The Infection

by Craig DiLouie

  ♦

  “Oh Lord,” Ethan says.

  He remembers seeing stories on the news about poor kids from the developing world who were flown to hospitals in the United States to have giant benign tumors removed. The kids were grotesques, carrying twenty to third pounds of flesh on their faces. The tumors were large masses of tissue forming as a result of cancer cells reproducing at an abnormally accelerated rate.

  Ducky has something similar growing out of his hip, but it is not a normal tumor. It is a monkeylike creature curled up into a fetal ball, breathing, apparently asleep. Ethan can see where the driver cut the pants of his uniform to release the constantly growing creature. Now he understands why the soldiers were carrying the driver here, away from the other survivors. They do not want the others to see Ducky like this.

  Sarge asks the driver how he is feeling. Ducky’s gaze shifts to Sarge but otherwise his expression does not change.

  The gunner shakes his head. “He barely has enough energy to breathe right now,” he says.

  Sarge looks at Ethan pointedly. “So. You’re the smart one. What do you think?”

  Ethan examines the thing growing out of Ducky’s hip, careful not to touch it. It is like cancer, but more than that: a parasite. He cannot believe his eyes; it appears that the man’s entire body has been completely rewired to give everything it has to the growing creature. The thing has apparently reorganized Ducky’s organs and is pressing on his bladder, making him piss himself nearly continuously, a sickly, foul-smelling pink fluid.

  Fascinating, almost miraculous, from a purely scientific standpoint. Horrific, and utterly revolting, from a human standpoint.

  “We don’t have much time,” the gunner says.

  “Time’s up, doc,” Sarge says. “Can you fix him?”

  “I don’t understand what it is exactly you expect me to do here.”

  Sarge extends his service knife to Ethan.

  “Can you fix him?”

  Ethan almost laughs, but stops himself. Sarge is not the kind of guy you laugh in front of when one of his people is dying.

  Sarge adds, “I sterilized it. It’s clean. And we got plenty of alcohol and gauze.”

  “He can’t survive an amputation.”

  “Ducky’s a tough sumbitch.” He smiles weakly at the driver. “We’ll booze you up good, Ducky. You won’t feel a thing.”

  “Sarge, I’m sorry about your man,” Ethan says carefully. “But there’s nothing anybody can do.”

  “Did I make a mistake hauling your ass out of that hospital?”

  “Sarge, you’re not really thinking straight. A procedure like this would take a team of real doctors something like half a day in a real hospital. I’m a high school math teacher. I am just smart enough to know that anything I do will kill this man. Look at this small wound here that’s still weeping; he must have tried to cut it off himself in the Bradley, and the pain stopped him. At some point, I assume the parasite will detach, as you can see legs forming here, but right now there is an entire system of veins supplying blood to it. I cut into this mass and even if Ducky’s heart didn’t fail from the shock, the loss of blood would surely—”

  “Holy shit,” Steve hisses, pushing himself away from the driver, falling sprawling on his ass.

  The parasite’s eye is open, studying them each in turn. The head, fused to the rest of the body-shaped mass of tissue by a thin film of clear mucus, begins to stir. The men gasp with revulsion. Ducky looks down at it, his eyes wide with helpless terror.

  The creature is becoming aware. It is literally being born right in front of their eyes.

  “It ain’t nothing, Ducky,” Sarge says, his voice fragile. “Don’t even look at it.”

  Ethan points to the thing’s face and says, “See how it’s able to move, but Ducky isn’t. The parasite is now stronger than its host, and is—”

  He leaps to his feet and bolts across the asphalt screaming.

  ♦

  Sarge chases Ethan under a darkening sky, calling his name, coughing on the smoke and ash that is now falling in a blizzard and almost blinding him. The tiny green figure flickers like a candle fifty yards ahead. The screams ring out across the blank, empty spaces.

  Suddenly, Ethan collapses to his knees, gasping. The soldier catches up and drops heavily to one knee next to him, still coughing.

