The Infection (3 page)

♦

Wendy finds some plastic bags at the cashier and hands them to the others. Panic buying cleared most of the shelves before Infection put an end to consumerism, but there are still useful things here. Wendy discovers a squashed plastic container filled with packages of beef jerky on the floor behind the open register, a great find. Some idiot rifled the register for its cash but left food on the floor. It goes into her bag. She finds a full pack of matches, large bag of salt, children’s vitamins, scotch tape, mosquito repellent, box of condoms and bottle of sunscreen. It all goes into the bag. She finds a bottle opener, which she puts into her pocket. A pack of Bazooka gum, which she immediately tears open with pleasure, spitting out her old wad of gum from her aching jaws and popping in a fresh piece. She finds a box of tampons and displays it like a trophy to Anne, who merely nods and moves on, scooping cans off of the floor.

Ethan pauses in one aisle and picks up a three-subject spiral-bound notebook. He turns the blank pages, leaving dirty fingerprints, as if skimming an old love letter. He brings the book to his face and breathes deep. When he lowers it, Wendy sees tears streaming down his face.

“You okay, Ethan?”

“No,” he says. “I mean yes.”

She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but suddenly cancels the gesture. Leaders in a crisis are not tender. Leaders in a crisis are strong. She has to be strong.

He adds, “Where would you begin to solve for
x
. I remember now where we left off.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” she says.

“Yes. Sometimes I forget where I am. I’m fine now.”

“Why don’t you go see if you can find something worth taking in the pharmacy?” she says. “Especially tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Prazosin for the bad dreams. Look for vitamins, gauze, antibiotics, swabs, Benadryl, Ibuprofen—hell, anything that looks useful.”

“All right.”

Wendy still considers herself a cop, which is why she still wears her uniform and in particular her badge. To her, symbols matter, especially in a time of crisis. The other survivors agreed at first, looking to her as an authority figure, but not anymore. To them, she is a valuable member of the team but otherwise just another refugee, no different than them. She cannot understand why they put so much trust in Anne when she fights even harder and takes even bigger risks for the group. Wendy just wants to help. To serve and protect. The fact is a lot of cops died back at the station so that she can go on doing her job. She owes a debt to the dead.

They have witnessed the end of the world one horrible scene at a time, each as potent as the last. Pillars of smoke rising from burning communities. The sprawling wreckage of a crashed 727 scattered for miles along the Parkway among blackened, half-melted cars driven by charred skeletons. The Infected feeding on the dead. Screaming on the radio instead of music and commercials. For Wendy, the most crushing thing she has seen is all of the abandoned police cars once manned by people sworn to protect life and property, but now swept away in the violence. The breaking of the Thin Blue Line signaled the collapse of law and order. It means every man for himself. The Infected took only minutes to virtually wipe out her entire precinct. The other cops saved her life, which now she must earn.

Strangely, the uniform probably extended her lifespan. The survivors all wear dark colors, various shades of black, tan and gray. Paul wears his black clerical suit with its white collar, for example. They are sharp, they are the best of what is left, but they are largely here by accident. In the early days of Infection, they would spill out of the Bradley and the Infected would rush straight at anybody wearing bright colors. Red excites them most. And everybody who wore red died or became Infected. Those wearing orange and yellow and green were next. It was Philip who figured this out, the corporate executive dressed in a grimy black suit and gray tie, that they were all alive because they picked the right clothes the morning the slaughter began.

“There’s something coming,” the Kid cries out from the door.

♦

They hear a low rumble they can feel as a subtle vibration in their feet. The survivors gather around the Kid. Anne increases the magnification on her scope and aims the rifle down the street. The sense of vibration migrates up to their knees.

“It’s a tank,” she says in wonder, lowering the rifle. “A really big tank. Coming fast.”

The tank smashes through an abandoned police barricade, scattering garbage and rats, now close enough for the survivors to take in the scratched and blood-spattered composite armor and massive barrel of the tank gun. They feel the roar of the engine deep in their chests. The treads shriek like a massive bird of prey.

“Um,” says Ethan, frowning.

“That’s an M1 Abrams,” the Kid says, filled with admiration.

“Does that mean the government is still functioning?” Paul asks.

“I think we might be saved, folks,” Wendy says, grinning.

“Get down,” says Ethan.

“Hey,” the cop calls out, waving her warms. “We’re in here!”

Their teeth are vibrating. Bottles of household cleaner topple off of the shelves. The windowpanes rattle in their frames. The dust dances on the asphalt. The tank’s turret swivels, aiming its massive gun directly at the store.

“
GET DOWN!
”

The tank’s machine gun fires a series of short, staccato bursts. The survivors throw themselves onto the floor as bullets crash through the windows, puncture shelving and products, and clatter against the far walls.

Dot-a-dot dot-a-dot dot-a-dot

“Stop shooting at us!” Ethan screams.

Wendy buries her face in her arms, listening to the bullets rip the air, destroying everything in their path. It sounds like somebody rattling screws and pieces of glass in a metal can next to her ear. Pieces of plastic and cardboard rain on her like confetti. Then the firing stops.

“Is everybody all right?” she calls out.

The tank turns onto their street and roars by the store on its steel-clad treads. The ground shakes. Shards of glass from the broken windows tinkle to the floor. The air is thick with glittering dust and particles.

“Everybody stay down,” she says.

