Arisen, Book Three - Three Parts Dead

by Glynn James

  Park felt like he was being waterboarded.

  “Maybe the lake water was okay,” Juice suggested. He was thinking that the whole point of the grenades had been to clear out the dead… although it also liquefied a lot of them.

  Ali had been able to keep her head clear of the water – though, with her helmet off, her hair had come down, and was soaked and matted below her chin. This was not a matter of fashion; that hair could now kill her. Pushing this thought aside, she moved out to the left side of the building, NVGs still on and rifle to shoulder, while Henno moved to the right. In thirty seconds, they both trotted back up.

  “Structure’s clear,” Henno said. “Either it stayed locked up through the fall, or someone cleared it out later. And cleared it out properly. No signs of Zulus or a scrap.”

  “Water?”

  Ali shook her head. “Both the boiler and the toilet tank are bone dry.”

  Juice looked up from where he was trying to wipe down both himself and Predator with antiseptic wipes from his aid kit. “How about bleach? Is there a janitor’s closet?” Ali nodded and took off again. The others crouched around the little green glow in the center of the church, the darkness pressing in on them – and the dead pressing in around that. They seemed to rattle the very structure with their heaving against the door and exterior walls.

  Handon looked up at Ali. “Homer?” He knew she would have already tried to radio him.

  She shook her head. “He’s probably still in the water.”

  Handon wasn’t worried. Everyone knew that the safest place for a SEAL was in the water, the deeper the better. They always seemed to be trying to fight their way back to it.

  Something cracked from the back of the church, sharp and loud. Handon looked at Henno. “Got it,” he said. Coming back seconds later, he said, “Stained glass. In the, the watchacallit, the short bits of the cross the church makes. The windows are at ground level. They won’t hold.”

  “How long?” Handon asked.

  “Ten minutes? Two?” Henno shrugged.

  Ali reappeared, toting a bucket and a white jug. Coordinating with efficient language, they got all of their remaining water into the bucket, then poured the bleach in after it. Then they got busy wiping and scrubbing. Wretchedly, where they most needed the bleach – around their mucous membranes – was where it burnt most savagely.

  While they scrubbed, Predator and Juice did their old-married-couple routine.

  “Hey,” Predator said, “remember that old zombie TV show, where people were constantly covered in the guts of zombies, episode after episode—”

  Juice cut in. “—and yet were in absolutely no danger of infection?”

  “Exactly. The tiniest scratch or bite, and they’re doomed – but they could be gargling with Zulu guts, and they’re fine.”

  Juice laughed, as he dunked his NVGs entire in the bleach solution. “What did they think the infection actually infected? And how did we ever buy into that?”

  “They probably just figured it looked edgy with everyone covered in gore all the damned time.”

  Handon wanted to tell them to shut the fuck up and focus. But he didn’t have the energy.

  Instead, he directed everyone to divide and swallow the anti-viral meds from their aid kits. There was no compelling clinical evidence that these prevented contraction of the virus. But it couldn’t hurt – and it was what they had. As the guys on the very front lines, they always carried them. It was something.

  Dr. Park got a double dose, which he had to swallow dry. Their water was gone.

  And now, if they’d been lucky enough to survive a close call with infection, they’d still have to try to avoid touching their wet clothes, or their faces, at least until they were able to clean up properly. Which was looking like it might be never.

  Handon looked around at his team, huddled in the middle of the nave, in the green glow of the single light stick, dead in the center aisle between the rows of pews. His immediate impulse, a stupid one, was to try to radio for support. But of course he knew that absolutely no support was coming.

  They were utterly on their own.

  This was nothing new, of course. But it was starting to feel uniquely bleak. After all this, after everything… would Alpha go down in a country church in some backwater lake town? Had the odds finally caught up with them?

  Shoving the blanket of hopelessness off him, reaching down again, as he’d done a hundred times before, Handon had the others do a quick catalog of weapons, ammo, and supplies they’d salvaged from the boat. It didn’t add up to much. Whatever hole that resupply pallet had dug them out of had itself been engulfed and swallowed up by Lake Michigan – the lake of the dead.

