Tooth and Nail (39 page)

A last flurry of muzzle flashes in the haze. A plume of smoke rising from a burst grenade. A blinding flash, fire and dust. Then nothing.

The infected fill the Circle, wandering aimlessly, as if the soldiers never existed. In fact, the Mad Dogs have probably already forgotten about them.

Petrova cries for the boys, hot tears flooding her cheeks.

The Crazy Eights, people called them.

I will remember you, she vows to herself. And I will repay you.

“Oh God,” Mooney sobs in sudden anguish, looking like a broken old man at the age of twenty. In a single morning, all of his friends have died and he has probably never felt more alone. Seeing him like this, Petrova remembers lying curled in a ball under the desk in the security room of the Institute, wishing she were somebody else, somebody without so much fear and pain. Now it is her turn to offer comfort. She takes his hand in hers, and they share tears over the death of his comrades.

As the helicopter continues to lift into the cold gray sky, she sees more and more of the dark crowds circulating through the city’s arteries. New York belongs to them now, the insane, the mad, the infected. They will die like flies over the coming days and make the city a graveyard, leaving a nightmare of disease and starvation for the survivors. Civilization will recede as the virus does, leaving the survivors forever afraid of its return. Their descendants will virtually worship the virus and its power.

She wipes her face and turns in her seat, still holding Mooney’s hand but emotionally turning inward, trying to stay strong so she can continue fighting this war. She is suddenly painfully aware that the Special Forces, buckled into their seats, are casting fierce, hopeful glances at her, wondering if she, and what she represents, was worth the lives of their friends.

What she can promise them, just as she is now promising the lost boys of Eighth Brigade in her heart, is that she will kill this virus. There will be other viruses, other plagues, but the Mad Dog strain will never again return to threaten extinction. When she is done with the virus, humanity will be able to return to its rightful place on the earth.

She will also honor the soldiers with her memory. Integrity, courage, loyalty—these and the other Army values seemed cute, even corny, to her several weeks ago, but will be in all too short supply in America’s future, she knows. Such men from the past will not easily be replaced by the next savage generation shaped by the plague.

Petrova believes with her whole heart that humanity will survive this apocalypse. But with men like Captain Todd Bowman dead and gone, who will inherit the earth?