Right out front of CentCom was a whole rumbling armor column – not merely armored vehicles like before, but big fuck-off main battle tanks, Challenger 2s. The lead tank had just bashed a hole right through the center of the meat wall out front – and seven others followed it through, fanning out and taking up positions in the no-man’s land between CentCom’s walls and the meat barrier.
Perhaps most unbelievably of all, a long file of dismounted infantry, probably 150 in total, ran through the hole behind the tanks and moved straight toward the front gates, going through the smaller entrance and coming inside the walls – even as the lead tank spun around, moved forward again, and physically plugged the hole it had made in the meat wall.
“So it’s not the dead, then,” Wesley said. He didn’t know much, but he knew the dead didn’t drive tanks. At least not yet.
“No,” Miller said. “It’s our reinforcements. Bit late.”
The other three turned and stared at him, unspeaking. Their expressions said it clearly enough.
How did this miracle happen?
Back in the Fight
In and Around London
[Several Hours Earlier]
Captain Windsor – commander, D squadron, King’s Royal Hussars – braced his arms against the unholy banging of the L37A2 medium machine gun in his hands. He knew at the rate he was firing, he was pretty quickly going to burn out his barrel. But he was determined that his body not give out before the hardware did. He also knew it was somewhat irresponsible, if not actually insane, having the squadron’s OC up in the turret personally engaging the enemy.
Then again, he thought, they don’t call this the Commander’s cupola for nothing…
But there was nothing funny about his motivation for being up here. He was trying to protect his men. And they were currently in deep caca, almost literally. Though within sight of the southwest gate of the ZPW, exactly half of the squadron, eight of his sixteen tanks, were now effectively mobility kills – stuck, trapped, and now stranded in a combination of the deep trench system they had accidentally blundered into, due to GPS follies… and millions of pounds of migrating dead meat.
They’d all felt invulnerable buttoned up in their super-powerful and all-conquering Challenger 2 main battle tanks – and no one had paused long enough to consider the danger of a formidable trench system, which had taken months to excavate, coupled with a raging sea of animated corpses, which had somehow only taken days to flood in. In any case, the combination was enough to stop even the Challengers.
Hubris, Windsor thought. It’s what took down all the Greek heroes. That fatal flaw, mortals thinking themselves equal to the gods. We had to be brought low.
And so they had been.
Now the squadron was fighting for its life, the eight mobile ones afraid to maneuver for fear of ending up like the others – and all of them banging away with their turret MGs and coaxial guns, trying to keep the dead from overwhelming them. But the dead were coming fast – and thick. One tank had already gone down, its air intakes clogged and an electrical fire forcing the crew out and onto the ground. Windsor didn’t even know what had happened to Sergeant Ashear and his crew, and hadn’t had time to try raising them on the radio in a long time.
Though commo seemed to be fucked anyway.
The end was coming fast, and they could all see it. And now the terrible truth hit Captain Windsor: the stranded half of his squadron was doomed. The only question was whether the other half would go down with them. On any other day, they would have chosen to make their last stand together, in a heartbeat. He knew every man in the squadron would rather fall fighting than abandon their brothers to their fates.
But they also had orders.
And the fate of not just Britain but the entire world was hanging in the balance. They had to get to CentCom, and reinforce the only ones left who had any chance of fixing all this. With every inch of the motion scraping his soul, the weight of duty crushing brotherhood beneath it like a thousand-ton rock, Windsor let go of the machine gun. He lowered himself down through the hatch. He pulled it closed.
And he got on the radio and gave the order.
Having the squadron’s correct position now, as well as an accurate map of the trench system, he got the remaining fifty percent of their column moving and to the outside of the southwest gate in less than fifteen minutes. Inexplicably, no one inside the tower responded to his hails. He didn’t think it could be the radio interference – they were line of sight and less than fifty feet away. But it didn’t matter – it couldn’t be allowed to matter, or to stop them.
He got the eight tanks formed up, performing defensive combat maneuvers as they were expertly trained to, managing to clear the area directly in front of the gate, and then sent dismounts to get the damned thing open themselves. The other seven tanks moved through fast, while Windsor’s own crew covered the rear – actually firing three rounds from their 120mm main gun at nearly point blank range – then followed.
And then they got the gate closed again.
And the survivors of the squadron headed up the M3 motorway, shedding gore and body parts from the fight.
Leaving their comrades behind.
* * *
Twenty miles closer to the center of London, nearly at its very heart in fact, Captain Gunn – commander, Company C, the London Regiment – figured this was it for him. He was done. It had never occurred to him that he would die by drowning. But it was always the one you didn’t see coming that got you.
Which was probably why it got you.
Sure enough, the shifting and groaning of Westminster Bridge beneath his feet – which his unit had been trying to cross, fighting through the thickest mob of civilians and vehicles he’d ever seen – had presaged the bridge’s collapse. The damned thing had dropped right out from under them, falling into the Thames like any one of a dozen recent movies he could think of where iconic London structures and landmarks blew up or fell down in expensive CGI sequences.
