Arisen, Book Four - Maximum Violence

by James, Glynn

  In the driver’s seat, Anderson gunned the engine and took the next corner, which Wesley hoped was their last, too quickly. The tires screeched as he battled the wheel and the truck lurched, skidded up to the edge of the sidewalk on the opposite side, then shot forward again, barely slowing.

  “Is this where we saw them?” shouted Wesley over the roar of the engine and the wind. With one hand, he held tightly to the handle of the passenger-side door, and with the other gripped his handgun, the knuckles of both whitening.

  “Just over there!” answered Melvin, through the smashed-out back window. Both he and Derwin stood in the flatbed of the truck, holding on to the rail that ran across the rear window. They had their assault rifles ready, but Wesley wondered how the hell they intended to fire the damn things and still hang on. At the very rear, Scott and Browning – who had run over from the main hangar after Wesley bellowed for them through the radio – sat with their backs to each other, rifles pointed outward, scoping buildings as they blasted by them.

  They had sped past a dozen massive warehouses, an auto yard that still had rows of cars lined up in the waiting bay, and a gray, unmarked, prefab building with half a dozen stretch limousines out front. They were parked haphazardly around the lot with their doors open, as though they had been abandoned in a hurry. Finally, Wesley saw the blue-roofed building in the distance, but he couldn’t spot the radio tower.

  “Slow down,” he said now, and Anderson eased off the accelerator. The truck slowed and rolled forward, and they all tensed up, eyes sweeping the area for any sign of the fleeing group.

  “There!” said Browning, pointing up the road. Wesley turned to see at least some of the group heading toward them on the opposite side, running alongside a building and using an overgrown row of shrubs as cover.

  But Wesley also saw what they had failed to see. Slithering swiftly across the roof of that same building were a dozen dark figures. They seemed to cling to one another, moving together as a pack, clawing over the half-collapsed landscape up there and through the debris, scrambling purposefully. Wesley guessed that the runners could sense the survivors, but had not yet spotted them. And he knew that when the group broke cover at the end of the building the runners would fall upon them.

  How they got up there in the first place was not a question Wesley cared to entertain.

  “On the roof!” he shouted, pointing.

  But Derwin had already spotted them and leapt from the back of the truck. “On me!” he said, moving forward. Browning and Scott spread out just behind, flanking him to either side, and Melvin brought up the rear.

  Wesley climbed out of the passenger seat, gripping his handgun with sweating fingers. He moved to the side of the road just as the frontmost survivor saw the tight knot of sailors advancing and stopped, spreading his arms out to halt his own group. Wesley could see the look of fear in the man’s eyes as his people backed away, toward the side of the building. He reached slowly to his hip, to a handgun holstered there, but then he frowned… and turned to look above and behind him. He had finally worked out that Derwin and the others weren’t aiming at them, but up toward the roof, and Wesley figured he had also guessed what they were probably aiming at.

  Anderson alone watched from inside the truck as the chaos unfolded. He flushed with a cold sweat and felt feverish with fear. He didn’t like the doors of the truck being open, and he didn’t like sitting there on an open road in the middle of dead man’s land, waiting for the wide-eyed Englishman and his toy soldiers to try and rescue a bunch of nobodies. He could feel the panic building in him, a strange tightening ache in his stomach that felt like someone had reached inside him and was squeezing his guts. His foot hovered over the accelerator.

  And then, in an instant, the tension erupted into bedlam – screaming, gunfire, and the hissing of the dead. As the pack emerged at the edge of the roof, still moving fast, they leapt from the rooftop into open air, and Derwin and the other shore patrolmen opened fire.

  Four of the runners were out of the fight before they even hit the ground.

  The flailing corpses rained down from the roof of the building, their gray, torn, barely clothed shapes ravaged by the disease, their bodies thin, skin taut and stretched across their bones, with raging, hungry eyes, bright white and bulging from blackened sockets. But their decrepit physical state didn’t seem to limit their energy or strength. They may have looked as though one punch would send them to pieces; but most of them survived the impact of a two-story fall and didn’t even slow down.

  Four full-auto assault rifles rattled with fury as the pack swept off the roof, onto the ground, and hurtled toward the team. There were ten in total, and the six that weren’t cut to pieces in mid-air hit the ground, bounced back up, and carried on, leaving their fallen fellows as a mess of blackened meat on the blacktop. Five ran in the direction of the sailors, their rotted minds now focused on these new targets – but the last had landed nearer to the survivor group. It wheeled, hissed, bared its teeth, and lurched at the man in front. He now drew the gun from his belt, and as the creature raced to within ten feet of him he leveled it, aimed, and fired.

  Meanwhile, Derwin took down one of the runners just as it stood up, shooting out its legs from under it. It buckled and fell, arms flailing. Derwin knew this wouldn’t kill it, but it would sure as shit slow it down – and right now they had too many other targets, and time was not on their side.

  Melvin dropped another, aiming high and peppering the creature in the neck and head. It fell backwards, hit the pavement with a sickening crunch, and lay still.

