Islands of Rage and Hope (eARC) (23 page)

"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..."

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"
Cruxshadows

"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."

"Okay, now it's making sense," Sergeant Smith said.

"They're trying to land on the island," Sergeant Hoag said. "Son of a bitch. So why couldn't they tell us?"

"'Cause if it didn't work, it'd be another morale blow," Faith said from behind them. "But that's why we had to land at night and thoroughly clear the island. And now we're going to be providing security for an extraction team. Assuming it lands on the island."

"When will we know, ma'am?" Sergeant Smith asked.

"The subs are surfaced," Faith said, pointing out into the channel. "They're following it on radar. Since they could find you to the meter, I figure they can probably find where it landed."

"Ma'am," Sergeant Smith said thoughtfully. "If they are coming down by parachute, they'll need winds aloft."

"I understand that Mr. Walker figured that out, Sergeant," Faith said drily. "Believe it or not, some of your superiors do have a clue, Sergeant."

"Yes, ma'am," Smitty said. "Understood."

"Shit, it
missed
!" Lance Corporal Ferguson snarled as the capsule passed overhead. It was clearly headed for the channel on the far side of the island. A moment later it winked from view as it dropped out of the sunlight.

"Winds," Sergeant Smith said, scanning to the southeast. "It's going to drift with these winds..."

"There," Faith said, spotting it again. "You can see the chutes..."

"Drift is in predicted track," the compliance tech said. "I think. Sorry, General, not precisely my area of expertise."

"At this point we just have to wait and hope," Brice said. "The reentry worked and the parachutes worked. That's better than we had any reason to expect."

Commander Luallin had slaved the camera to the radar track and now widened the field of view, trying to get some perspective. He looked at the radar track and frowned.

"I think it's going to miss," he said. "Certainly the primary LZ."

"It's going to be close, sir," the COB said.

"In this case, a miss is truly as good as a mile," Luallin said.

"Oh, shit," Faith muttered. "Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit..."

The main chutes had deployed at four thousand feet with the capsule well over the island. But the strong tropical wind had it moving northwest at a high rate of speed.

Straight at the flotilla.

"That thing's got rockets on it," Faith said. "If they fire over
us
..."

"Won't, ma'am," Smitty said as the capsule continued to descend rapidly. "Where was the LZ?"

"By that pond in The Valley," Faith said.

"Not going there, ma'am," Smitty said. "I think it's going to hit by the airport..."

The dimly perceived capsule dropped from view and there was a massive fire signature as yellow-orange flames and smoke poured into the predawn darkness.

"Rockets fired," Smitty said. "That's a good sign."

"I think the Dragon has landed," Colonel Hamilton said.

"All personnel,"
the tannoy boomed.
"Stand by..."
There was a crackle of static.

"Hello?"
an unfamiliar voice said.
"Anyone listening? We're down in one piece..."

"Dragon, this is Omaha. Good to hear your voices again. We're sending in a rescue party as soon as we're sure the fires are under control."

"Roger, Omaha. We'll just lie here, then. Gravity is taking a little getting used to."

"Subs, go to closed frequency. Omaha, out."

"And that is that," Hamilton said, looking into the darkness. "I don't even see any fires, yet." He touched his radio key. "Omaha, this is Kodiak Force Commander. Request direct contact, Dragon crew. We need to touch base..."

"This platform is pretty bare bones,"
Mission Commander Ollie Daniels said
. "Not that I'm complaining or anything. But we've only got walking around bottles. We'll need air in about forty minutes or have to pop the hatch. According to Doc Gordie and Doc Riz, while we're immune compromised, very slight contamination shouldn't harm us. And the blast zone should have cleared contaminants from this immediate AO."

He sounded remarkably calm for a guy who was depending on people he didn't know to save him from a plague in a zombie apocalypse.

"We're doing all we can to make 'slight' contamination equal zero," Colonel Hamilton said. "But roger on the air situation. We'll go ahead and punch our force now rather than waiting for daylight."

"Suit up," Hamilton said, looking at Walker. "You're going to have to figure out a procedure when you get there."

"We've got spare plastic, tape and tubing in the second five-ton," Walker said. "We'll kludge something up. I'm putting the ensign, Decker and Condrey in the sterile five-ton. Decker and Condrey are...used to handling human bodies even if the conditions are difficult. I'll remain on the outside to handle setting up the transfer system."

"That makes a tremendous amount of sense," Hamilton said. "But why am I not surprised. Good luck."

"Holy crap," Faith said. "There it is."

