Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

After ten blocks of being in a meat grinder and shooting at a sustained rate of fire, though, we started to get tired. It was like being under harassing fire except it was bodies they were throwing at us, not bullets. The abandoned vehicles all over the street forced us to take it slow and screwed up our firing lanes, making us waste ammo. There were cars and trucks and glass everywhere from one abandoned traffic jam after another, and the shadows from the light poles were murder. We saw over and over again where somebody with a big truck or SUV panicked and tried to ram his way out, pushing vehicles into pileups. Some of the cars were on fire and pumping out this thick, oily smoke. Civilians were screaming from windows and throwing shit at us to get our attention.

By the time we’d gone twenty blocks, we were down to forty, fifty men. A few guys got killed, but most of our losses were from guys who just melted away into doorways of apartment buildings. You’d turn around, and suddenly they’d be gone. Some walked away because they’d got bit and they knew this was a death sentence. Others probably just thought it was suicide to keep pushing and they’d had enough. I don’t think they’re cowards. I really don’t. This war is bigger than all of us, almost too big to even understand. People break easy when they try to get their head around something this big. A war where winning feels like losing, and losing, well, it means you’re dead.

Anyhow, the Mad Dogs showed up in force from two directions. There were thousands of them out there in the dark, coming fast, all of them growling with each breath so that they sounded like a train. If you ever saw the movie Zulu with Michael Caine, it was like that—thousands and thousands of people running in waves against aimed rifle fire. No, better, I remember I once saw a crowd of a couple thousand kids stampede at a heavy metal concert. Now imagine all those people are running at you and they want to tear you to pieces with their bare hands and teeth. I saw them coming and I pissed down my leg. There’s no shame in that. It happens to a lot of guys, right? Never happened to me in Iraq, even when the bullets went buzzing right by my ear like wasps. Funny if you think about it. I had to come home to learn true fear.

It’s down there? God, this place looks like an insane asylum. Freaking stinks, too. Listen. Just let me tell the rest of my story before you put me in, please. I didn’t fight my way here all night just to get pushed into one of these rooms and forgotten about. I came because I wanted to feel something, anything, like home again, just one more time. And I want to tell my story first so you won’t forget me.

Thank you. I mean it.

So there we were, already low on ammo and with a horde of maniacs coming at us out of the darkness, and we tore them a new asshole. We unloaded everything we had on them. No more shoot and scoot. We were a mobile defense, and it was time to defend. We propped the MGs and SAWs on the hoods of cars and rained lead. They were ripped to shreds. Bodies were cut in half. Heads popped off of bodies and flew into the air. It was incredible, like being in some warped virtual reality game. You’re going to think I’m one sick puppy, but it felt good. It felt like survival. I didn’t see them as people anymore, but as a group, as a whole, like this one big monster. The more they died, the more I lived, you know? I wanted them to keep coming. I wanted them all to die.

And I still honestly thought we’d make it. At that time, despite our fatigue, our ammo situation and our losses, getting overrun was the last thing on my mind. But then rifles started jamming. One of the MGs overheated. I fired mag after mag at a rapid rate of fire until I had almost nothing left, and still they kept coming. Waves of them. Overhead, the helicopters were circling, watching us, and then when things got dicey they strafed the Mad Dogs with the chain guns and, oh Lord, entire sections of the horde just exploded and disintegrated.

Things went to hell in a hurry after that.

An Apache came in low, blinding us with his light, and started dropping rockets and now vehicles were being flipped and tossed into the air, like: Wham! Wham! Wham! Hot metal was flying everywhere, ringing off the vehicles and clattering off the walls and ripping through the bodies of the guys in my squad. In an instant the Apache screamed overhead and was gone, I was squinting through the afterglow in my eyes and shooting, and then I noticed that my entire squad had literally disappeared. It was just me and my Sergeant, who was bleeding from his ears and stone deaf and staring in a daze. It wasn’t Maddy that killed my squad; it was blue on blue fire. It was right about then that Captain Reese got a little confused because he started screaming into the radio calling for an arty strike almost on top of us to keep the Hajjis from overrunning our position. He completely freaking lost it.

That’s when I knew I was a dead man. A river of blood was literally flowing around my ankles like something out of the Bible. Moments later, the power went out and everything went black. And that’s when the real horror began.

We had no time to put on NVGs or shoot a flare. We were firing randomly in the dark on full auto, backing up until we formed a square around Captain Reese with bayonets fixed. The muzzle flashes showed glimpses of the Mad Dogs tearing Second Platoon apart, so close you wanted to puke from the stench. They were screaming in the dark. It was hand to hand and the guys were dying fast. And what was I doing? Shit, my heart was pounding like a drum and I was pissing down my leg. I could barely move, I was shaking so bad.

First Sergeant Callahan tried to pull the Captain away to the safety of a nearby building, but the man stood his ground, shooting his pistol while somebody popped smoke in a crazy try at concealing him. The Maddies swarmed around him and ripped him apart by the handful. I only barely survived after being picked up and thrown into the air by the mob—it was like getting hit by a baseball bat everywhere on my body at once—and crawled under a truck. All around me, the horde just kept coming, running past, rattling the vehicles and making the ground shake like a herd of elephants.

Maddy died by the thousand but he wiped us out and barely broke his stride doing it. And after all that, I lived to hike it back almost the entire way here before some goddamn kid pops out the back of a minivan and gives me this on my hand. But I’ll tell you, it’s just as well, because I’m so tired. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.

Is this my new home?

Any, um, other last requests?

PFC Mooney opens the door to the classroom and waits. He and Wyatt have heard the same stories told repeatedly by shell-shocked survivors trickling in since last night. Mooney does not know what to say to the soldier. What is there to say? What does one say to a man whose friends were violently torn apart right in front of him and is now doomed to die from a poison busily replicating itself in his brain?

“I don’t get a roommate or nothing?” the soldier wants to know.

“Everybody else who got bit is already starting to turn,” Mooney explains. “You could be the last one. They might attack you. We don’t know.”

“It would have been nice to talk to somebody else from Delta and cross over together.”

“Sorry, man.”

“It’s okay. I guess it doesn’t matter. You’re gonna die some day whether you get that last smoke in or not. I’m just glad the war’s over for me.”

“We left a few books in there that we got from the library. Classics. Help you pass the time. I don’t know, maybe you’ll like them. We also put the word out in case any of the survivors want to stop by and talk with you through the door. You still got a little time.”