Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (32 page)

He tumbled and picked up speed as the blackness swallowed him whole.

* * *

On the roof above, Elson sprinted across the gap between the closed doors and the last helo. It hovered near the edge of the building, all its restrained power seeming poised or even desperate to launch itself into the air and to safety. Twenty feet ahead of him, Eli glanced up at the pilot, and wasn’t surprised at the fearful expression on the man’s face, as the four remaining Marines rushed across the rooftop toward salvation. Eli leapt in the side door, rolling and clearing out of the way as quickly as he could, hoping the others would be close behind. He shuffled into a kneeling position and hefted his rifle.

And then the door to the stairs burst outward, spilling a half-dozen of the insanely fast-moving ones, with more following behind. Elson, at the rear of the column of fleeing Marines, stumbled and nearly went down, but righted himself. He still had twenty feet of open roof to cover when the first zombie fell upon him, grabbing hold and pulling him to the ground. Others poured out of the door as Eli opened fire.

Another one of the last four Marines dove for the helo as it lifted off. He grabbed the lip of the doorway, and a man inside leaned out to pull him in, but then a dark flash of movement burst from the crowd below and vaulted the gap, latching on to the dangling man and clawing at him. He screamed, and grasped desperately, but the weight of the pawing corpse pulled him free as the helo rose and banked. One moment the man was there, the creature latched on to him, trying to claw its way up to the others inside, and the next the two were falling away, ten feet, then thirty, then a hundred, as the aircraft shot up and away from the building. And Eli watched with horror as the last of his Marines, left behind by the pilots, were now set upon by the dead.

He turned, and clambered over to the cockpit.

“We have to turn it around!” he shouted. “Jameson, Rotte, and Johnson are still inside the building, and may be alive.”

“Negative,” said the pilot. “We’re not going back. It’s too risky.”

“That’s not a suggestion!” shouted Eli. “That’s an order!”

The pilot turned from his controls for a moment, and stared Eli in the eyes.

“You may be in command of your unit now, Sergeant,” he said, his voice low and toneless, “But I outrank you, and this is my air mission.”

“But…”

“Not happening,” said the pilot. “We are mission complete.”

Eli stared at the man who had just sentenced his friends to death, and then looked back at the target building. Inside, as far as he knew, three of the men who had been his best mates since he joined up, many years ago, were now either dead or fighting for their lives. Elson, a man he had known for fifteen years, had already fallen, and soon Jameson, Rotte, and Johnson would be gone. He knew there was no possible way out of that building for just three men. The dead were too fast and they outnumbered the living a hundred or even a thousand to one.

Godspeed, my brothers.

Just Hanging Around

Target Building - Elevator Shaft

Every muscle in Jameson’s body screamed in protest as he gripped the cables, trying desperately to slow his descent, but still he plummeted too fast down the cold, dank, and pitch black shaft. He knew that in seconds he would hit the roof of the elevator car, which he remembered was all the way down on the ground floor. Ten stories, or would it be nine?

He squeezed harder, feeling his gloves, which were made for fast-rope descents, heating up and burning. They were protective enough on nylon rope, but on steel cable? He could feel the heat increasing on the palms of his hands, but gradually he began to slow. Dank air rushed past his face as the darkness below still sped rapidly toward him.

The flow of air slowed as he finally, and painfully, came to a stop and just hung there, breathing raggedly and wrapped around the cable with both hands and both legs. He felt something shift at his waist, and his heart jumped as the handgun popped out of its holster and fell into the darkness below. He let go with one hand and scrambled to catch it, grasping at the air with clutching fingers, but he was too slow. It was gone. But then, barely half a second later, he heard a loud thump as it landed below. He looked down, wishing to hell that he had managed to keep his night-vision goggles on, but they had broken off somewhere during the fight, or subsequent fall.

But the gun couldn’t have fallen far. It had only dropped for a second, maybe less, and there was no other sound of impact after the first. It had to be close by.

