Craig DiLouie - The Infection

Word was being passed down the line that the new Mayor had had enough of the protests and was cutting off all public access to the hospital at four o’clock.

The cop on Wendy’s left, Joe Wylie, shook his head and spit.

“Bullshit,” he said. “This ain’t no Nazi state. Shit, I lost people in the Screaming, too. These people have a right to find their family.”

“We don’t have the manpower,” said Archie Ward. “Or, in Barbie’s case here, girl power.”

Wendy said nothing, staring forward wearing an expression of sullen professionalism. She knew better than to take the bait. She chewed her gum.

Archie added, “The Mayor’s right. These people here tie up how many cops every day? We don’t have enough people. We’re running on empty, Joe.”

“I don’t mind the overtime. And right is right.”

The sergeant was shouting into his megaphone, telling the crowds to disperse.

They refused, screaming, No!

Another sergeant, the overweight old cop they called John-John, sang out in a comical World Wrestling Federation voice, “Get ready to rumble!”

“What do you think, Barbie?” Joe said.

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Wendy said, shrugging. “We got our orders.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Joe said.

“Jesus Christ, rookie,” Archie said. “You’re either the dumbest broad or the best politician I’ve ever met. Either way, you’ll go far at the Pittsburgh PD.”

The words hurt her, as usual, but she would never give the other cops the satisfaction of knowing just how much they did. Her expression never changed just as her opinions were always neutral and noncommittal.

The line of mounted police cantered off of the street. The phalanx of cops in front of the hospital pulled on their gas masks. Some began clashing their batons against their shields, and the rest joined in. Wendy knew these men. Despite their sympathies for one or even both factions, they were hoping the crowd would refuse to disperse and they could let off some steam stomping ass. Joe and Archie were grinning, bashing in a warlike rhythm.

The cops began firing tear gas grenades, which burst in brilliant white clouds. The crowds recoiled from the growing pockets of swirling cloud, people crying and sneezing and gasping and coughing in agony as the gas attacked the mucous membranes in their eyes, nose, mouth and lungs. The cops lowered their visors and crouched, tense, waiting for the signal.

Wendy felt a strong hand grab her ass and squeeze.

“Too bad you’re not a screamer, Barbie,” Joe Wylie said, his voice muffled by his gas mask. “I’d keep you in the spare bedroom.”

Even now, even after the Screaming, even after the thousands of smaller but equally horrible tragedies that followed, some of these men were still trying to break her. She wasn’t broken yet.

“If you ever touch me again, I swear I’ll fucking take you out,” she told him.

Joe grinned. “So there is somebody in there behind the mask. Nice to meet you finally.”

Wendy had attended the Training Academy two years ago with forty other cadets. All cadets experienced some type of degrading hazing treatment, and with three out of four police officers being men, they were hard on women—especially a beautiful young woman like her, making her scrub toilets and clean laundry and fetch coffee. She had taken it all in stride, excelling in firearms training, certification with the TASER, CPR and first aid, high-risk traffic stop training and the rest—all of it. The other cadets had constantly hit on her but she’d had neither the time nor interest in taking romantic risks with men. But then she met Dave Carver. Dave was different. He was a detective—older, experienced, adversarial against the world. He smelled like her cop dad used to smell before he retired, like cigarettes and black coffee. Dave was also different than the young men her own age in that he seemed so sure of himself. He could take or leave Wendy’s looks while seeming to be engaged by her personality and energy. He told her stories about drug dealers and bureaucratic hassles and the time he used his gun during a liquor store robbery. It was only later that she learned that he was married and that she had a reputation.

Dave’s friends were hard men and they could be cruel. After graduation from the Academy, she got assigned to her zone and started doing real police work. But the hazing had not stopped. Instead, it had spread, like infection, throughout Patrol, men and women alike. Through bad luck or somebody’s malice, she had been assigned to the same station as Dave Carver and his friends.

Wendy had worn a mask ever since.

The whistles blew. The line of cops surged forward and crashed into the crowd. The batons rose and fell, driving people back or beating them to the ground. The line quickly dissolved as everyone became lost in the expanding white clouds of gas.

Wendy slammed into a man with her shield, knocking him back. She raised her baton at a couple holding handkerchiefs over their faces, warning them off. People were shouting at each other in the smoke. Wendy felt detached, as if moving through a surreal dream. The desperate faces flashed by, weeping and coughing and screaming. She swung her baton at a man who stumbled away, blood pouring into his eyes from a jagged tear in his scalp. He did not seem to be critically injured, so she continued to press forward, quickly forgetting about him.

As far as the police were concerned, she was at the bottom of the pecking order. But she was still better than these fleeing people. In the larger pecking order of society, they were all lower than her. She was cop. They were civilian.

She heard a deafening bang that she instantly recognized as a gunshot. She flinched as the sound was followed by the roar of multiple shots. Moments later, Joe Wylie staggered out of the clouds, his plastic body shield riddled with blackened holes, and crumpled to the ground in a heap.

Wendy pulled him out of the chaos until other cops hoisted him onto a stretcher and rushed him into the hospital. By the time the gas cleared, they found two other critically wounded cops lying on the ground among the moaning protestors. The cops had identified four shooters; they were dragging the one they’d caught behind some nearby bushes for swift justice.

These were not ordinary times.

The sergeant saw her watching them, gripped her arm with a hand like iron, and pulled her roughly away, towards the police station, which was only four blocks east of the hospital.

“I’m assigning you to recovery operations until the end of your shift, Saslove,” he barked. “Check dispatch to find out where the teams are going tonight. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

Wendy walked to the police station, dumped her riot gear, and caught an hour’s sleep under a desk. For the next twelve hours, she looked for screamers. Her search team found sixteen, half as many as the night before, and one-fifth as many as the night before that. At six in the morning, exhausted but buzzing with coffee, she returned to the police station and entered Patrol. Some of the cops were gathered around a TV set, shaking their heads. Riots in the western states. A wave of violence spreading inland from the coast. Most of the military and National Guard were still deployed overseas and in disarray from the Screaming, with only some units having been flown back to the homeland. The police was the main line of defense and in city after city, that line was breaking. Not here, the officers swore. They were tired and angry but they were holding their ground and they were not going anywhere unless it was on a stretcher.

“Turn that shit off,” somebody yelled, and they did. The windows were open and a cool breeze wafted through the big squad room. Somebody produced a bottle of scotch and was sharing splashes in Styrofoam cups. “Get ready,” he was saying. “They need you out there. Get ready.” Wendy was bone tired and covered in bruises and her jaw and skull still ached from earlier in the night, when somebody clocked her while her team intervened to prevent the looting of the Whole Foods store.