“And if Ali doesn’t come back?” This was Baxter. Elliot belatedly realized he had followed Kate out – and he also had a fourth person in tow, someone he didn’t recognize, who stood silently in the shadows, just listening.
“She has to come back,” Elliot said.
But Baxter gave him a look, both amused and not at all amused. Both he and Elliot had been through experiences that had taught them better. Anyone could go down.
“What’s all this stuff?” Baxter asked. To get farther out, he was having to duck under a swing arm sticking out from the tower and over the side, as well as step over a couple of sandbags, and around a rope hanging between the two.
Elliot said, “The zombie cargo-crane they threw together.”
“What?”
“It’s just a pulley. They needed to lasso and haul up a Zulu for testing. The sandbags are counterweight.” With both of them farther out now, Elliot could see the newcomer Baxter had brought was another British soldier, small and young but with ears big enough to be visible even in the darkness.
“This is Liam,” Baxter said.
“Elliot,” Elliot said, offering his hand up.
“He’s going to man our MG for us.”
Kate looked at Liam and said, “Just make sure and stay the hell off it – until and if we’re all about to die.”
Liam nodded, anxious to comply, while looking around. Every other weapon up there was superbly suppressed.
They didn’t call it the sniper OP for nothing.
* * *
Miller watched the backs of the once-and-future CentCom commanders finally exit the JOC with the reinforcement commanders, and he wearily took the headset from Jones.
“CentCom HQ, send message, over.”
“CentCom, Max One, message follows, break.”
Miller squinted into the monitor glow of the JOC, his brow furrowing as he recognized both the call sign and the voice. It was the Sikh bloke again – on the fuel-scavenging mission. But it wasn’t the man’s voice that was worrying him. Nor the terrible quality of the transmission – even across just a few miles of south London, the EMI was playing havoc with radio. No, it was the environmental noises Miller could nonetheless hear in the background on the other end.
“Good news!” Noise said cheerily – in stark contrast to the ambient sounds of nonstop firing, frenzied moaning, and also some kind of inexplicable roaring noise. “We are at the second target site!”
Miller almost breathed. That was something. “Max One, have you managed to fill the tanker truck with aviation fuel?”
“To the bloody brim, mate! Twenty thousand liters if it’s a drop. Sloshing over!”
Miller arched his eyebrows. Maybe this was better than it sounded. It certainly sounded better than it sounded. “All received. Outstanding, Max One. What’s your ETA back here?”
“Ah. Yes, well. Slight wrinkle there.”
Miller blinked very slowly. And he just waited for it.
* * *
Battersea Heliport was engulfed in flames – a raging inferno consuming both the smaller split-level office structure out on the pier, and the larger aircraft hangar behind that. Giant licking tongues of flame leapt into the black of the night sky, and reflected on the Thames to the opposite bank, 700 feet away, and up and down it for a quarter-mile in both directions.
The only thing not completely engulfed in flames was the helipad itself, which jutted out a hundred feet over the river on a big wooden-pile pier – and it wasn’t going to stay that way long, due to the large number of flaming stunt-guy zombies walking, running, or leaping out onto it. To get there they were having to climb over and around several crashed and/or tipped-over cars, trucks, and helicopters in the parking lot that abutted the pier, and the edge of the helipad itself.
Tied up to the section of embankment immediately adjacent to the heliport’s pier was one of the big flat garbage scows that constantly plowed the Thames, taking away the 60,000 tons of rubbish the Capital produced every day – or used to. Fortuitously, the peak tide meant the level of the scow was only a couple of feet below both the embankment and the helipad pier itself. It was also adjacent to both, its long starboard side tied to the embankment, with its square prow pushed right up against the pier.
Noise climbed out of the cab of the fuel tanker truck, which he had just driven out onto the deck of the scow from the pier, pleased at how smoothly the operation had gone. Admittedly there was no railing on the helipad, but he’d rather worried that the deck of the scow would give way – or at least sink down under the enormous weight to an extent that would be awkward.