  Browning, the best shot in the team, killed another two with well-placed headshots. But the fifth ran forward, closing in on Scott before he could bring his weapon around. He got off a shot, but it went astray and the runner leapt at him, arms outstretched and claw-like hands grasping. He stumbled backward, trying to level his rifle at the creature, but it was all over him, knocking him to the ground and lunging, teeth bared.

  Scott smelled the rank odor of rotted flesh and fetid breath as the thing stretched out its neck and snapped at him. He tried to shove it away using his rifle, which was now jammed against his chest, as leverage, the snapping teeth inches from his face. He was shocked at how strong the thing was – almost as strong as he, and much more desperate. He pushed with every bit of his remaining strength.

  But just as his arms screamed surrender, a single shot rang out.

  Wesley, standing apart from the team, lowered his handgun.

  He had initially seen the runner charging Scott, raised his handgun and aimed, but it had been too fast and he couldn’t track. It wasn’t until they collided and both went sprawling to the ground, that it stayed still long enough for Wesley to line up his shot. They had been so close, and Wesley knew he was no great shot. He’d half-expected to see Scott take the bullet, but instead the runner’s head exploded in a cloud of black mush, spraying the tarmac. The headless body lost animation and fell away from the struggling sailor, rolling over onto its back, twitching.

  Scott lay still for a moment, stunned and catching his breath, hardly able to believe he was still alive. In the prior moment, he had felt sure that this was his time to die, and had all but accepted it. The zombie had been too strong, and in another second his strength would have failed. Yet the runner was destroyed and he was still in one piece.

  He climbed to his feet and scanned the scene, lifting his rifle with shaking hands.

  Wesley sighed with relief, which was a welcome change from panic. He looked now toward the group of survivors, huddled against the side of the building, after the one out front had gunned down their runner. It had fallen at his feet, but then started to rise again. The leader – or Wesley presumed he was the leader – stepped forward, aimed calmly at the runner’s head, and fired again.

  The man looked up at Wesley and smiled, and Wesley thought he was about to speak. But then the color drained from the man’s face and he stepped backward, his expression darkening. A sink
ing feeling pulled at Wesley’s stomach as he turned around to follow the man’s gaze.

  Anderson watched from the driver’s seat of the truck, in horror, as another group of runners – a much bigger group, twenty or more – broke through the row of bushes and ran across the road, right between the truck and the team. He stared, numb, unable to open his mouth and shout any warning, as the dead mob raced toward the others. His hand gripped the wheel even tighter and his heart thumped. He knew he had to warn them, but he couldn’t act. Fear and panic had undone him.

  I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. I’ve got to get out of here.

  And then he slammed his foot on the accelerator and twisted the wheel. The tires of the truck screeched in protest, but the truck leapt forward, swinging round in a semicircle, before taking off down the road, back in the direction they had come.

  Anderson dared to look up into the rear-view mirror as the dead flooded the road behind him. He watched tight-lipped as a group of them leapt onto Scott, who had only just got to his feet. And he watched as more of them swarmed toward the Englishman.

  He tried to shut his mind down, limiting it to only one thought: They’re already dead, he told himself. They’re all already dead.

  Anderson put the pedal into the floorboards and the truck gained speed, racing away from a scene he refused to let himself even imagine.

  Plan B

  On board the JFK

  If Commander Drake had been asleep on his feet after the last two days… well, the news that the storm of dead was accelerating, and still coming straight at them, was a hell of a wake-up call. Now everything hung on them getting the carrier the hell out of the way.

  The demise of the flat-top wouldn’t quite be the end of the world. If Alpha made it back, but the JFK went down, the survivors could still sail back with the scientist on the escort ship, the Michael Murphy. That was why they’d spent all the fuel to bring it along – for redundancy. As the spec-ops guys always put it: two is one, one is none.

  But Drake for one didn’t much relish the prospect of the supercarrier going down, or what its loss would mean for humanity’s already slim chances. He certainly didn’t much like the idea of his whole crew being buried under a million slavering dead bastards.

  And he especially wasn’t keen on going down with the ship.

  Descending the island, the hulking five-story tower that glowered over the entire flight deck from its starboard edge, he darted down the last bit of ladder (which was what they called the steep, narrow stairwells on board), with a flustered aide in tow. He pushed open a steel hatch, emerging onto the carrier’s five sprawling acres of flight deck. All across it he could see mini-scenes of frantic activity: sailors shoving bodies and debris into the water, others rolling pallets of equipment and supplies from one place to another, and, mainly, people conducting desperate repairs.

  It was this last that most concerned Drake.

  He bypassed all the little sideshows and instead made a beeline for the main event: the repair of the enormous gash in the hull on the port side, from the explosion of the Sparrow missile launchers. He stalked intently over, beneath the mixed cloud cover that was still a hell of a lot brighter than the windowless room that had been his home for the last two days. He quickly spotted the man he needed – the best surviving engineer and construction rating on the boat, name of Shields, and who Drake had put in charge of this most critical project.

  “Sitrep,” Drake said. He was awake and all business now. And there was no time for niceties.

