The Flood Read online

  Handon winced. “Okay. What I need to know is this: is it going to cross back again? By which I mean: if we get bitten by one of these things, are we going to be infected and turn?”

  Long pause on the other end. “It’s extremely unlikely.”

  Handon didn’t respond. Park would know that answer didn’t cut it.

  “Unless I get a sample from one of them, I can’t tell you for sure. And, actually, I couldn’t even REALLY know for sure without exposing a human to the live virus. All I can tell you right now is that very few diseases are zoonotic – that is, affect multiple species. And the odds are it mutated when it entered the hyraxes – and is now inert in humans. But the only way to know for sure…”

  “Yeah. Is to get bitten. Got it. One last question. Are we going to see more of this? Will there be others?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “Okay, the most likely candidates for other infected species would probably be animals that have the most human-like DNA, the most base pairs in common. Primates. Land vertebrates. Or intelligent animals with complex brains.”

  “Primates like…?”

  “Pygmy chimps. Gorillas. Smart ones.”

  “Got it,” Handon said, exhaling. “Any last words of wisdom?”

  “Just watch yourselves. Large wild animals in Africa were dangerous before. But they usually tended to run away from people, or at least leave you alone. Now they may be hunting you. And they’ll have no fear of death – for obvious reasons.”

  “All received. Cadaver out.”

  Handon slumped back in his seat and looked out at Somalia racing by around them. Brady’s driving had scared him shitless. But now dying in an MRAP rollover started to seem like an okay way to go. It sure beat being bitten and infected by a zombie chimp.

  Christ, he thought. This virus doesn’t just want me and everyone I love.

  It wants every creature on the planet.

  It wanted all of life.

  * * *

  Ali sat in back with her rifle between her legs. “Jesus. Zombie hyraxes.” Then she said what others were thinking. “And zombie whale sharks before that.”

  “I don’t know about the goddamned fishes,” Pred said. “But those little furry bastards were not alive.”

  Ali nodded her agreement. “I cut one cleanly in half – which just resulted in both halves coming for me.”

  Pred shook his head. “This ZA just gets better and better. Oh, well – fuck it. I’ll take a pack of those moles over three million Zulus in Chicago.”

  “Or ten million on the Virginia coast,” Juice said.

  “At least the moles you can stomp on,” Pred said.

  Juice just nodded and looked off into the distance. And he didn’t say what all the others were thinking: Not everything you can stomp. What the hell would be next?

  “Hey, is that your Toughbook?” Reyes asked Juice. He was nodding toward what looked like a ruggedized laptop strapped down to a metal workbench jutting out of the wall. Reyes had heard that Juice took a laptop into battle – and wreaked much havoc with it.

  “No,” said Juice, whose machine was safely stowed in his ruck. Checking out the device on the table, which had been there since they first loaded up, he saw that it looked like a hardened laptop, but also had wings sticking out to either side, one of with a joystick on it, as well as a thick rubberized antenna sticking forward off the lid. “That’s a Universal mini-GCS – Ground Control Station.”

  Reyes’s eyes widened. “So you can fly drones from inside this thing?”

  “Every UAV in the U.S. fleet, in theory. It’s portable, too.”

  Reyes was about to remark on the coolness of this, but then Handon clambered in from the front, taking his usual spot in the center of the wedged-in warriors – and did his usual routine of grabbing Zorn by the collar. “Why the hell didn’t you warn us about these – dangerous infected animals?”

  Though inside the MRAP, Zorn had seen the hyrax fight out the windows. He’d certainly heard the shouting. “Never seen ’em before. Swear to God.”

  Handon didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Maybe it didn’t matter. He turned to the team. “Doc Park says we may see more of this.”

  “More of what?” Pred asked. “Zombie critters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind?” Ali asked.

  “He doesn’t know. Could be anything. He said the more complex brain the more likely it would be a host for the virus. Primates for example.”

  “Aw, shit,” Ali said.

  “What?”

