Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

Camp Lemonnier - Southwest Guard Tower

  When the single grenade sounded out near Thunderdome, followed by the first gunshots, Command Sergeant Major Zorn eyed the weird Indian dude out of the corner of his eye to see how he reacted. The man put his hand to his radio – but then stopped. Zorn assumed he’d decided to keep the channel clear, and let the men on the ground hail him if they needed him.

  Not a terrible call. But it also meant that the man’s attention was still on him.

  So Zorn rose slowly and moved out to the railing. He pointed into the distance and said, “I think your guys are in trouble.” That didn’t work either – his captor stepped away from him, and actually swiveled to face him more.

  Dammit. Zorn was about to sit back down, when he saw the Indian’s hand go to his radio earpiece. From the way the man’s expression darkened, Zorn guessed it was a call for help. Which wouldn’t surprise him a bit.

  And then the man rushed to grab the gate control box, leaning over and turning away from him.

  That’s all Zorn needed. He snatched up the wooden leg of the bench he had been working loose while sitting on top of it, and gave it a full-arm swing at the back of the man’s head. He went down like a sack of cement.

  It took him a few minutes to disarm his former captor, get the man’s wrists and ankles tied with his own flex cuffs, and then take his radio off him. By the time he did and got the earpiece in, the secret squirrels’ leader was on the channel, shouting. “Noise, Handon, I say again – we need you to get that last gate open RFN. We are inbound, ETA two mikes! How copy?”

  Zorn pressed the transmit button. “I read your cool operator ass just fine. But that gate stays closed.”

  Slight pause. The strained voice came back on. “Zorn, you son of a bitch – open that gate before we get there and I’ll let you live. Otherwise, we cut through and I kill you in four minutes. Choose.”

  Zorn exhaled. “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t.”

  He could now see the fleeing group of SOF guys down below, running flat out through the maze of the camp. They’d all consolidated. But the undead horde, which they’d haplessly unleashed from Thunderdome, was hot on their heels. They might have time to cut through the last gate. And then again they might not.

  Zorn keyed his mic. “Looks like my conventional soldiers are breathing down your neck. Suggest you cure them if you want to live.”

  Another pause. “What the fuck are you talking about? There’s no cure!”

  “Bullshit. I intercepted radio traffic between your carrier and the UK, talking about it. You’re not such a secret squirrel as you think. Now you’re going to use that cure on my people – starting with my commander, General Præsidium.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind, Zorn. Look, you don’t open that last gate, we’re going to cut it or blow it – after which your precious camp will be overrun again.”

  “Like you give a shit. And I’ll take care of my camp. But if you want your guys to get out of there alive you’ll get hopping – and start using that aerial sprayer of yours on my garrison.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Handon. I can see the tank on the back of the guy with the hipster beard. What else would be in there? I’m not a fucking idiot.”

  No response came back to this.

  * * *

  Handon actually slammed bodily into the last section of closed steel fence. Bouncing off it and spinning around, he could see everyone coming in right behind him. And the undead army coming in right behind them.

  Correction – everyone was there but Henno and Homer.

  “Set a perimeter!” he shouted, moving to anchor it himself.

  Without needing to be told, Juice set upon the fence with his wire-cutters. There was no way they could blow the damned thing with explosives now – they were all backed up too close to it by the frontrunners of the incoming Zulu marathon. Worse, this was a double section of fence – two sheets of heavy-gauge wire back to back, with two inches between them – and with that same thick coil of deadly razor wire twelve feet up at its top. As he worked, Juice heard the firing behind him ramp up almost immediately.

  Watching destroyed dead sliding up to his feet, still firing flat out and point-blank into head after face after mouth, Handon spoke into his mic. “Homer, status!”

  “Still near the wire. Not sure how I’m going to work my way back there. But fine for now.”

