Cataclysm
Author: Michael Stephen Fuchs
Date: 2015-09-28 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror; Fiction; Military Fiction; Apocalyptic; Post Apocalyptic; Science Fiction; Action; Dystopia
Description: Hope Never Dies.This is the end game - and it's not going well.The battle to keep the undead tide from the walls of London is lost. Africa is a deadly hall of mirrors, leaving Alpha team riven with dissension and doubt. And the one man who might save the world is crashing to Earth half a world away. Only our greatest warriors can walk through this fire.Betrayal. Chaos. Courage.CATACLYSM
Publisher: Complete & Total Asskicking Books

ARISEN
Hope Never Dies.

First published 2015 by Complete & Total Asskicking Books
London, UK

Copyright © Michael Stephen Fuchs

The right of Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

About the Author

MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS, in addition to co-authoring the first eight books of the bestselling ARISEN series with Glynn James, wrote the bestselling prequels ARISEN : GENESIS and ARISEN : NEMESIS (an Amazon #1 bestseller in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction and #1 in Dystopian). The series as a whole has sold nearly a quarter million copies. He is also author of the D-BOYS series of high-tech special-operations military adventure novels, which include D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and CLOSE QUARTERS BATTLE (coming in 2016); as well as the acclaimed existential cyberthrillers THE MANUSCRIPT and PANDORA’S SISTERS, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation). He lives in London and at www.michaelstephenfuchs.com, and blogs at www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter (@michaelstephenf), or by e-mail.

ARISEN

BOOK NINE

CATACLYSM

MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS

For Mark – the other one

“All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
Panic and pitfall have befallen us, devastation and destruction.”
– Lamentations 3:46-47

“Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.”
– Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest

Get It Done

Open Water - Gulf of Aden

Trackless ocean.

Henno had heard that phrase but he’d never got what it really meant. North Yorkshire had coastline, sure. Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay, the beach at Withernsea. But always with the solid moors and dales of Yorkshire anchoring it. Blighty. His people’s island home, invulnerable, never trampled by foreign boots – for almost a thousand years, since the Norman invasion.

Until now.

Trackless. As Henno scanned the black surface of the ocean on all sides, he finally got it. What it meant was: not only was there was no one here – it was as if no one had ever been here before. They were alone. With a whole lot of fuck-all in every direction. Back on the carrier, they’d sat up above it all, riding their floating city of thousands, lords of creation.

But now the operators were down upon it. And it was just them. And in many ways, and in darker moments, Henno felt… it was just him.

He sat now at the front of the thirty-foot single-hulled utility boat, the ship’s launch, nearly up at the prow – beneath the sailor manning the minigun that pointed menacingly ahead. The wind was weak but steady as the boat ramped over little swells in the darkness, then dropped down the other side. A thin sea spray misted the faces of the thirteen souls on board.

Henno wasn’t in the front of the boat by accident. He was leaning forward. He was going to get this done. Everything he loved was on the line. Britain was going down under a remorseless tide of the dead. His own countrymen, Englishmen, were falling in their thousands and turning the map of Britain black – and closing a noose around the capital, one from which there could be no escape.

He had never cared for London, really, much less Londoners. He thought the place loud, dirty, and crowded, and most of the people there too far up their own backsides for his taste. But he also knew that when the capital fell, there would be nothing stopping the remorseless tide of death from flooding north and swamping his beloved Yorkshire. And soon all of Britain would go down.

And then that would be it for mankind.

And that could not be allowed to happen.

They’d come too far, and paid too high a price, to fail now. Henno’s best mate in this world, and his only real one in Alpha team, Captain Connor Ainsley, had gone on to his reward, five thousand miles behind them – in a dingy underground corridor beneath a dead American city. He had triggered off five high-explosive rounds in a small corridor heaving with dead. Point-blank range it was. He chose to spend his life so the others could have a chance to escape, to survive, and to complete the mission.

Ainsley had done it for his sons, as well as for all of humanity. He’d done it without hesitation, and he’d done it because it was his duty.

And there was absolutely no way Henno was going to let that sacrifice be for nothing. He personally knew the captain’s wife, Rebecca – and he knew his two lads, Aiden and Luke. The tykes probably didn’t even know their father was dead yet. But Henno knew.

And he could never forget it.

* * *

In the rear of the boat was a second sailor, like the first wearing a flak jacket, Kevlar helmet, and life vest. He was piloting the launch – the same one that had delivered Juice and his Marines to their mission in South Africa. And which had gotten the Marines out. Most of ’em, anyway.

This was the boat that had nearly delivered Juice to his grave.

He’d all but bled to death standing watch over that motherlode of supplies he won from the Russians. But the tough bearded bastard had gutted it out. Henno respected that. You had to. Not least because those supplies were a matter of life or death – and, more important, mission success or failure.

Just ahead of the pilot were some of the fruits of Juice’s triumph: stacked crates of ammo, pallets of bottled water, boxes of MREs, radio batteries – all the most critical supplies the operators were likely to need more of, perhaps urgently and desperately, when they got into contact. Especially the ammo. They couldn’t carry it all with them, but they were bringing it as far forward as they could. The beached boat would serve as their COP, or combat outpost – a place to rearm and refit.

Once again they had launched at BMNT – beginning of morning nautical twilight, when the sun was twelve degrees below the horizon. This would give them maximal daylight for the op itself, but also the cover of darkness to insert under.

Not that the dead give a shit, Henno thought.

But it made a difference for the living, right now subjecting them to a seriously spooky atmosphere – motoring together through a spectral, sepulchral, half-twilight, with the tiny amount of weak light of dawn reflecting off the black surface of the water. It was impossible to see more than fifty meters in any direction. Only the sailors, pilot and gunner wore NVGs.

The others knew they’d be able to see when it mattered.

Between the minigunner in the prow and the pilot at the stern were a mismatched pair of special-operations teams. In the rear was Fire Team One of the JFK’s MARSOC Marines – Brady, Reyes, and Graybeard, led by Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick himself. The Marines were a strange lot – though obviously very serious warriors. Henno had gotten to know them only a little. Brady, the refined, well-spoken, good-looking martial-arts champion and smart-arse coffee connoisseur. Reyes – the Hispanic former L.A. bounty hunter, smarter and cagier than he looked. And Graybeard, the ancient and grizzled Master Sergeant, who had fought in every U.S. Marine engagement back to the First Gulf War, and who had proved himself unkillable across all of them.

This was the same group that had extracted Alpha from the middle of North America, taking and holding an airfield overrun by thousands of dead, some of them exploding and/or on fire.

In the front of the boat were the remains of Alpha – Predator, Juice, Ali, Homer, and Henno – led, in name anyway, by Command Sergeant Major Handon.

This was the Premier League. These were the best left.

But they were still a motley group, virtually every one of them having been wounded in some way large or small over the course of this dog’s dinner of a mission. But none were willing to quit, nor sit this last phase out.

Though there was one key difference between Henno and the rest of them – none of the others were fighting for the survival of their home country. It seemed to him a bit like the Second World War all over again. The Brits suffer, and struggle, and fight on alone – until the Yanks turn up late to the party, gallantly saving the day. The conquering heroes.

And so they were, maybe.

But on this one, too late wasn’t going to cut it, and neither was too little. It seemed the most obvious thing in the world to Staff Sergeant Henno – when saving the world was your mission, then nothing got in the way of your mission. Nothing, and no one, ever.

Henno looked over his shoulder, his eyes instantly locking with those of CSM Handon. The man looked over, as if he had just noticed him. But those eyes had been boring holes in his back, Henno could feel it. And he knew one thing.

Either Handon would get this job done – whatever that required, whatever it took, and whatever the cost. In the lives of soldiers, in the death or injury of civilians, in collateral damage, in scars upon their own flesh and immortal souls.

Or else Henno would get it done.

That much he knew for fucking sure.

* * *

“The glory of God’s creation, Henno.”

Henno swiveled at his waist, turning to face the resonant voice, which belonged to Noise – the mysterious Sikh pilot who had touched down on the carrier, and who Handon seemed to have recruited onto the team now.

Henno snorted in amusement. He stood corrected. There actually was another Englishman on this boat – even if he was a Londoner. And Noise was also SAS – sort of, 23 Reg, the SAS reserve regiment.

There hadn’t been a lot of Sikhs in the Yorkshire village of Kirby Mills where Henno grew up, but he’d met a few along the way, particularly in the Army. He hadn’t been much for the Church of England, or any religion for that matter, but he reckoned Sikhism was a faith he could get behind. A warrior tribe. Their scripture said the sword pre-dated the universe. In one of Britain’s many scraps in Afghanistan, twenty-one of them from a Sikh infantry regiment had fought to the death against 10,000 Afghans. Churchill himself singled them out for praise, for what they did in the world wars.

And this one seemed like he could handle himself.

Henno nodded once at him, then spared another look back toward the stern. Off in the distance behind them was the shrinking gray ice shelf of the JFK. He didn’t know, but certainly suspected, that this might be the last time some of them would lay eyes on the ship, which had been their home since they left Britain.

Up ahead of them now was the swelling land, the fat finger of Djibouti sticking out into the Gulf of Aden. The launch was motoring in from way out on the water, where the carrier was anchored. Last time, it had gotten too near the North American coast – and attracted the attention of ten million dead. They had flown too close to the flame. And no one was keen to repeat that. Not least because they couldn’t possibly survive another scrap like that one.

The time for fuck-ups was at an end.

This was it. The last phase of their mission, and the beginning of the endgame. Either they would recover Patient Zero, Doc Park would complete his vaccine, and they would all go save what was left of Britain – and what was left of humanity. Or else they’d fail, and down mankind would go.

But Henno didn’t intend to let that happen.

He knew that one man with sufficient will, with the willingness to do whatever was required, could accomplish anything. The SAS had taught him that. It was all in their motto: Who Dares, Wins.

The sandy edge of Africa was now just starting to come into view in the smudgy pre-dawn dusk. Henno leaned back against his ruck, enjoying the feel of the ocean breeze on his face. When the bottom of the boat scraped land, he would go leaping out – first and fastest. Because he had a job to do.

No danger, Henno thought to himself. He’d get it done.

And Handon, the owner of those eyes he could still feel on his back, would not get in his way. He wouldn’t stop him doing what needed doing.

Nothing would.

Oblong Shapes

10,000 Feet Over the Gulf of Aden

Silence.

Silence and open sky.

Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells was once again up above it all – above their fallen world, and its cares, and its expectations. Out of reach of the rebukes and criticism of her superior officers on the JFK, soaring high enough to escape the gravity well of her family’s disapproval and disappointment, pulling at her even in death…

Now, she was weightless again, and she was free.

Way up above the shore mission in their little launch, that tiny shape creeping across the dark surface of the globe, Hailey had more light than they did. In fact, she could see almost the entire pulsing globe of the sun, below and behind her, cresting the horizon of the vast spreading Indian Ocean. She could even see the curvature of the Earth, falling away gently to either side. And that added to the planet’s aspect of vulnerability, of being a tiny cocoon of life, clinging to survival, adrift and alone in a universe that was implacably hostile to all forms of life.

But life had made it this far. And humanity was the best it had done. It had produced souls that could be tweaked by the beauty of a sunrise, engineers who could build supersonic stealth aircraft, and pilots who could thrill to fly them.

Hailey wasn’t the most skilled pilot in the carrier air wing, and she was never going to be. She certainly didn’t have a career, or accomplishments, to rival those of her brothers. She hadn’t achieved anything her father, the admiral, would have recognized as in any way exalted.

But none of that mattered. She was flying. And she was free again. With her light-brown bob of hair swept under her flight helmet, her slightly pixie-ish face beamed at the beautiful open sky around her.

But she also had a job to do. The TOC-jocks back in CIC would be monitoring her sensor-suite video and radar. But there was a reason they still put human beings in these aircraft. And Hailey needed her own intel and situational awareness. She flipped down her helmet video monocle, then zoomed and panned the camera until she could see the launch below. She knew she was too high up for anyone on that craft to see her, unless they really squinted. And she was much too high to hear – which was the point of her mission.

To see, and not be heard.

One of the carrier’s surviving EA-18G Growlers would have actually been a better ISR platform, not to mention would have used less fuel. But it couldn’t do close air support (CAS) if the guys on the ground got in trouble. The air wing had two F-35s left, and two healthy pilots to fly them, and they would be alternating, one in the air and on station at all times.

Hailey for some reason had gotten the first shift. But she didn’t care why. She only knew she loved to fly – anywhere, any mission. Also, there probably wasn’t much she could screw up on this one – so that was less of a weight upon her peace of mind.

With luck, she would do nothing but keep watch, relaying radar and video.

And if she had to do CAS, she’d do it, to the best of her ability. But she also knew that if the ground team were indoors, or under forest canopy, or in really close contact – where much zombie fighting took place – well, there wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot she could do for them anyway.

Maybe being the angel on their shoulders would be enough.

* * *

At Handon’s signal, the operators started unclipping and expanding the launch’s fold-out paddles. For the same reason they were inserting by water, and from far out in the Gulf, they were going to kill the engine and paddle the last stretch.

It paid to be careful. Not to mention quiet.

As Juice hefted his paddle, trying to figure out how he was going to lean out far enough to use the damned thing, he almost dropped it in the drink as something bumped into the boat – hard.

And it was right beside and beneath him.

Oh, God, he thought. Not another underwater herd, like on Lake Michigan…

Sitting across from him, Ali read his look. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “The waters off the coast of Somalia are swarming with sharks.”

“Seriously?” Juice boggled. He shot a look over the side. “Man-eaters?”

“Oh, yes.”

Behind her, Predator shook his head. “The hits just keep coming for this place. I can see why you left.”

Ali shrugged. “Just one more reason Somalia is everyone’s favorite holiday destination.”

Predator grunted. “Just ask Task Force Ranger – the ones who lived.”

“Less talking, motherfuckers,” Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick growled. “More paddling.” But in the privacy of his head, he was thinking: That would be just like this FUBAR deployment – all of us getting eaten by sharks. Every other damned thing has gone wrong so far…

When he looked up, Handon was lightly shaking his head – pretty obviously thinking the same thing.

The two unit leaders were mentally in sync by this point.

And if they were lucky, their two teams would work together as seamlessly. Though luck had not been one of their big operational assets, not for a long time.

They were learning to do without it.

* * *

Hailey banked her sleek bird around, looping back up the coast and then over the Gulf again, to keep that speck beneath her and in sight. With the high-powered optics, she could see them approaching shore now – a silent little oblong shape, with a bigger white wake out behind it.

And with the increasing light, she could now also see other oblong shapes, lighter ones, gliding through the water all around them. The water was clear enough that the huge numbers of sharks that infested these waters were totally visible from above.

Good thing they can’t see what I can, she thought. They might never have gone out in the first place. They’d certainly be keeping their hands and feet inside the ride at all times…

And very soon they’d be on shore – with other creatures much more likely to try to eat them alive. They were brave sons of bitches, and Hailey wouldn’t want their jobs.

Then again, she hadn’t much wanted her own, very recently, when it had looked like she was going to have to go out alone and attack that Russian battlecruiser. Thank God, and thanks to one enterprising SEAL, it was now at the bottom of Saldanha Bay, which made her world a hell of a lot easier – and everyone’s much safer.

Then again, the ZA seemed to be very much an if-not-one-goddamned-thing-then-another sort of affair.

She tried not to wonder what was coming next.

* * *

Juice couldn’t stop himself from looking over the side constantly now, and suddenly he was able to see a huge pale shape gliding by just below the surface. It had bright iridescent blue spots, and Juice didn’t know what the hell it was.

“Jesus,” he said, “look at the size of that thing.”

Ali spared a look over the side. “Don’t worry. It’s a whale shark. It’s the largest fish that swims, but they only eat plankton and algae.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know. Forty feet? Twenty tons? Unconfirmed reports of bigger ones.”

“Fuck me,” Juice said. “There are a lot of them, too.”

Ali shrugged. “They give birth in the warm waters around here. This is part of the African rift, the hottest part of the continent. The hatchlings feed on the abundant plankton here, then migrate down the coast, past the Seychelles and on to Australia.”

“Oh, really?” Juice said. “How soon does that happen?”

* * *

Hailey banked it around once again. She’d be doing a lot of that, despite keeping her airspeed down close to her stall speed – both to save fuel, and to increase her linger time.

She took a look at the sky around her. She knew that all of Africa’s hazards weren’t on the ground. Up above it, the number one aerial threat was flocks of pterodactyl-sized vultures that went blasting around like packs of airborne dogs. They wouldn’t be up this high, but she’d have to watch her ass if she got down below five thousand feet. And if, God forbid, she had to land anywhere down there, she knew she was likely to face zebras and wildebeest migrating across any airstrip.

Basically, Africa had been dangerous to all known forms of life, never mind all forms of aviation, since long before the dead ruled – and long after the living stopped wielding RPGs and shoulder-fired missiles, which should in theory not be much of a threat to a last-generation stealth fighter like the F-35…

But even as she thought that, her electronic warfare suite went red and noisy – she had just been painted with radar.

What the hell?

That was weird. There definitely shouldn’t be anyone down there operating any kind of radar any more, never mind the kind that could get a purchase on her very low-observable (VLO) integrated airframe, with its composite materials and internal weapons and fuel tank.

But after a single second, it stopped again.

Her hunch was this was some kind of electronics anomaly, rather than real hostile reconnaissance – just a ghost in a very complex machine, a result of maintenance standards, not to mention availability of spare parts, going to hell. Nonetheless, she needed to report it to CIC, and was about to do so—

When she spared another look at the launch below.

And all those oblong shapes were really close to it now…

* * *

Checking both his watch and the instrumentation, the sailor piloting the shore launch reached for the ignition switch to kill the engine.

As his hand was a few inches away, suddenly the inboard engine, or maybe the rotors themselves protruding beneath the hull, made some kind of horrendous grinding and burbling noise.

And then the stern of the boat dipped down toward the water, causing everyone to scramble and lean to stay where they were – and sending a fat wave of seawater washing over the rear gunwale and flooding the deck and the tops of eleven pairs of assault boots.

A gigantic spotted fin breached the dark water behind them, followed by the whole twenty-foot-long tail underneath it, both terrible and ghostly in the dim light. Finally, most of twenty tons of whale shark came slapping back down on the surface of the water before rolling over, and sending a much bigger wave of salt water over everyone sitting in the launch.

And this was only the first of them.

Suddenly, the sea was coming alive all around them, submerged bulks bigger than the launch itself bashing into it from every side, as well as from underneath.

Within seconds, they threatened to crush the boat and pull its whole crew beneath the waves, before they had even reached shore.

They definitely hadn’t seen this one coming.

Sausage Fest

JFK Galley - 02 Deck
[72 Hours Earlier]

“I say we’ve got to insert by helo. There’s no time to drag our tired asses overland.”

“There’s also no time to fuck it up. If the rotor noise draws a singularity, then that’s us fucked – for the duration.”

“Okay, good point.”

“And drone surveillance shows Hargeisa more crowded than your mom’s house on payday.”

“Mom says hi, by the way.”

“Ha. Tell her I’ll be by at eight. And I want those sheets washed for once.”

Dr. Simon Park threaded through the galley, then sat down amid the roaring laughter at the long table colonized by the Tier-1 operators. He had no illusions that he was one of them. Then again, after all they had suffered and sacrificed to pull him out of that bunker in Chicago, which he’d had every reason to think would also be his tomb, he felt like he owed them something. For starters, whatever help and expertise he could offer. He needed to make sure he was available to them, and doing his part.

That ethic had been etched into his soul now.

As he sat down, the front of his tray bumped into Henno’s, opposite him. The British hard man looked up from shoveling sausages into his mouth, and his expression turned. He was looking at the visible bits of corn in Park’s veggie sausages. On his own plate, Henno had meat with meat, and meat sauce. Plus thick-cut fries. Potatoes were always going.

Ali was sitting one spot over. She caught the visual exchange between Henno and Park, and asked “Where’d they get meat?”

Henno tossed his head at Juice, farther up the table. “Saldanha. Juice’s handiwork. Tinned stuff, but not bad for all that.”

“Ugh,” Ali said. “Canned meat.”

Henno grunted. “I’ve been in the British Army since age sixteen.”

“So?”

“So you’ve obviously never had bully beef.” Henno looked at Park’s plate of rabbit food. “Filthy seed-eater,” he said, leavening the epithet with a slight grin. “You can be as vegetarian as you like, mate. You think the rest of the world will hesitate one second before devouring you? You’d better keep yourself at the top of the food chain. You won’t like the bottom.”

Sarah Cameron, the only non-Alpha person there other than Park, sitting further up by Handon, leaned down the table and weighed in. “That’s absolutely right. I knew a lot of vegetarians in Toronto. None of them are here now.”

Park nodded thoughtfully, not taking offense. “No, I suppose that’s right. There’s little getting around that life exists by devouring other life. A plant may not have a nervous system – but it’s still made up of exactly the same amino acids. Me and this corn have a common ancestor. And now it’s going down so that I may live.”

Still chewing, Henno looked up at Homer. “We missed a trick. Could have had fresh dolphin meat for brekkie.”

Homer smiled but didn’t respond. Among those there, only Ali knew that he and Henno, when launching their undersea attack on the Admiral Nakhimov, had to evade military dolphins – which the Russian Navy had trained to locate and attack enemy divers. As had the U.S. Navy, for that matter.

Ali sat toying with her food. “Chris Kyle said all real warriors were meat-eaters.” She was referring to the most lethal sniper in U.S. history – who had survived four deployments protecting Americans and Iraqis in the brutal fighting of Fallujah and Ramadi, only to die trying to help troubled veterans, when one turned his gun on him at a shooting range.

Noise, one spot up on the other side, nodded. “Shaitan Ar-Ramadi. The Devil of Ramadi. Chief Kyle counted much crow.”

“Oi,” Henno said, as he polished off his plate. “Aren’t you Sikhs supposed to have your dagger on you at all times?”

Noise nodded politely. And pointed at his own head.

“What, under your turban?” Henno pushed his chair back, big arms bulging. “Nice one. That might yet come in handy.”

* * *

Handon, sitting farther down beside Sarah, kept his own counsel, and listened to Sarah talk with Henno about hunting. He had shot grouse and pheasants back in the north of England. And Sarah had shot most everything that walked, ran, hopped, or flew in North America. She’d had to, to survive.

Henno was smiling at Sarah and being a little too charming – and she seemed to be enjoying it. That was a little weird, as previously it had been Henno who seemed most to judge her for failing to save her husband and son back in Michigan. But whatever offense Sarah had taken at that, she seemed to have forgotten it now. Maybe she was attracted by Henno’s obvious unconcern for what she thought of him, his refusal to curry any favor. Maybe it was just his rough air of confidence and capability.

She seemed to go for that sort of thing.

Handon also couldn’t forget that Henno had been a renowned ladies’ man back in the world. With his witty banter, brooding self-confidence, and Sean Bean “bit of rough” good looks, he knew women went for him. Was he using his power now for evil? Just to get under Handon’s skin?

Despite steeling himself not to react, he hated the two of them being so friendly, flirty even. And, much worse, he knew Henno could sense that he hated it – could probably even tell that he hated that he hated it.

And it was possible he was taking pleasure in Handon’s discomfort.

This was seriously pissing him off.

The team had been trying to discuss operational matters, the damned mission parameters, before this extended digression. And they didn’t have time for distractions.

“…it’s only a flashbang,” Homer said, deadpan.

Handon only tuned in to the tail end of this comment, and only because of the way Sarah reacted to it, turning from Henno to Homer and laughing out loud. She was having a fine old time. Now Handon was reminded that the two of them had been alone together on their long overland journey across a third of undead North America. This was obviously some inside joke between them. Someday maybe they’d have time for Sarah to tell Handon the full story of that odyssey.

For that matter, maybe one day he’d earn her trust enough for her to tell him what happened to her back in Toronto – the mysterious dark chapter of her life that led to her marrying a totally unsuitable husband. She wasn’t volunteering it so far. And Handon wasn’t going to push her. He figured he had to give her space.

He just wasn’t thrilled with what she was doing with it right this second.

But thinking about personal crap like this was definitely not the kind of distraction he needed. Hell, at this point, he didn’t need distractions of any kind.

Checking his watch, he said, “It’s time.” As he stood up tall and erect, he radiated waves of authority. Chairs scraped floor and trays clanged.

Henno rose last, his chest open as he pushed himself up with strong, tattooed forearms. And his fraction of a gaze that slid off Handon communicated why he wasn’t rushing to obey this order. It said:

You’re only in charge of this team because the better man got killed.

No Quit In Them

JFK - 02 Deck Briefing Room

When Alpha filed into the briefing room for the mission brief, Fick and his Marines were already on station. This was the same room in which they had all met three weeks and many lifetimes ago, briefing for the insertion into Chicago.

“Well, we’re back in the car again,” Predator rumbled as he wedged himself into a seat. Both the seats and the rows of desk were made for human-sized people, not stone giants.

“At least you’re out of the tree,” Reyes said, getting the movie reference, and reaching out to fist-bump the big Alpha man.

Ever since the Marines had fought through hell to pull Alpha out of North America, the two teams had been brothers. There was always inter-service rivalry, and loyalty to unit was still written in blood. But, ultimately, it was, as they said: One team, one fight.

Handon looked up as both Commander Abrams, acting skipper of the boat, and LT Campbell, who’d be quarterbacking the op from CIC, walked in on a wave of We’ve got a lot of shit to do, so you’d better make this good – and fast.

Without preamble, Handon spoke, his voice filling the room. “This is the first briefing for what we’re now calling Op Primum Cadavere.” Amid light snickers, he frowned and added, “Not my idea for the mission name. And, no, I’m not telling you whose it was.”

“Somebody who thinks Latin makes him sound smart,” Brady said.

“Damnant quodnon intelligunt,” Ali said, sitting slumped back in her chair, chin on fist. She looked over at Brady, who seemed determined not to ask what that meant. She told him anyway: “They condemn what they do not understand.”

“And now,” Fick said, leaning against the bulkhead beside Handon, “we all know who to blame for the mission name. Moving the fuck on.”

Handon said, “Alpha is call sign Cadaver One, the MARSOC element Cadaver Two. Here’s the full order of battle…”

* * *

Reyes raised his hand and said, “I thought we still had two helos left.”

Handon nodded. “Have, yes. But the one that slugged it out with the Russians is more Swiss cheese than aircraft.” He nodded at Ali, who was the only reason it had made it back at all. “The air wing maintenance guys have ruled it unflyable. They say they’ve got no idea how it stayed in the air as long as it did.”

“And if we need it anyway?”

Handon shook his head. “Getting killed in a helo crash is no help to anyone. Anyway, keeping rotary-wing aircraft and other giant noisemakers out of the AO is a feature, not a bug. If we need medevac, or fast extraction – or, best of all, if we actually achieve our mission objective – then we secure an HLZ and the one remaining Seahawk comes in and pulls us out.”

Fick said, “I don’t know what you ladies are bitching about anyway. It’s only two hundred and fifty miles overland from Djibouti to Hargeisa. It’ll be a goddamned Sunday drive in the countryside.”

Handon nodded. “And with a little luck, we can scavenge military transport from the base there.”

Ali snorted. “What, no jingle bus?”

“Sure,” Fick said. “You goddamned hippies can put NPR bumper stickers and a bobble-head Jesus on it if you want, just as long as we’re rolling. Now. Here’s what ISR says we’re looking at when we hit American soil…”

* * *

As Fick briefed on the outlook for Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, Handon tuned out and scanned the faces in the room. And what he found himself looking for was something deeper than any intel in the briefing.

Simply, he was trying to judge what his guys had left in the tank.

Everyone was exhausted, rubbed right down to the bone. Two years of frantic OPTEMPO and unrelenting missions had culminated in the bullet and Foxtrot festival that had been Chicago, followed by the heart-in-mouth street fight for that airstrip on Beaver Island, their WW2-vintage bomber only getting off the ground at the last possible second… and then all of them jumping out over the Stalingrad-style Battle of the JFK, where they’d somehow held off a surging tide of ten million dead, the whole mess unlike anything any of them had ever seen, or even had nightmares about…

And then finding they’d escaped that, and gotten all the way across the Atlantic, only to be attacked out of a blue sky by the flagship battlecruiser of the entire Russian fleet, one of the most lethal ships that ever floated… then Juice and Ali and Homer all nearly buying it, slugging it out toe-to-toe on land, sea, and sky with hardman Spetsnaz killers who were almost as good as Alpha – and twice as brutal and remorseless…

Basically, it had been a long damned deployment so far, to say the very least.

Scanning faces, including the Marines, Handon saw that not one of them showed it – but he knew that virtually every part of them hurt. Even the areas of their bodies that weren’t wounded. Sure, they’d been shot, stabbed, blown up, swarm-attacked by packs of runners, and had Foxtrots jump on their heads. But they’d also HAHO jumped through a crashing storm into a knot of skyscrapers, fought a 360-degree street battle through thousands of dead, been dragged behind a speeding powerboat – or caught between it and a bigger one. They’d come down in crashing aircraft, had others crash down on their heads, dodged thermobaric missile strikes, chased mini-UAVs around the flight deck.

Some of them had been peppered with bullet fragments by deadly Canadian and Russian snipers – guys who had killed hundreds, and knew how it was done. There’d been near-misses with anti-personnel IEDs, collapsing buildings, religious nutjob assassins, burning forests, exploding underground fuel tanks, that snaking trail of flaming aviation fuel that had nearly burned Gunny Fick to death. They’d been blown up by Zulu jihadis, winged by flaming Zulu machine gunners, stabbed, shot, and crossbowed by asshat wannabe pirates – not to mention lit up by their four-barreled 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun…

When Handon added it all up, he figured it was a damned miracle anybody on either team could even walk at this point.

But they could – and they were going to have to.

They were all going to have to reach down one more time.

And they were going to have to, finally, once and for all, get this shit done.

* * *

“I am aware that the further into the bush you go, the greater the risk to the team.”

When Handon focused back on the room, he saw that Dr. Park had taken the lectern – their special briefing guest star.

“But the closer we get to the original victim, the better our odds that the final vaccine will be universal. Patient Zero, the first victim, is the ideal. Every additional transmission past him slightly decreases the likely or statistical effectiveness of the vaccine. How low are we willing to go?”

Judging from the silence in the room, the gravity of this had sunk in.

Park resumed. “Since you’re starting at Camp Lemonnier, yes, an American soldier would be a good start. I gather the camp went down very early – plus we’d have something, a sample much earlier than the ones I have now. At the same time, anything you can find out about the origin of the virus is potentially helpful.”

Graybeard raised his hand. “Is this a Zulu hunt – or a fact-finding mission?”

Before Park could answer, Brady mocked up a whiny voice and interjected, “Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”

Fick leaned forward. “You secure that shit.” Everyone seemed to be waiting for it. Fick sighed out loud. “Hudson.”

Park blinked heavily. “It’s a Zulu hunt. That’s absolutely the key. Get me a victim from inside Hargeisa, and I all but guarantee I can complete the vaccine. Information is secondary. Just please don’t throw away any you come across. Curing a pandemic is like solving a complex puzzle wrapped in a deep mystery…”

* * *

LT Campbell stepped up to the lectern. She not only didn’t laugh at the periodic jokes and wisecracks – she looked like she’d never found anything funny, cute, or charming her whole life. “Your top cover will be F-35s flown by Morris and Wells,” she said. “They’re our only two breathing and healthy fighter jocks, and will be alternating – providing one hundred percent coverage with the air mission.”

“Trust we won’t hear them – those afterburners?” Ali asked.

“Affirmative,” Campbell said. “You won’t even see them – unless you need ’em.”

Handon looked around. “And for the team on the ground, it’s melee weapons as long and as much as possible. We need to try to conserve ammo, due to the difficulty of resupply by air – as noted, the helo’s too loud, and the carrier air wing no longer has any palletized air-drop capability. But, mainly, the last thing we want to do is start shooting, even suppressed, if we can avoid it. It’s noise discipline first, last, and always.”

“Yeah,” Graybeard said. “Africa was kind of a crowded place back in the day.”

Fick nodded, seeing that everyone got it, but decided to stress the point anyway. “If I hear so much as a roach fart in that mother, I will smoke the shit out of every last swinging Richard in this bitch.”

Everyone got that.

* * *

As Campbell finished up her segment, Handon turned to Fick and lowered his voice. “After everything we’ve faced so far, how much worse could Africa be? It’s just more dead guys, right?”

Fick smiled that terrifying smile back at him – though he’d been practicing, under the tutelage of Emily, the civilian girl they rescued from the pirates, and was getting better at it. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. And this is a solid plan, for being totally batshit crazy and thrown together on the fly.”

Handon nodded once. As always, the guys who were doing the planning were the ones who would be executing the mission – and whose asses were on the line. And Handon couldn’t ask for a better co-commander than Fick. The two had only fought together briefly, in just two engagements – the airfield fight and extraction, and the very tail end of the flight deck battle. But each knew the other’s capabilities, and each knew the other was at the peak, and probably the end, of an extremely accomplished military career. And each would also be leading their very best surviving operators – from the front.

If they couldn’t get this done and save the day, no one could. Humanity was sending its last and best out as champions.

As Campbell finished and stepped down, Handon straightened up, faced the room, and put his platoon sergeant voice back on. “Okay,” he said. “Briefing ends. Everybody get back to work. It’s already tomorrow, and there’s a lot more coming at us.”

Fick also stood tall and spoke loudly. “It’s a hundred hours sailing around the Cape. Let’s try to be more ready at the end of it than at the beginning.”

Handon took one more look around the room. “One last thing. There is no one else to do this. We are it.” He scanned the faces in the room. “This is the team. Selection’s over. So let’s get it done.”

As the men began to file out, the commanders lingered up front.

Handon squared up to Abrams. “Commander. What exactly is our plan for getting the mission objective – plus Park, his research, and ideally his vaccine – back to the UK? I know the original idea was the plane that brought the other scientists in. That’s out, obviously.”

Abrams clapped Handon on the shoulder. “Way ahead of you, Sergeant Major. We’ve got an identical aircraft, another Beechcraft, inbound from Britain.”

“Great,” Fick said, standing nearby. “Try not to push this one over the side with a goddamned tractor.”

“Roger that, Master Guns. Negative on the goddamned tractor.”

* * *

As the two teams gathered up their notes and crap, and filed out and back to their duties, Handon’s last comment about selection was causing more than one of them to think back to the beginning of the long journey that was culminating with this mission.

Back to the beginning of their careers as Tier-1 operators.

Homer thought back to BUD/S, the initial selection course at the beginning of the years-long training pipeline for SEALs. He remembered the endless PT, thousands of push-ups face-down in the freezing surf, flutter kicks in the sand until their midsections burned, then lost all feeling, and then burned again… teams of exhausted SEAL candidates carrying giant logs through the darkness of the Coronado beach on their shoulders. And then Hell Week, with its 200 miles of running and 20 hours of PT per day – all on four hours total sleep for the week.

Ali and Pred remembered the quiet horrors of Delta selection – the relentless overland navigation exercises in the mountains of Appalachia, crushingly heavy packs burning on their backs, weeks of physical and mental stress, with no one telling them what the standards were, and zero feedback on their performance. Just a quiet winnowing of hundreds to a handful.

Henno was flashing back to the 20-hour timed ruck marches in the outrageously tempestuous weather of the Brecon Beacons mountain range in South Wales, plus the jungle training in Borneo, the hazing and abuse, and impossible tests and insoluble puzzles, candidates dying occasionally from heart and kidney failure.

In every case, whatever their differences of emphasis or surface dissimilarities, each of these selection courses was designed to do exactly one thing: break the candidates down completely – so the instructor cadre could see what they would do, when there was nothing left in the tank.

This was not by accident. It was by careful design.

Starting with the best people anywhere in the service, they systematically made candidates so miserable, exhausted, physically drained, and mentally crushed, that only those with superhuman resolve and resilience would stick around. By the end, because it had been so monumentally difficult and unpleasant, anyone remotely willing to quit anything under any circumstances had by then already thrown in the towel.

And what was left at the end was: only those who “had no quit in them.” And that – in addition to being pro-level athletes with high intelligence and staggeringly large and diverse skill sets – was why they were unstoppable.

In a way, the careers of everyone there had been one long selection process – a Darwinian one, which had led finally to those still standing being it, the final champions and flame-carriers for all of mankind… on this, humanity’s last lunge at survival. These were the last men standing.

And, as one, they were all doing the same thing now.

They were reaching down for what they had left – when they had to, when success was their only option, and when there was absolutely no choice but to dig down, Ranger up, and get it done.

Even when there was nothing left in the tank.

Especially then.

All In

JFK - Hangar Deck

Suppressed gunfire. Slow and steady. Backgrounded by quiet grunts and deep intakes of breath. The whoosh of melee weapons cutting the air.

The JFK Hangar Deck had started life as home to an air wing of over eighty combat aircraft – plus the maintenance and engineering facilities needed to service them. After most of the planes had been pushed over the side, it had been repurposed into an organic farm, needed to keep the thousands of personnel on the carrier strike group alive.

And now a sizable corner of it had been repurposed again – requisitioned, commandeered really, by CSM Handon. This corner now served as a gun range, close combat dojo, and general operator training facility. These things had become necessary because a hundred hours – the travel time for them to transit around the Cape of Good Hope and back up the East African coast to the Gulf of Aden – was a long time to go without training.

Tier-1 guys operated on a razor edge of painstakingly honed skills. And every one of those skills was perishable. Either they were operating, or they were training – or they were progressively becoming useless. Those were the options. It was also notoriously difficult to stay in shape on board a ship under way. Just ask any SEAL. Guys in the surface fleet who had SEAL teams aboard joked that it actually stood for Sleep, EAt, and Lift.

Anyway, this training area would help.

Handon had his HK416 assault rifle broken down on a waist-high table set up for the purpose, as a gunsmith work bench. This was a few meters away from their little two-lane firing range. It wasn’t long enough for them to stretch the legs of their weapons. But it was long enough to zero them, and tease out any mechanical issues or irregularities. The carrier already had a little live-fire range on another deck. But Handon wanted a place where they could all train and do pre-mission work-up together.

Right now it was being used by Henno to teach Sarah Cameron some of the finer points of CQB shooting. He was standing behind her – not to mention right up against her – as he adjusted her shooting posture.

That wasn’t precisely what Handon had in mind when he set this up.

Law of Unintended Consequences, he thought, forcing himself to look away and back down to his own weapon. He considered asking Sarah why she wasn’t with Doctor Park, the protection of whom was her main job. But, ever since taking that assignment, she didn’t work for him anymore. Technically, she worked for LT Wesley, or whoever was in charge of the Naval Security Forces (NSF) these days. Also, Handon knew he’d be playing right into Henno’s hands if he said anything.

Slapping the lower receiver of his rifle back into place on the upper, and then hefting the weapon, Handon looked up to see Juice approaching across the big dim space – with his SIG assault rifle held by the magazine well, low by his side. He nodded as he approached, and for a second Handon considered asking him what he was doing out of bed. But it was a stupid question.

“How you feeling, Juice?” he asked him.

“Good to go,” Juice said, clearly looking around for somewhere to spit tobacco juice. He rolled the shoulder of the arm that had been shot through and through. “Just need to keep from popping the stitches. No real damage from either wound.” He didn’t add that he’d nearly bled to death from the nick in his femoral artery.

Handon couldn’t disguise a concerned look.

Juice shrugged. “I’m just gonna do some light shooting for now.”

Handon nodded. Part of him would like to tell him no. But he really didn’t have the luxury. He needed everyone.

Looking up, now he saw Henno walking toward him – or really just walking by. Handon nodded and asked, “How’s your chest?” He meant the wound from the crossbow bolt that half-assed pirate had buried in him just under his clavicle – and which had then been driven in deeper by the hull of their speeding ship – plus all the 9mm rounds he’d caught in his body armor in the fight to take the wheelhouse.

“What about my chest?” Henno countered, not slowing as he went by.

Handon shook his head. Whatever else, Henno was hard to the end – not even willing to acknowledge he’d been wounded at all. In his mind, he probably hadn’t been. A thin puncture wound, plus some bruising, were nothing more than normal wear and tear to him.

Handon counted his blessings. With only twenty-four hours left until they stepped off, this was now crunch time, and the moment when he was going to have to make some hard in-or-out decisions on team assignments. Henno’s was one less role he had to worry about.

A hatch on the near wall banged open, and two big bodies spilled down the ladder behind it and onto the deck. It was Reyes and Predator, both dressed out in their PT kit, and both covered with a sheen of sweat and breathing hard. They’d become flight deck jogging buddies while Juice was laid up. The fact that they were both nursing banged-up legs also made them a good match. They rolled into the cavernous hangar deck in on a wave of energy and rumbling laughter that nearly filled the place. They were laughing at their own gimpy movements.

“And this is the ZA,” Reyes said. “Where, if movies and TV are to be believed, a twisted ankle is invariably fatal.”

“Heh,” Pred said. “Or at least requires you to shoot the guy next to you – so he’s even slower!”

“True,” Reyes said. “You don’t have to be faster than the runner…”

“…you just have to be faster than the slowest guy running from the runner!”

Passing Handon at the gunsmithing bench, they both nodded to him, then moved on toward the sparring mats.

Ali paused a series of elaborate kendo routines with her wooden sword, and stepped off the mats to greet them, as Handon watched. Earlier, in private, he had also tried to give her the option of hanging back – after the wounds and stress she’d suffered in her aerial duel with the Russian sniper. “Yeah, right,” she’d said. “All I did was sit in a helicopter and take some potshots.”

Now Handon smiled to see them all lined up, quietly and professionally carrying on with their training and mission work-up tasks. He’d definitely had his doubts about how many of his and Fick’s people were going to be combat ready and mission-capable in time for this. Or whether they were going to have to try to sub in surviving – and in almost all cases junior and inferior – guys from the MARSOC teams.

Now he had his answer.

They weren’t going to let this mission go forward with contributing to it. And they definitely weren’t going to let their teammates go out without them.

To the last, they were: all in.

* * *

“What we really need is a powered melee weapon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, swords, knives, and axes are silent. But they all require arm strength – and they tire you out.”

The operators were discussing force innovation again – a topic they felt they’d neglected in the face of the urgent need to stay alive, and keep Britain from falling, for the first two years of the ZA. They all sat at their regular table in the 02 Deck Galley, firing down a fifteen-minute lunch in the middle of their work day. The sailors who crewed the carrier had started giving this table a wide berth, even when Alpha wasn’t at it.

Everyone sitting there knew that swinging melee weapons tired you out, more quickly than most people realized, even guys in superior physical shape. This was hardly news to Juice – never having been any good with a sword, he usually mounted a bayonet. But that required swinging and stabbing his whole rifle, which was even heavier than a sword.

But right now he just ate and listened to the discussion in silence.

“You know what I’m talking about. When you’ve been in heavy contact, out on the ground, sometimes for hours… exhaustion from swinging those damned things can be a real risk factor.”

“True. It’s when you get exhausted, and surrounded, that you risk getting in trouble.”

“So what would a powered melee weapon look like? A chainsaw?”

“Fantastic. You’d never get tired hauling around a goddamned gas-powered chainsaw. Sign me up.”

Juice just squinted in thought, and chewed silently.

* * *

An hour after the lunch break, Juice reappeared in the Hangar Deck dojo – with a satisfied look on his face, and his weapon in hand. But now it had some kind of long thin attachment along the outside of the barrel – and from its near end emerged a curly cable that extended to a metal canister protruding from his pocket.

He made a beeline to where Ali was whirling in circles around a boxing/MMA dummy, ritualistically slicing and stabbing at it with her wooden sword – and silently lamenting, for the thousandth time, that Pope was no longer around to give her a proper kendo sparring session.

But now she turned and ducked as Juice brought his rifle up, it emitted a barely audible sound like a puff of air, and a spike shot out the end of it into the dummy’s head. By the time Ali had blinked, Juice was already retracting the spike, with a flick of his left thumb on a button fixed to his vertical foregrip. It seemed to be a rifle-mounted pneumatic spike, run on compressed air.

“Nice,” Ali said. “Where’d you get that?”

“I got Chief Shields to badge me into the engineering workshop down on 04 Deck – and he gave me the run of the place. Knocked it together in there.”

Ali nodded, remembering the lunchtime discussion. “Just like you, Juice. The rest of us bitch. You shut up and go build something.” She ran her finger over the tube, slid it down to the foregrip – and actuated the weapon. The sharp and narrow spike shot out again, fully eighteen inches of it.

Juice shrugged. “Purely selfish motives. I remembered having to thrust my bayonet into all those flaming zombies on Beaver Island. Got tired just thinking about it. And technology—”

“Yeah,” Ali finished for him. “Beats dumb brute strength every time.”

Pred, who had wandered over with Reyes, now admired the device. “Like goddamned Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Except scarier.”

Ali smirked. “Hairier, you mean.”

“A little less old and tired, anyway,” Juice said. He tapped the tank of compressed air, which was about the size of a small fire extinguisher. “With this, it’s good for about four hundred shots.”

Ali put her hand on her chin. “We’re gonna need a name for your pneumatic head sticker there.”

Juice nodded. “PHS?”

“Not catchy enough. The Brutus?”

Reyes leaned in. “No, man. Not pop-culture enough. But don’t worry, I got this. The OJ.” He smiled big, obviously pleased with his own cleverness.

“I like it,” Predator said. “The Juice for Juice.”

Ali shook her head, not all that amused by the image of a man stabbing his ex-wife repeatedly in the head and neck. “Wow. LA is a very tacky place, isn’t it?”

His smile not dimming one watt, Reyes said, “Probably now more than ever.”

And then he reached around and slapped Ali on her ass.

There was a very pregnant pause, during which nobody there breathed, and Ali just slowly cocked her head. Ordinarily, she would have taken this in her stride and just let it go. She was after all one of the boys. But, then again, it occurred to her that they were here to train.

So she brought the side of her fist, thumb protruding, around in a side swing that Reyes literally didn’t see coming – it was outside of his cone of vision. It caught him in the nerve nexus in the side of his neck – not hard enough to knock him out, but just hard enough to cause his leg muscles to give out from under him.

As he dropped like a sack of swarthy cement toward the deck, Ali caught him in a combined wrist and arm lock, bent him over at the waist, and frogmarched him toward the stack of sparring mats.

“Oh, you want to play grab-ass… sure, man, let’s do it…”

The only noise out of Reyes now was a pained sputtering for breath, before Ali threw him onto the mat in a tangle of his own limbs. The remaining group of operators erupted with a unified roar of laughter that rose up twenty-five feet to the hangar ceiling.

Handon smiled at this.

Team building, he thought.

* * *

About an hour later, Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick appeared at the periphery of the training area and, not pausing to speak to anyone else, made a beeline for Reyes and Brady. These two were now grappling on the foam mats – but they were grappling with knives, and not rubber practice ones.

Reyes had Brady in a rear chokehold, his forearm locked around his windpipe, and mimed stabbing him repeatedly in the face. Unfortunately, his victim was a tournament champion in Brazilian ju jitsu – and instantly dropped his chin, shoulders, and elbows, threw Reyes over his shoulder, locked his arm out, and then repeatedly mock-stomped him in the face.

“Sucks to be your face,” Fick said down to the prone form of Reyes.

“Oh, hey, Master Guns,” Reyes said, from around Brady’s foot.

“You two on me,” Fick said. Brady pulled Reyes up off the floor, and the pair followed Fick to an out-of-the-way spot, off near the planting beds. He paused before speaking, just giving his two Marines a baleful look.

“How are you healing up?” he finally asked.

Neither of these two had spent much time thinking about it – but both had been seriously injured in the fight on Beaver Island. Brady had merely been shot in the arm. But Reyes had been blown up, catching significant shrapnel and burns across his body – especially his right leg. Until a couple of days ago, he could barely walk without a cane. Now both were merrily jocking up for the Somalia mission.

“All squared away,” Reyes said.

“Ready to get some,” Brady added.

That seemed to cover it as far as they were concerned.

Fick’s face did more unfamiliar contortions. It was almost as if he was worrying. It looked to his two Marines like the old grandmother version of the hard-ass master gunnery sergeant they knew and loved to hate.

“Maybe you two ought to hang back on this one,” Fick finally said.

“What?” Reyes exclaimed, looking like he’d been kicked in the junk.

Brady cocked his head, skeptical. “So, what, just you and Graybeard step off?”

Fick shook his head. “We can bring Sergeant Lovell. Pick out a fourth.”

“Fuck that,” Reyes said. “We’re your best Marines. And you know it.”

Brady nodded agreement. “The mission’ll have no better chance than with us along for it. Anyway, we’re not wounded – we’re handi-capable!”

Fick exhaled. He tried on a smile – with the usual effect. Then he sagged a bit as he relented. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. And between the two of you freaks, you do make one healthy Marine – one top, one bottom. Although I don’t know which brain I want less.”

Reyes and Brady were happy to ignore the insult, as long as they were on the mission. They smiled and went back to their mat, and to their knives.

But Fick remained in that spot for a minute longer, his strained smile slowly fading. He was troubled, and his expression revealed it. He was trying to figure out whether what he was really concerned about was the success of the mission – or even the welfare of his Marines.

Or whether it was something else.

Knob-Heads

JFK - 04 Deck

Henno moved assertively though the dim sardine tin that was the JFK’s lower decks. He had a certain distinctive walk. It wasn’t affected. It was just something you picked up – growing up in the rural north of England, joining the British Army as early he did, and ending up at Hereford as he had.

It was a walk that said he wasn’t going to fuck with you.

Just as long as you refrained from having the very, very bad idea of fucking with him first. But then, if you did, all bets were off.

For some reason there wasn’t anyone else down there at this time of day. Henno was down here now, deep in the bowels of the kilometer-long warship, heading for the MARSOC stores and weapons room. He’d been told they might have a replacement screw for the one that had gone missing from the Picatinny accessory rail on his rifle. It was annoying that he couldn’t find one in his own load-out – one of Henno’s least favorite pastimes was relying on others, particularly guys in other units – but he had to get this sorted.

He was navigating from memory. As he paused at an intersection of companionways, he heard voices up ahead. Instantly, he knew there was something wrong about them. Menace. Fear. Something.

Adjusting his footfalls so they were silent, he followed the sounds, edging up to the next intersection. Sticking half an eye around the corner, he could make out the scene, about twenty meters farther along.

It was three sailors, enlisted guys, wearing not the Navy working uniform, but the blue coveralls of guys who really worked for a living. Shoving coal into the boiler down here or some such. But they weren’t alone. They were in a ring around someone else – someone much smaller.

