The Infection

FLASHBACK: Anne Leary

“This is outrageous,” she said into the phone cradled between her cheek and shoulder as she flattened a lump of dough with her rolling pin. “Did you call the police?”

Anne had championed the bond to refurbish the park with new playground equipment. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was that playground equipment was not cheap, as in five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of not cheap, but she’d negotiated hard—people had a hard time refusing Anne Leary—and gotten the very best. She felt a sense of ownership over it. Now here was Shana calling to tell her that there were two men at the playground acting suspiciously.

“The cops aren’t answering the phone,” said Shana.

“Our tax dollars at work,” Anne said, rapidly cutting the dough into a ten-inch square and then expertly maneuvering the knife to cut the square into strips a half inch wide.

“The phone lines are all jammed up with that thing going on downtown. People killing each other in the streets. It’s like the Screaming again. It took me eight tries just to get through to you.”

Anne began laying half of the strips on top of her pie filling at regular intervals, pressing the ends into the edge of crust. Afterwards, she would place the other half crosswise across the top, bake it, and produce a perfect blueberry pie with a lattice crust.

“I don’t understand what the fuss is about,” she said. “They said on the radio it’s happening everywhere but if that’s true then it should be happening here. I don’t see anything going on.”

“I don’t know, Anne. Things are apparently pretty dangerous out there.”

“You know how the media is. They sensationalize everything. This is all going to blow over; you’ll see. We got past the Screaming. We’ll get past a bunch of people trying to take advantage by stirring up trouble. We just got to stay tough until the cops sort it out. And if the cops don’t, we will. If the crazies come here, we got to show them they aren’t welcome like last time.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Anne looked up at the ceiling as if imploring Heaven, almost laughing. “Of course I’m right!”

After the Screaming, the city had filled up with crazies. People deranged by what they had seen, wandering about in shock and anger. Others convinced the world was ending and flailing at their neighbors in panic. Criminal types looking for easy pickings. They were everywhere; some of them inevitably wandered through Anne’s neighborhood. People had been scared, staying in their homes, but Anne had toughened them up. They banded together and chased the crazies out.

And this, too, shall pass, she thought. Fear is the real enemy. They just had to stay tough.

“Well, what are we going to do?”

Everybody in the neighborhood knew who Anne Leary was and looked to her to take the lead in a crisis. People didn’t just call her to tell her things. They expected her to do something. She was treasurer for the local PTA and produced a monthly newsletter for the local homeowners association. After the Screaming, she not only organized the drive to eject the crazies, she also enlisted the other homeowners in her community to get their fallen neighbors to the clinics, take care of their children, and tend their yards and anything else that needed doing. It was hard work but the people who lived here were more than happy to have something they could do to help. Anne believed that a major crisis could bring out the best in people, if you only asked them to step up.

The dog ran into the kitchen and began marching back and forth in front of the glass sliding door connecting the kitchen to the backyard, whining and barking and scrabbling at the glass.

“Hang on,” Anne said. “I can barely hear you. The dog’s going crazy.”

She opened the door and watched Acer take off like an arrow and disappear through a gap in the fence that her husband always threatened to repair, but never did.

“I’m back,” she added, scooping up her pie and tossing it into the oven. “We can’t have the crazies running amok in our park. Our children play there, Shana. If the cops are too busy to help, we’re going to have to do this ourselves. Just like last time.”

“Oh Anne, don’t go vigilante again.”

“Me? I’m not doing anything. Big Tom’s going, not me.”

Her kids tramped by scowling and she followed them with her eyes, monitoring her little ducklings for signs of conspiracy.

“I got to go, Shan,” she added. “I have to go vigilante on my kids.”

“Tell Big Tom to be careful if he’s going out today.”

Anne frowned and laughed. “Sure thing. Bye, Shan.” Hanging up, she turned on the hot water tap, squirted in some dishwashing liquid, and began filling the sink. “Children, come here!”

Peter tramped back into the kitchen, followed by Alice and Little Tom. They gazed sullenly at their mother.

“Well?” she said, hands on hips. “What’s wrong?”

“Dad says we can’t go outside today and we’re bored out of our minds.”

Anne turned off the tap and dumped a stack of dirty breakfast dishes into the foamy water.

“Did he now?” she said. “TOM!”

