Islands of Rage and Hope

CHAPTER 26

“That’s no space station,” Faith said, looking up at the island of Saba. “That’s a moon!”

Saba was quite simply a currently inactive volcano rising up out of the Caribbean Sea. It looked like a shorter version of Mount Rainier with fewer trees. There was a small “harbor” big enough to get a few yachts in and cliffs with straggling bright green vegetation trying to keep hold.

From the satellites and the limited intel on the island, the main town, “The Bottom,” was at the top of the mountain in the caldera of the extinct volcano. The entire area had been cloudy during the one direct overhead pass and images were blurred. They, thus, had no intel on survivors or probable infected numbers. From her own experience, right at eight hundred infected would be about right.

“Now fill it with twenty-eight thousand heavily armed, fanatical, Japanese soldiers in bunkers and you’ve got some idea what taking Iwo Jima was like, Lieutenant,” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said. “It’s even got a sulfur mine.”

Faith thought about it for a few seconds, took another look through the binoculars and shook her head.

“There’s no way,” she said. “Taking this place against an armed force would be impossible.”

“Not for the United States Marine Corps, Lieutenant,” Gunny Sands said proudly.

“That climb is going to be a bitch,” Faith said, looking up at what could be seen of the road. Seeing the island on the satellite overhead had not prepared her for the reality.

“No, Lieutenant,” Sands said, pointing at the vertical cliffs. “Climbing that would be a bitch, ma’am. And if that was what it took to complete the mission, that is what we would do, ma’am. Climbing the road will be a minor hump. Especially compared to some of the stuff we’ve done in Afghanistan.”

“Point,” Faith said, nodding. “Very valid point, Gunnery Sergeant. Never thought of Marines as mountain climbers but… Well, time to get it on and go for a little stroll. And we’d better make sure everybody drinks!”

It was ninety degrees and despite the trade winds the conditions were sweltering.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said, smiling slightly.

“I think we need to stay frosty on this one, Gunny,” Faith said as they landed on the small breakwater. She had gotten a pretty good feel for how many infected to expect the Navy to chew up compared to the population density. Total pre-plague population of Saba in the off-season was about 1800. From that and given only two “clearance” points, the other on the far side of the island, there should have been about three hundred infected chewed up on the beach. There were barely twenty.

“Not enough carrion, ma’am?” Gunny Sands said.

“Not nearly enough,” Faith replied. “I want us to proceed with caution on this one. There’s going to be a concentration, somewhere. In The Bottom would be the most obvious choice. We’re going to do a hold for more two-forty ammo and I’m going to go ‘coordinate’ with the Navy landing force.”

“That’s not enough bodies, Sis,” Sophia said, gesturing with her chin to the small pile.

“Noticed that,” Faith said. “My guess is most of the rest are going to be in the Bottom. From there they just wouldn’t have noticed the lights and sound. And even if they did they might not have been able to find this place. I’m bringing up more two-forty ammo. My intent is to move up to the pass, then recon the objective. We may need resupply runs and, as usual in the fricking Caribbean, there aren’t any cars.”

There were a few cars. Tidal surge had pushed most of them off into the harbor or the surrounding waters. The few on land were on their sides or, in one case, high-sided on a wall. It must have been one hell of a storm.

“You think your people can hump the ammo or do we need to come back for it?”

“We can do that,” Sophia said, nodding. “I mean, if you’ve got the people free…But if you need it we’re there.”

“I’m going to commo up with higher,” Faith said. “Get approvals on that. But I’m pretty sure we’re going to need the support at some point….”

“That’s the sitrep, Force. Hotwash is majority threat not say again not eliminated by Naval fire. Request on-call materials support from NavLand if necessary, over.”

“Understood,” Hamilton said, nodding. “Concur. Note: Personnel not materially prepared for scrum. Avoid physical engagement.”

“Concur, Force. Not interested in scrumming in regular uniform. Any further, over?”

“Negative,” Hamilton said, looking at the narrow road up to the main town. “Use caution and in this case will remind you of Maxim Thirty-Seven.”

“Maxim Thirty-Seven, aye, Force. That’s why we’re calling for more ammo. First Platoon, out.”

“Maxim Thirty-Seven?” Ernest Zumwald asked curiously. The former Hollywood executive had rendezvoused with the Force at sea during the crossing and had been designated to “handle” the refugees from St. Barts who couldn’t figure out that a zombie apocalypse trumped “do you know who I am?” He was getting ready for the first meeting on the subject and “touching base” with the colonel on what he’d like covered.

“There is no overkill,” Colonel Hamilton said. “There is only ‘Open Fire’ and ‘Cover me while I reload!’”

