Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Read online

  Fick grabbed it by the hair on the back of its head, hauling for all he was worth to keep it off him – but he couldn’t bring his pistol around. His gun hand wouldn’t move. So instead of shooting it, he snarled himself and lunged his own head forward to bite the stupid dead motherfucker before it could bite him first—

  * * *

  “It’s okay. It’s okay…”

  Fick found himself lunging at a face even stranger than that of the flying fucking Zulu. It was the face of a young woman. She was holding something wet to his forehead. The wrenching shock of essentially being teleported from one world into another thrummed through his whole body and mind. As his vision dialed up and the world around him started to make some kind of sense again, Fick felt cold steel beneath his hands, and the room vibrating around him.

  Chuckie. I’m in the goddamned bomber. And it’s still in the air.

  They hadn’t crashed, and they all weren’t going to die, one by one.

  “Fuck me,” he said aloud. “It was a bad fucking dream.”

  “Yes,” the girl agreed, her pale blue eyes inches from Fick’s. “You were having a bad dream.”

  Fick’s face was still slack and awestruck from the fog of sleep, and from his miraculous escape from that nightmare, and he reached up to grasp her hand as it mopped his fevered brow. Looking around him now, he saw that he was still in the bomber, and remembered that it had miraculously gotten off that runway at Beaver Island – with Alpha team and their mission objective safely on board. And, trying to pick out the human figures that stretched down the fuselage, he remembered that most of them had made it.

  Most but not all.

  He had lost Chesney, the Kid, who had sacrificed himself, staying behind in that control tower to cover their extraction. They’d lost the co-pilot and their flight engineer, in the terrible explosion of the Zulu jihadi and the underground fuel tank, which had also badly wounded Reyes. Fick himself had nearly burned to death in the same incident, and Brady had been pummeled by machine gun fire and shot through the arm by a flaming zombie.

  Fick knew Alpha had lost two people, including their commander. He could also tell they had a variety of injuries – Predator favoring his leg, Ali her arm. Juice had a head bandage, and Henno one on his shoulder. Frankly, they all looked like shit.

  But they hadn’t died at that overrun airfield. And they hadn’t crashed in some flying-Zulu-infested forest, the survivors picked off one by one while Fick couldn’t run or scream.

  He was so relieved he felt like crying.

  And as he continued to hold the girl’s small hand in his, and looked up into her eyes, his own face became almost unrecognizable. It was suddenly no longer the face of an old, grizzled, seemingly unkillable Marine, but that of a frightened boy, gazing up desperately for reassurance – and receiving it. The girl, whom Fick slowly began to recognize as Emily, Alpha’s mystery civilian, looked kindly down on him, returning the tenderness he was sending out.

  But then Fick’s face reverted in a flash, resuming its normal fearsome aspect, deep-furrowed scars twisting up. “Who are you, anyway?” he asked, pulling his hand away.

  Emily recoiled from him, and let the damp rag fall into his lap. And as she rose to leave, Fick was already cursing himself for speaking to her that way. All she’d been doing, pretty obviously, was mopping the sweat from his forehead, making herself useful – and being kind.

  But Fick also knew why he’d reacted the way he had.

  It was because of the shock. Not the shock of waking from that horrible, technicolor-vivid, immersive dream, where he lost all his people one by one. No, that was minor by comparison. The real shock had been from the way he felt, for exactly two seconds after he woke, looking up into the girl’s bright eyes, feeling her delicate hands on his mortified flesh.

  For just a moment in there – and there was no way Fick could deny this to himself – he had felt cared for in a way he had not felt in a long, long time. Probably not since he was a boy, lying enveloped in his mother’s arms.

  God knew his Marines cared about him. Brady had shown that clearly enough when, already wounded himself, he had been willing to fight Fick to keep him from getting off the plane and throwing his life away trying to rescue the cut-off and doomed Chesney. But with the men, in sight of that care, and in spite of it, he couldn’t admit weakness. And he could never show fear.

