The Infection

THE FIRE

The three survivors stand on the hospital roof and watch the growing fire consume western Pittsburgh. The sky over the east glows red as buildings continue to burn downtown, soar up into the sky on powerful convection currents, and rain back down as particulates. The air is thick with heat and smoke and falling ash. The night is alive with gunfire and screams.

“Paul was right,” Anne says. “It’s huge. And it’s moving.”

“Gone,” Wendy says, her voice cracking. “It’s all gone.”

Sarge says, “We’ve got to get out of here. Tonight.”

The survivors race in and out of their rooms in the glow of LED lanterns, throwing bags and supplies into the corridor. Their shadows flicker across the walls. Shouts echo in the gloom. A box rips open and cans spill and roll noisily across the floor. A handful of bullets clatter and roll like marbles. The survivors know they cannot stay here and yet none of them want to go outside. They never go outside at night, but they have no choice. The fire has produced a massive migration. Pittsburgh is on the move. The fire is flushing thousands of people out of their hiding places and into the streets to mingle with the fleeing Infected. The numbers of Infected must be increasing exponentially, by the minute, and they are all headed this way in a tidal wave.

“What about Ethan?” Todd says, panting.

Sarge glances at Anne, who shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

“He’s coming with us,” he growls, glaring at her.

“Goddamn right he’s coming,” Paul says.

“I got him,” says Sarge.

The soldier grabs the front of Ethan’s shirt and pulls him to his feet, cursing as the man instantly spews a small bucket of spaghetti and red wine onto the floor. Then he heaves the man up and over one shoulder and his rucksack over the other like a counterbalance.

The survivors hustle down the stairs in a train, moving as fast as they can with as little light as possible, and begin dumping supplies at the entrance of the hospital. Sarge drops Ethan in a heap in the vestibule and turns to scan the outside parking lot using his rifle’s night vision close combat optic. The optic amplifies ambient light thousands of times and creates an image rendered in green. He can make out grainy figures marching through the parking lot.

“Where’s our ride?” Todd says, his voice edged with panic.

Steve and Duck went to retrieve the Bradley, and if they do not come back, the survivors will be stranded. And probably die.

“It’s coming,” Sarge hisses. “I’ll cover here. The rest of you: Go get the rest of our shit.”

Anne touches his shoulder, asking the unspoken question, Do you need me for anything?

“Light,” he says.

They have flashlights, but turning one on right now would be like ringing a dinner bell. Instead, he needs fire—flares, Molotovs. He does not have to explain this. Anne knows what to do.

He suddenly thinks about Wendy, his heart racing. It was always nothing to take care of himself, but now he is worried about her, too. It is hard to aim a rifle when your heart is pounding in your chest. He pushes his worries roughly out of his mind and breathes slowly and steadily for a few moments until he has regained complete control of his nerves.

Crowds of Infected flow through the cars in the parking lot, squealing and shoving and howling. A pack of them breaks off with strident cries, pounding towards the hospital, apparently curious about what might be inside, their eyes gleaming bright green in Sarge’s optic.

They never stop searching for us, Sarge thinks, as he pulls the trigger and cuts them down with several bursts.

Steve and Ducky race between the rows of abandoned cars in the parking garage, guided by their night vision goggles, rifles held in the aiming position.

The sounds of distant fire and chaos, a constant roar filling the air like white noise, is suddenly undercut by the characteristic ping of Sarge’s AK47. The commander is blazing away at somebody down at the front of the hospital, from the sound of it. Steve takes a moment to look out from the second floor of the parking garage. He sees the muzzle flashes and, beyond, the Infected streaming through the cars towards the hospital, adding their shrieks to the night’s din.

“Let’s go,” Ducky hisses from somewhere ahead of him.

Steve nods. He wants to help Sarge, but the only way he can do that is to get the Bradley down there as fast as possible.

