Mainly, he had to get the kids someplace safe. But he also needed to finish the job he’d come in here to do. He couldn’t be certain, but he felt pretty sure that crawlspace was how the dead had been getting in – the source of the incursion. On the downside, checking the general area, he couldn’t see any obvious way to seal up the hole, and racking his brain for fifteen seconds didn’t improve the situation.
Then he remembered he was an officer, and didn’t have to solve every problem. He had people for that, and he could delegate. “You,” he said to the soldier already guarding the crawlspace. “Either find a way to plug this hole, or stand in this spot and guard it. Don’t care which.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wesley paused. “You understand my intent?”
“Nothing else comes out of there.”
“Good lad. Radio for help if you need it.” Still carrying Josie, he turned to the other soldier. “You’re on me.” He realized that, since they were already inside and nearby, he also wanted to swing by the armory, and make sure the Royal Marines had secured it. He had a lot of confidence in them, but also wanted to see for himself. Taking the kids along for that wasn’t ideal, but not much was in the ZA.
Finally, as they headed out, Wes realized something else – something intensely personal. When he had decided to come out here and find the leak himself, he had fed himself several excuses as to why: that he didn’t want to spare anyone else from the walls, that the fight was well in hand, that Pred and Juice could take up the slack. But now he realized none of those was the real reason. No, it was because he had hoped against hope that the kids, and particularly Amarie’s little girl, were still alive somewhere inside.
The real reason was right there in his arms.
They reached the armory just as Croucher and Simmonds were stepping out of it. “Armory secure?” Wesley asked.
Croucher, seeing Wesley’s rank insignia on his chest, straightened up. If he was confused by a U.S. uniform on an Englishman, he didn’t let on. “Yes, sir.”
“Nice work.” He looked around and all seemed quiet. He looked back at the Royal Marines, tooled up and palpably professional, and who he badly wanted back on the line. “We’ve also plugged the original leak, so one sentry to guard the armory should be fine.”
He double-checked that the last British Army soldier with him also had a radio. “Guard this room,” he said. “Anything irregular, you put it out on the net, yeah?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the Marines. “You two can return to your unit.”
Croucher saluted and turned to go, but Simmonds hesitated. “You’re carrying a little girl, sir. You’ll need security.”
“Fair point.”
Simmonds hefted his rifle. “Where we going?”
“Quarantine. And then back to the walls.”
They’d both been gone long enough that they had no idea how bad things had gotten out there.
Or what they would both be walking back into.
Over The Top
CentCom – Sniper OP Tower
“Let’s take it back to the JOC and plan there,” Ali said, watching as Homer unclipped his rifle and thunked it down on one of the desks in the guard tower.
“No time,” he said, nodding out toward the walls and the defenders, where they could both see and hear the situation deteriorating fast. “And I’ve got everything I need right here.” Homer picked up an empty vaccine syringe from the floor and put it on the desk, beside two others he’d grabbed outside. Then he opened the hopper of the second paintball rifle and fished out the three remaining paintballs of MZ.
Ali knew her tactic was transparent to Homer – trying to buy time to think of some way to do this that didn’t involve him going out there into hell. So she shifted gears and ditched that idea, and instead just picked up her own rifle and clipped it on. “Okay,” she said. “You and me, then.”
“No,” Homer said, sliding the needle of the syringe into the first paintball and drawing out the faintly orange-tinted fluid – the MZ. “You were half-right the first time. You’re going back to the JOC. That’s your station.”
She opened her mouth, but didn’t get any farther.
“The supreme allied commander can take a few minutes out to do some shooting. But she can’t go over the top into no-man’s land.” He laid down the full syringe and picked up an empty one. “Don’t worry, I can find the Foxtrots myself.”
“You mean they’ll find you.” He’d be human bait.
Homer smiled and shrugged as he filled the second syringe.
“I’ll send Pred and Juice with you, then.”
