Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (9 page)

Wordlessly, those with oars dug in – hard. And soon, though not quite soon enough, the wooden hull scraped the shingle of the beach in the gloom. As one, the operators leapt out and dragged the boat up the pebbly sand, until it was resting half out of the water. One of the sailors waded out to assess the damage to the engine, and when he came back he literally had no words. Or only one, anyway.

“Fuckers,” was all he managed.

“Those things did
not
look healthy,” Brady said, as he wrung out his socks, sitting in the sand amid a circle of alert operators. Handon and Fick had quickly set security on the beach, and were giving him exactly one minute to get himself unfucked before they moved out.

“What the hell does that mean?” Henno asked.

“I don’t know,” Brady said, standing up, and visibly trying to decide whether there was any point in keeping one boot. “They had dead eyes.”

“Of course they did,” Reyes said, coming over and elbowing him in the ribs. He put on his best Captain Quint voice. “‘The thing about a shark, it’s got
lifeless
eyes, black eyes, like a
doll’s
eyes… and then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red—”

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Graybeard said, in his raspy, quiet, dangerously calm old-ass operator voice. “You’re fired as morale officer.”

Brady looked over to Ali, who had been practically on top of one of them. “Did those things look healthy to you?”

Ali shrugged. “What am I, a whale shark gynecologist?”

No one quite understood what the hell had just happened to them. They all felt grateful to have gotten to shore alive. But not one of them considered this a good omen. Africa had just greeted them with an enormous
Fuck you
– before they had even reached it.

And it felt as if the rules of the game were changing yet again.

It’s Not Going to Suck Itself

Djibouti - the Beach Outside the Airport

“Cadaver, Thunderchild, commo check, over.”

Handon was standing farther up the strand, scanning the dusky dunes ahead. This message came in over the CAS net, and he paused to appreciate that the F-35 pilot had stayed out of his ear until they were out of danger. It couldn’t have been easy. She must have seen what was going on. But there wasn’t anything she could have done to support them from the air anyway. The sharks were basically in their laps.

“Thunderchild, this is Cadaver One Actual, you’re five by five.”

“Everyone okay down there? Anything I can do?”

“Cadaver is green, up, and up. No action required. Maintain CAP. Out.”

Fick stepped up to join him. “No point taking it out on the pilot chick.”

Handon cracked a smile, despite himself. Looking over his shoulder at the half-eaten boat, he said, “Good thinking with the flares.”

Fick nodded. “Yeah, well, it worked for you with that Russian drone.”

Juice padded up to report to the two leaders. “The bad news is it looks like we lost about half the combat load-out to that bullshit.” Handon had assigned him to catalogue their losses. Unfortunately, the supplies had all been stowed in the stern, and some or much of it had spilled out and gone to the bottom when the first whale shark half-flopped onto the back of the boat. “The worse news is that almost all the losses are ammo.”

Handon shook his head. “You’re kidding me.”

Juice shrugged. “The pallets of water floated in place. The MREs are vacuum-sealed, so even more buoyant. But the ammo slid out and sank. And the boat’s a write-off. It’ll float, for a while, but the propeller and shaft are gone. Literally gone.”

As Juice turned and went back to the others, Handon just kept shaking his head. He was thinking,
Well, isn’t this typical for our missions – things going to hell from the very outset…

Fick said it out loud: “Aren’t we just Bad Luck Chuck. Or the Keystone Operators, maybe.”

Handon looked over at him, his expression stony. “What the hell
was
that?”

Fick exhaled, scanning the horizon. “I wouldn’t worry about it. The whole world’s gone to shit. They probably just went nuts from having no plankton to eat or something.”

Handon squinted slightly, regarding the slightly shorter, slightly stockier senior NCO. “What, so all the algae died, from the dead bodies wading out into the surf? Something like that?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Fick said, rolling his shoulder. He didn’t know, and pretty obviously didn’t care that much. It was behind them.