“Don’t be like that,” one of the sailors said – and Henno instantly didn’t like the tone of his voice. “We’re nice guys! Come on, give us a chance.”

“Yeah. Show some hard-working American boys a little love.”

As one of the sailors shifted, Henno could now make out the figure at their center. It was Emily, the eighteen-year-old civilian girl they had pulled out of that pirate ship full of bell-ends they’d had to slot back on Lake Michigan. He gathered she’d been fitting in well, babysitting Homer’s tots, and helping out the Marines. Good for her.

But now Henno could see one of these sailors who surrounded her running his index finger across her midsection, which was covered only by a threadbare t-shirt. Another grabbed her by the arm, his grip not gentle. She was trying to pull away, but had nowhere to go.

“Please,” Emily said. “I need to go. Just let me go.”

And that was all Henno needed to hear.

He stepped into the open and powered forward, his footfalls now pounding like armored cavalry. As he waded into the group, none of the three sailors had time to react. Henno grabbed the closest one by his head with both hands and threw him down the corridor. The man had little choice but to follow his head, and so he hurtled away then slid twenty feet along the deck.

The second was trying to step back when Henno knuckle-punched him in the throat. He dropped to the deck, wheezing.

The third finally tried to throw a punch. Henno caught it, broke his wrist, then dislocated his elbow, and then his shoulder. The other two got back up and tried to help their friend, which was their last big mistake.

By the time Henno switched gears from avenging demon to succoring angel, and put his arm around Emily’s shoulders to walk her out of there, all three of the sailors were down on the deck – unconscious.

As they walked off, Henno kept Emily from looking back, which might have been disturbing to her, and instead turned her chin up to look at him. His face a portrait of gentleness and protective concern, he asked:

“Did they hurt you? Are you injured anywhere?”

Emily shook her head – though Henno could already see red marks on her arms where she’d been grabbed and held.

But she was afraid to answer yes – in case Henno went back.

* * *

He was taking her up one level and forward to the hospital, insisting that she get checked out despite her protestations that she was fine – just shaken – when they ran into Sarah Cameron, coming from Park’s lab.

Seeing the look on the girl’s face, she instantly asked, “Okay. What the hell happened?”

Emily shrugged, and Henno sighed and said, “She was attacked by three knob-heads down on 04 Deck.”

“I wasn’t attacked,” she tried to protest. “Just slightly… molested.”

“Got it,” Sarah said, instantly going into police mode. “Let’s all just take a walk back into the hospital so Doc Walker can look you over. Then, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll sit down and you can tell me exactly what happened.”

Sarah looked as if she wished she had her police notebook with her.

But Emily couldn’t help but feel better. This was a lot of care and protection.

* * *

Handon palmed his phone after it beeped at him.

He had a text, sent across the ship’s packet data network.

He’d initially been amazed to find he had cell service, out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean – and in the middle of the post-Apocalypse. But he’d learned the network was not only ship-wide, but covered the whole carrier strike group. A supercarrier in effect operated a mid-size telecoms service provider – the clue was in the thicket of antennas and dishes that topped the island – and the strike group itself was like a big city, or small island nation.

The text on Handon’s phone, curtly worded, was summoning him to the bridge.

He didn’t really have time for this, but he assumed it must be important. In eight minutes he’d climbed his way to the top of the island. There, sitting at his station, Commander Abrams was waiting for him. But he didn’t look happy to see him.

“Your man Henno,” Abrams said, not getting up, “just put three of my sailors in the hospital.”

“Okay,” Handon said. “What happened?”

Abrams shook his head and ignored the question. “One is having his jaw wired shut. Another has an arm he may never use normally again. All three are basically out for the duration. Do I look to you like I have personnel I can spare?”

Handon squinted in thought. His first reaction was loyalty to his people, plus not rushing to judgment. “Henno must have had his reasons,” he said. He hadn’t heard Henno’s side of it, and it sounded like neither had Abrams. Then again, it was possible neither of them ever would – Henno wasn’t big on explaining himself or justifying his actions.

In any case, Abrams didn’t look too interested in impartiality. “Yeah, well, those reasons are your problem. Mine is keeping your trained killers from decimating my crew. Handle it.”

Handon exhaled. “I’ll handle it.”

He turned and headed below again.

What Needs Doing

JFK - Alpha Berths

“So what caught your fancy about hunting and survival?” Henno asked.

Sarah smiled. “Someone had to be ready. Sure wasn’t going to be my husband.”

Henno nodded. “Admit I never did understand that match.”

The two were sitting in Henno’s cabin now, side by side on the lower bunk bed. After getting Emily checked out, they had taken her back here so Sarah could question her about what happened. It was closer than Sarah and Handon’s bigger cabin, and was also the closest place they figured they could get some privacy.

Finishing with that, they’d sent Emily on her way. Henno tried to accompany her back to her duties, but she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary, and went off on her own. But Sarah had stayed to talk, and the talk was quickly turning personal.

“Shane – um, Handon said the same thing. He didn’t understand my marriage. Why would he? And he wanted to know what had happened to me that sent me down that life path.”

“You tell him?”

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”

Henno just nodded. He’d figured it was something. To cause her to get into that situation. That made her distrustful of people. That made her so distant from her husband and son. None of that had been any mystery to Henno.

Only the cause was.

Sarah took a deep breath. What the hell? she thought. For some reason she had a sense now this man wouldn’t judge her. She also wasn’t in a relationship with him, so there was less at stake.

“Fifteen years ago,” she said finally, speaking nearly in a monotone, “I was a rookie cop in Toronto… Well, no, wait. It starts earlier than that. With my father, I guess.” She paused there, obviously having trouble continuing.

“Go on, then,” Henno said. “I guarantee you he couldn’t have been a bigger tosser than me own dad.”

Sarah laughed, but uneasily. “Don’t speak too soon. Mine was manic-depressive, and he self-medicated with a lot of alcohol. When he was down, it was like all the lights had gone out. But when he was up it was worse – gambling, whoring, money troubles.”

“Okay,” Henno admitted. “That’s pretty grim.”

Sarah shook her head. “He also abused my mother. Every time the neighbors called the cops, she’d say it was her fault and she didn’t want to press charges – and the officers would nod and wink and leave. That was really the reason I joined the force. To try to make some kind of change.”

“And did you?”

“I hope so. But I also almost pissed it all away. When I was a rookie, trying to fit in, I got involved with another officer – older, more cynical… and way too much like my father. Drank a lot, took risks, wasn’t always very nice to me. I started drinking with him – too much sometimes. Sometimes too close to a duty shift. Turned out he was also involved in some shady business with the Mob. I only found that out when internal affairs got interested in him, and started questioning me. He panicked and asked me to help get rid of some evidence.”

Henno tilted his head. “And did you in the end?”

Sarah paused. “No. I can’t say I didn’t think about it. But what he wanted me to do… I couldn’t cross that line.” Sarah just stared at the bulkhead for a moment. “Then he wanted me to testify to things that were just flat-out lies. Lies that would put others in prison.”

“So what happened?” Henno asked.

“Funny, in the end, after all his tough talk, he pleaded out and accepted loss of his badge and five years of parole… after ratting out all his buddies. He had a car accident six months later, killed instantly.”

Henno nodded his head seriously. “I’m guessing it wasn’t an accident.”

Sarah just shrugged. Her body language said it all.

“They ever come after you – his Mob buddies?”

“I got a couple of hang-up phone calls. Dark sedans parked across the street. Enough that I moved across town, didn’t give anyone my new address.”

“But you were still a cop.”

“Barely. He nearly took my career down with his. Why do you think I was never promoted past constable first class, in fifteen years of service? I was tainted. Basically, I flew too close to the flame. And I knew it.”

Henno nodded. He was starting to see where this was going.

“Not long after that I met Mark. Decent guy. No connection to the police, much less to organized crime. Stable. Didn’t drink, didn’t gamble. Was always nice to me – certainly would never hit me. Marrying him seemed to be a way to make my life safe. Not long after, when I realized I’d made a mistake, I doubled down by getting pregnant. Thought that might make the marriage make sense. But then I was really stuck – forever, even past the end of the world.”

Henno nodded and grunted. “Well, you’re free now.”

“I guess so. But at what cost?”

The two sat in silence for a few seconds. Henno could tell she’d just needed an ear to bend, had been waiting for one for a long time, and he was happy to provide it. Sure, he’d been flirting with her before in the galley, and down at the shooting range – he couldn’t ignore that Sarah was an attractive, fit, smart woman. And he certainly didn’t give a damn how Handon felt about it.

But now the tone had changed, and she had put him in her confidence. And he knew it wasn’t right to mix one thing up with the other.

The door knocked – but then opened before Henno could rise.

In walked Handon – and when he saw Sarah sitting there beside Henno on his bunk, he visibly swallowed whatever it was he’d had cued up to say.

Sarah looked up, alarmed.

And Henno stood, up to his full height. He hadn’t locked the hatch. But still he didn’t like Handon just busting in like that. There were boundaries.

Handon visibly reset, moving his steely gaze from Sarah to Henno. “I just got called out on the carpet by Abrams,” he said. “He tells me you put three of his sailors in the hospital. That true?”

“Aye,” Henno said. “Some people need thrashing.”

Handon blinked and shook his head.

Sarah’s face changed from alarm to dismay. Evidently Henno wasn’t going to explain to Handon any more about what happened. She didn’t know that, to a Yorkshireman, explaining yourself was about as appealing as crapping in public.

She jumped in. “Wait a second. What happened was—”

Handon cut her off. “I don’t care what happened. I’ve got far too much to do as it is. Mediating fights between soldiers and sailors is about the last goddamned thing I need to be doing, less than twenty-four hours before we step off.”

Now Sarah’s expression changed again – to anger. “That’s pretty insensitive. A girl was almost raped. And it was only because of Richie that she wasn’t.”

Handon looked baffled. “Who the hell is Richie?”

But then he remembered. That was Henno’s first name. Handon had never heard it used before – only seen it, once, in his personnel file, which he’d been shown on his first week in Hereford two years ago. And then Handon realized – his was not the only first name that Sarah had gotten. It was no longer a unique intimacy between them.

“Henno,” he said. “You’re on me. Right now.”

* * *

Henno followed Handon out into the companionway. Squaring up opposite him, but trying to keep the aggression he felt under wraps, Handon carefully said, “I don’t want this to get acrimonious.”

Henno paused, lowered his head, and squinted in a way that would have been terrifying to someone less of a bad-ass than Handon himself. “No,” he growled. “You really don’t.”

Handon took a breath. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t care. Maybe they had it coming. All I need to know is that you’re not going to create problems on this boat for us.” He paused, considering whether to go on. “And I need to know that I can depend on you to do your job on this mission.”

Henno straightened up, his expression taken aback. “Do my job? Are you having a laugh? When have I not done my job? You, on the other hand…”

Handon’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”

Henno paused and gathered steam. “It means that, for starters, on this one we are not skiving off to go rescue any more random civilians. You got that?” Handon knew full well Henno was talking about their misadventure with the pirate ship, where Handon’s sympathy had been tweaked by a girl’s call for help – one that turned out to be a trap. And he knew he was vulnerable here. It hadn’t been a great call on his part, and had almost spelled disaster for the mission.

But it also wasn’t Henno’s place to be second-guessing Handon’s command. And he didn’t much like his tone. But, then again, he knew as well as anyone that authority was earned. And they had to be able to work together. And Henno might even be right on this one. So he made an attempt to dial it down.

“Okay,” he said. “You won that argument. I’ve gotten religion on that one.”

He meant they would be mission focused. But even as he said the words, he knew he wasn’t even convincing himself – not totally.

Henno definitely wasn’t satisfied. He said, “And we are not going to hang about, held at gunpoint by random civilian nutters we’ve stupidly tried to rescue.” This time he meant Emily’s sister – who had put a gun to Dr. Park’s head, and tried to blackmail them. Henno had wanted to kill her instantly, but Handon had made him hold off. That incident too could have easily gone a lot worse than it did.

Henno went on. “I can’t be doing with any of that again. Anybody points a gun at us, anybody fucks with the mission, I’m going to slot ’em. You got that?”

Handon nodded, though it pained him to do so. Because the lesson he felt he had learned in Michigan was still with him – that if they didn’t safeguard their essential humanity, then they were as good as dead already, and were fighting for nothing. But, as insubordinate as Henno was being, he also had an excellent point. If everyone was dead, if the world fell, then their humanity didn’t matter in the least.

If the team didn’t get the job done, it was all over.

Handon had never really known how to reconcile those two imperatives – saving the world, versus safeguarding their own humanity. But right now, with the endgame looming, he figured Henno probably had it right. And they both of them came from a culture where being right was a lot more important than holding rank, or being in command.

But then, even as he thought that, Handon succumbed to another impulse. Maybe he just couldn’t stand the sneer on Henno’s face. Also, he found himself flashing back to Sarah in his cabin – right on his bunk. So as Henno was turning to leave, Handon grabbed his shoulder and said: “Just as long as you’re clear on one thing: that I’m in charge of this outfit.”

Henno powerfully shrugged free of Handon’s grip, and turned back to face him. “This is Captain Ainsley’s outfit. A man who knew that the mission came before everything. And who gave everything he had, or ever would have, for it.”

“Ainsley’s gone,” Handon said. “And I’m going to continue to make the calls for the team – right, wrong, or indifferent. You got that?”

Henno shrugged. “We’re going to do what needs doing. End of.”

Handon took his meaning: it was the mission or nothing. And he decided he might have to leave it at that. It was basically an impasse – one that could easily turn into a stand-off. Or worse.

Just hopefully not at a fatal moment.

As they were both turning to leave, Handon twisted at the waist and said, “There’s one other thing. Those three sailors you knocked out. Two of them woke up with their ship’s ID cards missing. You know anything about that?”

“No. Why would I?”

Handon nodded, and mentally shrugged it off. That didn’t make any sense to him either. Henno would have no reason to take them. And he would be unlikely to lie about it if he did. One thing about Henno, Handon thought: you rarely had to wonder about his motives.

And you pretty much always knew where you stood with him.

Something to Fight For

JFK - Hospital

Fick nodded to Sergeant Lovell as he pulled up another chair by the bedside. In front of them was the half-mummified form of Corporal Raible, who had been terribly wounded by an IED blast on the shore mission to SAS Saldanha. They had gone there to secure desperately needed supplies – but they’d run into a team of Spetsnaz commandos who wanted them just as badly.

Fick swallowed hard as he looked from Lovell over to his injured Marine. Raible was all messed up – ventilator, yards of white bandages, salve on his large variety of burn wounds. Much worse, he had a lot of soft tissue damage, which was going to be a long time healing, if ever.

Worst of all, they’d had to take off his left leg below the knee.

Fick shook his head. He’d already had a quick conference with Doc Walker and the surgical staff. And it wasn’t like the ship’s hospital had a bunch of top-shelf prosthetics just lying around. Getting Raible’s leg replaced was probably going to be a project for after they saved the world.

Meanwhile, he was just going to have to hang tough.

Right now he was still all drugged up and blissed out – sleeping through it.

Lovell, who had been in charge of Raible on that mission, looked over to Fick and said, “It was a pretty close-run thing.”

Fick nodded. “Yeah, well, you made it. And you got the job done.”

“I kept thinking that was exactly how the LT bought it.” He meant the MARSOC team’s original officer and commander – who had stayed back to hold a choke point while the rest of the Marines, including Fick, ran like hell and escaped. “Running for the boat across an overrun port, shooting in every direction, rockets raining down from the drone overhead.”

Fick just nodded, expressionless. This wasn’t one of his favorite memories. Because he still knew it was he who should have bought it on that mission, not the LT. But he had let the young officer hang back, knowing it would be his last command decision, then saluted and ran away. That was how he had ended up in charge. He’d told himself then, and in the days that followed, that he’d done it for the greater good – because he was a better leader for the Marines than their original commander. It was a terrible thought, a guilty thought.

But, ever since then, the only way he could think to redeem it was to do everything in his power to make it true. To be the best possible leader of these men, and to keep them alive. Of course, Fick couldn’t say any of that then, and he couldn’t say it now. He just kept nodding, and kept any expression off his face.

Lovell shook his head. “Man. Those Spetsnaz dudes were good – and hard.”

Fick believed it. He also still wasn’t totally clear on how a handful of dinged-up Marines had beaten them.

Lovell caught his expression, and tried to explain. Basically, their temporary leader, Juice, had improvised like a mad genius – intercepting the radio signals the Spetsnaz team used to remote-detonate their IEDs, then ordering a fake retreat to lure them into their own traps, and setting them off by hacking the signal.

Fick nodded, impressed.

Lovell blinked once. “I had my doubts about Juice. But the dude’s extremely solid. He’s a great combat leader.”

Fick nodded. Everyone in Alpha was.

He was glad it was them he would be going into the shit with.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Fick stopped in the middle of an otherwise deserted companionway and looked up. It was Emily – again. Also stopped and looking up at him.

“Hey,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

In truth, he’d kind of been looking for her too – hoping to find her in the MARSOC team room, where she’d spent a lot of time lately doing valuable support work for them. He’d wanted to say goodbye before they stepped off. But he didn’t quite feel up to admitting that. Maybe she’d think it was weird.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “What for?”

“No real reason. I guess I just wanted to see if you needed anything from me before you leave.” She paused and cocked her head, her thin and light blonde hair spilling over her face. “Okay, that’s not true. I wanted to see you before you left.” She put one ankle behind the other and twisted slightly, coquettish.

Jesus, Fick thought. She can’t be flirting with me?

He was happy that he seemed to be turning into some kind of father figure for her. And after the fucked-up redneck Whiskey Tango childhood she’d had, all of it overshadowed by her mother’s series of shitbird boyfriends, the last thing she needed was another incestuous father figure.

Nah, he thought finally. It’s probably fine. It’s just her being a girl.

He relaxed and smiled. It was the genuine and heartfelt smile he’d slowly been learning, and which, unlike his old strained one, didn’t make him look scarier. It made him look human. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.”

As they fell in side by side, he looked across and saw red marks on her arm. “What happened there?”

She shook a bit more hair down in front of her face. “Nothing,” she said. There were also things she wasn’t ready to share with him. “Just rough-housing with Ben and Izzie,” she said. Fick knew she had two jobs on this vessel – support staff to him and the Marines, and part-time live-in au pair for Homer’s kids.

Mainly to change the subject, she said, “There’s not really hot chocolate, is there?”

“Tsk, tsk. You shouldn’t be so cynical.” After traversing another stretch of hallway, they ducked into the 03 Deck mess, which was smaller and less used than the one on the deck above. At the moment, there was no one eating and only one guy on duty inside.

“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.

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.

And from the frantic movement of his arm, he knew how close he’d come.

Charlotte pushed her cyclic to the right, throttled her dual Rolls-Royce engines up, and blasted off toward the other side of the base.

She had fewer boys to protect down there now.

But they needed her more than ever.

* * *

Major Jameson clicked off the air channel, but left his radio headset where it was – squarely on his head. There was little chance of his going a full minute without needing it.

At the sound of his name being spoken, he turned around to face one of the support staff – who might have been a cook or a janitor in real life, for all Jameson knew, but was at least a corporal in the British Army – who had been pressed into service helping with radio operations in the JOC. The only two legit operations officers left alive were at that moment sitting at two of the only fully functional tactical stations left undestroyed – the pair of them two-handedly trying to run the entire battle for the south of England.

Everyone else on the JOC staff was dead.

The lightning outbreak that had started with the Foxtrot version of Major Grews had taken down the entire JOC in minutes – and most likely would have taken down the whole complex, if One Troop Royal Marines hadn’t hit the ground and rushed into the breach, guns blazing. Hell, Jameson’s troop sergeant, Eli, had taken down Zombie Grews himself – after he got outside the walls, and was seconds away from disappearing into the general population of inner London.

Which probably would have been like a match to a drought-ravaged forest. It could easily have been “the end of the fucking world,” to use the words of the late Colonel Mayes – the son of a bitch who, by dying, had dropped this whole shitty situation in Jameson’s lap.

“Go,” Jameson said to the corporal, not caring to waste syllables, or seconds.

“Sir. I spoke to personnel in the pilots’ ready room. Good news – yes, those last two B200s out on the deck are flight-ready. And, yes, one of them can land on the American carrier. And they’ve even got somebody who can fly it, plus someone who will do as a co-pilot.”

Jameson wondered if the co-pilot was qualified on that aircraft. He decided he didn’t want to know, and kept his mouth shut. It was enough that they’d be able to fulfill the Americans’ request to send another plane – to get their magical scientist and his vaccine back to Britain.

Maybe even before everyone there was all dead.

The very last act of Colonel Mayes had been to read Jameson in on the joint mission to North America to retrieve a rumored vaccine against the plague. It was just one more damned thing Jameson was having to manage. On the other hand, it was perhaps the best reason they had to keep fighting – and for staying alive.

The corporal smiled. “The pilot said to leave it with him – they’d get out there, get the plane prepped, file a flight plan, and get in the air.”

Jameson almost relaxed for a second. Something going right – and someone else handling it. This was like a deep-tissue massage to the pummeled flesh of his psyche. He nodded and was already turning away, when the corporal chirped up again. “It’s only, sir, he wants to know about mid-air refueling. Sir.”

Jameson stopped turning and blinked once. “What?”

“Well, sir,” and with this the corporal referenced a clipboard and started reading numbers off it. Jameson listened stonily as he was informed that it was 3,758 miles from London to the Gulf of Aden where the JFK was anchored – and that the B200, their little Beechcraft twin-turboprop utility plane, the only aircraft type on base that could land on the carrier, had a maximum range of 2,075 miles. Getting it there, never mind getting it back again, was going to require mid-air refueling.

Jameson further gathered that this operation had been done once before, when they sent a team of bioscientists and a load of scientific equipment out to the carrier. But he hadn’t been around for that, and he was damned if he knew how all that worked – aeronautically, logistically, or (most of all) administratively.

Luckily, one of the actual ops officers working at a station nearby overhead this exchange, despite being involved in a half-dozen stacked-up radio transmissions. He was a second lieutenant and Jameson seemed to recall his name was Miller.

“Brize Norton,” Miller said, covering the mic on his radio headset. He meant the RAF base in nearby Oxfordshire. “101 Squadron has Voyager KC2 and KC3 AAR tankers.” Jameson must have looked blank. The ops guy looked annoyed. “Air-to-air refueling aircraft.”

Jameson restarted his breathing. “Can they support this flight?”

“Last I heard there was exactly one Voyager still flying and mission-capable. And that’s if Brize Norton isn’t overrun.”

Jameson’s expression darkened. “What? We don’t even know?” How could they not know which British military bases were overrun?

The ops guy pointed to the huge, and now completely shattered, digital display at the front of the JOC – the one that had previously displayed in high resolution the entire battlespace of southern England, including the lines of advance of the dead, as well as the location of all military units fighting them. Jameson got it: their big picture had been blown into a thousand shards – and everything they knew they were having to cobble together piecemeal.

He looked down and said to Miller, “Can you organize this refueling?”

The man made a fucked-off expression and pointed at his headset – out of which were leaking multiple voices, urgent and panicked, all clearly expecting support and coordination from CentCom. And all of which support was being provided by a tiny handful of personnel, most of them ill-trained for the job, rather than the forty full-time subject matter experts and TOC jocks who were supposed to be running this place.

Jameson shook his head, looked around at the several other people who had queued up needing something from him, and looked back to the ill-trained corporal. “Organize the refueling mission. Make it happen. Do whatever it takes. Don’t bother me about it again until it’s done.” Delegating was his only chance of keeping his head above water here.

But then Jameson grimaced. He had already told the Americans they we were sending an aircraft, in response to their request. He figured that as soon as that started being true, he’d better ring them back up and give them an updated ETA.

For that matter, he thought grimly, I wouldn’t say no to an ETA on that vaccine of theirs – if such a thing actually exists, or is even possible…

But he pushed that thought away, and turned back into the maelstrom.

* * *

A few minutes later, though it felt much longer, Jameson sensed as much as heard Sergeant Eli behind him. His long-time troop sergeant, and best friend, was now pretty much the only thing allowing Jameson to keep any of the wheels on this wagon. He was now serving as his acting 2IC both in running this base, and in managing the chaos that was the JOC and the fight for the south.

“Sir,” Eli said, looking and sounding as unfazed as Jameson hadn’t felt in a long, long time. That was the great and indispensable thing about grizzled NCOs. Experienced and hard-bitten, they remained untroubled and combat effective however crazy things got. Jameson made a mental note to shoot himself in the head immediately if anything ever happened to Eli.

He nodded at his friend to go ahead.

“As ordered, we’ve taken command of all surviving base personnel.”

Jameson exhaled. Thank God. “Outstanding. I want everyone in uniform and still breathing air reporting to and under the operational control of you or one of your Marines. Down to and including our most junior enlisted.”

“It’s already being done.”

Jameson nodded. “We are running this show now, we are responsible – and there will be no more fuck-ups.”

Eli nodded, still unfazed. “Leave it with me. Do you also want me to organize a full assembly? Or just the RMPs, so you can issue orders?”

He meant the Royal Military Police who, aside from One Troop, were the only remotely effective fighting force here in what was supposed to be a hardened military installation. But Jameson shook his head. “No. You speak for me, with my voice, and you can handle it. Alert me if you need input or resources.”

“Roger that.” Eli cocked his head. “Any update on the arrival of the command element from Edinburgh?”

The only really good news in the whole pear-shaped situation was that Jameson & Co. were only going to have to manage this shit-show for a little while longer. At that point, a whole slew of replacement commanders and ops officers, basically a JOC-in-a-box, would be flying in from CentCom North HQ in Scotland, and would take this whole thing off their hands.

Jameson hadn’t had time to get an update on that. “No. Assume they’re on schedule.” He checked his wristwatch, at the end of a soot-streaked bare forearm, his camo combat shirtsleeves long ago rolled up. It was hard even to remember that they had stepped off the helicopters from the Germany mission and virtually straight into the outbreak here – and its aftermath, including inheriting responsibility for everything. “It’s less than two and a half hours total flying time by Chinook, so they should be here within the hour.”

Eli nodded. “Thank fuck for that. Sir.”

Jameson smiled. As usual, his troop sergeant had it right. But then his smile melted away… as Jameson mentally pictured some blighting Foxtrot they had missed in their sweeps leaping out at the arriving command detachment and mauling them all before they could relieve One Troop, and particularly Jameson, from this loathsome duty.

He looked at Eli seriously. “Listen. I want one last sweep – of everything. But starting at the helipad and hangar, and pushing out from there.”

Eli nodded. He got it.

“Prioritize this, put every warm body you can scavenge on it – and do it now. Whatever’s already been checked three times, check it a fourth and fifth. Our relief is going to take over as planned. Seriously – no fuck-ups.”

“Understood,” Eli said. “We’ll do it proper.”

Eli knew his boss was on target as usual. It wasn’t just that they wanted out of there. It was that they were totally unqualified for the job they were doing. Simply, they had to see this through to a successful handover – or else they would be half-assedly manning that place until everyone everywhere was dead.

Including, in the end, them.

But Jameson almost smiled at the thought of the handover. “With luck, we’ll be doing some nice relaxing zombie fighting out on the ground by nightfall.”

Eli saluted, turned on his heel – and headed out to get it done.

Days Not Weeks

CentCom HQ - Helipad

“No fuck-ups,” Private Simmonds told the two RMPs, stressing the most important of their mission parameters. He knew this was a little cheeky, not least because the two “Redcaps” – as the Royal Military Police were called due to their traditional scarlet berets – outranked him. Both were sergeants. But word had come down from the top – and the top was now Major Jameson – that when it came to chain of command, there was everyone in One Troop… and then there was everyone else.

The Royal Marines were calling the shots now.

“Sweep through the hangar complex,” Simmonds said. “Every corner, every closet. Then push back out here to the helipad where you’re on stag until that flight of Chinooks lands.” Simmonds checked his wristwatch, worn operator style on the inside of his left wrist. “Which is less than thirty minutes from now. So get moving!”

The two RMPs nodded, faces stony. They sure as hell weren’t saluting.

As they turned to leave, Simmonds stopped them by saying, “Wait – you’re both topped up on rifle mags, right?” They responded only by looking down at their chest pouches, which were very obviously full of magazines. Simmonds reached out and tapped a grenade clipped on to the webbing of one of them. “Don’t expect you’ll be needing those—”

“Right. We’re off.” They’d had enough of having their jobs explained to them.

Simmonds called after them, “Just make sure nothing dead comes out of there alive!” He grinned as he watched the pair head off.

He was rather enjoying this being-in-charge lark.

* * *

Jameson stood at the shot-out windows that faced the airstrip and watched the little Beechcraft commuter plane defy gravity and leave their patch of earth behind.

Nice, he thought. More things happening in good order. He figured he’d better update the Americans. He was also very interested in learning more about the state of this rumored vaccine that was going to save their bacon. He’d gotten no more than a fifteen-minute briefing from his predecessor, the horribly wounded and infected Colonel Mayes, before the man had to nip off and shoot himself.

Jameson walked over to one of the stations – not one manned by either of the two ops officers, who had much more critical and urgent things to do – but that same shanghaied corporal he’d dealt with earlier.

“Do you know our long-range frequencies?”

“Sir?”

“The ones used with expeditionary units. Overseas.”

“Um – no, sir.”

“Well, figure it out. You’ll also need to load up whatever radio encryption key we use to talk to the Americans.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’m going to stand here and look at you while you do it.”

The young man, who already looked overmastered by his tasks, now looked physically crushed. Pressed down in his seat, features sagging, like his own personal gravity field had doubled.

Jameson just rested his elbow on the man’s radio set and smiled.

If he feels crushed now, he thought, just wait and see how he feels when two million walking dead get here…

* * *

Mann and McDonagh, the two RMPs under Simmonds’s (temporary, they ardently hoped) command, now briskly walked toward the big aviation hangar complex that fronted the helipads.

Mann looked up at the blue sky and shook his head. It was like September 11 – a beautiful blue sky for a day of total horror. Something about the cool sunshine of the day took his mind back – and he realized he was thinking of the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, which happened every November for Armistice Day. When the whole nation stopped what it was doing, and the Queen and PM came out to lay wreaths, and everyone gave thanks for the sacrifices of all those who had fallen in Britain’s wars.

Mann’s dad had taken him to see it as a boy. He’d been entranced by the pomp and the ceremony and the smart British soldiers in their dress uniforms. It was probably then that he decided he wanted to join the Army.

Now Mann shook his head, recalling that this year was the first time in over a hundred years they hadn’t held the ceremony. It wasn’t any lack of patriotism. Just lack of personnel. All those soldiers in the Household Cavalry, all those members of the military bands, were now soldiers for real – wearing very unceremonial outfits while fighting in the south. Defending Her Majesty from the hordes sweeping toward them even now.

Mann knew some of those men. And he wished them well. But, right now, he was going to do his bit here – at the center of the empire.

He and McDonagh quickly crossed the cavernous space of the main hangar and plunged into the maze of storerooms at its rear. Mann held open the door for his friend, then followed him into the darkness. Neither had weapon-mounted lights, so both juggled small tactical flashlights along with their rifles.

There was no reason Mann could think of for the lights being off back here – the whole base had reliable power, more so than the rest of London – except that the bulbs in this room had burned out and no one had thought to replace them.

Or maybe zombie-fighting just isn’t spooky enough with the lights on, he thought cynically. His whole career had turned into something out of a comic book or television show – much more so since the terrible outbreak that morning. He and McDonagh had been right in the thick of things, and were instrumental in stopping the outbreak before it flashed through the base and took it down.

The troop of Royal Marines who had rocked up were obviously experienced fighters, and they had amazing unit cohesion. But they were not the only military personnel serving there at Her Majesty’s pleasure, nor the only ones who had fought the outbreak. The 174 Provost Company of RMPs, the unit responsible for security at CentCom HQ, had taken heavy casualties in the fighting. Moreover, this was their patch – and they didn’t particularly appreciate a bunch of bombed-out bootnecks coming in and ordering them around like they didn’t know their own jobs.

Mann looked over at McDonagh as the darkness opened up into a larger storeroom and the two of them stepped into it. They had spent so much time together these past two years they had become de facto best mates. And Mann knew he would not only sacrifice his life to safeguard this facility – he’d lay down his life in a heartbeat to save his friend.

He felt his heart swell with gratitude that neither of them had fallen in the fighting earlier in the day. Mann figured if the two of them stayed alive, maybe it was going to be okay. And as long as McDonagh was on his feet, he knew he wouldn’t have to worry about his own safety. They’d look out for each other, as they always had.

The two split up now, moving down opposite sides of the room. Metal shelving, stacked with boxes of engine parts, filled the center. The two shone their lights into every corner, doing their best to keep their muzzles pointed in the same direction as the beams.

In two minutes they’d reached the back end and the door that led to the next room. When Mann opened it, reached inside, and flipped the light switch… this time the lights came on. That alone lightened their mood – and their burden.

They stepped inside.

* * *

“Got it!” the conscripted radio operator finally exclaimed. Without preamble, and probably without proper radio protocol, he just pulled off his headset and handed it to Jameson.

Grimacing slightly, Jameson took off the headset he already had on, seated the new one, and said, “JFK from CentCom Actual, message, over.”

There was a pause on the other end, one which slightly smacked of confusion. Jameson figured it was a clash of radio procedure.

“CentCom Actual, this is Seven-Nine Actual, we read you Lima Charlie, go ahead.”

Now Jameson paused, slightly confused himself. He knew neither the hull number of the USS John F. Kennedy, nor that the ship’s captain used that number as his call sign.

“CentCom Actual, repeat, this is Commander Abrams – Charlie Oscar of the JFK, go ahead.”

Ah, Jameson thought. That he got – commanding officer of the ship.

“Right. Major Jameson here.”

There was a distinct pause on the other end. “You’re commanding – Major?”

Jameson sighed. “That’s affirmative. But only temporarily. After the outbreak we had here, I’ve relieved Colonel Mayes, and will be relieved in turn, hopefully within the hour, by a more senior command element.”

“Did you put the outbreak down?”

“Yes. Just.”

There was another pause, this one with the flavor of awe. “Jesus, Jameson. That sounds like a pretty lethal bullet to have dodged – right in your HQ.”

“Just one of many. The noose is still closing on London.” But Jameson wasn’t enjoying this line of discussion, and had a lot to do, so he got to the point. “Good news, JFK. Your requested aircraft is wheels up and en route to your location. ETA approx twelve hours – repeat, one-two hours.”

“That’s received, CentCom, and thanks very much. We will aim to have it loaded up and back in the air to you as soon as.”

Jameson frowned. “Yes – about that. What can you tell me about this vaccine?” He paused briefly to consider OPSEC. But this was an encrypted channel. And, hell, everyone had much bigger problems right now than keeping secrets from any remaining enemies among the living.

“What do you want to know, CentCom?”

“Pretty much only one thing: when it will be ready.”

There was another pause on the American end. “I’m told we’ve already got what appears to be a working serum.”

“What does that mean? Is that like a cure?”

“Something like that. I need to get the bioscientist up here to brief you.”

“And what about the vaccine?”

“What do you know about it at this point?”

“Not too much. I was briefed on your mission by Mayes before he died.”

“How’d he die?”

“Torn to pieces – and infected. Lived just long enough to finish himself off.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. Quite. We’re a bit on our back feet here. So you can see why we’re keen to know when that vaccine will be ready.”

“It’s in progress.”

Jameson pursed his lips in frustration. “Any chance of an ETA?”

“We’ll try to get you one, CentCom.”

“That’s received. Please just be advised – right now Britain is hanging on by a thread. If you chaps are going to sweep in and save us by inoculating everyone left… well, you’d better do it fast.”

“Wilco, CentCom. How long would you say we have to work with?”

Jameson looked up at the shattered big board at the front of the JOC. In a way, he was glad he couldn’t see it. He knew it would only display a literal ring of death closing in on London.

“I’m afraid that depends on everything. We’ve got a lot of men and machines in the field, fighting balls out. And we’ve got a giant wall around London. But I honestly don’t know how long we’re going to be able to hold.” He paused and drew breath. “Listen, this isn’t my command, and I’m not even supposed to be here. I expect we can get you a better sitrep when the new command element lands, which should be any time now. But…”

Jameson looked forlornly out the lack of window toward the continued and distressing lack of helicopters landing on that helipad.

“…you probably need to be thinking days, not weeks.”

Wing Drop

JFK - Bridge

The Kennedy’s bridge had unexpectedly become a place of some peace again. Despite the news that Britain, the last bastion of humanity – last one on shore, at any rate – was going down fast, it was hard to feel that peril here. Commander Abrams put down his radio phone handset, leaned back in his captain’s chair, and considered.

Right now the boat was anchored way out in the middle of the Gulf of Aden, waiting for the completion of the shore mission. All the tracking and supporting of that mission was being done from CIC, and via air ops. There were plenty of workaday things to deal with, not least the never-shrinking list of shipboard repairs. But for once they actually weren’t that second in any kind of terrible crisis or ship-wide peril. And the peace of this empty stretch of ocean and the sunshine on it were nothing short of relaxing.

It was all unaccustomed, and very pleasant.

Just as Abrams had decided to take himself out on the observation deck and take a closer look at Africa, a sailor walked smoothly onto the bridge from the outside ladder. He was a good-looking blond man who appeared to be in excellent shape – big shoulders, narrow waist, and angular lines framing his face – and wearing the insignia of an electronics technician. He paused, took a long look around the bridge, then saw Abrams looking at him and saluted.

“Sorry, sir,” he said in a confident voice. “Wrong turn.”

And he turned on his heel and marched right back out.

That’s weird, Abrams thought. He hadn’t recognized the inexplicably lost seaman. But that didn’t mean much – he had only been on board a week and a bit, and in command for just a few days. And his plate had been pretty full for most of that. He knew every single hand from the USS Michael Murphy, all of whom had been absorbed into the Kennedy crew. But he was still trying to learn the names of his bridge crew and senior officers – not to mention earn their respect and trust.

He looked around the bridge, but no one else seemed to have noticed the man.

Abrams hopped up and went out to the observation deck as planned – but with a different purpose. He got there in time to see the man fast-walking off the ladder and onto the flight deck. For some reason he couldn’t figure, Abrams now remembered the three banged-up seamen who had gotten on the wrong side of Alpha’s British operator… But as the man disappeared again, Abrams looked up and the original object of fascination grabbed at his attention again:

Africa.

As was his long habit, he liked to get a direct look at things. Somehow the mediation of drone video kept him from feeling whatever vibe he needed to really know what was going on – on the ocean surface, or out on the ground.

So he stared off at the world’s second largest continent for a few minutes, trying to picture what it was like for Alpha and the Marines operating on their own in there. He was supposed to be getting occasional updates from CIC on their mission status, so he presumed nothing catastrophic had happened – yet.

He took another minute just to stare out and sense the aura Africa gave off. It was strange to think he had come out of that place. Then again, everyone had come out of that place – all of humanity. The big question now was:

Would their shore team be coming out again?

And would they have the key to humanity’s salvation with them when they did? The secret to keeping the long run of homo sapiens from coming to an abrupt end – a mere 40,000 years after they started their long dispersion out of Africa, going on to colonize the rest of the globe.

Abrams noted ruefully that it had only taken the virus a couple of weeks, also starting right here, to infect, subsume, and cover the entire planet.

Give the double-stranded RNA its due…

His reverie was interrupted by the ship-wide tannoy going, presumably from up in PriFly. “All hands be advised, air recovery ops under way. Make clear the angle deck. Air recovery ops imminent.”

This would be one of the two surviving F-35s – and one of the two surviving pilots – coming back to refuel. The other one had already blasted off to take this one’s place, providing constant cover for the shore mission, thirty minutes ago. In a way, the recovery was a bigger deal than the launch – it required careful coordination with the movement of the carrier.

Abrams hadn’t been much consulted for either operation – more just alerted. He honestly wasn’t sure whether this was because he was new, or because the acting captain of the boat just wasn’t that critical to flight ops. He was still learning as he went. Which in some ways was terrifying. But it was also just par for the course. As a grizzled chief petty officer had pointedly asked him once, while trying to drill some basic facts into his newly minted officer’s brain, “You did join the Navy to learn, didn’t you, son?”

Abrams stayed outside long enough to watch the remarkable and heart-stopping ballet of an aircraft being recovered – and just long enough to see that it had been accomplished without disaster.

Which was pretty amazing – for a maneuver like landing a jet plane on a boat.

And then he went back inside and onto his bridge.

* * *

The first sighting of the flat-top still filled Hailey with awe, all these years later.

It was just so damned big – and so small at the same time. Gigantic when you needed to walk across it, or paint it. And pretty damned tiny when you needed to land an aircraft with a 200mph stall speed on top of it. What she was about to do was a seriously complex and dangerous business.

First she dropped down to her marshaling altitude, about five minutes before her Charlie time – the moment her tail hook would be crossing the ramp. She marveled at what a glorious day it was – mostly clear sky, beautiful rising sun, moving cumulus clouds and a breeze rippling the surface of the ocean and causing it to glint up at her, all the way out to infinity.

She noted the exact wind speed and direction, checked the sea state, and got an update from PriFly. No surprises. Then she checked her fuel, mainly to know whether she needed to dump any of it to hit her max trap weight. But she was down to the bottom of the tank – they were keeping both her and Morris in the air every second they could before cycling them.

Before she knew it, she and her bird were down at 800 feet, pushing 400+ knots, and approaching the stern, a hundred feet or so starboard of the ship. She simultaneously threw the stick over, stood on the left wing, and pulled hard, thumbing out the speed brake and yanking the throttle to idle – which got her down to the 180 knots she needed to be at for this to work.

She dropped her gear, jockeyed the throttles, picked up the landing ball, hit her glide path – and watched with the inevitable and never-fading alarm that always accompanied the giant steel stern of the boat racing at her at over 200mph. She battled to stay on center-line, then put her hook right in between the 2- and 3-wires, and slammed the bird down onto solid steel. Finally, as the aircraft was yanked from its high-speed flight by a steel cable – going from 180 knots to nothing in 300 feet, causing her body to rage against her five-point harness – she retracted the speed brake and put her throttles to full military power, staying there until she came to a complete, jarring, unmistakable stop.

She’d done it again. She was safely down. Another miracle.

She got out of the wires and taxied clear of the landing area in another minute, throwing a thumbs-up to the maintenance chief. His crew chocked and chained the bird, and Hailey raised her cowling, unstrapped her harness, unsnapped her mask, pulled off her helmet, and climbed out.

“Hiya, Chief,” she said, hitting the deck as her chin-length russet hair spilled around her face, and she worked a little to get her sea legs back.

“Hiya, Thunderchild,” he said. “Did we have a pleasant flight today?” The maintenance chief, whose name was Davis, was a Senior Chief with a lot of years in and the worry lines to prove it. His new number two – the best surviving aircraft mechanic after the legendary Stan bought it on Beaver Island – also gave a nod and a cheery wave, and started checking out the aircraft from the outside in. His name was Pete, a happy and funny kid. Hailey liked him.

“Feeling a little wing drop on the left when maneuvering, actually.”

“We’ll take a look,” Chief Davis said.

These two were the domain masters who kept Hailey in the air, post-Stan. She had no idea how they knew enough to do that job. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II stealth fighter had about 300,000 individual parts, many of them moving – and none with replacements being manufactured anymore.

But these guys did it, and they were amazing, and Hailey loved them for it.

She smiled her thanks and headed below. She had about ninety minutes to get a bite, attend to bodily functions, and basically bleed away the stress of the mission – so she could go up and do it all again when her slot came back around. It was a lot of stress, responsibility – and flying.

But today was turning into just about the best day of her career.

Wrecking Crew

Djibouti-Ambouli Airport - On the Tarmac

When they left the beach and the half-destroyed shore launch behind them, Alpha and the Marines – collectively known as Team Cadaver – still had a little dawn left. Now they used it to get across the open ground of the airport’s runways and taxiways. They had cut into the fence on the seaward side of the airport, just beyond the dunes that fronted the beach.

Handon was thinking that must have made for some damned dramatic sunbathing – with jumbo jets landing right over the beach umbrellas. Then he remembered the swarming sharks, and realized it was unlikely anyone would have been doing any sunbathing there.

And his people weren’t here for sightseeing either.

Cadaver One, namely Alpha, were on their own now, moving stealthily through the dark brown smudged light and broad open spaces of the airport grounds. Cadaver Two, the Marine element – plus Noise, detailed to them to even out the numbers – were separate but just within visual range. The two teams would be infiltrating Camp Lemonnier from different directions, and at different insertion points. This was one aspect of their “eleven eggs, two baskets” strategy, designed to reduce the odds of the whole force being taken down at once. This way, if one got in trouble, the other could come and help – or, more likely, run like hell, as it was absolutely critical that one group survive to finish the job.

Peering out through the dim and dusty air, Handon could see the other group moving smoothly and stealthily down the other side of the main runway. Both teams were covering basically the same ground to start with. This consisted of a lot of flat, sandy, scrubby, medium-brown dirt – much of which had blown onto the paved runway and adjacent taxiways. The landscape between the paved sections was dotted with scrub brush, but it wasn’t much as far as concealment goes, and it wasn’t any kind of cover at all. As they got closer to the main airport complex itself, small outbuildings and maintenance sheds started to spring up, followed by hangars of various sizes.

There were no aircraft visible on the ground.

Yeah, Handon thought. I wouldn’t have left any here either.

Looking behind and around him, he could see all his people had their primary weapons up and out – but their melee weapons close to hand. With a glance, he could make out Henno’s cricket bat, and Homer’s boarding axe, protruding from the tops of their rucks. Ali wasn’t wearing a short sword in its usual spot, side-draw configured in the small of her back, as Handon did. Instead, on this one, she decided it was better to go out loaded for bear: she’d brought her katana, a proper samurai long sword, secured between her back and her ruck, with its long cloth-wound pommel emerging diagonally from over her shoulder, in top-draw configuration.

Gaze shifting, Handon noted the slim profile of the tube attached to the side of Juice’s barrel – terminating at the back in a spiral hose that connected to the air canister cinched to the side of his pack. His pneumatic spike, dubbed the OJ. Now THAT’s force innovation, he thought. He could hardly wait to see it in action.

Beyond Juice was Predator, who had force-innovated himself. He decided he was on to something with his hard pipe-hitting rampage with that iron bar on the flight deck battle, in which he had turned a couple of hundred undead into choice butcher’s cuts – and, not incidentally, saved Handon from certain death or infection. Swinging that bar was basically a way to convert his outrageous upper-body strength into rapid destruction of the dead. So he had dug around the Kennedy’s sports and rec stores until he found himself a nice aluminum baseball bat. Not as big or deadly as the scavenged iron bar, but a lot lighter and easier to pack and hump around.

Now it was cinched to the outside of his pack, just a quick draw away.

But Pred also his had his full-size high-capacity (15+1) FN .45 autoloader, finished in flat-dark-earth, nestling in its chest rig. Pred was one guy who not only didn’t need a more compact pistol – but with his catcher’s-mitt-sized hands, he couldn’t even use one. And, Handon silently hoped, there wouldn’t be another near-infection episode where he had any temptation to turn the weapon on himself.

Handon felt safer just thinking about Pred and his rampages. If the shit really came down, Alpha’s man-mountain and one-man wrecking crew might actually be able to tear a giant hole through the heart of undead Africa… or at least one big enough for the team to escape out of.

But, so far, they had encountered zero Zulus on the tarmac, or in this area at all.

Typical, Handon thought, still moving forward smoothly and monitoring the terrain. We spend our whole deployment trying to stay clear of the dead. Now when we actually want one, there are none to be found.

This was unexpected, but also made a certain amount of sense. The fence around the airport was intact. No one would have been authorized to be out there other than fueling and loading crew, aircraft dispatchers, pushback guys – and they all would have cleared out before the end, probably as soon as the flights ceased. And now there wasn’t really anything to go in there for – nothing worth scavenging for the living, and no living as meals for the dead.

This place was basically secure.

As the main terminal started to loom ahead of them, and the team passed silently around the air traffic control tower, Handon saw another large structure behind and beyond it. An aircraft hangar. He decided to make a quick diversion to recon it. With hand signals alone, he motioned for Juice to come with him – and the others to find cover and go firm.

Henno gave him a look, roughly translatable as: Side trip a good idea, mate? But he complied with the order. And Handon appreciated that.

Because the time might soon be coming when he wouldn’t.

* * *

The hangar looked sealed up as they did a quick circuit of it, finally returning to the human-sized door around the side. Juice drew his breaching tool, but Handon made a Quiet signal, and Juice took out a lock-pick set instead. In ten seconds he had the door open and held it for Handon, who led them in.

It was properly dark inside, nearly pitch-black, and Handon switched on his weapon-mounted tactical light. In another half-minute they had circled the perimeter, cleared the small office in the corner, and emerged back into the dark airy space of the main hangar.

At its center, taking up almost all the available room, was a single big white aircraft, with twin prop engines slung underneath its wings, which were mounted high up on the fuselage. This gave it the feel of a bush plane, but an unusually large one. Handon panned his light from the large T tail, upon which was written “WFP” in light blue letters, all the way to the cockpit, just behind which was written “United Nations Humanitarian Air Service” in the same color.

He recognized the aircraft as a de Havilland Dash 8 – a medium-range turboprop commuter plane that held about thirty passengers. It had no visible damage, which was consistent with the hangar being sealed up. Then again, that was a far cry from being flyable. It had been sitting here for two years with its seals drying out, air filters molding, fluids congealing, and parts rusting. Hell, there were probably rodents living in the air filter box – and they’d probably chewed through all the wiring for good measure.

Nonetheless, he and Juice relocked the door on their way out. As they made their way back to the team, Henno, out at the front of the formation, spoke quietly on the squad net.

“In your own time.”

Handon clenched his jaw. They were operational now, no one was more mission focused than him, and he certainly wasn’t out here for his own goddamned amusement. As soon as they got back within visual range of the others – though you had to know where to look for them – he made that same hand signal again he’d made for Juice.

Fucking noise discipline.

Same signal – slightly different emphasis.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the team reached the inner wire, the edge of Camp Lemonnier itself, at the point they had picked for their infiltration. The Marines were out of sight now, having circled around to the western edge of the base for their own infil. Silently, Juice moved up to cut in to the fence. But he froze and instead motioned Handon forward.

When he got there, and looked where Juice was pointing, he saw it. Someone had already cut into the wire at this exact point. And then, using cable ties, that mysterious someone had sealed it up behind them again.

Alpha might or might not be here alone.

But they were definitely not here first.

Primus Inter Pares

Camp Lemonnier - Inside the South Wire

Henno took point as Alpha flowed into the camp.

