Islands of Rage and Hope

by John Ringo

  * * *

  “Permission to speak, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Barnard said as they were cruising down Valley Road.

  “Speak, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. She was up on the .50 in the lead of the convoy and triggered a burst into an infected in the road. “Go around that so the cars can see it, Roberts. I don’t want them getting stuck on a body.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Roberts said.

  “A Marine obeys orders, ma’am,” Barnard said tightly. “But . . . why the hell are we doing this? It’s unsafe, as you’ve said, and it’s—”

  “Not in your . . .” Faith said. “Crap, cannot think of the word. Bucket? You don’t get to know. Not now. If something happens, it’ll all make sense. If it doesn’t . . . It will hopefully never make sense. Think of it as a training exercise. Which we by God need. Any other questions? I’ve killed a few infected tonight. With a kukri. I’m in a good mood.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Roberts, this one’s too close. Just run her over. Following teams, body in the road. Don’t get stuck . . .”

  * * *

  “Let’s just park out here,” Lance Corporal “Dutch” Van Rijk said, pulling the car to a stop on the runway of the airport. “We’ll crank up the music and climb up on the car in a triangle. That way we can see them coming.”

  “Roger,” Sergeant Hoag said, her jaw clenched. She did not like being under the authority of a fucking lance corporal.

  “In deference to your rank, Sergeant, if you’ve got an iPod you can pick the tunes . . .”

  * * *

  “Got one,” Fumitaka said. “Closing.”

  “Wait for it to get close,” Dutch said, looking over his shoulder. “You don’t want the round hitting somebody in the distance.”

  “Aye, aye,” Fumitaka said. He waited until the infected was twenty meters away and fired. And fired again. “It ain’t stopping.”

  “Fucking Barbie guns,” Van Dijk said. “Keep shooting.”

  Fumitaka put seven rounds into the infected, which stopped nearly at his feet.

  “Shit,” Fumitaka said. “Shit, shit, shit . . . That sucked.”

  “Try putting five rounds into their chest, fast,” Dutch said. “That usually stops them. Or double tap, one to the chest one to the head. If the first one slows them down. Stand by, got one.” He waited until the infected, a rather small woman, had closed. He put one round into her chest and another in the head. “That usually gets ’em.”

  “Usually?” Hoag said. “Shooting them in the head doesn’t always work?”

  “Eventually,” Dutch said. “I’ve seen ’em keep coming even after they’ve been shot in the head.”

  “Firing,” Hoag said. She put five rounds into the chest in rapid fire and was rewarded with an infected that wasn’t at her feet. “Yeah, that worked.”

  “Good training, huh?” Dutch said.

  “Good training.”

  “By the way, Sergeant,” Van Dijk said. “With due respect, I like your taste in music.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  “I think we got one chasing us, Sergeant,” PFC Jesse Summers said.

  “Okay,” Hocieniec said, slowing to a stop. “Get out and kill it.”

  Summers opened the back door of the 1980s Malibu and stepped out into the darkness.

  “I swear it was right . . .” she said as the infected popped up around the back of the car. “Shit!”

  She fired two rounds and the infected grabbed her, biting at her neck and shoulders.

  “Pistol,” Hocieniec said watching from the other side of the car. “Or knife.”

  The infected suddenly slumped to the ground as “I’m shot in the heart” finally got through to the brain.

  “Or you can wait for it to die,” Hooch said, shrugging. “That works, too.”

  He slammed into the car as a big infected hit him from behind.

  “Fucker,” Hocieniec said, pulling his pistol. He put it into the hip of the infected and pulled the trigger. The zombie let out a howl and fell on the ground, writhing. Two more rounds put it out of its misery. “Okay, everybody pick a sector and let’s just see how many come to us . . .”

  * * *

  “Shewolf, Hocieniec, over.”

  “Go, Hooch,” Faith said. They’d stopped the truck and had Barnard and Edwards out as security.

  “We got stuck on a dirt road and sort of got swarmed, over.”

  “Define swarmed, over.”

  “Uh . . . You remember Tenerife?”

