The Infection

FEMAVILLE

The refugee camp appears over the next rise, a sprawling mass of people and buildings covering the land as far as the eye can see. Distant helicopters buzz like flies in the still, hot air. Tiny figures swarm among the houses and public buildings and trailers and tents, a seething ocean of humanity partially obscured by smoke drifting from thousands of cook fires.

The Bradley grinds to a halt and the survivors emerge from its dim interior at a crouch, weapons at the ready. Acting like a combat infantry unit is now second nature to them.

One by one they join Sarge on the cracked road that plunges downhill and straight to the gates of the camp. Their weapons slowly sag in their hands as they forget themselves, overwhelmed by the view. Jaws drop as Sarge passes around a pair of binoculars. They stare at the camp in a mounting daze. It is literally tiring just to look at it.

The camp easily holds more than a hundred thousand people. At its core is Cashtown with its private houses and stores and public buildings and parks packed with rundown FEMA trailers. Beyond the core, the camp encompasses outlying farms, the fields filled with campers and vehicles, even a giant circus tent. And beyond that, entire forests leveled to make room for this teeming horde and its miles of camping tents and shanties. Massive clouds of dust hang over the land like a brown veil. The camp surges against mountainous walls of heaped sandbags, tractor trailers, vehicles, piled office furniture and box springs, all wrapped in miles of barbed wire and buttressed with wood guard towers. The air is filled with the white noise of thousands of people and vehicles, occasionally startled by the distant popcorn pop of gunfire. In the east, a small band of Infected makes a run at the wall through the haze and is cut down by snipers in the towers.

Just two weeks ago, this camp did not exist.

“There it is,” Wendy says, her chest heaving with emotion. “The FEMA camp.”

“I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or having a nightmare,” Ethan says.

The sight almost defies belief. It is beautiful. Beautiful and horrifying.

“It’s incredible,” Paul says, his voice loaded with awe.

Wendy glances at Sarge. “This is good for us, right?”

“Maybe,” says Sarge, running his hand over his stubble.

“I can smell it from here,” Ethan says.

“We’re Americans,” Todd says. “We’re all on the same side, right?”

“We can’t be sure of anything,” Sarge tells him.

Steve whistles. “I wish Ducky could have seen this.”

To the survivors, the camp represents the Time Before. If they drive into that place, they will rejoin the human race. They will be like astronauts returning home after years in space. But the world will not be the same. The Time Before is gone and anything resembling it is a mirage and possibly a trick. The truth is if they go down into the camp, they will surrender their liberty in return for protection, and they are worried about the cost. Right now they are being chased hard by the devil, but it is the devil they know.

Sarge sighs. “It’s a chance. Anybody got any better ideas where to go?”

Nobody does.

“Anne would know what to do,” Todd says.

“Anne ditched us, Kid,” Sarge says bitterly. “We waited around for two days and she didn’t come back. We barely made it out of there alive. She’s either dead or on the road. Either way, she already made her decision and has no say in ours.”

“Okay,” Todd says.

“So that’s it, then,” Paul says, nodding. “We’re going in.”

Wendy snorts. “We have no choice.”

The Bradley cruises down the road past fields filled with the stumps of cut trees and burning piles of cleared brush. Scores of pale department store mannequins wearing designer fashions strike surreal poses across the smoky wasteland, their torsos tied to stakes and old street signs planted at regular intervals, some lying in the dirt among rags and scattered plastic limbs. A hundred yards from the road, several figures in bright yellow hazmat suits load bodies into the back of a municipal garbage truck, pausing in their work to stare at the armored fighting vehicle as it zooms past.

The camp looms close now, piled across the horizon and emitting waves of white noise and sewage smells and wood smoke. The vehicle roars past a concrete pillbox from which the barrel of a heavy machine gun protrudes, swiveling slowly to follow its progress. A man wearing a T-shirt and camouflage pants steps into the road and waves at them, motioning them to stop, but the rig keeps rolling, sending him sprawling into the ditch. Near the gates, more in hazmat suits are tossing body bags from the back of an olive green flatbed truck into a deep, smoking pit. They pause in their work, staring, as the Bradley comes to a halt in a cloud of dust and sits idling in the sun.

The man in the camo pants jogs up panting for air. He slaps his hand against the Bradley’s armor.

“Open up in there, goddammit,” he shouts.

After several moments, he adds, “If you think we’re going to let you into the camp without you telling us who you are, you’re crazy. So what’s it going to be?”

The single-piece hatch over the driver’s seat flips open and the gunner pops his head up, grinning. Moments later, the hatch on the turret opens and Sarge emerges wearing a scowl.

“We’re looking for Camp Defiance,” he says.

The man laughs. “You came to the right place. And you would be?”

“Sergeant Toby Wilson, Eighth Infantry. I’ve got one crew and four civilians inside. We were told it was safe here.”

“We’re still here, ain’t we?” The man turns his head and roars, “Open the gates! Got a military vehicle coming in!” He winks. “Welcome to FEMAville, Toby.”

The gates slowly grind open, pulled by soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders, and the Bradley lurches forward in low gear, following a uniformed woman directing them where to park using hand signals. The area smells like diesel fuel and decaying garbage. Other soldiers press in, gawking at the vehicle and its cannon.

Sarge blinks, startled, as they burst into cheers at this symbol of American might.

They are still clapping as the survivors emerge blinking into the sunlight, wide-eyed and smiling awkwardly.

The area appears to be some type of checkpoint and distribution area bustling with activity. The Bradley sits parked between a beat-up yellow school bus and a Brinks armored car. A massive pile of bulging plastic garbage bags awaits disposal next to several rows of body bags. A large truck stacked with cut logs sits next to a cluster of large yellow water tanks, one of which is being coupled to a pickup truck. Men in overalls are unloading salvage from the back of a battered truck covered with a patchwork of tiny scratches made by fingernails and jewelry. Light bulbs hang from wires strung between wooden poles. The Stars and Stripes sways from one of these wires like drying laundry, big and bold, making Sarge suddenly aware of a lump in his throat.

He looks down at the cheering, hopeful boys and wonders if this might be home.

A man pushes his way through the throng, extends his hand and helps Sarge down from the rig. He is a large man with a square build and salt and pepper hair and silver Captain’s bars.

“Welcome to Defiance, Sergeant,” the man says. “I’m Captain Mattis.”

“Sergeant Tobias Wilson, Eighth Infantry Division, Mechanized, Fifth Brigade—the Iron Horse, sir,” Sarge answers, saluting.

The Captain grunts. “You’re the first I’ve seen from that unit.”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost them, sir.”

“And your squad?”

“KIA over a week ago, sir. Pulling security for a non-lethal weapons test.”

“Non-lethals,” Mattis says sourly. “I almost forgot we even tried it. Seems like a year ago. You’ve been on the road with these civilians since then?”

“Pretty much. I trained them, and they did most of the fighting.”

“I’ll be damned,” Mattis says, sizing up the others. “Were you all in Pittsburgh?”

“We got out just ahead of it.”

“A horrible thing. I stayed overnight there once, you know, years ago. Loved the rivers and all the bridges. The old neighborhoods. Beautiful city.”

“Yes, sir, it was. So what is the situation here?”

Mattis smiles. “You rest up. I’ll bring you up to speed after your orientation, Sergeant.”

Sarge notices that the grinning soldiers are collecting weapons from the other survivors.

The Captain adds, “Now please surrender your sidearm.”

Wendy climbs onto the school bus and collapses into one of the seats, fighting the urge to curl up into a ball. For the last two weeks, she has lived with her Glock always locked, loaded and within easy reach on her hip. She now feels its loss as if it were an amputated limb.

Sarge sits next to her, his hands fidgeting.

“Are we under arrest or something?” she whispers to him.

“I don’t know,” he says. “They said we have to go through some sort of orientation.”

She chews her lip, wondering. Orientation could mean just that—the people who run the camp want to tell them about who runs it, what the rules are, how to collect rations—or it could be a euphemism for something else, perhaps something sinister. Sarge looks worried, not a good sign. The windows have been painted black and covered in layers of chicken wire, making the interior as dark and claustrophobic as the Bradley. And without the protective weight of her gun at her side, she is ready to assume the worst.

The school bus roars to life and begins rolling forward, trembling violently as it passes over a series of deep potholes.

Wendy reaches for Sarge’s large hand and clasps it in hers.

“Did the soldiers tell you anything?” she asks him.

Sarge shakes his head. “I don’t know who’s in charge.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I literally don’t know who’s in charge here—FEMA, the Army, some other branch of the government. Those guys you saw at the gate weren’t from a single unit. I recognized patches from at least six different outfits. Some Army, some National Guard. The highest-ranking officer on the scene—that captain I was talking to—was a logistics officer in an ordnance company. The only real clue I saw was the flag when we came in. It was a U.S. flag.”

“All right,” she says. “But if they’re Army and you’re Army, why’d they take your gun?”

“I don’t know, Wendy.”

“I don’t like this. Not knowing.”

He squeezes her hand and says, “I don’t like it either.”

“At least we’re all still together.”

Wendy flinches at a loud thud, followed by another. Somebody is throwing something heavy at the bus. It reminds her of the monster bashing their vehicle as they struggled to flee the Pittsburgh fire. She gasps and digs her nails into Sarge’s hand, which he accepts without protest. The soldiers at the front stand up, glaring, fingering their rifles. The window across the aisle explodes and angry shouting and dusty sunlight penetrates the bus. Wendy half stands in her seat and catches a glimpse of camping tents and people through the jagged hole.

“Take your seat, Ma’am,” one of the soldiers says, a clean-shaven kid with large ears protruding from under his cap. “Please, it’s for your safety.”

Wendy sits, shaking her head in wonder.

“Volleyball,” she says, feeling almost giddy with relief. “I saw some teenagers playing volleyball outside.”

“That wasn’t a ball that hit us,” Sarge says. “Somebody was throwing bricks or rocks at us. Something is wrong here.”

“It can’t be all wrong if kids are playing volleyball,” she says.

“People play volleyball in prison,” Sarge tells her.

The bus stops and the driver kills the engine. They sit quietly for several minutes, waiting for something to happen. The heat is oppressive. The smell of diesel exhaust slowly dissipates, replaced by conflicting odors of cooking and open sewage. They hear a mother shouting at her child to be careful. Somebody is playing a guitar.

The door opens and a woman enters the bus carrying a clipboard, her face partially obscured by a green bandana. Her blue eyes glitter against her sunburned forehead. She pulls the bandana down, revealing a young, pretty face set in a bright smile.

Wendy grunts with surprise. The camp appears to be run by teenagers.

“I’m Kayley,” the girl says. “I will be your orientation instructor.”

