Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Each time this happened, the trio stopped and watched to see what it would do. If it spotted them and locked on, they took it down. But if it didn’t, they just waited and then moved on. Every engagement, every shot fired, reduced their life expectancy out here.

  “Never seen fog like this,” whispered Clifford, spitting into the grass.

  Ahmit glanced at him, hissing “Shut it, you daft prick.”

  Clifford glared back. “Who you calling daft? You’re the one who can’t fucking find our way out of here.”

  Elliot stopped. “Will you two shut up?” he hissed. “You’re gonna draw them to us.”

  The argument was left hanging as, up ahead, barely twenty yards out, a lumbering figure appeared. It had once been a woman, dressed for the outdoors, but now most of her torn down coat was emptied out. She staggered through the grass, heading directly across the patrol’s path, and for a moment Elliot hoped she wouldn’t notice them. But then her head swung round to face them, and the three Paras saw that most of her face was missing, including both of her eyes and her nose. All that remained now was a gaping jaw, half hanging off. That jaw opened, and a low, quiet moan followed.

  How the hell it even knew they were there was beyond Elliot. And now it didn’t matter anyway.

  He raised his rifle and fired, the bullet striking her where her chin would once have been, and sending her falling backward into the fog soup. The three Paras stood stock-still, waiting to see if others would follow, and expecting the worst.

  After half a minute, Ahmit started moving again. The other two followed, stepping carefully through the grass and skirting around the spot where the faceless woman had gone down. There were more moans now, and the rustling of movement.

  They’ve clocked us, thought Elliot, increasing his speed and overtaking Ahmit, who picked up his own pace in response. And Clifford broke formation entirely, passing the other two and ranging out ahead on his own. As he went by, Elliot could see the terror in his eyes.

  Trust us to get stuck with this muppet, he thought, marveling that the selection and training process that he had found so grueling still somehow allowed an idiot such as Clifford to become a paratrooper.

  As they skirted around a hillock of rock and stepped down into a dirt track, Elliot saw them, moving in from their left flank – dozens of the dead, stumbling into view, all seemingly heading in the same direction across their path, and all merely yards away.

  And it was the sight of these that broke Clifford. Elliot tried to reach out for him, intending for them to take cover behind the rocks and let the herd pass. But he missed the man’s sleeve by inches as Clifford took off, running ahead of them and away from the shambling crowd that now saw his movement. A chorus of moaning erupted – and the dead, a moment ago slow and almost passive, quickly became an animated and lively pack of predators.

  “Idiot,” whispered Ahmit as he passed Elliot, heading in the same direction that Clifford had run. Elliot took off at a labored jog, trying to keep up with the others, but the long wet grass, the poor visibility, and the extremely heavy load forced him to slow down or else risk a fall. He could still see his friend about ten yards ahead, cursing under his breath as he ran on, trying to catch up with Clifford… but then Elliot slowed as a rising, terrified scream erupted ahead of them.

  “Oh, shit,” cursed Ahmit, stopping as Elliot reached him.

  Just ahead, and only barely inside their visual range, was a heaving mass of the dead. Countless palsied figures surged in all directions, pushing and shoving against one another, trampling upon those that fell. There were perhaps as many as a hundred, and they were all jostling to get to the spot that Elliot judged was the center. There, he could just make out slivers of wet flesh being pulled from a writhing figure in the middle of it all, and he realized what the dead were tearing apart.

  Clifford.

  * * *

  “Back,” hissed Ahmit, moving quickly away. “While they’re distracted!”

  The two surviving Paras stumbled away from the scene, Elliot boggling that Clifford had run off in fear of the dead behind them, only to barrel straight into the middle of an even bigger mass.

  “Not that way,” said Elliot, as he tried to catch up with his friend, but Ahmit wasn’t listening, and carried on into the mist. Then he turned, heading in another direction, and Elliot followed, not knowing where the hell they were, or whether they were even heading back toward the safety of their own lines. Behind them he could hear a lot of movement, and a quick glance over his shoulder rewarded him with something he didn’t want to see at all.

