* * *
Pope and Henno were still squaring away kit in their berth, while Homer was, as so often when off duty, God only knew where. Ali had simply evanesced, also as usual, disappearing and reappearing in different places, never seeming to move through the solid 3D world, but just ghosting her way around the aether. This ability was half the reason for her status as last best sniper in the world. The other half was that she virtually never missed, out to ranges of 2,000 yards and beyond.
“Looks like we’re in for some heavy weather,” said Pope, stuffing clothing in his footlocker.
“What’s that?” asked Henno. “The ocean crossing?”
“No. When we get there. Chicago. Three million walking corpses, in a high wind.”
“Don’t mind the wind. And the corpses we can handle.” Henno stuck his face into his open ruck, before adding, “As long as your boss doesn’t mind slotting ’em before it’s too late…”
Pope almost let this pass entirely. But he took a chance that he could smooth something over, rather than stirring it up. “How do you mean, brother?”
Henno came out with a double handful of his stuff, then sighed. “Sometimes I get the impression Handon is a little slow on the trigger. Something more than ammo conservation and noise discipline. You know what I mean?”
Pope did, actually. He just nodded, letting Henno go on.
“Made some remark the other week. Sumint that sounded like he thinks there are people still alive inside the dead bastards.”
Pope propped his rifle in the corner and took a deep breath. He lowered himself down onto the lower bunk, steepled his fingers, and pinned Henno’s eye. “You want the backstory?”
“Aye,” Henno said. “I always want to know about aught that might get me killed.”
Pope paused before going on. “I served on one of the Task Forces with Handon, in Iraq.”
“TF135.”
“Or whatever it was designated that week.” A mixed special mission unit (SMU) of Tier-1 and other special operators, plus a support, intel, and aviation apparatus, the Task Force, and another like it in Iraq, had been charged with hunting HVTs – “high-value targets.” This meant the worst of the worst of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Mahdi militia – tangos galore. Tango being the military slang term for terrorists. Pope went on.
“At that point, we were doing this incredible tempo of ops – out every night on kill-or-captures, bringing intel back, crunching it for the next target, then going out again. Sometimes several times a night.”
“Yeah, you were the ones kicking down all the doors – and killing all those civilians.”
“A few.” Pope knew how the Brits viewed the American ethos – which valued aggression more than caution, or public relations. “We went out one night to take down a safehouse. Hardcore AQ types, the intel said. Handon pointed out that this village had never been anything but helpful to us, no reason to think they were harboring AQ. Intel disagreed. We went out, it turned into a big firefight, we ended up killing everyone in the building.”
Henno didn’t look surprised by any of this.
“Next morning,” Pope said. “A bunch of the villagers came out to the FOB, carrying the bodies of young men we had killed. Handon wasn’t supposed to talk to them, but he did. A couple of grandmothers, tear-stained and half-crazed with grief, convinced him their grandsons were good kids who’d just gotten in with the wrong crowd. But now they were dead.”
“Yeah,” Henno said, “that’s the kind of shit you find out when you actually talk to people before shooting them. So Handon got religion or something because of this?”
Pope paused before answering. “Handon spent most of his career hardening himself against all the killing he had to do. Came to think of terrorists as non-human. Operating with the Task Force, night after night, you almost had to. It was the only way to keep functioning. But these grandmothers, and these dead boys… well, they made him doubt his whole methodology. He found he was no longer able to just write tangos off into some non-human category.”
“And now he feels the same about Zulus?”
Pope shrugged. “Who amongst us can prove him wrong?”
Henno had no answer to this.
* * *
Predator and Juice now emerged out on the flight deck, dressed out in physical training kit. They wanted to find the permitted running routes around this floating airport. They also wanted to announce themselves with a big Fuck you to the thousands of sailors onboard – their PT kit consisted of black shorts and gray T-shirts with “ARMY” in big letters across the front. (Juice had been an Intelligence and Communications officer with the Army Rangers before being headhunted by the Activity.) With Predator bulging out of his T-shirt and shorts, and Juice displaying way too much curly body hair around his, they both looked like Bruce Banner halfway into becoming the Hulk.
As soon as they hit open air, they seated their ballistic Oakley wraps (Juice also wore his permanent reversed ballcap) and took off at a fast jog. The open air and sea breeze felt fantastic, even with the sky gray and overcast. They could also see that even now the JFK was putting back to sea. The gangway was in, the mooring lines cast off, and they could sense what felt like the Earth moving beneath them – a nuclear-powered supercarrier getting underway.
Predator also noted that only one of the other ships in the strike group was pulling out with them – one of the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers. That seemed strange – a carrier generally needed its support ships around it to survive. But Pred queued this factoid to investigate later. Anyone in the military, at any level, is used to not being told all kinds of things.
