Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Shouts and clattering, metallic things falling over. And hissy moaning, ramping up in volume. It was all happening very fast. And Reyes thought:

  They must have followed the smell of blood.

  He considered trying to stand, but figured he could instead just give them another couple of seconds. Sure enough, two of them came around his examination table, one on either side, both locked on to people further back. Reyes elevated his weapon, steadied his aim, and fired; then traversed to the right, and fired again. Two rounds total. Gore from the two heads painted the ceiling; and both disanimated corpses collapsed, never to rise again.

  But he had counted three. That might mean he was going to have to try to stand up after all. But then he heard a shotgun blast, then two more. Pulling himself around the edge of the table, he saw one of the security guys had reappeared – and bagged the third one.

  Within sixty seconds, hospital staff in scrubs and masks were cleaning all the surfaces, wiping them down with iodine, and getting back to work.

  And they put Reyes right back where they’d had him – nearest the door.

  And nobody said anything about disarming him this time.

  * * *

  When Fick, winded from climbing another eight flights of ladder, and also flashing back to running up and down that damned air traffic control tower on Beaver Island, finally blasted onto the Flag Bridge, he found Commander Drake and Lieutenant Campbell and a bunch of other officers and senior NCOs staring out the fore-facing screens.

  They were looking down on what looked like a life-size game of Risk gone horribly wrong: the enormous, crazy battle out on the flight deck.

  When Fick clapped him on the shoulder, Drake spun around and looked like he’d just come face-to-face with Sasquatch. “Jesus Christ, Gunny. You look like someone cooked you. And ate half.”

  Fick ignored this. “What are we looking at?”

  Drake faced front again. “You can see for yourself. We’re retreating. The flight deck’s gone.”

  And Fick could see. The whole front of the deck was now a jagged, smoldering crater. A small force, maybe fifty men, was holding a semicircle at a spot just behind that, up against the starboard edge of the deck. Fick reckoned this corresponded to the gash in the hull that exploding magazine had made. He leaned forward, and saw a bigger force, maybe 175 or 200, falling back to the island. In that group were several of his Marines.

  And, in between the two, all across the deck in fact, were palsied, tattered, staggering, lurching dead, running around like they owned the goddamned place. There actually weren’t that many of them – but even in the few seconds Fick watched, he could see more starting to pour over the front edge of the deck again, at an accelerating rate. The fixed defense he had viewed from the air was gone. It was now down to two beleaguered outposts of defenders – one around the hole, the other falling back to the island.

  But Fick and his guys were damned well going out to reinforce them.

  “Sir,” Fick said to Drake, throwing up a quick salute and turning to leave.

  “Gunny!” Drake said, not quite stopping him. “Try not to look to the west if you can avoid it.”

  Fick half nodded, having no idea what Drake was talking about.

  But he was already out the hatch anyway, Brady and Graybeard right behind.

  * * *

  Handon tried to get some air down, as he was now running a significant oxygen deficit. But that aside, the fighting retreat had been a success – or at least not a disaster. The gargantuan explosion at Ammo City had nearly cleared the deck, and given them the breathing room they needed to break contact and displace to the rear.

  They had actually passed the top reserve force, all of them fresh and bright-eyed, coming up on the elevator and heading forward, even as what was left of the main force went aft. Now they were setting up a perimeter around the island, the Marines supervising.

  So Handon took four seconds to try and catch his breath, while Pred, Juice, and Henno helped the Marines set the lines. Though he found he was mostly breathing gasoline vapor – he’d gotten soaked with it in his little gambit to disinfect Predator.

  Handon now heard a shout, and spun around to see a breakthrough in the line already. From all the fury and panic, he guessed it was a rush by one or more Foxtrots. Several sailors, only just put in position, broke and ran. As Handon brought his rifle up and tried to get a sight picture, a retreating man with a shotgun staggered past, nearly colliding with him – then turned and fired back toward the breakthrough, right across Handon’s body.