He trained to fight to protect his country, but he never trained for this. Of course, he is scared. They are all scared, all of the time, even in their dreams. But more than that, he hates, with every atom and every fiber in his being, killing other Americans. The first time he did that, he stopped being a soldier. He trusts Sarge and will go on following his orders as long as it helps keep them all alive, but Steve isn’t in Sarge’s Army anymore.

A noise like a foghorn stops them in their tracks, followed by a deep, rumbling, phlegmy cough. Steve and Ducky crouch behind the hood of a car and scan the area. Something big is moving through the far end of the garage, pushing vehicles out of its way with its lumbering strength.

“What is that?” Ducky says, his voice cracking. “One of those worms?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Steve turns on the SureFire flashlight mounted on his rifle and aims it at the thing moving through the gloom. The flashlight has a red lens, making the beam barely visible to anybody not wearing night vision goggles. On NVGs, the light appears a brilliant green. The beam plays along the smooth flank of something big striding ponderously through the garage, coughing deep in its massive lungs.

“Some kind of elephant or something,” Ducky says.

“Or something. At least it’s moving away from us.”

The thing shoulders aside an SUV, setting off a car alarm.

Ducky pats Steve’s arm and says, “We’d better get moving.”

They find the Bradley where they left it in the corner. Steve pulls at the massive black plastic tarp, exposing a yellow happy face stenciled on the vehicle’s side. Moving quickly and expertly, he and Ducky begin folding the tarp.

Another sound distracts them. Something making a wet clicking sound deep in its throat.

The soldiers stop, look, listen, aiming their carbines into the darkness.

“We don’t have time for this,” Steve says.

“Forget the tarp, then,” Ducky tells him. “Just get in the rig.”

Steve ignores him, staring intently at the source of the noise, a squat, stumbling shadow. At first, he believes it is a child on a tricycle, the noise a squeaky wheel. He takes two steps forward until freezing as the shadow reveals itself.

“Oh my God,” Ducky says.

The creature looks like a little sickly albino baboon wobbling on legs articulated like a grasshopper’s, grotesque on something its size. Its little barrel chest heaves as it takes rapid, wheezing breaths. Despite its shocking appearance, it appears almost harmless, a bizarre mutation thrust into a hostile world, barely equipped to survive, a pale and hungry thing.

“Kill it,” Steve says, his skin crawling with revulsion.

At the sound of his voice, the baboon thing stops, fixes its gleaming eyes on Ducky, and roars massively, showing rows of teeth like knives. A moment later, its nose wrinkles and the elongated face shakes with a massive sneeze, spraying a cloud of mucus.

Ducky raises his carbine and fires a quick burst but the thing is already flying through the air, shrieking. It lands with a thump on the soldier’s chest, hugging his body and champing its teeth down on his Kevlar body armor.

Steve aims his weapon but hesitates. He does not have a shot. Ducky is reeling drunkenly, screaming for help, trying to push the thing off of him.

Steve drops the rifle, pulls out his knife, and closes in, slashing. The thing shrieks in pain and a jet of scalding, oily liquid shoots up his arm.

And then it is gone, vaulting into the air and landing ten feet away, where it briefly whines and hisses before disappearing into the dark in a series of long, flying leaps.

Steve races to collect his rifle until stopped cold by Ducky gasping, “I’m hit.”

Sarge drops an empty magazine, pops in a fresh thirty-round mag, and chambers the first round in a single rapid, fluid motion. He fires a quick burst, cutting down an Infected racing at him with a blood-curdling howl. Sarge had gotten the automatic rifle from a dead Taliban fighter, who had probably gotten it off of a dead soldier during the Soviet occupation, long ago. More than a souvenir, he treasures the rifle for the simple fact that it almost never jams. It is rugged and reliable if a bit inaccurate, but between the close combat optic he had retrofitted onto it and the close range of less than a hundred meters, he is dropping bodies steadily.

He misses a shot and curses. He is tiring, getting sloppy. He fires again, and the snarling man goes down wearing a surprised look on his face.

Sarge knows he cannot keep up this pace. Anne must either show up with the flares and Molotovs or the Bradley must show up to get them all out of Dodge. If neither happens soon, the Infected will take him and that will be that.

