Reading Time
5 hrs 53 mins
How long to read ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires?
The estimated word count of ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires is 88,040 words.
A person reading at the average speed of 250 words/min, will finish the book in 5 hrs 53 mins. At a slower speed of 150 words/min, they will finish it in 9 hrs 47 mins. At a faster speed of 450 words/min, they will finish it in 3 hrs 16 mins.
| ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires - 88,040 words | ||
|---|---|---|
| Reading Speed | Time to Read | |
| Slow | 150 words/min | 9 hrs 47 mins |
| Average | 250 words/min | 5 hrs 53 mins |
| Fast | 450 words/min | 3 hrs 16 mins |
- Authors
More about ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires
88,040 words
Word Count
for ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires
455 pages
Pages
Hardcover: 455 pages
Paperback: 439 pages
Kindle: 457 pages
9 hours and 28 minutes
Audiobook length
Table of Contents
There are 60 chapters in ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires. We have listed them below.
| Copyright First published 2014 by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs London, UK Copyright © Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs The right of Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the authors. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. |
| Title Page ARISEN BOOK SEVEN DEATH OF EMPIRES GLYNN JAMES &MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS |
| “Here life has death for neighbour, And far from eye or ear Wan waves and wet winds labour, Weak ships and spirits steer” – Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine” “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea |
| If I Should Wake Before I Die (ii) If I Should Wake Before I Die (ii) The USS John F. Kennedy Night. Breathless, frozen in place, Juice looks wide-eyed upon the ocean of dead that now stretches to the front edge of the carrier, and then out beyond it, to the horizon, and then on past the very curvature of the Earth. In the immediate foreground, he can see the flight deck heaving with these undead killers. Beyond that, they spill off the prow into the shallows, and then in struggling and cresting waves back up onto the beach, and then across the dunes, and finally onto the land itself – across three thousand miles of a great, lost, dead continent. Juice knows the population of North America at the time of the fall was 600 million. And now its population is zero. Or so close as makes no difference. To either side of him stand his brothers, those in Alpha, and others in MARSOC. They are waiting for the signal. They are all staring down the barrel of an entire five-acre supercarrier flight |
| Echo of Sparrows Echo of Sparrows The USS John F. Kennedy - Bridge The phone at Drake’s station flashed, and the acting commander of the Kennedy strike group raced to snatch up the handset. “Yeah. You’re sure? Fine.” Replacing the phone, he looked up at Abrams, his acting executive officer (XO). “It’s the Admiral Nakhimov. CIC has positive ID.” Abrams shook his head. “Christ. I thought so. Not too many warships that size – in the old world or this one.” Drake squinted up at his XO. “But what the hell is a Russian Kirov-class battlecruiser, from their Northern Fleet, doing off the coast of South Africa? It makes no goddamned sense.” Abrams shrugged. “She was probably doing what everyone else was – trying to escape the plague. Then they sent a party ashore to scavenge for supplies. And brought the infection back on board.” Both Drake and Abrams looked up at the overhead video display, watching the giant, weapons-bristling battlecruiser grow bigger and meaner on live video, as their helic |
| Shipwrecks Shipwrecks JFK - Bridge “Incoming missile threats, multiple launches, profiling now!” These shouted words were from Lieutenant Campbell, down in the Combat Information Center (CIC), and who had just opened a broadcast channel to the bridge, piped through the room speakers. The entire bridge crew unconsciously leaned toward them. There was actually little for Drake or Abrams or anyone on the bridge to do now – except listen, wait, and grip the edges of their stations with white knuckles. All the ship’s missile defense systems were completely automated – they’d already seen the two RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow Missiles (ESSMs, or just Sparrows) launch from the port-side missile launcher. And anything else that needed to be done in the next few seconds would be done from CIC. Everyone on the bridge saw the blossoming explosions as the Sparrows found their targets. No surprise there – they were designed specifically to counter supersonic maneuvering anti-ship missiles. Twelve feet |
| Blood On the Floor Blood On the Floor JFK - Hospital, Biosciences Lab When Handon pushed his way into the lab at the back the hospital, he found Dr. Park and Sarah Cameron leaning into a big plastic utility box with the lid back, as Professor Close looked on. All three wore scrubs over their clothes – plus gloves, surgical masks, and goggles. Sarah was holding a high-gauge hypodermic needle – the kind from nightmares and David Cronenberg films – which she had stuck into a body bag inside the box, and was now pulling the plunger back. As Handon approached, he could see that the bag was… wiggling. “That what I think it is?” “Uh huh,” Sarah said, removing the syringe and shutting the lid. She glared at Park. “I told you to stay back.” “And I told you,” Park said, relieving her of the syringe, “that this is a Group-4 infectious agent, and not for handling by amateurs…” Handon figured this must be the runner Sarah had trapped in a sealed companionway on the bottom deck – the one that had ne |
| Pissed Off God Pissed Off God The JFK - 03 Deck, Frame 172 Wesley almost crashed straight into it, as he, Melvin, and Burns dashed around the corner into the adjacent companionway. All around them, the ship’s sirens blared, deafening them with a piercing wail that seemed to bore into their heads. It took Wesley a few seconds even to work out what he was looking at – and more than a little courage to refrain from running away again, right back in the opposite direction. Barely ten feet away from them was what looked like a huge section of fat metal pipe. The companionway was a good ten feet across, and equally high, but the object spanned and nearly filled the entire space. On both sides of it, the interior bulkheads had been completely torn away. Twisted metal, debris, insulation, and wiring spilled out of both sides, covering the deck for many feet in both directions. There was smoke, dust, debris, and the smell of burning. The object itself was roughly cylindrical and painted a dark |
| Goodbye to a Dead World Goodbye to a Dead World Somewhere Over France It had stood stock-still for nearly a year, in the middle of the road, barely swaying even when the wind was high. Rain, storms, snow, and hail – all these had visited the town over the last two years, buffeting the figure, freezing it, thawing and drenching it yet again. Still it remained motionless, staring across the street at the front of a shop that had collapsed just weeks before. It had barely stirred when the entire wooden framework of paneled glass came crashing down, finally succumbing to the onslaught of unchecked weather. Just one eye had turned at the tremendous noise of cracking wood and shattering glass, but the other remained where it was, hanging by a thin shred of gristle. Garbage and debris littered the mile-long stretch of road that cut through the small and rural French town – the remnants of a place that had been left to fight the elements alone. Cars were covered in dirt, their windows cracked |
