The Infection

by Craig DiLouie

  “Hey,” Todd says to the combat engineer.

  The glazed eyes flicker and focus.

  “Hey, what?”

  “Why forty feet?”

  Patterson grins. The transformation this brings is almost alchemical. A moment ago, he looked like a hardened killer on death row waiting for his lawyer. Now he looks like a frat boy about to explain how he spiked the professors’ punch at the party.

  “Mike Powell,” he says, his accept deep Louisiana.

  “Oh yeah,” Ray says.

  “Who’s Mike Powell?”

  “He set the world record in the long jump back in the nineties,” Ray says.

  Patterson nods.

  “Almost thirty feet,” he points out. “We’re going to do forty—just in case one of those little Hopper sumbitches can beat old Mike Powell’s record.”

  Todd grins with the other men, nodding, suddenly filled with awareness that history is being made today. It’s the end of the world but a new one is beginning. He cannot help but feel excited. It’s epic, ninja, like living in a video game.

  He has already forgotten the brief, crushing sense of death he felt back at the hospital when Wendy held her Glock against his head and Ethan counted down to zero. You made it this far, Todd old man, he tells himself. You’re lucky. You’re good. Hell, you’re practically immortal. You are earning your place in the new world. There will be historians in this new world, recording the heroic deeds of people during the dark time of Infection for future generations to understand and respect.

  The bridge they are blowing is the Veterans Memorial Bridge. What buildings and bridges and monuments will they build to honor our sacrifices? What day will they set aside for our memory? They will look at us as the Greatest Generation, the people who fought Infection and rebuilt the world. Every war has a turning point. Ours is here, now. He thinks about John Wheeler and Emily Preston and the ghosts of his high school. Most of them are by now certainly Infected or dead. But not me, he reminds himself. I was chosen for a reason.

  Maybe this time he will reap the rewards when he returns. Maybe he will get a little more respect. Erin was impressed by his tales of survival and the wound on his arm but ripped him off anyway. Inside the camp, he felt powerless, small, his life reduced to stories nobody could truly believe even in these times. Out here, he feels powerful, somehow more real, part of something again. He would never say such a thing out loud to the other survivors, but he is here because he wants to find himself.

  ♦

  Paul signed up for this mission on impulse, but he is old enough to know that nothing happens purely that way. There is always a reason.

  It is not loyalty to the others. He feels safer with them, but not really safe, and certainly not very safe out here, in the lion’s den. He loves them in his own way with whatever love he has left to give anyone, but they can make their own decisions and take care of themselves.

  It is not disgust with Pastor Strickland and his ministry of bitterness and regret. He does not approve it, but he also has no interest in fighting it. Strickland still loves the Infected that he lost but hates people he does not understand. A kingdom divided will be ruined and a house divided cannot stand, as Jesus taught. There have always been lost sheep like Strickland and McLean, and there always will be.

  It is not even a simple desire to find a better place to live. If he continues on with Ethan to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg, it will be as filthy, hungry and violent as Defiance. When they were leaving, the people were cheering and blowing whistles and shooting into the air. The rumors that the Army was coming had achieved a critical mass. But nobody cared about the convoy of vehicles leaving the camp, filled with troops ready to sacrifice everything to save them all.

  If God can appear cruel and hypocritical and vindictive, well, we are all made in his image, he reminds himself. God should have told Job that he had no right to question him because as bad as God is, people are even worse. When the chips are down, the best and worse is on full display.

  The funny thing about the story of Job is that Job never questioned Satan. In Hebrew, Satan has two meanings. One is the Adversary. The other is ha-Satan, the Accuser. In either case, he is an Angel of the Lord. Maybe Job did not question Satan because he did not have to do so. If God is everything, he is also Satan. The Adversary. The Accuser. Creator of Heaven and Earth.

  The fact is Paul hated leaving only a little less than he hated staying. Perhaps that is why he is here. Anne had the right idea, he tells himself: Just keep moving. He feels like he finally understands her decision to abandon them.

  If you keep moving, they can never get you. You might even outrun yourself.

  Stay still, and curse the day you were born.

  We try to live with as little pain and as much pleasure as possible. But pain makes us realize we are alive. We truly live one moment to the next when we live with pain. When pain stops, we become afraid. And we remember things we do not wish to remember that are themselves painful.

  Long is the way and hard, right, Anne?

  The Catholics believe there is Heaven and Hell and between them a place called Purgatory, in which souls are purified and made ready for Heaven through a period of punishment. Similarly, there is a state of existence between living and dying: survival.

  These days, God has no use for charity and good works. God demands everything now. These days, the Lord only calls those who have been baptized in blood.

  And that, he realizes, is why he has come. Not to be tested, but to put an end to these tests.

  “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave,” Job said upon hearing that his family died and all his earthly possessions were destroyed. “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” Sara, I will be with you soon.

