Tooth And Nail Part 5

"Suppose we don't pa.s.s on the new ROE to the men," says Lewis. "What happens if we are attacked? How do we defend ourselves, and with what force?"

"I'm not shooting American citizens," McGraw says, his face burning.

"I took an oath to defend them, not slaughter them, for Chrissakes. Even the G.o.dd.a.m.n dirty hippies."

"So we're going to let the Mad Dogs here attack us and kill us or infect us," Lewis says. "That's your ROE?"

McGraw snorts. "How many people are we talking about here? We can handle a few at a time without killing anybody. Not that many people go Mad Dog. It's pretty rare."

"If that's true," says Ruiz, "then why are we getting these reports of Mad Dogs attacking Army units?"

n.o.body has an answer to that.

"I mean, did you ever wonder why America had to pull its forces out of almost every one of its military bases around the world? We've got what, more than seven hundred bases? More than two hundred fifty thousand people overseas just in the Army? Think about it. Almost every one of them is home now."

"They're not telling us something," Lewis says. "That's for d.a.m.n sure.

You can take that straight to the bank."

"Our situational awareness is very limited," Bowman says.

"What happens later, sir?" Ruiz is asking. "Suppose we do shoot some people who are honest to G.o.d trying to kill us. What happens after, when the Pandemic is over? Do we end up in court charged with murder or what? Could we get sued?"

"They're going to die anyway," says Lewis.

"I want some a.s.surances," says Ruiz. "About the legalities."

"So I say if they're trying to kill us, we should be able to kill them first.

They can't give the whole Army a court martial, can they?"

"I'm not shooting anybody," McGraw says. "The question is not whether we refuse the order, but whether we tell the Captain that we're refusing the order to make a point up the chain of command."

"We can't be the only unit refusing to fire on sick people," Ruiz says.

"These are dangerous times," says Lewis. "I wouldn't go around announcing to the chain of command that you're refusing to follow orders, know what I mean?"

"Are we even supposed to be here?" says Ruiz. "Isn't it against the law for the Army to be pointing guns at people at all in our own cities? You know, Posse Comitatus?"

"We trained for this type of domestic emergency before we shipped out for Iraq," Lewis tells him. "Why would they do that if they didn't mean for us to use that training now?"

"Yeah? Then where's the non-lethal equipment?"

Lewis glances at Kemper. "Back me up on this, Pops."

Kemper wants to shout them down, remind them that they are professionals and that they should shut up and listen to the LT, but Bowman is not doing anything, only sitting there with his mouth open and grumbling to himself that the whole thing does not make sense: If only three to five percent of the sick develop Mad Dog symptoms and die within a week, how can they be that big of a threat? At any given time there cannot be more than ten, maybe fifteen thousand of them in all of Manhattan. That's a lot if you put them all together, but they are scattered far and wide.

How can there be this many Mad Dogs?

Kemper looks away, suddenly wondering if the Lieutenant is going to be able to get them through this in one piece. After serving together a year in Iraq, it is a disloyal feeling, and he does not like it.

He also finds himself agreeing with Lewis: The Army is not telling them something vital. Like the LT said, their situational awareness is very, very limited, and Kemper wonders what it is going to cost them when the bill comes.

The worst thing I ever smelled

PFC Jon Mooney lies awake on his bunk in the dark, restless and staring and dry-mouthed from wearing an N95 mask all day and night. He plays the shooting over and over in his mind: Did they do the right thing? He can't get the image of the Mad Dog squealing and flopping in a puddle of blood, tangled up in the wire, out of his head.

Around him, the boys of First Squad snore gently in the dark. Collins is speaking in tongues while he slumbers, gibberish for the most part but ending with, "Fried chicken?" and a throaty chuckle. Somebody else farts and turns over. Mooney likes these guys, they are like brothers to him, he and them have gone to h.e.l.l and back together, but he can't stand them anymore and he would really, really like to be alone for a while.

He turns onto his side and sees PFC Joel Wyatt staring back at him, his eyes gleaming in the dark. Wyatt takes off his headphones and says, "You still awake, Mooney?"

"Can't sleep. You?"

"Chillin' like a villain, partner."

"All right. Well, good night, Joel."

"'Night."

Mooney closes his eyes, forces the shooting out of his mind, and tries to remember what Laura looks like. They are technically not together but he is trying to forget that. Before he left for Iraq, he told her that maybe they should break up. He still thinks that was a sound decision at the time. Plus he'd been feeling spiteful because sometimes he wondered if she is really all that good looking and that maybe he deserved better. He hadn't antic.i.p.ated, however, how hard things would be overseas, how lonely he would get, and he clings to the idea that he still loves her-a lifeline in his violent world.

Plus she had agreed a little too readily to his suggestion of seeing other people, and it has been eating at him ever since he deployed.

"Hey, Mooney."

"Yeah, Joel?"

"I feel like some TV. They got TV upstairs in the patient rooms, right? You in or not?"

Something like electric current floods Mooney's system, jolting him out of bed. Within seconds, the boys are quietly pulling on T-shirts and pants and tip-toeing into the hallway on bare feet, trying not to laugh as they dart past the facility manager's office where the LT, platoon sergeant and squad leaders are huddled together in a tense pow wow.

They pause to listen.

"My wife and kid are out there and I am going to protect them," they hear somebody saying.

Lewis? Mooney mouths to Wyatt, who shrugs.

