Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Fick stepped up to the lip, but paused to look back down the cabin.

  Handon was shouting at him.

  “The destroyer! Jump for the destroyer!”

  Fick gave him a thumbs-up.

  And then he hurled himself out into the lashing storm.

  Nearly two miles below him, a much bigger, much worse storm lashed at the Kennedy.

  * * *

  Handon slapped backs as he went down the line. The Marines had gotten out the door so quickly and efficiently that there was space for Alpha to line up almost before they’d got to their feet. Less than twenty seconds had passed since he’d left the flight deck. He mentally took back what he said about the Marines not being a real airborne unit.

  At the end of the row, closest to the hatch, Ali stood with her two civilians. Handon stuck his forehead up against hers and shouted over the storm, as well as the bellowing and groaning of the stricken aircraft. “Listen up!” He looked down and checked his watch: GPS was a no-go, and he didn’t have time to find their grid square on a map, but the compass worked. “We’re still on a heading out to sea! I want you to wait as long as you can before you jump!”

  Ali nodded. She didn’t need Handon’s intent explained to her: this would give them the best chance of clearing the herd, as well as the fight on the carrier, and splashing down farther out and close to the destroyer, where their chances of recovery were best.

  Handon stuck his head out the hatch into the crashing wind and rain. First he looked down – there was nothing to be seen but black clouds and electrical violence. They were just going to be playing the odds jumping out over that. But they couldn’t stay where they were. He looked up and forward now: neither of the engines on this side of the plane was running. But the near one, which had taken the most recent hit, was a metallurgical mess. The structural stability of the whole wing around that point was obviously compromised. The wing trembled and flapped, with shredded and burnt bits of steel waving in the wind.

  He grabbed Ali by a strap and pulled her head outside with him.

  “You keep your eye on that engine! The second it gets any worse, you jump!”

  “Check!”

  They pulled their heads back in. Ali grabbed Park, and Handon grabbed Emily, and they yanked them both out of the way, pressing them up against the opposite wall. Predator stalked up, ducked his head, and tumbled out. Henno followed him, nodded once, said, “See you in the sea, skipper!” and launched himself out. Juice was still trundling up the cabin.

  Handon turned to Park. “Give me the laptop!”

  Park hesitated.

  “We can’t lose both it and you! Give it to me!” He could see Park was attached to his MacGuffin, and wanted to keep being the ring-bearer. But it was too risky to keep them both together; and there was no time for arguing. Handon started to unsling the satchel himself. But Juice interposed himself between them. He grabbed Handon’s arm, held up a thumb drive, then shoved it in Handon’s sleeve pocket, Velcroing the pocket flap down. “Copy of the data for you, top! That makes three!”

  Handon realized that solved the problem. Good ole Juice.

  All their knees buckled as the plane lurched violently. Emily went down to the deck. Juice recovered, struggled upright, and then launched himself out the open door. Handon looked back once. If Ali and the scientist never got out of the plane, or if they didn’t have time to get their chutes open, it didn’t matter in the least what they were over. But there wasn’t time to second-guess his instructions.

  He just had to trust that she’d call it right. She always did.

  Handon also didn’t like not going out last, but it made operational sense, and he mainly needed to clear the hatch for the others. He pulled himself upright, fighting the rocking and the g-forces of the careening and descending aircraft, and launched himself out.

  The first thing he felt was the aileron scraping against his lower back – he hadn’t dove low enough, and nearly got himself killed before he even got clear. Instantly, the wind and slapping rain pummeled his face. He had jumped without goggles before, which wasn’t any fun at the best of times, but not into anything like this. He squinted into the tempest that buffeted him from all sides, but saw nothing.

  He immediately deployed his canopy, without checking his altimeter. Whatever altitude he had, it wasn’t going to be much – and he wanted to have as much flying time as he could get. Being able to steer himself even a hundred extra meters one way or the other might mean the difference between surviving this drop, and becoming a meat waffle lunch for the Zulu herd below.

