.Life Eater.
Part 1.
Mark Fredericks awoke to the sound of whispering wind, slowly surfacing to indistinct light and shapes. His head hurt and everything was blurry, he had no idea of the time and there was something seriously wrong with the world...then he had what some people would call an epiphany.
He suddenly remembered everything and knew what had happened.
He remembered the trees sweeping past below them as the chopper flew meters over the tree-line.
He remembered the engine coughing once...twice, then dying altogether, the rotors slowing down and the ground rising faster and faster.
He saw two of his team fall from their seats and fall through space.
He also remembered the pilot screaming into his mic and not making any sense.
He also remembered watching the sky...the trees...the sky...
The last thing he remembered was jumping out the sliding door as the trees scraped the body of the helicopter. After that it had all been blackness and numbness until now.
And one more thing...He appeared to be upside-down and hanging from his ankles. But, at least he was still breathing.
Okay, limb check. He moved his arms and legs (as much as he could anyway) everything still seemed to be working; no shooting pains or protruding bones that he could feel or see. He took a deep breath and waited for the tell-tale sign of cracked ribs or a punctured lung...nothing. Well that was a plus. He had fallen God knew how many meters through a tree canopy hitting branches and everything else in between and it looked like the worst he had suffered was some scrapes and bruising to his ego.
He could live with that.
The ground was a good three or four meters below him, the ground covering looking soft enough to break his fall without hurting too much.
He lifted his head and angled his vision towards where his feet were. His legs stopped at mid shin, the rest lost in a thick tangle of leaves and branches somewhere out of sight. He wasn't going anywhere for the moment.
He dropped his head back down and looked slowly around, the blood rushing to his head making his brain feel fuzzy and dislocated for a second. When his head had cleared and he could see more clearly he checked out his immediate surroundings. The copter lay at a slanted angle half buried in the forest floor the rotors on top broken and shattered, the tail section gone...at least it hadn't caught fire and burnt him alive while he was unconscious, that would have really sucked. He couldn't see any bodies from where he was but knew that they had to be around the wreck somewhere.
The rustle directly below give the dead man away before he knew it was there. He instinctively lifted his arms and swung up at the waist before realizing that the things reach was well below his range. He relaxed a little.
Reaching up he grabbed for the pistol that always hung on his thigh.
His fingers took hold of nothing but air.
The drop-leg holster was there, the ammunition clips still held in their snap pockets...but the 9mm browning was gone; the fastener hanging open, swinging free. Frantically he scanned the floor underneath him and saw it.
It was there, safe...unreachable...being trampled into the dead leaves by the zombie under him.
His leg slipped a fraction from where it was being held.
Oh crap!...not now he thought.
The branches snapped with the sound of a pistol shot, his body plummeting to land on the person below.
Both of them went down in a tangle of limbs. Mark thrashed his arms and upper body in a frantic attempt to keep the gnashing teeth from his flesh, he grabbed the things throat with one hand and pawed the floor with the other looking for his fallen side-arm. The thing above him was stronger than he could have imagined and he could feel himself losing ground to the snapping teeth of it as they came closer with every passing second.
His fingers brushed against something made of metal and he pulled it towards him. It wasn't the missing pistol but rather a sharp, forearm-long interior strut from the downed craft. Mark pulled it between the two of them and managed to put the sharpened end underneath the dead man's chin. With the last of his failing strength he pushed the metal into its flesh and into its mouth, the force of the things lunge pushed it the rest of the way and it entered the lower portion of its skull through its pallet. Several inches of it protruded from the top of the head coated in brains and gore. Mark felt the body go stiff and then the weight was gone from on top of him.
Taking several deep lungfuls of stale air he got shakily to his feet. Another zombie groaned nearby and he whipped his head in the direction of the noise.
He dropped to his knees and began another search for the missing gun.
They were thirty feet away and closing fast, or at least it seemed fast because he had no weapon.
There wasn't just one but three of them, all dressed in the torn rags of military uniforms.
His team...
His friends.
Twenty feet...
He found the gun and racked the slide back chambering a round in the barrel. He flicked off the safety with his thumb...and he waited.
Fifteen feet...
The pilot had seen better days that much was certain. The left side of his face was a mess of bloody tissue and exposed muscle and bone. A burst eyeball hung from its socket and lay on its raw cheek swinging slowly from side to side. One arm was missing below the elbow and the remains of it ended in bloody streamers of torn flesh. The other reached forwards, the three remaining fingers grasping, reaching for him.
He fired once...twice...the first catching him in the chest, the second punching him backwards into the ground, a smoking wound between his eyes.
His second in command had fared better; the right side of his body looking broken but intact. He walked with a sloping gait favouring its right leg, its left dragging sideways across the ground behind it. Mark sighted down the barrel and fired a single shot, the bullet taking the dead man high on the crown of its head flipping the skull open like a can. Blood and brains misted the air behind it as it thudded to the ground like a felled tree.
Eight feet...
The last was, or had been, the newest member of the team, just a kid of nineteen who had wanted to do his part in the war they all found themselves thrust into. It had been his first outing with the rest of the squad...and his last. He dragged himself forwards through the grass and leaves his sheared-off legs leaving bloody furrows in the ground behind the rest of his body. His fingers dug in relentlessly, pulling him forwards with one goal; the need to feed. Unrelenting...unquenchable...all encompassing. Mark lifted the weapon and sighted for a final time, his mouth moving in a final apology for this kid, this...child, and then he pulled the trigger. The bullet ploughed through the kids brow and then down into the trunk of its body stopping its course somewhere deep inside. He fell to the grass face first fingers still digging into the ground even in death.
Mark lowered the gun and let out a ragged sigh unaware that he had been holding his breath.
He was alive, he was unhurt...
And he was totally alone.