Strands of Sorrow (eARC)

by John Ringo

  “This matter is closed. Wolf out.”

  * * *

  “This is fucking insane,” Gunnery Sergeant Brown said. “All this… She’s a God-damned lieutenant, Gunnery Sergeant! Just some salty newbie. You don’t fucking break a colonel and a sergeant major over a lieutenant!”

  “So was Presley O’Bannon,” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said coldly. “So was Chesty Puller at one point. And I’m not exaggerating. You got no fucking clue what’s been going on in the world, Gunnery Sergeant. If you don’t want to step in the same steaming pile of infected guts your boss did, you’d better bone up. Fast. I’m not going to hold your fucking hand…”

  * * *

  “Oh… Jesus Christ,” Gunnery Sergeant Brown said, watching the videos. “Oh… Fuck me. And a split? Fuck me…”

  * * *

  “This is at least a company objective, Colonel,” Colonel Downing said, looking at the mission requirements. “Certainly to do it in three days.”

  “You are not being asked for your opinion, Colonel,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Similar missions have been completed, in less time, by the young officer you castigated then relieved of her commission. Clearing the liners should be simple; they indicate low infected presence and there’s a possibility of survivors. Nine Marine officers and staff NCOs should have no issues. If the special weapons are not in the magazines, you are not required to find them. They’re just gone for the time being.

  “You are to clear all the boats and prepare them for survey, salvage and recovery teams from Gitmo, raise the bridges for which you have equipment and supplementary trained personnel who can figure out the bridge systems, and clear the island to chartreuse. This is a simple mission, post-Fall, Colonel. You’re not trying to do it with gear stripped off of boats, boarding the liners at sea and in a storm. You have one day to requisition anything you need from the base for this mission. That, right there, makes this so easy it’s insane. This is baby steps, Colonel. Lieutenant Smith would do this mission in her sleep, having completed ten harder mission in the previous week, while singing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ to the zombies, Colonel. As LantFleet put it, time to prove you’re better than a seventh grader.”

  “Very well, Colonel,” Colonel Downing said, standing up. “I’d better get started.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Lyons shook the can of spray paint and started spraying the wall.

  He’d considered being an artist growing up. He was one of those kids who was always getting in trouble in school for drawing artwork in class instead of paying attention to the teachers. Of course, that was because he was bored: He was generally ahead of the class.

  But he also was physically active and athletic. Which had stood him in good stead during his teenage years when you could often find him in dark clothes in an alley with a bag full of spraypaint. When he’d gone through his poly for his TS they’d asked him not only had he ever been arrested or convicted of a crime but did he ever commit one. You got a free pass on most of those. This was the only crime he’d ever committed and he’d done it quite a bit over the years. Even after becoming a SEAL officer. Many an alleyway in foreign countries had his art on the walls. And NASA had even let him do so “officially” a few times, doing murals on some of their walls. Having an astronaut who was a known graffiti artist was sort of a cachet. Showed NASA was hip or something.

  In this case, all he was writing was letters…

  * * *

  Faith took a step, paused, took a step, paused, rustled the undergrowth at her feet for a moment, took a step…

  It was the way that animals moved. They weren’t silent. They made a little noise. Unless startled, they didn’t move fast. She could move so carefully and so naturally that the birds didn’t do alarm calls when she approached. And they generally were her first warning there were infected in the area.

  She stayed in the open. Moving around corners kept you out of observation for a longer time but limited your own views. Deer do not sneak around corners. Rats do, but she wasn’t a rat. She was a hunter.

  There were, alas, damned few alpha infected left on the island. Birds alarmed for alpha infected. That was how she’d tracked most of them down. She’d spotted, she thought, most of the betas and figured out their territories. She felt sorry for the betas. They were like naked, harmless, homeless people.

