The Infection

by Craig DiLouie

  “What in the hell is that?” Ray says.

  “We don’t know,” Paul tells him.

  “But you’ve met.”

  “Yeah, we’ve met. We call it the Demon.”

  For several moments, nothing happens. Thick clouds of smoke hover at the end of the bridge in a thick haze, concealing the buses and the Infected. The Infected have stopped coming for the moment. Then the monster screams again, rending the air with its pain and drawing the smoke clouds into strange swirling patterns.

  Todd catches a glimpse of a massive horned thing. Then it emerges, a thickly muscled mass of armor and spikes and giant horns instead of eyes set almost directly over its wide chomping mouth. Enormous membranous wings. Todd can feel each of its steps sending a tiny vibration up his spine. The thing is so ugly and terrifying that his eyes glance off of it.

  The Bradley’s cannon begins firing. The Demon shudders, stumbling under the blows, but does not appear harmed. It screams, blanking out Todd’s mind for a moment, literally eliminating his memory of the last few seconds, and advances. The smoke follows it in swirling patterns, clinging to its limbs.

  The engineers have removed the array of charges from the Bradley’s path and Patterson is shouting into his mike. The rig jolts forward. Todd reads boom stick on the side of its turret as it roars full speed towards the Demon, its cannon pounding.

  “What are they doing?” Todd demands, running after the Bradley and waving his arms. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Paul grips his arm and pulls him back. “Let them go, Todd.”

  “No! They’ll be on the wrong side of the bridge when it goes up!”

  The Bradley disappears into the clouds of smoke swirling at the end of the bridge. The thick haze lights up with flashes of cannon fire, the reports echoing back as booming thunder. Then it is gone. The engineers are already returning the charges to the road.

  “No!” Todd screams. “No!”

  Waves of Infected pour out of the smoke, squealing and howling.

  “They had no choice,” Paul shouts into his ear. “Patterson’s not ready and we don’t know what that thing can do to us. We’ve got to finish this, boy!”

  One of the behemoths lumbers towards them, groaning under the MG fire, then roars and gallops forward blindly with a sudden, heart-stopping burst of speed until crashing through the rail and falling into the river below.

  Ray appears at their side, shooting.

  “Fire your fucking guns!” he cries, emptying his rifle into the swarm.

  The Towering Things step ponderously among the Infected, their giant faces grinning.

  “Shaw chonk?”

  “Roomy lactate.”

  “Shaw chonk mute chonk.”

  “Fire in the hole!”

  Trailing a line of smoke, an AT4 rocket streams from the Guard unit, scoring a hit on one of the Towering Things. The top of its head suddenly erupts in a geyser of blood and brains.

  “Holy shit,” Todd says in amazement.

  He drains his magazine, reloads, fires again.

  Hoppers drop down from the cables onto one of the MG teams.

  “They’re above us again,” Ethan yells into the noise, firing into the air.

  “Got it,” Todd says, adjusting his aim to shoot at the things clambering up the cables. Moments later, two of the creatures fall to the ground with a wet, meaty sound.

  The soldiers are screaming and shooting their rifles as the Hoppers leap into their midst, fangs bared and stingers erect. Ethan sees more climbing the cables.

  Ray tugs on Paul’s arm. “We got to fall back or we’re screwed.”

  “You go, Ray. I’m not moving until this bridge is down.”

  “You may already be dead, Preacher, but I’m not.”

  “You will be if we don’t blow this thing, understand? We all will!”

  Todd glances behind them and sees the engineers running after the retreating five-ton trucks, joined by some of the soldiers. Patterson is backing away slowly at a safe distance, uncoiling wire. He waves at them. The charges are in place, tamped, primed and ready to explode.

  Hackett blows his whistle, calling the retreat. It’s time to blow the bridge.

  Another AT4 missile zooms down the span, detonating on the far side. A score of Infected disintegrate in the blast, raining blood and flesh on the rest. A severed arm comes to a skidding halt at the survivors’ feet.

