The top of his head explodes.

On the roof of the building, a puff of smoke rises.

Sergeant Grant Lewis peers into his ranging telescopic sight, scanning the ground for additional targets. He sits on a stool he found in an art cla.s.sroom, resting the rifle on a bipod on the parapet next to an unfinished MRE.

The street below opens up to him in detail.

Bowman collected the NCOs back at the hospital and explained what his scouts found: Private Boyd had gotten bitten during the night and then turned into a Mad Dog by morning, like something out of a zombie movie. It explained everything. For Lewis, it all fit-the huge number of Mad Dogs running wild attacking people, the change in mission, the new ROE. Hawkeye catching the Mad Dog strain from a bite on his face confirmed it. The rate of transmission for this disease is incredible.

And if we don't do something about it, he tells himself, we are going to be wiped out.

As a result, Lewis has come up with his own ROE: If you are a Mad Dog, or if you are bitten and are going to become a Mad Dog, I am cleared hot to kick your a.s.s.

The M21 is a semi-automatic adaptation of the M14 bolt action sniper rifle. The advantage of the M21 is the shooter gets a quick second shot, which is ideal for target-rich environments. A cam built into the scope mount adjusts the sight to compensate for the bullet's trajectory. The magazine he is using holds twenty 7.62-mm bullets.

There are no targets in view. The street is empty of life. The air smells like smoke. But they are out there, close, circling. He can hear their growling and their sad, plaintive cries carried on each fresh breeze.

The longer he stays up here, the longer he can delay having to listen to Sergeant Ruiz chew his a.s.s about alleged fratricide. n.o.body wanted to kill The Newb. n.o.body wanted The Newb to die. Friendly fire is a common thing in combat. Things were very confused trying to cross that intersection. Accidents happen all the time in war.

He can also avoid Sergeant McGraw, who has been moping under his own personal storm cloud, wondering how he missed the fact that PFC William Chen was cracking from the stress right under his nose. Wondering if he could have prevented the poor kid from blowing the back of his head off, which of course he couldn't. Every soldier has a different way of reacting to stress. Every soldier has a different breaking point. If they themselves do not know what it is, how are you supposed to know?

Lewis shakes his head in wonder. The way his fellow NCOs have chosen so far to react to this crisis is making him lose a little respect for the rank of sergeant.

He leans back in his chair, stretches, and takes a swig from his canteen. He hates the taste of New York City munic.i.p.al water, but like all guys with experience in the field, he is used to making do. He has food and water, which is all that counts. A grunt can burn up to four, five, six thousand calories a day on a high-stress mission like this one. You either lose weight or you eat every chance you get and replace the calories.

Across the street, two guys in suits and ties are smoking cigarettes on the roof. One of them is leaning over the parapet to take a look at Lewis' kill. The other sees Lewis looking back at him and sheepishly holds up his index and middle finger to make a V. He is either communicating "victory" or "peace," Lewis isn't sure.

To a real soldier, Lewis believes, it is the same thing.

The pause in targets gives him time to reflect on Charlie's predicament. Bowman is going to try to consolidate Charlie with Battalion and Battalion is going to try to hook up with Brigade, Lewis guesses. It's a big effing mistake. It is exactly the kind of smarta.s.s strategy some soulless egghead would dream up. He can picture the egghead now, showing the Bra.s.s a big color-coded map of the USA and telling them the parts they can hold with armor and the parts they are going to have to give up for a while. He will rattle off casualty estimates and label civilian casualties under his plan as "acceptable."

And the Bra.s.s will grunt and nod. A lot of these guys served in the Cold War and believed America could fight and survive a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. This many million will die, this many million will survive. They have heard this type of language before and they speak it fluently. As long as we come out on top, right? Of course, it is not their families dying-oh no, not these rear-echelon motherf.u.c.kers.

And then the environmental nuts will come along and say how this is going to be good and very cleansing for the planet. Global population will be rewound to before the birth of Christ, and the planet will bounce back and flourish and Man will live in harmony with nature from thence forth. We are the real virus here, multiplying and consuming until we kill the host that sustains us. We must end this world to save it, right? Of course, this is all freaking fine in theory until it is your family that is doing the dying.

