Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (9 page)

He rolled his shoulder, as if trying to shrug off an unwanted intrusion, or buzzing insect. He was chewing on the mangled stub of a cigar, and staring daggers at the laptop screen. What was on it clearly held his attention, but not in a good way. Emily could see his left cheek and ear, both still red and peeling from being splashed with flaming aviation fuel back on Beaver Island. But it had been worse, and would be a lot worse right now, if Emily had not taken it upon herself to salve it for him on their flight back.

When she tapped again, he grabbed the top of her right hand with his and reversed it into a very uncomfortable wrist lock. Emily yelped in pain – a high-pitched noise that practically caused Fick to tumble out of his chair. He immediately released her hand, then dialed down the volume of the music.

“Em,” he said, looking like he had startled himself by remembering her name.

“Gunny,” she said, smiling beneath huge eyes, and rubbing her wrist. She nodded at the laptop. “Don’t turn it down on my account. I like classic rock.”

Fick was already opening his mouth to ask if she was okay, but now he shut it again.
Classic rock? Jesus Christ, I must be getting old…

“One nice thing about the end of the world,” she said.

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“When you write your war memoirs, you can include all the song lyrics you want – without any frivolous lawsuits from the dumbasses in the music industry.”

Fick opened his mouth again, then closed it. He squinted, and just looked at her like she was some kind of alien visitor to their team room, which was pretty much the case. Finally he thought of something to say.

“In the Battle of Fallujah, the enemy blared prayers and religious songs over their loudspeakers – while we blasted Drowning Pool and Metallica over ours, twenty-four seven, just to fuck with them. Everyone started calling it Lalafallujah.”

Emily laughed. “The music festival from hell.”

Another awkward pause. Fick finally said, “Was there some actual reason you came down here?”

She hesitated, but then plunged ahead. “Well, um, Ali told me maybe you guys could use some help?” When Fick didn’t respond, she coquettishly crossed one ankle in front of the other. “Is there… anything I can do?”

Fick retrieved his cigar stub from where he had dropped it, and stuck it back in his piehole, seemingly just for the purpose of talking around it. “I don’t know,” he said, chomping. “Is there anything you can do?”

Emily smiled, because she actually got the reference. Fick was channeling Sergeant Apone from
Aliens
. Despite him being white, it was a nearly perfect fit. She played along, pointing at his screen. “Well, I can drive those spreadsheet macros.”

Fick’s eyebrows went north. He looked skeptical.

“Temp work. Plus computer classes at the community college.”

Relief washed over Fick’s face, as paperwork was just about the least favorite activity of every Jarhead whose job description included it. These team manifests, tab after incomprehensible tab, were making Fick really miss their lost and lamented Lieutenant, who as an over-educated officer type used to do all that crap for them.

“Be my guest,” Fick said, stepping away from the desk to make way for her. She sat down and adjusted the screen. After spending a few minutes explaining to her the tasks that needed doing, Fick happily moved across the room, looking forward to picking up something heavy.

A few minutes later, Emily removed an MP3 player from her pocket, jammed it into a USB slot on the laptop, and cranked the volume again. The laptop speakers started rattling out some edgier, more electronic-sounding rap-rock. Fick grimaced at first. But he soon found it growing on him. Marines around the room started bobbing their heads. Somebody fist-punched the air.

Sergeant Coulson looked over at Fick. “Hey, Gunny, a cute girl shows up – and your temporary command of this outfit draws to an immediate close.”

Fick stood up and jabbed an index finger in Coulson’s chest. “Hey! I’m still fuckin’ this monkey. She’s just here to take pictures.”

Emily turned around, her whole face lit up with amusement – and feigned shock.

“Don’t worry,” Coulson called across to her. “It probably won’t get any worse than this. Then again, it won’t get a whole lot better, either…”

Emily smiled, shook her head, and turned back to her work.
Take my word for it, guys
, she thought to herself.
I’ve heard much, much worse. And lived through it, too…

And she had.

She knew she was in a safe place now.

