Pandemic r-1

by Craig DiLouie

  “That doesn’t—”

  “Did you at least evacuate any medical staff still on site, or did you just kill uninfected civilians? Doctors, for Christ’s sake—”

  “We contacted each hospital and instructed them—”

  “The whole world’s going to see this when CNN gets a hold of it!”

  “There’s not going to be a CNN tomorrow!” Walker exploded.

  All work in the command post came to a halt. The staff stared at them in wonder.

  Prince blinked in surprise. For all his faults, the major thrived on order. He was loyal. He never lost his cool. He was too damned logical. He certainly never questioned Prince in front of the enlisted men under his command.

  Prince tilted his head toward a corner of the room, where they could speak in relative privacy. Walker followed him there.

  Prince said, “You’d better explain yourself, Major, because I’m about to land on you with both boots.”

  “That city out there isn’t Boston anymore. It’s not even Afghanistan. It’s worse than Afghanistan. We need to change our thinking, or we’re done.”

  Prince smoldered while the staff officers and sergeants continued to stare. He hated backtalk. He took it from Captain Lee, but he respected Lee. “Major Walker, I understand your concerns. We are overextended. But it’s not up to you. It’s not up to me. We have our orders. Having independent initiative to implement orders doesn’t mean you get to ignore them.”

  “We’ve lost control of almost every single major city in the country, Colonel. We need to start thinking about taking care of ourselves.”

  “What are you saying? We should mutiny?”

  “I’m saying the optics don’t matter anymore. The infected artillery unit doesn’t matter. The Governor doesn’t matter. Going after them is just going to dig our hole deeper. The situation is changing by the hour now. We need to think about accomplishing our primary mission at the least amount of risk. We need to start thinking about the probability of collapse.”

  Prince frowned. “Collapse.” He winced, as if the word tasted like crap. “Collapse.”

  “Across the board. I’ve been in contact with other units around the—”

  “Are you saying we should pull out of Boston and give it to the infected wrapped in a bow?”

  Walker held his ground. “Affirmative.”

  Prince growled, “We’re done here.”

  “Sir, if we don’t—”

  “Not another word, or I’ll relieve you. I swear to Christ, I’ll shoot you myself for cowardice. I’ll shoot you in the fucking head.”

  A soldier burst into the trailer, laughing and crying. The staff sergeants leaped out of their chairs and backed away.

  “I resign!” the man screamed. “I’m going Elvis!”

  Prince pulled his 9mm from its holster and flicked the safety lever. Several men stood in his way. “Make a hole!”

  Another enlisted man ran into the trailer, grabbed the first man, and pulled him out.

  Prince, burning with rage, started to follow.

  Walker blocked his path. “The man was just drunk, sir.”

  For every physical casualty, there were two psychiatric ones. But it was no excuse.

  “Get out of my way, Major.”

  “I’ll get him squared away, sir.”

  “You’re relieved. Get the fuck out of my sight.”

  “Sir, there’s one more thing you need to know.”

  “Be thankful I don’t throw you off the base and let the crazies have you.”

  “Sir, listen to me. We’ve lost contact with Big Brother.”

  The red mist dissipated. Prince’s headache returned full force. “What?”

  “We’ve lost contact with Colonel Armstrong’s command.”

  NINETEEN.

  Sergeant Ramos, half his face turned into hamburger and billowing smoke, grinned at him with the other half and showed him the pig-sticker he kept in his boot.

  Wade awoke, gasping for air.

  A soldier in ragged fatigues jumped back as Wade lunged upright.

  “You were screaming, bro,” the soldier said. “Bad for morale.”

  “He means shut the fuck up,” another soldier barked, lying against the wall.

  Wade heard the distant babble of thousands of voices. He was hot. Sweat was pouring off him. His face ached and itched. He was lying on the carpet of some type of office. From the trophies and pennants that decorated the place, he guessed the occupant to be a football coach.

  A few soldiers sat smoking in chairs or on the floor. They were from Tenth Mountain, but Wade didn’t recognize anybody from Bravo Company.

  He touched the bulky bandage on his face. His vision blurred. He was gone again.

  Sometime later, a woman’s asked, “You want some water?”

  Wade opened his eyes and drank deep from the offered canteen.

  “You’re all right,” she said. The woman was slim and athletic-looking, pretty except for the black eye and massive bruise on the left side of her face.

  “Who are you?” he croaked.

  She smiled, displaying some broken teeth. “Sergeant Sandra Rawlings. 164th Transportation Battalion. Alpha Company, the Muleskinners. Massachusetts Guard.”

  “Where’s my platoon?”

  “Can’t help you there, soldier.”

  “Wade. Private First Class Scott Wade. Bravo Company.”

  “First Battalion, Tenth Mountain, right. You look like you were in the shit. Somebody brought you here, and now here you are.”

  “What is this place?”

  “I’ll give you the nickel tour.” She held up a knife. “First, the special orientation.”

  Wade stared at the knife. He saw Ramos holding it, leering down with his Klown face.

  Gonna make a hole. Make it wide.

