Islands of Rage and Hope

CHAPTER 17

“You ready to go, Funk?” Faith asked, stepping up onto the pier.

“Yes, ma’am,” Funk said tightly.

“Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “Just this once, please do your job and ensure that my Marines do not frag me.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Barnard said.

“Funk, unload your weapon,” Faith said.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Funk said. He jacked the round out of his weapon.

“You have to drop your magazine first, Marine,” Faith said. “Drop your magazine.”

“Confirmed infected in west sector,” Sergeant Hocieniec radioed.

“Roger, Hooch,” Faith said. “Scrum it, over.”

“Scrum it, aye,” Hocieniec replied.

“Second Squad, check fire,” Hocieniec said. “Check fire, check fire. Smitty, scrum that motherfucker.”

“Scrum that motherfucker, aye,” Sergeant Chris Smith said, standing up and drawing a tactical knife. “If any of you fuckers shoot me in the back I will shoot you in the head.”

The infected had closed to the edge of the light and was now dodging through the shadows, apparently unsure what was going on at the beach. Without a pack of its fellow zombies, some shred of self-preservation had kicked in.

Smith walked up to the edge of the beach and took a crouch.

“Come on, zombie,” Smith said, waving to it. “Come to papa.”

The zombie, driven by hunger, charged and Smith caught it with a hip roll, throwing it over his hip and onto the sand of the beach. He followed it down with his full weight and drove the Gerber into its eye.

“The problem with that technique is getting your knife out,” Smith said, putting his foot on the zombie’s head and wrenching at the bloody knife.

“Hey, Smitty, you got more incoming,” Hooch said, grinning.

Faith had, meanwhile, strolled up the road with PFC Funk.

“Zombies cannot even begin to harm you until they are at arm’s length, PFC,” Faith said. She had her radio “open” deliberately this time. “Which was why you wait until they’re close, generally, to fire. You hit them that way and you can be sure that they are zombies and not survivors or fellow Marines.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Marine said nervously.

“And in this gear, they can’t get to you at all,” Faith said. “Last but not least, they are not the walking dead. Are they Corporal Douglas?”

“No, ma’am,” Derk yelled.

“So they can be killed in various ways that don’t require shooting them in the head,” Faith said. “Unless you’re using a fucking Barbie gun. In which case…well…check fire, check fire, check fire,” she shouted just to be sure.

She’d heard the zombie closing in the darkness. She let it charge and slam into her from behind. She flipped it across her shoulder and onto the ground, then let it have her left arm to bite.

“Notice that he’s not gaining an inch,” Faith said, drawing her kukri. “Human teeth cannot penetrate this bunker gear. And…” she reached across his arms and chopped downward. There was a spray of arterial blood. “They are not hard to kill.

“All Marine personnel will now unload their weapons,” Faith said, flicking the kukri to clear it of blood and pushing herself to her feet. “Squad and team leaders will assure that they are unloaded. Not just on safe. And that goes for all Squad and team leaders. Then the Marines who are from Gitmo will move up to the tree line and engage infected in hand-to-hand while the Iwo Marines conduct the class. We will continue this evolution until I call it. Staff Sergeant that includes you.”

“Permission to…” Staff Sergeant Barnard said and paused. She’d finally realized that the infected on top of her wasn’t going to kill her. But he was massive and incredibly strong. “Okay, what the hell do I do now, ma’am?”

“The mistake was letting him get on top of you, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “And you’re only carrying one knife and you let him pin you in such a way as your Ka-Bar is inaccessible. I would suggest using your forty-five. Just put it into his stomach and pull the trigger. Bet you’re glad you’re wearing a gas mask, huh? That guy’s got a heck of a schlong…”

“Discontinue exercise,” Faith said. “Any remaining wrestlers, Iwo Marines take out the infected. Then everybody keep your guns unloaded and huddle up at the base of the pier…”

“The purpose of this exercise was to show you that it really doesn’t matter how many infected pile up on you,” Faith said. She had the Iwo Marines out on security while she talked to the “Gitmo” Marines. “The most dangerous thing out here in the dark is us. Yea, though we pretty much literally are going to be walking through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil. Because we are the most dangerous motherfuckers in this valley.

