Tooth and Nail (37 page)

It is a dog. A pack of them. Filthy, feral dogs, feasting on a child. “Hey!” he says.

Wyatt hisses at him to shut up, but he cannot stand the sight of that boy being eaten.

“Git!”

One of the dogs slouches closer, its lips peeled back and its ears flat, snarling in defense of its meat.

Mooney looks down at his bayonet. He is not allowed to shoot unless it is a matter of life and death; otherwise, it is the bayonet. But he does not want to get into a knife fight with a pack of feral dogs carrying God knows what diseases.

He picks up a beer bottle off the ground and throws it at the dogs, who scatter with snarls and yelps, licking their bloody chops.

“Dude, check it out,” Wyatt says. “Hajjis on our three.”

Four teenage boys stand across the street, wearing dirty hoodies and looking at them.

Wyatt adds, “You think they’re infected?”

Mooney shakes his head, unsure. He raises his hand and waves.

The boys exchange a glance. One waves back.

“I don’t think so, Joel.”

The boys start walking towards them, glancing both ways, out of habit, before crossing the street.

They are holding baseball bats, but of course they would be armed. It would be madness to go outside without some type of protection. But Mooney is not in the mood to take chances anymore.

“That’s close enough,” his says, raising his carbine.

The boys stop in the middle of the street, their eyes vacant, and exchange a long, meaningful glance. They turn back to the soldiers. One of them grins.

As he grins, saliva leaks down his chin. He is infected, but has not turned yet.

They suddenly sprint forward, swinging their bats.

“Stop or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead,” Mooney says.

One of the boys runs clumsily into Wyatt’s bayonet, spearing himself, while another hits him in the arm with a bat, hard enough to make him drop his carbine. They close to grapple. Moody swings his own carbine to slash at the other two boys with his bayonet, but they dodge out of reach and pause, their mouths open and laughing soundlessly.

One breaks left and the other right—

McGraw’s shotgun discharges with a deafening bang, killing one of them instantly. The two survivors flee, leaving one dead and the other trying to pull his bleeding body across the street, keening in his death throes.

“Finish him quick, Mooney,” McGraw says. “Count your coup.”

“Roger that, Sergeant.”

If the blast did not bring Maddy running, the kid’s grating death wail will. It is best to finish him quick. Mooney takes a deep breath, raises his carbine with the bayonet pointing down, and brings it down into the boy’s back.

The knife pierces the boy’s body clean through, impacting the street below with a jolt that resonates up Mooney’s arms and neck. For several moments, the boy writhes under the bayonet like a fly pinned to a wall. Then he falls still, bleeding out onto the asphalt.

“Dead now, Sergeant,” Mooney says.

“Then let’s go,” the Sergeant says.

Mooney pulls his bayonet free and stands over the corpse, exhausted. He notices Petrova staring at him, wide-eyed with horror.

“I had no choice,” he says weakly.

“Your eyes,” she whispers.

Mooney blinks. What does she see?

“Are you wounded, Private?” McGraw asks Wyatt.

Wyatt, standing aside with his hands jammed in his armpits, wags his head, looking pale and tired.

“I’m good, Sarge,” he says. Wincing, he bends to pick up his carbine.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Mooney demands.

But Petrova is not paying attention to him. She is looking up at the pale gray sky.

He follows her gaze and senses the change in atmosphere. Then he hears the sound coming from the southeast: the thunder of rotors. It rapidly grows in volume until three CH-47 helicopters roar over nearby rooftops at more than a hundred fifty miles per hour, red lights blinking on their bellies.

“Get on the horn with those Chinooks and tell them we’re coming,” McGraw shouts at Mooney, who has been carrying the SINCGAR since Jake Sherman died. “Tell them to hover at the rendezvous point until we reestablish radio contact!”

Mooney begins chanting into the radio, trying to contact the pilots.

“I’ve made contact,” he tells the others.

The group lets out a ragged cheer. Only Wyatt looks sour, staring after the disappearing helicopters glumly and muttering something to himself.

