Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  All of them knew the shape of things now.

  These seven super-badasses, winnowed from what was already the world’s most elite surviving spec-ops teams, were going to have to undertake one last impossible maneuver: fight their way across a half-mile of completely overrun aircraft carrier flight deck – and then rally and bale out the defense of the reservists at the hole.

  Every one of them knew this was a nearly perfect suicide mission.

  And not one of them expected to survive it.

  But they were out of options.

  And the fact that it was almost certainly going to get them all killed was neither here nor there. It didn’t even occur to any of them not to go.

  * * *

  The Flag Bridge was trembling, or even rocking slightly, around the officers and men serving in it. This was a good sign – that perhaps the ship was coming loose, as the destroyer powerfully tugged on it. But it wasn’t good enough, and it wasn’t happening quickly enough.

  Not in time to save them.

  Commander Drake stood beside Captain Martin, who had rushed up from the windowless tomb of CIC to witness the attempt to refloat the Kennedy. The tension now was just too much. Martin had to see if this was going to work. He had to know if anything he had done, all he had convinced Drake to dare, was going to come to anything. Or if it would just be one more failure, like his attempt to start the reactor.

  Except that this time, if it didn’t work, then everyone would die, as the whole carrier, and not just the reactor’s core, would melt down – swarmed by the dead and incinerated in a raging and total outbreak below decks.

  Drake and Martin had both overheard the radio chatter between the hole-defending reserve force and CIC – it was playing over loudspeakers on the Flag Bridge. But they didn’t need the spot reports. They could see for themselves, right out the damned screens. The flight deck was once again heaving with marauding dead, in various flavors, which had poured over the front of the flight deck from the inexhaustible supply available. And while the larger, more experienced, better-led main force was still holding around the island, the reserve force was simply being overwhelmed. Degraded, attrited, ground down.

  They manifestly weren’t going to be able to hold – the time until they fell perhaps measured not in minutes, but in seconds.

  And as soon as they collapsed, or shortly thereafter, the lower decks of the ship would be flooded and overrun with the dead. Not a handful, as had already happened, and which itself had represented a serious risk of a bad outbreak. But thousands this time – tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Aside from being eaten, infected, wiped out… the crew of the JFK probably wouldn’t even have room to stand. The dead would literally flood the ship.

  Drake stared outside with dead eyes.

  When the dyke did finally burst, he figured some pockets of survivors could probably hold out in locked compartments. But they’d never again be able to move the ship. And the last of them would finally die of starvation, or dehydration.

  The game was nearly up.

  “It’s not happening,” Martin said, his voice thick with despair. They could feel the ship trembling around them. But it just wasn’t coming loose. Martin once again checked the video feed from the UAV, its camera still locked on the mountain of dead pressed up against their hull. He thought about running the numbers again. But there seemed little point. It was either happening, or it wasn’t. And it wasn’t.

  Maybe his simulations and calculations were all a load of shit. Maybe they had been fooling themselves all along.

  “No,” agreed Drake. “It’s not.”

  One of the junior officers standing nearby leaned over and spoke to Drake, panic tinging his voice. “What about the UK engineers? Aren’t they supposed to be here by now?”

  Drake shook his head. “They’re not coming. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

  Martin looked over at the American commander, his eyes full of pain. “What are you going to do?”

  Drake didn’t react for a second. Then he swallowed heavily, and said, “I’m going to order the Murphy to drop the chain and steam out of here – back to England. And I’m going to order all hands to abandon ship. This is it. This is the end.”

  “Abandon ship?” Martin boggled. “To where?”

  Drake looked over at him now in surprise, as if snapping from a reverie. “I don’t know. God knows. Maybe a few lifeboats can make their way to safety from the stern. At least everyone won’t die here – buried below decks in this giant steel tomb.” Drake was also thinking that the time to do it was just before the ocean of dead broke the dyke – so his people would have some chance to get out before they were fighting hand-to-hand in the cramped corridors and compartments below, trying to flee and fight at the same time. It was too horrible to contemplate.

