Tooth and Nail (14 page)

Fuentes grins, leaking foam between clenched teeth.

“Maybe we should leave now,” Saunders says, blinking.

“Where’s Dr. Baird?” Hardy says. “We need to confirm that he’s here and then we can get out and seal the room.”

He turns to the right and sees the man several yards away, behind a desk.

“Jesus, Baird, you scared the crap out of me,” Hardy says, forgetting for an instant what his colleague has become.

Baird is growling. His ponytail has worked loose and his long blond hair, clotted with blood, is splayed across his face and shoulders. He’s a strong man, a weight lifter. His hands clench into fists.

Hardy can see his eyes through the veil of hair, burning like coals. “Oh, shit,” he says.

Baird launches across the desk, scattering papers and sending a PC crashing to the floor. He brushes aside the golf club that Hardy feebly raises to defend himself, seizes the back of the man’s neck and sinks his teeth into his throat. Fuentes, her mouth foaming, latches onto Hardy’s left arm and together, the infected scientists bear him to the floor screaming.

“Do something!” Lucas wails. “Somebody do something!”

Saunders shouts repeatedly, too terrified to make words.

Baird has ripped Hardy’s throat out with his teeth. A fountain of bright red blood flies into the air. Hardy’s scream becomes a gargle. His eyes are glassy with fear and understanding.

“Mom,” he croaks.

Within moments, the lights in his eyes fade. His body relaxes.

The cell phone in the pocket of his lab coat spills onto the floor and begins ringing.

Petrova picks up the golf club and brings it down across Baird’s back, making him flinch and yelp like a dog kicked in the ribs. She brings it down again, connecting with Fuentes’ broken arm. She rolls on the floor, weeping with agony.

“Get out!” she says, wildly slashing at Baird again. “Lucas, Saunders, get out now!”

Despite the repeated blows, Baird is slowly rising to his feet, bleeding and snarling, while Fuentes is working her way back across the floor towards her on her knees, holding out her good hand in a splayed claw.

“Get out!”

Suddenly, she realizes that she is alone and that Baird is on his feet. She backs up through the open door and hurls it shut.

A moment later, Baird’s body slams against it and begins thrashing and clawing, leaving bloody prints on the porthole.

Inches away, on the other side, Petrova sits on the floor hugging her knees and crying, feeling the vibrations and frenzied pounding against her back.

Saunders and Lucas sit against the wall on either side of her, dazed and shaking from an excess of adrenaline.

Suddenly, Baird stops. The silence is startling.

Hardy’s cell begins ringing again.

“He’s dead,” Lucas says, his teeth chattering. “He’s dead, right?”

“They all are,” Petrova says, wiping the tears from her face.

Gregory Baird and Marsha Fuentes died the moment the virus replicated enough to saturate their brains and subjugate their will to its own. The moment it began using their bodies as puppets for the sole purpose of violently passing itself on to new hosts.

She adds softly, “The Mad Dog strain is a parasite, and it has them now.”

Petrova slowly gets to her feet, peers through the porthole, and gasps. Baird is grinning back at her, wheezing and dripping drool onto his bloodied tie and labcoat.

Viruses are the world’s oldest form of life, primordial and ancient, and yet this mutant strain is something new, she realizes. It is a new force of nature, unleashed upon the world.

A new life form seeking its rightful place in the pecking order.

Baird and Fuentes are no longer making decisions on their own. They are rabid, acting solely based on the virus’ simple program:

Attack, overpower and infect.

“Oh,” she says, backing up. “Oh my.”

“What is it?”

She turns, her eyes gleaming and wild, and screams:
“RUN!”

Moments later, the door shatters off of its hinges with a crash and Baird spills into the hallway, howling with pain and rage.

Second Platoon, now a wedge made up of three rifle squads in diamond formation with HQ, Weapons Squad and the walking wounded in the center, reaches Samuel J. Tilden International Middle School ten minutes behind schedule. A growing crowd of civilians follows the platoon at a respectful distance, hoping for protection.

