Strands of Sorrow (11 page)

CHAPTER 9

“Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day,” Faith sang over the radio as the amtracks churned into the Mayport Naval Station boating basin. “Shooting zombies with my taaank, everything’s going my way . . .” She unkeyed the radio since it was lousy radio discipline.

“We’re not shooting zombies with your tank, yet, ma’am,” Januscheitis replied. He was in the trail amtrack of the convoy. “And this ramp is narrower.”

“Target,” Twitchell said over the intercom.

The landing objective was outside the fence line of the basin and the airfield which is where the helo had concentrated and where it still continued to circle, looking for targets. But there were more infected outside the wire than inside. And some of them were up on the pier, attracted to the sound of the approaching amtracks.

“Oh what a beautiful morning,” Faith sang again as they approached the ramp. “Oh what a beautiful day. Shooting zombies with my amtracks, everything’s going my way. . . . Forty millimeter. Open Fire!”

The amtracks were armed with a dual system: 40mm Mk19 grenade launcher and .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns. All the gunner had to do was choose or, in this case, have the choice made for him.

The basin where the ramp was located was small but not so small that five amtracks couldn’t squeeze into it. And there was a fairly large welcoming party.

Mark 19 40mm was designed as an antivehicle round. They hadn’t bothered to load the armor-piercing, discarding sabot, only the high-explosive incendiary. There wasn’t, unfortunately, a canister round. That would have been spar.

The sealed turrets were controlled entirely internally and really did look like something from Star Wars. At Faith’s words the turrets, which had been tracking the gathering infected, all opened fire. And immediately disproved the statement: there is no such thing as overkill.

Overkill can be defined as: Five amtracks whose turret operators had limited training more or less simultaneously opening fire with 40mm antimaterial rounds at a hundred rounds per minute at a scattered line of possibly, max, a hundred infected, using a weapon that has a 2200 meter range, with a minimum arming distance of 100 meters, in the confines of a 180 meter long, 88 meter wide basin, into which said amtracks were more or less packed and, in some cases, at functional arm’s length to said infected.

“JESUS CHRIST!” Faith yelled as she ducked into the vehicle then keyed the radio. “CHECK FIRE, CHECK FIRE!”

The rounds shredded the infected, in many cases not even bothering to explode. Often, they simply hit and bounced off, the speed of the baseball-sized rounds being hard enough to kill the infected by impact alone. The ones that missed, and they were more common than the ones that hit, impacted the buildings around the basin. And the cars. And in some cases the walls of the basin. The entire area was pinging with fragments. When the rounds
had
detonated on contact with the infected, the zombies were not so much “blown up” as obliterated. Bits and pieces were still raining down when the last gun stopped firing.

“We seriously need more adult supervision,” Faith said, picking a severed arm up off the deck of the amtrack and tossing it over the side with a slightly nervous flick. “They let
lieutenants
make these decisions?”

“Okay, Tex,” Faith said over the radio. “I think we got ’em. Let’s mount up that ramp and see what else is in store for us. And next time . . . Maybe just have the team fire them up from the crew hatch?”

“In retrospect, that might have been a superior choice,”
Januscheitis said.
“I’ll remind higher that my background is air ops, not amphib. Holy cow. Over.”

“Ground Force, Force Ops.”

“Ground Force,” Faith replied.

“Reminder from higher. We need the base more or less intact, over.”

“Roger that, Ops,” Faith replied, then unkeyed the radio. “Jesus Christ. I think I wet myself. Oh, no, that’s just spla . . . That ain’t water . . . Crap. Just once, I’d like to
not
end up covered in blood. . . .”

* * *

Their path out of the basin led them right past the burned POL facility. The reason that the infected had been able to gain access to the small boats basin was obvious at that point: the fire had effectively melted the heavy steel fencing. It was breached in several places and the half melted posts were bent over at more.

Unfortunately, the breaches were more or less directly away from their line of travel. The armored vehicles could just push the fence down, but it was a dicey proposition. They were just as likely to get stuck. So they had to go to the gate for the facility and breach it.

