ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  It was an oversized tractor trailer, which Gunn recognized as normally being used to transport tanks, but with a long cylindrical fuel tanker bouncing behind it, and it came out of the darkness and slashing rain – heading straight for the tip of the reservist’s phalanx formation. As the soldiers there dove and shoved back and clambered out of the way for dear life, the pummeling mass and noise and weight of the tanker blasted by inches away, sweeping hundreds of dead bodies along with it, or crushing them under its twelve tires…

  Horn beeping – and a hand waving cheerily out the window.

  When it had finished rampaging by, leaving destruction in its wake, the gigantic vehicle braked, slowed, turned in a wide arc out in the rolling field of the Common…

  And it came back in and did it all over again.

  With one more turn on the opposite side, it finally came in slower this last time – the ranks of the reservists parting to admit it into their perimeter – and it rolled up alongside the plane, the soldiers re-forming to fill the gap. And with the whooshing air sound of the truck’s parking brakes engaging, the bearded and turbaned pilot Hailey recognized from the flight there hopped down from the cab with his combat shotgun and spotted her, trotting over and smiling.

  “Trust we’re not too late,” Noise said. Belatedly spotting Gunn, he snapped a salute. “Captain.”

  Gunn returned it. “Not at all. Thanks for the relief.”

  Hailey just shook her head as she made for the fueling hose coiled around two pegs on the side of the truck, so Noise nodded at Gunn and moved to assist her. As they got it secured to the big fuel valve on the bottom of the tanker, Hailey said, “Last I heard you were floating out toward the English Channel.” Together, they ran the hose over to the plane and the fueling port on the bottom of the near-side underwing engine. “How’d you get off the river?”

  “Mate, do not even ask.”

  Hailey looked up to see a jaded-looking RMP frowning at her, but usefully taking up a security position in front of their refueling operation.

  As Hailey got the line locked in, Noise ran back to the tanker, looked up at her for confirmation – then hauled on the big metal lever to start the flow of fuel. As the hose stiffened, he smiled at her and the RMP, giving them both a big thumbs-up.

  Shrieking tore the air, coming in fast – some kind of a breakthrough in the phalanx – and when Noise looked up, a Foxtrot was flying over the wing of the plane straight toward them. Without hesitation, he brought his AA12 up, tracked, and triggered off, filling the night sky with twelve-gauge buckshot, thunk thunk thunk!

  And the Foxtrot came down – right on the fueling hose.

  But it was just chunks of wet meat now – taken apart in midair by Noise’s buckshot barrage. The hose was fine.

  “Thank fuck,” said LCpl Bird, the RMP. “Finally.”

  More shrieking pierced the air above – and machine-gun fire peppered the air and ground, pinged off the tanker, rounds coming in everywhere, everyone hitting the deck. Face down in the wet grass, Noise looked up to see the machine-gunner on the wing tumbling off it, finger tight around trigger, screaming, Foxtrot gnawing on his face. Even as the pair hit the ground, the belt went dry, and Bird rushed to take out the Foxtrot.

  Noise rose and ran to check the tanker. Incoming machine-gun rounds had dented the steel – but not penetrated it.

  “Thank fuck indeed,” he said, rubbing the dents and smiling.

  And then the acrid smell of aviation fuel hit his nostrils. When he turned, he saw Hailey kneeling down on the ground by the fuel hose. It had been shredded by the wild machine-gun fire, and fuel was pouring out onto the ground.

  Noise shut off the valve.

  * * *

  As bad as things were at Bio, and out in the Common, the real fight was still on the north walls. Within minutes of Handon’s Henry V impression, the dead had piled up to the level of the ramparts again. There were also more Foxtrots than before – more than any of them had ever seen in one place. But they weren’t even bothering to leap over the walls anymore.

  Now they could simply walk over.

  And then bash straight into the faces of the defenders on the parapet. Not only the Gurkhas but even the USOC operators were starting to take serious casualties now – it was to the point of either die fighting, or retreat down off the walls. And nobody was coming down off the walls.

