The Flood (36 page)

Well, one bit of good luck
, he thought, letting his head fall back again.

And then a hand slapped down on his arm.

Oh, godDAMMit
, he thought, reaching across, pulling the hand off him, and dropping it back into the water. Pushing himself up onto his elbows with agonizing effort, he could now see what he already knew: the Red Sea was full of charred undead floaters. And now it looked like the ones closest to him were starting to lock on. Maybe they smelled him. He was half-cooked, after all.

He exhaled heavily.
Maybe I’ll let them make a meal of me.
Anything was better than any more damned exertion.

But then he heard the engines and rotors of what could only be the incoming Seahawk. He looked down his chest at the IR strobe they had given him at the last second on the carrier flight deck. Upon turning it on, he hadn’t seen it doing a damned thing, and still didn’t. But he gathered he wasn’t supposed to, and evidently it worked. And as the sound of the helo rose up into a roar, and started rocking the sea around him, it was joined by a chorus of gunfire.

Looking up, he couldn’t see very well into the blacked-out cabin, only the muzzle flashes. But he knew well enough what that was – it was his teammates, firing down all around him, shooting to protect him. He could see and hear rounds smacking into floating undead bodies, into the surface of the water – and in one case actually into the top of the door. But he was simply too knackered to be alarmed or afraid.

He’d had all the fear anybody needed for a whole lifetime. And he had passed through it. Because he’d had no choice.

Once they cleared up the threat of the floaters, somebody threw that treacherous rope ladder down at him. For a second he contemplated trying to climb it.
But you know what?
he thought.
I’ve exerted myself enough for one day. They can just haul my tired old bones up there.

So he just lay there ignoring the ladder – until they pulled it back up and threw down the winch line. He got the strop wrapped around his waist and secured it, and just hung on as they winched him up. Even as they were hauling him in the open door, the helo was already banking south and accelerating into the night.

Lying on his back and sucking air, Wesley said, sort of to everyone and no one, “I really am the luckiest Englishman alive.”

“And the unluckiest,” Sarah said, pulling the strop out from under him.

“Yes, that too.” He looked up at Sarah. “You look pretty smart now skipping the riot gear.”

Sarah smiled down at him. “I always look pretty smart.”

But she knew she’d been wrong on this one in the end. She’d thought she had to atone for her sins with her life. But here she was anyway. Something or someone still wanted her walking this Earth. She would be seeing Handon again after all, a thought that filled her with elation.

For his part, Wesley just lat flat and unmoving, looking up at the five faces that gazed down on him with care and compassion – four smooth and one furry, which then licked his own face. He struggled to master his voice and said:

“Thank you. Thank you all.”

“Hey, you saved us,” Burns said. “We saved you.”

Browning nodded. “That’s what it means to be a team.”

“Hey, LT,” Jenson said jauntily. “You look pretty good with no eyebrows…”

Wesley just closed his eyes and let the wind and engine noise lull him to sleep.

Team Deathmatch

Outside Gebilay - 35km Northwest of Hargeisa

“Cadaver One from Cadaver Two, how copy?”

Fick was kneeling down in the dark at the edge of the narrow and dusty road that led out of Gebilay, the next little town over. This, their secondary target sight, had proven to be a total bust, exactly the same as Hargeisa. They’d found few dead of any sort, and no locals at all. They were all the same North Africans or Arabs who had been swept in with the giant herds, sweeping all the Somalis out.

“Cadaver One from Cadaver Two, commo check.”

Fick looked each way up and down the night-shrouded road, where Brady and Reyes were pulling security on either side of him, their NVGs scanning the blackness from side to side. He was whispering into his mic to keep the noise down, but he knew his two Marines could hear him.

And he knew what they were thinking.

Fick stood up. “Just shitty air between here and there. Forget it.” It was true there were a thousand reasons for commo failure – and everyone on the other end being dead was only one of them. Hell, Alpha had been so closely engaged at last contact, they probably just didn’t have the breath to answer.

“Okay,” Brady said. “So what now?”

