ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME Read online

  Fick grunted. “Their skipper said he thought it was better to come in through a hole they could plug – rather than lead them around behind the barrier into our open rear, which they couldn’t plug.” He sighed. “You pick your goddamned poison.”

  Wesley heard pattering and stuck his hand out. The rain was starting again, fat drops splashing in his palm. He could also see faint, distant lightning flashes. The storm was coming back in, from the north this time. “So now what?” he asked.

  Fick sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Now we wait for Alpha to come back and save everyone’s goddamned bacon.”

  Jameson said, “Or else for it all to kick off again.”

  Wes said a silent prayer that Alpha would come back first. But then he remembered his lonely vigil in Virginia Beach, waiting with his tiny NSF team for Alpha to land there.

  They never did.

  Terminators

  London – Moorgate

  As Pred had predicted, Juice’s infil patrol route had them looping around to the west of their target structure – on the side where the giant set-piece zombie battle wasn’t taking place. On the other hand, they had looped all the way around the north side, over to the east, and back down again, and were now close enough to the action to get a pretty good look down at one corner of it.

  “Yeah,” Pred whispered. “Those guys are in uniform. Must be HIC, the reservists based here. Looks like they’re having a rough night.”

  Juice just scanned the rain-splashed darkness in the other direction. “That’s their fight. We’ve got our own problems.”

  And they did, the first of which was that they had just done a complete circuit of the entire block their target buildings were on – and there was no damned way in. There were no ground-floor windows, and the ones on upper stories had metal bars, plus looked to be barricaded. Juice was reminded that while they were in the middle of the city, this was a military installation – and what looked like a hardened one. Maybe it had always been pretty secure. Maybe they’d toughened up in preparation for what was happening now.

  It didn’t matter.

  Now the two Alpha men were crouched down beside what looked like their best, if not only, way in – a big, black, wrought-iron, swinging double vehicle gate, flanked by tall stone columns with brass plaques. It was also firmly closed and locked. But it led to the interior courtyard and parade ground, and they had to hope the inside faces of the buildings were less protected. And, on the upside, Gordon and Shughart the killer robots had now maneuvered themselves into place, strongpointing either end of the block out front, each visible about fifty meters away through the halogen lights and haze of rain.

  On the downside, the end of the block to their right, the south, connected diagonally to Finsbury Square and its raging battle – the shouts, moans, screams, and the irregular but steady banging and chattering of rifle and machine-gun fire echoing off all the stone. There was no way to be in the vicinity and not hear it, and almost no way to be at this gate and not catch glimpses of it – in fact, stray rounds were occasionally flecking off the stone above and around them. Then again, it was hardly the first urban combat either Pred or Juice had seen. Also, the noise of the fighting not only masked any sound they made, it was drawing all the dead in the vicinity. They’d really have to work to draw attention to themselves.

  While Pred took a knee and scanned the dark and rainy street over his holographic sight, Juice squared off to cut into the gate.

  “Hey,” Pred whispered, before he could start. “There’s an electronic card reader mounted here. Can’t you just hack it?”

  Juice spoke over his shoulder. “Who do I look like – Benji Dunn from the IMF? Anyway, fire’s faster.”

  He already had his Metal Vapor Torch out and got to work on the bars. This was a great piece of gear, better than a traditional acetylene torch, not least because it was a whole hell of a lot smaller and lighter, the size of a tactical flashlight – more like a light saber, Juice personally thought. Using little solid fuel capsules of copper oxide and magnesium, it produced a jet of 5000°F flame that would cut through damn near anything. The good news was that it was pretty quiet. The bad news was that it was brighter than a fireworks display. It also burned through a fuel cartridge every few seconds. Juice started going through them.

  “Yeah, sure,” Pred said. “Faster – and a lot more like the sun.”

