A random sailor standing nearby said, “Yeah, it’s not like we’re gonna get fired on coming into port. Right?”
Handon, Ali, and Homer tried not to give him too baleful a look. They didn’t really believe in careless words jinxing their luck.
Then again, they didn’t totally disbelieve either.
* * *
As the five of them stood watching and waiting, Ali felt she couldn’t take the tension anymore, or maybe the cognitive dissonance of it. So many disturbing thoughts and feelings had been brewing and rumbling in her head ever since Homer’s return, growing larger during the long nights alone – and only getting worse as she saw the problems caused by Handon’s relationship with Sarah, never mind Henno’s probing attacks on their vulnerability. It had all been building to some kind of explosive pressure inside her head, and she had just decided to pull him aside and say something, when Homer beat her to it. Feeling the vibe coming off her like some static-electricity field, he touched her elbow, and led her away.
The two of them stopped and faced each other, about ten meters behind the others.
Before Ali could speak, Homer looked intently into her eyes and said, “I want you to know how much it means to me – you bearing with me these last few days. I know it can’t have been easy.”
Ali merely nodded. There were words down inside her. But they didn’t want to rise past her throat.
Homer went on. “But I’m ready now. Ready for us to start being together for real, spending more time together. And I also want to start getting the kids used to you.”
Ali swallowed drily. “Used to me?”
Homer smiled. “As a more regular, permanent fixture in their lives.” He leaned in closer and inclined his head down, holding her by the shoulders and looking seriously at her.
But he found he didn’t recognize the look in her eyes.
A few more heavy beats passed before Ali broke the silence.
“I’m ending it,” she said.
“…What?”
“It’s over.”
She pulled away from him and just walked away.
But even as she did so, she was already thinking: I can stop sleeping with him.
I just have no idea if I can stop loving him…
* * *
The Fire Scout didn’t need to get very high, nor very close to shore, before its all-scanning cameras beamed something profoundly unexpected back into the Kennedy’s bridge.
“What the hell…?” Drake breathed.
Abrams was back inside now, where the view was better, standing at Drake’s right elbow, and staring up at the big video display. “Is that what it looks like?”
Drake punched up the phone again. “CIC, Bridge.” He knew they were already seeing what he was seeing – a bit before him, in fact. “Get me POSIDENT on that vessel.”
He hung up again, then looked up at Abrams, who shrugged and said, “It’s just going to be another ghost ship.”
Drake exhaled. Abrams was probably right.
On its long wanderings, the JFK had passed uncountable numbers of ships that had suffered catastrophic outbreaks – infections that had taken the crew down, no doubt horrifyingly quickly. Either everyone on board had been turned or eaten – or enough had that the survivors jumped over the side in pure panic. Either way, no one was left at the helm, and these ships floated – adrift, lost, soulless.
The great thing was just to stay away from them.
This one had no doubt docked up here, then had an outbreak that got out of control. End of story. Drake said, “Just to be on the safe side, let’s hail them.”
The officer at the comms station asked, “Radio, sir?”
“Radio, signal light, and semaphore.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The phone on his desk blinked and Drake snatched it up. “Go ahead. You’re sure? Okay.” Hanging up, he looked up at Abrams again. “It’s the Admiral Nakhimov.”
“I thought so. Not too many warships that size – in the old world or this one.”
Drake nodded. “But what the hell is a Russian Kirov-class battlecruiser, from their Northern Fleet, doing off the coast of South Africa? It makes no sense.”
Abrams shrugged. “She was probably doing what everyone else was – trying to escape the plague. Then they sent a party ashore to scavenge for supplies. And brought the infection back on board with them.”
Both Drake and Abrams looked up at the overhead monitor as the giant weapons-bristling battlecruiser grew bigger, and meaner-looking, as the Fire Scout overflew her. The Admiral Nakhimov was anchored out in the mouth of the harbor. Saldanha Bay consisted of a big crescent-shaped body of water, with two arms of land forming its neck; and then another partially enclosed section beyond that, before the land finally gave way to the open sea. The Russian warship was in the second area – a sensible place to anchor a ship that big, and with a draft that massive.
The ship herself looked like a throwback to the WWII-era battleships – long, wide, tall, and menacing – though she didn’t have multiple big deck guns like the battleships of yore, only a couple of smaller 130mm ones. But what she lacked in guns she more than made up for in a huge arsenal of surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, cruise missiles, rockets, and torpedoes. The whole foredeck was covered with a matrix of pop-up missile cells, and surrounded by swiveling rocket and torpedo launchers.