Moving there wasn’t difficult and didn’t take long. But by the time they got there, there was another reception committee. And their plans on breaching were for entry into clear zones, not exit. On the other hand, with this fence down at multiple points, they really didn’t
need
the gate.

“Can we just ram this thing down and run into them, J?” Faith asked, looking at the infected on the other side of the gate. She’d seen them on the decks of ships plenty of times and, often, at very close ranges. But this was different. They were just . . . there. Right on the other side of reinforced link. Howling and keening and trying like hell to get through.

“Need to get with higher on that, ma’am,” Januscheitis said. “Again, amtracks not my specialty.”

“If we had my tank this would be easy,” Faith muttered. “Force Ops, Ground, seeking counsel, over.”

“ForceCom, over.”

“Small boat fence compromised multiple points,” Faith said. “Breaching plan for exit . . . nonfunctional. Exit gate swarmed. Exit gate also functionally useless due to compromised fence line. Getting slightly surrounded,” she added, looking over her shoulder. There were more infected closing from the rear. “Easiest and most direct method, ram gate, ram infected, spread out and clear with light auto fire and, well, Patton quote. Query: probability of ramming gate causing . . . Are we gonna get stuck on the gate? Jan’s not sure, over.”

“You shouldn’t,”
Colonel Hamilton said after a moment.
“Fencing can jam treads in some conditions but if you get a running start you should slam right through.”

“Roger,” Faith said. “We’ll try that. This would be a lot easier with my tank, you know.”

“Tungsten ball bearings going as fast as those go ricocheting off the concrete walls of the basin could have holed the amtracks, over.”

“Will keep that in mind. Ground Force, out. Right,” she said, switching back to intercom. “Freeman, back up to the edge of the basin. To the edge, not into. Hooch, get up and out and watch where we’re going. And wave to get people out of the way.” She switched back to the platoon frequency. “Everybody back up a bit. We’re going to ram this gate. Following that, we are going to move into the parking lot and engage infected with direct fire. Break. Air ops, you up on this frequency?”

“Roger, Ground.”

“Once we’re in the car park, can you give some overhead fire, break. And to be clear,
away
from us so we’re not getting hit by bouncers. Over?”

“We can do that,”
Captain Wilkes replied.

“Okay, hold it there, Freeman,” Faith said as Hooch signaled for them to stop. “You’ve got the target?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Freeman said, gunning the engine with his foot on the brake.

“Stand by,” Faith said, ducking into the interior and going over to the team inside.

“I’m not sure how this is going to work!” she shouted. “We’re going to ram the gate. We might go through like it’s not there. We might get stopped cold. I don’t know. So hang the fuck on!”

“Ma’am!” Hooch shouted.

“Yeah?”

“We’re gonna go right through!” the sergeant said. “I looked at the gate. Not a chance in hell it’s going to slow us down!”

“Roger,” Faith said. “Hang on anyway! Following, I want to get the SAW gunner up and out. We’ll spread out and use light fire to clear.”

“Aye, aye!” Hooch said. “Permission to go topside on the run?”

“Roger,” Faith said. Hooch, as one of their few actual infantrymen, had the most experience with amtracks. He really should have been one of the commanders. She’d kept him on the dismount group mostly to have his experience in her vehicle and close to hand. “Watch yourself when we hit!”

“Will do,” Hooch said.

“Okay,” Faith said, getting up in the commander’s cupola and bracing herself on the hatch. She held one arm back like throwing a baseball, ready to point. “R—”

“FREEZE!” Hooch called.

The command was drilled into every Marine, even Faith. They all froze.

“Freeman,” Hooch yelled. “Make sure the track is in
forward
. Not
reverse
!”

The newbie amtrack driver looked down at his controls and sheepishly put the vehicle in forward.

“You had it in
reverse
?” Faith said angrily. She looked behind her. They were backed to the edge of the basin and if they’d gone into reverse, between the three-foot drop, the angle and the fact that the BACK HATCH WAS OPEN . . .