  “Now can we go?” Ray asks.

  The survivors turn and sprint after Patterson, who is already splicing the firing wire to the blasting machine rapidly with expert fingers.

  Several engineers are waving at them.

  “Fire in the hole!” they shout.

  “Get down, get down!”

  Ray tackles Todd to the ground as the blasting machine sends an electric pulse through the firing wire and each of the electric blasting caps wired in series in the TNT.

  The blasting caps explode, detonating nearly a ton of dynamite in the far right lanes.

  The bridge erupts behind them with a cataclysmic peal of thunder. The bodies of the survivors leave the ground as the shockwave hiccups through the bridge. The massive jolt tears the cables, sending them flying through the air like the metal tentacles of a colossal beast, causing one of the towers to shift and slump. The sky goes dark overhead as a massive wave of dust billows over them. Then another section of TNT erupts, sending a second shock wave through the bridge. The ground bucks under them again, and for a moment if feels as if they are all falling into the water.

  After the third explosion, the bridge falls silent. Todd raises his head and looks behind him, coughing on dust. The world is dark and filled with swirling particles and he cannot see five feet in any direction. His ears ring loudly. Through it, he can hear the tramp of thousands of feet, sense monstrous shapes moving through the clouds of dust, searching for them. The Demon screams, the sound vibrating through the concrete deck. The Bradley’s cannon booms in response.

  “We did it,” he rasps.

  “Almost,” Ethan says. “That was the stripping charge. Now we have to go back and finish it.”

  ♦

  The Demon punches the Bradley with a crash that reverberates through the hull and the bodies of the crew. The thing is constantly circling the vehicle one step ahead of the turret. Wendy presses the fast turret switch, increasing the speed of its response, and wrenches the joystick, suddenly bringing the monster’s body into view. As the reticle passes over the Demon’s spiky flank, Sarge fires the cannon point blank with armor-piercing rounds. The monster stomps away with a series of deep booms, roaring in pain. They catch a glimpse of its tail terminating in a spiked ball, then it is gone. Moments later, they hear the Infected pounding everywhere on the hull, trying to get in. The LO AMMO indicator light pops on and begins flashing. Sarge overrides the system, but has no target.

  “Where is it?” Wendy cries. “We almost had it!”

  boom boom boom boom boom boom

  The Demon is rushing them from the right on stomping feet. Wendy yanks on the stick, pulling the turret as fast as it will go. The monster roars and punches the hull and she blacks out for a moment, seeing stars. When she comes to, she cannot remember why she is here.

  “I have no shot!” Sarge tells her. “Move the turret!”

  She frowns at him. Why is he yelling at her? Suddenly, she remembers. She pulls on the stick. Sarge fires again and curses. The sear indicator light is blinking.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  “Misfire!”

  Sarge presses the misfire button, returning the 25-mm gun bolt to the cocked position, but the sear light continues to blink.

  “It’s still jammed,” he says, staring at the instruments in helpless rage.

  “What now?”

  “Now . . .”

  boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

  “Look out!”

  BOOM

  The next punch makes her vomit against the instrument panel.

 
; “Sorry,” she moans, wiping her mouth and wagging her head to fight the continuing nausea.

  “What?” Sarge says. “What’s going on?”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Where’s Randy?” he says, laughing.

  “Sarge, knock it off!”

  She shoves at him twice, hard. The Bradley commander stares at her blankly, then shakes his head to clear it. He presses a button and another light pops on. Wendy recognizes it. Sarge is dropping all of their smoke grenades at once.

  “Steve,” he says into the intercom. “Reverse! Steve! Back the hell up!”

  Wilco, Sarge.

  The rig jolts backward on screeching treads as the Demon stumbles through the thick white smoke, screaming, looking for them.

  “We still got the TOW,” Sarge says.

  The monster emerges from the smoke, its head bobbing as if smelling the air, and then roars and charges them.

