Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (22 page)

“So, even if I considered sending a team – which I’m not even saying I’m considering at this point – but if I did, one thing I can tell you is that you wouldn’t be on it.”

Sarah Cameron spoke for the first time.

“Then send me, Commander. I can be Dr. Park’s proxy. His eyes and ears. We can also do a live video link, so he can literally see what I do.”

Abrams cocked his head and considered. That kind of made sense.

Park tried to speak again, but Abrams didn’t let him. “Okay, second, do I look like I have operational combat personnel sitting around jiggling their balls? Alpha’s deployed, half the surviving Marines are deployed – and the other half are spun up as a QRF to go rescue them if they get in trouble.”

Abrams paused to shake his head and marvel at himself. The longer he was in this job, the more he sounded exactly like Commander Drake – over-tasked, under-resourced, and a little snarky about the whole situation. Abrams remembered the old advice to never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Then, if he doesn’t like it, you’re a mile away. And you have his goddamned shoes.

Park didn’t look like he was backing down. “What about the ones who swept the lower decks for the Zulus that attacked me and Sarah?”

“NSF,” Abrams said, referring to the Naval Security Forces.

Sarah nodded. “I’m billeted to them anyway. Surely a few of them can be spared for this.”

Abrams shook his head. “Yeah, sending our security force out will work great – until something goes wrong here. And what’s ever gone wrong on this boat? Odysseus’s fleet was like Carnival Cruise Lines compared to us.”

Jesus
, Abrams thought.
I am completely turning into Drake…
He also remembered why, also like Drake, he’d never really wanted this job. But now he had it, so he’d better learn to like it. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”

Park said, “You heard the officer at CentCom – two days could make the difference between survival and extinction. And getting a DNA sequencer could
be that difference
.” He paused, took a look at his shoes, then looked up again. “Look, Commander. I know I screwed up. But we can fix this. I know I can make it good. Just give us the chance. Let me try.”

Abrams exhaled mournfully.

“Put together a mission plan. Get in a room with Lieutenant Wesley, commander of NSF. Also grab Sergeant Lovell, if he can be spared, and who will know his ass from his elbow regarding shore missions – and, more importantly, your ass from your elbow. The Marines he commands aren’t leaving the boat, at least not on your escapade. But he’ll know how a mission like this can be run with some chance of success.”

Park’s eyes lit up, and Sarah looked excited herself.

“When you’ve hashed it out – and I mean everything, answers to every question that might arise – you come back and show it to me.”

Robbing Peter to pay Paul
. That was another phrase Drake used to throw around a lot. Now Abrams understood that, too. He could either hang on to his security forces to keep the carrier safe. Or he could send a mission to get the DNA sequencer that might save humanity.

And there was no one to make these calls now but him.

Park and Cameron finally nodded, turned, and left.

And Abrams got the peace of his bridge back. For now.

Whitehall

London - Westminster Bridge

Crouching low, Colley crept forward and told Hackworth about the guns he’d found in back. Neither had any way of knowing these invaluable weapons had been on their way to CentCom HQ to get everyone there armed, in the wake of their nearly fatal outbreak. They only knew it was an odd stroke of fortune – and that it gave them some options.

Though mainly terrifying ones.

“If we get stopped…” Colley said, seeming to mean they could shoot their way out, or through the checkpoint.

Hackworth shook his head. That was crazy talk. The Tunnelers were veterans of the zombie wars – but they weren’t soldiers. And they definitely couldn’t fight the military. They’d only get themselves killed trying. No, the best place for those guns was in the crates they came in. If things got so bad that they had to break them out… well, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But it wasn’t a possibility he liked to think about.

He waved Colley back into the rear.

Because they had now reached the security checkpoint at the end of the bridge. Hackworth shoved the barrel of the pistol as far as he could into the seat before him, to remind the driver what was at stake. That was all he could do.

The truck rolled to a stop.

