Strands of Sorrow

PROLOGUE

“This is so wrong,” Lieutenant Lyons said. “I’m trying to count the ways this is wrong.”

Commodore Carmen J. Montana, AKA Lieutenant General Montana, AKA “Mr. Walker” AKA so many other AKAs even his redoubtable memory couldn’t remember them all, Commander in Chief, Pacific Forces, had decades before come to the philosophical conclusion that anyone who said “I have never failed a mission” rarely got the sort of missions that were his forte.

The first mission of his career in special operations was called Operation Eagle Claw and was a
spectacular
and very public failure. He wasn’t in charge or anything, but it was still a failed mission. It was also where he had earned his first award for heroism while pulling air-crew out of a burning chopper. Operation Urgent Fury, a cake-walk for most, had been for his team another high-body-count failure that resulted in his first Distinguished Service Cross. Mogadishu: another spectacular, and public, failure had earned him his
second
DSC. He had, personally, failed to stop Osama Bin Laden from escaping from Tora Bora. But let anyone guess which of two thousand, mined, trails the bastard was going to use. Trying to get that Soviet physicist out of the middle of Siberia, those two days in Shanghai, that thing in Berlin . . . and, oh God, if he never saw Beirut again it would be too soon . . .

But Navy Base San Diego was starting to get
right up there
in his personal best of utterly fucked up missions.

There were various military bases scattered all over the San Diego valley. Miramar, playground of the Airedales. Pendleton up the road, playground of the Hollywood Marines. NAVSEA based deep in the heart of Dago. Then there were the three main attractions: Point Loma, North Island and Navy Base San Diego.

NBSD was out of the question. It was on the city side of San Diego Bay. You might as well try to clear New York City. Given enough time, Subedey bots and helos . . . Well, they’d do it eventually. Heck, some working Abrams could do it. But it was never on the original game plan.

Point Loma, home to most of the submarines, was equally out of the question. It was a peninsula that was backed by a sprawl of suburbs and really didn’t have much of interest.

North Island, on the other hand . . . had looked doable. Bad points. It was attached to the mainland by both a bridge and a narrow causeway. It had a vast sprawl of housing. Good points. It was
only
attached to the mainland by the bridge and a narrow causeway. And the causeway was both long and went to a, relatively, uninhabited area. Relatively because this was, after all, southern California and nowhere was exactly “uninhabited.” There was limited water. By all that was holy, they should have only had to deal with the infected that were the survivors of the base personnel. Those that hadn’t already died of thirst. Couple, few, thousand. Close the bridges and the causeway, get some of the survivors oriented, get some of the landing craft up and going, go clear Pendleton and he’d be CINCPAC in more than name.

Should have. Probably. If only.

They’d been informed there was “a light.” Satellites had detected “heavy infected density.” He’d noted the same thing before he’d left from the Atlantic. But . . . Sigh.

It was worse than Mog. Every freaking street was packed. It looked like naked Mardi Gras. Half the population of San Diego and Tijuana seemed to have moved to North Island. Because, well, there was “a light.”

Specifically, the Seawolf-class submarine, USS
Jimmy Carter
, SSN-23, was alongside North Island. And under power. And shining a very powerful spotlight almost straight to the heavens.

Which light had drawn every freaking infected in the San Diego region.

“As I recall, all the Seawolfs are supposed to be based in Bangor,” Montana said, looking over at Lieutenant Commander Halvorson.

“Yes, sir,” the commander of the
Michigan
said. “That is where it should be.”

In the Nineties, with the nation facing “multiaccess threats” that often required more finesse than destroying cities with nuclear weapons and new strategic arms agreements limiting the number of nukes subs could carry, four of the older Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, notably and hilariously, the
Ohio, Michigan, Florida
and
Georgia,
were reclassed and repurposed for “littoral insertion” of special operations and “cruise missile” support by converting some of their missile space into housing for SEAL teams, with special lock-out arrangements, and modifying the rest to hold an absolute slew of Tomahawk cruise missiles on rotating launchers.

The admiral in charge of the program, rather clueless on modern acronyms, initially dubbed this the “O-M-F-G Program” for “Ohio-Michigan-Florida-Georgia” until it was pointed out that the initials were probably not the best choice and the program name was changed. Nobody, however, could remember the new program name: The acronym stuck. Given they could fire up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles in less than five minutes, it was entirely appropriate. The absolute barrage of cruise missiles that broke the back of the Libyan Army’s response to the “pro-democracy” uprising came from
one
OMFG.

“So that’s one thing,” Montana said. “And isn’t the sub base at Point Loma?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Lyons said. “So I would suppose the next question is why is it snuggled up to the
Ronald Reagan
?”

“Those two
never
got along, I’ll tell you that,” Montana said with a snort. “In fact, if there was any rationale to the universe either the
Gipper
would have crushed the
Jimmy
by now or they’d be forced apart by mutual loathing.”

The conversation was taking place on the sail of the guided missile-class submarine. So the commodore had to look up, then look up again, to see the open hangar deck of the
Ronald Reagan
and the flight deck above. Both of which were packed tight with infected. Occasionally one would slip over the side from the crowding. Looking down, it was apparent that the sharks were enjoying a regular bounty. Not only sharks.

“Lieutenant Lyons,” the commodore said. “I have a very extensive, most people would describe it as exhaustive, knowledge of just about, well,
anything
.”

“I’ve played you at Trivial Pursuit, sir,” Lyons said.

“But you are from this area and used to occasionally play in these waters.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So what the
fuck
are
those
?” Montana said, pointing at the boiling water’s surface where large, hooked, tentacles occasionally flailed.

