Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  There was a longish pause. The voice that came back was flat, neutral, and resigned: "Copy that. Looks like I’m not getting out of here then."

  Ali instantly recognized the second voice.

  Juice.

  Across the Lines

  Six Miles South of the M25 ZPW

  Private Elliot Walker of the Parachute Regiment tried to steady his footing in the deep mud, then leaned against the old wooden fence and took careful aim across the field, as the first of the dead came into sight.

  The lull in the fighting, after they were ordered to break contact with the enemy and withdraw, had only lasted an hour at most. Elliot thought it a strange strategy to pursue, now that they were only twenty miles from the first line of trenches around London, with their backs practically up against the ZPW. But he couldn’t deny he was glad for the rest.

  Most of the dead stumbling toward them now, in increasingly greater numbers, were the slow-moving type, but they had the advantage of numbers, and had flooded over some of the outlying defenses already. The men on the front lines, Elliot’s Para brothers, were exhausted now from the constant contact. So a cessation of the brutal fighting, an hour of rest, and a resupply of water and rations, had come as a short but much-needed relief.

  The creature that now appeared from the treeline, about two hundred yards out, was a slow one, a stumbler as Elliot liked to call them, and it didn’t seem to have locked onto the line of Paras crouched in a ditch, behind a thin row of bushes. The weather had turned over the last couple of hours, and as well as the drifting fog that hampered long-range recon, the rain was lashing down on them now, in thin cold sheets that seemed to burrow in right to the bone.

  As Elliot watched, the lone Zulu pushed past brambles and bushes, waded heedless through a patch of stinging nettles, and finally lurched out onto the open grass of the field. He could see it had once been a middle-aged man, very thin, and he wondered if the man had been starving already when he’d died. He wore a pair of ripped jeans and a torn sweater, both blue, and both now splattered with patches of dark gray gunk that Elliot presumed was some combination of mud and the black shit they had for blood.

  There was also a yawning hole in the side of its neck.

  A few days before, some of the lads in his squad had debated how the dead could rise up and grow in number so quickly. The rapid expansion of the outbreak was staggering, and as the Paras took stock of the towns between Folkestone and the surging front line, the numbers just didn’t add up.

  Not until Elliot remembered the migrant camps.

  There were tens of thousands of homeless people in the wilderness outside London now, maybe even hundreds of thousands. Elliot had seen the makeshift camps strewn across the landscape, dotted here and there amongst the woods and fields, filled with people who didn’t want to be trapped in the cities, or else had no place else to go. And Elliot thought those thousands of vagrants and wanderers were what made up much of the mass of dead that was now devouring Britain – one town, one county, one field at a time.

  But this particular vagrant wasn’t going to get any closer to London. And Elliot wasn’t going to let him have this field.

  His suppressed L129A1 sharpshooter rifle bucked once, and his single round took the dead man in the face, the whole operation producing almost no perceptible noise. Elliot slowly crouched back down behind the post.

  Job done.

  He glanced to his sides, double-checking that the other front-line sharpshooters were still positioned at 50-meter intervals. He could see they were also hunkered down, hiding behind cover, but meticulously observing the treeline and fields to their front.

  Dissolution and delay of the horde was the aim of their retreat. At least that was what Elliot had been told. If the dead lost track of the front line of troops, at least some of them would cease their advance and wander aimlessly, or possibly even reverse course. The military’s constant, measured retreat had only been pulling the dead along with them, and drawing more and more into the fray from a distance. Elliot’s thinking was that they should have considered a quick evacuation to behind the wall instead.

  Or maybe that was just his instinct to get away from the damned things.

  He was anxious to do his duty – and he would do anything, including give his life, to support and protect his friends in the regiment. But he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t scared. Not out here on open ground, with God knew how many thousands of them swarming around out there, perhaps just out of sight in the mist and rain.

  As Elliot watched, another one stumbled through the thicket at the field’s edge, but as he checked the distance, he decided it wasn’t in his sector. As though reading his thoughts, another Para marksman, in the position to his immediate left, rose up, took careful aim, and dropped it with a single shot.

  * * *

  A hundred yards away, Captain Evan Forester paced the ground, glancing from his radio operator to the treelines that ringed the fields. He and the radio op were in a small copse of trees to the rear of where his men squatted in that damp ditch. His slightly elevated position meant he could keep an eye on his paratroopers, as well as any enemy movement from the forests.

  The numbers were definitely lower now, as they had hoped, but not to the extent they had been depending on. And Captain Forester knew that the minute his troops got caught up again in any significant engagement, those dead that had been left behind would soon catch wind of it, and all start trundling forward once more.

  His unit had lost over a tenth of its strength in the last few days to that damned horde, and he was worried. It was nothing like panic he felt, not yet. But the battle for southern England was not going well. And Forester saw little reason to hope that command was going to turn things around.

  “Still no word from CentCom on the ammo drop?” he asked the radio operator, and felt his stomach drop when the man shook his head.

  The radio op, a young private, exhaled heavily. “I’m not even getting an acknowledgement, which is weird. Even if they can’t answer the call they normally queue it up and back call, but I’m not getting through at all.” The young man paused and turned to a different piece of field electronics. “But I am picking up a faint transponder beacon, about two miles from here. Could that be our drop?”

