Strands of Sorrow

by John Ringo

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Tommy J. Kinsey, Jr. said. The USS Boise, one of the older 688s, had suffered several irreparable mechanical failures post-Plague. The former commander was now the designated Blount Island commander. He’d brought part of his crew along to set up the base as well as refugees newly inducted into the Navy and civilian technical experts.

  “Use the Alexandria for power initially,” Hamilton said. “Tugs are bringing in your old boat. Be planning the power hand-off on that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kinsey said. “All under control. After it comes in, three days to restart the reactor from cold. Then we can hand-off and the Alex can resume operations.”

  “First priority after getting power restored and the computers cracked will be to set up a land-based helo operations center,” Hamilton said. “I want to get the Sea Dragon off that crow’s nest and in a hangar. Possibly before we get power restored. Second priority, to be handled in tandem, is getting Marine equipment up and running.”

  “Aye, aye,” Kinsey said.

  “Any questions?” Hamilton asked.

  “May not be . . . uh . . . Girl’s name, oorah? . . . germaine, sir,” Faith said. “I understand that the long-term program is to clear multiple bases up the east coast, sir?”

  “That would seem to be the plan, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. “Your father is still keeping some cards close to his vest. You may know better than I.”

  “He never really talked about it with us, sir,” Faith said. “Da’s always kept his cards close. The point, and it might be getting ahead of where we’re at, is that this equipment will be useful doing that. And we don’t have amphibs or landing craft, sir. Any ideas on getting it there, sir?”

  “It is getting ahead of where we’re at and outside this meeting,” Hamilton said, making a note. “But it’s something we’ll have to fix when we get there. We’ll set up a planning meeting next week to look at that. Off the top of my head, you can drive AAVs off the back of the Grace Tan and she should be able to carry at least four. I’m less sure about getting them back on other than alongside with a crane. But we’ll cover that next week. Lieutenant Commander Chen.”

  “Yes, sir,” the commander of the small boat flotilla replied.

  “We so far don’t appear to need your services,” Hamilton said. “Once you get past the Jacksonville sprawl there are numerous small towns along the river. New mission. Run upriver and do light clearance of small towns along the river. You are not permitted to do landings. We will be way too far off to support your forces, and we’re not going to get a repeat of London. Understood?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Northern limit of operations is the Florida 16 bridge,” Hamilton continued. “Take one of the tugboats with a support barge along for fuel and supplies. No landings, but the rural areas . . . People have guns. With luck they’ll be able to self-extract if we can get the infected numbers down.”

  “Understood, sir,” Chen said.

  “That’s about it for commander’s intent,” Hamilton said. “And it gives your people something to do. Leave two of the yachts here for support, the rest head upriver.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “For now, clearance, salvage, survey and rescue. Oorah?”

  “Oorah!” Faith said. “Ready to rock and roll, sir.”

  * * *

  “We ready to roll, Gunny?” Faith said.

  The Marines were gathered by a set of M-ATVs that had been moved closer to the Grace Tan’s pier. The ship had been tied off at one of the RO-RO piers and was in the process of disgorging a mass of material to get the base up and going again.

  “Please say ‘Yes,’” Faith added. “I just told the colonel we were prepared to begin clearance.”

  “All ready, ma’am,” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said. “Teams have been detailed.”

  “I suppose this is as good a time for a driving lesson as any,” Faith said, looking up at the M-ATV with a frown. “It’s not like I can wreck this thing and hitting a few things on the civilian side probably won’t be a problem.”

  “With due respect, ma’am,” the gunny said. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to wreck one. You might not kill the vehicle hitting something but you might kill crew. Also, there are several ponds on the far side. And these are not amphibious, ma’am. Last, officers don’t drive themselves, ma’am. Private First Class Freeman has already been detailed as your driver, ma’am.”

  “Very well, Gunnery Sergeant,” Faith said. “If you insist. But at some point, your lieutenant needs to learn how to drive.”

  “Possibly when you’re fourteen, ma’am?” Januscheitis said.

