Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (17 page)

But, then again… if he opened fire, God knew what that would bring down on him. And his M4 wasn’t suppressed – it would be both loud and bright, perfectly identifying his position. And now he also saw the staggering forms of the undead stumbling and running in from the periphery of the fight.

The LVAD’s engine started up with a throaty roar. Triple Nickel was outgunned, and they were clearly planning to drive themselves the hell out of this death zone. And Zorn was in a good position to help cover their withdrawal.

He hesitated once more, the instinct to pitch in battling the instinct to survive.

And then, finally, he remembered that team’s last withdrawal from this camp. First they’d tried to take off and rescue their split team out in the bush – just as the base was fighting off determined militia attacks all along the wire. And then, when everything went completely to hell, Zorn had seen them driving out in their super-special gun trucks, blasting right by him while he was in heavy contact – and not so much as waving, never mind stopping to help him.

They had abandoned the camp, abandoned the command they were posted to, and abandoned the conventional soldiers who were supposed to be their brothers.

No
, Zorn thought bitterly.
Fuck them.

And he silently lowered his weapon and watched it all play out.

* * *

Finally, after the SF guys hauled ass out of there in the truck, he watched as the remaining al-Shabaab fighters got swarmed and devoured by the dead. They put up a decent fight in a running battle, legging it for the main gate. But they lost.

For a brief second, Zorn assumed a shooting stance and took a bead. But then he realized he honestly had no idea whether he was about to help cover the al-Shabaab guys from the dead while they reloaded… or start picking them off, Sergeant York-style, from the back of their column.

It was a weird moral dilemma. But, then again, not one he felt all that compelled to resolve. In the end he held his fire. And he watched all of them go down. Or almost all of them, anyway. At the very end, he thought he heard an engine start up somewhere outside the wire, and drive off to the southeast.

So at least one had survived.

But then, just like that, it was over.

Though these two groups of unwelcome assholes had riled up the undead camp residents to a fever pitch Zorn hadn’t seen since the fall. So he crept back to his DFAC redoubt and gave them a few days to settle down into their regular torpor again. Then he crept back out.

He had a couple of things he wanted to do.

First, he wanted to know why the SF guys had come back. That was quickly resolved when he went by the Heavy Weapons locker. The thick steel door had been cut into with an acetylene torch – and almost everything behind it had been cleared out. Well, not everything. But a shitload of weapons and ordnance.

Nervy sons of bitches
.

The super-special forces had finally come back – but only to clean the camp out of its best hardware. That was typical. In his mind, Zorn had been saving the heavy weapons to one day retake and fortify the camp. He didn’t know when he was planning on doing so, any more than he knew why he kept putting it off.

Maybe he just couldn’t face the enormity of the task.

He’d kept telling himself that support and resupply from his chain of command was going to come, one day. But in fact they weren’t coming – ever. He wasn’t going to have any help, and he knew now he had to do this job himself.

Fuck it
, he thought. He was the senior enlisted man in the command, which meant he worked for a living, and by proclamation was better at his job than anyone below him. Which was everyone, outside of the officer ranks, who were of course completely useless. Only a little more so now that they were dead.

So he’d just do the shit himself.

Still keeping to the shadows, and cutting a wide swath around the figures that stood alone or in small groups, canted at weird angles, either stock-still or teetering and twitching, he made his way to the construction compound. Opening up the largest structure, he immediately found the two things he most needed: one of the little Bobcat earth movers. And a shit-ton of HESCO barriers – the canvas-covered mesh-wire baskets that could be filled with dirt, stones, or rubble to make blast-proof walls. The latter were currently unfilled and neatly folded up.

And if he could fill HESCO barriers and move them around, which he could with the Bobcat, then he could redraw the lines of the camp.

In the next shed over he found a bunch of stacked chain-link fencing. And some of those chain-driven motors used to open and close sections of them. The time had come. He couldn’t just hang out surviving anymore.

He had to retake the camp – and regain his command.

