There were a handful of military and civilian personnel sharing the old prison canteen with them, sitting and eating, or walking with trays. The offerings weren’t brilliant, standard institutional cafeteria fare. But it was hot and plentiful.
And, mainly, they were safe. Thank God.
She mussed Aiden’s hair, causing him to pull away, then wiped Luke’s chin for him. He was too old for that really, but his table manners still left something to be desired. The little girl, Josie, was just big enough to sit up on her own in Rebecca’s lap, and feed herself apple slices. Rebecca shifted her, as well as her purse, feeling the hard corner of the pistol in it pressing against her hip.
And she thanked God again that she’d never had to use it, nor even had to take it out; with one exception – when she’d pointed it at Hackworth and the Tunnelers. But they had turned out to be the furthest thing from dangerous, despite having just broken into her building. Like everyone else, they’d only been trying to keep themselves alive.
And in the end they’d kept her and her boys safe, as well.
And while Rebecca felt safer having the handgun, she knew she was safer still not having to use it. Hell, the boys, aged eight and six, actually had more practice with the thing than she did. Connor loved taking those two out to the range, even though Rebecca told him they weren’t old enough.
But she didn’t love going there herself. The gun was full-size, a SIG P220 .45 auto, and it made her hand hurt. But something about Connor’s ethos wouldn’t let him get anything compact for her. He claimed it had less recoil than a smaller 9mm, which shot faster, but she wasn’t so sure. In the end, she’d only consented to two training sessions; and those only because he’d insisted that she needed to know how to use it. And how to defend the family, while he was gone.
And now she breathed easier to think she might never need to use it. Thanks to Connor’s foresight, and her own steadfastness in getting them there across London, they were finally safe – at least for now. The cafeteria around them, aside from the armed soldiers, seemed almost normal. Like it could be anywhere, and not in the middle of a city under siege by the dead. Even better, she knew the walls that surrounded this place on all sides rose to twenty feet at every point.
Rebecca was an Army wife. She had faith in the UK military.
She took another bite of buttered toast, remembering that keeping her own strength up was part of protecting her family. She figured that, at some point, she was going to need to find out what was happening outside of there – outside London, at the ZPW. And, mainly, she desperately needed to get news of Connor, somehow. This was now longer than he’d ever been out of touch before, even on his Middle East deployments.
And she needed her husband back.
She picked up a paper napkin and reached to wipe Luke’s chin again – but froze mid-dab, as the outside door behind her, which led to the big prison courtyard, banged open. Her head spun as she saw a uniformed man dash inside in a panic, grab the door with both hands, and slam it shut with all his force. But he slammed it too hard – and it bounced back open, hitting him in the face. And as everyone in the canteen froze, turned, and looked, more figures raced in the open entrance. These ones weren’t panicked – but savage, vicious, and feral.
Screams erupted all around.
* * *
When Sarah had made her way inside Bio and found the main area of labs, she immediately spotted Simon – and he had a smile the size of Nevada on his face, hugging and energetically back-patting an equally ecstatic-looking man with spiky hair, black glasses, and a hipster beard tracing his mouth. Several other men and women in lab coats all looked like they’d just won the lottery.
“Sarah!” Park said, spotting her over Aliyev’s shoulder. He ran up and hugged her, too.
“I’m glad to see you, too, Simon,” she said, bemused but not displeased. It was good that they were reunited. Both were survivors, both still alive two years later, and for that reason shared a bond. She was even beginning to think maybe they’d survive to the end of all this. But her arrival was clearly not what he was so excited about.
“What?” she said, pulling away. “What is it?”
Park tossed his head over at what looked like an impressive array of computing hardware. “We did it,” he said, still unable to stop smiling. “The final vaccine. It’s complete.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide – and she hugged him again.
“We need to test it.” This was said in a Slavic accent, by the man with the beard and glasses.
Simon shook his head, still obviously adrenalized. “Yes. But no.” The others in the room looked to him, and Simon turned and spoke to the group, raising his voice. “There’s no time. We’re all out of time.” He picked out a stout middle-aged man in a lab coat with an ID that Sarah could see read Towson. “Bob,” Park said. “We’ve got to start fabricating doses – now.”
The man shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
Aliyev stepped closer to Park and said, “Look, Simon, no one is further from the world of the FDA drug-approval process than I am, but still…”
Park took a steadying breath. “Okay. Yes, I’m obviously going to do protein-interaction testing.” He looked over at the big reassembled Biacore 4000 SPR unit out at the edge of the room. “To make sure it’s safe, that the inactivated virus in the vaccine won’t actually give people the virus. And I’ll complete that before we actually vaccinate anyone. But we have got to get the vaccine fabricating, and filling up the vaccination kits – now. Every second we delay is another dose we don’t have. Which means failing to save the life of someone left out there, someone still alive right now.”
“I get that,” Aliyev said. “But how can you know—”
“It will work.” Park seemed seized by some kind of religious certainty. “I just know. I can see the matrix of this, the biochemistry, the genomic markers, with perfect clarity. I’ve been living with this vaccine design every day for two years. And we’ve flipped the final switch, believe me. The last tumbler in the lock. It will work. It has to work.”