  Drake reached for a hand mic; then set the tannoy to All Stations.

  He brought the mic up slowly to his mouth.

  As if he had a eulogy to deliver.

  Unleash Hell

  The JFK, Beneath the Flight Deck

  The Captain sat in the observation dome built into the deck, perched over the EMALS launch controls, and watching cagily as the dead rampaged over the glass dome which was usually used by the catapult officer. The swarming creatures didn’t seem to notice the old man watching them through the thick glass only a few inches away.

  He scanned out across the deck of his ship, at least as much as he could though the blur of corpses that rampaged everywhere. He could barely see the group of defenders still desperately holding the weakest point on the ship, the hole. They were bunched up, still keeping some semblance of a defensive line, but their numbers were dropping fast.

  Soon, they would be overrun.

  The Captain turned around and saw the defenders of the island, arrayed in formation around the huge tower that was the beating heart of the ship, their officers directing them from observation decks above. They too were holding their ground, but for how long? The dead outnumbered them more than 4,000 to one. Even the Spartans at Thermopylae hadn’t faced such overwhelming odds. And this new enemy had no fear of death or loss, no concept of defeat. Victory was merely a circumstance of continued existence.

  He took a deep breath, turned to the man sitting at the station next to him, and nodded. It was time. He lifted a hand mic, and pressed the talk button, channel already dialed in.

  “Now is your moment, Mr Evans. Turn on the sprayers.”

  * * *

  A couple of hundred yards away, watching out of the screens of the Flag Bridge high up in the island, Drake was still holding his own hand mic, hesitating even now, having never in his life expected to say the words he was about to, which would send every member of the crew running for the nearest lifeboat or escape route.

  He took a deep breath, pressed the talk button, and drew breath to speak…

  Just as the entire deck outside the screens turned from darkness into a hazy mist – and then, in less than three seconds, into a dazzling, surging mass of white.

  “What the fuck…” was heard through every loudspeaker, at every single station across the entire ship.

  * * *

  Handon looked over his shoulder and saw Coulson directing a couple of burly sailors in manhandling two big crates of ammo down the nearest ladder. He had the vague impression the Marines had cached a couple of pallets here for the final defense of the island. He also had a strong sense that Coulson would have personally shot anyone who tried to get into them before that. As the top came off one of the crates, Handon helped himself, filling up his mag pouches yet again – one last time, and for what might be his final mission on this earth.

  But he was too tired to really feel the danger or drama. He just wanted this day to end – one way or the other.

  As he scrabbled around inside the ammo crate, another hand competed with his. He saw the skin was a rich black, the fingers long and delicate – and the nails painted, though the polish was badly chipped. Handon looked
up.

  “Armour,” he said, with genuine pleasure. “Glad you’re still alive.”

  She smiled a mouth full of straight white teeth back at him, her hair still spilling out of her helmet. This seemed to be an ongoing problem with her. “You, too,” she said, equally warmly. Then she looked around at the rest of Alpha and Fick’s Marines, who were getting in the starting blocks for their death run up the entire length of the overrun flight deck. “You not lookin‘ to stay that way?”

  Handon just shrugged, as he slotted a final mag into his last free pouch. “‘Drop the question of what tomorrow may bring and count as profit every day that Fate allows you.’ Or, in this case, every second, I suppose.”

  “Who said that?” Armour asked, Velcroing down her own last pouch.

  “Horace.” Handon took off his glove to shake her hand. He had to go. “Good luck,” he said. But even as he turned and stepped into the line, right between Predator and Henno… he suddenly realized that a strange hissing noise had welled up all around them, just audible beneath the roar of the battle… and, much more unmissably, some kind of foam was now welling up from the deck beneath their feet. It was a thick, soapy white foam, spurting from previously unseen jets buried in the surface of the flight deck’s non-skid surface, spaced at regular intervals. The stuff quickly jetted up a dozen feet in the air.

