Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  ARISEN

  Hope Never Dies.

  First published 2015 by Complete & Total Asskicking Books

  London, UK

  Copyright © Michael Stephen Fuchs

  The right of Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  About the Author

  MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS, in addition to co-authoring the first eight books of the bestselling ARISEN series with Glynn James, wrote the bestselling prequels ARISEN : GENESIS and ARISEN : NEMESIS (an Amazon #1 bestseller in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction and #1 in Dystopian). The series as a whole has sold nearly a quarter million copies. He is also author of the D-BOYS series of high-tech special-operations military adventure novels, which include D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and CLOSE QUARTERS BATTLE (coming in 2016); as well as the acclaimed existential cyberthrillers THE MANUSCRIPT and PANDORA’S SISTERS, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation). He lives in London and at www.michaelstephenfuchs.com, and blogs at www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter (@michaelstephenf), or by e-mail.

  ARISEN

  BOOK NINE

  CATACLYSM

  MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS

  For Mark – the other one

  “All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

  Panic and pitfall have befallen us, devastation and destruction.”

  – Lamentations 3:46-47

  “Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.”

  – Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest

  Get It Done

  Open Water - Gulf of Aden

  Trackless ocean.

  Henno had heard that phrase but he’d never got what it really meant. North Yorkshire had coastline, sure. Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay, the beach at Withernsea. But always with the solid moors and dales of Yorkshire anchoring it. Blighty. His people’s island home, invulnerable, never trampled by foreign boots – for almost a thousand years, since the Norman invasion.

  Until now.

  Trackless. As Henno scanned the black surface of the ocean on all sides, he finally got it. What it meant was: not only was there was no one here – it was as if no one had ever been here before. They were alone. With a whole lot of fuck-all in every direction. Back on the carrier, they’d sat up above it all, riding their floating city of thousands, lords of creation.

  But now the operators were down upon it. And it was just them. And in many ways, and in darker moments, Henno felt… it was just him.

  He sat now at the front of the thirty-foot single-hulled utility boat, the ship’s launch, nearly up at the prow – beneath the sailor manning the minigun that pointed menacingly ahead. The wind was weak but steady as the boat ramped over little swells in the darkness, then dropped down the other side. A thin sea spray misted the faces of the thirteen souls on board.

  Henno wasn’t in the front of the boat by accident. He was leaning forward. He was going to get this done. Everything he loved was on the line. Britain was going down under a remorseless tide of the dead. His own countrymen, Englishmen, were falling in their thousands and turning the map of Britain black – and closing a noose around the capital, one from which there could be no escape.

  He had never cared for London, really, much less Londoners. He thought the place loud, dirty, and crowded, and most of the people there too far up their own backsides for his taste. But he also knew that when the capital fell, there would be nothing stopping the remorseless tide of death from flooding north and swamping his beloved Yorkshire. And soon all of Britain would go down.

  And then that would be it for mankind.

  And that could not be allowed to happen.

  They’d come too far, and paid too high a price, to fail now. Henno’s best mate in this world, and his only real one in Alpha team, Captain Connor Ainsley, had gone on to his reward, five thousand miles behind them – in a dingy underground corridor beneath a dead American city. He had triggered off five high-explosive rounds in a small corridor heaving with dead. Point-blank range it was. He chose to spend his life so the others could have a chance to escape, to survive, and to complete the mission.

  Ainsley had done it for his sons, as well as for all of humanity. He’d done it without hesitation, and he’d done it because it was his duty.

  And there was absolutely no way Henno was going to let that sacrifice be for nothing. He personally knew the captain’s wife, Rebecca – and he knew his two lads, Aiden and Luke. The tykes probably didn’t even know their father was dead yet. But Henno knew.

  And he could never forget it.

  * * *

  In the rear of the boat was a second sailor, like the first wearing a flak jacket, Kevlar helmet, and life vest. He was piloting the launch – the same one that had delivered Juice and his Marines to their mission in South Africa. And which had gotten the Marines out. Most of ’em, anyway.

  This was the boat that had nearly delivered Juice to his grave.

  He’d all but bled to death standing watch over that motherlode of supplies he won from the Russians. But the tough bearded bastard had gutted it out. Henno respected that. You had to. Not least because those supplies were a matter of life or death – and, more important, mission success or failure.

  Just ahead of the pilot were some of the fruits of Juice’s triumph: stacked crates of ammo, pallets of bottled water, boxes of MREs, radio batteries – all the most critical supplies the operators were likely to need more of, perhaps urgently and desperately, when they got into contact. Especially the ammo. They couldn’t carry it all with them, but they were bringing it as far forward as they could. The beached boat would serve as their COP, or combat outpost – a place to rearm and refit.

