TEN.
Gunfire rattled. Wade felt the muffled thuds in his feet. First Squad was in action downstairs. Outside in the hall, the screaming stopped. Then it started again.
“Fix bayonets,” Ramos said quietly.
In Afghanistan, Wade hadn’t used his bayonet once. But they weren’t in Afghanistan. This was a different enemy. This enemy didn’t stop until their hands were on you or they were dead.
He gripped his carbine, weapon shouldered and pointed at the floor. The fireteam glared fiercely at Ramos, waiting for the order to step off. They wanted to move, shoot something. Get it over with. Thousands of people slept inside the hospital. If they all woke up, the squad’s only hope of survival was to rush and shoot their way to the Humvees.
Then call in an airstrike.
Ramos keyed his headset microphone to contact Lieutenant Harris, who led the team on the floor above. “Antidote Six, this is Antidote Two-Two. How copy, over?”
“Antidote Two-Two, this is Antidote Six. We have heavy contact. The hospital is compromised. Repeat. The hospital is—”
A long, sustained explosion of gunfire drowned out the rest. The soldiers glanced upward. The Klowns were on every floor, it seemed.
“Bad copy, Antidote Six. ‘Hospital compromised’ is received. Request orders. Over.”
Ramos waited for Harris’s response and got more thunder instead.
“Antidote Six, Antidote Six, this is Antidote Two-One. Over.” The sergeant leading First Squad was trying to cut in, his voice professional but edged with panic. “Antidote Six, how copy?”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Williams said.
This is getting seriously bad, Wade thought. “We’ve got to move, Sergeant.”
“And I have to find out if we’re bugging out or sticking with the original OPORD. So shut it.” Ramos repeated his request for orders into his headset.
Wade exchanged a glance with Ford. Does the LT think we’re still good to go for this shit mission? An understrength platoon against thousands of homicidal maniacs? They had to get out. Every second they delayed sealed their fate. Where the hell’s the rest of Bravo Company?
“We’ll be out of this in no time,” Ford said. “Back at the FOB for a hot and a cot.”
Wade nodded, though he didn’t believe a word of it.
A massive boom shook the building. Acoustic tiles fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Somebody upstairs had thrown a grenade. The screaming in the hall died, replaced by waves of howling laughter.
Wade took a deep breath and felt sudden calm wash over him. His pulse slowed, and he became intensely aware of his surroundings.
Ramos was a seasoned non-com, one of the Army’s centurions. He knew what he was doing. Wade trusted him to get them out. Otherwise, it was out of Wade’s hands. He would fight for himself and his comrades. Either he would die, or he wouldn’t.
Ramos shook his head. “All right, we’re going to—”
“All Antidote Ops, retrograde to the Humvees. Abort operation. Antidote Six, out.”
“Antidote Six, Antidote Two-Two. That’s a solid copy. Out.” The sergeant loaded a round into his shotgun’s firing chamber. “Listen up. We’re getting out of here. Hard and fast.”
“I was scheduled to go on leave two days ago,” Eraserhead muttered.
“We know, we know,” Williams said.
“I should be in a bar somewhere, getting so drunk I piss myself.”
“We know,” Williams repeated.
Another grenade went off upstairs. The lights blinked several times.
“At least you’ll still get the chance to piss yourself,” Williams added.
Downstairs, the gunfire stopped. The lack of sound was even more alarming than the grenades.
“Step off in three, two, one,” Ramos said.
“See you on the other side,” Eraserhead told them.
Wade tensed, ready to kill.
It wasn’t murder anymore. It was survival.
Ford opened the door.
ELEVEN.
Lt. Colonel Prince watched the landmark office tower get bombed on live television. It was mesmerizing in its way. Not the violence, but the fact nobody was doing a damned thing about it.
That alone told him everything he needed to know about the current situation.
Another section of the building vomited fire, smoke and glass. The camera shook. Prince recognized the building. The Federal Reserve Bank. At the bottom of the screen, triple captions scrolled public service announcements and propaganda. In the upper right: LIVE.