  Now they had only what they carried.

  And what they carried – rifles, magazines, grenades, radios, vests, helmets, NVGs – varied from man to man. Nobody had everything. It had all happened too fast. Handguns were about the only universal. Oh, and they were also down another team member – hopefully temporarily.

  And then there were five, thought Handon.

  The noise of cracking glass, from up in the transept, turned now to crashing. The snuffling of the dead sounded clearly, no longer muted by the wood and stone walls. The church was breached. As much to stall for planning time as out of necessity, Handon sent Ali and Henno forward to hold the line.

  Juice helped Pred to his feet, pausing to tell him to fuck off when he tried to shrug him off and do it on his own. Dr. Park bounced to his feet, eyes wide and shining. Handon took a deep breath. Oh, well, he thought. We’ll just have to shoot our way out of here. It worked for Butch and Sundance…

  “I’ve got a horrible feeling,” Juice said, “that it’s not gonna be any better out there than it was when we came in.”

  Predator grunted. “I’ve just got a horrible feeling.”

  As Handon chamber-checked his HK416 – taking care not to eject the round in the chamber; they’d need every cartridge – his radio did something extraordinary.

  First it squelched. And then it spoke. In a woman’s voice.

  “Hey, you.” It then squelched off, and paused. “The dumbasses. In the church.”

  Handon ground his jaw and looked at the others circled around him. He almost cursed aloud. This was beyond stupid, beyond even comical, and pretty much beyond enduring. But then he exhaled heavily. Oh, what the hell…? he thought. He pressed his transmit bar and spoke.

  “Dumbasses receiving five by five, send traffic.”

  The others busted out laughing, and Handon tried to hush them with his hand so he didn’t miss the response.

  Even Ali guffawed. And she was up at the front of the church, battling the dead.

  * * *

  The woman suddenly had no idea why she’d said that, spoken so flippantly. She knew radio protocol as well as anyone – maybe not their specific flavor of it, but still. But when the sound of their laughter came through her radio earpiece – including, she’d swear, the laughter of the woman she’d seen – she had to admit that was a pretty good omen.

  She was now half the length of the village away from their location – where the newcomers had basically advertised a free dead-guy festival up at the church. She had to keep her distance to avoid all the fun. But it was still easily within radio range.

  She pressed her transmit bar again, then raised the radio to her lips and spoke quietly. “This is Five-Five-Eight Tango Papa receiving. Listen to me if you want to get out of there alive. Over.”

  She took a steadying breath. Now she was really committing.

  God, let me not have cause to regret this…

  * * *

  “Standing by, Five-Five-Eight,” Handon said. He pulled the earpiece cable out of the radio and pointed the speaker outward. He figured everyone may as well hear this, if only to save time. And they were about out of that. Again.

  “Okay. Listen carefully, and do not mistake me. I can get you out of there. And I can get you to safety. But you do EVERYTHING I say. W
hen I say it. Including when I say it’s time for you to go. Understood?”

  Handon spoke seriously in response. “All received and understood. It’s your party, Five-Five-Eight.”

  “Okay. That church you’re in is of colonial vintage. Which means it’s built on a root cellar. You won’t have seen it, because last I checked it’s under a rug, but there’s stairwell access through the floor behind the altar. Got that?”

  Handon tossed his head at Juice, who darted off toward the altar.

  “Dumbass copies all. And does that get us out of the building alive, over?”

  “Affirmative on getting you out of the building. Alive will be trickier. Most of your dead are clustered around the front doors where you went in, and the windows of the transept. But they’re pretty much on all sides at this point – and they aren’t getting any fewer, so listen up. Because I’m an idiot, I’m going to do you a diversion, on the front side of the building. If you’re lucky, that will draw the ones from the back. On my signal you break out. Got it?”

