Tooth And Nail

by Craig DiLouie

  “You didn’t really think the Army was going to leave us alone, did you?” says Carrillo. “We’re one of the only units in the area that’s still obeying orders.”

  “We’re one of the only units still alive,” Ratliff says.

  “They at least had to try to get us killed,” Rollins says, but nobody laughs.

  “Quit your bitching and gear up, boys,” McGraw says, stomping into the room. His sleeves are uncharacteristically rolled up, revealing his hairy Popeye forearms with a skull tattooed on one and crossed rifles on the other. “I want you out in the hallway, against the far wall in single file, ready to move, in fifteen. Drop your fartsack, Ratliff. Your poncho, too. We’re going light. Bring lots of ammo and otherwise only what you need. We’re leaving everything else for the Hajjis.”

  The boys burst into laughter. They’ve taken to calling the Mad Dogs “Maddy” and the civilians “Hajjis” over the past few days, and hearing one of the NCOs do the same—especially their own blunt, burly Sergeant McGraw—is hilarious to them.

  Many of these boys will leave their warm sleeping bags and risk their necks tonight purely out of devotion to their NCOs. They respect the non-coms. Wherever they go, the boys will follow.

  “Anybody got any more glow sticks?” Rollins says. “I can’t hardly see shit in here.”

  “Use your NVGs,” Mooney says. “It’ll be good practice.”

  McGraw turns at the sound of Mooney’s voice, points at him, and says, “You.” He points at Wyatt. “And you.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Wyatt says.

  “Get your shit on, meatballs,” McGraw tells them. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Mooney says darkly. The other boys are already tearing into MREs for breakfast. His stomach growls.

  They are on the move after a few minutes. The boys of the other squads are already spilling out of the other classrooms in the wing and filling up the hallway. Most squat against the student lockers in grim silence, their carbines between their knees. Some race out of line to use the john before the company steps off. Somebody from First Platoon cranks up “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ’N Roses on a CD player to get their juices flowing and wake up the Hajjis.

  At the end of the hallway, McGraw tells them to wait, his eyes on the Platoon Sergeant, who is arguing with several civilians.

  Somebody calls out for fresh batteries for his NVGs. The boys here are finishing up their last smokes, dropping the butts and grinding them out with their boots. Then two soldiers from First Platoon’s Weapons Squad show up carrying a crate of ammo between them, and start passing it out.

  Top up, they say. Put a mag in every spare pocket. Bring as much as you can carry.

  Mooney steps closer to the Platoon Sergeant and listens in on his argument.

  “You will be okay here if you keep your heads down and don’t attract attention,” Kemper is saying. “There’s plenty of food. We had crews filling up every bottle and bucket in the place with tap water. You’ve got extra gas we siphoned from the refrigerated trucks, so you’ve got a good supply of fuel for the generator.”

  “Your duty is to help these people, Sergeant,” one of the civilians says.

  “My duty is to follow my orders.”

  “You work for us, goddamnit.”

  “I work for the U.S. Army, Ma’am.”

  Kemper walks away, nods to McGraw, and continues down the hall, which suddenly grows increasingly loud and chaotic as the NCOs begin ordering and dressing their squads for the movement. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the CO made some last-minute changes to the order of march, promoting some of the sergeants to the rank of LT, combining squads, and otherwise rebuilding a new overstrength company on the fly from the wreckage of a battalion. Some of the boys are shouting out names, panicked; entire squads appear to be missing.

  Mooney turns around and sees Martin and Boomer tagging along with their .30-cal M240. Martin gives him a thumbs up. Mooney frowns. He never knows if Martin is being nice or an asshole. In Iraq, giving somebody a thumbs up is the same as giving them the finger.

  “You know what’s going on?” he whispers.

  Martin shakes his head, grinning.

  “No talking,” McGraw says.

  They turn the corner and enter an empty hallway. Soon, the sounds of what’s left of First Battalion recede into the gloom.

  Kemper switches on the SureFire flashlight attached to his carbine.

  “Turn that thing off,” a voice says in the dark. “I’m right here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kemper says.