The pair of them settled into a good eight-minute-mile pace around the edge of the flight deck – figuring someone would tell them if they ran somewhere that might get them killed. While they ran, they also talked around their deep breathing. Pred and Juice, though they hadn’t known each other before being put together on the North Korea mission, were getting a bit like an old married couple now. Most of their conversation consisted of retreads of stories they’d heard a thousand times, or observations on the deep silliness of life under both the military and the ZA.
“Hey, man,” Juice said. “Remember all those zombie movies, back in the day, where no one had ever heard of zombies? Like they lived in some universe where George Romero had never existed? What a load of bullshit.”
Predator laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, now that you mention it… nobody ever knew what they were dealing with – the dead would rise up and try to eat them, and they’d all be like – ‘What the fuck!’ Whereas anyone not totally cut off from pop culture would be like, ‘Zombies! Shoot ’em in the head!’ Oh yeah, and they always had some other name for them – like ’walkers’ or ’infected’…”
Juice turned to look at him sideways. “…or ’Zulus’?”
Pred chewed on that for a second. “Good point.”
“I don’t know.” Juice turned to spit off into the ocean. He chewed tobacco even when running. Amazingly, it appeared to make it all the way over the deck, and 60 feet down into the North Atlantic. “We probably should have predicted this. Between brain parasites… neurotoxins… mad cow disease and brain prions… neurogenic stem cells… we should have seen it coming. And with all the zombie fiction, it’s not like we can say it never occurred to anyone.”
“Maybe all the movies and TV shows and books were our way of getting ready.”
“Well, if it was, it worked out about as well as a dick sandwich.”
“True,” said Pred. “If there’d been just a few hundred guys on the ball, handier with axes and shotguns, at critical times and places, maybe all this could have been fucking headed off.”
That made Juice sad to think of it. All these months and years of horror, all the people gone, virtually all that humanity had built up laid low – that it might all have been unnecessary.
So he just ran, and enjoyed the feeling of still being alive.
Major Grews paced the floor, glancing at the radio operator every few seconds, his irritation growing by the minute.
“Call again,” he said. “Get him on conference.”
The comms officer tapped intently at his keyboard, his hands twitching nervously, but he kept it together. The major was always like this when things were tense. He could become insufferable if left waiting for too long.
Grews hated being stuck in an office, commanding from a chair. It just wasn’t his style. Despite the fact that he’d been ordered to stand back and cease leading from the front, he still yearned to be out there. This was the first real outbreak he’d had the opportunity to handle, even if you counted the defensive year when Zulus walking out of the water regularly threatened the coasts. Since then, there had been small outbreaks across the country, but this was different. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight minutes. Eight minutes and that damn plane would level half of the town, along with everything he had worked to rebuild. And CentCom wouldn’t give a damn if it meant losing a hundred infantry with it.
“I’ve got him, Major,” said the radio operator. There was a pop and a high-pitched buzz as the microphone picked up the speakers and fed them back.
“Bordell?” asked the major.
“Speaking, sir,” answered a voice. The signal was weak and dulled by static.
“Status.”
The was a cough from the other end. “Situation is stable, sir,” answered Bordell. “There are a few still wandering around, but the main concentration has been destroyed.”
Grews sighed heavily, feeling the flood of relief soothe his tattered nerves.
“Wait one, Bordell.” Grews turned to the second network operator sitting across the room, waiting.
“Tell them to stand down.”
“Yes, sir.” The operator nodded and flicked up his headset microphone.
“Three Acres actual orders stand down on the air mission.”
The major turned back to his microphone.
“Bordell. You still there?”
“Yes, sir. Still here.”
“Good work, soldier. Many casualties?”
“Only five of ours, sir. Civilian casualties total eight. But, unfortunately we lost everyone in the outgoing team that were in the hotel. Well, all but one.”
“Christ. That many?”
“Afraid so, sir. We have one survivor, a Captain Martin. Oh, and we also have one of the security detail from the tunnel.”
The major closed his eyes, once more feeling the pressure building between them.
“Clean up, Bordell. Tell everyone good job.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bordell?”
“Sir?”
“Send me this captain and the security bloke. If they check out, of course. I still have to send out my quota tomorrow.”
“Sir.”
“And get back here as soon as you can. We need to decide which squad is going instead. I have no choice on this. You know that, don’t you?”
There was a pause at the other end.
“Yes, sir.”
“Grews out.”
The line went dead. The major sat back in his chair and sighed. “Great. I have twenty-four hours to get another crew together or my arse is going to be in a sling.”
“Sir?” called the second operator.
“Yes?”
“CentCom confirms stand down on the air mission.”
“Good. Excellent.”
“But sir…”
“What now?”
“They said to inform you to prepare for a full-scale sweep of the area and also for an excavation team on the tunnel.”
“They what?”
“They are going to open the tunnel up, sir.”
“Why? What the hell was their reason?”
“They didn’t say, sir.”
“Get me CentCom and ask for Colonel Mayes.”
* * *
“Andrew, I have no choice. I’m under orders just like you are.”
“Bob. You know that opening the tunnel up is just crazy. We always knew it was a weak point.”
