Uh oh, he thought, reaching for his radio.
* * *
“Send it,” Handon said into his throat mic, economical as usual. He was standing in a narrow alley with a Zulu impaled and wriggling on the end of his short sword. He and Henno were trying to work out where it was from.
Homer said, “I’m walking the northwest section of outer wire and I’ve just found a couple of small explosive charges on the fence, wired to a radio detonator.”
“Copy that,” Handon said. He watched as Henno actually reached around and dug a wallet out of the back pocket of the Zulu’s half-rotted Levis. He removed a small card from the wallet, checked it out, then held it out for Handon to see. It was an Egyptian driver’s license.
Shaking his head, Handon withdrew his sword and used it to take off the dead Egyptian’s head. It and its body both fell to the ground.
Kneeling down to wipe his sword clean, he keyed his mic and said, “Okay – what do you think that means?”
“Impossible to know for sure. But my guess?”
“Yeah, your guess.” Handon stood up and smoothly sheathed the sword in the small of his back.
“I’d say Zorn meant for us to clear these last sections of the camp for him, push through to the back of the last enclosure – and then he’d blow the outer wire, ejecting us along with any remaining Zulus. Basically, I don’t think he wants us here any more than he wants the dead. He wants us gone. He’s just using us as conscripted labor first.”
Handon and Henno both shook their heads. “Yeah, I got that vibe, too.”
“Jammy bastard,” Henno spat.
“Can you disable those devices and get back here?”
“Disabled them while we were talking – heading back now.”
“Good m—”
But Handon abandoned his next word as the dull crump of a grenade going off sounded from somewhere nearby.
“Come on,” Handon said, hefting his rifle.
They both took off running.
* * *
Not looking at a ton of options, Brady rushed forward with the knife he already had out, while Reyes fumbled for his own, and cut through the duct tape holding the grenade to the post. He pulled it clear and with an instant wrist flick managed to not only toss it to the end of the HESCO corridor – but also bank it off the back wall and around the corner.
They were now shielded from the coming blast, but the two of them covered up anyway as it went off. Dust and debris whooshed out over them, but they were fine. Chuckling, Reyes said, “Think there’s a third one?”
“Nah, I doubt it. Nobody’s that much of an asshole.”
“Wait – what the fuck is that?”
That’s when they both heard the moaning – nearly too late. Facing forward, they belatedly saw another section of chain-link fence that had been blown down by the grenade blast. It was that second gate they had speculated would be there. And it wasn’t hard to work out what it had been keeping penned in.
Because it was now being trampled by the feet of a gaggle of dead rushing out.
Reacting quickly, they both tumbled back out the outer gate – and then rushed to slam it shut. The undead reached it before they could latch it.
Now it was a shoving contest.
Two on twenty – with more flooding out every second.
Like a Demon Possessed
Camp Lemonnier - Outside Thunderdome
Actually, it was even worse than two on twenty. If Fick was to be believed, it was only one of them – the wounded Reyes and Brady adding up to a single healthy Marine – about to be opposing hundreds. The number of bodies on the other side was increasing fast.
The Marines were both strong men, and shoving like hell on the gate. But the situation was going south on them. Without time to think about it, Reyes braced his back leg and dug in – but with the nerve damage there, it buckled on him and he fell to his knees, still shoving, but now with less leverage.
Brady instantly tried to compensate. But one of the thick crowd of riled-up dead inside – almost certainly a Foxtrot – flew face-first into the gate, slamming it brutally into Brady’s shot-through and weak right arm. He howled in pain and rage, but dug in and kept pushing, as Reyes tried to regain his feet.
Both of them could already feel their bandaged wounds seeping blood. They looked into each other’s faces as Reyes tried to stand. And their expressions said it all: they were not getting this gate shut.
They were about to be swarmed and overrun.
* * *
Handon and Henno, Juice and Pred, Fick and Graybeard, Ali, Homer – all started running when they heard the grenade go off.
And now they heard the call go out.
“Hey, guys. We’re in heavy contact up at Thunderdome – and we can’t contain it. You should seal off this section and get the hell out of here.”
This transmission was followed by the sound of full-auto 5.56 fire.
But everyone knew the section they were in had already been sealed off as soon as they went into it. And none of them had any intention of leaving anyone behind.
Correction – none of them but their commander.
“All Cadaver elements – withdraw back to first rally point. Henno and I will take this.” Handon clicked off and kept running – hoping like hell the others would see reason and listen to his damned orders.
On this one, it was absolutely critical that they did.
* * *
Reyes was flat on his back, firing his SCAR as fast as he could pull the trigger. He went dry and did the fastest mag change of his life – but luckily Brady was standing over him, firing full-auto… equally surprised and pleased that his borrowed rifle turned out to be an M4A1, and thus had a full-auto setting on its fire selector.
When they’d worked out that gate wasn’t closing again, they decided they were better off choosing when to let it go. Now here they were, in tight quarters – with what was obviously an entire Thunderdome full of Zulus, Romeos, and the odd Foxtrot spilling out at them. The two Marines were dropping them almost as fast as they rushed out of the narrow exit.
