Tooth And Nail

by Craig DiLouie

  “Where do you want my SAW, Sergeant?” McLeod shouts over the din.

  “Pick your own ground, Dorothy,” Ruiz growls, racking a round into the firing chamber of his shotgun. “We’ll be on the move in less than a minute.”

  McLeod deploys his bipod on the hood of a yellow cab, lines up his sights center mass on one of the leading Maddies, and fires his first burst. The gun bucks against his shoulder, making his teeth vibrate. He continues firing, empty shell casings and links popping out of the weapon’s eject port and clattering onto the hood of the car. The tracer rounds strobe, flashing and guiding his aim into torsos and faces and limbs and skulls. The stream of hot metal pulverizes everything it comes into contact with.

  “Frag out!”

  He notices that the Mad Dogs are close and getting closer. Floyd made a mistake: He set up too close to the intersection without giving his first lines any breathing room.

  “Reloading!”

  Ruiz has already seen the same problem, and is ordering the first line to withdraw. The fire slackens as the boys come off the line.

  “Contact!”

  “Where?”

  “The mothers are behind us!” somebody screams.

  At the next intersection, First Platoon has been split in half by a massive horde of Mad Dogs converging from the north and south.

  In just moments, most of Ruiz’s command has become cut off and surrounded.

  “Shit,” he says.

  “Our father, who art in heaven,” McLeod says. He is suddenly unable to remember the rest of the prayer, his mind blank.

  “Contact!”

  “Man down!”

  The Mad Dogs are ripping the boys apart in the intersection and pouring into the side streets, driving everything before them.

  “FIRE!” Ruiz roars at anyone in earshot, then turns and blasts his shotgun into the infected coming the other way. “FIRE YOUR WEAPONS!”

  Contact.

  Some of the soldiers panic and flee to nearby doors, trying to escape into the buildings lining the street. Most of the doors are metal and locked, while others are fronted with glass and easily broken with rifle butts. The soldiers cry out in fear and rage as they open the doors but find their way inside blocked by furniture stacked into crude barricades by people living in the building to keep out the infected.

  There is no escape from this.

  At what moment did Custer, seeing all those warriors running up the hill with murder in their eyes, realize that he was toast? McLeod wonders. What did he do about it? Did he just sit down on the grass and wait to be tomahawked, taking his last precious moments to reflect on his short life, maybe sneak in one last combat jack?

  Or did he keep shooting, wasting those moments but doing it anyway just so he could prolong his life by several more seconds?

  Hell, when I die, he tells himself, I want to be doing something fun, not firing a gun.

  He wills himself to stop shooting, but his fingers do not obey him.

  I guess that solves that mystery, he tells himself. The instinct of self preservation trumps all. Quantity is better than quality. Now is probably a good time for cyclic fire, then.

  He fires the SAW in rock and roll mode, spraying death almost blindly into the crowd.

  Look at me, he thinks, I’m goddamn Rambo.

  “That’s the stuff, Private!” Ruiz roars, firing his shotgun and chambering another round, ejecting a smoking empty shell. “Hit him back tenfold!”

  “I’m trying!” McLeod answers him.

  “Reloading!” somebody calls out.

  “I hate this goddamn Army,” Williams says, struggling to clear a jam in his carbine. An instant later, the Mad Dogs swarm over him, turning his scream into a sickening wet gargle as two pairs of jaws sink into his throat and rip it open.

  “Our father who art in heaven!” McLeod rasps, tears streaming down his stubble, mowing down the Mad Dogs still biting frantically at his dead friend’s face, tearing away pieces of flesh and spitting them out.

  Nearby, Corporal Hicks falls on his ass, one of his arms mangled and bleeding and the other holding his carbine, still shooting while the rest of the soldiers struggle to form a defensive square and fix bayonets.

  A grenade flies into a second-story window and instantly detonates with a flash, ejecting glittering hot glass and flaming debris down onto the street, followed by a drifting veil of smoke and dust.

