ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME Read online

  “Check,” Homer said.

  “Also, I suggest you try to infect the running ones. I think they will spread the infection at a much faster rate, and more widely, than the slow walking ones.”

  Homer nodded again. “Why not Foxtrots, then? Their whole job is covering a lot of ground and infecting people. They also don’t waste time hanging around eating them.”

  Aliyev considered, remembering what Simon had told him about the crazy-ass new fast ones. “Sure, okay, sounds good to me. I guess.” He squinted in thought. “Look. Let me come with you. I can consult.”

  Homer looked like he was considering it. “No, we probably can’t let you get killed, either. Find a radio and stay by it. We’ll call the science hotline if we need you.” He turned and took off.

  The two lab techs ran behind, trying to keep up.

  * * *

  Holding the pistol with both hands, Aiden was braced for a heavy kick when he fired. But it was actually less bad than he remembered. And he remembered another thing Dad sometimes told them: the thought of doing it was always worse than actually doing it. Even the noise wasn’t as bad as he’d feared – the sound of ambient gunshots outside the building made his own seem somehow less conspicuous than he’d feared.

  So the noise and kick weren’t that bad, and his target was hardly moving, still trying to pull itself out of the crawlspace – and both of Aiden’s shots got the Zulu square in the head.

  It collapsed and went limp.

  Aiden took a series of deep breaths, and realized he hadn’t been breathing at all. He’d forgotten to take a breath and release half of it before firing, like Dad had taught them to do. He’d get that right next time. But it turned out next time was right now – another one was shoving the destroyed body forward, and trying to crawl out around and behind it.

  Aiden’s eyes went wide, and he raised the weapon and started shooting again. This time it took three shots to do the job. Mum had fired once, and always kept one in the chamber, so he knew that left him with only two. Not lowering the gun, he turned to his brother, who still had Mum’s purse over his shoulder. “Give me the other magazine,” he said.

  Luke was crying again, his breathing rapid and panicked. Fighting his own crying jag, he said, “Aiden, let’s go…”

  “Just do it!” Aiden said, trying to make his voice like Dad’s, that Army officer voice that wouldn’t put up with bad behavior, disobedience, or crying.

  It must have worked because Luke mastered himself, dug into the purse, and held out the other magazine with his small and shaking hand. But before taking it, Aiden pressed the release on the side of the pistol and pulled out the one that was in there, then traded with Luke.

  “Reload that one from the box,” he said.

  Luke shook his head. “Aiden, I want to go! We have to go!”

  Aiden paused to think. Maybe Luke was right. He remembered what he had been thinking about before – that his most important job was to protect his brother, second only to protecting the little girl. But something tickled at the back of his mind. What would Dad say?

  As his mind raced, he looked back to the open crawlspace. The two bodies wedged in there were moving again, but not under their own power. There must be more trying to come in behind them, shoving the others forward.

  He stole a glance over his shoulder, seeing the glass doors at the end of the long hallway he thought led outside. He didn’t know what was beyond that, but he guessed the whole rest of CentCom. He looked back to the crawlspace. There was no way to shut it. There was only them here to guard it.

  He knew from talks with his father that this CentCom base was the center of the military, and in charge of the whole war to keep the Zulus out of England. What would happen if they got loose in here? Right now they were bottled up. And it was only the two of them at the bottleneck.

  And suddenly Aiden knew what Dad would tell him. That he did have a job more important than protecting his brother, or even protecting the little girl.

  It was to do his duty.

  “We have to stay here for now,” he said to Luke. “You have to watch over the girl. But you also have to get the bullets out and reload for me.”

  “How long?” Luke asked, crying, even as he complied and tried to get the cardboard flap of the box of bullets pulled out. “How long do we have to stay?”

  Aiden wrapped both hands back around the pistol and held his aim steady on the slowly advancing bodies in the crawlspace. “Until help comes. Or until we run out of ammo.”

