Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Read online

  But underneath her sarcastic reply, she also seemed to be looking up at him with some suppressed, underlying guilt.

  In reality, she was suddenly remembering how in her first hours on this ship, and her first with Handon, she swore not to become the Yoko Ono of Alpha team. To never let herself come between Handon and his team, between Handon and his job – which was pretty much the most important job in the world.

  And, if she let herself think about it, maybe that was exactly what she was doing now. Way deep down – though she was fighting like hell to whitewash it – some part of her knew that she had been behaving irresponsibly.

  And she probably even knew why.

  All the resistance and humor draining from her face, she said, “I just… it’s just been the giddy freedom, I think.”

  Handon gave her a look, like: What the hell does that mean?

  “I escaped. Against all the odds. I not only survived the end of the world – but I even got away from the man I thought I was going to be stuck with, taking care of, until the end of time. Suddenly, I was free.”

  As she admitted this, even Handon could see she was lacerated by guilt over it. How could she be rejoicing in her freedom – when it was earned by the death of her husband and son? He considered that maybe it was also the guilt that had been making her act out – making her weird, making her push the boundaries.

  Maybe he should cut her some slack.

  But for some reason now he flashed back to her and Homer having a big laugh about some inside joke from their private road trip. And he was suddenly pissed off again. He knew it was irrational.

  Homer and Sarah? he thought. Now THAT’s crazy talk.

  But, suddenly, unexpectedly, he closed the distance between them and grabbed her. She startled – but was also viscerally affected by this display of Handon’s powerful caveman side. Suddenly her breathing went shallow and fluttery, and her cheeks flushed.

  As Handon pushed her down onto the bed, he tried to banish his jealousy, to get it out of his head – where only his job belonged right now.

  Oh well. This’ll teach me to fall in love, he thought. Love and sexual attraction are all based on hormones anyway – and they don’t give a damn about your happiness, much less your mission…

  Pretty soon neither of them were thinking about the mission.

  * * *

  When their hatch knocked in the dark, Handon came instantly and smoothly awake and checked his watch on the bed table. It was still forty minutes before he needed to be up. He pulled on his skivvies and opened the hatch.

  Behind it was Dr. Park.

  He was holding a nylon pouch, which he pulled open to show Handon the contents. “I made you twelve doses of the serum to take with you,” he said. “If you need it, it should be administered daily, via intramuscular injection.”

  Handon nodded and took the pouch.

  “But listen,” Park said. “There’s been virtually no testing of this on humans. It could have all kinds of unknown or severe side effects – up to and including death.”

  Handon shrugged. “Somebody’s got to test it sometime. And if you’re already infected…”

  “Yeah,” Park said. “You’re pretty much dead already.”

  “Thanks,” Handon said, nodding and closing the hatch again.

  Dead Eyes

  Gulf of Aden - 250 Meters from Shore

  “Dig in!” Handon bellowed, leading by example as he jammed his own paddle into the frothing surf around them. “One man rows, the next man fights!”

  It didn’t take any particular tactical genius to know they had to get to shore before the boat was taken apart right out from underneath them – and probably them with it – by the school of whale sharks now inexplicably rampaging all around them. The engine was either disabled, or perhaps entirely gone at this point.

  The Navy pilot in the rear, evidently having no desire to pull a Captain Quint, had gone scrambling toward the fore, climbing over the stacks of supplies and away from the sinking stern and the monstrous creature there seemingly trying to swallow their boat whole. Ali leapt past him in the opposite direction, running to the point of maximum danger while drawing her sword.

  Climbing up on the stern gunwale, she could see the dead eyes of the nightmarish giant fish – and buried her blade right between them, instinct telling her to go for its brain. Jesus, Ali thought. That thing’s mouth must be five feet wide… It also seemed to have thousands of teeth, but they were tiny, thank God, and nothing like the flesh-rippers of a great white. Still, looking down its throat was like peering down a well to the center of the earth.

