The sun at Fort Benning doesn’t just shine; it oppresses. It’s a physical weight, pressing down on the shoulders of the enlisted men while the officers sit under white canopies, sipping ice water that costs more than my boots.
I adjusted the collar on my dress blues, feeling the sweat trickle down my spine. My name is Sergeant Marcus “Mac” Holloway. I’m not an Academy boy. I didn’t go to West Point. I grew up in a trailer park in Oklahoma where the only thing you inherited was debt and a bad temper. I clawed my way into the K9 unit because dogs make more sense to me than people. Dogs don’t care about your bank account. They don’t care if your dad was a Senator or a drunk. They only care about loyalty.
“Easy, Brutus,” I whispered, dropping my hand to scratch behind the massive, blocky ears of my partner.
Brutus was a hundred and ten pounds of pure, kinetic energy wrapped in black and mahogany fur. He was a Rottweiler, an anomaly in a sea of Belgian Malinois and German Shepherds. Most handlers didn’t want Rotts. They said they were too heavy, too stubborn. But Brutus? He was a tank with a Ferrari engine. We’d spent two tours in the sandbox together. He’d pulled me out of a collapsed building in Kandahar when the rest of the squad had written me off as KIA.
Today, though, we were just lawn ornaments.
It was the promotion ceremony for General Arthur Sterling. The man was a legend, or a myth, depending on which side of the pay grade you stood. Four stars. A jawline that could cut glass. A net worth that made the military salary look like pocket change. He came from old money—the kind that bought libraries for universities just to get their kids in.
I watched from the perimeter, about fifty yards from the main stage. Sterling was up there giving a speech about “sacrifice” and “brotherhood,” words that sound great when you’re saying them into a microphone and not whispering them to a dying kid in a muddy trench.
“Sit,” I commanded softly. Brutus sat, his muscles coiled like steel cables under his fur. But he was agitated. I could feel it through the leash. A low, vibrating hum traveled up the leather strap and into my palm.
“What is it, boy?” I murmured, scanning the crowd.
The audience was a sea of high-ranking brass, politicians, and their families. In the front row sat Sterling’s wife, a woman who looked like she’d been airbrushed into existence, and his son, Leo.
The kid was maybe seven years old. Small for his age, pale, wearing a miniature suit that probably cost more than my car. He looked bored, swinging his legs, staring at the grass.
Brutus let out a whine. It wasn’t his “threat” whine—that deep, guttural sound that meant he smelled explosives or an aggressive adrenaline spike. This was different. High-pitched. Urgent.
“Quiet,” I hissed. The last thing I needed was some Colonel coming over here to chew me out for having a noisy animal.
But Brutus stood up. His nose was working overtime, nostrils flaring as he sucked in the thick, humid air. He wasn’t looking at the crowd. He was locked onto the VIP tent.
Specifically, he was locked onto the boy.
My stomach dropped. “Brutus, heel.”
He ignored me. That never happened. Brutus was an extension of my will. If I told him to run into fire, he’d ask how fast. But right now, his eyes were dilated, fixed on Leo Sterling.
The General was wrapping up his speech. “…and it is for the future of this nation, for children like my son Leo, that we hold the line.”
Applause broke out. Polite, gloved applause.
Brutus took a step forward. The leash went taut.
“Down!” I ordered, putting force into my voice.
Brutus looked at me for a split second. In his amber eyes, I didn’t see disobedience. I saw panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. He looked at me the way he did right before the mortar hit in Kandahar. He knew something I didn’t.
He turned back to the boy. Leo had hopped off his chair and was wandering slightly away from his mother, towards the edge of the stage, chasing a butterfly or something.
The smell hit me then. A faint drift of wind changed direction. It wasn’t sweat or expensive perfume. It was sweet. Sickly sweet. Like rotting fruit mixed with copper.
I froze. I knew that smell. Every K9 handler trained in bio-warfare knew that smell, though we prayed we’d never encounter it in the wild. It was the scent of a specific biological agent reacting with human pheromones.
Brutus didn’t wait for my permission.
He launched.
I am a strong guy. I bench three plates. But when a hundred pounds of muscle decides to move with life-or-death intent, physics is not on your side. The leather leash didn’t just pull; it snapped my wrist back with a sickening crack before tearing out of my grip.
“BRUTUS! NO!”
The scream ripped out of my throat, silencing the polite applause instantly.
The scene unfolded in slow motion, a nightmare rendered in high definition.
The black blur of the dog tore across the pristine green parade ground. He was moving at thirty miles per hour, a heat-seeking missile made of teeth and muscle.
General Sterling turned, his smile fading into confusion.
The crowd gasped—a collective intake of breath that sounded like a vacuum.
“LEO!” the General’s wife screamed.
The boy, Leo, turned around just in time to see the monster rushing at him. He didn’t even have time to cry out.
Brutus left the ground. He was airborne for a terrified second, a silhouette against the blinding sun.
He slammed into the seven-year-old boy with the force of a linebacker.
Thud.
The impact was sickening. The boy flew backward, hitting the turf hard. Brutus landed on top of him, pinning him to the earth.
Time stopped.
For one heartbeat, there was absolute silence. The kind of silence that precedes a gunshot.
Then, chaos.
“GET THAT DOG OFF HIM!” General Sterling roared, his voice cracking from polished orator to terrifying father. He leaped off the stage, hand going to the ceremonial pistol at his hip—which I knew was loaded.
“GUNS! GUNS!” shouted the MP Captain.
A dozen M4 carbines snapped up, the metallic clack-clack of safety selectors disengaging echoing across the field. Every barrel was pointed at my dog.
I was sprinting. My lungs were burning, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I was fifty yards away. Too far.
“DON’T SHOOT!” I screamed, waving my arms, making myself a target. “DO NOT SHOOT THE DOG!”
I saw the MP’s fingers tightening on triggers. I saw the General draw his weapon, his face purple with rage. He was going to execute Brutus right there on national television.
“DOWN!” I bellowed, sliding onto my knees as I reached the chaos, throwing my body between the rifles and my dog. I put my hands up, chest heaving. “Sir! Don’t shoot! Look! Look at him!”
“Move, Sergeant!” Sterling screamed, leveling his pistol at my forehead. “Move or I will put a bullet in you and that mutt!”
“Look at the dog, General!” I pleaded, tears of desperation stinging my eyes. “He’s not biting! Look!”
The silence returned, heavier this time.
Everyone looked.
Brutus wasn’t tearing the boy’s throat out. He wasn’t growling. He was whining—a high, pathetic sound. He had the boy pinned, yes, but his massive head was buried in the crook of the child’s neck.
He was licking. Frantically. Obsessively.
He was licking a spot right below the boy’s ear, slobbering over the skin, nudging the boy’s collar aside with his wet nose.
Leo was crying, terrified, but unharmed. “Get off! Get off!” the kid sobbed.
“Brutus, Aus!” I commanded, my voice trembling.
The dog stopped licking but refused to move. He looked up at me, then at the General. He barked once—sharp, demanding—and then shoved his nose back into the boy’s neck.
General Sterling hesitated, the gun shaking in his hand. “What the hell is this, Sergeant? Control your animal.”
“He… he’s alerting, sir,” I stammered, realizing the magnitude of what was happening. My career was over. I was probably going to prison. But I had to say it. “He’s found something.”
“He attacked my son!”
“No, sir. He grounded him. He’s trying to show you something.” I slowly lowered my hands, moving towards the boy. “Brutus, easy.”
I reached out and grabbed Brutus’s harness. The dog resisted, whining, his eyes pleading with me. Trust me, dad. Trust me.
“Let me see,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
I pulled the dog back just an inch. Leo was shaking, tears streaming down his face.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I said to the kid. “I need you to look at me. Did anything hurt you?”
“He… he licked me,” Leo cried.