  “Okay,” Luke said, finally. He was bracing up, and asked only one more question. “But what’s going to happen to us?”

  Aiden could hear the click of Luke pushing bullets into the magazine, like Dad had showed them. He didn’t even look over his shoulder when he answered – and he knew he wouldn’t have to tell his brother whose words he was using.

  “Don’t worry too much about that.”

  * * *

  “Sir!”

  As far as Miller was aware, he was the only officer on duty in the JOC at the moment. Ali had taken off to meet the SEAL up on the walls with the MZ and paintball guns – and he had his doubts about her being an officer at all.

  With a grimace, he moved to the station Cpl Jones was hunched over and calling to him from. It was the CCTV monitors. When he got there, the problem was self-evident and needed no annotation. Two Zulus could be seen stumbling through the gloomy video frame. And the gloom they were stumbling through was very obviously somewhere inside the prison. But then it did turn out to require some commentary.

  Jones pointed at the white text at the top of the screen, which denoted the location of that camera. Miller couldn’t unpack the text, so just looked at Jones expectantly.

  “That’s about a hundred feet from the armory,” she said.

  “Ah, hell.”

  Miller straightened up. Dead inside the prison were bad. But if they lost the armory, just as the fight at the walls was heating up, they were in big trouble. He grabbed a desk mic, the radio already set to the joint command channel for unit leaders across the base. And he kept his voice calm and stuck to formal radio procedure. But the gist of his transmission was fairly unmistakable:

  Somebody with guns had better haul ass to the armory – RIGHT NOW…

  He paused before completing his transmission.

  Or we’re all well and truly fucked.

  He put the mic down on the desk again.

  No Fuck-Ups

  CentCom – North Walls

  Hardly needing to talk about it, Pred and Juice had slotted themselves in as anchor points on opposite ends of the front line. That line was the whole north section of the old prison walls, which in turn was the north sector of CentCom.

  The two also hadn’t had to discuss it much before making the half-strength troop of Royal Marines the center of that line. One look at them, and six words with their commander, had made it obvious these guys had more combat experience in their bootlaces than the RMPs had in their entire regiment.

  On the way through the dark and drizzling rain out to his sector, Pred had stopped to talk to the machine-gun crew on his side, explaining to them their priorities: accuracy, conservation of ammo, keeping their barrels from burning out – and, mainly, dropping the dead far out, before they piled up at the foot of the walls. Now he was pleased to hear them firing three- and five-round bursts, as he settled down into his spot on the left, but not all the way out on the flank. He wanted to be roughly in the center of the RMP/home-guard contingent on this side – like a mast, or mountain, they could rally around, and anchor to.

  “What’s up, dudes?” he said, physically pushing apart two British soldiers standing at the ramparts, and muscling in between them. This was just about the thickest concentration of defenders, but even here they weren’t exactly shoulder to shoulder. Then again, Pred needed a lot more room than the average bear.

  The two men stopped shooting, craned their necks, and looked up at him from either side, wi
de-eyed and ogling, as if Mag the Mighty had just come up on the line. Rainwater dripping down his giant head, Pred spat tobacco juice over the ramparts, then flipped his NVGs down from his helmet, brought his rifle up, actuated the IR laser on the barrel rail – and, following the spectral green beam through the darkness and thin rain, started taking single aimed headshots on dead about a hundred meters out.

  With every shot, another destroyed body hit the ground.

  He went through a full mag of 7.62 that way; then, as he fished another one out of a vest pouch, he noticed the rifles of the two men to either side of him were depressed nearly forty-five degrees. Laying his weapon down on the rampart, he reached out with both hands and gently raised both of theirs.

  “Farther out, guys,” he said over the noise of gunfire. “Gotta keep them from piling up against the walls.”

  Ceasing fire, the man to his right said, “Mate, we can’t hit them that far out.”

  The one to his left said, “Christ, I can’t see them that far.”

