Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (11 page)

There was no ground crew rushing forward to meet her and to block the wheels. No techs from the Aviation Maintenance Company shoving aside refuelers and rearming guys to clip in computers, run checks, and make sure the bird was ready to go back out and deal more death. This was nothing like the normal Indy 500 pit stop routine.

Squinting slightly in alarm and confusion, she moved forward in her Nomex flight suit across the tarmac. Directly ahead of her was the aviation hangar. She checked that first, along with the attached offices, as well as the pilot ready room. Nothing; nobody. Then she actually ran across the open helipad to the officers’ and NCOs’ mess – now everybody’s mess, since the enlisted one got destroyed by that Hellfire mishap a week ago. She even did a run by the half-destroyed and boarded-up hospital.

Nobody – anywhere.

She knew that at any given time, and particularly lately, many or most of the operational teams could be outside the wire on deployment. And she’d already heard that more and more of them were being pulled into the defense of the southeast. But even if every single operator were out in the field…
where the hell was everyone else?
The support people, the command element, the TOC jocks, medical, comms? She’d only been gone two days. Yet they’d all vanished without a fucking trace.

Her beloved home had become a ghost town.

“This makes zero fucking sense.” She quickly realized that not only had she stopped and was standing in place – but that she was speaking aloud again. Maybe she was spending too much time in her own company. Logging too many hours without a gunner.

Fuck it
. She decided to go to the top.

She found the Colonel’s office unlocked, and empty. Stepping forward, the short barrel of her MP7 seeming to rise up under its own power, she pushed her way in. Loose papers covered the desk, as if he’d left in a hurry. Normally the Colonel was a fiend for OPSEC – he certainly observed a clean-desk policy in Charlotte’s experience.

Fuck
. She shook her head again. This was like a bad dream. Exiting the command shack, she ran toward the operators’ quarters and ready rooms. Echo’s area was locked. She tried around the other side, and found an unlocked door, which led to the Alpha billets and team room. She entered, pointing her weapon ahead of her, the screaming silence ringing in her ears. Hot tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes.

She was being abandoned – again.

Inside Alpha’s area, everything was squared away – not as if anyone had left in a hurry, much less a panic. More as if they had been setting off on a long journey. Which they had – Charlotte knew Alpha was on some kind of extended (and top-secret) deployment. Her mind began to scream, desperate for a clue of any sort. She opened one of the lockers at random. Inside was some clothing, load-bearing equipment, a few empty pouches. And taped to the inside of the door…

…a brilliantly lit photograph. It showed a man, a woman, and two boys, in some kind of beautiful green space. She recognized the man as Captain Ainsley, commander of Alpha team. She had to fight back a half-sob, shoving it back down her chest. The image was so alive and lovely and peaceful, it only underscored Charlotte’s aloneness. Her abandonment. But wherever Captain Ainsley was right now, she prayed he was safe. And wherever his family was… well, she prayed the same thing for them.

Not only had Fortress Britain been breached, but now, somehow, even Hereford had gone. Which meant no place was safe. Nothing could be more obvious to her.

On her final walk back to the helipad, just on a hunch, she ducked into the Quarantine Shack. No doctor was there on duty, but both of the Zulu-sniffing dogs were at their post – both looking tragically abandoned and forlorn behind their wire mesh. She took the time to feed and water them both. And then she set them free.

She didn’t know what else to do.

* * *

Charlotte watched the Potemkin Village that was Hereford fall away beneath her, as she turned her Apache back toward the east. She’d had to refuel and rearm the damned thing herself. The fueling was okay, but rearming was not a one-woman job, even if she’d remembered very well how to do it.

But none of that mattered now. She was back in the air. And, even if alone, she was safe.

Her prior mission on the line had been her last scheduled for a while, according to the CentCom battle controllers. So she didn’t have to go back there. But she couldn’t stay here.

And ahead of her, out there somewhere, was her home squadron – 1 Regiment Army Air Corps, based at Wattisham Airfield. This was in Suffolk, nearly on the east coast of England – but at least a bit to the north.

