The Infection ti-1 Read online

  “Lay off,” the other cop said. “She’s one of us.”

  John-John had raised his cup and was intoning loudly to all of them, “Sometimes it seems the only time a cop is called a hero is when he takes a bullet. Well, today, we got three heroes. That’s right. But I say you’re all heroes, every day, and especially right now, in the middle of this goddamn apocalypse. So here’s to our guys still in critical condition at Mercy Hospital, and here’s to all of you ugly dicks who won’t give up. You guys are my heroes. Here’s to you, Pittsburgh’s finest.”

  She’s one of us.

  The cops emptied their cups and held them up for refills. Somebody turned a radio on, trying to make it a party. Everybody stood around awkwardly in their uniforms and Batman belts, holding their drinks. The alcohol burned Wendy’s throat, making her feel alert and loose at the same time. Bracing. One of the communication dispatchers entered the room, blustering, “I need somebody to take a domestic disturbance and everybody’s committed. We’re getting flooded with calls.”

  “Give it to the commander,” one of the cops called out, and everybody laughed.

  The dispatcher was rifling through his slips. “Sound of breaking glass on the street,” he read. “Man heard screaming in alley.”

  The officers chanted, Tell it to the commander! until the dispatcher left, red-faced and roaring. The cops cheered. They were dead tired. They needed a break. Wendy had just finished two twelve-hour shifts back to back. In just a few hours, she and the other police officers in the room would have to pull another twelve-hour shift. Until then, they were officially off duty.

  The radio was playing an old song that reminded her of summers as a child. A very old song recorded before she was born. Some of the younger cops were moving to the music, nodding and shifting from one foot to the next, trying to unwind. Wendy could not remember the band but the song took her back to one particular summer when she was ten years old, maybe eleven. She remembered riding a bike down the driveway past her dad, who stood hunched over the open hood of his big police cruiser, working on the engine. Her bike’s handlebars had multicolor tassels that streamed in the wind. She remembered the sound of lawn mowers and the smell of fresh-cut grass. A boy kissed her that summer. His name was Dale. There was a tire swing hanging by a thick rope from an old oak tree in his backyard and he kissed her there. The memory gave her butterflies. For a few seconds, she fell asleep on her feet.

  She opened her eyes. Men were shouting in the foyer. Several of the officers looked at each other, some frowning, others laughing. A scream pierced the air. Everybody froze and glared at the doors. More screaming. Stomping feet. The cops bristled.

  The Raspberries, Wendy thought. That was the band.

  The doors burst open and people began running into Patrol, grabbing at the nearest officers, who shoved them back with shouted obscenities. More entered the big room, panting, wearing paper gowns and hospital scrubs. The cops flailed with their batons while others tried to cuff the assailants. More rushed in, howling and baring their teeth. The cops nearest Wendy dropped their drinks and reached for their batons. Wendy did the same.

  “Son of a bitch bit me!”

  Cops were going down. Wendy saw a man bite a cop’s arm and shake his head like a dog. She struck the man with her baton and he stumbled away. The cop sank to his knees, shaking, his eyes glazed, and toppled onto the floor. Everywhere it was hand to hand fighting. The batons rose and fell but for every attacker clubbed to the ground, more took his place.

  John-John gripped her arm.

  “Go tell the lieutenant we’re under attack,” he roared. “Go, rook, go!”

  She ran down the hall and entered the Detectives section. A man instantly grabbed her in a headlock. She struggled but other hands held her. She heard guns crashing back in Patrol.

  “Stop struggling, Wendy,” she heard a familiar voice.

  She opened her eyes and saw Dave Carver surrounded by a group of burly detectives in cheap suits and bad ties, glaring and flushed and breathing heavily. They reeked of stale coffee.

  “Let go of me,” she cried. “I have to see the lieutenant.”

  “He’s busy,” one of the detectives sneered. “What’s going on in Patrol, rookie?”