The survivors are led into a classroom inside a brick school building. Kayley stands at the front of the room, by the chalkboard, while they take their seats. The window blinds are open, allowing sunlight to fill the space and providing an outside view of several women taking a smoke break while another inventories a pile of boxes.

Ethan pauses at the teacher’s desk before finding a seat. His classroom had been like this one, clean and neat but low on budget and behind the times in terms of technology. The main teaching method was lecture using a green chalkboard, erasers and lots of chalk. For a little excitement, maybe an overhead projector with transparencies. He remembers how much he loved the squeaky sound a stick of chalk made on the board as he wrote equations for his students. He loved everything about the job, in fact. That, and his relationships with his family, had defined him.

How quickly things change, he thinks.

How would you solve for x?

Answer: You try to kill it.

His finger throbs with pain. He pops another painkiller.

A part of him realizes that he could start over here. The camp appears to offer a second chance. If they provide schooling to kids, maybe he could even become a teacher again. Putting his skills to work here is a duty as real as Wendy’s wish that she were still a cop. One might think teaching kids math during the apocalypse would be a waste of time, but the opposite is true. Kids should continue learning, preparing for the future. Otherwise, there is no future and the war against Infection is already lost. The other way lies barbarism.

He will never teach again, however. He knows this. Even if the plague and the fratricides were to end tomorrow, he still cannot imagine it. That part of him is as broken as the world.

The truth is the only reason he is here is because of the slim chance he might find his family among the camp’s residents. This hope, as thin as it is, has become his strongest reality. Everything else is illusion. He will keep searching until he finds them. He will search forever. That is what he does now. That is who he is.

Todd flops into the desk next to him and slouches, scowling. “I just can’t get away, I guess,” he mutters.

“Ready for some algebra?” Ethan says with a wink, hoping to rib him.

“I liked algebra,” Todd tells him. “It’s school I hated.”

A man walks into the room, talks quietly with Kayley for a few moments, and then leaves. Immediately, a group of people enter in a cautious daze.

“You are all survivors of Pittsburgh,” she tells them. “You are not different from each other. You are all the same. At one time, you were neighbors. Welcome each other.”

The survivors pause, sizing each other up, and nod before taking their seats. The newcomers are filthy and exhausted. One of them sobs quietly as she hugs a sleeping toddler against her chest. Another puts his head down onto his desk and immediately falls into a fitful sleep. Dust floats in the sunlight around them. They smell like ashes.

“Welcome,” Kayley says. “Welcome to Camp Defiance. You are safe here, in this room. This is a safe place and you’re okay.”

The survivors quiet down and look at her hungrily.

She says: “After the Screaming, the Federal Emergency Management Agency established a series of forward operations posts across the country to coordinate Federal support of local authorities. Camp Defiance was one of them, although back then it was simply called FEMA 41.”

After the Screaming turned into Infection, she explains, the camp was almost overrun, but word had gotten around about its existence, and people poured in from all over southern Ohio. The refugees helped keep the camp going and now it is run by a mixture of Federal, state and local government people and protected by a mixed bag of military units.

“Today, the camp has a population of more than one hundred and thirty thousand people, and is constantly growing,” she tells them, pausing to let that sink in. “I worked in a refugee camp for the Peace Corps for two years overseas. The ideal size for a camp like this is twenty thousand. It’s nothing short of a miracle this place is functioning as well as it is.”

Ethan suppresses the urge to whistle. A hundred and thirty thousand people is a tiny fraction of the population in this region before Infection, but it represents a chance. Somewhere, in this teeming horde, his wife and baby girl might be living, safe and sound.

Kayley spends the next fifteen minutes describing how they will be processed. Newcomers to the camp must go through a brief medical exam and register, she tells them, to receive resident cards. Food and water may be collected at food and water distribution centers. Skilled workers may be offered jobs by the government paid in gold, and receive priority access to housing and bonus allotments of food and water. The camp also has a health center and scattered health posts, pest houses, cholera camp, schools, markets and cremation pits for disposal of the dead.

“Does anybody have any questions so far?”

“I do,” Ethan says. “What kind of records do you keep? I’ve got family missing.”

Kayley nods. “Locating lost loved ones is a big priority for us. Tell the people at registration while you’re being processed, and they’ll help you out. We keep a record of every person who has ever entered this camp. They also have contacts with other camps in Carollton, Dover, Harrisburg and other places.”

Ethan leans back in his chair, satisfied.

“I’ve got a question,” Sarge says loudly, standing. “What are you hiding here?”

Kayley smiles at him. Her face shows no signs of surprise.

The survivors bristle at Sarge’s tone. A moment ago, they were disoriented, listening to Kayley in a lethargic daze, struggling to absorb everything she was telling them. Now they are alert and taut as deer that smell a predator in a sudden shift of wind. They watch Sarge and Kayley closely, their hearts racing and their breath shallow as they once again, automatically, tread the tightrope between fight and flight.

After several moments, Kayley says, “Can you be more specific?”

Sarge blinks. “Well, for one, why did you take our guns?”

Wendy glares at Kayley, wondering the same thing and wishing she felt the reassuring weight of the Glock in her hand right now. She feels electrified by urgency and confusion. She has complete faith in Sarge’s instincts but he sprang this confrontation without telling her; she has no idea how to back him up.

“Sergeant Wilson, almost everybody in this camp is armed,” Kayley is saying. “We all know that Infection spreads like wildfire. If one person got the bug, it might bring the entire camp down. We are on the constant lookout for Infection and must be ready to act quickly if we see it.”

Sarge crosses his arms. “I’ll ask again, then: Why did you take ours?”

“Your weapons were taken for the time being because, quite often, certain newcomers do not take to orientation. We do not have the means to enable new residents to slowly transition from the dangerous world outside to the relatively safe oasis that we have created here. Some people cannot accept the sudden change and become upset and irrational.”

“I can see why,” Sarge says. “It’s like a police state around here.”

“Yes and no. We are actually rather thin on policing. Surely you don’t really think this camp could function without the consent of its residents. But it is true that we are a society that is under siege. It is different being here than out there on the road.”

“If we are not prisoners, you would let us leave if that’s what we wanted.”

“You are not prisoners, but neither can you simply come and go from the camp as you please, for obvious reasons. Every time somebody enters the camp, there is the possibility of Infection or some other disease being imported. We cannot allow that.”

“You’re not answering my question,” he says.

“The simple answer is you can leave any time you like. But if you do, you cannot come back. Is that a satisfactory answer?”

“We can leave with all our gear?”

“If a resident decides to leave, they can go with either what equipment and supplies they brought or its equivalent value, which is the law.”

“What about our Bradley?” Sarge says, glaring at her.

Kayley’s smile disappears, replaced by a hard line.

“I think you mean our Bradley, Sergeant. That machine was manufactured for the Army and belongs to the people of the United States. You are a soldier and if you try to leave, your superiors may let you go, or they may decide to shoot you for desertion. I don’t know. But I can tell you for a fact that the people in charge here are not going to let you drive out of camp with a multimillion-dollar piece of military hardware that could be used to save American lives.”

“This is bullshit,” Sarge says. “It’s a trap.”

“The trap is in your mind, Sergeant Wilson.”

Sarge turns to the other survivors and says, “Come on, we’re leaving. They can’t stop us.”

None of the survivors move, not even Wendy, who believes Kayley explained the camp’s position perfectly and is now feeling reassured rather than threatened. Sarge gapes at them, sweat pouring down his face, seemingly disoriented and unsure of what to do next. He bumps against his desk and knocks it over with a crash that makes the other survivors flinch.

“It’s not safe here,” he pleads, his breath suddenly shallow.

Wendy stands and peers into his face.

He says quietly, just to her, “This is a bad place.”

The man is visibly shaking.

“You are among friends here,” Kayley says. “You are perfectly safe.”

Wendy glares at her briefly and says, “Could you shut the hell up, please?”

She returns her attention to Sarge, slowly reaching out until she is touching his face gingerly. She holds his face in her hands.

“Tell me,” she says.

His eyes avoid hers until finally connecting.

“I’m scared,” he says, taking a deep, shuddering breath.

“I’ve got you, baby,” she tells him. “Look at me. Look at me.”

The other survivors look away. Nobody judges him. They have all been where he is now. Everybody has post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, these days, with its bad sleep, depression, guilt, anxiety, anger, hyper vigilance and fear. Wendy still cannot sleep at night without flashing to the Infected bursting howling into the station. She is amazed that after everything Sarge endured, it is now that he cracks, and here, where he is finally safe.

But she understands. The truth is none of the survivors is comfortable in this place. The very sudden change from survival to safety—not just safety, but society, with rules and customs—is nothing short of an abrupt shock to the system. None of them fully trust it.

And yet it is not evil. It is, in fact, their best chance at survival.

“I’m sorry,” Sarge says.

Wendy now believes she understands why Anne did not come with them to the camp. We are all broken, she thinks. None of us may belong here.

Holding Sarge’s face, she suddenly remembers the man in the SUV during the morning of Infection, when Pittsburgh woke up to a war zone. Her station had already been overrun and Wendy walked the streets alone, on foot, shrugging off people begging her for help. The cars were snarled bumper to bumper all along the four lanes of North Avenue and were even stacking up on the sidewalk and jamming into the narrow median, their horns bleating like panicked sheep. Others raced through the trees in the adjacent park, skidding in the mud and going nowhere fast.

The Infected ran among the vehicles in the jam, peering into the cars as if window shopping before punching in the glass with bloody knuckles. Wendy saw the Infected swarming over a nearby wrought iron fence, emitting a communal howl that made her heart rate skyrocket and her legs turn to jelly. Although her conscious mind was still in pieces, it registered in the back of her mind that Allegheny General was on the other side of that fence; the Infected were still waking up and streaming out of the hospital’s doors even now, like rats.

Wendy unholstered her service weapon and fired once, twice. A man yelped and flopped off of the fence, quickly replaced by another in a paper hospital gown, his legs smeared with his own shit. I don’t have enough bullets, she thought.

People were abandoning their cars and running into the park swinging purses and briefcases or holding hands, turning the traffic jam into a parking lot. She turned, distracted by the sickening sound of crumpling metal and a gunned engine straining against an impossible load.

A man was driving a shiny red 4x4 SUV on a lifted suspension, three tons of glass and steel with a little evergreen air freshener swinging from the rear view and a specialty license plate reading XCESS over the standard visitPA.com. He was panicking and trying to ram his way out of the press of honking vehicles. The acrid stench of muffler exhaust and burning rubber filled the air. He backed up his vehicle, his face and his mouth working behind the windshield, and then stomped his foot on the gas and rammed into the car ahead of him, shoving it forward less than a yard and jolting himself with whiplash.