His eyes continually sweep the parking lot while barely moving, absorbing every detail and instantly assessing it as a threat, an asset or nothing. The robot has taken over; he is in complete survival mode, every part of him focused on fight and the option of flight. Being under fire in Afghanistan has given him the ability to look at the world as a palette of survival. He finds it bizarrely unsettling to be in combat, firing his rifle steadily at close targets standing out in the open, without worrying about the snap of bullets flying past his ear. When he blinks, sometimes he sees insurgents running at him at a crouch, not Infected. Time is compressing and he has little idea of whether he has been out here for minutes or an hour.

No matter how many of them he kills, they never quite feel like the enemy. Even after all of the atrocities he has seen, he cannot bring himself to hate them.

The worst is when they come at him wearing military uniforms.

The flares go arcing high into the sky, landing among the derelict cars, bursting with a fierce orange glow and revealing scores of moving figures.

Anne taps his shoulder, then raises her rifle, peers into the scope, and takes down a running woman with a colossal bang and flash of light.

“It’s about time,” he grunts, still firing.

Anne is a different sort than him, he knows. Anne has enough hate for both of them.

The asphalt vibrates with stomping feet.

“Swarm!” says Wendy, standing with her Glock held ready in case any Infected get close.

“I’m on it,” Todd yells, lighting his first Molotov.

The Infected bob among the cars, blending into a howling mob racing through the night towards the six survivors.

“Molotov out!” Todd cries.

The flaming bottle soars through the air and hits one of the Infected in the chest, bursting into a wide sheet of fire that turns her and five others into staggering, screeching human torches.

“Good throw, boy,” Paul says, yelling, “Molotov!”

The flaming bottle arcs over the Infected’s heads, bursting on the roof of a station wagon. A group of Infected races through the fire, the clothing on their arms and legs suddenly igniting with flaming gasoline, and continue running at the survivors until Wendy cuts them down with her handgun. The fire flares briefly, then suddenly ebbs and begins to fizzle out.

“It’s starting to get dicey out here, Sarge,” Todd says, his voice breathless and panicky.

“Shut up, Kid,” says Sarge. “This ain’t nothing.”

Actually, they are in deep shit. The enemy is relentless and inexhaustible. His own tiny force is tired, scared and fighting with a limited supply of ammunition. In the long run, the Infected will either overrun them or force them back into the hospital, where they will be killed by the expanding fire or stuck barricaded behind some door for who knows how long.

Unless the Bradley gets here first.

He sizes up his next target, the red dot in the close combat optic hovering on the man’s chest. He squeezes the trigger, the view shakes violently, and the man drops.

And another. And another. Bankers and housewives and bakers and students and firemen.

Behind him, Wendy and Paul are firing. The Infected press in on the flanks. Somebody throws a Molotov and Sarge hears the bottle shatter dangerously close; he can feel the heat from it.

A loud metallic squealing fills the air.

“What is that?” Paul says, sweeping the parking lot with his shotgun. The gun fires with a deafening roar, cutting a howling woman almost in half.

The squealing grows louder, like a giant eagle descending on its prey.

Sarge grins. That sound, he thinks, is the cavalry arriving in the nick of time.

The Bradley slams through a row of nearby cars on its screeching treads, its main gun blazing like thunder and lightning. Sarge sees the familiar boom stick on the side of the turret. The red tracers stream toward the far end of the parking lot, where the cannon rounds rip apart Infected and cars alike and fling both into the air like confetti in a series of mushrooming fireballs. The survivors watch this incredible violence in silence until the Bradley grinds to a halt nearby.

The tail lights wink and the ramp drops, promising safety in its dark interior.

Ducky Jones sits in a semi-reclined position in the driver’s station in the left front of the hull, hands on the steering yoke and foot working the pedals, eyes glued to the center periscope that offers night vision. He removes his right hand from the yoke and shifts into higher gear using the selector lever, engaging the transmission. Building speed, he scans the gauges arrayed across the dashboard with a single glance before returning his attention to the periscope. To his right, the five-hundred-horsepower Cummins engine hums loudly, with heart, propelling the heavy vehicle forward on its treads.

