Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (18 page)

Predator grunted in appreciation as he took the plate of additional food that Ali handed off to him. As he cut up everything in advance, the quicker to fire it all down, he said, “I like German Shepherds. The sturdy body, dense coat, fierce head, bright eyes. The tall ears. Always alert. Like a furry missile of potential energy.”

Juice squinted across at the animal, who was very sleek since Wesley had cleaned her up. “How
did
she make it all that time on her own? Two years of surviving the dead, surviving no food, surviving the other survivors – who I’m sure would have been happy to turn her into a meal.”

Handon looked over his own shoulder. “Wait a second,” he said, twisting around at the waist. The dog seemed to lock eyes with him. She then looked around at the other operators around the table, her tail wagging happily. “Sit,” Handon said. The dog instantly did so.

"Oh, yeah," said Wesley. "She responds to sit and—"

Speaking in clear, sharp tones, Handon said, “
Building search
.” The dog stood again, alert as hell – but then looked around, as if waiting to be pointed at something. Which is exactly what she was waiting for.

“Heel,” he said. The dog sat down again. “
Stand off
,” he said, and pointed at Henno. The dog leapt to her feet, showing her bared teeth to Henno, and leaning forward at him, growling slightly. It was as if only some invisible leash prevented her from blasting forward and attacking. In reality, it wasn’t the leash – it was the absence of the next command in the chain of aggression.

“Nice one,” Henno said, setting his mug down.

“Heel,” Handon said, causing the dog to disarm herself. He looked up at Wesley. “This is a working military dog.”

“And that’s how she survived,” Juice said, wiping his mouth and putting his napkin on his tray. “Military training.”

Wesley nodded in understanding. He watched the dog looking happily at the operators. “She seems to like you lot.”

Handon shrugged. “We probably smell like her previous handler.”

“Plus,” Juice added, “grunts always recognize other grunts. Where’d you find her, specifically?”

“Not far from Naval Air Station Oceana, actually. She was hiding in the boat we escaped on. I’d say from the mess in there that she’d been holed up in the place for a good while.”

“That’s it, then,” Juice said. “She probably stayed near the base – waiting two years for her handler to come home. He never did. I bet there’s even a decent chance we can guess her name for you.”

“Oh,” Wesley said. “How’s that?”

“Military K-9 guys aren’t always all that creative. Plus they’re tradition-bound. Certain famous military dog names have a way of always coming back around.” Juice leaned toward the animal. “Chesty?” he tried. “Chips?” Nothing. He shrugged, then explained to Wesley, “Marine mascot, and the most decorated dog of World War Two, respectively.”

Predator threw in. “Gunner? Horrie the Wog Dog?” Nothing.

“She’s a girl,” Ali said, “you dipsh— you fools.” She leaned over. “Smoky? Are you named Smoky?”

Before Ali could try again, Henno spoke up. “Smoky was a Yorkshire Terrier. This is no Yorkie.” He screwed up his face and looked thoughtful, finally pronouncing: “
Judy
.”

The dog looked him in the face and barked.

“Judy,” Henno said again, obviously pleased with himself.

“Who was Judy?” Sarah asked.

Henno was already standing up to leave, Ali following his lead. But he paused and said, “Served with the Royal Navy in the big one. Only animal to have been registered as a Japanese prisoner of war.”

“How did that happen?”

Henno visibly searched his memory. “Her ship was sunk by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. She got ashore with the survivors, but they had no water, so she dug down to an underground spring, saving everyone’s necks. When the crew were captured by the Japs, they smuggled her into the camp. Inside, for years, the pooch would sound the alarm when the guards approached, distract them from their beatings, and such like. They were finally being transferred aboard a ship, but it got torpedoed. Somebody shoved her out a porthole, not knowing if she’d survive. Later, there were stories of a dog helping drowning men reach floating debris, bringing them flotsam to keep ’em afloat, or else letting blokes hold on to her back while she swam ’em to safety. Then she just rocked up at the new camp, in Sumatra, like.”

