The Infection Read online

  He needed a moment to think. He tore off his sweatpants and put on a pair of jeans and socks. He went downstairs, turned on the TV in the living room and made himself coffee, which he drank scalding. Some anchor on the TV was sobbing through evacuation instructions.

  “Nobody knows anything!” he shouted at his empty house.

  He made another coffee and drank it in front of the TV, hitting redial on his phone repeatedly and continually getting an all-circuits-busy signal. Then the news cut to video recorded by a helicopter accompanied by the breathless monologue of a reporter describing the scene.

  A group of people surrounded a family of four in a tightening circle in the middle of a busy downtown intersection, blocking their escape. The man stepped in front of his wife and kids. The other people rushed in. The man punched one and then they beat him and his family to the ground and kicked them for a while and tore the children limb from limb, stunning the reporter into shocked silence. The screamers began to eat their remains while the man and the wife lay on the ground twitching.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ethan said, almost in tears.

  The reporter was screaming, The SEELS are changing. Oh God, oh God, they’re attacking people, they’re attacking everybody they see, they’re eating people.

  Ethan turned the TV off and went back upstairs to watch history unfold from his picture window. Towers of smoke dominated the downtown skyline. It was chaos down there. Across the street, he saw his neighbors’ houses standing in a neat row facing him. One stood dark and silent, the living room window painted with streaks of dark fluid.

  What is that? he wondered. Could they be here already?

  Pale faces looked back at him from an upstairs window of the house directly across from his. The three Tillman kids. He could see their father, Roger, pacing furiously downstairs in the living room, holding one of his big hunting rifles. In the distance, an Army Chinook helicopter pounded over the city. Roger had the right idea: bunker down. Ethan stared at their house for a long time, trying to think about what came next: food, water, defense. But everything was fuzzy. He could not focus on these things beyond abstractions. He decided that he would pack some items in an emergency backpack and leave it by the door. He did not think they would need it but when Carol finally came home she would have wanted him to have done something constructive. He pictured himself showing her the backpack. He smiled glassily, taking a little comfort in the thought.

  A hole appeared in the window with a sound like a wine glass breaking in the sink, jolting his consciousness. Roger Tillman stood on his porch, lowering his rifle and squinting up at him through a puff of gun smoke. Ethan backed away from the window in a dry-mouthed stupor, occasionally flinching as if prodded.

  Why did Roger do that? he thought. Jesus, he could have killed me!

  He retreated to the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the toilet, shaking. Long minutes passed and nothing happened. He sat there until he started to feel safe again.

  The gunshot made him realize how serious the situation was. What am I doing here? he asked himself. I have to find my family. I have to find them now and get them to a safe place.

  Ethan ran out to his car and drove to the bank and then the daycare but both were closed, locked and empty. He saw many terrible things but later he would remember the entire drive only as a blur. As darkness fell, he returned home and paced his house alternating between rage at Carol for not coming home and blind panic that what happened to that family on TV might have happened to his wife and precious little girl. He howled in torment like an animal until he realized that he was starving and needed food immediately. He drank more coffee instead and watched the news in the dark and hit redial on his phone repeatedly until he fell asleep.

  He stayed at home for days waiting for Carol to bring Mary home. Each morning, he woke up hopeful and each night, he passed out from exhaustion in a state of near suicidal despair. The days began to blur together until the power failed. There were no more sirens downtown, only sporadic gunfire. He realized that he had plenty of meat in the freezer that he should cook before it spoiled, but the gas stove did not work either. He ate as much as he could from the refrigerator and washed it down with the cold dregs left in the coffee pot and then went back to staring at his cell phone, willing it to ring and feeling sick. He tried to pour himself a glass of water but the plumbing did not work. He had not filled the tub or any gallon jugs, only a few bottles for the backpack. For some reason, he had thought the plumbing did not need electric power to work. He stared at the faucet, feeling helpless rage at his own stupidity.

  He tried to call his wife again but his cell phone could not get a signal. The collapse of the power grid had cut off phones, cellular communications and the Internet. Ethan was completely isolated from his family now. He knew all about the mathematics of probability. Finding them at this point would be like finding a needle in a haystack—a haystack soaked in gasoline and blazing. He spent the day overpacking two suitcases with clothes and provisions and put them by the door.

  That night, he lay curled up in a fetal ball on the bed, crying into his wife’s pillow, unable to even look inside his daughter’s room, and smell her in the air, out of fear of losing his mind entirely. A machine roared to life outside and he got out of bed in the utter darkness, grateful for the distraction. Across the street, Roger Tillman had a generator going and the house blazed with light under a beautiful night sky filled with stars. Ethan watched, running his hand over his scraggly new beard, questioning his own manhood. That Roger really knew what he was doing. He had a gun, generator, food, water and his family under wraps. He had prepared for the apocalypse. He had thought of everything, while Ethan had whined and paced.

