Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Whatever they were doing up there, Handon didn’t have time to mess with it, nor the attention to follow along. He didn’t have time for anything – except to prepare, and to go. Everything was moving very, very quickly – and even a momentary lapse of attention could prove fatal. He backgrounded his awareness of whatever was going down up on the tractor, monitoring it only enough to notice if it grew into something he needed to react to.

  But up on the tractor, Coulson instantly clocked the situation: four sailors, who had been trapped in Ammo City when it got overrun, had somehow survived. Now they were trying to fight their way back to friendly lines. The crush of dead on the front quarter of the flight deck wasn’t so thick that you couldn’t push your way through it – but, being a crowd of infected, flesh-eating monsters, it was a hell of a lot denser than you really wanted to have to push through.

  The four survivors, in their gray-and-blue fatigues, sci-fi rifles raised to shoulders, maintained a tight cruciform formation as they moved, backs all in to the center, each one facing out and firing in a cardinal direction – and firing non-stop. They had somehow managed to clear enough space around them to stay on their feet. But every mag change was a crisis, and there was little room for error. Though, given where they’d just come from, presumably they at least had plenty of ammo.

  Nonetheless, they were drawing more interest, and the rampaging dead were focusing in and rushing them – and their progress back toward safety was slowing and jamming up. They didn’t look likely to make it.

  Corporal Flores, still firing to support them from the top of the tractor, asked Coulson for permission to go out and bring them in.

  “Negative!” Coulson said. “Points for humanity – but it’s suicide, and I can’t spare you!”

  Flores answered as he changed mags. “Dammit, Sarge, forget humanity – it’s morale! They gotta know we’ll come for them if they’re lost or cut off!”

  Coulson knew the man had a point. He only considered it for one more second. “Okay. I’ll do it, though.” He unslung his rifle, hopped off the tractor, and looked back up once. “If I don’t make it back, this shit show is all yours!”

  Flores gave Coulson an awestruck look, like he’d just volunteered to take his place on the gallows.

  Wasting neither time nor words, Coulson physically shoved the militiamen in the line out of his way and waded out into no-man’s-land completely on his own. Stepping off, rifle to shoulder, he emptied a mag with single shots in seconds, clearing space in front of him. His idea had been to make some room this way – and then make some more with his grenade launcher. But it was too tight for his safety, or even for the men on the line – never mind the group he was trying to rescue, whose position he couldn’t make out now that he was down on the deck.

  While he blasted forward, Flores fired over his head, helping to clear a path – and still breathing fast at the shock of being saved from going out there. Now he was on overwatch – and Coulson’s life was in his hands.

  In a few more seconds, Coulson, a death-dealing one-man Marine Expeditionary Force, had fought his way out to the beleaguered four, and began leading them back in. Dead rushed at them from all sides – and fire from the line also zipped over their heads and around and between them, inches away. Any one of the five, or all of them, could buy it so many ways now. It was totally touch and go.

  As Coulson and the four reached a point only ten meters from safety, and it looked like they might just make it… Coulson looked up and locked eyes with Flores for a single instant. And in that frozen moment, a Foxtrot raced from the undead mob, reached the defensive line in two bounds, leapt over the two ranks of defenders, and flew up onto the tractor – taking Flores over backwards and down to the deck.

  Fuck! Coulson mouthed to no one…

  Obviously, no place here was safe. And anyone could die at any second – even those who had stayed in the rear and thought they were safe.

  When Coulson got back, no more than twenty seconds had elapsed since he’d leapt up on the tractor. And Flores was dead. It was all happening that quickly.

  A medic raced forward and performed a rapid but thorough examination of the four survivors – a skill he’d obviously had to master in real time – which revealed that none of them had been bitten or scratched. None even had significant gunk on them.

  It was a little miracle in the middle of this merciless purgatory.

  And Flores hadn’t died in vain.

  * * *

  Briefing concluded, Handon climbed to the top of the tractor himself now with a few shoves of his powerful legs. He nodded down to one of his new guys, who handed him up an XM29. Another followed him up with a satchel of 20mm-grenade mags. The rain lashed down on them all unrelentingly, as both storms howled. The rain raked them in heavy sheets, and the dead continued to rage and surge to their front, all while the living on the line fired steadily to push them back, or at least keep them at bay.

  The whole area seemed to roar, from the crackle of the rifle volleys, the thunder of the storm, the groans of the heaving masses of dead, the frantic shouts of the living.

  “Cover up!” Handon bellowed, loud enough to be heard locally. “Fire in the hole!”

  He aimed just behind the first ranks of attacking dead – counting on that front rank to provide some cover for the men in the line. And he systematically shot off all five grenades in the mag, dropped it out, and then put his left hand out palm-up, a full mag from his bagman instantly slapping into it. He repeated this routine with four mags in a row, creating a gaping if temporary crater in the Zulu mob – and then dropped the XM29 and leapt off the front of the tractor, right over the front line, which was now made up, in that spot, of his eight-man team. As one, they cut down the front rank of Zulus that had shielded them from the explosions.

