ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  “Trojan copies. But what the hell – how?”

  Nesbitt turned to face out again. “Because some glorious sons of bitches destroyed the damned stairwell.” With her back to the rubble, which was all that remained of the stairs, and her last people crowding around her, she could see dozens of dead following them into the lobby through the blown-out glass. They were trapped. There was nowhere left to go.

  She raised her rifle – and started emptying her last mag.

  * * *

  Her daughter’s eyes covered, Amarie looked into her doom.

  Then she looked to the right – and so did the Foxtrot…

  At the sound of the stairwell doors banging open, and then a big knot of people blasting out onto the rooftop: Brown, Siobhan, Cherie, and a half-dozen other Tunnelers… and bringing up the rear was the giant form of Colley, toting his axe, sucking wind and covered in sweat.

  From the fastest stairwell destruction job of their lives.

  Brown fired two rounds from a rifle, then hurled it at the Foxtrot. It was enough to get its attention, and instead of leaping on the women and children, it turned and took off toward the Tunnelers – and ran straight into Colley, who with a last pulse of giant strength, plus careful timing, cleaved its head in half with his axe.

  Looking like he wanted to collapse, instead he turned at the sound and motion of the two RMPs wrestling with the other Foxtrot, trying to find the strength to even lift the axe again. But little old Cherie beat him to it – bashing in the Foxtrot’s rotten head with three swings of her baseball hat, while it was still fixated on the soldiers. And while she and Brown tried to help the badly wounded man and woman down on the deck…

  Colley and Siobhan ran to Amarie and Josie.

  “Where’s Hackworth?” Amarie asked.

  “He fell,” Colley said, face and voice somber. “On the walls.”

  They all embraced, faces streaked with tears and rain.

  As all around them the world convulsed and died.

  The Fall

  Bio – Labs

  “Time, gentlemen.”

  Master Sergeant Wheeler sounded preternaturally calm, like a bank manager or a bartender, especially for a guy putting up a one-man defense, spinning, pivoting, and circling the work table to fire single head-removing twelve-gauge blasts from Aliyev’s Benelli – just about the only weapon with any ammo left in it. Dead were lurching into the room from at least three directions now – which was at least how many holes they’d torn in the Bio walls. And it was only him, Park, and Aliyev left alive anywhere in the complex at this point.

  Aliyev might have been surprised by Wheeler’s sangfroid, but Park sure wasn’t. He’d seen it many times, and felt perfectly comfortable and protected by even a single operator, still not looking up once from his work.

  He knew what Wheeler was. And that he had this.

  But Park also ignored his instruction to leave, and instead just kept working. He was still carefully filling simunition rounds with MZ and HRIG before handing them to Aliyev, who sealed them with acetate, blew on the seals to dry them, then loaded them into a second magazine, as quickly as Park could hand them over.

  Park knew that right now they were hand-loading the only rounds that could really kill the dead anymore – the only weapon that could kill the entire ZA. These were their silver bullets, their last hope – and this was their last chance. The endgame. They were probably minutes away from either winning through at last, or else all going down forever. The latter looked enormously more likely. But Park definitely wasn’t going to let it happen because he lost his nerve.

  He’d come way too far.

  And then they all smelled smoke.

  “Ah, shit,” Aliyev said.

  “Seriously, you guys are done,” Wheeler said, firing the shotgun into the face of a runner coming in from the side entrance, and stepping out of the way as it slid past. He then flipped the Benelli on its side to double-check that it was empty, dropped it where he stood – “End of an era,” Aliyev said – and moved to the north entrance, drawing his short sword from the small of his back, then hacking the heads off two Zulus coming in that way. Spinning back again, he quick-drew his pistol and fired over the middle of the table, right between Park and Aliyev, two headshots on two more coming in from the opposite direction. Even in the time it took him to do that, they could all see the smoke starting to drift into the room.

  “What’s the source of the fire?” Park asked, finishing the second-to-last round in the second box, and handing it over.

  As Aliyev brushed it with sealant, he said, “Probably just a Bunsen burner I left on and forgot about.”

