The Killing Floor

by Craig DiLouie

Marcus appears hurt, but she cannot help that. “We still need to vote on it.”

  “There is no vote. You are either with me, or on your own.”

  “But how would we find him?” Evan asks.

  “I’m going to follow the Infected. They’re following him.”

  Jean groans, burying her face into Gary’s shoulder.

  Marcus stares at her, raising his eyebrows. Are you sure?

  She returns his stare. This has to be done.

  “All right, let’s get ready to move,” Marcus announces, standing. Anne stifles a sigh of relief. She was partly bluffing; she is not sure she could stand to part with him.

  “You could at least drop us off at Nightingale,” Gary tells her.

  “No,” she answers.

  “It’s the moral thing to do.”

  “No.” Anne barks a short laugh at this. “It isn’t.”

  “You’re crazy,” Jean says.

  “The sane thing to do is to save as many lives as possible. More lives than just yours and Gary’s. Wouldn’t you agree? That means killing Ray Young.”

  “But we were safe in that art gallery. It was hard and we suffered but we were safe. Now you want to drag us along on some quest. We never would have left if we had known.”

  Anne shrugs. Things have changed. She can do nothing about it.

  “You don’t understand,” Jean says, her tone pleading. “I’ve lost everything. I can’t do this anymore. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  The Rangers bristle at this. Shaking their heads in disgust, they move away to collect their gear to load back onto the bus.

  “That’s a good point,” Anne tells Jean. “I have no idea what you’ve been through. So tell me about it. What did you do to survive back there in Hopedale?”

  “Wait,” Gary says, startled.

  “Leave her,” Jean hisses in a sudden ugly rage, glaring at Anne with open hatred. “If she wants to die so bad, let her. Let her go to her Infected. They’ll rip her apart and stuff the pieces in her mouth to shut up her lies.”

  The Rangers ignore her, focusing on their tasks. Anne pats one of her holstered pistols pointedly, and then hurries to catch up with Todd.

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” she says close to his ear.

  He blinks, lost in his thoughts, as if surprised to see her there.

  “If I lost you and Marcus,” she adds. It is too painful to finish the thought.

  “Anne, I’m not with you,” Todd tells her.

  “I thought you were coming,” she says, surprised at how hurt she feels.

  “I am. If what you’re saying is true and the Infected are following Ray, then going with you is my best chance of finding Erin if she was infected. But don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m with you. I won’t kill Ray Young. I won’t do it. I won’t even help you do it.”

  Anne grunts in surprise. “What is he to you? He caused Erin’s death, you know. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but it’s the truth.”

  “Every couple nights, I have a dream,” the boy says. “I see Paul pulled up into the mouth of one of those tall monsters—the ones that look like giant heads on skinny legs. I see Ethan pushed to the ground and infected. Sarge and Wendy drive the Bradley into the smoke to fight the Demon, and don’t come back. In the end of the dream I’m alone and the juggernaut is coming straight at me. Then all of a sudden I’m not alone. Ray is there and we’re screaming our heads off and shooting at the thing together. My last thought before the monster falls through the broken bridge is I’m happy I won’t die alone.”

  She hears the unspoken accusation clearly. You abandoned me. Ray didn’t.

  “Infection killed her, not him,” Todd adds. “I don’t hold him responsible.”

  “Fair enough,” Anne nods, once again suppressing her feelings. “Just stay out of my way when the time comes.”

  Jean

  She was starving. Someone was going to have to go out for food, but they were too weak to do it. And Prendergast would not shut the hell up.

  They’d been stuck in the art gallery for six days. Instead of sanctuary, it had become a tomb. They were dying by inches, surrounded by Prendergast’s massive, horrible paintings.

  The artist himself lay spread eagled at the foot of one these paintings, sweating profusely, his wrinkled black shirt riding up to expose his round white belly.

  “My work connects the real and the imaginary,” he said.

