“Shit,” he says.
“Our father, who art in heaven,” McLeod says. He is suddenly unable to remember the rest of the prayer, his mind blank.
“Contact!”
“Man down!”
The Mad Dogs are ripping the boys apart in the intersection and pouring into the side streets, driving everything before them.
“FIRE!” Ruiz roars at anyone in earshot, then turns and blasts his shotgun into the infected coming the other way. “FIRE YOUR WEAPONS!”
Contact.
Some of the soldiers panic and flee to nearby doors, trying to escape into the buildings lining the street. Most of the doors are metal and locked, while others are fronted with glass and easily broken with rifle butts. The soldiers cry out in fear and rage as they open the doors but find their way inside blocked by furniture stacked into crude barricades by people living in the building to keep out the infected.
There is no escape from this.
At what moment did Custer, seeing all those warriors running up the hill with murder in their eyes, realize that he was toast? McLeod wonders. What did he do about it? Did he just sit down on the grass and wait to be tomahawked, taking his last precious moments to reflect on his short life, maybe sneak in one last combat jack?
Or did he keep shooting, wasting those moments but doing it anyway just so he could prolong his life by several more seconds?
Hell, when I die, he tells himself, I want to be doing something fun, not firing a gun.
He wills himself to stop shooting, but his fingers do not obey him.
I guess that solves that mystery, he tells himself. The instinct of self preservation trumps all. Quantity is better than quality. Now is probably a good time for cyclic fire, then.
He fires the SAW in rock and roll mode, spraying death almost blindly into the crowd.
Look at me, he thinks, I’m goddamn Rambo.
“That’s the stuff, Private!” Ruiz roars, firing his shotgun and chambering another round, ejecting a smoking empty shell. “Hit him back tenfold!”
“I’m trying!” McLeod answers him.
“Reloading!” somebody calls out.
“I hate this goddamn Army,” Williams says, struggling to clear a jam in his carbine. An instant later, the Mad Dogs swarm over him, turning his scream into a sickening wet gargle as two pairs of jaws sink into his throat and rip it open.
“Our father who art in heaven!” McLeod rasps, tears streaming down his stubble, mowing down the Mad Dogs still biting frantically at his dead friend’s face, tearing away pieces of flesh and spitting them out.
Nearby, Corporal Hicks falls on his ass, one of his arms mangled and bleeding and the other holding his carbine, still shooting while the rest of the soldiers struggle to form a defensive square and fix bayonets.
A grenade flies into a second-story window and instantly detonates with a flash, ejecting glittering hot glass and flaming debris down onto the street, followed by a drifting veil of smoke and dust.
McLeod staggers and bumps into Ruiz, who is slowly retreating while rapid-firing his M4 Super 90 shotgun. The air is thick with smoke and the stench of infection. As the smoke descends upon the street, he catches glimpses of Hicks and Wheeler being torn into shreds. They reach the defensive square only to find it already gone. Back to back, McLeod and Ruiz create a three-hundred-sixty-degree zone of death for the Maddies.
The SAW grows hot in his hands, and suddenly clicks empty.
“Final protective fire,” Ruiz says, then stumbles away, dropping his smoking shotgun. He is clutching his neck, blood running through his fingers.
“Sergeant?” McLeod says, unable to believe his eyes.
Ruiz is indestructible. He can’t die.
He was not bitten; a stray bullet caught him.
“Emmanuel!” the man gasps, falling to his knees.
“Man down!” McLeod screams automatically, knowing it is useless to call for help.
He rushes forward to pull the Sergeant to safety but is suddenly shoved to the ground in the swirling melee of soldiers and infected. A Mad Dog trips over him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Gasping for air, he sees Ruiz on his hands and knees, struggling to stand up, surrounded by Maddies hanging onto him and biting every inch of his body.
“Sergeant!” he calls out.
A knee cracks against the back of his head. The world goes black except for a few colorful sparking stars. By the time his vision clears, Ruiz has already been transformed into road kill, a headless and armless torso crushed and studded with fragments of glass.
“You motherfuckers,” he says, crying with helpless rage. “You didn’t have to do that to him. You didn’t have to do that.”
A grenade explodes nearby, sending charred and broken bodies collapsing around McLeod and soaking him in blood and smoking scraps of flesh. Another cloud of smoke and dust flows across the crowd. The high-pitched screams of the dying penetrate the loud ringing in his ears. Sobbing hysterically, he crawls between the running legs through the filth and glass until he is able to pull himself into the yellow cab and curl up shaking in a fetal ball in the backseat. The car rocks and jolts like a boat in the storm as the infected pour around him, finishing the slaughter of the doomed boys of Third Platoon.
Outside, the screams reach a crescendo.
The crackle of small arms fire begins to die out. A Mad Dog runs into the side of the cab, smashing its face against the window and cobwebbing the glass. The foul-smelling corpse in the driver’s seat sways with the impact, its head rolling and grinning.
A final flurry of gunshots, then nothing but the tramp of thousands of feet and a primal, almost triumphant growl from thousands of mouths.
I had no choice
There were once ten of them. Now there are four heading north through a wasteland, dirty and tired and bloody, while infected mobs pound the garbage-strewn alleys and side streets in a never-ending hunt for fresh meat.
They are the last of the main column after Bowman took the rest of the platoon east to divert the Mad Dogs: McGraw, Mooney, Wyatt and the scientist, Dr. Petrova.
They march in single file close to the buildings, staying in the shadows. With each step, the gunfire and shouting recedes further behind them until they can see the greenery of Central Park beckoning to them and promising sanctuary.
More than once, they have had to hide to avoid bands of Maddies, all heading south towards the shooting.
A metal garbage can rolls into view from behind the next corner, trailing garbage, and comes to a halt in the gutter. Slimy rats pour out of it, scrambling for cover.
Petrova groans with revulsion, her nails digging into Mooney’s arm. She has faced every horror without faltering but his arm, the usual target of her channeled hysteria, is now covered with scratches and bruises.
Mooney accepts the abuse without complaint. He likes the attractive scientist, but that is only part of it. The pain keeps him from screaming in fear and revulsion and grief himself.
McGraw has called a security halt. Chewing on his handlebar mustache, his eyes wide behind his tinted sunglasses, he signals that he wants Mooney and Wyatt front and center.