The school is a sprawling, three-story building consisting of a central trunk and two wings, accessible via a main entrance and numerous emergency exits. In the early days of the Lyssa epidemic, the City government closed all of the schools to prevent the rapid spread of infection among children, who were then taking the disease home to their parents. As the epidemic continued growing and began overwhelming the hospitals, the government tried to alleviate the pressure by opening Lyssa clinics at sites such as schools, the larger dance clubs and even the subway and train stations.

This school, turned into a Lyssa clinic, was where Quarantine placed the headquarters of Charlie Company, First Battalion, and its First Platoon. Yesterday, it was teeming with patients, medical volunteers and nearly forty soldiers, MPs, engineers and specialists, including at least one squad constantly manning a checkpoint behind a sandbag position constructed around the front doors.

Today, the entrance appears deserted. The street in front of the building is also empty of vehicles, restricted to official traffic only. Nobody comes out to welcome the boys of Second Platoon.

There are bodies everywhere lying on the street among fluttering papers and loose garbage, already starting to stink in the brisk air of this late September morning. The air is thick with flies.

They died from gunfire.

Second Squad is on point. Sergeant Lewis calls a halt. The LT hustles up, takes out his binoculars and scans the small, neat sandbag fort.

No soldiers are visible.

Bowman turns to Lewis and signals him to move.

The Sergeant whistles softly and Second Squad’s fireteams rush across the open space to the sandbags, carbines held in the firing position.

Behind him, the civilians are getting nervous and asking why the platoon is stopped and they are not entering the refuge. Kemper explains that they must check out the area to make sure it is not dangerous. He tells them to stay out of the way for their own safety.

Second Squad disappears into the building. The scene is quiet except for the intermittent clatter of a machine gun somewhere far to the northeast.

“Every time we stay out of the way, we get slaughtered,” one of the civilians complains.

Moments later, Lewis reappears at the sandbags and whistles, waving his hand in front of face to give the signal for all-clear.

“Now we can move,” Kemper says to the civilian. “See how this works?”

“I thought how it worked is I pay taxes and you protect me,” a woman in the crowd says, just loud enough for him to hear.

Kemper sighs, sorry that he tried.

The platoon moves forward, the civilians following closely.

“What the hell happened here?” Sherman wonders. The area in front of the school’s doors is carpeted with bloody brass shell casings, the product of hundreds, possibly even thousands, of rounds being fired. The smell of cordite hangs in the air.

“Some kind of war,” says Boomer.

“No sign of blue forces, sir,” Sergeant Lewis reports to the LT.

The boys shuck their rucksacks in the hallway and take long pulls on their canteens. The civilians file past them, looking shell-shocked.

“Rest up,” Bowman says. “We’re on the move in five.”

Sergeant Ruiz extends his arm over his head and gives a slight wave. Williams and Hicks get into position on each side of the door and give him a thumbs up.

Ruiz opens the door to the classroom and flicks the light switch. Inside, the rows of institutional fluorescent lights blink to life instantly.

He steps over the threshold, holding his carbine at shoulder level, ready to fire. Williams follows on his heels and turns left, while Hicks turns right. Behind them, Wheeler and McLeod pull security in the hallway, watching their backs.

The fireteam then loops around until they return to the doorway. “Clear,” Williams says.

“Clear,” Hicks says.

“Clear,” says Ruiz.

They have done this eight times already, and they are exhausted. This is how a rifle platoon seizes control of a building, one room at a time. Once they entered the school, the LT placed his gun team and HQ, along with the wounded and civilians, near the primary doors, plugging the main entrance. This base became their foothold for action inside the building, while denying access to outsiders who might reinforce enemy forces.

This accomplished, the next step is to systematically clear the building. The three squads each entered a separate wing of the building, with the fireteams in each squad alternating as assault and support forces.

“All right, here’s the stairwell leading up to the second floor,” the Sergeant says, mopping sweat from his forehead. “Down there is the admin wing, which we got to clear before we can go up. McLeod, I am placing you here with your SAW.”

