Tooth and Nail (20 page)

“Roger that.”

“Lead the way, McDuff.”

“You’re a very funny guy,” McLeod says. “It must run in the family.

Just the other night, your mom—hey, that sounds military, doesn’t it?”

The sound grows louder as they approach the doors and open them cautiously, peering out at the corpse-strewn street.

“Lookit, it’s an LAV,” Martin says, raising his fist. “Go, Marines! Get some!”

The armored personnel carrier, shaped like a large green boat on eight wheels, turns onto their street from several blocks away, its engine grinding.

“I want one of those,” says McLeod.

“It’s the LAV-R,” Martin says. “See the boom crane on the back? It’s got a winch so it can recover other LAVs that break down. The recovery model doesn’t have much for defense, just the single M240 and some smoke grenades.” He adds admiringly, “You should see the fighting version. It’s got an M242 Bushmaster chain gun and two M240s. I saw one once. In action, too. It was freaking cool. The Iraqis call these babies the Great Destroyers.”

“I hear she’s single, tiger,” McLeod says.

“They can go sixty miles an hour and drive underwater, man.”

“Uh oh, they got company. Check it out.”

The LAV-R has completed its turn and guns its engine to pick up speed. The vehicle is surrounded by a crowd of about twenty Mad Dogs running alongside it. A few somehow clawed their way on top and are beating on the armor with their fists.

The vehicle accelerates on the open street and the Mad Dogs begin to lag behind.

“I didn’t even know the Marines were in Manhattan,” Martin says. “We got no commo with them. Should we run out and try to tell them we’re here?”

McLeod snorts. “Be my guest.”

The LAV roars by on its eight wheels, Mad Dogs clambering over its metal body, followed by a swarm of infected, chomping at its heels.

Less than a minute later, the last Mad Dog runs by, a shredded red shirt flapping from his mouth. Then the street is quiet again except for the distant rattle of small arms fire.

“Well,” says McLeod. “You don’t see that every day.”

The naked obese woman chases the teenaged boy down the street, arms outstretched and breasts rolling. They pass two charred corpses that lay smoking on the sidewalk outside a burned-out convenience store. His sneakers crunch on broken glass.

With a loud bang, the woman drops to the ground, writhing and moaning.

The boy stops, grips his knees, and totters, panting, almost too tired to stand on his own. His entire body, clad in a bunny hugger and jeans, is flushed and drenched in sweat. After making sure the woman is no longer a threat, he lifts his face to scan the nearby buildings, searching for his savior.

In doing so, he reveals an inflamed and swollen bite mark on his cheek, smeared with blood and drool.

His roaming eyes find a tiny silhouette on the roof of the building across the street. His mouth spreads into a big, toothy grin. He raises his hand to wave hello.

The top of his head explodes.

On the roof of the building, a puff of smoke rises.

Sergeant Grant Lewis peers into his ranging telescopic sight, scanning the ground for additional targets. He sits on a stool he found in an art classroom, resting the rifle on a bipod on the parapet next to an unfinished MRE.

The street below opens up to him in detail.

Bowman collected the NCOs back at the hospital and explained what his scouts found: Private Boyd had gotten bitten during the night and then turned into a Mad Dog by morning, like something out of a zombie movie. It explained everything. For Lewis, it all fit—the huge number of Mad Dogs running wild attacking people, the change in mission, the new ROE. Hawkeye catching the Mad Dog strain from a bite on his face confirmed it. The rate of transmission for this disease is incredible.

And if we don’t do something about it, he tells himself, we are going to be wiped out.

As a result, Lewis has come up with his own ROE: If you are a Mad Dog, or if you are bitten and are going to become a Mad Dog, I am cleared hot to kick your ass.

The M21 is a semi-automatic adaptation of the M14 bolt action sniper rifle. The advantage of the M21 is the shooter gets a quick second shot, which is ideal for target-rich environments. A cam built into the scope mount adjusts the sight to compensate for the bullet’s trajectory. The magazine he is using holds twenty 7.62-mm bullets.

