ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Hackworth shot him a Thanks for nothing look.

  “Exactly,” Siobhan said, nodding. “And some sanctuary – locked up helpless in quarantine, waiting to die. Again.”

  Hackworth took a deep breath. “You know what none of us fell off? That ladder across to the helicopter. And we didn’t lose a single person there. Why? Because of those same soldiers – some of whom did fall and die. Getting us out of there.”

  Brown, leaning on the stone wall to ease his shot leg, spoke now. “In fairness, that’s their job. It’s not ours. Fighting.”

  “Look,” Hackworth said. “I know how you feel. But we’re all still alive. And we’re relatively safe here.”

  Siobhan snorted. “And I for one want to stay that way. I say we let the soldiers die fighting for this place.”

  Hackworth sighed and exhaled.

  But then, after no more than a few seconds of consideration, he sucked in his gut and pulled himself up to his full height, which wasn’t all that much. But he just wasn’t willing to abandon the awakening he’d had back at the Wall – the dawning realization that they couldn’t survive on their own. That it couldn’t be every man for himself. They wouldn’t survive that way. No one would.

  And even if they did… that survival would be meaningless.

  Life would be meaningless.

  And he wasn’t willing to let the others forget it, either. Or give up this easily, just because of one bump in the road, one slight – being chucked in quarantine, which could easily be understood. No, they needed to stick with this, see it through. Not that they had any real choice, the way Hackworth saw it. They simply had to give solidarity with the rest of humanity one more chance. If they all dug down and pitched in, one final time, maybe they would all survive. And maybe then they’d have a place they really belonged. And if they didn’t survive, even if no one did…

  They could at least live with themselves at the end.

  Hackworth looked around the group, scanning every face, all intimately familiar to him, even in the dark. And he spoke to all of them – his voice strong, level, and utterly free of doubt.

  “What the soldiers do is on them. Fight, run, use us as cannon fodder, quarantine us – we can’t control any of that. But what we do is on us. This is our choice, our decision, and our course of action – right now. It counts. And it will define us.”

  He looked around the group one last time.

  Finally, more quietly, he said, “Anyway, I’m going.”

  And he turned and walked away.

  Straight toward the sound of the guns.

  * * *

  Wesley wasn’t sure whether or not he envied Fick his role down inside on the ground. On the one hand, he was going to have to fight Foxtrots right to their faces, and be in serious physical danger again, probably soon. On the other hand, he didn’t have to look out at what was coming for them.

  Or see what was happening now.

  But Wes guessed that was pretty much the commander’s main job – knowing what the hell was going on. And not freaking out about it. And he definitely did have a god-like view over the battle. From out on the walkway in front of his CP, he could behold it all.

  The tankers had kicked off their main-gun barrage with one tank only – the one out front in the gap. Wesley had been afraid it was going to blow itself up firing point blank into the reservoir of dead bottled up beyond the meat wall. But they must have known what they were doing, or the round had a minimum arming range or something, because the first couple exploded about 200 meters out – and quickly cleared a narrow but deep channel directly out front, practically to the horizon.

  But it was equally obvious the other seven tanks couldn’t fire those guns where they were. Shooting to the north, they’d take down the protective meat wall. And to the south, they’d destroy CentCom. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even leave anything for the dead to pick over. So as Wesley watched through his NVG binos, the thickening rain streaming off them, as well as his helmet and face, the rest of the tanks rolled around either side of the meat wall…

  And, together, started destroying all of Wandsworth.

  Or so it looked from where Wes stood.

  The vast billowing blossoms of flame from the barrels of the tanks was impressive enough, lighting up the night sky like doomsday, which Wesley guessed this was.

  But on the other end of that operation, high-explosive shells were dropping into the thickest concentrations of dead, roughly between CentCom’s two o’clock and ten o’clock, walking north toward the river. And unimaginably vast stretches of neighborhood row houses, forest and parkland, commercial high streets, roads and motorway – and mainly thick and thronging armies of migrating dead – all were going up in great thundering geysers of smoke, flame, dirt, wood, foliage, and most especially meat.

  Thick, towering geysers of meat.

  All of that stuff was exploding, over and over again, combining and turning to mulch and undifferentiated wasteland, rising up toward the black night sky and falling down again, carpeting the world and acre by acre turning the boroughs of Wandsworth and Battersea into Los Angeles circa 2029 A.D. And not only did the scene have the crushing tank treads – it even had the lasers. The green IR aiming lasers of the operators and Marines on the walls crossed and searched out in no-man’s land, closer in.

  And as hypnotizing as were the sights and sounds of a squadron of main battle tanks putting south London to ruin, Wesley’s eyes were drawn back to those walls, and the scene right in front of them, both by the hypnotic sight of the searching green beams, and by the sounds of unsuppressed rifle and machine gun fire, heavy and ramping up.

  Because without the tanks out front to stop them…

  The dead were back, in force.

  By destroying thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, much farther out, and before they ever got there, the tanks were probably increasing CentCom’s long-term life expectancy. But now they had short-term problems to deal with, and they had to deal with them fast. This was a damned narrow corner to be in, Wesley thought, and not a comfortable one.

