Strands of Sorrow

by John Ringo

  “There’s not enough gators in the world to clean this up,” Hooch radioed.

  “Gators, hell,” Januscheitis said. “I’m not sure the wash point operators are going to let her in till she at least rinses off.”

  * * *

  “BEACHHEAD IS CLEAR,” Faith radioed. “DO YOU COPY? MOVE FORWARD!”

  “Roger,” Januscheitis radioed. The square wasn’t deserted, but the infected were trying to make it that way. Screw all the fresh carrion. There were better places to be. Anywhere. And it wasn’t so much “carrion” as blood pudding. “Moving forward at this time . . .”

  * * *

  “We’ve got a following again,” Faith radioed, watching the infected. “Slow it down; we need them to cluster.”

  They’d started off with Trixie in the lead of the formation, running down the zombies. That had worked for about an hour. But the problem was, the infected from the square had run while more were still trickling in. Some of their “trickles” were more zombies than you got in a liner. And they tended, because the unit was moving, to end up behind the unit. When they occasionally had to slow down to negotiate through the choked roads, the zombies caught up and fell on the less powerful amtracks. That wasn’t a security problem but it was hard to kill the ones that were in close and even firing at the amtracks risked holing them.

  So they had switched. Trixie was now trailing the unit with Staff Sergeant Januscheitis leading and, fortunately, navigating. And her turret was pointed to the rear. The light flow of infected they were running into as the tracks passed could be handled by the track guns or the Marines in the hatches.

  While Trixie handled their “followers.” In this case, several thousand infected in a mob. As the tracks slowed, the zombies charged, five thousand voices keening a discordant howl that even now sent a shiver down Faith’s spine.

  “Where’s the wonder, where’s the awe?” Faith crooned hoarsely as the infected clustered behind them. “Where are the sleepless nights I used to live for? Before the years take me I wish to see The lost in me . . .”

  “Target concentration,” Faith said. She’d turned down the music. She had to. Her voice was already going from screaming orders.

  “Target!” Decker said.

  “Fire!”

  “On the way!”

  The center of the mob was taken out. That wouldn’t panic infected. It was only when the beast was in their midst that they panicked. There were more still coming forward. Faith slewed the turret to port, simultaneously opening fire with the commander’s gun.

  “Target concentration . . .”

  “Target concentration . . .”

  “Coax . . .”

  “Concentration cleared,” Faith radioed. “Roll it.”

  She ceased fire as Decker finished off the last few surviving infected with the coaxial machine gun. It was only then that she realized they were rolling at a walking pace past a burned-out church.

  “Someday, maybe, God will forgive us for this, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said.

  “God already does, ma’am,” Decker replied. “We are saving people by this, ma’am. And these fallen we send on are already forgiven. How could God condemn them for being victims of a plague, ma’am? Or for any actions before entering this fallen state? They are, too, forgiven by the Grace of Our Lord. We are just filling the choirs of heaven, ma’am.”

  “Duly noted, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said as Trixie sped up.

  The unit rolled on, leaving the One Hundred Block of Duval Street strewn with offal . . .

  “I wish to see what’s lost in me . . .” Faith sang to the music, clearing up a few last infected with the fifty, her face stone. “I want my tears back, I want my tears back NOW!”

  * * *

  Trixie rolled off the barge onto Blount Island as the sun was setting. She was still dripping. Not with blood, with water. Well, and blood. They’d stopped by Dames Island where there was a solid sandbar. Faith had taken the splattered tank down into the water and driven back and forth to get the worst of the mess off. The juggernaut wasn’t clean by any stretch of the imagination. There was a biological purée of meat, bone, brains and internal organs in every niche on the exterior and the lieutenant was still covered. But it was clean enough to run through the wash point.

  “That was quite a probe, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. He’d decided it was appropriate for him to be present for the landing. Very appropriate.

  The unit had never retreated as planned for the “probe.” There’d been no need. They had swept through all of downtown Jacksonville. They couldn’t cover the entire sprawling city but they’d covered a lot of it. They’d even rearmed Trixie from stores carried in the amtracks. They’d only stopped when the sun was going down. And there’d been very few surviving infected left behind them. The densely populated areas they’d swept repeatedly.