| Yet Another Day at the Office Yet Another Day at the Office CentCom Strategic Command, London Colonel Robert Mayes sat at the desk in his small office out on the periphery of the main complex, and stared into the empty mug he had filled a moment before. He was overtired, and the nasty excuse for coffee they had been reduced to drinking didn’t even touch the exhaustion, not on any level. They used to drink the good stuff, but as with everything, they had finally run out. Now he thought he should probably be grateful they had provisions of any kind. That certainly wasn’t the case for much of the surviving population of London, and as far as he knew there was nowhere in the UK that could grow coffee beans, so whatever was in the stores was it. Of all the things from life before the ZA, Mayes knew he would miss coffee the most. His small office was scantily furnished, with a single desk, two chairs facing each other on either side of it, and half a dozen filing cabinets full of reports and |
| This is Your Wake-Up Call This is Your Wake-Up Call CentCom Strategic Command - Short-Term Billets Major Grews lurched as the knock at the door ripped him from sleep. His head spun, and for a moment dizziness swamped his ability to focus. He tried to sit up, but instead almost fell from the bed, as neither his arms nor legs responded. He tottered for a moment before falling back onto the bed. Deep breaths, he told himself. It’s just anxiety, again. No matter how many times he faced the dead, this was always the result, and he knew it. Then again, the numbness in his limbs was something new. And then a rush of pain crackled through his stomach and up into his chest. What the hell was that? He looked around the room, wondering where the hell he even was. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t quite remember the last few hours. The room was unfamiliar, and sparse, just the bed he lay on and a cabinet with his personal effects and side arm on top in a pile. Confused, he tried to gather his thoughts, |
| They Deserved Better They Deserved Better CentCom Strategic Command Private Nolan of Internal Security stood at his post for another five minutes before heading back to the third floor, and the short-term accommodation wing. He took the stairs, heading up and cursing under his breath that they had cut the electricity to the lift. It wasn’t the only amenity here that now no longer worked, but it was one he’d used dozens of times a day, and all this climbing of stairs was starting to feel like too much exercise for him. Somehow he doubted it would be heart disease or high blood pressure that got him in the end. Screw exercise. This wing of the second largest building in the compound had once been the solitary confinement section of the old prison, and even though a lot of it had been rebuilt and remodeled, it still bore signs of its old function – the curved metal stairways, the open atrium at the center of each level, and of course the bars on the windows. When CentCom took over the pri |
| Knife to a Gunfight Knife to a Gunfight JFK - CIC “Where’s the Washington?” Drake asked Campbell, referring to the carrier’s escort sub. “And I mean, right this second.” “You sure you want that on the big board?” The location of the sub at any given point in time was highly classified. “Yeah. Do it.” Campbell leaned around a subordinate at his station, logged him out and logged herself in. A few seconds later, the giant overhead map view zoomed out from the South African coast, to show a large chunk of the south Atlantic. A marker for the USS Washington appeared – but nearly a thousand kilometers behind them. “Fuck,” Drake hissed. He already basically knew where their Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack sub was – playing catch-up on the Atlantic crossing, at its much slower top speed. But he’d been hoping for some kind of miracle. The Washington was exactly what they needed to counter a giant battlecruiser, and to protect them. That was basically its whole job. It just wasn’t th |
| Pretty Much Pretty Much JFK - 02 Deck Gunny Fick all but hurdled bodies as he salmon-spawned up the main companionway running the length of 02 Deck. He’d just dropped off two walking wounded down at the hospital, after having pulled both of them to something like safety from the missile impact point up top. Now he was half-covered in blood, and the-other-half-covered in soot, and leaving quite a lot of both on people as he elbowed past them. And that’s my good deed for today, motherfuckers, he thought. He was glad to help, it was everybody’s job to help, and those were his brothers and sisters hurt up there. But the Good Samaritan act had also left him out of position. He needed to be somewhere he was plugged into what the hell was going on – the bigger picture. That pretty much meant the bridge, which was where he was headed now. Knowledge of what the hell is going on was usually what kept you alive in combat. And that knowledge was very thin on the ground throughout the rest of the b |
| Combat Leaders Combat Leaders JFK - Alpha Team Room “Well, that sucked about a hundred yards of cock,” Predator grumbled, unslinging his ruck and letting the deflated and packed-up – but still fantastically heavy – combat rubber raiding craft (CRRC) drop to the deck. He made way for the others, wiping sweat from his forehead with a thigh-sized forearm. The others – Ali, Juice, and Henno, all of them still sucking wind from the panic, the running, and the toting of quite a lot of heavy gear – now filed back into their team room. They immediately started unslinging all the crap festooned on their bodies, and getting it stowed again. “It could have been worse,” Ali said, setting her assault pack in the corner. “We could all be paddling for it right now.” “True,” Juice agreed, sitting down heavily on a palletized load of gear. “True.” Shortly after the general-quarters alarm had sounded, Ali had raced into the team room with word that the ship had been hit by missile strikes – but no one y |
| Crash Site Crash Site JFK - Alpha Team Room “Back in a flash,” Juice said, cinching shut a team kit bag he’d just quadruple-checked the contents of. No one asked him for an explanation, but he added, “I’ve got a jumper at the door.” Ali shook her head. “Thanks – first farting, and now paratrooper euphemisms for crapping. And people wonder why women are under-represented in the airborne.” The others laughed, including Juice, as he slipped out the hatch. He actually wasn’t going to the head. In fact, he needed some air, and a little solitude, and he didn’t know why he’d been embarrassed to admit that, or needed to tell a ridiculous lie about it. Maybe it was because of what he needed the alone time for. His first thought was to head for the fantail deck, which was usually a good place for solitude and reflection. But something pulled him up short – and drew him up top instead, and toward the fore. Maybe he wanted to see the carnage that had resulted from the missile strike. Or maybe it w |