Recovering, he backed up again, yanked on the steering wheel, and roared into a Volkswagen Jetta in the righthand lane at an acute angle, the collision twisting the frame and shattering the driver’s side windows. The car’s driver howled in shock and pain, covered in blood and glass, trying to shield her face with her arms. As the SUV backed up again, crumpling the hood of another car behind it, an Infected man pulled himself into the Jetta’s open window, his gown flapping and his legs kicking in the air.

Wendy’s stomach turned over and she bent to spit a gob of bile, listening to distant car alarms. The mindless, brutish cruelty of the SUV driver and the rabid Infected was making her feel physically sick. The driver had a cut on his forehead now and looked dazed, revving the engine and bucking his vehicle forward into the car in front of the Jetta, shoving it sideways against the curb and bursting its windows in the sharp impact. The passenger door opened and a woman emerged, wailing and pulling a screaming child out of the backseat. The air filled with a sweet maple syrup smell, ethylene glycol released by a broken radiator. Wendy swallowed hard against another urge to vomit.

“Halt,” she said hoarsely, then raised her arm and stepped forward, shouting: “Stop it!”

She marched up to the SUV as the man stepped on the gas. She did not flinch. Recognizing her uniform, he braked with a short screech, stopping the vehicle inches from her knees. He stared down at her through the window, panting for air. His eyes slowly focused with understanding and regret, began to fill with tears.

The cop raised her gun and fired, punching three cobwebbed holes in the windshield. Smoke filled the cab and blood splashed across the glass.

She wished she had more bullets.

Then she is back in the classroom, cupping Sarge’s face and looking into his eyes.

She knows what it is like to lose control.

“I’ve got you, baby,” Wendy says. “I’ve got you.”

After a brief medical exam, Todd hurries into the processing center, a hot, confusing jumble of people and tables jammed together under various signs and flags in what used to be the school gym. People sit behind the tables, talking to sitting or standing applicants, while others sit on the floor ringing the room, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard marked with numbers. A wave of sour body odor immediately envelops him, almost making him gag. It is so hot in the room and there are so many people sweating that a mist hangs in the air, rising on beams of sunlight entering the space through skylights. He spots Ethan at one of the tables but cannot locate the other survivors. His heart races as he realizes they must have gone through processing already, leaving him behind. He had been last in line for the medical exam and apparently he’d spent too much time in the bathroom taking the longest dump in his life sitting on a real toilet that actually flushed, surrounded by four walls in blissful privacy. His thoughts are jolted as a man shoulders him as he walks past, offering a muttered apology.

His first impression of the place is that there is still a huge number of refugees entering the FEMA camp, but he soon realizes that all sorts of government business goes on here, from job applications to replacement of resident cards to reporting crimes, and more. Some of the tables are run by sharp-eyed, clean-shaven men in business suits under American and other flags indicating various agencies of the Federal and Ohio state governments. Todd figures they’re the complaints department. You go there and complain, and in return they give you bad news.

He takes a number and finds a spot on the floor, fanning himself like everybody else, trying to keep an eye on Ethan, who has moved to another table, keeping the little stump of his finger elevated as he works the room. Probably looking for his dead wife and little girl. Todd is mentally flexible enough to accept that his father is dead or Infected along with all the other cubicle drones at the office where he worked, and his mother is definitely Infected, having fallen during the Screaming. He feels sorry for Ethan but living your life like a defective CD eternally skipping during your favorite song is not living.

Eventually, his number is called and he finds himself sitting at a picnic table across from a red-haired woman who looks at him like he just hit her in the face. Slapping an index card on the table in front of her, she begins to take down his information—name, where he lived, social security number, gender, age, height and eye color, nearest relations and a brief medical history.

“You were in high school?” she says, pen poised above the card.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Todd answers, using the respectful tone he used with teachers.

“What grade?”

“Senior,” he says, worrying in the pit of his stomach that the woman would check up on him and realize he lied about that and his age. But then he notices the stacks of index cards tied with rubber bands being carted by the other bureaucrats, and realizes he can pretty much say anything he wants and there would be no way that she could confirm or deny it.

“Do you want to go back to school? We offer schooling here. You could get your diploma.”

“No thanks,” he says sunnily, his brain working hard on how to defend that decision.

The woman shrugs, does not care.

“Any job skills?” she asks.

“I’ve had jobs before but nothing that required skills,” he tells her. “I am really good with computers, though. What kind of skills are you looking for the most?”

“Psychotherapist,” she answers.

He laughs.

“I’m not kidding,” she adds.

Todd opens his mouth, but she silences him by holding up her index finger, the universal sign for wait a minute. The woman pulls an old mechanical typewriter towards her and starts pecking at the keys with agonizing slowness, glancing frequently at the index card. She finally yanks a business card-sized piece of paper out of machine, stamps it with a seal, and hands it to him with a thick manila envelope.

“This is your resident card,” she tells him, explaining that he will use it to obtain his rations, access the showers and medical services, and apply for other government help. “This is your information packet. In it you will find a recap of your orientation—a map of the camp, the rules you are expected to follow here, and a list of services and where to find them. There is currently a small surplus in shelters so you do not have to build your own; your allotment is marked in yellow highlighter. This is your claim ticket so you can pick up the property you brought into the camp with you. And finally, here are two flea collars. Put one around each ankle. Keeps the lice away.”

“Gross!” Todd says. “I mean, thanks.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“Just one. Do you have stores or anything like that?”

“There are six outdoor markets. Four are where people sell pretty much anything. Another is for produce grown in the camp, and the last is for meat.”

“What’s the accepted currency?” he presses. “Is it a barter system, or is the dollar—”

The woman glances over his shoulder and yells, “Twenty-one!”

Todd stands, trying to think of something biting, but a family approaches, wild-eyed and holding out their cardboard number to the woman like an offering, and he tells himself she is not worth it. She is not going to get me down. I survived out there weeks while she was in here sitting on her ass filling out index cards. I have fought and killed to survive.

He has a sudden flashback to Sarge standing in front of the hospital, spitting tongues of flame and smoke with his AK47 in the dark. He remembers throwing a Molotov into a mob of the Infected. The Bradley smashed through the parked cars, its gun booming. He smiles.

“Ha,” he says, and walks away to find Ethan standing near one of the tables, wringing his hands. He asks the man how the search is going.

“Slow,” Ethan says with a sad smile, but he appears happy to be trying, and this is something, Todd realizes. At least there is that.

“Where’s everybody else?”

“The Army took Sarge and Steve away for debriefing. Wendy got a job as a cop and is heading to where they told her she could live. She gets priority housing being a cop. And Paul is on his way to one of the food distribution centers. He got a job there passing out food.”

“Well,” Todd says, feeling awkward.

“How about you? You going back to school? They offer that here, you know.”

“I don’t really see the advantage of learning calculus,” Todd says before catching himself. “Oh, sorry, man.”

Ethan nods sadly. “It’s okay. I don’t see the point in teaching it anymore, either.”

“I’ve got big plans, Ethan. I’ve got this stash—”

“One hundred and eight!” a voice cries from one of the tables.

Ethan perks up. “That’s me.”

“Well,” Todd says, frowning. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Right,” Ethan says vacantly. “Take care of yourself, Todd.”

Todd collects his duffel bag, weapon and ammunition in another room and walks outside into hazy sunlight, feeling tickled and breathless with excitement.

I’m here, he thinks. I made it.

The street in front of the school is filled with activity. A group of bored soldiers glances at him, sweating in their helmets, and then go back to talking among themselves. They barely look a day older than him, just beefy kids. Several children sit on the cracked sidewalk, drawing with pieces of colored chalk. Another group of kids, orphans of Infection quickly going feral, pull a red wagon filled with empty plastic jugs and bottles. Whatever grass might have grown here is now gone, trampled into dried dirt that floats in the air as dust. A military five-ton truck rolls down the street, ignoring a stop sign, beeping at the lazy crowds. Several men are working on a large machine, their tools and parts laid out neatly on a filthy white blanket. Dogs are barking inside a mom and pop shop across the street converted into housing. A loudspeaker attached to an old telephone pole, dangling a tangle of wires, squawks instructions on how to avoid cholera, followed by an ear-splitting screech. A moment later, a Britney Spears song begins playing, tinny and offering more nostalgia than entertainment in this time and place.

Todd is irritated at the other survivors. They could not even stick around to stay goodbye. You’re on your own again, Todd old man, he tells himself. You were doing just fine before joining up with them. You were ninja, surviving on your own, as you’ve always done. You will do it again. The improbable umbilical cord was not meant to last. It had been a relationship born of necessity, nothing more. Now it is time to be a nation of one again.

He consults his map, a virtual city carefully drawn in madman scrawl, his to explore. He identifies the school, situated on a road that forms one of the camp’s major arteries used for motorized transport between the central hub and the distribution and health centers. He finds his new home, a speck in one of the endless shanty towns, revealed by a blotch of highlighter. Then he locates the nearest general market, where he intends to launch his career as a trader.

The other survivors are haggard, tired, broken. Just look at Sarge, he thinks, the man who fought a horde of screaming Infected by himself and saved our lives: damaged goods. Todd is young and taut and mentally flexible and much, much more resilient than he looks. If anything, the apocalypse has been almost kind to him. Already lean, he is starting to put on a little muscle and with it, more confidence. He feels powerful. He looks at the kids running by in packs and the soldiers passing around a cigarette and thinks: My generation will survive this. Will be defined by it. And we will define the age in turn.

Paul hitches a ride hanging onto the side of a garbage truck as it grinds down one of the camp’s main arteries, raising a choking cloud of dust. The truck has been assigned to collect the dead for disposal. Its sides are decorated with crowded layers of outlandish graffiti, much of it incorporating grotesquely painted skulls and bones. He let the driver bum a cigarette and in return found out why the dead are burned in pits outside the city. The reason, he was told, goes back to the camp’s origins, when many people, raised on horror films, postulated that the Infected were zombies—hungry things that rose from the dead. Although it has been disproven, the practice stuck. Even if the people here want to bury the dead now, they cannot. There is simply not enough space.

A rock glances off of the side of the truck with a metallic boom, making Paul flinch. Another sails by close to his head, almost making him fall into the dust. The cab’s passenger-side window rolls down and a rifle protrudes, carefully sighting on a target among the tents.

No more rocks are thrown at the vehicle.

The truck lurches over the potholes, trembling in its metal skin. It makes three stops to pick up bodies lying stiff in the sun, their faces pale and their skin flaccid and waxy under sheets of plastic. For years, Americans sanitized death. Few people actually saw the dead in their natural state, bloated and drawing flies with their stench. They saw them laid out on velvet in fine caskets, dressed up in their best clothes, preserved like Egyptians.