No, the smart thing to do, Lewis believes, is for everybody to stay where they are, make the Air Force earn its pay for a change by keeping everybody supplied, and then punch out patrols to go deep into neighborhoods and shoot down every Mad Dog they see. Every kill is a broken chain of infection, slightly improving humanity's odds.

Meanwhile, hand out guns. Give everybody and his mother an old surplus rifle and sixty rounds, a flyer explaining how to use it, and a license to kill for a month.

But Lewis knows the Army and the Army is not going to do that. He believes the Army's going to react to the first punch in the nose the Mad Dogs gave it by retracting all its limbs inside its sh.e.l.l. Instead of putting the Mad Dogs down while they are still dispersed, the Army is going to let them build an army that will wipe the human race off the face of the earth and give it back to the birds and the bees.

Movement down in the street. Lewis peers into his telescopic sight and sees a woman and child running, holding hands. They are so beautiful that he daydreams for a moment about his wife Sara and their boy Tucker, far enough away from him that they might as well be on the Moon. The woman is a young mom, in her mid twenties, with long straight blond hair and a slim, athletic body clad in a tight T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, while the daughter is virtually a smaller version of her mother, maybe seven years old.

I'll protect you, he thinks. On this one street, you will be safe. Go in peace.

He blinks, looks again.

The mother has been bitten in the arm. The wound has been hastily bandaged and a length of unraveled gauze, stained almost black with dried blood, flaps behind her.

She is already dead. All he has to do now is stop her from taking who knows how many poor saps with her to the grave.

He takes aim and prepares for the shot, but freezes on the trigger pull. If he kills the mother, the girl won't have a protector. She won't last five minutes on these streets.

But the mother has been bitten. If he does not kill her, she will later go Mad Dog and then kill or infect her daughter.

He can't decide what to do. The Bible story about King Solomon enters his mind. Two women are fighting over a child and Solomon's answer is to take a sword and cut the child in two. When one of the women says please don't do this but instead give the child to the other, Solomon knew instantly that she was the real mother and gave her the child.

The smart move, the safest bet, is to kill both of them.

A thought pops into his head: We must end this world to save it.

His view of the mother and daughter is now blocked by the corner of the building.

Picking up the rifle and cursing a blue streak at himself for losing his concentration, he runs to the other side of the roof and quickly repositions his weapon on its bipod. He finds the pair after a cursory scan of the street, aims the barrel of his rifle at the back of the woman's head, and exhales.

It's all freaking fine in theory until it's your family that's doing the dying.

He releases the trigger. He can't do it.

Lewis spits over the parapet in disgust.

Across the street, a man in an office is waving at him and holding a sign that says: TRAPPED, HELP.

Lewis spits again.

"Welcome to the club, buddy," he says.

The more I see her, the more I think it's unfair that she's scared of me, and this makes me p.i.s.sed off, and then I think about it some more, and then I decide-

Sergeant Ruiz peeks into the cla.s.sroom through the window set in the door and sees Third Squad sprawled asleep on top of their fartsacks where they'd been billeted, surrounded by leftovers from rapidly devoured MREs. One of them cries out in his sleep, making the others stop snoring long enough to frown and twitch for a few moments.

Again he thinks about his young wife and infant son in Jacksonville, Florida. Should he try to call her now?

What if she doesn't answer the phone?

Would he go over the hill and try to get home to his family, like Richard Boyd?

Maybe, but look where that got Boyd. The LT said half his face got bitten off and he'd been transformed into a Mad Dog.

He hears footsteps, turns and sees 2LT Greg Bishop approaching from the end of the hallway, gesturing angrily at his trailing NCOs. Probably complaining again about Bowman's order to McGraw to shoot down all those civilians. Said it was inhuman, even with the ROE. Said Bowman doesn't deserve to take command of what's left of Charlie Company. Said even some n.a.z.is during WWII refused to follow orders and partic.i.p.ate in wholesale slaughter.

