City Under the Moon (35 page)

The SEC Commander responded over their headsets. “Roger that, November. Negative on landing, that location is very hot. Infected have been rallying there for hours. We have ops in place, we’ll advise when it’s safe to approach. Proceed to primary LZ, over.”

The infected have been rallying there.

“Then we’ll go in hot,” she said. “No time to waste.”

“Negative, November. There is no landing zone. Wait out.”

“Roger, SEC. Desperation out,” said Kim.

“Where is the primary landing zone?”

“Bellevue Hospital.”

Bellevue was just down 26
th
, already in their sights, and it was a disaster. Plumes of smoke rose from all over the complex. Escapees had taken refuge on the roof. Gurneys were strewn across the helipad.

The streets weren’t any better. FDNY fire engines were pinned by vehicle pileups on First Avenue, trying to ram their way through. The firemen were locked in combat with civilians climbing aboard their truck. An overturned ambulance with its doors open lay in the center of First and 26
th
, looking like a turtle on its back. Gunshot pops, horns, sirens, alarms.

“SEC, Bellevue LZ is hot. Requesting redirect to grid 8333-3234.”

“Negative, Desperation, you have no support,” the aggravated commander replied. “Proceed to secondary LZ.”

“Roger, SEC. I hear you Lima Charlie.”

“Secondary LZ? Where is that?” Tildascow demanded.

“Brooklyn Naval Yard.”

The Brooklyn Naval Yard was at least five miles south of Bellevue and across the Wallabout Bay. Putting down and refueling, they’d lose at least an hour. Maybe two.

“No, no. Fuck no. We’re not leaving the island. Drop us here and we’ll go on foot.” She turned to Mantle and Jaguar in the seats behind her. “Right?”

“Hooah!” Mantle yelled.

“Drop us.”

Eleven

VA Hospital Roof

East 25th & First Avenue

1:49 p.m.

Desperation One
and the
Silver Bullet
roared away as Tildascow and her crew readied their gear.

They’d hopped onto the roof of the three-story VA medical building just south of Bellevue, a wide swath of snow-covered gravel. Their view of First Avenue was blocked by a raised façade, not that they could see through the thick smoke from the nearby fires. Tildascow directed Lon to cover his nose and mouth with his elbow. Mantle and Jaguar took a torch to the access door’s lock.

Ilecko squeezed some of the dirty blood from his rawhide pouch as Tildascow and Lon watched over his shoulder. The red drowned in the dusty snow as they whisked smoke from their eyes. Soon the top powder collapsed, revealing the blood as it fought its way toward the Chrysler Building.

“He’s there,” Tildascow said loudly enough for the Shadow Stalkers. “He’s fucking there.”

Jaguar kicked in the metal door.

“Move fast,” she said, readying her 1911. “Heads down, no spectacle.”

The Shadow Stalkers led them into a tight stairwell of worn paint on cinderblock. The first landing was at a metal door marked “Third Floor” in godawful 1960’s-brown cursive.

Several floors below them, a door slammed open, and a couple entered in mid-argument.

“We can’t stay here!” cried a sobbing woman.

“It’s safe here! It’s safe here, what the fuck do you want from me!” answered a hoarse man. They kept repeating themselves.

Tildascow peered at them over the railing. They’d definitely call attention to her squad and slow them down. Or maybe she was still smarting from having to shoot that grease job from the Cougar. Either way, there had to be another stairwell nearby. She directed the Shadows with hand motions.

She unlatched the door and peeked out onto a long corridor of recovery rooms. No power, so the floor was dark except for murky swaths of sunlight cast from open rooms. No activity other than a few nurses and doctors. A battery-powered exit sign was glowing at the far end of the hall; that’d be the other stairwell.

The argument downstairs grew worse. “
What the fuck do you want from me? The fuck do you want me to do?”

“Find someone to help us!”

“End of the hallway,” she whispered to her team, “to the exit sign.”

Lon nodded “affirmative.” Ilecko agreed.

“Who’s going to help us? Who the fuck is going to help us?”

She slowly, quietly pushed open the—

“Tildascow?”