There are no targets in view. The street is empty of life. The air smells like smoke. But they are out there, close, circling. He can hear their growling and their sad, plaintive cries carried on each fresh breeze.

The longer he stays up here, the longer he can delay having to listen to Sergeant Ruiz chew his ass about alleged fratricide. Nobody wanted to kill The Newb. Nobody wanted The Newb to die. Friendly fire is a common thing in combat. Things were very confused trying to cross that intersection. Accidents happen all the time in war.

He can also avoid Sergeant McGraw, who has been moping under his own personal storm cloud, wondering how he missed the fact that PFC William Chen was cracking from the stress right under his nose. Wondering if he could have prevented the poor kid from blowing the back of his head off, which of course he couldn’t. Every soldier has a different way of reacting to stress. Every soldier has a different breaking point. If they themselves do not know what it is, how are you supposed to know?

Lewis shakes his head in wonder. The way his fellow NCOs have chosen so far to react to this crisis is making him lose a little respect for the rank of sergeant.

He leans back in his chair, stretches, and takes a swig from his canteen. He hates the taste of New York City municipal water, but like all guys with experience in the field, he is used to making do. He has food and water, which is all that counts. A grunt can burn up to four, five, six thousand calories a day on a high-stress mission like this one. You either lose weight or you eat every chance you get and replace the calories.

Across the street, two guys in suits and ties are smoking cigarettes on the roof. One of them is leaning over the parapet to take a look at Lewis’ kill. The other sees Lewis looking back at him and sheepishly holds up his index and middle finger to make a V. He is either communicating “victory” or “peace,” Lewis isn’t sure.

To a real soldier, Lewis believes, it is the same thing.

The pause in targets gives him time to reflect on Charlie’s predicament. Bowman is going to try to consolidate Charlie with Battalion and Battalion is going to try to hook up with Brigade, Lewis guesses. It’s a big effing mistake. It is exactly the kind of smartass strategy some soulless egghead would dream up. He can picture the egghead now, showing the Brass a big color-coded map of the USA and telling them the parts they can hold with armor and the parts they are going to have to give up for a while. He will rattle off casualty estimates and label civilian casualties under his plan as “acceptable.”

And the Brass will grunt and nod. A lot of these guys served in the Cold War and believed America could fight and survive a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. This many million will die, this many million will survive. They have heard this type of language before and they speak it fluently. As long as we come out on top, right? Of course, it is not their families dying—oh no, not these rear-echelon motherfuckers.

And then the environmental nuts will come along and say how this is going to be good and very cleansing for the planet. Global population will be rewound to before the birth of Christ, and the planet will bounce back and flourish and Man will live in harmony with nature from thence forth. We are the real virus here, multiplying and consuming until we kill the host that sustains us. We must end this world to save it, right? Of course, this is all freaking fine in theory until it is your family that is doing the dying.

No, the smart thing to do, Lewis believes, is for everybody to stay where they are, make the Air Force earn its pay for a change by keeping everybody supplied, and then punch out patrols to go deep into neighborhoods and shoot down every Mad Dog they see. Every kill is a broken chain of infection, slightly improving humanity’s odds.

Meanwhile, hand out guns. Give everybody and his mother an old surplus rifle and sixty rounds, a flyer explaining how to use it, and a license to kill for a month.

But Lewis knows the Army and the Army is not going to do that. He believes the Army’s going to react to the first punch in the nose the Mad Dogs gave it by retracting all its limbs inside its shell. Instead of putting the Mad Dogs down while they are still dispersed, the Army is going to let them build an army that will wipe the human race off the face of the earth and give it back to the birds and the bees.

Movement down in the street. Lewis peers into his telescopic sight and sees a woman and child running, holding hands. They are so beautiful that he daydreams for a moment about his wife Sara and their boy Tucker, far enough away from him that they might as well be on the Moon. The woman is a young mom, in her mid twenties, with long straight blond hair and a slim, athletic body clad in a tight T-shirt and jeans, while the daughter is virtually a smaller version of her mother, maybe seven years old.