  And that was only one of about a hundred ways he could get killed in the next four minutes.

  After deploying his canopy, recovering from the violent arrest of his freefall, and hauling on his steering lines, he looked up and tried to spot the bomber above and behind, not really expecting to see it. But, weirdly, there it was – as if some wormhole through the storm had opened up between him and it. He saw a figure go out the hatch. From its size and shape, it was the girl. He watched and waited, willing two more to follow.

  But before they did… the right wing of the plane separated cleanly from the fuselage, pirouetting out and away, off into the storm.

  The bomber rolled slowly and heavily on to its left side, beginning a lugubrious spin down and away. Going into its death spiral.

  Just like over Normandy, Handon thought.

  Ammo City Blues

  JFK Flight Deck

  The noise was off the scale, and Morgan had given up even trying to hear any of the orders the Marine just a few feet away was shouting. The guy may as well have been miming.

  Below the staggered line of defenders at the ramparts, the swarm was just a dozen feet away. The raking fire of the heavy machine-guns on the Murphy, which had opened up shortly after the defenders had, thank God, clattered in his ears, and in answer to this the uncountable dead roared and moaned. Assault rifles rattled along the line, including his own, and overhead, just to add to the audio assault, helos swept by slamming missiles and minigun fire into the fray.

  And then there were the grenades.

  Everyone was armed with these hybrid rifles that were part grenade launcher, which Morgan couldn’t remember the name of, even though they had been told ten times during their rushed training. But the effect of the grenades was unmistakable. One minute the mass of bodies was climbing and clawing, making its way toward the foot of the makeshift defensive wall, and the next they were dying and dismembering as great chunks of the attackers were turned into a messy pulp by fast-moving high explosives.

  The problem was most of the destroyed ones really had nowhere to go – and merely became part of the platform climbed by the countless ones behind them. Shortly after that, the Marines had bellowed for them to check their grenade fire. The horde was too close, and explosions inside that distance were profoundly unsafe. Now it was down to the bullets of the assault rifles, which were much less devastating, plus needed more aiming. But the militia did as they were told, everyone too afraid of blowing up a friend, or themselves.

  They had fought this battle for half an hour already, but Morgan wasn’t aware of time passing anymore. He was already near to collapse from exhaustion. How they were going to keep this up was beyond him, but he kept going. The rush of movement around him, the sight of the dead below, all of it blurred into one crazy vision as he continued to fire, reload, fire, reload. Behind him, the crate of magazines that he reached into each time he ran out was already beginning to deplete. Hands constantly reached in and grabbed new mags and more than once he found himself holding the same one as another defender. Now it twinged his back even to lean down.

  He reloaded and turned back to face the onslaught, but at that moment something barreled up at him from below. He barely saw it in time and only just managed to step back as it leapt from the swarm below, cresting the rampart and reaching for him. It had once been a man, and it still wore the tattered remains of a dirty, yellow tracksuit. Half its
face was hanging away, flapping against the side of its head, revealing a grotesque maw of glistening, bloodied teeth, and sharp, broken fingers swept within inches of his face as it flew past. It had been aiming for him, and for his back while he was turned away, but it missed and collided with the man to his left, now grasping each side of the man’s face and digging the shards of bone that had once been fingers into his temples. Blood spurted into the rain from both wounds as the creature latched on, clawing and biting.

  From the blinding way it moved, Morgan knew it had to be one of the Foxtrots the Marines had warned them about.

  The sailor screamed, trying to batter the creature away, and Morgan turned, lifted his rifle, and tried to aim, but there was no clear shot, the Foxtrot and sailor entwined in a battle to the death, and one that Morgan knew the man had already lost.

  Then suddenly they were both gone.

  In a rush of movement, both the zombie and the sailor tumbled over the rampart and plummeted into the swarm below. Morgan staggered away, shocked to see that the pair had been kicked off by the heavy boot of one of the Marines. He didn’t know the Marine’s name, nor had he known the name of the man who stood at his shoulder for the whole battle this far. The sailor below was still screaming, but the noise was quickly drowned out, and in seconds he had disappeared into the writhing mass.

