one homicidal but weaponless guy tearing apart some crummy New York apartment.
And yet he’s so scared he can barely think straight.
They enter the building, and Susan points up.
“Fourth floor.”
They walk up the stairs slowly, quietly, Boyd first, holding his carbine, Susan hugging the wall behind him, clearly terrified.
On the second floor, Boyd flinches as he hears screams behind one of the doors. A woman’s voice pleads with somebody named John not to hurt her. The screams become high-pitched until they dissolve into sounds of furniture being tossed aside and an ensuing struggle on the floor and a long, shrill peal of terror.
Then silence.
Boyd swallows hard and turns to Susan, sees tears running down her face.
“I know that woman,” she says. “I know her and her husband.”
“Can you go on?”
“They have a baby.”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
“I’m so sorry, Rick.”
“You’re a brave girl.”
He feels very close to her now.
I could fall in love with this girl, he thinks.
“Don’t give up yet,” he adds.
She nods, visibly trembling, and they continue their climb. On the third floor, he hears an ominous gurgling growl behind one of the doors, the sound of pacing feet, reminding Boyd of an animal in a cage.
The wall vibrates from an impact.
“Let me call home first,” she says. “See if anybody answers. Okay?”
“All right,” he tells her, thankful for the break in the tension.
Susan takes out her cell phone and calls the number, but hangs up after a few seconds.
“Nothing,” she says, paling.
He wants to comfort her, but can only nod and glance up at the ceiling.
They climb the next set of stairs. She points to a door and says, “This is it right here.”
Boyd wipes sweat from his eyes, blinks, nods, steadies his carbine against his shoulder. “Let’s do this,” he says.
He hears a door open behind him. Before he can turn, something heavy cracks against his right leg, which gives out beneath him, forcing him onto his knee. Hands tug at his carbine. The barrel of a pistol is pushed roughly against the side of his head.
“Let go of it, man,” he hears.
“Susan!” he cries, reaching out, but the girl flings herself into the arms of a tall, muscular boy. “I did it, baby,” she says, kissing him passionately. “I did it.” Her boasting quickly turns into hysterical sobbing, her face buried against his chest. “I did it, you goddamn bastard.”
The boy says to another holding a length of pipe, “She should never have had to go out there to do this.”
“And yet she did, and she got back alive, and mission accomplished.”
“She’s a wreck, look at her. She could have died out there.”
The whole thing was a setup, Boyd realizes. The cell phone call was the signal.
“Williams said your story was shit and that you were a junkie,” he cuts in, blinking tears of shame and rage. “I should have listened to him.”
“Junkie?” says the grinning boy holding the gun. “We’re NYU students. I’m pre-med. Susan’s a freaking philosophy major.”
The boy with the pipe crouches and looks Boyd in the eye. “It’s nothing personal, guy. I’m really sorry I had to hurt your leg. We just need your rifle and any ammo you got, then you can go home.”
The boy with the pistol chimes in, “We need to cross over to Jersey tonight, and we got to have some weapons in case we have to fight our way through any drooling wackos. We grabbed this pistol off a dead cop. Then Bob and Susan cooked up this lunatic idea to get a couple of you guys out here and do a snatch-grab on your guns.” He laughs crazily. “Seeing you actually here in the flesh, I can’t believe it worked. It was a stupid plan.”
Glaring, Boyd asks, “What’s in New Jersey?”
“A place we can hold up while the world ends.”
“The world’s not ending.”
“Are you blind? Did you not see what’s going on out there, friend?”
“I’m not your friend,” Boyd seethes.
The jock holding Susan says, “You know, you could always come with us.” His friends try to shout him down, but he presses on: “We got your rifle but we don’t even know how to use it right. We need a guy like you with us. I almost had a heart attack when we mugged you. But you have experience with this sort of thing. What do you say?”
The others look at him expectantly.
Fifteen minutes later, Boyd limps briskly down the street, wincing at the jolt of pain lancing through his leg with each step.
He is alone.
Those crazy dumb kids won’t make it to New Jersey, he thinks. They’re not going anywhere. Weapon or no weapon, if it’s going to get as bad as they say it will, they’re going to die.
He sees a body lying face down in the middle of the street, twitching, and gives it a wide berth.
After everything he has seen and heard tonight, the safest place to be is smack in the middle of Charlie Company’s Second Platoon, with natural born killers like Hicks and Ruiz watching his back. He would rather be with them, with Ruiz kicking his ass black and blue for going over the hill and losing his M4, than take his chances with a bunch of gun-slinging, middle-class, smart-ass college kids.
Another three blocks and he’ll be home.
He tries again to think up some good excuse for abandoning his post and losing his weapon and ammo, but his tired brain still isn’t giving him anything. An infantryman losing his rifle is like a
He hears gurgling in the dark. He turns, seeking refuge, a place to hide, but nothing is in easy reach. Down the street, two dark figures are moving towards him at a loping gait. He quickens his pace, but the pain in his leg flares until he sees stars. The figures have already drawn closer, their faces in shadow.
Nothing to do but fight, then. So be it.
For the first time all night, Boyd is perfectly calm. This he understands.
The college kids took his carbine and bayonet but they did not take his personal knife, a bad-ass pigsticker he keeps in his boot.
He draws the knife and waits.
Run, run, goddamn run
The hospital corridor beyond the doors is packed with people standing or shuffling along in pajamas and paper gowns and hospital scrubs. They twitch and roll their necks in the bright fluorescent light, their eyes wide and staring at nothing, snarling and scratching as they bump into each other in their aimless wandering.
Their faces are scarlet and shiny with sweat. Their eyes gleam with fever. Their bare feet track blood and excrement along the floor.
The stench is incredible.
“Holy shit,” Wyatt says aloud.
Heads turn. Eyes flicker and focus. The snarling grows louder.
“Joel, come away from there,” says Mooney, taking a step backward.
One of the Mad Dogs, a woman with long graying hair, takes three rapid strides forward and screeches at Wyatt, spraying spittle.
