Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (31 page)

And Elliott was still here only because he’d gotten lost.

Then he heard a moan, close by. He rose and ran over. Lying in a shallow depression was not only a completely intact body – but it was moving and looking at him. It was Jones – a man not just in his company or platoon, but his own section.

“Jonesy, mate,” he said, his voice solidifying again. “Tell me where it hurts.”

Jones actually laughed. He was a dark-complected soldier with black stubble that never seemed to go away no matter how often he shaved, and piercing dark eyes, nearly black. The gleam of intelligence and mischief hadn’t gone out of them. “Just about everywhere,” he said.

It looked like he was hit worst in his legs, where there was a lot of blood, so Elliott got some big gauze pads out and started wedging them in there – the rips in his trousers facilitated this – and then started taping the pads down.

It was only now, when he heard the first firing, that Elliott started to realize the import of the decision he had made – that everyone had made – to go back to help the wounded. Because not only was C Company moving back into the area devastated by the artillery barrage… but the great mass of the dead was at the other end of this field of charnel, and they had their own agenda for the wounded.

And they were moving fast through the mists and drifting smoke.

For a second Elliott was frozen – torn between his sacred duty to help his friend, and the sudden urgent need to defend them both from being fallen on and torn to bits. He stopped to take a half a dozen shots on the nearest stumbling figures, then went back to his work on Jones.

“Can you walk?” he asked, trying to keep panic out of his voice.

“Mate, I’m not sure I could even roll over.”

Within another minute, Elliott had used all his pads and tape getting Jones’s wounds wrapped up – and was digging into the grievously wounded man’s own aid pouch for more – when rapid movement drew his eye, practically on top of him. He got his rifle up as the racing figure crashed into him, and used his weapon to sling it around past him – then fired six rounds into and around its head as it hit the ground.

It was a runner, and it had almost made an end of him.

Elliott spun electrically when a hand landed on his shoulder, bringing his rifle up to fire again – but it was pushed gently away, and a face, very much alive, was right in his, asking: “Walker, you okay?”

It was Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj.

Elliott nodded, sweat falling from his face as he shivered from the adrenaline.

“We gotta go, Private. We all gotta go!”

Now Elliott managed to dial up his situational awareness – and he realized that in all directions healthy Paras were helping wounded ones to their feet, or else carrying them, while others fired to protect them, as the dead swarmed and descended. And many of them were also shouting variations of “We gotta go!” “Pick ‘em up and go!” “C’mon!” “Go, go, go!”

The dead were on them, the great mass less than a hundred yards away.

And, everywhere, small packs of runners were already bashing into the groups of wounded and rescuers. In some cases, they were put down by rapid defensive fire. In others, they weren’t. Rifle reports, shouts, and moans, all seemed to float out of the drifting smoke and mists from every direction and none. These little vignettes of maximal peril and nose-to-nose violence, some visible and some not, were being played out everywhere, all around Elliott – as close as twenty meters away, all the way to the edge of vision.

Elliott could see Bhardwaj thrumming with nervous tension – he had dozens of men he needed to help and to lead.

“Go,” Elliott said. He nodded at Jones. “I’ve got him.”

The sergeant nodded, then took off again, rifle up.

“Brace yourself,” Elliott said to Jones, as he rolled him onto his stomach. He could actually feel the wrenching pain this caused him. But Jones didn’t make a sound. Elliott hooked his elbows under Jones’s armpits and hauled him to his feet, or something like it. He then placed his right leg between Jones’s, grabbed his right hand with his left, then squatted down, wrapped his arm around Jones’s knee, and then lifted him up. Somewhere along the line, the Army had taught him how to get a wounded man into a fireman’s carry. It must have stuck.

Luckily, Jones wasn’t a big man, but he was still fully kitted up – and Elliott didn’t even remember his own leg wound until he started running again. Tottering, more like. But they were moving.

They were getting the hell out of there.

