Arisen : Nemesis (9 page)

She scanned frantically for the bulge of a suicide vest, but in fact his top was hanging open, revealing rolls of flesh beneath. He was running at them with arms extended. Attacking them literally barehanded.

What the fuck?

Before she could get a sight picture, Elijah knocked the man down with four quick shots to the center of mass, and they were both running past him.

Now Kate realized her reflexes had also better tune up – and
right now
. Shots were still being fired, but if there were any geometry to this battle, it totally eluded her. She remembered the old rule that the number-one trick to surviving combat was figuring out what the hell was going on. She grimaced at that, and tried to manage her breathing.

Elijah turned a corner on the left at a dead run and Kate followed, skidding on the rubber matting. As they emerged into an open area, the first thing she saw resolving from the darkness was a soldier in tan ACUs – tackling another one, identically dressed.

Seriously – what the FUCK?!
This made zero sense. She shouted ahead. “Elijah, what the
fuck
is going on?”

“It’s the sick people, man,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Keep moving!”

“What does that
mean
?” She racked her brain. Was it like rabies, or psychosis – or was it some kind of chemical or biological warfare agent they’d been hit with, and that was making people wig out? She knew al-Shabaab had a history of trying to acquire chem-bio weapons. But she had neither the wind nor the attention to have this or any discussion with Elijah right now. Instead she focu—

A body slammed into her from a tiny dark alley she hadn’t even seen. She bounced off it and reacted by giving him a mighty shove with her weapon and the figure stumbled back into the darkness from which it came. She started to bring her weapon up to fire, but thought better of it and just kept moving.

Her Under Armor shirt, beneath her LBE, was soaked with sweat now – and bits of loose hair floated out from under her
ARMY
cap. Everything was still thoroughly kaleidoscopic and she didn’t feel like she was getting any more of a grip. Rather, she felt like the odds were tipping against her.

And if the camp was going down… would she go down with it?

No
, she decided.
No, I’m fucking not.

And she remembered another principle: the people who survived catastrophes, riots, natural disasters, ambushes… were the ones who absolutely resolved themselves to.

Elijah darted down another row and they came back out against the wire, with something solid on one side of them again at least. He turned right and took off, and Kate accelerated to follow – and immediately felt another body crashing into her again, from the right side now, out of another gap. She pivoted, and used his own body weight to throw him to the ground.

It was an American serviceman.

The man writhed on the ground and scrabbled at her boots.

She kicked him away hard, rolling his body up the narrow alley.

Looking over the wriggling body, she could see Elijah disappearing into the darkness up ahead. He didn’t know she had stopped – that she’d been cut off. The soldier thrashed on the ground between them.

Kate backed away and brought her rifle to her shoulder as the whacked-out soldier lurched to his feet, instantly moving toward her again. His head was down so she couldn’t see his face, but from the way he moved the dude was not in a good way.

She had absolutely no idea what to do now.

“Shoot him!” she heard. It was Elijah, who had turned around finally and seen her. He was now quick-walking back.

She blinked hard. This couldn’t be happening.

She depressed her M4 and shot the advancing man in his right thigh. A dark hole appeared in his fatigues. But he didn’t slow and he didn’t even look down.

The wound had absolutely no effect.

Sorry About Your Face

Camp Lemonnier - Beside the East Wire

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT.

Hands pawed at her, enveloping her flesh, a fetid mouth opening and snapping at her face, at her bare neck. Kate tried to grapple, her rifle wedged between their struggling bodies, the soldier’s starched ACUs scraping against her bare arms and covered thighs, way too intimate, like a teenage boy groping and fumbling…

She could see his face now – and he may well have still been a teenager. He was a young kid, a dog-faced soldier, a ground-pounder – and he was so fucked up she could barely recognize him as another living human being. Mottled skin, grayish-green, with patches of flaking red sores. Faint black spiderweb patterns around the eyes and under the thin skin at his temples. Milky and opaque eyes – looking for all the world blind, but still locked onto her with some inexplicable, single-minded intensity.

