Arisen, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead

by Glynn James

  “Do not be fearful, my brothers,” he said as he opened the locker and revealed the zombie. Neither of the other two moved; both looked at the creature with mild alarm. They had not run, as he been worried they might.

  “This, my brothers, is where I have gained all of my answers. Fools may believe that these are monstrous creatures, but as we know they cannot be. For were they not originally made in God’s likeness? Did he not create each one of them? This change has been his will, and by long study and contemplation, God has told me his will. Now we shall release this creature and guide it toward our enemies.”

  They hauled the zombie out of the locker and stood it up. The stench was overpowering, but neither of the men showed any signs of weakness.

  Carson stood facing it, reached forward and pulled off some of the duct tape that had kept it incapacitated all these months, just from its legs for now. Then they began to walk it ahead of them through the dim passageways. Around them, the hum of the ship, the background noise that was always there, disguised the low groaning that the zombie now made. The henchmen held one arm each, with Carson guiding it by a rope tied around its neck. They took it up two flights of stairs, quietly avoiding the few sailors who worked nearby. Carson had carefully checked the duty logs, and knew exactly which berthing compartment to go to. The carrier required staffing 24 hours a day, and that meant people sleeping at all hours.

  Carson peered through the door that was slightly ajar, then turned and nodded. The nearer henchman pushed the zombie forward and began to cut the duct tape that bound it. It began to struggle, to reach for them, but they pushed it into the room as the last of the duct tape gave way. Carson reached forward to pull the strip from the creature’s mouth, just as a sailor in one of the nearby bunks began to stir.

  What no one was expecting was the speed with which the zombie moved. Carson had always believed the thing to be one of the slow-moving ones. He had no information, and no way to consider that the fast ones, the new nightmares that could spread the virus like lightning, were actually an evolution of the earliest victims. This creature had been dormant for two years, hidden away in the locker. Its body had not deteriorated nearly as much as those that walk the Earth – but its behavior had evolved dramatically.

  Carson stepped back out the door as the follower on his left pulled it shut. They would close the door and listen while the creature turned those in the room. It wouldn’t matter if people awoke. They would not be quick enough to realize they had the walking dead in their midst.

  But that wasn’t what happened next.

  As the henchman pulled on the door he felt a pain in his wrist. Black and filthy fingernails dug into his arm as the zombie tore into him, shredding the skin and bursting the veins. Blood squirted out as the artery was sliced open, splattering Carson and the other man, blinding them both for long enough to leave them dazed as the zombie rushed through the door. In a flash, it raked its other hand across the face of the second henchman, at the same time lunging forward and sinking its teeth into Carson’s face. All three men lurched backward, shock and fear incapacitating them as the creature bit and clawed. Carson reached for the gun in his waistband, drew it and fired, but he couldn’t see clearly, and the round tunneled straight through the chest of the first henchman, who stopped clutching at his wrist and fell to the ground.

  And with that, the zombie was gone, rushing back into the room behind it to attack the twenty sailors asleep in the bunks. Carson staggered backward, stopped himself from falling to the floor, and stumbled away down the corridor. He glanced back at his men, unable to speak even a word. At that very moment, the dead henchman began to twitch. Carson ran. He ran all the way to the hospital ward on the floor above, passing several people on the way, but not saying a word. At least one person called out to him, but he didn’t stop. He just kept running until he could lock himself away.

  He yanked open the door, forgetting to shut it behind him, pulled open a cabinet and came up with a fistful of bandages. The blood from his face was pouring down his neck fast and, as Carson looked into the mirror beside the cabinet, he noticed the skin around the wound – a gaping hole that made him faint to behold – was turning grey and mottled. Small tendrils of dark coloring were already spreading from it. He panicked, grabbing hold of the mirror to steady himself, now revealing claw marks on his arms. More pale skin and spiderweb lines of darkness were appearing, as he watched the virus spread and take hold.

