Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain Read online

  Well, the elite operators were too few to make any difference then.

  And this was a next war that no part of the military, even its elite, had been prepared to fight. Finally, the only survivors were scattered small units of SOF in remote locations overseas – and particularly those training for an ultra-secret joint mission on a certain hardy island nation in the stormy North Atlantic…

  * * *

  Sergeant Major Handon realized, almost too late, that he’d somehow lifted all the way to the point of muscle failure – even with the low, warm-up weight. How many freaking reps was that…? The transporting music, and the transfixing vision of his memory and mind’s eye, had caused him to lose track completely.

  With a last pulse of strength, he heaved the bending and trembling bar up to the lower pegs on the rack behind and above him, and rolled out from under it. Sitting up, he regarded his hands in the low light, while the music still rolled over him, and his breathing slowly came back down to normal.

  It took 100,000 years to build up all of human civilization, he thought to himself, almost amused. And it took the virus, a strand of RNA barely 100 nanometers long, less than 100 days to bring it all down…

  KEN TAI I-CHI ("ATTACK AND DEFENSE ARE THE SAME")

  “Onegai shimasu,” Ali said to Pope, bowing deeply, her wooden sword, or boken, held straight before her in both hands. Pope bowed in mirror image. The two stood facing each other on the padded floor of the “dojo” that they had cobbled together in the basement of the Hereford gym.

  Pope was Alpha’s guy from the elite paramilitary arm of the CIA, the Special Activities Division (SAD). A child of immigrants from the Caribbean, he had served as a marine officer through a half dozen tours in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, before being recruited by the Agency. Guarding spooks and rescuing hostages in some of the world’s very dodgiest corners had been his idea of a relaxing retirement activity. Thin, dark, and extremely soft-spoken, Pope was also the prototypical “gray man.” You didn’t notice him until he killed you.

  Coming out of his bow, he hauled back and launched a powerful diagonal strike at Ali’s neck, which she countered with a loud snap, while pivoting around him like a big cat.

  Despite the wooden swords, the bamboo armor, and the pleasantries in Japanese, Kendo (literally, “Way of the Sword”) was not practiced at Hereford in any form that pre-apocalyptic devotees of the sport would have recognized. As Neal Stephenson once noted, “Kendo is to real samurai sword fighting what fencing is to real swashbuckling: an attempt to take a highly disorganized, chaotic, violent, and brutal conflict and turn it into a cute game.” Needless to point out, the men and one woman of Alpha had no time for games in the ZA.

  Pope and Ali traded a half dozen more high strikes, spinning and grunting, before Pope tried for a decapitation strike. Ali dropped out from underneath it, and took Pope’s legs out with a mighty side swing. Now they half lay facing each other.

  Just-in-time learning and training, for specialized missions and environments, was old hat for special operators. But, who, really, would ever have guessed that Japanese sword fighting would become the new rage, after the fall? At various times, the fashion had been for Brazilian ju jitsu, Krav Maga, the Close Quarters Defense system… and always the incessant pistol, assault rifle, submachine gun, and sniper rifle work. But it turned out the medieval Samurai had the best line on close-quarters, silent combat in varied terrain against multiple, swarming opponents.

  The pair of duelers banged swords four times at close range on the ground, neither able to generate any power while prone, before Ali closed to grapple. But Pope was already rolling away and back onto his feet.

  Virtually everyone operational at Hereford now carried a wakizashi, the samurai short sword, as a secondary weapon. Some also went out with the long sword, the katana, for certain kinds of specialty work – for instance, in heaving strongholds of the dead, where silence was non-negotiable. And where backup wasn’t coming – ever.

  Inevitably, of course, it was now the fondest dream of some of these badasses to get to the point where they could fight with the long sword in the right hand, the short in the left, whirling and flashing, and holding off unlimited zombies, with no support. (“My left hand is my fire support,” as the saying went.) Alas, fighting with two swords was a lot like shooting two pistols simultaneously: looks very cool in Hollywood (or Hong Kong) movies, but takes an insane level of specialized skill, plus a very particular scenario with multiple moving opponents, for it to be worthwhile. It was virtually always better to just focus on one weapon and using it masterfully.

