Arisen, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead

by Glynn James

  The Exchange is close, only about six blocks from here. Maybe I can make it. I’m taking a laptop with all of the research data, as well as the samples, and some instruments, in a backpack. If you’re in Chicago, and alive, and you get this, and you can make your way there, and you don’t have any better options... well, it’s a chance. And if you’re a colleague elsewhere... if I make it there alive, and can continue working, and can somehow convey any results to you from there, I will.

  May God protect you all.

  Simon

  “Well,” said Henno, his palm on the butt of his sidearm. “That’s some good luck, then.”

  Pope just shook his head at him. He had to hand it to that guy…

  “Give me a map,” Ainsley said, snapping his fingers at Handon, who pulled a digital map pack from a thigh pouch and handed it over. Ainsley powered it up and put it on the table, then zoomed and scrolled with thumb and forefinger. “Six block radius,” he said, making a circle with both hands. “Chicago Mercantile Exchange Center, Hyatt…” he recited aloud while scanning. “Here.” His finger came to rest on a spot four blocks south of their position, and two to the west. He keyed his transmit button and hailed Ali. Her traffic with Homer had been coming in loud and clear on the squad net from down on the street.

  “Ali here, you are Lima Charlie, send traffic,” she answered.

  “Interrogative: where are those Zulus of yours coming in from?”

  “The south, and a bit west. But they’re not Zulus.”

  “What are they then?” Ainsley looked impatient.

  “I think they’re Foxtrots. They’ve gotten extremely feisty since they’ve twigged to my presence up here, and to Homer down on the street.”

  “Copy that. Interrogative: how many Foxtrots, over.”

  After Ali pressed transmit, but before she answered, they could hear her suppressed rifle firing non-stop in the background. “All of them, I think. Gotta bounce, Cap, these are SERIOUSLY hard shots to make. Out.”

  The three men looked to their officer. None of them looked worried.

  But Captain Connor Ainsley sure as hell was. He nodded at Handon. “Okay. Now we call in the QRF. Do it.” He knew that if it was a matter of fighting their way on the streets to a new location, they were going to need every gun they could get in the fight.

  Handon twiddled his channel selector to the command net and hailed the JFK again.

  And then again, and a third time. He just looked back up at Ainsley.

  Nobody had to be told the new state of play.

  They were on their own.

  INSURRECTION ][

  Drake steadied his M4 rifle on the gunwale. He was kneeling on a balcony platform of the Flag Bridge, the second of the four habitable levels of the island. Directly above him was the Bridge; above that, Primary Flight Control; below him, at ground level, was the Flight Deck Control and Launch Operations Room. Drake was currently covering a rear sector in an unlikely battle, watching the flight deck below and behind them, as a mixed unit of sailors and marines pressed forward to try and retake the Bridge.

  But, frankly, it wasn’t happening. The Zealots, the mutineers, had superior position, elevation, full control of the whole Bridge level of the island – and they had a lot of grenades. That made fighting back up there a tough row to hoe.

  But Commander Drake knew they had somehow to do it. Only a few minutes after the bridge had been stormed and lost, the nuclear-powered steam turbines had blasted up to their full 320,000 horsepower, causing the whole vessel to vibrate. And then the four bronze screw propellers (each 22 feet across and weighing 68,000 pounds) began to spin. And then the whole mammoth vessel, all 110,000 tons of her, began to turn and to move.

  And now she was steaming directly toward land. In what could be no more than twenty minutes, they would be run aground. At high speed, this would also likely rupture the hull, flooding the lower decks – and almost certainly putting the Kennedy out of action for the rest of time.

  Clattering gunfire and throaty explosions shook the whole island. The bastards had come out of nowhere. No one had been expecting it. Standard shipboard security protocols had been in place for a combat mission in hostile waters, but these guys must have been planning this for ever. And of course they knew all the security protocols, just as they knew everything else about how the ship was organized and run.

  There had only ever been one mutiny in U.S. naval history. And it had happened in 1842.

  But, Drake considered, I guess every damned thing’s different now.

  Now he seemed to recall the SEAL, Homer, say something to that effect – that the interesting thing about a zombie apocalypse was what it did to the living. How they either worked together to survive – or else turned against each other, and clawed themselves to bits. With a painful twinge, he also remembered Homer trying to warn him about the Zealots. Just too many damned things to worry about at once…

  And that’s when the fore starboard Sparrow emplacement went up. Jesus Christ…

  He saw two figures, backlit by the flames, sprinting across the flight deck. Was it a Zealot counterattack, in their rear? Drake had secretly been relieved to not be on the front lines – it had been a long time since he qualified on the M4, though he kept up his pistol qualification. He pulled the assault rifle into his shoulder and took a bead on the lead figure down there… Oh, God, it was the British soldier… he eased up on the trigger, breathing hard.

  And then he saw the burning figures behind them. And, like Martin, he soon recognized their motion – never mind that they weren’t dying despite being covered head to toe in flame.

