With a warm smile, he apologized and repeated the question.
“I can certainly still hear that horde out there, if that’s what you’re talking about,” while shifting my eyes out toward the monsters pushing through the trees in the distance.
“No, not them,” he replied, pointing out beyond the rear of the airliner.
“Yah, I hear them too,” I said, letting my shoulders drop. “I’ve been listening to them all night. They don’t seem to be moving toward us.”
“That’s the point. They’re not moving.”
Thinking about that for a second, I realized he was right. Wherever the other group of zombies was, they appeared to be staying in the same spot.
Jarvis gazed out beyond the crashed airplane, which looked even worse in the morning light. “Ever known a group of Zs just to huddle up and hang out without something to keep them focused?”
Raising my head a bit, and following his gaze, I replied, “No, I guess I haven’t.”
Rubbing his leg, and then standing back up straight, Jarvis looked me dead in the eyes. “My best guess on how to get out of here is to follow the moans.”
Follow the moans. The statement buzzed like a broken alarm clock in the back of my head. I had never willingly followed the cries of the dead. Normally, I knew better… we all did. Desperation seemed to shine a new light on what we were willing to do. How far we were willing to push ourselves to survive?
When Kyle and Aidan joined us, we discussed Jarvis’s plan, and decided it was our best course of action. No matter what, the plane radio was not going help, and we decided that the helicopter that Aidan and the rest of Gordon’s men had flown in on was toast… literally. Besides, even if anything like the radio in it was still salvageable, the idea of trying to walk through the landscape below seemed insurmountable, especially with all the broken-down creatures ready to grab out at us if we tried to trek around down there.
Throwing down some more peanuts and a few bottles of water that we’d managed to dig up in the wreckage, we surveyed what we had left in terms of protection. With the guns out of commission, we weren’t left with much. Kyle grabbed his fence post, which had gotten him that far. Jarvis rummaged through the wreckage before cracking a faint smile as he picked up the long chunk of metal used to burn his leg. Coincidentally, it had burned into a nice jagged point. Aidan yanked a two-foot metal piece off of one of the chairs and wrapped part of the seat belt around the end of it, making it look like a sword of sorts.
Of course, I had my hammer, which I was plenty happy to be carrying.
Taking one last look at the chairs circling the campfire, as well as the busted plane, I couldn’t help but think that we were damn lucky to have found the place. Perhaps only the kind of luck that would happen in a bad book or stupid movie to continue the plot forward… but lucky all the same.
Getting down to business, the four of us ventured toward the forest in what Kyle called a “four man spread.” He explained that it allowed us to cover more area, while at the same time keeping us from being a line of sitting ducks for anybody or anything that may want to take a crack at us.
Moving past the debris left behind from the plane crash, we continued back into a thick forest, each of us trying like mad to minimize any noise as we moved through the leaves and branches.
Knowing I was no more graceful than a contestant from that old TV show The Biggest Loser trying to perform in a ballet, I could literally feel Kyle’s eyes drilling into me to keep it down. Suddenly, he completely stopped in his tracks. Knowing something was wrong, the rest of us froze.
Kyle was the first to hear it in the distance, but almost immediately, the echoing sound of a helicopter flew above us, shaking the forest canopy violently. It flew right over our position, seeming to head back toward where we had just come from.
“Gordon just won’t let up,” I whispered.
Jarvis lowered his head and met my eyes. “He never does.”
Aidan kept his eyes glued on the canopy, seeming to be in deep thought. He wasn’t alone.
As we continued along, I couldn’t help but wonder where the sounds were coming from. I saw no civilization or obvious place that would be attracting the creatures. Maybe there was a small cabin or farm out here. Perhaps someone was hunkered down in some sort of small bunker like you’d see in the movies or those end-of-the-world apocalypse preparation TV shows. The types of underground one-room living spaces that were cramped with nothing more than food, beds, and people.
Funny thing about those bunkers. I once read that they found a number of them filled with bodies sometime after World War II. More often than not, blunt force trauma was the leading cause of death versus starvation or disease. Looking back at it, I always thought those bunkers were nuts. Forcing a person to stay buried for months or even years cramped into a small one-room spot with a number of people seemed maddening. To me, the bunker idea always seemed like living in prison, only you’re stuck in the cell with your family or friends.
Some people can’t sit around the dinner table for an hour without some sort of fight breaking out. Stick them in an underground dungeon with nothing to do but slowly go insane, and it’s only a matter of time before someone picks up the nearest can of peaches and starts trying to kill everybody.
Nearly fifteen minutes into the hike, the cries from the creatures started getting loud enough to put us all on edge. Coming over a dark hill, hidden from the sunlight by the towering trees, all four of us dropped to our hands and knees, and pulled ourselves to its crest.
Kyle, slightly ahead of our little group, put his hand up and waved it down, signaling to us to be silent. Slowing crawling up to him, I squeezed the wooden handle of my hammer as I peered through the dimly lit brush. I knew what we were looking for, but it didn’t stop my heart from falling into my stomach at the sight of the thirty or forty creatures circling the base of a giant tree, reaching up into the sky above them. Each of the monsters was crawling over one another with their arms reaching toward its branches.
“What the hell’s up there?” Aidan whispered, with his eyes locked on the mass.
“No clue… but it’s gotta be something, or someone,” Kyle added.
“Look over there, boys. Another bunch is circling that tree,” Jarvis said, pointing at a tree maybe fifty yards to the right.
The group of Zs circling at that spot was smaller, at only five creatures, but they were doing the same reach to the sky dance as their friends across the clearing.
Kyle looked back and forth between the two trees before his eyes rested on me.
“What do you think?”
Before I had a chance to respond, we heard what I can only describe as a giant jacket zipper screaming at us from just beyond the canopy above.
Freezing, as if some sort of new monster was up there to get us, our heads shot up into the sky in unison, trying to see what the hell was causing the sound. Then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Still with no clue what it was, the same noise started again. Only this time, I was able to get a fix on where it originated.
Coming from between the two trees surrounded by Zs, the noise spun from one to the other. As it shot by, we could see some of the branches moving around in the forest above, causing a few of the drier leaves to come floating down to the ground below.
“Over there.” Aidan pointed.
At first, I couldn’t see what he was pointing to. Squinting my eyes ever so slightly, I gritted my teeth as I realized what we were looking at. In the second tree, surrounded by the smaller group of Zs, there were what appeared to be two men standing on some sort of wooden deck built into the tree itself.
As I stared at it in amazement, a third zipping noise rang out. Moments later, I saw a man seemingly float onto the same wooden perch. Landing his feet solidly on the deck, he reached up and unhooked himself from what I finally saw was a long metallic line that connected the two trees.