The Flood (20 page)

But the farther they got out of town, the safer everyone was – including the helo that was Graybeard’s only chance. And they were also running north directly toward it, even as it flew south toward them, decreasing, however fractionally, the time until their gravely wounded Marine could receive life-saving medical care.

“Keep going,” Fick said. “Thirty mikes ’til dust off.”

“Let me spell you,” Reyes said. “You take security.”

“Nah,” Fick said. “You’ll just drop him on his head.” He looked down at Graybeard, whose face and skin were now grayer than his beard – paper-white, in fact. “You’re gonna have to hang on a little longer, old friend, okay?” Fick didn’t know if he could hear him.

Fick and Brady shook out their cramping hands, adjusted their grips on the litter handles, and picked up the pace. All three scanned the darkness through their NVGs – waiting for whatever might be coming.

And hoping the helo would get to them first.

* * *

“Oh, that thieving son of a whore,” Noise said.

Henno didn’t speak as he slowed from a run to a trot to a walk. He just gave Handon a look. It was full of murder – specifically, a particular homicide he should have been allowed to commit back at Camp Lemonnier, and one he’d now be executing at the earliest opportunity. They were all standing around an empty spot in the road where they had parked their vehicle.

The MRAP was gone.

Just totally not there. All that remained was a set of deep tire prints in the dirt.

Handon looked at Noise. “Thanks for bailing us out,” he managed, around deep sucking breaths. They’d all just run half the length of Hargeisa. “That was a hell of a one-man assault.”

“No problem, Handon. The dead must die.”

“But why the hell didn’t you bring the MRAP
with
you?”

“You have the starter, Handon.”

Handon remembered he was right. It was in his pack.
Shit.

Juice boggled. “So how the hell did Zorn drive the damned thing off?”

Nobody had an answer to that one.

“Worth trying to radio him?” Predator asked. “Try to reason with the cocksucker?”

“Save your breath,” Henno said.

Now the chug of suppressed shooting sounded from behind them. It was Ali and Homer, calmly covering the team’s six. They had all moved fast enough out of town to break contact with the undead Arab army – sort of. But the dead were usually just about smart enough to remember which direction the living had gone. And now that Alpha was stopped, the dead were catching up with them – runners first.

They didn’t have much time.
Yeah, that makes a change
, Handon thought. Time was the one thing they virtually never had any of.

The question remained, though: time to do what?

Around his panting, Juice said, “From here we’ve got a straight shot out of town, even if we are on foot. Looks like smooth sailing.” And it was true. The road to the northeast, the same one they’d come in on, looked clear. There was little reason for the dead, human dead at least, to be out there in the bush. They could hoof it, break contact, and go to ground. Live to fight another day.

Pred dropped and checked his mag, then added, “We’re not exactly drowning in ammo either.” They’d had to do a fair bit of shooting to blast their way out of that undead menagerie in town. There was plenty left from their helo resupply at the coast – but all of it was in the MRAP, wherever the hell it was.

Handon scanned the scene. His guys had a point. They’d just been attacked by a totally new threat – stronger, more vicious, and maybe even faster than any they’d faced before – and had only survived by the skin of their teeth. Now they were being chased by what could be an arbitrarily large number of human dead, who were probably filling up the town even as he pondered. Finally, they’d covered quite a lot of Hargeisa without seeing even a hint of an infected Somali – an early-stage victim to bring back and stop this plague once and for all.

Simply, they were failing. And it looked like maybe the best option was to cut their losses and run.

Handon flipped up his NVGs and looked at Henno now, who already had his up. For the first time, Henno didn’t seem to be hitting him with a look of disdain or distrust. His face looked calm. Like maybe, for once, he trusted Handon to make the right call. Then again, Handon knew Henno had stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.

Maybe he just read it on his face – Handon’s expression, or body language. And maybe some primal hindbrain part of him had already decided this – before his executive reasoning function even knew about it.

Maybe it was written all over him.

“No,” Handon said. “We’re not leaving. We’re going back in.”