Big Tom was in the living room, sitting on the couch watching the news, already an hour late for work. After a few moments, he entered the kitchen scratching the back of his head and looking worried. Her husband was a large man—not muscular, not fat, just big. His smile lit up his entire face. People thought he was a natural comedian but they also respected him when he was serious. He was the kind of guy who finished but did not start fights.

“The authorities are saying it’s some sort of plague,” he muttered. “Things are getting pretty hairy out there.”

“Tom. Tom. We can’t keep the kids locked up like this.”

“They’re telling everybody to stay indoors, dear.”

“It’s just more of the crazies. Kids hopped up on drugs.”

“It’s the screamers, they say. The screamers all woke up, and they’re like maniacs.”

Anne snorted. “Give me a break. In any case, all that stuff is going on downtown, not here. The only thing we got going on here is two crazies hanging around the park that I want you to give a good talking to. Go kick them out of there so our kids can go play outside.”

“They can play in the backyard,” he offered.

“Tom. If you were here each day with these little darlings since the Screaming like I have been, you would know that they are wild animals and need space to roam. You cannot keep children bottled up on a beautiful day like this. They will tear the house apart. I am speaking from experience.”

Anne suppressed a smile, enjoying their game. She knew he would obey her. He always did. The truth was he loved her more than anything and after a good deal of token hemming and hawing he always did as she said. Anne was the type of person who mouthed off to strangers about their driving, their parking, how they treated their kids in public. She had actually gotten her husband into a fistfight once over her editorializing about a man taking two parking spaces at the supermarket with his oversized truck. Big Tom had apologized after knocking him to the ground.

“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” her husband said with a massive frown.

Her eyes narrowed. He was not playing. He was serious. Well, so was she. When it came to things like this, she was very much in charge. And she could be very, very stubborn.

“Go, Tom. Go be the man.”

“You want me to go?”

“Don’t go, Daddy,” Little Tom said, his voice cracking.

“Don’t you say another word,” Anne warned him, her voice quiet and deadly. A hush fell over them all; the mood in the house had suddenly become tense. She went on sunnily, “Your father is not working today, so he can help out around the house.” She looked him in the eye, accepting his dare. “Yes, dear, I want you to go take care of that problem in the park.”

Big Tom stormed out of the kitchen and returned holding one of his shotguns. The kids watched this in stunned silence except for Little Tom, who choked back a long series of sobs.

“Oh, Tom, don’t go Rambo or anything,” she said. “It’s just stupid kids, I’m sure of it. Just give them a stern warning so they leave and don’t come back.”

Big Tom loaded the shotgun wearing a grimace that was almost a sneer, blinking rapidly. She could tell he was scared and it confused her. The only time she had seen Big Tom scared was their first date, their wedding day and the birth of their firstborn.

“Okay, I’m going, then,” he said.

Anne looked at the ceiling, almost laughing, and said, “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Lock the door after I leave the house.”

She waved him off, already focused on her next task. Anne had never locked her door during the day and she was not about to start now. If she needed to lock her door, she wouldn’t be living in this neighborhood.

After Big Tom left, doubt began to nag at the back of her mind, a little voice whispering, bring him back, which she overcame through diving back into the endless housework that constituted her 24/7 job. She washed the breakfast dishes, dried them, put them away. She took her pie out of the oven and set it to cool. Big Tom loved her pie and she almost laughed thinking about him devouring it. He would come back feeling silly about being scared and she would say nothing and put a big piece of pie in front of him with a cold glass of milk. She tried to call her girlfriends to talk about all of these things on her mind, but there was still trouble on the line. Around noon, she made sandwiches for her kids and began to seriously worry.

The kids ate their lunches sullenly at the kitchen table. Little Tom’s chin wobbled as he chewed mechanically, watching his mother with big, watery eyes.

“Where’s Dad?” Peter said, his voice challenging.

Alice stopped chewing. Little Tom sobbed and rubbed his eyes. Anne, who had been staring out the window wondering that very thing, realized they were all looking at her.

Fear flickered across her face, followed by a smile.

“Dad went for a walk with Acer,” she said.

She stood, picked up the phone, and tried to call his cell, but the phones were jammed. She tried again. And again. Always the same. Always that frantic busy signal indicating system failure. The kids studied her closely with worried expressions.