  Sparks leapt from his barrel – a not uncommon occurrence with shotguns, particularly ones that hadn’t been cleaned recently.

  Handon’s vision went red and white, and all the oxygen around him went away.

  He realized he was on fire.

  The vomit of sparks from the shotgun had ignited him, or rather the gas he was covered in.

  He heard a loud bang behind him as he threw himself to the deck. But before he could even start rolling around, something large, heavy, and stifling landed on him. And as he and his clothing sputtered out, he worked out that what covered him was a fire blanket – almost certainly from that station on the side of the island, the one with the hose he’d used to wash down Pred.

  But he didn’t know what was on the other side of it, not for another couple of seconds. Then the top of the blanket was peeled away. On the other side, lying full on top of him, was Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick. And he was damned heavy. Handon could barely draw breath.

  “Fick. What the hell?”

  “Handon? Jesus Clit-twiddling Christ.”

  But then Fick’s expression changed in a flash, and his handgun appeared from nowhere, rapid-firing almost before it was clear of leather. A third heavy body fell on the pair of them, Fick quickly shoving it off. Handon looked over. It was one of the Foxtrots.

  When Fick finally got to his feet, and pulled Handon up after him, they found the breakthrough had been contained, and the other Foxtrots put down. The lines were still firm – and the ranks of dead on the other side still relatively thin. They still hadn’t really repopulated the flight deck yet; though that was coming.

  First things first, Handon put his hand up to his head. Yep, he still had hair. That was a damned quick reaction by Fick to put him out. On the other hand…

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Handon asked.

  Fick said, “What are we doing here? I thought you were going to the fucking destroyer!”

  “I thought you were,” Handon said, exhaling mournfully.

  He looked around Fick and saw Brady and Graybeard emerging from the island. Fick, for his part, looked off to the other side and saw Pred, Juice, and Henno anchoring the lines.

  Fick chuckled grimly. “Well, isn’t this just the Gift of the goddamned Magi.”

  “Too true. Well… since we’re all here, I guess we’d better save this carrier.”

  Fick had no argument with that.

  Staff Sergeant Coulson appeared out of nowhere – and grabbed a guy literally by the ear. It was the one with the shotgun, who had just negligently discharged it too close to Handon and set him on fire. And now that Handon could see the man’s face, he’d swear it was the same overzealous bastard who had shot the Foxtrot on Predator’s back, and nearly turned the deadliest human in the world into a zombie. Coulson had apparently clocked the same thing. As he pulled the man along by the ear, he snatched his shotgun away with the other hand, and gave him an ass-chewing at the same time.

  “Are you fucking determined to get people killed? Can you not smell the fucking gasoline?” He tossed the shotgun to Handon, who caught it with his free hand. “You’re relieved. Report to your original duty station. Below decks.”

  But this chastened individual didn’t have time to take a single step off the deck before—

  The entire world to the west, everything out past the front of the ship, instantly went sheet white – as if God had whited out North America. Th
e dazzling flash ended as quickly as it began, and was replaced by a miles-wide fireball, which immediately expanded, ranging in color from deep sunset-orange to canary-yellow. Concentric rings of white smoke started to spontaneously form around and above it, each ring expanding and making way for the next one. In a few seconds more, the fireball had merged with the rings, forming into a single great bulb – all of which sat atop a pillar of smoke.

  It was the classic mushroom cloud.

  “Dude – what the fuck?”

  Handon couldn’t even make out who said this. It could have been anyone.

  He spoke for them all.

  Endgame

  JFK, Flag Bridge

  Lieutenant Campbell pulled her gaze from the transfixing vision of nuclear armageddon playing out onshore, and looked over at Drake.

  “You son of a bitch! I knew it.”

  Drake returned her gaze blankly. Any sense of triumph, never mind humor, had long since abandoned him. It was way too late in the day. But Campbell went on speaking.

