Arisen, Book Three - Three Parts Dead

by Glynn James

  They would both adjust in time, Amarie thought as she stroked her daughter’s thin, soft hair. They would get used to daylight and the noises that people made, and they would find some place to be in this new world. That much she was very grateful for; all the time she had spent in the Tunnel with her fellow refugees from France she had thought – had been convinced – that the world outside was finished, dead and gone, humanity wiped out on a global scale forever, and that they would have to spend their entire lives living underground, fighting off the zombies that always found them again. Now, outside of the Tunnel, she had discovered that not only were people still surviving, but they were surviving in their millions; a whole nation on one island still fighting against the tide of the dead that crept ever closer.

  And it was an island that had defended itself in the same way for centuries before – by being an island. Zombies could not get on boats and launch an invasion.

  Amarie stared out of the window, trying to force her eyes to cope with even the dim light that shone through the net curtains that she had hung up, and she began to think, as she had done many times since their rescue, about what they would do next. London seemed the obvious choice, as it seemed the only choice to many, and she wondered when they would be allowed out of their quarantine. Two more days minimum, they had been told, and until then they were only allowed to walk in the tenement grounds.

  London. She had dreamt of visiting the city all her life, and had nearly made the journey a couple of times. She had even hoped she might travel there with Wesley when he finished his security contract in Paris. That was what he had suggested a few weeks before… before that last time she had seen him.

  “I’ve got a place there if you want to come with me,” he had said, and she had smiled. Now she wasn’t smiling. Back then she had been coy, and undecided. She hadn’t wanted to seem too keen to follow him. She hadn’t wanted to scare him away by being overpowering in her affections, even though she knew she would have followed the man anywhere, and career be damned. Now, she just wondered if he was alive – and if she would ever find him.

  Find him and tell him that he had a child that he didn’t even know existed.

  It wasn’t how she had wanted her first visit to London to be, but now it seemed she may get to visit the place after all. Though she wondered if it would still be the thriving, bustling hive of life that she had always imagined.

  There was a small supply shop directly across the street; she could see it from her window on the fourth floor, and she watched as people came and went, carrying bags full of goods and walking off in whatever direction their homes lay. Every day a truck arrived outside, and two soldiers stood guard while two other men pushed overloaded carts through the doors and came back with empty ones. A couple of days more and she would be allowed to go there herself and not depend on the supply drop.

  She watched two soldiers standing guard and talking to each other, wondering if they could give her any news of her homeland – for no one had been forthcoming about France. Everyone she asked merely frowned at her and tried to change the subject. They just didn’t understand that all she wanted was a simple answer, in fact just a confirmation of what she already knew: that her homeland and everyone in it was dead.

  She thought now of her parents in the south, the rolling slopes of the vineyard that she had played in as a child, and wondered if now the dead walked lumbering through those beautiful landscapes.

  And that was when the sirens began to blare.

  For a moment Amarie was confused. The noise was alien to her, but her head cleared and it all clicked into place as she watched the two soldiers force the delivery men to stay inside the shop, and jumped back into their truck. The door of the shop closed, and then the metal shutters lowered as the truck raced off up the road. Amarie looked down the street, and saw people coming out of their homes and looking up and down.

  They had been told of the sirens, told about the drill if an imminent outbreak was happening. But they had also told them that it was very unlikely to ever be necessary. Amarie felt her heart beating in her chest, and tried to calm herself. This wasn’t bad. This was nothing like what she had experienced every day in the Tunnel. They said there had been no outbreaks near Canterbury for over a year. There was nothing to worry about. They would be in quarantine for a couple of days and then they would be shipped to London.

  There would be no outbreak.

  Then she heard the gunfire.

  And then she heard the screams.

  Dalliance

  Sarah shifted slightly on the waterside log-bench she still shared with Handon. She paused a beat, then looked at him intently. “Were you ever married?”

  Handon looked back across at her. He definitely wasn’t used to answering personal questions – not in his past life and career, and definitely not lately. He answered anyway. “Yeah, once. But we divorced years ago.”

  “Is she…”

  Monitoring the dirt and foliage at his feet again, Handon shook his head slowly. “I tried to contact her. Before the fall. During. A bit after.”

  Sarah’s expression grew tender. “She was at Fort Bragg?”

  This drew Handon up, and he looked at her, eyes slitted. “How’d you guess that?”

  “Home of the Airborne,” she said. “And Special Forces. Didn’t take you for a mechanic.”

  Handon laughed. “Special Forces has mechanics. They’re amazing.”

  “No doubt,” said Sarah, and she meant it. For some reason, she felt like pushing her luck, intimacy-wise. “Kids?”

  “No. We tried. But I probably did too much rescuing of nuclear materials casks or something.”

  Actually, the fertility problem had been with her. Or so the doctors had said. And it had been mainly Handon who wanted a child. He had been looking forward to retirement from the military. And he’d been thinking about what might give his life meaning, after the fight was over for him.

  Ha, he thought to himself. Little did I know…

  But he pushed those thoughts away and changed the subject. Back to her.

  “You’re lucky to have your family around you. And they’re obviously damned lucky to have you.”