  Ali, as so often, was at the front of the group with her sword out – but a full-size katana this time. She looked like an aikido master, spinning and whirling through a crowd of attackers, all of them racing straight at her – until she smoothly pivoted out of the way, spearing or decapitating them as they went by, then letting them fly right back out again. The others were shooting around her, with inches to spare. But that too was part of the endless CQB training – their rounds went exactly where they wanted them, including inches from their teammate.

  “Fuck this,” Predator muttered, slinging his rifle and drawing his bat as he lumbered forward. He took a position far enough to the side of Ali not to hit her with his backswings – and, not for the first time, started destroying Zulus en masse with great, wide, powerful arcs of his melee weapon. Now the operators behind were shooting around two – and Pred was harder to shoot around for obvious reasons – but the surging flood of dead soldiers wasn’t crashing over them.

  They were holding back the wave – for now.

  While Handon dropped his empty mag and replaced it, he struggled for breath and hit the radio again: “Henno, status!”

  No response. The dead were starting to envelop them now. Everyone was firing flat out, but it was largely a chorus of deadly whispers as every weapon was suppressed – all but Brady’s, and he was hanging back covering Juice while he worked on the fence.

  “Time, gentlemen!” Fick shouted at them as he slapped in a new mag.

  “Twenty seconds!” Juice answered.

  Handon traded a look with Fick – it was going to be close.

  * * *

  The darkness turned slowly to light as Noise’s eyelids struggled to flutter up. He knew better than to move at first. Whoever had sucker-punched him did not need to know he had regained consciousness. But very quickly he remembered who it was – Zorn – and saw that the man had his back to him, leaning out over the railing and watching whatever chaos was swirling around down below.

  Both Noise’s shotgun and his scimitar had been taken off him, and lay on the deck right at Zorn’s feet.

  As soon as he realized his wrists were bound behind him, Noise smoothly and silently brought them around underneath his legs – flexibility born of thousands of hours of yoga – and back around in front. Still moving no more than necessary, he reached up to his head and dislodged his turban – causing three feet of jet-black hair to spill onto his shoulders.

  And then he pulled out the small curved dagger he had tucked up under there. In two quick slices, his bonds were off.

  Now he rose up from the floor – his long flowing mane, not to mention the look on his face, transforming his normal peaceful appearance into that of some vengeful Hindu deity.

  He had become Shiva, the destroyer.

  Zorn never even turned around.

  * * *

  Handon looked away from Fick and back to what he was shooting at. Yeah – it was going to be close. But then… very unexpectedly, the motor near the ground buzzed to life and the gate slid open.

  Handon slapped shoulders down the line. “Go, go, go! Center peel!” He fell back from the last position of the maneuver, fully intending to be last man out, as always. But he was wrong there, or rather was beaten to it. As the rest of the group backed through the small opening, and the gate began closing again to keep the dead out after letting the living in…

  Henno burst into view seemingly from nowhere, gunning down corpses from the rear, body-checking others with his shoulder, bashing them with his rifle barrel, and basically
clearing a path for himself… as well as for the large bundle he had slung over his shoulder. He slipped through the last vanishing sliver of gap behind Handon, as the others fired through the chain links to cover his last-man-out heroics.

  As the gate finally clicked closed, Handon looked closer at the unwieldy package Henno was carrying. It was human-sized, fully enclosed in a PVC body bag – and was visibly kicking and wiggling. And Handon didn’t have the least doubt the dead man inside would be wearing a U.S. military uniform.

  In all the chaos, and the struggle to retreat and to survive, Henno was the only one of them who’d maintained mission focus and remembered their absolutely critical objective – to get an early-stage dead guy. An American Zulu.

  Henno had got the job done.

  No Cure For Being Dead

  Camp Lemonnier - Outside the Last Gate

  “Whoah ho,” Pred said, shaking the gore off his bat. “No points for guessing what Henno’s got in there.”

  “Yeah,” Reyes agreed, pulling out a bandage to double-wrap the blood-soaked one around his leg. “Nice one, dude.”

  Even in all the chaos, Henno’d had the presence of mind to remember why they were there in the first place – and the critical importance of getting as early-stage a victim as possible. An American soldier wasn’t good enough. But it was a start.