Peter understands what is happening, she thought. Perhaps even better than I do.

“Ha!” she said. The phone was ringing.

Big Tom’s ringtone, Leo Sayer and the Wiggles doing the chorus of “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,” sang out from the living room.

Anne slammed the phone down, biting back a nice, juicy F-bomb. That was just like him. He was always forgetting to bring his cell phone.

“Where’s Dad, Mom?” Peter pressed.

“Go to your rooms,” she said.

“I want Daddy,” Little Tom screamed, wailing.

Alice buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

“Where’s Dad?” Peter said.

“I have a better idea,” Anne said. “Come on, get up. You’re all coming with me.”

“Where are we going?” her boy demanded.

“You’re going to Trudy’s next door. I’m going to get your father. You all right with that?”

Peter nodded, almost visibly deflating with relief.

“Then let’s go, troops,” she snapped. She bent to wipe Little Tom’s tears with a paper towel. “You too, big man. Finish your juice first.”

The kids got out of their chairs and put their shoes on, Peter helping his brother and Anne helping Alice. Anne noticed how grown up Peter was becoming at just seven years of age and she swallowed hard to get rid of the sudden lump in her throat. Outside, it was a beautiful day, sunny and a perfect seventy degrees. Anne blinked in the sunshine, looking for trouble, but the neighborhood looked the same as it always did. The air was crowded with distant sirens, but there was no trouble here in the ’burbs. Just green lawns and well-kept blue-collar homes and beautiful blue sky. No people either, but they were probably all at work or inside watching the news. Even Little Tom perked up and she had to hold his hand to keep him from becoming distracted. He had reached an age where he was fascinated by anything resembling a rock.

She herded the kids across the street to Trudy’s house and rang the doorbell.

A muffled voice: “Who is it?”

“Trudy, it’s me.”

“Anne?”

“Open up, Trudy.”

The door opened and Trudy Marston peered out at them and then past them, scanning the sidewalk and street beyond.

“Everything all right, Anne?”

“Right as rain,” Anne answered, resisting the urge to turn around to see what Trudy was looking at. “Listen, friend. I need you to watch my little ones while I go look for Big Tom at the park.”

Trudy opened the door further, exposing her haggard face. “Jesus, is he okay?”

Anne smiled grimly. “He won’t be after I get through with him.”

Her neighbor’s voice suddenly became shrill. “What was he thinking going out today?”

Anne blinked. “Never mind that. I need to bring him home. Can you watch my kids?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Hugo is in a bad way. He’s been stirring all morning, crying out in his coma. I got to keep a watch on him.”

“You know Hugo is in our prayers, Trudy. If he’s stirring around on his bed, that’s a good sign he’ll wake up soon. It’s not a coma anymore if he’s yelling in his sleep. Take it from me: You know I was a nurse before Peter came along. They’ll all wake up soon. We’re all hoping that.”

An expression of horror crossed Trudy’s face.

“You okay, Trudy?”

“Yes, I hope so, too,” the woman said, her voice tired and faded. “Anyhow, I got to keep a watch on him. I got to be ready when he wakes up.” She laughed harshly. “Even after everything, I just can’t leave him. Ain’t that a hoot?”

“Well, now you got three little helpers to help you watch. Right, helpers?”

“Yes, Mom,” Peter said, scowling skeptically at Trudy.

“This is not a good idea, Anne.”

“Come on, kids, get in there,” Anne said, hustling her children through the door. She stifled a cough; the house stank like sour milk. Her poor neighbor had really let herself go since Hugo fell down during the Screaming. “Trudy, fifteen minutes is all I ask.”

“Please…”

Anne looked up at the sky, almost laughing. Why was everybody being so unreasonable with her today? “Come on, the park is right over there. It’s a five-minute walk. I’ll be right back, I swear.”

People had a hard time refusing Anne Leary.

She power walked to the park, fueled by her fury at her husband for making her worry like this, and paused at the curb. If there were a couple of crazies lurking about, it might not be a good idea to run into them. She had a forceful personality and was a big talker, but she was physically small and hated violence. Talking tough could only get you so far and she could not back it up without Big Tom around. She surveyed the neatly manicured lawns and trees for any sign of friend or foe. For any sign of people at all. Wind rustled in the branches. The playground stood empty, the swings moving a little in the wind, as if haunted.

