The Infection

by Craig DiLouie

  Ethan leans back in his chair, satisfied.

  “I’ve got a question,” Sarge says loudly, standing. “What are you hiding here?”

  Kayley smiles at him. Her face shows no signs of surprise.

  ♦

  The survivors bristle at Sarge’s tone. A moment ago, they were disoriented, listening to Kayley in a lethargic daze, struggling to absorb everything she was telling them. Now they are alert and taut as deer that smell a predator in a sudden shift of wind. They watch Sarge and Kayley closely, their hearts racing and their breath shallow as they once again, automatically, tread the tightrope between fight and flight.

  After several moments, Kayley says, “Can you be more specific?”

  Sarge blinks. “Well, for one, why did you take our guns?”

  Wendy glares at Kayley, wondering the same thing and wishing she felt the reassuring weight of the Glock in her hand right now. She feels electrified by urgency and confusion. She has complete faith in Sarge’s instincts but he sprang this confrontation without telling her; she has no idea how to back him up.

  “Sergeant Wilson, almost everybody in this camp is armed,” Kayley is saying. “We all know that Infection spreads like wildfire. If one person got the bug, it might bring the entire camp down. We are on the constant lookout for Infection and must be ready to act quickly if we see it.”

  Sarge crosses his arms. “I’ll ask again, then: Why did you take ours?”

  “Your weapons were taken for the time being because, quite often, certain newcomers do not take to orientation. We do not have the means to enable new residents to slowly transition from the dangerous world outside to the relatively safe oasis that we have created here. Some people cannot accept the sudden change and become upset and irrational.”

  “I can see why,” Sarge says. “It’s like a police state around here.”

  “Yes and no. We are actually rather thin on policing. Surely you don’t really think this camp could function without the consent of its residents. But it is true that we are a society that is under siege. It is different being here than out there on the road.”

  “If we are not prisoners, you would let us leave if that’s what we wanted.”

  “You are not prisoners, but neither can you simply come and go from the camp as you please, for obvious reasons. Every time somebody enters the camp, there is the possibility of Infection or some other disease being imported. We cannot allow that.”

  “You’re not answering my question,” he says.

  “The simple answer is you can leave any time you like. But if you do, you cannot come back. Is that a satisfactory answer?”

  “We can leave with all our gear?”

  “If a resident decides to leave, they can go with either what equipment and supplies they brought or its equivalent value, which is the law.”

  “What about our Bradley?” Sarge says, glaring at her.

  Kayley’s smile disappears, replaced by a hard line.

  “I think you mean our Bradley, Sergeant. That machine was manufactured for the Army and belongs to the people of the United States. You are a soldier and if you try to leave, your superiors may let you go, or they may decide to shoot you for desertion. I don’t know. But I can tell you for a fact that the people in charge here are not going to let you drive out of camp with a multimillion-dollar piece of military hardware that could be used to save American lives.”

  “This is bullshit,” Sarge says. “It’s a trap.”

  “The trap is in your mind, Sergeant Wilson.”

  Sarge turns to the other survivors and says, “Come on, we’re leaving. They can’t stop us.”

  None of the survivors move, not even Wendy, who believes Kayley explained the camp’s position perfectly and is now feeling reassured rather than threatened. Sarge gapes at them, sweat pouring down his face, seemingly disoriented and unsure of what to do next. He bumps against his desk and knocks it over with a crash that makes the other survivors flinch.

  “It’s not safe here,” he pleads, his breath suddenly shallow.

  Wendy stands and peers into his face.

  He says quietly, just to her, “This is a bad place.”

  The man is visibly shaking.

  “You are among friends here,” Kayley says. “You are perfectly safe.”

  Wendy glares at her briefly and says, “Could you shut the hell up, please?”

  She returns her attention to Sarge, slowly reaching out until she is touching his face gingerly. She holds his face in her hands.

  “Tell me,” she says.

  His eyes avoid hers until finally connecting.

  “I’m scared,” he says, taking a deep, shuddering breath.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” she tells him. “Look at me. Look at me.”

  The other survivors look away. Nobody judges him. They have all been where he is now. Everybody has post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, these days, with its bad sleep, depression, guilt, anxiety, anger, hyper vigilance and fear. Wendy still cannot sleep at night without flashing to the Infected bursting howling into the station. She is amazed that after everything Sarge endured, it is now that he cracks, and here, where he is finally safe.

  But she understands. The truth is none of the survivors is comfortable in this place. The very sudden change from survival to safety—not just safety, but society, with rules and customs—is nothing short of an abrupt shock to the system. None of them fully trust it.

  And yet it is not evil. It is, in fact, their best chance at survival.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarge says.

  Wendy now believes she understands why Anne did not come with them to the camp. We are all broken, she thinks. None of us may belong here.

  ♦

  Holding Sarge’s face, she suddenly remembers the man in the SUV during the morning of Infection, when Pittsburgh woke up to a war zone. Her station had already been overrun and Wendy walked the streets alone, on foot, shrugging off people begging her for help. The cars were snarled bumper to bumper all along the four lanes of North Avenue and were even stacking up on the sidewalk and jamming into the narrow median, their horns bleating like panicked sheep. Others raced through the trees in the adjacent park, skidding in the mud and going nowhere fast.

