Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (13 page)

Colley now trudged back to them through the water, looking grim, and bringing Hackworth out of his thoughts. He pushed his way through the crowd and stopped, shaking his head.

“They gave me these,” he said, holding his hand out. Hackworth took the bundle of paper slips, squinted at them and then looked back up.

“Ration slips?” he said. “Jesus. It’s come to ration slips.”

Colley nodded. “Apparently we should go join that queue down the road to get fed, and then we’re to come back here. Then they’ll have us someplace to go, within an hour or so.”

The solemn group trudged together through the rain toward an area with several green military marquee tents dotted here and there. There was steam coming from the back of one, as well as the smell of food cooking. The group joined the back of the queue, as Hackworth shook his head in disbelief.

“I never would have thought I’d see a military encampment in the middle of London,” he said, as he continued to try to figure out just where in the city they were. His memory of the place was distorted by how much it had changed in the last couple of years. So many structures were boarded up or torn down – and some of the landmark buildings he would normally have used to judge his whereabouts weren’t even standing anymore. He thought they might be somewhere near Camden Town, maybe even one of the plazas, but it looked so different he couldn’t place it.

They stood in line, barely talking, and watched Army trucks pick up and drop off groups of people. Every few minutes, a new vehicle would arrive, disgorging a group of bedraggled and scared refugees, and then taking others away. There were hundreds, maybe thousands in the area, huddled in groups, looking dejected or just cold.

As Hackworth wondered if many of these people were from Canterbury or Folkestone, he heard shouting across the road, and turned just in time to see two men begin hitting each other, and another trying to pull one of the men away. A bag was torn open, its contents spilling upon the ground – it was money, coins and notes, falling into the puddles or scattered across the ground. Several other figures broke away from the crowd and joined in the fight, kicking, punching, and pushing one another.

And then Hackworth saw the third man reach into his jacket and pull out something shiny… something that looked like a gun. Chaos erupted in the square.

Hackworth grabbed Amarie and the child, and pushed them both to the ground, placing himself between them and the danger. Colley was pushing their group back, away from the melee. Everywhere, people were running, moving away from the fight. And then the gun went off, a loud crack that split the air and set off screams from the crowd, while Hackworth watched, puzzled, as the man holding the gun was thrown forward and onto his face, sprawling across the cobbled ground. Quickly, the water around him turned red, his blood pooling and mixing with the rain.

Hackworth tried to figure out what the hell had happened, but all was confusion, as people ran in all directions. Two more gunshots went off, and then he turned to see a group of a half-dozen soldiers approaching the scuffle, rifles raised to their shoulders. Another man tried to draw a weapon as he turned toward them, but they all opened fire – and three, maybe four, figures in the brawl fell to the ground.

The soldiers ran forward, weapons up and panning, as the remaining brawlers raised their hands over their heads. Hackworth watched as this scene unfolded, the soldiers leading the remaining men away, and a truck soon arriving to take away the dead. All five of those who had fallen were quickly lifted onto the truckbed and covered with sheets.

And, as if nothing had happened, the crowd in the plaza returned to the queues, though the talking and bustle was quieter.

“This is crazy,” Hackworth said to no one in particular, but Colley was standing next to him and answered.

“Nuts. I’ve never been to London before,” said the Moroccan. ”But this isn’t quite the safe place I imagined it would be. To think that this was where I was originally trying to get to when everything went crazy…”

Hackworth turned to the big man. “It isn’t. Is it?”

“What?” asked Colley. “Not what I expected?”

“No. It’s not safe here. We need to—”

“What’s that?” asked Colley, pointing over at the open-topped truck with the dead men piled in back.

Hackworth spun around, looking to where Colley was now pointing. But there was nothing, just the truck, and a pile of covered bodies. Two soldiers sat in front, and another stood outside next to the driver, talking through the window.

Then Hackworth saw it: movement. One of the bodies in the back of the truck twitched.

“Oh shit,” he cursed, and started to move toward the truck.