“Tom?” Anne said, hating how timid her voice sounded.

Where was everybody? Usually, there were a lot of people in the park on a beautiful day like today, even on a Monday, even after the Screaming screwed everything up.

She noticed a plume of smoke rising in the east. That was downtown. There was a big fire downtown. The sirens crowded in a little closer. As she moved into the trees, she heard a crackling sound. Of all things, she thought. Who would be lighting fireworks at a time like this?

“Tom!” she yelled, feeling bolder. “Tom!”

She crisscrossed the park repeatedly, searching for any sign and finding none. She did not wear a watch, setting her schedule by her routine alone. Fifteen minutes had blurred into an hour. The sirens only grew louder until, suddenly, she realized they weren’t there anymore. Everybody seemed to be lighting fireworks downtown. Time blurred again as her rage turned into panic. She felt the day slipping away from her.

“Tom, I’m sorry,” she cried, running blindly. “I’m sorry. Now come on out here!”

Anne stopped, sweating and panting. Her shoes were muddy, her pants scraped and torn. The sun hung low in the sky. The last sirens were petering out. She had a sense of some massive unseen battle being fought and lost. The crackling sound was everywhere now.

“I want my husband,” she said fiercely, spitting.

A horrible feeling overtook her, shooting through her like an urge to vomit, making her fall to her knees.

“Oh no,” she said, covering her mouth with her hands. “Oh, no no no no no no.”

Anne rose unsteadily to her feet and ran as fast as she could, wondering if she were too late. She finally arrived at Trudy’s door gasping for breath.

“Please,” she said, pounding on the door. “Please, God.”

Nobody came to open it.

She ran to the picture window and tried to peer in, but the sheer curtains obscured her view. A television was on, glowing in the dark interior. She pounded on the window until pain lanced through her hand, forcing her to quit. She briefly contemplated breaking the window and how she might accomplish this. Instead, she ran around to the back of the house feeling like she was about to scream. She had a sense of being out of control.

If somebody touched one hair on my kids’ heads—

Anne could not bear to finish the thought. Could not bear the idea they might be hurt.

“Please God,” she breathed. “Please God, please God—”

The glass sliding door was open. The screen door was closed, the mesh torn away.

That sour milk stench poured out of the house.

“Please,” she whispered, stepping inside.

The living room was dark. The TV was on, displaying the rainbow colors and emitting the loud ring of the emergency broadcast signal.

“Trudy? Trudy, are you there?”

Nobody answered her. Anne ran across the room to the kitchen. Three small glasses sat on the table. One still had a little milk in it.

“Trudy, where are my kids?”

There was an unmade bed in the master bedroom and the sour stench in there was so concentrated it made her gag, pushing her back out of the room with an almost physical force.

“Trudy, it’s me, Anne!”

All of the rooms were empty. It seemed nobody was home. Where had Trudy taken her kids? she wondered. She needed time to think. She needed to find them and keep them safe until Big Tom came home.

Anne returned to the living room. The emergency broadcast signal continued to grate on her frayed nerves and she moved to turn off the TV.

Oh my God—

“No,” she said. “No, no, no, no—”

She convulsed, bending over and vomiting explosively onto the carpet.

After several moments of retching and gasping to catch her breath, Anne was able to look again at what had been hiding in plain sight.

The bodies were arranged on the floor by the fireplace. Trudy had died wearing an odd smile, her neck cleanly broken. Peter and Alice and Little Tom surrounded her legs.

Something had mangled them. Torn pieces out of them. There was blood everywhere.

They had huddled around Trudy for protection. They had wanted Trudy to protect them because their mother and father were not there.

No, Anne told herself. Peter still held the poker from the fireplace. They were protecting her. That’s my kids. This is just like them. To put somebody else’s safety before their own. So brave. My big, grownup boy is so brave. My good Peter. Just like his daddy.

Anne screamed, clawing at her face, until she passed out.

She found herself wandering in the middle of the street coughing on smoke. Paul Liao was calling to her from the driveway of his home as his wife hustled their kids into an overpacked station wagon. Across the street, a body lay on the sidewalk at the end of a long smear of blood. Somebody far away was screaming. Somebody close by fired a gun, shattering a window.

A van approached and stopped. The doors opened.

“I got her,” somebody said. “Cover me.”

