Handon moved over and hunkered down beside Ainsley, who pulled out a ruggedized tablet device. The two of them reviewed maps and drone video of the target area. They had an insertion to plan. Ideally, they’d plan it in some way that wouldn’t get them as jammed up as the SEALs were. Or maybe at least not as quickly. You can’t help anyone when you’re dead.
And you’re a positive menace when you’re undead.
* * *
By the time they got the five-minute warning in the air, the TOC had lost comms with the SEALs completely. Everyone knew what this probably meant. But everyone also knew enough not to jump to conclusions. Loss of radio contact wasn’t the same as death, or infection. Radio comms are fiddly, and they get fucked for all kinds of reasons. Fucked comms are more often the cause of getting killed, than the result.
Anyway, the rescue force had come too far to turn back now.
The red combat lights flashed twice – two minutes.
The helo flared down into a flat area in the dark and shadowed western ruins of Calais, near the Channel Tunnel entrance. Scattered debris was the only obstruction to their insertion. This bird was a hell of a lot louder than their normal ride, though, so the only tactic to play here was to come in low and fast, kiss the ground just long enough for the four operators to pile out and take off, and then for the bird and the soldiers to part ways fast.
By the time the Raider was zooming out to its stand-off marker offshore, the four-man team, back and shoulder muscles hunched up, rifles held expertly at the shoulder, moving fluidly and as a single organism, had slithered out of the open landing area and into the maze of abandoned buildings and the ruins and detritus of fallen Europe.
Correction: the buildings were abandoned only by the living. The dead still lived there. A mass of them were already making their way to the LZ, drawn by the fading noise of the helo. But by then the operators had gone.
As long as they kept quiet and moved with speed and perfect economy, they could, with a little luck, stay out of contact. At the very least, they’d avoid a firefight, and getting jammed up in a nexus of hungry dead bastards. The odd one or two, sometimes even the faster Romeos, stumbled upon and surprised, were never a problem. They could easily be dispatched with melee weapons.
Homer took point, moving like a man on a mission. Out front, not even slowing, he quietly topped three undead in the first minute of their movement – just wrong place, wrong time dead guys. Unusually amongst the operators, Homer eschewed the Samurai swords, carrying instead a boarding axe – an old pirate standby, like a long-handled tomahawk. Its bladed edge could cleave or remove heads; and the spike tip opposite it, when deployed expertly, could puncture a brainstem right through an eye socket.
A handful of dead went down without ever quite waking up.
They had just got between Homer and his brother SEALs.
* * *
The moving map GPS on Ainsley’s heads-up display told them they were 200 meters from the location of the SEAL team’s radio transponder. The captain touched Homer’s shoulder, and communicated the distance. Almost everything was touch and hand signals on live ops. Chatter cost lives.
The team, which had fanned out somewhat, slithered back into a tight line, and slipped into the dark entrance of the ruined building next door. All four paused to pull down their NVGs (night vision goggles) from their helmet mounts. By now, there was a little thin light outside. But the interior of this building would be much darker – and they wouldn’t dare turn on the lights even if they worked.
The four now executed their room-clearing drills as they made their way to the northwestern edge of the structure. As they hoped, sections of wall there had crumbled or been torn down. They paused at the edge of the adjacent structure for a full thirty seconds, to tune in to the new building. They didn’t hear anything as they passed through the vestibule – but did soon after that, freezing in place while they tried to make it out.
Whatever it was, it was in the next room over. This was also pretty close to the location of the SEALs’ transponder. (In the GPS-degraded era, with fewer SATs working less reliably, geo-location was a thornier problem.) The noise they heard could possibly have been whispering, or rustling. It could also have been shuffling, or feeding. This wasn’t necessarily the death of hope – the transponder could have shaken loose. Also, the rescuers already knew the SEALs had casualties. They could still have survivors.
Homer dictated the hard entry parameters with hand signs, and the other three stacked up behind him. On the count, they spilled into the room, splashing it with the IR lights mounted on their weapons – and making the room bright as day through their NVGs.
A SEAL in full assault kit knelt in the corner, over the prone form of another. Homer’s heart leapt with hope – that stupid, intransigent hope – thinking it was a medic working on a wounded SEAL. The “medic” turned around instantly.
And then issued a deep, hissing groan from between blue lips.
“Mikey,” Homer said flatly, flipping his NVGs up onto his head and staggering back.
The others saw that what used to be Mikey had two handfuls of his brother SEAL, which he resumed stuffing into his mouth. Handon grabbed Homer by the arm and hauled him back into the other room. Pope and Ainsley stayed inside to do what was necessary.
Later, Handon would say that he saw Homer’s faith flicker out in that moment.
Whether there was still a smoldering ember, something that could be fanned back into a cleansing flame, would be determined in the next few days.
SECUNDA MORTEM
The reunited Alpha team, all eight operators, sat now in two ranks of chairs, in one of the USOC briefing rooms at Hereford. Ainsley, Handon, Homer, and Ali in the front; and Pope, Predator, Juice, and Henno jostling for space in the rear. Absent from this room, but also very present, were the eight SEAL team members who would never be coming back from their one trip outside the wire.
