The nightmare, sadly, is about to get worse, with no end in sight. The apocalypse is taking its sweet time, but this is still the end of the world. The final collapse will come suddenly, and then the human race will no longer be able to stage large-scale organized resistance to Infection. Out in the open, humans will become part of the food chain, somewhere near the bottom.
We will all go down together, and we will go down fighting.
In the first days of the epidemic, he saw a small band of exhausted police fight until a mob of Infected overran them. They shot at the Infected, and when they ran out of bullets, they clubbed at them with the butts of their guns. They knew the entire time their fight was futile, and yet they did not submit to the inevitable. They fought back, tooth and nail, to the final second.
FUTILE BUT BRAVE; that will be our epitaph.
The one logical alternative to going down with the ship is to find a good place, dig in and hold onto it for as long as possible. Fortify it, make it self-sufficient, and defend it with people you can trust with your life. If there is one thing Paul’s death taught Todd, it is people don’t matter, only certain people do. If there is one thing Erin’s death taught him, it is to take whatever happiness you can get for as long as you can get it.
Wendy is right. They should go. Todd wants to join them.
One hope still exists, however. One major hope for the human race.
We could find a cure.
And for this reason, it is not time to leave just yet. He has one more thing to do.
He still wants his revenge on Infection.
“Ray Young is alive,” he tells them.
Cool Rod
Dear Rod,
We’re all okay.
A man dropped by the dorm today to tell us that the Marines have retaken the White House. It won’t be long now, he said. Soon, our nation’s capital will be free again.
He called the infected people demons. I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. They may be crazy and evil now, but they still look like us. They used to be us. They are so sad.
The monsters we hear about are another story altogether. They sound like something out of Hell. Have you seen any during the fighting? The kids try to scare each other during the day by pretending to be monsters, and it makes them laugh, but at night they’re terrified. Sometimes, late at night, you can hear the real monsters howling outside the wall.
Victor was starting to make such a racket at night that he now sleeps with me and Lilia, and then Kristina didn’t like that so now we all sleep on the floor on an old mattress. Okay, I admit, a part of me likes it. I make them feel safe, and they make me feel needed. The more they need me, the more it takes my mind off other things, like the end of the world.
I’m sorry I sound so down in the dumps in this letter, Rod. Most times I write, I put a big smile on my face because I want you to not worry about us. Things aren’t great, but we’re doing okay. We’re alive and we have enough to eat, and that’s plenty to be thankful for these days. You have enough going on in the war without wondering if your family is all right, because we really are.
It’s just that every day things get a little harder. The other night one of those things got inside the camp and the MPs were chasing it around with flamethrowers. They had it surrounded—this horrible, hoofed, screaming thing—and they were shooting it with jets of fire. We were hustled into the rec center, where we stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark until the coast was clear, and came out to find our dorm tent had burned clean to the ground and all our possessions were floating away in the dark as ash and sparks on the wind. Our photo albums are gone, Rod. All those years of memories. Our entire past. I now have only one photo of you to keep me company at night and remind our kids that they have a daddy, and it’s falling apart from all of us holding it so tight.
Today, a salvage crew brought in a truckload of clothes to replace what we lost in the fire. I try not to think that the clothes our kids are wearing once belonged to other kids who are now probably dead. Dead and eaten, from what I hear the crazies do to children.
If the Marines have taken the White House, I hope that means you’ll win this important victory, and get to rotate out for a few weeks of rest. You could come home and live with us for a while. I really need you, Rod. There was a fire and the photo album is gone and now I can’t stop crying. I feel like it wasn’t just pictures but our past that got burned up and forever lost. Right now, our past is all I have of you.
As time goes on, I feel your absence ever so much. You should be with your family right now. Your place is here. I freely give up this demand, my right as your wife, in the hopes that you will win and be able to save not just us, but the entire country. Do your duty, Rod. The wolves are at the door and your family is counting on you to put this to an end. Fight hard, without mercy. Kill them all. Do whatever it takes to win, no matter how hard, no matter how horrible. Put this to an end. And then come home to us so that we can build new memories.
I love you more than myself. Your children miss their father. We are all praying for you.
Your loving wife,
Gabriela
Anne
Sitting cross-legged on the road, Anne cleans and oils her weapons by starlight while her team sleeps fitfully on the bus, dreaming their bad dreams. With swift, deft movements, working by feel, she reassembles her rifle and dry fires it. The forest crowding the road is alive with the song of insects and nocturnal critters scampering through the undergrowth. The air feels warm and wet against her skin. Most people are terrified of the night these days, but not Anne. She welcomes it. The Infected can hide in it, but so can she. In the dark, Anne becomes a hunter.
The asphalt feels warm against her ass and legs. She finishes her granola bar and washes it down with a few chugs of Red Bull. This is what passes for breakfast, but Anne does not mind. Food is for fuel, not pleasure, these days. And speed is paramount; it is time to get back on the road and narrow Ray’s head start. She reloads the rifle and stands, dusting her pants and stretching like a cat. In the dark, she feels calm, thoughtful and safe, as long as she does not think too much about the past.
