“Run, you idiots!” Wesley snapped at the sailors, then took off down the walkway. Now was not the time for a rear-guard action. He knew that if they stopped, they would be caught, and there were just too many bearing down on them for a few guns to make a difference.
Wesley’s three sailors broke away, following him at a sprint. He could almost feel the dead behind them, catching them up, closing the distance. In his gut he felt a scream building, one of utter terror, as overwhelming numbers of them, fast-moving ones, converged on their position. Their only chance at escape was to get out onto the water.
Ahead of them, given even those few seconds of head start, the survivors were piling onto the first yacht. As Wesley ran down the pier and leapt over the side, he saw two of them disappearing down a hatch, one pulling a jug from his backpack – gasoline he guessed, by its color – and the other hauling out something that looked like a car battery. One of the women was rushing the children to the front of the boat, but the others were now lining the railing and aiming weapons back at the oncoming runners.
Wesley landed on the deck, skidded, turned, and took his place in line just as the three shore patrolmen jumped on. Then they waited, listening to the overpowering noise of the horde, as the mass of runners sped along the dock toward them, almost within range now. There were dozens hurtling along, and hundreds behind that, and Wesley’s heart thumped, his head swimming with the overload of movement and peril.
It seemed like minutes passed, but it could only have been seconds. Then they were in range, and the firing began, the line of survivors and sailors blasting down the pier at the figures surging toward them. There were too many, even for a dozen guns, and every one they took down was replaced with another, and another. Bodies fell into the water and hit the wooden dock, and still they came.
Then the dead were at the gangway leading to the boat, just twenty yards away, those at the front falling from the hail of bullets. Wesley resisted the urge to fire at random, just get as many rounds off as he could, instead aiming and making every shot count. This was it, their last-ditch defense. The mass of dead spilling into the water on the other side of the lake would never be a problem if they didn’t get the yacht moving – they would all be dead before those got anywhere near them.
All this way, he thought. Across an entire ocean on some crazy mission, and I’m not going to make it home. And to have discovered this miraculous group of survivors, whom he’d dared to hope he could help save, and now he was just going to die with them. All this way, so many close calls – and it was coming down to a yacht that just didn’t want to move.
Then a runner was leaping at him across the short span of water, landing with a bang on the deck, only two feet away. As it lurched forward, throwing its weight at him, Wesley swung around, trying to bring his handgun to bear, but he was too slow and the thing collided with him, sending him sprawling out backward. Blackened hands grasped at his face, missing him by inches as he tried to shove it away. The corpse wasn’t as heavy as he was, but it was fast, and frantic, and its mouth only inches away, teeth crunching up and down as it struggled to bite.
Then it was windmilling backward, yanked away. Wesley jumped to his feet, his head still spinning, and there was Browning, one hand holding his rifle by the pistol grip, the other hauling on the ragged clothes that barely hung from the zombie. He slammed the creature against the side of the boat, and was raising his rifle to fire when the yacht’s engines roared to life.
The ground underneath them shifted and Wesley was thrown to the deck again, falling forward this time. A shot rang out just inches away, followed by a splash of water. He looked up, lifting his handgun to fire at the runner, which he expected would be either on him in a second or attacking someone else, but it wasn’t there. All he saw was the dock moving away from them at speed, runners leaping into the water, trying to land on the boat before it was out of reach, and Browning, still aiming his rifle at the spot where the runner had been just a moment before.
Unkillable
On Board Chuckie, 10,000 Feet Over North America
After a few minutes, Handon emerged again from the pilots’ command deck. He didn’t engage with or even meet the eyes of Park or Juice as he stepped over them. Instead, he stomped a trail directly back to Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick, who was doing a gear and weapons manifest with Brady. There wasn’t very much of either, as most of it had gone out the windows to lighten the plane before (or during) take-off. But it looked like they were soon going to need everything they had.
“I need to brief you,” Handon said.
Fick looked up. “My office or yours?”
There wasn’t a hell of a lot of private space going. But, fairly quickly, the two units’ acting commanders worked out that there was in fact a relatively spacious compartment, intended for the bombardier and navigator, way out in the nose, ahead of and beneath the flight deck. Somehow, Graybeard had known about this (prior service in WWII?) and had scored it for himself. Handon and Fick booted him out.
Handon spread out a paper map on the console.
“Okay,” he said. “I just got off the horn with the Kennedy.”
“Drake?” Fick asked.
“No. He’s a little overtasked right now. I talked to the CIC watch officer.”
“And?”
“And they’re going to be engaged – soon. The outer edge of this storm, as they’re calling it, has already reached them. And the bulk of it will be on them inside of the hour. They’ve already launched ground-attack sorties. And their bombardment of the shore is about to begin.”
Fick crinkled his brow. “What’s their game plan?”
“Try to thin it out as much as they can. And then try to hold.”
“Until?”
“Until we get there, for one thing.” Handon checked the GPS on his watch – which, slightly miraculously, had signals from the four sats it needed to compute a position. He leaned over and drew a black X on the map. “We’re here.” He then eyeballed the distance, and calculated time based on airspeed. “We’ll be at the coastline in seventy-five minutes.”
