The Fallen

by Jack Ziebell

  The next morning he was woken by a loud banging on the metal door. The cook was yelling, “Wake up, Tim wake up, they are at the gate, they are climbing the walls.”

  Tim threw on a pair of jeans. “Hold on I’m coming.” He opened the door to see the cook, who looked distressed. He was holding a marine’s rifle and had a new handgun tucked into his belt. Tim grabbed his own gun from on top of a filing cabinet and shut the door, but not quickly enough to prevent the cook’s eyes from peering over his shoulder to where his wife lay sleeping naked behind him. He locked the door and looked at the cook. “What’s going on?”

  The cook shook his head and motioned for him to follow him down the hallway to the stairwell. “They just went wild out there, banging on the gate, trying to climb over.”

  They ran across the compound to the entrance area. The first thing Tim noticed was a man caught in the razor wire topping the wall next to the gate. The man was struggling to get free but was becoming increasingly entangled and was already bleeding from multiple lacerations. Then he saw that a wrist was impaled on one of the spikes topping the gate. The gate obscured the owner of the wrist who was hanging from it on the other side, as the hand would occasionally jerk as if trying to break free. Finally he noticed a smell that made him instantly furious. He turned to the cook. “What have you done?”

  The cook looked sheepish. “Nothing, nothing, I mean I was just grilling some of the steaks that’s all, they were going bad and they needed to be…”

  Tim tried to control the anger that was welling up from inside him, wanting to break free and strangle the cook; it took all of his effort but he managed to remain outwardly calm in the face of such life threatening stupidity. Sighing and shaking his head, he put one hand on the cook’s shoulder and gripped it tightly. “Look, it’s the smell of the meat, that’s what’s bringing them here, put it out, and take whatever you have done inside and seal it in something. Then get back here.”

  The cook nodded, realising he had made a mistake and ran back towards the embassy building where Tim could just make out smoke gently rising from a BBQ. Tim jogged over to the tower next to the gate and climbed the internal ladder to the guard booth that overlooked the street. He peered over the rail so that only the top of his head and eyes were visible. Before him he saw a hoard of fifty or more people scrambling outside the gate. He could see the man hanging from his wrist trying to reach up to pull himself free but his strength had already gone and his free arm grasped weakly. He’d either climbed on somebody’s shoulders or worse, been lifted up there.

  The strong hinges and bolts looked like they would hold but bodies from the crush were starting to pile up at the foot of the gate and surrounding walls, enabling others to clamber on top and reach higher. It would not be long if they continued this way before they would be able to clamber over the lifeless ramp and get into the compound. He stood up in the guard tower and yelled at the mob, “Hey! Get back! Back!” He didn’t know if they understood but the yelling seemed to stop the crush for a moment before the crowd surged forward once more. He fired a warning shot into the air but it had little affect. He decided to try something else. He aimed at the man caught in the wire and pulled the trigger. The man stopped struggling and fell back, suspended limply by the razors. The crowd did not seem to make the connection between the sound of the gun and the impact of the bullet. He yelled again to get their attention and when some looked up at him he shot the man hanging from the gate in the leg. The man screamed and the crowd drew back. He yelled again and fired several rounds into the ground in front of them. They retreated further, until a large woman stepped out ahead of the rest and shouted something; nothing more than a series of triumphant sounds but the crowd stopped retreating. He would have to do it, he had to make them fear him or they would not stop. He yelled out once more and aimed his rifle at the woman. She stared back at him defiantly and opened her mouth to respond with a new cry but she hit the ground before she could and would never speak another word. The crowd let out a collective scream and there was a stampede to escape from the devil in the tower. Several more people were trampled in the rush. Tim slumped down and sobbed but was brought back to his feet by the sound of gunfire.

