The Rising Horde, Volume One Read online

  THE RISING HORDE

  Volume One

  by Stephen Knight

  © 2012 by Stephen Knight

  Cover art © 2012 by Jared Rackler

  The dead overran Europe in less than a month.

  The plague of the moving dead started in Russia and spread outward like some sort of creature expanding its territory. At first, the Russians handled it in the usual way—they denied there was any problem, controlled all media, and refuted all claims that Russia was responsible, or even involved. But by the time a million corpses walked through one of the heaviest artillery bombardments in history and descended upon Moscow, the European continent was lost.

  Despite the technological advances of most European societies and the ever-vigilant police forces in several of the continent’s nations, with the fall of Russia, the dead spread through the European Union like unchecked wildfire. By the time the EU’s leaders had determined that the carnivorous hordes were a threat of significant consequence that required an overwhelming asymmetric response, it was too late.

  NATO was generally powerless to operate in the beginnings of the conflict, shackled beneath a command and control structure both burdensome and lackluster. Despite early warnings from the American military, the Europeans didn’t want to face the problem. When it came time to push and shove, the Americans were already withdrawing. Other than a token force sent to Britain to assist in stabilizing the United Kingdom—the only European nation to take the threat seriously from the beginning—Europe had to face the horde alone.

  And the European ineffectiveness was all the dead needed to proliferate worldwide.

  1

  McDaniels watched Boston Harbor grow closer as the Coast Guard cutter Escanaba cruised down the channel at a steady six knots, her bow knifing through the polluted water. It had taken the Escanaba almost eighteen hours to make it from New York to Boston, and it seemed that her engines were running full-out the entire time. He had never been much of a fan of Boston, but he was happy to see it after what he had endured in New York. From a distance, all looked well. But as the Escanaba drew closer to the shore, he could see flashing strobe lights, scores of helicopters in the air, and smoke on the horizon. Just off to the ship’s starboard side, Logan International Airport should have been a beehive of activity, with commercial carriers coming and going. Instead, the only aircraft were military planes, which landed and took off in great synchronicity. McDaniels leaned against the deck railing and hung his head.

  The dead were already in Boston.

  Shipboard announcements were made, telling the crew to remain aboard while the ship was reprovisioned. McDaniels already knew a car would be waiting for him at the Escanaba’s dock, to spirit him and the precious Iron Key flash drive sitting in the ship’s safe to a safe location, if such a place existed. The dead had a funny way of being able to turn even a fortress into a tomb.

  As a tugboat linked up with the Coast Guard cutter, rifle fire crackled somewhere on the shore. McDaniels recognized the likely caliber, 5.56 millimeter, the same caliber an Army M4 would fire. The regular beat of the shots indicated one weapon firing on full automatic. So either the military or a law enforcement SWAT team had just gone to guns on something. McDaniels was certain he knew what that something was, and looking at the Coast Guardsmen who tended to their duties on either side of him, he saw they knew, too.

  “Major?”

  McDaniels turned. Regina Safire stood beside him, her green eyes turned toward the approaching shoreline. She regarded the curtain of smoke rising into the air with a haunted expression.

  “They’re here; aren’t they?” she asked.

  McDaniels nodded. “I think pretty soon, they’ll be everywhere.”

  “Where are you going? After we get … what do they call it? Put ashore?”

  “Nothing’s changed. I’m still going to the Rid.” McDaniels had been charged with delivering Doctor Wolf Safire and his valuable research from New York City to the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, also known simply as “the Rid.” The fact that Safire was dead was largely unimportant. McDaniels was the appointed custodian of Safire’s final research, and that was good enough for the government. He had been in contact with his commanders over his satellite telephone, and they had told him he would be met when the Escanaba made landfall. The only major change was that McDaniels had been instructed to bring Regina Safire with him, just in case the researchers at the Rid encountered difficulty with the files. She might be able to assist in deciphering some of her father’s processes.

