Then Wesley heard another loud hiss beside him as the second hose came online, the group controlling it bearing down hard.
“Aim that one this way!” came the Captain’s voice. Wesley glanced toward the hatch, where their main force was still gathered.
“We need to clear our way across the deck,” continued the old man, whose beard was now caked in white foam in addition to dirt. “Drive a wedge that cuts the deck in half and clears a way to there.” He was pointing at the bulky shapes of the two forklifts that had been left out after the abandonment of Ammo City and the defensive line behind it.
“Then we can really start to get these bastards off my ship.”
Don’t Shoot Me in the Ass
JFK Hospital
Less than two minutes after admitting the last unwelcome visitors, the doors to the hospital burst open once more – but this time the remaining security guy, and not just Reyes, were ready. Both their weapons, pistol and shotgun, were up and trained on the two figures that staggered through, before the one in the lead could even turn around. The man, not dressed in a uniform of any kind, was coming in backward, limping and struggling, his ass pointing the way as he dragged the second figure with him.
“Hold your fire,” said Reyes, his free hand coming up palm facing the guard. This guy was jittery as hell since the last incursion, a bag of nerves, and likely to start blasting at any moment. But he responded to the Marine’s command, and held his position.
The man, or thing, dragging the other body turned around upon hearing the voices. Reyes prepared himself for some nasty vision, like a mouthful of flesh, or a smashed face, but all that stared back at him were the wide eyes of fear.
“Shit! Don’t shoot. Please.”
The security guy slumped with relief, and gave Reyes a look that said he was going to have a heart attack if this went on much longer. Reyes wondered how the man was even still alive. A weak ticker and nervous temperament were not the qualities you looked for when handing out shotguns.
And suddenly there were others pushing through the door behind the first two – a woman trailing two children and with a younger child in her arms, then two other men, backing into the room with their rifles pointed behind the group, covering the rear. None of these people wore a recognizable uniform – except the barely conscious man being dragged by his armpits. Surveying the little showdown, and the weapons being brandished, one of the women stepped forward.
“We’ve just come on board. We need help. This is one of your people,” she said, pointing at Derwin. The sailor was looking so pale, his skin almost blue, that it was difficult to tell if he was even alive anymore. “He was shot, an hour ago at least.”
A nurse pushed forward, followed by a doctor in surgical garb, and the two helped the survivor haul Derwin onto a gurney.
“Was he bitten or scratched?” the doctor asked. She was the same lieutenant commander who had briefly tangled with Fick, and her body language now said she wasn’t interested in having any debates about infection risk. Two years of battlefield medicine in the ZA had left her a steely-eyed veteran.
The woman answered, “No, not bitten. Just shot.” Then she added, tentatively, “I think.”
The doctor checked Derwin’s pulse and temperature.
“He’s alive, but barely. Vitals show no indication of infection. Let’s get mitts and a mask on him anyway, and get a saline drip in. Two units of plasma right now and type and cross for two more. I’m going to explore that wound. Let’s get going, people.”
The newcomers watched as the medical staff rushed Derwin to the back of the hospital, one of the nurses already attaching what looked like a pair of oven mitts to his hands, another fitting a mask that secured from behind but had air holes. The woman who had spoken to the doctor looked around the complex now, noting the rows of beds in the next room – almost all of them empty, even though a battle raged just above their heads.
“Where are all the wounded?” she asked.
The nearest nurse looked up as he helped a limping survivor onto a chair.
“Most people don’t need need medical care when they get wounded fighting Zulus. They don’t usually make it to the ward.”
* * *
The dead were now pouring off the edge of the deck in great torrents.
From his vantage point at the rightmost of the hose crews, and barely twenty feet from the sheer drop-off into the sea, Wesley could see the deck gradually clearing. Those crews, which together now comprised nearly sixty people struggling to point a dozen furious high-pressure hoses at the churning foam and zombie mess, was managing the impossible.
The hoses were kicking out water at such a rate that it was difficult to keep them from flying away, but the effect on the mass of dead, already struggling even to stand up, was astounding. The dead were being flung backward, flailing and grasping at air, bouncing against the hard deck surface and smashed against the incoming wall of water. And those pushed out near to the edge of the deck on either side were systematically ejected into the ocean.
Behind him, Wesley could still hear gunfire, and he was aware that Melvin, Browning, and a dozen other shooters were running along the line and taking out any stragglers that happened to get past the hoses. But, more importantly, they were taking down zombies loose behind the lines, those that had already got past them before this crazy expedition had launched. There were still a lot of dead, hundreds of them, stuck in the foam behind them, and clumsy or not, some were breaking free.
And the level of the foam was already beginning to drop, thinned and scattered by the jets of water as well as the sparse rain that still fell from above. But with that there was good news, too. Wesley could watch as the storm of dead carried on trying to climb aboard, but the mass of bodies at the prow was being cascaded with spilling foam now, and they didn’t seem able to grab hold of anything, or climb across one another as they had before.
At least for the moment.