Instead of answering, Fick changed channels. But before he could hail the
JFK
, to report the dry hole at the secondary site and request instructions, they hailed him first. “
Cadaver Two from JFK, how copy?
”

“Cadaver Two, go ahead.”

“Interrogative: is this Cadaver Two Actual on the line?”

“Yeah, affirmative. In the flesh.”

“Hold for Lieutenant Commander Walker.”

There was a brief pause, then a change to a female voice.

“Fick, it’s Walker.”

“Hiya, Doc. Go ahead.”

Hearing this, Brady and Reyes each stepped closer, craning their heads down toward the radio.

“Listen. I’m calling with an update about your wounded Marine.”

Fick just waited for it.

“I’m sorry. He’d already lost too much blood.”

“What?” Fick could only manage the single word.

“He didn’t make it. We did everything we could for him.”

He couldn’t believe it.

Graybeard was gone.

* * *

Fick tromped up the road through the pitch-black African night. He was vaguely aware of Brady and Reyes following behind him, but he couldn’t face them right now. He’d gotten the team moving up the road, just to get them moving. And he needed a minute here. To think. To grieve. To work this out.

To get into his own head.

Or maybe that was the last thing he needed.

Mainly what he was thinking was that he couldn’t believe it. This was his own personal nightmare coming true – the same nightmare he’d had on the bomber, flying back from Beaver Island. Watching a shadowy, unimaginable terror emerge from out of the trees and take one of his Marines. And now, he felt sure, the impossible, unendurable part had started:

Now he was going to watch his remaining Marines go down one at a time.

Graybeard was hardly the first man Fick had lost in combat. Far from it. But Graybeard was in a whole different category – a category of one. He was supposed to live forever, supposed to be unkillable. And he was the one who was going to make it through to the end of this thing. Out of all of them, he was supposed to make it.

Perhaps worst of all, his death had been pointless. Graybeard’s life hadn’t bought them anything – they were no closer to their mission objective, to Patient Zero, than they’d been when they’d landed in this Godforsaken place.

It was only one down so far.

But Fick could feel it in his bones. It was coming. And it was only a matter of time. Soon, he would be on his own. And he will have lost the whole team. And not just this fire team out with him now – but everyone on Teams 1 and 2, A Company, 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion. Everyone he had started the ZA with.

Fick was running out of Marines. The drawer was almost empty.

There had been those taken down – one here, two there – in all those scavenging missions over the first two years, keeping the population of the strike group alive. Then a handful fell in the mutiny and outbreak… even as their youngest Marine, the Kid, Chesney, was left behind on Beaver Island. More in the Battle of the
JFK
on the flight deck, including another grand old man, Gunny Blane.

Then Coulson, burned alive after that Russian missile strike.

But now with Graybeard going down, that not only meant that any of them
could
die. It seemed to Fick to mean that
everyone WAS GOING to die
– that each of them had now been marked for death. Graybeard had been the oldest member, by far, of the MARSOC teams. He had seen and done it all. But now Fick was left as the Grand Old Man of the outfit. And he was already feeling a hell of a lot older, and a hell of a lot more lonely.

Older and more alone than he’d ever imagined he could feel.

He slowed his relentless forward march, came to a stop, and finally turned around to face the other two. Brady and Reyes came in close and flipped their NVGs up. Graybeard’s death had obviously shaken them, too. And as Fick looked into the sad dark eyes of the younger Reyes, and blue ones of the even younger Brady, he realized he was going to have to pull his shit together – and
right now
. For them. Now his job was to keep the younger guys focused on their jobs, and combat effective – and keep them alive if he could. Maybe that was the most important thing.

And as he looked into their eyes, his vision went long and he momentarily saw an even younger pair looking back at him. They were the fair, pale blue eyes of Emily, his friend waiting for him back on the carrier.

And that vision also reminded him of his duty.

Everyone left alive was still counting on them to get this done.

He took a deep breath. “C’mon,” he growled. “We’ve still got a job to do.”

“What now, skipper?” Reyes asked. He was obviously desperate for some kind of guidance and leadership. Brady wasn’t far behind him.