  Park nearly looked up at that. “Seriously?”

  “No. It’s a fucking giant lab, being swarmed by gamboling corpses. It could be anything.”

  Park handed him the very last round, which made sixty in total, as Wheeler backed up to the table, squatted down, and felt up Savard’s body for any last ammo he might have missed on his first search. There wasn’t any.

  With effort and chafed thumbs, Aliyev clicked the thirtieth and final round into the magazine, and handed it over to Park, who sighed and looked down at it. They now had exactly two full magazines of MZ/HRIG rounds. And these had at least the potential to kill not sixty dead – but all of them. Park knew they were never going to get any more. And now they had to get these ones out. He pocketed the second magazine beside the first, and drew his crowbar from his belt.

  When Wheeler stood, he had taken Savard’s short sword and now stuck it in Aliyev’s hand. “Don’t stab me in the ass.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be very good at using this,” Aliyev said.

  “Get better,” Wheeler said, turning. “My back pocket.”

  “Hang on,” Park said, at the last second realizing there were at least a dozen full vials of HRIG left. He closed the box and tucked it under his arm. “Okay – go, go!”

  “Wait!” Aliyev barked. “One last thing.”

  “Oh, goddammit,” Wheeler said, but waited while Aliyev put the sword on the table, grabbed a test tube and stopper, and – throwing containment and safe handling procedures to the wind – opened up the culturing table and poured and scraped the last dregs of MZ from four Petri dishes into the tube, then stoppered it. When he finished, it was three-quarters full.

  It was also the seed stock – the last MZ they’d ever have.

  Clutching the test tube in his left hand, he picked up the sword with his right. Now he felt like the Killer of Death.

  “Go!” Park said, shoving Aliyev. “Right behind you.”

  Wheeler led them forward through the thickening smoke, sword in one hand and pistol in the other, the last three out.

  Bio was going down.

  * * *

  “Shit,” Ali said, straightening up in the rain and dark.

  “Yeah,” Homer agreed.

  They both realized at once that they had erred, though it could be understood in all the chaos and urgency. They’d dropped off the back side of the overrun sniper OP down into the Common below, on the guard tower’s right side. But Kate, Baxter, and Elliot were not there waiting for them. Because the stairs of that guard tower, which sat at the junction of inner and outer walls, actually let out inside the prison yard.

  Which was now on the other side of the walls.

  “Come on,” Ali said, leading the way, swords first.

  Not needing to be told, seeing Ali had her hands full, with swords, Homer hit his radio and hailed Kate and the others.

  “Yeah, can you guys just follow the wall and meet us at the first gate to the Common?”

  “Wilco! There in one!”

  When Homer and Ali arrived, the gate was already swinging open. There were still guards there, but they were busy fighting for their lives. More to the point, it was now about as bad on one side of the inner prison walls as on the other. When the other three raced out, Elliot spotted Ali and said, “Your AI got left behind in the tower!”

&nbs
p; “Doesn’t matter,” Ali said, raising her taped-up sword hand. “Can’t shoot anyway – or only left-handed, which isn’t good enough. It’s got to be you now, my son. I’m just security.” She turned and cut down two incoming runners with double swings of her swords, then two more, justifying her claim in real time.

  “Go!” she said.

  “Where to?” Elliot asked

  They were already moving forward, but Ali nodded ahead of them and up. “Where do you think?”

  Elliot looked up at the top of SHQ. Best sniper OP left.

  “Where’s Liam?” Baxter asked, running alongside.

  “He fell,” Homer said, axe swinging. “So we can stand.”

  Baxter’s face dropped, and he looked like he wanted to sit down and quit – like he had violated some sacred trust, by failing to keep Liam alive. But Kate instantly clocked both his face and body language – and gave him a shove in the shoulder to propel him forward again. “You never give up,” she said. “You never back down. You don’t even let up the throttle.”

  Baxter shook his head, straightened up, and started running faster and fighting harder. He not only recognized the line, he knew how to finish it. “A hundred and ten miles an hour,” he said. “Blasting straight through – all the way to the finish.”

