ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Break contact drill, he thought numbly.

  The gate pressed closed behind them.

  * * *

  Fick startled and looked back at the sound of the first hellacious explosion behind them in the distance – then flipped his radio over to Alpha’s working channel. He immediately heard Homer:

  “—no joy, repeat mission unsuccessful. We’re coming back in.”

  Then Ali: “Copy. I have overwatch.”

  Fick frowned in the dark and rain. Well that’s a damned shame. Then again, at least it’s not my personal problem. He was still standing in that spot frowning as four smaller explosions also went up to the north.

  “What in hell was that?” one of his RMPs asked.

  Fick grunted. “Break contact drill.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He turned to face southwest again. “That one?” he asked, pointing across the dark of the field toward a big structure up against the extended walls. He was the only one on his team who had NVGs, but he had his flipped up on his helmet. He had them if he needed them. But he didn’t want advantages the men in his unit lacked. And he wanted to see what they did.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” the RMP sergeant said.

  They were nearly on top of it, but the warehouse was still no more than a hulking black smear in the slightly less black darkness of the Common. Fick sipped his coffee and angled the QRF off toward it.

  A scream tore the darkness, from exactly that direction.

  Fick chucked his coffee. And he took off running.

  * * *

  “So much for breaking contact,” Ali whispered to herself, caressing the trigger of her AI. A hundred and fifty yards out, at the crest of the meat pile, the head of a single staggering Zulu turned to mist, and the body quietly collapsed.

  One more for the pile.

  But, nonetheless, it had followed Homer’s team over the top, despite the distracting fireworks show on the other side. And in the ZA, where there was one, there would always, sooner or later, be more. She and the others could keep trimming the hedges, silently, from up on the walls and this sniper OP. But they could only put off the inevitable.

  The dead would find them again. They always did.

  The clock was ticking once more. Then again, it had never really stopped. Ali had known all along, as all of them probably did, that this lull would be temporary.

  But at least Homer was back, and alive. She left the rifle where it lay and went back inside the guard tower to greet him. He, Kate, and Baxter were already there, the latter two stripping off gear and wearing shell-shocked expressions.

  “What happened?” Ali asked.

  “Just bad luck,” Homer said.

  “I may have just killed the whole world,” Baxter muttered.

  “Hey.” Homer looked at him with concern. “It’s nobody’s fault. We’ll find another way. You understand?”

  “Check,” Baxter managed.

  Ali started to move toward Homer, but he put a hand up. Now she could see even in the darkness that his assault suit was glistening. It had to be Zulu gunk, and he was covered.

  Aww, hell.

  “I’m gonna go get hosed off,” he said. He placed something on the desk – a syringe with no needle. “That’s the last of the MZ, except for Aliyev’s seed stock.”

  And then he left.

  As Ali watched Homer’s back disappear into the greater blackness, Baxter looked over at Kate, his own eyes wide and shining. He said, “Thanks for coming back for me.”

  “Always. You’re the only teammate I’ve got left.”

  Baxter tried to smile, not quite managing it. Whatever had gone wrong out there, whatever he did to fuck up, he looked like he was trying to shake it off. He was an earnest kid. Ali liked him. She didn’t have any particular feelings one way or the other for Kate – which unfortunately the former CST soldier seemed to interpret as disdain. But Ali simply didn’t have the time or energy to make friends with everyone. Baxter said, “Looks like I was the damsel this time.”

  Kate shrugged. “So we’re even now.”

  He stepped to the window, looked out, and said: “How long is this night going to last?”

  Ali wasn’t sure how literal he was being, but she checked her watch. “London’s at more than fifty degrees latitude, north of Calgary. And it’s December now. It’ll be nearly sixteen hours between sunset and sunrise.”

  Baxter took a breath, still looking out beyond the wire.

  Ali asked, “How bad was it out there?”

