ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME Read online

  Park said, “Can we get more there?”

  “Sure. Any good-sized hospital will stock it.”

  Sarah grabbed the vial. “Come on.”

  “Careful,” the doctor called after them. “It’s fragile – and can be inactivated by drying out, UV rays, contaminants…”

  * * *

  Six minutes later, they were all back in the warehouse again, HRIG in Sarah’s hand. Aliyev reached for it, but Park intercepted him, believing the Kazakh too damned excitable. So while Park inserted a needle and syringe in the top and drew a small amount out, Aliyev went to the porthole of their test-subject closet.

  “Holy shit.”

  Park looked up and came over.

  “You were right, Simon,” Aliyev said. “You were totally right!”

  And Park could see it as well: the Zulu they had put in there with the infected Foxtrot was not a happy zombie. It was walking slowly in a tight circle, tremors gripping its body – and holding one arm out with the elbow bent in a direction it probably shouldn’t go. Zulus were often fucked up, but Park had seen enough of them to recognize the ways they were generally fucked up. And this was new.

  “It’s infected,” Park said. “It’s got meningitis Z.”

  Sarah said, “Which means the Foxtrot is a carrier.”

  As if being called by name, it leapt at them again through the porthole. This time, Park didn’t even recoil. He just stuck the hypodermic needle in its eyeball and depressed the plunger on the syringe.

  Then he and Aliyev and Sarah stood there for a few seconds watching the thing shriek and rage and try to get at them through the hole, as it had before. Then it spasmed, twisted, and finally calmed down – just pausing for a couple more seconds. And then it looked over at the sick Zulu, actually seeming to glare at it. Park’s eyes went wide. That alone was odd enough – the dead never noticed other dead.

  And then it attacked – raking its broken nails across the Zulu’s face, and taking a bite out of its neck for good measure. But then it withdrew, and went back to trying to get at the living guys outside, ignoring the Zulu again.

  Park said, “Classic Foxtrot behavior – infect and move on.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “Except directed against another zombie. Which is a hell of a lot less classic.”

  Aliyev said, “And a shitload more valuable. If that thing hadn’t already been infected, it sure as hell would be now. A Foxtrot infected with MZ, running around scratching and biting the crap out of Zulus due to HRIG exposure, would pretty much be the ultimate plague carrier.”

  Park looked down at the vial.

  “How much did you give it?” Aliyev asked.

  “Only about a sixth of the dose.” Park bounced the vial once in his palm, then hauled it back over his shoulder.

  “Wait!” Aliyev said. “What are you doing?”

  Park paused. “One, we need to know what it does at higher doses. Two, we need to see if it works weaponized.”

  “But that’s all we’ve got!”

  “Yes. But we have to know.” Park winked. “Science, bitches.”

  He hurled the vial. It smashed in the Foxtrot’s face.

  They all watched it for three seconds, during which its agitation slowly wound down, until it was just staring at them with dead eyes – and then it closed them. Two more seconds ticked by. Finally it gave a terrible shudder.

  And then it went absolutely fucking apeshit.

  First it shrieked and wailed like Judgment Day – even louder, much louder, and also much worse, than the normal Foxtrot shriek – so loud, Park was worried it might actually be heard outside the walls. Then it started flinging itself around the closet like the director’s cut of The Exorcist too horrifying to release. Limbs and head and torso slammed into walls and boxes, flinging spit, mucus, and black fluid. Then, just when it looked like it was going to try hurling its body up and into the ceiling… instead it banged into the body of the sick Zulu.

  And then it achieved a level of energy and ferocity that none of them had ever seen, and that made normal Foxtrots look like church tea ladies. It tore into the Zulu with hands, claws, and teeth, and literally ripped it to pieces. It wasn’t clear if it was superzombie strength, or the relative rottenness of the Zulu’s body, or probably some combination of the two, but the Foxtrot didn’t stop until the Zulu was in chunks on the floor. And then it still didn’t stop, ripping at the chunks, stomping them, biting them, and hurling them at the walls. It was like every iota of hate, vengeance, and loathing that had ever been felt in any human heart had been given full voice, and action, all in one tiny closet and a fifteen-second window.