She couldn’t think, she was only reacting – she dropped her rifle on its sling and grabbed his head with both hands, using all her strength to keep it off her, and the vulnerable flesh of her face and neck. The dude was all over the place, writhing and thrashing, both arms wrapped around her shoulders, and a lot stronger than a sick guy ought to be – stronger even than a healthy one.

She was half bent over backward now, all her leverage gone, angles awkward and worsening, relying on pure forearm and hand strength – which was evaporating fast. The open mouth, and those perfect middle-American teeth, an inch away from her nose. She had no fucking idea whatsoever what she was staring in the face, or what this dude’s deal was – she only knew she absolutely didn’t want any.

She pivoted ninety degrees, putting her back to the fence, and braced her back leg behind her – then rallied her last strength to shove the horror-movie visage a few inches farther away…

And the entire face, and the head it was stuck on, disappeared. It just went away from between her hands, stopped existing, wasn’t in this world, or in her face, anymore. Her hands held nothing. A fraction of a second later she heard the percussive boom of a heavy weapon – Jake’s .50-cal, roaring from twenty yards back down the alley.

Instantly, she felt a strong and irresistible shove in her shoulder, and a deep bellow at her ear: “
GO! Keep moving!
” The shove sent her half-tumbling into Elijah, who had reached her from the other direction. He turned on his heel and led the way forward, Kate striding behind, now sandwiched between a fearless badass and a man of God… which surely represented, by far, the most safety she’d enjoyed today.

Or maybe ever would again, for all she knew.

Hot tears leaked at the corners of her eyes, and she took her hand off the vertical foregrip of her weapon to wipe them away.

* * *

As she ran with the wire just off her left elbow, Kate could only think one thing now:
Keep moving
. She had to keep moving. And she wasn’t sure she could think about anything else.

Thought was shutting down.

She had to battle to stay functional. And she knew it was in those moments when things went kinetic, and everything went wrong, that the operators were separated from the conventional guys. That ability to improvise, to adapt, to change up – and to never give up. Resilience to chaos, and resolve to keep going. She had been trying to prove something last night.

Today was no different. Just worse – and harder.

She almost laughed aloud at that thought, as something blew sky-high off toward the center of the camp, sending tendrils of orange flame and plumes of heavy black smoke into the slowly lightening sky.

But, explosions or no, morning would eventually come.

And she fucking well was going to be there for it.

The three of them finally reached the end of the row of buildings that backed onto the east wire and dispersed out into an open area, each quick-walking heel-toe, weapons up to shoulders in high ready. Instantly, Jake pivoted and engaged something to the right, and out of Kate’s adrenaline-constricted cone of vision; Elijah was doing the same to the left. She focused on the middle sector – across which moved two palsied figures, backlit by the flames that were now in view a hundred yards away.

She gained a sight picture on the first – then stopped walking, drew up, shooting posture perfect, regulating her breathing, fundamentals perfect. It was the training that made this possible – shooting fundamentals drilled in until they were pure muscle memory, which was the only way they were going to work in the stress of combat.

She squeezed her trigger, putting two rounds, then two more, into center mass on the charging figure on the right.

And, in the moment that she fired, she honestly had no idea whether her target was American or Somali, Islamist or southern Baptist. She only knew she was fighting for her life now. And it was a fight she had zero intention of losing. And if she did lose, it wouldn’t be because she failed to try. She would go down fighting.

The attacker was close enough that she saw all four rounds hit.

The guy didn’t go down, but just kept coming, arms reaching out for her as he closed the last ten meters.

Motherfucker. Body armor – it had to be
.

But that could still mean either soldier or jihadi these days.

She took two head shots, and then pivoted and took two on the guy on the left, even as the first dropped and slid into the dust at her feet like a buffalo. The second collapsed a little farther out.