I looked at the spot where Brutus had been focused. The boy’s collar was wet with saliva. I gently pulled the fabric of his expensive suit shirt aside to see the skin of his neck.
My blood ran cold.
There, right over the jugular vein, was a rash. But it wasn’t heat rash. It wasn’t poison ivy.
It was a spiral. A perfect, angry purple spiral about the size of a dime, with tiny, blistered edges that seemed to be throbbing in time with the boy’s heartbeat.
The crowd pressed in. The MPs lowered their weapons slightly, curiosity warring with protocol.
General Sterling stepped forward, looming over me. “What is that?”
I looked up at the General. I saw the confusion in his eyes, but I also saw the class divide crashing down. He was a man who commanded armies, but he had no idea what was growing on his son’s neck.
“Sir,” I said, my voice steady now, locked into mission mode. “That’s not a rash. That’s an injection site.”
“Injection?” Sterling blinked. “What are you talking about? He’s been with us all morning.”
“Brutus is trained in bio-threat detection, General,” I said, standing up but keeping a hand on the dog. “He signals for agents that cause rapid necrosis. Flesh-eating bacteria, weaponized viruses.”
I pointed at the spiral.
“That spiral pattern? That’s the hallmark of a delayed-release delivery system. Someone stuck your son with something, probably a micro-needle patch, within the last hour. And if Brutus smells it this strongly…”
I swallowed hard, looking at the terrified boy.
“…it means the containment seal just broke. The poison is entering his bloodstream right now.”
The General’s face went white. The gun fell from his hand to the grass.
“Medic!” he screamed, the sound tearing his throat. “GET A MEDIC!”
But I knew a field medic wouldn’t be enough. As Brutus leaned back in to lick the site—his saliva likely trying to cool the burning sensation only the dog could sense—I looked around the crowd of elites.
Someone here did this. Someone in the VIP tent.
And as the General scooped his son into his arms, I saw it.
Standing near the back of the VIP section, sipping a glass of champagne, was a Colonel. He wasn’t looking at the boy. He wasn’t looking at the General.
He was looking at his watch.
CHAPTER 2: CHAIN OF COMMAND
The world didn’t stop when General Sterling’s gun hit the grass, but it definitely tilted on its axis.
“Clear the area! Now! Get these civilians back!”
The order came from the MP Captain, a man whose neck was thick with muscle and whose eyes were wide with a panic he was barely suppressing. The manicured lawn of Fort Benning, usually a stage for pomp and circumstance, instantly transformed into a chaotic casualty collection point.
I stood there, my hands raised, watching the most powerful man on the base cradle his son. General Sterling was no longer the stoic, four-star deity who moved armies with a signature. He was just a dad, terrified and clueless, holding a boy who was growing paler by the second.
“Get away from him, Sergeant!” an MP barked, shoving the barrel of his M4 into my ribs. “Back up! Face down on the grass! Do it now!”
“I’m telling you, it’s a bio-agent!” I shouted, ignoring the rifle barrel digging into my kidney. “You need a hazmat containment team, not a field medic! Don’t touch the rash with bare skin!”
“Shut your mouth!” the MP screamed, kicking the back of my knee.
My leg buckled. I hit the dirt hard, the smell of crushed grass and boot polish filling my nose. They wrenched my arms behind my back, slapping zip-ties onto my wrists so tight I felt the circulation cut off instantly.
“Brutus!” I yelled, craning my neck.
My dog was going berserk. Two MPs had loop-poles around his neck—the kind used for rabid strays. Brutus was thrashing, his claws tearing up the turf, his barks sounding like thunder cracks. He wasn’t aggressive; he was desperate. He kept trying to lunge toward Leo, his instincts screaming that the pack was in danger.
“Don’t hurt the dog!” I roared, struggling against the weight of the MP on my back. “He’s the only reason that kid is still breathing!”
“Secure that animal or put it down!” a voice cut through the noise.
It wasn’t the General. It was Colonel Vance—the man I had seen checking his watch.
I twisted my head, dirt grinding into my cheek. Colonel Vance was walking toward the huddle around the General, his gait smooth, unhurried. He looked like he was strolling through a museum, not a crime scene. His uniform was immaculate, not a crease out of place. He adjusted his beret, looking down at me with eyes that were as cold and dead as a shark’s.
“General,” Vance said, his voice calm, projecting authority. “We need to evacuate you and the boy. The Sergeant’s dog has clearly snapped. It’s a liability. I’ll have my men handle the animal.”
“Handle” meant a bullet to the brain behind the equipment shed.
“No!” I shouted. “General! Listen to me! The dog alerted to a specific toxin! Look at the boy’s eyes! Look at his pupils!”
General Sterling looked up. His face was a mask of sweat and terror. He looked at Vance, then at me—the dirty, enlisted grunt facedown in the dirt.
“Medic!” Sterling screamed again, ignoring Vance. “Where is the damn medic?”
A team of corpsmen sprinted up, carrying trauma bags. A Lieutenant Doctor—young, clean-shaven, looking like he’d just stepped out of a recruiting poster—skidded to a halt next to Leo.
“Sir, let me see him,” the Doctor said, pulling on latex gloves. He looked at the boy’s neck. “Okay… okay. Pulse is thready. Respiration is shallow.”
“It’s an attack,” Sterling growled. “The handler says it’s a bio-agent.”
The Doctor scoffed, shining a penlight into Leo’s eyes. “With all due respect, General, the K9 handlers see ghosts in every shadow. This looks like a severe allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis. Probably a bee sting or a spider bite that the dog aggravated when it tackled him.”
“It’s a spiral rash!” I yelled from the ground. “Bees don’t leave geometric patterns!”
“Gag him,” Vance ordered the MPs. “He’s causing panic.”
“Wait,” the Doctor said, pausing. He leaned in closer to the boy’s neck. “It… it is strange. But it’s not bio-warfare, General. That’s impossible. We’re in the middle of a secure base. It’s likely contact dermatitis from something on the grass.”
“Give him an EpiPen!” Sterling demanded.
“Yes, Sir. Administering epinephrine now.”
“NO!” I screamed, thrashing so hard the MP on my back grunted. “Don’t! If it’s a hemotoxin accelerator, epinephrine will pump it through his heart faster! You’ll kill him!”
The Doctor paused, the auto-injector poised over Leo’s thigh. He looked at me with pure disdain. The look of an Officer looking at an Enlisted man who dared to speak Greek.
“I went to medical school, Sergeant,” the Doctor sneered. “You went to dog training class. Stay in your lane.”
He slammed the EpiPen down. Click.
The drug flooded the boy’s system.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Then, Leo screamed.
It wasn’t a cry of a child. It was a sound that didn’t belong in a human throat. His back arched off the ground, his body going rigid as a board. Foam, pink with blood, bubbled instantly at the corners of his mouth.
“Leo!” The General’s wife, who had been sobbing quietly, shrieked and tried to grab him, but the Doctor pushed her back.
“He’s seizing!” the Doctor yelled, panic finally cracking his smooth demeanor. “Heart rate is spiking! 180… 200! I can’t get a rhythm!”
“I told you!” I yelled, tears of frustration mingling with the dirt on my face. “I told you, you arrogant son of a bitch!”
The rash on the boy’s neck began to change. Before our eyes, the purple spiral darkened to black. Veins radiating from the center turned a sickly green, tracking up toward his ear and down toward his chest.
Brutus, still fighting the catch-poles, let out a howl that raised the hair on everyone’s arms. He knew. He could smell the death spreading.
General Sterling stared at his son, then at the Doctor who was now fumbling with an oxygen mask, his hands shaking uncontrollably. The General’s world was crumbling. The class structures, the rank, the “officers know best” mentality—it was all failing him in real-time.
Sterling stood up. He looked at the Doctor, then he looked at Colonel Vance, who was still standing there, unhelpfully calm.
