Operation Wild Tarpan (4 page)

Fresh troops, members of Bayonet, surged out into the surrounding streets, taking up defensive positions both inside and outside of the compound wall. Miller took twenty minutes to himself and had the rare opportunity to clear his mind.

The gym inside the compound had been a luxurious place, once, but its machinery was breaking down under heavy use from the security teams and engineers. About all that reliably worked until the Boltman guys went on one of their fix-it crusades were the weights. The plumbing, on the other hand, worked just fine.

Before getting into his shower stall, Miller set out a dry hand towel and his cologne beside the washbasin with his straight-edge razor, and set the water running while he peeled off his gear and armour.

The bruise on his ribcage looked so bad that, for a moment, he thought the rifle round had made it through his flexshell vest. It was livid pink, a bloody colour. With some tender prodding at the ribs nearby, and a few careful deep breaths and coughs, he was convinced he hadn’t broken anything. Just a bruise, and under the hot water, it hurt like hell before starting to ease.

He’d had worse.

No, that was a lie to bolster his self-esteem. In the army he’d been shot
at
—live fire training exercises, gunfire whizzing overhead—and he’d been in the vicinity of hostile gunfire in his time as a bodyguard, but he’d never been
shot
. Never had anyone specifically trying to kill
him
.

His strength fled him, and he clutched the shower cubicle’s walls until he was steady on his own feet.

He saw that soldier’s face, rising up from behind the enemy Bravo, and saw it vanish behind the muzzle-flash of his M27. He relived pouring fire into the window that SMAW had been launched from—for all Miller knew the walls were thin, the rounds had gone straight through. Then there was the faceless corpse du Trieux had stolen the keys from.

He’d worn that uniform. That same fucking uniform.

At last he punched off the shower’s spray, wrapped himself up, set himself in front of the mirror, and picked up his razor.

He unfolded it, held it to his throat, thought better of it, and put the razor back down.

First no dry cleaners, now no barbers.

He ran the hot water faucet until it steamed, then doused the hand towel. It hurt to pick up, but Miller diligently did just that, spotting it with dabs of his cologne—the best substitute he had to hand for a barber’s essential oils—before smothering his face in aromatic heat.

There were few pleasures in the world like a hot towel shave, and few so simple.

Rubbing the towel into his bristles, breathing in scented steam, Miller shut his eyes and did his best to forget, distracting himself with pleasant thoughts of ex-lovers he’d taught to do this, and the one he’d learned it from. He replayed a vivid memory of trying it on a laughing Samantha’s legs, since she didn’t have a beard.

He rubbed away tears, spat the sour taste in his mouth away when the image of that missing face came back to him, and went about carefully applying, then scraping off dabs of shaving gel with his straight-edge razor.

Feeling clean, aching, but purified, there was nothing he wanted more than to pull on his comfortable old suit and see if he could find the cufflinks Billy had given him, but it was all packed away, and Stockman’s forces were on their way.

Fresh underclothes and a soft t-shirt to wear under his combat gear would have to do.

He emerged into the light of the end of days; not a new man, but at least a bruised and refreshed one.

S
CREAMING SHAPES KNIFED
through the air overhead, smaller titan-birds chasing down prey. A fresh coat of stinking fungicide had been laid down 4th Street, seeping into the asphalt and repelling the usual crowds of civilians looking for somewhere quiet to go.

Not that they’d find any.

The steady growl of generators was pouring in all the way from 1st Street. Miller hefted up his M27, and slipped his earpiece back in.

“Cobalt-2 Actual back on duty.”

“
Join us at barricade six, son,
” Lewis said.

Miller made his way past piled car bodies that the Boltman engineers had stacked up for spare sheet metal, down an alleyway criss-crossed with old piping and new camera mounts, the shady space burned white in LED cones.

A kid chasing her ball stopped dead at the sight of Miller, and backed up against the wall as he passed. Her face was pale, almost unreadable as she hugged the ball to herself, running off the moment he’d gone by.

Before he was quite out of earshot, he heard her laugh. A child laughing, running along, being a kid. In the middle of all this, with the internet and all its amusements effectively dead.

