Muldoon believed the kid hadn’t just shown up at that exact place and time by chance, not in all that wide open nothing. The Taliban had already known they were there. The kid was probably just being used to collect intel on their unit. A spotter. Besides, he didn’t kill ten-year-old kids unless they were pointing a gun at him.
But Muldoon understood why Lee had given the order. Hell, Muldoon sometimes questioned whether he’d made the right call. That was one of the fucked-up things about war—you often faced horrible moral choices that sucked no matter what you did. You ended up plagued with guilt because you didn’t cut a kid’s throat.
His problem with Lee was that the man hadn’t called off the mission, even after there was a good chance they’d been spotted. If there was any chance of the Taliban leader rolling through, Lee wanted to nab him, regardless of the risk.
Lee was a good soldier, a good officer. His intelligence work had saved lives. Muldoon respected that. But the man was a fanatic when he had a cause. Fanatics got good men killed.
Not today. Not if Muldoon could help it. He and his boys were coming back alive.
THIRTY-SIX.
Wade awoke from a long, dreamless sleep with a start. He raised his head from Rawlings’s shoulder. She stirred.
“Rise and shine,” Gray said as he kicked the men awake.
The soldier had taken off his helmet and blouse and wore his tactical vest over his T-shirt. He had large stains around his armpits. He grinned under mirrored sunglasses, chewing gum. He looked like something out of Soldier of Fortune.
The asshole’s starting to enjoy this, Wade thought. Thinks it’s fun.
“On your feet, lovebirds. It’s oh-dawn hundred.”
Sunlight streamed through the closed blinds. The room was hot. Wade felt like crap. But he’d slept the whole night, from dusk to dawn, perhaps for the first time in weeks.
The classroom had a whiteboard and little desks. Books and art supplies filled the shelves. Posters hung on the yellow walls. School was out. He wondered if kids would ever go to school here again.
Rawlings gave him a bleary smile. “’Morning, Private Wade.”
He gave her hand one last squeeze and let go. “Thanks.”
“You should know I don’t let every guy I meet sleep on my shoulder.”
He smiled at her. “I got your back today, Sergeant.”
“Eat up,” Gray said. “We got a long day. Get your calories.”
A soldier burned up to six thousand calories a day in a combat zone. The Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, provided twelve hundred calories. They’d have to eat every chance they got. The men tore into the pouches and ate their breakfast cold. Gray turned to Wade with a big, satisfied smile.
What does he think, I’d tell the men NOT to eat? Wade was already tired of the pissing contest. If Gray wanted to be in charge, so be it.
Then he realized Gray wasn’t looking at him. As far as Gray was concerned, the pissing contest was over. He was looking at Rawlings. The soldier licked his lips. He had a thing for her, then. Love or lust, it didn’t matter. Gray was going to be a problem.
The men hauled themselves to their feet and checked their gear. They cleaned and reloaded their weapons and counted magazines.
“Let’s move,” Gray said. “We’ll stay on this side of the highway. Check out some houses and see if we can find a few working vehicles. Get the fuck out of here.”
The squad geared up and filed out the window. They moved quietly through the residential neighborhood, flashing hand signals to communicate where they were going and what they saw. Wade limped after them with Rawlings, refusing her help. He had to pull his own weight.
They found plenty of abandoned vehicles, but none of them would run. Even the vehicles still drivable and that had keys in the ignition had been drained of gas by scavengers.
The houses turned into low-rise apartment buildings with retail stores on the bottom floors. The squad filed down the middle of the street, weapons ready, faces pale and drawn. Dead bodies drew clouds of flies. Loose litter fluttered in the breeze. Most of the houses had Xs painted on the doors; the area had been ordered evacuated by the government. Graffiti invited them into some buildings and warned them out of others. The air smelled of smoke.
Wade and Rawlings exchanged a glance. They were going to die there, and they knew it.
The Klowns had disappeared, but they were still here. They’d gone somewhere to sleep. The sun was rising. Soon, they would wake up and come out to play.