Then he looked at me.
“Get him up,” Sterling said. His voice was quiet, deadly.
“Sir?” the MP on my back asked.
“I said get him up!” Sterling roared, drawing his sidearm again. But this time, he didn’t point it at me. He kept it at the low ready, scanning his own inner circle. “Cut those zip-ties. Now.”
The MP scrambled to cut the plastic cuffs. I rubbed my wrists, adrenaline masking the pain.
“Sergeant,” Sterling said, stepping over his seizing son to look me in the eye. “You said you know what this is.”
“I said my dog knows what it is, Sir. And I know my dog.”
“The Doctor says it’s impossible.”
“The Doctor is wrong,” I said, looking at the medic who was now performing CPR compressions on a seven-year-old. “And if you don’t listen to me right now, your son is going to die on this parade deck.”
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic huff-huff of the rescue breaths.
“Talk,” Sterling commanded.
“Brutus alerted to a complex organic phosphate. It’s a binary agent. It requires two parts to activate. The patch on his neck was the delivery system,” I explained rapidly, my mind racing through the hazmat briefs I’d memorized. “The epinephrine you just gave him acted as a catalyst. It sped up the absorption.”
Sterling face paled, looking like he might vomit. “We… we made it worse?”
“You didn’t know,” I said. “But we have to stop it. We need Atropine, but not just the standard dose. We need the heavy stuff. And we need to get him to the isolation ward at the base hospital. Not the ER. The Bio-containment unit.”
“Colonel Vance,” Sterling turned to his subordinate. “Get the chopper. Now.”
Vance didn’t move immediately. A shadow passed over his face—annoyance? Disappointment?
“General,” Vance said smoothly. “The containment unit is classified. We can’t just drag a civilian child in there. The protocols—”
“Damn the protocols!” Sterling grabbed Vance by the lapels of his uniform, bunching the expensive fabric. “That is my son! Get the chopper, or I will court-martial you so fast your head will spin!”
Vance stared at the General. For a second, I saw it. A flicker of genuine malice. But it vanished instantly, replaced by the mask of a dutiful soldier.
“Yes, Sir. Calling it in.” Vance stepped away, pulling out a sat phone.
“You,” Sterling pointed at me. “You’re coming with us.”
“And the dog,” I said firmly.
“What?”
“Brutus goes where I go. And frankly, Sir, right now he’s the only one here who can track the scent of whoever planted that thing. You want to save your son? You bring the cure. You want to catch the killer? You bring the dog.”
Sterling looked at Brutus, who was currently growling low in his throat at the Doctor.
“Fine,” Sterling said. “Get in the vehicle. We’re driving to the landing zone.”
The ride to the LZ was a blur of sirens and shouting. I was thrown into the back of an armored SUV with Brutus. General Sterling was in the front, holding Leo, who was unconscious now, his skin taking on a gray, translucent quality. The Doctor was in the back with me, trying to stabilize the boy, shooting me dirty looks every time the vehicle hit a bump.
Brutus sat at my feet, his head resting on my knee. He was exhausted. The adrenaline dump of the takedown was fading, leaving him panting. But his eyes never left the boy.
“He’s fading, General,” the Doctor whispered, checking the portable monitor. “Oxygen saturation is down to 80%.”
“Drive faster!” Sterling yelled at the driver.
I leaned forward, looking at the boy’s neck. The black veins had stopped spreading, but the central spiral was weeping a clear, viscous fluid.
“Doc,” I said. “Don’t wipe that.”
“I need to clean the area,” the Doctor snapped.
“That fluid is likely contagious now,” I said. “If you touch it, you drop. Brutus smells it. Look.”
Brutus was pressing his nose into the floor mat, whining, trying to get as far away from the Doctor’s hands as possible while still staying close to the boy.
The Doctor hesitated, his hand hovering over the wound with a gauze pad. He looked at the dog, then at me. The arrogance was cracking. Fear was seeping in. He pulled his hand back.
“What… what do we do?” the Doctor asked, his voice trembling.
“We pray we get there in time,” I said.
The SUV screeched to a halt on the tarmac. The rotors of a Black Hawk helicopter were already churning, whipping the hot air into a frenzy.
The doors flew open. We scrambled out. The wind from the rotors stung my eyes.
“Let’s go! Move! Move!”
Medics from the flight crew ran down the ramp, taking Leo from the General.
I grabbed Brutus’s harness and ran toward the bird.
“Hold it!”
A hand slammed into my chest. It was Colonel Vance again. He was shouting over the roar of the engine.
“The dog stays!” Vance yelled. “Flight safety regulations! No unconstrained animals on the bird!”
“General’s orders!” I shouted back, trying to push past him.
“I am the ranking officer on this transport regarding security!” Vance stepped in front of me, his hand resting on his holster. “That beast is unstable. I will not risk the flight crew.”
I looked past Vance. General Sterling was already on board, strapping in. He wasn’t looking at us. He was focused entirely on his dying son.
Vance leaned in close to me. His voice dropped, barely audible even under the rotors.
“You’re a brave man, Sergeant,” Vance said, his eyes glittering. “But you’re playing a game you don’t understand. Leave the dog. Walk away. It’s better for your health.”
A chill went down my spine that had nothing to do with the wind. This wasn’t about flight safety.
Vance didn’t want the dog on the helicopter. Why?
Because Brutus could smell it.
I looked down at Brutus. The dog was staring at Vance. A low rumble started in Brutus’s chest—a growl so deep it vibrated through the tarmac into my boots. Brutus wasn’t growling at the helicopter. He was growling at the Colonel.
The realization hit me like a physical blow.
The smell. The sweet, coppery smell. It wasn’t just on the boy.
I stepped closer to Vance, pretending to plead. “Sir, please. The General needs me.”
I inhaled sharply.
Underneath the smell of jet fuel and starch… there it was. Faint. Almost imperceptible. But present.
The same sickly sweet scent.
It was on Colonel Vance’s uniform.
“You…” I whispered.
Vance smiled. It was a tight, predatory smile. “Get off my tarmac, Sergeant.”
“GENERAL!” I screamed, lunging past Vance.
Vance tried to grab me, but I stiff-armed him, spinning away. I wasn’t leaving. Not now.
“GENERAL STERLING!”
Sterling looked up from the boy, seeing the commotion.
“Get him on board!” Sterling barked into his headset. “Vance! Let them through!”
Vance’s face tightened. He couldn’t disobey a direct order in front of the flight crew without exposing himself. He stepped back, his eyes promising murder.
“As you say, Sir,” Vance said.
I scrambled up the ramp, dragging Brutus with me. I strapped in opposite the General. Vance climbed in last, taking the seat next to the door. He locked eyes with me.
The doors slid shut. The Black Hawk lifted off, banking hard to the left.
We were in the air. Trapped in a metal box thousands of feet above the ground.
I looked at the dying boy.
I looked at the distraught General.
And I looked at Colonel Vance, the man who had orchestrated this entire nightmare, sitting five feet away from me.
I put my hand on Brutus’s head. The dog was trembling, his eyes fixed on Vance’s throat.
“Easy, buddy,” I whispered. “Wait for it.”
We were flying into a trap. I knew it. Brutus knew it.
But the General? He had no idea he had just invited the devil into the lifeboat.
CHAPTER 3: THE VIPER IN THE COCKPIT
A Black Hawk helicopter is loud. It’s a deafening, vibrating metal box where conversation only happens through headsets. It’s also intimate. You can smell the sweat of the man sitting across from you.
And right now, the smell of treachery was overpowering.
I sat with my back against the fuselage, Brutus wedged between my legs. The dog was vibrating, a low growl constantly rumbling in his chest, audible only to me through his body against mine. His eyes were locked on Colonel Vance.