  Once again they had launched at BMNT – beginning of morning nautical twilight, when the sun was twelve degrees below the horizon. This would give them maximal daylight for the op itself, but also the cover of darkness to insert under.

  Not that the dead give a shit, Henno thought.

  But it made a difference for the living, right now subjecting them to a seriously spooky atmosphere – motoring together through a spectral, sepulchral, half-twilight, with the tiny amount of weak light of dawn reflecting off the black surface of the water. It was impossible to see more than fifty meters in any direction. Only the sailors, pilot and gunner wore NVGs.

  The others knew they’d be able to see when it mattered.

  Between the minigunner in the prow and the pilot at the stern were a mismatched pair of special-operations teams. In the rear was Fire Team One of the JFK’s MARSOC Marines – Brady, Reyes, and Graybeard, led by Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick himself. The Marines were a strange lot – though obviously very serious warriors. Henno had gotten to know them only a little. Brady, the refined, well-spoken, good-looking martial-arts champion and smart-arse coffee connoisseur. Reyes – the Hispanic former L.A. bounty hunter, smarter and cagier than he looked. And Graybeard, the ancient and grizzled Master
Sergeant, who had fought in every U.S. Marine engagement back to the First Gulf War, and who had proved himself unkillable across all of them.

  This was the same group that had extracted Alpha from the middle of North America, taking and holding an airfield overrun by thousands of dead, some of them exploding and/or on fire.

  In the front of the boat were the remains of Alpha – Predator, Juice, Ali, Homer, and Henno – led, in name anyway, by Command Sergeant Major Handon.

  This was the Premier League. These were the best left.

  But they were still a motley group, virtually every one of them having been wounded in some way large or small over the course of this dog’s dinner of a mission. But none were willing to quit, nor sit this last phase out.

  Though there was one key difference between Henno and the rest of them – none of the others were fighting for the survival of their home country. It seemed to him a bit like the Second World War all over again. The Brits suffer, and struggle, and fight on alone – until the Yanks turn up late to the party, gallantly saving the day. The conquering heroes.

  And so they were, maybe.

  But on this one, too late wasn’t going to cut it, and neither was too little. It seemed the most obvious thing in the world to Staff Sergeant Henno – when saving the world was your mission, then nothing got in the way of your mission. Nothing, and no one, ever.

  Henno looked over his shoulder, his eyes instantly locking with those of CSM Handon. The man looked over, as if he had just noticed him. But those eyes had been boring holes in his back, Henno could feel it. And he knew one thing.

  Either Handon would get this job done – whatever that required, whatever it took, and whatever the cost. In the lives of soldiers, in the death or injury of civilians, in collateral damage, in scars upon their own flesh and immortal souls.

  Or else Henno would get it done.

  That much he knew for fucking sure.

  * * *

  “The glory of God’s creation, Henno.”

  Henno swiveled at his waist, turning to face the resonant voice, which belonged to Noise – the mysterious Sikh pilot who had touched down on the carrier, and who Handon seemed to have recruited onto the team now.

  Henno snorted in amusement. He stood corrected. There actually was another Englishman on this boat – even if he was a Londoner. And Noise was also SAS – sort of, 23 Reg, the SAS reserve regiment.

  There hadn’t been a lot of Sikhs in the Yorkshire village of Kirby Mills where Henno grew up, but he’d met a few along the way, particularly in the Army. He hadn’t been much for the Church of England, or any religion for that matter, but he reckoned Sikhism was a faith he could get behind. A warrior tribe. Their scripture said the sword pre-dated the universe. In one of Britain’s many scraps in Afghanistan, twenty-one of them from a Sikh infantry regiment had fought to the death against 10,000 Afghans. Churchill himself singled them out for praise, for what they did in the world wars.

  And this one seemed like he could handle himself.

  Henno nodded once at him, then spared another look back toward the stern. Off in the distance behind them was the shrinking gray ice shelf of the JFK. He didn’t know, but certainly suspected, that this might be the last time some of them would lay eyes on the ship, which had been their home since they left Britain.

  Up ahead of them now was the swelling land, the fat finger of Djibouti sticking out into the Gulf of Aden. The launch was motoring in from way out on the water, where the carrier was anchored. Last time, it had gotten too near the North American coast – and attracted the attention of ten million dead. They had flown too close to the flame. And no one was keen to repeat that. Not least because they couldn’t possibly survive another scrap like that one.

  The time for fuck-ups was at an end.

  This was it. The last phase of their mission, and the beginning of the endgame. Either they would recover Patient Zero, Doc Park would complete his vaccine, and they would all go save what was left of Britain – and what was left of humanity. Or else they’d fail, and down mankind would go.

  But Henno didn’t intend to let that happen.

  He knew that one man with sufficient will, with the willingness to do whatever was required, could accomplish anything. The SAS had taught him that. It was all in their motto: Who Dares, Wins.

