Someone screams shrilly, ending in a choking gurgle. The man he pushed is being stomped to a pulp by a ring of snarling Infected. One of them hunches over the man’s neck, slurping at an arterial fountain of blood. The others stop kicking at his body and reach down to tear off pieces of clothing and flesh and shove them into their mouths.
Roaring a string of obscenities, Ray doubles his efforts to get away from the crowd now swarming toward the fallen body and groaning with pleasure as they tear it to shreds. They chew on pieces of muscle, cartilage, cotton, denim. A woman holds a hairy strip of scalp over her head like a trophy, screaming a long stream of gibberish before consuming it.
Ray lunges from the crowd, falls to his knees and pukes long and hard into the grass.
Oh God, it’s me, he realizes. It’s me. It’s my fault. I didn’t want that to happen, but it did.
He remembers the Infected on the bridge, reaching out to him as if pleading. The Infected at the wall, trying to tell him something, oblivious to the arc of the flamethrowers. The Infected slapping their hands against the window of the house where he fought Infection.
He did not beat the bug. The bug won, and has been using him all along.
I infected all of these people, he understands.
And now they belong to me.
Cool Rod
The Hellraisers sit on the sidewalk with their backs against the wall of a burned-out bookstore, sweating in M50 gas masks with their rifles held on their laps, taking five. Ash flutters to the ground like snow in Hell; their uniforms are grimy with the stuff. Waves of heat radiate down the street, making them feel like they are being cooked in a microwave. A battalion of heavy tanks got lost and tore through Georgetown two nights ago, shooting everything they saw with Biblical flashes of light, and set fire to the entire district. The fires fizzled out, but not before filling the air with a solid, eastward-moving wall of smoke, heat and ash to greet the Dragoons’ advance, hence the M50s. Saving this city, it seems, requires the Army to destroy it one block at a time.
An M88 Hercules recovery vehicle fills the street with its massive bulk, its thousand-horsepower engine growling as its seventy tons maneuver into position to tow a disabled Stryker. His back against a brick wall, Rod studies his squad and realizes they are spent. He can see it in their worried, bloodshot eyes, barely visible through the dirty lenses covering the top half of their black Darth Vader facemasks. They have fought hard and accomplished incredible things.
But you can win only so many times before it feels like you’re losing.
Rod closes his eyes and feels his mind drift in the dark, searching for a happy thought.
The monsters boil up from the shaft, their wings buzzing—
The surge of adrenaline jerks him from his doze. He sits panting, his body electrified, until he notices the skinny soldier standing over him.
“You all right, Sergeant?” the kid drawls.
Rod wags his head, trying to get rid of the overwhelming feeling of dread left behind by the dream. “What do you want, troop?”
“LT says he wants to see you. I’m to show you the way.”
The squad watches him stand, collect his weapon and follow the kid into the maze of giant vehicles idling in the heat, like cattle watching one of their own being led away to the killing floor of the slaughterhouse.
Georgetown still smolders in the northwest. Charred bits of garbage and clothing flutter to the earth, some of it burning as it falls, touching the ground as cinders. Rod walks through air filled with smoke and vehicle exhaust that drifts but never leaves. He feels dried out, tired and grimy to the bone.
A helicopter drifts overhead, its rotors stirring the ash thick as a sandstorm.
Thank God for these masks. Just need the new air filters.
“Over here, Sergeant.”
The kid leads Rod through one of the blasted-out windows of a shattered diner. Rod’s boots crunch on broken plate glass. The restaurant was designed with a retro flavor, with lots of chrome and vinyl. Neon signage sits dark and unused along with a jukebox. It is a disorienting sight; parts of the diner look the same as the day the epidemic started. A chalkboard announces specials and dollar-ninety-nine giant milkshakes. The stools in front of the counter are empty and inviting. On the walls, framed posters of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean have been defaced with obscene graffiti by another unit passing through. Lieutenant Willie Sims sits at one of the red booths with Jared Kelley, the new platoon sergeant, who raises his hand in greeting.
“How are your men doing, Rod?” says Sims, his voice muffled by his mask.
“We’re still here, sir,” Rod answers, taking a seat opposite the officer. In the past, he usually reported his boys were itching for a good fight, in the hopes of getting something solid to do in the field. But not today. Today, he is hoping to avoid asking his squad to do anything even remotely dangerous.
The new platoon leader is a straw-haired, overgrown Iowan the Hellraisers call Techno Viking, a second lieutenant from the Third Armored Cav who recently earned his silver bar. Rod likes the gentle giant who is his new platoon leader. The man listens to the non-commissioned officers, cares about his troops, and has no crazy personal ambitions other than to keep as many of them alive for as long as possible.
Sims’s standing order is to kill anything that moves, and let God sort it out. This is not crazy bloodlust, but simple survival. The fact is they are fighting a war of extermination.
It’s called total war. In military speak, a war with an unlimited spectrum. In civilian terms, it means we fight without pause or quarter until the enemy is all dead or we are.
Rod taps his gas mask and adds, “Any word on the new filters, sir?”
“Negative,” Sims tells him.
“We can’t do our jobs if we can’t breathe.”
“I hear you, Rod. We’ll just have to make do until we get back to base.” Lines form around his eyes and Rod guesses he is smiling. “Not that I could tell the difference. I feel like I can’t breathe in this mask at any time.”
“You get used to it, sir,” Rod tells him.
“That’s what my platoon sergeant keeps saying,” Sims says, glancing at Kelley.
“You should have been around when we were using the M40s,” says Kelley, an old-timer like Rod. “Made you look like a giant insect. You could barely suck enough air to breathe. We had to run five K in one as part of the training. Half the guys puked into theirs.”
Rod laughs, a muffled barking sound coming through the mask. Kelley has tons of stories like this; he’s been in the Army since Jesus was a corporal.
Sims leans forward, planting his elbows on the table. It’s time to get down to business.
“Sergeant,” he says, “I’ve got a job for you and your men.”
Rod closes his eyes for several seconds. “Sir, I am hoping there is another way to do what needs doing. My boys have zero fight left. They need a good rest.”
“I know I’ve been leaning hard on you,” Sims says. “And you’ve done an amazing job getting your squad this far without even a scratch. But you are the best I got and I need your men to give a little more today.”
Orders are orders. Rod is a professional.
“What do you need?” he growls.
♦
It’s a recon mission. The heavy smoke cover is preventing their birds from seeing what’s happening on the ground. Captain Rhodes wants eyes all the way up to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, the projected edge of the advance by the end of the week.
The engineers cleared the road as far as the first few blocks. Third Squad advances along the empty street in a wedge formation with the flamethrower on point and Rod and the RTO, the radio/telephone operator, not far behind.