And as she descended, she found her own thoughts were of her brothers and her father. She might disappoint them again. But it wouldn’t be today. And it wouldn’t be getting the whole world killed.
And maybe she would yet make them proud.
As she reached the flight deck, her legs not terribly steady, some strange impulse seized her… and she just laid herself down flat on the sun-warmed deck, arms and legs out snow-angel style. And she let gravity press her down, and the rushing wind caress her.
And she just lay there, feeling life flowing through her.
And listening to the sound of children’s laughter.
The One That Tried to Get Away
CentCom - Biosciences Complex
Captain Charlotte Maidstone stood in the entrance of the newly built warren of labs, white rooms, and fabrication facilities, with her side arm, a Glock 17, in her right hand. She was tensely monitoring the road that led to the prison. Gunfire was erupting everywhere up there now, and she figured Jameson and the Marines had arrived and were at that moment wreaking havoc. Anyway, she sure hoped they were.
And she also figured they had probably worked out, right around when she did, just what the hell was going on.
Behind her, out in the main open atrium of the complex, scientists and technicians moved around nervously, three of them hovering around a phone at the security station. The soldier who had previously been stationed there, an RMP, was now standing a few feet away from Charlotte, along with the other two helo pilots – all of them armed and waiting.
“It’s an outbreak,” one of the three scientists had said, after being briefed over the phone. “And it’s inside the compound.” Of course, this had sparked near-panic.
“Is it being put down?” asked the second of the trio, just as the chatter of gunfire began to sound in the distance.
“I can’t get them to answer me any more,” replied the man at the phone. “Let’s assume they’re busy.”
The lights in the entranceway and across the atrium flickered, causing several people to cry out in fear, but soon came back up.
Charlotte turned to the MP and the other pilots. “Can one of you guys try and calm them down a little in there?”
One of the pilots nodded and headed inside. Charlotte tapped at her thigh, wishing to God she still had her radio headset, so she could try to listen in on local frequencies, and maybe find out more about what the hell was going on. But she realized the only local frequency she had anyway was flight control. Then her eyes lit up as she remembered Jameson’s squad net! She’d been given that frequency for the mission just completed.
She turned to the MP and said, “I need your team radio.”
He gave her a look like: Are you out of your freaking mind? Not happening.
So she rephrased her request: “I need your team radio – Sergeant. And right now.”
He shook his head as he regarded the three stars of her captain’s insignia, on the shoulder of her flight suit. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and started unthreading the radio and headset from his chest rig.
Charlotte had it strapped on and tuned to the Marines’ radio chatter in seconds.
“Nicks here. All clear on north corridor, proceeding up to the second floor.”
“Halldon here. In heavy contact in south corridor. Assaulting now. Wait out.” Underneath the voice, Charlotte could hear thick and heavy gunfire in the background.
“Halldon here. South corridor is clear to halfway point. Out.”
She wanted to break in, to ask them for an update, to ask how she could help. But she knew better than to interrupt operational radio chatter, never mind troops in contact. So she settled for listening in.
The lights flickered in the building again, this time for longer – then they finally went out completely. Charlotte had just accepted that they weren’t coming back on when the row of fluorescents behind her in the reception area, and those alone, flickered to life. Now the area was dim, spooky, and slightly glowing.
In the distance, she could see a plume of smoke rising from one of the main buildings. Then, on the second floor of the south wing, the section most visible from where they stood, a row of windows exploded outward – followed almost a second later by the sound of multiple grenades going off.
Jesus, these guys aren’t pulling any punches in there, Charlotte thought.
Glass and debris rained down in the distance.
* * *
Charlotte had seen, or at least heard, Jameson and his men in action in Dusseldorf, where they had taken the target building with near-perfect stealth – until the mission had gone noisy and descended into chaos. But the fight here was obviously totally different from the start – fast, brutal, explosive, and merciless.
Charlotte continued to monitor the squad net, eyes narrowed and lips slightly parted, as the radio traffic told a tale of the different sectors of the complex being taken down – methodically, efficiently, and totally by storm.
But then some motion drew her gaze from the air in front of her face, snapping her head toward the horizon – and there she saw something running through a line of trees, and across the two-lane road that bisected the common.
She squinted, trying to focus in on the figure as it raced in the opposite direction, away from the main building. It was one of the base personnel, or so she thought – but the soldier wasn’t running like any normal man. And as Charlotte watched, she realized his foot was twisted around the wrong way. And he was making excellent time for a man with a badly broken ankle.
It was a runner.
And it was headed in the direction of the quarantine building – the security detail of which she had just seen rushing toward the fight in the main building. The place would be totally undefended. With God only knew how many unarmed people locked up in quarantine there.
Charlotte turned to the other pilot and the MP. “Guard this door – let nothing get by you.” She then turned and took off out the entrance, sprinting toward the road.
Nearer to the prison, the area beside the road had been cleared of trees and now played host to a row of parked helos. This included a couple of Apaches, Charlotte noted as she approached. It was actually near them that she judged the runner would emerge from the treeline, on its way to the quarantine building, so she angled to intercept.
