ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Everything turned to a confusing blur around him, hurtling and colliding bodies, wind whipped by the huge twin rotor blades outside, Croucher firing and shoving with one hand while windmilling with the other to urge him on, vision narrowing to a pin-hole on that gap in the world between solid building and somewhat solid helicopter, hearing Jameson and Croucher still arguing on the radio about who would be last man out…

  But then he was flying through open air, the rotor-whipped wind beating his face, toy figures and vehicles out of focus impossibly far below his kicking boots, and then he tumbled onto the hard steel deck. His momentum took him past the ramp and into the riot of bodies inside, civilians and Marines trying to get to their feet, or get rifles pointed out the rear to shoot back and cover the others, slamming into the front rank of Marines, starting with Yap, and knocking them back and down like bowling pins. As he regained his feet, fighting through the riot of limbs and rifles, Simmonds twisted around to look back and see…

  Finally even the mighty Croucher, head down, running as if the end of the world itself lapped at his heels, which it did, and then leaping out over the yawning void. He must have finally lost his argument with Jameson. But while he was a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than either Simmonds or Yap, he was also a hell of a lot heavier, and it looked like his foot slipped as he kicked off from the edge…

  And he didn’t make it across.

  Instead, his arms and upper body slammed onto the end of the ramp, its edge knifing mercilessly into his midsection, just below his body armor. Only Simmonds was upright and in any position to fall on the colour sergeant and grab him by both arms to keep him from falling. As he latched on, he instantly knew there was no way he could pull the big NCO back in, not by himself. Instead, he just hung on, and for some reason looked over the top of Croucher’s helmet, back into the chaos of the restaurant, his vision searching deep to the middle of it where he could just make out…

  Jameson and the lone Para.

  The last two men left on the ground.

  * * *

  It was only because Private Elliot had been so closely engaged, focusing on keeping the dead out of the room, or rather on making them properly dead, that he hadn’t turned and punched Jameson right in the face – at the moment when he saw him do exactly that to a civilian woman.

  That son of a bitch, Elliot had thought – but then had to resume putting carefully aimed rounds into the gnashing mouths of ravening dead who were either attacking civilians, or trying to fight their way through them to get out of the stairwell.

  Even now he could see Jameson, the soulless bootneck bastard, putting the boot into more innocent civilians, who were terrified out of their minds and simply seeking safety and shelter. Maybe some of them were infected, but certainly not all. And this absolutely wasn’t what they were here for – as far as Elliot knew, the whole point of the military was to protect civilians. Obviously, this crap-hat major didn’t care any more about them than he did about soldiers in other service branches – dropping high-explosive artillery rounds on their heads like they were no more than dummy targets, if doing so would kill a few dead, or slow them up for a few minutes.

  Elliot was actually thinking he just might kill this son of a bitch himself if they happened to make it out of there alive, when he realized the major was shouting in his ear.

  “Walker! Go, go!”

  Elliot looked over his shoulder – and very belatedly realized they were the last two left. Everyone else had loaded up onto the hovering helo – though somebody appeared to be hanging by both arms off the back ramp, held in place by another Marine pressed down on him, flat on the deck.

  Jameson half shoved and half pulled him away from the stairwell, and Elliot went with the motion, putting his head down and running for it. As he did, he could hear Jameson shouting behind him, “We’re going to have to jump fo—”

  But this was cut off by a crash and half a shout, and Elliot looked over his shoulder just in time to see Jameson literally disappear in a cloud of plaster dust, dropping completely out of sight, presumably right through the floor. Elliot could only think he must have stepped on one of those sections of exposed ceiling panel, or one that had been hidden by something covering it but no more solid.

  And just like that – he was gone.

  Elliot skidded to a stop – but even as he did, he saw he was facing a surging tide of bodies. Without them holding the gap at the stairwell, it had burst free, the pressure of living and dead bottled up inside surging out onto the floor at high speed, living and dead running and flooding forward like a wave. In another second they had reached and covered the section of floor Jameson had disappeared through.

