ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  But there were an awful lot of panicked living people in this one, inexplicably going both up and down – which of course meant there were also hungry dead ones. Shooting carefully and methodically, rifle pulled in tight in the close quarters, Ali destroyed the dead, knocked the living out of her way with her barrel – and made judgment calls on the obviously infected.

  On the one hand, she probably had immunity from the zombie virus herself now, so didn’t have to be as careful as in every other close engagement with the dead these last two years. On the other hand, this was it, the endgame – and the lives of everyone left were in her hands.

  She couldn’t go down. And she couldn’t fail.

  When she reached the top, she pushed out into the hallway, shot her way across half the top floor to the final stairwell, and then climbed up that one. It wasn’t as bad – but at the top, sure enough, their lock and bracket had been battered or levered off, and the door stood wide open. And when she flowed out onto the rooftop itself, she was instantly more annoyed than she even expected to be. Yes, there were dead running around in the rain and the halogen-lit dark, or down on the ground in puddles of rainwater and blood, eating the living. And yes there were terrified living trying to fight them off.

  But there were also guys trying to lift up the canopy hatches of her goddamned Apache.

  She shook her head. What exactly the fuck do they think they’re going to do THEN? When they get in?

  She pushed out toward it, taking a couple of quick shots on dead who got in her way, or who got interested in her – then shouted, “Hey, asshat!” and hauled a guy off the aircraft cowling with one hand. He tumbled to the deck, and she was reaching for the next one, when a hand clutched her own arm – and a rancid mouth bit into her shoulder, or tried to.

  “Goddammit.” She spun around, knocked it off her, and shot it in the face. Scanning the rooftop, she saw there were no more than a half-dozen active dead up there, so she took the time to go around and clean them up. This seemed to calm the general panic. But it also wouldn’t be the end of it. She went and checked the stairwell door – but it wouldn’t even shut properly now, never mind lock. She pushed it closed anyway.

  Getting back to the helo, she hauled two more criminally oblivious bastards off it, then got the rear hatch open and climbed in herself. Instantly, panicked civilians tried to follow her up and inside.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  Her rifle was already stowed, so she pulled her pistol and fired a single shot in the air, which got their attention. Wide eyes looked up at her.

  “Listen up!” she shouted. “Anyone within fifteen feet of this aircraft in fifteen seconds is getting shot in the face! Capisce?”

  Not one of them backed off. Then again, they didn’t come any closer, either. And Ali had bigger problems anyway.

  Like – where the hell was Homer?

  * * *

  To their credit, the two British reservists shanghaied by Predator managed to muster up a small element of their fellows, another six soldiers, in just a couple of minutes. They were young, but disciplined and efficient. When they all got back to the target-site entrance, the woman of the original pair, who was blonde, pretty, and sounded upper-class to Pred’s untrained ear, asked, “Who are you, then? Actually.”

  “JSOC,” Pred answered, not quite paying attention. He finally saw he was getting only nicely manicured arched eyebrows in response. “USOC,” he corrected himself. “Whatever sock. Look, I need your help. What are your names?”

  “Andrew.”

  “Miranda.”

  “Okay. I need you guys to help me defend this gate.”

  They moved to comply, but Andrew examined the cut bars first, and gave Pred a look he interpreted as, So what the hell are you doing in our barracks?

  Pred sighed. “Long story, but it’s a critical tasking from CentCom, okay? Just work with me.” The young soldier nodded, and moved into the center of the neat single rank his fellow soldiers had formed around the gate, his female squadron-mate beside him. Pred instinctively liked these two – they were switched on, disciplined, and clearly wanted to do their duty and help. But he didn’t have time to like them long, because machine-gun fire drew everyone’s gaze up and out.

  Looking back toward the southern intersection, Pred could see Randy not only firing again – but leaving. It was trundling out into the open, engaging targets out in the square. There were more of these now, moving closer, because – probably inevitably – they were following the living who had left that way.

