ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

“Come on. Let’s go watch the sunrise.”

  * * *

  “Hey, big guy.”

  Predator stopped himself mid-spit, turned, and looked down. It was Kate. “Hey,” he said, with a smile.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Good to go.”

  She looked up and into his eyes – and could see that he was. Predator had found a mission worth living for, and had even completed it. He had saved every Cali left. And he had forgiven himself for being unable to save his own Cali.

  He had found his way back to life.

  “I’m sorry about Jake,” Predator said. He’d never really gotten a chance to say that to her.

  Kate sighed. “He died doing what he loved. On his feet, fighting flat-out, and going a hundred and ten miles an hour.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not grieving.”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t think I’d ever have time to grieve.”

  Predator looked down at her gently. “Maybe you will now.”

  “Or maybe I’ll just bypass that, and do what he would want me to do – as would Bren, and Kwan. And especially Todd.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She stood on her toes, reached up and grabbed his giant head, pulling it down toward her – and kissed him on the lips. Pulling away again, she said. “Get on with it. With duty. With love, maybe. And with life.”

  Pred smiled. “That sounds pretty good.”

  “Come on,” Kate said, slipping her hand inside his gigantic one, grabbing Juice’s arm, and turning them both around. “The dead rise no more.

  “And the sun’s on the other side.”

  * * *

  Fick stepped up beside Ali and Homer at roof’s edge.

  Almost at the same time they were joined by Handon, Charlotte, and the boys… Juice, Predator, and Kate… Wesley, Amarie, and Josie… Baxter, Hailey, Noise, Miller, and a few of the others. All of them with full-on sunlight shining on their faces now.

  “Looks like you did it,” Fick said, squeezing Ali’s arm.

  “We all did it,” she said, squeezing him back.

  And as Ali looked across at Fick, she suddenly realized something else. She knew now she’d had it wrong – back when the two of them were walking up that muddy dirt ramp in the pouring rain in the middle of the night, in the brief lull before the final battle. In that dark moment, she had been afraid the Zulu Alpha was weeding out everyone kind and gentle – leaving only hard men, unrelenting, those who could fight, but couldn’t nurture, and who would never back down.

  But she’d had that wrong.

  Actually, the ZA was like Delta selection, all over again, but for the whole world. What it had weeded out was everyone without resilience, without total resolve. Everyone without the blessing of unextinguishable hope. And leaving only those who never quit – no matter how bad things got.

  Homo invictus, she thought, not for the first time. Man unconquerable. None of these people around her had ever given up, not for a second. And they had finally won through.

  What had befallen the world and humanity was a tragedy beyond measure, and nothing could ever make it okay, or erase all the pain and loss it had caused. But still, Ali had to wonder: what kind of world would the new one be – remade by, and made up of, these people who were left? The kind of indispensable men and women who surrounded her now.

  And her heart swelled with joy – and with hope.

  * * *

  One who still stood away from the others was Simon Park.

  In part, he was holding vigil over Aliyev’s body. In part, he was watching the last dead fall, down below. Mainly, he just needed a minute to try to get his mind around it. Despite his cool demeanor, including his report that he had basically vanquished human disease… in his heart, he could scarcely believe it. That they had all made it, for one thing.

  But also how far he himself had come.

  From being buried down in that isolated bunker, totally alone, thinking he was the last man left on Earth, and just waiting to die… all the way across the globe, to here, site of the final battle for mankind, watching the ZA come to an end.

  And standing at ground zero of humanity reborn.

  He knew of course there were still unimaginable obstacles between them and reclaiming, never mind rebuilding, what was left of the world. But Park also knew they would be able to face them. He understood now that adversity was inevitable, a universal of human experience. But the contest would always be decided by how they chose to react to it.

  That was what life was – how we respond to adversity.

  And he felt now like he had really internalized the appropriate, irresistible, and eternally powerful response to obstacles and unpleasant surprises:

  Adapt and overcome.

  With those three words, you almost couldn’t lose at life. And of course, Park had absolutely no illusions about who had taught him this. The operators had not only saved his life, over and over again.

  They had changed his life.

  And their lessons had saved the whole world.

  * * *

  “Hey! Bring it in, dude – I mean, Doc.”

  This was Predator bellowing over the heads of the others, who quickly opened and expanded the circle so Dr. Park could join the rest of them – and he immediately got pulled into something like a gigantic group hug. He was the farthest thing now from a LaMoE – the last man on Earth.

  He was surrounded by people – by his human family.

  They all were. After everything they had fought through, suffered and struggled with side by side, crossing great stretches of the globe in their epic quest, facing trial after trial, suffering and dying for one another, what they were now was more like… a tribe.

  And at the head of that tribe was Handon. Despite the loss of Sarah, aside from the new spark with Charlotte, he was nothing like bereft of love – and he never had been. He was surrounded by it. He had the love of his brothers and sisters. He had brought his people home – most of them.

  And so he would always have a place where he belonged.

  They all would.