  “Hot diggity dog,” Faith said. “HEY, LOAD UP! On our way, Hooch. I don’t suppose you know where you are?”

  “Sort of . . .”

  “Shewolf, Annapolis, over.”

  “Hear you, Annapolis,” Faith said as the staff sergeant loaded into the vehicle.

  “Our intercept gear says they’re up Albert Lake Drive near Long Pond, over.”

  “Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “Find that. Thanks for the steer, Annapolis.”

  “Good entertainment as always, Shewolf. Sorry to hear about your casualty.”

  “He’ll make it,” Faith said. “Somebody told me one time this wasn’t a safe job. Pretty sure Goodwin knew that, too.”

  “Head up to the medical school,” Staff Sergeant Barnard said. “That way . . .”

  “Oh, holy shit,” Edwards said.

  “Now that’s what I call a concentration,” Faith said, gleefully.

  The Kia sedan the three Marines had squeezed into was covered in infected. The miracle was that the windows hadn’t broken under the weight.

  “Hocieniec wins the bottle of good hooch!” Faith caroled on the general circuit. “None of you bastards better get in here and ruin my fun. Stay on your sectors. We got this.”

  “Ma’am, with due respect . . .” Barnard said.

  “I’m not going to use the God-damned machine gun, Staff Sergeant,” Faith snarled. But she wasn’t sure what to do. With the infected literally covering the vehicle, a fifty-caliber round would go through an infected, the occupants and the engine block. The question was how to use any weapon against them without hitting the occupants. “Oh, fu—fornicate it.”

  Faith jumped out of the gunner’s ring, slid down the windshield of the truck, then onto the ground.

  “Do not run me over, Edwards,” Faith radioed. “HEY! FRESH MEAT!” she screamed, waving her hands over her head.

  “Fuck,” Barnard said, rolling out of the truck.

  Faith had drawn her .45 and was servicing targets as the infected, blinded by the truck’s lights, turned from the unavailable meat and headed to apparently easier pickings. She dropped the pistol and clawed another out of her chest holster as the infecteds closed.

  Barnard had barely gotten out of the truck when the lieutenant was swarmed.

  “. . . sometimes I get overcome thinkin’ ’bout . . .” Faith sang, slamming a trench knife into an infected’s face. “. . . makin’ love in the green grass . . .” The trench knife sunk into a throat as she fired her .45 single-handed into a stomach. “. . . behind the stadium . . .” Another pistol hit the ground and her third and last came out. “. . . with you, my brown-eyed girl . . . Wait. Does singing this make me gay?”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Barnard said, wading in with her Ka-Bar.

  She found it surprisingly hard to kill this infected with a knife. She couldn’t seem to get it to stop struggling and it was a woman, not even her size. She suddenly realized that the little bitch really was unbelievably deadly, since in the time it took her to finally stab the infected to death the lieutenant had killed three.

  “Stab up, Staff Sergeant,” Faith panted, firing into a belly. “And you might want to use the pistol in contact instead.”

  The Ka-Bar slid out of Barnard’s blood-covered rubber gloves and she scrabbled for her pistol as an infected tackled her.

  “How can you stay on your feet?” Barnard snarled as she fired the 1911 into the infected’s chest.

 
“The same way you get to Carnegie Hall, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “I also play a fair trombone.”

  The three-man team had finally bailed out of their vehicle and with them wading in they made quick work of the remaining infected.

  “Tha’ was a fair dinkum scrum, mates!” Faith caroled as she helped the staff sergeant to her feet. “Fair dinkum an ah! So far you win the prize.”

  “Can we get it tonight, ma’am?” Hocieniec asked. “I couldn’t figure out how to kill them from inside the car.”

  “Shoot through the window next time,” Faith said. “O— oorah. Staff Sergeant?”

  “Ma’am,” Barnard said, bent over and panting.

  “This vehicle needs extracting,” Faith said. “Put out security and handle it. I’m going for a walk. Oh, zombies! Zombies, zombies, zombies? There’s a poor little girl all alone and lost in the woods . . .” She wandered back down the road continuing to call. “Ooo! Ow! I think I twisted my aaankle . . .”

