Strands of Sorrow (eARC)

by John Ringo

  The reason that tank tracks pop off like tiddlywinks when you try to turn too fast is static friction. All tank treads work on that basis. It is, at the quantum level, the stickiness between two dissimilar substances caused by photonic interaction. It is increased by the nature of the two substances and pressure. A tank tread drops down, sticks to the ground due to pressure and static friction, which is increased by pressure, then is lifted back up to be brought around again. Ah, the miracle of caterpillar treads. Thank you, George Cayley. Your invention led to all modern civil engineering and the ability to kill your enemies from inside a mobile castle. Go you, George.

  The coefficient of static friction is higher than that of mobile friction. Mobile friction is when something is rubbing on something else but still moving. A belt sander works by mobile friction and car pistons experience it. It produces much more heat than static friction. By the same token, it has a much lower coefficient. That’s the reason that cars slide so far on ice. They’re operating under mobile friction not static friction until they get a grip again.

  Very rarely do tanks encounter a situation of mobile friction. They are very heavy, thus increasing the coefficient of static friction, and their treads have rubber soles which increase it more. The occasionally slip in mud, but that’s something different. You generally have to have ice to have mobile friction conditions and even then with an Abrams it has to be black ice on a very solid road. Or, occasionally, they can slide on a road that is, say, covered in oil and water. Lube.

  In this case there was not “black ice” but…call it “red lube.” Lots of red lube. There were the infected they’d already been using to “grease the treads of our tanks.” There were the piles left by Seahawk Four. There were the infected trying in most cases very hard to get out of the way. There was the pile they’d just greased.

  Greased. All of them were greased. Flat. To molecular level… They were, in fact, lube.

  Lubrication acts to reduce the coefficient of static and mobile friction by… Oh, enough.

  In short, the 73 ton tank did not slide to a halt in a welter of sparks. It instead started to spin.

  Trixie was in a flat spin, as if she was on ice, going “in the region of…” oh the hell with that, sixty-five or so and completely out of control. Like the beginnings of a spectacular NASCAR wreck but much, much larger and the dirt flying up on the infield wasn’t dirt. She looked like a Brobindinagian sand-colored top that had been filled with red food coloring that was spraying in every direction like crimson snow in a spin-out in some insane Dante’s land where snow was red instead of white. She looked, in fact, like nothing any of the observers had ever seen or hoped to ever see again.

  Fortunately, the road was flat, straight and there was nothing but more infected and piles of bodies or wounded zombies to get in her way. Most of the hale infected were diving away as fast as they could, generally not fast enough. Many were frozen in the road like possum and ended up much the same. But road-killier.

  She finally stopped, pointed at an angle to the road, more or less in the direction of the SUV, in the intersection the SUV had taken, four hundred meters from where she’d tried to turn. The engine had automatically shut down so there was only the sound of the fading Marine Corps Hymn and a plinking of hot metal.

  “Condrey, don’t do that again,” Faith said quietly. “Ever.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Condrey said, restarting the tank.

  “Now go back to the car,” Faith said. “Carefully.”

  The Marine Corps Hymn had been a brief instrumental, the sort of thing played by the Navy band when a cadet who stated he wanted to be a Marine Armor Officer made the winning touchdown against Army which gave him a sense of superiority and perfectly incompetent arrogance that lasted right up until turning into a zombie.

  It was, in fact, a mere forty-four seconds long. Which told Faith exactly how long she’d spent with her entire life flashing before her eyes. All things considered, the replay hadn’t been much better than what was happening. She was forced during the replay to reevaluate her choice of lifestyles and came to the conclusion that one of these days she really needed a change of scenery. Some gentle Eden was looking better and better. Or maybe she’d put in for a desk job at Blount Island. Work with the master gunnery sergeant and learn the intricacies of saying “No, you can’t have them, I need a minimum inventory to count…”

  Faith had forgotten, what with one thing and another, that Bodies followed the Hymn. But it was appropriate. The road was now one gigantic smear. And Trixie was pink again. So, for that matter, was Faith.

