Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

Maybe pigs would sprout wings and fly out of his ass.

That news guy, Billy Trout, said it was everywhere, that it was traveling at the speed of human need. Planes, trains and automobiles. Outflying and outdistancing prophylactic measures. Outrunning all common sense and precaution; spread by the people who were trying to outrun it.

There was a joke in there somewhere. His old boss Captain Joe Ledger could have said something funny about that. A twist of wit, sarcasm and social commentary. Sam wondered where he was. Probably dead, too.

He drank the rest of the beer and put the can into the canvas cooler because he didn’t want the breeze to knock it off the deer stand. Sam was cautious like that.

He froze.

Something out there moved. He was sure of it.

Sam raised his rifle. It was a CheyTac M200 Intervention sniper rifle. Best of the best for someone like him. Too much gun for hunting, but this wasn’t really deer season. He scanned the field with his shaded eyes first to zero on where he’d heard the movement. Found it. Something moving through the corn off to his left. He leaned into the spotting scope, but the corn was tall and green and lush. The stalks moved, but he couldn’t see why.

He’d used super glue to attach a sock filled with beans to the rail of the tree stand, and he rested the rifle on that. He did the math in his head. Baseline trajectory and bullet drop. His breathing was calm, his finger relaxed along the outside of the trigger guard.

If this was a deer, then he’d let it go past. He could be here for a while if no one came, and there was plenty of food in the truck. It would make more sense to let the deer breed next year’s food. Sam had a feeling that would matter.

If it was a person, he’d have to coax them into the open and make them stand there until he could come over, pat them down, check them for bites, and ask a few questions.

But if it was one of them… then there was only one option. A single round placed just so. Catastrophic brain shot. Something he’d done in hostage rescue situations more times than he could count. A shot to the brain stem or the neural motor strips that kills so instantly that body reflexes cannot react. What was funny—in a curious rather than humorous way—was that it was a golden shot for snipers, something they aspired to, but which was rarely even considered by other branches of the military. Most of the soldiers he’d known on the way up had been more concerned with seeing how much ordnance they could throw downrange, operating on a more is better plan. Snipers were stingy with their rounds. It was a matter of pride with them, and Sam seldom pulled a trigger unless he was certain of a kill.

He was loaded with .408 Cheyenne Tactical cartridges in a single-stack seven-round magazine, and at four hundred rounds he could kill anything he wanted dead. He’d dropped targets at much greater distances, too, but this wasn’t that kind of war. If this was one of them, then they would walk right up to take the bullet.

“Come on,” he murmured, softer than the whispering breeze.

The weeds parted.

It was a child.

Six years old. Maybe seven. Sandy blond hair riffled by the wind. Jeans and a Spider-Man sweatshirt. Red sneakers. Holding something in his hands.

For a moment Sam thought it was a teddy bear. Or a doll dressed all in red.

“No,” he said, and it came out as a sob.

It wasn’t a doll.

It wasn’t a fucking doll.

It wasn’t.

It.

Sam took the shot.

The bullet did what it was designed to do. It ended all brain function. It ended life. Snap. Just like that.

The boy’s head was blown apart like a melon. Very immediate and messy. The body puddled down, dropping the awful red thing it carried.

A perfect shot.

Sam sat back and down, thumping hard onto his ass. Gasping as if the shot had punched a hole in the world through which all air was escaping. The day, even here in the shade, was suddenly too bright.

He felt the burn in his eyes. Not from muzzle flash or gunpowder. Tears burn hotter than those things.

The sound of the shot echoed off of the farmhouse and the ranks of corn and the walls of hell. It went away and then found him again, punching the last air from his lungs as he fell onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut.

This was the world.

This was how the world was.

He came down from the tree stand and stood for a moment, leaning against the rough oak bark. The rifle was up there. He couldn’t bear to touch it.

It was bad enough that it had been one of them. He’d been sent to this part of Pennsylvania at the start of the plague. He knew the science of it. Lucifer 113 , an old Cold War bioweapon cooked up in some Russian lab but brought out of history’s trash bin by a deranged prison scientist named Herman Volker and used on a death row inmate. The plan had been to torture the condemned serial killer by introducing the genetically engineered parasites that would hotwire the man’s brain while hijacking his motor cortex and cranial nerves. It would keep the higher functions awake and aware, but with no connection to motor functions. The killer would go into his grave totally connected to all five senses—hyper aware of each—while his body, unable to die any normal death, slowly rotted. But aware. Completely and irrevocably aware.

The killer never made it to the grave because when it came to doing things right the system was almost always in clusterfuck mode. A relative appeared out of the devil’s asshole, or someplace equally unlikely, claimed the body and brought it home to a little shithole town called Stebbins. In the local funeral home, the killer woke up.

Woke up hungry.

That was how it started. Less than a goddamn week ago. Sam knew the story because he was one of the people who had a need to know. Most people probably still didn’t know what the plague was, or why it was, or how it spread. And the one thing that was nowhere on the news was the fact that every single motherfucking one of them was aware. Trapped inside. Connected and in touch with every taste, every smell, everything nerve conduction could share. All of those people. Helpless passengers, forced to be both witnesses and accomplices in the murders they committed.

All of them.

The little boy, too.

And the baby he carried.

Every.

Last.

One.

Sam staggered out into the field. Not to see the boy. That kid was gone. Freed, if that word could apply. No. He had to find the baby.

The red, ragged bundle the boy had been carrying.

No , Sam demanded of himself. Tell the truth. Know the truth. Have the balls to honor the dead by accepting the truth .

The boy had been feeding on the infant. Carrying it around.

Eating.

It was there. On the ground. Twitching.

Handless. Footless. Faceless.

Alive.

Or… un- alive. Sam didn’t know the new language required for this fucked up version of the world.

What were these things? They were not living. They weren’t dead. Not really. The body was hacked, controlled. All nonessential systems were shut down to conserve food and other resources for the parasites. So much so that a lot of the surface flesh and even some of the organs became necrotic, and the slow rot released chemicals and proteins which the parasites devoured. If not alive and not dead, what was the third option?

Living dead?

It had a lurid quality to it, but it also fit. Like a bullet fits the hole it creates as it drills in the flesh. Forced, but functional. Sufficient to its purpose.

The living dead.

This is what Sam chewed on while he knelt in the dirt and dug a hole with his hands. No, not a hole. A grave. He bruised his fingers on roots, tore his nails, numbed his flesh with the cold, cold soil.