Pandemic

SIXTEEN.

Scott Wade knew he was going to die in this hospital.

He’d survived horrific battles against the Taliban over the past year. Only once had he truly been convinced he was going to be killed. After it became clear the Americans were pulling out to fight a new war, the Taliban, still fighting the old war, staged an all-out assault on Combat Outpost Katie. They wanted American bodies and weapons as trophies to show off. They could then claim they’d driven out the infidels.

In a night attack, the Taliban took out the gun placements in the tower with rocket-propelled grenades. Soviet-era heavy machine guns rattled along the ridges. The red sparks of tracer rounds blurred across the rocks. A stray rocket blew up the fuel truck and drenched the compound in fire. The ammo in a burning Humvee began to cook and pop at intervals.

The first two waves of fighters blew themselves up on the claymores. The rest raced to the walls. They threw grenades and emptied their AK-47s.

The platoon threw everything they had at them. The air filled with hot metal flying in all directions. After Guzman toppled with a smoking hole in his helmet, Wade took over his M240 machine gun and returned fire until the barrel got so hot it began to melt.

Apache gunships approached but didn’t engage, the soldiers afraid of killing American troops. Outpost Katie replied if the helicopters didn’t start dropping ordnance, they were going to be overrun. The Apaches opened up with their chain guns. After this pounding, the guerillas melted away into the mountains while the gunships pursued like angry wasps and mopped up the stragglers.

Wade had been wounded in three places on his left arm. Bravo Company’s medic performed some quick field surgery and told him he didn’t rate a medevac. The next day, the company struck its colors and drove down to Kabul, which was in chaos due to the plague, then flew out of the Sandbox to Vicenza, Italy. Then to Fort Drum in New York State. Then to Boston.

To Christ Hospital, where, ironically, he was going to die.

As far as he knew, most of his platoon had already been wiped out. He didn’t have a weapon. Pain lanced through his ankle. His left leg could barely take his weight. His right trembled with exhaustion. He was on the fifth floor of a large building filled with thousands of homicidal maniacs. And one of the best soldiers he’d ever known wanted to stab him to death.

Ramos lurched over the corpses. Wade wondered what was holding the man together. Half his face was gone. He moved jerkily, like a puppet.

Wade limped down the corridor and pushed the stairwell door open. He looked down and heard echoing sounds of struggle. Stomping feet. Shouts. Laughter. From outside, he could hear the hammering of the fifty-cal machine guns mounted on the Humvees.

Nowhere to go but up.

He grit his teeth and pulled his body up the stairs one step at a time.

Behind him, the door slammed open.

“An Army of one, motherfucker!”

Wade kept climbing. He finally came to a roof exit and prayed it was unlocked.

The door opened with a squeak of the hinges. He cried with relief and stepped outside.

Bright sunshine washed over him. The light flickered as a squadron of Apache gunships roared past, bristling with their low-slung chain guns. They weren’t part of his mission. He had no way to contact them.

Wade paused to catch his breath. The view struck him. Parts of Boston were on fire. He smelled smoke. The ever-present sirens had fallen silent, replaced by a distant chorus of screams and laughter. The epidemic had reached some tipping point. After weeks of endless struggle, the military had finally lost control.

Behind him, the door banged open. Ramos staggered from the dark opening as relentless as the Terminator. He laughed with red teeth. He still held his pig-sticker. “Get some.”

Wade backed away until he reached the edge of the roof. Far below, he saw the fifty-cals rocking on the Humvees. The gunners stood hunched behind the heavy machine guns, blasting away at the hospital entrance.

He had nowhere to go. He was going to have to fight. That, or jump to his death.

Then he spotted a maintenance ladder. He hoped it ran down the length of the building. It was a chance he had to take.

The pain in his foot nearly blinded him when he tried to move again. Ramos laughed, terrifyingly close. Wade didn’t look behind. Instead, he doubled his pace, crying out in pain. He gripped the ladder rails and began to climb down, favoring his right foot.

The ladder reached all the way to the ground. At the halfway point, Wade looked up and saw his sergeant’s grimacing face at the top. He resumed his downward climb. The sergeant wasn’t following. Wade knew he was going to make it.

His body tingled as the shadow fell over him. He heard rags of clothing flapping in the wind. Something was coming at him—fast.

It was Ramos. Wade hugged the ladder as the sergeant flew past. He cried out as searing pain ripped across his face.

Ramos kept falling, laughing all the way, until his body smashed against the asphalt.

Wade pulled off his glove and touched his cheek. His fingers came away red. He was wounded. His entire face hurt like a son of a bitch. Blood poured down his neck. Ramos had jumped and sliced him on the way down, cutting Wade’s cheek wide open.

Wade remembered seeing him lick the knife. I’ve got the Bug! His mind blanked out with fear. He counted the seconds.

Nothing happened.

I’m okay. I’m okay. Please let me be okay.

He knew the surviving members of the platoon would be frantically trying to contact Lieutenant Harris. The idea that they might give up and bug out, leaving him there, terrified him even more than the possibility of infection.

He hurried the rest of the way down and limped toward the vehicles, waving his arms. Halfway there, he collapsed with a groan.

A figure knelt next to him. A panicked face came into focus. Corporal McIsaac.

“Fuck, it’s Wade.”

“Goddamn. Look at him.”

“Help me get him into the Humvee.”

Wade heard the metallic crack of an M4.

“Move it! I’ll cover forward!”

Wade glimpsed a horde of gleeful men and women—naked or dressed in the rags of hospital gowns—pouring out of the entrance of the hospital. They waved and clapped as the fifties tore them apart.

He grimaced as somebody squirted antiseptic onto—

—the Bug—

—his wound and slapped a bandage onto it.

“What do you see?” Wade croaked. Worms? Little crawling worms?

McIsaac patted his chest. “It’ll need stitches.”

Hands lifted him. The sun burned into his eyes as he was half carried, half dragged across the parking lot and shoved into one of the vehicles. He couldn’t stop crying.

“Let’s move!”

“Jaworski! Mount up!”

The Humvee lurched forward. The gunner stood next to Wade, his head and shoulders above the roof so he could work the machine gun. Empty shell casings rained into the vehicle and rattled across the roof. Wade heard the whump of a Mark 19 on another Humvee as it spit grenades into the hospital emergency room. Glass sprayed across the parking lot.

The hospital entrance was obscured by smoke and dust. The lightfighters cheered.

“We’re out of here!”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hang in there, Wade. You’re okay now.”

“What happened?” the driver yelled. “Where’s the rest of your team?”

“They’re all dead.”

“What? Are we going back?”

Wade shook his head. He felt dizzy. “They’re all dead.”

“What are the Tomcats doing here?”

“Do they see us?”

Wade glanced out the window in time to see the squadron of Apaches launch batteries of Hellfire missiles from their stub-wing pylons.

“Holy shit! Go, go, go!”

Guided by advanced radar systems, the Hellfires rocketed into the hospital with an aerosol roar and burst with a flash.

The ground trembled under the rig’s wheels. Wade felt the air around him suck toward the blast. Brilliant white light washed out his vision. His ears filled with terrifying booms. The sensation was like getting struck by lightning.

The gunner dropped into the vehicle. “Just go, just go, just go!”

They were too close to the blast. Debris rained around the Humvees.

“Just—”

Something big struck the vehicle with a CLANG. The windshield cobwebbed. The vehicle rocked and swerved. Hot oil sprayed from the crumpled hood. The engine howled. The driver fought for control. The gunner screamed.

Wade was flung into darkness.