  The others were impressed.

  But Henno wasn’t. He dropped the wiggling bag on the ground and looked around. “Where is he?” His voice was ice-cold murder, and no one had to guess who he meant – Zorn. “Because I’m going to fucking kill him.” He was already stalking off before Handon could restrain him, so instead he just followed.

  The others at the gate soon realized they weren’t totally out of the woods yet. Juice had scissored a pretty big gash through this gate before Noise opened it for them, and they were going to have to defend it if they didn’t want the dead squeezing through one at a time. Some of the operators now shot or stabbed, while Juice had a go at sealing the gap with cable-ties.

  Dozens of other American Zulus, all of them in a frenzy, were soon pressing up against the fence – and quickly piling up toward the tops of the HESCO barriers to either side. Soon, there were going to be hundreds of them.

  And this barricade wasn’t going to hold for long.

  * * *

  “A thousand pardons,” Noise said, leaning out over the railing as Henno and Handon mounted the stairs. “I allowed this dubious individual to cold-cock me.”

  As Henno and Handon reached the top of the guard tower, Noise pointed to his headgear, which he’d gotten back in place with his hair under it. “But he didn’t reckon on the turban. Softened the blow.”

  Handon nodded his gratitude, but Henno was already on Zorn – who was now flexcuffed again and sitting on the bench in the rear. Henno hauled him to his feet and threw him up against the wall. Once again Zorn, no shrinking violet, came back at Henno with his shoulder lowered – but Henno hauled the man’s head down into his rising knee, and he crumpled to the floor, where he lay still and worked to breathe.

  Henno leaned over Zorn’s prone form, raised the man’s head up by the skin on his scalp, and said, “I’m going to need your windpipe now, mate.”

  “Henno,” Handon said, in a voice not to be ignored. “We still need him as a guide. And there’s nothing to be gained by killing him – aside from revenge, which gets us nowhere.”

  Henno squinted up at Handon – still holding Zorn by the head.

  * * *

  “What is it about us,” Fick muttered, as he stabbed heads through the chainlink fence with his knife, “that we just attract every deranged asshole in the ZA?” He was referring to, in addition to Zorn, the unhinged Canadian sniper who had almost shot them out of the sky over Beaver Island. Everyone knew what he meant.

  Ali, standing further down the fence and spearing faces with her sword, shook her head. “I told you. Another batshit-crazy loner.”

  Reyes laughed and said. “And I told you! Genre conventions are inviolable!”

  Pred shook his head and said, “And what the hell was that with all these dead GIs locked up in Thunderdome? Was Zorn saving them for something, or what?”

  Juice said, “Maybe he was hoping for a cure.”

  Pred shook his head in amazement. “Yeah, a cure for being dead. It was like the goddamned walkers in the barn all over again.”

  Reyes said, “I never watched that show.”

  “I did,” Pred said. “Wish I’d paid better attention.”

  Ali looked back and saw Reyes was also taking a load off, sitting beside Pred, both of them with their injured legs extended. Her expression hardening, she said, “You two could give us a hand up here, if you’re done being pop-culture savants. And if your vaginas – excuse me, I mean your legs – aren’t aching too much.”

  Pred shook his head at all the head-stabbing through chainlink and said, “Hey, man, that’s some serious Walking Dead shit right there. I don’t like being that close to infected fluids, personally.”

  “Let me do it,” Juice said, finishing his cable-tying of the gash in the fence. He stood up and started firing his pneumatic spike, the OJ, through the wire mesh. In a remarkably short time, he had destroyed every Zulu on the front rank, which effectively provided a barrier to those behind, who pressed up against them.

  “See?” he said. “Much safer. Plus faster and easier.”

  But they could also see that the combined weight of the ones behind was eventually going to bring the fence down. And by eventually what they meant was pretty damned soon. It was an extremely heavy-gauge and finely meshed military-grade chain link, and double-stacked. But this fence’s minutes were numbered.

