The Infection ti-1 Read online

  We were lucky, Carol, he thinks, his brain soggy with alcohol. We were stupid.

  He takes another long sip of wine. It is a ridiculously expensive vintage but he has put down so much already that his taste buds right now could not tell the difference between a fine Bordeaux and Mad Dog.

  Ethan takes out his backpack and carefully places a series of artifacts on the bed. A hairbrush with his wife’s hair still tangled in it, which no longer smells like her. A yellow rubber airplane, a promotion from an airline during a family vacation to Florida. Plastic piggy: Mary picked it up while playing in a park and would not part with it. Grimy little teddy bear that squeaks when squeezed; Mary used to make it talk back to her in a falsetto voice during pretend conversations. A hairclip. A card his wife gave him to express how glad she was that he had not been taken from her by the Screaming. Ethan knows the words, written in her fine handwriting, by heart. A wood spirit carving, the face of a bearded old man. A little blue Buddha on a keychain: Carol frequently toured spirituality but could not commit to religion. A photo of her from before Mary was born. Another of them smiling at their wedding, hastily ripped out of its frame before he fled the house. Several wallet photos of Mary when she turned one. The edges are worn from constant handling.

  He has dozens of other photos but they are all on his computer at his house. He wants to think that he can go back there one day and get them. That someday the Infected are all going to drop dead or some scientist will invent a cure, and he can go home.

  ♦

  Sarge returns to consciousness with an intense sensation of butterflies in his heart. The beautiful cop is pulling away. He gazes after her sadly, wondering if he did something wrong.

  But she says, “Will you hold me?”

  “Yes,” he says, surprised at how relieved he feels that she is not leaving.

  “Just hold me for a minute?”

  “I would like that.”

  Wendy guides him gently to the bed and pushes him down. She curls up next to him. They lie together on their sides, spooning, his large arm wrapped protectively around her stomach.

  “This is nice,” she purrs. “Jesus, I feel really safe right here. Oh, fucking yes.”

  Sarge feels the warmth of her body against his. He smells her hair. The sensations are intoxicating; he has not been with a woman since before his deployment to Afghanistan. A long time. He wonders if he can touch her in other places, but does not move. He is afraid of spoiling the moment.

  “Do you mind if I sleep here tonight?”

  “You can sleep here,” he tells her.

  “Sarge?”

  He frowns at her tone. The moment was spoiled after all. A part of him expected this all along. She is going to ask him why he prefers Anne as leader. He does not want to have to explain the deal he made.

  Instead, she says, “Do you think we have a responsibility to other people anymore?”

  He blinks in surprise.”What do you mean?”

  “You’re a soldier. I’m a cop. We swore an oath. We have our duty.”

  Sarge thinks of Ducky, willing to risk everything to find friendly forces.

  “We do,” he agrees.

  “What if this is really a safe place? Are we allowed to stay here and be happy? Or are we obligated to find others like us and see what we can do to help?”

  “I don’t know, Wendy,” he says. “I honestly do not know.”

  He wants to kiss her again, but she has already fallen asleep in his arms. She is a different person in sleep, so beautiful and innocent it makes his heart ache. His arm is already hurting from the weight of her body but he does not care.

  She moans briefly in her sleep, wincing. Her cheeks are wet with tears.

  “I’ll protect you,” he whispers.

  ♦

  Paul stands in the dark on the roof facing north, gazing into more darkness. The fluorescent lighting had begun to make him feel nervous and exposed. It, or the wine over which he had silently mouthed the Sacrament almost without thinking, was starting to give him a headache. He believes he understands why Anne left. He felt a similar yearning to go out into the night. The dark can be a safe place. In the dark, nobody can see you. Sanctuary is what we all wanted, he tells himself, and now we fear it. We fear its illusion of safety and choice.

  He lights another cigarette, careful to conceal the flame of his lighter. He coughs on a cloud of smoke. His throat feels scratchy and raw. He is already planning his next cigarette. He has a fresh pack making a comfortable bulge in the pocket of his jacket. He finds renewing his old habit good for the nerves. A habit is reliable. Right now, lung cancer is the least of his worries.

  He thinks about the first man he killed. A woman, actually, in the beverage aisle of Trader Joe’s market. The woman came running and the shotgun, held in his shaking hands, suddenly seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He barely remembers firing it—by that point, his heart rate was skyrocketing and his vision had shrunk down to the size of a small circle. He couldn’t control his hands. The roar of the gun startled him and he flew back against the empty shelving; then he ran screaming for help. When he returned with the other survivors, he found the woman lying on the ground, her head splashed down the aisle, stone dead. His legs gave out and he cried. Over time, he has gotten better at killing, but he still regrets every one.

  The only man he actually wishes he had ever killed was that first Infected who came running at him out of the darkness in the alley behind his house. When he tries to sleep at night, that hateful face lunges out of the dark, flooding his system with adrenaline. He has killed a dozen Infected, wounded perhaps twice that, but that one man still terrifies him. That one man has become more than a memory; he is a symbol of Infection and the hate and fear it has imposed on his life. If Paul could only go back in time, he would fight and kill the man with his bare hands.