The United States Army had an operations manual for everything. Prince liked to say, “There’s an op for that.”
There was no op for what he was seeing. Whoever was doing the shooting was military.
“Major Walker,” he barked.
The major signed a clipboard and returned it to a staff sergeant manning the radios. He approached wearing a slight smile Prince wanted to punch off his face.
“Colonel?”
“Something amuse you, Major?”
“No, sir. Just trying to be positive in front of the men, sir.”
Walker was hiding something. Prince had never liked his executive officer. The man was a politician, a cold snake, and he sucked as a soldier. Walker was nothing more than a desk warrior. But he was a wizard at getting things done.
The colonel let it pass. He found he really didn’t care what Walker might be hiding behind that creepy little smile of his. “How’s the operation coming along?”
“Which operation, sir?”
“Mercy.” That was the name the Brass had given the operation to terminate the infected in the major quarantine hospitals. It involved three companies, most of their fighting strength.
“Forces are en route.”
“Outstanding. What about the Governor?”
“We’re still talking to his people.”
Colonel Armstrong, commander of the 55th Infantry Regiment—the “Double Nickel”—and Prince’s boss, had issued another critical operational order, or OPORD. His boys were to round up the governor of Massachusetts and other senior civilian officials and put them in a safe place, per the Federal Continuity of Government plan.
“Talk faster. Get it done. Understand?”
The major’s tall, slim body stiffened into a respectful stance. “Yes, sir.”
On CNN, another round hit the Federal Reserve Bank. Prince flinched as if he were there. The building was burning in a dozen places, pumping black smoke into the air.
According to the Army, after two to four days of little rest, an extended sleep is needed—twelve to fourteen hours. The colonel had barely slept in over a month. Exhaustion on this level was like being drunk. Leaders made mistakes when they were this tired. He needed to stay sharp.
He dry swallowed another Advil and tried not to think about that. The muscles in his face were numb. His head pounded in time with his steady heartbeat, threatening a blinding migraine.
Prince had often marveled at how much power he held commanding a light infantry battalion. Eight hundred men. Tenth Mountain. Climb to Glory. The best infantry in the world.
They were First Battalion, part of the 55th Infantry Regiment, Fifth Brigade Combat Team, Tenth Mountain Division, XVIII Airborne Corps. Six companies—Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo (an attached forward support company providing logistics), and HQ (call sign, The Wizard). These forces were supplemented by the Tomcats, an attack aviation battalion; the Trailblazers, a scout platoon; Thunder, a mortar platoon; and Nightingale, a medic platoon.
When Colonel Armstrong, call sign Big Brother, had contacted Prince and explained that the Army had been called into action, Prince had responded like a dog freed from its leash.
He thought it would take days. Weeks rolled by. The division was soon spread all over New England, getting chewed up by real estate agents and housewives turned into laughing sadists and suicide bombers.
They hadn’t cleaned up the mess. They�
��d become part of it.
When Big Brother reached out to him, he’d had a choice. He could have gone home and protected Susan and Frankie. If he had, they wouldn’t have caught the Bug, and they wouldn’t have been shot down in the street like rabid dogs. Prince had thought he could do more for them where he was, helping to maintain order and halt the spread of infection. Over the past two months, he’d accomplished little more than slowing the tide, and even that was questionable.
The massive, constant headache he suffered had started right after he realized that.
Walker eyed him with open concern. “Is there anything else, sir?”
“Affirmative.” Prince pointed at the video image of the blazing office tower, which was still taking hits. “That’s Boston. And that’s heavy ordnance. On live television. Who the hell is doing the shooting, and why is nobody putting a stop to it?”
Walker said nothing.
“Get me some answers.”
“Right away, sir.” Walker’s enigmatic smile returned as he gave the video monitor a final lingering glance. “The apocalypse will be televised.”
TWELVE.