A cop in riot gear appeared in front of her, flinching at the sight of her face.

“Crazies,” she said thickly, her voice sounding alien to her ears.

“You’re safe now, Ma’am,” the cop said. “Step right this way.”

Another cop stood nearby, sweeping the area with his shotgun.

“Jesus, look at her face,” he said. “I thought for a second she was one of them.”

Moments later, he began firing, the gun’s roar filling the world.

“Chase them out,” she insisted. She wanted to tell them something else important but could not remember what it was. The noise had scrambled her thoughts again. She was having a hard time thinking. She was fading in and out of consciousness, making hours blur into minutes. She remembered burying her children in her backyard. She remembered the power going out. She remembered digging a grave for herself. She became angry. She wanted to yell at the big cop, but he was gone. It was dark—inside, not outside. She became aware that she was in some type of big room, sitting with her back to the wall, her face stiff and stinging from an alcohol wipe and the wounds on her cheeks throbbing under thick, bulky bandages. A blanket was draped around her shoulders and she pulled it tighter protectively. She sensed the presence of hundreds of people in the room, coughing and whispering and snoring. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw their bodies lying on cots and sitting huddled on the ground like her.

“Tom,” she said, trying to find her voice. She called out: “Tom? Tom, are you there?”

“Oh Jesus, not another one,” somebody groaned.

“Please shut the hell up!” another voice roared in the darkness. “We’re trying to sleep here.”

“Big Tom!” she cried. “Answer if you can hear me!”

“You’re not the only one who lost somebody, lady,” another voice answered. “Give it a rest.”

There were people sobbing in the dark, talking to loved ones who were not there. Somebody coughed loudly. Nearby, a couple made love on a cot. A man masturbated loudly under a blanket. The tips of cigarettes glowed in the dark. Another man lay on the cool hard floor twenty feet away, huddled around a handful of photos he studied endlessly with a flashlight.

Anne could not remember when she last got some real sleep. She recalled that the last time it happened, she dreamed of a single baby tooth resting on Trudy’s mantle. She had not truly slept since then. She stared at the man’s flashlight until her vision washed out in a flash of white and she became aware of two men arguing loudly. One of them said it was only a matter of time before the food and water ran out and then they’d be killing each other over the crumbs. The other said the world was ending outside and only a fool would try to make plans that lasted longer than a day.

Anne blinked at the voices. It was daytime, she realized; time had blurred again. Beams of morning sunlight streamed through a row of punched windows near the ceiling. The room was a vehicle service garage. People milled around aimlessly, bartering candy and cigarettes, settling disputes with swift and furious beatings, emptying their waste into a row of portable toilets, washing themselves with sponges and tepid water poured into plastic bowls. The air smelled like old motor oil and human waste and fear. People huddled around radios and argued over the news, then drifted away. Colorful public health notices plastered the walls, orange and red and yellow, reminding her to wash her hands and avoid the Infected and approach law enforcement and military personnel calmly, without sudden movements, and with her hands over her head.

She realized that she was not in some type of government fortress but instead an old-fashioned refugee camp, and a temporary one at that. How long had she been here? How long had it been since her world ended? She felt lightheaded, like she had not eaten in days. She thought of a blueberry pie sitting on a kitchen counter, covered in flies.

“The authorities are in control,” a voice said. “Help is coming. Don’t give up hope.”

The skinny, shell-shocked kid was some sort of government official and he was handing out lists of evacuation centers printed on clean yellow sheets of paper.

“This one’s been overrun,” somebody said in a disgusted rage. “I was fucking there.”

“The next one on the list is five miles from here.”

“Might as well be on the Moon.”

“The only safe place is right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

The kid ignored them, continuing to hand out his yellow sheets and deliver his simple mantra of hope with an unconvincing smile.

He held one out until Anne accepted it. His dead face warped into his plastic smile and he said, “The authorities are in control. Help is coming. Don’t give up hope. Report any suspicious behavior.”

Nobody else seemed to be in charge. The cops who’d brought her here were gone. Even the kind woman wearing a blue Wal-Mart apron who eventually brought her rations appeared to be some sort of volunteer. Then she saw several men working the room, shaking hands and looking concerned and writing things down in a notebook. This ad hoc leadership committee gradually grew close enough for her to hear one of them, a gentle-looking overweight man wearing large glasses, tell people that they had to get organized.

