Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon Read online

“Who was Judy?” Sarah asked.

  Henno was already standing up to leave, Ali following his lead. But he paused and said, “Served with the Royal Navy in the big one. Only animal to have been registered as a Japanese prisoner of war.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Henno visibly searched his memory. “Her ship was sunk by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. She got ashore with the survivors, but they had no water, so she dug down to an underground spring, saving everyone’s necks. When the crew were captured by the Japs, they smuggled her into the camp. Inside, for years, the pooch would sound the alarm when the guards approached, distract them from their beatings, and such like. They were finally being transferred aboard a ship, but it got torpedoed. Somebody shoved her out a porthole, not knowing if she’d survive. Later, there were stories of a dog helping drowning men reach floating debris, bringing them flotsam to keep ’em afloat, or else letting blokes hold on to her back while she swam ’em to safety. Then she just rocked up at the new camp, in Sumatra, like.”

  “What happened to her? Was she freed in the end?”

  “Jap guards got sick of her and sentenced her to death.” Those around the table who didn’t know the story tensed up, bracing for a horrible end to an amazing tale. “But she managed to hide out in the jungle, scoffing snakes and rats. Tussle with an alligator left her injured. But the war finally ended, she hopped a troopship to Liverpool, and lived happily ever after. Interviewed on the BBC, she was.”

  “Judy,” Wesley repeated, leaning down to scruff her face. Looking up at Henno, he said, “Cheers, mate.”

  “Yeah, no worries.” And with that, he and Ali both nodded and left. There was work to do. There was always work to do.

  Along with Pred, Juice got up as well. “Just keep a good eye on her,” he said.

  “Okay,” Wesley agreed. “Um – why’s that?”

  “Those two years on her own will have been tough. God knows what she saw, or what she had to do to survive. And working military dogs… well, they sometimes suffer from PTSD.”

  Wesley glanced at the two kids, and looked concerned. “You think I should put her on a leash?” he said. “She seems pretty docile to me.”

  Juice shrugged. “I’d just watch her.”

  And on that note, the party broke up, leaving Wesley and the dog standing, looking at each other.

  “So it’s Judy,” he said, and grinned when she stood up and whined. “Well, I’m Wesley.”

  She cocked her head to one side, and sniffed again. Wesley stood watching her, and then grinned.

  “Hmm. I wonder how many commands you understand? I think it’s time to go look in on Derwin in the hospital. He said something about experience handling military dogs…”

  Grounded

  Britain - Kent Downs

  Major Grews was choking, his throat constricted. As he slowly came to, consciousness returning in swirling drifts rather than a sharp edge, he realized that someone had him by the throat and was tightening their grip, slowly. His breath was shallow, and with every second it became harder to breathe, as the pressure increased. Even with this threat he found himself unable to take control of his own body, and a haze hung over his every sense as he fought to break free. It wasn’t until he could no longer draw a breath that his body rebelled, throwing him into the waking world with a violence that sent a tingle of nerves spiking through his arms and face. His eyes flew open, and he tried to put his arms up to defend himself, but there was no one there.

  He tried again to move, but realized he was pinned down. It was the seating from the back of the helicopter – somehow it had gone from being attached to the floor behind, to being on top of him. The constricted feeling was not in his throat, but his chest, as the heavy seat was forced against him, pushing him hard against his own seat and the inside of the aircraft.

  Many thoughts rushed to his mind, but his memories of the last few minutes were elusive. What the hell had happened? He tried to cycle back, to figure out what had gone wrong, and to remember why he wasn’t up in the air following the battle, but instead upside down, forced against the fuselage and looking through cracked glass at the ground directly below him.

  And then he remembered. They had gone back over the battlefield one last time on his order – watching the defenses as they collapsed. His instinct had been to leave, to head to the next rally point, and to assess his resources before his next action. But CentCom was going to want to know what exactly had gone wrong, and also there was the strange urge to see his people make their stand, to be witness to their sacrifice, as the dead swarmed over the refugee camp, washing away the defenses like a flood. Grews had ordered the pilot to fly over one last time, circling the remaining defensive positions, which were still holding on, to give the refugees as much time as possible to escape. But something had slammed into the helo, something heavy, or more than just one. The world had spun, crashed into them, then fallen away again, but he remembered seeing the pilot slumped over his controls with blood pouring from his face.

  They had risen again briefly, but then the helo rotated madly and collided with some nearby trees. The world whirled again, the noise of the rotors thudding in his head, and the groaning of stressed engines screeching as gravity pulled the struggling machine down. Grews had seen the ground coming up to meet them at high speed, just before the world blinked out.

  Then, darkness.

  But now more memories flooded into his head, clearer details. They had been flying over the top of a lone armored personnel carrier just as the dead overran it. There were soldiers all over, scurrying away from the vehicle, rather than standing their ground and fighting. Grews had cursed them, knowing there were enough of them down there that if they stood and fought, if they had been properly organized and led, then the dead could have been held back longer.