  “Not long on that, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “But for now . . . let’s go see if my sister left us anything to kill . . .”

  * * *

  “Do you have any idea how awesome it would be to have a professional facility to fly out of, sir?” Sophia asked. They were hovering over a building hoisting up refugees but she’d gotten experienced enough to be able to look around while in a hover. And at the moment she was looking at the hangar at the Mayport Airfield and the lines and lines of Seahawks and Dragons. “I mean, a real hangar and shops and everything?”

  The airfield was small as such things go but it was well stocked with helicopters. The base had not only been the support base for a squadron of surface warfare ships, each of which had a helicopter, but the training base for Seahawk and Sea Dragon pilots for the east coast as well as pilots from foreign navies which had bought the well-tested aircraft.

  “I’d be damned thrilled to have the Iwo back,” Wilkes said. “Which would also resolve your sister’s point about how to move the stuff around. But, yes, that would be a wonderful thing.”

  “Screw a tank,” Sophia said. “I want a hangar and a decent shop for my birthday.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell the colonel that, Ensign,” Wilkes said. “We had that at Gitmo, you realize.”

  “Cuba is not the primary objective, sir,” Sophia said. “And the Iwo was trashed, sir. I was inside it more than you were, sir. Totally trashed. Dockyard job.”

  “We’re in and secure,” Olga commed. “One of them’s having some labor signs. Again.”

  “Roger,” Wilkes said. “RTB, Wolf.”

  “RTB, aye,” Sophia said, nosing down. “You’d think we could at least refuel from the Bo.”

  “Again, something to put on the list of birthday wishes,” Wilkes said, grinning.

  “Dear Santa . . .”

  * * *

  “Well, I know where to get a car, anyway,” Faith said.

  The masses of containers, which contained Ganesh only knew what, were probably more impressive in their own way. But they were just closed steel boxes and since they could be stacked they covered far less area than the vehicles. So what was noticeable on the civilian side was the cars and trucks. And vans. And everything else.

  They were currently driving between lines of cars, SUVs and vans. Every kind imaginable.

  “Since I can’t get a tank for my birthday, I’ll take a Mustang,” Faith said. There were about a thousand of those. “Or maybe an Expedition.” Two thousand. “Charger?” Five hundred. “Seriously, I can take a driving lesson in one of these. Any of these. Ooh! Mini Cooper!”

  “Shewolf, J, over,” Januscheitis radioed.

  “Wolf,” Faith radioed back.

  “Recommend divert to west river area,” Januscheitis said. “Interesting activity this AO.”

  “Infected, over?” Faith said.

  “Negative. Just . . . interesting, over.”

  “Thataway, Freeman,” Faith said, making a chopping knife-hand gesture to the west.

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Freeman said.

  * * *

  “Son of a bitch!” Faith said as they pulled up to the cluster of vehicles. The “interesting activity” was apparent.

  The helo run the day before had dropped a mass of infected bodies at the edge of the car park. Part of the plan
to get the base up and running involved eventually gathering them up, using front-end loaders, then probably burning them. There weren’t any good areas for a mass grave.

  However . . . body clearance was being taken care of for them. There were the usual flocks of seagulls and vultures but in this case, alligators were crawling out of the nearby river in a virtual tide. As she watched, a gator that seemed be the size of one of the parked Expeditions dragged an already partially dismembered corpse towards the water. Another, smaller, gator grabbed the corpse by the leg and the two engaged in a tug-of-war that resulted in a ripped-in-half corpse. The first gator dragged its partial prize into the water, leaving behind a trail of intestines.

  A coyote, or a dog that looked a lot like one, darted in and grabbed the trailing intestines, then ran with them as a gator lunged at it. There were more coyotes, and even recognizable dogs, circling the pile of carrion and avoiding the snapping gators.

  That sort of thing was going on everywhere, well up into the car park area.

  The Marines were keeping a safe distance and generally staying up on or in their vehicles.

  “Don’t go near the water,” Januscheitis radioed.

  “We’re Marines, J,” Faith replied. “It’s sort of what we do.”