  “Goddammit,” Pred muttered.

  Now he had two new problems… no, wait, three: bot abandoning its post, dead following – and dead able to go right around the former strongpoint and walk up on them, due to having no bot there. Wait, four problems – more goddamned civilians, also following the whole circus.

  Pred decided to punt.

  “Juice! Goddammit! I thought the bots were supposed to stay in position. Not go off on a damned hunting expedition.”

  “Yeah. That might be one of the little bugs. Hang on…”

  Pred started engaging targets, since Randy was off the goddamned job. To their credit, the HIC guys started doing so as well, their shooting disciplined and accurate. The problem was they now had an even larger wave of civilians coming toward their lines. Not only did they have to shoot around them – but since they were busy shooting the dead, they weren’t free to stop the living, as Pred had intended. As he also shot to defend the position, he saw Randy finally turn and start rolling back toward them. But this time its guns weren’t blazing.

  And with sinking certainty, Pred knew why. There were too many living people in its background. It had no safe shot.

  Startlingly quickly, this had turned into a smash-mouth fight.

  And the flesh-and-blood warriors were in it on their own.

  * * *

  Sure enough, Ali saw more dead blast out the busted rooftop access door about thirty seconds later – and runners this time, a baker’s dozen of them, splashing into the scene like kindergartners at a fun fair. And, at least as predictably, this sent the civilians up there – a good two dozen of them – straight back into full-on crazy-ass panic.

  Including trying to climb back up on her goddamned helo.

  Goddammit.

  At least this made slightly more sense – with a pilot in it, there was some kind of a chance of them getting out of there on it. But Ali still had to get them the hell off it. Staying put at first in the rear seat, she knocked one of them off with a forearm shove, then dropped a runner with her side arm pointed out the hatch. But she couldn’t effectively defend against either the living or the dead up here, so she had to climb out again.

  But she left her rifle in the cockpit. Aside from having limited ammo left for it, it was no longer the right tool for the job. For the first time since probably Hargeisa – it definitely wasn’t the right tool for battling Spetsnaz – she drew her katana from over her right shoulder as lightning flashed in the sky above her.

  And she started laying about her with it

  The long gleaming blade whirled and flashed and slung droplets of both water and blood all around her, as her lean, agile, black-clad, rain-glistening body pivoted and spun with it like a dance partner, or binary star system, each in thrall to the gravity of the other, the familiar and meticulously practiced footwork and strikes of kendo not so much coming back as never having left her at all.

  After twenty-five seconds of kill-crazy rampage, thirteen undead heads lay on the glistening deck. Bodies, too.

  And then she went to work on the civilians – switching to the flat of the sword and using it to beat them back away from the helo, and try to shock them out of their mindless panic with a little blunt force trauma to their soft tissues. It seemed to be working, lots of people going down yelping, others backing away – a woman in black with a huge sword coming at you a million miles an hour will do that – but she could also only face in one direction at a time.

/>   And when she spun back to the Apache, there were two motherfuckers climbing into her cockpit again. Only this time the rear canopy hatch was open. So they were getting in.

  She drew her H&K USP Tactical with her right hand.

  And she double-tapped them both between the shoulder blades. One fell to the deck, and she marched over and hauled the other body off and down from the airframe. When she turned back to what was left of the mob, she saw she’d finally gotten their attention.

  She banged her pistol barrel on the left stub wing. “Touch helo. Get shot.” She didn’t have to yell this time. As she sheathed her sword and climbed back in, she added over her shoulder: “And I would seriously get to work barricading that stairwell door if I were you.”

  As she sat down again, she hit her radio. “Homer. Any time now would be great.” To her moderate surprise he both received this transmission, and responded.

  “Copy that. Package recovered. En route to you.”

  “Don’t dawdle.” Or stop to save anybody…

  She started the engines. And got her rotors turning.

