Arisen, Book Four - Maximum Violence

by James, Glynn

  And they hadn’t even begun to deal with the issue of who among them might have been infected in the close-quarters melee. It was too much, and Wesley couldn’t make himself think about it. Perhaps not least since he himself had been knocked down by one of them.

  To make matters worse, their route seemed to be all uphill. They had crossed through work yards filled with vehicles and junk, pushed through collapsed fencing, and finally made it into the brush land between the industrial park and the base, but then they had slowed. The ground was overgrown with weeds and grass, and strewn with junk, and debris littered the thin path. Buildings gave way to thin copses of trees and even as they ran Wesley could sense, and sometimes see, movement in the brush around them. The runners were keeping up the pace still, and Wesley didn’t even dare hope they’d let up.

  After ten minutes of pushing through the woods, they broke out onto open ground, and the tattered and collapsed ruin of the naval station’s perimeter fence loomed ahead of them, up an even steeper slope.

  And Wesley was so damned tired. But he couldn’t stop. Not as long as the others kept going. And not as long as they were depending on him to get them out of there alive. Wesley was brand-new to command. But something in his character intuitively grasped the main principles, the first of which was:

  His devotion had first to be to the men under him.

  Hearing gunfire to his right, Wesley looked over to see Browning firing into the treeline. Melvin and three of the survivor group joined in, and as Wesley looked ahead again, he saw that Derwin was close to collapse. He stepped toward the man, grabbing him under the arm and raising him up. Behind them, a dozen gaunt, terrible, running figures broke from the bushes. They didn’t move in a pack this time, but spread out, emerging at a flat-out run from different shadowed pockets of the woods.

  “Keep going!” shouted Melvin, and Wesley did, hauling Derwin the final ten yards up the slope to a wide gap in the fence. The survivors had already gone through, and some now ran across the flat ground of the naval base beyond.

  Derwin grabbed at the fence and held up his own weight.

  “We’ve got to go,” Wesley told him. “Can you make it?”

  Derwin nodded, but Wesley could see the man’s injury had drained him of nearly all his strength. He was pale and dripping with sweat. Suddenly Wesley had to imagine the possibility of leaving him behind – when he could absolutely go no further. But it was too terrible an eventuality to contemplate. “One second and I’ll be good to go,” Derwin said. He took a couple of heavy breaths, and then pushed himself through the gap.

  The next half a mile took the fleeing group beyond exhaustion, as their deadened feet pounded across open ground and down a runway. It couldn’t be much further now, Wesley told himself, and he could see the hangar looming ahead of them. But it still seemed so distant. On the other side of that building, the helicopter would be waiting, just where they had left it. With that thought he forced himself onward, just a little farther.

  Wesley hadn’t even been able to estimate how many runners were following them at this point, at least not until they were out on the flat ground of the base. Then, when he looked back, his heart sank and his will began to drain. Hundreds of them poured through the fence, and Wesley knew that if they stopped for even a second, the pack would be on them and they wouldn’t be able to hold them off. He didn’t think they had enough ammunition left.

  The survivors ahead rounded the corner of the hangar and stopped. Their leader turned to look back at Wesley with a puzzled and terror-struck expression, and as Wesley caught up with them he discovered why.

  There was no helicopter on the deck.

  There was nothing, and no one.

  Wesley stood there dumbstruck. All there was on the hard tarmac was the oversized truck that Anderson had driven off in.

  That fucking coward.

  They’d been left behind.

  And now they were all going to die.

  Melvin ran past, followed by the other men from the survivor group – who were covering the women as they shepherded the children.

  “The truck!” Melvin shouted, and carried on running. The Scotsman jumped onto the flatbed, turned, and began firing over their heads at the swarm of runners that even now closed the gap and came into view around the hangar’s edge. Wesley’s heart jumped as a surge of hope swept through him. He ran around the side of the vehicle and jumped into the driver’s seat, jammed his handgun into its holster, turned the key, and nearly screamed for joy when the truck roared to life. The passenger door swung open and Derwin hauled himself in, spilling onto the seat and curling up around his wound, croaking now as much as breathing. Still he tried to get his rifle pointed out the window.

