Strands of Sorrow (10 page)

CHAPTER 8

“Oops,” Faith said as the M1 banged into the Ford Expedition. The tank didn’t even notice. It was a good thing they had plenty more trucks if they ever needed them. And they made nice traffic cones for a tank so Faith could have a proper driving lesson.

“Little more care in the steering, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Decker said from the commander’s cupola. “Recommend you take it a bit slower.”

“Aye, aye, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said, grinning as she gunned it. “You said slower, right?”

* * *

“There’s no way we’re ever going to need two hundred Kia Sorentos,”
Colonel Hamilton radioed.
“Go for it.”

“HEE HEE!” Faith squealed, gunning the Abrams as she drove up on the first of the mid-sized SUVs. It crunched like a tin can under the foot of a giant AND THERE WERE A HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE TO GO. “THIS IS THE GREATEST BIRTHDAY EVERRR . . .”

* * *

“Sir!” Faith said to the colonel. “I know I’m not maintaining professional demeanor but this is the greatest birthday EVER!” She threw her arms around him in a hug. “Thank you!” She grabbed the gunny and hugged him. “And thank
you
, Gunny, ’cause I know that a colonel couldn’t have pulled this off on his own! Us officers aren’t that smart!”

More than half the Force was gathered at the party in building Fourteen. The
Alexandria
turned out to have only left a small security and watch detachment onboard. Most of the Naval Landing Force was there, the helo team had landed and, of course, her Marines. Most of them were gathered around the cooling tank, admiring the detail work. Undersecretary Galloway, General Brice, Commodore Montana and Mum and Da had all chimed in via satellite. Turned out they were all in on the surprise party.

“Frankly, we were stumped, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said. “It took the machinists mates from the
Alexandria
to get the fuel system working. And we couldn’t have gotten it up without their help all around.”

“That’s just . . .” She looked at Commander Vancel and shook her head. “I am just having the best birthday ever, everybody. Just . . . the best. But . . .” She paused and shook her head again. “This is not the best use of our scarce available resources, you know?”

“Lieutenant,” Vancel said, frowning. “I’m trying to figure out how to put this . . .”

“May I, sir?” the COB asked.

“Of course, Chief,” Vancel said.

The Abrams had been parked back in the building after Faith’s “driving lessons” so the COB climbed up on it and shouted: “AT EASE!”

“I got a few words to say,” the chief of boat said, raising his glass of punch. Since everybody was armed, and in honor of the only teetotaler Marine lieutenant in history, the party was dry.

“We spin words around stuff,” the COB said. “My daily report for the day the
Voyage Under Stars
was spotted had the notation that ‘Crew Morale Could Use Improvement.’ But what did that mean? We’re a weird bunch, submariners. We’re chosen from people who are functionally insane in the civilian world. Just being in a sub is being under pressure. And the ones that stay in the business just adapt to that. You know you’re in a tin can that can sink any time and be crushed to smithereens. You gotta have a sort of definite sense of either fatalism or invincibility to handle being in the sub service.

“But we weren’t looking at our own deaths. We were looking at . . . I’ll just leave it at we left people behind on the strand. I’ll just leave it at that. And higher had us looking anywhere and everywhere for signs of . . . well, recovery, hope, anything. And there wasn’t a
fucking
thing. Not one fucking item. Every base was crawling with infected. Every ship. Every port. Hell, every God-damned beach. Six and a half billion people. Half of ’em were dead, the other half were vicious, insane carnivores. Infected carnivores. Three billion of ’em, maybe. Not a fucking thing you can do about that. We knew the truth. There was no home to return to. And as the days and weeks and months went by, there was no hope. It was that Fifties movie
On the Beach
. At some point, we were going to have to make the choice, do we go and let ourselves get infected or just . . . take the pill. And some of us already had. Guys had just hung themselves. Stuck their heads in bags . . .

“
That’s
what ‘Crew Morale Could Use Improvement’ means.