“ID, manifest, destination, and business in the GSZ,” Hackworth heard an invisible guard say as he stepped up to the window. He heard a rustle as the driver handed over his ID and some papers, and answered, “Wellington Barracks.” Hackworth knew this was home to the Household Cavalry and Guards units – the guys with the big bearskin hats and red uniforms – right around the corner from Buckingham Palace. He could only hope this was a plausible lie.

But it must have been, because the heavy gate scraped out of their way, and the truck accelerated smoothly through it. By the time Hackworth climbed back into the passenger seat, they had passed under the stately gaze of Big Ben, and were emerging into Parliament Square. He looked up to see the larger-than-life statue of Churchill, slightly bent over, hand on cane, wearing his overcoat. To Hackworth, the Great Man looked tired. Maybe they all were.

The driver immediately hooked a right onto Whitehall itself – driving through the very center of the UK government. Up ahead in the middle of the road was the Cenotaph – the memorial to all of Britain’s war dead. Hackworth had seen it many times on television, always on Remembrance Sunday, when the Queen and PM and others came out to lay wreaths and observe the two-minute silence.

But it was a very different scene today – and not at all silent. Located all along Whitehall were some of the very central government ministries – the hulking Edwardian-Baroque Treasury Building, with Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in the basement. The Cabinet Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence – and Downing Street itself.

And in front of all these buildings, choking the wide boulevard to barely more than a single lane, were rows of big lorries. Moving trucks. And being carried onto them by moving men were… computers. Lots of computers. A few filing cabinets. Cardboard boxes. Hackworth saw what looked like a large framed painting with a drop-cloth over it. This was being supervised by men and women in suits and skirt-suits. They looked like senior civil servants.

Hackworth’s first response to this was to tense up. Here they were, the mouse in the very center of the cheese. They were either certain to be caught – or else totally safe, as no one would be stupid to drive a hijacked military truck right through the beating heart of the former British Empire. But only a few seconds later, his feelings turned to outrage. Because he very quickly got the impression these people were going somewhere – somewhere else, far away from all this.

Hackworth looked back to see Colley crouching in the space that led to the rear of the truck. “I told you,” Hackworth said. “And it’s not only the rats fleeing this ship. It looks like the captain and senior officers going. Maybe the whole crew.”

Peeking up over the dash, Colley nodded. “Everyone in charge, maybe.” But then he cocked his head at Hackworth. “Wait – are we the rats in all this?”

“Absolutely,” Hackworth said, looking back and nodding – but not taking his gun off the driver. “Because we’re getting off first.” He clenched his jaw resolutely.

“And we’re going to survive.”

* * *

They passed through the rest of the Government Security Zone, and much of central London, including Trafalgar Square, without incident. Soon, the truck full of guns and Tunnelers came to the checkpoint on the way out – right in the middle of Charing Cross Road.

Once they were north of this they would be home free. They’d still have to cross north London, with its higher risk of marauders, and after that somehow talk their way out at the Wall. But at least they wouldn’t be in the middle of a highly secure military zone, subject to discovery at any second.

Hackworth crawled back into his little space, finger on trigger, trying to decode the expression and body language of the driver as he did so. Because if Hackworth knew they’d be relatively safe from discovery after this… the driver knew it, too.

The last thing Hackworth saw before he crawled out of sight was a civilian truck facing them, trying to cross the checkpoint in the opposite direction. It was hard to miss because the men in the truck, and the soldiers at the checkpoint, were on the verge of shouting at one another. It was turning into some kind of a stand-off.

And Hackworth had already seen enough to know that, as order had started to collapse, looters and marauders in the city were attacking soldiers and stealing their weapons – which were quickly becoming priceless, with the spreading disorder, and the approaching undead horde. It was no surprise the soldiers were jumpy and aggressive. They were under siege – from all sides.

And even from his hidey-hole, Hackworth could hear this stand-off ramping up – all underneath the loud and tense voice of the guard who approached them now.

“ID, manifest, and destination.”

Before Hackworth could react, he heard the driver’s door fly open – and the pressure on the seat before him lifted, as the driver threw himself out.

