Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain
Author: Michael Stephen Fuchs; Glynn James
Date: 2012-08-05 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: supercarrier; Increment; fast zombies; Horror; SOF; spec-ops; techno-thriller; high-tech weapons; SAS; dystopian fiction; naval adventure; Special Operations; Zombies; SEAL Team Six; Delta Force; Mili
Description: A world fallen - under a plague of seven billion walking dead A tiny island nation - the last refuge of the living One team - of the world's most elite special operators The dead, these heroes, humanity's last hope, all have... ARISEN Book One - Fortress Britain When the Zombie Apocalypse came, one country had shut down its borders in response to a major terrorist attack. Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living - with 50 million beleaguered survivors facing down a world of 7 billion animated corpses. And when civilization fell, one international team of supremely elite special o

A world fallen – under a plague of 7 billion walking dead
A tiny island nation – the last refuge of the living
One team – of the world’s most elite special operators
The dead, these heroes, humanity’s last hope, all have…

First published 2012 by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
London, UK

Copyright © Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs

The right of Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them 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 authorr‘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 unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

About the Authors

GLYNN JAMES is an Amazon-bestselling author of dark fantasy novels, born in Wellingborough, England in 1972. He has an obsession with anything to do with zombies, Cthulhu mythos, post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction and films, all of which began when he started reading HP Lovecraft and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend back when he was eight years old. He is the author of the bestselling DIARY OF THE DISPLACED series (DIARY OF THE DISPLACED, CHASING SPIRITS, THE BROKEN LANDS, AT LAST GOODBYE, WHISPERS OF THE DISPLACED, and THE LAST TO FALL).

MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS is the author of the D-BOYS series of high-concept, high-tech special-operations military adventure novels: D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and CLOSE QUARTERS BATTLE (coming in 2013). He’s also author of the acclaimed existential cyberthrillers THE MANUSCRIPT and PANDORA’S SISTERS, both published worldwide by Macmillan, in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats. He is represented by Robert Gottlieb, Chairman of Trident Media Group in New York. He lives in London and at www.michaelstephenfuchs.com, and blogs at www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge.

Notes from the Authors

Glynn
When I had the original idea for the ARISEN series (a name Michael came up with), I was planning on writing something involving much less combat and military, and not special forces, but then it occurred to me that all of the zombie fiction that I’d read lacked something – really fast-paced fight scenes. So the idea developed, and I was getting more and more enthusiastic about it, but I also became convinced that I would need expert help. This was too big for me. Fortunately I had a good friend and an excellent writer to turn to. It was a huge and crazy experiment. Neither of us had tried co-writing before and the two genres we write in are very far apart in terms of style, so it was unexpected when we found ourselves half-way through the second book and unable to stop. I’m so glad we tried it and I want to thank Michael for both taking the leap and for making a good idea become an awesome reality. One that I couldn’t have achieved alone. We had no idea that this was going to turn into something we were both very proud of and I certainly am.

The coolest thing is that I get to introduce my readers to one of my favourite authors! To everyone who has read one of my books and liked it, I hope this new project will entertain you as much if not more.

Michael
First and foremostly, thanks to my writing partner Glynn for suggesting this project, for coming up with such a great concept, for making it happen, and for being so fabulous to work with. Very, very many thanks also to Mark George Pitely, Alex Heublein, SNaFu, Michael & Jayne Barnard, and Jacqui Lewis – Lady Editrice(.co.uk) non pareil.

To those readers of this book who may have very kindly read one or more of my D-Boys books (D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and whatever I’m calling the third one ;^), you might have noticed in ARISEN a very slightly more cavalier attitude toward details of tactics, tech, weapons, and other SOF minutiae. Basically, I figured since we were writing a series of Zombie Apocalypse novels, I could probably rely on a bit more suspension of disbelief as well as push things further. But you may trust that the high standards of military realism to which you have been accustomed in the D-BOYS books will be right where we left them. Thanks so much for reading (both series).

ARISEN

BOOK ONE

FORTRESS BRITAIN

GLYNN JAMES &
MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
– George Santayana

“And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from Heaven on the Earth in the sight of men.”
– Revelation 13:13

NO EXITS

Its face appeared through the mist, the mouth torn and the left side of its skull shattered. Ragged and bloodstained shreds of clothing, hanging from the gaunt frame, grew visible as it advanced. Congealed black fluid leaked out of sores that burned red with infection, and its bones cracked in defiance with every movement as it staggered into sight.

And there was no hiding from it. Poor visibility meant nothing to the wretched creature that now lumbered forward, slowly closing the gap between them. Handon raised his rifle and sighted in, quietly waiting and hoping that he wouldn’t have to take the shot. The noise of gunfire was all that was needed to bring the whole neighborhood down on them.

“Contact, my twelve,” he whispered into the chin mic curling around from his lightweight tactical helmet. Even as he spoke he could see more dark shadows stirring behind the first. There was no mistaking their direction – straight toward his team – but they were yet to latch on, to spot them en masse, and the wave of moaning had yet to begin. But Handon knew that it would soon. And then every poor dead bastard within a mile would be shambling mindlessly in their direction. And that was if they were lucky, and it was only shamblers out there, and not the fast ones. Come on, he thought. Just a little more time was all they needed.

It didn’t matter how many of these creatures Handon had seen, each one still made his heart lurch. And every time he fired and one of them fell, he wondered who that person had once been. Unlike the men and women on his team, he had not developed the ability to switch off, to put the dead and the living in firewalled mental boxes. He had yet to accept that the creatures had no souls. Medical science was divided on how much was actually going on in there, whether there was even anyone home. It was known that the creatures lived for just one purpose – to devour the living – but little else was understood as to what drove them, what motivated something that should be rotting away quietly under six feet of soil to haul its ass up from the ground and seek out the nearest anything with a pulse.

He had questioned every theory he’d heard in the last two years, but Command Sergeant Major Handon’s doubts on the subject didn’t really matter, and he sure as hell didn’t voice them openly. It was best if his guys had only need-to-know access to what was going on in his head. He could shelve his own doubts, put them to the back of his mind, for now. But for those who depended on him, well, his resolve had to be unquestionable.

“Unfriendlies, nine o’clock,” came the call on the team’s radio. “Multiple Zulus.” This time it was Predator, their enormous and seemingly unkillable assaulter and combat medic – everyone did double duty these days – who would now be standing fifty meters to Handon’s right, holding the north side of their landing zone at the edge of the target structure. Handon didn’t need to glance in that direction to know this, and even if he had he wouldn’t be able to see the man, or most of his team for that matter. The mist that had descended in the last hour was so thick you could almost drink it.

“Yeah, ditto on our three.” This was Pope, a seasoned paramilitary with what used to be the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division. That was in what used to be the United States. African American, soft-spoken, keen on knives, he was also rumored to have killed more people than smallpox, back in America’s counter-terror wars. That was before virtually everyone was dead already.

And now the dead were surrounding them. Again.

On the other hand, they were always surrounded, even at the best of times, holed up as they were in Fortress Britain. But right now, the four of them, Handon’s detached half of Alpha team – and for all he knew a significant fraction of the Tier-One special operators still left alive anywhere in the world – simply needed to hold this one building entrance. The large plain lettering on the front of the warehouse-like structure read “Merck KGaA.” The top of the letter M had fallen off and the final A was cracked and barely legible. Handon wondered how in just two years everything could go so quickly and completely to shit.

His team was raiding the research labs of what used to be Germany’s largest pharmaceutical company – from back when there were things like companies, and Germany. This also meant they were way too deep into fallen Europe for anybody’s safety or comfort – so deep that one screw-up could mean disaster for the whole team. But there was nothing for it. It was, if anything, an understatement to say that any hope of survival humanity still had hinged on operations like this one, even if the remaining population would never know about it. Most of the time it was best that way.

Handon blinked, but maintained target lock as he heard Pope switch smoothly to the command net. “Hotel X, this is Alpha-Two, requesting ETA on extraction. We’re pretty much ready to hit the road here.” Speaking of understatement, the first thing about Tier-One operators is that they are not prone to panic. Even when panic was fully justified – especially then. Unconsciously, Handon cocked his head into his earpiece, willing the channel to perk up. But it stayed silent as the grave. Maybe they were in a radio skip zone, in addition to being neck deep in zombie soup. A dead zone.

Fifteen seconds passed, several lifetimes in a combat situation. All around the team, the mist shifted with movement. And with that, and no other preamble, the lead creature, the one with only half a head, was upon him. Handon placed the red target reticule of his EOTech holographic sight on the zombie’s chin point. Directly behind that would be the brainstem. He applied a quarter-pound of pressure to the trigger, then hesitated. The creature, almost instantly driven to frenzy by the scent of living flesh, wheezed out a guttural roar, accelerated to its top speed of about 7mph, and lunged forwards.

Handon let his rifle – a heavily customized HK16, one of the last in the universe and thus nearly priceless – swing down on its single-point tactical sling, and switched in a blur to his secondary weapon. In this new, fallen, deeply strange world, that was no longer his .45 autoloading handgun. It was a wakizashi, a samurai short sword, worn in side-draw configuration above his duty belt in the small of his back.

In the same motion as the draw he whirled the razor-sharp blade around in a tight arc – the curved blade was designed precisely for drawing and striking at once – and separated what was left of the creature’s head from what was left of its body. The fragile, torn abomination lost its animation and fell forward at Handon’s assault boots, its knees cracking as the weak bones splintered with the impact of the hard pavement. The body fell sideways, hitting the pavement with a rich, wet sound. Decapitation wouldn’t actually kill the head – only destruction of the brainstem could do that – but it would stop it getting to him. It would be a few weeks or so before the head dried up and whatever constituted the zombie inside it finally died. Until then it would lie in the same spot, gnashing its jaw at the open air.

And then he heard it, just a split second before it came thrumming into view – the indistinct electric whir of suppressed rotor blades cutting through the muffling mists. It was the unit’s Stealth Black Hawk, inbound on short final. You didn’t hear these things until they were practically on top of you. And, especially in poor visibility, you couldn’t locate the origin of the sound with any accuracy. All of which was intentional. Sound drew zombies. Any sound. In a world shut down by the dead, almost anything audible was the sound of a survivor.

Handon’s thoughts of their dead world suddenly became less abstract, as the Stealth Hawk flared, nearly instantly blowing away the mist for a hundred meters in every direction. And in every direction, Handon could now see the soulless… hundreds upon hundreds of them, back up to the tree line, oozing forward like a mass of maggots, searching for healthy flesh. He had no idea where this many had come from that damned quickly. Aerial recon hadn’t given any indication of this kind of density. Blame the thick mist. Plus, in the Zulu Alpha, sometimes you just got swarmed out of a blue sky. Pretty damned often, actually, Handon thought with resignation. Surveying the incoming horde, he saw there were too many for his sword, and many more than he had rounds for his rifle or pistols. The team’s priority now had to be to exfil, RFN – “right fucking now.”

The helo rocked on its four wheels as it touched down dead center in the diamond described by the three operators and the building entrance. As Handon got a boot on the lip of the open side door and heaved his heavily loaded frame inside, he heard the first suppressed shots being fired by Pope and Predator. If they were shooting, things weren’t good. The ammo situation had gone from tight to catastrophic in the last few months. But the helo had landed facing south, which meant Handon could still cover his sector, the east, from inside the cabin. The other two would have to hold their positions, until their entry team, and their haul from the target site, got out and got onboard.

Handon spared a look over his shoulder and saw their PO (“Procurement Officer,” a fancy term for a scavenger with heavy IT skills and biotech experience) and his security escort emerge from the front door in a hurry. The ‘escort’ was the fourth member of their detachment, Juice – a large, puffy, heavily bearded man in a ballcap, and former operator with what was sometimes called The Intelligence Support Activity. (AKA the Field Operations Group, Gray Fox, Sentra Spike, and a host of other opaque names – but usually just referred to as “The Activity.”) Juice now served as the team’s comms operator and all-round tech badass. Also a completely lethal commando, he was the perfect choice to keep the PO alive. And as an IT genius, he was also uniquely suited to help him do his job.

Which it looked like he had done – the fifth man, more lightly armed and armored, had a full rucksack, sagging with weight, slung over one shoulder. He held one hand in front of his face against the swirling dust and rotor wash. The pair emerged from the entryway and pivoted left and right, the PO with a handgun, Juice with his SIG SG 553 assault rifle at his shoulder. Handon could see their mouths going wide in response to the Zulu Dusk that had risen up on all sides of them. The mouth shapes for “FUCK me” were familiar enough at this point.

Ordinarily they’d be doing this extraction up on a nice safe rooftop. Zulus – what the military had designated the regular, slow moving zombies that were the early stage victims of the disease – climbed poorly when they climbed at all, and rooftops were the preferred ways in and out of buildings. However, drone footage had indicated this building had likely taken fire and looting damage in the weeks after the fall. A couple of winters of heavy snow on the rooftop, with no maintenance, hadn’t helped the world’s structures any either. It was too unstable to be trusted. This intel flashed through Handon’s memory as he now watched the front of the building collapse – disastrously, and without warning.

It was either the heavy rotor wash, or the press of dead bodies surging around the corners, that kicked it off. Maybe a bit of both. Either way, it happened in one second of shuddering crash, a whole lot of dust, and the shouts of the men in the doorway. By sheer luck it didn’t extend to the helo, which was parked nuts-to-butts with the building for security. Juice was knocked clear, but lay prone and still. The PO was face down on the pavement, the lower half of his body crushed by hundreds of pounds of concrete and rebar.

Handon didn’t spare the time to curse fate. Turning to face out to the east again, he spun up the door-mounted GAU-17 minigun and burnt through 400 irreplaceable rounds of linked 7.62mm. On any other mission, with any other team, the rounds might actually be worth more than the men. But not on this one. Firing in an arc from extreme left to extreme right, a bit below neck height, Handon watched the first dozen ranks of amassed undead collapse into a rancid meat pile. Many of them were effectively turned off, with nerve connections severed between their bodies and the unholy infections raging in their brainstems. Others simply got too dismembered to locomote. With this precious breathing room, Pope and Pred could hold the flanks for the few seconds Handon needed here.

As he hurled himself back out of the door facing the building, he drew his sword with his right hand and his custom Kimber .45 autoloader with his left. By the time he hit the ground, a handful of leakers had already slipped through the perimeter and were rampaging in their rear, going straight for the incapacitated men on the ground. Wheeling and flashing, Handon took off two heads and sent single .45 ACP slugs whumping into three other brainstems. Back in the world, he had been trained always to fire doubletaps. Now they were a luxury.

He came to rest and kneeled at the side of their PO. The man was obviously in unendurable agony. But everyone here already knew that this pain was almost certainly the best thing he had left to look forward to. Just to try it on, Handon threw his weight into the largest piece of rebar pinning the man on the ground. It didn’t budge.

“Falling back by sectors.” That was Pope, speaking levelly in Handon’s earpiece. “Hate to rush you, man…” And that was Pred. “But just about all out of room to back up here. Ten seconds tops.” Handon looked down into the agonized eyes of the half-crushed man, whose earpiece was tuned to the same squad net. And, anyway, the man could see perfectly well what was happening around them. They were being overrun.

With his ebbing strength, he wiggled out of the ruck and pushed it across the dust and debris. He tried to speak, but couldn’t draw enough breath. Handon laid his palm across the man’s forehead. Another soul winking out. But at least this one would never rise up. Nor would his last experience be that of becoming a one-man live banquet. Handon used the .45. This man was worth the bullet. He’d only been posted to Handon’s team for a few weeks – POs tended to have a short half-life – but he was obviously a brave man.

Straightening up, Handon stuck his sword in the face of a zombie breaking through on his left. Its skull burst in two, spewing the blackened contents of its head backwards in an arcing spray. Before the body had even hit the floor he had scooped up the ruck with his right hand, and with a powerful motion tossed it into the helo. Firing spaced single shots with his left hand, dead bodies falling deader around him, he pulled Juice up and into a fireman’s carry, yanked his sword free from the dead face on the ground, then heaved himself forward and into the collapsing pinhole of their escape.

As he lurched into the cabin, throwing the unconscious operator ahead of him, he could see Pred backing in the opposite door, alternately firing and jabbing the barrel of his assault rifle through the heads of those that were nearly on top of him. Pope appeared from nowhere, proceeding to do basically the doing the same routine behind him at the other door. Gore was splashing close and thick all around, but they all wore their face shields, as well as bite-proof assault suits. The powerful twin engines of the heavily modified UH-60 Black Hawk whined and surged and the bird rocked off the ground, climbing and accelerating. Pope and Pred hacked off a few clinging arms on the door edge and the fixed landing gear, while Handon stuck his head into the flight deck to confer with the pilots.

In less than a minute, they would be flaring in over their secondary target site – where the other half of Alpha team was heavily engaged on the rooftop.

* * *

Captain Connor Ainsley, formerly of the SAS’s ultra-elite Increment unit, burst onto the building’s flat roof, with his left hand on his PO’s shoulder. They’d got the goods, and they’d gotten out alive. Now – where the bloody hell was their air? The SOF pilots that flew these Black Hawks were American, and Ainsley couldn’t shake the feeling they flew just that bit faster to extract other Americans.

Dusk was still an hour away, but an oppressive overcast sky blotted out the low sun, and of course there was all that damned mist, lying low and thick on the ground. Any cursed thing could be out there. He hailed the American sniper chick, emplaced out on the edge of the roof for ISR and security. But he spotted her before she answered so he just trotted over.

“Sitrep.”

“Unchanged,” she said, not taking her eye from her scope. “Romeos in ones and twos. Manageable.” Romeo was the designation for the other ones – the runners, the ones who moved fast. Her scope sat on an enormous rifle, an Accuracy International Arctic Warfare in .338 Lapua Magnum. It would take the head off anything with a head, out to over 1,000 yards. It was also fitted with an internal suppressor and subsonic ammunition to keep the noise down when necessary – very necessary in bandit country – though that dinged her range.

As Ainsley nodded and turned, she took a shot on a runner, at about 350 yards, as it broke from the tree line. This one, like the others, had been drawn by the noise of the original helo insertion. The Delta sniper, Aaliyah, or Ali, had been keeping them off the building for the last twenty-two minutes. The Romeos were a hell of a lot more dangerous than the bog-standard Zulus – not least because they could open doors. It wasn’t through a form of developed coordination that they managed it, just blind, fast fury. Where a slow zombie would bang the door down over time, a fast one would usually open it by accident much quicker.

And with that thought, the other two members of their four-man detachment, Homer and Henno, burst onto the rooftop. Both brandished short swords and handguns, their assault rifles hanging on their slings. This meant they’d been in close contact. They also glistened with gore.

“Henno, talk to me,” Ainsley said into his throat mic.

“No drama, boss,” he said, backing away from the stairwell entrance, while Homer produced a hammer and nailed three eight-inch spikes diagonally into the door frame, sealing it. Henno trotted up to the captain, flipping up his face mask. “Heaving Romeos down there now, and this building’s right Swiss cheese at this point. Danger Girl there can only shoot in so many directions.”

As Homer pounded the last nail home, a tumult, including a variety of gurgling roars, erupted from the opposite side of the rooftop. Ainsley belatedly noted a large maintenance structure – and also quickly deduced it must have additional stairwell access – around which Romeos in platoon strength were pouring. The ghouls put their shoulders down and sprinted.

The three operators and the PO hunkered down in all-around defense and started putting out rounds. Ainsley had the presence of mind to think of the girl. Swiveling his head and sparing a look, he saw that she was tightly wired and switched on as usual – flipped on her back, firing her sidearm through her raised knees. Ainsley breathed evenly and made his shots count. Romeos were dangerous, but the team knew their capabilities, and they had enough open space to work with here.

And, thank God, that’s when the Stealth Hawk roared in low and fast and from out of nowhere. The men onboard the bird also started putting out rounds, and the rooftop started to clear as a SPIE rope, with D-rings at three-meter intervals, dropped out the side. The team on the roof executed the drill, covering, withdrawing and clipping in. The captain went last, right after the PO, and the bird began to climb instantly, pulling the men off the ground in sequence.

And that’s when it appeared.

From out of fucking nowhere.

Ainsley actually froze – not good. He’d never seen anything, never mind anything dead, move that fast. For a second he thought it was coming right at his face, but it wasn’t. With an ungodly shriek and an inhuman leap it launched itself into the air, over Ainsley’s head, and straight at Homer in the number four position on the rope. The eyes of the utterly unflappable former Team Six SEAL went wide, and he pulled the only evasive maneuver open to him: he unclipped in a blur and slid down the rope right onto Ainsley’s head.

Everyone had trouble following exactly what happened from there, but piecing it together later, they couldn’t avoid the conclusion that the ghoul had grabbed onto the rope – and then scampered up far enough to maul the PO, who was in the three position. And the attack was the strangest thing of all: instead of going for the man’s flesh, either a bite or a ripped-out handful, as they’d all seen happen too many times, it instead raked its splintered nails across the man’s face, leaving deep furrows amid a smear of mixed blood and viscera.

It then leapt away, disappearing into the gloom and mists on the ground as the helo buzzed away. Somebody thought they saw it running flat out, away from them, like it was fleeing.

And it did that after a twenty-meter fall that should have broken half of the weakened, rotten and infested bones in its body.

Unseen hands above pulled the stunned and bleeding PO into the cabin. Ainsley simply clung to the rope where he was, twisting gently in the aircraft’s slipstream. A voice came over his earpiece, from the air mission net. “Raptor One-Zero to Alpha Actual. Uh… what the fuck was that, over.”

Ainsley blinked once, heavily, before remembering that he was being pulled up, and needed to get a leg over and into the cabin.

Whatever the hell it was, he wasn’t hallucinating.

The pilot had seen it, too.

This was something new.

EVEN ZULUS LONG FOR HOME

The PO’s breathing was shallow and fluttery, but his pulse steady and strong. He wasn’t going to die of his wounds. And he wouldn’t die from the infection, assuming he’d been infected, for many minutes, or maybe even hours. After hauling him aboard, Homer carried him to the back of the cabin, and Predator did some of his battlefield medicine magic. This was more in basic decency, than any kind of hope. The PO’s face was a bloody mess. The poor man had flipped his face shield up when he hit the SPIE rope. Homer thought placidly: it’s always the one from the direction you’re not looking that gets you.

He shook his head and tried to reconcile himself to it. No one can out-think the mind of God.

He looked out the cabin doors, where the very last light was all singed orange as the sun set on the west. The wind whipping through the airframe was cool and without sin. Homer breathed deeply and let the wind gently take the beading sweat off his face.

Looking back inside, he saw Predator working on Juice, who was coming around now. That was good. Shifting his gaze down again, he removed his glove and placed his palm over his trembling PO’s forehead – sure enough, the skin was ratcheting up to stovetop temperature. If there were any hope of him escaping infection, after deep scratches like that, the fever sunk it. Homer shook his head at Pred to let him know. He kept his hand on the man’s simmering head and started reciting Psalm 23.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in green meadows…”

“Hey, Homer, mate.” Homer looked up without reacting. It was Henno, the other SAS soldier, and Captain Ainsley’s man. “Why don’t you ask the bloke if he wants last rites before just charging in?” Homer smiled at him, in as much honest kindness as he could manage. No point in explaining that there’s no basis in Scripture for last rites, which are a man-made (and Papist) invention. Anyway, the wounded man was too doped up on morphine to consent to anything. And the terrified look in his eyes told Homer he wasn’t going to turn down consolation – of any denomination, or none.

“He leads me by peaceful streams. He renews my strength, he guides me along right paths…”

“Let him alone,” said Predator to Henno. “If nothing else, the pious shit makes Homer feel better. And when Homer feels better, I feel better.” Pred swiveled in his squatting position toward Handon, changing the subject. “Okay, boss, I’ll bite. What the fuck was that?”

Homer looked up and watched their top sergeant, Handon, maintain his poker face; it hardly ever deserted him. Homer’d always personally thought the sergeant major was a dead ringer for the Punisher. That heavy, lined brow. The wavy black hair. And the dark, shadowed, deeply sad eyes. Weight of the world. The world that was.

“Runner?” Handon said, though even as the word spilled out Handon knew he wasn’t convincing anyone that it was merely that. He knew, and more importantly he knew that everyone else there knew, that this was something different. They’d all taken down runners before.

Predator laughed rumblingly. “Yeah, the zombie of Michael fucking Jordan, maybe. With a forty-eight-inch vertical leap.”

Handon in turn looked to Captain Ainsley. The British spec-ops officer, and team commander, shook his head, looking just as confused as Handon was. “Never seen the like.” His expression changed fractionally as he scanned the cabin. “Say – where’s your PO?”

Handon shook his head. No.

“Both of them. Christ." The last word was almost a curse. "Secure the data?”

Handon patted the big ruck full of pharma research drives.

But Ainsley shook his head again. “Fuck sake, Handon. We can ill afford to lose more tech guys. You’ve got to be more cautious. What in the hell happened out there?”

“Bad luck.” He nodded toward the dying man in the back of the cabin. “How about yours?”

Ainsley held his gaze. (Staring contests in the spec-ops world can be epic. Backing down is really not the done thing.) “You saw it as well as I did.” Handon didn’t respond to that. But it was a poorly concealed secret that he thought Ainsley, who commanded Alpha team, had been showing unexceptional tactical judgement lately.

And no one needed wonder about Ainsley’s feelings for Handon, the American senior NCO, whom he believed to be systematically undermining his authority with the mostly American team. Homer figured one day there was going to be a reckoning between those two. And God save them all then – from tearing themselves apart from the inside, when the whole Rapture was tearing at what was left of them from every other side. Would they destroy themselves from within, in the end?

The English Channel appeared now on the horizon, the setting sun flashing on the white tips of wind-driven surf. Another change from the old days, Homer thought – daylight ops. SOF, Special Operations Forces, used to own the night. Now even they feared it. There’s aught more dangerous than us out there now, Homer thought. Predator saw the sweat pouring off the PO, and gave Homer a pointed look. Five minutes, Homer mouthed. They didn’t have to do it until just before they cleared the Channel. And something made Homer want to give this man the blessing of a last few minutes alive. Amongst the living. Amongst his brothers.

He unwrapped the shemagh, the black-and-white checked scarf he’d picked up in Libya, and worn habitually ever since. He used it to mop the man’s sweat-drenched brow.

* * *

“I think I caught it on my shoulder cam,” Juice said a little weakly, pausing to spit tobacco juice out into the slipstream. “Whatever it was.” Handon nodded at him. Combat video feeds could be seen as a luxury, for a military unit, a whole species, on the brink. But even more than in the high-tech terror wars, all data was precious. They captured everything, so it could be analyzed and exploited after they returned to base. If we return to base, Homer mentally amended. But knowledge was definitely life.

They were flashing toward the cliffs of Dover now, and Homer spotted the cruciform shape way out. It was a landmark for them. The lacerated, worm-gnawed figure nailed to it didn’t resolve until a few seconds later. But it was still there. In the early days of the quarantine, English country people, farmers mostly, had gone around nailing the soulless up on crosses, all along the coast, at mile or two intervals. Homer figured it was nice that Christian symbols retained some of their talismanic, or protective, power.

Unfortunately, many of the ones they nailed up never did get properly destroyed. Homer didn’t know whether it was through carelessness, or cruelty, or as some kind of warning to the others. But many of them were wiggling up there to this day. Some of course rotted right off, or pulled free of their own limbs, tumbled down, and wandered off to kill and infect more. Which was a reminder that you didn’t want faith getting in the way of tactical considerations. But, at a certain point, faith, however groundless, however forlorn, can be all you’ve got left.

