The Infection

THE BRIDGE

When the survivors left Pennsylvania, they crossed a sliver of West Virginia, a piece of ground stabbing north like a spike, before finally entering Ohio. The Veterans Memorial Bridge connects Steubenville, Ohio and Weirton, West Virginia—six lanes of modern superhighway carrying U.S. Route 22 across the Ohio River. Nearly twenty football fields in length, the cable-stayed bridge consists of steel girders and beams supporting a composite concrete road deck, the entire structure suspended by cables fanning out from the two support towers, a common design for long bridges.

Before Infection, thirty thousand people crossed this bridge every day. Now it is a funnel for more than a hundred thousand Infected moving west away from the still-burning ruins of Pittsburgh.

The Bradley roars east on Route 22, leading a convoy of vehicles including several flatbed trucks stacked with explosives, armored cars and four school buses packed with soldiers and fitted with V-shaped snowplows on their grilles.

The rig slams into an abandoned minivan and sends it spinning onto the shoulder of the highway without breaking its stride. The crash makes Wendy flinch.

“We’re going to practice a rapid scan,” Sarge says.

Wendy blows air out of her cheeks and nods. She moves her left hand to wipe sweat from her forehead and bangs her elbow again.

“Mother,” she hisses. Sitting in the commander’s seat directly adjacent to Sarge in the gunner’s station, her body is almost surrounded by hard metal edges. Not much room to do anything except work the joystick that controls the turret and weapons systems.

She peers into the integrated sight unit, which provides a relay of what Sarge sees, overlaid with a reticle to help aim the Bradley’s guns. The highway slices through the rolling hills to the horizon, flanked with green. Smoke is still pouring out of Pittsburgh, darkening the eastern sky. The horizon shimmers and pulses with heat waves.

“Hey,” Sarge says. “You’re sightseeing.”

“It’s hard to take my eyes off the road.”

Sarge smiles. “You have to get used to the fact that somebody else is driving. While Steve will obey our commands to stop and go and so on, we are a self-contained world up here, just you and me. You help scan and identify targets, and I’ll track and kill them.”

“Yes, sir,” Wendy says.

“I’m not a sir. I work for a living, Ma’am. Now let’s do a rapid scan with overlapped sectors.”

“With who, what?”

“That means I’ll be scanning roughly the same ground ahead as you. First, scan center out, near to far, then left and right to center, near to far. I’ll be scanning far to near.”

Her gum cracking, Wendy scans the highway ahead and identifies two abandoned vehicles in the grassy median. They are passing a billboard on the right that tells her to tune in to Channel Seven News at Eleven with Janet Rodriguez, Janet grinning confidently down at her in a power suit with her arms crossed. Beyond, power lines and trees.

The opposite lanes of the highway are occupied by a long column of Infected that stare grimly at the rig as it rolls by on its grating treads.

“Identified,” she says.

“Confirmed. Range?”

“Fifty meters?”

“I’m asking for the range to the nearest target.”

“I thought that’s what I was giving you.”

“See that billboard up there on the other side of the highway? That’s about a hundred.”

“Oh, then twenty, twenty-five?”

“Bingo,” he grins. “You’re learning fast. You should be proud, babe.”

“That’s Private Babe to you,” she answers, turning and flashing a smile.

“What can I say, girl. You do look good in cammies.”

“Settle down, Sergeant,” she laughs. “This Army uniform is like two sizes too big for me.”

“You wear it like a dress.”

“A tent, maybe.”

Wendy laughs lightly, feeling good for the first time since she kissed him at the hospital. Sarge is a good man. He gives her precious moments in which she can forget about Infection and everything else. She believes she could easily fall in love with him if they live long enough.

The Bradley trembles slightly with the stresses generated by dozens of moving parts. She can feel the beating heart of the engine, turning the force of controlled explosions into the raw horsepower needed to turn the treads and propel the vehicle’s twenty-five tons. The vibrations flow through her body, reminding her that she is riding a metal bull with the strength of five hundred horses and a mind of its own. And yet she feels powerful sitting here in its brain. More in control than she has ever felt, in fact. She is in an armored box with wheels, somebody else is driving, and she’s got the big guns. She laughs again as she considers there are few better places one could be in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

The exhilaration she feels, however, is tempered by a growing weight on her chest. Running the rig is a lot of responsibility. The soldiers, the other survivors, and all the people back at the camp will be counting on her to make good decisions when they hit the bridge in ninety minutes, and she simply does not have enough training or experience to do it right.

She is scared.

“You ready for more?” Sarge says.

I’m ready for a hot bath with real soap, scented candles, some Alanis on the CD player and a tall glass of red wine, she thinks.

“What else you got?” she says.

She is still wondering why she wanted to come on this mission, but another glance at the man beside her in the gunner’s station reminds her. They are a tribe.

Todd smiles at the almost surreal sense of déjà vu he is feeling at being back inside the hot, noisy, dim interior of the Bradley. He has butterflies in his gut, the humid air is dense with the smells of nervous sweat and diesel combustion, and he has to pee. Just like old times. It feels oddly right. The big difference is Anne is gone, Wendy is up in the front with Sarge, and there are two new faces in their unit—Ray Young, the rent-a-cop with the hard eyes and handlebar mustache, and Lieutenant Patterson, the combat engineer with the buzz cut and earnest, clean-shaven face.

“Once more into the breach, huh, Rev?” Todd says with a laugh, hoping to show off his easy familiarity with the group to the newcomers, but the two men either did not hear him over the Bradley’s engine or are simply lost in their own thoughts. As usual, nobody cares.

Paul smiles weakly and nods, but says nothing. Todd looks at him and realizes how grounded he feels being here with the other survivors. The Bradley feels like home. And yet he still does not know these people very well. He suddenly wants to talk to the Reverend about something important, something philosophical, man to man at the edge of the abyss—the nature of faith during war or whatever—but he cannot think of where to start such a conversation. A little more grounded, but he is still floating, away from others as well as himself.

The survivors’ role in the mission is to help clear the bridge and then keep Patterson safe because the Lieutenant is going to blow the bridge using more than two tons of TNT and C4.

The engineer told them that cable-stayed bridges are a little harder to blow a hole in. The cables fanning out from the towers pull to the sides instead of up like a suspension bridge, requiring a stronger deck to compensate for the horizontal load. That means more force will be needed to blow a hole in it that the Infected cannot cross.

What’s more, they will not have time to attach the charges under the bridge for a bottom attack. Instead, they will have to lay the explosives directly on the road deck, tamp it with a hill of sandbags, and blow off the concrete to expose the steel reinforcements. A second round of charges will cut the steel rods and beams. It will be a lot of work and take a long time.

Here is what will happen: After the bridge is secured, the trucks will pull up and workers will unload the explosives in piles across the eighty-foot-wide, six-lane bridge. These piles will be laid out in two lines covered in sandbags used as tamping to direct the force of the blast down into the concrete. The engineers will apply shaped C4 charges to the exposed steel elements.

Then, boom. The unsupported piece between the two blast lines will fall into the Ohio River and the resulting forty-foot gap will stop the Infected from crossing.

They have to do all this while potentially holding off a horde of Infected at both ends of the bridge.

“Hey,” Todd says to the combat engineer.

The glazed eyes flicker and focus.

“Hey, what?”

“Why forty feet?”

Patterson grins. The transformation this brings is almost alchemical. A moment ago, he looked like a hardened killer on death row waiting for his lawyer. Now he looks like a frat boy about to explain how he spiked the professors’ punch at the party.

“Mike Powell,” he says, his accept deep Louisiana.

“Oh yeah,” Ray says.

“Who’s Mike Powell?”

“He set the world record in the long jump back in the nineties,” Ray says.

Patterson nods.

“Almost thirty feet,” he points out. “We’re going to do forty—just in case one of those little Hopper sumbitches can beat old Mike Powell’s record.”

Todd grins with the other men, nodding, suddenly filled with awareness that history is being made today. It’s the end of the world but a new one is beginning. He cannot help but feel excited. It’s epic, ninja, like living in a video game.

