Read Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon for Free Online

already been.
    “Crazy weather,” Eli said, turning to face his Lieutenant. “I reckon this bloody plague has screwed up more than people. This field’s gonna be a quagmire in a few hours. Shit, fighting deaders in the damn mud, again, just like in Belgium.”
    Jameson coughed, then shook his head. “Not for us, at least not today.” His throat was drying up again, and he wondered if he had an internal injury, or maybe just a slight cut. I hope that’s all it is, he thought.
    Eli looked surprised. “What’s up, boss?”
    Jameson looked to the north across the field that an hour ago had been teeming with refugees. Now it was filled with paratroopers, and dozens of Chinooks emptying even more of them out onto the muddy ground. Just yards away, a new line was forming to bolster the effort to keep the dead at bay, and in the distance Jameson could make out another black dot zooming in over the trees – their ride, inbound.
    “We’re being recalled. CentCom have something else for us.”
    Eli raised his eyebrows. “And that is?”
    “No idea, mate,” said Jameson, shaking his head. “They didn’t say what, or where, but we’re expected to be half a mile from here in ten minutes. Then up and out.”
    Eli grinned, the first smile that Jameson had seen on the man’s face for a while.
    “Nice,” said Eli. “Out of the rain and mud… and the dead.”
    “For now.”
    Jameson turned to his men, most of whom were still seated or lying on the ground. Some worked at checking their gear, but most were just getting their breath back and taking a well-earned break. He hated to cut it short. His men had been through pretty much every bad situation possible in the last day or so, and then some, but at least this time he had some good news for them.
    “Okay. Everybody ruck up! We’re moving out,” he shouted, and grinned when his order was met by moans.
    “We’ve gotta be one klick north of here in ten minutes for extraction. So, unless you really want to stay here and fight zombies in the mud with the boys in the maroon berets, rather than taking a nice ride back to quarantine…”
    The response was as he expected, and his grin widened as every man leapt to his feet and started bundling up their gear. A minute later, One Troop was pounding dirt across the field. They dodged through the mustering paratroopers, and jogged through the wooden gate at the north end of the field, past a copse of trees and into the open ground beyond. More Chinooks were landing in the next field, half a dozen of them settling carefully before spilling troops into the mud. A few hours before, this field had been filled with refugees being checked for infection, those who had escaped the terrible outbreak in their town, and as One Troop ran along the narrow ditch at the edge of the field, they came across the grisly evidence that remained.
    They stumbled upon the ditch about halfway across the field. A number of times squad members slipped and were pulled to their feet by those behind them, but when they saw the four-foot furrow, they all slowed, almost stopping dead. Jameson wondered what the ditch was for, but then caught his first glimpse of the body bags. Dozens of them were lying along the edge of the field, from where they normally would have been collected and disposed of, but the camp had been evacuated in a hurry, the convoy of CentCom vehicles hurrying away along the road, followed by masses of running or walking uninfected survivors. Here, lying in lines along the ground, were the unfortunate ones, those who had been cut or bitten. And there had simply been no other humane way to deal with them.
    Jameson shook his head and tried to concentrate on the way ahead, pushing his men to follow at a quickening pace. He had fired upon hundreds of the dead in the years after the fall, probably thousands, but killing civilians who were still alive, but definitely or even probably infected, was a job he was glad someone else had to do.
    As the