  “Ground ops, Force ops, over.”

  “Ground ops,” Faith replied.

  “State nature of unusual activity, over.”

  “Reptilian, mammalian and avian local inhabitants doing body clearance, over.”

  “Reptilian inhabitants?” Petty Officer Third Class Sahms said.

  “Snakes?” Seaman First Class Gardenier replied.

  “Gators,” Petty Officer First Class Querce said. “Probably. Ask for a clarification.”

  * * *

  “Ground Ops, Force Ops. Clarify ‘reptilian,’ over.”

  “Gators are dragging the bodies and parts into the water,” Faith replied. “The vultures, coyotes and seagulls are fighting over the scraps. Over.”

  * * *

  “Dragon Three, Force Ops, your camera working, over?”

  “Force Ops, Dragon Three,” Wilkes replied. They were just taking off from the Boadicea, having dropped off the latest group of refugees.

  Despite being the only known Sea Dragon in inventory, they used “three” as their number. The reason was a tiny bit of military trivia. Any military airframe that had the number “One” was carrying the President. Any that used “Two” was carrying the Vice President. So “Three” was the lowest number they could use.

  “Do a pass over the kill zone from yesterday’s civilian side clearance. Break. Get a shot. Over.”

  “Roger,” Wilkes said, gesturing to the west. “Nature of shot, over?”

  “You’ll see it when you see it, Dragon. Multiple requests for video, over.”

  “Roger,” Wilkes said. “Proceeding.”

  “Wonder what that’s ab—” Sophia started to say over the intercom. “Holy shit!”

  “What’s up?” Olga said. “Wolf, Tang, talk to us!”

  “It’s a visual, Legs, Lee,” Wilkes said. “Lean out and look.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Yu replied a moment later.

  They’d seen the circle of vultures over both kill areas. That was expected. They’d seen that before and learned to avoid the spirals. But most of the bodies they’d left behind yesterday were already gone. And the waters of the river were churning with alligators. The coyotes were basically background to the mass of at least a hundred alligators.

  “Tang, Legs. Two-thirty, ground level. In the river up by the bend.”

  “What?” Sophia said, skewing her head around. She was carefully circling the feeding frenzy as Wilkes handled the camera.

  “Okay, that’s . . . Look there,” Wilkes said, pointing. He’d also directed the steerable camera on the bird’s nose to the sight and zoomed in.

  The majority of the gators were swarming halfway down the section of river on the west side of the island. Right by the bridge something was swimming in the river. Sophia had an odd moment of not being able to get the scale. It looked like a house cat. No, it was too big to be a house cat. Either the bridge was really small or it was too big to be a bobcat. As it clambered out of the river and shook itself off, she realized what it was.

  “That’s a fucking TIGER!” she screamed.

  “I know,” Wilkes said.

  “It’s a fucking TIGER!” Sophia shouted again.

  “Calm down, Ensign,” Wilkes said.

  She spun the bird around for a better look, shook her head, then keyed the radio.

  “Ground force, Dragon, over.”

  “What’s up, Sis? You diggin’ this?”

  “Be advised, you have a Panthera Tigris Tigris approaching your location,” Sophia radioed. “Potentially hostile.”

  “Location, over?”

  “Approaching from north on bank having swum the river,” Sophia said.

  * * *

  “This I gotta see,” Faith said. She wriggled into the back past the gunner, then out the rear hatch and onto the roof. “Freeman, hand up the mike!”

  “Roger, ma’am,” Freeman said. He handed the microphone to Lance Corporal Harvey, the gunner, who handed it to Faith.

  “J, Shewolf,” Faith said. “Check out what’s approaching from the north.”

  “Roger, Shewolf. Care for a skin, over?”

  “Possibly gator but not tiger,” Faith said, looking through binoculars. “Look at the dugs. She’s nursing.”

  The tigress walked through the surrounding packs of coyotes and dogs like, well, a tigress and settled down to feed at one of the corpses. When a smaller gator approached she growled at it and when it didn’t back off, she spun around, landed on its back and bit down on the back of its head. The alligator was left shuddering in death throes. She went back to eating man.