In a short time, they had built up a wall of bodies in front of the gate, spilling out to ten feet in front of it and to either side. And the undead reinforcements were having to climb over this meat wall to get to them. Particularly with Reyes immobile, this was pretty much the only reason they weren’t already overrun and devoured.
When Brady went dry, and heard Reyes’s weapon back up, he let his rifle drop, pulled two grenades, tossed them over the wall of meat, and covered up Reyes on the ground while he reloaded. After the grenades went off, he looked up to see… that he’d mainly succeeded in knocking over the body pile, right back toward them.
And now dozens of frenzied figures scrambled over the collapsing obstacle. Really the only thing they had going for them was that the slow ones were holding the fast ones up. Then Brady managed to trip as he tried to back away, falling on his ass while still firing, as Reyes crab-crawled away, also firing one-handed.
They were about two seconds from being fallen upon by the horde.
* * *
Blitzing onto this scene, Henno yanked Reyes to his feet while firing one-handed himself, as Handon leapt over Brady, putting himself between them and the threat.
When the two newcomers both went dry, there was no time for Handon to reload – he was too close to the front line – so he pulled his sword and a .45, both in a blur, while Henno stood in place behind him and swapped mags too quickly to follow with the eye. In little more than a second, Henno was again firing aimed single shots at ridiculous speed, pushing forward and circling around to the side of the meat wall – which Handon was beginning to build up again – then went dry and did it all again. Mag after mag, nearly a hundred rounds in the first half-minute of the engagement.
And virtually every one he fired came to rest in a brainstem. It was a masterclass in precision tactical shooting.
“Good news!” Brady shouted.
Handon ignored this, emptying his .45 into a couple of faces and taking two heads off with whirling slashes of his sword. He then leapt back to the two wounded Marines. As he hauled Brady upright, the lanky Marine elaborated: “We found dead Americans in uniform.”
Handon shoved them both toward the rear, then looked back over his shoulder, where Henno was putting up a furious and masterful one-man holding action, fighting like a demon possessed while Handon led the two wounded out of there.
And, sure enough, the growing pile of disanimated bodies, as well as the ones walking, running, or leaping over it, the ones Henno was putting down about two a second… all of them were in American military uniform.
It looked like much of the entire former garrison was now spilling out of Thunderdome – perhaps not all four thousand of those missing personnel, but a hell of a lot of them. This was where they had all gone.
Zorn hadn’t killed and buried them. He had herded them in here.
Fool me twice, Handon thought bitterly, getting Reyes’s arm up and over his shoulder, and half-dragging the pair of them back toward safety.
* * *
Homer, having pushed so far forward, now found himself cut off. The mass exodus from Thunderdome was between him and his route back. So he figured the best thing he could do now was make his way to one of the towers on the north wire, where he could cover the withdrawal of the others.
But before moving out, he leaned around a corner for a quick look at the scene, glassing a lot of targets, but not taking any shots. The reason he hesitated was he saw they’d finally found what they were looking for – undead in American uniform. Early-stage victims.
Man, he thought. You wait all day for a bus, then four thousand show up at once.
But he also figured the rest of the team would be in a better position to safely capture and restrain one, more than Homer out here by himself. Also, they were all now in some pretty serious caca, and probably needed to make progress on the problem of staying alive before doing their live capture.
But then Homer’s scope unexpectedly went dark as a body moved in front of it – one much closer than the mass of rampaging dead, who were a good two hundred yards south of his position. He pulled his eye away from his sight and saw a single dead man, standing no more than twenty-five yards away from him.
And it was just standing there looking at him – not advancing, not slavering or grasping, or otherwise presenting as a threat. That alone was weird enough.
But then Homer’s throat seized up – as he recognized the dead man’s face, despite its green tint, emaciated cheeks, and sore-covered skin. His first thought was that he must be imagining things. But then he also recognized the webbing and gear on its body. It was pretty standard configuration for an operator or OGA guy. Homer would have said this could be anyone from the CIA’s Ground Branch. But he also knew Team Six guys had a special way of arranging their gear – and this man in particular did as well.
And Homer knew him from his time in the teams. There could be absolutely no doubt. They had overlapped by only a few months in DEVGRU, before the man took his papers and went over to CIA. But if the spec-ops community was small, and the brotherhood of SEALs even smaller… Team Six was like a tiny fraternity, or cult – one you were in for life. Everyone knew everyone.
So Homer wasn’t confused now. He knew this man, beyond any doubt.
He remembered his irreverent humor, his advanced degree, his obsessive stock trading, and how much women everywhere loved him. His toughness and courage and excellence at his job. And Homer could clearly picture the intelligent cast to his dark eyes and angular stubbled jaw.
Not least because he was looking right at them.
Dugan.
It of course wasn’t possible that Dugan recognized Homer in turn. Nor was it in any way conceivable that zombie Dugan was refraining from attacking him.
But it was also happening – Dugan just stood there and watched him – and it was happening right in front of Homer’s face. And you couldn’t deny what was in front of your face.
Plus, Homer thought, impossible things happen all the time.
