Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (36 page)

Henno was a soldier, and he was a man of principle. Handon vowed to remember this.

The group from the tower – Handon, Henno, Pred, and Noise – wasn’t moving at full speed, due to having a bagged-up dead guy to carry, and a flex-cuffed live one to prod along. The others – Ali, Juice, Fick, Graybeard, Reyes, and Brady – who until a few seconds ago had been holding the dike, soon caught up with them. Now they formed up ranks and all hauled ass toward the garage where Zorn’s giant car-crushing vehicle was parked.

As they ran, they could hear the fence behind them give way.

And they felt as much as heard the undead tide wash in, flooding through and around every structure before it, sluicing through the canals between buildings and across the base like a bad disaster mash-up movie –
Zomnami
, maybe.

And now the living had to get out of there before they were all submerged and drowned beneath it.

* * *

“Fuck, yeah,” Brady said as the metal-slat garage door rolled up, revealing the MaxxPro International XL towering behind it. “That’s our ride
right
there.”

“Seriously,” Reyes said. “No more ghetto hoochies for us – this is the Cadillac Escalade of MRAPs!”

“You jokers shut the fuck up – and load up!” Fick barked, as he turned, brought his rifle up, and took a position at the corner of the garage, aiming back where they’d come from. Instantly, he was taking shots to drop the front-running Romeos. A Foxtrot – inexplicably wearing the remains of an Army Class A dress uniform – broke from the pack, leaping and tacking around the street like a crazy-ass bastard on steroids. Fick took a dozen shots on it but couldn’t land one. Maybe when it got closer. Maybe it would be too late then.

“Load up and button up!” Handon bellowed, helping Pred shove the bagged Zulu through the big open side hatch of the MRAP, then pulling the flexcuffed Zorn through. “Once we’re buttoned up inside, we’re untouchable!”

“Not to mention unstoppable,” Pred added. “Once this thing gets moving…”

“Ah, shit,” Handon said, turning to Zorn. “The starter!”

Zorn just glared at him.

“Two options,” Handon said. “Drive out of here with us – or stay and be torn to pieces and eaten alive. Even if you survive, you turn. Choose!”

For a second it looked like he was genuinely on the fence about it. “Cocky motherfuckers,” Zorn finally said. “Back left corner of the garage, top storage box in the stack. Inside an oil pan.”

Handon nodded to Ali, who had just slithered in, as she was fastest and most agile. She nodded in return and slithered back out, salmon-spawning against those coming in. Handon reached over and cable-tied Zorn’s flexcuffed hands to a metal shelving unit, mounted to the wall beside the hatch and stacked with mine-detection gear.

Big overloaded bodies continued to pile in the side door, which luckily was designed precisely to admit guys in full battle rattle – or even EOD suits. In the middle of this scrum Ali reappeared, cradling a boxy hunk of metal, which she tossed to Handon. He caught it and leapt forward, clambering into the driver’s area in front. In seconds he had the starter back in place, and hit the start button.

The whole gigantic steel beast rattled and rumbled as its turbocharged, inter-cooled, direct-electronic-injection engine roared to life – all 400 horsepower of it.

Handon turned around and stuck his head into the back. “Who’s got hours in the driver’s seat of one of these things?”

“Got it,” Brady said, looking like a kid whose turn had come at the go-cart track. He clambered up front while Handon slid over to the passenger side.

They both heard the hatch slam shut, a deep rich clang, followed by a fist banging on the back of the driver’s compartment. “All in! Go, go, go!”

Brady and Handon pulled their belts across their chests.

And the grinning Marine gunned it.

* * *

Homer watched the team disappear into the garage through his scope.

He was going to have to hook back up with them at some point, but there were a lot of ways he might do it. Fighting his way back through the lines of the entire dead garrison – which was even now taking their camp back – was not a particularly appealing one.

One better option would be to climb down outside the wire and go all the way around – not unlike how he’d dove off their overrun boat on Lake Michigan and swum around the whole fracas before rendezvousing with them inland.