  Once again, the monstrous, and very very scary, pink dragon in their midst got through to the normally insensate infected. They’d had enough. They were scattering in every direction.

  “Pull up next to the car to cover until the amtracks get here,” Faith said, targeting the runners. Waste not want not. “And you’re going to have to figure out how to clean her.”

  “Ground Force, Force Ops. Permission to breach main gate, aye. Try to do minimum damage.”

  “Roger, Force Ops,” Faith said, looking at the demolished gate area. The gate house had been torn apart like a trailer in a Kansas tornado, the gates themselves, what she could find of them, were fifty meters away and a section of fencing and fence poles was ripped out for at least twenty meters on either side. “Copy that. Breach already performed. Damage appears minimal and easily repaired. Probably should get a couple of containers up here to do a temporary patch. Oh, and in the words of Viscount Field Marshall Sir William Slim: There has been a good killing.”

  * * *

  “Now hear this! Now hear this! Stand by for a transmission from LantFleet, subject: Survivors, MIA and known KIA, Kings Bay Submarine Base.”

  “Under orders from LantFleet, Navy and Marine Forces have completed a thorough sweep of the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia. Rather than send the information piece-meal, the decision, by me, was to wait until all the lists were compiled. Marines swept every housing area up to and beyond Kingsland with additional care swept every home-of-record of active duty and dependents who had not checked in. General reaction: Survivor level at King’s Bay was five percent. That is high compared to past experience but clearly not good. Task Force Kodiak found every survivor in the area and in a few cases were able to identify noninfected KIA. Infected were, obviously, unidentifiable. All others remain MIA, PI—missing in action, probability infected.

  “All the information is now being loaded to your boats. If a dependent was a known KIA, that will be transmitted by your chain of command. I am sorry for your loss. The mission remains. Wolf, out.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “Parris Island, to an even greater extent than King’s Bay, is surrounded by swamp,” Colonel Hamilton said, pointing to the overhead. “It is, let’s face facts, the Devil’s Island of the Marine Corps, designed to keep recruits from escaping until they can be properly brainwashed.”

  “Oorah, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “Makes better Marines than Hollywood, too, sir.”

  “The point to this being it is actually hard to perform an amphibious assault on the island,” Colonel Hamilton said. “The majority of the strand zone is mud, which is impassable by the amtracks, much less Trixie. Gunny, you’re going to have to check me on this: the only solid point is here,” the colonel said, pointing to a spot on the southwest of the base near some ranges.

  “That is my recollection as well, sir,” Gunny Sands said. “I don’t know of anyone we have who was stationed at the base and would have more information.”

  “I asked Colonel Ellington and he concurred,” Hamilton said. “But we’re going to have to recon it. And given…all the animal interaction with infected, that may be problematic.”

  “Gators?” Faith asked.

  “Oh, God, yes, ma’am,” Januscheitis replied. “Big ones. At one point they had to shut the confidence course down ’cause of gators in the water hazards.”

  “And probably well fed a
t this point,” Colonel Hamilton said.

  “Not a real issue, sir,” Faith said. “You can take out a gator with a Barbie gun, sir. Now, if they’re swarming on infected piles, different issue. But if we’ve got to jump off a zod to check the beach stability… Da swam through a feeding frenzy to release a boat at one point. You just have to act like you’re supposed to be there and they don’t want to mess with you, sir. Last but not least, they’re not salties, sir. Gator gets ahold of you, it’s going to be a bad day. It’s not your last day, sir. Not if you have mates, sir. I recognize that checking the landing point will be a PFC job, sir. I respectfully suggest the Platoon Leader handle it, sir. ’Cause I really don’t care about gators. Unless they’re swarming a zombie pile, sir. And if one gets ahold of me, sir? That’ll be a scar to tell the grandkids about.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Hamilton said. “With the Seahawk, clearing the base should be possible without Trixie…”

  “Sorry, sir,” Faith said, raising her hand.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” Hamilton said.

