ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME Read online

  “Yes, please,” Wesley said, putting the tablet aside.

  Handing him one of two mugs, Fick took a seat, took a sip, closed his eyes, and seemed to savor the coffee like a six-course banquet. Wesley just watched him, realizing he knew almost nothing about this man, with whom he had been serving and fighting side-by-side. But before he could come up with any small talk – jumping right into serious personal questions would have been nearly impossible for an Englishman – he noticed Fick was wearing a mismatched uniform. His trousers looked like they were from a British one. Wesley nodded at them.

  “Why are you wearing those?”

  “Don’t even worry about it.” Fick nodded in turn at the tablet in Wesley’s lap. “What were you looking at?”

  “Personnel roster. Still trying to learn all the men’s names.”

  Fick grunted and sipped. “Not sure I’d bother.”

  Wesley cocked his head in the dark. “Why not?”

  “Maybe the RMPs are called ‘redcaps’ for a reason.”

  “I thought it was their maroon berets. Oh, wait. You mean the ‘redshirts’ in Star Trek.”

  Fick nodded in the dark. “You said it, not me.”

  Wes wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “All quiet in the Common? Your QRF okay?”

  “Yep. No more reports or sightings. I’m letting the men get more confident with routine patrols while it’s peaceful. Though you know what, it’s really more of a mobile reserve than a QRF.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, if we were a real QRF we’d be sitting on our asses in some comfy FOB, playing Grand Theft Auto on our PSPs and listening to radio traffic, waiting for some dumb-ass platoon leader six weeks out The Basic School to get in deep shit and call for help. Not chasing Foxtrots around in the rain all night.”

  Wesley paused, then came in on the real topic at an angle. “You haven’t lost any men on that team, have you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you’ll keep them all alive.”

  “Yeah. Don’t count on it.” Fick paused long enough to put his feet up on the desk. “You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to go to a military academy. But my dad couldn’t pay for it, or wouldn’t. But, you know, we were always on military bases.”

  “Your dad was a Marine.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I was always seeking out mentors, trying to learn everything I could about war, what it was like. There was this one old devil dog who sometimes put up with my questions, who’d fought at the Battle of Huế in Vietnam. In that one, they lost a thousand Marines killed and wounded – a third of their strength. But then I found out this guy’s commander at Huế had fought on Peleliu, a little pile of bloody rocks in the Pacific. And that shit was a meat-grinder that made Huế look like tea and cakes.”

  Wesley squinted in the dark. “I think I remember seeing it on that HBO miniseries – The Pacific.”

  “Yeah, well, they couldn’t show what it was really like – not even on premium cable. On that one, the Marines lost ten thousand killed and wounded. All to take this miserable stupid rock pile that happened to have a bunch of suicidal Japs dug into the cracks.”

  Wesley stayed respectfully silent. The only possible response he could think of was, War is stupid.

  Fick’s face was almost completely hidden in shadow – he had never taken his helmet off – as he spoke in a near whisper. “But you know what, in percentage terms, I’ve got them both beat. One hundred percent casualties. My whole unit. There’s only me left. And soon it’s going to be my turn.”

  And suddenly, and unexpectedly, Wesley got very un-English. “How about you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me, Master Guns. It’s not just you, you know. I lost one hundred percent of my first command, too.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Yeah. Seriously. It was exactly two men, and they were security guards. But they were good kids. And they were my responsibility. And now they’re both dead.”

  Fick looked at him, but that wasn’t what he was seeing. He said, “I should have been there.”

  “On the Kennedy, you mean.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I could have kept some of them alive.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe not. But you’ll never know. Because you had a different job – namely saving CentCom. And I’m very sure no one else could have planned or led the defense of this place, not the way you have. And by saving this place, you’re saving the whole world.”

  Fick just stared at him from out of perfect shadow.

  “And you’re probably going to have to do it again. So frame up, mate. Captain Martin always told me to follow Churchill’s advice in rough times: KBO. Keep buggering on.”