She froze. That voice wasn’t one of theirs. It was dreary, old, and it had come from beyond the door. The others heard it too. Lon’s wide eyes wanted an explanation that she didn’t have.

She listened carefully, but the idiots downstairs were getting louder.

Then it called again. “Tildascow?”

Mantle flipped open a two-part mirror device on the barrel end of his SCAR rifle and eased it through the doorway. Tildascow leaned in for a look.

A ghostly old woman stood in the corridor, backlit by smoky blue light that cast a shadow of her wiry frame onto her loose hospital gown. Gauze crisscrossed her body like scotch tape on a broken vase and her right eye was hidden beneath a patch.

“Brianna Tildascow?” she whispered.

Tildascow pushed Mantle’s weapon aside and stepped into the hallway, leading with her 1911. Jaguar followed to flank, checking behind, and Mantle stayed at the door, watching with Lon and Ilecko.

She squared off, calling across the barrel of her gun. “Who are you?”

“I don’t know,” the old woman sobbed. Her lips quivered, revealing a few withered, lonely teeth.

“Were you attacked? Are you infected?”

“I don’t know,” she cried.

“How do you know my name?”

“He told me.”

“And who is
he
?” she asked, knowing goddamn well who “he” was.

“I don’t know,” she sobbed, and her toothpick arms swayed as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

All at once, her fear faded, her body went rigid and she raised her good eye in a dead lock with Tildascow’s.

Now she sounded rehearsed: “He has a message for you, and for Yannic Ilecko and the United States of America.”

“And what is that message?”

She covered her ears and took a deep breath. And then she shrieked, “Find a cure!”

It hurt Tildascow to watch. Spittle and blood shot from her throat as she screamed again.

“
Find a cure!
” And again. “
Find a cure!
”

“Okay, ma’am. Stop!” Tildascow shouted, but the woman couldn’t hear her. And she couldn’t stop if she tried.

Now a new voice from behind them: “
Find a cure!
”

Tildascow spun to find a wild-haired college student limping from another room. His arm was set in a cast and his face had turned savage purple as he screamed at a throat-ripping volume.
“Find a cure!”

They overlapped each other, like a tortured version of “Row Your Boat.”

More patients filtered into the hall, coming from every direction, joining the disharmony.
“Find a cure!”

Put-put-put!
Jaguar fired his rifle and shouted—

The frail weight of the old woman landed on Tildascow’s back, and then she felt something tear at her neck. She whipped her elbow around and felt the woman’s brittle jaw and spine snap.

She turned to find the woman on the floor, her head broken from her collar. Chunks of Tildascow’s flesh were stuck between her gravestone teeth. Blood trickled from her mouth.

Then Tildascow felt the warm flow seeping down the back of her neck. She touched the wound and came back with fingers coated in blood.

More voices now, rising up from other rooms. The infected stumbled about like zombies, covering their ears and shrieking. They were oblivious to Tildascow or anyone else, but the doctors and nurses and non-infected patients bolted for the exits. Some ran right between them, unimpressed by their weapons.

And then the screams rose from the floors below, echoing up the stairwell. And from the streets outside, diminishing into oblivion. Voices in every direction, of every quality, bellowing mercilessly. Over and over.

“Find a cure!”

Twelve

New York City

2:14 p.m.

It swept across the city like a tidal wave.

They could hear it at the naval yard across Wallabout Bay, a strange din over the helicopters. It reached Rainey Park on the other side of Roosevelt Island, where the media had gathered with telescopes. Snipers protecting the shores even heard it in Edgewater, New Jersey, all the way across the Hudson River.

The rioting in Columbus Circle ceased as the infected covered their ears and began screaming.

Some of the non-infected joined in, trying to discipline the lunacy by turning the cacophony into a chant.

But there would be no discipline.

The message was the chaos.

“Find a cure!”

Thirteen

The Oval Office

2:34 p.m.

President Weston stood to greet USAF Colonel James J. Murdock, Commander of the 28th Bomb Wing out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. Murdock’s dossier sat on the president’s desk along with the personnel files of four other
Wolfsbane
candidates.