  It was beyond a horror show, beyond Death incarnate.

  This was death not just killing death – but consigning it to total and utter oblivion. Park had never seen, or imagined, anything like it in his life. None of them had. Only when he looked over at Sarah and Aliyev did he realize all of them had taken a good ten steps back from the closet. Aliyev’s mouth was open again. Finally he spoke, in an awed whisper.

  “Holy fucking shit of Christ.” Then he crossed himself.

  But Park wasn’t thinking of God. He was thinking of the Colonel, and his prediction that they were all doomed when the Foxtrots got there – doomed. And he said:

  “I think our doom just became our salvation.”

  Aliyev looked at him. “We’ve got to get more of this shit.”

  Twice More Into The Breach

  CentCom – Sniper OP

  Park knew the Colonel was in charge now. But, like Fick, he just didn’t give a damn. In the decisive moment, his instinct was to find Ali. His faith in her was total – having someone rescue you from open ocean, filling up with dead, with a Seahawk helo crashing on your head, will do that to you.

  For better or worse, that meant leaving Sarah behind. She was off the reservation, and couldn’t face Ali again, not alongside Park – the one place she wasn’t supposed to be. So instead Park took his RMP security guy – and also had him radio Fick on the way. When the two of them plus Aliyev reached the sniper OP on the northwest walls, Fick and Jameson were just arriving, joining Ali, Homer, and Elliot – along with Kate and Baxter, who had also recently returned. None of the others noticed, but Jameson and Elliot conspicuously avoided each other’s gazes.

  “Okay,” Fick said. “What.”

  Ali just looked on expectantly, hand on hip.

  In a fast and efficient briefing, Park explained his and Aliyev’s discovery of the effects of HRIG – both in creating perfect plague carriers at low doses, and perfect zombie-killing machines at higher doses. Finally, he concluded: “If we pull this off, the Foxtrots will do half the work for us – infecting the dead. And then they’ll do the other half – fighting them for us.”

  Equally quickly and efficiently, Ali found the flaw in this plan: “Great. Then what the hell do we do with all the infected and hyper-violent Foxtrots?”

  Park just hmm’d. It was a decent point. He and Aliyev hadn’t actually thought that far ahead.

  “Fuck it,” Fick said, after pondering for two seconds. “I say we deal with that when we get there. Wouldn’t you rather fight a few thousand Foxtrots versus seven billion Zulus and runners? I also really like the idea of having zombie serial killers working for us. It’s – what’s the word? – elegant.”

  “Plus ironic,” Park said. “In the most kick-ass way.”

  Ali gave both of them a look that said she wasn’t so sure. “You guys remember I Am Legend? That cure for cancer looked like a sure thing at the time.”

  Aliyev said, “That movie was also stupid. Were they zombies? Were they vampires? Stick to a damned genre.”

  Homer chimed in. “I think the Master Guns is right. We’re out of time and options. We’ve got to gamble.”

  “Yeah,” Fick said. “Always listen to the Master Chief.”

  Jameson said, “You’ve already got a Foxtrot, infected with both MZ and HRIG, right?”

  “Not infected,” Aliyev
said.

  “What?”

  “HRIG isn’t a pathogen, but a therapy. The Foxtrot’s been exposed to it, not infected.”

  Jameson looked like he wanted to throw a medical dictionary at Aliyev’s head. “Whatever. We’ve got one. Can’t we just toss it over the walls, and let it get to work?”

  Aliyev snorted. “Sure, you go into that closet and get it out safely. On his soul’s darkest night Dante couldn’t dream up shit like what’s in there.”

  Fick exhaled. “I’ll get it out. No idea how, but I’ll do it.”

  Park touched the corner of his eyeglasses. “One can’t hurt. But I don’t think one carrier will get us to a tipping point – and not fast enough. It would be just one among millions. But if we infected ten outside the walls – or, better yet, a hundred… Even if it didn’t destroy all the dead everywhere, not right away – still, it would relieve the pressure. It would buy us the time we’ve got to have – for the vaccine to start working, and to distribute it.”

  “Okay,” Ali said. “How do we do it, then?”