But, then again, from where he was in this guard tower he could cover the team’s withdrawal. Buttoned up in an MRAP, they might have cause to appreciate having someone with an elevated and unobstructed view on overwatch.

But for now, Homer was safe up in his tower, where none of the dead had even noticed him. Heck, it was more than safe, it was positively peaceful – up above it all, sitting in the shade, a nice breeze taking the sweat from his brow. He scratched at the knife wound on his cheek, given to him by that Spetsnaz combat diver, and which had begun to itch in the heat. His wide variety of slashing wounds from that fight had been stitched and/or taped up, like a boxer having his wounds closed to get back in the ring for one more round.

Way up here, Homer even had a second to reflect. He wondered how the hell Dugan, of all the Tier-1 guys he knew, could have ended up like that. He tried to imagine what had gone down, in the days, the minutes, before he was turned. If Homer knew the man at all, and he did, he felt sure Dugan fell doing his job – trying to protect others.

But still – the message was clear. If a man and an operator like Dugan could be infected and go down… then anyone could.

And that included Homer.

Now, as he watched through his scope, the biggest MRAP he had ever seen went blasting out of that garage, and started bashing through the heaving crowds of dead. In fact, it was heading north, right toward Homer’s position – which also meant it was surfing straight into the teeth of the tide, crashing through wave after wave of surging dead bodies. Homer smiled.

That almost looked like fun.

* * *

Brady put the hammer down, while Handon’s fingers dug into his armrest.

Pred was right – once this thing got a head of steam, all fifteen tons of her rolling along like an out-of-control freight train through the remains of the camp, not much was going to stop her. Not even four thousand undead. In the end, they were only flesh and bone, and mostly rotted flesh at that.

Soon the fully loaded MRAP was crashing through cresting waves of meat.

Rotted body after body went under the wheels, into the grille, or was hurled to the side, or up in the air. At this point, the base was totally overrun – certainly the northwest section they were driving back into. But it seemed the MRAP could drive over or through a virtually unlimited number of walking corpses.

One was like a thousand, where this thing was concerned.

What a difference a little hardware makes
, Handon thought, comparing this to their earlier exfil from Chicago on foot, close-hauled and nerve-shredding, and in which they’d all nearly gone down. Though he was slightly concerned by Brady’s exuberance and utter disregard for obstacles. But maybe that was what was required right now. The sheer horsepower, not to mention complete indestructibility, of this rampaging beast were intoxicating. Handon was even starting to have fun himself. Brady obviously had been from the start.

Handon gathered from Homer’s radio reports that they were going to have to bash their way through a second growing singularity out at the wire. But that shouldn’t be a problem either – any more than the outer wire itself would. As long as they kept their speed up, every potential obstacle was just something else waiting to be destroyed or knocked down.

They were untouchable.

And they were now monster-trucking over and through vast crowds of dead, tearing a hole through the horde with the truck’s cattle catcher in front and V-shaped hull underneath. The truck was bumping and rocking, and around the Odin-like bellowing of its engine they could just make out the sound of howling and hissing and moaning on all sides. As gore and black gunk splashed across the windows, it started to feel like they were in some kind of dry submersible, a mini-sub deep in a sea of viscera and gore and liquefied meat.

Juice stuck his head up into the front and said, “Hey, Noise is in the turret. He wants to know if you want the fifty up.”

“No,” Handon said. “Save the ammo. I don’t know that he could clear the way any better than the vehicle itself.”

“True.” But then Pred noted the rising tide of gore on the front windows. Brady already had the big industrial wipers on – but they weren’t getting the job done. Visibility was dropping fast. Pred said, “Hey, how can you see where the hell we’re going?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Brady hollered gleefully. “Nothing stops a MaxxPro!”

Pred was slightly skeptical. But maybe this thing really was like the Hulk, bashing through all and sundry, unstoppable.