He has already forgotten the brief, crushing sense of death he felt back at the hospital when Wendy held her Glock against his head and Ethan counted down to zero. You made it this far, Todd old man, he tells himself. You’re lucky. You’re good. Hell, you’re practically immortal. You are earning your place in the new world. There will be historians in this new world, recording the heroic deeds of people during the dark time of Infection for future generations to understand and respect.

The bridge they are blowing is the Veterans Memorial Bridge. What buildings and bridges and monuments will they build to honor our sacrifices? What day will they set aside for our memory? They will look at us as the Greatest Generation, the people who fought Infection and rebuilt the world. Every war has a turning point. Ours is here, now. He thinks about John Wheeler and Emily Preston and the ghosts of his high school. Most of them are by now certainly Infected or dead. But not me, he reminds himself. I was chosen for a reason.

Maybe this time he will reap the rewards when he returns. Maybe he will get a little more respect. Erin was impressed by his tales of survival and the wound on his arm but ripped him off anyway. Inside the camp, he felt powerless, small, his life reduced to stories nobody could truly believe even in these times. Out here, he feels powerful, somehow more real, part of something again. He would never say such a thing out loud to the other survivors, but he is here because he wants to find himself.

Paul signed up for this mission on impulse, but he is old enough to know that nothing happens purely that way. There is always a reason.

It is not loyalty to the others. He feels safer with them, but not really safe, and certainly not very safe out here, in the lion’s den. He loves them in his own way with whatever love he has left to give anyone, but they can make their own decisions and take care of themselves.

It is not disgust with Pastor Strickland and his ministry of bitterness and regret. He does not approve it, but he also has no interest in fighting it. Strickland still loves the Infected that he lost but hates people he does not understand. A kingdom divided will be ruined and a house divided cannot stand, as Jesus taught. There have always been lost sheep like Strickland and McLean, and there always will be.

It is not even a simple desire to find a better place to live. If he continues on with Ethan to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg, it will be as filthy, hungry and violent as Defiance. When they were leaving, the people were cheering and blowing whistles and shooting into the air. The rumors that the Army was coming had achieved a critical mass. But nobody cared about the convoy of vehicles leaving the camp, filled with troops ready to sacrifice everything to save them all.

If God can appear cruel and hypocritical and vindictive, well, we are all made in his image, he reminds himself. God should have told Job that he had no right to question him because as bad as God is, people are even worse. When the chips are down, the best and worse is on full display.

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.

“Shaw chonk roomy lactate.”

“Jesus Christ,” Wendy says.

In any other time, the vision of this monster tottering down Route 22—its skinny legs supporting a bloated, improbable sphere of mottled flesh with its grotesque, almost human face—would have suddenly and irreparably damaged Sarge’s mind. Today, it only fills him with instant revulsion and hatred. The thing is a trespasser on his planet and must be destroyed. Anne used the perfect word to describe these things: abominations.

Sarge gives the general order to halt the convoy and tells Steve to stop the Bradley.

“What are we going to do?” Wendy says, her voice quiet and breathless.

Sarge switches to high magnification for a closer look at the thing. The monster’s grinning face fills the optical display. Revolted, he quickly switches back to low magnification.

“Roomy lactation!” it bellows across the landscape, eyeing the vehicles.

“We’re going to kill it,” Sarge tells her.

He estimates the range to target at two hundred meters using the rule of thumb method of picturing a distance of a hundred meters and ranging to the target in hundred-meter increments. He adjusts the RANGE-SELECT knob.

“Two,” he says absently.

He presses a switch on the weapons box, illuminating the AP LO annunciator light, indicating selection of the twenty-five millimeter gun with armor-piercing rounds firing at a low rate of fire, about a hundred rounds per minute.

“Line up the shot, Private Babe,” Sarge says.

Wendy presses the palm switch on her joystick with her fingers, activating the turret drive and releasing the turret brakes, then puts pressure on the stick. The turret responds immediately, beginning its rotation. The reticle centers on the monster’s legs.

“Now give me elevation to center mass on the thing’s hideous goddamn head.”

She feathers the stick until the reticle is centered between the monster’s eyes.

“Got it.”

“You’re drifting.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry; stabilize.”

She pushes the drift button, stabilizing the turret.

“Good job.”

“Sarge, if something should happen—”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he says, his eyes glued to optical display. He presses the arming switch for the cannon. “But if you really want to know, I love you.”

“So we’ll be together no matter what.”

“No matter what, if you want me,” he grins, adding: “On the way.”

He depresses the trigger switch and the Bradley’s main gun begins firing.

“Tell me what you see,” he says.

The rounds arc up the highway, the path illuminated by tracers. The thing is moving again.

“Um, lost?” she says, meaning she thinks the rounds are passing over the target.

“Correction,” he murmurs. “I’m taking over the turret.”

He corrects the elevation and starts shooting again, leading the lethal fire into the beast using the tracers. Giant cigar-puffs drift lazily away from the rig. The rounds, designed to penetrate Soviet tanks and concrete bunkers, enter the monster’s skull and burst in flashes of light, sending geysers of blood and brain rocketing high into the air.

The Towering Thing screams shrilly and stumbles, weeping and groaning, until it topples to the ground trailing black smoke, the remains of its head splashing across the lanes and into the median. One of the legs twitches briefly, and then it is still.

Despite the noise of the Bradley’s engine and systems, they can hear the soldiers in the buses cheering. Sarge’s heart pounds in his chest. These things die just like anything else.

“Target destroyed,” he says, turning his head to smile at Wendy, who beams back at him.

“Holy crap, that was exciting,” she says. “I think I’m addicted. And I think I love you, too.”

“We’re going to get through this,” he tells her, smiling. “We’re going to win.”

His smile suddenly fades. The truth is a part of him hopes that they never win. The truth is he wants the war to go on and on and on, because he can never return to peace.

The Bradley hums, idling after the shooting stops. Sarge gets on the intercom and tells them they just destroyed one big, ugly monster. Ray glances across the smiling faces and wants to scream at them for being complete morons. They are driving to a place where the big, ugly monsters will be thick as fleas. They are going there by choice; they are idiots.

The idea of driving onto that bridge and being greeted by the entire Infected population of Pittsburgh fills him with pure, bowel-evacuating terror. America has become a killing floor and there are things out there that want to eat you. They will eat you while you are still alive and then you will be dead and you will never see the sun again or kiss a girl or laugh at a joke or drink a beer. Ever again. Forever.

And nobody will give a shit about your famous last words. These days, if you’re lucky, your friends will burn you in a pit. If not, then you’re food.

Only a crazy lunatic would want to put himself into that situation.

These motherfuckers are crazy.

No, he tells himself. You’re the looney. You’re here because you made a promise, which you actually did not literally make, to a lot of dead people, who are, well, dead, to make things normal again, which means asshole cops back being asshole cops, and if it’s one thing you hated from the Time Before almost as much as credit card debt, it’s asshole cops.

These maniacs don’t know any better, apparently; you do. Which makes you an even bigger fool.

He swallows hard, fighting the urge to retch.

Todd leans towards him and says charitably, “It’s going to be okay, man.”

“Shut up, kid,” he says.

Just because you’re suicidal does not make you any braver than me, he thinks. In my time, I started fights over anything from noble causes to petty grievances, and more often than not I ended them. I fight to win and I fight dirty. Bravery has nothing to do with this. This is about living and dying. There is nothing in between. You make a choice and that is your choice.

Cashtown had so many ne’er-do-wells like him that the few upright citizens were hard to tell apart from everybody else unlucky enough to have been born there. Once, the town prospered in steel and timber, but like so many places in America, it fell into ruin due to overseas competition and decades of betrayal of the American worker by big business and the country’s politicians. People passing through left with impressions of rusting, abandoned steel mills, smokestacks and rail yards. Deteriorating housing drenched in American flags. For years, it was just one town in a depressed region where people lived check to check with as much pride as they could muster.