“Armed men in the truck!” he shouted. “The whole back’s filled with raiders!”

Ah, shit
. Hackworth thought. They’d just been done.

He heard more feet on the road, as well as yelling, all of it surrounding the truck now. And then a new shouted voice: “Everyone out of the lorry,
right now
– hands up and moving slowly. Comply if you don’t want to be shot.”

Hackworth didn’t see any way out of this. It was over.

He took a deep breath, and prepared to surrender.

But then gunfire rang out – ahead of them at first, and then all around. At first Hackworth thought the soldiers had simply opened up on them.

But then he heard cries nearby, in addition to the sound of bullets crashing into the cab and tearing through the thin metal skin of the cargo area. He covered up his head and curled up into a ball in his little space – praying everyone in back was doing the same.

What felt like a lifetime later, but was really no more than ten seconds, the gunfire died down – and Hackworth felt he had to see what the hell was going on. He dragged himself up into the passenger seat and peered out. He could see the unmoving bodies of soldiers sprawled out in the street in front of them. And on the other side of the barrier… marauders, armed with pistols, and a few military-issue rifles. They had evidently all come out of that civilian truck facing them.

And now they started sweeping forward.

And for no reason that Hackworth would ever be able to explain to himself, he opened the passenger-side door and swung down onto the blacktop – which was littered with shell casings, not to mention spreading pools of blood.

Movement to his left caught his eye and he saw a very young soldier, but with what looked like officer’s insignia and beret, pop up from behind cover with his side arm held forward. Nearly instantly shots rang out from the marauders – and the soldier took several hits in his body armor, and one in his shoulder, where Hackworth could see blood mist out into the air. The young officer went down on his back, hard, and his pistol skittered across the blacktop – all while Hackworth watched, horrified and frozen.

Looking up, he saw one of the marauders – a scruffy thirty-something man with long hair and a patchy beard, and incongruously wearing military-issue body armor – leap the concrete barrier with a pistol in hand. The man saw Hackworth as soon as he cleared the barrier, and leveled his gun at him.

Hackworth immediately put both hands in the air – though he kept hold of the gun. Maybe it was his civilian clothes, maybe his age or posture, but for whatever reason the marauder didn’t fire. Instead he eased off, then stepped over the prone form of the wounded soldier, his feet on either side of the young man’s waist.

Pathetically, the soldier raised his hands up in front of his face, trying to protect himself from what was coming, or somehow wave it all away.

And, then, unexpectedly he tilted his head and looked back – and straight into Hackworth’s eyes. His face was terrified, and in pain – and, mainly, he was pleading for help, for succor, for something. Anything.

Hackworth held the young man’s pleading gaze for two seconds – and then looked away. He looked ahead of him, where he could see more of the marauders removing the barrier. Their way out of there was now clear.

Without another look down at the wounded and doomed young man, Hackworth climbed back into the truck and slid over into the driver’s seat this time.

As he put the truck into gear… he heard the single shot.

He put the accelerator into the floor.

And he got them the hell out of there.

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck

750 Feet Over Western Russia

“
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!!
”

Oleg Aliyev – Kazakh bioweaponeer, half-assed vaccine researcher, and would-be savior of the world – came fully awake, and directly into full-on panic, as the blackness of the ground raced straight at his face, and the tortured helicopter shook violently all around him. Between his face and that hard frozen ground below was only a glass chin-bubble – and a totally indeterminate amount of open air. Indeterminate, but definitely shrinking fast.

Basically, he was going down – and he was about to go in hard.

Aliyev and his super-expensive Eurocopter EC175 – both of which had miraculously gotten away from his burning, exploding, zombie-overrun, lethal-pathogen-coated dacha back in the Altai Mountains of central Asia – were not only diving at the ground at high speed. But they also seemed to be in an uncontrolled roll to the right; and there was a little tail vortex thrown in for good measure. But Aliyev had to intuit all this from physical sensations, and from the instruments.