"There's a break in this wall somewhere along here," Tony said. "It happened during the war. A stray rocket or something . . . . The usual military ineptitude."
They soon found it, a jagged gap in the concrete from which they could look down on the throngs of infected who moved slowly away from Philadelphia.
"There goes my hibernation theory," Tony said.
Alex peered through the gap, and saw what Tony meant. Each of the infected had become hunchbacks, growths swelling underneath the ragged clothing of those who wore anything at all. Those who were naked revealed not curved spines, but gelatinous parasites clinging to their flesh.
Passengers. Every one of the infected carried a colloid on his or her back.
"It's a clean sweep, all right," Alex said, leaning back out of sight of the infected. "The meek have inherited Philadelphia, if not the Earth."
Tony nodded. "This is wild," he said. "Where the hell do you suppose they're all going?"
"Broadway?"
Tony laughed as they clomped down the hill away from the interstate, and it occurred to Alex—not for the first time—that as long as they could laugh, they would never be completely beaten. They sought refuge behind a windowless brick building.
"I wonder," Alex said, as soon as he had caught his breath, "if we could just sort of fall in at the end of the line and march along behind them."
Tony tried to laugh, but he seemed unsure of whether Alex was serious or not. "You know what they'd do to us if they found out?"
"If we were at the end, we could just shoot the nearest of them and make a run for it. I don't think they could catch us."
"You're crazy as a shit house rat, man," Tony said.
"So they tell me."
"Look, for all we know they're going to jump off a cliff like a bunch of lemmings. Why not let them go?"
"I already explained all that to you, Tony."
"Yeah, but you seem to be looking for ways to get us in trouble."
"You don't have to come with me."
Tony fell silent. Alex knew that he was putting the kid between a rock and a hard place. If he didn't tell him where the guerrillas were holed up, Tony would remain a solitary wanderer in a deserted city. Of course, Alex could tell him about the armory and let Tony go join the others, but then Tony's incentive for helping him would vanish. Maybe he was being a little ruthless, but it seemed necessary. This was, after all, war.
"You'll take me to your friends if I go with you?" Tony asked. "Provided we live through this?"
"You have my word on it."
Tony looked dubiously at him, but he nodded his assent. "You sound like that lawyer who used to advertise on TV."
Alex laughed. "You know what happened to the lawyers, don't you? Sane and logical as they were, they were among the first to go."
Tony permitted himself a smile. "Maybe the colloids aren't all bad."
"Well, pretty soon we'll find out just how bad they are, won't we?"
Tony didn't look at him, as he said, "Yeah, I guess so."
"Let's do it then."
"What about your gun?"
Alex looked down at the Ingram nestled in his arms. "What do you mean?"
"As soon as they see it, they'll know you're not one of them. Then what's going to happen?"
"Maybe I can strap it on my back and cover it with my clothes. It'll look like I'm carrying a colloid."
"It might work."
"Sure it will. You should look for something to put on your back, too."
"But you said that they communicate telepathically, Alex. How are we gonna fool them?"
"There are thousands upon thousands of them. They won't bother about a couple of stragglers."
"I hope you're right."
Alex removed his shirt and arranged the Ingram's strap around his left shoulder, with the barrel pointing toward the ground. Then he put the shirt back on and pulled it up over the gunbutt.
"How does it look?" he asked.
"Lovely," Tony said, tearing strips from his own bedraggled jacket and stuffing them under his collar. "You should have been featured in
GQ
."
"You'll pass muster, too. Let's go."
They hustled back up the hill, taking care not to be seen. Coming to the gap in the wall, they waited until the last of the infected staggered past, and then stealthily walked out onto the crumbling asphalt. They took their places at the end of the line and pretended to be part of the exodus.
Alex felt a sense of awe as he looked ahead, seeing the infected walking four or five abreast as far as the eye could see. Perhaps Tony had been right; this might not have been a very good idea. After fifteen or twenty minutes, they came to an exit ramp. More of the infected were joining them, coming up from Girard Avenue. Alex tried not to stare at the blotchy blue faces as the newcomers fell in behind him and Tony.