He is working the accelerator and brake pedals with his left foot instead of his right. His right leg is completely numb below the knee. The bruise on his hip is the size of a grapefruit now and continues to throb steadily like a drum made out of pain. The agony is incredible. He wonders if this is what it is like to be shot. To donate bone marrow. He wipes sweat from his face and stifles a moan. Deep down, he knows that he is growing weaker by the moment, that he is, in fact, dying a little at a time.

Ducky was a ten-year-old military history buff when the September 11 attacks shocked the country. He made a decision that day to become a soldier. Years later, he made good on that decision and enlisted. By that time, the ideals of fighting for freedom around the globe had deteriorated into the usual lies, betrayal and corruption. The guy who planned the attack on the Towers got away with it while big business cashed in on the wars. It was a valuable lesson in a fact of life: That which is pure is precious and easily corrupted. But he was still idealistic enough to believe that something could be pure. He loved his country and wanted to serve. Maybe he could do something good. He still believed one man could make a difference. At least he would get to see history up close and maybe make some himself instead of just reading about it.

The Army became his life. He lived on the base and had Army friends and dated women his friends introduced him to. He complained about the Army constantly but he loved it like a second mother, and would deck any civilian (or serviceman from another branch of the military) who dared criticize it. He thought about death philosophically, as young men tend to do, and accepted the fact that one day he might die for his comrades in combat. As he saw war close up in Afghanistan, his ideals faded even further. He watched as the Army built a clinic in a village and then accidentally bombed its school. But he still believed in one thing that was pure and could never be corrupted—the sacrifice of comrades for each other in combat. He believed that dying in combat, fighting for the men next to him, was a truly honorable death, which it was.

Ducky had never imagined he might die of a bizarre, enormously painful infection growing in his body, planted there by a sickly mutant, while driving out of the burning ruins of a major American city. There is no honor in this total war, this war of extermination, only futility and waste. There will be no medal for him. No historian to record his deeds. Possibly, there is not even a country anymore for which to die. Instead, he will die with people he barely knows in the ruins of a country he loves at the end of history. Not what he imagined at all.

The simple fact is Ducky is still fighting the pain and driving the vehicle because he is living on borrowed time and is willing to give that time to help these people stay alive themselves a little longer. There must be some honor in that.

The Bradley rolls into a downed telephone pole, cracking it into splinters and dragging a tangle of insulated cable and chunks of wood clattering after it. The gunner and commander sit at their stations, gripping handles used to maneuver the turret and fire the weapons, the gunner using a periscope with night vision while the commander sees what the gunner sees using an optical relay.

“There’s something wrong with the ISU,” Sarge says, squinting.

Next to him in the cramped, dark compartment, the gunner shakes his head.

“I can’t see shit, Steve,” Sarge complains. “What the hell now?”

He taps the display, which accomplishes nothing. Under the familiar reticle, large, flickering pale green blobs glow brightly, which he interprets as fires. Off to the left, he can see little bursts of pale green light, which he knows from experience are muzzle flashes; there are people out there shooting. He can make out a road sign announcing ROUTE 22, 376, THE PENN LINCOLN PARKWAY. But the rest makes no sense. His visual is filled with bizarre shapes that seethe across the screen at different speeds in multiple shades of green, as if the relay were on a bad acid trip.

“I saw a sign,” Sarge says. He activates the comm and says, “Take the next exit for Parkway West, Ducky.”

Wilco, Ducky says.

They are almost home free now. Once they reach the highway, they will break west and escape the conflagration.

He adds to Steve, “Not that it matters. We could get on the eastbound highway and still go west. It ain’t like somebody’s going to write us a ticket for driving the wrong way, right?”

Except maybe Wendy, he thinks, suppressing a grin. He briefly wonders what she sees in him. Aside from the uniform and the values it represents, he does not consider himself to be anything special—a “big lug,” the kind of guy that beautiful girls like Wendy would consider a valuable friend, but not a lover. Most girls like that fall for the gunner with his square jaw and surfer build.