  “Did that tiger just kill a gator?” someone radioed.

  “Calling station, Shewolf,” Faith replied. “They do that. They’ve been observed to kill saltwater crocodiles in the wild. There’s a reason mammals rule the earth. Ground force. Coffee break’s over. This is not getting the mission done. Load up. Container Group. What’s the status on containers to close the bridge?”

  “We’re ready when we get the call, Shewolf, over.”

  “Ground force, move to escort container force, break.” She paused and looked at the feeding frenzy again. “Upon bridge closure, return this AO. Fire is authorized on canines and canines only. They can’t swim off the island once the bridge is closed and clearly they’re a potential threat. We’ll let the reptilians clear the bodies. Move to link-up with container force, now. No readback. Just follow me.”

  “Okay, Freeman, head back to the base,” Faith said as soon as she was back in her seat.

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Freeman said, starting up the M-ATV and turning it around.

  “You know how they call amphibious forces the ‘gator Navy’?” Faith said as they drove through the vehicle park.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Takes on a whole new meaning, don’t it?”

  * * *

  “Civilian side is blocked, locked and the usual chartreuse cleared, sir,” Faith said, saluting Colonel Hamilton. “Any more we’d have to do night sweeps, sir. Should I schedule those?”

  “Not at this time, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said, looking around at the mass of equipment. “We’re probably not going to activate the civilian side until we have this side up and going fully. When the lights come on at night, any infected will be drawn to the fence line of this side. Where they’ll be easy enough to eliminate.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Faith said.

  “Don’t plan on getting any rest this evening, though,” Colonel Hamilton said. “While the enlisted are hard at work on the AAVs, you and I will be going over plans for clearance of Mayport as well as looking at amphib assault concepts using other than designed ships.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Faith said.

 
“No rest for the weary . . .”

  All four of the Marines started at the pounding on the hatch of Building Fourteen. It had already been a sucky night and none of them needed to get heat from higher.

  None of the M1s were in anything like useable condition. Everything rubber had succumbed to the heat, humidity and just sitting. Even Decker was scratching his head at getting the fuel system on their chosen tank working again. He was an experienced tanker which meant he knew more than just “Level One” repairs. But this was something he’d normally be talking to a master gunner tank vehicle repair specialist about. It didn’t help that they were trying to do it all using hand lights and one generator. But they were, by God, going to get the lieutenant a tank. Might be a bit late for her birthday. This was a fucking depot level job.

  Januscheitis got up from where he had been replacing another of the sixteen million fucking seals on the bitch and walked over to the hatch.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Somebody who can knock politely, talk and who would like to get out of the zombie fucking haunted dark!” a voice said. “Open the fuck up!”

  Januscheitis cracked the hatch and was surprised to see at least a dozen Navy pukes standing there clutching M4s, shotguns and tool bags.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Get out of the way, Jarhead,” the short, burly machinist mate first class said, pushing past him. “No way four of you were going to get an M1 this worn-out up and going in four days. Faith was the only entertainment we had for months so now you have some real mechanics. Where’s the manuals . . . ?”

  CHAPTER 6

  “Survivors, one-thirty, half a mile maybe,” Olga said. “Livey. Up on the roof of a house. Clear to starboard.”

  “Roger,” Sophia said, banking off of the search pattern.

  They’d been crisscrossing East Arlington for an hour. Greater Arlington “town,” more of a small city, was not so much a suburb as an extension of Jacksonville, which was across the river.

  As with London, it had burned extensively. Whole neighborhoods were gone. But the road network tended to act as a fire-break and while one neighborhood would be nothing but ashes and debris with the occasional infected wandering through it, the next would be relatively untouched. They all were damaged, though. Overgrown, unkempt, yards and gardens run wild. In fact, one way to spot survivors was the occasional carefully tended backyard gardens, always with a fence. They probably snuck out during the day, quietly, to plant, weed and harvest. It was a living.