  Sure enough, the short but startlingly large torrents of flame, sparks, and smoke did in fact do the work required to draw attention to them – and within a couple of seconds a handful of runners burst out of an alley diagonally up the street, not needing to accelerate, but already moving at full speed, tear-assing straight toward them. Pred raised his rifle, but before he could engage, the sound of a 7.62mm machine gun started banging away – from the direction of the battle, but closer. Pred snapped his head over to see the robot at the corner, Shughart, fast-rolling backward, its turret and weapons swiveling and snapping from side to side, and firing extremely rapid three- to five-round bursts. In a few seconds it was over.

  All the runners were motionless on the ground.

  Pred pushed out to check the bodies, and also to check the mouth of that alley – but froze dead after a couple of steps. Because the robot had just wheeled on him and locked on, a small red light glowing in its rain-dotted sensor dome – and the muzzle of the M240 pointed right at his face. Pred froze, scrunched up his shoulders, and just waited for it.

  Ah, shit, he thought.

  But nothing happened. The thing just looked at him with that red light – which was directly over the drawn-on mustache. It was almost like the damned thing was smiling at him, and Pred half expected it to wink. Sure enough, the red light went out again – and the robot, without turning, just rolled backward into its original position, its treads splashing on the blacktop, and its turret finally rotating to face out again.

  “Good robot,” Pred cooed, finally exhaling. “Fuck me.” He touched his radio. “Hey, we need to get that thing a cowboy hat, like Randy used to wear.”

  “I’ll know for next time. Now quit playing cowboys and Terminators and get back here.”

  When Pred darted over again, he found Juice had finished. After rapid-reloading the torch six times, he’d made the cuts he needed, and was now peeling away three bars wide enough for him to squeeze through.

  But not wide enough for Pred.

  “Whu…?” Pred said, watching Juice insert himself.

  “Strongpoint here,” Juice said, sucking in his stomach.

  “Lemme come. We could just bend the bars back in. Barricade it somehow.”

  “Yeah,” Juice whispered, squeezing the other half of himself inside and pulling his rifle after him. “Like those desperate bastards out there won’t find a way in. And the bots can’t stop the living. It’s their fatal flaw.”

  Pred’s brow wrinkled. He remembered the paintball place. “Yeah, lesson learned, I guess. Fine. I’ll stay.”

  Juice stuck his head back out. “You’ve got a wall to your back and Gordy and Randy guarding your flanks. They can probably do any shooting necessary. Hopefully you can just hang out and stay quiet, and I’ll be back in ten.” He withdrew his head again and disappeared into the darkness of the little access road behind the gate. Pred turned to face the street, raised his rifle, and scanned up and down, eying the two motionless metal warriors with suspicion. Finally he backed up against the stone wall.

  And he tried to melt into the wet shadows.

  * * *

  Ali’s search for the main stairwell in Zombie Apocalypse Central General Hospital was short-lived. She was simply following the emergency exit signs, but quickly ran into a survivor barricade in the hallway. She only paused for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough for both her and Homer to independently conclude it was quicker and safer to go around than try to bash through.

  But when Homer spun around and took the lead, he immediately faced a thick knot of running and stumbling bodies floodin
g down the hallway from the opposite direction, completely filling it like the lower decks of the Titanic. He took a couple of quick shots, but the living, dead, and infected were all mixed up, plus shifting into each other’s foregrounds and backgrounds.

  Homer knew Ali might have shot her way through anyway, but in this case he figured the humane way was also the safer one. He shouldered his way through a door to their right, and just got them out of the hall, to let it pass. Hearing Ali shut the door behind him, and knowing she’d be covering it, he cleared the room, which took one second. It was a fifteen-foot-square exam cubicle, and it had a single person in it.

  The lone man was lean and solid, good-looking but with dark circles under his eyes, early thirties, and wearing the garb of a paramedic – matched dark-green cargo trousers and a button-down shirt with NHS embroidered on one side and the crest of the London Ambulance Service on the other. He also had what looked like a long, thin, heavy pair of wrought-iron pliers, but closed up, and was holding them like a club.

  Homer lowered his weapon. “Homer, CentCom.”

