ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Goddammit.

  Putting his head down, powering forward, and running flat-out, feeling as much as hearing the Niagara of dead spilling over behind him, one or two actually hitting the roof of the Tunnelers’ truck in the rear, Jameson put his hands out and let his Marines pull him into the back, which was filled by a crushed riot of body armor, weapons, and hyperventilating bootnecks. Wherever the hell they were going now…

  Jameson was home.

  But as they pulled out onto the road and accelerated madly south, he looked out the back, as upon Sodom or Gomorrah, watching their doom flow over the low gap in the ZPW – and the army of the dead, without so much as a pause to look around, hit the ground and start running after them, chasing anything alive, heading toward the center of London, and the last of the living. The ZA was flooding in, totally unopposed.

  The Wall had been breached.

  And London was going to be overrun.

  It was all over now. All but the screaming.

  Crash

  CentCom – Northwest Guard Tower

  “This is us.” Fick did a brisk turn around the gray and dusty interior of the guard tower, which rose up from the old prison walls on their north edge, where they faced back toward London, but on the west side.

  “This is what?” Wesley asked, following him in.

  “Our CP, forward command post,” Fick said. Out of 360-degree windows, the room had a commanding view of the whole of CentCom behind them, as well as south London ahead, spreading out a mile ahead to the River Thames, and central London beyond that. They both knew what was eventually going to be coming from that direction. The city was like a battleground that just hadn’t been hallowed yet. Nor yet reduced to ruin.

  Fick grunted in approval as a pair of RMPs, following them up and looking annoyed to be conscripted as manual labor – about which annoyance Fick gave precisely zero fucks – started stacking boxes of ammo against the inside edge of one wall.

  Wesley was already having a poke around, and when he pulled open a drawer, came out with a small pewter flask. It had fine engraving on its surface and a screw-off top attached by a little swing arm. He opened it, put it to his nose and sniffed, then handed it across to Fick, who did the same. Fick’s eyes closed and he smiled.

  It was a very smoky Scotch, and the flask was full.

  “Told you this was us,” he said, capping it and putting it back in the same drawer. “We’re definitely gonna need that later.”

  Wesley smiled – but then his smile froze on his face as a vibrating and slightly smoking helicopter passed behind Fick’s head, outside the window, coming in alarmingly low over the walls. Fick turned and squinted, and the two went to the window and stood side-by-side, heads swiveling in tandem to follow it.

  Together they watched it go down.

  * * *

  “Ah, there you are.” Miller trotted up to Ali, even as she was pulling herself together, and pulling her head and arms off the outside of Bio. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

  “The gap in the Wall?” she asked.

  He nodded, his face grim. “It’s fallen. The battle’s over.”

  “Come on,” Ali said, leading them back toward the JOC. But they’d only taken a dozen steps when they too saw the wounded Apache come in low over the walls to the north, engines straining and rotors wobbling. It was heading toward the helipad at the hangar but also losing altitude fast, and finally veered off to an open area of grass about halfway between the hangar and the parking ground for the other helos. It came in too hard and fast for comfort, something between a very rough landing and a crash landing.

  Ali had already veered her and Miller into an intercept course, and by the time they arrived at the downed bird, the pilot was climbing out of the back seat in a British Army Air Corps flight suit and getting her helmet off, straw-colored hair spilling out from under. If Ali was surprised to meet another woman Apache pilot, she didn’t let on. Squinting slightly, she actually recognized her, from having seen her around Hereford, back at USOC.

  “Hard landings in that airframe aren’t fun, are they?”

  Charlotte put her helmet under her arm and shook her hair out of her eyes. “Why? Have you tried it?”

  “Once or twice.”

  Charlotte just nodded, turned, and headed off.

  “Wait,” Ali said. “Where are you going?”

  “To get another one.”

  Ali liked her style. Still, she said, “Let me borrow you first.” She nodded up at SHQ, and the JOC on its top level.

  Charlotte sighed and followed.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, the three of them sat around the table in Ali’s new office, along with Fick, Wesley, Aliyev, Corporal Jones – and their other pilot, Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells, whom Ali had also summoned for this.

  “Simon sends his regrets,” Aliyev said in his mild Slavic accent. “He’s busy saving the world, so I am the science delegation today.”

  “How close are you?” Ali asked. “To a final vaccine design?”

  “So close we can taste it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Fick said. “And how close is that?”

  “We’re hours away,” Aliyev said.

  A faintly perceptible thrill went round the table. This could be it. There was a chance they were actually going to make it, after all. But Ali poured cold water on this.

  “The dead will be here in hours. The northern defense has collapsed, at the fallen section of the Wall.”

  “So now it’s a race,” Wesley said. The highest stakes race in the history of humankind, he didn’t add. He didn’t need to.

  Ali looked to Miller. “Those twenty-five million vaccination kits. Once they’re loaded up, how do we get them distributed?”

  Miller nodded. “Airdrops was the original idea. But we’re out of planes, and I don’t know what if anything else we can muster. More RAF bases are being overrun every hour. Plus they don’t answer the damned phone.”