  At that moment, Handon jumped in their ears over the squad net:

  “Hey, somebody bring that bagged-up Zulu back to the tower for me.”

  “On my way,” Pred said, rising and throwing the wiggly body over his shoulder as lightly as if it were salt after a tequila shot.

  He and it limped off toward the rear.

  * * *

  “I’m telling you one more time,” Handon said. “Stand down, Henno.”

  His face a hate mask, Henno rose to his feet, pulling Zorn up with him by the loose skin on his head. “The hell with you, Handon. I’m going to slot this fucker right now. No more diversions. No more fucking about. No more mercy. He was trying to roger us from the start – you heard Homer. He was going to blow us out of here with all the dead.”

  As if on cue, Homer came over the squad net. “Hey, team leaders, be advised – dead from the town are starting to pile up against the outside wire. Your little fracas around Thunderdome has piqued their interest.”

  “Received,” said Handon, not taking his eye off Henno.

  The radio went again, Fick this time. “Hey, Handon – this internal fence is about to come down. We’re looking at minutes, maybe single digits. We need to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Received,” Handon said. “Stand by.”

  Henno was still staying his hand and not killing Zorn – for now – but he wasn’t letting him go. He said, “You’re right about one thing, though. Revenge is no more useful than mercy. Only the mission matters. But we’re not safe while this bell-end is breathing air. And so neither is the mission.”

  Handon shook his head. “He’s still a source of intel.”

  “Oh, really? You like what he’s told us so far? Or maybe you’re just not hard enough to do what needs doing.” Henno drew his knife – but before he could use it, Handon seized his forearm with a vise-like grip. Henno braced himself and gave Handon a mighty shove with the knife-wielding hand, knocking him back a pace.

  Noise, standing in the corner, looked seriously alarmed by this developing internecine violence. “Gentlemen! I beseech you…”

  Henno turned away, threw Zorn up against the wall, put the knife to his throat, and looked into his eyes from a few inches away. Zorn smiled and spat in his face. Henno hauled his knife ba
ck – and Handon grabbed the knife-hand again from behind, hauling Henno across the room and slamming him into the opposite wall. Henno dropped the knife, put his head down, and charged Handon, catching him across the midsection. The two of them crashed to the floor.

  Trying to cover Zorn, and also keep clear of the wrestling dinosaurs in the center, Noise heard Fick come on the channel again. “Seriously, Handon – what’s the plan? We need to motate and exfil NOW.”

  Henno and Handon grunted and pistoned body blows into each other… for about two seconds, which was when Predator, having climbed up there unseen in all the chaos, clomped inside, dropped his live Zulu, and waded into the middle of the fight – the only one big enough to break it up, never mind fearless enough to put himself in the middle of it.

  “KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!” he thundered, grabbing first Henno, then Handon, and flinging both big men to opposite sides of the tower like rag dolls. Each bounced into a sitting position on the floor and looked up at the newcomer.

  Pred glared back and forth between them. “We don’t have time for this tomfoolery!” This was so ridiculous, coming from who it came from, that all the rage flooded out of Handon and Henno, and they both started laughing.

  But they stopped again when they realized Zorn had joined in. The two of them could laugh at their well-spoken land giant. But this guy sure as hell wasn’t allowed to. Handon bounced to his feet and grabbed the wiggling bag of Zulu. “Thanks,” he said to Pred.

  “No problem.”

  Handon dragged the bag over toward Zorn.

  “What the hell?” Zorn said.

  Hauling himself to his feet, Henno said, “Whatever you have in mind, we don’t have time for it.”

  “We make time,” said Handon.

  He unzipped one end of the bag, pulled the hood off the gnashing Zulu – and stuck its face into Zorn’s restrained and exposed arm. Zorn tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. The Zulu made a snuffling noise – and, in another second, had taken a big chunk out of Zorn’s flesh and was hungrily gobbling it down. Handon replaced the hood and zipped the bag back up. He then produced a small vial of liquid and he held it in front of Zorn’s face.