The truck finally slows in front of a large wood church. A hand reaches out of the window and points to the front doors.

Paul jumps off, pounds the side of the truck to signal the driver that he can go, and waves. The hand waves back and the truck continues down the road.

Free of the truck’s exhaust, the camp’s ever-present smells of cooking, wood smoke and sewage return with a vengeance.

He breathes deep, figuring he might as well start getting used to it.

The doors are open and he walks in eager to do something.

Moments later, he finds himself staring down the barrel of an M16 rifle.

“Where do you think you’re going, Father?”

Paul frowns. “It’s Reverend, not Father, and I’m going to the place where I’ve been assigned by the authorities to live and work.”

“Let’s see your papers.”

The soldier studies his work papers while the rest of his squad glances at him curiously and then returns to their business. Paul ignores them and takes a look around. The church is filled with children sitting on every kind of chair in front of every kind of table—folding chairs, armchairs, office chairs, deckchairs, ottomans, benches, dining room tables, ping pong tables, nightstands, coffee tables, end tables, drawing tables and poker tables. The pews are gone, probably hacked up for firewood. A long line of sunburned kids holding bowls, spoons and mugs wait their turn to receive stew being ladled out of large vats on the altar in the domed apse, like a scene out of Oliver Twist. Their chatter fills the grand nave, rising up to the vaulted ceiling. They chew in the light of windows beautifully patterned with hand-stained glass.

“Hi,” a man in clerical garb says, approaching with his hand outstretched. The man is tall and skinny, his shoulders slightly stooped, and wears a neatly trimmed beard. “I’m Pastor Strickland. This is my church.”

“Nice to meet you,” Paul says, taking his work papers back from the soldier and shaking the man’s hand warmly. “I’m Paul Melvin. These kids are all… ?”

“That’s right. Orphans of Infection.”

“So many,” says Paul, staring at them. He has not seen a happy, living child in weeks and seeing so many here, eating good food in a safe place, warms his heart.

“These kids must be nourished and protected. They are our future. But they’re still wild animals, most of them. Don’t turn your back on them or leave your property unattended.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But they seem pretty well behaved.”

“They have an abiding respect for the supernatural,” Strickland says with a smile. “They think if we find the right words, God will end Infection.”

Paul grunts, pleased. “That’s something I have in common with them. I’ll have to ask them what words they think will work.”

“I’m sorry, Paul. But you won’t be working here. You’ll be working down the street at the FoodFair handing out rations to the campers. Hard work, most of it, and thankless at that. Is that a problem?”

Paul shakes his head. He would like to work with the children, but it does not matter. “I just came here to work. I have to wonder, though.”

“Why do we need somebody like you to do that kind of work?”

“Something like that,” Paul admits.

“Ah, well,” says Strickland. “I’ll tell you. On a weekly basis, we hand out enough food to give each camper about twenty-one hundred calories a day. They get wheat, beans, peas, vegetable oil, fortified food such as a corn soya blend, some salt and sugar. If the camp gets its hands on some cattle, we can distribute a little beef, but that’s not all that often. The campers get no spices and most people can’t afford that kind of thing at the markets. Our fare will keep you alive, but it’s monotonous, as you can imagine, and people get mad after a while eating the same thing. Here’s something else. We try to give rations to women only because they are more likely to pass it on to other family members instead of selling it to buy something else. That naturally produces conflicts. Plus there’s the simple fact that we work for the government here, essentially, and a lot of people are resentful.”

“I saw people throwing rocks at a garbage truck today.”

“They are less likely to throw them at people in our profession,” Strickland says. “Does that answer your question simply enough? A lot of people have turned away from God because of what has happened, but they haven’t gotten around to blaming us for it yet. Most of the campers see us for what we are: people trying to help.”

“That’s what I want to do,” Paul tells him. “I want to help.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place. This camp needs all the help it can get.”

Wendy enters the police station, a graffiti-covered building crowded with shouting people arguing with powerful, burly men wearing a variety of motley uniforms, from correctional facilities officers to private sector rent-a-cops. The building smells like angry men testing each other, a scent she knows well. She senses an atmosphere of simplicity and brute force here. The walls are plastered with wilting public health notices, camp edicts, duty rosters and poorly rendered carbon copies of missing persons sheets. Two bearded officers shove their way through the crowd, loading shotguns. Dogs sleeping on the floor raise their heads sharply as the men tramp out of the station. A man wearing a steelers cap, handlebar mustache and cashtown fire department T-shirt directs her to where Unit 12 bunks, the cost for this information a degrading moment of sexual appraisal. He does not care why she wants to know; he probably thinks she is somebody’s woman paying a visit. He watches her leave, spitting tobacco juice into a soda can.

She walks down a corridor that smells like an ashtray. The administrative area has apparently been converted into housing for another unit; off-duty officers pad in and out of the rooms barefoot in their underwear, scratching their bellies as they watch her struggle along with her duffel bag. The hallway is partly blocked by boxes of miscellaneous equipment. She briefly wonders if Sarge is okay, surprised by the sudden sensation of butterflies in her gut. He seemed fine when he left with Mattis, but she is worried about him and wonders when she will see him again.

The reality of the situation strikes her just before she reaches her quarters. The camp is overcrowded and space is obviously at a premium. People are jammed everywhere, and skilled workers are expected to live in or near their base of operations. Unit 12 bunks in the detention area; she will likely be living in a jail cell. Pondering the irony of it, Wendy enters the space, her foot crunching on an empty beer can, and takes in her new quarters.

She was right. Eight men occupy the detention area’s processing space and six holding cells. A man snores loudly in a bunk while another sits next to him on the floor wearing a pair of boxer shots and cleaning a rifle. A mustached man smokes a four-smelling cigar while filling a plastic cup from a water cooler. Another has a small Coleman going; she smells coffee brewing, rich and strong, which makes her feel strangely homesick. A gray-haired man stops reading his book and peers at her curiously over his reading glasses, a toothpick clenched in his teeth. Wendy suddenly becomes aware they are all looking at her with their lean, stubbled faces. Good ol’ boys. She returns their gaze coolly, wearing her game face. Her heart is soaring at the opportunity to be a cop again but she suddenly wonders what it is going to cost her.

“I’m looking for Ray Young,” she says. “The unit sergeant.”

“And you would be?” the man with the book says.

“Officer Wendy Saslove, reporting to the unit.”

The man glances at the others briefly before chuckling.

“How about that,” he says, chewing on his toothpick.

“Christ, Jonesy, I could have sworn she was one of yours,” a voice behind her says.

Wendy instantly recognizes the mildly sardonic tone. She turns and sees the man with the steelers cap filling the doorway, smiling and holding his soda can.

“I’m, uh, working on that, Ray,” the young man called Jonesy says, licking his hand and straightening his hair.

Ray spits into the can and says, “Well, Officer Saslove, I guess that’s your room right there.” He nods, gesturing to one of the holding cells.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Wendy picks up her bag and takes it to the cell. The toilet is dry as bone and the sink has been removed. Instead, she has a washing bucket with a sponge and fresh bar of soap and a shit bucket with a bag of lime and roll of TP. The bunk looks serviceable enough and will actually rate as four-star comfort after sleeping on the ground for the past two weeks. The walls are plastered with photo spreads of big-chested blondes from porn magazines; those will obviously have to go. The main problem will be privacy in this male zoo. She rolls out her sleeping bag on the bed and then opens her duffel bag, noticing for the first time the name Devereaux written on it in black marker.

After a few moments, Wendy becomes aware that the sergeant followed her and is standing in the doorway to the cell. The others watch closely, wearing half-smiles.

“Officer Saslove, if I may,” he says. “It’s not that I mind having a pretty face like yours hanging around, but I look at you and I wonder: What are you doing in my unit playing cop?”

She ignores him, pinning her badge to her belt. Ray squints at it and adds, “So what were you, then, a meter maid?”

One of the other cops walks up to the cell and leans against the bars, peering in with a smile.

“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Ray says, crumpling the soda can in his hand. The room tenses and Wendy with it. She will eat the sergeant’s shit; she is the rookie here, so she expects some unit hazing. But if any of them touches her, if that’s how things work in this shithole, she is going to break bones.

In preparation, she takes out her Batman belt and puts it on, her body electrified by the comforting weight of the Glock on her hip. She almost smiles. She pulls her side-handled baton out of the bag next and slides it into place, flashing back to its last use back at the hospital.

“Where’d you get that gear, Saslove?”

“From the Pittsburgh Police Department,” she tells him.

He glowers at her, his face reddening. “Is that so? How did you get it, exactly?”

“It’s standard issue, Sergeant. I worked patrol for nearly a year.”

“You’d better be telling me the truth, so help me. Are you shitting me?”

Wendy stares back at him, saying nothing.

He takes a step forward and she places her hand on the handle of her baton, already planning where she is going to hit him and how hard.

“Jesus Christ,” Ray says gently, with something like awe.

The other cops gather around behind Ray. “Pittsburgh,” they whisper among themselves, almost chanting the word. “She’s a cop.” One of them reaches and touches her shoulder lightly, making her flinch, while another holds out a warm can of beer with a friendly wink.

“Welcome, Officer Saslove,” Ray says, his eyes big and watery. “And God bless you.”

The open air market is set up at the site of the old Cashtown Flea Market on the outskirts of town, and serves as the closest thing to a mall the camp’s residents can get. Now situated in the middle of a vast shantytown, the market’s boundaries are roughly marked on the west by Christmas lights and light bulbs hanging from wires strung between poles, and on the east by one of FEMAville’s many foul canals. These canals were once part of a Medieval-style defense system of staked trenches dug around the old town by the original refugees to stop the Infected, but were slowly absorbed by growth, the stakes removed and burned for firewood, the pits filled with rainwater. Wood planks form bridges over the rank canals, now filled with sewage and garbage and even a few bodies, some always burning, day and night. Solar landscape lights thrust into the dirt mark its edges to ensure night travelers do not fall in. The canals are deadly; if the fall into the toxic sludge itself does not kill you, any number of diseases will.

Todd wanders awkwardly among the crowds of people browsing the wares stacked on the tabletops, as if testing his legs on the deck of a ship. He is not used to crowds. Especially crowds where almost everybody is carrying a gun, axe, hammer, bat or other weapon. The people here are angry and desperate and stink of fear. He feels exposed, vulnerable, a little disoriented with something like vertigo—that weird sense that everybody knows each other and is aware of you and that you do not belong. It’s high school all over again.

Come on, Todd old man, he tells himself. Nobody here gives a crap about you. They have their own problems. Boy, do they ever.