Fisher and Brown fell out of formation and waited for Wade and Rawlings to catch up.
“He’s looking for a fight,” Fisher said. “He’s going to get us killed.”
“Dude thinks he’s Lord Humungous,” Brown added.
Wade caught up to Gray. “We should find somewhere to hole up until it gets dark.”
“Get back in line, Wade.”
“At least get out of the middle of the street. We’re sitting ducks out here.”
Gray glared at him and spit his gum onto the road. “All right.” He signaled the squad to get onto the sidewalk and keep moving.
Wade grunted with each step. They were going to need to find some vehicles soon. He doubted he’d be able to walk all the way to Hanscom.
Brown said, “We can’t shoot our way there. I got just one mag, that’s it.”
“We should break off on our own,” Fisher said. “What do you think, Sergeant?”
She said, “I think all options are on the table at this point.”
Wade opened his hand. Stop. He tapped the guy in front of him and repeated the gesture. The soldier passed the message up the line to Gray, who turned with a frown.
Wade cupped his hand to his ear. I hear something. Waved his hand to the ground. Get down. A listening halt.
The squad crouched behind the line of cars parked against the curb.
Gray looked at Wade and mouthed, What the fuck?
Then they all heard it—a distant rattle growing louder by the second.
Wade fixed his bayonet to the end of his carbine. A vehicle rolled up the road, scattering trash. The shiny BMW convertible was driven by a middle-aged couple wearing black sunglasses and smiling as if out for a pleasant Sunday drive in the city. The man wore a brown suit and tie, the woman a polka-dot dress.
The rattling sound was chains. The car was dragging dozens of bodies shredded into hamburger over miles of road. The stench of death struck the soldiers as the vehicle passed.
The car came to a halt. The V8 engine roared. The couple’s heads swiveled toward the squad’s position.
The man grinned and said, “I smell lunch.”
Gray popped up and opened fire. The Klowns jerked as blood sprayed across the windshield. They slumped in a smoking mess.
Gray turned to the squad and patted his weapon. “I’m sick of this shit. No more skulking—” He stopped and gaped up at the buildings across the street.
Wade followed his gaze. Dozens of grinning faces looked back at him from the windows.
Gray sighted on one of them. “Contact.”
Wade barely heard him over the tramp of feet on asphalt coming from all directions.
“What are we going to do?” Rawlings asked.
Wade looked at her. “We’re going to get that vehicle.”
A body landed heavily on the car in front of them, setting off its alarms.
“Christ!” Fisher screamed.
“Contact!” Gray repeated.
A few shots. Seconds later, the scattered gunfire turned into a steady roar.
The Klowns came up the street. They poured out of every building and rained from the windows like human missiles. One ran up to Wade’s group and emptied a handgun. Wright flopped backward onto the sidewalk, shot through the face. Wade returned fire, the rounds thudding into the Klown and making him do a jig before collapsing. Young propped his SAW against the hood and started hammering anything that moved.
Gray dumped a grenade into the entrance of the
building on the other side of the street. It detonated with a BOOM, vomiting smoke and burning bits of wood onto the street.
Gray pumped his fist. “Booyah!”
“Fuck!” Brown sat on the ground with an arrow through his shoulder.
“Man down!” Fisher cried.
Another body fell from the sky onto Young, knocking him down. The SAW slid off the hood. A moment later, a man popped up with it and opened fire at the squad.
Three soldiers were thrown through the plate glass window behind them.
Wade sighted on the Klown, but his gun jammed. Rawlings fired, and the man dropped. Wade spared a quick look around while he cleared the two rounds stuck in the firing chamber. The street was filled with laughing maniacs falling under a rain of hot metal. Klowns in the store behind them hacked at the wounded soldiers with hatchets and machetes. Gray was shooting grenades down the street as fast as he could load them. Half the squad was out of action. The rest fired at close range or were locked in hand-to-hand combat. A Molotov cocktail burst in their midst, catching Steele’s legs on fire. If they didn’t move, they were going to die.