The helo continued its unrelenting flight, landfall coming up on them faster and faster. The PO’s remaining seconds in this world ticked down.

And then Homer saw the other one – the buddy. He recognized this one, he’d swear he did. You see millions of the soulless, you kill thousands, they blur. But this one he knew. Usually it just walked or stood on the cliffs, a hundred meters or so from the edge, all alone, shoulders slumped, looking lost and profoundly forlorn. The Lord alone knew how it’d survived, what with the regular shoreline patrols, the recons in force going out to tamp down outbreaks, the combat air patrols over the Channel… but somehow this one poor creature was almost always there, when they flew back in this air corridor. It looked like it was searching for someone, or had lost something. Like nothing mattered enough – or it all mattered too much.

The Existential Zombie.

As noted, it was usually alone. But sometimes, like today, it would stand at the foot of that crucifix, its last shreds of clothing flapping in the wind, head bent down toward the ground, standing almost perfectly still like it was on some kind of vigil. Like that was its brother up there. This vision was deeply affecting to Homer, and also, of course, extremely creepy. Homer wondered how long it would be until they would fly over this way and see the clifftop devoid of that figure. Would it eventually give up its post and wander off, or maybe find peace at the bottom of the cliffs? Everyone had put a bead on the thing at one time or another, but for some unfathomable reason no one ever pulled the trigger. Maybe one day it would look up and see what it had lost. Or maybe it would be there forever.

Homer pulled his eyes from the scene outside and looked down into the pale blue eyes of the fevered, dying, frightened man before him. His pupils were already growing paler and more translucent, dark flecks and lines already forming in that spiderweb pattern as the blood vessels died, even as Homer watched. It was a sign of the turning. But then his expression softened. Homer thought he’d maybe somehow passed through the fear, and found some kind of peace. Waving Predator off when he tried to help, he cradled the man under his arms and eased him over to the open cabin door. They held each other’s eyes as Homer put the single round through his brainstem. The deformed bullet left him and sped off out into the lonely Kingdom of Heaven, way out above this fallen world.

As they approached the tall, noble clifftops, Homer’s mind’s eye flashed back to the cliffs of La Jolla, near San Diego, back when he was stationed with the West Coast SEALs at Coronado. His wife, his son, and his daughter, he could see them with such beautiful clarity, the four of them together amid so much peace and joy, their bellies and hearts so full, basking in the warmth of that world’s California sunlight, the ocean named for peace stretching out past God and man’s horizon. Knowing nothing of what was to come.

The dead man’s own weight took him right over the edge, and as he fell he picked up speed, tumbling peacefully toward the last stretch of the darkening water.

“Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies…”

SHADOWS IN THE MIST

Andrew Wesley, Corporal with the UK Security Services, and officer in charge on the night watch at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone, England, shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He pulled a precious cigarette out of the crushed packet on the desk in front of him and lit up. He looked up at the clock and was relieved to see there was only an hour and a half of his shift to go. It had been another long and boring night. Addison and Chambers, his two subordinates, were likable enough, but boy did those kids talk a load of rubbish, and he had to put up with it night after night. If it wasn’t aliens then it was superheroes. If it wasn’t superheroes, then it was Bible conspiracies. He was tired of it.

“They never bother with zombies anymore,” he muttered under his breath, guessing that subject was now far too real to allow for many “what ifs,” even with the mystery of the creatures’ origin still intact.

It had been half an hour since he had sent the pair of young recruits out into the dark to walk the perimeter. They had to do it every hour, on the hour, and even though they complained about it, Wesley had to admit that they always just got on with it – even though the Channel Tunnel terminal was probably one of the dullest security duties going. The soulless still walked up onto beaches, straight out of the Irish Sea or the North Sea, well into year two of the ZA. But the Channel Tunnel was sealed up tight. It had been for a long time.

As usual, the two young men had complained a bit before trudging out into the cold. Tonight was particularly miserable as far as the weather – the mist that had descended at around 2am was biting cold. Wesley normally smoked outside of the building, even though no one bothered with the smoking laws anymore – or any of the other old health and safety laws, for that matter. Tonight he had gone out for just one smoke outside the door, and he hadn’t been out since.

He took a deep drag on the cigarette and watched the smoke swirl around the room as he exhaled. He wondered how long his two apprentices would stay at the tunnel. They were very young and far too enthusiastic, he thought, to be stuck in a post this dull.

How many zombies had been spotted in this sector? Maybe ten in the whole year that he had been in charge, and they had been putrefied enough that they were barely mobile. And none had come out in the last six months, which meant the Conspiracy Twins – as Wesley liked to think of them – had quite likely never even seen one. Why Central Command, CentCom, had even bothered to send him two additional people was puzzling. He could understand them replacing Jones; the old man was just too frail to be traipsing around at night, and the old guy had been suffering with his knee joints for the whole time Wesley had been there. But two young and untrained guards? Wesley would have traded them back in for Jones any time, even with the arthritis.

He stubbed his cigarette out and looked up at the clock again. Where the hell were they? Twenty minutes, tops, was all it took to walk the perimeter and check the tunnels. They didn’t even need to check them, really. Both entrances were sealed off, and the maintenance tunnel was locked up tight. He hadn’t been there when the teams of soldiers blocked the entrances off completely in just a couple of days, with debris from abandoned buildings; that had been done before he arrived, but old man Jones had told him all about it. They had filled the tunnels with the rubble from demolished buildings, and there were plenty of those around Folkestone. No one wanted to live near the tunnel anymore, at least not after the early days when the dead making a break out of it represented a constant threat, even after the military had flooded some of the sections to get rid of the problem.

Wesley picked up the radio from the desk.

“Addison, come in,” he said, and coughed. He needed a drink. A beer would be nice. His throat was dry.

“Addison, come in,” he repeated.

All that came back was a static hiss.

“Addison, come in, you little git. Where are you two?”

Nothing. Just dead air.

“For crying out loud,” he cursed, heaving himself off his chair and grabbing his coat from a row of hooks near the door. He stepped out into the cold, pushing the radio into its holster and pulling his torch and short-handled axe from his belt. He glanced back at the cabinet on the wall of the office, wondering whether he should take the shotgun with him, but then decided that getting it out and loading it was more hassle than it was worth. He knew exactly where the two young guards would be and why they were late.

The gravel underneath his feet crunched as he started along the track toward the fence, carelessly leaving the door open behind him. The cold mist that had settled over the entire area seemed even colder now. It was the kind that clung to you and bit your throat with every damp breath. Wesley hadn’t realized quite how thick it had become whilst sitting there in the warm office. It also meant that visibility was reduced to a few dozen yards, the white blanket of it seeming to just hang there, casting an oppressive pall over the landscape. Wesley always found it creepy in the yard when the mist settled, which seemed to be more and more often these days. He had never lived this far south before taking this posting, but he was sure that Folkestone was supposed to have had reasonably clear weather most of the year. He had no clue where that idea had come from.

He went the opposite way round the perimeter, trudging up the long gravel track that wound around the fence, and eventually descended back toward the train tracks themselves. Years ago the area had always been clear, but that was back when the trains ran with a startling regularity through the tunnels to France, and before the military had taken over Folkestone. Where there had once been open ground, with only the tracks running toward the tunnel, there were now row upon row of containers and derailed train carriages, all used for storage. He had never asked what the military stored in them, but it was important enough to warrant daily visits, enough for the dirt trail from the gate to the storage area to have compacted and formed a road of sorts. They never spoke to him, the soldiers who came and went each morning, they merely showed him their badges and went about their business. And Wesley had been given strict instructions to stay in his office when they were onsite. Dodgy as hell, he thought. But he also knew it was in his best interests to ignore it. Ignorance was sometimes best.

Tonight, the outer fence was quiet. Too quiet, he thought. The only sound was the crunch of his own boots on the gravel path, and he was relieved when he finally rounded the fenced edge and started down the slope back into the yard. He presumed Addison and Chambers would be sitting there, on one of the containers, chattering as usual. He had lost count of the number of times he’d had to tell them to get their circuit done on schedule. It wasn’t as if he was that bothered, but over at CentCom they liked their regular calls to confirm that all was still clear. One more box to be ticked. This didn’t seem to have registered with the pair of new recruits, but at least they had taken note of his complaints about their endless nattering and scheming, and taken their conversation elsewhere. No doubt they were arguing about what secrets were held in the yard right now, instead of seeing to their own jobs.

Wesley had been a security guard for most of his forty-five years, including in a number of very well paid jobs back before the zombies turned up and changed everything. He had actually been working over in France when the outbreaks began, and he vividly remembered standing at the bar in his favorite drinking hole in the Latin Quarter and staring up at the TV screen, dumbstruck, as report after live report from around the world played out. He couldn’t remember the exact night it had happened, but he could remember how haunting it had been when the first live news team went down under a zombie swarm attack.

The whole world had been shocked by that scene, and until then most people had talked about the trouble as though it was a foreign thing, and something that would never affect them. Then the footage had been shown of the reporter and the camera crew being pulled to the ground and literally torn to shreds by the marauding dead. Even though the camera had fallen on its side, it clearly captured one of the horrendous creatures gorging on the neck of a reporter. Within an hour of that news event, which seemed to replay on nearly every channel over and again, Wesley had received the call from his boss, instructing him to get his ass on the next train home.

It was hard to think back to those days. They seemed so far in the past, even though only two years had gone by. All the folks he had worked with during his time in Paris, all of the other security personnel, the airport workers, the shipping office clerks, the girls in the main office – all gone now. He often wondered what had happened to Amarie. Had she managed to escape? Had she fled back to the south of France to be with her parents? Wesley felt a twinge of regret at failing to find her in her flat when he had paused in his frantic flight from the city to look for her. He had only known her a month. Yet it pained him deeply to know that he would almost certainly never see her again.

His thoughts drifted to the streets of Paris back then – people rushing in all directions, the first looting in the shops, police sirens rising and falling. That was before the virus was even close to the city, and before the first real outbreak – the one in Villiers-le-Bel that people initially thought was just a riot. He could clearly remember the feeling of shock and revulsion as he watched a group of young men ransacking a shop across from his apartment. They hadn’t even waited for the cover of night, or for the shop to close.

“You need to get the next train back,” his boss had said on the phone, just after the first reports of rioting in the city had hit the headlines. “Everyone is heading home as soon as possible, before the docks are closed. Rumour is they are closing the border completely.”

It wasn’t good news. Civilian air traffic into the UK had been brought to a halt for three days already, meaning that anyone who wanted to get back had to use the tunnel or go by ferry. There had been all sorts of stories coming back about the difficulty of getting into the country, even for those who held British passports.

But Amarie’s phone rang through every time he called, and she hadn’t been at home when he went there. Wesley had rushed around the apartment building, asking the neighbours if they had seen her, but no one knew anything. Finally, he had sat in the kitchen of his own apartment, counting the hours and watching the news, before he finally grabbed his bag and headed for the station.

The throng of people trying desperately to get onto the trains was mind-boggling. Thousands struggled even to get into the station, let alone the terminal itself. Wesley was too jaded to be surprised at the outbreaks of violence amongst the crowds, and it was evident that the police had little control over events. What few officers hadn’t been called up for riot control in the streets were too few to control the mob of people pushing and shoving to buy tickets.

Wesley felt a pang of sadness to remember that the train he caught was the last one ever to travel the Channel Tunnel. The chaos in France had exploded out of control after that, and by the time Wesley arrived at his old flat in Peckham and switched on the TV, most of Paris was in flames. The riots had spread so quickly in the City of Light that a state of complete anarchy existed within hours. The police and emergency services collapsed shortly after. Most of the police and ambulance staff had abandoned their posts and run for their homes and family.

What about the Scottish family that he had become friends with over the last week before the end? They had stayed in the hotel opposite and had taken to dining in the cafe on the street below Wesley’s apartment. Had they managed to get out? He hadn’t seen them for the whole day before he left. Wesley sighed, and hoped to God that they got their two little kids out. He shook his head, trying to push the memory from his mind, but it was difficult.

Maybe that family had been lucky. So many hadn’t been as the virus spread with alarming speed. The progression of the infection varied from person to person, but rarely took more than ten or twenty minutes to render the victim unconscious. Wesley had even seen it claim a person merely seconds after she stopped bleeding. As soon as a victim was no longer in control of his or her body – either out cold or else done bleeding to death – they were at its mercy.

He remembered the old woman outside the pharmacy, as he made his way hurriedly to the Metro. She had been the fastest turning that he had ever seen, and she had been one of the first that he had witnessed. The woman had been trying to leave a shop when an infected man had stumbled out of the alleyway next door. Before Wesley even clocked him he had bitten the woman on the neck, tearing out a chunk of flesh and ripping open her jugular vein. Wesley remembered the alien feeling of battering the man to the ground. He had been in fatal conflicts before – it sometimes couldn’t be avoided if you worked for a major international security firm – but this had been different. The man hadn’t even tried to defend himself. He was too busy trying to grab hold of and devour the woman. Less than a minute later, as Wesley staggered away from the man’s body, the woman had grabbed him by the leg from her prone position on the ground and bitten him. Fortunately, she bit into his boot, or else Wesley’s survival of the apocalypse would have been very short lived.

Now he snapped out of his reverie, and realized that he had stopped walking, and was standing at the foot of the slope and the beginning of the storage yard. He was just staring at the ground and had been completely lost in his own thoughts.

He looked around, and then grabbed his radio again. This was where he had expected to find Addison and Chambers, and if they weren’t here then they hadn’t even gotten a quarter of the way round their circuit.

“Addison, come in,” he said. “Chambers, come in. Anyone? Where the hell are you two?”

He peered through the mist and began walking across the yard between the huge containers stacked high on each side. The place seemed so peaceful now in comparison with the chaos of the last two years. Was it like the calm of the Phony War at the beginning of WW2? After the invasion of Poland, but before the Battle of France? No. Only if Hitler had overrun the whole world, and those he killed risen up again. This was more like the silence of the grave.

A noise snapped him out of his thoughts. It was distant, but he was sure that it was a cry.

He dismissed it, thinking that it was probably just a bird or a fox.

No. There it was again. Not a cry. That was someone screaming.

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

Herefordshire was dead and black by the time Alpha team zoomed low over its hills and flared into the former SAS compound at Hereford – now home to the Unified Special Operations Command (USOC). This was where the last few hundred of the world’s very best military superheroes operated from, deployed in defense of the world’s very last hundred million or so human beings.

The perimeter of the dirt helipad was bathed with red combat lights – the UK countryside was relatively cleared and safe, but white light was still just too damned irresistible to the dead – and Handon’s boot hit sod before the bird had settled onto its four fat tires. He lit the remnant of a cigar with one hand and with the other smacked the two rucksacks full of hard drives into the chest of Juice, who had followed him off the bird.

“Check these in,” Handon said, blowing smoke off into the fragrant night. “Report the loss of the POs. With our respects.” Juice nodded, sliding his ballcap back over his matted mane. Through his trademark beard – thick, dark and red – he said flatly, “And the other thing?”

“Yeah, that too. Put in an intel spot report.” Handon hesitated. "How's your head?"

Juice nodded. "All squared away, Sarge." The building collapse had basically just knocked him cold for thirty seconds. The two men turned and strode off in opposite directions as the rest of the team unassed the helo and began hauling down their kit and the remains of their combat load-out. Ainsley had already stalked off wordlessly for the BOQ (Bachelor Officers Quarters).

Juice spat again in the red-tinged darkness, hitched up the two rucks on his shoulder, and began to thread the rows of uniform wooden structures until he found the Head Shed. Opening the door and pulling back the blackout curtain, he entered and hailed the officer of the watch. The guy was expecting them, had heard their inbound radio chatter on the air net. Had already heard about the casualties.

“Mission outcome?” he asked, taking the rucks as Juice handed them over.

“Successful,” Juice said, still squinting through animal eyes into the brighter light of the Ops Center. “Both target sites taken, both exploited. It’s all there in the bags.” The officer gave him a long, vacant look. Both of the dead POs were his men. Juice got it. “Sorry, man. We did everything we could.”

A pause. “Shit happens in the Zulu Alpha,” the officer said, shrugging. “We’ll go down the list and try to get you new attachments.”

“Thanks.” Juice paused, reining in the impulse to spit on their floor. “There’s something else.” The officer arched his eyebrows. “We lost the Second Detachment PO to a Romeo.” Another pause. “But not one like we’ve seen before.”

“Like what, then?”

“It was fast.”

The officer just gave him a No, shit? look. That was sort of the whole point of runners.

“Faster. A lot faster. Plus it could jump – like a meth-head on Wile E. Coyote springs. I’ve never seen anything like it. It took a leap at your guy on the SPIES rope. It scored him across the face, hit the ground – and then ran away.”

The officer didn’t react for a couple of seconds. “You got any video?”

Juice unslotted a flash memory chip from his shoulder rig – he’d earned the call sign “Juice” because every single thing he carried ran on batteries, which constantly needed charging – and handed it to the officer, who jammed it in a machine. Juice took the mouse and fast-forwarded through the video. Expressionless, the officer watched from Juice’s POV, looking out of the helo and down, helping reel the others in. A gray shape came out of the bottom of the frame and flashed by. It latched onto the rope and there was some kind of scuffle. And then it was gone. Juice froze the frame, unwittingly on the mauled face of the PO. He looked up at the officer, then killed the window.

The other man’s expression turned a few degrees more grim – more even than everyone in this unit looked all the time. “We’ve been getting scattered and broken reports of Romeos like that. On over-the-water raids. One border patrol. They think it might be some kind of mutation. A new kind.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that doesn’t feed.”

Juice worked his wodge of tobacco. “What kind of zombie doesn’t feed?”

“They just seem to infect people and move on – fast. The guys in the Med Shack think maybe it’s a new adaptation of the virus. Now that the dead outnumber the living by such a high multiple, they’ve given up on trying to feed. They’re now just out to spread the virus. Or, rather, the virus has hijacked them to spread itself.” The officer ran the fingers of his right hand across his regulation buzzcut. “Into the last corners of the living.”

Juice shifted his weight. He was still wearing eighty pounds of combat load. “Got a designation for it?”

“Not an official one. But, colloquially, they’ve been calling them Foxtrot Novembers.” Juice held his gaze. “The Fucking Nightmare.”

Juice nodded his goodbye – SOF guys didn’t salute very much, in the old world or this one – then turned and exited. Great, he thought, angling for the Alpha complex, with their ready room, briefing areas, and billets. As if this world wasn’t nightmarish enough already.

As he banged through the door toward his gear locker, Juice realized this month would be the second anniversary – two freaking years since the quarantine, and the fall that came almost immediately after. Now into year three of the ZA.

And welcome to it, he thought, the exhaustion hitting him, stumbling through camp like the walking dead himself.

HELL HATH LESS FURY

“Oh my fucking God!” screamed the voice that echoed across the yard.

Wesley took off at a run, his boots crunching heavily on damp ground. He crossed most of the distance in just a few seconds, but then slowed to a halt as he rounded the last train carriage. Ten yards away he spotted Chambers leaning over the struggling form of Addison. There was blood flowing heavily from the latter’s arm. Wesley felt a wave of fear as he ran forward, drawing his axe and pulling it back, ready to strike.

But he didn’t have to. Chambers turned round as he approached.

“Oh thank fuck. Help. We’ve been attacked,” he yelled. Wesley slowly lowered his axe.

The look on Chambers’ face changed as he realized what had nearly just happened. He was holding tightly onto Addison’s arm, and Wesley could clearly see blood trickling from between his fingers.

“I’m not infected!” he yelled. “It didn’t bite me. It didn’t bite either of us.”

“It?” Wesley hissed.

“It came out of nowhere,” said Addison.

“Keep your voice down,” said Wesley, spinning around and peering into the mist. Nothing moved around them, no wavering shadows or sounds. His mind raced. Where had it come from? It couldn’t be the tunnel, which was flooded, and had been for well over a year, the entrance filled with rubble. Nothing could physically get through.

“It came from nowhere,” repeated Addison, obviously on the verge of tears. “It was so fast. I didn’t even see it. All I knew was the pain in my arm. Oh God, it’s not a bite is it?”

“No,” said Chambers, shaking his head. “It’s just a cut. Same as what it did to me. it just cut you deeper. It’s okay. No bites.”

Wesley turned back to the young trainees, thinking how naive they were and wishing that he could be so innocent. But he knew. A bite was a guaranteed infection. A scratch? It was still high risk. If the creature had blood or gore on its hands then the two young officers were as good as dead. He needed to get the gun.

“We need to get you back to the office. Get up. Quickly.”

Chambers struggled to his feet, then helped Addison up, and they both followed Wesley as quickly as they could.

“Where did it go after it attacked you?” Wesley asked, without looking back, hoping that the injured junior officers were close behind him. He didn’t have the luxury of keeping track of them; he was too busy scanning the dark corners of the yard and the gaps between the storage units, searching for signs of movement or a distant noise.

“I don’t know,” stuttered Chambers from a few yards away. “I was in shock. I didn’t see it run off. I thought we were going to die.”

“Okay. Right. I need the gun. I’m going to run for it. Get in the office as fast as you can and shut the door behind you.”

The search for the two youths had taken Wesley along nearly the entire circuit of the fence, and this end of the yard was only a few hundred feet from the office. He hurried through the gap between two huge train carriages and by the time he hit the foot of the grass slope he was already running.

“Three Acres, come in,” he wheezed as he tried to climb the slope and use the radio at the same time. He wasn’t feckless like the young guys, but he wasn’t young like them, either, not anymore. Dirt and grass churned underneath his feet and he had to stop for a moment to regain his footing. “Three Acres, come in.”

What the hell was it with people not answering their radios? Three Acres was the centre of communications in Folkestone, and had once been part of a retail park. Now there were armed forces from six different countries occupying the warehouses, and this included the security monitoring office that should be answering his call very quickly. They had people in that office 24/7 to organize every coastal patrol from Margate to Eastbourne. On a clear night, Wesley would have been able to look out of his office window, across the M20 motorway just a few hundred yards away, and see the lights of the Comms Centre. But tonight the mist obscured everything further than fifty feet away.

“Three Acres come in… Come on, God damn you, answer me,” Wesley spat as he contemplated contacting CentCom in London directly. But that would mean a military reaction, and a single zombie escaping into the countryside wasn’t something that CentCom wanted to be contacted for.

He glanced back down the slope. The two injured men were halfway up now and still climbing. His gaze drifted across the yard. So much of it was obscured by the fog and darkness that the creature could be anywhere. It would be there somewhere, stumbling in the darkness in search of more prey, Wesley thought, as he ran up the remaining forty yards of slope and through the open doorway to the office. He didn’t stop, but made a dash straight for the cabinet.

“The keys… the keys. Where the fuck are the keys?”

The shelf above the kettle, where a spare set of office keys always lay, the set with the gun cabinet key on it, was empty. Had he moved them? Wesley glanced over to the wooden cabinet in the corner. The door was still shut. He looked on top of the cabinet , but there was nothing, just a layer of thick dust. He rushed around the office, pulling open drawers and scattering the contents, frantically searching. How could they be gone? No one had been in the office and the keys were always on the shelf. Always. Had he moved them and forgotten? He stood in front of the cabinet looking at the lock, and then reached to his waist, pulling the axe from its loop.

A noise behind him made his nerves tingle. He spun round to see the first shadow pass the office window. The office door creaked open, mist obscuring his view out. Chambers or Addison.

“Have you seen the…”

The words died in his throat. Addison lumbered into the doorway and stood glaring at him – except this wasn’t the young, foolish trainee that Wesley knew. Addison had changed. His face was drained of all colour, his skin an alien, pale gray, with darkening lines that had once been veins visible beneath. Zombie Addison’s eyes now burned inside blackened sockets, with what Wesley could only feel was hatred. Hatred of him. Those eyes almost bored into his mind. From Addison’s mouth there hung something bloody and dripping; something that Wesley couldn’t identify. The blood had soaked into a spreading patch on the dead officer’s shirt.

Addison hissed and bared his teeth, dropping the lump of flesh to the floor. He stumbled forward and tripped over the chair next to the door. He fell sprawling, his hands reaching out, but not to stop his fall. Those hands reached out for Wesley.

Another shadow loomed in the doorway behind the undead officer. Chambers staggered into view, and hit his head on the glass panel in the door, smashing it in his desperation to get inside. As Wesley backed up toward the far end of the room, he saw that the left side of Chambers’ neck had been torn out. The dead trainee’s head swayed unsteadily as he moved, his neck no longer able to hold the weight. There was blood soaking his jacket, but no blood flowed from the wound now. Chambers had bled out already.

That was what Addison had been eating. He’d eaten his own friend.

A survival instinct that Wesley didn’t even know he had snapped him out of his panic. He was no longer frozen to the spot as the two creatures struggled to negotiate their way through the office and around the furniture, toward him. The mess that Wesley had created during his rush to find the keys now slowed them down. Chairs that had been moved out of the way, tables that had been pushed and drawers that were still open; all of these meant precious seconds as the dead clambered across the room to get at him.

He turned to the cabinet and smashed the door with his axe, grabbed the shotgun and turned over the box of shells, snatching the nearest.

Addison was barely three feet away when the single chamber snapped shut and Wesley raised it to the dead man’s face and pulled the trigger. Addison’s head vanished in the blast, replaced by a cloud of blood and gore that splattered across the office. The noise was terrific, echoing in Wesley’s head for seconds afterwards. He had forgotten how loud shotguns were, especially in enclosed spaces. He sidestepped the body, slipped a new shell into the chamber, snapped it shut and aimed over the desk at Chambers.

The one thing that had always unnerved Wesley about the undead was their sheer lack of fear, and their complete ignorance of any form of danger. He aimed the shotgun at Chambers’ head, and the zombie just kept coming. It was only a few feet away when Wesley pulled the trigger, and right up until that moment the creature hadn’t even acknowledged the weapon, hadn’t considered the danger that it was rushing toward. Not until it was too late, and its unthinking brain splattered across the brick wall at the back of the office.

Wesley jumped over the nearest desk, slammed the shotgun down and grabbed the radio from the wall.

“Three Acres come in! Come in!”

A minute later, Wesley’s boots were thudding against the tarmac road as he jogged toward the car park. He unlocked his car with his key fob and jumped into the driver’s seat, throwing his radio and axe onto the passenger seat. He carefully placed the reloaded shotgun into the passenger footwell, double-checked his pocket for the remaining shells, and then rammed his keys into the ignition. The car skidded out of the gravel drive and tore up the ground as he raced toward the roundabout that would take him over the M20 and toward the Security Centre. He put his foot down, speeding up the slope toward the main road, but something caught his eye, something in his peripheral vision.

He skidded to a halt and wound the window down. There, down in the yard, right near the blocked-up entrance to one of the tunnels. There was movement, and lots of it. For just a moment the wind must have blown the mist away, because his view of the tunnel entrance cleared, and in the darkness amongst the rows of storage units, Wesley saw dozens of figures moving about. He saw clearly that a small section of the blocked-in tunnel had now been opened up.

There was a hole.

Wesley slammed his foot on the accelerator so hard that his knee popped. The car shuddered once in defiance before it lurched into motion and screeched up the road toward the bridge. Wesley knew what was happening now, and he realized the urgency.

He changed channels on his radio with one hand, then pressed the transmit button. “CentCom come in,” he shouted into the pickup, but cursed as he saw the battery indicator go dead. He tossed the radio aside and grabbed the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

He had to get to Three Acres and warn them.

Fortress Britain was breached.

