Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (6 page)

“Okay,” said Mayes. “So scratch them. Who else?”

“The civilians from the tunnel.”

“No. Not civilians. I need military intel. They don’t know shit.”

Broads looked thoughtful for a moment, but then clicked his fingers.

“The Marines who went into the tunnel at Folkestone also were engaged at Canterbury. They tagged and confirmed the original type-three, which was the original vector of this whole shit-show. They’re back behind the lines now, I believe. At least we have confirmation that the rescue op for the Channel Tunnel survivors was successful, so I’m going to presume we have the Marines back in the lines.”

“Who is that? What unit?”

“One Troop Royal Marines. They were the ones that busted out of Germany.”

Grews’ pet Bootnecks
, Mayes thought.
Well, he’s had them on his leash for long enough.

“That’s our men,” said Mayes. “I need their commander in quarantine and ready for debrief.”

“Roger that, sir,” said Broads.

“Hell, pull his whole team from the front. The Paras have the retreat under control, and a handful of men won’t make a difference. Have them sent to Biggin Hill and quarantined for refit. And get me their officer on the blower ASAP.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Broads.”

“Sir?”

“Make absolutely sure they are under strict quarantine. The last thing we want is one of them carrying the damn plague inside the M25.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mayes turned back to the screen.

“Now, we have how
many refugees on the way to the south gates?”

“Roughly thirty thousand, from the reports in so far. And that’s just from Canterbury and the Folkestone area. Other areas north of there are already starting evacuation into the safe zone, and I can confirm that we have that under control.”

“How long before most of them reach the wall?”

“About eight hours. They’re mostly on foot, and have been traveling overnight, so progress is slow.”

“Do we even have somewhere to put all these people? What’s the capacity of the quarantine zones?”

Broads looked puzzled for a moment as he made some calculations. “We can fit them, but we’d have to use the prisons as well. We’ve got room for maybe half that number in the facilities at Epsom and Gravesend, but we don’t have the logistics support right now to handle those kind of numbers. Food, water, blankets, medical supplies – all stretched thin.”

“If we have the space to quarantine them all, then do it, and alert the Royal Logistics Corps to find the support for it. There’s a reason they’re the largest corps in the Army. Anyway, I’m not fucking around with shifting refugees across London when we’ve got the outbreaks to worry about. Whose job is that anyway?”

“Erm… Major Hallings, sir. He’s OC of the quarantine camps.”

“Good. Get someone to ring him up and tell him he has thirty thousand refugees to cope with in the next few hours.”

Battlefield

Britain - Kent Downs

Lieutenant Jameson watched as the third helo rose rapidly from the ground, leaned to its left and then shot up into the darkening sky. With it, the last of the Channel Tunnel survivors were safely away, and on their way to London, where at least they would be far from the front line. For now.

For his men, after what seemed like an age of unrelenting combat, there was no such reprieve. In the distance, thunderclouds rumbled and sporadic flashes of lightning flickered like tendrils across the sky. He turned and scanned his unit, One Troop Royal Marines, and did a headcount. Two more of his men had gone down in the fight to break through to the friendly line of Paras holding the dead at bay along this section of the front. Even as he scanned the weary faces of his men, he found it difficult to identify who had fallen, which of those faces he saw every day was now missing. He knew all these men very well, like each was his brother, but somehow he couldn’t focus his thoughts and recall those that had gone.

They had been lucky, he thought. Even with two more men down, he was surprised they hadn’t lost a lot more. During the push through the waves of dead that were even now, inexplicably, coming from seemingly every direction, they had been surrounded more than once. At those times, the Marines had formed a tight circle around the civilians and gone into all-around defense, keeping the dead away with a torrent of gunfire, the civilians joining in with hand-held weapons when things got too close and the dead were too many. It had been a while since he had ordered his men to fix bayonets, but they had needed it this time.