  “If you touch me without permission, I’ll cut off your balls,” Rawlings said. “And if you ever get the drop on me, you’d better kill me after. Understand?”

  He gaped at the knife twirling in her hand.

  I’m going to make you one of us.

  BOOM! Ha, ha!

  “Jesus, Rawlings, give the guy a break,” one of the soldiers said.

  She put the knife away and studied Wade with concern. “You okay?”

  He blinked. “No.”

  She offered her hand. “Let’s get you that nickel tour.”

  Wade let her help him up. He felt unsteady on his feet. His ankle still hurt from the fight at the hospital. He was bruised everywhere from the Humvee crash. A little dizzy, he wondered if he’d suffered a mild concussion.

  Rawlings swept her hand across one of the big picture windows. “Harvard Stadium.”

  The U-shaped stadium offered a majestic view of the playing field and stands. The field was covered in tents. Thousands of people milled around them. A safety shelter.

  “It’s something to see, huh?” Rawlings grinned. “Home of Harvard’s football team. Janis Joplin performed her last show here in 1970. It’s where The Game is played.”

  “You mean football?”

  “The Game, Wade. Harvard versus Yale. You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “I’m from Wisconsin.”

  “Never been there.” She shook her head. “I’ve been to Iraq but not Wisconsin. Funny.”

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Down there? Nobody. You got Red Cross, some local government, charities and churches. Those people are shell shocked. Many of them are armed. And they’re really pissed off.”

  “I need to report in and find my unit. Who’s in command of this unit?”

  “Nobody. You want the job, Wade?”

  “Who’s senior?”

  Rawlings jerked her thumb toward the far corner of the room. “Him.”

  Wade turned and saw a sergeant lying in a fetal ball on the floor.

  She said, “Don’t know his name. He hasn’t said a word since he got here.”

  “What is this? Why are we here?” />
  “I was guarding a truck that got thwacked. Ended up here by chance. As for you Tenth Mountain boys… Apparently, this is a casualty collection point. There are guys here from all over your battalion, some walking wounded, but mostly psychiatric casualties. Guys messed up in the head. Wounds that run deep. A few are catatonic. There are maybe thirty guys here in all.”

  Wade nodded at the massive crowds below. “And the mission is to protect them?”

  “Our job is to stay alive, Wade. This building is the university’s athletics department. We got views all around. We keep an eye on things. Helicopters drop food once a week. We go down there and get what we need at gunpoint. We let them sort out the rest on their own.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be distributing it or something?”

  Rawlings snorted. “That sounds like a great way to get killed.”

  “What’s it like down there?”

  “Just what it looks like. A shithole. Every day, you got fistfights, murders, rape and shootings over women, beer, smokes. You ask me, it’s a powder keg just waiting to go off. You got a weapon, cowboy?”

  He shook his head. “Lost it.”

  “Ammo?”

  “A few mags for my M4.”

  “We’ll see about getting you armed. One more thing, Wade. Sleep every chance you get.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because somebody is always screaming in their sleep and waking everybody up.” She sighed. “Those poor guys, the things they’ve seen and done… I don’t want to know.”

  Wade studied her face. She really was pretty. “What happened to you, Sergeant?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  TWENTY.

  Lt. Colonel Prince closed the door to his private office in the command trailer and sat at his desk with his head in his hands. The migraine bloomed behind his eyes. He could hardly think. No amount of aspirin would help. What he needed was a long, long sleep.

  Ignoring his desktop computer, which demanded his attention, he opened a drawer and scooped out a bottle of Jim Beam. He kept the bottle around for special occasions, to toast a promotion or observe the end of an operation. Sharing a shot always made the moment memorable. He wondered if drinking alone would have the opposite effect. What he needed now was to forget everything.

  He put the bottle away without drinking. He had work to do. Still he didn’t move. What was the point? Anything he did was just pushing a broom against an avalanche.

  The radio/telephone operator had contacted Harry Lee. The captain was en route back to Hanscom. He’d seen some horrible things on his recon trip. The confidential report he’d transmitted stuck to the facts, but the story was clear enough. Boston was a lost cause.

  Maybe Walker was right.

  Screw Walker.

  They still couldn’t raise regimental HQ. Prince told them to jump the ladder and try Division at Fort Drum. Again, no response.

  Prince had seen rough soldiering. He’d led his boys through some tough campaigns. But he always knew he had the full weight of the Big Green Machine behind him, a powerful military that projected American power across the planet. Not anymore.

  The idea that Division headquarters had been overrun or compromised by infection was impossible to conceive. Fort Drum wasn’t near any major cities. It was in the middle of nowhere in New York State. At first, he’d thought there must be something wrong with the communications system. But they were still able to contact other Tenth Mountain units. Those field units all reported the same problems getting through to central command.

  What was the next step? Go still higher up? Call the Pentagon?

  The Pentagon had been evacuated. The President and the Joint Chiefs were in their underground bunker at Mount Weather, making their erratic decisions without any knowledge of what was really happening on the ground.

  Prince was going to have to make his own decisions. The right course eluded him. He knew the current strategy wasn’t working, but he couldn’t just pull his boys out of Boston and give up. More than six hundred thousand people had lived in the city before the plague. Another four million lived in the Greater Boston area. The survivors were desperate. They needed help.