LOVE SPREADS

Predator and Juice sat in silence in the Alpha ready room, squaring away their weapons and gear. In this world as in the old one, it was the personal responsibility of every Tier-1 operator to ensure the perfect functioning and reliability of his own kit. After a mission, but before secondary matters like sleep and food, weapons got cleaned and lubed, magazines and grenade pouches refilled, radio batteries recharged – and everything carefully stowed away where it could be got at on a second’s notice.

One difference between this world and the old, though, was that if you failed to take care of your shit, there might not be any replacement weapons, parts, or repair services. You only appreciated industrial society, and international trade, once they were gone. Predator in particular mourned for Delta’s master gunsmiths and armorers, all of whom were presumed to have died when Ft. Bragg, in North Carolina, went down.

He sat at a bench, carefully stroking a wire brush on a brass rod down the barrel of his beloved 7.62mm SCAR (SOF Combat Assault Rifle). He’d been carrying this weapon since 2nd Iraq and had no plans to break up with it now. Predator originally got his call sign for seeming to be seven feet tall, unkillable, and unstoppable; for being expert at a wide variety of extremely deadly weapons; and, in particular, for moving awfully close to silently and invisibly for a guy the size of a truck.

Juice, hairier and cuddlier, stood nearby, pulling batteries out of his devices and plugging them into a wall multi-charger. Neither man spoke, both working in the cordial silence and placid concentration of a ladies’ sewing circle.

Other members of the team would be doing the same, but elsewhere, so they weren’t all on top of one another. (In a depopulated world, space was strangely at a premium.) Ali and Pope were next door, in the quad billet they shared with Pred and Juice. While the latter two were still stripping off dirty assault suits, they caught sight of Aaliyah slipping out of the room, pressing the door closed, and padding off into the blacked-out moonscape of the base.

“There she goes again,” said Juice, checking the soles of his assault boots for gore.

Pred grunted in response, sniffing at a pair of thick socks. “Yeah, it’s funny. I’ve worked with Ali for a decade. Ordinarily, she’d sooner chew her own head off than get involved with anybody she’s serving with.”

Juice nodded, grabbing a towel and a pair of shower shoes and shutting his locker. “Ordinarily, the dead wouldn’t be walking the Earth.”

“True. True.”

Pausing at the door, Juice looked thoughtful. “She hook up with someone in headquarters company, maybe?”

“Maybe. But somehow I don’t quite see her hooking up with a REMF, either.” Tier-1 guys were so far removed from “Rear Echelon Motherfuckers” that they generally couldn’t be bothered to look down on them, as the regular infantry grunts did.

Suddenly, the sound of shouting floated in through the propped-open door – then crescendoed and multiplied with frightening speed. The two big men exchanged looks with each other, then looked back at their shut weapons lockers.

* * *

His kit and weapons squared away, but the grime of the mission still on him, Captain Connor Ainsley took a few breaths sitting on the rack in his private quarters in the BOQ. He then speed-dialled his wife. The sat phone he'd previously depended on to reach her from around the world was now just a particularly heavy and useless brick – ever since the telecom sats started falling out of their orbits. And the civilian mobile network was dodgy at best. But military packets at least had priority.

She picked up after a few rings – probably the degraded and patchy network of towers trying to locate her. “Hello?” She’d never learned to keep the fear out of her voice, even just answering the phone.

“Hello, darling. It’s me. Everything alright?”

“You’re okay?” Neither wanted to take the time to answer, before the other did.

“Fine, just fine.”

“Us, too. The boys are okay.”

“How’s the city?” Ainsley’s wife and two boys lived in central London – in theory one of the safest places in Britain, and thus in what was left of the world. They used to own a house in Surrey, but moved in after the quarantine, and a bit before the fall. And with military comms and scuttlebutt being as unreliable they were, he often got better intel straight from her than from briefings in his own chain of command.

He could hear her pause and swallow before answering. “It’s okay. The regular military units are still like the bloody Gestapo – every time I get stopped on the street, I want to tell them my husband is a real soldier, an elite one, out fighting the real war.”

“We’ve all got our roles to play, sweetheart.”

“I know… The streets seem safe. There have been no outbreaks that I’ve heard of. Just the odd one wandering in from the countryside. They don’t get far or last long. So far.”

“You’re all staying indoors after dark, though, right?”

“Yes. But it’s hard. The rationing bites a little worse every month. The boys are on the verge of boycotting potatoes, no matter how I cook them… I feel like they’re not growing as quickly as they should do…”

“It’s fine. They’ll be fine.”

“What about your leave, Connor? What did they say?”

Ainsley sighed quietly, not wanting to upset her any more than necessary.

“It’s still no. For the time being.”

His door knocked, then cracked open. It was Handon.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll call again in a few days. Inside after dark. Okay? Bye.”

Ainsley rung off and gave Handon a weakly expectant look.

Handon’s expression started out as its usual granite surface. “The Colonel wants us. A briefing.” But then it unexpectedly softened. Ainsley looked like he was in physical pain.

“You okay?”

Ainsley looked away, then back into Handon’s dark and steely eyes. “It’s my family. I’ve been trying to get leave to go look after them for a little while. Fortify the house better. Try to lay in more provisions…”

But with that, Handon’s expression froze back into rock. Instantly, Ainsley realized he’d misstepped. He knew as well as anyone, and better than most, that few of the Americans fighting here had the least idea whether their families back home were alive or dead.

Or that other thing.

Handon didn’t respond, but Ainsley got the point perfectly. He changed the subject.

“Who’s in this briefing? When?”

“Just us. RFN.”

Unexpectedly, shouting erupted from outside – the same noises that caused Juice and Pred to freeze in the ready room. Handon turned and put his palm on the butt of his sidearm. The shouting grew louder quickly.

And then the two of them rushed outside and across the menacing darkness of the compound.

* * *

During the run-up to the fall, the militaries were the last to go down. Military installations – walled, guarded, heavily armed, and generally designed to withstand attack – at first seemed the perfect anti-zombie bastions. But what finally brought them down was camaraderie. Esprit de corps. The military brotherhood.

Not a single American or British military base was overrun from the outside. They all fell from within. When soldiers were wounded, their brother warriors erred – far, far too much – on the side of bringing them back inside the wire. Either not believing they’d been infected… or thinking they could be treated, or at least controlled… or just credulously taking their word for it that they weren’t bitten or scratched… they walked or carried their own doom right inside the walls with them.

Now, tonight, long after the world outside Britain had been overrun… whatever was going on, whatever the cause of the tumult at Hereford, it was near the NCO’s mess. Just outside the entrance, a mass of bodies was grappling in the bad light, grunting and swearing, elbows pistoning for punches. One figure lay on the ground at the foot of others, literally getting the shit kicked out of it. It was violent, shadowy chaos.

Handon kept ten meters between himself and the melee, his .45 in one hand and Surefire LED flashlight in the other, the two crossed at the wrist. Ainsley moved out, spreading the flank on the left. There were no shots yet. Before Handon could work out the tactical situation, or acquire a target, a new, large figure charged in – and immediately started tossing bodies out.

“Cut it out, you goddamned sons of bitches…!”

It was the Colonel.

Somebody went flying and rolled up at Handon’s feet, coughing.

Scanning to either side – constant, total situational awareness is pretty much rule number one in spec-ops, and the first ten rules in zombie fighting – Handon saw a couple of corporals spill out of the mess and swing wide around the perimeter of the fighting. Handon grabbed one of them by the collar.

“Sitrep.”

“It’s just a soldier fight, Sarg.” Handon didn’t let him go. “One of the staff clerks from H&S company thought one of the operators from Echo Team looked dodgy. They were just back inside the wire, and the clerk thought he was twitchy and told him to get tested. Guy’s team told him to get fucked. It went south from there.”

With that, Juice and Predator skidded up to a halt, holding their assault rifles forward at the low ready position, night vision goggles protruding from their faces like African tribal masks. Juice wore only a towel wrapped around his waist, and flip-flops. Predator was ass-naked.

“What went south?” Pred growled, pivoting and aiming.

Handon couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Master Sergeant, get that cannon out of my face.” He didn’t mean Pred’s SCAR. “And stand down. It’s just a fist fight.”

Ainsley stepped up again and lowered the hammer on his .45 with his thumb, his expression darkening at the two huge and undressed men. Turning away, he muttered, “I could have gone my whole life without seeing that…”

By now the Colonel had gotten to the bottom of the dust-up, and was letting the perpetrators have it with both barrels. “The next time you dubious motherfuckers want to have a fight that doesn’t involve Zulus, you fucking well do it outside the wire, where you can’t scare anybody. Except the dead. Got it?”

Several dusty and bleeding soldiers, variously standing, sitting, or lying, nodded or Yes, sir’d in response. The Colonel scanned and pointed at a big and grizzled operator from Echo – presumably Patient Zero of this outburst. “You, First Sergeant. I don’t give a shit how many decades of operational time you have in, or how many thousands of Tangos and Zulus you’ve slotted. You follow the goddamned fucking rules. I don’t give a shit if it’s the soup lady who doesn’t like the look of you. You drop your shit where you stand and get your ass tested.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Now!”

The operator pulled himself up and stomped off toward the Med Shack.

There were quiet mutters of approval from some of the scrawnier, bloodier guys.

“And you rear echelon motherfuckers. Next time you’ve got concerns about somebody’s health, you goddamn well take it up through channels. You’re no use to me or humanity with your heads torn off and shoved up your asses.”

The four Alpha men, grinning or shaking their heads, were now turning to leave. Juice tapped Pred on the shoulder and pointed off behind them. They could just make out a figure climbing down from the tallest structure in that part of camp, a three-story warehouse. It was slim and lithe, with long hair, black and curly, and a rifle across her back.

“Looks like someone got her rendezvous interrupted.” Juice whistled. “She moves fast.”

“You have no idea, man,” Predator said. “At least we weren’t the only dumbasses who thought the shit was coming down in camp…”

With a toss of his head, the Colonel rounded up the two senior Alpha men and began fast marching them back toward his command post. The Colonel did everything fast. He knew they were all running out of time.

RUNNING BLIND

Aleister leaned back against the laundry trolley and took a long drag on his cigarette. It was a cold night, and he hadn’t seen mist come off the sea like this in months. He exhaled slowly, feeling the nicotine working its magic on his nerves. It wasn’t very often that he got a few moments to himself these days, not with so many soldiers coming and going, and at every hour.

He had worked at the Premier Inn even before the world fell apart. But back then he’d worked the rooms, as cleaning staff. That meant a whole lot of piling up sheets onto trolleys and emptying bins. People had stopped coming to stay after the tunnel breakouts and even though the building was left open, there was barely any staff. The manager had left to head north in a hurry, and most of the other staff didn’t turn up for work. Eventually Aleister was left there on his own. Unlike the others, he had nowhere else to go.

When the military took over Folkestone after the town was abandoned by civilians, he had stayed on. Overnight, the hotel went from being an empty shell to a catering center for the mass of troops now being housed in the multitude of empty houses. Major Grews, the old-school, gray-haired officer in charge of what was now called “Camp Folkstone” had turned up with a group of heavily armed soldiers and informed Aleister that the hotel was being commandeered for military use. When asked who was in charge, Aleister couldn’t think of anyone to name, being the sole occupant and effectively a squatter. So he told them that he was the manager.

That had been over a year ago, and now none of the military personnel who lived in the rooms of the inn, not even Mess Chef Lanslow, questioned him being there. Oddly, it was presumed that he was now drafted and in charge of the cleaning staff.

Tonight had been the busiest night in the hotel since he could remember, with every room full of soldiers on their way to somewhere. Aleister wasn’t privy to the comings and goings, but on occasion he would overhear something, and this was one of those occasions. Two of the squaddies had stood at the bar for an hour later than most of the others, drinking cans of cheap lager and talking a little too loudly. Something big was happening, something that involved a lot of people travelling a long distance. The second soldier, the more vocal of the two, complained about suffering from seasickness.

Aleister stood up, dropped his cigarette on the concrete behind the bin and stubbed it out. He was about to go back into the building – back to the unpleasant job of filling up the washers for the night – when something caught his eye. There was movement over on the other side of the motorway. Someone running fast, and whoever it was obviously in a great hurry to get across the bridge. Six months ago there had been a copse of trees obscuring the view, but the Army had chopped them down for fuel, and now – even with the mist as thick as it was – he could see across the main road. The roundabouts on either side of the bridge were clearly visible.

The figure continued to sprint, and was nearly halfway across the bridge when a white van sped out into the road and rushed toward it.

Oh shit, he thought. They didn’t even see the person running.

“Stop!” he shouted, but the van was too far away, and all Aleister could do was cringe as the vehicle ploughed into the running pedestrian at nearly forty miles per hour. The body bounced off the wing of the van, tumbled along the road and came to a halt next to the pavement. The van screeched to a halt.

ACROSS THE BRIDGE

The car shuddered in protest as Wesley swerved the vehicle, nearly taking the roundabout head on. It was a clapped-out old thing, and certainly not used to this kind of treatment. He eased off the accelerator and the juddering stopped.

He squinted, focusing on the road ahead, and further across the bridge. Something was blocking the way, but he couldn’t make out what until it was thirty feet away. A white van had stopped in the middle of the road, three quarters of the way across. Wesley hit the brake, slowing the car, and crawled it forward in the near darkness.

The door on the driver’s side was open, yet there was no sign of the driver. In the passenger seat a man struggled with his seat belt, a double-barreled shotgun lying across his lap. But the blood on his hands was causing him to fumble. Wesley yanked hard on the hand brake, grabbed his own shotgun, swung his door open and rushed around the car to the other side of the van – where he nearly tripped over a headless body lying in the road. He slowed, stepped carefully over the splayed limbs of the corpse, and pulled the van door open.

“Fuck, he bit me,” blurted the passenger, his face pale and his voice cracking. “Alex bit me. I had no choice. I had to shoot him.”

“It’s okay. I can help,” said Wesley, not sure how much he could help.

“That thing. It came out from nowhere. We didn’t see it. I spotted it just before we hit it, but I didn’t shout quick enough. I thought it was a man, but then it got up and rushed at us. No man could get up like that after being run down. It smashed the window and bit Alex’s neck. Oh crap. He was bleeding everywhere. I tried to stop it, but too late. He changed so quickly.”

“What about that thing? The zombie?”

“The what?”

This was delirium setting in. The man was obviously infected, and badly. Wesley’s stomach churned at the thought that he would have to deal with him very soon.

“The zombie. The one you hit. Where did it go?”

“Oh. It ran off. Fucking ran. They aren’t supposed to run like that are they? Not like that. Not that fast. Even the fast ones aren’t that fast. Oh, God, I’m gonna be one of them.”

The man was shaking, his hands still fumbling at his seat belt, but Wesley could tell that he was already losing control of his extremities.

Wesley leaned forward and gently picked up the shotgun from the man’s lap, popped the remaining live shell out of the chamber, pocketed it, then moved the weapon away from the door. He glanced at the scattered shotgun shells littered across the footwell of the van, but decided that the risk of leaning in – even though the man was yet to turn – was not worth it. In a few minutes he could get those in relative safety.

“Do you have a radio?” He immediately felt cold and heartless as he ignored the man’s fear. But it was no use. There was nothing else he could do.

“Yes. In the back. We’re telecom engineers. Alex was my boss. Oh, God, I shot him in the face. I didn’t know the shotgun would take his head off. I’ve never fired it before. Not at someone.”

Wesley nearly wrenched the back door of the van off its hinges pulling it open. He had expected more resistance. Inside the van, piles of equipment lay strewn across the floor. One of the shelves that had held dozens of boxes of screws and nails and small clips in a million shapes and sizes had collapsed, spilling its contents everywhere. Fortunately, he didn’t have to clamber over any of it. The radio was attached to the left side panel, just inside the door. Wesley grabbed the receiver, twirled the channel selector, and pushed the button so hard he felt his thumb pop.

“CentCom, come in. CentCom, come in,” he said weakly.

A moment of silence passed.

“CentCom receiving, over. What is your designation, please?” The voice was female, and cold – emotionless and following protocol.

“Corporal Andrew Wesley, Security Services, Channel Tunnel. We have an emergency.”

“Oh fuck it,” cursed the injured man in the front of the van. Wesley barely heard him as struggled. “Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.”

“What is the nature of the emergency?”

“Zombie incursion out of the tunnel. They’re out here and people are dying.”

“Hold one moment… what did you say? An incursion?” The voice had changed, the simple mechanical tone in the girl’s speech now wavering. “They got out? Where are you now?”

“I’m on the bridge between the Channel Tunnel terminal and the Premier Inn. There was a van in the middle of the road. I think the zombie came this way, because the driver is dead and the passenger infected.”

“What zombie? Where did it come from?”

“Look, this is bad,” snapped Wesley. “A runner got out of the tunnel somehow. It’s into Folkestone. I’ve already lost two guards here and found another one dead on the…”

BANG!!

The sound hammered through Wesley’s head, making his eyes involuntarily shut tight. His ears rang, and he fell to the floor, stopping his fall with both hands, but not stopping his head from colliding with the van door as it swung back toward him. The radio receiver bounced off the aluminum wall of the van with a thud. Wesley could vaguely hear the woman’s voice, but it was too quiet and his hearing overloaded.

A trickle of blood ran into his eyes and he raised his hand to the top of his head, where a long thin cut had appeared. He glared up at the van door, at the two-inch hole – the one the bullet had made as it whizzed past his head at a distance of barely two inches, travelling at 1,200 feet per second. The bullet that had just a microsecond before blown the passenger’s brain all over the cab partition.

“Hello? Hello?” chattered the radio. “Acknowledge! Acknowledge!”

But Wesley was too stunned to acknowledge anything but the arrival of another death.

He staggered to his feet, leaning against the side of the van to steady himself as his head spun. Unsteadily, he walked around the front of the van and peered into the open window.

The engineer had decided that he didn’t want to become a zombie. On his lap, still clenched in his pale fingers, was a handgun. His head was at an awkward angle, leaning off to one side, but his comfort was the very least of Wesley’s concerns right now. The gaping hole in the back of his head, and the spray of blood, bone and brains across the interior of the cab said that this was no longer going to be an issue.

Wesley grabbed the handgun, careful to not get any of the blood on him or make contact of any kind with the dead man. Even a minute or two after a zombie had expired, the virus was still active enough to spread and infect.

The handgun must have been in the glove compartment directly in front of the dead man. It lay open, contents spewed across the floor – papers, empty cigarette packets, pens, all manner of junk. But more importantly, a small black pouch containing two more magazines for the handgun – which was already fully loaded except for the one round expended.

Wesley ran round the back of the van and grabbed the radio. The woman’s voice could still be clearly heard.

“Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m still here.”

“What happened? What was the noise? It sounded like gunfire.”

“Yes, it was. The remaining occupant of the van just blew his own brains out.”

“Ah.”

“Look. Is Three Acres still safe? Are there people there?”

“Yes. I have alerted them and the other checkpoints, as well as the military barracks. You should proceed to Three Acres immediately for debriefing. Let the military take care of fighting the outbreak.”

“What about civilians? There are people still in the town. The thing headed that way.”

“Please proceed to Three Acres immediately. The Army are on their way. You should move out of the infected area as soon as possible.”

“Okay, thanks,” he said, placing the radio back into its holder. He shuddered as he glanced at the hole in the back door that had been barely inches from his head.

Wesley looked toward the town. Lights were on in various places, signs of the few people that had remained. The zombie would be death to them. He had to do something.

And then every window of the Premier Inn exploded outward.

FOLKESTONE IN CHAOS

Wesley hit the ground hard, diving behind the van as debris from the explosion in the hotel flew in all directions. Needle-sharp slivers of glass and bits of mortar and brick scattered across the road with a loud hiss. He stayed still for a moment, bundled up with his legs tucked in as tight as he could pull them, feeling the clatter of debris hitting his back. After a few moments, the downpour ceased and the noise of clattering across the tarmac road petered out, so he peered out from around the side of the van. He was shocked. A sea of glass, brick, plasterboard, and not just a few small lumps of something red and wet had almost completely covered the road.

Wesley looked in the direction of the explosion. Every window in the outside of the large building was gone, and even at two hundred feet the debris was carpet-thick on the ground.

Something moved amidst the smoke and dust that now billowed from every hole in the building. As Wesley watched, dumbfounded, a figure jumped from the upper floor, landed hard on the ground and began running in the direction of the road, a noticeable limp in his gait. More movement, then, but in pursuit. Several shadowed figures staggered from the gaping holes that had been the ground floor doors only a few seconds ago, and ran after the lone survivor.

As the man drew closer to the road, Wesley could see that he was dressed in army fatigues and carrying an assault rifle – the standard British Army SA80. The soldier spun on his heels, fired half a dozen rounds into his pursuers, and then carried on running across the rough ground toward the road. The soldier took a minute to clock Wesley, but instantly dropped to his knees and took aim when they unexpectedly made eye contact.

“Don’t fire!” shouted Wesley, holding the handgun out to his side. The soldier nodded, spun round again and planted four more shots into two of the figures still chasing him across the grass verge. He stopped firing then, and began frantically changing his magazine. Wesley ran toward him, stopping at the curb, raised the handgun and aimed at the nearest dark figure lumbering through the fog. He wasn’t as accurate a shot as the soldier obviously was, and steadied himself, taking a deep breath and releasing half before squeezing the trigger.

Just as he fired, the mist around the nearest figure cleared, and Wesley’s stomach churned as he saw what was chasing the soldier. The creature may once have been one of the soldier’s own teammates. Its attire, what was left of it, was almost identical. One arm dangled from a few shreds of torn flesh, but the other was missing completely. A stump only a few inches long jutted out from the dead thing’s shoulder while pale bone smeared with blood jutted out of the wound. The creature’s face was barely recognizable as human. Its eyes were gone, as was its lower jaw. Black gunge now oozed out of the hole that would once have been a nose.

Wesley’s first shot hit it in the chest, knocking it backwards. It stumbled and rose up again, staggering forward, but no longer in the direction of the soldier. It had a new target now, and so did the three other zombies, their torn and twisted forms lumbering across the barren ground. They all turned, almost as one, and began to move frighteningly quickly toward Wesley.

“Oh, fuck.”

He fired again at the same zombie, this time hitting it in the shoulder.

Why the hell didn’t I do more firearms practice?

His third shot ended the creature’s afterlife, striking it through the raw open wound that had been its mouth, tearing a hole the size of a fist in the back of its neck. It fell over and hit the grass silently, even as the spray of its blood splattered the zombie behind it.

Wesley kneeled down and tried to steady his hand, panning round to take aim on the second undead pursuer, now only twenty feet away. The shot jarred his arm, then caught the creature in the neck. But it was a glancing shot, and not centered enough to drop the thing. It continued to advance, even as its head flopped to one side.

Automatic gunfire assaulted Wesley’s ears as the soldier finished his reload and opened up again. Relieved, Wesley stopped firing, but kept his sights on the zombies as each of them fell in turn. The sheer firepower of the assault rifle ripped their broken forms apart.

Finally – silence, though not for very long. A scream erupted from the hotel, and gunshots echoed from the street beyond.

“Come on,” shouted Wesley. “We need to get to Three Acres.”

The soldier shook his head, breathing heavily.

“I won’t make it that far. Knackered ankle. I think I ripped some tendons.”

“But you just…”

“Yes, I know. Had to. Can’t do much more, though.”

“I’ve got a car.” Wesley indicated behind him.

“Okay, but we have to help. They’re everywhere. We can’t just leave these people.”

“I was told to go to Three Acres.”

“There are civilians in the town. Repopulation and Scavs. Two hundred moved into the center of town last week. They’ve got families with kids down there.”

Wesley hesitated, then moved to help the soldier, pulling his arm over his shoulder to take some of the weight. Together they stumbled across to where Wesley had abandoned his clapped-out rust-bucket of a car.

“Okay. Look, we can drive through the streets. Maybe we can get down there and warn folks before the zombies get there.”

“Sounds good,” replied the soldier, pulling himself into the passenger seat. “I’ll ride shotgun and keep the window down. Maybe I can take a few out as we go.”

“A few?” asked Wesley as he ran around the car and jumped into the driver’s seat.

“The hotel had dozens in it. The fucking thing must have got in somehow.”

Wesley turned the ignition and cursed as the vehicle shuddered.

“They normally keep the place locked up,” the soldier continued. “I was asleep. And suddenly there’s the fucking cleaning boy bursting through the door and biting my mate’s face off. Shit, we even flipped coins for nearest bed to the window. Guess I won more than the best bed tonight.”

The car finally coughed and hummed. Wesley put his foot down and they tore off toward the roundabout. The road led around the hotel, and he hoped that they might just catch any zombies making their way to the town. They took the roundabout at fifty miles per hour, skidding around the corner and only just avoiding the curb.

“There must be fifty of the things by now,” coughed the soldier, as though he sensed Wesley’s thoughts. “I reckon I took out maybe half of them in the hotel with that blast – but a lot had already busted out and headed toward the town. I need to radio the base at Risborough and find out what the hell is keeping them.”

“They already know. I spoke to CentCom.”

“CentCom? Shit! Now we’re fucked. Should have left it to Grews. He’ll be pissed if he finds out it went out of his hands before he could deal with it.”

“CentCom alerted the barracks. Grews already knows,” said Wesley.

“Hell. Grews knew minutes ago. I radioed before I started chucking grenades.”

The car sped toward the town. Ahead, in the fog, Wesley could see figures moving. Some ran, some staggered, but all moved with intent.

“CentCom will be calling out the dogs now. We’ll be blockaded in this town in an hour. Guaranteed. How the hell did one of those things get up here? It can’t have washed in on the tide.”

“It got through the tunnel.”

The soldier frowned, looking at Wesley as he would a squashed bug. “Don’t be ridiculous. That thing’s been flooded and blocked up for over a year.”

“Yes, I know. I work security detail down there. It got out and chewed up some of the other security guys. There are more coming through as well. I saw them.”

“What? You mean they are coming out of the Tunnel still?”

The soldier reached to his waist and pulled out a radio that Wesley hadn’t noticed.

“Kilo Four to Risborough. Come in Risborough, over.”

Only silence came from the radio as the car barreled down the hill toward the zombies, shuddering through the fog.

“Risborough here, Kilo Four. Go ahead, over.”

“Update on the Premier Lodge outbreak. We have estimated fifty Zulus on the streets of Folkestone and we have a fix on the origin. The Channel Tunnel is breached. Repeat. The Channel Tunnel entrance is breached.”

“Roger that, Kilo Four, all received. Will re-route a team to the tunnel entrance. Confirm your location, over.”

“We’re following the Zulus. Will attempt to intercept, over.”

“Copy that, Kilo Four. Proceed to intercept. Be aware that the Harbour barracks division is mobile and currently sweeping toward the town from their base. Expect friendly crossfire and watch for blue-on-blues. Proceed with caution. Your main objective is to secure the repopulation area and await their arrival.”

“Roger that, Risborough. One last thing.”

“Go ahead, Kilo Four.”

“CentCom has been alerted.”

“Understood, Kilo Four. We are aware. We have thirty minutes to contain.”

“Then what?”

“Hammer down, Kilo Four. The plane is already on its way.”

“Understood. Kilo Four out.”

“Be careful out there, Martin. Out.”

“Always,” muttered the soldier to himself, as Wesley rammed the first of the zombies, breaking its spine instantly and sending it tumbling under the wheels. Nearly every bone in its body shattered as the vehicle ploughed over it. The soldier clipped the radio back onto his belt and flipped the safety up on his weapon.