  The major had just been buried.

  Spinning back the other direction, Elliot could see the helo still hovering just outside – but it wouldn’t be there for long. It couldn’t. If this mob reached it and started leaping over, it was all over, for all of them. And there was no one left holding the line now but him – and in fact there was no line any more, and also nowhere for Elliot to go but over, into the aircraft. He’d either do that and live, or stay here and perish. The was absolutely nothing he could do back here on his own.

  He told himself maybe he could go back and get help.

  He put his head down and ran like hell.

  In another second he kicked off into empty space, flew across the gap and staggered on the steel of the deck, tripping on the right arm of the hanging man, knocking free the hand of the man holding him – and, to his own horror, and despite trying to dodge, kicking the colour sergeant in the side of the head.

  Hearing a shout of alarm, he spun around awkwardly and saw the hanging man had gone limp – and only the other man, Simmonds, was keeping him from falling, gripping furiously onto his left arm alone, while the man’s right arm flailed around in open air. Elliot fell forward onto the lip of the ramp, half out over the forty-story drop, and grabbed onto the colour sergeant’s drag strap, hauling for all he was worth.

  Together, he and Simmonds massed barely half again what Croucher did, but straining and hauling with all their strength, they got the big man up over the lip of the ramp. As he passed his center of gravity, Simmonds’s grip failed and he flew backward into the bulkhead, striking the back of his head viciously on a protruding strut, then fell forward again.

  Elliot finished hauling Croucher’s legs back in, then looked down at the pile of him and Simmonds, neither man unconscious, but both dazed and lolling, one from hitting the bulkhead, the other from the boot to the head – then looked over them at the riot of bodies and weapons inside, everyone buffeted as Charlotte tried to hold her hover steady.

  * * *

  Yap shoved Tunnelers off his half-trapped body, and tried to battle to his feet, even as he snatched at an ICS headset mounted on the wall. He dropped it as something banged into the outside of the airframe, and he realized it was a runner leaping out one of the nearby shot-out windows. He stuck his face out the gunner hatch just in time to see it plummeting away out of sight, limbs flailing madly.

  Jesus Christ…

  He stole a look over his shoulder toward the rear ramp through the riot of bodies, and saw a couple of Marines trying to bring their weapons to bear and fire back to keep the dead from leaping over. Beyond that, he could see runners and random civilians bunched up at the edges of the blown-out windows, the living trying to stop and push back against the dead – but then getting pushed out and over, tumbling into open air, screaming as they fell.

  Yap was flooded with relief, and then guilt, that at least those guys didn’t have a prayer of making it over to the ramp and into the back of the Chinook. So they were safe from an outbreak. But, more importantly, looking at, through, around, and past them, he didn’t see anyone in a uniform still back in the building. Nor anyone he recognized as a Tunneler.

  Whatever else, it looked like they had all made it in.

  But he had to be sure. On an ordinary day, their troop sergeant Eli would
do an exact headcount before they finished extracting from any target site. But Eli wasn’t there, and this was light-years away from an ordinary day.

  And all was complete fucking chaos.

  The helo was still lurching, bodies outside flying and dropping into open air or slamming into the side of the aircraft, ones inside tangled up in unidentifiable piles of limbs, everyone freaking out, especially the Tunnelers – screaming to get them the hell out of there – and Yap couldn’t seem to get or keep his feet. But he finally managed to get the headset on, and immediately heard Charlotte shouting through it.

  “—S EVERYONE IN?!”

  Before he could answer, the helo finally swayed too close to the building, and the rotors took out the glass panels above them, sending a storm of shards whipping around in the rotor wash. Yap squinted against it, but still managed to fight his way toward the rear.

  “I SAY AGAIN – IS EVERYONE ABOARD?!”

  Yap managed to shove enough people out of his way, until he had a clear look to the back through the crowd of bodies thronging the narrow cabin. There he could just see what looked like Simmonds and Croucher down on the deck – and, standing over them, the Para dude. He knew Croucher wouldn’t be on the helo if everyone else weren’t already here.