  Mother of God, he thought, raising his barrel and taking a bead. He had no idea how it could possibly have happened, but now the dead were here. Out at sea, and in the middle of a raging insurrection. Fuck it. His first rounds caught one of them in the torso, slowing but not dropping it. He struggled to pull off a headshot. Underneath his barrel, he saw the Brits make it into the cover of the island.

  While out on the flight deck, fires burned and the dead walked.

  Drake frantically tried to figure out how they were going to keep them out of the island – while they were all still in the fight of their lives with the living for control of it…

  * * *

  Wesley and Martin leapt up the stairs, after a couple of the loyalists one deck down directed them up. They found Drake out on his balcony, still sniping flaming corpse heads.

  “I thought I told you to stay put?” he said.

  “Apologies, Commander,” Martin said. “Got too hot belowdecks.” Wesley nodded rapidly in frantic agreement.

  “Oh, hell.” Drake’s M4 stovepiped, and he stopped to try and clear the jam.

  “Help you with that?” Martin asked. He took the weapon, promptly cleared and charged it, and took a couple of measured shots himself. He paused to hand his sidearm to Wesley, who seemed to know how to handle it. But now there were too many figures running around on the deck below: the mutineers, the loyalists, and the dead – who were loyal to no one. Some people shot others at close range, while others dove on and devoured them. It was complete and total chaos. Drake flinched and motioned them all inside.

  “Look. We’ve all got to get in the fight upstairs,” he said. “If we don’t take the Bridge back within fifteen minutes, we’re all completely screwed. We’ll be run aground. Maybe sunk.”

  Martin nodded and took this in. He seemed fairly unflappable. “What about shutting down the engines?”

  “The nuclear reactors?” Drake asked. “I can’t reach any of the engineers down there. I don’t know if any of them are alive, driven off, what.”

  “I’m an engineer,” Martin said jauntily. “Corps of Royal Engineers.”

  Drake almost laughed. “That’s great. But this isn’t sapping, or pontoon bridges.”

  “Doubtless,” Martin said. “But my degree is in nuclear. And I certainly know how a nuclear fission pressurized water reactor works. Enough to shut it down, anywa
y.”

  Drake gave a look, half in awe, half in disbelief. He had no time to decide, so he just did.

  “Okay, let’s go. I’ll see if I can get us a marine escort.”

  But as he turned toward the ladder, a sailor came running up it, from the Launch Ops room. “Commander! Incoming aircraft, twelve o’clock.” He pointed over Drake’s shoulder out the porthole. Oh, shit, Drake thought, stepping outside again. It was the C-2A Greyhound – back from inserting the USOC team in Chicago. And here to land, refuel – and return to extract the team.

  Without it, there would be no extraction.

  Drake cast his eye over the manic flight deck – flames, debris, living, dead, and undead.

  The plane buzzed around in an arc.

  No doubt seeing the same thundering shit-storm below.

  STREET BATTLE ROYALE

  For this mission, Ali had selected as her primary weapon a Mk 12 Special Purpose Rifle – what was sometimes called a “designated marksman weapon.” Not quite a sniper rifle, it was still very effective out to 600 or 800 yards (more like 1,000 with Ali driving). And not quite an assault rifle, it was still very handy when things got hairy up close and personal. It looked like an M4 on steroids, with a huge scope, bipod, suppressor, and air-cooled upper receiver. It allowed Ali extreme flexibility – and allowed her to carry only one rifle, which was much more pleasant when jumping out of a plane.

  With one eye to the Mk 12’s 3.5-10x tactical day optic, and the other wide open, she tried to track targets. There still were quite a few of them. But those she did see were just jackrabbit sons of bitches. At first, they seemed to take it easy and stagger around like your normal workaday Zulus. But when one of them got a whiff of Homer on the ground, or caught wind of Ali’s shots chugging from up above, they just went batshit crazy – moving a hundred miles an hour, jigging, wheeling, and finally leaping upon their prey – whether that be Homer down below, or the bottom of the ‘L’ platform where Ali was laying up.

  She took a headshot on one that hadn’t been activated yet. Cake. But then her other eye registered movement, two of them, coming in fast. She swiveled on her bipod trying to track. The first one she caught with a round in the center of mass – and this slowed it enough for her to just make a headshot. The second got by her totally. She could hear Homer’s rifle going cyclic down below.

  So far, two had totally slipped by both Ali’s overwatch and Homer’s patrolling of the ground below, coming from unexpected directions. And these sons of bitches had enough vertical juice to leap up and grab the bottom of the train platform. Both had been killed while trying to haul themselves up – one by Homer below, one by Ali above (with her sidearm). Luckily, having to climb had the effect of both slowing and steadying them.

  But it wouldn’t take too many more of these to swarm up, over, and across the platform, overwhelming Ali’s position. And with overwatch gone, Homer would probably go down shortly after. That level of threat wasn’t here yet. But Ali could see it coming, as the bastards multiplied. She was starting to think very seriously about moving inside the target building, and up top with the others. But Handon hailed her first.

  “Ali, Handon, how copy?”

  “Ali copies, send it.”

  “Yeah, stand by. We’re coming to you.”

  She blinked heavily. “Repeat your last.”

  “It’s a dry hole. We’re all moving overground to a secondary target. Down to you in five mikes.”