“Why?” a man said belligerently.

A woman sitting on a cot said: “You’re just like them.”

The overweight man blinked, adjusted his glasses and said, “Them?”

“The government.”

“But we’re all alive because of the government,” he reasoned. “They brought us here and gave us food and water, blankets, medical supplies. We’re trying to get organized in case the supplies run out and the government can’t send us anything else.”

“Like I said,” the woman said triumphantly.

Anne shook her head in mild disgust. At least these guys are doing something, she thought. She recognized something of herself in them.

“But I could use some batteries if you got any you could spare,” the woman went on.

Anne noticed an armored fighting vehicle parked at the far end of the garage and decided to take a closer look. Wrapping the blanket around her tightly and hiding her half-full water bottle in her back pocket, she wandered through the dense smells and noises of the camp until she found an empty spot where she could sit and put her back against a concrete pillar with a clear view of the impressive war machine. Three soldiers stood hunched over the engine, arguing in language so technical it was almost foreign. Anne thought they looked more like mechanics than soldiers. She watched them while she slowly sipped her bottle of water. They cleaned engine parts with rags and occasionally studied the crowd around them like engineers looking for cracks in a dam.

She planned to stay close to them. It was obvious to her that the man she’d heard arguing this morning was right: This place would not last very long. If anything happened, the safest spot in the room would be behind the soldiers and their weapons. She hated herself for thinking this. Anne cursed herself for wanting to survive.

She watched them work on their vehicle for the next three days. During that time, the refugee population rapidly dwindled to less than a hundred souls. The cops never came back to bring in more people, and as food and water began to run out, the portable toilets filled to overflowing, and petty crime escalated, many people left to take their chances trying to make it to one of the evacuation centers.

On the third day, the Wal-Mart woman brought Anne her daily ration—this time only a bottle of water and an energy bar.

“Sorry it’s a bit meager this morning, love,” she said. “But don’t worry. We’re expecting another shipment later today, I’m told. The government promised.”

“So things are getting better outside?”

An expression of fear flashed across the woman’s face, quickly replaced by a sunny smile.

“Of course!” she said.

The mood was tense in the shelter. People were furious that the rations had been cut to almost nothing, and were looking for somebody to blame. Mothers demanded milk for babies that screamed in their hunger. Rumor spread that several women at the far end of the room had been raped in the night. Most of the refugees wanted the portable toilets cleaned and the corpses, zipped up in shiny black body bags arranged in nice neat rows against the east wall, removed. Some of the men were threatening each other over accusations of using more than their fair share of supplies. People were crowding around the leadership committee demanding answers. Eventually, the overweight man with glasses fought his way through the mob and approached the soldiers timidly.

“May I speak to the commander?” he said, his voice tight and thin.

“I’m Sergeant Toby Wilson, sir,” one of the soldiers said in a booming baritone, extending a large hand. “You can call me Sarge.”

The man shook the commander’s hand with enthusiasm, beaming at the warm reception.

“Nice to meet you, Sarge. I’m Joshua Adler.”

“So what can we do for you, Mr. Adler?”

“Me and some of the other guys, we’ve been trying to get things organized.”

“Uh huh. We’ve been watching you do that.”

“Well, you must know that our supply situation is getting bad. The government said they would be coming back with more. Now, I’ve drawn up a list of supplies…”

The man fumbled with a notebook until Sarge held up his hand.

“Mr. Adler, we have nothing to do with that. We don’t know anything about it. We’re just here to get our rig working again. It needs professional civilian maintenance. Seeing as that’s not going to happen, it’s on us to fix it using whatever we can find around here. That’s taking time.”

“I see…”

“We almost got it figured out and we’re hoping to return to the field as soon as we can. Getting back where we can be useful is our top priority.”

“All right, I understand, uh, Sarge, but maybe you could tell me if you have any news of things on the outside—”

“It’s bad,” said Sarge.

“Bad?”

“Bad as in really, really bad. Bad as in we are losing this fight.”

“So who’s in charge?”

Sarge shrugged. “I guess you are,” he said.

At the other end of the garage, the doors opened, letting in a blast of cool, clean air and three soldiers armed to the teeth and wearing bulky MOPP suits complete with goggled respirator masks that gave them a vaguely buglike appearance.