He eased his grip on the cable and started to slide down, two, three feet, then five, and then finally his boots hit the solid metal roof of the elevator.

Holy fucking shit, that was close.

He had slid nearly the entire length of the cable, the full height of the building, and only just stopped five feet from the bottom, seconds before he would have crashed into hard steel.

He squinted into the darkness and went down on his knees, searching for the handgun. He had another in a holster at his lower back, just for emergencies, and quickly checked that it was still there. It was, but he wanted both weapons. How many pistol magazines did he have? Four in a pouch on his tactical vest, plus one in each gun – if he could find the other in the dark.

He ran his hands along the roof and found something, but it wasn’t his handgun. He lifted it up, trying to use the tiny sliver of light from the lift shaft above to see what it was: his night-vision goggles, and still mostly intact. He managed to clip them back onto his helmet mount, hoping they would still work, but not expecting much. In that, he was not disappointed. Nothing, just more darkness, except… he switched on the visible-light LED on the side and it glowed for a moment and then went out. A couple of taps and it jumped to life, emitting a tiny glow into the corner of the elevator shaft – where his handgun lay just inches from the edge, threatening to fall into the gap down the side.

Jameson scanned the tiny area, and felt a surge of claustrophobia as he realized his situation – stuck at the bottom of a 150-foot shaft, surrounded by hundreds, or more likely thousands now, of the dead. He was completely alone for the first time in years. Alone except for – he suddenly learned as he panned the head-mounted light around behind him – a long-dead man whose grisly face stared back at him from the opposite side of the enclosed space.

The body was withered and thin, its skin cracked and dry, and long wispy strands of gray hair stuck out from underneath a cap pulled down tight over the dead man’s head. He wore overalls that had once been blue, but were now covered in dirt and grime, and as Jameson scanned the area around him, he saw signs that this poor soul had been here for a long time.

In another corner, a pile of empty cans lay rusting, and close by was a sleeping bag, or maybe just a blanket, bundled up. Flies buzzed around the rotted cloth, and jutting out of the man’s right hand was a bread knife with a black stain upon it, while his other hand lay across his stomach. There was a gaping wound in his wrist, long dried up and rotted away. Jameson stared at the man for a few seconds, wondering if that was to be his fate – to bleed to death in this pit, like its previous occupant. It would certainly guarantee that he didn’t come back as one of the dead, if he ended it right here.

But that wasn’t his way, and never could be. He had survived the apocalypse this far, even though it had been with the help of some of the greatest men he’d ever known, some of whom had just lost their lives in the building above him. He tried to take stock of his situation, to figure out what best to do next. Getting out of there was going to be difficult, perhaps impossible, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to die hiding on top of a lift.

But up above him, and through the very walls, he could hear banging and moaning. The dead were searching for him, he knew, and he looked up, wondering if at any moment one of them would come plunging down out of the darkness, having jumped into the shaft after him. Surely the fall would cripple anything that did, but if one of them landed on him? Well, if that happened he wouldn’t have to worry about escape plans.

He looked up again, to the single sliver of light up there, 150 or more feet above. They must have seen him jump, he thought, they must have. But maybe not. The damned things weren’t exactly worried about the consequences of falling, even down an elevator shaft. So, if they had seen him jump, they would have come tumbling after him in their dozens. But they hadn’t. He knew they were mindless, and driven only by instinct, so maybe the minute he had disappeared from sight, they had looked for a different target. Now that the helos were away, he was the only one that remained.

And then, unexpectedly, he heard radio traffic – and realized it had been there all along, but he hadn’t been listening. A knockback from the battle noise in Canterbury, maybe. He tried to focus on the voices, and finally Eli’s resolved. He attempted to follow the conversation, but it was muffled, and broken with static. The building itself was blocking the transmission – that had to be it. But he did hear Eli attempting to argue with another voice – was it the pilot? Jameson realized his radio was still on the air-mission net. And he could hear Eli shouting across it – demanding that the helos go back.

