The Infection (32 page)

“Do you want to go back to school? We offer schooling here. You could get your diploma.”

“No thanks,” he says sunnily, his brain working hard on how to defend that decision.

The woman shrugs, does not care.

“Any job skills?” she asks.

“I’ve had jobs before but nothing that required skills,” he tells her. “I am really good with computers, though. What kind of skills are you looking for the most?”

“Psychotherapist,” she answers.

He laughs.

“I’m not kidding,” she adds.

Todd opens his mouth, but she silences him by holding up her index finger, the universal sign for
wait a minute
. The woman pulls an old mechanical typewriter towards her and starts pecking at the keys with agonizing slowness, glancing frequently at the index card. She finally yanks a business card-sized piece of paper out of machine, stamps it with a seal, and hands it to him with a thick manila envelope.

“This is your resident card,” she tells him, explaining that he will use it to obtain his rations, access the showers and medical services, and apply for other government help. “This is your information packet. In it you will find a recap of your orientation—a map of the camp, the rules you are expected to follow here, and a list of services and where to find them. There is currently a small surplus in shelters so you do not have to build your own; your allotment is marked in yellow highlighter. This is your claim ticket so you can pick up the property you brought into the camp with you. And finally, here are two flea collars. Put one around each ankle. Keeps the lice away.”

“Gross!” Todd says. “I mean, thanks.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“Just one. Do you have stores or anything like that?”

“There are six outdoor markets. Four are where people sell pretty much anything. Another is for produce grown in the camp, and the last is for meat.”

“What’s the accepted currency?” he presses. “Is it a barter system, or is the dollar—”

The woman glances over his shoulder and yells, “
Twenty-one!
”

Todd stands, trying to think of something biting, but a family approaches, wild-eyed and holding out their cardboard number to the woman like an offering, and he tells himself she is not worth it. She is not going to get me down. I survived out there weeks while she was in here sitting on her ass filling out index cards. I have fought and killed to survive.

He has a sudden flashback to Sarge standing in front of the hospital, spitting tongues of flame and smoke with his AK47 in the dark. He remembers throwing a Molotov into a mob of the Infected. The Bradley smashed through the parked cars, its gun booming. He smiles.

“Ha,” he says, and walks away to find Ethan standing near one of the tables, wringing his hands. He asks the man how the search is going.

“Slow,” Ethan says with a sad smile, but he appears happy to be trying, and this is something, Todd realizes. At least there is that.

“Where’s everybody else?”

“The Army took Sarge and Steve away for debriefing. Wendy got a job as a cop and is heading to where they told her she could live. She gets priority housing being a cop. And Paul is on his way to one of the food distribution centers. He got a job there passing out food.”

“Well,” Todd says, feeling awkward.

“How about you? You going back to school? They offer that here, you know.”

“I don’t really see the advantage of learning calculus,” Todd says before catching himself. “Oh, sorry, man.”

Ethan nods sadly. “It’s okay. I don’t see the point in teaching it anymore, either.”

“I’ve got big plans, Ethan. I’ve got this stash—”

“One hundred and eight!” a voice cries from one of the tables.

Ethan perks up. “That’s me.”

“Well,” Todd says, frowning. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Right,” Ethan says vacantly. “Take care of yourself, Todd.”

Todd collects his duffel bag, weapon and ammunition in another room and walks outside into hazy sunlight, feeling tickled and breathless with excitement.

I’m here, he thinks. I made it.

The street in front of the school is filled with activity. A group of bored soldiers glances at him, sweating in their helmets, and then go back to talking among themselves. They barely look a day older than him, just beefy kids. Several children sit on the cracked sidewalk, drawing with pieces of colored chalk. Another group of kids, orphans of Infection quickly going feral, pull a red wagon filled with empty plastic jugs and bottles. Whatever grass might have grown here is now gone, trampled into dried dirt that floats in the air as dust. A military five-ton truck rolls down the street, ignoring a stop sign, beeping at the lazy crowds. Several men are working on a large machine, their tools and parts laid out neatly on a filthy white blanket. Dogs are barking inside a mom and pop shop across the street converted into housing. A loudspeaker attached to an old telephone pole, dangling a tangle of wires, squawks instructions on how to avoid cholera, followed by an ear-splitting screech. A moment later, a Britney Spears song begins playing, tinny and offering more nostalgia than entertainment in this time and place.

Todd is irritated at the other survivors. They could not even stick around to stay goodbye. You’re on your own again, Todd old man, he tells himself. You were doing just fine before joining up with them. You were
ninja
, surviving on your own, as you’ve always done. You will do it again. The improbable umbilical cord was not meant to last. It had been a relationship born of necessity, nothing more. Now it is time to be a nation of one again.

He consults his map, a virtual city carefully drawn in madman scrawl, his to explore. He identifies the school, situated on a road that forms one of the camp’s major arteries used for motorized transport between the central hub and the distribution and health centers. He finds his new home, a speck in one of the endless shanty towns, revealed by a blotch of highlighter. Then he locates the nearest general market, where he intends to launch his career as a trader.

The other survivors are haggard, tired, broken. Just look at Sarge, he thinks, the man who fought a horde of screaming Infected by himself and saved our lives: damaged goods. Todd is young and taut and mentally flexible and much, much more resilient than he looks. If anything, the apocalypse has been almost kind to him. Already lean, he is starting to put on a little muscle and with it, more confidence. He feels powerful. He looks at the kids running by in packs and the soldiers passing around a cigarette and thinks: My generation will survive this. Will be defined by it. And we will define the age in turn.