Ramos raised his Sledgehammer as he cleared the doorway. Wade followed, pointing his carbine the other way. Eraserhead with the SAW, the squad automatic weapon, was next, followed by Williams with his M4/203.
Grinning Klowns filled the corridor. Several stomped on the half-stripped, mangled body of a nurse lying on the floor. Others watched and roared with laughter, hands on their hips or gripping their stomachs. The nurse was laughing too.
When the infected noticed the soldiers pointing guns at them, they cheered and shrieked with glee as if the guests had finally arrived at their surprise party. Once again, Wade was disturbed by their faces. They looked like clowns with their wide glassy eyes and crazy leers.
One stumbled close to Ramos and giggled. Ramos cut him in half with a blast of buckshot.
As if they’d been waiting for a signal, the crazies charged.
Wade sighted center mass on a woman and fired a burst. The recoil hummed against his shoulder. She went down. Another took her place. Another. And another.
Spent shell casings flew from the carbine’s eject port and clattered to the floor. The metallic crack of the carbines and the roar of the sergeant’s shotgun pounded his ears.
Eraserhead got the SAW into position and fired controlled bursts. The mob disintegrated, bodies blowing apart under the withering fire. Tracer rounds streamed down the hallway.
Wade gasped. The scene was like something out of a movie.
And more kept coming.
“Reloading!” Wade pocketed an empty magazine and slapped a new one into his carbine. He pulled the charging bolt, aimed and fired.
Behind him, the Sledgehammer boomed. The infected were coming at them from the other end of the corridor.
Combat was typically unpredictable, but Wade knew their survival here was a matter of simple mathematics. Either they had enough bullets, or they didn’t. Even if they did, if there were too many infected, their guns would eventually overheat and start jamming.
That was how military units got overrun by crowds of infected: human wave attacks against small groups of soldiers who fired until their weapons jammed. Klowns didn’t take prisoners. They either killed you or made you one of them.
Wade fired. A bald man’s head erupted in a geyser of brains and blood.
“Nice shot,” Eraserhead said. “I knew you had it in you.”
“Go to hell,” Wade told him.
The SAW was rocking now, firing nine hundred rounds per minute, every fifth a blurred tracer that pulsed strobing red light. Eraserhead was grinning. “Time for some payback.”
A severed hand trailing a long rag of flesh and tissue slapped against Wade’s chest and flopped to the floor. The Klowns were throwing body parts at them.
Williams dropped an empty magazine from his carbine. “Reloading!”
Wade glanced at the hand lying on the floor. He laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. It just rolled out of him. He wasn’t infected. The whole situation was insane. He’d survived a year of combat against the Taliban, and he was going to die fighting a mob of murderous maniacs throwing arms and legs at him. He had to either laugh or scream.
But laughing was a good way to get himself killed. He half expected his comrades to train their weapons on him. Instead, Eraserhead started chuckling.
Then they were all laughing at the infected as they killed them by the dozens.
Laughter really was contagious.
The crowd was thinning. The soldiers kept the fire hot. Eraserhead put down the last of them with a few bursts. The squad ceased fire.
Wade raised his goggles, which had fogged again. The hallway was shrouded in a thick, smoky haze. Broken, bleeding bodies lay in piles in their shredded hospital gowns. The sight should have sickened him, but he could only stare in morbid fascination. He knew he shouldn’t look at all. He knew the tableau would haunt his nightmares the rest of his life.
Ramos tapped his shoulder. “Get ready to move!”
Wade blinked, surprised he was still alive. “Roger that, Sergeant.”
They reloaded. They’d burned through most of their ammunition, and they were going to have to get out of the hospital quickly.
Eraserhead opened the SAW’s feed tray, laid in a new ammo belt and slammed the tray shut. He yanked the charging bolt. “Good to go.”
Wade heard muffled reports. The gunfire on the floor below them was barely audible over the loud ringing in his ears. No sounds filtered from above.
Ramos tapped his headset. “I can’t get the LT on the radio. We’re going up.”
