Strands of Sorrow (34 page)

“Roger,” Faith said.

“Your response is ‘shot, out’ saying you heard that.”

“Shot, out,” Faith said.

“Splash, over.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a splash,” Faith said as the variable timed artillery exploded over the heads of the infected. It wasn’t centered on the mass but it tore a huge chunk out of one wing. There was no clear
reason
, just pops of smoke overhead then . . . infected just fell. “Nice. Keep it coming, over.”

“That is what fire for effect means. You have five more stonks on the way, over.”

“I need somebody who actually knows how this works,” Faith muttered. The fire was tearing up the infected but most of them weren’t actually in the basket. About half the group of infected were making it past. Some of them were stopping to feed, the rest were just following the damned music. “Fire control, Alpha One, over.”

“Alpha One, Fire Control.”

“Most of them didn’t get hit, break,” Faith said. “I’m going to go right to Target Point Two, right on top of the point, and just park and let them swarm. Then scratch my back. We’ll see how that works, over.”

“Roger,”
Fire Control answered a moment later.
“Your call.”

“Maxim Twenty: If you’re not willing to shell your own position, you’re not willing to win,” Faith said. “Should be a lark. Switch to target point two . . .”

* * *

“Fire Control, Alpha One.”

“Fire Control,” Lance Corporal Paula Winters said. She looked over at the battery FDC chief. “Is it just me or did she sound nervous?”

“Nervous,” Staff Sergeant Lefre Delmont said. “She’s about to have fifteen rounds of one-five-five drop on her head.”

“Yeah, are you ready to fire on Target Point two, over?”

“Roger,” Winters replied.

“Now might be a good time, break. They’re sort of all over us. Like banging on my top hatch all over us. Over.”

“You have to call it,” Winters said, rolling her eyes.

“
Fire Control, Alpha One. Fire for Effect, five times, stonks, whatever, target point two. Over.”

“Fire for effect, out,” Winters said, sending the command to the guns. There was a distant series of booms. “Shot, over.”

“Shot, out.”

“Splash,” Delmont said a few seconds later.

“Splash, over.”

“Yeah . . . Wow. Sounds like rain on a tin roof . . . Could you pass to support that the tracks are gonna need a wash down? Oh, and, tell your guys they rock. That got the rest of
’
em. Over.”

“Any idea on total kills, over?” Winters asked.

“Twenty thousand or so in the two sets or whatever. Still quite a few left. We’ll roll and see if any follow. There’s feeders on the first set at Target Point Nine. I don’t know if you want to fire that up. Or . . . break. We’ll roll back there and park and you can fire us up again. How’s that work?”

“Up to you, over,” Winters said, shaking her head.

“We’ll figure it out. Always do. Oh, I think you blew up my speakers . . .”

* * *

“The main problem, besides the roads, was the artillery,” Faith said. “It worked great where it worked but the area of impact was too small. Fifty thousand people take up room. I don’t know for artillery but they’re either going to have to shift it around as they fire or more guns or something. That’s pretty much all I got. Oh, and if we have to back scratch every time, we’re going to need to armor up the speakers or something.
Now
that’s all I’ve got.”

“Fire support?” Colonel Dawson said.

“Right now we have one battery in support of our battalion, sir,” the fire support officer said. “We can have them do adjustment in fire. But it would seem we need more tubes in support.”

“All the batteries aren’t firing all the time,” Colonel Dawson said, making a note. “I’d suggest that we have all the batteries fire every time there’s a call rather than the support battery. But that will have to be a decision of higher. And we probably should send in an ANGLICO team to see how the fire is working and make adjustments. Do we have one available?”

“We have a member, sir,” the fire support officer said. “One for the MEU. ANGLICO took a bit of a hit in the plague, sir. But we should be able to send him along to see what’s what.”

“I’ll pass that up the chain, too,” Dawson said.