“No, not them either. You already know you can’t risk losing three-quarters of the remaining team at once. We’re all that’s left of Alpha. And those two are out there on the walls right now keeping the defense, and those defenders, from falling apart.” He didn’t add that, even with them, it wasn’t going to last.
Things were getting bad out there, quickly.
And, yeah, Ali did already know all that. But it was still annoying to have Homer scouting out in front of her inside her own head. But she still wasn’t letting him go out there alone. She exhaled, turned, and stuck her head out the door.
“Baxter, Dunajski – front and center.”
* * *
Well, that was a short-lived respite, Juice thought, looking up and down the line, in both directions along the dark and wet walkway atop the wall. The good news was that, the breakthrough having been contained, the lines had re-formed. The conscripts had gotten turned around, picked up their rifles, and then been shuffled off out to the flanks this time – the far flanks.
The bad news was everything else.
Juice turned, squatted down in the puddle spreading beneath him, and quickly refilled his empty mag pouches from a crate that had been shoved up behind them. As he did so, he gave thanks, not for the first time, that he’d modified the lower of his SIG SG553 to accept standard STANAG magazines. As in many places, the standard military rifles in the UK also took them.
The best kind of mag is a full one, he thought, slapping this one to seat it, then standing up and getting back up on the line, fast – where most of that bad news was staring him in the face. While the original breakthrough – that Jerusalem-style daisy-chaining up and over the wall – had been beaten back with grenades and nose-to-nose fighting…
Now they were looking at similar situations in a half-dozen spots up and down the north walls. The dead were getting in too close, too fast, and seriously piling up. And that kind of thing was an irreversible process, or at least an unrelenting one, grenades notwithstanding. More explosions were crumping off up and down the line now, eclipsing the noise of the rifle and even machine-gun fire, but they could only do so much – and, worse, Juice was pretty sure the bangs and bright flashes in the dark were drawing more, even faster than the unsuppressed firing was.
He checked in with Pred. It was the same down on his side. Then he hailed Ali. “Hey, not sure how long we’re going to be able to hold this line. So any time now would be good with that whole infecting and killing all the dead thing.”
“Copy that. Stand by.”
Her response was staticky, Juice presumed due to the EMI event they’d been briefed on, but intelligible. She was only down at the other end of the same section of walls.
He looked out again at the spreading, thickening, increasingly riled-up ranks of the dead, piling up higher and faster, and flooding in from some seemingly inexhaustible source. And he started taking shots again. But it was all just shoveling seaweed against the tide.
It was obvious they couldn’t win this way.
They could only put off the end.
And not even for a whole hell of a lot longer.
* * *
Homer saw Ali had both hands on Baxter’s shoulders, leaning around him from behind to talk about him like he wasn’t there. “Young, lanky, presumably fast.”
Homer smiled. “Okay, fine. He’ll
do.” He slipped plastic covers over the needles of the three full syringes of MZ, then slid all three into nylon PALS loops on his vest. These were usually used for chemlights or flexicuffs, but were the right size. He stood up.
“Baxter’s not going without me,” Kate said, from the doorway. Homer understood – each of them was the last teammate the other had left. They’d been through a lot. But Ali spoke before he could.
“Yeah, don’t worry, he’s definitely not going without you.”
Kate gave Ali a look, which she didn’t see, but Homer did. He knew the effect Ali could have on other women. She took up a lot of space in a room – and her talents, abilities, and accomplishments were so towering, she could be intimidating, especially to other female soldiers.
But then, standing up, Homer hesitated. He tapped the neoprene-like surface of his assault suit and looked at Ali. Kate and Baxter were in Ghostex, Under Armor, and Crye Combat – functional and beloved by SF guys, but not notoriously bite-proof. Nor infection-proof.
Ali hit her radio. “Miller, Ali, how copy? Yeah, are there any MOPP suits on this base? I mean NBC protective suits.” She listened for a few seconds, then signed off and shook her head, speaking to the room. “The best they can muster is face shields, gloves, and smocks, from Bio.”