No one told him to, and nobody said he could. He was leaning forward, so he gravitated to it – the pointy end of the spear. Anyway, this kind of fluidity was par for the spec-ops course, particularly in CQB, when they flowed through targets and structures like a self-organizing organism.

They operated under principles, not rules.

Still, Henno could see this made Handon nervous. As did anything that suggested erosion of his authority. But was Henno bothered? Not in the least. He was here to do a job. And authority among operators came from ability, and from trust. It wasn’t granted, it was seldom conferred, and it definitely couldn’t be demanded.

From Henno’s first step through the wire, which Juice had cut open in the same spot like an incision through a healed-up scar, he had felt Handon’s eyes on his back. As far as he knew, there had never been any scientific verification of this fact, but he knew people could feel eyes on them, even from directly behind, and generally turned around to look. This was why smart snipers refrained from looking at their targets until they were ready to take the shot.

It didn’t make sense. But you trusted what you’d experienced.

As he stepped smoothly heel-toe, rifle panning mechanically, Henno slowly became aware there was another set of eyes on him. Not Handon’s, and not those of anyone else on the team. No, this was new. And whoever it might be was properly eye-fucking them.

Henno scanned over his rifle sight through all angles and planes, trying to work out where from. He was leading the team around the perimeter of the camp, just inside the outside wire and behind buildings – stopping to peer out through the gaps as they passed each of them. Now Henno stopped at a corner, took a knee, and inhaled a steadying breath. The others, dispersed behind him at wide enough intervals that they didn’t make one fat target, paused and crouched down as well.

Henno exhaled. It could have been his imagination.

But he didn’t think so.

He looked down at the smooth dirt beneath his boots, then up at the building to his right. There were bullet holes in most of the camp structures around them, as well as scorch marks.

But there were no shell casings on the ground. Not one.

Something big and nasty had gone down here. But some time afterward, someone had gone around and policed up all the brass.

A few of the visible structures had been damaged beyond reasonable repair. But even the debris from those had been tidied away. There wasn’t so much as scraps of trash blowing on the ground. Henno squinted deeply. They had come to East Africa, ground zero for the fall of man.

And it was like the ZA had never hit here at all.

Well, aside from the place being totally depopulated.

Which led to the most striking feature of all… there were no dead. No active ones standing or moving around. And no destroyed ones on the ground.

So far Alpha hadn’t ventured into the center of the sprawling camp, instead keeping the wire on their left elbow. But looking out through the gaps, they’d now seen a fair bit of the installation. And, aside from being without a garrison, it looked like this place was ship-shape and squared away – to rigorous military standards.

Had someone come in and cleared the joint? Henno wondered. Maybe the same people who cut that hole in the wire. He didn’t know.

But he didn’t like it.

* * *

Handon wasn’t enormously pleased by all this, either. Their mission plan had them quickly bagging up a Zulu in American uniform, which would have locked in some gains. Then they would know they had a much earlier-stage victim than any Doc Park had seen before. But once again, the first time their mission was to find the dead was also the first time they weren’t swarmed by hundreds or thousands of them.

Now it seemed like they couldn’t buy a dead guy.

But Handon pushed that thought away and got back into his “three-foot world.” This was a notion he’d picked up from Homer – a mindset that reminded you to focus on what you could affect, the stuff directly in front of your face and within reach, and to let the rest go. It was not only liberating, it was also a short-cut to winning. Because it was usually executing the fundamentals well, and not losing focus on your objective, that were the keys to success.

Bitching or worrying about the unchangeable was a ticket to fail.

Handon had to continually remind himself of this – another price of excellence was teaching yourself the same damned lessons over and over again – but more so since he took command of Alpha. Since then, worry had tried to settle on him like a suffocating and scratchy blanket, virtually every morning he woke up. And that blanket would tangle him up if he let it.

He had to choose not to.

Up ahead, Henno got up and got moving again, and the team followed at a slow and deliberate pace, everyone methodically covering their sectors and checking their corners. The famous “Don’t run to your death” rule definitely still applied, after being cemented into the heads of the Tier-1 guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was still relevant in zombie warfare, plus today they arguably faced a higher risk of encountering opponents with brains and guns.

Certainly the dust-up with the Russian Spetsnaz teams, and the various bloody noses they took in that one, had reawakened them to this risk.

Handon stayed in the number-two position behind Henno. When they reached the first guard tower, still on the south fence but closer to the southeast corner, they finally turned to head in toward the interior. They’d dipped their toes in, and seen enough to tip the odds in their favor.

Instead of staying on point, Henno took a knee beneath the tower and strong-pointed while the others filed by. Handon didn’t know what his thinking was, but he decided to trust it and go with it – and he stayed back with him, taking a supporting position.

As Juice filed by, Handon traded a look with him – both of them remembering the dead that had littered the ground at Saldanha Naval Base, their brainstems cleaved by the sharpened shovels of those Spetsnaz guys. Handon had seen it on drone video, and Juice had seen it up close. And there was none of that here. No dead destroyed by any method.

But as Handon knelt there in the dirt, he took one hand from his rifle, reached down, and picked up a handful of dry soil, crumbling it in the palm of his shooting glove. It was faintly dark on the surface – and when he dug deeper, it got sticky and tar-like, fouled by the black blood of the dead. Some had been spilt in this spot.

But then someone had come through and raked over the dirt.

Someone had not only cleared this place. They had cleaned it.

Handon briefly wondered if it was possible that a group of tightly wired civilian survivors had re-secured and occupied the camp. If so, they all needed to watch their six. And they had all better have their weapons in condition one.

But Handon already knew everyone there had brass-checked their weapons at the water’s edge. This wasn’t a group of twenty-year-old enlisted infantry, and they didn’t need to be coached. They didn’t even really need to be led, or commanded – just let off the chain. And Handon’s role was really only primus inter pares – first among equals. Even if Henno disagreed.

As the last of the team slithered by, Handon decided this level of tidiness looked more like the work of soldiers than civilians – and a particular type of soldier. It showed a level of attention to surface matters that was somewhat rare in spec-ops. But which was very common in the conventional forces.

Handon nodded at Henno, then rose and moved out, trusting him to follow.

As he fell in behind the others, he noted that the mottled air was still lightening around them – but there was still no sound from any direction. No birds. No creatures of the forest. No wind. Nothing. It was like moving through a vacuum, or an alien planet, or some weird dreamscape.

But then, just as suddenly, something did make a noise. Whatever it was had been too faint for Handon to identify it – or even to swear he heard it at all. But instinct drove him to stop and spin in place, raising his rifle.

As he did so, Henno spoke a single word over the squad net: “Disperse.”

As he finished whirling, Handon could see that Henno had moved no more than twenty meters away from the guard tower – and had already turned back to face it, even before Handon did. He had his weapon elevated, aimed up top at the firing platform and the railing before it.

As Handon raised his weapon to cover the same spot, he could now see, mounted on the lip of the railing, just protruding over the edge, the six barrels of a minigun. It hadn’t been visible on their approach toward the tower from the west. A minigun was an unusual weapon to emplace in a guard tower – but not unheard of.

No, the red light was: it was facing inward. Toward the camp.

He could sense more than hear the rest of the team behind him scattering, spreading out silently toward the nearest hard cover, while automatically coordinating to cover every sector – all 360 degrees around the team’s now strung-out position.

And while both Handon and Henno held their aim on that spot, they also began to silently side-step away from each other, to be less of a clumped-up target. But they were still both caught out in the open. Actually, there was little point in going for cover now. Everything in sight was made of wood or cement blocks, and would be chewed through by a minigun in seconds if it started going off.

As they did this, Handon had to squint to make out motion up in the tower – and just above the weapon. What he saw was the top of a head. First, the tiniest sliver of salt-and-pepper buzz-cut hair… and then a deeply lined forehead… and finally a single eye, peering through the top-mounted Lead Computing Optical Sight System (LCOSS). This device was actually designed to compute firing solutions at long ranges and high speeds – usually from fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft.

But the range between this weapon and the men on the ground could be measured in feet. And now nobody was moving so much as an inch. So Handon didn’t figure this guy was going to need the sight, if he intended to use that thing.

And as he thought this, he saw a bright red dot appear – instantly, perfectly dead-center on the minigunner’s forehead. Henno had flipped on the visible laser on the PEQ15 mounted on his barrel rail. And it told him what he already knew – that his aim was perfect.

And it also told Handon something – that Henno was about to take the shot.

He had maybe a quarter-second to consider this. Once again acting on instinct – it was all happening too fast for methodical thought – Handon side-stepped back toward Henno… and gently but firmly depressed the man’s rifle barrel down toward the ground. He wasn’t trying to shove Henno around the battlefield – it was just the most economical way to tell him to hold his fire.

But instantly Henno’s eyes went wide, he angled his head – and gave Handon a look like he’d just groped his little sister, pissed in his pint, and then shat in his hat. It wasn’t a look anyone wanted to be on the receiving end of.

Henno slapped Handon’s hand away from his weapon and brought it back up.

Now Handon braced himself for this all to kick off – and gave himself maybe even odds that he was about to be ripped into meat ribbons by hundreds of 7.62 rounds spitting from six barrels less than twenty meters away from his face.

If he’d known Henno wasn’t going to be deterred, he would have let him take the shot right away.

Because now it might be too late.

Not Kids Anymore

CentCom - Main Aviation Hangar

Sergeant Mann of the Royal Military Police reached the back wall of the last room they needed to clear in the hangar complex – and with just enough time to finish it before the helos from Edinburgh were due to land.

The lighting in this section was natural daylight, from large and dirty warehouse-type windows way up on the steel walls. The MP’s normal duties rarely called them to the hangar, and never went back in the bowels of the place, so they’d been exploring as they went. Mann hit that back wall and turned back around to face McDonagh.

“Done and dusted,” he said. There was nowhere to go but back. Their sweep had turned up nothing – which was definitely his idea of success. He clapped his mate on the shoulder.

But then McDonagh flipped his light back on – and shone it down at their feet. They were both standing on a metal grate. And down beneath their boots was a whole other dark space. And as far as they could make out, it was mostly filled with hulking steel containers.

Mann frowned. “Nothing down there but the aviation fuel tanks.”

McDonagh panned his light around. “Yeah. But it looks like there’s some crawl spaces around ’em.”

“Seriously?” Mann said. “We can’t be fannying around in every cranny here.” He checked his watch. “Those Chinooks are due in ten minutes. We’re supposed to be out on the helipad for it.”

McDonagh shrugged. “They said check everything. Won’t take me a minute to have a look around down there. Just watch my six.”

Mann nodded and hefted his rifle as McDonagh found the section of grate that came up, flipped it up on his hinge, and shimmied down. In seconds, the beam of his light was moving out of sight through the cramped darkness.

Mann took a look at the room around him and the door at its far end. He wasn’t thrilled about McDonagh going down there alone. Then again, he figured he’d be fine. Both of them were NCOs of long standing, both solid and experienced, and both had been in the forces almost ten years.

They weren’t kids anymore.

Mann touched his radio button. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Yeah, mate, sorry. There’s nothing down here, and not much room for anything. Just gonna follow it to the end and loop back round. Hang about.”

“Roger that.” Mann peered into the darkness – but there was nothing to be seen.

No, they weren’t kids anymore. But most of the RMP soldiers who had gone down earlier that day were – they were much younger, and had panicked when the shit started flying. In all the chaos, they’d been unable to keep their cool and make their shots when it counted. And they had been swarmed and taken down – especially by the runners, who were on them in seconds.

Most of them never had a chance.

Whereas Mann and McDonagh had stayed in tight formation, watched each others’ backs, and kept their heads – carefully aiming and methodically making their shots. So they had ended up with a lot of destroyed Zulus and Romeos piled up around them – unlike so many of the young squaddies, who’d ended up with dead piling up on their heads, and ripping them to pieces.

And turning them to the other team.

* * *

“Major!”

Jameson turned to look back across the JOC. Right now he was trying to get his head around a planned artillery barrage on the advancing line of dead in the south. The idea was to have the infantry on the front lines retreat and pull the dead into a pre-planned kill box. Done right, it should not only destroy a lot of dead in one go, it might even create a significant chunk of no-man’s-land between the living and the dead, so the troopers on the front lines could break contact cleanly.

But, obviously, getting it all coordinated was of some importance – when you had gunners dropping 105mm rounds all over the place, you needed the men on the ground somewhere else.

But Jameson’s half-cocked radio operator was calling for him.

“Got the Kennedy back on the blower for you!”

He figured he’d better take that one.

Making a vague gesture at the two clerks who’d been shanghaied into running the indirect fires control station, he got up and threaded through the general chaos – more and more random officers and men were getting recruited and pulled in for duties in here, and each knew less about what he was supposed to be doing than the last – until he finally reached the radio station near the blown-out windows.

“CentCom Actual, go ahead Kennedy.”

“Jameson, it’s Abrams again. Listen, I’ve got our domain expert up here with me, and I’m going to conference him in so we can all get on the same page.”

Jameson took a deep breath, and tried to muster patience and calmness of spirit. “Sure, Kennedy. Go ahead.”

* * *

“Funnily enough, I don’t see you back up here, mate.”

Mann heard McDonagh’s tone of voice change over the radio. “Yeah, well I can hardly breathe from the stench of aviation fuel down here. Whoever tops these tanks either has the shakes, or very bad vision. Speaking of which, I can hardly see my own hand in front of my face down here…”

Mann touched his radio button. “Still got any of those magnesium road flares? Those should help you see much better.”

“Very fucking funny. Hang on… there’s some sort of gunk spread around down here at the far end. Seems kind of bodily in nature… no idea how it would have got down here.”

“Yeah, what say you don’t mess with that?”

“Roger. But there’s also another above-ground crawl space up there, with access from where I am. Just going to stick my head up there to be thorough.”

Mann didn’t like that one bit. He wanted them both out of there, and he particularly wanted them back in each other’s sight. But before he could formulate his objection, he heard what sounded like a series of loud grunts, and then some kind of hissing noise – none of it over the radio, just echoing up from the underground space.

Mann keyed his mic. “McDonagh, what the hell’s happening?” He gave him one second to respond. “McDonagh, status.” Nothing came back – only silence. With no further hesitation, Mann hefted his rifle, squatted down – and jumped down to the bottom of the underground room.

When he got his light on and pointed it forward, he found it was both damned close and damned spooky down there. So he started moving forward at a measured pace—

When something else came across the radio.

It sounded like gurgling.

Fuck caution. Mann put his head down – and ran.

Sequences

JFK - Bridge

Doctor Park touched the corner of his plastic-framed eyeglasses, an habitual gesture of nervousness, as he was hustled onto the bridge. He’d actually just been hustled all the way up here from his lab at the back of the hospital on 03 deck, and across most of the aircraft carrier.

Which was a lot of hustling.

Now as he spilled out into the big bridge, which was naturally lit by wide windows on all sides, his head turned automatically to the view out the front. They were 150 feet above the ocean surface and the view out over the sparkling Gulf of Aden stopped him in his tracks. In the distance he could see twin arms of land enveloping the gargantuan ship and their patch of ocean from both sides – the Horn of Africa on the left, the Arabian Peninsula on the right.

It was a stunning, and actually somewhat bracing, sight. It made a hell of a change from his windowless bunker forty feet below the gray cityscape of Chicago. But, mainly, it underscored the reality of things. They were really here. This was happening. And out there on the land somewhere, the same men who had fought their way into Chicago to save him were now fighting their way into an even more dangerous place.

And they were doing it solely because he, Simon Park, said they had to.

The sailor who had chaperoned Park now handed him off to a light-skinned African American in a senior officer’s uniform. With close-cropped hair, dark with a hint of red, and strong, square lines to both his face and body, he was holding a phone handset to his head, looking serious and attentive, but not anxious or worried.

Which Park figured was probably pretty good for a guy in his job.

Judging from his seat at the center of the bridge, Park also guessed this was Commander Abrams – the former commanding officer of the destroyer, who had assumed command of the Kennedy after Drake got injured and stepped down. Park had heard all the scuttlebutt. And he had seen Drake around the ship a few times since he’d been aboard. But this was his first visit to the bridge, and his first time meeting Abrams. He was slightly intimidated by both the duty station and the man running it.

He was now inside the head of the giant robot.

And the Kennedy was the biggest robot humanity had ever built.

Abrams motioned him over, and when Park stepped up, he hit a button on his station then put the phone down. To Park he said, “This is CentCom on the horn – Britain’s central military command, responsible for running the defense of the whole country.” He leaned toward the speaker. “Major Jameson, I’ve got Dr. Park here. Doctor, the major here would like to know how soon your vaccine will be ready.”

Park took a breath and considered.

He knew the last two things either of these two wanted to hear right now were “It’s complicated” and “It depends.” The fact was that it really was complicated, and it really did depend. But with the fate of the world on the line, and him being stared down by two of the men who had much of the responsibility for saving it, he figured he’d better come up with a straight answer – and ideally a very specific one.

“As soon as we get our early-stage virus sample… the next, critical, and potentially last step is sequencing its whole genome.”

There was a distinct pause on the other end. And as Park looked down toward the speaker, a confident voice with an English accent came out of it. “Right. And how long will that take?”

“With whole-genome amplification and direct sequencing techniques, elution of small amounts of RNA and optimized primers—”

Park wasn’t cut off by Jameson or Abrams. He cut himself off. He belatedly realized that none of this would be of the least interest to these men. None of it would even make sense. “Two to four days,” he said. “Once I get it in a DNA sequencer, two to four days.”

There was an audible exhalation of breath from the other end. “Is it two – or is it four? Because two days might be the difference between Britain standing or falling.”

Park stammered. “I… I didn’t know it was that ba—”

Now the Brit cut him off. “It’s that bad. So I trust you won’t waste any time.”

Park blinked slowly, formulating his answer. “No. Of course not. Just, as soon as we get there, can you please make sure and have a suitable device ready?”

“A suitable device.”

“Yes. An Ion Torrent NGS would be great if you have one. The Applied Biosystems 3700 series would be fine, or even GE Megabase—”

Park found himself cut off again. “You’re saying you don’t have one. A DNA sequencer.”

Park’s face started changing colors. “No. We did have one, briefly – you guys sent it, along with your scientific team.”

Abrams cleared his throat and chimed in. “But then it all kind of went to the bottom of the ocean. Along with that first aircraft.”

Now there was an actual chuckle from the other end. “Oh, this just gets better by the minute…”

Park mastered his discomfort and spoke up again. “You must have one there. Professor Close said you’ve got complete drug discovery and fabrication facilities. There must also be DNA sequencing equipment.”

“I don’t know. Probably is. I gather they’ve got every damned thing under the sun over at that biolabs complex. But the one thing we don’t have is time. We’re SERIOUSLY RUNNING OUT OF TIME, mate.”

Park nodded and swallowed. “Okay. I could do the sequencing work here, or while we’re traveling back there to you. Can you airlift us another sequencer? That could shave days off the total time to a working vaccine.”

This next pause was the longest yet. “Yes, we surely could have done. But here’s the thing.”

Abrams and Park just looked at each other, the former leaning back as if getting out of the way.

Now it sounded as if Major Jameson were speaking through gritted teeth. “The thing is this: It was not two hours ago that we launched just about our last aircraft rated to land on your bloody flight deck. And it was accompanied by our ONE AND ONLY working tanker/refueler, without which the plane can’t fly that far, never mind fly back – and which is even now winging its way to you. So my question to you is: why the bloody sodding hell did you not bring this up two hours ago?”

Abrams and Park eyed each other.

Neither dared speak, each hoping the other would first.

Cataclysm I

CentCom - Main Aviation Hangar

After five seconds of sprinting through the shadows of the underground space with the aviation fuel tanks, Sergeant Mann reached the far end. There was light coming down from above, and he could see the open section of grate that McDonagh must have climbed up through. He ascended using the rungs welded into the wall and stuck his head out. Eyes at floor level, he checked down one way – nothing – then the other.

And there was McDonagh – down on the deck.

Breath ragged and pulse pounding, Mann hauled himself up into the narrow corridor, brought his SA-80 to his shoulder and fast-walked to where McDonagh lay. Looking behind him again, then forward, he lowered his rifle and knelt down to check his teammate’s pulse and breathing.

But he could already see: McDonagh had neither.

Mann stood up and checked both sides of the hallway again. Still nothing.

He knelt down again and made himself look at what was left of his friend. His throat had been ripped out – and his lifeblood still spilled over his neck and cascaded through the grate below.

Oh my God. That was what the gurgling sound had been. McDonagh had been trying to radio for help, with his throat torn out.

“Oh, no, mate,” Mann said, still kneeling down by his friend, his head and shoulders sagging. “Not like this. Not after all this.” Tears fell from the corners of his eyes, and he cursed himself. He hadn’t been there when his friend needed him. It was all too damned much to bear—

Something sounded in the corridor behind him.

He rocketed to his feet and spun round while bringing his rifle up.

There was nothing there.

He spun in place – nothing in the opposite direction either.

* * *

“Yeah,” the JFK commander finally said. “We kind of fucked up there.”

“Yes, I guess you did.” Jameson stared around the JOC. There were still a thousand things that urgently required his attention, and this call wasn’t really getting him anywhere.

“In Dr. Park’s defense,” Abrams said, “he didn’t know the clock was running down so quickly – he thought there would be time to complete his vaccine once we got it and him back to Britain. And he obviously feels like shit about it. But listen, surely you can find another suitable aircraft to fly us a DNA sequencer on – from somewhere in all of Britain?”

Jameson all but bit his tongue. “I’m afraid Britain’s getting smaller by the minute. And the bits left in our control are in chaos.”

“Can’t you just go to Heathrow?”

Jameson ground his teeth. “No, I cannot just pop down to Heathrow. I’m not in a fucking position to drive out to sodding Heathrow, commandeer a plane, and hijack it to the Gulf of Aden.”

Jameson looked balefully around him, where a dozen people now urgently needed his input – not least on the artillery barrage scheduled to take place within the hour. He needed to be ten places at once. And it was becoming impossible to keep this train on the tracks.

Even for the short time remaining he had to do so.

* * *

Mann froze, feeling the sweat chill on his face.

He started to spin around again, one last time – but too slowly. Something was already leaping on his back, knocking the breath from his body and smashing him down into the unyielding steel grate below.

He instantly felt the terrible pain of teeth ripping into the flesh on the back of his neck, and saw his scarlet beret go flying – and wished, too late, that he’d worn his combat helmet. Writhing and flailing, he couldn’t get the manic thing off his back. And he couldn’t get out from under it – it was pressing him down, and hanging on tenaciously as hell. He managed to get his knife out and stabbed frantically over his shoulder. He hit something, but it wasn’t stopping it.

Mann knew two things now: one, from the speed this thing had hit him, and from the maniacal way it was tearing into him, it had to be one of the crazy new fast ones. Two, he was bitten, and thus already dead. He could even then feel himself weakening from blood loss and shock. Soon he’d pass out – and this thing would devour him. And then it would run off to kill and infect more – maybe right in the middle of the arriving command element landing on the helipad.

And he could not allow that to happen.

Mann dropped his knife, mustered his strength, and managed to twist and roll over on his back. The crazed dead bastard let him go for half a second but then was back on him, all teeth and claws and inexplicable undead strength, and it was just tearing him to pieces. Mann didn’t even have space to breathe.

Worst of all, as he turned to face it, he could see now it was one of his own – a young RMP private who used to be named Harry. But Mann could only tell from the remains of the uniform and the nametape. The face was now basically unrecognizable – a pale and sore-covered mask of horror and hostility.

Keeping one hand up to guard his own face, Mann managed to get his pistol clear with the other and started triggering off. But with Foxtrot Harry’s hands clawing at his throat, he couldn’t raise it high enough – firing into its midsection, the only effect of which was to empty its guts over him, viscera and intestines and probably flesh from its most recent meals. And the creature was still going crazy, lacerating his arms and face and torso.

The slide of the pistol locked back, empty, and there was no way he was going to get it reloaded – and the Foxtrot’s windmilling arms knocked it from his grasp anyway. Mann brought both hands up to try to protect his face and neck. But that was going to buy him a couple of seconds at best.

And he thought once again:

I can’t let this thing out of here.

* * *

“Look,” Jameson said finally, to the Americans. “I’ll talk to our handful of remaining pilots and see if anything can be done about organizing another flight. But don’t hold your breath – we’ve got our own enormous set of problems here. I expect when my relief gets here they can sort something for you.”

And with that, as if on cue, a faint but rising sound caused Jameson to turn to face out where the windows used to be. And it was exactly what he’d thought it was – what he’d been hoping and praying for all day.

Outside, just above and beyond the hulking shape of the main aviation hangar, he could now see two big fat Chinook helicopters, both fully loaded judging by how heavily they lumbered through the air, flying in formation as they slowed and descended, majestically flaring in to land.

It was Jameson and One Troop’s relief.

Oh, thank fuck for that.

* * *

With a last pulse of strength, Mann reached down and pulled a grenade clear of his webbing. With shaking, blood-slick fingers, battling to control his body in this nightmare that had become his whole reality, he managed to get the pin out, then let the spoon pop, and finally clutched it to his chest. He knew that in this enclosed area, the channelled and intensified blast was guaranteed to finish both of them.

It was a perfect last act – noble and suitable.

And it would keep this thing from getting out and turning anyone else.

But then the creature’s head lunged forward and actually tried to bite his face off. Involuntarily, out of pure autonomous reaction, Mann’s hands went back to his face to try to protect it. And the Foxtrot’s flailing arm knocked into his own, batting the grenade hard, like he was playing world championship handball.

The grenade broke free from his grip and skittered away at high speed, banging and scraping along the steel grate behind them.

And Mann realized too late that he should have radioed in first. He should have reported this threat, but he was so frantic to get to and help his friend. Now he pressed his radio button and tried to speak, but nothing came out. Nothing but a gurgle. And now he knew what his best mate’s last seconds had been like. Trying to use the radio with his throat torn out.

The skittering sound behind him finally stopped – as the grenade fell away through the open section of grate and into open space.

And then it clanged twice on the steel floor of the underground area – right in the middle of all the fuel tanks.

* * *

Well, Jameson thought, regarding the ungainly Chinooks, they’re as majestic as two flying school buses can be. But the incoming flight was still one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen.

He pulled off his radio headset without signing off and turned away from that beautiful view to face in toward the JOC. He was about to raise his voice and issue what would be his very last orders as temporary commander of CentCom, and of all British forces in the south. He had just opened his mouth to do so— when the entire building shook around him like the start of an earthquake, and a second later he felt hot air and particulate debris blasting in thorough the already blown-out windows at his back.

He spun around and ran to the window.

Out at the hangar and helipad, a giant fireball was rising up into the sky.

And as Jameson watched stunned and open-mouthed, the gigantic gout of flame rolled right up into the two descending Chinooks and consumed them.

Oh my fucking God, he thought, his mouth hanging open.

And as Major Jameson looked on, utterly helpless, he saw first one Chinook and then the other tip over in the air from the force of the rising explosion, then roll on its side, break in half at the waist, erupt in flame – and then, turning the stomach of every person watching the horrifying and hypnotic sight…

Simply fall out of the burning sky in slow motion.

He Is Legend

Camp Lemonnier - Beneath the South Guard Tower

Handon gritted his teeth. He reached out and put his hand on Henno’s rifle barrel again – knowing full well he might not get the hand back this time. Looking at the side of Henno’s face, jaw stubbled with blond whiskers and a few gray ones, and set like the cliffs of Dover, Handon said:

“Staff Sergeant. Stand down.”

This was all happening with a goddamned 7.62 minigun pointed down on them from a handful of feet away in that guard tower. And with the rest of the team dispersed behind them and under cover – but the two of them standing in the open, in the long shadows cast by the early morning sun behind the buildings.

Hesitating not at all, Henno firmed up his grip on his rifle, both on the pistol-grip and out on the stock, pivoted at the hips – and gave Handon a powerful shove.

“The FUCK off me, Handon,” he hissed.

That shove would have been enough to knock most men on their asses. But Handon was ready for it, and had his back foot planted. He glared back and said, “This is not the time or place, Henno.”

“You’re fucking telling me.”

And with that, Henno raised his weapon – up toward Handon’s center of mass.

Both of them could practically feel the disbelief of the rest of the team, rapidly washing over them from behind:

Holy fucking shit. This is NOT happening…

Handon tightened his grip on his own weapon, but kept it pointed down. There were several reasons he didn’t raise it – foremost of which was he’d never make it. Henno had, like the rest of them, reflexes trained to a glinting edge – mentally able to slow his perception of events to a crawl, and trained to react and dial the violence up in a fraction of a heartbeat.

When the tension was like a cloud of gasoline vapor between them, ready to ignite at the tiniest spark… they heard an unfamiliar but gruff voice say, “Hey! Knock it the fuck off! Who are you assholes?”

Handon stole a glance up at the tower and saw that head with the graying crewcut now protruding even more up over the minigun… but even as he looked, a forearm appeared from behind the head… and slowly and silently, like a ghost solidifying into human form, slipped into a noose around the minigunner’s neck… and then the head and forearm both jerked out of view again.

At this, both Handon and Henno relaxed and lowered their weapons, as a whole new voice – also gruff, but a lot more familiar – spoke out onto the scene. “You kids shouldn’t play so rough. Somebody’s gonna start crying.”

It was Fick – who was walking right up from around the side of the guard tower, with Reyes, Graybeard, and Noise in tow. Handon de-tensed his posture, turned to face the newcomers, and nodded.

Seeing three Marines on the ground, Handon raised his eyes up to the tower to wait for the fourth, who was appearing even then. It was Brady, now standing at the railing with the crewcut minigunner – who had just spent an uncomfortable few seconds down on the deck, getting flex-cuffed by a big Marine who also had his legs clenched around his waist. This was after Brady took him down from behind with the economy of a lion taking down a wildebeest.

As Brady frog-marched his prisoner down the stairs, Handon nodded his thanks. Then he looked back down and locked eyes with Henno… and extended his fist. Henno hesitated one second, looked as if he were battling a smile – then returned the fist-bump. The seemingly mortal conflict between the two of them had started out genuine enough. But then when they both saw Brady climbing up the back side of the tower like a big mean monkey, they’d traded a look of recognition and started hamming it up.

As a distraction.

Henno went ahead and bumped fists, but shook his head immediately after.

Bloody Americans, he thought. Expect to hear electric guitars and Team America theme music every time they do something right…

Handon couldn’t help smiling, though. He wasn’t sure what the final result was going to be of this episode between him and his most problematical team member. But it felt good in the moment.

Then again, he knew full well Henno wasn’t going to let positive interactions with Handon get in the way of the mission – any more than negative ones.

Maybe that was the way it ought to be.

* * *

As the two teams re-formed, not relaxing their vigilant posture despite having suppressed one threat, Handon watched Brady prod the prisoner out into the open, and he considered the last few seconds.

It was the minigunner’s haircut. That was what decided him.

Not in isolation. But in context, with everything around them. Simply, the man’s haircut matched what they were seeing on the ground. It fit with the tidy order of the base. Handon had seen it before.

Hell, to an extent, Handon had been that before.

So he knew that the man who had gotten the drop on them was a soldier, an American one. He could see this verified as the dude hit the ground and walked stiffly forward, chest held out. Middle-aged, of medium height but powerfully built, he was wearing tan Army ACUs with a digital chocolate-chip camo print – and they were pressed and clean, as were his standard-issue desert boots.

The look on the man’s lined face betrayed intelligence, caginess, pride, and intransigence. He might have gotten captured – but he wasn’t beaten.

Finally, what was most interesting was the small rank insignia patch Velcro’d to the center of his chest. It showed three chevrons above three rockers – and in the center were two wings flanking a star. It said this man was a Command Sergeant Major – the senior non-commissioned officer for this entire command.

Handon had a bunch of those patches, or used to. Somewhere.

“Sergeant Major,” Handon said, nodding. “Why don’t we talk in your office.”

The man, whose nametape read Zorn, nodded once.

And he set off without looking back.

Handon fell in behind him, ahead of the men – and beside Fick. As he glanced over and traded a knowing look with the senior Marine, he idly considered that Fick was really more the Mr. White of this scenario than Mr. Blonde: older, seasoned, professional, and principled – to the point of being willing to die for those principles. But somehow Handon sensed it wasn’t the prospect of Fick’s own death that troubled him. Though the two leaders had never discussed it, they were both battling similar demons.

But that wasn’t the fight they were in right now.

And any discussion of their internal conflicts was going to have to wait until the successful completion of their mission.

Until then, everything else was a sideshow – at best.

Including this guy, Handon thought. But it was also possible Command Sergeant Major Zorn could prove uniquely valuable to their mission. Handon had been around long enough, and deployed to enough crazy-ass places, to know this: local knowledge was king – and you always listened to the guy on the ground.

Which is why he’d nearly been willing to fight Henno.

To keep this man alive.

* * *

“How’d you get that scar?” Handon asked.

CSM Zorn shrugged, and touched two fingers to the jagged raking tissue that went from his right temple, underneath his eyes, almost to the corner of his mouth.

“One of the crazy-ass fast ones,” he said, his voice deep and slightly raspy. “It leapt in, scratched me, then leapt away before I could put it down.”

“But you weren’t infected,” Fick said. It was a statement.

Zorn shrugged again. “Just my lucky day, I guess.”

Handon took a look around Zorn’s office, which was a very spartan working space, and located in one of the intact buildings about a hundred meters from the guard tower where they’d found him – or, rather, where he’d found them. Like its owner, the office was tidy and squared away.

“How about taking these off?” Zorn asked. He held up his hands, which were still flex-cuffed in front of him at the wrists.

Handon hesitated. He could feel the fourth man in the room, Henno, who stood off to the side holding up a wall, radiating disapproval. By rights, it should have been just the two unit commanders in there – Handon and Fick. But Henno had followed them inside and seemed determined to sit in. Handon didn’t feel like risking another confrontation by trying to order him out. Anyway, it wasn’t the end of the world to have another pair of eyes and ears on this.

Handon looked at the cuffs. “No more muzzle-sweeping my people – not with a minigun, not with anything else. Got it?” Zorn nodded, and Handon drew his Vorax combat knife from its upside-down chest rig, stuck the point between Zorn’s hands, and cut the cuffs with a wrist flick. The knife was past razor-sharp.

“Okay,” Handon said, leaning back slightly. “Put us in the picture.”

What he meant was: How did you survive here, all alone?

But he also meant: Everything. Tell us everything.

* * *

Outside, the eight other operators set security, moving off in pairs in each of the four cardinal directions.

Ali needed to be in overwatch, ideally in the highest spot nearby – which meant that original guard tower they’d passed beneath. Homer started to accompany her – but she shut him down with body language alone, and picked out Predator instead. No matter where these two ended up, they might actually represent the safest spot in Africa, or anywhere. Under Ali’s long gun, you’d never get close to them. And if you did, and found Predator waiting for you, you’d wish you hadn’t.

Nonetheless, Graybeard and Reyes insisted on going along and dropping them off, before swinging out to their own position.

As the four commandos walked two by two, Graybeard said in his quiet, husky rasp, “Anyone else think that was a little fucked up back there?”

“You’re not wrong,” Pred said. Now that the sun was climbing over the building tops, he took out and seated his ballistic Oakley wraps. “That dude could have smoke-checked the whole team. He had the drop on us from an elevated firing position – not to mention a goddamned minigun.”

Reyes kind of wanted to say that Brady had it under control. But he also knew it could easily have gone another way. Yeah, the guy behind the minigun turned out to be an American soldier. But, especially in the irregular garb the operators wore, they could have been anybody as far as he was concerned. Not least since anyone could scavenge military uniform and gear these days.

Then again, spec-ops guys had always had this problem. Local garb – keffiyahs, Afghan wool shawls and Pakol hats, thick beards – made them look approachable to the locals, and damn sure made them look cool. But they also made them look like Shi’ite militiamen or Taliban fighters – which was potentially a big problem every time they came back inside the wire, or through lines manned by regulars.

It didn’t help when the regulars were lone nutjobs.

Ali looked back over her shoulder and said, “Another goddamned LaMOE.” She meant Last Man on Earth. CSM Zorn wasn’t the first they’d encountered.

“Good ole Robert Neville,” Reyes said, using the Marines’ term for it.

Pred grunted. “He is legend, motherfuckers.”

Graybeard wasn’t so sure. “He might not be the Last Man on Earth,” he drawled, squinting into the slanting light. “He might just be the last soldier on duty.”

Pred nodded and grunted again. Maybe he was.

Ali said, “It would certainly be nice to find one person who survived the ZA on his own – and didn’t go batshit crazy. Nobody’s got any mental stability in this zombie apocalypse.”

Reyes smiled and said, “You are one genre-savvy chick.”

She looked back and arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“It means if this were a movie or TV show, you’d be the character who knows what kind of movie or show you’re in – and what the conventions are. You’d be the one in the horror movie saying, ‘Guys – whatever you do, don’t split up and go outside the cabin to investigate!’” Reyes nodded, happy with his explanation. “In this case, you know that lone survivors are always nuts. So you’re ready for it.”

Ali blinked a couple of times in silence.

“Whatever,” she said.

They reached the tower and she slung her rifle and climbed smartly up it.

They Died Running

Camp Lemonnier - Zorn’s Office

“For pretty much the first eighteen months, I was locked in the DFAC.” Zorn meant the dining facility, the main mess hall for the base.

“Had all the entrances barricaded. The walk-in fridges and freezer were slowly filling up with empty food containers – which I’d refilled with my shit. Piss went down the sinks. I stayed there until the food finally ran out.”

Handon eyed him levelly. “Where’d you get water?”

Zorn nodded. “We’ve got multiple above-ground storage tanks. Ultimately, I rigged them to top up with rainwater. Until then, well, a U.S. military base in Africa keeps several metric shit-tons of bottled water on hand at all times.”

Handon nodded. It sounded believable – the water and long-life food stores of an installation this size would keep one man alive for a very long time. But there was still the question of why he was the one man alive – and where everyone else had gone. Handon might not be genre-savvy. But he knew Zorn’s presence here demanded an explanation. And he didn’t have time to dance around the issues.

“Where’s the rest of the base garrison?” he asked.

“Dead,” Zorn said. “Turned.”

“Yeah, we presumed that,” Fick said, sitting erect in a wooden chair with his forearms on his thighs. “But where are they now?”

Zorn picked up on the pointedness of this question and squinted at Fick in reaction. “Wandered off,” he said.

“What?” said Handon. “All four thousand personnel?”

Zorn shrugged. “It’s been a long two years. And most of the gates were open for most of that time.”

“And none wandered in?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Handon let this lie for the moment. “What about the local population? Djibouti Town. They must have gone down about the same time as the base garrison.”

Zorn cocked his head slightly. Handon had the uncomfortable sense that the man was trying to work out Handon’s game. That the two were playing some kind of poker. And Zorn was keeping his cards close to his chest.

“They did,” Zorn said after a pause. “But they’re not in Djibouti Town anymore.”

* * *

“You and I,” Noise said to Brady. “Together, we are ready for anything!”

He meant that one of them, namely him, had a fully automatic combat shotgun, a full-size scimitar hanging from his belt, and was kitted out in full assault gear. And the other had a knife, and was basically naked – having lost virtually all of his weapons and gear to the bottom of the Gulf of Aden. Brady didn’t say anything. He couldn’t help but feel the man in the combat turban was trying to put a happy face on things.

And he could at least be grateful Noise had left his smoothie maker at home.

The two of them had just positioned themselves at an intersection of roads and buildings to the west of the office where the commanders were interrogating the prisoner. They had good visibility and fields of fire, though they also shifted around periodically to get a different view, and to keep from being too static. This part of the camp was just like the other parts they’d seen – clean, empty, and damaged by long-ago action.

Like a ruin of an ancient city that was now some kind of tourist attraction.

Brady noticed that Noise kept glancing off toward the northwest for some reason. He followed his eye, but couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything, either. So it must have been some other sense the Sikh was tuning in to.

And just as Brady had mentally accepted his barefoot and minimalist fighting posture and decided to go with it, Henno came around the corner and tossed something at his chest. The Marine reached out and snatched it out of mid-air – it was a set of keys on a lanyard.

“What’s this?”

“Keys to the local armory,” Henno said. “You can get kitted out again there.”

“Nice,” Brady said, straightening up.

Henno nodded at Noise. “And the LaMoE saw that shoulder artillery of yours. Said they might have some drum mags for that thing as well.”

Noise smiled winningly. “Outstanding.” He used to have several of the hubcap-sized 32-round shotgun magazines for his Auto Assault 12, but had been unable to rescue them before they went to the bottom of the Atlantic. “Shells, too?”

“No doubt,” Henno said. “I’ll spot you here.” Henno gave them quick directions, then took up their position and scanned the base through squinted eyes.

He tried to picture what that full-auto shotgun would do when unleashed. He’d seen the collateral damage caused by American weapons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. They’d go blasting in, call down air strikes or artillery, level everything, kill civilians. Then they’d wonder why there was an insurgency they couldn’t put down.

Henno considered it ironic that it was the other Brit who had the indiscriminate weapon on this one. Maybe it was a reminder to him to be a little more fair-minded – and not so quick to make it him against the world. Or even him against the Americans.

And the time may yet come when he’d be glad they had shoulder artillery.

* * *

“Thanks for that,” Handon said to Zorn, after Henno left.

“No problem. I’m pretty good on small arms and ammo. But what I really need to defend this place is heavy weapons.”

Handon said, “What happened to the base’s heavy weapons?”

Zorn paused fractionally. “Used in the fall. In the final defense of the camp.”

Fick squinted. “Need it to defend this place from who?”

Zorn shrugged. “Herds. Scavengers. Marauders.”

Handon said, “So there are other survivors in this area?”

“Not ’til you showed up.”

This seemed evasive to Handon. Zorn wasn’t answering the question. “No one else alive on the ground around here?”

Zorn considered. “Some Somali militia guys came once, early on. Managed to bring the dead down on their heads.”

“They take anything?” Fick asked. He was thinking about force protection, wondering how heavily armed the locals around here might be – not least since they might be fighting them in the next hours or days.

“They got two Hellfire missiles.”

Fick squinted. “What the hell would militia do with Hellfires?”

Zorn looked like he didn’t care. “I don’t know. Make kiddie playground rides?”

Handon ground his jaw in frustration. “You said they brought the dead down on them. Again – where are all the dead now?”

Zorn looked up. “You sound like you’re in a really big hurry to get into trouble. What’s your mission here?”

Handon and Fick exchanged a look: No. The long-ingrained habits of OPSEC told them not to read this guy in.

“We’re just reconning the area,” Handon said, knowing a lie was less likely to lead to an impasse than an outright refusal to tell him.

“There are plenty of dead outside the wire,” Zorn said. “In town.”

Handon nodded, looking satisfied – and started to rise.

“Assuming you like Egyptians.”

Handon froze, his expression hardening again. “What does that mean?”

“None of the dead in town are original inhabitants. Almost all North Africans out there now. Bunch of Egyptians and Libyans. Some Algerians, I think. Rampaged two thousand miles or more across the second largest continent just to grace me with their goddamned presence here.”

Fick shook his head. “And the hits just keep on coming.”

He meant: so much for finding an early-stage victim.

“How?” Handon said, completely unamused.

“Herds, like I said. Swirling things up.” When he looked up, neither Handon nor Fick looked convinced. “Mainly one big-ass herd – really big. About six months ago. Thought it would never stop going by. By the time it did, it had basically displaced the entire original set of dead assholes in the region. Now, if there are any of the original ones left, there aren’t many. And it’s hard to tell which are which.”

Handon cursed under his breath.

Fick perked up. “We could tell if they were in uniform.”

Zorn paused. “You won’t find any of the garrison soldiers in town.”

“Why not?” Fick said.

“You just won’t.” Zorn looked around the room. “Look, I haven’t seen any in a long time. But go check it out if you want.” He squinted slightly.

Handon thought either his poker face was wearing thin – or he was using it to better advantage. He glanced around the room and for the first time noticed the radio set on a table in the corner. It was an AN/PSC-5D military radio – with military encryption.

Handon said, “So this whole camp’s secure, then? Undead-free.”

“Not all of it,” Zorn said.

“How’d you clear as much as you did?” Fick asked.

Zorn shrugged. “I just did it.”

“You said you were holed up in the DFAC for the first eighteen months. What happened six months ago that made you want to join the world again and retake the camp? Clear this place and polish it up to a high sheen?”

“It seemed like the time.”

Handon bookmarked all that for later. “And nobody else survived? No one from the JSOC compound? None of the SF ODAs working out of here?” Handon found it hard to believe that none of those operators survived, while this guy did.

Zorn read his look perfectly. Like they were bad-ass spec-ops guys, and he was just a shitbird conventional forces grunt so, hey, the only way he could possibly have survived when they didn’t was hiding out in a closet or something – while the SOCOM guys all fought to the last man.

Zorn’s face twisted up around his scar. “Those assholes ran for it.” He paused to relish the effect this was having. “I assume they died running. And you should, too.”

Handon didn’t know whether that meant he should assume the others died running. Or whether he and his team would die running themselves.

Maybe both.

Abandoned

Camp Lemonnier - DFAC
[Six Months Ago]

CSM Zorn bolted out of his makeshift bed at the first cracking reports of gunfire.

The last time he’d heard that sound, it had been when a bunch of al-Shabaab assholes had walked right into his camp, started poking around the aircraft ordnance sheds – and then woke up a shitload of dead.

And the sound now was exactly the same: full-auto AK fire.

He paused and considered for a second. Then he grabbed his meticulously cleaned and oiled M4, pulled on a tactical vest with a few mags, buckled up his belt with its M1911 .45 pistol, and quick-laced his boots.

Then he circled the building to the side closest to the gunfire and took a look out the window. He couldn’t see anything but a little reflected glow of muzzle flashes. So he opened the door and dashed out.

This was only about the fifth time he’d gone outside – in a year and a half.

As he ran to the sound of the guns, trying to avoid approaching them from down-range, he was able to make out two new sounds. First, faintly, was the sound of suppressed rifle shots. He didn’t imagine that would be the al-Shabaab guys, though who knew, really. They’d been getting more tactically savvy all the time. Then again, there was little point in having only some of your weapons suppressed.

And then he heard grenades crumping off.

Finally he turned a corner and got a beautiful view of the action. It was in fact a bunch of militia-looking guys, either al-Shabaab or so close as made no difference, all swarming forward, from ahead and to his left.

On his right was one of their old LVAD trucks, even then being mounted up by a handful of figures he not only recognized as Army Special Forces – he knew exactly which ODA it was: 555. Because he had been face-to-face with them, twice, in the last few hours before the camp fell.

The al-Shabaab guys were now shooting the shit out of the truck, though the Triple Nickel guys were putting out effective return fire. And Zorn realized he was actually in an excellent flanking or supporting position for them. If he opened up on the al-Shabaab force, he could probably halt their advance. The panic and fear caused by being lit up from their flank would send them scurrying.

But, then again… if he opened fire, God knew what that would bring down on him. And his M4 wasn’t suppressed – it would be both loud and bright, perfectly identifying his position. And now he also saw the staggering forms of the undead stumbling and running in from the periphery of the fight.

The LVAD’s engine started up with a throaty roar. Triple Nickel was outgunned, and they were clearly planning to drive themselves the hell out of this death zone. And Zorn was in a good position to help cover their withdrawal.

He hesitated once more, the instinct to pitch in battling the instinct to survive.

And then, finally, he remembered that team’s last withdrawal from this camp. First they’d tried to take off and rescue their split team out in the bush – just as the base was fighting off determined militia attacks all along the wire. And then, when everything went completely to hell, Zorn had seen them driving out in their super-special gun trucks, blasting right by him while he was in heavy contact – and not so much as waving, never mind stopping to help him.

They had abandoned the camp, abandoned the command they were posted to, and abandoned the conventional soldiers who were supposed to be their brothers.

No, Zorn thought bitterly. Fuck them.

And he silently lowered his weapon and watched it all play out.

* * *

Finally, after the SF guys hauled ass out of there in the truck, he watched as the remaining al-Shabaab fighters got swarmed and devoured by the dead. They put up a decent fight in a running battle, legging it for the main gate. But they lost.

For a brief second, Zorn assumed a shooting stance and took a bead. But then he realized he honestly had no idea whether he was about to help cover the al-Shabaab guys from the dead while they reloaded… or start picking them off, Sergeant York-style, from the back of their column.

It was a weird moral dilemma. But, then again, not one he felt all that compelled to resolve. In the end he held his fire. And he watched all of them go down. Or almost all of them, anyway. At the very end, he thought he heard an engine start up somewhere outside the wire, and drive off to the southeast.

So at least one had survived.

But then, just like that, it was over.

Though these two groups of unwelcome assholes had riled up the undead camp residents to a fever pitch Zorn hadn’t seen since the fall. So he crept back to his DFAC redoubt and gave them a few days to settle down into their regular torpor again. Then he crept back out.

He had a couple of things he wanted to do.

First, he wanted to know why the SF guys had come back. That was quickly resolved when he went by the Heavy Weapons locker. The thick steel door had been cut into with an acetylene torch – and almost everything behind it had been cleared out. Well, not everything. But a shitload of weapons and ordnance.

Nervy sons of bitches.

The super-special forces had finally come back – but only to clean the camp out of its best hardware. That was typical. In his mind, Zorn had been saving the heavy weapons to one day retake and fortify the camp. He didn’t know when he was planning on doing so, any more than he knew why he kept putting it off.

Maybe he just couldn’t face the enormity of the task.

He’d kept telling himself that support and resupply from his chain of command was going to come, one day. But in fact they weren’t coming – ever. He wasn’t going to have any help, and he knew now he had to do this job himself.

Fuck it, he thought. He was the senior enlisted man in the command, which meant he worked for a living, and by proclamation was better at his job than anyone below him. Which was everyone, outside of the officer ranks, who were of course completely useless. Only a little more so now that they were dead.

So he’d just do the shit himself.

Still keeping to the shadows, and cutting a wide swath around the figures that stood alone or in small groups, canted at weird angles, either stock-still or teetering and twitching, he made his way to the construction compound. Opening up the largest structure, he immediately found the two things he most needed: one of the little Bobcat earth movers. And a shit-ton of HESCO barriers – the canvas-covered mesh-wire baskets that could be filled with dirt, stones, or rubble to make blast-proof walls. The latter were currently unfilled and neatly folded up.

And if he could fill HESCO barriers and move them around, which he could with the Bobcat, then he could redraw the lines of the camp.

