Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

On the screen, a second building was being shelled, a large hotel. They were hitting it with high-explosive incendiaries—white phosphorous. Several floors were already engulfed in chemical fire, pumping out rolling clouds of dense white smoke.

Big Brother was going to have Prince’s head, but that no longer mattered. If there were people inside, they were being burned alive. He had to stop it.

Conventional doctrine, aggressive action, flawless execution. That was his motto, and it had served him well during twenty years of service to the people and the Constitution of the United States. Though conventional thought and flawless execution had gone out the window, he still had aggressive action as a card to play. He could at least do that.

He wanted to do something . Something real. Something with results. His exhausted, throbbing brain had stopped cooperating. It was time to make some decisions from the gut.

“What do we have that can take out those Nasty Girls?” Prince asked, using Army slang to describe the National Guard.

“Our air assets are all tied up,” Walker said.

“Untie them. Get me something that can fly and shoot.”

“Sir, are you saying we should engage a Massachusetts Army National Guard unit?”

“An infected unit. And yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, Major. We’ll use the Apaches to track them by radar, confirm they’re infected, and destroy them.”

“Sir, I feel it’s my duty to point out we’re in a rather delicate situation with the Governor.”

Prince had never wanted to punch a man so badly in his life. “ Delicate? ”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re going to protect the man and his family and ensure Massachusetts has a government next week. What’s so delicate about that?”

“He won’t come, sir. He’s still holed up at Logan International Airport, surrounded by state police and Guard. He’s running the government from there.”

“Did you tell him the President of the United States declared a state of emergency? That’s why we’re here helping him keep whatever he has left from washing away.”

“He says he declared martial law, Colonel.”

“Good! We’re all on the same page! So what’s the problem?”

“He just declared all Federal units on Massachusetts soil to be under state control. He says our command is now subordinate to Major General Brock.”

The news struck Prince speechless for a moment. The situation had just changed so dramatically it gave him a sense of vertigo.

Based at Camp Edward in Cape Cod, Major General Brock commanded the Massachusetts Army National Guard, eight thousand strong. Prince considered Brock a dependable soldier and a solid brother officer. National Guard units were scattered all over Boston, and they shared communications and even staged joint operations with Prince’s battalion.

After declaring a state of emergency, the President had nationalized all Guard units, putting them under Federal control. But with the new order, the Governor was putting Prince’s battalion under Brock.

Prince glanced across the tactical operations center at the National Guard liaison sitting in front of a radio and talking to his counterpart. “What’s Brock going to do?”

Walker shook his head and shrugged. “Hell of a time to secede, though.”

The last thing Prince wanted was a shooting war against an entire brigade of National Guard. His eight hundred lightfighters were no longer in any condition for that kind of fight. And the rest of Tenth Mountain was committed. There was no help available from the outside.

But he had his orders. That, and there was no way he was going to take orders from the Governor; his boss was the President of the United States. “Major, I want you to draw up a contingency operational plan for doing a snatch grab on the Governor. In and out and with no blood spilled. I want to know what kind of assets we have and what kind of assets he has. Last time I checked, Massachusetts was still one of the fifty states.”

“Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”

“I’m sure it’s an order, Major.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Outstanding attitude. Get me eyes on that arty unit and on that airport. As in now.”

“I’ll get on it right away.”

“And pull Harry Lee out of the field. I need my S-2.” He regarded Walker with disdain. “He’s the only officer I’ve got with a clear head and a pair of balls.”

Lathered in sweat. Eyes wild. Pulse pounding at a heart attack pace.

The soldiers screamed at each other to lower their guns.

They were making enough noise to bring the entire hospital down on their heads. Soon, the Klowns would come howling through the doors.

Wade scanned the faces. Nobody was infected. Yet.

He looked at the weapons. There was enough firepower to fill the air with metal in seconds. The sergeant’s combat shotgun was fixed on Williams’s chest. The Sledgehammer was loaded with twelve-gauge shells—high-velocity buckshot. On full auto, the gun fired five rounds per second, emptying its twenty-round drum in about four seconds and destroying anything in its path.

Wade remembered something Ramos had said to him in Afghanistan: The gun calls to be used . He lowered his carbine. “Okay, okay. Listen.”

The others ignored him.

“Come on, guys. Put them down.”

Rapid shotgun blasts caught Williams in the chest and threw him down the hall. Surprised, Wade fell backward and landed on a bloody pile of arms and legs.

Ford snapped two rounds into Eraserhead’s arm and shoulder then put another three in the ceiling. Eraserhead laughed as the impact spun him around.

Wade looked up into the Sledgehammer’s smoking barrel as Ramos took aim.

This is it. Oh fuck, this is it—

“BOOM!” the sergeant roared. Then he burst into laughter.

Ford swept his carbine toward Ramos.

The world exploded in a blinding flash of heat and light.

Grenade—

Ramos disappeared in the blast. Shrapnel ripped the walls apart. The concussion flung the bodies against the ceiling and dropped them like puzzle pieces. Wade was lifted and spun through the air. He landed hard on his side and curled into a fetal ball among the dead.

Bare feet splashed past, hairy legs. Infected looking to play.

He shut his eyes and didn’t move. His body hurt everywhere. If he had an open wound, even a cut, he was as good as dead.

Man down, he thought.

Wade sat up with a jolt. He reached for his carbine by reflex but couldn’t find it. He patted his body, checking for wounds. His armor had caught some shrapnel. He was going to have a lot of bruises, and his ears were still ringing at high volume, but he seemed to be okay.

Ramos lay a few feet away, his hands twitching and his armor pockmarked and smoking. Ford gasped from a ragged chest wound. Eraserhead was in even worse shape with one arm blown off.

Wade knew he should pinch off Eraserhead’s artery to keep him from bleeding out, lash a tourniquet around the upper part of the limb, and slap a Kerlix bandage onto the stump. He should stab Ford’s chest with an angiocatheter to release air and keep the man’s lungs from collapsing. Then get both of them a Medevac.

Wade didn’t move. The men were splattered in blood. Blood crawling with live virus.

He’d seen microscope images of the Bug in one of the endless PowerPoint presentations the Brass was always sending down to the front-line troops. The Bug looked like little worms that lived in bodily fluids, seeking out the brain and its fertile tissues, where it fed.

The men lying in that hallway were his friends. They were wounded.