“One down!” he shouted, opening up on two other zombies trying to break down a door across the street.

MEMORY, THAT TRICKSTER

“Everyone’s getting wound too tight.”

The Colonel spoke quietly now, across the open air above his spare desk. Handon and Ainsley sat stiff-backed on chairs opposite. The Colonel only shouted when he needed to. Or when he was pissed off. Otherwise, his authority came across well enough at low volume.

“I don’t suppose it needs saying that we can’t afford to be tearing ourselves apart. There are few enough left of the living. And eating us alive is the job of the dead.”

“Yes, sir,” Ainsley said. Handon just nodded.

The Colonel paused a beat, then his tone softened. “What happened out there?” He was referring not to the fight, but to the mission just ended. Where the team lost both their POs in the course of half an hour.

Ainsley and Handon looked at each other. Ainsley screwed himself up and said, “No excuses, sir.”

“Just bad luck?” the Colonel asked.

Ainsley nodded. “You could call it that.”

Handon leaned forward in his chair. “But bad luck is also cumulative, Colonel,” he said. “These missions deeper and deeper into Europe. They’re getting close to the bone. Keep it up and we’re going to lose a team. Maybe two, when a second goes over to bail them out.”

“That’s why you sons of bitches get paid the big bucks,” the Colonel said. “And, anyway, always has it been thus. If hardcases like you don’t take the impossible missions, then who will? You don’t like it, go be a farmer, or a coal miner. God knows we need more of them. And, anyway, your missions are deep because that’s where the remaining labs are.”

It was true that the diciest and most critical jobs had always been reserved for the Tier-1 special operators – Delta Force, SAS Increment, Seal Team Six, and the USAF 24th Special Tactics Squadron. Now, unsurprisingly, the job of saving humanity had mostly fallen to them. The coalition government in the UK knew that every big pharmaceutical company and biotech lab in the world had been frantically working on a vaccine, or a cure, or both, at the time of the fall. But then the lights had gone out.

The Internet had started to blink out within minutes of the world’s power grids going down. Phone networks shortly after that. Now, whatever the state of research amongst the world’s top virologists and biomedical researchers, their findings were walled up with them, entombed. The researchers were assumed dead (or undead). But their data, still buried in there with them, remained of critical interest to the living.

Now the job of the surviving Tier-1 operators was to go there in person and try to get it. At the very tip of the spear for this work was Alpha team at Hereford. There were also a half dozen other teams of highly skilled SOF guys doing similar kinds of high-value jobs. But Alpha was unique – made up of representatives of all the very top commando and SOF units in the world. They were mixed in together because they’d been teamed up for a nearly impossible job just before the fall. And they were still together now because they knew and trusted one another; and because most of their home units no longer existed; and because they wanted it that way.

Across the UK, most of the specialized military units did less dramatic but still critical things like scavenging Europe for electronics, food, medicine, seeds, and other supplies. And the regular military, well, they were now basically a home guard – fighting outbreaks in the cities, hunting the scattered soulless in the countryside, and holding the borders.

But at the very top of the whole military heap, well, Alpha was called Alpha for a reason.

They had been hitting European labs so far because that’s what they could get to. It was as far as their capabilities for force projection stretched.

“And it’s either that,” the Colonel added, referring to the missions to scour the labs, “or hang out on this island waiting for the walls to come down. And the last lights to go out.”

Neither Handon nor Ainsley spoke back. They already knew the score.

“Your latest haul has been shot up to Edinburgh.” The high-tech ecosystem around Edinburgh University had been the UK’s center of biomedical research before the fall. And so it remained now. Everything the operators and their POs dug up was immediately sent up there for exploitation – usually by ghosting the drives and sending them over the wire, which was fastest. Time was not on their side.

“With luck, you’ll get a new target package out of that last intel.” One of the first things the geeks in Scotland looked at was actually email. All the world’s labs, scientists, and university researchers had been collaborating and sharing findings. These email trails often revealed which labs had made the biggest strides – and thus which ones the survivors should hit next. “You men rearm, refit and stay on one-hour alert.”

“Sir,” said Ainsley. He started to rise.

Handon stayed seated. “What’s this about some new type of Romeo?”

The Colonel shuffled a paper. “You tell me. Heard you saw one.” He paused, looking up again and holding Handon’s eye. Finally, he looked down again and spoke, more quietly. “There’s been an outbreak down in Folkestone. Bad. Happened fast. Police and regular military say they have it contained.” All three men let that hang for a second. “Contained” had often been a euphemism for “catastrophe.” But if this outbreak and the new Romeos were connected, the Colonel wasn’t going to elaborate.

“You’re dismissed,” he said.

* * *

Handon went straight from the briefing to the base gym, where he dressed out and hit the free weights. It was also the personal responsibility of every Tier-1 operator to maintain a razor edge of physical fitness. The job had long been like being a professional athlete, but with no off-season – and death or dismemberment if you lost a game. Now, as an added bonus, if the game clock ran down to zero, everybody in the stadium died with you.

With his earbuds in, sinking into the music of a world that used to be, warming up by bench-pressing 180 pounds without a spotter, he let his mind wander back.

He remembered the madness after the quarantine, but before the final fall. Chaos engulfing Europe, government control failing in state after state, waves of refugees streaming west and north from the Mediterranean and the Levant… Britain simply keeping the borders closed after the 11/11 attacks… and then the waves of the desperate, crossing the Channel on everything from cabin cruisers to container ships to inflatable two-man rafts.

For a while, they were simply turned away en masse, from Dover, from Folkestone, from Hastings. But, finally, the RAF resorted to strafing the Channel with Tornado and Typhoon fighter-bombers, setting alight the oil slicks of crippled and listing seacraft. Along with tens of thousands of floating dead, Britain got something like a moat. It had become necessary for national survival. The UK simply had no way to accommodate 500 million refugees – never mind to test them all for infection. To let them in would have been to doom their island home. The dead would have swarmed from Land’s End to John O’Groats in days.

So the kinder, gentler modern Britain of EU membership and international human rights accords had reverted to its Churchillian spine of steel quickly enough when it’d had to. The RAF fought a second Battle of Britain. That it was largely against civilians made it no less a struggle for survival.

Handon remembered getting back to Hereford after the aborted North Korea mission, and getting on the horn with Bragg for a sitrep – and for a new tasking, given all the chaos.

“Yeah, you guys hang tight where you are for now…” There had been shouting and gunfire in the background. “The 101st Airborne is being mobilized to try and secure the borders north and south here. National Guard units are being called out to secure the cities…”

As usual, the Big Green Army had moved too slowly. It was too enormous a bureaucracy to turn on a dime, let alone to try and keep up with a virus spreading and mutating like wildfire through a population that was about as ready for it as the Native Americans had been for smallpox. Also as usual, the elite Joint Special Operations Command, and its constituent SOF units such as Delta, had considered themselves above this kind of ponderousness and panic. And certainly no one could say they ever lost their cool.

But when the American south started to go down, as the unsecured southern border with Mexico became a raging and unmanageable vector for the virus… and as the military bases became beleaguered outposts in a rising sea of the dead… and then when well-meaning combat medics poked a hole in the Bragg dike by bringing infected men inside…

Well, the elite operators were too few to make any difference then.

And this was a next war that no part of the military, even its elite, had been prepared to fight. Finally, the only survivors were scattered small units of SOF in remote locations overseas – and particularly those training for an ultra-secret joint mission on a certain hardy island nation in the stormy North Atlantic…

* * *

Sergeant Major Handon realized, almost too late, that he’d somehow lifted all the way to the point of muscle failure – even with the low, warm-up weight. How many freaking reps was that…? The transporting music, and the transfixing vision of his memory and mind’s eye, had caused him to lose track completely.

With a last pulse of strength, he heaved the bending and trembling bar up to the lower pegs on the rack behind and above him, and rolled out from under it. Sitting up, he regarded his hands in the low light, while the music still rolled over him, and his breathing slowly came back down to normal.

It took 100,000 years to build up all of human civilization, he thought to himself, almost amused. And it took the virus, a strand of RNA barely 100 nanometers long, less than 100 days to bring it all down…

KEN TAI I-CHI ("ATTACK AND DEFENSE ARE THE SAME")

“Onegai shimasu,” Ali said to Pope, bowing deeply, her wooden sword, or boken, held straight before her in both hands. Pope bowed in mirror image. The two stood facing each other on the padded floor of the “dojo” that they had cobbled together in the basement of the Hereford gym.

Pope was Alpha’s guy from the elite paramilitary arm of the CIA, the Special Activities Division (SAD). A child of immigrants from the Caribbean, he had served as a marine officer through a half dozen tours in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, before being recruited by the Agency. Guarding spooks and rescuing hostages in some of the world’s very dodgiest corners had been his idea of a relaxing retirement activity. Thin, dark, and extremely soft-spoken, Pope was also the prototypical “gray man.” You didn’t notice him until he killed you.

Coming out of his bow, he hauled back and launched a powerful diagonal strike at Ali’s neck, which she countered with a loud snap, while pivoting around him like a big cat.

Despite the wooden swords, the bamboo armor, and the pleasantries in Japanese, Kendo (literally, “Way of the Sword”) was not practiced at Hereford in any form that pre-apocalyptic devotees of the sport would have recognized. As Neal Stephenson once noted, “Kendo is to real samurai sword fighting what fencing is to real swashbuckling: an attempt to take a highly disorganized, chaotic, violent, and brutal conflict and turn it into a cute game.” Needless to point out, the men and one woman of Alpha had no time for games in the ZA.

Pope and Ali traded a half dozen more high strikes, spinning and grunting, before Pope tried for a decapitation strike. Ali dropped out from underneath it, and took Pope’s legs out with a mighty side swing. Now they half lay facing each other.

Just-in-time learning and training, for specialized missions and environments, was old hat for special operators. But, who, really, would ever have guessed that Japanese sword fighting would become the new rage, after the fall? At various times, the fashion had been for Brazilian ju jitsu, Krav Maga, the Close Quarters Defense system… and always the incessant pistol, assault rifle, submachine gun, and sniper rifle work. But it turned out the medieval Samurai had the best line on close-quarters, silent combat in varied terrain against multiple, swarming opponents.

The pair of duelers banged swords four times at close range on the ground, neither able to generate any power while prone, before Ali closed to grapple. But Pope was already rolling away and back onto his feet.

Virtually everyone operational at Hereford now carried a wakizashi, the samurai short sword, as a secondary weapon. Some also went out with the long sword, the katana, for certain kinds of specialty work – for instance, in heaving strongholds of the dead, where silence was non-negotiable. And where backup wasn’t coming – ever.

Inevitably, of course, it was now the fondest dream of some of these badasses to get to the point where they could fight with the long sword in the right hand, the short in the left, whirling and flashing, and holding off unlimited zombies, with no support. (“My left hand is my fire support,” as the saying went.) Alas, fighting with two swords was a lot like shooting two pistols simultaneously: looks very cool in Hollywood (or Hong Kong) movies, but takes an insane level of specialized skill, plus a very particular scenario with multiple moving opponents, for it to be worthwhile. It was virtually always better to just focus on one weapon and using it masterfully.

Both coming to their feet again, sucking for air, swinging and slashing close-hauled and with zero room for error, the two dancers whirled around the room.

For Ali, the swordfighting was like an intense meditation. Every motion was instinct and improvisation, and her mind was set free, for reverie, for recollection… for revolving again around to her memories of how they got there, the bizarre gravity well of the fall…

* * *

She remembered a much earlier moment of looking at Pope’s handsome and serene face, unmasked and unarmored then, as they sat in back of a humming Royal Air Force BAE 156. They were finally on their way to the staging area for the North Korea op. Six months of intensive planning, training, logistics, and rehearsals – all to infiltrate their hybrid team into the world’s last Stalinist police state.

North Korea had already gone nuclear while the world stood and stared. They had even been involved in nuclear proliferation, supplying Pakistan and Iran with technology and materials. But now they had been found to be manufacturing Plutonium-239, in one of their existing fission reactors. HEU, highly enriched uranium, had been one thing. It was the primary ingredient in the atomic bombs of which the North Koreans already had several.

But plutonium was something else entirely – it would allow them to produce hydrogen bombs, orders of magnitude more destructive than what they already had.

The U.S. and UK had decided that could not be allowed to happen.

By this point in time, the strange pandemic, the one that made its victims dazed and violent, that had them turning on and attacking medical personnel, friends, loved ones… had begun to filter through the news. It had just started to get the attention of the world’s medical authorities, not to mention started to cause paranoia amongst travelers. The ever-present white face masks of the bird flu and swine flu days made a major comeback.

But no one yet knew what they were really dealing with.

So Alpha team’s mission had proceeded on schedule. There would always be pandemics. But loose H-bombs could spell the end of civilization as humanity knew it.

The RAF plane was a small passenger jet, with only thirty seats, so when it turned on a dime, everyone on board could feel the lurch. Ali and Pope exchanged looks across the tiny table. Captain Ainsley came in from the forward compartment.

The seven other operators, and the dozen support personnel, turned to face him.

“We’re standing down,” he said. Everyone at this level was far too professional to grouse. They just took it in. Ali’s first thought was that it must be something to do with the pandemic. But she was wrong. The captain visibly swallowed a lump in his throat.

“Two BA triple-sevens have just gone down on approach to Heathrow. One crashed into a populated area just outside of London, in Slough. The other ditched in the Channel.”

There was a small reaction to this, an intake of breath, a catch of shock throughout the cabin. The age of terror was back – it had never left. But it seemed like too many threats at once now. Too much to take in, or to take on.

“All incoming flights into the UK have been diverted, all those scheduled going out canceled. As a military transport, we’re just getting in under the ban. Our plan is to RTB and regroup there. I don’t know what the status of our mission is now. We may be re-tasked.”

It turned out that the terror plot had actually been against multiple civilian aircraft, and multiple terrorist cells had to be taken down. The total air ban in the UK stretched out to over a week. The tightened security also slowed train and ferry traffic to a trickle.

What no one at the time could have known was that these terrorist attacks of 11/11, coming too late in the day ever to be really infamous, ultimately saved Britain. By cutting off all long-haul air travel and immigration into the country, just at the most critical time, and by sheer luck, they also cut off the most rapid method by which the virus spread.

In the few days that followed, the plague reached a global tipping point – much more rapidly than anyone could have predicted. The majority of victims went down before they even had any idea what was going on. By the time the horrible truth started to get out, the dead outnumbered the living. And the downfall of mankind was more or less a foregone conclusion by then.

The ban on air travel, and the reduced ground travel, didn’t prevent the virus getting into Britain. It just gave them an indispensable few extra days to work out what the hell was going down – and to hunker down against it.

Many infected came in on trains and ferries. But by that time, most Britons were locked up in their homes, wearing thick clothing and carrying weapons when they went out. Thus the virus never reached that tipping point in the British Isles. The military was able to squash the biggest outbreaks, impose martial law in the cities, and hunt the small packs of zombies that roamed the countryside.

And when the final fall started to come, when the panic drove the waves of refugees toward Britain, both the healthy and the infected, with the millions of dead pushing behind them… the UK just kept the steel shutters locked down. And reinforced the hell out of them.

Ali for one knew that people will take to the streets after three days without food – which meant we were all nine meals away from anarchy. But now she, and the whole world, had seen it play out in real time. Since then, Ali hadn’t swapped two words with any child in the ZA without recalling that chilling exchange from the film Aliens: “My mommy always said there were no monsters – no real ones… Why do they tell little kids that?” “Most of the time it’s true.”

What a crapsack world we’ve inherited… she thought bitterly.

* * *

Without quite realizing how she got there, Ali found she had the edge of her sword pressed up against Pope’s throat – and the man himself pressed into the corner of the dojo, bleeding from some kind of light head wound, which dripped from under his helmet and face guard.

“Your point,” he said, breathing smoothly but deeply. “Nice one.”

Tier-1 guys tended not to cry foul. And they definitely didn’t complain.

Ali withdrew her sword with a start, and gave her brother operator a hand up.

She made a mental note to reserve her angst and rage for the dead.

NEVER WATCH THE NEWS

The problem with an armed camp, Homer thought to himself, is not the enemy outside the gates. It’s the people inside – and never being able to get away from them. Of course, when posted to an ocean-going vessel, he had got used to being crammed in belowdecks. But there was still always somewhere to escape to – a deserted stretch of gangway abeam… the forecastle on the night watch…

And better yet, back on land in Coronado, a headland or spit of sand at ebb tide could be its own private vault of Heaven.

But here… well, the nearby Malvern Hills of Herefordshire called to him, from so very close outside the fortified walls. But there was no going out there. Not for a nice evening stroll, anyway. But Homer was sure he could feel God’s presence out there. Even amidst all this death.

He was actually alone now, but not the right kind of alone. He decided to take a turn around the base. Just twenty minutes for himself. Then he’d start making himself useful again. There was always so much that needed doing. Idle time was a luxury lost to this world. As was luxury itself, when he thought about it.

“…through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world, for this is what you are meant to get out of your life of toil under the sun.” The writer of Ecclesiastes wouldn’t have been surprised by any of this, he figured.

No sooner had Homer slipped the flap of his billet than he was spotted and hailed. “Hey, Homer, mate, all right?” The British were lovely people, and stalwart as hell. But where’s all this “I keep myself to myself” ethos Homer had heard about? Not in the military, that’s for sure.

He threw a friendly wave and veered off. His new route took him past the Intel Shack, where he remembered getting his very first briefings – within minutes of hitting the ground, actually. Meeting the other Tier-1 guys, from units scattered across the English-speaking world. He’d known right away that it was going to be one hell of a team – like nothing that had ever operated before. No one but the supremely elite could make that mission happen. And that was when they all thought nothing could be more dangerous or urgent than North Korean nukes. Those ideas they used to have about Armageddon, the way the End of Days would come…

Before long, Homer found himself at the closest thing this place had to a forecastle – underneath the guard tower at the far northwest corner, where the two fortified walls met. He huddled up in the dark beneath it, about as alone as he was going to get. At his back, the dead world spread out into the gloom. And before him he could now make out much of the little kingdom that the survivors had carved out for themselves. He let his mind wander back.

* * *

It was a couple of months after those first onsite briefings, when they were well into their rehearsals, that they started getting the very first reports – first via intel, then on the news. Some new virus out of the interior of Africa. The reports were conflicting. Some victims it was said to kill. Others it made crazy. Stories of the sick getting delirious, and then violent – attacking medical personnel, or loved ones. Like some weird strain of rabies – which had always ticked over in the dark corners of the saddest continent, Africa. Homer remembered being curious, and quizzing one of the medical officers – a surgeon, and a colonel.

“Is it like Ebola? Marburg? Should we be worried?”

“I don’t think it’s like Ebola.”

“Some other kind of hemorrhagic fever?”

The medical officer paused heavily, not looking like he was enjoying this. “It might be related – people have been coming in bleeding out.” He paused again. “But mostly from their mouths.”

But Homer knew how it was with the nightly news – always happening somewhere else. And happening to the less fortunate. This world, this Middle Kingdom, this stopping over place, was always producing new horrors. The operators still had their work. And Homer had his family.

“Come, eat your food with joy and drink your wine with a glad heart … enjoy life with the woman you love, through all the fleeting life which God has given you in this world…”

* * *

Something loomed out of the shadows and into Homer’s reverie. Before he was even aware of it, he’d drawn his SIG 226, thumbed the safety up, and sighted in. Behind and just above his three-dot tritium night sights there was now a face – a living one, and familiar.

“Exactly the same twitchy motherfucker I remember. Stand down, brother.”

“Mikey? Good Lord.”

“Yeah, Homer – at your service. They told me you might be out here. In the shadows.”

The newcomer stepped into the deeper shadow under the guard tower and pulled Homer into a hug that was equally heartfelt and lung-crushing. Homer and Mikey had served together for two years with SEAL Team 3 – in Coronado, and also off in much more dangerous places. Homer knew the man, and damn well respected him. They had parted company when Homer left for Team Six (DEVGRU) – which can be a bit of a black hole, swallowing an operator and his whole former life – and Mikey didn’t.

Homer pushed him back out to arm’s length and looked into his soulful brown eyes. “Not only alive and still in this world. But in the UK! At Hereford! How?”

Mikey let out a long, slow breath. “A few months before it all came down. I was posted to a surface vessel – the Arleigh Burke herself. With a half-platoon, eight SEALs.” The Arleigh Burke was the lead ship for the whole Arleigh-Burke class of Aegis guided missile destroyers, some of the meanest warships in human history.

“We were doing counterproliferation and interdiction work, right at the seam of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. VBSS, that kind of thing.” Visiting, boarding, searching, and seizing ships suspected of carrying contraband was a classic SEAL mission, one for which they were supremely qualified. Any frogman would be happy doing it. Particularly after the mountains and deserts, and the bloody losses, of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“And after the fall?” Homer asked.

“Man. We were like the goddamned Ancient Mariner.” He winced slightly, remembering Homer’s faith, which had never been a secret, not in any unit Homer had served with, but he’d had to be pretty easygoing about it. Most sailors swear like, well, sailors. “Sorry, man. Pardon my blasphemy. Anyway, we were roaming the oceans, trying port after overseas port. Just making a living as far as fuel and supplies went. Some places we could dock, some we couldn’t. Some were abandoned by the living – but we could fight our way into.”

“And your orders?”

“At first, it was just ‘Hold station’ or ‘Continue patrol’ or ‘Stand by’. Then, nothing, of course. Finally we got news that overseas American military personnel, every branch, by every conceivable conveyance, were making their way to England. That there were living people there. Something like civilization left. And it’s true.”

It was true. Something north of 30,000 American servicemen and women had fought their way to safety there. Now they fought for everyone.

“Why’d it take you so long?”

He shook his head. “We had a few adventures along the way. Anyway, it wasn’t quite that long. We’ve been docked at Southampton these last three months. Been going out on milk runs, moving supplies from one place to another. Plus the odd search and salvage. But it was only last week that somebody with stars on his shoulder figured out our old boat had a fully-kitted SEAL team onboard. They put two and two together – or, rather, put us eight and however many badasses you’ve got here together. Doing whatever kinds of jobs you’re doing.”

Homer smiled. “They won’t have told you much yet, I guess.”

“We’re getting briefed in the morning. And going out in the afternoon. No time wasted.”

Homer squinted slightly at his old friend, concerned. “Got a sense of what you’re going to be getting into out there?”

Mikey chuckled. “That’s the whole point of the years of ballbreaking SEAL training, right? So we’ll be ready even for the things we aren’t ready for. Especially them.”

“Good enough.”

Mikey sensed Homer’s unease, though, and shifted slightly. “What’s your thinking, brother?”

Homer pivoted, a little evasively, regarding the blackness outside the wire. He let out a long breath. “Honestly?”

“You know how to be anything else?”

Homer laughed once, not very mirthfully. He put his hands on his hips. There was an orange glow out in the hills. He didn’t know where it came from. He turned again and locked steady gazes with his old friend.

"You know, when it all started I honestly thought the Rapture was here – not some freakshow zombie apocalypse. And all I could think of, for the longest time, was, Why am I still here? Why do I have to get my gun in the fight, in the last battle between Heaven and Hell, while everyone else is sitting pretty in Heaven? I’ve done my service for God and man. Don’t I get to go to Heaven?”

Mikey reached out and put his hand on Homer’s shoulder.

“But you know what worries me the most? It isn’t who will win. It isn’t what’s going to happen to me, or to any of us. It isn’t even whether any of this will ever be over.” Homer looked back in his friend’s kind face. “It’s, which side am I fighting for? Am I fighting for God? Am I fighting for the good of all? Or am I one of the bad guys? Did you ever consider that we might just be the evil ones? And those things out there are God’s cleaners?"

He hadn’t been able to tell anyone else this, all this time.

And Mikey knew just what he was talking about. He hardly had to say it.

The SEAL Brotherhood – stronger than death, stronger than the end of the world.

THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME

Wesley swerved the car sharply to the right, missing the girl by just a few inches. She fell backwards, buffeted by the strong breeze and reeling from the surprise of it. She had appeared from nowhere in the mist – and, from her perspective, so had the car. It now barreled across the road and smashed into an abandoned vehicle, which sat across from the house that the girl and her parents had been given when they arrived two weeks earlier.

She saw the man in the passenger seat burst through the front window and roll across the pavement. The man in the driver’s seat stayed put. The noise had been overpowering, like nothing she had ever heard – first the screeching of brakes that pierced her eardrums, and then the loud crash as the car collided with the other. Windows exploded outwards and metal crumpled as the front end of the moving vehicle compacted to two thirds of its original length.

“Oh, God!” It was her father’s voice, from behind her. He had seen the whole incident while trying to open the driver’s door on the other side of their own car. The girl, Alison, leapt to her feet and ran to him. He held her tightly.

“Mary, get out here!” he yelled. “There’s been an accident.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Alison sobbed, her whole body shaking with fear. “I didn’t see it.”

“It’s not your fault.” His heart was beating double-time as the dread thought of what could have just happened dawned on him. He had sent his daughter out to get into the car. They had been told to evacuate ASAP to the harbor zone.

Mary rushed out of the house with their other daughter – two-year-old Madison – in one arm, and a rucksack filled with a few possessions that she couldn’t leave behind slung over her shoulder. “What happened?” she stammered as she saw the wreck and devastation on the other side of the road.

“No time,” barked her husband, Ruben, as he threw the carryall full of supplies onto the back seat. “Get the kids in the car. I’ll see if I can help them. Ali, get in the car, sweetheart.” The eight-year-old sobbed as she jumped into the back seat, closed the door, and buckled up. Ruben knew that she would be distraught after this, but he also knew that she was a tough one, and the two passengers in the crashed car might need his help urgently.

He rushed over the road, and around the car to the driver’s side, hoping not to see some gory mess that had once been human. He kept his hand on the gun at his waist just in case he needed to stop them from turning. But the driver was still conscious and rubbing his head.

“Are you okay, buddy?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Wesley. His head was swimming, and he shook it, trying to regather his thoughts. Then he remembered the last few moments. The girl’s eyes bright in the headlights. The swerving and the crash. “Is she okay? I didn’t hit her, did I?”

“She’s fine. Are you injured?”

Wesley sighed with relief and then moved his legs, pushing open the now bent car door and stumbling onto the pavement. He steadied himself against the side of the vehicle as his brain tried to catch up with all the sudden movement. Then his instincts clicked and he reached in and grabbed the shotgun from the floor and checked that the handgun was still in his belt.

“Yeah. I’m okay. Look, you need to get the hell out of here, and fast. Zombies on the way. You have maybe a few minutes. Crap. Where did the soldier go?” He spun around, noticing the broken front window for the first time. “Fuck.”

“I’m good,” called a voice from a few yards away. “Well, nearly.”

Wesley spun around again, to see the man lifting himself up using the side of the parked vehicle they had destroyed, a red convertible.

“Shoulder hurts pretty bad and my ankle is even more screwed. But I won’t need to be put down just yet.”

Ruben’s jaw dropped.

“You flew out of the car. How the hell did…?”

The soldier leaned down, picked up his helmet and showed them the dent in the top.

“It probably saved my life,” he said, dropping it to the ground. “And the body armor helps.”

“Rube, we need to go,” called Mary from the car.

Wesley looked up the road. Dark figures were now stumbling through the shadows, deep guttural moaning echoed down the street. Ruben was also staring at them.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes. Now go,” said Wesley. “Get the hell out and don’t stop til you’ve gone through a line of squaddies. They’re on their way.”

Gunfire erupted from a few feet away. The soldier was already back to work. The nearest shadow in the mist fell backwards and didn’t get back up.