They both turned again as Henno came stalking up from the rear. He was squared away, rifle cradled, expression all business. He’d obviously had enough faffing about on the beach. He wore an expression that said,
This isn’t the Costa del Sol, and we are NOT on holiday…

As he reached the two commanders, he nodded approvingly and said, “Looks like we’ve burned the boats, then.”

Fick raised a thick eyebrow. “And that’s a good thing?”

Henno nodded again. “Worked for Cortés.”

“Yeah, well, there were a lot fewer Aztecs in Mexico than dead guys in Africa.”

“Quit your whinging,” Henno said. “We’re a hell of a lot better armed than the Spaniards.”

And with that, he stalked off, heading up over the dunes that ringed the beach. He didn’t look back, and was obviously expecting the others – including the leaders – to follow.

Handon looked back, preparing to make a
move out
signal – but they were already doing so themselves, taking the initiative and self-organizing. He and Fick waited for the men to fall in and file by, before bringing up the rear.

Ali hitched up her ruck, adjusted her slung weapon, and set off, muttering, “Well, it’s not going to suck itself…”

Reyes laughed out loud. “Ha! What the hell does that mean?”

Already passing him by, Ali said, “I saw it on a t-shirt once – the punchline being that it was being worn by a woman.”

“Okay, what does it mean
now
?”

“That this is definitely going to suck. But it’s not gonna do it on its own.”

Reyes laughed again as he filed by.

As Brady passed the commanders, he had his bayonet out and held in an overhand grip. Having lost almost everything, he’d somehow hung on to this. Fick nodded his approval – if you’re going to get hauled overboard and nearly drown to death for a knife, you may as well come out of it with the damned knife. Marching beside him, Graybeard glanced over and said, “Looks like you’re kicking it
Walking Dead
style on this one.”

“Yeah, man. Silent and deadly. This and some BJJ takedowns, and I’ll have this continent subdued in a week.”

Graybeard shook his head. “Kid, you’re cockier than a guy with six cocks.”

Brady nodded in agreement. “And I get more trim than the hedges at Versailles.”

Following behind those two were Predator and Homer. Pred was still limping, and Homer still had visible band-aids on his face – not to mention stitches and bandages on his arm and half his torso, from all the knife wounds he had taken fighting off half a naval Spetsnaz brigade underneath the carrier. As they went by, Handon could hear them talking quietly to each other. Pred, making light of their dinged-up state, shook his head and muttered, “I expect we’ll all be wounded, dead, or turned before this is over.”

Homer nodded, but said, “Hey, don’t rule us out yet. Humanity’s made it a long time.”

“I’d give humanity even odds.” Pred smiled sadly. “But not us.”

“C’mon – everyone knows you’re invulnerable. You’ll make it. And I’d like to see you in peacetime.”

Pred shook his head. “I can’t even remember that now. I can’t imagine it.” As he’d been doing on and off since his one-man rampage on the flight deck battle, Pred thought again of his young wife Cali, far behind him in North Carolina – and lost to him forever. And, for just a second, he wondered what he was going to do if they
did
manage to save the world – and he survived long enough to live in it.

He figured he’d just have to work that out then.

Following behind, Juice overheard this exchange, and wished he knew how to help his friend. But he knew Pred would put it aside for now, for the sake of the mission. Because there was still a hell of a lot of ZA between them and a saved world. Or even between them and safety back in Britain.

If there even was still any kind of safety back there.

No Fuck-Ups

London - 500 Feet Over Wandsworth Common

Squirters.

That’s what Captain Charlotte Maidstone was looking for as she took her borrowed AH-1 Apache attack helicopter through another long, low, sweeping pass over the grounds of CentCom Strategic Headquarters. This whole place had recently been the site of a rampaging and nearly terminal outbreak – one which, had it not been stopped, almost certainly would have proved fatal to the last defenses of Britain, and humanity’s last stand.

After taking down a runner right to its face with her side arm, and then hopping in a spare Apache, Charlotte had been instrumental in containing the eruption of rampaging dead before it reached critical mass. Now, with her shoulder-length straw-blonde hair spilling out in a ponytail at the back of her £22,000 custom-made helmet, her eagle-like green eyes scanned the whole area below. Her excellent vision was augmented by the aircraft’s combined sensor and targeting system – electro-optics, laser rangefinder and target designator, plus a 127x zoom camera – all of it fed into her helmet-mounted sights and slaved to the movements of her head.