  Runners, a pack of about six, were just within sight behind them now. And if it hadn’t been for the tall grass and the uneven ground, Elliot knew they would already have caught them. He’d seen their like many times as the regiment faced the endless hordes of dead, had seen them burst from the ranks of the slow-moving ones, at a speed even many of the living couldn’t match. But he’d been within the relative safety of a formation of infantry then. Now, out in the fog, alone and cut off, stumbling around without a clue which direction they should be going, the frantic creatures overtaking them were ten times more terrifying.

  Elliot pushed on, glancing back every few seconds and trying to judge if he had time to turn and engage them. But they were too close, and he knew that if he stopped to fire, he would never be fast enough to take them all down – not before they were on him. And then it would all be over for him.

  “Shit,” came a muttered curse ahead of him, and he saw that Ahmit had stopped running and was staring straight ahead at something just outside of Elliot’s vision. He caught up with him and raced past, having zero desire to slow or stop now.

  And he saw it was the abandoned armored vehicle, still stuck in the mud, right where they had left it. They had gone around in a complete circle, which meant they were nowhere near the Para lines. And there was also no way they could continue to stay ahead of what was right behind them.

  “Runners!” Elliot shouted. “Get inside!” He ran past his friend, making a direct line for the open rear cargo door of the truck, and hoped like hell Ahmit would follow.

  It was only when he reached it that he even thought about the fact that he’d been carrying the heavy load of ammo, two full rucks, this entire time. It wasn’t that he had been too scared, or distracted, or stupid to drop them. It was simply that his brothers were depending on him to bring it back. And, even with death licking at his heels, when his lifespan might be measured in seconds, it simply had not occurred to him to lay down his burden – to fail at his job, to let down his teammates.

  Now, he had to drop the rucks simply to get in the truck.

  As he reached the open rear door and dove inside, he heard Ahmit’s heavy breathing pass by him as his friend scrambled in the driver-side door – but then he heard cursing, and turned to see Ahmit kicking out at something just outside the door, trying to bring his assault rifle to bear, but there wasn’t enough room. Elliot saw a dark humanoid shape trying to force its way in, but it was being pushed back every time Ahmit lashed out.

  His hand slapped at his waist and Elliot drew his handgun in a flash, then clambered forward, pushing himself up over the rear bench seat and into the front passenger area – just as the runner managed to get its body half inside. Ahmit screamed and kicked out, just as Elliot opened fire. The runner was thrown back, the force of the rounds catching it across the shoulders. This wouldn’t destroy it, but did send it tumbling away, knocking down two others behind it.

  And that was all Ahmit needed, two precious seconds, to grab the door handle and slam it shut. The percussive roar of the gunshots in that enclosed space rang in Elliot’s ears, and he had to shake his head to focus. Then the runners were back, hammering on the windows and the sides of the truck.

  Elliot climbed into the back and lunged for the open cargo door – which somehow he had forgotten to close in the panic of helping his friend. He reached it just as another runner leapt for the gap. He raised
the pistol and opened fire again, emptying the magazine and sending that one and another tumbling backward away from the truck.

  If they could get the doors all shut, Elliot knew the dead wouldn’t be strong enough to get in, and as he grabbed the inside handle and heaved on the heavy hatch, he checked that the others were all already closed. This one slammed down, and Elliot heard a chorus of loud thunks as the locking mechanism kicked in.

  From the driver’s seat, Ahmit stared back at him, eyes wide, chest heaving as he took long gulps of air. His left hand was on the driver-side door, on the auto-lock button, but his other hand was on his right knee, and Elliot could see a trickle of blood oozing from between his fingers.