  Carson’s chest heaved as he struggled to breathe. The asphyxiation, he thought. The lack of breath. His heart thumping slower and slower. All were signs of the infection, but this was too fast, much faster than he had known it could be.

  Aaron Carson slumped down onto the floor and stared at his hands. Around him, the distant sounds of gunfire began to echo through the halls. His followers had begun their mutiny. Soon the ship would be in their hands, but now… now he would not be there to lead them in the way that he had envisioned.

  How could this be? he thought. This was not the will of God, not what was promised. This was wrong. He was supposed to lead the chosen few home, not become one of God’s cleaners.

  THROUGH GLADDEN FIELDS

  Corey Westrow prodded the soil and frowned at the wilting potato plant in front of him. He stood up, stretched, and shook his head in disgust at the spreading patch of dying plants. He was completely puzzled by it. Up until the last few days, this hangar had been the ideal place for growing crops – even more so than his father’s fields, and that was saying something. Everyone thought of Idaho for potatoes, of course. But Washington state, with its gorgeous soil plus the wet and chilly weather everyone complained about, had the most productive potato fields in the world. Well, used to have.

  But now that same soil, dug from the ground not far from the fields his father had tended, and hauled in sacks onboard and then down to the cavernous hangar deck of the JFK, had given no fewer than four life-saving crops to the thousands aboard the surviving ships of the strike group. It had taken the work crews a week of going backward and forward to the mainland to gather enough soil and wood to build the farm – a week that Drake had not wanted to spend with the carrier sitting so near to shore. But it had been worth it. Corey looked across the dimly lit deck. He glanced up at the racks of UV lighting that they had installed, all taken from a warehouse on the outskirts of Seattle, and then over the endless rows of crop beds packed with spreading plants.

  It had worked a treat so far, but now something was amiss. He guessed that it was the drainage, or the sea air, or maybe the water filtration was failing somehow. His father would have gotten to the bottom of it quickly, no doubt. And Corey wished that his father were here now to berate him for not airing the soil enough, or not turning it over a third or fourth time. It’s all in the preparation, that’s what his dad had drilled into him from the moment he had grown old enough to walk and watch his father on the farm. As he approached manhood, though, Corey had become convinced that it was a hopeless profession, farming the fields while most of the other Irish immigrant families to the region had long ago taken up work as bankers, merchants, publishers, politicians, mine owners – anything to escape the grip of the single crop that had devastated Ireland. Like them, Corey longed for something else.

  In spite of his current troubles, he laughed loudly at how ridiculous it all was, really – imagining the look on his father’s face if he had lived to see the world’s most powerful warship with its aircraft hangar deck full of potato beds. He laughed bitterly at how he had left his father and that farm on the hillside to run off and join the Navy. The catering corps had been ideal for him, the escape that he had needed and a means to travel the world and see places that he had only dreamed of. A way to forget the hurt and disappointed expression on his father’s face when he had told him he was leaving the farm. He never imagined that he would end up on an aircraft carrier, not only cooking the meals but growing the damned potatoes as well.

  Corey laughed aloud, even though he cou
ldn’t hear the sound himself. The CD player that he had scavenged from the electronics shop three weeks ago, when he was told to collect batteries, was turned up full blast, Iron Maiden hammering at his ears. Another little something surviving from the Auld Sod, the British Isles. It was his secret guilt, that player, and it meant that he could tune out of the hum and bustle of the carrier; shut away the loud noises that echoed belowdecks through the monstrous behemoth.

  Unfortunately for Corey it also meant that he hadn’t heard the door in the south of the hangar deck creak open and then bang against the outer wall. He hadn’t heard the slow footfalls of the visitor approaching him. If he had turned a few seconds earlier, he would have seen the dim UV lights casting shadows across the torn face that had once belonged to Aaron Carson – as the undead Preacher lumbered forward, dragging his left leg heavily across patches of spilt soil.