  * * *

  Pred had recruited the HIC soldiers for crowd control, but now he was damned glad he had them for zombie fighting – and they could damned well do it. With Randy temporarily out of action due to whatever its take on the Three Laws of Robotics was, there would have been no way Pred could have survived the quick and dense wave of runner packs that now swarmed the street from out of the square.

  He was shooting nonstop, and unerringly, over the heads of the single rank of eight HIC guys, but no one could have shot quickly enough to drop all of them. In seconds, the running dead were in among them – and Pred was also aware that he was vaccinated against the zombie virus and the others were not. As his rifle went dry he dropped the empty mag with a thumb press – but then let the rifle fall and grabbed the two soldiers directly ahead of him.

  And he pulled them behind the line and took their place.

  The two happened to be Miranda and Andrew, who for Pred now had names, faces, and personalities – but he told himself this was incidental, or would have if he’d had time to think of it. Now he had neither time nor space to reload, so he quick-drew his aluminum bat from over his shoulder and started bashing heads – quickly stepping out front the better to swing it.

  The HIC guys to either side and behind were still firing – or else were being tackled and wrestling, getting pistols or knives out, grappling, going down fighting. And then…

  And then Randy was back.

  Finally reaching their little line in front of the gate and backing up to them, it didn’t even have to turn – its turret was already facing back the way it came, and it opened up point-blank, its machine-gun going cyclic and spitting 650 rounds a minute, each moving 2,800 feet per second as it exited the barrel, which jerked back and forth as the sensor dome acquired targets, whether sixty yards away or six inches.

  In no case did it miss. It shot perfectly.

  Its aim was unerring, and no runner could move fast enough to get out of the way of those 7.62mm rounds in flight. Not at any range involved in urban fighting.

  And, not even noticing it was multitasking, it started arcing grenades over the heads of the dead in front, dropping them on the ones in back – once again about one inch outside of safe deployment range from the living people behind it.

  This masterful clearing action allowed Pred to step backward into the line, drop his bat, reload his rifle, and resume shooting. Now it was one Predator, one Terminator, and eight mortal humans against a shitload of runners.

  Thirty seconds later Randy stopped shooting – finally out of MG ammo. But then, five seconds after that, it was all over.

  Reloading by touch, Pred scanned the scene – and there was a lot to scan. Most immediate was at least thirty dead runners carpeting the street in a wide and deep ring around them. The next thing Pred saw caused him to understand why Randy had stopped chucking grenades – when he still, by Pred’s count, had at least a couple left.

  Because there was a big knot of about fifty civilians at the end of the street, where it met the square, huddling up against the building fronts on one side. Pretty clearly they’d been trapped between the millstones – the bad fighting and hordes of dead out in the square, and both nearly as bad up here.

  It was safer here now, so Pred motioned them forward, and they ran to him. But when he turned to point them where to go, up against the wall in the dark alcove with the others, he saw this safety had come at a very high price.

  All of the HIC soldiers were down on the ground.

  Dead, bleeding out, or just badly enough wounded that they were without a doubt infected. All of them but two – Andrew and Miranda, who had only been saved because Pred shoved them to the rear. And now the price they were paying for their survival was… having to go around and finish off their dying and infected brothers in arms.

  “Hey, guys,” Pred growled at them, pushing down Andrew’s rifle barrel. “Get these civilians over there with the others.” There was no way they should have to do what they were doing right now. And taking over the job was the very least Pred could do for them. Not least since they had saved his life. But he also realized that with all but two of the soldiers gone, and Randy black on ammo…

  The next wave of runner packs would probably take them.

  He and Juice needed to get the hell out of there.

