John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“How long to sweep the base?” Steve asked, looking at the operations plan.

“About five days, sir,” Colonel Hamilton. “To fully sweep it.”

“Two,” Steve said. “Get as many weapons picked up as you can in two. Detail some areas for the Navy ground people to sweep as well. Day three you need to be rolling. Clean them up on the way to Anguilla.”

“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said. “The question has been raised about the dead, sir.”

“Which has already been considered,” Steve said. “Lieutenant Commander Isham is getting teams together to gather them up and get them buried. Mass grave, mind you. We’ll be working on that while you’re on the op. As noted, we’re going to hold this base for the time being and it’s a public health issue. As are the legions of rats and flies. We’ll be getting it cleaned up and habitable while you’re on float, Colonel. So, good news, not your problem. Bad news: ground clearance ops have their own unpleasantries. Two days, Colonel. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” Colonel Hamilton said.

“Base this size I can’t believe they don’t have AT-ATs,” Isham grumped.

The handysized freighter M/V Paul Osted was unloading its cargo onto Pier L. All of it. A team had gone through its computerized manifest and triaged the containers based on “this is definitely useful, this is possibly useful, this is not useful right now.” The plan was to unload all the containers, sort them out, reload the “useful”—pretty much anything in terms of “consumables”—while checking the “possibly useful.” The “this isn’t useful” were going to be stacked and stored.

“AT-ATs?” Steve said. “Like the elephant tank things in Star Wars ?”

“Those big gantry cranes,” Isham said. “Like they had, you know, in Tenerife?”

Fortunately, the ship had its own cranes. Unfortunately, as usual, the people using them had limited experience. The answer was “don’t hurry.” On the other hand…

“Well, we couldn’t exactly use the ones in Tenerife, Jack,” Steve said. “Bit of an infected problem. How long?”

“Two weeks, minimum,” Isham said. “You have no clue how much stuff is in there.”

“Alas, most of it useless,” Steve said.

“There are two, count ’em, two containers listed as ‘medical supplies,’” Isham pointed out. “Don’t know what kind until we get to the detailed manifest. But the codes indicated pharmaceuticals and equipment. That should be good.”

The ship had been out of Rotterdam headed to a series of small African ports when the Plague had been announced and it was “stranded” at sea. Shortly after the crew, which had naturally already picked up the virus, had gone zombie. The captain had left a quite detailed log up to a point.

“Anything like that is useful,” Steve said. “The truth is that everything we critically need is sitting on some ship, somewhere. If we had, say, the internet we could probably even figure out which and where.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Isham said. “I know what business I’m getting into when I’m done with this Navy shit.”

“I think it’s the only business there’s going to be for the foreseeable future,” Steve said. “I just hope we can keep civilization functioning in that environment.”

“You worry too much, Steve,” Isham said, turning away from the unloading ship.

“Clearance of the bodies on the base?” Steve asked. The pier had been cleared but he could see the seagulls squawking over the bodies on Radio Point.

“Not a lot of takers,” Isham said. “I’ve got some guys with civilian construction experience digging a pit for a mass grave. You know how big a mass grave you need for about seven thousand bodies?”

“Big is about the best I can do,” Steve said.

“The same guys are willing to go around with front-end loaders to pick them up,” Isham said. “Problem being, you got to have people on the ground, too. And between being afraid of the infected and, well, not being into moving bodies…”

“We’re keeping back some Navy masters-at-arms,” Steve said. “Have them roust out the “lazy” among the SLLs. At gunpoint if necessary. The carrot will be we’re going to be rough clearing some Caribbean islands. If they help out on this, and they will even if we’ve got to break out whips, we’ll put them on a nice Caribbean island with some weapons in case of infected and they can just scavenge and beachcomb the rest of their lives.”

“We might have to get whips,” Isham said. “They’re pretty comfortable with a bed, water and sushi.”

“There was a study done post-Katrina,” Steve said as they walked down the pier. “About how refugees respond. About ten percent have to have something to do to help out and they tend to be the first to jump ship and get out of whatever refugee camp they’re in. At the other end, ten percent will do anything they can to avoid leaving food and a place to sleep. They used cruise ships for some of the refugees and that bottom ten percent had to be physically removed from them. So round up that bottom ten percent and tell them they can either pick up bodies or we will drop them off on the Cuban side, where the infected haven’t been cleared, and they can try to fend for themselves. I am that serious.”

“That’s kind of like murder,” Isham pointed out.

“I’m kind of past caring, Jack,” Steve said. “I’m going to send my daughters out on another ugly mission to help save the world, and I really don’t give two shits about people too lazy to help.”

“You warmed up enough, Lieutenant?” Fontana asked as Faith pounded the bag.

“Warmed up enough to kick your ass, Lieutenant,” she said to the hulking former SF NCO.

“So the student shall defeat the master?” Fontana asked, humorously, putting in a mouth guard.

“What student?” Faith said, directing a light snap-kick in his direction. “You think I’m your student?”

“How’s the new platoon?” Falcon asked.

“Honestly, I can’t really tell,” Faith said, blocking his punch and going for a wrist bar, which he evaded. She feinted a punch and tried another snap-kick. You had to be careful with Fontana; he’d put you on your ass if he caught your kick. “I know I have to let the new staff sergeant handle shaking them down. I know that. And I need to just let her do her job clearing the base. But I want to get out there picking up weapons and stuff. Hell, I want to go beyond the cleared zones and do some zombie hunting.”

“You at least are going zombie hunting,” Fontana said. “I am stuck here playing catch-up on being a baby doctor. I have dealt with more insane women and looked at more vaginas in the last week than I ever wanted to see in my life.”

“TMI, Falcon,” Faith said. She attacked with a blurring combination of kicks and punches, then backed off. As usual, she couldn’t break through his defenses. She’d taken a couple of different styles of martial arts since she was a kid, but Fontana had been a hand-to-hand instructor in the Special Forces. It had been noted almost from 9/12 that occasionally soldiers, especially people like SF who were out on or beyond the front lines, had to actually, you know, fight for their lives and occasionally that got down to hand-to-hand. Which was why, eventually, SF had gotten serious about hand-to-hand training. It was Fontana’s training as much as anything that Faith had used when it got down to “scrums.” Not that it had in a while.

“Two thousand four hundred and eighty-three women in current manning in the squadron,” Fontana said. “More women survived than men. No clue why. Of those, eighteen hundred are pregnant. With most coming to term within a month of each other. And when one woman in a confined group goes into labor, it tends to cause a ripple effect. We’ve already had twenty-six premature births. One looks like he might survive. We’re going to have more and more. God help us if we have a storm or something. Any sort of global stress, even a big weather change, can trigger premature labor.”