But all too real now were the water over his head, the sinking stone debris, and the bodies and vehicles all around. And he was sinking fast, even as he desperately tried to stroke with both arms. They hadn’t been all that far from the foot of the bridge when it collapsed. But still too far to save him.
Utrinque paratus.
For some reason the motto of the Parachute Regiment popped into his head: Ready for anything. It was always Latin with the mottoes. But he was going to be really annoyed if that was the last thing that went through his head – like the damned maroon machine telling the TA off for being unprepared. He decided he’d be fucked if it was his last thought – and made one more lunge for the surface. There was no time to try to struggle out of his body armor or even ditch his weapon.
He had to get a breath now – or he was done.
And then his feet scrabbled in something – silt. Blessed low tide, he thought. Strength fading, stroking and kicking for all he was worth, he powered himself a few meters closer to the embankment – and found he was able to stand, just enough to angle his head up and steal a breath. Two minutes later, he was dragging his dripping, coughing, half-drowned self up a set of slime-covered stone steps that led up from the sandy bare shore of the river at low tide to the embankment above.
And he started doing a head count of the survivors.
Almost an hour later, he had one – he was just unable to accept it. Fully half his men, 150 soldiers, all of whom he was responsible for, were gone. That was how many were unaccounted for, presumed drowned and dead. And, much worse, he knew they couldn’t stay to look for them – either to find some who could still be rescued, or to recover the bodies of those who couldn’t.
They also couldn’t lie down on the riverbank and die, which is what Gunn desperately wanted to do now. All of their vehicles, a half-dozen Snatch Land Rovers, including his command vehicle, were lost – and with it most of their spare ammo, water, and medical supplies. Many of the survivors had lost their weapons, packs, body ar
mor…
And half their company was dead.
And still Captain Gunn knew exactly what they had to do. They all had to get up. Brace up. Stiffen their spines, steel their courage, stop their tears.
And get marching again.
They had to get to CentCom. And they had to protect it.
* * *
Sergeant Major Pradup Sun of the Royal Gurkha Rifles only looked out the porthole at the next Chinook over in the formation for four seconds – which is how long it took to go from flying erratically to crashing into the helo beyond that, taking them both down in a tumbling, flaming, smoking, screaming, disintegrating jumble of warping and tearing steel fuselage, shattering rotors, and falling bodies. Both aircraft had been completely full of Sun’s brother Gurkhas – at least thirty men in each.
And now they were all dead, or would be in seconds.
Which was about how long Sun had to save the men in his own helo. He turned from the box-seat view of slow-motion air disaster, and went back and found the infected man in his section he’d identified a few seconds earlier.
And he shot him in the face.
He did it with his side arm, ensuring the round came to rest in the Kevlar of the man’s helmet, then caught him before he fell and eased him to the deck. Then he barked for the attention of everyone in the cramped and packed cabin. In seconds, the panicked voices had settled and everyone was strapped into the bench seats that ran down the sides.
Now they had a tiny bit of space and time.
Zombies couldn’t work safety harnesses.
Then Sun stuck his torso up onto the flight deck and shouted at the two pilots to “put it back down on the ground – now!” But even as he did, and they moved to comply, the gazes of all three were drawn by another bird in the formation, directly to their right. Chinook cockpits have a lot of glass, on three sides, so they could all see straight out to their three o’clock – and directly into the next cockpit.
And they could see boot prints on the glass. In blood.
Bodies thrashed around furiously inside.
And then that aircraft didn’t so much fall out of the sky – instead, its nose pitched down and to the right and it accelerated at the ground like the frontrunner in a helicopter crash race, with absolutely no intention of losing its lead.
“Holy mother of God,” the co-pilot muttered.
“Get us down,” Sun repeated, clapping him on the shoulder. “And radio the others to follow. Do it!” Back in the cabin, he assigned one man to assist him – and they went down each row of men to either side, looking into faces and eyes. By some miracle, as far as they could tell, no one else had been infected. By the time the Chinook’s fat tires bounced twice on the ground – nothing like the smoothest landing any of them had experienced, though perhaps the fastest – three things had become apparent.
First, only two of the helos had made it to the ground intact.
Two out of six.
Second, they’d been wrong – two other men in their own aircraft had been infected. Both were heaving around in their harnesses, the men next to them scrambling to get the hell away, before two more pistol shots rang out.
Finally, strangest of all, Sun realized: he was now in charge of B Company, 2 Royal Gurkha Rifles. Their entire command element, all of the commissioned officers, had ended up in two of the helos that had crashed.
He absorbed and accepted this in seconds. But he kept them on the ground another hour – personally going through both aircraft and checking out the men. He also didn’t let them go look for survivors in the wreckage of the other four, some of which were close by. It was too dangerous. And there was too much at stake. Luckily the noise and flames of the crash sites were drawing all the local dead. Sun let them.
When he was reasonably satisfied no one else was going to turn – and had double-checked to make sure everyone in both birds was strapped down – he got them in the air again, and winging their way toward CentCom.
They’d just lost 120 out of the 180 men in the company.