Aliyev exhaled. “Okay. I believe you. Still – someone has to be injected first.”
Park nodded. “It should be me.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
The two turned to see who had said this – and it was Sarah. “What if it kills you?” she said. “Who will fix it then?”
Park deflated slightly. She had a point.
“Who, then?” Aliyev asked.
Sarah opened her mouth to volunteer.
Before she could speak, a low warbling siren went off, from somewhere indistinct. It was outside the Bio complex but seemed to surround it on all sides, only muted a little by the thin walls. Sarah, Park, and Aliyev looked at one another, wordless and wide-eyed.
What the hell?
* * *
Ali looked up, bent at the waist over Cpl Jones’s station, out on the floor of the JOC, just in time to see Homer returning. He didn’t have to catch her eye. She could just feel his aura now, and even knew how far away he physically was from her.
“Did you see Handon?” she asked, straightening up.
“Yes,” he said, approaching around the bank of stations. “He was even awake for a few minutes.”
Ali’s brow knitted with concern. Handon was supposed to be out. But before she could drill down on that, what sounded like an air-raid siren started going off outside. No, she mentally amended. Obviously a prison siren. Obviously.
She looked over to see 2Lt Miller emerging from an adjacent office, looking concerned. As he reached Homer and Ali, she just gave him a Well? look.
“I know what that is,” he said. “But I’ve only heard it once before.” And Ali remembered that, out of all the ops staff in the JOC, Miller was one of only two survivors from the original outbreak – the one that nearly took down all of CentCom.
Her radio went. “Ali, Fick.”
“Go. What have you got?”
He sounded not only breathless
but like he was actually running flat-out. “Runners, inside the walls.”
“Number and disposition?”
“Unknown at this time. Stand by for updates.”
“Copy that.” She snapped her fingers at the soldier sitting at the nearby CCTV station. The man got busy cycling through internal cameras – and stopped when she snapped her fingers again and moved in closer. She hit her radio: “Fick, be advised, we see runners in platoon strength, moving fast from the main prison complex out into the Common – via the south gate in the old prison walls. Looks to be undefended. And wide open.”
Slight pause. “Oh, you gotta fucking be kidding me…”
Ali slightly wanted to answer, “Negative, not fucking kidding,” and also ask him what it was about that particular gate – but instead looked up to see Homer hefting his rifle and moving toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” he said, simply tossing his head at the smashed screens, blood-stained carpet, and other evidence of the prior carnage that had happened in there. When he reached the outer door, he shut and locked it, then took up a kneeling position ten feet behind – rifle raised and steady.
Good old Homer, Ali thought, gladder even than before that he was here. She touched Jones on the shoulder. “Get that Apache pilot in the air. CCTV’s not enough. We need aerial ISR – specifically, her optics.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When she looked over to Miller, he was handing her a desk mic. And his grim expression caused hers to darken.
“So much for two hours,” she said, taking the mic, thinking none of them might live long enough to have to face the Siege of CentCom. “This thing might be over before it begins.”
She flipped the tannoy selector to all stations.
The Necessary
CentCom – Canteen
“All personnel stand to. There are dead reported inside the walls. Arm yourselves, report to your duty stations, and await orders. Repeat – all personnel and all teams stand to.”
No one in the canteen heard any of this. Firing, screams, moans, the crash of falling trays and dishes, and generalized chaos, filled the space and echoed off the tile floor and walls.
There were enough other people scrambling, shooting, and being taken down by the dead rushing the room, that Rebecca had time to react. She found herself instantly on some kind of autopilot she had no idea she possessed – the hardwired instinctive reactions of a mother protecting her young.
She got Josie off her lap and into the arms of Aiden, her oldest. His father’s son, he also reacted, somehow stifling panic, wrapping the girl in his arms. Rebecca then pulled both boys to their feet, got her body between them and the door, got the pistol clear of her purse – and started reversing them all toward the back of the room, where there was a door behind the counter, she guessed leading to the kitchen.
Panning the pistol from side to side, feeling for her boys behind her with the other hand, she didn’t fire – until one of the hissing figures turned and locked onto her. She pulled back the hammer with her thumb, put the front post sight on its face, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The sodding safety.
The creature took off running, hurdling a bench table. It was only twenty feet away and would be on her in seconds. She had no ability to find the safety by touch, but did see it when she turned the gun to the side and looked. She pushed it up, then tried to point it forward and refocus again, but too late – it was on her, and every cell in her body braced for the collision, intent only on keeping herself between it and the children…
The dead man’s jaw erupted and it collapsed at her feet, sliding into her shins as she scrambled away. Someone else had shot it; she couldn’t even tell who with all the chaos, and had no time to look around or try to find out. She only turned, swept the kids forward with her arms, turned the handle on the door behind the counter, and pushed it open.
