Corporal Hendricks's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Corporal Hendricks was a dead man walking, and he knew it. He had died months ago, but his mind stayed sharp under the helmet, and one thought drove him forward: a rumored stronghold held a cure that could make him human again. So he walked. He kept his gun on his back, his canteen full, his camouflage caked in mud. He hunted the living world for a way back to it. Tonight the dead hunted him instead. The pack caught his scent at dusk. A dozen feral undead, faster and hungrier than he remembered being, spilled over a low ridge behind him. They didn't wander like Hendricks. They ran. Their moans rose into one long note, and that note meant swarm. He counted the gap between them and himself. Thirty steps. Shrinking. He could not outrun them. His legs were stiff and slow. He could not fight them all. His rifle held nine rounds, and gunfire would only call more. Hendricks ran anyway, because stopping meant teeth. He crashed through brush and stumbled down a slope. His boot struck metal. He fell hard and turned to look. Half-buried in the hillside sat a squat stone dome. Riveted plates covered it. A round steel hatch faced him, sealed with a red frame and a heavy wheel. Vents flanked the hatch like blind eyes. Someone had built this to be found by no one. The pack reached the top of the slope. Hendricks grabbed the wheel and turned. His fingers barely gripped, but the wheel gave. Metal shrieked. The hatch swung inward. He threw himself through and hauled it shut behind him. The first body slammed the door a breath later. Then another. The dome rang like a struck pot. Hendricks spun the inside wheel until the bolts drove home. He pressed his back to the cold steel and listened. The moans changed. They lost the sharp edge of the hunt. He understood why. The vents. Something in this bunker scrubbed his scent from the air. Outside, the pack could no longer smell him. They pawed the stone, confused, and one by one they drifted off. Within minutes the moaning faded into the dark. Hendricks stayed still a long time. The dead had lost him. He was alive, in the only sense he had left. Then he turned and looked at where he was. The bunker held one room. A cot. A dead lantern. And on the far wall, a map pinned with a rusted knife. Someone had marked a single route across it in red, ending at a circled point far to the north. Below the circle, a shaky hand had written one word. Cure. Hendricks stepped closer. The map maker was gone. But the route was here, and now it was his. The swarm had chased him straight into the one thing he needed most.