Ray worked as a rent-a-cop for a self-storage facility and frequently got into trouble with real cops. He drank, he smoked, he brawled, he broke things, he screwed anything with two legs. He lived in his mom’s basement and broke her heart with bad behavior and odd jobs and general lack of a future. Probably the only decent thing he ever did was volunteer for the local fire department.

When the Screaming happened, he was sleeping one off. He found his mother dead hours later. She had caught the Screaming while taking a bath and drowned, all alone. There were so many dead that the mortuary could not bury her. The county zipped her up in a shiny black body bag, tagged her, and drove her away in a truck for burial in a mass grave—to be dug up later and buried properly when things returned to normal. Of course, they never did.

During the morning of Infection, he was driving home from his shift when he saw a pack of lunatics in pajamas tackle and tear apart a child fleeing on a bicycle. Suddenly, there were people fighting everywhere. The people who ran the bakery were looking out the window of their store, pointing and murmuring to each other and trying to call somebody on the phone. As Ray drove by, he saw another pack of pajama-wearing lunatics crash through the window, lunging for them.

All Ray could think at the time was, I don’t want that to be me.

The truck radio shouted at him until he turned it off.

He drove home and loaded his rig with everything he could get his hands on. Food, beer, liquor, cigarettes and dip, jugs of water, packets of Kool-Aid, burritos and TV dinners. He restarted his truck, turned on the radio and flipped across the shouting voices until he found the local AM news station, which promptly began emitting the emergency broadcast signal.

He turned off the radio. It’s better this way, he told himself. I don’t want to know.

He drove back to the storage facility, locked the chain-link fence behind him, and then sealed himself inside one of the storage sheds with somebody else’s dusty furniture.

Ray stayed in there for five days until he ran out of booze, the last set of batteries failed in his flashlight, and he could no longer stand the stench of his own waste.

He opened the garage door and emerged into a brave new world.

The camp was already sprawling, bursting out of Cashtown until it reached the self-storage facility. Some of the storage units were being plundered to make room for refugees. He stood there for fifteen minutes, blinking in the sunlight with his mouth open, trying to understand it, his head pounding with the worst hangover of his life. After what he had seen on the first day of Infection, he had thought he would find the town abandoned by the living. Instead, he found a thriving refugee camp with the population of Boulder, Colorado.

Not a very noble way to survive that first deadly week of Infection, but the point is he emerged. The point is he survived.

There is no honor in survival, but life goes on and life is everything. Nothing else matters. And anybody who thinks differently is a fool—a fool who probably won’t live very long.

Most of his friends were dead. The town had five governments. Four families were living in his mother’s house, which had already been looted top to bottom. Some of them he recognized as his former neighbors. Many of the locals had tried to cash in, selling land to the government and basic necessities to the refugees at outrageous prices, trading everything they had for a pile of paper money that rapidly declined in value until it became virtually worthless. Some of the more important and civic-minded locals, however, became entrenched with the government. They knew Ray and trusted him and they needed to beef up community policing fast.

So Ray became a lawman and, in the process, a true believer in making the world right again. He was good at it. His only regret was that his mother was not alive to see him do it.

When he found out Wendy was a Pittsburgh police officer, it had been like meeting an angel. The news of the burning of the city had hit the camp like a thunderbolt. People walked around in a daze, unable to comprehend it. By the time Wendy showed up at the police station, the fire had already become a legend. That made her something of a miracle, rare and precious.

Which is why he came, to protect her. The part of Ray Young that he has been finding out is good believes that if he can protect her, he can help make the world right again.

As for the part of him that is bad, the part he knows all too well, that part also wants to see the world return to normal. Ray is tough and morally ambivalent, he can be a bully and violent on a whim, but he has no wish to live in a world in eternal fear of being wiped out by a horde of diseased, homicidal maniacs. He longs for the day when he can get drunk on payday, throw a bottle through a window, and take a swing at honest cops who come to arrest him. He was a loser back in the day, that is true, while he is an important man now. But he was a loser who was certain to live a long life of petty amusements in a town he loved. He wants the world to get back to normal: a world where beer is manufactured and sold cheaply in mass quantities, tobacco farmers are free to harvest their crops unmolested, and women are loose and have easy access to birth control.

He came for reasons both selfless and selfish, but none of that matters now.

Now that he is here, all he wants to do is live.

The numbers of Infected multiply as they approach Steubenville along Route 22, the Bradley breaking their bodies with sickening thuds, the buses sending them flying with their V-shaped highway truck snowplows that had been retrofitted onto their grilles. They bypass the town along the north, their view of it obscured by a treed slope that gradually turns into a concrete wall. The fronts of the vehicles are splashed with blood; the windshield wipers are working full time. The Bradley crashes through a guide panel mounted on a sagging overhead gantry and announcing ROUTE 7 SOUTH STEUBENVILLE, smashing it into flying green shards that flutter and scatter across the highway. The Infected race towards the buses, squealing and pounding on their sides painted with special messages: HELLO, NOW DIE AND NONE SHALL PASS AND INSTANT CURE! inquire within.

Sarge says into the intercom, “We’re approaching the bridge. Stay frosty.”

Wendy glances at him with wide eyes, her face pale and pouring sweat.

“Eyes forward,” he says, then adds gently, “You’re okay, babe.”

“This is different than before. This is not just survival. This is a mission.” She shakes her head briefly before returning her attention to the ISU. “We’re fighting a war now.”

“Don’t matter what you want to call it. Either way, people’s lives are riding on what you do, so you make sure you do right. You do the best you can.”

“It’s too much this time. I’m scared.”

“Only crazy people don’t get scared. Being scared is perfectly normal. You just have to control it so it don’t control you.”

“How?”

“You take things one step at a time. Each minute as it comes.”

She nods, licking her dry lips. “Okay,” she rasps.

“Baby steps. Right now, all we got to do is drive.”

The bridge appears in the distance on the left, growing larger by the minute. Sarge glances at the instrumentation, pleased that none of the critical annunciator lights are lit up or flashing at him, which would indicate a problem with a vital system. He activates the intercom.

“Get into your battle rattle,” he says, trying to sound upbeat. “We’ll be in the shit in less than ten and back home in a few hours.”

No macho cheering or theatrical complaining comes back to him from the passenger compartment, just cold silence. He reminds himself that this is a different kind of war. A war of fratricides. A war of genocide against people they once loved.

Nobody wants to cheer in this kind of war until it’s over.

The bridge looms on the left, dominating the view against a gray sky that darkens towards the horizon like a distant storm. Waves of heat ripple at the horizon’s edge, Pittsburgh continuing to give up its ghost. The appearance of the bridge itself, a wonder of modern engineering appearing suddenly after miles of empty country, is almost as startling as the memory of the fire. An overhead road sign declares EAST 22 NORTH 2 WEIRTON PITTSBURGH. The convoy slows as it comes together in single file, exiting for the interchange.

Honking loudly, a line of Brinks armored cars and flatbed trucks at the tail of the convoy breaks off, continuing south along Route 7 into Steubenville. These troops are headed to the Market Street Bridge, just a few miles to the south of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, an old light rail suspension bridge built in 1905 that was later upgraded into a two-lane crossover for vehicles. Seven thousand cars and trucks crossed that bridge every day before the end of the world. Now it is used only by monsters.

The Bradley rolls onto the bridge. Sarge sighs with relief.

The operation has officially begun.

The two leading buses race ahead to the other end of the bridge, knocking down Infected along the way while the rest of the convoy slows and stops. The other two buses deploy laterally across the Ohio side, forming a steel wall blocking access to the Infected. Immediately, the soldiers in the buses begin shooting out of the windows, cutting down the Infected who were following the convoy. The Bradley sits on the asphalt, idling. Inside, the survivors listen to the occasional pop of rifle fire as soldiers on the bridge take down stray Infected.

Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus Christ

Sarge keys his handset.

“Negative contact, Immune 2. Say again, over.”