  Black shapes and shadows flickered around the Tillman house. Suddenly a man came running out of the darkness into the pool of illumination created by the bright porch light. He bolted straight into the front door and bounced off it with a startling crash, howling in pain and rage. Then ran back again, and again. A woman appeared at the edge of the light on wobbly legs, dressed in a torn suit and holding onto her purse slung over one shoulder. Her head jerked in little spasms like a bird as she walked to the living room window and peered in as if looking for somebody to ask directions. She began punching the window repeatedly, finally putting her fist through it, her arm spraying blood until she fell to the ground twitching. Within minutes, the house was surrounded by growling people. Some of them began to crawl into the opening. Roger banged away at them with his rifle but now dozens of people, drawn to the light and noise, were pouring into every window and door. Jane Tillman was screaming like an animal, Don’t you touch them you motherfuckers, I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking cut you. Roger was shouting, Get back, get back, there’s too many. Shadows flickered inside the Tillmans’ living room and a table lamp spilled, its bulb popping in a flash of light, plunging the room into darkness. The rifle banged several more times, the muzzle flashes lighting up the dark. Then the screams for mercy began.

  Moments later, the house was quiet except for the buzz of the generator and the screamers stumbling around the illuminated porch, drawn like moths to the light and noise.

  Ethan returned to his bed, curled up into a ball and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep until a crash jarred him awake.

  Footsteps clomping downstairs. Somebody was in the house.

  He almost called out, but didn’t. He knew it was not Carol. He realized then that he had lost hope that she would bring Mary home, and that it was time to get out of this house if he wanted to survive the week. The threat of death was once miles away but now it was crashing through his front door and this fact electrified him. There are people in my house that cannot be spoken to or reasoned with, he thought. Things out of nightmares that are now wild animals and hunting me even though they are not yet aware of my existence. Creatures that will claw and bite me until I am dead or become one of them. Some of them wear faces that I know but they are no longer human.

  The first st
ep was to get out of the house.

  Stepping quietly, Ethan got dressed. The sun was rising over a smoking America and its first rays provided a dim red light in the bedroom. He stuffed his pockets with photos and trinkets and a hairbrush from his wife’s drawers. He found a tiny yellow rubber airplane on the floor, a toy carelessly left there by Mary days ago, and pocketed it. He suddenly wanted to take as much of them with him as possible. The floorboards creaked downstairs. He picked up his baseball bat and felt its reassuring weight in his hands. His suitcases were downstairs by the front door, ready to go. He tried to control his breathing. Here we go, then.

  Footsteps in the den, the room he and Carol used as a home office. Moaning in a female voice, sad, plaintive. Whatever it was sounded more like a woman in mourning than a monster. As he descended the stairs, however, he could feel the air thickening around him as the woman sensed his presence and began growling deep in her throat. His heart pounded against his ribs. Books and papers crashed to the floor in the den. The woman yelped and paced, shouldering the walls as she moved. At least there was only one and not a pack of them in the house. He forced himself to breathe in and out, in and out, his bowels liquefying. Feeling the weapon in his hands, he felt a sudden stabbing urge to rush in there and bash her brains out, but the moment passed quickly, leaving him feeling dry-mouthed and drained and even more terrified.

  Ethan slipped out of the front door, leaving it open, and began running to the car, which he had left parked on the street. Instantly, people in neighboring yards saw him and began howling, the sound echoing all over the neighborhood. Something snarled and thrashed through the rosebushes. Dropping the suitcases in a blind panic, he ran to the car, started the engine and stomped on the gas pedal just as a man threw himself against it, leaving a massive dent in the door. The car roared, building speed rapidly.

  “Get out of the way!” he cried, jerking the wheel.

  People were running out of driveways and lawns. The car jolted as a woman bolted directly into the passenger side window, cobwebbing the glass and leaving a red smear clotted with tufts of hair. A man surged into the back door, bounced off, and then ran alongside, pounding on the glass with bloody fists until losing his balance and falling hard onto the pavement. Ethan speeded up but then began weaving erratically, trying to avoid hitting an overturned truck and another man running at him from the open front door of a house.

  “Oh God, no, please no,” he begged, leaning on the horn.

  The sound only attracted more. The shapes burst against the car like human missiles, impacting and bouncing off with heart-stopping bangs, leaving blood and cobweb fractures in the windows and dents in the body. Ethan drove past a burning house with a burning tree in its front yard, screaming his head off and gunning the engine again, plowing into a snarling young woman in a red dress who went flying over the roof. Another blurred against the door on his side, cracking its nose against the window and leaving a long squirt of blood.

  “Stop it!” he screamed, almost blinded by tears. “Fucking stop it!”

  The neighborhood began to turn from residential to commercial. He glanced into his rearview mirror and saw a horde of his neighbors shrieking at his heels. He suddenly became aware that an old Beatles song was playing on the car’s speakers. After a few moments, his pursuers began to lag behind, and gave up the chase, glaring at him.

  It’s over, he thought, letting out a ragged sound that was part chuckle, part sob.

  By the time he glanced back at the road it was too late to avoid the small mob running directly at him from the front. The car plowed into their bodies and flung them over the car like ragdolls. One became stuck like a nightmarish ornament, flailing with its one good arm, the crumpled hood spraying scalding water onto the body and the windshield. Ethan gunned the engine, half blinded, until the man, writhing and shrieking, detached and became caught in the right wheel hub, which ground and broke up the body with an awful cracking sound. The car jerked to the right and everything went black.