  She’d actually been learning more about infected in the last week than she had in the last ten months. They nested. She’d seen one nest in Anguilla, and more than a few on boats, but hadn’t really understood them. Humans were, apparently, innately acquisitive, primate magpies. But what they acquired was odd. There was always the mess of discarded food, bones and skin. One way to find them was to look for flies. But there were little things. Bright things, mostly. Jewelry, broken glass, bright clothes, toys. She’d found one beta nest she could covertly observe and watched the female playing with a doll. The female had the signs of having given birth but there was no baby. Just the doll.

  She always watched her surroundings. Not focusing, staying open, her eyes drifting, looking for signs of change.

  Which was why she spotted the trail. It was faint, but they generally were. Something had moved through the area. Just a few strands of bent grass but it was enough. It was human sign. It wasn’t infected, either. They’re trails were subtly different. It was moving in a straight line. It was a sentient.

  She paused and thought about it. Da always said the most dangerous thing in a zombie apocalypse was the most dangerous thing in the world: Humans. Forget the zombies, the lions and tigers and bears. Humans were the most deadly predator on the planet.

  She’d been on the lookout for humans. Any cleared area was eventually going to attract human predators. Scavengers, anyway. And they’d probably love to scavenge a nice ripe female. The good part was that they probably wouldn’t shoot first. They’d want to capture her. That would be a mistake.

  She knew the beta’s territories. She’d left them alone. But other territories…

  The scavengers would know they were in someone else’s territory when they hit the tripwires…

  * * *

  Lieutenant Lyons stopped as he was about to cross between two buildings. There was something subtly wrong. He wasn’t sure what, but something was screaming at him.

  He looked around. There were various places people could observe him from. But it wasn’t that. He wasn’t sure what was wrong.

  He started to step forward and it was like his leg had a will of its own. “Uh, uh. Not gonna.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment in thought, then grimaced. He’d had this feeling before. He reached into his messenger bag, pulled out a can of silly string, shook it vigorously, then squirted it on the path. The sting landed on a nearly invisible wire placed across the concrete walkway. Following the difficult to see wire he finally spotted the claymore covered by a piece of junk cardboard his subconscious had detected. The cardboard must have slipped down a bit and the arming point was just visible.

  “Clever girl,” Lyons muttered.

  That was enough graffiti art. He headed back to his hide. Give it a few days.

  And stay off the trails, Lieutenant.

  * * *

  Faith paused at the faint remnants of another trail. It wasn’t recent. Yesterday, probably. She knew there was another human on the island. But he or she was staying very covert, just as Faith was.

  She continued on, cautiously. Infected didn’t scare her. Humans scared the shit out of her.

  She was always looking for a change. But she was primarily looking for threats. It was the smell that drew her attention, not the writing. Graffiti was not a threat. Then she realized that the human on the island probably wasn’t, either.

  The graffiti was professional quality. Beautifully written and drawn. A giant porcelain toilet with a rack of toilet paper next to it. And a gorgeous caption:

  “FLUSH TOILETS!”

  “Oh, you’re not getting me back that easily…” Fai
th said. She kept the chuckle down and wondered whom they’d sent. Someone with a sense of humor at least.

  She thought about where her nearest claymore was and headed that way, a bit more openly. Time to strip out some of the defenses.

  * * *

  The claymore was gone. He had to check. So she’d gotten at least one of his messages.

  He sprayed some silly string just to make sure, then walked over to the wall where the claymore had been and started painting.

  * * *

  Faith had spent the afternoon the day before clearing her claymores. She didn’t want a friendly to accidentally hit them. But she wondered if the unknown actor had noticed.

  At the third point there was another graffiti painting. She’d seen two more at this point. “Running Water” and “Hot Showers.” That one was a little, ahem, graphic. The faces of the two people in the shower as well as naughty bits were obscured but… She’d gotten kind of hot. It was, okay, very soft and very well done porn.

  This one, though. The guy had really taken his time. And he was, yeah, one hell of an artist.

  It was a tableau: Her mum and da. Sophia in her flight suit. Gunny Sands, Januscheitis, Hocieniec. And General Montana. All of them with a hand outstretched as if asking her to join them in heaven.