  “Get a move on!” bellowed Wesley, though he doubted anyone could hear him over the terrible roar of gunfire in close quarters. Still, the survivors spilled across the concrete and bundled their children onto the flatbed, before climbing on themselves. Finally, Wesley saw a blur of movement as Browning ran from his firing position at the corner of the building and made a leap for the back of the truck.

  “Go, go, go!” shouted a voice over the din of gunfire.

  Wesley stole a glance in the rear-view and saw that it was fuller than a clown car back there, but they were evidently all in.

  “Hang on!” he shouted, and then his foot hit the accelerator and they were speeding down the runway. Behind him the gunfire tailed off, and in the rear-view he could see the mass of what must have been hundreds of runners blessedly receding in the distance as the truck barreled forward.

  Wesley looked across the expanse of concrete toward the buildings ahead. All were abandoned. No one living would be here now. He knew they had been the last team onsite, and that meant Alpha’s homecoming wasn’t going to happen here. Wesley had no radio with the range to call the JFK – Anderson had taken that – so he couldn’t even tell them that soon the base would be overrun. There was nothing he could do but try to keep this bedraggled bunch of sailors and survivors alive minute to minute, and try to find some way out for all of them.

  He cursed. Damn it, he had wanted to be there when Alpha landed in Chuckie on that runway. Wanted just once to feel like he was doing something bigger than himself, something to help the cause. Ever since being dragged into this crazy expedition he had felt that he was merely a spare part, that everyone around him was a million times more skilled and qualified to be there. He had felt that they expected more out of him than he could give, that they thought him some sort of zombie-fighting expert just because he had been in the battle at Folkestone. But he hadn’t been able to tell them anything they didn’t already know, and he’d felt like an impostor doing it.

  He wasn’t sure why these feelings were coming back to him now, only seconds after finishing a nightmare run of the gauntlet, and barely dodging a horrible death. Our minds are funny that way, he figured. Already his mood felt lighter.

  “So where to now?” he said aloud, glancing briefly to the fuel gauge. They had half a tank. Thank you, God.

  “Virginia Beach,” came a shouted reply from the back of the truck. Wesley recognized the voice of the leader of the survivors, who now stuck his head in the sliding back window. “Just keep going. We’ll pick up Southern Boulevard straight ahead, then Norfolk Avenue and then we can cut south on Pacific. There are a lot of bays of boats down there. We can try Lake Rudee first, and then if that’s empty we go to Lake Wesley. Both have access to the ocean through an inlet. Anyway, that’s where we were headed before we met you. Plenty of boats there. We hope.”

  “Lake Wesley?” Wesley shook his head.

  Only in the goddamned ZA…

  Heavy Metal

  On Board the JFK

  Commander Drake stared out the porthole glass of the flag bridge, at the very top level of the island. Outside and below, he could see the repair and construction crew maneuvering an absolutely enormous piece of steel plating into place with a three-story crane.

  Once fi
tted, this would be the finger in the dyke – the linchpin sealing the gigantic gash that got blown in the hull when the two dozen Sparrow missiles in the magazine, each with a 50-pound high explosive warhead, had gone up with a blast that shook every corner of the 110,000-ton vessel. This would effectively be the world’s very biggest Band-Aid – and, if they were really lucky, it might even make the carrier once again watertight, and more importantly Zulu-tight. If they couldn’t get off this sandbar, then they could at least put up all the storm shutters and try to weather the damned hurricane.

  Drake decided this was a critical enough show that he wanted a better seat.

  Leaping down the ladder this time, he went without his aide. There were still tons of preparations that needed to be made. But it really all came down to one of two things now. Either getting this boat back out to sea; or, failing that, patching the enormous hole in the boat so they’d have a chance of sealing the whole thing up and weathering the storm.

