Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

“Are you kidding? What’d I ever do to anybody?”

“Have you ever tried seeing what would happen if you maybe shut your big mouth, McLeod?” Boomer says.

McLeod smiles and says nothing.

Boomer adds, “Looks like you’re as popular in the Army as you were in high school, McLeod. Count yourself lucky you’re not shoveling body parts into the basement furnace with the Hajjis—I mean, the civilians.”

“Instead, you got guard duty,” Martin says, gesturing toward the front doors of the school. “Hmm. Aren’t you supposed to be like, you know, guarding?”

“Nobody’s going to come here,” McLeod tells him.

“It’s a Lyssa hospital in the middle of a Lyssa plague,” Martin says, taking off his cap and making a show of scratching his closely shorn head. “Hmm.”

“Yeah, I wonder if anybody’s coming,” the AG says, cracking up now.

“Shush, I’m thinking,” Martin says, still in character.

“Quiet for a sec,” says McLeod. “Listen.”

In the distance, they hear the roar of a diesel engine.

A large vehicle is approaching the school.

He adds, “Oh thank God, they’re starting to pick up the trash again.”

The MGR rolls his eyes and says, “Boomer, stay here, I’m going to go with McFly and check it out.”

“Roger that.”

“Lead the way, McDuff.”

“You’re a very funny guy,” McLeod says. “It must run in the family. Just the other night, your mom—hey, that sounds military, doesn’t it?”

The sound grows louder as they approach the doors and open them cautiously, peering out at the corpse-strewn street.

“Lookit, it’s an LAV,” Martin says, raising his fist. “Go, Marines! Get some!”

The armored personnel carrier, shaped like a large green boat on eight wheels, turns onto their street from several blocks away, its engine grinding.

“I want one of those,” says McLeod.

“It’s the LAV-R,” Martin says. “See the boom crane on the back? It’s got a winch so it can recover other LAVs that break down. The recovery model doesn’t have much for defense, just the single M240 and some smoke grenades.” He adds admiringly, “You should see the fighting version. It’s got an M242 Bushmaster chain gun and two M240s. I saw one once. In action, too. It was freaking cool. The Iraqis call these babies the Great Destroyers.”

“I hear she’s single, tiger,” McLeod says.

“They can go sixty miles an hour and drive underwater, man.”

“Uh oh, they got company. Check it out.”

The LAV-R has completed its turn and guns its engine to pick up speed. The vehicle is surrounded by a crowd of about twenty Mad Dogs running alongside it. A few somehow clawed their way on top and are beating on the armor with their fists.

The vehicle accelerates on the open street and the Mad Dogs begin to lag behind.

“I didn’t even know the Marines were in Manhattan,” Martin says. “We got no commo with them. Should we run out and try to tell them we’re here?”

McLeod snorts. “Be my guest.”

The LAV roars by on its eight wheels, Mad Dogs clambering over its metal body, followed by a swarm of infected, chomping at its heels.

Less than a minute later, the last Mad Dog runs by, a shredded red shirt flapping from his mouth. Then the street is quiet again except for the distant rattle of small arms fire.

“Well,” says McLeod. “You don’t see that every day.”

Every kill is a broken chain of infection

The naked obese woman chases the teenaged boy down the street, arms outstretched and breasts rolling. They pass two charred corpses that lay smoking on the sidewalk outside a burned-out convenience store. His sneakers crunch on broken glass.

With a loud bang, the woman drops to the ground, writhing and moaning.

The boy stops, grips his knees, and totters, panting, almost too tired to stand on his own. His entire body, clad in a bunny hugger and jeans, is flushed and drenched in sweat. After making sure the woman is no longer a threat, he lifts his face to scan the nearby buildings, searching for his savior.

In doing so, he reveals an inflamed and swollen bite mark on his cheek, smeared with blood and drool.

His roaming eyes find a tiny silhouette on the roof of the building across the street. His mouth spreads into a big, toothy grin. He raises his hand to wave hello.

The top of his head explodes.

On the roof of the building, a puff of smoke rises.

Sergeant Grant Lewis peers into his ranging telescopic sight, scanning the ground for additional targets. He sits on a stool he found in an art classroom, resting the rifle on a bipod on the parapet next to an unfinished MRE.

The street below opens up to him in detail.

Bowman collected the NCOs back at the hospital and explained what his scouts found: Private Boyd had gotten bitten during the night and then turned into a Mad Dog by morning, like something out of a zombie movie. It explained everything. For Lewis, it all fit—the huge number of Mad Dogs running wild attacking people, the change in mission, the new ROE. Hawkeye catching the Mad Dog strain from a bite on his face confirmed it. The rate of transmission for this disease is incredible.

And if we don’t do something about it, he tells himself, we are going to be wiped out.

As a result, Lewis has come up with his own ROE: If you are a Mad Dog, or if you are bitten and are going to become a Mad Dog, I am cleared hot to kick your ass.

The M21 is a semi-automatic adaptation of the M14 bolt action sniper rifle. The advantage of the M21 is the shooter gets a quick second shot, which is ideal for target-rich environments. A cam built into the scope mount adjusts the sight to compensate for the bullet’s trajectory. The magazine he is using holds twenty 7.62-mm bullets.

There are no targets in view. The street is empty of life. The air smells like smoke. But they are out there, close, circling. He can hear their growling and their sad, plaintive cries carried on each fresh breeze.

The longer he stays up here, the longer he can delay having to listen to Sergeant Ruiz chew his ass about alleged fratricide. Nobody wanted to kill The Newb. Nobody wanted The Newb to die. Friendly fire is a common thing in combat. Things were very confused trying to cross that intersection. Accidents happen all the time in war.

He can also avoid Sergeant McGraw, who has been moping under his own personal storm cloud, wondering how he missed the fact that PFC William Chen was cracking from the stress right under his nose. Wondering if he could have prevented the poor kid from blowing the back of his head off, which of course he couldn’t. Every soldier has a different way of reacting to stress. Every soldier has a different breaking point. If they themselves do not know what it is, how are you supposed to know?

Lewis shakes his head in wonder. The way his fellow NCOs have chosen so far to react to this crisis is making him lose a little respect for the rank of sergeant.

He leans back in his chair, stretches, and takes a swig from his canteen. He hates the taste of New York City municipal water, but like all guys with experience in the field, he is used to making do. He has food and water, which is all that counts. A grunt can burn up to four, five, six thousand calories a day on a high-stress mission like this one. You either lose weight or you eat every chance you get and replace the calories.

Across the street, two guys in suits and ties are smoking cigarettes on the roof. One of them is leaning over the parapet to take a look at Lewis’ kill. The other sees Lewis looking back at him and sheepishly holds up his index and middle finger to make a V. He is either communicating “victory” or “peace,” Lewis isn’t sure.