  Now the dead weren’t just coming in from the north, but around the meat wall from the east and west. For better or worse, they were being drawn to the noise on the north walls, where their strongest defenses were. So that was where the fight was shaping up.

  But it was shaping up too fast, the carpet of bodies out front, after being squashed flat by the armored vehicle convoy, already starting to rise back up toward the walls. Coming in from the sides, they were harder to knock down while still far out. The Marines, Gurkhas, and USOC operators were fighting masterfully, in all three northern sectors, all of their weapons banging away, including machine guns.

  And they were knocking down the tide.

  But it was obvious to Wesley the clock was no longer ticking. That was the wrong metaphor. No, now they were in a boat that was being submerged. Going down, sinking. All they could do was try to keep paddling, and try to keep the gunwales above the level of the surging waves.

  But very soon they’d be bailing out the ship.

  Wes got Miller on the radio again to see if there was any update from the two Alpha team missions.

  “Strict radio silence,” Miller said. “Involuntary, of course.”

  That made Wesley smile. If you couldn’t crack a joke when everyone was about to die…

  There was hardly any point in being British.

  But the smile melted away as he went and picked up his rifle. He may or may not be Patton or Montgomery. But they were probably going to need everyone shooting before long.

  Soon it was going to be every man to the walls.

  Once again, Wesley prayed for Alpha to come home.

  Non-Kill-Crazy Rampage

  St. Thomas’s Hospital – Basement

  The hallway outside the pharmacy wasn’t as tranquil as the first time they came down it, and Homer could see and hear Ali shooting to clear the way ahead, selectively engaging the dead swarming among the panic
ked patients and staff, another Tier-1 precision shooting masterclass.

  Given Rob the EMT’s radio call about the trouble up on the rooftop, Homer guessed the chaos was spreading both up and down. When he spun to check the rear, he gave the knot of desperate parents a nod and waved them toward the pharmacy door, letting them know they could go back in.

  Unfortunately the junkies got the same message.

  But that’s life… especially in the end times.

  When he spun forward again, he found a young woman on top of him. She’d snuck into their formation between him and Rob, from out of a cross hallway. Her chin point was already right behind the red dot of his EOTech, and he took half the slack out of his trigger. She had scabs and discoloration on her face, and for a second Homer honestly couldn’t tell whether she was a drug addict or a Zulu. Her raising her hands up in front of her didn’t help any, but at the last second he recognized her from inside the pharmacy, and held his fire.

  Blurred movement in peripheral caused him to spin to his right – but too late. Something heavy smashed into his helmet and he banged into the opposite wall and fell to the deck. When he rolled off his side into a prone position, pulled in his rifle, and managed to focus his eyes, he could see what looked like a portable x-ray machine lying beside him – the improvised bludgeon that had walloped him. Beyond it he could see the woman he’d just spared, along with a man, no doubt her boyfriend, both racing away back down the hallway.

  And the boyfriend had Homer’s duty bag on his shoulder. And inside that was the HRIG, their mission objective.

  Homer dropped him with two between the shoulder blades.

  The man sprawled out face down and the woman screamed, but then running bodies obscured Homer’s sight picture. And through them, but before they cleared out, he could just make out the girl grab the bag and disappear around the corner, all in a flash.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and saw Ali’s barrel pointing over his head. “You injured?”

  “Good to go,” Homer said, shaking his head.

  “Come on,” Ali said. “Hot pursuit.” She’d either seen the bag disappear, or else just saw Homer no longer had it on him.

  “No,” Homer said, rising into a crouch. “I’ll get it. You secure the HLZ. Be right behind you.” He didn’t figure she’d like that, so he took off out of his crouch like a sprinter and didn’t look back. Ali stood up as Rob the paramedic reached her.

  She shot him a look and tossed her head, indicating down the hall. “Well – go with him!”

  He did, taking off like a sprinter himself.

  * * *

  The machine gun and grenade show that Randy the killer robot had just put on was something beyond a precision shooting masterclass – and to say Predator had been impressed would be an understatement. Hell, he’d been totally won over. Bots – hell, yeah! But then it turned out Juice had not only been right about the MAARS units’ capability – he’d also predicted their weakness in advance.

  They couldn’t stop the living.

  A group of about eight civilians ran right around this one, fleeing the violence in Finsbury Square – looking as if they badly wanted to get off the street. They were heading for the breached gate in front of Armoury House, but came to a stop when they saw Predator standing in front of it, like a giant stone idol.

  Ha, he thought. Guess I’m scarier than Randy. He paused and drilled down on that. Maybe Predators beat Terminators…

  “Please move along, people,” he said, politely enough he thought. His whole job in strongpointing the entrance was to keep their target site secure so Juice could safely operate in it – to keep people, dead ones or living, the hell out of it.

  But these people didn’t move along.

  Now Pred realized it wasn’t so much that they were scared of him – but that they were looking to him for protection. Huh.

  “Fine,” he said, pointing to a shallow but shadowed alcove in the side of the medieval-looking building behind him, just a few meters up from the gate. “You can shelter there.” They complied with this directive, but kept eying the bent bars in the gate behind him. Clearly they’d prefer being inside to out.