  But, in those two seconds with the girl, he had done both.

  And it had been okay.

  His breath caught in his throat again, so vividly did the feeling still grip him.

  But then he remembered what Drake had been trying to tell him in the dream – and had actually told Handon in real life, over the bomber’s radio. He’d said: “Congratulations on your escape from the frying pan.”

  And Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick’s briefly smoothed brow crinkled up again with worry. And he realized he had better get the mask back in place, and right now.

  Because this shit wasn’t over.

  Alamo

  Flight Deck of the USS John F. Kennedy, off the Coast of Virginia

  Screw the ear protection, Commander Drake thought, pushing away the pair of puffy headphones that the yellow-shirted air officer (more commonly known as the “Air Boss”) tried to force upon him. Yeah, it was probably at least 150 eardrum-shredding decibels out there. They were standing only about ten meters from the afterburning turbofan engine of an F-35 fighter, as it revved up to its full 43,000 pounds of thrust, preparing to be catapulted off the deck.

  But Drake had heard worse than that before and survived.

  Moreover, he just had a whole hell of a lot bigger problems than hearing loss right now. In fact, if preparations for this battle didn’t start shaping up a lot more smartly, he might actually be better off not having to hear what was going to happen to his ship, and to his people. But right now he needed to push that thought away from his already overtasked brain – and even further from his face.

  He simply couldn’t afford to reveal the crippling doubts he felt.

  Drake tried to muster an approving nod for the Air Boss – who was responsible for all aircraft operations on the flat-top, starting down in the hangar deck and extending out to five nautical miles in every direction from the carrier. Under normal circumstances, the Air Boss would be up in PriFly (Primary Flight Control), on the very top level of the five-story “island” that towered over the sprawling five-acre flight deck. But, as far as Drake could tell, no circumstances had been anything like normal for about two years now.

  Hell, everything on the carrier had been non-stop improvisation, and crisis management, and frantic running from one wrong place to another, ever since starting this FUBAR mission they had unamusingly, to Drake at least, called Secunda Mortem.

  Drake’s eyes went down now toward their feet, where the Catapult Officer (or “shooter”) was ensconced within the catapult control pod – a small glass-encased control station with a transparent dome that protruded slightly above the deck like a blister. With only his head and shoulders visible behind green-tinted glass, he looked like Captain Nemo piloting his submarine. Right now, his eyes were on the the Aircraft Director, who controlled all movements of the planes on deck, and who stood fearlessly out at the front of this one. He exchanged salutes with the pilot, touched the deck, and then pointed off down the runway.

  By means of this symbolic dance, first one, then the other, of a pair of single-engine F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters blasted out of the two waist catapults and tear-assed up the angle deck, accelerating to over 165mph in less than two seconds. The old steam catapults had been replaced by the new EMALS – the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, which slingshotted their birds faster, more powerfully, and with more precision. In four eye blinks, the two birds had taken all their screaming power and grace and heavily-armed death-from-above up into the skies over the stranded carrier. These planes were primal and lethal – and also a miracle of human ingenuity, engineering, and viciousness.
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  Much good may they do us, Drake thought to himself.

  But then he mentally shrugged, and allowed himself a single nod of approval. At least the first of his combat sorties was safely away. That was one less thing to worry about. One of about a million.

  TEN million, he mentally corrected himself, grinding his teeth. He had an estimated ten million things to worry about, most of them arriving about an hour from now.

  But then he cast about the deck in mild confusion. He had expected to see the air wing’s other surviving pair of F-35Cs – humanity’s only other matched set of last-generation, multirole, ground attack, reconnaissance, air defense, stealth fighters (price tag: $280M each). Even with all the other frantic activity taking place across the bustling expanse of the flight deck, Drake was pretty sure he would have seen a couple of 50-foot-long, 50,000-pound aircraft.

  He grabbed the Air Boss by the elbow. He didn’t bother asking him why the man was down on the deck instead of at his station up in PriFly; he’d have his reasons. And Drake only had time now to care about outcomes, not ways or means.