Points for buoyancy, he thought.
Also, in fairness, there’d been nowhere else to go.
He circled around the side of the tanker, following the sound of nonstop firing to the rear – where he found Lance Corporal Bird doing an outstanding job of holding off the flaming zombies trying to follow them on board the scow. It would also be very awkward if the ship caught fire. He touched Bird on the shoulder to let him know he was there, and Bird’s head snapped around – Noise wasn’t sure he’d ever seen eyes so wide, shining in the light of the riverside bonfire. The man looked down at Noise’s slung shotgun. But Bird was doing a fine job, and Noise’s work right now was elsewhere.
He drew his scimitar and began methodically severing the mooring lines down the starboard side of the vessel. They took a couple of hacks each, but he always kept his blade razor-sharp, so in the end this was only the work of a minute or so. Equally happily, the swift current of the river at high tide immediately pulled the scow, and the truck and men upon it, away from the embankment and the pier – and then downstream.
That done, Noise paused and turned to see LCpl Bird walk up behind him – then fall to his knees. The poor chap seemed to be weeping, his face in his hands. Noise looked upon him with concern – and only remembered Miller at CentCom when the ops officer’s staticky voice spoke in his ear.
“Max One, what is your EXACT situation?”
Noise hit his radio. “CentCom, regret to inform we are currently floating away from Wandsworth, with the current of the Thames and to the east, at this exact second. But take heart – it is merely a temporary setback.”
Noise walked around behind Bird and started kneading the poor man’s shaking shoulders, at the same time looking up to the raised wheelhouse at the stern, and wondering what would be involved in getting the engine started.
The flames, and flaming zombies, receded behind them.
* * *
Miller kept blinking slowly, but gave up on grinding his teeth. It just made his jaw hurt.
“Ring us when you get to France,” he said. “CentCom out.” Then he removed the headset and placed it gently on Jones’s station. She was looking up at him with a worried expression, so he pulled his lips across his teeth and nodded cheerily.
Then he grabbed his binoculars and went to the window to watch the reinforcements deploy. That would make him feel better. But a faint buzzing sound drew his gaze up and to the north.
“Rabid Two air mission,” Jones said from behind him. “Back from insertion and inbound on short final.”
“Yeah, cheers,” Miller muttered.
“Lieutenant Wells wants to know the status of the fuel resupply for her plane. What should I tell her?”
Miller sighed, trying to decide how to even handle that one.
He could already see her aircraft bouncing on the airstrip.
* * *
Simon Park was deep inside Bio, in the fabrication facility – overseeing the running of the assembly line himself. Right now, nothing was so important as producing as much of the vaccine as humanly possible, as quickly as possible. He’d been on a single crusade for the last two years – namely developing the vaccine in the first place. But just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans have to have a purpose, and something always floods in. Now Simon’s new purpose was to flood the world with the magical elixir he had created, the only thing that could
save everyone left.
And doing so before it was too late.
His greatest fear was that it might already be too late. So right now, he was huddled up before the humming and rumbling assembly line, reviewing its schematics with one of the few lab techs who knew anything about its operation, and trying to find ways to innovate and speed up the fabrication process.
Unforgivably, but probably predictably, the one expert, who had architected the whole system, had died in the runner invasion. But, then again, Park figured he had to forgive him – he sure knew what it was like to be the one indispensable man. Also, not only was there no point in recrimination, it was also a distraction.
One he couldn’t afford.
Another distraction he couldn’t afford was the racket of what sounded inexplicably like airplane engines. This room was deep inside the Bio complex, but the circus-tent walls were damned thin. He zoned the noise out and focused. The lab tech he had shanghaied into this duty didn’t seem too hopeful that things could be speeded up any more than they already were. But something could always be done – when it had to be. What this guy needed was a good dose of the operator mindset. Park paused to give it to him – putting the specs down and squaring up to the white-coated man. He grabbed a single dose of the synthetic vaccine off the conveyer belt and held it up.
