The Infection (20 page)

Wilco,
Ducky says.

They are almost home free now. Once they reach the highway, they will break west and escape the conflagration.

He adds to Steve, “Not that it matters. We could get on the eastbound highway and still go west. It ain’t like somebody’s going to write us a ticket for driving the wrong way, right?”

Except maybe Wendy, he thinks, suppressing a grin. He briefly wonders what she sees in him. Aside from the uniform and the values it represents, he does not consider himself to be anything special—a “big lug,” the kind of guy that beautiful girls like Wendy would consider a valuable friend, but not a lover. Most girls like that fall for the gunner with his square jaw and surfer build.

Steve says nothing, glued to his periscope.

“All right, Steve?”

“Not now, Sergeant,” the gunner says, his voice tight, gritting his teeth.

“What do you see? What’s going on out there?”

Steve turns away from the periscope with a wince, making Sarge’s heart skip a beat in sudden alarm. His face is taut. Droplets of sweat glisten on his forehead. His eyes are gleaming like those of an animal caught in a steel trap.

“See for yourself.”

“But . . .”

“There is nothing wrong with the equipment,” the gunner tells him.

“This interference . . .”

“What you are seeing is
real
.”

“Steve . . .”

“Look, Sergeant. Look again.”

Sarge concentrates on the images unfolding on the commander’s optical relay and gasps as the tumbling, seemingly random shapes begin to coalesce into monsters.

The Bradley hurtles down the road, punching cars out of the way or flattening them, surrounded by a ragged column of creatures joining the exodus out of the burning city. Little baboons hobbling on insect legs. Lumbering and tentacled behemoths. A leathery wall impossibly covered with screaming human faces. Giant balls of flesh, like ticks bloated with blood, strutting on spindly tripod legs. A thing with massive lobster claws where its hands should be. A half dozen other species. And of course, hundreds of Infected marching like refugees in their grimy and tattered T-shirts and uniforms and business suits and jeans and dresses. The murmuring of the Infected competes with the constant roar of the rig’s engine.

The fire appears to be flushing everything out of their hiding places tonight. The conflagration soars into the air behind them, flowing into the sky and coming back down in a constant rain of ash on this parade of monsters.

“What are these things?” Steve asks in a childlike voice. “What does this mean?”

♦

The survivors look at each other with gaping eyes in the dark, hot interior of the Bradley, gasping for air and scarcely able to believe they are still alive when so many thousands of people were either claimed by the Infected or burned alive in the fire. Every breath astounds them. Their bodies are slick with sweat and their old street clothes, already damp from washing earlier in the day, cling to their flesh. It is so hot it feels like they are being cooked in a microwave. They can barely move, almost buried in boxes and bulging plastic bags and gallon jugs. Cans and bottles roll around their feet, making a sudden clatter as the Bradley takes a sharp turn. Ethan is stuffed crumpled into a corner, breathing shallowly, ignored.

Anne is experiencing a deep sense of contentment to be back on the road. She finds familiar comfort in the drone of the engine and the smells of fear and body odor and burning diesel. They are safe here, for now, in the Bradley’s dark and sweltering metal stomach. She opens a bottle of water, takes a long pull, and passes it on. She welcomes the road. This is where she is meant to be.

Sitting across from her, Wendy covers a private smile with her hand.

Anne stares at her, wondering what could possibly be worth smiling about right now.

Wendy sees her watching and says, “Did you ever do something on crazy impulse and it turned out to be the best idea you ever had?”

“No,” Anne says, struggling to remember a time when that might have been true.

The cop frowns and turns away. Anne did not mean to offend her. Sometimes, she feels like she no longer knows how to be a real person and connect with other real people in a real way. Everything she thinks, feels or remembers ultimately winds up taking her to a dark place in her mind where people die over and over. She does not know how to tell Wendy that she lived most of her life obeying her impulses, and that they eventually got everybody she loved killed.