Homer looked up. “As always, it’s either face shields or NVGs. Not both.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “I think I’ll go with being able to see. And I’ll pass on the smock.”
“Me, too,” Baxter agreed. “Rather be able to move. Plus not look like a girl.” Neither Ali nor Kate seemed to notice the comment. In their world, everyone knew the girls in this room could kick Baxter’s ass without even raising their heart rates.
Ali nodded, let the matter of protective gear go, and looked back at Homer. “Recommend you go out the south gate, then work your way around.” Her point was obvious to him – they wouldn’t be dropped straight into the meat grinder that way. It would give them a chance of surviving the mission – or at least surviving long enough to complete it. Then again, they’d be farther from the thick concentrations they needed to infect, and would burn time getting into position.
Given that CentCom was on the verge of being overrun, time wasn’t something they needed to be burning right now. And given that no one inside was immune yet, the vaccination kits weren’t ready, and they didn’t even have fuel to air-drop them, what they desperately needed was to buy more time. They had to do something. Because they couldn’t go down now.
Homer guessed this was a suicide mission anyway, though it didn’t matter. It was their Hail Mary. All that mattered was getting in the end zone. If he could get out there and infect some dead, and the zombie-killing plague got going, maybe they’d have a chance.
“West gate,” Homer said, mainly to keep Ali happy.
“I’ve got overwatch,” she said. “I’ll try to keep the thousands of Zulus and Romeos off while you wait for your star-crossed Foxtrot.” That made Homer laugh – which seemed to make everyone feel better. He pulled down his NVGs, then turned on a small infrared strobe on the back of his helmet. “Follow the bouncing ball.” The IR light would pop like a supernova in Ali’s night vision, and allow her to keep eyes on them as they waded out into the horde. Homer nodded to Kate and Baxter, who flipped their own NVGs down and hefted their rifles.
And then he led them out.
They were going over the top.
* * *
Never in Wesley’s life had he seen a reaction or facial expression like the one Amarie displayed when she saw Josie, even through the plexiglass of quarantine. It was like enlightenment, salvation, beatification, renunciation, hitting bottom, and finding God all at once. She fell to her knees and pressed her hands and tear-stained face up against the glass.
“Mama,” Josie said, stressing the second syllable in the French way, kissing her mother through the barrier.
Aiden smiled up at Wesley. “I think that’s her second word.”
“What was her first?” Wesley asked.
“Don’t ask.”
Wes turned to the guard, intending to ask him how they could get the little girl inside with her mother. But then he realized that was the wrong idea. Particularly after what Josie had been through, he wasn’t going to stick her in quarantine. He was going to bring her mother out.
“Can’t do it, sir,” the guard said, checking his watch. “The doc said they look okay. But they’ve still got eight hours to go.”
“Just her,” Wes said. “For God’s sake, she’s got a child.”
The guard looked like he was considering it. But then the door Amarie had come through opened up – and the rest of the Tunnelers spilled out of it. They wanted to see Josie, and check on Amarie. She turned and looked back at them, then forward at Wes. Her look said she wasn’t sure she wanted to come out if they didn’t. But then she looked down at Josie again, terribly torn.
Now Simmonds, who had accompanied Wes and the kids to protect them, turned and spoke to the guard. “I know this lot.” And he did – not just from the Battle of the Gap, but going all the way back to Canterbury. “They’re solid. If they were infected, they’d say – or they wouldn’t have lasted this long. And they won’t run out on a fight.”
Wesley looked from Simmonds to the Tunnelers. “That’s good enough for me. We need everyone who can fight up on the walls, anyway. We’ll all be infected soon enough, if we let ten thousand dead come over. Let them out,” he said to the guard. “That’s an order.”