  But many of the men down there weren’t infantry, they were logistics personnel, and civilian contractors, some of them conscripted, and most with very little combat training, and even less experience. It was pointless expecting them to behave much differently than the civilian refugees, who were now streaming away from the scene in their thousands. Instead of holding the line, the conscripts had fled with everyone else.

  That was when the lone APC had come back into view, as Grews’ flight circled around and made another pass. He remembered it now, the scene sharpening in his mind – they had been turning at last to leave, and he recalled looking back and seeing the machine-gunner in the APC turret being jumped by a mob of the dead, the fast ones. The man had spun around desperately, his trigger still depressed, filling the sky with the giant 50-caliber slugs that could tear thin-skinned vehicles to ribbons.

  Including aircraft.

  The hail of bullets had ripped through the helicopter, killing the two officers in the seats behind him and badly wounding the pilot. Blood had clouded the man’s eyes beneath his helmet, and he groaned in despair as gravity won the battle against the lift of their rotors. Only Grews had been left unscathed, and he couldn’t pilot the aircraft. He remembered trying to help the pilot keep his grip on the collective, and how they had bounced off the ground once and then spun toward the trees. The world blurred at that point, his vision unable to process the riot of movement as they rolled over again and again. Too many details were assaulting his senses for him to assimilate them, before more poured in.

  He remembered up until the point the helicopter hit the treeline, and then the rest was blank, a void of lost memories and unconsciousness.

  And now he was hanging upside down, pinned by the back seat, with only inches of freedom to move, one of his arms trapped and the other with a very limited range of motion. Behind him were the bullet-riddled remains of the two junior officers, and below, lying half out of the smashed front cockpit glass, was a very dead pilot. As Grews’ vision blurred one last time he caught a slight movement outside – no, a lot of movement. Dark figures passed by the window, rushing through the grass.

  Must be the refuge
es, Grews thought. If he could raise his voice and call out, maybe someone would hear him. They might be able to smash the window on his side and pull him free. Or maybe they would just ignore his calls and run for their lives. He tried to call out but nothing came. His chest was too constricted to produce more than a rasp.

  Then there was a face in the window beside him, only a foot away. The man might have been handsome at one time, but now his tanned skin was purple and blotchy, and only one eye stared out of the two sockets. All that remained of the other was an angry black hole of dried blood and raw flesh. The hatred in the dead man’s remaining eye made Grews nearly crawl out of his skin. He had commanded many ground engagements against the dead in the days after the fall, but he had never been this physically close to one of them. Always his position had been safely behind the lines.

  Then the dead man started pounding on the window, a dull, quiet thud-thud repeating every few seconds. Grews braced himself for the attack, for the creature to force its way in and reach for him. But after a minute of watching it bang on the glass, Grews realized it just didn’t have the strength to break through. He was safe, for the moment, but he would need to get out of this damned chair and get a gun if he were to have any chance of escape.

  Then it dawned on him. The other shapes going by in a rush – they weren’t refugees. He now knew that the helo had fallen into the field he saw being overrun, and that he had been unconscious long enough for all the living to be either safely gone, or else no longer alive. Those dozens of dark shapes sprinting or stumbling by now were the dead, and he was behind enemy lines.

  He tried to focus, but all he could think of was that the pilot must have been hanging half out the window when they went down. The man’s lower body should have been dangling outside, but only bloody stumps protruded from the airframe. There was something, a squelching, grinding noise, coming from below them. Grews couldn’t place the noise, couldn’t recognize it. He was only able to think about the pilot’s missing legs.

  Okay, he told himself. You’ve just got to get your hands to the release catch and get yourself unstuck. Then you can get on the radio. If it still works. If not, then you run the fuck toward friendly lines, and hope to hell that you can stay ahead of the flood.

  He pushed, trying to squeeze his arm between his chest and the seat that was crushing him, and after a few minutes had to stop to take a breath. The seat was wedged hard against the release button, which was also trapping his other arm. He tried wiggling the fingers of his right arm, and his stomach turned when he felt nothing, got no response from his extremity.

  How the hell can I get my hand through there to get the damned catch? he thought… when he saw the hand of the dead pilot twitch instead.

  Kinemortophobia

  Kent Downs - Crash Site

  Grews was not a man prone to panic. It just wasn’t his way. To be in command of such a large contingent of troops took a level of control that few people possessed. In his earlier years, before the ZA, he had been in combat many times, and his stoic, deeply embedded calm was one of the reasons he rose so quickly through the ranks. He didn’t falter under pressure, even when he did raise his voice.

  But something had changed with the coming of the dead that walked. He would never admit it to anyone, but they terrified him, and he had avoided close contact with them at all times. He had been fortunate with his command in the south until the last few weeks. Even though it was the section of the country closest to the continent, and there were always the occasional floaters drifting in to the shore, his border patrols dealt with them efficiently. Only now, days into the biggest incursion of the dead into his territory, was he exposed.

  And now he was trapped in the shattered cockpit of his command helo with a pilot who was turning on him. As he hung there, pinned to the side of the airframe, he watched the previously skilled and agile aviator struggle to articulate and move. The man was now missing his legs and lying on his back, clawing toward Grews, but unable to get to him. The seats the other dead officers had occupied, which currently stopped Grews from escaping, were also protecting him as a barrier.

