Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  And what was worse: she had no idea when she was going to see her again.

  Watching the pathos of this scene in solemn silence, Colley just shook his head. He took a look around the group, to make sure everyone was okay. Most were sitting on or around the big wooden crates that took up much of the space back there. It occurred to him that he ought to shove them out. These people needed more room – and deserved it.

  But something made him hesitate.

  He stood up from the one he’d sat down on, produced his axe, and levered up the nailed-down top of the crate. And he whistled when he saw what was inside – row after row of assault rifles, British Army SA-80s, gleaming and new in wood shavings, facing in alternating directions. Also, dozens of empty thirty-round magazines, and fifty-round boxes of ammunition – hundreds of them.

  There were three crates of that size. He levered open one of the smaller ones and found pistols. He read the lettering on the side – they were Glock 17 Gen 4s in 9x19mm. There were also seventeen-round magazines for them, and much smaller fifty-round boxes of 9mm bullets, also hundreds of them. He lifted one of the pistols out and found it had a rough, pebbly-textured grip.

  “Whoah,” Colley said aloud, feeling the light weight and reassuring solidity of the polymer-framed pistol. Maybe these shouldn’t go out the back after all.

  Also now he had a job – and quickly recruited a few of the steadier men of the group to assist him – in loading magazines. Few of the Tunnelers really knew how to use these weapons. But the time might soon come when they’d have no choice but to use them, expertise or no.

  And Colley knew enough to know this: they’d be a lot more useful loaded.

  * * *

  Hackworth was basically winging the navigation, and the driver wasn’t doing much to help him. He was actively thwarting him, actually, Hackworth decided. Maybe he figured there was little chance of the pudgy middle-aged man actually using the pistol on another living person.

  They’d gotten out of Wandsworth Common with little bother, and were now heading northwest on York Road. The trouble was going to be getting across the River Thames. Hackworth simply didn’t know which bridges were open, which had security checkpoints, and which were totally off-limits due to leading into the Government Security Zone…

  He was guessing maybe Vauxhall Bridge would be okay – but as they reached the roundabout that led to the foot of the bridge, they saw a multi-car crash piled up in one lane and most of the shoulder, blocking the exit they needed. There were lots of police on scene, on foot and in vehicles – dealing with the general chaos as much as the disabled vehicles and injured drivers and passengers.

  And the Tunnelers did not want to attract the attention of the police.

  “Left, left!” Hackworth shouted at the driver, keeping his pistol low and out of view… but it was too late, and they were already heading up the road that bordered the south bank of the river. The next bridge across would be Lambeth Bridge – and the one after was Westminster Bridge. They’d already seen the latter had a giant wall and heavy security at its northern end – and Hackworth didn’t much like their odds at the one before it.

  The driver took them past it.

  But as they approached the next roundabout, Hackworth said, “Keep going north – we’ll cross further along, well clear of Whitehall.” The last thing they needed was soldiers at government checkpoints sniffing around.

  The driver nodded, swung them onto the roundabout – a little fast maybe – but then he kept them leaning into their turn, passing the north exit.

  “No!” Hackworth shouted, grabbing at the wheel. But it was too late.

  And then he took them out of their orbit – right onto Westminster Bridge.

  “Damn you,” Hackworth said. Once again he’d been too slow. Also, he hadn’t really wanted to risk a crash by battling over the steering wheel. Though a crash probably would have suited the driver just fine. His captivity would be over, as would this hijacking.

  And the Tunnelers would be well and truly screwed.

  But within seconds they were already halfway across Westminster Bridge, and well within sight of the security station in the giant wall at its end. If they stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned around, it would be too suspicious. If they lost their nerve, they were done for.

  They were in it now. One way or another.

  Hackworth sucked in a couple of breaths, steeling himself for what he had to do… and then he jammed the pistol into the driver’s ribs – hard. This seemed to surprise the man. Hackworth surprised himself. He leaned in so his lips were inches from the man’s ear, and the soldier would feel his breath on them. He spoke softly, and in a way that was genuinely menacing.

  “I’m going to crouch down behind your seat,” he said. “And I’m going to point this gun at your spine. If you betray us… you will never walk again.”

  The driver stole a glance over at the older man, and fear flashed across his face. But then he hardened. “I don’t believe you’d do it.”

  Hackworth’s eyes flashed bloody murder. “Do I look like a man with anything to lose? If this goes south, we’re going to have to shoot our way out. And I swear the first bullet is for you.”

  The driver swallowed dryly. And he began to slow. They were nearly at the checkpoint. Hackworth smoothly withdrew, wedging himself into the narrow area behind the driver’s seat. And he stuck the muzzle of the gun into the seat back – hard enough so the driver would feel it in his spine.

  Now all he could do was wait, and pray.

  And marvel at what it seemed he was now capable of.

  Maybe anyone was capable of such viciousness – when given no choice.

  Make It Right

  JFK - Bridge

  The bridge of the Kennedy was a place of some peace again – after Dr. Park had finally decamped, looking shame-faced, and the agitated British major at CentCom had stopped yelling at him on the radio. Commander Abrams was just starting to once again enjoy the relaxation of being at anchor and not having anything blowing up or going horribly wrong, at least for the moment.