“Stay where you are,” one of the soldiers announced, his voice muffled by his mask. Anne could not even tell who was speaking from where she was sitting. “Please stay calm.”

The first soldier appeared to be the leader. Gripping a pistol in his clenched fist, he walked through the people crowded among the cots looking into their faces, as if searching for something, while the other soldiers followed toting automatic rifles.

Joshua excused himself, signaled to the other men in the leadership committee, and worked his way through the crowd to the soldiers.

“Captain,” one of the soldiers said.

The leader turned and raised his pistol. “Sit down, sir,” he commanded.

The soldiers standing behind him swept the room slowly with their rifles.

“But we’re—”

The Captain slid the bolt back in his service weapon, chambering a round. “Now, sir,” he added.

Joshua abruptly sat on the ground with the other men, paling.

The soldiers continued to walk through the crowd, the Captain leading the way, looking each of them in the face before moving on. Everybody was quiet, watching the soldiers, except for a few babies that cried softly in their mothers’ laps.

Finally, the Captain pointed at a man and said, “I got one here.”

One of the soldiers reached and grabbed the man by the arm, pulling him.

“Where are you taking this poor man?” a woman demanded.

“He’s Infected, Ma’am,” the Captain said. “Come on, Parker, get him up.”

The people nearest the man cried out and shrank away from him, leaving him to struggle weakly against the soldiers. He was obviously sick; his face was shiny and red with fever. Finally, one of the soldiers thrust the butt of his rifle into his head and he fell limp, moaning.

They began to drag him out of the garage.

“Wait,” Anne said. “Officer, wait! What are you going to do to him?”

The Captain replied, “Sit down and shut up, Ma’am.”

“I think she likes you, Captain,” the soldier named Parker said.

“Watch out, she’s going to report you to her PTA,” the other added, laughing.

“He’s just sick,” she pleaded. “He’s not one of them.”

The Captain raised his pistol and aimed it at her face.

“Maybe you’re Infected.”

A man stood behind the soldiers and approached the Captain. Anne could tell instantly from his black suit and white collar that he was a clergyman.

“Now, hold on a minute, sir,” the man said.

The Captain turned, gave the clergyman a quick once-over, and said, “Are you Catholic?”

The man blinked, caught off guard. “No, son, I am not.”

“Then I don’t give a rat’s ass what you have to say.”

The pistol flashed in the man’s hand, striking the clergyman in the face and knocking him to the floor. Anne, still standing, exchanged a quick glance with Sarge, who stood by his Bradley with his crew, wiping his hands with a greasy rag. The man shook his head slightly.

Anne swallowed her rage and returned to her seat on the floor as the soldiers dragged the sick man out of the garage and the clergyman lay groaning, cupping his face in his hands.

The roar of the gunshot penetrated the walls and rang in her ears.

Later that day, about half of the refugees packed their meager belongings and left the shelter after a long, bloody fistfight between some of the men who were leaving and those who were staying over whether the remaining supplies should be divided up. The Wal-Mart woman ended the dispute by announcing that there were no more supplies. Nothing. Not a crumb. Those who remained were broken people, lying on the cots staring at the ceiling, including Joshua, holding a dirty wet rag against his bleeding nose, one of his eyes almost swollen shut.

The following night was long and uneventful except for people sobbing quietly in the dark. The room stank with the ammonia smell of piss. They were doomed and they knew it.

The next morning, the doors burst open again and a group of men and women entered the garage carrying rifles and pistols and wearing a motley collection of military uniforms. The refugees shrank from them, screaming shrilly.

“Anybody here need a ride?” one of newcomers called out, grinning.

“Sam!” a woman cried, flinging herself into the man’s arms.

“I told you I’d find you,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “I told you.”

“We’ve got buses outside, enough for everybody,” announced another member of the gang, a woman with a bandaged head. “There’s a FEMA camp on the way to Harrisburg and we’re starting a convoy. If you want in, pack up your things now. We’re out of here in ten.”

The refugees crowded around asking questions. They must have been satisfied by the answers, because all of them grabbed whatever possessions they had and hurried out the door to the line of commuter buses idling outside.

As the last of the refugees headed towards the door, one of the them called out to Anne, “Last chance, lady!”

She shook her head.