  And of course it wasn’t just one, now. To his right, still hammering unceasingly on the window, was that other dead bastard. Grews just hung there, trying to control his fears, his heart rate and his breathing, trying to see some way out of the situation, but nothing was coming. He was trapped.

  He looked around, searching for anything useful within reach. There were four handguns in this aircraft, one per passenger, but the pilot’s was in a shoulder holster underneath his grasping arm, his own was pinned behind him, and the third officer’s weapon was nowhere in sight. As for the fourth, Grews could actually see it, but it was too far away, strapped to the dead man’s waist and covered in blood.

  Then there was more movement near the hole in the cockpit glass, and a face appeared through the massive gap, its mouth and chin covered with blood. Now Grews knew where the pilot’s legs had gone, and how he had been infected in the first place. The newcomer, a dead woman now grimacing at him through the hole, had eaten them. With the pilot’s body in the way, it had been all she could get at.

  The pilot continued to reach up, and every time he did Grews took a deep breath and tried to push himself further back. But there was nowhere to go, no escape, and it hit him with a stark certainty – one of these things was going to get to him eventually. And he would not be able to fight them off. If he didn’t figure out how to escape from this trap soon, then he was going to be eaten alive, right there.

  As the dead pilot finally managed to grasp onto the metal bar at the bottom of the seat, Grews suddenly knew which of the dead would be his downfall. The pilot bared his teeth and pulled hard, clawing with the other hand, inches away, then again, closer. Grews tried to use his free arm to bat the creature away, to delay the inevitable, but his flailing backfired, and the pilot’s clawing hand grasped the sleeve of his shirt and pulled.

  Grews screamed and pulled back, flailing, even though his body could barely move. There was a loud crack and a snapping sound as something gave way – the seat itself. The weight of the pilot and Grews struggling finally unwedged it, and it fell and rolled, landing on the pilot and knocking him down, leaving the dead man writhing under the metal frame.

  Grews’ heart somehow beat even faster now. He found he was now able to move, except his other arm didn’t respond. Broken, or worse, he thought, but he quickly used his working hand to reach over and unclip his safety harness. He fell free, tumbling to the side away from the window and the incessant hammering of the thing outside. Hitting the side of the fuselage and struggling into a sitting position, he turned just as the dead woman managed to climb halfway into the cockpit. She lurched forward, but stopped – something was holding her back, and as Grews desperately reached for his handgun he saw that her shirt was caught on the sharp edge of the window frame.

  He drew his weapon just as the pilot rolled from under the seat and grasped at his ankle, teeth baring as it started to clamp down. The noise almost deafened Grews as he shot the pilot in the head: blood and brains splattered across the interior, but Grews had no time for disgust. He simply turned, aimed, and fired at the woman, and then turned again, aimed through the window, and cranked off a third shot into that incessantly banging son of a bitch.

  The knocking finally stopped.

  Grews sank to the floor, his breathing strained and his chest heaving, and listened to all the movement outside. They were coming now, and he wouldn’t have much time. Shadows crossed the light as the dead closed in around the downed helicopter. The gunshots, although saving his life, had drawn many more, and he knew they would be swarming over the crash site in seconds.

  He tried to judge those other, distant gunshots he could now hear – those of the Paras and his own remaining troops – and decided they were at least a kilometer away. He was behind enemy lines, and about to be swarmed, if he didn’t get out fast.

  He looked up at the side door a
bove him. It was already wide open, probably having swung that way when the helo hit the ground, popping out of its frame. He hauled himself to his feet, quickly searched the interior of the devastated aircraft for pistol magazines, finding two, and then pulled himself up and out the side door, emerging into the open air outside.

  He looked around, keeping his head down and hopefully out of sight, not that these things needed sight to home in on him. Across the field, hundreds of dead were staggering or running toward the north, where the gunfire was coming from. He was relieved that most had not been attracted to the sounds of his struggle in the helo, but dozens closer by had heard, and were now drifting slowly toward the downed bird. Some had already reached the area and were only a few meters away, reaching out for him now. There were no runners among them, and certainly no Foxtrots, or he would be dead already, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t spot him.

  And there was simply no opening in their ranks to run for.

  Grews ducked back inside and scrambled toward the controls. He crouched down by the pilot and carefully peeled off his radio headset, but as he pulled it away he found its cable hung free, shredded and useless. He looked around again, stabbed at the controls, wondering if there was a way to use the radio without the headset. But he had no idea, and the damned thing was dead anyway – no power, no radio.

  He turned and crawled over the debris to the back, searching for his own headset, but had no luck. The interior was completely trashed and he couldn’t even find his personal radio. Then he finally spotted it, a battery-powered handset, covered in blood and gore, lying between the dead officers at the back. Grews shuddered, but grabbed it anyway, flicked the knob to an emergency channel, jabbed the button, and held the radio to his ear.

  “All call signs, this is Helix Actual, message, over.”

  Nothing came back. He waited less than a second.

  “Any call signs, this is Helix Actual, you fucks. This is an emergency tra—” But he was cut off before his cursing escalated.