Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Handon eyed him levelly. “Where’d you get water?”

  Zorn nodded. “We’ve got multiple above-ground storage tanks. Ultimately, I rigged them to top up with rainwater. Until then, well, a U.S. military base in Africa keeps several metric shit-tons of bottled water on hand at all times.”

  Handon nodded. It sounded believable – the water and long-life food stores of an installation this size would keep one man alive for a very long time. But there was still the question of why he was the one man alive – and where everyone else had gone. Handon might not be genre-savvy. But he knew Zorn’s presence here demanded an explanation. And he didn’t have time to dance around the issues.

  “Where’s the rest of the base garrison?” he asked.

  “Dead,” Zorn said. “Turned.”

  “Yeah, we presumed that,” Fick said, sitting erect in a wooden chair with his forearms on his thighs. “But where are they now?”

  Zorn picked up on the pointedness of this question and squinted at Fick in reaction. “Wandered off,” he said.

  “What?” said Handon. “All four thousand personnel?”

  Zorn shrugged. “It’s been a long two years. And most of the gates were open for most of that time.”

  “And none wandered in?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  Handon let this lie for the moment. “What about the local population? Djibouti Town. They must have gone down about the same time as the base garrison.”

  Zorn cocked his head slightly. Handon had the uncomfortable sense that the man was trying to work out Handon’s game. That the two were playing some kind of poker. And Zorn was keeping his cards close to his chest.

  “They did,” Zorn said after a pause. “But they’re not in Djibouti Town anymore.”

  * * *

  “You and I,” Noise said to Brady. “Together, we are ready for anything!”

  He meant that one of them, namely him, had a fully automatic combat shotgun, a full-size scimitar hanging from his belt, and was kitted out in full assault gear. And the other had a knife, and was basically naked – having lost virtually all of his weapons and gear to the bottom of the Gulf of Aden. Brady didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help but feel the man in the combat turban was trying to put a happy face on things.

  And he could at least be grateful Noise had left his smoothie maker at home.

  The two of them had just positioned themselves at an intersection of roads and buildings to the west of the office where the commanders were interrogating the prisoner. They had good visibility and fields of fire, though they also shifted around periodically to get a different view, and to keep from being too static. This part of the camp was just like the other parts they’d seen – clean, empty, and damaged by long-ago action.

  Like a ruin of an ancient city that was now some kind of tourist attraction.

  Brady noticed that Noise kept glancing off toward the northwest for some reason. He followed his eye, but couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything, either. So it must have been some other sense the Sikh was tuning in to.

  And just as Brady had mentally accepted his barefoot and minimalist fighting posture and decided to go with it, Henno came around the corner and tossed something at his chest. The Marine reached out and snatched it out of mid-air – it was a set of keys on a lanyard.

  “What’s this?”

  “Keys to the local armory,” Henno said. “You can get kitted out again there.”

  “Nice,” Brady said, straightening up.

  Henno nodded at Noise. “And the LaMoE saw that shoulder artillery of yours. Said they might have some drum mags for that thing as well.”

  Noise smiled winningly. “Outstanding.” He used to have several of the hubcap-sized 32-round shotgun magazines for his Auto Assault 12, but had been unable to rescue them before they went to the bottom of the Atlantic. “Shells, too?”

  “No doubt,” Henno said. “I’ll spot you here.” Henno gave them quick directions, then took up their position and scanned the base through squinted eyes.

  He tried to picture what that full-auto shotgun would do when unleashed. He’d seen the collateral damage caused by American weapons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. They’d go blasting in, call down air strikes or artillery, level everything, kill civilians. Then they’d wonder why there was an insurgency they couldn’t put down.

  Henno considered it ironic that it was the other Brit who had the indiscriminate weapon on this one. Maybe it was a reminder to him to be a little more fair-minded – and not so quick to make it him against the world. Or even him against the Americans.

  And the time may yet come when he’d be glad they had shoulder artillery.

  * * *

  “Thanks for that,” Handon said to Zorn, after Henno left.

  “No problem. I’m pretty good on small arms and ammo. But what I really need to defend this place is heavy weapons.”

  Handon said, “What happened to the base’s heavy weapons?”

  Zorn paused fractionally. “Used in the fall. In the final defense of the camp.”

  Fick squinted. “Need it to defend this place from who?”

  Zorn shrugged. “Herds. Scavengers. Marauders.”

  Handon said, “So there are other survivors in this area?”

  “Not ’til you showed up.”

  This seemed evasive to Handon. Zorn wasn’t answering the question. “No one else alive on the ground around here?”

  Zorn considered. “Some Somali militia guys came once, early on. Managed to bring the dead down on their heads.”

  “They take anything?” Fick asked. He was thinking about force protection, wondering how heavily armed the locals around here might be – not least since they might be fighting them in the next hours or days.

  “They got two Hellfire missiles.”

  Fick squinted. “What the hell would militia do with Hellfires?”

  Zorn looked like he didn’t care. “I don’t know. Make kiddie playground rides?”

  Handon ground his jaw in frustration. “You said they brought the dead down on them. Again – where are all the dead now?”