  And in less than three seconds it had piled up into a thick cloud, or sud bath, rising to a height of two feet across virtually the whole of the flight deck.

  “What the fuck…?” Handon muttered, as confused as Drake had been, even if he had a much smaller audience for it.

  The only reason he and the rest of the main force defending the island weren’t floundering in it was because they were clustered tightly around the island. Also, some of them were physically blocking the jets, though they tended to leap out of the way as soon as they started spraying. Handon looked down and saw he was standing in about a foot of the foamy white stuff. But out past their lines, it continued to well up – to three feet, and then nearly four in some places.

  And, without examining it himself, Handon knew something else about the strange mystery foam: it was slippery. Ahead of him, the dead charging their lines were falling ass over teakettle, their legs going out from under them – and then sliding on their backsides as if at a water park. Never the most dextrous of creatures, the dead simply couldn’t regain their feet. Even their usual tactic of dragging themselves across the ground by their arms was failing. The white foam was slippery enough that not a single Zulu on the deck was able to locomote, but only flail. The entire host of invaders was all but immobilized.

  Handon, unusually, repeated himself. “What the FUCK…”

  He heard deep, gravelly laughter from behind him. It was Fick. As Handon turned, Fick said, “It’s AFFF – from the goddamned fire-suppression wash-down system.”

  “What the hell is that?” asked Pred, kicking some of the stuff off his boots. Handon paused to look forward, just to maintain tactical awareness. But he didn’t need to. Few people on the line were firing now – and most of those that did were just dispatching Zulus that had slid right up to their feet. It was as if the battle had suddenly been put on hold, for everyone to take a slip’n’slide break.

  “AFFF,” Fick repeated. “Aqueous Film Forming Foam. It’s the fire-retardant stuff used for fire suppression in emergencies, blow-ups on the deck, or down in the hangar. Can’t have a fire raging out of control around jet fuel or heavy ordnance. But it hasn’t been deployed in two years – or even tested, as far as I can remember. I’m amazed the jets are even clear enough to work. Also, I’ve never seen it this thick, even back when they did run regular tests. A foot deep at most. They must be emptying the tanks right now.”

  Handon shook his head. He had spent some time on carriers before. But obviously not enough to know they had a system in place to cover the whole deck in fire-retardant foam. Then again, he wasn’t that surprised. He had seen video of fire and explosion disasters on carrier flight decks – and they weren’t pretty. They were incredibly deadly, in fact. He also really wondered why no one had thought of turning this on earlier. To his eye, it looked like the best defensive measure of the entire battle.

  And now he also heard a deep rushing sound, from somewhere up toward the fore. Trying to see over the foam, he thought he could make out guys up on the prow manning fire hoses, from the ship’s many hose and damage-control stations.

  “Well, shit,” Handon said. Now he knew two things. One, not only would it be basically impossible for them to make their way up to the hole now, through all that foam, and the spraying hoses… but, two, there was now little point. The deck was being cleaned – or, more accurately, scrubbed – of dead.

  Alpha and the Marines had just been reprieved.

  Handon looked around for Coulson – or, more to the point, for the Marine’s radio. He needed more battlespace intel. Whatever was happening, it had to be some kind of an opportunity.

  The question now was how to leverage it.

  Whatever else, Fate had somehow now allowed them all a few more minutes of life.

  Or maybe it wasn’t Fate, he thought, squinting off up the deck through all the foam. But whoever had done this, he would count it as profit.

  * * *

  “Why the hell did I end up at the front?” cursed Wesley as his shoulder hit the hatch. He wasn’t technically first out. That honor would go to Browning and Melvin, but it was his shoulder pushing the hatch open at the front of a hundred-strong force that now surged up the stairs toward the deck.

  He was expecting the hatch to resist, thinking maybe there would be a mob of undead pushing on the other side, and maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be able to open it, and therefore could stay safely inside. And there were in fact dead behind it, but as it swung open he saw several bodies sliding away across the foam-flooded deck, leaving a gap of maybe ten feet for him to step out and let the first shooters through.

