Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  An unexpected voice pulled him from his reverie – he’d had his head down, staring holes in the photo of Ainsley’s family, staring well past it in fact. He looked up now to find a man all in white, looking at him expectantly over a counter, through a rectangular hole in the wall.

  “Beg pardon?” Henno said.

  The man smiled at him. “I said, you want a coffee or something?”

  Henno’s expression softened. “No thanks, mate.”

  “Hey.” The American sailor perked up. “You’re British.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How about a nice cup of tea, then?”

  Henno paused a beat before answering. “Yeah, cheers. That’d be grand.”

  “How do you take it?”

  Henno’s gaze grew wistful, and his vision once again extended out to focus on some other, distant place. Someplace where the dead lived forever. “Two teas, actually, if you don’t mind. One Whoopi Goldberg for me. And one Julie Andrews for me mate.”

  The sailor suddenly looked all at sea. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, dude.”

  Henno looked up at him, with very many miles behind his eyes. “One black with no sugar, one with milk and no sugar. Please.”

  “No problem.”

  A minute later, the man brought two mugs out, set them down, and then left Henno alone again. As if he had been some kind of tea-serving angel, just dropping in to make sure Henno was getting on okay. As he waited for the tea to cool, the wound from that crossbow bolt in his shoulder throbbed slowly. He’d had it seen to at the hospital; though there wasn’t much you could do with a puncture wound. Just clean it out, cover it up, and wait for it to heal.

  Henno warmed his hands around the steaming mug, and blew on its surface until it cooled a little more. Then he took a long sip. It warmed all the way down. He put the mug back on the table. And he looked over at the other one, as it steamed peacefully across the table from him.

  “Well, you did it, mate,” he said. “You got us home.”

  * * *

  Commander Drake sat alone with his feet hanging off into the void.

  The carrier’s island was only five stories of enclosed and inhabited areas – but the whole thing actually towered nearly 150 feet up into the sky. The balance of it, up above the manned decks, consisted of a towering, massed array of radar and communications antennas – microwave, X-band, SATCOM, data, fleet broadcast… all of them deployed as bulbous domes, and flat dishes, and motor-driven rotating ones… And winding around all that was a precarious network of metal ladders and steel-grate platforms which were used to access the equipment for maintenance.

  Way up here amongst the tubes and wires wasn’t a very dignified place for the acting commander of the strike group to be. But it was a fantastic place to hide out.

  And Drake hadn’t gotten two seconds to himself, alone, not for many days, more than he could even remember. His last attempt to be alone for a minute, right before the battle, had been pre-empted by a rampaging British Captain. Then again, Martin had come there to sell him on the plan that ultimately saved the ship. So Drake kind of had to forgive him that.

  But he wasn’t making any apologies for his disappearance now. If nothing else, it was an astounding view – more than a hundred feet up above the flight deck, and two hundred above the skittering surface of the ocean, which glittered with tiny flashes from the just-risen sun.

  It was truly a new day.

  And Drake had never in his life been so happy to be under way.

  It was like they had all been condemned men – but now had been reprieved. Every soul on board had been spared. More, actually – because the JFK’s crew had now been augmented by the survivors from the Murphy. That amazing, brave vessel hadn’t steamed away along with the carrier – and would never steam anywhere again.

  She had gone down in the line of duty.

  It would be going too far to say that Abrams had torn the Murphy’s guts out in towing the Kennedy free. But he had definitely wounded her – mortally, as it turned out. The instrument of her demise had been the deep axle mounted beneath the wildcat – the spindle around which they wound the giant anchor chains tied to the Kennedy.

  The force of the destroyer’s engines, running flat out, and resisted by the much heavier supercarrier, had basically pulled the axle free of its mooring in the lower decks and sent it crashing through two thick steel bulkheads, and finally into the outer hull. It had then sheared through that, ripping a gash in the ship’s skin from the gunwale down to beneath the waterline. The axle ended up sticking out through the hull like a bad compound fracture.

  So her guts hadn’t quite been pulled out. It was more like a really large bone had been yanked halfway outside the body.

  And, not long after, the patient had hemorrhaged to death – taking on water at a rate that defeated her bilge pumps. Abrams’ XO, Commander Jones, had personally led the damage party. When he reported back, Abrams only wanted to know one thing: if they were going to lose the ship. “It is,” Jones had answered, “a mathematical certainty.” The humor of this straight-faced homage to the Irish shipbuilder who had reported the Titanic’s doom to her captain, before going down with the ship himself, had perhaps been the only way to release some tension.

  Abrams may have lost his command. But he had spent her in the best possible way, doing exactly what they were meant to do – protecting the flat-top. And nearly every soul on board had survived. It was a testament to their training and discipline.

  So it had been Drake’s honor to personally meet the Murphy’s fifteen encapsulated lifeboats, each one holding 25 of its brave crew members. It had also been a relief and a pleasure. Already badly thinned out, the Kennedy’s crew had shrunk precariously in defending itself from the storm of the dead. And Drake needed the people.

  Every bit as much as they needed a new home.