  So, second things first, he thought tightly to himself, blasting out of the hatch onto the flight deck, and marching purposefully to the construction site.

  As he approached, he caught sight of Master Chief Shields – who was actually perched on top of the crane, directing his men from above. Hanging by rappelling harnesses out over the sea and alongside the boat, all around the enormous hanging steel plate, were three different members of the construction crew. They wore masks and held giant arc welders, with fuel tanks strapped to their backs. Drake could see that the big crane had been bolted to the deck and was also counterbalanced by hundreds of barrels of water and bags of sand. Tons of dead weight.

  Still, it all looked damned precarious, at least to Drake. That big hunk of steel, which had been carved out of the side of the hangar deck below, was just about the biggest single plate he had ever seen. And God alone knew how much it weighed, dangling by two thick steel cables out alongside and below the deck edge.

  Drake could hear Shields barking commands to both the crane operator and the men hanging over the edge – and, he gathered, to others working inside on the decks below. Drake guessed those guys were pulling the plate in and aligning it. He didn’t have time to understand every little thing. And he damned well wasn’t going to interrupt to ask questions. This would be about the worst time in the history of the world for micromanagement. If anyone knew what he was doing, it was the Master Chief.

  Drake had a decent look at one of the welders, who was almost level with the flight deck and to the left, nearer the fore. Another was on the opposite side, and a third down below and behind the whole hunk. Fick worked out that they were using smaller pieces of steel to help connect the big one. Again, Drake had to guess that there’d been no time to cut a precision chunk to exactly fit the hole.

  The whole thing looked dangerous as hell. But it seemed to be happening.

  The welding began in earnest, sparks and glare flying in all directions.

  Shields seemed to look on approvingly from above.

  And then, less than a minute later, a horrific groan sounded from… well, Drake wasn’t totally sure where from. He saw the crew perk up, and start running around with a purpose. The deck seemed to move, or warp, slightly under their feet.

  He heard Chief Shields bellow, “Stand clear! Everyone the fuck out!”

  And suddenly it became clear what was happening. Drake could see that the weld between the left edge of the hole, and the replacement steel plate, was holding. But the seams in the next section over were being torn out. That whole section, along with the new plate and everything else attached to it, was ripping right out of the boat. It couldn’t hold its own weight.

  And in that horrible frozen second, Drake thought: structural weakening.

  And then it was all happening at once. The groaning turned to shrieking. Tons of tempered steel ripped loose and began to swing out and away from the boat. Now the weight of the plate – plus the section welded next to it – was too much for the crane to hold, heavier than the counterweights and stronger than the bolts.

  Drake saw Chief Shields leap from the crane as it started to go over.

  He saw the welder nearest him push off with his feet and swing out on his rope to the side, trying to get clear of it all.

  Drake couldn’t see the one behind and below the plate. But there could be no doubt about what was happening to him. Amid shouts of warning and yelps of panic, the attached hunks of steel screeched loose and all plummeted toward the surface of the water, nearly a hundred feet below. The crash of it hitting the sea was like the sound of Niagara – and the resulting plume of water crested and surpassed the flight deck, much of it crashing down around the scrambling survivors of the work crew.

  * * *

  Drake went straight from this unmitigated catastrophe down to the nuclear reactor frames. Like the very first responder on a disaster scene, he simply couldn’t get caught up in the details of the rescue effort – helping survivors, doing first aid, or any of the minutiae of recovery. He had to coordinate.

  And, mainly, he had to save the carrier.

  Swinging once again into the reactor control room, he encountered a scene of strangely Zen-like peace. Captain Martin was sitting at the control desk, staring down at his tablet full of reactor operations manuals. The two ensigns, both at their stations, looked like they were meditating. It was either that or total physical paralysis from fear. Drake couldn’t tell.