There are thousands of them

“I repeat: Negative contact, Alex. How copy, over?”

Over the Bradley’s idling, Sarge can hear the splash of small arms fire from the other end of the bridge nearly six hundred meters away. Wendy flinches at the sound, then returns to scanning the bridge for threats. The Immune 2 unit, comprising the two buses that moved ahead, are supposed to plug the West Virginia end of the bridge by creating another steel wall. Once both ends of the bridge are sealed by buses manned by combat troops, Sarge and his force will walk the bridge from one end to the other, clearing it.

Then Patterson and his engineering team can do their work.

We’re trying to set up the buses but they’re everywhere, Sarge. Not just the Infected but the monsters, too. Hoppers. The giant heads with legs. Elephants with worms growing out of them.

“Copy that,” Sarge says.

“Should we go and help him?” Wendy says.

“Our job is to clear the bridge,” Sarge tells her. “Alex’s job is to secure the other end.”

I think we got it! Yeah, he’s got it. Holy shit, we’re in place. We’re in place, Immune 1.

“I copy, Immune 2. Great job, over.”

We’ll hold them here as long as we can, over.

“Hang on. We’ll see you in a few minutes, out.”

Roger that, out.

Wendy activates the Bradley’s intercom system before Sarge can reach for it.

“It’s time to go, guys,” she says, fighting to control her voice. “I just wanted you to know that I love all of you. Good luck and come back safe.”

Sarge nods.

“You heard the lady,” he says, and presses the button to drop the exit ramp.

The survivors dismount the vehicle, stepping into May sunshine. Nearby, a squad of National Guard and two machine gun crews watch them fidget with their weapons while wearing expressions of barely concealed disdain. Covered by the Bradley, they are all going up the bridge together. Their job is to clear it of anything breathing so that Patterson and his people can do their work. The big five-ton trucks, loaded with tied-down boxes of TNT and C4 covered in plastic tarps, stand idling, surrounded by large, burly men waiting for their turn in the game. Patterson walks over to them and shouts instructions. Immediately, the men begin taking off the tarps, exposing enough explosive to rip the bridge in half.

Todd checks his M4 carbine and waits for the order to move out, chomping at the bit for some action. He saw the way the Guard were looking down their noses at him and wants to show them what he can do.

The firing at the other end of the bridge suddenly increases in volume. Todd wonders what those men up there are seeing, what they are going through.

Paul nudges him, blowing air out of his cheeks.

“This is going to be a shit storm, boy,” he says. “You stay close to me.”

“I’m not worried, Rev,” Todd says with a smile. “If God is with us, who can be against us?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Paul answers. “I think God might be on their side.”

“Got an extra smoke for me, Preacher?” Ray says.

“Here you go, Ray.”

“Thanks. Feel that breeze. Man, that feels good.”

While the two men smoke, Todd moves away a little, irritated. Between their smoking and all the exhaust hanging in the air from the idling vehicles, he is starting to get a headache.

Gunfire crackles in the distance. The survivors crane their necks and squint at the Market Street Bridge, clearly visible to the south. Vehicles and tiny figures are moving on the road deck. The crackle becomes a steady pounding roar. Sparks flash along its length, tracer rounds streaming to contact. Several pale figures fall off the bridge and into the muddy waters below. A rocket explodes at the far side, a flash followed by a deep boom and a mushroom cloud.

There is a hell of a fight going on over there. The other force is in action.

Todd fingers the handset the Army gave him for the mission and keys it with a squeeze.

“Uh, Sarge?”

Todd, unless this is an emergency, get the hell off the commo, over.

“Sorry about that, Sarge.”

Todd hesitates, but cannot help himself. He is already committed. And he cannot resist using the radio.

“I was just, uh, wondering when we’re going to get moving,” he adds. “Um, over.”

You move when I tell you to move. Out.

Todd smiles. He heard Wendy laughing in the background.

Moments later, Sarge gives the command to advance.

It’s show time, folks.

The Bradley begins crawling along the bridge, keeping pace with the Guard unit led by Sergeant Hackett, fanned out across the left three lanes, and the survivors spread out on the right. On the far right, near the edge, Paul looks down at the brown torrents far below. The water seems a good place to be, he muses, especially if the Infected cannot swim. A man could get a boat and disappear. He thinks about how the Ohio is formed by the Allegheny and the Monongahela meeting at Pittsburgh, and travels all the way here; downstream, it feeds the Mississippi. He asks Todd to swap weapons for a moment and uses the close combat optic to get a magnified view of the far shore. It is swarming with Infected as far as the eye can see. Corpses and small islands of plastic garbage float in the water, collecting in piles on the riverbanks. The Infected gather at the water’s edge, drinking among scores of bloated corpses washed up onto the mud.

Paul lowers the rifle, feeling sick, and hands it back to Todd.

“You look like you saw a ghost, Rev,” Todd says. “What’s going on over there?”

“The usual,” Paul tells him.

Behind them, Ray says, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” repeatedly until doubling over, vomiting loudly onto the road.

Sergeant Hackett frowns at the survivors and shakes his head.

Todd flushes with embarrassment and hisses at Ray, “Come on, man.”

Ray wipes his mouth, gasping, and says, “Fuck this.”

“Contact!” one of the soldiers calls out.

The Guard begin shooting. The Bradley slows even further, almost coming to a halt. The survivors slow their pace as well, waiting until the threat is eliminated.

“Clear,” the soldiers shout. The motley little army resumes its advance.

Ray is right to be scared, Paul thinks. The hordes of hell are waiting for us at the other end of this bridge.

As if reading his thoughts, Ray says, “You don’t look too scared, Preacher. What’s your secret?”

“There isn’t any secret, Ray.”

“You think if you die, you go straight to Paradise to be with the virgins, right?”

Paul smiles and answers, “No, boy. I’m not scared because I’m already dead.”

Ray stares at him in disbelief for several moments before shaking his head. “You people are fucking crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” Todd says.

Paul notices Ethan frowning as if trying to solve a difficult puzzle. The Reverend pauses, raising his shotgun. He knows that look well. Todd sees them and shoulders his carbine.

“What you got?” says Todd.

Ethan suddenly roars, “Heads up!”

His voice is drowned out by a flurry of screams and gunshots and curses. Paul looks up in time to see a flash of pale gray flesh. He pulls the trigger and the shotgun discharges with a burst of light and sound, bucking hot in his hands. The little creature flops to the deck, rolling and hissing and bleeding. Paul aims quickly and fires again. The Hopper explodes, leaving a trail of smoking gore splashed across the asphalt.

He turns quickly, sensing motion in the corner of his eye, and cracks another of the little monsters in the skull with the butt of his gun. The thing stumbles away, reeling with vertigo, squealing with confusion and pain until Ray Young pumps several rounds into it with his pistol.

Killing the Infected is hard because they are people. These monsters are something else. Demons. When Paul kills them, he feels he is doing God a favor.

He scans the area with his shotgun, but sees no other threats. The gunfire around him sputters.

“Cease fire, cease fire!” Hackett calls out.

“Man down!” one of the soldiers cries.

“We need a minute to take care of our people,” Hackett shouts at the survivors. “What you got?”

“We’re all okay here,” Paul tells him, waving.

The Guard pause after this announcement and glare at the survivors with open resentment.

“Guess they thought we’d all be dead or something,” Paul says.

“Sorry to disappoint them,” Todd grumbles.

“The Hoppers were up in the cables,” Ethan says sheepishly, shrugging. “These cables that hold the bridge together. They were up there waiting to drop down on us. A pretty basic ambush.”

Paul nods. “Good one, boy.”

Ray laughs, his face as white as a sheet, and spits on the ground. “Batshit crazy,” he says. “But you seem to know your stuff. I’ll give you that.”

Sergeant Hackett pulls a can of spray paint out of a leg pocket, shakes it vigorously, and sprays a bright orange X on the back of one of the two men in his squad who were stung by the Hoppers. The man nods, accepting his death sentence. He will keep fighting but he will have to be killed when it is all over.