  “Roger that. Moving into position now.”

  “Not so fast! No shooting when you break out. You do it as damned close to silently as you can manage. Because if I see the dead are still on you when you get back outside… you are on your own again. You got that?”

  “Roger that,” Handon said, looking around as they all moved down the aisle and around the altar. This took them past Ali and Henno’s positions in the two transepts. All the front-facing windows there had now been shot or smashed out. The two defenders fired methodically, every time one of the creatures seemed like it was about to claw around the others and drag itself inside.

  “Noise discipline,” Handon said, and reached for the rug at their feet. But as he grabbed a handful and started to yank, another hand stopped his. It was Predator, grabbing him by the wrist. Handon swiveled his neck and pinned the giant’s squinted eyes with his own. He just waited for it.

  “Any idea whatsoever who’s on the other end of that line?” Predator said. His tone implied a certain doubt in Handon’s decision-making right this second. “And any particular reason we trust her?” He let go of Handon’s wrist and let him answer.

  “No idea. But there can’t be as many of them as there are Zulus, and if it goes south we’ll just kill them, too. And I’m a little more trusting precisely because it’s a ‘her’.”

  Predator nodded, his expression saying Okay, fair enough.

  Handon now gave the rug a yank, revealing a trapdoor in the floor beneath it. Huh, he thought. With a little luck, the Zulus won’t be able to get this open behind us… He held it up for Dr. Park, Juice, and Pred – then whistled for Ali and Henno, who backed toward him, their rifles slung and melee weapons out. They disappeared into the black maw of the basement, and Handon followed them down. He could see dead piling into the building on either side as he did so.

  As a last brilliant maneuver, he tried to pull the rug back over the trapdoor as he shut it.

  But it wasn’t necessary. Within five seconds, he could hear the Zulus walking all over it. Their own stupid dead weight would keep them from ever getting it open.

  Handon clicked on his weapon-mounted light, took a few steps toward the rear of the building, and cast around until he found another short set of stairs. It rose up and terminated in one of those slanted cellar doors they’re always taking shelter from tornadoes behind. Or so Handon remembered from the movies. With the others stacked up behind him, he pressed to transmit, hoping like hell whoever it was was still there.

  “Five-Five-Eight, Dumbass is in position, how copy?”

  “That’s received. Stand by.” She sounded like she was moving. She came back on a few seconds later. “You ready for that diversion?”

  “Good to go. On your signal.”

  “Well, this is your signal. The coast is clear – all your dead are now inside the church, or trying to fight their way in. No diversion required. Thank fuck. Over.”

  Handon made a Silence hand signal, extinguished his light, worked the latch, and slooowly pushed open the cellar door. Outside, it looked like empty churchyard and clear night air to him – though the dark was now starting to lighten slightly. Dawn was almost breaking. Handon led the way out, head on a swivel, the snuffling and scrabbling sounds of the dead coming around either side of the building behind them. There was a treeline to the rear, on the other side of fifty meters of churchyard, and Handon made for it. The others followed.

  As soon as they were what Handon would call a safe depth inside the wooded area, about a hundred meters, he came upon the woman. Or she came upon them. She was of average height, proportional build, with what looked like shoulder-length dark hair pulled into an efficient ponytail. Early thirties Handon guessed. She wore jeans and a thigh-length hunting jacket, with a tactical belt on the outside of it. She also carried a Ruger Mini-14 – not quite pointed at them, but not quite lowered either.

  Handon lowered his weapon completely. He put out his hand.

  “Handon,” he said.

  “Later,” she said, eyeing the rest of the group. “This way.” She led them at a smart jog up what looked to Handon like a deer trail. After another two hundred meters, she angled them off it, taking them through thick underbrush, which finally emerged onto a somewhat washed-out dirt or clay road. Then she carried on, still at a vigorous jog, west along it – away from the lake, and up into forest of higher elevation.

  Only when they were a good mile out did she slow her jog to a brisk walk.