  “Pretty bad,” Baxter said. “Homer was in a roll-around fight with at least three of them. He didn’t get bit or scratched, but that was a lot of slime flying around. He got vaccinated, right?”

  “Yeah,” Ali said. “And before anyone else.” She checked her watch again. “But it was less than four hours ago.” It was conceivable he was immune now. But probably not.

  From behind them, Kate said, “He didn’t seem worried.”

  Ali laughed. “That’s because he believes God’s protecting him.”

  Baxter looked over, eyes shining in the dark. “Do you think that’s true?”

  Ali snorted. “Oh, yeah, he’s definitely beloved by God. Or believe me he wouldn’t still be here.”

  But her interior thoughts were much less flippant. She shook her head in the dark. Damn you, Homer. She should have followed her instincts and gone out with him, despite his protests or his logic. At the very least, she now realized she should have sent Pred and Juice, instead of these Tier-3 guys. But she hadn’t. And his mission had failed.

  And she almost lost him – again. In fact, she might have lost him already.

  They’d know soon enough.

  * * *

  Running flat out once again, Fick was prepared to kick down the warehouse door or bash through it with his own substantial body weight and momentum, but he found it wide open, and in the dark nearly fell straight through it and onto his ass.

  But he recovered, straightened up, and flipped on his weapon light, partially illuminating the scene inside. The warehouse was, basically, a warehouse, with lots of piled-up boxes and crap and open space. Ahead and to the right, cowering behind what looked like some big piece of machinery or tractor covered by a tarpaulin, was a wounded soldier. Fick knew she was wounded because she was whimpering, cradling her arm, and half covered in blood.

  Fick kept his light on her for exactly one second, because the noises coming out of the dark from ahead of them, farther forward and to the left, were a lot more compelling. Not to mention the wounded soldier was pointing there, over the covered tractor or whatever the hell it was, eyes shining with terror.

  Fick swiveled left, the cone of illumination along with him.

  And the light showed, about fifty feet away, a blood-streaked door of what looked like a storage closet, built out from the corrugated tin wall. And there was a dead man clawing and banging on it in fury, its back turned. Fick took a bead on its brainstem, then hesitated.

  It spun around, crouched, and coiled itself. And it wasn’t a dead man after all – but a dead woman, just with a very stocky build and a butch haircut. And it didn’t hiss at him – it shrieked. Then it took off like a crazy-ass witch, lurching from side to side, but tearing up the open floor between them, covering the distance in seconds.

  Rounds started cracking off behind and beside Fick.

  That would be the on-duty half of his QRF, following him in. Rounds caught the Foxtrot in the torso, their force knocking and slowing but not stopping it. Fick turned and slapped the two barrels away, both of them sparking with discharging rounds, and both with their under-barrel lights on.

  “Check fire!” he shouted.

  The looks on the faces of the men who had fearlessly followed him through the door clearly said: Okay, so what, then – do we just stand here and wait to die?

  Fick spun to face forward again.

  The Foxtrot was back up and accelerating again up to its considerable top
speed. Fick looked around and sighed.

  Okay, he thought, maybe this is my personal problem. Fuck it. He unclipped and dropped his rifle where he stood, and then in a single motion swept the tarpaulin off whatever the hell it covered – it actually was a tractor – and he took off with it.

  Hauling ass straight toward the hurtling Foxtrot.

  In the two seconds he had before their head-on collision, he thought: Sure wish Lance Corporal Burris was here – and Sergeant Lovell was alive, plus here. Those were the only two Marines he knew who had hands-on Zulu-wrangling experience. Though even they hadn’t tried it with a Foxtrot.

  He’d just have to learn on the job.

  He slammed into the thing, holding the tarp as high and wide as he could, then tried to bring it down and around the writhing, struggling, bucking dead woman. He almost couldn’t believe how strong it was, but he managed to get its arms pinned, then kicked its legs out from under it, and started dragging it across the floor, back where it had come from. It fought him like a one-woman army of the dead the entire way.

