Mooney gave up his own radio after his recon mission, so he doesn't hear the response. But the Captain keeps moving, so it must be all right.

"Here I come now," Bowman says, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Hold your fire. Don't shoot. We're just going to have a conversation."

The Captain turns the corner and disappears.

Kemper follows closely until he reaches the corner, then squats down, listening. McGraw whispers to Mooney and Wyatt to prepare for action on his command.

Mooney drops to one knee, feeling the comforting cus.h.i.+on of his kneepad, sweating in his BDUs. His heart pounds against his ribs and his blood is cras.h.i.+ng in his ears. The moment Captain Bowman disappeared around the corner, the tension began mounting until it has now become almost impossible to breathe.

"Todd, sorry we have to meet like this," a voice says.

Lieutenant Bishop, Wyatt whispers.

"Same here," Bowman answers.

"Well, we're not going, as you can see. We're going to stay here and rebuild."

"I understand."

"We don't want anything to do with your war. We're not in the Army anymore. And we're not going to die to keep the memory of a dead country alive."

"I understand. But I still need to talk to the men."

"Go right ahead. There's nothing you can say to change their minds, though. They already survived one ma.s.sacre. They're not going to walk into another."

"Men!" Bowman says.

The Captain's voice echoes through the hallways until it becomes a ghostly murmur.

"Men!" he repeats. "You can stay here. We're not going to force you to come with us. What's done is done. It's all right."

"That's nice of you," Bishop warily. "What do you want in return?"

"One of you is a traitor against the United States, and must be punished."

"And who-what are you doing?"

A pistol bangs loudly, echoing sharply in their ears with an almost physical impact, making them flinch.

Another bang. A wave of cordite in the air, tingling the nose. Mooney can sense McGraw tensing ahead of them. He can smell the man's nervous sweat as he prepares to rush forward and provide cover fire for the Captain. But nothing happens. The seconds tick by. The deserters do not shoot.

The ringing in Mooney's ears slowly fades.

"What's done is done," Bowman says. He calls out into the gloom, "If we are forced to return, you will be accepted back into the Battalion with no questions asked. If we don't come back, take good care of the civilians. I am intending to tell the General that you volunteered to stay behind. There will be no dishonor for you, as long as you stay true to yourself and the people in your charge. While they remain alive and well, you are still in the United States Army."

After a few moments of silence, Bowman adds, "Well. G.o.d be with you men."

"Thank you, sir," the boys whisper in the dark.

Moments later, Captain Bowman returns, his glow stick almost glaring in Mooney's eyes. The light is trembling, and it takes Mooney a moment to realize it is the Captain who is shaking. The man just shot down a fellow officer while a dozen, two dozen-it could have been scores-of deserters aimed a variety of automatic weapons at him.

"We can't use them if they're broken," Bowman says. "We have truly become a volunteer army tonight." He looks dazed and exhausted. "Bishop was a traitor, though. That I did to fulfill my duty to the Army. Things may be falling apart, but we still are the U.S. Army."

Kemper and McGraw nod somberly. There is no need to explain. Bowman sees Mooney and Wyatt, takes a deep breath, and smiles. "Thanks for the backup, men."

"You're welcome, sir," Mooney rasps, his mouth dry.

"Now let's see if we can get the h.e.l.l off this island tonight."

Thrust and hold, move. Withdraw and hold, move. Attack position, move

The boys file out of the school's front doors two by two, a long tan line that snakes through the dark, bristling with bayonets. The first squad in the column fans out to form a wedge, making the formation look like an arrow. The NCOs walk alongside the column, keeping a tight grip on their squads. While they will be moving in company strength, each squad will be acting independently, since there is no talking and no talking means no communication up and down the chain of command.

They all know where to go, how to get there, and what the rules of engagement are. No shooting unless it is a matter of life and death. Safeties on. They will push through with the bayonet. Speed, surprise and night vision will be their allies on this mission.

Near the front of the column, Mooney marches along in his NVGs, a pair of goggles that look into an amplified electronic image of the outside world on a green phosphor screen. This allows the soldiers to see even in starlight, which is all that is available tonight, by amplifying ambient light thirty thousand times and then creating an image rendered in green. The soldiers can see Maddy, but Maddy can't see them back.

Maddy can, however, hear them making an awful racket. The column rattles along, boots crunching gla.s.s and kicking cans and bottles, coughing on waves of stink circulating through the otherwise silent city. But despite the noise, the Mad Dogs do not attack. They appear to be dormant.

Mooney hears a scuffle on his left, followed by a hideous thunk sound and a sharp yelp. He turns just in time to see his sergeant pull his shovel out of a woman's head and shove her corpse to the asphalt. McGraw signals to them: Don't stop, keep moving.

The Sergeant whispers in the dark, "Sorry, Ma'am."

Mooney cannot stop himself from wondering who she was before she crossed over and became one of them. An important movie producer? A magazine editor? A meter maid? A subst.i.tute teacher? Did she have a husband or was she single? Did she have kids? Was she planning a vacation in Mexico over the winter?

Was she a terrorist who was going to blow up New York?

Was she a scientist about to discover the cure for cancer?

We'll never know.

Many of the infected are walking barefoot across broken gla.s.s, leaving trails of blood behind them. Others have gaping flesh wounds that are leaking pus from scores of infections, not just from the germs transmitted by bites, but because New York has become an open sewer over the past several days. Their stench is horrific, slowly winning its war against the vapor rub the soldiers have slathered under their noses. These people are scarcely human anymore.

But Mooney does not hate them. He just can't see them as monsters. Several days ago, they were regular people. It is hard to hate slaves. They have no choice.