As the group filed out, led by Amarie, who tearfully swept Josie up in her arms, one of them, a stout middle-aged man, asked Wesley, “Where are our weapons?”
“In the armory,” the guard answered.
Wes turned to Simmonds. “Take them to get kitted out, then get them up on the walls.”
“Sir.”
Wes turned to Amarie, Josie, and the boys. “Come on. I’ll get you all someplace safe.”
And then he really did have to get back to his men, and back to the fight. Even here, the sounds of the battle ramping up outside were unmistakable. Things were getting desperate out there.
And Wesley’s duty was right where he had left it.
* * *
As usual in a fight, Predator had a variety of natural advantages. One, he could actually palm four live grenades. This he did, methodically pulling the pins, then dumping the whole handful over the parapet and bellowing, “COVER UP, MOTHERFUCKERS!” Everyone in his sector did – another one of his advantages being that he could be heard over virtually any level of battle noise or chaos.
The grenades exploded not quite at once, like a string of really big Chinese firecrackers. Sure, Pred was worried about being that heavy-handed with explosives this close to the walls, and what it might do to their structural stability.
They just had bigger problems right now.
He stood up to his full height again, the parapet sort of level with his waist, raised his rifle in a perfectly erect shooting posture, and started engaging individual targets again. When he went empty, he spared a quick look to either side. All of the RMPs were still right where he had put them – and, more importantly, still firing.
Those were his third and fourth advantages: Pred was both carrot and stick all at once. Seeing him in the middle of any military formation, and being able to rally round him was, again, like having a giant from beyond the Wall leading the charge, or in this case, anchoring the defense. It instantly conferred courage, and resolve. But underneath that was the stick – imagining what he’d do to you if you broke and ran, or let down the team.
And absolutely no one wanted to find that out.
Pred spat over the parapet into the sea of bodies and rainwater. We’ll see how they do when the dead come over.
While he was leaning out anyway, he scanned to both sides. In most sectors, the dead were now piled between halfway and three-quarters to the top of the twenty-foot wall. And three-quarters of the way was within arm’s reach, so runners
were already grabbing onto the parapet and trying to pull themselves over the top. Never mind that the Foxtrots needed a hell of a lot less proximity to simply leap over.
This siege was about to become a full-on assault.
Predator both leaned and stepped back rapidly, then elevated his weapon in a blur, as another Foxtrot launched itself off the growing pile below, vaulted up over the parapet, and arced down into the yard behind and below. Pred shot it four times in midair, but he couldn’t tell where he hit it, so he also hit his radio. “Yeah, Master Guns, another one coming down to you.” No response. “Fick, how copy?”
Hmm, that’s not good.
* * *
Fick wasn’t receiving shit over the net – in part, he figured, due to the EMI, but mainly because he was balls-deep in a big-ass stone prison. He didn’t have the breath for radio calls anyway, because he was hauling ass to get out of there as quickly as he could – and he was carrying a goddamned 35-pound mortar tube.
The QRF soldier beside him only had a base plate, at 29 pounds, plus was a hell of a lot younger, so was making conversation. “That was an awful lot of dead bodies lying around the armory.”
Fick couldn’t deny it. He also didn’t care. He could finally see the exit up ahead, and he put his shoulder down and bashed through it, leading the five-man detachment from his QRF, and the additional four ammo bearers he’d conscripted, all of them ferrying pieces of the two 81mm mortars, and two cases of mortar bombs, outside at high speed.
He could immediately sense that the other half of the QRF had their damned hands full, playing grab-ass with the Foxtrots, who clearly were not leaping the walls any less now, as the dead piled up higher on the other side. But he had to let them deal with that. It was basic bear-pit training – once you were in the bear pit, you either learned to train bears… or you didn’t.
Instead, Fick directed half his group – hopefully a group carrying enough pieces to add up to a working weapon – to the mortar pit he’d had the sappers dig behind the line on the left, while he led the other three toward the one on the right.
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME Page 9