  “Dr. Park asking to speak with you again, sir.”

  Dammit.

  Abrams’s first inclination was to decline this request, because he didn’t have time for it. But weirdly – uniquely, in fact, in his whole command of the JFK so far – he actually did have time for it. With both the shore mission and flight ops being rodeo’d by others, for once Abrams felt like he could breathe.

  “Bring him back in.”

  This time the compact scientist stepped up with Sarah Cameron in tow – his handler, enabler, and personal protection detail. As the pair reached Abrams’s station, she looked alert and all business – though the scientist himself looked a little frazzled, like he’d been putting the hammer down, working.

  “Dr. Park,” Abrams said nodding. “Ms. Cameron.” He considered taking the pair to the briefing room upstairs. But he didn’t really want to hand over command of the bridge. And, frankly, he didn’t want to get up from his seat. “What’s up?”

  Park nodded, and touched the corner of his eyeglasses. “Commander. I screwed up. I know that. I should have realized we could complete the vaccine faster, doing critical work before we got to London, if we had a new DNA sequencer to replace the one that went over the side. I should have made that request and got it in motion earlier – before they sent the new plane. It was my error. A bad one.”

  Abrams just nodded. He felt for the man – everyone screwed up, especially in the topsy-turvy environment they all had to work in. Then again, Park’s job was saving the world, so he didn’t feel real inclined to pat him on the head and tell him it was okay and he’d get it right next time.

  “But I know how to fix this. I can make it right.”

  That piqued Abrams’s attention. “Go on.”

  Park nodded and began. “There were an awful lot of DNA sequencers on this planet at the time of the fall. They were running round the clock sequencing the ge
nomes of everything from local human populations, to thousands of species of animals and plants, to the gut bacteria, and tens of trillions of other bacteria, that make up the microbiome for each of us. The cost of these things went through the floor in the years after the human genome was first sequenced in 2001. So everyone started getting in the game.”

  “You’re saying we could go get one. A DNA sequencer.”

  “Yes. I’ve been staring at the map of the region and torturing my memory.”

  “Tougher without Google Maps, right?”

  Park shrugged. “Or the Internet, period. We never appreciated how useful it was to be able to look up anything – until it was gone.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “You know, someday, when all this is over, someone is going to have to go out to San Francisco, raid Google or the Internet Archive, and retrieve a snapshot of the whole thing. A mission to recover all human knowledge. And then turn the Internet back on.”

  Abrams squinted. It was a very interesting thought – and one that had no relevance whatsoever to their current mission. And what things would be like “when all this is over” had not nearly been decided yet. He steered Park back on to topic. “But today we live like our fathers did. What’d you come up with?”

  “Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Human Genome Project.”

  “Seriously?”

  Park nodded again. “Yes. They were based in Jizan – down at the very bottom of the country. Almost at the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s less than five hundred miles from where we’re anchored right now.”

  The two of them locked eyes.

  Park said: “Let me go there and get what we need. With a shore team.”

  Abrams shook his head. “Okay. First of all, as you ought to know, you’re not going anywhere. Not even below decks on this ship without an armed escort. Definitely not onto a shore teeming with dead.”

  Park nodded. “Okay, I can under—”

  “So, even if I considered sending a team – which I’m not even saying I’m considering at this point – but if I did, one thing I can tell you is that you wouldn’t be on it.”

  Sarah Cameron spoke for the first time.

  “Then send me, Commander. I can be Dr. Park’s proxy. His eyes and ears. We can also do a live video link, so he can literally see what I do.”

  Abrams cocked his head and considered. That kind of made sense.

  Park tried to speak again, but Abrams didn’t let him. “Okay, second, do I look like I have operational combat personnel sitting around jiggling their balls? Alpha’s deployed, half the surviving Marines are deployed – and the other half are spun up as a QRF to go rescue them if they get in trouble.”

  Abrams paused to shake his head and marvel at himself. The longer he was in this job, the more he sounded exactly like Commander Drake – over-tasked, under-resourced, and a little snarky about the whole situation. Abrams remembered the old advice to never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Then, if he doesn’t like it, you’re a mile away. And you have his goddamned shoes.

  Park didn’t look like he was backing down. “What about the ones who swept the lower decks for the Zulus that attacked me and Sarah?”

  “NSF,” Abrams said, referring to the Naval Security Forces.

  Sarah nodded. “I’m billeted to them anyway. Surely a few of them can be spared for this.”

  Abrams shook his head. “Yeah, sending our security force out will work great – until something goes wrong here. And what’s ever gone wrong on this boat? Odysseus’s fleet was like Carnival Cruise Lines compared to us.”

  Jesus, Abrams thought. I am completely turning into Drake… He also remembered why, also like Drake, he’d never really wanted this job. But now he had it, so he’d better learn to like it. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”

  Park said, “You heard the officer at CentCom – two days could make the difference between survival and extinction. And getting a DNA sequencer could be that difference.” He paused, took a look at his shoes, then looked up again. “Look, Commander. I know I screwed up. But we can fix this. I know I can make it good. Just give us the chance. Let me try.”