The vendors near him are shouting out products and prices while others are being haggled by customers or chasing away children and beggars. The products include batteries, candles, matches, condoms, cigarettes, hand lotion, knives, sewing thread, spices, seasoned firewood and boxes of useless electronics. Commodities, rarities and plenty of junk. The prices are based on whatever the seller wants—dollars, gold, services in kind, barter—and the market appears to be thriving. Like the earth, capitalism abides. Barter appears to be most popular form of exchange; one merchant is selling playing cards and board games and dice but is only accepting cigarettes as payment.

Nearby, a line of people wait their turn to get into one of a battery of portable toilets. They erupt into spontaneous applause as a truck drags an emergency generator down the road. Electricity means progress. Two men in orange jumpsuits pull the bottom section out of one of the portable toilets, where the waste reservoir is located, mount it on a wheeled cart, and push it up a ramp onto the back of a wagon drawn by a horse.

More than anything, the people here want and need electricity, Todd realizes. That and plumbing. In the shanties where he lives, he saw people everywhere using car batteries, sometimes wrapped together in banks, to power DC devices and AC devices using adapters. One enterprising mechanic has two cars wired together with jumpers and juices up failing batteries as a service. As for water, the only option is to wait hours in line at a government water tank.

Todd walks among the booths, taking notes of merchants and what they buy and sell. Water purifiers, baby supplies, vitamins, tampons, propane, clothespins and lines, toilet paper, garden seeds, weapons and ammo. Sugar, porn mags, chocolate, duct tape, bug spray, soy sauce, bikes, scissors, coffee and tea, candles, jeans, matches, shaving kits, candy, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, manual can openers, laundry detergent. Little bits of comfort and convenience and civilization. Pieces of an America that has fallen down, most of them garbage. Products from other countries that no longer exist. Consumable relics of a past age.

Todd has a lot of DC-powered appliances from the truck stop store that could make life much easier for at least a few people here. They are heavy, though, and liable to break. He wants to dump them in exchange for a different product. The most successful merchants, he notices, specialize in a particular item that everybody needs. The item should be small and lightweight to be easily portable. Something like cigarettes would be ideal but then he would need to be constantly on guard against addicts. Sugar and coffee would be ideal but the sellers are dealing them in plastic baggies, creating a risk of spoilage due to water or infestation. Garden seeds should be a popular item right now but he does not understand gardening.

Something like candles, on the other hand, would be perfect.

“So what are you supposed to be?”

He turns and blinks in surprise as he realizes the girl is talking to him. Time slows as their eyes connect. His heart takes a sudden flying leap. She is a petite fiery thing, her skin white as a sheet, with long, curly red hair that rages about her head like a lion’s mane. She looks about fifteen or sixteen, which is his own age. She has a sly mouth and a button nose and laughs easily, her blue eyes sparkling, betraying an appealing brand of feminine insanity.

“I’m Todd,” he says instantly.

“I’m Erin,” she says. “I asked you what you’re doing.”

“I’m going to be a merchant,” he tells her. “I have some stuff I’d like to sell.”

“Really? You should definitely hire me, then.”

Todd laughs. “And why should I do that?”

“You’re new. I can show you how things work around here so you don’t get conned.”

He stops laughing. “How do you know I’m new here?”

Erin flashes him a glance that tells him she thinks it is obvious. “Do you know about the gangs? They will try to collect a tax from you.”

“How much should I give them?”

“Nothing, you dodo bird,” she says. “It’s just a con. If the sellers paid every gang, there would be no market. They can’t really do anything to you. The sellers look out for each other, and everybody here is armed to the teeth. Now aren’t you glad I told you that?”

“Yeah,” he admits.

“You need somebody,” she points out. “Every day you have to collect water and firewood and cook your food. Once a week you pick up your rations and they let you take a shower. That doesn’t leave much time to be a seller. All these sellers have somebody helping them out.”

He has to agree she makes a good argument.

“You could do all that for me?” he asks her.

She shrugs. “I’m doing it anyway for me. Might as well try to get paid.”

“And what do you want in return?”

Erin smiles as she leans in close, making his heart pound.

“I want in on the action,” she whispers close to his ear.

The school gym is hot and crowded and noisy. The tired volunteers and professional bureaucrats manning the tables feverishly write and type information that nobody will read and hand out poorly mimeographed information that few will actually use. The main thing people seem to come here for is decisions, but they appear to be in short supply. After days of working the system to try to find his family, Ethan is beginning to see the processing center as a flea market for dying government. One big going-out-of-business sale. Waiting for his number to be called again by the records people, he wanders among the tables, finally pausing in front of a clean-cut young man under a U.S. flag and a sign that says ASK ME ABOUT RESETTLEMENT.

“Would you like to hear about Resettlement?” the man suddenly asks him.

Ethan shrinks back, shaking his head.

“It’s all part of the President’s policy for a Fresh Start,” the man says. He is clean shaven and wears a business suit with a neatly ironed white shirt and blue tie. “When the pandemic is over, we’re going to have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. This means people who still have assets out there, somewhere, will recover them. Those who have lost everything will be given the means to start a new life. This is Resettlement in a nutshell.”

“You’re going to do what, then? Tell me where to live?”

“Only if you sign up,” the man says with a smile. “If you enroll in the Resettlement Program, we will match you with a good community and give you a job as close to your old profession as possible, respecting of course your preferences, special needs such as any health problems, and surviving social networks. But of course the final decision is yours.”

Ethan laughs. “And the incentive is you’re going to give everybody a house and a car?”

“Whatever you need to start a new life.”

“How can the country afford this?”

“The nation is filled with dispossessed property, sir, previously owned by individuals and corporations. Property owned by individuals who die intestate will be passed on to the nearest surviving heirs in accordance with state and local laws. But in cases where there are no identifiable heirs, the property will escheat to the Federal government for redistribution.”

“My God,” Ethan says.

The man behind the table is talking about a massive seizure of property on an unprecedented scale, to be distributed to the survivors.

“Not God,” the man says. “The Wade Act.”

This Wade Act will conflict with numerous state and local laws. With the amount of power and assets on the table, it might even be enough to trigger a civil war.

Ethan does not care about any of this, however.

“I’m here trying to find my missing family,” he tells the man.

“Resettlement is about looking to the future, but there will be a full accounting. Every person, every dollar, every asset. If your family is alive, you will find them and you will be able to live together again under Resettlement.”

“Good,” Ethan says.

“Just fill out these forms,” the man says brightly, holding out a clipboard.

“Let me ask you a question first.”

“Of course.”

“You mentioned a full accounting. How full will that accounting be?”

“The fullest.”

“I’m speaking of the dead. We all have blood on our hands.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, sir,” the man smiles, still holding out the clipboard.

Ethan stares at it longingly.

“Perhaps later,” he says.

The man frowns, dropping the clipboard back on the table.

Ethan adds, “Sorry.”

“You know, we will survive this,” the man tells him. “It’s okay to hope.”

Ethan says, “Not yet it isn’t.”

Mobs of people, angry, shell-shocked, dressed in filthy clothes, wander among the densely packed tents and shanties built on grass long trampled into dust.

Ray says this place is going to blow.

“It’s fucked up, but it works—barely,” he says. “And for now. You know the old saying about America being three days away from a revolution? Here, it’s a matter of hours.”

Wendy nods. “What are the biggest community problems?”

Ray laughs. “Everything. Wendy, we got people packed in here like sardines. The place is an open sewer that serves gruel for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to truck in clean water for half the camp. Outside resupply is obviously touch and go. Then there’s the constant threat of fire, disease and of course Infection. Everybody’s carrying a gun. We got gangs, prostitution, drugs, con games, rapes, murders, suicides, you name it. All right?”

Just two weeks ago, this place did not exist. There was a sleepy small town here in the middle of eastern Ohio. Outlying farms. Open fields and woods. All of it now absorbed into a camp with the same population as Independence, Missouri and the poverty of Calcutta.

“I get the picture,” she says.

“Don’t worry about them. Worry about you. The main thing you got to realize is there are a lot of unhappy people in this place who had everything and now they have nothing. They are mad as hell and looking for somebody to blame. Every once in a while some asshole gets an itch to take a shot at a cop. So you keep a sharp eye out there.”

“I will, Sergeant.”

“My name is Ray. Use it. Dammit, Wendy, you should be calling the shots, not me.”

“I’m just fine with the way things are, Ray,” she says. “So when does my training start?”

The man snorts. “This is your training. You got a question?”

“Okay. How are arrests processed for trial? Where is the courthouse?”

“Stop right there,” Ray says, taking off his grimy steelers cap and wiping sweat from his forehead. “I guess I need to explain a few things. Wendy, I know you were a cop back in the real world but this is the far side of the Moon. We just don’t have what you want here. It’s frontier justice. We’re holding this ground by force.”

They approach long lines of people waiting for their turn to fill their jugs at a bright yellow water tanker guarded by a squad of kid soldiers with M16 rifles. A cloud of dust hangs over the scene. Ray changes the subject, pointing out landmarks on what will become her night beat—shower facilities, health tent, food distribution center, and a feeding center where new mothers can breastfeed and collect extra rations. The latrine area, a large battery of portable toilets, is especially dangerous at night. Women who come here after dark are often raped. Men, too, sometimes. As a result, many people drop their waste into the nearest canal, and sometimes fall in.

“So what am I supposed to do if I see a crime?” she interrupts. “Just rough them up?”

“If you want,” Ray says, placing a pinch of chew into his cheek. “Or you could take them to the Judge, who will probably give them hard labor such as shit disposal. They get an electronic bracelet that tags them. It’s pretty much the same punishment for any offense, so only bring in the hard cases you really want punished. The worst offenders get put outside the wall.”

“What about proof? Is it just my word?”

“Yup,” Ray says. “That’s how it is here. You got to understand, though, that our main role is not to solve and punish crimes. The locals mostly do that for us. The people here all watch out for each other. They usually know if somebody commits a crime, and sort it out themselves without our involvement. We’re not really in the justice business. Our job is to keep the peace.”

“We’re not cops,” Wendy says, disgusted. “We’re armed thugs.”

“Yup. You want out?”

She does not even have to think about it.

“No,” she says.

“Our unit’s shift starts around sundown. Then we get to patrol a Third World shantytown in the dark for twelve hours. Memorize your beat, don’t get lost, don’t fall in the canals, don’t get killed. Especially don’t get killed. We need people like you, Wendy.”

“I’m nothing special, believe me. Especially for this work.”

Ray stops and spits a gob of tobacco juice into the dust. “You don’t understand. We need people like you to survive. Listen: One day this thing is going to end and things are going to get back to normal. To do that, we’re going to need people who can remember what normal was and can make things right again. There are not many cops walking the earth right now. Every time one dies, all those memories of how things used to be dies with them.”

