The Infection (35 page)

While the woman continued talking, he began to notice how attractive she was. He realized that he could always move on. He could find somebody else and start a new family.

He did not want to do that. What was it Paul said to him when they talked about the people who left behind photos of their loved ones?
I wouldn’t even know how
, he said when asked if he could ever let go of those he left behind. Right.

Thinking about Paul triggered memories of hours sitting in the dim, hot belly of the Bradley fighting vehicle, rolling through a dying city on screaming treads.

The memory made him feel oddly homesick.

Ethan was wondering how the other survivors were coping when the woman’s friends approached. They noticed he was wearing scrubs and asked if he was a doctor. They had a sick friend and they were there to try to get him placed on the list for surgery—a service provided only to the most needy cases in this time of scarcity, as so many medical professionals were either killed or infected in the first days of Infection. The hospital sent them here, only to be told by the government to return to the hospital.

They reminded him that it was against the law for doctors to avoid work. Their eyes were gleaming, desperate.

When he told them he was not a doctor, one asked him if he had been a hospital patient. How could he have survived when the first wave of Infected rose from their beds? Maybe he had the disease but did not know it. Was he a carrier? Was he infecting all of them even now?

Ethan does not remember how things became violent. His memories blur at that point. He may have lashed out at them first; his mind simply blanked out. He became aware of shacks flying by, grim faces staring at him from doorways and over the flames of cooking fires. Lawn ornaments, hanging laundry, buckets and plastic jugs. He knocked something over. Curses filled the air.

He remembers when he used to be a pacifist. At school, kids would occasionally fight, and he would have to get between them and break it up. He hated doing it. Sometimes he would have night terrors over getting punched by a kid. In these visions, he would lose control, lash out and lose everything.

A truck rumbles alongside, filled with men laughing down at him. One of the men, a brown giant in T-shirt and jeans, stands and shouts, “Hey you! You want a job for the day?”

Better to ride than to run, he tells himself. He nods, gasping for breath, remembering that horrible day in the department store, as he ran blindly among the mannequins.

Large, calloused hands reach down and pull him up into the truck.

“
¿Qué onda?
” they ask him.

He sits on the trembling bed of the truck as it lurches over the potholes. One of the men hands him a bottle of water. He takes a drink, wincing at the metallic taste, and hands it back.

“You got a trade?” the giant says to him.

“I was a teacher,” he says. “Now I just kill people.”

The men laugh, ringing him with their bearded faces. They spit over the side. He can smell onions on their breath. Some of them speak English while others chatter in Caló, an argot of Mexican Spanish common in the Southwestern states. Somebody passes around a flask and he smells distilled alcohol, probably made from the wheat and rice distributed in the weekly ration.

Booze is not the only thing you can make by distilling alcohol from mashed grains. Distilled alcohol makes a good anesthetic, antiseptic and preservative, he knows.

The truck stops in a cloud of dust in front of a large barn and the men jump out. The building is being used as a slaughterhouse. Cattle pace around a holding pen, agitated by the smell of blood. Draped in plastic garbage bags, butchers work on animals hung upside down by their hind legs, draining the bodies, removing the head, feet, hide and internal organs. The ground is soaked with blood.

The giant tells Ethan the beef is cut, wrapped and sent out immediately to the food distribution centers. The men here are paid in meat. A lot of it ends up in the market, bought and consumed fast before bacteria take hold. Most refugees put it into an eternal stew they keep continuously bubbling over fire, along with anything they can find such as wild onions and beans. The bones are fed to the camp dogs—pets brought by the refugees who now can no longer afford to feed them—whose presence is tolerated by the authorities because of their hatred of the Infected, making them good sentinels. The fat is used to manufacture soap and candles and biodiesel.

Other slaughterhouses in the camp process chickens, sheep, pigs. This one, the giant says, handles only cattle—steers and heifers mostly. The men here know cattle, how to stun them with a hammer, how to cut their throats and drain their blood with a knife, how to strip the carcass.

“
So what do we do?” Ethan says.

“
We move the cattle that comes into the camp into the pens.”

“
From where?”

“
The truck pulls up over there.”

“
And we move the cattle about fifty feet into the pens? That’s it?”

The giant grins down at him. “That’s it. We were told some trucks are coming in today. Here comes one now.”

The massive tractor trailer trembles, coughing, as it pulls up near the holding pens. The cattle, crammed together inside, bellow sadly.

“
Águila
, boys
,” the giant says. He winks at Ethan. “Sharp eyes. Like an eagle.”

The men take their weapons and form a semicircle around the rear of the truck. Two men clamber up and tie a nylon net in front of the trailer’s doors. The driver, sweating in a camouflage
john deere
cap and hunting vest bulging with shotgun shells, gets out and leans against the cab, watching them and biting into a tomato.

“
What do you want me to do?” Ethan says.

“
Caile
. I want you to stand right here,
bolillo
.”

The giant moves to the doors, removes the bolts, and flings them wide. He quickly steps out back and to the side. A wave of heat pours out of the trailer. Ethan winces at the rich smell of dung. The cattle push against each other, jostling and raising their heads, lowing. Their eyes gleam at him from the dark.

Ethan wonders why nobody is doing anything. Two of the men continue to hold the net taut, sweat pouring down their faces. He suddenly realizes that the others have moved away from him, stepping back from the trailer.

