Suddenly, the living were a bigger threat than the dead.
Jameson knew the Chinook typically ferried thirty loaded combat troops – and seemed to remember the absolute maximum load was about forty-five people. Basically, what remained of One Troop and the Tunnelers was pretty much going to fill it. They could perhaps take a few more – but, having no idea who among this lot might be infected, and definitely knowing what an outbreak on a small aircraft looked like, they sure as hell weren’t going to.
Getting rough with innocent civilians wasn’t pleasant, and definitely wasn’t what any of them had signed up for. But it was the situation they now found themselves in.
And Jameson realized they were going to have to find some way to keep the panicked mob from rushing the aircraft – while at the same time crossing over and getting on it themselves. There were already too many people swarming the floor, which meant more Marines were shoving and wrestling, and fewer shooting – and there were still runners rushing out from the stairwell, chasing the living. Someone Jameson cared about was going to get taken down or infected this way. Even worse, if even a couple of either the living or dead got to that ladder, they were going to send it tumbling forty stories to the ground.
Maybe the runners would even be able to leap the gap.
In either case, that would be all of them fucked.
Something had to change.
* * *
When Jameson shouted for two men to push out with him and secure the stairwell, he definitely didn’t expect Private Elliot to be one of the volunteers. But that was who he found on one side of him, Simmonds on the other, as they marched out into the storm, Croucher anchoring the defensive line behind them and shouting, “Don’t worry about us, Major!”
As the three moved through something that felt more like a rugby match than a firefight or zombie battle, Jameson wasn’t sure such junior men were who he really wanted with him for this. But they were who he had – and they were just going to have to step up. Everyone was.
He shoved a woman out of his way with his left hand – she didn’t look great and might have been infected, but he wasn’t a goddamned doctor, and wasn’t going to make that call – but then was instantly forced to fire one-handed at the dead man behind her. That one was at least moving slowly – maybe the Zulus were here already. But, just as likely, and judging from the man’s suit and undecayed state, he’d only recently turned. Back in the day, you could always count on the recently infected to become bog-standard Zulus, not runners or Foxtrots. Now it seemed any damned thing was possible, and Jameson had just about given up trying to figure it out.
Instead he kept himself ready for anything.
The three of them had to maneuver and flow through an area of steel counters and what looked like it used to be the bar, before they reached the built-up area in the center of the otherwise open floor that had the lifts and stairwell in it – and, more to the point, had that big hole in the wall. By the time they got there, it looked like someone had farted in a clown car – terrified living and ravenous dead were all fighting one another to get through the hole, which was also wider than they had left it. Pretty much the whole section of drywall was gone now.
Making a plan on the fly, Jameson shouted, “Simmonds – rear security!”
“Roger!” he replied, spinning to face the huge open room behind them. But he didn’t immediately have to engage – pretty much everyone was running away from them, toward the Marines’ perimeter and the loading of the helo.
Now what? Jameson wondered. That was the easy part of the plan. He didn’t see anything handy like a table they could use to try to seal the breach. No, they were just going to have to do it the hard way. Which was the same way they’d been doing it so far – by shooting the dead, and man-handling the living. But at least they were now doing it at the bottleneck, which gave them something like throttle control.
He shot a glance at Elliot beside him, who had his rifle up – the standard infantry LA85, while his bigger sharpshooter rifle still hung on his back – and he looked steady enough. Or maybe he was just numb. Or still angry. It was impossible to tell. “You shoot!” Jameson shouted at him. “I’ll shove!”
Elliot just nodded – and started taking shots into the mass of emerging flesh, taking care to shoot only the dead. For Jameson’s part, he lowered his rifle – and he literally put the boot in. The living people trying to get out of there might be infected, and they might not, but they were all mixed up with the dead, and Jameson didn’t fancy getting up close and personal. Grabbing a ledge behind him for balance, he gave the business end of his boot-sole to anyone on the verge of making it clear of the stairwell. Luckily, they were good and jammed up already, and as Elliot destroyed dead in their midst, the logjam only got worse.
This might even work, Jameson thought. Then again…
“One Troop, move your arses!” This was Charlotte’s voice in his ear. “Too many bodies latch onto this flying septic tank, and we’re going to be driving it through the streets!”
Then again, there were still all the living and dead already behind them in the main room, and evidently threatening the helo, the ladder, and the loading operation.
A hand latched onto Jameson’s weapon, and he turned to see a woman had somehow gotten by Simmonds in their rear, and was for reasons unimaginable hauling on his rifle and his arm, tears streaking her cheeks. He had no idea what she wanted from him, but even in the one second he spent looking at her, more bodies were pushing through the hole.
God forgive me, he thought, and punched her in the face. She fell away and he turned back to plugging the dyke, shoveling human and undead seaweed against the tide – and hoping like hell his people were loading up fast.
He didn’t have the time or space to turn and check.
Idol
CentCom – JOC
“Hey, Lieutenant.”
“What.” Miller stepped over to where Cpl Jones leaned over the CCTV station, and leaned in himself. The camera view showed a truck parked crookedly outside the southwest walls.
