Pandemic(11)

The walls were painted in blood.

“Jesus Christ,” Ford said.

Grimacing bodies and spent brass covered the floor. Some of the bodies wore uniforms and clutched broken weapons. One soldier, his back against a wall, still held the barrel of his rifle in his mouth. A section of wall smoldered, blown out by a grenade. Wade looked up at the ceiling. A bare leg protruded from a shattered acoustic tile next to a dangling fluorescent fixture. Gunsmoke hung in the air.

Ramos called a security halt. The men stopped and formed a circle, backs to the center, guns pointed outward.

“It’s like a slaughterhouse,” Ford said.

The soldiers here had died in hand-to-hand fighting. The mob had rolled over them and moved on. Wade recognized the faces of men he knew well: Eckhardt, Jones, Hernandez, Richardson, Lopez, Cox. He didn’t see Lieutenant Harris.

Despair washed over him. His mind flashed to mountain views and firefights, freezing together in cramped bunkers at Combat Outpost Katie, patrols carrying seventy pounds of gear. Endless hours of joking, hazing, rough sports and petty squabbling.

Wade looked at his squad and knew they were remembering the same things.

“Those motherfuckers,” Eraserhead hissed.

“Our guys gave better than they got,” Wade said.

Eraserhead spit on a corpse. “How does that make it right?”

Ramos nodded. “Honorable deaths.”

Wade remembered that last horrible night at Katie, when they all almost died. These men had looked the tiger in the eye that night only to fly home to America and get ripped apart by a swarm of crazy people.

Then he pushed his feelings aside. They were still under the hammer, and they all had to stay focused if they wanted to avoid the same fate. The men raised their goggles.

Williams pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “I’ll get their tags.”

Wade heard a sound and froze. Then, he heard it again—a moan.

The men readied their weapons.

“Let’s get out of here, Sergeant,” Wade said.

Ramos shook his head. They had to check for survivors.

The sergeant raised his shotgun as a soldier stumbled out of one of the patient rooms. Wade gasped. Lieutenant Harris, pale from loss of blood, had one hand shoved down his pants. His crotch was covered with a massive red stain.

Ramos lowered his gun. “It’s all good, LT. We’ll get you out of here.”

Ford looked as if he might cry. “What did they do to him?”

Wade knew. They all knew.

Eraserhead opened his medical kit. “I got this.”

Harris pulled his hand out of his pants and flung a spray of blood.

The soldiers lurched away sputtering. Harris roared with laughter and stuffed his hand down his pants again. “Hey! You want some more of the good stuff?”

Ramos shot the man in the face. He growled and spat.

Wade touched his cheek. Blood on his gloves.

Infected blood.

He raised his weapon at the same time as the others.





THIRTEEN.



THE OFFICE TOWER was going down. Most of it, anyway. A giant piece wrenched clear and slid off in a biblical cloud of smoke and dust.

Prince ground his teeth. For him, that building symbolized everything. America’s strength reduced to rubble. His own impotence to stop it. The plague was stripping away everything that gave him a sense of self worth: his family, his command, his country.

“What did you find out?” he barked at Walker.

“I had an RTO perform a quick radio check with our special weapons and air units,” the major reported. “I don’t think that’s us.”

Prince glared at the man, his chest burning. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“That’s not us, sir. It’s not our mortars or air units doing the shooting.”

“Are you an idiot, Major? Of course it’s not us. That’s heavy artillery. Battlefield howitzers. Not mortars. It’s the National Guard. A unit from the 101st Field Artillery. I would expect even you to recognize the difference.”

Walker reddened. “My bad, sir.”

The colonel growled. “I’ll do it myself.” He turned and yelled at the Massachusetts Army National Guard liaison, “Hey, McDonald! What is that?”

The young lieutenant blanched. He put down the magazine he was reading and stood at attention. “What is what, Colonel?”

Prince stabbed his finger at the screen. “Some of your people caught the Bug and just blew up an office building on live television! Do you think you might want to do something about it?”

“Uh, yes, sir.” The pale liaison turned to his radio and worked the dials.

“We’re supposed to be helping people,” Prince screamed at him, “not destroying their last fucking ounce of hope!”