  Hell, Pred thought. I would, too.

  Suddenly, their panicked shouts and raised arms caused Pred to spin in place and raise his weapon. As usual, the living were drawing the dead. Pred dropped a runner and two Zulus stumbling out of that same alleyway across the street and slightly south. Then another runner. Now he realized that, masterful as Randy’s shooting had been, it had also been loud. And this alley was the breach in their otherwise secure block. Now, all things considered, they might be done with stealth.

  When Pred turned around and looked back again, another group of about six civilians had run up from the square – and the first of them was already squeezing through the bars of the gate.

  “Hey!” Pred shouted, rushing over. “Son of a bitch!” He pulled the man bodily out of the gap like a rag doll, and shoved him back into his group. “Go over there!” he said, pointing toward the first group. They all complied, but looked even less pleased about it than the others had. The crowd was getting antsier, and their numbers growing, as they all huddled in the dark alcove like half-drowned rats. On the upside, the rain was slacking a little, and it felt like the storm might be moving off toward the south. But still Pred could feel another 100 Agent Smiths type situation brewing. He got on his radio to Juice inside.

  “Hey, man.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Starting to attract a crowd of civilians here. And I can only do so much crowd control on my own.”

  “Copy. All those dudes across the street are British Army. Why don’t you tie in with them, and get some help?”

  “No comms with them, for one thing.”

  “Try yelling?”

  Pred grimaced – then raised his rifle to drop another Zulu from the alley. “You found the goddamned armory yet?”

  “A-ffirm. It was actually where the kid said it was – I was just in the wrong building. It’s in the basement of the attached barracks, the castle looking thing, not the stately home thing.”

  “If you found it, what the hell are we still doing here?”

  “Now I’ve got to break into an armory. Twenty mikes max.”

  Pred sighed out loud and looked around. He pointed a huge hand and index finger toward the huddling knot of civilians. “Stay there,” he said in his booming Predator voice. “Or you’re all in big trouble.”

  Then he trotted off toward the south end of the block.

  * * *

  “God, we’re seriously thick,” Andrew shouted over the roar of the rifles, dropping down behind a concrete barrier to reload. “Where the fuck did we think they were going to evac people to?”

  Miranda, his teammate in 2 Squadron of the Honourable Infantry Company (HIC), dropped down beside him, more to catch her breath than to reload. “Hell, where did the civvies think they were going to get evac’d to?” The two of them paused and just breathed, their backs up against the waist-high barrier, already soaking wet, but feeling the rain finally slackening off. They were on the northwest edge of the square, so marginally safer than the more elite soldiers of 1 Squadron, who were in the thick of it in the center.

  “Civvies are stupid,” Andrew said, looking across at his mate in the glow of street lamps, the sounds of the battle raging around them. “We should have known. Or been told.”

  Miranda shrugged. “Mushroom farming, chap – keep us in the dark and feed us shit.”

  Their reserve regiment, the HIC, had been fully mobilized weeks before. But it had only been when the ZPW was breached that they were tasked with setting and defending a helicopter evacuation zone here in Finsbury Square. The good news was it was practically right across the street from their barracks. The bad news was there were no helicopters – and never would be. Which didn’t matter, because there was nowhere to evacuate anyone to.

  But still word had gotten out, and people had flocked here
.

  And as always the dead flocked after them.

  Now the entire regiment, all five squadrons, were fully committed – engaged in a smash-mouth battle that pretty clearly had no point other than itself. Or survival, maybe. They were in this fight, so they had to fight it. At least until the ammo ran out. They had already carried out everything in the armory but the simunitions, and they wouldn’t be surprised if they were told to go back for those.

  Two squadron was a light ISR unit, but they were descended from Yager (“hunter”) light infantry, so did get shooting training well beyond the British Army minimum. But the logistics and signals squadrons were also out here, and Andrew and Miranda could at least be glad they weren’t them.

  Miranda squinted, then reached across and mussed Andrew’s dripping hair. “Where’s your helmet, poppet?”

  He looked up at his eyebrows. “No idea, mate.”

  “Hey, you – WITH THE FACE!”

  They both looked up and were startled to see a soldier the size of a red phone box bellowing at them. It was instantly clear he wasn’t British Army. As he vigorously waved them over, it also looked like ignoring him wasn’t a serious option.

  “A little help,” he added, sounding slightly needy.

  Andrew and Miranda exchanged a baffled look.

  And they climbed back to their feet again.

  * * *

  Ali’s fight to get back up the main hospital stairwell was bad. But virtually every fight she’d ever been in was bad – otherwise Delta, USOC, or Alpha wouldn’t have gotten thrown into them in the first place. If she’d wanted things easy, she could have stayed in the Air Cav. She was also absolutely fine operating on her own. Or would have been – if the teammate she’d been operating separate from had been anyone but Homer.

  But she couldn’t deny his logic. They had to get the mission objective back. And they had to make sure they had some way to get it the hell out of there. Which meant dividing up. It would also be helpful if she could get back to the rooftop while the stairwells were still passable. They were – just barely, and for now.