ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  What’s going on is also bullshit. Also in a hat.

  Beyond the chocolate-starfish shape of the prison buildings, he could see the fight raging out on the north walls. He wasn’t sure what it would look like to successfully defend a prison against all the dead overrunning the entire world. But this probably wasn’t it. However that was going to turn out, it looked like it was going to turn out that way pretty soon.

  And then shit suddenly got worse.

  Whistling overhead was punctuated by explosions behind him. Aliyev turned to see walking blossoms of flame in the night – behind the south motherfucking walls.

  They were now clearly motherfucking surrounded.

  But still it was a beautiful sight – the booms sounding a full two seconds after the blossoms of flame. Everything was kind of peaceful at a distance. Somehow.

  Doubling down on his failure to figure out what was happening – “our strategy was no good and we stuck with it,” to borrow an old phrase – Aliyev dug out the radio he’d grabbed, got the headset on, and powered it up. And he started flipping around channels, as he had done many times before, first in his beautifully appointed living room with snow falling outside, and later in his giant T-15 Armata tank coffin with dead hands falling all over it…

  And he started listening in on men in combat.

  Listening in on the end.

  * * *

  “—ntco— … —bid t— … —y?”

  Aliyev squinted trying to make out the transmission. All of the other channels he’d tried were staticky, the voices of panicked, urgent, or angry local soldiers, squad leaders, or commanders coming through muffled, but intelligible. However, this one sounded like the local access TV station had gone off the air three hours ago.

  It sounded like a longer-range transmission.

  It sounded like the one he had intercepted from the JFK.

  “—m, th— …ra— … —mitt— … —blind.”

  Fuck. It went out again. Nothing but auditory confetti.

  Aliyev fished the radio itself out of his pocket and held it up over his head. Even as he did so, he felt the rain slacken slightly, and a breeze pick up. He was already looking up at the radio… and behind it, he could see a section of black storm-socked sky slowly lighten… and then a tiny patch actually cleared away, and through it Aliyev could see a couple of stars.

  “I repeat, this is Rabid Two transmitting in the blind.”

  And the next fifteen seconds were scratchy but totally intelligible. Aliyev even recognized the damned voice – the blond soldier, or sailor, with the eagle-and-anchor insignia on his uniform. This had to be a message from the mission to get the HRIG. When it finished, having efficiently and clearly conveyed their mission status – shit out of luck, evidently – and their exact location – deep in the shit, clearly – Aliyev rotated the radio until he found a rubberized button and pressed it, angling the chin mic on the headset with his other hand.

  “Hello! I can hear you! Hello! Can you hear me? Hello?”

  Nothing came back. He looked to the sky.

  The stars were gone.

  * * *

  Aliyev scanned the end of the world, all around him.

  Had anyone else heard that?

  He rapidly flipped through channels. Certainly no one was talking about sending out another helicopter to rescue the HRIG mission from failure and certain death.

  Shit.

  He turned and ran back downstairs. Now there was no one at all in the JOC. Totally empty.

  Shit on toast.

  He ran back up onto the rooftop, got on the radio, and started hailing Fick, Wesley, that asshole Colonel, the hot blonde English helicopter pilot, whoever. But he had no idea what channel anybody was on, or even what the numbered channels on this radio meant. On top of that, every frequency with voices on it was chaos already, plus staticky, and no one seemed to pay him any attention. Well, one guy told him to stay the fuck off that channel, which was at least familiar.

  But that was it.

  Aliyev scanned the ground below and all around him again. Everyone was fighting everywhere, on all sides. It looked like every man to the damned walls. Except, no, wait… now guys were running down off the south walls. And, yep, dead were coming over it, right behind them. That didn’t look good. That looked bad. He scanned around the Common until his eye fell upon…

  A single helicopter parked alone out there on the grass.

  Oh, no, Tovarysh Doktor. Even you’re not that stupid.