  I’m Crushing Heads

  CentCom – No Man’s Land

  Fick hadn’t been wrong that neither the Gurkhas nor USOC had medium machine guns. But he’d underrated the Gurkhas, who had actually humped an L2 .50-cal heavy machine gun across half of Kent. Anyone who’d ever seen Sherpa porters carrying loads equivalent to their own body weight up and down the brutal terrain of the Himalayas in Nepal, often wearing flip-flops, wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Sergeant Major Pradup Sun shoved another couple of boxes of belted .50-cal up behind his two-man crew and patted them on their backs. It didn’t take too many two-inch, 800-grain .50 BMG rounds to take apart a zombie, and his guys were doing a good job of keeping the center under something like control. On the other hand, .50-cal was heavy, and these two boxes were the last they’d found in the CentCom armory.

  As their belt fed through and they stopped to reload, Sun noticed they had the weapon propped on the parapet. “That stable enough?” he asked – and immediately regretted it. While the loader got an ammo box open, the gunner reached down into the shadows at his feet and came up with the tripod.

  “Don’t worry, keeping this handy for you! Ha ha ha!”

  Goddammit. His final defense of that combat outpost in Helmand with a machine-gun tripod just never, ever stopped being funny to these guys. He shook his head. “You can build a thousand bridges, but you fuck one sheep…”

  With the fifty temporarily not blasting, Sun heard an inexplicable wet slapping sound. When he stuck his head over to take a look, he was shocked at what he saw. With the MG down, fast-moving Foxtrots were making it intact through the criss-crossing small-arms fire of no-man’s land. And they were trying to leap up and over the twenty-foot wall. They weren’t making it, but they weren’t missing by all that much either – slamming into the stone around the halfway mark in sickening crunches of teeth and cheek bones, then falling again, and going crazy down at the foot of the wall. After that, they were still trying to jump, but not getting anywhere without the running start.

  Sun armed two grenades and dropped them down.

  Turning, he could see his guys had the fifty reloaded. Before they started banging away again, he said, “Hey, there are an awful lot of Foxtrots out there. Shoot fast.”

  They did.

  * * *

  Croucher sent Simmonds and Sledge down to the guard tower at the left end of the line for more ammo – where he hoped and trusted there was some left. The bearers were still ferrying it up onto the walls from the armory, but not fast enough, and he hadn’t seen them for a good ten mi
nutes. And things were getting crunchy in their sector surprisingly quickly. The good news was, with the arrival of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, One Troop had been slid down the line to the left, so the ammo run to the tower should be fast.

  But of course there was always bad news.

  When Croucher looked back over the parapet and started shooting again, he could see they were losing the initiative. With the tankers gone, pushed out beyond the meat wall, the dead were flooding into no-man’s land – and they were getting to the walls faster than the Marines could put them down. And killing them at the base of the walls didn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good – it was just building a siege platform for the ones behind to climb up on.

  And it was impossible to ignore that the proportion of Foxtrots was increasing. Croucher didn’t know if the rate of mutation was speeding up as the dead sensed final victory, or what. But those manic jack-rabbit sons of bitches weren’t going to need all that much of a pile to climb up, in order to jump over the walls and right back into their laps.

  It didn’t help that One Troop was pretty undermanned in their sector, with exactly eighteen men – while the Gurkhas had two full platoons, sixty soldiers – and the international men of mystery in USOC had nearly a hundred in theirs. Granted their sectors were bigger, but not a whole hell of a lot bigger. Then again, it did sweet fuck-all to complain, and complaining had never been Croucher’s style.

  He just shouted at the men to fight harder.

  * * *

  SFC Savard was one of those USOC guys with a light machine gun – not a SAW, but a Mk 46 Mod 0, the SOCOM version. It was lighter, more compact, with a three-sided rail system – and this one was customized with a vertical foregrip and collapsible buttstock. Savard hadn’t brought it in himself, but someone had, and he’d picked it up, assault rifle now slung by his side. The MG wasn’t suppressed, but since things had gone noisy anyway, he was having some fun with it, putting short and precise bursts into thicker groups of incoming dead.

  Business was definitely picking up to their front, but USOC’s was the one sector that seemed to still be in hand. It was pretty obvious this couldn’t last. But they were all from the special operations community, and would deal with the worse shit when it came down – and wouldn’t panic even then.