Pines

The sudden noise cut Pilcher off. At first, Ethan thought someone had fired up a jackhammer out in the forest, but then the fear hit him right between the eyes.

It was the tat-tat-tat of the AK.

Pam’s voice exploded over the radio. “Start the chopper! They’re coming!”

Pilcher glanced into the cockpit. “Get us out of here,” he said.

“Working on it, boss.”

Ethan heard the turbines of the BK117 starting up, the thunderous boom of Pam’s shotgun. He moved over to the window, staring back toward the woods as the gunfire grew louder.

Already, it was too noisy inside the helicopter to talk, so he tugged on his headset and motioned for Pilcher to do the same.

“What do you want me to do?” Ethan asked.

“Help me run Pines. From the inside. It’ll be a helluva job, but you were made for it.”

“Isn’t that what Pope’s doing?”

Ethan saw movement in the trees as the turbines began to whine, the cabin vibrating as the RPMs increased.

Pope and Pam broke out of the forest, backpedaling into the clearing.

Three abbies leaped out of the trees and Pope cut two of them down with a long burst of full auto while Pam put a pair of slugs through the third one’s chest.

Ethan lunged to the other side of the cabin and looked out the window.

“Pilcher.”

“What?”

“Give me your gun.”

“Why?”

Ethan tapped the glass, motioning to a pack of abbies emerging on the far side of the field—at least four of them, all barreling toward Pam and Pope at a fast, low sprint that utilized all four appendages.

“You with me, Ethan?”

“They’re going to be killed.”

“Are you with me?”

Ethan nodded.

Pilcher slapped the .357 into his hand.

Ethan ripped off his headset and shouted into the cockpit, “How long?”

“Thirty seconds!”

Ethan cranked open the door and jumped down into the grass.

The noise and the wind from the rotors screaming in his ear.

Pope and Pam were fifty yards away and still backing toward the chopper while laying down a torrent of suppressing fire.

They’d killed a dozen of them already—pale bodies strewn across the grass—and still more were coming.

More than Ethan could count.

He ran in the opposite direction.

Twenty yards past the copter, he stopped and planted his feet shoulder-width apart.

Stared at the revolver in his hand—a double-action Ruger with a six-shot cylinder.

He raised it.

Sighted down the barrel.

Five of them charging at full speed.

He thumbed back the hammer as frantic machine-gun and twelve-gauge fire roared over the turbines.

The abbies were thirty feet away, Ethan thinking, Anytime you want to start shooting, that might be a good idea. And no double taps. You need single-fire kill shots.

He drew a bead on the one in the center, and as it came up into the crest of its stride, squeezed off a round that sheered away the top of its head in a fountain of gore.

At least he was shooting hollow points.

The other four kept coming, unfazed.

Twenty feet away.

He dropped the two on the left—one shot apiece through the face.

Hit the fourth one in the throat.

The last abby inside of ten feet now.

Close enough to smell it.

Ethan fired as it jumped, the bullet only grazing its leg, Ethan adjusting his aim as the abby rocketed toward him.

Pulled back the hammer, pulled the trigger as the monster hit, teeth bared, its scream at this proximity louder than the turbines.

The bullet went through its teeth and tore out of the back of its skull in a spray of bone and brain as it crashed into Ethan.

He didn’t move.

Stu

His head jogged so hard that flashes of light were detonating everywhere he looked, and his hearing was jumbled—muffled and slowed down so that he could pick out all the individual pieces of sound that built the symphony of chaos around him.

Shotgun blasts.

The AK.

The spi

The screams of the abbies.

Telling himself, Get up, get up, get up.

Ethan heaved the dead weight of the abby off his chest and sat up. Tried to look across the field, but his vision was stuck on blurry. He blinked hard several times and shook his head, the world slowly crystallizing like someone turning the focus knobs on a pair of binoculars.

Dear God.

There must have been fifty of them already in the clearing.

Dozens more breaking out of the trees with every passing second.

All moving toward the helicopter in the center of the field.

Ethan struggled up onto his feet, listing left in the wake of the hit, his center of balance a

He stumbled toward the helicopter.

Pam was already inside.

Pope standing several feet out from the skid, trying to hold the abbies off. He had shouldered the rifle and was taking precision shots now, Ethan figuring he must be down to the final rounds of his magazine.

Ethan patted him on the shoulder as he stepped onto the skid, screamed in his ear, “Let’s go!”

Pilcher opened the door and Ethan scrambled up into the cabin.

He buckled himself in, glanced out the window.

An army of abbies flooded across the field.

Hundreds of them.

Ten seconds from the chopper and closing in like a mongrel horde.

As he put on his headset, Pilcher pulled the cabin door closed, locked it, said, “Let’s go, Roger.”

“What about the sheriff?”

“Pope’s staying.”

Through his window, Ethan saw Arnold throw down his AK and try to open the door, struggling with the handle but it wouldn’t turn.

Pope stared through the glass at Pilcher, a beat of confusion flashing through the lawman’s eyes, followed quickly by recognition.

Then fear.

Pope screamed something that never had a chance of being heard.

“Why?” Ethan said.

Pilcher didn’t avert his eyes from Pope. “He wants to rule.”

Pope beat his fists against the window, blood smearing across the glass.

“Not to rush you or anything, Roger, but we’re all going to die if you don’t get us out of here.”

Ethan felt the skids pivot and go airborne.

He said, “You can’t just leave him.”

Ethan watched as the chopper lifted off the ground, the sheriff hooking his left arm around the skid, fighting to hang on.

“It’s done,” Pilcher said, “and you’re my new sheriff. Welcome aboard.”

A mob of abbies swarmed under Pope, jumping, clawing, but he’d established a decent grip on the skid and his feet dangled just out of reach.

Pilcher said, “Roger, take us down a foot or two if you wouldn’t mind.”

The chopper descended awkwardly—Ethan could tell the pilot hadn’t flown in years—lowering Pope back down into the madness on the ground.

When the first abby grabbed hold of Pope’s leg, the tail of the chopper ducked earthward under the weight.

Another one latched onto his other leg, and for a horrifying second, Ethan thought they would drag the chopper to the ground.

Roger overcorrected, climbing fast to a twenty-foot hover above the field.

Ethan stared down into Pope’s wild eyes.

The man’s grip on the skid had deteriorated to a single handhold, his knuckles blanching under the strain, three abbies clinging to his legs.

He met Ethan’s eyes.

Screamed something that was drowned out by the roar of the turbines.

Pope let go, fell for half a second, and then vanished under a feeding frenzy.

Ethan looked away.

Pilcher was staring at him.

Staring through him.

The helicopter banked sharply and screamed north toward the mountains.

* * *

It was a quiet flight, Ethan’s attention divided between staring out his window and glancing back through the curtain at his sleeping family.