Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Read online

  But if she found any that weren’t… well, backing up the high-tech optics was a 30mm autocannon which fired high-explosive dual-purpose (HEDP) rounds, ten per second – the gun also slaved to her head, and pointing wherever she looked.

  She knew how to use the sensors, she was damned deadly with the autocannon, and moreover she knew how to track down squirters. Mostly, these had been Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, escaping from infantry assaults or air strikes – bad guys hauling ass away from bullets or bombs, scattering in ones and twos into the surrounding hills or forests. Charlotte had cleaned up a lot of squirters on her two deployments to brutally contested Helmand Province.

  But it definitely hadn’t been her favorite part of that job.

  What really got her up in the morning was zooming in to support beleaguered British squaddies on the ground – protecting her boys. It was always about keeping them safe, and never leaving one behind. Today, as usual, it was the ground-pounders – in this case the Royal Marines of Lieutenant Jameson’s One Troop – who had borne the brunt of the fighting. But Charlotte’s overwatch, mobility, and aerial firepower had been a critical component.

  And Charlotte knew that more men were alive down there now because of her being up here then.

  And just as she found herself thinking of Jameson – the unassuming yet formidable Royal Marine officer she had pulled out of that vortex of collapsing building and swarming runners in Dusseldorf – his voice spoke aloud in her ear. At this point, she’d know that voice anywhere.

  “Wyvern Two Zero, CentCom Actual, how copy?”

  Even if she didn’t recognize the call sign. Technically, Wyvern Two Zero wasn’t her call sign anymore, either, as this was a different mission, and even a different aircraft, than in Germany. But she knew what he meant. His call sign, on the other hand, was a little harder to get her head around.

  “CentCom Actual, Wyvern Two Zero copies. But, fuck me, Lieutenant, they didn’t put you in charge of this whole cock-up, did they? Over.”

  “That’s exactly what they did. And it’s Major now.” Jameson’s tone said that on another occasion he might enjoy this witty badinage, but at the moment he actually didn’t even have time to scratch his privates, and he wasn’t calling now for a friendly chat. He also didn’t need her taking the piss about his rank or new job, about which no one was more surprised, or less happy, than him.

  He got right back to the reason for his call. “Are you the only operational helo pilot we’ve got on this base? Over.”

  “Negative. The majority are deployed and flying in theater across the south. But there are a handful of rotary-wing and fixed-wing pilots on standby here.”

  “Received. What is their location?”

  “Pilots’ ready room, adjacent to the main hangar.”

  “Good. Let’s keep them there.” Jameson sounded relieved. “I need you to RTB and get down there, too. The time may soon come when we need you to save our asses again, so I want to keep you safely in storage. How copy?”

  Charlotte hesitated and considered her response, while she zoomed in on some movement in a copse of trees and banked around to get behind it. “All received, Major. But, with respect, I’d like to request permission to stay on station. I’ve still got fuel and armaments. I can be your eyes and quick-strike capability.” She paused. No response. “I’m a piece you want on the board, not in a drawer. And assuming this place was secure was what almost lost it in the first place.”

  There was the briefest of pauses on the other end. “Roger that. Permission granted. Jameson out.”

  Charlotte had no trouble reading between the lines on that one, either. It said: Whatever. Basically, he didn’t have time to micromanage every decision. He was already totally overwhelmed with what was on his plate at that moment in the Joint Operations Center (JOC) below.

  But however the decision got made, Charlotte was happy. Simply, she just didn’t want to be grounded – she never did. She wanted to be on station, and she wanted to be in the fight. And she could only help protect her boys when she was up above them riding her fire-breathing dragon.

  It turned out there was indeed a figure coming out of the other side of the copse of trees. Luckily for him, he turned and waved at Charlotte – only seconds before he might have caught a 30mm flame job.

  And from the frantic movement of his arm, he knew how close he’d come.