  He looked over the rail to see the cook had climbed the inside of the gate and was shooting wildly with a handgun at the retreating crowd; he could see the man smiling. Before he could say anything the cook had emptied his clip and jumped back down from the gate. Tim climbed down the ladder and as he reached the bottom he felt the cook slap him on the back. “Woah, you did good back there man, you like totally nailed that bitch, one shot, one kill – brutal.” The cook was Generation Kill, brought up by sound bites and first-person shooters; to him this was just one more video game. Tim gave him a cold look and walked back to the embassy building.

  The cook ran after him. “Hey did I say something wrong? Did I offend you man? You’re like me, you just did what you had to, right?”

  Tim said nothing and kept walking.

  The cook stopped. “Yeah fuck you, you British fuck, and your crippled wife.”

  Tim ignored the cook and closed the embassy door behind him. He went into the kitchen and found the steaks that had been cooking, took three and went back upstairs to the strong room. He locked the door behind him and gave a steak to Sarah whose eyes lit up. The other two steaks lay sweating on a plastic bag in front of him but he wasn’t hungry.

  Chapter 27

  Brian paced the lobby near the main entrance. Marius and Zakorski had disappeared - to the living quarters he guessed - leaving him the lone civilian in a military world. The pens had been finished several hours ago but there was no sign of the prisoners or the vehicles that had gone to fetch them. It was getting dark and the people around him were starting to worry. A heavily armed search party had been hurriedly organised and was about to leave when over the radio of a soldier standing nearby came a panicked voice, “We’re coming back, we’re coming back, we lost the lieutenant, the lieutenant’s dead.”

  The doors were opened and a single truck and Humvee drove inside, skidding to a halt. Brian noticed blood on the side of the vehicles. As the soldiers got out, he saw some were badly wounded and most had scratches and bite marks on their hands and faces.

  “There were just so many of them, they overran us, they killed the lieutenant and Phillips and Tang, and Davis…” said one of the men, his voice trailing off as he wandered aimlessly away from the truck.

  Brian moved to the back of the truck. There were writhing bodies stacked inside, wrists and feet bound with cable ties; about eighteen women. He noticed that the feet at the bottom of the pile were not moving and knew he had to do something. “Hey get these people out of here, they’re suffocating!”

  Four soldiers ran over and started unloading the truck. Even under all the grime it was clear to Brian that the women had been selected for their age and looks. Those who were moving had given up trying to break free of their binds but some still tried to bite the soldiers unloading them. A bruised and bloodied private holding a bottle of water and shakily smoking a cigarette walked over to Brian and stood next to him, watching the women being unloaded.

  “I hope they were worth it,” said the private, “I told them not to be too picky, but they wouldn’t listen. We almost had the first truck loaded when we got mobbed; pressed in so tight I couldn’t lift my weapon. Baker managed to pull me up through the window and we just ploughed our way out in the truck. The others weren’t so lucky. One thing’s for sure, I’m sure as hell not going back out there to do that again.” The private took one last look at the truck, threw his cigarette on the ground and walked away.

  Three of the women hadn’t made it, the rest were taken to the pens, where Marius and Zakorski had returned and were co-ordinating the confinement. They had been expecting to put several people in each but with so few it meant the women had individual cells. Zakorski looked concerned by the selection process that had taken place.

  “I thought it w
as a rescue mission, not selection for a breeding programme,” said Marius. If it was a joke, Zakorski wasn’t laughing.

  One of the soldiers assigned to her team, a small man holding a broom, leered at the captives. “Yeah, so do we get to pick by rank, because you know a lottery would be fairer.”

  Zakorski pulled out her side arm and pointed at the soldier. “If anyone says another word about these women, I will shoot them myself.”

  “Is there a problem Captain?” said the Brigadier, who had apparently come to inspect the cargo personally.

  “I thought we were taking people for re-integration Sir,” said Zakorski.

  “We are Captain, indeed we are. Carry on – and Zakorski clean the prisoners, they stink,” said the Brigadier, eying the cages before disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.

  Once the Brigadier was out of earshot, Zakorski turned to Brian and Marius. “This is getting worse by the minute, we’ve got to do something.”