Steve says nothing, glued to his periscope.

“All right, Steve?”

“Not now, Sergeant,” the gunner says, his voice tight, gritting his teeth.

“What do you see? What’s going on out there?”

Steve turns away from the periscope with a wince, making Sarge’s heart skip a beat in sudden alarm. His face is taut. Droplets of sweat glisten on his forehead. His eyes are gleaming like those of an animal caught in a steel trap.

“See for yourself.”

“But…”

“There is nothing wrong with the equipment,” the gunner tells him.

“This interference…”

“What you are seeing is real.”

“Steve…”

“Look, Sergeant. Look again.”

Sarge concentrates on the images unfolding on the commander’s optical relay and gasps as the tumbling, seemingly random shapes begin to coalesce into monsters.

The Bradley hurtles down the road, punching cars out of the way or flattening them, surrounded by a ragged column of creatures joining the exodus out of the burning city. Little baboons hobbling on insect legs. Lumbering and tentacled behemoths. A leathery wall impossibly covered with screaming human faces. Giant balls of flesh, like ticks bloated with blood, strutting on spindly tripod legs. A thing with massive lobster claws where its hands should be. A half dozen other species. And of course, hundreds of Infected marching like refugees in their grimy and tattered T-shirts and uniforms and business suits and jeans and dresses. The murmuring of the Infected competes with the constant roar of the rig’s engine.

The fire appears to be flushing everything out of their hiding places tonight. The conflagration soars into the air behind them, flowing into the sky and coming back down in a constant rain of ash on this parade of monsters.

“What are these things?” Steve asks in a childlike voice. “What does this mean?”

The survivors look at each other with gaping eyes in the dark, hot interior of the Bradley, gasping for air and scarcely able to believe they are still alive when so many thousands of people were either claimed by the Infected or burned alive in the fire. Every breath astounds them. Their bodies are slick with sweat and their old street clothes, already damp from washing earlier in the day, cling to their flesh. It is so hot it feels like they are being cooked in a microwave. They can barely move, almost buried in boxes and bulging plastic bags and gallon jugs. Cans and bottles roll around their feet, making a sudden clatter as the Bradley takes a sharp turn. Ethan is stuffed crumpled into a corner, breathing shallowly, ignored.

Anne is experiencing a deep sense of contentment to be back on the road. She finds familiar comfort in the drone of the engine and the smells of fear and body odor and burning diesel. They are safe here, for now, in the Bradley’s dark and sweltering metal stomach. She opens a bottle of water, takes a long pull, and passes it on. She welcomes the road. This is where she is meant to be.

Sitting across from her, Wendy covers a private smile with her hand.

Anne stares at her, wondering what could possibly be worth smiling about right now.

Wendy sees her watching and says, “Did you ever do something on crazy impulse and it turned out to be the best idea you ever had?”

“No,” Anne says, struggling to remember a time when that might have been true.

The cop frowns and turns away. Anne did not mean to offend her. Sometimes, she feels like she no longer knows how to be a real person and connect with other real people in a real way. Everything she thinks, feels or remembers ultimately winds up taking her to a dark place in her mind where people die over and over. She does not know how to tell Wendy that she lived most of her life obeying her impulses, and that they eventually got everybody she loved killed.

“Ducky’s hurt,” Steve says. “He says he’s okay, but I think he’s hurt real bad.”

Sarge says nothing. He waits for the gunner to continue.

“There were things in the garage, Sarge. Fucking monsters. Dark shapes that flitted around the cars, always just out of sight. Then we saw one. A giant bloated thing covered in elephant trunks that boomed like a foghorn. When it made that sound, the trunks stuck out straight, shaking. Like something out of a nightmare. It pushed cars out of its way. Made you want to puke just to look at it. Then we saw a little white, hairless monkey with thick insect legs, barely able to walk. It was sickly, diseased. It could barely see. It was in pain. It was like a newborn, Sarge. A freak of nature that somehow survived against all odds and was walking along making this bizarre clicking noise in its throat. Kind of sad, like a little kid looking for his family.