Wesley scanned the panorama of crazy, chaotic madness before him. This Captain’s in-extremis force wasn’t anywhere close to removing the whole threat, with the horde still trying to crawl onto the ship at the very front edge of the flight deck, foam or no. But they had now pushed out past the two bow catapults, the EMALS launcher points the Captain wanted cleared so badly, and were making fast progress toward the hole.
At the same time, the militia still on their feet around the hole were fighting back.
But Wesley was puzzled by something else now. The teams rushing up to the catapults – what the hell were they doing with those forklift trucks? He couldn’t see clearly, and was too focused on keeping the hose pointed safely forward, but occasional glances revealed the Captain barking orders and a small team frantically driving the two forklifts to sit in the middle of the deck at the base of the catapults.
Wesley didn’t have to wait very long to find out. One moment he was ten feet from the nearest hose crew, and the next the line of hose wielders were edging toward him, bunching up – and creating a gap in the center of the deck, as though they were making room for one of those crazy-ass pilots to launch in a fighter plane.
“Clear out!” shouted Melvin. “Clear the runway! Everyone to one side!” The Scotsman waved at the hose crews and looked back over his shoulder with a grim expression.
Wesley now saw a forklift sitting in front of each of the launchers.
Then he realized that a catapult crewman was attaching something to the front of each of the forklifts and backing away, body low to the ground.
He’d seen them attaching those metal lugs to the planes before a launch…
Wait, you’ve got to be kidding me.
“Fire!” shouted the captain.
There was a sharp snapping sound, followed by a loud roar, as the two forklift trucks went from motionless to, a fraction of a second later, blasting down the runway at speeds that Wesley couldn’t even imagine. These launch systems were built to send 40-ton aircraft into the air. What was happening to thes
e much lighter ground vehicles defied the imagination…
Not quite two seconds later, both forklifts rocketed off the front edge of the deck. But before that, neither had stayed upright, instead spinning, rolling, and screaming in protest, leaving a shower of sparks behind them as they tumbled along the hard surface of the deck, all the way barreling into masses of dead and pushing them before them, or shoving them off to the side, or just crushing them. Hundreds of bodies were knocked from the deck in waves, as several tons of solid metal smashed through their ranks with unspeakable speed and violence.
“Holy fucking shit,” said a voice to Wesley’s left. He turned to see Melvin with his mouth hanging open. “The guy is mental!” But then he burst into cackling laughter.
And no sooner had Wesley recovered from the shock of watching a normally slow-moving truck become catapult ammunition, than two more vehicles – the portable generator truck and the decommissioned deck cleaner that Wesley had seen below – were being driven into position. And beyond that, rising up from the hangar deck on the giant aircraft elevators, were more heavy machines.
Wesley suddenly recognized the driver of the generator truck – Burns. He leapt out of it and was running back to the other vehicles even as the catapult crewman attached the lug.
“Get those hoses in a line!” bellowed the Captain’s voice, once more loud and brooking no dissent. “When we’re done with the launches, you start a slow march forward and don’t stop. I don’t want to see one of you slacking off until we’re all standing on the prow!”
Wesley turned again to the front, and back to the job of keeping his hose on target. Ahead of him, he watched as the gaps left behind by the forklift missiles began to fill with the dead that still struggled onto the ship. They were being slowed down, knocked back, and degraded, and the living had gotten the upper hand for now. But there were still millions of them out there, and they were still trying to come over the top.
Wesley figured they could keep going like this for a while. But at some point they would run out of machines to lob, or the white foam would all be sprayed out and washed away, or the shooters keeping the stragglers away from the hose line would run out of bullets.
And somewhere along the line the ship would still fall if they didn’t all get the hell out of there, and soon.
Salvatio Futurae
JFK, the Island
“Commander? The channel’s still open, sir.”
Drake looked down at his hand, which still held the mic. He gripped it tightly in his fist, the talk button still depressed. A glance at the desk showed the tannoy was still set to All Stations.
“Shit,” he said – but, this time at least, after releasing the button.
He glanced to his side, where Martin was leaning out over the desk, knuckles on the console, and boggling out the front screens. The commanding view from here was always nice. But sometimes it had particular rewards.
And right now they had an absolutely perfect vantage, as if from a VIP booth at the Super Bowl, as the entire flight deck was covered with foam from the AFFF wash-down jets… and then as a bunch of guys, Drake had not the first flipping clue who, emerged onto the flight deck and started sweeping it clear with fucking fire hoses.
The power of these blasting jets of water was nothing short of devastating. And the Zulus on deck were standing, or for the most part lying, on viscous foam. They went off the edge of the deck like tungsten slugs out of a rail gun. They practically rocketed off the ship and back out into the ocean. Drake had never seen anything like it. Hope rose up in his breast like a tidal wave.
And then this was tempered by the realization that he ought to be court-martialed for incompetence of command – for never having thought of this amazing shit himself. But – who the hell had thought of it?
He grabbed a pair of binoculars, raced out onto the observation deck, and peered down toward the end of the flight deck.