  Charlotte pushed her cyclic to the right, throttled her dual Rolls-Royce engines up, and blasted off toward the other side of the base.

  She had fewer boys to protect down there now.

  But they needed her more than ever.

  * * *

  Major Jameson clicked off the air channel, but left his radio headset where it was – squarely on his head. There was little chance of his going a full minute without needing it.

  At the sound of his name being spoken, he turned around to face one of the support staff – who might have been a cook or a janitor in real life, for all Jameson knew, but was at least a corporal in the British Army – who had been pressed into service helping with radio operations in the JOC. The only two legit operations officers left alive were at that moment sitting at two of the only fully functional tactical stations left undestroyed – the pair of them two-handedly trying to run the entire battle for the south of England.

  Everyone else on the JOC staff was dead.

  The lightning outbreak that had started with the Foxtrot version of Major Grews had taken down the entire JOC in minutes – and most likely would have taken down the whole complex, if One Troop Royal Marines hadn’t hit the ground and rushed into the breach, guns blazing. Hell, Jameson’s troop sergeant, Eli, had taken down Zombie Grews himself – after he got outside the walls, and was seconds away from disappearing into the general population of inner London.

  Which probably would have been like a match to a drought-ravaged forest. It could easily have been “the end of the fucking world,” to use the words of the late Colonel Mayes – the son of a bitch who, by dying, had dropped this whole shitty situation in Jameson’s lap.

  “Go,” Jameson said to the corporal, not caring to waste syllables, or seconds.

  “Sir. I spoke to personnel in the pilots’ ready room. Good news – yes, those last two B200s out on the deck are flight-ready. And, yes, one of them can land on the American carrier. And they’ve even got somebody who can fly it, plus someone who will do as a co-pilot.”

  Jameson wondered if the co-pilot was qualified on that aircraft. He decided he didn’t want to know, and kept his mouth shut. It was enough that they’d be able to fulfill the Americans’ request to send another plane – to get their magical scientist and his vaccine back to Britain.

  Maybe even before everyone there was all dead.

  The very last act of Colonel Mayes had been to read Jameson in on the joint mission to North America to retrieve a rumored vaccine against the plague. It was just one more damned thing Jameson was having to manage. On the other hand, it was perhaps the best reason they had to keep fighting – and for staying alive.

  The corporal smiled. “The pilot said to leave it with him – they’d get out there, get the plane prepped, file a flight plan, and get in the air.”

  Jameson almost relaxed for a second. Something going right – and someone else handling it. This was like a deep-tissue massage to the pummeled flesh of his psyche. He nodded and was already turning away, when the corporal chirped up again. “It’s only, sir, he wants to know about mid-air refueling. Sir.”

  Jameson stopped turning and blinked once. “What?”

  “Well, sir,” and with this the corporal referenced a clipboard and started reading numbers off it. Jameson listened stonily as he was informed that it was 3,758 miles from London to the Gulf of Aden where the JFK was anchored – and that the B200, their little Beechcraft twin-turboprop utility plane, the only aircraft type on base that could land on the carrier, had a maximum range of 2,075 miles. Getting it there, never mind getting it back again,
was going to require mid-air refueling.

  Jameson further gathered that this operation had been done once before, when they sent a team of bioscientists and a load of scientific equipment out to the carrier. But he hadn’t been around for that, and he was damned if he knew how all that worked – aeronautically, logistically, or (most of all) administratively.

  Luckily, one of the actual ops officers working at a station nearby overhead this exchange, despite being involved in a half-dozen stacked-up radio transmissions. He was a second lieutenant and Jameson seemed to recall his name was Miller.

  “Brize Norton,” Miller said, covering the mic on his radio headset. He meant the RAF base in nearby Oxfordshire. “101 Squadron has Voyager KC2 and KC3 AAR tankers.” Jameson must have looked blank. The ops guy looked annoyed. “Air-to-air refueling aircraft.”