Nobody protested. Leave no man behind. It wasn’t just a noble idea; it motivated them to face danger, knowing their comrades would come for them.
They’d have to move fast. The building was filling up with crazies awake and dying to play.
The fireteam chased after Ramos. They flung open the stairwell door and sprinted up the stairs, gasping under the weight of gear and armor.
They banged onto the sixth floor, weapons at the ready.
Nothing. They bounded down the hall. Two men covered while the others moved.
The walls were painted in blood.
“Jesus Christ,” Ford said.
Grimacing bodies and spent brass covered the floor. Some of the bodies wore uniforms and clutched broken weapons. One soldier, his back against a wall, still held the barrel of his rifle in his mouth. A section of wall smoldered, blown out by a grenade. Wade looked up at the ceiling. A bare leg protruded from a shattered acoustic tile next to a dangling fluorescent fixture. Gunsmoke hung in the air.
Ramos called a security halt. The men stopped and formed a circle, backs to the center, guns pointed outward.
“It’s like a slaughterhouse,” Ford said.
The soldiers here had died in hand-to-hand fighting. The mob had rolled over them and moved on. Wade recognized the faces of men he knew well: Eckhardt, Jones, Hernandez, Richardson, Lopez, Cox. He didn’t see Lieutenant Harris.
Despair washed over him. His mind flashed to mountain views and firefights, freezing together in cramped bunkers at Combat Outpost Katie, patrols carrying seventy pounds of gear. Endless hours of joking, hazing, rough sports and petty squabbling.
Wade looked at his squad and knew they were remembering the same things.
“Those motherfuckers,” Eraserhead hissed.
“Our guys gave better than they got,” Wade said.
Eraserhead spit on a corpse. “How does that make it right?”
Ramos nodded. “Honorable deaths.”
Wade remembered that last horrible night at Katie, when they all almost died. These men had looked the tiger in the eye that night only to fly home to America and get ripped apart by a swarm of crazy people.
Then he pushed his feelings aside. They were still under the hammer, and they all had to stay focused if they wanted to avoid the same fate. The men raised their g
oggles.
Williams pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “I’ll get their tags.”
Wade heard a sound and froze. Then, he heard it again—a moan.
The men readied their weapons.
“Let’s get out of here, Sergeant,” Wade said.
Ramos shook his head. They had to check for survivors.
The sergeant raised his shotgun as a soldier stumbled out of one of the patient rooms. Wade gasped. Lieutenant Harris, pale from loss of blood, had one hand shoved down his pants. His crotch was covered with a massive red stain.
Ramos lowered his gun. “It’s all good, LT. We’ll get you out of here.”
Ford looked as if he might cry. “What did they do to him?”
Wade knew. They all knew.
Eraserhead opened his medical kit. “I got this.”
Harris pulled his hand out of his pants and flung a spray of blood.
The soldiers lurched away sputtering. Harris roared with laughter and stuffed his hand down his pants again. “Hey! You want some more of the good stuff?”
Ramos shot the man in the face. He growled and spat.
Wade touched his cheek. Blood on his gloves.
Infected blood.
He raised his weapon at the same time as the others.
THIRTEEN.
The office tower was going down. Most of it, anyway. A giant piece wrenched clear and slid off in a biblical cloud of smoke and dust.
Prince ground his teeth. For him, that building symbolized everything. America’s strength reduced to rubble. His own impotence to stop it. The plague was stripping away everything that gave him a sense of self worth: his family, his command, his country.
“What did you find out?” he barked at Walker.
“I had an RTO perform a quick radio check with our special weapons and air units,” the major reported. “I don’t think that’s us.”
Prince glared at the man, his chest burning. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“That’s not us, sir. It’s not our mortars or air units doing the shooting.”
“Are you an idiot, Major? Of course it’s not us. That’s heavy artillery. Battlefield howitzers. Not mortars. It’s the National Guard. A unit from the 101st Field Artillery. I would expect even you to recognize the difference.”
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