The Infection ti-1 Page 27

  She screams again. And again. But the man is gone.

  ♦

  The crowd of thousands pours down the road past the food distribution center, singing hymns and waving poorly made signs announcing GOD IS STILL WITH US and LUKE 21:11. Paul grinds out his cigarette and joins their ranks. His mind flashes to the suburban mob marching down the road back in Pittsburgh, thronged together with their weapons and shouting their slogans to make themselves feel stronger. Air Force jets roared overhead in a sky filled with black smoke, dropping bombs on distant targets. He remembers how he spoke to them: He blessed them just before the Infected attacked. He told them their war was just.

  They march by the camp’s feeding center and the pest house and a swing set displaying flags for various government agencies and services housed inside a small red brick building that used to be the town post office. The refugees pause in their daily routines, watching the marchers stream by singing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Some of them excitedly join the march while others laugh or shout at them to go make noise and stir up the dust somewhere else. Soldiers squint at the marchers, fingering their weapons and glancing at their sergeants.

  God is not very popular these days, Paul realizes. These people here are the hardcore Christians. The true believers. Their faith astonishes him. It makes him feel a bit ashamed. And yet he cannot help but see them as a woman who defends the alcoholic husband who beats her regularly, making excuses for what is essentially psychotic behavior.

  “Did you hear?” a man says behind him. “The Marines are in New Jersey.”

  “Who needs ’em?” another man snorts.

  “I heard the Feds are going to try to take our guns away from us after the Army shows up,” a woman says. “We’ll be defenseless.”

  “That’s just a rumor. Just like the Marines landing anywhere is a rumor.”

  “I heard it was Philadelphia, not New Jersey,” somebody cuts in.

  “But what if it’s true? Don’t they understand the Second Amendment saved this country? If it weren’t for the Second Amendment, we’d all be Infected by now. God bless the NRA.”

  Paul hears babies crying, startled at the sound, flashing back to the giant fanged worm slithering out of the gloom, mewing for food. He marvels that even now, children are being born in the camp. No matter what, it seems, life goes on. Perhaps the human race abides, too.

  Near the front of the crowd, a man is shouting into a megaphone. The march is slowing, becoming more congested around several figures standing on the roof of a van in front of the old high school, the nominal seat of government in the camp. Paul continues to push forward, recognizing Pastor Strickland and several other clergy standing behind an overweight man wearing a crew cut, white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and massive sweat stains at the armpits, and a bright yellow tie. Paul has never seen him before but recognizes his voice. The man is a popular talk show host on the AM dial in the Pittsburgh area. McLean. Thomas McLean.

  “We thought we were invincible,” McLean is saying. “We were consumed by money and pleasure and sex. Infection is happening because God is punishing us.”

  The mob roars its approval, drowning him out.

  “They want you to believe we can live without God,” Paul hears him say after the crowd settles down. “Without our faith. They want us to ignore God. But God ain’t ignoring us, folks. No, sir. God is talking to us loud and clear. And do you know what he’s saying?”

  Paul holds his breath, straining to hear, wondering who “they” are.

  “He’s saying we have insulted him, and he’s not going to take it!”

  The crowd roars. Pastor Strickland and the other clergymen behind McLean nod and applaud, smiling grimly.

  “We have insulted him by celebrating the spirit of the Antichrist and we are reaping the whirlwind. Insulted him by allowing feminism to destroy the American family, murder children and promote lesbianism. By allowing homosexuals to destroy marriage and corrupt our children. By corrupting this great nation with our greed, pop culture, liberal universities, public education, separation of church and state, and persecution of Christians.”

  “No,” Paul says. “Not this. Not now.”

  The crowd is growing increasingly angry. He can feel the energy surge through them like a wind. They wave their signs, crying out to McLean to tell them what to do.

  “We must repent for the end is nigh,” McLean says. “I think we can all agree that it’s pretty nigh. But how does one repent? Do you even know what that word means? It means to make yourself righteous. Pure. We must purify ourselves as a nation and forge a new covenant with God.”