The man waved and shut the door. Anne sighed with something like relief. The atmosphere, previously tense and stifling, became peaceful. The room suddenly seemed so much larger without the others filling it.

“Why didn’t you go?”

Anne noticed the clergyman had also stayed behind.

“It shouldn’t be that easy,” she said.

“You might be right. I’m not sure if I trusted them either.”

“No,” Anne said. “The others had no choice but to trust them. I have a choice. It should not be that easy.”

The clergyman nodded. He approached and sat on a nearby cot with a heavy sigh, touching the bruise on his face gingerly. Anne got a good look at him. He was a big man, with short, white, frizzy hair and a weathered, stubbled face. She guessed him to be in his late fifties.

“What about you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go?”

He shrugged and said, “‘Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.’ That’s a fancy way of saying I agree with you.”

“I liked that. Was that the Bible?”

“No. Paradise Lost. John Milton.”

They introduced themselves. His name was Paul.

The Bradley commander approached.

“I think we’ve just about got the rig fixed,” he told them. “If you don’t mind, later on today we’d like to start her up and drive her around a bit. We’ll open the service door a little to ventilate, but it’s going to be loud and smell bad anyway.”

“It’s all right,” Paul said, wandering off to contemplate the rows of corpses, still in their body bags, which lay waiting for transport that would never come.

Anne said, “Sergeant, how could you be so callous when they were dragging that man outside to be murdered in cold blood? You knew he wasn’t Infected.”

The soldier shrugged. “I could give you a dozen reasons, Ma’am. Let me ask you a question. Why were you willing to risk your life to save him?”

She thought of several reasons—the man was innocent, his murder was immoral, a society is judged by how well it defends its weakest members—but all of them rang false and hollow in her mind. She snorted. “What was I really risking?”

Sarge smiled grimly and nodded. “That’s what I thought. In Afghanistan, when things got really bad, the only way we could get through was to accept the idea we were already dead.”

“Jesus,” she said, recoiling.

“Those people out there,” Sarge said, pointing. “The Infected. They’re pretty much the living dead. But us? We’re the dead living.”

“How can you say we’re already dead?” Anne said, panicking at the thought. She thought about it for a moment. “How could you do it? Doesn’t it change you?”

“Yes,” Sarge said. “It changes you. But.” He shrugged again. “You survive.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why survive if it’s not really you anymore?”

“Why me? Why you? Somebody’s got to live, Ma’am. Somebody’s got to carry on. That’s all we need to know. That’s all we’re ever going to know. Somebody’s got to live or the whole thing is pointless.”

“What is?” Anne wondered.

He blinked in surprise. “The human race, of course.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility.”

“If we don’t accept it, we might as well let them win now and get it over with.”

He cleared his throat and told Anne how he had taken his unit into the field to test a non-lethal weapon, and how radio dispatches suggested some type of disaster. He and his crew subsequently lost contact with the Army. They were on their own. They had a new mission in mind for themselves. They wanted to return to the mission site and try to locate their lost boys.

“We won’t survive out there long on our own,” he explained. “We need infantry to protect us. In return, we offer protection. The Bradley’s mobility, its armor and cannon.”

“What are you saying?”

“Well, I guess I’m saying I want you to join up with us.”

“I want to help you, I really do, but I’m not a soldier,” she said. “Never been one either.”

“I want you to pull together some civilians and run them as a squad. We have weapons. I will teach you how to use them. If we find our guys, then two days, max. Maybe three.”

“What about him?” Anne said, looking at Paul praying over the bodies of the dead.

“I think he’s suicidal,” Sarge said. “But if you want him, you can have him. See how this works?”

“But why me?” she said. “If you knew me, you wouldn’t pick me for something like this.”

“I am picking you based on what I know. You don’t fear death. You’re tough; you’re not looking for easy answers and for everybody else to take care of you. And you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You sat down instead of getting yourself killed helping that man, so I don’t have to worry about you welcoming death or even actively seeking it.”

“Well,” Anne said in amazement. “I can see you’ve thought this through.”

She realized she wanted this. Had, in fact, been sitting here for days waiting for something like it to present itself. The chance to really do something. The chance to fight back and stop the plague in its tracks.

The chance to kill every one of these monsters for what they did to her kids.

“You’re a survivor, Anne,” Sarge said. “I need survivors.”