There were more infected coming up Third Avenue from the country club. Maybe two dozen. Clark gestured for the nearest squad to handle them, then spun around when someone behind him shouted 'Target spotted, in that window!'
'Somebody kill that motherfucker for me already!' Horrocks screamed, his eyes huge and white. A squad of soldiers carrying M4s broke off to assault the entrance to a copy shop with wide windows overlooking Fillmore Street. A young man in a blue apron was in there pressed up against the glass, his hands white blobs against the window, the muscles of his face completely slack. Like something stuck to the wall of an aquarium. One of his cheeks was dark with torn skin and dried blood.
Clark backed up against the side of the HEMTT and reloaded his sidearm. It had been a long, haunting night and it just kept getting worse. He thought about countermanding the order'the infected boy wasn't a danger to anybody stuck inside that store. It would demoralize the troops though to leave even one of the cannibals standing.
Keeping morale alive was pretty much all Clark could hope to accomplish. For every one of the infected they cut down ten more seemed to appear out of thin air. They were making no progress at all toward their stated objectives.
'Come on, come on, let's not lose the operational tempo here,' Horrocks insisted.
The soldiers were still crisp, still professional. Maybe it was only Clark who was wilting after a night of violence and cold food and no sleep. They kicked the boy away from the window and butchered him and were back to the HEMTT inside of sixty seconds. On the roof of the big truck a crew-served M249 kept them covered the whole time.
The HEMTT was full of scared survivors, people they'd picked up along the way. Every time one of the troops discharged a weapon a collective moan of shock billowed out of the back. The sound got on Clark's nerves'he felt guilty enough already, he didn't need the infernal howling of the survivors to remind him he was slaughtering innocent civilians.
'Comms,' Clark called out and a specialist with a satellite cell phone came duck-walking up to him. Keeping low, just like she'd been trained'it made it less easy for a sniper to hit her. Nobody was shooting at them in Denver but she'd had proper cover procedure drilled into her so hard it stuck. She knelt down by the side of the truck with Clark and threw him a salute. 'What do we have?' he asked. 'Did you get through to the Adjutant General?'
'Sir, no, sir, nothing since the last transmission.' That had been half an hour before. A column of light armor (Hum-Vees with mounted weaponry) was supposed to come down Speer Boulevard any minute and relieve the platoon. Clark wasn't holding his breath. The AG wasn't responding to his calls, which couldn't mean anything good. 'Alright, get back to the vehicle,' he told her. He called for Horrocks and the sergeant appeared instantly. 'It's time to break contact. We're holding our ground here but that's not exactly the same as making progress. I want squad three on rear security.'
The sergeant set about making it happen while Clark hauled himself up into the cab of the HEMTT. A laptop on the dashboard showed a GPS map of the neighborhood. It showed the country club and the Cherry Creek shopping center tinged in red. Clark had to zoom out to see any blue at all'a Stryker group sitting tight on a stretch of Federal Boulevard. 'How old is this product?' he asked.
'Sir, about thirty minutes,' the comms specialist replied. She was blushing under her helmet. The best data she had must have come in with the last download from command.
'Alright,' he said, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'What is CNN saying?'