  “Sir,” Shields said, saluting. He was a grizzled old Master Chief, with twenty-five years in, most of it spent patching together rusty buckets from one side of the world’s oceans to the other. “We’re making it happen. We’ve developed a schematic and work plan that I believe will go. I’ve got half my guys down on the flight deck cutting out big sections of unused steel bulkhead, to use to cover the hole. And the rest are up here, welding, hammering, and sanding – getting the edges ready to take the welds.”

  “When?”

  “It’s hard to estimate accurately. Never done anything quite like it. And I don’t nearly have the men or materials I’d like for the job.”

  “Okay,” Drake said. “I’ll tell you when, then. You’ve got exactly four hours. And not one second longer.”

  Shields only hesitated a half a beat. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Drake pinned him with his eye. “Do you fully understand the importance of this job, Chief?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “I’ll bottom-line it for you: there are going to be ten million dead arriving here in four hours. And if we’re still stuck on this goddamned sandbar, then our only hope is going to be to batten down the hatches and try to weather the storm. But if there’s a huge gaping hole in the hull, then it’s going to be Alpha Mike Foxtrot to the boat and everyone on it. Do you copy that?”

  “Lima Charlie, sir.”

  “Four hours and zero-point-zero seconds.”

  Chief Shields saluted. But Drake was already stalking off.

  If they could shore up the ship, then maybe they could ride out the storm. But that was definitely Plan B, and not an enormously attractive one. Drake moved smartly toward his next stop: the nuclear reactor section below.

  * * *

  As soon as it had become clear that they no longer had the skills and experience needed to safely restart and run their nuclear reactors, the first thing he’d done was ring up CentCom in London. And he’d told them to rustle up every surviving maritime nuclear engineer in the Royal Navy – or anywhere on the island, actually – and put them all on the fastest plane that could make the trip and land on the flat-top.

  Now, as he fast-walked across the open deck, he had CIC patch him through to Britain, on his cell. The call went through.

  “This is Drake, XO on the Kennedy. Are my nuclear engineers in the air?”

  “Um, yes, well. Actually, about that…”

  Drake energetically cursed the fucking roundaboutness of the English. By the time he got to the hatch that led down into the deeper bowels of the ship, he’d finally gotten the gist out of them.

  There were no surviving maritime nuclear engineers in the Royal Navy.

  And the closest they’d been able to find, and could spare, were a handful of civilian nuclear engineers from thermal power stations, still being rounded up.

  Whom they’d get in the air in an hour at the soonest.

  Which meant they weren’t going to make it in time.

  Drake punched the end call button, tossed the phone to his aide, and yanked open the hatch. Even before his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he’d begun leaping down the ladder. Four decks later, he pushed through another hatch and stalked off down a cramped and dim corridor, trusting the aide would follow. After almost a hundred meters, he made a left into what was a cavernous room by shipboard standards – the reactor control room.

  Inside it was another Englishman.

  “Captain Martin,” Drake said loudly, wading in.

  “Sir,” Martin said, turning to face him. Slick with sweat and haggard – he’d spent the last two days giving himself a crash course in the operation of nuclear fission reactors – still he seemed mentally sharp. It was all still there, behind the eyes.

  And so far, Martin had been a lot less roundabout, and quicker to get to business, than most of the people Drake had served with – American or British. It was probably down to his fifteen years in the Royal Corps of Engineers, where bullshit wouldn’t get the job done – only skill and hard work would. How he’d ended up as acting chief engineer on a U.S. Navy nuclear supercarrier was a long and strange story, one he’d enjoy telling one day, should any of them live.

  “Sitrep,” Drake said.

  “We’re not there,” Martin said simply. “I’m making good progress through the reactor documentation and operations manuals. And these two gentlemen certainly have a lot of value to add.” He gestured at two serious-looking young ensigns also in
the room. Drake thought maybe these guys had run IT for the engineering section, or swept the floors, or some damned thing.

  “When?” Drake said. This was getting repetitive. But the point bore stressing.

  “It’s something of a continuum,” Martin said. “At this point, I’d say I’ve got my head around the broad outlines of how these systems work and interrelate, as well as the essential physical processes underlying them. And, in theory, I understand the reactor start-up procedure. The question is where along this continuum it becomes safe to actually try it.”

  “And?”

  “How safe is safe? Totally safe? Probably never. Reasonably safe? Sooner.”

  “When.”

  “I’d estimate that, on current trends, and still ruling out sleep or breaks, I’d be modestly confident of being able to start one of the reactors and not cause a meltdown that sends the ship to the bottom in an uncontrolled fission reaction that devours us all, in… twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  “That’s too late,” Drake said. “You’ve got three and a half.”

  Martin’s eyes widened slightly. “I’m telling you it’s not safe.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s not safe: having the ship overrun by ten million walking corpses.”

  “I see your point.”

  “You have got to try it – and you’ve got to do so in three-point-five hours. And if we melt down, we melt down.”

  “Roger that. Sir.”

  Drake began the long climb back to daylight, aide in tow.

  When he got out into the open air of the deck again, he breathed deeply and savored both the fresh air and the light. He might not get another chance to do so.

  There was a storm coming in.