| Broken City Broken City London - Covent Garden Hackworth sighed heavily and looked around at his rag-tag group of survivors from the Channel Tunnel. The situation was ridiculous. For the second day running – after having escaped the immolation of Canterbury, walked themselves across half of Kent, and finally arrived in London – they were still queuing outside the relocation center, waiting to hear where they were to be sent next. He’d tried reason, he’d tried getting angry and shouting at the staff – but quickly found himself escorted from the place by two not-particularly-burly security guards. His friend Colley, the huge Moroccan man, had been on the verge of kicking off at that point, but Hackworth, even with his own temper rising, had calmed him. It was no good, and would have achieved nothing. The authorities here were overwhelmed. And they simply had to accept that they would be waiting a lot longer than they’d originally been told. The promised hour had turned to two, and then t |
| There's No Place Like Home There’s No Place Like Home London - Covent Garden Rebecca Ainsley placed the phone back on its hook and staggered to the kitchen table. She held the back of the nearest chair to steady herself, and waited for the panic to pass. Alan, her brother, with whom she had just spoken for the first time in a week, had been frantic at first, babbling something about a dog, and zombies out in the lane, but he had eventually calmed down. Now Rebecca went over the last two minutes of rushed conversation in her head, trying to make sense of it. Evidently, Alan and Tessa were rushing to get away, packing their 4x4 as quickly as possible, with as much as they could take, in the few minutes they had before the dead arrived. Arrived, she thought. How could they be so far across the country already? The outbreak was in the southeast, near Canterbury and Folkestone, as far as she knew, not all the way over near Portsmouth. And she knew the Army was deployed all across the south. |
| Anywhere But Here Anywhere But Here London - Covent Garden The door nearly flew off its hinges as Colley barreled into it. Hackworth was at his side, but the older and smaller man had barely made contact with the solid oak before the Moroccan was past it and moving through the hallway. Ahead of them, a set of stairs led upward, but Colley moved past them, heading down the hallway and passing a door with the number 1a on it. Hackworth glanced behind him to check that the others in the group were close. He was relieved to see that they were. Many rushed past him now, stooping low, and terrified of the exchange of gunfire going on just fifty yards away. It had been his call to run for the nearest house, and now Hackworth hoped to hell there was a back door, and a street or alleyway behind the building, otherwise they would be trapped. As he got to the first interior door, wondering if anyone actually lived in the building, it opened – and a frightened-looking old man stared out at him. “W |
| Where to Now? Where to Now? London “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the soldier, shifting the weight of his rifle. “I can’t provide transport at this time. We’ve got riots kicking off all over the city, not to mention looting. Everything is going to hell, and I just don’t have a spare driver or vehicle to allocate to you.” Rebecca was standing in front of a desk inside the dirty brown tent that was the small patrol base, fifty yards from the school. She’d said goodbye to Hackworth and his group a few minutes before, and watched them head to the nearby checkpoint, looking one last time for a line on housing or food. Then she had fetched her sons from the school. Although the staff had been instructed to stay put and not let anyone out, there had been no resistance as she strolled in and walked her boys out, with only a nod to the teachers. Two years before, this would have gotten her a sharp letter regarding attendance, but everyone had much bigger problems now. Like getting across London safel |
| And All This Might Even Work And All This Might Even Work JFK - MARSOC Team Room “Juice, this here is Sergeant Lovell and Corporal Raible.” Juice shook the two Marines’ hands. He’d seen them around, not least in the immediate aftermath of the lethal chaos of the flight deck battle. These two had been the only Marine survivors of the reserve forces that had held the giant gash in the hull. Now these three, plus Handon and Fick, stood at the edge of the MARSOC team room, near the hatch. “The bad news,” Fick said, “is this mission is being dropped right on your head. And you have to get up to speed fast – then jump your ass in the fire.” Juice just nodded, looking serious and observant. “The good news,” Handon said, evidently tag-teaming with Fick again, “is that we’ve burned too much daylight – providing a floating target platform for the Russian battlecruiser, and fighting the resultant deck fires. So we can’t launch this thing until tomorrow, BMNT.” This stood for beginning of morning |
| Twenty-Three Reg Twenty-Three Reg JFK - Alpha Berths The sun was going down, and night in the south Atlantic began to swallow the gigantic and powerful – but by this point badly battered – warship. She was becoming just a small dark smudge sitting at the seam between sea and sky. Even at her size, the largest vessel ever built by man, she was still totally lost on this vast ocean, just as the Earth itself disappeared in the endless void of the empty, dead cosmos. The world’s last nuclear supercarrier was now no more than an indistinguishable speck on a tiny blue dot, itself floating lonely and silent in a cosmic sunbeam. But where Juice was now, he had no way of knowing the light was failing, though he was acutely aware of the hour – and of how few of those were left to him. He was sealed up in his sleeping berth, wedged up in the top bunk, with only the narrow cone of his reading light for illumination – and the binder that contained the massive mission planning document lying heavily |
| Piloting the Couch Piloting the Couch JFK - Hospital Lieutenant Hailey Wells pushed through the double doors into the ship’s hospital – and immediately began to wonder whether this was a good idea after all. She was here to visit two of her fellow pilots who had been injured in the missile attacks. All these poor guys had been doing was taking a few minutes to enjoy themselves for once, standing on deck and watching landfall. They’d just picked the wrong damned time to stand around in the open like that. And now they were part of what had become a tsunami of casualties – from what Hailey had heard, as many as fifty or sixty of them. And it looked like that was about right, because she could now see they were overflowing the available beds in the hospital. Cots had been set up in slightly out of the way spots, and IV stands dotted the landscape. From a cursory look, she guessed a lot of these injuries were minor, and many of these people would be out of here soon. But, right now, it was |