Ahead, he sees more infected. There are cl.u.s.ters of them standing listless in the dark, apparently sleeping on their feet, their shoulders rising and falling as they pant with rapid, shallow breaths. Others sob and cry out as if from deep sadness.

The stench grows in strength, making his stomach waver at the edge of a convulsion. He tells himself not to cough, not to make a sound.

He pa.s.ses a Mad Dog who has sensed their presence and is trying to find them blindly, his eyes blinking in the dark. The man suddenly moves into the blind spot of Mooney's peripheral vision. NVGs offer the advantage of night vision even in near total darkness, but have three big disadvantages that are unnerving and even dangerous.

Soldiers used to 20/20 eyesight during the day must quickly adapt to a reduction in visual acuity to 20/25 to 20/40 at best. In other words, the NVGs produce a fuzzy image. While the fact there is no moon tonight is probably saving their lives, it is also giving their NVGs very little ambient illumination to work with.

While the NVG visor is binocular, the actual lens is monocular, robbing its wearer of depth perception. The boys stumble along, adapting the way they walk so they can maintain balance. Some occasionally flinch when they see Maddies wandering around, because they are not sure how far away they are.

Meanwhile, soldiers used to having a greater than one hundred eightydegree field of view must adapt to forty-degree tunnel vision. The soldiers must wag their heads constantly to see if Maddy is coming up on their sides, where they are virtually blind.

Mooney hears the Mad Dog sniffing the air and growling on his left. He wags his head in time to see his squad leader bash in the man's skull with his shovel.

McGraw does not apologize.

Mooney's mind races: Investment banker? Famous actor? Father of three?

He is trying not to think about his turn on the front line stabbing these people in the dark and pus.h.i.+ng them to the ground. He has shot lots of people over the past few days, and even bayoneted the sniveling thing on the floor in the science cla.s.sroom back at the school. But he did that without thinking. Shooting somebody is one thing. Intentionally putting a knife into a person's body is another. Most soldiers hate the weapon.

Second Squad steps out of line and squats, exhausted by the fighting, waiting for the rest of the column to pa.s.s so that they rejoin it as its last section. It is now First Squad's turn to be on point.

Mooney takes a deep breath, constantly moving and a.n.a.lyzing the objects swimming in a dozen shades of green in his limited view.

Ahead, floating in the gloom, the pale bodies of Mad Dogs sleep in their strange huddles and wander among the ruins of an abandoned traffic jam, stumbling over torn luggage and dead bodies.

The air is suddenly pierced by wailing, one of the infected crying out in sadness and pain.

The column is not supposed to deviate from a straight line until the first turn four blocks ahead. If Maddy blocks the column, bayonet him, push him to the side, and keep moving. Those are his orders. If he disobeys, he might get everybody killed.

The Mad Dog directly in front of him appears to be vibrating on his green phosphor screen, his large body undefined and fuzzy and his long matted beard writhing like a sizzling nest of worms. His left eye is swollen shut and leaking black fluid from an infection. His mouth yawns open. He appears to be grinning.

Mooney falls into a boxer's stance, left foot forward, body erect, knees slightly bent, balancing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet.

He was trained for bayonet fighting. There are four attack movements that he learned back in Basic: Thrust, b.u.t.t stroke, slash and smash. There are friendlies on his left and right, so he is limited to the thrust. The basic idea is to put the blade into any vulnerable part of your opponent's body.

The biggest problem is picking the spot. It is during this moment of thought that the revulsion sets in. Many soldiers simply aim center-ma.s.s at the enemy's torso. Either they do not have time to think, or they don't want to.

Mooney pulls the stock of his M4 close to his right hip, extends his left arm, and lunges forward on his left foot with all his might, spearing the Mad Dog between the ribs and pus.h.i.+ng him. The man shrieks, stumbling backward and almost taking the rifle with him. Mooney pulls hard and retrieves the blade, which slides out of the man's body reluctantly with an awful sucking sound.

Maddy stumbles to the left, trips over a fallen motorcycle, and doesn't get up.

Another Mad Dog steps out of the gloom, an old woman dressed in the rags of a hospital gown, blood splashed on her face and chest. Her toothless mouth gapes at him, gurgling a stream of bubbling drool rich with virus.

Thrust and hold, move. Withdraw and hold, move. Resume attack position, move. Take a step forward.

Next to him, Finnegan curses quietly as his carbine is wrenched out of his grasp. He chases after it and retrieves it, stumbling and gasping.

After ten minutes of this, slowly carving their way through two blocks, Corporal Eckhardt taps his shoulder and takes his place at the front of the column.

Mooney falls back in line, feeling an overwhelming compulsion to tear off his NVGs and let the world go black. The tendons in his aching arms seem to have hardened into steel and a sharp pain lances through his left wrist. Bayonet fighting is punis.h.i.+ng work. He is dying for a drink of water.

Sergeant McGraw steps out front and holds up his hand. The boys drop to one knee with a general clatter, panting. The Mad Dogs ahead have a gleaming green halo around them, against which they wander as dark silhouettes. Apparently there is a fire ahead producing a lot of light and threatening to expose them.

Mooney wags his head to have a quick look around, and also try to clear his head of the claustrophobic sensation that he is trapped inside a horrible dream.

The infected are everywhere.

We will carry this action with the bayonet

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 cl.u.s.ters, panting in sleep, or wander around aimlessly, pressing close against the column, sniffing the air and growling, las.h.i.+ng 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 candle-light. 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 crus.h.i.+ngly 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 a.s.sault, 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 G.o.dspeed. 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 a.s.sault in a line punching through the middle of the throng.