Arisen : Nemesis (13 page)

The firing stopped.

She looked back and saw he was changing out ammo cans.

Fuck!

Advancing crowds of bodies swarmed in her peripheral vision. She was afraid to take her eyes off the road – and equally afraid to look at the barriers ahead.

“Todd…!”

“Just smash through! The truck’ll take it!”

Fuck, fuck, fu—
and then Kate’s vision went black and she felt herself flying across the passenger compartment to the left and nearly out of it, clinging to the wheel just to stay in the fucking vehicle. As her vision spooled back up after the impact, her head darted to the left.

And it was the second gun truck. It had slammed into them as it pulled up alongside. And Kate could instantly see why. Brendan was driving it, accelerating, jaw clenched, eyes squinted, looking like he was in a game of chicken – one he intended to win. Huddling in the passenger seat, looking like he was about to die, but still manning the machine gun on the swing-arm, was Elijah. And standing up in back, erect, solid, looking cool as a cucumber, was Kwon.

Also, he was now wearing her ARMY baseball cap.
What the fuck…?
She suddenly had this image of Kwon spotting it on the ground as they roared by and leaning over the side of the blasting truck to scoop it up. That was pretty fucking ninja. But not as ninja as the fact that he had now their own AT-4 cued up on his shoulder.
And that’s why he’s the weapons sergeant…

Once again, the world exploded just to the side of her head, sonic booms tore up the space-time continuum out to their front, and with no delay at all, what was left of the concrete barrier erupted in a short, sharp, black explosion.

“Punch it!”
someone shouted in her ear, she didn’t even know who.

She punched it.

And just before they entered the smoke and dust and whatever was still intact at the entrance, she stole another look behind her. As she accelerated, a gap was opening between them and the
third
truck – which was slowing just enough to let the second one merge back in between the two.

Somehow, they were all back together. They were all still alive – and a convoy again.

And everybody was shooting, in all directions.

Visibility dropped to zero for a fraction of a second – and then they were through – no, then they hit the gate itself, which lay behind the barriers, and hadn’t been destroyed by the rocket blast, but merely obscured by the dust and debris. But this splintered under the force and momentum of the lead truck and rocketed away to either side.

And then they were through.

The dirt road opened up in front of them, and spread out, welcoming.

They’d gotten free.

Eyes Front

Camp Lemonnier - Outside the North Wire

Until they hadn’t.

Kate couldn’t resist stealing a last look in the rear-view. Their little convoy was still intact, and still together. But behind them, and spilling out around their big halo of dust plume, she could see a whole fucked-up foreign legion of misshapen bodies surging forward, pouring out of the now blown-wide-open gate, all still following the sound of the vehicles and the weapons.

This was like the second coming of their last-second escape from the garage – except now they were being chased by a much more horrible, stomach-turning kind of detonation, a slow-motion animated meat explosion. Kate was just trying to pull her eyes away from this horror show when her attention was grabbed by something farther back down the road, and almost stranger – a big white SUV parked up on the verge with what looked like a guy aiming a rifle ove—

“Staff Sergeant – eyes front!”

It was Todd screaming at her, for the good reason that she was about to steer them off the road and into the culvert.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jesus. She had
one
job: to watch the road, and steer the fucking vehicle. And that was a damned deep culvert. It might have flipped even the super-stable Humvee, and definitely could have gotten them stuck. Now she straightened out and the wobble went out of their path as she breathed deeply of the smoky air.

“Where are we going?” she shouted over the wind noise.

“Bush camp!”

She nodded. That sounded good enough. Anywhere but here.

She bore down now and focused – determined not to look anywhere, ever again, but straight ahead at the road. Unfortunately, off to their left was Djibouti Town. Their path was gradually veering away from it, heading west up the coast… but right now it was still visible, and it took all she had not to rubberneck. Fires were burning in the still-thin light, and smoke drifted, though for some reason the sporadic gunfire of the night before had died down.