  Ethan awoke on the sidewalk, stumbling away from his car that rested half-smashed against the wall of a department store. He tried to run, holding onto his backpack, and fell to his knees vomiting. People howled behind him. He heard the tramp of feet. One of the department store’s display windows was broken and he climbed in, then began limping through the store past selections of men’s ties and belts and leather shoes. Several men clawed their way in behind and gave chase at a loping gait, hunting him as a pack through the cosmetics department.

  They steadily gained on him, yelping. They almost sounded happy. He ran blindly now, dropping his pack, seeing stars and gasping for breath. He had left the baseball bat in the car. One of the men appeared at his side, snarling. Moments later, he lunged and tackled a mannequin Ethan just passed and began beating and biting it. Another pushed over a second mannequin and began stomping on its face. The rest snapped at Ethan’s heels. Inspired, he saw a mannequin at the end of the aisle and ran straight for it, his legs burning from a lack of oxygen.

  The mannequin’s fists belched flame and smoke. Ethan threw himself onto the ground as his pursuers toppled around him.

  Ethan lay on his back, dripping sweat and gasping, unsure of whether he was going to laugh or cry when he finally caught his breath. He felt like his adrenal glands had been wrung out to the last drop. He looked up at his savior, a petite brunette dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, her hair cropped in a military-style buzz cut. She had a hard look about her, as if she had been born to kill people and had been doing it for years. Her face was disfigured by fresh scars. Her eyes looked old.

  She helped him onto his feet and handed him one of the pistols. She pointed at the wounded men who writhed and keened on the floor in widening pools of blood.

  “Finish them and you can join us,” she said.

  That was how Ethan met Anne.

  THE HOSPITAL

  The Bradley mounts the steel cantilever Liberty Bridge and begins crossing its five-hundred-foot main span over the Monongahela River at a careful pace. There are few abandoned cars cluttering the four-lane bridge but Sarge does not want to take any chances. He knows that a National Guard artillery unit destroyed several bridges in the area in a misguided effort to contain the spread of Infection, and does not want to drive through a big hole and plummet more than forty feet into the muddy waters below.

  The density of vehicles thickens as they approach the other side of the river, blocked by abandoned makeshift barricades. Piles of stiffening corpses draw flies in front of a machine gun mounted behind a heap of sandbags. The Bradley speeds up and drives through the scene, popping skulls under its treads.

  The Bradley enters the South Hills neighborhoods. Sarge opens the hatch for a look around in the open air and sees more barricades and piles of corpses. Some of the barricades apparently held; some were overrun. Either way, it did not matter. Even if they held, Infection was everywhere, eventually making barricades meaningless. Plastic bags and bits of garbage dance in the air, carried on the wind. A shredded T-shirt hangs on the branches of a tree, waving bye-bye at him, while another tree burns energetically like a giant torch, scattering heat and sparks and ashes. A pair of military jets fly high overhead, reminding him that the government is still fighting its own people.

  The houses here are covered in graffiti. After the Screaming left more than a billion catatonics twitching on the ground all over the world, volunteers in these communities worked with local authorities to search each house for people and get them to a place where they could receive care. Orange posters are still taped to streetlight poles encouraging citizens to call tip lines to report SEELS for pickup. Black Xs are still sprayed on many doors marking houses that have been searched and cleared of victims of SEELS. The tragedy is that by helping the screamers avoid starvation and dehydration, these good people unwittingly aided in their own destruction. Some houses have other graffiti on them; as people fled their homes, they sprayed messages, and other refugees added their own
, using the houses for communication. Names and dates. Missing persons. Directions and wayfinding. Going south. Avoid the police station. Bill, I’m going to get grandma. Other messages warn travelers of infestations, give opinions on everything from purifying water to effective killing methods, or offer trade. Some of the graffiti are simple tags. Newly formed militias claiming territory. Boasts of kills and time served. Totemic symbols scrawled by people in a hurry. Arrows. Biohazard signs. Skulls and crossbones.

  The Infected stumble and hold their heads, wailing in a constant state of metaphysical pain. They glower and bare their teeth at Sarge as he drives by in the armored vehicle.

  ♦

  The survivors find the tall, muscular man on his front porch wearing a bathrobe and boxer shorts, shouting and waving a pistol in his right hand and a battered, folded-up umbrella in his left. All of the neighboring houses have a large black X painted on their front doors; the Screaming apparently wiped out this community and left this man as its sole survivor.

  “This is my neighborhood,” he says, firing off a round with his pistol and killing a running Infected, who falls sprawling on the sidewalk, joining another draped over a fire hydrant and a third crumpled in a fetal position on the hood of an ancient Cadillac. “You ain’t welcome here!”

  The Bradley’s gunner, sitting next to Sarge inside the vehicle, sizes up the man through the periscope and says, “I think we found somebody who might be big enough to take you, Sergeant.”

  Sarge snorts and says, “I like his spunk. He’s a fighter.”

  “Spunk as in crazy,” says the gunner. He has the square jaw of an action movie hero and wears a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on the left cheek of his stubbled face. “Crazy as in a threat to all of us.”