About two months ago, she started her day serving breakfast to her husband and three small children in their kitchen. After dumping the dishes into the sink to soak in steaming water, she started rolling out pie dough. Her friend called to tell her there was trouble downtown—mobs of people running amok, doing horrible things to each other. By the end of the day, her husband disappeared and her children lay slaughtered in a neighbor’s living room. Three days later, she surfaced from a state of shock in a deteriorating government shelter. By the end of the week, Sarge taught her the basics of sniper craft, and she began the killing. She learned from the pros who worked the camp watchtowers. She often volunteered for a shift in the towers herself, practicing range finding, estimating elevation and wind. With endless practice, she turned murder into an art. Mostly, she has a knack for it. Some people have a natural talent for certain things. It is a strange thought, considering how she came to be a killer, but sometimes she feels she was born to do this.
Which is good in one way, because it is all Anne has left. Hurting Infection, in fact, is one of the few things that make her feel something besides guilt and loss.
The guilt of allowing her children to be slaughtered, the loss of everything she loved. The guilt of letting Ray Young live, only to see him return and slaughter tens of thousands.
Ray Young has become Infection. All that matters now is catching and killing him before he does even worse because Anne, in a moment of weakness, showed mercy.
Stepping onto the bus, she slaps Marcus’s boot and steps back as the man lunges awake, growling in the dark with a knife in his hand.
“Time to go,” Anne tells him.
“Anne? Christ, it’s still pitch black out there.”
“It’ll be light in less than an hour. We already spent too much time here.”
“Wait a minute.” Marcus sits u
p and rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Listen, Anne. I need to know you’re okay.”
“Since when I have ever been truly okay since you’ve known me?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m upset, Marcus. There’s a guy who can control the Infected, and spreads Infection, as far as I know, just by looking at you, and he’s on his way to Washington, DC, where our military is in a fight to the death to take the city back.”
“Look, you think we don’t get it about what kind of threat Young poses to all of us, but we do. We get it. It’s just hard to put your life on the line for something, you know? And that’s what you’re asking us all to do here. You’re asking us to die for this. Most of us would rather go somewhere safe and let someone else figure it out.”
Anne blinks at him. She forgot most people still place a high value on their lives.
“The stakes,” she says finally, unsure how to finish the statement.
“We’ll get him,” Marcus assures her. “We will, or the Army will.”
They remember the planes roaring overhead, the distant thunder, the rising wall of smoke on the western horizon, veiling the setting sun.
“We both know he got away before they dropped those bombs.”
“Anne, let me get to the point. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m worried about Todd.” For Anne, even this is a big admission.
“He can take care of himself.”
“He ran off to snoop around a horde of a hundred thousand Infected, and then was close to ground zero when the bombs fell. Marcus, I’m worried.”
“Let’s talk about you. Anne, you shot and killed a woman today.”
“So what? I’ve shot lots of people.”
“Jean was a crazy, but she wasn’t Infected. You shot her in cold blood and didn’t even blink. As far as I know, that’s a first even for you.”
“You know what she did in the art gallery.”
“Jean and Gary did what they had to do to survive. You’ve never judged anyone before for what they’ve done to stay alive. Christ, we all have blood on our hands. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
The truth is I lost control.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Anne says.
“All right. Forget why. What I don’t get is what’s going on inside your head. Me, I honestly can’t picture doing what you did. Shit, what do you feel about it? Do you feel anything at all?”
Anne’s mind flashes to pointing her pistol at Jean’s face and squeezing the trigger.
“I don’t feel anything,” she says, a little surprised at the realization.
Marcus nods, taking this in. Another major admission.
“We’re wasting time here,” she says. “Can we go now? Please?”
He says nothing, and they regard each other in the dark, their eyes gleaming.
“I need you, Marcus,” she tells him, her voice strained.
“I’ll come,” he says. “We’ll finish this.”
“Good. Let’s wake up the others.”
“But I want more.”
“More?”
“I want you.”
As much as Anne loves Todd as a son, she has come to love Marcus as a man. The thought of giving herself to him fills her with panic, however. For one thing, it is too soon. Just two months ago, she was mother to three children given to her by a man whom she loved with her whole heart for nearly ten years of her life. She never properly mourned them. She cannot just let go.
On the other hand, no more perfect time exists. She could die within the next five minutes.
“If you want sex, I can give you that.”
“It’s not about that, Anne. I want you.”
He is asking her to feel, but she doubts she has anything to give him. She remembers Sarge in the government shelter, what seems like a lifetime ago, calling the Infected the living dead.
Us? he added. We’re the dead living.
The words shocked her at the time. Now she understands.
How can you ask me to love you, Marcus, when you might die before sunrise?