Vance sat by the door, staring out at the passing landscape. He looked calm. Too calm for a man whose superior officer was sobbing over a dying child three feet away.
“ETA five minutes!” the pilot’s voice crackled in my ear.
“Step on it!” General Sterling barked back. He was holding Leo’s hand. The boy’s skin was now a terrifying shade of gray. The black veins had reached his jawline, looking like cracks in a porcelain doll.
“Heart rate is dropping,” the Doctor yelled, his voice rising an octave in panic. “Fifty… forty-five… General, he’s bradycardic. His heart is stopping!”
“Do something!” Sterling screamed.
The interior of the chopper became a flurry of motion. The medic unbuckled, trying to get a better angle for chest compressions.
I watched Vance. He didn’t unbuckle. He didn’t look concerned. His hand moved slowly to his chest rig. He adjusted his radio frequency.
I narrowed my eyes. We were all on the internal comms loop. Why was he switching channels?
I reached down and subtly toggled my own headset, scanning the frequencies. It was an old trick I learned in the sandbox to eavesdrop on local chatter. I found Vance’s channel.
“…package is critical,” Vance’s voice was calm, devoid of the static of the internal loop. “Prepare the isolation wing. I have the hostile subject in custody. I repeat, the handler is the primary suspect. Prepare for immediate containment upon touchdown.”
My blood turned to ice.
He was framing me.
Of course. It was perfect. The lowly dog handler from the trailer park. The “unstable” rescue dog. He was going to pin the bio-attack on me, claim Brutus was the carrier, and bury me in a black site prison before I could ever open my mouth.
I looked up. Vance was looking right at me. He tapped his headset and winked.
A cold rage, hotter than the helicopter engine, flooded my veins. I wanted to unclip, lunge across the cabin, and tear his throat out. But I couldn’t. Not here. If I moved, the flight crew would shoot me. The General would think I was attacking. Vance would win.
“We’re losing him!” the Doctor shrieked. “Charging paddles! Clear!”
Thump.
The boy’s small body convulsed on the stretcher.
“No pulse! Again! Clear!”
Thump.
Brutus whined, a high-pitched sound of distress. He sensed the life fading.
“Come on, Leo,” General Sterling wept, his face buried in the boy’s chest. “Don’t you quit on me, son. That’s an order. Don’t you quit.”
I looked at the boy. I looked at the spiral rash.
“Doc!” I yelled over the comms. “The temperature! Drop the cabin temp!”
“What?” the Doctor snapped, sweating profusely.
“The virus loves heat!” I shouted. “That’s why it spread so fast on the parade deck! It’s a thermophilic agent! Open the doors! Freeze it out!”
“Are you insane?” Vance cut in. “You’ll destabilize the aircraft!”
“DO IT!” General Sterling roared, head snapping up. “OPEN THE DAMN DOORS!”
The crew chief didn’t hesitate. He slid the side doors open.
A blast of wind hit us like a physical hammer. We were doing 140 knots. The noise was cataclysmic. The temperature inside the cabin plummeted instantly.
I shielded Leo’s face with my hand. Brutus buried his head in my jacket.
“Monitor!” I yelled.
We all stared at the small green screen.
A flat line.
Silence.
Wind.
Beep.
A pause.
Beep.
“We have a rhythm,” the Doctor gasped, slumping back. “It’s weak… but it’s there. The cold slowed the metabolic rate.”
I locked eyes with Sterling. He gave me a nod—a single, sharp dip of the chin. Acknowledgement. I had just bought his son a few more minutes.
But Vance? Vance looked annoyed.
“Touchdown in thirty seconds!” the pilot announced.
We banked hard, the G-force pressing us into our seats. Below us, the trees cleared to reveal a massive concrete complex surrounded by triple-strand razor wire. This wasn’t the base hospital. This was the USAMRIID annex. The heavy-duty bio-lab.
The wheels hit the tarmac with a jolt.
“Go! Go! Go!”
A swarm of figures in full yellow HAZMAT suits surrounded the chopper before the rotors even stopped. They looked like minions from a sci-fi movie.
The Doctor and the medics rushed Leo out onto a gurney. General Sterling scrambled after them.
“I’m with him!” Sterling shouted to the HAZMAT team.
“Sir, you need decontamination first!” one of the yellow suits yelled.
“Get out of my way!” Sterling shoved past them.
I unclipped Brutus and moved to follow.
“HALT!”
Three MP vehicles screeched to a halt around the helicopter, blocking my path. Six officers jumped out, weapons drawn and leveled at me.
“Sergeant Holloway!” a voice boomed over a loudspeaker. “Hands on your head! Get the animal on the ground! Do it now!”
I froze on the ramp of the helicopter.
Colonel Vance stepped off the bird behind me. He smoothed his uniform and walked past me toward the MPs.
“Take him,” Vance ordered, pointing at me. “He is to be detained under Article 94. Mutiny and Sedition. Also, suspicion of domestic terrorism.”
“What?” I screamed. “General! General Sterling!”
But the General was gone, disappeared into the bowels of the concrete fortress with his dying son. He couldn’t hear me.
“Get on the ground!” the lead MP shouted. “Last warning!”
Brutus snarled, stepping in front of me. His hackles were fully raised, a ridge of black fur standing straight up. He bared his teeth—a terrifying display of white fangs against black gums.
“Call off the dog or we shoot!”
“Brutus, Stand Down!” I commanded, my voice breaking.
I couldn’t let them kill him. If they killed him, the evidence was gone. If they killed him, I lost the only thing in the world that mattered.
“Brutus, Platz!” I used the German command for ‘down’.
Brutus looked at me, confusion and betrayal in his eyes. He wanted to fight. He knew these men were the enemy.
“Do it, buddy,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “Please.”
Slowly, agonizingly, Brutus lowered his belly to the tarmac.
Two MPs rushed in. One kicked me in the ribs, sending me sprawling. Another jammed a catch-pole around Brutus’s neck, dragging him away.
“NO!” I yelled as I was handcuffed, face pressed into the hot asphalt. “Be careful with him! He’s innocent!”
“Load the prisoner in vehicle one,” Vance’s voice drifted over. “Put the dog in the containment van. If it shows any aggression… euthanize it.”
“VANCE!” I screamed, spitting blood. “YOU TRAITOR! I KNOW IT WAS YOU! I SMELLED IT ON YOU!”
Vance walked over to where I lay. He crouched down, so only I could hear him.
“You smell a lot of things, Sergeant,” Vance whispered, his eyes dancing with amusement. “But nobody listens to the help. By the time the General comes out… if he comes out… you’ll be a tragic suicide in a holding cell. A guilty man who couldn’t live with what he did to a child.”
He stood up and tapped the MP on the shoulder.
“Get him out of my sight.”
They threw me into the back of a windowless van. The doors slammed shut, plunging me into total darkness.
The last thing I heard was Brutus barking—a desperate, lonely sound fading into the distance.
I was alone.
I was framed.
And the only man who could save me was watching his son die.
But Vance had made one mistake.
He didn’t check my pockets.
As the van lurched forward, I shifted my handcuffed hands behind my back, feeling for the small, hard lump in my back pocket.
Before we left the helicopter, while the Doctor was doing CPR and Vance was looking away, I had swiped something.
I had the bio-hazard wipe the Doctor had used to clean Leo’s neck.
The evidence wasn’t on the dog.
It was in my pocket.
And it was leaking through my pants, burning my skin.
CHAPTER 4: DEAD MAN WALKING
Darkness has a weight. In the back of that transport van, it weighed a ton.
My hands were cuffed behind my back, steel biting into bone. The suspension of the van was shot, meaning I felt every crack in the tarmac as we drove away from the airfield. But the bumps weren’t the problem.
The problem was my right leg.