  Captain Bowman steps out of an empty, dusty-smelling classroom, a glow stick dangling from his load-bearing vest. The monochromatic light stick, like the NVG phosphor screen, is purposefully colored green since the eye can distinguish between more shades of green than other phosphor colors. He’s the only one of them who has a light source.

  Kemper says to the MGR and AG, “I want you to set up the thirty-cal here, pointing that way. We’re going to the end of this hallway. If you hear shooting, you keep your cool and hold your fire. If I say shoot, you start shooting anybody with a flash light or a glow stick. But only if I tell you to shoot. Is that clear, Specialist?”

  “Hooah, Sergeant,” Martin says.

  “Good man.”

  The Captain gives Mooney and Wyatt the once-over. Mooney stands at attention and says, “Sir, Private Mooney reports!”

  Wyatt echoes the ritual.

  Bowman smiles at them. “Always you two. At ease, men.”

  “What are we doing here, Sarge?” says Boomer.

  “It’s personal,” Kemper answers.

  Martin and Boomer finish setting up the M240. The group moves down the hall.

  Ahead, in the darkness, Mooney hears murmuring voices, occasionally punctuated by a strident yell. His stomach begins a series of flying leaps. He suddenly feels certain that something bad is happening. And that something very, very bad is going to happen.

  The Captain is talking into his handheld.

  “I’ve got a couple of the men with me, but I’ll be coming around the corner to talk to you alone,” he says into his handset. “All right?”

  Mooney gave up his own radio after his recon mission, so he doesn’t hear the response. But the Captain keeps moving, so it must be all right.

  “Here I come now,” Bowman says, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hold your fire. Don’t shoot. We’re just going to have a conversation.”

  The Captain turns the corner and disappears.

  Kemper follows closely until he reaches the corner, then squats down, listening. McGraw whispers to Mooney and Wyatt to prepare for action on his command.

  Mooney drops to one knee, feeling the comforting cushion of his kneepad, sweating in his BDUs. His heart pounds against his ribs and his blood is crashing in his ears. The moment Captain Bowman disappeared around the corner, the tension began mounting until it has now become almost impossible to breathe.

  “Todd, sorry we have to meet like this,” a voice says.

  Lieutenant Bishop, Wyatt whispers.

  “Same here,” Bowman answers.

  “Well, we’re not going, as you can see. We’re going to stay here and rebuild.”

  “I understand.”

  “We don’t want anything to do with your war. We’re not in the Army anymore. And we’re not going to die to keep the memory of a dead country alive.”

  “I understand. But I still need to talk to the men.”

  “Go right ahead. There’s nothing you can say to change their minds, though. They already survived one massacre. They’re not going to walk into another.”

  “Men!” Bowman says.

  The Captain’s voice echoes through the hallways until it becomes a ghostly murmur.

  “Men!” he repeats. “You can stay here. We’re not going to force you to come with us. What’s done is done. It’s all right.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Bishop warily. “What
do you want in return?”

  “One of you is a traitor against the United States, and must be punished.”

  “And who—what are you doing?”

  A pistol bangs loudly, echoing sharply in their ears with an almost physical impact, making them flinch.

  Another bang. A wave of cordite in the air, tingling the nose.

  Mooney can sense McGraw tensing ahead of them. He can smell the man’s nervous sweat as he prepares to rush forward and provide cover fire for the Captain. But nothing happens. The seconds tick by. The deserters do not shoot.

  The ringing in Mooney’s ears slowly fades.

  “What’s done is done,” Bowman says. He calls out into the gloom, “If we are forced to return, you will be accepted back into the Battalion with no questions asked. If we don’t come back, take good care of the civilians. I am intending to tell the General that you volunteered to stay behind. There will be no dishonor for you, as long as you stay true to yourself and the people in your charge. While they remain alive and well, you are still in the United States Army.”

  After a few moments of silence, Bowman adds, “Well. God be with you men.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the boys whisper in the dark.