  “There’s only one vessel still floating with tac-nukes – the Washington.” She was referring to the strike group’s nuclear submarine, the one whose location only the strike group commander knew. But now Campbell knew something about its location as well. “And the max range of its Tomahawks is seven hundred nautical miles.” Which meant the sub couldn’t conceivably be any further away than that – but possibly a lot closer. “You blew off CentCom and had the Washington set off from Portsmouth after we did, didn’t you? It’s been catching up to us all the time we’ve been parked here.”

  Drake grimaced back at her. “Keep it to yourself.”

  “Like the crew’s not going to work it out!”

  “Humor me. Anyway, my chain of command goes through the U.S. Navy Fleet Forces Command and up to the President of these United States – whether any of them are alive or not. It’s great that the Brits are still in the fight. But they don’t command this strike group.”

  With a start, Drake realized for the first time that he was rather a law unto himself now. This had been true before – but with no one in the world other than the sailors on ships he commanded, it hadn’t mattered. Now there were other players – but only he commanded a carrier strike group, which had been said back in the world to be capable of winning a war against any country other than the U.S., singlehandedly. Drake wondered how all this might play out, and even briefly considered whether he needed to monitor himself for signs of corruption or megalomania. Tinpot dictators and super-villains usually got their start in positions of absolute power…

  But now Campbell was looking back out the glass, and down to the flight deck. The walking dead were still climbing over the front edge of the ship, totally unimpressed by the thermonuclear light show and genocide of their fellows taking place behind them. And there were hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions, still on their feet, and still moving between ground zero of that nuclear detonation and the carrier.

  Campbell said, “I don’t actually know that it’s going to help us too much in the end.”

  Drake exhaled as he checked a display on the console before him. He grabbed a wireless keyboard, and talked as he typed. “It can’t hurt. If the small bombing runs distracted thousands of them, this might distract more. Anyway, some day all of those things are going to have to be destroyed. And we may never again have that many bunched up in one place.”

  The LT looked incredulous. “What about the fallout?”

  Drake kept typing. “I’d say that’s the least of North America’s problems right now. Anyway, the main thing for us is: with the core of the herd seriously degraded, that’s a hell of a lot fewer to spill out into the ocean and overwhelm us. Maybe it buys us a little more time.”

  Campbell looked out to the deck again. She realized the island was finally living up to its name. They were not so slowly being surrounded, on all sides – and turning into a tiny, marooned, island of the living. Out toward the prow, she could also see the reserve, the defenders of the hole, battling for their lives, perhaps already close to being overrun themselves.

  Death was everywhere. The noose was still closing. And they were deep into the endgame.

  Finishing typing and dropping the keyboard, Drake snatched his cell off the desk and ran for the stairs, leaping down them to CIC – talking into the phone as he ran.

  “Captain Martin!” Drake blasted into CIC on a wave of energy – or, more likely, barely restrained panic. He found Martin trying to drive two consoles at once. When he looked up, the Brit looked as frantic as Drake felt. “We’re out of time. This is it.”

  “Right,” Martin said, shooting one quick look toward his drone view, and another toward a notepad full of scribbled equations. “Right, then. Do it.”

  Drake suddenly stumbled, and Martin swayed in his chair. The whole ship had just lurched underneath them. Drake took his phone from his ear – Martin hadn’t noticed it was there – and tossed it on the console. “I’ve already ordered the Murph to start tugging. It’s on.” He didn’t add what they both already knew: the destroyer pulling on them wasn’t going to be enough. Not nearly.

  Not on its own.

  * * *

  Abrams slammed the dedicated phone back down on the console. He looked at Jones, right by his side and steady as ever – which suddenly Abrams was weepingly grateful for. “This is it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jones said. “The ship is aligned on heading one-eight-zero. On your order.”

  Abrams nodded. “All engines ahead one-third.”

  “Captain!” A radar controller was looking up at Abrams from his station. “Firehawk One is inbound to refuel and rearm.”