Tony glanced at him resentfully, as if to say that he had told Alex so. It was too late to get out now, though. Now they were stuck here, and would have to see it through till the end.
It was eerie, marching silently in this army of the dead. The infected made gurgling sounds, similiar to the noises some inmates had made when Alex was in the hospital. The scuffing of rotted shoes on the asphalt was the only other sound. A strong breeze swept the sickly odor of the infected away most of the time, but every now and then it assailed Alex and Tony. It was so repellent that Alex wanted to gag every time he caught a whiff, but he tried to show no reaction. Nevertheless, he became preoccupied with the smell. It was a death stench, but not like after a desert firefight, or even like the dying in a hospital. It was a unique and—for lack of a better word—alien smell.
As time passed, and they marched into Philadelphia's northeast, the wind died. Surprisingly, Alex became more accustomed to the odor. He was reminded of a summer job he'd held when he was a teenager—garbageman. His first day on the job, he had made the mistake of standing under the enormous trash crusher blade after the truck had deposited its disgusting contents at the dump. Suddenly a stinking rain had fallen from the blade, drenching his hair and running down onto his face and shoulders. He had shouted out in anger at the driver, but the more experienced garbagemen had only been quietly amused by his discomfiture. After a few more days, he had gotten used to the smell . . . though his mother had not enjoyed washing his work clothes.
He found comfort in this memory now, assuring himself that he would get used to the terrible stench of the infected. The trick was simply to take your mind off it, to think of more pleasant things. He tried to occupy himself by looking around him, taking note of the odd detail, or trying to determine what the wrecked buildings had once been used for.
Tony walked slightly ahead of him, to his right. He seemed as preoccupied as Alex was trying to be, and his face was so dirty it was impossible to tell that he had none of the telltale blue blotches on his skin.
Terror seized Alex's heart then. There was a trail of cloth strips falling from the tail of Tony's jacket. His fake colloid was coming undone.
Alex dared a glance at the infected behind them. Their dead eyes were on the trail of rags behind Tony. The nearest of them advanced clumsily but swiftly toward him.
Three of them were on Tony before Alex could even think of reaching for his gun. More were behind them, grasping and grunting, trying to get in on the kill. Tony screamed as they wrestled him to the ground, overpowered by the sheer weight of their numbers.
Alex's hand was reaching for the Ingram's shoulder strap, but he made a conscious effort to stop it. They didn't know that he wasn't one of them. Only Tony was in danger.
Could he stand by and watch the kid die? If it wasn't for Alex, Tony wouldn't even be here. But there were hundreds of the infected behind them now, and those ahead were turning to join in the fray. The Ingram could only kill a few of them, and then he would be trapped. He had to let them kill Tony. With a resigned motion, Alex turned toward the north and continued walking.
"No!" Tony cried. "You can't do this!"
Tony was screaming at his attackers, but it seemed as if he were talking to Alex. He kept on screaming as Alex shuffled slowly forward, trying to show no sign of the horror and heartsickness he felt. He should never have forced Tony to come with him. The kid had trusted him.
As the infected horde moved slowly onward, Tony's shrieks faded and then stopped altogether. Had he been killed outright, beaten to death by the infected? Or had the colloids instructed their hosts to place some of them on the poor kid, so that they could devour him alive? Alex might never know, and he didn't want to. It was enough to know that Tony was dead . . . and it was all Alex's fault. Tony had survived on his own for three years, and now he had been done in by his need for companionship. Alex had played to that need like a master manipulator.
But why? He hadn't needed Tony's help. It wasn't like him to enlist other people in his causes. He should have just sent Tony to the armory and left it at that. Now he had to live with this.
The day wore on into dusk. As the stars came out, Alex noticed that the odor of the infected didn't really bother him so much anymore. Tony's death and the physical effort of the long walk had numbed his senses, he supposed. Would he ever have a chance to get away? Maybe he should work his way over to the edge of the highway. Then he might be able to slip onto the embankment of an overpass and make a run for it. He tried, but the infected were so close around him that he couldn't do it without arousing them.