The capsule had clearly once been bright white. It was now mildly fire scorched. But the Space X logo was brightly noticeable on the side. It also was bigger than she'd expected. It was nearly three stories tall or so it seemed. The hatch was more than a tall man's height off the ground. And there was no convenient ladder.

The capsule was canted at a slight angle on a hill near the airport. The scrub around it was on fire but the fire seemed to be burning out by itself.

"Stop here," Walker said as they approached the spacecraft. "Marine units, deploy and get those fires out. Navy decon teams, stand by."

"Grab the fire extinguishers," Faith yelled, baling out of the front of the five-ton. The back was packed with Marines and the Navy away team. "We need to get these fires out. But I think the fire truck was overkill..."

The sea grape and tantan in the area had apparently had some recent watering as the fires were only smoldering. The Marines spread out with heavy-duty extinguishers and had the ones that threatened the approach out in minutes.

"Sir, we have the approach fires out but the ground is still hot," Faith said. "Not sure what to do about that unless we go try to find the fire truck."

"Keep putting the fires out, Shewolf," Walker said, clambering out of the front of the five-ton. He was wearing a moon suit and had a hard time watching his step. "Don't worry about the hot ground. Ensure that we've got security. These fires are sure to draw any remaining infected and I don't want blood contaminating this environment."

"Aye, aye, sir," Faith replied.

"Decon teams," Walker continued. "Set up east of the septic five-ton. Sterile five-ton will remain in place until we've got the situation under control."

"Roger, sir," Sophia replied.

"I'll just sit here in the darkness, then," she added sotto voce.

Decker, Condrey and she were in the back of the "sterile" five-ton. Five-tons have a canvas top and "rear closure" system with a drop tailgate. The tailgate was up and the canvas "rear closure system" was in place, making the interior dark as a cave. In addition, the entire interior had been covered in plastic and sealed to a fare-thee-well. If they hadn't had air bottles they would have used up the oxygen on the interior.

"What was that, ma'am?" Decker asked, sitting on the personnel bench at the position of attention. Which was tough with a fire fighter's silver suit.

"Just proud to be here, Staff Sergeant," Sophia said loudly.

"Put it right there," Sergeant Major Barney said, pointing to a spot next to the "septic" five-ton.

"Roger, Sergeant Major," Hadley said, laying down the child's tub.

"Wait," Barney said. "Hold it up. Get the water into it while it's off the ground at first. The ground is hot. If it burns through the tub, you are all in the shitter."

"Aye, aye, Sergeant Major!" Seaman Apprentice Yu, said, pouring a five-gallon can of water into the tub. Olga walked up with a bleach bottle in either hand and added to it. She, too, was wearing a moon suit. When there was water on the bottom, Hadley set it down.

"Take off the bloody
caps
," Sergeant Major Barney said. "You're not filling canteens..."

"That's enough," Walker said as Yu poured another five gallon bucket of bleach water over his suit. "All septic personnel back away. Sterile five-ton."

"Sir?"
Sophia replied as there was a shot in the darkness.

"Stand by, security team?"

"One infected," Faith said. "Down. Well away from the capsule. Situation still clear, sir."

"Roger. Sterile five-ton will back up to the capsule taking my hand and arm signals. That's not you, Ensign, that's Lance Corporal Edwards.

"Aye, aye, sir,"
Edwards said.

"Stand by, Edwards, and listen. I want you to get lined straight up to the hatch on the capsule. Do you even know where that's at?"

"No, sir."

"Unass from the vehicle and come out here," Walker radioed.

Edwards jumped out of the vehicle and at Walker's direction walked around the capsule, keeping a distance, and found the hatch, which was at two o'clock from their approach.

"Can you back up to that?" Walker shouted.

"Aye, aye, sir!" Edwards said. "I can put it right up to it."

The back of the five-ton was, conveniently, about the same height as the hatch. In fact, with the tailgate up, the top of the tailgate would just about be at the level of the bottom of the hatch.

"I will ground guide," Walker shouted. "Watch my hand and arm signals."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Edwards said.

"Let's get a move on," Walker said, then changed frequencies. "Any sub retrans to the Dragon capsule. Do
not
pass this message to
any
squadron personnel..."

"Dragon, incoming call from Thomas Walker for Mission Specialist Troy Lyons, over."

"Uh, Roger that," Commander Daniels said, puzzled. "You're up, Troy."

The mission commander was a forty-five-year-old Canadian, six two and formerly a hundred ninety pounds, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. A former Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, he had a master's degree in mechanical and aviation engineering.