Standing at the front, before a large digital whiteboard, the Colonel shared a brief look with Handon. Neither repeated Handon’s “keep this up and we’re going to lose a team” line from the day before. But each knew the other was thinking it. Captain Ainsley, seated beside Handon, looked away.
The Colonel wasn’t prone to big presentations or theatrics. So his opening line got the men’s attention: “They’re calling this one Operation Secunda Mortem.” His emotionless ice-blue eyes scanned the faces in the room. “And they think it might be the big one.”
The Colonel picked up a folder of papers and put his narrow ass on the desk in its place. “The pointy heads in Edinburgh have gone through the data you pulled out of Merck in Germany. The bad news is, it doesn’t look like Merck had shit. No breakthroughs, nothing promising in either therapeutics or vaccine research. As you already know, this virus is a double-stranded RNA virus, and a complete cocksucker. It took down humanity before we even made a dent in it.”
He flipped open the sheaf of papers to the first page. “So, Merck didn’t have shit themselves – but they did have some email that makes for a helluva read. As you’ll also know, all the labs and biotechs were collaborating like crazy sons of bitches, before the lights went out. IP protection went out the window when everyone’s ass was on the line. So a couple of scientists at Merck had some incoming mail – from an outfit that wasn’t even on our radar before today…”
He paused to pull a rectangular pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket, and refocused on the page. “NeuraDyne Neurosciences was, and I quote, ‘a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacturing, sales and marketing of bespoke biopharmalogics, as well as game-changing neuroscientific research.’” He looked back up to room. “Big on brain drugs. Breakthrough, fourth-gen antidepressants. Alzheimers. Behavioral genetics and molecular and cellular neuroscience.”
Juice raised one of his ham-sized hands. “How come we hadn’t heard of ’em before now?”
“Biggest names got attention first. And this one is def
initely a boutique outfit. Like fifteen guys in a white room.”
Ainsley started to look impatient. “What does the email say?”
The Colonel held his gaze for a bit, then looked back to his papers. “Says the team there had worked out a method of dsRNA interference – one that suppresses a critical gene in the virus. And as a result selectively induces apoptosis in any cells containing the viral dsRNA.”
“Apoptosis,” echoed Juice. “Cell suicide.”
“An ice cream cone for the big bearded man,” the Colonel said, tapping his pen. “They also claimed it rapidly kills infected cells without harming healthy, uninfected cells.”
“We’ve heard this kind of big talk before,” said Juice. “Does their shit work?”
“They claim it had demonstrated effect in multi-celled bacteria, mice – and chimps.”
This earned a couple of respectful whistles. Chimps share 98% of DNA with humans.
“So then we’re looking at a cure,” Captain Ainsley said.
The Colonel shook his head. “Only for those the virus hasn’t killed yet. More of an antidote – if you administer it quickly enough. But useless on the reanimated. Too late after it’s killed you.”
“As Watson said,” Ali intoned, “‘When you’re dead, you’re all dead.’”
Juice snorted. “Watson’s out there walking around somewhere.”
“Touché.”
“But more fucking importantly,” said the Colonel, looking impatient, as he often did with his precocious polymath commandos, “they claim their dsRNA-i technique can also be used in vaccine development. And that they were in the ballpark of making it work.”
A few beats of silence filled the room. An antidote would mean hope for the recently infected. But a working vaccine would be a way back for humanity. Salvation.
“Well let’s go get it, then,” said Handon. “Where?”
The Colonel cleared his throat and shuffled his papers again.
* * *
"Fugly Chi-town," said Pope in a goofy voice.
"Da Bears," said Juice, in another, looking off into a dark corner.
The six non-command Alpha team members had been ejected from the briefing room, and were now piled into one of their quad billets.
"Fucking Chicago? Seriously?" Predator asked rhetorically.
"As in Chicago, Illinois, USA?" asked Henno. He’d obviously heard of it. He just didn’t believe it.
Despite their joking, no one in Alpha was really finding any of this funny. It was nervous tension, gallows humor. Though Pope looked dead-level and composed as always. “A U.S. mission would be an incredible stretch of our capabilities and logistics.”
“Bloody suicide mission, more like,” said Henno.
“You lose it out there,” added Pred, “you’re in a world of hurt.”
No one had heard a peep out of North America for over a year. It was assumed to be wall-to-wall corpses, from sea to shining sea. Even worse than fallen Europe. An enormous frontier country of the dead.
“Ain’t no Quick Reaction Force on that continent,” said Juice. “Ain’t no humans.”
“We don’t know that,” said Ali in measured tones. “There could still be isolated pockets of survivors.”
Juice gave her a look. “What’s the last new episode of Mad Men you’ve seen broadcast?”
“Point taken.” Ali looked down sadly. “And it’s not just in the middle of the continent. It’s also inside a city of three million people. Three million dead people.”
All of the Alpha operators knew the score. Each of them had fought numerous urban battles, both before and after the end of civilization. From engagements going back to Mogadishu, to Beirut, and even before, they knew that urban areas were bad fucking news. Time, people, resources such as ammo, radio batteries, water, and food, cities had a way of burning through them all – usually much more quickly than expected.
