ARISEN_Book Fourteen_ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Probably past it.

  He was flying the Puma, a British military helicopter, erratically. But he was flying it, and there weren’t really any points awarded for style anymore, nor many people left alive to award them.

  Plus he’d had a much easier time finding Ali and Homer than he’d feared he would. Locating the riverside hospital was easy enough, not least since it sat directly opposite Big Ben. And then the nearby big parking deck from there, the tallest local structure, which Homer had described in his radio call – plus which had a crashed helicopter on the ground beside it.

  He’d scanned the top deck with the little night-vision scope thingy, but there had been no beacons, flashing or otherwise, nor anyone obviously alive, so he just flew around, mostly to the south, bringing the scope to his eye periodically to scan the streets while trying not to crash the helicopter.

  But he didn’t have to scan too many streets and not for very long, because when he did see the flashing beacon, he realized a couple of things. First, this was amazing fucking kit – the bright white strobe jumped out at him from half a mile away. And, second, he never would have found two guys running around post-Apocalyptic London in the middle of the night without it. Then again, when he got closer, he could also see they were about the only ones down there who were alive, not currently being eaten, and also bristling with weapons.

  But then, as he came in over them, he also saw that, as with everyone else, being alive was a temporary condition. They were being chased by two big packs of runners, converging on them from either side. But when a radio response came back, it was not only in a voice that didn’t seem worried. It was one that sounded only grudgingly grateful to see him. And recognizing the voice, Aliyev knew this was not only not his biggest fan. It was also the only living person who scared him more than the dead.

  “Yeah, Oleg,” she said. “Yeah, we actually do need a lift.”

  That was gratitude for you.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Homer asked.

  Ali scanned as they continued to power forward, since stopping wasn’t an option. The street was pretty dodgy to bring a bird down in – cluttered with cars and streetlights, not all that wide, and currently contested by runners. She said, “Too hard to secure an LZ. What’s that up ahead?”

  Opening up a couple of blocks farther south they could see a broad tree-dotted lawn. “Imperial War Museum, I think,” Homer said. The pair of 15-inch naval guns mounted in front of it were kind of a giveaway. “That could work.”

  Ali hit her radio. “Aliyev, there’s an open green space a hundred and fifty meters to your two o’clock.”

  “Yes, yes, I see it.”

  “Pick us up there in thirty seconds. Touch and go.”

  She and Homer put their heads down, reached down deep, and put on a last burst of speed – and of endurance. The two runner packs were still on them, only closer now, and the living even closer to the point of exhaustion. Ali felt more tired than she had in a long time, which was saying something. But she also knew she was in no danger of giving up – nor were the two of them in any danger of not making it.

  She and Homer were together now – in every sense.

  And together they could do anything.

  As they covered the last stretch, she could see the big gates out front were shut, but the grounds were enclosed by only a four-foot fence, which they gripped and leapt over, hardly slowing – and which the runners behind them tripped and tumbled and piled over.

  They didn’t have to turn to know the dead were still right on them – they could hear them, despite the noise of the helo flaring in unsteadily ahead. Ali scanned the area, eyes landing on those fifty-foot gun barrels, the breeches of which sat almost down at ground level, but which rose to nearly twenty feet high at the muzzles.

  “Yeah,” Homer said, reading her mind.

  She hit her radio. “Oleg – tip of those guns, please.”

  Reaching the base, she gave Homer a shove to try to boost him up first, but he resisted and turned to the rear with his boarding axe, and there wasn’t time to argue – the pack was already on them. Homer swung twice to take apart the frontrunners as Ali climbed up. Then he threw her the axe, which she caught in the crook of her right arm, firing her pistol with her left over his shoulder as he climbed up after her.

  Once he was up, she tossed the axe back, turned, and started doing a Cirque du Soleil high-wire running routine up the length of the naval gun. Only Homer holding the line behind her made it possible to complete this, then leap across into the swaying helicopter – “Steadier, Oleg!” – and through the open cargo door. She then turned, got her rifle back up – for which she had, as always, kept one full mag in reserve – and shot left-handed, dropping runners off the gun as they chased Homer up it, only her perfect shooting making it possible for him to turn, break contact, and get away.