  Jameson restarted his breathing. “Can they support this flight?”

  “Last I heard there was exactly one Voyager still flying and mission-capable. And that’s if Brize Norton isn’t overrun.”

  Jameson’s expression darkened. “What? We don’t even know?” How could they not know which British military bases were overrun?

  The ops guy pointed to the huge, and now completely shattered, digital display at the front of the JOC – the one that had previously displayed in high resolution the entire battlespace of southern England, including the lines of advance of the dead, as well as the location of all military units fighting them. Jameson got it: their big picture had been blown into a thousand shards – and everything they knew they were having to cobble together piecemeal.

  He looked down and said to Miller, “Can you organize this refueling?”

  The man made a fucked-off expression and pointed at his headset – out of which were leaking multiple voices, urgent and panicked, all clearly expecting support and coordination from CentCom. And all of which support was being provided by a tiny handful of personnel, most of them ill-trained for the job, rather than the forty full-time subject matter experts and TOC jocks who were supposed to be running this place.

  Jameson shook his head, looked around at the several other people who had queued up needing something from him, and looked back to the ill-trained corporal. “Organize the refueling mission. Make it happen. Do whatever it takes. Don’t bother me about it again until it’s done.” Delegating was his only chance of keeping his head above water here.

  But then Jameson grimaced. He had already told the Americans they we were sending an aircraft, in response to their request. He figured that as soon as that started being true, he’d better ring them back up and give them an updated ETA.

  For that matter, he thought grimly, I wouldn’t say no to an ETA on that vaccine of theirs – if such a thing actually exists, or is even possible…

  But he pushed that thought away, and turned back into the maelstrom.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, though it felt much longer, Jameson sensed as much as heard Sergeant Eli behind him. His long-time troop sergeant, and best friend, was now pretty much the only thing allowing Jameson to keep any of the wheels on this wagon. He was now serving as his acting 2IC both in running this base, and in managing the chaos that was the JOC and the fight for the south.

  “Sir,” Eli said, looking and sounding as unfazed as Jameson hadn’t felt in a long, long time. That was the great and indispensable thing about grizzled NCOs. Experienced and hard-bitten, they remained untroubled and combat effective however crazy things got. Jameson made a mental note to shoot himself in the head immediately if anything ever happened to Eli.

  He nodded at his friend to go ahead.

  “As ordered, we’ve taken command of all surviving base personnel.”

  Jameson exhaled. Thank God. “Outstanding. I want everyone in uniform and still breathing air reporting to and under the operational control of you or one of your Marines. Down to and including our most junior enlisted.”

  “It’s already being done.”

  Jameson nodded. “We are running this show now, we are responsible – and there will be no more fuck-ups.”

  Eli nodded, still unfazed. “Leave it with me. Do you also want me to organize a full assembly? Or just the RMPs, so you can issue orders?”

  He meant the Royal Military Police who, aside from One Troop, were the only remotely effective fighting force here in what was supposed to be a hardened military installation. But Jameson shook his head. “No. You speak for me, with my voice, and you can handle it. Alert me if you need input or resources.”

  “Roger that.” Eli cocked his head. “Any update on the arrival of the command element from Edinburgh?”

  The only really good news in the whole pear-shaped situation was that Jameson & Co. were only going to have to manage this shit-show for a little while longer. At that point, a whole slew of replacement commanders and ops officers, basically a JOC-in-a-box, would be flying in from CentCom North HQ in Scotland, and would take this whole thing off their hands.

  Jameson hadn’t had time to get an update on that. “No. Assume they’re on schedule.” He checked his wristwatch, at the end of a soot-streaked bare forearm, his camo combat shirtsleeves long ago rolled up. It was hard even to remember that they had stepped off the helicopters from the Germany mission and virtually straight into the outbreak here – and its aftermath, including inheriting responsibility for everything. “It’s less than two and a half hours total flying time by Chinook, so they should be here within the hour.”

