Arisen : Genesis (10 page)

Four more shots, rifle rounds this time. Dugan stepped out of the dust cloud, from around the opposite side of the truck, his HK416 in the high ready position – then higher, as he scanned the rooftops, as well as the street in every direction, all while catching up with Bob.

The two of them passed Zack and Baxter and hit the safehouse entrance, ducking inside and up the stairs. Zack pointed his pistol outward as he followed and Baxter pulled the iron gate closed, then the heavy door, then worked the locks.

They were safe.

For the moment.

* * *

Maximum Bob powered up the stairs, carrying the man, wounded in some non-obvious way, but still unconscious, all the way up to the top floor, where they had the most open floor space.

“Going for the med ruck…” Dugan said, peeling off a floor below. Zack and Baxter cleared out a space, laid down four of the cushions in the center –
safely away from those huge stacks of shit
, Zack thought – then made way as Bob put the man down. He then went instantly to work, starting with rolling the man over on his side.

Zack clocked that the man wore 5.11 gear, short-sleeve button-down shirt and cargo pants, a lot like his people here, tan desert boots, and under a light jacket a belt holster which at some prior date had held a handgun and spare mags. This was pretty much the uniform of light-footprint diplomatic security guys. And now Zack could also make out bright red arterial blood soaking through the back of the shirt. Dugan raced in, ripped open a large backpack of med supplies, laid it open, and then leaned in to assist.

“Clorhexidrine,” Bob said, ripping open the man’s shirt with hands that looked like they could peel wood.

“Check.” Dugan handed over a fluid sleeve and a four-inch applicator, which Bob used to douse the wound area, in the small of the back. They could all see now that it was an ugly gunshot wound, the flesh both bruised and burnt in a wide ring around it. Zack recognized the powder burns, which meant he’d been shot at close range.

“Run the drip for me,” Bob said. “Get some antibiotics in it.”

“Check.” Dugan started setting up the IV, while Bob investigated the wound. He then pulled a fingertip EKG sensor out of the bag, fixed it to the man’s finger, then powered up the battery-powered device. It started blinking slowly with the shot man’s pulse, and a small digital readout showed
38
. This was perilously low.

While Dugan inserted a plunger full of broad-spectrum antibiotics into the port on the IV line, Bob pressed Kerlex into the wound, then taped down a trauma pad over it. Pausing in their labors, the two now looked at each other, both still kneeling over the shallow rise and fall of the man’s breathing.

“Well?” Zack asked, from off to the side.

“He’s shot in the kidney,” Bob said. “It won’t kill him – not for a while. He’s got maybe an hour or three.”

Dugan nodded. “So then we go back out. To the hospital.”

Everyone looked around at everyone else – the horribleness of that idea evident on all faces.

Something outside exploded, loud enough to shake the room.

The unconscious man stirred and groaned.

Survival is Rare

Ultimately, Bob decided they shouldn’t move the wounded man until they were sure he’d stabilized. Thirty minutes with no change in pulse or breathing should do it. Which was good, because Zack told them he wasn’t personally going anywhere until he called Langley on the big red phone and reported in. The shit was seriously coming down in his patch, a major civil unrest and epidemic, and the only possible justification he had for not reporting in already was that he had people in harm’s way.

“HOA, Hargeisa station, Altringham. Yes. Put me through to the senior desk officer. Yes. Yes. No.”

Also, Zack hoped, in the time he spent making his report, maybe things would calm down out on the streets. Maybe what passed for order would reassert itself. Then again, it might get worse.

Meanwhile, Bob watched over the patient, while Baxter assisted by keeping an eye on the streets from their OP. And Dugan sat in the TOC with Zack, listening in, and waiting to give him a brief.

In calm and efficient tones, Zack described over the phone the situation as he’d observed it in the last hour on the ground. He finished by promising a written report within 60 minutes, and supplementals as he learned anything new.

Finally, he hung up and turned to Dugan.

“Okay,” he said, exhaling. “What went down out there?”

“Got me, brother,” Dugan said. “Damned if I can work it out. I’ll give you the facts, though.”

“Go.”

“We drove to the grid coords for the State guys in contact. Streets were already getting a bit manic on the way out.”