“Are there many other people near here?” Wesley called to Ruben as the man ran to his car.

“Yes,” he yelled, trying to shout over an automatic weapon that was now lighting up the whole street. “Lots on this street and the junction down the road. They would all have got the call.”

“The call?”

“CentCom called and told us to evacuate immediately.”

Even as Ruben finished speaking, the doors of houses were opening, spilling out the families that had lived in them for only a few weeks. Most of them rushed straight to cars and started bundling children and possessions inside, jumping in, and firing up engines. Wesley realized that these people lived their lives this way – frontier families used to working in the border towns near places that were quarantined. They were civilian scavengers, people who the government used to retrieve supplies from abandoned towns across the country or reclaim an urban location that those in charge deemed useful. They were ready to move out at any moment.

A man ran out of the building next door and stopped dead, backing away from the soldier as he fired round after round into the zombies that now appeared in greater numbers. Wesley had also taken up a position across the road, behind another rusted car. This one already had broken windows and looked as though it had been sitting there since the apocalypse began.

“My car,” the man mumbled. “It’s trashed.”

The soldier stopped firing for a moment. No more zombies in view.

“You seriously chose an open-top car?” he asked.

“It was what was there and no one needed it. Shit, I have to get out of here.” The man took off at a run down the street away from them, pushing and shoving his way past the families that thronged the road, and not appearing to give a damn who was in his way.

“Selfish fucking idiot,” cursed the soldier. He glanced over at Wesley, who was swapping out his handgun magazine.

“How many rounds you got left?”

“About thirty, I think,” replied Wesley, his voice barely audible over the noise of people and cars rushing away from them.

“Take these,” he said, and pulled two magazines from his belt. Even from ten meters, he recognized the same model as his own sidearm, a SIG P226, standard British Army issue. He dashed across the road and dropped the mags on the bonnet of the car before Wesley.

“Cheers.”

“No problem, mate. Heads up. Here they come again. Better make those count. What is your name, anyway? If I’m going to die standing next to you I’d like to know.”

“Wesley. Andrew Wesley.”

The soldier nodded. “Martin. Captain James Martin. Pleased to meet you.”

They stood next to each other, staring into the mist as the next wave of zombies appeared. There were not merely fifty as he had suspected, and when they surged into view even Captain Martin’s heart skipped a beat. There must have been one hell of a breakout through the tunnel, for now the whole street heaved with them. Hundreds of the creatures pushed and shoved each other as they shambled through the streets. The howls and moans intensified as the one at the front spotted the soldier and the security guard standing waiting for them.

Wesley glanced behind him. Cars were pulling away nearby, but they weren’t moving fast enough. Most of the civilians were making a good escape but they were queued up. The terrified eyes of a small child stared back at him from the rear screen of the nearest car.

“We have to hold them,” shouted Martin as he opened fire.

Wesley spun back to see the mass of zombies clawing their way down the street, lifted his pistol and took careful aim at the nearest. “Absolutely,” he said. He knew that the two of them would never be able to stop all of the creatures. There were just too many. They didn’t have enough bullets and the creatures were coming too fast and too thick, but he was going to make damn sure those frightened eyes that stared back at him from the window of the rearmost car wouldn’t close forever.

The two guns echoed down the street, and for the first time in his life Wesley felt a surge of hope. Not for himself, but for redeeming himself for his failure to find Amarie. He thought of her now as the mass of raging limbs and bloodshot eyes surged down the street toward them. He thought of her long hair and her smile. How they had laughed until they nearly cried that first evening that he had met her in the bar in Paris.

I expect I’ll be with you soon, he thought. He had never been a religious man. But right then, just when he knew that his end was rapidly rushing toward him, he felt something stir. A calmness that he had never felt before flooded his body. Those fearful eyes of the child in the car flashed in front of him. This is what I was meant to do, he thought.

“Pray, let me hold,” he muttered under his breath and squeezed the trigger again.

Someone somewhere answered.

One moment there were but two guns blasting their noise into the night sky, and the next moment they were answered by many. Wesley almost felt the air move around him and tried not to take his eyes off his task as other figures appeared in his peripheral vision and more guns blazed at the horde. First one, then two, then dozens.

The British Army was here.

And the zombies began to fall.

FORLORN HOPE

“Sarge. Wake up, man.”

Handon came awake instantly. Sleepyheads didn’t make it into Delta. And the drowsy were all dead now anyway. He followed Pope out of his billet into the dark – it was still a good two hours before dawn – and the two threaded the alleys of Hereford to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC). There, they found a full house: commo guys, aviation desk, tactical, ops, medical, everyone. Back in the days of the world, the TOC would hum all night – night missions were all the missions. Now, usually, people slept. No one went out at night.

“What’s up?” Handon approached Captain Ainsley, who was hunched over a console with the Colonel, as well a couple of ops desk guys.

“The new SEAL Team,” Ainsley said, not looking up. “They’ve got into a spot of trouble.”

Handon knew about the new SEALS. Homer had briefed him.

“Who are they out with?”

Ainsley paused a beat. “Just the eight of them. A Stealth Hawk crew inserted them.”

The TOC speakers were even now playing the radio traffic from the mission command net. Handon and Pope could hear the TOC-side mission commander going back and forth with the SEAL team on the ground.

“Mud Snake Six, interrogative: can you update me on your casualty status, over.”

The channel squelched as someone on the ground team keyed his mic. “Hotel X, Mud Snake, wait one.” Behind the SEAL’s voice came the sound of rapid firing, one or more people spitting out curses – and the now totally unmistakable moaning of frenzied dead. Ones that were riled up, hungry, and attacking en masse.

Pope and Handon shared a look. It said, This ain’t good.

“Where?” Handon asked.

“Calais,” Ainsley said, still not looking up from a digital multi-map display.

“Mission objective?”

Ainsley looked over at the Colonel, who frowned, paused, then finally answered himself. “They’re checking the fortifications at the Frog end of the Channel Tunnel.”

“At night?”

“It was priority highest. And their skipper volunteered them. All of them volunteered.”

“Of course they volunteered,” Handon said. “They’re fucking SEALs. There are no words for ‘negative’ in their vocabulary. But they’ve been in theater for about five minutes.”

Ainsley sighed. “They’ve been fighting zombies for two years, just like the rest of us.”

The Colonel removed a headset and laid it on the console. “Or so they said.”

The radio traffic was going from bad to worse. From the chatter around the TOC, Handon worked out that the SEALs had been in a running urban battle for the worst part of an hour – and hadn’t yet been able to fight their way to an extraction point. And that they’d also taken casualties – dead or bit, or both.

Handon straightened up. “Let me get this straight – you sent a bunch of FNGs out on a mission over the water, at night, and by themselves. And now they’re getting eaten and everybody’s all surprised.”

The men at the desk suddenly realized that someone was standing behind them. It was Homer. And he was completely kitted out and tooled up – weapons, assault suit, ammo, the works. The Colonel turned to face him. “Appreciate your initiative, Master Chief. But stand down. Alpha’s not going out into that. Not now, anyway.” He didn’t elaborate on that. It probably meant Alpha had already been tasked for a new save-the-world mission. They generally were.

With Handon, Ainsley, Pope, and the Colonel watching, Homer didn’t speak. He just gave them that look. Pretty much everyone knew it meant he was going to Calais if he had to backstroke it. He turned on his heel and marched out.

“Just four men,” Ainsley said to the Colonel. In his heart, he honestly didn’t know how he was going to stop Homer either. All he could do was go with him. “We’ll be careful.”

“Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ,” the Colonel said, putting his palm to his face. Why had command become such a fluid concept since the world ended? He waved his hand tiredly. “Go.”

The three Alpha men jogged out. In eight minutes they were on a rotors-turning helo with their weapons and go-bags. They’d suit up in the air.

* * *

This time their ride wasn’t a Stealth Hawk, but a Sikorsky S-97 Raider. With twin coaxial main rotors, two vertical stabilizers, and a pusher propeller, it had a theoretical top speed of 299mph – making the Raider the fastest military or civilian helicopter in the history of the world. (And, most likely, its future, too.) It was also a prototype, and the only one flying.

Ainsley, Handon, Pope, and Homer sat in the near-black cabin pulling on their assault suits, face shields, load-bearing vests, radios, pouches, grenades, and other combat load. The sky was still dark purple, with a little orange on the horizon in the east. Finally, the four charged their weapons, monitored radio traffic – and waited, as the bird blasted low through the sky.

Well, Handon thought to himself, if we get killed or turned, it’s only half the team, anyway. They used to say that death walked with SOF guys every day. Now that was so literal it was beyond parody. The real difference was that dying was no longer merely accepted as a price that might have to be paid. Sometimes it was relished as a possible escape. The world was fucked, and didn’t look like getting particularly better anytime soon. Santayana had said, “That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.” But it was getting harder to assume all the time.

Oh, well, Handon thought to himself. He’d do what he’d always done – Ranger on. Maybe the world would take care of itself. Though he doubted it.

He looked over to Homer. The man looked untroubled as always. A little more determined perhaps. Handon watched him unconsciously rub the gold crucifix that always hung around his neck. The guy’s faith really was a sword and a shield. Handon truly envied him that. After the undead, the greatest danger to survival in the ZA was doubt, loss of faith. When hope is all you’ve got, doubt is a lethal and implacable foe – always surging, never going down for good.

Handon moved over and hunkered down beside Ainsley, who pulled out a ruggedized tablet device. The two of them reviewed maps and drone video of the target area. They had an insertion to plan. Ideally, they’d plan it in some way that wouldn’t get them as jammed up as the SEALs were. Or maybe at least not as quickly. You can’t help anyone when you’re dead.

And you’re a positive menace when you’re undead.

* * *

By the time they got the five-minute warning in the air, the TOC had lost comms with the SEALs completely. Everyone knew what this probably meant. But everyone also knew enough not to jump to conclusions. Loss of radio contact wasn’t the same as death, or infection. Radio comms are fiddly, and they get fucked for all kinds of reasons. Fucked comms are more often the cause of getting killed, than the result.

Anyway, the rescue force had come too far to turn back now.

The red combat lights flashed twice – two minutes.

The helo flared down into a flat area in the dark and shadowed western ruins of Calais, near the Channel Tunnel entrance. Scattered debris was the only obstruction to their insertion. This bird was a hell of a lot louder than their normal ride, though, so the only tactic to play here was to come in low and fast, kiss the ground just long enough for the four operators to pile out and take off, and then for the bird and the soldiers to part ways fast.

By the time the Raider was zooming out to its stand-off marker offshore, the four-man team, back and shoulder muscles hunched up, rifles held expertly at the shoulder, moving fluidly and as a single organism, had slithered out of the open landing area and into the maze of abandoned buildings and the ruins and detritus of fallen Europe.

Correction: the buildings were abandoned only by the living. The dead still lived there. A mass of them were already making their way to the LZ, drawn by the fading noise of the helo. But by then the operators had gone.

As long as they kept quiet and moved with speed and perfect economy, they could, with a little luck, stay out of contact. At the very least, they’d avoid a firefight, and getting jammed up in a nexus of hungry dead bastards. The odd one or two, sometimes even the faster Romeos, stumbled upon and surprised, were never a problem. They could easily be dispatched with melee weapons.

Homer took point, moving like a man on a mission. Out front, not even slowing, he quietly topped three undead in the first minute of their movement – just wrong place, wrong time dead guys. Unusually amongst the operators, Homer eschewed the Samurai swords, carrying instead a boarding axe – an old pirate standby, like a long-handled tomahawk. Its bladed edge could cleave or remove heads; and the spike tip opposite it, when deployed expertly, could puncture a brainstem right through an eye socket.

A handful of dead went down without ever quite waking up.

They had just got between Homer and his brother SEALs.

* * *

The moving map GPS on Ainsley’s heads-up display told them they were 200 meters from the location of the SEAL team’s radio transponder. The captain touched Homer’s shoulder, and communicated the distance. Almost everything was touch and hand signals on live ops. Chatter cost lives.

The team, which had fanned out somewhat, slithered back into a tight line, and slipped into the dark entrance of the ruined building next door. All four paused to pull down their NVGs (night vision goggles) from their helmet mounts. By now, there was a little thin light outside. But the interior of this building would be much darker – and they wouldn’t dare turn on the lights even if they worked.

The four now executed their room-clearing drills as they made their way to the northwestern edge of the structure. As they hoped, sections of wall there had crumbled or been torn down. They paused at the edge of the adjacent structure for a full thirty seconds, to tune in to the new building. They didn’t hear anything as they passed through the vestibule – but did soon after that, freezing in place while they tried to make it out.

Whatever it was, it was in the next room over. This was also pretty close to the location of the SEALs’ transponder. (In the GPS-degraded era, with fewer SATs working less reliably, geo-location was a thornier problem.) The noise they heard could possibly have been whispering, or rustling. It could also have been shuffling, or feeding. This wasn’t necessarily the death of hope – the transponder could have shaken loose. Also, the rescuers already knew the SEALs had casualties. They could still have survivors.

Homer dictated the hard entry parameters with hand signs, and the other three stacked up behind him. On the count, they spilled into the room, splashing it with the IR lights mounted on their weapons – and making the room bright as day through their NVGs.

A SEAL in full assault kit knelt in the corner, over the prone form of another. Homer’s heart leapt with hope – that stupid, intransigent hope – thinking it was a medic working on a wounded SEAL. The “medic” turned around instantly.

And then issued a deep, hissing groan from between blue lips.

“Mikey,” Homer said flatly, flipping his NVGs up onto his head and staggering back.

The others saw that what used to be Mikey had two handfuls of his brother SEAL, which he resumed stuffing into his mouth. Handon grabbed Homer by the arm and hauled him back into the other room. Pope and Ainsley stayed inside to do what was necessary.

Later, Handon would say that he saw Homer’s faith flicker out in that moment.

Whether there was still a smoldering ember, something that could be fanned back into a cleansing flame, would be determined in the next few days.

SECUNDA MORTEM

The reunited Alpha team, all eight operators, sat now in two ranks of chairs, in one of the USOC briefing rooms at Hereford. Ainsley, Handon, Homer, and Ali in the front; and Pope, Predator, Juice, and Henno jostling for space in the rear. Absent from this room, but also very present, were the eight SEAL team members who would never be coming back from their one trip outside the wire.

Standing at the front, before a large digital whiteboard, the Colonel shared a brief look with Handon. Neither repeated Handon’s “keep this up and we’re going to lose a team” line from the day before. But each knew the other was thinking it. Captain Ainsley, seated beside Handon, looked away.

The Colonel wasn’t prone to big presentations or theatrics. So his opening line got the men’s attention: “They’re calling this one Operation Secunda Mortem.” His emotionless ice-blue eyes scanned the faces in the room. “And they think it might be the big one.”

The Colonel picked up a folder of papers and put his narrow ass on the desk in its place. “The pointy heads in Edinburgh have gone through the data you pulled out of Merck in Germany. The bad news is, it doesn’t look like Merck had shit. No breakthroughs, nothing promising in either therapeutics or vaccine research. As you already know, this virus is a double-stranded RNA virus, and a complete cocksucker. It took down humanity before we even made a dent in it.”

He flipped open the sheaf of papers to the first page. “So, Merck didn’t have shit themselves – but they did have some email that makes for a helluva read. As you’ll also know, all the labs and biotechs were collaborating like crazy sons of bitches, before the lights went out. IP protection went out the window when everyone’s ass was on the line. So a couple of scientists at Merck had some incoming mail – from an outfit that wasn’t even on our radar before today…”

He paused to pull a rectangular pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket, and refocused on the page. “NeuraDyne Neurosciences was, and I quote, ‘a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on the development, manufacturing, sales and marketing of bespoke biopharmalogics, as well as game-changing neuroscientific research.’” He looked back up to room. “Big on brain drugs. Breakthrough, fourth-gen antidepressants. Alzheimers. Behavioral genetics and molecular and cellular neuroscience.”

Juice raised one of his ham-sized hands. “How come we hadn’t heard of ’em before now?”

“Biggest names got attention first. And this one is definitely a boutique outfit. Like fifteen guys in a white room.”

Ainsley started to look impatient. “What does the email say?”

The Colonel held his gaze for a bit, then looked back to his papers. “Says the team there had worked out a method of dsRNA interference – one that suppresses a critical gene in the virus. And as a result selectively induces apoptosis in any cells containing the viral dsRNA.”

“Apoptosis,” echoed Juice. “Cell suicide.”

“An ice cream cone for the big bearded man,” the Colonel said, tapping his pen. “They also claimed it rapidly kills infected cells without harming healthy, uninfected cells.”

“We’ve heard this kind of big talk before,” said Juice. “Does their shit work?”

“They claim it had demonstrated effect in multi-celled bacteria, mice – and chimps.”

This earned a couple of respectful whistles. Chimps share 98% of DNA with humans.

“So then we’re looking at a cure,” Captain Ainsley said.

The Colonel shook his head. “Only for those the virus hasn’t killed yet. More of an antidote – if you administer it quickly enough. But useless on the reanimated. Too late after it’s killed you.”

“As Watson said,” Ali intoned, “‘When you’re dead, you’re all dead.’”

Juice snorted. “Watson’s out there walking around somewhere.”

“Touché.”

“But more fucking importantly,” said the Colonel, looking impatient, as he often did with his precocious polymath commandos, “they claim their dsRNA-i technique can also be used in vaccine development. And that they were in the ballpark of making it work.”

A few beats of silence filled the room. An antidote would mean hope for the recently infected. But a working vaccine would be a way back for humanity. Salvation.

“Well let’s go get it, then,” said Handon. “Where?”

The Colonel cleared his throat and shuffled his papers again.

* * *

"Fugly Chi-town," said Pope in a goofy voice.

"Da Bears," said Juice, in another, looking off into a dark corner.

The six non-command Alpha team members had been ejected from the briefing room, and were now piled into one of their quad billets.

"Fucking Chicago? Seriously?" Predator asked rhetorically.

"As in Chicago, Illinois, USA?" asked Henno. He’d obviously heard of it. He just didn’t believe it.

Despite their joking, no one in Alpha was really finding any of this funny. It was nervous tension, gallows humor. Though Pope looked dead-level and composed as always. “A U.S. mission would be an incredible stretch of our capabilities and logistics.”

“Bloody suicide mission, more like,” said Henno.

“You lose it out there,” added Pred, “you’re in a world of hurt.”

No one had heard a peep out of North America for over a year. It was assumed to be wall-to-wall corpses, from sea to shining sea. Even worse than fallen Europe. An enormous frontier country of the dead.

“Ain’t no Quick Reaction Force on that continent,” said Juice. “Ain’t no humans.”

“We don’t know that,” said Ali in measured tones. “There could still be isolated pockets of survivors.”

Juice gave her a look. “What’s the last new episode of Mad Men you’ve seen broadcast?”

“Point taken.” Ali looked down sadly. “And it’s not just in the middle of the continent. It’s also inside a city of three million people. Three million dead people.”

All of the Alpha operators knew the score. Each of them had fought numerous urban battles, both before and after the end of civilization. From engagements going back to Mogadishu, to Beirut, and even before, they knew that urban areas were bad fucking news. Time, people, resources such as ammo, radio batteries, water, and food, cities had a way of burning through them all – usually much more quickly than expected.

Before the fall, major cities had been the scenes of epic set-piece battles between the living and the dead – and also amongst the living, as survivors battled one another for dwindling resources, control of which meant continued survival. So a city also presented the additional danger of friendly fire from any remnants of the living. If they’d survived this long, they didn’t do so by asking questions first and shooting later.

Cities were also the perfect setting for industrial accidents, raging fires, toxic spills, navigational snafus (anyone remember “the lost convoy” from Black Hawk Down?)… and that was aside from the simple goddamned population density. That alone virtually assured any visitors of a full-tilt rollicking Zombie Festival immediately upon arrival.

If you lost your mobility or initiative in a city, if you got in trouble or bogged down, you’d generally find yourself holed up in some large structure, barricaded in. And the thing about zombies is that once they are onto you, they just will not go away. You’re now in a siege, one of unlimited duration. And in a siege, the moans of the besiegers will bring more besiegers. And the newcomers never leave either. So you could theoretically trigger some kind of zombie singularity – and find yourself at the center of a mass of all the zombies on that entire continent.

And no matter how high your walls, or how many levels above the street you’ve barricaded… given enough Zulus, they will eventually climb on top of one another until they’ve surmounted whatever it is you’ve constructed.

And even if that didn’t happen, and even if you had supplies for a long siege… you could still be nicely hunkered down in your fortress, safe-ish – and then a fire breaks out. Enjoy your fire drill. Your rendezvous and evacuation point is down there, on the corner of Dead Guy Ave and You’re Fucked Street.

A somewhat stunned silence had now descended over the team.

“And what’s up with the op designation?” Predator said, finally. “Secunda Mortem? I opted out of Latin at Ranger School, but I’m pretty sure mortem means death.”

Homer looked up. He hadn’t spoken until now. “Secunda mortem – second death.” He looked back down to where he held his crucifix before him, pressed between his palms. “It’s a Biblical reference, Christian resurrection theology. ‘Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such, the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and will reign with him a thousand years.’ He looked up into the room again. “Revelations, verse twenty, chapter six.”

Predator snorted and stood. “I’ve gotta take a shit.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Juice, rising and following him out.

* * *

Ainsley, Handon, and the Colonel now sat in the latter’s office in the dim light. They were going over the high-level tactical options that had been produced by the planning staff so far.

“…Yeah, we could insert by air direct from here,” the Colonel said, leaning back in his chair. “We could just about pull off the logistics of the flight and the refueling. The problem is support.”

“Sir?” Ainsley said.

“Yeah, once you arrive in theater, you haven’t fucking got any. Not a sweet rat’s. Totally on your own. Now I know you Tier-1 guys have got a collective death wish. But being air-dropped, eight guys alone, into the middle of Zombie City U.S.A. might be too much for even you dubious sons of bitches.”

“Okay, so then it’s a sea voyage,” said Handon. “On what? Frigate? Destroyer?”

The Colonel didn’t answer. Handon tried, “Catamaran?” He didn’t know if the Waterworld reference would be lost on them.

The Colonel tapped his pen. “Carrier.”

“There are no carriers,” Handon said.

The Colonel tapped his pen once. “Carrier strike group.”

“Come on.”

“Carrier Strike Group Six. The USS John F. Kennedy.”

Handon squinted unbelievingly at the Colonel. “The Kennedy’s still floating. Seriously?”

“Seriously. But it’s been need-to-know until now.” The Colonel spared a look at the mission status board mounted on his wall, cables snaking to the floor. “Basically, some people thought that it might become Noah’s freaking Ark – the last bastion of the living on Earth. Hasn’t come to that yet. And she’ll make a hell of a transatlantic cruise liner. Not to mention a hell of a forward operating base for your mission. About half her support ships are still floating, too.”

“Jesus,” said Ainsley.

“Just so,” said the Colonel. “This whole goat rodeo may prove to be an impossible job. Not one of you hardcases may be coming back. But if there’s any possibility of a cure, we’ve got no choice but to do it. Unless you’ve been sitting on a vaccine we don’t know about.”

Ainsley was thinking that it didn’t matter very much whether any of them came back. As long as they were able, somehow, to transmit back the secret to ending the plague.

The Colonel tilted his chair forward again, and spun around a map pack on the desk. “Okay, from the Atlantic coast to Chicago is too long a stretch for a helo insert, and we don’t need you going in there all noisy and waking the dead, anyway.” There was evidence that the dead went dormant when all prey in their region had been devoured. That when the last survivors went down, the undead world went quiet.

“So we’re thinking if you do a HAHO jump, the aircraft won’t even need to overfly the city… You fly in on the prevailing winds off of Lake Michigan and land right about here…” The Colonel stubbed a spindly finger on the map. “This is just a very early, high-level concept. I’m gonna get us all in a room with joint mission planning staff before the sun goes down tonight.”

The three men leaned in, and tried to imagine a way in.

And maybe a way out.

For everyone.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

Wesley sat in silence, and spent the time monitoring the ashen faces opposite and on either side of him. The hum of the truck’s engine offered a little comfort, but his thoughts were scrambled.

Twenty-four hours ago he had been sitting in his small box office expecting just another quiet day, and now here he was drafted and on his way south to God knows where. They hadn’t even told him that much. He had been informed that their experience on the streets of Folkestone during last night’s outbreak would be invaluable to the people they were travelling to meet, but little else.

He looked across at Martin, who was also very deep in thought. The man looked like the shock of the previous night might be catching up with him. These military types, Wesley figured, are not all hard and stoic. They’re just people able to put a grim face on and do what is necessary. Nothing that most folks wouldn’t be able to, given the right conditions. Wesley supposed that the main difference lay in the training. He didn’t think that the training could prepare anyone for losing his entire platoon, though.

Of course, Martin wasn’t the only one to lose his whole team.

The others faces that stared back at him from the seats around him were not much different – quiet, contemplative, all deep in their own troubles.

The truck had come from London, so these were probably men and women leaving their families behind to go, well, wherever they were going. How long would they be away? From what Martin had said during their brief, pre-sleep conversation at the barracks, these postings could be for a few months, years – or forever.

“I was posted in the Outer Hebrides, for over a year, before this. That’s out in the middle of nowhere north of Scotland, if you didn’t know,” Martin had said.

Wesley nodded. He knew the place.

“After Europe fell, the islands became home to any random naval ship that stumbled into port. They have new docks all over the islands now. I’d been there once before when I was a boy, on holiday with my parents. It was so quiet and remote back then. Not so now.”

He’d seemed to pause for a moment, and Wesley could almost see the man’s thoughts drifting back to happier times.

“Two months of fixing APCs out of Hereford before that. And some shore duty up near Yarmouth for six months. No permanent post yet. I guess they need engineers wherever they need them.”

Wesley had thought his job at the tunnel was going to be permanent. But then everything had changed overnight.

“That area is restricted now,” he’d been told that morning by the pimple-faced clerk perhaps half his age. The boy had probably never seen action. Wesley had repeatedly asked if he would be guarding the entrance again, once the Harbour barracks division had cleared the way. Asking anyone he could find.

“Your orders are for a change of station.”

“Orders? I’m not military. I work for the UK Security Services.”

“CentCom, and UKSS, have both already approved this.”

“They can’t do that.”

“Yes, they can.”

“I’m not military,” he had repeated.

“Basically, you’ve been drafted. My instructions are to give you your next assignment, which is to report to the barracks down in the harbor.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No, sir. Your previous position is null and void. Security at your old station will be performed by military personnel as of this morning. Of course, if you wish to catch a transport to London and go and work in the coalfields, that’s always an option.”

Wesley visibly wilted.

“Your rank in the Security Services will be carried over into your position in the military… Corporal.”

Wesley was fuming. At least that had been his initial reaction, but he’d had the chance to stew over it all in the last few hours, just sitting in the back of the truck, staring blankly at the other distant faces.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad, he thought. But then he shook his head. This was bad, and he knew it full well. He wasn’t going to be sitting behind the lines guarding some quiet post that the military thought was dealt with already. He wasn’t going to spend quiet evenings just watching the night sky, sitting with a cup of coffee and listening to his two young charges babble away about all the weird stuff that the universe might throw at the world.

No. He would never hear their voices again. Not now that their brains were almost certainly washed away into the dirt, and their remains burned, probably only a few yards from the place where they had spent all those nights mulling over the state of the world.