Brown was laughing as he tried to stand. “It hurts soooo good!”
“To the car!” Wade shouted. “Get to the car!”
Rawlings led the way, spearing Klowns with her bayonet. Fisher picked up Brown’s carbine and fired wildly. Wade hobbled after them, dropping Klowns with aimed fire.
Gray was already at the car. He yanked out the bodies and dumped them onto the sidewalk. He got in. “Hurry up!”
Wade, Rawlings and Fisher leaped inside as Gray stomped the gas pedal. The car lurched into the crowd, slamming into Klowns and hurling them down the street. A woman tumbled over the vehicle and crashed onto the road behind them.
Wade pushed Fisher off him and looked back. The last few members of the squad unloaded everything they had before the infected swarmed over them. A grenade exploded in their midst, ripping through the crowd and covering them all in a pall of smoke.
The Klowns brayed like hyenas as they closed in with knives to collect their trophies.
THIRTY-SEVEN.
Muldoon radioed the convoy to halt. His squad piled out of the Humvees to clear the area. Lee was right; there were a lot of Klowns in the neighborhood, all heading to Hanscom. The squad went to guns on them. Muldoon called out the combat engineers.
This was a good place to break the road. On the right, the ground sloped past the guardrail through some trees to the Cambridge Reservoir; on the left, a patch of thick woods. And in between, six lanes of highway dotted with abandoned vehicles and wrecks. The job was to blow some massive craters all the way across. A piece of cake for the engineers.
They placed ten M180 cratering demolition kits at regular intervals on the north and southbound lanes of the road. More on the shoulders and median.
Each kit weighed a hundred pounds. A big rocket was mounted on a tripod and aimed at the ground. A second shaped charge was attached to one of the tripod legs.
A radio signal would trigger the rockets to fire and strike the shaped charges. The explosion of the shaped charge would rip a hole in the road about six feet deep. The rocket would then propel through the back blast into the hole and detonate at the bottom.
Then BOOM.
A crater ten to twenty feet across would appear, a massive trench across I-95 that would stop any vehicles.
Muldoon’s squad pulled security. They watched their sectors but frequently glanced at the engineers like excited children waiting for Christmas. The explosion was going to be a hell of a thing to see. The boys did love their toys.
The only problem was time. The whole thing was taking way too long. The engineers were bickering over proper placement of the demolition charges. Muldoon thought Lieutenant Donald would put an end to it. Instead, he took out a tape measure.
“Lieutenant!” Muldoon called. “We’re on the clock here.”
Donald frowned. “This has to be done properly, Sergeant.”
“We’re going to have company real, real soon.”
“My orders were to do it right.”
“Contact!” Ramirez said.
Muldoon grabbed the binoculars. “What you got?”
“A whole lot of Nasty Girls, Sergeant.”
He brought the view into focus. Visibility was poor. Smoke drifted like fog across the highway from fires burning on the other side of the reservoir. A column of vehicles and soldiers emerged from the haze. Humvees. Five-tons belching exhaust. Bands of infantry hoofing it.
No armor. Good.
Still, it was going to be a close thing.
He raised the binoculars again.
A swarm of Klowns emerged from the trees next to the highway. The usual freak show of ragged clothes, self-mutilations, homemade weapons, grisly trophies and naked captives on leashes. They raced across the southbound lanes toward the National Guard.
Come on! Muldoon wanted to scream at the Guard. They’re coming right at you!
They did nothing. They didn’t even appear to notice the Klowns.
Ramirez shook his head. “What the hell are they doing?”
You’re about to be attacked, you idiots! Fire! Fire!
The Klowns ran straight at the Guard and fell into step with the column.
Muldoon felt the blood drain from his face.
Aw, shit.
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Muldoon radioed to base and requested an airstrike. The Apaches were engaged in the west. They’d get there in thirty minutes. He didn’t have thirty minutes. He terminated contact and considered his options while his squad watched him anxiously.
