Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (34 page)

Trying to cover Zorn, and also keep clear of the wrestling dinosaurs in the center, Noise heard Fick come on the channel again.
“Seriously, Handon – what’s the plan? We need to motate and exfil NOW.”

Henno and Handon grunted and pistoned body blows into each other… for about two seconds, which was when Predator, having climbed up there unseen in all the chaos, clomped inside, dropped his live Zulu, and waded into the middle of the fight – the only one big enough to break it up, never mind fearless enough to put himself in the middle of it.

“
KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!
” he thundered, grabbing first Henno, then Handon, and flinging both big men to opposite sides of the tower like rag dolls. Each bounced into a sitting position on the floor and looked up at the newcomer.

Pred glared back and forth between them. “We don’t have time for this tomfoolery!” This was so ridiculous, coming from who it came from, that all the rage flooded out of Handon and Henno, and they both started laughing.

But they stopped again when they realized Zorn had joined in. The two of them could laugh at their well-spoken land giant. But this guy sure as hell wasn’t allowed to. Handon bounced to his feet and grabbed the wiggling bag of Zulu. “Thanks,” he said to Pred.

“No problem.”

Handon dragged the bag over toward Zorn.

“What the hell?” Zorn said.

Hauling himself to his feet, Henno said, “Whatever you have in mind, we don’t have time for it.”

“We make time,” said Handon.

He unzipped one end of the bag, pulled the hood off the gnashing Zulu – and stuck its face into Zorn’s restrained and exposed arm. Zorn tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. The Zulu made a snuffling noise – and, in another second, had taken a big chunk out of Zorn’s flesh and was hungrily gobbling it down. Handon replaced the hood and zipped the bag back up. He then produced a small vial of liquid and he held it in front of Zorn’s face.

“If you have any interest in staying human,” he said, “You’re going to need this serum. Which means you need me.” He yanked Zorn once again to his feet. “You understand? It’s our way, or the undead way.”

Zorn nodded, then looked down at his mutilated and bleeding arm, sobered. All the belligerence and attitude had finally been shaken out of him. Earlier, Handon had told him if he lied to him again, he’d kill him. And he’d just done it – Zorn had been bitten and almost certainly infected. And he had finally met a meaner and more resolved man than himself.

Handon looked up to see Henno staring at him through slitted and scarcely believing eyes.

He gave him a look back that said:
That hard enough for you?

“Holy shit, dude,” Predator said. “That was pretty fucked up right there.”

“C’mon,” Handon said, pushing Zorn toward the stairs.

“Whatever you say,” Pred said, hefting the live Zulu again, and sounding like he was disinclined to fuck with Handon at this point. “Where to?”

“Our ride,” Handon said, disappearing down the stairwell. “Zorn’s MRAP. We’re all getting the hell out of here.”

Cataclysm III

Hertfordshire - 500 Meters North of the ZPW

The Wall loomed out of the settling dusk like the gates of
Jurassic Park
– except six times as high, and mounted with a lot more firing positions, parapets, and weapons. None of the soldiers in 2 Para had seen it before. They’d been trucked in from their garrison in Colchester, Essex, directly to the front lines in Kent.

And while they’d just had to circumnavigate half of London on foot, their commander had kept them a couple of miles away from the Wall – because their job was still to be a buffer between London and the horrors descending on it. And, even cut down to fifty percent strength, they still had a job to do.

In the end, very few of the wounded from D Company made it out of that artillery-ravaged field. And an awful lot of C Company men went down trying to save them. There were a few that made it, mostly those with minor injuries. But not anybody who’d had to be carried or dragged out.

Now the only remotely full-strength rifle company left in the battalion was B – plus, thank God, the Support Company, with its Machine Gun, Mortar, and Anti-Tank platoons.

Despite this tragedy, Elliott no longer had his ass hanging off the back of the formation. Ever since fighting his way back through the lines a second time, he was stuck right in, near the middle of the platoon. In fact, very unexpectedly, Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj had made him a section leader. Both the leader and assistant for the platoon’s second section had gone down in the attempt to rescue the wounded.