  When the song that was playing on Corey’s CD player ended and didn’t jump to the next track, he looked down and tapped the device a few times, wondering if the batteries were finally going. It was then that he heard it – a low rattling rasp that cut through even the muffling of the headphones.

  Corey spun around at the noise and took a step back, instinctively holding up the only weapon available to him at the time – a trowel – and felt his heart miss a beat.

  This… it wasn’t possible… not on the ship, not belowdecks. Not after all this time…

  He took two more steps back, and stared straight into the dead face of the Preacher, who in turn glared back at him with a burning hatred that made Corey feel a chill down to his bootsoles. The Preacher. The one who took up the post of the disappeared chaplain. But this wasn’t the same man. This was the dead version. This one had a gaping hole in his face and claw marks across his arms. This one opened its mouth and hissed, a sound of pure malice.

  The creature reached for him, now only a few feet away, and Corey swung the trowel, hitting it in the neck just above the collarbone. Black blood splattered across the already wilting potato plants. The zombie lashed out, grasping Corey’s shirt and pulling hard as he tried to escape, to clamber through the plant bed – but the weight of the corpse pulled him back and sent him stumbling. He tripped, called out, and dropped the trowel as he flailed his arms and tried to break his own fall. But he only had one hand to do it with.

  I miss you, Dad, was the last thing that went through Corey’s mind as his head hit the wooden edge of the plant bed, knocking him cold instantly. Corey would not wake up again, at least not as Corey. Thirty seconds later his system began shutting down and going into shock, as the virus spread rapidly through his system. He hadn’t even felt the bite in his arm that had been the catalyst, hadn’t even noticed the clumsy figure stumbling away across the hangar toward the north door. He also didn’t sense others pass him by as he lay there dying.

  Ten minutes later, Corey Westrow rose, sniffed at the air, and started shuffling in the same direction. Around him others staggered through the plant beds as the sound of gunfire began echoing through the corridors. But now he barely heard those noises. All that went through Corey’s dead mind was pure instinct, pure hatred, and a single impulse.

  Feed.

  JUMP MASTER

  The wind and stinging rain slapped Captain Ainsley in the face like it had gotten a good wind-up, and lightning flashes rippled in 360 degrees. He was immediately disoriented in the black cloud soup, tumbling and trying to maintain his breathing through his regulator.

  This was the worst weather he had ever jumped into. Never mind from high altitude.

  He had of course gone out the door first, leading from the front. Anything else would have been unthinkable for a combat leader – in USOC, in the SAS, or in any regiment.

  As senior NCO, Command Sergeant Major Handon would be jumping last, tail-gunner Charlie, riding herd on his flock.

  But even now, the others would be tumbling out right behind Ainsley, and despite the horrifying conditions, he had to be effective, and he had to hit his marks. He spared one look for the altimeter, none for the GPS, and deployed his canopy. Within a few seconds, he began spotting the flashing IR beacons of the others, which made bright and pretty green fireflies in his night-vision goggles.

  With a little luck and timing, they’d be ditching the NVGs within half an hour. By the time they hit Chicago, coming in south from across Lake Michigan, as well as down from the sky, sunlight should be breaking. Or maybe, once underneath the cloud cover, there’d at least be gloom they could see through.

  Visuals were dodgy, so Ainsley did a radio head count. No one below would be listening. Everyone sounded off. He checked his instruments again, and everything checked. So, following his compass, he turned his canopy on the proper heading, and felt as much as saw the seven others maintain formation around him.

  And right now all they had to do was fly thirty miles to Chicago… but it was after they hit the ground that things would get tricky.

  * * *

  Handon didn’t much like it. But, then again, as so often, he didn’t have to like it – he just had to do it. The weather was a bastard. But he and his people could make it happen anyway.

  He felt the weight of his leg bag hanging beneath him. When he hit the drop zone, the parachute canopy would come off – and the leg bag would convert to his ruck. For now, to ensure a common rate of descent of all the gliding paratroopers, gear had been carefully apportioned to keep everyone the same weight.

