Islands of Rage and Hope (eARC) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  EPILOGUE

  THE BEGINNING

  Islands of Rage and Hope - eARC

  John Ringo

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Book 3 in the Black Tide Riding Series. Sequel to To Sail a Darkling Sea and Under a Graveyard Sky.

  With the world consumed by a devastating plague that drives humans violently insane, what was once a band of desperate survivors bobbing on a dark Atlantic ocean has now become Wolf Squadron, the only hope for the salvation of the human race. Banding together with what remains of the U.S. Navy, Wolf Squadron, and its leader Steve Smith, not only plans to survive--he plans to retake the mainland from the infected, starting with North America.

  The next step: produce a vaccine. But for do that, Wolf Squadron forces led by Smith's terrifyingly precocious daughters Sophia and Faith must venture into a sea of the infected to obtain and secure the needed materials. And if some of the rescued survivors turn out to be more than they seem, Smith just might be able to pull off his plan.

  Once more, exhausted and redlining Wolf Squadron forces must throw themselves into battle, scouring the islands of the Atlantic for civilization's last hope.

  BAEN BOOKS by JOHN RINGO

  BLACK TIDE RISING:

  Under a Graveyard Sky * To Sail a Darkling Sea * Islands of Rage and Hope * Strands of Sorrow (forthcoming)

  TROY RISING:

  Live Free or Die * Citadel * The Hot Gate

  LEGACY OF THE ALDENATA: A Hymn Before Battle * Gust Front * When the Devil Dances * Hell's Faire * The Hero (with Michael Z. Williamson) * Cally's War (with Julie Cochrane) * Watch on the Rhine (with Tom Kratman) * Sister Time (with Julie Cochrane) * Yellow Eyes (with Tom Kratman) * Honor of the Clan (with Julie Cochrane) * Eye of the Storm

  COUNCIL WARS:

  There Will Be Dragons * Emerald Sea * Against the Tide * East of the Sun, West of the Moon

  INTO THE LOOKING GLASS: Into the Looking Glass * Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) * Manxome Foe (with Travis S. Taylor) * Claws that Catch (with Travis S. Taylor)

  EMPIRE OF MAN:

  March to the Sea (with David Weber) * March to the Stars (with David Weber) * March Upcountry (with David Weber) * We Few (with David Weber)

  SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: Princess of Wands * Queen of Wands

  PALADIN OF SHADOWS:

  Ghost * Kildar * Choosers of the Slain * Unto the Breach * A Deeper Blue * Tiger by the Tail (with Ryan Sear)

  STANDALONE TITLES:

  The Last Centurion Citizens (ed. with Brian M. Thomsen)

  To purchase these and all Baen Book titles in e-book format, please go to www.baen.com.

  Islands of Rage and Hope

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright (c)2014 by John Ringo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3662-4

  Cover art by Kurt Miller

  First Baen printing, August 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  As always

  For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

  Born: May 12, 1979

  Died: March 23, 2003, Afghanistan

  You fly with the angels now.

  Prologue

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  (chorus)

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  His truth is marching on.

  --"The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

  "Sergeant Hoag, pull your team out," Gunny Choy radioed.

  "Never leave a Marine behind, Gunnery Sergeant," Sergeant Sheila Hoag replied.

  The gunny's Humvee was high-sided on a pile of infected. More were piling on as he radioed. The team of Marines and some civilian and Navy refugees stuffed into the Humvee were safe. For now. On the other hand, they couldn't get out.

  Hopkins was blazing through ammo on the 240 but the infected were swarming onto their Humvee, too. If she didn't watch it she was going to be in the same boat as the gunny.

  "Gunnery Sergeant," Hoag radioed, backing around to try to keep some of the infected guessing. "I think if I can get in behind you I can push you off the pile."

  The H7D3 virus had hit the base in waves. There had been, in retrospect, a slew of "patient zeros" in a large-scale Navy personnel transfer. There were only 7500 people on the sprawling base and when they were up to four hundred infected in "temporary care facilities" that made the worst gulags on Earth look like a picnic, and another four hundred dead from the virus itself, the base wasn't running so well.

  Then the second wave hit. And all hell broke loose.

  "If you don't get out of here, you're going to be in the same boat, Sergeant," the gunnery sergeant replied calmly. "We're clocked out on 240. You're about to be clocked out. We just had a civvy turn and bite one of the Navy guys. You are hereby ordered, Sergeant, to save your team and passengers. Make for the log buildings as previously ordered. Conserve your rounds. You're going to need them. Now, go. That's an order."