  She gazed at the stream – seeming to Handon to be making a decision about her response, as well. “Of course I love my son very much…” The hell with it, she in turn thought. Life is WAY too short to tell polite untruths. “But they need so much management, reassurance, propping up, protecting… I’m sorry, I’m just very tired. It’s been a long two years.”

  For a moment, Handon wasn’t sure how to react to this. He spoke hesitantly. “Well, you must have them trained up pretty well now… and I’m sure Mark is very devoted to you.” He braced himself, not knowing if he’d said the wrong thing.

  She paused before answering. “Well, yes. On the upside, Mark has always been faithful. Then again, men are said to be faithful in inverse proportion to their opportunities to stray.”

  Handon laughed. “And there are damned few opportunities these days.”

  “Oh, hell, who are we kidding? There were damn few for him back before all this.”

  The both laughed together now. They also both rocked slightly – in sync with each other. Weight seemed to fall from Sarah as she plowed ahead. Basically, she hadn’t had anyone to really talk to since she could remember. She spoke easily now.

  “I fell out of love with Mark a long time ago.” She exhaled through puffed cheeks. “I’d been waiting for the right moment, and the courage, to end the marriage. But then all this happened. Now, obviously, there’s not much point – especially with the boy to look after. How could I get divorced, anyway? All the lawyers got eaten.”

  “One nice thing.”

  Her smile bloomed, then faded slowly, and she grew a little sad again. “Also, for all I knew, my husband and son were the last two living people I was ever going to set eyes on.”

  “And yet, here we are,” Handon said. “Just goes to show, you never know.”
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br />   “No, you don’t.” But Sarah didn’t seem like she was done unburdening herself. As if she’d been burdened for an awfully long time. “Mark was never the most impressive or manly husband back in the world. He was an okay domestic partner when society took care of almost everything for us. But here in the Crunch… well, this has not been his moment to shine.”

  “May I ask why you got married?”

  “Of course you can ask.” The hours they had known each other were starting to seem like bigger units of time. And they were both starting to acknowledge that fact. Again, there was little point in dodging it – not when this hour might be their only one. “Mark happened to come along at a very bad point in my life – when… well, something bad had happened. And he was there for me then. Afterward, I suppose we stayed together out of habit, or maybe my lingering gratitude toward him. It was pleasant enough for a while. And when the gloss of pleasantness wore off, it still seemed too much trouble, and too painful, to tear it all down – just for the sake of going out to try and find something better.”

  “And your son?”

  “I think we had him because it seemed like the thing to do. To make the marriage make sense.”

  “But it didn’t work. Or not well enough that you had another one.”

  “No. And God knows we’re not going to now. I… I try to be maternal to the boy, but it doesn’t seem to be my strongest trait. Also, when every little decision can tip your odds of survival, it’s so much harder to take feelings into account, to forgive his mistakes, to be kind.”

  “You must have had him very young.” He saw her raise her eyebrows at him. He went ahead and dug himself in deeper. “Being in your early thirties, I mean… Very early thirties…”

  She kept him in agony for a few seconds. “I’m thirty-eight, actually.” She paused. “I just take care of myself. I suppose you have to these days, don’t you?”

  Handon nodded. “One nice thing about the apocalypse. No processed foods.”

  “Ha!” The green of her eyes warmed, right in front of his. “Yes. Vegetables from the garden, meat on the hoof. No pesticides. Though, to be honest, I’ve always been a bit of a health nut. Comes with the job, if you take it seriously.”

  Handon watched the ground as he said, “That also explains why you look like that.”

  “Like what?”

  And Command Sergeant Major Handon experienced an emotion he had probably not felt since Basic: awkwardness. Jesus – what the hell am I doing? he asked himself. He had responsibilities. Danger was on all sides of them – and now, possibly, right here in front of him. In this… this thing that was happening.

  Could he afford this kind of distraction, or weakness, or vulnerability? He’d seen what it did to operational efficiency, and seen it damned recently. He saw how a critical mission parameter, the one dictating that force protection be sacrificed to the mission objective, went out the window when Ali missed her drop and Homer followed her down onto the streets of Chicago. By rights, that should have resulted in his death on top of hers.

  It was all very bad juju.

  Handon simply couldn’t allow himself to be… dallying like this. It wasn’t like him. It was almost exactly unlike him, in fact. But the person who was having these feelings hardly felt like him at all. Certainly, Handon hadn’t expected to feel this way. He hadn’t expected his heart to lurch like this – probably ever again. And he was too self-aware not to recognize what was happening to him.

  But I’d damned well better be strong enough to get it under control, he thought.

  He also knew that in any conflict between personal feelings and his duty, personal feelings were going to go down hard. This was what made them so dangerous to indulge, or even to feel.

  Because he still had a mission to complete. And he had a team to lead – six very important people he needed to get out of there alive. And they were all still deep in Zulu country, even if they felt momentarily safe. He simply couldn’t allow himself to be lulled this way.

  Or this badly distracted.

  * * *

  Mark appeared from outside, walking into the main room of the cabin. He carried an armload of firewood, his axe stacked up on top. He looked annoyed. Juice guessed maybe he’d heard the laughter from outside. Mark quickly saw his son with Juice’s assault rifle, working the bolt and peering into the chamber.