  “You’re coming with me,” he added. “Big Army wants you in Virginia.”

  She nodded, then turned away from the lights of Boston and looked at him. “What about Earl and Zoe?”

  McDaniels sighed. “They’re… they’re not persons of interest. They’re free to go anywhere they want once we dock.”

  “I’ve been talking with Earl. He doesn’t know anyone in Boston. He doesn’t have any resources. Kicking them to the curb now is kind of cruel. Don’t you think?”

  McDaniels nodded. “I do. But there’s not a lot I can do about it. I can maybe get him a room somewhere, but I don’t have any credit cards or anything. Not even an ATM card, so I can’t get him any cash—”

  “I’ll take care of that. But Earl lost his wife and oldest daughter almost back-to-back. And he has Zoe to look after. With everything that’s going on, dumping him onto the street and wishing him luck just isn’t good enough.”

  “I’ll talk to the Coasties. Maybe they can help out. In the meantime, you should get ready to disembark. Once we’re at the pier, we’re gone.”

  “All right.” She turned back to the railing.

  McDaniels made his way to the bridge. None of the Coast Guardsmen on the deck challenged him, but Commander Hassle didn’t look very happy to see him. Not surprising, since McDaniels had basically called the man a coward in front of his crew for not going back into New York City to rescue one of McDaniels’s men. Once aboard the Escanaba, McDaniels had made radio contact with the last of his men, First Sergeant David Gartrell. At the time, Gartrell, who had acted as a decoy so McDaniels could get the civilians—and the Iron Key thumb drive—to safety, was on the run from the zombie horde and still very much alive, but McDaniels knew his ammunition had to be almost depleted. A single soldier, even an accomplished thirty-year veteran like Gartrell with decades of special operations experience, was simply no match for thousands of hungry stenches. Alone in the city, Gartrell was fast approaching his expiration date, and the only thing that might save him would be McDaniels and a handful of Coast Guardsmen. But Hassle had denied McDaniels the men, denied him the use of one of the Escanaba’s small boats, and had finally stripped him of his weapons. McDaniels had been incensed at what he perceived to be cowardice on the part of the ship’s captain, but over the time it had taken for the Escanaba to return to sea and journey to Boston, he had slowly come to understand Hassle’s position. While McDaniels had been operating under a surge of emotion, Hassle had a crew to preserve and a ship to oversee. Those were his primary mission essentials. Launching what would almost certainly have been a suicidal rescue effort for one soldier just didn’t offer enough returns for sacrificing several of his men. And when McDaniels had time to get it together, he knew the Coasties would be literally chewed up if they went ashore. Their training and experience simply had not prepared them for protracted overland operations in urban terrain.

  Besides, Hassle had taken a big enough risk by sending a detachment out into the waters of the East River for McDaniels and the others. McDaniels was surprised they made it out of New York alive. Even with the Escanaba’s firepower, the horde had almost take
n them down. The entire Special Forces operational detachment that had gone in with McDaniels and Gartrell had been killed, along with the soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment who had been trapped with them in the city. The horde had peeled them off, one by one, until only McDaniels and three civilians remained.

  Given what he had narrowly survived, McDaniels wondered how he could have even thought of going back. The Special Forces code required that no one be left behind, but it didn’t specifically state that everyone had to die to retrieve one of their fallen. And that would have been the case had Hassle allowed it.

  McDaniels approached Hassle on the bridge and saluted. Even though Hassle wasn’t in the Army, he was still a superior officer. And McDaniels felt he should show the officer some respect to possibly repair some of the damage he’d done earlier.

  Hassle returned the salute perfunctorily. “Major McDaniels. We’ll have you ashore in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you, sir. I was wondering if I could speak to you about Mister Brown and his daughter. It seems they have nowhere to go and … well, it seems that maybe Boston might not be much safer than New York.”

  “I thought they were your problem,” Hassle said.