  “Downtown Jax orange cleared, sir,” Faith replied, saluting. “And Staff Sergeant Decker and Lance Corporal Condrey have something to report, sir.”

  “Yes?” Hamilton said curiously as the lance corporal and staff sergeant popped their hatches.

  Decker climbed off the tank in a much less robotic manner than had been his habit and walked up to the colonel. He snapped off a parade ground salute.

  “Sir!” Decker boomed as Condrey fell into formation beside him. “Staff Sergeant Decker with a party of one, reporting aboard, sir.”

  “Feeling better, Decker?” Hamilton asked, returning the salute.

  “Sir, a Marine NCO should never publicly be disrespectful of the chain of command or superiors, sir,” Decker said, almost conversationally. “However, in the case of Lieutenant Klette, may the Staff Sergeant be so bold as to state that the useless fucker should have been fragged immediately upon reporting aboard, sir. I would recommend turning him into vaccine, but his stupid might rub off, sir.”

  “Duly noted,” Hamilton said, shaking the NCO’s hand. “I’m more than prone to overlook that public statement and I’d like to welcome you and . . . the Lance Corporal? Aboard.”

  “Feeling better, sir,” Condrey said. “The staff sergeant’s . . . When the staff sergeant went off about the fucking lieutenant, sir, I just . . . I used to dream, at first, about somehow strangling the damned lieutenant in his sleep, sir. Other than that, just hoping the wash point is up, sir. Trixie needs a serious wash down, sir. And I’m gonna need to go ever the systems real good. She’s had a hard day for her first date, sir.”

  “Wash point is up, Lance Corporal,” Hamilton said cautiously. Decker seemed better but Condrey had simply . . . changed. He had gone from robotic to wild-eyed. “We made sure of that earlier today. Why don’t you two take her over and give her a nice bath while I debrief the lieutenant.”

  “I thought he’d cracked, sir,” Faith said. “Decker, that is. Right before we rolled. Started raging about how bad an officer Lieutenant Klette was, sir. Almost crying. Then he was like ‘I’m up, LT. Ready to rock and roll.’”

  “Happens occasionally with severe situational neurosis,” Hamilton said. “There will be after effects. He was functional for the mission?”

  “Perfect, sir,” Faith said. “Couldn’t have a better gunner. Of course, he’s a staff sergeant so you’d expect him to be superb, sir. Condrey is also an excellent driver, sir.”

  “The effect of the system was broadly noted,” Hamilton said. “General Montana sends his regards. ‘A Fine, Fell Day’ was the message he wished me to convey. Various ‘good jobs’ from others. Another letter of commendation for your file from Undersecretary Galloway.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Faith said. “I think that the . . . effort of getting Trixie into operation was useful. The major issue is getting sufficient concentrations of infected to justify the power, sir. I would recommend at some point doing night sweeps, sir. Possibly without lights, using night vision gear, sir. The sound will carry farther. And if we use some of the IR flares, we can engage the infected while their vision is limited.”

  “W
e’ll discuss that at the full AAR, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. “Are you up for that?”

  “I’m good, sir,” Faith said. “Tired. Sort of . . . washed out, sir. But I’m prepared to do my duty, sir. What I’d really like is a shower and a drink, sir.”

  “You don’t drink, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said.

  “I know, sir,” Faith said. “And times like this it really bites, sir.”

  “Take time for the shower, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said, reaching out and plucking a tooth off the lieutenant’s shoulder and flicking it into the distance. “Definitely the shower . . .”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Your daughter has showered herself with congratulations again, Captain,” General Brice said. “I’ll add mine.”

  “It was certainly . . . riveting, ma’am,” Captain Smith said.

  “Tanks seem to be an effective urban renewal system,” Brice said. “I’d prefer cluster bombs, but there are issues. Notably, getting the infected to . . . cluster.”

  “That is the problem, yes, ma’am,” Steve said.

  “You seem muted, Captain,” General Brice said. “Does that mean you don’t agree?”