  ♦

  Ethan remembers holding Carol’s hand while she pushed Mary out into the world, counting between pushes, trying to pour all of his strength into her by will alone. He had always wanted children but felt ambivalent about the amount of responsibility they entailed. He wanted kids to be like Blockbuster videos, rentable and returnable within a week. Something he could manage over time, not maintain every single hour of every single day. The idea of wiping shit and vomit and changing diapers for the next few years was overwhelming. Mostly, he was worried about his relationship with his wife. They had a good life and he did not want to see it spoiled.

  “It’s a girl,” the doctor told him.

  “It’s a girl,” he said to his wife, his heart bursting with pride.

  Carol cried with relief and joy, still holding his hand.

  Later, the nurse asked him if he wanted to hold his daughter for the first time.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation.

  The woman handed him the tiny swaddled creature and his heart opened. A visceral, almost painful love surged through him, pouring out into the child in his arms.

  Change diapers? He would eat this kid’s shit, he realized.

  Anything, he pledged. Anything for you.

  This person will die without me. But more than that: Everything I do to this child from now on will reverberate through the rest of its life. He never felt so needed. So responsible.

  “Your name is Mary,” he told her in a singsong voice, not caring how it sounded.

  From that point forward, nothing mattered except family.

  They are going to the bridge to blow a hole in it and then he is going to travel two hundred miles to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg. He is going to have to get there on his own this time and it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to do it. Carol and Mary might as well be in Australia. And yet he has not felt so close to them since Infection started. There is a chance they exist.

  The operation itself appears equally difficult. Two school buses loaded with troops will lead the way. The buses are forty feet long, which is almost exactly the span of each set of lanes on the bridge. They will drive to the end of t
he bridge and block it, creating a wall of firepower against the Infected. The Bradley will follow at a walking pace with the survivors and another squad of soldiers, clearing the bridge and setting up the charges while another pair of buses parks behind them, sealing both entrances against the Infected.

  The combat engineer and his people will set up the charges, strip the concrete, plant the next round of charges, and then begin the countdown. The soldiers in the buses will make a run for it. Machine guns will cover their retreat. The final charges will blow.

  Mission accomplished. Bravo, bravo.

  Impossible.

  A million things can go wrong, not the least of which is that the Infected might brush them off the bridge with ease. Monsters walk the earth now. The bridge might be packed with giant worms, swarming with malevolent little Hoppers, or even worse, occupied by the terrifying Demon that kicked the crap out of the Bradley and almost burst their ear drums with its wailing.

  He will not even be able to launch his journey to Immunity on the West Virginia side of the river. He is going to have to find a boat. Even that seems impossible to him. But he will do it.

  He will do anything, kill anybody, sacrifice everything, to find his family again.

  ♦

  Sarge is glad to be back in the Army doing his duty, although he is not sure who he is actually working for at the moment. Captain Mattis is regular Army but got the operational orders for the mission from the provisional government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Federal government nationalized the Guard while Ohio claimed control of Federal troops currently fighting on its soil. The refugee camp is run by FEMA, at least nominally, with people from different levels of government claiming jurisdiction over everything.

  Even here, in the field, things are not perfectly clear: Sarge is in charge of security, but Patterson, the combat engineer and a first lieutenant, is nominally in charge of the entire operation. Mattis gave him a half-strength, watered-down National Guard infantry company for the mission, two-thirds under Sarge’s direct command for the assault on the Veterans Memorial Bridge, the remaining third to be deployed for a separate operation to destroy the smaller Market Street Bridge a few miles to the south. The northward Fort Steuben Bridge had already been demolished the summer before the Screaming, apparently. The soldiers are weekend warriors for the most part, supplemented by volunteers from the camp, but most of them are well trained, disciplined and equipped, and some have even done time in Iraq.

  In the end, it does not matter to him where he got his orders. The mission is sound and he is simply happy to be back in the field commanding troops. Out here, ringed by death on all sides, appears to be the only place where he can feel truly calm. He is terrified by what this means. He is glad Wendy came along because he is not sure he is going back when this is all over.

  “Identified,” Wendy says, adding, “What the hell is that thing, Sarge?”

  The giant hairless head totters on spindly tripod legs. It suddenly stops and drops a load of dung that falls onto the highway like a wet bomb. Grimacing with a wide mouth and oversized, bulging eyes, the thirty-foot-tall monster leers down at the Infected streaming around its legs.

  “Shaw chonk,” it says, its deep voice booming through the air.

  Suddenly, a long, thick tongue lashes out, wraps around the torso of an Infected woman, and pulls her up into its cavernous, gobbling mouth. Chewing loudly, the thing chortles deep in its throat, the heavy bass sound vibrating at its edges like an idling motorcycle.

  “Shaw chonk roomy lactate.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wendy says.

  In any other time, the vision of this monster tottering down Route 22—its skinny legs supporting a bloated, improbable sphere of mottled flesh with its grotesque, almost human face—would have suddenly and irreparably damaged Sarge’s mind. Today, it only fills him with instant revulsion and hatred. The thing is a trespasser on his planet and must be destroyed. Anne used the perfect word to describe these things: abominations.

  Sarge gives the general order to halt the convoy and tells Steve to stop the Bradley.

  “What are we going to do?” Wendy says, her voice quiet and breathless.