She looked down in the dim and hazy air now, at the bizarrely shaped head of the second one. He was wearing night-vision goggles. Last time she checked, the only people who had those were…

She pushed the thought away. She didn’t have time for it – and down that road madness lay. Instead she scanned jerkily around to both sides.

Jake and Elijah were nowhere in sight.

Peering through all angles of the plane, now she heard someone call her name and spotted them – at the door to a big sheet-metal structure with a semi-cylindrical roof. They were holding the door, shooting intermittently – and shouting at her. And also, she belatedly realized, pointing.

In her tactical training, an instructor had said something that stuck with her: “Whatever else is going on, it’s always a good idea to just take a look behind you from time to time.”

She did.

There were four figures fast-walking straight at her in a converging line. They had the firelight before them this time, and she could see they were an even mix of soldiers and jihadis. And they were ignoring one another completely, in their haste to get to her.

Zero fucking sense…

She faced forward again, tensed her fluttery leg muscles – and launched herself at the doorway of that sheet-metal structure. In six seconds she was there.

Jake slapped her ass inside like she was a relay runner, Elijah collapsed inside behind, and somebody pulled the door shut. She banged into the hard steel of a large vehicle, and turned to see Jake and Kwon pushing two fuel barrels and a crate of something in front of that door.

She safetied her weapon. Muscle memory again. Range safety.

And she tried to restart her breathing.

Alamo

Camp Lemonnier - 555 Garage

Kate had put out some rounds in her previous deployments. But in Afghanistan you usually couldn’t even see who you were shooting at. You pretty much just shot in the same direction as everyone else. Even in the attack last night, she’d really only been plinking at muzzle flashes.

Today had been different.

“I’ve never shot a living person at close range before,” she said, when her breathing and heart rate had gotten down to the point where she could say it without her voice quavering.

“I think you still haven’t.”

That was Jake. He didn’t elaborate on this comment, but instead unslung his weapon and laid it down on the hood of one of the vehicles, then placed his hands palms-down to either side of it. He looked around at the others, who were wedged into the narrow spaces around the trucks. Kate noted with some awe that all the trucks had either two or three mounted machine guns: a mix of M249 SAWs, M240 medium machine guns, and .50-cal M2s – the big boys.

Eighty percent of the floorspace of the cramped garage was taken up by the three gun trucks, parked nose to tail. Much of the rest was maintenance and repair equipment – a vehicle lift, wheel aligner and balancer, workbench and tool rack, some welding equipment. All of this was lit by a single fluorescent strip hanging overhead.

Terrible noises, muted now, could still be heard from the other side of the ridged steel walls. Occasionally, something actually bumped or banged into them. Nobody actually jumped in response. But everyone was jumpy. And nobody stood farther than arm’s length from their weapons.

“Ideas?” This was Brendan, standing slightly back in the shadows, back pressed against a wall.

“Yeah.” This was the guy Kate hadn’t actually met, the blond and tanned one. He wore staff sergeant stripes and no nametape. “Shouldn’t we be out there?” He gestured vaguely at the wall. The others got it.

“Doing what, man?” This was Kwon.

“Helping. Shooting.” He paused there. No one needed, or dared, say that they’d all just been out there shooting – mostly at other American soldiers. It hung in the air before them.

The blond guy tried again: “Helping to defend the camp.”

“Dude,” Kwon said. “The camp is gone.”

“Then what the hell are we still doing here?”

“They’re both right,” Jake said, looking across at Brendan. “If there’s any defense left to mount, then we should be part of it. And if there’s not, then we should get the hell out of here.”

Brendan’s youthful but serious face was impassive as he considered. “Our current position seems secure. What if we Alamo up here for now – and wait and see how things develop?”

Kwon shook his head. “And what if this structure catches fire?” He nodded at the gasoline barrels.

“Or we get surrounded – by too many to drive through.” This was the Jesus figure, Peter Price. He looked to her like a regular guy caught in a bad situation.