Tooth and Nail (18 page)

Things have changed a lot since she burrowed under the operator desk and slept.

Baird is lying face down in one of the hallways at the end of a long dark smear, twitching. Probably dying by inches because of his wounds. Who knew how much damage his body had taken when she pummeled him with the golf club, or when he burst through the door, or during whatever Jackson did to him after that.

On the other screen, showing the hallway outside Laboratory West, Lucas and Fuentes are hunting together, sniffing at doors.

Petrova watches with interest.

They do not attack each other, only us, she tells herself. Is this the reason for the odor they produce? An olfactory cue that another person is already infected, and therefore “safe”? How else would they recognize each other?

They pass Saunders lying on the ground. Saunders twitches and slowly gets to his feet. One of his ears has been gnawed off, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Petrova pushes a button on her keyboard to bring up another image on the screen.

The image shows the majestic main lobby downstairs, populated by a mob of people, many of them waving at the security camera. A beautiful blonde in their midst—whom Petrova recognizes from a TV series she used to watch—is holding up a sign that says,
NOW! OR WE KILL THE OTHER ONE
.

Despite her fascination with what is happening down there, it is not her immediate concern. She forces herself to continue exploring the facility on her screens.

Empty hallways.

An empty elevator lobby.

An empty auditorium.

An empty records room.

A corridor with a man’s broken body propping open the door to the east-side Men’s Room. Petrova instantly recognizes him as Dr. Sims.

Her first thought: He is dead.

She cannot prevent her second thought, which fills her with shame: Thank God. Thank God he is not a Mad Dog.

In the image produced on the other screen, Joe Hardy lies on his back in a large puddle of his own blood in Laboratory West. His eyes are open and his face is a mask of horror. Miraculously, he survived long enough to pick up his phone, which is now in his hand. She wonders if he ever answered it.

She suddenly cannot bare to look at him. She quickly brings up an image of another hallway. A pair of legs in men’s trousers are protruding from one of the offices. Another person is hurt.

“Hello? This is Sandy. Are you still there, Dr. Petrova?”

“Just one more minute, Sandy.”

“I was just thinking about Dr. Sims. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Please wait.”

“We left him there and he died, right?”

“Sandy. Please. I am working on a way to get you out of there safely.” Petrova rapid-fires through the remaining images, all of them empty spaces, and performs a quick calculation in her mind: There are now five uninfected people at most, including Sandy Cohen and herself, cowering in their various hiding places, most likely in the offices.

Go back
, a voice in her head tells her.

She cycles through the camera images in reverse order, searching randomly until she becomes frustrated. Whatever she was trying to tell herself, she’s lost it now.

“What am I looking for?” she asks out loud, feeling irritated.

“Dr. Petrova? Is there somebody there with you?”

“No, Sandy. I am alone.”

“Stringer isn’t there?”

“I am speaking to my—”

The voice in her head suddenly shouts:
Stringer!

Ignoring Cohen’s questioning, she clicks to the image of Sims lying in the doorway to the Men’s Room.

“Oh,” she says quietly.

Behind Sims, in the mirror on the bathroom wall, she can see Jackson looking at himself, far enough from the camera so that the resolution is not very good, but close enough for her to see what he is doing.

He is poking very gingerly at his right eye. Or rather, his left eye, which only looks like his right eye in the mirror. Yes, he is poking at his eye.

Or rather, what is left of his eye.

Jackson, the retired, overweight, out-of-shape cop, beat Baird. But Baird bit his face and ruined his left eye.

Jackson’s clearly in shock. And almost certainly infected.

He has not yet turned, but it is only a matter of time.

There are now four infected people in their section of the building, and two, possibly three uninfected survivors trapped inside with them.

“Sandy, listen to me,” she says into the phone. “I am looking at the security camera feeds and they are showing me the corridor outside Dr. Saunders’ office.”

“Can you see if Dr. Baird is still around?”