* * *

We are meat
, Elliott thought. It was a horrifying thing to have go through his head. He knew that he and his brothers, that all people everywhere, were also exquisite sparks of unique consciousness – perhaps unique in the thirteen-billion-year history of the universe. We are angels, spirit creatures of hope and light and possibility and love.

But we are also meat
, he realized now
. Bags of meat.

And it occurred to Elliott, young as he was, that this might actually be the core contradiction of being human: born with the souls of angels – but mortal angels, meat angels, born to die and rot away. And that was maybe even the fundamental problem every human had to solve: how to live in a world where we are born to die.

It was only when the C Company men were moving with the devastated and broken survivors of D Company, those still alive and who could be moved, that their own fundamental mortality and vulnerability became stark – and utterly undeniable.

Because the dead were falling on them and taking them down.

The runners in particular – laden with the wounded, there was almost no way the soldiers could outrun them. And firing to the rear to protect themselves was harder than most could manage.

And so down they went, from the back of the formation first, and Elliott could hear them going down, and then he could hear the unendurable sounds of what the dead were doing to them. And he thought about how utterly horrifying it was that what had minutes earlier been a wonderful individual, one of his best friends, a young man he’d lived and trained with for years, the names of whose family he knew, whose loves and passions and quirks and essential humanity were all intimately familiar to him… could now end up as nothing more or less than a meal for another creature.

And it occurred to him that if you were both at the same time – both spirit creature of light and consciousness, and also bag of tasty meat being devoured – well, that was about as bad as you could end up. Being both at once, conscious while consumed. That was the worst thing imaginable.

And that’s how many of his closest friends were ending up now. Their bodies had been broken by the errant artillery barrage. But they were still conscious as they were devoured. And Elliott could hear their screams.

And all he could do was just keep running, back toward the lines, with Jonesy bouncing on his back. The best he was going to be able to do was to save his one platoon-mate. But he was goddamned well going to do that. He had to.

And now an old joke popped into his head, one he hated himself for remembering, but also smiled at somehow at the same time:
You don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the slowest guy RUNNING from the bear.

Behind him, all around, from first to last, the healthy refused to leave the wounded – but the ones who refused to leave also got taken down, and then got swarmed. And it was only those groups going down, and attracting crowds of the dead looking for an easy meal, that was going to allow any of them to get away and survive. Maybe.

Elliott knew he couldn’t outrun the runners, never mind the Foxtrots. He just had to keep going – and hope he kept getting lucky.

But then suddenly his luck ran out.

He heard a breathy shrieking sound behind him – which grew in volume, damned fast, as it grew in proximity. Elliott staggered to a stop and spun around – both to face the threat, and to shield Jones from it. He still held his rifle by the pistol-grip with his right hand. He started firing from the waist, round after round, trying to walk them onto the thing’s head, having virtually no hope that he’d be able to make the shot…

When another shriek came in from behind him, the other side, faster and louder this time. Now he knew that two Foxtrots had him hemmed in from either side. And before he could even begin to spin again, the second one slammed into his back, or rather into Jonesy on his back, and they all went down hard – Elliott face-first into the thick mud.

For a second, the weight of two bodies on his back pushed him so far into the wet loam that he thought he was going to suffocate. Some horrible struggle was taking place on his back – but Jonesy still didn’t make a sound. And then half the weight went away, and Elliott was able to get his chin out of the mud and lever his head up…

And ahead of him, right where he had last seen it, was the first Foxtrot. It lowered itself down into a crouch, buzzing with coiled energy… and it looked Elliott in the eye and hissed, a sound of pure malevolence. Elliott willed his eyes to stay open. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn’t going to hide from it. If seconds were all he had left, he was going to live those seconds.

And then the fell, manic creature uncoiled all that energy and erupted out of its crouch – tearing away off to the right, disappearing into the mists almost too fast to track. Elliott, crushed down, exhausted, tried to get some breath into his lungs. And then he mustered his strength to roll Jones off his back. He rose into a crouch, turned around, and checked on his wounded friend.