  Morgan stared at the Marine for a moment, shocked at how quickly the decision to kick a crew member from the deck had been made, but then he turned back, lifted his rifle and started firing again. He knew there had been no other choice. Even if the sailor had won the fight, he was infected and soon would have been one of the enemy.

  He was wondering if he could be so cold and act so quickly if the Marine hadn’t been there, when the noise around them changed. He couldn’t place what had happened, but he knew it was something bad. His ears were already ringing, and he couldn’t quite clock the new change. The swarm was louder, the rattle of the defenders’ guns was louder, but something was missing.

  It hit him just as the Marine stepped back, eyes wide. At least one of the guns from the Murphy had ceased to fire. The Marine next to him stepped back, looking behind him, and shouted “Fuck, they’re reloading!”

  And the swarm below surged upward faster than Morgan’s senses could keep up with. In less than ten seconds the dead were in his face, reaching out, pulling themselves over the top of the rampart. They surged over as Morgan stumbled back, nearly tripping over the crate of magazines. He kicked, rolled, and landed on the other side of the supply pallet, scrambling to get back on his feet. All along the ramparts, the defensive line was collapsing. Dead bodies tumbled over the makeshift defenses and onto the deck, some jumping up and leaping upon the defenders, outnumbering them two, three, four to one.

  Morgan emptied his magazine into the crush of bodies before him, but realized the impact just wasn’t enough. The Marines were shouting to hold the line, and defenders were doing their best, but the dead were overpowering them. Just a few feet away, a tall man dressed in engineering overalls held his position, refusing to back down even when the formation to either side of him was collapsing. For a second, Morgan even thought the man would stand and hold, but a dark figure shot from the riotous crowd and knocked him backward, and then the surge of undead swept over him.

  Then they were running, following the shouts of the Marines to regroup on the other side of Ammo City. Morgan followed the Marine who had been next to him, running between two high walls of ammo pallets, while behind him, clawing and hissing, came the swarm. He didn’t look back, knowing the stinking creatures were only a few feet behind. The Marine barreled forward, glancing over his shoulder, running full tilt through Ammo City for the new position on the other side. And as he glanced back at Morgan, he ran through an intersection in the pallets…

  And got hit from the right, by a creature moving so fast that Morgan didn’t have time to track it. One second the Marine was there running ahead of him, and the next he shot out of sight, falling into the aisle as multiple fast-moving bodies slammed into him. Morgan tried to slow himself down, but he hit one of the creatures pursuing the Marine, tumbled over it, and rolled forward, hitting the ground hard. He threw his body to the left, dodging as one of the dead broke away from the pack and rushed him. He wanted to run but found himself in a cul-de-sac of pallets, with eight-foot walls on all sides.

  He sat up, stunned. There were at least six of them attacking the Marine. The doomed man was trying to push them away, spitting curses, trying to bring his weapon to bear, but they had him pinned, and the blood started to fly. The one Morgan had stumbled over now broke away and rushed at him, much faster than he had seen a zombie move before, and he barely lifted his rifle in time, pulling the trigger as the barrel leveled on the creature’s face, which exploded. He kept his trigger depressed and turned the spray of bullets upon the pack of dead that was tearing the Marine to pieces.

  Movement came in fast from his right, from the same direction that he just had. He turned his weapon, but as three figures rushed into the cul-de-sac, his magazine ran dry and he pointed an empty, feebly clicking assault rifle on… three other militia members.

  They rushed into the gap and crashed in a heap around him, none realizing in time that they’d run into a dead end. Morgan glared at the pallets surrounding them, desperate for a reload, and spotted it almost immediately. The very bottom crate next to him was what he needed. He pulled his knife from his belt and cut into the cling-wrap and through the soft wood, reaching in and pulling a dozen mags out, several skittering across the deck and quickly grabbed up by the three newcomers.