  “Let me see it,” he says.

  Ethan moans, shaking, cradling his bloody hand.

  Paul and Todd come running, looking down at him in surprise.

  “Is he in shock?” Paul says.

  “No,” Sarge says. “Not physical shock, anyhow.”

  “You need help?”

  “What the heck happened to him?” Todd asks him, his eyes gaping.

  Sarge leans close to Ethan’s ear.

  “You’re okay now,” he says calmly and quietly. “Now let me see it.”

  He is still doubting what he saw until Ethan slowly unravels his trembling hand and shows the bloody stump where the tip of his index finger used to be. The fucker bit it off. Ate it with a crunch. Its little black eye gleaming with hate.

  Ethan is looking at his hand, his face pale and surprised.

  “Somebody, get me the med kit,” Sarge says.

  “I’ll go,” Paul says, and starts running for the Bradley.

  “And plenty of water, Reverend,” Sarge calls after him. He tears a strip from the teacher’s shirt and winds it tightly around the wound. “We’re going to take care of this,” he tells Ethan. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll put some pressure on it for now, all right? Then we’ll clean it real good and I’ll sew it up.”

  Todd drops to one knee next to Ethan and says, “You’re alive, man. You’re alive.”

  “You’re fine,” says Sarge. “It ain’t nothing.”

  Ethan whispers something. Sarge bends closer to hear.

  “Kill. Him.”

  “The hell you say!”

  Ethan winces, his eyes clenching shut against the pain.

  “Not murder. Mercy. Quickly, before—”

  Back at the fuel island, Steve’s rifle pops once, twice.

  “Take care of this man,” Sarge barks.

  “Sarge?” Todd says.

  Sarge jumps to his feet and runs back across the lot. “No, goddammit, no!”

  He finds Steve standing over Ducky’s corpse, his rifle smoking and his eyes wild.

  “What happened?” Sarge demands.

  “That thing,” Steve says, shaking with disgust and rage. “That fucking thing.”

  Sarge closes his eyes but he can still see Ducky’s body lying on the ground, a drained, sightless, empty husk, and the creature splattered across the asphalt.

  He can still see where the parasite had begun eating Ducky’s leg.

  ♦

  Wendy returns in time to see Sarge carrying Ducky, a limp bundle wrapped in a blanket and light as a child, into a nearby gently sloping field crowned by a stand of oak trees. Paul and Todd and the gunner have gathered at the top, covered in soot, next to a hole they dug. They ask her where Anne is; Wendy shakes her head, staring in horror at the empty hole, feeling death’s chill. She tells them the Infected are not far behind. A heavy silence falls on them as they fear the worst has happened to Anne, and turn inward to look at these fears.

  Sarge and Steve gently lower the body into the pit.

  “He knew he was going to die and yet he kept doing his job to the very end, saving our lives,” Sarge says. “That thing was pounding us and Ducky kept on going. He was in an amazing amount of pain, alone and without hope, and yet he kept on going. For us. And for that, Ducky, you have our thanks. Because of you, we’re still here, and we will remember you.”

  He nods to Paul, who intones: “‘Our days on Earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone—as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him.’ Amen.”

  “Amen,” the survivors murmur.
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  Paul lowers his respirator mask to cover his face while the others lift wet bandanas over their mouths. Steve pours gasoline into the hole with the body and Sarge lights it. They step back from the sudden fury of heat and light. Sarge insisted on burning him. That way, he said, nothing will be able to dig him up and eat him.

  There is no time for mourning. Sarge knows that grief is a luxury at a time like this. They will just have to try to find Anne on the road, if they can. After several minutes, the survivors plod back down the slope toward the Bradley, now completely inventoried and repacked, everything in its place. On any other day, they might admire the view from this hill, but not today. Not this wasteland across which distant tiny figures toil. Sarge notices a group of refugees breaking into the truck stop, searching for food, water, weapons, shelter. The Bradley is concealed but they should get back on the road now. The day will only bring more refugees, each more desperate than the last, and behind them, a flood of Infection.