Wesley was going to miss those two boys now. As much as he had groused and been irritated by their constant yabber, he had somehow found it comforting to listen to at the same time. It had reminded him of a world where there were no zombies, except in the movies and comics; a world where you could buy a four-pack of beer on a Friday night and chill out in your living room watching terrible repeat programs. Those programs wouldn’t be repeated again now that the TV stations were all but gone.

The last things Chambers and Addison had talked about were aliens and alien invasions. Wesley shook his head and even laughed a little when he considered the futility of aliens arriving on our planet now. They would get a hell of a surprise, he thought. Maybe some little alien guy on the mothership would get sacked for not researching the planet enough.

His laughter stopped when he heard Addison’s distinctive laugh, and that of Chambers, ring out in his mind. He thought of how alive they had been an hour before the attack, and how they had then changed so quickly. The burning glare in their eyes, the pale skin, the already blackened teeth and bloodshot eyes. How was it that those changes happened so quickly? Was that even humanly possible?

Now it seemed he was in the Army. And he would be going out to face those things, probably every day. Until last night, he had never witnessed the creatures en masse, but only heard tales from soldiers who passed through Folkestone. So many stories that had made his blood chill and his skin feel like something had crawled over him while he slept. Paris was overrun. The Americas were overrun. The tales of massive swarms of the dead all trudging along some insane and unfathomable path. Millions, no, billions of them now.

He’d been so sheltered in Fortress Britain. But the horrible reality outside was going to be part of everyday life for him now.

The truck shuddered and came to a stop, snapping Wesley’s mind back into the now. Voices outside called to the driver and were answered quickly, and then they were moving again, gates clanging shut behind them and the sound of gravel crunching under the tires. A sound just like that from under his feet when he made the circuit around the tunnel yards. The truck swung slowly around a winding road for a few minutes and they passed other trucks, groups of soldiers hurrying about. Finally they came to a stop and the back door fell open.

“Out you get, fellas,” barked the soldier, a man with a bright red beard and piercing green eyes. There was nothing pretty about the man, his face was scarred and weather worn, his insignia suggested… Wesley couldn’t think of it. He’d seen so many, but… wait. Sergeant. He was a staff sergeant and outranked him.

“Get a move on.”

Everyone filed out of the truck and fell into line along the side of the road. Wesley was in awe of what he saw. Everywhere around him was a buzzing mass of movement. Thousands of troops and vehicles came and went while he stood and stared.

“Okay,” said the sergeant with the red beard. “I need Corporal Wesley and Captain Martin. Step forward.”

Didn’t Martin outrank the sergeant? He stepped forward.

“I’m here, sergeant.”

“Ah, good. Sorry about the hurry and informalities, sir. I was told to collect yourself and the corporal and get you to the helipad as soon as you arrived.”

“We’re going flying?” asked Martin, puzzled.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, but I have no further details. Only your immediate priority to get into the air.”

Martin nodded. “Understood.”

And he did, thought Wesley. Martin understood something that Wesley had not been able to figure out yet.

Martin flashed him a look that said, Odd. But he didn’t question the sergeant further. Wesley wished that he had. He didn’t much like all this foreboding secrecy.

Twenty minutes later and Wesley was soaring through the air, feeling quite sick, the bone-trembling roar of the blades and engines gripping him, as he tried to calm his nerves and keep his stomach straight. He watched the coastline of the British Isles disappear into the distance, and then there was nothing below them but miles upon miles of endless Atlantic sea.

“Where are we going?” he finally asked, looking at Martin.

Martin glanced back, taking his gaze away from the ocean.

“Oh, you don’t look so good. Not used to flying?”

“Not in a helicopter,” replied Wesley, shaking his head.

Martin looked back out to sea.

“We’re going nowhere at the moment,” he said, frowning.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing this way, not for thousands of miles, unless…” Martin’s frown deepened.

“Unless what?” snapped Wesley, unable to suppress the irritation in his voice. Martin turned back, and looked like he was going to snap back in return, but then his eyes softened.

“There must be some sort of sea platform out here. Maybe a rig. Or a ship.”

Wesley absorbed that in silence. He couldn’t decide whether this fact made things better for him, or worse.

BIG JOHN

It came out of the mists, making a low hissing sound as it pushed both air and water before it. Gray and indistinct, its hulking shape slowly resolved through the fog.

“Big son of a bitch,” breathed Predator, standing shoulder to shoulder with the other Alpha operators.

“Only the second of her class,” said Homer, the only sailor in the team. “And the last.”

“Never say never,” said Predator.

The eight commandos stood in a single rank on an ancient pier, at the border between two worlds – the land and the sea. Britain had come to rule the largest empire the world had ever seen mainly by being a very hardy, and very clever, seafaring nation.

But they ruled the sea no longer.

The supercarrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) hove into view, dominating the entire horizon like a ocean-going ice shelf, like the God of a hundred thousand sperm whales, and began the elaborate process of docking and tying up.

“Grab your gear,” growled Handon. “Let’s move.”

He knew the Kennedy wasn’t going to risk staying tied up for long. In the ZA, you had to watch your mooring lines, and your anchor lines, like a hawk. One submersible Zulu crawling up them and onto your deck could turn your floating sanctuary into a self-consuming, flesh-rending charnel house. An outbreak belowdecks ain’t pretty.

* * *

The Kennedy was only the second in the new Gerald R. Ford class of nuclear supercarriers to be floated out of Newport News Drydock. She was launched nearly a year ahead of schedule – and so just slightly ahead of the collapse of civilization that halted shipbuilding, and virtually all other kinds of building, for the duration. The Ford class was designed to replace the aging Nimitz-class carriers that went into service in 1975. The John F. Kennedy was the second carrier to bear that name – the original being the first of the Nimitz-class carriers, now long retired.

A nuclear-powered supercarrier with an 85-plane air wing and a full complement of nearly 5,000 crew, the new Kennedy stretched the length of the Empire State Building laid on its end, with five acres of flight deck, and a control tower looming five stories over it all. She was fully electric, with twin A1B nuclear reactors that could power the whole operation for 15-20 years at sea. She also had her own giant, onboard desalination plant, capable of turning 600,000 gallons of salt water into drinkable fresh water every day. She was a nearly totally self-sufficient floating city. And thus did she survive two years afloat after the fall of civilization.

Before the fall, it was truly said that a carrier strike group could single-handedly win a war against any nation on Earth. Unfortunately, aside from Britain, there were no longer any nations on Earth. And unfortunately for those serving in it, this carrier strike group originally also consisted of a bunch of ships not nearly as self-sufficient as the supercarrier – two Aegis guided missile cruisers, four destroyers, a nuclear-powered submarine, and an ammunition, oiler and supply ship. Half of them had not been as lucky at the Kennedy, going down to infection after port calls, or being abandoned and scuttled for lack of fuel and supplies.

Nonetheless, the miniature fleet that was the Kennedy strike group was an awesome display when she powered into what was left of the Royal Navy Command Headquarters at Portsmouth. She retained awesome capabilities for ocean-going force projection – and now represented humankind’s last, best hope for salvation from the Hell it had blundered into. She breathed hope into the breasts of everyone who laid eyes on her.

Surely any race that could build such a wonder couldn’t be destroyed by a virus? Surely any life force behind this was too strong to be dragged down by death.

* * *

The eight-man operational Alpha team crossed over 50 meters of gangway – then still had a half-mile walk across and down into the bowels of the gargantuan warship. All around them, exterior bulkheads rose to the sky, yawning hatches descended out of sight into blackness, and enormous, ancient, building-sized stacks of machinery groaned, steamed, and clattered. It was like being welcomed aboard some floating city of the gods.

And throughout all this, the operators carried, or pushed before them on rolling palletes, about three times their mass in weapons, ammo, and other mission-critical kit. By the time they were shown their bunks, they were ready to hit them. Their area consisted of a suite of four-man sleeping berths, a briefing room, a staging area – and even a live-fire range, where they were invited to zero their weapons. Like everyplace on Earth, the JFK was a little depopulated.

“The XO’s on his way down,” said the Marine gunnery sergeant, head of the four-man security detail that brought Alpha aboard. Handon clocked his insignia as that of the Marine Special Operations Regiment. This caused him to raise an eyebrow, but he kept his comments to himself. Ainsley thanked the man, and the Marine team cleared out smartly.

Handon picked out a bunk in a room with Ainsley, Predator, and Juice, tossing his personal gear on a bottom rack, before Ainsley scored it. (In both the British and American militaries, it had long been not so much “rank hath its privileges” as “first in gets dibs.”) When Handon turned toward the hatch again, there was a smart-looking naval officer filling it.

“I’m Commander Drake, ship’s XO.”

Ainsley took his hand. “Captain Ainsley, USOC. This is CSM Handon, my first sergeant.”

Drake, late thirties, angular features, immaculately turned out and squared away in tan service uniform and #1 haircut, squinted at this, and his eyes glinted. “I suppose that’s the advantage of a slimmed down service structure. A lot of guys in jobs they’re overqualified for.”

Handon almost smiled himself. He liked this guy immediately. “What was with the MARSOC security detail?” he asked, referring to the Marine Special Operations Command. “I thought Navy MPs, or at least maybe SEALs, would provide shipboard security.”

Drake nodded. “When the shit started coming down, we had recently disembarked a fifteen-man Marine spec-ops team – Team 1, A Company, 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion. They radioed for pickup, fought their way to the coastline – then swam out to the boat. After a two-week quarantine, we pretty much put them in charge of all security and combat teams throughout the strike group.”

Handon didn’t have to ask why. MARSOC marines were drawn from the Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance community – the very best of what’s already a smart, deadly, elite outfit. They were notoriously bad hombres, as cunning as they were lethal. When you had fighters like that, you let them do your fighting.

“You guys might have cause to particularly appreciate they’re here. They’re the B team for your mission – and also your QRF if you get in trouble.” Handon made a mental note not to piss them off, in any inter-service drinking contests that erupted. “But that’s getting into material for your first briefing. Which I’m going to give you whenever you get yourselves squared away. You squared away yet?”

Ainsley and Handon shrugged, ducked their heads at the hatch, and followed him to the briefing room. No time like the present.

JUST DON'T USE THE Z WORD

Predator and Juice watched their commanders go, then took advantage of their absence to more advantageously arrange their compartment. Juice took a brass spittoon out of his ruck and placed it carefully in the near corner.

“You brought that?” asked Predator.

“It’s gonna be a long passage. And swabbies get pissy if you spit on their freshly-swabbed decks. It’s either that or sleep up top.” Just as he tossed his head toward the hatch, a shadowy figure glided by. Juice stuck his head out into the passageway. “It’s your girl again. Wait a minute…”

“What?”

“Whoever she’s fooling around with is back at Hereford. Right?”

“Maybe she met a nice naval aviator. Iceman or some shit.”

“In five minutes?” Juice looked disbelieving.

“You said it yourself – she moves fast.”

“Or maybe she’s shtupping anything that lives.”

Pred gave him a very unamused look, then touched his toe to the deck between them. “That’s the line right there, buddy.” Alpha was very much an in-group – as was humanity itself at this point. However, when the shit really came down, loyalty would always be to service and to unit. Predator and Ali were Army – and both Delta. You didn’t fuck with that.

“Sorry, man,” Juice said, taking half a step back. “I’ll change that to ‘killing everything that’s dead’ and I think I’ve got it about right.”

“Much better,” said Predator, punching Juice in the shoulder – a blow that would have knocked most normal men down.

* * *

Pope and Henno were still squaring away kit in their berth, while Homer was, as so often when off duty, God only knew where. Ali had simply evanesced, also as usual, disappearing and reappearing in different places, never seeming to move through the solid 3D world, but just ghosting her way around the aether. This ability was half the reason for her status as last best sniper in the world. The other half was that she virtually never missed, out to ranges of 2,000 yards and beyond.

“Looks like we’re in for some heavy weather,” said Pope, stuffing clothing in his footlocker.

“What’s that?” asked Henno. “The ocean crossing?”

“No. When we get there. Chicago. Three million walking corpses, in a high wind.”

“Don’t mind the wind. And the corpses we can handle.” Henno stuck his face into his open ruck, before adding, “As long as your boss doesn’t mind slotting ’em before it’s too late…”

Pope almost let this pass entirely. But he took a chance that he could smooth something over, rather than stirring it up. “How do you mean, brother?”

Henno came out with a double handful of his stuff, then sighed. “Sometimes I get the impression Handon is a little slow on the trigger. Something more than ammo conservation and noise discipline. You know what I mean?”

Pope did, actually. He just nodded, letting Henno go on.

“Made some remark the other week. Sumint that sounded like he thinks there are people still alive inside the dead bastards.”

Pope propped his rifle in the corner and took a deep breath. He lowered himself down onto the lower bunk, steepled his fingers, and pinned Henno’s eye. “You want the backstory?”

“Aye,” Henno said. “I always want to know about aught that might get me killed.”

Pope paused before going on. “I served on one of the Task Forces with Handon, in Iraq.”

“TF135.”

“Or whatever it was designated that week.” A mixed special mission unit (SMU) of Tier-1 and other special operators, plus a support, intel, and aviation apparatus, the Task Force, and another like it in Iraq, had been charged with hunting HVTs – “high-value targets.” This meant the worst of the worst of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Mahdi militia – tangos galore. Tango being the military slang term for terrorists. Pope went on.

“At that point, we were doing this incredible tempo of ops – out every night on kill-or-captures, bringing intel back, crunching it for the next target, then going out again. Sometimes several times a night.”

“Yeah, you were the ones kicking down all the doors – and killing all those civilians.”

“A few.” Pope knew how the Brits viewed the American ethos – which valued aggression more than caution, or public relations. “We went out one night to take down a safehouse. Hardcore AQ types, the intel said. Handon pointed out that this village had never been anything but helpful to us, no reason to think they were harboring AQ. Intel disagreed. We went out, it turned into a big firefight, we ended up killing everyone in the building.”

Henno didn’t look surprised by any of this.

“Next morning,” Pope said. “A bunch of the villagers came out to the FOB, carrying the bodies of young men we had killed. Handon wasn’t supposed to talk to them, but he did. A couple of grandmothers, tear-stained and half-crazed with grief, convinced him their grandsons were good kids who’d just gotten in with the wrong crowd. But now they were dead.”

“Yeah,” Henno said, “that’s the kind of shit you find out when you actually talk to people before shooting them. So Handon got religion or something because of this?”

Pope paused before answering. “Handon spent most of his career hardening himself against all the killing he had to do. Came to think of terrorists as non-human. Operating with the Task Force, night after night, you almost had to. It was the only way to keep functioning. But these grandmothers, and these dead boys… well, they made him doubt his whole methodology. He found he was no longer able to just write tangos off into some non-human category.”

“And now he feels the same about Zulus?”

Pope shrugged. “Who amongst us can prove him wrong?”

Henno had no answer to this.

* * *

Predator and Juice now emerged out on the flight deck, dressed out in physical training kit. They wanted to find the permitted running routes around this floating airport. They also wanted to announce themselves with a big Fuck you to the thousands of sailors onboard – their PT kit consisted of black shorts and gray T-shirts with “ARMY” in big letters across the front. (Juice had been an Intelligence and Communications officer with the Army Rangers before being headhunted by the Activity.) With Predator bulging out of his T-shirt and shorts, and Juice displaying way too much curly body hair around his, they both looked like Bruce Banner halfway into becoming the Hulk.

As soon as they hit open air, they seated their ballistic Oakley wraps (Juice also wore his permanent reversed ballcap) and took off at a fast jog. The open air and sea breeze felt fantastic, even with the sky gray and overcast. They could also see that even now the JFK was putting back to sea. The gangway was in, the mooring lines cast off, and they could sense what felt like the Earth moving beneath them – a nuclear-powered supercarrier getting underway.

Predator also noted that only one of the other ships in the strike group was pulling out with them – one of the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers. That seemed strange – a carrier generally needed its support ships around it to survive. But Pred queued this factoid to investigate later. Anyone in the military, at any level, is used to not being told all kinds of things.

The pair of them settled into a good eight-minute-mile pace around the edge of the flight deck – figuring someone would tell them if they ran somewhere that might get them killed. While they ran, they also talked around their deep breathing. Pred and Juice, though they hadn’t known each other before being put together on the North Korea mission, were getting a bit like an old married couple now. Most of their conversation consisted of retreads of stories they’d heard a thousand times, or observations on the deep silliness of life under both the military and the ZA.

“Hey, man,” Juice said. “Remember all those zombie movies, back in the day, where no one had ever heard of zombies? Like they lived in some universe where George Romero had never existed? What a load of bullshit.”

Predator laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, now that you mention it… nobody ever knew what they were dealing with – the dead would rise up and try to eat them, and they’d all be like – ‘What the fuck!’ Whereas anyone not totally cut off from pop culture would be like, ‘Zombies! Shoot ’em in the head!’ Oh yeah, and they always had some other name for them – like ’walkers’ or ’infected’…”

Juice turned to look at him sideways. “…or ’Zulus’?”

Pred chewed on that for a second. “Good point.”

“I don’t know.” Juice turned to spit off into the ocean. He chewed tobacco even when running. Amazingly, it appeared to make it all the way over the deck, and 60 feet down into the North Atlantic. “We probably should have predicted this. Between brain parasites… neurotoxins… mad cow disease and brain prions… neurogenic stem cells… we should have seen it coming. And with all the zombie fiction, it’s not like we can say it never occurred to anyone.”

“Maybe all the movies and TV shows and books were our way of getting ready.”

“Well, if it was, it worked out about as well as a dick sandwich.”

“True,” said Pred. “If there’d been just a few hundred guys on the ball, handier with axes and shotguns, at critical times and places, maybe all this could have been fucking headed off.”

That made Juice sad to think of it. All these months and years of horror, all the people gone, virtually all that humanity had built up laid low – that it might all have been unnecessary.

So he just ran, and enjoyed the feeling of still being alive.

SEEING GHOSTS

Major Grews paced the floor, glancing at the radio operator every few seconds, his irritation growing by the minute.

“Call again,” he said. “Get him on conference.”

The comms officer tapped intently at his keyboard, his hands twitching nervously, but he kept it together. The major was always like this when things were tense. He could become insufferable if left waiting for too long.

Grews hated being stuck in an office, commanding from a chair. It just wasn’t his style. Despite the fact that he’d been ordered to stand back and cease leading from the front, he still yearned to be out there. This was the first real outbreak he’d had the opportunity to handle, even if you counted the defensive year when Zulus walking out of the water regularly threatened the coasts. Since then, there had been small outbreaks across the country, but this was different. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight minutes. Eight minutes and that damn plane would level half of the town, along with everything he had worked to rebuild. And CentCom wouldn’t give a damn if it meant losing a hundred infantry with it.

“I’ve got him, Major,” said the radio operator. There was a pop and a high-pitched buzz as the microphone picked up the speakers and fed them back.

“Bordell?” asked the major.

“Speaking, sir,” answered a voice. The signal was weak and dulled by static.

“Status.”

The was a cough from the other end. “Situation is stable, sir,” answered Bordell. “There are a few still wandering around, but the main concentration has been destroyed.”

Grews sighed heavily, feeling the flood of relief soothe his tattered nerves.

“Wait one, Bordell.” Grews turned to the second network operator sitting across the room, waiting.

“Tell them to stand down.”

“Yes, sir.” The operator nodded and flicked up his headset microphone.

“Three Acres actual orders stand down on the air mission.”

The major turned back to his microphone.

“Bordell. You still there?”

“Yes, sir. Still here.”

“Good work, soldier. Many casualties?”

“Only five of ours, sir. Civilian casualties total eight. But, unfortunately we lost everyone in the outgoing team that were in the hotel. Well, all but one.”

“Christ. That many?”

“Afraid so, sir. We have one survivor, a Captain Martin. Oh, and we also have one of the security detail from the tunnel.”

The major closed his eyes, once more feeling the pressure building between them.

“Clean up, Bordell. Tell everyone good job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bordell?”

“Sir?”

“Send me this captain and the security bloke. If they check out, of course. I still have to send out my quota tomorrow.”

“Sir.”

“And get back here as soon as you can. We need to decide which squad is going instead. I have no choice on this. You know that, don’t you?”

There was a pause at the other end.

“Yes, sir.”

“Grews out.”

The line went dead. The major sat back in his chair and sighed. “Great. I have twenty-four hours to get another crew together or my arse is going to be in a sling.”

“Sir?” called the second operator.

“Yes?”

“CentCom confirms stand down on the air mission.”

“Good. Excellent.”

“But sir…”

“What now?”

“They said to inform you to prepare for a full-scale sweep of the area and also for an excavation team on the tunnel.”

“They what?”

“They are going to open the tunnel up, sir.”

“Why? What the hell was their reason?”

“They didn’t say, sir.”

“Get me CentCom and ask for Colonel Mayes.”

* * *

“Andrew, I have no choice. I’m under orders just like you are.”

“Bob. You know that opening the tunnel up is just crazy. We always knew it was a weak point.”

“Yes. I know that. But we didn’t deal with it as we should have done. You also know that. We have to get it right this time. It also means that we can clear up what was left behind. Don’t you want to do that?”

Grews exhaled heavily. The refugees. He had tried to put them to the back of his mind over the last two years, but the video surveillance from the tunnel still haunted him. They had expected some kind of riot at the French end of the tunnel when the gates were closed. But a full-scale assault by civilians, one that completely overpowered the already dwindling French security forces, was much worse than they had anticipated.

Their civil affairs advisor had told them that most French refugees would spill out into the streets and the harbors. And that the south of England should be reinforced on the coast to stop a wave of unauthorized entries by boat. But it didn’t happen that way – it happened much, much faster. The disease was already amongst those in the queues, in cars and vehicles backed up for miles.

So Grews had watched as the tunnel was overrun. He had watched as the mass of bodies pushed its way to the trains; trains that wouldn’t be running regardless of what anyone did. No fuel. No power. No train. The last one out had already left. In some ways, Grews thought the terminal being overrun had been inevitable, even though he hadn’t voiced the thought at the time.

Instead he had sat there, staring at the screens that showed views from the cameras dotted all over the complex. He had sat there watching, awestruck and, deep down, somewhat proud of those people who dared go into the tunnels themselves. He would never forget their determination and bravery, even when he had been forced to stop them. They couldn’t get across the Channel by train, so they were damn well going to walk the whole way.

Or so it had seemed.

“They won’t live more than a few weeks, even if they manage to stay in there and keep the dead from following them,” the security operator had said. The man was bald and fat and was sweating profusely as he sat there flipping through the camera points as Grews had ordered him to.

“What?” asked Grews, his attention not really shifting from the screen.

“No food, unless they have some with them,” continued the man, who looked like he could probably last a few months without food himself. “No water.”

“Indeed,” Grews had said, inwardly wishing the sweaty security guard would shut up, and damn sure he would swap him in an instant for any one of those poor folks running into the tunnel. If there was one thing Grews couldn’t abide, it was overindulgence, and this guy was off the scale.

“Oh, hang on,” the operator had said, and stopped switching cameras, shifting his hands to another terminal. He started flicking through lists on the screen, bright coloured lines flashing by, his eyes squinted above a deep frown.

Grews had leaned over, impolitely shunting the man’s chair so that he could reach the controls. Twenty minutes of watching and he’d already figured out how to flip through the cameras. Click. Click. Click. There they were, right down the tunnel by at least two miles. What the hell were they doing? Were they smashing a door down? Some kind of access route? There were at least thirty of them that had made it this far. He couldn’t tell the ages or genders. They were just shadowed figures in the dark, and some of them were small.

“Oh, God. They could.”

Grews snapped his head from the screen.

“Could what?”

“When we cut the power and closed the gates. There was a train outbound. They left it on the tracks because there was no time to get it to the French terminal and turn it around.”

“People? Are there people on it?”

“No. No, they would have evacuated. It’s freight.”

“What kind of freight? Why didn’t they just drive it backwards?”

“Hundreds of tons of canned goods, heading for Belgium by the looks of it, and they couldn’t reverse the engine. It’s an old one, and no rear engine – and the front-engine type, to the best of my knowledge, wouldn’t be able to push that many carriages.”

“They just left the damn train on the lines, full of food supplies?”

“We were told to evacuate immediately.”

Grews had watched on those cameras over the days that followed, even after the security guard had not turned up for work a few days later, and then not again after that. Grews made it personal somehow.

Further back down the tunnel, a long way behind those few outliers who were far far more resourceful, thousands of living and dead were pouring into the tunnel. The living, mostly already infected, running from the dead that followed them. Grews had asked if they could send troops down before closing the tunnel, retrieve the few who had made it nearly all the way along the tunnel, had found the supply train, breached the maintenance corridors and disappeared from camera view… but the answer from on high had been no.

Close that tunnel, Grews had been told.

And then when they’d realized that the tunnel was filling with the dead, word came that it had been hit from the air. RAF bombers undid in just a few seconds what had taken decades of planning and construction. They tried to close the halfway gate, the one that had been put there for this very purpose, but the mechanism failed. The midway failsafe was closing, but it was closing at such a slow speed that it would take hours to shut, and by then the tunnel would be overrun.

The bomber hit the tunnel just three miles from Calais and the evacuation call had gone out to clear the area around the entrance. They had expected the floodwater to come spewing out at such a rate that hectares of countryside might become a marshland. Entire divisions were mobilised and sent to the area to prepare for a massive clean-up of thousands of dead and infected.

Grews had sat in front of those screens and watched, unable to do a single thing, as one by one the cameras blinked out from power loss. He watched as the water flooded different sections, and saw the mass of dead, and the undead, carried forward by the flood.

Thank God we collapsed the tunnel at this end. Or we would have just flushed half of the undead of France onto British soil.

It had been his idea. And it had been done in a hurry. A dozen charges just fifty feet inside had collapsed the tunnel. It might stop the water, he’d thought, and then maybe they could check the maintenance tunnel for those survivors. But orders from above came that the maintenance entrance was to be collapsed, too. No one was to come out.

But something had happened, and he had never found out what. Somehow the half of the tunnel on the English side hadn’t flooded completely.

That had been nearly two years ago.

“Andrew? You still there?”

Grews snapped back to the present. “Yes, I’m here.”

“Are you with me on this? You know that that tunnel needs clearing out.”

“Yes. I know.”

“I’d get someone else on it, but you know how things are now. We’re short of officers and men both, with this damn call-up mystery that no one is telling us about.”

“I know. And I need to do this. You know that.”

Bob did know. He had been Grews’ direct superior then, even as he was now, and he’d been the one to decide that those refugees weren’t getting out. What Bob didn’t know was that Grews had seen occasional movements in the unflooded sections of tunnel at the English end even after many months, even after nearly a year, movements that were not always the lumbering and slow trudge of the dead. Sometimes there were even flickers of light down in the darkness. But Grews had never caught clear view of who they were. But he knew. They were his refugees. The heroic and trapped survivors of the tunnel.

But they had vanished again after the first year, and Grews had presumed they had starved, or succumbed to the undead floating in the water.

He wondered at what point he had become this very different man, when it had happened? He had spent so many years commanding peacekeeping forces and relief missions that his instinct had always been to help where he could. Those instincts had even garnered him a reputation as a soft touch, a weak commander, but back then he had been proud of that. This new Grews, somewhere along the way, had managed to become a man more interested in hiding what he had seen than in facing it.

Why? He knew why. It had been the moment they bombed the tunnel and turned down the chance to help just a few more people get out. That had been the moment he had changed. There had been ample time to send a crew in. He could have saved them.

