Arisen : Nemesis (54 page)

And then he saw it, as he shut the back door and turned. It was sticking out of the mud, maybe fifty feet away, just a scuffed aluminum corner. But there could be no doubt. It was the GCS for the Predator. It had been blown into the middle of the courtyard by the rocket barrage on Zack earlier.

Baxter hesitated, seeing all the incoming kicking up dirt between him and it.

And then Zack spoke in his ear.
“No way, Baxter! Not again! It’s destroyed – and we’ve gotta go!”
Looking up, Baxter could see him looking and firing right over his shoulder from the turret. And he knew he was right.

When he crawled into the driver’s seat again Baxter could hear two things: Jake firing half-aimed bursts while half-slumped over the 240, and Zack still firing the minigun, with one hand now, and pounding on the roof with the other, shouting,
“Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!”

Baxter gunned it. For a second, the truck didn’t want to move. It was because the tires were all shot flat and they were in mud. But he rocked it a couple of times and got them moving, just mentally blocking out the incoming rounds and bodies slamming into the truck, and the screams.

In a few seconds more he had them pointed at the hole in the wall.

And he had them accelerating fast, thanking God for run-flat tires.

Ahead, Baxter could see the walking dead walking on in – and he could also see al-Shabaab guys both fighting them off and making a fast first attempt at sealing the gap in the wall, using crates, debris, half-destroyed pieces of timber, mud and rocks…

Baxter just gunned it and plowed straight through all of this.

Al-Shabaab guys, dead guys, pieces of improvised wall, all of it went flying in every direction with violence and authority.

For one second the truck went airborne, plus tilted sideways, and Baxter was convinced they were going to roll, but the center of gravity of this thing was somewhere about an inch off the ground and they came down on two wheels, then two more, and crashed through some underbrush and small trees. Baxter wrestled it toward what looked like a clearing, and it was in fact the road leading south out of there, and only lightly populated with walking dead guys.

He simply couldn’t believe it.

And he really couldn’t believe it when they’d gotten maybe a hundred yards down the road and a figure ran right out in front of them.

Baxter had to decide whether to stop or to run it down.

He had one second to decide whether it was Zombie Kate.

Or just Kate.

She raised her arms and shouted.

Baxter locked up the brakes.

We’re Going Back

The Stronghold - North Wall
[Fourteen Minutes Ago]

Kate couldn’t believe it.

In fact, she didn’t believe it. She saw that horrible barrage of rockets go in even as Todd stayed where he was and put fire on the wall over her head, protecting her. She saw the blossoming explosions and the steel turret flying apart.

But she didn’t believe it. No – Todd would be dead when she saw his body, checked his pulse, and did thirty minutes of CPR with no response. Not before.

But right now she had her own set of problems.

The first was the section of wall above and behind her. She took a couple of steps away and looked up – and was surprised it hadn’t come down from that explosion on the parapet. She could see it was scorched and cracked down to about two-thirds of the way up, and looked none too stable.

But now, in the relative silence that followed, she heard the sound of large numbers of dead scrabbling and hissing on the other side.

Shit. That can’t be good
.

She decided she wasn’t going to hang around underneath this thing any longer than strictly necessary.

But that was when she encountered her second problem: Todd hadn’t killed everyone on the parapet. With the explosion, he’d actually sent a few flying off it. Now they were regaining their feet and their senses and were shouting and targeting her with AK fire. They were also to the west, which put them right between her and the rest of the team at the surviving truck.

The wall made an awful creaking noise.

She spared one look up, then took a knee and started shooting to defend herself. She was pretty well trapped back there. In fact, she saw only one immediate escape route. But she didn’t like the look of it, and would avoid taking it if at all possible. Her immediate goal was to fight her way back to the north gun truck – above ground.

And that’s when it gave way.

