Arisen, Book Four - Maximum Violence

by James, Glynn

  “Of course I am,” Brady said. “But… my coffee’s gone. All my coffee-making supplies…”

  Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, thought Fick. What were the Alpha guys going to think of them with talk like that?

  Looking to his other side, he could see the strange cowering girl, curled up only a few feet away with the arm of Ali, the woman sniper, wrapped protectively around her. From within this embrace, the girl looked up and inexplicably locked eyes with Fick across the dim cabin. He held her gaze for a moment, two people connected by absolutely nothing, as far as Fick could tell. He finally looked away, shaking his head. He didn’t even know what she was all about.

  But he figured someone would explain it to him at some point.

  He felt the gentle rise and fall of the aircraft around him as it rode the winds, and the cool breeze from outside flitted through the cabin. They were airborne – and they were heading home.

  They were going to make it.

  As Fick let his head fall back again, looking forward to not going anywhere, or shooting anyone, or being blown up, or running his old ass up and down any stairs for a while, he saw Sergeant Major Handon walking back toward him from the front of the plane. He had been on the flight deck trying to raise the JFK. Fick decided to maintain his current position, which was flat on his back, as Handon arrived to tower over him.

  “Well?” Fick said, looking up.

  Handon gazed down at him, his face expressionless and inscrutable. “I got Drake.”

  “And?”

  “He says they’re about to be in some real pretty shit there.”

  Fick just shrugged. Whatever this new disaster was, it wasn’t happening here, and it wasn’t happening to them. And Gunny Fick didn’t have to deal with it, at least not right this second. “Did he have orders for us?”

  Handon paused before answering. “Yeah. He said, and I quote: ‘You’re going to have to jump for it. But congratulations on your escape from the frying pan. Good luck, and God be with you all.’”

  Fick just sighed, and felt around for a helmet to pull down over his eyes. He knew he had at least two hours before further miracles were going to be required of him. Letting the weight of his own eyelids pull them down, he heard Handon walk away.

  And he let the beautiful hum of their freedom bird lull him off to sleep.

  Stormfront

  On Board the JFK

  He sat staring dead-eyed into the mirror, as he had almost every day for over a year.

  He was trapped there, in his own head, his mind locked up with his memories and his own paranoid thoughts. He didn’t see the gnarled face that stared back at him, its beard grown to nearly six inches, unkempt and straggly. And he didn’t notice the sunken, deep-set, and bloodshot eyes, his gaze stricken and pained.

  What the Captain of the JFK saw was ghosts.

  He ate sometimes, never questioning where the tray of food outside the door came from, and never really paying much attention to what was on the plate. He would sit and stare at that mirror as his hands auto-piloted the food into his mouth. He drank water from the tap sometimes, leaning forward and sticking his head in the bowl, but he didn’t wash. Somehow his body knew that it needed the food and the water to survive, but all else had long since been forgotten, cast aside as the mind forgot the body.

  The room stank of human waste, its occupant having abandoned all thoughts of hygiene long ago. And since the Captain never allowed anyone to enter, the mess wasn’t going to be cleaned up any time soon. Trays of food lay discarded in piles, drying in the dusty air. If the suite of rooms, which had once been as plush as many high-class hotels, hadn’t had its air cycled through a conditioning unit, it would have crawled with flies.

  Not that the Captain would have noticed even that.

  It seemed a long time since anyone had even knocked on the door or called in to ask if he was okay. Six months, perhaps. Yet the tray of food was there twice a day, set out by someone he never saw or heard.

  He thought of home and he thought of his two children and his wife. The mirror revealed their smiling faces, animated as the two small boys ran around a garden that existed only in memory, watched over by the tall and graceful figure of their mother. But over the months and days the faces of those three in the mirror had blurred and become unrecognizable. He couldn’t seem to remember how they looked anymore.

  The constant question that echoed around his troubled mind returned. Why hadn’t he just packed up and gone home? He could have done it during that last port call, before the fall. He’d have been gone before anyone even knew. He’d have been home when the whole world shut down, and it wouldn’t have mattered if he died there along with everyone else. With his family.

  What had stopped him? Was it duty? Had he become so engrossed in his job as commander of the Kennedy and its strike group that he had forgotten all else?

