Tooth And Nail

by Craig DiLouie

  If you can’t run, and you can’t hide, you have to fight.

  The strategy is settled. The rest is tactics.

  Maddy has numbers and speed, but Maddy can’t shoot a gun. He is only dangerous if he can get his hands on you. So if you want to live, keep your distance.

  Bowman’s plan calls for deployment in depth, with the lines collapsing like a bag after contact with the enemy. Each squad will dump ordnance on the tightly packed Maddies and, once the enemy gets too close, hoof it to the rear, passing the enemy off to the next line.

  As long as they do not run out of bullets or make any mistakes, they should be able to keep themselves safe.

  He doubts it will work, actually, but he feels he has no other choice.

  By deploying his troops in depth, basically spreading them out, he might wear down and destroy this very large body of Mad Dogs while leapfrogging all the way to Central Park. The problem is their formation will stretch out over a half mile, leaving the flanks vulnerable to other large bodies of the infected that he believes may be converging on his people. If this happens, his force will be cut into two or more pieces, and any units unlucky enough to be cut off will be destroyed. And the mission will certainly fail.

  A thick trail of black smoke billowing from a burning dumpster begins flowing across the avenue, chased by a sudden change in wind and blocking his view. He puts his binoculars away and spares a moment to glance up at the sky, wishing he had air support. Even a single recon helicopter would be helpful.

  Warlord Six, this is Warlord Seven, over.

  Warlord Seven is the senior enlisted man in the battalion, Kemper.

  Bowman keys his handset and says, “Go ahead, Mike, over.”

  Be advised that Warlord Five is leading a detachment east, over.

  “Say again, over.”

  Warlord Five is leading a detachment east on Thirty-Eighth Street, over.

  “Wait, out,” he says, fighting a mixture of rage and panic.

  Warlord Five is the XO.

  The company is moving north, and Knight is leading some of the boys east.

  The man is committing some incredible blunder, completely misinterpreting his orders, and dangerously close to getting them all killed.

  Bowman realizes he has seconds to fix this.

  He keys his handset again.

  “Warlord Five, this is Warlord Six, how copy?”

  Warlord Six, this is Warlord Five, go ahead, sir.

  “Steve, what are you doing? Get those people back in formation before we have a disaster on our hands.”

  Negative, says his XO.

  Wrong answer

  Lieutenant Stephen Knight, holding a pair of binoculars and watching the turn where he led Alpha, Bravo and Delta away from the main column, grunts with satisfaction as threads of brilliant white smoke begin to drift into the intersection.

  His plan is simple: He is going to hit Maddy as he enters the intersection, then leapfrog east rapidly while the rest of the column continues north.

  Bowman screamed at him for several moments over the radio but quickly realized they were wasting time they did not have, and decided to adopt Knight’s plan on the spot.

  Good old Todd. He has a flexible mind.

  Knight is convinced his plan will succeed. Charlie’s rear guard popped smoke to conceal the company’s retreat and hauled ass north. Meanwhile, his own force will draw Maddy off of Charlie and keep them busy for a while.

  Maddy is not going to make a fool out of me again, he tells himself, grinning.

  Vaughan comes jogging up after issuing orders deploying the rest of their force in depth, stacking them facing west, with a strong rear guard. Around them, two squads of soldiers, their first line, have found comfortable firing positions and are waiting for the order to shoot, locked and loaded.

  Knight puts his binoculars away and winks at the man who had been his platoon sergeant and is now a first lieutenant, commanding what is left of Alpha.

  “I just got off the com with the CO,” Vaughan says. “I ought to shoot you in the goddamn head. You just killed us all.”

  The soldiers closest to them, hunched over their weapons, raise their heads and blink, wondering what is going on.

  “This is the only way to accomplish our mission,” Knight says.

  “My boys died because you froze,” Vaughan roars, unholstering his nine-millimeter and chambering a round. His face is flushed, making the ugly diagonal scar appear livid on his face. “Now they have to die so you can redeem yourself!”