Donald gave him a thumbs-up. “Good to go, Sergeant!”
Apparently, the engineer didn’t have a problem cutting corners when two companies of heavily armed, homicidal maniacs were rolling up the road.
“Hooah, sir,” Muldoon said.
They could blow the road and leave. Mission accomplished. The National Guard would be slowed, and the battalion could get out of Dodge. Then Lee would send a few whirlybirds to put the Klowns out of their misery with a little precision-guided whoopass.
Only that wouldn’t happen. Lee wouldn’t spend the fuel and ordnance. He’d be totally focused on getting the battalion to Fort Drum in one piece. And that would leave two companies of infected soldiers free to wreak havoc on what was left of the Greater Boston area. Muldoon couldn’t stomach that idea.
Brock had real problems on his hands. He wasn’t going to stop Tenth Mountain from leaving the state. He apparently didn’t have enough force available to even try. When the man threatened Lee, he’d been bluffing, hoping to deter him. As if anything deterred Lee.
It was all on Muldoon. He had nine shooters plus the engineers, three Humvees with two fifty-cals, a Mark 19 grenade launcher and some explosives. It was like a puzzle. The trick was making all the pieces fit so they added up to the annihilation of two hundred infected soldiers.
“What are we going to do, Sergeant?” Ramirez asked.
His little command could put a dent in the opposition force, sure, just before it got slaughtered. Those men down the road had all the weapons and training they had before the virus got them. They were organized. The Klowns were working together in large groups. They could maybe even strategize.
“Sergeant?”
There was one thing the Klowns didn’t have, which was any interest in force protection. They didn’t care if they were killed or if their unit was destroyed. All they cared about was getting to the party. That was what made them so tough, but also, under the right circumstances, weak.
He grinned. His men relaxed and grinned back.
Muldoon said, “We’re going to fuck them up.”
THIRTY-NINE.
They drove fast. Gray grit his teeth and yanked the wheel. The car wove through mobs of infected, past scenes of madness and savagery. The Klowns turned and acknowledged them with the delighted surprise of seeing old friends.
Wade looked behind them.
The crazies chased them in a laughing stampede. Ahead, men on ladders were busy crucifying a cop to a telephone pole.
“Problem,” Gray said.
Rawlings glared at the back of his head as if looks could kill.
“Jesus Christ,” Fisher said. “What the hell now?”
“Gas,” Gray barked. “We’re on the reserve tank.”
“We’re not far from Hanscom,” Wade pointed out. “Maybe a mile.”
“Might as well be a hundred,” Fisher said.
The car sputtered.
Gray pounded the wheel. “End of the road.”
They were on a residential street lined with abandoned cars and broken glass. They got out and stared at the flood of laughing maniacs pouring up the road. Nobody gave the order. They knew what to do. They started firing.
The carbines threw rounds downrange into the mob. Crazies dropped and were trampled by their fellows. Gray’s grenade launcher thumped. The grenade burst in their midst, sending bodies flying through a cloud of smoke.
“Bounding!” Gray shouted and took off.
Fisher stopped firing. He looked down at his weapon and released the empty magazine. “Shit, I’m out!”
“Move!” Wade shouted.
“Bounding!” Fisher ran.
The mob was getting closer by the second.
Rawlings shoved him. “Go! I’ll cover forward!”
No time to argue. He went, hobbling as fast as his ankle would take him.
Gray and Fisher had stopped behind an SUV lying on its side in a pile of glass in the middle of the street. Wade turned. He didn’t see Rawlings.
Gray pumped another grenade into his launcher and fired. “Come on, Wade!”
“I don’t see her!” Then he heard it—gunfire from one of the buildings. Rawlings was leading them off.
Fisher was already running. Gray tossed a smoke grenade onto the street. He grabbed the back of Wade’s blouse and pulled him along.
They stopped after a hundred meters, gasping for air, and looked behind them. None of the Klowns had followed them through the smoke.
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