  “Other than a beach clearance somewhere, may I request amtracks and amtracks only, sir?” Faith said.

  “Rationale?” Hamilton said.

  “Gunny?” Faith asked.

  “It’s Parris Island, Colonel,” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said. “Possibly Seahawk to provide top cover only after the Parade Field is cleared, sir.”

  “Duly noted,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Which leads to the next point. Lieutenant, you will not be leading the landing.”

  “Sir?” Faith said. “I know I’m not… I know I’ve never been to a real Marine officer’s course…”

  “That is not the reason, Faith,” Colonel Hamilton said. “If you think I’m going to let anyone else be the first Marine to touch down on Parris Island, you’ve got another think coming, Lieutenant. And you’ve been having all the fun.”

  * * *

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t do this, ma’am?” Staff Sergeant Januscheitis said nervously.

  The Zodiac, what the Navy called a “RHIB” for “rigid-hulled inflatable boat,” was puttering along a small strand of beach by the Known Distance Ranges. The objective had been used as a launch point for small boats from the looks. The otherwise solid scrub along the water-line was broken and there was a small sandy trail leading away from the water.

  For a change, there was very little indications of an apocalypse other than the almost perfect silence. There was a call of seabirds and a buzzing of the ubiquitous sandflies. Other than that, it was quiet, peaceful and deserted.

  Except for a couple of alligators pulled out on the shore, sunning themselves. One thing Faith thought she had going for her was that the water was extremely cold and the gators were going to be sluggish. They also didn’t like cold water.

  “I’m sure you should, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said quietly. “Just as I’m sure I’m gonna. We sent our only disposable SEAL to the Pacific.”

  SEALs had been formed from Navy Underwater Demolitions Teams but their progenitors had been the Beach Reconnaissance Units of World War Two. Although the Marines were famous for taking island after island away from the Japanese, with the exception of Guadalcanal Navy frogmen had been on every island before they got there. In fact, an entire BRU unit had landed in Japan before the First Marine Division arrived and had greeted them, for once, with a banner proclaiming “United States Navy, welcomes the United States Marine Corps to Japan.” Since they were a top secret unit, the pictures had been quickly suppressed.

  However, the primary mission of the SEALs remained reconnaissance of beaches for Marine Landing Forces.

  “Maybe we should have swept Virginia Beach first, ma’am,” Januscheitis said. “Just look for the guys taking pictures of themselves flexing their pectoral muscles.”

  “I’m sure there’s a joke there somewhere, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said, concentrating on the plan. “I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Januscheitis said.

  “Bring it in right over there,” Faith said, knife-handing to the left of the opening. Most of the gators were to the right.

  “How hard can it be?” Faith said. All she had to do was collect five samples of sand off the short strand between the water and the vegetation. They’d already pulled the samples from in the water with a pole device. Take them back to the ship, get them checked out and they were golden. Assuming the sand would take the weight of the amtracks.

  “Don’t jinx it, ma’am,” Januscheitis muttered, covering the shore. All the Marines were wearing FLIRs, forward looking infrared monoculars, so they would hopefully see any infected before it took down the skipper.

  As it turned out, alligators didn’t show up well on infrared.

  “SON OF A BITCH!” Faith screamed as her right leg was taken out from under her. She found herself being dragged into the water before the surprised Marines could react.

  “Don’t let it ro—!”

  Faith’s yell ended in a gurgle as she was taken under and the beast began a death roll with her leg clutched in its jaws.

  “Motherfu—” Faith snarled as she briefly surfaced. “That HURT!”

  Faith hadn’t survived this long by standing idly by while being killed. She’d dragged one of her .45s out while being rolled.

  Alligators roll, check to see if the prey is still struggling, then roll again. Faith knew this. Which was why she didn’t struggle. She just leaned sideways and shot the gator in the head.