  She arched her eyebrows and took a breath. “East Africa is overrun with baboons. In particular the cities, ever since they figured out that’s where the food is, plus totally lost their fear of man.”

  Handon grimaced. “That going to be a problem for us?”

  Ali snorted. “Only if you think a hundred-pound primate with four-inch fangs coming at you at thirty-five miles an hour is a problem.”

  Juice chimed in. “Seriously. Back when I was stationed here, we were more afraid of the baboon troops than the Islamist militias. Their bite can break bones, and even kill. And they’re vicious bastards, with highly coordinated behavior – go into a rage and literally tear a leopard to pieces. I mean, like, little pieces. I’ve seen them scare off lions.”

  “And with about fifty in a troop,” Ali added, “that’s five thousand pounds of baboon coming at you.”

  Handon shook his head. “Okay. We’ll keep our heads up and deal with that as it comes.” He sent Predator up front, sat down beside Zorn, got out his notepad and pen, and got in the prisoner’s face.

  “Talk.”

  “Sure. What about?”

  “About what’s waiting for us in Hargeisa. I want a full intel dump from you.”

  Zorn grunted, hesitated, then looked down at the bite wound in his arm that Predator had wrapped up for him. “Okay. I honestly don’t know anything about any zombie animals. But I do have one hot tip for you. There was an Agency safe house in Hargeisa. I think you ought to check it out.”

  “Why?”

  “They were tracking the epidemic in the early days. I know they had their eye on it, and being Agency, they’d have written reports. Those might still be there.”

  Handon suppressed his annoyance at what seemed like another distraction – or another trick, knowing Zorn. Then he remembered what Park had said: Anything you can find out about the origin of the virus is potentially helpful. Handon bookmarked it. When they got to Hargeisa, they’d get their prize – the victim and virus sample from the very beginning – and then maybe they’d see about that.

  Right now, he focused on picking Zorn’s brain. His knowledge and experience of the region could still save their lives. And maybe in the end it would even be worth all the shit they put up with from him.

  As Zorn talked, Handon checked his watch. They should be there in less than two hours. Assuming no more blocked bridges, beaver attacks – or catastrophes they weren’t even able to imagine yet.

  Empty, Silent, and Dead

  Outskirts of Hargeisa

  But the rest of the drive south through central Somalia passed without drama.

  Now Team Cadaver found a laying up point (LUP) for the MRAP on the outskirts of Hargeisa, rumbling three of its six giant tires onto the verge that separated road from forest. From there, the combined teams would patrol in on foot. And, Handon thought, if God had one iota of regard for them, one smidgeon of mercy or grace, they would find a nice two-years-gone Somali dead guy at the first intersection, bag him up, and get the hell out of there.

  Inevitably, though, the first omen was bad. As Handon climbed out the front and his boots hit dirt, his radio went on the CAS (close-air support) net.

  “Cadaver from Thunderchild.”

  Handon touched his radio button. “Thunderchild, Cadaver Actual, send it.” He stole a look at the sky, but couldn’t spot Hailey in her F-35. Though she was probably near
ly directly overhead, from the quality of the transmission.

  “Be advised, Cadaver, in a few minutes I have to go off-station to refuel, how copy?”

  “Solid copy. I thought we were getting full-time coverage from two aircraft.”

  “That was the plan. But they’ve discovered a mechanical fault in the other bird. Something with the landing gear, from when they had to get it off the stuck aircraft elevator. Break.”

  Handon just sighed and waited for it.

  “But you’ve still got me. I’m going to zip back, touch and top the tanks, and race back here. Should be no more than fifty minutes. They’re also going to send you some drone to bridge the gap.”

  “That’s received. Fly safe.” Handon exhaled as Fick ambled up from around the side of the MRAP. “You hear that?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Fick said.

  “Should we wait for her to come back on station before we infil?”

  Before Fick could answer, Henno did – coming around from the other side of the vehicle. “Abso-bloody-lutely not. There’s no time. England’s dying.”

