At the east entrance, he passed several soldiers just returned from a patrol. One of them stood hunched over, hands on his knees, hyperventilating while the others tried to calm him. They nudged each other as their commanding officer approached.
Prince crouched in front of the gasping man. Man, hell. He was just a kid like all the rest. His boys weren’t machines. They were people. But like machines, they broke.
“You’re all right now, son.”
“Sorry,” the kid gasped, “sir.”
“No shame in it. Let it out.” Prince gripped the soldier’s shoulder. He held on for a moment, as if he could transfer his strength into the boy. When he withdrew his hand, he saw the crossed swords of the Tenth Mountain patch. Climb to Glory.
The boy’s breathing began to ease. The other soldiers watched with anxious expressions. One of them was visibly shaking, dealing with his own demons. Another’s eyelid twitched.
“I’m okay now, sir,” the kid said.
“Bad out there, is it?” Prince asked.
The soldiers nodded.
“You’ve already done far more than your country had a right to ask,” Prince told them. “I want you to know, for what it’s worth, that I’m proud of you. And that I love you all.”
“Sir?” one of the men said. “Any idea when it’s going to be over?”
Prince stood and smiled. “Everything ends. Until then, we soldier on.”
The simple, brute logic appealed to the soldiers. They saluted.
He returned it. “Get some rest, boys. Tomorrow’s another day.”
He headed back to the command trailer. The staff sergeants glared at the interruption. The air was tense and rank with fear. He ignored their questions as he passed, touching each of them lightly on the shoulder and leaving them calm but wondering.
Prince went into his office and closed the door. He took the framed New York Times article off the wall and dropped it into his wastebasket. He sat at his desk, pushed his computer aside and pulled out his bottle of Jim Beam and a clean glass. He picked up the photo of Susan and Frankie he kept on his desk. He stared at it for a long time.
For the first time in weeks, he could really see again. He saw it all with perfect clarity.
The endless blood.
Climb to Glory.
Lt. Colonel Prince removed the 9mm from his holster, put the business end between his teeth, and squeezed the trigger.
TWENTY-FOUR.
As the light of day faded, the convoy of Humvees roared down the road, scattering rubbish. The streetlights were off. Rotting corpses swung from the poles in the mounting twilight. Feasting birds scattered at the approaching diesel roar.
Captain Lee had built a career on honesty. He held nothing back in his intelligence reports. When asked, he gave his opinions without the sugar coating. He didn’t believe in putting lipstick on pigs. He’d made captain because of it. He’d been held back from further promotion because of it.
He was going to tell Prince everything. He’d already submitted a report, but even that didn’t contain half of what he’d seen. He’d shared the facts, but he had to make the Colonel see the horror. Right now, First Battalion was scattered, ineffective and losing ground by the day. They needed to pull their forces back into a defensible position and build their operations from there. They could take the city back, block by block, using overwhelming force and killing the infected without mercy. The stakes involved survival of an entire city, and there wasn’t much time. The inmates were inches away from running the asylum and putting it to the torch.
As night fell, they approached the onramp that would take them onto Concord Turnpike. The road was supposed to be reserved to official traffic, but the police and their vehicles were gone, the rows of barriers smashed and flattened. The emptiness was unnerving. The silence made Lee think of Afghanistan. The calm between attacks.
Without being told, Murphy slowed the vehicle and cut the headlights. The men put on their night vision goggles, which rendered the dark landscape in a thousand shades of phosphorescent green. Nobody in sight. In the distance, headlights moved quickly along the turnpike, too fast for military. The vast fires of Boston glowed a brilliant green on the horizon. The Humvee’s tires thudded across the smashed barriers. Lee held his carbine propped in the open window. Foster swiveled the .50-cal in the gun turret, sweeping the area for threats.
Behind them, the other two Humvees did the same.
“Do you believe in prayer, Captain?” Murphy asked.
“Not really, Mike.”
“Could you try? I really don’t want to die here.”
“I believe in good planning, but that doesn’t work either. It’s all on us.”
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“Really? We’ve gotten this far.”
They pulled onto the turnpike and took off their goggles. The headlights flashed on. After a mile, they passed the first flaming wreck on the side of the road. Still no visible threats.
“Your prayers seem to be working, Mike.”
Light flared in the side view mirrors.
“Way to jinx it, Captain,” Murphy said.
The headlights in their rear were approaching fast. Lee remembered the top speed of a Humvee was fifty-five miles an hour.
“We can’t outrun a civilian vehicle,” he said. “And we can’t shoot unless they’re hostile.”
“We won’t know they’re hostile until they’re right on top of us.”
“We should stop. Set up a defensive formation.”
“Fire some warning shots? If they don’t stop, we light them the fuck up.”
The light gleamed bright in the side views.
Lee shook his head. “No time.” He picked up the phone on his field radio. “Rebel Three, this is Rebel Six. What have you got, over?”
“Rebel Six, this is Rebel Three. Vehicles approaching fast. Five hundred meters. Over.”
“You are authorized to use lethal force to respond to any threats. Over.”
“That’s a solid copy, Rebel Six. Over.”
“Take no chances, Rebel Three.”
“Don’t worry about us, s—what the fuck?”
They’d misjudged how fast the vehicles could catch up to them. Lee heard the .50-cal hammer over the roar of an overstressed engine and found he wanted to pray after all. He flinched at the ear-splitting crash of metal. The car shattered against the two-ton military vehicle and burst into flames. Rebel Three lurched and rolled in a series of bangs.
He cursed himself for his stupidity. Here he was on his way back to preach to Prince, but even he didn’t get it. The rules of engagement no longer mattered, only force protection. He should have declared the highway a free-fire zone and taken the consequences.
Behind him, Rebel Two’s machine gun swung into action. Tracer rounds burst in the dark. A smoking car swung off the road. A truck raced past to catch up with Rebel One.
“We got company,” said Murphy.
Foster got off a few rounds but missed. The truck was going too fast. He walked his fire forward, guided by the tracers. The truck pulled up alongside the Humvee’s right and slowed. Lee saw naked, mutilated men swarming across the truck bed, clashing crowbars and golf clubs against the battered chassis. One of the crazies threw a colorful object that struck the rear of the Humvee.