Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

Right now, outside these walls, there is no local government. No food distribution. No medicine. There are almost no firefighters putting out fires. Only a handful of police offers are still doing their duty. Many of the hospitals have been abandoned, like this one. It’s fast becoming the law of the jungle out there.

There is a reason for this.

Warlord has suffered major losses as well. Captain West and his headquarters staff are MIA and presumed dead. Colonel Armstrong is dead, and so is the Battalion XO, Major Reynolds. Captain Lyons of Alpha is taking over Battalion.

Gentlemen, be quiet. There’s more.

As you know, I have been placed in command of Charlie. I have received new orders directly from Brigade. All units in our AO have been ordered to consolidate into the next highest level at an easily defensible location. This means Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta Companies are going to concentrate and reconstitute Warlord. Quarantine wants Battalion squared away until he needs us.

These orders make sense. They are also simple as far as we’re concerned because our current position is the rendezvous point. Everybody is coming to us. All we have to do is wait. A citywide curfew is going into effect at seventeen hundred hours. By eighteen hundred, the Battalion should be reconstituted under Captain Lyons.

Now it’s time to tell you the real problem that is behind all this. What I have to say may shock you, but at this point probably will not surprise you.

At first, we were told that Mad Dog syndrome is common only in the most severe cases of Lyssa, where the virus attacks the brain. Turns out this is wrong. Turns out the Mad Dogs apparently carry an entirely different strain of the virus in their saliva. When they bite people, those people become Mad Dogs.

In fact, once bitten, they can become a Mad Dog within hours.

Gentlemen, be quiet.

Gentlemen—

Thank you, Sergeant.

The number of Mad Dogs is increasing at a rate that we cannot understand. We have seen with our own eyes that they are dramatically growing in numbers and that they attack and seek to infect, without fear or mercy, any non-infected person that they see. The level of threat is increasing by the minute and will increase until the Mad Dogs are either all dead or they exhaust the supply of people they can infect.

Now you know why we have no choice but to concentrate Battalion or cease to be in the game helping America get through this crisis. Gentlemen, I am not kidding when I say that we are fighting for the survival of our country. Possibly the human race.

The situation is unprecedented.

All right, listen up.

Things have changed, and we need to adapt.

First, there will be no more talk of “baby killers.” If you think the Mad Dogs are still people, your sentimentality is going to get you and the man next to you killed. Mad Dogs are not people anymore. They are puppets controlled by the Mad Dog virus. The virus tells them to attack and infect, and they do it. These people probably have no knowledge of who they are, what they are, or what they’re doing.

And if they do know, but have no choice, then God help them. Either way, if you kill a Mad Dog, it is a mercy killing. It’s that simple.

Mad Dogs do not carry weapons and they look like you and me, but do not let appearances fool you. These things are the deadliest foe that America has ever faced and the most dangerous enemy you will ever meet in combat.

There will be a lot more killing. We are in a hostile country, surrounded by a hostile army, close to being cut off from resupply and medevac, and the enemy is hunting us in a war of extermination, fighting us using tactics against which we never trained.

This is an enemy that does not take prisoners. That does not negotiate. That requires no supply, knows no fear, and attacks relentlessly. The virus does not fight for land or money or politics or religion. It fights to survive by infecting, or killing, all of us.

I am telling you this so you can get your head on straight. If you want to stay alive, you’re going to have to get some fight in your gut and see this situation for what it is.

A war with unlimited spectrum. Total war.

It’s us or them, gentlemen. These are the facts on the ground.

Right now, you are probably getting very worried about your loved ones. I have family in Texas, some in Louisiana, who I think about every day. But I can’t get to them. I’d never make it. If I walked out that door, I’d be dead, or a Mad Dog, within twenty-four hours.

If you want to help your family, then do your job.

Somebody has to survive this.

Civilian law enforcement is being wiped out. That leaves us. We’re all that’s left between a rising tide of Mad Dogs and annihilation. So your family’s only hope, our country’s only hope, is that the Army stays together long enough to make a difference. From now on, once a unit is destroyed, it cannot be replaced. It’s gone.

One of you asked me if this is the end of the world. My answer was not a very good one. I thought of a new answer, and I like it better.

Whether the world is going to end or not is literally up to us.

As for me, gentlemen, I say it’s not.

Chapter 9

They do not deserve to take it all from us

The sun is shining and the streets are jammed with people enjoying the end of summer. In Central Park, hundreds lie on blankets in Sheep Meadow, sleeping or reading. Several boys with their shirts off throw an orange Frisbee back and forth, while a dog playfully barks and scampers between them. Christopher sits on a bench bouncing Alexander on his knee. They both smile eagerly as she approaches them barefoot and laughing. Alexander demands ice cream. Valeriya Petrova suggests a ride on the Merry-Go-Round instead and he shouts for joy before realizing he’s been fooled, suddenly declaring his interest in both ice cream and a ride.

What flavor, Alex? Christopher asks.

Alexander looks up at his father and cries exultantly: Vanilla!

Her eyes flicker to Christopher, deliciously aware that he is unaware of being watched, and knows they are getting older every day and that some day they will die and there will be nothing and they will never be together like this again. Instead of making her sad, the thought fills her with a strange elation that she is alive and not dead, that she still has time, that they all have time, before even just this single perfect day ends. And her son has even longer and all the world lies before him.

Tonight she will make love to her husband and whisper thank you in his ear as she does at times when she feels like this, when she cannot contain the beauty of her life and the joy her family brings her.

Harsh white light shatters the darkness.

The building groans to life as its systems reboot.

Petrova lies under the desk, shivering with her eyes clenched shut.

You must get up, she tells herself. You must not give up. You must survive for them.

No, stay and dream a little while longer. Maybe the dream is true. Maybe, outside, the world has returned to normal. People in the park, laughing and playing. Lying on the warm grass, reading a paperback—

No—

Outside, she knows, the world is dying.

Everybody she has ever known, everybody she has ever loved, everything she cherished as part of life, is being destroyed.

She knows that she is probably going to die here without ever seeing the sun again. Without ever seeing her son again.

So far away.

Mankind will not cross the Atlantic again for perhaps hundreds of years. London may as well be on another planet. Within a generation, even the word “London” may cease to be generally remembered in North America. Knowledge that there are other continents at all may slowly be forgotten as future generations struggle to survive.