The Infection ti-1

by Craig DiLouie

  Paul jumps off, pounds the side of the truck to signal the driver that he can go, and waves. The hand waves back and the truck continues down the road.

  Free of the truck’s exhaust, the camp’s ever-present smells of cooking, wood smoke and sewage return with a vengeance.

  He breathes deep, figuring he might as well start getting used to it.

  The doors are open and he walks in eager to do something.

  Moments later, he finds himself staring down the barrel of an M16 rifle.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Father?”

  Paul frowns. “It’s Reverend, not Father, and I’m going to the place where I’ve been assigned by the authorities to live and work.”

  “Let’s see your papers.”

  The soldier studies his work papers while the rest of his squad glances at him curiously and then returns to their business. Paul ignores them and takes a look around. The church is filled with children sitting on every kind of chair in front of every kind of table—folding chairs, armchairs, office chairs, deckchairs, ottomans, benches, dining room tables, ping pong tables, nightstands, coffee tables, end tables, drawing tables and poker tables. The pews are gone, probably hacked up for firewood. A long line of sunburned kids holding bowls, spoons and mugs wait their turn to receive stew being ladled out of large vats on the altar in the domed apse, like a scene out of Oliver Twist. Their chatter fills the grand nave, rising up to the vaulted ceiling. They chew in the light of windows beautifully patterned with hand-stained glass.

  “Hi,” a man in clerical garb says, approaching with his hand outstretched. The man is tall and skinny, his shoulders slightly stooped, and wears a neatly trimmed beard. “I’m Pastor Strickland. This is my church.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Paul says, taking his work papers back from the soldier and shaking the man’s hand warmly. “I’m Paul Melvin. These kids are all… ?”

  “That’s right. Orphans of Infection.”

  “So many,” says Paul, staring at them. He has not seen a happy, living child in weeks and seeing so many here, eating good food in a safe place, warms his heart.

  “These kids must be nourished and protected. They are our future. But they’re still wild animals, most of them. Don’t turn your back on them or leave your property unattended.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. But they seem pretty well behaved.”

  “They have an abiding respect for the supernatural,” Strickland says with a smile. “They think if we find the right words, God will end Infection.”

  Paul grunts, pleased. “That’s something I have in common with them. I’ll have to ask them what words they think will work.”

  “I’m sorry, Paul. But you won’t be working here. You’ll be working down the street at the FoodFair handing out rations to the campers. Hard work, most of it, and thankless at that. Is that a problem?”

  Paul shakes his head. He would like to work with the children, but it does not matter. “I just came here to work. I have to wonder, though.”

  “Why do we need somebody like you to do that kind of work?”

  “Something like that,” Paul admits.

  “Ah, well,” says Strickland. “I’ll tell you. On a weekly basis, we hand out enough food to give each camper about twenty-one hundred calories a day. They get wheat, beans, peas, vegetable oil, fortified food such as a corn soya blend, some salt and sugar. If the camp gets its hands on some cattle, we can distribute a little beef, but that’s not all that often. The campers get no spices and most people can’t afford that kind of thing at the markets. Our fare will keep you alive, but it’s monotonous, as you can imagine, and people get mad after a while eating the same thing. Here’s something else. We try to give rations to women only because they are more likely to pass it on to other family members instead of selling it to buy something else. That naturally produces conflicts. Plus there’s the simple fact that we work for the government here, essentially, and a lot of people are resentful.”

  “I saw people throwing rocks at a garbage truck today.”

  “They are less likely to throw them at people in our profession,” Strickland says. “Does that answer your question simply enough? A lot of people have turned away from God because of what has happened, but they haven’t gotten around to blaming us for it yet. Most of the campers see us for what we are: people trying to help.”

  “That’s what I want to do,” Paul tells him. “I want to help.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. This camp needs all the help it can get.”