  “You got me,” Faith muttered.

  And the trail, for once, was very clear.

  * * *

  Lyons heard the whistle and just kept stirring the stew.

  “HALLO THE CAMP!”

  “Come on in!” he called, waving for her to come to the fire.

  “You know, you really missed your calling, Lieutenant,” Faith said as she plopped on the ground by the fire.

  “You haven’t, Lieutenant,” Lyons said. “You damned near got me with one of those claymores.”

  “Sorry about that,” Faith said. “I was expecting scavengers. Human scavengers. Deer step right over them.”

  “Animals are like that,” Lyons said. “You gotta be the animal.”

  “Yep,” Faith said. “I can’t go back.”

  “You know how common teenage runaways were in the pre-Fall period?” Lyons said. “I was a spokesperson for a group that helped teenage runaways. Knew a bunch of them growing up from the graffiti movement. Which was, face it, what you did. And for all the same reasons. And they always say ‘I can’t go back.’ They’re too embarrassed even if they won’t admit it.

  “Faith, General Montana sent a fast attack boat from the Pacific. A nuclear submarine dispatched for one reason and one reason only. My orders are bring you back or your body. If I go back and say, ‘She needs more time’ that’s fine. I’ll do that. But you’re wanted. You’re loved. Hell, you’re beloved. Everybody gets this. They really do. And if you want to spend some time, or the rest of your life, playing lone zombie hunter, okay. But for God’s sake, you can do this in Jax and have a place to sleep with flush toilets and security. And, you know, friends.

  “There is one bit of paperwork. You have to sign to sign a form to officially withdraw your commission. Currently you are on an unscheduled ‘reconnaissance of the island to gather intel on infected.’ And when you get back to Jax, you’re on admin leave for thirty days. Which means you can decide to sit by the pool—it’s up and going again—or go salvage in the ruins or… Read a book or something. Then decide if you really want to withdraw your commission.

  “If you don’t, General Montana wants you as his aide. Your da would prefer that you take over one of the new platoons that’s training up in Jax. The officers and NCOs are being trained by your Marines and are, well, I’d say ‘starting to realize’ what a fuck-up this was but they’re past starting and on to realization. Colonel Downing, by the way, was ordered to take his officers and senior NCOs down to Canaveral and clear it. He had three days. And he failed. He’s now a stevedore in Gitmo. Your da took pity on the sergeant major and he’s a sergeant. His officers were reduced to your rank and the senior NCOs were reduced to sergeant or privates.”

  “Waste not, want not,” Faith said.

  “Then they sent down Januscheitis and Hocieniec,” Lyons said, grinning. “Everyone was reduced to the rank of private, temporarily except for the colonel, and put under their command. They had the island cleared and the bridges up and the liners cleared in two days. Oh, and they found the nukes. Right where they were expected to be.”

  “That’s good news,” Faith said. “And of course they cleared it in two days. I’d expect nothing less from my sweet devil dogs. I’m sort of… How fucked up did they have to be to not clear something that easy in three days?”

  “Trainers often have a hard time readjusting to regular units and actual action,” Lyons said, shrugging. “I had a guy come to my platoon who had been a trainer for years. He was one of my trainers. I really looked up to the guy. Then when he got to the teams he just could not cut it. Good operator, no leadership skills for teams. Got cut, then got out of the Navy. The training cadre has operator skills by the same token. They just have to relearn the leadership for a combat, hell, post-apocalyptic, environment. So, yeah, waste not, want not.

  “You can do anything you want, Faith. Stay here, go to Jax, go to Gitmo and start clearing Cuba. You can have your own island and a boat so you can come visit. But, here? These sandflies really are killer.”

  “And the mosquitoes at night,” Faith said. “Jesus. I’m spending most of my time looking for Off.”