  Brothers

  UK, Six Miles South of the M25 ZPW

  Ahmit cursed as he crawled back out from underneath the dash. For the last twenty minutes he had been pulling out panels and checking wires, every few minutes crawling back up into the driver’s seat to try and start it up, but not once had the engine even threatened to turn over.

  “It’s screwed,” he said.

  “Damn it,” said Elliot.

  “I’ve tried everything,” said Ahmit, wiping the sweat from his face. “Either the battery is dead, or something is just knackered in the electrical system, and I can’t get at that without going back outside.”

  Elliot looked to his left, out the window, and directly into the face of one of the runners as it beat frantically on the glass. “Not an option,” he said.

  Ahmit shook his head. “No. I think we just have to settle in and wait it out.”

  Elliot sighed. If they ever actually go away, he thought.

  He knew that what they might be waiting out was: the end of the world.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the hammering had died down.

  Elliot sat in the front passenger seat, with his assault rifle lying across his lap. He’d been watching dully as the dead mindlessly, implacably tried to force their way in. At first it had been just the pack of runners that had chased them here, and which they’d had to fight to keep out. But of course other dead soon homed in on the noise, and came in droves to hammer at the sides of the truck, and the windows – which, being bulletproof, at least were never going to break.

  But the noise of a hundred hammering fists on the steel shell of the vehicle had given Elliot the mother of all headaches.

  All the way in the back, Ahmit was now lying down on a makeshift bed.

  He’d been fine – for a while.

  “Maybe it’s okay,” Ahmit had said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, and the cut isn’t infected.” And Elliot had agreed, helping to bandage the wound up – but wearing a pair of surgical gloves from his aid kit, and carefully disposing of them after. Another man might have refused to go near the blood, but this was Ahmit, his friend of so many years.

  They had walked into that Army recruitment office on the same day, both fresh out of secondary school, then gone through recruit selection side by side, and then on to Parachute Regiment selection. Finally, there had been the arduous thirty-week Para training course, where they kept up each other’s spirits and motivation, and each finally earned the coveted maroon beret on the same day. After that, to the delight of both, they were assigned to the same battalion, company, and even platoon.

  It had been like that at every stage of their military careers.

  Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was fate. Or maybe the British Army knew exactly what it was doing – knew that the real reason soldiers fought, and suffered, and sacrificed, was for the men they did it beside.

  Elliot never had a biological brother, just three sisters. And in Ahmit that was what he had found.

  This man was his brother.

  * * *

  Ahmit had been fine for the first hour after being injured, and that, Elliot knew, was a hopeful sign. These days it seemed people could turn in just seconds if they died, and even if they lived they could start showing signs within minutes. Though there seemed to be no hard and fast rules.

  But that hour had been merely grace, and soon Ahmit started to feel weak, and needed to lie down.

  Half an hour before the hammering stopped, Ahmit threw up, and as Elliot looked him in the eyes, he saw the signs – the darkening and redness of the eyes, the faint spider-like tendrils of black lines creeping slowly across the skin over the places where veins lay underneath.

  And just a few minutes before, Ahmit’s breathing had become strained.

  “I don’t want to be one of them,” he said, his voice floating up from the darkness at the back of the truck. There was little illumination, but Elliot could see his best friend’s eyes shining back at him, reflecting the dim light through the windshield glass.

  Elliot sat silently for a moment, unable to believe that after all these years it had come down to this. When the outbreaks had started, and the plague spread across the face of the world, the two of them had promised they would take care of things for each other, if it came to that. Elliot never thought it would actually happen, even though he had seen men die every day since. He and Ahmit were supposed to be untouchable.

  Maybe it was because they were young. But no one left alive was any longer as young as they used to be.

  “You know I won’t let that happen,” Elliot said.

  “We promised,” said Ahmit.

  “Yes, we promised.”

  More silence.

  “I want you to do it,” said Ahmit.

  Elliot coughed. “What, now? You’re not even near going yet.”