Wendy stands and creeps to the door, where she peers out at the rear of the tank, now already two blocks away, just in time to see small arms fire open up on it from apartment buildings on both sides of the street. A Molotov cocktail streams down from a third floor window, bursting on the rear of the tank and briefly setting it on fire. She flinches, wondering about her safety. Why are those people shooting at the tank?

The Abrams grinds to a halt in a cloud of dust, returning fire with its machine guns while its turret swivels and raises the main gun to aim at one of the apartment windows.

The tip of the 105-mm barrel erupts in a blinding flash. Wendy gasps and jerks her head away as the heat and light strike her with an almost physical force. The apartment building abruptly sneezes its contents onto the street in a massive explosion of wreckage and dust and swirling debris: plastic bags, gum wrappers, bits of foil, flaming clothing. Wendy catches a glimpse of people and furniture flying. The massive cloud of smoke ripples and seethes down the street, obscuring the tank from view and plunging the survivors into virtual darkness.

“What the hell is going on?” the Kid shouts, still on the floor.

“I don’t know,” Wendy answers.

“Change of plans, I think,” says Anne.

“Why is that?”

Anne replies, “That tank is going in the same direction we are.”

♦

The atmosphere is still filled with soot and ash from fires burning in the city, making the sunset spectacular with lurid alien colors. The survivors camp for the night in a service garage at a car dealership. After clearing the building, they black out the windows with paint and make sure all of the doors and windows are locked up good and tight while ensuring proper ventilation for their cook stove. Every nook and cranny of the Bradley’s interior is filled with the tools of survival, which they carefully unload to establish their camp: flashlights and batteries, Coleman stove and propane tanks, waterproof matches, utensils, bedrolls and gallon jugs of water. They set out a chemical fire extinguisher and battery-operated carbon monoxide and fire detectors.

Cockroaches scuttle from the light into dark spaces. Empty cans, wrappers and rotting food litter the floor. Others have used the garage as a refuge before them, fellow nomads who left behind graffiti messages and photos of loved ones covering part of one wall. Paul and the Kid explore the wall with their flashlights. The light beams play across the photos of the dead and missing, smiling in happier times before Infection.

if you see this man dale, tell him jesse is alive and heading north to the lake. the infected are not people anymore: kill them or become them!! if you act like you are infected they will not attack you.

this is a lie!!! if you see this boy, please take care of him and tell him mommy’s ok and loves him very much!!! infection takes less than three minutes. the army is shooting anything that moves so keep your head down! kill them all!! youngstown is free of infection.

lie!! repent, folks, the end is
near
here
!!!!

The survivors often have access to information such as the messages that others have scrawled on this wall in fear and boredom and need. As usual, almost none of it is useful.

“Do you think it’s true, Reverend?” the Kid says. “Are the Infected not people anymore?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do they even have souls? Or have they already crossed over?”

“I don’t know that either, Kid.”

“What are they, though? Are they still men? Or animals? Machines?”

This time, Paul does not answer. His flashlight illuminates the faces on the wall, some of whom are dead, others Infected. It is hard to say what they are, he thinks. Whatever they are, they are not human, but they are still our loved ones. We still love them, perhaps even more than before Infection. When somebody is gone, it is easy to remember only the good things about them. No wonder so many people can’t pull the trigger, and accept death or Infection themselves. When Sara came at me, I couldn’t do it either.

“Is killing them murder, Reverend?”

“No,” Paul says.

♦

Ethan takes out his dead cell phone and stares at it intently, wishing it would ring, before returning it to his pocket. He thinks of Philip, sweaty and grimy, sitting in the back of the Bradley with his tie neatly knotted at his throat and his briefcase open on his lap. As the disaster unfolded, the businessman tried for days to call his broker to buy stock in home security and healthcare companies. He drooled over the killing he would make shorting the airlines. He saw home-based power generation as the next big thing. He speculated about pharmaceuticals and trucking and water and agribusiness. The other survivors listened politely, blinking.

Philip’s broker in New York would not answer the phone, making him steadily more anxious. Philip said economics was simply the study of who got the pie. Infection, like the Screaming, was just another economic shock creating new winners and losers, and those who could shift their investments from the losers to the winners quickly would earn the biggest return. But that required a broker who would answer his goddamn phone. It seemed particularly important to him that he convince Anne of his theories, but Anne would listen wearing the expression one usually brings out when rubbernecking a crash, and say nothing.

Philip started shouting into the dial tone, demanding share prices in Remington and Glock and Brinks. Then the grid failed and he lost his signal. He was cut off now and became quiet and morose. In Wilkinsburg, while picking through the ruins of a convenience store, he saw a copy of
The
Wall Street Journal
with the wrong date, sat in the ashes, and let the Infected take him.

♦

They found the dead man in a dark corner, his feet sticking out from under a tarp, which they now pull back to reveal a desiccated corpse sitting with its legs spread and the top half of its head exploded up the walls behind it. The corpse wears a brown uniform. This man was an employee of the Allegheny County sheriff’s office. His gun is missing. Somebody has taken his shoes.

Killed, or killed himself.

Wendy kneels next to the corpse and unpins the man’s star-shaped badge.

“What are you doing?” Sarge asks.

“Collecting dog tags,” she says tersely.

The soldier nods.

Anne approaches, her rifle slung over her shoulder, and tells them dinner will be ready in a few minutes.

“Does this place remind you of anywhere in particular?” Sarge says, watching her closely.

Anne looks around at the garage as if seeing it for the first time.

“I think I was born in a place like this,” she says.

Sarge nods.

She adds, “We need to talk about that tank.”