  Rapid movement beyond the gun and to her right caught Ali’s eye and she pivoted to see a Foxtrot coming in fast, angling and coiling to leap and tackle Homer off the gun. She had to drop it before it leapt. She nearly did – it got airborne, but only smashed the top of its already shot-through head on the bottom of the gun barrel. Another one slammed into the opposite side of the helo, rocking the cabin, and threatening to knock Ali out the hatch. The bird lurched skyward, Aliyev no doubt freaking out and climbing.

  Motherfucker. “Oleg!” she shouted, regaining her feet.

  Looking out again, she could see Homer at the end of the gun and still going full speed – and he had nowhere else to go. He leapt – falling well short of the open hatch. Eyes wild, Ali threw herself down onto the deck and hung her body halfway out.

  And there he was. Hanging from a swinging cargo rope secured to the bottom of the aircraft.

  Jesus Christ.

  She reached for her radio to tell Aliyev to climb faster, but he was already doing it, hauling Homer into the sky as another leaping Foxtrot scraped his boots with its claws. He hauled himself up the rope, reached over onto the metal step beneath the hatch, then swung out and onto it, hanging by both hands. Ali helped drag him up over the lip, having to fight the erratic motion of the helo in addition to his weight.

  As Homer rolled onto the deck and to safety, Ali muttered, “And that’s about enough of that shit.” She unclipped her rifle, dropped it on the deck, went up front, and took the controls. Aliyev took his hands off the cyclic and collective on his side, and as Ali climbed and banked the aircraft, she could feel the Kazakh looking at her awkwardly from her right side.

  Letting out a deep exhalation, she said, “You suck ass as a pilot, Oleg.” But then she also glanced over and gave him a softer look – one that said, barely perceptibly, that just maybe he didn’t suck quite so hard as a human being. He had, after all, just saved their asses. “Now get the fuck out of my cockpit.”

  He did, and Homer came up and took his seat.

  Stealing a glance over at him, Ali could see he had that serene look he so often wore, as he surveyed the open sky ahead of them, and the overrun streets below.

  “Oh, no,” she said, annoyed in advance. “I do not want to hear how God got us out of that.”

  Homer just smiled. “He sent an angel for me, anyway.”

  Ali nodded toward the rear. “What – that asshole?” This made them both laugh. “Anyway, get it right. Avenging angel.”

  “Avenging angel. But I do know one thing…”

  “Yeah,” Ali said. “Me, too.”

  Neither of them had to say it, or say anything at all.

  They both knew that one of them on their own never would have made it out of there. Aside from all the other times they had kept each other alive, neither could have made the final run up that gun barrel without the other covering them. This also meant that if Ali hadn’t gone back for Homer in the parking deck, the mission objective never would have made it out.

  She got it now. They both did.

  Love wasn’t the enemy of the mission. Love was the who
le reason for the mission in the first place. Love had allowed the two of them to survive, and to prevail.

  Love was the point of everything.

  PART THREE

  “In the midst of winter, I at last realized that there was in me an invincible summer.”

  – Albert Camus

  Sacrifice

  CentCom – North Prison Yard

  “Jesus Rimjobbing Christ,” Fick said, finally pulling free of Handon’s grip. Normally he’d haul on his arm a little longer and harder, but the man had just got out of the hospital. But his grip was still strong. “What the hell are you doing out of bed? No, strike that. Dumb-ass question.”

  Handon shrugged. “Didn’t want to miss anything.”

  “Yeah, well, you missed a lot. Those for me?” Fick gestured at the four ammo cans at Handon’s feet, beside the vehicle.

  Handon ignored the question. “What’s our situation?”

  Fick snorted. “This fight is like fucking a gorilla. You keep going until the gorilla wants to stop.”