  “The Army tells me that only Miss Safire is going to accompany me. The Browns are basically shut out. And I figured since this is your town …”

  “You figured that the Coast Guard would be able to look after them, Major? I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help. Once you’re off and we’ve been reprovisioned, the Nob heads back to sea.”

  “I see. So there’s nothing any of the Coasties ashore can do?”

  “You called it when you said Boston has some issues, Major. Those Guardsmen ashore have other things to worry about right now than finding the Browns a hot and a cot. Again, I’m sorry, but…” Hassle shrugged and spread his hands.

  “I understand, Commander. I’ll figure something out. Thanks for everything. And I’d like to apologize for the things I said to you before. That was not in keeping with the traditions of my service, and it was just plain rude. You have your own mission to worry about, and I was wrong to try and press you to the mat over my first sergeant.”

  Hassle took the apology well, and some of his tension seemed to ebb. “I totally understand, Major. You guys were under the hammer the entire time and losing another man at the end… well, I wouldn’t want to stand in your shoes. I wish there was more we could have done, but you saw the size of the crowd at the shoreline. Even with the fifty and seventy-six, we couldn’t keep them back long enough to get your man. We’d have lost the entire party if we tried.”

  “I know that now, sir.”

  Hassle nodded. “After we dock, I’ll hand off that thumb drive to you. I’m told a government vehicle is already waiting at the pier to take you to… to wherever it is you’re going.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Good luck, Major. Whatever that man Safire came up with, I hope it can help us straighten all of this out.” Hassle jerked his chin toward Boston. “And I hope it happens soon because whatever bug can reanimate the dead and then spread itself through bite wounds is probably something real, real bad.”

  “It sure as hell is, Commander. Trust me on that one.”

  ***

  McDaniels found Earl and Zoe sitting with Regina in the Escanaba’s cramped crew galley. Zoe leaned against her father listlessly, her gaze fixed on the tabletop. She didn’t look up when McDaniels stopped next to the table and asked her how she was doing. McDaniels frowned. She was totally shut down. The things she had witnessed in New York had completely overwhelmed her ability to cope. But she was still young, and McDaniels felt—hoped—she would be able to recover.

  Her father, Earl, wasn’t in much better shape. His eyes were flat and dull behind his glasses as he looked up at McDaniels. Seeing his wife become one of the walking dead and the death of his eldest daughter as she fell down a dark elevator shaft had taken a terrible toll on the man. Despite the fact he had no military or survival training beyond what he might have picked up on the streets of Harlem, Earl had managed to get his daughters to a place of relative safety amidst the carnage that had descended upon New York City. If McDaniels and the others hadn’t arrived, perhaps the zeds would have overlooked the Browns’ enclave completely. But reanimated members of Operational Detachment OMEN—the Special Forces team that had been chopped to McDaniels for the rescue mission—had come hunting for the surviving special operators. And the Browns had paid a terrible price.

  McDaniels saw no hatred or malice in Earl’s eyes, only loss, hurt, and despair.

  “Any news?” Regina asked.

  “Nothing good,” McDaniels said. “Earl, you don’t have any place in Boston where you could go? No friends, no family?”

  Earl shook his head. “Nothin’ that I can think of right now. Had an uncle who lived up this way, but he died years ago, and I wasn’t close with his family. You got some sort of plan for us, Major?” There was a hint of life in his voice, and he looked at McDaniels almost expectantly. After all, they were both men of color; Earl was probably hoping that McDaniels would help out a brother down on his luck.

  “Miss Safire and I will be leaving the ship in a few minutes. We’re going to be met by a car at the pier. You and Zoe will have to leave as well, and the Coast Guard says there’s nothing they can do for you right now.”

  Earl grunted. “I saw the city from the deck. Same thing’s happening here as in New York. It’s just startin’, but it’s the same thing. Boston’s gonna go down the same way, and this time, I don’t have no building to hide out in.” He shook his head and squeezed Zoe, but she didn’t respond. “And what am I going to do with her?”

