Tooth and Nail (24 page)

The riot control unit advanced, trying to separate the Mad Dogs from the uninfected, and found themselves trapped between the two.

Only tear gas saved them.

The cops fired CS grenades, which burst in huge clouds of brilliant white gas. Mad Dogs and uninfected people alike ran blindly through the clouds, tears and mucus streaming from their eyes and noses, clawing at their clothes and burning skin. Dozens of people bent over and began choking and vomiting. The Mad Dogs suffered the most. Tear gas reacts with moisture on the skin and in the eyes, and Mad Dogs are soaked with sweat and saliva. Tear gas also burns the nose and throat, and the infected already find it enormously painful to swallow because the Mad Dog strain paralyzes the nerves in the throat to force production of saliva.

The unit was broken, the cops scattered and trying to return to their station. For this group, it has been a running fight lasting nearly a mile along a circuitous path. There were five of them in the beginning. But one was chased into a plate glass window, and the other died heroically in front of a Staples store to buy time for this friends to escape.

The man in scrubs, growling, leaps through the air—

And falls to the ground with a loud bang.

A puff of smoke rises from a nearby rooftop.

Sergeant Lewis, sitting on a stool on the school’s roof nursing a wad of Red Man dip in his cheek, sees another Mad Dog come running at the cops from the apartment building. He sizes up the man, aims center-mass at his body using his scope, and drops him with a shot between the shoulder blades.

The cops duck for a moment, glance at each other, and then begin looking around for the shooter.

This I like, he thinks, taking a quick moment to spit. Clear-cut ethics. One man, at the right place at the right time, making a difference.

Now all we need to do is put every man with a uniform, a gun and some training in the right place to wait for the right time. Break the chain of infection everywhere and roll this plague back into Pandora’s Box or wherever it came from.

Small arms fire begins cascading to the south, and he glances in that direction, wondering what kind of trouble Alpha and Bravo Companies have gotten themselves into. They should have shown up an hour ago. They stepped off late and they are meeting resistance along the way. Now they are losing the light.

He turns back just in time to see another Mad Dog, an obese woman in a jogging suit, running towards the woman cop, who braces herself and raises her truncheon to strike.

Damn.

He fires and misses.

Damn!

The M21 is a semi-automatic weapon, however, which means he gets another shot. He fires again. The woman flops to the ground, convulsing and pouring blood from a smoking hole in her back.

This is my street, he thinks, spitting tobacco juice. I give you free passage. You will be safe as long as you travel here under my protection. Next time, don’t bring a billy club to Armageddon.

He glances up at the sky. Just enough daylight to make good on this promise. Feeling magnanimous, he waves, hoping they see him.

They are not looking up at the buildings, however.

They are trying to run.

Peering into his scope, he sees one of the cops, crawling on hands and knees, while the other man staggers away, lurching on tired legs, following the woman cop who sprints ahead of them with all of her remaining strength.

“God,” he whispers in awe.

Beyond the three cops, a moving wall of Mad Dogs is advancing down the street, hair matted and disheveled, dressed in rags, filthy and trailing their own waste.

Thousands of them.

The horde tramples and grinds down the first cop like road kill without breaking its stride. The second stumbles and falls to his knees. Almost instantly, the mob plows into him with the force of a car, tosses him into the air like a doll, and quarters him neatly, spraying a cloud of blood into the air.

The woman cop stops in the middle of the street and turns around, bracing her shield and holding her truncheon over her head, her braid spilling down her back.

Lewis’ rifle bangs: A Mad Dog drops. Bangs again, and another falls. He is trying to make a hole for the woman, but he knows it is useless. He sees the faces of the infected as he kills them. Their faces have no expression, only moving when their mouths contort into snarls and yelps, while their eyes remain fixed with an alien stare.

He fires again and again, draining the magazine.

Save one bullet for her, he tells himself.

No, she can make it.

No, she’s already dead.

His rifle clicks empty.

The cop swings her truncheon once before disappearing into the throng, which swallows her whole, instantly, as if she never existed.