  And what the hell was that noise?

  His vision of the two small figures wavered for a moment, and he looked around his imaginary garden, into the distance, at the horizon. There was something wrong with that horizon – a deep, thick smudge of darkness that seemed out of place on a bright and sunny day. He looked at his wife, and saw that her face was pale and she was no longer smiling.

  He blinked once, heavily, then rubbed his eyes. His vision cleared and he saw the same old face staring back at him, his own face. He frowned, not even sure who the person looking back at him was anymore.

  Was that a rumbling noise? It wasn’t the ship’s engines – he had tuned out that noise a long time ago. There it was again, far in the distance; a deep roaring, or hissing.

  He stood up and cast around at the room, for the first time in many months snapping out of the daze that had consumed him. The noise was still there, far at the back of his senses, and very faint, but he could still hear it. He stumbled across the cabin, cursing the mess, then unlocked the outside hatch, grasped the handle, and turned it. He paused there, steeling himself to face the world outside.

  The corridor beyond was littered with debris, a stark contrast to how it had been the last time he had looked out. As he walked down the narrow companionway, he gazed with puzzled curiosity at the things that had been abandoned here. Sheets of paper lay crusted with dirt; a pile of empty folders, stacked against a wall and left to gather dust. These things would have been cleared away once, but it seemed no one bothered anymore.

  He passed no one on his walk up to the observation deck, and this surprised him more than the discarded crap. The ship should be bustling with activity, yet there was no one. As he made his way up the last flight of stairs to the exit, he thought he heard voices and footsteps in the distance, but then the noise had gone.

  He turned the handle of the hatch that led outside, and took a deep breath as the sea air hit him. It was the first time he had felt that breeze in a long time, and he had missed the smell, the feel of it. He closed his eyes, dazzled by the glare. There was no one on the observation deck, but he could see movement out on the flight deck below – a maintenance crew busy at work, but he couldn’t make out what they were working on. He crossed the short distance to the railing and leaned against it, trying to focus his blurred vision, to resolve what they were doing. But as his sight cleared and the world came into focus, he saw something else – something that made his stomach lurch and his heart beat faster.

  He turned and peered out silently at the expanse of solid land that lay ahead, out beyond the prow and the front edge of the flight deck. And the dark line that he had seen in his visions in the mirror was there again, right in front of him now, spanning the entire panorama of the horizon. He sidestepped, grabbed at the telescope fixed to the railing, looked through it, and focused in on the dark line.

  The horizon was alive with movement. Many thousands or even millions of dark shapes tumbled over one another, subsuming the crumbling buildings before them, structures obscured by the dead as they surged across the landscape, climbing over and on top of one another, pushing forwar
d, thrashing and clawing. He dialed in tighter and saw those in the lead, the faster-moving ones, crossing the last mile of land between the horde and the water, sluicing between the buildings and through the streets. Finally his focus stopped on the beach itself, where a few scattered figures already raced across the sand and plunged into the sea.

  And the Captain of the USS John F. Kennedy realized with a sickening certainty exactly where the black storm of undead was going.

  It was headed straight for his ship.

  Love this book? Share the love, support independent authors, and make us your best friends forever, by posting a quick review on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Thanks! - Glynn & Michael

  Want to be alerted when the next ARISEN book is released? Just drop an e-mail to arisen@glynnjames.co.uk and we’ll keep you updated. (And we’ll never share your address or use it for anything else.)

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  Come back and live through the beginning of the end of the world in

  ARISEN : GENESIS, the riveting and bestselling ARISEN prequel.

  Thanks and Acknowledgements

  Michael

  This author wishes to thank Anna Kathleen Brooksbank, (the eternally wise) Mark George “Mr. Pitliv” Pitely, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Alexander Montgomery Heublein, Amanda Jo Moore, Michael and Jayne Barnard, and the indispensable e (AKA the e-reader).

  A nod and debt of gratitude to William C. Martell, and his excellent book, The Secrets Of Action Screenwriting. While I’m at it, thanks to William Hauge for the fantastic Writing Screenplays That Sell – not well-titled, it’s actually the second-best book on story-craft I’ve ever read – and my notes from which I reference before every book I write. And, last and perhaps best, Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. These three guys know story. (Screenwriters generally do.)