“I’ll live, Ray. I survived out there for weeks. I’ll make it in here. This is nothing.”

“Just know the original cops in this town were good men and they died trying to hold this place when it was first being built. Not all of them died by the hands of the Infected.”

Wendy smiles at him, touched by his concern.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” she tells him.

“You do that, Wendy,” Ray says, eyeing her sadly. “You do that.”

Speakers mounted on poles in the area squawk, we are winning; ask what you can do to help, before screeching loudly and resuming a tinny rendition of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

Paul leaves the FoodFair supermarket, dog tired and enjoying the night air after hours of handing out food packages, shifting boxes and mopping floors. The food distribution center has no air conditioning and keeping the camp supplied is hot, sweaty work. His tattered clerical uniform, recently cleaned and patched, is already getting ripe again. He could use a shave and a haircut. But he did good today. He digs into his pocket for his wilted pack of Winstons and lights one up, sighing. The cool air feels good and he is happy for the opportunity to finally rest. After his smoke, he will brush his teeth and hit the sack with the other workers, lying on his old bedroll with bags of rice as a mattress.

The camp is still noisy but is slowly settling down for the night. The parking lot of the FoodFair is covered in tents and campers and people huddled around their cook fires. He takes another drag and exhales, enjoying the relative peace. He remembers that the last time he had a cigarette like this, Pittsburgh was on fire. The Infected streamed through the cars. He threw a Molotov. He cut somebody in half with his Remington. The Bradley roars in his head.

He stills his mind with a short prayer of thanks that he remains alive to do this good and useful work. Maybe God does not want to listen, but being omnipresent, he cannot help but hear it.

“Is that you, Paul?”

Paul sees a figure sitting on a bench and approaches. It is Pastor Strickland, sitting with one hand cupped around the flame of a candle and the other holding an old photo.

“Do you think it’s impossible to still love somebody who is Infected, brother?” Strickland asks him.

“No,” Paul says. “I think it’s not only possible, but unavoidable.”

The man smiles, wiping his eyes.

“But they hate us in return,” Paul tells him. “That is the hardest thing to bear.”

Strickland rubs tears from his eyes with the palm of his hand. “The love is just as hard.” He adds, “You did good work today, Paul.”

“Thank you.”

“This means something to you, doesn’t it? The work, I mean.”

“It’s the only way I know how to be me,” Paul answers, surprising himself with the sudden insight. He wants to think about it more, but his tired mind cannot hold onto the threads.

“There will be a march within the next few days,” Strickland says. “A march of Christians trying to make things right around here. There’s more that can be done working together than by one man alone. You might want to give a listen to what they have to say. I’ll be there, too.”

Paul slaps the back of his neck to kill a mosquito. “I’ll do that.”

They pass the next few moments in silence. Paul finishes his smoke and grinds it out on the asphalt with his boot. Strickland blows out his candle. A dog howls in the distance.

“Can I tell you something, brother?” the pastor says quietly in the dark. “Can I speak to you as a man of the cloth? Will you hear a short confession?”

“Of course.”

“I always wondered if you could be a Christian and cry at a funeral. I mean, if somebody is going to heaven, shouldn’t we be celebrating? It’s the same here. The world is dying. Why are we so sad? Why do we cling to this miserable life? Maybe this is it, Paul. Maybe the Lord is calling us all home. If so, why do we resist the call? Why are we fighting God’s will? And why does it feel so horrible? Why does it taste like ashes? Why does it fill us with sadness?”

Paul has no answer, but he understands the essential question. He has asked himself the same question repeatedly in the past.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Sara would have an interesting answer, he is sure. His mind flashes to the battle between the Infected and the mob and what happened after the Infected overran the last knot of fighters: sketchy images of himself walking down the road, returning home to his wife. But he cannot remember what happened after that.

He is beginning to worry that he may have killed her.

Ethan runs between the shanties, his finger itching and throbbing. He hears his pursuers shouting to each other. He believes he has lost them.

It happened suddenly.

The woman was telling him that the Marines had landed in New Jersey when her friends noticed what he was wearing.

He still wore scrubs from the hospital—the pants, anyway.

They thought he was a doctor.

Ethan spent the last few days at the processing center trying to locate his family, sleeping on the floor and living on handouts. The arrangement was not so bad. The school still has electricity and plumbing, the government’s way of demonstrating its strength. In some ways, he has been living in luxury compared to many people in the camp.

They sat on folding chairs, fanning themselves with their cardboard numbers. The woman told him she heard the Marines had landed in New Jersey.

He had already heard the rumor several times while waiting in the processing center. The Marines established bases along the coasts and the Army was striking inland, reinforcing the refugee camps and using them as forward operations bases in the campaign to retake the country.

It sounded a bit wishful, to say the least.

If it’s true, then where are they, why aren’t they here? Ethan asked, and didn’t bother listening to the answer. Rumors about the Army held no interest for him. All that mattered was the search.

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. “Machín.”

“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.

“Yeah,” he says gloomily, covering the bandage with his hand. “So how about you? What’s your story?”

“I’ve been here almost since the beginning,” she says, then stops.

“What happened?”

“I came to the camp with my dad and I got bored,” she mutters, then suddenly brightens. “Let’s play truth or dare.”

“Okay,” he says.

“I’ll go first. Go ahead, Todd. Ask me.”

“Um, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” she announces, sitting primly.

“All right,” Todd says. He is not sure if he is high or not from the joint but he wants to think that he is. “Okay, what’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?”

“Oh my God, I’ve got a great answer to that one.” Erin starts laughing and Todd smiles along. “One time, in study hall, me and my friends were updating the status on our Facebook pages, right? I had to run to the ladies’ due to some women’s trouble. That night, my Blackberry started ringing nonstop with these guys wanting to do some really gross things to me. Turns out I’d left myself logged in to Facebook and my jerk friends wrote as my status that I love to give blowjobs, with my phone number.”

She is laughing loudly now while Todd continues to smile along politely, wondering why she finds something so cruel to be so funny.

“Oh, man,” she adds. “That happens to everybody sooner or later, right? Okay, it’s your turn. Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” he says, hoping she will not ask him the same question.

“When was the first time you did it with a girl?”

Todd stammers briefly before inventing an elaborate story about his junior prom and how he scored with his date in the backseat of his friend’s car. His voice trails off. She can tell he is lying.

“It’s okay,” she says.

“Um,” he says.

His mind scrambles in search of something light and witty to say to recover the mood, but none is needed; Erin deftly rescues him.

“Want to see one of my cheers, Todd? A really good one?”

“Okay,” he tells her, feeling overwhelmed.

Erin jumps onto her feet, shakes off a sudden wave of laughter, and then stands erect with her arms stiff and muscles tight.

“Sharp and snappy,” she says. “One, two, three, here it is: Go Cougars!” She claps to the beat, keeping her hands under her chin. “Go Cougars! We are the Cougars, hey, we’re number one; our cougar roar has just begun.” She punches the air. “Roar!” She claps again. “Roar, roar! We are the Cougars, yeah, we’ll say it loud; we’re stepping up because we’re proud. Roar! Roar, roar! We are the best, all right, we’re here to win—”

Erin finishes a kick and flops onto the ground laughing. Todd claps his hands.

“Wow,” he says, his heart pounding with sexual excitement.

Outside the shack, somebody yells at them to keep it down, making her laugh even harder.

“Let’s pretend that was my dare,” she says, panting. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Dare,” he says.

“Kiss me.”

Todd was hoping for this. Truth or dare, after all, is a kissing game. He moves towards her on his hands and knees, feeling lightheaded and breathless, unsure of where to begin. He has never kissed a girl before. She meets him halfway. It is like falling into a warm pool, smooth and jolting. He kisses her for several moments, holding her shoulders. He probes her tongue with his, wondering if he is doing this right. His right knee, pressed against a pebble on the ground, is beginning to hurt, but he ignores it, afraid to move. His erection strains against his jeans, sending waves of pain and pleasure through his body. Finally, she pushes him away.

He falls out of the kiss, amazed.

“And,” she adds, “take off your shirt. I forgot to mention it’s a two-part dare.”

Still dizzy, he obeys automatically, then fidgets as she appraises him.

“No tattoos,” she observes. “Wow. My boyfriend has tats everywhere.”

Todd frowns, alarmed and jealous. He half expects a bunch of jocks to enter the shack pointing at him and laughing and congratulating her on setting him up for a fall.

“You have a boyfriend?” he says, trying to control his tone.

“He’s one of them. Outside.”

Well, then he’s not really your boyfriend anymore, he wants to say, but holds his tongue.

She smiles coyly at him and says, “Maybe I need a new boyfriend.”

He smiles back, thawing quickly.

“Dare,” she says.

“You too,” he says bravely.

Erin crosses her arms, hesitating with a teasing glance, then pulls her shirt over her head in one swift motion. Todd expects her to be wearing a bra but there is none. Her pert breasts are shining and perfect. Her smooth body burns in the candlelight. He stares at her in awe.

“Dare,” he whispers.

“Come here,” she says. “Kiss me again.”

As Wendy approaches the latrines, she turns her flashlight on and continues warily. Next to her, Jonesy does the same. She prefers to patrol by moonlight, letting their eyes adjust to the dark and becoming hunters instead of mere night watchmen, but the latrine area is dangerous at night even for cops, and a nearby canal is poorly marked by solar-powered landscape lights. A flare arcs into the sky over the horizon and she hears the snarl of distant small arms fire. The pickets have been busy tonight outside the camp. Then the shooting stops as suddenly as it began. Wendy radios in their position to Tyler, the gray-haired book reader back at the station.

Roger that. You guys be careful, now. Keep a sharp eye.

She smiles at the men’s protectiveness as she keys the walkie-talkie and says, “You, too.”

I most certainly will, young Wendy.

Another flare arcs over the distant shanties.

“Sounds like a real battle out there tonight,” Jonesy says, chewing loudly.

“Give me some of your gum.”

“What do I get?”

“Jonesy, my boyfriend could break you in half. And if he couldn’t, I could.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

She pops the piece into her mouth and begins gnawing on it with a vengeance.

Her third night on foot patrol with Unit 12, and she is already bored.

Last night, a little excitement: An explosion on the far side of camp, a flash in the sky followed by a boom and slight shock that she could feel in her feet. Outside her patrol territory, unfortunately. Turns out it was a homegrown crystal meth lab that blew sky high. She finds herself almost wishing something like that would happen here.

Flares burn as they fall across the distant sky. A machine gun begins rattling.

They walk along the edge of the canal, looking for planks that will allow them to cross. Their flashlight beams flicker along the rough ground. Somebody is playing a harmonica in the nearby shanties. A couple moans loudly, having loud sex in one of the shacks.

