Tooth And Nail Part 29

"This is two companies of First Battalion, Twenty-Fifth Brigade, commanded by Colonel Powers. He took a real beating last night and is barely holding it together."

He points at a red X in the South Bronx.

"This is the last known position of the other two companies of First Battalion, Twenty-Fifth Brigade, commanded by Captain Marsh. We have lost all contact with his command. It is believed to have been destroyed."

The NCOs murmur and step from foot to foot, suddenly restless and angry.

Bowman taps his finger on a blue square in midtown.

"This is us here. First Battalion, Eighth Brigade."

He points to a blue rectangle in Jersey City, to the west.

"This is Second Battalion, commanded by Colonel Rose," he says.

"We're what's left of the Crazy Eights."

"Wait, where's Quarantine?" one of the NCOs calls out.

Bowman shakes his head. "We have lost contact with Quarantine. Colonel Winters and his command are MIA. We are now trying to. . . ." He gives up talking as the non-coms begin murmuring loudly among themselves.

Their headquarters, and all its logistics and signal units-even the brigade band-has disappeared without a trace somewhere across the Hudson River in Jersey City.

"Listen up!" Kemper roars, quieting them instantly.

"The Twenty-Fifth is being loaded onto transports to be taken down the coast to Virginia," Bowman tells them. "Immunity is withdrawing from the region. As far as I can tell, the new strategy is to consolidate in the more rural areas of the country, where the Mad Dog population is smaller and more dispersed, particularly the bread basket-"

"What about us, LT?" McGraw says. "What are we doing here?" Bowman shakes his head.

"That's just the thing. I honestly don't know. Eighth Brigade has not been issued evac orders for the time being, and Division isn't telling us why."

"What about Los Angeles? Is it being abandoned? I got people there, sir."

"This is a G.o.dd.a.m.n disgrace!"

Several of the other sergeants start shouting at once.

"I already told you everything I know," Bowman yells over them.

Sherman is pushing his way through the crowd. He reaches Kemper and hands him a piece of paper.

The LT adds: "So we're going to hunker down here for a while and reorganize our unit. We're also going to start training for a new mission."

Kemper reads the note and glances sharply at the RTO, his face reddening.

Bowman continues, "We're going to try to salvage the equipment H&S Company left when they got overrun. They had weapons, food, water, medicine in storage. An ammo dump. If we don't get it, the locals will pick it clean. We need those supplies to remain combat effective."

"How are we supposed to get to H&S?" says Ruiz. "They were over a mile away from here when they were overrun."

Bowman smiles and says, "We're going to innovate."

Kemper approaches and says something into the LT's ear. By the time he finishes, Bowman is visibly angry, leaving the sergeants wondering.

"Put it on the map," says the LT.

The Platoon Sergeant draws a yellow border around Second Battalion in Jersey City. Bowman turns to the NCOs.

"Uh, Jake has just heard from Division that we are to avoid any contact with Second Battalion over in Jersey City," he says. "Colonel Rose and his XO, Major Boyle, are reported dead. Captain Warner is in command, and he is refusing to obey orders."

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

McLeod finishes mopping the hallway in the Asylum-what the boys call the wing where they put the soldiers turned Mad Dog-and walks slowly down the virtually empty hall, reading the names carved into the boards nailed over the doors. The visitors are all long gone, as the inmates have all turned Mad Dog.

He pa.s.ses by one that reads, JAMES LYNCH.

Behind the boarded up door, he can hear Maddy pacing in his boots, growling.

"If you had a longer life span, I'd join you," McLeod says. "Seeing as your side seems to be winning this thing, and all."

James Lynch snarls and throws his shoulder against the door, making McLeod take a step backward, almost spilling his bucket. Down the hall, Private Becker from Third Platoon, posted on sentry duty, watches and shakes his head.

McLeod grins and waves, then checks his watch. Lunch time. He decides to take his MRE onto the roof to watch Sergeant Lewis bang away at Maddy with his rifle.

He arrives to find the roof empty except for a smiling Private Williams, leading one of the female civilians by the hand. They disappear behind one of the HVAC units.

McLeod walks to the parapet, sets down his SAW, and looks out over the city.

New York.

What a view. Even dying of this horrible cancer, it's beautiful. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" he says into the chilly air, quoting a poem he read once in English cla.s.s, in what seems to him now to have been another life. "Allah akhbar."

It has never been so quiet. There are no cars moving, no shrill sirens, no babble of voices. Smoke drifts over the looming skyline as fires rage unchecked. Garbage and sewage are tossed out of windows into streets choked with corpses.

Mercifully, the wind blows south, carrying the stench out over the ocean.

A single helicopter buzzes in the distance. McLeod recognizes it as an observation helicopter. Division's air support is wasting no more fuel or ordnance on New York City. The sky belongs to the birds now, feasting on the dead.

He rips his MRE open and looks down at the street.

It is deserted. Nothing for Sergeant Lewis to bang away at except drifting garbage and a pack of feral dogs, even if he were here. Soon, even the dogs are gone.