  Both coming to their feet again, sucking for air, swinging and slashing close-hauled and with zero room for error, the two dancers whirled around the room.

  For Ali, the swordfighting was like an intense meditation. Every motion was instinct and improvisation, and her mind was set free, for reverie, for recollection… for revolving again around to her memories of how they got there, the bizarre gravity well of the fall…

  * * *

  She remembered a much earlier moment of looking at Pope’s handsome and serene face, unmasked and unarmored then, as they sat in back of a humming Royal Air Force BAE 156. They were finally on their way to the staging area for the North Korea op. Six months of intensive planning, training, logistics, and rehearsals – all to infiltrate their hybrid team into the world’s last Stalinist police state.

  North Korea had already gone nuclear while the world stood and stared. They had even been involved in nuclear proliferation, supplying Pakistan and Iran with technology and materials. But now they had been found to be manufacturing Plutonium-239, in one of their existing fission reactors. HEU, highly enriched uranium, had been one thing. It was the primary ingredient in the atomic bombs of which the North Koreans already had several.

  But plutonium was something else entirely – it would allow them to produce hydrogen bombs, orders of magnitude more destructive than what they already had.

  The U.S. and UK had decided that could not be allowed to happen.

  By this point in time, the strange pandemic, the one that made its victims dazed and violent, that had them turning on and attacking medical personnel, friends, loved ones… had begun to filter through the news. It had just started to get the attention of the world’s medical authorities, not to mention started to cause paranoia amongst travelers. The ever-present white face masks of the bird flu and swine flu days made a major comeback.

  But no one yet knew what they were really dealing with.

  So Alpha team’s mission had proceeded on schedule. There would always be pandemics. But loose H-bombs could spell the end of civilization as humanity knew it.

  The RAF plane was a small passenger jet, with only thirty seats, so when it turned on a dime, everyone on board could feel the lurch. Ali and Pope exchanged looks across the tiny table. Captain Ainsley came in from the forward compartment.

  The seven other operators, and the dozen support personnel, turned to face him.

  “We’re standing down,” he said. Everyone at this level was far too professional to grouse. They just took it in. Ali’s first thought was that it must be something to do with the pandemic. But she was wrong. The captain visibly swallowed a lump in his throat.

  “Two BA triple-sevens have just gone down on approach to Heathrow. One crashed into a populated area just outside of London, in Slough. The other ditched in the Channel.”

  There was a small reaction to this, an intake of breath, a catch of shock throughout the cabin. The age of terror was back – it had never left. But it seemed like too many threats at once now. Too much to take in, or to take on.

  “All incoming flights into the UK have been diverted, all those scheduled going out canceled. As a military transport, we’re just getting in under the ban. Our plan is to RTB and regroup there. I don’t know what the status of our mission is now. We may be re-tasked.”

  It turned out that the terror plot had actually been against multiple
civilian aircraft, and multiple terrorist cells had to be taken down. The total air ban in the UK stretched out to over a week. The tightened security also slowed train and ferry traffic to a trickle.

  What no one at the time could have known was that these terrorist attacks of 11/11, coming too late in the day ever to be really infamous, ultimately saved Britain. By cutting off all long-haul air travel and immigration into the country, just at the most critical time, and by sheer luck, they also cut off the most rapid method by which the virus spread.

  In the few days that followed, the plague reached a global tipping point – much more rapidly than anyone could have predicted. The majority of victims went down before they even had any idea what was going on. By the time the horrible truth started to get out, the dead outnumbered the living. And the downfall of mankind was more or less a foregone conclusion by then.

  The ban on air travel, and the reduced ground travel, didn’t prevent the virus getting into Britain. It just gave them an indispensable few extra days to work out what the hell was going down – and to hunker down against it.