  Alligators have very hard heads. And while the .45 ACP round is quite good at killing anything alligator size that is not armored, it’s not so good at penetrating crocodilian craniums. What it does do, however, is sort of throw them for a loop.

  The gator started thrashing like a snake with its head chopped off. Still holding onto Faith’s leg.

  Faith reached down with her left hand and managed to get the gator’s jaws unclamped from her leg. This was aided by the fact the gator was opening and closing its jaws spastically due to being shot in the head by a .45.

  She held up her now somewhat mangled hand and shook her head in disbelief.

  “When am I ever gonna learn?” she muttered.

  Januscheitis was already in the water dragging her to the RHIB.

  “You’re gonna be okay, ma’am,” the staff sergeant said, half desperately.

  “Oh, I’m gonna be fine,” Faith replied, holding up her hand. “But I still gotta get those samples.”

  “Got it under control, ma’am,” Twitchell said. “Five samples.”

  “I’d say you should have done this in the first place,” Faith said as Janu pulled her into the boat, “but you gotta admit this is gonna be one hell of a story.”

  “One I’m not looking forward to telling your father, ma’am,” Januscheitis said. “Jesus, that leg don’t look too good…”

  “‘Granma! Tell us again about when the alligators tried to eat you!’” Faith said, holding a thumb on her wrist artery to control the bleeding. “I swear to God I am going to find a better line of work.”

  * * *

  “Hello, again, Reginald,” Faith said as the amtracks approached the objective. The alligators were sliding off the bank into the water to avoid the loud things approaching from the water but even in the pre-dawn light she could spot Reggie. He had a distinct wound on his forehead.

  “Should I take care of them, ma’am?” Twitchell said.

  “No,” Faith said, switching to radio with her good hand. It had only taken a few dozen stitches to sort of fix. The corpsman was pretty sure she’d get almost full use again someday. The leg was also pretty mangled. It had been suggested she sit this one out. She’d pointed out all she had to do was sit in an amtrack and look important.

  “Kodiak, Shewolf,” Faith radioed.

  “Kodiak.”

  “Request no fire on local wild-life,” Faith said. “They were just doing their job, protecting the base. Over.”

  “Roger,” Kodiak responded. He
’d taken Sergeant Hoag’s place as TC of Track Two. And had the psy-ops speakers loaded on the track. “All tracks. Shewolf likes the gators ’cause they’re family. Do not fire on the gators. Now line up and get ready to hit that beach.”

  The music started and Faith grinned. Even she would admit that there was only one choice for this landing. And it was a longer version than the one she usually played: The Irish Grenadiers version.

  Alas, since it was a fairly deserted part of the base, there seemed to be no-one to hear it. But they were on the land on Parris Island. Check that, there seemed no-one sentient to hear it. They were definitely getting customers. Track Two had already opened up with fifty cal.

  As her track cleared the bushes along the shoreline she could see what they were firing at. Dozens of infected in this part of the base had apparently not headed over to the Navy fire zone.

  “Twitchman,” Faith said. “Free fire, forty, on all infected.”

  “Free fire, forty, aye, ma’am,” Twitchell said, opening up with the Mk19.

  * * *

  “Sergeant of the Guard to Post Four!” Recruit Private Gina Swanson called, continuing to observe her sector.

  “Report, Recruit!” Gunnery Sergeant Annette Brown barked as soon as she’d reached the post.

  “Ma’am, firing from the southwest, ma’am!” Swanson barked. “Also…music, ma’am!”

  The plague had swept Parris Island just like the rest of the world. The response had been to fall back on food stores for a siege. The process had been as strict and orderly as possible. No attempt was made to hold any portions of the base except the food stores. All recruits who had completed basic rifle marksmanship were armed. Recruits who had not completed rifle marksmanship or who had failed their first time through were put on non-armed duties including maintaining control of and security for dependents.