“You see that, Joel?” he adds. “We might just make it.”

Seeing those massive birds cross the sky was one of the most beautiful things that Mooney has ever seen.

He feels like he will be home again soon, wherever that may be.

McLeod opens his eyes and slowly extricates himself from the cab’s backseat, his face sticky with drying blood and his ears ringing at a deafening volume.

He stands and takes a deep breath.

The sky spins, filled with the distant echo of gunfire.

He falls to his knees, vomiting messily onto the bloody ground. Somebody hands him a canteen and he drinks greedily, spits.

“How,” he says, and groans at the pain in his head.

The street has been turned into a nightmare landscape made up of hills of dead people and body parts and lakes of blood. Here and there, a wounded Maddy writhes on the ground, eyes and mouth gaping like a fish out of water. Civilians from nearby buildings silently pick at the dead, scavenging. The women mourn the soldiers, weeping as they search the bodies for food, blood splashed up to their elbows. The men pick up the carbines and look wistfully toward the sounds of shooting to the north. Everybody is pale with wide, panicked eyes; several people have paused in their work to vomit against a nearby wall.

McLeod shrugs off the hands trying to help him up and staggers to the place where he last saw Ruiz. His feet squish in boots filled with warm blood. He can’t find the man’s remains but knows he is there, buried in the scattered human wreckage.

“Sergeant?” he says, and breaks down coughing, his throat hoarse and sore.

Wait, he tells himself. The world does not know how to mind its own business. There are people out there who are going to try to stop you. You must be ready to fight.

He bends to pick up a carbine and pistol, load his pockets with ammo, and scavenge a few MREs and a canteen.

“Did I do right?” he says.

He bends over and coughs, spitting repeatedly.

“Did I do right by you then, Sergeant?”

The civilians gather around him as he starts moving in the opposite direction of the sounds of gunfire. They step out of his way and touch him lightly as he passes. Behind him, a woman sobs quietly.

He pauses long enough to touch his heart and say quietly to himself, “
Shookran
, Sergeant,” then continues on his way.

He will break into a music shop and play every instrument. He will set up house in the New York Public Library and read every one of its books. Life is short, and this is the greatest city in the world, filled with treasures.

From now on, he vows, nobody will ever tell him what to do again.

Mooney’s heart pounds as the double-prop Chinooks land in Sheep Meadow, the thirty-foot-long propeller blades savagely chopping the chilly air during their descent and sending waves of swirling dust and slivers of grass roaring across the field.

Each of these twelve-ton machines is nearly one hundred feet long and can transport more than fifty soldiers. Today, they will take on only four new passengers.

Next to him, Dr. Petrova is crying.

“We played here,” she says, feebly gesturing at the field. “All of us.” He can barely hear her. The noise is incredible.

“That was my spot, under that tree,” the scientist adds.

The loading ramps at the rear of the helicopters’ fuselages drop, unloading Special Forces fireteams that fan out and establish security. Several start shooting at distant targets, dropping the first Maddies attracted to the heavy thumping of the rotors.

One of the soldiers stands and waves.

“That’s our cue,” McGraw shouts. “Let’s go!”

The wind blast is strong, tugging at their uniforms and making them cough on the waves of dust. Mooney takes Petrova’s hand to steady her as they half run, half limp to safety.

“We’re almost there,” he tells her, unable to believe they are going to make it.

The woman is pale and weak, murmuring to herself.

But this was his home, she says.

“Whose home?” he asks. “Keep moving, Ma’am!”

We ate ice cream last summer.

The soldiers rush forward to take her arms and help her onto the helicopter. Mooney starts to follow, but notices that McGraw and Wyatt are hanging back at the ramp.

“I’m not going with you boys,” the Sergeant says.

“What?”

“I’m staying behind!”

Mooney looks at him helplessly. Is the man insane, hoping to get killed, or simply freakishly loyal, willing to take the incredible risk of fighting his way back to the Captain? Does he expect Mooney to stay with him, too?