And while she could clearly make out various groups of human figures moving around below in the complex of buildings, landing strips, and parade grounds, they all appeared to be living ones.

But if she found any that weren’t… well, backing up the high-tech optics was a 30mm autocannon which fired high-explosive dual-purpose (HEDP) rounds, ten per second – the gun also slaved to her head, and pointing wherever she looked.

She knew how to use the sensors, she was damned deadly with the autocannon, and moreover she knew how to track down squirters. Mostly, these had been Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, escaping from infantry assaults or air strikes – bad guys hauling ass away from bullets or bombs, scattering in ones and twos into the surrounding hills or forests. Charlotte had cleaned up a lot of squirters on her two deployments to brutally contested Helmand Province.

But it definitely hadn’t been her favorite part of that job.

What really got her up in the morning was zooming in to support beleaguered British squaddies on the ground – protecting her boys. It was always about keeping them safe, and never leaving one behind. Today, as usual, it was the ground-pounders – in this case the Royal Marines of Lieutenant Jameson’s One Troop – who had borne the brunt of the fighting. But Charlotte’s overwatch, mobility, and aerial firepower had been a critical component.

And Charlotte knew that more men were alive down there now because of her being up here then.

And just as she found herself thinking of Jameson – the unassuming yet formidable Royal Marine officer she had pulled out of that vortex of collapsing building and swarming runners in Dusseldorf – his voice spoke aloud in her ear. At this point, she’d know that voice anywhere.

“Wyvern Two Zero, CentCom Actual, how copy?”

Even if she didn’t recognize the call sign. Technically, Wyvern Two Zero wasn’t her call sign anymore, either, as this was a different mission, and even a different aircraft, than in Germany. But she knew what he meant. His call sign, on the other hand, was a little harder to get her head around.

“CentCom Actual, Wyvern Two Zero copies. But, fuck me, Lieutenant, they didn’t put you in charge of this whole cock-up, did they? Over.”

“That’s exactly what they did. And it’s Major now.”
Jameson’s tone said that on another occasion he might enjoy this witty badinage, but at the moment he actually didn’t even have time to scratch his privates, and he wasn’t calling now for a friendly chat. He also didn’t need her taking the piss about his rank or new job, about which no one was more surprised, or less happy, than him.

He got right back to the reason for his call.
“Are you the only operational helo pilot we’ve got on this base? Over.”

“Negative. The majority are deployed and flying in theater across the south. But there are a handful of rotary-wing and fixed-wing pilots on standby here.”

“Received. What is their location?”

“Pilots’ ready room, adjacent to the main hangar.”

“Good. Let’s keep them there.”
Jameson sounded relieved.
“I need you to RTB and get down there, too. The time may soon come when we need you to save our asses again, so I want to keep you safely in storage. How copy?”

Charlotte hesitated and considered her response, while she zoomed in on some movement in a copse of trees and banked around to get behind it. “All received, Major. But, with respect, I’d like to request permission to stay on station. I’ve still got fuel and armaments. I can be your eyes and quick-strike capability.” She paused. No response. “I’m a piece you want on the board, not in a drawer. And assuming this place was secure was what almost lost it in the first place.”

There was the briefest of pauses on the other end.
“Roger that. Permission granted. Jameson out.”

Charlotte had no trouble reading between the lines on that one, either. It said:
Whatever
. Basically, he didn’t have time to micromanage every decision. He was already totally overwhelmed with what was on his plate at that moment in the Joint Operations Center (JOC) below.

But however the decision got made, Charlotte was happy. Simply, she just didn’t want to be grounded – she never did. She wanted to be on station, and she wanted to be in the fight. And she could only help protect her boys when she was up above them riding her fire-breathing dragon.

It turned out there was indeed a figure coming out of the other side of the copse of trees. Luckily for him, he turned and waved at Charlotte – only seconds before he might have caught a 30mm flame job.