Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (8 page)

“Evening, Master Gunnery Sergeant,” he said, looking up from wiping down a counter. “What can I do you for?”

Fick pressed his hoary fists into the countertop. “Two powdered milks – steamed and frothed, please.”

“No problem.” The mess still had an espresso machine, even if there’d been no milk to put in it, nor even real coffee – until Juice came back with both.

Taking the two steaming mugs a minute later, Fick handed one to Emily, and grabbed a spoon, and they moved together to one of the empty tables. He then held up an index finger, like,
Now – watch this.
And he produced from his shirt pocket a legit 100-gram bar of Lindt Swiss milk chocolate. He broke off two squares for each of them, dropped them in the mugs, and began stirring vigorously.

When Emily looked up at him over the cup, Fick looked into her blue eyes and suddenly knew that something was wrong – or at least had been. Now she seemed to be coming back from it. The truth was, in that incident below decks, she had been as frightened of Henno’s violence defending her as she had been of the original attack. After all of that terrible time with the trade-union pirates on that boat, she’d thought she was finally in a safe place here. In an instant, that belief had been badly ruptured, if not exploded outright.

Maybe there wasn’t any safe place, anymore – not anywhere.

Out of the blue, she looked up at Fick and said, “I don’t want you to get hurt. I want you to come back.”

Fick exhaled. “Hey, you bet I’ll come back… if I can.” He immediately regretted those last three words. “Aw, come on now,” he said, pulling a napkin from a dispenser and putting it to her cheek. “Don’t cry. Please, for God’s sake, don’t cry.”

She wiped her nose and straightened up. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I can be stronger than that. I
am
stronger than that.”

Fick brushed her hair away from her eyes, then squeezed her shoulder. “I know you are. You’ve proven it. Hell, you’re still here. Which makes you tough as nails.”

And Fick thought to himself that he really would like to survive this mission and get back to her. He hadn’t had a friend in a while. And he was very grateful for this one. First he just had to go off and save the damned world.

Maybe she gave him the best reason for doing so he’d had in a while.

Serum

JFK - Hospital

“What is it?” Handon said, meeting Sarah at the front entrance to the hospital. “I’ve got mission prep and we’re out of time.”

He didn’t look at all pleased to be there – and it didn’t take a lot of pondering on Sarah’s part to wonder why. Their three-way run-in earlier – with her, him, and Henno – was still raw, and unresolved. They hadn’t even begun to work through it.

But Sarah’s message to Handon had said that
Park
needed to see him. So here he was. She motioned toward the back of the hospital, and led Handon there.

“What’s up?” Handon said, seeing Park standing outside an examination room.

“I need you to come look at something,” Park said. He opened the hatch behind them, let the other two in, then followed them in and closed the door. There was a man strapped down to the table, wrists and ankles, with a surgical mask over his mouth and nose. It was Anderson, the deserter Wesley’s NSF team had found hiding in the shadows at the bottom of the boat. Handon could see from a glance at the man’s eyes that he was infected.

“Some reason you’re keeping this guy alive?”

Park nodded. “It was Sarah’s idea, originally. Using the vaccine as a serum – to keep the infected from turning.”

Suddenly Handon looked interested, his brow creasing. “How long?”

“At least a week. This man was infected over a week ago.”

* * *

When Handon returned to the cabin he shared with Sarah, at the end of a crushingly long day, and with only a few hours to go before mission launch, she was still up and waiting for him.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“I’m not sure that’s my priority right now.” He shucked his clothes, folded them, and put them on a chair. As he did so, he was thinking that this relationship was becoming problematical, to say the least. They were still together, and he still had strong feelings for Sarah. But she was now pissing him off, letting herself get distracted from her job – and worst of all, unforgivably really, distracting him from his. In fact, she was fomenting rebellion within his team.

“Henno’s just using you,” he said, turning to face her.

“What?”

“To get to me. To agitate me. He doesn’t give a shit about you.”