Her head snapped up at the sound of the creaking and snapping – and she saw the top third of the wall give way and go over. And right behind it was a whole shit-ton of dead meat. She flinched down and away from it automatically, as she saw it coming down to the west of her, up ahead – but then the wave of snapping timbers and tumbling bodies rolled right toward her.

And now it was coming down over her head – but the force of the bodies punching through actually caused the cascade of dead to shoot out ahead of the wall first, trapping her as if behind the sheet of a waterfall. The time dilation of adrenaline allowed her to see all this happening – but in reality she had less than a second to react.

Uncoiling the energy in her legs, she power-dove forward and down – straight into the tunnel entrance in the ground two feet away. The sun was blotted out above her, first from the tsunami of dead covering the sky and then from the dirt ceiling above her, and she could both feel and hear the horrible impact of the timber-and-meat wave crashing down. With zero time to spare she scrambled to the far end of the dugout, pushed the wooden door open, ducked in, and then put her back up against it and heaved.

It didn’t shut, but instead bucked against her.

The dead were writhing and scrabbling on the other side and pressing their massed weight against it, filling in the hole Kate had just crawled through. She dug her boots in and shoved for everything she was worth – the resistance on the other side shifted as the dead tried to gain their feet, and for a quarter-second there was enough slack for her to push the door shut and bring down the wooden bar to secure it.

She was back underground.

But she was still alive – neither dead nor undead, for at least a little longer.

* * *

Goddammit
, Kate thought. Where was Baxter when she needed him? Every time she thought she’d found a way back out of this low-rent labyrinth, she found herself either blocked by collapsed passages or cut off by running al-Shabaab guys.

Seemingly unerringly, she was being channeled back to that escape tunnel. Or maybe that was just the one route she knew. And maybe her best shot was to try to get out and meet them on the road. She could radio when she got above ground.

Fuck it
. She ran down the length of the long escape tunnel and got the door open. Outside there were more dead than before – but they were also more fixated than ever on walking or running to the walls of the Stronghold.

In a few minutes more, ducking from tree to tree, she found the road.

And peering out from the edge of the forest, she actually saw the section of south wall come down. Somebody in there was still rocking a grenade launcher.

And then one of the gun trucks came ramping out, monster-trucking over debris and bodies.

And there’s my ride.

* * *

The truck slid to a halt with its front bumper four inches from her knees. Baxter was behind the wheel, eyes like saucers of milk, and she could see Zack up in the turret rocking the minigun. When she went to the passenger side and pulled open the door, the first thing she saw was Jake lying there, unmoving – and she started to panic. But, mastering herself, she got two fingers on the radial artery on his wrist, and her face up to his, to feel for breath.

He was alive.

“Get the fuck in!” Baxter yelled.

Dead from the incoming herd were starting to converge on them. And somebody was still shooting at them – rounds were skipping back down the road, one or two plinking off the truck’s already ravaged panels.

Kate moved to the back door, pulled it open, and climbed in – and around Zack’s legs sticking down from the turret, she saw Brendan lying on the bench seat. He was also unmoving, his young body lifeless. And when she grabbed his wrist and rotated his head to feel for breath, she saw it.

A bullet entry wound on his scalp, just under his helmet.

He was gone. Kate gasped, but swallowed it back down.

Now the truck roared off again, their acceleration swinging shut the door Kate had left open. As they bounced around the uneven road she scanned the cabin.

That was it. This was everyone.

She turned forward and shouted at Baxter. “Turn it around! We’re going back!”

Not slowing in the least, Baxter shouted over his own shoulder. “Are you out of your mind?”

She yanked free her M9 and stuck into the base of his skull. “We’re not leaving Todd. You don’t want to come, you can exit the goddamned vehicle.”

Baxter eased off the gas, just to keep from being shot in the head. And he said, very carefully, “He’s here Kate. He’s in the very back.”

Kate spun and dove half over the partition. Todd was lying in the small truck bed, curled up. He looked like he was sleeping. He looked beautiful, and peaceful. She checked his pulse and breathing.