  He looked back only to be blinded by the RMPs’ weapon-mounted lights, which understandably had him directly spotlit, but he could still perfectly sense their gobsmacked expressions, despite being unable to see them.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, you dipshits, get the damned closet door open…”

  When they raced past him and did so, another terrified soldier scrambled out of the closet, where he had obviously been hiding – and only just in time for Fick to hurl the gift-wrapped, bucking, shrieking Foxtrot inside, and slam the door shut again.

  He turned and looked up to find all six of his RMPs staring at him, speechless. He looked down and saw his radio was still on Alpha’s channel. He keyed it. “Yeah, if you guys still need a damned Foxtrot to infect, I got one for you. Yeah. Warehouse on the southwest side of the Common. Yeah, okay, I’ll wait.”

  He looked back up.

  “Damn, Master Guns,” the RMP sergeant finally managed. He’d obviously never before seen a living person who was actually meaner than a Foxtrot. Then again, he’d never met a U.S. Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant before yesterday. And it was like Fick had told Wesley – words never won anyone over.

  “Yeah,” Fick said. “I pretty much run on caffeine and hate. Speaking of which, somebody get me another coffee.”

  A single shot went off. They all looked up.

  It was the wounded soldier. She had taken care of herself.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, both Park and Aliyev came through the door of the warehouse – not walking, but running. They had an RMP trying to keep up, who Fick gathered was Park’s new close-protection detail.

  By that point, Fick had also gotten one of the Royal Engineers in there with a jigsaw, and he was at work cutting a viewing port right in the door of the storage closet. The man had also set up a couple of work lights on metal stands nearby.

  Despite having on a face shield, the sapper stepped away smartly as the twelve-inch-diameter disc of wood fell away, revealing the green-and-grey, hissing, ravening face of the Foxtrot inside. It was trying to stick its whole head out the hole, and nearly succeeding. As it was, its face was protruding way too far for anyone’s comfort.

  Aliyev stepped up and produced two syringes – one empty, and one full, but with no needle. It was the dose of MZ that Homer had salvaged after their failed infection mission outside the wire. Aliyev filled the empty one from the full one, then took a step forward – but hesitated. Spittle was flying from the black lips of the gnashing face sticking through the porthole.

  “Gimme that,” Fick said. He took the syringe and jammed it in the Foxtrot’s eyeball, probably all the way through to the brain. The creature didn’t react to this, but only tried harder to get its mouth on Fick. Luckily, the small hole in the door was keeping its face pretty immobile. Fick jammed the plunger, then pulled it out again.

  It was done.

  “So now what?” Fick asked. “Just chuck it back out over the wall? Catch and release kind of thing?”

  “No,” Aliyev said. He exchanged a look with Park. “Since you have so masterfully managed to get this one confined, I’m going to say we need to keep it under observation.”

  Park looked like he was onboard, but Fick asked why.

  Aliyev nodded. “Okay. When I designed this pathogen, I’d never seen a runner, much less a Foxtrot.”

  “You’re saying you don’t even know if it works on them?”

  “There’s every reason to think it will work. But now we can be sure.” He paused and grinned, the work lights glinting on the thick black frames of his eyeglasses. “Science. It works, bitches.”

  Fick checked his watch. “You are aware the world’s dying?”

  Aliyev exhaled. He was all too aware. He had caused it. “Listen. Until and if this thing starts to sicken, it probably won’t be contagious anyway. So there’s little point in sending it out until then.”

  “And at that point,” Park added, “we’ll be sure.”

  Aliyev nodded. “Also, aside from the dose you just used, the only MZ we have left is a tiny amount of seed stock. It needs time to culture back up again to any kind of quantity, before we can weaponize it again. So we have got time – whether we want it or not.” Aliyev paused, then gestured at the area around Fick’s crotch. “I think you got some zombie gunk on you. You might want to use the time to get a change of clothes.”