  McLeod staggers and bumps into Ruiz, who is slowly retreating while rapid-firing his M4 Super 90 shotgun. The air is thick with smoke and the stench of infection. As the smoke descends upon the street, he catches glimpses of Hicks and Wheeler being torn into shreds. They reach the defensive square only to find it already gone. Back to back, McLeod and Ruiz create a three-hundred-sixty-degree zone of death for the Maddies.

  The SAW grows hot in his hands, and suddenly clicks empty.

  “Final protective fire,” Ruiz says, then stumbles away, dropping his smoking shotgun. He is clutching his neck, blood running through his fingers.

  “Sergeant?” McLeod says, unable to believe his eyes.

  Ruiz is indestructible. He can’t die.

  He was not bitten; a stray bullet caught him.

  “Emmanuel!” the man gasps, falling to his knees.

  “Man down!” McLeod screams automatically, knowing it is useless to call for help.

  He rushes forward to pull the Sergeant to safety but is suddenly shoved to the ground in the swirling melee of soldiers and infected. A Mad Dog trips over him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Gasping for air, he sees Ruiz on his hands and knees, struggling to stand up, surrounded by Maddies hanging onto him and biting every inch of his body.

  “Sergeant!” he calls out.

  A knee cracks against the back of his head. The world goes black except for a few colorful sparking stars. By the time his vision clears, Ruiz has already been transformed into road kill, a headless and armless torso crushed and studded with fragments of glass.

  “You motherfuckers,” he says, crying with helpless rage. “You didn’t have to do that to him. You didn’t have to do that.”

  A grenade explodes nearby, sending charred and broken bodies collapsing around McLeod and soaking him in blood and smoking scraps of flesh. Another cloud of smoke and dust flows across the crowd. The high-pitched screams of the dying penetrate the loud ringing in his ears. Sobbing hysterically, he crawls between the running legs through the filth and glass until he is able to pull himself into the yellow cab and curl up shaking in a fetal ball in the backseat. The car rocks and jolts like a boat in the storm as the infected pour around him, finishing the slaughter of the doomed boys of Third Platoon.

  Outside, the screams reach a crescendo.

  Our father, who art in heaven

  The crackle of small arms fire begins to die out. A Mad Dog runs into the side of the cab, smashing its face against the window and cobwebbing the glass. The foul-smelling corpse in the driver’s seat sways with the impact, its head rolling and grinning.

  Our father who art in heaven

  Our father who art in heaven

  A final flurry of gunshots, then nothing but the tramp of thousands of feet and a primal, almost triumphant growl from thousands of mouths.

  Our father

  I had no choice

  There were once ten of them. Now there are four heading north through a wasteland, dirty and tired and bloody, while infected mobs pound the garbage-strewn alleys and side streets in a never-ending hunt for fresh meat.

  They are the last of the main column after Bowman took the rest of the platoon east to divert the Mad Dogs: McGraw, Mooney, Wyatt and the scientist, Dr. Petrova.

  They march in single file close to the buildings, staying in the shadows. With each step, the gunfire and shouting recedes further behind them until they can see the greenery of Central Park beckoning to them and promising sanctuary.

  More than once, they have had to hide to avoid bands of Maddies, all heading south towards the shoot
ing.

  A metal garbage can rolls into view from behind the next corner, trailing garbage, and comes to a halt in the gutter. Slimy rats pour out of it, scrambling for cover.

  Petrova groans with revulsion, her nails digging into Mooney’s arm. She has faced every horror without faltering but his arm, the usual target of her channeled hysteria, is now covered with scratches and bruises.

  Mooney accepts the abuse without complaint. He likes the attractive scientist, but that is only part of it. The pain keeps him from screaming in fear and revulsion and grief himself.

  McGraw has called a security halt. Chewing on his handlebar mustache, his eyes wide behind his tinted sunglasses, he signals that he wants Mooney and Wyatt front and center.

  Mooney gestures at Petrova, but the Sergeant does not care. There is nobody else. The last time they ran into a mob of infected, Carrillo, Finnegan, Ratliff, Rollins, Eckhardt and Sherman were cut off, climbed into the bed of a pickup truck and made a stand.