  Walking side by side with Handon, she stuck her hand out this time.

  “Sarah,” she said.

  Handon took hers. “How’d you know our radio frequency, Sarah?”

  “Not hard to work out,” she said, keeping her eye on the dirt road and the gloom that spooled out ahead of them. “You’re obviously military. Ex-military, I guess.” Her voice was rich and feminine, but smart and professional. Serious, Handon thought. Grown-up. She looked back behind them – and saw, perhaps for the first time, Predator’s half-crippled, lurching gait. “You didn’t tell me you had wounded,” she said.

  Before Handon could answer, Pred said, “Screw you, lady,” as he accelerated to a stiff-legged fast-walk and overtook them all. Handon shook his head. The problem with giant unstoppable badasses was that they dealt very poorly with injury, limitation, or incapacity.

  “Parachuting accident,” Handon said.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows at this, and turned on her heel and started walking backward. As she did so, she eyed the others in the group more closely. They all looked intact. Moreover, she probably just had to trust here. This group looked serious enough not to keep bit or scratched friends around. If they were like that, they never would have made it two years in the first place.

  Handon worked out what she was doing – as well as the conclusion she reached. As she turned on her heel again and faced forward, Handon smiled slightly, intrigued. Whoever this woman was, she was all business.

  And she was very clearly in charge.

  Good enough, he thought, settling in to the walk. This suited him at the moment. And he knew enough to always defer to the person who knew the ground.

  Local knowledge was powerful mojo.

  As the terrain gently rose and forested hills swelled up around them, Handon looked sidelong at her again, and considered asking her where they were going. But she’d done enough already, and he decided to leave it for now. She’d tell them in her own time.

  Sometimes demonstrating a little faith was tactically proficient.

  At the Gates

  CentCom Exchange, London

  Elise Bridgeton, exchange operator, leaned back in her chair and took a mournful breath. She grabbed her coffee cup and fired down a swig, grimacing at the cold, sharp liquid. Around her, the office was buzzing; thirty other operators chattered into their headsets, answering emergency calls or patching military comms from one location to another. This was an average day at the CentCom first-line call center
.

  Elise had joined CentCom a year before, having been in telephone sales for five years before everything went bad. She used to love her job, sitting in a high-rise office not far from Westminster, cold-calling London banking and finance firms, and selling them computer hardware and software. It had been easy.

  This, on the other hand, answering distress calls and patching military updates, gave her a level of deep-down good feeling that sales never had. There was something very satisfying about telling someone that help was on the way, or just saying the words, "Received, CentCom out" to a squad of soldiers patrolling the coast, or maybe some inbound flight coming back from a mission and making their hourly call in.

  CentCom was very strict about those hourly call-ins, and when one didn’t happen it made everybody nervous.

  That was what was happening now, and Elise was frightened as hell. She’d only had a few incidents where a team hadn’t reported in at the correct time, and that usually just meant they were occupied at that moment, or were having a comms outage. A quick call from a CentCom operator, or a few minutes’ waiting, normally resolved the issue. But occasionally the call went unanswered, as had the one she just made to a Rural Mobile Team patrolling south of Canterbury. Patrol 15, Canterbury Border Division were now twenty minutes over their call-in time.

  She was just about to flag down her superior officer, the call center supervisor, when the incoming-call light on her screen began to flick on and off.

  Elise breathed a sigh of relief. It was the team’s radio signature. Crisis over. She opened the channel.

  “CentCom. Go ahead, Team Fifteen.”

  But the voice that answered was not the one she expected.

  “Hello? Hello? Do you hear me?”

  Elise’s heart jumped in her chest. The voice on the other end sounded strained, frightened.

  “CentCom Exchange, please state your unit designation.”

  “I’m at the hospital. Chaucer Hospital. We’ve just picked up your soldiers. I mean the patrol. They came in and they’re all…”

  The voice trailed off. There was a noise in the background, but Elise couldn’t make it out. Someone in pain, maybe?