Then she crawled back there with him, got his vest off, rolled him on his back, did two emergency breaths – and started the first set of thirty strong chest compressions.

Glancing up and out the back window, she just caught a last sight of the Stronghold receding behind them. Her final image was of al-Shabaab guys fighting to seal the hole in their wall – as waves of dead converged on it from all directions.

It was going to be a singularity – a bad one.

Kate wished them all the worst with it.

Vengeance

The Last Gun Truck - Heading north-east Through Sanaag

Rolling and bumping, the hissing of tires.

The sun slowly going down, and the cool breeze twisting in through the shot-out windows.

Plus the world around him swimming and weaving.

Jake cracked his crusted eyes and the first thing he saw was a clear IV bag tucked in by his side, as well as the tube snaking into his arm. From the warmth and weightlessness of his body, and the dull pain and throbbing of his leg, he figured someone had put some morphine in with the plasma drip.

Struggling to raise his head, he looked down the length of his body and saw someone had unrolled the tape from around his calf – which was probably a good thing, as it was now swollen to the size of a prize watermelon. When he looked back up and between the seats into the front compartment, he saw the backs of Baxter driving and Zack riding shotgun.

Only when he laid his head back again did he realize it was lying in Kate’s lap. Despite the morphine, his heart twisted as if squeezed by a strong hand.

“You’re alive… how?”

She looked down and stroked his hair. “I’ll tell you later. Take it easy for now.”

“Bren?”

She shook her head no.

“Todd?”

Kate had done her full thirty minutes of chess compressions, as she had silently sworn she would, before giving up. “They’re both in back,” she said.

Jake swallowed. His mouth was paper-dry. “What about Kwon?”

This was harder. Kate also swallowed before speaking. “We pulled over near where Baxter thought you dropped him off this morning. And I tried to find his OP. But the herd was coming in. We had to go.”

Jake’s face fell even further. He couldn’t believe they had left him behind.

“There’s something else,” Kate said. “When Baxter and I were outside the walls, by the tunnel entrance, I saw al-Sîf. And he had Kwon’s rifle. That SSR.”

Jake’s mouth opened in confusion and sorrow.

But I killed al-Sîf
, he thought.

Then he remembered that he hadn’t. He’d merely thrown him twenty feet down into a giant herd of the dead. It would be just like that son of a bitch to survive.

Jake closed his eyes.
So damned stupid…

He also didn’t say something like, Just because al-Sîf had Kwon’s rifle, that didn’t mean he was dead. Because that’s almost certainly what it meant. Kwon wouldn’t have it taken from him in any other circumstance.

A pair of hot tears leaked from the corners of Jake’s eyes, for the second time today – and for the second time in probably thirty years.

“I did this,” he croaked.
My ego
, he thought,
my need for vengeance.

It had been his refusal to compromise, to act or think more objectively, more strategically. His failure of leadership. Ultimately, this was all his fault.

He choked back the beginning of a sob.

All because I had to kill al-Sîf and Godane
.
And because I thought I knew more than everyone else. Thought I was good enough to do the impossible.

It was his failure to master his ego had brought them all low.

Kate looked down at him, her eyes shining with kindness. “No, Jake. The bad guys did this. You were doing your job.”

He shook his head weakly. “No. It was me who brought everyone here. To this place of madness and death.”

“They were following Brendan, too. Because he wanted to do something to help save humanity. Everyone did. Each of them knew exactly why they were there. And they’d do it all again, exactly the same.”

A pair of fresh teardrops rolled down the sides of Jake’s face. “Yeah. And look where that got us.”

Kate grabbed him by the sides of his head and leaned down to look right in his eyes. “None of your guys ever gave up. They died fighting for each other. So are you going to quit now? Just because some people got hurt? Or because you’re probably going to lose your other leg? I didn’t realize you were such a pussy.”

Jake blinked once. It looked like there was the ghost of a smile buried down there somewhere. But it couldn’t find its way to the surface.