  Park paused. “The MZ is obviously infectious, that’s the whole point of it. But the HRIG isn’t. Like Oleg said, it’s a therapy, not a disease. So we need a dose for every Foxtrot we want to put to work for us. But there will be plenty of HRIG in any big hospital – and the closest is St. Thomas’s.”

  Jameson said, “It is close – on the south bank, right at the foot of Westminster Bridge, actually.”

  Ali shook her head. “Which is also totally overrun and a refugee panic and death zone.” She’d seen aerial imagery from the JOC.

  Homer smiled at her: What else is new with our missions?

  “Okay,” Ali said. “Suppose we do secure a bunch of HRIG. What then?”

  “Then we bundle it up with the MZ,” Park said.

  “Do we have any at this point?”

  “More every minute,” Aliyev said. “Not a whole hell of a lot more. But a bigger more with each additional minute, due to the exponen—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Jameson said. “We get it.”

  “And a mission to secure HRIG,” Homer said, “would give the MZ more time to culture.”

  Ali pursed her lips, then continued. “Okay, so say we do retrieve some HRIG from out there, and bundle it up with MZ, which we might also then have enough of. The question remains – how do we weaponize and deliver it?”

  Homer nodded. “We’ve established that the paintball guns are a no-go for hitting Foxtrots.”

  Ali said, “And Homer nearly got killed going out there and trying to inject them by hand. And it still didn’t work.”

  Kate had been lurking on the periphery, staying out of the discussion, while Baxter was on station out on the walkway with his rifle – watching for and taking down wandering dead coming over the top of the meat wall, which somebody had to do. But now Kate spoke up. “Homer also almost had his eye put out when one jammed a syringe right in his face.”

  Fick laughed at this. “Ha. Yeah, we can’t have you going around with a goddamned pirate eyepatch like Adam Brown.” He knew Homer would get the reference – Adam Brown was a DEVGRU operator who lost an eye in a training accident, as well as the use of one hand, and yet somehow remained operational, at the highest level of any military.

  “True,” Homer said. “And do you remember how Chief Brown lost that eye? When a simunition round snuck up under his eye-pro.”

  “Fucking simunitions,” Fick said. “Why the hell didn’t we think of that?”

  “Yep,” Homer said. “They work in real rifles, and shoot straight and fast, just like regular rounds. I didn’t really understand why you went with paintballs instead of sims, but figured you couldn’t get the latter.” Ali and Fick shot a look at Aliyev, who’d originally had the bright idea about the paintball guns, but Homer didn’t catch it.

  Ali looked intrigued, but also skeptical. “Sims still don’t have full charges. Slower muzzle velocity than ball or hollowpoints.”

  Homer said, “Yes, but a heck of a lot faster than the three hundred feet per second of paintball guns. It won’t be the three thousand FPS of your AI, but much closer to the rifle than the toy. And the accuracy will be an order of magnitude higher in MOA terms.”

  “It’s true,” Ali admitted. “Okay, great, so next problem – will it even work? As a delivery system?” She looked at Aliyev, obviously hesitating to ask the one guy who had been completely wrong last time, but having little choice. The MZ was his creation, and he had done the only testing of it. “Okay, Oleg. These rounds are specifically designed not to penetrate flesh.”

  Aliyev stroked his chin pubes. “Okay, I get that – but that’s probably healthy living flesh, right? This will be half-rotted dead flesh. It won’t take much to break skin. And even if it doesn’t penetrate, it will splash on their skin, right? Just like the paintballs.”

  Ali nodded. “They’re basically small paintballs embedded in live rifle and pistol casings, instead of bullets.”

  Aliyev looked at Park, both of them remembering his weaponization experiment of hurling the vial. “As before, just hit them in the face. The MZ infection risk will be very substantial, the same as before with the paintballs. But we can pretty much guarantee you the HRIG will work. We tried it.”

  Ali exhaled. “Okay, then. Last problem – and probably the fatal one. Anybody got sims lying around? Didn’t think so.”

  “I know where there are some.” This new voice was young, quiet, and unfamiliar to everyone there – to everyone but Ali and Jameson. It was Private Elliot Walker of the Paras. “They actually air-dropped us some by accident at the Battle of the Gap, when we needed real ammo.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Fick said. “Last I heard that battle was over. And that position slightly overrun.” He and Jameson shared a look, but Jameson didn’t say anything.