  Anne is waiting for them at the Bradley, hands on hips, her head and shoulders wrapped in rags, surrounded by falling ash. Her shirt is sprinkled with fresh blood. She pulls the rags and bandana down to expose her smiling face. They have not seen her smile before and find it jarring and yet also oddly uplifting. A tiny voice in their heads suddenly tells them that this too shall pass. They will get through this. They are alive, and they can go on surviving.

  “Don’t give up hope,” Anne says.

  ♦

  The Bradley drives along the westbound lanes of the Penn Lincoln Parkway through open, hilly country, passing abandoned cars and files of tired refugees on foot carrying rifles and backpacks and children. The groups of refugees maintain a cautious distance from each other and nobody waves at or approaches the Bradley. The scarred, ash-filled wasteland that was once Pittsburgh recedes the farther they go west; the view here is a brilliant green, virtually untouched.

  The vehicle suddenly veers onto an exit, taking it past another abandoned military checkpoint and onto a sunlight-dappled two-lane back road. They pass telephone poles staked at regular intervals and periodic mailboxes and speed limit 45 and school bus stop ahead signs. Rolling hills overlook the road from the right, crowded with maple and beech and dogwood. Distant dark figures march singly or in small groups across open green fields. The air is humid and clean and crowded with the sounds of birdsong and insects.

  After several miles, the Bradley slows, passing a sign announcing buchanan evergreen farm and another marked christmas trees before turning onto a long crushed-stone driveway, speeding towards the distant farmhouse and raising a massive cloud of dust. In the living room, they find the desiccated corpses of a large family lying on the floor, smiling and blue and hugging each other, surrounded by empty bottles of pills. They remove the bodies and burn them in the backyard, coughing soot out of their lungs and marveling at the greenery and lazy birdsong. Anne wants to put more distance between them and Pittsburgh but Sarge tells her they will stay the night here. Paul contemplates the fresh graves and the family photos on the wall, depicting generations that owned this land until Infection, and believes the world is slowly becoming haunted. Or maybe we’re the ghosts and do not even know we’re dead yet, he wonders; survival, after all, has turned out to be a strange purgatory between living and dying. Anne gives Ethan his glasses back, which she forgot she’d scooped up at the hospital, and a fresh T-shirt. She says nothing else, but Ethan, pleasantly numb on painkillers, knows he is accepted again. While Anne unpacks the Bradley, he searches for but does not find his backpack with his family photos, realizing there is now virtually nothing to even note that they once existed. Like the others, he has no home, not even evidence of a past life outside his own unreliable mind. Todd watches the others move about in safety with a smile on his face, biting back witty quips, biding his time. Wendy cleans her Glock and exchanges a long glance with Sarge before going upstairs to take her turn washing in the antique bathtub. The soldiers fortify the house and sit on easy chairs in the living room with a sigh while the others set up the stove and make coffee and drink it slowly in silence, feeling safe for the first time since they left the hospital.

  The clock in the living room chimes the hour.

  Anne tells them about the refugee camp.

  The soldiers she saw on the highway had been attached to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They had come from a camp. She talked to an officer at the camp on the Humvee radio. It is only a few hours’ drive away, in Ohio, in a place called Cashtown.

  Sanctuary. A place where they can finally rest. The real deal: A place where they can be finally, truly safe.

  The survivors blink at her, unsure how to respond to this news. After everything that has happened, they are happy simply to be alive and clean and fed in this house. The idea that they might finally end this journey is a lot to absorb.

  After several moments of stunned silence, Paul says, “Well, Amen.”

  The other survivors laugh and echo the sentiment.

  The night passes without nightmares.

  The next morning, Anne is gone.

  FLASHBACK: ANNE LEARY

  “This is outrageous,” she said into the phone cradled between her cheek and shoulder as she flattened a lump of dough with her rolling pin. “Did you call the police?”