  “What the hell?” one of the soldiers says.

  “Oh man, I knew this mission was messed up,” another mutters.

  “This is the right thing to do,” Knight says calmly.

  “I outrank you now, Steve. You had no right to do this to me!”

  He raises the pistol, takes a step forward and aims it at Knight’s forehead.

  “I don’t care if you shoot me, Jim. What’s done is done.”

  “You had no right to do this to these boys!”

  One of the soldiers calls out: “Contact!”

  Without taking his eyes off the pistol in Vaughan’s hand, Knight takes a deep breath and screams with all his might: “FIRE!”

  The line erupts with a storm of gunshot, turning the first wave of Mad Dogs into flying fragments of meat and bone.

  Vaughan lowers his pistol, shaking his head sourly.

  More Mad Dogs turn the corner and race towards their line until stopped cold by another volley.

  “They’re taking the bait,” Knight says triumphantly. “See that, Jim?” He raises his carbine, sizes up a Mad Dog in his scope, and fires his first rounds. “I knew it’d work!”

  If the entire game is going to be lost, there is nothing to be lost by sacrificing a pawn, he tells himself. Because with the game lost, the pawns die anyway.

  The tracers stream down the street, every fourth bullet a red streak created by a trail of burning phosphorous. A thirty-cal machine gun opens up, lacerating flesh and snapping bones. A forty-millimeter grenade falls from the sky, bounces off the roof of a car and explodes in mid-air, decapitating a dozen Mad Dogs at once.

  And still they come, pouring around the corner, stumbling over the dead, their feet splashing in a lake of blood and writhing bodies and body parts.

  “Reloading,” somebody calls out.

  “Bring it!”

  “Get some!”

  One of the soldiers raises an AT4, a lightweight recoilless antitank rocket launcher good for area fire up to five hundred meters, and disengages its two safeties before cocking the mechanical firing pin. Estimating the range, he adjusts the tube-shaped weapon’s plastic sights and takes aim.

  “Fire in the hole!” he screams.

  He pulls the trigger and fires, producing a mushrooming, fiery back blast from the rear of the tube. The finned missile ejects and closes the distance between the soldiers and the Mad Dogs in a half-second, skimming the top of the crowd before disappearing into the building beyond. A moment later, it detonates with a blinding flash, rocking the building, which belches its flaming guts onto the street.

  A wave of smoke and dust descend upon the Mad Dogs, shrouding them from view.

  Knight is laughing, draining a magazine at a cyclic rate of fire, shooting randomly into the dark veil.

  They must all die to wipe out his sin and pay his debt to the dead.

  “Fall back!” Vaughan is shouting, waving his handgun. “Back of the line!”

  As the boys stream toward the rear, the former sergeant grips Knight’s arm and shouts into his ear, “LT! Do you have a plan for getting us back to the main column?”

  “Of course!” Knight grins, his eyes gleaming with their own pale light. “It’s simple. We kill them all!”

  “Wrong answer, sir,” Vaughan says.

  The handgun discharges in his other hand, putting a bullet through Knight’s calf. Knight screams and collapses, clawing at his leg.

  Moments later, it’s rai
ning body parts

  McLeod runs across the open intersection, firing his SAW from the hip, hitting almost nothing and screaming his head off. The other boys of Third Squad run alongside, their faces red and sweaty, huffing as they lay down their own wild suppressing fire. The bullets shatter windows, punch holes and blow out tires in vehicles, rattle off walls, snap through the bodies of the Mad Dogs.

  Everybody is doing more running than shooting right now. The column is still retreating north after Knight’s defection, and it is turning into a rout. The XO’s ploy helped them escape the first horde of Maddies, but thousands more are pouring into the area from the east and west, and the column is being flanked on every street.

  As the rear guard, Third Squad’s only hope is to outrun Maddy before the column is broken and they are cut off.