“Manic how? Never mind, hell, I was up on the roof looking at it. But did you see what I saw? Something like sick people in the streets?”

“Yeah, I think so. Fucked-up-looking guys tottering around here and there. Like they’d just got up and walked out of the ICU. And then everybody still healthy-looking going around strapped, blazing away. Borderline anarchy.”

“Yeah, lovely town,” Zack said. “An armed society is a polite society, right?”

“We got to the X, and there were two dudes hunkered down at the back end of an alley. All fucked up. Several bodies laid out nearby. Some kind of close action or melee had gone on. Both the State dudes are wounded. One guy’s had like chunks ripped out of him. Ragged wounds on his arm and shoulder. And he’d accidentally fragged the other dude in the fight. Popped him in the lower back when he got jumped from behind, he said.”

“Holy shit.”

“You haven’t heard the holy shit part yet. We get ’em both loaded up in the Tahoe. At this point, there’s enough random gunfire and shouting that we’re buttoning up and moving fast. Bob wanted to sit in back to work on the wounded, but I needed him up front shooting. I didn’t know how bad it was going to be coming back. As you saw, we had to jig a little to get through the town. But then we were finally turning down our street and home free…” Dugan blinked and shook his head.

“And?”

“And the first dude just went for me, in the truck, from the back. Grabbed my face from around the headrest, grip like a lumberjack. Started making this hellish noise. I couldn’t see, couldn’t shake loose – and couldn’t control the vehicle. We tip over. No idea what the fuck this was. Bob and I are okay, and we unass the truck like it’s on fire. The tore-up dude is still flailing around in the back, like the little girl in
The Excorcist
. The shot one’s still in the back, but looks to be unconscious at this point. So we’ve got to get them both out of the truck. And we all had to get the hell off the street.”

“Copy that.”

“This is all happening in seconds. I throw open the back door, and we’re both circling to try and restrain this guy somehow. He’s totally lost the thread. Comes piling out, snarling, and we both back away. Then some skinny we didn’t even clock, about a half a block north, pops him. Just guns him down in the street, half an AK mag to the chest and head. I go for cover, Bob pivots and drills the skinny. The guy could have nailed both of us if he’d targeted us first. I check the State guy he shot. No pulse, big chunk of his head gone. Bob slings his rifle, pulls the surviving dude out of the truck like a rag doll, and I cover him as we move to the house. You pretty much saw it from there.”

Zack just looked at Dugan for several seconds. Finally, he said: “What the hell is all this?”

Dugan shrugged. “Some kind of breakdown of public order. You know that people riot after three days without food. We’re always just nine meals away from anarchy.”

Zack squinted. “But is this one related to the outbreak?”

“Maybe. I guess.”

Zack squinted more deeply. “The guy who went for you in the truck.
Was he sick?
”

“He was something.”

“Okay. Listen to me. I want you to get out of those clothes. Put them in a burn bag. Then get some disinfectant, get in the shower, and scrub yourself down. You got it?”

Dugan showed a rare expression – surprise. “Aye aye,” he said, which was sailor-speak for “I understand the order and I will execute the order.” He was already up and moving out.

“And as soon as you’re finished, Bob does the same.”

* * *

Zack sat in silence for a minute, trying to keep his head and think through their situation, and what should be their next move. That would probably be to report in and request instructions. But, instead of doing that, Zack sat in his chair and pictured the swarm attack he’d seen out on the street, from up on the roof. And he recreated, in his mind’s eye, the scene inside the Tahoe just before it went over. Finally, he pictured the scene in the hospital quarantine tent.

And while he had a second here, what the hell, he turned to his station and flipped to the world’s greatest intelligence source: Wikipedia. And, just for grins, he looked up rabies.

Rabies (pronounced /'reIbi:z/. From Latin:
rabies
, "madness") is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) in warm-blooded animals.[1] The disease is zoonotic, meaning it can be transmitted from one species to another, such as from dogs to humans, commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms. The rabies virus infects the central nervous system, ultimately causing disease in the brain and death… symptoms include slight or partial paralysis, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, and hallucinations, progressing to delirium…

But the article also said that the period between infection and first symptoms was two to twelve weeks, which didn’t fit. Nonetheless, Zack couldn’t get the image of rabid humans out of his head. Nor the thought of mutant or bioengineered viruses…

But it was neither here nor there. He’d just picked up the secure phone for a priority call to Langley when his cell went. He checked the screen. It was Abo. That was unusual. He paused, then picked up.

