“He’s just one guy. What the hell can he do?”
Sergeant Turner shrugged. “Eliminate the right guy, a gang leader or something, then you can change a lot.”
Jake tugged his sleeve down over his palm and fingers, adjusting his grip on the cup’s twin metal handles. The damn thing was starting to get hot. “What if he does get himself killed?”
“Then we got an all-expense paid trip to New York City, courtesy of the US Army, sir.” Turner’s fake smile soured, turning into a frown. “Look, sir, I get it. We have the potential to end this if that scientist nerd can find anything of value in Harper’s blood. But there’s no guarantee that it will work. The miraculous, walking shitshow that is Grady Harper may be a genetic fluke with no way to reproduce those results. He said they experimented on him for months to take his natural immunity and turn it into something else. If the key to ending this is that natural immunity that only, what? A tenth of a percent of people are immune?”
“Um… I don’t know,” Jake admitted.
“When Colonel Albrecht got bitten, he said that only one in a couple of thousand were immune, so he was positive that he was a goner—which, as you know, sir, he did turn.”
“Saved my life before he did, though.”
“Yes, sir. Good man…” Turner trailed off for a moment, then cleared his throat. “So anyway, if everything hinges on a natural immunity only found in a tiny handful of the population, then we may be fucked anyways. Even if Jackson Jefferson is able to create some type of vaccine from Harper’s blood, it would probably only be able to help those who are already immune.”
“I hadn’t thought about it from that aspect,” Jake admitted. Turner had a good point about the natural immunity as a starting point for how Harper became an anathema to the infected and could walk amongst them without fear of attack. “Doesn’t seem like much of a vaccine if they’re already immune, huh?”
Turner shrugged. “If it makes it so those immune fellers could go outside the walls without worrying about attack, then there could be some real value to that.” The NCO pulled his cup away from the fire to set it down on the balcony as he ripped open the packet of instant coffee. “But hey, I’m just a dumb grunt. What the fuck do I know? Maybe that kid will be able to do something amazing and create a useful vaccine for all of us, huh?”
Jake followed his lead, removing his cup. “I hope so. Although, I’m less confident about it after this little conversation than I was yesterday.”
“I never was very good at pep talks, sir.”
Jake grinned and stirred his coffee, watching the water turn an unnatural brown color from the dissolved flakes. He took a sip of the liquid and frowned. “It ain’t Starbucks.”
“You drink that burnt, over-priced shit?”
“Everybody in my generation drinks that burnt, over-priced shit, Sergeant. Or did, anyways.”
The apartment’s front door opened and Jake’s eyes snapped upward. It was Phil, the former NYPD officer. He raised a hand in greeting as he walked in. Jake and Turner rose to meet him.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said with a strained look on his face. If possible, his accent was even thicker in the morning than it had been in the afternoon yesterday.
“What’s wrong?” Turner asked gruffly.
“Seems like one of your boys went and got himself in some trouble last night. Killed a whole bunch of Latin Kings. We had a truce with them and Jefferson is pissed.”
“I’m pissed off too,” Jake said. “When I woke up this morning, he was gone. Taavi told me that he went out to go hunting.”
“This ain’t something to just be pissed off about. This is some serious fucking shit, LT. The Latin Kings ain’t a group to fuck around with. They’re organized, they’re armed, and they’re violent. They completely wiped out the Crips who’d tried to move into Manhattan from Harlem, left their bodies strung up like scarecrows for a week. They’ve even got those MS-13 fucks intimidated into staying over in Queens.”
“Where’s Harper now?” Sergeant Turner asked.
“Harper?” Phil asked, blinking rapidly. “Fuck.”
“What?” Jake asked. That sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach was beginning to return.
“We didn’t know it was Harper. The Kings got him. They nabbed him. He’s being held down on their turf.”
“Mother fucker,” Jake yelled, much louder than he’d meant to. “That stupid fucking dipshit, cowboy sonofabitch, piece of—”
“As you can see,” Sergeant Turner said, sliding between Jake and Phil, “Lieutenant Murphy did not approve of Harper’s actions. But we need him. He’s the one who’s immune. He’s the reason we came all this way.”
“I don’t know that Jefferson would be willing to help you. It’s the Latin Kings, fellas. We aren’t willing to go to war with them. We have a good thing going right now. They do whatever the fuck they want at night while the good people of Manhattan are locked away safe and sound, then we operate during the day to try to build the city back up.”
“I understand that, Phil,” Turner said, glancing back at Jake, who still cursed under his breath while he watched his platoon sergeant try to work an angle on the situation. “We aren’t asking anyone from Jefferson’s organization to go to bat for us. Just tell us where they’re keeping Harper. We’ll go get him.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
The words of the Ranger Creed echoed through Jake’s mind. He’d had to memorize that damned thing and