  “Your work idealizes ideology through literary exposure, and yet real ideology is a hidden force, a political prime mover, not something you can frame and point to,” Jean whispered, laboring to speak clearly. “The paintings juxtapose the real and the imaginary in conflict, not connection.”

  “The connection is within the conflict of these opposites,” Prendergast insisted. “My work is fascism expressed as a brand. You can buy it, you can use it, you can throw it away.”

  Jean closed her eyes. She did not have the energy to say anything else.

  At the other end of the gallery, Gary sat huddled against the wall, hugging his knees and rocking, watching them with narrowed eyes that appeared sunken into his skull.

  Getting Ricky Prendergast and Jean Byrd together at the gallery had been his idea. He owned the gallery and considered Prendergast the local boy who made good. The artist’s paintings and their declaration of a stark totalitarianism repulsed and attracted at the same time. Their size enveloped the viewer, threatening his or her individuality, and yet were strangely seductive, promising an existence without thought, whispering, you kind of want this.

  Jean was an East Coast art critic who wrote for several important art magazines. Her pen had made a few careers, and broken more than she could count. She and Gary had fallen into bed together after Grady Tallman’s opening (which she later skewered) in New York three years ago. Hearing she was going to be in Akron, he’d convinced her to visit his gallery in Hopedale and review Prendergast’s exhibition at Wild Arts. After the Screaming screwed everything up from air travel to basic utilities, he’d doubted she would show, but she did.

  “You’ll love it,” Gary had told her when she’d appeared at his door first thing in the morning. “His paintings are like propaganda for a fantasy regime built on absolutes. They make you want to punch a Nazi in the face. Wow, Jean, I’m so happy you’re here!”

  He’d kissed her, laughing, and handed her a mimosa in a champagne flute. He told her how good she looked in her black and white Chanel suit. She sipped her drink, smiling back at him. Gary was strictly small town, but he was extremely cute, and she had always had a soft spot for him.

  Jean had toured the gallery, aware of Gary’s eyes on her, and concluded Prendergast’s work stank. His paintings were childish in their assumptions, their one saving grace, in her opinion, being their rich colors and sheer size made them audacious—suggested maybe they weren’t childish after all, but profound, perhaps even threatening.

  Gary had sensed her vibe, mistook it for ambivalence, and told her she would really come around once she met the local genius himself.

  Prendergast, a giant of a man dressed in a black suit—his height and size squandered on fat, however, making him appear as if he were made of spheres—arrived late, complaining of the ungodly hour. His big, bright grin, framed by dimples and surrounded by a beard, forced you to like him, if only for a moment. He extended his large, sweaty hand, and Jean shook it. They agreed to have breakfast at the cafe around the corner, and discuss her impressions of his work.

  As they’d left the building, a policeman shot a woman sprinting, dropping her to the asphalt. The gunshot electrified them. The cop screamed, waving them back inside, as more howling figures appeared. Before Jean knew what was happening, she was back inside the gallery and Gary was pulling down the metal gates to cover the windows.

  The police officer’s pistol had cracked several more times as Gary darted back inside and locked the door, his eyes bulging and his chest heaving, babbling about crazy people in
the street. Whatever he’d seen outside, it had terrified him.

  Gary did not have a radio or television in the gallery, but they’d had their cell phones, and both Prendergast and Jean had iPad computers. They spent the day surfing and sharing information. They finished the orange juice and champagne, getting drunk and treating the whole thing as an adventure. In a few days, the government would resolve the crisis, they believed, and then they would have a great story to tell when it was over.

  Jean had slept on the floor curled into a ball, using her purse as a pillow, and woke up starving in the middle of the night. She hadn’t eaten all day, and she felt weak and nauseous. After an hour of pressing her fist against her stomach to try to quell the growls and pangs of hunger, she fell back asleep.

