Craig DiLouie: Pandemic

But the laughter seemed purposeful. The infected appeared to enjoy inflicting or receiving pain. They laughed while they shoved a toilet plunger down somebody’s throat. Putting a bullet in their guts sent them into hysterics.

Otherwise, the crazies retained higher brain function. They walked and talked. They displayed a rudimentary cunning. They remembered how to load a shotgun and where they kept the rake in the garage. But they had no sense of self. They felt compelled to seek out others and hurt them until they killed or infected them. They were puppets pulled on a string by the Bug. More than that, they were partners . The Bug wasn’t evil. It only wanted to be spread. The method of spreading was up to those it infected—their memories and creativity. That was the evil part.

After a while, the Bug was categorized as a virus, but nobody knew where it had originated. It appeared to be synthetic, but if the government knew who made it, they weren’t telling. For a time, the media reported that members of an apocalyptic cult called the Four Rider Army had cooked up the Bug and had flown around the world spreading it. It boggled Braddock’s mind that a few crazy people could build a virus that could make the whole world go insane.

Transmissibility: bodily fluids, which mainlined the virus to the brain.

Infection rate: 100%.

Incubation and symptoms: ten seconds to ten minutes.

Braddock theorized that some people might not show symptoms for days. From a medical standpoint, it was fascinating. From a human standpoint, the worst horror imaginable. Humanity might not become extinct, but it might go crazy.

If the Four Rider Army wanted an apocalypse, they were sure as hell getting one.

The disease continued to spread outside the hospital. The news trucks sped off in search of other horrors. The police left with their barricades. The supplies stopped being delivered.

After that, Braddock gave the staff a choice: Stay and try to keep the patients alive, or go home to their families. Most left.

Braddock locked the doors and went to work. He avoided watching the news. Looking out the nearest window told him everything he needed to know. It was far worse out there than it was in here.

They carried on. They had to. Braddock knew how cheap life was—and how valuable. The days blurred into weeks. Eventually, they would run out of sedative, and the patients would wake up hungry and wanting to play.

After that…

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe he’d find some other place where he could do some good. Maybe he’d just give up. Nurse Robbins would stay to the end because of her sister. Braddock would likely stay with her. The hospital was his home.

On the fifth floor, Braddock found a group of heavily armed soldiers dragging his patients out of their beds and hog-tying them on the floor. The diseased opened their eyes and grinned.

The soldiers raised their weapons and screamed at him to get on the ground.

“What are you doing to my patients?” Braddock demanded.

“Get down on the fucking ground!”

They wore camouflage Army combat uniforms tucked into brown boots. Tactical vests stiff with armor and bulging with gear. Kevlar helmets with that slightly unsettling Wehrmacht look.

Their shoulder patches read MOUNTAIN with a symbol of two crossed swords.

One of them had stenciled TEOTWAWKI on his helmet.

“I’m not infected!” Braddock realized he probably looked it with his beard, matted hair and grimy scrubs and labcoat. He raised his hands and shut his eyes in fear.

A stocky, powerfully muscled man commanded, “Lower your weapons. He doesn’t have it.” To Braddock, he added, “I’m Sergeant Ramos, Tenth Mountain Division. We’re under orders. You need to vacate this area immediately and let us do our jobs, sir.”

The sir hung in the air, dripping with disdain. The bland, boyish faces of the squad regarded him as if they might have to shoot him anyway, just to be the safe side.

Braddock stood over six feet tall. He’d boxed as a young man and would gladly take on any of these punks in the ring. As a group, though, they unnerved him. They’d been through hell. They were exhausted and close to the edge, relying on their training to keep it together.

He tried to see them patriotically as American soldiers, men who risked their lives in defense of their country and did their jobs whether they agreed with the mission or not. But at the moment, they were invaders, and they scared the shit out of him.

Braddock counted five. Robbins had made it sound as though there was a squad in the building, maybe two. Where were the rest?

He spared a worried glance at Ellen White. She lay with her eyes closed and wearing her dreamy smile. Her long, graying hair lay neatly brushed on the pillow. He visited her often to give her status updates. He hoped she could somehow hear him and feel assured her hospital was still running. Even now, he sought her approval.

The fifth floor was special for another reason. The ward was where Braddock had initiated an experimental treatment based on the Milwaukee Protocol, used to treat rabies. The patient was loaded with midazolam and ketamine to induce a coma, and then fed amantadine and ribavirin to fight the virus. He’d just started it. Anything was worth a try.

Now these soldiers were ruining the experiment.

“May I ask what your orders are?” he asked, trying to sound polite. He still trembled from the shock of seeing guns pointed at him.

Ramos ignored his question. “Who’s in charge here?”

“I am. I’m the acting Chief of Medicine.”

“Then you’d better start evacuating the hospital. Get your staff out as fast as you can.”

“And then what? Go where?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Wherever you want. Someplace safe. There are safety shelters.”

“Who can I talk to about this? Who’s in command?”

“The lieutenant. He’s upstairs with another fireteam.”

Okay, we’re talking . This is good. We’re talking about it. “I’ll go speak to him then. Please don’t do anything until I get back. Ten minutes.”

“We’ve got our orders. You have yours. Get your staff out.”

The men smelled like smoke and fear. Their eyes were wild. They weren’t crossing the line. The whole country was. There’d been a decision at the top.

“You don’t have to do this, Sergeant.”

“Just get your people out, Doc,” Ramos said, his expression softening to reveal the man behind the mission mask. “You don’t want to see this.”

“How bad is it out there?”

“Bad enough for this. Desperate times, desperate measures. Understand?”

“You still have a choice. These are innocent people. Innocent, sick people.”

Fighting the infected out in the street was one thing. Murdering sick people in their beds in cold blood was something else. Sick civilians .

“We have our orders.”

“Shit orders,” a tall, wiry Black soldier said.

Ramos wheeled. “What did you just say, Private?”

The Black soldier nodded at Braddock. “He’s right, Sergeant.” He pronounced it Sarrunt , making it sound deferential and defiant at the same time. “We don’t have to do it.”

Braddock said nothing. He’d learned when to talk and when to shut up.

“This is bullshit,” added another soldier with a handsome, boyish face. He looked like he’d be more at home surfing some wave in California than sweating here in a combat uniform. “It’s just us, with the ammo we got, and we have to waste the whole hospital? There are thousands of people here. Where’s the rest of the company?”