  “We’ve got one perfectly good airplane,” Fick said, nodding at Hailey. “The one we all got here in.”

  “Sure,” Hailey said, “if you want a ten-minute sight-seeing tour of central London.” The others looked at her blankly. “There’s about ten gallons of fuel left in it.”

  The others looked to Miller. “We’re bone-dry, in terms of aviation fuel. Our underground tanks kind of spectacularly exploded. Which also kind of killed all our pilots.”

  Charlotte chimed in. “And we used what fuel we had left – and the pilot we had left – to stage the Moscow mission.”

  Ali looked like she didn’t want to hear any more negativity. “We’ve got perfectly flyable fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, one of each, plus two pilots for each.” The others looked at her. “These two, plus me and Noise.”

  Aliyev looked like he wanted to speak up, but didn’t.

  Ali went on. “All we need is aviation fuel. And there is no doubt some left somewhere, even on this tiny island.”

  “Tiny and shrinking,” Fick said.

  “Sutton,” Corporal Jones said, speaking up for the first time, her voice bright and a little chirpy, but crisp. “There’s a Royal Logistics Corps base there, 210 Transport Squadron. And they’re close. South London.”

  “Transport, yes,” Miller said. “But ground transport. They’ve only got lorries – no aircraft, so there’ll be no avgas.”

  Charlotte tapped her fingers on the table. “I know where there’s likely to still be avgas – and it’s even closer. Battersea heliport, right on the river.” The others looked at her. “I know a few other AAC pilots, ferrying the Royals around, who have definitely refueled there. The question is how we get it back here.”

  Jones brightened and spoke again. “Sutton.”

  Miller squinted. “She’s right. They’ll definitely have fuel tanker trucks at the Logistics base. Grab an empty truck from there, drive it to Battersea, fill it up with avgas, and drive it back here. And Bob’s your uncle.”

  Fick looked l
ike he had a comment to make about Miller’s uncle, but just said, “I’ll go.”

  “No,” Ali said. “I need you here planning and leading the defense. We’ll send Noise. He’s British Army, so they might not shoot him on sight as a looter. Plus he knows London.”

  “I can give him an RMP security detail,” Fick said.

  “Do it,” Ali said. She looked to Miller. “Transport there?”

  “Whole motor pool full of trucks. And diesel we have.”

  “Better make it fast,” Fick said.

  Ali’s look said she didn’t disagree.

  Time they didn’t have.

  * * *

  But maybe they could buy some. “Talk to me about your designer pathogen,” Ali said, turning to Aliyev.

  The Kazakh sat up straight. “Sure. The good news? Kills zombies dead. Within thirty to sixty minutes of infection, it locks their limbs, drops them to the deck – and then actually extinguishes the brainstem infection. It’s a straight Apocalypse killer.”

  “Okay.” Ali nodded. “So how do we weaponize it?”

  “Well, that’s the bad news. The pathogen is a strain of bacterial meningitis – a biological strain. I arrived with a tiny sample. It’s culturing and multiplying now – I’m growing as much as I can, as fast as I can. But culturing is fucking slow, man. And the amount we have got so far, or will have any time soon, is going to stay small.”

  “So then crop-dusting is pretty much out,” Fick said.

  Aliyev nodded. “Whatever we do, it has to be surgical. And we have to make it count. If we don’t achieve a tipping point when we start the infection, we risk it just burning itself out. And when this stuff is gone…”

  “So the question remains,” Ali said. “How do we deploy it?”

  “How about fire extinguishers?” Jones said. “Some kind of hand sprayer, maybe. Water balloons.”

  Fick and Ali both gave her a dark look. She deflated.

  “I was actually thinking about paintball guns,” Aliyev said.

  Neither Fick nor Ali looked much more enamored of that.

  “No, seriously,” Aliyev persisted. “It could work. I used to play, with a friend who was in Russian special forces.”

  Ali ground her jaw. She’d had about enough of Russian special forces lately. But she didn’t say anything.

  “Also Russian mafia,” Aliyev added. “Whatever. Point is, the guns are pretty good. I think we could simply suck the paint out with a syringe, inject the MZ, and then seal it up with acetate or some such. Injecting the bug directly in the dead would be best. But I don’t suppose any of us want to get that close. And splashing it on them, particularly on the face, will do the job. My experiments support it.”

  “That would be fantastic,” Fick said. “If only we had fucking paintball guns.”

  “We can get some,” Wesley said. “There’s a paintball arena quite close, in Surbiton.” The others looked at him. “South London lad, born and bred. I played there once or twice.”

  Miller spoke up. “And that’s also to the southwest, far from the breach in the Wall. Should be pretty safe.”

  “Not so sure about that,” Wes said. “You might have trouble with south Londoners. Bit of a reputation as hard men.”

  “Hard-ons, maybe,” Fick said. He looked at Ali. “So – another damned mission.”

  “We’ll send Pred and Juice,” Ali said. “They’ll love that shit.”

  “Fuel to distribute the vaccine by air,” Fick said. “And toy guns to perpetrate biowarfare on the dead. Two milk runs. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Ali gave him a look, but pushed back from the table and stood up. “Let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, they all stood out on the Common, on the dirt road that connected the north and south gates. Two Pinzgauer six-wheeled trucks sat on their fat tires in the dirt, engines rumbling, facing opposite directions.

