Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  He knew this made him a single point of failure, as well. And that wasn’t good. But, at the time, the alternative had seemed to be the certainty of failure, right then, followed quickly by death. They’d done what they had to. And now Drake had to see it through. No one else could.

  As he waited, he looked around the bridge, waiting and half-expecting the faces of more long-dead people to start appearing on the heads of the living. He wasn’t stupid, and even in his degraded condition he had enough self-awareness to know what was happening.

  Everyone who had died under Drake’s command, all those he had sent to their graves, were now somehow coming back to haunt him. He could only conclude that the strain and guilt of the past two years had built up into some kind of towering psychological cliff. And the shootdown of their two pilots had sent him hurtling over the edge.

  But he’d be damned if he’d shatter on the rocks below.

  He knew he couldn’t quit simply because things had gotten hard, or because he’d gotten a little wounded. The Alpha operators never gave up, or packed it in. Neither did Fick and his Marines.

  Drake could do no less.

  * * *

  “Sitrep,” Drake said, as Abrams got off the line with CIC.

  The XO’s voice was mechanical when he answered. “Sir, the Admiral Nakhimov is still holding position at stand-off distance, 410km due south.”

  Drake nodded. “Well, that’s some good luck, at least. But why?”

  “Our working theory is that the one missile our planes got through their defenses was enough to force them to pull back and stop for a damage control effort.”

  “And still nothing like a real BDA?”

  “Negative,” Abrams said. “We’ve still just got this very fuzzy long-range video from the Predator.”

  “Goddammit. We need a better look.” Abrams didn’t seem inclined to argue with him. “How the hell can we get an aircraft closer to that ship?”

  Abrams considered for a moment. “The short answer is we can’t. They’ve got long-range SAMs, short-range SAMs, more short-range SAMs, eight of those damned Kashtan autocannons… We could maybe get an aircraft close, flying low to the ground clutter on shore, where it would be hidden from radar – but as soon as it popped out over water and showed itself, it would go down.” He didn’t make reference to their lost F-35s. He didn’t need to. “We might get a few seconds of video, but then we’d lose the aircraft.”

  “So then we send something disposable,” Drake said.

  “The Predator,” Abrams said, anticipating him.

  “Exactly.”

  “Yeah. But no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if the Predator is down on the deck flying there, it’s not sitting up at fifteen thousand feet serving as our radar relay. Also, it would take nearly two hours to get there – every minute of which we’d be blind.”

  Drake shook his head, realizing that, basically, they didn’t have enough pieces left on this chessboard.

  “Okay,” he said, sounding resigned. “What else is there?”

  “Still no contact with the shore team. And CIC, via the Fire Scout drone, is starting to see increasing Zulu activity in the vicinity of the base. We’re waiting and hoping for a sitrep from the team.”

  “And if it doesn’t come? What are our QRF options?”

  Abrams just shook his head. There was basically no one left to go out and rescue Juice and the Marines. No one they could spare, and no one they could risk. And certainly no one who could fight through the dead that were now starting to be seen moving around on the base.

  Anyway, for all they knew, the shore team was already gone.

  And that was the moment Campbell picked to come back on the line: “Bridge, CIC. Be advised: that Zulu activity which was increasing around the naval base… is now an exponential increase. We’re seeing what looks like a big chunk of the population of the nearby town converging on our team’s last known position.”

  And with that, Drake realized, a shitload more opposing pieces had just gotten dumped on the board – and some of them would now be running flat out, coming for their shore team.

  If any of them were still alive.

  * * *

  Sergeant Lovell had just finished tightening a bandage around Juice’s thigh – the bullet had gone in and out, and the wounds on both sides were packed with gauze – and was going for his arm wound, but Juice shrugged him off.

  As he regained his feet, Juice realized three things. One, the outside wall of the warehouse, which was a thick corrugated tin, was now fucking rattling. Two, if he listened closely, he could hear moaning out there as well. And three, using the squad net had caused him to recall that he had never turned his radio back onto the command net – which he’d turned off entirely in order to focus on the firefight, and keeping his team from getting wiped out to the last man. Since then, he hadn’t had the time, attention, or breathing space to deal with it.

  He looked down at his radio and flipped the switch.

  “—peat, Biltong Actual, be advised: your position IS BEING OVERRUN. You have Zulus inbound in battalion strength. How copy? How copy, Biltong?”

  Juice sighed and pressed his PTT button. “CIC, Biltong Actual copies all. Will send mission status update. Wait out.”

  Something was making noise closer now, just around the next intersection between pallets, to the right. Juice raised his rifle to high-ready, smoothly stepped forward heel-toe, then leaned way out to the left, covering every inch as the corridor opened up to his right.

  BANG! He fired once.

  “Thank goodness for that,” he said. It was only a living dead guy, not a half-dead Spetsnaz guy. But that also meant: they weren’t just being overrun from outside.

  The dead were also in there with them now.

  * * *

  Looking energized, possibly even happy, Abrams put his phone down and turned to Drake.

  “The shore team’s alive.”

  Drake exhaled. “Thank Christ for that.”

