Craig DiLouie - The Infection

“Banish the elitists who look down at you!”

“This is not right,” Paul says to the faces around him as McLean continues to run down his list. “God does not want this. God does not want us to hate each other.”

“He wants us to hate sin,” a woman snaps at him.

“It ain’t a rally until the devil shows up,” a man observes. “Here he is in the flesh.”

“This is deranged,” Paul pleads. “Infection has deranged us. Can’t you see that?”

“All I see is a nigger with a death wish,” the man says with a grin.

“Keep that racist crap to yourself,” another man warns.

“God is punishing us for our wickedness,” the woman says. “Why is it deranged to think that?”

McLean is pointing at the processing center and shouting.

“Those people in there, they tell us how to live, but nobody voted for them! Now they want to silence me for speaking out! They see me as a threat! They can kill me, but they do not understand that the fire has been lit, that the fire is you, and it is spreading, and we will burn the corruption from the body of this great nation, and an even greater nation, a true Christian nation, will rise from the ashes!”

The crowd surges towards him hungrily. The soldiers guarding the processing center push the people back from the front doors with their rifles, angry and sweating.

“Tell them to pass the Sodomy Law. Tell them loud. Tell them now. Tell them—”

A metallic shriek drowns him out. The crowd pushes, compresses, eventually loosens as people scatter at its edges. Down the road, a Bradley armored fighting vehicle approaches at forty miles an hour, raising a massive cloud of dust. A wreath of wildflowers trembles on its metal chest like a necklace. An American flag waves from one of its antennae. McLean points at the vehicle, shouting into the megaphone, but nobody can hear him, coughing and blinded by waves of dust in the air.

The vehicle flies through the crowd, sending people lunging out of the way into the dirt, and continues on its path.

Paul grins, watching it pass. It is his Bradley, he’s sure of it, and it can only be Sarge and Steve driving. He ducks out of the mob into one of the narrow alleys between the rows of shacks, intent on following the vehicle. It would be nice to see a friend right now.

The Bradley rolls past the sentries and into the military compound. Squads of soldiers, sweating in their helmets and uniforms, admire it as it passes. The Bradley slows as it turns onto Main Street, whose small retail stores and upper-story apartments now provide barracks, mess and headquarters facilities. The street is filled with soldiers wearing different uniforms, merchants and mercenaries, prostitutes and drug dealers, civilian officials in business suits and olive green five-ton trucks unloading troops and food and ammunition. A long line of soldiers waits patiently in front of a water tanker. Even here, the command structure is confused, with many different Army and National Guard units mixed together, large numbers of raw recruits, and with several different headquarters displaying their loyalty to the United States, State of Ohio and/or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. One banner hanging from the barracks windows announces simply, praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

The Bradley slows again and executes an abrupt turn into the service garage. The grease monkeys instantly surround it, hoping something is wrong, itching to work on its engine again. They love the machine. There are so few of them left operating on American soil.

The hydraulic ramp drops and Sarge emerges, holding Wendy in his arms.

Smoke drifts in the air, reeking of cordite. On the other side of the garage, a squad of recruits practices firing M16 rifles at paper targets set up in front of a wall of sandbags. The loud firing quickly tapers to respectful silence as they catch sight of the Bradley’s commander carrying the beautiful sleeping woman into his quarters.

Todd enters FEMAville’s military compound, marveling at the barbed wire and chaos, asking around where he can find the man commanding the Bradley.

They laid in the shack on their backs staring up at the ceiling, sweaty and naked and panting. For the first time in his life, he felt truly accepted. She had seen him naked and he had come inside her and now they were bonded and he would love her until the day he died. His body continued to shudder with the aftershocks of the incredible explosion of pleasure. The shack was filled with her unique musky smell. She lit up the remainder of her joint and chattered about her iPod and Blackberry and Facebook and how she wanted to exist again. Todd nodded, barely listening, studying the curves of her body and feeling strangely envious of her effortless beauty. He was already sad that she would have to leave and he might never have her again. He was suddenly starving. Moments later, she asked him if he wanted to do it again, and immediately went down on him, making him come again in her mouth. After the third time, he passed out.

When he woke, Erin was gone, and so was his stash of electronics. His capital.

Suddenly, he had nothing.

She left him an enigmatic note that read simply, Sorry. You are very cute.

He thought about his options all morning. He could try to find her and get his stock back or he could forget about it. Confronting her would be problematic. To put it mildly. Todd is terrible at confrontation, plus he believes he might be in love with her. He can feel the agony of wanting to see her again slowly overtake the anger he feels at her robbing him blind.

Screw this, he told himself. I know a cop. I’ll get her to help me. The cops will get my stuff back, and I’ll forgive Erin and we’ll be together again.

He knows he will never have her, that he was used. But he cannot stop himself from hoping.

By the time he reaches the military compound—where he believes he will find Sarge, who in turn will be able to tell him where Wendy is—he has replayed the events of the previous night dozens of time in his mind. He has imagined many conversations they are yet to have. The angry one where he asks her why she used and hurt him, forces her to take a hard look at herself, and makes her cry over her misdeeds. The calm one where he gazes upon her coldly and tells her he forgives her and pities her, and then wishes her a nice life. The happy, highly improbable one where she brings his stuff back and they fall into each other’s arms.

The steady crackle of gunfire at the perimeter of the camp intensifies, reminding him that his personal problems are insignificant compared to the ever-present threat facing the people here.

The garage is filled with soldiers sitting on the hard cement floor writing letters, reading books and making coffee on Coleman stoves. Chickens cluck in a series of cages against the far wall, next to neatly stacked cordwood. Todd smells cordite and coffee and chickenshit. The soldiers are being oddly quiet, frequently glancing at the office in the corner where Sarge has made his home. He treads carefully among them, ignoring their hostile stares, still muttering to himself as he knocks on Sarge’s door. No answer. He pounds angrily.

The door opens and Sarge steps into the entry wearing his camo pants and a T-shirt, glaring at him, his expression instantly softening with recognition.

“Hey, Kid,” he says. “Good to see you.”

Todd flushes at hearing his old nickname.

The soldier thrusts out his hand, and Todd shakes it.

“You too, Sarge.”

“What brings you out this way?”

“I got some bad news. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Come on in, then. I have some bad news, too, Kid.”

Todd stops in surprise at the sight of Paul and Ethan standing over a cot where Wendy sleeps fitfully, softly moaning.