  The Infected ran among the vehicles in the jam, peering into the cars as if window shopping before punching in the glass with bloody knuckles. Wendy saw the Infected swarming over a nearby wrought iron fence, emitting a communal howl that made her heart rate skyrocket and her legs turn to jelly. Although her conscious mind was still in pieces, it registered in the back of her mind that Allegheny General was on the other side of that fence; the Infected were still waking up and streaming out of the hospital’s doors even now, like rats.

  Wendy unholstered her service weapon and fired once, twice. A man yelped and flopped off of the fence, quickly replaced by another in a paper hospital gown, his legs smeared with his own shit. I don’t have enough bullets, she thought.

  People were abandoning their cars and running into the park swinging purses and briefcases or holding hands, turning the traffic jam into a parking lot. She turned, distracted by the sickening sound of crumpling metal and a gunned engine straining against an impossible load.

  A man was driving a shiny red 4x4 SUV on a lifted suspension, three tons of glass and steel with a little evergreen air freshener swinging from the rear view and a specialty license plate reading XCESS over the standard visitPA.com. He was panicking and trying to ram his way out of the press of honking vehicles. The acrid stench of muffler exhaust and burning rubber filled the air. He backed up his vehicle, his face and his mouth working behind the windshield, and then stomped his foot on the gas and rammed into the car ahead of him, shoving it forward less than a yard and jolting himself with whiplash.

  Recovering, he backed up again, yanked on the steering wheel, and roared into a Volkswagen Jetta in the righthand lane at an acute angle, the collision twisting the frame and shattering the driver’s side windows. T
he car’s driver howled in shock and pain, covered in blood and glass, trying to shield her face with her arms. As the SUV backed up again, crumpling the hood of another car behind it, an Infected man pulled himself into the Jetta’s open window, his gown flapping and his legs kicking in the air.

  Wendy’s stomach turned over and she bent to spit a gob of bile, listening to distant car alarms. The mindless, brutish cruelty of the SUV driver and the rabid Infected was making her feel physically sick. The driver had a cut on his forehead now and looked dazed, revving the engine and bucking his vehicle forward into the car in front of the Jetta, shoving it sideways against the curb and bursting its windows in the sharp impact. The passenger door opened and a woman emerged, wailing and pulling a screaming child out of the backseat. The air filled with a sweet maple syrup smell, ethylene glycol released by a broken radiator. Wendy swallowed hard against another urge to vomit.

  “Halt,” she said hoarsely, then raised her arm and stepped forward, shouting: “Stop it!”

  She marched up to the SUV as the man stepped on the gas. She did not flinch. Recognizing her uniform, he braked with a short screech, stopping the vehicle inches from her knees. He stared down at her through the window, panting for air. His eyes slowly focused with understanding and regret, began to fill with tears.

  The cop raised her gun and fired, punching three cobwebbed holes in the windshield. Smoke filled the cab and blood splashed across the glass.

  She wished she had more bullets.

  Then she is back in the classroom, cupping Sarge’s face and looking into his eyes.

  She knows what it is like to lose control.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” Wendy says. “I’ve got you.”

  ♦

  After a brief medical exam, Todd hurries into the processing center, a hot, confusing jumble of people and tables jammed together under various signs and flags in what used to be the school gym. People sit behind the tables, talking to sitting or standing applicants, while others sit on the floor ringing the room, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard marked with numbers. A wave of sour body odor immediately envelops him, almost making him gag. It is so hot in the room and there are so many people sweating that a mist hangs in the air, rising on beams of sunlight entering the space through skylights. He spots Ethan at one of the tables but cannot locate the other survivors. His heart races as he realizes they must have gone through processing already, leaving him behind. He had been last in line for the medical exam and apparently he’d spent too much time in the bathroom taking the longest dump in his life sitting on a real toilet that actually flushed, surrounded by four walls in blissful privacy. His thoughts are jolted as a man shoulders him as he walks past, offering a muttered apology.

  His first impression of the place is that there is still a huge number of refugees entering the FEMA camp, but he soon realizes that all sorts of government business goes on here, from job applications to replacement of resident cards to reporting crimes, and more. Some of the tables are run by sharp-eyed, clean-shaven men in business suits under American and other flags indicating various agencies of the Federal and Ohio state governments. Todd figures they’re the complaints department. You go there and complain, and in return they give you bad news.

  He takes a number and finds a spot on the floor, fanning himself like everybody else, trying to keep an eye on Ethan, who has moved to another table, keeping the little stump of his finger elevated as he works the room. Probably looking for his dead wife and little girl. Todd is mentally flexible enough to accept that his father is dead or Infected along with all the other cubicle drones at the office where he worked, and his mother is definitely Infected, having fallen during the Screaming. He feels sorry for Ethan but living your life like a defective CD eternally skipping during your favorite song is not living.