And then the inexplicably fast zombie that had now emerged from the tunnel. Was it some mystical super-zombie, a claim that had been making the rounds of the rumor mill? Grews for one didn’t believe it for a second, even after the chaos of the night before. But whether or not that was real, all of this meant something new, and stunning. It meant that the refugees who had for a while managed to survive down there were now lost. But maybe now he would get the chance to at least put them to rest.

“So you’ll get this done?” said the voice on the radio again.

Grews blinked. His concentration was fading.

“Yes, of course. I’ll get it done.”

“And you’ll clean up, as well? No damn heroics. They’re all dead things now and you know it. We can’t risk bringing anything or anyone else out of that tunnel.”

“Of course.”

Time to face the ghosts, Grews thought.

CLOSE! STAND CLOSE TO ME, STARBUCK

Homer found it all too easy.

Basically, he just made as if he were having a nice evening stroll around the outer edge of the flight deck. Most of that wasn’t a total no-go area, unless flight operations were actually going on right then. And with the aviation fuel situation, flight ops now happened only as often as needed, and not much more. He carried with him only a modest-sized duty bag. Then it was just a question of waiting until a couple of the flight deck crew in their brightly colored shirts passed, shielding him for two seconds from sight of the control tower, or “island.”

That was all it took to tie off on the railing, hurl the rope bag over, clip onto his own D-ring, and leap overboard. A single bound, and he had rappelled himself down to the center of nowhere. The sweet spot for solitude on a Ford-class supercarrier turns out to be a little side-deck, two levels below the top, facing out to the sea, and nestled between the Sparrow missile launchers and the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System. Basically, unless there were maintenance issues with one of those two weapons bays, this deck was virtually guaranteed to be empty. It also sat out of view of everyone else onboard.

The only problem was, of course, that the ship’s ID keycard they gave the Alpha men – for access into their team’s suite, the mess hall, a few common areas, and up top via direct ladders – didn’t allow Homer access to it. But never try to keep a SEAL out of someplace on a boat he wants to go. Or under the water, or across a desert, or up a mountain, for that matter… Pretty much their whole job is gaining access to places they aren’t supposed to be. And it’s popping up where they’re not remotely expected that allows them to wreak such havoc with such small numbers.

But Homer found it all really funny. No sooner was he sitting around Hereford reminiscing about the solitary joys of shipboard life than here he was, in the blink of an eye, aboard the largest warship ever built by man – and almost certainly the most formidable. With literally about a billion individual parts, it was also probably the most complex machine ever built – or, on current trends, ever would be. But it seemed that anything could happen to you in this world, even in the ZA.

Ma’shallah, Homer thought, and as he knew his Muslim brothers to say. What wonders God hath wrought…

* * *

As he sat watching the light fail over the North Atlantic, listening to the wind and the rush of water against the hull, he thought about all the changes that he’d seen in the last two years. Many mornings he’d still wake up and say his wife’s name – assuming it had all been a horrible, displacing dream. Then the reality would come back to him in a sickening rush.

Homer supposed, in many ways, the ZA was a lot easier for warriors than for civilians. And he didn’t just mean their weapons and training and much greater ability to survive. To a great extent, the zombies were the least interesting thing about a zombie apocalypse. What was really gripping, and wrenching, and awful, was what it did to the survivors – what men do to each other, and to themselves, when the structure all around them, and upon which they’ve relied all their lives, catastrophically fails.

But military personnel, especially SOF, had been operating in catastrophic vacuums of order and structure for most of their careers. Think Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq during its civil war. Being able to be effective in such wretched, menacing places was much of what it meant to be a special operator. Homer supposed the end of civilization really just supercharged what had always been the main human problem – working together to survive. The civilians had been shielded from that for a long time. But Homer and his brethren hadn’t.

After the virus reached the tipping point, most people went down before they even knew what to be afraid of. It raged out of control that quickly. By the time the dead outnumbered the living, it only helped marginally to know what the hell was going on. It was too late then. And when the delicate latticework of civilization failed – the daily food deliveries to grocery store shelves, the constantly pulsing power grids, the free-flowing clean water, police and ambulances that came when you called – well, at that point, the other survivors started to become as dangerous as the dead. Survival became as much a matter of competing with the living for resources, as about battling the dead. And that’s where things got really tricky.

That was the whole “working together” part.

And that’s where Homer and others like him really had the advantage. The military brotherhood is well known, going back at least to Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. But special operators – they were a breed apart. They operated in such severe and austere conditions, and against such appalling odds, that the only way to prevail was through the perfection of their training as a team. It was said that the average officer in the special operations community had more formal education than the average university professor. And so should it be. The training was unending, and relentless, and exacting, because it had to be for them to succeed at the job. Even to survive it.

So the brotherhood of special operators was definitely a family. And one thing that hadn’t changed, Homer figured, was that family was still the most important thing. The whole world had changed, but they hadn’t – not really. And having your brothers around you was how you knew you weren’t a zombie – that you were still one of God’s children, and still made in his image.

Because the first thing you notice about zombies is… that they don’t notice each other. A dead guy could be surrounded by 5,000 others, and wouldn’t pay them any mind. Well, with the possible exception of that one on the cliffs, with his buddy on the cross… Homer thought maybe he’d call him Job from now on. Maybe God was testing him.

Homer figured perhaps these thoughts about family had been prompted by this mission – by sailing, then flying, so close to where his wife and children were last known to be alive. He expected the ship was going to anchor only a few hundred miles, if that, from his home in Virginia Beach, where they’d moved after he joined Team Six. And that was a whole ocean closer than Homer thought he would ever again get to them. Some part of him always believed they were still alive. Some part of him thought he would see them again in this world.

But he did know he would see them in the next.

Also, a big part of him wrestled daily with his duty as a warrior. Every day he got up and thought of reasons why he shouldn’t leave, that second, just take off, to go look for them. What kind of father was he? What kind of husband? His children might be crying out for him now, lost, in pain, afraid. And even if they weren’t, even if Homer died in a futile search for the already departed… well, that would just hasten that day they would all be together again.

Some of the other guys said it was only by sheer, dumb luck that they had all been deployed overseas when it happened. That they were in the one island nation that, also through sheer dumb luck, escaped the implacable armies of the walking dead. But was it luck? Handon would say that it’s an operational principle that Delta makes its own luck. But Homer knew that what looks to us like luck, and what looks to be skill, are all the same thing.

God’s plan for every one of us.

* * *

And this plan had showed itself even today – in Homer’s recon of the ship areas leading to this isolated half-deck. Posted up in a common hallway was a bright yellow flyer for a daily shipboard chapel service. It didn’t mention the denomination, but he didn’t suppose it mattered all that much at this point. The timing was perfect. A half-hour for himself up there, another half-hour for the meeting whose name he dare not speak, then a half-hour for the sermon. And then back to work.

It was always good to meet other believers. It was a shame that those the ZA didn’t kill outright – eaten by the dead, infected and turned, killed by the desperate living, or just starved out by the fall – had a strong tendency to lose their faith over the matter. So the faithful were pretty few and far between these days. But, as the man has said:

Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding onto.

BEST LAID PLANS

Commander Drake sat across from Handon and Ainsley in the small briefing room. He said, “I’ve asked the MARSOC team leader to join us for this one. You’re going to want to be on good terms with this guy. As I mentioned, it’s him and his men who are going to be on standby to pull your bacon out of the fire when and as necessary.”

“Or, more likely,” said Ainsley, a little dryly, “it’s his men who are going to inherit our mission if and when my team goes down.”

“That, too. CentCom has made it very clear to me this one’s in the too-big-to-fail category.”

“So you must have a C team lined up?” said Handon.

Drake just nodded.

Need to know, Handon figured. Since he wasn’t going to elaborate on that, and since they had a second here, Handon tried on a question that had been vexing him.

“I understand your reactors can provide power for decades.”

“That’s affirmative. Though, when we do need to refuel, that can take a couple of years. You might have seen we have only one support ship sailing with us, to save on fuel. But it’s a hell of a backup – one of the Arleigh-Burke destroyers, and the latest. The Michael Murphy.”

Handon nodded. “And on top of unlimited power, you’ve got all the fresh water you can drink from your desalination plant… but last time I was on a supercarrier, I was told it could only store about 70 days worth of food. How has that worked?”

Drake nodded. “Well, for starters, and as you’ll have already noticed, ship’s complement is massively under strength. We sailed with 4,660. As of today, we’re at 2,132.”

“Killed or infected?” Ainsley asked. “Outbreaks?”

Drake nodded. “We’ve lost people on land. But there have been zero outbreaks on the JFK. Every shore party is quarantined for a week on the Rainier, our oiler, ammo, and supply ship.”

“But max gestation time is only 72 hours.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t know that in the early days. And we couldn’t afford even a single incident shipboard. So we’ve stuck with the policy.”

Ainsley and Handon nodded and waited for him to continue.

“No, our losses were different. Desertions were big, particularly in the first few months. A lot of people jumping ship, some of them too far out to realistically swim to land. They were trying to get home to their families. God preserve them.” Drake took a look off to the corner of the cabin. “And then there were the suicides. It’s a fact of life in any military outfit. But ours have ticked up over time.”

“How do you sail the ship with so few?” Ainsley asked.

“Well, we just picked up a few in Britain – donated by your own CentCom. Filled a few critical roles. But it’s a lesser known fact that most of the crew on a supercarrier is actually in support of the air wing. And we haven’t been flying much. So little fuel, so little point. More on which in a second. Anyway, obviously it wasn’t just air wing people we lost. So we’ve had to do retraining. But, hell, this ship is so automated, in many ways it sails itself. To a great extent, the people are here to look after the other people, and the aircraft.”

Drake seemed now to come out of his dark reverie. “Anyway, half the mouths to feed solved half the food problem. But for much of the first year, we spent most of our time raiding ports and coastlines for supplies. We’d hope to find someplace quiet and abandoned. More often it was a matter of fighting our way in, then holding a perimeter while food was onloaded. The MARSOC guys were invaluable there. Fight like bulldogs on meth.”

Handon well knew. Also, he’d known and worked with enough marines to know that they’re not just ferocious – but they actually tended to be disconcertingly smart and cagey, as well. God knows how the myth of the knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal jarhead hangs on, he thought to himself. Hmm – maybe it’s because they want it to. Now THAT’s smart…

Drake went on. “Anyway, the shore parties were our biggest risk of infection, of course, and some of our junior officers were already looking ahead. A few months in, we planted huge potato and wheat beds, under sunlamps, down in the hangar. Three levels of them, actually. We’re now about 50% self-sufficient on food, at least as far as calories goes. Since then, shore parties focus on canned fruits and vegetables, spices, and yeast to make bread. That and multivitamins. Meat’s pretty few and far – the frozen stuff went when the power failed, and the fresh stuff you have to hunt and slaughter, all of which burns time on shore. And dairy’s a memory, aside from tinned milk and powdered eggs, when we get lucky.” Drake laughed mirthlessly to himself. “Something I never thought I’d see – a bunch of vegans on a U.S. Navy warship…”

He laughed again, easier. “Anyway, we’ve been a bit like the Battlestar Galactica – guarding our dwindling fleet, wandering the galaxy looking for a new home. Instead of being hounded by the Cylons, it was the dead.”

“And so what did you do with the air wing?” Handon asked. The flight deck couldn’t hold more than a couple dozen aircraft at a time – ordinarily, most of them lived belowdecks in the cavernous – three-story high, 700 feet long – hangar bay.

“We pushed quite a few of them into the ocean.”

“That’s a bit of a shame,” Ainsley said.

“Starving to death’s a shame.” Drake, Ainsley, and Handon turned to see that this was spoken by a newcomer, who’d slipped into the doorway without anyone noticing. He wore a khaki utility uniform, boots, and a sidearm. Two deep furrows of scar tissue ran down the left side of his face. “And in zombie warfare, air superiority is about as useful as nuts on a nun.”

“Captain Ainsley, Sergeant Major Handon,” Drake said, “this is Gunnery Sergeant Fick, who commands the MARSOC team, since their LT went down.” It was the same guy who had escorted them onboard.

“We met,” said Handon.

Fick nodded. “Wanted to check out the new hotshots myself. Find your comfy racks okay? Pillows nice and fluffed for you?”

Ainsley looked disconcerted, in that British way of abhorring a scene. Handon just smiled. God love the Marines… Hell, he thought, they’re probably loving life in the ZA.

Another thing about the Marines: used to very austere living conditions.

* * *

Gunnery Sergeant Fick took a seat and put his thick arms on the table.

Commander Drake said, “Truth is, we do have several dozen security personnel, Navy MPs and shore patrolmen. But Fick asked to bring you onboard himself.”

The stocky marine nodded. “Being as the fate of the world evidently rests in your no-doubt capable hands.” Left unsaid, but pretty obvious to Ainsley and Handon, was that Fick figured his own guys were more than up to the job.

Both Ainsley and Handon felt for the guy. But, then again, neither of them gave that much of a shit. If they went around giving away jobs to every SOF or elite force that fancied themselves the best men for the job… well, SOF guys aren’t given to backing down or shrugging with humility. And, in the end, everyone went where they were damn well ordered, and damn well did the jobs assigned to them. Especially in Handon’s Delta, where professionalism was job one.

Ainsley said to Drake, “I gather you’ve gotten the high-level concept from our OC.”

Drake and Fick looked at each other.

“Officer Commanding,” said Handon. “A little Brit-speak for you.”

“Ah, right,” said Fick. “Everything bass-ackwards.”

Ainsley almost smiled. “No, that’s the Frogs, actually – les bâtards morts.” Like many English of his class, Ainsley spoke good French. (Unlike the French, who no longer spoke.)

Drake nodded. “Okay. Yes, we got a three-page mission concept from your Colonel. He’s right in suggesting a helo insertion is too much of a stretch – bird could get there, but not back. Not without refueling. Also too much danger of mechanical failure on a helo. So it’s going to be a fixed-wing aircraft, and a combat jump.”

“Right,” Ainsley said. “HAHO.” High-altitude, high-opening – after which the operators would steer their canopies to the target. “I’m told your air wing can support this?”

“Yes, you’re in luck. One of the planes we agonized about, but ultimately decided to keep, was our C-2A Greyhound. It’s a twin-engine cargo aircraft – generally used to move supplies around the strike group, or to shore bases. It’s a big old bastard – about the heaviest thing ever to lumber off a carrier flight deck, and bang back down again – but it was too useful to scupper.”

“Capacity?” Handon asked.

“About 4,500 kilograms, 26 passengers nominal. Should take your team, all your kit, and your chutes no problem.”

“Plus a shitload of ammo,” Fick added. “We assume that since you’re jumping into Zulu Universe, you’re going to want to jump with some big-ass resupply palletes. Set up some kind of local FOB, or at least supply cache.”

“That’s affirmative,” said Ainsley.

“My guys can help you put it together and palletize it. I saw you brought an awful lot of your own hardware. But we’re not too badly fixed for stuff like 5.56 rounds and linked 7.62. When we raided the U.S. Naval Base in Singapore, we emptied their ordnance stores.”

“Top marks,” said Ainsley.

With civilian firearms virtually banned in the UK, there hadn’t been enough of a domestic armaments industry in place when the curtain came down. It had been ramped up as quickly as possible, but it was competing with industrial resources for absolutely everything – everything that Britain used to import. Of course, USOC got priority on ammo – but every time they pulled the trigger, that meant some poor bastard defending his neighborhood having to rely on an axe.

“And about that QRF?” Handon asked, referring to the Quick Reaction Force.

Fick nodded. “Basically, you call, we come running.”

Drake said, “They can insert in the same plane you went out in, as soon as it can be turned around. But probably a low-altitude opening to get in faster.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll pull your bacon out of the fire,” said Fick.

Ainsley let that sink in for a second, then spoke. “No. You’ll pull our bacon out of the fire only if it conduces to mission accomplishment. If we’re too bogged down, or torn up, or hard to get to, then you’re to act precisely as if we’re dead. You raise the banner yourselves and Charlie Mike.” More slang: continue mission.

The Marine officer nodded, sobered. “Roger that.”

Handon nodded himself. He had to give Ainsley credit.The man could be a bit of a tight-ass. But he was a brave son of a bitch and, like all the Brits Handon had served with, he definitely knew what his duty was, and damn well intended to do it. Born to rule and sacrifice…

Fick cracked a smile again. “Well, if we do have to go in after you, I trust there’ll be a hell of a lot fewer Zulus than when you landed…”

Handon raised his eyebrows. “What, a hell of a lot fewer than three million? That might leave a few.”

Fick kept on smiling. “Well… one nice thing. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. The dead never rise up a second time.”

From the marine’s slightly demented grin, Handon got the sense he would be perfectly happy to go out and try to personally kill every one of the 7 billion undead abominations that currently ran the world. Like he felt no one was getting any younger, and this was a job that needed doing, and he’d prefer to be getting on with it.

Handon figured he could only respect that. Demented as it was.

“Okay,” Ainsley said. “Let’s get stuck into the mission parameters. At a high level, I want to make sure we’re on the same page with logistics, comms, the air mission, waypoints for infil and exfil, branches and contingencies, ISR, map packs, essential tasks, operational timings. Once we’ve got our command ducks in a row, we’ll bring in both teams and drill down on everything…”

BACK TO HAUNT YOU

Major Grews stood at the top of the slope, shifting impatiently, his mind jittering from one scene to the other. Below, in the yard, the last of the train carriages was being shunted along the track at an excruciatingly slow pace. It had taken the best part of the morning to clear them out in preparation for the tunnel’s excavation. Even though he was weary of waiting, he was still extremely impressed by the speed at which the engineering team worked. Impressed would actually be an understatement.

He had witnessed a lot of deployments, a lot of temporary bases being erected in hostile territory, and he was always amazed at how quickly these things came together when they threw a a few hundred skilled soldiers at the job. But this, this had been beyond that. He had watched for six hours as just thirty weary-looking soldiers of the Royal Corps of Engineers – arrived just that morning after being woken from their beds in London – systematically shifted nearly forty carriages with little more than a few engines and some forklift trucks.

The area had to be completely clear. A lot of heavy equipment was coming in to haul out the collapsed section of the tunnel – seriously heavy machinery that his bosses only dusted off on special occasions. They were gas guzzlers, these diggers, and meant for leveling an area very quickly. This time they would be digging out fifty cubic meters of rubble. Unfortunately, this would mean opening the tunnel right up, as well as a good chunk of the hill under which it sat.

Grews glanced over at the field, across the train tracks, at the two monstrosities that sat hulking in the blistering sun, waiting to churn the ground. He tracked his vision further over to the field, where pyres burned even now, eight hours after the last zombie had fallen. Nearly a hundred of the damn things had been on the loose in the end, most of them alive and sleeping in the Premier Inn a day ago. Now they were burning. The remainder, about two dozen, had crawled out of the hole that the first had made.

How the hell that thing had clawed its way out was something Grews didn’t even want to dwell on. But he couldn’t stop himself worrying that a few of them may have slipped by, out into the countryside. There was a large search party out there right now, scouring the forest and the scrublands, visiting every building no matter what its function. Drones and manned surveillance aircraft scanned the area tirelessly through video, IR, and synthetic aperture radar. And all of them just looking for stragglers who may have gotten away. As for the super-zombie… well, he hoped that it was only one of them. And that one had now been accounted for with a hundred bullets in its head put there by his troopers.

Though Grews still wasn’t buying the super-zombie theory. He thought it more likely that damnable security guard had just been lying to save his own skin, along with the single remaining soldier from the hotel. Both damn useless. They would have had a lot to answer for if they weren’t already on their way south. Best out of his way, thought Grews, who would have hung them if he could have. They should have used their own bodies to block up the hole instead of running for it.

The thing that was troubling him was how all of this had happened so quickly. The engineers from London and the diggers should have taken days to organize. They must have already had plans in place to do this, Grews thought.

Twenty minutes later and the diggers were at work. The first one took the tunnel entrance head on, eating away at the mass of solid stone – solid stone in all but a small passage that had allowed the creatures the night before to break through. The second digger was already slicing off massive mounds of earth on the hill above.

Digging. Had those creatures, the zombies, or at least this one fast one, really been digging away for nearly two years?

Grews turned to the junior officer, a woman, who stood nearby. "Check in with the Harbor barracks OC. I want to know if the second sweep of the town has been completed."

"Yes sir," said the communications officer. She was young and inexperienced, but he couldn’t take his two regular comms guys away from their desks. There was too much to organize today and he needed them on the radios to coordinate everything.

Grews looked down into the yard, fifty feet from where the digger was tearing the ground apart, and near where the first of the carriages had been parked just a few hours ago. A team of three dozen of his best men were gathered, checking equipment, loading weapons, and then rechecking. They were his elite – Royal Marine Commandos who had turned up in the Channel six months after the border had been closed, and months after Europe had become a graveyard. They had traveled all the way from Germany, and through all kinds of hell in between, stolen some fishing boats and rowed.

CentCom had wanted to move them out, reassign them to Hereford or London, but Grews had managed to delay that for months – long enough for them to become a permanent fixture in his barracks. They were his urban cleansers, used for storming coastal villages along the French and Portuguese coasts so that teams of scavengers could safely do their jobs. But this time they were going somewhere new. This time they were going underground to clear out the Channel Tunnel.

A shout went up near the tunnel, and the digger stopped. The ring of squaddies, standing thirty yards from where the digger was munching away at the rubble, lifted their rifles and took aim. Shots rang out for a few seconds, and then silence.

More of the damn things being let out of the darkness.

Just an hour later and he stood and watched as the first team of marines entered the tunnel – which was now a gaping maw at the end of a fifty-yard-long trench. The diggers had done their job at dazzling speed.

The first squad moved slowly, the lights on their weapons lighting up the tunnel ahead of them, glints flickering on the walls. Grews only wished that they still had enough working night vision goggles, but what few he’d had in stock had been packed up and shipped to Hereford for the golden boys of special operations. His men would have to use spot lamps, and their weapon-mounted tactical lights. At least they had been able to find a supply of oxygen canisters and breathing masks. He had no doubt that the air in that tunnel would be rancid at best.

The second squad entered the tunnel just thirty seconds later, followed by the final dozen that made up Squad Three. All moved as the first had, slowly and methodically, heads low and backs hunched over, their weapons never lowered.

Grews turned to his radio operator, now seated at a small desk with a laptop and a comms suite perched on top of it. Its noisy generator buzzed a few yards away. On a table nearby were three small LCD monitors showing the helmet-cam views of all three squad leaders. Shadows flickered across the screens and reflected off the water that was already ankle deep.

"Okay, give me a headset and keep open channels."

"Yes, sir. Hold on a moment… Harbor division confirms that the above-ground sweep is completed."

“Good.”

Grews put the headphones on and tapped the microphone.

"Comms check. How copy?"

Three calls of "Solid copy" came back quickly.

"Okay. Keep your ranks tight, watch the flanks and cover every damn crevice that you see. No fuck-ups. Remember your orders: kill on sight. Anything that moves down there is a threat, no exceptions."

There was a pause, seconds passing as Grews waited. Now a new voice popped up on the command net. One that had been monitoring silently from almost a hundred miles away.

“Good work, Major. I think I can leave this in your hands now.”

“Thank you, Bob,” said Grews, holding back the burning feeling in his stomach. Interfering ass, he thought.

Grews turned to another young officer standing nearby.

“Is that air pump going yet? Did we get the vents open? Fetch me a chair,” he snapped, not waiting for answers. “And switch to the secondary squad net. We’re ready to do this our way now.”

The young officer grinned.

“Absolutely, sir.”

INTERMISSIONARY POSITION

Handon stuck his head into the sleeping compartment as he and Drake cruised by outside.

“Mission briefing, all hands, one hour. Down the hall.”

Predator nodded, and Juice saluted, ironically.

Handon started to withdraw, then paused. “You know where Homer and Ali are?”

“Nope.”

“Tell ’em when you see ’em.”

Drake stood paused behind Handon in the passageway. He leaned around him now. “You know, all ship’s IDs have active RFID chips on them. We can find your guys from the bridge, or any deck’s security station.”

Juice’s eyebrows had already gone north. “No need,” he said, reaching into one of his hard cases and coming out with a handheld digital radio scanner.

“I think the frequency is—”

“Four-point-two gigaherz,” Juice finished for him, pointing the scanner at his own pocket.

“We’ll take it from here,” Pred said.

“Carry on,” Handon said, withdrawing and marching off with Drake.

“I assume you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Juice said to Pred, rubbing his hands together, then twiddling knobs.

“Yep. Not only are those two both always disappearing – but nearly always at the same damned time. Never realized it before. It’s like never seeing Batman and Bruce Wayne at the same party… And now’s our chance to bust them.”

“Only if they’re currently within about 200 meters…” Juice scrolled through a listing on a touchscreen on the scanner. “The IDs are broadcasting name and service number.” He panned the device around the room. “Yep, got Ali. She’s aft of here, probably a couple of decks up.”

“Awesome. And Homer? ’Cause I’ll bet you my last nutsack they’re in the same spot. I knew it. On some level, I think I always knew it…”

“Got his card, too – looks pretty damned close to the same vector, but…”

“But what?”

“The signal strength.” Juice stood and went to the door. Pred followed him out, down the passageway – and into the berthing compartment next door.

Pope looked up from his rack. “Help you boys?”

Juice stepped to the bunk on the other side of the room. He picked up Homer’s ID card from where it lay on the bed, and looked at it forlornly.

“Sons of bitches,” said Pred.

“Thought we had ’em,” said Juice.

Pope gave them a serene yet uncomprehending look, and watched their backs as the pair withdrew.

* * *

Henno poured Ainsley a cup of coffee, Julie Andrews, as he always took it. (White nun, i.e. milk with no sugar.) Then another cup, Whoopi Goldberg, for himself. The two sat across the metal table in the dim and empty mess.

“You get through to the missus before we sailed?” Henno asked. He knew Ainsley’s family, from long years of service together.

“No,” Ainsley said. “Total commo lockdown, after the first briefing.”

“Jesus… Don’t know what they think the gobshite zombies are going to do if they get wind of a mission. Moan on a different frequency or something.”

“Well… opsec’s a hard habit to break.”

“It’s gotta be tough for her,” Henno said, holding his boss’s eye, and thinking of the man’s wife. “Not hearing a peep until we get back. That’s if we get back.” Henno had been a committed bachelor since his first divorce. It was a lot easier in the military, never mind in spec-ops. When you came back after unexplained six-week absences, and could only answer that you’d been “somewhere hot”… well, it was easier on a casual girlfriend, or one-night stand, than on someone you were supposed to be sharing your life with.

Ainsley shrugged. “She’ll call Hereford and they’ll tell her I’m deployed. She knows the drill. She’s been through it enough times.”

“Fair play.” Henno’s coffee was just getting to sub-scalding, so he raised it and drank deeply. He swallowed, paused, and looked up. “Do you think we’ll come back from this one?”

“Don’t worry too much about that,” Ainsley said, straightening, and raising his mug with thumb and two fingers. “Worry about what kind of world we leave behind.”

Henno was pretty sure his captain was thinking about his two little boys at that moment. But he let it lie.

* * *

Ali brushed her fingertips across his as she rose to leave.

Without a look back, she strode down the dim passageway, straightening her uniform slightly. Despite her best efforts, she thought anxiously about what the two of them had been doing – and what she’d say if they were caught. She could just hear Handon asking, “What were you thinking?”

Luckily, she had a good answer to that one: I was thinking we all might be dead tomorrow.

As to why she was with who she was with, well, that was a slightly more vexed question. She’d chosen him because he was gentle, and because he was good. As to why he had consented… well, he’d probably say it was because he was weak. And because he was a sinner. And Ali also knew of course that he was lonely, like all of them. The ZA was a damned lonely place, even in a family of special operators.