It felt good to hear something normal. Was this the new normal?

Some time soon the day would come when the children in this compound wouldn’t remember anything different. Babies were born, children would grow up inside these walls. Miller wondered how many generations would be here, maintaining a twisted status quo, not recollecting how life outside had once been.

As it existed now, there were four refugee sectors pushed up against the inside of the compound’s barrier wall, sprawling across streets cut in half by the wall, filling the buildings that had been incorporated into its structure. Shantytowns separated out from each other by chain-link fences with privacy strips woven into the wiring, to help contain any assaults that got over or through the wall—not that anybody had told the refugees that.

They weren’t starving, but most of them had been, and the threat of famine was starting to loom large again. Trucks had stopped entering the compound that day, and in response, the warehouses of canned and preserved food had been broken open. Miller eyed the dwindling supplies inside one warehouse as he walked across the compound. It was shocking to see how much of a dent thousands of civilians had made in the stockpiles in just a few hours. It wouldn’t last much longer at the rate they were going.

B
ARRICADE SIX WAS
a spar of the compound wall that ran diagonally across 26th Avenue, jutting out an extra block to incorporate a string of row houses into the wall, their windows all welded over with steel plate scavenged from cars. Mounting pivots and armoured shields for heavy machine guns stood empty every six feet or so on the top, like a castle’s battlements. Completing the medieval image, a rope ladder had been thrown over the top. A couple of workers below set up anti-personnel mines and IR trigger sensors in the streets outside.

Lewis and what was left of Cobalt-1, including a miserable-looking Hsiung sporting a glossy burn treatment bandage around her upper arm, were set up in a hole in one of the row-house rooves, a ladder leading down into an abandoned bedroom that had become a local command post.

The pungent aroma of mildew suffused the dark space, but Lewis didn’t look too concerned about it, using a couple of screens set up on old bookshelves.

“Shouldn’t we be under attack by now?” Miller asked. “Where’s the rest of Stockman’s convoy?”

“We ran into some luck. Here, look at this.” Lewis made space for Miller at the screens.

Drone overflight footage showed M1A4 Abrams tanks with a crowd of angry-looking Infected beating on it. For a moment Miller thought the tank was under attack, but the crew were doing it too, flinging open engine hatches.

Abrams tanks had gas turbine engines. Not all that dissimilar to an aircraft’s jet turbine. At the end of the day, the tanks were suffering the same way S-Y’s drones had been. A couple of spores had gotten through the air filters, and now the Infected were tearing yard-long strips of soggy fungus out of the M1A4’s engines. Miller didn’t know how, or why, but the Archaeobiome’s shroud fungus was capable of growing inches every hour on fuel oils and lubricants. Anything that wasn’t electrically driven was at risk of getting gummed up, especially turbine engines that sucked down gallons of spore-laced air.

“Hmm,” Miller mused.

Lewis nodded.

Miller looked back over at the refugee shanties and then across the wall as he grunted.

He sure as hell didn’t
feel
lucky.

H
OURS LATER, AFTER
Miller had gathered up Cobalt-2 and spread his people out atop the barricade section, scattered reports came in of Infected civilians wandering through the area. But there wasn’t a clear line between civilians and the military among the Infected. The ‘civilians’ started scattered firefights, the kind of unenthusiastic slow back and forth play of gunfire that kept everyone in cover that Miller had envisaged earlier, with few casualties but plenty of scares.

Lewis figured they were performing reconnaissance by fire for the military—shoot at shit until shit shoots back so you know what you’re dealing with. They’d melt away the second one of the heavy machine guns mounted on top of the compound wall opened up.

Any attempt by S-Y’s security teams to push out into the city were thwarted every time by the appearance of military assault teams, guided in by Infected civilians keeping watch. Occasional organized assaults fell back; the compound wall was too big, and too well defended, for them to hit without their heavy vehicles.

The stalemate went on into the night, but things slowed down. The company had enough night vision gear to equip every member of the security teams, and the Infected only had enough for the military. It looked like the Infected knew they wouldn’t get anywhere under cover of darkness.