He spoke loud enough that everyone could hear him – including Homer and Ali holding the rear. They were also best positioned to see what Handon was ordering them to go back into. Because it was already coming for them, and it was bulking out into a seriously daunting herd.

But those two didn’t protest, and neither did anyone else. If they had to push back into that, they’d do it. Maybe it was certain death. Maybe they’d find a way through, or around.

Maybe they’d even succeed in their mission.

* * *

“Cadaver One to CIC,” Handon said into his mic. “Is that drone on station?”

“Affirmative, Cadaver. The UCAV is in a racetrack pattern directly over your head at fifteen thousand feet. You want the video feed?”

“Negative. I want you to drop it down to one thousand feet – and then start dropping ordnance, danger-close strikes. My guy will walk you on.”

While the ops officer in CIC tried to digest that, Handon pointed at Juice. “Get on the CAS net. Use the weapons on that drone to blast us an infil path back into this fucking town. Get it done.”

“Roger.” Juice hesitated. “You do know the stall speed of that UCAV is like 160mph – and its armament is Hellfires and five-hundred-pound JDAMs?” That meant it would be moving too fast to be really precise or careful, and everything it dropped was going to go boom in a major way.

“Do it. We get singed, we get singed.”

Pred said, “Good call. I’m fucking sick of running, anyway.” He pulled his big .45 and checked the mag, then reseated it. “Though I’d like this plan of going back into town better if we had the MRAP to do it in. At least it’s baboon-proof.”

Handon said, “The MRAP’s gone. Tough shit.”

“Deal with it,” Henno added. “We adapt and overcome.”

The two nodded at each other – lethal adversaries now become allies. At least for the moment. Handon stole a look at Juice, who had stepped up behind Ali and Homer and was surveying the disposition of enemy forces, speaking very intently into his radio, and zoning most of the rest out.

Handon raised his voice loud enough to be heard by all again. “This is our final target site. We’re not being driven off it – because there’s nowhere else to go. Going home isn’t an option. And there’s no going around – this is not an obstacle, this is our destination. This is it. There is no Plan B, no contingency. We get it done now. Or die trying. Today. Right here. There’s mission success – and there’s a hundred percent casualties. That’s it.”

“Speaking of a hundred percent casualties,” Juice said – having to shout now, because of the roaring of the jet engine of the UCAV blasting in low over their heads from behind. “Watch this – and get down!”

As the operators hunkered down and covered up, the road ahead of them for at least two hundred meters – and to either side for twenty-five – erupted in blasting, rippling, scorching explosions and flame, debris and sparks, and Zulu body parts shooting a hundred feet into the sky. Superheated air and debris pummeled the helmets and backs of the hunched commandos.

Handon was first back on his feet. He stepped out past their lines and looked back at his people, his deep and strong voice rising over the settling explosions. “We’re not done yet. Somewhere in this town is a goddamned Somali Zulu – a first-stage victim. And we’re not leaving without it.”

Left unasked was,
And if there isn’t one?

So the answer could also be left unsaid:
Then we won’t be leaving.

Handon saw Noise checking and reseating his second-to-last full drum mag for the AA12. “Not on this one, Noise,” Handon said. Before the Sikh warrior could protest, he said, “I need you to hang back and be our one-man QRF again. You’ve proven your value at that.”

“I’ll be more valuable if I’m with you.”

“I know you would. But I also need you to stay here in case Zorn comes back. Worst case, I need you to report to command if we don’t come out of this.”

Noise’s expression darkened, but then lightened again. “Go tell the Spartans, thou who passeth by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.”

“Something like that,” Handon said. “I’m surprised you don’t know it in the ancient Greek.”

“Who says I don’t?”

Finally, Handon turned to the others. “On me.”

He faced forward, hefted his weapon – and charged back into battle.

Hedging His Bets

Jizan Economic City - Electrical Plant

Wesley pressed his back up against the door, the one he had just slammed on the hallway full of newly awakened dead on the other side of it. But within seconds, they were banging and beating on it, sending evil vibrations into the unlikely ground commander’s spine.