  And then another voice played in his head, one from out of memory, clear and perfect like a recording. It was the hot blonde helo pilot, back in that mission planning session.

  “There’s a flyable Puma on the deck, left over from the Dusseldorf mission. It’ll have some fuel in it.”

  This helo he saw down there now had to be the one.

  Goddamn you, hot blonde English pilot chick.

  His own voice played in his head, from ten minutes ago.

  I’ve got skills. I used to have adventures.

  He sighed. Goddamn you, asshole Kazakh survivalist bioweaponeer and bringer of the Apocalypse… and truly shitty amateur helicopter pilot.

  He remembered something else from that meeting. Not only was this the last helo. But there were also no more helo pilots.

  There was only him.

  * * *

  Only him… and a whole lot of dead guys running around below in that dark and rainswept Common.

  And more every second Aliyev stood here on his dick.

  And not just dead – but runners, like the ones who had run him to ground in Red Square. And suddenly, shoulders sagging, Aliyev wasn’t sure he could face that shit again.

  Suddenly he felt very tired. Suddenly it all seemed to catch up with him – the months of work in the lab on his ill-fated and hopeless vaccine design, then on undead-killer pathogen design, then on successful but worthless undead-killer-pathogen vaccine design. Then the madcap flight from his overrun, burning, exploding Dacha. The Fridge of Death – and the adjacent flammable crate of motherfucking grenades. The point-blank shoot-out with the dipshit Cossacks in a field somewhere in the fetid womb of Mother Russia. The crash-landing, the duathlon in Red Square – running and shooting, with the other runners also his targets – getting trapped in a tank, getting dragged out of the tank by the Spetsnaz Wolf Pack, having the shit pounded out of him by the alpha wolf, rescue by Brits, open-air grenade throwing, getting trapped in a building. Getting trapped in a warehouse.

  With a Foxtrot.

  With brain damage.

  And in the end he also finally realized: none of that mattered. It didn’t matter what he’d suffered or overcome up until now. It didn’t matter in the least how tired he managed to convince himself he was. And, finally, with a great wave of deflation, he realized: if you want to take the hero’s journey…

  You actually have to be the motherfucking hero.

  You had to choose to do so – even when you didn’t feel like it. You had to risk getting killed. Or killed and eaten. Or eaten alive. Or worse. And as he continued to stand there on his dick, Aliyev also saw it was not just runners down there. There were also at least a few Foxtrots in the mix.

  Shit, he thought. I’ll never make it. Even if I try.

  Was he going to try?

  Did he actually have anything heroic in him? He doubted it.

  But then he looked up and around him again. Far to the north, he could see London – burning. Overrun. The world’s last great city, getting a lot less great, really fast.

  This was it. These were the End Times.

  And it was, of course, all his fucking fault. He had done this. He had more or less singlehandedly caused the end of the world. His greed, his fecklessness, his diabolical skill, great power used for great evil, inability to care about anything more than himself. It was just about the worst thing anyone had ever done. It was a terrible sin.

  But now… God had given him one chance to make it right.

&nbs
p; Wait – what the fuck? Did I just think that?

  Aliyev didn’t believe in God. Of course he didn’t – just as, of course, there wasn’t any God. One quick look around and two seconds of reflection made that fact obvious. But maybe…

  Maybe something had put him here. In this spot. At this moment. It was a hell of a feat of positioning, not to mention timing. And maybe it was for a reason. Maybe this was what he had been counting on, living for, flying across the world for.

  Maybe this was that chance to save his immortal soul.

  He looked down at the shit show in the Common again.

  Nope. Still too scared – plus tired.

  A drink, a cigarette, an affair, a nap. Those sounded better.

  And, hell, on top of all that, he also suddenly remembered – very belatedly, but perhaps not fatally too late – that half the team out there he was considering getting his ass killed trying to rescue actually consisted of… yeah, that motherfucking psycho-bitch killer ice-queen woman with the horror-movie boot knife, and who had not figuratively, but literally and unmistakably, totally promised to murder his ass and put him in the ground, should both of them somehow manage to survive to the end of this thing. What kind of fucked-up, death-wish-having, masochistic loser would go so far out of his way to rescue his own designated fucking assassin?