  Sarge switches to high magnification for a closer look at the thing. The monster’s grinning face fills the optical display. Revolted, he quickly switches back to low magnification.

  “Roomy lactation!” it bellows across the landscape, eyeing the vehicles.

  “We’re going to kill it,” Sarge tells her.

  He estimates the range to target at two hundred meters using the rule of thumb method of picturing a distance of a hundred meters and ranging to the target in hundred-meter increments. He adjusts the RANGE-SELECT knob.

  “Two,” he says absently.

  He presses a switch on the weapons box, illuminating the AP LO annunciator light, indicating selection of the twenty-five millimeter gun with armor-piercing rounds firing at a low rate of fire, about a hundred rounds per minute.

  “Line up the shot, Private Babe,” Sarge says.

  Wendy presses the palm switch on her joystick with her fingers, activating the turret drive and releasing the turret brakes, then puts pressure on the stick. The turret responds immediately, beginning its rotation. The reticle centers on the monster’s legs.

  “Now give me elevation to center mass on the thing’s hideous goddamn head.”

  She feathers the stick until the reticle is centered between the monster’s eyes.

  “Got it.”

  “You’re drifting.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t say sorry; stabilize.”

  She pushes the drift button, stabilizing the turret.

  “Good job.”

  “Sarge, if something should happen—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” he says, his eyes glued to optical display. He presses the arming switch for the cannon. “But if you really want to know, I love you.”

  “So we’ll be together no matter what.”

  “No matter what, if you want me,” he grins, adding: “On the way.”

  He depresses the trigger switch and the Bradley’s main gun begins firing.

  “Tell me what you see,” he says.

  The rounds arc up the highway, the path illuminated by tracers. The thing is moving again.

  “Um, lost?” she says, meaning she thinks the rounds are passing over the target.

  “Correction,” he murmurs. “I’m taking over the turret.”

  He corrects the elevation and starts shooting again, leading the lethal fire into the beast using the tracers. Giant cigar-puffs drift lazily away from the rig. The rounds, designed to penetrate Soviet tanks and concrete bunkers, enter the monster’s skull and burst in flashes of light, sending geysers of blood and brain rocketing high into the air.

  The Towering Thing screams shrilly and stumbles, weeping and groaning, until it topples to the ground trailing black smoke, the remains of its head splashing across the lanes and into the median. One of the legs twitches briefly, and then it is still.

  Despite the noise of the Bradley’s engine and systems, they can hear the soldiers in the buses cheering. Sarge’s heart pounds in his chest. These things die just like anything else.

  “Target destroyed,” he says, turning his head to smile at Wendy, who beams back at him.

  “Holy crap, that was exciting,” she says. “I think I’m addicted. And I think I love you, too.”

  “We’re going to get through this,” he tells her, smiling. “We’re going to win.”

  His smile suddenly fades. The truth is a part of him hopes that they never win. The truth is he wants the war to go on and on and on, because he can never return to peace.

  ♦

  The Bradley hums, idling after the shooting stops. Sarge gets on the intercom and tells them they just destroyed one big, ugly monster. Ray glances across the smiling faces and wants to scream at them for being complete morons. They are driving to a place where the big, ugly monsters
will be thick as fleas. They are going there by choice; they are idiots.

  The idea of driving onto that bridge and being greeted by the entire Infected population of Pittsburgh fills him with pure, bowel-evacuating terror. America has become a killing floor and there are things out there that want to eat you. They will eat you while you are still alive and then you will be dead and you will never see the sun again or kiss a girl or laugh at a joke or drink a beer. Ever again. Forever.

  And nobody will give a shit about your famous last words. These days, if you’re lucky, your friends will burn you in a pit. If not, then you’re food.

  Only a crazy lunatic would want to put himself into that situation.

  These motherfuckers are crazy.

  No, he tells himself. You’re the looney. You’re here because you made a promise, which you actually did not literally make, to a lot of dead people, who are, well, dead, to make things normal again, which means asshole cops back being asshole cops, and if it’s one thing you hated from the Time Before almost as much as credit card debt, it’s asshole cops.

  These maniacs don’t know any better, apparently; you do. Which makes you an even bigger fool.

  He swallows hard, fighting the urge to retch.

  Todd leans towards him and says charitably, “It’s going to be okay, man.”

  “Shut up, kid,” he says.

  Just because you’re suicidal does not make you any braver than me, he thinks. In my time, I started fights over anything from noble causes to petty grievances, and more often than not I ended them. I fight to win and I fight dirty. Bravery has nothing to do with this. This is about living and dying. There is nothing in between. You make a choice and that is your choice.

  Cashtown had so many ne’er-do-wells like him that the few upright citizens were hard to tell apart from everybody else unlucky enough to have been born there. Once, the town prospered in steel and timber, but like so many places in America, it fell into ruin due to overseas competition and decades of betrayal of the American worker by big business and the country’s politicians. People passing through left with impressions of rusting, abandoned steel mills, smokestacks and rail yards. Deteriorating housing drenched in American flags. For years, it was just one town in a depressed region where people lived check to check with as much pride as they could muster.