“Cover me while I reload!” Sergeant Smith shouted, ripping out another magazine.

The road up from the harbor to the pass had been nearly straight uphill, twisting back and forth through a narrow gorge but only hairpinning once. The road was broken concrete with a small “curb” less than knee height on the sweating Marines marching up it. The sides were nearly vertical walls of rough pumice with viney vegetation and straggling grasses covering the black earth and rock. The vegetation hadn’t been enough to keep the material together in one or more tropical storms: there were several washouts and landslides, one of them completely covering the road in dirt and rock.

But there had also been zero infected. Apparently all the ones with territories on the seaward side had turned up for the party.

The road down from the pass hairpinned several times. At one point there was a small turnaround or water run-off point, Faith wasn’t sure which. But it was a large enough, fairly open area that was protected on most sides by vertical rock walls or the road cuts of the road itself with a good overlook of the terrain. She had had the platoon hold there while they evaluated the situation.

Barely had the Marines dropped their rucks when the first infected came into view. Smitty had, on orders, taken it out with a single aimed shot. Even with a stock M4, a Marine Scout Sniper does that sort of thing. Then the birds had descended. Then more infected had showed up to see what the birds were eating. Then more. And more. And then they realized the Marines on the overlook were fresh meat.

There was a trail of bodies from the hairpin where the first infected had been killed. And it was getting inexorably closer to the Marines as more and more and MORE infected turned up for the feast. The only good part was, the terrain was so steep they were channeled into the road.

“Grenades!” Faith yelled as the lead group of infected got within thirty meters.

NCOs stopped firing and pulled out grenades instead.

“On my command!” Faith said, pulling the pin on an M87. “All ready? Good… Throw! TAKE COVER!”

The Marines ducked down behind the low wall as the grenades went off in a series of loud “pops” followed by howling. Faith counted the grenades and waited until all five had gone off.

“UP AND AT ’EM!”

“This is where dialing in the long-range accuracy would have helped, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said, taking another head shot.

“You get my dad to schedule the range time, Gunny, and I’ll get the ammo,” Faith said. “Where the fuck is Sophia with the damn Singer ammo?”

“You rang?” Sophia said as Yu dumped a pile of .308 ammo by the machine gun team. He went ahead and started opening boxes since it looked as if Edwards was out. She looked at the pile at the switchback and the trail up the road. “Oh, my, that is a lot isn’t it?”

“A few,” Faith said, bagging another one with a double tap. “A few.” There were several hundred bodies on the narrow road. And the infected seemed at this point to be ignoring them in favor of trying to close with the Marines.

“Want some help?” Sophia asked.

“Your accuracy would be a benefit,” Faith said, missing her next shot. “I’m not so sure about the rest of your team, no offense. So, no, we’ve got this. We just needed the ammo. Thanks. I don’t think we needed it so much for here as this probably isn’t all of them.”

The flood of infected was clearly starting to fall off.

“I’m going to go back up to the pass and see about holding this point,” Sophia said. “We can use it for hand-off and get LandTwo to hold the harbor up to the pass. Nothing’s getting past this to the harbor.”

“Roger,” Faith said, standing up. There was still a trickle of infected coming up the road but as they came to points that the 240 could spot them they were being engaged and made good zombies. Sergeant Hoag had been essentially useless as a squad leader. She was fairly good as a machine gun team leader. As long as somebody else carried it.

And Condrey turned out to be a damned artist with the 240. If he wasn’t so…rigid still, she’d consider promoting him to Lance Corporal. But as it was, he had to have each target pointed out to him. If Sheila didn’t designate the target, he’d just sit there on one azimuth until an infected ate him. On the gripping hand, point out a target and it was toast.

“Gunny, we’re going to move forward,” Faith said. “I’m not going to sit here all day waiting for them to come to us. Put out a point that’s got good snap-shot ability and let’s take this slow. But we’re going to take it.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Sands said. “ON YOUR FEET, MARINES. WHAT, YOU THINK THIS IS A VACATION…?”

“You okay, Sergeant Smith?” Faith asked. The squad leader had stopped to readjust his ruck and wasn’t looking all that hot. Well, he was looking hot, he was sweating up a storm. And not looking so hot.

The town of The Bottom was composed of mostly two-and three-story white buildings with red tile roofs. The foundations were generally tufa volcanic rock blocks; upper stories were wooden. It also was simply crawling with remaining infected. They were hitting the platoon in ones and twos in a continuous trickle. Fortunately, the Marines had settled down since Anguilla and were handling that.