“What happened to her? Was she freed in the end?”

“Jap guards got sick of her and sentenced her to death.” Those around the table who didn’t know the story tensed up, bracing for a horrible end to an amazing tale. “But she managed to hide out in the jungle, scoffing snakes and rats. Tussle with an alligator left her injured. But the war finally ended, she hopped a troopship to Liverpool, and lived happily ever after. Interviewed on the BBC, she was.”

“
Judy
,” Wesley repeated, leaning down to scruff her face. Looking up at Henno, he said, “Cheers, mate.”

“Yeah, no worries.” And with that, he and Ali both nodded and left. There was work to do. There was always work to do.

Along with Pred, Juice got up as well. “Just keep a good eye on her,” he said.

“Okay,” Wesley agreed. “Um – why’s that?”

“Those two years on her own will have been tough. God knows what she saw, or what she had to do to survive. And working military dogs… well, they sometimes suffer from PTSD.”

Wesley glanced at the two kids, and looked concerned. “You think I should put her on a leash?” he said. “She seems pretty docile to me.”

Juice shrugged. “I’d just watch her.”

And on that note, the party broke up, leaving Wesley and the dog standing, looking at each other.

“So it’s Judy,” he said, and grinned when she stood up and whined. “Well, I’m Wesley.”

She cocked her head to one side, and sniffed again. Wesley stood watching her, and then grinned.

“Hmm. I wonder how many commands you understand? I think it’s time to go look in on Derwin in the hospital. He said something about experience handling military dogs…”

Grounded

Britain - Kent Downs

Major Grews was choking, his throat constricted. As he slowly came to, consciousness returning in swirling drifts rather than a sharp edge, he realized that someone had him by the throat and was tightening their grip, slowly. His breath was shallow, and with every second it became harder to breathe, as the pressure increased. Even with this threat he found himself unable to take control of his own body, and a haze hung over his every sense as he fought to break free. It wasn’t until he could no longer draw a breath that his body rebelled, throwing him into the waking world with a violence that sent a tingle of nerves spiking through his arms and face. His eyes flew open, and he tried to put his arms up to defend himself, but there was no one there.

He tried again to move, but realized he was pinned down. It was the seating from the back of the helicopter – somehow it had gone from being attached to the floor behind, to being on top of him. The constricted feeling was not in his throat, but his chest, as the heavy seat was forced against him, pushing him hard against his own seat and the inside of the aircraft.

Many thoughts rushed to his mind, but his memories of the last few minutes were elusive. What the hell had happened? He tried to cycle back, to figure out what had gone wrong, and to remember why he wasn’t up in the air following the battle, but instead upside down, forced against the fuselage and looking through cracked glass at the ground directly below him.

And then he remembered. They had gone back over the battlefield one last time on his order – watching the defenses as they collapsed. His instinct had been to leave, to head to the next rally point, and to assess his resources before his next action. But CentCom was going to want to know what exactly had gone wrong, and also there was the strange urge to see his people make their stand, to be witness to their sacrifice, as the dead swarmed over the refugee camp, washing away the defenses like a flood. Grews had ordered the pilot to fly over one last time, circling the remaining defensive positions, which were still holding on, to give the refugees as much time as possible to escape. But something had slammed into the helo, something heavy, or more than just one. The world had spun, crashed into them, then fallen away again, but he remembered seeing the pilot slumped over his controls with blood pouring from his face.

They had risen again briefly, but then the helo rotated madly and collided with some nearby trees. The world whirled again, the noise of the rotors thudding in his head, and the groaning of stressed engines screeching as gravity pulled the struggling machine down. Grews had seen the ground coming up to meet them at high speed, just before the world blinked out.

Then, darkness.

But now more memories flooded into his head, clearer details. They had been flying over the top of a lone armored personnel carrier just as the dead overran it. There were soldiers all over, scurrying away from the vehicle, rather than standing their ground and fighting. Grews had cursed them, knowing there were enough of them down there that if they stood and fought, if they had been properly organized and led, then the dead could have been held back longer.