The other soldier was apparently stung several times and lies curled up on the ground with his face clenched in mortal pain. He does not appear to be able to move. Ethan looks at him and wonders what must be going through his mind right now. Wonders if the man can feel Infection proliferating in his blood. Can feel his body slowly being converted into an alien life form.

Hackett crouches, talking to the man, patting his shoulder. Then he stands, unholsters his nine-millimeter, and shoots him in the head with a loud report. The other soldiers tense and Ethan thinks, this is it, they’re going to shoot him now and go home, but Hackett growls at them to get back in line and prepare to advance, and they obey.

The Bradley revs its engine and resumes its slow crawl to the center of the bridge. Ethan glances at the other bridge to the south, now almost concealed in a haze of smoke lit by muzzle flashes. As the survivors pass under the overhead WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA sign, the remaining Infected stream toward them in a flying horde, howling.

We kill them and the bridge is ours, Ethan tells himself. This is it.

He raises his rifle, but Paul pushes the barrel down.

“What?”

“Wait,” Paul says, watching Hackett.

The sergeant has called for a halt and to hold fire until his command.

“What’s going on?” Ethan says.

“He’s afraid of hitting the bus and killing our own people,” Paul tells him. “We’re going to let the Infected get close and take them out with aimed shots.”

The Infected are bolting down the bridge, arms splayed at their sides. It takes every bit of strength Ethan has not to empty his rifle at them. Or run like hell.

“Hold the line,” Hackett cries.

This is ridiculous, Ethan realizes. There are too many. If they get close, the survivors are going to have to make almost every shot disable one of them.

He sees no old faces in the swarm. The virus is a harsh mistress, driving its hosts to constant exertion in its never-ending effort to spread Infection. The bodies of the old failed long ago. There are also no children. The Screaming spared the children but Infection did not; the Infected refuse to spread the virus to them, preferring instead to kill and, if they need food, eat them.

What is left are healthy adults who were once Americans and had lives. He sees a man running at him wearing a tattered business suit, his tie still neatly knotted around his throat. A Sikh with a long beard, dressed in a turban and greasy mechanic’s overalls. A cop still wearing his bulky Batman belt, dead radio and all. A beautiful naked woman with a gray face and the remains of a hospital gown dangling from her wrist.

A wave of stench washes over them, the characteristic sour milk stink of the Infected.

“Give the order,” Ethan murmurs.

“He’s got this,” Paul says.

“Why is nobody firing?”

“Don’t panic,” Ray mutters. “If you start panicking, I’m really going to panic.”

“Give the goddamn order already!”

“FIRE!” Hackett screams across the highway.

The line erupts with a volley and the Infected collapse in a red mist and haze of smoke. Ethan blinks, caught off guard, and fires his first shot, shooting the mechanic through the throat. He adjusts his aim and puts two into the woman. He backs up several steps, firing at the businessman, missing until finally shooting out his knees and putting him down.

The line trembles. Suddenly they are all running, streaming back towards the Ohio side of the river, firing as they run, trying to keep distance between themselves and the Infected.

“Halt!” says Hackett, holding out his arms.

The soldiers show good discipline, stopping and firing upon the remaining Infected. The air fills with noise and smoke and cordite. Ethan keeps running. For a moment, Ray runs alongside him and it feels like they are racing. Then Ethan is abruptly jerked back. He struggles, fighting against the hand grabbing at his shirt.

“Fire your rifle,” Paul shouts in his ear.

“Leave me alone!” Ethan screams in a panic, wrenching out of Paul’s grasp and spinning in time to see the swarm bearing down on him, hands outstretched, their howl and sour milk stench turning his legs to cold jelly.

Paul’s shotgun crashes in his ears and a man wearing pajama bottoms collapses in a heap.

Ethan feels drained and he can no longer run. A part of him wants to sit and let the Infected take him. His mind flashes back to Philip, who sat in the cinders of a half-burned convenience store in Wilkinsburg after seeing a newspaper with an old date.

He pictures his daughter’s face.

He screams and fires. The cop’s face explodes and the man continues running, almost decapitated, until collapsing to the ground at Ethan’s feet.

The team returns to the center of the bridge. The survivors walk among the twitching, dying bodies in a slight daze, as if through a dream, their shoes soaked through with the blood of the dead. Killing is exhausting work, draining on all levels, leaving them feeling numb. The wounded Infected crawl after them, coughing blood and growling, until finished off with mercy shots given without a second thought.

The machine gun crews set up at the edges of the bridge, aiming their weapons towards West Virginia. One of the soldiers sneezes loudly on the sharp tang of cordite hanging in the air. There is a sea of Infected on the other side of the two buses up there and if that line fails, the MG teams and the Bradley will become the main line of defense, holding off the horde until the engineers can finish the job. The five-ton trucks are already backing up towards the center line, men clambering along their beds, cutting into the boxes and dumping piles of sandbags on the road.

Ray sighs loudly, feeling strangely blessed. He has been ambushed and rushed and he is standing next to a bunch of morons fooling around with more than four thousand pounds of high-grade explosives, but he is still alive. When Patterson tells him to grab some sandbags and start distributing them along the two lines in the road he drew with chalk, he is almost grateful. Mindless labor he understands. He is perfectly fine with that. A little work won’t kill him.

“Yo, Ray. Ray. Ray Young.”

He turns and sees the Bradley commander gesturing from the open hatch of the vehicle.

“You need something, Sarge?”

“I’ve lost contact with Sergeant Horton. He’s in the right bus. I need a runner to get up there and report back on what’s happening.”

“Christ, Sarge, you can hear the firing from here. They’re still there.”

Sarge glowers and Ray glares back, setting his jaw, feeling mean. He is afraid of death, yes, but not of fighting. He never backs down when it comes to a fight.

Anytime, Sergeant Wilson, he thinks. Anytime you want, you let me know.

“Ray, there’s blood on the windows,” Sarge says. “I need to know if he’s got casualties. I need to know what he’s got in front of him. I need to know if he needs ammunition.”

Ray understands bullying very well. Sarge is not being a bully. It’s a reasonable request.

“All right, all right,” he grumbles.

“You sure it’s okay? Sure you don’t mind?”

“I said all right, I’ll go.”

“Then move your ass, shit for brains!”

Ray grins, checks the magazine on his M16, and starts jogging. After fifty feet, he is already flagging and wheezing a little, his lungs starting to ache.

Christ, Ray, he thinks. You need to get back into shape.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and almost screams.

“What’s up, dude?”

“What are you doing here, kid?”

“Thought you might want some company.”

“Why don’t you just do it and I’ll go back?”

Alarm crosses Todd’s face.

“Sarge wouldn’t like that. Come on, it’ll be cool.”

It’ll be cool. Crazy, stupid kid.

They slow as they approach the bus. Several of the windows are sprayed with blood on the inside. Two of them are open and gun smoke drifts lazily out of them. Dark shapes are moving inside. The constant pop of gunfire is so hot and loud here that it almost feels like a physical barrier.

Ray and Todd glance at each other.

“What do you think?” Todd shouts at him.

“I think we should get this over with.”

Ray pushes open the bus doors and climbs aboard, looking down the aisle and coughing on the smoke. The aisle and seats on the right are filled with soldiers, firing and reloading and roaring obscenities. Dead men occupy several of the seats on the left, their eyes staring at nothing. Empty shell casings clatter onto the floor, already covered in brass and links. There is an atmosphere of madness here. The soldiers wear wild expressions, like they’ve completely lost it.

But they are holding.

He is about to grab one of them when he sees Sergeant Alexander Horton sitting in one of the seats, his eyes bulging with fear and his chest torn out and dripping onto the floor, dead as a doorknob. Mission accomplished, now let’s get the hell out of here.

Todd taps him on the shoulder and points.

Ray looks past the nearest soldiers and sees the horde.