  Abrams’s smile went away. “Now the question is… how the hell do we get them out of there?”

  “Yeah,” Drake said, his own short-lived smile fading. “Never mind with the supplies.” That team was in there fighting for their lives because, without those supplies, nobody else – not Alpha, not the Marines, not the carrier, not the rest of mankind – would be able to fight for theirs.

  And Drake and Abrams both knew that the dead were now swarming their shore team like locusts – and that the Russians in that battlecruiser could still come back and destroy them, or drive them off, pretty much any damned time they felt like it.

  Basically, being alive was a provisional and temporary thing.

  For everyone.

  Way Too High a Price

  JFK - Rear Dock

  Floating just beside the Kennedy’s rear dock, Predator put his hand on the crank for the outboard motor on their combat rubber raiding craft (CRRC). But Henno shook his head at him darkly and unclipped two fold-out paddles.

  He handed one over and the two worked in tandem to straighten the raft up, then paddle it around the edge of the dock. Now they dug in and got it moving smoothly up the starboard side of the carrier, which rose up beside them like some kind of gray equatorial ice shelf.

  With the African coast off to their right, they moved north toward the prow, which was over a kilometer distant. They were following the path they believed Homer had taken, after disappearing under the surface in his diving gear just a few minutes earlier – off on a one-man mission to search and clear the hull of any mines.

  Not to mention confront any enemy divers down there laying them.

  “Hey, man,” Pred said, speaking in hushed tones, for reasons he wasn’t totally clear on. “Is it just me, or is Homer being overly dramatic? Does he really think a Spetsnaz mini-sub is just going to rock up here and attack us?”

  Henno shrugged. He wasn’t really an expert in naval Spetsnaz units. Then again, he used to h
ave a buddy in the SBS, the Special Boat Service, with whom he had done a lot of cross-training – and that guy was. He cleared his throat and spat over the side before answering.

  “Back in the Cold War, the main business of them bastards was infiltrating Western countries before a war with NATO. Destroying port facilities. Fuel and ammo depots. Ships at anchor.”

  “Huh,” said Pred. “Yeah, I guess history is ignored at our own peril.”

  “Aye. Just ask the Swedes. To the Soviets, with almost no warm-water access, Swedish ports were do-or-die targets in the event of war. Spetsnaz frogmen were like sightings of Nessie for years, all up and down the Swedish coast.”

  “Still,” Pred said. “I presume Homer knows the Russian ship is still like 400 kilometers south of us.”

  Henno shrugged. “It matters nought. These blokes always turn up where you think they aren’t. That’s the whole point of ’em. Masters of trickery, backstabbing, and sabotage. And they fight dirty – always.”

  “Sound like you respect the dudes.”

  Henno looked him in the eye. “You’d better respect your enemy. As soon as you don’t, you’re done.”

  Pred realized the former SAS man was right.

  Maybe he had just gotten out of the habit of fighting the living, never mind organized militaries. Part of him still wondered if they shouldn’t leave ship’s security to the Marines, or NSF. But he knew the former were badly degraded from past battles and fully tasked now – and the latter little more than glorified mall security guards, in his not-all-that-humble view.

  He just had to trust that Homer knew what the hell he was doing. In any case, the SEAL was almost certainly the only man on the Kennedy trained for counter-mine warfare. So it was probably him or no one.

  “Well,” Pred finally said, “I guess it’s a good thing he packed his suit, tank, and rebreather. All for a mission to Chicago – which is 1,500 miles inland.”

  Henno nodded. “He’s a SEAL. I don’t reckon he goes for a shit without scuba gear.”

  After this, Henno kept his own counsel, and just paddled. But he was worried, too. He’d never judge Homer for the time he’d taken out – first to rescue his family, then to put it back together. Everyone on the team knew he’d been pulled in two directions, faced with totally incompatible duties. But was he overcompensating now? Getting reckless, going into the water alone, chasing monsters?

  And was he going to get himself killed doing it?

  Henno didn’t like the thought of Homer getting slotted – and leaving those two moppets of his orphaned and alone again. But there wasn’t much he could do about it. Except keep paddling. And be ready to join the fight.

  The gloom of the Kennedy’s shadow and the silence of the empty sea seemed to underscore their mood of foreboding. Somewhere down below them, in the much deeper shadows, their teammate was operating on his own. And all that could be done by these two hard men, one from each side of the Atlantic, was carry on paddling through it.

  And stand ready.

  * * *

  Juice issued a terse warning to his team of Marines about Zulus in the warehouse, then motioned them forward again – they didn’t need specific instructions, but knew perfectly well how to do CQB and room-clearing.

  Pretty soon, they had reached the very back of the warehouse, on what Juice had come to think of as the Russian side of it. They’d passed more blood, a bit more carnage, and one more dead body – making sure of that by shooting it repeatedly, then leaving it where it lay.

  They’d also dropped several more stumbling Zulus – ones that weren’t in the South African naval uniform, but civilian clothes. These were undead from the town. They’d obviously been woken up by the furious firefight and multiple explosions in the warehouse.

  And they were also getting in somehow.