  Ali swallowed heavily, squared herself up – and addressed her full attention to trying to clear the street for her team, before they were all down and neck-deep in it.

  * * *

  Homer had no problem operating on his own. SEALs were a little more comfortable in pairs (swim buddies and all that), but they were totally modular, configuring into groups of one, two, or four, up to multiple platoons of 16. The problem today was that these Foxtrots were fast. And having someone to watch his back, literally, would have been very welcome right about now.

  The issue wasn’t so much dealing with the handful that got curious and made their way up the street toward him. The problem would be arousing the interest of those thousands most likely behind them. Every time he or Ali fired a shot, and every time one of the soulless had time to emit a moan in response to prey, it increased the likelihood that the dam would burst.

  And then they’d be awash in the three million missing Zulus. Or perhaps three million Foxtrots, God preserve them.

  Correction: Homer, down alone on the street, would be awash in the three million.

  He pictured himself being washed out to sea on a literal tide of the dead, like Noah in some horrifying Biblical Story/Zombie Apocalypse mashup…

  * * *

  In the end, Juice hadn’t seen any reason to go looking for trouble. If the building they sat on top of was full of dead… well, that was a fantastic place for them, safe behind a locked door, and he and Predator would very happily leave them the hell alone. Seeming to validate this intuition, on his way back, he got his marching orders from Handon – or rather his lack of them.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna try and consolidate with Ali and Homer on the ground, and all move together to a secondary target site. You two take it easy for now. We’ll figure out how to get you down off of there later.”

  “Roger that. Good hunting.”

  A few seconds later, he turned the corner into view of Predator, who was lying where he’d left him – and who of course had heard the whole exchange on his own team radio. He was also busy manufacturing an improvised splint, made up of a section of two-by-four which he’d snapped in half with his bare hands, and which he was now duct-taping to his fractured leg. Around and around he wrapped the heavy tape. The agony this cost him must have been soul-scraping. But he didn’t make a sound, and only gritted his teeth in concentration.

  “Oh, no, man,” Juice said – knowing this was useless even as he tried it. Pred didn’t even look up. So Juice just sighed and started gathering up their gear. When Pred was up on his feet – or rather on one foot, the other stuck out like a drumstick, silently belying the torment this too must have caused – the two hobbled together back to the access door. Before Juice could address the matter of breaching it, Pred shredded the lock with a buckshot round from the Metalstorm shotgun slung under his rifle.

  And without a pause, he went straight into the darkness ahead, firing and shouting, and hobbling on one agonizing drumstick.

  Juice took a breath and went in straight behind him.

  They would simply fight their way down. And not for the first time.

  * * *

  After Alpha hit the ground, it quickly became obvious where the Foxtrots were coming from.

  They were coming from exactly where Alpha was going to. With each block the team covered, the opposition they faced increased. It seemed that every Foxtrot they dropped brought four more. And they were expending a lot more ordnance per kill than any of them were accustomed to, so difficult were the damned shots. It was truly turning into some Black Hawk Down shit. Including the dwindling ammo.

  All eight of them had hit the street at the same time – Ainsley, Handon, Pope, and Henno down from the target building… Homer half-catching Ali as she dropped by her fingertips from the platform… and Predator and Juice stumbling out of the building across the street. The storm was well over now, but the streets still slick, and the sky still a low and oppressive gray.

  Synchronized movement had long been part of their playbook. They were more like a dance troupe than shock troops sometimes – even if Juice and Pred were cutting in today. When Ainsley and Handon saw them, they just shook their heads. Ainsley briefly considered trying to order them back. Handon instantly knew that to do so he’d have to fight Predator. And they all had more than enough fight on their hands as it was.

  Ali had rigged up a nylon sling to help elevate the barrel of her weapon. Pope and Handon passed a few rifle magazines over to Homer, who was already running low. Ainsley got a bearing
and took the lead. And they all moved out.

  Bounding overwatch, the old fire and movement routine when moving to contact, was right out. Now it was just haul ass – and make shots on the hoof. It’s only with tens of thousands of hours of training and drilling in close quarters battle (CQB) that soldiers can make shots on moving targets, while also moving themselves. (While a staple of blustery Hollywood dreck, it’s actually one of the most difficult feats of arms imaginable.) Luckily, every member of Alpha had that level of training – plus many hundreds of hours shooting in operational situations.

  And this was a good thing – because battling through swarms of Foxtrots, they discovered, was like being tossed into the Velociraptor pen. They came from everywhere – but more often from nowhere, fell flashes of mottled flesh, bared teeth, and cracked, filthy, slashing nails. Where they got the energy for this, none of the living could imagine. Then again, the dead seemed to violate most of the known laws of biology.

  The eight moved in a staggered line, each responsible for an overlapping sector, 360-degree zombie warfare. Ali, with her superior vision and situational awareness, spotted two of them coming dead from the front (“zero angle on the bow” as Homer would put it), at full speed, and well before Ainsley did. She steadied her rifle on her half-dead left arm. She fired twice. Both went down. Their dead-on approach did mean they jigged less.