At eleven p.m., watchtower two exploded. Flames belched out of its base as the jury-rigged construction tipped over, only for another explosion to strike the ground directly beside it, gouging open the compound wall, a third, a fourth—six blasts in all, artillery shells, fucking
big
ones.

Miller and Morland couldn’t leave their positions, bracing themselves against what felt like imminent attack, but they didn’t need to. Major General Stockman’s voice roared across the entire Astoria Peninsula, unnaturally warped by loudhailer systems that had to be only blocks away.

“
That was a warning! You have twenty-four hours to surrender your illegal fortifications to us or I swear to God I’ll tear it off the face of the earth with my artillery. Any civilians who choose to remain under your protection at that time will be killed with the rest of you fucking animals!
”

Morland cursed under his breath.

Miller shifted from his position and tried to conjure up his thoughts on Stockman’s threat, but he felt nothing.

He rubbed the smoothness on his chin and closed his eyes and tried to imagine an end to this stalemate that didn’t involve everyone inside the compound or outside the walls dead and faceless.

But no solutions came to mind.

3

“H
E CAN’T BE
serious,” Hsiung said, clutching at her hair. “There’s fifteen
thousand
civilians in here with us.”

“I don’t think Stockman cares.” Du Trieux’s face was smudged in grey, something between mourning ashes and urban camouflage. She hadn’t gotten any more sleep than Miller had—God alone knew when they’d get any, it was going on one a.m. and the day had no end in sight.

Cobalt’s new break room seemed empty, compared to a few days before. The half-and-half coffee brew was so bad Miller skipped it, leaving it to Doyle and Morland. He left and joined Lewis in the attached briefing room, along with Jennifer Barrett and Robert Harris.

“Good, you’re here,” Barrett said, looking up at Miller as he came in.

Harris sat literally twiddling his thumbs, staring at his interlinked hands and fumbling one thumb over the other. “Don’t see why I need to be here.”

Barrett glared at him. “We still have procedures to follow, Bob. Security’s still your purview.”

“I already signed off on this,” he muttered.

“Operation Wild Tarpan,” Barrett said to Miller. “Lewis tells me you’re the man to take it.”

Miller straightened up, as if his career mattered anymore. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re taking Hsiung, too,” Lewis interjected, hunching down over the table. “Mannon’s dead, Crewe’s in the hospital. I’m not pulling Cobalt-2 apart just so I have something to command.”

“Hsiung’s not going to like that.”

Lewis shook his head, grinding his teeth. “You need the manpower if you’re going to pull off this black ops shit.”

Miller raised his eyebrows by way of answering.

“Operation Wild Tarpan is a carefully thought through response to Stockman’s threats, not ‘black ops shit,’” Barrett replied, snippishly.

Lewis turned tired eyes on her, and shrugged. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

“Stockman’s made threats against us,” she pressed. “With the correct reprisals we can prevent him from enacting them.”

“He’s going to blow us to shreds,” Miller said. “I don’t see a whole lot we can achieve with
reprisals
.”

“We think he’s playing for time as much as we are.” Harris had switched over to toying with a loose pen. “Other than Bravos, every piece of heavy equipment available to him runs on hydrocarbon fuels. It’s all bogged down with fungus.”

“Until he develops a solution for the fungus problem,” Barrett said, “and we don’t think he can, his forces are spread out.” She slid a file, a hard-copy paper in a cardboard cover, across the table to Miller. “That vulnerability is ameliorated by their communications network. Operation Wild Tarpan will deploy covertly into the city, dressed as refugees. The goal is to eliminate the electronic warfare and communications unit at the forward operating base the 11th Division’s established in Harlem. You will complete the attack before ten a.m. today.”

Miller checked his watch. It was barely two in the morning. He picked up the file and folded down the cover while he listened. The orders were handwritten—printers must have been in short supply.

“Without their local communications structure,” Barrett continued, “not only will their dispersed forces be at a disadvantage, they will be cut off from local air defence radar stations. In conjunction with a projected drop in fungal particulate counts at altitude, the meteorological team’s predicting a two-hour window for us to hit Stockman’s artillery with our air assets.”