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.
EPILOGUE
“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.”
“H7 doesn’t like me, remember?” Faith said. “I’m not so sure about some of the rest of my guys. They might be immune, they might not. And I’m not losing Jan. I’m not, Sophia. I’ll help.” She wrung Trixie until the water ran red on the deck.
“You may not be able to make it, Ensign,” Dr. Rizwana Shelley said, walking up and holding her hand out for a package. “I can. And test it. And make sure it’s right. I’ve already started the lab up. All I needed was the gel. And, of course, the biological material.”
“I take it you’ve decided to assist, Doctor?” Sophia said.
“Yes,” Dr. Shelley said. “Entirely.”
“What changed your mind?” Sophia asked.
“Your sister’s helmet camera,” Dr. Shelley said. “Not the fight. Or that as well, perhaps. The destruction. The devastation. It is not necessary to have an additional flight to check on my daughter. Her neighborhood is gone. Everything is gone. It has all been destroyed. Not, truly, by people, even insane people. By this horrid disease. Which must be ended. Forever. Whatever it takes.”
“Good thing we brought back some nice fresh spines,” Faith said, pulling a plastic bag out of her soaking assault ruck. “You might want to wear gloves.”
“I’ll grind them for you,” Sophia said, taking the ziplock bag. “I’ve done worse.”
“That, right there, is a beautiful sight,” Steve said as the crew of the SSGN USS Florida started landing at the pier in Guantanamo. Dr. Shelley had a full lab set up in the Grace Tan, still anchored in the Thames, and was cranking out vaccine like there was no tomorrow. Among other things, if the Marines might be a bit squeamish about stripping out the spines of infected Gurkhas had no problems with it. And there was a copious quantity of available infected in London. As well as survivors.
Subs were proceeding to the Thames to pick up their vaccine and then delivering it wherever it was needed. And at “in excess of 20 knots,” attack subs could deliver it all over the world in record time. The crew of the Florida had been subsisting on coconut and fish, and not much of either, for most of the last year on a desert island in the Indian Ocean. There was the best meal the cooks in Gitmo could make for them awaiting their arrival. And the Alexandria was alongside taking on stores, the crew as thin as death camp survivors but pitching in with a will. They had more missions to accomplish and now at least they had supplies to do it.
General Montana had declined to take command from either General Brice or Steve. He had taken a voluntary demotion to colonel, “’cause colonel’s more fun than being a general,” and was slated to move to the Pacific as CINCPAC as soon as all the subs were vaccinated. He and his command team were going to take one of the SSGNs for the voyage.
Nobody was arguing.
“Over a thousand survivors from London alone,” Stacey said, holding Steve’s hand. “Four thousand sub crewmen. And seventy Gurkhas.”
“Survivors self-extracting in the sub-arctic,” Steve said, looking out at the rising sun. “About to have a baby boom. All the boat corpsmen are about to be very busy. We’re pulling out of the dive, finally. Now we can really get started. Now we can fly…”