As he closed the gap, Colley right behind him, he started to shout. The soldier next to the driver spun around, startled by the noise, his weapon rising instinctively. He frowned at Hackworth, but then ran to the back of the vehicle and peered over the edge.

The body, very recently dead from a bullet wound to the throat, sat up. The soldier leapt backward, fumbling with his rifle and watching wide-eyed as the dead man clambered off the back of the truck, the sheet sprawling onto the ground. It staggered to its feet, locked eyes onto Hackworth, and began to lurch forward.

Hackworth moved back as Colley stepped in front of him and produced his ax, then began to raise it. But he didn’t need to use it. A loud crack echoed across the plaza once more as the soldier fired, his aim not accurate enough to kill the thing, but good enough to knock it to the ground. He then stepped forward as the creature flailed onto its back and tried to get up again, but this time his aim was methodical, precise, and the second shot took the zombie between the eyes.

Other soldiers ran into the plaza now, and as Hackworth backed away into the crowd with the rest of the tunnelers, he heard an officer barking commands.

He continued to retreat, and soon found himself with his back against the tent serving up food. He turned, nearly falling over the market stall, and looked straight at the server – a middle-aged man in military overalls.

“You got a ticket?” asked the man, but Hackworth only blinked in response. He’d just seen a fight, summary military justice, and a newly risen zombie taken back down, all in a matter of a minute, in the middle of the only remaining capital city in the world.

“Are you deaf?” asked the caterer.

“What?” said Hackworth, frowning. “No. I’m not…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bundle of ration slips, then handed them over.

“Is this normal?” asked Colley, who hadn’t left Hackworth’s side the whole time.

“What?” asked the caterer. “Fights?”

“Yeah,” said Colley. “And that guy… turning.”

The caterer started to hand over plastic plates of what looked like vegetable stew. Hackworth wasn’t sure what it was, but it smelled pretty good.

“You’re not from London, are you?” asked the caterer.

“Nowhere near,” said Colley.

“Well, the fighting’s normal, quieter than usually if anything. But turnings? No. Not quite like the last few days, with all the folks from the front coming in. I mean, there’s always the odd one stumbling around in the dodgier areas, but not like the amount we’ve had turn up the last few days.”

A few minutes later, as the group gathered just down the street, all shoveling stew and stale bread into their mouths, Hackworth stood watching the plaza, where they had come from.

“Covent Garden,” he said, finally.

“What?” asked Colley.

Hackworth indicated the cobbled street where the fight had happened. “It’s fucking Covent Garden,” he said, bewildered. “Doesn’t look anything like it used to.”

Colley shrugged. Having never seen it in the first place, he had no reference to compare it to, but one thought did come to mind. “How do they expect that wall out on the M25 to keep the dead away, if they’re trucking infected people right into the city?”

Black on Ammo

JFK
- Hospital

“We considered setting you up your own lab, in an unused compartment nearby. But we ultimately decided it was quicker and better just to give you ours. It’s through here.”

From the insignia of the woman who greeted Sarah and Park in the front of the hospital, she was a Lieutenant Commander – and a certified flight surgeon. From her commanding demeanor, she also gave the impression that she ran the joint. She wore a service side arm on her hip, and her name tape said “Walker.”

She led Sarah and Park through two large examination and ward rooms, then turned left into a side compartment – a slightly more high-tech one. Inside, she turned to face them and carried on speaking. She didn’t hem, pause, fidget, or shuffle her feet. She was rocks.

Sarah immediately liked her.

“Word came down straight from Drake,” she said. “We’re to afford you every consideration – whatever you need. So we’re giving you the keys to the kingdom. This is our medical lab, with additional stations for radiology and pharmacy. I can’t promise you my people won’t need to come in here to get things done. This department currently has fifteen officer billets and thirty enlisted, and we’re responsible for the health care, health management, and combat medicine for every one of the twenty-five-hundred souls aboard.”

She paused to draw breath. “The good news, from your point of view, is that some of our ratings are in laboratory, X-ray, and biomedical equipment repair. Those people are also at your disposal. Contact me, or the officer of the watch in my absence, for anything you need, or any questions you have.”

