Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  He had only walked fifty yards when the bushes on the side of the road rustled, sending a rush of leaves into the air. Alan stopped dead, and lifted the shotgun.

  No way, he thought. Did I just luck out, and the dog is back already?

  He stepped forward, slowly, edging toward the bushes. Again, he only had the one shot, and he damn sure wasn’t going to miss this time.

  He took a deep breath as he side-stepped, slowly moving around the bush so as to get a good aim at what lay behind it.

  The bush erupted in violent motion, and Alan held his ground and aimed, waiting for the perfect moment to fire. But what came rushing out of the bushes was not a canine. It was a human figure, closing the gap between them so quickly that Alan had only a fraction of a second to see the blood upon the face and the pale color of the skin. He was aiming straight at the man’s face, already starting to lower the shotgun in shock, thinking he had nearly killed a person. But then he realized this wasn’t a living person at all – that the angry, hungry-looking man rushing toward him was dead already, and had been for some time.

  Pull the trigger! his voice screamed in his head. But he stood frozen with terror as it barreled toward him, reaching out, about to fall on him.

  And then the gun went off – and the angry expression on the zombie’s face was replaced by red-misted air as its head partially vaporized. The body kept on moving, staggering a few feet before landing on the dirt track, nearly at Alan’s feet.

  He wobbled unsteadily, almost falling down himself from the shock. He had only seen the dead on the TV, never in real life, never right in front of him, and… Oh god… He had only barely stopped the thing, with inches, and less than seconds, to spare. He found himself shaking violently, his nerves firing madly. He finally lowered the shotgun, while taking deep, ragged breaths.

  That was when the second runner burst from the bushes.

  It had been a few hundred yards away, and heading toward the village and the sounds of life, when the noise of the gun set it off. It ran, bursting through bushes and stumbling across the stream, not even aware of the terrain around it, as it made for the source of the noise.

  It was barely out of the treeline when it leapt upon Alan, knocking him to the ground. He fell backward, stunned, and felt the hard soil slam into the back of his head. His vision swam, and bright lights and black spots flickered in and out of view as he struggled to stay conscious. It was on him, clawing and scratching, trying to get at his flesh, but unable to quite get there.

  This is it, Alan thought. I’m dead. I’m going to be one of them or this thing is going to eat me alive, right here.

  But when he opened his eyes, he saw that he had managed to push the shotgun before him, ramming into the creature’s throat, keeping it at bay. It raked at his arms, and tried to scratch, but it wasn’t able to get through his thick waxed jacket or his gloves. But he was also stuck underneath it, with no way to get out. For thirty seconds, the struggle continued, but Alan could feel his strength beginning to ebb, and the creature was relentless. Even though it hadn’t hurt him yet, it would only be another few seconds before he could no longer hold it back. It clawed and scratched, every desperate clench of its bloodstained fingers a little closer to his face. Still, he pushed back, forcing it up and away, as he tried to heave it over to one side. His only possible chance for escape was to get the damned thing off, but for something that had been dead for a while, it was incredibly strong.

  Then it was being pulled off him, dragged away, and he could hear growling and thrashing. He sat bolt upright, and saw it was now a few feet away, still reaching for him, and still clawing at the ground. But beyond it was the dog – the same evil mutt that had been stealing his chickens. But now it had its jaws locked on the right boot worn by the zombie, pulling it away across the path.

  Alan leapt to his feet and stumbled forward, lifting the shotgun as he went, but reversing it as he did. He stepped forward, lifted the heavy weapon as high as he could, and then smashed the zombie across its forehead. The result, he thought, was very satisfying, even as he felt a little disturbed that caving in someone’s skull should be a pleasure. The rotten head cracked and collapsed, and the body stopped fighting and lunging. Alan stepped back, and took another whack for good measure.

  Then he looked from the twice-dead body up to the dog, which was now sniffing at the corpse, and looking up at him nervously.

  This mutt, which he had intended to kill only an hour earlier, the savage that had been mauling his chickens, had saved his life. Now that he had a good look at it, he saw that it was not all black, but actually the same breed as his other dogs, another Border Collie, and that it wasn’t as scruffy as he had expected it to be. But the moment was broken as he heard moans coming from the woods, and more from up the dirt track. He looked back, and saw three more of the dead stumbling along the road in their direction. These ones weren’t running, but merely staggering along like a trio of drunks. But they were heading toward him.

  He turned to go, but then looked back. The dog was watching him, warily.

  “Come on,” he called, and then began to jog back toward the farm. He had to get Tessa and the dogs into the truck and get them out of here. Or else he would hole up, lock the doors, and call the police, or the army, or whatever that organization one called… Central Con? Either way he had to get back home, and fast. If the dog followed, then good. It had saved him and the very least he owed it was a safe home. Another day of life.

  As he jogged back to the house along the lane, he glanced back, and saw that the dog was following, tentatively, about fifty feet behind him.

  Good dog, he thought. My three are going to love you.

  Maybe he’d even give it some chicken.