Jonesy chuckles.

“Guess you’re not the only ladies’ man around here,” Wendy says.

He laughs.

“Here’s the bridge,” he says. “Watch your step.”

They tramp over the planks and find themselves among the batteries of portable toilets.

“Police,” Wendy says loudly.

“Police coming through,” Jonesy says.

Three days, and still no word from Sarge. Wendy is now worried.

“So Jonesy, how did you end up becoming a cop?” she asks to distract herself.

“Well, Ray started the unit and Tyler and Ray are on the same bowling team and Tyler’s my dad,” Jonesy answers. “When Infection started I was finishing high school. I was going to college, too. I was going to learn how to be a veterinarian.”

Wendy smiles. Tyler was not being protective of her, but of his son.

“Being a vet is a good job,” she says.

“Oh, yeah, it’s a really good—”

A man suddenly appears in their path, shielding his eyes from the glare of their flashlights.

“Can you all get that light out of my eyes, please?”

They lower their flashlights a little. Wendy places her other hand on the handle of her baton.

“Stay where you are, sir,” she says.

“You’re cops, right? I thought I heard you say you were police.”

“Do you need assistance?”

“My wife is missing. She came out here to use the bathroom an hour ago.”

“All right, sir,” she says. “Can you describe—”

Her instincts scream, Fight.

She wheels, drawing her side-handled baton as Jonesy falls moaning to the ground, a man standing behind him holding a length of pipe. Another pipe glances off the side of her head with a meaty thud and her eyes go black and flood with stars.

She reels, struggling to stay on her feet as the shapes close in.

The training takes over and she moves.

She flails with the baton, smashing one of the men in the face, then backhands the other man in the ear. The first stumbles backward and she pursues, beating him furiously to the ground while the second thrashes in the nearby canal, coughing and spitting.

Another blow to the head.

She falls into a deep blackness.

Sarge. Sarge, help me

Wendy regains consciousness, first becoming aware of a heavy weight on her body and a stabbing pain in her genitals. She opens her eyes, looking up into the darkness, and sees the Infected leering back down at her, its face gray and wet with blood, its eyes red with virus.

Wendy screams.

She no longer sees an Infected on top of her, just a man telling her to shut up or he will kill her. She smells his rancid breath, hot on her face. He strikes her savagely once, twice.

She blinks and sees an Infected, and screams again.

His hand clamps over her mouth. She works her teeth around it and bites down as hard as she can. He hits her again, but with little force; she clamps down harder, growling like a dog. Within seconds, the man is screaming and begging for mercy. She feels blood spray down the back of her throat and releases the mangled hand, coughing wetly.

She screams again. And again. But the man is gone.

The crowd of thousands pours down the road past the food distribution center, singing hymns and waving poorly made signs announcing GOD IS STILL WITH US and LUKE 21:11. Paul grinds out his cigarette and joins their ranks. His mind flashes to the suburban mob marching down the road back in Pittsburgh, thronged together with their weapons and shouting their slogans to make themselves feel stronger. Air Force jets roared overhead in a sky filled with black smoke, dropping bombs on distant targets. He remembers how he spoke to them: He blessed them just before the Infected attacked. He told them their war was just.

They march by the camp’s feeding center and the pest house and a swing set displaying flags for various government agencies and services housed inside a small red brick building that used to be the town post office. The refugees pause in their daily routines, watching the marchers stream by singing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Some of them excitedly join the march while others laugh or shout at them to go make noise and stir up the dust somewhere else. Soldiers squint at the marchers, fingering their weapons and glancing at their sergeants.

God is not very popular these days, Paul realizes. These people here are the hardcore Christians. The true believers. Their faith astonishes him. It makes him feel a bit ashamed. And yet he cannot help but see them as a woman who defends the alcoholic husband who beats her regularly, making excuses for what is essentially psychotic behavior.

“Did you hear?” a man says behind him. “The Marines are in New Jersey.”

“Who needs ’em?” another man snorts.

“I heard the Feds are going to try to take our guns away from us after the Army shows up,” a woman says. “We’ll be defenseless.”

“That’s just a rumor. Just like the Marines landing anywhere is a rumor.”

“I heard it was Philadelphia, not New Jersey,” somebody cuts in.

“But what if it’s true? Don’t they understand the Second Amendment saved this country? If it weren’t for the Second Amendment, we’d all be Infected by now. God bless the NRA.”

Paul hears babies crying, startled at the sound, flashing back to the giant fanged worm slithering out of the gloom, mewing for food. He marvels that even now, children are being born in the camp. No matter what, it seems, life goes on. Perhaps the human race abides, too.

Near the front of the crowd, a man is shouting into a megaphone. The march is slowing, becoming more congested around several figures standing on the roof of a van in front of the old high school, the nominal seat of government in the camp. Paul continues to push forward, recognizing Pastor Strickland and several other clergy standing behind an overweight man wearing a crew cut, white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and massive sweat stains at the armpits, and a bright yellow tie. Paul has never seen him before but recognizes his voice. The man is a popular talk show host on the AM dial in the Pittsburgh area. McLean. Thomas McLean.

“We thought we were invincible,” McLean is saying. “We were consumed by money and pleasure and sex. Infection is happening because God is punishing us.”

The mob roars its approval, drowning him out.

“They want you to believe we can live without God,” Paul hears him say after the crowd settles down. “Without our faith. They want us to ignore God. But God ain’t ignoring us, folks. No, sir. God is talking to us loud and clear. And do you know what he’s saying?”

Paul holds his breath, straining to hear, wondering who “they” are.

“He’s saying we have insulted him, and he’s not going to take it!”

The crowd roars. Pastor Strickland and the other clergymen behind McLean nod and applaud, smiling grimly.

“We have insulted him by celebrating the spirit of the Antichrist and we are reaping the whirlwind. Insulted him by allowing feminism to destroy the American family, murder children and promote lesbianism. By allowing homosexuals to destroy marriage and corrupt our children. By corrupting this great nation with our greed, pop culture, liberal universities, public education, separation of church and state, and persecution of Christians.”

“No,” Paul says. “Not this. Not now.”

The crowd is growing increasingly angry. He can feel the energy surge through them like a wind. They wave their signs, crying out to McLean to tell them what to do.

“We must repent for the end is nigh,” McLean says. “I think we can all agree that it’s pretty nigh. But how does one repent? Do you even know what that word means? It means to make yourself righteous. Pure. We must purify ourselves as a nation and forge a new covenant with God.”

Hundreds of hands are in the air, waving gently like wheat in a breeze.

“To the atheists, I say, banish them from the camp!”

“Cast them out,” the people chant.

“Banish the homosexuals!”

“Cast them out.”

“Banish the elitists who look down at you!”

“This is not right,” Paul says to the faces around him as McLean continues to run down his list. “God does not want this. God does not want us to hate each other.”

“He wants us to hate sin,” a woman snaps at him.

“It ain’t a rally until the devil shows up,” a man observes. “Here he is in the flesh.”

“This is deranged,” Paul pleads. “Infection has deranged us. Can’t you see that?”

“All I see is a nigger with a death wish,” the man says with a grin.

“Keep that racist crap to yourself,” another man warns.

“God is punishing us for our wickedness,” the woman says. “Why is it deranged to think that?”

McLean is pointing at the processing center and shouting.

“Those people in there, they tell us how to live, but nobody voted for them! Now they want to silence me for speaking out! They see me as a threat! They can kill me, but they do not understand that the fire has been lit, that the fire is you, and it is spreading, and we will burn the corruption from the body of this great nation, and an even greater nation, a true Christian nation, will rise from the ashes!”

The crowd surges towards him hungrily. The soldiers guarding the processing center push the people back from the front doors with their rifles, angry and sweating.

“Tell them to pass the Sodomy Law. Tell them loud. Tell them now. Tell them—”

A metallic shriek drowns him out. The crowd pushes, compresses, eventually loosens as people scatter at its edges. Down the road, a Bradley armored fighting vehicle approaches at forty miles an hour, raising a massive cloud of dust. A wreath of wildflowers trembles on its metal chest like a necklace. An American flag waves from one of its antennae. McLean points at the vehicle, shouting into the megaphone, but nobody can hear him, coughing and blinded by waves of dust in the air.

The vehicle flies through the crowd, sending people lunging out of the way into the dirt, and continues on its path.

Paul grins, watching it pass. It is his Bradley, he’s sure of it, and it can only be Sarge and Steve driving. He ducks out of the mob into one of the narrow alleys between the rows of shacks, intent on following the vehicle. It would be nice to see a friend right now.

The Bradley rolls past the sentries and into the military compound. Squads of soldiers, sweating in their helmets and uniforms, admire it as it passes. The Bradley slows as it turns onto Main Street, whose small retail stores and upper-story apartments now provide barracks, mess and headquarters facilities. The street is filled with soldiers wearing different uniforms, merchants and mercenaries, prostitutes and drug dealers, civilian officials in business suits and olive green five-ton trucks unloading troops and food and ammunition. A long line of soldiers waits patiently in front of a water tanker. Even here, the command structure is confused, with many different Army and National Guard units mixed together, large numbers of raw recruits, and with several different headquarters displaying their loyalty to the United States, State of Ohio and/or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One banner hanging from the barracks windows announces simply, praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

The Bradley slows again and executes an abrupt turn into the service garage. The grease monkeys instantly surround it, hoping something is wrong, itching to work on its engine again. They love the machine. There are so few of them left operating on American soil.

The hydraulic ramp drops and Sarge emerges, holding Wendy in his arms.

Smoke drifts in the air, reeking of cordite. On the other side of the garage, a squad of recruits practices firing M16 rifles at paper targets set up in front of a wall of sandbags. The loud firing quickly tapers to respectful silence as they catch sight of the Bradley’s commander carrying the beautiful sleeping woman into his quarters.

Todd enters FEMAville’s military compound, marveling at the barbed wire and chaos, asking around where he can find the man commanding the Bradley.

They laid in the shack on their backs staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and naked and panting. For the first time in his life, he felt truly accepted. She had seen him naked and he had come inside her and now they were bonded and he would love her until the day he died. His body continued to shudder with the aftershocks of the incredible explosion of pleasure. The shack was filled with her unique musky smell. She lit up the remainder of her joint and chattered about her iPod and Blackberry and Facebook and how she wanted to exist again. Todd nodded, barely listening, studying the curves of her body and feeling strangely envious of her effortless beauty. He was already sad that she would have to leave and he might never have her again. He was suddenly starving. Moments later, she asked him if he wanted to do it again, and immediately went down on him, making him come again in her mouth. After the third time, he passed out.