| Bad JuJu Bad JuJu JFK - 02 Deck Homer stopped in his tracks. Of all the luck. He had just glided up to the outside of Juice and Pred’s compartment. And Ali had just slipped out of hers, right next door. The two ex-lovers locked eyes in the dim and deserted companionway. No words passed between them. But a thousand volts of emotion did. And it was not the same type of electricity they used to feel. Now, the connections between them, while far from broken, were bent, and crossed, and tangled up. And shorting dangerously. And it made each of them look away. When Homer looked up again, she was gone. Ali had a very special talent for disappearing into thin air. And Homer had to work to catch his breath – as he considered how much had been contained in that one look between them. What the hell happened with us? He also knew that, however impossible it was recovering from a break-up that devastating, even under ideal conditions… the actual current conditions were that A) they were trapped tog |
| To Either Side of You To Either Side of You JFK - 02 Deck Ali glided silently and nearly invisibly through the lower decks, onto a ladder, up one level, through some more deserted companionway – and finally onto the surviving Sparrow/CIWS deck, out on the port side of the night-swaddled carrier. If I’m looking to stay away from Homer, she thought ruefully, taking a seat on the cold metal plate of a protruding duct, I’m going about it in a strange way… This was his favorite hiding spot – and he was the one who had originally showed it to her. Oh, well, she thought. Custody battles were always ugly. She exhaled into the cool night air, and felt a shudder go through her as she remembered all that had been contained in the look that passed between the two of them just now. She’d been through a lot of extreme experiences in her life – hell, her life had been mostly those – but that one ranked up there. She leaned back, let her shoulders sag, and tried to relax. Whatever else, she knew, with |
| Redemption Redemption 48°59'32" 87°40'16" The man strained all the muscles in the right side of his body, trying to stretch far enough to reach the handgun where it lay, just beyond his reach on the cold white tile floor. The tips of his fingers brushed the blued metal, but could not gain any purchase. In fact, he was in danger of pushing the weapon even farther away. And if he couldn’t recover it in the next few seconds, he was pretty sure… that would be it for him. He had lost his focus for only a few seconds. But that’s all it took. He’d always known, intellectually, that if he lost his shit out here, if he let things fall apart, absolutely no one would be coming to save him. But now that abstract nightmare was becoming a stomach-dropping reality. He was feeling the cold daylight crash of it happening – for real. It’s just me here, he thought. And the sense of crushing loneliness that this brought, even in his moment of maximum peril, took his breath away and caused a tear to roll f |
| Thank God For The Walking Dead Thank God For The Walking Dead 48°59'31" 87°40'17" - Altai Mountains, Asia With a shudder of relief, Oleg Aliyev saw that his herding implement was right where he left it, on his most recent trip out, when the traps had proved empty. This consisted of a six-foot length of hollow PVC pipe, with a sort of curved pommel guard at the end – and a thick section of nylon rope, which emerged as a noose at the guarded end, and a knotted length at the other. Thank God for The Walking Dead, Aliyev thought, as he often did, giving credit where it was due for the original idea. Those guys paved the way for the rest of us. Employed carefully, the noose on the end could be gotten over the head of one of them, tightened around its neck by pulling on the rope, and then the subject herded back to the lab with minimal fuss – and minimal danger. Though it definitely paid not to get complacent. And, anyway, first he had to get the damned things out of the traps. As the scene |
| Briefback Briefback JFK - MARSOC Team Room [Ass O’Clock] Somewhat before first thing next morning, Sergeant Lovell and Corporal Raible stood at the front of the MARSOC team room, tag-teaming on the commander’s briefback. This was the last milestone before they launched the scavenging mission to the South African naval base at Saldanha Bay. The briefback was generally where the guys who had done the planning, and who would actually be conducting the mission, ran through all the details so the commander could make sure that, 1) it was going to accomplish what he wanted it to; and, 2) it wasn’t going to get everyone fucking killed. The role of the commander today was played by Drake. And it was Lovell and Raible giving the briefing because, of the two fire teams of four MARSOC Marines each assigned to this op, they were the most senior. Everyone superior to them was either dead, or being kept in reserve for Somalia. The other main audience for this briefback was Juice – who was now hearin |
| Panjshir Panjshir JFK - Combat Information Center Drake leaned back into one of the comfy upholstered chairs around the periphery of CIC. He wasn’t sure why they got all the comfy chairs in here, except perhaps because these guys had to be glued to them all the time. That, or so it would look like it did in Tom Clancy films. He leaned back in the cool dimness, settling into the rich hum of voices and activity around him, and watched the big screen up front. This showed the video view from their Fire Scout, the helicopter drone, which had cycled and refueled, and then relaunched an hour ago. It now orbited the naval base, its camera currently trained on their boat full of badasses, which was about five minutes from hitting the docks. The light was still low enough that they were watching in night-vision/thermal mode. But the sun was coming up. Under normal conditions, they’d have two or even three UAVs up there, for a variety of views on the target objective. But they already had the Pr |
| Belly of the Beast Belly of the Beast JFK - Stores Wesley stood in the middle of the vast open space that was ship’s Stores, pointing his flashlight at the map in his other hand. The lighting down here was very dim, and the flashlight not a hell of a lot better, so he had to squint to focus on the details Dr. Park and Sarah Cameron had scrawled on the tattered sheet. He followed the markings, noting each cross and the tiny scribbles next to them, then glanced at the stack of pallets to his left. There was a patch of unpleasant gunk on the floor a few feet away. Wesley’s adopted German Shepherd, who they had determined was named Judy, and who had formerly been a working military dog, sniffed at the gunk and growled quietly. He reached down and patted her thick fur. “Yeah, I don’t like it much either…” He looked up again. “Right here, is my guess,” he said, looking over at Melvin, who stood nearby. The Scotsman held his assault rifle aimed outward as he scanned the darker corners of the |
| You're So Dead You’re So Dead JFK - Stores The companionway was silent as the four men backtracked down it, the dog still sitting quietly before the hatch at the end – the one with the footprints leading to it. Wesley had decided they needed to go back and clear all the less suspect compartments before tackling the final one. He took the lead now, aiming his light and his weapon into the corners of each room as Melvin eased the hatches open. The first two were empty and looked as though they had been that way for a long time. The floors were dust-covered, the corners filled with cobwebs, and no supplies, wood or otherwise, could be seen. Not even any debris. They moved on to the next two, and found these to be very different. They were still covered with a fine layer of dust, but were piled from floor to ceiling with stacks of treated wooden planks. They looked like the kind used to build decks in a yard – and, when he thought about it, Wesley recognized them as identical to those that |