  “Man, I’ve got a confession to make,” Juice said. “I had my doubts we were going to make it.”

  “Ha,” Pred rumbled, his arm around Kate’s shoulder. “I never believed for a second we were going to make it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Fick grunted. “Nobody, anywhere, believed for one second we were going to make it.”

  “Oh, I did,” Noise said. “I wish Henno had lived to see it.”

  “Me, too,” Handon said. “He called me a ‘twunt’ one time.”

  “Nice,” Ali said. “Two incredibly foul words, without being either one.”

  “Hey,” Predator said. “Remember that first Foxtrot we ever saw, in Germany? The one that jumped on the SPIE rope?”

  Handon nodded. “The zombie of Michael Jordan.”

  “Yeah. That one. Man, I thought we were all doomed.”

  Juice nodded. “And somehow our doom became—”

  “Our salvation,” Park finished for him. “Death destroyed itself. And thereby saved us.”

  “No,” Ali said. “It wasn’t them. It was us.”

  Standing together, happy, watching the sun rise and the clouds blow away, they all knew exactly what she meant. They had saved one another.

  It was love that had conquered death.

  They all knew it was going to be a long, hard road ahead, with perhaps no hope of ever regaining all they had lost.

  But humanity had ARISEN.

  And hope never dies.

  Come back and live through the beginning of the end of the world in

  ARISEN : GENESIS, the pulse-pounding and bestselling first ARISEN prequel.

  And then live through it again, except harder and faster, with the SF soldiers of Triple Nickel.

  ARISEN : NEMESIS.

  Salvation. Vengeance. Vanity.

  NEMESIS

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  A portion of the earnings from this book will be split between the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association (IAVA) – which provides resources to and community for post-9/11 veterans, with a focus on combatting suicide among troops and veterans, improving services for woman veterans, reforming government for today’s veterans, and defending veteran and military education benefits; and the Royal British Legion, a UK charity founded in 1921 that provides lifelong financial, social and emotional support for the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, Reservists, veterans, and their families.

  Note from the Author

  Oh my God, that was hard. (At the time, writing Books Eleven and Twelve was, by a very comfortable margin, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I didn’t imagine it could get any harder. Turns out this was just a failure of imagination on my part. Not my first.) And oh my God, am I tired. Think I’m probably just going to leave it at that. (Okay, some details here.)

  Oh, except:

  THANK YOU

  I’ve been saying it all along, and I’m not going to miss the chance to say it one last time: Without you (the readers and fans of ARISEN), I’m little more than a sad bastard sitting alone in a dark room beating his head bloody on a keyboard. Having you along for the journey – your presence, your support, your endlessly kind words, buoying me up when I felt so often I was sinking, your love for the series, the story, the characters, and the world, even the author – has meant everything. You guys are absolutely the greatest readers any author could remotely hope for. I am blessed – and grateful.

  Thank you for taking this ride with me – all the way to the end. I hope it’s been worth it, and that that this last chapter lives up to all that’s come before, and lives up to your loyalty to the series. I also hope with all my heart that it will prove to be a very happy ending, for all of us.

  Michael

  01 November 2017

  Thanks & Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank the incredibly generous and talented people who make up the ARISEN beta-reading team: Mark George Pitely, Amanda Jo Moore, Dave Fairfax, Ron Purugganan (aka Nil Ate), Peter Odukwe, and most especially Electronics Technician Chief Petty Officer Mark D. Wiggins, USCG (ret).

  Thanks as always to the amazing Editrice (jacqui@ladyeditrice.co.uk), for making ARISEN bulletproof. (And for finally raising her rates!)

  Thanks are not enough for amazing and instantly indispensable publishing assistant Madame Marauder, aka Julia Molin. You complete me.

  Thanks also and forever to Anna K. Brooksbank, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Alexander M. Heublein, Matthew David Grabowy, and Michael and Jayne Barnard, for their indispensable support. Also, Bruce, Wanda, Alec, and Brendan Fyfe for their service and sacrifice. RIP Bruce – an absolutely amazing man, and great friend to the author, and whose tireless work on behalf of homeless veterans was awe-inspiring. You can contribute to his memorial endowment fund here. Eternal thanks to Glynn James for coming up with ARISEN.

  Thanks to Mark Wiggins for the broadband EMI solution (as so many others before).

  Thanks to Darby Suzan Kimball for the great Ainsleys storyline. It pays to have a solar-powered Himalayan trekking companion. :)

  The wonderful cover image for this book was created by the always amazing Tom Weber at MILPICTURES. It wouldn’t have been right to finish the series without him.

  The bit about Odysseus’s sweet trip is from the best travel book of all time, Jeff Greenwald’s The Size of the World: Once Around Without Leaving the Ground.

  The bit about Westmoreland making officers write their obituaries was stolen from the fantastic The Kingdom, written by the exceptional Matthew Michael Carnahan.

  Fick’s line, “This fight is like fucking a gorilla. You keep going ’til the gorilla wants to stop.” was stolen from Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, written by Robert Carlock.