Much worse was that she had the vague impression of human figures crawling across the muddy ground between the road and the town. She’d never been so transfixed by something she
wasn’t
looking at, and anyway she still had that combat tunnel-vision the adrenaline always causes, where everything’s indistinct outside of a very narrow cone dead ahead an—

“STAFF SERGEANT!”

Todd’s shout was mixed with high-pitched squealing this time. And only now did she see the group of Somali kids break from the treeline on the right side of the road and blast out in front of them, totally heedless of their danger – because they were being chased.

Kate locked the brakes and twisted the wheel to the left, G-forces trying to pull her into the passenger seat now, the truck swerving six inches in front of the child at the head of the group, and then swerving back onto the road, only that kick-ass low center of gravity keeping them on four wheels, and she heard the screaming of engines and brakes from behind and dared look in the rear-view again…

The vehicle immediately behind, the one with Brendan, Elijah, and Kwon, locked up its brakes, but was too late to miss the kids to the left, and so they swerved right – which meant it plowed right through the crowd of sick bastards pursuing the kids. Meat flew, but the truck swerved back and managed to stay on the road.

The third vehicle probably couldn’t see the kids at all initially, and swerved left just to avoid crashing into the second truck.

That had them barreling straight at the crowd of kids, who were moving right to left, and just stepping off the road now. Tiny limbs and hair braids were right in the path of 12,000 pounds of steel going 70mph.

Peter Price cranked the wheel all the way to the left.

And the last gun truck went both left-side wheels into the culvert.

And then it was pirouetting around its lengthwise axis, spinning through the air like a Michael Bay film come to life, but at least missing the children. The driver had sacrificed himself for them.

And as Kate fought the shuddering wheel and tried to level them out, she suddenly knew who had been in the back of the third truck.

It was Jake, Master Sergeant Redding.

She knew because he was now flying in a high parabola through the air.

* * *

He was the lucky one. He had been sticking out the weapons turret and was thrown clear.

When the truck came to rest, Pete, the driver, ended up pinned, only his upper body clear of the upturned vehicle, its engine still screaming and four big tires spinning against nothing – and its massive steel body pressing him mercilessly into the mud. He didn’t scream. But he didn’t speak either.

He was trying to breathe.

Kate had finally stopped their truck and gotten it turned around – the turning radius of the Humvee was also somewhat legendary, but not in a good way – and reached the new crash site second. Brendan, Kwon, and Elijah were already there, out of their vehicle, and trying to set security.

And they were already shooting.

Their first tactical objective was putting down the half-mown-down crowd of diseased sons of bitches who had been chasing the children across the road. This was easier said than done, because they’d been knocked in all directions like ninepins by the second truck when it came through.

But they somehow kept coming.

Kate could see both Brendan and Kwon putting shots into figures with their rifles – some walking, some crawling, some just wriggling in piles of their own limbs and organs. Somehow it didn’t take her long to work out that they were only taking head shots now. Because it hadn’t taken them long to work out that only head shots did any good.

Once again, thank God, there was no time for thought – only time to react.

Kate was out of the truck and moving almost before it had come to a stop, and immediately tried to work out how to make herself useful.

And then she remembered: Jake would have landed somewhere.

She stepped out into the muddy field between the road and Djibouti Town.

And she immediately saw him get up under his own power, take a knee – and then start shooting, his .50-cal booming again. His personal weapon had been strapped to him, as they always were, and had taken his flight with him. He was now shooting at advancing figures from the town, who had evidently gotten interested in the commotion at the roadside. By the time she reached him, he had cleaned up that whole flank.

He got up off his knee and turned to face her.

There was blood streaming down his face in a broad sheet. His forehead had been gashed open – either by their earlier crash into that CLU, or else by his high-speed encounter with the rocks in this field. It could have been either, or both.

Elijah passed by Kate’s elbow, heading for Jake and saying, “Whoah, Sarge, what say you take a knee while I check you out—” at which he saw the sheet of blood, and added “and get that bleeding stopped.”