“Now, we’d picked up the chatter from a group of civilian boats that were doing some rescue and clearing. But . . . that’s all it was. Chatter. Just a bunch of boats. Not really under discipline, barely getting anything done.
Trying
, mind you, but not really what we’d call ‘serious.’ It wasn’t really . . . hope. It was just . . . It wasn’t really hope.

“Then the
Voyage
got spotted. We’d seen others. We knew what was happening. Crew Morale Could Use Improvement.

“And that group of boats just said; ‘Screw this, we’re going to save those people.’ But what the fuck could they really do? Huh?
Voyage
was the second largest liner in the
world
, people! It was like clearing a fucking supercarrier. Thousands of infected left, probably. What the
fuck
could they do?

“And the first shooters to arrive, were these two young ladies,” the COB said, pointing at Faith and Sophia. “We didn’t have their ages, then. But we’d seen ’em. Okay, we’d watched ’em quite a bit. We knew they were young. Teenagers. And what the fuck could they do? Against that? But what they did . . .”

He shook his head and turned away for a moment.

“We were
all
watching. Everybody was, high, slow, radio up and linked in. The boats that were there. The boats that were away in the Atlantic, Pac, Indian. Then this young lady, she called her ‘Da,’” the COB said, nodding at Faith. “And when she answered with her back-up plan . . .” Again he shook his head.

“There was a pause. Long one. Then you could
hear
the laughter start all over the boat. Not much at first. I hadn’t heard one single laugh on the boat, not even in black humor, since . . . forever. It was slow at first, as if people had forgotten how. Then it was . . . hysterical. Out of control. It has been duly reported that more than one watch officer fell out of his chair he was laughing so hard. A submarine that shall not be mentioned nearly lost ballast control when the planesman was laughing so hard he took her into a banking dive.

“Then when she
did
board? When she just . . . fucked over more infected than God? By herself? Most of it hand-to-hand?

“You could
hear
the hope start. Like dawn coming up over a force ten sea. Like spring under the arctic ice. Groaning at first, unsure, then breaking. You could
hear the hope.
In every voice. And her sister,” he said, pointing at Sophia. “She was just
right there
, Johnny on the Spot, every moment.
They
weren’t giving in to the impossibility of the situation. They were just . . . driving the fuck on.

“Lieutenant, when we got word that the Marines were trying to get an M1 up and going for you, and trying to keep it secret which Marines
suck
at,
every machinist on the boat
wanted to help. Every
crew member
wanted to help. We had to tell guys they couldn’t land ’cause they had watch, then listen to their bitching.

“Everybody in that first Wolf Squadron threw into the
Voyage
. But you, Lieutenant and you, Ensign, you were what gave us back
hope
. Not that things would be the same. Not that . . . those we left on the beach were going to be waiting. Just . . . hope. Hope that we could, some day, feel the land under our feet again and
do
something. Not just rot to death in a tin can until the choice was give up to the infected or take the pill. What you and your da and Sergeant, sorry,
Captain
Fontana and Sergeant Hocieniec and all the rest of your crews did—what you did in reality, the clearance and the rescue and all the rest—that should have been fucking impossible. But you did something more impossible than that.

“When the night was darkest. When hell was risen and heaven seemed to have left the building. When everything seemed impossible, when God had abandoned us, when there was no future but the zombie . . .

“You gave us hope.

“So if you want a fucking tank, Lieutenant, you get a fucking tank.”

“Thank you,” Faith said in a very small voice as the applause died down.

“And the plan was retroactively approved by your chain of command including Undersecretary Galloway and General Brice,” Colonel Hamilton said. “All work was done on-own-time. Well, most. We had to test it initially during the day.”

“So I
was
being deliberately kept in the headquarters building,” Faith crowed.

“And you learned a lot,” Commander Kinsey said. “Which isn’t a bad thing.”