Jones looked up at him and said, “Isn’t that the Pinzgauer truck the Alpha blokes went out in?”
“Hmm,” Miller hmm’d. “I believe it is.”
“So where the hell are the Alpha blokes?”
“Hmm,” Miller repeated. But even as he made the noise, a second vehicle skidded into the video window, swerving around the truck, disappearing out the other side of the frame. They’d hardly got a look at it, and Miller didn’t quite believe what he’d seen anyway. He thumped the man at the station, who panned the camera down until it was trained on the area directly in front of the walls and the gate there.
“Ah,” he said, the question now answered.
He’d already started waving Ali over with his free hand, and she arrived just in time to see the vehicle before its occupants dismounted – or climbed off. It was a comically tiny Mini Cooper. And sitting cross-legged on top, like some giant Aztec idol on a plinth, nearly as tall again as the vehicle itself, and hanging onto the roof rack with one hand, was Predator.
With the other hand he was cradling a child in his lap.
“My God,” Ali muttered. “What now?”
* * *
Juice yanked the handbrake and unfolded himself out of the tiny driver’s seat of the Mini, then pulled his rifle out and got it clipped on – and instantly brought it to his shoulder. Not only had there been scatterings of runners on the road on the way there, which they’d had to swerve around or run down. There were also runners already here.
And they were running right in the open CentCom gate.
“What the Sam Hill is going on around here?” Juice exclaimed, sighting in and dropping the ones running away from them through the entrance, then spinning and engaging a handful of others on their way in – who had just locked onto him, Pred, and the survivors of the family from the road. He could see and hear Predator engaging as well, all while sitting Buddha-like on the roof of the toy car
, firing one-handed, the other curled protectively around the older child, who was covering her ears, and squeezing her eyes shut.
Within fifteen seconds they had the area cleared up – but even before they did, still shooting, Juice hailed the JOC. “CentCom from Airsoft One.”
“Welcome back,” Ali responded. “Nice ride.”
Juice skipped the niceties, and ignored the sarcasm. “Are you aware that somebody left the fucking outside gate wide open? I mean – seriously, guys?”
“Well,” Ali radioed back. “That explains that.”
Juice was already pushing in through the open gate as Pred climbed down and got the mother and smaller child out of the passenger seat. The back seat and trunk were so jammed with paintball equipment that Juice hadn’t been able to use the rearview mirror, not that he’d needed to. Now he glanced down at the riot of bullet-riddled bodies lying within and just outside the walls, pausing to scoop up a set of keys lying by an outstretched hand.
“No one on station at that position?” Ali asked.
“One RMP, mostly eaten. Bunch of dead civilians.”
“Copy that.” This late in the day, Juice could read her tired tone of voice perfectly. She was wondering if she could depend on anyone at all – other than her own people. But now at least two of them were back. Alpha was nearly intact again.
And maybe only just in time.
Pred hustled the woman through the entrance, each of them carrying one of the children, even as Juice hauled the heavy gate closed behind them, and used the keys to lock it.
At least now the barn door was finally shut.
Guilty
London – The Gherkin
Simmonds had the best seat in the house for the horror show engulfing them in the former restaurant, dead center in the coliseum-like open space that made up the top level of the building. He had his back to the breached stairwell, where presumably Jameson and the Para would continue to prevent him from getting eaten or tackled from behind.
And, mainly, directly out ahead of him, in vivid panoramic 3D HD glory, he could see everyone living or dead on this floor all racing toward… One Troop’s skirmish line, arrayed in a wide but shrinking arc around the smashed-out windows on the south side of the building, out of which… the last of the Tunnelers were choosing probable death over certain death by scampering onto a swaying aluminum ladder that led across open air to… that good old Fat Cow Chinook, which was blasting all and sundry with its artificial windstorm, and hovering just outside the building like an escape hatch warped into existence in midair by God.
Or rather by Captain Maidstone, God love her.
As Simmonds took carefully aimed shots on the heads of walking, running, stumbling, and gorging dead, in most cases from directly behind, he couldn’t keep himself from smiling at the sheer marvelous adrenaline-washed absurdity of it all. One Troop had been in some ridiculous shit before, but this might actually take the biscuit. He almost couldn’t wait to see how the hell, or even if, they were going to get out of this one.
He also had the substantial comfort of having only one job to do – namely keeping the dead off the Major, and his Para little buddy. As long as he did that, he was golden. Everything else was pretty much his commander’s problem, or else the colour sergeant’s.
Until suddenly he had a big problem of his own.
He could see the very last of the Tunnelers fast-crawling fearfully out into the rotor-wash hurricane and over to the helo, specifically the stout older bloke who seemed to be in charge of them, and the first of the Marines starting to collapse back and turn to the rear to follow them. And as responsibility for sectors of the defense shifted, no one saw a pair of runners tear-assing around the perimeter of the room, hugging the wall on the right, blasting toward a Marine in that spot who had just spun to the rear to start climbing over.
It would be on him in seconds and no one was engaging it.