  Those That Remain

  Britain - Central London

  Rebecca Ainsley, wife of USOC Captain Connor Ainsley – and now, though not yet known to her, his widow – stood at the window of her front room, staring out into the street below. The rain was beating down on the hunched figures milling around there, and although their street was usually very busy, today it was heaving with people almost to the point of being a riot, and the torrential rain didn’t seem to be helping much. Dozens of them were huddled together, pulling hoods over their heads, or trying to find shelter where there was none, as sheets of storm-driven rain lashed down. It had been bright and fair the day before, and the sun had cheered Rebecca up, but this dreary, gray sky depressed her again.

  She had five minutes to drink her coffee and shove the hastily made toast into her mouth before heading out. Her two sons would be due at the school in twenty minutes, and the walk was fifteen minutes at least. She hated to be late dropping them off. As she turned to call the boys, to make sure they were dressing as they were supposed to, one of them ran past the doorway, in the hall, already dressed. Good, she thought, at least one of us is with it today.

  She looked back out the window, and her gaze shifted to the bustle across the street, and the cause of the increase in foot traffic – the refugee relocation center. It had only opened up a few months before, occupying what had once been a community center. Ever since, there had been a constant stream of people coming in from the quarantine camps, all bedraggled and weary, and all looking for somewhere more permanent to live.

  Rebecca didn’t like the facility being there at all, not with everything it brought to the neighborhood. She felt for the refugees, honestly, but not long ago, these quiet, empty streets had been a nice place to walk, with tree-lined paths and open stretches of grass – something not so common this close to the center of London, particularly not after two years of the dead roaming the earth. Now she had to stay in at night, and not because of the dead. There were very few outbreaks in London itself, and those that did occur were put down quickly.

  No, it was the homeless wanderers that were the problem now – the people who had nowhere to go.

  Many of those coming to the relocation center really just wanted someplace to call h
ome, at least for a while, somewhere that had solid walls and a door that locked. But others arrived in the minibuses, did their obligatory sign-in and registration, and then didn’t wait for relocation. They simply drifted off into the streets. It was these ones that caused all the problems, breaking into houses and squatting, or else building makeshift housing on empty and disused land. Only a few streets away there was a park, one that she had taken the boys to often when they were very little, just so they could play on the swings and the slides, but now that park was a city of boxes and shanty buildings, and home to hundreds of drifters.

  Rebecca thought that among the ZA’s wandering homeless there were probably many good people, most of them in fact, but there were also a few that would cut your throat just to steal your shoes. A couple of years ago she could let the boys out on their own to play in that park around the corner, but now they stayed in, and the place wasn’t safe enough even if she went with them. She couldn’t even remember how long it had been since they’d been anywhere just for fun.

  Yes, she could. Three months, no more. It was the last time Connor had been home. Those had been a good few days, before he was rushed off yet again to go wherever he was sent. She tried to think of something else, to take her mind off the fact that she hadn’t heard from her husband in over a week. It was usual, and certainly not uncommon, for him to be away for long periods. But he did normally try to phone her regularly, no matter where he was. And he hadn’t called.

  As she watched a new throng of refugees walking into the building opposite, she wondered if the phone lines were even up at the moment. She hadn’t checked, and she glanced over at the phone, thinking maybe she should call her brother, an excuse, really, just to make sure. She hadn’t spoken to Alan in a week, and with the chaos going on in the south, whatever that meant, she was worried about him. He was far enough from it, surely, practically all the way over near Portsmouth.

  No time, she told herself, and threw her coat on, then headed for the door. She’d ring him when she got back from picking the boys up again, later on. They would love to speak to their uncle anyway, they always did. How they loved his dogs.

  Out on the street, with her two boys in tow, and thankfully neither of them complaining, Rebecca walked along the sidewalk, heading in the direction of the school. They passed a group of soldiers, and then a larger group of civilians standing on the side of the road, all of them weary, and all dirty. As they turned the corner, and the refugees disappeared from sight, she thought for some reason that she recognized them. How that was possible, she wasn’t sure, but there were familiar faces among the crowd. Old school friends maybe? No, that wasn’t it.

  As they moved along the busy street, past a trio of men sitting on a bench, watching her and her boys as they passed, Rebecca instinctively pressed her hand against the bulge in her purse, the handgun that Connor had given her, and painstakingly trained her to load and to shoot. She barely ever took it out, but the feel of the thing, and its deadly power, reassured her. She wasn’t defenseless.

  Ten minutes later, as she saw the gates of the school ahead, having double-timed it along the canal with her hood pulled tightly over her head to keep the rain off, and making sure both the boys did likewise, she finally remembered where she’d seen the group of people on the street. It had been on the TV, in the canteen at work. They were the ones from the Channel Tunnel, she’d swear they were. That footage of those men getting into the helicopters, along with the one woman with the child. They were unmistakable.

  She smiled as she thought of that little girl, actually a refugee from France, nearly two years after the country fell. Some of those in the tunnel group were said to be British and on their way home when they got trapped. But some were French, others Spanish, nationalities very sparsely represented by the living these days. That much she knew. Working for the Quarantine Authority in central London gave her access to a lot of information, and one snippet of that was how many refugees had come in from other countries during the fall of Europe. It was literally just in the thousands for France and Spain – those who had managed to take the train in the last week before the lockdown, and those who had already been visiting.