  There are way too many military memoirs and nonfiction accounts to cite them all (see the backs of my D-BOYS books for that bibliography), but since the Marines were so out front in this one, I’m especially indebted to Evan Wright’s amazing Generation Kill (the HBO miniseries rocks, too) and Fred Pushies’ MARSOC: U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command. The discerning Gen-Kill fan won’t have failed to notice that I borrowed a number of character traits from the Marines in First Recon, and one or two good lines. Thank you very much indeed, Nate, Fruity Rudy, Espera, Iceman, and Person. God bless you all.

  Thanks to Brandon Webb and all the guys at (the also indispensable) sofrep.com.

  Thanks to Klayton of Celldweller, for contributing a totally ass-kicking soundtrack for writing this book. Also, I borrowed a couple of lines, without permission, from his awesome Wish Upon a Blackstar album. They just took up residence in my brain, and insisted on migrating to the page.

  Special thanks to Daymo, for free consulting support on British Army voice procedure and squaddie speak; plus thanks for his service.

  Super extra special thanks to Slayer 155, for his unflagging support, promotion, free mil-tech consulting – and especially for 20+ years of awesome and extremely distinguished service.

  Also, every thanks I’ve got to the other men and women of the American and British special operations communities – who train like professional athletes, perform like minor gods, and lay it all on the line every day in the defense of freedom and decency. There are no books without you guys. (Also probably no western civilization to have books in.) I urge readers to support the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides full college scholarships to the children of fallen special operators.

  Glynn

  In addition to everything he said…

  Thanks to all of the James’s – Julia, for your patience and encouragement, and my pipsqueaks, for just being you (mini me).

  To my parents and my brother for not being too surprised that I write crazy fiction, and for telling me it’s cool.

  To Bill, Sara, Billy, Jim & Jean for taking me seriously and never doubting that I could actually do this, and for demanding signed copies when I thought that whole idea was daft.

  To Jacqui, for patience and editing expertise beyond the call.

  To everyone who reads the books (my own, Michael’s, and the Arisen series) for being awesome. Without you folks and your encouragement and support, this series wouldn’t exist.

  To Neil Gaiman, for reminding me to Make Good Art.

  And lastly, thanks to memories, and hopes, and dreams. Don’t forget any of them. Ever.

  A world fallen – under a plague of 7 billion walking dead

  A tiny island nation – the last refuge of the living

  One team – of history’s most elite special operators

  The dead, these heroes, humanity’s last hope, all have...

  Fans of the bestselling ARISEN series are calling it "a non stop thrill ride", "unputdownable", "the most original and well-written zombie novels I have ever read", "riveting as hell – I cannot recommend this series enough", "the action starts hot and heavy and does NOT let up", "astonishingly well-researched and highly plausible", "non-stop speed rush! All action, all the time – got my heart racing", "A Must Read, this book was a hell of a ride", and "may be the best in its genre."

  Alpha team will return in

  ARISEN, BOOK FIVE – EXODUS

  There is a place where nightmares are real. It is a dark and terrifying place, hidden from the world we know by borders that only the most unfortunate of souls will ever cross.

  James Halldon woke up in the dark, alone, without any food or water, without a clue where he was, and with no memory of where he came from.

  It only got stranger…

  Readers are calling the bestselling DIARY OF THE DISPLACED series "fast-paced, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining", "utterly compelling from beginning to end", "a fantastic book – gripping from the very first couple of lines", "ghosts, zombies, London buses and even an evil nemesis. What’s not to love?!", "truly magnificent", "the best book I’ve read in a long time", "one of the finest-written stories you will ever read", "a brilliant series – right up there with Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker", and "simply perfect… absolutely enjoyable from start to finish."

  They are the most capable, committed, and indispensable counter-terrorist operators in the world.

  They have no rivals for skill, speed, ferocity, intelligence, flexibility, and sheer resolve.

  Somewhere in the world, things are going horrifyingly wrong…

  Readers call the D-BOYS series "a high-octane adrenaline-fueled action thrill-ride", "one of the best action thrillers of 2011 (or any year for that matter)", "a riveting, fast paced classic!!", "pure action", "pretty much the definition of a page-turner", and "hi-tech and action in one well-rounded explosive thriller."