  Zorn looked up. “You sound like you’re in a really big hurry to get into trouble. What’s your mission here?”

  Handon and Fick exchanged a look: No. The long-ingrained habits of OPSEC told them not to read this guy in.

  “We’re just reconning the area,” Handon said, knowing a lie was less likely to lead to an impasse than an outright refusal to tell him.

  “There are plenty of dead outside the wire,” Zorn said. “In town.”

  Handon nodded, looking satisfied – and started to rise.

  “Assuming you like Egyptians.”

  Handon froze, his expression hardening again. “What does that mean?”

  “None of the dead in town are original inhabitants. Almost all North Africans out there now. Bunch of Egyptians and Libyans. Some Algerians, I think. Rampaged two thousand miles or more across the second largest continent just to grace me with their goddamned presence here.”

  Fick shook his head. “And the hits just keep on coming.”

  He meant: so much for finding an early-stage victim.

  “How?” Handon said, completely unamused.

  “Herds, like I said. Swirling things up.” When he looked up, neither Handon nor Fick looked convinced. “Mainly one big-ass herd – really big. About six months ago. Thought it would never stop going by. By the time it did, it had basically displaced the entire original set of dead assholes in the region. Now, if there are any of the original ones left, there aren’t many. And it’s hard to tell which are which.”

  Handon cursed under his breath.

  Fick perked up. “We could tell if they were in uniform.”

  Zorn paused. “You won’t find any of the garrison soldiers in town.”

  “Why not?” Fick said.

  “You just won’t.” Zorn looked around the room. “Look, I haven’t seen any in a long time. But go check it o
ut if you want.” He squinted slightly.

  Handon thought either his poker face was wearing thin – or he was using it to better advantage. He glanced around the room and for the first time noticed the radio set on a table in the corner. It was an AN/PSC-5D military radio – with military encryption.

  Handon said, “So this whole camp’s secure, then? Undead-free.”

  “Not all of it,” Zorn said.

  “How’d you clear as much as you did?” Fick asked.

  Zorn shrugged. “I just did it.”

  “You said you were holed up in the DFAC for the first eighteen months. What happened six months ago that made you want to join the world again and retake the camp? Clear this place and polish it up to a high sheen?”

  “It seemed like the time.”

  Handon bookmarked all that for later. “And nobody else survived? No one from the JSOC compound? None of the SF ODAs working out of here?” Handon found it hard to believe that none of those operators survived, while this guy did.

  Zorn read his look perfectly. Like they were bad-ass spec-ops guys, and he was just a shitbird conventional forces grunt so, hey, the only way he could possibly have survived when they didn’t was hiding out in a closet or something – while the SOCOM guys all fought to the last man.

  Zorn’s face twisted up around his scar. “Those assholes ran for it.” He paused to relish the effect this was having. “I assume they died running. And you should, too.”

  Handon didn’t know whether that meant he should assume the others died running. Or whether he and his team would die running themselves.

  Maybe both.

  Abandoned

  Camp Lemonnier - DFAC

  [Six Months Ago]

  CSM Zorn bolted out of his makeshift bed at the first cracking reports of gunfire.

  The last time he’d heard that sound, it had been when a bunch of al-Shabaab assholes had walked right into his camp, started poking around the aircraft ordnance sheds – and then woke up a shitload of dead.

  And the sound now was exactly the same: full-auto AK fire.

  He paused and considered for a second. Then he grabbed his meticulously cleaned and oiled M4, pulled on a tactical vest with a few mags, buckled up his belt with its M1911 .45 pistol, and quick-laced his boots.

  Then he circled the building to the side closest to the gunfire and took a look out the window. He couldn’t see anything but a little reflected glow of muzzle flashes. So he opened the door and dashed out.

  This was only about the fifth time he’d gone outside – in a year and a half.

  As he ran to the sound of the guns, trying to avoid approaching them from down-range, he was able to make out two new sounds. First, faintly, was the sound of suppressed rifle shots. He didn’t imagine that would be the al-Shabaab guys, though who knew, really. They’d been getting more tactically savvy all the time. Then again, there was little point in having only some of your weapons suppressed.

  And then he heard grenades crumping off.

  Finally he turned a corner and got a beautiful view of the action. It was in fact a bunch of militia-looking guys, either al-Shabaab or so close as made no difference, all swarming forward, from ahead and to his left.

  On his right was one of their old LVAD trucks, even then being mounted up by a handful of figures he not only recognized as Army Special Forces – he knew exactly which ODA it was: 555. Because he had been face-to-face with them, twice, in the last few hours before the camp fell.

  The al-Shabaab guys were now shooting the shit out of the truck, though the Triple Nickel guys were putting out effective return fire. And Zorn realized he was actually in an excellent flanking or supporting position for them. If he opened up on the al-Shabaab force, he could probably halt their advance. The panic and fear caused by being lit up from their flank would send them scurrying.

  But, then again… if he opened fire, God knew what that would bring down on him. And his M4 wasn’t suppressed – it would be both loud and bright, perfectly identifying his position. And now he also saw the staggering forms of the undead stumbling and running in from the periphery of the fight.

