Authors: Craig Dilouie
Major Duncan appears to sense his hesitation. He clears his throat and says, “Sergeant, I know you and your men have been through a lot in this war, and that this mission offers a great deal of risk for uncertain gain. I want you to consider something. Do you know the biggest threat to our forces right now? The leading source of casualties among our fighting men?”
Rod realizes the question is not rhetorical, and scrambles to think up an honest answer. “The monsters,” he says. “The hoppers in particular, sir.”
“The correct answer is suicide, Sergeant. Our people are killing themselves in record numbers.” The Major takes off his glasses and cleans them with a handkerchief. “Let me ask you another question. Do you know why we still pay our personnel in dollars, and accept those dollars at the PX for goods available at normalized prices?”
“The dollar’s the national currency, sir.”
The man puts his glasses back on and regards Rod with a grim smile. “Gold is the closest thing this country has to a national currency right now, Sergeant. Gold and things you can touch—food, water, toilet paper. Hell, bullets are so valuable these days
they
should be the currency. So why bother with paper money, when so many people in the country have given up on it? I’ll tell you the answer this time, Sergeant. One word: Morale. The illusion everything is normal. We pay dollars to soldiers to clear ground and scavenge goods, which we then sell to these soldiers in return for their dollars. We do a lot of things like that to maintain the idea that things are still normal, right down to busting balls about dress and appearance. But we all know they’re not normal. This war is taking a massive toll and it’s only just started. The fact is, Sergeant Rodriguez, we are falling apart a little bit every day. Even as we continue to gain ground, we are losing the war for the hearts and minds of our own people.”
Rod nods in understanding. He underestimated this officer. For a rear echelon type, Major Duncan appears to know what he is doing.
“Do you catch my meaning, Sergeant?” says the Major.
“I understand if there’s any chance to win this fight, we have to take it, and my boys are up to whatever it takes to get the job done,” Rod tells him. “You can count on it, sir.”
“Aieeyah, Sergeant,” Duncan says, while Rhodes and Sims nod.
Rod meant every word he said.
It’s a long shot, but any shot at all is enough to make me a believer at this point. After all, there are no atheists in foxholes.
Anne
The bus trembles and bangs over potholes marring the sun-dappled road. Anne studies the forest and open fields through the windows with her detached telescopic sight. A white-tailed deer bounds through the distant growth, fleeing the metal monster with its grinding hum.
“They could be anywhere,” Todd says, studying the same ground with the binoculars.
Anne wants to tell him to stay focused on the mission, which is to find and kill Ray Young before he can infect more innocent people. But she knows what Todd is going through.
“They can’t be far from here,” she says. “We’ve got to keep searching.”
“Of course. It just feels a little hopeless with so much ground to cover.”
“Stop the bus,” she says. “I think I’ve got them.”
“You’re kidding,” Todd says, leaning forward, trying to see what she sees. The forest on the right drops off in a steep slope, revealing a valley divided into farms covering the land like faded patches on an old quilt. “I don’t see anything.”
“There,” she points as Marcus pulls onto the shoulder of the road.
“That smoke? That could be anything.”
“Not smoke. Dust. You were saying?”
“Wow,” Todd says with a grin.
She resists the urge to tousle his hair.
A dust cloud could mean a lot of things. It could mean cattle, but she knows the cattle herds are gone from the area, eaten by survivors and the Infected. It could mean a refugee camp, but if there were one there, she would have heard about it. It could mean a convoy of vehicles, but the dust is too concentrated and localized.
By process of elimination, it is most likely a massive crowd of people.
These are the Infected of Camp Defiance, migrating east. Assuming they are following Ray, then he should be there as well, like Moses leading his people to the Promised Land.
“If I see Erin, I’ll let you know.”
“Promise me you’ll look,” Todd says.
“Promise.”
Marcus cranks the handle, opening the door. Anne touches his shoulder and hops down onto the road, rifle slung over her shoulder and her boots crunching stones.
“You need me to watch your back?” he asks her.
“No thanks, I’m good,” she says. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“You be careful,” he says, and she feels his desire.
“I will,” she says, holding his gaze.
“We’ll be here,” Jean calls from back of the bus. “Like sitting ducks.”
Marcus grins, shaking his head. Anne rolls her eyes at him before turning and marching into the woods.