  Anne had championed the bond to refurbish the park with new playground equipment. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was that playground equipment was not cheap, as in five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of not cheap, but she’d negotiated hard—people had a hard time refusing Anne Leary—and gotten the very best. She felt a sense of ownership over it. Now here was Shana calling to tell her that there were two men at the playground acting suspiciously.

  “The cops aren’t answering the phone,” said Shana.

  “Our tax dollars at work,” Anne said, rapidly cutting the dough into a ten-inch square and then expertly maneuvering the knife to cut the square into strips a half inch wide.

  “The phone lines are all jammed up with that thing going on downtown. People killing each other in the streets. It’s like the Screaming again. It took me eight tries just to get through to you.”

  Anne began laying half of the strips on top of her pie filling at regular intervals, pressing the ends into the edge of crust. Afterwards, she would place the other half crosswise across the top, bake it, and produce a perfect blueberry pie with a lattice crust.

  “I don’t understand what the fuss is about,” she said. “They said on the radio it’s happening everywhere but if that’s true then it should be happening here. I don’t see anything going on.”

  “I don’t know, Anne. Things are apparently pretty dangerous out there.”

  “You know how the media is. They sensationalize everything. This is all going to blow over; you’ll see. We got past the Screaming. We’ll get past a bunch of people trying to take advantage by stirring up trouble. We just got to stay tough until the cops sort it out. And if the cops don’t, we will. If the crazies come here, we got to show them they aren’t welcome like last time.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Anne looked up at the ceiling as if imploring Heaven, almost laughing. “Of course I’m right!”

  After the Screaming, the city had filled up with crazies. People deranged by what they had seen, wandering about in shock and anger. Others convinced the world was ending and flailing at their neighbors in panic. Criminal types looking for easy pickings. They were everywhere; some of them inevitably wandered through Anne’s neighborhood. People had been scared, staying in their homes, but Anne had toughened them up. They banded together and chased the crazies out.

  And this, too, shall pass, she thought. Fear is the real enemy. They just had to stay tough.

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  Everybody in the neighborhood knew who Anne Leary was and looked to her to take the lead in a crisis. People didn’t just call her to tell her things. They expected her to do something. She was treas
urer for the local PTA and produced a monthly newsletter for the local homeowners association. After the Screaming, she not only organized the drive to eject the crazies, she also enlisted the other homeowners in her community to get their fallen neighbors to the clinics, take care of their children, and tend their yards and anything else that needed doing. It was hard work but the people who lived here were more than happy to have something they could do to help. Anne believed that a major crisis could bring out the best in people, if you only asked them to step up.

  The dog ran into the kitchen and began marching back and forth in front of the glass sliding door connecting the kitchen to the backyard, whining and barking and scrabbling at the glass.

  “Hang on,” Anne said. “I can barely hear you. The dog’s going crazy.”

  She opened the door and watched Acer take off like an arrow and disappear through a gap in the fence that her husband always threatened to repair, but never did.

  “I’m back,” she added, scooping up her pie and tossing it into the oven. “We can’t have the crazies running amok in our park. Our children play there, Shana. If the cops are too busy to help, we’re going to have to do this ourselves. Just like last time.”

  “Oh Anne, don’t go vigilante again.”

  “Me? I’m not doing anything. Big Tom’s going, not me.”

  Her kids tramped by scowling and she followed them with her eyes, monitoring her little ducklings for signs of conspiracy.

  “I got to go, Shan,” she added. “I have to go vigilante on my kids.”

  “Tell Big Tom to be careful if he’s going out today.”

  Anne frowned and laughed. “Sure thing. Bye, Shan.” Hanging up, she turned on the hot water tap, squirted in some dishwashing liquid, and began filling the sink. “Children, come here!”

  Peter tramped back into the kitchen, followed by Alice and Little Tom. They gazed sullenly at their mother.