* * *

“Oooh,” Faith said as the brigade time-on-target hit. They’d gathered up another nice group of infected following them and the fire had hit direct on the mass. And it hit a much larger footprint, covering the entire group. “Splash, out. Good effect.
Big
mass of bodies. When you’re finished, we’ll finish off the survivors. Out.” She switched to the platoon frequency.

“Turn around and follow me. Use turret guns to clean up. Out.”

* * *

“You gotta hope these guys are okay with this,” Faith said over the intercom as Trixie rumbled through Arlington National Cemetery.

The normally well-kept grounds were overgrown with weeds and a fire had scorched many of the trees. Robert E. Lee’s house had burned to the ground.

Despite all that, they weren’t finding many infected in the area. Should have been prime stomping grounds for them.

“They understand, ma’am,” Decker replied. “Can’t you hear them, ma’am?”

“That is your gift, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said.

“These are not unquiet dead, ma’am,” Decker said. “This is usually a place of great peace. To lie here means that you have cast aside the burden of duty for the feather of honorable death. But they know the turmoil of our nation and have wished to rise to its defense could they again. We quiet them, ma’am, by the rumble and squeal of our treads and the thunder of our artillery, for they know the nation is protected, still. It was only before our arrival that they were unquiet. I doubt that any infected
could
nest in these hallowed grounds.”

“Decker,” Faith said, her eyes misty. “Like the rest of us, I don’t know if you’re crazy as a bedbug or gone through crazy to some other side of insane sanity. But I’m glad you’re you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Decker said. “The nice thing about ghosts is you always have someone to talk to . . .”

* * *

“I’d like to pass to the aviation people the request for an overfly and survey of the course before we go to free-fire tonight,” Faith said, looking at her notes. “I’d like to know which holes are sort of clear. The combination of blood and dirt is making things treacherous. We got an amtrack stuck on the ninth hole last night and that was no fun at all. And we need to figure out a way to tell platoons from Two One that when there’s a check fire on a hole it means that another unit is trying to extract an amtrack or something and to keep driving around in circles till the kill zone is clear. Not, let me repeat, NOT bring fifty thousand howling infected down onto the course while we are deployed hooking up towing cables, however funny this will seem in retrospect, and I quote. If there is a bar fight at the O club sometime this week, I hope you’ll understand why a certain platoon leader from Two One is in the hospital . . .”

* * *

“Time to go full rig,” Faith said, looking up at the Pentagon. There were infected. They’d survived. How many on the interior wasn’t as clear. “This ought to be a lark. And tell the wash point guys to be on standby; we’re gonna need it.”

“How’s it going, Lieutenant?” Colonel Ramos said.

Faith was at her “command post” deep in the bowels of the Pentagon. The mini-base had been set up with ammo, food and water resupply in a secured section of rooms in the Army portion of the massive building. Troops could rotate back from combat and get some rest before continuing clearance.

“Slow, sir,” Faith said. “This place makes a liner seem straightforward, and it’s hard to prevent infiltration. We’re getting constant leakers. Then there’s the damned security doors. Some of ’em you can barely scratch, sir.”

“I’m surprised by the infected density,” Colonel Ramos said. “I can’t believe so many survived.”

“If anyone had mentioned this thing had basements I’d have expected it, sir,” Faith said. “Basements flood. Water equals infected. And they’ll find a way in even if we can’t. Did it get so high that they’re moving through the ventilation, sir?”

“We got that,” Ramos said.

“Going to take a while, sir,” Faith said. “Just another bug hunt.”

“Nuke it from orbit,” Ramos said. “It’s the only way to be sure.”

“Don’t joke, sir,” Faith said. “I know where there’s a bunch of special weapons just sitting around collecting dust. And we’re finding dick all for survivors.”

“Bravo, One One is closing in on the Tank,” Ramos said. “It’s the only spot that might have them. We’ve checked every other supply point in the building. If it’s empty, I’m calling this. We’ll just seal the doors. Maybe pump it full of chlorine gas.”