  Kate just slapped his back – and covered her sector.

  Jake was still right there with them.

  * * *

  Choking smoke, lights popping out in the claustrophobic corridor, rampaging dead ahead and behind. And then the unthinkable happened.

  Master Sergeant Wheeler went down.

  For one second, Park could only stand and stare. He’d never before seen an operator go down. Savard had been a shock, but he’d been too absorbed in his work to think about it. But, before today, in his entire experience, all operators ever did was survive and prevail. They never fell – and definitely not the last one, leaving Park and Aliyev on their own.

  Wheeler had been hacking his way through runners ahead, and then to the right – and then gotten tackled from the left. Now he was down in the middle of the crossing, twisting and heaving and wrestling, combat knife in one hand, hauling back and stabbing over and over, a tangle of writhing bodies.

  Park snapped out of his paralysis, leaned in, and started bashing heads with his crowbar. “Fucking help!” he shouted over his shoulder, and Aliyev started stabbing with his sword with one hand – while clutching his MZ and his midsection with the other. In ten seconds it was over – and the stillness was unnerving. It was just a big lumpy pile of bodies, covered in blood and gore. Finally the pile stirred, and Wheeler pulled himself halfway out of it – blinking and shaking his head, and drenched in his own blood.

  Park put out his hand to help him the rest of the way up.

  He took the hand, looked in Park’s eye, face white…

  And collapsed back down into the pile.

  Coughing, eyes burning, Park turned and looked at Aliyev. They could hear the sounds of dead approaching from four directions. They were trapped and totally cut off in a burning building rapidly filling with the dead.

  And they were on their own.

  * * *

  Hailey shook her head in genuine disbelief. “Dude – that is the single least safe thing I have ever seen in my fucking life.”

  Noise just smiled, and blew on the fueling hose. It turned out it hadn’t been shredded by the swan-diving machine-gunner after all – but merely had four holes shot in it, and not very big ones at that. Now he had simply shoved four of his twelve-gauge shotgun shells in the holes, which were about the right size, and was sealing them up with the acetate the scientists had kindly provided.

  “Seriously,” Hailey said. She had her side arm out, monitoring the degraded and shrinking defense of the London Regiment around them, watching for the next breakthrough. “That acetate is flammable – and you’re pouring it on fucking shotgun shells… sticking out of an aviation fueling hose.”

  Hailey sniffed the air and then looked behind them at Bio. “Oh – and the fucking building next door is now on fire.”

  Noise sighed. “Okay, you’re right – safety first. Dry enough.” He turned and twisted the lever to restart the fueling. As the hose stiffened, he checked the seals – and found they were holding. “See? Ik Onkar provides. Hey – big man!”

  “Heya, Noise.”

  Hailey looked up to see Predator and Juice running by like men with their asses already on fire – into a burning building.

  In two seconds they were gone.

  * * *

  Park and Aliyev were back to back, sword and crowbar facing out, struggling to breath the choking air, waiting for the last rush of the dead – and, between them, in possession of all the HRIG, and all the MZ, in the entire non-overrun world.

  Park couldn’t believe it was going to end like this.

  But it wasn’t going to.

  The dead did make their last rush. But they were already destroyed, falling forward, Predator and Juice hurdling their bodies from behind and emerging from out of the smoke.

  “You okay?” Juice asked. Park nodded, coughing. “Got everything?” Another nod.

  Looking up from the body of Wheeler, who had radioed for this cavalry only minutes ago, Pred said, “Savard?”

  Park shook his head no.

  “Go!” Juice said.

  With Pred in the lead, smashing the heads of dead in the way, scientists in the middle, Juice in the rear, the four tear-assed through the last section of superheating, smoke- and dead-filling complex, and out the front door. It wasn’t a second too soon – even as they emerged, Captain Gunn was shouting at his last three dozen or so soldiers, ordering them to collapse their defense around the plane.

  While Pred faced out, Juice turned to Park and Aliyev. “Ready to run for it?”

