Patient Zero

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Baltimore, Maryland / Tuesday, June 30; 3:36 P.M.

“OKAY,” I SAID, “so we danced a bit earlier. Is anyone too damaged to train? More to the point, is anyone too banged up to go into combat today or tomorrow if it comes to it?”

“Well my nuts still hurt,” Ollie said, then added, “sir. But I can pull a trigger.”

“I’m good,” Bunny said. He tossed the ice pack onto the floor beside the mats.

Skip winced. “Nuts for me, too, sir. I think they’re up in my chest cavity somewhere.”

“They’ll drop when you hit puberty,” Bunny said under his breath. He looked at me. “Sir.”

“Skip the ‘sir’ shit unless we’re not alone. It’s already getting old.”

“I can fight,” Skip said.

I nodded to First Sergeant Sims. “What about you, Top? Any damage?”

“Just to my pride. Never been blindsided before.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “Church wants Echo Team to be operationally ready to carry out an urban infiltration sometime in the next day or two. The last two combat teams were KIA by these walkers. I haven’t seen the tapes yet, but they tell me those guys were at full complement and fully trained, but because of the unknown nature of the enemy at the time they became confused, and that caused hesitation, which proved disastrous. The five of us are supposed to be the new bulldogs in the junkyard. Sounds great, sounds very heroic-but on a practical level I’ve never led a team before.”

“As pep talks go, coach,” Bunny said, “this one kinda blows.”

I ignored him. “But what I have done is train fighters. That I know I can do. So, because I’m the big dog I get to teach you four to fight the Joe Ledger way.”

So far the Joe Ledger way had involved them getting their asses handed to them, so they weren’t all that eager to rush in. Not a “rah team” moment.

“How exactly are we supposed to kill these walker things?” Skip asked. “They, er, being dead and all.”

“Try not to get bitten, son,” Bunny said. “That’s a start.”

“In the absence of further info from the medical team we’ll proceed on the assumption that the spine and/or brain stem is the key: damage that and you pull the plug on these things. I kicked the living shit out of the first one-Javad-and I might as well have been shaking his hand; but then I broke his neck and he went right down. Seems reasonable that there’s activity in the brain stem area, so for us the new sweet spot is the spine.”

“Let me ask something,” Skip said. “The way you dropped Colonel Hanley don’t you think that was a little harsh?”

“Church said something that had me scared and pissed off.” I told them about Rudy sitting there with a gun to his head.

“She-e-e-it,” Top said, stretching it out to about six syllables.

“That’s not right,” Skip said.

“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but it put me in a zero-bullshit frame of mind. I don’t play well with others when they get between me and what I want.”

“Yeah,” said Bunny, “I feel you.”

“Even so,” Skip said, “it reduced our operational efficiency by one man.”

Top answered that before I could. “No it didn’t. Hanley was a loudmouth and a showboat. He got mad and focused his anger on the cap’n as if he was the problem at hand. A man thinking with his heart ’stead of his head has stepped out of training. He’d get us all killed.”

“Yeah,” Bunny agreed, “the mission always comes first. Don’t they teach you that in the navy?”

Skip shot him the finger, but he was grinning.