  Ali stuck her head in the cab of the north-facing one. Inside was Noise, in the passenger seat; a very young and nervous-looking RMP, driving; and a large number of piled-up boxes of shotgun shells. Ali had previously been the beneficiary of Noise’s work with that AA12 full-auto combat shotgun, which now sat propped beside him, so found the sight reassuring. Through the window, she passed him his scimitar in its jeweled scabbard, which he took with a grateful nod.

  “You’re call sign Max One,” Ali said.

  “Max?”

  “As in Mad. Fuel scavengers.”

  “Ah – very amusing!”

  Ali didn’t look amused. “Got everything you need?”

  “Affirmative!” Noise said with a smile. “We are good to go.”

  Ali must have looked worried, because as the RMP popped the clutch and rumbled them off, Noise stuck his head out the window and said, “Do not worry, First Sergeant Khamsi! We will return with the fuel, forthwith! It is a piece of piss…”

  The truck roared off toward the gate as it swung open.

  Ali moved to the other truck, the south-facing one – but before she could stick her head in a window, tobacco juice went arcing out it in front of her face – out both front windows, in fact. Ali ducked, at the same time as one of the REMEs came running up, and said, “Awfully sorry – we used to have two big rolling carts you could have used to load everything onto the truck. Dunno what happened to them…”

  Juice looked out. “Don’t worry, man. We’ll make it work.”

  Ali said, “You’re call sign Airsoft One.” It was a reference to their somewhat absurd mission to secure paintball guns. A couple of the bystanders giggled at this.

  Pred didn’t stick his head out, but could be heard growling from inside anyway. “Okay, you fuckers, laugh it up.”

  Juice patted him on his tree-trunk thigh, then turned back out to Ali. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be back in a flash.”

  Ali couldn’t help but smile, despite everything. She loved these two huge clowns. And God knew she could depend on them. Even as the whole world burned down around them.

  Brothers, even unto the end of the world.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes after that, Wesley was fast-marching back into the lobby of the SHQ building, on a one-man mission back to the JOC. Fick had said he wanted actual paper print-outs of the complete layout of the complex or, failing that, aerial imagery that could be marked up with a pen. He also wanted Wesley to give Ali an update – that an early version of the CentCom defense was up and running.

  As he strode through the glass double doors and into the lobby, head down and mulling over a million swirling concerns, Wesley nonetheless stopped short and looked up. On an uncomfortable-looking sofa were a woman and three children, two of them sleeping. Searching his fried memory, he realized they’d been here the other two times he’d passed through. He’d just been with others and caught up in conversation.

  But now something made him stop and go over.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The woman mustered a smile. “I’m an Army wife. It’s my job to make sure we’re all right.” Wesley got her meaning – her role was to keep the home front in order, and the family safe and functioning. That was her job in the fight. And her husband, whoever and wherever he was deployed, couldn’t do his job unless he knew she was doing hers. Wesley had started to become a part of the military world lately. And now he was also back on home soil, dealing with more familiar Brits.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  Her look just said, You don’t want to know.

  Wesley checked his watch, then looked to the kids. There were two little boys, perhaps six and eight, and a tiny girl, maybe one or two. His eye paused on the girl, who sat quietly and patiently, and in fact returned his gaze, looking like an old soul – or someone who had seen too much in her brief time on Earth. Looking into her eyes, Wesley imagined there was something familiar about her, but then dismissed the notion as impossible. Where could he have possibly seen her before?

&nbs
p; Wesley also knew there were guest billets in this place – and determined to get these four there, where they’d be a lot more comfortable. But then he hesitated.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, then. I know where the canteen is.”

  The woman picked up the little girl and got the two boys moving. As they walked out into the Common, then back through an open gate and inside the old prison walls, Wesley heard a bit of their history – that Rebecca Ainsley had gotten her kids across most of central London even as it all went to hell, looters and marauders turning it into a post-Apocalyptic nightmare-scape, finally getting them to safety here.

  “Your sons and daughter have a brave mum,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, as they crossed one of the prison courtyards, heading toward a door through which floated the sounds and smells of food being cooked and eaten. “But she’s not my daughter.”

  Wesley squinted but just let that go.

  As they paused at the door, though, he got curious and asked, “What’s your husband’s regiment?”

  “He was SAS, but is now an officer in the Unified Special Operations Command,” she said, ill-concealing her pride. “He commands Alpha team.”

  Now Wesley’s eyebrows went for the top of his head, as he thought of the American commander, Handon, lying in critical condition in the nearby med wing. That made no sense at all. Whatever the explanation, it seemed too awkward a discussion to have right now. There must be more than one Alpha team, he thought.

  And he was out of time anyway.

  “You’ll be safe here,” he said to Rebecca, nodding at the canteen, which lay deep inside the prison complex. “Plus, there are reinforcements coming. We’re going to be okay.”

  She nodded, obviously determined to believe this.

  He saw them inside, then turned and got back to work.