  “Ready,” Park said.

  “Wait,” Aliyev said. He pulled the tube with the very last of the MZ from his pocket, stepped forward – and then simply hurled it with all his strength into the thickest concentration of dead he could find. He literally teared up with gratitude when he both saw and heard it break on a mottled undead face and then splash on at least one other beside it.

  “Wait – why?” Park asked.

  Aliyev sighed, sounding exhausted. “It’s like Saul Goodman said to Jesse Pinkman: ‘They’re here, the end times.’”

  Park nodded. “You’re right. The MZ will take at least thirty minutes to start working anyway. If any of us have thirty minutes left, it’ll be a miracle. That alone won’t save us—”

  “Nope,” Aliyev said. “But even if we all die, it may eventually take all the dead bastards down with us.”

  “Hey,” Juice said. “It’s never over ’til it’s over.”

  “It’s about to be over, motherfuckers,” Pred said. “Come on!”

  Behind them, engulfing flames collapsed the roof of Bio.

  “’Til the roof come off…” Juice muttered.

  They all took off – for one last very long run.

  Noise gave a cheery wave to their backs to speed them on. He didn’t personally believe it was the end times just yet.

  But he did like Breaking Bad…

  * * *

  “Well, if it isn’t Sheriff Rick Fucking Grimes.”

  This was Fick, stealing a look over his shoulder, at Handon stabbing five heads right in a row with his Mercworx Vorax knife. In his other hand he held a wakizashi he’d picked up from a fallen USOC guy. But it was getting too heavy to swing.

  Up on the north walls, the end was nigh.

  Marines on the left, operators on the right, Gurkhas in the middle, all of them degraded, exhausted, out of ammo… Handon and Fick still fought in the very center, back to back. Handon had been swinging the short sword he picked up, even as he fired the last rounds in his last pistol mag, then holstered the .45 and drew the knife.

  “What does it take to get that thing off you?” Fick asked.

  “I love this knife.”<
br />
  “So did Misha.”

  Swallowing his disgust, Fick picked up a dropped L85 like it was a turd, fired it dry, dropped it, and grabbed another, but this one was empty. He reversed it and swung it like a club, knocking dead guys off the ramparts as fast as they came over. Looking back and forth, he shouted over his shoulder, “Damn, you really miss having Predator on the line.”

  “I miss Ali,” Handon said. It was probably a toss-up which of those two was more lethal and unstoppable. But both had more important jobs now. “Hey, can you get me their status?”

  Fick got on his radio, while Handon fought to cover him, as much as that was possible now. Ten seconds later, Fick reported. “Good news. Pred and Juice have got Park and the loaded-up simunitions – and Ali and Homer have got that hot-shit Para sharpshooter. Both groups are moving to the Alamo.”

  “I thought the prison was already the Alamo,” Handon said, pivoting, stabbing, and swinging.

  “Alamo of the Alamo, then,” Fick said, swinging the reversed rifle from side to side, battling for breath. “Roof of SHQ.”

  They could both see perfectly that, at this point, a hundred Predators and Alis couldn’t have held back the tide coming over the walls any longer. The sheer mass of it was unstoppable. However many they destroyed, they were still going to be buried in meat – probably in seconds, not minutes.

  “Time to call it?” Fick shouted.

  “Think we can make it to that rooftop?” Handon asked.

  “Hmm… get down off these walls, across the yard, into the Common, and around to SHQ? I seriously doubt it.”

  “Okay. Then we buy the others a little more time.”

  “Works for me – wait, hang on,” Fick said, as he squinted and cocked his head, then spoke into his radio. “Copy that… Yeah, why the hell not.” Mustering his strength for another swing, he then slapped Handon on the shoulder and pointed, way behind them and off to the right. “Think we can make it there?”

  Handon exhaled. “Yeah. Why the hell not.”

  * * *

  “What’s the plan again?” Pred asked, running like hell and clearing their path by alternating wide powerful swings of his bat with just putting his shoulder down and bashing.