Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

“You’re on, uh, fire, Jake,” he says, noticing smoke rising up from his RTO’s radio pack.

“It’s the radio, sir,” says Sherman, sporting a black eye. “It’s toast. But who knows, maybe I can fix it.”

Bowman nods. If the radio is broken, the platoon is now cut off from the rest of the Army. They are officially off the reservation, at least until they rejoin their company.

“Sergeant Ruiz?” Corporal Hicks says. He is standing over Hawkeye, who sits on a curb, rocking back and forth. “He don’t look so good, Sergeant.”

Ruiz wipes blood from his face and crouches down to face the soldier. Hawkeye shivers, sweating and pale, with his face buried in his hands. Getting the shakes is common after combat due to an excess of adrenaline.

The Sergeant put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“You all right, son?”

Hawkeye removes his hands from his face. His N95 mask is gone. Ruiz sees a jagged hole where a Mad Dog bit and tore away a chunk of flesh from his cheek. The skin around the wound is swollen and inflamed.

“Sergeant,” the boy says vacantly. “I don’t feel so good, you know?”

“Just a scratch,” says Ruiz, involuntarily jerking his hand away.

Hicks is calling for the medic.

They have little time to patch up their wounds and take stock of themselves. Bowman is issuing new orders. They are still shooting and using up ammunition, there are too many civilians in the area, and they are not secure. Time to move. Their objective is very close now. Within just a few blocks, they’ll be back with Charlie Company in a defensive position behind some thirty-cals. Then they can rest.

Bowman will be happy to turn this mess over to the company CO and let him decide what to do.

The chain of command appears to have figured out the Mad Dog threat as well and is trying to consolidate its forces in New York. It’s the smart thing to do, he believes: Hold what can be held and give up the rest. But the politicians are not going to want to give up anything. They are going to give the Army an impossible task. And officers do not always make smart decisions when surprised. It is going to be chaos.

In any case, it may be too late to consolidate in a city that is already beginning to swarm with infected.

Bowman, in fact, is now wondering how long, given a probable exponential spread of infection in the general population, Eighth Brigade will be able to remain effective as a fighting unit. He is aware that the ramifications go far beyond the Army and his tiny corner of it. He is just not ready to face them yet.

Right now, the end of the world is simply too big to even contemplate.

Chapter 5

I can’t work like this!

Dr. Joe Hardy hustles into his office with Dr. Valeriya Petrova in hot pursuit, their labcoats flapping behind them.

“Here it is,” he says, grabbing his putter from behind his desk. “Now we’re in business.” He turns around and begins to head back out the door, but his colleague blocks his way, staring at him coldly.

“Really, Doctor, this is no time for golf practice,” Petrova says in her Russian accent.

“Watch me,” he says, pushing past her.

“Are you drunk, Doctor?”

He laughs derisively. “No, hungry,” he says, patting his enormous stomach. “Both make me irritable, so be warned.”

She gives chase. “We need to discuss my findings.”

“Findings!” He pauses a moment to face her. “Findings?”

“Yes. The implications are significant.”

“Honestly, Valeriya, do you really think anybody gives a flying shit about your findings right now?”

“But they are significant, Doctor. Did you not agree?”

“Agree with what? Do you realize that we’ve got some serious problems that we are dealing with here?”

She looks surprised. “You did not get my email?”

Hardy laughs again and keeps walking, swinging his putter. Petrova stomps her right foot in frustration, her face flushed, and hurries to catch up with him, marching along at his side. What a strange woman, he thinks. Smoky, exotic looks and foreign accent that inspire lust. A masculine, abrupt manner that inspires loathing. Half the time, he doesn’t know if he wants to buy her flowers or kill her.

Now Dr. Lucas steps out of his office, hastily repositions his glasses on his nose, and says, “Ah, Dr. Hardy, good to see you. Are you going to do something about the air conditioning or not? You may have, ah, noticed that it’s freezing in here.”

“He is right,” Petrova says. “It is cold in this building.”

Hardy sighs. “People, I’m the director, not the facility manager. Who, by the way, is MIA. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Well, I can’t work like this, sir!” Lucas challenges him. “If you want me to keep at my research while we’re going to be stuck living here for the near future, you could at least try to provide decent working conditions.”

“Tape some garbage bags over the air vents,” Hardy tells him, brushing past.

Dr. Saunders steps out of his lab, his wide balding head gleaming under the fluorescent lights, and shouts down the hallway, “Hey Joe! Any word from CDC or USAMRIID yet on our rescue before we freeze to death and starve?”

“No!” Hardy shouts over his shoulder, and keeps moving.

“Five minutes, Doctor,” Petrova says. “That is all I ask. It is quite urgent.”

They enter the employee break room. Hardy walks up to one of the vending machines and studies it for a few moments.

“Stand back, Dr. Petrova,” he says.

“What?”

“Just move back two, maybe three steps.”

“Why? You—here? Is this acceptable?”

“Yes, that’s perfect, thank you.”

He takes a deep breath just before swinging the putter as hard as he can at the machine. The club connects with the glass front and shatters it. The noise is startling. Glass shards spill onto the floor.

“Wow,” he laughs. “Did you see that?”

“You could have warned me you would do this,” Petrova tells him.

“Believe it or not, it scared me as much as it scared you.”

Hardy looks down at himself, half expecting to see pieces of glass sticking out of his large, round body accompanied by his mother’s voice yelling at him as a kid, See, that’s what you get for playing with things you don’t understand, Joey . Seeing himself unscathed, he pulls down his mask and reaches into the machine to plunder a package of peanut M&Ms, which he tears open with a hungry grunt.

“This was necessary?” his colleague asks him. “Please explain.”

“Did you not hear me just say to that jackass Bill Saunders that CDC and USAMRIID are not returning my calls, meaning we are cut off from the outside world?”

Petrova nods. “I see,” she says.

“Do you?” he says, munching rapidly. “There’s a mob downstairs threatening to kill people if we don’t hand over the magic medicine we don’t have. We are under siege.”

“Yes, I know all these things.”

“Then, to top it all off, last night my daughter calls me to tell me there are some psychos attacking people in her building, and all the 911 lines are jammed.” His shoulders sag. “Christ, between the siege and the power brownouts and all hell breaking loose outside, I don’t know if it’s even possible to finish what we started here.”

“I understand things are hard,” she says.

“Do you? So surely, then, you see why I don’t care about your findings right now.”

Petrova eyes him coldly. “Doctor. You know well that my husband and son have been trapped in London since all flights were grounded at the beginning of the Pandemic. My boy is three years old and I have not seen him or my husband in weeks. The cell phones are jammed and I have not spoken to them in seventy-two hours. I—” Her voice cracks for a moment as an expression of pain flickers across her face. “I think I understand how serious the situation is.”