“I want you,” he repeats. “Don’t we deserve to be happy, even if for a little while?”
“I don’t know what that means anymore. I want to but I don’t know if I can.”
Marcus nods. “All right. Then I’ll settle for that.”
He smiles at her in the dark and Anne smiles back, a rare sight at any time of day.
Ray
While Ray twitches and sweats in a deep snoring sleep with his arms wrapped around Lola, he dreams the Infected are normal again. In the dream they stand outside where he left them, but it is bright and sunny instead of dark, and all of them are well dressed and clean and looking up at the sun, tears flowing down their cheeks as they smile. The men and women look at each other with wide, sparkling eyes. There is no hate here, no rage, just the thrill of freedom.
Lola, accustomed to dreaming of billions of monsters writhing like maggots across the scoured face of a red planet, finds herself at her house in Cashtown, weeding her garden while her children shriek and run barefoot through the sprinkler spray on the lawn. Her husband winks at her as he enters the garage to take out the lawnmower. She vows to hold onto the feeling she has looking at her family—a sense of her soul being filled to the brim with contentment—knowing nothing perfect lasts forever in this world. That night, as they drink wine and barbecue steaks and eat them outside in the cool dusk, she tells herself if she had to pick a day to relive, she would pick this one, this beautiful summer day spent doing almost nothing.
Outside, the other Infected moan in the darkness, free of the dreams of the red planet and the long exodus through space. They dream of the time before, reliving the past. They are free of the bonds of slavery at last, while Infection waits patiently until morning to reclaim its hosts.
Anne
Dawn is coming fast and the bus flies down the road, chasing a paling sky. The V-shaped snowplow retrofitted onto the front, peppered top to bottom with blood, sends the occasional Infected flying into the ditch with a thud. The engine growls as Marcus changes gears with the stick, slowing down and speeding up to navigate occasional wrecks blocking the road. The Rangers peer through the metal firing ports welded over the windows, Anne looking for any sign of Ray Young, the others watching for threats that specialize in the night. The air feels humid but cool against her skin. This has always been her favorite time of the day; it’s a new day, and anything can happen. For as long as she can remember, Anne has been a morning person.
Holding the edges of the seats to stay balanced as the bus bangs over potholes, she navigates the center aisle until she finds Gary, huddled against the window with his arms crossed.
“I’m sorry about Jean,” she says.
“How did you know what we did in the art gallery?”
“I found the evidence. It wasn’t hard to piece together.”
“You shouldn’t have judged her,” Gary tells her. “Her one sin was she refused to accept that things have changed. She honestly thought the whole thing would blow over and her life would pick up again almost where she’d left it. I think she thought once we got to Nightingale, she would find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi.”
Anne frowns. “Jean had bigger sins than that.”
“What we did, we did to survive. We were trapped. It was either that or die. But it wasn’t her. It was me. I was the one who did it. I made a choice. You should judge me, not Jean. Jean just ate.”
Anne nods. Her suspicion has been confirmed. “She just ate.”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s why I judge her, Gary. You, I don’t judge.”
Gary stares back at her stricken, on the verge of tears.
“I killed my friend and then we ate him,” he says. “You need to understand this.”
“You survived.”
“If you call living with that surviving.”
“Can you handle a weapon?”
“I’ve never
fired a gun in my life,” he says. “I killed my friend with a knife.”
“We don’t talk about the past,” she says.
“I killed my friend with a knife,” Gary repeats with a shrill laugh. “It actually feels good to say it out loud. I was selling his paintings in my gallery and then a week later I cut his throat so Jean and I could eat him and live. It was hard work. Once I had him down, I had to lean and put all my weight into it. He hardly struggled. He just looked at me in surprise while I did it. I was pretty surprised too. I mean, I was outside my body, watching myself do it. I should be in jail, but here I am, alive, and he’s dead. Do you see what kind of person I am?”
“Are you willing to kill again to survive? If you had to?”
“I want to live,” Gary says after a pause.
“All right. We’ll give you a nine millimeter. If the Infected get close, you point it, you shoot it. You watch our backs, we watch yours. Think you can do that?”
“I can do it.”
“Good,” says Anne. “If you killed a man to survive, I can’t absolve you. None of us are shining examples of virtue; we’ve all done terrible things or we wouldn’t be here. But it tells me you have what it takes. That’s the only qualification that matters these days.”
“Anne!” Marcus calls from the driver’s seat at the front.
She feels the tug of gravity test her balance. The bus is slowing.
“Thank you,” Gary says, crying.
Anne stands and hurries toward the front.
“We’ve got people waving us down, about a hundred yards up the road,” Marcus says. “Cops having some car trouble, from the looks of it.”
Anne braces her feet with a wide stance and takes a look through her rifle scope. Standing next to a state police car, two large men wearing black T-shirts and load-bearing vests and jeans wave at the bus, flagging it down. The badges on their belts glint in the morning sun.
The Killing Floor Page 27