Sarah drew a breath, and tried to think how to respond to this. She needed not to let it get out of hand. Particularly since these might be their last few hours together – maybe forever.

Before she could formulate a reply, Handon said: “Did you sleep with him?”

“What?” She was kind of shocked. But she’d heard him right.

And even as he waited for her to answer, he knew it was crazy talk. Aside from the fact that she’d be too smart to risk that… there was also the question of when, actually, they would have found the time.

Now Sarah laughed out loud. “He’s strong, he’s funny, and he’s good-looking. So you want to know why I’m here with you instead of off with him?”

Handon exhaled. “I think I want to know why you let him handle that business with Emily and those sailors. Instead of me. His commander.”

Sarah shrugged. “One, he was there and you weren’t. Two, he was perfect for it – the ideal bad cop, just what was needed. When I need good cop, I’ll call you.”

But underneath her sarcastic reply, she also seemed to be looking up at him with some suppressed, underlying guilt.

In reality, she was suddenly remembering how in her first hours on this ship, and her first with Handon, she swore not to become the Yoko Ono of Alpha team. To never let herself come between Handon and his team, between Handon and his job – which was pretty much the most important job in the world.

And, if she let herself think about it, maybe that was exactly what she was doing now. Way deep down – though she was fighting like hell to whitewash it – some part of her knew that she had been behaving irresponsibly.

And she probably even knew why.

All the resistance and humor draining from her face, she said, “I just… it’s just been the giddy freedom, I think.”

Handon gave her a look, like:
What the hell does that mean?

“I escaped. Against all the odds. I not only survived the end of the world – but I even got away from the man I thought I was going to be stuck with, taking care of, until the end of time. Suddenly, I was free.”

As she admitted this, even Handon could see she was lacerated by guilt over it. How could she be rejoicing in her freedom – when it was earned by the death of her husband and son? He considered that maybe it was also the guilt that had been making her act out – making her weird, making her push the boundaries.

Maybe he should cut her some slack.

But for some reason now he flashed back to her and Homer having a big laugh about some inside joke from their private road trip. And he was suddenly pissed off again. He knew it was irrational.

Homer and Sarah?
he thought.
Now THAT’s crazy talk.

But, suddenly, unexpectedly, he closed the distance between them and grabbed her. She startled – but was also viscerally affected by this display of Handon’s powerful caveman side. Suddenly her breathing went shallow and fluttery, and her cheeks flushed.

As Handon pushed her down onto the bed, he tried to banish his jealousy, to get it out of his head – where only his job belonged right now.

Oh well. This’ll teach me to fall in love
, he thought.
Love and sexual attraction are all based on hormones anyway – and they don’t give a damn about your happiness, much less your mission…

Pretty soon neither of them were thinking about the mission.

* * *

When their hatch knocked in the dark, Handon came instantly and smoothly awake and checked his watch on the bed table. It was still forty minutes before he needed to be up. He pulled on his skivvies and opened the hatch.

Behind it was Dr. Park.

He was holding a nylon pouch, which he pulled open to show Handon the contents. “I made you twelve doses of the serum to take with you,” he said. “If you need it, it should be administered daily, via intramuscular injection.”

Handon nodded and took the pouch.

“But listen,” Park said. “There’s been virtually no testing of this on humans. It could have all kinds of unknown or severe side effects – up to and including death.”

Handon shrugged. “Somebody’s got to test it sometime. And if you’re already infected…”

“Yeah,” Park said. “You’re pretty much dead already.”

“Thanks,” Handon said, nodding and closing the hatch again.

Dead Eyes

Gulf of Aden - 250 Meters from Shore

“Dig in!” Handon bellowed, leading by example as he jammed his own paddle into the frothing surf around them. “One man rows, the next man fights!”

It didn’t take any particular tactical genius to know they had to get to shore before the boat was taken apart right out from underneath them – and probably them with it – by the school of whale sharks now inexplicably rampaging all around them. The engine was either disabled, or perhaps entirely gone at this point.