In fact, the battalion’s cadre of senior NCOs, and most of the not-so-senior NCOs, had been decimated. This was because, out of all of them, they were the ones most committed to not leaving anyone behind – their loyalty to the men was absolute. They had put themselves at the point of maximum peril trying to protect the wounded, and the troopers trying to get them out.

And they had died in droves.

And now Elliott had a job. He may have lost almost all of his brothers in D Company. But he had a new home.

There was still a place for him.

* * *

Wiping the sweat from his forehead and hitching his pack up again, trying to ignore the pain in the wrapped-up wound in the back of his knee, Elliott couldn’t even guess how many miles they had covered. But he was sure this was the longest and hardest ruck march he’d ever undertaken. And God knows he had done some long ones.

But word was they were moving to a quiet sector, guarding the north part of the Wall, where they could rest and recuperate. Maybe even get resupplied.

Like everyone trudging around him, Elliott was so damned tired, and felt like he had nothing left in the tank. But, as improbable as it was, he was a leader now. And he couldn’t show his tiredness, never mind complain about it. Instead, he had to dig down, gut it out – and keep himself together for the good of the men.

On the bright side
, he thought, trying to dredge up a smile,
the dead are no longer hot on our heels
.

The artillery barrage hadn’t allowed them to break contact as intended. When Elliott rejoined the battalion, they were moving fast, trying to stick together, and shooting at the runners that dogged them from close behind.

And then – though no one intended it, or even would have wished it – 2 Para ran straight into the middle of an encampment of civilian refugees. And they unintentionally led the pursuing dead right into them. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. The dead, particularly the runners, dispersed into the civilians, and just tore into them.

These people had been camped close to the walls of London, where they probably thought they’d be safe. Maybe the Paras could have stopped and tried to defend them. But, realistically, they just would have died along with them. Or so they told themselves. So instead, God forgive them, they took the opportunity to get clear, regroup, and move out.

Maybe they were meant to survive for a reason.

Elliott decided he had to believe that.

* * *

Now the day was finally winding down – the north side of the Wall looming massively as they approached it in the late afternoon sunlight, moving through sprawling sections of defensive trenches – deep ones, properly built and reinforced. But, weirdly, they were all abandoned. Neither Elliott nor anyone around him knew who had been posted to these positions, or why they’d abandoned them. The best guess was they had been pulled out and thrown into the fight in the south, where things were worse.

But maybe not for much longer.

Nonetheless, and whatever perils awaited them, to the Paras these looked like hammocks on a white sand beach. They could finally stop marching and have some rest – even if it was outdoors, even if it was outside the Wall. They just needed a little time, to pull themselves together as a battalion. Maybe the night would be kind to them.

And tomorrow they would be ready for the fight again.

Word came down and Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj positioned the platoon on the far right flank of the entire line. This was the direction they had come from – and presumably the direction the dead would arrive from first. Elliott took it as a statement of faith in Bhardwaj – and then the sergeant placed faith in Elliott by putting his section on the very end of their line.

“Where’s the lieutenant?” Elliott asked, mainly just out of interest. The LT hadn’t made himself very present since Elliott had joined the platoon, but he’d been totally absent since they reached the Wall.

“Senior leaders meeting,” Bhardwaj said.

Elliott nodded. “Where’d they put BHQ this time?” He meant the Battalion Headquarters, which their commander had been putting up and tearing down over and over again as they retreated across southern England.

“Right up against the bloody Wall, mate.” Bhardwaj spat into the grass, which was growing indistinct in the shadows at the end of day. “The charitable view is it’s shelter for the maps and radios, from the wind and rain. But I suspect it’s actually so the colonel and his staff can be first back inside the Wall, when our lovely defense in depth falls apart…”

Elliott shook his head, moved off, and poured himself into his trench, while getting the ruck off his sweat-soaked and burning back. The others in his section were doing the same. Elliott put himself at the very end of the line, so his sharpshooter rifle could look back and provide maximum protection. But when he turned and peered behind him, he saw the seven men of his section all looked asleep on their feet.