  No. Just – fuck no. Because no.

  And then… and then, to what would probably be his very short-lived regret, he turned and looked back to the fight on the north walls again. There were a lot of soldiers standing up there behind those ramparts, and they all looked kind of same-y to Aliyev. But one group on the left caught his eye. It was a smaller group than those in the center or on the right, and one that seemed somehow tighter-knit. They also seemed really tired.

  But they were fighting as hard as anyone else.

  And then, not even knowing how, Aliyev recognized them. Or convinced himself he did. Somehow he knew those were the Royal Marines. The same men who had come for him in Moscow. Who had flown their own asses halfway around the world – a lot farther than a few miles across central London – to come rescue his sorry ass. And who had fought through a lot more than a couple hundred meters of overrun back yard.

  No, they’d fought through hell, down to the bottom level of an underground bunker manned by Akela and his entire Wolf Pack, solely to pull his sorry tied-up ass out of it. They had risked and sacrificed a hell of a lot more than Aliyev ever had, or was being asked to now, or probably ever would.

  And as he watched them, even now, still fighting, practically hand-to-hand on those walls, he remembered how they had never given up or given in, not even when things looked darkest, or even totally hopeless, in that shit show in Red Square. Somehow they had battled through it all, murdering the crap out of a massively superior force of Spetsnaz Alfa killers, through pure skill, will, resourcefulness – and their absolute determination not to fail.

  Why had they done all that? Aliyev asked himself now.

  Moreover – how had they done it? Where had they found such strength to go on? The courage to face nearly certain death? The unshakable determination to prevail?

  But even as he asked it, Aliyev knew the answer.

  It was because they believed.

  They believed in something bigger than themselves. And because they were determined to save their homes and loved ones, and knew they were the only ones who could do it. He remembered overhearing their officer say something about how a hero was one who sacrificed himself to save others.

  In the end, it was because they were heroes.

  And not all of them had made it back out of that bunker, or out of Red Square. Some were still buried with Lenin, and Akela, in that dead-flooded tomb. Others lay dead back in that barricaded building, or else trapped back in that overrun square, left behind, probably forever.

  And now Aliyev had to ask himself: Was he so much less heroic than those men?

  Almost certainly.

  But could less be asked of him?

  No. He owed more. He owed those Marines, big-time.

  He owed everybody.

  * * *

  He just needed some fucking shoes first.

  But one thing the post-Apocalypse didn’t lack for was dead people. Aliyev found one right outside SHQ, face down in the dripping grass. After pressing his foot against one sole for size, he leaned down and unlaced both boots – but when he pulled the first one off, he froze in horror as he saw the Bates stamp on the heel, and Durashocks tag on the cuff.

  Hands trembling, he rolled the body over.

  Thank fuck. It wasn’t Simon.

  It was just kick-ass boots. Rock.

  He pulled off the other one, then both socks, then retreated back up against the building to get them on. There weren’t any dead close to here, yet, but the last thing he wanted to do was finish the end of the world, not to mention fail the hero’s journey forever, by getting taken down tying his fucking shoes.

  With a wall to his back, he paused to check the inside tag. Exactly his size. Ha! God is giving me this chance! Bitches…

  A few seconds later he was shod, plus had his good old trusty motherfucking Benelli Tactical, and his bug-out bag, from which he’d already filled his pockets with shotgun shells. Now he was just looking at a quick run over open ground to reach that helicopter. He’d definitely done shit like this before. Tear-assing away from the dead, getting helicopters in the air in the midst of chaos, it was all old hat for him.

  He took off.

  Utilizing his mad shotgun skillz, painstakingly honed under pressure, he eliminated the faces of one, two, three running dead guys who looked at him the wrong way.

