Free Scourge - A Medical Thriller (The Plague Trilogy Book 3) by Victor Methos Page B

level said it was, and the federal government claimed it was issuing orders directly to the states. Directions weren’t followed, and regional military commanders began making their own decisions. In some regions, where they abandoned their body armor and traditional military fighting tactics, they did well. In other places, where they tried to stand toe to toe with the infected and just overpower them, they failed. Huge numbers of soldiers were lost to nothing more than their commanders refusing to recognize that they were facing a superior force, a force that didn’t care if it lost. One of the generals told me that the winner of any fight is the one with the most to lose. But he didn’t understand that the infected didn’t think that way. They couldn’t think that way. They just didn’t care about the outcome or themselves. The winner of any fight isn’t the one with the most to lose, it’s the one with the least to lose.
    “At JFK, we landed and got off the plane into a hub of raging death , not at all what I expected. The infected had attacked and the marines dug themselves in. Wave after wave of the infected, screaming, mostly nude, like some dark force from our nightmares, hit the marines’ position over and over and over. The marines fought to the last bullet, and when no ammunition was left, they used knives and fists, trying to stab and beat the infected to death. That was another thing that wasn’t planned well—ammunition. Everyone had a weapon, but not everyone had enough ammunition to actually use it against hordes of infected. We jumped into a transport, which was just a city bus used to move people away from the airport. People were rushing to get there, and as soon as they did, they’d have to wait in line to be rushed away. The marines couldn’t hold the position for much longer, and as our bus left JFK, I saw them overrun.
    “It looked like a tsunami flowing over the marines and taking them with it. A few stragglers tried to run and were quickly swallowed up. Some stood and fought and were taken down like ants. I saw one marine slam the butt of his rifle into the jaw of an infected, a woman, and her jaw snapped off, but she didn’t stop. She leapt on top of him, attempting to bite into his face, but without her lower jaw, all she could do was pour blood down his throat from the wound—torrents of blood, right down his throat. I knew that not everyone would die from an attack by the infected. Many of them would become infected themselves.
    “ ‘They don’t die,’ Jessica said, panic in her voice. I put my arm around her as the bus sped down the interstate and away from the airport.
    “ ‘No, they’ll die,’ I said. “The human body can only survive about a week without water. They’re not getting any water. Eventually, they’ll all die of dehydration.’
    “A man seated across from us said, ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ The man had light black skin and green eyes. He wore jeans and a green army jacket, the handle of a pistol visible underneath the jacket. ‘I’ve seen the way they kill,’ he said. ‘They don’t just tear apart the flesh. They drink the blood, too, a lot of it. Most of it’s thrown up, but they’re learning. They’re trying to retain as much as they can… they’re trying to survive.’
    “ I held Jessica closer to me and Luther said, ‘That’s impossible.’
    “The man shook his head. ‘I wish it was.’ The name on the breast of his jacket said JASON S. He turned his face toward the window and didn’t speak for a long time. Neither did we. Everyone on the bus just watched the passing city out the windows. The fires had begun to burn across New York, too, just like in Atlanta. I didn’t know how they started, but I later learned that the military had been given orders to burn the bodies of the infected. Sometimes, if there was an enormous number of dead in a building, they would just light the building on fire rather than drag the bodies out