* * *

As Sarah traversed more companionway on the lower deck, she soon passed sailors walking alone or in small groups. She nodded at a young ensign, then an enlisted woman, as they went by. Neither seemed to know quite what to make of her; though the latter seemed to want to salute, before stopping herself. But, anyway, seeing these young, sharp, evidently capable people cheered her.

She had been a very long time in the wilderness – so many months in that lonely cabin. It had been precisely its isolation, carefully designed, that had allowed them to survive. But maybe she shouldn’t have been hiding out. Maybe she hadn’t been doing her part to save the world. Or maybe it had been all she could do – just staying alive had been her part.

But she’d never been much of a spectator.

Handon’s original idea had been to post her to the carrier’s NSF, the internal security force. It wasn’t too far from her own field of law enforcement (LE), and while possibly a stretch of her tactical skills, it would have been a good fit, and she knew she could grow to fill it. And evidently they needed people – after their onshore mission had gone wrong at NAS Oceana, and they’d had to conduct a frantic flight through shore bombardment to escape the descending storm of the dead.

But then Handon had a better idea, and a more important job for her.

Ali had been responsible so far for babysitting Dr. Park. But now she had to focus on healing up, as well as the team’s work-up for the Somalia mission. Back in the relative safety of the supercarrier, Park certainly needed less protecting than he had when they were fighting their way across Beaver Island, or parachuting into a giant set-piece naval zombie battle. But he was still the most important man in the world, and there were still rumors of lone Zulus wandering the lower decks – and Handon still needed someone he could trust, absolutely, to keep tabs on him.

He also figured he could count on Sarah to get the scientist whatever he needed to do his work, and basically keep the gears of his research churning. He had a strong impression of her as a capable, get-it-done type of organizer. She’d had to be, just to survive two years into the ZA in a tiny cabin, with two dependents, using only her own wits, skills, and good preparation. Also, while she was new to the carrier, she wasn’t new to being in a uniformed, disciplined service, nor to carrying arms – and using them. Handon knew he could depend on her, both to protect Park, and to get shit done for him.

So she’d been put on the NSF personnel manifest – but detailed as personal security to Dr. Park.

Turning onto the companionway with the hospital on it, she saw he was already there, waiting outside, laptop satchel over shoulder, hands in pockets – looking bright-eyed and ready to work.

That was a good sign.

* * *

When the last to arrive had taken a seat around the table in the briefing room, Commander Drake pushed his arms against its edge, biceps swelling a little beneath the short sleeves of his khaki service uniform, and he cleared his throat lightly.

That’s all it took to get their attention.

After his leadership in the Battle of the
JFK
– inspired, daring and, as he’d be the first to admit, desperate – after he had miraculously saved the ship and its crew from an assault of ten million undead… well, the officers and men had started to regard Drake as something like a minor deity.

Of course he’d been far from alone in pulling that off. Coulson and Handon had effectively run the fight on the flight deck by themselves. Master Chief Shields and his construction ratings had built the fortifications from behind which they fought. And virtually everyone on board had sweated, bled, and battled through their own terror, not to mention battling through the dead.

But it was a funny thing about command – while Drake couldn’t take all the credit for the victory, he sure as hell would have taken the blame if they’d lost.

Not that there would have been anyone left to blame him. No one who could still speak, at any rate.

And, in what was just one more weird mystery of the ZA, the Captain, the carrier strike group’s actual commanding officer, had disappeared again – completely. It had happened sometime after he led the final charge to clear the flight deck with his conscripted army, wielding firefighting foam, water hoses, and catapulted heavy machinery. Now, no one had the least idea whether he had gone down in that final rush – or, emerging victorious, had simply retired once more to some other hidden cabin deep below decks, never to reappear, perhaps until needed again.

Both of these theories had proponents.

But even if he had still been around, the crew would have voted him off their gigantic floating island in favor of Commander Drake. They followed him now without question.