Fick nodded. “Now we go find Alpha. And we all go find this magical first dead guy. And then we get the fuck out of this shithole and go home.”

Brady and Reyes both nodded. That sounded good to them.

“And after that, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives playing Call of Duty team deathmatch, on our final posting – to Camp Couch, Fort Living Room.”

Brady and Reyes both grinned in the darkness.

“Now move out,” Fick grumbled.

Uneasy Lies the Head

Summit of Mount Shimbiris

Ali was on overwatch. She felt a lot more comfortable there. She always did.

No stress, no awkwardness, and no dramas – between her and Homer; or, worse, between Handon and Henno. Just her and her rifle, and the rarefied upper air, and long and uninterrupted sight lines.

She’d positioned herself up on the bare stone crown of the mountain.

And right now, with the morning sun rising over it, nothing was moving on that mountain – or anywhere down below it, as far as she could see. From here, the very highest point in all of Somalia, she had perfect views out to the Gulf of Aden to the north, and over the Cal Madow forests that blanketed the shoulders and slopes of the peak in every other direction. She couldn’t see into all the thick sections of trees and bush.

But she could see enough.

And so now she could just lie on her stomach behind her rifle and do her job. As well as zone out, relax, and reflect.

After their escape from the imploding multi-species zombie vortex that was Ali’s hometown of Hargeisa, they had faced an eight-hour overland drive, west and then north, back up to the coast and onto the slopes of Mount Shimbiris, the tallest peak in the country. There they had been welcomed into the forest encampment of some Army Special Forces guys who had, utterly unexpectedly, turned up to pull their asses out of the fire – literally, from that burning and collapsing hospital.

And it was not just any Special Forces ODA – it was the legendary Triple Nickel, and Juice’s old team.

Handon of course had a hell of a lot to discuss with their team sergeant, Master Sergeant Jake Redding. Ali knew they had been swapping info and plans non-stop on the drive. But it had proved all but impossible for her to stay awake – particularly since she didn’t have to. So she kept nodding off across that long drive, even as the sun came up ahead of them and to the right.

It had been over twenty-four hours since she’d slept. This assclown circus of a mission had taken them non-stop from the dawn of the first day to the dawn of the second, either patrolling, driving, or fighting the entire time.

Where they went now, and what they did, was happily above her pay grade. Though it was obvious it would be dictated by the SF guys claiming to know the location of the literal Patient Zero – the Typhoid Mary of the whole Zulu Alpha. Or maybe it was Zack Altringham, the senior CIA analyst, who knew. Ali still didn’t quite believe he was alive, because she hadn’t seen him. As they’d approached the camp, she’d instantly volunteered to go up into overwatch – in part to avoid him.

She definitely wasn’t ready to have that conversation yet. She didn’t even know how to begin processing it.

But whatever was decided, she’d go where she was told. Ali trusted Handon completely – they’d worked together for a lot of years, starting long before USOC, Hereford, and the ZA. And Unit guys always trusted other Unit guys, above all others. They didn’t make a big deal out of it, but deep down they felt themselves to be a band apart.

But if the survivors of Triple Nickel really did have a grid reference for Patient Zero, that was much more valuable than gold dust. That was the whole ballgame. And with the entire local population of Hargeisa, perhaps all of Somalia, relocated by herds to God knew where, then Patient Zero was also the only game in town.

Right now, the two commanders were down below in that Green Beret bush camp, presumably coming up with a plan to go and get it.

And maybe that would be the beginning of the end.

The beginning of a way back.

* * *

Time. Time and silence. These were the two gifts Ali had now, as the sun slowly rose in the clear sky. Time that had been denied to so many. And, unlike when they had started this segment of the mission, time to sort through her feelings.

On their drive out of the burning, heaving, overrun town, she had taken one last look back – as that truly would be her last exit from that place. In many ways, her second escape from Hargeisa had been less harrowing than her first, many years ago. This time, she never doubted that she’d make it. Before, she never really believed she could succeed.