  Hundreds of hands are in the air, waving gently like wheat in a breeze.

  “To the atheists, I say, banish them from the camp!”

  “Cast them out,” the people chant.

  “Banish the homosexuals!”

  “Cast them out.”

  “Banish the elitists who look down at you!”

  “This is not right,” Paul says to the faces around him as McLean continues to run down his list. “God does not want this. God does not want us to hate each other.”

  “He wants us to hate sin,” a woman snaps at him.

  “It ain’t a rally until the devil shows up,” a man observes. “Here he is in the flesh.”

  “This is deranged,” Paul pleads. “Infection has deranged us. Can’t you see that?”

  “All I see is a nigger with a death wish,” the man says with a grin.

  “Keep that racist crap to yourself,” another man warns.

  “God is punishing us for our wickedness,” the woman says. “Why is it deranged to think that?”

  McLean is pointing at the processing center and shouting.

  “Those people in there, they tell us how to live, but nobody voted for them! Now they want to silence me for speaking out! They see me as a threat! They can kill me, but they do not understand that the fire has been lit, that the fire is you, and it is spreading, and we will burn the corruption from the body of this great nation, and an even greater nation, a true Christian nation, will rise from the ashes!”

  The crowd surges towards him hungrily. The soldiers guarding the processing center push the people back from the front doors with their rifles, angry and sweating.

  “Tell them to pass the Sodomy Law. Tell them loud. Tell them now. Tell them—”

  A metallic shriek drowns him out. The crowd pushes, compresses, eventually loosens as people scatter at its edges. Down the road, a Bradley armored fighting vehicle approaches at forty miles an hour, raising a massive cloud of dust. A wreath of wildflowers trembles on its metal chest like a necklace. An American flag waves from one of its antennae. McLean points at the vehicle, shouting into the megaphone, but nobody can hear him, coughing and blinded by waves of dust in the air.

  The vehicle flies through the crowd, sending people lunging out of the way into the dirt, and continues on its path.

  Paul grins, watching it pass. It is his Bradley, he’s sure of it, and it can only be Sarge and Steve driving. He ducks out of the mob into one of the narrow alleys between the rows of shacks, intent on following the vehicle. It would be nice to see a friend right now.

  ♦

  The Bradley rolls past the sentries and into the military compound. Squads of soldiers, sweating in their helmets and uniforms, admire it as it passes. The Bradley slows as it turns onto Main Street, whose small retail stores and upper-story apartments now provide barracks, mess and headquarters facilities. The street is filled with soldiers wearing different uniforms, merchants and mercenaries, prostitutes and drug dealers, civilian officials in business suits and olive green five-ton trucks unloading troops and food and ammunition. A long line of soldiers waits patiently in front of a water tanker. Even here, the command structure is confused, with many different Army and National Guard units mixed together, large numbers of raw recruits, and with several different headquarters displaying their loyalty to the United States, State of Ohi
o and/or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One banner hanging from the barracks windows announces simply, praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

  The Bradley slows again and executes an abrupt turn into the service garage. The grease monkeys instantly surround it, hoping something is wrong, itching to work on its engine again. They love the machine. There are so few of them left operating on American soil.

  The hydraulic ramp drops and Sarge emerges, holding Wendy in his arms.

  Smoke drifts in the air, reeking of cordite. On the other side of the garage, a squad of recruits practices firing M16 rifles at paper targets set up in front of a wall of sandbags. The loud firing quickly tapers to respectful silence as they catch sight of the Bradley’s commander carrying the beautiful sleeping woman into his quarters.

  ♦

  Todd enters FEMAville’s military compound, marveling at the barbed wire and chaos, asking around where he can find the man commanding the Bradley.