  The Black Hawk pilot who described a Chinook as “like two palm trees fucking a Dumpster” did so in the terrific MARSOC memoir, Level Zero Heroes.

  “How about some dick?” is from Chris Rock, via Neil Strauss.

  “People in hell want Slurpees” is from, God save me, The Walking Dead – S02:E05, “Chupacabra”, written by David Leslie Johnson.

  “That was all you needed: a lit window in the distance, the knowledge that there was something there, something to work for. The company of a dwarfy hope.” (slightly adapted) is from Tibor Fischer’s indescribably wonderful Under the Frog.

  “Science. It works, bitches.” is from XKCD (of course), and as channeled by Richard Dawkins.

  “If tonight’s our night to go, one thing I know… We’ll need a coin for the ferryman.” is from Nickelback, thank you very much.

  The overly philosophical section with Noise in the truck with the RMP had a lot of fathers and mothers. “The world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news.” etc. is from the best novel of the twentieth century, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. “We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good?” is from Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way (nearly the best, and certainly the most useful, book I’ve ever read). The bit about how in any situation, there are multiple things to attend to, that it is very rare that all of them are negative, and you get to choose, is from the Dalai Lama. Finally, “Life is what you pay attention to” is from Winifred Gallagher, in the life-changing Rapt.

  Aliyev’s yearning for a drink, a cigarette, an affair, a nap is from David Mamet: “How many times have we heard (and said): Yes, I know that I was cautioned, that the way would become difficult and I would want to quit, that such was inevitable, and that at exactly this point the battle would be lost or won … but those who cautioned me could not have foreseen the magnitude of the specific difficulties I am encountering at this point – difficulties which must, sadly, but I have no choice, force me to resign the struggle (and have a drink, a cigarette, an affair, a rest), in short, to declare failure.” Holy s*&^, have I felt like that.

  There were a lot of voices whispering in my ear during the very many times I thought I was too tired to go on, on this one – most conspicuously: Steven Pressfield, David Mamet, Ryan Holiday, Eric L. Haney, and akb. Thank you, gentlemen, and lady.

  In the evenings, too shattered to focus my eyes on the page of a book (ironically), I rewatched The Unit from front to back; with a Delta guy (Eric L. Haney) and the best playwright of his generation (David Mamet) teaming up, what could be more perfect? When I ran out of that, I rewatched Ultimate Force, which is also outstanding. You should absolutely watch both, too. 8^)

  Two new (one new to me, the other just new) books in the storycraft canon this time were The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd edition, by Christopher Vogler (a classic I somehow only just got around to); and Matt Bird’s The Secrets of Story (instant classic). I also obsessively reviewed just the really good stuff to try to get ready to bring it all home. Plus the Save the Cat books. Obviously. RIP, Blake.

  Once again – the long-awaited music section! As you will (still) know, there’s almost no ARISEN without the soundtrack. That is, this music totally powers me through my runs (where I do all the creative work) and then through my writing days (where I do all the work work). Books Thirteen and Fourteen being by far the (new) longest, hardest, and most ambitious project
of my life (never mind all the personal crap I was (still) dealing with), the music was even more indispensable than usual in keeping me going. It kind of saved me, actually.

  This time, official theme-song honors are split between “Break” by Three Days Grace (Book Thirteen) and “Million Miles an Hour” by Nickelback (Book Fourteen).

  However, both were eclipsed and overwhelmed when I discovered Viks Sideburns! Whoah hoah! Best remix/mashup artist of all time!!! And massively improving, somehow, the songs of some of my very favorite artists. My initial obsession was this “Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, Celldweller, Fort Minor, Blue Stahli (Sideburns Remix).” Five freaking artists, on one track! Including Celldweller and Blue Stahli! I ended up grabbing fully thirteen of his tracks for the writing playlist. The other ridiculous stand-out was “Linkin Park VS Blue Stahli (Sideburns remix).” I swear to you there were days (when I was months past exhaustion, yet still hundreds of scenes away from a completed series) when I listened to this song a hundred times right in a row. It just never got old, and never let me down. Damn, dude. I should thank Linkin Park and Blue Stahli as well. And I do. 8^)

  And, for the second time, I’ve done the complete playlist I wrote these books to as a Spotify playlist, so you can actually listen along as you read. (Oh, I didn’t do a separate editing playlist, but just move a bunch of the softer/more instrumental stuff to the very bottom, and would jump down there during editing sessions.)

  https://open.spotify.com/user/mrfuches2/playlist/0XAINn1fEEKbl5zdIXaayL

  Spotify still doesn’t have Tool – and, much more critically and unforgivably, they don’t have Viks Sideburns (evidently they don’t operate in his home country). So I’ve done the Sideburns as a YouTube playlist, and bunged in the Tool, along with a few other worthy tracks for some reason not on Spotify. But this the end of ARISEN definitely doesn’t exist with Sideburns. 8^) Enjoy!