She also had 76mm armor plating all around, and was fully 827 feet long, nearly as long as the Kennedy – and, like the Kennedy, nuclear-powered. Her displacement, however, was only about a quarter of the carrier’s, and her crew barely a sixth the size. Though her ship’s complement now presumably stood at zero.
“No response to hails, sir,” the comms officer reported.
“Helm, all stop,” Drake ordered.
After the better part of a week at sea, blasting ahead non-stop at forty knots, the USS John F. Kennedy finally churned to a stop. Its massive forward momentum would take it a fair bit closer to land yet.
When Abrams stepped outside again, with binoculars this time, he found he could now make out the tall, menacing shape of the big battlecruiser himself.
An almost unmediated view.
* * *
“We’re slowing,” Handon said, looking over his shoulder as Ali returned. She was just coming to tell him she was going back down to the team room.
“No,” Homer said, coming up on Handon’s other side, and wrapping his arms around Ben and Isabel. “We’re stopping.”
He was feeling stunned by Ali’s bombshell, and slightly surprised his voice worked. But, then again, he’d remained effective through much worse shock, many times before. And now he could actually feel the change in vibration beneath their feet, as the engines, nuclear-powered and thus having no idle mode, went offline.
The familiar artificial breeze against their faces slackened, but a natural one picked up now from the north. The sun glinted on the choppier water here nearer shore. A gull called in the distance, though Handon couldn’t spot it.
Ali could. She stopped and remained with the others, for the moment. Despite the dire awkwardness of remaining there with Homer, she wanted to see what was happening.
And then a muted klaxon sounded, from somewhere just behind and below them, and off to their left. It was followed almost immediately by a great whooshing sound from the same location, as two flashing darts appeared from beneath the port side of the carrier, trailing orange flame and gray-and-white smoke. They were Sea Sparrow anti-ballistic missiles, and now flew off at a speed almost too fast to track, skimming just above the water’s surface.
Quickly, they disappeared, racing out toward the horizon.
Toward Africa.
Two seconds later, a pair of explosions blossomed out ahead of them, also low to the water, and just above the line of the horizon. It was impossible to see what the two outgoing missiles had hit. But the sound of the explosions reached those on deck shortly after. This was followed by one second of silence,
as the echoes faded out.
And then they all heard a high-pitched whining sound, like a giant but distant buzz-saw, and also coming from down underneath the left side of the ship.
And in that instant, Homer knew exactly what that sound was: it was the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS), the surviving one on the port side – that giant six-barreled Gatling cannon with its big radar-guidance system, which was designed to shoot down incoming anti-ship missiles.
And it was out of ammo.
But its radome worked just fine.
And now it was tracking incoming threats, its barrels spinning and whining, but shooting blanks – at one or more objects approaching them at 2.5 times the speed of sound, much too fast to see, never mind to hear coming in.
Homer snatched up Isabel in his arms and turned toward the stern, not having to tell Handon to grab Ben.
“Run,” he said.
Humanity will return in
ARISEN, BOOK SEVEN – DEATH OF EMPIRES
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Come back and live through the beginning of the end of the world in
ARISEN : GENESIS, the pulse-pounding and bestselling ARISEN prequel.
Thanks and Acknowledgements
Michael
This author wishes to thank Anna Kathleen Brooksbank, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Alexander Montgomery Heublein, Matthew David Grabowy, e, Slayer 155, and Michael and Jayne Barnard, for their indispensable support. Critically, my thanks to Amanda Jo Moore (“Ugh!”) and Mark George Pitely (“My advice? Cleansing fire.”) for making this work stronger and making me a better writer (and a better human being). Thanks to Bruce, Wanda, Alec, and Brendan MacDonald Fyfe, for their amazing examples of lives directed by purpose, compassion, and service. Finally, my warm thanks to Jane and David Brooksbank for the N. Yorkshire writer’s garret, and all the veg – and for Isobel and Ben.
My sincere thanks to Glynn, for hanging in with me. I don’t always make it easy. (Where’s the counseling and therapy for writing partners?! Definitely money to be made there.) As I put it during one of our marital spats: “We’re absolutely in this together, and together is the only way we’re going to make it all the way.”
Finally, as always, very many thanks indeed to our kick-ass readers – for your reviews, posts, personal messages, word-of-mouth, and generally amazing feedback and support. You are the Zulu Alpha.