  “Lance Corporal,” Barnard said, still bent over. She straightened up and twisted her neck. “You and Rock take security. Haugen, there should be a tow strap in the back of the five-ton. Hook it up to the car.”

  “Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant,” Haugen said.

  “Lance Corporal,” Barnard said.

  “Staff Sergeant?”

  “I’m going to need a shot of that hooch.”

  “Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant! Miss Faith is a tad nuts, Staff Sergeant. But you get used to it. Have you met Trixie, yet?”

  * * *

  “Okay,” Sophia said through her mask. They were working in Tyvek suits and air masks to avoid contaminating the interior. “Seal it up. Put fricking rigger tape everywhere and seal it tight . . .”

  Cleaning and securing the five-ton had been a bitch and a half even with the powerful spots of the Grace Tan illuminating the scene. For one thing, the flies that always hovered around fresh kills were all over the place and with all the light they were active. For another there was the wind, which was from the land so it was carrying dust and potentially flu. They had finally just turned the five-ton around so the back was pointed at the Grace Tan and away from the land.

  “Staff Sergeant Decker,” Sophia said. “Thank you for your assistance in this.”

  The staff sergeant and his sidekick Condrey had, in fact, been of assistance. A pain in the ass but a necessary one. He had insisted on going over every inch with a toothbrush. At one point there had been seven people in the back of the vehicle scrubbing every square centimeter to the staff sergeant’s painfully precise direction. But if it wasn’t perfectly antiseptic, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  “Staff Sergeant, moment of your time,” Sophia said, walking away from the five-ton.

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Decker said, following her over at a slow march.

  “This is not for dissemination,” Sophia said. “We are going to have to get seven people from a vehicle into the five-ton without contaminating them or the interior of the five-ton. We then are going to have to drive it back, back it onto the Grace Tan and get them into the container that the Grace Tan is preparing. I’m going to leave that last up to Mr. Walker and the Grace Tan crew. Getting them out of the vehicle, which will be somewhere on the island, and into the five-ton, without contaminating the interior, concerns me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Decker said, frowning. “What type of vehicle, ma’am?”

  “Think an Apollo moon lander,” Sophia said.

  “Ma’am . . .” Decker said, then froze.

  “No ideas?” Sophia asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Decker said. “No ideas, ma’am.”

  “We’ll figure it out when we get there, then,” Sophia said with a sigh. “I’m going to need you and Condrey to accompany me. And we’re going to need lots of plastic and tape I guess. We’ll need to decontaminate the suits again but we’re going to be going onto the Grace Tan in a bit. We’ll get out of them and then suit back up later.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Decker said.

  “I’m calling this exercise complete,” Sophia said, pulling off her mask. “Fall into the Tan with Condrey and unrig.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Decker said.

  “Soph?” Olga said as the staff sergeant marched back to the Grace Tan.

  “Yeah, Olga?” Sophia said. It would be a nice night if it wasn’t for the smell of iron and shit and the occasional burst of fire in the distance. Okay, the fire wasn’t so bad. She really didn’t want to try to extract the ISS crew with infected swarming. On the other hand, she didn’t want Faith getting shot by her undertrained Marines.

  “What the hell is going on?” Olga asked. She’d pulled off her mask as well.

  “Thanks for waiting till now to ask,” Sophia said with a sigh. “I appreciate you just going along with the madness. The answer is, I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, come on,” Olga said. “What the hell could be that important?”

  “Olga, you’re smart,” Sophia said. “Why in the hell would we be thoroughly clearing an entire island while simultaneously preparing a germ-free transport vehicle? Why did we carry a container that was just as thoroughly decontaminated and has an air lock? And when you figure that out, ask yourself why in the hell we’re keeping the reason secret. And until you can answer that one, don’t talk about it, okay? If by tomorrow at noon there’s no apparent reason for all this . . . Then if you think you’ve figured it out you’ll also understand why we’re just calling it a training exercise.”