  Eventually, his number is called and he finds himself sitting at a picnic table across from a red-haired woman who looks at him like he just hit her in the face. Slapping an index card on the table in front of her, she begins to take down his information—name, where he lived, social security number, gender, age, height and eye color, nearest relations and a brief medical history.

  “You were in high school?” she says, pen poised above the card.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Todd answers, using the respectful tone he used with teachers.

  “What grade?”

  “Senior,” he says, worrying in the pit of his stomach that the woman would check up on him and realize he lied about that and his age. But then he notices the stacks of index cards tied with rubber bands being carted by the other bureaucrats, and realizes he can pretty much say anything he wants and there would be no way that she could confirm or deny it.

  “Do you want to go back to school? We offer schooling here. You could get your diploma.”

  “No thanks,” he says sunnily, his brain working hard on how to defend that decision.

  The woman shrugs, does not care.

  “Any job skills?” she asks.

  “I’ve had jobs before but nothing that required skills,” he tells her. “I am really good with computers, though. What kind of skills are you looking for the most?”

  “Psychotherapist,” she answers.

  He laughs.

  “I’m not kidding,” she adds.

  Todd opens his mouth, but she silences him by holding up her index finger, the universal sign for wait a minute. The woman pulls an old mechanical typewriter towards her and starts pecking at the keys with agonizing slowness, glancing frequently at the index card. She finally yanks a business card-sized piece of paper out of machine, stamps it with a seal, and hands it to him with a thick manila envelope.

  “This is your resident card,” she tells him, explaining that he will use it to obtain his rations, access the showers and medical services, and apply for other government help. “This is your information packet. In it you will find a recap of your orientation—a map of the camp, the rules you are expected to follow here, and a list of services and where to find them. There is currently a small surplus in shelters so you do not have to build your own; your allotment is marked in yellow highlighter. This is your claim ticket so you can pick up the property you brought into the camp with you. And finally, here are two flea collars. Put one around each ankle. Keeps the lice away.”

  “Gross!” Todd says. “I mean, thanks.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “Just one. Do you have stores or anything like that?”

  “There are six outdoor markets. Four are where people sell pretty much anything. Another is for produce grown in the camp, and the last is for meat.”

  “What’s the accepted currency?” he presses. “Is it a barter system, or is the dollar—”

  The woman glances over his shoulder and yells, “Twenty-one!”

  Todd stands, trying to think of something biting, but a family approaches, wild-eyed and holding out their cardboard number to the woman like an offering, and he tells himself she is not worth it. She is not going to get me down. I survived out there weeks while she was in here sitting on her ass filling out index cards. I have fought and killed to survive.

  He has a sudden flashback to Sarge standing in front of the hospital, spitting tongues of flame and smoke with his AK47 in the dark. He remembers throwing a Molotov into a mob of the Infected. The Bradley smashed through the parked cars, its gun booming. He smiles.

  “Ha,” he says, and walks away to find Ethan standing near one of the tables, wringing his hands. He asks the man how the search is going.

  “Slow,” Ethan says with a sad smile, but he appears happy to be trying, and this is something, Todd realizes. At least there is that.

  “Where’s everybody else?”

  “The Army took Sarge and Steve away for debriefing. Wendy got a job as a cop and is heading to where they told her she could live. She gets priority housing being a cop. And Paul is on his way to one of the food distribution centers. He got a job there passing out food.�
��

  “Well,” Todd says, feeling awkward.

  “How about you? You going back to school? They offer that here, you know.”

  “I don’t really see the advantage of learning calculus,” Todd says before catching himself. “Oh, sorry, man.”

  Ethan nods sadly. “It’s okay. I don’t see the point in teaching it anymore, either.”

  “I’ve got big plans, Ethan. I’ve got this stash—”

  “One hundred and eight!” a voice cries from one of the tables.

  Ethan perks up. “That’s me.”

  “Well,” Todd says, frowning. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Right,” Ethan says vacantly. “Take care of yourself, Todd.”

  Todd collects his duffel bag, weapon and ammunition in another room and walks outside into hazy sunlight, feeling tickled and breathless with excitement.

  I’m here, he thinks. I made it.

  The street in front of the school is filled with activity. A group of bored soldiers glances at him, sweating in their helmets, and then go back to talking among themselves. They barely look a day older than him, just beefy kids. Several children sit on the cracked sidewalk, drawing with pieces of colored chalk. Another group of kids, orphans of Infection quickly going feral, pull a red wagon filled with empty plastic jugs and bottles. Whatever grass might have grown here is now gone, trampled into dried dirt that floats in the air as dust. A military five-ton truck rolls down the street, ignoring a stop sign, beeping at the lazy crowds. Several men are working on a large machine, their tools and parts laid out neatly on a filthy white blanket. Dogs are barking inside a mom and pop shop across the street converted into housing. A loudspeaker attached to an old telephone pole, dangling a tangle of wires, squawks instructions on how to avoid cholera, followed by an ear-splitting screech. A moment later, a Britney Spears song begins playing, tinny and offering more nostalgia than entertainment in this time and place.