The Infection

by Craig DiLouie

  Flares burn as they fall across the distant sky. A machine gun begins rattling.

  They walk along the edge of the canal, looking for planks that will allow them to cross. Their flashlight beams flicker along the rough ground. Somebody is playing a harmonica in the nearby shanties. A couple moans loudly, having loud sex in one of the shacks.

  Jonesy chuckles.

  “Guess you’re not the only ladies’ man around here,” Wendy says.

  He laughs.

  “Here’s the bridge,” he says. “Watch your step.”

  They tramp over the planks and find themselves among the batteries of portable toilets.

  “Police,” Wendy says loudly.

  “Police coming through,” Jonesy says.

  Three days, and still no word from Sarge. Wendy is now worried.

  “So Jonesy, how did you end up becoming a cop?” she asks to distract herself.

  “Well, Ray started the unit and Tyler and Ray are on the same bowling team and Tyler’s my dad,” Jonesy answers. “When Infection started I was finishing high school. I was going to college, too. I was going to learn how to be a veterinarian.”

  Wendy smiles. Tyler was not being protective of her, but of his son.

  “Being a vet is a good job,” she says.

  “Oh, yeah, it’s a really good—”

  A man suddenly appears in their path, shielding his eyes from the glare of their flashlights.

  “Can you all get that light out of my eyes, please?”

  They lower their flashlights a little. Wendy places her other hand on the handle of her baton.

  “Stay where you are, sir,” she says.

  “You’re cops, right? I thought I heard you say you were police.”

  “Do you need assistance?”

  “My wife is missing. She came out here to use the bathroom an hour ago.”

  “All right, sir,” she says. “Can you describe—”

  Her instincts scream, Fight.

  She wheels, drawing her side-handled baton as Jonesy falls moaning to the ground, a man standing behind him holding a length of pipe. Another pipe glances off the side of her head with a meaty thud and her eyes go black and flood with stars.

  She reels, struggling to stay on her feet as the shapes close in.

  The training takes over and she moves.

  She flails with the baton, smashing one of the men in the face, then backhands the other man in the ear. The first stumbles backward and she pursues, beating him furiously to the ground while the second thrashes in the nearby canal, coughing and spitting.

  Another blow to the head.

  She falls into a deep blackness.

  Sarge. Sarge, help me

  Wendy regains consciousness, first becoming aware of a heavy weight on her body and a stabbing pain in her genitals. She opens her eyes, looking up into the darkness, and sees the Infected leering back down at her, its face gray and wet with blood, its eyes red with virus.

  Wendy screams.

  She no longer sees an Infected on top of her, just a man telling her to shut up or he will kill her. She smells his rancid breath, hot on her face. He strikes her savagely once, twice.

  She blinks and sees an Infected, and screams again.

  His hand clamps over her mouth. She works her teeth around it and bites down as hard as she can. He hits her again, but with little force; she clamps down harder, growling like a dog. Within seconds, the man is screaming and begging for mercy. She feels blood spray down the back of her throat and releases the mangled hand, coughing wetly.

  She screams again. And again. But the man is gone.

  ♦

  The crowd of thousands pours down the road past the food distribution center, singing hymns and waving poorly made signs announcing god is still with us and luke 21:11. Paul grinds out his cigarette and joins their ranks. His mind flashes to the suburban mob marching down the road back in Pittsburgh, thronged together with their weapons and shouting their slogans to make themselves feel stronger. Air Force jets roared overhead in a sky filled with black smoke, dropping bombs on distant targets. He remembers how he spoke to them: He blessed them just before the Infected attacked. He told them their war was just.

  They march by the camp’s feeding center and the pest house and a swing set displaying flags for various government agencies and services housed inside a small red brick building that used to be the town post office. The refugees pause in their daily routines, watching the marchers stream by singing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Some of them excitedly join the march while others laugh or shout at them to go make noise and stir up the dust somewhere else. Soldiers squint at the marchers, fingering their weapons and glancing at their sergeants.

  God is not very popular these days, Paul realizes. These people here are the hardcore Christians. The true believers. Their faith astonishes him. It makes him feel a bit ashamed. And yet he cannot help but see them as a woman who defends the alcoholic husband who beats her regularly, making excuses for what is essentially psychotic behavior.

  “Did you hear?” a man says behind him. “The Marines are in New Jersey.”

  “Who needs ’em?” another man snorts.

  “I heard the Feds are going to try to take our guns away from us after the Army shows up,” a woman says. “We’ll be defenseless.”

  “That’s just a rumor. Just like the Marines landing anywhere is a rumor.”

  “I heard it was Philadelphia, not New Jersey,” somebody cuts in.

  “But what if it’s true? Don’t they understand the Second Amendment saved this country? If it weren’t for the Second Amendment, we’d all be Infected by now. God bless the NRA.”

  Paul hears babies crying, startled at the sound, flashing back to the giant fanged worm slithering out of the gloom, mewing for food. He marvels that even now, children are being born in the camp. No matter what, it seems, life goes on. Perhaps the human race abides, too.

