Craig DiLouie - The Infection

They wait. Ethan marks the time out loud. The survivors hold their breath while the Kid listens to his life ending in ten-second increments. He had pictured a heroic end for himself but this is getting put down, covered in filth, like an animal. After everything he has been through, he will die from a friend’s bullet. He wants to remember something important, hold onto a beautiful memory or thought he can take to the other side with him, but his mind is a raw blank. He wants to pray but all he can remember is the one he used to recite each night as a child.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” he rasps quietly. “I give thee Lord my soul to keep.”

The survivors slowly back away in a widening circle, coughing and fingering their weapons.

“And if I die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.”

He clenches his eyes shut as Ethan counts down the final ten seconds of his short life.

“Zero,” Ethan says, visibly deflating.

“But I’m still me,” the Kid says.

He laughs until it turns into hysterical crying. Wendy drops to her knees and hugs him. Sarge jogs back to the Bradley to get the med kit.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him, her tears joining his. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I want my mom,” he says.

Todd Paulsen sits numbly on the floor in the glow of an LED lantern in one of the recovery rooms. Anne unscrews the cap on a plastic gallon jug and pours water into a bucket. Todd wearily pulls off his ruined bullet-proof vest, ripped and slashed by the thing’s teeth. He is skinny and normally does not like taking his shirt off in front of other people, but right now he does not care. He peels off his T-shirt and reaches to scratch a spot between his bony shoulder blades. He feels hollow, empty. Completed drained. If he were not so scared of never waking up he would be asleep already. He did not know death was so terrifying. It had always been an abstraction to him, sometimes even a romantic one. He could afford such foolishness before today because he had been immortal. Now death is in his hair and skin. It lurks in the empty space between the beats of his heart. Non-existence. Nothingness. And all the world with its beauty and horrors will go on without him as if he never existed. What was it the preacher was always saying? The earth abides. The earth, in other words, does not give a shit.

Todd takes the sponge from Anne and goes through the motions of washing himself. His arms are filthy with ash, the black dust contrasting strangely against his pale torso, gleaming white like a dead fish. He is ashamed of his body and his weakness. He cried in front of them. The adults. He faced death and he cried. He could not think of even one beautiful memory. And worst of all, at the moment he thought he was about to die, he could not remember his mother’s face.

“Would you rather be alone?” Anne asks him.

Todd shakes his head numbly. He is already alone.

Anne says, “Here, let me help you.”

She takes the sponge, wrings it out, and begins wiping down his face and neck.

Somebody knocks at the door. Sarge enters carrying his helmet, filling the space with his large frame.

“We need to talk, Anne.”

Anne glances at Todd and shakes her head slightly.

Sarge nods. He squats in front of Todd, who cringes, his expression vacant.

“How’s the arm?” he says, pointing at the bandage covering the boy’s wound, which Sarge carefully cleaned and stitched up with needle and thread.

Todd does not answer.

“Keep it clean, soldier,” the soldier adds. “The bug going around ain’t the only infection we got to worry about.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Anne says. “You might want to check on Wendy.”

Sarge appraises Todd with a hard stare and a tight smile. “I just wanted to say you did real good today, Kid. You’re a tough little sumbitch, you know that?”

After he leaves, Anne nudges him and whistles.

Todd smiles.

Wendy sits on a sheet of plastic on the edge of the bed in another recovery room, her hands shaking. Slowly, she removes her Batman belt—heavy with handcuffs, gloves, gun, TASER, baton, leather notebook, extra magazines and pepper spray—and sets it carefully on the plastic beside her. She takes off her badge and pins and places them next to the belt. She unbuttons her uniform shirt, balls it up and puts in a plastic bag. She unhooks her bra, grimy and soaked through with sweat, and hangs it to dry out. After a quick but thorough wash, she examines herself in the mirror, brushing her wet, tangled hair. She recognizes the face and body but her eyes look like somebody else’s. Her face and perky chest earned her a lot of attention from the other cops but prevented them from fully accepting her. Wendy knows she is physically beautiful; she heard it said enough times to be sure. She knows it made them want her. She knows it made them angry. Then it saved her life when the man who had hurt her most told her to leave and save herself when the Infected came howling through the door.

She raises her left arm and frowns, inspecting a thin red line across her ribs. The creature’s razor-sharp teeth grazed her flesh. Not deep enough for stitches but enough to draw blood. Enough to plant virus and infection.

Christ, she was about to shoot Todd in the head and she was on Infection’s doorstep herself.

Would she have done it?

If she had to do it, then yes, she would have. Murder one or help to murder all.

Would she have then shot herself if she felt herself turning?

Yes, she told herself. More readily than shooting one of the others, in fact. The realization surprises her.

Most of the other cops never accepted her and yet she was still a cop. Many cops at the station had an us-against-them mentality about the communities they policed. Wendy was trained in that culture and adopted it as her own. She was still one of “us.” Nobody had as much authority as she had when she patrolled the neighborhoods. Up until she held her gun against that teenage boy’s head, she saw the other survivors as civilians, people who were not her equals but instead her ungrateful charges. She no longer feels that divide. We are becoming a tribe, she thinks.

Somebody knocks and she tells them to wait a moment while she pulls on a black T-shirt, making a mental note to put antiseptic on the cut given to her by the monster, which carried God knew what germs in its rancid mouth besides Infection.

Sarge enters the room, glancing up and down and nodding appreciatively. It is so subtle that he does not realize he is doing it, but Wendy can read the language of attraction without trying. She pointedly looks away, pinning her badge to her belt. The soldier clears his throat and gets down to business immediately.

“I brought you some more water so you can wash your hair if you want,” he says.

“Just did it. See?”

“Roger that,” he says. “Well, take it anyway, for later. It’s rainwater.”

“Does the building not have any water in its tank?”

“It does. A lot, in fact, but we’re saving it for drinking and cooking. Tonight, we are washing with good old rain.”

“Well, thank you,” she tells him. “So what’s our situation?”

“Steve and Ducky swept the rest of the floor. It’s clear. No Infected and no giant slugs with teeth either. I think we’re secure. Now we’re clearing out the bodies and cleaning up the place.”

“You need a hand?”

“No, no, no. This is just a social call. You rest. You’ve been through hell.”

The cop sits on the bed, sighing. “All right.”

“Hey, uh, Wendy…”

“Yes?”

The soldier takes a deep breath and says, “I wanted to say thanks.”

“For what?”