  ♦

  Wendy enters the police station, a graffiti-covered building crowded with shouting people arguing with powerful, burly men wearing a variety of motley uniforms, from correctional facilities officers to private sector rent-a-cops. The building smells like angry men testing each other, a scent she knows well. She senses an atmosphere of simplicity and brute force here. The walls are plastered with wilting public health notices, camp edicts, duty rosters and poorly rendered carbon copies of missing persons sheets. Two bearded officers shove their way through the crowd, loading shotguns. Dogs sleeping on the floor raise their heads sharply as the men tramp out of the station. A man wearing a steelers cap, handlebar mustache and cashtown fire department T-shirt directs her to where Unit 12 bunks, the cost for this information a degrading moment of sexual appraisal. He does not care why she wants to know; he probably thinks she is somebody’s woman paying a visit. He watches her leave, spitting tobacco juice into a soda can.

  She walks down a corridor that smells like an ashtray. The administrative area has apparently been converted into housing for another unit; off-duty officers pad in and out of the rooms barefoot in their underwear, scratching their bellies as they watch her struggle along with her duffel bag. The hallway is partly blocked by boxes of miscellaneous equipment. She briefly wonders if Sarge is okay, surprised by the sudden sensation of butterflies in her gut. He seemed fine when he left with Mattis, but she is worried about him and wonders when she will see him again.

  The reality of the situation strikes her just before she reaches her quarters. The camp is overcrowded and space is obviously at a premium. People are jammed everywhere, and skilled workers are expected to live in or near their base of operations. Unit 12 bunks in the detention area; she will likely be living in a jail cell. Pondering the irony of it, Wendy enters the space, her foot crunching on an empty beer can, and takes in her new quarters.

  She was right. Eight men occupy the detention area’s processing space and six holding cells. A man snores loudly in a bunk while another sits next to him on the floor wearing a pair of boxer shots and cleaning a rifle. A mustached man smokes a four-smelling cigar while filling a plastic cup from a water cooler. Another has a small Coleman going; she smells coffee brewing, rich and strong, which makes her feel strangely homesick. A gray-haired man stops reading his book and peers at her curiously over his reading glasses, a toothpick clenched in his teeth. Wendy suddenly becomes aware they are all looking at her with their lean, stubbled faces. Good ol’ boys. She returns their gaze coolly, wearing her game face. Her heart is soaring at the opportunity to be a cop again but she suddenly wonders what it is going to cost her.

  “I’m looking for Ray Young,” she says. “The unit sergeant.”

  “And you would be?” the man with the book says.

  “Officer Wendy Saslove, reporting to the unit.”

  The man glances at the others briefly before chuckling.

  “How about that,” he says, chewing on his toothpick.

  “Christ, Jonesy, I could have sworn she was one of yours,” a voice behind her says.

  Wendy instantly recognizes the mildly sardonic tone. She turns and sees the man with the steelers cap filling the doorway, smiling and holding his soda can.

  “I’m, uh, working on that, Ray,” the young man called Jonesy says, licking his hand and straightening his hair.

  Ray spits into the can and says, “Well, Officer Saslove, I guess that
’s your room right there.” He nods, gesturing to one of the holding cells.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Wendy picks up her bag and takes it to the cell. The toilet is dry as bone and the sink has been removed. Instead, she has a washing bucket with a sponge and fresh bar of soap and a shit bucket with a bag of lime and roll of TP. The bunk looks serviceable enough and will actually rate as four-star comfort after sleeping on the ground for the past two weeks. The walls are plastered with photo spreads of big-chested blondes from porn magazines; those will obviously have to go. The main problem will be privacy in this male zoo. She rolls out her sleeping bag on the bed and then opens her duffel bag, noticing for the first time the name Devereaux written on it in black marker.

  After a few moments, Wendy becomes aware that the sergeant followed her and is standing in the doorway to the cell. The others watch closely, wearing half-smiles.

  “Officer Saslove, if I may,” he says. “It’s not that I mind having a pretty face like yours hanging around, but I look at you and I wonder: What are you doing in my unit playing cop?”

