“Rations will be one ration per day for civilians, one and a half for Marine and Navy. The extra half is because we shall maintain physical fitness standards. We also shall maintain military customs and courtesy. This is a siege. Armies throughout history have withstood sieges with less adequate supplies and preparedness than…”
He paused as one of the Navy petty officers started to thrash.
“Get ’em off me!” the PO1 shouted, unbuckling his pants. “Get ’em off…!”
“No firing,” Hamilton said. “Pin him down. Watch the teeth.”
Hoag had already grabbed his wrist and was trying to wrestle him onto his face. The problem being, it was hard to wrestle with your feet tied. She and two other NCOs managed to get him pinned as Colonel Hamilton slid a confinement hood over his head. Then the colonel dropped a fast tie around the PO’s neck and pulled it tight.
The howling was cut off abruptly but the PO continued to convulse for what felt like forever. Finally, he was still.
“We will need to create a containment area for bodies,” Hamilton said, continuing the meeting as if nothing had happened. “That will need to be sealed away from the rest of us or there will be a significant health hazard. I will entertain suggestions on that in a moment….”
“Idle hands are the devil’s handiwork,” Colonel Hamilton said as Hoag rounded a corner of shelving. He was leaning up against the shelves, his arms crossed and one foot crossed across the other at the ankles.
The warehouse was big and filled from floor to ceiling with materials. Much of it was food. There were even quite a few pallets of water. It was a good place to ride out a siege.
But there were different kinds of sieges. Maybe back in the old days it was normal to be talking to a teammate and have him suddenly start screaming and clawing at his clothes. Maybe it was normal to have to strangle him to death to conserve rounds.
Maybe it was normal to leave your gunny behind.
She wasn’t sure quite why she was wandering on the back side of the warehouse pretty much as far away from her squad as she could get. She also wasn’t thinking, definitely wasn’t thinking, about the .45 she had in her waistband.
What she did wonder was how Colonel Hamilton managed to always turn up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Only first sergeants were supposed to be able to do that.
“Yes, sir, they are, sir,” Hoag said, coming to attention.
“Rest, Sergeant,” Hamilton said, waving idly. “I’d start talking about how we need to find more activities for the men and solicit your advice, say that’s why I’m here, play it off, but that wouldn’t suffice. It wouldn’t solve the problem of one of my NCOs slowly coming to the conclusion that if it’s supposed to be ‘death before dishonor’ then maybe death will erase the stain.”
“Not sure what you mean, sir,” Hoag said.
“It’s called ‘counseling,’ Sergeant Hoag,” Hamilton said, straightening up. “Walk with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said.
“I was discussing the issue of choices with General Zick, before he turned and left me as senior officer,” Hamilton said. “And before the batteries on the radios ran out. Choice, Sergeant, is a terrible thing, did you know that?”
“No, sir,” Hoag said.
“It is,” Hamilton said. “The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said that all of life is choice. Since his general view of life was fairly nihilistic, that makes sense. Every choice requires decision. Every decision is a stress. Therefore, every choice is a stress. As you may have been told in leadership training, stress is not just cumulative, it is multiplicative. That is, each stress, small or large, multiplies the previous stress. Americans and Westerners in general, before the Plague, had a multitude of choices in their life. Decisions to be made every moment. Just stop or go on a yellow light was a stress, not to mention when to brake or accelerate. I read a ‘weird news’ report one time about a man who had killed his brother fighting over who shared the remote. To most, this looked like insanity. To me, it was a sign of the problems of choice and stress in American society. Do you get my meaning, Sergeant?”
“Sort of, sir,” Hoag said. “But it still sounds insane.”
“Clinically,” Hamilton said. “At the point that the one brother killed the other, he was functionally insane. Due to stress. I don’t know what other stressors were on him—did he not handle stress well?—but choice had brought him to making the choice to kill his brother. Over which show they were going to watch. If he was being forced to watch Oprah, I suppose it was less insane.”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said, chuckling slightly.
“Being in the military under any circumstances involves tremendous stress,” Hamilton said. “However, for the juniors, and you are fairly junior, Sergeant, that rarely involves stress related to choice. As a junior, certainly when you were a private, you were given orders and I’m sure you obeyed them. Now, as an NCO, you have more responsibilities, stress, and you have to use your experience and intelligence to expand upon orders. Stress. But you really, still, don’t have the stress of choice. Of having to think beyond ‘I’ve been given an order and must make sure my men comply.’ The military does that to an extent deliberately. How well one handles stress is, functionally, one of the tests for promotion. Some have the innate ability to simply not feel it. Most have to learn how to manage it. So the military brings people, officers and enlisted, along slowly, teaching them by both classwork and daily operations, how to make good decisions rapidly and functionally and how to handle stress, including the stress involved in choice, wisely. Are you still with me, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said.
“You may be thinking ‘What the fuck is he talking about’ but there is a point here,” Hamilton said. “You have been very carefully not paying a lot of attention to the forty-five you picked up in the battle. But one of the choice stresses on you is whether you should use the forty-five, which is quick and clean but would waste a precious round, or strangle yourself as we did with your sole remaining squad member, PFC Hopkins. In that case, you’re going to use parachute cord; you have it in your right cargo pocket. Tie it to one of the shelves, climb up, put a noose around your neck and do the dance.
“You have formed no strong bonds in the two weeks since we were besieged. None of these people are ‘your’ people. Some of them are Marines but they are not ‘your’ Marines. You have no ties to this group. You are fairly sure, as we all are, that most if not all of our families are dead back in the States. There is very little keeping you to this mortal coil. And you are struggling with the question of dishonor in leaving not just other Marines but your gunnery sergeant behind to be eaten by infected. About all you can reply at this point is ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said, her jaw locked.
“So, Sergeant, here is the question. Are you a Marine, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said.
“The obvious answer,” Hamilton said. “There you are, wearing the uniform, with your sergeant’s rank and all. You, obviously, are a Marine. Do Marines obey orders, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” Hoag said.
“Then that was what you did,” Hamilton said. “Lieutenant Harris confirmed that your orders from your gunnery sergeant were to leave him and his team, and their passengers, behind. If it had been the president and you were given that order, you should have obeyed it. If it was the commandant, you should have obeyed it. For one reason and one reason only: The honor would have been broken if you disobeyed the order. Not to mention we would have lost your team. And we are so very few. There was, in fact, no dishonor. There was great honor on both sides. On the gunny and his team for essentially holding the rear guard, permitting your team to escape, and on yours for obeying their solemn duty and their orders. Honor, Sergeant, is satisfied. I am not asking for agreement. I know that emotionally you do not agree. However, do you concur that I, your commanding officer and a Marine officer with three times as many years as you have in the Corps has stated ‘Honor is satisfied’?”