  And Handon didn’t so much wade in as butterfly speed-stroke straight into the pool of dead, blasting unerringly toward Ammo City like a one-man wind of destruction. His eight people followed behind him in a phalanx sweeping out to either side and behind, with him as the irresistible iron tip of the spear. Behind them and farther out to the sides, the rest of the militia slowly but steadily pushed forward to keep gaps from forming in the line. The whole formation was shaping into a bell curve – a normal distribution of asskicking and zombie destruction.

  They all knew that for every one they put down, there were a thousand, a hundred thousand, out there behind it, ready to fill the gap. They knew they couldn’t really make a dent. But they didn’t have to make a dent.

  They just had to push out a bulge in this battle. And then hold it for a minute.

  In less than ten seconds, Handon had reached Ammo City.

  Now he had to clear it.

  Most of his instructions to his guys had been about how to stay out of his way, and avoid getting shot in the crossfire. But still they filed in behind him, stopping and strongpointing the intersections of crates and pallets, as Handon personally cleared each section.

  Clear and hold. That was the objective.

  Handon walked straight down the middle aisle, firing steadily forward – and tossing grenades when he had the space and safety to do so. As he reached each intersection, he’d spin left, then right, then left again. And finally right. The first two engagements were to clear the space immediately on top of him, to avoid getting jumped instantly; the next two were to clear to the ends of the row in both directions.

  Empty mags clattered to the deck, tumbling on his boot-tops, spinning away behind him in splashes of gore-tinted rainwater. His mag changes were too fast to follow with the eye; his spins to either side of blinding precision. He padded forward heel-toe, quickly but smoothly, rifle tight into shoulder, head curled over it, shooting posture perfect, a portrait of utter precision.

  He reached the final row – the one closest to the prow, and thus where things were worst. He fired into three or four lurching, wheezing, and variously decomposed dead bastards as they spilled into the matrix of crates f
rom the front. Each went down from precise chin-point shots. He hit the intersection and spun left. His rifle barrel whacked into a head, so close was the first Zulu. He shuffled back a half step, took the shot, then shot the one queuing up behind it.

  But that backward step took him into the one leading the charge from the aisle to the right. Fell hands grasped his shoulders, and Handon didn’t wait for the next step in that dance. He spun in place, breaking the grip around his neck – then turned his rifle sideways, gripped it with two hands, and used it to shove the whole conga line of dead away from him. With that tiny bit of space, he raised the rifle again and opened fire. His mag went dry as they dropped – and now there were hands on him again, from the other side.

  Before he could react, a pistol shot went off by his ear.

  When he spun again, one of his guys – no, it was actually a gal, with glossy black hair spilling from under her helmet – was holding her 9mm service pistol forward rigidly, with her heavy rifle hanging on its improvised sling.

  Handon’s left ear now rang like hell. But he cared a lot less about that than about how the young woman had lined up her shot. Because she had taken time to make sure the contents of that Zulu’s skull splashed the wall of crates opposite, rather than Handon’s face. It now dripped chunkily to the wet and already gore-splashed deck, harmless.

  Handon nodded his thanks, clapped her on the shoulder, and moved out again.

  * * *

  One of the forklift trucks was found just in front of Ammo City, which meant pushing out another small salient to recover it. Handon led this effort – which cost him two of his people, taken down on the flank before they could tie themselves into the new line, or even fire to defend themselves. As always, broken ranks were lethal. Even the Spartans knew this – it was one of the secrets of their success. Handon didn’t have time to do a headcount. But he was pretty sure he’d also lost one or two while flowing through and securing the area in the first place.

  Now that he was so much closer to the prow, Handon could also see what he hadn’t before, what Coulson had alluded to – that it was mainly the fire of the heavy weapons from the destroyer holding the line and saving the day for them there. Particularly with the defenders having abandoned the ramparts, now giant 20mm and 25mm rounds from the destroyer’s CIWS and Bushmaster cannons just raked the top of the wall and the edge of the deck. It was obvious that for every Zulu that managed to climb over and drop down, maybe a half-dozen were blasted back. No wonder the defenders had been pushed back when the CIWS was reloading.

  The gunners on the Murphy were keeping the situation tenable on the Kennedy.

  While he had a quarter-second here, Handon shot a glance down and to his left, where there was a wooden crate, its lid lying crookedly across the top. Not lowering his rifle, he flipped the top open with his left hand and saw it was full of STANAG mags. He quickly moved to refill his pouches with one hand, while still firing with his right. This was a nice bonus, and it felt great getting dug out of that hole.

  Guess there’s a reason they call it Ammo City, he thought. And it’s mine now.

  Finishing this, Handon risked a glance behind him. As planned for, a green-shirted forklift operator was being rushed forward through the ranks of militia, and through the lashing of the rain, to the newly extended lines. While being covered by Handon and his team, he climbed aboard the forklift, fired it up, and drove it bucking and bouncing over the thick carpet of bodies back toward the rear.

  Handon couldn’t supervise this part of the operation, as he himself was the indispensable linchpin in the line. But he could hear the whine as the operator lowered his fork and drove it under a stack of pallets, four fat ones.