| Zero Options Zero Options JFK - Stores Wesley stood looking down into the hole in the deck, at the man hiding below. Anderson. Wesley had always guessed the guy was weak. All the time they had been out in Virginia Beach he was constantly coming up with reasons for not doing whatever needed to be done. Leaving him in the truck had seemed the best way to deal with the guy at the time – keep him out of the firing line and away from anything that might cause him to flip out and screw things up. Wesley had intended to have him reassigned the moment they got back to the JFK – ideally to some area with fewer guns, and where he wouldn’t be a threat to everyone on his team just by being there. But he hadn’t had the chance, and Wesley’s choice to make him the driver had backfired in spectacular fashion. At the moment he’d been most needed, Anderson had driven away, leaving the small team to fight off an overwhelming number of fast-moving and vicious runners. If it hadn’t been for the help of the |
| Zero Dark Thirty Zero Dark Thirty The Kazakh’s Dacha - Altai Mountains, 30 Miles from the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility The Dacha – Russian for Lodge – that was how Aliyev thought of it, capitalizing it in his mind. But the name was misleading, as it was not nearly so rustic as all that. In fact, looked at objectively, it was much more like the mountain fortress of an evil genius, or perhaps a Bond villain. Both of which, Aliyev figured, captured him pretty well. As for the Kazakh… well, that was how the Somalis had referred to him – those Islamist nut-jobs in the East African al-Qaeda offshoot called al-Shabaab, the ones who had paid for the virus – and who had actually paid for much of the complex that surrounded him now. And also the same clumsy dipshits who had lost control of the virus, thus causing all of the death that surrounded the Dacha, all the way out to the edges of the Earth. Or so Aliyev tried to tell himself – that they had caused this. He knew that the virus had cha |
| Lethal to the Dead Fatal to the Dead The Kazakh’s Dacha - Altai Mountains And then there was Aliyev’s lab. As lavish as the rest of the Dacha was, it was the lab that had really taken the big bucks to stock and equip. Looking around him now, even all this time later, he still got pleasure from the fact that this joint truly had it all: flow cytometers, digital and analog cell analyzers, ultracentrifuges of all sizes (one refrigerated). It had equipment for biomolecular interaction analysis (including a very pricey Biacore), a liquid nitrogen storage system, CO2 incubators, a heated incubator. There were liquid scintillation counters, a fluoro-image analyzer, a Gamma irradiator… it went on and on, a full-service, one-stop shop for deadly pathogen design. Aliyev had truly been a one-man army in his freelance days. Now, he let his eye wander across the rows of equipment, and finally to the four big glass enclosures at the end of the lab. Those he had put in special – and after the fall. A |
| 28 Days Later 28 Days Later SAS Saldanha - Military Docks The ghostly South African port facility, abandoned two years earlier, was now just another post-apocalyptic sound stage – a place of former bustling human activity which the humans had all been removed from, as if beamed away into outer space. Virtually the whole world was weirdly alike in this way now – like a scene from 28 Days Later, double-decker buses overturned on Westminster Bridge, trash and debris blowing in the streets, and the silence of total depopulation so loud it roared in your ears. All that moved in this scene was Juice, the Marines under his temporary command, the boat that ferried them across – and, achingly slowly, the rising sun. Almost no sound was made by any of them. As was also usually the case at port facilities, there were no boats tied up. They’d all been taken during the fall, as the dwindling living tried to escape the swelling legions of dead on the land. Few of them lasted long at sea; but they la |
| Close With and Destroy Close With and Destroy SAS Saldanha Still keeping perfect noise discipline, using hand signals only, Juice directed the two teams closer to the group of big warehouse-looking buildings. So far, he had an excellent impression of the Marines, who seemed extremely tactically proficient. They also kept their problems to themselves, and their minds on their jobs. He watched the eight tooled-up figures in digital urban camo, all carrying tan SCAR assault rifles, slither forward in the thin early-morning light, switching seamlessly between bounding overwatch and standard patrol formations, as the terrain dictated. They showed very solid small-unit patrolling tactics – and Juice had no doubt their reaction drills to enemy contact would be equally sharp. As he waited for the two columns to stretch out a bit farther – no bunching up – he considered that these guys had presumably been equally proficient in the flight-deck battle. There’d just been no time to notice it. And |
| Plotting a Murder Plotting a Murder JFK - Bridge “Sir! Commander!” Abrams jumped as the ensign shouted, presenting with something a little too much like panic. Maybe this was payback, Abrams figured, not having left the poor man alone all morning. In fact, this was the first time Abrams had stepped away from that station for more than three minutes in a row. He’d just gone out on the observation deck to check out what appeared to be a lone Alpha dude, inexplicably pacing the edge of their flight deck, reminding Abrams of the Ancient Mariner, shoulders sagging under his albatross… But the instant he realized who was calling him, he hauled ass back inside. “What? Report!” “Sir, the Admiral Nakhimov is under way!” “You are fucking kidding me. Of all the shit timing.” He meant that they had only just launched their shore mission, thirty minutes ago. “Heading and speed.” “Heading zero-one-five… speed approx fifteen knots… coming through two-zero… two-five…” Abrams got it. In fact, he could |
| Victim Operated Victim Operated SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse Juice clicked on his weapon-mounted Surefire tactical light as the door of the last and biggest warehouse closed behind them. He and the six Marines immediately found themselves at one end of a long windowless hallway, and the banishment of the light from the doorway left them in blackness. Now his light punched narrow holes in the dark. He wasn’t too bothered about drawing any dead that were in this building. He needed to destroy them anyway. Hence the light. Though the living would be a whole other issue. They hadn’t found any of either so far. But Juice had too much combat experience to assume conditions wouldn’t change. So he still directed the team using hand signals rather than spoken commands. He padded smoothly forward down the long hallway, silently pushing his Marines into the blacked-out rooms that opened up every few meters to their right. Hearing no sounds of contact, either radio reports or suppressed rifle sho |