In my back pocket, the stolen bio-hazard wipe was leaking. The viscous fluid—the delivery system for the binary agent killing the General’s son—was soaking through my denim jeans. It felt like someone had pressed a lit cigar against my skin and just left it there.
The pain was sharp, chemical, and relentless.
“Hey!” I shouted, my voice bouncing off the metal walls. “I need a medic! I’m exposed!”
“Shut up back there, traitor,” the driver yelled through the partition.
“I’m serious!” I gritted my teeth, sweat pouring down my face in the dark. “Check your protocols! I have hazardous material on my person! If I die in this van, you’re hauling a corpse that’s technically a biological weapon!”
Silence from the front. They were ignoring me. Just like Vance wanted.
The burning sensation started to spread. It wasn’t just my leg anymore. My vision was swimming. Bright spots danced in the pitch blackness. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm—thump-thump-thump—that echoed the dying boy’s stats I’d seen on the monitor.
I realized then: I wasn’t just carrying the evidence. I was becoming it.
The binary agent needed two parts. The wipe was Part A. My own body chemistry, the sweat and heat, was acting as Part B. I was cooking myself.
If I passed out now, it was over. Vance wins. Leo dies. Brutus gets put down.
I had to move.
I rolled onto my back, gasping for air. I visualized the layout of these standard-issue prisoner transport vans. No handles on the inside. Reinforced doors. But the partition… the partition was usually just bolted plexiglass and wire mesh.
I shimmied my body around, ignoring the screaming pain in my leg, until my boots were pressed against the partition.
I waited. I needed momentum.
The van slowed down. A turn. The centrifugal force pushed me to the right.
Now.
I kicked. I put every ounce of leg strength I had—years of rucking hundred-pound packs, years of bracing against a hundred-pound Rottweiler—into a double-footed stomp right at the base of the partition.
CRACK.
It didn’t break, but the bolts screamed.
“What the hell was that?” the passenger MP shouted.
“He’s kicking the cage. ignore him.”
I pulled my knees back to my chest and fired again. BAM.
This time, the metal groaned. The headache was splitting my skull now. The toxin was entering my bloodstream. It felt like I had consumed ten energy drinks and a bottle of vodka simultaneously. Dizziness mixed with hyper-focus.
The van screeched to a halt.
“Pull over,” the passenger said. “I’m gonna zip-tie his legs. Sick of this.”
This was my chance. My only chance.
I heard the front doors open. The crunch of boots on gravel. They weren’t at a prison yet. We were on a service road.
The rear doors unlocked with a heavy clunk.
Light flooded in, blinding me. A silhouette loomed—the MP, baton in hand.
“You got a death wish, dirtbag?” he sneered, reaching in to grab my ankle.
I didn’t fight him. I let him grab me.
As he yanked me forward, I didn’t resist. I used his pull to launch myself. I coiled my core and snapped my legs up, locking my ankles around his neck in a triangle choke.
“Ghhhk!”
He fell backward, pulling me out of the van with him. We hit the gravel hard. I landed on my cuffed hands, blinding pain shooting up my shoulders, but I kept the lock on his neck tight.
“Hey!” The driver came running around the side, hand on his holster.
I squeezed my legs. The first MP passed out, limp.
I rolled, scrambling to my knees. The driver leveled his pistol.
“Freeze!”
I was unarmed. Cuffed. Dizzy.
But I had the wipe.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled, turning my back to him. “Look! Look at my leg!”
The driver hesitated. The back of my jeans was soaked in a dark, wet stain that was eating through the fabric. The skin underneath was visible—angry, purple, and blistering.
“What is that?” the driver stammered.
“Anthrax-Two,” I lied. “It’s airborne if you shoot me. You pop a round in me, the pressure releases the spores. You breathe it, you liquefy in ten seconds.”
It was complete nonsense. But fear is a powerful thing. And nobody wants to melt.
The driver lowered his gun, taking a step back, covering his mouth with his hand. “You… you’re infected?”
“I’m a walking bomb, man,” I panted, struggling to stand. “Vance didn’t tell you? He wants us all dead. Why do you think he sent you out to the boonies to dump me?”
The driver’s eyes darted around. The seed of doubt was planted.
“Unlock me,” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “Unlock me, and I walk away. You go back, tell Vance I escaped. Tell him I died in the woods. I don’t care. But if you keep me here, we both die.”
The driver looked at his unconscious partner, then at my festering leg. He made a choice. He threw the key to the cuffs on the ground and sprinted for the driver’s side.
“I didn’t see you,” he yelled. “I didn’t see anything!”
The van peeled out, gravel spraying everywhere, leaving me alone on a service road in the middle of Fort Benning.
I fell to my knees, grabbing the key. My hands shook so bad it took me three tries to unlock the cuffs. When the metal clicked open, I screamed in relief.
But I wasn’t free.
I checked my leg. The rash was a perfect spiral, just like Leo’s. It was about four inches wide now. The skin was hot to the touch. My veins looked like black spiderwebs under the surface.
I had maybe an hour before I started seizing.
“Okay, Mac,” I whispered to myself. “Think. Mission first.”
I needed to get to the lab. I needed to get this wipe to someone who wasn’t on Vance’s payroll.
And I needed my dog.
Meanwhile, inside the Level 4 Bio-Containment Unit.
General Arthur Sterling stood on the other side of a thick glass wall. Inside the isolation room, his son lay on a steel table, hooked up to machines that beeped with terrifying irregularity.
Men in space suits moved around the boy with slow, deliberate motions.
“Report,” Sterling demanded into the intercom.
The lead scientist, Dr. Aris, looked up. His face behind the visor was grim.
“General, the Atropine is slowing the heart rate, but the necrosis is spreading. The agent is rewriting the cellular structure of his dermis. It’s… it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Is he going to make it?”
Dr. Aris hesitated. “Without a sample of the source agent to synthesize an antidote… statistics suggest fatal organ failure within ninety minutes.”
Sterling slammed his fist against the glass. The sound echoed through the sterile hallway.
“General.”
Sterling turned. Colonel Vance was walking down the hallway, holding two cups of coffee. He looked concerned, sympathetic. A perfect actor.
“I brought you this, sir. You look like you need it.”
Sterling took the coffee, his hands trembling. “My son is dying, Vance. And they don’t know what it is.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Vance said, standing beside him, looking at the boy. “MP reports say the handler—Sergeant Holloway—escaped custody.”
Sterling’s head snapped up. “Escaped?”
“Violently,” Vance sighed. “Assaulted two officers. He’s on the run. Sir… I didn’t want to say this, but intelligence found files on his personal laptop. Anti-government manifestos. Dark web searches for bio-synthesis.”
“Mac?” Sterling shook his head. “I’ve seen that man with his dog. He’s not a terrorist.”
“Sleepers are the hardest to spot,” Vance said softly. “The dog was the delivery system, General. We believe the dog was coated in the agent. When he tackled your son…”
“No,” Sterling whispered. “The dog was licking him. Trying to clean him.”
“Or trying to infect him further,” Vance countered. “We have to face facts. Holloway did this. And now he’s loose.”
Sterling looked at Vance. He wanted to believe him. It was easier to have a villain to hate than to accept the chaos.
“Find him,” Sterling whispered. “Find him and kill him.”
Vance nodded solemnly. “With pleasure, sir.”
Vance turned to walk away, tapping his earpiece. He didn’t see the General’s eyes narrow slightly. Sterling was a strategist. And something about Vance’s story—the files found so quickly, the immediate blame—didn’t sit right.
But Sterling was trapped. He couldn’t leave his son.
I was moving through the woods that bordered the airfield. The pain in my leg had settled into a dull, throbbing agony that synced with my heartbeat.
I knew where they took Brutus.
Every base has a kennel. Usually near the MP station. But for “dangerous” animals or bio-hazards, they’d use the isolation cages behind the veterinary clinic.
I had to get there before they put him down.
