original briefing, Abdallah’s and Njagi’s squads were assigned a neighborhood about twenty blocks north of Darby’s squad. Each group would gradually move westward throughout the day, establishing new perimeters and evacuating whatever civilians they found. Hunk could only hope that Abdallah and Njagi were having an easy time of it as well.

Twelve minutes later, like clockwork, the helicopter returned. By now it was nearly six o’clock, and the sky was growing a dim blue-gray with the coming dawn. Hunk knew he would feel a whole lot better once the sun was up.

The helicopter hovered over their position and began to lower to the ground. Darby ordered the civilians back so the chopper had plenty of room to land. Hunk stepped away and scanned the nearby houses for the hundredth time. He turned to see one of the men in the squad running down the street towards them.

It was Beckett. “Sir!” he shouted, running up to them. “Hosts! Lots of them!”

“What?” Darby snapped.

Hunk shoved past the civilians until he could see where Beckett was pointing. Down the other street, at least a block away, a mob was approaching, and even from that distance, it didn’t take a genius to see that they were not normal people. They were moving together almost like a single unit, shuffling in unison with their arms swaying at their sides. Hunk estimated their numbers at about forty. Four members of the unit were gathering, rifles raised, but they seemed hesitant to open fire.

“Let’s go!” Darby yelled, waving the helicopter down as it hovered overhead. The civilians gripped their clothes and shielded their eyes from the wind kicked up by the rotors.

“Sir?” Snyder asked.

Darby shook his head at her. “Let’s get these people on board first!”

At their slow shuffling pace, it would take the zombies several minutes to get close enough to them to be a threat. Once the last of the civilian survivors was on the chopper, Darby and the rest of the unit could deal with the zombies as necessary. But it was hard to fight the instinct to immediately start shooting, even though at this range their accuracy would be terrible. Seeing a huge crowd of zombies lurching in their direction was enough to make the other soldiers panic if the given the opportunity.

The helicopter finally settled on the street. Darby and Lambert immediately began ushering the evacuees forward, perhaps a little too roughly, but Hunk couldn’t blame them for that. Some of the civilians were dragging their feet, nervous about leaving their home and also worried about these strange foreign shoulders ordering them on board a military helicopter. But they didn’t have time to dawdle. If any of the evacuees resisted or slowed them down, Hunk was prepared to physically pick them up and throw them onboard.

“Hunk? Sir?” Snyder asked, looking anxious. The zombies were getting closer, now just over half a block away.

“Go and help your Captain,” he suggested.

She nodded in relief and hurried over to the chopper. Beckett and Okada stood on the corners at opposite sides of the street, guns ready. They glanced at Hunk and he stepped forward.

Beckett said, “There’s like fifty of them. What are we going to do?”

“Once the survivors are taken away, we’re moving to a new location. Just hold your fire for another minute or two. We’ll retreat and take them out as needed.”

“We’re supposed to move west,” Beckett said. He pointed at the crowd of infected hosts with his rifle. “That direction is west.”

“I know that,” Hunk said.

The color had drained from Okada’s face, and he stared at the oncoming undead horde with absolute terror in his eyes. “This is insane, man,” he said.

“Yes,” Hunk agreed, “it is.”

“Did you … did you see so many of them …? In that city in America, I mean?”

“I saw many more than that. The crowds in Raccoon City numbered in the hundreds. Just stay calm. We have plenty of room to maneuver here.”

“I thought I was ready for this ...”

Hunk’s expression was grim. “Nobody is ready for something like this.”

Behind them, the last civilian, an old lady dressed in a nightcoat, was finally loaded onto the chopper. Darby slammed the door shut and then banged on the window next Walters.

“All right! Get them out of here! Go!”

The rotors increased speed and the helicopter began to lift up. Hunk gave a short sigh of relief and waved for Beckett and Okada to back up away from the oncoming crowd of undead. Darby called them over and the entire squad retreated back to where he was standing in the middle of the street. Above them, the helicopter rose up above the houses.

“All right,” Darby said, loud enough that they could hear him over the helicopter. He took out a small touchscreen tablet with a map of the city showing on the screen. “This neighborhood is clear. We will move two blocks south and then six blocks west, as planned, and set up a new perimeter.” He pointed at the mob of hosts still shambling towards them, now less than thirty yards away. “Let’s get some space between us and them first. Everyone retreat in an orderly fashion, we won’t open fire out unless we –”

He was interrupted by a howling roar that seemed to come out of nowhere and blast down the street like a shockwave. Darby flinched and the rest of the squad immediately spun around, guns raised and fingers on the trigger. Hunk turned to face the approaching mob of zombies and slowly raised his rifle to his shoulder.

Darby came up beside him. “What in the hell was that?”

A shape appeared from the shadowy gloom two blocks away, just glimpses of it illuminated by street lights. Hunk took an involuntary step backward.

“Tell the squad to retreat,” he said before he even realized what he was saying. “Right now.”

“What?” Darby asked. “What is that thing?”

It was moving fast, almost too fast for the eye to follow, as if it was skipping forward in time, at first just appearing like a blurred shape but gradually coalescing into something vaguely humanoid in appearance. Tattered shreds of clothing flapped from its enormous limbs, and the sound of it pounding across the concrete was like the sound of a charging rhino. The ground shook under their feet. As it got closer, the creature opened its huge twisted mouth in another bestial, blood-curdling scream, running right at them.

“Go!” Hunk shouted, turning and running to the side. “Everyone take cover!”

