They reminded him that it was against the law for doctors to avoid work. Their eyes were gleaming, desperate.
When he told them he was not a doctor, one asked him if he had been a hospital patient. How could he have survived when the first wave of Infected rose from their beds? Maybe he had the disease but did not know it. Was he a carrier? Was he infecting all of them even now?
Ethan does not remember how things became violent. His memories blur at that point. He may have lashed out at them first; his mind simply blanked out. He became aware of shacks flying by, grim faces staring at him from doorways and over the flames of cooking fires. Lawn ornaments, hanging laundry, buckets and plastic jugs. He knocked something over. Curses filled the air.
He remembers when he used to be a pacifist. At school, kids would occasionally fight, and he would have to get between them and break it up. He hated doing it. Sometimes he would have night terrors over getting punched by a kid. In these visions, he would lose control, lash out and lose everything.
A truck rumbles alongside, filled with men laughing down at him. One of the men, a brown giant in T-shirt and jeans, stands and shouts, “Hey you! You want a job for the day?”
Better to ride than to run, he tells himself. He nods, gasping for breath, remembering that horrible day in the department store, as he ran blindly among the mannequins.
Large, calloused hands reach down and pull him up into the truck.
“¿Qué onda?” they ask him.
He sits on the trembling bed of the truck as it lurches over the potholes. One of the men hands him a bottle of water. He takes a drink, wincing at the metallic taste, and hands it back.
“You got a trade?” the giant says to him.
“I was a teacher,” he says. “Now I just kill people.”
The men laugh, ringing him with their bearded faces. They spit over the side. He can smell onions on their breath. Some of them speak English while others chatter in Caló, an argot of Mexican Spanish common in the Southwestern states. Somebody passes around a flask and he smells distilled alcohol, probably made from the wheat and rice distributed in the weekly ration.
Booze is not the only thing you can make by distilling alcohol from mashed grains. Distilled alcohol makes a good anesthetic, antiseptic and preservative, he knows.
The truck stops in a cloud of dust in front of a large barn and the men jump out. The building is being used as a slaughterhouse. Cattle pace around a holding pen, agitated by the smell of blood. Draped in plastic garbage bags, butchers work on animals hung upside down by their hind legs, draining the bodies, removing the head, feet, hide and internal organs. The ground is soaked with blood.
The giant tells Ethan the beef is cut, wrapped and sent out immediately to the food distribution centers. The men here are paid in meat. A lot of it ends up in the market, bought and consumed fast before bacteria take hold. Most refugees put it into an eternal stew they keep continuously bubbling over fire, along with anything they can find such as wild onions and beans. The bones are fed to the camp dogs—pets brought by the refugees who now can no longer afford to feed them—whose presence is tolerated by the authorities because of their hatred of the Infected, making them good sentinels. The fat is used to manufacture soap and candles and biodiesel.
Other slaughterhouses in the camp process chickens, sheep, pigs. This one, the giant says, handles only cattle—steers and heifers mostly. The men here know cattle, how to stun them with a hammer, how to cut their throats and drain their blood with a knife, how to strip the carcass.
“So what do we do?” Ethan says.
“We move the cattle that comes into the camp into the pens.”
“From where?”
“The truck pulls up over there.”
“And we move the cattle about fifty feet into the pens? That’s it?”
The giant grins down at him. “That’s it. We were told some trucks are coming in today. Here comes one now.”
The massive tractor trailer trembles, coughing, as it pulls up near the holding pens. The cattle, crammed together inside, bellow sadly.
“Águila, boys,” the giant says. He winks at Ethan. “Sharp eyes. Like an eagle.”
The men take their weapons and form a semicircle around the rear of the truck. Two men clamber up and tie a nylon net in front of the trailer’s doors. The driver, sweating in a camouflage john deere cap and hunting vest bulging with shotgun shells, gets out and leans against the cab, watching them and biting into a tomato.
“What do you want me to do?” Ethan says.
“Caile. I want you to stand right here, bolillo.”
The giant moves to the doors, removes the bolts, and flings them wide. He quickly steps out back and to the side. A wave of heat pours out of the trailer. Ethan winces at the rich smell of dung. The cattle push against each other, jostling and raising their heads, lowing. Their eyes gleam at him from the dark.
Ethan wonders why nobody is doing anything. Two of the men continue to hold the net taut, sweat pouring down their faces. He suddenly realizes that the others have moved away from him, stepping back from the trailer.
“A ponemos chancla,” one of the men whispers behind him.
The creature lunges hissing out of the dark, claws outstretched. Ethan cries out in fear and revulsion as it smashes into the net and plunges to the ground at his feet, shrieking and straining and reaching for him. A massive stinger protrudes from between its legs, stabbing repeatedly at the dust. The men surround the thing, hooting over their shotguns and holding the net, while two others rush in with spears. They shout obscenities in multiple languages as they thrust their weapons into the monster, which begins thrashing, keening, almost pitiful.
Finally, the thing lies still, dead. The men continue to stab it with their spears until it becomes a bleeding, featureless pile of road kill.
“Mono,” one of Chicanos says to Ethan, drawing his finger across his throat. “Hoppers.”