  It was Sergeant Coulson himself who checked the crate markings, to make sure they weren’t recovering a whole bunch of something they couldn’t use. And then the forklift practically did a bootlegger turn, splashing waves of rainwater and gore off the deck, in the operator’s haste to get back to someplace at least remotely safe.

  And now all Handon needed to do was lead a fighting retreat, and shrink the salient back down to the straight line it had begun as.

  But then something changed.

  Through the haze and splashing of the downpour, first Handon clocked that the volume of hissing, jerking, scrabbling figures flowing over the ramparts had doubled; then tripled; then worse. In the next fraction of an instant, Handon realized that all the heavy-weapons fire on the deck edge had stopped. The guns on the Murphy had fallen silent – reloading, out of ammo, or overheated, Handon had no idea which, and it didn’t matter at this point.

  Because now a re-quadrupled assault of Zulus poured over the wall, and rushed across the front of the flight deck, like the very worst moment of Rorke’s Drift. Handon flicked his fire-selector switch to full-auto – something he virtually never did – depressed his trigger, traversed his barrel, and began a hasty retreat back into the warren of crates that was Ammo City.

  Even more so than usual in combat, it was difficult in the extreme to know what the hell was going on, particularly from the center of the maelstrom. But Handon realized with a sickening lurch that their absence of comms with the destroyer, their failure to coordinate, was about to get everyone killed. And it seemed to Handon that the general retreat happening around him had nearly instantly turned from hasty to panicked.

  It had become a rout.

  Both of the flanks of militia that had been pushed out were now collapsing, falling apart in seconds. Many sailors went down as they reloaded, or else fired fruitlessly, throwing up their hands as the ranks of the vicious dead fell on them. Others turned and ran. A few gallantly tried to conduct a fighting retreat, firing as they walked backward. Most of those were pulled down.

  Handon heard a voice that sounded like Coulson’s, bellowing, “Hold this line! HOLD THE LINE!” But it was for nought.

  The moaning of the dead, the hissing of the rain on the deck, the staccato tattoo of the rifles, and the horrific screams of men and women being taken down and eaten alive… all of it combined into a kind of nightmare soundscape from some storm-tossed hell – a panic-inducing free-for-all that left only the very best trained and skilled among them unaffected.

  Pretty much only Handon, and a handful of the Marines, were still combat effective.

  Handon stood at the front-middle intersection of Ammo City, firing straight out the front, slapping in mags as he emptied them, and holding the very front of what remained of the line. It was only the narrowness of the aisle that kept him from being overrun and pulled down – only so many dead could rush in at once. When he had a free quarter-second to work with, about a second later, he looked left and right. To his enormous relief, his people were still there.

  Down either row were the two sailors he’d put there. Both of them, their backs facing Handon, were firing and holding. Granted, the onslaught of dead was moving lengthwise down the flight deck, and so not as many were coming sideways up the row and attacking them.

  But, still, they were doing the absolutely essential work of keeping Handon’s flanks clear, and his heart swelled with gratitude and pride, as his head recognized and admired their discipline and bravery. His guys had gotten exactly two minutes more training than their fellows – but it had been two minutes of training from a Tier-1 operator, and that had steadied their nerves and steeled their resolve enough for them to hold when others broke and ran.

  Handon even stole a look behind him, and saw his guy plugging the hole to the rear. Few dead were coming at him that way; but even one getting through and coming at Handon’s back would have been too many – enough to bring the whole formation down. As it was, Handon’s hand-picked militia was holding Ammo City.

  But it couldn’t last.

  Handon could feel rather than see that the rest of the sailors and Marines had abandoned them. He didn’t blame them for a second, not even the jarheads. Their responsibility was to the ship – and they had to try and salvage the whole defense, not save t
he lives of a few guys and a single parachuting interloper. But the fact remained: Handon and his dwindling team were alone, with the whole undead storm swirling around them.

  And, unless he took action, very soon they would be overrun.

  Handon heard a scream to his left – it was his man on that side being taken down. Now Handon had two avenues to defend. He spun from one side to the other, firing non-stop – and knowing this couldn’t last long. He had to formulate some kind of a breakout plan. But he was completely overtasked just staying alive; they all were. They couldn’t stay here. But there was no way out, and no time to think of one, and no way he could see to make one.

  Handon heard another scream – another one of his people going down, somewhere behind him. In a few more seconds, he was going to be alone in the middle of this Minotaur’s labyrinth. And even he couldn’t fire in four directions at once.

  It was all collapsing around him.

  And it was all going to be finished in seconds.

  Ass Full of Jarheads

  Stern of the JFK

  Gunny Fick wasn’t going to make it to the flight deck. It was just too far, and his descent through the sky had sped up too much at the last second. He was in some kind of killer downdraft, yanking him mercilessly through the wind and rain.

  For a second it had looked like it was going to be close.

  Now it clearly wasn’t – not close at all.

  However, there was still the carrier’s fantail deck, basically a big rectangular hole in the towering wall of the stern, like a kind of giant oversized patio, which now raced at him – and which also represented, he knew, his last chance. It was either manage to hit the fantail deck, or else smack into the giant vertical steel ass of the carrier, and then slide down it into the dead-tossed sea below.