Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (30 page)

When he looked up, Ali had locked eyes with him. But she only held his gaze for a second, before realizing Handon had it right – and it was his call anyway. They had to leave Henno behind – to get out, or not, on his own. So she slung her rifle, put Reyes’s other arm over her shoulder, and led them all toward that gate.

Which was still fucking closed.

* * *

Pred and Juice regarded each other, hesitating.

“Do what the man says?” Juice asked. “Just get ourselves out of here?”

Pred considered. From where they were, they could easily hear the rampaging mob – and now they could just see the edge of it, spilling out into their sector. “Yeah. I suppose we should. Anyway, First Rule of Holes, man.”

Juice cocked his head. “What’s that?”

“When in one, stop digging.”

“Okay. Let’s head back. Henno’ll be fine.”

Juice hoped he believed that.

* * *

When Fick and Graybeard reached the others at the gate, it was still shut – and Ali was trying to chew through the heavy-gauge steel meshes with the wire-snipper on her multi-tool, which was painstaking work at best. Handon looked up at the thick coils of razor wire that topped the twelve-foot fence, as he shouted into his radio.

Fick spun Reyes around, and then Brady. “You two assholes okay?”

“Fine,” Reyes said.

Brady added, “Thanks for caring, Master Guns.”

“Can we blow the gate?” Handon asked Ali.

“Maybe. But that means everyone here retreating back down there.” She nodded toward the closest cover – where the dead were coming from. “And I can’t reach the damned tension cable to cut it…”

But as Juice rocked up, he hauled an arm-length pair of cable-cutters out of his pack, shoved Ali out of the way, and got to work, making much shorter work of the thick steel meshes.

Fick moved to Handon, who was still on the radio.

“Noise, Handon, we need this last gate open – precedence flash!” He looked up at Fick. “Nothing.”

“Fuck ’em,” Fick said. Juice already had the fence cut practically in half, and they all started squeezing through the gap. But they could all hear the undead mob raging, closing from behind.

And now those in the rear took shots on the first few that appeared.

Henno was still nowhere to be seen.

Rubicon

London - Charing Cross Road

“It’s Brown and Dolby!” Colley shouted, sticking his head up into the front of the hurtling truck the Tunnelers had hijacked. Hackworth was driving, trying to keep them from crashing, and couldn’t take his eye off the road. They were driving way too fast for a narrow surface street in central London, but he couldn’t bring himself to throttle down yet either.

“What about them?” he shouted over his shoulder.

Colley took some deep breaths and climbed up into the passenger seat. “They’ve both been shot.”

Hackworth’s mouth opened – but nothing came out. Actually, he could easily believe it. The truck, stopped at that government checkpoint, had been the center of a whole storm of gunfire, as marauders took out all the soldiers manning the gate. With all that shooting, plus the thin skin of the truck’s cargo area, it wasn’t all that surprising some of their people had been hit.

Still, Hackworth needed a minute to get his mind around it.

Because the stakes had just gone up again. The Tunnelers – already having become hijackers, kidnappers, and refugees from the military and police – now also had wounded to care for. And Hackworth knew he was responsible – both for them getting hurt, and for whatever happened to them now.

“How bad?” he asked, gripping the big steering wheel with bloodless fingers, watching the theaters and bookshops of Charing Cross Road blur by. They blasted across the intersection with Oxford Street without slowing. The traffic signals were out. But they made it through without a collision.

“Brown’s just hit in the leg. It’s bleeding but doesn’t look too bad. But Dolby…”

Hackworth could hear the moaning from the back now, and it was horrible. He knew that Dolby, the old man from the south of France, with his bad asthma, hadn’t been in great health at the best of times. “Will he make it?”

“I don’t know,” said Colley. “He’s hit in the chest and the wound is making these bad wheezing noises…”

“I can make it!” they both heard from the back. The voice, equally laced with pain and determination, was that of Brown. Hackworth knew him to be a pretty tough young man. If he said he could make it, maybe he could.