“God damn you bastards!” Lewis roars in a sudden blind rage, standing and shaking his fist. “I’ll kill every one of you!”

His radio crackles in his ear.

He turns and sees the officers and senior NCOs clustered on the other side of the roof, staring at him.

Lewis wipes his eyes and keys his handset.

“You’d better come see this, LT,” he says. “You’d better come right now.”

McLeod flips the girl onto her stomach so he does not have to look at her face, particularly her eyes, which are wide open and glassy and staring. He bends down, grabs her ankles using latex gloves, and begins pulling her across the street, followed by a dense cloud of flies. Her dress hikes up, exposing her bare legs, and her face drags along the ground, leaving a thick smear of coagulated blood from the bullet hole in her throat.

“Oh, God,” he says, repulsed, trying not to look, humming loudly to shut out the sound of her face rasping against the asphalt.

“Hold up, Private,” a voice says behind him.

“Roger that,” McLeod says, flinging the girl’s legs down and staggering away from the corpse.

“Here. Take this.” It’s Doc Waters, holding out a Q-Tip.

“What’s this for?”

“It’s Vicks vapor rub. Rub some under your nose and it’ll cut out the stink.”

McLeod smiles, waving flies away from his face. “Thanks, Doctor. You’re the best.”

“Not in your nose, Private. Under it. There you go. Technically, you should not even be putting it under your nose. But it should help against the smell of the dead.”

“I don’t care what it does to me, as long as it works.” McLeod begins sniffing dramatically. “How about that. It does work.”

“You know, you really shouldn’t stack corpses like that. You should have used body bags. If you need to move them again, you’ll have to use a shovel.”

“Not enough bags, I guess. Shovelers, we got lots of.”

“I see.” Doc Waters gestures at the three other soldiers dragging corpses into the fly-covered pile near the front of the building. “So you’re not the only one in the shitter, Private. Who are these guys?”

McLeod grins. “They’re the misfits from First Platoon who started fighting after the LT’s speech telling us how everybody we know is dying back home.”

Doc Waters eyes him. “When was the last time you got some shuteye?”

“What is this wondrous thing you call ‘shuteye’?”

The combat medic sighs. “Sergeant Ruiz doesn’t have the authority to give you an Article 15 punishment. I’ll put in a word with him about how hard he’s riding you.”

“Why? Look at me, Doctor. I’m working outside. Exercise, sunlight, fresh air.”

The truth is he has not been this tired since Basic. He remembers sleeping on his feet all the way to some range in the middle of nowhere, stuffed into a cattle car with the rest of his training company. That was nothing compared to this. One thing he can thank the Army for: a deep appreciation for the simple things in life that are absent during combat, like a hot shower, air-conditioning, greasy burgers and fries, time for yourself, driving a car going nowhere in particular, privacy, a girlfriend. And decent sleep.

They flinch at the high-pitched crack of carbines down the street. First Platoon boys providing security for the cleanup detail, dropping Mad Dogs at the perimeter.

“And my own bodyguards,” McLeod adds, then turns and shouts,

“Keep ’em coming! Get some!” He grins. “They keep killing Mad Dogs over there, and me and my new friends keep stacking them nice and neat over here so we can burn them later for public health. Do you know what I call that, Doctor? Do you?”

“No, what do you call that, Private?” Doc Waters asks, his patience suddenly exhausted.

“Job security!”

The medic chuckles despite himself, shaking his head.

A soldier calls from the front doors of the school. “We got more people coming in, Doc. You want to check them out?”

“You’re a piece of work, Private,” Doc Waters tells McLeod, and returns to the front doors of the school, where four civilians are being held at gunpoint.

“I try my best, Doctor,” McLeod mutters, bending over and grabbing the girl’s ankles. “I try my best.”

First Platoon’s Sergeant Hooper tells the detail to stop work for the day and come get some chow.

“Roger that,” says McLeod, dropping the corpse’s legs again, stripping off his gloves and walking over to the curb, where the boys from First Platoon are already washing their hands and tearing the plastic wrapping off their MREs.