She soon spotted it through a gap in the row of helos, and darted toward the nearest. As she slowed to a trot, crouched down, and skirted around the nose of the airframe, she fought to calm her frantic breathing, while also raising her Glock.
She came round the corner – no more than five yards away from the dead soldier. It saw her immediately, and now Charlotte knew for certain this was no living man. Its eyes burned with rage, and its mouth opened wide as it emitted a shriek. It lunged for her, much faster than she had expected, so she was forced to back-pedal while opening fire.
Keeping her feet from tangling up underneath her, while simultaneously aiming and discharging the weapon, was a task many times harder than anything she’d ever attempted at the range. And the stakes were infinitely higher. She had one go at this, and if she failed she’d never get another try – at anything.
But the shots ripped into its dead body, four hitting its left shoulder and chest, the next two missing completely as it was knocked into a falling spin. It fell sideways and rolled on the ground, but then flailed and tried to stand again, hauling its mortified dead flesh up and straight back into her. Charlotte took a quick shallow breath, squinted over the top of her front sight, and shot the creature dead center in the face.
It collapsed to the ground in an unmoving pile of limbs.
Then she simply stood there, still breathing crazily from the combination of running, terror, and adrenaline. And she found she needed a second to figure out what she was experiencing. She was used to taking these things out a dozen at a time from the remote safety of an Apache helicopter gunship – not one-on-one, and face-to-face, right on the ground. Not like this.
> And that thought caused her to turn and regard the row of helos behind her. Her heart immediately sang out for her own ride – but that was the better part of a mile from here, plus had been running on fumes and black on ammo when she put it down. As for the ones right in front of her, she guessed the only reason they’d be parked up here, rather than engaged in the south, was that they were in for some type of maintenance. But she also guessed at least one of the Apaches would be fit for flight – it was an incredibly complex machine, and maintenance was rarely delayed until the thing actually broke down. With luck, one might even be fueled and armed.
She checked the nearest – no missiles or rockets on the hardpoints, no 30-mil in the autocannon – but then she struck lucky on the second. Its hardpoints were also bare, but the autocannon was topped up with what looked like a fresh belt.
Charlotte pulled open the hatch and climbed in, quickly checking the fuel gauge and finding it a quarter full. With a wide grin, she strapped herself in, fired up the APU, ran through the fastest flight checks of her life – and then started the bird up, as she glanced around outside, half expecting to get rushed by more runners. She’d be happy to deal with them – once she was off the ground.
The fierce metal bird hummed to life, then lifted powerfully off the deck, Charlotte simultaneously spinning it to face back toward the main prison complex. It seemed to respond to the controls slightly sluggishly compared to her own personal dragon. But it was all fine with her.
It’ll do the job, she thought as she continued to gain altitude, accelerated forward – and immediately spotted three more unsteady figures sprinting across the grounds, heading away from the main building and toward the perimeter.
Yeah. It’ll do just fine.
Grews Has Left the Building
CentCom Strategic Command Center
Eli hit the bottom of the stairs and skidded to a stop. Nicks was right behind him, followed by most of the remaining Marines. They spread out, splitting into their fire teams and moving swiftly across the large open reception area, and toward the various exits Eli had indicated.
There was no movement in the immediate area – most of the dead had been taken down as they entered the building, or in the fight that had raged when they moved out of the JOC. There was still a lot of ground left to cover, and many rooms and corridors to check, so Eli made his instructions simple.
“Each team take a wing. Clear it room by room, missing nothing. We have multiple FNs out there right now, and not one of them can make it out of this complex. Or we’re fucked.”
This was met with acknowledgements by each team leader, and they headed out and started their sweeps.
Eli moved into the middle of reception and took up a position that allowed him to monitor most of the corridors heading off into the various wings. The fire teams moved rapidly and smoothly out the exits, self-organizing, parceling themselves out among the ground-floor corridors, and Eli noted the position and direction of each in turn. The radio channel was silent – though that would change pretty quickly, as they started sending updates.
But for now Eli allowed himself a brisk nod of satisfaction.
This shit almost seemed to be going well.
* * *
Private Simmonds of second squad stepped out into the third-floor corridor and peered through his ACOG rifle sight into the brightly lit expanse of doors and interior windows. They had covered the two floors below quickly, and met little opposition, aside from a group of orderlies hiding in a room at the far end of the building. A dozen living people had stared back fearfully at them when they kicked the door in, their expressions melting into blessed relief. But there was an FN close by and on the move, one of them had said. They thought it had climbed to the upper floors.
After watching the group flee down the corridor toward reception, Simmonds and the other three Marines of his fire team headed up the stairs, taking the second floor quickly, again meeting no resistance. Now only the top floor remained, and Simmonds felt a prickle of anticipation run up his spine as they moved down the main corridor. There was noise coming from somewhere further on, and the instinct to rush forward was unbearable. But they weren’t going to make the mistake of leaving enemy in their rear and getting cut off, so every room got cleared as they advanced.