  If his lightfighters couldn’t do anything, what good were they? Why bother?

  He’d always thought the world would end suddenly. An asteroid would come, humanity would have a week to get its shit in order, and then BOOM.

  He’d never imagined a plague would do the job, and with such horror. A plague in which everybody became an enemy, everything familiar became a threat, every loved one was perverted and defiled.

  Like Susan and Frankie. Your own family was shot down in the street like dogs by men wearing uniforms just like yours.

  Stars flared in his vision. He groaned.

  He needed some creative thinking. Goddammit, he was going to have to get Walker back. But he’d get the man squared away first.

  Prince was still rattled from their last encounter. Walker had the logic—and personality—of Mr. Spock and the loyalty of a bloodhound. If he’d lost enough faith to challenge a superior officer the way he had, he had to have a damned good reason. Or maybe he was just cracking under the stress. A lot of men did.

  He opened the drawer and looked at the bottle. Forget everything. He closed it again.

  Maybe he should appoint Lee as his XO. Lee was a straight shooter, and the man had balls. They’d destroy the rogue artillery unit that was terrorizing the Boston core and put the Governor in his place. They’d find a new strategy to check the spread of infection across the area and stop the violence.

  They could do it. They still had a mission.

  Somebody knocked on the door.

  Prince touched the 9mm at his hip. “Come in.”

  The radio/telephone operator entered the room. “Good news, Colonel.”

  Prince stared at the man. He hadn’t heard good news in over a month.

  The RTO added, “We’ve established contact with regimental HQ.”

  “Outstanding, son.” Prince stood and followed the man into the work area. For the first time in weeks, he started to feel like things were going his way. He picked up the headset. “Wizard Six. Over.”

  Armstrong roared, “WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING MALFUNCTION, JOE?”

  Even though Colonel Armstrong couldn’t see him, Prince stood at attention. He’d gotten such treatment before. Armstrong wasn’t one to mince words; he called it “tough love.” Clearly, the regimental commander knew about Prince’s failures: the destruction of the hospitals, the Governor rejecting his offer of sanctuary, the infected rogue artillery unit bombing downtown, the steady losses of men and materiel…and his utter failure to achieve his mission. What could he say that would change the commander’s opinion? That he was going to appoint a new XO?

  He felt his optimism wash away like sand in the surf.

  “DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? ARE YOU DEAF?”

  “I heard you loud and clear, sir. Over.” After a long silence, he added: “Sir?”

  Armstrong exploded into insane laughter.

  Prince blanched. “May I speak to your XO?”

  “That might be a little tough, Joe. I ate his tongue.” Again, that explosive, shrieking laughter came through the headset.

  Prince terminated the connection. He went back into his private office and closed the door. He sat at his desk and ran his hands over his crew cut. This is bad. This is really bad. The chain of command was broken. First Battalion was officially off the reservation.

  Another knock came at the door.

  “Come in,” he said mechanically. His head pounded to the tune of his rapid heartbeat.

  Lieutenant Torres entered the room, looking pale. “Sir, I forwarded you a new PowerPoint file we just received from HQ. An advisory.”

  Prince shook his head. “Not now.”

  He was going to have to organize a mission to Troy to provide aid to HQ and help re-establish the chain of command. With what? We’re stretched to the breaking po
int.

  He’d work with the commanders of the other battalions. A joint mission. Then he frowned. Why the hell was HQ sending PowerPoint presentations? Didn’t they know they had a major crisis on their hands?

  “You need to see this, Colonel,” Torres insisted.

  Prince looked at the man’s face. Torres was a tough son of a bitch, but he appeared to be on the verge of tears.

  “This came from regimental HQ?” Prince asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Prince located the file on his computer and opened it.

  TWENTY-ONE.

  T he first slide presented a title promising authorization guidelines for lethal use of force against armed civilians. That was bad enough, as it suggested some people had gotten so angry that they were taking shots at Army units in the field.

  The second slide showed a photo of a severed head with a lit cigarette in its mouth. It wore a helmet. The eyes had been carved out and replaced with shiny pennies.

  The third depicted a pile of hacked-off body parts and Tenth Mountain patches torn from uniforms.

  Others displayed scenes of torture and murder. Laughing soldiers holding down their comrades and butchering them. Sodomy. A screaming head in a vise. A crying man with wires wrapped around his head, the wires leading back to a car battery. Another with a burning tire on his head.

  One image showed a large crowd of infected soldiers in the dining facility, laughing and wrestling on the floor. Their uniforms were stained and ragged. Some fired their weapons into the ceiling. The leering cooks slopped chili into bowls in the chow line. A human foot protruded from one of the pots.

  Prince closed the file and deleted it. He wished it was paper so he could burn it.

  Then he went to call in an airstrike.

  Oddly, his headache had disappeared.

  TWENTY-TWO.

  Wade explored the building. The other rooms, all of them offices adorned with sports paraphernalia, offered views of Boston. In one, three soldiers had opened a window to let in the air. They stood looking out at the skyline of South Boston.