  She ignores him, pinning her badge to her belt. Ray squints at it and adds, “So what were you, then, a meter maid?”

  One of the other cops walks up to the cell and leans against the bars, peering in with a smile.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” Ray says, crumpling the soda can in his hand. The room tenses and Wendy with it. She will eat the sergeant’s shit; she is the rookie here, so she expects some unit hazing. But if any of them touches her, if that’s how things work in this shithole, she is going to break bones.

  In preparation, she takes out her Batman belt and puts it on, her body electrified by the comforting weight of the Glock on her hip. She almost smiles. She pulls her side-handled baton out of the bag next and slides it into place, flashing back to its last use back at the hospital.

  “Where’d you get that gear, Saslove?”

  “From the Pittsburgh Police Department,” she tells him.

  He glowers at her, his face reddening. “Is that so? How did you get it, exactly?”

  “It’s standard issue, Sergeant. I worked patrol for nearly a year.”

  “You’d better be telling me the truth, so help me. Are you shitting me?”

  Wendy stares back at him, saying nothing.

  He takes a step forward and she places her hand on the handle of her baton, already planning where she is going to hit him and how hard.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ray says gently, with something like awe.

  The other cops gather around behind Ray. “Pittsburgh,” they whisper among themselves, almost chanting the word. “She’s a cop.” One of them reaches and touches her shoulder lightly, making her flinch, while another holds out a warm can of beer with a friendly wink.

  “Welcome, Officer Saslove,” Ray says, his eyes big and watery. “And God bless you.”

  ♦

  The open air market is set up at the site of the old Cashtown Flea Market on the outskirts of town, and serves as the closest thing to a mall the camp’s residents can get. Now situated in the middle of a vast shantytown, the market’s boundaries are roughly marked on the west by Christmas lights and light bulbs hanging from wires strung between poles, and on the east by one of FEMAville’s many foul canals. These canals were once part of a Medieval-style defense system of staked trenches dug around the old town by the original refugees to stop the Infected, but were slowly absorbed by growth, the stakes removed and burned for firewood, the pits filled with rainwater. Wood planks form bridges over the rank canals, now filled with sewage and garbage and even a few bodies, some always burning, day and night. Solar landscape lights thrust into the dirt mark its edges to ensure night travelers do not fall in. The canals are deadly; if the fall into the toxic sludge itself does not kill you, any number of diseases will.

  Todd wanders awkwardly among the crowds of people browsing the wares stacked on the tabletops, as if testing his legs on the deck of a ship. He is not used to crowds. Especially crowds where almost everybody is carrying a gun, axe, hammer, bat or other weapon. The people here are angry and desperate and stink of fear. He feels exposed, vulnerable, a little disoriented with something like vertigo—that weird sense that everybody knows each other and is aware of you and that you do not belong. It’s high school all over again.

  Come on, Todd old man, he tells himself. Nobody here gives a crap about you. They have their own problems. Boy, do they ever.

  The vendors near him are shouting out products and prices while others are being haggled by customers or chasing away children and beggars. The products include batteries, candles, matches, condoms, cigarettes, hand lotion, knives, sewing thread, spices, seasoned firewood and boxes of useless electronics. Commodities, rarities and plenty of junk. The prices are based on whatever the seller wants—dollars, gold, services in kind, barter—and the market appears to be thriving. Like the earth, capitalism abides. Barter appears to be most popular form of exchange; one merchant is selling playing cards and board games and dice but is only accepting cigarettes as payment.

  Nearby, a line of people wait their turn to get into one of a battery of portable toilets. They erupt into spontaneous applause as a truck drags an emergency generator down the road. Electricity means progress. Two men in orange jumpsuits pull the bottom section out of one of the portable toilets, where the waste reservoir is located, mount it on a wheeled cart, and push it up a ramp onto the back of a wagon drawn by a horse.