  “About tanks as an urban renewal program, ma’am?” Steve said. “No, I don’t, actually.”

  “The Marines just did one hell of a job of clearance, Captain,” Brice said. “I was going to recommend you start focusing on getting M1s up and going despite my own background.”

  “I’ll let them continue,” Steve said. “Until Colonel Hamilton has the conditions sufficient for the task force to move on. Far be it from me to harsh Faith’s vibe. But . . . have you discussed this with Commodore Montana, ma’am?”

  “Just in passing,” Brice said. “We didn’t really discuss mission focus.”

  “I suppose I could let him do the math, ma’am,” Steve said. “In one day a group of thirty-seven Marines in tracks were able to say ‘orange’ clear a five square mile area, ma’am. The total urban area of the United States, alone, is one hundred and six thousand, three hundred and eighty-six miles. That works out to twenty-one thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven days or fifty-eight years, ma’am. Assuming, of course, only one platoon of Marines. That ignores transportation issues, which are serious given the weight of M1s and the number of bridges that are destroyed or damaged. Coastal cities are accessible, clearly. But even the Mississippi is currently questionable as a route. What Faith did was . . . fun for values of fun. And certainly morale raising. However, tanks and troops in armored personnel carriers are not going to get the cities cleared in any reasonable time frame, ma’am.”

  “What is, then, Captain?” Brice asked formally.

  “Genocide, General,” Steve said, sighing. “Pure and simple genocide.”

  “Are you ready to be specific, yet?” Brice asked. “You’ve indicated for some time you have a plan.”

  “There is one item missing, yet, ma’am,” Steve said. “Well, two. One of them is some information I suspect Colonel Ellington will have in his remarkable brain. However, if you’d like the outline . . .”

  “Please,” Brice said.

  “It involves what I like to call Subedey bots, ma’am,” Steve said.

  After Steve was done with the “brief outline” in no more than a few sentences, the general just looked at him for a long time.

  “That is . . .” Brice said carefully. “My career, basically, has been thinking about ways to kill nations wholesale, Captain. And even I find that . . . cold as shit. Have you discussed this with anyone else?”

  “Only General Montana, ma’am,” Steve said. “After he broke cover and on condition of silence. I’m aware that the plan would make me a bigger monster historically than Hitler. Right up there with the developer of the virus, ma’am. But it is much more efficient than driving around in a tank. However . . . morale-boosting that may be. We will drive around in tanks and APCs, eventually, ma’am. We’ll . . . clear major buildings. Get around to the remaining carriers. But only after the bots do their work.”

  “It will still take a big force,” Brice said.

  “Oh, enormous, ma’am,” Steve said. “At some point, we’ll stand the Army back up and that will be the main driver. And it will require lots of volunteers. I can’t really see conscription working in this environment. Cross that bridge when we come to it, ma’am. But it will work. With one more piece, we’ll be ready to start moving. And based on growth models . . . We should be able to clear the entire U.S. to, say, orangish yellow, maybe yellow, in five years. By which time we’ll be working on Europe and Asia. People are already freeing themselves in the north, ma’am, and using kinetic activity to drop the infected level even more. Drop the infected level to yellow, hell, to yellowish-orange, and people will extract themselves. And definitely drop things to yellow, at least in the U.S. Lots of guns, lots of people capable of and willing to use them. We’ll do it.”

  * * *

  “Gunny,” Nick said, shaking his boot. “There’s movement.”

  “There’s always fucking movement, Nick,” retired Master Gunnery Sergeant James Robinson growled, taking his hand off the 1911 under his pillow.

  “To be more precise, there’s music and what sounds like armor,” Nick said.

  Robinson reached over, fumbled out a Marlboro Red, lit it with a Zippo that had the Globe and Anchor on the side, took two puffs, rolled over, sat up in his rack and put his feet on the floor. Oh-dark-thirty and his day had begun, God damnit. Waking up seemed to get harder and harder as he got older.

