Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  “Bridge, CIC.”

  “Report status for ground attack salvo Alpha One.”

  CIC on the Murphy, which had the capability to run an entire massive air–sea battle for the whole strike group and its air wing, was actually significantly bigger than the bridge itself. Not to mention less vulnerable, buried as it was in a windowless room below decks.

  “Bridge, CIC. Target… um, targets locked in and tracked in real time, five-by-five. Missile impact point co-ords laid in, all launch and control systems nominal.”

  “Roger that, CIC. Stand by.” The XO turned to face Abrams. “Captain – on your command.”

  Abrams stood up from his command chair. It wouldn’t do to be sitting down while kicking off the Murphy’s first real combat mission of the ZA. He looked around the bridge. It all began now.

  “Mr. Jones,” he said. “Release salvo Alpha One.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” But before Jones could bring the mic back to his mouth, a bright red light commenced blinking on the console in front of them. The red light was beside a red phone handset on the console. This was the direct line to the bridge of the Kennedy.

  “Belay that order, Mr. Jones,” Abrams said, reaching for the handset. “This is One-Twelve Actual,” he said into the mouthpiece, using the Murphy’s hull number, DDG-112.

  “Abrams. Drake here. Listen, I’m gonna need you over here. Right now.”

  Abrams only hesitated fractionally. “Yes, sir.”

  “And, listen, Jim. I’m also going to need you prepared to execute those shore fire missions… while maneuvering.”

  Abrams hesitated fractionally longer. “What kind of maneuvers, sir?”

  Precision artillery fires while maneuvering the ship were a whole different animal, involving much more targeting and computational complexity. And the crew of the Murph hadn’t done anything like that in quite a while. But, then again, the ship was practically one huge floating computer for targeting and tracking. And his people would do their jobs.

  “We’re shooting you over a set of waypoints and timings right now. Have your guys lay ’em in and rerun your targeting calcs. But you get your ass over here, and I’ll give you the strategic and tactical update in person. And Jim?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We’re all sitting here waiting for you. Back of the Flag Bridge.”

  The line went dead. Abrams looked across to Jones. “Scramble Firehawk One for me.”

  Jones nodded. “Already on the deck and prepped, pilots on cockpit standby.”

  Abrams grabbed his phone and headed for the hatch.

  Jones watched him go, and as he steeled himself to take command of the vessel, said a silent prayer that they’d get their captain back before the fight started in earnest. Not least because he figured the Kennedy was about to be a damned unsafe place to be – and it didn’t look like getting any safer any time soon.

  Your Mission

  The JFK, Deck Four – Stores

  It was like a warehouse, one that hadn’t been cleaned for decades. Even though the area was busy almost every day with stores crew coming and going, there were still a lot of quiet places hidden away among the rows of crates and boxes, if you knew where to find them. It was mostly dark, with only strip lighting every twenty feet or so, and even that was turned low to preserve power.

  Along a central walkway, forklift trucks passed each other, and the three figures sitting on crates a few rows back could hear the low, electrical hum as they passed by. Occasionally, the quiet was broken by the slam of the heavy forks hitting the deck, or the crack of a crate as some overzealous driver misjudged a corner. They were all tired – hell, everyone on the ship was tired – but none of the three Storekeepers sitting in near darkness could sleep.

  They’d seen it. The swarm, or the storm, or whatever folks were calling it. Up on deck just an hour ago, standing in line, chilled to the skin from the cold wind coming in ahead of the weather front, and barely listening to the Marine who was bellowing instructions at them. They’d all seen it. It was a dark line, at first barely visible between the massive shorefront hotels, but moving fast, and during the time they went through their drills, the dark line moved closer, spilled between the hotels, and then turned the bright sands of the beach black.

  And then the sea had begun to swarm with the damn things.