I’ll protect you, he thinks. On this one street, you will be safe. Go in peace.

He blinks, looks again.

The mother has been bitten in the arm. The wound has been hastily bandaged and a length of unraveled gauze, stained almost black with dried blood, flaps behind her.

She is already dead. All he has to do now is stop her from taking who knows how many poor saps with her to the grave.

He takes aim and prepares for the shot, but freezes on the trigger pull. If he kills the mother, the girl won’t have a protector. She won’t last five minutes on these streets.

But the mother has been bitten. If he does not kill her, she will later go Mad Dog and then kill or infect her daughter.

He can’t decide what to do. The Bible story about King Solomon enters his mind. Two women are fighting over a child and Solomon’s answer is to take a sword and cut the child in two. When one of the women says please don’t do this but instead give the child to the other, Solomon knew instantly that she was the real mother and gave her the child.

The smart move, the safest bet, is to kill both of them.

A thought pops into his head:
We must end this world to save it.

His view of the mother and daughter is now blocked by the corner of the building.

Picking up the rifle and cursing a blue streak at himself for losing his concentration, he runs to the other side of the roof and quickly repositions his weapon on its bipod. He finds the pair after a cursory scan of the street, aims the barrel of his rifle at the back of the woman’s head, and exhales.

It’s all freaking fine in theory until it’s your family that’s doing the dying.

He releases the trigger. He can’t do it.

Lewis spits over the parapet in disgust.

Across the street, a man in an office is waving at him and holding a sign that says:
TRAPPED, HELP
.

Lewis spits again.

“Welcome to the club, buddy,” he says.

Sergeant Ruiz peeks into the classroom through the window set in the door and sees Third Squad sprawled asleep on top of their fartsacks where they’d been billeted, surrounded by leftovers from rapidly devoured MREs. One of them cries out in his sleep, making the others stop snoring long enough to frown and twitch for a few moments.

Again he thinks about his young wife and infant son in Jacksonville, Florida. Should he try to call her now?

What if she doesn’t answer the phone?

Would he go over the hill and try to get home to his family, like Richard Boyd?

Maybe, but look where that got Boyd. The LT said half his face got bitten off and he’d been transformed into a Mad Dog.

He hears footsteps, turns and sees 2LT Greg Bishop approaching from the end of the hallway, gesturing angrily at his trailing NCOs. Probably complaining again about Bowman’s order to McGraw to shoot down all those civilians. Said it was inhuman, even with the ROE. Said Bowman doesn’t deserve to take command of what’s left of Charlie Company. Said even some Nazis during WWII refused to follow orders and participate in wholesale slaughter.

Ruiz shakes his head in disgust and resumes his own walk to the gym, where a thousand people lie moaning and dying on cots arranged in nice, neat rows. Healthy civilians are moving among them changing sheets and bedpans and IV bags, supervised by three hapless, red-faced corpsmen and a handful of nurses from the day shift who made it to work. Others are disposing of corpses and disinfecting the area with mops and rags. The LT told them: We have food, water, blankets. We can protect you, feed you and shelter you. But if you stay, you work. And you work hard.

It is unpleasant labor, and there is plenty of shirking, but many of the civilians are happy to have something to do to take their minds off their problems. The ones who are working are the toughest, the ones you can count on. The others just can’t take what’s happening to them and their world. They quickly wandered off and nobody has seen them since. Many of these people have lost everything, and it was torn away bloodily in front of their very eyes. They are in shock, and many of them will never snap out of it.

It was a good idea, in any case, to give the civilians something to do. The LT is smart for an officer, Ruiz thinks. If Bowman commanded the way Bishop says he should, First Platoon would still be trapped in that classroom, under siege and starving by inches, and Second Platoon would have been scattered to the winds on Forty-Second Street.