Colley lowered his voice. “But what about Dolby? I think we’ve got to get him to the hospital. If we don’t, I think he’s gonna die…”

Hackworth gritted his teeth. If they drove this shot-up military transport, full of boxed-up guns and civilians and the one hostage they still held, the soldier who had been in the passenger seat… if they drove this apocalyptic war wagon up to A&E, what did they think was going to happen?

Hackworth shook his head. “We’re gonna get nicked if we do that. They’ll probably arrest us on sight – unless they shoot us on sight.”

Colley looked into the side of Hackworth’s face and gripped his upper arm. “Come on, man. We just drive by, push him out on the curb – and lay on the horn as we drive off. We’ve got to. We can’t take care of him.”

Hackworth nodded tiredly – and swung a screaming right onto Great Russell Street, taking them right in front of the classical columns and friezes of the British Museum, then looping back onto High Holborn, heading east.

“We’ll take him to St. Bart’s,” Hackworth said. That would only be a ten-minute detour. But now he spared a look away from the road and over at his long-time number two. “But you be ready. Because I am just barely going to slow down for this.” He looked back at the road now with slitted eyes.

But what he actually couldn’t stop seeing was the young soldier lying on the ground at that checkpoint behind them, flat on his back, hands held pathetically up before him, pleading, begging Hackworth with his eyes for help…

But Hackworth had simply looked away. And then drove off.

But he had to look away again now, from his mind’s eye. He needed to clear this from his head, put it out of his mind entirely – and for the same reason he had used to justify it at the time: he had been protecting his people. He was responsible for them. And their lives had to matter more than other people’s.

But a deeper, more human part of him also knew that he had crossed a terrible moral Rubicon – and that they were all now blasting headlong down some horrific moral Slip’n’Slide. With God knew what waiting for them at the bottom.

And God only knew what they would become.

Or maybe not all of them. Maybe just him. And even there among all his people, with whom he had shared and suffered so much for so long…

Hackworth had never felt so alone.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, they had managed to get Dolby out in front of the hospital and then get away again, back on the road blasting north. Central London was falling away, yielding to the dingier, sparser, and more suburban high streets of north London in zones three, four, and then five.

Colley came forward again. He said, “We found the truck’s first aid kit and got Brown’s leg wrapped up. I don’t know how fast he’s gonna be able to move.”

Hackworth shrugged. They’d deal with that then.

Colley sat down in the passenger seat, seeming to catch his breath for the first time since the gunfight at the checkpoint. “That was twice we’ve been saved by everything going to hell.”

Hackworth nodded, realizing he was right. The first time had been at CentCom – when the chaos caused by the giant explosion inside had allowed them to capture this truck in the first place.

Colley looked over. “What about the other soldier?” He meant their second hostage – the one who had been riding shotgun. “Should we get rid of him, too? Cut him loose?”

Hackworth shook his head. “Does he have a military ID?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Then we’re going to need him to get out of here. Keep an eye on him. Sit on him if you have to.”

Colley nodded and returned to the cargo area. But ten minutes later, he was back – with the soldier in tow. “He asked to speak with you.”

Hackworth looked over his shoulder. The soldier looked like he was about fourteen years old – wide eyes and ears that stuck out from his head. “What is it?”

When he answered his voice was quiet – but perfectly composed. Not afraid. He said, “You’ll have a much better chance with me up here in front.”

Hackworth’s immediate reaction was suspicion. But he stole another glance at the kid, and didn’t see any deception on his face. Moreover, he was right. They were ultimately not only going to need him up front. They were going to need him driving. “Take a seat, kid.”

He did so, while Colley hovered behind them.

“It’s okay,” Hackworth said. “Go back and look after Brown.”

Colley nodded and left.

And the two men – one on his way out of the wrong side of middle age, the other just becoming a young man – rode in silence for a few minutes. The silence was either cordial, or suspicious. Probably some of both.

Finally, the boy said, “What happened to Brandon?”