  Abrams just nodded calmly. “They can land on a moving platform. They’re Seahawk pilots, that’s half their damned job.” But then he paused. Something was suddenly tickling at his memory. Then he had it. He looked over to the air ops station. “Where the hell is Firehawk Two? What’s the status of their water recovery? Shouldn’t they be back by now?”

  The man at the station nodded manically. “They’re underneath our radar, sir, so presumed to be engaged in the recovery op now. I haven’t had radio contact. But that may just be the storm.”

  Jones looked over at him. He said, “Should we send Firehawk One? We have got to recover those people. They’re the point of th—”

  Abrams shook his head and interrupted. “Negative. With our guns down, that bird’s firepower is desperately needed at the carrier. Get ’em rearmed and back into the fight.” As always, Abrams believed that supporting the carrier was job one – maybe now at the expense of a more critical job… He raised his voice, making it strong and steady. “All engines ahead one-third.”

  And so finally the Murphy rumbled, juddered, and slowly started to strain forward. Within five seconds, having traveled no more than 25 meters, the ship jerked sharply. This was the last of the slack going out of the gargantuan chain rigged up to the JFK. The engines boomed in protest as the ship was prevented from steaming forward. The stern dipped in the water, tilting everyone on the bridge back slightly, as the USS Michael Murphy floated in its spot, trembling with barely restrained power.

  “Engines ahead two-thirds,” Abrams ordered. Both the rumble and the shaking increased. But they still weren’t going anywhere. “All ahead standard.” Now a violent trembling seized the bridge, and everything and everyone on it. This was not a happy warship. But it was still a powerful one. Abrams opened his mouth – but caught a look from Commander Jones. His first officer leaned in close for a word.

  “Captain. Drake was very clear – we can’t risk pulling our own hull out. And the flat-top is heavy enough, and those chains are strong enough, that we could do it.”

  Abrams pursed his lips, but finally nodded. Jones was right. He just wanted so very much to get the Kennedy free. To save the day. To do his job. But only so much could be done – yet. He said, “I’m going out on deck. You have the conn.”

  Abrams pushed his way out the
hatch, to see what the hell was happening.

  With his own eyes.

  * * *

  Less than a mile away from the Murphy, Emily’s contorted face burst through the surface of the ocean and into sweet, breathable air. The rain had slowed if not totally stopped. But at least with the rescue helicopter gone, there were no more violent lashings of spray and mist. She wheezed desperately, her body trying to draw in ten breaths at once, as if each were her last. She had dove just as deep as she had dared, and stayed underwater slightly longer than that.

  It turns out a giant helicopter falling out of the sky at you, blades first, is terrifying enough to overwhelm even the body’s autonomous, ancestral dread of drowning.

  When her eyes got clear enough of water to see, and her wheezing draughts of breath calmed down, she saw that Park was already on the surface nearby. And, in the next second, Ali’s sleek head breached the surface. She spit out some water.

  And then just calmly looked around.

  The three of them were alive.

  And the Seahawk was gone – just completely absent. All that remained was an area of disturbed water on the opposite side of them from which it had been coming, as well as a few bits of debris floating on the surface, and pools of fuel or other unidentifiable oily fluids. And there were still a lot of air bubbles rising and bursting all around.

  It was like some kind of watery grave marker.

  Slightly belatedly, Ali worked to generate some situational awareness, and took a look around. And it turned out she had missed a little something: a motherfucking mushroom cloud, hanging in the west like the whole world on fire. What the fuck? It must have detonated while they were actually underwater, diving for their lives.

  And if they were slinging nukes, even tac-nukes, then things must have gone from bad to fucked out there. Ali knew U.S. carriers and destroyers weren’t even supposed to have nuclear weapons on board anymore, not since the end of the Cold War – and not least because it was a lot easier to get foreign docking privileges without them. Then again, they’d never officially denied it. And the Murphy was a guided-missile destroyer, with a lot of cells.