  They all knew there could be no retreat.

  This was it. Stand and fight – and die in place.

  On the right flank, USOC guys were firing pistols point-blank and swinging short swords in close quarters on the walkway – former Rangers and Army Special Forces, a handful of Delta and DEVGRU guys, a few SEALs and USAF special tactics guys, one SWCC a very long way from his boat, a lone Marine Raider. British SAS, SBS, and Special Reconnaissance Regiment, a few Paras, an RAF Regiment guy. A team of Canadian JTF2 who’d been in Britain on attachment. A squad of French GIGN, two from German KSK, four Finnish Jäger commandos, a man and woman from Israeli Sayeret Matkal, one lonely Pole from GROM… all of whom had fought their way out of overrun Europe, and joined up with USOC.

  Only to make their last stand here.

  Still down on the left, the Royal Marines of One Troop – Simmonds, Webb, Yap, Sledge, and the rest of them, the last surviving veterans of a dozen campaigns, all rallying around the rock that was Colour Sergeant Croucher – fired down to the bottoms of their last mags, then stabbed head after head with their bayonets, using their rifle butts to shove destroyed bodies back over the ramparts, or their dripping boots to kick them off the walkway down into the prison yard.

  All around the center, the little Gurkhas fought like demons, even as they got knocked down or pulled over, none flinching or retreating an inch, nor making a sound as they died. Right in their midst, Sergeant Major Sun fired the end of their last belt of .50-cal into the faces of dead two feet away, disintegrating a dozen rotting heads and blowing chunks of skull and brain out into the rain-lashed and heaving darkness beyond. As the heavy machine gun finally went silent, he felt a weight on his arm, and heard a voice.

  It was the loader, a smile in his voice. “You can’t dodge destiny, dog. Just do it.”

  Sun shook his head in resignation. “Fuck it.” He picked up the machine gun before him and hurled it into the heaving mob with strength that belied his small stature, knocking a half-dozen bodies back. Then he took hold of the tripod.

  And he started laying about him with it.

  It was hand-to-hand and nose-to-nose along every inch of the walls now, guys getting tackled and tumbling to the ground below, or the lucky ones rolling down the dirt ramp, wrestling and fighting and stabbing all the way down… Shooting, slashing, clubbing, and grappling – the defenders all but literally holding back the flood with their bare hands.

  And anchoring it all at the very center was… Alpha team.

  All five of them were black on rifle ammo now. If there even was any more ammo in CentCom, the deliveries were a thing of the past, not least because there was no rear anymore, dead dropping down and swarming the yards below. But Alpha used what they had, fighting as one supremely cohesive unit, the unbreakable steel at the center of the defensive spine.

  Ali battled like a one-woman imperial army of samurai, removing and aerating heads, halving bodies, bashing skulls with her pommel, fighting her way up the walkway to stop a breakthrough between their sector and USOC’s. The quarters were almost too tight for the long sword now. She couldn’t sheath it due to it being lashed to her hand, but she stooped to snatch up a wakizashi from a fallen operator with her left hand, and went back to work, spinning and whirling like a pair of combines now, one blade coming in as the other withdrew, turning and slashing, pivoting and striking, her body an unceasing blur of lethal perfection.

  Fighting beside her, Homer swung and stabbed with his boarding axe in his right hand, firing Zack’s M9 with his left until it went dry, then dropping it and stepping back to swing the axe two-handed.

&
nbsp; Juice used his OJ, firing the pneumatic spike so much and so fast the big air tank finally went dry. Beside him, Pred bashed heads with the bat in his right hand, firing his high-capacity .45 with his left, spinning and swinging, whirling and firing, sticking the bat under his arm to load up his last pistol mag. Even as he did so, mottled bodies leapt off the pile and onto his shoulders like velociraptors onto a T-Rex – and, playing the part, Pred bellowed and spun, ripping one off him with one hand and hurling it out into the night, while Juice hauled on the other and slung it down into the yard below.

  When Juice looked at Pred, he saw both of them were covered in black gore. They all were. Juice almost laughed. “This is some real Walking Dead shit, man.”