| Balerion Balerion JFK - Outside the Alpha Team Room “Goddamnit,” Ali said as she opened the team room hatch to walk out of it, and saw Homer standing behind it. “This is like a bad rom-com. Could we stop meeting cute, please?” Homer didn’t smile in response. Instead he said, “I need your help.” Ali’s annoyance evaporated as she realized he was serious. The two of them went back inside, where Pred and Henno just gave them inquiring looks. Homer instantly began briefing the team, as well as giving instructions for exactly what he needed from them – while simultaneously also yanking out boxes of gear, uncharacteristically heedless of the disorder he was causing. When he found the box he was looking for, he worked the catches and flipped the lid, all at pit-stop speed. Inside, stowed and carefully arrayed, were his wetsuit, Draeger rebreather, rocket fins, dive booties, mask and snorkel, and regulator. There was also a dive computer, pressure gauge, buoyancy compensator, diving lamp – and |
| МиШа МиШа SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse Juice stepped out into the cavernous, enveloping darkness of the main warehouse, still alone. He could have called the team back to support him, almost certainly should have. But some part of him was enjoying operating on his own, ranging ahead, exploring, feeling alive. He felt as if he had been given a whole new lease on life, and he wanted to road test it a little. He also told himself that, with at least part of this building wired to blow, he ought to clear the rest of it without putting the others at risk. Of course, he knew that was bullshit. The Marines were pros, and this was exactly what they were here for. Nonetheless, he carried on alone. And he quickly worked out where all the supplies had gone – everything from the entire base and depot. It was all right here. This was the motherlode. Every conceivable type of military ordnance was in evidence, even in just the first few rows of stacked pallets he checked – crates of ammo in every c |
| Just When You Thought... Just When You Thought… CentCom Strategic Command, London “The Biacore has arrived,” said Broads, switching his headset to mute and glancing over at Colonel Mayes, who stood a little way across the JOC. “The Germany mission just touched down and are disembarking now.” “The equipment’s in working order?” Broads flicked the mute off and spoke into the headset. “LandMark One, please confirm status of the recovered equipment. Is it intact?” Mayes couldn’t hear the reply with all the noise in the room and waited impatiently until Broads looked back up and spoke. “Seems it’s all disassembled inside its casing, but they’re getting it into the lab and will confirm with us then.” Mayes nodded, accepting this answer, though he’d have much preferred to hear something more reassuring. Evidently, that chunk of electronics was absolutely critical to the final efforts of the American scientist to develop a vaccine, and if it wasn’t in working condition, they were pretty well s |
| All Go Boom All Go Boom CentCom Airfield, Wandsworth Common “I thought that was it for you,” said Eli, as he and Jameson stood off to the side of the parked-up helos. Nearby, a dozen techs hurried to secure the Biacore 4000 to the bed of a flat-top truck that had been waiting for the expedition to land. The two Marines watched, amused, as men and women in lab coats or coveralls strapped down the housing and cardboard packaging – the only container Eli had been able to find as they rushed to get the machine and its hundreds of parts out of the target building. But which had absolutely not been fit for the job. For a moment, Eli wondered what the reaction would be in the lab complex when they finally opened the box and found everything shoved inside in one great pile. He hoped to hell they’d found all the pieces, but mentally shrugged. It was out of his hands now, and someone else’s problem. Jameson exhaled. “Yeah, I thought it was it for me, too. But you know me. Too damned stubborn to |
| Bugs Rule the Planet Bugs Rule the Planet The Kazakh’s Dacha, Altai Mountains A half-hour after infecting the first test subject, and fifteen minutes after admitting the two “healthy” ones into the same enclosure with it, Oleg Aliyev could not yet see any signs of cross-infection. It was too early to start worrying, but not too early to start getting bored, as ADD was a well-understood and long-running problem with him. So he stood up again, and while he waited… he lectured. This was a slightly eccentric habit he’d fallen into, during the long hours of the Apocalypse, alone with only his dead test subjects for company. It was due to boredom, and also loneliness, it was sheer black humor and perversity. Maybe it was only natural – most scientists talked to their lab subjects. Though a mouse or white rat, never mind a chimp, showed a lot more understanding and camaraderie than a dead human. But maybe it also had to do with Aliyev being a natural pedagogue. Simply, he liked teaching. It h |
| Last Dead Man Standing Last Dead Man Standing The Kazakh’s Dacha, Altai Mountains Returning to the lab, Aliyev immediately resumed pacing. Gesturing grandly now, he said, “In the years since humans developed the germ theory of disease, we have learned something critical. We have learned that almost all human illnesses are the result of microbial infection.” He turned and paced back in the other direction. “And this understanding changed everything! Once we knew it was the bugs that were killing us, human lifespan more than doubled, in just the last 150 years. And this was due to very basic shit like decent sanitation and public hygiene – covered sewers, indoor plumbing, clean water. Doctors washing their hands between the morgue and the delivery ward. And the invention of penicillin and other antibiotics, which have saved more lives than any other invention in human history. But…” He turned to face his class and soliloquized, his Slavic-accented voice deep and resonant. “All that succe |
| Putting the Damage In Putting the Damage In JFK - Angle Deck LCDR Cole, Commander of the carrier’s Air Group (CAG), sat swaddled in the familiar womb of his cockpit, using biofeedback techniques to get his breathing and heart rate under control. No matter how many times he did this, a carrier launch never became routine. He was about to be catapulted across the deck and into space, accelerating to 160mph in less than two seconds – with a rocket engine strapped to his groin, high-explosive missiles on his arms, and a fire-breathing Gatling gun between his teeth. This shit just never got old. And it never stopped spiking his adrenaline up into a range not available in any other human activity. He peered over his digital instrument suite and out through the cockpit glass, off to the starboard side – where he could see their Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) helo rising up to the deck on an aircraft elevator. This was one of only two Seahawk helicopters the JFK had left flying. CSAR was the |
