After the column grinds to a security halt, Bowman lifts his NVGs and is instantly plunged into darkness. He raises his carbine and peers into the red-dot close-combat optic, which provides night vision and also magnification.
He quickly surmises that the front half of the column has become embedded in a large force of Mad Dogs. Not one of the main bodies of thousands, but a force of several hundred at least, moaning and wheezing in the darkness. They stand in clusters, panting in sleep, or wander around aimlessly, pressing close against the column, sniffing the air and growling, lashing out when they walk blindly into the bayonets. And at the rear of the crowd, some type of fire, probably a car fire, is burning in the middle of the street.
His unit is in trouble. Maddy is blocking the street in large numbers and is now virtually surrounding one- fourth of the company like a herd of blind predators. If the column tries to push through at the point of the bayonet, they will become increasingly visible as they get closer to the fire. Then they could have a real battle on their hands, and on unequal terms.
The Captain flips his NVGs back over his eyes. Above the street, he suddenly notices, many of the windows are glowing green with candlelight. All around them in this seemingly dead city, people are still trying to survive.
You’re leaving all of them to die, he tells himself.
He forces this crushingly depressing thought out of his head with a grunt.
Keying his handset, he murmurs, “All Warlord units, this is Warlord actual. Hold position until further notice, over.”
Jogging down the line, he finds Sergeant Lewis at the back of the column, and sends him to the far left, then sends the next squad to the far right, repeating this until he has created a line of troops spanning the street.
After deploying his troops, he finds an abandoned car, gets in, and gently closes the door.
“All Warlord units, this is Warlord actual,” he whispers. “If I have taken you out of line, I name you Team A. The rest of you still in line are Team B. On my mark, Team A will charge and push Maddy back. Once we make contact, Team B will join the attack. We will carry this action with the bayonet. There will be no shooting.
“The research facility is just over eight blocks from here. A little over half a mile. After we begin our assault, we will keep moving as fast as possible. This will be the mission’s release point. After we begin, you will be responsible for getting your unit to the objective on your own.
“Step off on my mark. Good luck and Godspeed. Wait, out.”
Getting out of the car, he gets into position next to Sergeant Lewis, who turns and acknowledges his presence with a nod.
“Step off in five, four, three, two, one, go,” says the Captain.
Team A begins jogging forward in a bristling line. The line quickly becomes ragged as some of the boys stumble over garbage and corpses, others lag from exhaustion, and some painfully run into fire hydrants, street signs and even cars after misjudging how far away they are. Bowman can hear his breath come in short, sharp gasps.
The first Mad Dog appears. Bowman spears him, the force of the momentum of his thrust almost shocking the carbine out of his grasp. He retrieves the blade with a colossal effort and shoulders the man out of the way, knocking the wind out of both of them. The man goes down.
Another takes his place, snarling.
Ahead, the crowd continually thickens until a virtual wall of bodies appears ahead of them in the green gloom. Some of the boys, unable to help themselves, shout high-pitched war cries to amp up their courage as they rush forward into battle.
The line crashes home. Maddy reels from the shock, dozens dropping to the ground writhing with bayonet wounds. The survivors attack the soldiers, then Team B stands and begins its own assault in a line punching through the middle of the throng.
If this were any normal enemy with a healthy fear for their own lives, they would be fleeing as fast as they could run in the dark. But this is no normal enemy. It is an enemy incapable of fear or reason. To Lyssa, the human body is disposable, just a meat puppet with a five-day expiration date. Even the individual virons in each body have no real interest in self preservation, only in the overarching survival of their genetic code. The individual viron is just as much a slave to its ancient program as its infected victims are.
A flurry of small arms fire punches holes in Maddy’s ranks.
Nobody gave the order to shoot. It happened suddenly at five different places at once. There are too many Mad Dogs for them to kill in hand to hand fighting. The soldiers’ line has been broken in several places as some squads were able to push forward while other squads were stopped cold. With a broken line, the Mad Dogs’ superior numbers began to tell as they began to surround and overwhelm the soldiers.
One exhausted soldier panicked when a wounded Mad Dog on the ground sunk her teeth into his boot. He shot her in the head, blowing off several toes in the bargain.
Moments later, everyone is firing.
Above them, civilians are leaning out their windows, shouting themselves hoarse.
What’s done is done, Bowman tells himself. He thumbs off the safety on his carbine and begins shooting Mad Dogs at a nearly cyclic rate of fire, a round every few seconds, draining mags and reloading without breaking stride. The crackle of small arms fire turns into a roar as the entire company lights up the Mad Dogs. Muzzle flashes burst along the line, almost beautiful to watch on their NVGs. Tracers stream through the air. A grenade explodes, a massive green fireball erupting into sparks and fiery blobs. The air begins to fill with luminous, pale green smoke clouds.
The civilians are cheering.
“All Warlord units, this is Warlord actual,” he says into his handset. “Keep moving. Keep moving.”
The use of live ordnance proved decisive. The company shot its way through the mob with very few casualties.
Eight blocks to go. About three quarters of a mile.
All around them, the city has begun to stir with the tramp of thousands of feet as the Mad Dogs awaken from their haunted dreams of the time before the plague.
If the soldiers move fast, and there are no other mobs between here and the research facility, they can do this.
“Go, go, go!” Bowman cries.
They make it.
Chapter 12
We’re the U.S. Army
Sergeant Lewis leads the first grab team up the stairs while the rest of the company pulls security down in the Institute’s lobby, waiting their turn. It is pitch black in the stairwell, robbing them of vision as NVGs are useless without some ambient light to amplify, so they turned on the SureFire flashlights mounted on their carbines, fitted with red lenses. The resulting beams appear a brilliant green on their NVGs, but are barely visible to Maddy’s naked eye.
The squad pauses on the stairs.
“It’s good and locked, Sarge,” says Corporal Jaworski, trying the door that Lewis believes leads to the labs.