  The next day, the street belonged to the crazies, cutting them off from the outside world. Things appeared to be getting worse by the hour. They felt lightheaded and jittery. Their blood sugar levels were crashing. The room stank of bad breath. They drank as much water as they could, and spent hours checking the Internet and talking through their options, each of which led back to staying put inside the gallery doing nothing. As the day wore on, Jean became unable to focus on what she was reading. All she could think about was food. Every time they opened the door, screaming maniacs charged them. They were trapped. For hours, they sat in a fearful silence.

  “Maybe we could talk about your impressions of my work,” Prendergast had offered.

  Jean had actually appreciated the request. Anything to pass the time.

  “I don’t like your paintings,” she’d said. In fact, she was terrified she was going to die surrounded by them, and Prendergast’s Iron Eagle, an art deco portrait of an angry stylized war bird surrounded by light beams, would be the last thing she saw. “Sorry, Ricky, but I don’t.”

  That was five days ago, before the power went out, before they began to die.

  “My work is a complete rejection of post modernism, offering one truth,” Prendergast said.

  They had argued for most of that time, but now Jean just moaned. Her body had burned through what little fat remained on her rail thin body, and had begun eating itself to recover proteins it needed to keep her heart and brain and nervous system functioning.

  She could not believe how empty she felt. She’d once thought art could change the world. Now thoughts of food occupied every horizon of thought, left room for nothing else. Everything important in her life before the epidemic now struck her as pointless next to food.

  “One truth,” Prendergast repeated, “but one that is painful to look at.”

  Jean opened her mouth. Her tongue felt like it was covered in moss. Her breath smelled sour.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I like them. I like your paintings. I will write a good review.”

  Prendergast lay silent, and then said, “Thank you.”

  For what, the capitulation or the argument that took his mind off his contracting stomach, she wasn’t sure. In the ensuring silence, she fell into darkness.

  When she awoke, Gary and Prendergast were gone and the gallery smelled like burning meat, overwhelming the open sewer shit smell emanating from the bathroom with its dead plumbing. Her salivary glands squirted, flooding her mouth, and she wondered if this were a mirage—a bitter manifestation of her starvation.

  “Gary,” she hissed. If this was a sign of the end, she didn’t want to go alone. She gathered her strength and screamed, “Gary, please!”

  He emerged from his office smiling and knelt on the floor next to her. She had a hard time seeing him; her vision had gone blurry.

  He unclenched his fist and showed her a sliver of steak cupped in his palm.

  “Eat,” he said.

  Jean swiped the warm meat from his hand and jammed it into her mouth, swallowing it almost whole. It was amazing. Nothing she’d ever eaten, in fact, had ever tasted so good. It had tasted like God. She licked her fingers and cried.

  “I have more food, but you have to go slow,” Gary told her. “I know how hungry you are, but you have to take it slow, okay?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “I chose you,” he said enigmatically. He smelled like smoke.

  “How did you get it?”

  “After you fell asleep, I went outside to check things out. The crazy people were gone. So Prendergast and I scavenged around the neighborhood and found a butcher shop with some meat in a cooler that was still good for eating. I dug the hibachi grill out of storage; we used to cook shrimp out back for parties. I got it set up in my office. I’m trying to vent the smoke out the window.”

  Jean felt alarmed Prendergast was eating it all. “Where is he?”

  Gary’s smile turned into a hard line. “Ricky didn’t make it, Jean. We weren’t alone out there. Some of those people were around.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I know he was your friend.” Faced with the prospect of survival, she now regretted compromising her artistic principles by conceding the argument and saying she liked his work.

  “Yes, he was. Thanks for that. Listen, the steaks are going to burn. I’ll be back in a bit. You stay here, okay? Don’t move. I’ll bring you more food in just a minute.”

  Jean lay on the floor for some time breathing in the odors of roasting meat and moaning with need. Wisps of barbecue smoke drifted in the air like spirits. Burned, medium rare, raw—she didn’t care, as long as she got to eat it. Now she started to panic Gary was going to eat it all, leaving her with nothing. He didn’t understand; she had to eat. She had to eat now.