♦

Paul hitches a ride hanging onto the side of a garbage truck as it grinds down one of the camp’s main arteries, raising a choking cloud of dust. The truck has been assigned to collect the dead for disposal. Its sides are decorated with crowded layers of outlandish graffiti, much of it incorporating grotesquely painted skulls and bones. He let the driver bum a cigarette and in return found out why the dead are burned in pits outside the city. The reason, he was told, goes back to the camp’s origins, when many people, raised on horror films, postulated that the Infected were zombies—hungry things that rose from the dead. Although it has been disproven, the practice stuck. Even if the people here want to bury the dead now, they cannot. There is simply not enough space.

A rock glances off of the side of the truck with a metallic boom, making Paul flinch. Another sails by close to his head, almost making him fall into the dust. The cab’s passenger-side window rolls down and a rifle protrudes, carefully sighting on a target among the tents.

No more rocks are thrown at the vehicle.

The truck lurches over the potholes, trembling in its metal skin. It makes three stops to pick up bodies lying stiff in the sun, their faces pale and their skin flaccid and waxy under sheets of plastic. For years, Americans sanitized death. Few people actually saw the dead in their natural state, bloated and drawing flies with their stench. They saw them laid out on velvet in fine caskets, dressed up in their best clothes, preserved like Egyptians.

The truck finally slows in front of a large wood church. A hand reaches out of the window and points to the front doors.

Paul jumps off, pounds the side of the truck to signal the driver that he can go, and waves. The hand waves back and the truck continues down the road.

Free of the truck’s exhaust, the camp’s ever-present smells of cooking, wood smoke and sewage return with a vengeance.

He breathes deep, figuring he might as well start getting used to it.

The doors are open and he walks in eager to do something.

Moments later, he finds himself staring down the barrel of an M16 rifle.

“Where do you think you’re going, Father?”

Paul frowns. “It’s Reverend, not Father, and I’m going to the place where I’ve been assigned by the authorities to live and work.”

“Let’s see your papers.”

The soldier studies his work papers while the rest of his squad glances at him curiously and then returns to their business. Paul ignores them and takes a look around. The church is filled with children sitting on every kind of chair in front of every kind of table—folding chairs, armchairs, office chairs, deckchairs, ottomans, benches, dining room tables, ping pong tables, nightstands, coffee tables, end tables, drawing tables and poker tables. The pews are gone, probably hacked up for firewood. A long line of sunburned kids holding bowls, spoons and mugs wait their turn to receive stew being ladled out of large vats on the altar in the domed apse, like a scene out of
Oliver Twist
. Their chatter fills the grand nave, rising up to the vaulted ceiling. They chew in the light of windows beautifully patterned with hand-stained glass.

“Hi,” a man in clerical garb says, approaching with his hand outstretched. The man is tall and skinny, his shoulders slightly stooped, and wears a neatly trimmed beard. “I’m Pastor Strickland. This is my church.”

“Nice to meet you,” Paul says, taking his work papers back from the soldier and shaking the man’s hand warmly. “I’m Paul Melvin. These kids are all . . . ?”

“That’s right. Orphans of Infection.”

“So many,” says Paul, staring at them. He has not seen a happy, living child in weeks and seeing so many here, eating good food in a safe place, warms his heart.

“These kids must be nourished and protected. They are our future. But they’re still wild animals, most of them. Don’t turn your back on them or leave your property unattended.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But they seem pretty well behaved.”

“They have an abiding respect for the supernatural,” Strickland says with a smile. “They think if we find the right words, God will end Infection.”

Paul grunts, pleased. “That’s something I have in common with them. I’ll have to ask them what words they think will work.”

“I’m sorry, Paul. But you won’t be working here. You’ll be working down the street at the FoodFair handing out rations to the campers. Hard work, most of it, and thankless at that. Is that a problem?”

Paul shakes his head. He would like to work with the children, but it does not matter. “I just came here to work. I have to wonder, though.”

“Why do we need somebody like you to do that kind of work?”

“Something like that,” Paul admits.

“Ah, well,” says Strickland. “I’ll tell you. On a weekly basis, we hand out enough food to give each camper about twenty-one hundred calories a day. They get wheat, beans, peas, vegetable oil, fortified food such as a corn soya blend, some salt and sugar. If the camp gets its hands on some cattle, we can distribute a little beef, but that’s not all that often. The campers get no spices and most people can’t afford that kind of thing at the markets. Our fare will keep you alive, but it’s monotonous, as you can imagine, and people get mad after a while eating the same thing. Here’s something else. We try to give rations to women only because they are more likely to pass it on to other family members instead of selling it to buy something else. That naturally produces conflicts. Plus there’s the simple fact that we work for the government here, essentially, and a lot of people are resentful.”

“I saw people throwing rocks at a garbage truck today.”

“They are less likely to throw them at people in our profession,” Strickland says. “Does that answer your question simply enough? A lot of people have turned away from God because of what has happened, but they haven’t gotten around to blaming us for it yet. Most of the campers see us for what we are: people trying to help.”

“That’s what I want to do,” Paul tells him. “I want to help.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place. This camp needs all the help it can get.”

♦

Wendy enters the police station, a graffiti-covered building crowded with shouting people arguing with powerful, burly men wearing a variety of motley uniforms, from correctional facilities officers to private sector rent-a-cops. The building smells like angry men testing each other, a scent she knows well. She senses an atmosphere of simplicity and brute force here. The walls are plastered with wilting public health notices, camp edicts, duty rosters and poorly rendered carbon copies of missing persons sheets. Two bearded officers shove their way through the crowd, loading shotguns. Dogs sleeping on the floor raise their heads sharply as the men tramp out of the station. A man wearing a steelers cap, handlebar mustache and cashtown fire department T-shirt directs her to where Unit 12 bunks, the cost for this information a degrading moment of sexual appraisal. He does not care why she wants to know; he probably thinks she is somebody’s woman paying a visit. He watches her leave, spitting tobacco juice into a soda can.