Shrieking approached – from behind.
And not your normal everyday shrieking; it was far beyond the standard Foxtrot horror soundscape.
Shrieking like none of them had ever heard.
* * *
Down on the deck, Colley knew the five seconds was up.
Moving fast, he got his powerful arms wrapped around the HRIG-exposed Foxtrot’s torso, pinning its arms, clutching it tight as he climbed to his feet – even as the hot-wired human corpse shuddered even more violently than before, shrieked even louder, impossible as that was…
And then went absolutely fucking insane.
It lurched, shrieked, bucked, writhed, and struggled with impossible superhuman strength. Colley knew he could keep the thing’s arms pinned for another few seconds at best. But it was already kicking and kneeing him with hyper-fast and powerful bucks of its legs, and stabbing him in the thighs with its pinned claws. And as Colley leaned forward to face the edge of the roof that faced the prison, and took off at a run…
It started shredding his face with its teeth.
* * *
A few feet away, Fick was just about out of Foxtrot hair.
He looked over at Colley’s as it shrieked and went apeshit – there was almost no way not to look. And in that instant, he realized Stier must have executed Handon’s command and hit it with the HRIG. Say what you will about Germans, they know how to obey orders…
But when his head snapped back to the face trying to eat his own, Fick realized Colley’s wasn’t the only one that had been exposed. He had no idea how he’d missed it before, but then again it was only inches away, and Fick needed reading glasses, which he’d refused to get, and he’d been busy keeping his face from being eaten. Now he saw it.
There was a vial sticking out of the Foxtrot’s fucking eye.
And then suddenly, it was no longer trying to eat his face. Now it was like no Foxtrot, or zombie, Fick had ever seen – peaceful, not only its mouth closed, but also its eyes. Scratch that – he’d seen exactly one like this before.
In that warehouse closet.
Now that he had a second here, and the head had gone slack, he leaned around to regard the vial. Sure enough, he could even read the label: HRIG. And it was jagged at the business end, fluid dripping out of the Foxtrot’s ruptured eye and down into its mouth. This had been what it had eaten in its massive face-plant down onto the deck.
Of all the rotten fucking luck.
Fick looked up to see Colley hauling ass away – his face being chewed up as he ran. So Fick knew perfectly well what was coming next, what was about to happen. For one second, the one second he had and probably the last, he considered destroying this thing before it kicked off. That would save his own life. But that would be dodging his duty, not fulfilling it.
And, in addition to having a second he also now had a free hand… so he hauled it back and punched the Foxtrot three times right in the mouth with his full strength, knocking its teeth out and back down its throat.
By the time he finished, the thing was already shuddering.
Just as Colley had, he gripped it around the middle, pinning its arms as it bucked and shrieked.
And he turned toward that roof edge.
He hadn’t guessed the prophecy would end this way.
But it looked like one more act of redemption was required.
And it was a hell of a way for the last Marine to go.
He took off running.
* * *
Colley didn’t make a sound as the rabid Foxtrot bit into his nose and ripped it away, but just clenched his jaw, somehow kept himself from screaming, hugged the bucking creature to him with all his strength – and angled for what looked like the last gap in the line, as its defenders were re-forming.
And when he hit the edge…
He dove – with all the strength left in his body.
* * *
Predator watched the two bodies fly through the gap and go hurtling off the rooftop, which definitely made a change, both of them in their death grip tumbling down the slope below.
But almost before he could begin to enjoy that show, he heard more mega-shrieking approaching from behind, causing him to spin in place – but then clotheslined another pair of bodies, one running and carrying the other, knocking them both back down onto the deck, hard.
“I got this one, Master Guns,” Predator said.
And with two gargantuanly large and strong hands, he reached down and pried the two bodies apart and hefted the one that wasn’t a Marine, even as it flailed and bucked and slashed and bit at his hands and arms.
And he hurled it nearly thirty feet out over the slope of dead.
A little off to the side of Colley and the other one.
“Thanks,” Fick said, climbing to his feet. “Demented dead son of a bitch was gumming my nose.”
And then the two of them, plus Juice, and the other defenders in the front rank, faced forward – and looked upon the most remarkable thing any of them had seen, in two years of ZA, or in their entire lives for that matter.
A pair of Foxtrots turning into undead lawnmowers.
In two spots down on the slope of active and destroyed dead, in the relatively small area Predator had cleared using Langmack, the two rabid Foxtrots went to work like 2,000 Loony Tunes Tasmanian Devils on meth, crack, and quad espressos – flailing, bashing, heaving, grasping, biting, pulling off heads, tearing rotted bodies apart on one side and then the other, ripping them limb from limb. They decimated waves of runners trying to run up the slope, latching onto them and ripping them apart, sending them whole or in pieces tumbling back down the slope or out to either side.
Unbelievably, even to those standing there actually watching it all happen at the time, within seconds the two rabid Foxtrots had actually made a dent – destroying or disabling so many dead that the numbers heading for the rooftop were perceptibly reduced. The front rank of defenders was already back at work, having to fight to hold the line.
But they were holding.
And then another mega-shriek sounded from the rear.