  Wesley stood up and put his coffee down.

  “And we’ve both got new men to lead now. Who are counting on us. I’m going out to check on them.”

  He touched Fick on the shoulder as he went out.

  * * *

  Crossing the blacked-out yard, Baxter fractionally raised his rifle when he spotted a small dark figure huddling in a deeper shadow – beside and half behind the little Bobcat earth mover that had been parked up against the inside of the walls, after building the big dirt ramp and digging the mortar pits nearby.

  Zulus weren’t notorious for hiding out, but you couldn’t be too careful, and nothing would surprise Baxter at this point. Also, he was on his own for the moment, having left Kate back in the head. Typically, whatever a woman was doing in the bathroom, he didn’t want to ask too many questions, nor hang around too close by. Everybody deserved a little privacy.

  Except whoever this guy was.

  When he was ten feet away, Baxter flashed a red-lensed light, still keeping it half covered, and the guy looked up. He was small, young, wearing a British Army uniform, and now pretty clearly human. But was he infected?

  “You okay, buddy?” Baxter asked, turning off the light, but keeping his rifle handy.

  “I’m fine.”

  Baxter lowered his rifle. The dead never spoke, though the infected rarely admitted it. But Baxter clung to his idealism. He still chose to believe the words that came out of people’s mouths, until he had a good reason not to. And this guy looked okay – just scared, really. Baxter moved in beside him, helping him hold up the wall. He could see the young guy had laid his rifle down across the two fat tires of the Bobcat.

  “Was that your first battle?” Baxter asked. “Up there?”

  “Second. I was at the Battle of the Gap, in the north.”

  “I’m Baxter,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  “Liam.”

  Baxter thought this guy needed a different haircut, with ears that stuck out that much. “Are you posted up on the walls?”

  “Supposed to be. Just… taking a second.” Liam looked at the ground. “It’s a little odd – fighting furiously to keep them from coming over the walls one minute… then total silence and peace the next.”

  Baxter didn’t have to ask him if he was worried about what would happen when the dead came back. It was obvious from the way he spoke. Never mind that they were all worried. Baxter also sensed this guy wasn’t really hiding out down here because he was scared. But rather because he was worried about how he would perform.

  Looking back, Baxter remembered from his own journey from analyst to soldier that the second fight was worse than the first. The first time, you had no idea what to expect. But the second, you knew how bad combat was. You knew enough to be afraid. And you definitely knew just enough about what to do and how to perform to know that you knew… nothing.

  Baxter reached into his vest and touched the corner of the e-reader he’d inherited from Maximum Bob. He hadn’t had a whole lot of reading time since Somalia, but he’d had a little – most recently on the shitter. The porcelain flush toilet had been such a novelty and luxury after two years of squatting over holes in the ground that he’d stayed on it a while. But, anyway, the significance of the device w
asn’t really the books on it. Replaying Liam’s last comment, about the eerie contrast between the fighting and the lull, he remembered what Dugan had told him, and repeated it now.

  “It’s all about throttle control,” he said. “Be smooth, keep the lid on, and keep your cool – until it kicks off. Then you dial the violence all the way up, instantly. All on – or all off.”

  Liam nodded in the dark, his breathing seeming to settle.

  Baxter squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’re going to be fine.” He’d said these words before he even realized he was parroting Maximum Bob. It was one of the last things he’d said to him. And he had died keeping that promise. Now, Baxter realized, having said it to this even younger and more inexperienced man, he was also going to have to do his best to make it true for him.

  And maybe doing so would cost him his life, too.

  The wheel always turned.

  When Baxter looked up and across the dark of the yard, he saw something much odder than a lone figure huddling against the walls. It looked like two huge operators herding a pair of Mars robotic rovers, two tracked vehicles rumbling happily across the wet ground. Baxter’s eyes went wide.