“If you’re nervous about getting hit by these infected, you’re going to make the mistake that Curran made and we will have more wounded. So don’t be nervous. We are God-damned Marines and we are covered in fucking gear and the only thing that can hurt us is us. That and heat stroke so drink! Pay attention to where you’re pointing those weapons, keep them unloaded unless we really need to fire. I am making an on-the-fly change to the current manning table. We’ll do it like choosing teams at dodge ball. Gitmo Marines line up behind the Iwo Marines. Except you, Staff Sergeant. You stay with me. And we’ll need… Edwards. Can you drive a truck, Edwards?”

“That’s my MOS, ma’am,” PFC Robert Lee Edwards said.

“Perfect,” Faith said. “But before you do that. I’m aware that rank is, like, everything in the Marine Corps. But for the rest of this exercise, Gitmo Marines follow the orders of the Iwo Marines, even if the person is lower rank. Iwo Marines should try to use proper military courtesy. But…Corporal Rock, you’re with Hocieniec. He’s in charge, got it? You obey his orders even though you outrank him. Sergeant Hoag, you’re with Dutch. Sergeant Weisskopf…Randolph. Now let’s sort the rest of it out…”

“Oorah,” Faith said. “Now the Navy left us some functional vehicles. I bet they don’t have gas, though. So we need to find…seven vehicles and make sure they’re full. Otherwise you guys are going to be walking back. We can’t ‘establish a perimeter’ while doing so. And we’re going to be muttering around in something of a cluster fuck getting it done. So the only ones who can fire are Iwo Marines and by God if you fire without my okay I will make you sorry and sore. So let’s go find the cars and get ’em filled up…”

Filling the vehicles, in the dark, was a nightmare. It was a bit that had been overlooked in the planning. There were ten cars in all in the area. The Navy personnel had used five of them. The teams needed two more started. They found two more that would start. Then there was the matter of gas. They had to siphon fuel from the remaining three and spread it around. None of the cars ended up with a full tank of gas. And as they’d found throughout the operations, the gas was usually contaminated.

And they were getting hit. The zombies kept trickling in in ones and twos. Which wasn’t a huge problem and gave everyone some more training in that fact. However, it sometimes was a bit of an issue. Say, when Lance Corporal Ferguson was siphoning out a car’s gas tank and got hit from behind by an infected.

“The good news is, you’re in bunker gear,” Faith said, chopping the infected on the back of the neck. “But since your ammo would probably cook off if that gas catches, the smoking lamp is out.”

“Okay, so we also got to reformat the patrol areas,” Faith said. “Hooch, take your teams up to the east end of the island past the town. Dutch, you and Sergeant Hoag have between here and the town. Smitty, your teams have from here to the west end of the island. Got it?”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Sergeant Smith said.

“Okay,” Faith said, sorting through the maps. “So here’s your maps and assigned sectors. Dutch, you can probably just drive around the airport real slow, that will give you some range. The rest of you, just drive up and down slow and bring them in, then kill them. I mean, you’ve seen that it’s easy if they ain’t swarming. If you shoot, aimed fire, people. We’re going to be often moving close to each other. We have to get every last infected on this island. Every last one. Blow your horns. Play your music loud. Bring them in! Understood?”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Hooch said.

“Staff Sergeant and I will take the town with the five-ton,” Faith said. “If you get in the busy and feel like you can’t handle it, call us. Make sure you don’t run out of gas. Load up and move out.”

“Permission to speak, ma’am,” Staff Sergeant Barnard said as they were cruising down Valley Road.

“Speak, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. She was up on the .50 in the lead of the convoy and triggered a burst into an infected in the road. “Go around that so the cars can see it, Roberts. I don’t want them getting stuck on a body.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Roberts said.