  Pred looked to either side. Neither man had NVGs, and both of their weapons had stock SUSAT sights, day optics. The rain wasn’t helping any, either. He sighed. “Okay. Just do your best.” They were trying.

  And all Pred could do was try to get the best out of them.

  * * *

  That was something Major Jameson never had to worry about. The Royal Marines of One Troop gave their best all the time, were magnificent even at their worst – and Colour Sergeant Croucher could be depended upon to beast the shit out of anyone found to be slacking off.

  Jameson was himself positioned, he believed, at the very center of the entire defense. He was pleased and honored, but not surprised, that One Troop had been placed in the center of the front line, occupying the central sector between the two MGs, both of which he could hear firing now. But it was hard to forget that they got chosen for every damned critical tasking. And he had chosen to put himself at the center of the center.

  But he was also happy for his unit to be back in something like a secure, or at least defensible, position. Having a British military base around them and allied forces at their sides, rather than having their asses hanging out in the wind all alone, was a hell of a lot better than they’d had in longer than any of them could recall. And, moreover, they had the situation well in hand, at least for now. With cover, stable firing platforms, NVGs, and even regular ammo deliveries coming up from the rear, this was practically a jolly for the Royal Marines.

  And while the dead were coming their way in droves, thicker and faster all the time, everyone in One Troop could shoot. And they were dropping them out at stand-off range, the destroyed bodies starting to pile up into a decent little physical barrier itself. Some were getting through and reaching the base of the walls, but they were even easier to drop there.

  Jameson had the impression the redcaps and other random soldiers out on their flanks were having a tougher day of it, plus trying to huddle miserably out of the rain, failing to understand that huddling didn’t keep you any drier. It didn’t do anything, except make you feel more miserable. But none of that was his damned problem. For once.

  However, when Jameson heard Miller’s transmission from the JOC about small numbers of dead inside the prison, threatening the armory, he sighed and figured they were probably in the best position to send a small detachment to deal with it. And when Croucher appeared at his elbow a few seconds later and said, “We’re probably closest,” that sealed it. Croucher was in a position to know – pretty much all One Troop had done here since returning from Moscow was top up on ammo before getting thrown back into the fight.

  “Take one man,” Jameson said.

  “I’ll go,” Simmonds chirped up, from Jameson’s other side.

  “Leave your bergen,” Croucher said, shucking his ruck and tossing it down beside the wall. “You won’t need it, and without it slowing you down we’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Simmonds dropped his bag by Croucher’s. Both sagged with the weight of ammo – they’d grabbed all they could when last in the armory, not knowing that it was also being ferried to the walls by support personnel. He then turned to follow Croucher, but Jameson grabbed his arm and stopped him.

  “No fuck-ups,” he said, repeating his line from long ago, and watching as Simmonds’s smile melted into a hang-dog expression. But then he gave him a wink, and shoved him off.

  Then he called it in on the radio.

  And he got back in the fight.

  * * *

  “JOC, One Troop will take it. Two personnel en route to armory now, over.”

  Wesley pressed hard on his earpiece to hear this over the machine gun banging away out on the front walkway of his guard-tower CP. He got the gist of it, then squinted in thought as he considered.

  On the one hand, he was relieved. The Royal Marines were clearly the best fighters they had at their disposal, outside of Alpha team, of course. And also Fick. Wesley wouldn’t take Fick on. It was reassuring to have One Troop addressing this incursion. And they were capably defending their sector in the center of the line, so could spare the manpower.

  On the other hand, Wes didn’t like the idea of only two men, even skilled and experienced ones, dealing with this. He knew how quickly one could be infected and turn, leaving the other not just on his own – but at the mercy of his former buddy.

  He tapped the RMP sergeant in the CP with him, who was scanning out to the front with one of their few pairs of night-vision binoculars. “Pick two men to rendezvous with those Royal Marines and support them at the armory.”

  “Sir,” the man said, getting on his radio.

