Craig Dilouie - The Killing Floor

“You’re all my second chance.”

Wendy

They set up the Coleman stove in the abandoned warehouse and heat some of the MREs, or meals ready to eat, the Army provided as part of its supplies for the NLA. Sitting in a circle on the cement floor, they eat in a thoughtful silence, the Bradley crew watching Todd, Todd studying the blue ring of fire on the Coleman. This is fine with Wendy; she just wants to look at him. They all know it is a miracle they found each other again.

He has grown up a lot in the past two months, but at this moment he looks like an exhausted boy on the verge of tears. She is not even sure why she missed him so much. They fought and scavenged in the same group for just two weeks. Once they reached Camp Defiance, they split up with hardly a goodbye.

But they went to hell and back. For those two weeks, they were a tribe, relying on each other with their very lives. Wendy remembers standing in a dark hospital corridor with him, guns readied, waiting for the Infected to attack. She held her Glock against his head after the monster bit him, praying he would not become infected and she would not have to put him down. They escaped while Pittsburgh burned, pursued by the Demon. They made it to Defiance and later fought a horde to save the camp.

The simple fact is she feels safe with him there.

And yet he makes her a little sad, too. He makes her remember Paul and Ethan and how they died on the bridge. Deaths that now seem utterly pointless, seeing as the camp fell anyway.

Wendy tells Todd about their journey to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg, where they told Ethan’s wife about his death on the bridge, and how they joined up with the New Liberty Army, taking the fight to the Infected all over southeastern Ohio.

Todd nods and accepts a cup of coffee from Toby.

“You’re going to be okay, Kid,” Toby tells him. “You got your whole life ahead of you.”

“We’re leaving soon,” Wendy says.

The boy glances at her.

“We’re leaving the war,” she continues. “We’re done.”

Wendy studies him for a while. He watches her intently, waiting.

“Where are you going?” he finally says.

“South. We’re going to find an island. A state park or something, where it’s warm all year around. Make a stand. Live as long as we can.”

She and Toby heard the bombing, saw the smoke, and decided to check it out, which led them straight to Todd. There can be no other reason they found each other like this.

It’s meant to be.

“You should come with us,” she says.

Todd

Wendy’s idea is the same as their original plan back in Pittsburgh, before they learned people were resisting, before the Army came home to wage its impossible war against Infection. They would leave humanity to fend for itself, and find a place for themselves. Find sanctuary with people you could trust to watch your back, and survive as long as possible. Not just survive, but live , on their own terms, not in some miserable, overcrowded refugee camp. It is either the wish of a dreamer or the most rational thing he ever heard.

Sarge said he has his whole life ahead of him. At seventeen, it is hard for Todd to understand what that means. It is the kind of thing someone who has been alive a long time would say. He remembers Anne saying she does not get to come back. What about me? Can I leave the road and build a new life somewhere? Anne and Paul taught him your demons can never touch you if you keep moving. It’s dangerous on the road, but some of the worst monsters are in your head.

And yet finding a remote place that is defendable and self-sustaining is possibly the one rational course left. People like Sarge and Wendy are best equipped to survive not just today, but what is coming. In just a year, civilization could finally collapse, Todd believes, at least in the North. Everywhere he has traveled, people were using up what they had while producing nothing, and nobody seems to be planning ahead for the lean times coming in the winter. Salvage is not enough to keep the nation going. Winter, hunger and disease may finish it.

The nightmare, sadly, is about to get worse, with no end in sight. The apocalypse is taking its sweet time, but this is still the end of the world. The final collapse will come suddenly, and then the human race will no longer be able to stage large-scale organized resistance to Infection. Out in the open, humans will become part of the food chain, somewhere near the bottom.

We will all go down together, and we will go down fighting .

In the first days of the epidemic, he saw a small band of exhausted police fight until a mob of Infected overran them. They shot at the Infected, and when they ran out of bullets, they clubbed at them with the butts of their guns. They knew the entire time their fight was futile, and yet they did not submit to the inevitable. They fought back, tooth and nail, to the final second.

FUTILE BUT BRAVE; that will be our epitaph.

The one logical alternative to going down with the ship is to find a good place, dig in and hold onto it for as long as possible. Fortify it, make it self-sufficient, and defend it with people you can trust with your life. If there is one thing Paul’s death taught Todd, it is people don’t matter, only certain people do. If there is one thing Erin’s death taught him, it is to take whatever happiness you can get for as long as you can get it.

Wendy is right. They should go. Todd wants to join them.

One hope still exists, however. One major hope for the human race.

We could find a cure.

And for this reason, it is not time to leave just yet. He has one more thing to do.

He still wants his revenge on Infection.

“Ray Young is alive,” he tells them.

Cool Rod

Dear Rod,

We’re all okay.

A man dropped by the dorm today to tell us that the Marines have retaken the White House. It won’t be long now, he said. Soon, our nation’s capital will be free again.

He called the infected people demons. I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. They may be crazy and evil now, but they still look like us. They used to be us. They are so sad.

The monsters we hear about are another story altogether. They sound like something out of Hell. Have you seen any during the fighting? The kids try to scare each other during the day by pretending to be monsters, and it makes them laugh, but at night they’re terrified. Sometimes, late at night, you can hear the real monsters howling outside the wall.

Victor was starting to make such a racket at night that he now sleeps with me and Lilia, and then Kristina didn’t like that so now we all sleep on the floor on an old mattress. Okay, I admit, a part of me likes it. I make them feel safe, and they make me feel needed. The more they need me, the more it takes my mind off other things, like the end of the world.

I’m sorry I sound so down in the dumps in this letter, Rod. Most times I write, I put a big smile on my face because I want you to not worry about us. Things aren’t great, but we’re doing okay. We’re alive and we have enough to eat, and that’s plenty to be thankful for these days. You have enough going on in the war without wondering if your family is all right, because we really are.

It’s just that every day things get a little harder. The other night one of those things got inside the camp and the MPs were chasing it around with flamethrowers. They had it surrounded—this horrible, hoofed, screaming thing—and they were shooting it with jets of fire. We were hustled into the rec center, where we stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark until the coast was clear, and came out to find our dorm tent had burned clean to the ground and all our possessions were floating away in the dark as ash and sparks on the wind. Our photo albums are gone, Rod. All those years of memories. Our entire past. I now have only one photo of you to keep me company at night and remind our kids that they have a daddy, and it’s falling apart from all of us holding it so tight.