  Ha ha, motherfuckers. Buckshot shampoo.

  Surprisingly quickly, he was within sight of the helo. This definitely beat doing circles around Red Square with nowhere to go. He shoved a few shells in the loading port while he covered the last stretch. Because shotgun shells.

  Ooof. He went face down into the mud, hard, the weight of some heavy dead mean bastard pressing him down like it was trying to give him a decent burial. Alive. And then…

  MOTHERFUCKER.

  The thing bit into his motherfucking scalp, which smarted like a motherfucker. Freaking out and wriggling like an electric eel, Aliyev tried to get out from under this fucker, which he knew with every cell he had to do fast, but he was giving up a good sixty pounds to the guy, and the mud was making it impossible to gain any purchase, and the dude was gnawing on his fucking head, which made it a little hard to focus…

  And then gunfire rang out, the biting stopped…

  And hands rolled the body off him, then rolled him over.

  And now it actually was Simon, looking down at him with concern, and offering him a hand up. As he climbed unsteadily and muddily to his feet, and retrieved his shotgun, he saw Park had a handful of other armed people with him – Sarah Cameron, an RMP, a couple of adrenalized-looking soldiers he didn’t recognize. Simon must have somehow seen him, and brought this group running over from Bio to save him. Simon nodded at the helo parked behind him.

  “Bugging out on us?”

  As if. Aliyev explained his mission to rescue the HRIG mission in as few syllables as possible, while running with the others to the helicopter, climbing in the open side cargo door, clambering into the cockpit, then trying to face the annoying problem of starting the goddamned thing. The controls were somewhat like his Eurocopter. But also not really. Then again, he could enjoy the relaxing experience of figuring them out without the imminent threat of being incinerated by an exploding fuel tank underneath him, breathing weaponized anthrax and Ebola, or watching dead Mongols French-kiss his cockpit glass inches from his face.

  With the four people with rifles outside defending them, and Simon providing moral support and mostly unhelpful suggestions in the cockpit, Aliyev managed to get the engines started and rotors turning. As the racket got louder, and he got a radio headset on one ear, Park exited out the back, then came up to the coc
kpit window to shout back and forth.

  “Wish you could come with me!” Aliyev shouted. And he did. You trusted who you’d fought with. They’d kept each other alive in that warehouse.

  “Me, too,” Simon shouted back. But they both knew his job was here – riding herd on the vaccine. “Let me send two soldiers along to protect you.”

  Aliyev shook his head. “No. I’m afraid you are going to need everyone you’ve got for the defense here. If this place goes down, it’s all over. Anyway… this is for me to do.”

  “You sure?”

  Aliyev actually smiled. “I got this.”

  With that, another face appeared at the window – Sarah Cameron’s. She handed across something that looked like a small scope. “Take this,” she yelled. “Night-vision monocular. If the team on the ground called for helo extraction, they’ll probably have an IR strobe on, to get spotted. You’ll be able to see it through this.” Aliyev took it, and Sarah withdrew.

  Aliyev increased power, and as the engines beat at him, Park smiled in the window. “Sorry I doubted your intentions.”

  Aliyev shrugged. “That’s okay. I would, too.”

  As the helo started to lift, Park stepped back and saw the aircraft was trailing a thick rope, which was also attached to a cargo net piled up on the ground – and he realized this must be the very helo and cargo net that had transported that Biacore 4000 out of Germany for him. Evidently it hadn’t been used since then. As the rotors beat the air, the helo slowly climbed, and the rope spooled out, Park rapidly unscrewed and squeezed a giant carabiner, and managed to unclip the net from the rope at the last second.

  Helo, Kazakh, and dangling rope disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  “Need a lift, citizens?”

  Aliyev had to deliver this line six times before he found the right radio channel, but it was a good line, and he didn’t want to waste it – and he was still an egocentric son of a bitch. It was funny how the desire to sound cool and funny persisted even to the end of the world.