| Post-Apocalyptic Badass Survivor Shit Post-Apocalyptic Badass Survivor Shit SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse The six hard men now arrayed against Juice in close quarters were, completely transparently to him, Spetsnaz – Russian special operators. There was nothing else like them, in the old world or this new fallen one, or in any conceivable world. Their identity just spilled out of them. Spetsnaz might not have had the technology or training infrastructure of the Americans or Brits. But they had been, it was equally obvious just looking at them, trained and tormented to within an inch of their lives: tattooed on any and all surfaces (not necessarily with real tattoo needles), dunked in ice water, cut with knives, drop-kicked, cleverly beaten to leave no bruises. They’d had flaming boards broken across their bare backs, been dragged behind jeeps, involved in quite a lot of bare-knuckle boxing matches, and had concrete blocks laid across their abs and broken with sledgehammers. The shit th |
| Knife to a Dogfight Knife to a Dogfight Over the South Atlantic Cole leveled out his two-aircraft formation again, having gotten them back on track for their first waypoint, after that brief distraction and order to RTB. Now the world spread out below them in silence like a lovely blue marble, and the curvature of the Earth could be seen out 270 degrees of cockpit glass. Despite the roaring engine, the Earth below, stretching out to the horizons, looked peaceful. What it really was, of course, was dead. But Cole was mainly looking at the target designator for the Russian ship on his moving map display. He and Tom-o were now up high enough to get their own radar signature back for the battlecruiser, without need of the Predator up above them at 15k feet. With the enemy vessel showing up clearly, Cole had no concerns about staying out of their 200km kill radius – nor about getting it inside their own 370km circle of death. They’d passed into that outside border zone a few seconds ago. Bu |
| No Scenario in Which This Guy Lives No Scenario in Which This Guy Lives SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse So now his Marines were back – and they had a true stand-off on their hands. Which, Juice had to admit, probably beat what he had a second ago, which was being completely at the mercy of the least nice guys in the entire history of special operations. Then again, this wasn’t a whole hell of a lot better. Juice flashed back to the last living people he’d had to fight – those civilians in the middle of Lake Michigan. And what he was facing here was a very different proposition from those self-styled pirates on that pleasure boat. Those guys had imagined themselves to be badasses. These dudes never even had to think about it. Well, at least they’re professionals, Juice thought, looking on the bright side. Amateurs were always more dangerous. Or maybe not… he amended, as he now very unexpectedly saw his own Lance Corporal Jenkins appear from down an aisle – one controlled by the Russians, |
| The Trick is to Keep Breathing The Trick is to Keep Breathing JFK - Bridge When Gunny Fick burst onto the bridge, in the seconds after both their F-35s were blown out of the sky by the Admiral Nakhimov’s bolt-from-the-blue long-range missiles, he briefly thought he’d taken a wrong turn and stumbled into the mortuary affairs compartment. It was that quiet, and that grim. The first thing he saw was Drake doubled up near the front screens, like someone had punched him in the gut. The rest of the bridge crew seemed frozen in place, like a visitor from an advanced civilization had just warped in and halted time. The disaster that had just struck them was completely unthinkable. And it had seemingly robbed everyone of the ability to react, or perhaps even to think. Abrams rushed now to the side of Drake, who seemed to be having trouble breathing, or even standing. As Fick stepped inside, he and Handon locked eyes across the room. This was bad. Finally, Fick spoke, his rough voice rupturing t |
| Circling the Drain Circling the Drain SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse Juice, hunkering down in the middle of the sudden and savage firefight now shredding the air of the warehouse, looked to his side, where he found Sergeant Lovell. He gave him a look which he hoped would convey his displeasure that the Marines had disobeyed his order and returned. “Hey,” Lovell shouted, “nothing blew up! And you didn’t come back!” With that, he popped up, squeezed off a dozen rapid rifle rounds, then dropped down again. “What are you engaging?” Juice shouted. “I don’t know, man! I just figured one of us should fucking return fire!” He had a point. Underneath the pummeling roar of the incoming volleys, Juice could hear the squad net going manic. To their credit, the Marines were self-organizing, and mounting a defense. They were also following their excellent training, which told them never to hang around trading rounds. You never wanted to be in a firefight, you wanted to dominate it – with crushing fir |
| Machine Gun to a Missile Fight Machine Gun to a Missile Fight JFK - Bridge Drake waved Abrams away, and tried to straighten up, not to mention draw breath. The news of their pilots getting blown out of the air, coming across the open channel from CIC, had been like a punch to the gut. A massive wave of pain rolled across Drake’s skull, causing his knees to buckle. And the dizziness, headache, and nausea that had been dogging him all day surged up and overwhelmed him. All of Drake’s worst fears were coming true, right in front of his face. He had just committed a catastrophic error of command – getting the assessment of the enemy’s air defenses wrong, and overruling his subordinate who wanted to take the time to double-check them. And, because of that, people had died. They were hardly the first to fall under his command. But those pilots were irreplaceable – never mind their aircraft, none of which would ever be built again. But even that might not be the worst of it. Without those F-3 |
| Battle Damage Assessment Battle Damage Assessment JFK - CIC This time, when Drake entered CIC, he got the unmistakable vibe of being totally unwelcome there. And when he found Campbell, she honestly looked like she might hit him. Hell, go ahead and take a shot, Drake thought. It wouldn’t take more than a soft tap to put him on his ass. Which might be the best place for him. Barely moving her jaw, Campbell said, “Commander, CSAR needs to dust off now. Our guy is alone out on open water, with the enemy moving on both sea and air. We need to scramble the other two F-35s, and get the CSAR bird moving now.” Drake ignored this – which compounded the shock felt by the entire CIC staff, and moved Campbell that bit closer to the hairline border of insubordination. Instead, Drake looked at a radar console and its operator. “What’s the status of the Nakhimov? In the last minute.” “She’s turned south again, sir. Steaming at sixteen knots on heading one-seven-three.” So they were moving away now. B |