Ethan shakes his head, trying to clear it of the blind terror he felt when the thing sprang out of the dark. And rage at being used as bait.
“Now you are one of us,” the giant says, grinning. “Machín.”
“See this?” Ethan says, holding up his finger. “I was already one of you.”
The giant nods, transfixed by the jagged stump, his face paling.
Ethan stares at the thing lying dead on the ground. The men are spitting on it.
“So what happens next?”
“Now we check the cattle for Infection, vato.”
The cattle are led into a special quarantine pen. Two of them are Infected. They are easy to spot: thin, silent, listless, staggering a little when forced to walk. A heifer has one of the monkey things growing out of its side while a steer has two, both on its right flank.
“Hoppers,” the giant says.
The Infected cattle are separated, killed and dragged to a large, smoking pit behind the barn. The heat there is incredible, rising from the scarred ground in blistering waves. Charred legs stick out of the blackened piles of meat, slowing crumbling into ash blowing away in the wind.
There, the dead cattle are burned with all of the others.
♦
Todd lights a candle in his small, sweltering one-room shack and stares at its intense glow. This candle, he thinks, is possibly the only beautiful thing in this entire horrible place.
Candles would be an ideal specialty as a merchant, he thinks. Everybody needs candles. They are simple, small and necessary. The only thing to watch out for is breakage. That and a match shortage. He might have to sell matches, too.
But he is not going to buy and sell candles.
He has an idea he believes will make him rich. He remembers Philip telling him that a good businessman will buy low and sell high. But how do you do this with a barter system?
The answer may be that you acquire lots of something that is almost worthless now and sell it later on when it is almost priceless.
Winter clothing, for example.
A few people sell winter gear in the market, mostly for scrap value and as substitute pillows and stuffers for bedrolls. Coats, hats, scarves, gloves, sweaters.
Almost nobody here believes Infection will last until winter. They have been here for less than two weeks and many of them have no idea what things are like outside. They believe the rumors that the Army is coming to save them. They believe the government propaganda that things are getting better. Things are not getting better. They are getting much, much worse.
Todd knows the people here will be in for a rough winter. If he can build up a big supply of winter clothes, he can trade them for pretty much anything he wants.
“Knock, knock,” a voice says from the doorway.
“Hey, Erin,” he grins. “Come on in. Welcome to my humble abode.”
The girl walks into his shack and looks around.
“Humble is right,” she says. “Yeesh.” She holds up a plastic baggie. “I scored some weed. It’s not very good, but it gets the job done. You want to get high?”
“Okay, I guess,” Todd says warily, looking at the bag.
Erin sits on the ratty carpet covering the dirt floor and starts rolling a joint.
“I am in dire need of some entertainment,” she says. “My need is dire. You know, before everything went to shit, I was going places. I was one ugly duckling as a kid. And then I got older and I wasn’t. Just like that: Suddenly I was popular. I had like eight hundred friends on Facebook. Then the bug comes along and I’m cut off from the world. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even exist anymore.”
Todd watches her come up for air but she says nothing more, lighting her joint and toking on it carefully until getting enough smoke in her lungs. She hands him the joint and he kisses it, taking little puffs and wondering about the strange, strong smell of it.
“I’m so fucking bored,” Erin says, blowing a long stream of smoke.
“I used to do a lot of wargaming with these college guys,” Todd offers tentatively. “I’m wondering if there are any wargaming clubs around here. You know, Warhammer 40,000 . . .”
Erin is staring at him curiously. His voice trails off and time appears to slow. He coughs loudly on the smoke.
She suddenly smiles, beckoning the joint to return.
“I don’t know anything about that stuff,” she says. “Can we light another candle?”
“Sure,” he says, relieved.
“Cheer this place right up. How about beer? You got any alcohol?”
“No, but I have some candy if you’re interested.”
“Oh God, yes.”
Chewing on Gummi Bears with an expression approaching bliss, she asks him what things are like on the outside. He tells her about escaping his house during the first day of Infection, surviving on his own, finding the other survivors. Riding in the belly of the Bradley, spilling out to fight and scavenge. The stories are so fantastic that instead of embellishing them he tries to downplay their drama, afraid she will accuse him of making it all up.
Erin stares at him wide eyed. “I wish I had done all that,” she says, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight.
“I’m not sure if you would. We came very close to dying—well, almost every day.”
“Man, it’s so cool.”
“Um,” he says.
“Is that how you got that wound on your arm?”
Todd remembers the worm monster lunging out of the dark, its sharklike jaws snapping.
“Yeah,” he says gloomily, covering the bandage with his hand. “So how about you? What’s your story?”
“I’ve been here almost since the beginning,” she says, then stops.
“What happened?”
“I came to the camp with my dad and I got bored,” she mutters, then suddenly brightens. “Let’s play truth or dare.”
“Okay,” he says.
“I’ll go first. Go ahead, Todd. Ask me.”
“Um, truth or dare?”
“Truth,” she announces, sitting primly.
“All right,” Todd says. He is not sure if he is high or not from the joint but he wants to think that he is. “Okay, what’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?”