It’s not fair, he thinks.

McGraw says: “I’m quitting the Army!”

Wyatt laughs into the howling wind.

The Sergeant explains, “This was my last mission. I’m done. I’m going to keep my head down until it blows over, and then try to get home to my girl. Good luck to you boys. I wanted you to know I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Mooney says with a lump in his throat.

“Good luck, Sarge,” Wyatt says.

“Luck I got plenty of,” McGraw says, winking. He salutes quickly and then he is gone, jogging lightly past the Special Forces teams as if the world were just beginning, not ending.

“I’m staying, too, Mooney,” Wyatt tells him.

“You quitting?”

“Naw,” Wyatt says. He pauses for a quick farmer’s blow and then adds sourly, “One of those wanking wanktards back there bit me in the armpit. The infected one got me.”

“Christ, Joel,” Mooney says, too stunned to understand what he is hearing.

“Hurts like hell. I can actually feel the little mothers in my brain. Guess I’ll go somewheres and eat the rest of my chocolate bars. Maybe go swim in the pond back there. Maybe rob a bank. Who knows; a lot can happen in a few hours before I turn into a zombie.”

Mooney’s voice cracks. “But what the hell am I supposed to do without you?”

Wyatt offers up his gimpy smile. “You’ll manage okay on your own, boss. But I’ll have to find a new sidekick.”

One of the Special Forces soldiers appears at the top of the ramp and says, “Coming or going, make a choice. We got company.”

“I’ll see you around, Joel,” Mooney says, holding out his hand.

Wyatt ignores the gesture, backing away awkwardly in the raging wind, smiling and offering a comical salute with his middle finger.

“Contact!”

Several soldiers rush down the ramp and begin firing at a horde of Mad Dogs breaking from the trees and streaming into the back of one of the other Chinooks parked across the lawn, overrunning its guards in hand to hand fighting. The distant bodies flop onto the grass, while others disappear inside the massive helicopter, which suddenly lurches into the air.

One of the soldiers grabs Mooney and shoves him roughly inside, where he lands on the floor shouting in panic. He scrambles into the seat next to Petrova, who screams at the sound of the gunfire, covering her face in her hands.

“No more killing,” she pleads.

An NCO runs down the aisle towards the pilots, roaring a command to get the bird into the air right now.

“You’re going to be okay, Dr. Petrova,” Mooney says. “You made it this far for a reason. You had all those chances to die and you didn’t. You can’t die now.”

The helicopter suddenly lifts hard, rising at a speed of twenty-five feet per second. Gravity sucks at his stomach and toes.

A Special Forces medic works his way down the aisle until he reaches Petrova and begins shouting questions at her: Has she been bitten? Is she otherwise injured? Does she have any other medical conditions affecting her well being? Does she want water?

Turning away, Mooney hops frequencies on the combat net radio, searching for Charlie’s net. The air whistles through the cabin, making it difficult to hear. Then his ears pop and the voices come through clear as a bell.

He finds the sounds of their voices, even describing a losing fight, strangely comforting. They are still alive down there, and as long as they are still alive, there is hope.

Mooney notices that the Special Forces guys are staring intently out the windows of one side of the helicopter, swearing. Turning in his seat, he sees the Chinook that was infested with Maddies flying erratically in the sky, its tail swinging back and forth, the loading ramp still open and spilling bodies that fall hundreds of feet to the ground below.

“Come on, come on,” one of the soldiers says. “Keep control.” Mooney knows how they feel. Their friends are dying in the other helicopter, and there is nothing they can do about it.

The distressed helicopter roars west, veering towards the majestic, castlelike towers of the San Remo Towers building with the others pursuing at a safe distance. The men suck in their breath, expecting to see it crash and dissolve in a fireball inside one of the towers, but it pulls back, lurching and trying to stabilize. It is still too close, however: The props suddenly break against the side of the building and the violent stresses rip the Chinook in half with a burst of fire and smoke. The two pieces flop over and fall like stones to the earth, where they crash into pieces.