It surges towards him in a vast shrieking swarm, an endless freak show of monsters and zombies converging on the bridge. He spots packs of Hoppers with their absurd walk, occasionally leaping to sting one of the Infected. Giant leering faces swaying on bony stilted legs. Titans waving their tentacles, bellowing. And flowing among them, mindlessly marching and occasionally serving as food for the monsters, thousands of Infected waiters and students and housewives and cashiers and typists and investment bankers.

He wakes up outside the bus, running, gasping for air, trailed by Todd.

Paul rushes to meet them halfway. They fall to their knees together.

“Talk to me,” he says.

“He freaked out,” Todd says. “Paul, there are like a million of them over there.”

“Ray?”

“Tell your boss that Horton is dead,” Ray gasps. “In fact, one out of four soldiers on that bus is dead. And every Infected bastard from Pittsburgh is beating at their door.”

Sarge sits on the Bradley’s turret, aiming his binoculars at the school buses at the end of the bridge and chewing his lip. They have been on the bridge for over an hour, anxiously watching the engineers do their job. Patterson bangs on the armor to get his attention and tells him that he is almost done setting up the charges. The TNT is arranged in two lines in front of the Bradley. All that remains before the show, the engineer explains, is finishing the tamping and pulling back the wires for each series of explosives to where they will be detonated.

Twenty minutes, he says.

Roger that, LT.

The distance between the Bradley and the end of the bridge is about three hundred meters. Sarge has the Bradley’s battlecarry—pre-selected range and ammunition—set up, establishing a kill zone around the buses. He looks at his watch nervously, sweating in the afternoon sun.

He sees Todd, working with the other survivors and Guard to pass sandbags along a human chain, and waves.

Yeah, Sarge?

Sarge smiles. For a moment, he forgot he has radio communication with the survivors.

He keys his handset and says, “Todd, I want you to go up to the buses and tell those boys we need twenty more minutes from them, over.”

Cool! Todd, out!

Todd snatches his carbine and takes off at a sprint.

He hears a colossal crash of thunder and looks south. The center of the Market Street Bridge, shrouded by a drifting cloud of black smoke, is collapsing into the Ohio River.

The soldiers let up a ragged cheer. Sarge grunts with satisfaction. Half the mission is over. But it will not be successful until they finish the job and destroy this bridge.

He returns his binoculars to the buses. He sees fresh streaks of blood on the windows, the dead propped up in the seats, as if waiting for their next stop.

Just hang on a little longer, he thinks. He marvels at the bravery and endurance of the men inside those vehicles. He cannot even imagine what they must be going through in there.

The engineers are shouting in alarm. Sarge shifts his gaze and sees one of the Towering Things leering down at the bus, ropes of drool leaking between its massive teeth.

The monster’s tongue lashes out. After several moments, it pulls the broken body of a National Guardsmen into its chomping mouth. The monster bites down, chewing greedily with a blissful expression, its eyes closed and leaking tears. The creature is so happy it is crying.

Another Towering Thing appears on the right, chortling. Its tongue lashes out and a man screams.

The bus is moving.

“Todd, get back here now,” Sarge says.

But I’m almost there, over.

“Get back here now,” Sarge roars. “The line is breaking.”

The gunfire sputters and stops. Soldiers emerge from the buses and race towards the safety of the machine guns at the center of the bridge. One of the monsters lashes out over the roof of the bus and grips a fleeing soldier by the ankle, yanking him up and into the mouth, the man screaming and firing his weapon until the teeth crush his body into paste.

The bus is moving, swinging open like a door. Something big is pushing it. Tentacles wave in the air behind the vehicle. One of the Giants. A limb as thick as a tree trunk, knotted with thick, pale muscle, emerges. Moments later, the behemoth pushes its way past and lumbers onto the bridge, bellowing like a foghorn.

“Prepare for action,” Sarge says into his handset. “Hold the line!”

So close, he thinks. We are so close to winning this.

He drops into the telescoped seat, lowers it, and seals the hatch.

Immunity 1, this is Immunity actual, over, he hears over his headset.

“Go ahead, LT,” Sarge says.

I still need fifteen minutes, over.

“You got your fifteen, out.” Sarge shouts, “Get those MGs up!”

Moments later, the .30 cal machine guns placed at the edges of the bridge start firing, the tracers streaming down the causeway and converging on the bellowing titan, which staggers back a few steps, its massive head trembling. The Infected swarm around the feet of the monster, racing towards the center of the bridge.

“Hackett, I want that MG fire focused on the foot mobiles,” Sarge says.

Roger that, Sarge.

“What about us?” Wendy says.

“On the way,” Sarge says, squeezing the trigger.

The rig shudders slightly as the cannon fires, BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP, empty shell casings spilling down the Bradley’s chest. The HE rounds crash into the Giant and the area around it, exploding in a series of flashes.

“Target,” Wendy says, letting Sarge know that his aim is good. “Target.”

“It’s like shooting at a barn,” Sarge mutters.

Immunity 1, this is Immunity actual, we’re about ten from detonation. How copy?

“Solid, LT,” Sarge says. “Ten minutes to detonation.”

The Giant collapses, shivering, gushing blood.

“Target destroyed,” Wendy announces.

Good work, Steve says from the driver’s station.

“Mark the time, Wendy. Officer or not, if the LT is not ready in ten, I’m going to put my boot up his ass.”

Smoke billows at the end of the bridge. The horde comes running out of the smoke, throwing themselves into the machine gun fire, driven by their endless rage.

“Shifting fire to area target,” he murmurs, switching to the coax MG. “On the way.”

Sarge keeps the reticle in the same place, fires a burst of ten to fifteen rounds horizontally across the target area, then another diagonally, then another horizontally, in a repeating Z pattern.

“Jesus,” Wendy says, almost retching.

Hundreds of rounds fall among the ranks of the Infected, cutting them down like wheat under a scythe. The bodies collapse in groups, often in pieces. Smoking fingers and hands and heads and feet and legs fly through the air in a bloody mist. Just as often, the bodies literally disintegrate under the withering machine gun fire, flesh and bone exploding wetly across the asphalt.

Ten minutes, Sarge reminds himself. Ten minutes is a long time. But we can do it. The soldiers and the survivors can handle the Infected, while the Bradley can handle the larger monsters.

He freezes, wincing, as the Bradley fills with a hellish roar that he remembers all too well.

The monster’s screaming cascades across the bridge. The shooting sputters for a moment as the soldiers and survivors flinch in primordial terror. The screaming fades and the firing resumes while the engineers begin removing sandbags and rows of TNT blocks in front of the Bradley. The rig revs its engine and trembles like a bull stomping its feet.

“What in the hell is that?” Ray says.

“We don’t know,” Paul tells him.

“But you’ve met.”

“Yeah, we’ve met. We call it the Demon.”

For several moments, nothing happens. Thick clouds of smoke hover at the end of the bridge in a thick haze, concealing the buses and the Infected. The Infected have stopped coming for the moment. Then the monster screams again, rending the air with its pain and drawing the smoke clouds into strange swirling patterns.

Todd catches a glimpse of a massive horned thing. Then it emerges, a thickly muscled mass of armor and spikes and giant horns instead of eyes set almost directly over its wide chomping mouth. Enormous membranous wings. Todd can feel each of its steps sending a tiny vibration up his spine. The thing is so ugly and terrifying that his eyes glance off of it.

The Bradley’s cannon begins firing. The Demon shudders, stumbling under the blows, but does not appear harmed. It screams, blanking out Todd’s mind for a moment, literally eliminating his memory of the last few seconds, and advances. The smoke follows it in swirling patterns, clinging to its limbs.

The engineers have removed the array of charges from the Bradley’s path and Patterson is shouting into his mike. The rig jolts forward. Todd reads boom stick on the side of its turret as it roars full speed towards the Demon, its cannon pounding.

“What are they doing?” Todd demands, running after the Bradley and waving his arms. “What the hell are you doing?”

Paul grips his arm and pulls him back. “Let them go, Todd.”

“No! They’ll be on the wrong side of the bridge when it goes up!”