  Robert Callum – Rob to pretty much everyone – had been U.S. Navy for over thirty years now, a Storekeeper First Class, and close to retirement, literally weeks away, when the ZA hit. He had been looking forward to his place in Minnesota, the lodge he had bought just a few years before. Lots of fishing and staring out at the lake was what he had in mind. Not much chance of that now. He honestly thought he had seen everything the world had to offer until standing out on that deck, watching the endless stream of dead pour into the sea.

  They couldn’t swim, and that made his skin crawl more than the horrible fact of the storm itself. To cross the water to the JFK, they would have to literally fill the ocean up with themselves. Underneath the roiling mass that was surging slowly toward the carrier were thousands upon thousands of others, trapped under the water and being crushed into the seabed. It was an image he struggled to deal with. They had been people once, and if they were alive now, this would have been one of the worst disasters in history, with thousands of people drowning under the crush of thousands of others.

  But they weren’t people anymore, just empty shells that had somehow disconnected from their humanity yet still managed to keep walking. They didn’t breathe, so they wouldn’t drown, and if some of them got stuck in the sand for eternity, the water would gradually erode them, dissolving them until only their bones lay on the ocean bottom.

  Rob wondered at what point the new thing that lived inside the dead, whatever that was, the thing that kept them animated, would leave. When a living person dies, he dies and it all ends, as far Rob knew. But the undead? Was there some symbiant creature hidden inside there that would remain trapped on the bottom of the ocean for all time?

  A cough sounded, and Rob jumped, his mind returning from the horror of the dead surging into the sea and spilling across the waves. He looked up and saw that Dooley, the young man who had joined them from the U.K. just before they left, one of the mass of new replacement crew, was leaning over at an odd angle. Across from him, Kate, another new recruit, was rubbing her eyes, having obviously nodded off. Both were Storekeepers Third Class – and, to Rob, both seemed younger than newborn pups.

  “You okay, boy?” Rob asked, his voice low.

  The boy, Dooley, was quiet now, though he was always pretty quiet. Rob didn’t think he could be older than eighteen. He wasn’t Navy, and had been recruited right out of the Merchant Navy in the U.K., as had Kate. They both had experience of serving on a ship during wartime, which had been part of the criteria, but they were both still green. Under normal circumstances, a new life aboard the JFK would be a massive improvement in both of their circumstances. But after what they’d seen crawling toward them across the waves today, Rob wondered if this was a fate much worse.

  “Dooley?” he asked, louder this time, and for a moment wondered if the boy was losing it, disappearing inside himself in some way. He wouldn’t have blamed him.

  The boy stood up quickly, confused. “Sorry,” he said. “I… must have been dreaming. I guess I fell asleep.” He turned, looking for the crate he’d been sitting on, then sat down again, still looking disoriented.

  “Don’t worry, son. It’s fine to be scared. I can’t sleep at night myself.” Rob shifted to get more comfortable. They could have gone up to their berthing areas, but they’d all agreed to head down here. Too much noise up there, and it would be worse today, with the non-stop activity across the ship, and even those few off duty chattering about what they’d seen.

  “I don’t want to sleep,” said Dooley. “Not after what I was just dreaming.”

  “Nope. I got sympathy with that,” said Rob, thinking that nightmares were a commo
n problem these days. He’d had enough of his own in the last two years. Hell, they even had two or three complete whiteouts locked away somewhere – crew members who had utterly lost their sanity. Rob wondered for a moment where they kept those guys.

  “I can’t get it out of my head,” said Dooley. “The storm.”

  “Me neither,” said Kate. “They were like soldier ants.”

  Dooley looked up, his eyes wide and bright in the dim light of the cavernous cargo space. “And we have to fight them off? It just seems crazy.”

  “It could be worse,” said Kate, with a shrug. “We’re only in the deep reserve force. We don’t have to be at the front when those… things… attack. We may not even have to go outside.”

  They sat in silence, listening to the hum of a forklift as it slowly approached, the long whining buzz of the electrical motor getting louder and then tailing off as it headed into the depths at the back of the ship.