Hackworth looked over. He guessed that was the name of the driver.

“Back at the checkpoint,” the boy further prompted.

“He jumped out and warned them,” Hackworth said, his voice tight. “He tried to grass us up.” He hoped that would be warning enough to the kid.

“You can’t blame him for that. It was his job – his duty.”

“It was bloody stupid was what it was.”

“Is he okay?”

Hackworth’s immediate, human reaction was to lie – to spare this kid the pain of learning his friend was gone. But he realized he needed to use it. “He’s dead.”

“Oh, no,” the kid said. His voice was still composed – but he turned his head away and stared out the window.

Hackworth realized the kid thought he had killed him. And as useful as that too might be, he couldn’t bear taking the blame for it. “It wasn’t me, for God’s sake. It was the marauders who killed him.”

The kid looked back at him. “What’s the difference? Between you and the marauders?”

That shut Hackworth up good.
What the hell WAS the difference?

Now the silence they rode in had a very different flavor.

* * *

They were moving through what looked for all the world like farmland now. It was hard to believe this was still London, still inside the M25. But the enormous Wall was starting to loom now – rising up out of the horizon.

There was a reckoning coming – their last and toughest hurdle.

Perhaps recognizing this, the kid started talking again. “What are you guys even doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean hijacking a military transport full of weapons. Kidnapping soldiers. It doesn’t look very good.”

Hackworth pressed his lips together. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t. So explain it to me.”

So Hackworth did. He told him a little about the terrible trials the Tunnelers had endured to make it this far. About how they had been let down again and again by the authorities. How they had no choice but to look out for themselves.

The young man, both skinny and of modest height, exhaled. “Okay. Maybe I’d do the same in your circumstances. I don’t know. Maybe anyone would.”

Hackworth looked over. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Private Borchers.”

“No. Your given name.”

“Liam.”

“How old are you, Liam?”

“Eighteen.”

Hackworth just shook his head. Being such a young age was all but unimaginable to him. His youth was so far behind him it might as well be locked up in another dimension.

“What’s your name, then?” Liam asked.

“Hackworth.”

The kid just gave him a look.

“Will. It’s Will.” Hackworth realized no one had used his first name since… hell, ever since they went into the Tunnel on the French side, before the fall.

“So we’re both William, then.”

“Yes, I suppose so. We’re both William.”

Liam put out his fist. Hackworth shook his head – but finally made a fist and bumped the kid’s. Then he let off the accelerator and braked them to a smooth rolling stop.

“You’re going to have to drive now.”

Liam nodded. But before he got out of the driver’s seat, Hackworth looked seriously into the young man’s face. “Listen. We just want to get out of here. That’s all. This place is a death trap. London is doomed. We just want to go.”

Liam didn’t look like he agreed with Hackworth’s assessment. But he agreed to do what was asked of him. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

Hackworth decided he trusted him. Anyway, he didn’t have a choice.

They switched seats and got moving again.

And the Wall loomed ahead.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Kent - Two Miles South of the ZPW

Elliott rose to his full height from the pit of destruction in his shell hole.

And he didn’t even look back.

The commander of 2 Para had just ordered everyone able-bodied to the rear, leaving the wounded behind. At first, because he wasn’t looking behind him, but only following the cries of the wounded, Elliott wasn’t aware of the others following him. But it turned out everyone was behind him, every healthy Para in this sector, all moving forward. No one was going back.

No one was leaving anybody behind.

Elliott already had his personal aid kit out when he knelt down at the first motionless figure he found. With all the debris and carnage on the ground, it took him a few seconds to realize it wasn’t a body. It was only a torso. But its nametape was intact. It read:
McKay
. A man from his company.

Oh, God.
Elliott swallowed a sob and moved on.

The next one he found was familiar not just by name, but by face. A man from his platoon. A friend. A brother.

These men were all from D Company. This was his unit. They had been the last out, covering the withdrawal of the rest of the battalion. And they had been devastated. All his brothers, every one of them… they were all gone.