“Oh my God, I’ve got a great answer to that one.” Erin starts laughing and Todd smiles along. “One time, in study hall, me and my friends were updating the status on our Facebook pages, right? I had to run to the ladies’ due to some women’s trouble. That night, my Blackberry started ringing nonstop with these guys wanting to do some really gross things to me. Turns out I’d left myself logged in to Facebook and my jerk friends wrote as my status that I love to give blowjobs, with my phone number.”
She is laughing loudly now while Todd continues to smile along politely, wondering why she finds something so cruel to be so funny.
“Oh, man,” she adds. “That happens to everybody sooner or later, right? Okay, it’s your turn. Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” he says, hoping she will not ask him the same question.
“When was the first time you did it with a girl?”
Todd stammers briefly before inventing an elaborate story about his junior prom and how he scored with his date in the backseat of his friend’s car. His voice trails off. She can tell he is lying.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“Um,” he says.
His mind scrambles in search of something light and witty to say to recover the mood, but none is needed; Erin deftly rescues him.
“Want to see one of my cheers, Todd? A really good one?”
“Okay,” he tells her, feeling overwhelmed.
Erin jumps onto her feet, shakes off a sudden wave of laughter, and then stands erect with her arms stiff and muscles tight.
“Sharp and snappy,” she says. “One, two, three, here it is: Go Cougars!” She claps to the beat, keeping her hands under her chin. “Go Cougars! We are the Cougars, hey, we’re number one; our cougar roar has just begun.” She punches the air. “Roar!” She claps again. “Roar, roar! We are the Cougars, yeah, we’ll say it loud; we’re stepping up because we’re proud. Roar! Roar, roar! We are the best, all right, we’re here to win—”
Erin finishes a kick and flops onto the ground laughing. Todd claps his hands.
“Wow,” he says, his heart pounding with sexual excitement.
Outside the shack, somebody yells at them to keep it down, making her laugh even harder.
“Let’s pretend that was my dare,” she says, panting. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Dare,” he says.
“Kiss me.”
Todd was hoping for this. Truth or dare, after all, is a kissing game. He moves towards her on his hands and knees, feeling lightheaded and breathless, unsure of where to begin. He has never kissed a girl before. She meets him halfway. It is like falling into a warm pool, smooth and jolting. He kisses her for several moments, holding her shoulders. He probes her tongue with his, wondering if he is doing this right. His right knee, pressed against a pebble on the ground, is beginning to hurt, but he ignores it, afraid to move. His erection strains against his jeans, sending waves of pain and pleasure through his body. Finally, she pushes him away.
He falls out of the kiss, amazed.
“And,” she adds, “take off your shirt. I forgot to mention it’s a two-part dare.”
Still dizzy, he obeys automatically, then fidgets as she appraises him.
“No tattoos,” she observes. “Wow. My boyfriend has tats everywhere.”
Todd frowns, alarmed and jealous. He half expects a bunch of jocks to enter the shack pointing at him and laughing and congratulating her on setting him up for a fall.
“You have a boyfriend?” he says, trying to control his tone.
“He’s one of them. Outside.”
Well, then he’s not really your boyfriend anymore, he wants to say, but holds his tongue.
She smiles coyly at him and says, “Maybe I need a new boyfriend.”
He smiles back, thawing quickly.
“Dare,” she says.
“You too,” he says bravely.
Erin crosses her arms, hesitating with a teasing glance, then pulls her shirt over her head in one swift motion. Todd expects her to be wearing a bra but there is none. Her pert breasts are shining and perfect. Her smooth body burns in the candlelight. He stares at her in awe.
“Dare,” he whispers.
“Come here,” she says. “Kiss me again.”
♦
As Wendy approaches the latrines, she turns her flashlight on and continues warily. Next to her, Jonesy does the same. She prefers to patrol by moonlight, letting their eyes adjust to the dark and becoming hunters instead of mere night watchmen, but the latrine area is dangerous at night even for cops, and a nearby canal is poorly marked by solar-powered landscape lights. A flare arcs into the sky over the horizon and she hears the snarl of distant small arms fire. The pickets have been busy tonight outside the camp. Then the shooting stops as suddenly as it began. Wendy radios in their position to Tyler, the gray-haired book reader back at the station.
Roger that. You guys be careful, now. Keep a sharp eye.
She smiles at the men’s protectiveness as she keys the walkie-talkie and says, “You, too.”
I most certainly will, young Wendy.
Another flare arcs over the distant shanties.
“Sounds like a real battle out there tonight,” Jonesy says, chewing loudly.
“Give me some of your gum.”
“What do I get?”
“Jonesy, my boyfriend could break you in half. And if he couldn’t, I could.”
“Okay, okay,” he laughs. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
She pops the piece into her mouth and begins gnawing on it with a vengeance.
Her third night on foot patrol with Unit 12, and she is already bored.
Last night, a little excitement: An explosion on the far side of camp, a flash in the sky followed by a boom and slight shock that she could feel in her feet. Outside her patrol territory, unfortunately. Turns out it was a homegrown crystal meth lab that blew sky high. She finds herself almost wishing something like that would happen here.
The Infection Page 26