  “We can’t take them with us?” Regina asked McDaniels.

  “We might be able to drop them somewhere along the way, but I very much doubt we’ll be able to take them all the way to Virginia with us.”

  A voice came over the speakers, “Attention all hands, attention all hands—ship secure portside. Major McDaniels, you and your party are requested to disembark at this time from the main deck. All crew, remain at your docking stations until further notice.”

  Regina looked from Earl to McDaniels. “We need a plan.”

  “I know. Like I said, we might be able to drop them somewhere along the way, but I don’t know what’s going to be between us and wherever it is we’re headed, which I guess will be an airport.” McDaniels sighed and put a hand on Earl’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. The first thing to do is go topside and find out what transportation has been arranged for us, then find out where it’s headed. We’ll work on the next step after that. All right, Earl?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  McDaniels stepped back from the table. “Then let’s get to it.”

  ***

  The air was chilly on the main deck. A passerelle had been erected, connecting the cutter to the cement pier. Several vehicles were parked on the pier, and McDaniels tried to identify the one waiting for him. All were either nondescript sedans or trucks waiting to service the Escanaba.

  Hassle met McDaniels at the passerelle and gave him the Iron Key thumb drive. Someone had wrapped it in plastic, probably out of an abundance of caution should the device go overboard, which made sense. The device supposedly held the recipe for saving mankind from the growing horde of necromorphs that threatened the entire planet.

  “That’s something you probably want to take care of,” Hassle said.

  “You got that right. Thanks, sir.”

  Hassle motioned to a crewman who stepped forward with McDaniels’s MP5 and Mk 23 pistol. “I had the ship’s weapons officer service and clean your weapons, and we’ve filled the magazines. I hope you won’t need them anytime soon, but they’re ready if you do.”

  McDaniels accepted the weapons, checked them quickly, then secured them. He nodded to Hassle. “Gosh, hot food, hot showers, laundry service, flushing toilets… I’m not so sure I want to
leave, Commander.”

  Hassle smiled and pointed down the passerelle. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Just the same, get the hell off my ship, Army.”

  McDaniels and Hassle exchanged salutes, then handshakes. “Thanks for taking care of us,” McDaniels told the taller, thinner man. “You came through where even Marines failed.”

  “I’ll remember you said that.”

  “Take care, Coastie.”

  “Stay alive, grunt.”

  The enlisted Coast Guardsman at the end of the ramp pointed out a black Ford Crown Victoria with government plates sitting at the end of the line of parked vehicles. “Your ride’s over there, sir.”

  “Thanks, son.” McDaniels signaled for the others to follow him as he set off for the parked car. When he drew near, the driver’s door opened, and a tall kid in battle dress utilities climbed out from behind the steering wheel. He glanced at McDaniels, then took a longer look at the civilians. His features were tough to read beneath the shadow cast by the bill of his patrol cap, but McDaniels was certain he wasn’t thrilled to see more bodies than he had been told to expect.

  “Major McDaniels?” the soldier asked, saluting McDaniels.

  McDaniels returned the salute. “You got it, Private. What’s the drill?”

  “I’m Private First Class Ernesto, sir. I’m to drive you to Logan, where they’re holding a plane for you and Miss Safire.” He looked at Earl and Zoe, but said nothing further.

  “The other civilians are with us for the time being,” McDaniels explained, hoping that would be enough.

  “Sorry, Major. My orders are to take you and Miss Safire only.”

  McDaniels stepped closer to the private. McDaniels stood at six feet flat; the kid before him could have been a forward on the UConn Huskies basketball team. McDaniels glanced at the patches on the private’s shoulder; he didn’t recognize them. “What unit are you with?”

  “The Nine-Seven-Two Military Police Company, part of the Massachusetts Army National Guard. We should get going, sir.” To accentuate his point, the private pulled open the rear passenger door on the driver’s side. The interior dome light snapped on, revealing decidedly no-frills government-issue accommodations.