“The little bastard jumped on Ducky. The only way I could get it off was to cut it with my knife. Ducky went down, saying he was hit. The thing had sharp teeth and had been biting around Ducky’s throat, so I assumed that’s where he was wounded, but I couldn’t find a wound. His neck was wet but there was no blood. So I asked him where he was wounded, and he said his hip. The little fucker had used his teeth like he used his arms and legs, to hold on. It was… I don’t want to say what it had been doing to Ducky’s hip, but it was unnatural. It… stabbed him, with this big stinger between its legs, like a barbed scorpion’s tail. The puncture left a massive bruised lump. He insisted on driving. I had to help him into the rig. He could barely walk.”

Steve stops talking. Sarge takes a few moments to rub his eyes. Outside, the horde of Infected continue making noise like a house being slowly ransacked, barely audible over the loud hum of the Bradley’s engine. He hears no more gunfire.

“Ducky,” Sarge says into the microphone attached to his helmet, “do you copy?”

I’m okay, Sergeant, the driver answers.

“How’s that wound?”

I said I’m okay.

“We’ll pull over at the nearest safe point and get it looked at.”

By who? Who’s going to look at it?

Sarge does not know how to answer. The fact is they have little in the way of real medical supplies, no medical knowledge, no medevac. They are completely on their own.

I’m still fit for duty. So let me do my job while I still can.

Sarge nods grudgingly. He does not know what to say. Perhaps he should just say thanks.

“You sit tight,” he says, gritting his teeth. “We’re going to try to find help for you.”

Sergeant, I just wanted to say—

The air fills with an enormous roar of rage so pervasive that at first Sarge is convinced that it originated inside his own head.

The survivors flinch at the sound and stare at each other, their eyes big and watery. The roar stops as suddenly as it began, replaced by pounding footsteps and a sudden boom that makes the rig tremble like a gong. The sound rattles through their bodies and hums in their brains, knocking out every thought as effectively as high voltage. They wince and cup their ringing ears in the aftermath. Then another boom, jostling them, vibrating deep in their chests.

The roar again, filling the air, followed by another BOOM. Something is hitting the Bradley repeatedly. The rig tries to speed up, lurches, corrects itself. Wendy sees Paul huddled with his arms wrapped around his ribs, his eyes clenched shut and his mouth working silently. She never saw the Reverend pray before. She finds it deeply disturbing, the idea that the Bradley is unsafe.

The roar never seems to end. It cascades in waves of endless despair and rage that scrapes its nails repeatedly over the chalkboard of her nerves. It fills the air so completely she finds herself struggling to breathe it. She still has enough sense to understand that whatever is out there, it is big and powerful and angry. She has a moment to wonder about the size of its lungs. Then her mind blanks out completely as the terrible sound of the attack builds and builds. The sound finally punches its way out of the paper bag of Wendy’s mind and she screams, the sound tinny and distant and lost like a child shouting in a wind tunnel. She reaches out and Todd clasps her hand tightly before another boom jostles them violently against the boxes and each other. Todd lashes out with his other hand, pushing at the boxes in blind panic. Across from her, Anne is shouting angrily and Paul is grimacing and cupping his ears with his palms.

The siege lasts for years; it lasts for minutes. The thing outside suddenly appears to lose interest, lagging behind. The last tremor dissipates through the Bradley’s armor and their bones. The last roar fades, leaving behind a deafening echoing ring in their ears and a tingling vibration deep in their chests. The thing cries plaintively in the distance, as if sad to see the Bradley go and calling for its return. Wendy gasps for air, her heart clanging in her chest like a bell. She sees the terrified pale faces crying in the dark and barely recognizes them. She touches her mouth, unsure if she has stopped screaming yet.

The Bradley crashes through an abandoned military checkpoint and then the survivors are free of Pittsburgh at last. Behind them, the city burns like an early sunrise.