Several incomparably awesome lines (pretty much all of them Fick’s) were borrowed from the Funniest thing your Drill Sergeant/Instructor said that you almost laughed at but didn't because you didn’t want him to kill you thread on The Most Infantry Man in the World on Facebook. Thanks to all those hilarious DSes and DIs, and the recruits who resisted laughing at them.
The lines “Keep moving and thinking. Countless millions have spent their last moments on Earth paralyzed by confusion. Don’t be counted among them.” are – again, just like they were in Book Five; but they bear repeating – from Mark Miller in SOFREP, though he was paraphrasing Tony Blauer.
The line “If I should wake before I die” is from Icon for Hire – who put out my favorite two albums of last year, and provided the soundtrack to writing a lot of this book. (Not least inspirational was this one. While I’m at it, this didn’t hurt my motivation levels, either. Nor did this.) And Celldweller’s Soundtrack(s) for the Voices in my Head, volumes 1-3, ended up being my go-to music for writing much of (my bits of) this book.
The description of German Shepherds was borrowed (almost, but not quite, wholesale) from Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
The bit about how “only a freak chain of improbable accidents produced the bubble of conditions that was necessary for the rise of life” (and much of the material around it) was stolen from evolutionary psychologist John Tooby on Edge.org.
Good ole Cracked.com provided the reality check on getting knocked out.
The writers of The West Wing (Aaron Freaking Sorkin…) did much work in showing me (or at least trying to show me) how to do long-form serial drama that is at once unapologetically intellectual and willing to hash out serious ideas to any depth; yet still uncompromisingly dramatic and captivating.
Thanks to the M■■ (C■ M■■) - especially S/■■ A.M. - for reminding me never to quit.
Here are some books that were either helpful or inspirational in producing (my bits of) this one:
My Share of the Task: A Memoir, by General Stanley McChrystal
Service: A Navy SEAL at War, by Marcus Luttrell, with James D. Hornfischer
Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease, by Paul Ewald (from which I took much or most of the material on microbes and disease)
Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, by Eric Blehm
Lest We Forget: A Ranger Medic’s Story, by Leo Jenkins (from which I borrowed the lines “get in my back pocket” and “welcome to the I Just Got Blown Up Club”, as well as the description of the effects of adrenaline and the sympathetic nervous system on the limbs and body under stress)
Apache: Inside the Cockpit of the World's Most Deadly Fighting Machine, by Ed Macy (which provided most of the info about, obviously, Apaches, and also the direct quote about what flying one is like)
Dressed to Kill: The Remarkable True Story of a Female Apache Pilot on the Frontline, by Charlotte Madison (which, equally obviously, provided the inspiration for a certain female pilot character)
Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior, by Dick Couch
Redeployment, by Phil Klay (perhaps the best Iraq War fiction yet, and the source of “Lalafallujah” and “the music festival from hell”)
The Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich, by David Kenyon Webster (the single best WWII memoir I’ve ever read – it reads like a novel; an excellent one – and has many more personal and beautiful details than Stephen Ambrose’s (also wonderful) Band of Brothers)
Over 2.3 million Americans have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Studies indicate that at least 20% of them (nearly half a million) suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and/or depression – half of whom do not seek treatment. Untreated PTSD can result in destroyed marriages, lost jobs, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide. Additionally, more than 260,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), usually caused by close proximity to explosions such as roadside bombs. TBI can result in memory and mood problems, headaches, and difficulty sleeping. To learn more, check out Military Minds. If you’d like to help, you can raise awareness by liking the Military Minds page on Facebook; if you want to make a donation, one great place is the Brendan MacDonald Fyfe Fund and the Campaign to Bring Our Veterans All the Way Home.
Glynn
Thanks to all of the Jameses – 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 Michael, for going along with this daft and crazy idea, and turning it into something much more awesome than I originally conceived. From this point on we’re into
new territory that is beyond the original plan.
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.”
Humanity will return in
ARISEN, BOOK SEVEN – DEATH OF EMPIRES
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”, “The Best Techno Military Thriller I have read!”, “Awesome!”, “Gripping”, “Edge of your seat action”, “Kick butt in the most serious of ways and a thrill to read”, “What a wild ride!!! I simply could not put this book down”, “has a real humanity and philosophical side as well”, “a truly fast action, high octane book”, “Up there with Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin”, “one of the best Spec Ops reads I have run into”, and “hi-tech and action in one well-rounded explosive thriller.”
Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon Page 27