  “Yeah,” Pred said, clearing the area around them with one irresistible two-handed swing of the bat, then squatting down to retrieve his dropped handgun. “But we actually are immune now, so at least it makes some kind of fucking sense.” He handed the pistol to Juice, who took it with a nod.

  As he fired the weapon two-handed, beloved SIG assault rifle hanging by his side and finally out of the fight, Juice shook his head sadly and said, “Man, that show was so bad by the end. I couldn’t even watch.”

  “True. And it finally took the real zombie apocalypse to get the damned thing off the air.”

  “Less banter, more fighting.”

  This was Handon, right between the two old married couples – Pred and Juice on his left, Ali and Homer to his right – at the very center of it all, firing .45s akimbo, the Colonel’s old-school American Colt in his left hand, Jake’s sleek tan Belgian FN in his right, arms spread thirty degrees to left and right, then right arm crossing to fire over the left as the Colt went dry, then dropping both mags and jamming the pistols in his armpit to reload both at once – also with the last mags for each. As he did so, he turned to look around for a melee weapon.

  And he saw that same civilian group, or what was left of it, cowering on the dirt ramp behind him, being guarded by a giant dark-skinned man with a large axe. But the rest of them were beyond terror, out of ammo – and in the way. It was too tight up there, not to mention too perilous, for strap-hangers.

  “Get them out,” Handon barked, finishing his reload.

  “Where to?” Colley asked.

  Two pistol shots rang out, too close to Handon’s head, but two bodies tumbled past him down the ramp, the Tunnelers dancing out of the way, and a gruff voice answered from behind him. “Top of the SHQ building.”

  Handon turned to see Fick, nodding over the building tops of the prison toward the tallest structure in CentCom. “It’ll be the last spot to go down. And our last fallback position.”

  Handon turned to see the Tunnelers still hadn’t gone, reluctant to leave, despite all of them being about to die. “Go,” he said. “Secure that rooftop for the rest of us.” They nodded and took off. When Handon turned back to the front…

  The Gurkhas were shouting and charging over the wall.

  Attacking out into the horde again.

  “Jesus,” Fick said, trying to catch his breath and taking his place beside Handon. “Who are those fucking guys?”

  “I don’t know,” Handon said. “But I like them.”

  The two old warriors charged back into the fight. This one was almost over. But they’d finish it side-by-side.

  Both of them on their feet.

  Alamo a No-Go

  CentCom – SHQ, Top-Level Office

  What was left of the world was collapsing around them.

  But Amarie could stroke her daughter’s hair, and maybe that was enough. They were still alive. And they were together. Amarie’s heart was back in her body. Or close enough.

  And she also felt less alone, and less afraid, having the other woman in the room with her. Only a mother could really understand. The young blonde Englishwoman had spent much of the time since their arrival here weeping – but quietly, trying not to scare her own two children. She had them both cradled next to her, amid piled blankets on the floor, the little boy not quite old enough to understand what was happening, the little girl only a little older than Josie. They both kept asking where their father was. Their mother didn’t answer, but just traded looks with Amarie across the room, where she held Josie in her lap, each of them trying to give the other courage.

  In fact, the only people in the dim little room whose courage seemed not to fail them were the two boys, the brothers. The older one stood guard by the door with his pistol, almost never moving, while the younger came over every few minutes to check on Josie, who seemed to like him.

  Finally, Amarie asked, “Were you together?”

  Luke nodded. “For a while. Her and Aiden and me. After our mum…” But he trailed off. Seeming to master his thoughts, he said, “Josie’s brave. Smart, too.”

  Amarie smiled and mussed the boy’s hair. Suddenly she had the sense that she owed her reunion with Josie not only to Wesley, but to these two boys, as well. She thought of Wesley now, wondering if she’d see him, if—

  The noise of breaking glass sounded from outside.