  Shrieking tore the rain-riven night air, audible even over the battle, and arcing overhead – landing in the yard nearby in a scramble and flurry of limbs. Handon raised his rifle, but Fick didn’t move – his QRF was already springing into action.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Fick said. “They’ve got it.”

  Handon nodded. “RMPs. Looks like you’ve got them well trained.” The eleven men were now expertly encircling the Foxtrot, cutting off its escape, and disabling and destroying it.

  “Yeah, like junkyard dogs. Okay, dolphins, maybe.” He pointed at the dirt ramp up to the walls. “Come on. I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

  As they walked and climbed, Fick put Handon in the picture, focusing on exactly what he needed to know to start being effective, which Fick didn’t have to ask was what he wanted. About how they were Alamo’d up in the inner prison, with the rest of CentCom overrun. About the power outage, the commo outage. How the vaccine was complete, and being mass-produced in Bio – with a plane on standby to airdrop vaccination kits, if the fuel mission ever got back.

  Also and in particular about the hail-Mary plan to save their asses by infecting the dead with Aliyev’s designer pathogen, MZ, which was culturing up into a weaponizable quantity, also in Bio. And the clever idea about spreading the disease fast with Foxtrots exposed to HRIG, which made them attack other dead. And how the surviving half of Alpha had gone out on two missions outside the wire to make all that possible – one for the HRIG itself, the other for simunitions to weaponize it.

  And, finally, by which time they’d reached the top of the ramp and the center of the walls, about their reinforcements and general disposition of forces. “Troop of Royal Marines down there,” Fick said pointing left, “or what’s left of them. Your old buddies from USOC on the right, nearly a hundred of those guys. Two platoons of Gurkhas in the center, along with a bunch of tankers they peeled out of their tin cans. Oh, and whoever these fucking guys are.” He gestured vaguely at someone in civilian garb – who was praying aloud, apparently in French, while trying to figure out where the magazine went in an L85. “Also about a hundred and fifty RMPs and random Brit conventional soldiers covering the prison walls on every side but north, Wesley commanding them.”

  It was a lot to take in. Handon took it in, unfazed.

  What didn’t need any annotation or commentary was the tactical situation they were in. Handon’s eyes presumably worked fine, and from the top of the walls he could see as well as anybody the tens of thousands of dead lumbering, running, and leaping their way through the rain and out of the darkness from the north. And piling up below the walls.

  Not only was it obvious they were on a clock. You could practically see the seconds ticking off in big lit-up letters in the sky over the battlefield, like The Hunger Games.

  Handon turned to Fick. “Where are my guys now?”

  Fick sighed. “Last best I got is Pred and Juice have their mission objective, and have called for extract.” He paused, his expression grim. “No word from Ali or Homer.”

  Handon nodded – his expression just fine. “They’ll be here. What’s the plan for when they get back?”

  Fick cocked his head. “Get the sims and HRIG back to Bio, I guess, so they can be weaponized. That’s where the MZ is.”

  Handon turned and scanned across the misty and overrun Common, his eyes settling on the white bulk of the Biosciences complex – which was now fairly well surrounded, but definitely hemmed in at the entrance. “How do you plan to get it there?”

  “Huh. Hadn’t thought that far ahead. We’ve kind of been winging it. But Alpha has to get back with the goods before we can even deal with that.”

  Handon repeated himself firmly. “They’ll be here.”

  Fick exhaled and nodded.

  Handon clapped his arm. “We just have to hold until then.”

  Fick almost smiled. It was goddamned good to have Handon back in the mix. And his presence almost did make him think, for just a second, that they might actually make it. “Hey, you know, you’re only still breathing air because Sarah Cameron went and singlehandedly wheeled your ass out of the med wing when it got overrun.”

  He thought this would make him happy, but instead Handon frowned and said, “Why wasn’t she guarding Dr. Park?”

  Fick’s smile faded. He knew exactly why, and what had almost happened to Park as a result – Ali had given him an earful. But now he figured Handon was better off not knowing.