  “They’re killing them. I’m serious—they’re killing them!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s drunk. Smell it on her breath.”

  “Who the hell is shooting in the station, rookie?”

  “Just let her talk!”

  The detectives released her. Wendy caught her breath and said, “We’re under attack. Civilians dressed in hospital clothes. They had no weapons.” The truth suddenly struck her. “They’re screamers. Probably from Mercy. They’ve woken up and they’re crazy.”

  Dave nodded. “How many?”

  “Forty. Fifty. Maybe a hundred. I don’t know. Maybe more. It’s wall to wall in there. Every patrol officer was committed.”

  They suddenly realized the screaming and gunshots in Patrol had been replaced by growling in hundreds of throats. A fist banged on the door, startling them. Then another.

  “This is bullshit,” one of the detectives said, paling.

  The other detectives glared at the door, their fists clenched.

  Dave said, “Is everybody armed?”

  Multiple fists were pounding against the door now.

  “Where’s Patrol?” one of the detectives cried, panicking. “Where the fuck is Patrol?”

  Dave touched her shoulder and said, “Get behind me, Wendy.”

  The door began to shake on its hinges, splintering.

  The detectives unholstered their guns and aimed them carefully at the door.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s get this over with,” somebody said.

  The door exploded inward and people ran screaming into the room. For a critical moment, nobody did anything; their attackers were just regular people—unarmed, sick people. Some of the detectives yelled, freeze, police, stop or we will shoot. A moment later, somebody fired his gun and they all started shooting, roaring like madmen, one running forward and emptying his shotgun at point blank range into the gray faces. But the screamers were already in the room and the fighting quickly turned hand to hand.

  Wendy stared, horrified and unable to move. Some of their attackers were police officers. She saw John-John tackle one of the detectives, scattering files and a typewriter from one of the desks. She unholstered her Glock and aimed it at the doorway.

  Dave grabbed her arm and began pulling her towards the window. “Get out of here! We’re not going to make it!”

  “Fuck you, Dave,” she said, shrugging him off.

  “Wendy, get out now!”

  “They need my help!” she screamed back.

  “We’re done!”

  She fought him but he was stronger than her. He began to physically drag her to the window and push her out onto the fire escape.

  “Survive,” he said.

  “Come with me, then,” she pleaded.

  “All right, babe. I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

  He turned away before she could respond, blazing away with his hand cannon. She climbed down the fire escape and stood in the vehicle yard, waiting for him. The guard booth was empty. From here, the sounds of gunfire ground together like the rumble of thunder. The muzzle flashes lit up the windows like paparazzi. Dave did not appear at the fire escape. The detectives were backing against the far wall and giving it everything they had.

  Wendy stood helplessly, her fist clenched around her Glock, her eyes flooded with tears.

  The shooting fizzled out until the windows became filled with dark shapes stumbling aimlessly, silhouetted by the glare of the station’s institutional fluorescent lighting.

  The entire station was wiped out in minutes and she had not fired a single shot. Her ears were still ringing loudly and the loss of sleep over the past few days suddenly hit her hard, making her feel drained and disoriented.
/>
  Lay off her. She’s one of us.

  She raised her pistol with both hands and aimed it carefully at the windows above her.

  “Help me! Please help me!”

  A woman ran down the alley in a nightgown, waving her arms.

  “Stay right there,” Wendy said raggedly, extending her palm, her nerves raw and electric. Her training kicked in automatically. “What’s the problem?”

  “My husband is hurt,” the woman said, her eyes wild. “He’s bleeding.”

  “Okay, did you call 911?”

  “The lines are all busy.”

  “Where do you live, Ma’am?”

  “Just over there.”

  You can’t do this, she told herself. You need to report what you saw.

  Another voice in her head countered: What you saw could not have happened.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said.