  Behind them, a soldier from Third Platoon pauses to lift a Javelin launcher to his shoulder, his aim wobbly as he gasps for air.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The missile instantly strikes an SUV standing like an island in the middle of a flowing river of infected, crumpling its door like aluminum foil just before it detonates with a boom the soldiers can feel in their feet. The fireball sends half of the vehicle ripping through the crowd like a giant bowling ball before crashing through a nearby plate glass storefront, while the other half flies spinning into the air.

  The soldier leans back and howls in triumph, then shouts after his fleeing comrades, “Don’t tell me you guys didn’t see that!”

  He is instantly tackled to the ground by a mob of the infected coming up behind him. He shrugs them off, struggling to flee, and topples under the weight of an endless stream of Maddies. Behind them, a score of infected stagger by, on fire from head to tie and flailing blindly, screaming in agony. A moment later, the soldier is permanently obscured from view by a wave of black, oily smoke. A living flood of Maddies pours out of the smoke racing headlong after the column. They are scarcely recognizable as human anymore, filthy, hair greasy and matted, covered in bruises and open sores, gaunt and dressed in bloody rags.

  They are the living dead.

  “Contact left!”

  Ruiz is ahead of the squad, swinging his arm like a baseball coach on third base waving his runners home for the big win, screaming, “Go, go, go!”

  The boys stop firing and pour their last energy into a flat out run to get across the next intersection before they are cut off and slaughtered.

  They pass Ruiz, who yells “Frag out!” and throws a grenade down the street at their pursuers. Moments later, it’s raining body parts.

  Then they’re running across the next intersection as a column of Maddies bears down on them fifty meters away from the west.

  “Captain says we’re clear up ahead,” Ruiz shouts when they’re halfway up the next block. “We’re walking to the next intersection.”

  “Roger that!” the boys shout back, panting.

  “Now give me fire while we take five, and make it hot!”

  The boys yell exultantly, pouring a storm of hot metal into the approaching Mad Dogs, who disappear in a cloud of red mist. The fire immediately eases as the soldiers marvel at their incredible firepower.

  “Keep firing!” Ruiz roars at them. He’s obviously tired of withdrawing under pressure, and wants to make some breathing room.

  A grenade explodes near the burned-out wreck of a car in the middle of the street, flipping it. McLeod steadies his SAW against the hood of a Toyota Corolla and begins firing in controlled bursts. He will not switch to cyclic fire unless he has to do so to stay alive; he does not want to risk overheating his weapon. Once it jams, it is out of action and that’s it, he will be out of the game.

  He notices an inviting door leading into an apartment building. A few minutes running up the stairs until he gets to the roof, and he can wait this whole thing out.

  But he does not move.

  Every time I fire my weapon, he tells himself, I consent to this freakshow.

  He spares a glance at Sergeant Ruiz, then fires a burst that cuts a skinny woman in half. He is not going anywhere as long as that son of a bitch is still alive. He promised Magilla that he would do his part, and he intends to keep the promise, unsure why it is so important that he do so.

  He is vaguely aware there is also a moral dilemma involved. The only way he can successfully escape into one of the buildings is if the rest of his squad—including Williams, who has put up with his crap longer than most would—stays in the street fighting while needing every gun, especially his SAW, on line.

  “Hey, they’re popping smoke behind us,” somebody says.

  At the next intersection, their comrades in Second Platoon, the column’s advance guard, disappear behind a wall of smoke heading north, while the remains of First and Third Platoons are moving east. It is Lieutenant Knight’s crazy plan all over again.

  “Prepare to withdraw on my command!” Ruiz calls out.

  Fire slackens as the boys get set to break off contact and haul ass.

  Time to retrograde.

  I’m not afraid

  Knight slowly pulls himself onto his feet, grimacing with pain at the bleeding hole in his torn and bruised calf muscle, and sees the first Mad Dogs racing toward him from only twenty meters away.

  “Vaughan!” he screams. “Vaughan, help me!”

  Leaning back against a car, he reaches for his carbine, but it is gone. All he has is his nine-millimeter. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he quickly unholsters it and squeezes off several shots into the approaching horde, dropping bodies onto the street.