“That is something you don’t usually see in San Diego harbor, General,” Lyons said. “Those are Humboldt squid. I didn’t think they could or would come in here. Generally they’re only found in deep pelagic areas. Deep. They normally only come up to the last couple of hundred feet at night. About ten feet long including tentacles and nasty as they come. Frankly, I’d rather fight a shark.”

“If you used to swim within a thousand miles of those things you are a braver man than I,” Montana said. “And that’s saying something. Commander Halvorson. Refresh my memory again. If that light has been burning for better than nine months, the boat has got to be under power. Correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Halvorson said.

“And the
Topeka
already went active trying to wake up the reactor watch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which means no reactor watch.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there any reliable data on how long a reactor can continue to run, safely, without someone at the controls?” Montana asked.

“I think the answer is ‘somewhere around nine or less months or possibly more depending on when the reactor watch died and when this reactor finally goes critical,’ sir,” Halvorson said. “In other words . . .”

“This
is
the test case,” Montana said. “This is probably as long as any reactor has ever gone without someone manning it.”

“Yes, sir. And the generators, sir. Rather . . . amazing, sir. I’d have said impossible for more than a few hours. And terrifying. ‘Active reactor’ and ‘no reactor watch’ are two phrases no one in their right mind wants to hear.”

“Duly noted,” Montana said. “Go Navy. A real credit to your nuclear reactor designs and SOPs. But unfortunately it has made North Island a bit of a pickle. Right. Let’s find a good spot to open fire and have Leuschen rig The Beast. We certainly have enough targets.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore.”

“Frankly, I’d say just hammer it with your payload but even with this swarm there might be survivors,” Montana said. “And we need the personnel, gear and materials. Not to mention a full reload on one of these boats is a major Congressional line item. Eventually we
shall
have a Congress again and I do
not
want to explain firing off four hundred
million
dollars worth of cruise missiles. So . . . Rig The Beast!”

“COB,” the skipper said over the 1MC. “Tell Leuschen to rig The Beast.”

* * *

The Beast was the sort of weapon you’d only get in a zombie apocalypse.

It looked a bit like a large machine gun. A bit. Or possibly a large paintball gun, which was closer to its actual form and function. There was a long, fairly flimsy looking barrel that had obviously been hand-machined from some sort of tube. There was a breech. There was a butterfly trigger. There was even a bit of a sight. So far so good. Pintle mount that hooked into a lock on the deck. Even the most modern submarines in the U.S. fleet retained provisions for a deck gun, which in this case was to the good.

Then there were the odd bits. Instead of a belt feed, there was a large vaguely conical hopper on top. There was an air hose running from a fitting on the deck to a similar fitting on the breech.

There was the seaman first class pouring two-inch steel ball bearings into the hopper.

“Loaded, sir!” Petty Officer Second Class Leuschen said, beaming for all he was worth. As inventor, designer and creator of The Beast, it was universally judged that he should have first crack. There were others onboard crazy enough to try it out but they mostly spent their time these days trying to chew through the straps. “Permission to open fire?”

“Commodore?” Commander Halvorson asked.

“Oh, why not?” Montana said. “Fire at will, Commander.”

“Open fire!”

The chosen target area was the northeast corner of Quay Drive on North Island. Maneuvering the
Michigan
in close quarters, without tugs, was no picnic but the XO had managed to get it right in position. And The Beast had plenty of customers. The infected were as dense there as they were everywhere on the God-forsaken island. And shore side. And Point Loma. Normal humans would have mostly succumbed to dehydration and starvation at this point. But not the infected. Oh, no, not the infected.

At least some were about to succumb to The Beast.

The sound was surprisingly muted. Accustomed as he was to gunfire, Commodore Montana was unsure at first if it was even firing. The sound was an odd
whip, whip, whip . . .

But then the ball bearings reached their targets.

The concept of The Beast was simple. It was, at heart, nothing but an oversized, insanely overpowered paintball gun. As Leuschen had pointed out, the one thing a nuclear submarine has in near infinite supply is compressed air. Replace paintballs with steel ball bearings and what you got was a brutal and extremely efficient slaughter-machine.

The infected were moving more or less randomly on Quay Drive. Generally the densities they were looking at would only have occurred with a true alpha swarm. They weren’t shoulder to shoulder but they were often bumping each other. Which occasionally erupted into fights and even small riots; infected did not get along with each other much better than with the rest of the world.

There was no clear view down Quay Drive from their position, which meant “aiming” was sort of moot. And the ball bearings could hardly miss.

Infected started to drop and Leuschen didn’t even bother to walk his aim from side to side. There was always another target straight ahead. And infected were going down. Nine times out of ten, an infected hit by a two-inch ball of steel going not much under the speed of sound is going to die. Though far less spectacular than the water-cooled fifty-cals used by Wolf Squadron, The Beast was at least as effective.

“Now if we just had a hundred of them,” Commander Halvorson said. “I can get to work on more, sir.”

“The choke point isn’t weapons, Commander,” Montana said. “The choke point is bullets. We have only ten thousand ball bearings. And while I suspect that Leuschen’s concept of using small cylinders made from machine steel is sound, at a certain point we’ll have to either cannibalize your submarine or run out of steel. Nonetheless, with a successful test, do start making more. But quit when The Beast has used up seventy percent of its ammo. We’re sure to need it somewhere else.”

“I’d suggest we need to find more ball bearings, sir,” Halvorson said.

“I’ll put it on the agenda,” Montana told him. “We first need to get that damned light turned off. Preferably with extreme prejudice. Lieutenant Lyons.”