Arisen : Nemesis by Michael Stephen Fuchs Page A

back. Get the fifty up.”
    “What?”
    “The fifty. Ma Deuce. ” He meant the M2.
    What the hell does he want me shooting at? Kate thought.
    But she uncoiled herself, straightened up, and took another look around. And she saw that the camp was indeed like a ruin of itself – except for the scattering and shambling hordes of… well, whatever the fuck they were now. Ghouls. Lost souls. The sick. The dying.
    Kate’s stomach turned, and she wanted very much not to think too closely about that, or what was about to happen.
    The warm, dirty, polluted air blasted around her in the open vehicle, and so instead she looked over the roll-bar beside her at the ground blurring by a few inches from her healthy, fleshy, and vulnerable body.
    Why the hell did I have to end up in the dune buggy?
    They were totally exposed to the elements, which might at this point include virtually anything. And it took only about another two seconds for her to work out where the lost brigade of Camp Lemonnier was going.
    They were converging on the three vehicles.
    They were heading straight toward them.
    Which meant they had to keep moving – or they were all dead.
    Kate stood up and yanked on the giant charging handle of the heavy machine gun. She was ready to rock and roll.
    And she thought:
    Well, goddamn.

    It IS the zombie apocalypse.
    * * *
    Up ahead of them, Kate could see the great, billowing, Pasha’s-caravan shape of Thunderdome. That was the name for Camp Lemonnier’s rubberized basketball court, volleyball pit, and assembly area – with its huge, semi-rigid, canvas roof stretched overhead, and supported by arcing steel ribs.
    As they rapidly closed the distance, she could see one side of it was collapsed, and also half torn-away. Inside she could make out hundreds of folding chairs, presumably left over from some recent assembly, and now mostly overturned.
    “So much for Bingo Day,” Todd muttered over the channel.
    “What?” Kate asked, not having the vaguest idea what he was talking about, or why.
    “Never mind. Fuck it.” He upshifted and accelerated.
    Around Thunderdome, Kate could see stumbling figures dotting the blighted landscape.
    But because they were the lead vehicle, the way ahead of them was relatively clear. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that it was taking the victims time to spill out into the road and converge – and they were much more of a threat to the other two trucks. Only their speed was keeping them clear of the tide of sick.
    So she traversed her weapon 180 degrees, circling around the mount, and looked for targets to the rear.
    But the first one she saw wasn’t even one of the sick. It was an American soldier, dashing out from inside a tent, hauling his arm back as if to throw. He didn’t look terrific, but he didn’t look like the others. He was still moving like a regular human. Albeit a desperate, half-panicked one.
    Unfortunately, the direction he was moving was right into the gap between the rear two trucks – and he was totally oblivious to them. No one could know what the hell this guy was trying to do, and there was no time to ponder it. The third gun truck swerved out of line and more than half out of the road to avoid him. But even as it went sliding left through the dust, the grenade detonated in the dumb son of a bitch’s hand, the explosion half-disintegrating him – and blasting into the right side of the hurtling truck.
    Instead of swerving right, back into the road, it carried straight on and plowed into one of the trailer-like CLUs, half disappearing inside the flimsy structure.
    And as Kate watched, open-mouthed, the second truck locked up its brakes and cranked its front wheels, spinning around in the dust and coming to a shuddering stop. Then its tires spun up again, spewing dust behind it, and it blasted off back where they’d come from.
    Right back toward the crashed vehicle. And if both those vehicles stopped back there, they’d be overrun – in minutes, if not