  And beyond him he could see only runners and civilians.

  Still, Yap shouted at the Para at the top of his voice.

  “Is everyone fucking in!?”

  The Para met his gaze, eyes wide and shining.

  * * *

  Elliot was now at the very rear of the cabin, last in, and closest to the edge of the open hatch and lowered ramp – and with a front-row seat to the final damnation of the civilians left alive on the top floor of the building. Bodies tumbled over the lip and into open air, screaming and flailing. Probably to keep his mind from overloading with the pathos and horror of it all, he idly wondered if falling to your death beat being eaten alive.

  He figured it probably did.

  He stole a look over his shoulder. The cabin wasn’t full. They could have saved more. They could have saved somebody.

  He heard a voice screaming at him and tried to focus.

  One of the Marines was shouting directly at his face.

  “I said, is everyone fucking in!?”

  Elliot turned back around to gaze upon the horror show back across ten feet of open air. Somewhere back there was Major Jameson, though no doubt now buried five deep in dead. In the foreground, practically in his face, he could see glass cascading down in slow motion from the shattered windows above. Behind the cloud, behind the falling people, he could make out a Foxtrot blasting through the mob of civilians and runners, somehow locked onto the noise of the helo and probably the uninfected people crammed inside. And he knew a Foxtrot could leap that ten feet without breaking a sweat. He could feel the helo bouncing and lurching all around him.

  He knew if they stayed there any longer, they were all dead.

  His eyes going out of focus, he found he could very clearly see the faces of the all the desperate civilians they had beaten down, that Jameson had beaten up, back at that stairwell.

  But, mainly, even clearer than that, what he was seeing was the faces of all his dead brothers in C Company, 2 PARA, their bodies broken by carelessly dropped artillery shells – and then, still conscious, screaming, being eaten alive by the dead. And now Elliot knew who was to blame.

  Mainly, he realized he was just numb.

  “IS THAT EVERYONE!?”

  He turned back to face the shouting Marine.

  And he nodded his head: Yes.

  The man shouted into the chin mic on his headset.

  The helo’s nose tilted forward.

  And it dropped, powered ahead – and flew away.

  Protectors

  CentCom – Old Prison

  “Hey, can you guys get to Biosciences from there?”

  “Wait one,” Juice said.

  He was cleaning up the last couple of runners that had dashed in through the outside gate before he’d gotten it closed – slightly annoyed that Pred wasn’t helping, but instead was looking after the mother and her two children. But he kept his mouth shut, got the job done, and then moved across the yard to the inside door that let onto the Common where Bio lay.

  He found the door open, its lock destroyed – but when he pushed into the little security area inside, he found a second door on the other side, this one both shut and locked. But the jailor’s keys he’d picked up off the ground opened it. He stuck his head out into the deepening dusk of the outer Common, and could see the towering white structure of Bio in the middle distance, visible in the near dark.

  “Affirmative, Ali, no problem. We’re en route.”

  “Copy. Don’t dawdle. Doc Park’s boxed in there.”

  Juice darted back into the prison yard and yelled at Pred. “C’mon, man. Urgent tasking.”

  Pred nodded and waved – but when he ran over, he was still carrying one of the kids, and had in tow the mother, who was carrying the other.

  “No time for strap-hangers, dude. We gotta jam.”

  Pred shook his huge head. “We can’t leave them here – there were runners all over the place.”

  Juice cued up five possible solutions to this problem – but realized he could anticipate Pred’s objections to each before he even spoke them. The guard house had a broken door. The windows of the car could easily be smashed by determined dead – though without any living in there, the paintball stuff should at least be safe for now. The nearby canteen was an infected cesspit. And trying to take the family anywhere else was going to take even longer. Finally Juice just sighed, shook his head, raised his rifle – and led them out.