| Survivability Survivability JFK - CIC “I thought your missiles could defeat their close-in weapons systems.” This came from an all-new and steely voice behind the others. Drake and Campbell turned to see Sergeant Major Handon, along with Ali, both standing behind them, arms crossed, both perfectly upright and still, like marble statues, and both watching the video over their shoulders. They had come down upon reuniting on the observation deck, after Fick’s one-man air-defense masterclass. Handon was still loath to get in the way of shipboard ops. On the other hand, what he’d just witnessed up on the bridge was something like a total breakdown of command. If he and Fick hadn’t acted on their own… Drake used to think the same thing Handon had just vocalized – that their LRASMs were too fast and stealthy to get tagged by the Russian Kashtans. But this was only like the tenth time today they’d been catastrophically wrong. And it was starting to look like the Russians had seen them coming – |
| IED Alley IED Alley SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse Withering fire was still coming in on Juice and the Marines – totally merciless, and increasingly accurate. Much worse than this was the fact that, while Juice had forbade his Marines to maneuver, the badass Spetsnaz killers were happily maneuvering in on them, and working around their flanks. They moved, shot, and communicated with daunting skill, and flawless small-unit cohesion. It was like fighting the Borg. Soon they’d have the Marines’ position enveloped. And not long after that, they’d all be dead. Ordering a static defense as Juice had done was preventing them from being shredded by more of those IEDs, or from overreaching themselves and being cut down by superior shooters. And it would probably keep them alive for a few minutes longer. But staying static was also a one-way ticket to defeat. And, ultimately, being wiped out – to the last man. Juice’s SIG went dry again. Instead of doing an immediate mag change, he ducked down, s |
| The Fight of Their Lives The Fight of Their Lives JFK - Flight Deck Commander Drake’s admonition to Bring that goddamned helicopter back echoed in Ali’s ears as she and Handon emerged from the island, the two of them jogging across the flight deck toward the idling CSAR bird. The Seahawk’s rotors were now going batshit, screaming and whining about two RPMs short of dust-off, as if it were straining against its leash. Ali heaved herself aboard and then turned around, as Handon grabbed the back of her head and stuck his own up to it. “Helicopters are replaceable!” he shouted. “You’re not! You bring YOURSELF back!” Ali knew he was right. If they really needed another goddamned helo, they’d go out and find one. It wasn’t like their owners needed them anymore, or cared. “Roger that!” she shouted back. “No dramas, boss.” And with that, the sleek aircraft powered up and blasted off into the sky – and into a desperate race with the Russians, to see who would get to their downed pilot first. An |
| Love This Book? Love this book? Share the love, support independent authors, and make us your best friends forever, by posting a quick review on Amazon. Thanks! – Glynn & Michael Want to be alerted when the next ARISEN book is released? Sign up for e-mail alerts and we’ll keep you updated. (And we’ll never share your address or use it for anything else.) You can also hang out with other readers and fans, plus the authors themselves, by joining the Official ARISEN Series Community on Facebook. Finally… every time you volunteer your time to recommend our books to friends, family, colleagues, and loved ones, that’s what allows us to keep writing for a living – because it’s word-of-mouth that sells books, period. Which means it’s you we have to thank for having careers. And that is a debt that can never be repaid. THANK YOU. |
| Also available in audiobook! This title also available as an AUDIOBOOK performed by the incomparable R.C. Bray (Totally free with Audible trial!) Listeners rave about the ARISEN audiobooks: “RC Bray is a god of narration” … “Fuchs and Bray combine to create a perfect storm of story-telling. These two are a force to be reckoned with” … “Heart-stopping prose delivered by a very impressive actor” … “Honestly if Bray read the phone book I'd download it” … “R.C. Bray makes each and every character come alive in a unique way. Get this audiobook RFN!!!” … “the best narrator in the business. If you've not listened to this series then you're missing out” … “Absolutely a freaking thrill ride from beginning to end. I could not stop listening.” |
| Thanks and Acknowledgements Thanks and Acknowledgements Michael This author wishes to thank indispensable uber-reader Amanda Jo Moore, as well as go-to readers (and subject matter experts) Mark George Pitely and Alexander M. Heublein; also Anna K. Brooksbank, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Matthew David Grabowy, and Michael and Jayne Barnard, for their indispensable support. Also, Bruce, Wanda, Alec, and Brendan Fyfe. The phrase “masters of chaos” was borrowed from Linda Robinson’s fantastic book, Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces. The whole section about how “defense of one’s tribe is an insanely compelling idea” was taken, and then pretty much just lightly paraphrased, from Sebastian Junger’s outstanding book, War. Because Junger spent months living (and practically fighting) with soldiers in one of the most remote combat outposts in Afghanistan, the amazing insights he shares in his book – about combat and abo |
| Prequels and Spin-Offs With ENDGAME, the world-shattering climax & conclusion of the ARISEN epic, the main series is complete. But… The story doesn’t end here. Across the entire overrun world, two whole years of ZA remain to be explored, and many of your favorite heroes will return, in forthcoming prequels and spin-off mini-series, including: ARISEN : Raiders and ARISEN : Operators To be alerted when these adventures are available, sign up for e-mail alerts from MSF today! |
| One troop of beyond-Tier-1 operators – gone completely off the reservation. One platoon of stalwart Army Rangers – pledged to protect them, but now pushed too far. And 10,000 relentless Syrian regulars, headhacking Islamist militias, desperate ISIS and al-Qaeda remnants, bloodthirsty Iranian agitators, and hyper-lethal Russian Spetsnaz pipe-hitters… who all just want them gone. |
Description
Readers call the ARISEN series: "As well written and conceived as any book I have ever read" ... "Wall to wall adrenaline - edge of your seat unputdownable until the very last page" ... "utterly compelling" ... "Blows World War Z out of the water" ... "THE BOSS of the zombie apocalypse genre" ... "The pace and action are breathtaking" ... "the most amazing and intense battle scenes you've ever experienced" ... "Holy crap!! Nail-biting, pucker-factor 11, non-stop, badass, blow-by-blow action from the get-go to the very end" ... "Just WOW. Five Stars just doesn't cover this one. WOW" ... "rolls along like an out of control freight train" ... "well written, sophisticated, witty, compelling, exciting, well-researched, and supremely enjoyable" ... "I cannot believe how great this series is" ... "a knock down drag out kick ass read - the best ZA book series around, period" ... "six stars nothing less - I thought this series could not get any better, how wrong I was" ... "insane propulsive storytelling"With over a half-million copies sold, and a 4.7/5.0-★ average on over5,000 reviews, the world's most thrilling and best-loved military zombie-apocalypse series returns, powering toward its epic and cataclysmic conclusion.ARISENHope Never Dies. Read more