Craig DiLouie - The Infection

The funny thing about the story of Job is that Job never questioned Satan. In Hebrew, Satan has two meanings. One is the Adversary. The other is ha-Satan , the Accuser. In either case, he is an Angel of the Lord. Maybe Job did not question Satan because he did not have to do so. If God is everything, he is also Satan. The Adversary. The Accuser. Creator of Heaven and Earth.

The fact is Paul hated leaving only a little less than he hated staying. Perhaps that is why he is here. Anne had the right idea, he tells himself: Just keep moving. He feels like he finally understands her decision to abandon them.

If you keep moving, they can never get you. You might even outrun yourself.

Stay still, and curse the day you were born.

We try to live with as little pain and as much pleasure as possible. But pain makes us realize we are alive. We truly live one moment to the next when we live with pain. When pain stops, we become afraid. And we remember things we do not wish to remember that are themselves painful.

Long is the way and hard, right, Anne?

The Catholics believe there is Heaven and Hell and between them a place called Purgatory, in which souls are purified and made ready for Heaven through a period of punishment. Similarly, there is a state of existence between living and dying: survival.

These days, God has no use for charity and good works. God demands everything now. These days, the Lord only calls those who have been baptized in blood.

And that, he realizes, is why he has come. Not to be tested, but to put an end to these tests.

“I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave,” Job said upon hearing that his family died and all his earthly possessions were destroyed. “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” Sara, I will be with you soon.

Ethan remembers holding Carol’s hand while she pushed Mary out into the world, counting between pushes, trying to pour all of his strength into her by will alone. He had always wanted children but felt ambivalent about the amount of responsibility they entailed. He wanted kids to be like Blockbuster videos, rentable and returnable within a week. Something he could manage over time, not maintain every single hour of every single day. The idea of wiping shit and vomit and changing diapers for the next few years was overwhelming. Mostly, he was worried about his relationship with his wife. They had a good life and he did not want to see it spoiled.

“It’s a girl,” the doctor told him.

“It’s a girl,” he said to his wife, his heart bursting with pride.

Carol cried with relief and joy, still holding his hand.

Later, the nurse asked him if he wanted to hold his daughter for the first time.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

The woman handed him the tiny swaddled creature and his heart opened. A visceral, almost painful love surged through him, pouring out into the child in his arms.

Change diapers? He would eat this kid’s shit, he realized.

Anything, he pledged. Anything for you.

This person will die without me. But more than that: Everything I do to this child from now on will reverberate through the rest of its life. He never felt so needed. So responsible.

“Your name is Mary,” he told her in a singsong voice, not caring how it sounded.

From that point forward, nothing mattered except family.

They are going to the bridge to blow a hole in it and then he is going to travel two hundred miles to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg. He is going to have to get there on his own this time and it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to do it. Carol and Mary might as well be in Australia. And yet he has not felt so close to them since Infection started. There is a chance they exist .

The operation itself appears equally difficult. Two school buses loaded with troops will lead the way. The buses are forty feet long, which is almost exactly the span of each set of lanes on the bridge. They will drive to the end of the bridge and block it, creating a wall of firepower against the Infected. The Bradley will follow at a walking pace with the survivors and another squad of soldiers, clearing the bridge and setting up the charges while another pair of buses parks behind them, sealing both entrances against the Infected.

The combat engineer and his people will set up the charges, strip the concrete, plant the next round of charges, and then begin the countdown. The soldiers in the buses will make a run for it. Machine guns will cover their retreat. The final charges will blow.

Mission accomplished. Bravo, bravo.

Impossible.

A million things can go wrong, not the least of which is that the Infected might brush them off the bridge with ease. Monsters walk the earth now. The bridge might be packed with giant worms, swarming with malevolent little Hoppers, or even worse, occupied by the terrifying Demon that kicked the crap out of the Bradley and almost burst their ear drums with its wailing.

He will not even be able to launch his journey to Immunity on the West Virginia side of the river. He is going to have to find a boat. Even that seems impossible to him. But he will do it.

He will do anything, kill anybody, sacrifice everything, to find his family again.

Sarge is glad to be back in the Army doing his duty, although he is not sure who he is actually working for at the moment. Captain Mattis is regular Army but got the operational orders for the mission from the provisional government of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Federal government nationalized the Guard while Ohio claimed control of Federal troops currently fighting on its soil. The refugee camp is run by FEMA, at least nominally, with people from different levels of government claiming jurisdiction over everything.

Even here, in the field, things are not perfectly clear: Sarge is in charge of security, but Patterson, the combat engineer and a first lieutenant, is nominally in charge of the entire operation. Mattis gave him a half-strength, watered-down National Guard infantry company for the mission, two-thirds under Sarge’s direct command for the assault on the Veterans Memorial Bridge, the remaining third to be deployed for a separate operation to destroy the smaller Market Street Bridge a few miles to the south. The northward Fort Steuben Bridge had already been demolished the summer before the Screaming, apparently. The soldiers are weekend warriors for the most part, supplemented by volunteers from the camp, but most of them are well trained, disciplined and equipped, and some have even done time in Iraq.

In the end, it does not matter to him where he got his orders. The mission is sound and he is simply happy to be back in the field commanding troops. Out here, ringed by death on all sides, appears to be the only place where he can feel truly calm. He is terrified by what this means. He is glad Wendy came along because he is not sure he is going back when this is all over.

“Identified,” Wendy says, adding, “What the hell is that thing, Sarge?”

The giant hairless head totters on spindly tripod legs. It suddenly stops and drops a load of dung that falls onto the highway like a wet bomb. Grimacing with a wide mouth and oversized, bulging eyes, the thirty-foot-tall monster leers down at the Infected streaming around its legs.

“ Shaw chonk ,” it says, its deep voice booming through the air.

Suddenly, a long, thick tongue lashes out, wraps around the torso of an Infected woman, and pulls her up into its cavernous, gobbling mouth. Chewing loudly, the thing chortles deep in its throat, the heavy bass sound vibrating at its edges like an idling motorcycle.