Tooth And Nail Part 13

"Here comes McGraw and First Squad, LT," Kemper says.

First Squad is limping away from the intersection, firing behind them, dropping anybody who comes close. Two bloodied cops have joined them, toting shotguns.

"Where's Sergeant Lewis?"

"No sign of him," Kemper says.

"Try him on the commo."

"Friendlies coming in!" Lewis calls from behind them, running up with Second Squad.

"Friendlies on our six!" says Corporal Hicks, then calls out, "Reloading!"

"We made it through and set up a defensive line another block up the road," Lewis tells the LT. "Didn't know you wanted to rally here. Sorry, sir."

"It's all good, Sergeant."

Ruiz glowers at Lewis and says, "You and me are going to have some words later, motherf.u.c.ker."

Lewis says, "Go to h.e.l.l, Sergeant."

Second Squad begins covering First Squad's movement. The carbines pop and the bullets hum and snap through the air.

Bowman almost does not recognize Second Squad. In Iraq, they were boys who were much older than their years because of what they had done and seen. But now they are beyond even this scale. They are ancient now. It is in their eyes, he realizes. Looking ahead with thousand-yard stares, their eyes burn like cold stones as old as war itself.

The boys have become killing machines, like something out of myth. He looks at Kemper, who also has the look. He guesses that he himself might have it.

There are two types of soldiers in the platoon now. Those who shot non-combatants, and those who did not. Those who shot uninfected people to save themselves and their comrades, and those who would have stayed in that intersection.

Those who will in the future, and those who won't.

Kemper nods to Bowman. He now understands the choice that the LT made back in the hospital. The choice to be d.a.m.ned, as long as it saved his men. A choice that was not expedient, but necessary.

"It was an emergency food relief operation," one of the cops is saying, his eyes gaping. "The food trucks drew a ma.s.sive crowd of people, thousands. Then a couple of gangs of Lyssa victims came at us the other way, attacking and biting people." He's pleading with the soldiers around him. "There was nothing we could do!"

"You're all right now, buddy," one of the soldiers says to him.

Kemper whispers near the LT's ear, "Sir, if they're broken, we're it." The other cop glares at Lewis' boys and says, "We're not staying with these murderers, Brian. We'll find another way back to the station."

Bowman checks his watch. The movement across the intersection-and intervening battle-lasted all of four minutes, and left them exhausted, bloodied and dispirited.

"You're on, uh, fire, Jake," he says, noticing smoke rising up from his RTO's radio pack.

"It's the radio, sir," says Sherman, sporting a black eye. "It's toast. But who knows, maybe I can fix it."

Bowman nods. If the radio is broken, the platoon is now cut off from the rest of the Army. They are officially off the reservation, at least until they rejoin their company.

"Sergeant Ruiz?" Corporal Hicks says. He is standing over Hawkeye, who sits on a curb, rocking back and forth. "He don't look so good, Sergeant."

Ruiz wipes blood from his face and crouches down to face the soldier.

Hawkeye s.h.i.+vers, sweating and pale, with his face buried in his hands. Getting the shakes is common after combat due to an excess of adrenaline.

The Sergeant put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"You all right, son?"

Hawkeye removes his hands from his face. His N95 mask is gone. Ruiz sees a jagged hole where a Mad Dog bit and tore away a chunk of flesh from his cheek. The skin around the wound is swollen and inflamed.

"Sergeant," the boy says vacantly. "I don't feel so good, you know?"

"Just a scratch," says Ruiz, involuntarily jerking his hand away.

Hicks is calling for the medic.

They have little time to patch up their wounds and take stock of themselves. Bowman is issuing new orders. They are still shooting and using up ammunition, there are too many civilians in the area, and they are not secure. Time to move. Their objective is very close now. Within just a few blocks, they'll be back with Charlie Company in a defensive position behind some thirty-cals. Then they can rest.

Bowman will be happy to turn this mess over to the company CO and let him decide what to do.

The chain of command appears to have figured out the Mad Dog threat as well and is trying to consolidate its forces in New York. It's the smart thing to do, he believes: Hold what can be held and give up the rest. But the politicians are not going to want to give up anything. They are going to give the Army an impossible task. And officers do not always make smart decisions when surprised. It is going to be chaos.

In any case, it may be too late to consolidate in a city that is already beginning to swarm with infected.

Bowman, in fact, is now wondering how long, given a probable exponential spread of infection in the general population, Eighth Brigade will be able to remain effective as a fighting unit. He is aware that the ramifications go far beyond the Army and his tiny corner of it. He is just not ready to face them yet.

Right now, the end of the world is simply too big to even contemplate.

Chapter 5.

I can't work like this!

Dr. Joe Hardy hustles into his office with Dr. Valeriya Petrova in hot pursuit, their labcoats flapping behind them.

"Here it is," he says, grabbing his putter from behind his desk. "Now we're in business." He turns around and begins to head back out the door, but his colleague blocks his way, staring at him coldly.

"Really, Doctor, this is no time for golf practice," Petrova says in her Russian accent.

"Watch me," he says, pus.h.i.+ng past her.

"Are you drunk, Doctor?"

He laughs derisively. "No, hungry," he says, patting his enormous stomach. "Both make me irritable, so be warned."

She gives chase. "We need to discuss my findings."

"Findings!" He pauses a moment to face her. "Findings?"

"Yes. The implications are significant."

"Honestly, Valeriya, do you really think anybody gives a flying s.h.i.+t about your findings right now?"

"But they are significant, Doctor. Did you not agree?"