Like looking at the frozen peaks of mountains, once the majesty wears off, New York's skyline could not be more depressing for human survival. There is no money, only a barter economy with little to barter. Few people here have the skills they will need to survive for the next few months. There is no electricity, no plumbing, no sewage, no health system, and little hope for the future. And oh yeah, if you step outside for the next few weeks, you will probably be killed. Long term, your prospects are even worse.

Across the street, somebody taped a sign on the window of a private office, facing outward, that says, TRAPPED, HELP. The office appears to be empty.

"Mind if I join you?"

McLeod turns and sees a middle-aged man wearing a neat suit, cardigan sweater and tie, fiddling with a transistor radio.

"Sure." He nods at the radio. "What are you getting?"

"Nothing local, obviously," the man says cheerfully. "But I am receiving an AM news station out of Pittsburgh. The government has a cure for Mad Dog disease, they say. It's only a matter of time now before they fix this and we can get things back to normal."

McLeod checks out his lunch. Pork rib. With clam chowder as a side. He rips open a packet of barbecue sauce and slathers it onto the ribs.

"You think so?" he says.

"Sure," the man says.

"So what did you do before?"

"I am a professor at Columbia University."

"I was going to go to college."

"You still can, my boy. You got your whole life ahead of you." He sets the radio down on the parapet and takes out a pipe. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Help yourself, Professor," McLeod says, his cheek bulging with food.

"You can call me Dr. Potter."

"Okay, Dr. Potter."

"I'm joking, young man. You can call me Dave."

McLeod shrugs. "Okay, Dave."

They listen to the radio together. A reporter recaps a statement that the Secretary of Health and Human Services made earlier in the day.

Blah, blah, blah, McLeod thinks.

"Do they do any local reporting, Dave?" he asks.

The question appears to startle Potter, who finishes lighting his pipe before answering. The puffs of smoke smell like cherries.

"No," he says. "They always report from the FEMA bunker at Mount Weather down in Virginia. Which is natural, since that's where the government is these days. CNN and MSNBC and CBS, they're all there. They are still operational. That's a good sign."

McLeod chews slower, suddenly depressed, until he can barely swallow.

The truth is the networks are not really there anymore. They are just repeating whatever the government tells them. The media, like all the other inst.i.tutions Americans recognize, are being whittled down to facades. It is so obvious that even a guy like McLeod can figure it out, but so horrible that even a college professor will not acknowledge it.

"I have a feeling," McLeod says, "I'm never going to get to go to college."

Which means he is going to have to learn how to be a soldier after all, he realizes. He doubts there will be many other career choices for him in the near future. Soldier may not be the best profession, but it sure as h.e.l.l beats "scavenger" and "serf."

He flinches as two fighter planes scream directly overhead, briefly washing the roof in flickering shadows. USAF F16 Flying Falcons. Twenty-seven thousand pounds of thrust pushing up to fifteen hundred miles per hour.

"Look at those suckers go," McLeod says.

The planes soar through the sky in unison until they disappear over the buildings to the southwest, appearing to slow as they bank over the East River.

"I should have joined the Air Force," he adds. "Last I heard, Maddy can't fly."

Moments later, they begin their return, zooming back towards the northwest. Four black dots emerge from their torsos, drop rapidly away, and fall hurtling through the air towards the earth in a forward trajectory.

"Holy s.h.i.t," says McLeod.

Each of those dots is an unguided two-thousand-pound bomb. "Hum? Is something wrong?" Potter says, toking on his pipe.

The dots drop out of sight. A moment later, a distant flash, followed by grating thunder. A column of black smoke rises over the cityscape of southern Manhattan.

Potter shouts over the echo, "What in G.o.d's name was that?"

"I think the Air Force just blew a big hole in the Williamsburg Bridge, Dave," McLeod says, shaking his head in wonder as another pair of F16s roars past, heading south. "It looks an awful lot to me like they're sealing off Manhattan."

The last man standing

Four days ago, First Battalion numbered more than six hundred fifty combat effectives. It now has a combat-ready strength of less than two hundred. All of the officers are dead or missing except for 2LT Todd Bowman and the other two surviving lieutenants from the four original companies of Charlie Company.

Bowman reports these numbers after Immunity, the call sign for Major General Kirkland's divisional command, contacts War Dogs Two by radio during a sweep of units still operating in the region.

Holding the SINCGAR handset to his ear, Bowman stands ramrod straight at attention, even though he is alone in the Princ.i.p.al's personal office except for Jake Sherman, who sits nearby chewing on a thumbnail. Junior officers often do this during those rare occasions when a Major General gives them a call.

Kirkland congratulates Bowman on keeping his command intact, appoints him commander of the Brigade and, in recognition of his accomplishments in the field, promotes him on the spot to the rank of Captain.

The old ways apparently die hard. After everything he has seen, this unusual field promotion surprises Bowman more than anything that has happened yet.

Kirkland says he has a mission for him.

After the call is terminated, Captain Bowman turns to Sherman and says, "The wonders never cease."

"Congratulations on your promotion, sir," the RTO says, beaming.