  “Boss!” he shouted, into the other’s headphones, over the fading noise of the jet engines, and through the ongoing general madness and tumult that was life on a working carrier flight deck. “Where are my other two birds? And why aren’t they taxiing?”

  The Air Boss held Drake’s gaze with his own slitted ice-blue eyes – which were surrounded by enough lines and wrinkles to indicate a man who had been around the block a few times, and had his share of troubles and close calls along the way. “Still below,” he shouted back. “Still prepping, after the CAS mission to Beaver Island.”

  “Why the hell aren’t they ready?”

  “No excuses, Commander.”

  Drake gritted his teeth again. The Air Boss was where all bucks stopped as far as flight ops went, which was normally great. But today, Drake was in the very front row of the firing line. And he needed to know what was going on. “Give me an explanation, then.”

  The Boss tossed his head over Drake’s shoulder, toward the fore. “Well, your general militia there is still drilling on my refueling and rearming point. We could cycle birds faster, and fly more sorties, if I had that space back.”

  Drake exhaled heavily. He was constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul around here, trying to stretch out their inadequate resources – of people, of equipment, of supplies and fuel and ammo. And most especially of time. “I’ll see what can be done,” he said. It was his next stop anyway.

  He didn’t bother saluting as he marched off, nodding crisply at his aide to follow.

  * * *

  This was an inspection tour – and almost certainly his last. Drake, acting commander of the carrier and its strike group, was stretched far too thin himself, trying to oversee the last stages of the manic preparations taking place in virtually all parts of the nuclear-powered supercarrier, both above and below decks.

  Scratch that, Drake thought as he fast-walked. FORMERLY nuclear-powered.

  They had failed in their efforts to start up one of the two A1B high-core-energy-density reactors, and thus perhaps drive the boat off the Virginia sandbar where it had been wedged, seemingly permanently, by the nearly successful mutineers. On top of that, their construction effort to close up the enormous hole in the starboard-side hull – blown there by a detonating magazine full of surface-to-air missiles, also courtesy of the mutiny – had resulted in catastrophe: the loss of the enormous steel panel, destruction of a three-story crane, and the deaths of two sailors who had been hanging their asses out over the side, and risking them on behalf of everyone on the boat.

  And now, since they couldn’t flee (steam away), and they couldn’t hide (properly seal up the goddamned ship), that only left them one option: to fight. And Drake was going to do everything in his power to make his people and his ship ready.

  Because a storm of perhaps ten million dead was about to break upon them. The initial lashings of that storm were already spilling out into the shallows – and beginning to lap up against the towering hull of the Kennedy.

  Drake could already hear small-arms fire popping from out at the prow. That was mainly people test-firing, learning to use their weapons.

  But very soon, they would all be shooting in earnest.

  Now he approached the biggest group that would be doing that shooting. The “general militia,” the Air Boss had called it, and it was indeed drilling on the open area of deck afore of the island and stretching nearly to the waist. This was the centralized rearming and refueling point that had been built into the new Ford-class supercarriers to reduce the time needed to turn around aircraft – doing it on the deck was a lot quicker than sending them down on huge elevators to the hangar deck – and thus increase the number of sorties per day the carrier could launch.

  But air operations were no longer their primary operational focus.

  Today, the USS John F. Kennedy was the Alamo.

  And this large group of sailors drilling on the deck, men and women both, and of very mixed ranks and ratings, were their Texans. Maybe there was even a Davy Crockett somewhere in amongst them. Then again, Drake thought to himself grimly, maybe that’s not an analogy I want to extend too far…

  Everyone knew how the Alamo had worked out for the guys inside.