  Abrams exhaled mournfully.

  “Put together a mission plan. Get in a room with Lieutenant Wesley, commander of NSF. Also grab Sergeant Lovell, if he can be spared, and who will know his ass from his elbow regarding shore missions – and, more importantly, your ass from your elbow. The Marines he commands aren’t leaving the boat, at least not on your escapade. But he’ll know how a mission like this can be run with some chance of success.”

  Park’s eyes lit up, and Sarah looked excited herself.

  “When you’ve hashed it out – and I mean everything, answers to every question that might arise – you come back and show it to me.”

  Robbing Peter to pay Paul. That was another phrase Drake used to throw around a lot. Now Abrams understood that, too. He could either hang on to his security forces to keep the carrier safe. Or he could send a mission to get the DNA sequencer that might save humanity.

  And there was no one to make these calls now but him.

  Park and Cameron finally nodded, turned, and left.

  And Abrams got the peace of his bridge back. For now.

  Whitehall

  London - Westminster Bridge

  Crouching low, Colley crept forward and told Hackworth about the guns he’d found in back. Neither had any way of knowing these invaluable weapons had been on their way to CentCom HQ to get everyone there armed, in the wake of their nearly fatal outbreak. They only knew it was an odd stroke of fortune – and that it gave them some options.

  Though mainly terrifying ones.

  “If we get stopped…” Colley said, seeming to mean they could shoot their way out, or through the checkpoint.

  Hackworth shook his head. That was crazy talk. The Tunnelers were veterans of the zombie wars – but they weren’t soldiers. And they definitely couldn’t fight the military. They’d only get themselves killed trying. No, the best place for those guns was in the crates they came in. If things got so bad that they had to break them out… well, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But it wasn’t a possibility he liked to think about.

  He waved Colley back into the rear.

  Because they had now reached the security checkpoint at the end of the bridge. Hackworth shoved the barrel of the pistol as far as he could into the seat before him, to remind the driver what was at stake. That was all he could do.

  The truck rolled to a stop.

  “ID, manifest, destination, and business in the GSZ,” Hackworth heard an invisible guard say as he stepped up to the window. He heard a rustle as the driver handed over his ID and some papers, and answered, “Wellington Barracks.” Hackworth knew this was home to the Household Cavalry and Guards units – the guys with the big bearskin hats and red uniforms – right around the corner from Buckingham Palace. He could only hope this was a plausible lie.

  But it must have been, because the heavy gate scraped out of their way, and the truck accelerated smoothly through it. By the time Hackworth climbed back into the passenger seat, they had passed under the stately gaze of Big Ben, and were emerging into Parliament Square. He looked up to see the larger-than-life statue of Churchill, slightly bent over, hand on cane, wearing his overcoat. To Hackworth, the Great Man looked tired. Maybe they all were.

  The driver immediately hooked a right onto Whitehall itself – driving through the very center of the UK government. Up ahead in the middle of the road was the Cenotaph – the memorial to all of Britain’s war dead. Hackworth had seen it many times on television, always on Remembrance Sunday, when the Queen and PM and others came out to lay wreaths and observe the two-minute silence.

  But it was a very different scene today – and not at all silent. Located all along Whitehall were some of the very central government ministries – the hulking Edwardian-Baroque Treasury Building, with Chur
chill’s Cabinet War Rooms in the basement. The Cabinet Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence – and Downing Street itself.

  And in front of all these buildings, choking the wide boulevard to barely more than a single lane, were rows of big lorries. Moving trucks. And being carried onto them by moving men were… computers. Lots of computers. A few filing cabinets. Cardboard boxes. Hackworth saw what looked like a large framed painting with a drop-cloth over it. This was being supervised by men and women in suits and skirt-suits. They looked like senior civil servants.

  Hackworth’s first response to this was to tense up. Here they were, the mouse in the very center of the cheese. They were either certain to be caught – or else totally safe, as no one would be stupid to drive a hijacked military truck right through the beating heart of the former British Empire. But only a few seconds later, his feelings turned to outrage. Because he very quickly got the impression these people were going somewhere – somewhere else, far away from all this.

  Hackworth looked back to see Colley crouching in the space that led to the rear of the truck. “I told you,” Hackworth said. “And it’s not only the rats fleeing this ship. It looks like the captain and senior officers going. Maybe the whole crew.”

  Peeking up over the dash, Colley nodded. “Everyone in charge, maybe.” But then he cocked his head at Hackworth. “Wait – are we the rats in all this?”

  “Absolutely,” Hackworth said, looking back and nodding – but not taking his gun off the driver. “Because we’re getting off first.” He clenched his jaw resolutely.

  “And we’re going to survive.”

  * * *

  They passed through the rest of the Government Security Zone, and much of central London, including Trafalgar Square, without incident. Soon, the truck full of guns and Tunnelers came to the checkpoint on the way out – right in the middle of Charing Cross Road.