  Moments later, Captain Bowman returns, his glow stick almost glaring in Mooney’s eyes. The light is trembling, and it takes Mooney a moment to realize it is the Captain who is shaking. The man just shot down a fellow officer while a dozen, two dozen—it could have been scores—of deserters aimed a variety of automatic weapons at him.

  “We can’t use them if they’re broken,” Bowman says. “We have truly become a volunteer army tonight.” He looks dazed and exhausted. “Bishop was a traitor, though. That I did to fulfill my duty to the Army. Things may be falling apart, but we still are the U.S. Army.”

  Kemper and McGraw nod somberly. There is no need to explain.

  Bowman sees Mooney and Wyatt, takes a deep breath, and smiles. “Thanks for the backup, men.”

  “You’re welcome, sir,” Mooney rasps, his mouth dry.

  “Now let’s see if we can get the hell off this island tonight.”

  Thrust and hold, move.

  Withdraw and hold, move.

  Attack position, move

  The boys file out of the school’s front doors two by two, a long tan line that snakes through the dark, bristling with bayonets. The first squad in the column fans out to form a wedge, making the formation look like an arrow. The NCOs walk alongside the column, keeping a tight grip on their squads. While they will be moving in company strength, each squad will be acting independently, since there is no talking and no talking means no communication up and down the chain of command.

  They all know where to go, how to get there, and what the rules of engagement are. No shooting unless it is a matter of life and death. Safeties on. They will push through with the bayonet. Speed, surprise and night vision will be their allies on this mission.

  Near the front of the column, Mooney marches along in his NVGs, a pair of goggles that look into an amplified electronic image of the outside world on a green phosphor screen. This allows the soldiers to see even in starlight, which is all that is available tonight, by amplifying ambient light thirty thousand times and then creating an image rendered in green. The soldiers can see Maddy, but Maddy can’t see them back.

  Maddy can, however, hear them making an awful racket. The column rattles along, boots crunching glass and kicking cans and bottles, coughing on waves of stink circulating through the otherwise silent city. But despite the noise, the Mad Dogs do not attack. They appear to be dormant.

  Mooney hears a scuffle on his left, followed by a hideous thunk sound and a sharp yelp. He turns just in time to see his sergeant pull his shovel out of a woman’s head and shove her corpse to the asphalt. McGraw signals to them: Don’t stop, keep moving.

  The Sergeant whispers in the dark, “Sorry, Ma’am.”

  Mooney cannot stop himself from wondering who she was before she crossed over and became one of them. An important movie producer? A magazine editor? A meter maid? A substitute teacher? Did she have a husband or was she single? Did she have kids? Was she planning a vacation in Mexico over the winter?

  Was she a terrorist who was going to blow up New York?

  Was she a scientist about to discover the cure for cancer?

  We’ll never know.

  Many of the infected are walking barefoot across broken glass, leaving trails of blood behind them. Others have gaping flesh wounds that are leaking pus from scores of infections, not just from the germs transmitted by bites, but because New York has become an open sewer over the past several days. Their stench is horrific, slowly winning its war against the vapor rub the soldiers have slathered under their noses. These people are scarcely human anymore.

  But Mooney does not hate them. He just can’t see them as monsters. Several days ago, they were regular people. It is hard to hate slaves. They have no choice.

  Ahead, he sees more infected. There are clusters of them standing listless in the dark, apparently sleeping on their feet, their shoulders rising and falling as they pant with rapid, shallow breaths. Others sob and cry out as if from deep sadness.

  The stench grows in strength, making his stomach waver at the edge of a convulsion. He tells himself not to cough, not to make a sound.

  He passes a Mad Dog who has sensed their presence and is trying to find them blindly, his eyes blinking in the dark. The man suddenly moves into the blind spot of Mooney’s peripheral vision. NVGs offer the advantage of night vision even in near total darkness, but have three big disadvantages that are unnerving and even dangerous.

  Soldiers used to 20/20 eyesight during the day must quickly adapt to a reduction in visual acuity to 20/25 to 20/40 at best. In other words, the NVGs produce a fuzzy image. While the fact there is no moon tonight is probably saving their lives, it is also giving their NVGs very little ambient illumination to work with.