  “There’s so many,” said Dooley. “And they say it’s ten miles thick.”

  “Ten kilometers, I heard,” said Kate.

  “Same thing,” said the young man.

  “Well, not really, but it doesn’t matter,” replied Kate.

  Rob considered that. For the swarm to be that large, it had to be made up of millions of them. When they’d seen them pouring into the sea, he was convinced that it wasn’t anything to worry about, even though they were all up on deck going through drills to prepare them to fight when they reached the ship. It was a couple of miles across the water to the shore, and even with that many, the things couldn’t swim. They’d literally have to fill up the whole shallows to get to the carrier. But it was a fact that they would do so now. Somebody, somewhere on the ship, had done the math and it wasn’t a matter of if.

  It was when.

  The three were silent for a moment, listening to the distant clatter as someone dropped a pallet at the other end of the deck. There was a curse, and laughter, and then silence again.

  “Do you think…?” Kate started to say, but then stopped. Rob could see her expression in the dim light, a weak glow that lit only half her face. She looked puzzled, but then turned around, staring out across the sea of crates, and then back again, frowning.

  “What is it?” asked Rob.

  “What’s that noise?” Kate asked. She stood, walked across the small clearing they had turned into a makeshift camp, and peered down the aisle nearest to the the hull of the ship, the great curving wall that delimited their world, and kept the ocean out. Then she was back again, walking between the crates. Rob listened, and could see Dooley concentrating, straining to hear what the girl seemed to.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Dooley, turning to watch as the young woman prowled around the crates. “A rat, maybe?”

  Rob nodded. He’d seen a few of them from time to time. Big bastards as well, and how they’d managed to get onto the ship in the first place confounded him. But Kate was ignoring them, still glancing behind boxes and looking more agitated by the moment.

  “You can’t hear that noise? That scratching?” she said, her head appearing over the next row of crates.

  “No,” said Rob. But then he did hear it, faintly at first, and as his hearing became more attuned to the sound, it grew louder, more distinct.

  “I can hear it,” said Dooley. “What is it? That’s not a rat. Where’s it coming from?”

  “Shhh,” cautioned Rob. “Be quiet a minute, will you?”

  The three of them stood there in the darkness and listened, each trying to locate the sound. It was dull, like something trapped inside a container. A long scrawling, metallic, grating sound.

  Then there were more. Instead of a single scratching noise there were now several, and the noises seemed to be coming from all around them.

  Dooley began to back away, toward the central aisle.

  “Something has got in here,” he said, his voice trembling. “It must be one of them. One of the dead has got in here.”

  “Calm down, Dool,” said Kate, as she emerged from a gap in the crates. “It’s okay. If one of those things was in here we’d know about it. We’ve been coming down here for weeks. And they couldn’t get in without going through half the ship.”

  After a few seconds the boy seemed to relax, as he somehow managed to grasp this logic, but Rob was distracted, and not paying attention to either of them. Instead, he followed the noise, still trying to locate it. “Not inside,” he muttered under his breath. “They’re not inside. So they have to be…”

  He looked at the inside surface of the steel hull, barely twenty feet away, feeling his heart thumping faster, heavier, and slowly made his way through the piled-up boxes until he was standing just two feet away.

  He hesitated, but then reached out and touched the cold metal. And he felt them. Vibrations thrummed along the superstructure, his hand sensing the slight tremors of all the sharp, clawed fingers that were only a few feet away now. The noise and vibrations slowly rose, changing from a few, to dozens, and then to so many that all they could hear was the rising clamor of thousands of dead hands trying to claw their way into the ship from the outside.

  “Oh… shit,” said Rob, pulling his hand away as though he had actually felt the dead touching him. He felt unclean, and wanted to run off to a shower compartment somewhere and scrub every inch of his skin. “They’re outside,” he said.

  “Can they get in?” asked Dooley, his voice still trembling. “How did they get this far so quickly? They were miles away.”