Simmonds started to hit his radio to broadcast a warning – but there was no time, and the chaos too great. He pulled his rifle in tight, flipped his fire selector to full auto, started tracking the pair of runners as they hurtled from his right to left…
And he opened up, pouring fire into both bodies.
He could see window glass shatter and ripple behind them, triangular panels blowing out and collapsing like dominos falling in a row toward the ladder – and then both running bodies jerk and stumble from repeated high-velocity hits…
And then both skidded and tripped and went tumbling out the empty window panes, limbs flailing and grasping as they pirouetted into empty air, and got pulled toward the ground and out of sight by good old reliable gravity.
“Fucking RESULT,” Simmonds announced, still smiling out loud, only louder, as he dropped his empty mag on the deck and fished out another from a vest pouch. Blasting two runners straight out a forty-story window was seriously cool.
Resuming his vigil, he watched with satisfaction as the Marines commenced scrambling over across the ladder. All that time on the obstacle course at the Commando Training Centre clearly hadn’t gone amiss. With his own tiny team holding the breach at the stairs, and more of the dead dropping all the time, the situation started to look almost salvageable. In less than a minute, all but three of the Marines manning the perimeter were across. Simmonds could see Croucher and Yap performing a very tight two-man holding action as Akers, shoved by Croucher, turned and started over.
Maybe we WILL get out of this one, Simmonds thought.
Croucher came on the net: “Major – we are LEAVING.”
“Copy that,” Jameson said. Simmonds could hear him in his ear, and also almost directly, over the moaning, shouting, and helo noise, as he was standing right behind him, the two nearly back to back. “Advise when everyone else is across.”
“Due respect, Maj—”
“When we fall back, the dam breaks. Do it, Croucher.”
Simmonds realized he’d allowed himself to get distracted by this exchange when he saw two more figures running the velodrome circuit around the room edge, just as had the two runners before, making a break for the right side of the loading operation. But in this case it was one civilian, being chased by a runner. Simmonds raised his rifle and took aim, wasting a split second deciding not to shoot the civilian, but instead sighting in on the zombie…
And then the civilian, looking over his shoulder and seeing he was about to be caught, leapt out of one of those windows Simmonds had shot out a minute ago, just beyond Croucher and Yap’s tiny security perimeter. He flew through open air, then slammed into the teetering ladder at the one-third point along its length, hitting right behind Akers, who was halfway across, grabbing on with both arms, hanging and swinging wildly beneath it.
Simmonds frowned deeply at this, knowing two on a ladder over an abyss was very bad ju-ju. But as he blinked and refocused and fired on the trailing runner, in peripheral he could also see Croucher turn and fall on the near end of the ladder, anchoring it with his body weight – while over on the ramp of the helo, the big Moroccan did the same at that end. Maybe they could keep it from falling, but Simmonds had to focus on his own job.
And he went cyclic with his rifle again.
Now the runner went blasting out the open window.
But its forward momentum took it right up to the suspended ladder, where it reached up and out and grabbed onto the dangling legs of the hanging civilian, swinging forward like the daring young dead man on the flying trapeze. The weight and momentum of the two of them hanging and swinging forward pulled the far end of the ladder from the Moroccan’s grasp and sent it sliding and scraping off the edge of the helo ramp.
On the near end, Croucher dug in harder.
But the far end of the ladder fell away, taken down by the weight of three bodies – the Marine on it, and the civilian and runner hanging from it. Croucher wouldn’t let go, and the ladder started to pull him over the edge, but his fingers failed at the last second and, upper body hanging out over the abyss, he wa
tched the ladder, civvie, and zombie tumble through open air toward the street 41 stories below.
Mainly, he watched one of his Marines fall to his death.
* * *
“Major!” Croucher again.
“Everyone over?”
“GodDAMMit…”
Now Simmonds’s cheeky smile disappeared as he was forced to shoot in earnest, covering Yap and Croucher. Not only were they the last two left other than him, Jameson, and the Para. But, to get across with the ladder gone, those two were forced to bash their way back toward the middle of the floor, civilians shoving and grasping, a few surviving dead in the mix, to get up a running start. The ramp angled downward about twenty degrees by design, so its end was slightly lower than the floor of the building. But it was also a good ten feet away. Trying to leap that gap, particularly in full combat kit, was definitely a stunt that could go either way.
But they had no choice other than to try.
Croucher had his pistol out, and was shoving and shooting, and as they turned again, he gave Yap a mighty shove to get him moving – and give him no time to think about it. The younger Marine put his head down, took off like the Road Runner – and kicked off the edge into open air, flying across the ten-foot gap and slamming face down and arms out onto the steel ramp, stunned but safe.
“MAJOR!” Croucher again.
“We’re coming in hot, right behind you. Simmonds! Go!”
Only two feet away, still scanning for targets in the rear of their stairwell defense, Simmonds didn’t have to be asked twice. Tucking in his chin, he took off, intending to use the full length of the room to get up the running start of his life. However, with his first step, he saw he was about to put it through one of those thin exposed ceiling panels, so he pulled up short, veered around to find a solid bit of floor to run on – and then took off.
ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Page 33