  Many infected came in on trains and ferries. But by that time, most Britons were locked up in their homes, wearing thick clothing and carrying weapons when they went out. Thus the virus never reached that tipping point in the British Isles. The military was able to squash the biggest outbreaks, impose martial law in the cities, and hunt the small packs of zombies that roamed the countryside.

  And when the final fall started to come, when the panic drove the waves of refugees toward Britain, both the healthy and the infected, with the millions of dead pushing behind them… the UK just kept the steel shutters locked down. And reinforced the hell out of them.

  Ali for one knew that people will take to the streets after three days without food – which meant we were all nine meals away from anarchy. But now she, and the whole world, had seen it play out in real time. Since then, Ali hadn’t swapped two words with any child in the ZA without recalling that chilling exchange from the film Aliens: “My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones… Why do they tell little kids that?” “Most of the time it’s true.”

  What a crapsack world we’ve inherited… she thought bitterly.

  * * *

  Without quite realizing how she got there, Ali found she had the edge of her sword pressed up against Pope’s throat – and the man himself pressed into the corner of the dojo, bleeding from some kind of light head wound, which dripped from under his helmet and face guard.

  “Your point,” he said, breathing smoothly but deeply. “Nice one.”

  Tier-1 guys tended not to cry foul. And they definitely didn’t complain.

  Ali withdrew her sword with a start, and gave her brother operator a hand up.

  She made a mental note to reserve her angst and rage for the dead.

  NEVER WATCH THE NEWS

  The problem with an armed camp, Homer thought to himself, is not the enemy outside the gates. It’s the people inside – and never being able to get away from them. Of course, when posted to an ocean-going vessel, he had got used to being crammed in belowdecks. But there was still always somewhere to escape to – a deserted stretch of gangway abeam… the forecastle on the night watch…

  And better yet, back on land in Coronado, a headland or spit of sand at ebb tide could be its own private vault of Heaven.

  But here… well, the nearby Malvern Hills of Herefordshire called to him, from so very close outside the fortified walls. But there was no going out there. Not for a nice evening stroll, anyway. But Homer was sure he could feel God’s presence out there. Even amidst all this death.

  He was actually alone now, but not the right kind of alone. He decided to take a turn around the base. Just twenty minutes for himself. Then he’d start making himself useful again. There was always so much that needed doing. Idle time was a luxury lost to this world. As was luxury itself, when he thought about it.

  “…through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world, for this is what you are meant to get out of your life of toil under the sun.” The writer of Ecclesiastes wouldn’t have been surprised by any of this, he figured.

  No sooner had Homer slipped the flap of his billet than he was spotted and hailed. “Hey, Homer, mate, all right?” The British were lovely people, and stalwart as hell. But where’s all this “I keep myself to myself” ethos Homer had heard about? Not in the military, that’s for sure.

  He threw a friendly wave and veered off. His new route took him past the Intel Shack, where he remembered getting his very first briefings – within minutes of hitting the ground, actually. Meeting the other Tier-1 guys, from units scattered across the English-speaking world. He’d known right away that it was going to be one hell of a team – like nothing that had ever operated before. No one but the supremely elite could make that mission happen. And that was when they all thought nothing could be more dangerous or urgent than North Korean nukes. Those ideas they used to have about Armageddon, the way the End of Days would come…

  Before long, Homer found himself at the closest thing this place had to a forecastle – underneath the guard tower at the far northwest corner, where the two fortified walls met. He huddled up in the dark beneath it, about as alone as he was going to get. At his back, the dead world spread out into the gloom. And before him he could now make out much of the little kingdom that the survivors had carved out for themselves. He let his mind wander back.

  * * *

  It was a couple of months after those first onsite briefings, when they were well into their rehearsals, that they started getting the very first reports – first via intel, then on the news. Some new virus out of the interior of Africa. The reports were conflicting. Some victims it was said to kill. Others it made crazy. Stories of the sick getting delirious, and then violent – attacking medical personnel, or loved ones. Like some weird strain of rabies – which had always ticked over in the dark corners of the saddest continent, Africa. Homer remembered being curious, and quizzing one of the medical officers – a surgeon, and a colonel.