Captain Charlotte Maidstone said a silent prayer that the airfield still stood. If it didn’t, she had no idea where she was going to land this thing.

But there was nothing else for her to do.

It was time to go.

No Fox Among the Chickens

Britain – West Sussex

Alan edged carefully toward the movement in the bushes, his shotgun aimed at the rustling of leaves. This was it, what he had been trying to achieve for days, to finally catch it. The damned thing had been roaming the woods around the farm for weeks now and he’d lost a dozen chickens already.

The movement in the bushes stopped, the leaves going still, and he took a deep breath and stopped moving. It must have sensed his approach, he figured, and any movement now would completely screw it up. There was far too much cover here, and way too many bolt holes for it to run to. And if it was disturbed and fled, as it had already done a number of times, then he was likely to miss again. And he’d only get one shot. The dog was so damned fast that if he missed it would be away and running, and out of range before he could reload.

If only he’d taken Tessa’s advice and bought a bolt action instead, then he’d have a second shot if needed. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it, and with the gun restrictions lifted he could have bought an assault rifle if he’d wanted. When the ZA hit the world, and the military from other countries started making the UK their home, they’d brought with them all manner of guns. Alan smiled – if there was one thing you could count on the Americans for it was a lot of hardware. Ammunition, that was the problem, as well as the reason he’d stuck to his single-barrel shotgun. He had a few hundred shells stored away in boxes in the house, more than enough to keep him in good supply, and to deal with the occasional wild dog that moved into the area.

The leaves rustled again, and Alan lifted the shotgun, slowly, and took aim. Should he just let rip? The blast of birdshot wouldn’t be likely to miss in such a small area anyway, but he didn’t fire. He wanted to see the thing before he ended its life.

The wild dogs were a new problem that had appeared not long after the zombies. There hadn’t been many outbreaks in the UK, and those that did occur had been very small and were stamped out before they spread. But when the rationing started to bite, many people began hoarding their food and prepping for the worst. And even though Alan hated it, he knew this meant that for some, the family dog was booted out to reduce the number of mouths to feed.

Damned stupid city folk
, he thought. What happened to that phrase… what was it? A pet is for life… something like that. Well, those people kicked out their best buddies pretty damned quickly, just to save a few tins of food, when times were suddenly hard. He’d never do that to his dogs, no chance. And the thought of his three Border Collies, huddled up next to the fire in the farmhouse, gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling. They were his babies.

The movement in the bushes had stopped again, and Alan could feel the start of a cramp building in the backs of his legs. He’d wait the beast out if he had to, but he hoped to be back at the farm within the hour. Tessa would have his lunch on the table, and he really didn’t want to miss that today. Being out just after first light, following the trail the dog had left after killing two more of his birds, meant he had already missed breakfast, and his stomach was rumbling uncomfortably. It puzzled him, how the dog was able to get through everything he had set up, and still kill his chickens. Barbed wire, solid wood fences. Doubled-up netting, traps of various types. The dog seemed able to maneuver around everything and still get in there and out again, with a full belly and a mess of feathers and guts left strewn across the chicken pen.

As Alan stood there, just watching the bush, waiting for the creature to make its move, he noticed for the first time how quiet the woods had gotten. There were usually birds in the trees or other small animals moving about, and normally this place would be full of ambient noise at this time of the morning. But now the air was still, with no sound at all. But then there came a very distant throbbing sound that he couldn’t place. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it was very slowly getting louder.

Against his better judgment, Alan looked away from the bush and up to the sky, where he thought the sound was coming from. He saw nothing at first, but as he watched, tiny dots appeared on the horizon, heading toward him, and there were a lot, dozens maybe. He frowned, and continued to watch as the specks got bigger, becoming more distinct. A flight of helicopters, coming in from the west. The noise of their rotors grew louder as they approached, and Alan stood, transfixed, the dog in the bushes temporarily forgotten, as two dozen fat, twin-bladed military helicopters sped through the air only a few hundred yards away. The roar and downdraft were tremendous.