  “Rob,” the man said, putting out his hand. “LAS.”

  “Ex-forces?” Homer asked. He could just tell.

  Rob nodded. “Yeah. Royal Artillery, combat med tech. You’re American military, aren’t you? SOCOM?”

  Homer nodded. Guess he can just tell, too. The accent was one giveaway, and the weapons and gear probably another. He nodded at the man’s own unusual melee weapon.

  “Nicked it from the London Dungeon, just next door.”

  “Thought it looked like a medieval torture device.”

  Rob smiled, but that melted away quickly. “Stopped to grab it after I lost Jess. My partner.” He took a breath and squared up. “Right, then. What do you need?”

  Homer smiled. It didn’t take this guy long to work out they weren’t here for no reason. “HRIG,” Homer said.

  “What – really? Wouldn’t think a rabies outbreak is our big problem right now. But I guess all of this doesn’t make every other health hazard go away.”

  “No,” Homer said, pausing to give him the three-second version of a briefing. “We discovered it makes the dead attack and kill each other. We’re going to weaponize it.”

  “Follow me,” Rob said, with no questions and zero hesitation, totally switched on. “I’ll get you to the pharmacy.”

  Ali opened the door and led them out again.

  She’d never even turned around.

  * * *

  Juice exited the little service road behind the breached gate, and a vast space opened up ahead of him, the courtyard and parade ground. Even after having studied the maps, he was a little surprised at the scale of it, right in the heart of the financial district, surrounded by gleaming office buildings, and where the property values must be insane. But Miller had told him the HIC had owned it since the 1600s – and it was often referred to as “the world’s most expensive football pitch.”

  It was still reasonably well lit by outside lighting fixtures, the falling rain visible around the lamp posts, so Juice kept to the shadows on the periphery. The dead didn’t seem to have gotten inside, which was great. But he still had to worry about being shot by the regiment based here. He hadn’t exactly gotten permission to come on base.

  As he followed the outside stone walls past a couple of big carriage-borne artillery pieces – one probably of WW2 vintage, the other maybe the Crimean War, he didn’t even know – he stole a look at the MAARS control panel on his arm, flipping from one robot’s camera to the other. Even without the usual piped-in overhead drone video to his monocle, he actually had a better view on the street outside than Pred did, seeing it from both ends. The robot cameras were excellent, and he could aim or move them around at will.

  Multitasking, he decided to pull the south one in another ten meters. Their programming tended to make them roam around on their own a little when they spotted movement, and he didn’t want the one closest to the battle unnecessarily drawing attention. He also didn’t want it taking shots unless it had to. Pred definitely saw it moving because he got in Juice’s ear.

  “Hey, you sure your damned Zulu recognition software is ready for prime time?”

  Juice reached the front double doors of the huge eighteenth-century stately-home-looking structure that he gathered was Armoury House. One look at the four-inch keyhole told him his lock-pick kit wasn’t going to do the job. He started unslinging his pack to get at his Hoolitool, while he answered.

  “Not sure it’s what I’d call, you know, totally QA’d and ready for release. But for a beta version I feel pretty good about it.”

  The silence that came back, Juice knew with great certainty, was Pred mouthing, Oh, goddammit… When he did speak aloud, he said, “Yeah, well, I’m not sure how good I feel about it – having two goddamned Terminators running around with two-forties and grenade launchers, deciding what needs killing.”

  Juice wedged the end of the hooligan tool between the two big doors. “They only kill the dead, dude. More importantly, they recognize that you’re living.”

  “Shit, those things don’t know me. All I am to them is a bunch of dots mapped onto a three-d model. They don’t care.”

  Juice popped the door open in one strong yank. “I’ve got bad news for you, man. Our brains are also just big protein computers attached to cameras – so that’s all you are to a person, too. At first.” He got the tool stowed and shrugged back into his pack. “And you might start feeling like those things actually do care about you before the night’s over.”

  He raised his rifle, lowered his NVGs…

  And slipped inside.

