Craig Dilouie - Tooth And Nail

A bizarre rumbling sound, like a million cardboard boxes being punched in the distance.

The civilians in the windows are crying out to them in panicked voices, pointing south. The NCOs at the rear of the column shout into their radios.

Letting go of Mooney’s hand, Petrova climbs onto the hood and then scrambles up onto the roof of a Ford Ranger pickup truck, ignoring his protests.

Panting, she turns and looks south.

A moving wall of people races towards them, raising a colossal cloud of dust that drifts high in the air, wafting against the sides of skyscrapers.

Deep in the flood of Mad Dogs, cars and trucks appear to slide as they are jostled by the crowd, like they’re floating on water.

A million Bairds, all rushing headlong towards her in a compact, twitching mass, driven by a single mind.

She screams.

If you can’t run . . .

Captain Bowman stands on the roof of a blood-spattered yellow taxi, carbine slung over his shoulder, looking through binoculars and whistling at the horde of Maddies bearing down on his command from less than two thousand meters away. Around him, the company streams past, preparing to shed squads every block to form lines facing south.

He is faced by an overwhelming force, and has few options. He can’t run, at least not very far, because Maddy runs faster. He can’t hide because the helicopters will be recalled if the company doesn’t show up at the scheduled time, and they will be trapped here; besides, there is no guarantee Maddy will not follow them into the buildings.

If you can’t run, and you can’t hide, you have to fight.

The strategy is settled. The rest is tactics.

Maddy has numbers and speed, but Maddy can’t shoot a gun. He is only dangerous if he can get his hands on you. So if you want to live, keep your distance.

Bowman’s plan calls for deployment in depth, with the lines collapsing like a bag after contact with the enemy. Each squad will dump ordnance on the tightly packed Maddies and, once the enemy gets too close, hoof it to the rear, passing the enemy off to the next line.

As long as they do not run out of bullets or make any mistakes, they should be able to keep themselves safe.

He doubts it will work, actually, but he feels he has no other choice.

By deploying his troops in depth, basically spreading them out, he might wear down and destroy this very large body of Mad Dogs while leapfrogging all the way to Central Park. The problem is their formation will stretch out over a half mile, leaving the flanks vulnerable to other large bodies of the infected that he believes may be converging on his people. If this happens, his force will be cut into two or more pieces, and any units unlucky enough to be cut off will be destroyed. And the mission will certainly fail.

A thick trail of black smoke billowing from a burning dumpster begins flowing across the avenue, chased by a sudden change in wind and blocking his view. He puts his binoculars away and spares a moment to glance up at the sky, wishing he had air support. Even a single recon helicopter would be helpful.

Warlord Six, this is Warlord Seven, over.

Warlord Seven is the senior enlisted man in the battalion, Kemper.

Bowman keys his handset and says, “Go ahead, Mike, over.”

Be advised that Warlord Five is leading a detachment east, over.

“Say again, over.”

Warlord Five is leading a detachment east on Thirty-Eighth Street, over.

“Wait, out,” he says, fighting a mixture of rage and panic.

Warlord Five is the XO.

The company is moving north, and Knight is leading some of the boys east.

The man is committing some incredible blunder, completely misinterpreting his orders, and dangerously close to getting them all killed.

Bowman realizes he has seconds to fix this.

He keys his handset again.

“Warlord Five, this is Warlord Six, how copy?”

Warlord Six, this is Warlord Five, go ahead, sir.

“Steve, what are you doing? Get those people back in formation before we have a disaster on our hands.”

Negative, says his XO.

Wrong answer

Lieutenant Stephen Knight, holding a pair of binoculars and watching the turn where he led Alpha, Bravo and Delta away from the main column, grunts with satisfaction as threads of brilliant white smoke begin to drift into the intersection.

His plan is simple: He is going to hit Maddy as he enters the intersection, then leapfrog east rapidly while the rest of the column continues north.

Bowman screamed at him for several moments over the radio but quickly realized they were wasting time they did not have, and decided to adopt Knight’s plan on the spot.

Good old Todd. He has a flexible mind.

Knight is convinced his plan will succeed. Charlie’s rear guard popped smoke to conceal the company’s retreat and hauled ass north. Meanwhile, his own force will draw Maddy off of Charlie and keep them busy for a while.

Maddy is not going to make a fool out of me again, he tells himself, grinning.

Vaughan comes jogging up after issuing orders deploying the rest of their force in depth, stacking them facing west, with a strong rear guard. Around them, two squads of soldiers, their first line, have found comfortable firing positions and are waiting for the order to shoot, locked and loaded.

Knight puts his binoculars away and winks at the man who had been his platoon sergeant and is now a first lieutenant, commanding what is left of Alpha.

“I just got off the com with the CO,” Vaughan says. “I ought to shoot you in the goddamn head. You just killed us all.”

The soldiers closest to them, hunched over their weapons, raise their heads and blink, wondering what is going on.

“This is the only way to accomplish our mission,” Knight says.

“My boys died because you froze,” Vaughan roars, unholstering his nine-millimeter and chambering a round. His face is flushed, making the ugly diagonal scar appear livid on his face. “Now they have to die so you can redeem yourself!”

“What the hell?” one of the soldiers says.

“Oh man, I knew this mission was messed up,” another mutters.

“This is the right thing to do,” Knight says calmly.

“I outrank you now, Steve. You had no right to do this to me!”

He raises the pistol, takes a step forward and aims it at Knight’s forehead.

“I don’t care if you shoot me, Jim. What’s done is done.”

“You had no right to do this to these boys!”

One of the soldiers calls out: “Contact!”

Without taking his eyes off the pistol in Vaughan’s hand, Knight takes a deep breath and screams with all his might: “FIRE!”

The line erupts with a storm of gunshot, turning the first wave of Mad Dogs into flying fragments of meat and bone.

Vaughan lowers his pistol, shaking his head sourly.

More Mad Dogs turn the corner and race towards their line until stopped cold by another volley.

“They’re taking the bait,” Knight says triumphantly. “See that, Jim?” He raises his carbine, sizes up a Mad Dog in his scope, and fires his first rounds. “I knew it’d work!”

If the entire game is going to be lost, there is nothing to be lost by sacrificing a pawn, he tells himself. Because with the game lost, the pawns die anyway.

The tracers stream down the street, every fourth bullet a red streak created by a trail of burning phosphorous. A thirty-cal machine gun opens up, lacerating flesh and snapping bones. A forty-millimeter grenade falls from the sky, bounces off the roof of a car and explodes in mid-air, decapitating a dozen Mad Dogs at once.

And still they come, pouring around the corner, stumbling over the dead, their feet splashing in a lake of blood and writhing bodies and body parts.