“Legs are just feeling a little rubbery after the climb, ma’am,” Smitty said. “All gung ho, ma’am.”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain reality star spending the whole night in the Marine quarters, would it?” Faith asked, innocently. “I’m sure everyone was having great conversation and party games. Right?”

“Not at all ma’—two steps left, ma’am.”

Faith took two steps left and Smitty fired past her to take out an infected.

“I’m sure it had nothing to do with that,” Faith said, grinning. She didn’t even look around to see if he got it. “If it did, the next time I’d have to bring it to the gunny’s attention. For now, drink water.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Smitty said, getting his assault ruck adjusted and stepping away from the rock retaining wall. “We were just playing cards and having a tea—”

The infected came out of nowhere, diving out of the bushes above the road and pile-driving the sergeant into the road.

Faith didn’t even hesitate. Before it could get past the high neck of the sergeant’s body armor, her kukri had cut into its upper neck, severing the cervical vertebrae and killing it instantly.

“Did it bite me?” Sergeant Smith screamed.

“No,” Faith said, grabbing the infected by its long, greasy, hair and pulling it off the sergeant. “Close but I don’t think so.”

“I think I’d rather be clearing liners, ma’am,” Smitty said, pushing himself to his feet. His nose was bleeding and his chin was scraped. “Damn,” he said, slowly moving his head from side to side. “Thanks, ma’am.”

“You’re slurring,” Faith said. “You going to be okay?”

“Gung ho, ma’am,” Smitty said. “Just took a hit on the chin. Just got to shake it off.”

“TARGET!” There was another flurry of shots.

“I’d definitely rather be clearing liners,” Faith said.

“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,” Faith caroled in high, perfect, soprano as the platoon marched up the steep road to the medical school. “They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;/ I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:/His day is marching on…”

“Glory, glory hallelujah!” the platoon chorused. “Glory, glory, hallelujah!/Glory, glory, hallelujah!/His day is marching onnn.”

“FORRRM PERIMETER!” Faith bellowed.

“Gotta love a lieutenant that knows all the words to ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’” PFC Funk said as the unit spread into a perimeter on the lawn of the medical school. The “school” consisted of a few small two-story buildings and had been swept by fire. They probably weren’t getting much out of it.

“All six verses of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ is the part that gets me,” Sergeant Weisskopf said. “I’d never even heard the sixth verse. ‘Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”’ Why don’t they sing that one at games?”

“Maybe they will, Sergeant,” Funk said. “TARGET!” He fired five times in quick succession and the charging infected dropped. For a change it was a white female. Most of the infected so far had been black males. “New day and all that…”

“By teams,” Gunny Sands said. “Prepare for sweep. And so help me God if you can’t keep from shooting each other this time, I will transfer you to the fucking Navy as no use to our Blessed Corps…”

Faith kicked a pile of burned textbooks and shook her head.

“I am not sure this island is worth the price of the ammo, Gunny,” the lieutenant said.

“Think there are survivors, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said. “That’s worth something.”

“Hopefully these won’t expect me to know who they are…”

“Jesus, mon,” the haggard man said, staring at Sergeant Smith with wide eyes. “Oh…God mon…”

“No, sir,” Smitty said. “United States Marines, sir. But people do get confused…”

“We’ve found about twenty survivors so far, break,” Faith radioed. The intervening mountains had required climbing up a hill to get a shot at the ocean. She could see a sub surfaced in the distance and, beyond it, another island that was probably Sint Eustatius, the next objective. “That is in clearance up to the edge of The Bottom and the medical school. School burned, no faculty or students found. Also found functioning vehicles. Query is multiple. Continue clearance, yes or no. Break down force to cover more ground, yes or no? Over.”

“Security condition, over.”

“Mixed,” Faith replied, frowning thoughtfully. “Since the encounter at the road in, it’s died down. Frequent close-quarters attacks with low numbers. Probability of…break…Probability of incidental infection reduced with vehicles. Given current time, recommend rapid sweep of additional…stand by.”

She drew her .45 and fired twice, dropping the infected that had tried to sneak up on Sergeant Weisskopf. “Recommend rapid sweep by small teams using vehicles of additional heavily inhabited areas, then fall back to pick-up, over.”

“How close is the contact, over?”

“Running out of Marinespeak, break,” Faith said. “There’s just a lot of these buggers and there’s lots of concealment. They keep popping up like jack-in-the-boxes at really short ranges. That was the ‘stand by.’ One popped up ten meters away. I think we can maybe sweep the other areas with vehicles. Good news is more survivors than normal. Bad news is more leakers than normal. Over.”

There was a long pause.

“Two vehicles together at all times. If the road is blocked, they do not proceed. Keep back a reaction force. Repeat back.”