  You did NOT want to fall down there, she thought.

  And this one attacking the stern was only one of many.

  Half the combined team was now leaning out over the heaving gunwales, trying to stab or beat off the inexplicably attacking whale sharks.

  “Wait, why aren’t we shooting again?” Homer asked, seeming slightly amused by all this, as he got his boarding axe clear of its cinches on his pack and into play.

  “Melee weapons only,” Ali said, bringing her sword down again, and doing her best hard-ass Handon voice. “Plus it would probably just piss these things off.”

  Others were rowing, but so far they were going nowhere fast. The boat was jammed up, at the center of some bizarre mid-ocean feeding frenzy.

  “I thought you said they only ate plankton!” Juice yelled.

  Everyone turned to the starboard side at the rear as the sound of bellowing was followed by a heavy splash. Brady had gotten his knife into the head of one of the mythical-seeming aquatic monsters – and then declined to let go as the twenty-ton fish flexed at its middle, nearly folding in half, and pulling its head fifteen feet from the boat – and Brady right along with it.

  He went over the side before he could react.

  Reyes flew to that spot and leaned out, his arm reaching for his friend. The water was churning everywhere, but Brady was nowhere to be seen. Ali could see the look of alarm on Reyes’s face as he frantically scanned the surface for his teammate.

  It was a full fifteen seconds before the big lanky Marine’s head and shoulders broke the surface again – and he began stroking powerfully back toward the boat. Reyes leaned out further, extended his hand, and shouted, “Take my word for it! Don’t look back!” Brady actually smiled from around all the seawater and the deep breaths he was sucking to power his swim. But then his smile instantly evaporated – as did his forward progress. Something had him from behind, and Brady rolled on his back and started kicking for all he was worth. Something came free, mainly him, and he started moving again, and in five seconds Reyes was hauling him back over the side.

  When Ali looked over, she saw that he’d had to shuck his combat gear to keep from going to the bottom. His tactical vest and rifle were gone.

  And he was also shy a boot.

  Jesus, she thought, pulling her sword free, pivoting, and looking for another target. That’s not funny.

  The boat was taking on more water now, as giant masses of flesh bashed against the outside of the hull, which was beginning to splinter in spots. It occurred to Handon that they might actually sink – right then, right there, and with all hands aboard. Not a brilliant start to their final mission.

  Finally, amidships, Fick could be heard to mutter, “Okay, fuck all this noise” – and he yanked open one of the side hatches in the boat, rummaged around a first aid kit and some survival gear, and finally came up with a flare gun. Then he moved to the other side and repeated the operation. Ali saw where he was going with this – so she stuck her sword in the deck and started pulling grenades from webbing. Most everyone had at least one, flashbang, HE, she didn’t give a damn, she took anything that looked like it would go boom.

  She pulled pins, let spoons fly, and started chucking – geysers appearing in sequence at twelve o’clock, nine o’clock, six o’clock… – even as Fick, with flare guns akimbo, started triggering off into the water on all sides of
the beleaguered boat, the bright-red winking magnesium flares arcing low over the water, hitting the surface, then continuing to burn bright as they slowly sank into the darkness.

  Almost instantly, the pressure on the boat was relieved, the feeding frenzy dissipated, and they had some breathing room. The nightmarishly aggressive whale sharks were scattering, following the noise and light show that had been set off away from the boat on all sides.

  Wordlessly, those with oars dug in – hard. And soon, though not quite soon enough, the wooden hull scraped the shingle of the beach in the gloom. As one, the operators leapt out and dragged the boat up the pebbly sand, until it was resting half out of the water. One of the sailors waded out to assess the damage to the engine, and when he came back he literally had no words. Or only one, anyway.

  “Fuckers,” was all he managed.

  “Those things did not look healthy,” Brady said, as he wrung out his socks, sitting in the sand amid a circle of alert operators. Handon and Fick had quickly set security on the beach, and were giving him exactly one minute to get himself unfucked before they moved out.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Henno asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brady said, standing up, and visibly trying to decide whether there was any point in keeping one boot. “They had dead eyes.”