  More than anything, the people here want and need electricity, Todd realizes. That and plumbing. In the shanties where he lives, he saw people everywhere using car batteries, sometimes wrapped together in banks, to power DC devices and AC devices using adapters. One enterprising mechanic has two cars wired together with jumpers and juices up failing batteries as a service. As for water, the only option is to wait hours in line at a government water tank.

  Todd walks among the booths, taking notes of merchants and what they buy and sell. Water purifiers, baby supplies, vitamins, tampons, propane, clothespins and lines, toilet paper, garden seeds, weapons and ammo. Sugar, porn mags, chocolate, duct tape, bug spray, soy sauce, bikes, scissors, coffee and tea, candles, jeans, matches, shaving kits, candy, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, manual can openers, laundry detergent. Little bits of comfort and convenience and civilization. Pieces of an America that has fallen down, most of them garbage. Products from other countries that no longer exist. Consumable relics of a past age.

  Todd has a lot of DC-powered appliances from the truck stop store that could make life much easier for at least a few people here. They are heavy, though, and liable to break. He wants to dump them in exchange for a different product. The most successful merchants, he notices, specialize in a particular item that everybody needs. The item should be small and lightweight to be easily portable. Something like cigarettes would be ideal but then he would need to be constantly on guard against addicts. Sugar and coffee would be ideal but the sellers are dealing them in plastic baggies, creating a risk of spoilage due to water or infestation. Garden seeds should be a popular item right now but he does not understand gardening.

  Something like candles, on the other hand, would be perfect.

  “So what are you supposed to be?”

  He turns and blinks in surprise as he realizes the girl is talking to him. Time slows as their eyes connect. His heart takes a sudden flying leap. She is a petite fiery thing, her skin white as a sheet, with long, curly red hair that rages about her head like a lion’s mane. She looks about fifteen or sixteen, which is his own age. She has a sly mouth and a button nose and laughs easily, her blue eyes sparkling, betraying an appealing brand of feminine insanity.

  “I’m Todd,” he says instantly.

  “I’m Erin,” she says. “I asked you what you’re doing.”

  “I’m going to be a merchant,” he tells her. “I have some stuff I’d like to sell.”

  “Really? You should definitely hire me, then.”
r />   Todd laughs. “And why should I do that?”

  “You’re new. I can show you how things work around here so you don’t get conned.”

  He stops laughing. “How do you know I’m new here?”

  Erin flashes him a glance that tells him she thinks it is obvious. “Do you know about the gangs? They will try to collect a tax from you.”

  “How much should I give them?”

  “Nothing, you dodo bird,” she says. “It’s just a con. If the sellers paid every gang, there would be no market. They can’t really do anything to you. The sellers look out for each other, and everybody here is armed to the teeth. Now aren’t you glad I told you that?”

  “Yeah,” he admits.

  “You need somebody,” she points out. “Every day you have to collect water and firewood and cook your food. Once a week you pick up your rations and they let you take a shower. That doesn’t leave much time to be a seller. All these sellers have somebody helping them out.”

  He has to agree she makes a good argument.

  “You could do all that for me?” he asks her.

  She shrugs. “I’m doing it anyway for me. Might as well try to get paid.”

  “And what do you want in return?”

  Erin smiles as she leans in close, making his heart pound.

  “I want in on the action,” she whispers close to his ear.

  ♦

  The school gym is hot and crowded and noisy. The tired volunteers and professional bureaucrats manning the tables feverishly write and type information that nobody will read and hand out poorly mimeographed information that few will actually use. The main thing people seem to come here for is decisions, but they appear to be in short supply. After days of working the system to try to find his family, Ethan is beginning to see the processing center as a flea market for dying government. One big going-out-of-business sale. Waiting for his number to be called again by the records people, he wanders among the tables, finally pausing in front of a clean-cut young man under a U.S. flag and a sign that says ASK ME ABOUT RESETTLEMENT.