General Alan Truesdale and Chief of Staff Teddy Harrison were also there to greet Murdock as he entered and introduced himself with a salute. Truesdale returned the salute, but Weston greeted him with a measured nod. Some servicemen and women found it distasteful for a civilian, even the CINC, to co-opt the salute. Weston chose to respond with a handshake whenever possible, or a constantly grateful nod. The pundits accused him of grandstanding by breaking a tradition begun by Ronald Reagan, but as far as he was concerned, his tenure was about mending the fences the last guy knocked down. No better place to start than with his own people.

“Colonel James J. Murdock reports as ordered,
sir
.”

“At ease, Colonel,” Truesdale said.

“Have a seat.” Weston directed him to the hot seat. As an afterthought, he presented an awkward handshake that caught the colonel off guard. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s an honor, sir.”

Weston searched the eyes of this man, who had dedicated his life to serving his country, and prepared to ask him to irreparably tarnish his name and his legacy.

Murdock had received his commission from the USAF Academy in the spring of 1989. He’d served in positions from instructor pilot to Wing Weapons Officer to Strategic Warplanner for US Central Command. He had over twenty-five hundred flight hours in the B-1B
Lancer
strategic bomber and the T-38
Talon
supersonic jet trainer. He’d garnered four major decorations, and President Clinton recognized him as a “Great American” in his 1998 State of the Union Address.

For this job, he stood apart from the other candidates because he had no children.

“You’ve been briefed on this operation, Colonel?” Weston knew he had, but he wanted to hear the tone of Murdock response.

“Yes sir.” Appropriately somber, yet confident.

“And you’re prepared to carry it out?”

“Yes sir.” And firm.

Murdock was starstruck, but Weston wanted a genuine reaction from the man, not the standard military spiel. Actually, he wasn’t sure
what
he wanted. Maybe he wanted to be in the cockpit with him. Maybe he wanted to reassure him that he’d be by his side in the aftermath.

Whatever it was, he just needed this guy to
talk
to him. “James—can I call you James? Or do you prefer Jim?”

“Either, sir.”

“Gentlemen, would you excuse us?” Weston asked Truesdale and Teddy.

They nodded at Weston and Murdock on their way out.

“Jim,” Weston began, “while we’re alone I’d like you to call me Will.”

“Yes sir,” he said uncomfortably, before forcing out “Will.”

“Jim. In 1945, Paul Tibbets and Charles Sweeny dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing over two hundred thousand people. They faced that reality in the public and in the mirror, every day, for the rest of their lives. Protesters hounded them. Churches cursed them. Some people said they were in league with the devil. They did what their CINC asked of them, and they came home to liberal hypocrites who apologized to the Japanese right under their noses. It never relented, until they died.
After
they died, even.”

“I’m familiar with their story, sir.”

“Did you know that Tibbets asked not to be buried, because he thought protesters would desecrate his grave?”

The word “grave” hung in the air as Murdock nodded
yes
.

“Are you prepared to drop a weapon of mass destruction over Manhattan?”

“If those are my orders, sir, I will carry out my mission.”

Weston frowned and leaned forward. “What if we were to drop all the pretenses, Jim, and we had a man-to-man exchange instead of CINC to soldier? And what if, instead of ordering you to do this, I just asked you?”

Murdock thought for a moment before responding, and in that moment, Weston realized
that
was what he wanted.

“I’d say I appreciate your asking, Will. And I’d say I gladly and proudly serve at your discretion.”

Weston cleared his throat and stood. Murdock also stood, although far more rigidly. They exchanged a nod of silent understanding, and then Weston reached beneath his personnel files for an envelope that was unmarked except for his own signature across the seal. “The codes.”

Murdock took the envelope. “Thank you sir.”

“I appreciate your service, Colonel Murdock. And so does your country.”

“Thank you sir.”

Murdock saluted. Weston shook his hand.

Fourteen

39th & Lexington

3:07 p.m.

Lon couldn’t stop shuddering, and it wasn’t because of the cold.

Lexington Avenue looked as though it’d just hosted the most gruesome party ever. Dead bodies lay about like macabre confetti. The older ones had become snow popsicles. Some lay on the ground, staring at him like it was his job to wake them up. And there were dismembered limbs all over the place, little things people had just left behind. Like their arms or their legs.