Jake not only didn’t lie down, he didn’t even stop walking, and simply shrugged off Elijah when he reached for him. “I’m fine. Just gotta keep the blood out of my eyes,” he said, his voice as rock-steady as before. He cast around and spotted Elijah’s shemagh, which was still wrapped around Kate’s neck.

He didn’t speak to her, and hardly even looked at her. He just reached out and took what he wanted.

Fuck me, that’s hot
, Kate thought, to her own significant self-loathing. But there it was, a feeling utterly inappropriate to the time and place.

As Jake wrapped the cloth around his head, Elijah tried again: “Whatever you’ve got in mind, man, it’s not as important as the fact that you have a head wound and a near-certain concussion…”

Jake tied off the checked cloth, hefted his rifle, and just pointed off over Elijah’s shoulder with one hand. Kate turned as well.

She could see the others now bent over their guy trapped under the truck, presumably trying to help get him out of there.

None of them were looking back up the road toward the base.

The garrison was coming for them.

Jake stalked off, straight toward the army of diseased attackers.

Jesus Saves

Edge of Djibouti Town

The others finally worked out the new threat when they clocked Jake shooting in that direction. By the time he reached them, Kwon and Todd were consolidating into a defense, pushing out just beyond the crashed vehicle, while Brendan was still kneeling down with Peter, holding the hand of the trapped and possibly doomed man.

But when Jake reached their lines, he just kept on going.

“What’s your plan, Jake?”
Kate heard Brendan ask over the squad net.

“Movement to contact,”
Jake said simply.

And she could see he still wasn’t limping. Not only did the grizzled son of a bitch only have one leg, but he’d just been thrown forty feet through the air from a vehicle crashing at 70mph. She could actually understand why he wasn’t the least bit cowed by a few shambling sick guys.

She moved up to try to support him.

By the time she did, he was already firing from the shoulder, non-stop, still moving straight into the middle of the approaching crowd. It also took him about two seconds, and four ineffective center of mass shots, to work out the whole head shot thing. Or maybe he’d worked it out back in Camp. Actually, his .50-caliber rounds weren’t totally ineffective on torsos, tending to take them apart. But now he was taking heads off.

Kate reached the crashed vehicle herself. Its tires were still spinning lazily and the engine still running. It was only then that she realized Price was not only still alive, but conscious. It also looked like there were a couple of crushed bodies of sick Somali guys underneath the truck with him. That in itself was pretty worrying, given current trends in public health.

“You guys gotta go,” Pete was saying.

“Shut the fuck up,” Brendan said. From the white flesh of both their hands, it looked like he was squeezing Price’s hand for all he was worth. Kate shook her head. She figured the man must be in indescribable agony.

There was a lot of firing now, as the first freed inmates of fallen Camp Lemonnier approached. The other Triple Nickel guys were shooting, but from fixed positions – while Jake, that bloodstained keffiyeh wrapped around his head like Lawrence of Arabia, was out front, wading right into them. His Beowulf boomed, easily distinguishable from the others. He was reloading a lot, with only ten shots per mag – and carefully replacing the empty mags back in his vest pouches.

Kate guessed he didn’t know when he’d see more of those.

She looked up now at the sound of full-auto fire, and saw Kwon had gotten on an M240 on one of the surviving trucks, and was now shooting over Jake’s head. He was still way out there and exposed. She took a deep breath and started to head out after him. Something about the veteran team sergeant, his total fearlessness maybe, compelled her to follow.

But she felt an insistent hand on her elbow. It was Brendan.

“I need you here.”

She nodded.

Brendan looked at her and Todd. “We’ve gotta try to lift the truck up enough to get him out.” She nodded even more eagerly, and slung her weapon behind her, as did Todd, and all three moved into position. The booming of the .50-cal stopped, and was replaced by pistol reports – but not 9mm, instead a .45, like the CSM’s. Kate’s eye was drawn to Jake again, and she saw he had his primary weapon slung – he must have burned through all his mutant magazines – and had his side arm out. He was also already reloading that one.