“It is not Dr. Baird anymore, Sandy,” Petrova says. “In any case, he is dead.”

“Oh my God.”

Petrova grips the phone, her hand and ear slick with sweat.

“Drs. Lucas and Saunders are now infected and have become Mad Dogs themselves,” she says. “And Marsha Fuentes.”

“There’s three of them now?”

“I am afraid so. Actually, four. Stringer Jackson has been bitten. He has not yet become a Mad Dog, but I believe he will transform soon, which is why it is essential you try to get to me now, where it is safe.”

“That’s not supposed to happen. You can’t become a Mad Dog if you get bitten. You only get it if the virus enters the brain. And no virus has an incubation period that short—”

Petrova sighs loudly. “I cannot get into the details, but what I am telling you is true.”

“Well, I can’t stay here forever with those things around, Dr. Petrova,” Cohen says, her voice edged with hysteria. “You have to help me. You have to make them leave.”

“I cannot do that, Sandy.”

“Make them leave. Please. Please.”

“Listen to me. I cannot make them leave, but I can see where they are by using the security cameras. That means I can tell you when it is generally safe to come to my location.”

“You want me to leave here and go out there? Are you freaking nuts?”

“Right now, Dr. Lucas and Marsha Fuentes are in the auditorium and heading towards the elevator lobby,” Petrova says, rapidly scanning the flipping images on the screens. She blinks, surprised at how fast the Mad Dogs move. “And Dr. Saunders, um, is now in Dr. Hardy’s office.”

“Saunders is too close!” Cohen hisses.

“If you go now, you can make it.”

“What if there’s another one of these Mad Dogs in one of the offices?” Petrova admits the possibility to herself, but there is no other way to get Cohen to the safety of the Security Command Center without her eventually abandoning the relative security of her hiding place. There is no sure thing here. She has to take a chance or stay where she is, cut off from food and water and help.

“I know for a fact that there are no other Mad Dogs,” she lies. “Trust me. Do you know the way to the Command Center?”

“But after I hang up, I won’t know where they are.”

“This is a good time for you to leave Dr. Sims’ office and come here.” She can hear Cohen taking deep breaths, getting up her nerve.

“No!” she hisses. “I can’t.”

Petrova thinks for a moment, then says, “Do you have a cell phone? If you do, then we could stay on the line together, and I can walk you here safely.”

“Yes, I have one. But all the lines are jammed, aren’t they?”

“It is possible to get through. So try. Please.” She reads Cohen the direct dial number of the phone in the Security Command Center. “Call now. Try a few times. If it doesn’t work, then call me again using the interoffice line, which we know so far is reliable.”

Before Cohen can respond, she hangs up.

The silence is startling.

Panicking, she flips through the images until she sees Baird lying on the floor. He is no longer twitching. He is dead. Really and truly dead. Thank God.

She bites her lip hard to prevent these little shrieks from sliding into uncontrollable hysteria. Wrapping her arms around her ribs, she rocks back and forth.

The phone rings, sending an electric wave of adrenaline through her body. She snatches up the phone, bathed in the glow of the screens.

“Yes?”

“I got through! I can’t believe it.”

“Keep your voice down,” Petrova hisses.

“I’m on my cell.”

“That is good. I will guide you, Sandy.”

Petrova scans the images until she confirms the positions of the Mad Dogs and Jackson, who is still at the mirror, staring dumbly at himself and probing his ruined eye.

“This is a good time,” she says. “You can go. But hurry.”

“All right, I’m up,” Cohen tells her.

Sandy Cohen appears on the left screen, dancing from foot to foot to restore her circulation. She is still wearing the white gown she had on in the lab, which flaps around her legs.

“Can you see me?” she asks.

“Go now. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Stop. Stop! Go into the office on your right. Now!”

Cohen disappears from the screen. Seconds later, Saunders appears, his hands balled into fists clasped against his chest and his head jerking like a bird’s. He stops outside the office Cohen entered, appearing to sniff the air.