The relief of reaching the rear was immediate. The group had pushed through the lines of paratroopers and collapsed onto the grassy field, not caring if they got covered in the mud kicked up by hundreds of boots. It was the first moment in nearly twenty-four hours that they hadn’t been fighting almost constantly, and they were all close to collapse.

Standing there, watching the last of the helicopters speed away, Jameson wondered where they would take the refugees next. London, sure, but where in London? What would they do with them? It wasn’t like they had homes to go to. Some of them, he thought, were British, and might have friends or relatives in London, but the majority were French. He guessed they would just have to go wherever there was space. It had been managed before, during the Blitz.

As he turned back to Eli, who was standing nearby watching the front, he hoped the tunnelers would be safe, and for the first time in two years. Initially, they’d been trapped in the Channel Tunnel – and he’d seen firsthand what that had been like, when his team cleared the place out – and then Folkestone, and on to Canterbury, both overrun and evacuated. And, in the case of the latter, bombed nearly to rubble, with them still in it. It was about time they caught a break.

“The line’s falling back,” said Eli, nodding toward the distant rank of troops. For the first time that morning Jameson noticed the dried blood on his friend’s forehead – from his concussion, he hoped, when that out-of-control 4x4 had knocked a stone wall onto him in Canterbury. The other possibilities weren’t as good.

Jameson frowned, wiped the dirt and sweat away from his eyes, and watched. Sure enough, the Para lines weren’t moving forward, as he would have expected, but backward, toward them. But they weren’t fleeing. This was a tactical retreat. He was wondering what the hell was going on when his radio crackled in his ear.

“One Troop, this is CentCom, message over.”

His frown deepened.

“CentCom, One Troop Actual, send message,” he tried to say, and was surprised to find all that came out was a feeble croak. His mouth and throat had clammed up, completely dry. He coughed, spat, and repeated the words more clearly this time.

“We’re unable to locate Major Grews,”
said the female voice, quiet and slightly broken by static hiss.
“Do you have a visual on him or have had contact recently?”

Jameson hadn’t heard from Grews since… when had he heard from his OC? Was it after the crashed ambulance, or before? He tried to focus on his last memory of Grews, but it just wouldn’t resolve.

“Negative. We’ve had no recent contact or visual on Major Grews.”

“Acknowledged. Report if you do locate him. Break. We have a new op order for you, over.”

Eli looked at him quizzically, and Jameson noted that his troop sergeant’s headset was missing, probably lost in combat – he couldn’t hear a word of the transmission.

“CentCom are looking for Grews, and we have new orders,” Jameson told him. Pressing his PTT button, he said, “Send orders, over.”

The radio crackled even louder, making it hard for Jameson to hear the words clearly.
“Head just to the north of the refugee camp, half a mile. There is a Chinook vectoring in to extract you, ETA ten minutes. Call sign is Lead Duck Zero One.”

“Roger that, but where are we going?”

“Quarantine,”
replied the operator.
“Your ride will have further details. Over.”

“All received,” he said, and as he did so his memory cleared, and his last conversation with Grews returned. “CentCom, be advised: I last saw Grews about an hour ago, in an airborne helo. He was overflying the battle as we pulled out of the city, but I haven’t seen him since.” He scanned the air across the battlefield, but after doing a full three-sixty and then panning back once more to be sure he hadn’t missed something, he still couldn’t see the tiny command helo among the dozens of big Chinooks. But he knew it had to be up there somewhere.

“That’s received. CentCom out.”
And the radio fell silent.

Jameson stopped scanning and turned to Eli, who had moved further away, and was standing with his back to him, looking up at the clouds. He was shading his eyes from the glare of the sun and peering toward the west, where dark storm clouds were rolling in, threatening to make their day even worse that it had already been.

“Crazy weather,” Eli said, turning to face his Lieutenant. “I reckon this bloody plague has screwed up more than people. This field’s gonna be a quagmire in a few hours. Shit, fighting deaders in the damn mud, again, just like in Belgium.”

Jameson coughed, then shook his head. “Not for us, at least not today.” His throat was drying up again, and he wondered if he had an internal injury, or maybe just a slight cut.
I hope that’s all it is,
he thought.