  The LVAD’s engine started up with a throaty roar. Triple Nickel was outgunned, and they were clearly planning to drive themselves the hell out of this death zone. And Zorn was in a good position to help cover their withdrawal.

  He hesitated once more, the instinct to pitch in battling the instinct to survive.

  And then, finally, he remembered that team’s last withdrawal from this camp. First they’d tried to take off and rescue their split team out in the bush – just as the base was fighting off determined militia attacks all along the wire. And then, when everything went completely to hell, Zorn had seen them driving out in their super-special gun trucks, blasting right by him while he was in heavy contact – and not so much as waving, never mind stopping to help him.

  They had abandoned the camp, abandoned the command they were posted to, and abandoned the conventional soldiers who were supposed to be their brothers.

  No, Zorn thought bitterly. Fuck them.

  And he silently lowered his weapon and watched it all play out.

  * * *

  Finally, after the SF guys hauled ass out of there in the truck, he watched as the remaining al-Shabaab fighters got swarmed and devoured by the dead. They put up a decent fight in a running battle, legging it for the main gate. But they lost.

  For a brief second, Zorn assumed a shooting stance and took a bead. But then he realized he honestly had no idea whether he was about to help cover the al-Shabaab guys from the dead while they reloaded… or start picking them off, Sergeant York-style, from the back of their column.

  It was a weird moral dilemma. But, then again, not one he felt all that compelled to resolve. In the end he held his fire. And he watched all of them go down. Or almost all of them, anyway. At the very end, he thought he heard an engine start up somewhere outside the wire, and drive off to the southeast.

  So at least one had survived.

  But then, just like that, it was over.

  Though these two groups of unwelcome assholes had riled up the undead camp residents to a fever pitch Zorn hadn’t seen since the fall. So he crept back to his DFAC redoubt and gave them a few days to settle down into their regular torpor again. Then he crept back out.

  He had a couple of things he wanted to do.

  First, he wanted to know why the SF guys had come back. That was quickly resolved when he went by the Heavy Weapons locker. The thick steel door had been cut into with an acetylene torch – and almost everything behind it had been cleared out. Well, not everything. But a shitload of weapons and ordnance.

  Nervy sons of bitches.

  The super-special forces had finally come back – but only to clean the camp out of its best hardware. That was typical. In his mind, Zorn had been saving the heavy weapons to one day retake and fortify the camp. He didn’t know when he was planning on doing so, any more than he knew why he kept putting it off.

  Maybe he just couldn’t face the enormity of the task.

  He’d kept telling himself that support and resupply from his chain of command was going to come, one day. But in fact they weren’t coming – ever. He wasn’t going to have any help, and he knew now he had to do this job himself.

  Fuck it, he thought. He was the senior enlisted man in the command, which meant he worked for a living, and by proclamation was better at his job than anyone below him. Which was everyone, outside of the officer ranks, who were of course completely useless. Only a little more so now that they were dead.

  So he’d just do the shit himself.

  Still keeping to the shadows, and cutting a wide swath around the figures that stood alone or in small groups, canted at weird angles, either stock-still or teetering and twitching, he made his way to the construction compound. Opening up the largest structure, he immediately found the two things he most needed: one of the little Bobcat earth movers. And a shit-ton of HESCO barriers – the ca
nvas-covered mesh-wire baskets that could be filled with dirt, stones, or rubble to make blast-proof walls. The latter were currently unfilled and neatly folded up.

  And if he could fill HESCO barriers and move them around, which he could with the Bobcat, then he could redraw the lines of the camp.

  In the next shed over he found a bunch of stacked chain-link fencing. And some of those chain-driven motors used to open and close sections of them. The time had come. He couldn’t just hang out surviving anymore.

  He had to retake the camp – and regain his command.

  Amarie's Choice

  CentCom HQ - Outside the North Gate

  No one had selected suitable footwear for this.

  When the group of Tunnelers had escaped into the French end of the Channel Tunnel two long years ago, they’d all been running for their lives. If it had been something they’d planned for, they probably would have worn sturdy hiking boots – or maybe wellies, if they’d known they’d be living in a flooded tunnel for two years.

  And when, against all expectations, they were finally pulled out the other end, the shoes they’d worn into it had mostly rotted off their feet. They’d had to take what they were given to replace them, which were largely donations from members of the public who saw the Tunnelers’ plight on television. Most of those donated shoes weren’t made for walking, and some didn’t fit very well.

  Now the surviving Tunnelers – Hackworth, Colley, McHeath, Amarie and Josie, and all the others – had practically walked these new ones right off their feet as well. First trudging out of overrun and bombed-flat Canterbury, most of the way to London. Then, fleeing the attack on the refugee center in Covent Garden, where they met Rebecca Ainsley and her boys – and agreed to escort them across half of south London, all the way to CentCom Headquarters in Wandsworth Common. And all for just the chance of being allowed into a safe place for a while.

  Now, as the tall and extremely imposing walls and main gate of CentCom finally loomed up over them, the Tunnelers were all wretchedly footsore and aching of leg and joint and almost wishing the zombie apocalypse would finally just take them – if it meant they wouldn’t have to do any more damned walking.