Amarie's Choice

CentCom HQ - Outside the North Gate

No one had selected suitable footwear for this.

When the group of Tunnelers had escaped into the French end of the Channel Tunnel two long years ago, they’d all been running for their lives. If it had been something they’d planned for, they probably would have worn sturdy hiking boots – or maybe wellies, if they’d known they’d be living in a flooded tunnel for two years.

And when, against all expectations, they were finally pulled out the other end, the shoes they’d worn into it had mostly rotted off their feet. They’d had to take what they were given to replace them, which were largely donations from members of the public who saw the Tunnelers’ plight on television. Most of those donated shoes weren’t made for walking, and some didn’t fit very well.

Now the surviving Tunnelers – Hackworth, Colley, McHeath, Amarie and Josie, and all the others – had practically walked these new ones right off their feet as well. First trudging out of overrun and bombed-flat Canterbury, most of the way to London. Then, fleeing the attack on the refugee center in Covent Garden, where they met Rebecca Ainsley and her boys – and agreed to escort them across half of south London, all the way to CentCom Headquarters in Wandsworth Common. And all for just the chance of being allowed into a safe place for a while.

Now, as the tall and extremely imposing walls and main gate of CentCom finally loomed up over them, the Tunnelers were all wretchedly footsore and aching of leg and joint and almost wishing the zombie apocalypse would finally just take them – if it meant they wouldn’t have to do any more damned walking.

“Think maybe they’ll shoot us up here?” Colley said, his gait betraying the terrific weight his ill-shod feet were having to bear. “Put us out of our misery?”

Hackworth was too knackered to answer.

Their new additions – Rebecca Ainsley, with her sons Aiden and Luke – weren’t far behind. The boys had often gone hiking with their dad, SAS Captain Conner Ainsley, and he’d instilled into them the qualities of resolve, determination, and forbearance. But they were still young boys, age six and eight, and they were tired and afraid.

Perhaps naturally, as the only two parents of small children, Rebecca and Amarie had gravitated toward each other – the former walking between her two boys as the latter tirelessly carried her small daughter Josie, all of them trudging across the bleak landscape.

“So your husband is in the Army?” Amarie had asked.

“Yes. Deployed overseas.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.” Rebecca smiled sadly. “I never know when. But I always know he’ll be back.” She hesitated before asking her next question. “Where’s Josie’s father?”

Amarie shrugged, her delicate shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. Lost.”

Rebecca just nodded. It was the usual story. And so common.

Finally, the group slowed to a stop as they reached CentCom HQ, built out of the former Wandsworth Prison, its hulking stone walls looming above them. Perhaps some salvation, or at least a cessation of walking, was finally at hand.

The guards manning the gate got a good look at the disheveled mob, and seemed to ready their weapons. Rebecca didn’t wonder if they thought it was actually a zombie attack. Holding tightly to her boys’ hands, she moved to the front. Working to dredge up a smile, she got out the precious ID card her husband had left her – as a last-ditch measure against the fall of London, or just the fall of order. Her
Get out of hell
card.

“Good morning, Staff Sergeant,” she said – glad for her ability to read rank from his uniform insignia – and handed over the ID.

The man was standing to the side of the closed vehicle gate in a human-sized doorway, which was currently open – but blocked by his body. He nodded, still looking warily around her at the mob she headed, then took the card. “What’s this, then?” He didn’t look as if he recognized it.

“CentCom civilian access card,” Rebecca said, still trying to smile, though her heart was beating a hundred miles an hour in her chest. “My husband is a captain in the SAS. This entitles his wife, namely me, and our two sons, to shelter and protection in any military installation.”

“Stay here,” he said, then turned and went back into the security station, which looked like a small room built into the thick wall itself. He picked up a phone and turned his back. Rebecca couldn’t hear what was said.

“Okay,” he said, returning and handing the ID back. “You three –
only
.”

