This kind of winning felt like losing. Like he’d cut the Afghan boy’s throat after all.
FORTY-ONE.
GRAY LAY IN a heap on the bloody asphalt.
Wade stared down at him. What happened?
The man was alive one second, bleeding from a dozen wounds the next.
Fisher backed away from him. “Aw, no, man.”
What’s with him?
Fisher took another step. “No. Please. Please don’t.”
Wade looked down at the bloody knife he held. He looked at Fisher. “You’d better run,” he hissed.
“Why’d you do that, Wade?”
Wade laughed. “He wasn’t one of us.”
Ramos’s parting gift had taken its sweet time, but it had finally taken control. Little worms in his head. Little puppet strings.
He screamed: “Run!”
Fisher yelped and ran off.
Wade looked down at the body and chuckled. He’d stabbed Gray in the kidneys. He licked the blood off the blade and stabbed again. He kept stabbing and stabbing.
Just before Gray died, they looked into each other’s eyes and laughed as brothers.
There was an old saying among warriors: Make pain your friend.
He hadn’t really wanted to kill Gray, but the organism in his body demanded everything. It didn’t appreciate divided loyalties. It wanted it all.
It wanted to see the whole world burn.
That would be so very freaking hilarious.
He heard a splash of gunfire. Below him, his brothers and sisters charged into First Battalion’s guns. He wanted to join the party.
Then he remembered Ramos’s family. They still needed attention. The sergeant would have wanted it that way.
The laughing virus in his skull thought that was a very awesome idea.
“Aw, Wade,” Rawlings said.
He wheeled. At the sight of her, he burst into long, breathless peals of insane laughter.
HAAAWWWW
HAAAAAWWWWWWW
HAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW
He knew why the infected sought out those they loved. The pain was so exquisite. It hurt soooo good.
“Sorry,” he managed. “Rawlings.”
She leveled her carbine. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Shoot me.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t think I can, Private Wade.”
“Shoot me now.”
“Tell me where Ramos’s family lives.”
He doubled over laughing.
She said, “I’ll take care of them. I’ll do that for you.”
He grinned and held up his knife. “Gonna make a hole. Make it—”
He lunged.
She fired.
FORTY-TWO.
SERGEANT SANDRA RAWLINGS watched Boston burn.
The big fires had radiated out of South Boston and were consuming everything in sight. The South End was gone. The skyscrapers of the Financial District pumped tons of smoke and ash into the already blackened sky. Chinatown had been burned to a cinder. Back Bay-Beacon Hill was gone, as was Fenway-Kenmore. The fires were eating Dorcester and Roxbury.
Across the Charles River, Charlestown was a black, smoldering ruin, and the conflagration was spreading across Cambridge and Somerville.
The firefighters were all dead, the police department overrun. The hospitals, considered centers of infection, had been destroyed from the air. The Governor held East Boston and little else. From Newton to Quincy, Major General Brock and his struggling battalions were steadily being pushed back toward Cape Cod.
Boston, drained of life, its soul already departed, was being cremated and with it everything that had defined Rawlings as a person. It was a city no more; it was becoming an idea. A symbol. For Rawlings, a memory. She remembered growing up in Dorcester. Living in one apartment after another around the city as an adult. Jobs in various offices in the Financial District before she became a paramedic working out of Christ Hospital. Proud service in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. A tour in Iraq. Then fighting hard, one day at a time, trying to save the city from plague, a plague that had devoured the city long before fire took its turn.
All of it was gone. Nothing left to fight for. Only the plague lived on.
Still, she turned toward the sound of the guns. Tenth Mountain was revving up its vehicles, getting ready to move. She wondered where they were going. Was anywhere safe?
Rawlings admired that they were still willing to fight at all. Those Tenth Mountain boys didn’t know when to quit. Maybe they could use a girl like her. She had a handful of dog tags to deliver. That, and their story. As the sole survivor of the group, she was the sole witness to their end.
Once more into the breach?
Hell, no. She wanted to find a house somewhere and take off her boots. Then, she’d get some water and soak in it for a while. After that, she’d sleep the sleep of the dead.
Nonetheless, Sergeant Rawlings found herself walking down the hill toward the sounds of the gunfire, searching for something that was still worth fighting for, living for. Maybe she’d find it outside Boston. Maybe she’d become a mountaineer after all.