  The sandy edge of Africa was now just starting to come into view in the smudgy pre-dawn dusk. Henno leaned back against his ruck, enjoying the feel of the ocean breeze on his face. When the bottom of the boat scraped land, he would go leaping out – first and fastest. Because he had a job to do.

  No danger, Henno thought to himself. He’d get it done.

  And Handon, the owner of those eyes he could still feel on his back, would not get in his way. He wouldn’t stop him doing what needed doing.

  Nothing would.

  Oblong Shapes

  10,000 Feet Over the Gulf of Aden

  Silence.

  Silence and open sky.

  Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells was once again up above it all – above their fallen world, and its cares, and its expectations. Out of reach of the rebukes and criticism of her superior officers on the JFK, soaring high enough to escape the gravity well of her family’s disapproval and disappointment, pulling at her even in death…

  Now, she was weightless again, and she was free.

  Way up above the shore mission in their little launch, that tiny shape creeping across the dark surface of the globe, Hailey had more light than they did. In fact, she could see almost the entire pulsing globe of the sun, below and behind her, cresting the horizon of the vast spreading Indian Ocean. She could even see the curvature of the Earth, falling away gently to either side. And that added to the planet’s aspect of vulnerability, of being a tiny cocoon of life, clinging to survival, adrift and alone in a universe that was implacably hostile to all forms of life.

  But life had made it this far. And humanity was the best it had done. It had produced souls that could be tweaked by the beauty of a sunrise, engineers who could build supersonic stealth aircraft, and pilots who could thrill to fly them.

  Hailey wasn’t the most skilled pilot in the carrier air wing, and she was never going to be. She certainly didn’t have a career, or accomplishments, to rival those of her brothers. She hadn’t achieved anything her father, the admiral, would have recognized as in any way exalted.

  But none of that mattered. She was flying. And she was free again. With her light-brown bob of hair swept under her flight helmet, her slightly pixie-ish face beamed at the beautiful open sky around her.

  But she also had a job to do. The TOC-jocks back in CIC would be monitoring her sensor-suite video and radar. But there was a reason they still put human beings in these aircraft. And Hailey needed her own intel and situational awareness. She flipped down her helmet video monocle, then zoomed and panned the camera until she could see the launch below. She knew she was too high up for anyone on that craft to see her, unless they really squinted. And she was much too high to hear – which was the point of her mission.

  To see, and not be heard.

  One of the carrier’s surviving EA-18G Growlers would have actually been a better ISR platform, not to mention would have used less fuel. But it couldn’t do close air support (CAS) if the guys on the ground got in trouble. The air wing had two F-35s left, and two healthy pilots to fly them, and they would be alternating, one in the air and on station at all times.

  Hailey for some reason had gotten the first shift. But she didn’t care why. She only knew she loved to fly – anywhere, any mission. Also, there probably wasn’t much she could screw up on this one – so that was less of a weight upon her peace of mind.

  With luck, she would do nothing but keep watch, relaying radar and video.

  And if she had to do CAS, she’d do it, to the best of her ability. But she also knew that if the ground team were indoors, or under forest canopy, or in really close contact – where much zombie fighting took place – well, ther
e wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot she could do for them anyway.

  Maybe being the angel on their shoulders would be enough.

  * * *

  At Handon’s signal, the operators started unclipping and expanding the launch’s fold-out paddles. For the same reason they were inserting by water, and from far out in the Gulf, they were going to kill the engine and paddle the last stretch.

  It paid to be careful. Not to mention quiet.

  As Juice hefted his paddle, trying to figure out how he was going to lean out far enough to use the damned thing, he almost dropped it in the drink as something bumped into the boat – hard.

  And it was right beside and beneath him.

  Oh, God, he thought. Not another underwater herd, like on Lake Michigan…

  Sitting across from him, Ali read his look. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “The waters off the coast of Somalia are swarming with sharks.”

  “Seriously?” Juice boggled. He shot a look over the side. “Man-eaters?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Behind her, Predator shook his head. “The hits just keep coming for this place. I can see why you left.”

  Ali shrugged. “Just one more reason Somalia is everyone’s favorite holiday destination.”

  Predator grunted. “Just ask Task Force Ranger – the ones who lived.”

  “Less talking, motherfuckers,” Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick growled. “More paddling.” But in the privacy of his head, he was thinking: That would be just like this FUBAR deployment – all of us getting eaten by sharks. Every other damned thing has gone wrong so far…

  When he looked up, Handon was lightly shaking his head – pretty obviously thinking the same thing.

  The two unit leaders were mentally in sync by this point.

  And if they were lucky, their two teams would work together as seamlessly. Though luck had not been one of their big operational assets, not for a long time.