“Hey, a little help…”
It was Handon, speaking in Pred’s radio earpiece. Turning, he realized the CSM was no longer on the line with them. He was in the rear – and he was executing his original plan.
“Come on!” Pred said, shoving Juice. “No rubbernecking!”
Juice raised his rifle and Pred his bat and they dashed back twenty feet behind the line, to where Handon was down on the deck with Croucher and Sun, Park standing close by, the three of them restraining another HRIG-exposed and rabid Foxtrot, face glassed and wet and lacerated, flailing like Judgment Day. Leaning in, Pred seized it with both hands at neck and crotch, and Handon and Croucher let it go only as he started hauling on it, so it got unleashed like a catapult launch.
Predator had to throw this one a lot farther to get it over the edge, and over the front line, but it was a relatively little guy, a girl actually, and he had the superhuman physical strength to do it. Bellowing, he hurled it across thirty feet of rooftop, over the heads of the defenders, and down into the sloping morass of dead below. He even got it out to the left of the first two. By the time he turned, Juice covering the whole operation with spaced single shots from his very last mag, Handon and Croucher had wrestled another Foxtrot to the deck, Sun holding its legs, and Fick now appeared, taking an HRIG vial from Park.
Hauling his arm back, he said, “Want a Red Bull, motherfucker? It gives you wings, motherfucker.” And he smashed the vial in its face.
This time Predator waited for the two-second dormant period, to save his ravaged hands and arms, and used the time to carry the thing right up to the edge – and hurled it way out to the right of the first three. Even as he released it, incoming shrieking drew his eye skyward, and he reached up and caught an incoming Foxtrot out of midair with one hand, around the neck. Turning his head to look behind him, he saw Park was already there – holding a single vial.
“Last one,” Park said, slapping it into his hand.
Predator smashed it into the creature’s face.
Then, grabbing it by the crotch with his other hand, he hurled it a good fifty feet out, way in front of the others. As it landed, he felt a hand slap his back, heard his own line being used back on him – “Damn, dude” – and turned to see this was Handon. The CSM looked exhausted, but happy – and even fist-bumped him. Pred returned the bump, taking care not to knock over the post-surgical old warrior.
Homer had been right from the start – it was indeed impossible to hit Foxtrots with those HRIG vials at anything but point-blank range. What he had failed to consider, but Handon had realized, was they didn’t have to hit them at long range – because they had Predator, who could hurl them out to long range after they’d been hit, in a matter of seconds. There probably weren’t many men on left on Earth, if there ever had been, who could throw other men fifty feet through the air.
But they happened to have one with them on that rooftop.
When the others stepped up behind Pred and Handon, eyes wide and jaws slack, they all looked and beheld five rabid Foxtrots at work. And either because God was truly looking out for them, or maybe just because that’s where all the new victims were coming from, all five faced away down the slope.
And they were fighting and ravaging the incoming dead.
“Man,” Juice said. “28 Weeks Later has got nothing on these guys.”
“Seriously,” Pred said. “Makes the rage virus look like colicky babies.”
The five rabid Foxtrots tore through the incoming horde, almost as if eating it alive – a complete, mindless, implacable, furious rage. And the damage they were doing was superhuman, beyond supernatural. They made short work of Zulus, decimated runner packs – they even took down other Foxtrots before they could get close enough to leap. It was like every other zombie in the world had murdered the families of these five asleep in their beds – and now they were having their revenge. And they didn’t seem to slow or tire. Of course, five Foxtrot super-warriors weren’t ultimately going to be enough to stop the millions still coming for them.
But they had without question bought a little time.
Juice squinted. “Hey, what the hell happens if two of those things start fighting each other?”
Pred laughed. “Then I’m not moving from this spot. Front-row seat, motherfuckers.”
But someone was already jostling for his spot.
It was LT Wesley, pushing his way through to see it all. And he immediately remarked on something none of the others had noticed. “The dead aren’t fighting back.”
“Hey, Wes, brother,” Pred said. “Wait – what?”
“They’re being decimated and ripped to pieces. And they don’t even seem to notice, never mind defend themselves.”
“Huh. True.”
Wesley’d always thought one of the most striking things about the dead was how they never seemed to be aware of other dead. But now, for the first time, these five alone weren’t just aware of the others – they were tearing them limb from limb. And the others were still totally oblivious. As Fick stepped up and clapped him on the back, Wesley looked up and down the line, at the other members of Alpha, Handon and Predator and Juice, and back at the RMPs, and the Tunnelers, and Amarie… and he thought:
The dead not only didn’t have anyone they loved and wanted to protect, all working together, fighting for the man or woman to either side of them. No, now the dead were treating each other like reviled enemies they had to destroy. Death was no longer just cold and unfeeling and devoid of love.
Death was now full of withering hatred and self-loathing.
Death was tearing itself to pieces.
Then again it could afford to.
It still owned most of the world.
* * *
“Focus, please,” Ali repeated, snapping Elliot from his trance.
He turned and looked up again.
It had been impossible to ignore the Apocalyptic shrieking from down below – louder than any ambulance siren, more terrifying than any sound Elliot had ever heard, turning his very heart to ice. And it wasn’t exactly designed to steady his already shredded nerves, either. But while his eye had been drawn to the Miracle of the Rabid Foxtrots, that wasn’t what he had seen down there.