  Behind him, he could hear Pred speaking in the most soothing version of his stone-giant voice. “Just stay between the two of us and keep moving. You’re gonna be fine…” The five of them moved through the two doors in the wall and out into the open but shadow-darkened space of the Common.

  Head on a swivel, rifle panning left and right, moving at a solid running pace, Juice figured he’d just have to be mission-focused for the two of them.

  They’d be at the Bio facility in four minutes.

  * * *

  There was only a small reception area and then a short hallway between the med-wing entrance and the ward, and Sarah didn’t find anyone in either. It looked like the hospital had been abandoned – or else depopulated. Not slowing, rifle up, she pushed out into the ward and instantly saw…

  Handon still peacefully sleeping in his bed.

  But with the body of another man draped across him, almost protectively. It looked like the one other patient, who had been in the other bed – and who she remembered the doctor said was a Royal Marine named Younis, or something like that. Now somehow he was in Handon’s bed, lying on top of him. And on top of him was…

  A swaying, blood-spattered figure, hunched over.

  And eating him.

  Breath catching in her throat, Sarah sidestepped around the end of the bed until she had the creature’s head in her sights – but then hesitated. Handon’s own head was right behind and below that of the feasting dead man. Steeling herself, she padded smoothly forward, took one hand off her rifle, grabbed the zombie by the collar – and hauled it away from the bed, shoving it to the floor. It reacted instantly, twisting and scrabbling on the ground and going for her legs, but she fired two rounds into the back of its head and it went limp. She took careful aim on the brainstem and fired once more.

  The banging of the rifle was like indoor detonations.

  Trying not to hyperventilate, she turned back to the bed. The man lying draped across it had several big chunks taken out of his back and neck, and wasn’t moving. Torn between caution, compassion, and concern for Handon, she carefully pulled Younis’s body off and down to the floor. Keeping half an eye on him, she turned back to deal with Handon first. There was some blood on his blanket – but, miraculously, it hadn’t soaked through. She pulled it off
him and flung it across the room. Underneath, Handon looked okay.

  Then she turned back to Younis.

  Her instincts, those of a police officer, told her to check for breathing – and if there wasn’t any, to get an ambulance rolling, then start chest compressions. But then she remembered it didn’t matter – even if this man was alive, he was dead. Devoured to the extent he was, there was no way he wasn’t infected. Fighting all her instincts – except the one that told her to protect herself, and her beloved – Sarah steeled herself, gritted her teeth, silently thanked him for saving Handon…

  And she put two rounds in Younis’s brainstem.

  Moaning from the doorway drew her eye and rifle back and upward in a flash – it was another one, a slow one, stumbling in through the open entrance. She fired four times, and it went down. She looked back to Handon. She had to get him out of there. She unplugged all the medical monitors, then found and disengaged the wheel brakes on the rolling bed. She checked the room again carefully.

  “Come on, Sergeant Major,” she said. “Not losing you now.”

  And she started rolling Handon the hell out of there.

  * * *

  Juice squinted into the gathering darkness of the Common, the storm clouds overhead making it even darker, and considered the unfortunate fact that neither he nor Pred had NVGs with them. This was because they’d been going out for a daytime mission, intending to be back in two hours.

  Jesus, he thought. It’s like Black Hawk Down never happened. We just never learn.

  Still moving fast across the nearly black grass hillocks, rifle up and panning, he stole a quick glance behind him, over his right shoulder. The frightened mother was still there, carrying her little boy. And, right behind her, Pred, with the bigger girl cradled in the crook of his giant left arm, while he held his rifle by the pistol grip with his right.

  They were at least all keeping up, thank God.

  As Juice turned his head forward again, a pack of runners rocketed out of the darkness from behind and to the left, locked-on and already moving at full speed. He stopped and spun in that direction, instantly and instinctively covering his sector, which was the right half of the pack, as divided down the middle. Pred was doing the same with the left, both of them shooting at high speed and with pure precision – and before the woman could even scream, the leading runners had dropped to the ground like the front rank of the losing side in a Revolutionary War battle.