Forrest and Kane fired into them even as the grenade exploded on the sidewalk. Laddie broke away from Melissa and bound past them, leaping over the bodies and out into the street, tearing into the first man he saw and ripping him screaming to the ground. The rest of the attackers recoiled in a moment of awe, astonished to see such a large dog, half expecting a pack of hungry wolves to come streaming out of the building.
One of them raised his weapon to shoot the animal but his head instantly exploded as a 230 grain, .45 caliber bullet blasted through his brain and slammed into the man behind him, killing them both.
Forrest stood defiantly among the many dying men at his feet, firing point-blank into the faces of the savages who would dare try to kill his son’s dog. Screaming as he charged into them, he grabbed up an empty carbine, swinging at their heads and splitting skulls as they reeled away in panic, their combat reflexes horribly degraded by starvation and disease.
Not all of them had lost their wits. One was returning his fire and scoring hits on Forrest’s armor and limbs, tracking him as he pivoted to the right, about to squeeze the trigger to blow out his brains. But suddenly, and to his horror, the dog sank its teeth into his testicles, frenziedly ripping them from side to side.
Kane smashed the man’s skull with the barrel of his carbine and grabbed the dog’s leash to haul him back inside. Glancing over his shoulder to see that Forrest had gone down, he dragged Laddie, snarling over the stacked bodies, and handed the leash to Melissa. He turned to dash out, but an unseen concussion grenade exploded just outside the window and hurled him back across the storefront into the counter, knocking him senseless. He tried to rise but collapsed and fell unconscious.
Bleeding badly, Forrest rolled beneath the hull of a pickup truck and blacked out as the Marines came charging up the street, supported by a second EFV, its 40mm cannon blasting away at the apartment building and killing all who ran for cover; killing all who stood to fight.
Veronica screamed for Michael and he abandoned his post in the back hall, running to the front and firing into the small group that sought to take cover inside the shop, killing a few and fumbling to reload. The women were about to put the capsules back into their mouths when they heard again the staccato blast of a 40mm cannon and the screaming of Marines as they surged past the shop. They were driving the few remaining killers before them toward the end of the block, where the other EFV and two more Marine platoons were waiting to gun them down.
When the last barbarian fell, the Marines let out with a roaring “Oorah!” and the street fell strangely silent, save for the occasional coups de grace being delivered to a wounded, sneering cannibal.
In the light of a magnesium flare held high above her head, Emory came through the Marines with a medical bag over each shoulder, spotting at once the bright red, white, and blue patch of the Eighty-second Airborne Division on the arm of a dead soldier stuffed beneath the rusted hulk of a pickup truck. She ran toward it, grabbing the wrist and dragging the body out into the light.
Forrest’s lifeless body was covered in blood, his face lacerated and his uniform torn to tatters.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, taking a knee beside him as men of the Third Marines shuffled around her and into the porn shop, shouting for survivors. She heard the women screaming from within that they were alive, and a surge of excitement swept through the Marines.
“They’re alive!” someone shouted. “Get Beauchamp!”
“Corpsman!”
“Hey, Emory! They’re alive!”
With a heavy heart, Emory rose to her feet to go see who had made it.
“Fuck you goin’?”
She whipped her head around to see Forrest looking up at her through one very swollen eye. “Oh, Jesus!”
“Can’t you see I need a fuckin’ medic?”
“Corpsman!” ripped from her throat as she dropped to her knees, then tore into one of the med kits. “More corpsman up front!”
“Who taught you to take a pulse?” Forrest mumbled, head spinning, his body coming alive with pain.
“I didn’t bother taking your pulse,” she said, digging out the compression bandage she would have to apply to his leg to prevent him from bleeding to death. “You sure as fuck know how to play possum!”
“Good thing. Else one’a those damn jarheads may’ve shot my ass.”
“You’re probably gonna lose that foot,” she said, seeing that it was bent nearly forty-five degrees.
“Figures.”
Veronica was climbing out through the window of the shop now and screaming his name. “Jack! Jack!”
“Here!” Emory called.
“Oh, Christ,” he murmured. “Knock me out, Shannon. I can’t take her right now.”
Emory smiled and took a syrette of morphine from the pocket on her upper arm. “See how good I follow orders?” She stuck him in the leg, and he was unconscious by the time Veronica and Melissa and the dog came scrambling around the rear of the truck.
“Oh, my God!” Veronica shouted. “Is he alive?”
“Just a little banged up.”
“A little banged up!” She dropped to the ground beside them. “He looks like he’s been hit by a truck, Shannon!”
Emory looked up to see Melissa gripping Laddie’s leash in one hand and covering her mouth in abject terror with the other, the sight of Forrest’s wounds shattering her. She punched Veronica in the shoulder, pointed up at the girl and gave her a shove. “How about trying to help!”
“Oh!” Veronica shook off her own sense of shock and jumped up to grab Melissa into her arms. The girl stood bawling into her bosom as Laddie began to lick the blood from Forrest’s face.
Gunnery Sergeant Beauchamp appeared and stood looking down. “This one gonna make it, Emory?”
“He’ll make it, Gunny. We need to get him to the ship ASAP.”
“They got one bad wounded around the corner,” Beauchamp said. “Medevac’s loading him up now. Five dead.”
“Five?” The number had startled her.
“Two men, two women, and a boy,” he said, then walked off shouting orders to his men.
As Emory was finishing with Forrest’s IV a short time later, Marty squatted beside her on his haunches, face pale, eyes full of dread.
“No!” she said, realizing her fear had come to pass. “Don’t you fucking tell me that, Marty!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, starting to cry. “Sean said he probably saved a lot of lives. Maybe everyone’s.”
Her eyes filled with tears, making it hard to see what she was doing. A corpsman joined her and she asked him to finish for her and got to her feet. “Where is he?”
“In a… in a bag on the sidewalk around the corner.”
“Stay here.”
She walked off through the milling Marines and made her way to the front of the pharmacy, where she knelt beside the largest of the five dark forms on the sidewalk. Taking out her flashlight, she drew a breath then unzipped Sullivan’s bag. She saw his shattered face and for a moment was sick to her stomach, certain she was going throw up and shame herself, but then a Marine called her name and pulled her back from the brink: “Emory! What do you want done with your dead?”
“I… I… Can we take them aboard ship? Bury them at sea?”
“Don’t see why not,” the Marine said, stepping back from the doorway as they were bringing Ulrich out on a stretcher to load him onto the EFV medevac.
Erin and the baby came out right behind him. “Oh, my God, Shannon!” she called. “Thank God you made it, honey!”
Emory waved and smiled mirthlessly, it never occurring to her that the baby in Erin’s arms was her own daughter. She reached into the bag to take hold of Sullivan’s hand. It was cold and lifeless and did not feel anything at all like the soldier’s hand it had once been. “I loved you,” she whispered. “Not the way you wanted, but I loved you.”