NCOs stopped firing and pulled out grenades instead.
“On my command!” Faith said, pulling the pin on an M87. “All ready? Good… Throw! TAKE COVER!”
The Marines ducked down behind the low wall as the grenades went off in a series of loud “pops” followed by howling. Faith counted the grenades and waited until all five had gone off.
“UP AND AT ’EM!”
“This is where dialing in the long-range accuracy would have helped, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said, taking another head shot.
“You get my dad to schedule the range time, Gunny, and I’ll get the ammo,” Faith said. “Where the fuck is Sophia with the damn Singer ammo?”
“You rang?” Sophia said as Yu dumped a pile of .308 ammo by the machine gun team. He went ahead and started opening boxes since it looked as if Edwards was out. She looked at the pile at the switchback and the trail up the road. “Oh, my, that is a lot isn’t it?”
“A few,” Faith said, bagging another one with a double tap. “A few.” There were several hundred bodies on the narrow road. And the infected seemed at this point to be ignoring them in favor of trying to close with the Marines.
“Want some help?” Sophia asked.
“Your accuracy would be a benefit,” Faith said, missing her next shot. “I’m not so sure about the rest of your team, no offense. So, no, we’ve got this. We just needed the ammo. Thanks. I don’t think we needed it so much for here as this probably isn’t all of them.”
The flood of infected was clearly starting to fall off.
“I’m going to go back up to the pass and see about holding this point,” Sophia said. “We can use it for hand-off and get LandTwo to hold the harbor up to the pass. Nothing’s getting past this to the harbor.”
“Roger,” Faith said, standing up. There was still a trickle of infected coming up the road but as they came to points that the 240 could spot them they were being engaged and made good zombies. Sergeant Hoag had been essentially useless as a squad leader. She was fairly good as a machine gun team leader. As long as somebody else carried it.
And Condrey turned out to be a damned artist with the 240. If he wasn’t so…rigid still, she’d consider promoting him to Lance Corporal. But as it was, he had to have each target pointed out to him. If Sheila didn’t designate the target, he’d just sit there on one azimuth until an infected ate him. On the gripping hand, point out a target and it was toast.
“Gunny, we’re going to move forward,” Faith said. “I’m not going to sit here all day waiting for them to come to us. Put out a point that’s got good snap-shot ability and let’s take this slow. But we’re going to take it.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Sands said. “ON YOUR FEET, MARINES. WHAT, YOU THINK THIS IS A VACATION…?”
“You okay, Sergeant Smith?” Faith asked. The squad leader had stopped to readjust his ruck and wasn’t looking all that hot. Well, he was looking hot, he was sweating up a storm. And not looking so hot.
The town of The Bottom was composed of mostly two-and three-story white buildings with red tile roofs. The foundations were generally tufa volcanic rock blocks; upper stories were wooden. It also was simply crawling with remaining infected. They were hitting the platoon in ones and twos in a continuous trickle. Fortunately, the Marines had settled down since Anguilla and were handling that.
“Legs are just feeling a little rubbery after the climb, ma’am,” Smitty said. “All gung ho, ma’am.”
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain reality star spending the whole night in the Marine quarters, would it?” Faith asked, innocently. “I’m sure everyone was having great conversation and party games. Right?”
“Not at all ma’—two steps left, ma’am.”
Faith took two steps left and Smitty fired past her to take out an infected.
“I’m sure it had nothing to do with that,” Faith said, grinning. She didn’t even look around to see if he got it. “If it did, the next time I’d have to bring it to the gunny’s attention. For now, drink water.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Smitty said, getting his assault ruck adjusted and stepping away from the rock retaining wall. “We were just playing cards and having a tea—”
The infected came out of nowhere, diving out of the bushes above the road and pile-driving the sergeant into the road.
Faith didn’t even hesitate. Before it could get past the high neck of the sergeant’s body armor, her kukri had cut into its upper neck, severing the cervical vertebrae and killing it instantly.
“Did it bite me?” Sergeant Smith screamed.
“No,” Faith said, grabbing the infected by its long, greasy, hair and pulling it off the sergeant. “Close but I don’t think so.”
“I think I’d rather be clearing liners, ma’am,” Smitty said, pushing himself to his feet. His nose was bleeding and his chin was scraped. “Damn,” he said, slowly moving his head from side to side. “Thanks, ma’am.”
“You’re slurring,” Faith said. “You going to be okay?”
“Gung ho, ma’am,” Smitty said. “Just took a hit on the chin. Just got to shake it off.”
“TARGET!” There was another flurry of shots.
“I’d definitely rather be clearing liners,” Faith said.
“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,” Faith caroled in high, perfect, soprano as the platoon marched up the steep road to the medical school. “They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;/ I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:/His day is marching on…”
“Glory, glory hallelujah!” the platoon chorused. “Glory, glory, hallelujah!/Glory, glory, hallelujah!/His day is marching onnn.”
“FORRRM PERIMETER!” Faith bellowed.
“Gotta love a lieutenant that knows all the words to ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’” PFC Funk said as the unit spread into a perimeter on the lawn of the medical school. The “school” consisted of a few small two-story buildings and had been swept by fire. They probably weren’t getting much out of it.
“All six verses of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ is the part that gets me,” Sergeant Weisskopf said. “I’d never even heard the sixth verse. ‘Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”’ Why don’t they sing that one at games?”
“Maybe they will, Sergeant,” Funk said. “TARGET!” He fired five times in quick succession and the charging infected dropped. For a change it was a white female. Most of the infected so far had been black males. “New day and all that…”
“By teams,” Gunny Sands said. “Prepare for sweep. And so help me God if you can’t keep from shooting each other this time, I will transfer you to the fucking Navy as no use to our Blessed Corps…”
Faith kicked a pile of burned textbooks and shook her head.
“I am not sure this island is worth the price of the ammo, Gunny,” the lieutenant said.
“Think there are survivors, ma’am,” Gunny Sands said. “That’s worth something.”
“Hopefully these won’t expect me to know who they are…”
“Jesus, mon,” the haggard man said, staring at Sergeant Smith with wide eyes. “Oh…God mon…”
“No, sir,” Smitty said. “United States Marines, sir. But people do get confused…”
“We’ve found about twenty survivors so far, break,” Faith radioed. The intervening mountains had required climbing up a hill to get a shot at the ocean. She could see a sub surfaced in the distance and, beyond it, another island that was probably Sint Eustatius, the next objective. “That is in clearance up to the edge of The Bottom and the medical school. School burned, no faculty or students found. Also found functioning vehicles. Query is multiple. Continue clearance, yes or no. Break down force to cover more ground, yes or no? Over.”