In the next shed over he found a bunch of stacked chain-link fencing. And some of those chain-driven motors used to open and close sections of them. The time had come. He couldn’t just hang out surviving anymore.

He had to retake the camp – and regain his command.

Amarie's Choice

CentCom HQ - Outside the North Gate

No one had selected suitable footwear for this.

When the group of Tunnelers had escaped into the French end of the Channel Tunnel two long years ago, they’d all been running for their lives. If it had been something they’d planned for, they probably would have worn sturdy hiking boots – or maybe wellies, if they’d known they’d be living in a flooded tunnel for two years.

And when, against all expectations, they were finally pulled out the other end, the shoes they’d worn into it had mostly rotted off their feet. They’d had to take what they were given to replace them, which were largely donations from members of the public who saw the Tunnelers’ plight on television. Most of those donated shoes weren’t made for walking, and some didn’t fit very well.

Now the surviving Tunnelers – Hackworth, Colley, McHeath, Amarie and Josie, and all the others – had practically walked these new ones right off their feet as well. First trudging out of overrun and bombed-flat Canterbury, most of the way to London. Then, fleeing the attack on the refugee center in Covent Garden, where they met Rebecca Ainsley and her boys – and agreed to escort them across half of south London, all the way to CentCom Headquarters in Wandsworth Common. And all for just the chance of being allowed into a safe place for a while.

Now, as the tall and extremely imposing walls and main gate of CentCom finally loomed up over them, the Tunnelers were all wretchedly footsore and aching of leg and joint and almost wishing the zombie apocalypse would finally just take them – if it meant they wouldn’t have to do any more damned walking.

“Think maybe they’ll shoot us up here?” Colley said, his gait betraying the terrific weight his ill-shod feet were having to bear. “Put us out of our misery?”

Hackworth was too knackered to answer.

Their new additions – Rebecca Ainsley, with her sons Aiden and Luke – weren’t far behind. The boys had often gone hiking with their dad, SAS Captain Conner Ainsley, and he’d instilled into them the qualities of resolve, determination, and forbearance. But they were still young boys, age six and eight, and they were tired and afraid.

Perhaps naturally, as the only two parents of small children, Rebecca and Amarie had gravitated toward each other – the former walking between her two boys as the latter tirelessly carried her small daughter Josie, all of them trudging across the bleak landscape.

“So your husband is in the Army?” Amarie had asked.

“Yes. Deployed overseas.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.” Rebecca smiled sadly. “I never know when. But I always know he’ll be back.” She hesitated before asking her next question. “Where’s Josie’s father?”

Amarie shrugged, her delicate shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. Lost.”

Rebecca just nodded. It was the usual story. And so common.

Finally, the group slowed to a stop as they reached CentCom HQ, built out of the former Wandsworth Prison, its hulking stone walls looming above them. Perhaps some salvation, or at least a cessation of walking, was finally at hand.

The guards manning the gate got a good look at the disheveled mob, and seemed to ready their weapons. Rebecca didn’t wonder if they thought it was actually a zombie attack. Holding tightly to her boys’ hands, she moved to the front. Working to dredge up a smile, she got out the precious ID card her husband had left her – as a last-ditch measure against the fall of London, or just the fall of order. Her Get out of hell card.

“Good morning, Staff Sergeant,” she said – glad for her ability to read rank from his uniform insignia – and handed over the ID.

The man was standing to the side of the closed vehicle gate in a human-sized doorway, which was currently open – but blocked by his body. He nodded, still looking warily around her at the mob she headed, then took the card. “What’s this, then?” He didn’t look as if he recognized it.

“CentCom civilian access card,” Rebecca said, still trying to smile, though her heart was beating a hundred miles an hour in her chest. “My husband is a captain in the SAS. This entitles his wife, namely me, and our two sons, to shelter and protection in any military installation.”

“Stay here,” he said, then turned and went back into the security station, which looked like a small room built into the thick wall itself. He picked up a phone and turned his back. Rebecca couldn’t hear what was said.

“Okay,” he said, returning and handing the ID back. “You three – only.”

Rebecca braced herself now for the hard and scary part. She had to try to get the others in. She’d promised she’d try. “These people,” she said, gesturing behind her, and smiling again. “They got me here safely. They protected me.” The guard’s hard expression didn’t change an inch. “Don’t you recognize them?” He didn’t even look up – like he didn’t care enough to try to recognize them. “They’re the Tunnelers. The ones on television, who survived two years underground. And then the bombing of Canterbury.”

This was clearly gaining her no traction. Finally she just asked. “Is there any chance you can see your way clear to letting them come in with us? Please.”

“Out of the question.” The guard looked like that was the end of it.

“Fuck. I knew it. Shafted again.” That was one of the Tunnelers – male, middle-aged, and unhappy – standing just behind Rebecca. Her self-preservation instincts kicked in now – and she braced herself to get her and her boys through that doorway before something ugly happened out here.

But then she saw the guard’s icy expression melt just a little.

Amarie was standing beside Rebecca, her precious bundle held as ever to her breast. But the thin blanket covering the little girl fell away – and she emerged from underneath, reaching her tiny hand out… to the scope mounted on the top of the soldier’s rifle. He tensed up, but didn’t pull away. Josie’s tiny face screwed up in a look of concentration, as she pulled and twisted on the scope, trying to turn it or pull it off. The soldier’s grim visage broke out into a reluctant smile, and he shook his head as he tried to fight it.

“Please,” Amarie said, in her soft and beautiful French accent. “Don’t send us back out there.”

* * *

Now Rebecca felt her spine stiffening.

“Yes,” she said, putting her hand on the soldier’s arm – but he instantly pulled back, cradling his rifle. “Surely you can take just two more? A woman and child? Surely your whole job is to protect people?”

The guard blinked heavily, his serious soldier face coming back in place. “If we start taking in every random civilian refugee who rocks up here… believe me, all will be lost. What if they’re infected?” It wouldn’t be the first infected person they’d let in there recently – and that had almost been the end of everything.

Rebecca knew the man had a point. That was kind of how the world had gone down in the first place. Yes, the people behind her were in trouble. But all of humanity depended on the soldiers in these bases. And this was CentCom HQ, upon which presumably rested the entire defense of Britain.

A loud and jarring horn sounded behind them. Rebecca turned and looked back – a large military lorry had come up the road toward the gates, but was blocked by the gaggle of Tunnelers spread out in the road. It edged forward to the back of the crowd, its big engine growling, and honked again.

The guard stepped forward, raised his voice, and shouted over Rebecca’s head. “You lot need to clear the road – now!”

Behind her, Rebecca could also see the leader, Hackworth, conferring with the big Moroccan man, his henchman, Colley. “This isn’t what we hoped for, but maybe it’s for the best,” Hackworth said. “I think London’s doomed. We need to go north – get out of here, and be on our own again. And I don’t think we’ll be the only rats fleeing this ship. We just need to make sure we’re not the last ones.”

Colley looked skeptical. “I don’t see how we’re going to make it across so many miles of a city falling into chaos.”

Rebecca blocked this out and turned forward again. She had to get inside. But she was also determined to get the young Frenchwoman and her baby in with her. At least them. But even as she opened her mouth to beg, the guard cut her off.

“Orders are orders. And it’s disobeying orders, now of all times, that’ll get everyone killed.” But even as he spoke, his eyes went to Josie, the beautiful and fragile eighteen-month-old girl, who was still leaning out, determined to master the accessories on his rifle.

Rebecca could see him weakening. She said, “Can’t we just say they’re my sister and niece? Just two mor—”

But her words were cut off by the sound of a thundering explosion – something terrible and violent and unexpected happening behind the stone walls. It crescendoed for a few seconds, then was punctuated by what sounded like something enormous and metallic crashing to the ground in the distance. The radio on the guard’s shoulder chirped up. “Warden One Zero, message, over!”

The man touched his radio. “Go ahead.”

“Lock down the gate. Security posture alpha. NOW.”

“Roger that, sir.” The guard put his hand on the big steel-grate door that would close their only entrance to the base. “Come in if you’re coming in.”

Rebecca looked from his young steely face, to Amarie’s young gentle one – and then down to her boys, who were both looking up at her in fear and expectancy.

“Please,” Amarie said, starting to cry.

“Have a fucking heart, man,” one of the Tunnelers said from behind.

The soldier’s colleagues were yelling at him from the other side of the door. He clenched his teeth – then put his hands out. “The little girl only. That’s it.” He looked to Rebecca. “You swear she’s yours, you take care of her, and it’s on your head.”

Rebecca looked over to Amarie, whose face had gone sheet white. The reality of it hit her in an instant: to get her daughter to safety she was going to have to abandon her. They would be separated. It was the worst choice she could possibly face. And she had to choose in the next second.

“Take her!” she cried – squeezing Josie to her breast a last time, kissing her on the head, and wetting her hair with her tears.

“Give her to me,” Rebecca cried, bundling up the little girl and herding her sons ahead of her through the gate, which was already swinging closed. It clanged shut with a crash and a shudder.

They were in.

Ahead of her, Rebecca could see men running – almost all of them toward what she could just make out as a terrible fire in the distance, pouring thick gouts of oily black smoke into the blue sky. Over the chaos swirling around inside the compound, she heard shouting behind her.

When she spun in place and looked back out through the gate… she could see Amarie still standing there with her fingers through the steel latticework, and tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’ll take care of her!” Rebecca shouted back. “I promise!”

Amarie nodded, but looked as if her heart had just been pulled out.

“You’ll be okay!” Rebecca added.

But behind the young woman, Rebecca could now see the Tunnelers swarming the truck in the road – pulling the soldiers out of the cab, and climbing over the tailgate into the back. Their movements bespoke their growing desperation – and their resolve to survive.

The rules of civilization were falling away, one by one.

Worth Staying Alive For

Kent - Four Miles South of the ZPW

Private Elliott Walker of the Parachute Regiment took aim once again. But it felt very different this time. As the sharpshooter for his platoon, a role bridging the gap between infantry soldier and long-range sniper, Elliott had been given a flash new L129A1 rifle – right out of the crate and gorgeous, with a jet-black receiver and barrel, tan pistol-grip and extensible stock, and a big ACOG 6x sight mounted on top. It was a beautiful weapon.

But it, and the training, had been given to Elliott for a reason:

To protect his brothers.

He was supposed to provide overwatch, and suppress targets too far out for his teammates to hit, up to 800 meters – and to do so before they became a threat to the team.

But today that gorgeous rifle was smeared in dirt and mud – and Elliott didn’t like to think what else – and even had a few stalks of grass sticking out of the accessory rail on the barrel. And Elliott was too exhausted and numb to pamper the weapon as he usually did. Moreover, now he was about to start shooting to protect one person only: himself.

And this was a damned unfamiliar and lonely feeling.

He had originally been sent out as part of a six-man patrol to recover an errant ammo drop. And now he was the only one coming back. The lone survivor.

Among those who hadn’t made it was Private Ahmit Patel – Elliott’s best friend of four years. He and Elliott had walked into the same Army recruiting office on the same day. They’d gone through Para selection and training together, been assigned to the same platoon, and over the years become closer than brothers.

Until today. When Elliott had shot Ahmit in the face in the back of a dirty SUV mired in the mud behind enemy lines in overrun Kent.

Now his brother was gone.

And now he had to somehow get back through to friendly lines – and back to the only brothers he had left. The other lads in 1 Platoon, D Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion (2 Para) – which was also much of what was left of the thin red line standing between London and its destruction. To have any chance of making it back, Elliott was going to have to try and clear himself a hole in the inexorably advancing horde of dead, from behind.

And then run like hell through it.

Because it would be collapsing on him from the instant he started.

Crouching in the grass beside the remains of a wooden fence, he took aim on the back of a head in the distance. He took a breath, exhaled half, and settled the illuminated red dot of his sight on the brainstem. He gently squeezed the trigger. The weapon barely chugged through its suppressor and the head dropped out of view. Then he acquired another target and did the same. He was aiming to clear a path maybe twenty-five meters wide – and as deep as possible, maybe even out to the 800-meter range of the weapon. He wasn’t sure how deep the enemy went.

The only thing Elliott had going for him was that the dead didn’t notice when the ones next to them dropped.

The dead had no brothers.

* * *

Then again, the dead wouldn’t accidentally shoot each other, either. The batteries for Elliott’s personal role radio (PRR) had gone dead. He never remembered to carry spares, because Ahmit always had a pocketful. They’d become like an old married couple, dividing up tasks and forgetting about them.

But even if he had remembered, he wouldn’t have had it in him to go through his dead best friend’s pockets before he left him. But now that reticence might actually get him killed. Coming back into friendly lines was a dicey maneuver at the best of times, particularly from the direction of the enemy – and was much aided by radioing ahead, alerting the defenders, and imploring them not to light you up.

Now Elliott would have to rely on some well-timed shouting, plus not having the profile of a Zulu. The combat helmet helped. Very few of the dead had those. Infected soldiers tended to be put down by their units before rising up again. Or else put themselves down if they had to.

But even as he brought his rifle up and stood up in the tall grass, Elliott felt his motivation flagging. Everything seemed so pointless now. The pain he felt over Amit’s death was the rawest he’d ever experienced. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been face-to-face with him when he died. But the pain was scorching and felt like it would never subside. If he had to guess, he would have said it might take the rest of his life to stop hurting.

Part of him actually hoped that his life wouldn’t go on much longer – because that would be an end to the pain. Maybe that made him a coward, maybe it meant he wasn’t cut out to be a soldier, never mind a paratrooper. He had absolutely no problem dying to defend his Para brothers – if he could save even one, just one life in the Regiment, he’d be happy to spend his life doing so.

And, finally, that thought provided him with his motivation, his one inspiring purpose. If he could get back to his platoon, he could help protect the others there, as they protected him. And maybe everything would be okay – even if they all went down together. He hadn’t been able to save Ahmit. But maybe he could save someone else.

And that was worth staying alive for.

No time like the present, he thought, taking a series of deep breaths. Particularly when the present might be all I’ve got. And it was slipping away fast. The hole he’d just painstakingly shot through the Zulu lines was already shrinking.

He took off.

Running in full combat kit was harder than it looked, and always a draining task. Now, totally on his own, Elliott was also going to have to shoot to defend himself. He had no one covering his six, nor his flanks. He had no base of fire support. He didn’t have a platoon or section to maneuver with.

He immediately switched to a two-eyed aiming technique – keeping the illuminated part of the sight in focus with his dominant eye while his other viewed the field to acquire targets. There was no way he was going to have time to line up shots peering through the pinhole of his scope, and it would destroy his situational awareness if he tried.

But his training on this had been minimal, so he just had to hope it worked.

For the first couple hundred meters, his initial sharpshooting stood him in good stead. There were no dead ahead of him – only destroyed bodies he had to hurdle or go around. The terrain was easy – mixed sections of crops, grass-covered pasture, and small sections of forest. The “wild spaces” of England were the result of millennia of agriculture, so were now laid out in very ordered plots. Elliott made a straight line through them all, not slowed by the fences and gates that normally sectioned them off.

All of those had been pulled down by the advancing army of the dead.

He cleared the first section of field, then the next of pasture. Then he entered a forested stretch. There was no underbrush – that had been cleared away decades ago – so the going was still easy, aside from some tree-dodging. But there were also a handful of Zulus lost and stumbling around in here, and they made for Elliott as soon as they heard him.

Too slow. He ignored them and ran on.

Another section of pasture. Now he could feel the pinhole of his escape collapsing. As he ran by dead on either side, they saw or heard him, and moved to follow. But as long as he kept moving fast…

More crop land. The oilseed rape stalks, like thick cabbage, threatened to tangle up his feet. He kept running. Another forest section. Now they were on him for real – including some runners, who took off as soon as they got the scent of prey. Instantly, Elliott was having to shoot on the run, taking frantic shots, just to stay alive and on his feet.

Out of the forest, into another pasture. There were a number of them in his path here, but most were slow ones, so he just ran and dodged, like a footballer breaking away for the goal. There were runners in his peripheral vision, but it was so damned hard to hit them while running himself. He had to keep moving and hope he could outrun them.

He was getting close to friendly lines. He had to be.

By the end of this field, they were pulling and pawing at him – he shoved them away with his rifle and carried on into the trees, where he had to start shooting again. If he could just get through this last stretch of forest, he figured he was home free.

He was snap-firing now, having to react more quickly than ever before. As a sharpshooter, he was usually able to take his time with a shot – and was virtually always static while shooting.

Now if he went static he was dead.

But he was getting the hang of it, leaping over ditches and brambles, dodging around trees, taking shots on any that got too close. Developing a rhythm. Making headshots on the fly. His twenty-round magazine went dry. He tried to keep his head up while changing it but both his pouches and his weapon were bouncing around, so he had to look down. When he’d reloaded and looked up again, there was one stepping into his path twenty yards away.

Chug. Down it went.

A runner piled into him from the side, but it couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds, so Elliott bounced off it, shoved it with his rifle stock, twisted at the waist and fired – chug, headshot – then faced forward, never really slowing down. The edge of the trees and the next field appeared ahead, with some kind of gully or ditch right at the border. Elliott got ready to leap it – being fully kitted out for combat was like being on a heavy-gravity planet – when a shadowed figure rose up out of the ditch, facing away.

Chug, headshot, and it dropped back down.

Elliott leapt over the gully, landing awkwardly on the other side.

And he skidded to a halt.

Oh, my God. He couldn’t have seen what he just saw. He’d only caught a flash in peripheral as he went over the ditch. But he thought he’d seen two things – the camouflage pattern of the clothing. And a stark white cylinder in its hand.

Loo roll.

He’d just killed another Para.

Oh, dear God. Why wasn’t he wearing his helmet!? This couldn’t be happening. Elliott tried to will his legs to step back to the rim of the gully, but he felt mired in cement. And in that instant, three or four dead stumbled out of the woods, hot on his heels, and now literally fell into the ditch.

And began gorging on the fresh body that lay at its bottom.

This couldn’t have just happened. It was the exact opposite of what Elliott wanted, of what he was staying alive for. Oh, God, how he would have preferred to have died and this man lived instead. Now he could hear the horrible wet ripping and gnawing sounds as the body was torn apart and devoured, only feet away.

Within seconds, though, one and then another of the Zulus in the ditch started climbing out the other side, vaguely aware of more prey ahead. And Elliott had no choice but to run, unless he wanted to join them.

For a few seconds, standing stock-still and frozen with horror, he was tempted. Maybe that would be best. It would be so easy to just fall down into that dark ditch – to stop running, stop fighting, stop being afraid. And, mainly, stop being sad about the loss of his friend. To shield himself from any more terrible pain or regret. It seemed like it just kept adding up, the ZA piling in on him while he was weakest.

Now the first pair were out of the ditch, lurching toward him with arms outstretched. Elliott looked into their quasi-human faces, their rheumy eyes and mottled skin, blood-slick chins and hands. And one thought obtruded into his brain: right now, he was the only thing that stood between them and the rest of his regiment behind him.

It felt like willing dead wood into action, but he managed to bring his rifle to his shoulder. And, looking over the top of his sight, as they were only five feet away, he took them down. And something prodded him back into motion and action – almost as if he were watching himself from above. He turned and headed out at a jog into that next field, and then into the next treeline.

And as he passed out of the open and into the trees, welcoming arms and concerned faces appeared out of the trenches to gather him in. And just like that he was back in friendly lines.

He didn’t know how close to salvation he’d been when he nearly gave up.

* * *

“You all right, mate?” This was a platoon sergeant from C Company, Elliott’s sister company. Elliott vaguely knew him by sight, and saw that his nametape read Bhardwaj. About thirty years old, he was like a grand old man of the Paras, solid and unflappable. Moreover, as he looked into Elliott’s eyes from a foot away, flashing deep and genuine concern for his well-being, Elliott felt like crying.

He nodded that he was okay, as the sergeant’s strong hands turned him around to check him out, then slapped him on the back. A couple of other squaddies crowded in, keeping him safe and keeping a lookout behind. Elliott felt completely cared for.

“Weren’t out there all by yourself, were you?”

He shook his head no.

“The others?”

No again. He finally found his voice. “Where’s D Company? I need to get back to my unit.”

“Not likely, mate. We’re scattered all over the damned countryside now, moving north more like deaders ourselves than any kind of disciplined military formation. Nah, you stick with us for now, you’ll be all right.”

Elliott’s throat caught again. And once again he nodded his assent.

Five minutes ago, back at that ditch, now seemed like a lifetime ago, and a world away. And Elliott thought: thank God he hadn’t given in to despair.

He had to never let that happen again.

Secret Squirrels

Camp Lemonnier - Southwest Guard Tower

“At a certain point,” Zorn said, “I realized it was safer just to herd the damned things, rather than try to destroy them all. Especially working on my own.”

Zorn, Handon, and Fick were now up in another one of the guard towers – also on the south wire, but farther to the west. Zorn was pointing out his handiwork – how he had segregated the camp into discrete sections with fencing and HESCO barriers. And then, section by section, had cleared them by herding all the dead into the next pen, then closing up the fence behind them.

“How’d you herd them toward one side,” Fick asked, “but get the fence closed behind them?”

Zorn nodded. “Generally, I threw flashbangs, or fired forty-mil smoke rounds. They’d usually follow those. Then I used this.” He opened up a little storage shed against the wall and pulled out a metal box with a variety of buttons. “These control the motor-driven sections of gate. I can open and close them, and channel the dead around that way.”

“Clever,” Fick said. “What happens then?”

“Once I get a group penned in next to the outside wire, I open that up, and set them free. It’s a lot easier than fighting them. Not to mention safer.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Handon said, and started to climb down.

* * *

Brady covered Reyes as he passed by the main vehicle entrance in the north wire, and eased open the smaller person-sized gate near the remains of the security shack. It opened without squeaking and he stepped outside. The two of them were doing a recon of the main camp gate on their own initiative. It seemed like it would be helpful to verify that the outer wire was actually intact. So far, it was.

Stepping outside the camp and scanning to the north from left to right, Reyes could see Djibouti Town out in front of them – and could just about make out a variety of slouching figures standing around, unmoving and peaceful. To his right, a little way down the road, a line of pickup trucks on the roadside made it look like a parking lot at a country music festival.

In four minutes, he and Graybeard had checked and cleared the vehicles.

Graybeard touched his radio button. “Hey, Master Guns, it’s Graybeard.”

Fick’s voice came back, thin and slightly hissy. “Go ahead.”

“There’s a whole bunch of raggedy-ass civilian pickups parked just outside the main gate. If we can get those running, they should do for transport.”

“Copy that. Any idea who they belonged to?”

“Militia, I’d say, judging from the brass scattered on the seats.”

“Copy. Nice job. Now get back in here.”

* * *

“Okay,” Fick said. “What now?”

After putting Zorn back in his office, he and Handon had stepped out again to confer in private.

“We could do a sweep of the town,” Handon said. “See whether any of what he told us is true. And see if we get lucky finding a local or an American in uniform.”

Fick nodded. “Yeah, but that won’t come for free. Once we start poking around out there, we may rile up the dead – wherever the hell they’re from.”

“Let’s get some aerial ISR on the town. We’ll take a look at the footage, and depending on what we see…”

“Yeah – just move on to the next phase of the plan. Go directly to Hargeisa.”

“Exactly,” Handon said. “But with one tactical advantage.”

“This guy,” Fick said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the building behind them. “Bring him with us. Local knowledge, local guide.”

Handon nodded. “Exactly. Odds are he can help us find an earlier-stage victim than we would on our own.”

“And he might even keep us breathing a little longer than we would otherwise.”

Handon nodded and led the way back inside.

Henno came back at the same time – catching the door as Fick was trying to close it on him.

* * *

“Here’s the deal,” Handon said, not bothering to sit. “We’re going to recon the town. Then we’re moving overland to Hargeisa. And we’re taking you with us. We need your local knowledge, and we need you to guide us. Help us avoid dangers on the road, and in the population centers.”

Zorn snorted once. “Oh, do you now?”

“Yeah,” said Fick, also standing – and taking a step closer. “We do.”

“Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re going there.”

“We told you,” Handon said. “Reconning the area.”

“Yeah, you did tell me that. But what you told me is bullshit. What are you really doing here?”

Handon shook his head. “It’s classified. And we don’t have time.”

Zorn laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure it is. You secret squirrels, with your ‘my ops are blacker than your ops’ bullshit.’”

Okay, Handon thought. He got it now.

This was one of those conventional forces leaders who didn’t like SOF guys. Didn’t like them operating in his battlespace. Didn’t like them bypassing his operational command, getting all the training money and best equipment, poaching his best men and officers. Handon had seen it before.

Almost always, the young enlisted guys idolized the operators. They all wanted to grow up to be D-boys, or at least Green Berets. But the leadership was different. It was generally too late for them. Plus they had their own serious responsibilities, and needed their junior men with their minds on their jobs, not on hero worship, or on how to get invited to Delta Selection. And, in fairness, having teams they didn’t control moving a hundred miles an hour in their backyard could sometimes cause headaches, or worse.

By the midpoint of the War on Terror, though, most SOF and conventional unit commanders had learned to play nice. And where they didn’t, SOCOM and JSOC were so powerful and indispensable they could bear whatever scorn conventional unit commanders cared to throw at them. It hardly mattered. And it wasn’t going to matter today, either – this guy was not going to fuck with Handon’s mission.

“Look,” he said. “This isn’t a negotiation. We have authority here.”

“Oh, isn’t it? And do you now?”

“Seriously,” Fick said. “Don’t fuck with us on this. Suffice it to say the entire goddamned world is on the line.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Zorn said. “You spec-ops guys think you’re saving the world every time you go for a shit. And you never share the operational details – no matter who it effects – because your shit is so goddamned sensitive.”

Handon took a deep breath. Maybe he was going at this the wrong way. It was starting to look like this guy wasn’t going to be bullied.

Before he could reset and try a different tack, Zorn spoke up again. “I’ll tell you what, though. I’ve got one last big section of this camp to clear – the whole northwest quadrant. I’d already got it half-cleared, when a small but mean herd blew in, took down a section of the outside wire, and overran the sections I’d already done. Re-clearing it all would take me a month or more to do on my own. But with your ten guys, we could have it done in a day. You do that for me and, sure, I’ll guide you to Hargeisa. No problem.”

Handon looked to Fick, then back to Zorn. He noted the Ranger tab on the man’s shoulder. It meant he had completed the toughest combat leadership course in the U.S. military, 61 days of near-hell. And Handon had as well. When you joined the Unit, you pretty much stopped wearing patches and insignia – hell, you didn’t wear uniforms most of the time. But one thing Handon missed, and still felt slightly naked without, was his Ranger tab.

It told you something about a man.

“Why is it so important to you to clear this base?” Handon said.

Zorn paused. “Because it’s my goddamned job. You’ve got your mission. Mine is to retake this installation. So that at whatever time I am either relieved or reinforced, the U.S. military’s outpost in East Africa will be secure, operational, and standing tall.”

Fick shook his head. “You do realize there’s no longer a U.S. military?”

Handon shook his as well. “Look. I’m sorry. We don’t have time for that. What we’re doing here is for the benefit of everyone left. Not just the military.”

Zorn snorted. “Somehow I doubt that, too. For the benefit of SOCOM, most likely.” He paused and looked from Handon to Fick and back. “We’ve got different chains of command, right? You guys make that clear enough whenever you’re posted to our AO and want to do whatever the fuck you want, with no regard for what we want, or for the overall mission in theater. You spec-ops guys are used to getting your own way whenever you need the conventional battlespace commander to do something for you. Well this time the shit’s on the other goddamned foot.”

Henno spoke up from the corner, his voice somewhere between unamused and malevolent. He said, “This is nothing but an ankle grab.”

Zorn said, “You can tie me up and march me around at gunpoint. But I’m not gonna tell you shit. And I’m definitely not gonna provide you with transport.”

Fick said, “We’ve got transport. There are trucks outside the main gate.”

Zorn laughed. “Yeah, good luck getting across half of Somalia in those broken-down jingle buses.”

“Why? Can you do better?”

“Fuckin’ A.” Zorn looked toward the door. “Allow me to sweeten the pot.”

* * *

Zorn’s back rippled under his fatigue blouse as he pulled on the chain that raised the garage door. Hulking behind it was the mother of all armored vehicles.

“MRAP,” Fick said, nodding his approval. Pronouncing it “em-rap,” he was using the generic term for Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles.

“Not just any MRAP,” Zorn said, turning back to face them. “This is the International MaxxPro – XL version.”

Handon and Fick admired the behemoth, while Henno shook his head at yet another gratuitous display of American dick-measuring. The humongous truck was dirt-colored, thickly armored, with six huge knobby tires – and stood fully fifteen feet tall with the gunner’s turret up top.

“Seats ten in full combat gear comfortably,” Zorn said, “or twelve if you squeeze in. Fifty-cal up top, in a fully protected turret. Tops out at sixty-five mph, and ranges out to six hundred kilometers on a single tank.”

Fick circled around the side, checking out the steel louvers over the side windows. “What does this bad boy weigh?”

“Thirty thousand pounds,” Zorn said. “Unloaded. Don’t get in front of it once it gets moving. Obviously, it’s got the V-shaped hull to survive even the biggest IEDs. Not that we’ll see many of those these days. Then again, you never know.”

Handon spoke drily. “I’m guessing the starter’s been removed.”

Zorn nodded his head slowly. “Good guess.”

“We’ll find it.”

“Oh, no you won’t. And in addition to knowing where the starter is, I know the roads across Djibouti and Somalia. I know the impassable areas, and I know something about the herd movements in the region. I can get you to Hargeisa in this in six or eight hours, just as safe as houses.”

“And we already know your price,” Fick said.

“Yep.”

Henno shook his head, not for the first time. “We don’t have time for this.”

Handon looked at Henno and said, “Watch him.” Then he pulled Fick around the corner and down the alley. Once they were out of sight, he lowered his voice and said, “I’m not thrilled about being blackmailed.”

Fick nodded. “Didn’t expect you would be.”

“But then again… there’s actually only one way to find out for sure whether or not this place is a dry hole for our mission objective.”

“Yeah. Do exactly what he wants us to do anyway. Sweep and clear.”

Handon nodded. “Yep. Then we’ll either have ourselves a dead American in uniform. Or we’ll know we’re not getting one.”

Fick cocked his head. “And at that point, we might be glad to have this place as a secure base of operations. Because God knows how long the expedition will last then.”

Handon nodded. “An FOB where we can top up supplies and ammo. Also a safe HLZ, someplace the Seahawk can touch down without getting swarmed.”

“And ultimately,” Fick said, “get Patient Zero, not to mention our precious asses, the hell out of here.”

“Exactly,” Handon said. “And I also still really like the idea of having someone who knows the ground getting us to Hargeisa.”

“Although not necessarily this asshole.”

“No,” Handon said. “But you go to war with the asshole you’ve got. And, as you said, he might be all that keeps us alive when the shit comes down. He kept himself alive here for two years – somehow.”

Fick shrugged. “We can probably clear the northwest quarter of this base in a couple of hours, if everyone pitches in.”

“Okay,” Handon said. “Let’s get moving. The clock hasn’t stopped.”

Zulu Rodeo

Camp Lemonnier - Joint Operations Center (JOC)

“I want everyone wearing their face shields,” Fick said.

Both teams were now gathered in the Lemonnier JOC, sitting at various stations in the center of the sunken ops pit, mainly because it was big enough to hold everyone. Or out of habit, maybe. They’d all sat through countless briefings in an awful lot of TOCs and JOCs all over the globe.

Fick continued. “I know you all packed face shields because I made you do it while I watched. And I don’t want to lose Marines, or even other types of people, to stupid-ass avoidable infection.”

Handon didn’t disagree. They’d all gotten a little slack about face shields through the middle sections of this never-ending mission set – mainly because they’d been battling to stay alive, as well as to keep the world from blowing up, pretty much every second of the day. And also because they were incompatible with NVGs. But now it was back to solid fundamentals.

It was too late in the day for fuck-ups.

“Listen to the Jarhead and do it,” Predator rumbled from another seat he was too big for. “Unless you like the idea of getting splashed in the face – then manhandled by Handon, and piddled on with gasoline. Though some of you may like that kind of thing. No judgment.”

Handon spoke over the quiet laughter. “We’ve been conscripted into clearing this base. But we’re still here for the reason we’re here. You come across any Zulu in American uniform, you capture it, restrain it – and keep it intact.” Despite what Zorn had told him, Handon wasn’t quite ready to believe the only dead left on the base would be North Africans who had walked 2,000 miles to get there. “And, speaking of that, can anyone here tell a Somali from an Algerian?”

Ali nodded. She knew her people, even if she’d left them a long way behind.

Juice raised his hand. “Probably,” he said. Handon remembered Juice had been based in the Horn of Africa for a couple of tours. “After two years of wear and tear, though, a dead North African might look an awful lot like a dead East African.”

“Do your best,” Handon. “You think you’ve got a Somali, bag it up.”

Fick jumped back in. “Zorn has got the uncleared part of the base sealed off into three discrete segments, all of them fenced off. We clear a section, close the gate behind us, then sweep forward. So you should have some kind of a wall to your backs at all times.”

Henno said, “Aye. But we’ll also be cut off and on our own, with an unknown number of dead bastards in there with us – and of unknown type.”

Handon said, “You can handle it. And this is worth the stretch. We get this done and we’ve got transport and a local guide all the way to Hargeisa.”

Fick said, “All right. Melee weapons – if you’re happy using them.”

Handon said, “But nobody get hurt trying to avoid shooting. Every weapon is suppressed and the outer wire is intact so we can’t really draw more. And we can top up ammo before we leave here.”

Fick nodded and jumped in again. “We clear in pairs. Here are the teams. It’s me and Graybeard. Brady and Reyes.”

Handon said, “Pred with Juice. Homer and Ali.”

He paused and saw those two turn their heads and look at each other. He’d been tempted to split them up, since they’d recently split up themselves. But he’d learned in Chicago it was pointless – if one of them needed help, they’d just shit-can the orders and go to the other’s aid anyway.

Handon paused. “And me and Henno.” Neither looked at the other.

Fick said, “Noise stays with CSM Zorn in the guard tower. They’ll control opening and closing the gates from there.”

Handon looked around the room and closed out the briefing. “Two critical mission parameters: We need to do this fast. But we need to do it safely.”

“But we need to do it fast,” Fick added, not looking like he was trying to be funny.

“Get it done,” Handon said.

* * *

As they geared up and paired off outside the JOC, Graybeard button-holed Handon and Fick. “What’s that big circus tent-looking building?”

“Thunderdome,” Fick said. “It used to be a briefing and activities area. Zorn used it as a holding pen – collecting the dead there before ejecting them from the base. But it’s empty now. He’s cleared the chamber. So don’t worry about that one.”

Juice stepped over from nearby and said, “Hey, guys. Last time I was here, Thunderdome was covered on top – but open at the sides. Like a concert pavilion.” They could all see that its sides were now made up of solid walls of HESCO barrier.

Handon shrugged. “He’d have had to plug it up to use it as a holding pen. Don’t go in there, and don’t worry about it.”

As everyone was stepping off, Fick button-holed Reyes and Brady. “Why don’t you two hang back a little. Don’t be the pointy end of the spear today.” He was still worried about their injuries – and how little time they’d had to recover from them. Neither was moving at full speed yet.

Brady looked dismissive. “We’re fine, dude. And the sooner we get this shit done, the sooner we get this shit done.”

Fick exhaled. “Okay.” Now he was also thinking: They’re going to have to mix it up sooner or later. He may as well find out now if they were up to it.

“Be careful,” he said.

* * *

The little electric motor at ground level hummed quietly, and the long chain rattled as it pulled the section of twelve-foot-high heavy-gauge chain-link fence, topped by thick coils of razor wire, out of the way before them. Fick stole a look over his left shoulder, at the elevated guard tower where Noise and Zorn were overseeing the op and controlling the gates.

He took a breath, cradled his weapon, and traded a look with Graybeard.

And the pair moved out, the others stepping off behind them.

Behind them, Predator flipped his face shield down, and announced: “On with the Zulu Rodeo. Yee-hah!”

Fick and Graybeard chuckled at this, but didn’t turn around, instead heading off into the warren of the camp. Like the others, they knew their assigned sector from the briefing and moved toward it quickly but carefully. As they separated from the others and made their way, Fick said, “Stay close.”

Graybeard grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling deeply. “Bet your ass I will.”

“Don’t worry,” Fick said. “I promise not to send you off on your own for jerrycans full of goddamned aviation fuel.”

“And I promise not to go if you ask me. I have absolutely no intention of leaping from another moving vehicle onto an airplane that’s already taking off…”

Fick laughed. That episode on Beaver Island had truly proven Graybeard was unkillable – if there’d been any doubt. The one thing you know about a dude that age who’s still operational, Fick thought, is that he’s a survivor. Suddenly he wondered if he should have paired Graybeard with one of his wounded guys, and kept an eye on the other one himself.

Oh well. Too damned late now.

They came to the closed door of the first structure they needed to clear.

They nodded to each other as Graybeard put his hand on the knob – then turned it slowly, pushed the door open, and got out of the way as Fick powered himself inside, clearing right. Graybeard followed him in, clearing left.

And, after that, it was just going to be a solid couple of hours of room and area clearing. Fick kept both eyes and ears on the next corner, the next doorway, the next building… but the physical movements of CQB were so ingrained, so much a matter of muscle memory, that he found himself doing what he would have kicked his Marines’ asses for.

Letting his mind wander.

* * *

From the elevated perspective of the guard tower, Noise and Zorn could see the five pairs of operators dispersing out into the warren that was the northwest quadrant of the camp. It was a little like looking down from an aerial drone view – which they’d actually considered doing, getting the JFK to task either a drone or the F-35 already on station, then piping the video into the JOC.

Finally, they’d rejected the idea, mainly just to move fast and get it done. Though Noise slightly suspected that neither Handon nor Fick were wild about telling the commanders on the carrier about the little side-mission they’d gotten roped into.

As the last pair entered the enclosure, Zorn pressed a button on his control station and the gate closed smoothly behind them.

“So you’ve got generator power,” Noise said.

“Some,” Zorn said. “There’s a shit-ton of fuel on the airbase next door. Only trouble is moving it back here.”

Noise stood carefully off to the side, and also slightly behind Zorn. He was well aware of being on double duty. One, overwatch. And, two, prisoner watch.

But with a little luck, they’d all be out of there by noon.

* * *

Fick held his weapon to his shoulder now, aiming over Graybeard’s as they both ascended a stairwell. This was one of the bigger, more permanent, multi-story structures on base, and took a little more time and attention to clear.

As they reached the top of the stairs, Graybeard went left again, Fick right. He saw only empty corridor and began moving down it, but then heard Graybeard say, in a normal speaking voice, “Contact left.”

By the time Fick turned and quick-walked back, there was a single Zulu on the floor at Graybeard’s feet – and he was withdrawing his K-Bar knife from its head. Graybeard was probably the last MARSOC Marine to actually carry an old-school K-Bar. Then again, they all seemed to be kicking it old school today.

Perfect for a couple of old-ass guys like us, Fick thought, clapping his Marine on the shoulder. Leaning around him, he could see the Zulu wasn’t in anything like a military uniform. And what skin it had left was light-colored. Fick guessed that meant it was North African. In any case, it was destroyed now, so he turned around and went back to his side of the floor.

The next room proved empty, and the one after that, and Fick’s mind started wandering again, thinking of Reyes and Brady out there on their own. And he wondered if he was ultimately going to be able to keep the promise he made to himself when their lieutenant died – when the young Marine officer sacrificed himself, allowing Fick and the others to escape, on that scavenging mission in Australia gone horribly wrong. The promise that he would be better at leading the Marines than the LT had been.

That he would do whatever it took to keep them alive.

The problem was… Fick was balefully aware that wasn’t really his job anymore. Because the mission was now a hell of a lot more important than any one Marine, or even all of them. Fick was self-aware enough to know what he was so afraid of: losing his Marines, having to watch them go down one at a time, while he carried on with the dwindling survivors… until there was no one left but him. That terrifying dream he’d had in the bomber, flying from Beaver Island back to the carrier, was still with him. The one where he’d had to watch his Marines get taken down one by one – knowing he was powerless to stop it, that nothing could stop it…

And that he was doomed to be the last man standing.

Hell, that dream – literally his worst nightmare – had almost caused him to panic at a critical moment, when the plane got hit and he ran up and down the cabin, practically pushing his team out the jump door so they wouldn’t go down with the aircraft. He got his shit together in the end…

But the dream had never left him.

In truth, this fear of his wasn’t very far removed from Handon’s secret terror that he wouldn’t have the wisdom to know when to spend his operators’ lives for the sake of the mission – and when to safeguard them.

But that was why it was a secret fear.

As much as Fick and Handon had been bonded in the crucible of combat, they never talked about that kind of thing. Admitting fear or vulnerability would have been an intimacy too far. You saved that kind of stuff for your wife – and, generally, not even her. They had been long conditioned to keep some things under wraps – always.

And if this was simply fear he was feeling, Fick knew he’d damned well better get over it. If he lost Marines on this mission, he lost them. All that mattered, all that could be allowed to matter, was the mission.

Everything was on the line now.

Fick cleared the last room at the end of the corridor and started making his way back to the stairwell to link up with Graybeard.

As he backtracked, he thought again of Reyes and Brady – both of whom had raised their hand for the big mission, then again for this sideshow. He’d seen enough war movies to know it was always the guys who volunteered to go forward when they didn’t have to who ended up getting killed.

And he wasn’t sure he could face it.

He only knew that he had to.

The weak human part of him still insisted there had to be some way around it. That he could work harder, be smarter, both get the job done and bring all his people home. Fuck this destiny I’m so afraid of, that part of him said, and fuck fear. But the more sober, resigned part of him knew that this was gut-check time. And completing this mission, seeing it home, might require that he lose everyone on his team – one by one, or maybe all at once.

This was the end game. This was it.

And everything Fick himself had was on the table, and in jeopardy, as well.

The Downward Spiral

CentCom HQ - Outside the Gates

Hackworth stood in the second rank of the Tunnelers outside the gate. He’d figured it was best if the woman with the access card, Rebecca, did the talking. But he could see which way this was going, in less than a minute.

He knew it. Almost from the minute they escaped the Channel Tunnel, the officials had been letting them down. They’d left them in quarantine in that terrible tenement in Canterbury – as the whole city fell to the dead, and they then carpet-bombed the place, nearly taking all of them out with it. Hell, they’d knocked their building over before the Tunnelers were even out of it.

Then they’d been forced to walk halfway to London. And when they got there, nothing had been done for them. No real provisions, no housing, no help. But Hackworth wasn’t wasting time with umbrage or self-pity. No, he just took the very obvious lesson from it:

They were on their own. Totally.

And always had it been thus. Early on, they learned that to survive they had to look out for one another. No one else was going to do it. And, with the world falling apart around them, they couldn’t afford the time, expense, or danger of looking out for anyone else. Maybe they had been cut off from the rest of humanity for so long that it had become an ingrained habit – even before the outside world started letting them down.

Maybe it had to be this way.

And as Hackworth listened to the guards at the gate deny them sanctuary and consign them to their fate out in the vortex of chaos that was descending… and he heard the weeping of Amarie and the cries of her daughter… and he winced at the loud honking of the truck trying to come through behind them… and, finally, heard and felt the huge explosion inside the gates of what was supposed to be the safest place in Britain… with all that, he now knew two things.

One, they had to get the hell out of London.

And, two, they damned well weren’t going to do it on foot this time.

“Follow me,” he said to Colley, who did so without hesitation.

The rest of the Tunnelers seemed to be on the same wavelength, without Hackworth even having to tell them what he had in mind. In a few seconds of minor but inspired violence, they took control of the truck – as well as the driver and another soldier in the passenger seat. Less than a minute later, the Tunnelers had all piled into the back, and the vehicle was rumbling onto the verge and turning around.

Colley was in the big cargo area in back minding the guard. Hackworth sat up in front in the passenger seat, pointing the driver’s own side arm at his ribcage.

“Listen,” the driver said. “This is not going to end well for you.”

“I don’t think it’s going to end well for anybody,” Hackworth said. And he meant it. With recent events, he had an even dimmer view of London’s survival prospects than he’d had that morning, watching heavily armed looters rampaging through government and military facilities in Covent Garden. London felt like a trap to him, one hemmed in by very high walls, and with an absurdly high population density.

It was like a powder keg waiting for a match. And he didn’t intend for them to be there when it went up. “Just drive,” Hackworth said.

“Where am I going?”

“North. The north gate in the Wall. Out of here.”

“They’ll never let you through.”

“Maybe not.” Hackworth tapped the barrel of the pistol on the picture ID clipped to the driver’s shirt pocket. “But you’re another story.”

Colley, who had just stuck his head into the front, now whispered to Hackworth. “The woman did say they shut the gates – for good. No one in or out.”

Hackworth shook his head. “They’ll let us out. One way or another. We’ve come too far. And we are not going to go down with London. Not after all this. I won’t let us.”

Colley nodded and returned to the back. That was good enough for him. Hackworth had never failed them yet. And Colley for one was prepared to follow him – even to the bitter end.

They all were.

* * *

In the dark of the rear cargo area, bouncing and rumbling on ill-maintained roads, Siobhan, one of the only other surviving women in the group, cradled Amarie’s head and tried to console her. On the opposite side was Alderney, the aging shopkeeper, who had long made it his business to look after Amarie. It had given him a sense of purpose during the long months in the darkness of the tunnel. But now he felt totally inadequate to the task. All he could think to do was pat her knee and mutter “There, there…”

But she was inconsolable – unable even to stop sobbing, her tortured breaths heaving in and out like she was drowning. Every one of the Tunnelers knew what that little girl meant to her – everything. That she’d had to give her up to keep her safe was obviously the most grievous pain she’d ever known.

And what was worse: she had no idea when she was going to see her again.

Watching the pathos of this scene in solemn silence, Colley just shook his head. He took a look around the group, to make sure everyone was okay. Most were sitting on or around the big wooden crates that took up much of the space back there. It occurred to him that he ought to shove them out. These people needed more room – and deserved it.

But something made him hesitate.

He stood up from the one he’d sat down on, produced his axe, and levered up the nailed-down top of the crate. And he whistled when he saw what was inside – row after row of assault rifles, British Army SA-80s, gleaming and new in wood shavings, facing in alternating directions. Also, dozens of empty thirty-round magazines, and fifty-round boxes of ammunition – hundreds of them.

There were three crates of that size. He levered open one of the smaller ones and found pistols. He read the lettering on the side – they were Glock 17 Gen 4s in 9x19mm. There were also seventeen-round magazines for them, and much smaller fifty-round boxes of 9mm bullets, also hundreds of them. He lifted one of the pistols out and found it had a rough, pebbly-textured grip.

“Whoah,” Colley said aloud, feeling the light weight and reassuring solidity of the polymer-framed pistol. Maybe these shouldn’t go out the back after all.

Also now he had a job – and quickly recruited a few of the steadier men of the group to assist him – in loading magazines. Few of the Tunnelers really knew how to use these weapons. But the time might soon come when they’d have no choice but to use them, expertise or no.

And Colley knew enough to know this: they’d be a lot more useful loaded.

* * *

Hackworth was basically winging the navigation, and the driver wasn’t doing much to help him. He was actively thwarting him, actually, Hackworth decided. Maybe he figured there was little chance of the pudgy middle-aged man actually using the pistol on another living person.

They’d gotten out of Wandsworth Common with little bother, and were now heading northwest on York Road. The trouble was going to be getting across the River Thames. Hackworth simply didn’t know which bridges were open, which had security checkpoints, and which were totally off-limits due to leading into the Government Security Zone…

He was guessing maybe Vauxhall Bridge would be okay – but as they reached the roundabout that led to the foot of the bridge, they saw a multi-car crash piled up in one lane and most of the shoulder, blocking the exit they needed. There were lots of police on scene, on foot and in vehicles – dealing with the general chaos as much as the disabled vehicles and injured drivers and passengers.

And the Tunnelers did not want to attract the attention of the police.

“Left, left!” Hackworth shouted at the driver, keeping his pistol low and out of view… but it was too late, and they were already heading up the road that bordered the south bank of the river. The next bridge across would be Lambeth Bridge – and the one after was Westminster Bridge. They’d already seen the latter had a giant wall and heavy security at its northern end – and Hackworth didn’t much like their odds at the one before it.

The driver took them past it.

But as they approached the next roundabout, Hackworth said, “Keep going north – we’ll cross further along, well clear of Whitehall.” The last thing they needed was soldiers at government checkpoints sniffing around.

The driver nodded, swung them onto the roundabout – a little fast maybe – but then he kept them leaning into their turn, passing the north exit.

“No!” Hackworth shouted, grabbing at the wheel. But it was too late.

And then he took them out of their orbit – right onto Westminster Bridge.

“Damn you,” Hackworth said. Once again he’d been too slow. Also, he hadn’t really wanted to risk a crash by battling over the steering wheel. Though a crash probably would have suited the driver just fine. His captivity would be over, as would this hijacking.

And the Tunnelers would be well and truly screwed.

But within seconds they were already halfway across Westminster Bridge, and well within sight of the security station in the giant wall at its end. If they stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned around, it would be too suspicious. If they lost their nerve, they were done for.

They were in it now. One way or another.

Hackworth sucked in a couple of breaths, steeling himself for what he had to do… and then he jammed the pistol into the driver’s ribs – hard. This seemed to surprise the man. Hackworth surprised himself. He leaned in so his lips were inches from the man’s ear, and the soldier would feel his breath on them. He spoke softly, and in a way that was genuinely menacing.

“I’m going to crouch down behind your seat,” he said. “And I’m going to point this gun at your spine. If you betray us… you will never walk again.”

The driver stole a glance over at the older man, and fear flashed across his face. But then he hardened. “I don’t believe you’d do it.”

Hackworth’s eyes flashed bloody murder. “Do I look like a man with anything to lose? If this goes south, we’re going to have to shoot our way out. And I swear the first bullet is for you.”

The driver swallowed dryly. And he began to slow. They were nearly at the checkpoint. Hackworth smoothly withdrew, wedging himself into the narrow area behind the driver’s seat. And he stuck the muzzle of the gun into the seat back – hard enough so the driver would feel it in his spine.

Now all he could do was wait, and pray.

And marvel at what it seemed he was now capable of.

Maybe anyone was capable of such viciousness – when given no choice.

Make It Right

JFK - Bridge

The bridge of the Kennedy was a place of some peace again – after Dr. Park had finally decamped, looking shame-faced, and the agitated British major at CentCom had stopped yelling at him on the radio. Commander Abrams was just starting to once again enjoy the relaxation of being at anchor and not having anything blowing up or going horribly wrong, at least for the moment.