"Agree with what? Do you realize that we've got some serious problems that we are dealing with here?"

She looks surprised. "You did not get my email?"

Hardy laughs again and keeps walking, swinging his putter. Petrova stomps her right foot in frustration, her face flushed, and hurries to catch up with him, marching along at his side. What a strange woman, he thinks. Smoky, exotic looks and foreign accent that inspire l.u.s.t. A masculine, abrupt manner that inspires loathing. Half the time, he doesn't know if he wants to buy her flowers or kill her.

Now Dr. Lucas steps out of his office, hastily repositions his gla.s.ses on his nose, and says, "Ah, Dr. Hardy, good to see you. Are you going to do something about the air conditioning or not? You may have, ah, noticed that it's freezing in here."

"He is right," Petrova says. "It is cold in this building."

Hardy sighs. "People, I'm the director, not the facility manager. Who, by the way, is MIA. There's nothing I can do."

"Well, I can't work like this, sir!" Lucas challenges him. "If you want me to keep at my research while we're going to be stuck living here for the near future, you could at least try to provide decent working conditions."

"Tape some garbage bags over the air vents," Hardy tells him, brus.h.i.+ng past.

Dr. Saunders steps out of his lab, his wide balding head gleaming under the fluorescent lights, and shouts down the hallway, "Hey Joe! Any word from CDC or USAMRIID yet on our rescue before we freeze to death and starve?"

"No!" Hardy shouts over his shoulder, and keeps moving.

"Five minutes, Doctor," Petrova says. "That is all I ask. It is quite urgent."

They enter the employee break room. Hardy walks up to one of the vending machines and studies it for a few moments.

"Stand back, Dr. Petrova," he says.

"What?"

"Just move back two, maybe three steps."

"Why? You-here? Is this acceptable?"

"Yes, that's perfect, thank you."

He takes a deep breath just before swinging the putter as hard as he can at the machine. The club connects with the gla.s.s front and shatters it. The noise is startling. Gla.s.s shards spill onto the floor.

"Wow," he laughs. "Did you see that?"

"You could have warned me you would do this," Petrova tells him.

"Believe it or not, it scared me as much as it scared you."

Hardy looks down at himself, half expecting to see pieces of gla.s.s sticking out of his large, round body accompanied by his mother's voice yelling at him as a kid, See, that's what you get for playing with things you don't understand, Joey. Seeing himself unscathed, he pulls down his mask and reaches into the machine to plunder a package of peanut M&Ms, which he tears open with a hungry grunt.

"This was necessary?" his colleague asks him. "Please explain."

"Did you not hear me just say to that jacka.s.s Bill Saunders that CDC and USAMRIID are not returning my calls, meaning we are cut off from the outside world?"

Petrova nods. "I see," she says.

"Do you?" he says, munching rapidly. "There's a mob downstairs threatening to kill people if we don't hand over the magic medicine we don't have. We are under siege."

"Yes, I know all these things."

"Then, to top it all off, last night my daughter calls me to tell me there are some psychos attacking people in her building, and all the 911 lines are jammed." His shoulders sag. "Christ, between the siege and the power brownouts and all h.e.l.l breaking loose outside, I don't know if it's even possible to finish what we started here."

"I understand things are hard," she says.

"Do you? So surely, then, you see why I don't care about your findings right now."

Petrova eyes him coldly. "Doctor. You know well that my husband and son have been trapped in London since all flights were grounded at the beginning of the Pandemic. My boy is three years old and I have not seen him or my husband in weeks. The cell phones are jammed and I have not spoken to them in seventy-two hours. I-" Her voice cracks for a moment as an expression of pain flickers across her face. "I think I understand how serious the situation is."

"I'd forgotten, Dr. Petrova," Hardy bl.u.s.ters, turning red. "I'm sorry."

"In fact," she says, collecting herself with a visible effort, "I believe I have a unique perspective on just how serious it really is based on my test results."

"All right, all right," he says. "I give. You've got your five minutes."

We are trying to cure the wrong disease

Petrova takes a deep breath and tells Hardy about what she found. The Lyssavirus is transmitted like influenza, entering the body through the respiratory tract and attacking the lungs. The most common cause of death is a cytokine storm, a situation in which the body's immune system turns on itself. When the body encounters an invader, cytokines summon armies of immune cells to fight the infection. Normally, they stop, but sometimes, when a new virus is encountered, they can't. The resulting storm of immune cells lays waste to everything, damaging body tissues and organs, blocking airways and drowning the body in its own b.l.o.o.d.y snot. The malfunctioning immune system kills the body it was designed to protect.

In advanced cases, Lyssa enters the nervous system and attacks the brain, resulting in progressive viral encephalitis-steadily worsening inflammation of the brain-which kills its victim in less than a week. It specifically targets the limbic system, which governs a person's emotions, motivation and behavior. The result is artificial rage, popularly called Mad Dog Syndrome.

Laboratories across the country are trying to crack the disease and produce a vaccine-some competing, some collaborating-under direction from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Normally, Hardy and Petrova's laboratory facility, a Biosafety-Level Two lab located in the heart of Manhattan, would not even be working on a virus as dangerous as Lyssa, but it is already in the community, so there would be no real threat if it escaped the lab. And besides, the CDC and USAMRIID are desperate.

Hardy's team is actually getting close to their objective. If starvation and the mob and the brownouts and the cold don't finish them first.

"This I know," Hardy says. "Tell me what I don't know."

"My research has led me to the conclusion that the advanced dementia variant of the disease-what people call Mad Dog syndrome-is actually a separate disease."