“I learned not to trust my chain of command,” Faith said, grinning. “Seriously. Thank you. Thank everybody who worked on it. But what are we going to get Sophia?”

“I’ve already said what I want,” Sophia said. “A working helo repair and support facility.”

“Then I will clear the fuck out of Mayport for you, Sis,” Faith said. “I’ll sort of be sad I can’t use Trixie, but getting it across the river would be a nightmare.”

“Lieutenant,” Colonel Hamilton said. “There’s a
bridge
. The M1A1 has a three hundred mile range.”

“I can drive it over?” Faith asked.

“There are about six hundred cars blocking the bridge, sir,” Sophia pointed out.

“I get to run over
six hundred cars
!” Faith squealed.

“Not tomorrow,” Colonel Hamilton said. “But the M1 may be somewhat useful in clearance operations. We’ll see on an ongoing basis. There’s also the issue that the bridge may not support the weight of both the cars and the Abrams.”

“Yes, sir,” Faith said. “I really love my tank, sir. But what is important is getting the clearance done. With our still-limited personnel, moving the facilities from Mayport to here would be a major logistical hurdle that, if it was due to the security situation would, obviously, be harder. Bottom line, there has to be a way to secure the base.”

“Half a million infected within ten miles, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said.

“Which just means half a million targets, sir,” Faith said. “Just need to get the number down. And Lord knows, we’re no longer limited in ammunition or equipment, sir.”

“The mission is to get the local area up and running, then clear bases north, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said.

“We’ve looked at the time it would take to get the major components of the support facility from Mayport to here, sir,” Faith said. “Thirty days, minimum, with the personnel we have available. If we take less time getting the infected level down to the point the base is no longer in threat, it’s a net win in terms of time, sir.”

“That is a point,” Hamilton said.

“Do it both ways, sir,” Sophia interjected. “Mechanicals.”

“Mechanicals?” Hamilton said.

“Mechanical infected . . . eliminators?” Commander Kinsey said. “Removers? I’m not sure what the nomenclature is. They used them in the Canaries as a test. Containers with some sort of cutting blades on the inside and light and sound attractors inside and out. Set exit end over the water, entrance end on land. Lots of lights on top. Zombies go in, they don’t come out. Or, rather, they come out either in pieces or so damaged that they drown. Problem being, the ones in the Canaries only worked for a few days then failed.”

“I’ve seen the redesign, sir,” the COB said. “It uses the full tranny and cruise control from a light truck to gear down if necessary. I think it will work.”

“I just wish that my tank was more useful for clearing infected,” Faith said.

“Unfortunately, they’re primarily designed for clearing other tanks, Lieutenant,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Even using the machine guns would tend to be spitting in the wind. But as I said, we may cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Funny, sir,” Faith said, shaking her head.

“Sir,” Gunny Sands said.

“Yes, Gunny?” Hamilton asked.

“M1028, sir.”

“Oh,” Hamilton said. “I hadn’t thought of . . . Lieutenant Smith’s comment that we officers are not very smart was just proven, wasn’t it, Gunny?”

“That is why you have gunnery sergeants around, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “And Decker was the first one to bring it up. I checked the magazine inventory, sir.”

“How many rounds?” Hamilton asked.

“Sorry,” Faith said, raising her hand. “Clueless lieutenant? M whatsit?”

“Two
thousand
, sir,” Gunny Sands said lovingly.

“Canister rounds,” Januscheitis said to Faith.

“Canister, canister, canister . . .” Sophia said, frowning. “I know I know that . . . Oh! Really?”

“I know I’ve heard the name, too,” Faith said, frowning. “Wait . . . Hornblower! Like grapeshot, right?” Her eyes lit up. “For my
tank
? Really?”

“Two thousand rounds in the magazine, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said, grinning. “Eleven hundred and fifty rounds of ball bearings, per. Basically a one hundred and twenty millimeter
shotgun
, ma’am. Way better than a Saiga.”