Park hastened to say, “Thank you.” Sarah nodded.

LCDR Walker nodded back. “Okay, then, here’s your six-bit tour. Pay attention because I don’t give it twice.” She turned and moved amongst the lab counters and stations as she narrated. “It’s a modestly complete bioscience lab, at least for biomedical applications. Some of the equipment is special purpose – cardiac enzymes, PT/PTT, hematology, that kind of thing. There’s also ultrasound and computed radiology – that workstation there, if it’s any use to you. But there’s also more general purpose microbiology equipment.”

She walked around pulling open drawers and cabinets. “We’ve got a good variety of test tubes, glass slides, and cover slips… beakers, flasks, and dishes… pipettes, syringes, Bunsen burners.” She pointed to a device that looked like a small photocopier. “Ultracentrifuge. And over there’s a spectrophotometer. Various flavors of chromatography at that station there. Induction coils, oscilloscope, and, finally, microscopes – two optical and one electron.”

She turned back to face the other two. “So you think you can save the world with this?”

Park smiled. “I can try. There’s some specialist drug-research and virology equipment I’ll need when we get to the UK. But I can definitely do useful work here.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” Walker said, already moving toward the hatch. She clearly had work to do herself.

When she was gone, Park and Sarah turned to face each other. “So…” he said. “Your job is just to keep me alive? I’m afraid you’ve got big shoes to fill there.”

“Why – you surprised to still be alive?”

“Yes, frankly. I never thought I’d see the outside of that bunker in Chicago. I was just waiting for the supplies to run out.”

Sarah nodded. This man was a survivor – just like her. And that wasn’t nothing. It could be the basis of a relationship. “No,” she said, finally. “My job is not just keep you alive. It’s also to keep you productive – get you whatever you need to work.” She paused and considered, looking around the room, then down at her empty belt. It had been a long time since she’d been farther than arm’s reach from a firearm.

Oh, well,
she thought.
Life is change
. And while it was better to have a gun and not need it, it was better still not to need one in the first place.

She noticed Park scratching at his ankle with the toe of his other foot. Then she saw the boots he wore clashed with his outfit – they were polished black work boots with thick soles and very high ankle support. But aside from that he was wearing business casual. Unlike her, Park actually was wearing the clothes he had escaped Chicago in – after they’d been through a piping hot cycle in the
Kennedy
’s gleaming laundry room. But now it was all matched with a pair of U.S. Navy Bates DuraShocks steel-toe boots.

Park shrugged while he scratched. “They take a little getting used to.” What he was used to was loafers, or lab slippers – neither of which had the weight, bulk, or stiffness of the military boots. Sarah figured he’d never had any need of a safety boot – though she had, across thousands of hours of patrol on the streets of Toronto, and then later in the forest.

Sarah smiled. “What happened to yours?”

“Walked them right off my feet. Two years in the bunker – then sprinting through the streets of Chicago, wading through the mud out of Lake Michigan, parachuting into the Atlantic…”

“Saltwater’s a killer.”

“So it seems.” Park paused. “Keep me productive, huh?”

“Actually,” she said, “I’m anxious to help you in whatever way I can. And I’m willing to try and learn whatever I need to know to do that.”

“Excellent. The more you learn, the more use you’ll be to me. And God knows I can use the help.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “I’m in.”

* * *

Up in what had recently been the relaxing atmosphere of Alpha’s team room, Ali now faced the moment of truth.

She had to spill the beans about Homer.

She hesitated another few seconds, shifting her view across the inquisitive gazes of Pred, Juice, and Henno. While she paused, it was quiet enough to hear the others not breathing. It was quiet enough to hear the lights hum.

She finally drew breath, and gave them the short version of Homer’s odyssey. The first part was indeed the story of an epic road trip – one gone horribly wrong, but salvaged in the end. The bombshell was what Homer and Sarah had found when they got to Virginia – specifically, in Dam Neck.

The other three just stared wide-eyed through the story.