We call them miracles.
* * *
Reyes snorted as he did his best to run on his newly re-wounded leg, leaning heavily on Handon. Yep, he thought, remembering his joke with Predator on the carrier. A turned ankle really is a goddamned death sentence these days…
They were coming within sight of the gate up ahead. It was just like they had left it – closed. Handon started to get on the radio, when Ali spilled around a corner at speed, almost knocking into them. “Where’s Henno?” she said.
“Delaying action.”
“I’ll go back to support him.”
“Negative! We push forward out of here. Through the gate.”
And in that instant, Homer came over the channel. “Guys, I have overwatch from one of the north guard towers. It sure looks like Henno could use a hand.”
Handon shook his head. Special-ops ethos aside, this was no time for the usual “leave no man behind” routine – and potentially getting people killed trying to save other people who were already getting killed. As much as in Chicago, where they had said it but didn’t act like it, the mission came first – way ahead of force protection. One casualty they could absorb. But they couldn’t lose half the team here. Or all of it. It was a total no-go.
Handon keyed his mic. “Disregard that. Everyone withdraws by fire teams. Repeat, no going back. Everyone out.”
When he looked up, Ali had locked eyes with him. But she only held his gaze for a second, before realizing Handon had it right – and it was his call anyway. They had to leave Henno behind – to get out, or not, on his own. So she slung her rifle, put Reyes’s other arm over her shoulder, and led them all toward that gate.
Which was still fucking closed.
* * *
Pred and Juice regarded each other, hesitating.
“Do what the man says?” Juice asked. “Just get ourselves out of here?”
Pred considered. From where they were, they could easily hear the rampaging mob – and now they could just see the edge of it, spilling out into their sector. “Yeah. I suppose we should. Anyway, First Rule of Holes, man.”
Juice cocked his head. “What’s that?”
“When in one, stop digging.”
“Okay. Let’s head back. Henno’ll be fine.”
Juice hoped he believed that.
* * *
When Fick and Graybeard reached the others at the gate, it was still shut – and Ali was trying to chew through the heavy-gauge steel meshes with the wire-snipper on her multi-tool, which was painstaking work at best. Handon looked up at the thick coils of razor wire that topped the twelve-foot fence, as he shouted into his radio.
Fick spun Reyes around, and then Brady. “You two assholes okay?”
“Fine,” Reyes said.
Brady added, “Thanks for caring, Master Guns.”
“Can we blow the gate?” Handon asked Ali.
“Maybe. But that means everyone here retreating back down there.” She nodded toward the closest cover – where the dead were coming from. “And I can’t reach the damned tension cable to cut it…”
But as Juice rocked up, he hauled an arm-length pair of cable-cutters out of his pack, shoved Ali out of the way, and got to work, making much shorter work of the thick steel meshes.
Fick moved to Handon, who was still on the radio.
“Noise, Handon, we need this last gate open – precedence flash!” He looked up at Fick. “Nothing.”
“Fuck ’em,” Fick said. Juice already had the fence cut practically in half, and they all started squeezing through the gap. But they could all hear the undead mob raging, closing from behind.
And now those in the rear took shots on the first few that appeared.
Henno was still nowhere to be seen.
Rubicon
London - Charing Cross Road
“It’s Brown and Dolby!
” Colley shouted, sticking his head up into the front of the hurtling truck the Tunnelers had hijacked. Hackworth was driving, trying to keep them from crashing, and couldn’t take his eye off the road. They were driving way too fast for a narrow surface street in central London, but he couldn’t bring himself to throttle down yet either.
“What about them?” he shouted over his shoulder.
Colley took some deep breaths and climbed up into the passenger seat. “They’ve both been shot.”
Hackworth’s mouth opened – but nothing came out. Actually, he could easily believe it. The truck, stopped at that government checkpoint, had been the center of a whole storm of gunfire, as marauders took out all the soldiers manning the gate. With all that shooting, plus the thin skin of the truck’s cargo area, it wasn’t all that surprising some of their people had been hit.
Still, Hackworth needed a minute to get his mind around it.
Because the stakes had just gone up again. The Tunnelers – already having become hijackers, kidnappers, and refugees from the military and police – now also had wounded to care for. And Hackworth knew he was responsible – both for them getting hurt, and for whatever happened to them now.
“How bad?” he asked, gripping the big steering wheel with bloodless fingers, watching the theaters and bookshops of Charing Cross Road blur by. They blasted across the intersection with Oxford Street without slowing. The traffic signals were out. But they made it through without a collision.
“Brown’s just hit in the leg. It’s bleeding but doesn’t look too bad. But Dolby…”
Hackworth could hear the moaning from the back now, and it was horrible. He knew that Dolby, the old man from the south of France, with his bad asthma, hadn’t been in great health at the best of times. “Will he make it?”
“I don’t know,” said Colley. “He’s hit in the chest and the wound is making these bad wheezing noises…”
“I can make it!” they both heard from the back. The voice, equally laced with pain and determination, was that of Brown. Hackworth knew him to be a pretty tough young man. If he said he could make it, maybe he could.
Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Page 22
