Craig DiLouie - The Infection

They never stop searching for us, Sarge thinks, as he pulls the trigger and cuts them down with several bursts.

Steve and Ducky race between the rows of abandoned cars in the parking garage, guided by their night vision goggles, rifles held in the aiming position.

The sounds of distant fire and chaos, a constant roar filling the air like white noise, is suddenly undercut by the characteristic ping of Sarge’s AK47. The commander is blazing away at somebody down at the front of the hospital, from the sound of it. Steve takes a moment to look out from the second floor of the parking garage. He sees the muzzle flashes and, beyond, the Infected streaming through the cars towards the hospital, adding their shrieks to the night’s din.

“Let’s go,” Ducky hisses from somewhere ahead of him.

Steve nods. He wants to help Sarge, but the only way he can do that is to get the Bradley down there as fast as possible.

He trained to fight to protect his country, but he never trained for this. Of course, he is scared. They are all scared, all of the time, even in their dreams. But more than that, he hates, with every atom and every fiber in his being, killing other Americans. The first time he did that, he stopped being a soldier. He trusts Sarge and will go on following his orders as long as it helps keep them all alive, but Steve isn’t in Sarge’s Army anymore.

A noise like a foghorn stops them in their tracks, followed by a deep, rumbling, phlegmy cough. Steve and Ducky crouch behind the hood of a car and scan the area. Something big is moving through the far end of the garage, pushing vehicles out of its way with its lumbering strength.

“What is that?” Ducky says, his voice cracking. “One of those worms?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Steve turns on the SureFire flashlight mounted on his rifle and aims it at the thing moving through the gloom. The flashlight has a red lens, making the beam barely visible to anybody not wearing night vision goggles. On NVGs, the light appears a brilliant green. The beam plays along the smooth flank of something big striding ponderously through the garage, coughing deep in its massive lungs.

“Some kind of elephant or something,” Ducky says.

“Or something. At least it’s moving away from us.”

The thing shoulders aside an SUV, setting off a car alarm.

Ducky pats Steve’s arm and says, “We’d better get moving.”

They find the Bradley where they left it in the corner. Steve pulls at the massive black plastic tarp, exposing a yellow happy face stenciled on the vehicle’s side. Moving quickly and expertly, he and Ducky begin folding the tarp.

Another sound distracts them. Something making a wet clicking sound deep in its throat.

The soldiers stop, look, listen, aiming their carbines into the darkness.

“We don’t have time for this,” Steve says.

“Forget the tarp, then,” Ducky tells him. “Just get in the rig.”

Steve ignores him, staring intently at the source of the noise, a squat, stumbling shadow. At first, he believes it is a child on a tricycle, the noise a squeaky wheel. He takes two steps forward until freezing as the shadow reveals itself.

“Oh my God,” Ducky says.

The creature looks like a little sickly albino baboon wobbling on legs articulated like a grasshopper’s, grotesque on something its size. Its little barrel chest heaves as it takes rapid, wheezing breaths. Despite its shocking appearance, it appears almost harmless, a bizarre mutation thrust into a hostile world, barely equipped to survive, a pale and hungry thing.

“Kill it,” Steve says, his skin crawling with revulsion.

At the sound of his voice, the baboon thing stops, fixes its gleaming eyes on Ducky, and roars massively, showing rows of teeth like knives. A moment later, its nose wrinkles and the elongated face shakes with a massive sneeze, spraying a cloud of mucus.

Ducky raises his carbine and fires a quick burst but the thing is already flying through the air, shrieking. It lands with a thump on the soldier’s chest, hugging his body and champing its teeth down on his Kevlar body armor.

Steve aims his weapon but hesitates. He does not have a shot. Ducky is reeling drunkenly, screaming for help, trying to push the thing off of him.

Steve drops the rifle, pulls out his knife, and closes in, slashing. The thing shrieks in pain and a jet of scalding, oily liquid shoots up his arm.

And then it is gone, vaulting into the air and landing ten feet away, where it briefly whines and hisses before disappearing into the dark in a series of long, flying leaps.

Steve races to collect his rifle until stopped cold by Ducky gasping, “I’m hit.”

Sarge drops an empty magazine, pops in a fresh thirty-round mag, and chambers the first round in a single rapid, fluid motion. He fires a quick burst, cutting down an Infected racing at him with a blood-curdling howl. Sarge had gotten the automatic rifle from a dead Taliban fighter, who had probably gotten it off of a dead soldier during the Soviet occupation, long ago. More than a souvenir, he treasures the rifle for the simple fact that it almost never jams. It is rugged and reliable if a bit inaccurate, but between the close combat optic he had retrofitted onto it and the close range of less than a hundred meters, he is dropping bodies steadily.

He misses a shot and curses. He is tiring, getting sloppy. He fires again, and the snarling man goes down wearing a surprised look on his face.

Sarge knows he cannot keep up this pace. Anne must either show up with the flares and Molotovs or the Bradley must show up to get them all out of Dodge. If neither happens soon, the Infected will take him and that will be that.

His eyes continually sweep the parking lot while barely moving, absorbing every detail and instantly assessing it as a threat, an asset or nothing. The robot has taken over; he is in complete survival mode, every part of him focused on fight and the option of flight. Being under fire in Afghanistan has given him the ability to look at the world as a palette of survival. He finds it bizarrely unsettling to be in combat, firing his rifle steadily at close targets standing out in the open, without worrying about the snap of bullets flying past his ear. When he blinks, sometimes he sees insurgents running at him at a crouch, not Infected. Time is compressing and he has little idea of whether he has been out here for minutes or an hour.

No matter how many of them he kills, they never quite feel like the enemy. Even after all of the atrocities he has seen, he cannot bring himself to hate them.

The worst is when they come at him wearing military uniforms.

The flares go arcing high into the sky, landing among the derelict cars, bursting with a fierce orange glow and revealing scores of moving figures.

Anne taps his shoulder, then raises her rifle, peers into the scope, and takes down a running woman with a colossal bang and flash of light.

“It’s about time,” he grunts, still firing.

Anne is a different sort than him, he knows. Anne has enough hate for both of them.

The asphalt vibrates with stomping feet.

“Swarm!” says Wendy, standing with her Glock held ready in case any Infected get close.

“I’m on it,” Todd yells, lighting his first Molotov.

The Infected bob among the cars, blending into a howling mob racing through the night towards the six survivors.

“Molotov out!” Todd cries.

The flaming bottle soars through the air and hits one of the Infected in the chest, bursting into a wide sheet of fire that turns her and five others into staggering, screeching human torches.

“Good throw, boy,” Paul says, yelling, “Molotov!”