Craig DiLouie - The Infection

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, sir,” the man smiles, still holding out the clipboard.

Ethan stares at it longingly.

“Perhaps later,” he says.

The man frowns, dropping the clipboard back on the table.

Ethan adds, “Sorry.”

“You know, we will survive this,” the man tells him. “It’s okay to hope.”

Ethan says, “Not yet it isn’t.”

Mobs of people, angry, shell-shocked, dressed in filthy clothes, wander among the densely packed tents and shanties built on grass long trampled into dust.

Ray says this place is going to blow.

“It’s fucked up, but it works—barely,” he says. “And for now. You know the old saying about America being three days away from a revolution? Here, it’s a matter of hours.”

Wendy nods. “What are the biggest community problems?”

Ray laughs. “Everything. Wendy, we got people packed in here like sardines. The place is an open sewer that serves gruel for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to truck in clean water for half the camp. Outside resupply is obviously touch and go. Then there’s the constant threat of fire, disease and of course Infection. Everybody’s carrying a gun. We got gangs, prostitution, drugs, con games, rapes, murders, suicides, you name it. All right?”

Just two weeks ago, this place did not exist. There was a sleepy small town here in the middle of eastern Ohio. Outlying farms. Open fields and woods. All of it now absorbed into a camp with the same population as Independence, Missouri and the poverty of Calcutta.

“I get the picture,” she says.

“Don’t worry about them. Worry about you. The main thing you got to realize is there are a lot of unhappy people in this place who had everything and now they have nothing. They are mad as hell and looking for somebody to blame. Every once in a while some asshole gets an itch to take a shot at a cop. So you keep a sharp eye out there.”

“I will, Sergeant.”

“My name is Ray. Use it. Dammit, Wendy, you should be calling the shots, not me.”

“I’m just fine with the way things are, Ray,” she says. “So when does my training start?”

The man snorts. “This is your training. You got a question?”

“Okay. How are arrests processed for trial? Where is the courthouse?”

“Stop right there,” Ray says, taking off his grimy steelers cap and wiping sweat from his forehead. “I guess I need to explain a few things. Wendy, I know you were a cop back in the real world but this is the far side of the Moon. We just don’t have what you want here. It’s frontier justice. We’re holding this ground by force.”

They approach long lines of people waiting for their turn to fill their jugs at a bright yellow water tanker guarded by a squad of kid soldiers with M16 rifles. A cloud of dust hangs over the scene. Ray changes the subject, pointing out landmarks on what will become her night beat—shower facilities, health tent, food distribution center, and a feeding center where new mothers can breastfeed and collect extra rations. The latrine area, a large battery of portable toilets, is especially dangerous at night. Women who come here after dark are often raped. Men, too, sometimes. As a result, many people drop their waste into the nearest canal, and sometimes fall in.

“So what am I supposed to do if I see a crime?” she interrupts. “Just rough them up?”

“If you want,” Ray says, placing a pinch of chew into his cheek. “Or you could take them to the Judge, who will probably give them hard labor such as shit disposal. They get an electronic bracelet that tags them. It’s pretty much the same punishment for any offense, so only bring in the hard cases you really want punished. The worst offenders get put outside the wall.”

“What about proof? Is it just my word?”

“Yup,” Ray says. “That’s how it is here. You got to understand, though, that our main role is not to solve and punish crimes. The locals mostly do that for us. The people here all watch out for each other. They usually know if somebody commits a crime, and sort it out themselves without our involvement. We’re not really in the justice business. Our job is to keep the peace.”

“We’re not cops,” Wendy says, disgusted. “We’re armed thugs.”

“Yup. You want out?”

She does not even have to think about it.

“No,” she says.

“Our unit’s shift starts around sundown. Then we get to patrol a Third World shantytown in the dark for twelve hours. Memorize your beat, don’t get lost, don’t fall in the canals, don’t get killed. Especially don’t get killed. We need people like you, Wendy.”

“I’m nothing special, believe me. Especially for this work.”

Ray stops and spits a gob of tobacco juice into the dust. “You don’t understand. We need people like you to survive . Listen: One day this thing is going to end and things are going to get back to normal. To do that, we’re going to need people who can remember what normal was and can make things right again. There are not many cops walking the earth right now. Every time one dies, all those memories of how things used to be dies with them.”

“I’ll live, Ray. I survived out there for weeks. I’ll make it in here. This is nothing.”

“Just know the original cops in this town were good men and they died trying to hold this place when it was first being built. Not all of them died by the hands of the Infected.”

Wendy smiles at him, touched by his concern.

“I promise I’ll be careful,” she tells him.

“You do that, Wendy,” Ray says, eyeing her sadly. “You do that.”

Speakers mounted on poles in the area squawk, we are winning; ask what you can do to help , before screeching loudly and resuming a tinny rendition of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

Paul leaves the FoodFair supermarket, dog tired and enjoying the night air after hours of handing out food packages, shifting boxes and mopping floors. The food distribution center has no air conditioning and keeping the camp supplied is hot, sweaty work. His tattered clerical uniform, recently cleaned and patched, is already getting ripe again. He could use a shave and a haircut. But he did good today. He digs into his pocket for his wilted pack of Winstons and lights one up, sighing. The cool air feels good and he is happy for the opportunity to finally rest. After his smoke, he will brush his teeth and hit the sack with the other workers, lying on his old bedroll with bags of rice as a mattress.

The camp is still noisy but is slowly settling down for the night. The parking lot of the FoodFair is covered in tents and campers and people huddled around their cook fires. He takes another drag and exhales, enjoying the relative peace. He remembers that the last time he had a cigarette like this, Pittsburgh was on fire. The Infected streamed through the cars. He threw a Molotov. He cut somebody in half with his Remington. The Bradley roars in his head.

He stills his mind with a short prayer of thanks that he remains alive to do this good and useful work. Maybe God does not want to listen, but being omnipresent, he cannot help but hear it.

“Is that you, Paul?”

Paul sees a figure sitting on a bench and approaches. It is Pastor Strickland, sitting with one hand cupped around the flame of a candle and the other holding an old photo.

“Do you think it’s impossible to still love somebody who is Infected, brother?” Strickland asks him.

“No,” Paul says. “I think it’s not only possible, but unavoidable.”

The man smiles, wiping his eyes.

“But they hate us in return,” Paul tells him. “That is the hardest thing to bear.”

Strickland rubs tears from his eyes with the palm of his hand. “The love is just as hard.” He adds, “You did good work today, Paul.”