  They laid in the shack on their backs staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and naked and panting. For the first time in his life, he felt truly accepted. She had seen him naked and he had come inside her and now they were bonded and he would love her until the day he died. His body continued to shudder with the aftershocks of the incredible explosion of pleasure. The shack was filled with her unique musky smell. She lit up the remainder of her joint and chattered about her iPod and Blackberry and Facebook and how she wanted to exist again. Todd nodded, barely listening, studying the curves of her body and feeling strangely envious of her effortless beauty. He was already sad that she would have to leave and he might never have her again. He was suddenly starving. Moments later, she asked him if he wanted to do it again, and immediately went down on him, making him come again in her mouth. After the third time, he passed out.

  When he woke, Erin was gone, and so was his stash of electronics. His capital.

  Suddenly, he had nothing.

  She left him an enigmatic note that read simply, Sorry. You are very cute.

  He thought about his options all morning. He could try to find her and get his stock back or he could forget about it. Confronting her would be problematic. To put it mildly. Todd is terrible at confrontation, plus he believes he might be in love with her. He can feel the agony of wanting to see her again slowly overtake the anger he feels at her robbing him blind.

  Screw this, he told himself. I know a cop. I’ll get her to help me. The cops will get my stuff back, and I’ll forgive Erin and we’ll be together again.

  He knows he will never have her, that he was used. But he cannot stop himself from hoping.

  By the time he reaches the military compound—where he believes he will find Sarge, who in turn will be able to tell him where Wendy is—he has replayed the events of the previous night dozens of time in his mind. He has imagined many conversations they are yet to have. The angry one where he asks her why she used and hurt him, forces her to take a hard look at herself, and makes her cry over her misdeeds. The calm one where he gazes upon her coldly and tells her he forgives her and pities her, and then wishes her a nice life. The happy, highly improbable one where she brings his stuff back and they fall into each other’s arms.

  The steady crackle of gunfire at the perimeter of the camp intensifies, reminding him that his personal problems are insignificant compared to the ever-present threat facing the people here.

  The garage is filled with soldiers sitting on the hard cement floor writing letters, reading books and making coffee on Coleman stoves. Chickens cluck in a series of cages against the far wall, next to neatly stacked cordwood. Todd smells cordite and coffee and chickenshit. The soldiers are being oddly quiet, frequently glancing at the office in the corner where Sarge has made his home. He treads carefully among them, ignoring their hostile stares, still muttering to himself as he knocks on Sarge’s door. No answer. He pounds angrily.

  The door opens and Sarge steps into the entry wearing his camo pants and a T-shirt, glaring at him, his expression instantly softening with recognition.

  “Hey, Kid,” he says. “Good to see you.”

  Todd flushes at hearing his old nickname.

  The soldier thrusts out his hand, and Todd shakes it.

  “You too, Sarge.”

  “What brings you out this way?”

  “I got some bad news. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Come on in, then. I have some bad news, too, Kid.”

  Todd stops in surprise at the sight of Paul and Ethan standing over a cot where Wendy sleeps fitfully, softly moaning.

  ♦

  Wendy wakes up with a massive headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. The small room is filled with men staring at her. Sarge presses a cool, damp cloth against her forehead and looks at her with an odd mixture of love and fear. Paul, Ethan and Todd are here, and so is Ray and all of the cops of Unit 12 except for Jonesy and his dad, their faces lighting up at seeing her awake. Ethan looks like somebody punched his lights out, grinning with a black eye. Somebody is asking her how she is feeling and she struggles to concentrate on the voice. Her mind has been swimming in and out of consciousness and she wants to wake up. She is not even sure she is awake now. If this is a dream, it is a good one; she feels happy having Sarge close and strangely safe being with the other survivors. Odd that she should spend the two worst weeks of her life with this group of people and suddenly feel so bonded to them. They are her people. She remembers how, at the hospital, she began to think of them as a tribe.

  She wonders if she is dying.

  Sarge is asking her if she needs anything. Does she need water?