Ruiz shakes his head in disgust and resumes his own walk to the gym, where a thousand people lie moaning and dying on cots arranged in nice, neat rows. Healthy civilians are moving among them changing sheets and bedpans and IV bags, supervised by three hapless, red-faced corpsmen and a handful of nurses from the day s.h.i.+ft who made it to work. Others are disposing of corpses and disinfecting the area with mops and rags. The LT told them: We have food, water, blankets. We can protect you, feed you and shelter you. But if you stay, you work. And you work hard.

It is unpleasant labor, and there is plenty of s.h.i.+rking, but many of the civilians are happy to have something to do to take their minds off their problems. The ones who are working are the toughest, the ones you can count on. The others just can't take what's happening to them and their world. They quickly wandered off and n.o.body has seen them since. Many of these people have lost everything, and it was torn away bloodily in front of their very eyes. They are in shock, and many of them will never snap out of it.

It was a good idea, in any case, to give the civilians something to do. The LT is smart for an officer, Ruiz thinks. If Bowman commanded the way Bishop says he should, First Platoon would still be trapped in that cla.s.sroom, under siege and starving by inches, and Second Platoon would have been scattered to the winds on Forty-Second Street.

Ruiz likes to make things simple. Here is how he sees it: Bowman is working hard and doing what it takes to keep his boys alive.

Bishop is a douche and is complaining instead of working.

And Knight, well, word is some of his own guys want to frag his a.s.s. Word is that when the Mad Dogs came out of the woodwork and started ripping his boys to shreds, he refused to fire, and instead told them to run for it.

Ruiz shakes his head. The reality on the ground has changed, and if we do not change with it, we will die. Those who cannot accept reality, as it is, should not command. Bishop, for example, believes Bowman should have called in units equipped with riot control gear and captured the Mad Dogs nonviolently.

The man is either insane or in denial about their predicament.

That leaves Bowman as the ideal man for the job as the guy least likely to get them all killed within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

Ruiz sees a few civilians patrolling the gym, toting M4 carbines. He exchanges a nod with one of them, a middle-aged marine with experience in Panama and the first Gulf War. Another one of Bowman's innovations-arming those civilian volunteers having prior military experience with Charlie Company's spare carbines. They are now Bowman's police force, used to make sure none of the Lyssa patients goes Mad Dog and makes trouble, while giving the rest of the civilians somebody to complain to besides the soldiers.

Bowman said he is not interested in a humanitarian mission. He is trying to keep Charlie Company combat effective. He is looking at this place as hostile territory and the Mad Dogs as enemy combatants, the way he was told to do by the Bra.s.s. The guys in the rear with the gear are not right very often, but on this, they are absolutely G.o.dd.a.m.n correct.

Ruiz walks down a row of Lyssa victims lying in their cots, looking into each face. Most are in bad shape, as the Mad Dogs showed a preference for spreading infection to those lying in their beds who were closest to recovery. But a few smile back at him.

There is hope in this place. It makes him feel good. They are doing some good here. The LT said there's plenty of supplies, including ammunition, and a lot of sick people to protect and help recover.

He also said not to get too comfortable.

If Charlie Company moves, Ruiz wonders, should I try to leave?

How would I get home?

Does it matter? If what Bowman said about Boyd is true, then the Mad Dogs are going to try to wipe this planet clean of human life. Maybe one out of twenty is now a Mad Dog, and they are already bringing the country to its knees.

The rate of infection is unbelievable.

It is a horrible thought, but our only hope of stalling the Apocalypse, he thinks, is that the Mad Dogs kill a lot more people than they infect, reducing the rate of infection. If the infection rate is arithmetical instead of exponential, they might have a chance at stopping them through brute extermination. The way the Iraqis were doing it just before Charlie was sent home. (It is strange to think that the countries most likely to pull through this are failed states with brutal societies and lots of guns and ammo.) In any case, if America is doomed, why should he stay? Why not at least try to get to Janisa and Emmanuel? In a contest between his family and his platoon, there would be no contest. If his love for his wife is pa.s.sionate, his love for his son is primordial. He would, in fact, saw off his own arm for his kid. He would systematically kill all of his comrades. His true duty in a crisis like this, at the end of the world, lies with his family.