  “What are you doing with that?” he asked.

  The boy looked up. “Juice is showing me how to use it.”

  “No,” Mark said. “It’s bad enough with all your mother’s guns. Give it back. Now.”

  Juice gently took the weapon back from him.

  Mark Cameron looked around the room – in particular to where Predator had his feet up. “Has anybody seen my wife?”

  No one answered. Predator had to bite his tongue not to say, “I’ve seen the top of her head.” Something about the emasculated patriarch of this clan brought out his inner bully.

  Mark stalked across the room and let the firewood clatter down onto the stone beside the fireplace. He gathered himself before turning back to face the room. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know why you people are here. I’m not sure why Sarah brought you back. Maybe it’s because she still hasn’t given up on the world. She wants to know that there’s something still out there. But there’s not. There’s only the three of us. All we’ve got is us.”

  No one had any response to this, either.

  “Look,” Cameron finally said, “what is it you people want?”

  “Honestly, dude?” Predator said, swiveling his huge head up to face the man in the fuzzy sweater. “Mainly I just want this moment to end…”

  Juice stood up hastily. “Sir, we’re just waiting for the radio to charge, then we’re going to be on our way. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”

  Mark looked to his son. “I want you to go out and find your mother. Now. Go.”

  Hair hanging in front of face, his body language broadcasting embarrassment and anger, the boy rose and stalked from the room. He paused long enough to grab the Mossberg shotgun from its place on the gun rack.

  He slammed the door with an ugly report that shook the cabin.

  * * *

  In the silence that still lay unbroken between Sarah and Handon, she fought her own mini-battle with feelings that were very unfamiliar. And that were also not the least bit sensible, or salutary to any of their chances for survival.

  There was something about the American soldier that was incredibly stirring. Obviously, he was manly and resolute, in every way that Mark was not. So if something had been missing for her, well, here it now sat. Also, as she turned these feelings over, trying to make sense of them… well, it seemed to her there was something about him that made her want to live. Through all of this. And to be more remarkable. To achieve more. To be her best self.

  Though, of course, just surviving another day was a pretty damned remarkable accomplishment these days.

  And these were also feelings she hadn’t felt in a long time. And only now did she realize that maybe she hadn’t been fully alive, also not for a long time. She had survived, sure. And she’d functioned at a high level, keeping her family alive, against the worst possible odds. But, still, some deep part of her that was the most authentic Sarah… well, she started to wonder if that part of her, out of sight, out of her consciousness, had been silently bleeding away. If maybe, without her noticing, she had already slid most of the way down the road to… well, to becoming no different from the dead that surrounded them.

  If maybe she wasn’t three parts dead already.

  Was love the key to really being alive? And being more than just one of the walking dead herself?

  But none of this meant she didn’t recognize the danger. She changed the topic.

  “Well, Sergeant Major, you told me where you’ve been. Why don’t you tell me where you’re planning on going. From here.”

  She thought he looked a little relieved at this.

  “N
orth,” he said. “We need to get to Beaver Island.”

  “That is pretty northerly,” she said. “And it explains the boat.”

  “It was sort of the other way around,” Handon said. “The boat was our only way out of Chicago. And we were told there’s an airfield on the island. So our big idea was to sail to it. But then we lost our wind. And the current took us up into… what is the name of that town?”

  “It’s called Glenbrook. Why Beaver Island?”

  “There’s an airport there. Someplace a plane can land and extract us.”

  Sarah looked impressed. “So there are still transatlantic flights, then.”

  “No,” Handon said. “We have a ship, off the coast of Virginia.”

  Sarah looked confused. “What kind of ship can you land a…” But then she trailed off. The question obviously answered itself. Finally, she said, “Seriously?”

  “Yes. The John F. Kennedy. Her crew’s at half strength, less now, I gather. And most of her ops involve scavenging for supplies to keep going. But she floats.”

  Sarah nodded, eyes still slightly squinted. “I can believe that. With nuclear power, she’d be damned close to self-sufficient… closer than us, at any rate. Her captain certainly won’t have to go around sucking on siphon hoses.”

  Handon laughed. And he thought he could almost see Sarah swell with hope – perhaps more than she had in a long time. He figured maybe she’d written off humanity. Now he had appeared with the news that it wasn’t over yet. He gave her a few seconds with this, before getting back to immediate concerns.

  “What’s your recommendation for us on getting up to the top of the lake? Oh, did I mention that our boat sank?”

  “Yes, I actually saw that.” She looked sidelong at him, wondering if he knew how close she had come to leaving them to their fate. She guessed that maybe he did – and that he wouldn’t hold it against her. He’d probably tell her to ditch the strangers next time. It was survival.

  “Is there another suitable craft in town? Or can we try to go overland? Up the lake shore?”

  “No – on both counts. If there were another boat in town, you wouldn’t want to go back there for it. It’s too dangerous now, maybe impossible, with the critters all riled up. I don’t think they’ll settle down for days, maybe weeks. And overland’s too dangerous. Never mind that you’d have to get on the water eventually anyway, to get to the island.”