Tooth And Nail Part 18

Carrillo stares at the carnage while smoke rises up from his SAW, which started to overheat at the end.

"One of those kids looked just like my sister Jenny's boy," he rasps quietly, as if he is losing his voice. "But they're supposed to be in Florida. You don't think?"

"Naw," Ratliff says. He looks around for the Sergeant, sees that the man's back is turned, and pulls down his mask to light a cigarette. "Couldn't be."

"But it looked just like him," Carrillo says. "His name's Robbie."

"I can't believe this freaking carnage," Wyatt says. "It's ten times bigger than the hospital. It's mad sick, like a video game, yo."

Nearby, Chen quietly retches against the wall, moaning and mumbling to himself.

"It's not a game, you G.o.dd.a.m.n psycho," Eckhardt says, his face burning with shame. "You're not supposed to like it."

"We paid them back for what they did, that's all," Finnegan says grimly, kicking at the carpet of empty sh.e.l.l casings on the floor. "G.o.d knows the difference between a just kill and the kind you go to h.e.l.l for."

In Iraq, they had shot up cars, some filled with families, that disobeyed their orders to halt at a checkpoint. Men, women, children. An inevitable accident of war that filled many of the boys with regret and would stay with them for the rest of their lives. But this was intentional, against Americans, and on a colossal scale they never imagined possible.

And here was the Sergeant telling them they did a good job. That they secured the area and could rest soon. It's like getting a medal for My Lai. This is payback, and it tastes like ashes. They wanted this, they were hot to kill a million of those things after what they saw what happened to some of the boys of First Platoon, and now they are ashamed.

"They just kept coming," Ratliff says, shaking his head with something like admiration. "They wouldn't stop."

"They're not human anymore," Mooney says, his ears ringing and his headache returning with a vengeance.

"I'm starting to agree with you on that," says Eckhardt. "The way they looked at us. The way they moved. Definitely not human." He shivers. "It's like they were possessed by demons."

"Actually, they were possessed by a virus," Mooney tells him. "But you're not far off, Corporal."

"Did you see the ones wearing BDUs?" Ratliff says. "They were Army.

Are we going to catch the bug and end up like that, too?"

McGraw is surveying the wreckage, stepping carefully among the mangled carpet of flesh, blood and human waste. An old woman, bleeding from a dozen wounds, crawls towards him on her hands and knees, hissing.

"I am truly sorry, Ma'am," he says, and shoots her in the head with his Beretta.

"Sergeant?" Finnegan says.

McGraw says, "If they can move, if they can bite, they're hostile. And we have to get through this hallway so we can clear the rest of this wing."

Mooney closes his eyes and wishes he were somewhere else. Instantly, his consciousness slides into black.

A b.l.o.o.d.y face lunges for his throat- He jerks awake, adrenaline rushing through his body, and takes a deep breath.

"I am very sorry, sir," McGraw says. Another shot rings out.

Down the hall, a door opens and a voice calls to them: "U.S. Army down here! Hold fire!"

"Same here," McGraw shouts back. "Howdy!"

"Is that Second Platoon?" the soldier says, stepping out of the room at the end of the hall, coughing on the smoke and stink. "Hooah, boys! First Platoon here!"

"We've been looking all over for you guys," McGraw says, grinning.

"We heard all h.e.l.l breaking loose and stayed down. Oh Jesus, h.e.l.l, what is this?"

The soldier is surveying the walls painted with blood and the piles of body parts and bodies, some of which are still moving, like a carpet of giant b.l.o.o.d.y worms.

His eyes roll back in his head and he faints. Other soldiers come out and gaze upon the slaughter in disbelief and shock, while a few run back where they'd come from to vomit in privacy.

Private Chen pauses behind Sergeant McGraw and swallows hard. He can't stop looking at the faces. The arms and legs, the guts and organs, the pools and streaks of blood, he can take that. But he can't take the faces. All those eyes looking back at him.

"We're all just meat, aren't we," he says.

"Maybe so," McGraw answers.

Chen can't take the hands, either. All those cold, open hands that feel nothing.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant."

The Sergeant turns, squinting. "What's that, Private?"

The feet. The hundreds of feet that will never walk again.

"That I can't come with you."

His voice has a shaky quality that makes everybody stop and look at him.

Chen laughs nervously as he puts the tip of his carbine into his mouth. And promptly pulls the trigger.

Chapter 7.

Can you help me?

Shivering in a ball under a desk in the Inst.i.tute's Security Command Center, Petrova dreams that Dr. Baird has burst howling through the lab door.

She has dreamed this dream continuously since she fell asleep.