Before the fall, major cities had been the scenes of epic set-piece battles between the living and the dead – and also amongst the living, as survivors battled one another for dwindling resources, control of which meant continued survival. So a city also presented the additional danger of friendly fire from any remnants of the living. If they’d survived this long, they didn’t do so by asking questions first and shooting later.
Cities were also the perfect setting for industrial accidents, raging fires, toxic spills, navigational snafus (anyone remember “the lost convoy” from Black Hawk Down?)… and that was aside from the simple goddamned population density. That alone virtually assured any visitors of a full-tilt rollicking Zombie Festival immediately upon arrival.
If you lost your mobility or initiative in a city, if you got in trouble or bogged down, you’d generally find yourself holed up in some large structure, barricaded in. And the thing about zombies is that once they are onto you, they just will not go away. You’re now in a siege, one of unlimited duration. And in a siege, the moans of the besiegers will bring more besiegers. And the newcomers never leave either. So you could theoretically trigger some kind of zombie singularity – and find yourself at the center of a mass of all the zombies on that entire continent.
And no matter how high your walls, or how many levels above the street you’ve barricaded… given enough Zulus, they will eventually climb on top of one another until they’ve surmounted whatever it is you’ve constructed.
And even if that didn’t happen, and even if you had supplies for a long siege… you could still be nicely hunkered down in your fortress, safe-ish – and then a fire breaks out. Enjoy your fire drill. Your rendezvous and evacuation point is down there, on the corner of Dead Guy Ave and You’re Fucked Street.
A somewhat stunned silence had now descended over the team.
“And what’s up with the op designation?” Predator said, finally. “Secunda Mortem? I opted out of Latin at Ranger School, but I’m pretty sure mortem means death.”
Homer looked up. He hadn’t spoken until now. “Secunda mortem – second death.” He looked back down to where he held his crucifix before him, pressed between his palms. “It’s a Biblical reference, Christian resurrection theology. ‘Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with him a thousand years.’ He looked up into the room again. “Revelations, verse twenty, chapter six.”
Predator snorted and stood. “I’ve gotta take a shit.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Juice, rising and following him out.
* * *
Ainsley, Handon, and the Colonel now sat in the latter’s office in the dim light. They were going over the high-level tactical options that had been produced by the planning staff so far.
“…Yeah, we could insert by air direct from here,” the Colonel said, leaning back in his chair. “We could just about pull off the logistics of the flight and the refueling. The problem is support.”
“Sir?” Ainsley said.
“Yeah, once you arrive in theater, you haven’t fucking got any. Not a sweet rat’s. Totally on your own. Now I know you Tier-1 guys have got a collective death wish. But being air-dropped, eight guys alone, into the middle of Zombie City U.S.A. might be too much for even you dubious sons of bitches.”
“Okay, so then it’s a sea voyage,” said Handon. “On what? Frigate? Destroyer?”
The Colonel didn’t answer. Handon tried, “Catamaran?” He didn’t know if the Waterworld reference would be lost on them.
The Colonel tapped his pen. “Carrier.”
“There are no carriers,” Handon said.
The Colonel tapped his pen once. “Carrier strike group.”
“Come on.”
“Carrier Strike Group Six. The USS John F. Kennedy.”
Handon squinted unbelievingly at the Colonel. “The Kennedy’s still floating. Seriously?”
“Seriously. But it’s been need-to-know until now.” The Colonel spared a look at the mission
status board mounted on his wall, cables snaking to the floor. “Basically, some people thought that it might become Noah’s freaking Ark – the last bastion of the living on Earth. Hasn’t come to that yet. And she’ll make a hell of a transatlantic cruise liner. Not to mention a hell of a forward operating base for your mission. About half her support ships are still floating, too.”
“Jesus,” said Ainsley.
“Just so,” said the Colonel. “This whole goat rodeo may prove to be an impossible job. Not one of you hardcases may be coming back. But if there’s any possibility of a cure, we’ve got no choice but to do it. Unless you’ve been sitting on a vaccine we don’t know about.”
Ainsley was thinking that it didn’t matter very much whether any of them came back. As long as they were able, somehow, to transmit back the secret to ending the plague.
The Colonel tilted his chair forward again, and spun around a map pack on the desk. “Okay, from the Atlantic coast to Chicago is too long a stretch for a helo insert, and we don’t need you going in there all noisy and waking the dead, anyway.” There was evidence that the dead went dormant when all prey in their region had been devoured. That when the last survivors went down, the undead world went quiet.
“So we’re thinking if you do a HAHO jump, the aircraft won’t even need to overfly the city… You fly in on the prevailing winds off of Lake Michigan and land right about here…” The Colonel stubbed a spindly finger on the map. “This is just a very early, high-level concept. I’m gonna get us all in a room with joint mission planning staff before the sun goes down tonight.”
The three men leaned in, and tried to imagine a way in.
And maybe a way out.
For everyone.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Wesley sat in silence, and spent the time monitoring the ashen faces opposite and on either side of him. The hum of the truck’s engine offered a little comfort, but his thoughts were scrambled.
Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain Page 9