“Eli, Jameson, how copy?” he said, his voice weak.

“Jameson!”
came Eli’s response immediately.
“Where the fuck are you? And Rotte, Johnson? We saw Elson go down.”
His friend’s voice grew quieter, as though he was covering the mic to speak to someone else.
“I told you they were still alive!”

“Johnson and Rotte went down on the stairwell,” replied Jameson, keeping his voice low. The last thing he wanted was to bring the horde down upon himself.

“This fucking pilot won’t let me come back for you,”
said Eli.

Another voice cut in.
“I told you we can’t risk the mission, or risk losing anyone else – or an entire aircraft.”

“Understood,” replied Jameson.

“What the hell?”
shouted Eli.
“You’re just going to let them leave you behind?”

Jameson sighed. “You can’t get me out of here, buddy. This place is crawling with them.”

“But…”

“No. No fucking buts, mate. There’s hundreds in here. Thousands more outside.”

“Make a run for it, at least.”

“Yes. I’m going to, but—”

“We can at least wait around and pick you up if you manage to get out.”

“No,”
came the pilot’s voice.
“I’m sorry. But we’re nearly at bingo fuel now. If I turn back and wait while he attempts a break-out, we won’t make it back to the UK.”

“Then drop me off,”
said Eli.
“I’ll go back and help him get out, and get back. We’ve done this before.”

“No,” said Jameson. “You’re not coming back for me. I’ll try and make it out of here, hopefully reach the river, but I’m not risking you or the men, never mind the mission.”

“And you’re going to get from here to the UK on your own? On foot?”

“If I have to. We did it once before.”

“
WE. We did it before. But alone?
” Left unspoken were Eli’s thoughts on Jameson’s chances of survival on a solo trek across Europe. And his voice was already fading out, as the last helo winged it steadily away toward the English Channel.

Finally, there was only silence on the channel. Jameson could almost hear the cogs of his friend’s mind spinning, and he wondered now if he should have just kept quiet, and not spoken at all. It would have made it a lot easier.

* * *

Just a mile from the building, at the rendezvous point (RVP) pre-agreed with the air mission commander, Captain Charlotte Maidstone, call sign Wyvern Two Zero, listened in on the radio chatter. Her Apache hummed around her, like a protective suit of armor, which is basically what it had been since the first day she sat down in it. She was safe there, and knew it one was thing that would always be there for her. But now, in the drama that was playing out as she listened in, yet another soul was being left behind – abandoned, and left to die alone.

This mission had been thrown together in a hurry, that much she knew. When she had finally landed at Wattisham Airfield, after the surreal shock of finding Hereford deserted, she’d gone straight to see the duty officer there.

Barely looking up, he said, “What, you back already?”

“I’ve been gone eighteen months!”

“And yet it seems like only yesterday… Anyway, not a moment too soon. Got a mission for you.”

“What? Where?”

“Over the water this time. Tool up, and top your tanks. This one’s going to be right at the edge of your combat radius.”

She’d been half-tempted to tell him that she’d only slept four hours in the last 48, and only in half-hour chunks. But, with no other flight-ready birds out on the deck, it was pretty obvious there was no one else to fly this mission. Everyone else was off fighting the outbreak. And, anyway, she wasn’t in the business of saying no.

Not when her boys needed her.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got a gunner for my front seat?”

“Ha!” The duty officer was already doing something else, before Charlotte finally turned around herself and got to it.

Within a couple of hours of that conversation, she was back in the air and watching the mad Royal Marines dropped on the roof in the middle of a city of the dead, wondering if they were brave or just suicidal. And now, as the three Pumas headed back in her direction, leaving behind the commanding officer of the Marines, she wondered what was so important about the equipment they had retrieved. This hadn’t been a standard salvage, she guessed that much, but for the damned equipment to suddenly be more important than the men doing the job of getting it rubbed her the wrong way. They were leaving a man behind, to die alone.

Not on my watch
, she thought.
Not if I can help it.