The sooner I dump you in someone else’s lap, Jean Byrd, the better. Maybe they’ll understand how bad you had it during the epidemic.
For now, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
She disappears into the trees, still tingling from the way Marcus looked at her, excited and afraid at the idea of his feelings coming out into the open.
Stay focused.
The gloomy forest envelops her, thrusting her into a darker, far more dangerous world.
Shrugging her rifle into her hands, she jogs through the foliage. The air smells like moist earth and greenery. The air is cooler here under the shade of the forest canopy, but more humid, covering her in a slick sheen of sweat. Her cap feels wet against her forehead. After fifty yards, she crouches, sweeping the foliage with the barrel of her rifle.
She hears a nasal grunt. Something else responds with a series of glottal clicks. Anne knows of just one thing that uses this form of speech.
Hoppers.
She finds the little band hunched in a circle around the carcass of a dead deer, tearing off pieces of meat and chewing, their little cheeks bulged with meat. The monsters look like the product of a bizarre genetic experiment—hairless, barrel chested, albino baboons with legs shaped like a cricket’s. They wobble when they walk, as if struggling, little arms outstretched for balance. When they sight their prey, they are capable of multiple jumps high into the air. Their wide mouths are lined with rows of jagged teeth.
Once they land on their victim, they bite and wrap their legs to prevent him from tossing them away. They then stab him with the erect stinger between their legs. This stinger injects a parasite that grows to become another hopper.
Anne hates the hoppers nearly as much as she does the Demon, the fiercest monster of all. She hates these particular creatures because they are parasites. Bottom feeders. Cockroaches.
As much as she would love to gun them down, she cannot afford to draw any attention to herself. If she shoots, more might show up, not to mention a hundred thousand Infected she believes are marching across the valley just past the next rise.
She goes around the hoppers, staying as close to the ground as she can.
Anne has bigger fish to fry today.
♦
Ahead, sunlight glares through the trees. Soaked with sweat after her journey, Anne slows as she approaches the edge of the forest, pausing every few paces to study her surroundings. The last thing she needs is to leave the woods and run into a pack of Infected.
She emerges at the top of a treed hill overlooking a farmhouse and surrounding cornfields swarming with Infected moaning in the sunlight. The horde seems endless, trampling the fields into ruin, large enough to raise a dust cloud seen from miles away.
So this is where you went.
The sight is breathtaking. So many people. So many lives destroyed just so that a mindless organism could survive a little longer. Sarge would have described the scene as a
target rich environment
, but she is not here to kill Infected.
Anne is looking for Ray Young, the man who caused all this.
She takes a drink of water from her canteen, breathes deeply, and gets to work. Peering into the eyepiece of the telescopic scope mounted on her rifle, she studies the crowd.
This might take a very long time. Might as well conserve energy.
She detaches the scope from her rifle and puts her back against a large tree, scanning the shifting crowds while she eats a granola bar.
Erin?
The girl drifts among the Infected with her arms at her sides, wearing a lost expression.
At least Todd will get some closure.
A flicker of movement far behind her catches Anne’s eye. A group of Infected swarm over each other, covered in blood, eating one of their own.
Something is moving on their left. She shifts her scope.
Ray Young jogs away from the Infected, looking terrified.
A smile flickers across Anne’s lips.
Got you, you son of a bitch.
She pockets her unfinished snack and reattaches the telescopic sight. Ray stops at the farmhouse and sits on the steps.
He believes he is still human. The tragedy is he is another product of Infection, perhaps the worst of all—a lie, a creature of deception, a Trojan Horse.
An abomination that must be killed.
Time for the killing.
The first step: find a good firing position.
Anne studies the ground, looking for a prone firing position offering support as well as concealment. Making herself as still as possible is necessary for an accurate shot, but is also exhausting. As muscles tire, they move, producing wobble in the crosshairs.
She cannot find a prone firing position on the hill with a decent line of sight. Not even a kneeling position. Anne will have to take her shot at Ray while standing.
Placing her palm against the rough bark of a tree, she extends her thumb to form a V and rests the butt of the rifle there, placing the stock against the pocket of her right shoulder.
Stay right there, Ray.
She flicks the safety to the FIRE position, pulls the bolt back to release the catch, and chambers the first round from the magazine. Locked and loaced.