  “Yeah, I know that,” Elliot said. “But I also know where there are some closer – and maybe in a secured position. My regiment used to use them when we did CQB cross-training with Twenty-Two Reg. I never got invited to the training – but had to go pick up the ammo.”

  “Where?” Ali asked.

  “Armoury House, in the City of London. It’s the home of a reserve regiment, the Honourable Infantry Company.”

  Now Jameson spoke. “The City is also slightly overrun.”

  Now Ali said it, sighing out loud first. “Yeah, well, everything is kind of overrun. And I guess that’s never stopped us before.” Scavenging critical stuff out of overrun and denied areas had been how Alpha had been tasked for almost the whole of the first two years of the ZA. And if it was their only chance of creating an army of rabid and infected Foxtrots to destroy all the other dead, and the only way to buy time for the vaccine to start working… then it was what they had to do.

  Nobody could argue with that. No one did.

  * * *

  They left Kate and Baxter to man the sniper OP, while the rest of the group climbed down and headed for SHQ. They talked and planned more on the way to save time, crossing the dark of the prison yard, then exiting out into the Common.

  “You know this isn’t actually my call anymore,” Ali said.

  Fick grunted. “Not sure how wild I am about reading in Colonel Cocksucker to our mission planning.”

  Ali wasn’t sure how wild she was about it either, not least since Fick and the Colonel had been on the verge of manslaughter at their last – and, come to consider it, first ever – encounter. But she said, “I’m just not sure how we’re going to launch aircraft, never mind quarterback missions on the ground, without support from the JOC. And he’ll be in there.”

  Homer said, “We’ll just have to sell him on the mission. It will hardly be the first time we’ve had to convince command of the virtues of sanity.”

  “Yeah, and talk them into not getting everyone fucking killed,” Fick added. He got Homer’s reference, flashing back to that briefing room on the JFK, when Homer had dropped a Soviet limpet mine on the table as exhibit A – and it
still hadn’t been enough to convince Commander Drake they had to go out there and take out the Russian battlecruiser. The only ones in that room then had been him and Homer, along with—

  “Pred, Juice,” Ali said into her team radio. “You two receiving on this channel?”

  “Five by five, Ali. Well, five-ish.” The EMI was still making even local radio traffic dodgy.

  “Can you meet us in the JOC, ASAFP?”

  “No problem. We’re Oscar Foxtrot Mike.”

  “We’re also going to need pilots,” Homer said.

  “I know a pilot,” Jameson said. And he even knew what channel Charlotte would be on. He flipped to it and hailed her.

  “What about Hailey?” Fick asked. “Any idea where she is? Or if she’s even got a radio?”

  “Guest billets, maybe,” Ali said. “They were dumping people in there.”

  “I’ll go look,” Homer said. “Meet you in the JOC.”

  * * *

  But when they reached the JOC, the Colonel wasn’t there.

  “Haven’t seen him in a while, actually,” Miller said.

  Ali had pulled him aside into a private confab. “So the JOC is yours, then?”

  “Yes, for the moment.”

  Ali considered this for two seconds. There was no time, and forgiveness always beat permission. “Okay. We’ve got two missions to plan and launch – with no authorization. You in?”

  Miller didn’t even hesitate one second before answering. Almost since the moment of her arrival, Ali had been his guy, and he was loyal to her – the leader who had made every right call and kept them all alive. And he’d made his feelings about that clear in his meltdown and rebellion against the Colonel.

  “We’re all in,” he said, waving Cpl Jones over.

  The three of them, along with Fick, Jameson, Elliot, Park, and Aliyev, gathered and huddled up over a tactical station on the end of one row – when Captain Charlotte Maidstone strode in smartly and joined them, followed ten seconds later by Predator and Juice… and thirty seconds after that by Homer, with Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells in tow. Charlotte did a double-take when she saw Elliot, but didn’t say anything, just trading a look with Jameson. She had vowed never again to look at that fucking guy – the one who had tried to leave Jameson behind in the Gherkin – so she didn’t.