  And now they are dead. They know this because they had to come back for the radio and found their bodies scattered like mangled, discarded puppets.

  Wyatt offers Mooney one of his gimpy grins, making his big glasses crooked, and then winks. Mooney nods, wearing an expression of hopeful sadness. They’ve brought each other luck so far. They can’t die now.

  McGraw punches the air, pointing.

  Prepare for action.

  Mooney and Wyatt creep up to the corner, weapons held ready to shoot. Other than two charred, burned-out police cars at an abandoned checkpoint, the street appears empty. Perhaps the garbage can just fell over. It happens.

  He is about to signal that the area is clear. Then he sees movement.

  It is a dog. A pack of them. Filthy, feral dogs, feasting on a child.

  “Hey!” he says.

  Wyatt hisses at him to shut up, but he cannot stand the sight of that boy being eaten.

  “Git!”

  One of the dogs slouches closer, its lips peeled back and its ears flat, snarling in defense of its meat.

  Mooney looks down at his bayonet. He is not allowed to shoot unless it is a matter of life and death; otherwise, it is the bayonet. But he does not want to get into a knife fight with a pack of feral dogs carrying God knows what diseases.

  He picks up a beer bottle off the ground and throws it at the dogs, who scatter with snarls and yelps, licking their bloody chops.

  “Dude, check it out,” Wyatt says. “Hajjis on our three.”

  Four teenage boys stand across the street, wearing dirty hoodies and looking at them.

  Wyatt adds, “You think they’re infected?”

  Mooney shakes his head, unsure. He raises his hand and waves.

  The boys exchange a glance. One waves back.

  “I don’t think so, Joel.”

  The boys start walking towards them, glancing both ways, out of habit, before crossing the street.

  They are holding baseball bats, but of course they would be armed. It would be madness to go outside without some type of protection. But Mooney is not in the mood to take chances anymore.

  “That’s close enough,” his says, raising his carbine.

  The boys stop in the middle of the street, their eyes vacant, and exchange a long, meaningful glance. They turn back to the soldiers. One of them grins.

  As he grins, saliva leaks down his chin. He is infected, but has not turned yet.

  They suddenly sprint forward, swinging their bats.

  “Stop or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead,” Mooney says.

  One of the boys runs clumsily into Wyatt’s bayonet, spearing himself, while another hits him in the arm with a bat, hard enough to make him drop his carbine. They close to grapple. Moody swings his own carbine to slash at the other two boys with his bayonet, but they dodge out of reach and pause, their mouths open and laughing soundlessly.

  One breaks left and the other right—

  McGraw’s shotgun discharges with a deafening bang, killing one of them instantly. The two survivors flee, leaving one dead and the other trying to pull his bleeding body across the street, keening in his death throes.

  “Finish him quick, Mooney,” McGraw says. “Count your coup.”

  “Roger that, Sergeant.”

  If the blast did not bring Maddy running, the kid’s grating death wail will. It is best to finish him quick. Mooney takes a deep breath, raises his carbine with the bayonet pointing down, and brings it down into the boy’s back.

  The knife pierces the boy’s body clean through, impacting the street below with a jolt that resonates up Mooney’s arms and neck. For several moments, the boy writhes under the bayonet like a fly pinned to a wall. Then he falls still, bleeding out onto the asphalt.

  “Dead now, Sergeant,” Mooney says.

  “Then let’s go,” the Sergeant says.

  Mooney pulls his bayonet free and stands over the corpse, exhausted. He notices Petrova staring at him, wide-eyed with horror.

  “I had no choice,” he says weakly.

  “Your eyes,” she whispers.

  Mooney blinks. What does she see?

  “Are you wounded, Private?” McGraw asks Wyatt.

  Wyatt, standing aside with his hands jammed in his armpits, wags his head, looking pale and tired.

  “I’m good, Sarge,” he says. Wincing, he bends to pick up his carbine.

  “What’s wrong with my eyes?” Mooney demands.