No, his only chance was to act just like them. He had to keep shambling along as if he were under the power of a colloid, no matter how long it took. Alex despaired to see that, even as darkness descended, they were not yet out of the city. Perhaps the night would be his salvation, though.
Again, he was disappointed. The infected often jostled him now, drawing closer to one another—and consequently to him—for warmth as the temperature dropped. Alex felt the cold seep through his rags, and through the holes in his boots. He exhaled vapor. Against his back, the Ingram was like ice.
As the night deepened, he remembered Tony's comparison of the infected to lemmings marching to the sea. Well, they were going the wrong way to reach the Altantic, but the walk probably would turn out just as ill-fated . . . for Alex, at least. And, when he got right down to it, what did it matter? In his most secret heart, he had often thought that the Earth was better off without humankind. Under the colloids' rule there was no pollution, no threat of nuclear war, no regional conflict. There had once been billions of people on the planet, it was true, but if he became truly objective about it, he had to admit to himself that, by and large, his fellow creatures had done a good job of little besides fouling their own nest.
And it was entirely possible that the colloids, once they had secured their position as masters of the Earth, would accomplish great things. The holocaust might prove to be the salvation of the planet.
Alex stared up at the clear night sky, wondering if the star the colloids had come from was even visible from earth. Might their arrival have been foreseen in the world's religions for all these millennia? Gods and angels, celestial visitors, UFOs . . . . Perhaps this was the destiny of the human race, the origin of all religions, somehow glimpsed by the prescient from the dim beginnings of civilization.
But this was fatalistic bullshit. Why had he fought the colloids if he believed that they were the rightful heirs to his own world?
He was very tired, but there was no chance of stopping to rest. The infected just seemed to go on and on without ever sleeping. No wonder they died so soon after the organisms invaded their nervous systems. Alex might be able to walk all night, but he would have to stop sometime tomorrow. He'd had so little sleep in the past few days. First the raid on the armory, then the death of his friend Flash, his discovery of Jo's true nature . . . . He had been so horrified to learn that she was host to a colloid. It didn't seem so bad to him now. After all, the colloid hadn't harmed her, had it? She was alive and well back at the armory, recovering from the intense struggle induced by the drug. But had she been so much different under the influence of the colloid?
Her motivations had given her away, of course. Suddenly she was not working for the guerrillas anymore, and he had become suspicious of her. Not right away, though. He had to admire the cleverness of the enemy, to devise this new and subtle method of infection. They had come up with a refinement that even the host might not be aware of.
The realization came at that moment, shriveling his guts with terror. He was infected.
But no, it couldn't be. He was the proud possessor of a bipolar disorder. He was a nut case. The colloids had never wanted people like him.
At least they hadn't up to now.
In spite of the cold, sweat began to form on Alex's brow and under his arms. He wanted to cry out, deny what he feared; scream to the stars that it wasn't true.
But with each passing moment, he knew with more and more certainty that it was. He had led Tony Chang to his death, at the behest of the colloid growing inside him. He had to remember that it was the colloid who had forced him to do it. He had believed himself to be no less at risk than Tony, hadn't he? If Tony had not carried a gun, was that his fault? And even if he had not joined Alex, Tony could as easily have died in the streets, couldn't he? Alex could have sent the kid to the armory, sure, but the guerrillas had little enough food as it was. Tony Chang was no great loss.
But this couldn't have been Alex thinking these things. This was contrary to everything he believed in.
It was the colloid, attempting to control his thoughts.
Alex looked around for the first time since Tony had been attacked, seeing that the infected paid no attention to him. They had doubtless been instructed by their masters not to harm him. He was one of them now.
How long had he been infected? Since the moment the colloid had been driven from Jo's body and mind? He estimated that at eighteen to twenty hours ago, but he could not be sure. He was losing track of time, borne along by thousands of the infected, moving endlessly into the shadows of night. The saurian necks of dead mercury vapor lamps rose up on either side of the broken asphalt, seeming to gesture towards the stars.