  Handon tried to regard the fact that Henno was probably right again – even when he was pissing him off (again). This kept getting harder. There was probably a discussion to be had about whether they had time to rush this, do it half-assed, and screw it up. But Handon didn’t relish having that debate with Henno. They’d too recently come to blows over their disagreements about tactics. There was also the fact that the sun was starting to flirt with the horizon. Going into Hargeisa right before nightfall wasn’t exactly what Handon would have chosen. But waiting until morning was a non-starter.

  So Handon just nodded at Henno then went around to the side door. Everyone was out and on the ground now – except Zorn.

  “Unass the vehicle, Sergeant Major,” Handon said.

  Probably also inevitably, Zorn looked like he was going to be a major pain in Handon’s ass again. “I agreed to get you to Hargeisa. You’re in Hargeisa.”

  Handon almost laughed. Part of him wanted Zorn guiding them out on the ground. But given the shit he had pulled so far, there was probably a lot to be said for keeping him safely in the truck. If they needed to know something they could radio back. “Okay. Noise – guard the vehicle and the prisoner.”

  The Sikh nodded. If he was disappointed at having to pull guard duty, he didn’t show it. He was a soldier and did what he was told.

  Just to be on the safe side, Handon went back up front, pulled out the starter, and dropped it in his pack.

  * * *

  “I hate this zombie apocalypse,” Ali said. “We need quiet, and we get three million dead chasing us up the Magnificent Mile. We need dead, and for the first time ever there aren’t any.”

  “You should write a strongly worded letter,” Predator said.

  She shook her head minutely while peering over her Leupold optic. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen Hargeisa without any Somalis in it.”

  And here Ali was, right back in her hometown. Not only for the first time since the fall – but for the first time since she had escaped it at age sixteen. So much of this place was so familiar. And yet what had once been bustling and full of life was now empty, silent, and dead. A depopulated ruin of itself. Ali found a sudden and very unexpected rush of feelings pulling her in multiple directions.

  To her this had been a prison, a place to escape from. But it had also been her childhood home – and the place where she had last seen her sister, Amina. They were only a few blocks from their school now. Part of her wept at the tragedy of a whole city full of her clansmen wiped out. But part of her was happy to see this backwards, oppressive, benighted place burned to the ground.

  And part of her was furious that it had taken down the whole world with it.

  But she immediately turned that line of thinking off. Because she couldn’t afford the distraction. And because none of that mattered. Only the mission did.

  And so far it wasn’t succeeding.

  The two teams were patrolling into town, once again from different directions, and so far neither had encountered Zulu one – never mind Patient Zero. Hargeisa, the origin of the virus – or “point of disease emergence” as Park called it – and epicenter of the fall of man, was a ghost town.

  And it wasn’t ghosts they needed.

  Across the net, Fick reported to Handon, “We actually saw something like this at NAS Oceana in Virginia. It was completely dead-free – because they’d all been sucked up into a giant herd that was even then bearing down on us.”

  “Copy,” Handon said. Great, was what he was thinking.

  But he damned well wasn’t giving up that easily – any more than he was going to wait for another storm of the dead to roll in and sweep them all away. At the same time, it was seriously spooky here. It might not be going too far to say that Handon was feeling personally spooked.

  He could feel the weight of something truly terrible having happened here. It was in the very air. Of course, something terrible had happened virtually everywhere. But somehow this place had a special evil power to it. Maybe it was just that Handon knew Hargeisa was the very special hole out of which had crawled the viral rider of the Apocalypse that took down the whole world. Maybe it was all just in his head.

  But it felt like a special, new, worse evil – weighing down the very air.

  And they were very alone here.

  At the same time, this heart of darkness also held clutched within it, somewhere, the seed or pearl of their salvation. The key to survival. And maybe even rebirth.

  Handon glanced over at Juice and his shoulder cam, which was wired to a data-capable radio, then popped onto the mission command net. “CIC, from Cadaver.”

  “CIC receiving, send it.”

  “Can you confirm that you’re seeing all this – getting the streaming video from our shoulder cam?”