  But Petrova is not paying attention to him. She is looking up at the pale gray sky.

  He follows her gaze and senses the change in atmosphere. Then he hears the sound coming from the southeast: the thunder of rotors. It rapidly grows in volume until three CH-47 helicopters roar over nearby rooftops at more than a hundred fifty miles per hour, red lights blinking on their bellies.

  “Get on the horn with those Chinooks and tell them we’re coming,” McGraw shouts at Mooney, who has been carrying the SINCGAR since Jake Sherman died. “Tell them to hover at the rendezvous point until we reestablish radio contact!”

  Mooney begins chanting into the radio, trying to contact the pilots.

  Roger, War Dogs Two-One. We copy.

  “I’ve made contact,” he tells the others.

  The group lets out a ragged cheer. Only Wyatt looks sour, staring after the disappearing helicopters glumly and muttering something to himself.

  “You see that, Joel?” he adds. “We might just make it.”

  Seeing those massive birds cross the sky was one of the most beautiful things that Mooney has ever seen.

  He feels like he will be home again soon, wherever that may be.

  The opposite direction

  McLeod opens his eyes and slowly extricates himself from the cab’s backseat, his face sticky with drying blood and his ears ringing at a deafening volume.

  He stands and takes a deep breath.

  The sky spins, filled with the distant echo of gunfire.

  He falls to his knees, vomiting messily onto the bloody ground.

  Somebody hands him a canteen and he drinks greedily, spits.

  “How,” he says, and groans at the pain in his head.

  The street has been turned into a nightmare landscape made up of hills of dead people and body parts and lakes of blood. Here and there, a wounded Maddy writhes on the ground, eyes and mouth gaping like a fish out of water. Civilians from nearby buildings silently pick at the dead, scavenging. The women mourn the soldiers, weeping as they search the bodies for food, blood splashed up to their elbows. The men pick up the carbines and look wistfully toward the sounds of shooting to the north. Everybody is pale with wide, panicked eyes; several people have paused in their work to vomit against a nearby wall.

  McLeod shrugs off the hands trying to help him up and staggers to the place where he last saw Ruiz. His feet squish in boots filled with warm blood. He can’t find the man’s remains but knows he is there, buried in the scattered human wreckage.

  “Sergeant?” he says, and breaks down coughing,
his throat hoarse and sore.

  Wait, he tells himself. The world does not know how to mind its own business. There are people out there who are going to try to stop you. You must be ready to fight.

  He bends to pick up a carbine and pistol, load his pockets with ammo, and scavenge a few MREs and a canteen.

  “Did I do right?” he says.

  He bends over and coughs, spitting repeatedly.

  “Did I do right by you then, Sergeant?”

  The civilians gather around him as he starts moving in the opposite direction of the sounds of gunfire. They step out of his way and touch him lightly as he passes. Behind him, a woman sobs quietly.

  He pauses long enough to touch his heart and say quietly to himself, “Shookran, Sergeant,” then continues on his way.

  He will break into a music shop and play every instrument. He will set up house in the New York Public Library and read every one of its books. Life is short, and this is the greatest city in the world, filled with treasures.

  From now on, he vows, nobody will ever tell him what to do again.

  You made it this far for a reason

  Mooney’s heart pounds as the double-prop Chinooks land in Sheep Meadow, the thirty-foot-long propeller blades savagely chopping the chilly air during their descent and sending waves of swirling dust and slivers of grass roaring across the field.

  Each of these twelve-ton machines is nearly one hundred feet long and can transport more than fifty soldiers. Today, they will take on only four new passengers.

  Next to him, Dr. Petrova is crying.

  “We played here,” she says, feebly gesturing at the field. “All of us.”

  He can barely hear her. The noise is incredible.

  “That was my spot, under that tree,” the scientist adds.

  The loading ramps at the rear of the helicopters’ fuselages drop, unloading Special Forces fireteams that fan out and establish security. Several start shooting at distant targets, dropping the first Maddies attracted to the heavy thumping of the rotors.

  One of the soldiers stands and waves.