  The Mad Dogs bear down on him, their slavering jaws champing.

  Knight laughs suddenly, his eyes shining, feeling lightheaded and weak from the loss of blood.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he says, and empties the rest of the clip into their snarling faces.

  The infected do not know what fear is.

  They rip him into pieces, ignoring his screams, and fight over what is left. They gnaw and bite even at the morsels, trying to infect his dead flesh with living virus.

  The rest rush by in their thousands, pressing onward into the crashing rifles of Alpha’s lines.

  One last card to play

  Bowman watches his new rear guard pop smoke, concealing their retreat as First and Third Platoons head east, hoping to draw Maddy off the main column, now reduced to a pathetic twenty-five troops. Nearby, Kemper is yelling at everybody to clear the net, which has become congested with incomprehensible, screaming voices.

  In less than fifteen minutes, his command has been scattered to the wind and is now entangled in a decisive engagement against a superior enemy, facing defeat in detail.

  “Vaughan’s holding,” Kemper tells the CO. “He says they’re starting to swing north soon and move towards the extraction point.”

  “Roger that,” Bowman says, trying to feel hopeful.

  A Mad Dog runs out of a nearby building, loping with his hands splayed into claws, spittle flying as he snarls. Without thinking, the Captain shoulders his carbine and cuts him down with two rounds.

  Killing Maddy has become routine, almost instinctive now, without remorse or regret.

  His company is at the edge of the abyss now.

  Knight, acting on his own initiative, split their force in the face of the enemy and the bastard was right. Bowman realizes that if they stuck to his original plan, the column would have been hit in the flank in several places while engaged and destroyed piecemeal. He saw no other alternative at the time. Knight was willing to sacrifice himself and the men as pawns in a game; Bowman was not. No wonder the crazy bastard kept his ideas to himself until the last possible moment.

  A mark of a good commander is to roll with the punches in the field. Not only did he decide on the spot to run with Knight’s plan, he decided to implement it again when faced with an unwinnable fight against another collection of mobs converging on them. Almost all of First and Third Platoons volunteered to act as a diversionary force
and hopefully Ruiz, part of the rear guard, will have the sense to join up with them instead of leading Maddy through the smoky veil that right now is their only real protection.

  They are doing a good deed, but there is no need for anybody to sacrifice his life for a cause. Once things get too hot, they can simply melt away into the nearest buildings until danger passes, and gradually find their way back to the school.

  Their decision was heroic, but also practical. They could all stay together and die valiantly, or break off and stay alive but give up the possibility of extraction.

  “Contact left!” Corporal Alvarez calls back from the advance guard.

  “Orders, sir?” Kemper says.

  Bowman asks about the size of the force, and Alvarez tells him.

  Christ, how many of these monsters are there?

  Roll with the punches.

  Another mark of a good commander: Keep one’s options open.

  The problem is they are almost out of options. Bowman has one last card to play, and decides to play it.

  It is his turn to go east.

  Contact

  Ruiz is no fool. He understands why the Captain popped smoke, and turns the corner to follow First and Third Platoons—already setting up to hit Maddy as he enters the intersection—instead of running through the smoke to rejoin the rest of Second Platoon. The other soldiers cheer as they turn the corner, happy for the extra firepower and to have a pro like Ruiz around. His combat skills are practically a legend in Charlie Company. The man has warrior spirit in his heart and ice water in his veins.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Ruiz asks Sergeant Floyd, a former corporal whom Bowman promoted to take over the remnants of Third Platoon.

  Floyd looks Ruiz up and down, his face pale and his eyes bulging.

  “You are, Sergeant,” he says.

  “All right. You’re too bunched up. I want these men here to spread out—”

  “Contact!”

  Ruiz screams: “FIRE!”

  The soldiers whoop as the line erupts with a volley. Instantly, the first ranks of the Mad Dogs collapse, their bodies torn and gushing blood, instantly replaced by fresh ranks. They’re all making the turn. For a second time, Maddy has taken the bait, sparing the main column.