  Now THIS I’ve got to investigate…

  * * *

  Rumbling across the overrun roads of south London, only a few miles away, was a much larger vehicle – a British Army Royal Logistics Corps Oshkosh close-support tanker. The articulated tank in back could hold 20,000 liters of fuel. But it was currently empty, having been painstakingly and perilously emptied out by the two men who now sat in the cab of its 6x6-wheeled all-terrain hauling tractor.

  And stealing glances across the dark interior of that cab was a man even more puzzled than Baxter, and a lot more worried than Liam. It was Lance Corporal Bird, the single RMP who had been detailed as security on this fuel-scavenging mission. And he was under the command of the mysterious British Sikh soldier, Noise, whom Bird gathered had been part of 23 Reg – the SAS Reserve Regiment – before being recruited into USOC, and something called Alpha team.

  And Noise, LCpl Bird felt increasingly confident, was going to get both of them killed.

  Bird looked forward again, not least because he was driving the huge vehicle. For a while the road had a lot of dead wandering across it, but the giant truck smashed right through the bodies without much trouble. Now it was clear and straight, plus dark, spooky, and empty – they had somehow found a stretch the dead hadn’t overrun yet. But it wasn’t the road, or even the dead, Bird worried about. It was the inexplicably serene man sitting beside him.

  Why did nothing ever bother this barmy bearded bloke?

  Getting out of that garage at the base in Sutton, which had by the end been surrounded on five sides by a besieging army of the dead, had been without a doubt the most harrowing experience of his life. And they weren’t done yet – they still had to fill the damned tanker with aviation fuel, which they could only get at Battersea Heliport. Which was even deeper in overrun territory.

  What the hell was that going to be like?

  Weirdest of all, the Sikh had never even fired his weapon. Stealing another look over, he could see him serenely sitting and rubbing its barrel with a cloth, like Viggo Mortensen with his eight-gauge shotgun in that Western movie. He was also surrounded by boxes of shotgun shells – all unopened. Hell, he hadn’t ever even gotten out that curved sword in its ridiculous jeweled scabbard, which was now wedged between his side and the door. Finally Bird couldn’t bear the silence any more.

  “Aren’t you worried?” he asked.

  Noise looked up from his weapon across the dark of the cab, the beat of silence he left and his furrowed brow saying he was seriously considering the man’s question before answering it. Finally he said, “Why worry? If you can fix it, fix it – no need to worry. And if you can’t fix it – also no need to worry.”

  And he went back to rubbing.

  What kind of Zen nutjob bollocks is that? Bird thought. He shook his head. “This is all so fucked,” he muttered.

  Now Noise put his weapon aside. “Okay. Listen to me, Lance Corporal. I will tell you something that is true. Are you listening?”

  “Yeah, I’m listening.”

  “The world is very old. You have been misled by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. Because now you can find the truth. You have been snared by the delusion that the world is something other than what you think it is. That it can be either good, or bad, outside of you thinking it so.”

  Bird snorted. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, mate, but the world has been overrun by seven billion fucking zombies – and I’m pretty sure that’s what the world is, and that it’s pretty fucking bad, whatever the hell I think about it.”

  “Okay, not a terrible point,” Noise said. “But it’s also a great example – the point that makes my point. We don’t get to choose what happens to us. But we always get to choose how to feel about it. And why on earth would you ever choose to feel anything but good?”

  Bird snorted. “Mate, it can’t be that easy – not for you, not for anyone. Who could feel good about this?”

  Noise nodded. “Look. In any situation, there are always many aspects to it, many facets that one can attend to. An infinite number, perhaps. And it is very rare that all of them are completely negative. Can we agree on that?” Bird didn’t respond. “And the thing is this: you get to choose. Which aspects to regard. The good or the bad ones. And that choice will define you. It will certainly define how you feel.”

  Noise nodded out the cabin at the night sky, which had cleared slightly as the rain blew away. “Right now, the night is beautiful and peaceful. The dead are nowhere to be seen. And, mainly, you and I are together, we are alive. And we are doing an excellent and important job, to help our brothers and sisters, back at the base behind us, and everywhere across this whole beautiful world around us. Isn’t that great?”