  Martin looked up and spoke calmly. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Drake nodded, trying to drum up some positivity. “Okay! I’ve got a good feeling about this. Ready to fire one of these bad boys up? Because that’s our only way out of here now. And if we stay where we are… we’re all dead.”

  Martin held his gaze serenely. “Yes. But once more and for the record: this is a very bad idea.” But his expression lightened almost at once, and he said, “But we’ll just give it a go and see how we get on.”

  Drake immediately sensed some of that famous British stiff spine and good humor in the face of doom – the Blitz, Dunkirk, all that. He asked, “What can I do to help?”

  “Just stand clear,” Martin said. “We’ve more or less made all the preparations. Now it’s a question of diving into the deep end head first… and hoping it’s not a pool of molten lava…” He turned to his skeletal two-man team, the two ensigns who were the highest surviving ratings in the nuclear engineering section.

  “Okay, lads,” he said, his tone reassuring, or trying to be. “This is a manual start up – remember that we are part of the automatic control loop, right? Direct RRS is going to be our friend.” The two answered one after the other.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Roger that.”

  Martin glanced down to his tablet – which Drake concluded was basically his cheat sheet for this high-stakes final exam. “Right, then. Now, after a long shutdown, the source is small and power will not rise to the usual levels on start-up – not until the core is very close to critical.” He looked up and pinned the nearer ensign with his eye. “Jakobs. Tell me your job.”

  The young man nodded, and glanced at the daunting array of readouts at his station, though mainly at one big LCD. “I watch core criticality like a hawk. And I shout out changes in normalized decay heat power, P over P-Zero.”

  “Correct. And?”

  “Oh, yeah. And I die at this post if necessary.”

  “Good lad. And Safo?” he asked, looking to the other.

  “I’m all about the control rods.”

  “Succinctly put.” He turned back to Jakobs. “What’s our reactor status now?”

  “Core is confirmed subcritical. Repeat, confirmed subcritical.”

  As Drake looked on, hand held over mouth in tense worry, Martin turned back to his station and put both hands and several fingers to a complex display on a touch screen. “Okay. First two fuel rods… are going in… now.” They all paused, waiting for something to blow up. Nothing did. “Right, that’s the first hurdle cleared. Saf
o, begin raising the control rods. Nice and slow.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Jakobs said, “Still subcritical – borderline deeply subcritical. P/P0 is one-point-oh-seven.”

  “Got it,” Martin said, pausing to wipe sweat from his forehead. “Significant reactivity addition now… ion chambers are coming on scale… Jakobs?”

  “Sir, core still beneath zone-level subcritical.”

  “Okay. There should be a very short prompt jump that we won’t see operationally…” At this point, Martin seemed to be more or less explaining this to himself: “…because all increases are ramp increases…”

  Already, a minute in, the tension in the room was beyond belief, and Drake thought it felt at least fifteen degrees hotter than it he knew it was. Or was it actually that hot? God, he hoped not.

  Martin said, “Two more rods going in.” He then moved briskly from his station to a whiteboard on the wall, took up a squeaky marker pen, and began manically sketching and solving equations.

  Drake couldn’t help himself. “What’s wrong?”

  Martin answered without turning, pen still squeaking with abandon. “At every stage, I have to measure the neutron flux in the reactor… and calculate the reactor’s neutron multiplication factor, to determine how close we are to design-predicted critical…” More under his breath, he added, “And I only know how to do the equations by hand…” He kept talking as he wrote: “Observed power equals one over one minus K times power source…”

  “Approaching critical,” Jakob said. “One-point-one-nine.”

  Martin leapt back to the desk and leaned over the tablet again, then started reading feverishly, the words passing his lips as little more than breath: “Reactivity in the core shall be controlled to limit possible overpower transients… Continuous indication of neutron flux level and rate of change of neutron flux at all times… Below ten to the negative seventh F.P. the ion chamber signal from a steady background of gamma rays is comparable to the neutron flux… Fuck, fuck, fuck…”