  “But I can feel it. I can feel something changing already. It’s in the back of my head. Like I have someone else speaking to me. And they aren’t my thoughts. It’s all wrong.”

  “You’re talking bollocks. What does that even mean?”

  But even Elliot himself knew he was in some sort of denial. He just couldn’t bear this. It was too sad, and he couldn’t take it.

  “I mean… it’s like there’s someone else, or something else in here with me, something alien.”

  Finally, Elliot straightened up, slowly picked up his handgun from where it lay on the dash, and climbed into the back. Then he crouched down and looked his friend in the eyes. And he was stunned at the rapid change. Just minutes ago, Ahmit’s skin had been clear and nearly flawless, glowing with youth and vigor. Now it had gone deathly pale, the spiderwebbed black lines growing stark and unmistakable, and his eyes wretchedly bloodshot.

  “The sickness is terrible,” said Ahmit, coughing into a blanket that lay next to him. As he pulled the cloth away from his mouth, Elliot saw a spreading stain of black liquid. “I’ve never felt so bad before.”

  Elliot took a deep breath, knelt down by his friend, and gripped the handgun tightly, wondering if he could possibly go through with this.

  “Please,” said Ahmit. “Do it now. Make it fast.”

  Elliot took another breath, then raised the weapon, pointing it at Ahmit’s head. Ahmit leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the tip of the barrel and looked Elliot straight in the eyes.

  Elliot tried to pull the trigger, but a rush of nerves flooded his stomach, and he released the tension on the trigger, withdrew the gun, and turned away. He was finding it simply beyond him to kill his own best friend.

  “You can do this,” said Ahmit. “You have to.”

  Elliot turned back and looked his friend in the eyes again. He saw pain there. This young man had been his mate through many difficult times, and he couldn’t fail him now. As hard as it was to accept what he had to do, the alternative was worse. No, not Ahmit turning, and becoming a monster, though that would be bad enough.

  It was the thought of failing his friend that he couldn’t face.

  He took a deep breath and raised the handgun. Once more Ahmit leaned forward. And closed his eyes.

  “Goodbye, my brother,” Elliot said.

  Then, without hesitation this time, he pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Elliot sat once
more in the front passenger seat, near the front of the vehicle, his rifle again on his lap, his handgun back in its holster, at one round under capacity.

  He peered out the windshield at the shapes that lumbered by. After the noise of the single gunshot, they had come back, and once more the hammering had begun, and it had taken over three hours this time for them to stop. He had covered Ahmit’s body with a blanket, and laid his friend’s rifle over him, even leaving the magazine in. He just couldn’t make himself take it.

  The dead still wandered by infrequently, but he had noticed in the last fifteen minutes that the numbers were thinning.

  Elliot wasn’t deep inside the enemy lines any more. He was out the other side, and behind them.

  And completely alone.

  Gun to a Knife Fight

  Open Water, Beneath the JFK

  Having miraculously won all his knife fights, and also having secured for himself a working supply of oxygen, now Homer had to hunt down whatever survivors there were of the Spetsnaz combat diver team. Luckily, they turned out to be close by, as he’d suspected they would be – and all in one place. He found them over on the other side of the ship, the seaward side, another hundred yards up toward the prow.

  Sticking close to the hull, like a black and silent remora clinging to the body of a whale, he spotted their lone sentry, and swam up at him from directly below. As he did so, he carefully unslung the amphibious rifle from his back.

  Sure enough, it had turned out the guy he’d killed earlier, the one who had tried to shoot him with this thing, actually didn’t have any more magazines. But Homer had taken the rifle with him anyway.

  And now he was glad he had. Because as he swam up toward him, he saw that this single lookout not only carried one of the rifles himself, but had a whole pouch of magazines on his dive belt. Now, instead of attacking the sentry, who floated in place and scanned around to either side of him, Homer just paddled up beneath him slowly, like an undersea ghost. And he reached up to the mag pouch…