♦

“Ducky’s hurt,” Steve says. “He says he’s okay, but I think he’s hurt real bad.”

Sarge says nothing. He waits for the gunner to continue.

“There were things in the garage, Sarge. Fucking
monsters
. Dark shapes that flitted around the cars, always just out of sight. Then we saw one. A giant bloated thing covered in elephant trunks that boomed like a foghorn. When it made that sound, the trunks stuck out straight, shaking. Like something out of a nightmare. It pushed cars out of its way. Made you want to puke just to look at it. Then we saw a little white, hairless monkey with thick insect legs, barely able to walk. It was sickly, diseased. It could barely see. It was in pain. It was like a newborn, Sarge. A freak of nature that somehow survived against all odds and was walking along making this bizarre clicking noise in its throat. Kind of sad, like a little kid looking for his family.

“The little bastard jumped on Ducky. The only way I could get it off was to cut it with my knife. Ducky went down, saying he was hit. The thing had sharp teeth and had been biting around Ducky’s throat, so I assumed that’s where he was wounded, but I couldn’t find a wound. His neck was wet but there was no blood. So I asked him where he was wounded, and he said his hip. The little fucker had used his teeth like he used his arms and legs, to hold on. It was . . . I don’t want to say what it had been doing to Ducky’s hip, but it was unnatural. It . . . stabbed him, with this big stinger between its legs, like a barbed scorpion’s tail. The puncture left a massive bruised lump. He insisted on driving. I had to help him into the rig. He could barely walk.”

Steve stops talking. Sarge takes a few moments to rub his eyes. Outside, the horde of Infected continue making noise like a house being slowly ransacked, barely audible over the loud hum of the Bradley’s engine. He hears no more gunfire.

“Ducky,” Sarge says into the microphone attached to his helmet, “do you copy?”

I’m okay, Sergeant
, the driver answers.

“How’s that wound?”

I said I’m okay.

“We’ll pull over at the nearest safe point and get it looked at.”

By who? Who’s going to look at it?

Sarge does not know how to answer. The fact is they have little in the way of real medical supplies, no medical knowledge, no medevac. They are completely on their own.

I’m still fit for duty. So let me do my job while I still can.

Sarge nods grudgingly. He does not know what to say. Perhaps he should just say thanks.

“You sit tight,” he says, gritting his teeth. “We’re going to try to find help for you.”

Sergeant, I just wanted to say—

The air fills with an enormous roar of rage so pervasive that at first Sarge is convinced that it originated inside his own head.

♦

The survivors flinch at the sound and stare at each other, their eyes big and watery. The roar stops as suddenly as it began, replaced by pounding footsteps and a sudden
boom
that makes the rig tremble like a gong. The sound rattles through their bodies and hums in their brains, knocking out every thought as effectively as high voltage. They wince and cup their ringing ears in the aftermath. Then another
boom
, jostling them, vibrating deep in their chests.

The roar again, filling the air, followed by another
BOOM
. Something is hitting the Bradley repeatedly. The rig tries to speed up, lurches, corrects itself. Wendy sees Paul huddled with his arms wrapped around his ribs, his eyes clenched shut and his mouth working silently. She never saw the Reverend pray before. She finds it deeply disturbing, the idea that the Bradley is unsafe.

The roar never seems to end. It cascades in waves of endless despair and rage that scrapes its nails repeatedly over the chalkboard of her nerves. It fills the air so completely she finds herself struggling to breathe it. She still has enough sense to understand that whatever is out there, it is big and powerful and angry. She has a moment to wonder about the size of its lungs. Then her mind blanks out completely as the terrible sound of the attack builds and builds. The sound finally punches its way out of the paper bag of Wendy’s mind and she screams, the sound tinny and distant and lost like a child shouting in a wind tunnel. She reaches out and Todd clasps her hand tightly before another
boom
jostles them violently against the boxes and each other. Todd lashes out with his other hand, pushing at the boxes in blind panic. Across from her, Anne is shouting angrily and Paul is grimacing and cupping his ears with his palms.