I limped out of the tree line. The vet clinic was a low, brick building about two hundred yards away. A single MP car was parked out front.
I didn’t have a weapon. I didn’t have a plan. I just had desperation.
I crept closer, using the parked cars as cover. My vision blurred again. I stumbled, my hand hitting the hood of a sedan with a loud thud.
“Who’s there?” A voice from the clinic entrance.
I ducked.
“Probably just a raccoon,” another voice said.
I peeked around the tire. Two MPs were smoking by the door.
“Shame about the Rottweiler,” one said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Gorgeous animal.”
“Yeah, well. Orders are orders. Doc is prepping the injection now. Said he wants to do it before the Colonel gets here.”
My heart stopped.
Prepping the injection.
They were killing him. Now.
I looked at the distance. Fifty yards. Open ground. If I ran, they’d see me. They’d shoot.
But if I didn’t run, Brutus died.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bio-hazard wipe. It was dry now, crusty, but still lethal. I wrapped it around a heavy rock I found in the landscaping.
I stood up.
“HEY!” I screamed.
The MPs jumped, hands going to their guns.
“Is that him? That’s the target!”
I didn’t run away. I ran at them.
“STOP! OR WE SHOOT!”
I chucked the rock. I wasn’t aiming for them. I was aiming for the large glass window of the clinic behind them.
SMASH.
The window shattered.
“Contact!” the MP yelled, firing a round into the air.
Inside the clinic, chaos erupted. I heard shouting. And then, the sound I was praying for.
BARK.
A deep, booming, ferocious bark.
Brutus wasn’t dead yet. And he just heard his dad.
“BRUTUS! HIER!” I screamed the command for ‘here’.
Inside the clinic, inside a cage, a hundred and ten pounds of Rottweiler decided that steel bars were merely a suggestion.
I heard the clang of metal hitting concrete. The sound of wood splintering.
The front door of the clinic flew open—not because someone opened it, but because a black missile hit it from the inside.
Brutus burst out, wearing a muzzle, dragging a broken leash. He saw the MPs. He didn’t care. He saw me.
“Shoot the dog!”
The MPs leveled their weapons.
I dove. I didn’t dive for cover. I dove in front of the dog.
BANG.
A bullet tore through the air. I felt a tug on my sleeve. A miss.
Brutus didn’t stop. He hit me, knocking me flat on my back. But he didn’t attack. He stood over me, straddling my chest, facing the gunmen. He let out a roar that wasn’t a bark—it was a declaration of war.
The MPs hesitated. A man shielding a dog? It didn’t compute.
“Back off!” I yelled, trying to sit up, my head spinning. “He’s a Service K9! You shoot him, you answer to the Pentagon!”
“He’s a bio-threat!” the MP shouted, shaking.
“No,” I gasped, pulling the muzzle off Brutus’s face. The dog immediately licked my chin, whining. “He’s the cure.”
I grabbed Brutus’s collar. I needed to stand.
“Get up, buddy,” I groaned. “We have to go.”
Brutus wedged his head under my arm, pushing up. He was helping me stand. He could smell the sickness on me. He knew I was failing.
The MPs were advancing.
“Down on the ground, Holloway!”
Suddenly, high beams blinded us. A Humvee roared around the corner, screeching to a halt between us and the MPs.
The door flew open.
“Get in!” a female voice shouted.
I blinked against the light. It was Captain Sarah Jenkins, the base veterinarian. I’d known her for years. She was the only officer who ever treated the K9s like soldiers, not equipment.
“Sarah?”
“Get your ass in the truck, Mac! Before they reload!”
I didn’t ask questions. I threw Brutus into the back seat and dove in after him.
The Humvee peeled out, bullets pinging off the rear bumper.
“You look like hell, Mac,” Sarah said, watching me in the rearview mirror as she sped toward the airfield.
“I’m dying, Sarah,” I choked out, leaning against Brutus, whose fur was cool and solid. “And so is the General’s son. Vance did it.”
“I know,” Sarah said grimly. “I analyzed the blood work from the parade ground before Vance confiscated it. It’s a synthetic chimera virus. Russian origin.”
She threw a tablet onto the back seat.
“And I know where Vance is keeping the antidote. But we can’t get in there. It’s the Command Center.”
I looked at the tablet. A map of the base.
“We don’t need to get in,” I said, a crazy plan forming in my toxin-addled brain. “We need to bring the General out.”
I looked at Brutus. He was staring at me, his amber eyes intense. He licked the black veins on my hand.
“Sarah,” I said, my voice getting heavy. “Drive to the power grid substation.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I closed my eyes, fighting the darkness. “If we kill the power to the bio-lab… the emergency protocols kick in. All doors open. The General will have to evacuate.”
“And then?”
“And then,” I patted Brutus’s head. “We hunt.”
CHAPTER 5: INTO THE DARKNESS
The world was dissolving into a watercolor painting left out in the rain. Colors were bleeding into one another. The sharp edges of the Humvee’s dashboard were softening, blurring.
My leg wasn’t just burning anymore; it was singing. A high, thin shriek of pain that traveled up my sciatic nerve and wrapped around my spine.
“Stay with me, Mac!” Sarah shouted, swerving the Humvee around a parked troop transport. “Don’t you dare close your eyes!”
I looked over at her. Captain Jenkins. She was an Officer, but she drove like a getaway driver. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
“I’m… I’m good,” I lied, my tongue feeling too thick for my mouth. “Just… thinking.”
“Think later. Fight now.”
Brutus was in the back seat, his head resting on my shoulder. His wet nose was pressed against my neck, right over my pulse. He was monitoring my heart rate. Every time I started to drift, he gave a sharp, impatient whine and licked my ear.
Stay, Dad. Stay.
“We’re coming up on the substation,” Sarah announced, downshifting. The engine roared in protest.
The Fort Benning power grid was a fortress of chain-link fences and high-voltage warnings. It fed the barracks, the admin buildings, and crucially, the USAMRIID containment lab.
“There’s a guard shack,” I mumbled, trying to focus on the looming silhouette of the checkpoint.
“Not for us,” Sarah said grimly.
She didn’t hit the brakes. She hit the gas.
The Humvee is a beast of a vehicle. It hit the drop-arm barrier at forty miles per hour. Metal shrieked, fiberglass crunched, and the barrier flew off its hinges, spinning away into the darkness.
We skidded to a halt in front of the main transformer banks—massive, humming monoliths of steel and copper that buzzed with enough electricity to fry an elephant.
“Out!” Sarah yelled, grabbing her medical bag and a heavy wrench from under the seat.
I fell out of the door. My legs were jelly. I hit the gravel, and for a second, I just wanted to stay there. The gravel was cool. The ground was solid. It would be so easy to just… stop.
GRRR.
Brutus grabbed the back of my tactical vest with his teeth and pulled. He dragged me backward, growling deep in his throat. He wasn’t being gentle. He was being a soldier. Get up.
I groaned, rolling over and forcing my body to obey. “I’m up, buddy. I’m up.”
Sarah was already at the control panel for the main breaker. It was locked with a heavy padlock. She didn’t have a key. She swung the wrench, sparking against the metal, smashing the lock off with a grunt of effort.
“Mac, I need cover!” she shouted, ripping the panel door open. “If the MPs patrol this sector, we’re sitting ducks!”
I leaned against the grill of the Humvee, trying to steady my vision. I didn’t have a gun. I had a rock. And I had a dying body.
“Brutus, Pass Auf,” I whispered. Watch.
The dog stiffened, his ears swiveling like radar dishes. He stood between us and the road, a black statue of vigilance.
“Hurry, Sarah,” I wheezed. “I can feel it… spreading.”
The hallucinations were starting. I looked at the transformer, and for a second, it looked like my father, standing tall and angry in our kitchen back in Oklahoma. You’re trash, boy. Just like your mother.
