Tooth And Nail Part 40

The fire begins to slacken. Anti-tank rocket launchers are discarded after they fire their last missiles. Grenades begin to run out. Magazines are pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Some of the boys curse and struggle with jammed weapons. Others stand stoically, carbine held in the ready position for bayonet fighting, waiting for the end. Many turn to their Captain with pale faces, looking for an answer, any answer, other than death. They are afraid to die.

"It's like Steve said once," Bowman says. "There just aren't enough bullets."

He leans his empty carbine against the base of the statue and blows air out of his cheeks.

"This is going to hurt a lot," he mutters, shivering a little despite himself. He unholsters his two nine-millimeters, holding one in each fist, and waits for the end.

He finds himself fixating on tiny details: Broken windows in one of the buildings across the street. Pale faces looking down. The trembling leaves of the skinny trees planted around the statue. The inviting green of the Park across the street to the northeast, where the ma.s.sive Maine monument stands, honoring the VALIANT SEAMEN WHO PERISHED IN THE MAINE BY FATE UNWARNED, IN DEATH UNAFRAID. Time dilates: The minutes appear to stretch into hours.

The Mad Dogs continue to die like flies but they are closer now, pushing through the haze, waiting patiently for their moment.

Bowman calls out: "Lieutenant Vaughan!"

"Sir?"

"See that building directly to the west of our position. The Time Warner Center?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the rally point. Perhaps some of us can make it through. Pa.s.s the word."

"Yes, sir."

Kemper and Lewis join him, and he tells them the plan. The building looks so close. It's right across the street.

"I can get my boys there," Lewis says, his eyes blazing. "I know I can."

"Then see to your men, Sergeant."

Kemper lights one of his foul-smelling cigars and sighs.

"My last one," he says.

Bowman watches the wall of Mad Dogs steadily inching towards their perimeter as the fire continues to slacken, and waits for Vaughan to tell him the boys are ready to charge. He leans back against the cool stone of the statue, taking a deep breath, willing his racing heart to slow down.

It is a fool's errand, he knows. They can charge, and maybe somebody will survive, but not all of them, and maybe not even some of them.

The Captain d.a.m.ned himself to save his men days ago and then sacrificed their lives for this mission. The mission is everything, and yet even a mission as n.o.ble as this one, saving a scientist who might save the world, doesn't seem worth the price. When these boys are gone, there will be none like them ever again.

So they will charge and finish it.

A fool's errand, yes. But if even one man survives, it will be worth it. He says, "What did I do wrong, Mike?"

"This still ain't about you, sir," Kemper says.

Bowman grins. Then he laughs out loud.

He says, "You can't win 'em all, Mike."

"It's a bag of d.i.c.ks, sir."

"The men are ready to move," Vaughan says.

Bowman tells him to give the order and lead the boys across.

As for him, he has decided that he will stick around for a while. He doesn't want to run anymore. Suppose he did and somehow survived. To where? To do what then? To survive how? For what tomorrow?

Better to die fighting, on your feet, like a man, for a country you love, before it disappears forever.

Kemper says, "Sir, I'm proud-"

Who will inherit the earth?

Petrova looks out the window and briefly says farewell to her home and all of the parts of her that she is leaving behind.

After hovering near the base of the San Remo Towers searching for survivors, the Chinooks climb the air and head southwest, suddenly offering a bird's view of Columbus Circle.

"Oh," she says, sucking in her breath and touching her chest, feeling her heart pound against her ribs.

It is here that Captain Bowman's dying company, a single ragged square barely visible through drifting currents of gun smoke, has chosen to make its last stand.

She sobs, seeing what they cannot-endless legions of infected pouring into the Circle and choking the streets beyond, their march raising clouds of dust over the city.

Hopeless.

The square suddenly moves, breaking towards the Time Warner Center, crossing a short distance before slowly dissolving in waves of smoke and infected. Some of the soldiers break off and run in all directions, flailing as they are caught and torn to pieces. Moments later, it is impossible to tell the soldiers and infected apart.

A last flurry of muzzle flashes in the haze. A plume of smoke rising from a burst grenade. A blinding flash, fire and dust. Then nothing.

The infected fill the Circle, wandering aimlessly, as if the soldiers never existed. In fact, the Mad Dogs have probably already forgotten about them.

Petrova cries for the boys, hot tears flooding her cheeks.

The Crazy Eights, people called them.

I will remember you, she vows to herself. And I will repay you.

"Oh G.o.d," Mooney sobs in sudden anguish, looking like a broken old man at the age of twenty. In a single morning, all of his friends have died and he has probably never felt more alone. Seeing him like this, Petrova remembers lying curled in a ball under the desk in the security room of the Inst.i.tute, wishing she were somebody else, somebody without so much fear and pain. Now it is her turn to offer comfort. She takes his hand in hers, and they share tears over the death of his comrades.

As the helicopter continues to lift into the cold gray sky, she sees more and more of the dark crowds circulating through the city's arteries. New York belongs to them now, the insane, the mad, the infected. They will die like flies over the coming days and make the city a graveyard, leaving a nightmare of disease and starvation for the survivors. Civilization will recede as the virus does, leaving the survivors forever afraid of its return. Their descendants will virtually worship the virus and its power.

She wipes her face and turns in her seat, still holding Mooney's hand but emotionally turning inward, trying to stay strong so she can continue fighting this war. She is suddenly painfully aware that the Special Forces, buckled into their seats, are casting fierce, hopeful glances at her, wondering if she, and what she represents, was worth the lives of their friends.

What she can promise them, just as she is now promising the lost boys of Eighth Brigade in her heart, is that she will kill this virus. There will be other viruses, other plagues, but the Mad Dog strain will never again return to threaten extinction. When she is done with the virus, humanity will be able to return to its rightful place on the earth.

She will also honor the soldiers with her memory. Integrity, courage, loyalty-these and the other Army values seemed cute, even corny, to her several weeks ago, but will be in all too short supply in America's future, she knows. Such men from the past will not easily be replaced by the next savage generation shaped by the plague.

Petrova believes with her whole heart that humanity will survive this apocalypse. But with men like Captain Todd Bowman dead and gone, who will inherit the earth?

end.