“
A ponemos chancla
,” one of the men whispers behind him.

The creature lunges hissing out of the dark, claws outstretched. Ethan cries out in fear and revulsion as it smashes into the net and plunges to the ground at his feet, shrieking and straining and reaching for him. A massive stinger protrudes from between its legs, stabbing repeatedly at the dust. The men surround the thing, hooting over their shotguns and holding the net, while two others rush in with spears. They shout obscenities in multiple languages as they thrust their weapons into the monster, which begins thrashing, keening, almost pitiful.

Finally, the thing lies still, dead. The men continue to stab it with their spears until it becomes a bleeding, featureless pile of road kill.

“
Mono
,” one of Chicanos says to Ethan, drawing his finger across his throat. “Hoppers.”

Ethan shakes his head, trying to clear it of the blind terror he felt when the thing sprang out of the dark. And rage at being used as bait.

“
Now you are one of us,” the giant says, grinning.
“
M
achín
.”

“
See this?” Ethan says, holding up his finger. “I was already one of you.”

The giant nods, transfixed by the jagged stump, his face paling.

Ethan stares at the thing lying dead on the ground. The men are spitting on it.

“
So what happens next?”

“
Now we check the cattle for Infection,
vato
.”

The cattle are led into a special quarantine pen. Two of them are Infected. They are easy to spot: thin, silent, listless, staggering a little when forced to walk. A heifer has one of the monkey things growing out of its side while a steer has two, both on its right flank.

“
Hoppers,” the giant says.

The Infected cattle are separated, killed and dragged to a large, smoking pit behind the barn. The heat there is incredible, rising from the scarred ground in blistering waves. Charred legs stick out of the blackened piles of meat, slowing crumbling into ash blowing away in the wind.

There, the dead cattle are burned with all of the others.

♦

Todd lights a candle in his small, sweltering one-room shack and stares at its intense glow. This candle, he thinks, is possibly the only beautiful thing in this entire horrible place.

Candles would be an ideal specialty as a merchant, he thinks. Everybody needs candles. They are simple, small and necessary. The only thing to watch out for is breakage. That and a match shortage. He might have to sell matches, too.

But he is not going to buy and sell candles.

He has an idea he believes will make him rich. He remembers Philip telling him that a good businessman will buy low and sell high. But how do you do this with a barter system?

The answer may be that you acquire lots of something that is almost worthless now and sell it later on when it is almost priceless.

Winter clothing, for example.

A few people sell winter gear in the market, mostly for scrap value and as substitute pillows and stuffers for bedrolls. Coats, hats, scarves, gloves, sweaters.

Almost nobody here believes Infection will last until winter. They have been here for less than two weeks and many of them have no idea what things are like outside. They believe the rumors that the Army is coming to save them. They believe the government propaganda that things are getting better. Things are not getting better. They are getting much, much worse.

Todd knows the people here will be in for a rough winter. If he can build up a big supply of winter clothes, he can trade them for pretty much anything he wants.

“Knock, knock,” a voice says from the doorway.

“Hey, Erin,” he grins. “Come on in. Welcome to my humble abode.”

The girl walks into his shack and looks around.

“Humble is right,” she says. “
Yeesh
.” She holds up a plastic baggie. “I scored some weed. It’s not very good, but it gets the job done. You want to get high?”

“Okay, I guess,” Todd says warily, looking at the bag.

Erin sits on the ratty carpet covering the dirt floor and starts rolling a joint.

“I am in dire need of some entertainment,” she says. “My need is
dire
. You know, before everything went to shit, I was going places. I was one ugly duckling as a kid. And then I got older and I wasn’t. Just like that: Suddenly I was popular. I had like eight hundred friends on Facebook. Then the bug comes along and I’m cut off from the world. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even exist anymore.”

Todd watches her come up for air but she says nothing more, lighting her joint and toking on it carefully until getting enough smoke in her lungs. She hands him the joint and he kisses it, taking little puffs and wondering about the strange, strong smell of it.

“I’m so fucking bored,” Erin says, blowing a long stream of smoke.

“I used to do a lot of wargaming with these college guys,” Todd offers tentatively. “I’m wondering if there are any wargaming clubs around here. You know,
Warhammer 40,000
. . .”

Erin is staring at him curiously. His voice trails off and time appears to slow. He coughs loudly on the smoke.

She suddenly smiles, beckoning the joint to return.

“I don’t know anything about that stuff,” she says. “Can we light another candle?”

“Sure,” he says, relieved.

“Cheer this place right up. How about beer? You got any alcohol?”

“No, but I have some candy if you’re interested.”

“Oh
God
, yes.”

Chewing on Gummi Bears with an expression approaching bliss, she asks him what things are like on the outside. He tells her about escaping his house during the first day of Infection, surviving on his own, finding the other survivors. Riding in the belly of the Bradley, spilling out to fight and scavenge. The stories are so fantastic that instead of embellishing them he tries to downplay their drama, afraid she will accuse him of making it all up.

Erin stares at him wide eyed. “I wish
I
had done all that,” she says, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight.

“I’m not sure if you would. We came very close to dying—well, almost every day.”

“Man, it’s so
cool
.”

“Um,” he says.

“Is that how you got that wound on your arm?”

Todd remembers the worm monster lunging out of the dark, its sharklike jaws snapping.