And then the bushes rustled again, and there was a crack of breaking twigs, and Alan spun back to where he should have been watching, toward where the dog was creeping… or had been a moment before. But now all he saw was a dark streak of fur running away. He raised the shotgun, knowing the animal was still in range, and fired, but too late. The dog disappeared behind a large oak, and all that Alan got for his efforts was a scattering of wood and bark chips as the blast hit the lowest branches of the tree.

He cursed aloud, then turned toward the flight of ungainly helicopters, which were now getting smaller as they headed out toward the opposite horizon – toward the east coast. He cursed again.

Two hours of walking in the woods, tracking the dog down, and he had missed his chance because of those buggers, he thought as he trudged forward, heading in the direction the dog had taken. He would follow it for a while, to see if it might hole up somewhere else, but he knew his chances were pretty slim. It would bolt a couple of miles now, most likely, and his tracking skills were not quite good enough to follow the thing indefinitely. No, he wouldn’t see the evil canine chicken-murderer again today.

He stepped through bushes and over fallen logs, reloading his shotgun as he went, and eventually made his way across the stream that marked the boundary of his farmland. He had intended to clear this bit of forest, back before the zombies arrived, chop the trees down and turn it into another field for crops, or maybe even plant an orchard. But Tessa had insisted that it it stay wooded, and be left to go overgrown.
That woman has always been a nature freak, even in school
, he thought. And even though he’d persuaded her to marry him and settle on the farm, he still hadn’t been able to remove the hippy side of her nature, and he was always secretly glad of that.

He crossed the stream and walked up to the lane on the other side, then started to trudge down it, back toward the farm. He decided the best way to beat the dog was to go back to making the chicken pen even more difficult to get into. This time he’d make the thing damn near impenetrable.

He had only walked fifty yards when the bushes on the side of the road rustled, sending a rush of leaves into the air. Alan stopped dead, and lifted the shotgun.

No way,
he thought.
Did I just luck out, and the dog is back already?

He stepped forward, slowly, edging toward the bushes. Again, he only had the one shot, and he damn sure wasn’t going to miss this time.

He took a deep breath as he side-stepped, slowly moving around the bush so as to get a good aim at what lay behind it.

The bush erupted in violent motion, and Alan held his ground and aimed, waiting for the perfect moment to fire. But what came rushing out of the bushes was not a canine. It was a human figure, closing the gap between them so quickly that Alan had only a fraction of a second to see the blood upon the face and the pale color of the skin. He was aiming straight at the man’s face, already starting to lower the shotgun in shock, thinking he had nearly killed a person. But then he realized this wasn’t a living person at all – that the angry, hungry-looking man rushing toward him was dead already, and had been for some time.

Pull the trigger!
his voice screamed in his head. But he stood frozen with terror as it barreled toward him, reaching out, about to fall on him.

And then the gun went off – and the angry expression on the zombie’s face was replaced by red-misted air as its head partially vaporized. The body kept on moving, staggering a few feet before landing on the dirt track, nearly at Alan’s feet.

He wobbled unsteadily, almost falling down himself from the shock. He had only seen the dead on the TV, never in real life, never right in front of him, and…
Oh god…
He had only barely stopped the thing, with inches, and less than seconds, to spare. He found himself shaking violently, his nerves firing madly. He finally lowered the shotgun, while taking deep, ragged breaths.

That was when the second runner burst from the bushes.

It had been a few hundred yards away, and heading toward the village and the sounds of life, when the noise of the gun set it off. It ran, bursting through bushes and stumbling across the stream, not even aware of the terrain around it, as it made for the source of the noise.

It was barely out of the treeline when it leapt upon Alan, knocking him to the ground. He fell backward, stunned, and felt the hard soil slam into the back of his head. His vision swam, and bright lights and black spots flickered in and out of view as he struggled to stay conscious. It was on him, clawing and scratching, trying to get at his flesh, but unable to quite get there.