  “This is a pile of shit,” muttered Forester, sitting down heavily on a tree stump a few yards away. He fidgeted briefly, then stood again, only to resume pacing. He needed to know where their resupply was.

  “It’s almost like there’s no one manning the fort,” continued the private. “Maybe they’re having a power outage?”

  Forester grunted. “Can you get Briars?” he asked, referring to the Major, their officer commanding in the field, who should be less than a mile away, also behind the lines.

  The private nodded.

  “Find out if he has a new operations order for us. And then try and get accurate grid coordinates on that beacon. It might actually be our drop – God save us.”

  If it was their drop, then it had been catastrophically mis-dropped, with even its giant cargo canopies out of visual range. Or perhaps it was because of the mist and rain. In any case, maybe they could still get to it and bring it in.

  The radio op started speaking into his headset, hailing the nearby command post, while Forester stood by impatiently watching the misty treeline in the distance.

  At least we don’t have to resort to message runners, he thought.

  Finally, he heard the call go through. As he eavesdropped, already working out from this end of it that Briars was having the same problems everywhere, he scanned out over the distant fields, his vision struggling to resolve anything in the soup-thick mists.

  Slowly, his expression changed… and the Para officer spat on the ground, silently mouthing curses, as a dozen dark and spectral shapes slowly resolved from the fog, within the treeline. They stumbled forward, making their way out of the forest, features still obscured by the dense mist, but their movements unmistakably clumsy a
nd slow. Behind them more appeared, another dozen, and two dozen after that… and soon Forester could see the makings of an undead army mustering along the far edges of the field.

  The field that his men, and they alone, now held.

  Alone, and cut off from higher command.

  Forester silently prayed that someone was still running this war. And that they had some tricks left up their sleeves.

  Because this one had just failed.

  Into the Mist

  UK, Six Miles South of the M25 ZPW

  Private Elliot Walker cursed, drew in a deep breath, released half, and took aim again. This time his shot was true, taking the zombie in the chin point – just inches from the crease that his first shot had scored along the side of its neck. The gray figure lurched backward, head lolling to one side, and then it was gone, tumbling backward into the long grass.

  Elliot checked his flanks, and the location of the others in the patrol. This time he was not manning a fixed position, but had been sent out into these swirling mists on a mission. To his left and just behind were Corporal Johnson and Private Abbot, and to his right were Privates Reeves and Clifford. All were keeping their formation tight and staying with him at a brisk walking pace. Behind him, Private Ahmit Patel cursed quietly. He was Elliot’s friend of four years, since they had both entered recruitment on the same day and in the same intake group.

  “It should be here,” Ahmit hissed. “This fucking GPS is shot, though.” He shook the device and peered closer, squinting and tapping the display. “I’m getting intermittent readings at best. But we should be right on it.”

  Captain Forester had given them a set of GPS coordinates that corresponded to the position of their ammo drop – or at least the transponder that had at one time been attached to it. The problem now was finding those coordinates.

  “Keep trying,” said Corporal Johnson, the patrol leader. “And it’s not the device, it’s the sodding satellites.” The squad slowed, then came to a stop, while Ahmit turned around several times, trying to will the device in his hands to function, to pick up the signals that had been reasonably strong ten minutes before.

  On a clear day, they probably would have been able to see the drop from there, but now they were surrounded by a wall of fog that had descended in the last few hours. Visibility had gone from fifty yards, to twenty, and finally to ten – all in the few minutes since Ahmit had taken the last reading. And though Elliot was confident he had kept them on a straight line, heading in the direction Ahmit had first indicated, it was difficult to judge.

  “It’s not fucking here,” cursed Clifford, a tall lanky soldier who Elliot always thought fit into the Parachute Regiment about as well as cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He’d never been able to work out exactly what it was that he didn’t like about the guy.

  “Quiet the fuck down,” said Johnson. “Minimal noise.”

  Clifford grinned, a smile that Elliot hated for its insincerity.

  “Keep it moving,” said Johnson, and the squad pushed forward, slowly trudging through the overgrown field.

  At the front, Elliot tried to peer through the mist, but was finding it hard to even focus on anything solid any more. All that he could see was the grass beneath his feet, and only about ten yards of that. The breeze had also started to pick up slightly, the mist drifting past in small swirls that made the visual field even harder to make sense of.

  “Still no signal,” said Ahmit, shaking his head. “We’re back to map and compass – and dead reckoning.”

  “Keep trying,” said Johnson. “We’re not going back without that ammo.”

  Then Elliot spotted something up ahead – a dark, looming shape about the size of a van, but still too far away to make out clearly. He moved forward slowly, aiming his rifle at the gradually materializing bulk. As they got closer, the mist cleared around them, folding back and revealing each yard as they advanced.

  The dark bulk ahead continued to resolve until Elliot could finally see that it was an armored vehicle of some sort, though no make or model that he recognized. It looked more like a large up-armored SUV than the military personnel carriers he was used to. The big truck was tilted to one side, and as the squad passed by it they saw that it was mired in the mud on one side. Both the big cargo door in the back, and the two front doors, had been flung open and left that way, as if someone had abandoned it in a hurry.