  “Affirmative, Cadaver. And we’ve got Dr. Park right here to consult for you.”

  “Received. Stand by.” Handon switched channels. “Cadaver Two, from One.”

  “Yeah,” said Fick.

  “We’re going to make our way to that CIA safe house. Continue your patrol.”

  “Wilco.”

  Handon started up toward the front to lead them in that direction – then stopped and listened. There was rustling in the underbrush at the wood line, a few meters from the road. Probably just more wildlife. But then again the wildlife had been getting wilder.

  The rustling stopped and Alpha and its leader moved out.

  * * *

  “We’re going to make our way to that CIA safe house. Continue your patrol.”

  “Wilco.”

  The MRAP’s integral radio set mounted in the dash – which had better range and reception than the team radios – was now tuned to the squad net, playing through its own speaker, so Noise could follow along. He was sitting in the driver’s seat – and this time had Zorn up there with him, hands bound and tied to the solid-steel strut holding the mobile data terminal on the passenger side.

  The Sikh was still smiling and affable.

  But he no longer took his eye off his prisoner, even for a second.

  With a little luck and God’s grace, he thought, the team will be back in an hour, and we’ll be back on our way – mission complete.

  He hadn’t been around long enough to know nothing ever went that well.

  * * *

  “Sun’s out, guns out, motherfuckers.”

  Reyes looked across at Brady, who was justly and famously proud of his Greek-god-like physique. “Dude, you’re not going to strip your shirt off, are you?” Admittedly, the sun was still beating down, even as it was heading for the horizon. The day was bleeding away, but was still hotter than hell.

  “Nah.” Keeping his right hand on the pistol grip of his replacement M4, with his left Brady pulled out his replacement M9 pistol, then stuck his head in the open door of a squat one-story building, pistol leading, and did a quick one-man clearing oper
ation. He emerged shaking his head: Nothing.

  Fick was tempted to shake his own head in turn. But they still had a job to do. That didn’t change because it wasn’t easy or quick. “Keep moving,” he said.

  They were inside the town proper now, such as it was, but staying out near the outskirts. While Alpha penetrated toward the city center, and the hospital, they were keeping a safer distance, traversing the perimeter. But it was much the same at the edges as elsewhere – another dusty, underdeveloped, low-rising town, like Berbera, but ten times as big. It had a lot of squat two- and three-story structures, tan or cream in color, many with flaking red tiles on the roofs. The dirt-paved streets were wide, but didn’t seem that way, due to being choked with cars, mostly eaten bodies, random crap and debris, and thousands of shell casings – almost all 7.62, the AK having been wildly popular here as everywhere else in the developing world.

  Another post-Apocalyptic shithole, Fick thought. And almost certainly a world-class shithole even before the Apocalypse…

  The Marines stepped over and around all the crap in the road, mostly keeping their distance from the buildings on either side to avoid getting jumped. It was an odd tension – two years of zombie-fighting had trained them to dodge the dead when they could, and kill them instantly when they couldn’t.

  This time – the zombie was the mission.

  Fick turned to their six just to check on Graybeard, who as usual was pulling rear security – and then froze as he saw a dark flash of movement in the trees, between two of the buildings behind them.

  Just a dark blur, and then it was gone.

  And Fick instantly flashed back to the terrible dream he’d had in that rattling bomber, flying back from the overrun airfield on Beaver Island. He had dreamt the bomber had crashed in a forest – one that was filled with flying Foxtrots, and Zulus that carried you off. And that whole nightmare dreamscape had been infested with non-stop blurs and dark flashes between the trees. He could still see them as vivid as life.

  And now here he was seeing one that actually was in life.

  Or so he assumed. Fick shook his head once, just to be sure he wasn’t still asleep. Maybe everything since Beaver Island had been one long, bad, epic dream. If so, it was a damned vivid one. He could see the dust puffing up under their boots, feel the sweat beading and trickling down his neck, and smell the rotted wood and flesh and ruin of the abandoned city.