by J. Thorn
It turned out that the terror plot had actually been against a half-dozen civilian aircraft, with multiple terrorist cells that needed to be taken down. The total air ban in the UK stretched out to over a week. The tightened security also slowed train and ferry traffic to a trickle.
What no one at the time could have known was that these terrorist attacks of 11/11, coming too late in the day ever to be really infamous, ultimately saved Britain. By cutting off all long-haul air travel and immigration into the country, just at the most critical time, and by sheer luck, they also cut off the most rapid method by which the virus spread.
In the few days that followed, the plague reached a global tipping point – much more rapidly than anyone could have predicted. The majority of victims went down before they even had any idea what was going on. By the time the horrible truth started to get out, the dead outnumbered the living. And the downfall of mankind was more or less a foregone conclusion by then.
The ban on air travel, and the reduced ground travel, didn’t prevent the virus getting into Britain. It just gave them an indispensable few extra days to work out what the hell was going down – and to hunker down against it.
Many infected came in on trains and ferries. But by that time, most Britons were locked up in their homes, wearing thick clothing and carrying weapons when they went out. Thus the virus never reached that tipping point in the British Isles. The military was able to squash the biggest outbreaks, impose martial law in the cities, and hunt the small packs of zombies that roamed the countryside.
And when the final fall started to come, when the panic drove the waves of refugees toward Britain, both the healthy and the infected, with the millions of dead pushing behind them… the UK just kept the steel shutters locked down. And reinforced the hell out of them.
Ali for one knew that people will take to the streets and riot after three days without food – which meant we were all nine meals away from anarchy. But now she, and the whole world, had seen it play out in real time. Since then, Ali hadn’t swapped two words with any child in the ZA without recalling that chilling exchange from the film Aliens: “My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones… Why do they tell little kids that?” “Most of the time it’s true.”
What a crapsack world we’ve inherited… she thought bitterly.
* * *
Without quite realizing how she got there, Ali found she had the edge of her sword pressed up against Pope’s throat – and the man himself pressed into the corner of the dojo, bleeding from some kind of light head wound, which dripped from under his helmet and face guard.
“Your point,” he said, breathing smoothly but deeply. “Nice one.”
Tier-1 guys tended not to cry foul. And they definitely didn’t complain.
Ali withdrew her sword with a start, and gave her brother operator a hand up.
She made a mental note to reserve her angst and rage for the dead.
NEVER WATCH THE NEWS
The problem with an armed camp, Homer thought to himself, is not the enemy outside the gates. It’s the people inside – and never being able to get away from them. Of course, on those occasions when he had been posted to an ocean-going vessel, he had got used to being crammed in belowdecks. But there was still always somewhere to escape to – a deserted stretch of gangway abeam… the forecastle on the night watch…
And better yet, back on land in Coronado, a headland or spit of sand at ebb tide could be its own private vault of Heaven.
But here… well, the nearby Malvern Hills of Herefordshire called to him, from so very close outside the fortified walls. But there was no going out there. Not for a nice evening stroll, anyway. But Homer was sure he could feel God’s presence out there. Even amidst all this death.
He was actually alone now, but not the right kind of alone. He decided to take a turn around the base. Just twenty minutes for himself. Then he’d start making himself useful again. There was always so much that needed doing. Idle time was a luxury lost to this world. As was luxury itself, when he thought about it.
“…through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world, for this is what you are meant to get out of your life of toil under the sun.” The writer of Ecclesiastes wouldn’t have been surprised by any of this, he figured.
No sooner had Homer slipped the flap of his billet than he was spotted and hailed. “Hey, Homer, mate, all right?” The British were lovely people, and stalwart as hell. But where’s all this “I keep myself to myself” ethos Homer had heard about? Not in the military, that’s for sure.
He threw a friendly wave and veered off. His new route took him past the Intel Shack, where he remembered getting his very first briefings – within minutes of hitting the ground, actually. Meeting the other Tier-1 guys, from units scattered across the English-speaking world. He’d known right away that it was going to be one hell of a team – like nothing that had ever operated before. No one but the supremely elite could make that mission happen. And that was when they all thought nothing could be more dangerous or urgent than North Korean nukes. Those ideas they used to have about Armageddon, the way the End of Days would come…
Before long, Homer found himself at the closest thing this place had to a forecastle – underneath the guard tower at the far northwest corner, where the two fortified walls met. He huddled up in the dark beneath it, about as alone as he was going to get. At his back, the dead world spread out into the gloom. And before him he could now make out much of the little kingdom that the survivors had carved out for themselves. He let his mind wander back.
* * *
It was a couple of months after those first onsite briefings, when they were well into their rehearsals, that they started getting the very first reports – first via intel, then on the news. Some new virus out of the interior of Africa. The reports were conflicting. Some victims it was said to kill. Others it made crazy. Stories of the sick getting delirious, and then violent – attacking medical personnel, or loved ones. Like some weird strain of rabies – which had always ticked over in the dark corners of the saddest continent, Africa. Homer remembered being curious, and quizzing one of the medical officers – a surgeon, and a colonel.