  He sighs and wonders what Sara would think about the new Paul if she were still alive. He takes comfort in the understanding she loved him and would want him to survive no matter what the cost. She would tell him to kill the thing in the alley. She would say: You are my man and I love you more than myself. She would say: Survive, baby. She would say: Kill them all.

  He cannot remember what happened to her. He remembers the grisly slaughter at the church, and the mob, and the battle with the Infected. The next thing he knew, he was huddled in a corner in a temporary shelter set up by the government. He cannot remember anything else but wants to know what happened. Sara is Infected: Knowing will not affect that outcome. But he would like to know. Or rather, he would like to remember.

  The sky is covered with flying clouds that hide the moon. For a few minutes, it is so dark that it is easy to imagine he is in a spaceship hurtling lost through the void. Slowly, his vision adjusts to night until he can make out the details of the urban nightscape. He hears muffled gunfire and shouts carried on a fresh breeze. He sees the headlights of a small convoy of vehicles driving far to the west. A bright red line emerges from the darkness in the northeast, like a glowing cut.

  He watches the line grow larger, curving, a glowing red scimitar. Fire. A big fire on the south side of the river. He can already smell the smoke. Around the spreading flames, gunshots and screams. People and Infected alike are in flight. Paul shudders. If the fire keeps going, there will be a bloodbath tonight as thousands are flushed out of hiding onto streets filled with Infected. Many of them will come this way. There are few other directions they can go.

  Already, down at the edge of the parking lot behind the hospital, he can see gray shapes moving in the dark, writhing and pushing against each other like maggots.

  ♦

  Ethan’s head is reeling from the wine and he cannot think straight. He picks up the cell phone, his heart suddenly pounding loudly in his ears, and turns it on. The image tells him that there is no service available in his calling area, another reminder that the entire power grid is down. Cellular networks use radio base stations and networks enabling voice calls and
text and connection to the wider telephone network. All of these systems use power, and there is no power because the people who run the power plants, provide fuel to the power plants, and maintain the power distribution system are all dead or Infected or hiding. He feels a crushing headache coming on.

  During his family’s last vacation together, they joined a group helping baby turtles make it to the sea. The female turtles leave the sea to dig a hole, lay up to two hundred eggs in it, and refill it with sand, the same as they have been doing for millions of years. After the turtles hatch, instinct draws them to the sea. As they emerge from the sand, predators, lying in wait, devour them. Most die; few survive. Only one in a thousand survive the journey. It is a heart wrenching thing to watch but there is no morality here, no overarching narrative, not even a guarantee that just one would make it. There is only life and death and survival of the fittest. This is nature. As Paul would say, the earth abides. The earth is blind to suffering and justice and happy endings.

  A part of him believes his family is alive. He pictures Mary, hiding alone in a closet, scared and crying for her mommy and daddy; the image almost physically rips the heart out of his chest. If she is alive, she is a needle in a burning stack of needles. He would not know where to look and he knows that he would not survive five minutes on the streets without the protection of the other survivors and their big fighting vehicle. One in a thousand survive: They are innocent but so few make it and the rest are culled and there is no reason for any of it. He cannot believe his family is dead even though the rational part of his mind knows that this must be true. Ethan understands that he will spend the rest of his life being broken, stuck in the past, unable to say goodbye.

  The lights cut out; the soldiers have turned off the power for the night. He becomes aware that he is on his feet pacing, drinking straight out of the bottle in long, painful gulps, his vision blurry with tears. His organs feel like they are in free fall. Ethan coughs on a mouthful of wine, vaguely aware that his right hand is bleeding and alarmingly swollen and throbbing with pain. My family is dead. It suddenly feels good to scream. What did my little girl think when the Infected beat her to death? He becomes aware of other people in the room. An LED lantern being turned on. He throws the bottle.

  Did she feel any pain?

  Voices cursing.

  Did she wonder where her daddy was?

  Hands on him, pushing him down.

  Was she still alive when they started eating her?

  Voices pleading.

  WHY, WHY, WHY—?

  Ethan lies on the bed screaming, his eyes wide, arching his back against the hands holding him down. His consciousness swims through a haze of guilt and rage, briefly focusing on Anne’s face, hovering overhead, just before he feels a jab in his arm and his vision fades to black.

  FLASHBACK: Todd Paulsen

  The government closed the schools after the Screaming. For Todd Paulsen, this meant the possibility of early summer vacation.

  Four whole months of freedom. No more furtive darting through the crowds in the hallways between classes. No more ritual humiliations during gym class. No more awkward moments trying to secure a seat on the school bus. No more fantasizing about walking into the school with a machine gun and hunting down every jock asshole who ever hurt him. He prayed the school system would stay screwed up until the end of the summer. The Screaming had culled the assholes; graduation would claim most of the rest. Then next year he would be a senior.