On the upside, Wesley could feel pleased that Judy’s barking was the result, and not the cause, of the dead turning up. As he’d claimed it would, her sense of smell had spotted the dead before they did. But, mindful of the higher standard of his leadership role, he didn’t say
I told you so
to Sarah. More importantly, having riled these things up, he knew they couldn’t let the banging and moaning go on.

“We can’t let that go on,” Sarah said, beating him to the punch.

“She’s right,” Browning said.

Wesley looked over to the wall map, thinking of finding a way around.

“No,” Burns said. “We’ve got to put them down. Or they’ll draw more.”

Wesley nodded once. They were all right. He’d knocked down the hornets’ nest. Now they had to kill all the hornets – and they had to do it fast. Plus quietly. He formulated a plan in a flash, whispering and pointing at the others.

“Jenson – get behind the door. Open it enough for me to stab through – but don’t let it open too far. Sarah – you back me up with your silencer. If any get past me, or it all falls apart, start shooting. Browning – you back her up, even farther away. If it all really goes to hell, you start shooting.”

“And me?” Burns asked.

Wesley smiled. “Go back – and tell them we died obedient to Sparta’s laws.”

The others giggled at this – it was probably the adrenaline making them giddy – though they tried to stifle it.

Wesley drew his sword, more awkwardly than he’d intended, then nodded to Jenson – who nodded back, then put his hand on the latch and his shoulder into the door. Bracing his feet, he turned the handle, and let the shoving behind inch it open.

Stepping forward, Wesley identified a mouth. And grasping the sword with both hands, he put the tip straight through it. It went in easier than spearing a well-cooked Christmas roast. The creature slumped, and Wesley withdrew the sword. It was almost comically easy. The whole maneuver felt practically safe. He poked around for the next open wheezing mouth, and the next after that.

In less than a minute there were a half-dozen destroyed dead, all wearing stained blue coveralls, lying in a pile right in the doorway.

Thank you, United States Marine Corps
, Wesley thought again, rather less sarcastically this time.

“Heads up, guys,” Burns said, sounding suddenly urgent.

And even as Wesley turned, he could already hear the moaning. There were runners sprinting around the giant vats of fuel oil through the huge room behind them. And, though taking several different routes, they were all converging on one point.

Theirs.

* * *

The moaning of the ones in the hall must have drawn them. And they must have been hiding dormant in that giant room somewhere, or in rooms that let off it.

But it didn’t matter now.

Wesley half reorganized his team – and they half spontaneously organized.

Sarah pushed out ahead of the others, took a knee, and started shooting – instantly and rapidly. The first few chugs of suppressed shots seemed to have no effect, to Wesley and the others’ dismay. She was having trouble hitting the fast-moving runners, not least since they were coming right at her.

Despite being a trained police officer and grizzled apocalypse survivor – one who had put in a lot of range time, plus been the recipient of some personalized training from Henno – Sarah had nothing like the lifetime of training and shooting experience of the operators. But she was just going to have to learn on the job, and learn fast – or else her career in NSF was going to be a short one. And this mission even shorter.

Her left hand moved to the trigger housing for the grenade launcher under the rifle, where she had a 40mm round loaded up. And it was very tempting to try to take out the whole rushing crowd in one shot. But of course what the crowd was rushing through was a bunch of giant vats of massively flammable liquid. So grenades were off the menu. She’d have to do this by hand.

Finally, after her first few rushed shots, they started going down – either destroyed outright by headshots, or knocked down by center-of-mass hits, then hit more exactly when they tried to get up. Sarah was firing as quickly as she could acquire targets, moving from one to the next with no room to breathe.

At the same time, Browning took up a position just beside and behind her, standing in a perfect upright shooting position with his rifle to his shoulder. But he held his fire. He was obviously only going to discharge the unsilenced weapon if they got to be too much for Sarah and started getting by her.

And in the rear, while this was going on, everyone else started pulling corpses out of the damned doorway – so they could exit this cursed room and shut the door behind them. As Wesley dragged a body by its boots, he looked over his shoulder and saw Sarah shooting toward targets snaking through the giant vats. “For God’s sake,” he shouted at her, “don’t hit the fuel tanks!”