“Dr. Park asking to speak with you again, sir.”

Dammit.

Abrams’s first inclination was to decline this request, because he didn’t have time for it. But weirdly – uniquely, in fact, in his whole command of the JFK so far – he actually did have time for it. With both the shore mission and flight ops being rodeo’d by others, for once Abrams felt like he could breathe.

“Bring him back in.”

This time the compact scientist stepped up with Sarah Cameron in tow – his handler, enabler, and personal protection detail. As the pair reached Abrams’s station, she looked alert and all business – though the scientist himself looked a little frazzled, like he’d been putting the hammer down, working.

“Dr. Park,” Abrams said nodding. “Ms. Cameron.” He considered taking the pair to the briefing room upstairs. But he didn’t really want to hand over command of the bridge. And, frankly, he didn’t want to get up from his seat. “What’s up?”

Park nodded, and touched the corner of his eyeglasses. “Commander. I screwed up. I know that. I should have realized we could complete the vaccine faster, doing critical work before we got to London, if we had a new DNA sequencer to replace the one that went over the side. I should have made that request and got it in motion earlier – before they sent the new plane. It was my error. A bad one.”

Abrams just nodded. He felt for the man – everyone screwed up, especially in the topsy-turvy environment they all had to work in. Then again, Park’s job was saving the world, so he didn’t feel real inclined to pat him on the head and tell him it was okay and he’d get it right next time.

“But I know how to fix this. I can make it right.”

That piqued Abrams’s attention. “Go on.”

Park nodded and began. “There were an awful lot of DNA sequencers on this planet at the time of the fall. They were running round the clock sequencing the genomes of everything from local human populations, to thousands of species of animals and plants, to the gut bacteria, and tens of trillions of other bacteria, that make up the microbiome for each of us. The cost of these things went through the floor in the years after the human genome was first sequenced in 2001. So everyone started getting in the game.”

“You’re saying we could go get one. A DNA sequencer.”

“Yes. I’ve been staring at the map of the region and torturing my memory.”

“Tougher without Google Maps, right?”

Park shrugged. “Or the Internet, period. We never appreciated how useful it was to be able to look up anything – until it was gone.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “You know, someday, when all this is over, someone is going to have to go out to San Francisco, raid Google or the Internet Archive, and retrieve a snapshot of the whole thing. A mission to recover all human knowledge. And then turn the Internet back on.”

Abrams squinted. It was a very interesting thought – and one that had no relevance whatsoever to their current mission. And what things would be like “when all this is over” had not nearly been decided yet. He steered Park back on to topic. “But today we live like our fathers did. What’d you come up with?”

“Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Human Genome Project.”

“Seriously?”

Park nodded again. “Yes. They were based in Jizan – down at the very bottom of the country. Almost at the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s less than five hundred miles from where we’re anchored right now.”

The two of them locked eyes.

Park said: “Let me go there and get what we need. With a shore team.”

Abrams shook his head. “Okay. First of all, as you ought to know, you’re not going anywhere. Not even below decks on this ship without an armed escort. Definitely not onto a shore teeming with dead.”

Park nodded. “Okay, I can under—”

“So, even if I considered sending a team – which I’m not even saying I’m considering at this point – but if I did, one thing I can tell you is that you wouldn’t be on it.”

Sarah Cameron spoke for the first time.

“Then send me, Commander. I can be Dr. Park’s proxy. His eyes and ears. We can also do a live video link, so he can literally see what I do.”

Abrams cocked his head and considered. That kind of made sense.

Park tried to speak again, but Abrams didn’t let him. “Okay, second, do I look like I have operational combat personnel sitting around jiggling their balls? Alpha’s deployed, half the surviving Marines are deployed – and the other half are spun up as a QRF to go rescue them if they get in trouble.”

Abrams paused to shake his head and marvel at himself. The longer he was in this job, the more he sounded exactly like Commander Drake – over-tasked, under-resourced, and a little snarky about the whole situation. Abrams remembered the old advice to never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Then, if he doesn’t like it, you’re a mile away. And you have his goddamned shoes.

Park didn’t look like he was backing down. “What about the ones who swept the lower decks for the Zulus that attacked me and Sarah?”

“NSF,” Abrams said, referring to the Naval Security Forces.

Sarah nodded. “I’m billeted to them anyway. Surely a few of them can be spared for this.”

Abrams shook his head. “Yeah, sending our security force out will work great – until something goes wrong here. And what’s ever gone wrong on this boat? Odysseus’s fleet was like Carnival Cruise Lines compared to us.”

Jesus, Abrams thought. I am completely turning into Drake… He also remembered why, also like Drake, he’d never really wanted this job. But now he had it, so he’d better learn to like it. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”

Park said, “You heard the officer at CentCom – two days could make the difference between survival and extinction. And getting a DNA sequencer could be that difference.” He paused, took a look at his shoes, then looked up again. “Look, Commander. I know I screwed up. But we can fix this. I know I can make it good. Just give us the chance. Let me try.”

Abrams exhaled mournfully.

“Put together a mission plan. Get in a room with Lieutenant Wesley, commander of NSF. Also grab Sergeant Lovell, if he can be spared, and who will know his ass from his elbow regarding shore missions – and, more importantly, your ass from your elbow. The Marines he commands aren’t leaving the boat, at least not on your escapade. But he’ll know how a mission like this can be run with some chance of success.”

Park’s eyes lit up, and Sarah looked excited herself.

“When you’ve hashed it out – and I mean everything, answers to every question that might arise – you come back and show it to me.”

Robbing Peter to pay Paul. That was another phrase Drake used to throw around a lot. Now Abrams understood that, too. He could either hang on to his security forces to keep the carrier safe. Or he could send a mission to get the DNA sequencer that might save humanity.

And there was no one to make these calls now but him.

Park and Cameron finally nodded, turned, and left.

And Abrams got the peace of his bridge back. For now.

Whitehall

London - Westminster Bridge

Crouching low, Colley crept forward and told Hackworth about the guns he’d found in back. Neither had any way of knowing these invaluable weapons had been on their way to CentCom HQ to get everyone there armed, in the wake of their nearly fatal outbreak. They only knew it was an odd stroke of fortune – and that it gave them some options.

Though mainly terrifying ones.

“If we get stopped…” Colley said, seeming to mean they could shoot their way out, or through the checkpoint.

Hackworth shook his head. That was crazy talk. The Tunnelers were veterans of the zombie wars – but they weren’t soldiers. And they definitely couldn’t fight the military. They’d only get themselves killed trying. No, the best place for those guns was in the crates they came in. If things got so bad that they had to break them out… well, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. But it wasn’t a possibility he liked to think about.

He waved Colley back into the rear.

Because they had now reached the security checkpoint at the end of the bridge. Hackworth shoved the barrel of the pistol as far as he could into the seat before him, to remind the driver what was at stake. That was all he could do.

The truck rolled to a stop.

“ID, manifest, destination, and business in the GSZ,” Hackworth heard an invisible guard say as he stepped up to the window. He heard a rustle as the driver handed over his ID and some papers, and answered, “Wellington Barracks.” Hackworth knew this was home to the Household Cavalry and Guards units – the guys with the big bearskin hats and red uniforms – right around the corner from Buckingham Palace. He could only hope this was a plausible lie.

But it must have been, because the heavy gate scraped out of their way, and the truck accelerated smoothly through it. By the time Hackworth climbed back into the passenger seat, they had passed under the stately gaze of Big Ben, and were emerging into Parliament Square. He looked up to see the larger-than-life statue of Churchill, slightly bent over, hand on cane, wearing his overcoat. To Hackworth, the Great Man looked tired. Maybe they all were.

The driver immediately hooked a right onto Whitehall itself – driving through the very center of the UK government. Up ahead in the middle of the road was the Cenotaph – the memorial to all of Britain’s war dead. Hackworth had seen it many times on television, always on Remembrance Sunday, when the Queen and PM and others came out to lay wreaths and observe the two-minute silence.

But it was a very different scene today – and not at all silent. Located all along Whitehall were some of the very central government ministries – the hulking Edwardian-Baroque Treasury Building, with Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in the basement. The Cabinet Office, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence – and Downing Street itself.

And in front of all these buildings, choking the wide boulevard to barely more than a single lane, were rows of big lorries. Moving trucks. And being carried onto them by moving men were… computers. Lots of computers. A few filing cabinets. Cardboard boxes. Hackworth saw what looked like a large framed painting with a drop-cloth over it. This was being supervised by men and women in suits and skirt-suits. They looked like senior civil servants.

Hackworth’s first response to this was to tense up. Here they were, the mouse in the very center of the cheese. They were either certain to be caught – or else totally safe, as no one would be stupid to drive a hijacked military truck right through the beating heart of the former British Empire. But only a few seconds later, his feelings turned to outrage. Because he very quickly got the impression these people were going somewhere – somewhere else, far away from all this.

Hackworth looked back to see Colley crouching in the space that led to the rear of the truck. “I told you,” Hackworth said. “And it’s not only the rats fleeing this ship. It looks like the captain and senior officers going. Maybe the whole crew.”

Peeking up over the dash, Colley nodded. “Everyone in charge, maybe.” But then he cocked his head at Hackworth. “Wait – are we the rats in all this?”

“Absolutely,” Hackworth said, looking back and nodding – but not taking his gun off the driver. “Because we’re getting off first.” He clenched his jaw resolutely.

“And we’re going to survive.”

* * *

They passed through the rest of the Government Security Zone, and much of central London, including Trafalgar Square, without incident. Soon, the truck full of guns and Tunnelers came to the checkpoint on the way out – right in the middle of Charing Cross Road.

Once they were north of this they would be home free. They’d still have to cross north London, with its higher risk of marauders, and after that somehow talk their way out at the Wall. But at least they wouldn’t be in the middle of a highly secure military zone, subject to discovery at any second.

Hackworth crawled back into his little space, finger on trigger, trying to decode the expression and body language of the driver as he did so. Because if Hackworth knew they’d be relatively safe from discovery after this… the driver knew it, too.

The last thing Hackworth saw before he crawled out of sight was a civilian truck facing them, trying to cross the checkpoint in the opposite direction. It was hard to miss because the men in the truck, and the soldiers at the checkpoint, were on the verge of shouting at one another. It was turning into some kind of a stand-off.

And Hackworth had already seen enough to know that, as order had started to collapse, looters and marauders in the city were attacking soldiers and stealing their weapons – which were quickly becoming priceless, with the spreading disorder, and the approaching undead horde. It was no surprise the soldiers were jumpy and aggressive. They were under siege – from all sides.

And even from his hidey-hole, Hackworth could hear this stand-off ramping up – all underneath the loud and tense voice of the guard who approached them now.

“ID, manifest, and destination.”

Before Hackworth could react, he heard the driver’s door fly open – and the pressure on the seat before him lifted, as the driver threw himself out.

“Armed men in the truck!” he shouted. “The whole back’s filled with raiders!”

Ah, shit. Hackworth thought. They’d just been done.

He heard more feet on the road, as well as yelling, all of it surrounding the truck now. And then a new shouted voice: “Everyone out of the lorry, right now – hands up and moving slowly. Comply if you don’t want to be shot.”

Hackworth didn’t see any way out of this. It was over.

He took a deep breath, and prepared to surrender.

But then gunfire rang out – ahead of them at first, and then all around. At first Hackworth thought the soldiers had simply opened up on them.

But then he heard cries nearby, in addition to the sound of bullets crashing into the cab and tearing through the thin metal skin of the cargo area. He covered up his head and curled up into a ball in his little space – praying everyone in back was doing the same.

What felt like a lifetime later, but was really no more than ten seconds, the gunfire died down – and Hackworth felt he had to see what the hell was going on. He dragged himself up into the passenger seat and peered out. He could see the unmoving bodies of soldiers sprawled out in the street in front of them. And on the other side of the barrier… marauders, armed with pistols, and a few military-issue rifles. They had evidently all come out of that civilian truck facing them.

And now they started sweeping forward.

And for no reason that Hackworth would ever be able to explain to himself, he opened the passenger-side door and swung down onto the blacktop – which was littered with shell casings, not to mention spreading pools of blood.

Movement to his left caught his eye and he saw a very young soldier, but with what looked like officer’s insignia and beret, pop up from behind cover with his side arm held forward. Nearly instantly shots rang out from the marauders – and the soldier took several hits in his body armor, and one in his shoulder, where Hackworth could see blood mist out into the air. The young officer went down on his back, hard, and his pistol skittered across the blacktop – all while Hackworth watched, horrified and frozen.

Looking up, he saw one of the marauders – a scruffy thirty-something man with long hair and a patchy beard, and incongruously wearing military-issue body armor – leap the concrete barrier with a pistol in hand. The man saw Hackworth as soon as he cleared the barrier, and leveled his gun at him.

Hackworth immediately put both hands in the air – though he kept hold of the gun. Maybe it was his civilian clothes, maybe his age or posture, but for whatever reason the marauder didn’t fire. Instead he eased off, then stepped over the prone form of the wounded soldier, his feet on either side of the young man’s waist.

Pathetically, the soldier raised his hands up in front of his face, trying to protect himself from what was coming, or somehow wave it all away.

And, then, unexpectedly he tilted his head and looked back – and straight into Hackworth’s eyes. His face was terrified, and in pain – and, mainly, he was pleading for help, for succor, for something. Anything.

Hackworth held the young man’s pleading gaze for two seconds – and then looked away. He looked ahead of him, where he could see more of the marauders removing the barrier. Their way out of there was now clear.

Without another look down at the wounded and doomed young man, Hackworth climbed back into the truck and slid over into the driver’s seat this time.

As he put the truck into gear… he heard the single shot.

He put the accelerator into the floor.

And he got them the hell out of there.

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck

750 Feet Over Western Russia

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!!”

Oleg Aliyev – Kazakh bioweaponeer, half-assed vaccine researcher, and would-be savior of the world – came fully awake, and directly into full-on panic, as the blackness of the ground raced straight at his face, and the tortured helicopter shook violently all around him. Between his face and that hard frozen ground below was only a glass chin-bubble – and a totally indeterminate amount of open air. Indeterminate, but definitely shrinking fast.

Basically, he was going down – and he was about to go in hard.

Aliyev and his super-expensive Eurocopter EC175 – both of which had miraculously gotten away from his burning, exploding, zombie-overrun, lethal-pathogen-coated dacha back in the Altai Mountains of central Asia – were not only diving at the ground at high speed. But they also seemed to be in an uncontrolled roll to the right; and there was a little tail vortex thrown in for good measure. But Aliyev had to intuit all this from physical sensations, and from the instruments.

Because he couldn’t see a damned thing.

Yes, the ground was racing at his face – but there had been nothing like a lightbulb burning on this continent for the better part of two years. There was a sliver of moon up there behind him somewhere, but it was tucked in behind thick clouds, napping.

Which was exactly what Oleg Aliyev had been doing until two seconds ago.

And it was falling asleep while flying that – in a development which ought to be surprising to no one – had caused this unbidden and unwelcome dive, roll, and vortex. Specifically, he was pretty sure his hands had fallen off the cyclic, and then his slumping torso had pushed it forward.

Obviously, on a trip this long, the helicopter ought to have been on autopilot. But the damned GPS satellites falling out of the sky had scuppered that. Every time he tried to turn on the autopilot, the display read “GDOP Error” and wouldn’t engage. Aliyev vaguely seemed to recall this meant the GPS fix didn’t meet the error threshold. But it sure as hell didn’t matter now.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he repeated, as he battled to regain control of the shuddering aircraft as it fell so enthusiastically out of the sky, with him in it.

Righting a plummeting and out-of-control helicopter had not been, to the best of his recollection, a major component of his hasty pilot training. But he figured he now had the rest of his life to figure it out. As he tried this, tried that, tried this again, he also realized exactly what his initial mistake had been – the flawed thinking that had got him into this aerial shit-show in the first place.

Where he’d gone wrong was in focusing on fuel, when he should have been thinking about flight time – specifically, how long he’d actually have to pilot the damned aircraft by himself. He’d done all his planning based on range, not endurance. Not the helicopter’s endurance, and definitely not his own. He had known it was 3,655.52 miles from the helipad behind his former home – which sat nearly atop the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility – across much of Asia and all of Europe to Charing Cross, the very center of London.

And he knew his beautiful Eurocopter, which might only be beautiful for a few more seconds now, unless you thought fireballs were beautiful, had a cruising speed just a hair over 177mph – and could thus theoretically deliver him to his destination in twenty hours and change. Though that was before adding in the all-important refueling stops.

And there had been Aliyev’s error.

He’d been worried about the refueling issue. Because even with his auxiliary tanks, he could only stretch to 750 miles (on a trip of, again, over 3,600) before having to set down and try to find more fuel. And every single one of those stops was destined to be a no-shit breath-stealing dice with death. Every stop put him at massive risk.

So far he had survived two such refueling stops. In both cases, he’d taken off again with seconds to spare before legions of the local former population fell on his ass. And, perhaps relatedly, both stops had taken longer than anticipated.

And so now, as he realized when it was pretty much too late, he had been either flying or refueling for fifteen hours straight. And prior to that he had been caught up in his pathogen research, then vaccine research, then the adrenaline-washed horror show that had been him bugging the fuck out of his exploding and overrun dacha… and so now he realized – again, too late – that he hadn’t actually slept, by his count, in thirty-five fucking hours.

And the lack of sleep, and just trying to bull through and stay awake, was now right on the verge of killing him – killing him dead.

But as he hauled on the cyclic for all he was worth, and the helo simultaneously and miraculously came out of both its dive and its spin, and even the tail started to settle down and behave itself, Aliyev exhaled in blessed relief – because he had just saved his own life.

But he had perhaps only saved it for a few minutes.

Because he knew he was now going to have to try to land somewhere, park this thing up – and get some goddamned sleep. There was simply no way around it. He couldn’t just pull over, grab a 64-ounce coffee, and keep on truckin’.

And he definitely couldn’t risk falling asleep again.

Because, as he’d just learned, the only thing worse than falling asleep at the wheel – and it was much, much, much, much worse – was falling asleep at the stick.

And not only would falling asleep again probably send him off to his last, eternal, dirt-covered nap. But it would also probably mean the destruction or at least disappearance of the super-duper zombie-killing pathogen he had in a coldbox in back – and thus result in the whole world going to sleep right along with him.

And neither would ever wake up.

* * *

Luckily, through the night-vision goggles Aliyev managed to dig out of his bug-out bag without sending the helo into another dive, it looked like the ass end of nowhere down there below him. Just a whole hell of a lot of nothing.

Aliyev knew he was somewhere over western Russia – which was a goddamned vast place to start with. But not only couldn’t he see any structures anywhere down there – he couldn’t even see any roads. No telephone or power lines. Not a damned thing made by the hand of man. That was a pretty hopeful sign.

Even better… he could now just see a nice little glen in the middle of those millions of hectares of forest. This glen was clear of trees, looked fairly level – though that was tricky to work out with the crappy depth perception of the NVGs – and with nothing in it but a lovely little trickling stream passing peacefully through.

If Aliyev could survive a night on the ground anywhere, it had to be here.

He brought the helo down quickly but reasonably lightly on its four fat tires, then shut down the engines as quickly as he knew how. He clambered into the back, grabbed his bug-out bag and Benelli Tactical shotgun, pulled open the side door, leapt out to the ground, and ran like hell – the bag bouncing on his back, the shotgun pointing around crazily in all directions – until he was a hundred yards away from the aircraft, in whatever direction.

Then he stopped, turned around, squatted in the knee-high grass…

And he watched. And waited.

To see who or what would come.

* * *

Nothing did.

Vaguely reassured, Aliyev tiptoed back to the helo, climbed in, pulled the door shut, and got his head down – resting on a crate of grenades – then took a long look down the length of his body to just beyond it.

His last waking sight was the self-powered clinical coldbox by his feet.

It was this that held the whole purpose of this insane-ass, dangerous-as-fuck, multiple-cross-continental journey. The coldbox held his latest, greatest, and almost certainly last designer pathogen – Meningitis Z, or MZ – which killed the dead with outstanding reliability, and was also communicable as a son of a bitch. Unleashed among the dense masses of dead swarming Britain, it might reasonably be hoped to spell the beginning of the end for the world’s seven billion undead bastards.

At the very least, it would take the pressure off London, and maybe even save Britain. God knew – as did Aliyev, from radio traffic – CentCom wasn’t going to.

The same coldbox also held his MZ vaccine, which might just keep this pathogen, once it started rampaging around the globe, from taking out the few remaining living people along with it. And Aliyev was glad to be reminded of why he was doing all this. And it was good.

And then he lost consciousness, in absolute record time.

He only woke again, with a terrible start, not having the vaguest idea how much later – it could have been five seconds, could have been five hours – when the side cargo door fucking opened up.

From the outside.

That meant one thing: at least it wasn’t the dead. They couldn’t open doors.

Mentally, Aliyev was still seventy-five percent in his dream – he’d been dreaming of flying around the world like Superman, except with his arms spread out to his sides like a bird, and crop-dusting poisons out of his ass, which settled across the face of the Earth killing everything they touched – but when he woke up enough to work out what was happening, and saw faces sticking into his helicopter cabin…

He was too scared to speak.

But he was screaming inside his head:

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck – FUCK!

Cossacks

Somewhere in the Forests of Western Russia

“We are simple Russian peasants, tovarisch. We mean no one any harm.”

Yeah, right, Aliyev thought. It was simple Russian peasants who rose up with the Cossacks and opened up a giant can of whoop-ass on the Tsars. But he just smiled and nodded and warmed his hands around his tin cup.

He’d finally gotten that cup of coffee.

Now he sat before a small fire, a few meters from the parked helo, in the company of four strapping young Russian farm boys – the same ones who had so brazenly intruded on his sleep, and his helicopter. They hadn’t killed and eaten him yet. But they’d survived the Apocalypse this long somehow, out here in the ass end of nowhere, so there could be little question they were capable of it.

All of them wore dirty, frayed, earth-toned country-ass clothes and work boots. All had unkempt hair and various lengths of non-designer stubble. All were between big and very big, and all were variously armed. They could have been brothers; and, in any case, Aliyev couldn’t even really tell them apart.

He paused now to curse fate. Only he could have such utterly shit luck as to land in what looked like the absolute middle of the Russian nowhere, and somehow end up in the clutches of a host of Russian peasants – or Cossacks, as he fancied them. Then again, he very belatedly considered, sound does carry. So maybe they’d been some distance away when they heard the unfamiliar sound of a helicopter landing, and then tracked him down.

Which, as Aliyev scanned out past the firelight to the ring of utter darkness that surrounded them in this forest glen, made him wonder what the hell else was out there, tracking them down even now.

He looked longingly over to the side of the helo where, reflected in the flickering firelight, his Benelli Tactical shotgun was propped up against the airframe. That was where the farm boys had put it. Now it might as well be a hundred miles away up in a tree. Oh, how Aliyev ached for it. How he cursed himself for having let these four get the drop on him so completely.

Have I never heard of fucking door locks?! He cursed himself in his head. This was actually a ridiculous mistake he had made twice in a row now. But it was one he definitely wouldn’t be making again.

One way or another.

Sitting on the ground beside the Benelli Tactical was his bug-out bag. The farm boy in charge had taken a quick rummage around inside. But so far they hadn’t taken anything from him.

Except the medical cold box.

Which now sat at the feet of the one speaking, and calling Aliyev comrade.

“We hunt. We fish. We are okay.” His dark eyes, glinting in the firelight, darted down to the box at his feet. “The only thing we worry about is infection when we go into the town. One bite, one scratch…” He shrugged his massive shoulders, as if no more need be said.

Another one of them, sitting to Aliyev’s side and slightly behind him, said, “What is it inside the box, tovarisch?” The two of them had already opened it up and seen the vials and syringes within. “It’s a cure for the plague – isn’t it? Pravda?”

The last word meant: the truth.

Aliyev shook his head. He had to give the dumb country crackers credit – it wasn’t a terrible guess. Crazy lone scientist flying across Asia with vials of drugs in his expensive helicopter… what other explanation could there be?

Now he looked around and spoke carefully – using Russian he had not spoken in a long time, but which had been the sole language of his long career with Biopreparat, the Soviet Union’s giant and super-secret bioweapons program.

“No, my friends, it is not. There is no cure for the plague.” Now he just had to quickly figure out some plausible lie to tell them about it instead. They’d seen the vials, so there was little point telling them the box contained a packed lunch.

If he told them the truth, that it was a bioengineered pathogen designed to be super-lethal to the dead, they might just fancy the idea of wielding an anti-zombie bioweapon themselves. But releasing it out here in the sticks on a couple of random dead guys was a virtual guarantee that it would just burn itself out.

No, Aliyev had to get this shit to southern England – where there was stratospheric undead population density. And if he couldn’t convince these crackers that it wasn’t what they thought it was, namely a cure, they might inject themselves just to see. They’d be dead in hours, but that would be small consolation and little use to Aliyev.

He absolutely couldn’t let this bunch of yokels steal or expend his MZ.

“Your accent,” the farm boy in charge said. “You speak Russian, but you aren’t Russian.”

Oh, God, thought Aliyev. Now, on top of everything else, these shitheads are going to kill me for not being local. Russians had always made themselves out as superior to Kazakhs. He remembered that sinister clown Putin proclaiming that there was actually no such country as Kazakhstan – and that Kazakhs had better be on their best behavior while serving Russian interests.

At least that ass-clown is dead, he thought. One upside to the Apocalypse.

But you could play that game all day. All the ass-clowns were dead. Except the four here encircling Aliyev. Which made him realize he was getting fatally distracted. What he really needed was to figure out how to get the ever-living fuck out of here, and away from these provincials. Because the level of tension in this social circle, which had been pretty high to begin with, was going nowhere but up.

“What is it a cure for, then, if not the plague? It is not the ingredients for Sex on the Beach.” The cracker laughed aloud at his own joke, showing a conspicuously missing tooth.

Aliyev could feel the circle tightening – literally. These guys were edging in toward him. And every nerve in his right arm and hand ached to reach under the down jacket he’d put on against the chill, snake up inside his waist band… and take hold of the FN Five-seveN autoloading pistol holstered there.

“Why do you keep secrets from us? Do you think we’re not trustworthy?”

The farm boy slightly behind him spoke up, his voice low and sinister. “I think maybe he thinks he is above us. With his shiny helicopter, and his expensive gear, and his fine foreign accent.”

Aliyev was now too scared to speak – and worried that he was visibly trembling, and not just from the chill of the night air in late-autumn Russia. He was also torn with irresolution, with conflicting thoughts and fears, with his own inadequacy. With his inability to out-think these idiots.

What? he wondered frantically. What is their game?

This was not an idle question. They were all visibly armed – but none had drawn their weapons, or even touched them. They had taken his belongings out of the helicopter and rifled through them – but so far they had stolen nothing. Did they plan on killing him and roasting him on a spit on this very fire for their dinner – before fighting each other over his weapons and equipment?

“Or maybe he is okay,” the leader growled. “Maybe he will share and share alike.”

That fully stocked bug-out bag – with its survival essentials, GPS, NVGs, tools, batteries, and particularly ammo – was worth much more than its weight in gold, particularly now that the Apocalypse was actually here. And never mind the Benelli Tactical shotgun – which was pretty much like Wōden, Achilles, and Thor had all gotten together over beers one night and designed the zombie-fighting weapon of their dreams.

No, there was no way Aliyev could see himself just walking out of here – never mind still in possession of all his invaluable shit.

Actually, there was one scenario in which he saw himself surviving – and it involved the most valuable item of all: the helicopter itself. Which Aliyev alone among them could fly, and in which he could easily see himself turned into a permanent slave chauffeur in order to ferry these brown-bear-fuckers around.

Or, then again… maybe they actually were just nice farm boys who were happy for the diversion of some company for a change, and were just giving him good-natured shit – and maybe hoping to get lucky and get in on an antidote to the plague. There was just no way to tell. It totally eluded him.

Aliyev tried to control his ragged breathing.

And then, finally, the truth of it hit him.

He knew that any shred of humanity he hoped to hold onto depended totally on maintaining his ability to regard and honor the essential humanity of other living people. These guys were survivors, just like him.

And he also knew that any remote chance he had of getting out of there alive, never mind with all his stuff, almost certainly depended on him gunning them down like rabid dogs before they did the exact same thing to him first.

It was that simple.

In a word, he had to start, and then somehow win, a gunfight.

The leader picked up a bit of dirty rag, lifted the coffee pot out of the fire, stood up, and moved to stand directly over Aliyev.

“How about some more of our nice coffee, tovarisch?”

Aliyev noted that he was holding the pot with his left hand.

While his right had moved to rest on the butt of the cheap-ass revolver he wore tucked into his cheap-ass leather belt.

Aliyev held out his cup and tried to smile.

And as the coffee waterfalled down into his cup, he wondered whether he was going to die rooted to this spot, too afraid, or – much worse and even more pathetic – too embarrassed to make a move.

His cup was nearly full.

Lapse

Camp Lemonnier - Northwest Quadrant

Well, this is fucking awkward, Ali thought.

She withdrew her katana from the head of a walking corpse wearing traditional Arab garb, then seamlessly wiped the blade on its dishdasha as it fell. She’d come up on it so quickly and quietly that it never woke up. It just made a tiny wheezing sound as it died for the second time, then crumpled to the floor.

She saw a stairwell farther down the corridor, then turned back to where Homer was watching her from behind. She could feel his eyes on her as unmistakably as if they’d been laser beams. Speaking quietly and emotionlessly, she said, “I’ll head upstairs. You clear the ground floor.”

He hesitated, obviously not thrilled about splitting up.

Ali read his look and thought: Get used to it.

And then Homer got it, too. Splitting up was the whole point for her.

She turned and headed up without a word, flipping her sword into an overhand grip to carry more comfortably by her side. She hadn’t even brought her rifle – the Mk12 designated marksman rifle (DMR) was half as big as she was, not to mention that she neither wanted to take along the big optic nor remove it. She did have her HK USP Tactical .45, with a big Brügger & Thomet suppressor screwed into the threaded barrel, sticking out the bottom of an open drop-leg holster.

But she didn’t plan on taking it out.

At the top of the stairs, she edged her nose out into the hallway, just a small and silent shadow among memories of shadows. Nothing moved, or even didn’t move, in either direction down the hallway. But through the doorway nearly straight ahead, she could see a figure sitting in a chair, facing the window.

And it was wearing tan Army ACUs.

Outstanding, Ali thought. She opened the pouch on her belt that contained her improvised ZPW (Zombie Prisoner of War) kit – hood, flex cuffs, and tightly rolled-up PVC body bag. Then she paused. This might be tricky. She couldn’t recall when she’d ever had to take one alive – erm, “alive.”

She shook her head. Whatever.

But as she silently rounded on the sitting figure, and it failed to perk up, she realized she still wasn’t going to have to. This one had an M9 pistol in its lifeless hand, which lay across its lap. And there was quite a lot of the contents of its cranium on the floor – dried up now across the years, and little more than fuzz and stains.

Ali mentally amended that: HIS cranium. Judging from the only faint spiderwebbing around his eyes, he’d still been a man when he took his own life.

And he had died like a man.

She exhaled mournfully and stepped up to the window, looking out at what must have been his last sight before he died. It was an open stretch of parade ground. But it must have been bedlam down there when he’d punched his own ticket. She wondered what his regrets were in his last moment on this Earth.

She wondered what her own were going to be.

And, unsurprisingly, but against her better judgment, she mentally flashed back to that Seahawk helo flight back from Homer’s crazy-ass mission to singlehandedly sink a 28,000-ton Russian battlecruiser. And not only had that stunt worked, but Homer had looked serenely confident that it would all along – including when he came up front and took the co-pilot’s seat, to keep her company on the flight back.

She had shaken her head then, but did have to give him credit. So she reached up and offered him a high-five, which he returned. Not long after that, as they’d sat with their legs hanging off the stern of the JFK, listening to the cheers as the Admiral Nakhimov exploded and headed for the bottom, she’d turned and kissed him on the shoulder.

She’d pretty much immediately regretted that.

Because he then looked across at her hopefully. Had she changed her mind?

And now she remembered back to a couple of days before that, when Homer had already brought his kids back, but before Ali broke things off between the two of them. When Homer had introduced them all.

“No,” Homer said, kneeling down, “Mommy didn’t know Ali. But I know they would have been friends if she had. She’s my friend – and she’s going to be your friend, too.”

Isabel had reached up and taken Ali’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said, looking nearly straight up. “We’ll be nice to her.”

“Good girl,” Homer said. “Mommy’s watching you right now from heaven, and she’s so happy and proud of you.”

Ali had done her best to smile – thinking how much easier that line must be to pull off when you actually believed it.

But, no, she hadn’t changed her mind.

Her relationship with Homer had to end. For all kinds of reasons.

The high-five, and the kiss, had just been two moments of weakness – all of which had started, really, when that same helo had earlier been in a flat spin, with Ali down on the deck, firmly believing she was seconds away from death. But, no – nothing had changed, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t continue her love affair with Homer. Maybe one day, after all this, if they both lived, if the world made it.

But not now. It was too distracting, too dangerous.

But flipping her face shield up and focusing on her own reflection in the window glass, she continued to remember, and could never forget, that when she was in that uncontrolled, spinning, diving aircraft, having what she was sure would be her last thoughts on this Earth… they had been of Homer.

Something moved in the reflection behind her.

She whirled around, bringing her sword up – too late.

* * *

When Homer burst into the room, what he saw was a 6’5” 260-pound dead infantry grunt, some kind of corn-fed Nebraska linebacker type, pinning Ali to the ground. He could hardly even see her under its big bulk.

Her sword was pressed flat across her chest by the thing’s massive weight, and she was trying to draw her handgun, but a tree-trunk-sized thigh was pressing into the weapon and holster, making that all but impossible. She was not only giving up 120 pounds and superior upper-body strength to this guy, but none of Ali’s usual tactics for dealing with bigger opponents – nerve strikes, pressure points, pain application, leverage, timing and superior speed – were of any use now.

The house-sized dead guy had simply pinned her with his weight, and now his big gelatinous mouth was mushed up against her face shield, gnawing. Homer couldn’t even imagine what she was feeling in that moment. And he didn’t have time to. He lined up his boarding axe and swung it flat, taking off the back of the Zulu’s head, and then he put his boot into its hip and rolled it off her.

She bounced to her feet, ripped her helmet and face shield off – getting the shield flipped down at the last second was all she’d had time for, and the only thing that had saved her – and she squared up to Homer and said:

“Idiot!”

He straightened up, lowered his boarding axe to his side, and opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“Which part of ‘dead Americans in uniform are early-stage victims’ did you fail to comprehend? Or were you playing fucking Angry Birds during the briefing?”

Homer closed his mouth. He got it now – he had screwed up, perhaps badly, by destroying this potentially valuable Zulu. In his urgency to save Ali, he’d forgotten the mission. But, moreover, he also understood that losing mission focus wasn’t really why Ali was so pissed at him.

It was because she’d had to be rescued. And – much worse – by him.

This was actually the first time Homer had seen Ali lose her cool – ever.

She picked up her sword and stalked out.

Over her shoulder, she said, “Find your own goddamned building to clear.”

* * *

Yeah, Homer got it – but Ali knew he didn’t get all of it.

As she exited the building and headed back to their staging area to get washed down, ideally with chlorine bleach solution, she cursed herself inside her head. For an operator known for her complete unflappability, losing her shit the way she just had was like an alcoholic with a twenty-five-year sobriety token downing a shot of whiskey. She couldn’t take it back.

And now it defined her.

But she was damn well going to take something from it.

A little reminder, she thought. You take your head out of this game for one second, and you’re done. FUCK.

Surviving over two years of ZA, on the most hazardous missions imaginable, would mean nothing, would all come down to nothing, if she went out now. All it took was one bite, one scratch, one splash of gunk… and she’d end up exactly the same as these seven billion other dead dumbasses who’d spent their precious days of life sitting on the couch watching reality television and eating cheesy poofs. All her accomplishments, all her trials bested, all that honing of herself into a perfect and exalted instrument of war – it would all be gone in a second, turned to nothing more than moaning and slouching and, finally, a bullet in the head.

And she knew exactly what had caused this near-fatal lapse on her part.

Thinking about fucking Homer.

And what had caused him to screw up royally by destroying that Zulu? His emotions for her. Jesus Christ.

And, come to remember it, the reason she had been down on the floor of that crashing helo in the first place was because she had just lost an aerial duel with that Spetsnaz sniper. Another first for her, and not a good one.

Not cool. Not cool.

Had she been thinking about Homer during that fight? She couldn’t even remember now. She only knew that losing was an experience equally unfamiliar and unpleasant, and one she had zero intention of letting happen again.

But what had happened just now was not a promising sign.

At least Handon hadn’t witnessed it – either the lapse, or the squabbling between them, with her storming off. If he had, he would have had serious questions about what was going on with the combat effectiveness of his team.

But, in any case, Ali could see it all now, with perfect clarity.

Indulging in love was every bit as dangerous as she’d feared. It had just a minute ago nearly gotten her killed. And it simply could not be tolerated.

She had to keep her mind on her goddamned job.

Notes from Underground

Camp Lemonnier - PX

Henno was a long way from Yorkshire now, as he stepped carefully through the scattered debris on the floor of the base PX – which seemed to him more like a mall department store than any kind of military setting – peering into darkness that was just light enough to not call for NVGs.

Because it was cramped and tight quarters in here, he had his SIG P220 Combat out in a two-handed grip, his rifle hanging on its single-point sling to his side. Both weapons had long suppressors screwed on to their threaded barrels, the SIG previously riding in an open-bottom holster to accommodate it. And the handle of Henno’s cricket bat protruded from the top of his assault pack over his right shoulder – within easy drawing reach.

With each of his careful, quiet footfalls, his assault boots raised another little cloud of dust – two years’ worth of it coated the floor, as well as every horizontal surface. He sighed. But only in his head.

He knew they were close – really close – to finally completing their weeks-long mission. Two years long, really. It had been a cure they had been looking for since the very start.

But, as close as they were to success… they were even closer to failure. Britain was on the ropes. And every minute they were out here, across all the minutes since they set foot out of Hereford, everything was on the cusp of going spectacularly wrong. They could all be killed or infected in one bad heartbeat.

And if they went down, so would all of humanity.

And Henno had to keep that from happening.

He stole a glimpse over his shoulder at Handon – and slightly wondered what it meant that he’d paired them together. Probably nothing more than: You’re not getting to me. Henno knew how it was in elite units – and more so in the SAS than elsewhere. You stood tall, you did your job, you didn’t take shit from anyone – and any shit you did get you paid back double.

With the bad blood between the two of them, this was Handon refusing to bow to it. Acknowledging it, but refusing to let it affect him, or the mission. It was just Handon being who he was. He and Henno were two men with wills of tempered steel, both capable of extraordinary violence. And if they were now eyeing each other warily, that was just what happened with two alphas in one pack.

No, what Henno was much more worried about was what the fuck they were doing on this half-arsed Zulu rodeo in the first place. They had a crystal-clear mission objective. And if they couldn’t achieve it here, then they needed to push forward to where they could. His countrymen were falling every minute they messed around here on behalf of some American conventional forces muppet, who would probably shoot them as soon as help them, given half a chance.

But Henno couldn’t run off and complete the mission on his own – at least not yet – so the best thing to do was get this done as fast as possible.

He swept forward through the dark aisles, not really waiting for Handon to keep up. And, once again, he felt the man’s eyes on his back. It didn’t bother him, any more than did Handon’s nominal authority over him. He knew that many times, if not most, authority was to be mistrusted – and it was always to be questioned.

But he also had to be careful to judge things on their merits – and to allow Handon to be right when he was right. Henno couldn’t be fighting him just because they were in a fight, or because Handon had been wrong before.

He was self-aware enough to be wary of his early conditioning. To know that his own upbringing had left him very distrustful of authority – and nearly completely intolerant of bad decision-making.

And he had to make sure he wasn’t letting it own or control him. Especially not his decisions and actions now, when everything was on the line.

He let his mind range back.

* * *

The Selby Coalfields in North Yorkshire covered over a hundred square miles – and were said to hold a hundred million tons of untapped coal, enough to power Britain for a hundred years. Moreover, the Selby fields had opened at the end of the miners’ strikes of the mid-eighties, when Margaret Thatcher’s government tried to smash the miners’ unions and leave the communities that depended on them to rot. Henno had been born in one of those communities.

His father worked down the mines.

The opening of Selby spelled a long-term future, and his dad couldn’t move their family there fast enough. People came from all over the country. There was no housing at Selby, but the miners settled in Castleford, Barnsley, Doncaster – or, in the case of Henno’s family, the down-at-heel village of Kirby Mills, literally on the wrong side of the tracks from the more prosperous Kirkbymoorside – and commuted in to work.

But there was work – which meant life.

Though, just as in earlier times, a miner was never far from danger or death. When there was an accident, it was often catastrophic – because everything was so big and fast. Giant lorries pounded down the roads, the conveyer belts ran at top speed, and everyone was required to work flat out. Thatcher had crushed the power of the unions, so management could do anything they wanted – including putting the workers at risk.

But Henno was too young to be aware of any of that. He grew up tromping around the North York Moors – walking on his own many miles out in the wilds, even before he hit puberty. He was happy out there in the fields and dales, and the severe, dramatic, windswept moors.

But underground it was still a dog-eat-dog world. There was a lot of bravado among coal-workers, and a great sense of camaraderie. But it was all built on sand. The mine owners – greedy for quick profits – started using contractors to drive the headers, instead of their own men. This fired the greed of the men, many of whom went contract for the bonuses and overtime – selling their influence and long-term prospects.

When everyone else is selling out, it becomes costly not to.

Henno’s dad could have been a contractor and made tons – but he refused, maintaining his solidarity with the lads still in the union. It proved to be a very costly decision. Eventually privatization of the coal industry, loss of subsidy, and low prices made the pits unprofitable in 21st-century England.

Selby closed – and everyone was thrown out of work again.

Even young as he was, Henno knew his fool of a father should have left then. There was no longer anything for them there. But he was stubborn – he wouldn’t leave his mates he’d worked the coal face with. So they stayed, the family living off benefits, the father drinking away an increasing share of them. He became an angry, frustrated, domineering drunk – always making bad decisions and losing what little money they had. Soon he was sitting at home all day, with little to do, and growing more bitter, and more ridiculous, by the day.

It was bad decision after bad decision. By the man in authority, the one who was responsible for them, the one who was supposed to know what to do.

So Henno would tramp off into the moors to get away. He would sit alone and just watch the heather-covered hillsides. He discovered the isolated Blakey Ridge, nearly ten miles away, and the Red Lion Inn that sat atop it. He’d do odd jobs there, and they’d give him meals, and tip him out at the bar. That became his home.

But on the day of his sixteenth birthday, with the written permission of his mother, he enlisted in the British Army – as a boy soldier. Though controversial in later years, the army continued its practice since WW1 of recruiting sixteen- and seventeen-year old boys into the forces. It was like an apprenticeship, a form of social mobility for all strata of society. For Henno it was a way out, and it became a place to grow up. For years he sent his pay packet home for his mother and sisters – begging them to keep it and not to tell Dad.

And all the while he grew stronger, smarter, better skilled, and more self-reliant, training course by course, year by year – finally climbing to the elite ranks of the SAS, and becoming one of the best soldiers in the best unit in what had been, for centuries, the best army in the world.

But he’d already had hardwired into him a very low tolerance for bullshit and stupidity – and especially for bad decision-making. And that could be a great asset now. But it had also put him on a collision course with Handon.

And if they collided at full speed, the collateral damage could be spectacular.

* * *

Pred and Juice cleared together through a warren of smaller semi-rigid structures. There was zero tension with these two – and maybe only an inch open air between them. They were closer than brothers. As they methodically moved and cleared, covering their sectors and each other with practiced ease and skill, they talked quietly.

“How’s it feel to be back in the Horn of Africa?” Pred asked, covering a left-hand corner while Juice swept right.

“Eh. Not bad. I was once shot down in a plane that took off right over there.”

“Oh, yeah? How come you didn’t die?” Pred swung his rifle smoothly up and around, and led them down the next alley.

“Kindness of old friends, mainly.”

“CSAR kind of thing?”

“Yeah – but under fire. More a QRF kind of thing.”

Pred just grunted and spat in response. Then he nodded at a bigger office building they were actually going to need to take seriously while clearing. Pulling open the door and holding it for Juice, he said:

“Hope your old friends made it out of here before the end.”

Now Juice just grunted and spat in response.

Following him in, Pred instinctively reached for his sword – but then remembered he’d replaced it with his aluminum Louisville slugger, and pulled that out from his pack. In seconds the pair had cleared the handful of front rooms. That left only a corridor leading to the back. But they could already hear something stirring down there.

Juice squinted. “May as well let ’em come to us.”

“True.” Predator stood at the end of the hallway and rapped three times on the wall with the baseball bat – loud. Then he turned back to face Juice. His expression grew thoughtful, and he asked: “Don’t you ever let it get you down?”

Juice arched his eyebrows, and leaned his heavily-laden bulk up against a wall. “Let what get me down?”

“The fact that pretty much the whole world has turned into one giant monster trying to eat you. Trying to eat us.”

Juice shook his head. “You got a real cheery outlook, man.” He paused to spit tobacco juice on the floor. “Anyway, believe me, the whole world was trying to eat you before this. We just had good immune systems—” But then he cut himself off and pointed over Pred’s shoulder, where a dead guy was now stumbling down the hall straight toward his back.

Pred glanced behind him but said, “Finish your thought.”

“We just had good immune systems to keep the tiny critters out – and sharp sticks to keep the big ones off. That’s it. Nothing’s really changed. It ’s just gotten worse.”

Pred nodded and put his hand on his chin, looking like this was a pretty interesting thought.

“Uh—” Juice pointed again.

Predator turned as the Zulu got within ten feet of him and stuck his baseball bat into its chest, stopping its forward progress – though it pressed forward and reached around with both arms, hissing quietly. Pred then twisted back at the waist toward Juice and asked, “Hey – does my Zulu look Somali in this?”

Juice leaned in. “Nah, don’t think so. Another North African, I think.”

“Hmm.” Disappointed, Pred removed the bat from the creature’s chest and bopped it once on the head, one-handed – crushing its skull and dropping it to the floor. The only sound was that of quietly crunching skull bone and mushing brain matter. With Pred’s massive reach, extended by the bat, he’d been able to do all this before the thing got anywhere near scratching range of him.

As he leaned over and took another look at it on the ground, a second one appeared down the hall. It was identical in dress and skin pigment, so Pred gave it the same treatment. The skull-crushing with the bat was almost more of a wrist flick. It looked like he was expending no more arm strength than he would to pop the top off a beer bottle.

Pred looked down the hall. Nothing else emerged. “I think that’s it. C’mon.”

Juice followed him down to the single large room at the back.

And when they pushed the door open and stepped in… both just stood silent and still and in awe, gawking all around them.

Juice whistled once – then looked up at Pred.

And then he hit his radio button.

* * *

“Go ahead, Juice,” Handon said, stepping outside into the light, where Henno was already standing, scanning the area, and taking a swig of water from his Camel-bak.

“Yeah, we’ve found something you might want to see.”

“How about you just tell me what it is.”

“Sure. We’ve basically found some kind of trophy room or shrine.”

“Shrine to what?”

“The former garrison of the base, I think.” Juice paused. “It’s a whole room full of patches and ribbons and rank insignia – everything from single stripes to single stars.” That meant buck private to brigadier general. “There’s unit patches – 10th Mountain… 449th Air Expeditionary Group… 3rd ID… Texas Army National Guard… 3rd Marines out of Okinawa… There’s also a shitload of fruit salad: hundreds of meritorious service medals, combat action ribbons, Bronze stars… Iraq, Afghanistan, and Global War on Terror campaign medals, Presidential Unit Citations, sharpshooter badges… also Airborne and Ranger tabs, a couple of long tabs… I could go on.”

“Don’t,” Handon said. “I get the idea. Where’d all these come from?”

“My guess? From the former garrison – every soldier in every tenant command of this base. Everyone who served here. Everything that used to be Velcro’d or pinned onto their uniforms is now collected here.”

“Received, out,” Handon said. He looked at Henno. “You want to come help me try to shake the truth out of that son of a bitch Zorn?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

The two jogged heavily back toward the rear – making for that southwest guard tower, and both with murder in their eyes.

Lie to Me Again

Camp Lemonnier - Southwest Guard Tower

“CSM Handon!” Noise said cheerily. “Staff Sergeant Henno! How go the zombie wars?” But the volume of his voice dropped off to nothing by the last word, as he saw Handon and Henno charge past him and seize Zorn. Handon picked him up and shoved him against the back wall of the tower. Zorn, a powerful man in his own right, bounced off the wall – and then stiff-armed Handon right back. It looked like a stand-off for a second—

Until Henno walloped him on the side of his jaw with a vicious right hook that caught him blind. Zorn went down – and when he looked up, Henno had his SIG P220 Combat stuck right in his face.

“Talk,” he said.

Zorn ignored the pistol, picked himself up, and wiped the blood from the corner of his lip. “Go fuck yourself, Tommy Trooper. I don’t know what your knickers are in a twist about.”

Handon squared up to him again. “About the former garrison of this base. You said they just wandered off. But our guys just found all of their unit patches, rank insignia, and ribbons. Did they happen to pull those off for you before they left?”

Zorn wiped his face again, and sat down on the bench seat on the inside of the tower railing. “Oh. You found those.”

“Yeah. We found those. Now you want to stop fucking with me? Because I don’t have the time, and I can’t accept the risk.”

“Okay.” Zorn nodded. “Yeah. I lied.”

“What happened to the base garrison, Zorn?”

The man looked up sullenly. “I killed them – all right? I destroyed them.”

Handon pulled up. “What, all of them?”

“Yeah. All of them. One or two at a time.”

“And what the hell did you do with the bodies?”

“They’re buried. Mass grave, out back.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“In a field on the grounds of the airport.”

Henno got sick of pointing his gun at the man’s head and put it away. He looked at Handon. Now what?

Handon acknowledged his look, but then turned back to Zorn. “Why?”

Zorn shrugged. “They were my soldiers. Every one of ’em. They deserved a decent burial. Not to mention a real death.”

Handon exhaled. He couldn’t argue with that. “Why’d you lie about it?”

“It’s not a very nice thing to have to do. Is it?”

Handon looked back to Henno. He could see the Brit still didn’t trust Zorn. He had never trusted him in the first place. And Handon was coming around to his way of thinking. But, then again, his people were already committed – out there in the overrun section of the base, clearing it, and already more than half done. Still, he thought about pulling them out.