By the time the boys had run through it to the kitchen, Aiden still cradling the little girl, and Rebecca turned to slam it shut, there was already a frenzied, writhing body half inside, blocking it. She brought the pistol around and fired point-blank into its face, then shoved the body back and through with her free hand…
But other hands latched on to her arm as it stuck out, and she felt a terrible deep pain. She simultaneously tried to pull her arm free and stick the gun out the crack, but it was knocked from her grasp and skittered on the floor behind her. With a last desperate flash of strength, she got her arm loose, at which point the door was clear, and she shoved it closed, turned the lock, then fell on her backside and scrabbled away, finally turning to check on the children.
They were cowering behind her, and looked okay.
But then Aiden and Luke’s eyes went up and wide.
When she faced forward again, the lock in the door was turning. Then it opened and a soldier with a key lanyard in one hand and a pistol in the other flew in, slamming the door shut behind him. He panned his weapon around the room, eyes gigantic and adrenalized. Finally, he looked down and locked eyes with Rebecca, trying to catch his breath – but instantly started hyperventilating again.
Rebecca realized he wasn’t looking into her eyes, but at her arm. She hadn’t dared look at it herself, but did so now. A huge chunk of skin and muscle had not just been torn out but had obviously been bitten out, telltale tooth marks on all sides of it. When she looked back up, he was looking at her face now – but his eyes seemed to be seeing some long-past horror, his face steeling against having to relive it again.
“No…” Rebecca managed.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, raising the pistol and firing once.
As the heavy report echoed around the kitchen, the soldier somehow only now registered the two boys and the little girl standing a few feet away. He was either in shock, or it was just impossible for him to emotionally engage, and in a dead monotone he said:
“Sorry, lads. She was no good to you anymore.”
The door behind him opened up again and three more figures tumbled inside, two of them clinging onto the third, and the whole flailing trio knocked the soldier to the floor, where the four of them scrabbled and fought and hissed and shrieked.
And bled out on the cold hard tile.
* * *
RMP Lieutenant McNiven ran flat-out, gripping his weapon, monitoring radio traffic – and mainly scanning in every direction around him, terrified of what he might see. He was watching for the dead, of course. But he was even more frightened of seeing the wrong living people – namely the Americans; specifically and worst of all, Wesley or Fick.
As usual, shame was more terrifying than death, and public humiliation the worst fate one could face. It came from our tribal past – when being banished from the tribe meant certain death. And McNiven was terrified of being caught.
He had to get this done, before anyone saw – or knew.
He emerged from the annex of the old prison that contained the RMP barracks, and flew across the little-used yard outside in two dozen long and fast strides. He then rounded the end of the long and narrow cell block that jutted out like a wheel spoke on the opposite site, slowing little, but trying to keep his weapon up and pointed ahead of him. He saw a couple of figures running across the visitor parking lot, and then two more disappearing around the back of the old prisoner intake building, and he could hear others shouting nearby.
But they all seemed human – plus British.
Crossing a second barren yard beyond that long cell block, McNiven finally entered the yard he needed – the one whose section of walls held the south gate to the larger Common outside.
The gate he’d instructed Private Booker to leave open.
His breathing almost steadied as he slammed into the cold stone beside the inner door and looked around again. Still no one in sight – though now he realized there was both firing, and the sort of screaming he didn’t even like to think about the cause of, coming from the canteen, the entrance
of which was on the far side of this same yard. His hand went to his radio to call it in – but then he decided to just go there and check it out himself.
Right after he did this.
He spun around the stone lip of the big medieval double doors and stepped inside. This put him in a dark and cramped little security station built into the thick wall itself. It was barely ten feet between the inner doors and the outer ones, holding only a desk, chair, and shelving, and serving basically as an airlock between the inner prison and the outer Common. Both double doors, on either side, were heavy timber, braced with iron, and dating from McNiven didn’t even know when.
And both stood wide open.
The security station was clear, so he stuck his weapon out into the Common and peered around. The coming darkness, oppressive cloud cover, the warbling siren, and not to mention the adrenaline coursing through his system, made it hard to focus. But there was no one and nothing in the immediate vicinity. It didn’t look like any of them had come through here. With a wash of relief, he lowered his rifle and pulled the heavy outer door closed, then hauled a heavy set of Victorian-era prison keys from his pocket and worked the big lock.
He crossed the interior room in two steps, re-entered the prison yard, turned, and did the same to the inside door. And then he sighed out loud. He’d covered his arse. But he’d also done the right thing. The dead had, somehow, against all his expectations, appeared – and this gate did need to be locked down. And he had gotten it done, before any harm was done – he hoped. He told himself that was what he was pleased about. The job. Doing his duty.
And not covering his backside.
A noise behind him caused him to spin in place, weapon up, back still against the wall. He tracked movement – it was a woman running in a panic along the edge of the building on the inside of the yard, looking like she’d come from the canteen. And she was being chased. Trouble was, McNiven could see she was heading toward a dead end – the narrow corner where two of the spoke-like annexes met in the center.
ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Page 28