Fick looked up and locked eyes with him. “And that’s when things get hairy.”
“Hairy like Juice’s nutsack.”
* * *
“Hang on a second,” Ali said to Emily. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” She squeezed the girl’s arm, rose, dug around under the bench behind her, then padded toward the front of the plane. She found Juice, still sitting with Dr. Park outside the command deck. She approached them while holding something behind her, shielding it with her body.
“Surprise for you, brother man.”
He looked up and cocked an eyebrow.
From behind her she produced his beloved SIG SG 553 assault rifle.
His eyes lit up. “You saved it!”
“Yeah,” Ali said, handing it over. “I hid it behind a strut.”
Juice checked out his beloved primary weapon – but then looked up in alarm. “Wait a minute – you risked the plane crashing on take-off, or not getting off the ground at all, for this?”
Ali shrugged. “I didn’t think three kilograms was going to make the difference one way or the other. And you’ve only got one of these – it’s your baby.” She looked over her shoulder briefly. “Anyway, Handon kept his, too.”
Juice chuckled. “Ha. His 416. There’s definitely only one of those. And I guess, if we did crash, we were damn well going to need them.”
“Exactly.”
As she turned to leave, Juice said, “Hey, what about your weapon?”
She just winked at him over her shoulder.
* * *
After finishing a fairly involved and fiddly process of patching up the variety of holes in Reyes, Predator now hobbled back up the aircraft, ducking his head beneath the low struts – all of which were low to him. As he did so, he passed Marine Staff Sergeant Brady, who was sitting alone and looking meditatively out the glassless window of the waist gun turret,
with the wild breeze on his face.
He didn’t seem aware of the arm wound that Predator had wrapped up for him, nor of the various contusions underneath his body armor, all of which he’d had inflicted on him by perhaps the world’s only flaming zombie machine gunner, back on Beaver Island. Predator didn’t really know Brady well enough be sure, but it seemed uncharacteristic of the naturally happy and outgoing Marine to be so quiet and pensive like this.
But, then again, it had been a vicious battle to hold that airfield. And Brady had been the linchpin of the defense, somehow holding the whole northern front together for the entire fight. And men had died anyway. This might have had something to do with Brady’s solemn aspect.
Predator stopped and squatted down beside him. “Arm okay, dude?”
Brady turned his head to look at him. “All squared away, Sarge. Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it.” Pred paused and looked thoughtful. “Hey. I heard you used to be a martial arts champion.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“What form?”
“Brazilian Ju Jitsu.”
“Ground grappling, huh? Pretty badass. Most fist fights end up as ground fights. Plus I seem to remember all the top MMA guys were BJJ, by the end.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty practical. Except, obviously, for zombie fighting.”
“Ha! Yeah. No.”
“Then again, pretty much all martial arts are pretty much useless in the ZA.”
“I don’t know,” Pred said, looking thoughtful. “We had to slug it out with some living dudes during our exfil. Ali got tangled up in some close-quarters grappling. And some knife work.”
“Oh, really?” Brady looked slightly disbelieving, and then slightly annoyed. “Man, you’d think we have enough problems, without the few remaining living people trying to kill each other. Can’t we all just get along?”
“I know, right? You’d think so. But maybe a little thing like the apocalypse isn’t enough to change human nature.” Predator shifted his big bulk. “By the way, I heard we may have to jump into the drink and get fished out. You think you can jump, and swim?”
“No problem.”
“All right, then. Good jarhead.” Predator clapped him on his unwounded arm, before rising to leave.
* * *
“Hey, wait,” Fick said. “That seventy-five-minute flight time doesn’t include refueling.”
“Re-what?” Handon didn’t look thrilled about having to deal with yet one more goddamned thing.
“Oh, yeah,” Fick said. “Nobody briefed you.”
Handon’s lips formed a tight line, and he just waited for it.
“The good news is we’ve got enough fuel to reach the Kennedy. The bad news is it isn’t all in the tanks.”
“You mean those jerrycans in back.”
“Yeah. The ones Greybeard almost got left behind to fill for us.”
Handon eyed Fick levelly. “So you’re saying we have to pull over.”
“Yeah, pretty much. Touch down, secure the site, top the tanks, lift again.”
Handon put his palms on the table. “It always sounds so easy in theory. I’m kind of surprised the pilot didn’t mention this when I talked to him.”
“Probably a lot on his mind.”
“Okay. Where do you figure?” Handon stepped to the front of the bomber’s nose, almost all of which was frameless plexiglas, previously used by the bombardier to get a full picture of targets on the ground. The view out, both below and ahead, was spectacular.
Fick leaned out beside him. “I guess any flat, straight stretch of road will do. As long as it doesn’t have a median or barriers. Or trees nearby.”
“A million miles from anything would be nice.”
“That, too. Well, no time like the present. You wanna tell the pilot, or shall I?”
Handon got the impression Fick and the pilot had already had a few tense moments in their operational history together.