  But Wesley found he was still uneasy. And he realized: they needed not just to protect the armory. They needed to find the source of the damned incursion. Dead were getting in somehow. But from where? They needed to find out, and plug the gap. Things were bad enough outside the walls. He knew they couldn’t afford another outbreak inside.

  He looked out to the defenders and tried to decide if he could afford to pull more men off the line to go investigate. They were already spread thin and fighting unceasingly. Men, maybe – but not an NCO to lead them, someone responsible, and who Wes would trust to deal with it. His instinct was just to go and do it himself. But he knew his place as commander was here on the front line. Then again, they now had two Alpha operators, Pred and Juice, anchoring that line. And they were far better leaders in a fight than Wesley could be, even if he did this for a hundred years. And the fight seemed to be in hand, for now.

  That’s what he told himself, anyway.

  He tapped the RMP again. “The CP is yours. I’ll be back.”

  The man looked like he wanted to ask when. But he didn’t.

  Wes went out on the walls, grabbed two non-RMP soldiers from a relatively quiet section of line.

  And, with them in tow, he headed inside.

  * * *

  Out on the right side of the line, in mirror image to Pred, Juice was pretty much doing exactly the same thing his buddy was – right down to spitting tobacco juice into the rain, instructing the machine-gun crew, and trying to get the men fighting beside him to do better. But then he noticed something that wasn’t symmetric about the line.

  All the soldiers in a big section to his left, between his sector and the Royal Marines in the center, not only weren’t Marines – they weren’t even RMPs. They were men and women in British Army uniform, but it was obvious to Juice from the way they shot and behaved that they were support personnel conscripted into combat jobs. He immediately knew a trick had been missed here – those guys should be anywhere but near the center of the front line.

  This would probably have to be dealt with.

  But before Juice could move to do so, it stopped being a concern – and became a big problem. These guys were not only missing a lot, but even when they hit, they were dropping dead way too close to the walls. And, startlingly quickly, there was a significant pile of both active and destroyed dead beneath th
eir section. And, even faster than that, faster than anyone could react, a Foxtrot raced across no-man’s land, unscathed through the hails of gunfire, scrambled up the mass of bodies beneath the wall…

  And it leapt – not getting over the parapet at the top, but managing to latch onto it with both hands. The conscripts in that section, rather than sensibly beating it back down or, better yet, cutting its damned hands off, instead staggered away, panicked by its wild gyrations and shrieking right in their faces. As Juice hefted his rifle and turned, but before he could race down there to deal with it, a runner latched onto the Foxtrot’s legs, and another started scrambling up its back, and another behind it, and in seconds there was basically a flesh ladder up to the top of their previously secure walls.

  Jesus, Juice thought, it’s like the fall of Jerusalem all over again. Even as he pushed through the mob of fleeing defenders to get to the incursion, he could see runners clambering over the top, chasing fleeing soldiers in both directions, then leaping on them – and also slipping on the perilously wet walkway, and falling down to the yard below, mostly attached to the former defenders, who were breaking and running.

  The nearby machine-gun crew, between Juice and the breakthrough, traversed their weapon to the left to try to engage, but because of the pivot it was mounted on they not only couldn’t shoot down the platform at the invaders, but couldn’t even hit the pile-up against the wall being used to get in.

  And, in a few seconds, the MG crew was also overrun.

  Shoving forward like a spawning salmon, trying to get a shot through the mass exodus, Juice hit his radio.

  “Yeah, Pred, we got a little breakthrough down here.”

  “No problem. On my way.”

  That was good to hear. On the other hand, the situation had gone to hell with breathtaking suddenness. But that was the ZA for you.

  Some things never changed…

  * * *

  Simmonds didn’t speak as he followed Croucher, both of them running down the dirt ramp and then splashing across the open and increasingly muddy yard, heading for the interior of the prison and the armory. He was ruminating on Jameson’s parting shot to him: “No fuck-ups.” That had been exactly what he’d told him shortly before what had proved to be, by a very large margin, the biggest fuck-up of Simmonds’s career.