The Flood (32 page)

“Stand clear! I’m going to launch grenades into it!”

“What the fuck!? How in hell is that going to help…!?”

“The explosions will suck up all the oxygen and knock the fire out – at least temporarily! As soon as you see it go down, run in and take your shot! You won’t have long!”

Wesley shook his head. For the love of God. This was the worst idea he’d ever heard in his life – with the probable exception of his original idea to try all this in the first place.
Sod it
. He dragged his exhausted, pummeled, singed body to his feet.

And he got ready to do some more running.

* * *

And then there was the small problem that Sarah had never fired one of these grenade launchers before.

On the upside, she wasn’t having to defend herself on her side as much as Wesley was on his. She’d actually found some cover – a little grove of designer trees, within sight of that critical west side of the water tank. The running, swarming, gathering dead were mostly just sluicing around both sides of the trees – and fixated on the world of fire ahead, never even sensed her.

She actually had a look straight between the tank and the plant – and at the vat-ignited secondary inferno that was keeping Wesley away from his own shot at the water tank. It probably wasn’t 100 meters away, the safe distance Lovell had advised her, but it probably wasn’t a whole lot less, or she’d have burned to death already.

And, again, she’d never used this weapon before. As she knelt down and double-checked the 40mm round and unsafetied the launcher – and got her six other rounds out on the ground where she could get to them fast – she swapped one last radio call with Wes.

“Hey,” she said, snapping the chamber of the EGLM closed, “what was that crap about me being Park’s eyes and ears? A technical consultant? Because it seems to me I’ve done all the fighting so far on this mission.”

She could hear Wesley sigh out loud on the other end.
“I don’t know what to tell you. This isn’t really what I signed up for either.”

“Oh, well. Fuck it. Incoming!”

She braced the rifle against her thigh, did her best to aim at the far side of the blaze – and fired the grenade.

* * *

Which flew nearly directly at Wesley’s face.

She had misjudged terribly – and nearly fatally. Wesley dropped electrically to the ground when he heard it racing at him. But it passed a foot or so over his head – he wouldn’t have had time to get out of the way if it hadn’t. In almost the same instant, he heard it exploding maybe fifty feet behind him, in the middle of a new crowd of dead that were angling for him.

By the time he got his head turned back there, just in time to feel the heat and overpressure of the explosion on his face, all he saw was body parts arcing gracefully down in a gentle meat shower. Some of the chunks landed on him. This was really the smallest of his very many problems, but it was gross, and impossible to ignore, and was pretty close to the last straw for him.

“What the bloody hell!?” he shouted into his mic. “You’ve got to arc them in!”

Meanwhile, there were more dead coming for him. Wesley pulled himself up to one knee, let the rocket fall on its sling before him, pulled his rifle around – and started shooting for all he was worth. Ten shots later he switched to full auto, sprayed fire across 150 degrees, changed mags, and did it again.

And what quickly became obvious was: the unsuppressed fire was drawing more than it was knocking down.

He couldn’t carry on this way and live. He had to go. He had to get out of there.

And then a miracle happened. Sarah adjusted her fire – and got it right on the second try. An explosion behind him went up close enough to feel like one more lethal hazard. But when Wesley turned to look, he saw the nearest part of that fuel-oil mini-inferno between him and his target had, like magic, dropped down to nothing more than a shimmering layer of blue flame on the ground.

He got to his feet and started running toward it.

And he prayed like hell Sarah would knock down the fire ahead of him as he went – without knocking him down with the explosions first.

* * *

Sarah walked them in, one after another, knocking the raging fire back with what was in effect a rolling barrage, each one closer to her and farther from Wesley. Any serious miscalculation would have killed either him, or her, or both of them.

Even she couldn’t believe she was doing this.

As she
whump
ed the last one off, she hit her mic. “That’s it! I’m out! Your rocket is all we’ve got left. One shot one kill!”

He didn’t respond.

She hoped what she’d said was more motivational than annoying.

* * *

Running flat out again, unslinging the rocket entirely so he could get it up on his shoulder, attention still a million places, nonetheless Wesley couldn’t possibly ignore that he was running and splashing through pools of fuel oil all over the ground, and all of it burning blue up to the top of his boots, like a gas stove turned down to the lowest setting.

But he knew deep in his bones that an unseen hand was on that gas knob. And as soon as oxygen flooded back into this area, it was going to go back to full blast. It was going to flash up and take him in an inferno that he hoped would kill him with smoke inhalation – but was pretty sure would actually cook him in his suit and sear his lungs as he tried to inhale fire.

But he also knew that didn’t matter – as long as he got his shot off.

And he had only seconds to do it – the kind you could count on one hand.

The moment of maximum peril came just before Sarah’s last grenade came down – so shit was still exploding in front of him, and the last stretch of inferno hadn’t been knocked down yet – and the dead were about to hit him from behind. Every speed he might run was either too fast or too slow. Once again, he couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back. He was jammed up, trapped – and he was going to die before he could take his shot. Either the runners would take him down, or the fire would flash and burn him up.

And there was not a goddamned thing he could do.

Except he had to do something. He couldn’t run into exploding fire, so he turned on his heels, brought his rifle up and prepared to defend himself.

His rifle barked three times then went empty.

In a flash he scrabbled for his pistol. After two shots it was empty, too.

He desperately wanted to turn and fire off the damned rocket, just to get rid of it – but he knew he’d never make the shot, or even get it off. The dead were nearly on him.

He put his hand to the pommel of his sword. It was all he had left.