  Anyway, he was afraid his silence kind of gave it away.

  * * *

  Sarah said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d gotten Park back inside the safe space of Bio again, after rescuing Aliyev and getting his mission launched – and also that the power was back on, meaning vaccine production was back up. With luck, that would keep Simon occupied – and not sticking his indispensable neck out into the overrun Common where he could get his carotid severed for him.

  She sighed and cradled her wet rifle as she watched him work. Yeah, she kept getting everything wrong. But at least she kept trying to get it right. That was something. Maybe she had it now. Surely if she could keep Simon alive long enough to finish saving the world, then she’d have earned her keep on this wet spinning rock.

  She’d have atoned for all she’d done wrong.

  Simon, for his part, never seemed to doubt or confuse his purpose, not for a second. Even now, he was conferring with some lab techs, trying to figure out a way to speed production of the vaccine. He was a good man. And, with his great attitude and refusal to quit, maybe he would even save them all.

  Sarah’s head perked up at the sound of increased firing – close. The thin walls of this prefab building made it sound like it was in the next room of a cheap brothel.

  Her general principle at this point was never to let Simon out of her sight. On the other hand, his official detail, that RMP, was doing the same thing, and seemed to be doing a good job of it. She’d also succeeded in shanghaiing those two British reservists from their commander, getting them reassigned to the inside of Bio, and putting them to work as a roving patrol. So the building was pretty secure. On the other hand, if the defense out front collapsed, that would change fast.

  She needed to know.

  Not bothering to tell Park, who was head down and fully absorbed anyway, she darted back through the complex and out the front doors. And things were like they’d been before – except worse. Significantly worse.

  The front ranks of soldiers all had bayonets fixed, and were using them. Sarah didn’t know if this unit had any more ammo than what they’d humped in, but they were obviously trying to conserve what they had left. Nonetheless, what shooting they were doing wasn’t suppressed – and it was drawing more dead, who Sarah could sense more than see were still flooding over the walls in the south. Thank God, the fight in the north was still louder, so more dead were flocking to the prison than to them. But still, eventually Bio would be overwhelmed.

&nbs
p; A Foxtrot screamed and flew over the front ranks of the defensive phalanx into its center, and a couple of soldiers there went down under it, others scrambling away – the rest in the vicinity finally organizing to take it down. But even as they did, the same thing happened again thirty feet away, and they were caught by surprise once more.

  Sarah shook her head. That kind of thing was definitely going to make “eventually” come a lot sooner.

  She looked over at the plane, where wide-eyed lab personnel were still ferrying vaccination kits into the back, ducking their heads, whether against the rain or the swirling chaos Sarah didn’t know. Probably both. The plane had to be nearly full by now. But as far as she knew there still wasn’t any fuel for the thing. She shook her head again – honestly unsure how this was going to play out. She only knew what her part in it had to be, and went back inside to do it.

  But before she got back to the fab rooms…

  She heard screaming from the rear of the complex.

  Raising her rifle and running in that direction, she ran into figures running away from it – one of them in a blood-splattered lab coat. Sarah grabbed him and yanked him to a stop.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “They tore a hole – right in the fucking wall!”

  Shit, Sarah thought. Cheap brothel.

  “Try to calm down,” she said. “Take me there.”

  * * *

  “Maybe final approach from the south, then,” Homer said, still in the right-hand pilot’s seat of the Puma, raindrops lashing the cockpit glass – and tracers now zipping by their heads. They were headed straight toward CentCom from the north – and despite the rain, despite the spotlights in their faces, they could see it was obviously a war down there. Tracers flashed out from the walls and explosions blossomed in the night – illuminating an Earth carpeted with walking and running dead.

  Worse, those tracers were now coming straight at them.

  “Yeah,” Ali said sadly. “Wish I could go around.”

  The twin turboshaft engines, located directly above the cockpit, jutting over their heads in fact, belched and sputtered. Homer looked down to the control panel and tapped on a fuel warning light. “How long has that been red?”