“You see this?” The tech obviously got that it was a rhetorical question. “Every single one of these we produce is another living person out there who makes it. Every kit is a family. Every pallet is a neighborhood.” He shook the vial in the man’s face. “This is somebody’s little girl. You got it? She’s either going to survive, or she’s going to be turned into a living dead girl, damned to wander the earth and devour the living, forever.” The man nodded. But Park wasn’t done. “Every one of these we fail to produce, right here and now – that’s somebody’s little girl who is going to die. That is the cost of failure. So we are not going to fail.”
“Great speech.”
Park looked up to see Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells standing in the doorway in her grimy flight suit, arms crossed, leaning on the doorjamb. “Heard you’d be in here.”
The tumblers clicked in Park’s mind. “That the Dash 8 outside?”
“Yeah. I taxied right up beside your science wonderland here. With my last two drops of fuel. But it’s ready to start loading up with vaccination kits. Put me to work.”
Park smiled, impressed. He stuck the schematics in the chest of the tech. “Keep working.” Then he led Hailey outside. “Shouldn’t you be resting? As the only pilot and everything?”
“What, you my LPO now?” Hailey asked, as they fast-walked together down the hall. “Logging my sleep hours?”
Park shrugged. He did need all the help he could get. And if things didn’t go well, they might all soon find themselves sleeping for a really long time. “Okay, come on then,” he said, leading them back toward the warehouse. He paused only to grab another tech in a white coat going by. “Vaccinations for the reinforcements?”
“Yes, sir. We’re going out to do it now.”
Park let go of his elbow and set off again.
Following, Hailey said, “Hey, are you aware you’ve got like a whole company of infantry forming up outside?”
Park wasn’t, but he also didn’t care too much. He still had to focus.
“I put them to work, too,” Hailey said, smiling.
* * *
“This, mate, is the heaviest fucking dead body in the history of fucking dead bodies.”
“Yeah, and dead bodies are fucking heavy.”
Two reserve soldiers of the London Regiment, big burly lads, were carrying the large PVC body bag and its contents out the open rear hatch of the prop plane, down the lowered ladder, and out into the dark and rain. Only two were carrying it because only two could fit through the hatch. But they dropped it the instant it was over dirt, and where there were two more lads to help them. Only those two were already going back up the ladder and into the plane for the other body.
The first two caught their breath while they waited.
“Who the hell is this American bird pilot anyway?”
“She’s a lieutenant is who she is. And Sergeant Zakaria says we move these bodies off her plane for her, so we move ’em.”
The other two emerged with the second bagged body, which was obviously a lot lighter. Just to get it over with, the four of them hefted the first one, from four corners.
“She said put them in ‘a safe place.’ Where the hell’s that?”
“Dunno. How about inside that parked Puma helo over there?”
“Just shuffling them from one aircraft to another?”
“Our orders are to get them off the plane.”
“Right. Job jobbed, then.”
* * *
Fick and Wesley both got back to their CP at the same time, from the task they’d divided between them, that of getting their numerous and badass reinforcements slotted in. Wes had been out on the walls, Fick down in the Common.
“Where’d you end up putting the Gurkhas?” Fick asked.
“Anchoring the center of the front line,” Wes answered. “Just like you said. Even the Royal Marines, even the USOC operators – all of them wanted the Gurkhas in the middle.”
“Yeah,” Fick said. “Their reputation kind of precedes them.”
Wes nodded. Even outside the military, just growing up in Britain, he knew the Gurkhas’ steadfastness under fire, and ferocity as fighters, was legendary.
“And the RMPs?” Fick asked.