“Oh, no fucking way…” he breathed.
White beard, white hair. Commanding presence.
It could only be one person.
Fuck it, Drake thought to himself. Just go with it.
A minute or so later, when their heavy vehicles started launching down the flight deck at 200mph and bowling over hundreds of dead like ninepins, he couldn’t even begin to know what to think about that. It was like he had entered some parallel dimension – one in which the dead were no longer a dire existential threat, but a mere nuisance, like mosquitos.
The hatch behind him banged open, and out of it raced the Air Boss, to whom those EMALS catapults belonged. He stopped a couple of feet from Drake, who swiveled his head to look at him. The Air Boss’ mouth was open. Absolutely nothing came out of it.
They both turned back to simply gaze, slack-jawed, upon the bravura closing number being performed on the stage below.
Drake realized that Martin had followed them out at some point, and now leaned on the railing just to his left. He then looked down at their feet, and realized the boat was still rocking slightly, as the destroyer still struggled heroically to pull them free of the sandbar.
At last, Drake tried to recover his senses, as he surveyed the deck below and saw that it was nearly completely clear of the dead. “We just bought some time,” he said. Looking back out toward the prow, he saw that dead were still coming over the front edge and sides, albeit at a slower rate, because they couldn’t get any purchase on the suddenly sudsy deck. “But maybe only minutes. What can we do with it?”
Martin, jaw clenched, nodded seriously and said, “Follow me.”
* * *
The rain was finally clearing. Ali thought that would be small consolation – maybe they would get to see the sun one last time before slipping beneath the waves. She could see Emily and Park fading fast. They’d been exhausted, from terror and extended exertion and stress, even before going in the water.
Soon they’d be done.
But as visibility started to improve, Ali found she could see the most startling thing. It was the stern of the carrier, which loomed above them and in the middle distance, and off of which was now pouring white foam – increasingly heavy in volume, and seemingly in slow-motion, much as the cascade of a waterfall looks slowed down at a distance. And all she could think was: Wow. On top of everything else, now they’re fighting a fire on the flight deck…
But then, from the other direction, suddenly something else came at them out of the clearing mist and the lightening gloom. It whump-whumped in on them heavily and unerringly.
It was the other Seahawk.
“Oh, thank fuck for that,” Ali said aloud, through her own fog of exhaustion. Sometimes you just needed good old dumb-ass luck to bail you out. In this case, she’d take it.
The helo went into a hover about ten meters above them, and an equal distance out to sea. Ali spotted a crew chief in the door and waved at him. But the guy just sat there and eyeballed her. Jesus Fuck, what now…? She pulled out her tactical light, held it up with one hand, and flashed Morse code at him: “Throw us the strop.”
The crew chief nodded – but then leaned his torso back inside. When he reappeared, his voice blared across the water, over their own rotor and engine noise, from the helo’s loudspeaker. “WE’RE NOT HERE FOR YOU,” he belted out.
As she worked to keep her head above water, and her temper under control, Ali found the swells of the sea were rising higher. She paddled more vigorously, keeping an eye on Simon and Emily. Soon, she was going to have to pull one of them into a rescue stroke – and she wouldn’t be able to save them both. Dead tired herself at this point, she was going to have to dig down even to handle one.
Surely the helo crew wouldn’t sit there and watch them drown?
Steeling her patience, Ali blinked once, slowly. Okay, she thought. Fuck it. I’ll bite. She raised her light and flashed back: “Who the fuck are you here for, then?”
The crew chief pointed his puffy flightsuit-clad arm downward and a little further out to sea. “THEM,” he bla
red.
Ali tried to follow his arm. But as the swells continued to grow, she finally realized the waves weren’t the only thing rising up beside them – and she now understood what was causing the swells. A steel, slate-gray wall was emerging out of the ocean, just out to sea behind them. Within a few seconds of that breaching the surface, a whole horizontal platform of identical gray steel rose out of the water underneath it, sloughing off great sheets of water into the surrounding ocean.
It was as majestic as a whale breaking the surface – only with sharper lines and angles. And four times longer than the largest whale that ever swam. That wall was actually a conning tower. And the platform was the deck of a Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine.
Ali just closed her eyes and shook her dripping head.
Nothing was surprising anymore. Not on a day like today.
She rallied her two charges one last time, and got them swimming toward the sub.
* * *
Corporal Raible was alone.
All alone with his duty – which consisted now of leading a dwindling band of terrified and barely trained sailors, all wielding lethal weapons in close quarters, trying to hold a disaster area and defend the world’s last nuclear supercarrier against a mountain of death that wanted to eat them all. And not just them – but everyone behind them.
The death mountain wanted to eat everyone, everywhere.
The roar of the assault rifles was crushing in the semi-enclosed space. And the 20mm grenade launchers were about to become a serious hazard. The sailors could be forgiven for using them, given how desperate was their situation – hell, they were supposed to use them. But there was a thing called minimum safe distance, and the dead were now well inside it. And Raible was starting to feel the heat of the explosions on his face.
Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Page 33