Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  But she knew the dead were getting closer.

  And soon ten thousand dead hands would be grasping up at them from below. And that was a very conservative estimate.

  Ali had to get them the fuck out of there. But there was nowhere to go. If they swam toward shore, the dead would take them. If they swam away from it, the sea would take them – they would all drown, sooner or later. And every inch they put between themselves and the spot where the helo had crashed reduced their chances of ever being rescued. The very first rule of being lost in the wilderness is: stay put. Stay close to your last known location.

  Fuck. Ali’s brain hurt, not least from the days-long stress and fatigue, as she tried to formulate some kind of plan – while also working hard to keep any sign of fear or dismay off her face. Her wounded arm started to hurt, as she used it to keep herself above water. And now her wrenched back kicked in, displeased at the way she had to arch it to keep afloat. She could feel it all closing in, starting to fall apart on her.

  This couldn’t be it – not after everything they had braved and survived. The mission couldn’t go down here, literally within sight of success. And these two young people, whom Ali had worked so hard to keep alive – they couldn’t just drown, sinking slowly to the bottom of this peaceful, implacable sea. As impossible as it was to consider, never mind accept, that was what it was starting to look like.

  Hell, Emily might have been better off if Ali had left her on that fucking pirate boat. Ditto Simon and his bunker beneath Chicago. At least they would have been alive.

  But she quickly drove those thoughts from her head. They were of exactly zero use. And if she was going to buy it here, she was going to buy it while still battling, and trying to complete the mission. She was basically healthy, with her wits about her, and still strong and resilient as hell – even in adversity, even in the gravest extremity. She just had to figure something out. She patted herself down, looking for other gear that might have slipped her mind, that might help them. But there was nothing.

  She would never give in to despair. But she couldn’t see any options at the moment. No radio, no flares, no flotation… devils on one side, the deep blue sea on the other. Nothing to do but try to keep their heads above water. And wait. And hope.

  But hope was not a strategy.

  Ali spat out another mouthful of water, and took a labored breath.

  And she wondered how many more of those were left to her.

  * * *

  “Go, go, go!” Corporal Raible shouted, windmilling his arms, and spouting quite a lot of what, in other contexts, he would have called “moto bullshit.” But he really did have to get these fifty adrenalized and terrified people out of this hatch – and he had to make them pass beyond it, and directly into perhaps the worst peril imaginable.

  These were to be the human fingers in the dyke. And their lives were being spent to plug the hole.

  Sergeant Atwell was already out there. He’d gone out first, leapt over and around the debris and refuse and cobbled-together seals and panels, and run straight to the point of contact – the very tip of the spear. And it was Raible’s job to make sure the rest of the spear lined up behind him. He could already see and hear Atwell firing furiously over the lip of the hole, down toward the rising horde.

  The good news was that the mountain of dead rising out of the sea toward the hole had been degraded. The destroyer had targeted some of its missiles on the base of the pile near that point – and had even risked dropping 105mm rounds from its deck gun on the top of the pile, or at least nearer the top, after it had ceased its shore bombardment. The bad news was that the pile was already growing again, surging up and grasping at the open wound in the Kennedy – and faster than anyone had predicted or imagined. This second reserve militia force were only going to have minutes, or maybe seconds, to get out, get into position, and get ready to fight.

  The position itself was like a multi-story building which had been torn open by a terrorist bomb – leaving multiple levels exposed, like a cut-away view or diorama, with a lot of severed wires, pipes, bulkheads, sections of decking, and not to mention a shitload of debris. More of the top had been blown off, meaning much of the area was exposed to the sky above. Master Chief Shields and his guys had done everything possible to seal the place up – in the time they’d had, with the people and resources they had. But it was still basically a disaster zone – one which the reservists had to fan out and fortify, once they’d all filed out the hatch that had been left unwelded for the purpose of disgorging them.

  Raible was now on the verge of physically pushing his people out. The only thing that stopped him was that they had nowhere to go. The bottleneck in their advance was well past the hatch, out in the open space – as people tried to clamber over rubble, to look for cover and defensible positions, and slowest of all, to climb down to the other exposed decks. There were three of them in total, or rather parts of three.

  Raible saw one other bit of good news: whatever had gone wrong up on the flight deck, which they had heard while making their way here, it had evidently been made right again – presumably by means of the world-shaking (or, at any rate, 110,000-ton-carrier-shaking) explosion that had knocked most of them to the deck. But they were back on their feet now. At least for the moment.

  Raible shouted out toward the front: “Push out! Keep pushing out!” But he could already see almost all the frontline positions had been taken. The others were just going to have to function as a deeper reserve, waiting for those on the front line to fall, or be pulled down, or turned, before moving up to take their spots. Already, Raible could see roughly half their guys leaning out over the edge, discharging their weapons, and engaging the enemy. The roar was terrible. But this did solve the looming problem that had been tearing at Raible’s soul: that of covering the noise of the acetylene torch, as it welded shut the hatch behind them.