  Near the front of the crowd, a man is shouting into a megaphone. The march is slowing, becoming more congested around several figures standing on the roof of a van in front of the old high school, the nominal seat of government in the camp. Paul continues to push forward, recognizing Pastor Strickland and several other clergy standing behind an overweight man wearing a crew cut, white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and massive sweat stains at the armpits, and a bright yellow tie. Paul has never seen him before but recognizes his voice. The man is a popular talk show host on the AM dial in the Pittsburgh area. McLean. Thomas McLean.

  “We thought we were invincible,” McLean is saying. “We were consumed by money and pleasure and sex. Infection is happening because God is punishing us.”

  The mob roars its approval, drowning him out.

  “They want you to believe we can live without God,” Paul hears him say after the crowd settles down. “Without our faith. They want us to ignore God. But God ain’t ignoring us, folks. No, sir. God is talking to us loud and clear. And do you know what he’s saying?”

  Paul holds his breath, straining to hear, wondering who “they” are.

  “He’s saying we have insulted him, and he’s not going to take it!”

  The crowd roars. Pastor Strickland and the other clergymen behind McLean nod and applaud, smiling grimly.

  “We have insulted him by celebrating the spirit of the Antichrist and we are reaping the whirlwind. Insulted him by allowing feminism to destroy the American family, murder children and promote lesbianism. By allowing homosexuals to destroy marriage and corrupt our children. By corrupting this great nation with our greed, pop culture, liberal universities, public education, separation of church and state, and persecution of Christians.”

  “No,” Paul says. “Not this. Not now.”

  The crowd is growing increasingly angry. He can feel the energy surge through them like a wind. They wave their signs, crying out to McLean to tell them what to do.

  “We must repent for the end is nigh,” McLean says. “I think we can
all agree that it’s pretty nigh. But how does one repent? Do you even know what that word means? It means to make yourself righteous. Pure. We must purify ourselves as a nation and forge a new covenant with God.”

  Hundreds of hands are in the air, waving gently like wheat in a breeze.

  “To the atheists, I say, banish them from the camp!”

  “Cast them out,” the people chant.

  “Banish the homosexuals!”

  “Cast them out.”

  “Banish the elitists who look down at you!”

  “This is not right,” Paul says to the faces around him as McLean continues to run down his list. “God does not want this. God does not want us to hate each other.”

  “He wants us to hate sin,” a woman snaps at him.

  “It ain’t a rally until the devil shows up,” a man observes. “Here he is in the flesh.”

  “This is deranged,” Paul pleads. “Infection has deranged us. Can’t you see that?”

  “All I see is a nigger with a death wish,” the man says with a grin.

  “Keep that racist crap to yourself,” another man warns.

  “God is punishing us for our wickedness,” the woman says. “Why is it deranged to think that?”

  McLean is pointing at the processing center and shouting.

  “Those people in there, they tell us how to live, but nobody voted for them! Now they want to silence me for speaking out! They see me as a threat! They can kill me, but they do not understand that the fire has been lit, that the fire is you, and it is spreading, and we will burn the corruption from the body of this great nation, and an even greater nation, a true Christian nation, will rise from the ashes!”

  The crowd surges towards him hungrily. The soldiers guarding the processing center push the people back from the front doors with their rifles, angry and sweating.

  “Tell them to pass the Sodomy Law. Tell them loud. Tell them now. Tell them—”

  A metallic shriek drowns him out. The crowd pushes, compresses, eventually loosens as people scatter at its edges. Down the road, a Bradley armored fighting vehicle approaches at forty miles an hour, raising a massive cloud of dust. A wreath of wildflowers trembles on its metal chest like a necklace. An American flag waves from one of its antennae. McLean points at the vehicle, shouting into the megaphone, but nobody can hear him, coughing and blinded by waves of dust in the air.

  The vehicle flies through the crowd, sending people lunging out of the way into the dirt, and continues on its path.

  Paul grins, watching it pass. It is his Bradley, he’s sure of it, and it can only be Sarge and Steve driving. He ducks out of the mob into one of the narrow alleys between the rows of shacks, intent on following the vehicle. It would be nice to see a friend right now.

  ♦

  The Bradley rolls past the sentries and into the military compound. Squads of soldiers, sweating in their helmets and uniforms, admire it as it passes. The Bradley slows as it turns onto Main Street, whose small retail stores and upper-story apartments now provide barracks, mess and headquarters facilities. The street is filled with soldiers wearing different uniforms, merchants and mercenaries, prostitutes and drug dealers, civilian officials in business suits and olive green five-ton trucks unloading troops and food and ammunition. A long line of soldiers waits patiently in front of a water tanker. Even here, the command structure is confused, with many different Army and National Guard units mixed together, large numbers of raw recruits, and with several different headquarters displaying their loyalty to the United States, State of Ohio and/or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One banner hanging from the barracks windows announces simply, praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

  The Bradley slows again and executes an abrupt turn into the service garage. The grease monkeys instantly surround it, hoping something is wrong, itching to work on its engine again. They love the machine. There are so few of them left operating on American soil.