  The spectacle before him was the new most bizarre thing Wesley had seen in his life. The entire deck was covered in a thick blanket of white foam, and within that foam thousands of undead writhed and clawed, unable to gain purchase, unable to stand or even crawl. As Wesley took a step forward, grabbing the hatch and pulling it open for those behind, he nearly landed flat on his ass. The deck was slippery, and his old boots had barely any tread. No wonder the dead couldn’t move in the stuff. It was difficult enough for a living human who had control of his limbs.

  “Ach, fuck me,” said Melvin in his broad Scottish brogue, taking his first good look outside. “Someone needs to phone home and tell them we found a new way to fight the dead. Bring on the era of fire extinguishers.”

  Then the two shore patrolmen were out the hatch, taking slow half-steps forward across the foam-covered deck, and more followed, each reaching the exit and slowing down to step outside, almost tiptoeing across the slippery mess. Wesley saw Burns, a determined expression on his face, gripping his shotgun and moving out of the hatch to the right, his back against the outside wall. Finally, after the emergence of a dozen or so of the weapons crew, as they had been named, the Captain himself stepped from the door, took a deep breath, and grunted with satisfaction.

  But then his broad brow furrowed. “Over there!” he said, pointing to a spot about twenty yards away. The area was thick with foam and bodies, and even at that moment one of the dead was almost free of it, clawing for freedom and insane with hunger. “Concentrate your fire. Kill everything between us and that area, but avoid those posts sticking up there. And no grenades. Small-arms fire only!”

  Seconds later, with the line formed up, gunfire cut through the muffled moaning of the dead. Wesley, newly issued shovel in hand, stood a few feet behind Melvin and Browning as they edged forward. The firing line shot anything that moved, and made slow but steady progress. After what seemed like an age, they finally made it, Wesley sagging with relief. Beheading corpses with a shovel was a stomach-turning task, and one
that he hadn’t been prepared for. Every time his arms jarred with the impact of the shovel whacking flesh and then the hard surface below, he thought his stomach would empty.

  Finally, they’d cleared a path to the spot the Captain had been so adamant they reach, and now Wesley discovered why. Jutting from the deck were a pair of pipe heads, with pressure controls. They were ports for wide-bore hoses. Twenty yards on was another identical station.

  “Push those bodies out of the way!” shouted the Captain, snapping his fingers impatiently as he watched. “And get those hoses deployed, now!”

  Wesley grabbed the business end of the first hose they managed to attach to a pipe, and by the time he stood at the front, aiming the nozzle at the pile of decapitated bodies on the deck before him, five others had grabbed hold of it and were steadying themselves against the violent force to come. Wesley had no idea how strong the water pressure was going to be, but he took the sailors’ actions as a warning. He gripped the handle behind the nozzle until his knuckles turned white, and braced himself against the deck.

  The Captain still stood by the hatch, guiding and commanding the rush of crew members exiting through it in a loud voice. Most were using shovels and rakes to keep the writhing, foam-covered dead away, but others were firing into the mass, taking out those that appeared to be quicker, or more active. Killing the fast ones before they got loose.

  “Hose teams! Clear the area from the pumps to the edge of the deck,” shouted the Captain, looking directly at Wesley. “Then turn and make your way to us.”

  And then the hose came on, and Wesley was holding on to it with every bit of his remaining strength. The damn thing was spraying with such force that he thought it would launch the six of them off into the air. But even with the slick surface beneath them, they somehow managed to hold their ground and point the power jet at the deck ahead.

  The effect was nothing short of stunning.

  Between Wesley and the edge of the deck, there was about ten yards of foam and zombies. The jet surged across the deck and blasted them backward, bodies tumbling over one another as the massive force of water pushed them across a deck surface slick with the slippery fire-retardant foam. Within seconds the area was clear, the writhing, moaning dead having tumbled from the deck and into the sea below.