The Navy pilot in the rear, evidently having no desire to pull a Captain Quint, had gone scrambling toward the fore, climbing over the stacks of supplies and away from the sinking stern and the monstrous creature there seemingly trying to swallow their boat whole. Ali leapt past him in the opposite direction, running to the point of maximum danger while drawing her sword.

Climbing up on the stern gunwale, she could see the dead eyes of the nightmarish giant fish – and buried her blade right between them, instinct telling her to go for its brain.
Jesus
, Ali thought.
That thing’s mouth must be five feet wide…
It also seemed to have thousands of teeth, but they were tiny, thank God, and nothing like the flesh-rippers of a great white. Still, looking down its throat was like peering down a well to the center of the earth.

You did NOT want to fall down there
, she thought.

And this one attacking the stern was only one of many.

Half the combined team was now leaning out over the heaving gunwales, trying to stab or beat off the inexplicably attacking whale sharks.

“Wait, why aren’t we shooting again?” Homer asked, seeming slightly amused by all this, as he got his boarding axe clear of its cinches on his pack and into play.

“
Melee weapons only
,” Ali said, bringing her sword down again, and doing her best hard-ass Handon voice. “Plus it would probably just piss these things off.”

Others were rowing, but so far they were going nowhere fast. The boat was jammed up, at the center of some bizarre mid-ocean feeding frenzy.

“I thought you said they only ate plankton!” Juice yelled.

Everyone turned to the starboard side at the rear as the sound of bellowing was followed by a heavy splash. Brady had gotten his knife into the head of one of the mythical-seeming aquatic monsters – and then declined to let go as the twenty-ton fish flexed at its middle, nearly folding in half, and pulling its head fifteen feet from the boat – and Brady right along with it.

He went over the side before he could react.

Reyes flew to that spot and leaned out, his arm reaching for his friend. The water was churning everywhere, but Brady was nowhere to be seen. Ali could see the look of alarm on Reyes’s face as he frantically scanned the surface for his teammate.

It was a full fifteen seconds before the big lanky Marine’s head and shoulders broke the surface again – and he began stroking powerfully back toward the boat. Reyes leaned out further, extended his hand, and shouted, “Take my word for it! Don’t look back!” Brady actually smiled from around all the seawater and the deep breaths he was sucking to power his swim. But then his smile instantly evaporated – as did his forward progress. Something had him from behind, and Brady rolled on his back and started kicking for all he was worth. Something came free, mainly him, and he started moving again, and in five seconds Reyes was hauling him back over the side.

When Ali looked over, she saw that he’d had to shuck his combat gear to keep from going to the bottom. His tactical vest and rifle were gone.

And he was also shy a boot.

Jesus
, she thought, pulling her sword free, pivoting, and looking for another target.
That’s not funny.

The boat was taking on more water now, as giant masses of flesh bashed against the outside of the hull, which was beginning to splinter in spots. It occurred to Handon that they might actually sink – right then, right there, and with all hands aboard. Not a brilliant start to their final mission.

Finally, amidships, Fick could be heard to mutter, “Okay, fuck all this noise” – and he yanked open one of the side hatches in the boat, rummaged around a first aid kit and some survival gear, and finally came up with a flare gun. Then he moved to the other side and repeated the operation. Ali saw where he was going with this – so she stuck her sword in the deck and started pulling grenades from webbing. Most everyone had at least one, flashbang, HE, she didn’t give a damn, she took anything that looked like it would go boom.

She pulled pins, let spoons fly, and started chucking – geysers appearing in sequence at twelve o’clock, nine o’clock, six o’clock… – even as Fick, with flare guns akimbo, started triggering off into the water on all sides of the beleaguered boat, the bright-red winking magnesium flares arcing low over the water, hitting the surface, then continuing to burn bright as they slowly sank into the darkness.

Almost instantly, the pressure on the boat was relieved, the feeding frenzy dissipated, and they had some breathing room. The nightmarishly aggressive whale sharks were scattering, following the noise and light show that had been set off away from the boat on all sides.