Each new explosion spreads the carnage further out, to new hardware, waiting to be engulfed. The chain reaction is out of control and won’t be stopped until there is nothing left to feed it.
Some helicopter pilots try to take the initiative before the destruction has spread to their craft. Those far enough away and with their engines already started hastily lift off and fly away from the danger zone, to save themselves and their helicopters. Other pilots who are either too close to the destruction or too slow to react either burn in their seats or are blown out of the sky, adding to the inferno and spreading the chaos to new areas of the landing zone.
Corporal Harris and his team were far enough away from the initial explosion to survive, and they looked on in shock and awe at the initial Chinook crash and the following fireball.
To Harris’s credit, he was quick to react, seeing that the Chinook’s crash would be the tip of the iceberg. He understood almost straight away what would follow that crash.
“We have got to get out of this area!” he shouts, desperately, at his men. “The whole area is going to explode.”
His men don’t argue; they see all the ground crews that have survived, so far running for their lives, away from the landing zone with panic across their faces. The only decision that needs to be made is which way do they go? The direction, from which they have just come back from their break, lined with more helicopters, just waiting to explode. That path only leads to the hangars laden with ordinance, which could easily go up too.
“This way!” Harris shouts as he starts to run off in the opposite direction as the bigger explosions start to ignite.
Everyone is going in the same direction, as fast as they possibly can. Harris and his men join the stream of people coming out of the landing zones, from between the masses of stationary helicopters. Caught in the expanse between the terminal buildings and the erupting landing zones, they all run straight ahead, desperately trying to get to open ground.
A shock wave travels out into the expanse, knocking two people off their feet in front of Harris. They don’t stay down to lick their wounds, but scramble back to their feet straight away and are off running again, their fear driving them. The explosions are getting close to the outer edge, where lines of Apache Attack helicopters sit ominously waiting to detonate. The expanse is wide, but not wide enough; anytime now, it will be an inferno that will surely engulf the terminal building.
Harris leads his men as they try to outrun the impending disaster. The expanse narrows the farther they go, which bunches all the people up and their progress isn’t helped by airport transport equipment abandoned in the middle of the tarmac.
Harris barges past some of the slower people, their panic not making their legs carry them fast enough for him. Their protests and whimpers as he pushes past are disregarded; it’s not his problem they are too slow.
One panicked idiot of a man is scything his way in the opposite direction against the tide. The man’s eyes are wide with terror. He won’t find any escape down that way, Harris thinks to himself, bloody twat.
Progress slows as some kind of bottleneck forms up ahead. A massive explosion detonates behind, Harris doesn’t turn to look. The force of the blast and the heatwave feel like they are virtually on top of him, his desperation to get clear escalating. The bottleneck is getting worse, however; what the fuck are these people doing? “Keep moving,” he shouts. Suddenly, he starts seeing faces, frightened faces, coming towards him. More idiots going the wrong way; no wonder his escape is slowing down. Some people lose their minds at the slightest sign of danger, for fuck’s sake.
“You’re going the wrong way!” he shouts at them uselessly.
Even above the deafening sounds of the explosions behind him, Harris hears a new sound, the sound of human screams ahead. What the hell is going on up there, the fire hasn’t reached that far, he asks himself? Whatever it is it can’t be as bad as being burnt alive or blown to bits. Harris presses forward.
A small lull in the explosions allows Harris to hear a shout and the penny finally drops. The people falling out of the floundering Chinook, before it crashed, flash before his eyes. Those weren’t people falling; they were infected, so that is why the Chinook went out of control. That is what Harris heard shouted; he heard someone shout ‘Zombies’.
Harris comes to a standstill, panic and fear gripping him, the same as everyone else, his mind floundering. Turn back to fire and explosions or go forward to whatever awaits there? His body turns backwards, then forwards, then back again; finally, he decides and turns forwards.
People are scattering, running in every direction, some even back into the maze of exploding helicopters. One in complete panic runs into the terminal building, headfirst into the solid brick wall that runs along the bottom of the building. Her head bounces off the whitewashed wall, knocking herself out, and the only evidence left is a small red patch where her head hit.
Harris looks forward for a path through the melee. He sees one and starts his run. Only a few strides in, something flies at him from above. Harris sees the Rabid infected Zombie over the heads of the people; it is flying at him as if on wires. The Rabid’s claw-like hands are outstretched ready to dig into
