Craig DiLouie - The Infection

Wendy tried not to smile through her game face.

He whistled. “First day on the job and you might get a collar. Lucky kid.”

The dispatcher was firing updates over the radio when Kendrick yanked the steering wheel and brought the squad car to a screeching halt in front of the house.

They got out of the car, Kendrick pausing to retrieve his shotgun. Wendy unholstered her Glock, fighting to control her breathing, and ran to the front of the house at a crouch.

They knocked loudly and took a step back.

“Police!”

The door opened and an old woman, leaning on a cane, waved them in.

“He left when he heard you coming,” she said.

“Where’d he go?” Wendy demanded.

“Up there,” the woman answered.

“Hold it a second, rook,” Kendrick said tersely. “Ma’am, are you hurt? Did he cut you?”

“He stabbed me right here. See?”

Kendrick’s face turned purple.

“It’s all better now. I refused to stay hurt. I am quite resilient.”

“Which way did he go, Ma’am?” Wendy said.

“I already told you he went up through the ceiling to his helicopter.”

Behind them, other cars rocketed to a halt in front of the house, spilling cops.

“What a waste of time,” Kendrick muttered.

“Can I get you a glass of milk, officer?” the woman said to him.

Sergeant McElroy showed up, talked to the woman for several minutes with clenched fists, and called the dispatcher to report the call as unfounded.

“Congratulations, Sherlock,” he said, jabbing Wendy in the chest with his finger. “You caught your first big case.”

She spent the rest of her first day as a police officer filling out reports on the incident in triplicate.

Clean and pink and dressed in plain green hospital scrubs, the survivors wolf down heated cans of ravioli and spaghetti and meatballs in the lounge, washing it down with bottles of red wine that before the world ended would have been considered expensive. The showers washed off the days’ old stink of fear and they are beginning to feel human again.

As the time approaches six o’clock, they chant a countdown. When they get to zero, nothing happens. The survivors stare at the ceiling, their hopeful expressions wilting in disappointment.

“Bummer,” Todd says.

The fluorescent lights suddenly blink to life, impossibly bright.

The survivors gasp in amazement, then cheer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you civilization,” Sarge says.

“Fantastic,” Ethan says. “It almost feels normal.”

“How much of the building is powered?” Anne asks.

“We isolated the power to a section on this floor that includes this lounge plus the pathology department, brain clinic, OBGYN, nursing administration and all of our rooms.”

“How long will we have it?”

“The generator runs on diesel like the Bradley. After topping up the rig, we’ve got enough fuel to have power for forty days if we use it an hour a day.”

“I’m going to try to power up my cell phone,” Ethan says.

“There’s probably still no service, though,” Paul says.

Ethan shrugs with a sad smile.

“Sorry,” Paul adds. “That was a stupid thing to say. Anything is possible.”

“It’s all right. I just want to have the phone ready, just in case. I have to be ready.”

“I hear you.”

Todd says, “I’m going to juice up my iPod. Shazam!”

“Are there any windows we need to black out?” Anne asks Sarge.

“I think we’re good, Anne,” Sarge tells her. “We turned off the lights in all the rooms with windows.”

“Somebody should go out and check to make sure no light is leaking out of the building.”

Sarge blinks. “If you think that’s wise.”

“If somebody sees the light, we will not be safe.”

“True,” he admits.

“We’re acting like we’re safe here but we’re not. We’ve only explored a small part of the building. Today, we found a room infested with worm eggs. There could be more of those things, not to mention more Infected, right under our feet on the second floor, or right over our heads on the floors above. They could be crawling through the air ducts. We can’t worry about both them and other people coming in from the outside wanting to take what we have.”

“All right, Anne,” Sarge says, feeling sour, as if a fine party has been spoiled. “Who do you want to go out and check? The power will only be on for an hour and it’s starting to get dark, so whoever is going had better get moving.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Not alone. If nobody else wants to go with you, I will.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather go alone,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not at all sure that you are,” Sarge says.

“So it’s decided.”

Anne cleans her hands on her pants, gets onto her feet, and walks out the door. The survivors stare at the empty doorway in a stunned silence for a few moments.

“Are you really going to let her leave like that by herself?” Wendy asks Sarge.

The big soldier shrugs. “She don’t belong to me.”

“She wanted to go,” Paul says, shaking his head. “She practically ran out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Ethan says, pouring himself another tall cup of wine.

The television set’s large screen flickers to life, filled with snow. The soldiers wheeled it in on a cart and plugged it into one of the power outlets. Sarge fiddles with the antenna. An image begins to resolve: a military officer standing in front of a blue curtain and giant map of the United States mounted on an easel board. The image lurches for a moment, stretching like a funhouse mirror, then snaps back, snowy, as if perpetually on the verge of disintegration.

“Whoa,” Todd says, eating a chocolate bar. “This isn’t the usual emergency broadcast crap.”

The speakers roar white noise, under which they can hear the officer murmuring like a ghost behind the walls. Sarge gives up and finally turns the sound off, backs away from the TV gingerly, and sits in one of the lounge chairs.

“Who is that guy?” Wendy asks. “Do you know him, Sarge?”

Steve snorts. “He’s the chairman of the joint chiefs.”

“The who?”

Sarge explains, “The chairman is the highest ranking military official in the country, besides the President. That’s General Donald McGregor. Ran the show for a few years in Afghanistan. He’s a tough sumbitch.”

“Any idea what he’s saying?”

“It looks to me like he’s giving some type of press conference.”

The survivors stare at the unstable image raptly, their brains tickled by the sensation of watching television again. Drunk on the feeling that they are no longer alone.

Ethan finally gets up and stands next to the TV, pointing at the map. “It’s shaded. Like a weather map. See? Pretty much all of Pennsylvania is red.”

“I guess we’re in for some hot weather.”

“That’s not a good color,” Ethan agrees, squinting closely at the grainy image. “Philly and New York are shaded a really dark red. That can’t be good either. But eastern Ohio, outside the major cities, is yellow. Yellow’s better than red, right?”

The survivors shrug, but nobody objects either.

He adds, “If the chairman would move his ass out of the way, we could see what’s going on out west.”

“The chairman looks profoundly unhappy about the current state of affairs,” Todd says, his mouth full of candy.

“Washington, DC is shaded dark red,” Wendy says. “I wonder where the President is.”

“At Mount Weather in Virginia, most likely,” Sarge guesses. “The emergency bunker. Anybody in government who made it out of Washington when the screamers woke up, that’s where they’ll be now.”