Craig DiLouie - The Infection

Moments later, Anne kneels next to the boy and puts her arm around him. After some time, he curls up into a ball on the ground, his head on her lap, and falls asleep.

In the distance, over the stomping feet and snarling breath of the Infected hordes, she hears the metallic scream of amored treads.

Ray sits on the corner of the edge of the bridge among the dead and dying, his feet kicking in empty space, looking down at the river. He briefly ponders the water, the clouds, the sun hanging low in the sky. The wind whistles through the gap, sweeping dust into the water. Across forty feet of open space, hundreds of Infected still crowd the other side of the span, moaning and reaching out to him as if pleading. He resurrects a mangled cigarette from the crushed pack in his shirt pocket and lights it, inhaling deeply and blowing a long stream of smoke. A cigarette never tasted so good. What I wouldn’t give for an ice cold beer, he thinks, almost salivating. Ice. Cold. Beer.

Life is good. It’s even beautiful.

And way too short.

The pain in his side is incredible. He can feel the virus growing there, converting his cells into a monster waiting to be born. One life ends, and another begins.

I’ll fight it, he vows. And maybe I’ll win.

He heard that the Hoppers grow right out of your body as if it were topsoil, sucking it dry, and then eat what’s left when they are born, the way baby spiders in some species consume their own mothers after they hatch. By that point, you’re so drained that all you can do is watch.

It’s a lousy way to go. He’d rather die of bone cancer.

The first time he does something really good in his life, he has to die for it.

A noble sacrifice. Right. Big fucking deal.

We ain’t the three hundred Spartans, he thinks. There ain’t no legends being born here. The country is filled with heroic chumps sacrificing themselves for a future that will be dominated by all of the ignorant, selfish assholes who hid and did nothing. In a week, most of the good citizens of Camp Defiance will forget all about it. And even if they didn’t, even if they built a goddamn pyramid here in my honor, I’d still be dead. I gave my life when all that matters is staying alive.

It’s too bad. I really wanted to see what I could do.

I was just starting to feel like I had some potential as a human being.

Sarge and Wendy sit on the Bradley’s warm metal skin on a thickly treed hilltop overlooking the desolation that was once Steel Valley. Sarge inspects the scorched land with a pair of binoculars while Steve stands guard nearby with a rifle. They see no sign of life, Infected or otherwise. The entire region appears to be dead, barren. They will be driving past Pittsburgh today along a southern route and they need to take a look at the road to see what is ahead. To the northeast, the city is still smoldering and blasting heat into the sky like a massive furnace and bleeding its toxins and rubble into the Ohio River. The land is carpeted in gray ash and cars half melted into the road.

They are refugees forced from everything they consider home, nomads living on whatever they can find. But mostly they are survivors. They are good at surviving because they are on the road and they are still alive. They have done the things one had to do to survive. They are going to Camp Immunity, near Harrisburg, to find Ethan’s family and tell them that he is dead and that he never gave up searching for them. That he never gave up hope. His little girl has a right to know who her father was, how he died so that thousands might live.

They do not intend to stay in Immunity. The only sanctuary they trust now is the Bradley.

Wendy runs her fingers along the deep scratches in the turret made by the claws of the Demon. The grooves remind her of the empty spaces inside her that appeared when she learned Paul and Ethan were dead. It is still unfathomable to her that they could die, even in this dangerous world. They had become larger than life in her mind over the past weeks, closer than family. Now she feels their absence like an amputated limb or a missing gun. Her mind still wants assurance they are there, covering their sectors, with her world being a little safer because of it.

Sarge touches her shoulder. Wendy wipes her eyes with the palm of her hand and tries to smile.

“They live here,” he tells her, touching his heart.

“It should have been me.”

“No,” he says. “It shouldn’t.”

Wendy looks down at the charred wasteland that was once a thriving city and wonders why she is alive when so many died. She does not see anything special about her. She cannot accept that she deserves it.

Sarge adds, “They didn’t die for nothing. They died so that many more could live and that’s the noblest way to die.”

She squeezes his hand and sighs, feeling strangely sick and empty, starving but unable to eat anything, her mind searching for its own sanctuary.

Maybe she will find it on the road.

The Bradley was not trapped on the West Virginia side of the river. The vehicle has an inflatable pontoon that encircles the rig and can turn it into a boat propelled by its treads at four miles an hour. But they did not go back to Defiance.

Anne radioed to tell them the mission had succeeded. She had been leading another group of survivors to the camp, taking them through Steubenville for supplies, when they heard the sounds of battle. She found the soldiers at the buses on the Ohio side of the river arguing over whether to abandon their position and support their comrades. Anne rallied the soldiers and led both them and her team of survivors in an assault that bought Patterson enough time to finish blowing the charges. Just what Wendy would expect her to do. She is a natural leader.

Anne said she was going to take Todd back to Defiance with the other survivors, and then head back out to find more. Todd said he wanted to go with her.

After breaking radio contact, Sarge told Wendy and Steve he could never go back. That he could never feel safe there. That the only place he could stand being is here, on the road.

They agreed instantly to come with him.

“I believe in you, Toby,” she says.

“It’s just us now,” he tells her.

“We’ll find others and start again.”

“A tribe, right?”

He puts his arm around her and she snuggles close, her eyes glassy.

“A tribe,” she agrees, and sighs.

“We’ll be together.”

“No matter what.”

Odd that they should reject the security of the camp for the brutality of the road, which just claimed two of their friends. They know it is insane, but they feel safe out here. They understand it. And strangely, they feel they must go on facing it in order to continue earning the right to be alive when so many died.

Survival, it seems, is also a state of mind. And it carries a steep price.

“Sarge!” Steve calls out.

“What’s up?”

The gunner grins at him. “Listen.”

The pounding of rotors in the distance, growing louder.

Sarge and Wendy turn and see five black objects moving slowly across the sky in formation.

“God,” Sarge says, raising the binoculars to his eyes. “I can’t believe it.”

“What is it? Toby, what is it?”

He lowers the binoculars slowly, smiling in a daze. “Chinooks. Big helicopters, troop carriers, moving west.”

“How? Who are they? Where are they going?”

“It’s the Army, babe. The Army. Here, take a look.”

Sarge hands her the binoculars. She watches the helicopters move across the sky. There is an elegance to the ungainly beasts that she finds inspiring.

“See that?” he says, sounding wistful.