  They entered the house. Wendy felt dizzy. Details in the scene jumped out at her. A pale man dressed in pajamas lying on the floor, bleeding from the head. A table lamp, still on, sitting on its side on the carpet, casting long shadows. Family photos on the wall. A TV with the sound off, showing a worried anchorwoman. A broken pot and the dirt and scattered remains of a plant. A baseball bat.

  “Officer, are you okay?”

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the mob run screaming into Patrol.

  “Tell me what happened here, Ma’am,” she said mechanically.

  “I hit him on the head. You can arrest me if you want. But take care of him first. Please!”

  Wendy inspected the wound.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lisa.”

  “Okay, Lisa, come on over here. He’s got a scalp wound. That type of wound bleeds a lot. I’m going to elevate his head a little so that it is above the heart. There. He’s going to need an ambulance but he should be okay. In the meantime, I want you to sit here and put pressure on it.”

  Wendy stood, fighting tears, and tried to call 911. The circuits were jammed. She saw the couch and suddenly wanted to lie down on it for just a minute. Maybe five minutes. Just a little while—

  “I had to do it,” Lisa was saying.

  “Uh huh,” Wendy said, glancing dazedly at the TV set. The anchorwoman was crying, mascara running down her cheeks in black lines.

  “He was threatening our boy—”

  “This man—?”

  “My husband.”

  “You say your husband was attacking your son?”

  “Then I stopped him. I heard him wake up and I followed him. When I saw him holding Benjamin down and biting him I grabbed the bat and hit him on the head. I had to do it.”

  “Was he one of the people who fell down? One of the SEELS?”

  “Yes. It was a miracle. But he must have been confused because he would never hit Benjamin. He loves that boy more than himself.”

  Wendy backed away, staring in horror at the sleeping man tangled up in his own limbs. Her hand flickered around the handcuffs on her belt. She unholstered her Glock and flicked off the safety. She frowned, trying to think.

  “You can remove your hands now, Lisa. I want you to back away from him slowly.”

  Lay off her

  “Okay,” Lisa said. “But he’s still bleeding—”

  She’s one of us—

  The cop raised her gun and fired, the sound of the discharge filling the house. The man’s head exploded and splashed up the wall.

  The woman wailed like an animal caught in a steel trap, rushing forward to hug the man’s broken face against her chest.

  “You killed Roy!”

  Upstairs, a teenage boy was snarling and banging on a bedroom door.

  Wendy holstered her gun and walked out the door into the night.

  “Why did you do that? Why? Why?”

  The woman’s screaming followed her down the street until it became just one of many voices rising up from the city in pain like a demonic choir.

  MEMORIES

  Todd wakes up in a bed in a warm, windowless hospital room after a long, dreamless sleep. He is still exhausted but his body is telling him he has already overslept. You’re still here, Todd old man, he tells himself. Still truckin’. Wrapping his blanket around his bare shoulders, he shuffles blearily to a bucket in the corner and empties his bladder. His stomach growls. Outside, he finds Paul in the hallway, whistling as he mops the floor with a strong bleach solution. He finds the sight reassuring. He is not used to being alone.

  “Hey, Rev,” he says.

  “Morning, Kid.”

  “Wow, we just got here and they got you mopping floors already. Too bad there isn’t more need for preachers in the post-apocalyptic world.”

  Paul pauses in his work, smiling. “On the contrary, son, a true minister is no stranger to working with his hands. It’s a form of prayer. Good for the soul. You ought to try it sometime.”

  “Are you trying to turn me into an atheist?”

  “Ha,” says Paul.

  “Anyhow, my soul needs some coffee or it’s not doing anything today.”

  “Go around the corner and look for the lounge. We got it set up as a common room. I’m sure Anne saved you something.”

  “Thanks, Rev,” Todd says, his blanket forming a train on the floor behind him.

  “Good to have you back, Kid.”

  Todd turns and grins. “The Kid abides, Rev. The Kid abides.”