  Now, as the last sailor clambered out, Raible looked back inside and saw the men who were to do the welding. He snapped them a salute, then helped pull the slightly deformed hatch closed. The men on the other side dogged it tight with the wheel. And then the telltale blue glare started up through the porthole glass.

  They were now all locked out there – with ten million Zulus.

  They were locked in with their fate.

  Raible turned and started moving forward. As soon as he was out from under the overhang of the flight deck above, he looked up. As planned, there was Sergeant Lovell, one of the two Marines leading the reserve force up top, and guarding the rim of the hole from the swarm on deck. Lovell smiled down at him as Raible gave him a thumbs-up to let him know they were in position. Lovell returned the gesture, then his head disappeared back over the edge. Raible gathered they were already heavily engaged.

  Looking forward again, he realized something terrible – the mountain of dead was back already. He could tell from the firing angle of the people at the lip – going from sharply depressed, up to level with the horizon, in only seconds. He knew Atwell’d had a little speech prepared for the team, because he’d run it by him earlier. It went something like, “Behind you is everyone you love. Behind us is the Kennedy, and all our brothers. Behind us is all humanity, and their hopes.”

  But now Raible knew this speech would never be delivered. If nothing else, it was already way too loud – with the flat-out firing and grenade blasts, and the crescendoing moaning of the legions of the dead. Raible could see Atwell firing calmly and steadily, anchoring the center of the line. Before this moment, in the back of his mind, he had thought maybe they really could hold – or even win. It was the insuperable spec-ops mindset, not to mention just being a Marine.

  But now that he saw what they were facing… he no longer thought they had any chance. Definitely not to win, and not even to survive. But maybe, just maybe, they could hold for long enough – and buy the carrier the time it needed to get the reactor started, and get them all the hell out of there.

  In any case, he had a job to
do. And this was what a long, hard, dedicated career came down to: a single moment in which to sacrifice everything, if that’s what was required. It was the greatest of prizes, and a suitable end for a warrior.

  To die in a pile of his own brass.

  As Raible raised his rifle to his shoulder, and picked his way forward to the line, he could already see the first defenders going down – or, rather, going over. They were being taken by what looked like Foxtrots, leaping up from the top of the rising pile, latching on to them, and then falling back. Their screams were quickly muted by the writhing sea of dead flesh that swallowed them. They were being eaten by the hill itself. Going down like that was a more terrifying kind of hell than Raible even wanted to contemplate. Yet others still stepped up to take the places of the fallen.

  He didn’t have to get too close to the edge to get his first glimpse of the animated carrion wave that was trying to swamp them. And he instantly clocked the problem with their whole conception of this defense: every Zulu they destroyed simply brought the others closer. A few got knocked back by the force of rounds, particularly the 20mm grenades. But most fell where they lay, and their twice-dead bodies just became stepping stones for the others, making a better bridge for them to cross.

  The living couldn’t win this way.

  Or, as the expression went: you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.

  Raible hailed Atwell on his team radio. “Coming up on your six!” he shouted, hoping to be heard over the pitched battle. He saw Atwell steal a look over his shoulder. The sergeant’s square jaw, bright eyes, and serious but calm expression steadied him, as it always did. And then, as Atwell looked forward again, a pair of mottled, fell arms wrapped around his legs from below. As the body they were attached to fell back heavily, they took Atwell’s feet out from under him. His ass hit the deck edge, and he depressed his barrel to fire directly at whatever horror it was that had him.

  Raible’s eyes went wide, and he raced forward to help, trying to get a shot. But even before he made the edge, Atwell had gone over it. Raible only got there in time to see him lying upon and being clutched at by the very mountain of dead itself, an uncountable number of hands and arms pawing at him, like he was crowd-surfing to the very bottom level of hell.

  “No!” Raible shouted involuntarily from his constricted throat, as he panned his rifle around, trying even to decide where to take a shot. But then he spotted two things. First, Atwell’s face: his jaw was clenched, but his mouth a tight line, and he looked as calm and resolute as if he were standing watch on some wall, rather than being devoured by an undead hill – tensed up, but not worried. And then Raible saw what was in his hand: the pull igniter for his satchel charge.

  This meant they had no more than fifteen seconds – and probably less.

  His face a rictus of sorrow, Raible looked to either side. He couldn’t tell the militia on the line to cover up until just before the blast – the Zulus would overrun their perimeter in that time. So he just started firing, while counting down the seconds in his head. And while he did, and with every infinite, interminable, horror-filled instant that passed, he watched his friend descend down into death. As hands and mouths tore at him, Atwell clutched the satchel charge to his chest with iron forearms.

  And he never made a sound.

  Two seconds after he disappeared entirely, Raible shouted at the top of his lungs: “COVER UP!” Then illustrated this by getting down behind some hard cover himself. Those around him followed his example.

  The charge went. It was more muffled than Raible had expected, with God knows how many bodies between it and them. Atwell had been pulled down pretty deep into the mountain of dead. But he now also blew the top completely off it.

  The reservists huddled up as body parts rained down.

