John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

There wasn’t a thing that Steve could do to support his children in the maelstrom. Which he had become as comfortable as any father was ever going to get about long ago. So he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Medical Wing, Nurse Black speaking.”

“Tina, could you please get me Lieutenant Fontana if he’s available?”

“Yes, sir. One moment, please.”

“Fontana.”

“Turns out Walker’s a lieutenant general?”

“Guess he decided to break cover, Captain?”

“Yes. You knew?

“Duh. Everybody in SF knew Night Walker. It’s like asking a Marine ‘have you ever heard of some guy named Chesty Puller?’ Or, you know, Audie Murphy, Alvin York, Patton…Except nobody without a TS was supposed to know his name. It’s why he turned down SOCOM. It was a publicly posted position. That and it was all politics.”

“And you never even thought to mention this? I mean, the first time you met him, you didn’t even blink , Falcon.”

“Of course not. It was Night Walker , Steve. And under cover. Of course I didn’t blow his cover. He’d have killed me. It’s an SF thing. You wouldn’t understand…”

“This is probably a stupid order, COB,” Commander Vancel, skipper of the attack sub Alexandria said. “But I don’t want book on this one. Not this one.”

“The guys already shut it down, sir,” the chief of boat said seriously. “And, with respect, sir, until they get out, or don’t, pretty much everything’s shut down but reactor watch, sir.”

“Approved,” Vancel said. “Please God, they make it out. I don’t know how we’d keep up morale without the Bobsie twins.”

One by one, the helmet cams of the leadership, and then the radios, succumbed to continual scrums with infected. Along the way, however, the viewers got a new appreciation for the word “fury” watching the combination of Night Walker and Shewolf. The helmet cameras of the whole group had to be doused down frequently as the seventy-something general and the “almost fourteen, damnit!” ieutenant cleared corridor after corridor, room after room, again and again.

Night Walker turned out to have a lot of adjectives he hadn’t unpacked. No single human could carry the entire battle, but the phrase “freak of nature” was applicable. The general had immense natural talent and nearly forty years experience of bringing death and destruction to America’s enemies. Single-handedly, the diminutive septuagenarian added at least the weight of another platoon. And if his age showed at all, no one could tell the difference. Even the gunny couldn’t keep up.

If this was to be the last battle of the Night Walker, it was an achievement to equal any in history.

After two hours the last word that higher had was link-up with Sergeant Hocieniec’s Team Six. But Sergeant Weisskopf’s team in Fourth floor South was cut off by then. When Weisskopf went into a scrum and his radio was ripped off his gear, that was the last transmission.

The helos continued to circle. Infected were being drawn by the sound from all over London and St. James Street and Pentonville Road were piling up with bodies. The Seahawk RTBed once for gas and ammo and to drop the Marines it had picked up, then returned. And still there was no sign of the rest of the party. Just more and more infected crowding in. Many of them were stopping in the street to feast but others seemed drawn to the sound of conflict in the building and were wading through the fire from the helos to close with the embattled unit.

Finally, eight hours after entry and six hours after the last transmission, a sole blood-covered Marine stepped out of the door carrying another Marine on his back.

But he was followed by more.

In ones and twos, bloodied and battered Marines stumbled out onto the roof and took up defensive positions around the door. Most of them didn’t have functioning weapons anymore. M4s were bent. Knives were gone. Many of them had pistols in their hands, gripped by the barrels, that had obviously been used as clubs. Some of them were stumbling out and hitting the deck, flaccid in exhaustion. But they were all alive. Helmets were missing. Some of them might have bites. A few were badly wounded. Sophia’s team, less General Montana, burst out in a group. Sophia staggered away from the door, took off her respirator and helmet, threw up, then staggered away a few feet and lay flat out on the roof. Olga just hit the deck facedown.

Thirty Marines, four Navy and “The General” had been left below and Hamilton slowly got a head count. There was a steady trickle. Two, ten, twenty, twenty-five…

“Seahawk, prepare to give cover fire,” Hamilton said as a burst of Marines blew out of the door. “Try to keep the infected from getting on them when they’re boarding.”

“Roger,” Colonel Kuznetsov radioed. “Standing by.”

Finally, Gunny Sands, Januscheitis and General Montana exited the door. Januscheitis was missing his helmet and most of one ear. Sands’ gear was definitely not parade ground and a Marine gunnery sergeant had done the unthinkable and left his rifle somewhere in the building. The general was covered in blood but other than that seemed to be unaffected. And still fighting.

General Montana hacked expertly at the arms of infected using a machete he hadn’t started with while Gunny Sands and Januscheitis dragged the furious lieutenant out of the stairwell by the back of her combat harness. Faith was missing her helmet, too, her gear was torn and ripped by teeth marks and she had a cut on her cheek. But she was still slashing the infected holding onto her with her kukri. As Hamilton watched, she cut off two of the half dozen hands pawing her gear.

She was the last. That was every single person who had entered the building.

There was a distant cheer and he realized the entire boat must be watching the video.

Marines piled into the door with anything they had left: Halligan tools, machetes, bent M4s, prizing the infected off their lieutenant. Then the entire group, directed by General Montana, managed to push the door closed against the mass of zombies, jamming it with anything to hand.

Faith kicked the door several times, then pushed through the Marines until she found one that had a remaining grenade. She walked back to the door, pulled the pin, pushed the grenade through the gap, cut off another hand to get free, then walked away. There was a brief blast of additional blood and tissue out of the gap.

Then she took off her assault ruck and pulled something out. It was a bright blue plastic package. She held it up to the helos and started dancing as the rest of the teams pulled similar packages out and held them up. Everyone had them. With no ammo in their rucks, there had been plenty of room. A quick estimate was that they were carrying a couple of hundred pounds of what had to be polyacrylamide gel powder. More than enough for all the vaccine they needed for the subs.

“I’ll be God-damned,” Hamilton breathed.

“I hope like hell you can get this stuff started fast,” Faith said, stepping out of the decontamination shower on the deck of the Grace Tan . She’d carried a couple of the, fortunately waterproof, packages, and Trixie, in with her to get the blood off them. It had soaked right through their assault rucks. “We’ve got bites. Janu got bit.”

Like rabies, the H7D3 infection could be fought off with continuous injections of vaccine. If you had enough vaccine. Most of the Marines had been exposed and were probably immune. But probably wasn’t certainly.

“If I can still stand,” Sophia said wearily. “Jesus. Sis, I take back any jokes I’ve made about you and clearance. You can have it. And if I can remember the process this tired. You need some, obviously.”