“Is it like Ebola? Marburg? Should we be worried?”
“I don’t think it’s like Ebola.”
“Some other kind of hemorrhagic fever?”
The medical officer paused heavily, not looking like he was enjoying this. “It might be related – people have been coming in bleeding out.” He paused again. “But mostly from their mouths.”
But Homer knew how it was with the nightly news – always happening somewhere else. And happening to the less fortunate. This world, this Middle Kingdom, this stopping over place, was always producing new horrors. The operators still had their work. And Homer had his family.
“Come, eat your food with joy and drink your wine with a glad heart … enjoy life with the woman you love, through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world…”
* * *
Something loomed out of the shadows and into Homer’s reverie. Before he was even aware of it, he’d drawn his SIG 226, thumbed the hammer back, and sighted in. Behind and just above his three-dot tritium night sights there was now a face – a living one, and familiar.
“Exactly the same twitchy motherfucker I remember. Stand down, brother.”
“Mikey? Good Lord.”
“Yeah, Homer – at your service. They told me you might be out here. In the shadows.”
The newcomer stepped into the deeper shadow under the guard tower and pulled Homer into a hug that was equally heartfelt and lung-crushing. Homer and Mikey had served together for two years with SEAL Team 3 – in Coronado, and also off in much more dangerous places. Homer knew the man, and damn well respected him. They had parted company when Homer left for Team Six (or DEVGRU, as they were known, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group) – which can be a bit of a black hole, swallowing an operator and his whole former life, and
immersing his every waking moment in the job.
Homer pushed Mikey back out to arm’s length and looked into his soulful brown eyes. “Not only alive and still in this world. But in the UK! At Hereford! How?”
Mikey let out a long, slow breath. “A few months before it all came down. I was posted to a surface vessel – the Arleigh Burke herself. With a half-platoon, eight SEALs.” The Arleigh Burke was the lead ship for the whole Arleigh-Burke class of Aegis guided missile destroyers, some of the meanest warships in human history.
“We were doing counterproliferation and interdiction work, right at the seam of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. VBSS, that kind of thing.” Visiting, boarding, searching, and seizing ships suspected of carrying contraband was a classic SEAL mission, one for which they were supremely qualified. Any frogman would be happy doing it. Particularly after the mountains and deserts, and the bloody losses, of Afghanistan and Iraq.
“And after the fall?” Homer asked.
“Man. We were like the goddamned Ancient Mariner.” He winced slightly, remembering Homer’s faith, which had never been a secret, but he’d had to be pretty easygoing about it – most sailors swear like, well, sailors. “Sorry, man. Pardon my blasphemy. Anyway, we were roaming the oceans, trying port after overseas port. Just making a living as far as fuel and supplies went. Some places we could dock, some we couldn’t. Some were abandoned by the living – but we could fight our way into.”
“And your orders?”
“At first, it was just ‘Hold station’ or ‘Continue patrol’ or ‘Stand by’. Then, nothing, of course. Finally we got news that overseas American military personnel, every branch, by every conceivable conveyance, were making their way to England. That there were living people there. Something like civilization left. And it’s true.”
It was true. Something north of 30,000 American servicemen and women had fought their way to safety there. Now they fought for everyone.
“Why’d it take you so long?”
He shook his head. “We had a few adventures along the way. Anyway, it wasn’t quite that long. We’ve been docked at Southampton these last three months. Been going out on milk runs, moving supplies from one place to another. Plus the odd search and salvage. But it was only last week that somebody with stars on his shoulders figured out our old boat had a fully-kitted SEAL team onboard. They put two and two together – or, rather, put us eight and however many badasses you’ve got here together. Doing whatever kinds of jobs you’re doing.”
Homer smiled. “They won’t have told you much yet, I guess.”
“We’re getting briefed in the morning. And going out in the afternoon. No time wasted.”
Homer squinted slightly at his old friend, concerned. “Got a sense of what you’re going to be getting into out there?”
Mikey chuckled. “That’s the whole point of the years of ballbreaking SEAL training, right? So we’ll be ready even for the things we aren’t ready for. Especially them.”
“Good enough.”
Mikey sensed Homer’s unease, though, and shifted slightly. “What’s your thinking, brother?”
Homer pivoted, a little evasively, regarding the blackness outside the wire. He let out a long breath. “Honestly?”
“You know how to be anything else?”
Homer laughed once, not very mirthfully. He put his hands on his hips. There was an orange glow out in the hills. He didn’t know where it came from. He turned again and locked steady gazes with his old friend.
“You know, when it all started I honestly thought the Rapture was here – not some freakshow zombie apocalypse. And all I could think of, for the longest time, was, Why am I still here? Why do I have to get my gun in the fight, in the last battle between Heaven and Hell, while everyone else is sitting pretty in Heaven? I’ve done my service for God and man. Don’t I get to go to Heaven?”
Mikey reached out and put his hand on Homer’s shoulder.