  Drake saw that the militia were all wearing the blue-and-gray digital-camo-print fatigues that were the standard Navy working uniform. Off to the side were large stacks of anti-flak vests, inflatable flotation vests, and lightweight Advanced Combat Helmets, which were assigned to all Navy personnel for use in surface warfare. Drake guessed they’d be wearing them soon enough. He also spotted several boxes of protective shooting glasses, which he was told by the Marines were helpful for keeping zombie gunk out of your eyes, and thus preventing infection. Though he didn’t expect there’d be enough of those to go around.

  As Drake stalked up, he heard the booming voice of one of their special-operations Marines instructing the twelve or so ranks of sailors, 400 of them in total. From the side, he recognized the man as Gunnery Sergeant Blane, one of the MARSOC senior Fire Team leaders. He was lecturing the newly formed militia on something about small-unit tactics. And Drake sure as hell wasn’t going to interrupt him. Instead he buttonholed one of the two other Marines behind him, who were uncrating boxes of brand new assault rifles.

  “How they looking, Sergeant?”

  The lanky, squatting man turned at the waist, then rose to his full height. He wore battle fatigues in the MARPAT digital-camo pattern, with a side arm and spare-mag pouch. As he straightened up, his musculature, lean lines, and sheer physical grace rippled even through the baggy fatigues. His buzzed blond hair tapered to a regulation Marine high-and-tight, and his jawline was sharp. This guy was squared away.

  “Sir. We’ve got the militia mustered, including everyone from the first round of the draft.”

  Drake looked at the man’s name patch on his blouse: Coulson. Drake recognized the name – this was Sergeant Brandon “Ice Cube” Coulson. The punchline about his nickname was that he was understood to be pretty much the whitest man on the team. He was also known to be a cool, methodical, and totally unflappable operator – but with a profoundly goofy sense of humor that usually came out at the most inappropriate times, for instance when it looked like everyone was about to die.

  Drake looked back up at him and said, “Draft? Didn’t realize it had come to conscription.”

  “Just an expression, sir. These are all volunteers. It’s the second round that might need to be compulsory… In any case, we’ve selected those among the crew who were most physically fit, who had qualified most recently on their weapons, and who basically seemed clued in and up for the fight.”

  Drake almost smiled; almost. “You mean: out of those who weren’t already required for other critical shipboard or fleet duties.”

  “Yes, sir. That, too.”

  “And? C’mon, Sarge, tell me something I want to hear. Please.”
/>   The expression of the already serious-looking warrior darkened a shade. “Well… I wish I could tell you they’re battle-ready. But I’d say that, at best, they’re going to be competent with their weapons, conversant in basic maneuvers, and reasonably capable of understanding and carrying out orders.”

  “But?”

  “But when the lead starts flying, and the moaning of the dead drowns out everything else, well, there’s no way of telling how they’ll react. Not until the moment they’re actually first in contact. And then we’ll find out pretty fast.”

  Drake nodded. He was getting good at not reacting visibly to bad news. “And what do you think will happen then?”

  The strapping Marine NCO furrowed his brow. “Some will hold. Some will fold. A few of them – and not the ones you would guess beforehand – will step up and become heroes. They’ll be totally fearless, and they’ll be fearsome fighters. But others, standing right beside them, will collapse in tears. Statistically, twenty-five percent of them will lose bladder or bowel control. That’s proven true across the board.”

  Jesus Christ, Drake thought. But he continued to keep his face neutral. “Okay, Sergeant. Are there any other resources I can provide you with, that will help you to improve or accelerate this process?”

  The MARSOC Marine looked thoughtful. “Well, sir… we could definitely use Rose and D’Amico and the rest of Fire Team Four.” It took Drake a second to recall that these were men he had assigned to overseeing the defensive constructions and ammo resupply depot at the prow – the bit that was going to be on the business end of the hurricane of dead when it hit. “That would allow us to do more one-on-one coaching, instead of the impersonal parade ground instruction. Sir.”

  “I can’t spare them right now,” Drake said. “But I’ll see if I can get them some help from elsewhere, and get them back to you more quickly.” Even as he said it, though, he knew it wasn’t going to happen.