Zorn read the look on his face. “A deal’s still a deal. You pull out now, you say goodbye to transport, and you say goodbye to me helping you.”

Handon stepped up and got in his face. “Lie to me again and I’ll kill you.” He turned to Noise. “Do not take your eye off this man.”

“Wilco,” Noise said, looking sobered.

Not looking at Zorn again, Handon turned and headed out, Henno following him down.

* * *

By the time they got back to the front, which had continued pushing out in their absence, the second of the three fenced-off sections had been cleared, and it was time to push out into the third. All five two-man teams spontaneously met up at the chain-link gate that led to the last area.

Handon touched his radio. “Noise, Handon.”

“Go ahead.”

“Have Zorn open the barrier to the last section.”

“Wilco.”

With only a second’s delay, the little motor near the ground spun to life, and wound up the chain that pulled the section of fence back. All ten operators moved through the gap. Handon didn’t bother telling Noise to close it. He knew they were visible from the tower, he’d see them move inside, and he’d take care of it. The teams automatically fanned out to their five sectors.

And the last section of camp to clear.

* * *

Homer had received Ali’s message with zero distortion.

So as soon as they were out of sight of the others, he peeled off to go entertain himself. He figured he could do worse than push out to the outer wire. He could be a long-range recon element for the ground the others had to cover – and he’d get an advance look at what was waiting for them outside.

And, as usual, he didn’t mind being alone.

He paused at the corner of a building to tune into the environment – and also to get into the shade and wipe the sweat from his brow. They day was already getting seriously warm, but that was equatorial Africa for you. Even with a few weeks to go until the start of summer in the southern hemisphere, the temperature might hit 90. And with all of the team’s gear and combat load – and depending on how much humping, patrolling, and fighting they had to do – that could mean heat casualties.

This was one reason no one went into combat without checking the forecast.

For his part, Homer liked the heat. It took him back to Coronado, near San Diego, with its brilliant sunshine baking him into a leathery but surprisingly comfortable lizard basking on the rocks.

But he worried about the others, including their fitness levels. Being able to run on the flight deck on the carrier helped – though, generally, on a carrier with an active air wing, running on the flight deck was a no-go most of the time. Then again, they’d had their own causes to be kept off it: mutiny, outbreak, running aground, exploding Russian anti-ship missiles…

Even before the period on the Kennedy, the operators hadn’t gotten as much gym time or road work as they would have liked. Once again, with the world dying around them, it was rational to discount the future. They had to perform now – not three months from now, when it all might be over.

But there was no point in lamenting that now.

Homer reminded himself: Three-foot world. It was a notion he’d picked up very early in his SEAL career – just out of BUDS, still in SQT (SEAL Qualification Training), and still very much an FNG. He’d been lead-climbing on a mountain-warfare training exercise, gotten in trouble, and started freaking out. The instructor, seeing perfectly well that Homer’s mind was in all the wrong places, free-climbed up to him like Spider-Man without the suit, and told him to get the hell back in his three-foot world. Only by engaging with the rock in front of his face was he going to get out of the jam he’d gotten into.

It was a lesson with surprisingly wide applicability.

Now, if Homer stayed in his three-foot world, maybe he could try to tip the scales in the team’s favor.

He moved out, ranging ahead.

* * *

Reyes and Brady moved in a line of two, both with bayonets mounted.

Reyes was in front, due to the gimpy leg, so he could set the pace, but smoothly panning his big tan SOF Combat Assault Rifle. Brady was in back, struggling to keep his newly acquired M4 to his shoulder, due to the ache in his right upper arm from that bullet wound. With every minute he held the rifle the pain increased, until it felt like he was being impaled with something.

Finally he mentally said Fuck it, and signaled Reyes to hold up. The M4 didn’t have a suppressor anyway, so he wasn’t anxious to use the thing. He detached the bayonet, then reconfigured the sling so the rifle would ride on his back. Then the pair moved out again, Brady wielding his knife once more.

These two hadn’t encountered a single Zulu in their sweeps of the first two enclosures. Luck of the draw, Brady figured. Maybe they’d be the ones to find an American Zulu – one in uniform, and who would actually progress their mission. That would be nice. And with the pain in his arm finally subsiding, he was able to focus and stay frosty.

Also due to the luck of the draw, the two of them were now approaching Thunderdome, the flaring white pavilion – which they could now see was bricked up on all sides with HESCO barriers. Everything was still and quiet as the grave.

As they came into its shadow, Brady halted and eyed up the structure – by far the biggest on base, with the possible exception of one or two of the aircraft hangars. He traded a look with Reyes, then moved his hand toward his mic key. But the radio spoke before he could get to it. And it was the very man he had been about to call.

“Brady, from Handon.”

“This is Brady, send it.”

“Yeah, can you join me on the spare channel?”

“Switching to Spare One now… Go ahead.”

“Yeah – remember how I told you not to go into Thunderdome because Zorn said it was empty?”

“Affirmative.”

“Yeah, well, go take a look inside Thunderdome for me. I want to know what the hell’s in there. Priority execute.”

“Yeah, no worries, Sarge, we’re there now. Stand by.”

The two Marines started circling Thunderdome, looking for a way in.

Time To Go

Kent - Three Miles South of the ZPW

Colonel Briars, officer commanding of Second Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) watched over the rapid breakdown and pack-up of another field command post. He wasn’t sure why they bothered – and he didn’t imagine they’d even be able to pretend much longer. This had stopped being a measured withdrawal.

It was turning into a rout.

They were abandoning another set of positions, and they were doing it fast. The urgent question now was where exactly they would go from here, and how the hell they were expected to get there. Which was why Briars was standing with a radio headset to his ear, while the soldiers of his Battalion Headquarters (BHQ) section packed up everything except the radio connected to their commander’s head.

He had been on hold long enough with CentCom HQ that there could be little question he’d been forgotten about entirely. And, despite the approaching sounds of battle – firing, grenades, and the ever-present moaning (and occasional shrieking) of the dead – he couldn’t bring himself to give up.

At last contact, he’d been told that the air transport he’d been promised, a flight of Chinooks to airlift his battle-weary troopers out of there, simply wasn’t coming. He’d also been told to retreat to the nearest gate of the ZPW and get back behind it, which was just fine by him. It contradicted earlier orders, but that was par for the course even in the absence of all the madness going on now.

The trouble was, he’d also received a FRAGO (fragmentary order) that there was an artillery barrage inbound – both to help his unit break contact, and to reduce the front ranks of the dead by turning them to meat pudding. And he was supposed to stand by for confirmation of final details. But there hadn’t been any. Now they were about to continue their decreasingly measured retreat – but while also waiting for the sky to open above them with high-explosive hail.

Artillery barrages were great. But the thing about them was that everyone had to be on the same page. The FRAGO had indicated the grid squares for the bombardment, starting with the one they were currently in – and then, after destroying a shedload of the enemy, it would walk to the west to draw the surviving dead off, while the Paras went east. If that was all still true, fine and good. But they hadn’t gotten final confirmation, and now Briars couldn’t get through at all.

And they were out of time.

By his watch, the barrage would start in twelve minutes. He didn’t even know for sure that it was still happening at this point. But he damn well had to assume it was. And the great mass of advancing dead were on them again anyway.

They had no choice – it was time to go.

* * *

Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj, Private Elliott Walker’s new platoon sergeant, stood up and went to the very front of the line – moving to the point of maximum danger. “Concentrate fire!” he shouted, leaning into his weapon and triggering off. “On me!”

Elliott could hear firing behind him as well, over his head, as the section that was in reserve also laid into the volley, while swinging around the flank to support. They were all shooting like mad, but in a very coordinated way, at a pack of six runners racing at their line at an angle – and also moving in a fashion that just looked way too coordinated.

Elliott had never seen them move together like that.

And the sight of it caused something deep down in him to go cold, and become even more afraid than he’d been. If the dead were organizing against them, what chance did they have now?

But in only a few seconds every runner in the pack had been cut down, collapsing or sliding into the grass, the last of them actually tumbling into the frontmost trench on the line, two squaddies scrambling to either side to get out of the way.

Before Elliott could catch his breath, Sergeant Bhardwaj was kneeling beside him with a hand on his shoulder. “All right, Walker?”

Once again, Elliott could only nod. He was hyperventilating. Finally, he managed, “Is that normal? Them attacking all together like that?”

“Yeah, it’s what we’ve been seeing. There’s the great mass of stumblers coming behind, moving forward slow but non-stop. And then there are packs of runners roaming the front, making hit-and-run raids, bashing through sometimes, usually getting cut down. As long as we see them coming we’re okay – and as long as we stay together. That’s the main thing.”

Elliott nodded his understanding. And he liked the sound of that.

“You need anything, Private?”

There was something. Elliott racked his brain. “Radio batteries?”

“Here you go, mate, no worries,” and the sergeant pulled a pair from a pouch on his vest and slapped them in Elliott’s hand. Finally, Bhardwaj clapped him on the shoulder and stood to leave – as he was already answering a hail on his radio, on some net Elliott couldn’t hear: “BHQ, this is Charlie-Two, go ahead…”

Elliott took a couple of deep breaths as he changed out his radio battery. Then he dropped out and checked his rifle mag and reloaded. He didn’t think he’d hit anything just now, but he’d shot a lot. Once again, facing down a fast-moving and coordinated pack of runners was not something he was used to, and had definitely never been trained for.

Less than a minute later, the sergeant came back to the line of hastily scooped-out trenches, from which his riflemen were now firing slowly but steadily at the approaching ranks of dead in the distance, and he started barking orders.

“Look lively! There’s an artillery barrage coming in to screen our withdrawal. We’re moving out by sections, while D Company covers the movement. We’re going now. Move out!” There was little preamble, and no ceremony.

Elliott got to his feet and fell in. The platoon he’d been thrown in with seemed happy to have another sharpshooter – destroying the dead farther out was better than letting them get close. Elliott would have liked to hold this position longer, and cover his new team’s withdrawal. But his brothers in D Company were doing that. They’d do a good job. And maybe, after this, he could hook back in with them.

With his best friend Amit gone, he’d really like all his next-best mates around him. Jones, Leakey, McKay, and the lads, all mucking in together again.

That was something to look forward to.

* * *

Running again. Bouncing, trying to keep drawing breaths, trying to keep his feet. Everything slightly blurry. The sun had gone away again, a thin rain had begun to fall – and mists on the ground had started to roll through once more. Elliott tried to stay on Sergeant Bhardwaj’s ass. It was comforting. He felt he couldn’t go far wrong if he stayed close to the platoon sergeant.

Except he could also hear him conferring with the platoon’s officer as they ran. They were both poking at a plastic-covered map sheet. “Definitely east after north?”

“Definitely!” Bhardwaj said. “And it shouldn’t matter, anyway – as long as we get far enough north, we’ll be clear!”

“Yeah,” and the lieutenant stuck his finger into the map, “But is that the grid square we’re supposed to be in? Or is it the northernmost one of the barrage?”

“Christ – I’m not sure.”

“Can you get battalion on the blower?”

“I can’t get anyone. The channels are saturated.”

“Does battalion even have commo with the artillery batteries?”

“Dunno. I say we just run like hell and get as far north as we can!”

Overhearing this, Elliott took deep sucking breaths and willed his legs to keep pumping. As little as he had wanted to fall off the back of the formation before… he was seriously motivated to keep up now. But ultimately it didn’t matter.

Elliott’s fate was sealed the moment he landed in C Company.

Fail Hard

CentCom HQ - JOC

Jameson stood at the shot-out windows with his mouth wide open, watching his salvation fall to Earth in great gouts of flame. The gigantic explosion in the aircraft hangar was taking down the two incoming Chinooks with breathtaking violence. Worst of all, easily worst, in a competitive field, was the individual figures he could just make out – flailing and falling and covered with flames – spilling from the cracks between the broken-apart sections of the ungainly helicopters and tumbling to earth.

Merciful God…

He instinctively brought his hands up to protect his face as all four halves of the two helos slammed into the ground in all-new fireballs and more hurtling debris. In a vague way, he knew he should get under cover. A counter-intuitive principle, but one that had been drilled into him, was: if you can see the explosion, the explosion can see you. Basically, shrapnel could fly mind-boggling distances. Miles in some cases.

But then it was all over, and nothing had hit him. But Jameson still felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

Confusingly, he now heard helicopter rotor noise. Stepping closer to the window, he craned his neck up and out… and there in the sky was Charlotte in her Apache. The mean-looking attack helicopter was rolling slightly from side to side, like it had been rocked by the explosions. But she had survived it.

And Jameson remembered he had tried to order her back to the pilots’ ready room. The one located in the hangar that was now a three-alarm fire. By staying in the air, she had perhaps just become their last surviving pilot.

Smart girl, Jameson thought.

And that was the last idle thought he was going to be able to allow himself. Because now he and his Marines were right where they had started the day – in charge of this place, and everything in it, and the entire battle for the south.

Their relief were all dead and charred and in pieces on the ground.

* * *

Out near the helipad, Private Simmonds slowly uncurled out of the fetal ball he had spontaneously rolled into, after being knocked to the ground by the force of the first gigantic explosion in the hangar. When the two helos had also gone up, then crashed to the ground in smaller but closer explosions, Simmonds had only curled up on the ground more tightly. But now as he forced his eyes open, and tried to see through the stinging black smoke and around the flaming pools of aviation fuel, he had just a single thought:

No one could have fucked up as badly as I just did. NO ONE.

He didn’t know what had actually happened to cause the cataclysmic explosion inside the hangar. Probably no one would ever know. But he had been responsible for the sweeps there, and making absolutely sure the place was safe and squared away, in advance of the command contingent from CentCom North arriving. And he also remembered joking about the grenades carried by the RMPs he had sent in there. Maybe that was related. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.

“No fuck-ups,” had been his orders.

He couldn’t have failed any harder if he’d worked at it for a hundred years.

Now he climbed to his feet and tried to imagine a way to organize some kind of rescue or recovery effort. It was impossible to imagine there was anyone to rescue – the hangar looked like a total loss, and both Chinooks were in flaming pieces spread across two hundred square meters of ground.

But he had to try. He had to do something.

* * *

And now everything was kicking off again all over – both there in the JOC, and everywhere else.

When Jameson had dealt with the first few emergencies – those related to the explosion and helo crash, and those not – he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. There was an enlisted woman he didn’t recognize behind him, and she had a group of civilians in tow – a woman carrying a little girl, and two young boys. “Sir,” she said, “the RMPs at the front gate sent these four up. Evidently they’re authorized to be here.”

Jameson boggled. “What – here in the JOC?”

“Um. No, sir. On base. They’ve got proper credentials.” She produced a laminated card. Jameson didn’t even look. It occurred to him that he wouldn’t have known the proper credentials if they’d crawled up his trouser leg and gnawed his knob off.

“The RMPs didn’t know what to do with them, so they’ve sent them to you.”

Jameson paused to actually look at the newcomers. The woman was mid-thirties, attractive, smart-looking – she nodded at him, seeming both alert and anxious. The tiny girl she carried was adorable, and the boys certainly seemed like nice lads. And for just one second he thought of his own childhood, in Canterbury, which now felt a million years away at the bottom of a black hole – as was, indeed, Canterbury. But of course he couldn’t begin to give a damn, or even think about these people.

“Take them somewhere else,” he said, turning away.

* * *

Second Lieutenant Miller was one of the two surviving ops officers in the JOC – one of the two people remotely qualified to keep the place running, and keep the hundreds of military units spread across the south, and increasingly the rest of the country, from falling into total chaos.

Now he pulled off his radio headset, shakily got to his feet, and started walking over to where Major Jameson once again stood gawping out the windows at the carnage around the hangar and helipad, while also taking a phone call. Along the way, he passed several tactical and comms stations that had either been abandoned, or just didn’t have personnel to man them at all. He heard a frantic voice leaking out of a radio headset lying on a desk.

“—rgently requesting confirmation of nine-line fire mission. Repeat, we need confirmation and final grid coords and parameters for walking artillery barrage. This is a priority flash transmi—”

But then he was past it and reached the commander. He paused before speaking, waiting for Jameson to deal with what he was dealing with that second, which he gathered was a strained conversation with the Ministry of Defence, and until then he just looked upon the hellfire and carnage out the window.

“Yes, sir,” Jameson said into the phone. “I do understand that you speak for the Chief of the Defence Staff… Yes, sir… Yes, we can certainly look into that… We will, by all means. Thank you, sir.”

He then banged the phone on the window ledge before him three times, hard. “Fucking MoD! They actually let these idiots be in charge of people?”

Miller started to elbow in and speak, but he was pre-empted by a queue-jumper, who shouted around him. “Major, there’s no response from the pilots’ ready room.”

So Miller waited and carried on looking out upon the burning inferno of the main aviation hangar, and the first units from the London Fire Brigade rolling through the front gates. No, there wouldn’t be any response from there, he thought. It’s on fire. He also guessed, correctly, that Jameson was trying to get hold of the pilots to help organize another flight to pick up operations officers from Edinburgh. But Miller could already tell him that wasn’t going to happen.

Jameson cursed, only half under his breath. “Then get me, um, Private Simmonds.” But then he realized he didn’t need help for that – and instead spoke into his own team radio. “Simmonds, Jameson.”

“Go ahead, sir.”

“What’s the status of the pilots in the ready room?”

There was a terrified pause. “Completely gone, boss. There is no pilots’ ready room. Just charred bodies and warped tin. And fire.”

Jameson hurled the radio down onto the nearest desk.

Finally, Miller infiltrated into this opening: “Major, we have an urgent transmission from the ZPW Security Station South.”

Jameson just nodded now. He looked like he was going numb.

“They’re experiencing additional crumbling of some of the hastily extended sections of wall down there.”

Oh, dear God, Jameson thought. Just as the dead were imminently reaching it, the goddamned Wall – the only thing standing between them and total destruction – was falling down around their ears.

“How bad is it? Is it actually falling down?”

“No, sir, I don’t believe so. As I said, it’s some of the extensions at the top. I gather the lower sections still seem to be solid.”

“Well, thank God for that. What now?”

“They’re requesting additional construction and engineering resources to get it handled – before, well, before…”

Jameson blinked heavily. “Do we have additional resources?”

“I don’t know, sir. I can try to find out.”

“Tell Station South to deal with it – and you deal with them. You’re deputized. Get them workmen, don’t get them workmen, I don’t care, just deal with it.”

“Yes, si—”

But Jameson was already turning away, as someone else came running up, holding a headset and saying, “Sir, it’s the OC of the Royal Artillery, I think you’d better take this…”

Miller walked numbly back to his station. As he passed that same abandoned headset, he could hear what almost sounded like screams leaking out of it now: “For the love of God – you’re murdering us out here…!”

Miller just kept walking woodenly by.

They were all getting murdered everywhere.

God of War (Cataclysm II)

Kent - Two Miles South of the ZPW

The land had turned to sea.

Great frothing geysers of earth launched twenty-five feet into the sky. The ground that wasn’t actually breaking like waves instead rolled like the ocean, undulating in a way that solid ground never should. And the air was alive with evil zipping hornets of shrapnel.

And the bodies. Every time Elliott stole a look over his shoulder, he could see two things – the incoming explosions, the walking artillery rounds, coming closer. And the men running behind him, those still on their feet, growing fewer.

They were just being churned up back there.

The whole of Kent around them had erupted into pure malevolence.

Being under an artillery barrage – including a friendly one – was just about the worst and most terrifying experience possible in life. For some reason now Elliott remembered the quote by Stalin: “Artillery is the God of War.” Today he was learning the undeniable truth of this. And also that it was a vengeful, wrathful, and implacable God. And its retribution, its steel rain, fell equally on the heads of the just and the unjust.

And there was no escape from its sight.

Everything was happening in such slo-mo razor-vivid detail that Elliott could actually see glowing red pieces of shrapnel cutting the air around him. It was menacing him terribly, threatening to kill him at any second – but it was actually doing it to the guys to his rear. It was just tearing them up.

Ahead of him, he could see Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj, legs and arms pumping, and audibly shouting (even over the thundering explosions) into his radio, to Battalion, to for the love of all that was holy get the artillery called off. Elliott had no doubt officers at Battalion were even then also screaming at CentCom, or maybe at the gunners themselves, if they could make commo with them.

But, whether it was overloaded channels, or an overrun artillery or command unit, or just crossed wires… nothing anyone was doing was helping.

Only running stood any chance of saving them. And even that didn’t. Elliott was on the back of the formation now – he’d been watching the platoon sergeant’s ass, but the sergeant had been herding his platoon, keeping them all in front of him. This wasn’t any slight to Elliott. It was just an oversight.

And now Elliott felt a white-hot pain in the back of his knee – and knew he’d just taken a shrapnel wound. And his running, not all that strong or swift or steady to start with, now took a hit.

Within seconds he was starting to fall off the back.

The air was thrumming with the overpressure of the explosions, churned-up dirt falling like the sky and earth had been inverted, the eardrum-shredding noise of the explosions growing even louder – and coming closer, bigger, faster, more terrible, with every second. It was almost impossible to keep the mind from shutting down in pure terror, total sensory and mental overload.

But, battling to stay functional, prodding his mind into action, Elliott quickly reached a conclusion: it was madness to stay above ground in this. If he did, he was dead. It was only when, not whether, he got killed – and it could be any second. He couldn’t outrun this. You can’t outrun shrapnel.

So he skidded to a halt at the outside edge of the crashing maelstrom. He turned around. And he started running back in the opposite direction, straight into the heaving cataclysm – and looking for the biggest closest shell crater he could quickly find. Once he got below the level of the ground, only a direct hit could take him out. Barring that, the explosions and shrapnel would just go by over his head. A crater was as good as a foxhole.

In seconds he found a huge hole in the earth that had been gouged out by a 105mm round and hurled himself into it, the impact of the hard hot earth knocking the wind out of him. He was stunned.

But he was alive.

* * *

“And now you fucking pick up. God save us.”

Colonel Briars was crouched in a copse of English elm trees, trying to master himself. He was actually on the verge of tears – not a great state for a leader of men, never mind a ground commander of infantry, a Para officer.

He was trying to master himself, and not doing well.

He could still hear the echoes of the last rounds of the artillery barrage bouncing around the fields of upper Kent. Mercifully, he was too far to hear the screams of the wounded. But right now his staff officers were taking casualty and status reports. And they weren’t good. It appeared that as much as half his manpower was gone, wiped out in a few terrible minutes. And it looked like D Company might be a total write-off.

“I need those helos you promised me – now,” Briars said, his voice shaking. “I need them urgently for casualty evacuation.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. It’s as I told you. THERE ARE NO HELOS.”

* * *

“Everything flying has been urgently tasked, and in many cases re-tasked,” Miller said, trying to hear the transmission through the ongoing chaos of the JOC. He was already half-stunned from the disasters there – and could find no way to generate empathy for the plight of all those soldiers out on the ground. He was numb. Moreover, as a professional, it was his job to be. “You’re going to have to leave your wounded. We will get them medevac’d, or casevac’d, as soon as humanly possible.”

There was no response on the other end. It was like Miller was talking to a badly traumatized child, or small animal. Like the Para colonel couldn’t even think how to respond to this, couldn’t make his mind work.

Miller took a breath. “Colonel, listen to me. We need everyone still combat effective in this battle. You’ve got to get your men out of there. Our ISR indicates the barrage didn’t work – you haven’t broken contact. The dead are still locked onto you, and they are still coming.”

“No shit it didn’t work.” An apoplectic pause. “Get my men out to where? Our last orders were to retreat behind the Wall in the southern sector.”

Miller paused. “Who told you that?”

“A Major Jameson. He said he was in charge there now.”

Miller cursed. That wasn’t smart. That wasn’t the plan, and it wasn’t what they needed to be doing. In fact, they needed every combat unit out on the ground slowing the advance of the dead. As soon as the dead reached the ZPW and started piling up, the final countdown for London, and humanity, started for real.

He looked across the heaving JOC where Jameson was still nominally commanding, but really just trying to keep his head above water. Miller considered going over to consult with him on this. But the man clearly didn’t want to be consulted about anything right now – that was obvious from his face, body language, and tone of voice. He looked like he was going to shoot straight out the roof if given one single thing more to deal with.

Miller just had to make an executive decision. It had to be done. He keyed his mic. “Two Para is ordered to stay in the field. Everyone is needed.”

“The battalion is at half strength! Half my men have been wiped out! I’ve got dozens of critical WIAs!”

Miller exhaled, then checked his local version of the map board. “That’s received, Colonel. I’ll tell you what. Withdraw to sector November Mike Four Niner. That’s the northernmost sector of the ZPW – the outside north edge of London. It’ll be calm there, at least for a while longer. You can man that sector. You’ll have time to refit, care for your wounded, maybe casevac some of them.”

“And still no airlift? Do you have any idea how far that is on foot?”

Miller took another breath. “Be advised, Colonel. You have to get your healthy troopers out of there – while the enemy is distracted by the wounded, and before they lock onto the rest of your men.”

“Go to hell.”

Miller guessed that counted as signing off.

He had a hundred other queued calls anyway.

* * *

It seemed to go on forever.

Hours of sheer terror, down in his hole, with shrapnel and body parts and even whole trees whipping by overhead, or else dropping in on top of him – the whole time Elliott praying that a shell wouldn’t land in his improvised foxhole at that exact moment and turn him to meat vapor.

Then again, if it did, he’d never know it.

They said artillery never hit in the same place twice. But Elliott knew that with the advanced targeting systems, they could drop two rounds on a two-pence coin if they wanted to. So that was just wishful thinking.

But then, even more suddenly than it had started… it stopped.

And now he could make out two things.

The first was the moaning of the wounded. It rose and fell and howled. There were cries, moans, screams, and soft sobbing.

The second was the voice of Colonel Briars himself, their commanding officer. He must have had all his subsidiary radio nets linked for automatic rebroadcast of this transmission. He was speaking to everyone in the battalion personally. And he actually sounded as if he were in shock, which made Elliott think maybe he was doing more harm than good by addressing them.

But it was what he said that made Elliott curse out loud.

Colonel Briars was telling them to move out – and to leave the wounded behind. For the first time in his military career, Elliott didn’t even consider obeying an order.

Some things were out of line.

Might Work

JFK - Bridge

“Doctor Park again for you, Commander.”

This time Park marched onto the bridge not just with Sarah Cameron in tow, but also Lieutenant Wesley, who was wearing the blue-and-gray camo Navy working uniform, with an NSF badge on his left breast pocket, a side arm in a belt holster – and a single silver bar on each collar point, representing his rank as Lieutenant (junior grade).

Park had a laptop, and each of the others had a thin folder of papers.

Abrams hadn’t totally expected to see them back, so he just waited for it.

“We’ve got our mission plan,” Park said.

“And it’s good,” Sarah added. “It’s viable.”

“You get with Sergeant Lovell?” Abrams asked.

“Yes,” Sarah answered. “He provided all the mission planning templates – and went over everything with us with a fine-tooth comb.”

Abrams sighed and looked over to Wesley. In the end, it was he and his men who were going to have to do this thing if Abrams approved it. “What about it, Lieutenant? You wanna get in the war?”

Wesley’s face did little contortions as he considered.

“Never mind,” Abrams said. “Just tell me – what’s your take on this plan?”

“Might work,” Wesley allowed.

Abrams shook his head. Maybe that was as enthusiastic as Englishmen let themselves get. He picked up a phone and rang CIC. “LT, I need you for half an hour. To help review a mission profile. Yeah, right now. Briefing room.”

He hung up and stood. “You three follow me. We’re gonna go upstairs and you all run me through this, and see if you can sell it to me. More importantly, you’ll have to sell it to LT Campbell. She’s the one who quarterbacks the shore missions, and is also the one who will have to watch you die – live on drone video – when it goes wrong.”

The group of four exited and ascended the inside ladder.

Forty-five minutes later, they returned to the bridge – Abrams and Wesley looking a bit less happy than Park and Sarah. With their planning documents, they had made an impressive case that a shore mission to Jizan in Saudi Arabia to retrieve a DNA sequencer might actually work.

They’d even nearly convinced the notoriously skeptical LT Campbell. She had worked hard to poke holes in their plan, asking questions like: What if you fall behind schedule, and this drags out? What if you need rescue – a QRF? Are we gonna have to run CAPs and CAS missions for you with aircraft we don’t have? What if your helo goes down – who’s going to CSAR all your asses then? And what if more Russians turn up on shore when you get there?

But none of these seemed fatal, or had no answer to them. Now Abrams might actually have to approve the damned thing.

And Wesley might have to go out there and actually do it.

Abrams scanned the group through narrowed eyes. “Okay. Lieutenant Wesley, you’re dismissed. Start getting your team ready.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Wesley said, a little pleased with his improving impersonation of an American naval officer.

“You, too,” Abrams said to Sarah. “Assist him. I want a moment with Dr. Park.”

Sarah nodded and she and Wesley turned and left.

Park opened his mouth to get persuasive again – but Abrams cut him off.

“You really believe that this is necessary?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” Park said. “I believe being able to do the sequencing the instant they get back with the virus sample could shave days off the time to a working vaccine.”

Abrams just grunted in response.

Park continued. “And you heard the same thing from CentCom that I did – days could make the difference. If we get back to Britain and everyone’s dead… I’m not sure how much difference the vaccine will make at that point.”

Abrams seemed to soften. This was a point he couldn’t ignore. “Okay. You’ve got provisional approval. I’ll give final sign-off when the NSF team has done all their mission prep and they’re ready to step off. Whether it’s helping them, or progressing the vaccine, you’d damned well better be doing something useful meanwhile.”

Park nodded, already trying to focus on everything he needed to do now.

The most important man in the world was getting more so. He wished there were someone else to share that mantle – savior of the world – as well as help carry the burdens that were his alone. But as far as he knew there wasn’t. So, as he had heard the operators say many times…

He was just going to have to get it done.

Thunderdome

Camp Lemonnier - Outside Thunderdome

Brady and Reyes found what they sought after circling about a third of the giant structure.

It was another heavy chain-link section of fence between squat HESCO barriers. Behind that was ten feet of HESCO-enclosed passageway, which then turned ninety degrees to the left. The ninety-degree bend was a common configuration – it meant an explosion outside the barriers couldn’t injure anyone inside. There were also a lot of stacked fencing sections on the ground, and there might be another gate around the corner. That would make sense for herding Zulus, an airlock kind of configuration.

While Reyes moved to the gate handle on the right side, Brady carefully checked out the hinges and the area behind them on the left. Sure enough, there it was – a primitive IED, clumsily disguised. It was a grenade duct-taped to one of the fence-posts, with a clear filament wire attached to the pin on one end, and the far side of the gate on the other. When the gate swung open, it would pull the pin.

Wordlessly, Brady took his knife, slid it through the fence, and put pressure on the grenade’s spoon. Then he nodded to Reyes, who worked the latch, and slowly pulled the gate open. The filament pulled taut and the pin came free and dropped to the dirt. But the spoon stayed where it was, under Brady’s knife. Reyes slipped through the gap, retrieved the pin, and replaced it in the grenade.

The two Marines nodded in sync, well pleased. Brady withdrew his knife, rose, and moved to enter. And Reyes pulled the gate wider to let him in.

Too late, he saw the second stretch of filament, leading to a second grenade on the opposite side – and this one had been pretty damn masterfully disguised.

The spoon popped and flipped through the air, hitting Reyes in the chest and dropping to his feet.

Aw, shit, he thought.

* * *

Homer moved parallel to the outside wire now, scanning both inside and out. The fence was so far intact, though it had obviously been repaired in sections. There were also a number of visible dead, standing or staggering around outside, between the camp and the town. Homer wasn’t making any noise, but he did pass through the field of view of some of them, and they started stumbling toward the fence to check him out.

Homer knew these ones would soon attract others. So the best thing he could do would be to get out of sight.

He was just about to head back in toward the interior of the camp, when something caught his eye. At first glance, it just looked like some trash that had blow up against the fence – specifically, a small and dried-out section of cardboard box. But something about it didn’t look right, and Homer paused to lift up the edge of it with his rifle barrel.

Uh oh, he thought, reaching for his radio.

* * *

“Send it,” Handon said into his throat mic, economical as usual. He was standing in a narrow alley with a Zulu impaled and wriggling on the end of his short sword. He and Henno were trying to work out where it was from.

Homer said, “I’m walking the northwest section of outer wire and I’ve just found a couple of small explosive charges on the fence, wired to a radio detonator.”

“Copy that,” Handon said. He watched as Henno actually reached around and dug a wallet out of the back pocket of the Zulu’s half-rotted Levis. He removed a small card from the wallet, checked it out, then held it out for Handon to see. It was an Egyptian driver’s license.

Shaking his head, Handon withdrew his sword and used it to take off the dead Egyptian’s head. It and its body both fell to the ground.

Kneeling down to wipe his sword clean, he keyed his mic and said, “Okay – what do you think that means?”

“Impossible to know for sure. But my guess?”

“Yeah, your guess.” Handon stood up and smoothly sheathed the sword in the small of his back.

“I’d say Zorn meant for us to clear these last sections of the camp for him, push through to the back of the last enclosure – and then he’d blow the outer wire, ejecting us along with any remaining Zulus. Basically, I don’t think he wants us here any more than he wants the dead. He wants us gone. He’s just using us as conscripted labor first.”

Handon and Henno both shook their heads. “Yeah, I got that vibe, too.”

“Jammy bastard,” Henno spat.

“Can you disable those devices and get back here?”

“Disabled them while we were talking – heading back now.”

“Good m—”

But Handon abandoned his next word as the dull crump of a grenade going off sounded from somewhere nearby.

“Come on,” Handon said, hefting his rifle.

They both took off running.

* * *

Not looking at a ton of options, Brady rushed forward with the knife he already had out, while Reyes fumbled for his own, and cut through the duct tape holding the grenade to the post. He pulled it clear and with an instant wrist flick managed to not only toss it to the end of the HESCO corridor – but also bank it off the back wall and around the corner.

They were now shielded from the coming blast, but the two of them covered up anyway as it went off. Dust and debris whooshed out over them, but they were fine. Chuckling, Reyes said, “Think there’s a third one?”

“Nah, I doubt it. Nobody’s that much of an asshole.”

“Wait – what the fuck is that?”

That’s when they both heard the moaning – nearly too late. Facing forward, they belatedly saw another section of chain-link fence that had been blown down by the grenade blast. It was that second gate they had speculated would be there. And it wasn’t hard to work out what it had been keeping penned in.

Because it was now being trampled by the feet of a gaggle of dead rushing out.

Reacting quickly, they both tumbled back out the outer gate – and then rushed to slam it shut. The undead reached it before they could latch it.

Now it was a shoving contest.

Two on twenty – with more flooding out every second.

Like a Demon Possessed

Camp Lemonnier - Outside Thunderdome

Actually, it was even worse than two on twenty. If Fick was to be believed, it was only one of them – the wounded Reyes and Brady adding up to a single healthy Marine – about to be opposing hundreds. The number of bodies on the other side was increasing fast.

The Marines were both strong men, and shoving like hell on the gate. But the situation was going south on them. Without time to think about it, Reyes braced his back leg and dug in – but with the nerve damage there, it buckled on him and he fell to his knees, still shoving, but now with less leverage.

Brady instantly tried to compensate. But one of the thick crowd of riled-up dead inside – almost certainly a Foxtrot – flew face-first into the gate, slamming it brutally into Brady’s shot-through and weak right arm. He howled in pain and rage, but dug in and kept pushing, as Reyes tried to regain his feet.

Both of them could already feel their bandaged wounds seeping blood. They looked into each other’s faces as Reyes tried to stand. And their expressions said it all: they were not getting this gate shut.

They were about to be swarmed and overrun.

* * *

Handon and Henno, Juice and Pred, Fick and Graybeard, Ali, Homer – all started running when they heard the grenade go off.

And now they heard the call go out.

“Hey, guys. We’re in heavy contact up at Thunderdome – and we can’t contain it. You should seal off this section and get the hell out of here.”

This transmission was followed by the sound of full-auto 5.56 fire.

But everyone knew the section they were in had already been sealed off as soon as they went into it. And none of them had any intention of leaving anyone behind.

Correction – none of them but their commander.

“All Cadaver elements – withdraw back to first rally point. Henno and I will take this.” Handon clicked off and kept running – hoping like hell the others would see reason and listen to his damned orders.

On this one, it was absolutely critical that they did.

* * *

Reyes was flat on his back, firing his SCAR as fast as he could pull the trigger. He went dry and did the fastest mag change of his life – but luckily Brady was standing over him, firing full-auto… equally surprised and pleased that his borrowed rifle turned out to be an M4A1, and thus had a full-auto setting on its fire selector.

When they’d worked out that gate wasn’t closing again, they decided they were better off choosing when to let it go. Now here they were, in tight quarters – with what was obviously an entire Thunderdome full of Zulus, Romeos, and the odd Foxtrot spilling out at them. The two Marines were dropping them almost as fast as they rushed out of the narrow exit.

In a short time, they had built up a wall of bodies in front of the gate, spilling out to ten feet in front of it and to either side. And the undead reinforcements were having to climb over this meat wall to get to them. Particularly with Reyes immobile, this was pretty much the only reason they weren’t already overrun and devoured.

When Brady went dry, and heard Reyes’s weapon back up, he let his rifle drop, pulled two grenades, tossed them over the wall of meat, and covered up Reyes on the ground while he reloaded. After the grenades went off, he looked up to see… that he’d mainly succeeded in knocking over the body pile, right back toward them.

And now dozens of frenzied figures scrambled over the collapsing obstacle. Really the only thing they had going for them was that the slow ones were holding the fast ones up. Then Brady managed to trip as he tried to back away, falling on his ass while still firing, as Reyes crab-crawled away, also firing one-handed.

They were about two seconds from being fallen upon by the horde.

* * *

Blitzing onto this scene, Henno yanked Reyes to his feet while firing one-handed himself, as Handon leapt over Brady, putting himself between them and the threat.

When the two newcomers both went dry, there was no time for Handon to reload – he was too close to the front line – so he pulled his sword and a .45, both in a blur, while Henno stood in place behind him and swapped mags too quickly to follow with the eye. In little more than a second, Henno was again firing aimed single shots at ridiculous speed, pushing forward and circling around to the side of the meat wall – which Handon was beginning to build up again – then went dry and did it all again. Mag after mag, nearly a hundred rounds in the first half-minute of the engagement.

And virtually every one he fired came to rest in a brainstem. It was a masterclass in precision tactical shooting.

“Good news!” Brady shouted.

Handon ignored this, emptying his .45 into a couple of faces and taking two heads off with whirling slashes of his sword. He then leapt back to the two wounded Marines. As he hauled Brady upright, the lanky Marine elaborated: “We found dead Americans in uniform.”

Handon shoved them both toward the rear, then looked back over his shoulder, where Henno was putting up a furious and masterful one-man holding action, fighting like a demon possessed while Handon led the two wounded out of there.

And, sure enough, the growing pile of disanimated bodies, as well as the ones walking, running, or leaping over it, the ones Henno was putting down about two a second… all of them were in American military uniform.

It looked like much of the entire former garrison was now spilling out of Thunderdome – perhaps not all four thousand of those missing personnel, but a hell of a lot of them. This was where they had all gone.

Zorn hadn’t killed and buried them. He had herded them in here.

Fool me twice, Handon thought bitterly, getting Reyes’s arm up and over his shoulder, and half-dragging the pair of them back toward safety.

* * *

Homer, having pushed so far forward, now found himself cut off. The mass exodus from Thunderdome was between him and his route back. So he figured the best thing he could do now was make his way to one of the towers on the north wire, where he could cover the withdrawal of the others.

But before moving out, he leaned around a corner for a quick look at the scene, glassing a lot of targets, but not taking any shots. The reason he hesitated was he saw they’d finally found what they were looking for – undead in American uniform. Early-stage victims.

Man, he thought. You wait all day for a bus, then four thousand show up at once.

But he also figured the rest of the team would be in a better position to safely capture and restrain one, more than Homer out here by himself. Also, they were all now in some pretty serious caca, and probably needed to make progress on the problem of staying alive before doing their live capture.

But then Homer’s scope unexpectedly went dark as a body moved in front of it – one much closer than the mass of rampaging dead, who were a good two hundred yards south of his position. He pulled his eye away from his sight and saw a single dead man, standing no more than twenty-five yards away from him.

And it was just standing there looking at him – not advancing, not slavering or grasping, or otherwise presenting as a threat. That alone was weird enough.

But then Homer’s throat seized up – as he recognized the dead man’s face, despite its green tint, emaciated cheeks, and sore-covered skin. His first thought was that he must be imagining things. But then he also recognized the webbing and gear on its body. It was pretty standard configuration for an operator or OGA guy. Homer would have said this could be anyone from the CIA’s Ground Branch. But he also knew Team Six guys had a special way of arranging their gear – and this man in particular did as well.

And Homer knew him from his time in the teams. There could be absolutely no doubt. They had overlapped by only a few months in DEVGRU, before the man took his papers and went over to CIA. But if the spec-ops community was small, and the brotherhood of SEALs even smaller… Team Six was like a tiny fraternity, or cult – one you were in for life. Everyone knew everyone.

So Homer wasn’t confused now. He knew this man, beyond any doubt.

He remembered his irreverent humor, his advanced degree, his obsessive stock trading, and how much women everywhere loved him. His toughness and courage and excellence at his job. And Homer could clearly picture the intelligent cast to his dark eyes and angular stubbled jaw.

Not least because he was looking right at them.

Dugan.

It of course wasn’t possible that Dugan recognized Homer in turn. Nor was it in any way conceivable that zombie Dugan was refraining from attacking him.

But it was also happening – Dugan just stood there and watched him – and it was happening right in front of Homer’s face. And you couldn’t deny what was in front of your face.

Plus, Homer thought, impossible things happen all the time.

We call them miracles.

* * *

Reyes snorted as he did his best to run on his newly re-wounded leg, leaning heavily on Handon. Yep, he thought, remembering his joke with Predator on the carrier. A turned ankle really is a goddamned death sentence these days…

They were coming within sight of the gate up ahead. It was just like they had left it – closed. Handon started to get on the radio, when Ali spilled around a corner at speed, almost knocking into them. “Where’s Henno?” she said.

“Delaying action.”

“I’ll go back to support him.”

“Negative! We push forward out of here. Through the gate.”

And in that instant, Homer came over the channel. “Guys, I have overwatch from one of the north guard towers. It sure looks like Henno could use a hand.”

Handon shook his head. Special-ops ethos aside, this was no time for the usual “leave no man behind” routine – and potentially getting people killed trying to save other people who were already getting killed. As much as in Chicago, where they had said it but didn’t act like it, the mission came first – way ahead of force protection. One casualty they could absorb. But they couldn’t lose half the team here. Or all of it. It was a total no-go.

Handon keyed his mic. “Disregard that. Everyone withdraws by fire teams. Repeat, no going back. Everyone out.”

When he looked up, Ali had locked eyes with him. But she only held his gaze for a second, before realizing Handon had it right – and it was his call anyway. They had to leave Henno behind – to get out, or not, on his own. So she slung her rifle, put Reyes’s other arm over her shoulder, and led them all toward that gate.

Which was still fucking closed.

* * *

Pred and Juice regarded each other, hesitating.

“Do what the man says?” Juice asked. “Just get ourselves out of here?”

Pred considered. From where they were, they could easily hear the rampaging mob – and now they could just see the edge of it, spilling out into their sector. “Yeah. I suppose we should. Anyway, First Rule of Holes, man.”

Juice cocked his head. “What’s that?”

“When in one, stop digging.”

“Okay. Let’s head back. Henno’ll be fine.”

Juice hoped he believed that.

* * *

When Fick and Graybeard reached the others at the gate, it was still shut – and Ali was trying to chew through the heavy-gauge steel meshes with the wire-snipper on her multi-tool, which was painstaking work at best. Handon looked up at the thick coils of razor wire that topped the twelve-foot fence, as he shouted into his radio.

Fick spun Reyes around, and then Brady. “You two assholes okay?”

“Fine,” Reyes said.

Brady added, “Thanks for caring, Master Guns.”

“Can we blow the gate?” Handon asked Ali.

“Maybe. But that means everyone here retreating back down there.” She nodded toward the closest cover – where the dead were coming from. “And I can’t reach the damned tension cable to cut it…”

But as Juice rocked up, he hauled an arm-length pair of cable-cutters out of his pack, shoved Ali out of the way, and got to work, making much shorter work of the thick steel meshes.

Fick moved to Handon, who was still on the radio.

“Noise, Handon, we need this last gate open – precedence flash!” He looked up at Fick. “Nothing.”

“Fuck ’em,” Fick said. Juice already had the fence cut practically in half, and they all started squeezing through the gap. But they could all hear the undead mob raging, closing from behind.

And now those in the rear took shots on the first few that appeared.

Henno was still nowhere to be seen.

Rubicon

London - Charing Cross Road

“It’s Brown and Dolby!” Colley shouted, sticking his head up into the front of the hurtling truck the Tunnelers had hijacked. Hackworth was driving, trying to keep them from crashing, and couldn’t take his eye off the road. They were driving way too fast for a narrow surface street in central London, but he couldn’t bring himself to throttle down yet either.

“What about them?” he shouted over his shoulder.

Colley took some deep breaths and climbed up into the passenger seat. “They’ve both been shot.”

Hackworth’s mouth opened – but nothing came out. Actually, he could easily believe it. The truck, stopped at that government checkpoint, had been the center of a whole storm of gunfire, as marauders took out all the soldiers manning the gate. With all that shooting, plus the thin skin of the truck’s cargo area, it wasn’t all that surprising some of their people had been hit.

Still, Hackworth needed a minute to get his mind around it.

Because the stakes had just gone up again. The Tunnelers – already having become hijackers, kidnappers, and refugees from the military and police – now also had wounded to care for. And Hackworth knew he was responsible – both for them getting hurt, and for whatever happened to them now.

“How bad?” he asked, gripping the big steering wheel with bloodless fingers, watching the theaters and bookshops of Charing Cross Road blur by. They blasted across the intersection with Oxford Street without slowing. The traffic signals were out. But they made it through without a collision.

“Brown’s just hit in the leg. It’s bleeding but doesn’t look too bad. But Dolby…”

Hackworth could hear the moaning from the back now, and it was horrible. He knew that Dolby, the old man from the south of France, with his bad asthma, hadn’t been in great health at the best of times. “Will he make it?”

“I don’t know,” said Colley. “He’s hit in the chest and the wound is making these bad wheezing noises…”

“I can make it!” they both heard from the back. The voice, equally laced with pain and determination, was that of Brown. Hackworth knew him to be a pretty tough young man. If he said he could make it, maybe he could.

Colley lowered his voice. “But what about Dolby? I think we’ve got to get him to the hospital. If we don’t, I think he’s gonna die…”

Hackworth gritted his teeth. If they drove this shot-up military transport, full of boxed-up guns and civilians and the one hostage they still held, the soldier who had been in the passenger seat… if they drove this apocalyptic war wagon up to A&E, what did they think was going to happen?

Hackworth shook his head. “We’re gonna get nicked if we do that. They’ll probably arrest us on sight – unless they shoot us on sight.”

Colley looked into the side of Hackworth’s face and gripped his upper arm. “Come on, man. We just drive by, push him out on the curb – and lay on the horn as we drive off. We’ve got to. We can’t take care of him.”

Hackworth nodded tiredly – and swung a screaming right onto Great Russell Street, taking them right in front of the classical columns and friezes of the British Museum, then looping back onto High Holborn, heading east.

“We’ll take him to St. Bart’s,” Hackworth said. That would only be a ten-minute detour. But now he spared a look away from the road and over at his long-time number two. “But you be ready. Because I am just barely going to slow down for this.” He looked back at the road now with slitted eyes.

But what he actually couldn’t stop seeing was the young soldier lying on the ground at that checkpoint behind them, flat on his back, hands held pathetically up before him, pleading, begging Hackworth with his eyes for help…

But Hackworth had simply looked away. And then drove off.

But he had to look away again now, from his mind’s eye. He needed to clear this from his head, put it out of his mind entirely – and for the same reason he had used to justify it at the time: he had been protecting his people. He was responsible for them. And their lives had to matter more than other people’s.

But a deeper, more human part of him also knew that he had crossed a terrible moral Rubicon – and that they were all now blasting headlong down some horrific moral Slip’n’Slide. With God knew what waiting for them at the bottom.

And God only knew what they would become.

Or maybe not all of them. Maybe just him. And even there among all his people, with whom he had shared and suffered so much for so long…

Hackworth had never felt so alone.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, they had managed to get Dolby out in front of the hospital and then get away again, back on the road blasting north. Central London was falling away, yielding to the dingier, sparser, and more suburban high streets of north London in zones three, four, and then five.

Colley came forward again. He said, “We found the truck’s first aid kit and got Brown’s leg wrapped up. I don’t know how fast he’s gonna be able to move.”

Hackworth shrugged. They’d deal with that then.

Colley sat down in the passenger seat, seeming to catch his breath for the first time since the gunfight at the checkpoint. “That was twice we’ve been saved by everything going to hell.”

Hackworth nodded, realizing he was right. The first time had been at CentCom – when the chaos caused by the giant explosion inside had allowed them to capture this truck in the first place.

Colley looked over. “What about the other soldier?” He meant their second hostage – the one who had been riding shotgun. “Should we get rid of him, too? Cut him loose?”

Hackworth shook his head. “Does he have a military ID?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Then we’re going to need him to get out of here. Keep an eye on him. Sit on him if you have to.”

Colley nodded and returned to the cargo area. But ten minutes later, he was back – with the soldier in tow. “He asked to speak with you.”

Hackworth looked over his shoulder. The soldier looked like he was about fourteen years old – wide eyes and ears that stuck out from his head. “What is it?”

When he answered his voice was quiet – but perfectly composed. Not afraid. He said, “You’ll have a much better chance with me up here in front.”

Hackworth’s immediate reaction was suspicion. But he stole another glance at the kid, and didn’t see any deception on his face. Moreover, he was right. They were ultimately not only going to need him up front. They were going to need him driving. “Take a seat, kid.”

He did so, while Colley hovered behind them.

“It’s okay,” Hackworth said. “Go back and look after Brown.”

Colley nodded and left.

And the two men – one on his way out of the wrong side of middle age, the other just becoming a young man – rode in silence for a few minutes. The silence was either cordial, or suspicious. Probably some of both.

Finally, the boy said, “What happened to Brandon?”

Hackworth looked over. He guessed that was the name of the driver.

