John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Roger,” Walker replied. “ Since when do you call me ‘sir,’ Seawolf?”

“Since you’re in charge, sir ,” Sophia said.

“Roger.”

“WILL OUR AIR BOTTLES WORK?” Sophia asked.

“NO!”

“Might as well open up, then,” Sophia shouted. “We’re as sterile as we’re going to get.”

“Talk to him,” the man said, pointing to one of the other suits.

“Hey,” Sophia shouted to the second suit. “We decontaminated the hell out of this and were careful to keep it sterile. It’s not a hospital room but it’s as good as you’re going to get. And we can’t supply oxygen. So you’re going to have to take your chances. We need you closed for the final transfer.”

“Roger,” the man said, opening his face plate and leaning over. It was apparent he couldn’t sit up. “Time to crack.”

The group tapped each other and slowly each of them opened their face plates.

“Welcome back,” Sophia shouted through her silver suit. “I know you’ve all got questions but if you could hold them until we get you to your temporary home. We fixed up a decontaminated container with as many decontaminated materials as we could find in the time we had. As soon as the canvas cover is back on we’re going to drive there. We’ll be backing onto a ship off a dock. Then you’ll need to close your suits again. We’ll get each of you out and decontaminate the outside of your suits, then get you into the container. Then you can get out of your suits. I don’t know, nobody knows, if it’s going to keep the flu out. All I can say is we’re doing our best and we had the CDC and the Hole looking in on it. We didn’t get much warning about this but, honestly, even if we had we couldn’t have done much more than this.”

The truck started and a moment later lurched into motion.

“Can you tell us what is going on?” the woman said. “How bad is it?”

“Generally people get how bad it is by my telling them I’m a fifteen-year-old ensign,” Sophia said. “My sister is thirteen and she’s a lieutenant in the Marines.”

“A lieutenant ?” one of the men said with a Slavic accent. “You are joking?”

“Faith’s a bit of a badass,” Sophia said. “But it’s that bad. This is one of the few land areas that you can walk around with nothing but light arms. During the day. And we’ve been clearing it for about twenty-four hours straight. Total surface mobile manning of the U.S. Navy is less than a thousand. Total Marine Corps is fifty-three. Total known survivors, that is people that we’re actually looking at, is right at six thousand. But several thousand of those are in subs and they’re only survivors ’cause they’re uncontaminated. There are no major land areas that are infected-free. And the ‘Navy’ and ‘Marines’ and all the rest is mostly former civilians or former military who have bootstrapped. I’m an ensign and my sister’s a lieutenant ’cause we’ve been doing this right from the start. My specialty is small boat operations and rescue. Recently I’ve moved to trying to find the materials to make vaccine ’cause…I’ve got some background in bio. I hear one of you is microbiologist?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “I am. Dr. Rizwana Shelley.”

“Glad to meet you,” Sophia said. “I thought I was going to have to do it on my own.”

“You?” the guy who had ordered them to crack their suits said.

“Might as well know now,” Sophia said, grimacing. “Just before the Fall I worked in an illegal corporate lab making attenuated vaccine. In fact, that’s what you’re getting. It’s the same stuff I and my family used. Same lot even. It works. As long as it hasn’t gone bad in six months. And it was stabilized. It was made by a professional. Overseen, anyway. I did most of the work.”

“From what source?” Dr. Shelley asked carefully.

“Human,” Sophia said.

“What a terrible business,” Dr. Shelley said, shaking her head.

“Which is what we’re going to have to produce to save the subs,” Sophia said, shrugging. “If you’ve got qualms about that, well…I guess I’m going to have to do it, still.”

“We’re still adjusting to…reality,” one of the Russians said. “Although, watching every light on the planet go out was…”

“Terrible enough,” one of the men said. He had an English accent. “Truly horrible.”

“Try fighting your way out of New York when those lights went out,” Sophia said. “My family is one of the few that is intact in the world that we know of. That makes us fairly unique. You’re the only people in the world that haven’t really been here for what happened. That makes you unique. Even the sub crews had a closer look at what went down. You don’t wanna know horrible. There’s a video. Watch that and then decide how you’re going to help. Or not. Whatever. I’ve pulled over two thousand survivors over a transom or from the land. It was nearly three months after the Fall that I set foot on land and ninety percent of that time I was in command of a small boat. Which is one of the reasons they made me an ensign. I’m in command of three boats now.

“My sister has cleared ten liners, which is about the most horrible thing you can imagine. The first one, the second largest in the world, was with my da, a Marine that was barely out of a lifeboat, and an SF sergeant. They’d come out day after day covered in blood, get washed down, eat, sleep, go back in the next day. When I was working in the lab in New York, I couldn’t do the first step which was, sorry, grinding the spines in a blender. At this point, it’s not even in the top ten of the horrible stuff I’ve seen. Not sure if it’s in the top twenty. Come to think of it, no, not in the top twenty. Probably not the top hundred.”

“Okay,” one of the men said after a moment.

“This is the tricky bit,” Sophia said. “We’re backing down this pier, which is almost exactly the width of the five-ton. So far we’ve done it a few times and not gone in the drink. If we fall over the side, just put your face plates back up. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“I’m trying to imagine what is more horrible than grinding up human spinal cords to make vaccine,” Rizwana said. “I’m not sure I want to.”

The container was, well, a container. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t great. The cushions they were lying on, still in their suits, were clearly salvaged from a boat. But there was a large plasma screen and someone had gone to the trouble of putting in two plexiglass windows. The large pile of MREs meant that clearly Troy wasn’t going to get his beloved cheeseburger any time soon. There was a distinct odor of bleach, which was comforting, all things considered.

“And she’s fifteen,” Dr. Price said. “She has to have horrible PTSD.”

“I think that pretty much everyone on the planet has to have PTSD,” Troy said.

A silver suit came through the airlock bearing a large plastic box.

“Tomato soup,” Ensign Smith said, setting it down. “Pretty much the most common first food we give survivors. These are microwave containers. They’ve been decontaminated and the box was sterilized. We’re going to try to prop you up so you can drink it…”

“Sorry about my…discomfort with the vaccine concept,” Dr. Shelley said. Decker and Condrey had gotten the astronauts propped up so they could drink, then left. “It must have truly been terrible.”

“Was,” Sophia said simply. “Is. World’s a pretty messed up place right now. I’m sorry I reacted the way that I did. It has been a very long day. And we usually don’t clear at night. That was fairly tense. We also had a friendly-fire incident today and I was worried that Faith was going to get hit by some of her Marines. All in all…I’ve had better days. But at least we got you guys back.”