  “There is nothing we can do, at least not for now,” said Marius.

  “Well we can’t just let this happen Marius, we’ve got to do something,” said Zakorski.

  “Like what?” said Marius, “Stage a mutiny? Would you be the mountain queen once the king is dead? The only thing holding this place together is military discipline; once that has gone, you won’t be just dealing with a mad General or sadistic Brigadier - you’ll be dealing with a couple of hundred armed men, each with his own idea of how things should be run. The way I see it is we have two choices; we can either stay, or we can try to leave.”

  “What about the women?” said Brian.

  Marius had clearly already made a decision. “If we leave, we can’t take them with us, they’re too dangerous and there’s too many of them; what are we going to do, keep them on a leash? I don’t think releasing them back into the wild is the kind thing to do either, do you Brian?”

  “Look, I just don’t want to go back out there,” said Brian, “Marius, I’m not going back out there.”

  “Do you want to stay here and be part of this?” said Marius.

  “Well, no I…” said Brian.

  He placed his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “My grandfather was in the German army. He was a good man, a loyal soldier but he was transferred to an SS Unit. He saw the things they did, the things they were doing. He knew he couldn’t be part of it and he knew he couldn’t stop them either.”

  “What did he do?” said Zakorski.

  “He escaped, he fled to Poland, and was shot by the partisans.”

  “We can’t just walk out the front door, I would be shot for desertion if we were caught,” said Zakorski, “And I’m not sure either of you would fare much better.”

  “Then there’s the small matter of the crazy world beyond the front door,” said Marius, “If half those soldiers didn’t make it back alive, what chance do we actually stand if we do manage to escape?”

  “Well I didn’t sign up for this; rape, pillage and gassing my own people. They may have lost their humanity but they’re still humans,” said Zakorski.

  Brian looked at the women in the cages, most of them were curled up on the floor and crying. “Are you talking about the savages outside or the ones in uniform?”

  At that moment the radio operator from Zakorski’s team ran up to her with an astonished look on his face. Out of breath, he didn’t even notice the women. “Captain, Captain, you need to come to the radio room now.”

  Zakorski looked puzzled. “Have you picked something up Private?” She was expecting him to say he’d heard some ham radio survivalist who’d just crawled out of his private bunker.

  The Corporal nodded, “It’s a sub Captain, the USS Jimmy Carter, she’s moored off the Pacific Coast.”

  “A sub!” She couldn’t believe it.

  A soldier standing nearby overheard and yelled the news to the rest of the men and a cheer went up. Brian followed Zakorski, Marius and the Corporal to the radio room and Zakorski picked up the headset. “This is Captain Zakorski at NORAD, who am I receiving, over?”

  The Corporal turned a dial so the rest of them could hear the reply.

  “This is Captain Adams of the Seawolf-class submarine USS Jimmy Carter, good afternoon NORAD. Glad that you guys are still with us. We’re moored one nautical mile off the San Francisco coast.”

  Brian couldn’t believe that they had travelled across half of America and now the sub had arrived at nearly the exact point from which they had left.

  “We have on board Admiral Thompson of the New Zealand Navy, we have been sweeping the coast for survivors, over.”

  “Did you find any survivors, over?” asked Zakorski.

  “We found plenty, just none that I would want to risk taking aboard this boat ma’am. You’re the first sane person we’ve spoken to since we arrived two days ago, over.”

  “Everywhere our scouts have been it’s the same. But New Zealand, Australia, they’re unaffected, over?” said Zakorski.

  The radio crackled, “New Zealand is unaffected, so is southern Australia, but it seems like the north of the country is down. Both countries had some electrical damage. They have their own problems to deal with. How many of you are there? Over.”

  “Two-hundred and sixteen military personal and two civilians,” she looked at Marius and Brian, “scientists, over.”

  “Are you secure, can you last a few more weeks, over?”

  “Yes, for now, we are secure and have provisions to last us at least six months, over.”

