Tooth And Nail Part 4

The street karma is constantly shifting, but Bowman, brand new to the country and command, is not prepared for how much hate he has to eat here on a daily basis. The walls of the high-rise apartment buildings, pockmarked with bullet holes from years of strife, radiate it. The very streets cry infidel. The very bricks want him dead.

"Contact, right!"

The RPG zips across the front of his Humvee and strikes a parked minivan, which explodes and rockets a spinning blur of metal against his windshield, where it bounces with a heart-stopping smash and leaves a spider web of cracks. Kemper, driving the rig, whistles through his teeth but otherwise barely even flinches at the impact.

They did not prepare Bowman for this in ROTC.

The air hums and snaps with small arms fire while the fifty-cals on the Humvees chew up the walls of nearby buildings. Tracers flicker and zip through the air. The top of a palm tree explodes, scattering burning leaves and blistering their windshield with pieces of shrapnel.

Bowman, wide-eyed and shouting himself hoa.r.s.e, forces himself to calm down. His men are counting on him to lead them, and he doesn't't want to let them down on his first mission. They need to stop and start directing aimed fire at the insurgent positions. In an ambush, if you can't't withdraw, you a.s.sault.

He starts to key his handset, but Kemper turns, winking, and tells him that things will be just fine, sir, if we keep right on moving.

The cops aren't answering the phone

Bowman's eyes flutter open and he looks around the facility manager's office with a flash of panic. Had he been dreaming? For a moment, he'd thought. . . . Then he'd heard a noise. A knock? He listens to the hum of machinery in the hospital bas.e.m.e.nt.

Somebody is muttering outside his door.

"Come in," he says.

Kemper enters the room, dimly lighted by a single desk lamp, followed by the squad leaders. Bowman is expecting them. He requested a squad leader meeting. The room's smells of sweat, stale coffee and lived-in gear grows stronger.

"Pull up a chair, gentlemen," says the LT, rubbing his eyes. "Yeah, Pete, just push that aside. Ah, coffee's not fresh but it is hot if you want some."

Ruiz stands, grinning, and heads for the pot. "Don't mind if I do, sir." His squad will be manning the wire for the rest of the night until relieved at oh-six hundred.

Bowman clears his throat and says, "Gentlemen, the situation has changed. Again. In fact, it's become fluid."

Puzzled expressions behind their masks. "Sir?"

"About thirty minutes ago, the RTO came to see me," Bowman tells them. "He shared with me some interesting information about messages he's been intercepting on the net. Gentlemen, there are units in our area of operations that are under attack by civilians."

The sergeants are squinting in disbelief.

"Confirmed, sir?"

"Captain West confirmed it."

"Coordinated?"

"No," Bowman answers. "The attacks are entirely random."

"Just what do they hope to gain from doing that?" says Sergeant McGraw. "Are they looking for food, vaccine or are they, you know, lashing out at the government?"

Bowman looks him square in the eye. "We were one of the units that was attacked."

The men gasp. These are men not easily surprised. But they have just learned the attacks are being made by Lyssa victims suffering from Mad Dog syndrome, and it floors them.

"We were attacked," McGraw says slowly.

"Yes, Sergeant. We were attacked."

"By unarmed Americans. American civilians. Sick people."

Bowman turns to the other sergeants. "As I said, the situation is changing."

McGraw shakes his head. "Sir. . . ."

"Pete, you may feel that your men have something to atone for after what happened on the wire today. I don't. Captain West agrees with my view on this. Whatever your feelings are, you're going to have to get yourself squared away on this."

McGraw chews on his mustache and mutters, "Yes, sir."

"Well, this makes sense," Ruiz says. "We've been turning away a lot of people who caught the bug, but also a lot of people asking for help controlling a Mad Dog, or saying a neighbor's gone Mad Dog and attacking people. More than we should be hearing about."

"What do you say to them?" Sergeant Lewis asks. He is a giant of a man, nearly six feet and four inches tall, and was once considered the unit's finest athlete. Back then, the soldiers called him Achilles behind his back, with admiration, but not anymore, not for some time. After his son was born and he quit smoking, he got a little soft and put on some weight. It did not dampen his natural aggression, though. If anything, he has only grown more aggressive over time. He adds, "What do you tell them to do?"

Ruiz shrugs. "To go back home and call the cops."

"And is that all right for them?"

"They, um, say the cops aren't answering the phone."

Lewis gestures with his large hands and says, "We got to get out there and start helping these people."

"Negative," says the LT, shaking his head for emphasis.

"It's why we're here, ain't it, sir?"

"It's a no go. It's not our mission. The Army is a weapon of last resort in civil disturbance situations. We're not cops. We trained with the non-lethals but we don't have any. We go out there, and we'll end up in situations like today where civilians get killed."

"Sounds like people are getting killed all over, and we're sitting with our a.s.ses in the wind," Lewis says bitterly. "What's the Army for if not protecting the people here?"

"I don't have the answers you'd like me to have," Bowman tells him.

"What matters is our position here. Our orders are the same. Keep this facility safe. Out there, we'd only do more harm than good."

Kemper nods. It makes sense. You can't kill a fly with a hammer.

Bowman clears his throat and adds carefully: "I should add, however, that in light of recent events, the rules of engagement have changed."

The NCOs begin swearing.

If you're AWOL for more than thirty days, you are technically a deserter

PFC Richard Boyd follows the girl down the street, both of them sticking to the shadows to avoid being seen. He had no idea things have gotten this bad out here. The streets are alive with packs of healthy and infected hunting each other in the dark.