  Fick looked down at the big circular wet spot, grunted, then assigned one of his RMPs to guard the dead chick, “in case she decides to come out of the closet.” Then he marched out.

  To go look for pants.

  Calm Before the Storm

  CentCom – Prison

  With the external threat abated for the time being, and the home guard on the walls reduced to fifty percent watch, Predator and Juice were taking the opportunity to get off the line for a while themselves. Specifically, they were going to hunt for some chow, refill Pred’s magazines from ammo stores – and just get the hell out of the rain.

  They were inside and halfway to the armory, following the dim strip lighting on the floor, when they bumped, literally, into two dudes who weren’t as big as they were – but weren’t particularly small, either.

  “Wheeler! Savard!” Pred exclaimed. “Motherfucking Charlie team, as I live and breathe.”

  “What’s up, brothers,” Savard said, bringing it in, the four taking turns embracing with bear hugs and vigorous man-pats.

  “Hey, guys,” Wheeler said, pulling away. He was a grizzled and stocky master sergeant, early forties, bald and not what you’d call good-looking. On the other hand, he’d been awarded a nearly unbelievable eleven Bronze stars, four of them with the V device for valor, in his fourteen pre-ZA combat deployments. So who gave a shit what he looked like. “Heard you two got some back in America.”

  “Hey now,” Savard said. “Pred’s a married man.” Sergeant First Class Savard was younger and nicer to look at, with swarthy angular features and dark hair, and a full-sleeve tattoo on his left arm, like a lot of the younger operators had, visible underneath shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. He also only knew that Pred had been married, and still wore his wedding ring. It was pretty much just Handon and a couple others in Alpha who knew about Pred’s last phone call with Cali, when she’d been infected but not yet turned.

  Wheeler said, “Hey, no one’s married—”

  Savard joined him on the last word: “—overseas!”

  Juice looked at Pred with concern, but he was obviously going to let it go. He just seemed glad to see friendly faces – and two former Unit guys. Juice was still anxious to change the subject. “What the hell have you guys been up to?”

  “Oh, you know,” Wheeler said. “Fighting the zombie wars.”

  “How’d that go?” Juice asked.

  “Not great. They had a mission for us in the south. Pulled the entire command for it. USOC as an expeditionary battle group.”

  �
�Seriously?” Pred asked.

  “Yeah,” Savard said. “There was an unstable section of ZPW in the south. Engineers knew it wasn’t going to stay up long once the dead hit it, and also when everyone started shooting off it, chucking grenades and rockets. And the dead were moving toward it fast.”

  “So what did you sad sacks do about it?”

  Wheeler picked up the story. “Our job was to dig in and hold them off long enough for the engineers to shore it up.”

  “Jesus,” Pred said. “Not a classic SOF mission.”

  Juice agreed. “Straight-leg infantry foxhole shit. You do it?”

  “No. Turned out it wasn’t possible anyway. But, thank God, that north section of the Wall collapsed – and all the dumb dead bastards bypassed the entire south and hauled ass north.”

  Pred grunted. “Huh. Lucky thing.”

  “Yeah, pretty funny how that happened, right?”

  “Well,” Juice said. “Glad you’re here now.”

  “Finally,” Pred said, grinning. “Now this thing’s almost over.”

  Wheeler shrugged. “Yeah, well, we would have been here quicker, but the dumb-ass Colonel insisted on taking a big-ass MRAP, thinking it would make a badass command vehicle. Of course it was the slowest truck in the convoy, and didn’t keep the dead off any better or worse than anything else.”

  Savard shook his head and said, “I told him we should have at least thrown those bomb-disposal robots out the back…”

  Wheeler shrugged again. “Hell, that vehicle weighs twenty-five tons, wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  Juice squinted and leaned in. “Wait – what kind?”

  “What?”

  “What kind of robots?”

  “Talons, I think.”

  “No,” Wheeler said. “SWORDS, with the weapons kits.”

  Juice’s eyes lit up, and he looked over at Pred.