When he woke, Erin was gone, and so was his stash of electronics. His capital.

Suddenly, he had nothing.

She left him an enigmatic note that read simply, Sorry. You are very cute.

He thought about his options all morning. He could try to find her and get his stock back or he could forget about it. Confronting her would be problematic. To put it mildly. Todd is terrible at confrontation, plus he believes he might be in love with her. He can feel the agony of wanting to see her again slowly overtake the anger he feels at her robbing him blind.

Screw this, he told himself. I know a cop. I’ll get her to help me. The cops will get my stuff back, and I’ll forgive Erin and we’ll be together again.

He knows he will never have her, that he was used. But he cannot stop himself from hoping.

By the time he reaches the military compound—where he believes he will find Sarge, who in turn will be able to tell him where Wendy is—he has replayed the events of the previous night dozens of time in his mind. He has imagined many conversations they are yet to have. The angry one where he asks her why she used and hurt him, forces her to take a hard look at herself, and makes her cry over her misdeeds. The calm one where he gazes upon her coldly and tells her he forgives her and pities her, and then wishes her a nice life. The happy, highly improbable one where she brings his stuff back and they fall into each other’s arms.

The steady crackle of gunfire at the perimeter of the camp intensifies, reminding him that his personal problems are insignificant compared to the ever-present threat facing the people here.

The garage is filled with soldiers sitting on the hard cement floor writing letters, reading books and making coffee on Coleman stoves. Chickens cluck in a series of cages against the far wall, next to neatly stacked cordwood. Todd smells cordite and coffee and chickenshit. The soldiers are being oddly quiet, frequently glancing at the office in the corner where Sarge has made his home. He treads carefully among them, ignoring their hostile stares, still muttering to himself as he knocks on Sarge’s door. No answer. He pounds angrily.

The door opens and Sarge steps into the entry wearing his camo pants and a T-shirt, glaring at him, his expression instantly softening with recognition.

“Hey, Kid,” he says. “Good to see you.”

Todd flushes at hearing his old nickname.

The soldier thrusts out his hand, and Todd shakes it.

“You too, Sarge.”

“What brings you out this way?”

“I got some bad news. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Come on in, then. I have some bad news, too, Kid.”

Todd stops in surprise at the sight of Paul and Ethan standing over a cot where Wendy sleeps fitfully, softly moaning.

Wendy wakes up with a massive headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. The small room is filled with men staring at her. Sarge presses a cool, damp cloth against her forehead and looks at her with an odd mixture of love and fear. Paul, Ethan and Todd are here, and so is Ray and all of the cops of Unit 12 except for Jonesy and his dad, their faces lighting up at seeing her awake. Ethan looks like somebody punched his lights out, grinning with a black eye. Somebody is asking her how she is feeling and she struggles to concentrate on the voice. Her mind has been swimming in and out of consciousness and she wants to wake up. She is not even sure she is awake now. If this is a dream, it is a good one; she feels happy having Sarge close and strangely safe being with the other survivors. Odd that she should spend the two worst weeks of her life with this group of people and suddenly feel so bonded to them. They are her people. She remembers how, at the hospital, she began to think of them as a tribe.

She wonders if she is dying.

Sarge is asking her if she needs anything. Does she need water?

After she drinks, she asks them how she got here. Her voice sounds funny and she thinks there might be something wrong with her ear. The men glance at each other, avoiding her eyes. The truth is she remembers nothing. Whatever happened to her was so bad that they cannot bear to say it out loud. Ray sits on an ammo crate next to her bed and tells her that she and Jonesy were attacked. Jonesy has a concussion and is in bad shape. She got banged up pretty good but physically she is fine. Wendy takes this in and wonders why she cannot rise from the cot. She feels oddly feverish. She cannot shake the feeling that she is dying.

You should see the other guys, Ray says with a grin, nodding with respect. You really did a number on them. We caught two of them. We know who the third guy is and we’ll have him in the bag soon. You don’t worry about them, Wendy. We’ll take care of it. They deserve to die for what they did and we’re going to take care of it.

Ray places her badge on the pillow next to her head.

We found this at the scene, he tells her.

Her head is pounding. She feels confused. Her dreams were filled with nightmares, and now she is wondering if some of them were real.

Ray asks if she has a problem with them taking care of things the Defiance way.

Wendy surprises herself by saying clearly, “Do it.”

She leans over the side of the bed and vomits onto the floor at Sarge’s feet. Moments later, she is plummeting into a nauseating darkness lit briefly only by a few tiny sparks.

The Unit 12 boys, smiling like wolves, leave the room in single file to deliver justice to the men who attacked their people. They nod to Ray, who is staying behind to look after Wendy, as they pass by with their black shirts and bullet-proof vests and guns.

Wendy tosses and turns on the bed for the next few hours while Sarge dabs at her face with a wet cloth. As evening approaches, soldiers bring in steaming bowls of beef stew and the survivors sit on the floor in a circle to eat by candlelight.

“Just like old times,” Paul says, chewing. “Except for this good food.”

“Must be nice to have a job that pays in raw beef,” Ray says.

Ethan grins. “You don’t know what I had to do to earn it,” he points out.

“Something dangerous, from the looks of your face,” Sarge says, squinting at him as if trying to figure out a puzzle.

“It’s nothing,” Ethan tells him happily. “Some people at the government center thought I was a doctor and attacked me. I ran, found a crew unloading cattle, and worked the day.”

“Ah,” Ray says in understanding. He knows about the cattle crews and how they use people as bait for the monsters that infect the animals.

“When I got back to the government center, the same people were waiting for me and gave me this,” Ethan answers, pointing at his face and laughing.

Todd laughs with him and says, “Why are you so happy about it?”

“I’m happy because I think I may have found my family.”

The other survivors glance at each other and offer weak smiles.

“That’s good news, man,” Ray says.

Sarge touches his shoulder and adds, “Yeah, it’s good, Ethan.”

Ethan glares at them. “I’m serious.”

“And I’m taking you seriously,” Ray answers carefully, bristling.

“I spent several days at the government center. The records people found one Carol Bell in the camp, but it wasn’t my wife. I kept pushing until I finally convinced somebody to check some of the other camps. Turns out there is a C. Bell and two M. Bells at the FEMA camp near Harrisburg. Three days after Infection, a C. Bell and an M. Bell arrived on the same day.”

He studies the faces of the other survivors for a reaction.

“It sounds hopeful, Ethan,” Paul says, nodding. “I mean it.”

“It sounds awesome,” Todd tells him.

Ethan turns to Sarge and says, “I was wondering if you could take me there. There, or as far as you can.”

Sarge believes it is appropriate that the other survivors are here with him again, as he has never really left them. His mind has been plunging into the past, against his will, during every still moment, reliving the horrors of Infection, the Screaming, Afghanistan. The worst is when he suddenly finds himself standing in the dark alone in front of the hospital, shooting the Infected swarming across the parking lot while every atom in his body screams at him to run. He surfaces from these terrifying flashbacks drenched in cold sweat, his heart clenched in his chest, refilling his lungs with a sudden gasp. He is not stupid. He knows he is suffering heavily from post-traumatic stress. He also knows that getting back out into the field will cure it, at least temporarily.

“I might be able to take you to Steubenville,” Sarge says.

“What’s in Steubenville?”

“Bridges.”

“The Infected of Pittsburgh,” Ethan says, nodding.

“What are you guys talking about?” Todd says.

“That big fire that chased us out? It also chased out all the Infected,” Ethan explains. “They’re walking west, straight to the bridges. Straight to us. Right, Sarge?”

Sarge nods. “I’m leading a mission out there to blow the bridges. Specifically, the Veterans Memorial Bridge. Six lanes across the Ohio River.”

“You can’t help but hear them,” Paul adds. “They’ve been attacking the camp ever since we got here. The gunfire has become almost constant, day and night. After a while, it gets to be background noise. If they get inside, we’re done.”

“We’re the last refugees that made it to the camp from Pittsburgh,” Sarge says.

“Can the Infected swim?” Ray says.

“Our intelligence says they can’t,” Sarge tells him. “If we blow the bridges, they’ll be stopped cold at the river.”

“What they’ll do is go north and south.”

“That’s not our problem.”

Ray shrugs. “You’re right. It’s not.”

“The migration will be deflected and that’s all that counts as far as we’re concerned.”

“I want in,” Todd says. “Let me come, Sarge. Please.”

“I might as well join in, too,” Paul says, eyeing him hopefully. “I could be useful.”

Sarge shakes his head in mild disbelief. The truth is he would be happy to bring them on the mission. The boys he commands are good but they do not know what the survivors know. Frankly, he is surprised that they would want to leave the safety of the camp to go back into the jaws of the beast. And after just a few days, no less. Was it not the point of their journey together, after all—to find this sanctuary, and try to live a normal life?

“It’s going to be incredibly dangerous,” he tells them.

He remembers driving through Steubenville, the town eerily quiet. No sign of life, not even a dog barking. The Infected are there, all right. And with many of the Infected of Pittsburgh migrating west, the place is going to be swarming.

“I’m coming, too,” Wendy says from her cot.

“Wendy!” Todd says happily.

The men launch themselves to their feet as she stands painfully, visibly trembling, touching the back of her head and wincing. She shrugs off their hands and walks to where they were sitting, taking a place next to Sarge and accepting a drink of water in a plastic cup.

“Well, then I’m going, too,” Ray says.

“The hell you are,” Sarge growls. “You’re not one of us.”

“But she’s one of us. If she goes, I’m going. It’s that simple. I made a promise.”

“Yeah?” Sarge glares at him. “To who?”

“To a lot of fucking dead people,” Ray snaps back.

“Ray is coming with us,” Wendy rasps.

Sarge scowls but says nothing.

“Are you all sure about this?” he says.

“Yes,” the survivors murmur, looking down at their bowls.

“What about you, Wendy?”

“You were right,” Wendy says. “It’s not safe here for us.”

“Can you do it?”

“You’re not going without me.”

“All right,” he says.

The room falls silent as they consider their reasons for wanting to go.

“I hate it here,” Todd says finally.

Ethan says, “I actually love it. But I have to get to Harrisburg.”

“We’ll get you as far as we can, Ethan,” Sarge tells him.

“It will be good to get out of here for a few days,” Paul says. “Maybe I’ll go all the way to Harrisburg with you. This place is unclean. God doesn’t live here.”

“Where exactly does he live, Preacher?” Ray asks quietly.

“Where? Out there, friend. With them. They are his agents.”

“Get your sleep tonight,” Sarge tells them. “We’re training tomorrow. The morning after that, we’re going to drive out there and blow a hole in that bridge.”

He adds, “I hope this is what you want.”