And saw he had a bite – a bad one, a whole chunk of his shoulder torn out.

“Stay with me, mate,” Elliott said, digging in Jones’s aid kit for another bandage.

“I’m right here, Elliott.”

As Elliott got the bandage out, he squinted in confusion at what had just happened. For no reason he could imagine the second Foxtrot had just left them there. Spared them. Tearing the packet with his teeth and getting the gauze pad in place, he said, “What the hell just happened?”

Jones looked strangely peaceful. Finally he said, “They say the new ones just infect and run. Maybe it thought we were just one really big bloke.”

Elliott’s eyes went wide. “And we were already infected.” If this was true, then it meant that his refusal to leave Jones, his willingness to sacrifice his life for him… was also all that had saved him.

Jones tried to smile – then winced as Elliott taped up the new bandage. He then started a repeat of the earlier routine of lifting him up onto his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Jones said.

“Getting you out of here.”

“You saw it yourself! I’m infected. I’m done for.”

Elliott spoke through gritted teeth as he rose again with Jones on his back. “Maybe you’re infected, and maybe not.” They both knew that even a bad bite wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. A handful of people had survived them. “Either way, you’re coming with me.”

Legs burning with lactic acid, lungs on fire, Elliott balanced his rifle with one hand – and his friend with the other.

And he started running again.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Jones began to turn.

At his urging, Elliott set him down in a copse of trees and held his hand, both their arms bent at the elbow. Elliott looked around, trying to keep his rifle handy. He was pretty sure they were behind enemy lines again. Those Foxtrots that had spared them had also left them in the mud while the main body of the enemy passed over and around them.

“It’s okay, Elliott,” Jones said, looking up. His handsome, smiling, pain-racked face said that it really was. “This has been the greatest day of my life.”

Hot tears leaked from the corners of Elliott’s eyes – not for the first time today. He felt like he was in a bad dream – a recurring one, and from which he never awoke. But he laughed through the tears as he said, “Yeah? Mine’s been shit.”

Jones laughed with him. “Hey, I spent today with my Regiment, defending my home and my people – and doing it side-by-side with the best mates I’ll ever have. And now, at the end, what you’ve done for me…” He seemed to be choking up.

There was also the fact that he was dying – the fine black spiderweb lines forming around his eyes, his skin becoming pale, and his eyes growing rheumy. But somehow he was still smiling. To Elliott, he looked like… like he’d never felt so loved or cared for in his life. They squeezed each other’s hands tighter, as if hanging on for dear life.

“And nothing can take that away – any of it.” Jones let go of his hand now as he fought back tears. “It’s okay, Elliott. Go on now. Get back to the Regiment. Keep on fighting.”

Elliott swallowed hard and tried to speak. “I can’t leave you like this.”

“It’s okay.” And with trembling fingers, Jones got out his pistol, and laid it in his lap. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to.”

Elliott leaned closer and hugged his friend, holding him tightly, and not letting him go for almost a minute. But then it was time. Wordlessly, with only a nod, he got up, hefted his rifle, and moved out, tears drying on his cheeks.

He knew he was going to have to break through the lines again. He’d done it once, and he could do it again. But it felt very different this time. This time, he had both resolve and – somehow – hope. At first, he wasn’t sure where it had come from. But as he jogged through the woods, picking up speed, suddenly and with startling clarity, a great truth came clear to him. He realized that in the face of certain death, the only thing that gave life meaning… was sacrificing for the people you loved.

And he knew that, no matter what, he wouldn’t be giving up.

And now he knew why.

Post-Apocalyptic Bad-Ass

Five Feet Over Western Russia

Oleg Aliyev hurled himself through the open cargo door and inside his Eurocopter like a man with his head on fire diving into a pool. Shots were still being fired, but they weren’t his, and so far they weren’t hitting him, and he couldn’t even hear or see them hitting anywhere around him, so he wasn’t totally freaked out. His major emotion right now was amazement at how easy it turned out to be to shoot living people – so much easier than he ever would have imagined.