  Pretty soon Juice knew how: the retreating Spetsnaz force had left the back door open. This was how the survivors had made their escape. Juice knew because there was a blood trail leading out of it.

  Which was also perhaps the scent the dead were following back in.

  Juice changed mags, sighted in on the crowd of Zulus pushing through the open door, and started shooting rapidly and methodically, while moving smoothly forward. By the time he reached the door, he’d put down eight with precise headshots. Now he slammed the door in the face of two more, pulled it shut – and sealed it with a pair of plastic flexicuffs from his chest rig.

  Turning around, he saw the remainder of his team converging on him. That was good – as they had one more thing to do before they could get out of there: they had to make sure that goddamned warehouse was sealed up tight, and its supplies secured.

  Because they’d come too far, suffered too much, and paid way too high a price… not to get what they’d come for.

  Big Bad

  Jesus Two Zero - CSAR Mission, Over the South Atlantic

  Approximately 75 kilometers southwest of the Kennedy, sitting serene and still in the whipping air of a streaking Seahawk helicopter, First Sergeant Aaliyah Khamsi watched the surface of the ocean spool out beneath her. The combat search-and-rescue (CSAR) mission she’d volunteered for, to go out and try to rescue their shot-down CAG, was under way. And they were zipping along way down close to the deck, at the aircraft’s very top speed.

  Because they weren’t the only ones racing out there to try to find the CAG. Radar in CIC told them that the Russian transport helo, a Kamov Ka-60 Kasatka (or "Orca"), was moving directly toward the CAG’s transponder signal. Now it was a race – at high speed, and with higher stakes.

  Ali wasn’t too fazed, in part because she had been on more helo insertions than she could even remember – most of them at high speed, all of them high-stakes, and many at such low altitude that the mountains and trees were as likely to kill her as ground fire on the way, or even the enemy when she got there.

  Now, she ran her hand around the hatch edge of the MH-60 Seahawk and shook her head. The last time she’d interacted at all closely with one of these aircraft, it was during the Battle of the JFK – when one of them had tried to rescue her from open water, but instead came crashing down on her head, rotors first.

  She just had to hope this one would do a better job of staying in the air. Though she knew that from the moment a helicopter comes off the assembly line, pretty much all it wants to do is kill you. And if this one went down, she would not be able to simply take a deep breath and dive.

  Ali had actually been shot down twice before, once each in Afghanistan and Iraq. She’d been the pilot on both those occasions, and flying a significantly more complex aircraft. Two was a lot of helo crashes to walk away from. But she wasn’t even the record holder in Delta. She wasn’t even close.

  And she had zero desire to pad her stats today.

  The Seahawk kept winging its way toward destiny.

  * * *

  “Listen up,” Juice said as the remaining Marines circled round, close enough that he didn’t need the radio. “We’re getting out of here. But first we need to secure this structure.”

  He got one or two slightly puzzled looks – from guys who could clearly hear the banging, rattling, and moaning all around them outside.

  So Juice elaborated. “As long as that undead mob stays on the outside of this warehouse, then the carrier can send men and helos to the roof, cut in, and pull supplies out by sling-load. Got it?”

  They got it. Heads nodded.

  “I want a fast sweep around the perimeter. Patrick goes with Lovell, counter-clockwise. Vorster comes with me, the other way. You hit a door, you make sure it’s shut – good and tight – and secure it like this one. Everybody got flexicuffs? Okay. We meet when we meet, then recover the wounded and get the hell out of Dodge. Questions?”

  Lovell looked from Juice to the blood trail in front of the door. “What about our Russian friends?”

  Juice shrugged. “They’re wounded, they’re degraded, and they’re out in heavy weather now. They’ve got their own set of problem
s. I don’t think we’ll see ’em again.”

  But even as he said this, Juice knew he didn’t believe it. He felt strangely sure about that.

  He knew somehow that Misha, their terrifying leader, wasn’t dead. He’d be seeing him again.

  And the man would not be in a good mood…

  * * *

  The first bubbles of air popped on the surface barely ten minutes after Homer went in, and Predator and Henno had set out behind him.

  This was strange enough – the whole point of the SEALs’ Draeger rebreathers was that they were closed-loop systems, emitting no bubbles to betray the presence of the frogmen below. But when these bubbles quickly turned to big gouts of air, popping and exploding on the surface, Pred and Henno turned in and gave each other unmistakable Okay, what the fuck? looks.

  They were still floating in the shadow of the carrier, its gigantic bulk blotting out the low early-morning sun – so they didn’t recognize the dark slicks of blood on the surface until they’d paddled right into them.

  “Jesus Christ…” Pred muttered, as he worked out what he was seeing.

  Henno leaned over alongside him. “Any idea what a SEAL’s blood looks like?”

  Pred turned to look back at him. “What – as opposed to a Spetsnaz dude’s? I guess I’d expect the SEAL’s to be blue.”

  Henno nodded contentedly. “Well, that’s all right, then. This shite’s red, so our lad’s fine, no doubt.”

  And that was when the first body floated up – causing both Alpha men to startle, nearly swamping the small boat. Henno squinted at the corpse as it breached, and they regained their composure and started paddling up to it.