  ♦

  Ethan plods slowly through the pathology department, marveling at the expensive equipment now gathering dust in the gloomy light of his lantern. Everywhere they go, he sees signs of a world that has fallen down. He is looking for things that they can use but has not found anything. A large centrifuge sits on a laboratory table, its lid open showing test tubes filled with cells, once living and now dead, from an unfinished experiment. People had been working here when the Infected got out of their beds. They left in a hurry. Ethan sees an overturned chair with a crisp white labcoat still clinging to the back. A crushed test tube on the floor.

  He pauses in front of a cabinet filled with delicate glassware, test tubes and beakers. They are clean but he feels a primitive fear of touching them. Germs are the greatest threat to his survival right now, and his instincts are not very discriminating. In the corner, an emergency liquid nitrogen tank catches his eye. He stares at it for a long time. The nitrogen is stored under pressure, so they might be able to siphon some of it off into a container to make a crude explosive. If they don’t blow their own hands off first. They might dump it on the Infected and flash freeze them. As long as they don’t freeze their own arm solid in the bargain.

  Liquid nitrogen is a dangerous laboratory material, he reminds himself. Probably best to leave it alone. He considered it worth thinking about, however. In this world, everything must be evaluated as a potential weapon. Out of the five basic survival needs, security now ranks first.

  Ethan fiddles with a fluorescence microscope but it sits dark, inert, lifeless without electricity. The room is filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in deteriorating lab equipment. He recognizes an incubator, decides not to open it. It strikes him again that scientists studied disease here. Not scary diseases like AIDS and Ebola, no, not in a lab like this, but dangerous nonetheless: cancer, diabetes, emphysema, bone disorders. The pathologists examined tissues and blood and urine to figure out what was wrong with people. Doctors used these tests to treat people with all sorts of disorders and extend their lifespan. Researchers looked at the smallest living particles in the human body and tried to understand what hurt them and how they adapted to being hurt—knowledge that could be used to diagnose some diseases more easily, treat others, and even cure. Now the healers have all gone, possibly never to return.

  Ethan tries not to think of all the great things they might have accomplished.

  ♦

  He once thought he understood what severe stress was like. He and Carol both worked hard at their jobs. They juggled dinner and daycare and doi
ng the dishes. They survived the dramas of raising a little girl who was deep into her terrible twos. Life was full of responsibilities and bills and little errands and phone calls and annoying bank mistakes and miscommunication and petty conflict. It was hard, but he would consider that sort of stress a breath of fresh air after what he has been through in the past ten days with the Sword of Damocles poised over his head, hanging by a thread. The human body was not meant to experience this level of fear for this long. Getting this close to death for too long can turn your hair white, break your mind.

  He and Carol would cope as best they could but every so often their frustrations boiled to the surface and they bickered. They bickered as they prepared dinner and as they ate it and as they cleaned up and put Mary to bed. They each knew how far they could go, and no further, to needle the other person without getting a major reaction that would upset their toddler. Every once in a while somebody would go too far, and there would be hurt feelings. When this happened, the bickering escalated and either Ethan or Carol would storm away from the table out of fear of shouting in front of Mary.

  One night, nobody walked away, and, without really understanding what he was doing, Ethan started shouting.

  “Carol, stop it, stop it, just stop it.”

  Carol sat back, stunned, while Mary, busily pouring her glass of water into her mashed potatoes, stared at him with eyes like saucers, her mouth hanging open.

  Ethan smiled at his daughter quickly, trying to reassure her.

  “How dare you shout at me in front of her,” Carol hissed.

  “I said I don’t want to argue. So stop it.”

  “I’m not the one shouting.”

  “STOP IT.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?”

  They shouted over each other for the next minute until he could not take it anymore and he stormed out of the house, seeing red. He walked for an hour, his mind boiling as he played the argument over and over in his mind, hating it. As his anger began to dissipate, he felt the first wave of panic over what they had done to Mary. He needed to talk to Carol. He hurried home.