Ray stands and paces, then stops. Anne rests her cheek against the worn surface of the walnut rifle stock and aligns her eye with the scope. The blurry image comes into sharp focus as she adjusts the magnification. As the reticle clears, she centers the crosshairs on Ray’s chest, making an adjustment to the ballistic cam to compensate for her higher elevation.
This done, she closes her eyes and relaxes. When she opens them, the crosshairs have dropped to her natural point of aim, a little left and below the target. If she were to correct and shoot now, her muscles would tense, which could throw off her aim. Anne adjusts her firing stance and repeats the exercise. When she opens her eyes, Ray is still in the crosshairs. Now she can shoot without any tension. The man looks as scared and confused as he did earlier. Rather than evoking any sympathy, this makes her hate him even more.
In a minute, all of your worries will be over, and you can go to sleep, you prick.
She inhales, exhales.
As she breathes out, she delays her next inhale, knowing she has about ten seconds of perfect stillness to shoot. Her finger touches the trigger.
Just a little more pressure, and BOOM.
Ray grins just before a man steps in front of her shot.
Anne pauses, blinking, and lowers the rifle.
Something strange is happening.
A large number of the Infected are streaming through the crowd, converging on her target.
Ray
Ray sits on the porch steps and watches the Infected bring him gifts. He thought about how hungry and thirsty he was, spoke the words aloud, and now here they come like robot servants, dumping pieces of jerky, cans of pasta in sauce, bottles of water, warm sodas, lint-covered Life Savers, sticks of gum, trail mix and a bag of multigrain tortilla chips crushed to the consistency of sand. He wishes for cigarettes, and soon has his choice of brands. He wishes for a stiff drink, and is given a metal flask with a bullet hole punched through the top and a little vodka in the bottom.
Saying the words is not even necessary. Picturing it in his mind, and willing it to happen, is enough to get what he wants.
Ray laughs.
I’m king of the motherfucking zombies.
He takes a long snort from the flask and gasps, raising it in a toast.
“I drink to your health.”
He is starting to process what is happening to him.
The bug turned me into a superweapon. It allowed me to live for this, and this only.
The Infected stand around, staring at him with their glazed, needy eyes. He pulls his STEELERS cap lower over his face and wolfs down his meal of junk food and water. Ray doesn’t want them to see him crying.
He feels defiled. Diseased.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“
Sorry” doesn’t begin to cover it, bro.
He looks up at the Infected crowding around and feels something else, too. A fierce pride. They belong to him now. They are, in a sense, his children.
Is that me feeling this, or the bug?
A dark defiant thought seeps into his mind and replaces his guilt.
The whole world can go fuck itself and become infected, as long as I live.
That was not the bug thinking. That was him. He lights a Winston and leans back on his elbows.
I’m alive, and there is only this, and that makes this good. Whatever it is.
Breathe in, breathe out.
You do what you think is best, Ray.
“You got it.”
He smokes in silence, listening to the Infected growl, and tries to reason things out.
I’m a carrier for the bug. I can’t be around normal people. That’s the bad news. The good news is I can control the crazies. Maybe even the monsters.
In any case, it’s nice to finally feel safe. Like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
On the other hand, the idea of living among the mindless Infected for the rest of his life is enough to make him doubt his sanity. He may be a bit of a misanthrope, but he is a sociable misanthrope. He may have a history of abusing people, but he needs people to be happy.
Ray smiles at the gray faces. If he can control the Infected, he can make them all walk off the nearest cliff, or turn on each other. He could be a major weapon
against
Infection.
He might, in fact, be capable of saving the world using this power. What would that idea be worth to the right people?
Maybe nothing. Maybe they’ll kill me on sight. Just in case. Just to make sure I can’t ever hurt them. It’s the safest move for them.
Maybe we could do a deal, though. I make all of the Infected climb the nearest mountain and jump off and die, and they find a way to cure me. It’s the least they could do for the man who saved the world.
He chooses to believe in this possibility. It is, after all, his one hope. Like he already learned, anything can happen.
Ray stands and stretches.
That’s it, then. I’ll try to contact the government. But where is it?
The Army is in Washington. That’s where he must go.
The lump in his side buzzes with appreciation.
“I’m glad the idea pleases you.”