The Bradley disappears into the clouds of smoke swirling at the end of the bridge. The thick haze lights up with flashes of cannon fire, the reports echoing back as booming thunder. Then it is gone. The engineers are already returning the charges to the road.

“No!” Todd screams. “No!”

Waves of Infected pour out of the smoke, squealing and howling.

“They had no choice,” Paul shouts into his ear. “Patterson’s not ready and we don’t know what that thing can do to us. We’ve got to finish this, boy!”

One of the behemoths lumbers towards them, groaning under the MG fire, then roars and gallops forward blindly with a sudden, heart-stopping burst of speed until crashing through the rail and falling into the river below.

Ray appears at their side, shooting.

“Fire your fucking guns!” he cries, emptying his rifle into the swarm.

The Towering Things step ponderously among the Infected, their giant faces grinning.

“Shaw chonk?”

“Roomy lactate.”

“Shaw chonk mute chonk.”

“Fire in the hole!”

Trailing a line of smoke, an AT4 rocket streams from the Guard unit, scoring a hit on one of the Towering Things. The top of its head suddenly erupts in a geyser of blood and brains.

“Holy shit,” Todd says in amazement.

He drains his magazine, reloads, fires again.

Hoppers drop down from the cables onto one of the MG teams.

“They’re above us again,” Ethan yells into the noise, firing into the air.

“Got it,” Todd says, adjusting his aim to shoot at the things clambering up the cables. Moments later, two of the creatures fall to the ground with a wet, meaty sound.

The soldiers are screaming and shooting their rifles as the Hoppers leap into their midst, fangs bared and stingers erect. Ethan sees more climbing the cables.

Ray tugs on Paul’s arm. “We got to fall back or we’re screwed.”

“You go, Ray. I’m not moving until this bridge is down.”

“You may already be dead, Preacher, but I’m not.”

“You will be if we don’t blow this thing, understand? We all will!”

Todd glances behind them and sees the engineers running after the retreating five-ton trucks, joined by some of the soldiers. Patterson is backing away slowly at a safe distance, uncoiling wire. He waves at them. The charges are in place, tamped, primed and ready to explode.

Hackett blows his whistle, calling the retreat. It’s time to blow the bridge.

Another AT4 missile zooms down the span, detonating on the far side. A score of Infected disintegrate in the blast, raining blood and flesh on the rest. A severed arm comes to a skidding halt at the survivors’ feet.

“Now can we go?” Ray asks.

The survivors turn and sprint after Patterson, who is already splicing the firing wire to the blasting machine rapidly with expert fingers.

Several engineers are waving at them.

“Fire in the hole!” they shout.

“Get down, get down!”

Ray tackles Todd to the ground as the blasting machine sends an electric pulse through the firing wire and each of the electric blasting caps wired in series in the TNT.

The blasting caps explode, detonating nearly a ton of dynamite in the far right lanes.

The bridge erupts behind them with a cataclysmic peal of thunder. The bodies of the survivors leave the ground as the shockwave hiccups through the bridge. The massive jolt tears the cables, sending them flying through the air like the metal tentacles of a colossal beast, causing one of the towers to shift and slump. The sky goes dark overhead as a massive wave of dust billows over them. Then another section of TNT erupts, sending a second shock wave through the bridge. The ground bucks under them again, and for a moment if feels as if they are all falling into the water.

After the third explosion, the bridge falls silent. Todd raises his head and looks behind him, coughing on dust. The world is dark and filled with swirling particles and he cannot see five feet in any direction. His ears ring loudly. Through it, he can hear the tramp of thousands of feet, sense monstrous shapes moving through the clouds of dust, searching for them. The Demon screams, the sound vibrating through the concrete deck. The Bradley’s cannon booms in response.

“We did it,” he rasps.

“Almost,” Ethan says. “That was the stripping charge. Now we have to go back and finish it.”

The Demon punches the Bradley with a crash that reverberates through the hull and the bodies of the crew. The thing is constantly circling the vehicle one step ahead of the turret. Wendy presses the fast turret switch, increasing the speed of its response, and wrenches the joystick, suddenly bringing the monster’s body into view. As the reticle passes over the Demon’s spiky flank, Sarge fires the cannon point blank with armor-piercing rounds. The monster stomps away with a series of deep booms, roaring in pain. They catch a glimpse of its tail terminating in a spiked ball, then it is gone. Moments later, they hear the Infected pounding everywhere on the hull, trying to get in. The LO AMMO indicator light pops on and begins flashing. Sarge overrides the system, but has no target.

“Where is it?” Wendy cries. “We almost had it!”

boom boom boom boom boom boom

The Demon is rushing them from the right on stomping feet. Wendy yanks on the stick, pulling the turret as fast as it will go. The monster roars and punches the hull and she blacks out for a moment, seeing stars. When she comes to, she cannot remember why she is here.

“I have no shot!” Sarge tells her. “Move the turret!”

She frowns at him. Why is he yelling at her? Suddenly, she remembers. She pulls on the stick. Sarge fires again and curses. The sear indicator light is blinking.

“What’s wrong?” she says.

“Misfire!”

Sarge presses the misfire button, returning the 25-mm gun bolt to the cocked position, but the sear light continues to blink.

“It’s still jammed,” he says, staring at the instruments in helpless rage.

“What now?”

“Now…”

boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

“Look out!”

BOOM

The next punch makes her vomit against the instrument panel.

“Sorry,” she moans, wiping her mouth and wagging her head to fight the continuing nausea.

“What?” Sarge says. “What’s going on?”

“What do we do now?”

“Where’s Randy?” he says, laughing.

“Sarge, knock it off!”

She shoves at him twice, hard. The Bradley commander stares at her blankly, then shakes his head to clear it. He presses a button and another light pops on. Wendy recognizes it. Sarge is dropping all of their smoke grenades at once.

“Steve,” he says into the intercom. “Reverse! Steve! Back the hell up!”

Wilco, Sarge.

The rig jolts backward on screeching treads as the Demon stumbles through the thick white smoke, screaming, looking for them.

“We still got the TOW,” Sarge says.

The monster emerges from the smoke, its head bobbing as if smelling the air, and then roars and charges them.

“Fire it now!” Wendy screams.

“We can’t,” he tells her.

They hear a series of thuds from behind as the Bradley slams into the Infected during its retreat.

The Launcher UP and TOW indicator lights are on. The TOW launcher is deployed and ready to fire missiles from its firing tubes. The MISSILE TUBE 1 indicator light is on, indicating its missile is ready to be fired.

“It takes sixty-five meters to arm,” Sarge explains. “We need distance.”

“Go, Steve, go,” Wendy says, virtually praying to the driver to go faster.

The Demon gallops at them, its enormous wings outstretched and flapping, dissipating the smoke in seconds and fully revealing its monstrous form. Suddenly, it stops, jerking its head back to lick the bleeding wounds on its flank.

Sarge presses the arming switch for the TOW.

“Put the reticle center mass on that abomination and keep it there.”

The monster rolls lithely back to its feet and resumes its chase.

“Come on, come on,” Sarge adds, sweating.

“We need more distance.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we do.”

Wendy looks over her shoulder but there is no back window, no rear view mirror. Somewhere, behind them, Patterson blew two cratered trenches into the bridge, each more than two meters deep. She is not sure the Bradley will be able to drive over them. If the rig falls into one, she is not sure they will be able to get it back out.

The thought fills her with claustrophobic panic.

“Um, Sarge?”

“On the way,” he says, and presses the firing switch on the gunner’s right control handle.

The TOW missile flies down the bridge and strikes the Demon in the chest in a fraction of a second, detonating in a burst of light.

“Target!” Wendy shouts, laughing and crying.

Cowabunga! Steve says.

The MISSILE TUBE 1 light is flashing. Immediately, the TOW system indicator lights burst across the board: TRCKR, CGE, PWR SUP. The TOW system is failing across the board.