“But you know what worries me the most? It isn’t who will win. It isn’t what’s going to happen to me, or to any of us. It isn’t even whether any of this will ever be over.” Homer looked back in his friend’s kind face. “It’s, which side am I fighting for? Am I fighting for God? Am I fighting for the good of all? Or am I one of the bad guys? Did you ever consider that we might just be the evil ones? And those things out there are God’s cleaners?"
He hadn’t been able to tell anyone else this, all this time.
And Mikey knew just what he was talking about. He hardly had to say it.
The SEAL Brotherhood – stronger than death, stronger than the end of the world.
THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME
Wesley swerved the car sharply to the right, missing the girl by just a few inches. She fell backwards, buffeted by the strong breeze and reeling from the surprise of it. She had appeared from nowhere in the mist – and, from her perspective, so had the car. It now barreled across the road and smashed into an abandoned vehicle, which sat across from the house that the girl and her parents had been given when they arrived two weeks earlier.
She saw the man in the passenger seat burst through the front window and roll across the pavement. The man in the driver’s seat stayed put. The noise had been overpowering, like nothing she had ever heard – first the screeching of brakes that pierced her eardrums, and then the loud crash as the car collided with the other. Windows exploded outwards and metal crumpled as the front end of the moving vehicle compacted to two thirds of its original length.
“Oh, God!” It was her father’s voice, from behind her. He had seen the whole incident while trying to open the driver’s door on the other side of their own car. The girl, Alison, leapt to her feet and ran to him. He held her tightly.
“Mary, get out here!” he yelled. “There’s been an accident.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Alison sobbed, her whole body shaking with fear. “I didn’t see it.”
“It’s not your fault.” His heart was beating double-time as the dread thought of what could have just happened dawned on him. He had sent his daughter out to get into the car. They had been told to evacuate ASAP to the harbor zone.
Mary rushed out of the house with their other daughter – two-year-old Madison – in one arm, and a backpack filled with a few possessions that she couldn’t leave behind slung over her shoulder. “What happened?” she stammered as she saw the wreck and devastation on the other side of the road.
“No time,” barked her husband, Ruben, as he threw the carryall full of supplies onto the back seat. “Get the kids in the car. I’ll see if I can help them. Ali, get in the car, sweetheart.” The eight-year-old sobbed as she jumped into the back seat, closed the door, and buckled up. Ruben knew that she would be distraught after this, but he also knew that she was a tough one, and the two passengers in the crashed car might need his help urgently.
He rushed over the road, and around the car to the driver’s side, hoping not to see some gory mess that had once been human. He kept his hand on the gun at his waist just in case he needed to stop them from turning. But the driver was still conscious and rubbing his head.
“Are you okay, mate?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Wesley. His head was swimming, and he shook it, trying to regather his thoughts. Then he remembered the last few moments. The girl’s eyes bright in the headlights. The swerving and the crash. “Is she okay? I didn’t hit her, did I?”
“She’s fine. Are you injured?”
Wesley sighed with relief and then moved his legs, pushing open the now bent car door and stumbling onto the pavement. He steadied himself against the side of the vehicle as his brain tried to catch up with all the chaos. Then his instincts clicked and he reached in and grabbed the shotgun from the floor and checked that the handgun was still in his belt.
“Yeah. I’m okay. Look, you need to get the hell out of here, and fast. The dead are on the way. You have maybe a few minutes. Crap. Where did the soldier go?” He spun around, noticing the broken front window for
the first time. “Fuck.”
“I’m good,” called a voice from a few yards away. “Well, nearly.”
Wesley spun around again, to see the man lifting himself up using the side of the parked vehicle they had destroyed, a red convertible.
“Shoulder hurts pretty bad and my ankle is even more screwed. But I won’t need to be put down just yet.”
Ruben’s jaw dropped.
“You flew out of the car. How the hell did…?”
The soldier leaned down, picked up his helmet and showed them the dent in the top.
“It probably saved my life,” he said, dropping it to the ground. “And the body armor helps.”
“Rube, we need to go,” called Mary from the car.
Wesley looked up the road. Dark figures were now stumbling through the shadows, and deep guttural moaning echoed down the street. Ruben was also staring at them.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes. Now go,” said Wesley. “Get the hell out and don’t stop til you’ve gone through a line of squaddies. They’re on their way.”
Gunfire erupted from a few feet away. The soldier was already back to work. The nearest shadow in the mist fell backwards and didn’t get back up.
“Are there many other people near here?” Wesley called to Ruben as the man ran to his car.
“Yes,” he yelled, trying to shout over an automatic weapon that was now lighting up the whole street. “Lots on this street and the junction down the road. They would all have got the call.”
“The call?”
“CentCom called and told us to evacuate immediately.”
Even as Ruben finished speaking, the doors of houses were opening, spilling out the families that had lived in them for only a few weeks. Most of them rushed straight to cars and started bundling children and possessions inside, jumping in, and firing up engines. Wesley realized that these people lived their lives this way – frontier families used to working in the border towns near places that were quarantined. They were civilian scavengers, people who the government used to retrieve supplies from abandoned towns across the country or reclaim an urban location that those in charge deemed useful. They were ready to move out at any moment.