  “Ma’am, we can take fifty of you with us now back to Devonport Naval Base, in Auckland New Zealand. That is our temporary base of operation, we rendezvoused with the USS Los Angeles in the mid-Pacific, she’s on her way there now. Once we have dropped off the first fifty we will be able to return a month later, when we have re-supplied, for another fifty. We’ll continue that way until you’re all safe with the Kiwi’s, sorry Admiral, New Zealanders, over.”

  “That sounds like a plan, we’ll,” but before Zakorski could finish her sentence the General entered the room and grabbed the microphone.

  “This is General Higgs of the U.S. Army, who am I speaking with, over?”

  “Captain Adams of the USS Jimmy Carter, General, Sir, over.”

  “Captain Adams,” the General smiled, “I believe that according to rank that makes me the commander here, unless you’ve got a US Navy Admiral onboard too.”

  “Yes, Sir. I mean no, Sir, we don’t have a US Navy Admiral with us. Over,” said the Captain.

  “And back in this Devonport Naval Base, do you have anyone there above your rank Captain Adams?”

  “No Sir, the highest rank is Captain, Sir. Over.”

  “How many sailors do you have aboard that boat Captain?”

  “One hundred and forty-eight, including myself, Sir. Over.”

  “Well Captain, we could do with a few more hands around here, I suggest you take that boat up through Lake Michigan, moor up and make your way to Cheyenne, this country won’t fix itself.”

  “But Sir, I was just telling your Captain that we are ready to evacuate you and your men to safety, it might take some time but…”

  “Now you listen to me Captain, when you are a US marine fighting for your country on home turf, you don’t retreat and you don’t get rescued. We might be all that’s left of this great nation and if we are, I’m not about to hand it over to a bunch of crazies and savages. You are to park that sub and report to me. There’s work to be done Captain.”

  There was a long pause, as if a discussion was taking place on the other end of the radio.

  “Sir I have conferred with Admiral Thompson of the New Zealand Navy, he is in agreement that this is a rescue mission and should remain so. Under Navy regulation four-fifteen, in times of war, should the chain of command be broken, a Captain has full-jurisdiction of his ship.”

  “Don’t quote that Navy bull-shit at me, Captain, I am the chain of command and you are speaking to me right now. If you disobey this direct or
der I will have you shot for desertion. Do I make myself clear Captain? Over.”

  “So be it,” said the Captain. “We will continue our sweep of the Pacific Coast for two days and after that remain within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge for a further five days, if anyone should wish to return with us. Good day General.”

  The radio clicked off, and the General shook the microphone. “Captain? Captain!” He looked at Brian, Marius, Zakorski and the radio operator, his face red. “Nobody mentions this to anybody, if you are asked you are to say the sub has gone to look for more survivors in Washington, via the Cape of Good Hope and will continue from there on to Europe.” He looked specifically at the radio operator. “If anyone tries to make contact with that boat again, you will report it to me immediately, is that clear?” As the General left the room with his aide he shook his head and cursed under his breath. “God damn navy faggot cowards”.

  Brian couldn’t believe it. “Did I just hear that correctly? Someone offered to rescue us and take us to the last bastion of civilisation on the planet, and the General said no?”

  Zakorski gave him a look and tilted her eyes at the radio operator, who was sitting with his back to her. “I think the General has a point Brian, America won’t rebuild itself, we’ve got to start somewhere, so why not here? Let’s get some coffee, there’s work to be done.”

  They left the radio room and when they were sure they were alone Zakorski spoke. “That sub is our only hope; it’s that or we go hole up in the mountains and hope that neither the General nor anyone else finds us.”

  “Well as much as I like your fine company Zakorski, being stuck in a cabin in the woods with you and Brian for eternity sounds worse than having your brain wiped. My vote is with the sub, is there anyone else in here we can trust?”

  “I’m not sure and I’m not sure if we should risk it either; patriotic loyalty is a funny thing, I never could quite understand it.”

  Marius smiled. “Hey you were the one who joined the military.”