But many of the men down there weren’t infantry, they were logistics personnel, and civilian contractors, some of them conscripted, and most with very little combat training, and even less experience. It was pointless expecting them to behave much differently than the civilian refugees, who were now streaming away from the scene in their thousands. Instead of holding the line, the conscripts had fled with everyone else.

That was when the lone APC had come back into view, as Grews’ flight circled around and made another pass. He remembered it now, the scene sharpening in his mind – they had been turning at last to leave, and he recalled looking back and seeing the machine-gunner in the APC turret being jumped by a mob of the dead, the fast ones. The man had spun around desperately, his trigger still depressed, filling the sky with the giant 50-caliber slugs that could tear thin-skinned vehicles to ribbons.

Including aircraft.

The hail of bullets had ripped through the helicopter, killing the two officers in the seats behind him and badly wounding the pilot. Blood had clouded the man’s eyes beneath his helmet, and he groaned in despair as gravity won the battle against the lift of their rotors. Only Grews had been left unscathed, and he couldn’t pilot the aircraft. He remembered trying to help the pilot keep his grip on the collective, and how they had bounced off the ground once and then spun toward the trees. The world blurred at that point, his vision unable to process the riot of movement as they rolled over again and again. Too many details were assaulting his senses for him to assimilate them, before more poured in.

He remembered up until the point the helicopter hit the treeline, and then the rest was blank, a void of lost memories and unconsciousness.

And now he was hanging upside down, pinned by the back seat, with only inches of freedom to move, one of his arms trapped and the other with a very limited range of motion. Behind him were the bullet-riddled remains of the two junior officers, and below, lying half out of the smashed front cockpit glass, was a very dead pilot. As Grews’ vision blurred one last time he caught a slight movement outside – no, a lot of movement. Dark figures passed by the window, rushing through the grass.

Must be the refugees
, Grews thought. If he could raise his voice and call out, maybe someone would hear him. They might be able to smash the window on his side and pull him free. Or maybe they would just ignore his calls and run for their lives. He tried to call out but nothing came. His chest was too constricted to produce more than a rasp.

Then there was a face in the window beside him, only a foot away. The man might have been handsome at one time, but now his tanned skin was purple and blotchy, and only one eye stared out of the two sockets. All that remained of the other was an angry black hole of dried blood and raw flesh. The hatred in the dead man’s remaining eye made Grews nearly crawl out of his skin. He had commanded many ground engagements against the dead in the days after the fall, but he had never been this physically close to one of them. Always his position had been safely behind the lines.

Then the dead man started pounding on the window, a dull, quiet thud-thud repeating every few seconds. Grews braced himself for the attack, for the creature to force its way in and reach for him. But after a minute of watching it bang on the glass, Grews realized it just didn’t have the strength to break through. He was safe, for the moment, but he would need to get out of this damned chair and get a gun if he were to have any chance of escape.

Then it dawned on him. The other shapes going by in a rush – they weren’t refugees. He now knew that the helo had fallen into the field he saw being overrun, and that he had been unconscious long enough for all the living to be either safely gone, or else no longer alive. Those dozens of dark shapes sprinting or stumbling by now were the dead, and he was behind enemy lines.

He tried to focus, but all he could think of was that the pilot must have been hanging half out the window when they went down. The man’s lower body should have been dangling outside, but only bloody stumps protruded from the airframe. There was something, a squelching, grinding noise, coming from below them. Grews couldn’t place the noise, couldn’t recognize it. He was only able to think about the pilot’s missing legs.

Okay
, he told himself.
You’ve just got to get your hands to the release catch and get yourself unstuck. Then you can get on the radio. If it still works. If not, then you run the fuck toward friendly lines, and hope to hell that you can stay ahead of the flood.

He pushed, trying to squeeze his arm between his chest and the seat that was crushing him, and after a few minutes had to stop to take a breath. The seat was wedged hard against the release button, which was also trapping his other arm. He tried wiggling the fingers of his right arm, and his stomach turned when he felt nothing, got no response from his extremity.