“Back at the checkpoint,” the boy further prompted.

“He jumped out and warned them,” Hackworth said, his voice tight. “He tried to grass us up.” He hoped that would be warning enough to the kid.

“You can’t blame him for that. It was his job – his duty.”

“It was bloody stupid was what it was.”

“Is he okay?”

Hackworth’s immediate, human reaction was to lie – to spare this kid the pain of learning his friend was gone. But he realized he needed to use it. “He’s dead.”

“Oh, no,” the kid said. His voice was still composed – but he turned his head away and stared out the window.

Hackworth realized the kid thought he had killed him. And as useful as that too might be, he couldn’t bear taking the blame for it. “It wasn’t me, for God’s sake. It was the marauders who killed him.”

The kid looked back at him. “What’s the difference? Between you and the marauders?”

That shut Hackworth up good. What the hell WAS the difference?

Now the silence they rode in had a very different flavor.

* * *

They were moving through what looked for all the world like farmland now. It was hard to believe this was still London, still inside the M25. But the enormous Wall was starting to loom now – rising up out of the horizon.

There was a reckoning coming – their last and toughest hurdle.

Perhaps recognizing this, the kid started talking again. “What are you guys even doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean hijacking a military transport full of weapons. Kidnapping soldiers. It doesn’t look very good.”

Hackworth pressed his lips together. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t. So explain it to me.”

So Hackworth did. He told him a little about the terrible trials the Tunnelers had endured to make it this far. About how they had been let down again and again by the authorities. How they had no choice but to look out for themselves.

The young man, both skinny and of modest height, exhaled. “Okay. Maybe I’d do the same in your circumstances. I don’t know. Maybe anyone would.”

Hackworth looked over. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Private Borchers.”

“No. Your given name.”

“Liam.”

“How old are you, Liam?”

“Eighteen.”

Hackworth just shook his head. Being such a young age was all but unimaginable to him. His youth was so far behind him it might as well be locked up in another dimension.

“What’s your name, then?” Liam asked.

“Hackworth.”

The kid just gave him a look.

“Will. It’s Will.” Hackworth realized no one had used his first name since… hell, ever since they went into the Tunnel on the French side, before the fall.

“So we’re both William, then.”

“Yes, I suppose so. We’re both William.”

Liam put out his fist. Hackworth shook his head – but finally made a fist and bumped the kid’s. Then he let off the accelerator and braked them to a smooth rolling stop.

“You’re going to have to drive now.”

Liam nodded. But before he got out of the driver’s seat, Hackworth looked seriously into the young man’s face. “Listen. We just want to get out of here. That’s all. This place is a death trap. London is doomed. We just want to go.”

Liam didn’t look like he agreed with Hackworth’s assessment. But he agreed to do what was asked of him. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

Hackworth decided he trusted him. Anyway, he didn’t have a choice.

They switched seats and got moving again.

And the Wall loomed ahead.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Kent - Two Miles South of the ZPW

Elliott rose to his full height from the pit of destruction in his shell hole.

And he didn’t even look back.

The commander of 2 Para had just ordered everyone able-bodied to the rear, leaving the wounded behind. At first, because he wasn’t looking behind him, but only following the cries of the wounded, Elliott wasn’t aware of the others following him. But it turned out everyone was behind him, every healthy Para in this sector, all moving forward. No one was going back.

No one was leaving anybody behind.

Elliott already had his personal aid kit out when he knelt down at the first motionless figure he found. With all the debris and carnage on the ground, it took him a few seconds to realize it wasn’t a body. It was only a torso. But its nametape was intact. It read: McKay. A man from his company.

Oh, God. Elliott swallowed a sob and moved on.

The next one he found was familiar not just by name, but by face. A man from his platoon. A friend. A brother.

These men were all from D Company. This was his unit. They had been the last out, covering the withdrawal of the rest of the battalion. And they had been devastated. All his brothers, every one of them… they were all gone.

And Elliott was still here only because he’d gotten lost.

Then he heard a moan, close by. He rose and ran over. Lying in a shallow depression was not only a completely intact body – but it was moving and looking at him. It was Jones – a man not just in his company or platoon, but his own section.

“Jonesy, mate,” he said, his voice solidifying again. “Tell me where it hurts.”

Jones actually laughed. He was a dark-complected soldier with black stubble that never seemed to go away no matter how often he shaved, and piercing dark eyes, nearly black. The gleam of intelligence and mischief hadn’t gone out of them. “Just about everywhere,” he said.

It looked like he was hit worst in his legs, where there was a lot of blood, so Elliott got some big gauze pads out and started wedging them in there – the rips in his trousers facilitated this – and then started taping the pads down.

It was only now, when he heard the first firing, that Elliott started to realize the import of the decision he had made – that everyone had made – to go back to help the wounded. Because not only was C Company moving back into the area devastated by the artillery barrage… but the great mass of the dead was at the other end of this field of charnel, and they had their own agenda for the wounded.

And they were moving fast through the mists and drifting smoke.

For a second Elliott was frozen – torn between his sacred duty to help his friend, and the sudden urgent need to defend them both from being fallen on and torn to bits. He stopped to take a half a dozen shots on the nearest stumbling figures, then went back to his work on Jones.

“Can you walk?” he asked, trying to keep panic out of his voice.

“Mate, I’m not sure I could even roll over.”

Within another minute, Elliott had used all his pads and tape getting Jones’s wounds wrapped up – and was digging into the grievously wounded man’s own aid pouch for more – when rapid movement drew his eye, practically on top of him. He got his rifle up as the racing figure crashed into him, and used his weapon to sling it around past him – then fired six rounds into and around its head as it hit the ground.

It was a runner, and it had almost made an end of him.

Elliott spun electrically when a hand landed on his shoulder, bringing his rifle up to fire again – but it was pushed gently away, and a face, very much alive, was right in his, asking: “Walker, you okay?”

It was Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj.

Elliott nodded, sweat falling from his face as he shivered from the adrenaline.

“We gotta go, Private. We all gotta go!”

Now Elliott managed to dial up his situational awareness – and he realized that in all directions healthy Paras were helping wounded ones to their feet, or else carrying them, while others fired to protect them, as the dead swarmed and descended. And many of them were also shouting variations of “We gotta go!” “Pick ‘em up and go!” “C’mon!” “Go, go, go!”

The dead were on them, the great mass less than a hundred yards away.

And, everywhere, small packs of runners were already bashing into the groups of wounded and rescuers. In some cases, they were put down by rapid defensive fire. In others, they weren’t. Rifle reports, shouts, and moans, all seemed to float out of the drifting smoke and mists from every direction and none. These little vignettes of maximal peril and nose-to-nose violence, some visible and some not, were being played out everywhere, all around Elliott – as close as twenty meters away, all the way to the edge of vision.

Elliott could see Bhardwaj thrumming with nervous tension – he had dozens of men he needed to help and to lead.

“Go,” Elliott said. He nodded at Jones. “I’ve got him.”

The sergeant nodded, then took off again, rifle up.

“Brace yourself,” Elliott said to Jones, as he rolled him onto his stomach. He could actually feel the wrenching pain this caused him. But Jones didn’t make a sound. Elliott hooked his elbows under Jones’s armpits and hauled him to his feet, or something like it. He then placed his right leg between Jones’s, grabbed his right hand with his left, then squatted down, wrapped his arm around Jones’s knee, and then lifted him up. Somewhere along the line, the Army had taught him how to get a wounded man into a fireman’s carry. It must have stuck.

Luckily, Jones wasn’t a big man, but he was still fully kitted up – and Elliott didn’t even remember his own leg wound until he started running again. Tottering, more like. But they were moving.

They were getting the hell out of there.

* * *

We are meat, Elliott thought. It was a horrifying thing to have go through his head. He knew that he and his brothers, that all people everywhere, were also exquisite sparks of unique consciousness – perhaps unique in the thirteen-billion-year history of the universe. We are angels, spirit creatures of hope and light and possibility and love.

But we are also meat, he realized now. Bags of meat.

And it occurred to Elliott, young as he was, that this might actually be the core contradiction of being human: born with the souls of angels – but mortal angels, meat angels, born to die and rot away. And that was maybe even the fundamental problem every human had to solve: how to live in a world where we are born to die.

It was only when the C Company men were moving with the devastated and broken survivors of D Company, those still alive and who could be moved, that their own fundamental mortality and vulnerability became stark – and utterly undeniable.

Because the dead were falling on them and taking them down.

The runners in particular – laden with the wounded, there was almost no way the soldiers could outrun them. And firing to the rear to protect themselves was harder than most could manage.

And so down they went, from the back of the formation first, and Elliott could hear them going down, and then he could hear the unendurable sounds of what the dead were doing to them. And he thought about how utterly horrifying it was that what had minutes earlier been a wonderful individual, one of his best friends, a young man he’d lived and trained with for years, the names of whose family he knew, whose loves and passions and quirks and essential humanity were all intimately familiar to him… could now end up as nothing more or less than a meal for another creature.

And it occurred to him that if you were both at the same time – both spirit creature of light and consciousness, and also bag of tasty meat being devoured – well, that was about as bad as you could end up. Being both at once, conscious while consumed. That was the worst thing imaginable.

And that’s how many of his closest friends were ending up now. Their bodies had been broken by the errant artillery barrage. But they were still conscious as they were devoured. And Elliott could hear their screams.

And all he could do was just keep running, back toward the lines, with Jonesy bouncing on his back. The best he was going to be able to do was to save his one platoon-mate. But he was goddamned well going to do that. He had to.

And now an old joke popped into his head, one he hated himself for remembering, but also smiled at somehow at the same time: You don’t have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the slowest guy RUNNING from the bear.

Behind him, all around, from first to last, the healthy refused to leave the wounded – but the ones who refused to leave also got taken down, and then got swarmed. And it was only those groups going down, and attracting crowds of the dead looking for an easy meal, that was going to allow any of them to get away and survive. Maybe.

Elliott knew he couldn’t outrun the runners, never mind the Foxtrots. He just had to keep going – and hope he kept getting lucky.

But then suddenly his luck ran out.

He heard a breathy shrieking sound behind him – which grew in volume, damned fast, as it grew in proximity. Elliott staggered to a stop and spun around – both to face the threat, and to shield Jones from it. He still held his rifle by the pistol-grip with his right hand. He started firing from the waist, round after round, trying to walk them onto the thing’s head, having virtually no hope that he’d be able to make the shot…

When another shriek came in from behind him, the other side, faster and louder this time. Now he knew that two Foxtrots had him hemmed in from either side. And before he could even begin to spin again, the second one slammed into his back, or rather into Jonesy on his back, and they all went down hard – Elliott face-first into the thick mud.

For a second, the weight of two bodies on his back pushed him so far into the wet loam that he thought he was going to suffocate. Some horrible struggle was taking place on his back – but Jonesy still didn’t make a sound. And then half the weight went away, and Elliott was able to get his chin out of the mud and lever his head up…

And ahead of him, right where he had last seen it, was the first Foxtrot. It lowered itself down into a crouch, buzzing with coiled energy… and it looked Elliott in the eye and hissed, a sound of pure malevolence. Elliott willed his eyes to stay open. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn’t going to hide from it. If seconds were all he had left, he was going to live those seconds.

And then the fell, manic creature uncoiled all that energy and erupted out of its crouch – tearing away off to the right, disappearing into the mists almost too fast to track. Elliott, crushed down, exhausted, tried to get some breath into his lungs. And then he mustered his strength to roll Jones off his back. He rose into a crouch, turned around, and checked on his wounded friend.

And saw he had a bite – a bad one, a whole chunk of his shoulder torn out.

“Stay with me, mate,” Elliott said, digging in Jones’s aid kit for another bandage.

“I’m right here, Elliott.”

As Elliott got the bandage out, he squinted in confusion at what had just happened. For no reason he could imagine the second Foxtrot had just left them there. Spared them. Tearing the packet with his teeth and getting the gauze pad in place, he said, “What the hell just happened?”

Jones looked strangely peaceful. Finally he said, “They say the new ones just infect and run. Maybe it thought we were just one really big bloke.”

Elliott’s eyes went wide. “And we were already infected.” If this was true, then it meant that his refusal to leave Jones, his willingness to sacrifice his life for him… was also all that had saved him.

Jones tried to smile – then winced as Elliott taped up the new bandage. He then started a repeat of the earlier routine of lifting him up onto his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Jones said.

“Getting you out of here.”

“You saw it yourself! I’m infected. I’m done for.”

Elliott spoke through gritted teeth as he rose again with Jones on his back. “Maybe you’re infected, and maybe not.” They both knew that even a bad bite wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. A handful of people had survived them. “Either way, you’re coming with me.”

Legs burning with lactic acid, lungs on fire, Elliott balanced his rifle with one hand – and his friend with the other.

And he started running again.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Jones began to turn.

At his urging, Elliott set him down in a copse of trees and held his hand, both their arms bent at the elbow. Elliott looked around, trying to keep his rifle handy. He was pretty sure they were behind enemy lines again. Those Foxtrots that had spared them had also left them in the mud while the main body of the enemy passed over and around them.

“It’s okay, Elliott,” Jones said, looking up. His handsome, smiling, pain-racked face said that it really was. “This has been the greatest day of my life.”

Hot tears leaked from the corners of Elliott’s eyes – not for the first time today. He felt like he was in a bad dream – a recurring one, and from which he never awoke. But he laughed through the tears as he said, “Yeah? Mine’s been shit.”

Jones laughed with him. “Hey, I spent today with my Regiment, defending my home and my people – and doing it side-by-side with the best mates I’ll ever have. And now, at the end, what you’ve done for me…” He seemed to be choking up.

There was also the fact that he was dying – the fine black spiderweb lines forming around his eyes, his skin becoming pale, and his eyes growing rheumy. But somehow he was still smiling. To Elliott, he looked like… like he’d never felt so loved or cared for in his life. They squeezed each other’s hands tighter, as if hanging on for dear life.

“And nothing can take that away – any of it.” Jones let go of his hand now as he fought back tears. “It’s okay, Elliott. Go on now. Get back to the Regiment. Keep on fighting.”

Elliott swallowed hard and tried to speak. “I can’t leave you like this.”

“It’s okay.” And with trembling fingers, Jones got out his pistol, and laid it in his lap. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to.”

Elliott leaned closer and hugged his friend, holding him tightly, and not letting him go for almost a minute. But then it was time. Wordlessly, with only a nod, he got up, hefted his rifle, and moved out, tears drying on his cheeks.

He knew he was going to have to break through the lines again. He’d done it once, and he could do it again. But it felt very different this time. This time, he had both resolve and – somehow – hope. At first, he wasn’t sure where it had come from. But as he jogged through the woods, picking up speed, suddenly and with startling clarity, a great truth came clear to him. He realized that in the face of certain death, the only thing that gave life meaning… was sacrificing for the people you loved.

And he knew that, no matter what, he wouldn’t be giving up.

And now he knew why.

Post-Apocalyptic Bad-Ass

Five Feet Over Western Russia

Oleg Aliyev hurled himself through the open cargo door and inside his Eurocopter like a man with his head on fire diving into a pool. Shots were still being fired, but they weren’t his, and so far they weren’t hitting him, and he couldn’t even hear or see them hitting anywhere around him, so he wasn’t totally freaked out. His major emotion right now was amazement at how easy it turned out to be to shoot living people – so much easier than he ever would have imagined.

Just draw, point, and shoot.

But maybe everything was easy when you had no choice. And Aliyev had decided, and he felt in his bones the truth of this, that the only way he was getting out of that campfire circle of sinister farm boys, out in the Russian hinterland, was to start shooting first – and to finish shooting last.

Then again, perhaps shooting the first Russian redneck had been so easy because the man had been blind and screaming, his hands covering his face, after Aliyev threw his cup of scalding coffee in it. Yes, shooting that man, who had been standing two feet in front of him, blind and screaming, had been very easy indeed.

Then turning to target the second, the one who was beside and slightly behind him, had also gone well. He shot that guy before he could get his gun clear. But, finally, Aliyev had neither the speed nor the skills to get the drop on and gun down four armed and alert men, however much coffee he threw around.

It had gotten messy from there. And Aliyev had legged it for the helo.

And so now there were either two of them, or maybe only one, one or both possibly wounded, still out there, just outside the weak ring of firelight, plinking at Aliyev as he dove through the door of the helo. In a last stroke of life-saving good luck, they had scampered off in one direction and he in another, and the direction they picked was not toward the helicopter, and the one he picked was.

Now Aliyev turned, raised his weapon, and fired six shots out into the darkness. Then he leaned out, reached down, and grabbed both his bug-out bag and his shotgun, hauled them inside – and finally pulled the cargo door shut. As he did, two incoming shots hit the outside of the door, but didn’t come through. That meant the metal of the helicopter body stopped bullets – or stopped their bullets, anyway, which was all Aliyev gave a shit about.

He turned forward, climbed into the front, and took the pilot’s seat.

A bullet hit the section of cockpit glass directly to his left. And this time it came through – and went straight back out the window to his right. In the middle it must have passed an inch in front of his face. Fuck! Aliyev leaned across the cockpit to the left – pilots sit on the right in helicopters – slid open the side window, stuck his gun out, and triggered off probably half the remaining rounds in his pistol’s big-ass thirty-round magazine. He didn’t bother aiming.

He was just trying to put their heads down for the little time he needed.

Then he started bringing the engines up – not giving short shrift to the pre-flight checks this time so much as completely ignoring them. Every few seconds he paused what he was doing and fired a couple of unaimed shots out that window, praying they would be enough to keep the surviving farm boys from swinging around to his front and shooting him to death through the cockpit glass.

When his mag went empty, and he was still on the ground, and the shots to the front of the helo didn’t stop, he realized this plan was a loser. They were going to get him before he could get airborne.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud. “And fuck these guys.”

He clambered back into the cargo area, slid the top off the wooden grenade case, and regarded the big matrix of fuck-shit-up inside. He’d never thrown a grenade before, but like everyone else had seen it in the movies a thousand times. It looked easy enough. He grabbed one in each hand, pulled the pins with his teeth, got the cargo door open a couple of feet – and started chucking.

The field began blowing up, plus whizzing with zipping shrapnel, plus flashing and banging. Aliyev couldn’t tell the types of grenades apart in the low light, and he sure wasn’t going to pause to puzzle them out now. He just distributed them around the field liberally – and when he’d thrown eight or so, he shoved a couple more in his pockets, climbed back in front, and resumed the start-up procedures.

There was no more incoming fire. Whether the last farm boys were dead, wounded, cowed, or run off, Aliyev hardly cared.

A surprisingly small number of lifetimes later, he was actually throttling up, pulling on the collective, and rising up out of this very poorly picked empty Russian field. And now he could once again make out the sounds of the Cossacks plinking at him from below – the grenade shower must have just got their heads down, which was enough for Aliyev. He could hear both the shots, and the tinny impacts they made on the underside of the airframe – but that was no longer his problem, because once again: he was in the wind.

“Ha! I’m out of here, bizzles!” he shouted, for the second time.

That line had been working for him.

And now the shooting of the farm boys became their fucking problem – because they were making a bunch of noise, and they wouldn’t have any ammo left when the walking dead got there, as they inevitably would.

As Aliyev continued to climb, and put himself back on the correct heading, he was feeling well pleased with himself.

Maybe he had a future as a post-Apocalyptic bad-ass after all.

Autorotation

Fifteen Hundred Feet Over Western Russia

“No, no, no, no, no…” But even as Aliyev denied it, he knew he was seeing it right. The low fuel warning light on the helicopter’s dash had come on bright and yellow. When he’d touched down in that misleadingly empty-looking Russian field, he’d had more than half a tank. Now, less than thirty minutes after his totally death-defying escape, the yellow light indicated he was down to fifteen percent.

Then, as he stupidly tapped at it – he didn’t know why, maybe in case there was a needle stuck behind the color touch-screen display? – it turned red on him. That meant he was down to ten percent. And there was absolutely no way he had used five percent of a tank in the last minute. That could only mean one thing.

The fucking Cossacks had got the last laugh. They’d hit his fuel tank.

Aliyev almost jumped out of the pilot’s seat as a sultry female voice said, “Warning. Low fuel.”

He dropped back into his seat, breathing fast. Crap! he thought. Damned luxury helicopters for rich assholes with spoken audio warnings! Everything was just getting on his dick today.

“Warning. Low fuel.”

But he had much bigger and more urgent problems than the aeronautical equivalent of Siri annoying the shit out of him, and he had to focus on these now. In actual fact: he was now pretty much completely hosed.

Well and truly screwed.

He scrabbled around for his NVGs, managed to get them on his face, and cast around frantically below him for someplace level to set it down. He figured “level” was about the absolute best he could hope for at this point. And even that, a safe landing, might only keep him alive for a few minutes longer than otherwise.

But then his heart sank as he realized that staying alive for a few minutes longer was actually well beyond anything he might hope for.

Because down below him, sketched out in night-vision green and black, was a riot of industrial buildings, overpasses, train tracks – and even a few high-rises, a bit farther off in the distance. He was over a city. Even aside from the total absence of large flat places where he might set it down… this was pretty much the worst conceivable place for him to be stranded. He had no idea how many dead would be down there – tens of thousands or millions.

He only knew it would be way too many for him.

“Warning. Critically low fuel.”

“I know! Shut the fuck up!”

Now for some reason he remembered the people who had jumped from the World Trade Center on 9/11. The thought of falling a hundred stories to their deaths hadn’t become any less terrifying. It was just less bad than the prospect of burning to death in the jet fuel inferno behind them. But Aliyev found he was different from them. He decided that dying right now in a crashing helicopter somehow seemed worse than dying ten minutes from now being torn apart by the dead. Surely the latter would be more painful.

But he just wanted those ten minutes.

He wanted to keep living.

To do so, he had to find a level spot somewhere, anywhere… there had to be something… there! It was off in the distance, but maybe just close enough. He could now see it was surrounded by giant hulking square buildings, and even what looked like pointy onion domes… but it was a gigantic flat spot, huge and totally level, and it even appeared bricked over or paved.

“Warning. Fuel exhausted. Engine shutdown imminent.”

But the engines started shutting down even before the automated bitch finished saying it. Hyperventilating, Aliyev tried to judge the distance to that square. And, much more critically, he racked his brain for the memory of how to do autorotation. He remembered the fact that, as improbable as it seemed, a helo with engine failure was actually more survivable than a plane in the same situation. Its salvation was in its spinning rotors.

All he had to do – and what he REALLY had to do – was use the helicopter’s forward momentum, as well as the upward flow of air from its descent, and most of all the kinetic energy stored in the spinning blades, to keep the rotors turning long enough to allow him to set down. To keep him from crashing and being turned into charred meat waffles in the urban shitscape below. And he knew there was basically one critical step he had to take to make this happen.

But he couldn’t remember what it was.

Though, once again, he probably had the rest of his life to figure it out.

Then it came back to him. Collective pitch! Lower the collective pitch! That was it. It had to be. It would reduce both lift and drag and put him into an immediate descent. Aliyev hesitated and looked below him. It didn’t look like anywhere he wanted to immediately descend.

Fuck it.

He could go down smooth, or he could go down hard. Either way, he was going down. Swallowing a big lump of terror, he took his left hand and jammed the collective into the floor.

The erratic motion of the aircraft immediately settled down. He was still moving downward, but also forward, and the flight path seemed stable. The weirdest thing was the eerie silence. He’d never been in a flying helicopter with the engines shut down – and the odds were extremely good he never would be again.

Now he also remembered that he could control his rate of descent by trading it off with his airspeed, using the cyclic normally. Increasing his airspeed would slow his rate of descent – up to a point! – and then the opposite would start to happen, when he’d be out of lift and start to plummet again.

Aliyev very quickly identified that spot on the curve, as he tried to urge this dying aircraft over the warren of buildings below him and into that open square. He eased the cyclic back until the combination of airspeed and rate of descent seemed to maximize the distance he could go before he ran out of sky, and fell the hell out of it. The sweet spot.

But he was having to eyeball all of this.

And as he angled in toward the roof of the last building before that square, and as he realized he genuinely had no idea whether he was going to just make it, or just miss it… something about one of the buildings on the far side of the square grabbed his attention and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t make out any real details in the NVG view but the shape was extremely distinctive – and equally familiar to him.

And now Aliyev’s throat closed in horror as he realized there couldn’t be two buildings shaped like that – not in the whole world. It consisted of four or five big onion domes arrayed underneath a spire with a smaller onion dome of its own at the top.

And now he was sure. It was what he used to know as Sobor Vasilija Blazhennogo. It couldn’t be. But it was – the fucking Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, otherwise known to the world as St. Basil’s Cathedral.

He simply couldn’t be here. But somehow he was – a quick glance down at the GPS moving-map display, which he hadn’t had time for in a while, verified it was true. Those were the buildings of Moscow spreading out below him. And, like it or not, Oleg Aliyev was, seriously, coming in for a crash landing…

Right in the middle of Red fucking Square.

American Zulu

Camp Lemonnier - Southwest Guard Tower

When the single grenade sounded out near Thunderdome, followed by the first gunshots, Command Sergeant Major Zorn eyed the weird Indian dude out of the corner of his eye to see how he reacted. The man put his hand to his radio – but then stopped. Zorn assumed he’d decided to keep the channel clear, and let the men on the ground hail him if they needed him.

Not a terrible call. But it also meant that the man’s attention was still on him.

So Zorn rose slowly and moved out to the railing. He pointed into the distance and said, “I think your guys are in trouble.” That didn’t work either – his captor stepped away from him, and actually swiveled to face him more.

Dammit. Zorn was about to sit back down, when he saw the Indian’s hand go to his radio earpiece. From the way the man’s expression darkened, Zorn guessed it was a call for help. Which wouldn’t surprise him a bit.

And then the man rushed to grab the gate control box, leaning over and turning away from him.

That’s all Zorn needed. He snatched up the wooden leg of the bench he had been working loose while sitting on top of it, and gave it a full-arm swing at the back of the man’s head. He went down like a sack of cement.

It took him a few minutes to disarm his former captor, get the man’s wrists and ankles tied with his own flex cuffs, and then take his radio off him. By the time he did and got the earpiece in, the secret squirrels’ leader was on the channel, shouting. “Noise, Handon, I say again – we need you to get that last gate open RFN. We are inbound, ETA two mikes! How copy?”

Zorn pressed the transmit button. “I read your cool operator ass just fine. But that gate stays closed.”

Slight pause. The strained voice came back on. “Zorn, you son of a bitch – open that gate before we get there and I’ll let you live. Otherwise, we cut through and I kill you in four minutes. Choose.”

Zorn exhaled. “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t.”

He could now see the fleeing group of SOF guys down below, running flat out through the maze of the camp. They’d all consolidated. But the undead horde, which they’d haplessly unleashed from Thunderdome, was hot on their heels. They might have time to cut through the last gate. And then again they might not.

Zorn keyed his mic. “Looks like my conventional soldiers are breathing down your neck. Suggest you cure them if you want to live.”

Another pause. “What the fuck are you talking about? There’s no cure!”

“Bullshit. I intercepted radio traffic between your carrier and the UK, talking about it. You’re not such a secret squirrel as you think. Now you’re going to use that cure on my people – starting with my commander, General Præsidium.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind, Zorn. Look, you don’t open that last gate, we’re going to cut it or blow it – after which your precious camp will be overrun again.”

“Like you give a shit. And I’ll take care of my camp. But if you want your guys to get out of there alive you’ll get hopping – and start using that aerial sprayer of yours on my garrison.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Handon. I can see the tank on the back of the guy with the hipster beard. What else would be in there? I’m not a fucking idiot.”

No response came back to this.

* * *

Handon actually slammed bodily into the last section of closed steel fence. Bouncing off it and spinning around, he could see everyone coming in right behind him. And the undead army coming in right behind them.

Correction – everyone was there but Henno and Homer.

“Set a perimeter!” he shouted, moving to anchor it himself.

Without needing to be told, Juice set upon the fence with his wire-cutters. There was no way they could blow the damned thing with explosives now – they were all backed up too close to it by the frontrunners of the incoming Zulu marathon. Worse, this was a double section of fence – two sheets of heavy-gauge wire back to back, with two inches between them – and with that same thick coil of deadly razor wire twelve feet up at its top. As he worked, Juice heard the firing behind him ramp up almost immediately.

Watching destroyed dead sliding up to his feet, still firing flat out and point-blank into head after face after mouth, Handon spoke into his mic. “Homer, status!”

“Still near the wire. Not sure how I’m going to work my way back there. But fine for now.”

Ali, as so often, was at the front of the group with her sword out – but a full-size katana this time. She looked like an aikido master, spinning and whirling through a crowd of attackers, all of them racing straight at her – until she smoothly pivoted out of the way, spearing or decapitating them as they went by, then letting them fly right back out again. The others were shooting around her, with inches to spare. But that too was part of the endless CQB training – their rounds went exactly where they wanted them, including inches from their teammate.

“Fuck this,” Predator muttered, slinging his rifle and drawing his bat as he lumbered forward. He took a position far enough to the side of Ali not to hit her with his backswings – and, not for the first time, started destroying Zulus en masse with great, wide, powerful arcs of his melee weapon. Now the operators behind were shooting around two – and Pred was harder to shoot around for obvious reasons – but the surging flood of dead soldiers wasn’t crashing over them.

They were holding back the wave – for now.

While Handon dropped his empty mag and replaced it, he struggled for breath and hit the radio again: “Henno, status!”

No response. The dead were starting to envelop them now. Everyone was firing flat out, but it was largely a chorus of deadly whispers as every weapon was suppressed – all but Brady’s, and he was hanging back covering Juice while he worked on the fence.

“Time, gentlemen!” Fick shouted at them as he slapped in a new mag.

“Twenty seconds!” Juice answered.

Handon traded a look with Fick – it was going to be close.

* * *

The darkness turned slowly to light as Noise’s eyelids struggled to flutter up. He knew better than to move at first. Whoever had sucker-punched him did not need to know he had regained consciousness. But very quickly he remembered who it was – Zorn – and saw that the man had his back to him, leaning out over the railing and watching whatever chaos was swirling around down below.

Both Noise’s shotgun and his scimitar had been taken off him, and lay on the deck right at Zorn’s feet.

As soon as he realized his wrists were bound behind him, Noise smoothly and silently brought them around underneath his legs – flexibility born of thousands of hours of yoga – and back around in front. Still moving no more than necessary, he reached up to his head and dislodged his turban – causing three feet of jet-black hair to spill onto his shoulders.

And then he pulled out the small curved dagger he had tucked up under there. In two quick slices, his bonds were off.

Now he rose up from the floor – his long flowing mane, not to mention the look on his face, transforming his normal peaceful appearance into that of some vengeful Hindu deity.

He had become Shiva, the destroyer.

Zorn never even turned around.

* * *

Handon looked away from Fick and back to what he was shooting at. Yeah – it was going to be close. But then… very unexpectedly, the motor near the ground buzzed to life and the gate slid open.

Handon slapped shoulders down the line. “Go, go, go! Center peel!” He fell back from the last position of the maneuver, fully intending to be last man out, as always. But he was wrong there, or rather was beaten to it. As the rest of the group backed through the small opening, and the gate began closing again to keep the dead out after letting the living in…

Henno burst into view seemingly from nowhere, gunning down corpses from the rear, body-checking others with his shoulder, bashing them with his rifle barrel, and basically clearing a path for himself… as well as for the large bundle he had slung over his shoulder. He slipped through the last vanishing sliver of gap behind Handon, as the others fired through the chain links to cover his last-man-out heroics.

As the gate finally clicked closed, Handon looked closer at the unwieldy package Henno was carrying. It was human-sized, fully enclosed in a PVC body bag – and was visibly kicking and wiggling. And Handon didn’t have the least doubt the dead man inside would be wearing a U.S. military uniform.

In all the chaos, and the struggle to retreat and to survive, Henno was the only one of them who’d maintained mission focus and remembered their absolutely critical objective – to get an early-stage dead guy. An American Zulu.

Henno had got the job done.

No Cure For Being Dead

Camp Lemonnier - Outside the Last Gate

“Whoah ho,” Pred said, shaking the gore off his bat. “No points for guessing what Henno’s got in there.”

“Yeah,” Reyes agreed, pulling out a bandage to double-wrap the blood-soaked one around his leg. “Nice one, dude.”

Even in all the chaos, Henno’d had the presence of mind to remember why they were there in the first place – and the critical importance of getting as early-stage a victim as possible. An American soldier wasn’t good enough. But it was a start.

The others were impressed.

But Henno wasn’t. He dropped the wiggling bag on the ground and looked around. “Where is he?” His voice was ice-cold murder, and no one had to guess who he meant – Zorn. “Because I’m going to fucking kill him.” He was already stalking off before Handon could restrain him, so instead he just followed.

The others at the gate soon realized they weren’t totally out of the woods yet. Juice had scissored a pretty big gash through this gate before Noise opened it for them, and they were going to have to defend it if they didn’t want the dead squeezing through one at a time. Some of the operators now shot or stabbed, while Juice had a go at sealing the gap with cable-ties.

Dozens of other American Zulus, all of them in a frenzy, were soon pressing up against the fence – and quickly piling up toward the tops of the HESCO barriers to either side. Soon, there were going to be hundreds of them.

And this barricade wasn’t going to hold for long.

* * *

“A thousand pardons,” Noise said, leaning out over the railing as Henno and Handon mounted the stairs. “I allowed this dubious individual to cold-cock me.”

As Henno and Handon reached the top of the guard tower, Noise pointed to his headgear, which he’d gotten back in place with his hair under it. “But he didn’t reckon on the turban. Softened the blow.”

Handon nodded his gratitude, but Henno was already on Zorn – who was now flexcuffed again and sitting on the bench in the rear. Henno hauled him to his feet and threw him up against the wall. Once again Zorn, no shrinking violet, came back at Henno with his shoulder lowered – but Henno hauled the man’s head down into his rising knee, and he crumpled to the floor, where he lay still and worked to breathe.

Henno leaned over Zorn’s prone form, raised the man’s head up by the skin on his scalp, and said, “I’m going to need your windpipe now, mate.”

“Henno,” Handon said, in a voice not to be ignored. “We still need him as a guide. And there’s nothing to be gained by killing him – aside from revenge, which gets us nowhere.”

Henno squinted up at Handon – still holding Zorn by the head.

* * *

“What is it about us,” Fick muttered, as he stabbed heads through the chainlink fence with his knife, “that we just attract every deranged asshole in the ZA?” He was referring to, in addition to Zorn, the unhinged Canadian sniper who had almost shot them out of the sky over Beaver Island. Everyone knew what he meant.

Ali, standing further down the fence and spearing faces with her sword, shook her head. “I told you. Another batshit-crazy loner.”

Reyes laughed and said. “And I told you! Genre conventions are inviolable!”

Pred shook his head and said, “And what the hell was that with all these dead GIs locked up in Thunderdome? Was Zorn saving them for something, or what?”

Juice said, “Maybe he was hoping for a cure.”

Pred shook his head in amazement. “Yeah, a cure for being dead. It was like the goddamned walkers in the barn all over again.”

Reyes said, “I never watched that show.”

“I did,” Pred said. “Wish I’d paid better attention.”

Ali looked back and saw Reyes was also taking a load off, sitting beside Pred, both of them with their injured legs extended. Her expression hardening, she said, “You two could give us a hand up here, if you’re done being pop-culture savants. And if your vaginas – excuse me, I mean your legs – aren’t aching too much.”

Pred shook his head at all the head-stabbing through chainlink and said, “Hey, man, that’s some serious Walking Dead shit right there. I don’t like being that close to infected fluids, personally.”

“Let me do it,” Juice said, finishing his cable-tying of the gash in the fence. He stood up and started firing his pneumatic spike, the OJ, through the wire mesh. In a remarkably short time, he had destroyed every Zulu on the front rank, which effectively provided a barrier to those behind, who pressed up against them.

“See?” he said. “Much safer. Plus faster and easier.”

But they could also see that the combined weight of the ones behind was eventually going to bring the fence down. And by eventually what they meant was pretty damned soon. It was an extremely heavy-gauge and finely meshed military-grade chain link, and double-stacked. But this fence’s minutes were numbered.

At that moment, Handon jumped in their ears over the squad net:

“Hey, somebody bring that bagged-up Zulu back to the tower for me.”

“On my way,” Pred said, rising and throwing the wiggly body over his shoulder as lightly as if it were salt after a tequila shot.

He and it limped off toward the rear.

* * *

“I’m telling you one more time,” Handon said. “Stand down, Henno.”

His face a hate mask, Henno rose to his feet, pulling Zorn up with him by the loose skin on his head. “The hell with you, Handon. I’m going to slot this fucker right now. No more diversions. No more fucking about. No more mercy. He was trying to roger us from the start – you heard Homer. He was going to blow us out of here with all the dead.”

As if on cue, Homer came over the squad net. “Hey, team leaders, be advised – dead from the town are starting to pile up against the outside wire. Your little fracas around Thunderdome has piqued their interest.”

“Received,” said Handon, not taking his eye off Henno.

The radio went again, Fick this time. “Hey, Handon – this internal fence is about to come down. We’re looking at minutes, maybe single digits. We need to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Received,” Handon said. “Stand by.”

Henno was still staying his hand and not killing Zorn – for now – but he wasn’t letting him go. He said, “You’re right about one thing, though. Revenge is no more useful than mercy. Only the mission matters. But we’re not safe while this bell-end is breathing air. And so neither is the mission.”

Handon shook his head. “He’s still a source of intel.”

“Oh, really? You like what he’s told us so far? Or maybe you’re just not hard enough to do what needs doing.” Henno drew his knife – but before he could use it, Handon seized his forearm with a vise-like grip. Henno braced himself and gave Handon a mighty shove with the knife-wielding hand, knocking him back a pace.

Noise, standing in the corner, looked seriously alarmed by this developing internecine violence. “Gentlemen! I beseech you…”

Henno turned away, threw Zorn up against the wall, put the knife to his throat, and looked into his eyes from a few inches away. Zorn smiled and spat in his face. Henno hauled his knife back – and Handon grabbed the knife-hand again from behind, hauling Henno across the room and slamming him into the opposite wall. Henno dropped the knife, put his head down, and charged Handon, catching him across the midsection. The two of them crashed to the floor.

Trying to cover Zorn, and also keep clear of the wrestling dinosaurs in the center, Noise heard Fick come on the channel again. “Seriously, Handon – what’s the plan? We need to motate and exfil NOW.”

Henno and Handon grunted and pistoned body blows into each other… for about two seconds, which was when Predator, having climbed up there unseen in all the chaos, clomped inside, dropped his live Zulu, and waded into the middle of the fight – the only one big enough to break it up, never mind fearless enough to put himself in the middle of it.

“KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!” he thundered, grabbing first Henno, then Handon, and flinging both big men to opposite sides of the tower like rag dolls. Each bounced into a sitting position on the floor and looked up at the newcomer.

Pred glared back and forth between them. “We don’t have time for this tomfoolery!” This was so ridiculous, coming from who it came from, that all the rage flooded out of Handon and Henno, and they both started laughing.

But they stopped again when they realized Zorn had joined in. The two of them could laugh at their well-spoken land giant. But this guy sure as hell wasn’t allowed to. Handon bounced to his feet and grabbed the wiggling bag of Zulu. “Thanks,” he said to Pred.

“No problem.”

Handon dragged the bag over toward Zorn.

“What the hell?” Zorn said.

Hauling himself to his feet, Henno said, “Whatever you have in mind, we don’t have time for it.”

“We make time,” said Handon.

He unzipped one end of the bag, pulled the hood off the gnashing Zulu – and stuck its face into Zorn’s restrained and exposed arm. Zorn tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. The Zulu made a snuffling noise – and, in another second, had taken a big chunk out of Zorn’s flesh and was hungrily gobbling it down. Handon replaced the hood and zipped the bag back up. He then produced a small vial of liquid and he held it in front of Zorn’s face.

“If you have any interest in staying human,” he said, “You’re going to need this serum. Which means you need me.” He yanked Zorn once again to his feet. “You understand? It’s our way, or the undead way.”

Zorn nodded, then looked down at his mutilated and bleeding arm, sobered. All the belligerence and attitude had finally been shaken out of him. Earlier, Handon had told him if he lied to him again, he’d kill him. And he’d just done it – Zorn had been bitten and almost certainly infected. And he had finally met a meaner and more resolved man than himself.

Handon looked up to see Henno staring at him through slitted and scarcely believing eyes.

He gave him a look back that said: That hard enough for you?

“Holy shit, dude,” Predator said. “That was pretty fucked up right there.”

“C’mon,” Handon said, pushing Zorn toward the stairs.

“Whatever you say,” Pred said, hefting the live Zulu again, and sounding like he was disinclined to fuck with Handon at this point. “Where to?”

“Our ride,” Handon said, disappearing down the stairwell. “Zorn’s MRAP. We’re all getting the hell out of here.”

Cataclysm III

Hertfordshire - 500 Meters North of the ZPW

The Wall loomed out of the settling dusk like the gates of Jurassic Park – except six times as high, and mounted with a lot more firing positions, parapets, and weapons. None of the soldiers in 2 Para had seen it before. They’d been trucked in from their garrison in Colchester, Essex, directly to the front lines in Kent.

And while they’d just had to circumnavigate half of London on foot, their commander had kept them a couple of miles away from the Wall – because their job was still to be a buffer between London and the horrors descending on it. And, even cut down to fifty percent strength, they still had a job to do.

In the end, very few of the wounded from D Company made it out of that artillery-ravaged field. And an awful lot of C Company men went down trying to save them. There were a few that made it, mostly those with minor injuries. But not anybody who’d had to be carried or dragged out.

Now the only remotely full-strength rifle company left in the battalion was B – plus, thank God, the Support Company, with its Machine Gun, Mortar, and Anti-Tank platoons.

Despite this tragedy, Elliott no longer had his ass hanging off the back of the formation. Ever since fighting his way back through the lines a second time, he was stuck right in, near the middle of the platoon. In fact, very unexpectedly, Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj had made him a section leader. Both the leader and assistant for the platoon’s second section had gone down in the attempt to rescue the wounded.

In fact, the battalion’s cadre of senior NCOs, and most of the not-so-senior NCOs, had been decimated. This was because, out of all of them, they were the ones most committed to not leaving anyone behind – their loyalty to the men was absolute. They had put themselves at the point of maximum peril trying to protect the wounded, and the troopers trying to get them out.

And they had died in droves.

And now Elliott had a job. He may have lost almost all of his brothers in D Company. But he had a new home.

There was still a place for him.

* * *

Wiping the sweat from his forehead and hitching his pack up again, trying to ignore the pain in the wrapped-up wound in the back of his knee, Elliott couldn’t even guess how many miles they had covered. But he was sure this was the longest and hardest ruck march he’d ever undertaken. And God knows he had done some long ones.

But word was they were moving to a quiet sector, guarding the north part of the Wall, where they could rest and recuperate. Maybe even get resupplied.

Like everyone trudging around him, Elliott was so damned tired, and felt like he had nothing left in the tank. But, as improbable as it was, he was a leader now. And he couldn’t show his tiredness, never mind complain about it. Instead, he had to dig down, gut it out – and keep himself together for the good of the men.

On the bright side, he thought, trying to dredge up a smile, the dead are no longer hot on our heels.

The artillery barrage hadn’t allowed them to break contact as intended. When Elliott rejoined the battalion, they were moving fast, trying to stick together, and shooting at the runners that dogged them from close behind.

And then – though no one intended it, or even would have wished it – 2 Para ran straight into the middle of an encampment of civilian refugees. And they unintentionally led the pursuing dead right into them. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. The dead, particularly the runners, dispersed into the civilians, and just tore into them.

These people had been camped close to the walls of London, where they probably thought they’d be safe. Maybe the Paras could have stopped and tried to defend them. But, realistically, they just would have died along with them. Or so they told themselves. So instead, God forgive them, they took the opportunity to get clear, regroup, and move out.

Maybe they were meant to survive for a reason.

Elliott decided he had to believe that.

* * *

Now the day was finally winding down – the north side of the Wall looming massively as they approached it in the late afternoon sunlight, moving through sprawling sections of defensive trenches – deep ones, properly built and reinforced. But, weirdly, they were all abandoned. Neither Elliott nor anyone around him knew who had been posted to these positions, or why they’d abandoned them. The best guess was they had been pulled out and thrown into the fight in the south, where things were worse.

But maybe not for much longer.

Nonetheless, and whatever perils awaited them, to the Paras these looked like hammocks on a white sand beach. They could finally stop marching and have some rest – even if it was outdoors, even if it was outside the Wall. They just needed a little time, to pull themselves together as a battalion. Maybe the night would be kind to them.

And tomorrow they would be ready for the fight again.

Word came down and Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj positioned the platoon on the far right flank of the entire line. This was the direction they had come from – and presumably the direction the dead would arrive from first. Elliott took it as a statement of faith in Bhardwaj – and then the sergeant placed faith in Elliott by putting his section on the very end of their line.

“Where’s the lieutenant?” Elliott asked, mainly just out of interest. The LT hadn’t made himself very present since Elliott had joined the platoon, but he’d been totally absent since they reached the Wall.

“Senior leaders meeting,” Bhardwaj said.

Elliott nodded. “Where’d they put BHQ this time?” He meant the Battalion Headquarters, which their commander had been putting up and tearing down over and over again as they retreated across southern England.

“Right up against the bloody Wall, mate.” Bhardwaj spat into the grass, which was growing indistinct in the shadows at the end of day. “The charitable view is it’s shelter for the maps and radios, from the wind and rain. But I suspect it’s actually so the colonel and his staff can be first back inside the Wall, when our lovely defense in depth falls apart…”

Elliott shook his head, moved off, and poured himself into his trench, while getting the ruck off his sweat-soaked and burning back. The others in his section were doing the same. Elliott put himself at the very end of the line, so his sharpshooter rifle could look back and provide maximum protection. But when he turned and peered behind him, he saw the seven men of his section all looked asleep on their feet.

And he realized he had better do something before they all crashed as one.

“Twenty-five percent watch,” he said, pointing at one man at the far end of the trench. “You and me. Everyone else get your heads down. Two hours.”

Elliott turned back and tried to arrange his corner of this hole in the dirt for comfort and combat effectiveness – in particular settling his rifle into a sandbag for stability. Then, unable to resist temptation, he turned around, craned his neck, and looked up toward the top of the towering Wall, which loomed behind them and stretched out of sight in both directions. If he squinted, he could just see ant figures crawling over the top sections, nearly a hundred feet up, evidently doing construction. Tiny welding flames sizzled in the fading light, and dust drifted down on the breeze.

Elliott had rather hoped they’d be done with all that by now. But they’d all heard the rumors about the crumbling and unstable sections of Wall – Elliott had even heard that whole sections had to be torn down and rebuilt, due to failure to properly engineer the foundations. So he just counted himself lucky that it was all currently standing, with no gaps. And he assumed those workers were up there shoring it up. As usual, he just had to trust the powers-that-be to take care of things.

Finally he turned around again and got busy peering through his scope at the horizon. After two quiet, slightly phantasmagorical hours had passed, he woke one of the sleeping men to relieve the one on watch… but a third came awake and defied what was almost his very first order.

“Oh, no, mate,” the man said. “No martyrdom for you. It’s your turn.”

Elliott’s eyes were closing even as he heard this, or he might have protested. Instead he crawled down into the cool shadows at the bottom of the trench and curled up, head on his ruck.

And he finally escaped the nightmare of reality, at least for a while.

* * *

He woke again to the sound of screaming.

Not people. Not Foxtrots, even.

Instead it was steel shrieking. Rivets exploding. Joists snapping and collapsing. It sounded like the world to the south of them was exploding and dying. Elliott was still half in his dream, frozen with the shock and paralysis of being woken violently, and all too soon, from an exhausted sleep. He only began to work out what was going on when he heard the first shouts, deep voices barking from several directions.

“Fucking RUN!” “Get the hell out!” “It’s coming down! It’s coming down!”

Elliott still couldn’t quite process this, but it almost made more sense in his dazed state. And it was ingrained habit to move when the men around him did. So he hauled himself and his rifle out of the foxhole, looked to make sure the rest of his section was doing the same, and started legging it.

He couldn’t even really feel his legs, and thought they might collapse under him at any second. There was also the very real danger of falling into an open foxhole in the near-dark. All around him the world blurred with movement – other Paras carrying their weapons and hurtling at high speed away from the Wall.

All the while, behind them, the sounds of collapse and destruction were crescendoing up to a new unsurpassable peak – but then redoubled and went louder and more violent still. And it was all tumbling at them from out of the sky. It was the sound of a disaster movie, sixteen Dolby digital speakers howling perfect and raucous sound design of the end of the world – except a hundred times louder and more vivid, and ten thousand times scarier.

Because this was really happening.

The ground bounced as the first sections of falling wall hit the ground, thousands of tons of steel and concrete impacting the earth at not far off their terminal velocity. The violent shaking was like an earthquake, and threatened to throw Elliott through the air and onto his face. But he had to keep moving – because it was still coming down. He could feel the rushing air behind him, and sense the upper sections racing at the back of his head.

Finally starting to feel his legs, he sucked wind and redoubled his efforts. He had to run faster. He had to keep up…

The next and final series of devastating crashes launched thick clouds of dust and debris at Elliott’s back, and the backs of the men around him. The air filled with roiling and rushing dust, further obscuring what was already indistinct in the fading light.

And then, just like that, it was over.

They must have made it far enough – because Elliott and the men around him were all alive. The very cells of his body filled with relief and gratitude for this. The visceral terror of being in the path of a force like that was unlike any he had experienced. But the relief only lasted a few seconds – as Elliott began to process what had really just happened.

Turning to look, he could now see it in the very last rays of sunlight, glinting across the land from the edge of the horizon.

An enormous section of the ZPW, that insurmountable and invulnerable last line of defense for London… was nothing more than rubble on the ground.

The Wall had been breached – before a single enemy had even reached it.

Now night was coming.

And all Elliott could think was:

What the hell do we do now?

The Choice

London - North Gate of the ZPW

It was nearly evening when the Tunnelers reached the Wall. The checkpoint at the north gate was quiet as the truck stopped in front of a lowered barrier arm.

The guards immediately knew something was wrong. Maybe it was the bullet holes in the truck. Maybe it was just that they were trying to go out through the Wall after passage had been closed in both directions. Hackworth ground his teeth from his spot behind the driver’s seat. But he’d put his pistol away. Liam was doing his best to bluff them through.

“Where’s your back-up driver, Private?”

“He took ill,” Liam said.

“So they sent you out, driving this size rig, all by yourself? No one to spell you at the wheel? No one to shoot if you get attacked? Not very safe, that, is it?”