But then, surreal even in the midst of this exploding hell, he heard a
whump-whump
ing sound falling on him from the flame-lit night sky. And it was not just falling but actually powering down out of the air, and at the last second became visible – it was the Fire Scout helicopter drone, and it crashed at high speed and a steep angle straight into the huge crowd of runners, crushing half, knocking others in all directions – and, finally, taking off heads and shoulders with its rotors, which were somehow still spinning. And then its fuel tank exploded – a tiny conflagration in the scheme of things around here and just one more thing that nearly killed Wesley, knocking him on his ass.

Smacking the ground with his back, he had the wind knocked out of him – again.

* * *

Park stared open-mouthed over Lovell’s shoulder at the monitor on the drone control station, where Lovell had planted himself after bodily dragging the pilot out of his chair – and then reached down and jammed the joystick into the panel, putting the drone into a dive and crashing it into directly the ground, and the undead crowd.

“Holy shit,” Park said.

Lovell nodded his head rapidly, in total agreement. Looking over his shoulder, though, he immediately saw LT Campbell looking at him – and staring daggers of death.

He figured he’d either just saved the human race – or doomed it. There was no way to tell yet. Either way, he’d certainly just spent a piece of equipment they couldn’t do without – one of their last aerial drones, which was pretty much totally irreplaceable – trying to salvage this utter shit-show of a mission.

He stood up and clapped Park on the shoulder.

“Okay. Now we watch the rest on TV.”

Park shook his head and said it again. “Holy shit.”

It was all he could manage.

* * *

Wesley instantly got back up off the ground. With the crowd of runners chasing him having been destroyed, he was no longer going to die in the next few seconds. But there was still no time for lying about.

He hefted the AT-4 rocket with trembling hands.

Now it was all down to him.

And his one… last… shot.

The Flood

Jizan - Between the Water Tank and Power/Desal Plant

Wesley actually had one second to look down to the stencil-painted label on the rocket tube in his hands. It read:
AT-8 – Bunker Buster
. Derwin had given him the bunker buster in the end.
Quality
, he thought.
That’s quality, mate.

The more trouble Wesley found himself in, the smarter Derwin got. If by some miracle he lived through this, he would remember the lesson: always trust your senior NCOs. He was becoming a good officer – perhaps just in time to become a fallen one.

A second ago, when he’d looked back at the unlikely sight of the helo drone crashing into all those runners pursuing him, he’d seen something else behind him – and it was as he’d feared: these sections of the fire, which Sarah had knocked down by walking her grenades onto him, weren’t staying knocked back. They were flaring up again.

Already the area behind him had turned back into a flaming death zone, and it was coming for him – fast. It would only be a matter of seconds before the docile blue flames at his feet leapt back up toward the sky, submerging Wesley – and consuming him. Luckily, the seconds were stretching out like minutes, as time subjectively dilated and spooled out in front of him to infinity.

And as he turned away from the helo crash site, and back into the holocaust ahead, he saw Sarah’s last grenade hit – and a quarter-second after that felt the violent slap of the explosion.

This was it.

He took a knee in the flaming liquid and brought the missile tube up onto his shoulder.

He knew the resurgent fire was going to take him any second. Also, the dead were still everywhere, many of them on fire and burning bright themselves. The dead didn’t give a damn. Wesley’s primary and secondary weapons were both empty, and he wasn’t going to have time to reload them.

He idly wondered whether the missile or the sword was his tertiary weapon.

The mind does stupid shit in combat
, Wesley reflected.

But he was all out of time – even with the subjective time dilation. Any longer spent here and either the fire would rise up and eat him, or the dead would fall on him and eat him. At least the dead, unlike the fire, probably wouldn’t cause the missile to explode in his hands. He could already feel the heat from the resurging inferno behind him super-heating his ass and the back of his head. But there was no more time for looking back.

He pressed down the missile’s red safety lever, then put his finger to the red firing button, and did his best to take aim through the two pop-up iron sights. And even as he did, that final 40-mil explosion ahead of him cleared – and the last section of flame between him and his target dropped down to a simmer. And suddenly he could see the moon-sized water tank rising up into the flame-lit sky, and stretching away into the darkness to either side.

The way was clear – a straight shot.

All he had to do was not miss.

* * *

Once it was too late, Sarah realized she probably could have gotten farther away, and increased her chances of surviving this.
No, the hell with that
, she thought. It wouldn’t have been in the right spirit. One thing a decade of policing had taught her was that nobody goes home until the job is done. They were all always there, ultimately, for one another. So if Wesley stayed, she stayed.

She was here to support him – whether that meant being close enough to keep him safe with her shooting, to walk those grenades on and get him his shot, or just to provide moral support. To be in it with him – all the way in.

Even if it meant dying with him.

Despite the chaos all around her, she both saw and heard him get that rocket off, the whoosh of its launch unmistakable.

They were halfway home.

* * *

Even as the missile left the tube, Wesley could see in peripheral, and very much feel, the inferno rising up again right beneath his feet, and all around his body. His suit was fire-retardant – but the heat was still spectacular.

He knew that in another second it would be up to his face.

The missile seemed to explode in the same instant he launched it. He was that close to the towering water tank. He hoped that meant he couldn’t miss.

The force of the explosion knocked him over on his back again. Or maybe he just fell over. He was weak as a kitten now. Falling back down into the fire, flames filled his vision.

Okay
, he thought.
That’s it. I really am done.

The fire was all around him.

* * *

The evisceration of the west side of the water tank by the bunker-busting missile was something Sarah could only compare to an expensive CGI sequence in a Roland Emmerich film. However many millions or billions of gallons of water there were inside there, they did not just go shooting out the large hole made by the rocket. No, almost as soon as the inconceivably high-powered jet of water started blasting out, the sheer violence of it destroyed the structural integrity of the moon-sized cylindrical structure.

And the whole side of the tank folded outward, crumpled, and ripped away. Like a matador’s cape being yanked clear, getting out of the way of, not the bull – but the Flood.