“Where is your father?” Taavi asked.
“They took him. The crazies did. They attacked us and took him.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She died in childbirth. It’s just me and my dad.”
“Do you live here in New York City?”
Jake glanced around at the men while Taavi talked to the boy. He hated to stop for so long, but if the kid had information about what the fuck was going on in the city, then it would be worth it. Although, given the amount of food wrappers in the SUV, he doubted the kid saw more than a couple of blocks at the most.
“We live in Hoboken,” David said, bringing Jake’s attention back to the conversation. “My dad was taking me to school when everything went bad. We tried to turn around to go home, but it didn’t work.”
Taavi circled his finger around in the air. “Everything went bad? You mean all of this?”
“Yeah. There was a big accident somewhere up ahead and we got stuck in traffic. Then the radio said they blocked the tunnels and bridges out of the city. Everything was all messed up.”
“So, what did you do, David?”
“We stayed with our car for a few hours, but the traffic never moved. After a while, people got out of their cars and started walking so we did too. There weren’t any hotels or anything, so we stayed in our car for a couple of days. Then my dad found a family with a house who let us stay with them for a while…”
“What happened to the family, David?” Jake asked.
“The crazies came and took them.”
Taavi glanced at Jake and tried to convey a message with his eyes, but Jake didn’t know the man well enough to understand what he meant. The Iranian looked back at the boy. “These crazies,” he said, “do they scream like animals and bite people?”
“No. Never seen them bite people. They do scream though. They sneak up on you, then scream when they attack. I almost got caught, but I was too fast for them. I hid in an old dumpster until they were gone. Then I came back here to our car.”
“I don’t think he means infected,” Jake offered.
The Iranian shook his head. “Neither do I, Lieutenant Jake. I think he is talking about murderers and rapists, not the Cursed.” He looked back to the car. “How long have you been alone, David?” Taavi asked, concern in his voice.
“A long time. I don’t know. I see some people sometimes, but I don’t tell them where I live.”
Taavi put a hand on the SUV’s window and leaned in close, resting his forehead against the glass. “I’m truly sorry this happened to you, David,” he said in a lowered voice. “I swear by Allah, that I did not know this would happen.”
Jake couldn’t hear everything the man said, but he heard an apology, so he figured that Taavi was trying to comfort the kid. The man spoke quietly to the boy for a little bit, then turned back to Jake and Sergeant Turner.
“I told him that we could keep him safe. He wants to come with us.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, sir,” Turner grunted. “We aren’t a daycare.”
Jake looked at Taavi, then over to where Grady Harper sat, chewing contentedly on a fig bar from an MRE. They’d come on this journey because of the secret that flowed through the man’s veins. He and Taavi seemed to be a package deal, even though they’d allegedly only met in that Kansas airport a few weeks ago. He glanced back at the SUV, where David sat, staring wide-eyed at all the soldiers surrounding the vehicle.
“Goddamn it. Fine,” Jake grumbled. “We can’t leave this kid all alone again. Tell him he can come.”
“Jesus H. Christ, sir,” Turner groaned, turning away from the car and walking off toward their little perimeter.
“Well, we know where the platoon sergeant stands on my decision,” Jake said dryly under his breath. “Can he be ready to go in about ten minutes?” he asked Taavi.
“He will be ready. I will ensure that he is no burden to the platoon. He is my responsibility now. I will not fail him.”
Jake nodded and called out to the rest of the platoon. “Take a quick ten minute piss break. We are in hostile territory. Nobody goes anywhere alone. Always have a buddy.”
“Welcome to New York City!” one of the men said loud enough to elicit laughter from the entire platoon.
“Yeah. The sooner we can leave this place, the better,” someone replied.
Jake laughed at this other statement. The men would have preferred to be out there, fighting the infected instead of in New York, where the enemies were human. Come to think of it, he said to himself, I agree with them.
5
PIÑON, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 4TH
“What an utter shit hole,” Sergeant Pollard grumbled, dropping the binoculars from his eyes.
“Agreed,” Cooper said beside him. Andy Cooper—no relation to the news correspondent of the same name—was the company JTAC, or Joint Tactical Air Controller. The JTAC was an Air Force position assigned to an Army unit and this was the first time that Pollard had actually seen one of the JTACs in real life. He’d been assigned to the sergeant’s team in case they stumbled across a target worthy of being blasted to smithereens by the Air Force.
Sergeant Will Pollard was a big guy from New Hampshire. He was used to small towns with little-to-no appeal for anyone who didn’t live there, but the “town” they observed was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. It was more akin to a collection of mud huts in Afghanistan than a town in America, but this was where their signal nerd, Private Valencia, said that the jamming equipment was