And he realized he had better do something before they all crashed as one.

“Twenty-five percent watch,” he said, pointing at one man at the far end of the trench. “You and me. Everyone else get your heads down. Two hours.”

Elliott turned back and tried to arrange his corner of this hole in the dirt for comfort and combat effectiveness – in particular settling his rifle into a sandbag for stability. Then, unable to resist temptation, he turned around, craned his neck, and looked up toward the top of the towering Wall, which loomed behind them and stretched out of sight in both directions. If he squinted, he could just see ant figures crawling over the top sections, nearly a hundred feet up, evidently doing construction. Tiny welding flames sizzled in the fading light, and dust drifted down on the breeze.

Elliott had rather hoped they’d be done with all that by now. But they’d all heard the rumors about the crumbling and unstable sections of Wall – Elliott had even heard that whole sections had to be torn down and rebuilt, due to failure to properly engineer the foundations. So he just counted himself lucky that it was all currently standing, with no gaps. And he assumed those workers were up there shoring it up. As usual, he just had to trust the powers-that-be to take care of things.

Finally he turned around again and got busy peering through his scope at the horizon. After two quiet, slightly phantasmagorical hours had passed, he woke one of the sleeping men to relieve the one on watch… but a third came awake and defied what was almost his very first order.

“Oh, no, mate,” the man said. “No martyrdom for you. It’s your turn.”

Elliott’s eyes were closing even as he heard this, or he might have protested. Instead he crawled down into the cool shadows at the bottom of the trench and curled up, head on his ruck.

And he finally escaped the nightmare of reality, at least for a while.

* * *

He woke again to the sound of screaming.

Not people. Not Foxtrots, even.

Instead it was steel shrieking. Rivets exploding. Joists snapping and collapsing. It sounded like the world to the south of them was exploding and dying. Elliott was still half in his dream, frozen with the shock and paralysis of being woken violently, and all too soon, from an exhausted sleep. He only began to work out what was going on when he heard the first shouts, deep voices barking from several directions.

“
Fucking RUN!” “Get the hell out!” “It’s coming down! It’s coming down!
”

Elliott still couldn’t quite process this, but it almost made more sense in his dazed state. And it was ingrained habit to move when the men around him did. So he hauled himself and his rifle out of the foxhole, looked to make sure the rest of his section was doing the same, and started legging it.

He couldn’t even really feel his legs, and thought they might collapse under him at any second. There was also the very real danger of falling into an open foxhole in the near-dark. All around him the world blurred with movement – other Paras carrying their weapons and hurtling at high speed away from the Wall.

All the while, behind them, the sounds of collapse and destruction were crescendoing up to a new unsurpassable peak – but then redoubled and went louder and more violent still. And it was all tumbling at them from out of the sky. It was the sound of a disaster movie, sixteen Dolby digital speakers howling perfect and raucous sound design of the end of the world – except a hundred times louder and more vivid, and ten thousand times scarier.

Because this was really happening.

The ground bounced as the first sections of falling wall hit the ground, thousands of tons of steel and concrete impacting the earth at not far off their terminal velocity. The violent shaking was like an earthquake, and threatened to throw Elliott through the air and onto his face. But he had to keep moving – because it was still coming down. He could feel the rushing air behind him, and sense the upper sections racing at the back of his head.

Finally starting to feel his legs, he sucked wind and redoubled his efforts. He had to run faster. He had to keep up…

The next and final series of devastating crashes launched thick clouds of dust and debris at Elliott’s back, and the backs of the men around him. The air filled with roiling and rushing dust, further obscuring what was already indistinct in the fading light.

And then, just like that, it was over.

They must have made it far enough – because Elliott and the men around him were all alive. The very cells of his body filled with relief and gratitude for this. The visceral terror of being in the path of a force like that was unlike any he had experienced. But the relief only lasted a few seconds – as Elliott began to process what had really just happened.