Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

“Naked?” Williams qualified.

“It’d be worth it,” said Eraserhead. “Either way.”

The boys chuckled, careful not to laugh too loud or too hard. They passed around a can of dip.

Wade shook his head. “What’s next, Sergeant?”

“We clear the next—”

They heard a burst of laughter out in the hallway.

The fireteam bristled. They glanced at the door before settling their eyes on the hulking Ramos and his Sledgehammer, the devastating AA-12 combat shotgun. The sergeant flashed them the hand signal to prepare for action.

Wade eyed the other members of his fireteam. Nobody did anything without the others knowing about it. Nobody moved unless somebody stayed behind, scanning for threats.

More laughter came, followed by the electrifying sound of a woman screaming.

Wade guessed the staff had heard the shooting and were trying to save the patients just as the doctor had. Saving them meant disconnecting them from the barbiturate cocktail flowing into their veins.

The Klowns were waking up.

“Get ready to move,” Ramos said. “If it’s laughing, kill it.”

The boys hustled into position. They had no doubts now about what they had to do.

Kill them all or die.

In the crowded trailer he was using as his headquarters, Lt. Colonel Joseph Prince studied the big electronic map and dry swallowed an Advil.

Little blue icons displayed First Battalion’s sprawling deployment around the Greater Boston area. A large blue icon indicated his headquarters at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, home to the 66th Air Base Group before it had been relocated.

Yellow icons showed live fire incidents—units in contact. There were a lot of those, more and more every day. Some never stopped being in contact. As for red icons indicating opposition forces, there were none. The enemy was everywhere. The enemy is us , as Pogo once said. The enemy included his wife and son, infected and running amok until they’d been shot down in the street like dogs.

He knocked back a second Advil and tried not to think about that.

The colonel didn’t need the big board to tell him he was losing a war against his own country. He’d made rank by following orders. He never bitched. He always took the fight to the enemy. “Conventional doctrine, aggressive action, flawless execution” was his motto.

Prince wasn’t very imaginative, but he was reliable, and he usually got results. He was used to having the kind of firepower that could flatten anything that got in his way.

The current conflict defied the imagination. The enemy was American citizens, the mission objectives vague, the rules of engagement contradictory. His lightfighters had taken twenty percent losses in continuous operations, while each afternoon, the colonel met with civilian lawyers to review every after-action report and decision that affected American lives and property. He could just imagine their faces when he told them the order had come down from Regimental HQ to terminate the infected in the quarantine hospitals.

Prince was used to freedom of action with massive amounts of power. Now he felt like a spider caught in its own web.

Video monitors next to the big board rolled horrific images transmitted by aerial drones, blimps and long-range cameras. Exhausted staffers sitting in front of flat screens and stacked radios managed operations and talked to units in the field. Foam cups, water bottles and mission binders cluttered the desktops. Dead cans of Red Bull filled the trash bins. The room smelled like nervous sweat and stale coffee.

CNN was broadcasting video of an office high-rise. A massive fireball bloomed from the side of the tower. Then another. Glass and debris rained onto the streets.

Prince recognized the landscape and its scars: Boston’s Financial District.

Gunfire rattled. Wade felt the muffled thuds in his feet. First Squad was in action downstairs. Outside in the hall, the screaming stopped. Then it started again.

“Fix bayonets,” Ramos said quietly.

In Afghanistan, Wade hadn’t used his bayonet once. But they weren’t in Afghanistan. This was a different enemy. This enemy didn’t stop until their hands were on you or they were dead.

He gripped his carbine, weapon shouldered and pointed at the floor. The fireteam glared fiercely at Ramos, waiting for the order to step off. They wanted to move, shoot something. Get it over with. Thousands of people slept inside the hospital. If they all woke up, the squad’s only hope of survival was to rush and shoot their way to the Humvees.

Then call in an airstrike.

Ramos keyed his headset microphone to contact Lieutenant Harris, who led the team on the floor above. “Antidote Six, this is Antidote Two-Two. How copy, over?”

“Antidote Two-Two, this is Antidote Six. We have heavy contact. The hospital is compromised. Repeat. The hospital is—”

A long, sustained explosion of gunfire drowned out the rest. The soldiers glanced upward. The Klowns were on every floor, it seemed.

“Bad copy, Antidote Six. ‘Hospital compromised’ is received. Request orders. Over.”

Ramos waited for Harris’s response and got more thunder instead.

“Antidote Six, Antidote Six, this is Antidote Two-One. Over.” The sergeant leading First Squad was trying to cut in, his voice professional but edged with panic. “Antidote Six, how copy?”

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Williams said.

This is getting seriously bad , Wade thought. “We’ve got to move, Sergeant.”

“And I have to find out if we’re bugging out or sticking with the original OPORD. So shut it.” Ramos repeated his request for orders into his headset.

Wade exchanged a glance with Ford. Does the LT think we’re still good to go for this shit mission? An understrength platoon against thousands of homicidal maniacs? They had to get out. Every second they delayed sealed their fate. Where the hell’s the rest of Bravo Company?

“We’ll be out of this in no time,” Ford said. “Back at the FOB for a hot and a cot.”

Wade nodded, though he didn’t believe a word of it.

A massive boom shook the building. Acoustic tiles fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Somebody upstairs had thrown a grenade. The screaming in the hall died, replaced by waves of howling laughter.

Wade took a deep breath and felt sudden calm wash over him. His pulse slowed, and he became intensely aware of his surroundings.

Ramos was a seasoned non-com, one of the Army’s centurions. He knew what he was doing. Wade trusted him to get them out. Otherwise, it was out of Wade’s hands. He would fight for himself and his comrades. Either he would die, or he wouldn’t.

Ramos shook his head. “All right, we’re going to—”

“All Antidote Ops, retrograde to the Humvees. Abort operation. Antidote Six, out.”

“Antidote Six, Antidote Two-Two. That’s a solid copy. Out.” The sergeant loaded a round into his shotgun’s firing chamber. “Listen up. We’re getting out of here. Hard and fast.”

“I was scheduled to go on leave two days ago,” Eraserhead muttered.

“We know, we know,” Williams said.

“I should be in a bar somewhere, getting so drunk I piss myself.”

“We know,” Williams repeated.

Another grenade went off upstairs. The lights blinked several times.

“At least you’ll still get the chance to piss yourself,” Williams added.

Downstairs, the gunfire stopped. The lack of sound was even more alarming than the grenades.

“Step off in three, two, one,” Ramos said.

“See you on the other side,” Eraserhead told them.