But just then an especially broad sheet of black gunk and viscera and body parts splashed full over both front windows, turning the whole view opaque and dark. The wipers were fighting against it, but losing the battle, clearing it away too slowly. Before any of them knew it, they had been driving completely blind for four, five, six seconds…

Handon grabbed on to the
oh-shit
handle beside his seat, and looked over at Brady – about to suggest that he might want to reduce their speed…

When their speed spontaneously dropped by half, instantly, as a loud crash sounded to their front, and the black gunk was sundered by fragments of wood and cement and glass, the windshield itself cracking, and the whole building-like vehicle shuddering and banging from the violent impact of a collision. In the next instant, the nose tilted down and forward – and they came to a sudden, jarring, and complete stop.

There was really only one possible explanation. They’d crashed into an actual building. A big solid one. Brady gunned the engine – but the wheels just spun.

Something had stopped the unstoppable juggernaut.

Now they were dead in the water.

And the tide was rising all around them.

Short, Controlled Bursts

Camp Lemonnier - JOC

Fick picked his battered body up off the deck – almost everyone in the back of the MRAP had been knocked to the floor or onto each other by the impact and crash of the vehicle – and put his face to one of the side ports. Because of the steel louvers outside them, made to shield passengers from IED blasts, but which recently had been slicing through dead bodies, it provided a relatively unobstructed view.

“I think we’re back in the goddamned JOC,” Fick said.

“We’re back in the car again,” Predator muttered. He was about the only one who had kept his seat – as usual, the immovable object.

Reyes, dusting himself off, delivered his line. “At least we’re out of the tree.”

Sure enough, it was the sunken pit in the center of the JOC that had doomed them. The MRAP had crashed through the outer wall no problem, then through the first few rows of stations. But then its nose fell off, dropping into the pit, and it finally came to a stop. Because of the truck’s angle, the wheels had no traction.

Pred got up, took a look outside, then grunted. “I don’t suppose getting out and pushing is going to help.”

Fick said, “Not even you, big guy.”

Up front, Handon shook his head and tried to get his senses back after the colossally jarring impact. The windshield had been partially cleaned by the walls of the building, and he looked out of it at the devastated JOC – shattered flat-panel displays, ravaged computers, splintered chairs and desks – and tried to formulate a plan. Maybe they could get some timber underneath the wheels, or use explosives to blow up the side of the pit that had them jammed up…

Because he knew that if they didn’t get out of there in the next sixty or ninety seconds, they were probably never getting out. The legions of dead would even now be flocking to the extremely loud ground zero that was them. And it would soon surround them a hundred thick on all sides. They could stay alive by staying buttoned up in the MRAP. But they’d eventually just die of thirst.

He had to think of something – fast – but nothing was coming.

And then a voice came over the squad net.

“Hey, I’m outside on your twelve. Can you guys do me a favor and release the winch cable?”

Homer.

* * *

Handon found and hit the winch release, then turned around and stuck his head into the rear.

But then he hesitated, wrestling with his next command decision. Should they open the door and push out security? Or stay buttoned up inside, where they were notionally safe? But then he cursed himself for even hesitating, because the question answered itself. Staying buttoned up in an immobilized vehicle, surrounded by the enemy, was a non-stop ticket to extinction. They had to dismount, push out, and defend the site, while the vehicle got unstuck.

And, anyway, before Handon could even bark a command, Ali decided the issue – she got the side hatch open and darted out of it with her rifle. Handon should have known: she was never going to leave Homer out there on his own to do this.

“Everyone out!” Handon shouted. “Push out security and defend the crash site!”

Everyone moved as one to comply. Handon craned his neck up – where he could see Noise up in the turret. “Get ready to engage. Clear us some breathing room.”

“Roger that, Sergeant Major!”

Handon grabbed his weapon and moved to climb out last – when Zorn shouted at him, holding up his ravaged arm. “Hey! How about that cure first?”

Handon hesitated.

“Unless you want me turned and biting by the time you get back.”

Handon didn’t have time for this. But the man had a point – he’d be equally useless to them undead as dead. Worse, actually. So he rummaged around for the pouch Park had given him, pulled out a syringe and vial, stuck the needle through the stopper, and pulled on the plunger. While he did so, he said, “I told you – it’s not a cure. It’s a serum. It’ll keep you from turning, but that’s it. I stop giving you these injections and you’re done.”