  “No harm, no foul,” Lyons said. “What this…kerfuffle exposed was that the training cadre was not prepared to take control of combat units. That’s a good thing. Some of them will be okay, some won’t. We’ll let the usual process handle that. If you come back, what you do after that is up to you. But you have thirty days’ leave before you decide whether to actually resign your commission. Administrative. Not counted against regular leave time. It’s a pre-Plague standard when you calculate your combat time and nature of actions. Not ‘Daddy being nice to his poor daughter.’ I’ve had admin leave based on stuff that’s nowhere near the level you’ve done. You end up back of beyond for extended periods you get admin leave to get your head back. Normal and standard. Should have been done months ago. Just now we have enough people we can take the time.”

  “What about my troops?” Faith said. “Hocieniec has been through as much as I have. Januscheitis and the Iwo Marines nearly as much. They need time off, too.”

  “They’re training the Phase Three Marines and their junior NCO instructors and having boatloads of time off while doing so,” Lyons said. “And they sort of own the NCO club at Mayport. I don’t think any of them have bought their own drinks since the landing. And what they’re mostly doing is telling ‘Lieutenant Faith’ stories. Faith, can I at least get you off of this horrible little patch of swamp? Figure out what to do later?”

  Faith looked around. The island was hers, all hers. But it was not the gentle Eden she was looking for. There were no horses. There were no friends to have her back. And it really was a horrible little patch of swamp.

  “How are we getting out?” Faith asked.

  “The Hampton is right off-shore,” Lyons said. “And I’ve got a RHIB.”

  “Gah,” Faith said. “Subs. I’m terrified of subs.”

  “Faith, you’re terrified of everything,” Lyons said. “You’re terrified of failure and strangers and new people and public speaking and infected. A very short sub trip is minor.”

  “Are you saying I’m a coward?” Faith asked, angrily.

  “No,” Lyons said, looking honestly puzzled. “But did you think that people like myself and General Montana and…well, everybody that was on that painting don’t know that? You react to fear by being angry. It’s your gift. So do all the people on that painting except maybe your mom. I don’t know her at all. Did you think we didn’t get that? We’re the same way.”

  “I…” Faith said. “No. I thought… Seriously?”

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “What about the stew?” Fai
th said.

  “It’s raccoon,” Lyons said. “Which tastes really horrible. On the other hand, the galley on the Hampton is pretty damned good. And they’ve got flush toilets. I’m dying for a Hollywood shower and a flush toilet. And I understand the first meal back is steak and lobster.”

  “Steak?” Faith said, her mouth starting to water. Lobster in the Caribbean had become something of a staple. But steak was a new one. She couldn’t remember the last time she had fresh beef. “Where’d they get steak?”

  “Florida turns out to have more cows than Texas,” Lyons said. “And Lieutenant Chen had rifles.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  * * *

  “How did your reconnaissance of the island go, Lieutenant?” Colonel Hamilton asked when she reported in.

  “Fine, sir,” Faith said. “I discovered some interesting things about infected lifestyles which I’m not sure how to apply, sir.”

  “After you get off your thirty-day leave, I want a detailed report,” Hamilton said. “We’ll add it to our general intelligence summary. That is after you get off leave.”

  “I’m not sure I need thirty days, sir,” Faith said. “I’m not sure what to do with thirty days’ leave, sir.”

  “Persons on leave can travel space available on any vessel in the U.S. military, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. “We have a regular ferry flight to Gitmo leaving and returning every three days so feel free to visit your parents. You can grab a boat from one of the cleared marinas and go travelling around. You can sit by the pool and read. You can go scavenge in Jax. Hell, if you found that you are evolved for submarine travel, we have a regular run to England and you can go visit King Harry. I’d say you could take the Hampton to the Pacific but that bastard Montana is trying to shanghai you. World is your oyster, Lieutenant. Then I need you back with your headspace and timing in place. Since we have all these Marines, gear and transport, our mission creep has gotten extensive. We’ve got multiple missions coming up and I need good officers for them. Oorah?”

  “Oorah, sir,” Faith said.

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant.”