  “Fire it now!” Wendy screams.

  “We can’t,” he tells her.

  They hear a series of thuds from behind as the Bradley slams into the Infected during its retreat.

  The Launcher UP and TOW indicator lights are on. The TOW launcher is deployed and ready to fire missiles from its firing tubes. The MISSILE TUBE 1 indicator light is on, indicating its missile is ready to be fired.

  “It takes sixty-five meters to arm,” Sarge explains. “We need distance.”

  “Go, Steve, go,” Wendy says, virtually praying to the driver to go faster.

  The Demon gallops at them, its enormous wings outstretched and flapping, dissipating the smoke in seconds and fully revealing its monstrous form. Suddenly, it stops, jerking its head back to lick the bleeding wounds on its flank.

  Sarge presses the arming switch for the TOW.

  “Put the reticle center mass on that abomination and keep it there.”

  The monster rolls lithely back to its feet and resumes its chase.

  “Come on, come on,” Sarge adds, sweating.

  “We need more distance.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we do.”

  Wendy looks over her shoulder but there is no back window, no rear view mirror. Somewhere, behind them, Patterson blew two cratered trenches into the bridge, each more than two meters deep. She is not sure the Bradley will be able to drive over them. If the rig falls into one, she is not sure they will be able to get it back out.

  The thought fills her with claustrophobic panic.

  “Um, Sarge?”

  “On the way,” he says, and presses the firing switch on the gunner’s right control handle.

  The TOW missile flies down the bridge and strikes the Demon in the chest in a fraction of a second, detonating in a burst of light.

  “Target!” Wendy shouts, laughing and crying.

  Cowabunga! Steve says.

  The MISSILE TUBE 1 light is flashing. Immediately, the TOW system indicator lights burst across the board: TRCKR, CGE, PWR SUP. The TOW system is failing across the board.

  The monster lies on the bridge keening and thrashing in a widening lake of thick black blood, one of its wings broken and flapping, one of its arms dangling by a few ropes of cartilage.

  “I think we killed it,” Sarge says, blowing air out of his cheeks.

  “Thank God,” Wendy says. “What now?”

  Swarms of Infected pour around the dying demon, racing towards the Bradley.

  Sarge selects the coax machine gun, arms it and puts his finger over the firing switch.

  “Now we hold them off here as long as we can,” Sarge tells her, adding, “On the way.”

  ♦

  The soldiers gather around Patterson and Hackett, filthy, their faces drawn and tired, their eyes wild, their hair and uniforms plastered with sweat and coated with white dust. Several wince and massage body parts where they have been stung and are even now gestating another generation of monsters.

  “It’s just us now,” Hackett says. He reaches into his kit, pulls out the can of orange spray paint, and throws it over the side.

  The survivors gather at the edge of the crowd, looking in. Paul coughs on the dust, feeling a hundred years old, tired in his bones. He removes a wilted-looking cigarette from his battered pack of Winstons and lights up, sighing.

  Hackett spits on the ground and glares at the lieutenant. “LT, I need an honest-to-God, no-shit assessment on what it’s going to take to finish this.”

  “I need thirty minutes up there to lay the second round of charges,” Patterson says.

  Hackett nods slowly, apparently weighing fight or flight.

  “They’re coming, Sergeant,” one of the soldiers says.

  “Sergeant, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to say,” another tells him.

  “Me, too,” says one of the engineers.

  All of the men who have been stung want to stay and do their duty. They have literally nothing else to live for. They know that within several hours, they will be dead.

  They want to die for something.

  “We still got the Bradley up there,” one of them says. “I can hear it shooting.”

  “And the MG,” another offers.

  “I still got a few rounds left for the AT4.”

  Paul blinks, realizing that most of the men here have been infected. They are dying. For them, the search for the meaning of life is over. Now they want to find meaning in death.

  “We also don’t have a lot of bullets left,” Ray points out. “What are we supposed to kill them with?”

