“She scares me, sir,” Steve said. “But she is well suited to the present situation.”
“Oh, screw this,” Januscheitis said. They’d dropped a few grenades over the side but they couldn’t fire into the mass swarming the lieutenant. “I’m going in…”
He pulled himself up on the railing and dropped off onto the lower stair. It would have been a boneheaded move dropping nearly a story, sure to bust an ankle if not his neck, but he was cushioned by the tide of infected. Not to mention all the bodies, blood and guts.
“IT’S SCRUMMIN’ TIME…!”
“Oh, hell, yeah!” Lance Corporal Freeman said, climbing up after him. “TIME TO HIT THE BEACH, MARINES!”
“Mr. Walker?” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said as the diminutive “technical expert” trotted past him. Most of the Marines were now clogged into the stairs, scrumming the zombies, creating a macroscopic version of antibodies fighting an infection.
“You’re seriously going to miss out on this, Gunnery Sergeant?” Walker said, pausing to draw a trench knife. “What has the Marine Corps come to?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” the gunny said, pulling out a Ka-Bar. “Can’t let the Army have the glory. After you, sir.”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friend,” Walker said, breaking into a sprint. “OR CLOSE THE STAIRS WITH OUR AMERICAN DEAD…!” Despite being nearly seventy and carrying as much weight as any of the Marines, the “civilian technical expert” cleared the rail in a bound and disappeared into the maelstrom below.
“Civilian, my ass,” Gunny Sands growled. “LEAVE SOME FOR ME!”
“In retrospect,” Faith said, sharpening her kukri, “we should have let them get up on the roof and machine-gunned them from the choppers.”
It had taken nearly thirty minutes of scrumming to clear the top two floors of the stairs. And they were still coming up. While the rest of the Marines got their combat time in, Faith was sitting on a good zombie while ammoing back up and fixing assorted “issues” that had cropped up during the scrum. Like her kukri needing sharpening, and straightening out her machete.
“But sometimes it’s just good to get your mad out,” Faith added.
“Probably would have worked better, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said, pouring some water into one of Faith’s magazines to get it half-ass cleaned. “And I’m not sure it was precisely necessary to scrum the stairs, with all due respect, ma’am. Once we had the landing, we could have used firepower.”
“Really, Gunnery Sergeant?” Walker said. “It would have been a superior choice to pour fire into a stairwell that is angled so as to bounce at least thirty percent of the fire back at your position? Especially given that five-five-six would pass through the bodies and continue to rebound?” He was honing his own blood-splattered trench knife.
“Which was what I was thinking, believe it or not,” Faith said, looking over at him curiously.
“That is a point, sir, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said thoughtfully.
“You just did it ’cause you enjoy scrumming, Faith,” Sophia said. She’d stayed out.
“Well, that too,” Faith said, standing up and putting away her kukri. “But I think I got one of my filters clogged with blood. That’s a first.”
“And the colonel sent that he’d appreciate it if you could wash off your helmet-cam, Faith,” Mr. Walker said.
“Where’s my water bottle…?”
Hamilton reran the video from Faith’s entry and considered how the rounds would have bounced around in the stairwell. Then he frowned.
“I hate when she’s right,” he muttered.
Dr. Rizwana Shelley had wanted to see the conditions of London so she had accessed the camera video as soon as the group left the boat. The young lieutenant and one of her sergeants had spent the flight at the back of the helicopter which had given an unfortunately complete view of the conditions. Idly—and if truth be told, somewhat morbidly—curious, she had continued to watch as the assault took place.
So far she had only thrown up once. But she had not stopped watching.
“There’s no doors to close, ma’am,” Januscheitis radioed.
“Say again, over?” Faith said, holding her earbud to try to hear over the continuous fire. She was firing a pistol one-handed while she held it.
The fricking infected were swarming from EVERYWHERE. Every corridor was choked with them and the Marines were literally having to wade through the bodies. They also were clocking out on ammo.
The gunny and Walker were back to back pouring fire in both direction. She’d heard her sister talking about the “civilian shooter” who turned out to have been “someone” but even Sophia had never seen him in a serious battle. The little shrimp was a fucking machine. Every shot was a head shot; he was getting pretty much thirty infected for every magazine. Even the Gunny wasn’t that good. ’Course, it was good he was a machine, since there were too many fucking infected. Finally the latest tide receded but they could hear more closing in.
“This building has all glass at the bottom, ma’am,” the staff sergeant radioed. You could hear continuous fire from Condrey’s Singer in the background. None of this “five-round burst” shit. “We’ve gained the lobby. Multiple panes are gone, ma’am. They’re pouring in. Estimate over one thousand infected in view, street is choked…. We’re only holding this balcony ’cause of the two-forty.”
“Seahawk,” Faith said, thinking about the map. “I need fire on all approaching infected on St. John Street. All teams, this is an abort; hold positions, prepare to extract. Anybody stuck?”
“Team six,” Hooch called. “We’re on the third floor, east. We’ve got overwhelming force both ways and we’re clocking out.”
“All teams, move towards third floor, east to extract team six,” Faith said.
“Belay that order, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said, cutting in on the command channel. “Pull your teams out and head for the roof.”
“Stand by, all teams. Hold current positions,” Faith said, switching frequencies and reloading at the same time.
“Sir,” Faith said. “Did you just override your ground commander, sir?”
“You need to extract what you can, Lieutenant,” Hamilton said. “With the entire ground floor open to infiltration there are approximately six million infected heading to your location and you cannot fight that, Lieutenant. When you’re down to fifty Marines, total, ‘leave no Marine behind’ is not the way to handle it. As your father said, we cannot afford an Iwo Jima. You need to extract while you still can.”
“Understood your order, sir,” Faith said, scrabbling for a magazine. “Understood the reasoning. Do not concur. We can push to Hooch’s position. I’m on fourth floor, central. I can make it. So can Janu and the Dutch Marines. We assemble on his position, cross-load ammo and blow our way to the roof. We can do this, sir. And, sir, if we lose every last Marine in this building, sir, you just got an infusion of seventy Gurkhas, sir. People die, sir. But honor does not. And if we don’t have honor, sir, what do we have left? A planet of death and misery and blood and shit. That’s all we’ve got, sir. And if that’s all we’ve got, what’s the fucking point? If you want to throw my HONOR on that pile, sir, I respectfully resign my commission, sir. And I will fucking well fight my way through to Hooch BY MYSELF!”