“Do not move even slightly, Sandy,” Petrova whispers into the phone.

Saunders turns, runs down the hall and enters East Lab.

“Now. Go. Now.”

The lab technician darts out into the hall on tip toes, looking both ways, holding the phone against her ear.

“Turn right at the end of the hall,” Petrova tells her.

Cohen turns the corner and abruptly freezes in her tracks, putting her hand over her mouth.

Petrova curses herself. The horrors that she has already begun to digest are new to Cohen. She should have warned the woman about what she was going to see.

“That is Dr. Baird,” she says. “He is dead. He is no threat to you.”

“Oh my God,” Cohen says.

“Be quiet,” Petrova says. “Dr. Lucas and Fuentes are heading in your direction. You can make it, but you must go now.”

She sees Cohen nod vigorously, dance around Baird’s corpse, and begin walking rapidly towards the Security Center, looking over her shoulder every few steps to make sure nobody is coming up behind her.

Petrova says, “You are doing just fine. You are very close now.” “Almost there,” Cohen huffs, already out of breath.

“You can do it,” Petrova tells her.

The digital projector blinks out, the lights shut off and Petrova is plunged into darkness and silence so total she wonders if she’s dead.

She sits in the dark, her heart pounding against her ribcage and her blood crashing in her ears.

The power has gone out.

The phone in her hand is dead.

She can hear Cohen shouting, “Hello? Hello?” out in the hall, the sound muffled and distant.

“Be quiet,” Petrova hisses at the dark. “Be quiet or they will find you.” The woman is not far away. She’s about thirty feet down the hall, in fact.

“The power’s out, Dr. Petrova!” Cohen wails. “Help me!”

Petrova hears thuds against the wall.

“Oh, no,” she says.

“Help me, please!”

Cohen is not being attacked. She is banging against the wall with her fists, which Petrova can hear in the Command Center.

That is how close she is. Closer even than Petrova initially thought. “Come and get me! Please!”

And if she keeps this up, she is going to get herself killed or infected. Petrova formulates a plan on the spot. She knows where the door is and believes she can find it in the dark easily. She will open it and guide Cohen to safety using her voice before the woman’s screaming brings every Mad Dog in the place running.

Only she doesn’t move. She is literally frozen with fear.

Cohen is still shouting for help.

Petrova begins to crawl back under the operator’s desk, burrowing into the wires and the dust and the cobwebs and the residual heat of the electronics.

The last thing Petrova hears before she falls asleep is the horrible sound of a struggle that she takes into her dreams with her.

Lieutenants Bowman and Knight, joined by their platoon sergeants Kemper and Jim Vaughan, stand on the roof of the Samuel J. Tilden International Middle School, which their units have cleared and secured, and listen to the gunfire in the city.

The school is only a couple of stories tall but even this high up, they have an almost antiseptic view of the city’s Midtown district. The buildings block their view of the wholesale slaughter going on at the street level of the city. But they can hear it.

To Bowman, leaning against the parapet and gazing out into the smoky haze produced by scores of unchecked fires, it is as if New York itself were a giant body, its people healthy cells one by one being converted into virus that is beating the crap out of the body’s immune system.

And to carry this analogy further, the immune system, well, that would be two brigades of infantry of the U.S. Army, about six thousand men and women in all—each a highly trained and heavily armed lean, green fighting machine.

We are the world’s greatest military and we are being beaten on our own ground, he thinks. By the people we swore to protect, armed only with tooth and nail.

On the other side of the roof, Sergeant Lewis fires his M21 sniper rifle. He is up here fighting his own private war, shooting Mad Dogs down in the street behind the school.

“I still can’t believe it,” Knight says. “Is this really happening?”

“It’s a numbers game, Steve,” Bowman tells him. “You take five guys who develop Mad Dog symptoms. They each bite one other person and that one other person turns into a Mad Dog. Then that person bites somebody else. Every couple of hours.”