The monster lies on the bridge keening and thrashing in a widening lake of thick black blood, one of its wings broken and flapping, one of its arms dangling by a few ropes of cartilage.

“I think we killed it,” Sarge says, blowing air out of his cheeks.

“Thank God,” Wendy says. “What now?”

Swarms of Infected pour around the dying demon, racing towards the Bradley.

Sarge selects the coax machine gun, arms it and puts his finger over the firing switch.

“Now we hold them off here as long as we can,” Sarge tells her, adding, “On the way.”

The soldiers gather around Patterson and Hackett, filthy, their faces drawn and tired, their eyes wild, their hair and uniforms plastered with sweat and coated with white dust. Several wince and massage body parts where they have been stung and are even now gestating another generation of monsters.

“It’s just us now,” Hackett says. He reaches into his kit, pulls out the can of orange spray paint, and throws it over the side.

The survivors gather at the edge of the crowd, looking in. Paul coughs on the dust, feeling a hundred years old, tired in his bones. He removes a wilted-looking cigarette from his battered pack of Winstons and lights up, sighing.

Hackett spits on the ground and glares at the lieutenant. “LT, I need an honest-to-God, no-shit assessment on what it’s going to take to finish this.”

“I need thirty minutes up there to lay the second round of charges,” Patterson says.

Hackett nods slowly, apparently weighing fight or flight.

“They’re coming, Sergeant,” one of the soldiers says.

“Sergeant, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to say,” another tells him.

“Me, too,” says one of the engineers.

All of the men who have been stung want to stay and do their duty. They have literally nothing else to live for. They know that within several hours, they will be dead.

They want to die for something.

“We still got the Bradley up there,” one of them says. “I can hear it shooting.”

“And the MG,” another offers.

“I still got a few rounds left for the AT4.”

Paul blinks, realizing that most of the men here have been infected. They are dying. For them, the search for the meaning of life is over. Now they want to find meaning in death.

“We also don’t have a lot of bullets left,” Ray points out. “What are we supposed to kill them with?”

Hackett ignores him. “Your orders, sir?” he asks Patterson.

“I want you to get my team to the center of the bridge and hold it for thirty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hooah,” the soldiers shout with hoarse throats.

They scramble for one of the five-ton trucks and climb onto the back among the boxes of shaped C4 charges, sitting with their legs dangling over the sides, rifles loaded with safeties off.

The truck revs its engine and starts down the highway with a burst of exhaust, speeding towards the onrushing horde. Paul stands on the back, leaning over the roof of the cab, blinking as the dust rushes into his face.

“You may want to start praying again, Ray,” he says. “Say another ‘hail Mary.’”

“I gave that up,” Ray tells him. “I think you were right.”

“What about?”

“God’s on their side, Preacher.”

“Something’s working,” Paul says, smiling grimly. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

Ray snorts.

The air fills with the pop of aimed rifle fire as the truck wades into the horde and the soldiers begin clearing the bridge.

At the center, Hackett blows his whistle and the soldiers jump down from the truck and charge. “Go, go, go!” he roars.

The soldiers fan out, covering the MG, giving it time to deploy. Moments later, the air fills with its staccato bark. A rocket streams into the open mouth of one of the Towering Things, exploding inside the massive head, smoke pouring from its eyes and mouth as it topples to the ground. The dust is settling and they see the Bradley among hills of dead and dying Infected, its coax machine gun still chattering, sending waves of Infected toppling to the ground.

The engineers drop ladders into the trenches and begin placing the charges, Patterson priming them with blasting caps connected by firing wire unreeled from a cardboard spool. The soldiers hurdle the trenches and deploy in a firing line, occasionally shooting but letting the machine guns do the hard work for now.

The minutes tick by.

The Bradley suddenly stops firing.

The vehicle is either suffering another malfunction or, more likely, is simply out of ammo. The endless horde surges around it, rushing towards the soldiers. Tentacled titans and towering froglike things and hopping monkeys and squat crablike creatures with enormous clacking scissor hands mingle with the Infected—thousands of them, needy, wanting, hungry.

Hackett roars an order. The soldiers stand and fire in a volley that sends the front ranks of the Infected crashing to the ground in a lake of blood.

“Reloading!” the MG crew calls out.

“Pour it on, boys, and make it hot!” Hackett roars, his M16 popping.

Tracers stream through the smoky haze in a pounding roar of gunfire. Todd aims center mass at a woman running at him and fires a burst, knocking her over. He spares a quick glance down the line and sees fewer than twenty tired men screaming like maniacs and firing rifles. Beyond, at the edge of the bridge, the MG team feverishly reloads its gun.

He aims at a man running at him in hospital scrubs and fires again. His vision shakes; the man falls. Nearby, Ray shoots on full auto, the rifle spitting empty shell casings and puffs of smoke, while screaming every obscenity he knows. The rifle suddenly jams. He throws it away, still roaring his endless string of profanity, and yanks two handguns out of their holsters, emptying them at the horde that is now less than twenty yards away and coming fast.

The Hoppers leap into the air with hisses, landing on several of the soldiers and sending them toppling back into the trench. A tongue lashes down, wrapping around the machine gunner and yanking him roughly into the air to land in a salivating mouth.

The Infected are dropping like flies while the rest close the remaining distance and surge against the firing line with a general howl.

Their horrible sour milk stench fills Todd’s nostrils moments before he feels himself shoved roughly to the ground. Shoes and bloody bare feet slam into his body. He glances up and sees the hateful faces of the Infected glaring down at him, shrieking.

It’s not fair, he tells himself, gasping at the lancing pain. He wishes he had never come on this mission. He wishes had had stayed. It’s not fair. It’s so stupid.

He curls up into a ball, covering his head with his arms. The Infected scream down at him.

Their chests explode and they flop to the ground in a smoking ruin.

“Don’t you touch that boy,” Paul roars, chambering another round and firing. Instantly, more bodies collapse all around Todd, spraying him with blood.

“ROOMY,” one of the monsters bellows over their heads.

“Don’t you touch that boy, I said!”

“Get him up,” Ethan says, rushing in with his rifle.

“We’ll cover you!” Ray says, firing with both fists.

Todd opens his eyes, his vision blurred by hot tears, and sees Paul’s face.

“Hey, Rev,” he rasps.

“You’re all right now, son. I’ll get you out of here.”

They hear a rumbling sound they can feel deep in their chests. Paul suddenly gasps, his eyes wide with recognition.

“You all right, Rev?”

Paul smiles weakly.

“God bless you, Kid—”

He suddenly lurches high into the air and into the gaping maw of one of the Towering Things, which bites down with a sickening crunch, chuckling deep in its throat.

“No!” Ray screams, firing his pistol up at the thing.

“The legs!” Ethan calls to him, shooting at the Infected. “Shoot it in the legs!”

“Rev?” Todd says, trying to stand, his eyes flooded with tears.

Ray nods and rushes at the Towering Thing, shooting down the Infected running at him until standing almost directly underneath the monster.

“Die, you piece of shit,” he says, taking careful aim and shooting out one of the thing’s knobby knees.

The Towering Thing squeals, its leg collapsing under its enormous weight, and falls into the horde with a meaty splash.

Another sound pierces the air.

Hackett is blowing his whistle.

Ethan and Ray and Todd leap across the trenches, trailing clouds of dust, the Infected spilling into the open pits behind them, squealing and clawing at the walls. Todd stumbles on the other side, screaming for the Reverend, Ray half dragging him.

“Go ahead, I’ll cover!” Ethan says, turning and walking slowly backwards while pouring lead into the snarling faces of their pursuers.

On his left, Hackett and several soldiers run toward him from the opposite lanes, chased by a group of Infected. He slaps a fresh mag into the rifle, chambers a round and fires several bursts, cutting down the pursuers.

I think I’m finally getting the hang of this, Ethan thinks, and turns again to provide cover fire. Constantly aware of the other survivors, he wonders where Paul is, and feels a sudden stab in his heart as the fact of his friend’s death strikes him again.

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.

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.