The siege lasts for years; it lasts for minutes. The thing outside suddenly appears to lose interest, lagging behind. The last tremor dissipates through the Bradley’s armor and their bones. The last roar fades, leaving behind a deafening echoing ring in their ears and a tingling vibration deep in their chests. The thing cries plaintively in the distance, as if sad to see the Bradley go and calling for its return. Wendy gasps for air, her heart clanging in her chest like a bell. She sees the terrified pale faces crying in the dark and barely recognizes them. She touches her mouth, unsure if she has stopped screaming yet.

The Bradley crashes through an abandoned military checkpoint and then the survivors are free of Pittsburgh at last. Behind them, the city burns like an early sunrise.

FLASHBACK: SERGEANT TOBY WILSON

Combat Outpost Sawyer had all the beauty of a heavily fortified shantytown. But the mountains were breathtaking. This was the roof of the world.

Afghanistan, land of the Afghans.

As the Bradley topped the crest and drove along the escarpment, Sarge, sitting in his telescoped seat with the hatch open, got his first good look at the outpost that was just another island in a vast archipelago of little firebases scattered across the mountains.

The soldiers here called it Mortaritaville.

Sawyer lay perched on the valley’s long slope, a sprawling little compound of sandbag bunkers and huts and tents around which sturdy timber walls and rows of C-wire had been erected. From here, on the ridge, it appeared tiny and weak.

Sarge whistled. The base had been poorly sited. A series of ridges commanded the base. From there, Afghan fighters could drop mortar rounds right into the middle of the compound and then drop behind the ridge, disappearing from view. The nearest helicopter support was at least twenty-five minutes away. No wonder the boys here were reported to be so fatalistic, living in this remote place in almost total isolation, with an enemy that could strike from anywhere at any time.

The Bradley began to catch up to a “jingle” truck, a high-axled vehicle painted in bold and bright colors and jingling with hundreds of shiny bangles. Luridly painted female eyes stared at him from the rear bumper, as enigmatic as a cat’s. The truck was open in the back and several men sat inside wearing the baggy trousers and loose tunics typical of Afghan men.

Smiling in the dust cloud raised in the wake of their truck, Sarge waved.

The men glanced at each other until one of them nodded, apparently giving permission to another man to wave back shyly.

There we go, Sarge thought. We’re making progress now.
Salaam
, bud
.

Hares scattered from the road, taking refuge among the rocks.

These men were elders and their retainers from one of the villages in the valley, on their way to attend a pow wow at the base. For several years, the Pashtuns in this wild region of Nuristan Province, so close to the Pakistan border, had welcomed the Americans. The land here was heavily forested, mostly conifers; while a majority of Afghans scratched out a living in farming and herding, the people here had been timber cutters since the days of Genghis Khan. They sold timber to Jalabad, Mehtariam, Pakistan. The jingle truck Sarge was following, in fact, was probably filled from top to bottom with firewood most days. The Taliban were oppressive and bad for business, so the people here celebrated when the Americans threw them out. Soon, however, Kabul began to enact laws restricting trade with Pakistan. The locals grumbled, but cut the Americans slack as the Americans were building roads and schools and regularly sending them gifts—school supplies, milk, prayer rugs.

The Taliban remained active in the area. The region was a corridor for insurgents crossing over to and from Pakistan. Inevitably, the locals got caught in the crossfire. The Air Force dropped a smart bomb onto a village and missed the target, a mid-level Taliban commander, by ten minutes, instead killing thirteen civilians, including several children. As a result, the locals threw their support to the insurgents against a foreign military they now saw as infidel occupiers. Fighting raged in the valley for the past six months, accounting for thirty percent of all combat in the brigade. The Afghan National Police station in the closest village to the east had been attacked so many times that the police were permanently demoralized. Without local support, the Americans controlled nothing outside their compound.