Free Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon by Glynn James, Michael Stephen Fuchs

developed a hugely positive impression of the British central military command.
    Then again , he thought, their country is still standing, and mine isn’t.
    "Obviously, their main objective is keeping the dead out of London. Because, if the capital goes down… well, I won’t belabor it. Ultimately, what they need to do is quell the outbreak entirely – either destroy all the dead or drive them back into the sea.” Drake looked up at Martin for confirmation.
    The Brit nodded. “Yes, that’s about right. Having a moat the width of the English Channel is one thing. But living in a state of siege upon the land… well, as you all know, no country in the world, in the history of the ZA, has ever done it."
    Drake paused and scanned faces before continuing. “Obviously… this impacts the urgency of our own mission.”
    While the last nation of the living were fighting for their lives on the land there, the warriors on the water here had to give them something to hold out for.

Abandoned
    Britain - Kent Downs
    The zipping volley of 2.75-inch rockets from the Apache attack helicopter tore into the front ranks of the advancing figures, vaporizing them at the points of explosion. Then, as each warhead sprayed out dozens of five-inch tungsten darts, the bodies that remained were cut down in concentric and overlapping half-circles out to fifty meters. It was like ripples in a pool, or wheat going down under some enormous scythe wielded by a giant.
    It was also a lot like mowing the grass – except that this shit couldn’t keep growing back forever. There were only so many living people in England. So there could only ever be so many living dead ones.
    This was small consolation to Captain Charlotte Maidstone, as she zoomed and panned with her helo's chin-mounted camera to assess the impact of her rocket volley. Despite her resolve, despite all her carefully honed professionalism, she couldn’t stop scanning those faces on the ground, thinking about her family. It was ridiculously unlikely, but still…
    The flechette rockets were the same type that her commanding officer at USOC, the Colonel, had ordered her to launch into their own hospital on the base at Hereford, to cauterize the terrible outbreak that had threatened to devour everyone who served there. Dead, alive, undead, or indeterminate, all those people she had cut down in that terrible minute had been her real family – her truest brothers and sisters. If she’d somehow white-knuckled it through that, then she could steel herself to get through today.
    Anyway, she had no choice. There was damn little resistance holding some parts of this line. And along her assigned segment she was pretty much all that stood between the outbreak and the Capital – the ancient and mighty city of London, which had long been the center of the world, and which was quickly shaping up into the last bastion of humanity. But if anyone could hold this line single handedly, it was Charlotte and her fire-breathing dragon.
    “Riding the dragon” – that was how they referred to piloting an Apache AH Mk1 attack helicopter. Totally deadly – and ridiculously complex. It has been said that taking one into battle was “like playing an Xbox, a PlayStation, and a chess Grandmaster simultaneously – whilst riding Disney World’s biggest roller coaster.”
    Qualifying to fly one required an 18-month conversion course, just to transition from being a regular old combat helicopter pilot. It required learning to deal simultaneously with the flight instruments, four different radio frequencies, the weapons targeting computers, the defensive suite’s threat reports, the cameras and radar – plus watching the ground for muzzle flashes and friendly units, and the air for other aircraft. You also actually had to teach your eyes to point in different directions – because one of the weapons systems was slaved to your retina .
    That was the 30mm electric cannon, which spewed ten high-explosive rounds