  “Of course they did,” Reyes said, coming over and elbowing him in the ribs. He put on his best Captain Quint voice. “‘The thing about a shark, it’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes… and then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red—”

  “Shut the fuck up, man,” Graybeard said, in his raspy, quiet, dangerously calm old-ass operator voice. “You’re fired as morale officer.”

  Brady looked over to Ali, who had been practically on top of one of them. “Did those things look healthy to you?”

  Ali shrugged. “What am I, a whale shark gynecologist?”

  No one quite understood what the hell had just happened to them. They all felt grateful to have gotten to shore alive. But not one of them considered this a good omen. Africa had just greeted them with an enormous Fuck you – before they had even reached it.

  And it felt as if the rules of the game were changing yet again.

  It’s Not Going to Suck Itself

  Djibouti - the Beach Outside the Airport

  “Cadaver, Thunderchild, commo check, over.”

  Handon was standing farther up the strand, scanning the dusky dunes ahead. This message came in over the CAS net, and he paused to appreciate that the F-35 pilot had stayed out of his ear until they were out of danger. It couldn’t have been easy. She must have seen what was going on. But there wasn’t anything she could have done to support them from the air anyway. The sharks were basically in their laps.

  “Thunderchild, this is Cadaver One Actual, you’re five by five.”

  “Everyone okay down there? Anything I can do?”

  “Cadaver is green, up, and up. No action required. Maintain CAP. Out.”

  Fick stepped up to join him. “No point taking it out on the pilot chick.”

  Handon cracked a smile, despite himself. Looking over his shoulder at the half-eaten boat, he said, “Good thinking with the flares.”

  Fick nodded. “Yeah, well, it worked for you with that Russian drone.”

  Juice padded up to report to the two leaders. “The bad news is it looks like we lost about half the combat load-out to that bullshit.” Handon had assigned him to catalogue their losses. Unfortunately, the supplies had all been stowed in the stern, and some or much of it had spilled out and gone to the bottom when the first whale shark half-flopped onto the back of the boat. “The worse news is that almost all the losses are ammo.”

  Handon shook his head. “You’re kidding me.”

  Juice shrugged. “The pallets of water floated in place. The MREs are vacuum-sealed, so even more buoyant. But the ammo slid out and sank. And the boat’s a write-off. It’ll float, for a while, but the propeller and shaft are gone. Literally gone.”

  As Juice turned and went back to the others, Handon just kept shaking his head. He was thinking, Well, isn’t this typical for our missions – things going to hell from the very outset…

  Fick said it out loud: “Aren’t we just Bad Luck Chuck. Or the Keystone Operators, maybe.”

  Handon looked over at him, his expression stony. “What the hell was that?”

  Fick exhaled, scanning the horizon. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The whole world’s gone to shit. They probably just went nuts from having no plankton to eat or something.”

  Handon squinted slightly, regarding the slightly shorter, slightly stockier senior NCO. “What, so all the algae died, from the dead bodies wading out into the surf? Something like that?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Fick said, rolling his shoulder. He didn’t know, and pretty obviously didn’t care that much. It was behind them.

  They both turned again as Henno came stalking up from the rear. He was squared away, rifle cradled, expression all business. He’d obviously had enough faffing about on the beach. He wore an expression that said, This isn’t the Costa del Sol, and we are NOT on holiday…

  As he reached the two commanders, he nodded approvingly and said, “Looks like we’ve burned the boats, then.”

  Fick raised a thick eyebrow. “And that’s a good thing?”

  Henno nodded again. “Worked for Cortés.”

  “Yeah, well, there were a lot fewer Aztecs in Mexico than dead guys in Africa.”

  “Quit your whinging,” Henno said. “We’re a hell of a lot better armed than the Spaniards.”