“Haraka Pizza,” he answered, in Swahili. He had to assume it wasn’t going to be Abo, but somebody with a gun on Abo.

“Zack. Ni mimi.”

“Okay, Abo.” He hadn’t used the duress word. “What’s up?”

“That is why I am calling. Do you know what is happening?”

“Not really. Where are you?”

“Gaalkacyo. But not for long. The brothers are putting together a big convoy. Many fighters. Tooled up with heavy weapons.”

“Where to? Where are you going?”

“To the stronghold. All the brothers in the region are meeting there. To be safe from the plague. And from the fighting.”

Zack tried to decide whether to lecture Abo on epidemiology, but realized the other knew about as much as he did, certainly about the situation on the ground. Also, from what Zack knew of it, the al-Shabaab stronghold might actually be the safest place in the country.

Zack startled and looked up as he heard shooting erupt from outside again, dopplering by as it rose and faded in volume. Someone firing from a vehicle.

“I don’t suppose they’ve told you where it is this time?”

“Of course not. And I will be in the back of one of the tr— have to go.”
The last three words were hissed. The call ended.

Baxter walked in. “Zack. They’re ready.”

“The hospital? We’re going?”

Zack looked up. He could hear clomping on the stairs. Bob and Dugan appeared, carrying the wounded man down on a Talon assault stretcher, which normally lived upstairs folded up in a big nylon pouch. An IV bag lay on the man’s chest. They put him down in the hall and stepped inside the TOC.

“Consider this your operational briefing,” Dugan said. Zack and Baxter spun up their attention and tried to get their game faces on. “Phase one is we have to recover the vehicle. We’re going to leave the casualty in the entryway while the four of us go out and secure the crash site.”

Zack or Baxter must have betrayed alarm at this.

Bob said, “It’s not total bedlam out there, though it’s not what you’d call safe either. But you’ll be okay.”

Dugan resumed. “We’re basically going to need you two to pull security, one facing each direction up the street, while Bob and I rock the truck back on its wheels.”

“Can you do that?” Baxter asked.

“Barely,” Bob said.

“And no choice,” Dugan said. “It’s too far to the hospital, and too crazy out there, to try and hoof it while carrying a litter. We’ll give you part two of the briefing in the truck.”

“They’re going to take care of us, right?” Baxter whispered to Zack as they started to file out. But Bob overheard him.

“Hey, I’m just here to drink beer and fuck fat chicks,” he said.

Everyone laughed at the look this brought to Baxter’s face.

Rock & Roll

Instead of exploding out the door in a dynamic exit, first Dugan carefully checked the front door camera. When the coast looked clear, he gently undid the locks, then eased open the door. This mirrored the evolution of SEAL tactics over the past fifteen years. Whereas they used to chuck flash-bang grenades and go in shooting… now they crept along in silence for as long as possible.

They found they lived longer that way.

Occasional single shots could still be heard in the distance, along with muted peals of AK bursts. And the smell of smoke was totally unmissable on the air, as well as in the eyes. But nothing was going on in their street. Leaving the stretcher in the entry, the four of them walked outside as the late afternoon began to bleed into early evening.

Aside from the distant gunfire, it was almost peaceful. Half an hour ago, it had seemed like the city was a cooker set on boil, and building up to an explosion. Now it had calmed again. Maybe people were hunkering down, getting off the streets. Did this mean the panic was over? Or was it just a lull before the bigger storm?

The SEALs placed the analysts where they wanted them, slung their rifles, and got on the other side of the truck, facing its roof. They began to rock it slowly, then faster, picking up momentum. Bob called it out: “Three… two… one… over!” And with that, the three-ton vehicle tipped over its center of gravity and rocked heavily onto its wheels. Dugan and Bob brought their rifles up, and resumed scanning every direction in 360.