Rebecca braced herself now for the hard and scary part. She had to try to get the others in. She’d promised she’d try. “These people,” she said, gesturing behind her, and smiling again. “They got me here safely. They protected me.” The guard’s hard expression didn’t change an inch. “Don’t you recognize them?” He didn’t even look up – like he didn’t care enough to try to recognize them. “They’re the Tunnelers. The ones on television, who survived two years underground. And then the bombing of Canterbury.”

This was clearly gaining her no traction. Finally she just asked. “Is there any chance you can see your way clear to letting them come in with us? Please.”

“Out of the question.” The guard looked like that was the end of it.

“Fuck. I knew it. Shafted again.” That was one of the Tunnelers – male, middle-aged, and unhappy – standing just behind Rebecca. Her self-preservation instincts kicked in now – and she braced herself to get her and her boys through that doorway before something ugly happened out here.

But then she saw the guard’s icy expression melt just a little.

Amarie was standing beside Rebecca, her precious bundle held as ever to her breast. But the thin blanket covering the little girl fell away – and she emerged from underneath, reaching her tiny hand out… to the scope mounted on the top of the soldier’s rifle. He tensed up, but didn’t pull away. Josie’s tiny face screwed up in a look of concentration, as she pulled and twisted on the scope, trying to turn it or pull it off. The soldier’s grim visage broke out into a reluctant smile, and he shook his head as he tried to fight it.

“Please,” Amarie said, in her soft and beautiful French accent. “Don’t send us back out there.”

* * *

Now Rebecca felt her spine stiffening.

“Yes,” she said, putting her hand on the soldier’s arm – but he instantly pulled back, cradling his rifle. “Surely you can take just two more? A woman and child? Surely your whole job is to protect people?”

The guard blinked heavily, his serious soldier face coming back in place. “If we start taking in every random civilian refugee who rocks up here… believe me, all will be lost. What if they’re infected?” It wouldn’t be the first infected person they’d let in there recently – and that had almost been the end of everything.

Rebecca knew the man had a point. That was kind of how the world had gone down in the first place. Yes, the people behind her were in trouble. But all of humanity depended on the soldiers in these bases. And this was CentCom HQ, upon which presumably rested the entire defense of Britain.

A loud and jarring horn sounded behind them. Rebecca turned and looked back – a large military lorry had come up the road toward the gates, but was blocked by the gaggle of Tunnelers spread out in the road. It edged forward to the back of the crowd, its big engine growling, and honked again.

The guard stepped forward, raised his voice, and shouted over Rebecca’s head. “You lot need to clear the road –
now!
”

Behind her, Rebecca could also see the leader, Hackworth, conferring with the big Moroccan man, his henchman, Colley. “This isn’t what we hoped for, but maybe it’s for the best,” Hackworth said. “I think London’s doomed. We need to go north – get out of here, and be on our own again. And I don’t think we’ll be the only rats fleeing this ship. We just need to make sure we’re not the last ones.”

Colley looked skeptical. “I don’t see how we’re going to make it across so many miles of a city falling into chaos.”

Rebecca blocked this out and turned forward again. She had to get inside. But she was also determined to get the young Frenchwoman and her baby in with her. At least them. But even as she opened her mouth to beg, the guard cut her off.

“Orders are orders. And it’s disobeying orders, now of all times, that’ll get everyone killed.” But even as he spoke, his eyes went to Josie, the beautiful and fragile eighteen-month-old girl, who was still leaning out, determined to master the accessories on his rifle.

Rebecca could see him weakening. She said, “Can’t we just say they’re my sister and niece? Just two mor—”

But her words were cut off by the sound of a thundering explosion – something terrible and violent and unexpected happening behind the stone walls. It crescendoed for a few seconds, then was punctuated by what sounded like something enormous and metallic crashing to the ground in the distance. The radio on the guard’s shoulder chirped up.
“Warden One Zero, message, over!”

The man touched his radio. “Go ahead.”

“Lock down the gate. Security posture alpha. NOW.”

“Roger that, sir.” The guard put his hand on the big steel-grate door that would close their only entrance to the base. “Come in if you’re coming in.”