* * *
Something about his talk with Brady affected Predator. The way the normally vivacious Marine had sat alone, looking out that window, his expression so serious – as if he was trying to work out why their God had forsaken them. It was obviously something more than just the loss of his beloved coffee supplies, tossed out with so much other gear to lighten the damaged plane.
But Pred had been around the deployment block enough times to know that the aftermath of combat, particularly when there had been losses, made some men contemplative.
And he was feeling a little that way himself.
So he just sat down in the waist bubble opposite from Brady’s, their backs facing in. And as the wind ruffled his hair, and he watched the gentle landscape of the American heartland roll by beneath them, he allowed himself a rare luxury: that of getting into his own head.
As he settled down, he felt his underwear going up his ass-crack again. In the ZA, it was hard to get anything in his damned size, not least skivvies. It was pretty annoying, the indignities one had to suffer – on top of the end of the world, and the fall of man, and and whatnot. Casting around, somewhat ridiculously, to make sure no one was looking, he gave his drawers a tug.
And as he looked back down the length of the plane, he saw Ali retaking her previous seat on the deck, and the girl from the boat, Emily, curling up beside her. In that vulnerable posture, she looked even younger than she probably was. And that youth and fragility made Predator remember something he hadn’t thought about in a long time: how much he and his wife had wanted to have a little girl.
But with every year, when it had seemed the time to try for a baby, instead another mission, another deployment, another extended absence had come up. And Cali would agree to put it off again. She always understood. It had seemed foolish not to delay parenthood just a little longer, until some more sensible time for them both. Some day.
But, in the end, the most foolish thing had been to keep putting it off.
Because they had waited until it was too late – too late for everything.
The sunlight from outside slanted across Predator’s big jaw, deep-set dark eyes, and muscular, meter-wide shoulders, as the bomber banked around to get back on course. And in his mind’s eye he now pictured the sunlight in their old kitchen, the way it would gleam through the glass vase on their kitchen table, which was usually filled with the big sunflowers that Cali was crazy for. Of course, everything in their beautiful home had been her doing.
His job had been to avoid knocking things over.
Predator, the unkillable giant. That was who he was, certainly to the people he served with. But he knew that all people contained multitudes, and that he himself was no different.
Because of his size, he’d always had an annoying tendency to attract bar brawlers, tough guys who figured the opposite of “small man syndrome” would apply with him – that because he was so huge, he’d never had to fight.
They couldn’t have had that one more wrong.
Around Fort Bragg, he’d usually been okay. For people there, the great majority of whom were military, it wasn’t hard to guess from his appearance that he was part of the special operations community. And that was warning flag enough. But when he’d traveled, or served overseas, he would occasionally get civilians, or conventional military, big tough dudes, a few martial artists, all wanting to take a shot at him.
They rarely realized they were picking a fight with what actually might be the single deadliest man on the entire planet.
Generally, if he couldn’t dodge the whole thing, he would try to thump them once and end it before anybody got hurt. Or else hold them down and give them the old talking to – explaining why what they’d just tried was such a profoundly bad idea. He didn’t really enjoy hurting people, especially servicemen who were supposed to be on the same side, or else the civilians it was his whole job to protect. He by no means fit the gentle giant stereotype; but he was capable of gentleness, when it was possible. When it made sense.
Of cour
se, if anyone fucked with his team, starting with and in particular Juice, with whom he’d grown very close in the last two years… Then again, Juice was more than capable of taking care of himself. And usually rather better at defusing situations.
Sometimes, other people he was with got him in trouble. For some reason, when he was out with SEALs, they always seemed to want to pick fights, and practice their excellent sparring and grappling skills, usually in dodgy bars. SEALs tended to be very modest-sized – like 5’9” and 160lb, which was only about 80% of Pred’s height, and literally half his weight. So they certainly punched above their weight class. But, in Delta, it had been seen as not very professional to go around getting into bar brawls.
The operators were simply too valuable, their jobs far too important.
Pred wondered if he’d ever see that SEAL bar at Coronado again, McP’s. Or the Green Beret Parachute Club at Bragg. But then that made him wonder if he’d ever see his home again, or whether he’d even want to, in the state it was likely now in… and then about whether America could ever be retaken, or recovered. All of which didn’t make for a healthy train of thought, as he realized when his thoughts returned to Cali again.
He remembered their final goodbye before his last mission, before he left for the UK. As had been the case for a long time, he hadn’t been able to tell her where he was going, or what he’d be doing, or for how long. And that was the last time she had set eyes on him in this world. They were to speak one final time, on the phone, just before the fall… but that memory was too painful for him to call up, even now, even as he seemed willing to lacerate himself with other such searing thoughts from before the end of the world.
It was funny. Everyone seemed to think that Pred was all but unkillable – perhaps literally unkillable. And he knew a part of him enjoyed that image, even sometimes did things to encourage it. But being unkillable didn’t mean you couldn’t take damage. It didn’t mean life couldn’t wound you, with its vicissitudes, with its non-negotiable pain.
Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Page 8