“A Marine obeys orders, ma’am,” Barnard said tightly. “But…why the hell are we doing this? It’s unsafe, as you’ve said, and it’s—”

“Not in your…” Faith said. “Crap, cannot think of the word. Bucket? You don’t get to know. Not now. If something happens, it’ll all make sense. If it doesn’t…It will hopefully never make sense. Think of it as a training exercise. Which we by God need. Any other questions? I’ve killed a few infected tonight. With a kukri. I’m in a good mood.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Roberts, this one’s too close. Just run her over. Following teams, body in the road. Don’t get stuck…”

“Let’s just park out here,” Lance Corporal “Dutch” Van Rijk said, pulling the car to a stop on the runway of the airport. “We’ll crank up the music and climb up on the car in a triangle. That way we can see them coming.”

“Roger,” Sergeant Hoag said, her jaw clenched. She did not like being under the authority of a fucking lance corporal.

“In deference to your rank, Sergeant, if you’ve got an iPod you can pick the tunes…”

“Got one,” Fumitaka said. “Closing.”

“Wait for it to get close,” Dutch said, looking over his shoulder. “You don’t want the round hitting somebody in the distance.”

“Aye, aye,” Fumitaka said. He waited until the infected was twenty meters away and fired. And fired again. “It ain’t stopping.”

“Fucking Barbie guns,” Van Dijk said. “Keep shooting.”

Fumitaka put seven rounds into the infected, which stopped nearly at his feet.

“Shit,” Fumitaka said. “Shit, shit, shit… That sucked.”

“Try putting five rounds into their chest, fast,” Dutch said. “That usually stops them. Or double tap, one to the chest one to the head. If the first one slows them down. Stand by, got one.” He waited until the infected, a rather small woman, had closed. He put one round into her chest and another in the head. “That usually gets ’em.”

“Usually?” Hoag said. “Shooting them in the head doesn’t always work?”

“Eventually,” Dutch said. “I’ve seen ’em keep coming even after they’ve been shot in the head.”

“Firing,” Hoag said. She put five rounds into the chest in rapid fire and was rewarded with an infected that wasn’t at her feet. “Yeah, that worked.”

“Good training, huh?” Dutch said.

“Good training.”

“By the way, Sergeant,” Van Dijk said. “With due respect, I like your taste in music.”

“Thanks.”

“I think we got one chasing us, Sergeant,” PFC Jesse Summers said.

“Okay,” Hocieniec said, slowing to a stop. “Get out and kill it.”

Summers opened the back door of the 1980s Malibu and stepped out into the darkness.

“I swear it was right…” she said as the infected popped up around the back of the car. “Shit!”

She fired two rounds and the infected grabbed her, biting at her neck and shoulders.

“Pistol,” Hocieniec said watching from the other side of the car. “Or knife.”

The infected suddenly slumped to the ground as “I’m shot in the heart” finally got through to the brain.

“Or you can wait for it to die,” Hooch said, shrugging. “That works, too.”

He slammed into the car as a big infected hit him from behind.

“Fucker,” Hocieniec said, pulling his pistol. He put it into the hip of the infected and pulled the trigger. The zombie let out a howl and fell on the ground, writhing. Two more rounds put it out of its misery. “Okay, everybody pick a sector and let’s just see how many come to us…”

“Shewolf, Hocienic, over.”

“Go, Hooch,” Faith said. They’d stopped the truck and had Barnard and Edwards out as security.

“We got stuck on a dirt road and sort of got swarmed, over.”

“Define swarmed, over.”

“Uh… You remember Tenerife?”

“Hot diggity dog,” Faith said. “HEY, LOAD UP! On our way, Hooch. I don’t suppose you know where you are?”

“Sort of…”

“Shewolf, Annapolis, over.”

“Hear you, Annapolis,” Faith said as the staff sergeant loaded into the vehicle.

“Our intercept gear says they’re up Albert Lake Drive near Long Pond, over.”

“Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “Find that. Thanks for the steer, Annapolis.”

“Good entertainment as always, Shewolf. Sorry to hear about your casualty.”

“He’ll make it,” Faith said. “Somebody told me one time this wasn’t a safe job. Pretty sure Goodwin knew that, too.”

“Head up to the medical school,” Staff Sergeant Barnard said. “That way…”

“Oh, holy shit,” Edwards said.

“Now that’s what I call a concentration,” Faith said, gleefully.

The Kia sedan the three Marines had squeezed into was covered in infected. The miracle was that the windows hadn’t broken under the weight.

“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…”