As they approached the noise, the four men aimed their short-barreled L85A2 assault rifles at the door and nodded to one other, preparing to go in. Simmonds kicked the door, and it gave way easily, revealing a room filled with utter carnage. Twenty feet away stood the FN, and in its hands was a decapitated head, which it seemed to be slamming against a closed door on the far wall. The rest of the body was spread across the floor and walls of the room. A breeze from outside hit the four Marines, and Simmonds saw that one of the two massive windows had been smashed out – a window that was supposed to be impact resistant.
Four assault rifles sang bloody murder, and the FN danced for a few seconds, twitching as the torrent of high-velocity 5.56 rounds cut it down. It fell to the floor with thunk, taking out a table nearby. Simmonds stepped into the room, avoiding the mess, and moved past the dead Foxtrot toward the far door.
“Anybody in there?” he said, removing his gloved left hand from his rifle’s vertical foregrip and knocking twice.
“Yes!” came a reply. “Are they dead?”
“Yes, the zombie is dead. You can come out.”
There was the noise of something heavy being dragged away from the door, and a clatter of falling objects, until finally the door swung inward to reveal a pale-faced man.
“They chased me in here,” he said. “I had to stack all this stuff up to barricade myself in.”
Simmonds frowned. There had only been one zombie in the room. “They?”
“Yes,” said the man. ”There were two of them, the mental ones. I heard them banging, and then heard the window crunch.”
Simmonds rushed over to the panel where the window used to be. Sticking his head out, he saw that thirty feet below was the spiderwebbed and badly cracked panel of glass.
Holy shit, he thought. One of the FNs must have literally bashed the window out of its frame. Now where was the second one?
He craned left and right out the window, scanning across the expanse of yard all the way out to the perimeter walls – and then he saw it. A hundred yards away, on the ground around a parked truck, lay two bodies. Beyond that, and just disappearing around the edge of a building and running full-tilt for the outside wall, was the dark figure of a Foxtrot. Simmonds brought his rifle up, but wasn’t fast enough. The manic figure vanished from view before he could put his sight on it.
He keyed his radio. “Eli, Simmonds.”
“Go,” said Eli.
“Yeah, we have a problem.”
“Care to be more specific?”
“One of the FNs got out of the building before we could engage it. Now it’s out in the grounds – and I think heading for the perimeter wall to the north.”
“Received.”
Their troop sergeant didn’t say anything else.
But he didn’t sound happy.
* * *
Damn it, thought Eli as he took off running, blasting into the ground floor of the newly built prefab building that was attached to the side of the old prison, on the north side.
“Did you copy that, LT?” he asked as he ran, dodging turned-over furniture, and making tracks for the doors at the far end, which he hoped would lead him out into the yard where the runaway Foxtrot was heading.
“I copy,” said Jameson. ”Just looking out the JOC now to see if I can get a bead on it. Wait, I’ve got it, it’s near the outside wire… nope I was too slow. Damn thing is fast and it’s gone up the side of the low building that abuts the wall. Eli – it’s jumped outside the perimeter. I repeat: it’s outside the wire.”
Double damn, thought Eli, as he passed three RMPs putting shots into the heads of fallen soldiers along the main corridor. He stopped at the main doors to the building, an
d saw that it led out onto another courtyard, and one without an exit to the main street. Seconds were passing with the sodding FN outside the complex, and the possibility of it attacking civilians on the street.
Gotta think faster…
He turned and bolted back down the corridor, skidding to a halt beside the three RMPs.
“Where’s the nearest exit to the street from here?” He presumed his tone, expression, and rate of travel made the urgency obvious.
The three MPs looked at each other.
“Errr… I think—” started one of them.
He’d been wrong. “Faster,” Eli barked. “I have a fucking FN outside the compound.”
Another guard pointed down the side corridor a few feet away. “That way. Then turn right. But any outside doors in the perimeter wall are usually locked nine different ways…”
Eli heard this last bit trailing faintly behind him, as he had already taken off at a bloody-minded sprint. He shoved through a set of double doors and burst out into another corridor, arms and rifle pumping wildly.
He took the first right, skidding on the tiled floor, and then blasted toward the large and solid wooden doors at the end of the corridor. As he approached, still accelerating, he could see they were thick and ancient, more like a gatehouse door in the wall of a medieval castle, and he could tell straight away that if it was locked he wasn’t going straight through by just charging and putting his shoulder in. He would probably knock himself cold. Nor did it appear all of the locks could be opened from this side without keys.
But the grizzled troop sergeant had other options.
He saw to it that he always did.
Now as he thundered forward, he slung his assault rifle, reached over his own shoulder, and drew the pistol-grip Benelli shotgun from the padded scabbard cinched to his backpack, where it had been riding undisturbed practically since the beginning of his military career. As he sped toward the huge doors and they swelled to take up his whole visual field, he leveled out the twelve-gauge, aimed at the locking mechanisms, and started squeezing the trigger and pumping the slide.
Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead Page 21
