Craig Dilouie - The Killing Floor

His eyes flutter open and he takes in her beautiful face, wet with tears. He can hear Sarge and Steve calling her name in the swirling, blinding dust.

The Demon roars, drowning out their voices.

The rage is gone now, spent. Ray feels calm. He knows what is coming, and accepts it. And he finds he does care what kind of world he leaves behind.

“I remember,” he says. “You want me to save you. All right. I can do that.” He closes his eyes and whispers, “Go.”

“Where?” Wendy asks him with alarm. Then she understands.

The children of Infection are leaving. The gunfire slackens off as the hoppers retreat into the forests surrounding the town. A group of them hiss at her as they lope past, bounding over the truck and disappearing.

The soldiers are cheering.

“You did good, Ray,” Wendy says. “You did real good.”

Ray’s eyes shift to the scientist. “You’d better get my blood or whatever it is you need, Doc. I don’t think I’m going to be around for much longer.”

Price scrambles for a syringe. Ray watches the man tie a tourniquet around his bicep, wipe the inside of his arm with an alcohol pad, and plunge the needle in.

“Ow,” he says. “Wendy, I hope you’ll stick around for the cure. You got your whole life ahead of you with that jerk boyfriend of yours.”

Wendy smiles, fighting tears.

“I got a sample,” Price tells him, holding up several vials containing Ray’s thick, dark blood.

“Hell, you can have more if you need it. Take it all. In fact, I can do even better, Doc. Do you want to see Infection? Would you like to meet the little bastard?”

He pulls the cut remains of his T-shirt aside, exposing his ribcage, and touches the pink bump on his side. The mound of flesh vibrates happily in response.

“Meet the enemy,” he tells them.

“My God,” Price says, clearly fascinated.

Wendy says nothing, eyeing it with revulsion.

“This is where I was stung. See? Instead of a hopper, a new me grew out of it. This is Infection, Doc. Take it. Cut the little sumbitch out. Do it now before it’s too late. Before it changes my mind.”

“I’ll kill you if I do that,” Price says.

“Dead already,” Ray says. “ I want to see you do it. I want to see us win.”

“All right,” Price says.

“I already know you got what it takes, Doc.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Wendy, reach into my pocket and give me a cig, will you?”

She finds his crushed pack of Winstons, puts a wilted cigarette between his lips, and lights it. Ray inhales and spits it out, coughing and spitting blood.

“Lousy day to have to give up smoking,” he says.

“I’m ready when you are,” Price tells him.

“Tell everyone about today,” he asks. “Tell them I did good.”

The dust is settling; he can see the sky, and it has never looked so blue. The earth abides. Yes, it does. And death is the biggest sucker punch of all.

He tightens his grip on Wendy’s hand and fixes his stare on her face.

You are my reason, Wendy. My second chance. My redemption.

You remind me of the way things were.

“Don’t cry, honey.”

“I’m sorry, Ray,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I can’t help it.”

“Do it, Doc.”

As the scalpel approaches his flesh, the lump flutters with terror, as if trying to escape.

Ray screams during the cutting.

By the time the operation is done, he is dead.

Wendy

Wendy cries into her hands until her face and fingers are wet. She wipes at her eyes and nose until she can see and breathe again, wondering how much time she has before the lights go out and she attacks the people she loves. She can bear the thought of becoming something else, something monstrous. But if the bug makes you hate your loved ones while otherwise you are still you, Wendy thinks she would rather put her gun in her mouth and end it now.

The dust has settled and the sun is shining. She sees the scores of corpses carpeting the parking lots and shattered vehicles, wonders how much of all that dead flesh is human. The soldiers stopped cheering long ago. Toby, Steve and Todd watch her from a respectful distance, waiting in silence, their expressions unreadable behind their black gas masks.

Steeling her nerves, she glances at her watch, anxious she wasted so much of her remaining time on regret. Next to her, Price kneels next to Ray’s body, continuing his gruesome dissection while Ray stares into oblivion, his face a cross between a smile and a scream.

“Why are you still cutting him?” she asks.

Price pauses, his scalpel gleaming in his blood-washed hand. “I need everything I can get,” he snaps. “And I don’t have much time.”

“But he showed us the tumor. That was Infection.”

“Maybe. We don’t know what we saw. Welcome to the scientific method.”

She hesitates, stung by his words. “How much time do I have?”

Price says nothing, his trembling hand poised over Ray’s open chest.

“Dr. Price?”

“I’m sorry I was rude, Wendy. I’m very tired. I think I might be in a state of shock.”

“How much time do I have?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “You were exposed five, ten minutes ago? I’d say you have another five or ten minutes before you show symptoms.”

“Is it sudden? I mean, what’s it like?”

Price turns his torso so she can see the man behind the faceplate.

“You fall down,” he tells her. “And then you get up, and you’re changed. But you might not have it. The odds are something like two in three you don’t. So there’s hope.”

The math is simple. She has a one in three chance of becoming infected within the next few minutes. She remembers standing in the ruins of a hospital a long time ago, holding a gun against Todd’s head after he was cut by the teeth of a monster, while Ethan counted down on his watch and then pronounced him clear.

Now it’s my turn.

He adds, “If anything happens, I will cure you. I swear I will.”

“Thank you,” she says.

“Thank you, Wendy. We’d all be dead if it weren’t for you.”

She stands and dusts her knees slowly, carefully, aware of a tingling in every inch of her body. Turning, she sprints toward Toby, needing his arms around her, the one place in the world she feels safe outside the Bradley’s gunner station.

Instead of extending his arms to embrace her, he pulls his mask off and falls to his knees, his shoulders shaking. Steve and Todd look away, too stricken to speak.

“Why?” Toby asks her. “Why, Wendy?”

She falls to her knees and puts her arms around her man, providing what comfort she can. “You know why. You would have done the same.”

“It’s not worth it,” he sobs. “They can all die except you. Me included. But not you.”

“There’s a good chance I don’t have it.”

He takes a long shuddering breath, gathering his strength, and puts his large arms around her. She nestles against him, feeling safe again.

“Tell me it’s nothing,” she says.

“How long until we know?” he asks her.

“Five minutes, maybe. I don’t know for sure. Where are the others?”

“Yang and Guthrie are helping the soldiers. They don’t know you might have the bug. Cruz and Noel didn’t make it.”

“Bury them deep, Toby.”

On the road, it is common practice to burn the dead so the monsters don’t dig them up and eat them. The alternative is to bury them extra deep. It’s considered a high honor.

She says nothing, her ear pressed against his barrel chest, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. Then she becomes aware of ghostly wailing in the distance. The sound appears to have no source. It seems to come from everywhere. Then the foghorns join in with their sad lowing that ripples through the air.