But the Gurkhas still had a mission – and a job to do.
And Sun knew everything depended on it.
Temporary Setback
CentCom – JOC
Barely ten minutes later, all three commanders of the newly arrived units were meeting with Wesley, Fick, and Miller in the JOC – actually in the office formerly occupied by the USOC Colonel, after Ali, after Jameson, all of them after Colonel Mayes… Miller wondered who the hell would be next.
Probably one of these guys, he thought. Two of them, the tanker and reservist commanders, were captains and thus outranked everyone else in the room. Nonetheless, the strength of CentCom’s garrison had just increased by more than a hundred percent. Though the eight main battle tanks probably actually increased it by infinity.
After the three newcomers introduced themselves and described their units, strength, and capabilities, even Fick looked pleased. He said, “You are most welcome, gentlemen.”
“Thanks for having us,” Captain Windsor said.
“Now,” said Captain Gunn. “Where do you want us?”
Both of them sounded not just very English but very much of the officer class, definitely London or at least southern England. And both probably public schoolboys. The Gurkha sergeant major, on the other hand, kept his gob shut. He just exchanged a knowing look with the U.S. Marine senior NCO.
“Follow me,” Fick said.
But before they could exit the JOC, rotor and engine noise drew Fick, Wesley, and Miller over to one of the blown-out windows. It was the two Chinooks, which had brought in the Gurkhas – both lifting off again.
“Hey,” Fick said. “We might need those.”
Miller grabbed for a radio desk mic, but Sergeant Major Sun stopped him, speaking for the first time, his voice quiet and calm, and shaking his head. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Those pilots are Sixteen Air Assault Brigade – and we still have men alive out in the field. I don’t think you’ll be able to stop them going out to try to bring them back.”
Fick grunted, Wes sighed, and Miller put the mic down. They all got it. The two dumpsters soared off into the night.
Miller looked up to see Jones waving a headset at him.
Again.
* * *
Private Elliot Walker looked over the top of his unfamiliar weapon at the remarkable sight of an armored column and most of an infantry company entering their no-man’s land, directly from the north. He had no idea who they were, but he was a trooper, of no rank, and used to not being told anything. He was also trained to keep doing his job, no matter what – which right now was to keep wandering dead from coming over that meat wall.
He was holding the rifle laid out before him one-handed, using the crossed-arm hold he’d seen many real snipers employ – right hand on the grip and trigger, left resting in the crook of his right arm. Ali was long gone, but she had left her flash AI sniper rifle here, and Elliot was unable to resist the temptation to try it out.
But he was quickly discovering the truth of what any shooting instructor, or combat veteran for that matter, will tell you: it’s no good switching violins mid-concert. You’ll only sound like shit. So he went ahead and switched back to the weapon he had been trained on, his MOD-issued L129A1 sharpshooter rifle.
However, he also got out his hex wrench and undid the rail screws on the front-mounted night-vision device in front of Ali’s scope. And then he mounted it on the Picatinny rail on his own barrel, in front of his humble ACOG sight. This was a case of nicking somebody else’s kit, pure and simple. But he had a funny feeling she’d approve.
And then he got back down into a prone shooting posture. And he tried to honor the instruction she had given him: “Time to get better.” Being able to see in the dark sure helped – enormously and instantly. But even with that, he found he was only able to make headshots on Foxtrots about one time in ten or fifteen attempts. And it wasn’t enough. He didn’t know how much HRIG Ali was going to come back
with. But he knew there was only a tiny amount of MZ, the disease that killed the dead, and more was growing only very slowly. He couldn’t afford to waste a drop. He, or someone, was going to have to make shots at a much higher hit ratio than anything he could manage right now.
“What are you doing?”
He looked over his shoulder. It was Kate, speaking in a near-whisper. He’d been so absorbed in his task, he hadn’t heard her come out there.
“Practicing,” he said, equally quietly. “Trying to hit Foxtrots.”
“Aren’t we going to need those?”
Elliot shrugged. He had been in the room when the plan to use Foxtrots both to infect and to kill the other dead had been hatched. But he’d also heard what things were like out there now. “We’ll have more than we want before this is over. Also, if they start jumping over the walls again, we’ll wish we didn’t.”
“Huh,” Kate said, resting her elbow on the railing. The same hand held the pistol-grip of her SCAR Mk 20 Mod 0 – which Elliot knew to be a better and more expensive designated marksman weapon than his own. It also had an excellent suppressor, and a better scope. American Special Forces always had a lot of money, and got the best of everything. Something in her posture and tone seemed to indicate she knew this – and maybe had a similar feeling about the shooters who wielded them. She said, “So what’s so special about you? Used to bullseye womp-rats in your T-16 back home?”
Elliot got the joke. But the last thing he needed was second-guessing or criticism. Even aside from already knowing he wasn’t good enough, he was also still exhausted and beat down, and racked with remorse and survivor’s guilt over the deaths of everyone in 2 PARA. He deflated. “No. And it probably doesn’t matter. I’m not good enough, and I can’t do it. Ali’s going to have to.”
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