Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

On the radio, preachers are saying it’s the Apocalypse.

But now this. Well, Hardy thinks, if Petrova is right, then it won’t just feel like the end of the world. It really might be the end of the world. Infection will spread exponentially until everybody gets it except for those smart and supplied well enough to stay hidden for the next few weeks. Billions will die. The survivors, many driven mad by what they have seen, will live the rest of their days scavenging among the toxic ruins.

If she is right, the stakes in the race for a cure, already high, have just been raised to the ultimate level of a fight against possible extinction.

After hanging up, he glares at Petrova. “You’re making me worry.”

“I am simply the messenger,” she says, staring wistfully at the phone in his hand. He can tell she is thinking about her family and wishes she had a little time so that she could try them again in London. He feels ashamed by this.

“Okay,” he says. “Show me your test results. Let’s hope you’re wrong.”

Then he freezes in his tracks and smacks himself in the forehead.

“Dr. Baird!” he shouts.

And rushes out of the room.

Puppets

Hardy jogs down the hall trailed by Petrova, his heart pounding in his chest. He just remembered that Dr. Gavin Baird entered the Institute last night shouting for help. On his way home, he got caught in a small riot of cops and looters outside a supermarket, and a child bit him on the hand, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Shaken, he returned to the Institute for antiseptic and a bandage minutes before the tall blonde and her mob showed up. Like the other scientists, he eventually gave up waiting and went back to work, disappearing into Laboratory West with Marsha Fuentes, one of the lab techs.

Hardy has not heard from either of them since.

Lucas leans out of his office, adjusting his glasses. “Do you know where the trash bags are kept?”

“Come with me!” Hardy roars.

“Should I come, too?” Saunders asks, then falls in with the rest. “Why aren’t you wearing your mask, Dr. Hardy? Are you lifting the self-quarantine regime?”

Hardy pauses at the door of the lab, looking through the porthole but seeing nobody inside. “Has anybody seen Marsha since yesterday? Marsha Fuentes?”

The others glance at each other and shake their heads.

Hardy looks into Petrova’s eyes wearing a sad expression. Then he opens the door and steps inside, holding the putter defensively.

Marsha Fuentes walks towards him from across the room, whimpering.

What is left of her, anyway.

She has been beaten black and blue. The left side of her face is purple and her eye is swollen shut. Her arm appears broken and, perversely, one of her breasts is completely exposed through a tear in her shirt and bra. She winces with each step.

“God, Marsha, are you all right?” he says, taking a step forward.

“She is one of them, Doctor,” Petrova says.

He realizes that Petrova is right: The woman’s throat is swollen, as if she swallowed crabapples that are now lodged in her throat. She’s growling, making the buboes vibrate.

“Aw, Marsha,” he says sadly.

“What’s this all about?” Lucas says, sounding panicked.

“Christ, what is that smell?” Saunders says. “What was she working on in here?”

Baird went Mad Dog and beat the crap out of Fuentes. He also bit her. By the time she regained consciousness, she was already one of them.

Fuentes grins, leaking foam between clenched teeth.

“Maybe we should leave now,” Saunders says, blinking.

“Where’s Dr. Baird?” Hardy says. “We need to confirm that he’s here and then we can get out and seal the room.”

He turns to the right and sees the man several yards away, behind a desk.

“Jesus, Baird, you scared the crap out of me,” Hardy says, forgetting for an instant what his colleague has become.

Baird is growling. His ponytail has worked loose and his long blond hair, clotted with blood, is splayed across his face and shoulders. He’s a strong man, a weight lifter. His hands clench into fists.

Hardy can see his eyes through the veil of hair, burning like coals.

“Oh, shit,” he says.

Baird launches across the desk, scattering papers and sending a PC crashing to the floor. He brushes aside the golf club that Hardy feebly raises to defend himself, seizes the back of the man’s neck and sinks his teeth into his throat. Fuentes, her mouth foaming, latches onto Hardy’s left arm and together, the infected scientists bear him to the floor screaming.

“Do something!” Lucas wails. “Somebody do something!”

Saunders shouts repeatedly, too terrified to make words.

Baird has ripped Hardy’s throat out with his teeth. A fountain of bright red blood flies into the air. Hardy’s scream becomes a gargle. His eyes are glassy with fear and understanding.

“Mom,” he croaks.

Within moments, the lights in his eyes fade. His body relaxes.

The cell phone in the pocket of his lab coat spills onto the floor and begins ringing.

Petrova picks up the golf club and brings it down across Baird’s back, making him flinch and yelp like a dog kicked in the ribs. She brings it down again, connecting with Fuentes’ broken arm. She rolls on the floor, weeping with agony.

“Get out!” she says, wildly slashing at Baird again. “Lucas, Saunders, get out now!”

Despite the repeated blows, Baird is slowly rising to his feet, bleeding and snarling, while Fuentes is working her way back across the floor towards her on her knees, holding out her good hand in a splayed claw.

“Get out!”

Suddenly, she realizes that she is alone and that Baird is on his feet.

She backs up through the open door and hurls it shut.

A moment later, Baird’s body slams against it and begins thrashing and clawing, leaving bloody prints on the porthole.

Inches away, on the other side, Petrova sits on the floor hugging her knees and crying, feeling the vibrations and frenzied pounding against her back.

Saunders and Lucas sit against the wall on either side of her, dazed and shaking from an excess of adrenaline.

Suddenly, Baird stops. The silence is startling.

Hardy’s cell begins ringing again.

“He’s dead,” Lucas says, his teeth chattering. “He’s dead, right?”

“They all are,” Petrova says, wiping the tears from her face.

Gregory Baird and Marsha Fuentes died the moment the virus replicated enough to saturate their brains and subjugate their will to its own. The moment it began using their bodies as puppets for the sole purpose of violently passing itself on to new hosts.

She adds softly, “The Mad Dog strain is a parasite, and it has them now.”

Petrova slowly gets to her feet, peers through the porthole, and gasps. Baird is grinning back at her, wheezing and dripping drool onto his bloodied tie and labcoat.

Viruses are the world’s oldest form of life, primordial and ancient, and yet this mutant strain is something new, she realizes. It is a new force of nature, unleashed upon the world.

A new life form seeking its rightful place in the pecking order.

Baird and Fuentes are no longer making decisions on their own. They are rabid, acting solely based on the virus’ simple program:

Attack, overpower and infect.

“Oh,” she says, backing up. “Oh my.”

“What is it?”

She turns, her eyes gleaming and wild, and screams: “RUN!”

Moments later, the door shatters off of its hinges with a crash and Baird spills into the hallway, howling with pain and rage.

Chapter 6

No sign of blue forces

Second Platoon, now a wedge made up of three rifle squads in diamond formation with HQ, Weapons Squad and the walking wounded in the center, reaches Samuel J. Tilden International Middle School ten minutes behind schedule. A growing crowd of civilians follows the platoon at a respectful distance, hoping for protection.