  He now scanned the surface of the ocean as it rolled out behind them at the carrier’s top speed of forty knots. Somewhere behind them, and far beneath the surface, lurked the USS Washington – the sleek nuclear attack sub once again down in the safety of the deep, only they and Drake knowing where. And even Drake didn’t know, right this second – he’d have to look it up. But he was glad they were there. He couldn’t know when he would have desperate need of them again.

  He flashed back now to the tense minutes between the Kennedy coming free from the sandbar, and the Washington’s nuclear guys getting their reactor started again. The Murphy had gotten the Kennedy loose – and even left them with a little momentum, coasting out to sea. But that was the last towing it would ever do, and soon it was sinking beneath the waves.

  And it had taken over an hour to get the carrier’s second reactor running – and longer to build up enough steam for main propulsion. And in that time, the inexhaustible storm of the dead had continued spilling out to sea and closer to them – and had even started piling up against their hull again. For a brief, horrifying moment, Drake had thought they were going to have to fight through the whole hellish cycle again.

  But it hadn’t come to that. He’d actually already had Campbell and Lovell start doing a headcount, and wearily start re-forming the defense. But the ship had gotten moving – just before the dead piled up to the level of the flight deck again.

  And now they were free – and they were still alive.

  Most of them, at any rate.

  The whole nightmarish interlude off that coast had been terrifying, and heart-stopping, and a much closer-run thing than Drake or his crew had ever lived through before. For a while, at several points in fact, Drake had found himself down to the bottom of his stores of courage, and of faith. Beneath bottom, in fact. Scrabbling at nothing, running on less than fumes.

  But somehow he had hung in. Somehow, they all had.

  Now, he struggled to take the right lessons from all this – to be worthy of the gift of survival and rebirth which he, and all the others, had been given. And as the brilliant low sun shone upon his face, and
the wind whipped around him, as he perched up in his rigging like any sailor of the last 500 years in the mast tower… facing ahead, trying to make out the unknown terrain that lay over the horizon… finally, Drake felt his mind settle on what this all meant. Or at least what he decided it was going to mean, for him.

  It had to be about never giving up, even in the face of the worst possible odds.

  And it was about the human spirit. It will see you through, Drake figured. But, sometimes, only if you’re willing to ride it to the far limit.

  He shook his head and laughed aloud.

  And he hoped to hell they never had to go any farther than they had on this one.

  * * *

  Juice and Predator threaded the narrow passageways of the Kennedy’s Gallery Deck, one limping in front of the other, the two of them pretty much blocking up the narrow space. They were coming from Alpha’s quarters, heading all the way back to the stern and the fantail deck, interested in some fresh air, if the swabbies would be good enough to let them out there. Regular discipline and security were starting to be enforced again.

  There were also rumors of the odd Zulu still wandering around down in the bowels of this 20-story, 1,100-foot-long, 250-foot-wide behemoth – which was divided up into over 3,000 separate compartments. That was a lot of ship to patrol. Especially when so very many of the men and women who had set out with this vessel were no longer on it.

  In fact, the ship seemed so deserted as they walked that they talked as if they were alone, the last two people in the world.

  “How’s the leg, man?” Juice asked. “What’d the docs tell you?”

  Pred answered without looking back. “Eh. It’s fine. Just have to keep this brace on for a while. I made ’em loosen it up enough so that I can operate.”

  “You know, we could just go up and hit the flight deck if you want.”

  “Nah,” Predator answered. “I’ve spent enough time there lately.”

  Juice hadn’t quite seen, but had definitely heard about what Pred had done at Ammo City, saving Handon and his sailors. Now he said, “That was some John Woo superhero shit you pulled up there, man.”

  Predator just shrugged. Juice had also heard about what had happened after that, when Pred had got splashed with infected gunk and had a terrifyingly close call – with himself. But he didn’t bring it up. He sensed that Pred just did not need to talk about that right now. So he changed the subject.

  “I hear we’re headed for Somalia next.”

  With that, they had reached the hatch out to the fantail deck. Predator pushed it open, and wind and sunlight and fine sea spray flew in to greet them. It felt great. He stepped out, holding the hatch for Juice, who closed it behind them. There was no one else out there. Pred put his arms on the railing, Juice joining him alongside.

  “Yeah, Somalia’s fine by me,” Predator said. Squinting out into the long expanse of sea and sky behind them, it almost seemed they could just make out the last smudge of the dark line that was North America disappearing into the sea as it receded. Pred spat down into the massively churning wake below. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this. But I think I’m done with America. It definitely ain’t what it used to be.”

  Juice spat as well. “Seriously.”

  Predator stretched out his neck, looking from side to side. He couldn’t decide whether to try and fight off the crushing thoughts about his beloved and lost Cali that kept intruding into his mind. But as he regarded his emotions now, turning them this way and that, he felt some kind of resolution developing. Or at least some kind of peace.

  He hadn’t died in the Battle of the JFK – and he hadn’t been turned, despite the close call, and despite his worst fears. Obviously, he had Handon to thank for that. But there was no shame in it. Relying on your team-mates was like relying on your own left hand.