The MRE provides twelve hundred calories and contains a main entrée, side dish, plastic spoon, bread or crackers and spread, sports drink or dairy shake or some other beverage, seasonings, pack of gum, candy such as Tootsie Rolls or a pastry, flameless ration heater, matches, napkins and moist toilette.

Tonight, McLeod has scored chicken and dumplings. Excellent, he tells himself. He pockets the moist toilette. He’s been saving them up and intends to take a quick whore’s bath after his work here is over.

“What’d you get?” one of the other soldiers says.

“Beef brisket,” another answers him.

“I’ll trade you chili and macaroni.”

“All right.”

“My mom used to make this incredible chili. She’d get the beef from Costco—”

“How can I eat this shit while I’m listening to you talk about your mom’s home cooking?”

“Who has Tabasco sauce?”

“Who’s got C4? Let’s make a fire and heat this shit up and eat it right.”

“No fires, boys,” Sergeant Hooper says, standing nearby with his thumbs hooked in his load-carrying vest. “Chow down that supper fast.”

Small arms fire erupts to the south.

“Stop making more work for us!” one of the grunts calls out. “We’re taking five over here.”

“That’s not our guys,” McLeod says. “It’s farther south. It’s Alpha. Or Bravo.”

“Listen to General Patton here.”

McLeod says, “The curfew is on. The new ROE says anybody they see walking the street after curfew is hostile and they are cleared hot.”

“Finally taking the gloves off,” one of the grunts says, nodding.

“Second Platoon’s LT is full of crap. We take the gloves off and put these mutants down, we’ll have this city cleaned up in no time.” He glares and his face turns red. “There ain’t no world ending. My mom and sister are doing just fine.”

“Okay, peace, brother,” says one of his comrades. “I don’t feel like fighting with you about it again.”

“Next time, I won’t try to break it up,” says the third. “You dicks got me in trouble.”

“And what about you, McLeod?” the first grunt says in a menacing tone. “Is the world ending? What do you think?”

“Oh, I think whatever you think,” McLeod says cheerfully.

The soldier blinks, then says, “Well, okay, then.”

McLeod goes back to eating, tuning out the soldiers and listening to the sound of gunfire all around the city as Warlord’s companies slowly grind their way through the wreckage to consolidate. It is a disturbing sound. It is the sound of a lot of people dying.

Is the world ending? You betcha, he thinks.

He remembers feeling a perverse thrill at the LT’s speech. The end of the world. Yes, sir! No more taxes, credit card debt, dance clubs, snooty cheerleaders, asshole jocks, careers, bank accounts, retirement worries, gym class, bad TV shows, plastic surgery, stupid politicians, megachurches or the constant feeling that you are in a hole and can’t get out. No more stupid rules that hem you in from every side.

Life is about to get a whole lot simpler. Just the law of the gun, and McLeod is hanging out with the people who have the best guns. As if to lend weight to this thought, the shooting to the south suddenly intensifies.

With each death out there, the world’s memory is getting shorter. A man could become reborn in this struggle and rename himself. No more living in the shadow of his great politician dad and his class clown past. During every screw-up in high school, McLeod would stand before his dad with a defiant smile, but the bastard never so much as blinked at him, too sanctimonious to lose his temper or even scold him his wayward son. Over time, the screw-ups got bigger, bolder, to get a reaction, any reaction. His upper-crust mother finally broke down, but he never won against dear old Dad of Steel. When he got caught shoplifting for the second time, his dad was through cleaning up his messes quietly behind the scenes, and McLeod was given a choice of jail or the Army.

When you screw up in the Army, you get a big reaction. Guaranteed. McLeod smiles to himself as he realizes that Dad will probably survive after all. All the bigshot politicians are probably being squirreled away to secret bunkers. Even though his dad’s side is out of power right now, all the oligarchs stick together. First thing they’ll do when they get out is nuke the Chinese and hand over everything that’s left to the rich people. Can’t come out the other side of Armageddon and make a fresh start for humanity without bringing all our old problems with us, right-right?