“You’re leaving me alone?” says McLeod.

Ruiz sighs loudly through his nose. “The rooms behind you have been cleared. We will be on your left, down that hallway. You lie here and point your weapon at the stairwell until we get back. Think you can manage that?”

“Since you put it like that—”

“Listen to me, dipshit.”

“Okay, Sergeant.”

“You got our backs. Do not screw up or nod off or rub one out or read a good book or whatever it is you do instead of soldiering. If you do, I will not assign you KP or smoke you with exercise. I will frag you. You will die. Okay? Do we understand each other?”

McLeod nods darkly. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“All right, let’s do this, ladies. Sooner we clear this building, the sooner we can kick up our feet.”

“Roger that, Sarge,” says Hicks.

“Take point, Private Williams.”

“All right, Sergeant.”

Williams turns the corner toward the admin offices and almost walks into the man standing there smiling down at him. A tall, skinny giant of a man, almost six foot five, wearing a neat suit and tie.

“Oh, sorry, sir,” Williams says.

He glances up at the face and his bowels turn to water. The man’s swollen, bruised throat bulges over the shirt collar, which is soaked with drool and mucus.

“Shoot him, Private!” roars Ruiz.

The man opens his mouth, making a bubbling, percolating sound deep in his throat, and reaches out with his long arms to embrace Williams.

The rifle pops and the man staggers backward, wincing in pain, his dress shirt now soaked red.

Williams blinks in surprise, then fires again as he was trained, putting the second bullet into the man’s face, blowing off his jaw and ear. The man spins like a top and eventually falls to the ground with a meaty sound, his hair smoking.

The soldier laughs hysterically.

“Who shot him? Was that me?”

“Give me your weapon, Private.”

Ruiz takes the M4 out of his hands, shoulders it and fires rapidly,
bang bang bang
, dropping three more figures at the end of the hallway.

“I’m going to make a soldier out of you yet, Private Williams,” he says, handing him back his carbine and then retrieving his shotgun.

“Roger that, Sergeant,” Williams says, blowing air out his cheeks.

“Roger that.”

A familiar voice from around the corner: “You guys all right?”

“Shut up and stay in position, Private McLeod,” Ruiz yells back.

“Sergeant, look, it’s a rifle,” says Hicks, stepping forward and picking the weapon off the floor. “It’s an M4.” He wrestles with the bolt and snorts. “Jammed.”

The Sergeant nods. He was afraid that at some point they were going to begin finding the shreds of First Platoon.

“And there’s a blood trail. See it?”

The trail of blood droplets leads under a door to an administrative office. The fireteams quickly get into position, ready to take it down. Ruiz peers through the window set in the upper half of the door, which is similarly spotted and streaked with blood. The inside of the office is clean and brightly lit but otherwise appears empty.

He counts down with his fingers,
Three, two, one—

The doorknob gives, but the door barely moves. Something’s blocking it.

He pushes hard until the obstruction clears.

The soldiers step into the room, clear it, and then converge on its sole occupant.

The corpse lies tangled up in his own limbs. They recognize him as Charlie Company’s RTO. He wears a crude tourniquet tied tightly around his leg, which has been mauled savagely below the knee. The top of his skull and brains are splattered up the scorched and splintered door, which he was blocking with his body.

Blocking, apparently, to keep the Mad Dogs out.

“This shit is cold,” says Williams.

“He didn’t want to become one of them,” Ruiz says.

“Sergeant?” says Hicks, puzzled.

“Nothing,” says Ruiz. “Just thinking out loud.”

The man still clutches the pistol that he used to blow his brains out. As RTOs are not issued sidearms, the pistol is not his, although the soldiers recognize it as an Army-issue nine-millimeter.

The Sergeant crouches down and tears off one of the corpse’s oval dog tags, then contacts the LT using his handheld.

“War Dogs Two-Six, this is War Dogs Two-Three, over.”