  “Is it like Ebola? Marburg? Should we be worried?”

  “I don’t think it’s like Ebola.”

  “Some other kind of hemorrhagic fever?”

  The medical officer paused heavily, not looking like he was enjoying this. “It might be related – people have been coming in bleeding out.” He paused again. “But mostly from their mouths.”

  But Homer knew how it was with the nightly news – always happening somewhere else. And happening to the less fortunate. This world, this Middle Kingdom, this stopping over place, was always producing new horrors. The operators still had their work. And Homer had his family.

  “Come, eat your food with joy and drink your wine with a glad heart … enjoy life with the woman you love, through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world…”

  * * *

  Something loomed out of the shadows and into Homer’s reverie. Before he was even aware of it, he’d drawn his SIG 226, thumbed the safety up, and sighted in. Behind and just above his three-dot tritium night sights there was now a face – a living one, and familiar.

  “Exactly the same twitchy motherfucker I remember. Stand down, brother.”

  “Mikey? Good Lord.”

  “Yeah, Homer – at your service. They told me you might be out here. In the shadows.”

  The newcomer stepped into the deeper shadow under the guard tower and pulled Homer into a hug that was equally heartfelt and lung-crushing. Homer and Mikey had served together for two years with SEAL Team 3 – in Coronado, and also off in much more dangerous places. Homer knew the man, and damn well respected him. They had parted company when Homer left for Team Six (DEVGRU) – which can be a bit of a black hole, swallowing an operator and his whole former life – and Mikey didn’t.

  Homer pushed him back out to arm’s length and looked into his soulful brown eyes. “Not only alive and still in this world. But in the UK! At Hereford
! How?”

  Mikey let out a long, slow breath. “A few months before it all came down. I was posted to a surface vessel – the Arleigh Burke herself. With a half-platoon, eight SEALs.” The Arleigh Burke was the lead ship for the whole Arleigh-Burke class of Aegis guided missile destroyers, some of the meanest warships in human history.

  “We were doing counterproliferation and interdiction work, right at the seam of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. VBSS, that kind of thing.” Visiting, boarding, searching, and seizing ships suspected of carrying contraband was a classic SEAL mission, one for which they were supremely qualified. Any frogman would be happy doing it. Particularly after the mountains and deserts, and the bloody losses, of Afghanistan and Iraq.

  “And after the fall?” Homer asked.

  “Man. We were like the goddamned Ancient Mariner.” He winced slightly, remembering Homer’s faith, which had never been a secret, not in any unit Homer had served with, but he’d had to be pretty easygoing about it. Most sailors swear like, well, sailors. “Sorry, man. Pardon my blasphemy. Anyway, we were roaming the oceans, trying port after overseas port. Just making a living as far as fuel and supplies went. Some places we could dock, some we couldn’t. Some were abandoned by the living – but we could fight our way into.”

  “And your orders?”

  “At first, it was just ‘Hold station’ or ‘Continue patrol’ or ‘Stand by’. Then, nothing, of course. Finally we got news that overseas American military personnel, every branch, by every conceivable conveyance, were making their way to England. That there were living people there. Something like civilization left. And it’s true.”

  It was true. Something north of 30,000 American servicemen and women had fought their way to safety there. Now they fought for everyone.

  “Why’d it take you so long?”

  He shook his head. “We had a few adventures along the way. Anyway, it wasn’t quite that long. We’ve been docked at Southampton these last three months. Been going out on milk runs, moving supplies from one place to another. Plus the odd search and salvage. But it was only last week that somebody with stars on his shoulder figured out our old boat had a fully-kitted SEAL team onboard. They put two and two together – or, rather, put us eight and however many badasses you’ve got here together. Doing whatever kinds of jobs you’re doing.”