"That's right," says somebody else. "She's out there. So what happens if she becomes one of them? Do you want us to shoot her too?"

"I'll tell you what," says Lewis. "If I become one of those things, I want you to shoot me in the grape."

"What the h.e.l.l, over?" whispers Mooney.

"What the h.e.l.l, out," Wyatt whispers back, shrugging.

As enjoyable as the spying is, the lure of mindless entertainment is stronger, calling them back to their original mission. The hallway is dark and shrouds their movements. The hum of machinery conceals their footsteps. The whole bas.e.m.e.nt stinks of ammonia and disinfectant. We are ninja, Mooney thinks, totally hidden. The thought makes him smile.

"What's on this time of night?" Wyatt wonders as they reach the stairwell and begin climbing the stairs.

"Who cares? I just want to turn my brain off and forget who I am for an hour."

"Better than sleep!"

"Who can sleep?" Mooney wonders.

"So where are we going, anyhow?"

"Let's go up to the sixth floor and then walk back down, checking out each floor until we find a room that has a working TV in it. Hooah?"

"Whoop," says Wyatt.

By the time they reach the sixth floor, the boys are panting and stop for a rest. They are in good shape but exhausted from months of hard work and lack of sleep and barely enough calories. They sit on the top step and share a cigarette. Mooney is starting to warm up to Wyatt, the tall, skinny red-haired replacement from Michigan with Army gla.s.ses who always seems to be looking over your shoulder while he's talking to you. Most of the boys think he is a little off.

"Ready for some infomercials, cuzin?" Wyatt says. "Some Girls Gone Wild?"

Mooney flicks the cigarette down the stairs, where it bursts in a shower of sparks, and puts his mask back on. "OK. Let's do this."

Wyatt hands him some latex gloves, which Mooney pulls on. "Remember, Mooney, if a nurse or somebody sees us, we just say we were sent to find that cop. Winslow. That'll be our cover story."

They open the door and immediately gag as the stink a.s.sails them, the horrible sour body sweat of Lyssa victims lurking under a sickeningly sweet combination of air fresheners and perfume that the Trinity people apparently sprayed everywhere.

Mooney hears people moaning, and realizes that the walls of the darkened corridor are lined with gurneys, a Lyssa patient in each connected by a tube to an IV bag to keep them hydrated. Some snarl and struggle against restraining belts, while most simply lie moaning, their breath rattling in their chests.

Other than the Lyssa victims, there's not a soul in sight.

Wyatt whistles at the ambiance. "Spooky."

Mooney nods.

"I mean," Wyatt adds, "wouldn't it be cool if they all jumped up and attacked us?"

They turn a corner. There are no patients in this part of the corridor and the lights are on for the night. Mooney and Wyatt blink at the fluorescent light.

"We shouldn't be here," says Mooney. "This whole place is crawling with virus."

"Dude, how about that smell? Every time I think I'm used to it, I get the urge to puke. And I even got a scratch-and-sniff perfume sample in my mask from an ad I tore out of a magazine."

"Abort mission?"

"h.e.l.l, no! These are patient rooms up here, yo. There's gotta be a TV in one of them. Wouldn't it be awesome if they had PlayStation?"

"I'd love to play Guitar Hero," Mooney admits.

Pinching their noses, they creep up to a doorway. Inside, Lyssa victims lie in the dark in their own sweat and stink. Mooney can hear their ragged breath. One of them, a young woman lying on a cot on the floor, is alternately weeping and apologizing to somebody named Ron in fevered delirium.

"Bingo," says Wyatt. "The sound's turned off, though. Gotta find the remote, unless you like the close captioning they've got on. Me, I can't read that fast."

"What's on?"

"CNN, I think. Some kind of riot going on in Chicago. No, wait. Now they're talking about Atlanta."

"h.e.l.lo?"

The raspy voice electrifies them, making them jump.

"You scared the s.h.i.t out of me, whoever you are," Wyatt hisses, and starts laughing.

"Same here," the voice says. "Are you the cops?"

"No, sir," Mooney answers. As his vision slowly adapts to the dark, he can now make out the figure of a man sitting up in bed. "We're U.S. Army."

"Somebody was screaming down the hall earlier tonight. Probably just somebody out of their head with fever, right? But it sounded awful. Like an animal being slaughtered. You might want to check it out. I'd tell a nurse but I haven't seen one in hours."

"How are you feeling, sir? It is bad?"

"A little better today, thanks. My fever's broke, but I could use some water-"

They jump again as they hear the crackle of small arms fire coming from outside the building. Stepping carefully, the soldiers approach the window and peer through the closed blinds to see who is shooting at whom. Far below, they see muzzle flashes and hear the reports.

Third Squad is lighting somebody up.

"What the h.e.l.l, over?" says Wyatt.

Mooney is starting to feel naked without his rifle.

"Oh, G.o.d," he says, and runs from the room.

Wyatt chases after him, finds him retching over a wastepaper basket.

"I breathed it in," Mooney says, spitting and trying to catch his breath.

"I forgot to hold my nose for a second. It was the worst thing I ever smelled in there. Holy s.h.i.t. It smelled like a rotting grave."

"Dude, put your mask back on before you get sick," Wyatt says nervously.

"Are you guys all right?" the Lyssa patient calls from the dark room.

"Don't leave me alone, okay? Bring me some water, please?"

"Hey, look at that," says Wyatt, pointing at the floor.