  They sat there, the four of them, backs up against the far wall of the cul-de-sac, aiming their weapons outward, waiting for the attack to come. The dead continued to rush past the gap at full speed, yet somehow none noticed the four refugees huddled just ten feet away.

  In the distance, a volley of small-arms fire erupted, and Morgan realized the militia must have managed to regroup. Then an even louder booming of guns joined in. The Murphy was back in the fight. But that wasn’t going to help him and the others hiding with him. They were cut off from the main group, stranded in the middle of Ammo City, and the defensive line had fallen.

  These four scared people, now missing in action, huddled miserably in the rain, as the battle surged all around them.

  Drop Zones

  On Board Chuckie, Over the Ocean

  When the one-winged and dying bomber began rolling to the left, it threw Ali up against the right-side bulkhead, and then dragged her along it, back toward the tail. All the momentum was down and to the left. The g-forces that pulled at her were atrocious, and waves of nausea rolled over her from the sudden absence of any absolute up or down.

  There was only one thing she had to do now.

  But she almost certainly had to do it in the next few seconds.

  The stricken plane made terrifying groaning noises as its own enormous weight and momentum tried to tear it apart at the seams. With the open escape hatch rolling up toward the sky, more cold rain poured in and a single stark flash of lightning illuminated the interior, then dropped it back into terrifying darkness. Invisible, implacable forces pulled at Ali’s every body part, pulled the very blood in her body to one side.

  It was like being on a theme park ride gone horribly wrong.

  Dr. Park had been slightly to the rear of her when the wing went. That meant he was thrown up against the tail turret. He was now just out of reach. In this frozen but also fast-evaporating second, Ali was still pressed up against the bulkhead that had the hatch in it. She figured, but didn’t know for sure, that the plane would go into a left-hand spiral and keep her where she was. If that was wrong, and gravity instead dumped her on the opposite wall, then hope would be dead. She’d never be able to lift herself up to the hatch, never mind Park.

  She had to make something happen – now.

  She tensed every muscle in her torso, and rolled over to her left, flopping on to her back
, still pressed up against the left bulkhead. (Ab work! she thought. If I live, I swear I’ll never complain about ab day again…) This flop put her just within reach of Park, who was sprawled around the entry to the tail turret, yelping in terror. Ali ignored this.

  Instead, she grabbed him by his belt with one hand, and his shirt with the other, and dragged him – dragged him for all she was worth.

  All around them, wind and storm and engines and groaning metal shrieked, the plane itself screaming and bucking, and Ali could feel that it was just about to settle into the downward spiral that would come to an end only when they all plowed into water, or land, and (in either case) broke apart and disintegrated into very small pieces.

  Mustering more upper-body strength than she ever imagined she had, she pulled the relatively small and light scientist up across her own body. When he was pressed against her, she shoved with everything she had, and reversed her earlier flop, rolling them both to the right. This put them only a few feet from the hatch, Ali on top. Her lungs and eyes and most especially her muscles burned and screamed, as she adjusted her grip on Park, braced herself, and rolled one last time.

  They both flopped over, him on top now. And this left them adjacent to the lip of the hatch.

  Ali found his ripcord and pressed it into his hand.

  She tensed and shoved with her arms, more or less benchpressing the man. At the last second, she shoved and rolled him to the right.

  He flipped over and tumbled out the hatch.

  The g-forces slackened as the bomber settled into its death spiral. Ali fell away and slammed face first into the opposite section of fuselage – nearly ten feet from the escape hatch.

  But it may as well have been ten miles.

  * * *

  As usual in combat situations, Fick struggled to work out where he was, where his people were, and what the fuck was going on. Wind and rain slapped at him as he hung in the sky, floating slowly toward earth. Luckily, if that was the word, he had broken through a lot of the cloud cover pretty quickly. Scanning through all angles and planes, though, he couldn’t spot a single other one of his people.