“Yes. I know that. But we didn’t deal with it as we should have done. You also know that. We have to get it right this time. It also means that we can clear up what was left behind. Don’t you want to do that?”
Grews exhaled heavily. The refugees. He had tried to put them to the back of his mind over the last two years, but the video surveillance from the tunnel still haunted him. They had expected some kind of riot at the French end of the tunnel when the gates were closed. But a full-scale assault by civilians, one that completely overpowered the already dwindling French security forces, was much worse than they had anticipated.
Their civil affairs advisor had told them that most French refugees would spill out into the streets and the harbors. And that the south of England should be reinforced on the coast to stop a wave of unauthorized entries by boat. But it didn’t happen that way – it happened much, much faster. The disease was already amongst those in the queues, in cars and vehicles backed up for miles.
So Grews had watched as the tunnel was overrun. He had watched as the mass of bodies pushed its way to the trains; trains that wouldn’t be running regardless of what anyone did. No fuel. No power. No train. The last one out had already left. In some ways, Grews thought the terminal being overrun had been inevitable, even though he hadn’t voiced the thought at the time.
Instead he had sat there, staring at the screens that showed views from the cameras dotted all over the complex. He had sat there watching, awestruck and, deep down, somewhat proud of those people who dared go into the tunnels themselves. He would never forget their determination and bravery, even when he had been forced to stop them. They couldn’t get across the Channel by train, so they were damn well going to walk the whole way.
Or so it had seemed.
“They won’t live more than a few weeks, even if they manage to stay in there and keep the dead from following them,” the security operator had said. The man was bald and fat and was sweating profusely as he sat there flipping through the camera points as Grews had ordered him to.
“What?” asked Grews, his attention not really shifting from the screen.
“No food, unless they have some with them,” continued the man, who looked like he could probably last a few months without food himself. “No water.”
“Indeed,” Grews had said, inwardly wishing the sweaty security guard would shut up, and damn sure he would swap him in an instant for any one of those poor folks running into the tunnel. If there was one thing Grews couldn’t abide, it was overindulgence, and this guy was off the scale.
“Oh, hang on,” the operator had said, and stopped switching cameras, shifting his hands to another terminal. He started flicking through lists on the screen, bright coloured lines flashing by, his eyes squinted above a deep frown.
Grews had leaned over, impolitely shunting the man’s chair so that he could reach the controls. Twenty minutes of watching and he’d already figured out how to flip through the cameras. Click. Click. Click. There they were, right down the tunnel by at least two miles. What the hell were they doing? Were they smashing a door down? Some kind of access route? There were at least thirty of them that had made it this far. He couldn’t tell the ages or genders. They were just shadowed figures in the dark, and some of them were small.
“Oh, God. They could.”
Grews snapped his head from the screen.
“Could what?”
“When we cut the power and closed the gates. There was a train outbound. They left it on the tracks because there was no time to get it to the French terminal and turn it around.”
“People? Are there people on it?”
“No. No, they would have evacuated. It’s freight.”
“What kind of freight? Why didn’t they just drive it backwards?”
“Hundreds of tons of canned goods, heading for Belgium by the
looks of it, and they couldn’t reverse the engine. It’s an old one, and no rear engine – and the front-engine type, to the best of my knowledge, wouldn’t be able to push that many carriages.”
“They just left the damn train on the lines, full of food supplies?”
“We were told to evacuate immediately.”
Grews had watched on those cameras over the days that followed, even after the security guard had not turned up for work a few days later, and then not again after that. Grews made it personal somehow.
Further back down the tunnel, a long way behind those few outliers who were far far more resourceful, thousands of living and dead were pouring into the tunnel. The living, mostly already infected, running from the dead that followed them. Grews had asked if they could send troops down before closing the tunnel, retrieve the few who had made it nearly all the way along the tunnel, had found the supply train, breached the maintenance corridors and disappeared from camera view… but the answer from on high had been no.
Close that tunnel, Grews had been told.
And then when they’d realized that the tunnel was filling with the dead, word came that it had been hit from the air. RAF bombers undid in just a few seconds what had taken decades of planning and construction. They tried to close the halfway gate, the one that had been put there for this very purpose, but the mechanism failed. The midway failsafe was closing, but it was closing at such a slow speed that it would take hours to shut, and by then the tunnel would be overrun.
The bomber hit the tunnel just three miles from Calais and the evacuation call had gone out to clear the area around the entrance. They had expected the floodwater to come spewing out at such a rate that hectares of countryside might become a marshland. Entire divisions were mobilised and sent to the area to prepare for a massive clean-up of thousands of dead and infected.
Grews had sat in front of those screens and watched, unable to do a single thing, as one by one the cameras blinked out from power loss. He watched as the water flooded different sections, and saw the mass of dead, and the undead, carried forward by the flood.
Thank God we collapsed the tunnel at this end. Or we would have just flushed half of the undead of France onto British soil.
Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain Page 11
