Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

A severed hand trailing a long rag of flesh and tissue slapped against Wade’s chest and flopped to the floor. The Klowns were throwing body parts at them.

Williams dropped an empty magazine from his carbine. “Reloading!”

Wade glanced at the hand lying on the floor. He laughed. He couldn’t stop himself. It just rolled out of him. He wasn’t infected. The whole situation was insane. He’d survived a year of combat against the Taliban, and he was going to die fighting a mob of murderous maniacs throwing arms and legs at him. He had to either laugh or scream.

But laughing was a good way to get himself killed. He half expected his comrades to train their weapons on him. Instead, Eraserhead started chuckling.

Then they were all laughing at the infected as they killed them by the dozens.

Laughter really was contagious.

The crowd was thinning. The soldiers kept the fire hot. Eraserhead put down the last of them with a few bursts. The squad ceased fire.

Wade raised his goggles, which had fogged again. The hallway was shrouded in a thick, smoky haze. Broken, bleeding bodies lay in piles in their shredded hospital gowns. The sight should have sickened him, but he could only stare in morbid fascination. He knew he shouldn’t look at all. He knew the tableau would haunt his nightmares the rest of his life.

Ramos tapped his shoulder. “Get ready to move!”

Wade blinked, surprised he was still alive. “Roger that, Sergeant.”

They reloaded. They’d burned through most of their ammunition, and they were going to have to get out of the hospital quickly.

Eraserhead opened the SAW’s feed tray, laid in a new ammo belt and slammed the tray shut. He yanked the charging bolt. “Good to go.”

Wade heard muffled reports. The gunfire on the floor below them was barely audible over the loud ringing in his ears. No sounds filtered from above.

Ramos tapped his headset. “I can’t get the LT on the radio. We’re going up.”

Nobody protested. Leave no man behind. It wasn’t just a noble idea; it motivated them to face danger, knowing their comrades would come for them.

They’d have to move fast. The building was filling up with crazies awake and dying to play.

The fireteam chased after Ramos. They flung open the stairwell door and sprinted up the stairs, gasping under the weight of gear and armor.

They banged onto the sixth floor, weapons at the ready.

Nothing. They bounded down the hall. Two men covered while the others moved.

The walls were painted in blood.

“Jesus Christ,” Ford said.

Grimacing bodies and spent brass covered the floor. Some of the bodies wore uniforms and clutched broken weapons. One soldier, his back against a wall, still held the barrel of his rifle in his mouth. A section of wall smoldered, blown out by a grenade. Wade looked up at the ceiling. A bare leg protruded from a shattered acoustic tile next to a dangling fluorescent fixture. Gunsmoke hung in the air.

Ramos called a security halt. The men stopped and formed a circle, backs to the center, guns pointed outward.

“It’s like a slaughterhouse,” Ford said.

The soldiers here had died in hand-to-hand fighting. The mob had rolled over them and moved on. Wade recognized the faces of men he knew well: Eckhardt, Jones, Hernandez, Richardson, Lopez, Cox. He didn’t see Lieutenant Harris.

Despair washed over him. His mind flashed to mountain views and firefights, freezing together in cramped bunkers at Combat Outpost Katie, patrols carrying seventy pounds of gear. Endless hours of joking, hazing, rough sports and petty squabbling.

Wade looked at his squad and knew they were remembering the same things.

“Those motherfuckers,” Eraserhead hissed.

“Our guys gave better than they got,” Wade said.

Eraserhead spit on a corpse. “How does that make it right?”

Ramos nodded. “Honorable deaths.”

Wade remembered that last horrible night at Katie, when they all almost died. These men had looked the tiger in the eye that night only to fly home to America and get ripped apart by a swarm of crazy people.

Then he pushed his feelings aside. They were still under the hammer, and they all had to stay focused if they wanted to avoid the same fate. The men raised their goggles.

Williams pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “I’ll get their tags.”

Wade heard a sound and froze. Then, he heard it again—a moan.

The men readied their weapons.

“Let’s get out of here, Sergeant,” Wade said.

Ramos shook his head. They had to check for survivors.

The sergeant raised his shotgun as a soldier stumbled out of one of the patient rooms. Wade gasped. Lieutenant Harris, pale from loss of blood, had one hand shoved down his pants. His crotch was covered with a massive red stain.

Ramos lowered his gun. “It’s all good, LT. We’ll get you out of here.”

Ford looked as if he might cry. “What did they do to him?”

Wade knew. They all knew.

Eraserhead opened his medical kit. “I got this.”

Harris pulled his hand out of his pants and flung a spray of blood.

The soldiers lurched away sputtering. Harris roared with laughter and stuffed his hand down his pants again. “Hey! You want some more of the good stuff?”

Ramos shot the man in the face. He growled and spat.

Wade touched his cheek. Blood on his gloves.

Infected blood.

He raised his weapon at the same time as the others.

The office tower was going down. Most of it, anyway. A giant piece wrenched clear and slid off in a biblical cloud of smoke and dust.

Prince ground his teeth. For him, that building symbolized everything. America’s strength reduced to rubble. His own impotence to stop it. The plague was stripping away everything that gave him a sense of self worth: his family, his command, his country.

“What did you find out?” he barked at Walker.

“I had an RTO perform a quick radio check with our special weapons and air units,” the major reported. “I don’t think that’s us.”

Prince glared at the man, his chest burning. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“That’s not us, sir. It’s not our mortars or air units doing the shooting.”

“Are you an idiot, Major? Of course it’s not us. That’s heavy artillery. Battlefield howitzers. Not mortars. It’s the National Guard. A unit from the 101st Field Artillery. I would expect even you to recognize the difference.”

Walker reddened. “My bad, sir.”

The colonel growled. “I’ll do it myself.” He turned and yelled at the Massachusetts Army National Guard liaison, “Hey, McDonald! What is that?”

The young lieutenant blanched. He put down the magazine he was reading and stood at attention. “What is what, Colonel?”

Prince stabbed his finger at the screen. “Some of your people caught the Bug and just blew up an office building on live television! Do you think you might want to do something about it?”

“Uh, yes, sir.” The pale liaison turned to his radio and worked the dials.

“We’re supposed to be helping people,” Prince screamed at him, “not destroying their last fucking ounce of hope!”

Across the trailer, the support personnel hunched even lower over their workstations. Prince paced in front of the TV like a lion tired of its cage. He was sick of playing defense. He wanted to take the initiative on something, anything.

Military personnel were catching the Bug. It was bad enough soccer moms were running around hacking up their neighbors with meat cleavers. The average soldier was capable of killing large numbers of people. If America stopped believing the Army would protect them, it’d be every man for himself out there. Game over.