“Two vehicles together, aye. Blocked road, do not proceed, aye. Reaction force, aye. Over.”

“We are doing a thorough clear on Sint Eustatius, break. Recommend to the locals a change of scenery. Over.”

“Haven’t gotten to discussing that,” Faith said. “Was next on my list, over.”

“Roger. Keep me apprised. Kodiak, out.”

“I know how to use a gun,” Jennifer Toplitz said, raising her hand. “I don’t really like them, but I know how to use one.”

After their first visit to Saba, Jennifer and her husband Tom had given up the life of corporate ladder climbing managers, bought a small bungalow and moved there to live out the rest of their lives.

The bungalow had, fortunately, been walled. And she had managed to push Tom off a balcony when he turned. Between a small garden, a mango tree and hurricane supplies, she had survived. Stay? That was another matter. A zombie apocalypse had caused the allure of unspoiled Saba to pall.

“Why?” Faith said. “I mean, if you don’t like them…”

“I’m from Texas,” Jennifer said. “Not particularly proud of it, but I am. I grew up with guns and hunting. My dad made me. I’ve never shot a machine gun before, though.”

“This isn’t a machine gun,” Faith said, unclipping her M4, dropping the mag and jacking out the round in the chamber. “It’s an assault carbine. Here’s the mag. Think you can load it?”

“Like I said, I don’t know these,” Jennifer said, looking at the magazine. Faith had deliberately handed it to her upside down and backwards. Toplitz managed to turn it right way around and even could figure out how to jack the bolt. “At that point, there’s a safety and a trigger, right?”

“Right,” Faith said, holding out her hand for the weapon. “We’ve got some more of these on the ship. We’re doing a strong clearance on Sint Eustatius and leaving a security detachment to secure the oil point. Think you could train a local militia for defense?”

“No,” Jennifer said. “I really don’t.”

“I was in the Dutch Army for a while,” a heavyset man said. “I think between us we could organize something. I do know machine guns. I did not use the M4, though.”

“We’re already crowded with refugees from St. Barts,” Faith said. “And we don’t really want to pick up everybody from all the islands. If someone doesn’t want to go to Sint Eustatius and can handle the fact that there may still be a few infected, we sort of need them to stay. And pretty much everybody is getting off at Sint Eustatius. This isn’t a pleasure cruise.”

There was a flurry of shots from outside the emergency center and the crowd stirred.

“Is it safe, mon?” one of the men asked.

“Takes at least five rounds from one of these to put down an infected,” Faith said, touching the M4. “Generally. We train that everyone who has an infected in their sector opens fire and fires at least three rounds. That was three Marines firing five rounds each. Tango down. That, in fact, is how you’re supposed to do it. Trust me, you’ll fire a lot more. Only Imperial Storm Troopers are that precise.”

“How many infected are there left on this island?” Toplitz asked.

“We really don’t know,” Faith said. “We’ve got about five hundred stepped on, most of them up the road to the harbor. You really can’t know how many you’ve got but I’d say at least two hundred more scattered around the island. And if you get generators going and put on lights, especially at night, they’ll cluster down to wherever you’re gathered. Good news is you can whack them easier. Bad news is, if you’re staying you’ll need to do something with the bodies. We generally just make them and go.”

“Oh, great,” Jennifer said. “Is it going to be like that in Sint Eustatius as well?”

“Probably.”

“So now we’re supposed to clean up the bodies, too?”

“No,” Faith said, slowly. “You clean up the ones near where you’re at and let the bugs, birds, dogs and pigs do the rest. These kind of temps, they’ll be down to bones in a week or so. Cluster up somewhere with supplies, keep the windows closed for a week or two and you’re good. We’re looking at an estimate of one percent total survival, world-wide, ma’am. That is the definition of ‘not enough left to bury the dead.’ Then clean up the bones if it matters to you. If you’ve got a backhoe and someone who knows how to use it it helps.”

“How old are you, Lieutenant?” Toplitz said, frowning. She clearly didn’t think much of those suggestions.

“Thirteen, ma’am,” Faith said.

“Th-th-th—”

“I’d just finished seventh grade if that’s what you’re asking, ma’am,” Faith said evenly. “Since the Fall, I don’t know how many infected I’ve killed but this is pushing my eight thousandth hour in combat conditions. Thousands is the easiest way to say it, ma’am. I’ve cleared ten liners and fought my way out of Washington Square Park. I’m starting to get carpal tunnel in my trigger finger. And I’d be very proud to have been raised in the great state of Texas, ma’am. I had to settle for Virginia.”

“When do we leave?” Toplitz asked.