  "Aye, aye, Gunnery Sergeant," Hoag said, putting the Humvee in reverse. She did, in fact, run over two or three infected but managed to keep from getting stuck. She spun out at one point, trying hard not to think about what she'd spun out on. Most of the infected were adults. Most.

  "I swear to God if any of you turn on me I will fucking shoot you in the gut," Sergeant Hoag said, backing the Humvee up as fast as it would go. She hit a good place to turn around and practically spun the vehicle out.

  They'd gotten the word that the fallback point was the logistics buildings around the piers on Corinaso Cove. The problem being, they were on Corinaso Point. The piers were in sight. If they wanted to try to swim, then fight their way into the buildings through the infected, in hand-to-hand presumably, that would be totally golden. Right now they had to drive from point A to Point B around the cove while not hitting enough infected to get stuck.

  She weaved around a couple of zombies and heard the breach click on the 240. They'd started off with three thousand rounds and gotten a resupply at one point. The
re were only 7500 people on the base. Where the fuck did the ammo go?

  She wasn't even sure which log building to make for. There were several around the piers.

  "Hopkins, you see any sign of resistance?" she yelled.

  "Building Fourteen," Hopkins called. "Riflemen on the roof."

  The problem being, there were infected swarming all around Building Fourteen like yellow jackets from a kicked hive. There was no way to get in there.

  Two of the main doors slid open and a fire team started wasting infecteds at the opening while someone stood behind them, waving for the Humvee to enter.

  She floored it, heading straight for the riflemen and the line of infected. She slammed infected to either side, plowing through them and hoping like hell she wasn't going to get high-sided. She practically jumped the last few as a Marine lance corporal dove to the side to avoid the oncoming vehicle.

  Once through the doors she slammed on her brakes and skidded to a stop just short of hitting a pallet of water bottles.

  "Everybody out," Hoag said. "Just get the fuck out."

  There was a Navy lieutenant JG shoved in the back and that wasn't how a Marine was supposed to address an officer. The pogue could just put her on report for all she cared.

  She sat there looking at those water bottles for a long time.

  "We currently have an adequate stock of water. We'll see how long that lasts."

  Lieutenant Colonel Craig "Kodiak" Hamilton was a WB: a waterboarder. Camp Delta most officially did not use waterboarding on the detainees. They did use various other methods, mostly psychological, to extract information from the detainees. Colonel Hamilton was one of the intelligence officers "involved" in such extraction. In his case, most figured that he just grinned at detainees and they gave him the locations of their blessed mother. He was 6'4" in his stocking feet and had won a silver medal in "all class" wrestling in the Olympics.

  Right now, the whole issue of "perpetual detainment" and the IRCC and Human Rights Watch and all the rest was as relevant as... Well, right now Hoag couldn't really think of anything less irrelevant. Camp Delta had been reformatted, early, for "infected care," then it all went to hell. All Hoag knew was that none of the bastards were in the two facilities designated as fallback points.

  The whole group was sitting in the meeting with their ankles tied. That had been practically the first order given. Get separated, tie your ankles. Request permission to untie. If you don't, don't be surprised if you get shot. The riflemen on the roof, still waiting, probably in vain, for more customers, were shackled. Chains allowed them to walk but they could barely run. And they had orders to shoot anyone who turned.

  The only group not tied was the response team. And there was another team, tied, eying them. Everybody was eying each other. Too many times people had just turned out of the blue.

  "There was a team out shutting off flow to other areas of the base," Colonel Hamilton said. "We're not sure how far they got and we've lost contact at this point. But we have free flow of water from the main tanks to these two buildings. As long as the water holds out, we'll be fine. It will, however, be rationed and we will fill every container we can find or make while it's running.

  "Brigadier General Zick has the other building. The plan is to wait until the infected levels drop to the point we can make a breakout. If they do not drop, we will have to wait until someone comes along to break us out. There is a very adequate stock of food for the forty of us. Literally years worth. We will begin processes after this meeting to capture any rainwater we can. Are there any questions?"

  "Any idea how long, sir?"

  Ryan "Robot" Harris was the Navy lieutenant JG she'd carried in. He worked in base operations was all she knew about him.

  "The last word we had was that everyone was in the same boat, Lieutenant," Hamilton said. "But I'm sure that as soon as they can restore order in the U.S., they'll send a team down to pull us out. Or, if we can, we'll self extract back to the U.S. There are boats here that we can do that with."

  "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 societ
y. 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?"