  Anyway, because of what Handon had done, Predator still lived. He no longer felt particularly unkillable. But he did feel very alive – almost reborn. And if he was going to carry on, to move forward, maybe he needed to put the past behind him. At least for now. Part of him felt like he was still going to have to really grieve for her some day. But he also felt like he could find enough peace, for now, to put his grief and loss aside.

  And to do what still had to be done.

  And maybe even get some goddamned underwear that fits, he thought, tugging at it again.

  Still stretching his stiff neck out, he looked off into the dark corner of the fantail deck, and now heard something that sounded strange. As if it didn’t fit. He took his arms off the railing and advanced toward the noise. He knew all the exterior surfaces of the ship had already been scrubbed of Zulu gunk, and searched for body parts. But it was a damned big ship. Hell, they thought there might still be whole ones walking around down here…

  As he approached a waist-high equipment locker, he heard the noise more clearly. It was some type of clacking sound. Putting one hand on the butt of his side arm, he grabbed the top edge of the locker with the other. He could see now there was a dark, narrow space between it and the bulkhead behind. He looked over at Juice, who just gave him a What? look.

  Pred frowned at this absence of solidarity, and yanked the locker away from the wall.

  A head rolled out at his feet. He jumped and scrambled backward, as if he had just seen a mouse and was looking for a chair to climb on. As the disembodied head slowed and stopped rolling, it came to rest facing partially down, but with the face still visible.

  And it clearly wasn’t dead. Little flickers of the eyelids, trembling of the lips. The clacking noise sounded again. It was the teeth.

  “Oh, no fucking way…” Predator muttered, as he and Juice both rounded on the still slightly animated head. Pred got behind it, his back to the bulkhead. He paused, looking out over the railing, at the last of North America receding behind them. And he wound up a careful kick with the top of his foot, like a field-goal kicker, and caught it square. The head arced over the railing, then disappeared again down into the ship’s wake.

  As it launched out of sight, Predator flipped the bird with one hand.

  “Fuck this continent,” he said.

  Juice leaned over the railing to watch the head disappear. “Seriously.”

  Grace

  The JFK, Rear of the Island

  In the end, Handon decided he didn’t want to descend anymore. He felt like they had already plumbed plenty of depths. Right now what he wanted was to be up above it all.

  He found a little exterior observation deck at the back of the island, outside of PriFly, which had more or less closed up shop for the day. Aside from the fact that nothing was flying right now, not a ton of people were moving around the ship. As his team-mates had noticed, non-essential personnel seemed to be cocooning, or as much as their duties allowed. Everyone seemed to need time to think. And just to breathe.

  Handon sat down with his legs hanging over the edge of the deck, arms threaded through the railing, and stared off at the thick white churning of the ship’s wake, as well as the endless blue Atlantic spooling out behind them. Somewhere back there, now out of sight, was the edge of North America. And beyond that, somewhere, was Sarah Cameron. It was in part because he figured he’d be thinking of her that Handon had wanted to be alone.

  Her loss was a heavy one to bear.

  Of course, his losses extended further, and were much heavier, than the mere loss of love. He’d come back from this mission with barely half his team. Handon reflected once again on the vicissitudes, the pitiless luck, and the cold logic of combat. And he thought about how those lost were now gone forever. And how he’d have to live with that, every day – and keep going anyway.

  But it had always been like this for the operators. They did work that was too dangerous not to take some of them; and too important for the survivors not to carry on.

  Even grief recedes with time and grace. Handon remembered the third-to-last American President had said that, at one of the 9/11 memorial ceremonies.
He also remembered the next line: But our resolve must not pass. Handon figured that was at least as true now as it had been then.

  Aside from Alpha’s dead and missing, there were also all the little losses – the ones the survivors accumulated, traumas both mental and physical. Handon thought of the injuries that the people in his charge, under his orders, had suffered. Virtually everyone on the team had been wounded in one way or another on this one.

  Everyone, that is, but Handon himself.

  Though he wouldn’t exactly describe himself as unscathed. Right now he could feel a deep ache in seemingly every muscle in his taut and powerful, but nonetheless forty-year-old, body. He was abraded and bruised and banged up from head to toe, plus slightly singed from having been briefly on fire.

  And he felt a deep soul-tiredness that exceeded any exhaustion he’d ever felt before. Keeping it together, keeping the team and this mission from falling apart, had taken everything he had. And he knew he still hadn’t done everything he could have.

  There had been that battle of the boats on Lake Michigan. Handon knew their first real fight with the living had not gone well – and it was a miracle they hadn’t lost anyone else. It certainly hadn’t been the sort of meticulous, perfectly planned and executed, totally one-sided takedown that made up the bulk of their playbook. Even impossible missions were supposed to go perfectly – because their training was perfect. It wasn’t fair that they’d been bushwhacked trying to help people in need. But fairness didn’t come into it.

  Fairness had never been an aspect of their training – because there was no such animal in combat. The only thing you could count on was that shit would go wrong, probably badly; and that if you didn’t figure out how to fix it, or work around it, then you and your brothers were going to die. And your mission was going to fail.