  Elliot glanced inside the cab as he passed, and saw that the front seat was covered with blood – and it couldn’t have been more than a few hours old.

  “Does that thing have a GPS?” asked Abbot, from the rear of the squad. Ahmit moved toward the vehicle, treading carefully in the slosh of mud surrounding the driver side. He leaned in, checking the darkness in the cab before climbing up to look at the dash. A moment later he jumped back out, shaking his head.

  “Even if it did, it’s completely dead now.”

  “And I told you,” said Johnson. “It’s not the GPS.”

  They hitched up their packs and moved out again. And as the dark bulk of the truck was swallowed again by the mists, they began to hear sounds around them, distant at first and muffled by the fog, but then clearer – and closer. Moans drifted toward them from multiple directions.

  “I thought we were behind the lines?” whispered Abbot, glancing at Johnson for confirmation, but the Corporal looked confused, or distracted. “There shouldn’t be many Zeds here.”

  “Wait,” said Elliot. “What’s that up ahead?”

  Just within their shallow field of vision there now appeared a bulky object of some sort, sitting heavily in the grass. Elliot couldn’t make it out initially, but as he stepped toward it a pale light became visible, pulsing and flashing – the beacon. And here, in the middle of nowhere, just thirty yards from the abandoned vehicle, was a palletized container drop, stacked high with nylon-strapped metal cases and wooden boxes. Trailing across the grass nearby was the limp shape of its oversized cargo chute.

  It was the ammunition drop they had been sent to find.

  “Fuck me,” said Johnson. “Finally.” He lowered his weapon and put one hand on his hip, looking content.

  Elliot moved forward, getting within three yards of the drop before he suddenly realized the mist around it was moving. He stepped backward quickly, bringing his weapon up to his shoulder, his breathing instantly going rapid and shallow.

  From behind and around the drop began to emerge the shadowy shapes of human figures. Elliot barely had time to consider that maybe another patrol had been sent out and found the supplies at the same moment they had, before he sensed more than saw the flash of movement that hit their right flank.

  Something rushed past, nearly noiseless, but still kicking up a swirl of mist, and Elliot only spun around to track it after it was already inside their ranks, and leaping at the nearest soldier – Corporal Johnson.

  Their patrol leader, his eyes focused on the mist ahead of them, never saw the runner coming. And before he or any of the others could react, it had leapt, latched on to his shoulders, and sunk its teeth into his neck – managing to get between his body armor and helmet, and tearing out a huge chunk of flesh and uniform. The corporal bellowed out a gurgling cry, but still managed to stay on his feet as he spun around and clawed at the creature with his left hand, trying to wrench it off him, while holding onto his rifle with the other.

  “Ah, shit!” shouted Abbot as he raised his rifle toward the struggling pair, attempting to engage the enemy that was now trying to tear the corporal a new face – but he hesitated and didn’t crank off the shot in time. Instead, Johnson’s spasming nerves twitched, his arms flailed wildly – and the rifle in his own hands went off, a burst of panicked rapid fire cutting across the two men at the back of the patrol. Abbot and Reeves went down, falling and sending clouds of blood merging into the mists.

  They both hit the ground and didn’t get up.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” shouted Clifford, also raising his weapon and firing, jamming on
the trigger repeatedly and not letting up. The torrent of bullets ripped into both Johnson and the runner attached to him, sending them both falling to the dirt, tangled up and bleeding.

  Elliot stood dumbfounded, completely numb. In three seconds flat, half of their six-man patrol had been cut down. Mastering himself, he moved woodenly to the fallen and knelt down to check on them. Nobody was breathing. Even the manic dead guy had caught a headshot, and was now dead for real. The silence of the scene roared in his ears. Death wasn’t just all around them now.

  It was right in their ranks.

  “What the fuck?” muttered Clifford. “I fucking shot Corporal Johnson.” He stood in place, shaking and staring down at the smoking rifle in his hands.

  More movement stirred around the three survivors, dark shapes emerging from the thick drifts of mist that set the limits of their vision at twenty yards.

  “Grab what you can,” said Elliot, his voice numb and affectless. “We need to get out of here.”

  Everywhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

  UK, Six Miles South of the M25 ZPW

  The three surviving members of the patrol moved as quickly as they could through the field, all with weapons raised, peering breathlessly out into the fog that just seemed to get thicker the longer they were out here. With two rucks slung over each shoulder, all at the limit of what they could carry and still be mobile enough to fight, they struggled to move any faster than a slow jog. The original plan had been that four of them would hump the ammo, with the others pulling security, but that seemed like a long time ago now.

  Ahmit, out on point, stopped them every fifty yards or so to check the GPS, but he mostly shook his head and peered around, trying to regain their bearings from the terrain.

  And all the while the dead were still closing in on them. None had attacked the group since that disastrous first contact, when they lost half their number in a few heartbeats. But the dead were close – so close that occasionally a moan would sound just yards away, or a dark figure would momentarily slip into vision through the swirling vapor.