  Hackett ignores him. “Your orders, sir?” he asks Patterson.

  “I want you to get my team to the center of the bridge and hold it for thirty minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hooah,” the soldiers shout with hoarse throats.

  They scramble for one of the five-ton trucks and climb onto the back among the boxes of shaped C4 charges, sitting with their legs dangling over the sides, rifles loaded with safeties off.

  The truck revs its engine and starts down the highway with a burst of exhaust, speeding towards the onrushing horde. Paul stands on the back, leaning over the roof of the cab, blinking as the dust rushes into his face.

  “You may want to start praying again, Ray,” he says. “Say another ‘hail Mary.’”

  “I gave that up,” Ray tells him. “I think you were right.”

  “What about?”

  “God’s on their side, Preacher.”

  “Something’s working,” Paul says, smiling grimly. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  Ray snorts.

  The air fills with the pop of aimed rifle fire as the truck wades into the horde and the soldiers begin clearing the bridge.

  At the center, Hackett blows his whistle and the soldiers jump down from the truck and charge. “Go, go, go!” he roars.

  The soldiers fan out, covering the MG, giving it time to deploy. Moments later, the air fills with its staccato bark. A rocket streams into the open mouth of one of the Towering Things, exploding inside the massive head, smoke pouring from its eyes and mouth as it topples to the ground. The dust is settling and they see the Bradley among hills of dead and dying Infected, its coax machine gun still chattering, sending waves of Infected toppling to the ground.

  The engineers drop ladders into the trenches and begin placing the charges, Patterson priming them with blasting caps connected by firing wire unreeled from a cardboard spool. The soldiers hurdle the trenches and deploy in a firing line, occasionally shooting but letting the machine guns do the hard work for now.

  The minutes tick by.

  The Bradley suddenly stops firing.

  ♦

  The vehicle is either suffering another malfunction or, more likely, is simply out of ammo. The endless horde surges around it, rushing towards the soldiers. Tentacled titans and towering froglike things and hopping monkeys and squat crablike creatures with enormous clacking scissor hands mingle with the Infected—thousands of them, needy, wanting, hungry.

  Hack
ett roars an order. The soldiers stand and fire in a volley that sends the front ranks of the Infected crashing to the ground in a lake of blood.

  “Reloading!” the MG crew calls out.

  “Pour it on, boys, and make it hot!” Hackett roars, his M16 popping.

  Tracers stream through the smoky haze in a pounding roar of gunfire. Todd aims center mass at a woman running at him and fires a burst, knocking her over. He spares a quick glance down the line and sees fewer than twenty tired men screaming like maniacs and firing rifles. Beyond, at the edge of the bridge, the MG team feverishly reloads its gun.

  He aims at a man running at him in hospital scrubs and fires again. His vision shakes; the man falls. Nearby, Ray shoots on full auto, the rifle spitting empty shell casings and puffs of smoke, while screaming every obscenity he knows. The rifle suddenly jams. He throws it away, still roaring his endless string of profanity, and yanks two handguns out of their holsters, emptying them at the horde that is now less than twenty yards away and coming fast.

  The Hoppers leap into the air with hisses, landing on several of the soldiers and sending them toppling back into the trench. A tongue lashes down, wrapping around the machine gunner and yanking him roughly into the air to land in a salivating mouth.

  The Infected are dropping like flies while the rest close the remaining distance and surge against the firing line with a general howl.

  Their horrible sour milk stench fills Todd’s nostrils moments before he feels himself shoved roughly to the ground. Shoes and bloody bare feet slam into his body. He glances up and sees the hateful faces of the Infected glaring down at him, shrieking.

  It’s not fair, he tells himself, gasping at the lancing pain. He wishes he had never come on this mission. He wishes had had stayed. It’s not fair. It’s so stupid.

  He curls up into a ball, covering his head with his arms. The Infected scream down at him.