I shook my head violently. “Not real. Not real.”
“Got it!” Sarah yelled. “I have to bypass the safeties to trigger a catastrophic overload. It’s going to blow the main breakers for the whole sector!”
“Do it!”
“Cover your ears!”
She jammed the wrench across two main bus bars inside the panel.
BOOM.
It wasn’t an explosion of fire; it was an explosion of sound and light. A massive arc of blue lightning snapped from the panel, throwing Sarah backward onto the gravel.
The humming stopped.
The floodlights cut out.
The entire northern quadrant of the base plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness.
“Sarah!” I stumbled toward her.
She was coughing, her uniform singed, but she was moving. “I’m okay! I’m okay! The grid is down!”
In the distance, the wail of sirens changed pitch. The emergency klaxons began to blare.
“The lab,” I gasped, looking toward the horizon where the USAMRIID building stood. It was dark. “The backup generators will kick in, but the magnetic locks on the isolation doors fail-safe to ‘open’ in a total power loss to prevent trapping personnel.”
“General Sterling has to move Leo,” Sarah said, scrambling up. “He can’t keep him in a compromised clean room. They’ll move him to the blackened transport.”
“That’s the choke point,” I said, a surge of adrenaline cutting through the toxin. “Vance will be there. He’ll try to take the boy during the transfer.”
“Why?” Sarah asked, helping me back into the truck. “Why does Vance want the boy?”
“He doesn’t want the boy,” I said, realizing the horrific truth as I climbed in. “He wants the body. If the boy dies in that lab, the autopsy is done by military pathologists. If Vance takes the body… he controls the narrative. He hides the virus. He hides the evidence.”
“We have to beat him there.”
The drive to the lab was a blur of night-vision driving. Sarah killed the headlights to avoid detection. We navigated by moonlight and memory.
My condition was deteriorating fast. The black veins had reached my face. My left eye was clouded with blood. I could taste copper in my mouth.
“Mac, talk to me,” Sarah said, her voice tight. “Stay awake.”
“My dad…” I mumbled, my head lolling against the window. “He used to say dogs were useless. Just mouths to feed.”
“Your dad was an idiot, Mac.”
“Yeah. Brutus… Brutus proved him wrong.” I reached back to pet the dog, but my hand was numb. I couldn’t feel his fur. “Is he… is he still there?”
“He’s right there, Mac. He’s watching you.”
We screeched around the final corner. The USAMRIID building loomed ahead, a concrete monolith in the moonlight. Emergency strobes were flashing red, casting long, dancing shadows.
“There!” Sarah pointed.
A convoy of black SUVs was forming at the loading dock. Marines were shouting, setting up a perimeter. In the center, a gurney was being rushed toward an armored ambulance.
General Sterling was running alongside it, holding an IV bag.
But blocking the path of the ambulance was another vehicle. A sleek, civilian-armored Mercedes.
Colonel Vance stood in front of it, flanked by four men in tactical gear who weren’t wearing standard MP uniforms. They were contractors. Mercenaries.
“He’s stopping them,” I rasped.
Sarah slammed on the brakes fifty yards out. “We can’t drive into that. They’ll shred us.”
“We walk,” I said. “Brutus… heel.”
I opened the door and fell out. The pain was gone now, replaced by a cold, devastating numbness. I was in the final stages.
I stood up, swaying. Brutus leaned his heavy body against my leg, locking his shoulder to my knee to prop me up.
“Let’s go, boy.”
We walked out of the shadows.
“STOP!” Vance’s voice cut through the night.
The entire scene froze. General Sterling looked up from the gurney. The mercenaries raised their rifles.
I kept walking. A dead man walking.
“General!” I shouted, my voice sounding ragged and wet. “Don’t let him take the boy!”
“Holloway?” Sterling squinted into the darkness. “Stand down! You’re under arrest!”
“Look at me, General!” I stepped into the light of the emergency strobes.
The red light washed over me. They saw it. The blackened veins. The sweat. The horrific decay of a man rotting from the inside out.
“Jesus Christ,” Sterling whispered.
“I have it too,” I choked out, stopping ten yards away. “The same thing that’s killing your son. And I got it from a wipe in the Doctor’s kit. A kit prepared by him.” I pointed a trembling finger at Vance.
Vance didn’t flinch. He smiled, a shark in a uniform.
“The Sergeant is delirious, General,” Vance said smoothly. “He infected himself to garner sympathy. He’s a fanatic. Shoot him.”
The mercenaries raised their weapons.
“NO!” General Sterling stepped in front of the line of fire. “Nobody shoots! He’s sick!”
“He’s a bio-hazard!” Vance snapped, his mask slipping. “He is a walking weapon! Neutralize him before he infects the perimeter!”
“Brutus!” I whispered.
The dog looked up at me.
“Find the cure.”
I didn’t know if he understood. But Brutus turned his head. He looked at Vance. He sniffed the air.
And then, he did something that chilled everyone to the bone.
He didn’t bark. He didn’t growl.
He focused on Vance’s left jacket pocket. And he sat.
It was the alert signal. The passive alert for a specific scent.
“What is the dog doing?” Sterling asked, his voice trembling.
“He’s alerting, General,” I said, sinking to my knees as my legs finally gave out. “He smells the binary agent. But not just the poison…”
I looked at Vance, whose hand was hovering over his pocket.
“…he smells the antidote.”
Vance’s eyes widened.
“That’s ridiculous,” Vance scoffed. “I don’t have—”
“Show us your pockets, Colonel,” Sterling commanded, drawing his own sidearm. “Now.”
Vance looked at the General. Then he looked at his mercenaries.
“I really didn’t want it to end this way, Arthur,” Vance sighed. “I really didn’t. But you’re too sentimental. The project was worth more than one child.”
Vance snapped his fingers.
“Kill them all.”
The mercenaries shifted their aim from me to the General.
“BRUTUS! FASS!” I screamed the attack command with the last breath in my lungs.
The world exploded into noise.
Brutus launched himself not at the gunmen, but at Vance. A black streak of vengeance.
Vance drew a pistol, but he was too slow. Brutus hit him in the chest, jaws snapping shut around the forearm holding the gun.
CRUNCH.
Vance screamed. The gun flew away.
“Fire! Fire!” Vance shrieked, thrashing on the ground with 110 pounds of Rottweiler tearing at his arm.
The mercenaries opened up.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Bullets chewed up the pavement.
“Get down!” Sarah tackled me, covering my body with hers.
“General, get the boy out!” I heard a Marine yell.
I looked up through the chaos. General Sterling wasn’t running. He was firing back, his dress uniform tearing as he dove behind the ambulance.
But Brutus…
Brutus was in the open. He had Vance pinned.
One of the mercenaries turned his rifle toward the dog.
“NO!” I tried to push Sarah off.
BANG.
The shot rang out, louder than the rest.
Brutus yelped—a sound that tore my heart in half. He spun around, biting at his flank. He had been hit.
But he didn’t retreat. He turned back to Vance, who was trying to crawl away, reaching into his jacket pocket with his good hand.
He was pulling out a small, silver vial. The antidote.
Vance raised the vial, looking at me with pure hate.
“If I can’t have it…” Vance snarled, preparing to smash the glass on the asphalt.
“BRUTUS! THE VIAL!” I screamed.
The injured dog lunged.
Time slowed down. The vial left Vance’s hand, arching toward the ground. Brutus snapped his jaws in mid-air.
Catch.
He caught the silver tube gently in his mouth, just like we practiced with tennis balls in the backyard.
He landed on three legs, blood pouring from his hip.
“Get the dog!” Vance screamed. “Don’t let him get away with it!”
Brutus looked at me. He was hurt. Badly. He was limping. But he had the cure in his mouth.
“Run, Brutus!” I whispered, darkness finally closing over my eyes. “Bring it… to… Leo.”