  She raised herself to her knees, gasping for breath and feeling dizzy, and gained her feet. The floor looked very far away. Then she started walking toward the office, her mouth filling with saliva again.

  Jean opened the door, squinting to see better, and gasped.

  Gary stood at the barbecue shrouded in cooking smoke, his mouth open in surprise. The room was dim and smoky, but she could see, plain as day, a plate of steaming brown steaks lying on a silver serving tray, the one he used to serve champagne to guests for small showings to important buyers. Two champagne flutes stood filled with water.

  He had scavenged a feast for her. This food would bring her back to life.

  For a moment, she thought she’d seen something else, something evil and impossible, a trick of the gloomy daylight filtering through the smoke. She thought she’d seen a chopped up carcass hanging from hooks used to mount large and heavy artworks. It’d looked like the body of a naked obese man hung upside down with his head, feet and hands cut off, gutted and bled out, the blood and organs dumped into a large plastic garbage can beneath the body.

  Then she blinked, and it was gone.

  “You weren’t supposed to see this,” Gary shouted, his voice edged with panic.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. She couldn’t take her eyes off the steaks. “It’s so beautiful.”

  That night, Gary crawled to where she lay, hiked up her Chanel skirt and entered her. Jean put her arms around him, smacking her lips and thinking about her next meal. He had little energy; it was over fast. Afterwards, while they slept huddled on the floor, the carcass invaded her dreams. The pale carcass of a man, chopped and gutted, mounted on the wall like slaughtered cattle. Like an obscene piece of art, provocative and visceral.

  Prendergast would have loved it.

  Dr. Price

  Travis paces his small cell and pushes at the walls in claustrophobic despair, convinced they are closing in a fraction of a millimeter at a time. He wonders if the cell is properly ventilated until he finds himself on all fours, sucking on air and dust trickling in from under the door. Picturing the room imploding and entombing him in solid rock is actually the least upsetting thing on his mind right now. He believes any minute, someone is going to come and make him disappear down the garbage shaft. In his mind’s eye it is Fielding who comes, grinning and wielding a big shiny knife. Sorry, Doc, orders are orders.

&
nbsp; Travis has a bucket for his waste and a mattress mounted on the wall, but otherwise the room is blank. He has no idea how long he has been stuck here; assuming they are feeding him three meals per day, then he has been in this cell for four days. It is something of a miracle he survived this long.

  Not long ago, he witnessed an actual coup d’état. Soldiers handcuffed the President of the United States and dragged him shouting from the room. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calmly eyed the Cabinet and asked if anyone knew where the Vice President was. It was the VP’s lucky day; he was going to be President. Then someone noticed Travis cowering in the corner.

  The funny thing is Travis happens to agree with General McGregor. Detonating nuclear weapons in American cities is a desperate measure that would accomplish little. In fact, it’d be like stabbing yourself in the brain with a knitting needle to get rid of a bad headache. In Travis’s opinion, Donald McGregor is even a hero of sorts; he stopped a madman. But whether Travis agrees or not with the men who staged the coup does not matter. What happened did not happen, and that means anyone who knows the truth is a bizarre anomaly that must be corrected, most likely with a bullet in the head.

  Sadly, Travis even agrees with the rationale behind his own murder. Outside Special Facility, Wildfire is rapidly paring the Federal government down to the military. Only the military has the command structure and resources to continue functioning on a large scale. The American people do not want the military to run the country, however. They will only follow the President, based on illusions of tradition, leadership, unity. Even most of the military would not obey McGregor’s junta if it openly declared itself in charge. So the President has a “heart attack” and is lionized as a martyr, the Vice President is sworn in, the bombing plan is axed, and everyone tells the same story for the good of the nation.

  Through simple bad timing, Travis was given a peek behind the curtain and saw the man working the controls. What he knows could shatter the illusion of civilian control of the military, and with it, unity and loyalty to the government. And for that, he must be eliminated.