  The hydraulic ramp drops and Sarge emerges, holding Wendy in his arms.

  Smoke drifts in the air, reeking of cordite. On the other side of the garage, a squad of recruits practices firing M16 rifles at paper targets set up in front of a wall of sandbags. The loud firing quickly tapers to respectful silence as they catch sight of the Bradley’s commander carrying the beautiful sleeping woman into his quarters.

  ♦

  Todd enters FEMAville’s military compound, marveling at the barbed wire and chaos, asking around where he can find the man commanding the Bradley.

  They laid in the shack on their backs staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and naked and panting. For the first time in his life, he felt truly accepted. She had seen him naked and he had come inside her and now they were bonded and he would love her until the day he died. His body continued to shudder with the aftershocks of the incredible explosion of pleasure. The shack was filled with her unique musky smell. She lit up the remainder of her joint and chattered about her iPod and Blackberry and Facebook and how she wanted to exist again. Todd nodded, barely listening, studying the curves of her body and feeling strangely envious of her effortless beauty. He was already sad that she would have to leave and he might never have her again. He was suddenly starving. Moments later, she asked him if he wanted to do it again, and immediately went down on him, making him come again in her mouth. After the third time, he passed out.

  When he woke, Erin was gone, and so was his stash of electronics. His capital.

  Suddenly, he had nothing.

  She left him an enigmatic note that read simply, Sorry. You are very cute.

  He thought about his options all morning. He could try to find her and get his stock back or he could forget about it. Confronting her would be problematic. To put it mildly. Todd is terrible at confrontation, plus he believes he might be in love with her. He can feel the agony of wanting to see her again slowly overtake the anger he feels at her robbing him blind.

  Screw this, he told himself. I know a cop. I’ll get her to help me. The cops will get my stuff back, and I’ll forgive Erin and we’ll be together again.

  He knows he will never have her, that he was used. But he cannot stop himself from hoping.

  By the time he reaches the military compound—where he believes he will find Sarge, who in turn will be able to tell him where Wendy is—he has replayed the events of the previous night dozens of time in his mind. He has imagined many conversations they are yet to have. The angry one where he asks her why she used and hurt him, forces her to take a hard look at herself, and makes her cry over her misdeeds. The calm one where he gazes upon her coldly and tells her he forgives her and pities her, and then wishes her a nice life. The happy, highly improbable one where she brings his stuff back and they fall into each other’s arms.

  The steady crackle of gunfire at the perimeter of the camp intensifies, reminding him that his personal problems are insignificant compared to the ever-present threat facing the people here.

  The garage is filled with soldiers sitting on the hard cement floor writing letters, reading books and making coffee on Coleman stoves. Chickens cluck in a series of cages against the far wall, next to neatly stacked cordwood. Todd smells cordite and coffee and chickenshit. The soldiers are being oddly quiet, frequently glancing at the office in the corner where Sarge has made his home. He treads carefully among them, ignoring their hostile stares, still muttering to himself as he knocks on Sarge’s door. No answer. He pounds angrily.

  The door opens and Sarge steps into the entry wearing his camo pants and a T-shirt, glaring at him, his expression instantly softening with recognition.

  “Hey, Kid,” he says. “Good to see you.”

  Todd flushes at hearing his old nickname.

  The soldier thrusts out his hand, and Todd shakes it.

  “You too, Sarge.”

  “What brings you out this way?”

  “I got some bad news. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Come on in, then. I have some bad news, too, Kid.”

&n
bsp; Todd stops in surprise at the sight of Paul and Ethan standing over a cot where Wendy sleeps fitfully, softly moaning.

  ♦

  Wendy wakes up with a massive headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. The small room is filled with men staring at her. Sarge presses a cool, damp cloth against her forehead and looks at her with an odd mixture of love and fear. Paul, Ethan and Todd are here, and so is Ray and all of the cops of Unit 12 except for Jonesy and his dad, their faces lighting up at seeing her awake. Ethan looks like somebody punched his lights out, grinning with a black eye. Somebody is asking her how she is feeling and she struggles to concentrate on the voice. Her mind has been swimming in and out of consciousness and she wants to wake up. She is not even sure she is awake now. If this is a dream, it is a good one; she feels happy having Sarge close and strangely safe being with the other survivors. Odd that she should spend the two worst weeks of her life with this group of people and suddenly feel so bonded to them. They are her people. She remembers how, at the hospital, she began to think of them as a tribe.

  She wonders if she is dying.

  Sarge is asking her if she needs anything. Does she need water?

  After she drinks, she asks them how she got here. Her voice sounds funny and she thinks there might be something wrong with her ear. The men glance at each other, avoiding her eyes. The truth is she remembers nothing. Whatever happened to her was so bad that they cannot bear to say it out loud. Ray sits on an ammo crate next to her bed and tells her that she and Jonesy were attacked. Jonesy has a concussion and is in bad shape. She got banged up pretty good but physically she is fine. Wendy takes this in and wonders why she cannot rise from the cot. She feels oddly feverish. She cannot shake the feeling that she is dying.