Eli looked surprised. “What’s up, boss?”

Jameson looked to the north across the field that an hour ago had been teeming with refugees. Now it was filled with paratroopers, and dozens of Chinooks emptying even more of them out onto the muddy ground. Just yards away, a new line was forming to bolster the effort to keep the dead at bay, and in the distance Jameson could make out another black dot zooming in over the trees – their ride, inbound.

“We’re being recalled. CentCom have something else for us.”

Eli raised his eyebrows. “And that is?”

“No idea, mate,” said Jameson, shaking his head. “They didn’t say what, or where, but we’re expected to be half a mile from here in ten minutes. Then up and out.”

Eli grinned, the first smile that Jameson had seen on the man’s face for a while.

“Nice,” said Eli. “Out of the rain and mud… and the dead.”

“For now.”

Jameson turned to his men, most of whom were still seated or lying on the ground. Some worked at checking their gear, but most were just getting their breath back and taking a well-earned break. He hated to cut it short. His men had been through pretty much every bad situation possible in the last day or so, and then some, but at least this time he had some good news for them.

“Okay. Everybody ruck up! We’re moving out,” he shouted, and grinned when his order was met by moans.

“We’ve gotta be one klick north of here in ten minutes for extraction. So, unless you really want to stay here and fight zombies in the mud with the boys in the maroon berets, rather than taking a nice ride back to quarantine…”

The response was as he expected, and his grin widened as every man leapt to his feet and started bundling up their gear. A minute later, One Troop was pounding dirt across the field. They dodged through the mustering paratroopers, and jogged through the wooden gate at the north end of the field, past a copse of trees and into the open ground beyond. More Chinooks were landing in the next field, half a dozen of them settling carefully before spilling troops into the mud. A few hours before, this field had been filled with refugees being checked for infection, those who had escaped the terrible outbreak in their town, and as One Troop ran along the narrow ditch at the edge of the field, they came across the grisly evidence that remained.

They stumbled upon the ditch about halfway across the field. A number of times squad members slipped and were pulled to their feet by those behind them, but when they saw the four-foot furrow, they all slowed, almost stopping dead. Jameson wondered what the ditch was for, but then caught his first glimpse of the body bags. Dozens of them were lying along the edge of the field, from where they normally would have been collected and disposed of, but the camp had been evacuated in a hurry, the convoy of CentCom vehicles hurrying away along the road, followed by masses of running or walking uninfected survivors. Here, lying in lines along the ground, were the unfortunate ones, those who had been cut or bitten. And there had simply been no other humane way to deal with them.

Jameson shook his head and tried to concentrate on the way ahead, pushing his men to follow at a quickening pace. He had fired upon hundreds of the dead in the years after the fall, probably thousands, but killing civilians who were still alive, but definitely or even probably infected, was a job he was glad someone else had to do.

As the Marines reached the end of the field, Jameson wondered if the people in those bags, the newly deceased, would ever be given proper burials. He saw Eli looking back, a thoughtful, sad expression on his face, and as he turned back again, Jameson nodded, understanding.

They reached another fence, and seeing no easy way around, climbed over the barbed wire that topped it and sprinted toward the fat, twin-bladed helicopter waiting in the middle of the barley field beyond.

As they rose into the sky a minute later, with all of his remaining Marines on board and accounted for, Jameson looked back across the battlefield, to see the lines of Paras facing off against the first mass tide of dead that had ever walked on British soil. There were no words to be said, so most of the men sat in silence, listening to the thrum of the rotors as they sped across the sky, away from the battle. Jameson was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before they were sent back to this very place, or somewhere else along the line, but he was damn well glad to be out of it for at least a few hours.

A few feet away, Eli was writing into his notebook – a dirty, scruffy old thing he had kept with him the entire time they had been crossing Europe to reach Britain. He thought it must be a diary of sorts, but had never asked. He just accepted that everybody needed their place to go to get away.