“Ma’am?” Quade called.
“Hello!” she yelled, knife-handing. “Target in your sector, Marine!”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” LCP Quade called, targeting the infected with a three-round burst.
“But we haven’t been hit by a large force,” Faith continued. “I’d say that Navy ground team can handle this, over.”
“Sweep the medical school, then return to the pier,” Hamilton radioed.
“Sweep the medical school, then return to the pier, aye,” Faith replied. “Marine Team out. Okay, let’s load up and roll out.” She sighed, drew her pistol and pointed it at Funk. “Duck.”
Funk hit the ground and she shot the infected crossing the courtyard in the head.
“They’re coming from fucking everywhere!” Faith snarled, decocking and holstering the pistol. “This is why I prefer clearing ships.”
The two-story tile-roofed medical school had not caught fire. The fires had seemed to miss that part of the island. It also had a fair number of infected.
“Oh, that explains it,” Faith said, looking to the east.
“Explains what, ma’am?” Barnard asked as there were more shots from the interior.
“Look over there,” Faith said, pointing to the east. There was a large pond that was tinged a bright green.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at, ma’am,” Barnard said.
“Zombies can survive anywhere there’s water, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “Any fresh water, no matter how foul. Some survive. That doesn’t look all that bad all things considered. So…lots of water, lots of zombies.”
“I understand, ma’am,” Barnard said.
“Which means this island is crawling with them,” Faith said. “Intel had that marked as a field so I didn’t expect this many to have survived. Without that there’s not enough water on this island. And with all the terrain stuff, hills, fences, stuff, they didn’t all make it to the beach.”
“I see, ma’am,” Barnard said. “It hasn’t been…bad so far.”
“They’re scattered,” Faith said, shrugging. “They do that. So we’re hitting minor leakers and pockets like this one,” she added as there was another burst of fire. There was also a yell. “That didn’t sound good.”
“Marine team leader, Squad Two,” Hooch radioed.
“Go,” Faith replied.
“We’ve got a casualty…”
“There goes my fitrep,” Faith said. “How bad?” she asked.
“Bad,” Hooch replied. “Need evac.”
“Move the casualty back to the trucks,” Faith said, switching frequencies again. “Force Ops, we have a casualty. We are moving casualty back to the pier at this time. Will require medical support.”
“Roger,” Force Ops replied.
“Oh, shit,” Faith said as the squad came back. Haugen had Goodwin over his back in a fireman’s carry and Goodwin was dripping blood from somewhere. “Get him in the five-ton. Where’s he hit?”
“In the back,” Hooch said, jumping into the five-ton to pull the lance corporal up.
“Get his gear off,” Faith said, jumping up as well. “Staff Sergeant, recover the rest of the teams and then head back to the pier. Hooch, up front and make sure we don’t get lost on the way back.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Hooch said.
As the armor came off a small hole was revealed in his back with a larger one on the front. The bullet was lodged in his frontal armor.
“We were sweeping and Curran…” Haugen said, shaking his head.
“I really don’t care,” Faith said as Hocieniec jumped out of the back and ran to the front of the vehicle. “Roll this vehicle, Barnard!”
She dove into her assault ruck and started pulling out medical supplies.
“Ma’am,” Barnard said.
“I am also the closest thing we’ve got to a corpsman, Staff Sergeant,” Faith snarled. “What part of my orders did you not understand this time, Staff Sergeant? Hooch! ROLL OUT! Force Ops, we have one GSW to the abdomen, rear entry. We’ll need at least one unit of…AB negative… Hey, Goodwin, this isn’t bad, okay? Seriously, this is a fucking flea bite, dude…”
“Colonel,” Walker said. “I’ll go prep the sick bay. Sophia can do the sweep for materials.”
“Agreed,” Hamilton said.
CHAPTER 16
“You all right, Lieutenant?” Hamilton asked. The lieutenant had taken a position well outside the perimeter around the base of the dock and was squatting in the light waves to wash the blood off her hands.
“Just fine, sir,” Faith barked.
“Seriously,” Hamilton said. “Are you good to continue the mission? Especially tonight?”
“I am just fine, sir,” Faith said. “We’ll get it done one way or another. I’d say never better but that would be a lie. I’ve had better days and worse days, sir.”
“What happened?” Hamilton asked.
“What happened was that we put a mix of trained and untrained personnel into a cluster of people who knew each other and had worked together, with people they didn’t know and hadn’t worked together, sir,” Faith said. “And in many cases, the untrained people were in charge. Then we sent them out with a bunch of ammunition and guns into conditions that in the case of the untrained personnel were unfamiliar and nervous-making. When you couple that with an absolutely untrained senior NCO who can’t find her ass with both hands, and conflicts in the chain of command, what we had, sir, was a shit sandwich, sir.”
“I take it you’re still having problems with Staff Sergeant Barnard,” Hamilton said, his face blank.
“The staff sergeant shouldn’t be a lance corporal, much less a staff sergeant, sir,” Faith said. “And that is documentable, sir. On four occasions so far she has failed to perform to anything like minimum standards, sir. And she can’t seem to just take a God-damned order, sir, which I thought was, word… Inigo Montoya… inconceivable in a Marine senior NCO. I recognize that she is working in ways that she is not prepared for by training, sir. And the whole thing about… ice water, sir. But if I am ever given the choice, sir, I’d make her your administrative assistant and have Sergeant Hocieniec run the platoon, sir. Or Sergeant Smith who has more time in grade, sir. Sergeants Hoag and Weisskopf are equally untrained for this form of operation, sir. I haven’t decided if they’re fundamentally ill-suited or just having a hard time adjusting, sir. Having Sergeant Smith, a trained infantryman with not only pre-Plague combat experience and training but significant combat experience post-Plague, as a gun bunny is not, in my opinion, the way to have the TOE laid out.”
“I see,” Hamilton said. “I will take that under advisement, Lieutenant.”
“I’m not sure you see the full point, sir,” Faith said, straightening up and dropping out of command voice. “There really is a point, sir. The Iwo Marines, as they’re called, most of them were various other MOS than infantry, sir. Goodwin is a 3381. But they were all in combat units, sir. They had all had more recent combat training, sir. They’d trained up for deployment into hot zones before the Plague busted out. Plus we trained them on shipboard clearance before we threw them out in teams. And they’ve got lots of down-range time at this point, sir. Hundreds and thousands of hours, sir. They have had time to adjust and adapt, sir. Your Marines, sir, were all various support MOS which were far less likely to encounter enemy fire. 0100s. 0300s. 27s. Okay, the 27s like Corporal Rock have spent some serious time in the Sandbox. But they were always surrounded by security teams. They weren’t the security.