  If all went well, they’d cover the 32,000 or so feet of descent to the height of their target structure, and the 30 miles to downtown Chicago, in about 34 minutes.

  But it couldn’t be said that everything was going well so far.

  Just maintaining formation was a nearly full physical and cognitive load on all the operators, as they were buffeted mercilessly by the storm. Plus, with the temperature lower than predicted, and the higher wind chill, hypothermia was becoming a real risk – they lost about 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet of altitude. And as the extremities began to go numb, their ability to manipulate the canopy, or any other equipment, dropped toward zero.

  Handon saw one of the IR beacons ahead of him begin to veer dramatically, the operator it represented sucked off course by a rogue gust of wind in the storm. He was pretty sure he know who it was.

  “Ali, sitrep,” he said into his throat mic.

  Since she weighed the least of anyone in the group, her leg bag was the heaviest – which left her with the lowest power-to-weight ratio of any of them. She was having to battle her steering lines, with her lesser upper-body strength. And as the storm picked up, and the cold sucked her strength and dexterity, she was losing the battle.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. Sure enough, the wayward beacon began slowly, tremblingly, to merge with the group again.

  What Handon had forgotten, but never should have, is that strength is a puny factor compared to the one that defines a special operator:

  Resolve.

  And which Ali had in greater measure than any other soldier Handon had ever met.

  He thought he could now begin to make out the edge, of dark on slightly less dark, where the shore of the Great Lake met the Windy City. Somewhere a few hundred meters inland would be the tiny rooftop upon which they had to land.

  Some fucking aircraft beacon lights, he thought, would come in handy right about now.

  Instead they were going to have to rely on GPS.

  And, if that went out, on visual landmarks and dead reckoning.

  Hell of a way to start the day, Handon thought.

  Below him, in his imagination, the city seemed to moan.

  INSURRECTION

  Wesley was already waking drowsily, when he woke violently to the sound of an explosion. Surely it was only in his dream? His dreams had been getting worse, not helped by the claustrophobia of sleeping in a sailor’s berth. Worst of all, opening his eyes did nothing – the world was just as black on the other side of them. The sound of gunfire – rattling
ly, crashingly, pummellingly loud and echoing in the steel confines of the ship-city’s belly – told him that the explosion had not been in his dreams.

  Thank fuck, the lights now came on – revealing Martin in his skivvies, standing at the switch, by the door. The two men shared a disbelieving look. The sound of gunfire, in at least two calibers, shook the room. Martin reached for the door handle. Wesley’s mouth went wide, trying to find the words to make him stop, but it was too late.

  Martin pulled the door wide enough for them both to see angry green tracers skipping down the hall in both directions, like lethal fireflies at light-speed in the near dark.

  Martin pushed the door shut again, then retreated back to his bunk, and began shakily pulling his clothes on. Wesley mimicked him. Better to die dressed, I guess, he thought… Captain Martin also found his sidearm, drew it, chamber-checked that there was a round loaded, then wrapped the belt with the holster around his waist.

  Wesley sidled closer, and found his voice. “What in hell’s going on?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” Martin said. Then he did have an idea. He found his mobile and speed-dialed Drake. It rang through to voicemail. Martin rang off and dialed again. On the third attempt, it answered. “Go for Drake!” The man was shouting – over gunfire.

  “Drake, Captain Martin. What the bloody hell is going on?”

  There was a pause, with more gunfire, before an answer came. “Mutiny! It’s the fucking Zealots. They’ve got numbers, arms, and surprise. They’ve taken the goddamned Bridge and are trying to run the ship aground.”

  “Where are you?” Martin asked, his face a mask of dismay.

  “We’re in the island, mostly scattered around the Launch Ops Room and the Flag Bridge. We’re trying to retake the Bridge. Fuck it. Never mind. Stay put. Arm yourselves if possible. I’ll come for you when I can. Out.”