porthole.
Inches away, on the other side, Petrova sits on the floor hugging her knees and crying, feeling the vibrations and frenzied pounding against her back.
Saunders and Lucas sit against the wall on either side of her, dazed and shaking from an excess of adrenaline.
Suddenly, Baird stops. The silence is startling.
Hardy’s cell begins ringing again.
“He’s dead,” Lucas says, his teeth chattering. “He’s dead, right?”
“They all are,” Petrova says, wiping the tears from her face.
Gregory Baird and Marsha Fuentes died the moment the virus replicated enough to saturate their brains and subjugate their will to its own. The moment it began using their bodies as puppets for the sole purpose of violently passing itself on to new hosts.
She adds softly, “The Mad Dog strain is a parasite, and it has them now.”
Petrova slowly gets to her feet, peers through the porthole, and gasps. Baird is grinning back at her, wheezing and dripping drool onto his bloodied tie and labcoat.
Viruses are the world’s oldest form of life, primordial and ancient, and yet this mutant strain is something new, she realizes. It is a new force of nature, unleashed upon the world.
A new life form seeking its rightful place in the pecking order.
Baird and Fuentes are no longer making decisions on their own. They are rabid, acting solely based on the virus’ simple program:
Attack, overpower and infect.
“Oh,” she says, backing up. “Oh my.”
“What is it?”
She turns, her eyes gleaming and wild, and screams:
Moments later, the door shatters off of its hinges with a crash and Baird spills into the hallway, howling with pain and rage.
Chapter 6
No sign of blue forces
Second Platoon, now a wedge made up of three rifle squads in diamond formation with HQ, Weapons Squad and the walking wounded in the center, reaches Samuel J. Tilden International Middle School ten minutes behind schedule. A growing crowd of civilians follows the platoon at a respectful distance, hoping for protection.
The school is a sprawling, three-story building consisting of a central trunk and two wings, accessible via a main entrance and numerous emergency exits. In the early days of the Lyssa epidemic, the City government closed all of the schools to prevent the rapid spread of infection among children, who were then taking the disease home to their parents. As the epidemic continued growing and began overwhelming the hospitals, the government tried to alleviate the pressure by opening Lyssa clinics at sites such as schools, the larger dance clubs and even the subway and train stations.
This school, turned into a Lyssa clinic, was where Quarantine placed the headquarters of Charlie Company, First Battalion, and its First Platoon. Yesterday, it was teeming with patients, medical volunteers and nearly forty soldiers, MPs, engineers and specialists, including at least one squad constantly manning a checkpoint behind a sandbag position constructed around the front doors.
Today, the entrance appears deserted. The street in front of the building is also empty of vehicles, restricted to official traffic only. Nobody comes out to welcome the boys of Second Platoon.
There are bodies everywhere lying on the street among fluttering papers and loose garbage, already starting to stink in the brisk air of this late September morning. The air is thick with flies.
They died from gunfire.
Second Squad is on point. Sergeant Lewis calls a halt. The LT hustles up, takes out his binoculars and scans the small, neat sandbag fort.
No soldiers are visible.
Bowman turns to Lewis and signals him to move.
The Sergeant whistles softly and Second Squad’s fireteams rush across the open space to the sandbags, carbines held in the firing position.
Behind him, the civilians are getting nervous and asking why the platoon is stopped and they are not entering the refuge. Kemper explains that they must check out the area to make sure it is not dangerous. He tells them to stay out of the way for their own safety.
Second Squad disappears into the building. The scene is quiet except for the intermittent clatter of a machine gun somewhere far to the northeast.
“Every time we stay out of the way, we get slaughtered,” one of the civilians complains.
Moments later, Lewis reappears at the sandbags and whistles, waving his hand in front of face to give the signal for all-clear.
“Now we can move,” Kemper says to the civilian. “See how this works?”
“I thought how it worked is I pay taxes and you protect me,” a woman in the crowd says, just loud enough for him to hear.
Kemper sighs, sorry that he tried.
The platoon moves forward, the civilians following closely.
“What the hell happened here?” Sherman wonders. The area in front of the school’s doors is carpeted with bloody brass shell casings, the product of hundreds, possibly even thousands, of rounds being fired. The smell of cordite hangs in the air.
“Some kind of war,” says Boomer.
“No sign of blue forces, sir,” Sergeant Lewis reports to the LT.
The boys shuck their rucksacks in the hallway and take long pulls on their canteens. The civilians file past them, looking shell-shocked.
“Rest up,” Bowman says. “We’re on the move in five.”
How a rifle platoon seizes control of a building
Sergeant Ruiz extends his arm over his head and gives a slight wave. Williams and Hicks get into position on each side of the door and give him a thumbs up.
Ruiz opens the door to the classroom and flicks the light switch. Inside, the rows of institutional fluorescent lights blink to life instantly.
He steps over the threshold, holding his carbine at shoulder level, ready to fire. Williams follows on his heels and turns left, while Hicks turns right. Behind them, Wheeler and McLeod pull security in the hallway, watching their backs.
The fireteam then loops around until they return to the doorway.
“Clear,” Williams says.
“Clear,” Hicks says.
“Clear,” says Ruiz.