“Gave them sixty minutes’ liberty,” Wes said. With the three units of hardened, blooded, and battle-tested warriors now manning the front sector, namely the north, the plan was to spread most of the RMPs and random conscripts out on the extended walls to the east, west, and south. For one thing, the coverage was extremely scanty on those sides, and when the dead came back, they couldn’t be counted on to do it from one direction. And for another, the home guard was still shell-shocked from the first battle. Taking them off the line seemed much the best thing.
Wes took a sip of coffee. “When they get back from liberty, I’ll put them in place.”
“Good enough,” Fick said.
“The reservists?” Wes asked.
Fick nodded. “The London Regiment is now permanently assigned to a new fixed defensive position – namely standing around in a big-ass flying wedge formation right outside the entrance to Bio.”
Wesley frowned. It wasn’t easy for him to understand the logic of devoting 150 men, nearly a third of their new total strength, to a spot inside the base. “You sure we don’t want some of them on the walls? Surely our best bet is to keep the dead from getting in here in the first place?”
“Defense in depth,” Fick grunted. “Attackers usually breach your line eventually. And the dead pretty much always get in.”
Wesley sighed. That was sobering – but also true in his experience. Then he also remembered that Bio, and everything inside it, was the whole match. Whatever happened, they couldn’t lose it. Assigning a large force to defend it made good strategic sense.
“That’s also why I’ve been keeping those mortars, and our limited ammo for them, in reserve – either for when things go completely to shit outside the walls—”
Wesley finished for him. “Or else inside the walls. Though you’ve already dug the pits behind the front line.”
“Believe me, holes can be moved. Anyway, eighty-one-mil mortars have a range of nearly five clicks, and I’ve had the crews lay in coordinate target packages all over this joint, inside and out. Speaking of outside – where are the tankers?”
“Parked right where they were before. We also volunteered some ammo bearers to help ferry out ammo for their turret and coaxial machine guns.”
“You mean we just donated a shitload of belted seven-six-two. Oh well, at least that we’ve got a lot of. And only four medium MGs of our own to shoot it.” Both USOC and the Gurkhas had brought in some squad
machine guns, but as far as Fick knew they were all the lighter 5.56mm U.S. SAWs and UK Minimis, that weren’t such beasts to carry around.
Wes nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Plus I figured we could trust them to put it to good use. Captain Windsor also left to rejoin them.”
But before they could go outside to check, Major Jameson came in, from the Marines’ position on the north walls. He was holding a pair of NVG binoculars – and wearing a grim expression. “Anyone in here paying attention?” he asked.
“To what?” Fick asked, looking at Wes. He didn’t point out that he’d been down in the Common, because he didn’t do excuses, but just took the binos as Jameson handed them over, and led the other two from the close darkness of the CP into the expansive darkness outside on the walkway. “Shit,” he said, green glow from the device leaking out onto his face.
“Yes,” Jameson said. “It’s fantastic we have reinforcements. Unfortunately now we’re going to need them.”
Wesley took the binos as Fick lowered them. And in the illuminated view, it was not quite plain as day – but plain enough. Whereas before it had been just the odd curious Zulu wandering over the top of the meat wall…
Now the trickle had turned to a steady flow.
It was centered on that new hole in the middle, which was plugged by one of the tanks – but not nearly to the height of twenty feet. The tank looked to be a bit less than ten, in fact, and lumbering figures, gawky and uncoordinated, were climbing right over the top of it.
And Wes had no doubt that, just as the trickle had turned to a flow, the flow would soon turn to a flood. Dead were always followed by more dead, and more still. The clock was ticking again – and soon the battle would be back on. They were still maintaining strict light and noise discipline, but it would only slow the process.
It couldn’t stop it. Nothing could now.
He lowered the binos and looked at the others in the dark. “They must have heard the tanks and helos.”
“Of course they did,” Jameson said, sounding like he wished someone had asked first if they wanted any very loud reinforcements. “And probably smelled the infantry. Not sure why the hell the armored farmers thought it would be clever to knock a huge hole in the only thing keeping the dead off us.”
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