  She snapped out of her thoughts, kissed her two sons goodbye, and watched as they ran through the gates of the school. Only when the pair had disappeared inside, past the armed soldiers at the doors, did she turn and start walking back, and as she made her way along the longer route via the road, her mind went back to the tunnelers, especially the little girl, and she wondered where they would be sent off to next.

  This Old Town

  Britain - Central London

  The rain beat down on the dirty London square with relentless aggression, torrents hitting the ground and forming a river that ran directly across where the assembled group stood. Hackworth, the unelected leader of the survivors from the Channel Tunnel, cursed as he felt the water seeping into his socks though his shoes. They were new boots, and new socks, and after two years in the dark, wet, dirty tunnel, wearing the same set of clothes, he was not pleased that his new boots were now three inches deep in water.

  They had already been standing out in the rain for an hour. Sure, he thought, the people organizing all these waifs and strays may be busy, but you’d think they would at least find the hundred or so people gathered in the cobbled area outside somewhere to wait out of the rain. The only person not getting wet at the moment was Josie, the little girl, safely covered up by her mother’s coat, as well as her own. Hackworth admired the young woman, her mother, immensely. She had been so strong throughout their time in the tunnel, and anyone who could so bravely face having to give birth in those conditions deserved endless respect. Now, she stood there with her coat over her daughter and the rain washing over her face. He edged around, irritably shoving a few strangers aside to get to where Amarie was standing, and placed his hat, a new one, on her head.

  She smiled at him, but he could see she was struggling.

  “Is there any news about how long we will be here?” she asked.

  Hackworth shook his head. “Nothing. I’m beginning to think they’ve forgotten all about us. Maybe I should go and prompt them again.”

  Colley, the huge Moroccan man, and Hackworth’s constant right hand, appeared at his side. “I will go and find out. This is ridiculous.”

  Hackworth nodded, and watched as Colley’s massive bulk pushed through the crowd and into the building. He didn’t get much past that, though, and Hackworth could see him talking and gesturing to one of the soldiers at the entrance.

  They had only been in London for a few hours, one of which they had now spent standing in the rain. The helicopters that had picked them up from the chaos outside Canterbury didn’t bring them all the way. After a short flight, they had found themselves at a military air station, where they were bustled onto trucks, and then sent on to yet another quarantine zone. He had hoped they would avoid doing that all over again, having already been in quarantine after they came out of the tunnel, but no such luck.

  Thankfully, the isolation period was a lot less the second time around, for reasons unknown to Hackworth, and the journey in the trucks to the center of London had been a quiet one. None of the tunnelers had wanted to talk, and most were content to sit in silence and mourn the loss of those who had died in the tenement in Canterbury. Hackworth had tried not to think about it himself, preferring to look out the window and be shocked every few minutes by how much this once great city had changed. Buildings that had once dominated the skyline seemed to be gone completely, which puzzled him. There weren’t many cars, and only a few buses running. Most of the streets were now filled with pedestrians.

  At one point they had passed Elephant and Castle, south of the Thames, and Hackworth had craned his neck to see if the old pub he remembered was still open. It was, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. The Underground station, once a busy thoroughfare, was boarded up, the entrance blocked by netted blocks of stone, a trio of soldiers standin
g guard. It was the same at the college just across the way. The usual bustle of busy people was now replaced by military vehicles and guards.

  Colley now trudged back to them through the water, looking grim, and bringing Hackworth out of his thoughts. He pushed his way through the crowd and stopped, shaking his head.

  “They gave me these,” he said, holding his hand out. Hackworth took the bundle of paper slips, squinted at them and then looked back up.

  “Ration slips?” he said. “Jesus. It’s come to ration slips.”

  Colley nodded. “Apparently we should go join that queue down the road to get fed, and then we’re to come back here. Then they’ll have us someplace to go, within an hour or so.”

  The solemn group trudged together through the rain toward an area with several green military marquee tents dotted here and there. There was steam coming from the back of one, as well as the smell of food cooking. The group joined the back of the queue, as Hackworth shook his head in disbelief.

  “I never would have thought I’d see a military encampment in the middle of London,” he said, as he continued to try to figure out just where in the city they were. His memory of the place was distorted by how much it had changed in the last couple of years. So many structures were boarded up or torn down – and some of the landmark buildings he would normally have used to judge his whereabouts weren’t even standing anymore. He thought they might be somewhere near Camden Town, maybe even one of the plazas, but it looked so different he couldn’t place it.

  They stood in line, barely talking, and watched Army trucks pick up and drop off groups of people. Every few minutes, a new vehicle would arrive, disgorging a group of bedraggled and scared refugees, and then taking others away. There were hundreds, maybe thousands in the area, huddled in groups, looking dejected or just cold.

  As Hackworth wondered if many of these people were from Canterbury or Folkestone, he heard shouting across the road, and turned just in time to see two men begin hitting each other, and another trying to pull one of the men away. A bag was torn open, its contents spilling upon the ground – it was money, coins and notes, falling into the puddles or scattered across the ground. Several other figures broke away from the crowd and joined in the fight, kicking, punching, and pushing one another.