  After she drinks, she asks them how she got here. Her voice sounds funny and she thinks there might be something wrong with her ear. The men glance at each other, avoiding her eyes. The truth is she remembers nothing. Whatever happened to her was so bad that they cannot bear to say it out loud. Ray sits on an ammo crate next to her bed and tells her that she and Jonesy were attacked. Jonesy has a concussion and is in bad shape. She got banged up pretty good but physically she is fine. Wendy takes this in and wonders why she cannot rise from the cot. She feels oddly feverish. She cannot shake the feeling that she is dying.

  You should see the other guys, Ray says with a grin, nodding with respect. You really did a number on them. We caught two of them. We know who the third guy is and we’ll have him in the bag soon. You don’t worry about them, Wendy. We’ll take care of it. They deserve to die for what they did and we’re going to take care of it.

  Ray places her badge on the pillow next to her head.

  We found this at the scene, he tells her.

  Her head is pounding. She feels confused. Her dreams were filled with nightmares, and now she is wondering if some of them were real.

  Ray asks if she has a problem with them taking care of things the Defiance way.

  Wendy surprises herself by saying clearly, “Do it.”

  She leans over the side of the bed and vomits onto the floor at Sarge’s feet. Moments later, she is plummeting into a nauseating darkness lit briefly only by a few tiny sparks.

  ♦

  The Unit 12 boys, smiling like wolves, leave the room in single file to deliver justice to the men who attacked their people. They nod to Ray, who is staying behind to look after Wendy, as they pass by with their black shirts and bullet-proof vests and guns.

  Wendy tosses and turns on the bed for the next few hours while Sarge dabs at her face with a wet cloth. As evening approaches, soldiers bring in steaming bowls of beef stew and the survivors sit on the floor in a circle to eat by candlelight.

  “Just like old times,” Paul says, chewing. “Except for this good food.”

  “Must be nice to have a job that pays in raw beef,” Ray says.

  Ethan grins. “You don’t know what I had to do to earn it,” he points out.

  “Something dangerous, from the looks of your face,” Sarge says, squinting at him as if trying to figure out a puzzle.

  “It’s nothing,” E
than tells him happily. “Some people at the government center thought I was a doctor and attacked me. I ran, found a crew unloading cattle, and worked the day.”

  “Ah,” Ray says in understanding. He knows about the cattle crews and how they use people as bait for the monsters that infect the animals.

  “When I got back to the government center, the same people were waiting for me and gave me this,” Ethan answers, pointing at his face and laughing.

  Todd laughs with him and says, “Why are you so happy about it?”

  “I’m happy because I think I may have found my family.”

  The other survivors glance at each other and offer weak smiles.

  “That’s good news, man,” Ray says.

  Sarge touches his shoulder and adds, “Yeah, it’s good, Ethan.”

  Ethan glares at them. “I’m serious.”

  “And I’m taking you seriously,” Ray answers carefully, bristling.

  “I spent several days at the government center. The records people found one Carol Bell in the camp, but it wasn’t my wife. I kept pushing until I finally convinced somebody to check some of the other camps. Turns out there is a C. Bell and two M. Bells at the FEMA camp near Harrisburg. Three days after Infection, a C. Bell and an M. Bell arrived on the same day.”

  He studies the faces of the other survivors for a reaction.

  “It sounds hopeful, Ethan,” Paul says, nodding. “I mean it.”

  “It sounds awesome,” Todd tells him.

  Ethan turns to Sarge and says, “I was wondering if you could take me there. There, or as far as you can.”

  ♦

  Sarge believes it is appropriate that the other survivors are here with him again, as he has never really left them. His mind has been plunging into the past, against his will, during every still moment, reliving the horrors of Infection, the Screaming, Afghanistan. The worst is when he suddenly finds himself standing in the dark alone in front of the hospital, shooting the Infected swarming across the parking lot while every atom in his body screams at him to run. He surfaces from these terrifying flashbacks drenched in cold sweat, his heart clenched in his chest, refilling his lungs with a sudden gasp. He is not stupid. He knows he is suffering heavily from post-traumatic stress. He also knows that getting back out into the field will cure it, at least temporarily.