The only problem is he is here and they are there, and he would die before he could reach them.

A young woman hurries by, her dark eyes wide with alarm. Doc Waters, exhausted and in a fine rage now, shouts after her to bring back as much amantadine-a generic antiviral drug-as she can carry.

Even with the mask, Ruiz can tell that the girl is pretty, just like his Janisa. The idea that his wife and son are in danger fills him with grief.

He will try to call her. But first he has to check on one of his boys. Hawkeye has been tied down to his cot with restraining belts, sweating and reeking, the bandage on his cheek stained a rusty brown, his throat beginning to swell into a ma.s.s of golf ball-sized buboes. He tries to smile upon seeing Ruiz, but the smile quickly morphs into a grimace, his skin the sickly gray color characteristic of infection.

"How are you, Hawkeye?"

"Been better, Sergeant," he rasps, his voice underscored with a vibration that occasionally culminates in a growl when he exhales. "You come to help me?"

"I brought an extra pillow for you, like you asked."

"I can't swallow. I'm G.o.dd.a.m.n thirsty all the time but I can't stand even looking at water. Just seeing an IV bag p.i.s.ses me off. I'm p.i.s.sed off all the time."

"It's unfair, Hawkeye."

"No," Hawkeye hisses. "It's the germs. They're making me p.i.s.sed off.

They're putting thoughts into my head. You see that pretty girl who just walked by? The one with the big black eyes you could fall into?"

"She just walked by here," Ruiz says. "Sure, I saw her."

"Of course you did-she's beautiful," Hawkeye chuckles, then grimaces again. "She's kind of scared of me. Every time she walks by, she looks at me real scared. And I think, don't be scared, miss, I'm Cameron Ross, I'm a good guy, I'd never hurt you. And the more I see her, the more I think it's unfair that she's scared of me, and this makes me p.i.s.sed off, and then I think about it some more, and then I decide I want to chew up her face so she can't see me anymore."

Ruiz takes a step back without thinking, gazing down in horror at the soldier.

"Everything makes me so d.a.m.n p.i.s.sed off, Sergeant. Every minute that goes by I can feel myself getting more p.i.s.sed off. I don't want to die hating everybody and everything." He glances down at his hand, and Ruiz sees that he is holding a photo of his girlfriend. "I want to die while I still love them. I'm dying either way, Sergeant. That's a fact. I'm not scared. I just don't want to die hating my girl, or my own mother. Do you get it now, or do I have to drill it into your f.u.c.king skull?"

Ruiz nods and says softly, "I get it, Hawkeye."

Hawkeye growls deep in his throat, then closes his eyes and sighs. "Thank you, Sergeant."

Ruiz takes the pillow he brought, places it over the boy's smile, and presses down.

"Bye, Hawkeye," he says, tears streaming down his face.

The boy struggles for about a minute, then lies still.

When Ruiz is done, he notices the room is strangely silent except for the general moan of the Lyssa victims lying in their beds. He looks up and sees almost everyone staring back at him. Several of the civilians slowly nod in understanding, while others cover their faces to hide their tears.

He is not the first person to have to do this for a friend.

Feeling tired in his bones, Ruiz begins walking in the direction of the west wing, where he hopes to find an empty cla.s.sroom where he can call his wife. Immediately, the people around him resume working as if nothing happened.

Corporal Alvarez approaches and salutes. He says the Lieutenant wants the entire company to muster. LT has talked to Quarantine, he says.

Quarantine has new orders for Charlie Company.

It's us or them, gentlemen

Gentlemen, the Lyssa virus is much more of a problem than we have been led to believe. The Pandemic has taken many lives and caused severe shortages and panic. But now the game has changed and our mission has expanded. The Army is no longer simply concerned with protecting infrastructure. We are fighting for the survival of the United States. I know that sounds dramatic, but there's really no other way to put it.