  Back in the old days, soldiers used to say that when they retired they were going to buy a farm. It was so common it became the regular expression for dying: bought the farm. Robinson had grown up in rural Iowa. He knew how hard farm work was. The hell if he was going to bust his ass hauling bags of seed and picking rocks after thirty years in the Corps. He knew what he was going to do when he got out. Same damned thing he did for thirty years in: Logistics.

  When—to the covert relief of Marine units all over the globe—he had retired, he looked around at Army/Navy stores. Like anyone who had an ounce of sense, he knew the world was a terrible place kept less terrible by much effort. If you were in a disaster, best possible place to be was sitting on a supply depot. Civilian equivalent was an “outdoors” or “Army/Navy” store. Pay for your supply depot by overcharging wannabes for cheap-ass tiger stripe made in Bangladesh out of finest, guaranteed-to-fall-apart-on-first-washing cotton, sell “disaster supply kits” at three hundred percent mark-up to idiots who thought the sky was falling when there was a hurricane, including corporate idiots—he’d made a packet off of that racket—and make sure your stock of critical items never fell below five years’ supply. Just like in the Corps. Fuck the line. They didn’t really need batteries. Night vision is for pussies. Let me tell you how it was back in the Old Corps. . . .

  Ammo shortage? What ammo shortage? He had an FFL, and selling guns meant having plenty of ammo on hand. He bought all over the place, really got some cool ass shit in the nineties, and practiced a very strict program of “first in, keep most of it, let a little out especially if it was going out of date.” He still had some of that Czech armor-piercing he’d bought at auction in ’97 waaaay in the back. He’d been so miserly with his ammo, BATF finally insisted, with the rousing approval of OSHA and EPA, that he spend sixty-seven thousand one hundred and forty-eight dollars and seventy-three cents on a God-damned ammo vault. A God-damned “ammo vault.” Made him pay some bastard to build a magazine “to Federal specifications.” God-damned liberal Federal BATF assholes. Okay, so he had more ammo than Blount Island. Okay, so he was a certified holding point for civilian demolitions and if it all went off he’d take out the whole block. It still cost sixty-seven thousand one hundred and forty-eight dollars and seventy-three God-damned cents. Pissed him off.

  Worst part? No matter how much ammo you had, there was never enough for a zombie apocalypse.

  Good part was, a few of his regulars weren’t total asshats. So
when it was clear that the worm Oroborus was turning, they’d got together and activated Zombie Plan Alpha. First, get out all the metal screening that the City of Greater Arlington in all its glory had insisted he could not install in the first place. Took one morning for that to go up. Started right after he didn’t turn around the “closed” sign. You want ammo? You want supplies? You want guns? Failure to prepare was preparing to fail. Fuck off. I’m bunkering up. Then plywood on top. Why plywood? Looked like they were just getting ready for a hurricane. More or less normal in Florida. What wasn’t normal was when the gunny called in a favor and a pallet of concertina turned up in the back parking lot. They waited till it was a for-real shit-storm for that. Took one afternoon to string the concertina on the top deck of the building. Fuck the zoning commission. If they didn’t like it, let ’em get a city inspector over and assess a fine. And zombies weren’t getting over the wire.

  That’s when the families came in. Through the back. Some of the group had jobs they weren’t willing to just drop. Nick was a cop. He had to stay out. They knew that would mean the zombie plague might make its way in. Decision would be made later whether they were in or out.

  Plague came in, anyway. Probably from Dolores Sims. She’d been a teacher and she got sick first. From the reports . . . could have been any of them, honestly. And if it was Dolores . . . She paid the price. That was when there were still “infected care centers” and they’d hit Dolores with a Taser before she could bite anyone, then evacced her.

  But a lot of them got it. He’d gotten the flu. He’d gotten over the flu. He hadn’t turned. Shit was like that. Before he’d gotten the flu, he’d ordered everyone to rig up. Tie up that is. If they turned, that way thinking humans were in control. He hated that about zombie movies. People got bit or infected and nobody did nothing. Just sat around fucking crying like that ever did the world any good. And when things at the “infected care centers” went from bad to worse . . . They did what they had to do. Then Nick turned up when things just . . . toppled. They’d gotten him in using a ladder and just locked the fuck down.