What he saw was courage and sacrifice and heroism. The men and women down below had bought a little more time. All for him. And they’d paid for it in the currency of their lives. It was beyond anything Elliot had ever personally witnessed – even after all this, even among his fallen brothers in the Paras. And certainly far beyond anything he’d ever done himself.
He had never done nearly enough, and it tore at his soul.
Now he saw the faces of all the brothers he’d been unable to save – Amhit and Jonesy, Beevor, Staff Sergeant Bardhwaj, that nameless trooper helplessly shitting in a ditch… And he thought about how he had somehow been spared again and again, each time, the inexplicable fact that he was still here, alone among all of them, when almost everyone was now gone – and his tortured belief that it must be for some purpose.
Lightning flashed overhead and whited out his vision, and upon that blank canvas, in his mind’s eye, he finally saw… Major Jameson, looking him in the eye in his last seconds alive on this Earth, and Elliot heard with perfect fidelity the last words he ever spoke.
“And you’ll save everyone.”
As thunder cracked and echoed, the lightning faded to black, the parade of dead faces receded, and darkness finally returned, so did Elliot’s sight – and left in his field of view now was only a single face. Ali’s.
“What’s your job?” she said.
“What?” He turned to look at her, her shining eyes only inches away, rain streaming down both their heads.
“You’re a sharpshooter – what’s your job?”
“Protect my teammates.”
“And who are your teammates?”
“Everyone up here.”
“Good start.”
“Everyone… everyone left alive.”
“Right.” Ali clapped him on the back. “Now get it done.”
Elliot stood up to his full height. He put his eye back to the scope, the world out beyond it illuminating in night-vision green and black. He picked out a Foxtrot leaping and raging on top of the meat wall in front of no-man’s land. He tracked, steadied his breathing, slowly squeezed the trigger – and then threw all that out the window and just felt the movement of his target.
And in that frozen moment, he felt something else.
All the fear and doubt had gone. His hands were steady. His whole body was – his whole being.
He fired.
Boom. Headshot.
Or, rather, face-shot. The Foxtrot’s head visibly snapped back. Elliot kept his scope on it, and watched as its movement slowed. For a second or two, it just stood atop the body pile, as if confused. Elliot could see its mottled dead face in the light-enhanced view, and it just looked down at its feet for two seconds. Then it spasmed, twisted, and finally looked up – at a stumbling Zulu coming over the hill.
And it attacked – biting and scratching the Zulu, before quickly turning and going after another one. And then another. It was going from one to another among the dead – biting, scratching, shoving, and taking off again fast. It was doing what Foxtrots did – infecting and moving on.
Spreading the disease. In this case, the MZ.
And then it disappeared over the top of the meat wall. Heading north. Off toward central London.
Energized, his breath rapid, Elliot found another one nearby, and fired again.
Boom. A miss.
“Fuck.”
He didn’t let it faze him.
His next shot hit. He methodically emptied the magazine, targeting Foxtrots on the meat pile, and then out on the hills just beyond it, making face shots about one time out of every two or three times he fired.
And when the bolt of Ali’s rifl
e finally locked back…
There were a dozen infected Foxtrots out beyond the walls – infected with MZ, and made aggressive toward other dead with HRIG. And they were all moving toward the thickest concentration of dead – which was north. Scratching and biting everything they passed, they were all heading away, into central London, high-speed vectors for the MZ infection.
“Nice job,” Ali said. “Plague on.”
* * *
But back on the front line, the fight was also back on.
As they’d always known, their five-Foxtrot HRIG gambit couldn’t hold off the entire ZA forever. But the living were all together, fighting side by side, and it was something like a fair fight now – so there was an inexplicable but palpable sense of having turned a corner. Even if this was still the end, they were happy warriors. They’d all go down together.
“Hey,” Juice said. “I think the sky’s lightening up.”
It was possible that dawn was threatening, but they were facing west, and mainly it was hard to tell through the storm. And then, almost imperceptibly, the rain began to slacken.
“Hey,” Juice said, again.
“What?” Pred said, swinging his bat.
“You hear that? Engine noise.”
Pred shrugged. “It looked like Noise was refueling the vaccine flight. Expect Hailey should be taking off by now.”
“Not down in the Common,” Juice said, turning and pointing behind them, and up. “There.”
Pred turned to look. “Wait, who the hell is that?”
“No idea. But they’re seriously late to the party.”
Pred grunted, winding up his bat again. “Yeah. And I seriously doubt they’re going to like the after-party…”
The End of the End
500 Feet Above South London
“Two miles out,” Group Captain Gibson reported over the PA.
“Hoofing news, lads,” Royal Marine Staff Sergeant Eli said. “Home in time for tea and medals.”
Sanders smiled. “Figure they’ll have saved the world by the time we’re back?”
“No danger,” Halldon said, slapping the soft-spoken Sanders on the back. “Reckon they’ll have finished the vaccine, slotted all the dead with the Kazakh’s zombie flu, and already started cleaning up. Scran and zeds for us, mate.”
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