Pandemic

SEVEN.

Soon after deployment in Boston, Wade called his parents to make sure they were okay.

His sister answered.

Beth told him all the things she’d done to Mom and Dad. She told him what she wanted to do to him.

He listened to all of it. He just wanted to hear her voice. By the end, he was so numb he could barely speak.

The last thing he said was that he loved her. That it wasn’t her fault. That he forgave her.

She responded with hysterical laughter. Laughter so hard he could hear her wheezing. That was when he knew the sister he loved was still in there, a prisoner of the madness.

The infected laughed when they inflicted pain.

They also laughed when they experienced it.

Wade still kept a photo of her in his helmet. He looked at it so he could remember who she was, and didn’t have to think about her smashing in their parents’ heads with one of Dad’s golf clubs.

He hated the infected. He hated them for turning her into one of them.

He shot the people in the hospital because, at that moment, he wanted to kill anything not wearing a uniform.