  The only thing that kept him sane since entering high school was the Lycans, the wargaming club down at Lycan Hobbies. Most of them were guys attending the local college. He counted them as his only friends. He pretty much worshipped them. They were basically geeks like him, but they were much more self-assured and worldly. In fact, to them, geek was not an insult, something to be ashamed of, but instead a simple, apt and mildly amusing descriptor. They even dated girls and discussed their dating casually, without fanfare. They assured him that high school may feel like prison but college would be better, so be patient. This tantalizing thought had kept him sane all year.

  That, and Sheena X, the high school chick who worked the register at the store and usually sat with her feet up on the counter, chewing gum and reading comic books. Sometimes, she even participated in the gaming on Friday nights. She would typically show up wearing red skinny jeans, Converse All-Stars, and a black T-shirt with screamo or some band name scrawled on it. Often, she wore a matching studded belt and wristband. On colder days, she wore a tight sweater vest. Her hair, dyed black, fell over one eye. She would show up at the store with an obsession of the week. One week, it was getting suicide scars tattooed on her wrists. Another week, making a movie based on the songs of Island Def Jam and Joy Division and Garbage. For the next three weeks, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp. Todd usually communicated with her in an overexcited, virtually shouted stream of consciousness, but instead of rolling her eyes at him and mouthing freak, Sheena X simply stared and nodded sagely.

  They accepted him, more or less, as he was. They were his port in the unending storm that was his adolescence.

  The club played several tabletop miniature wargames but usually Warhammer 40,000, set in a space fantasy universe where the Imperium of Man, far flung across the Milky Way galaxy, was in constant conflict with powerful alien species. For many teenagers, music and fashion were their outlets. For Todd, it was gaming. He had painstakingly collected and painted a company of a hundred Space Marines, war machines and bosses, allowing him to participate in smaller games as well as big games, three thousand points and up, that played out over days. The Lycans had just gotten a new codex for urban warfare and had been trying it out with a game between Space Marines and massive swarms of Tyranids. The table presented the ruins of an ancient city in the middle. The Space Marines’ mission was to secure the city within several turns and set up a defense in time for a massive Tyranid counterattack. Todd and Alan had just taken the city before the Screaming, and now that school was canceled, he was itching to get back to the game. Alan had fallen down but his opponents were okay, and so the game could continue.

  Lycan Hobbies, however, remained closed three days after the Screaming. Finally, in a state of panic, Todd called Sheena X at home. She explained to him that the owner’s wife had fallen down, and that he was out of his wits trying to find his brother, who was missing.

  “Wow,” said Todd. “So do you know when he’s going to open the store again?”

  “I don’t know, dude. What are you doing up this early? You’re never up this early.”

  “Sirens woke me up. It’s like non-stop sirens out there. Some kind of fire or something.”

  “I can hear them here, too.”

  Fires were a common occurrence since the Screaming. A lot of heating devices—ovens, irons and so on—were left on when the screamers fell down. Natural gas systems were not being properly maintained. Power lines were still falling.

  “So anyway, do you think he would just let us in so we could finish up our game?”

  “Todd, what the fuck?”

  He launched into a recap of the first night’s gaming. She had not been there that night. Surely, if she knew how great it was, she would understand his impatience at continuing the contest. He’d had a simple strategy, he said. He and Alan had sent armor—two Venerable Dreadnoughts with plasma and auto cannons, flanked by Land Speeders armed with missile launchers and heavy bolters—pushing hard through the city, securing it. When the infantry caught up, he sent about half to mop up the remaining resistance and the other half to establish a defensive perimeter in a horseshoe shape. Then the Tyranid counterattack suddenly appeared, a real party made up of Tyrannofex, Termagants, Tervigons and Hive Guard led by a Swarmlord with three Tyrant Guard—

  “Enough, Todd,” Sheena said tersely.

  He felt his stomach fall into his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said tentatively, his mind racing to figure out what he had done wrong.

  “I don’t give a sh
it about Warhammer right now. My dad fell down, Todd.”

  “Now he won’t bug you anymore,” he offered.

  “I know I don’t like my dad very much,” Sheena X said, her voice strained. “I know he can be a real asshole when he wants to be. But I didn’t want this to happen to him. I didn’t want him to go into a fucking coma. I didn’t want half his foot to get chopped off by the fucking lawnmower he was pushing when he fell down.” Her voice became shrill. “Okay?”

  “Okay, Sheena,” he said, feeling chastened and more than a little shocked by her language. “I get it. You know, my mom fell down, too.”

  “I know, Todd. Maybe you should be thinking about her instead of that stupid game.”

  He recoiled, his face burning with embarrassment while anger flared in his chest. She had made him feel childish for enjoying Warhammer 40,000 when he had always understood that it was a game that adults played. It was not stupid. And his mom was fine. Dad had put her in a special facility where she was getting around-the-clock care. He also tried to get Todd to see a therapist, but luckily they were all booked up with new patients after the Screaming—indefinitely, it seemed. Why would he need a therapist anyhow? He was at home lying on the living room couch sick when the Screaming happened, fast asleep; he had missed the entire thing and had to see it on TV later. Half the school’s bullies were in a catatonic state and the school itself had been closed. His mom was sick like the other screamers but he knew that she would be okay. They would all be okay. He had tremendous faith in the government’s ability to solve problems like this. A cure was coming.