  And with that, he stalked off, heading up over the dunes that ringed the beach. He didn’t look back, and was obviously expecting the others – including the leaders – to follow.

  Handon looked back, preparing to make a move out signal – but they were already doing so themselves, taking the initiative and self-organizing. He and Fick waited for the men to fall in and file by, before bringing up the rear.

  Ali hitched up her ruck, adjusted her slung weapon, and set off, muttering, “Well, it’s not going to suck itself…”

  Reyes laughed out loud. “Ha! What the hell does that mean?”

  Already passing him by, Ali said, “I saw it on a t-shirt once – the punchline being that it was being worn by a woman.”

  “Okay, what does it mean now?”

  “That this is definitely going to suck. But it’s not gonna do it on its own.”

  Reyes laughed again as he filed by.

  As Brady passed the commanders, he had his bayonet out and held in an overhand grip. Having lost almost everything, he’d somehow hung on to this. Fick nodded his approval – if you’re going to get hauled overboard and nearly drown to death for a knife, you may as well come out of it with the damned knife. Marching beside him, Graybeard glanced over and said, “Looks like you’re kicking it Walking Dead style on this one.”

  “Yeah, man. Silent and deadly. This and some BJJ takedowns, and I’ll have this continent subdued in a week.”

  Graybeard shook his head. “Kid, you’re cockier than a guy with six cocks.”

  Brady nodded in agreement. “And I get more trim than the hedges at Versailles.”

  Following behind those two were Predator and Homer. Pred was still limping, and Homer still had visible band-aids on his face – not to mention stitches and bandages on his arm and half his torso, from all the knife wounds he had taken fighting off half a naval Spetsnaz brigade underneath the carrier. As they went by, Handon could hear them talking quietly to each other. Pred, making light of their dinged-up state, shook his head and muttered, “I expect we’ll all be wounded, dead, or turned before this is over.”

  Homer nodded, but said, “Hey, don’t rule us out yet. Humanity’s made it a long time.”

  “I’d give humanity even odds.” Pred smiled sadly. “But not us.”

  “C’mon – everyone knows you’re invulnerable. You’ll make it. And
I’d like to see you in peacetime.”

  Pred shook his head. “I can’t even remember that now. I can’t imagine it.” As he’d been doing on and off since his one-man rampage on the flight deck battle, Pred thought again of his young wife Cali, far behind him in North Carolina – and lost to him forever. And, for just a second, he wondered what he was going to do if they did manage to save the world – and he survived long enough to live in it.

  He figured he’d just have to work that out then.

  Following behind, Juice overheard this exchange, and wished he knew how to help his friend. But he knew Pred would put it aside for now, for the sake of the mission. Because there was still a hell of a lot of ZA between them and a saved world. Or even between them and safety back in Britain.

  If there even was still any kind of safety back there.

  No Fuck-Ups

  London - 500 Feet Over Wandsworth Common

  Squirters.

  That’s what Captain Charlotte Maidstone was looking for as she took her borrowed AH-1 Apache attack helicopter through another long, low, sweeping pass over the grounds of CentCom Strategic Headquarters. This whole place had recently been the site of a rampaging and nearly terminal outbreak – one which, had it not been stopped, almost certainly would have proved fatal to the last defenses of Britain, and humanity’s last stand.

  After taking down a runner right to its face with her side arm, and then hopping in a spare Apache, Charlotte had been instrumental in containing the eruption of rampaging dead before it reached critical mass. Now, with her shoulder-length straw-blonde hair spilling out in a ponytail at the back of her £22,000 custom-made helmet, her eagle-like green eyes scanned the whole area below. Her excellent vision was augmented by the aircraft’s combined sensor and targeting system – electro-optics, laser rangefinder and target designator, plus a 127x zoom camera – all of it fed into her helmet-mounted sights and slaved to the movements of her head.

  And while she could clearly make out various groups of human figures moving around below in the complex of buildings, landing strips, and parade grounds, they all appeared to be living ones.