“Works for me, sir,” Faith said. “There’s better uses for our time.”

* * *

“Where the fuck are they all coming from?” Faith asked tiredly. She was looking forward to getting back to the ships and getting a shower. Clearing the Pentagon, to the extent it was clear, had been a fucking bitch. And now infected were
still
turning up in Crystal City.

There was a constant
pop-pop-pop
of fire from the back of the seven-ton. Despite Arlington County being repeatedly swept, infected just
kept
fucking appearing.

“Alpha One One, First Platoon,” Faith said. “Permission to deploy for a short sweep, over.”

“This area has high infected, First,”
Captain Dobbins replied.
“That’s a negative.”

“Roger,” Faith said, watching an infected crawl out of store-front window. “Then request we come back and do a forced reconnaissance. I’ve got a crawly feeling, over.”

“Discuss at the firebase, over.”

* * *

“Let me get this straight,” Colonel Dawson said. “You want to do a ground level dismount sweep of . . . Where? Crystal City? Which is still orange at least.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said. She’d gotten a shower, food that wasn’t MREs and some more or less solid sleep in a comfortable bunk on the
Festival Dawn
. “On return to base after the Pentagon sweep I noted not only solid orange level infected presence but infected exiting numerous buildings along the return route, sir.”

“I saw the same thing,” Colonel Dawson said. “We can’t get them all, Faith.”

“Understood, sir,” Faith said. “My issue is that it is something with which I am unfamiliar, sir. When I hit something that’s new, I want to know how far it goes, sir. Because, sir, sometimes when I’ve just gone ‘Oh, big deal’ in the past, it has risen up to bite me in the ass, sir. I’ve got the creepy-crawlies, sir. I’d like to figure out why there are so many infected just popping the fuck up, sir. Jax is pretty much yellow to greenish at this point, sir. Why isn’t Arlington?”

“Do you have something besides ‘I’d like to go back to Arlington and get in a scrum’?” Dawson asked.

“I’m not planning on scrumming, sir,” Faith said. “Not if I can help it. Return to Arlington with the company in amtracks, sir. My platoon will do a reconnaissance trying to figure out where infected are coming from. If we can get some determination quickly, great. No more than a few hours recon. I’d like the company on standby to pull us out. I . . . I don’t know what is there, sir. Could be a few infected up in buildings and basements and they’ll eventually go away. Could be something new, in which case . . . I’d like the company on standby to pull us out. I do not want to do another LRI. But something is very very wrong, sir. And it’s got me concerned for planned future operations, sir. I know the joke about lieutenants and ‘in my experience,’ sir . . .”

“No one questions your experience, Shewolf,” Dawson said. “Not for more than the first conversation. If you’re this concerned . . . We’ll put it on the mission schedule.”

“Thank you, sir,” Faith said.

“And you’ll go rigged for close combat,” Dawson said.

“Oh, God, yeah,” Faith said. “I just hope we can self-extract. Sir.”

* * *

“Wait,” Faith said as Hooch was about to bang on the bulkhead with a crowbar.

They’d entered by an underground parking garage exit. They’d swept down towards the bottom and found the bottom level filled with water. There were the usual bits and remains of every kind of dreck, mostly identifiable human bones. But no infected. There were some doors with signs into other areas, but they hadn’t checked those, yet.

“This is a recon,” Faith said. “I know the whole thing about letting them come to you. We’re not doing clearance. So for once, we sneak.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Hooch said, putting away the crowbar.

“Check the hatches,” Faith said. “Infected can only use a simple hatch. Find one that’s open.”

* * *

The corridors were a maze but they weren’t lost. They’d been carefully marking their trail. So far, they had yet to encounter a live infected. Lots of sign. Even some nests. But no live infected.

Then Fisher, on point, quietly opened a door and made a “stop” sign. He then just as quietly closed the door and made a cutting sign with his hand, shaking his head.