  Bird exhaled, and managed: “Huh.”

  Noise picked up his shotgun again. “There’s always something great, if you have the eyes to see. The taste of cool water. The light of a sunset. The love of your brothers around you. Life is, simply, what you decide to pay attention to.”

  Bird remembered Noise’s former regiment. “Is that what they teach you in the SAS?”

  Noise nodded. “You mean, is that the special-operations mindset? Yes, actually, in a way. It’s all the same – the ability to focus your attention. Operationally, it means focusing on what is in your control, and blocking out what isn’t. That is the space in which one can operate, and prevail. Including on our mission tonight. Everything that matters is in our control, brother – by definition. Because only what we control matters. You will see.”

  Bird stared at the spooling road and genuinely tried to get his mind around this. Maybe Noise was right. But he still couldn’t decide. Either this was the one soldier he needed to stick with, no matter what. Or else the one he needed to quietly slot and leave by the side of the road, before it was too late.

  He figured he’d know before the sun came up again.

  * * *

  “You’ve got a lovely attitude.” That was what Handon had told Noise, in their very first meeting, down in the main hallway on 01 Deck of the JFK, what seemed a very long time ago. And he never forgot what Noise told him in response, which was—

  “‘You can have it, too.’ BOLLOCKS.”

  Handon blinked and tried to focus, but he didn’t need to see. He’d recognize the voice anywhere – the broad Yorkshire accent, with the undisguisable edge of menace, and judgment. It was Henno again. He was still sitting, hovering, hulking, by Handon’s bedside in the med wing of the prison. Now he was sitting on the chair that had Handon’s assault suit and duty belt draped over it. And which had most recently been occupied by Sarah Cameron. When she had told him…

  “Go away,” Handon said. He was getting sick of Henno’s admonitions, his warnings, his commentary. He’d had enough trouble out of the SAS hardman when he was alive
. That he was continuing to be a complete pain in the ass, even in death, seemed like more than Handon should have to put up with. “I don’t need you as a mentor, thanks.”

  Henno, big tattooed forearms on thighs, just snorted. “Mentor was the son of Alcimus, in The Odyssey. Athena appeared in the form of Mentor to advise Odysseus, when he returned to Ithaca. ‘Mentor, thou mischief-maker, thou wanderer in thy wits, what hast thou said, bidding men make us cease?’”

  “Jesus Christ, Henno.” The Brit had always been bizarrely well-read and literary, for a rough lad from a coal-mining town, a boy soldier, and then an SAS operator. This just made him more annoying now. “Cease – exactly, do that, please.”

  Henno snorted again, reverting to language probably more familiar in Yorkshire, and at Hereford. “Oh, no danger of that, D-boy. I’m going to be here feeding you belt-fed cock, until you get up out of that wank chariot you’re lying in. You didn’t think I was gonna leave you on your own to fuck this up at the end, did you…?”

  Handon felt like he had heard that line before. Finally, he remembered: it was the last thing Henno had said to him before he died. Now, he slightly wanted to tell the man who’d returned from the dead that he couldn’t get up, due to being in an induced coma, and also due to having one leg paralyzed. But he never made excuses, even at the worst of times, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Henno hear him making any now.

  But, being a ghost, Henno heard him anyway.

  “There’s more and worse than your little coma to come, mate, worse than that tiny hole in your back. You know you’ll be joining me soon enough. The question is – will you get up and do something first? You’ve still got that Gucci knife lying beside you – have you got the sack, the bottle, to use it?”

  Handon shifted – and felt his Vorax knife still by his side.

  Henno wasn’t done, his voice growing more insistent, more unyielding. “Are you going to do what’s required, to fix this cake-and-arse party going on out there? Are you going to GET IT DONE? And are you willing to PAY THE PRICE?”

  Handon tried to shut his eyes. But they were already shut. “Fine,” he said. “Tell me, then, since you’re here. What is it that has to be done…? What is the price I have to pay? Who is it I have to sacrifice?”