“We’re undermanned all over you. You know how it is, mate.”

“Kindly address me as ‘Sergeant’.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Hackworth could hear the guards circling around the truck. One of them banged hard on the truck wall – causing one of the Tunnelers hiding in back to whimper aloud.

The jig was just about up.

Hackworth kind of knew it all along – they were not going to be allowed out of London. They were trapped forever in this cursed city. Furthermore, they were about to be prisoners again – hell, that’s if they weren’t just shot on the side of the road. God knew what kind of rough justice would be meted out, with martial law in place, and civil order collapsing. With soldiers being attacked from all sides – by marauders that would be indistinguishable from Hackworth and his people.

Hell, even Liam hadn’t been able to tell them apart.

And maybe a shallow grave would be the most appealing way of dealing with armed hijackers and kidnappers.

My God. Hackworth didn’t even like to think about it.

The only possible alternative was… that they break out those guns they had in back, pass them around, and try to shoot their way out. Hackworth didn’t for one second like the idea of killing soldiers – no more than he liked the idea of some, or most, or all of his people being gunned down in turn. It went without saying that the skills and firepower of the soldiers would be massively superior.

He also figured the soldiers manning the ramparts would be different from those manning checkpoints in the city. They would be infantry – maybe combat veterans. Hackworth could hear it in the voice of the one interrogating Liam.

Basically, they were shagged either way.

This was truly Hackworth’s dark night of the soul – and he could see absolutely no way to any kind of a dawn.

But then the ground started to shake.

* * *

The radios of the soldiers started going crazy.

“Do not leave this spot!” Hackworth heard the sergeant shout.

And then something landed on top of the truck – hard. Hard enough to dent the steel roof. This was followed by more bangs on top – smaller and lighter, but no less distressing. Hackworth could hear everyone in back whimpering and whispering. What the hell was happening?

He crawled out of his space and raised his eyes above the dashboard. None of the guards were nearby now. Some were running into their security station, others running out. Quite a few were backing away from the Wall and looking up.

As Hackworth tried to follow their gaze up the towering side of the Wall, he could see debris coming down at them in the shadows cast by the last light of day.

Finally someone on the ground shouted: “It’s coming down!”

And now the rain of debris on the roof and the hood became a solid patter – punctuated by larger impacts that made Hackworth and Liam jump. Cries from behind caused them to turn and look into the back.

And in the dimly reflected light, Hackworth could see Amarie and Siobhan and Alderney, and the wounded Brown, their wide eyes shining white with terror. All of those frightened people, all counting on him to keep them safe. And when Hackworth looked at Liam, he could see the young man had seen the same thing.

And then, without a word, Liam jammed the truck in reverse – and he started backing them the hell out of there.

This quickly turned into a feat of tactical driving as Liam snaked the 14-ton truck around other vehicles and concrete barriers, quickly getting them out of the zone of falling debris. But he kept going, getting them even farther away, then cut the wheel sharply to the left. The truck crashed through a gate, taking them into the middle of a large dirt area, now a safe distance from the Wall.

It looked to Hackworth like a helipad. When he looked over at Liam, the kid said, “Military Quarantine Camp.”

Hackworth looked forward. They were not only a safe distance away – they now had an unobstructed front-row seat to watch the Wall coming down. On one level, Hackworth couldn’t believe what he was seeing. On another, it validated all his fears. London couldn’t protect them. It couldn’t survive. Hell, it couldn’t even build a wall that stayed up.

It sounded like the Twin Towers coming down on 9/11. The crash was tremendous and it went on for what seemed like minutes. The air filled with dust, obscuring visibility all around them.

Hackworth climbed out to observe the aftermath.

The first thing he saw was that the gate, and the security station, had survived. Both were to the left of the collapsed section. Moreover – they were no longer manned. There were no guards in evidence. Hackworth was pretty sure they could just drive over there, lift the barrier – and that would be it. They would be out, free and clear, heading north with nothing but themselves to take care of, to depend upon. They would be on their own again.

But then the strangest thing happened. There were definitely a few minutes of stunned shock, as soldiers and workmen stumbled around in the dust-filled air, looking at the destruction, and trying to determine if their friends and colleagues were okay. But that didn’t last long.

Then the soldiers, the security guys, the builders and engineers… they all started organizing. They started working, only minutes after the collapse.

And they started rebuilding the Wall.

* * *

“I need men with shovels and wheelbarrows!”

A man in uniform had climbed up onto a pile of rubble with a bullhorn, and was now shouting orders and instructions.

“Building teams – we need welders and masons, we need a cement mixer, and we need every crane rolling!”

Out on the ground, people had started running in various directions – even before the dust settled. They were rolling up their sleeves. It was amazing to see. A cement mixer was backing up, and guys were handing out trowels and big yellow two-handed tubs for the cement. Others were putting intact stones in wheelbarrows, and getting them rolling toward what was left of the Wall at the point of collapse. Hackworth heard something behind him – and turned to see a heavy self-propelled crane rolling forward, angling toward some giant steel plates scattered on the ground.

“Soldiers, security, and civilian personnel – rally round the engineers and builders! If you don’t have construction skills, you’re manual labor. Everyone fall in. We are rebuilding this wall – starting RIGHT NOW.”

Ladders and scaffolding were going up, as men cleared debris off the still-standing twenty-foot foundation of the wall. A couple of Bobcats and bigger bulldozers were rolling now, starting to clear debris away from the base.

Everyone in sight was pitching in.

Hackworth looked again at the unmanned gate, and got ready to move – when he sensed something behind him. Turning his head, he saw that his people had begun piling out of the truck, and were coming up behind him, also watching in awe. At the front was Amarie. Hackworth watched her face for a second – and then saw Colley watching her as well. And he knew they were thinking the same thing.

Amarie’s little girl, Josie, was back there behind them, back in the heart of London, along with Rebecca Ainsley and her boys.

Could they just run out on them? Let London fall – with Josie in it?

But Hackworth still felt they couldn’t stop now. Or could they? He knew the Tunnelers had learned one lesson above all others: that they had to look out for themselves – and no one else. They had been cut off for so long that it had become a reflexive habit.

And maybe it had to be that way.

But Hackworth also knew he and his people had changed, as order had disintegrated around them. In the last day alone, they had stolen a truck, kidnapped the driver, snuck or rammed through government checkpoints… and Hackworth himself had stood there and let a man die right in front of him. Leaving that badly wounded man they passed on the South Bank had been one thing. But the soldier at that checkpoint, looking up and pleading for his help…

But Hackworth had chosen escape, and safety, over the hard, decent, moral choice. To help. To do something. To save a fellow human being. And what he had done was not, in the end, all that different from murder – killing the man himself.

He turned now as he realized Amarie had stepped up beside him. He looked down at her and said, “We’ve stayed alive, when almost everyone else died, by not getting caught up with other groups. By looking out for ourselves.”

She looked up at him, her eyes shining in the dim light. “Yes. It’s true. But how long can we keep doing it? What happens when it’s only us left – when everyone else in the world is dead? How do we survive then?”

Hackworth knew she was right. Even if they made it out – what would that be worth? How long could they survive on their own? As soon as London fell, the dead, including the ten million in London itself, would flood north. They could put off the end. But only put it off.

Maybe they had to make their stand – and maybe it had to be here.

Night was coming. And London was going to need everyone to save her, to keep the flame of humanity burning.

Now Hackworth heard the other front door of the truck open, and looked back to see Liam jump down. The kid didn’t even hesitate – he just took off straight toward the work teams forming up. But at the last second, he slowed and looked back over his shoulder.

“Will!” he shouted. And his eyes pleaded with Hackworth – much as had the eyes of that other soldier, the one on the ground.

And that’s when Hackworth realized: they’d been going down the wrong path. Maybe they’d survive. But what would survival be worth? If they paid for it with their souls?

Liam had it right, from the start. The Tunnelers were becoming no different from the marauders – who were out for nobody but themselves, and were even then tearing London apart from the inside. Hell, they weren’t all that much better than the dead, who killed indiscriminately, and were coming to destroy London and humanity from without.

Hackworth looked up at that unguarded exit, and then over at the frantic and industrious construction site spontaneously going up. And he knew he had to make a choice. The Tunnelers had to decide whether to run and save themselves, as they had every time before – or else finally throw their lot in with everyone else. To stand and fight.

But he knew, as always, it wasn’t his choice alone.

He turned to face the group. “We’ve got a choice to make!” he said, looking from person to person. “Do we run north? Or do we stay and help?”

Everyone spoke at once – and they were all saying the same thing.

“Stay!” “I want to help!” “No more running!”

“Okay, then,” Hackworth said. He climbed into the truck cab, pulled the keys from the ignition and locked both front doors. Then he went around back, where a few people, including the wounded Brown, still sat.

“Everyone out!” he said.

When they’d complied, Hackworth regarded the big crates of rifles and pistols that remained in back – and then he closed the gate and locked it. It was easy enough to imagine the time might soon come when they would need them. And not to fight soldiers, marauders, or anybody else still living.

But to fight against the living death that was coming for all of them.

Emerging out in front of the group again, he said: “Everyone follow Liam!”

And the Tunnelers ran forward – toward the sound of the hammers, and to the defense of the realm.

The capital, and the last of humanity, lay naked behind them.

Meat Surfing

Camp Lemonnier - Moving Fast

As they exited the guard tower, hit the ground, and started running, Henno flicked Handon in the shoulder. “Oi – so you ordered the others to leave me behind, then.”

Handon nodded tiredly. He knew Henno would have heard that on the open channel. There was no way around it. And now the reckoning he had feared it would provoke was upon him. Surely Henno would conclude that Handon had used his authority to try to take Henno out – to eliminate a rival.

And there would be no coming back from that.

But then, utterly unexpectedly, Henno also nodded – contentedly, in approval. “Now you’re using your goddamned head.”

Handon looked over at him, not quite comprehending.

“Nobody’s bigger than the mission,” Henno said.

After Handon recovered from his shock at this, and his relief that it wasn’t going to be their final showdown, he realized he had to give it to Henno – the man had the courage of his convictions. He insisted that they be willing to sacrifice anyone – civilians, soldiers, random psychotic girls – to get the job done. And when he said everyone, that was clearly up to and including himself.

Henno was a soldier, and he was a man of principle. Handon vowed to remember this.

The group from the tower – Handon, Henno, Pred, and Noise – wasn’t moving at full speed, due to having a bagged-up dead guy to carry, and a flex-cuffed live one to prod along. The others – Ali, Juice, Fick, Graybeard, Reyes, and Brady – who until a few seconds ago had been holding the dike, soon caught up with them. Now they formed up ranks and all hauled ass toward the garage where Zorn’s giant car-crushing vehicle was parked.

As they ran, they could hear the fence behind them give way.

And they felt as much as heard the undead tide wash in, flooding through and around every structure before it, sluicing through the canals between buildings and across the base like a bad disaster mash-up movie – Zomnami, maybe.

And now the living had to get out of there before they were all submerged and drowned beneath it.

* * *

“Fuck, yeah,” Brady said as the metal-slat garage door rolled up, revealing the MaxxPro International XL towering behind it. “That’s our ride right there.”

“Seriously,” Reyes said. “No more ghetto hoochies for us – this is the Cadillac Escalade of MRAPs!”

“You jokers shut the fuck up – and load up!” Fick barked, as he turned, brought his rifle up, and took a position at the corner of the garage, aiming back where they’d come from. Instantly, he was taking shots to drop the front-running Romeos. A Foxtrot – inexplicably wearing the remains of an Army Class A dress uniform – broke from the pack, leaping and tacking around the street like a crazy-ass bastard on steroids. Fick took a dozen shots on it but couldn’t land one. Maybe when it got closer. Maybe it would be too late then.

“Load up and button up!” Handon bellowed, helping Pred shove the bagged Zulu through the big open side hatch of the MRAP, then pulling the flexcuffed Zorn through. “Once we’re buttoned up inside, we’re untouchable!”

“Not to mention unstoppable,” Pred added. “Once this thing gets moving…”

“Ah, shit,” Handon said, turning to Zorn. “The starter!”

Zorn just glared at him.

“Two options,” Handon said. “Drive out of here with us – or stay and be torn to pieces and eaten alive. Even if you survive, you turn. Choose!”

For a second it looked like he was genuinely on the fence about it. “Cocky motherfuckers,” Zorn finally said. “Back left corner of the garage, top storage box in the stack. Inside an oil pan.”

Handon nodded to Ali, who had just slithered in, as she was fastest and most agile. She nodded in return and slithered back out, salmon-spawning against those coming in. Handon reached over and cable-tied Zorn’s flexcuffed hands to a metal shelving unit, mounted to the wall beside the hatch and stacked with mine-detection gear.

Big overloaded bodies continued to pile in the side door, which luckily was designed precisely to admit guys in full battle rattle – or even EOD suits. In the middle of this scrum Ali reappeared, cradling a boxy hunk of metal, which she tossed to Handon. He caught it and leapt forward, clambering into the driver’s area in front. In seconds he had the starter back in place, and hit the start button.

The whole gigantic steel beast rattled and rumbled as its turbocharged, inter-cooled, direct-electronic-injection engine roared to life – all 400 horsepower of it.

Handon turned around and stuck his head into the back. “Who’s got hours in the driver’s seat of one of these things?”

“Got it,” Brady said, looking like a kid whose turn had come at the go-cart track. He clambered up front while Handon slid over to the passenger side.

They both heard the hatch slam shut, a deep rich clang, followed by a fist banging on the back of the driver’s compartment. “All in! Go, go, go!”

Brady and Handon pulled their belts across their chests.

And the grinning Marine gunned it.

* * *

Homer watched the team disappear into the garage through his scope.

He was going to have to hook back up with them at some point, but there were a lot of ways he might do it. Fighting his way back through the lines of the entire dead garrison – which was even now taking their camp back – was not a particularly appealing one.

One better option would be to climb down outside the wire and go all the way around – not unlike how he’d dove off their overrun boat on Lake Michigan and swum around the whole fracas before rendezvousing with them inland.

But, then again, from where he was in this guard tower he could cover the team’s withdrawal. Buttoned up in an MRAP, they might have cause to appreciate having someone with an elevated and unobstructed view on overwatch.

But for now, Homer was safe up in his tower, where none of the dead had even noticed him. Heck, it was more than safe, it was positively peaceful – up above it all, sitting in the shade, a nice breeze taking the sweat from his brow. He scratched at the knife wound on his cheek, given to him by that Spetsnaz combat diver, and which had begun to itch in the heat. His wide variety of slashing wounds from that fight had been stitched and/or taped up, like a boxer having his wounds closed to get back in the ring for one more round.

Way up here, Homer even had a second to reflect. He wondered how the hell Dugan, of all the Tier-1 guys he knew, could have ended up like that. He tried to imagine what had gone down, in the days, the minutes, before he was turned. If Homer knew the man at all, and he did, he felt sure Dugan fell doing his job – trying to protect others.

But still – the message was clear. If a man and an operator like Dugan could be infected and go down… then anyone could.

And that included Homer.

Now, as he watched through his scope, the biggest MRAP he had ever seen went blasting out of that garage, and started bashing through the heaving crowds of dead. In fact, it was heading north, right toward Homer’s position – which also meant it was surfing straight into the teeth of the tide, crashing through wave after wave of surging dead bodies. Homer smiled.

That almost looked like fun.

* * *

Brady put the hammer down, while Handon’s fingers dug into his armrest.

Pred was right – once this thing got a head of steam, all fifteen tons of her rolling along like an out-of-control freight train through the remains of the camp, not much was going to stop her. Not even four thousand undead. In the end, they were only flesh and bone, and mostly rotted flesh at that.

Soon the fully loaded MRAP was crashing through cresting waves of meat.

Rotted body after body went under the wheels, into the grille, or was hurled to the side, or up in the air. At this point, the base was totally overrun – certainly the northwest section they were driving back into. But it seemed the MRAP could drive over or through a virtually unlimited number of walking corpses.

One was like a thousand, where this thing was concerned.

What a difference a little hardware makes, Handon thought, comparing this to their earlier exfil from Chicago on foot, close-hauled and nerve-shredding, and in which they’d all nearly gone down. Though he was slightly concerned by Brady’s exuberance and utter disregard for obstacles. But maybe that was what was required right now. The sheer horsepower, not to mention complete indestructibility, of this rampaging beast were intoxicating. Handon was even starting to have fun himself. Brady obviously had been from the start.

Handon gathered from Homer’s radio reports that they were going to have to bash their way through a second growing singularity out at the wire. But that shouldn’t be a problem either – any more than the outer wire itself would. As long as they kept their speed up, every potential obstacle was just something else waiting to be destroyed or knocked down.

They were untouchable.

And they were now monster-trucking over and through vast crowds of dead, tearing a hole through the horde with the truck’s cattle catcher in front and V-shaped hull underneath. The truck was bumping and rocking, and around the Odin-like bellowing of its engine they could just make out the sound of howling and hissing and moaning on all sides. As gore and black gunk splashed across the windows, it started to feel like they were in some kind of dry submersible, a mini-sub deep in a sea of viscera and gore and liquefied meat.

Juice stuck his head up into the front and said, “Hey, Noise is in the turret. He wants to know if you want the fifty up.”

“No,” Handon said. “Save the ammo. I don’t know that he could clear the way any better than the vehicle itself.”

“True.” But then Pred noted the rising tide of gore on the front windows. Brady already had the big industrial wipers on – but they weren’t getting the job done. Visibility was dropping fast. Pred said, “Hey, how can you see where the hell we’re going?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Brady hollered gleefully. “Nothing stops a MaxxPro!”

Pred was slightly skeptical. But maybe this thing really was like the Hulk, bashing through all and sundry, unstoppable.

But just then an especially broad sheet of black gunk and viscera and body parts splashed full over both front windows, turning the whole view opaque and dark. The wipers were fighting against it, but losing the battle, clearing it away too slowly. Before any of them knew it, they had been driving completely blind for four, five, six seconds…

Handon grabbed on to the oh-shit handle beside his seat, and looked over at Brady – about to suggest that he might want to reduce their speed…

When their speed spontaneously dropped by half, instantly, as a loud crash sounded to their front, and the black gunk was sundered by fragments of wood and cement and glass, the windshield itself cracking, and the whole building-like vehicle shuddering and banging from the violent impact of a collision. In the next instant, the nose tilted down and forward – and they came to a sudden, jarring, and complete stop.

There was really only one possible explanation. They’d crashed into an actual building. A big solid one. Brady gunned the engine – but the wheels just spun.

Something had stopped the unstoppable juggernaut.

Now they were dead in the water.

And the tide was rising all around them.

Short, Controlled Bursts

Camp Lemonnier - JOC

Fick picked his battered body up off the deck – almost everyone in the back of the MRAP had been knocked to the floor or onto each other by the impact and crash of the vehicle – and put his face to one of the side ports. Because of the steel louvers outside them, made to shield passengers from IED blasts, but which recently had been slicing through dead bodies, it provided a relatively unobstructed view.

“I think we’re back in the goddamned JOC,” Fick said.

“We’re back in the car again,” Predator muttered. He was about the only one who had kept his seat – as usual, the immovable object.

Reyes, dusting himself off, delivered his line. “At least we’re out of the tree.”

Sure enough, it was the sunken pit in the center of the JOC that had doomed them. The MRAP had crashed through the outer wall no problem, then through the first few rows of stations. But then its nose fell off, dropping into the pit, and it finally came to a stop. Because of the truck’s angle, the wheels had no traction.

Pred got up, took a look outside, then grunted. “I don’t suppose getting out and pushing is going to help.”

Fick said, “Not even you, big guy.”

Up front, Handon shook his head and tried to get his senses back after the colossally jarring impact. The windshield had been partially cleaned by the walls of the building, and he looked out of it at the devastated JOC – shattered flat-panel displays, ravaged computers, splintered chairs and desks – and tried to formulate a plan. Maybe they could get some timber underneath the wheels, or use explosives to blow up the side of the pit that had them jammed up…

Because he knew that if they didn’t get out of there in the next sixty or ninety seconds, they were probably never getting out. The legions of dead would even now be flocking to the extremely loud ground zero that was them. And it would soon surround them a hundred thick on all sides. They could stay alive by staying buttoned up in the MRAP. But they’d eventually just die of thirst.

He had to think of something – fast – but nothing was coming.

And then a voice came over the squad net.

“Hey, I’m outside on your twelve. Can you guys do me a favor and release the winch cable?”

Homer.

* * *

Handon found and hit the winch release, then turned around and stuck his head into the rear.

But then he hesitated, wrestling with his next command decision. Should they open the door and push out security? Or stay buttoned up inside, where they were notionally safe? But then he cursed himself for even hesitating, because the question answered itself. Staying buttoned up in an immobilized vehicle, surrounded by the enemy, was a non-stop ticket to extinction. They had to dismount, push out, and defend the site, while the vehicle got unstuck.

And, anyway, before Handon could even bark a command, Ali decided the issue – she got the side hatch open and darted out of it with her rifle. Handon should have known: she was never going to leave Homer out there on his own to do this.

“Everyone out!” Handon shouted. “Push out security and defend the crash site!”

Everyone moved as one to comply. Handon craned his neck up – where he could see Noise up in the turret. “Get ready to engage. Clear us some breathing room.”

“Roger that, Sergeant Major!”

Handon grabbed his weapon and moved to climb out last – when Zorn shouted at him, holding up his ravaged arm. “Hey! How about that cure first?”

Handon hesitated.

“Unless you want me turned and biting by the time you get back.”

Handon didn’t have time for this. But the man had a point – he’d be equally useless to them undead as dead. Worse, actually. So he rummaged around for the pouch Park had given him, pulled out a syringe and vial, stuck the needle through the stopper, and pulled on the plunger. While he did so, he said, “I told you – it’s not a cure. It’s a serum. It’ll keep you from turning, but that’s it. I stop giving you these injections and you’re done.”

He jammed the needle into Zorn’s thigh and rammed the plunger down. Then he took a quick look around. Everyone else had now dismounted. It was just him, Zorn – tied to his shelving unit – and the bagged-up Zulu.

“Behave,” he said.

And he climbed out after his team.

* * *

They’d all moved so quickly to deploy out of the truck that when Handon joined them, the dead hadn’t even had a chance to work their way inside yet. While the operators stood or crouched in a defensive circle around the MRAP, a few beats of eerie silence passed – with only the sound of scrabbling and moaning coming through the walls around them.

Much of the JOC was still intact – enough to make it dim and close in there. But, on the other hand, the MRAP had basically taken out one wall, and some of the roof. And they all knew what would soon be coming through those gaps.

Voice low and serious, Brady whispered: “Remember – short, controlled bursts.”

Somebody laughed out loud, and Reyes looked at Brady and riposted, “Make no mistake, gentlemen. We are in the fight of our lives, against one of the greatest battalion commanders of the Vietnam War, I shit you not.”

“Hey, goddammit,” Pred interjected. “Hey.”

“That thing is out there,” Graybeard whispered. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear—”

Pred finally shouted, cutting them all off. “Okay, stop that shit right there! You can’t just jump across movies willy-nilly like that. Learn a goddamned sequence of dialogue from one character, why don’t you?”

“I thought that was one character,” Brady said.

“Where’s Ali?” Handon asked Fick, realizing he couldn’t see her.

Fick pointed toward the front – where the thick cable from the winch was snaking out of the far side of the building, and unwinding more each second.

“Cadaver from Thunderchild, how copy, over?”

Handon winced. Not a great time. Then again, if the pilot was busting into his ear, she probably had good reason. She would have seen the chaos going on throughout the base, and had kept out of it until now. They’d been too closely engaged for CAS to be a possibility anyway.

“Thunderchild, Cadaver, send it – fast.”

“Be advised: the outer wire of that base is down in two places. As many dead as you’ve already got converging on your position… now the population of Djibouti Town is sending reinforcements, over.”

“Copy, out.” A few thousand more dead changed nothing. They were about to have their hands full in there – breached outer wire or not.

Handon watched and waited for it.

And in that second, shadows started to crowd the building, around the wall the MRAP had come through. The hissing and moaning grew louder – but then were instantly drowned out by a shriek. It was that unmistakable Foxtrot sound. Then all that was drowned out by the .50-cal in the turret above them starting up.

It was game on.

You Want Some of This?

Camp Lemonnier - North of the JOC

Ali and Homer moved forward outside the JOC, both with their rifles up and chugging suppressed rounds at full speed, clearing their way. Homer had put the steel hook at the end of the cable into his belt, to have both hands free to shoot.

The only thing they had going for them was the great mob outside still seemed more interested in the half-destroyed building and the vehicle that had half-destroyed it, than they were about the two figures moving out of it, making little noise and keeping their profiles low.

Ali went dry, and it was getting too thick now anyway, so she drew her sword in a blur from over her back, striking and cleaving a head in the same motion – and then started swinging and pivoting, her long curved blade singing and arcing, as she finessed and carved them a way through the flowing and thickening crowd. As she did so, she belatedly wondered what the hell Homer intended to hook that cable onto – what could possibly be heavy, solid, and rooted enough for the MRAP to pull itself free on? Big tree? Another huge vehicle?

But pretty quickly she worked it out – if only because there was nothing else.

It was the next building over.

And that meant they were going to have to circle all the way around the damned thing in order to secure the cable.

Oh well, Ali thought. We’d better move fast.

Because it wasn’t going to suck itself.

* * *

Within seconds, it was obvious Brady had it right with his original movie reference – because runners were now storming the room, while Foxtrots dropped down from the partially destroyed ceiling and roof. When they hit the ground, they leapt over the half-destroyed tactical stations – one row closer, then another, and the operators had only seconds to make headshots on them.

It was a big room. But, then again, not all that big, particularly with the MRAP taking up the whole middle of it. And as the dead stormed in, they were practically on top of the living right away.

The operators all fired flat out, in all directions, working as a single organism to keep from being overrun. They were all shooting suppressed, so it was a thick chorus of whispers meeting a tightening ring of moaning and shrieking.

All silenced except for Brady. His full-auto M4A1 was chattering blue murder – but, sure enough, in short controlled bursts. He was firing left, right, up at the ceiling, at a half-destroyed one dragging itself across the floor toward his feet. The shearing muzzle flash of the weapon lit up his face in the dim room. Plus he was hollering as he fired. “Die, motherfucker! Come get it, baby! Come on, you bastard! Oh, you want some of this? Fuck you!”

Reyes, a few feet to his side, laughed out loud as he covered his sector. But he also took a careful look under his buddy’s feet – just to make sure one didn’t come up and drag him down from below. But there didn’t seem to be anything down there.

Over their heads, the .50-cal was still banging away non-stop, Noise spinning the turret left and right, but mainly back toward the destroyed wall. Now and then one landed on his turret, but it was completely enclosed in steel and blast-proof glass, so he ignored those, let the others deal with them, and kept firing. He was keeping a lot of the heat off the team.

But still, Handon could tell that there were, for all practical purposes, an infinite number of dead converging on this building. And they would run out of ammo long before they put a significant dent in their numbers. Luckily, Homer picked that moment to report in.

“Cable is secure! Reel it in! Winch it in!”

“Copy,” Handon said, throwing himself back in the truck and diving to the front.

“And friendlies coming back in from the north!”

Handon flipped the winch control to Retract and started the spindle motor. He touched his mic button to order the team to mount back up – but saw they were already doing it, as Brady tumbled into the driver’s seat. They didn’t need to be told. Brady fired up the engine – and revved it a few times in anticipation.

Fick’s head prairie-dogged up into the front. He probably just wanted to see for himself if any of this crazy shit was going to work.

They could all feel the cable go taut – and hear the nose of the gargantuan truck start to lift and inch forward.

Brady put it in gear, and caressed the accelerator.

Up… up a bit more… forward a bit…

The back wheels rolled down into the the deep operations pit – and immediately caught, surging them forward. A second later they hit the other edge of the pit. But between the truck engine, and the winch motor, the giant vehicle half-crushed and half-climbed up over that one – and then went straight through the opposite wall of the building, this time knocking it down in slow motion rather than at high speed.

“Yeah, bitch!” Brady hollered, pumping his fist. “Magnets!”

Fick looked over at him like he was stupid. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“Best show on television,” Brady said, putting both hands back on the wheel, and accelerating the huge vehicle, and the entire team, the hell out of there.

Fick shook his head. “I don’t even have any idea what you’re talking about. In fact, shut the fuck up.”

As the truck emerged from its building carapace out into the open, Handon could see Homer on the ground unlinking the hook from the cable – while Ali covered him, somehow being on all sides of him at once, swinging her long sword too fast to see. Wait a second, Handon thought. Was that cable wrapped around the entire next building over? Even more amazingly, the structure looked half-collapsed itself – like the MRAP had nearly pulled it down.

Never mind. It worked.

Now Ali and Homer turned and sprinted back toward the truck as dead of all flavors and speeds tracked them and tried to cut them off. Someone in back leaned out the side hatch and started firing furiously to cover them. Handon could hear Noise doing the same from above – and one or more of the people in back leaned out and hauled Ali and Homer inside.

“All in!” someone yelled from the back, banging the wall again. “Punch it!”

Brady punched it – hard.

And this time he banked them around away from the worst of the dead tide – and by preserving the ability to see, also kept them out of buildings. In two minutes he had them racing at high speed toward the southeast section of outer wire.

The MRAP blasted through it like cling film and ramped out onto the tarmac of the airport.

They were clear.

Senior Officers Die with Their Men

100 Meters North of the Fallen ZPW

This time, miraculously, it looked like none of the Paras had been hurt in the collapse of the Wall. Random chance, it appeared, was kinder to them than the fuck-ups of their own senior commanders.

Sergeant Bhardwaj found all his section leaders and finished his headcount. Everyone in the platoon was accounted for. And so, it appeared, were the rest of the men in the company, as well as most of the rest of the battalion, at least those who had survived long enough to reach the Wall.

But then a strange thing happened. As Elliott watched, Bhardwaj was unable to reach their lieutenant – and then he was unable to reach any of the officers, or the command element at Brigade Headquarters. He took his hand off his radio and looked at Elliott blankly. “Fuck me,” he said. “I forgot they were having a full leadership meeting.”

“At BHQ,” Elliott said. “Right under the Wall.”

“Yeah. Grab your weapon and come with me.”

He was already moving off, and Elliott hefted his rifle and tried to keep up.

Soon they were moving through a moonscape of debris, some of the collapsed sections of Wall towering up ten or twenty feet. As they walked and climbed, they passed other Paras going back, trying to find their trenches, and recover their rucks and equipment – if it all hadn’t been buried.

Finally, Bhardwaj found a corporal, one so covered in plaster dust his unit must have been one of the last ones to escape the collapse. He grabbed his arm and said, “Oi, have you seen any of the officers?”

“Yeah,” the young man said, looking badly shaken. “I saw them running like hell, behind my section, trying to get away from it.”

“And?”

“I don’t think any of them made it. They were too close.”

Bhardwaj blinked heavily a couple of times, while Elliott scanned the distance through his scope. He presumed the staff sergeant had taken him along to provide security, and he intended to do it. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that what the enlisted leader might really have wanted was just moral support.

“Come on,” he said. “We keep going.”

After another five minutes of climbing over debris, they reached the edge of the Wall itself. The first thing they saw was that it wasn’t completely down – there was still about twenty feet of it standing along most of the gap. It wasn’t much, and it sure wouldn’t hold up the horde for very long. But it was something.

The second thing was that BHQ was almost completely intact. Multiple set radios, camp chairs and tables – even a tea service. It was all covered with dust, but otherwise undisturbed.

Bhardwaj looked up in awe. “The collapse must have… I don’t know, sort of fallen forward, over the top of all this…” The whole section of wall, thousands of tons of it, had somehow tumbled over and out into the surrounding countryside, sparing the ground directly beneath it.

Elliott nodded, and almost laughed. “Which means they would have lived if they had stayed at their posts.”

Bhardwaj shook his head in disbelief. “Instead, they ran – and they died.” He shook his head again, as if he was trying to convince himself of all this.

It was all sinking in with Elliott, too. He knew that a senior leadership meeting typically included the commander of the battalion, Colonel Briars himself, as well as his senior staff officers… plus each of the company commanders… each of the platoon commanders… and finally very senior enlisted men, namely the battalion sergeant major and company first sergeants.

And now they were all gone, wiped out to a man.

Along with the decimation of the NCO corps that had happened back in Kent… Elliott realized with a rush of fear and uncertainty that his new boss, Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj… might actually be the highest ranking man left in 2 Para.

It was inconceivable. But so was everything else that was happening.

And, lastly, they realized that the radio sets were intact – when one of them started blinking with an incoming transmission.

Bhardwaj moved woodenly to pick up the handset.

* * *

“What we’re seeing on aerial surveillance – is it as bad as it looks from ten thousand feet?”

Elliott stood close enough that he could hear both sides of the sergeant’s call with CentCom HQ. There was nothing encouraging being said on either side.

“Yes, sir. Pretty bad. There’s still about twenty feet of it intact – but that’s eighty feet of wall gone. And the gap looks to go about fifty meters wide.”

“And are you currently linked in with other units to your flanks?”

“Negative. We are not linked in, and have no visual contact with any other elements.”

“Okay. Be advised. We are currently mobilizing all our construction and engineering resources in that sector.”

Bhardwaj glanced up toward the top of what remained of the Wall. Both he and Elliott could already hear the voices and activity on the other side, and see the tops of cranes moving around.

“They’re going to try to get that Wall rebuilt – somehow. And we’re going to try to get you reinforcements. But it’s all going to take time. And you are going to have to hold that position – NO MATTER WHAT. Defend that gap. Move for nothing. Don’t bend, don’t break. Your men die in place – and senior officers die with their men.”

Elliott seemed to remember Churchill saying something like that, before the fall of Singapore, from one of his military history classes.

Bhardwaj covered his mouthpiece. “That’s easy, then. No bloody officers left.”

“Be further advised. We are currently seeing massive, rapid movements of the enemy – all around the ZPW.”

“Copy that, sir. But movements where?”

Pause. “Not just closing with the Wall in the south. Also circling around the periphery of it, in both directions, heading north – directly toward your position.”

Elliott and Bhardwaj exchanged disbelieving looks. They were both thinking the same two things: One, the entire defense of the south must have now fallen. And, two, the dead had HEARD the Wall come down. It had been atrociously, crushingly loud. Still, this couldn’t be happening. Things just kept getting worse – every time they thought they’d hit rock bottom, they took another tumble.

“Your orders are simple. Two Para holds in place until relieved…

“Or until you’re all dead.”

* * *

“So much for resting up in a quiet sector,” Elliott muttered.

He and Bhardwaj were just taking a minute to gather themselves, sitting in the dark, dusty, and depopulated circle of BHQ. From the look on his face, the staff sergeant obviously knew that what he did in the next minutes and hours would define his entire military career.

If not the fate of the world.

“We’ve got to get the surviving leadership together,” he finally said. “Section leaders, assistant section leaders – whoever the hell’s left. We’ve got to pass down these orders, and start putting together new defensive positions.” Bhardwaj took a couple of quick sharp breaths, as if steeling himself for what he had to do now.

Elliott breathed deeply, steeling himself as well. There was no discussion about whether they could do this – as banged up as they were, as exhausted as they all felt, with fifty percent casualties, with no officers and only a handful of NCOs, and with previous orders to rest and refit. None of that mattered. It was time to dig down, find it in themselves, and go do their duty – and perhaps face their destiny.

They had their orders, anyway. So there was really no choice.

And it occurred to Elliott that maybe this was exactly what he had been wishing for – to stand among his brothers, all of them defending one another to the last.

And if it proved to be a last stand…

Well, then they’d all go down fighting.

But they’d do it side by side.

* * *

Back in the CentCom JOC, Jameson stood peering disbelievingly at a bank of monitors driven by Lieutenant Miller – looking at a large section of previously vertical wall lying all over the ground.

“So this is by Security Station South…” Jameson muttered. His affectless voice said: It’s over. We’ve lost.

“No, sir. This is in the north.”

“You told me the Wall was crumbling in the south.”

“It was. Things are tough all over. But it’s at least still standing in the south.”

Jameson appeared to start breathing again. London wasn’t going to fall, and everyone be eaten, in the next hour. “Who is that guarding the rubble?”

“Two Para, sir.”

Miller had once again taken it upon himself to issue the orders that needed to be given. Until just now, Jameson had still been caught up in dealing with the fallout and knock-on effects of the explosion and helo crash, while also trying to do his regular job running the whole war.

And, anyway, Miller wasn’t sure Jameson had the heart to tell the Paras what had to be done, that they had to die in place, to the last man, if necessary. The Royal Marine officer was simply too close to the men on the ground – hell, he was a ground-pounder himself. But running the war from the JOC was not combat, it was chess. And it was impossible to win without sacrificing pieces.

But now Jameson had to be briefed on the collapse of that section of Wall – and the collapse of the defense overall. This was a pretty simple operation, as the displays at Miller’s station all showed live video either from cameras actually on the ZPW or from drones overflying it.

And it was worse than just the collapse. Because the fact was, with the defense itself falling apart, the dead had now reached the outskirts of London, beginning in the southern sector – but not ending there. In at least half of the video windows, there were either dead milling around the Wall, racing toward it – or already piling up against it. Or, perhaps worst of all, running around it toward the north. There were still combat effective units in the field. But they no longer made up anything like a defensive line.

Jameson’s expression sagged and he looked down at Miller. “Is there any sector of the Wall left they haven’t reached yet?”

“Here and there,” Miller said. “But the only big contiguous stretch is in the north. And the fast ones are going to start reaching that within in a few hours. Basically, we’re surrounded.”

Jameson shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus, that happened fast.”

“It might be over even faster when they get to that collapsed section.”

Jameson just shook his head. And he prayed the Paras were as tough as they liked to make themselves out to be.

The imagery on the screens before them was unmistakable. London, the capital, was now officially a beleaguered island floating in a sea of dead. The tide was rising – and now it was only a matter of time before it flooded in.

The Siege of London had begun.

Even Death May Die

In the MRAP - On the Airport Tarmac

“So much for topping up on ammo before leaving camp,” Brady said. Having started shooting first, he’d been doing it longest. And now his mag pouches were empty. Looking around, he could see the others weren’t much better off.

The back of the MRAP, which had seemed pretty big at first, was now like a sardine can full of tooled-up and battle-weary commandos, the vehicle full to capacity, as it rattled across the airport tarmac. Everyone was thigh to thigh, elbows jostling, rifles held between knees and pointed at the deck.

“Not a problem,” Fick said, climbing back from the front. “We’ll have the Seahawk bring us an ammo top-up when it picks up this dead bastard.” He gestured toward the bagged-up Zulu in the corner.

“What’s the plan?” Reyes asked.

Fick nodded. “We’re heading back to the beach, where we’ll establish an HLZ, bring the helo in, and get this thing out of here.” He nodded again toward the preserved dead guy. “Then we head to Hargeisa to try and get a better one.”

“Hey, Fick,” Graybeard said. “I don’t think your American Zulu is moving.”

Fick belatedly looked back and saw the bag wasn’t in fact wiggling anymore.

“What the hell?” he said, shoving his way through the cabin. Pulling the body bag and its contents back up onto a seat, he zipped it down over the face – and it just stared up at him with dead eyes, its mouth hanging open slackly. It had been destroyed – somehow.

“Son of a bitch!” Fick cast around the cabin. “How the hell did this happen?”

Handon stuck his head back there. “How’d what happen?”

Fick held up the unanimated head by its hair.

“Goddammit.” Handon shook his head. He turned back toward Brady. “Stop the vehicle.” Climbing all the way in back, where there really wasn’t room for him, he said, “Okay. What the hell happened?”

Fick glanced at the side hatch, which had been left open during the fight for the JOC. “Ricochet, maybe?”

“The Law of Perversity of Physical Objects,” Pred said. He gestured up toward the turret. “Also applies to heavy machine guns.”

“Yeah, I got creased by a ricochet,” Graybeard said, pulling a rip in his sleeve to reveal a red slash across his upper arm.

Handon looked around, his eye settling on Zorn, who wasn’t saying anything. There was something wrong – he wasn’t cable-tied to that shelving unit anymore. Handon tromped up to him and grabbed his flex-cuffed hands. Then he saw a vertical rod was missing from between two of the shelves. Zorn had disassembled it and freed himself. But, worse than that… reaching down to Zorn’s feet, Handon picked up the long thin segment of steel.

It was covered in black gunk at one end. This was what had killed their Zulu. Zorn must have stuck it into its head through the PVC.

Handon slugged Zorn in the jaw, hard – and in the same spot Henno got him.

When Zorn raised his head again, he said, “The dead bastard bit me. There’s a price to be paid.”

“You dumb son of a bitch,” Handon said. “Don’t you know what that was for?”

“Nope. I didn’t meet your goddamned OPSEC threshold, so you didn’t read me in.”

Handon shook his head and ground his jaw. And when he looked up again, his gaze was magnetically drawn to Henno – who looked like he was well beyond I told you so. His expression said that Handon was now beneath contempt. Like an idiot child who just kept screwing up, and whom there was no point in scolding anymore.

Predator said, “Hey, at least it was the dead guy who got killed.”

Handon gave him a look. Pred got it: that was the worst possible person to get killed – the point of their whole operation. Their mission objective.

And it had been Handon’s decision to keep Zorn alive that had trashed it.

* * *

What a debacle.

Handon just stood where he was, staring at the wall and marveling that the whole first day of their final, critical, do-or-die mission had gone so completely to shit. They’d gotten deceived, descended into infighting, and had their asses kicked at every turn. They’d lost their boat and supplies, and expended most of their ammo. They’d lost Camp Lemonnier completely. And the one dead guy they’d managed to capture, who was a half-measure anyway, they couldn’t even keep alive for twenty minutes.

What a joke…

Handon continued to stand there, just staring at the inside wall of the truck – seemingly unaware that the whole team was looking at him, waiting for him to command. Instead, he was thinking back to his assessment of the team from that briefing on the carrier.

Maybe we DON’T have anything left in the tank, he thought. Maybe they were too banged up and exhausted – and actually weren’t going to get this done. Maybe this was, at last, the mission it really was impossible to complete.

No, that’s not it, he thought. It was just him who didn’t have enough left – and maybe his judgment as a combat leader was shot. He certainly seemed to be making every possible wrong call so far today. He wondered if he was too tired – or, more likely, too damned distracted.

There had been all that drama with Sarah back on the carrier, which hadn’t gotten resolved, and which he was afraid he’d taken along with him into the field. And, not totally unrelatedly, there was his simmering cold war with Henno, which was taking a larger and larger share of his mental resources to manage – and because of his failure to resolve it, was threatening to tear the team apart.

Whatever the cause, it was blowing up and falling apart on all sides of him.

Finally Fick broke the silence and snapped him back. “Okay – so what now?”

Handon considered taking the MARSOC leader outside for a one-on-one. But, as usual at the Tier-1 level, there was little point in excluding people. The most junior guy was as likely to have good ideas as the commander, or he wouldn’t be there in the first place. Never mind that the commander seemed to be all out of good ideas, or even decent ones, at this stage…

So Handon opened up the hatch, to let in some air and increase their prospects for breathing. Then he just looked around, his usual invitation.

“Okay,” Pred said. “So we go back and snatch another one. There’s no lack of those things running around that camp.”

Handon said, “Top cover reports the perimeter’s been breached. We’ll be fighting through the whole town to get to the garrison in the center.”

“Going back is more risk,” Juice said. “But if we have to do it, we do it.”

“Yeah,” Pred said. “Fighting is kind of in our job description.”

“That’s just it, though,” Henno said. “It’s not ultimately our mission. A sample from here is just an intermediate step, a hedge – not the real prize.” He meant that an undead soldier would be an early-stage victim – but not from the very beginning.

“Hargeisa,” Ali said – whose home town that happened to be. “One from ground zero, right at the start. That’s what we really need anyway.”

“Aye,” Henno said. Which also means, he thought but didn’t take the time to say, this whole stop and all its risk and burnt time was a complete and total waste…

Fick said, “What do you think? Just push on to Hargeisa? Double down?”

Handon nodded. He had to admit Henno and the others were right. “Park said the farther away from the original victim we get, the higher the odds his vaccine won’t work. And getting killed or jammed up here doesn’t help us. So maybe we go for the gold.”

“We were going there anyway,” Fick said. “Now the stakes are just higher.”

“All or nothing,” Predator grunted. “Do or die. I like it.”

Handon pretty obviously didn’t like it.

But, once again, he didn’t have to like it.

He just had to do it.

And they all had to somehow make it happen.

But it was Handon, and not anybody else, who had to grab the reins of this sideways-sliding mission, and his faltering leadership, and the fracturing team, and finally get it done. Because things couldn’t keep going as they had been. Handon couldn’t let them. Or else they were all dead.

Everyone, everywhere, would be dead.

Without another word, he slung himself back in the front, motioned to Brady to fire up the engine, and the huge rumbling vehicle got moving again. This time toward the highway that led south into the interior, into Somaliland – and directly toward Hargeisa, ground zero of the fall of man.

Straight into the heart of darkness.

ARISEN, BOOK TEN – THE FLOOD
launches on 21 October 2015

Yes, you read that right. Two new ARISEN books in a month – and for the same reason as last time: because you, the ARISEN readers, are awesome, and you deserve it.

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Thanks and Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank indispensable über-readers Mark George Pitely and Amanda Jo Moore, who go way above and beyond the call, and whose contributions to this author’s success are way too poorly rewarded.

Ditto the amazing Editrice – you make Arisen bulletproof. Thanks, and occasional tea and cakes at gallery cafes, are not enough.

Extra special thanks to outstanding new advance reader – plus military, weapons, and avionics subject matter expert, reader’s advocate, and occasional ghostwriter – Electronics Technician Chief Petty Officer Mark D. Wiggins, USCG (ret).

My deep and sincere thanks to 1SG Don Harper, US Army (ret), for the support, friendship, and the best gift an author ever got. RLTW.

Thanks also and as always to Anna K. Brooksbank, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Alexander M. Heublein, Matthew David Grabowy, and Michael and Jayne Barnard, for their indispensable support. Also, Bruce, Wanda, Alec, and Brendan Fyfe for their service and sacrifice. Eternal thanks to Glynn James for coming up with Arisen.

Once again, I have borrowed several incomparably awesome lines for Fick from the now sadly defunct “Funniest thing your Drill Sergeant/Instructor said that you almost laughed at but didn't because you didn’t want him to kill you” thread on the (also defunct) The Most Infantry Man in the World page on Facebook. (If anyone can dig this material up, it definitely deserves to be rescued and hosted somewhere.) Once again many thanks are due to all those super-smart-ass DSes and DIs, as well as the recruits who resisted laughing at them.

The idea that you can always feel eyes on you is from Among Heroes: A U.S. Navy SEAL’s True Story of Friendship, Heroism, and the Ultimate Sacrifice by Brandon Webb.

The notion of the three-foot world, as well as the story of learning that lesson lead-climbing on a mountain warfare training op, are from Mark Owen’s No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL. Also, the brief bit about dolphins being trained to interdict enemy divers. And the excellent and memorable catchphrase, “Don’t run to your death.”

The idea that local knowledge is king is taken from Delta Squadron commander Pete Blaber in The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander (the second best book on Delta ever written).

The line “You did join the Army [Navy] to learn, didn’t you son?” was borrowed from S01E02 of The Unit (“Stress”), written by David Mamet, series created by David Mamet and CSM (ret.) Eric L. Haney.

All of the details about what it’s like to land a fighter on aircraft carrier were taken from this remarkable Quora answer by Tim Hibbetts (former United States Navy A-6E and F/A-18C pilot).

Fick’s recital of the line “You kids shouldn’t play so rough. Somebody’s gonna start crying” was, I hope needless to point out, from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

Jameson’s line about the idiots at MoD being in charge of people is slightly borrowed from Corporal Person in Generation Kill (talking about Captain America as he stormed an empty airfield): “Can you believe that fucking retard is in charge of people?”

Fick’s observation that “the one thing you know about a dude Graybeard’s age who’s still operational is that he’s a survivor” was adapted from a nearly identical line delivered by James Caan in Christopher McQuarrie’s (rather underrated) The Way of the Gun.

Abrams’s line “You wanna get in the war?” was first George Clooney’s in the excellent Monuments Men. (Clooney also co-wrote the screenplay, so maybe it was really his line.)

Private Elliott Walker’s realization that in the face of certain death, the only thing that gives life meaning is sacrificing for the people you love is, basically, the theme of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Thanks, Papa.

The line, “If a man and an operator like Dugan could be infected and go down, then anyone could" was taken from General Stanley McChrystal’s comments about the death of Unit operator Bob Horrigan, in his outstanding My Share of the Task.

Thanks again to the amazing Tom Weber at MILPICTURES for the as always awesome cover photography.

More relevant thanks and acknowledgements in the back of Book Ten!

A portion of the proceeds from this book will go to support the USX Veteran Everest Expedition. Amazing undertaking, terrific cause. Watch their awesome short video and learn more here.

ARISEN
Hope Never Dies.

Fans of the bestselling ARISEN series call it “Staggeringly good - the most consistently excellent franchise in zombie literature” … “Wall to wall adrenaline - edge of your seat unputdownable until the very last page” … “totally stunning in its originality” … “jaw dropping” … “moves like an avalanche” … “You can smell the smoke, feel the explosions, and hear the rounds headed down range” … “edge of the seat, nail biting, page turning mayhem” … “had me holding my breath more times than I could count” … “a knock down drag out kick ass read - the best ZA book series around, period” … “rolls along like an out of control freight train” … “Left me shaking at the last page…”

Alpha team will return – but so will Spetsnaz Alfa Group – in
ARISEN, BOOK ELEVEN – DEATH MATCH

They are the most capable, committed, and indispensable counter-terrorist operators in the world.
They have no rivals for skill, speed, ferocity, intelligence, flexibility, and sheer resolve.
Somewhere in the world, things are going horrifyingly wrong…

Readers call the D-BOYS series “a high-octane adrenaline-fueled action thrill-ride”, “one of the best action thrillers of the year (or any year for that matter)”, “a riveting, fast paced classic!!”, “pure action”, “The Best Techno Military Thriller I have read!”, “Awesome!”, “Gripping”, “Edge of your seat action”, “Kick butt in the most serious of ways and a thrill to read”, “What a wild ride!!! I simply could not put this book down”, “has a real humanity and philosophical side as well”, “a truly fast action, high octane book”, “Up there with Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin”, “one of the best Spec Ops reads I have run into”, and “hi-tech and action in one well-rounded explosive thriller.”