Amtracks only floated because all the water was
outside
the track. The bilge pumps would not have helped. And there were, yes, sharks in the pool. They’d nearly done a full Anarchy. With a whole fire team and the crew.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Freeman said. “I’m a truck driver, ma’am!”

“Got it,” Faith said. “Hooch, thanks once again for saving my ass.”

“Well, as usual, Miss Faith,” Hooch said absently. “It was mine too. Ready to rumble, ma’am?”

“Okay,” Faith said. “Are we
sure
we’re going forward? I dunno. I’m just learning to drive.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Freeman said.

“Then roll it.”

The amtrack didn’t accelerate fast but by the time they hit the gate they were doing a solid ten miles an hour. And Hooch was right. The gate didn’t stand a chance against thirty tons, with crew and ammo, of rolling steel and aluminum.

Nor, for that matter, did the infected. Most of them had been pressed up against the closed gate. Which collapsed over onto them.

The AAV bumped up on the gate, then back down.

Faith didn’t look behind her to see what the effect of reinforced mesh with thirty tons of steel on top did to a human body. They’d be back around to check, later. What
was
noticeable was the decided lack of infected to engage.

“Ground Force, air, over.”

“Air, ground, over.”

“Do you enjoy making sausage, over?”

“Freeman, pull it along that edge of the car park,” Faith said over the intercom, then switched frequencies. “Whatever gets the job done, Air, over.”

“Roger.”

“Ground Force. Form a circle, sides oriented out like wagons and let’s just fire this AO up for a bit,” Faith said. “Primary weapon, SAW gunner. Use the main guns for long-range targets only. Commanders designate targets and let’s take a little more
care
this time. We need this facility intact. Read back. Track Two . . .”

* * *

“Okay, I think we’ve got the level fairly reduced,” Faith said over the radio. The ground around the circled tracks was littered with dead.

A few infected had managed to make it through the concentrated fire and get up to the amtracks. Which were not particularly easy to mount from their angle. But they also couldn’t be fired upon, given the height of the vehicle, once they got up close.

The simple answer was grenades. The shrapnel, equally, was not going to hit the people in the vehicles. So when the guys inside heard banging on the sides, the TC would toss a grenade over. It didn’t, primarily, kill the infected. Grenades tended to wound, not kill. But it did ruin their day.

“Let’s roll out of here,” Faith said. “We’re behind schedule to breach the basin gates. Freeman,” Faith said over the intercom. “Roll out to the basin gates.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Freeman said, gunning it. They were in a sort of spiral called a “lager” and he had a clear shot.

“Don’t run this one down,” Faith added.

“No, ma’am,” Freeman said.

When they reached the gate they backed up to it, close but far enough away to drop the ramp, then waited as the other amtracks got into position. The entrance was narrow, only admitting their one amtrack. The others were arrayed at the beginning of the lane, parked sideways, oriented at the car park filled with derelict and, at this point, pretty shot-up cars.

“Track commanders, engage with careful fire,” Faith said. “Use forty. Carefully. And get the grunts up and firing.”

Fortunately, the main buildings in their direct line of fire were just part of the sports and fitness complex. Not a big loss there.

Infected were still closing from all over the base, attracted by the sound of the amtracks. As she watched, the amtracks opened up on them with forty-millimeter grenades. Unfortunately, the gunners had had only a couple hours practice with the turrets and were still getting dialed in. So some of the infected were making it through the fire.

The troops, on the other hand, were also up. Instead of the usual twenty-five Marine passengers per amtrack they only had five apiece but that was enough. The unit had “up-armed” for the insertion so only the squad leaders were carrying M4s. The rest were either broken down into M240 medium machine gun teams or were armed with M203 grenade launchers or M249 squad automatic weapons. The Marines had started to substitute a redesigned H&K 416 taking Colt style magazines as the SAW. But fortunately there was a sufficiency of the high fire-rate Fabrique Nationale small machine guns in inventory. Because the difference in firepower was notable.