  When the smoke cleared, the hill had been degraded, knocked down by perhaps fifteen feet. Which bought them, by Raible’s estimation, maybe an extra minute.

  Lacking even one second to grieve for his martyred friend, he got on the radio, on the command net, and hailed the Combat Information Center, which was ostensibly running this battle from the island. “Leonidas Two to CIC!”

  “CIC, send it.”

  Raible panted into his chin mic. “We are in heavy contact – and in imminent danger of being overrun! Leonidas Two Actual is down. Position untenable! Repeat, position untenable – we are not going to be able to hold, over.” By the time Raible finished his transmission, he could already see the first of the new front line of defenders being knocked backward, or pulled over, by leaping Foxtrots.

  Getting his own gun back in the fight, he thought to himself that this whole thing was just a poorly conceived defensive posture. It simply didn’t work. And, overwhelmed almost as quickly as they got set, they were having to learn it the hard way.

  All they could do now was die doing their best.

  As soon as Raible cleared the channel, Lovell, up above, call sign Leonidas One, jumped on to advise CIC that the up-top reserve force were in bad trouble as well.

  It was all falling apart almost before it had been put together.

  And they were facing the end, even as they tried to begin.

  * * *

  Handon squeezed off evenly spaced shots over the top of the line, the 360-degree defense that had been put in place around the carrier’s island. He was standing up on an outside ladder, where he could both see better and run the defense more effectively – not to mention fire over the top of it. He was also a lot safer up here, and he knew it.

  I’d feel worse about that, he thought to himself – if I hadn’t almost been killed twenty times today already…

  The ship lurched beneath his feet. He could tell the destroyer was tugging now. But, while they were moving, they definitely weren’t going. The storm of the dead remained tightly pressed up against the front of this seemingly doomed vessel. And it was here they still had to stand and fight. Maybe it was here they would go down.

  Down below, Handon could see Henno, Pred, and Juice moving behind the lines, tweaking militia positions, handing out mags – and, mainly, reinforcing them when they needed help. On the deck on the back side of the island were Fick’s guys, Graybeard and Brady – and Fick looking over them from an observation deck there. Handon figured Fick must be seriously tuckered out to have removed himself from the front lines for once.

  Handon’s HK416 went dry and he dropped the mag out and replaced it. He figured he must have put 5,000 rounds through this rifle since last he’d cleaned it. This made him additionally grateful the weapon had been specifically designed to correct the jamming problems of the M4 and M16, and would basically fire forever, under any conditions.

  I may actually put that to the test today, he thought, resuming firing.

  He was also surprised the defense of the island was going so decently. They were all prepared to retreat again, when they had to, and button up inside. But that contingency was to be avoided for as long as possible – if for no other reason than it was nice to be able to see out the screens. Also, because the Zulus might break the glass, and flood into the ship that way.

  Just when Handon was feeling a little comfortable, he saw something going wrong out at the semicircle of the reserve force defending the hole, way up ahead on the starboard side. He didn’t have a great view; but he could see they had people going down – and that they were struggling to maintain their perimeter.

  Shit, Handon thought. It probably didn’t matter much that his group held the island – if the whole, gigantic, floating city were flooded with dead from beneath, down through the hole. And just as he saw this, he also saw in peripheral vision Coulson leaping up the stairs toward him.

  “Handon!”

  “Yeah,” Handon responded, partially lowering his rifle and turning his head.

  “We’re losing the reserve force! The defense of the hole is collapsing.”

  Handon checked his watch. They’d held for about two minutes and ch
ange. Not a terrific run. But there was no point bemoaning it. “What’s your recommendation?”

  Coulson looked seriously worried – for the first time today that Handon had seen. He’d weathered at least a half-dozen disasters, generally with a smart-aleck comment and wicked grin. Now he looked like it was finally catching up with him.

  “I don’t even fucking know,” Coulson said. “We can’t abandon the island – even if we could somehow get this force to fight their way back up to the hole.”

  “Can we split the force?” Handon asked.

  But he was answered by a louder, gruffer voice – it was Fick, circling around the platform, and rounding on the two of them. “Negative. We’ll never be able to coordinate the fire and movement of this huge mob of deck-swabbers. Not half of them, either.” Handon realized Fick was patched into the Marines’ local squad and command nets on his own radio, and had heard everything going wrong. Handon just looked at him – waiting for some kind a suggestion, which he was sure Fick would have.

  “Okay,” Fick said finally. “There are exactly seven guys here who can coordinate fire and movement closely enough to have a chance of advancing through that.” He flicked his fingers at the five-acre mosh pit of the dead that lay between them and the faltering reserve.

  Jesus, thought Handon. I’m suddenly really tired…

  But, nonetheless, thirty seconds later he and Fick had descended to the deck and huddled up behind the line with the survivors of Alpha and of the Marines’ best fire team: it was down to Predator, Juice, Henno, Graybeard, and Brady. These five, plus Handon and Fick, had almost no time to plan – they were simply going to have to go, and rely upon their combined century-plus of elite training and operational experience to keep them alive.