It is always the same.

She flees, and at first she is able to run faster than she ever has in a dream, faster even than she can in real life, but the fluorescent hallway is endless and its brightness rapidly dims as some ominous unseen presence eats the light. Suddenly, her strength begins failing and she can barely move despite mental pushes she gives herself in her sleep.

But this time the dream is different.

A phone rings shrilly, and she turns to see Dr. Baird at the end of the hall, grinning in triumph with b.l.o.o.d.y teeth and holding a clump of hairy, mangled flesh high over his head like a primitive trophy. Black fluid begins gushing from his eyes and grin.

Just meat, he says.

His face crumbles. Faster and faster, his head and arms dissolve as his body is converted into organic black fluid.

The liquid splashes against the floor and slithers forward like a million oily snakes, probing blindly, driven by an ancient program.

The liquid is pure virus seeking its new host.

She wants to scream, but she can't breathe.

The snakes coil and whisper in a million voices, We are life.

The phone rings again.

She turns and tries to run- Baird bursts through a wall in front of her, broken cinderblocks flying in a cloud of dust, bellowing with rage and pain.

A phone is ringing.

I'm so cold, please don't make me get up- Baird roars, shaking the building, making the light fixtures blink and fall out of the ceiling, but he is already fading.

Petrova's eyes flash open, her heart in her throat, her body clenched and gasping for air. Extricating herself carefully from under the desk, she quickly scans the operator desk and sees a phone with a red light flashing.

It rings- She picks it up warily, still haunted by the dream and uncertain of everything.

"This is Dr. Valeriya Petrova," she says thickly, rubbing at a lancing pain in her neck. "Who is this?"

"Dr. Petrova?" a voice asks feebly.

"This is Dr. Petrova. Who is this?"

"Can you help me?"

Get the h.e.l.l out of my lab

Lucas was taken first.

He ran several yards before he seemed to become winded and simply laid down and curled up into a ball. He barely struggled when Baird fell to his knees and sank his teeth into his arm.

After Petrova and Saunders turned the corner, Saunders slowed to a stop.

"We must go, Doctor," she said.

The scientist frowned as if trying to work out a complex math problem. "No," he said slowly. "We have to help Dr. Lucas."

"He has surely been bitten," she told him. "Which means he is already dead."

"You know, I don't even know his first name," Saunders laughed.

"You are ugly and I hate you," she hissed fiercely in a sudden fit of stress, surprised at herself for saying such things, especially since they were true. "Come with me. Now. Please, William."

"See what I mean?" His voice sounded weak and thin. "It's *Bill.'

n.o.body's called me William since I was ten."

He turned and jogged back around the corner to help Lucas, who was emitting a strange, high-pitched mewing sound, like a cat being slowly crushed.

"Please, William," she whispered.

She heard Saunders shouting. The shouts quickly turned into bloodcurdling screams.

"Oh," she said, and started running.

While she ran, she tried to remember how many people were trapped with her at the Inst.i.tute. Hardy, Lucas, Saunders, Sims, Fuentes . . . Ten. There were ten people on this floor, and five of them were already either infected or dead.

She needed to warn the others, quickly, before Baird decided to go hunting.

And after that, what?

Find a safe place where they can hide and figure out what to do next. She entered Laboratory East on unsteady legs and saw Dr. Sims and Sandy Cohen, a lab tech, working in gowns, masks, goggles and gloves. Sims was busy injecting reaction fluid into a strip of PCR tubes for a polymerase chain reaction test. Cohen was snapping digital pictures of Lyssa using the camera built into the lab's fluorescence microscope.

Petrova's eyes went straight to several gla.s.s Petri dishes on the desktop next to Sims. Each dish contained pure samples of Lyssa grown in cultured cells harvested from a dog's kidney.

At first, she was unable to speak, her mind numbed by the violence and adrenaline, somehow dumbfounded by the sight of her coworkers performing mundane tasks as if nothing had happened.

"Listen to me," she said shakily, then paused, suddenly out of breath.

Dr. Fred Sims, the oldest scientist on the staff at sixty-eight, turned and glared at the interruption. Giving Petrova the once-over, he quickly sized up her sweaty face, disheveled hair, spray of blood on her labcoat, and gleaming steel putter she still clutched in her hands.

"Dr. Petrova, you look unwell," he said, peering at her over the top of his spectacles. "Don't you think it's a bit early in the day for . . . whatever it is you're doing?"

"We are in serious danger."

"Now, if you please, get the h.e.l.l out of my lab."

"Oh!" she said, blinking and stomping her right foot.

"I said, get out."

"Dr. Sims!"