The dog hesitated, looking at my fallen body. He wanted to stay. He wanted to protect me.
“GO!” I screamed.
Brutus turned and ran. He ran past the gunfire, past the screaming men, toward the ambulance where the dying boy lay.
Then, the lights went out for me.
CHAPTER 6: LOYALTY ABOVE RANK
The world was a tunnel of noise and fading light, but for Brutus, there was only the mission.
He was running on three legs. The bullet had grazed his hip, tearing through muscle, leaving a trail of bright red blood on the asphalt. Every step was agony. But in his mouth, held with the gentleness of a mother carrying a pup, was the silver vial.
The mercenaries were suppressed now—the base Marines had finally realized who the real enemy was and were laying down heavy cover fire against Vance’s private security.
“Hold your fire! Watch the dog!” General Sterling screamed, rising from behind the ambulance.
Brutus didn’t stop. He cleared the distance in seconds, skidding to a halt at the General’s feet. He didn’t drop the vial. He couldn’t. His jaw was locked tight from shock and pain. He looked up at the General, his amber eyes glazing over, whining softly.
“I’ve got you, boy. I’ve got you,” Sterling whispered, ignoring the gunfire around them. He reached down and gently pried the silver tube from Brutus’s teeth.
The dog collapsed immediately, his heavy head landing on the General’s boot.
“MEDIC!” Sterling roared, turning to the ambulance crew. “Inject the boy! NOW!”
A terrified corporal grabbed the vial, loaded a syringe, and jammed it into Leo’s thigh.
We all waited.
Seconds felt like hours. The gunfire died down as the mercenaries surrendered, realizing their paycheck wasn’t worth dying for against the US Marine Corps.
Then, a gasp.
Leo’s back arched. He took a massive, sucking breath of air. The gray pallor of his skin flushed pink. The black veins on his neck seemed to retreat, fading like invisible ink.
“He’s back!” the medic shouted. “Pulse is returning! Sinus rhythm is stabilizing!”
General Sterling collapsed against the ambulance wheel, sobbing openly. He kissed his son’s forehead, the relief shattering his composure.
Then, he remembered.
He looked across the parking lot. Fifty yards away, Captain Sarah Jenkins was doing chest compressions on me.
“Mac!” Sarah was screaming. “Don’t you die on me! Breathe, damn it!”
I was gone. I was floating in that gray space between here and there. No pain. Just cold.
“General!” Sarah shrieked, her voice carrying across the silent lot. “He’s coding! I need the antidote!”
Sterling looked at the empty vial in the medic’s hand. It was empty. All of it had gone to Leo.
“Is there any left?” Sterling grabbed the medic by the collar.
“No, sir! It was a single dose!”
Sterling looked at me. He looked at his living son. And then he looked at Colonel Vance, who was being dragged in handcuffs by two MPs, his arm mangled and bleeding.
“Vance!” Sterling marched over to the traitor, grabbing him by his throat with his good hand. “Where is the rest? Where is the supply?”
Vance laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. “There is no supply, Arthur. That was the prototype. The only one. The Sergeant is dead meat.”
Sterling drew his pistol and pressed it into Vance’s forehead. “Think carefully, Colonel. Or I will execute you right here.”
“I… I have the synthesis formula,” Vance stammered, his eyes widening. “On a drive. In my pocket. But it takes hours to brew! He doesn’t have hours!”
Sterling ripped the flash drive from Vance’s pocket and shoved him backward into the dirt. “Get him out of my sight.”
He ran back to the ambulance. “Doc! Can we transfuse?”
“What?” The medic blinked.
“My son!” Sterling yelled. “He has the antidote in his blood! Can we transfuse his blood to the Sergeant?”
“Sir… cross-matching… the boy is seven years old… the volume…”
“Do it!” Sterling ordered. “Take what you can safely take. Mix it with saline. Just get the antibodies into that man! Now!”
They rolled my gurney next to Leo’s.
I don’t remember any of this. I was told later that they hooked a line directly from the General’s son to the trailer-park grunt. The blood of the elite flowing into the veins of the forgotten.
The ultimate bridge across the class divide.
THREE WEEKS LATER
The beeping was annoying. That was my first thought.
I opened my eyes. The light was blinding. I tried to move my hand, but it was heavy.
“Easy, Mac.”
I turned my head. Sarah was sitting in a chair next to the bed, reading a magazine. She looked tired, but she smiled when she saw me awake.
“Sarah?” I croaked. “Did we… did we win?”
“We won,” she said softly. “Vance is in Leavenworth. He’s singing like a bird to avoid the death penalty. Turns out he was selling the virus to a foreign syndicate. He needed a field test. He chose the General’s son.”
I tried to sit up. “Brutus? Where is Brutus?”
Sarah’s face fell slightly. She looked away.
Panic seized my chest. “Sarah. Where is my dog?”
“Mac… he took a .556 round to the hip. The damage was extensive. The bone was shattered.”
“No,” I whispered, tears instantly filling my eyes. “Don’t tell me he’s gone.”
“He’s not gone,” a deep voice boomed from the doorway.
General Arthur Sterling walked in. He wasn’t wearing his dress blues. He was wearing fatigues, sleeves rolled up. He looked younger, lighter.
And walking beside him, with a pronounced limp and a shaved patch on his flank, was Brutus.
“BRUTUS!”
The dog let out a happy bark and hobbled toward the bed. I ignored the pain in my own legs and reached down. He buried his massive head in my chest, licking my face, his tail wagging so hard his whole body shook.
“He’s retired,” Sterling said, standing at the foot of my bed. “Medical discharge. Full benefits. And I made sure the vet reconstruction bill came out of Vance’s seized assets. Titanium hip. He’s bionic now.”
I buried my face in Brutus’s fur, sobbing with relief. “Good boy. You’re such a good boy.”
“Sergeant Holloway,” Sterling said, his voice shifting to official tone.
I wiped my eyes and tried to salute from the bed.
“At ease, son,” Sterling smiled. “I have something for you.”
He stepped aside. Leo walked in. The kid looked healthy, vibrant. He was holding a small velvet box.
Leo walked up to the bed. He looked at Brutus, then at me.
“Thank you for saving me,” Leo said, his voice small but clear. “And thank you for sharing your blood.”
“We’re blood brothers now, kid,” I smiled weakly.
Leo opened the box. Inside wasn’t a military medal. It was a thick, leather collar with a solid silver plate. Engraved on it were the words: BRUTUS – HERO OF THE REPUBLIC.
“And for you,” Sterling handed me a folder. “Your discharge papers.”
My heart sank. “I’m being kicked out?”
“Honorably discharged,” Sterling corrected. “With a promotion to Lieutenant. But… I pulled some strings. There’s a private security firm consulting for the DoD on bio-threats. They need a head trainer. Pays about five times what the Army pays.”
He paused, looking at Brutus.
“And they have a strict ‘bring your dog to work’ policy.”
I looked at the General. The man who had once looked through me like I was glass. Now, he was looking at me with respect.
“Why, General?” I asked.
Sterling put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Because you taught me something, Mac. I thought rank made the man. I thought pedigree made the bloodline.”
He looked at Brutus, who was currently drooling on the hospital sheets.
“But when the chips were down… the only thing that mattered was loyalty. You and that dog… you have more honor than half the brass in the Pentagon.”
Sterling snapped a salute. A crisp, genuine salute from a Four-Star General to a man in a hospital gown.
“Project is yours if you want it, Lieutenant.”
I looked at Sarah, who was grinning. I looked at Leo, who was scratching Brutus’s ears. And I looked at my partner. The dog who took a bullet for a stranger and ran through hell for me.
“We’ll take it,” I said.
Brutus barked in agreement.
The class war was over. And on this battlefield, the dog was the king.
(THE END)