Arisen : Nemesis by Michael Stephen Fuchs Page A

also admitting any of the ghouls outside who they all sensed still wanted to get in. There was still wild and vaguely menacing movement, and shouting, and occasional shooting, in the darkness outside the wire. There were people running in and out of shadows, and the shouting was in what Kate presumed was Somali.
    And more of those vaguely seen stumbling figures.
    As their group approached it, the gate swung open, and the heavy steel bar with its massive concrete counterweight swung up for another incoming vehicle. Two MPs approached it with circular mirrors on sticks, which they used to examine the undercarriage. And this was unmistakably a military vehicle – a stock Humvee with four soldiers in full battle rattle sitting in it and looking like they were still fighting to get their breath back. Kate got the impression they’d never in their lives been so glad to be anywhere as on the inside of that gate.
    A third MP, the non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) by his stripes, approached the driver with a clipboard in one hand and a flashlight in the other, the beam of which he panned around inside. As Kate and her new team darted in front of this scene, her gaze was drawn to the two men in the back, who were illuminated in the beam for a few seconds.
    One was clearly wounded, with a bloody field dressing wrapped around one arm, and the other tending to him – giving him water out of his own CamelBak bite tube. Kate kept moving, but her gaze stayed riveted to the first guy, who did not look good. At first she thought maybe he had burns to his face, in addition to the arm wound. But then through squinting eyes she could make out what looked like faint red sores. And he appeared to be sweating like a pig about to become a Christmas ham, and also trembling.
    Shock from the arm wound? Or something else?
    She suddenly regretted not paying more attention to the phone over that guy’s shoulder in line at Starbucks – and the article about the epidemic.
    Whatever the cause of this soldier’s suffering, it didn’t look good to her, and she was glad they kept moving out of the area.
    * * *
    In another four minutes they reached a small standalone prefab structure, which was set slightly apart on the far edge of the camp. Kate, Jake, and Kwon arrived at almost the same instant as Brendan, who had two others in tow. One was the big slope-shouldered Echo Kate had seen at the radio set.
    The other she hadn’t seen before. He was dressed and armed more or less like an irregular soldier, including the distinctive Crye Combat Shirt that many SF guys wore – with its synthetic tan torso, rip-stop camo sleeves, and zip collar. But he honestly looked to Kate like nothing so much as a surfer dude. He was tall and willowy rather than muscular, with lightly tanned skin, and wispy blond hair poking out from under a scuffed-up dark-blue baseball cap with Cal written in golden cursive letters. He casually carried a tan SCAR with underslung grenade launcher, and seemed somehow to wear the world lightly.
    Brendan unlocked the door, reached in to hit the lights inside, and entered behind the others. The light was from two bare bulbs overhead, and as Kate looked around upon entering, she immediately saw her exact mental image of an ODA Team Room. In the center was a U-shaped arrangement of tables surrounded by chairs, one for each team member. In the middle of that were two sand tables, used for planning operations, complete with toy trucks, toy soldiers, and bits of vegetation, probably scrounged from the woods nearby. Around the edge were whiteboards and butcher-block paper pads on easels, for planning and briefing. And on every inch of the outside walls were racks for weapons, stacks of gear and ordnance, and lockers and shelving for ammo and operational equipment.
    This was where the daily planning, preparation, and instructional life of an ODA happened. Kate got a small adrenaline jolt, feeling like she had just been admitted to the inner