  Rob didn’t answer right away. His mind was spinning. How many clawing hands would it take to scratch their way through the thick metal hull of the carrier? How long would that take? Would they actually be able to? And if they were at the bottom of the sandbar already, then how long would it be before they were filling the seas upward and then toppling over the edge and onto the deck?

  “No,” he said. “They can’t claw their way in. The hull is several inches of solid steel plate.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said a new voice, from over near the central aisle. It was deep, and gravelly, and not one any of the three could recall ever hearing before.

  They all turned as one, nearly jumping out of their skins with fright.

  “Jesus, man,” snapped Rob. “You shouldn’t sneak up on folks like that. And what do you mean? Of course they can’t claw their way in through steel plate.”

  The newcomer stepped into the dim light cast by one of the emergency strip lights, and revealed himself. He was old, and had a beard that was long and unkempt. His clothes were ragged, his face gaunt, with eyes that stared out from sunken sockets.

  “They might do it if they were left for a couple of centuries. Mere rivulets of water made the Grand Canyon,” said the man. “But we won’t be here long enough for that. We’ll be long gone. Or else we’ll be dead.”

  Rob stepped toward the man, wary. He hadn’t the slightest clue who this was, and if it was some madman who had somehow managed to get aboard then Rob wanted to get between him and the others, Kate and the boy.

  “Who the hell are you?” asked Rob.

  The man smiled.

  “Why, Seaman Callum, I’m disappointed. I’m your captain, of course. And you don’t have to worry about fighting up on deck. You’re not going up there, at least not yet.”

  Rob’s eyes widened. The Captain? Jesus. How? That old guy had barely been seen for two years, having hidden himself away and cut off nearly all contact. But Rob looked at the man’s eyes, and the smile, and even though he had changed dramatically in two years, it was him.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, sir!” said Rob, and he was about to blurt out some excuse, but the Captain cut him off.

  “There’s no time for that now. I need you to do some things for me. Special assignments. And you are to ignore your normal duties and any counter-orders, on my authority.”

  Rob stood up straight and saluted, not surprised that a moment later Kate and Dooley stood next to him, both as awed and
wide-eyed as he was.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No more of that, either,” said the Captain. “Now. Would you happen to know the status of the excess stores of firefighting foam? We had a heap of it somewhere, but it’s… been a while since I was down here.”

  * * *

  Able Seaman Stewart Evans was convinced he had what was probably one of the most uninteresting jobs on the entire ship. Deep in the bowels of the massive behemoth that was the JFK, and actually not that far from the Deck Four storage rooms, was a small maintenance passageway leading to a single, solitary compartment. In that compartment was the heart of the JFK’s extensive fire-prevention system, a massive tank and high-pressure pump system that fed out to the many hose stations and jets on the flight deck and in the main hangar.

  Before the ZA, this was actually one of the most important stations on the ship, and a line of defense that could be deployed almost instantly, anywhere a major fire or possible explosion of fuel or weapons was happening.

  Of course, there hadn’t been much action in the way of flights in the last two years, but making sure the system was still functional was Evans’ job. And he wasn’t about to give up on it, or disregard it, even if everyone else seemed to have forgotten it even existed. He hadn’t been alone back then – hell there had been a whole team of them assigned to maintain it – but as the crew dwindled and the need for the system became less urgent, the team shrank.

  In the last six months, Evans had spent most of his waking hours sitting in that small room, watching the same dials and readouts, all reporting the same unchanging situation. Functional. Tank pressure optimal. He even set out a bunk in the corner of the room, choosing to sleep there rather than stay in the half-empty berthing compartment now mostly used by the folks who worked in the hangar-deck farm. They stank of fertilizer, and he didn’t like the smell.

  It wasn’t so bad, being alone, not when you had access to the ship’s library, and there were fewer people checking books out. But right now he was sitting, frowning at the book he’d just finished, highly disappointed with it. So much so that he didn’t even notice the old man standing in the doorway until the guy coughed.