The girl's name is Susan. He guesses her to be about nineteen, his own age. Pretty face. Nice body, slim and athletic. A girl next door type who seems out of place in New York. Being in a Muslim country for the past ten months made Boyd forget how much skin comes out in the West when the air is warm and muggy like tonight. She is wearing a tank top and cutoff jeans and the humidity is making her sweat. He pictures droplets of sweat trickling between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and feels the pull of arousal. Maybe she will kiss him for helping her out. Maybe she'll do more than that.

Susan disappears into the doorway of a jewelry store and he follows.

"What is it?" he whispers near her ear.

They are standing close and he wonders if he should try to kiss her.

After a few moments, she says, "Nothing. They're gone."

She showed up at the post just after midnight, while Sergeant Ruiz was in the hospital with the LT, and asked for help. Williams said she had a junkie look and suggested some sort of quid pro quo if he could get her something tasty out of the hospital pharmacy, which got the guys excited and joking. They stopped laughing when she told them her story: Her father was sick and went Mad Dog and starting beating the c.r.a.p out of her mother. Mom hid in a closet in their apartment and Dad was tearing the place apart. She called the cops but kept getting a recorded message saying all circuits are busy. That's when Corporal Hicks showed up and told her that there was nothing they could do for her in any case. If the cops could not help her, she was on her own. The boys suddenly ached to help, although Williams hooted and said it was all BS, you white boys almost got taken.

Some of them wanted to get taken. She really is pretty, they thought. That's when Boyd decided to go "over the hill." AWOL. He waited a few minutes, then slipped out through the wire and joined up with her. They have been making painfully slow progress to her apartment building in the Lower East Side ever since.

His plan: Save the girl's mom, be the hero, split for Idaho. He should be there, with his family, right now. Donna had Lyssa and Mom needed him. She said so in her letter. She said she was afraid his sister would go Mad Dog and then the Sheriff would come and shoot her and throw her body on one of the big fires outside town. The fact that everything in the letter happened a week ago does not matter to Boyd.

The only problem with this plan is he is not even sure where he is right now, much less how he is going to get to the suburbs of Boise during a plague, when all the planes are grounded and the streets, apparently, are alive with homicidal maniacs.

If you're AWOL for more than thirty days, you are technically a deserter. If he becomes a deserter, they might even shoot him if they find him. After what he has seen tonight, he is certain they will. These are hard times and getting harder.

Maybe he will go back after he helps this girl out. The idea of being executed is starting to loom large in his imagination, and he does not like it. He did not really think things through before slipping out of the post. His plan is already falling apart.

Susan darts into another doorway, and he follows.

"What is it?"

She shushes him, their bodies pressed together.

Then he hears it. Mad Dogs howling in the dark.

Two teenaged girls enter the glow of the sputtering street lamps, crossing the street. One stops and stares directly at where Boyd and the girl are hiding in the shadows, and emits a low guttural growl, shoulders slouched and trembling, her hands balled into fists at her sides. Drool drips from her clenched teeth, staining her T-shirt.

The other girl, her long hair falling in tangles over her face, continues limping along, dragging a leg that appears to be bleeding and broken. Then she too stops and begins growling at where Boyd and Susan are hiding.

Boyd raises his M4. The first girl growls louder. Susan is shaking, breathing in short, panicked gasps.

"Shoot her, shoot her. . . ."

He licks his lips as a sickening wave of horror blanks out his mind. His heart begins hammering against his ribs and he can feel his bowels turn to water. He blinks, tries to shift his mind back on his training, but he never trained for this. The fact is he has no idea what he will do if the girl charges him. In Iraq, things were never clear cut but fighting American civilians who have turned into some kind of psycho zombie is something new and beyond training. Instead, his mind begins obsessing on the theory he heard that Mad Dogs are not really growling when they make that noise, they are actually talking, but their throats have become partially paralyzed so it comes out as a creepy gurgle. Once he thinks of this, he cannot get it out of his mind.

He wonders what they are trying to tell him.

A mob of young, muscular Asian boys, wearing wife-beaters and jeans, emerges from the darkness and falls upon the girls with metal pipes and baseball bats. The girls' bodies topple to the ground under the blows. Except for the scuffing of their sneakers against the street as they lay convulsing and flailing and dying, they don't make a sound. Boyd hears the pipes and bats connecting with flesh and cracking bones when they hit, clanging off the asphalt when they miss.

"Jesus," he says, sick to his stomach.

One of the boys straightens and stares in their direction.

"Shut up," Susan hisses beside him.

"Why? They aren't infected."

"I've seen those guys before," she says. "You do not want to f.u.c.k with them."

Their work done, the mob moves on without a word, stretching and swinging their homemade weapons.

"Come on, Rick," Susan says, sighing. "We're almost home."

War has rules

In Bowman's headquarters in the hospital facility manager's office, the rules of engagement are changing and the non-coms are swearing.

Bowman presses on, "You are now authorized to use deadly force against any civilian who makes a threatening gesture towards a member of this unit. Even if that civilian is unarmed."

Now everybody is shouting.

"This comes straight from Battalion and presumably from Quarantine and the Old Man himself."

War has rules. Rules of engagement are spelled out by command authorities to describe the circ.u.mstances under which military units can use force, and to what degree.

They are also supposed to follow the basic precepts of law.

The LT runs his hand across his buzz cut. "Gentlemen, I'm honestly not sure what to make of it. I'm open to suggestions."

Kemper glances at him sharply.

"It's illegal," says McGraw. "We don't have to obey an unlawful order."