  Eli nodded. “Thank fuck for that. Sir.”

  Jameson smiled. As usual, his troop sergeant had it right. But then his smile melted away… as Jameson mentally pictured some blighting Foxtrot they had missed in their sweeps leaping out at the arriving command detachment and mauling them all before they could relieve One Troop, and particularly Jameson, from this loathsome duty.

  He looked at Eli seriously. “Listen. I want one last sweep – of everything. But starting at the helipad and hangar, and pushing out from there.”

  Eli nodded. He got it.

  “Prioritize this, put every warm body you can scavenge on it – and do it now. Whatever’s already been checked three times, check it a fourth and fifth. Our relief is going to take over as planned. Seriously – no fuck-ups.”

  “Understood,” Eli said. “We’ll do it proper.”

  Eli knew his boss was on target as usual. It wasn’t just that they wanted out of there. It was that they were totally unqualified for the job they were doing. Simply, they had to see this through to a successful handover – or else they would be half-assedly manning that place until everyone everywhere was dead.

  Including, in the end, them.

  But Jameson almost smiled at the thought of the handover. “With luck, we’ll be doing some nice relaxing zombie fighting out on the ground by nightfall.”

  Eli saluted, turned on his heel – and headed out to get it done.

  Days Not Weeks

  CentCom HQ - Helipad

  “No fuck-ups,” Private Simmonds told the two RMPs, stressing the most important of their mission parameters. He knew this was a little cheeky, not least because the two “Redcaps” – as the Royal Military Police were called due to their traditional scarlet berets – outranked him. Both were sergeants. But word had come down from the top – and the top was now Major Jameson – that when it came to chain of command, there was everyone in One Troop… and then there was everyone else.

  The Royal Marines were calling the shots now.

  “Sweep through the hangar complex,” Simmonds said. “Every corner, every closet. Then push back out here to the helipad where you’re on stag until that flight of Chinooks lands.” Simmonds checked his wristwatch, worn operator style on the inside of his left wrist. “Which is less than thirty minutes from now. So get moving!”

  The two RMPs nodded, faces stony. They sure as hell weren’t saluting.

  As they turned to leave, Simmonds stopped them by saying, “Wait – you’re both topped up on rifle m
ags, right?” They responded only by looking down at their chest pouches, which were very obviously full of magazines. Simmonds reached out and tapped a grenade clipped on to the webbing of one of them. “Don’t expect you’ll be needing those—”

  “Right. We’re off.” They’d had enough of having their jobs explained to them.

  Simmonds called after them, “Just make sure nothing dead comes out of there alive!” He grinned as he watched the pair head off.

  He was rather enjoying this being-in-charge lark.

  * * *

  Jameson stood at the shot-out windows that faced the airstrip and watched the little Beechcraft commuter plane defy gravity and leave their patch of earth behind.

  Nice, he thought. More things happening in good order. He figured he’d better update the Americans. He was also very interested in learning more about the state of this rumored vaccine that was going to save their bacon. He’d gotten no more than a fifteen-minute briefing from his predecessor, the horribly wounded and infected Colonel Mayes, before the man had to nip off and shoot himself.

  Jameson walked over to one of the stations – not one manned by either of the two ops officers, who had much more critical and urgent things to do – but that same shanghaied corporal he’d dealt with earlier.

  “Do you know our long-range frequencies?”

  “Sir?”

  “The ones used with expeditionary units. Overseas.”

  “Um – no, sir.”

  “Well, figure it out. You’ll also need to load up whatever radio encryption key we use to talk to the Americans.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I’m going to stand here and look at you while you do it.”

  The young man, who already looked overmastered by his tasks, now looked physically crushed. Pressed down in his seat, features sagging, like his own personal gravity field had doubled.

  Jameson just rested his elbow on the man’s radio set and smiled.

  If he feels crushed now, he thought, just wait and see how he feels when two million walking dead get here…