The solution is simple enough: All he needs is a vehicle with a full tank of gas. Maybe a pickup. He’ll take a bodyguard of Infected with him, and ditch the rest here.
I know just who I want for the job.
“Unit 12,” he calls. “Get your lazy asses over here.”
His old police unit streams through the crowd. He can hear the clatter of their gear and their glottal grunts. They stop in front of him in their black T-shirts and load-bearing vests bristling with shotgun shells, grinning wolfishly, their heads cocked and their fists clenched at their sides. Two of them still wear pistols on their hips. Ray laughs and whoops.
“Holy shit. Look what the cat dragged in.”
Tyler Jones shoves through the milling horde, ridiculous red suspenders and all, the front of his gray work shirt black with dried blood.
“Good to see you alive, buddy,” Ray says. “Even with the bug.”
He holds out his hand, but Tyler ignores it.
“I guess Jonesy didn’t make it. Sorry about that, bud. May he rest in peace.”
Tyler grimaces, but says nothing.
“You boys,” Ray tells them, “will be my Praetorians. I’ll bet you dumb shits don’t even know what a Praetorian is. Maybe you, Tyler, but that’s about it.”
It feels good to talk, and oddly, it doesn’t bother him to have a one-sided conversation with a bunch of crazies. It’s not quite like talking to himself; it’s more like talking to a pet dog.
“Now let’s see how good you people really are.”
He pictures a pickup truck and a set of keys.
Now fetch. Howl if you find it.
His mental image of the truck expands to include several big-chested blondes giving it a soapy wash. He laughs.
If you see any hot models hanging around the truck, bring them to me as well.
He is amazed by how powerful he feels. Before he made it to the camp, all of the fight had been sucked out of him. Now he feels like a king, with a nation to do his bidding.
Not to rain on your parade bro, but again, is that you or the bug feeling so good?
He finds the thought depressing. How does one know if he has free will? How much free will can you have if you have a parasite craving to be spread?
Does it matter in the end?
The women drift out of the mob, their faces twisted into frightening imitations of smiles. Brunettes and blondes and redheads. Beautiful, all of them, even with their unkempt hair and gray skin and feverish eyes.
His heart races. He has not been with a woman since before the Screaming.
What is this? Is Infection manipulating me again?
Nope, you imagined this. The bug merely delivered.
It wants you to be happy.
Several Infected howl from the front yard. The owner of the house left a truck behind. The women continue to approach, softly hissing, their heads jerking.
Stop
, Ray projects.
The woman hesitate, confused at his mixed signals. One of them lifts her T-shirt and squeezes her scratched breasts together, licking her chops while the others inch their way forward, their eyes gleaming like knives.
Oh God—
He knows of some guys who worked over Infected women. They raped the prettier ones before killing them. They justified it by saying the women didn’t even know they were being raped.
Ray remembers saying he would never sink so low.
But if I’m doomed to have the crazies as company forever. . .
Get away from me!
The Unit 12 cops turn and roar at the other Infected, shoving at them. The women shriek and melt back into the crowd.
Ray takes off his cap and wipes sweat from his forehead.
Shit, that was close.
As if I’d ever do something like that.
A little angel and a little devil perched on his shoulders, arguing over his soul.
But they wanted it.
Bro, they just wanted it because you wanted them to want it.
I’M LONELY.
His discontent passes through the Infected like a wind, agitating them. The crowd parts like massive curtains made of people. A single figure approaches. It is a woman, walking slowly like a bride coming down the aisle to join her husband at the altar.
The Infected howl again in the distance.
“In a minute,” Ray says absently, waiting.
Her hips sway as she walks. Like the other women, her hair is wild, but while this makes the others look like broken dolls, it just makes this woman more attractive. She is older now than he remembered; he hasn’t seen her in years—not since that night she looked into his face and saw only spite. He heard she married a pharmacist and returned to Cashtown to buy a house and raise a family. If anything, the years have been kind to her. She has put on a few pounds, but in the right places. Her face has aged, but she is still beautiful. Her legs, even covered in tiny scratches and insect bites, are still shapely and muscular. When she smiles, she appears human.
She was the only woman he ever loved.
“Lola.”
He takes a step forward just as the top of Tyler’s head disappears in a spray of blood.
A second later, he hears the rolling rifle shot.