That also probably made it incest. Ali winced slightly as she slithered up a narrow ladder.

Worst of all, she knew that he considered himself still married. Married in the eyes of God. And he would still be married until the day his wife was put in the ground.

Which might not be until the end of the world.

Regaining Alpha’s area, she stuck her head into her billet. Pope was on his rack, on his back, reviewing map packs on a tablet on his belly.

She smiled before asking, “Got time for some Ji-geiko, your Holiness?”

Pope looked up and smiled as well. Of course they’d brought their kendo equipment along.

And out on the flight deck of a supercarrier would be just about the baddest-assed place they’d banged swords yet.

RAPTURE

Homer lay where he was for a few minutes after she left, on their improvised bed of duffel bags in the corner of a nearly dark storeroom. But then he prodded himself to rise. It wasn’t good to be idle. Too many thoughts. Plus that chapel service would be starting. At least there he could pray for forgiveness for his sins.

He rose, buttoned his shirt, and checked his watch. Though the true max cruising speed of the Ford-class carriers was classified, Homer knew it to be a blistering 40 knots. He also knew the distance of the Atlantic crossing from Portsmouth; and figured they had about 80 hours at sea. Most of that time would be given to mission planning and prep. But, as usual in the military, there was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait at the front end while things got organized.

He thought he could make his way to the chapel by memory, but ended up having to ask directions from a couple of Aviation Machinist Mates along the way. When he slipped in the back hatch, about two dozen men and women were already seated and the service underway. He took a seat at the edge of the empty back pew. The chaplain was warming up.

“…and now, after a brief respite in a safe harbor, we are put to sea again. Amidst the storms, amidst the chaos, and amidst the Judgement.”

The chaplain was a mystery to Homer – not like any naval chaplain he had ever seen. He was in uniform, a mere E2, a junior enlisted rank, with an Apprentice Steelworker rating. All this was evident from his shoulder insignia. He wore no clerical scarf, and he spoke with a deep southern accent – and with a palpable fervor.

“Yea, truly are we all judged. Mankind has been judged for its sins. And we will be judged for what we do here in these End Days.”

Uh-oh – one of those, Homer thought, more amused than anything. The preacher raised an index finger to Heaven as he went on, picking up steam.

“Yes, verily, we have been judged, and afflicted with this plague. This plague of soulless who swarm across the land and the oceans. These soulless dead, whose souls are ascended to Heaven, while their bodies remain on Earth to finish God’s cleansing…” He paused to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. “And yet still we thwart them – with our man-made warships and our weapons and our armor.”

Now Homer’s brow furrowed. This man wasn’t just one of these – an End of Days type, who were common enough amongst those few believers who had made it this far into the ZA with their faith intact. No, this was worse…

“These swords and shields of ours were built to oppose Satan on Earth, his evil minions in the mortal realm. America and its military were a great force for God and for good.” His voice soared now, accenting with abandon, as his open hands gestured. “For opposing those who blew up innocents in orgies of sin, and who worshipped a false God… But now – America itself has fallen, for its many sins. For hedonism, for gays in the military, for the abomination of so-called gay marriage, for licentiousness, for lack of thrift, for greed… America fell. It was God’s will.”

This was clearly a lay preacher of some type – and also clearly one of the fire-breathing Pentecostal sort. Homer wondered where the real ship’s chaplains were – a supercarrier would have at least one of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith each. This guy was freelancing. Plus giving Homer a very bad feeling.

“How long, brothers? How long will we sail? Two long years we’ve been crossing the seas, staying alive, keeping the Final End of Days from coming, dragging out the Rapture, and keeping the faithful, including ourselves, from ascending to Heaven. How much more misery, how much more waiting?”

To survive long as a special operator one had to have, along with about 500 other skills, a pretty decent sense of folk psychology. And Homer was sensing a definite psychological aspect to these guys – assuming this congregation were in agreement, which from their nodding and humming, they seemed to be. And that psychological aspect was despair.

“And now, crossing the Atlantic again – God alone knows what for!” The preacher was near frenzy now. “To try to destroy all the soulless in America? To seek some kind of quote-cure-unquote? No cure will bring their souls back to Earth! This is God’s will, these are supposed to be the End Days! Just finish it, and it will be over! Let God’s cleaners do their last work on Earth.”

Yep, Homer had it now. He knew in his bones these were simply people who just couldn’t take the fight anymore – the fear, the hopelessness. The only way they could bear it now, he knew, was to decide that it was all supposed to be this way – and the only “problem” was our continued resistance and survival.

It was life under the ZA they couldn’t face anymore.

Which was understandable. In fact, it all sounded awfully like guilty thoughts Homer had been having himself lately, in the privacy of his head. And, while hearing this said out loud might have been seductive for that reason… in fact it had the exact opposite effect.

It reminded Homer of his duty.

Because, while these people might have been free to give in to despair, and to capitulate, and to advocate surrender, if they were civilians on dry land… as it was, they were uniformed military personnel deployed on a surface vessel in a time of war. And this kind of shit was dangerous. Worse than bad for morale, it was borderline treason.

Homer slipped out the back of the room. As he did so, he could hear the sermon reaching a climax and then winding down. He looped back around to scope the area. He found the chaplains’ quarters, tried the doors and found them locked. Toward the end of the same passage, and around the corner, he heard a door opening. Stopping dead, peeking around, he saw the flash of a room as the door closed. Inside, he could make out pallets, crates – and a rack of M4 assault rifles.

A voice spoke behind him.

“Greetings, brother.” It was the preacher, with two other men standing beside him.

IN DARKNESS THEY DWELL

Four hours after he entered the Channel Tunnel, his feet drenched to the skin from standing in six inches of muddy water, Lieutenant Jameson turned his head across a full panoramic sweep of the tunnel blockage. The last few hours had pushed his marines to the limit, as it had those behind him tasked with clearing up, filling the gaps in the line, and resupply. He had sent three of his men back with minor injuries – none of them, fortunately, from the undead they had put down. The tunnel was a danger in itself, with railway lines under the water and all manner of debris, most of which one didn’t want to contemplate too closely, floating around their feet.

The battle of the last four hours had calmed somewhat, and Jameson’s breathing was slowing to a steadier pace as his heart worked to catch up with the rest of his body. Not far away from him floated the decapitated head of the creature he had just killed. The rest of it was under the water, which still rippled from the splash the body had caused. The fight reminded him of his platoon’s trek across Europe, mostly on foot, all the way from Germany. He had thought nothing could compare with what he had experienced during those months, but he had been proven wrong. This battle with the dead had been hard fought.

And they had killed a lot. Though still not as many as he had expected – not as many as the analysts had predicted might be down here. The hardest part of the journey through the tunnels was trudging through the ankle-deep sludge and water. It slowed their pace and wore him and his men down faster than solid ground. Spotting zombies in the dark with only mining lamps to light your way was difficult enough without the terrain being against you as well.

The first sighting had happened barely a hundred yards inside the tunnel. Flickering lights highlighted the skulking figures of zombies moving slowly toward them – slower even than normal. At least the stinking sludge slowed the zombies down as well, but another thing it did was hide those lying down in it. Several times he nearly lost a man as a hand came groping up from the murky waters to latch onto a leg or a boot. The first time, the creature had actually bitten into the squaddie’s boot, but a shot to the back of the head had stopped it before its teeth could sink through the thick leather. From then on they were more careful, moving more slowly and in a straight line, watching the water as well as the darkness ahead of them.

That first encounter had fired Jameson’s nerves and surged adrenaline through his veins, and it fueled him throughout the whole journey. Which was a good thing, since they would encounter many more groups of undead along the way. They didn’t come in waves as the Royal Marines had experienced before; these creatures were somehow dulled and much clumsier, much slower than what were generally encountered on missions. It was as though the darkness and nearly excruciating confinement – the claustrophobia – of the tunnel had somehow stupefied even the already mindless dead. A ridiculous notion, Jameson thought, but he couldn’t deny the difference. They didn’t notice the living down there as quickly as they did on the surface.

They had moved slowly toward them, barely a dozen at first, and all in a rotten state like nothing he had seen in the last two years. The nearest, and the first to be cut down by gunfire, was barely held together. Stretched and pale sinews of what once might have been muscle covered it like a spiderweb; its bones clearly visible as they poked out of torn flesh. There was no skin on its face, and instead a grotesque moving skull stared at them through the darkness, the jaws twitching right up until the moment when several 5.56mm rounds slammed into its grin.

Mile upon mile of muddy tunnel had confronted them, until half an hour ago they had come across the barricade. It loomed out of the darkness and blocked the tunnel, standing nearly six feet high. At first, as the torn and broken metal frame came into view, Jameson had thought they had already found some remnant of the supply train they had been told to look out for. But it was far too close to the British side of the Channel, and he was sure they hadn’t covered enough ground to be near the midway gate yet.

Train parts, panels tied together with cabling, chairs and doors and seemingly any loose part of the train wreckage available had been piled together and stacked up high in a makeshift blockade that went the full width of the tunnel. The rotting dead were piled up high on this side, though very few of them moved.

First Squad had approached very slowly, aware that at any moment the entire mound of dead things could rise up from its slumber and come crawling toward them. But that hadn’t happened. As the lights from the soldiers’ lamps lit the area more brightly upon approach, it became obvious that these creatures had already been dispatched.

These dead were dead forever.

From this initial assessment, they decided that the barricade was more of a trap than a defensive wall. And from the bodies entangled in the wreckage, Jameson imagined any survivors that had once lived down here must have visited this place regularly – to deal with the creatures that had stumbled into it and gotten caught amongst the wires and the sharp metal, entangled and desperately flailing around until they could be destroyed with relative ease.

Grews had nearly gone through the roof with excitement at this news, and Jameson had found himself grinning as well, as he used his helmet-cam to show the major the defensive wall. He imagined that the major would have given anything, well, almost anything, to be down there himself.

“I knew it,” Grews had breathed. “I knew they’d done it somehow. Look at that. A defensive wall made of train wreckage. It means they survived long enough to put that damn thing up. Where did they find the tools, though?”

Jameson peered through, to the other side of the wall.

“It’s pretty rudimentary, mostly held together by cables. They would have had to work hard to keep the thing upright if faced with a big mass of the dead. It looks more like a way to trap the creatures than to stop them completely. I don’t think it would hold a Zulu more than a few hours if it was determined.”

“How many undead so far, though?”

“Maybe five hundred. Not nearly as many as we first suspected might be in here.”

“Why so few, I wonder? We expected thousands.”

“No idea, sir,” said Jameson, suddenly breathing heavily.

Grews frowned.

“Are you all right, LT? Is everything okay down there?”

“Yes, sir, but I don’t think that air pump is doing much good. Maybe the vents are blocked or something. Seems that the further into the tunnel we get, the harder it is to breathe. There isn’t a lot of oxygen down here.”

“Make sure everyone has their masks on. Those re-breathers should help you some.”

“Roger that, sir.”

Another hour later, and there was no sign of even a single zombie along the remaining stretch of tunnel. As Jameson stood scanning the midway defense gate, and the remaining framework of the train wreck, they had their answer.

“So the gate did close,” said Grews.

“Yes, sir, it would appear so. And it seems to have cut the train in half, quite literally. From what I can see, most of the wreckage had been compacted somehow, like it had been crushed before the gate even closed in on it.”

Jameson cringed as an unwelcome stench flooded his nostrils for the hundredth time. The signs of survivors were everywhere. Piles of trash and human waste were dotted about on this side of the barricade. Grews was even more excited about that, but then he hadn’t had to smell the damn stuff, or trudge through it. He also hadn’t had to see the piles of zombie remains littered intermittently along the tunnel.

“And the maintenance tunnel? The door that they opened?” Grews’ voice was quiet now, and the line crackled audibly. Evidence of old equipment gradually failing.

“We’re just cutting it open now.” Jameson glanced back down the tunnel, where he could see the glow of several welding torches burning. “Should be open in…”

The radio signal went quiet for an ominous moment. But then, instantly, Grews heard shouting from multiple voices on the squad net. The three screens that relayed the headcams of his squad leaders blurred with movement.

“Jameson. Sitrep.”

Not now, thought Grews. Don’t fall apart now.

Only Jameson’s panicked breathing came back down the line.

He peered at the first screen and saw the doorway where two soldiers had been welding rushing up to meet him as Lieutenant Jameson sprinted to close the distance. More shouting, and movement from the darkness of the door. Muffled shouts as the world on all three screens went crazy for what was only a few seconds, but which to Grews was a lifetime of waiting.

Finally, Jameson’s voice was back on the net.

“Sir, we have survivors.” More heavy breathing. ”Repeat, we have survivors here.”

Grews sat back in his chair, stunned. The world was spinning around him and all he could do was try to take it in. They survived all this time, he thought. They actually managed to survive down there, even after we switched off the power, bombed the damn tunnel, and flooded it. They still survived. It was unthinkable.

“How many? How many are down there?” His voice cracked with urgency.

But Grews could already see the dirty face of a man in the doorway, speaking rapidly. His eyes were wide and glaring for a moment, before squinting against the bright light of Jameson’s weapon-mounted light. The man wore some sort of jumpsuit, similar to the ones that the UK Security Services issued its officers. But this was different, with no logo on the front, no markings at all for that matter. The man’s head was almost clean-shaven, as was his face, and there was a deep scar running down the middle of his forehead, like something had gouged him. Now, as Grews watched intently, almost standing up and out of his seat, the man spoke rapidly to Jameson – but also covered his eyes, blocking out the unaccustomed light.

Finally, the man nodded and smiled, showing a neglected set of brown and yellow teeth.

“Thirty-eight survivors sir. I repeat, three eight,” reported Jameson across the line.

“Say again, Lieutenant,” said Grews. “Was that thirty-eight?”

“That’s affirmative.”

Grews shouted out loud this time, unable to restrain himself. He glanced around at his small command team, who looked back at him, their amazed expressions quickly turning to smiles that reflected his own emotional state.

“Lieutenant. Get them out of there, ASAP. Get them out before someone stops us. If we get them onto British soil then there is nothing anyone can do.”

“Roger that, sir. Do we need to quarantine?”

Quarantine. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Because he hadn’t expected them to still be alive. Body bags were what was waiting for them outside the tunnel. But for once body bags wouldn’t be needed.

“Yes Lieutenant, but I’ll deal with that. Get them out of that tunnel. And exfil your team as well. Get your boys out.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Thirty-eight survivors. My God.”

“Copy that, sir. Actually, I can’t totally make out the French guy, but I think he just said that one of them is only eighteen months old. A baby was born down there.”

Deep in the tunnel, Jameson coughed, looked around at his men, and then addressed the dazed Frenchman in front of him.

“You say you cleared the maintenance tunnel all the way to the entrance?”

The man nodded. “But it was locked.” It wasn’t a question really, but an accusation. They had got so close to freedom, all the way to the entrance. And no one had let them out.

The Frenchman went on. “The doorway was not openable. We did try. We tried many times.”

“Well we can fix that. Let’s get a move on. Wait… is it safe to move around in there?”

“Yes. And it is dry.”

Jameson turned to his squad leaders.

“Okay. Everyone into the maintenance tunnel. I’ll inform Grews that we’re coming out a different way.”

Five minutes later, and Grews was still up and pacing the ground, barking orders to everyone who came within a few yards of him. There was a lot to do, but none of the staff carrying out the orders seemed to mind. They had seen a change in their major almost instantly. He was himself again and he had a job to do and no one was going to stop him. Even if it meant that in a few hours he would be looking at a court-martial for disobeying orders.

“Get that damn maintenance tunnel open. And do it fast.”

MOGADISHU OF THE DEAD

All of Alpha, plus the fifteen-man MARSOC team, but minus their command elements, now sat in a larger briefing room belowdecks on the Kennedy. Predictably, the two teams sat on opposite sides of the room. But, for some reason, Henno made a special effort to plop down on the other side of the house. Maybe he was determined to meet some Americans he could fully endorse. He’d heard some damned impressive things about the U.S. Marine Corps.

“Henno,” he said, putting his hand out to the marine beside him.

“Reyes,” the man answered, taking his hand. “Any news from the world?”

“Let’s see. Last I heard, the Queen was touring the reconstruction of the East End, where the Olympic Park used to be.”

Reyes laughed. “She still gets out? What’s she, like 104? Amazing.”

“Yeah. She learned it from her mum and dad in WWII. They refused to be evacuated during the Blitz.” Most of the others in the room were talking quietly to their teammates, or reviewing pre-briefing notes.

Reyes leaned in. “I hear almost all of England’s still got electrical power?”

Henno nodded. “Comes on and off. But reopening and rehabilitating the coal mines in the north worked a treat. They’ve had to do modification of all kinds of shit to burn coal instead of oil. There’s also the wind farms that the hippies and the bloody EU pushed for back when people gave a shit about the environment. They look pretty smart now. And, of course, we’ve twisted the dials on the nuclear power plants all the way to the right.”

“I guess disposing of spent fuel rods is the least of our problems now.”

“Yeah. The Eurozone makes a pretty good dumping ground for nuclear waste at this point.”

Reyes laughed, but then his smile faded. “Tell me. Are you mothers seriously planning to do a run through a city of three million dead cannibals…?”

Henno just shrugged and nodded.

Reyes asked, “Are we even sure everyone there’s dead?”

“Dead-ish.”

“Jesu Cristo,” Reyes said. Henno squinted and looked into the man’s eyes – and recognized that look. It was the one they all got every once in a while – when it sank in that they might really be standing at the twilight of their species. That jolt of waking up into a nightmare.

Heigh ho, Henno always said at such times. May as well get on with it. Better than sitting around bemoaning the sorry fate of the world.

“What kind of tactics,” Reyes asked, “have you guys developed against swarm attacks?”

But before Henno could answer, their commanders – Drake, Fick, Ainsley, and Handon – banged through the hatch and silenced the already pretty silent room.

* * *

“Good evening,” Ainsley said. “Welcome to Op Secunda Mortem. Alpha has already gotten the high-level mission concept. Here it is for the MARSOC fellows, who are our backup and QRF.” Handon had reminded him to make a conscious effort not to refer to them as “the B team.” No pissing off the marines, remember… “Our team call signs for the op are going to be Mortem One and Mortem Two. The air element is Grey Goose Zero.” He sat on the edge of the table before continuing.

“This is a combat jump: high-altitude/high-opening over Lake Michigan, then we fly in on the prevailing winds – straight into downtown.” He tapped at a keyboard on the table, and an overlaid street- and topo-map of Chicago came up on the projection screen behind him. “The good news is our drop zone is the top of this building here: 290 West Lake Street, office and labs of NeuraDyne Neurosciences. Our target site.” He flashed a laser pointer at a building – dead in the middle of downtown, just inside the point where the Chicago River branched.

“The good news is: we don’t have to fight our way in on the street. We just touch down light as a feather on this nice flat roof, cut through the rooftop access doors, and descend – clearing and holding any levels of the building necessary to get where we’re going.”

Ainsley paused, put the laser pointer down, and pressed his palms flat on the table. He looked up, casting his gaze over the faces of the operators in the room. “The bad news is: particularly at this time of year, the wind off the lake can gust to 30mph – it can also send dense fog spilling into the canyons of the city streets. Meteorologically speaking, it’s a closed-loop circulation pattern causing sharp updrafts under certain conditions. In foul weather it can also massively increase storm intensity.”

“So that’s us fucked, then,” said Henno.

Handon took up the laser pointer. In gruffer tones he said, “You can see our drop zone here is ringed by both forks of the river… plus the ‘L’, or elevated train platforms… and about a dozen other skyscrapers on all sides.” He clicked the laser off. “That’s us fucked.”

The briefing moved forward.

* * *

“And now a few words,” Ainsley said, “about the new Zulu type.”

Most of the marines looked uncomprehending. This was news to them. Ainsley surveyed their expressions before continuing.

“We’ve only seen a handful, and only briefly, and never under sustained observation – never mind scientific controls. Luckily, we’ve got two gentlemen here with us who have.” He nodded at Drake, who stepped outside and came back with two strangers in tow. The first wore the standard British Army Temperate Combat dress – camo field jacket and trousers with beret. From his insignia, he was a captain in the Royal Corps of Engineers. The second man wore a blue jumpsuit, with the insignia of the UK Security Services.

“Captain Martin and Corporal Wesley,” Ainsley said. “Both saw action in the Battle of Folkestone. And both had close encounters with a Foxtrot.”

“Foxtrot, sir?” A marine lance corporal had both his hand and his eyebrows raised.

Ainsley cleared his throat. “The designation for the new Zulu type is ‘Foxtrot November’. Work it out in your own time.” The heavy brow of the marine started working up and down while Ainsley carried on. “It is believed that this represents a new adaptation of the virus – occurring in areas that have long been totally infested. So there’s at least a chance we’ll face them in Chicago. Martin and Wesley have kindly dropped in to brief us.” He stepped aside.

The two newcomers, scanning the room, now looked briefly to each other. The soldier straightened up. “Well… they’re fast – much faster than Romeos, or runners. Faster than any I’d ever fought. They also seem to have much more agility and body control. And they don’t appear to feed – only to infect.”

Another marine raised a hand. “Don’t feed, sir?”

Ainsley chimed in again. “The theory from the bio blokes is that it’s an adaptation – when there are few enough living remaining, this ‘infect-and-run’ behavior gets the infection into the last remaining pockets of survivors.”

“Bohica,” mumbled another marine. Bend over – here it comes again. Several of his teammates laughed aloud.

Wesley, the UKSS noncom, took a step forward. He didn’t look like he was finding any of this funny. “Just a single one of these things,” he said, fighting a quaver in his voice, “took down both of the men in my station before they even realized what was happening. They never had a chance... And before we knew it, it had turned ten, twenty, fifty more zombies…”

Under his breath, one of the marines whispered, “Motherfuckers shoulda learned to duck… Security dudes, jeesh…” This drew barely stifled laughter from MARSOC and Alpha both.

Wesley gave the room a venomous look. Handon didn’t look best pleased, either, and spoke sharply. “It’s not just security service guys, you comedians. USOC’s lost people, too. My team’s PO attachment bought it when one of these things leapt onto a fast rope dragged by a moving helo. And they may be responsible for taking out the SEAL team that was wiped out to a man yesterday.”

This seemed to drain the humor from the room.

Martin looked more circumspect, but added quietly, “I lost my whole platoon. One of these things got loose in our lodgings. Most of my men never made it out of bed.”

Gunny Fick stood, removed a stub of cigar, and concluded: “So you motherfuckers be advised: field reports indicate that the difficulty of making a headshot on a Foxtrot is about like the difficulty of hitting a regular Zulu – squared. They’re coming fast, they’re running and jumping – and with the implacable intention of turning you into a flesh-eating freak, who will kill and eat your own friends, probably in seconds. Under those conditions, only complete dead-eye dicks, who also have pure liquid nitrogen running through their goddamned veins, can make that shot. Which had better describe you fucking smart alecks.”

* * *

“…Another concern on this op is going to be the danger of ‘Robert Neville’ types still breathing air in Chicago.” The commanders had been trading off for over an hour, and Fick was now taking a turn. Frankly, the marines had a bit more experience zombie-fighting in more places, and in more varied terrain, than had Alpha. Also, since each group had lived its own personal ZA, their slang didn’t match up perfectly.

Ali raised her hand. “Robert Neville types, Gunny?”

“Yeah, you know, from I Am Legend. That guy living all alone in New York. I think in that other book they called ’em LaMOEs – Last Man on Earth. A long-term survivor, holed up with a lot of firepower… and very accustomed to shooting first and asking questions never.”

“Copy that, Gunny.”

Ali sunk low in her chair and pushed her hair behind her ear.

“Accordingly, it’s going to be full body armor along with the bite suits and face shields…”

* * *

“Let’s talk exfiltration and extraction,” said Ainsley.

“Thank fuck for that,” muttered Henno, along with several similar sotto voce sentiments.

“You all know how critical this target is believed to be. Frankly, it’s a lot more important that we get the data out than that we get ourselves out.” He let that grim reminder of their duty sink in for a few seconds. “The plan is this: we’re jumping in with a powerful radio transmitter, with encrypted burst data capability, as well as the batteries to power it. When we’ve secured the NeuraDyne servers, we’re going to try to send all the data out on the air straight away. But there may be paper documents, samples, chemical solutions, slides, X-rays, or other materials we need to get out as well.”

Handon removed his soggy cigar stub from his mouth and jumped in. “Plus, some of you sons of bitches may have ideas about getting home yourselves.” Most of the men grinned. The dynamic between Handon and Ainsley was actually a pretty good example of the complementary roles of officers and senior NCOs, with the latter as combination big brother and enforcer.

Ainsley went on. “As you’ll have guessed, we can’t just fly off the top of the building again. The closest place a fixed-wing aircraft can land to extract us is here.” He lased the map at a little island just off the edge of downtown, sitting in the lake, and connected by a thin land bridge at its northern end. “This is Northerly Island Park – formerly Meigs Air Field. From 1948 it was a little single-strip airport. In 1994, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans to close the airport and build a park in its place. There was some sort of palaver involving the state legislature, and in the end Daley bulldozed the runway. However, in 2003, we know that a small commuter aircraft made an emergency landing on the grass next to the demolished strip. After effecting electrical repairs, it took off safely again.”

Drake chimed in. “It won’t be the smoothest take-off you’ve ever experienced. But my pilots have seen the sat imagery. And they’re confident they can get in and out again. As you know, the bird for this op doesn’t have the endurance to linger, and there’s nowhere safe to land and hang out – so as soon as you jump, it’s going to do a 180 and race back to the flattop to refuel. At the Greyhound’s max cruise speed, it’s a hair over 2.5 hours each way. So that’s a minimum of five hours you’re on your own. When you ring, the bird will go out again – empty, if you’ve got the goods and need extraction; full of marines if you need assistance. Either way, it comes down on the island airstrip.”

“Wait a second,” Predator said, his palm making a move for his forehead. “There’s still the small matter of getting ourselves to the freaking airstrip.”

Ainsley nodded. “Two-point-eight miles over surface streets. You’ll hardly notice it.”

Predator went ahead and executed that face-palm maneuver. Juice joined him. Imagining that three-mile run out in the open, through an urban center, surrounded by virtually unlimited attackers, they were both pretty much thinking the same thing:

Welcome to the Mogadishu of the Dead – Population: us.

And around them the ship sailed on through the night, toward the Dead New World.

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The Epic Adventure Continues in:
ARISEN, BOOK TWO
MOGADISHU OF THE DEAD

When the Zombie Apocalypse came, one country had shut down its borders in response to a major terrorist attack. Now Fortress Britain is the last bastion of the living.

And one international team of supremely elite special operators are humanity's last best hope for survival. Supremely trained and armed, always the most skilled, resolved, and unstoppable amongst us, now the commandos of Alpha team are tasked with one last desperate operation.

They must cross the Atlantic aboard the world's only remaining supercarrier and insert by air into the very middle of a dead continent, all in search of a rumored vaccine that might bring humanity back from the brink. But their op goes dangerously wrong from the start, with their team scattered to hell and back, and their target site a dry hole. Now they must fight their way on foot through a city of 3 million ravening dead guys, in search of an underground bunker that might hold the Last Man on Earth. But these undead will not be like any Zulus they ever encountered before – and they surround the new target in a writhing ring of death 30 feet high on all sides…

Available now, exclusively from: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk.

Alpha team will return in January 2013 in
ARISEN, BOOK THREE
THREE PARTS DEAD