Craig DiLouie - The Infection

He lowers his rifle for a moment, panting with exhaustion.

“I’m sorry, friend,” he says, thinking: I hope you’re in a better place.

Hackett collides with him and he feels the air rush out of his lungs. The world spins and he hits the ground hard. His rifle is gone.

“Jeez, Sergeant,” Ethan gasps. “You okay?”

He feels a boot strike his ribs, knocking the air out of him again. Another sinks into his back, sending a lancing pain up his neck. The soldiers are standing over him, kicking him.

They’re Infected , he realizes.

Hackett slowly rises to all fours, groaning.

“Run, run, run,” Ethan hisses at him.

Hackett turns, snarling, and bites into Ethan’s ankle.

Ethan screams, flailing. The pain is incredible. He remembers the pistol on his hip and unholsters it, snapping off the safety and squeezing two shots through Hackett’s skull. His eyes stinging with tears of regret, he looks down at his torn ankle smeared with blood and saliva.

The soldiers have stopped kicking him.

The virus has entered his nervous stream and is already flowing into his brain. Within moments, he loses control of his limbs and his body begins twitching. The pain in his ankle recedes as his body responds to Infection by flooding his brain with endorphins.

The soldiers growl, grinning wolfishly, and then run after the others.

Probabilities. He was a math teacher. He understands probabilities. It works like this: You take enough risks on a long enough timeline, and you will probably lose. It’s that simple.

He looks at the gun still gripped in his hand. Despite the weakness and spasms, he retains some control of his body. He should end it now, before he becomes one of them.

He raises the pistol slowly to his head.

Infected begin to race past, snarling, their feet slapping on the wet asphalt and splashing through puddles of blood. Ethan slowly raises himself onto his elbow and aims the gun at them, firing methodically. A running figure spins like a top before toppling to the pavement.

His hand suddenly flops back to the ground, the gun forgotten.

The world is bathed in shades of red, terrifying and beautiful.

The first wave of despair passes through him. Now he understands why the Infected cry out at night. They are filled with sadness. Incredible, impenetrable, inconsolable sadness.

The sadness of memories of an entire life just out of reach.

The sadness of slaves.

Then the rage begins. The pure hatred.

The hunger. The need.

The urgent, directive hum of the Brood.

Ethan hisses, spraying spittle, struggling to stand. He knows there are things on this bridge that have not yet received the viral gospel.

There they are, murdering his people, each death an extinguished vector. He sees figures advancing towards him, running and shooting. Small arms fire crackles across the bridge.

A woman stands over him now, looking down at him wearing a sad expression. She holds two smoking pistols in her fists.

His face contorts into a hideous grimace.

“Anne,” he growls. “Good to see…”

The small moment of pleasure passes almost instantly. He glares up at her with hate, trying to push himself off the ground. She falls to one knee, meeting him halfway.

“Ethan, listen to me,” she says close to his ear.

He shakes his head and snarls. “Go…”

Within moments, he has already forgotten who she is. All he knows is that she is a terrifying monster in the eyes of the Brood. A monster that destroys vectors for the Brood. A monster that is a threat to the Brood. A monster that must be tamed by becoming a host for the Brood.

Assimilate , the Brood hums. Assimilate and grow in safety in a fertile host.

The monster says: “Your family is still alive.”

The red veil suddenly lifts and he gasps as the faces of Carol and Mary flash through his mind. He sees Mary in a bathing suit running through a series of sprays in a water park, Carol laughing as she unpacks lunch on a picnic table.

“Mary,” he growls deep in his throat.

Mary turns and rushes towards him.

“Daddy!” she squeals.

The sun in his eyes, so bright.

What a perfect day that was.

Ethan’s head bursts as Anne pulls the trigger.

Todd staggers through hell, shouting for Paul and Ethan while the engineers retreat with pistols and crowbars and baseball bats, forming a tightening protective circle around Patterson, who struggles to connect the firing wires to the blasting machine, the right side of his face swollen to twice its normal size.

Help is arriving. Fresh troops have formed a ragged line and are shooting into the ranks of the Infected, which break apart under the withering fire. The soldiers are from the two buses they left behind at the Ohio end of the bridge. There are civilians here, too, whom he does not recognize. He wanders among the Infected, which drop bleeding to the ground around him.

He shouts the names of his friends.

Get down, get down

Fire in the hole

The trenches in front of him erupt in a blinding flash, followed by a deafening crash. A massive tremor buckles the bridge, knocking him off of his feet to land hard on the asphalt.

He struggles back onto his hands and knees, feeling lightheaded.

Come on, kid , a voice says, tiny and distant.

He blinks and sees Ray Young frowning down at him, his mouth working, his steelers cap smoking. The man hauls him roughly to his feet.

The garbled, muffled sounds of the world rush into his ears with suddenly clarity.

“The bridge didn’t blow! We got to move! You hear me? It didn’t blow!”

Todd turns and sees a Giant lumbering towards him, bellowing its foghorn call, stomping the ground, its tentacles swaying like whips.

“We got to get out of here!” Ray tells him.

They failed. It’s over. And his friends died for nothing.

“Come on, kid!”

The horde continues its mad rush across the bridge, led by the titan.

Todd collapses to his knees, dragging Ray to the ground with him.

“No!” he says.

“Come on!”

“No! No!”

He pushes the man away from him, scrambling on all fours, and stops to shake his fists at the Infected, screaming and crying.

“You killed my friends! I fucking hate you!”

“We’re going to die here if we don’t move,” Ray pleads with him.

Todd stands shakily, shrugging off Ray’s hand again, and unholsters his pistol.

“You killed all my friends and now I’ll kill you!”

Todd aims his pistol at the behemoth crashing towards him and fires, screaming. Ray appears next to him, screaming his head off, firing with both hands until his guns click empty.

The Giant lunges into a gallop, roaring, filling the air with its stench.

Within moments, the monster looms over them.

And falls through the earth with a groan.

The broken section of the bridge detaches cleanly and tumbles seventy feet until swallowed by the waters below. The monster falls with it, lowing plaintively and flailing until crashing into the river.

Todd raises his fist, whooping like a savage as the Infected continue to run at him, toppling over the edge into the river below, shrieking like bats.

“Ha!” he screams at them. “Ha! That’s what you get!”

He finally falls to his knees among the rubble and bodies, crying hysterically.

“You killed my friends,” he says.

I didn’t know you very well, he thinks, but you’re the only ones who really knew me. You listened to me when nobody else did. You saw me. You depended on me. You accepted me.

Like nobody ever did.

“All for a goddamn bridge,” Ray says in disgust. He drops his pistols onto the road and walks away shaking, leaving Todd alone.