  “None of that makes any sense,” Olga said darkly.

  “Like I said, you’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” Sophia said. “There is a reason. Now keep an eye out for the returning Marines. We can’t fall back onto the ship till my sister gets here . . .”

  CHAPTER 18

  So you must carry this light into the darkness

  You shall be a star unto the night

  You will find hope alive among the hopeless

  That is your purpose to this life

  —“Sophia”

  Crüxshadows

  “Do not, say again, do not, contaminate my truck,” Sophia said, standing at the base of the pier with her hand out. “We’re bringing in Zods to clear you off.”

  “Do we have something set up to clean us off?” Faith asked, holding her arms out for a hug. “I sort of got covered in blood again.”

  “This was not the night to be scrumming, Sis, you know that,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “Stay away from me.”

  “Feel the love,” Faith said as the Zodiacs came into the beach. “You getting while the getting’s good?”

  “All your people here?” Sophia asked. “Tan, we’ll need wash-down for the Marines. They’ve been scrumming.”

  “We found the lost ones courtesy of sub intercept systems,” Faith said. “Who knew they were so accurate?”

  * * *

  “Omaha, radar locked on predicted track . . .”

  Commander Isaac Luallin, skipper of the SSBN USS Tennessee, wasn’t having the best week. Or month. Or for that matter year.

  Ballistic nuclear submarines are all about risk aversion. Not for them the chasing other boats, doing hull shots, sneaking into the back yard of other powers. No, SSBNs were all about finding a big, empty, deep patch of water and disappearing. For months. Drive slow, stay deep and pray that you never have to actually do your job.

  They had in fact been doing pretty much that since the Plague was announced. Even after the SSNs started “assisting” Wolf Squadron, the SSBNs had pretty much stayed in their patches except for the occasional, necessary, fishing expeditions. At one point they got an alert to stop even that when the Soviet general in charge had gotten frisky and ordered some of his remaining SSNs to hunt U.S. subs. According to the Hole that had come to nothing when the subs mutinied and the general had “retired.” Apparently he’d committed suicide by shooting himself in the back.

  They were finally going to get to help out and . . . now all they
could do was radar support. So they’d surfaced and put up the radar mast.

  “Roger Tennessee,” the “controller” in Omaha replied. “Incoming ballistic track predicted for five minutes. Stand by . . .”

  Luallin locked the periscope on the predicted track and connected it to the crew monitors. No reason not to. Unless it failed, which would be icing on the damned cake.

  * * *

  “When do we bring it up openly, sir?” Faith asked. She was freshly showered and back in MarPat. By the end of the sweep they were finding zero customers so the plan was for them to land in standard “light fighter” gear, not bunker gear.

  “When we have to,” Hamilton said. “Stand by . . . Roger. So the answer is: Now. Listen up, people!” he bellowed. “Look to the west and up at sixty degrees.” He pointed and raised a pair of binoculars. “Anybody see anything different?”

  * * *

  “I’ve got an inbound ballistic track on projected heading,” the Tennessee’s radar tech said. “Forty-five thousand feet. Seven point five six kilometers per second. Decelerating . . .”

  * * *

  “There it is,” Commander Luallin breathed, watching the monitors. “Son of a bitch. It’s past the plasma zone.”

  “Go baby go,” the chief of boat said.

  “I’ve got radar lock by six boats,” the digital compliance technician said. “Track is as predicted to ninety-eight percent.”

  “Let’s hope ninety-eight is good enough,” Brice said, grimacing. “At that range, ninety eight is miles. Miles as in in the drink.”

  * * *

  “Is that it?” Faith said, pointing up. “By that red star?”

  “That’s Mars,” Sophia said, scanning the sky. “And . . . yeah. That’s it. Look for the two red stars people. One of them is an inbound space ship!”

  “It’s lit up,” Faith said. “Fire?”

  “They’re well past the plasma stage,” Colonel Hamilton said. “It’s reflected sunlight. Red because the sun’s about to come up. It will disappear in a minute. That’s when it gets tricky.”