Drake wore this lightly. Because he knew all too well that they, never mind the rest of humanity, were not nearly out of this hailstorm of giant turds – not yet, and not by a long way. Now, when he spoke to his gathering of senior officers, he spoke levelly and simply, his voice resonant – though perhaps a bit deeper and more gravelly after shouting through much of a two-day battle.

“The good news,” he said, “is that the ship’s been refloated, we’re under way – and quite a lot of us are still breathing air. The bad news, as some of you will have heard through scuttlebutt or your own channels, is that Fortress Britain is breached. While we’ve had our asses hanging out here on the edge of undead America, there’s been some kind of rapid infection in the southeast of England, via the Channel Tunnel."

He paused and scanned the faces around the table. Directly to his right was CSM Handon, looking serene and steely as usual, his rebar-like forearms crossed and motionless before him. Down from him was Captain Abrams – former commander of the sunken destroyer, and now Drake’s acting 2IC… after him, the
Kennedy
’s Air Boss… then Lieutenant Commander Cole, the CAG… and Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick, acting commander of the MARSOC team. Beside him was Marine Sergeant Brandon “Ice Cube” Coulson, who had commanded in Fick’s absence, after everyone senior to him fell… then LT Campbell from CIC… and finally the Brit, Captain Martin, who was serving as the ship’s Chief Engineer.

This wasn’t the traditional line-up, nor even the traditional room, for a senior officer’s briefing. But some of those original officers were dead now, and others had gone missing. Many of their roles hadn’t been refilled – while other jobs, totally unexpected ones, had opened up. (Director of operations for an organic farm, anyone?) Operational requirements had radically redefined themselves over the last two years of post-civilization, and had carried on doing so right up until today.

So everything was always
ad hoc
now. Drake pulled whomever he needed, to do whatever needed doing. Every job was mission critical, and naval tradition and protocol were secondary considerations at best. And if other officers on board were upset about being left out, well that was just too fucking bad. On the long list of things the survivors didn’t have the luxury of anymore, ego was at or near the top of the list.

“Wait,” LT Campbell said, “Wasn’t the Channel Tunnel supposed to have been collapsed?”

Captain Martin, who had been on the scene when it broke open, blinked heavily. “Collapsed,” he said, “turns out to be a bit of a fluid concept.”

Drake waved this off. “However it happened, the fact is that the dead are in Britain, and things are going sideways on them. And now the outbreak is vectoring up through the country – and directly toward London.”

The silence in the room took on a darker cast with this announcement. Almost as soon as the
Kennedy
had reached the one safe place left in the world… Britain had started going down beneath the same nightmare flood that had submerged the rest of the entire doomed planet.

Drake continued, his voice quieter. “Accounts differ as to how bad things are. CentCom, after evidently being a little on the slow side to take the threat seriously, are now fighting along a wide front, trying to keep the outbreak contained." He paused, trying to keep judgment off his face. He hadn’t so far developed a hugely positive impression of the British central military command.

Then again
, he thought,
their country is still standing, and mine isn’t.

"Obviously, their main objective is keeping the dead out of London. Because, if the capital goes down… well, I won’t belabor it. Ultimately, what they need to do is quell the outbreak entirely – either destroy all the dead or drive them back into the sea.” Drake looked up at Martin for confirmation.

The Brit nodded. “Yes, that’s about right. Having a moat the width of the English Channel is one thing. But living in a state of siege upon the land… well, as you all know, no country in the world, in the history of the ZA, has ever done it."

Drake paused and scanned faces before continuing. “Obviously… this impacts the urgency of our own mission.”

While the last nation of the living were fighting for their lives on the land there, the warriors on the water here had to give them something to hold out for.

Abandoned

Britain - Kent Downs

The zipping volley of 2.75-inch rockets from the Apache attack helicopter tore into the front ranks of the advancing figures, vaporizing them at the points of explosion. Then, as each warhead sprayed out dozens of five-inch tungsten darts, the bodies that remained were cut down in concentric and overlapping half-circles out to fifty meters. It was like ripples in a pool, or wheat going down under some enormous scythe wielded by a giant.