  * * *

  Ali leading the way and shooting, Rob giving her directions from the middle, and Homer still doing his swiveling tailgunner routine, they reached a small back stairwell without too much drama or peril. And this one led all the way down to the basement, where the pharmacy was located.

  Unfortunately, the pharmacy proved to be a total zoo.

  They only had to push down a single long section of corridor to reach it – but they didn’t have to reach it to see and hear the chaos happening inside, because it was also spilling out. Two wrestling bodies tumbled out the doorway into the corridor and hit the tile floor. Because they were both throwing punches, Ali figured them for living and held her fire. Instead she stepped over them and took the left side of the door, pausing for Homer to stack up on the right.

  When they swung their rifles up and pushed inside, one after the other, the old Unit shoot-house CQB training kicked in, and she cleared her sector in razor-vivid bullet-time, zeroing and identifying a half-dozen targets in two seconds – and not engaging any of them. There were another half-dozen in Homer’s sector – and he didn’t fire either.

  Ali lowered her weapon as she sensed Rob coming in behind them and seeing what they were looking at: it seemed to be an even mix of shitty-looking strung-out junkies – and normal-looking people, except in some kind of abnormal frenzy. All of them were rifling and tossing a dozen aisles of tall shelving filled with hundreds or thousands of little cardboard boxes and the odd plastic tub, most of them white, some with colored patches.

  “Parents of sick kids,” Rob said. “Believe me, they’re as desperate as the junkies when the drugs run out.”

  Oh, Ali thought. “We’ve still got to clear them out of here.”

  “No,” Rob said. “It’s okay. I’ll get what you need.” But he hadn’t even managed to leap over the counter when he got punched in the face by a guy with his neck covered in tattoos and multiple safety pins through one eyelid. Rob punched back, but it quickly turned into a twelve-on-three brawl, and they all ended up doing it Ali’s way.

  She sighed, waded in, and started applying quick throat punches, nerve strikes, and arm leverage to the shitty-and-dumpy substance-abuse fans, while Homer applied apologies and gentle pressure to the backs of the parents to hustle them out, Rob switching from one role to the other. In a minute they had the room cle
ared, and the door shut and locked.

  Ali congratulated herself for not using lethal force.

  And she just settled in and covered the damned door.

  * * *

  “You done yet?” Pred asked, eyes scanning the burning night, drops of rainwater dripping off his helmet and onto his face.

  “Armory’s not where the kid’s map shows it.”

  “Did he draw it in crayon?”

  “No, but he did say they built this place in seventeen-thirty something. Guess stuff moves around sometimes.”

  “Hurry it up.”

  Pred shook his head in wonder to think the building behind him was older than America. He eyed the bots again, seriously doubting he and the Terminators were going to develop any deep attachment to one another tonight.

  “I’ll tell you who cares about me,” he muttered. “Kate.”

  But then with that thought, and pretty much against his will, he half-recalled a quote from Terminator 2. Something about how the cyborg would be a perfect father to John – never get drunk, never yell, never be too busy for him, never quit.

  Kate can no doubt recite that quote perfectly.

  Maybe that was where she got her inspiration. She never quit either – not on that crazy-ass plane fight, facing off against shovel-wielding Russians so unfeeling and slippery they may as well have been T-1000s… getting shot half to pieces by that Spetsnaz sniper, while singlehandedly taking out a Black Shark attack helo with small-arms fire. If she hadn’t kept fighting through all that, none of them would have made it out of Africa at all. She was definitely one tough mama.

  Maybe even Predator’s equal.

  Now he also remembered what she’d told him about love and loss, about how their Calis and Todds being gone was bullshit, but maybe they could find a way to live anyway… and how saving that woman on the road had made him start to feel like maybe there was a point, and some kind of a way through.

  And then he remembered why you didn’t get all fucking googly-eyed and distracted in the middle of a goddamned combat mission – as machine-gun fire and explosions tore the night to his right, all of it in the middle of a kinetic and confusing jumble of moaning and hurtling bodies.