“Jesus Christ!” Beckett screamed. He opened fire wildly, half of his shots striking the crowd of zombies and most of the others missing their mark entirely. Some of the other squad members reflexively did the same, frozen to the spot and just shooting out of desperation. Darby hesitated for a second and ordered the squad back, but by that point it was already too late.

The creature charged right through the crowd of zombies like they weren’t even there, smashing them aside like bowling pins. If they had been alive, the impact would have killed them. But they were already dead, so when their smashed bodies hit the ground, they still tried to get up with broken spines and shattered limbs.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hunk watched it barrel down on the squad members who had been too scared to run. Beckett was first, crying out and shooting at the creature on full auto at nearly point-blank range. The bullets did nothing. The creature bellowed madly and swung an arm, batting him into the air as if it was swatting a fly. Beckett’s gun went flying and clattered to the pavement, while his body sailed into a tree, twisted and broken.

Hunk had visions of things he had seen before, things he tried not to think about. He remembered what had happened to William Birkin in the Raccoon City lab, and how the former scientist had slaughtered his entire team. He remembered a towering creature in a black trenchcoat, chasing after the speeding streetcar and smashing through the roof to tear apart an entire squad of UBCF soldiers.

This was the same thing all over again, and something swept across Hunk almost like a feeling of déjà vu. He had been here before, seen this happen again and again, and each time it ended in disaster.

Campbell was next, standing all alone in the middle of the street, gun blazing, his eyes as wide as golf balls. The creature didn’t even slow down, it just trampled over him, smashing his body into the street.

And then it jumped.

Hunk was on the ground, lying on his back. He didn’t even remember when he had fallen. He scrambled backward and watched in complete disbelief as the creature leaped, soaring thirty feet into the air like some comic book monster. It roared in mid-leap and smashed right into the tail rotor of the helicopter, obliterating it in an explosion of twisted metal shards.

Someone was screaming, Hunk wasn’t sure who. The chopper immediately began to spin out of control, trailing a spiral of gray smoke as it spun, tilting sideways as it brushed the tops of the trees that lined the street. Gunfire erupted nearby and Hunk realized that Okada was shooting at the zombies that were still coming towards them. He didn’t even know where the creature had gone. After it smashed the chopper it had fallen back behind the row of houses and out of sight.

The helicopter continued to spin, the engines screaming. Hunk grabbed his gun off the grass and got to his feet. Half a dozen zombies were stumbling across the sidewalk and were lurching in his direction. He shook his head, gritted his teeth, and took them down as quickly as he could, dropping them with one or two shots each. Then he was running out into the street and grabbing Okada by the arm.

“Come on!” he shouted in Okada’s ear. “We have to get moving!”

“It killed Beckett!” Okada cried.

“I know! Come on!”

The chopper swung over their heads and dipped low, completely out of control, the rotors slicing through nearby electrical cables. There was an explosion of electricity, bright enough to practically blind them, and the helicopter thundered down to the street. The rotors struck pavement and disintegrated, sending huge fragments of metal shrapnel in every direction. Hunk pushed Okada to the ground with him as slivers of metal three feet long ripped through the nearby houses. The chopper exploded in a huge blossom of red and orange flame, sending streamers of burning wreckage into the air like fireworks. Hunk lifted his head and watched the billowing clouds of fiery smoke for a few seconds before slowly getting up.

“Oh, shit,” Okada stammered. “Oh, shit. What are we going to do?”

Hunk didn’t reply. He helped Okada to his feet and they hurried over to a side yard where he saw Darby and Lambert huddling together. Lambert was down on one knee and he looked like he was about to throw up, but Darby simply looked angry.

“What was that thing?” Okada begged to know. “And where is it? We have to get away from here before it comes back!”

“It must be the primary host,” Darby said before looking at Hunk. “Correct, Sergeant?”

“Yes,” Hunk said. “I believe that’s the case.”

Snyder came running over. “It looks like it ran off behind those houses. I heard it yelling. I think it might be wounded or something. It must have gotten messed up pretty bad when it hit the tail propeller.”

“Should we try to track it down?” Lambert asked, clearly hoping the answer was no.

“No way!” Okada blurted out, and then seemed to compose himself. “I mean, we can’t possibly kill that thing, can we? We’d need a freaking missile launcher to kill that!”

Darby considered it and then shook his head. “No, we aren’t equipped to take it down. Right now our priority is to make contact with squads two and three. We need to warn them about the primary host, and besides that, their helicopter is now our only way out of this city.”

“What about …” Okada glanced back toward the street and swallowed nervously. “What about Beckett and Campbell?”

Darby nodded. “Snyder, please retrieve Beckett’s and Campbell’s identification, if you can. Lambert, collect their weapons. We may need them. Okada, scout around and make sure there aren’t any more hosts nearby.”

All three of them ran off to do as they were told, glad to have orders to follow. Hunk stepped over as Darby pulled out his touchscreen tablet. “Njagi and Abdallah were at this location,” he said, pointing. His hand was shaking ever so slightly. “But they may have already moved to their second position. It’s almost a straight shot down this street. It shouldn’t take us too long to get there.”

“Good plan, Captain.”

Darby looked at him and let out a breath before continuing. “You … you lost men in Raccoon City, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“To a primary host like that?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Did you … did you manage to destroy it? I mean, were you able to avenge your men?”

Hunk shook his head. “No, Captain, I did not. But maybe this time will be different.”

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