  While the NVG visor is binocular, the actual lens is monocular, robbing its wearer of depth perception. The boys stumble along, adapting the way they walk so they can maintain balance. Some occasionally flinch when they see Maddies wandering around, because they are not sure how far away they are.

  Meanwhile, soldiers used to having a greater than one hundred eighty-degree field of view must adapt to forty-degree tunnel vision. The soldiers must wag their heads constantly to see if Maddy is coming up on their sides, where they are virtually blind.

  Mooney hears the Mad Dog sniffing the air and growling on his left. He wags his head in time to see his squad leader bash in the man’s skull with his shovel.

  McGraw does not apologize.

  Mooney’s mind races: Investment banker? Famous actor? Father of three?

  He is trying not to think about his turn on the front line stabbing these people in the dark and pushing them to the ground. He has shot lots of people over the past few days, and even bayoneted the sniveling thing on the floor in the science classroom back at the school. But he did that without thinking. Shooting somebody is one thing. Intentionally putting a knife into a person’s body is another. Most soldiers hate the weapon.

  Second Squad steps out of line and squats, exhausted by the fighting, waiting for the rest of the column to pass so that they rejoin it as its last section. It is now First Squad’s turn to be on point.

  Mooney takes a deep breath, constantly moving and analyzing the objects swimming in a dozen shades of green in his limited view.

  Ahead, floating in the gloom, the pale bodies of Mad Dogs sleep in their strange huddles and wander among the ruins of an abandoned traffic jam, stumbling over torn luggage and dead bodies.

  The air is suddenly pierced by wailing, one of the infected crying out in sadness and pain.

  The column is not supposed to deviate from a straight line until the first turn four blocks ahead. If Maddy blocks the column, bayonet him, push him to the side, and keep moving. Those are his orders. If he disobeys, he might get everybody k
illed.

  The Mad Dog directly in front of him appears to be vibrating on his green phosphor screen, his large body undefined and fuzzy and his long matted beard writhing like a sizzling nest of worms. His left eye is swollen shut and leaking black fluid from an infection. His mouth yawns open. He appears to be grinning.

  Mooney falls into a boxer’s stance, left foot forward, body erect, knees slightly bent, balancing on the balls of his feet.

  He was trained for bayonet fighting. There are four attack movements that he learned back in Basic: Thrust, butt stroke, slash and smash. There are friendlies on his left and right, so he is limited to the thrust. The basic idea is to put the blade into any vulnerable part of your opponent’s body.

  The biggest problem is picking the spot. It is during this moment of thought that the revulsion sets in. Many soldiers simply aim center-mass at the enemy’s torso. Either they do not have time to think, or they don’t want to.

  Mooney pulls the stock of his M4 close to his right hip, extends his left arm, and lunges forward on his left foot with all his might, spearing the Mad Dog between the ribs and pushing him. The man shrieks, stumbling backward and almost taking the rifle with him. Mooney pulls hard and retrieves the blade, which slides out of the man’s body reluctantly with an awful sucking sound.

  Maddy stumbles to the left, trips over a fallen motorcycle, and doesn’t get up.

  Another Mad Dog steps out of the gloom, an old woman dressed in the rags of a hospital gown, blood splashed on her face and chest. Her toothless mouth gapes at him, gurgling a stream of bubbling drool rich with virus.

  Thrust and hold, move. Withdraw and hold, move. Resume attack position, move. Take a step forward.

  Next to him, Finnegan curses quietly as his carbine is wrenched out of his grasp. He chases after it and retrieves it, stumbling and gasping.

  After ten minutes of this, slowly carving their way through two blocks, Corporal Eckhardt taps his shoulder and takes his place at the front of the column.

  Mooney falls back in line, feeling an overwhelming compulsion to tear off his NVGs and let the world go black. The tendons in his aching arms seem to have hardened into steel and a sharp pain lances through his left wrist. Bayonet fighting is punishing work. He is dying for a drink of water.