  Amarie’s eyes went wide, as she clutched Josie to her and the older boy cracked the door. Now they could hear more breaking glass, and it sounded like it was coming from below. She remembered the glass-fronted walls on the ground-floor lobby. She stood up, steeled herself, and looked at the others.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”

  “Where to?” the other woman asked, her voice trembling.

  “To the rooftop,” Amarie said. “Wesley said if things got bad… well, we’re supposed to go there.” Her voice must have conveyed some authority, because the others followed her out into the hall – but all stopped again right away. There were now sounds coming from below much worse than breaking glass – some kind of violent banging and crashing. But Amarie realized stopping was the wrong reaction – they had to get moving, so she led them down the hall and into the big control room, looking up to lock eyes with the lone female soldier inside.

  “Are you okay?” Jones asked.

  Amarie just nodded, then led her children’s crusade toward the door to the stairwell. In a few seconds, they were up on the big expanse of the rooftop. They were also out in the near darkness of the middle of the night – or rather the very early morning – and exposed to the lashing rain, coming down heavier than ever, rapidly soaking the two women and five children. And they were surrounded by the war.

  There was now fighting on all sides.

  From their commanding position, even as lightning crashed down and the sky thundered overhead, they could see bright tracers arcing off into the night, hear firing from all around them – and, much worse, moaning in every direction, along with shouts and cries of fear, pain, alarm, resolve, men bellowing orders, others begging for help or mercy.

  It was all closing in around them. This was the end.

  When Amarie went to the west side, the one that abutted the prison, and looked over, she could see men fighting the dead on the adjacent prison wall twenty feet below.

  The dead were already up on the walls.

  Amarie startled as the door to the stairs banged open – and two soldiers rushed out, carrying rifles and wearing red berets. While one closed the door and took a knee facing it with his weapon up, the other approached the group in the center, even as Amarie returned with Josie. The second soldier was a woman.

  “Jonesie sent us up,” she said. “We’ll keep you safe.”

  Amarie was glad they were here, and tried to smile. But she couldn’t believe what she had just been told.

  It was obvious no one could be kept safe. Not anywhere.

  * * *

  Rifle slung, Savard finished directing lab staff in barricading the breach in the outside wall of Bio, all of them shoving aside destroyed dead bodies to do so, while Wheeler calmly covered them, pivoting to face up and down the hallway that ran along the east side of the complex.

  When the two operators returned to the lab area, they
saw Park and Aliyev had righted the work table and gathered up its contents, and someone had dragged the bodies out of the way. They were being guarded by Lt Col Nesbitt herself, who had taken the rifle, vest, ammo, and radio off the single reservist left in there – and who had fallen fighting the runners that had charged the room. So there were three defenders again – and this time they stuck closer to the work table in the center.

  Park and Aliyev exchanged a quick and wide-eyed look – and then got back to it. This time they knew they couldn’t fuck around. There wasn’t time. It was still incredibly delicate work, but they attacked it with verve, Park injecting equal parts MZ and HRIG into the tips of simunition rounds, and Aliyev sealing each with liquid acetate, dabbing it with a brush, then placing it back in the plastic tray.

  In about ten minutes, though it felt like much longer, they had finished an entire box – thirty rounds. Aliyev blew on the tops of the last ones, but they were all dry. “Now what?” he asked, looking at Park – but immediately felt something on his arm.

  It was Savard, tapping him with a rifle magazine, one of his own empties, plus smiling at him.

  “Now we do more,” Park said. “You load.”

  Aliyev started carefully pressing the completed MZ/HRIG rounds into the magazine, an operation he had performed before at the range, while Park got to work on a second box of the sims. And only Aliyev looked up when a rich and deep voice said, “So sorry to trouble you, chaps – but does anyone happen to have a roll of electrical or duct tape I might borrow?”

  It was Noise, coming in from the front entrance.

  Nesbitt racked her brain, and they pulled open every drawer in the lab, but no tape could be remembered or found. Nesbitt shook her head. “Sorry, that’s surprising – and a bit crap. Then again, this is a lab, not a hardware store.”

  Noise sighed and looked vexed. “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost… And I only wanted a bit of tape.”