The Infection

EPILOGUE: On the Road

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It should have been me.”

“No,” he says. “It shouldn’t.”

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

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

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

Maybe she will find it on the road.

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

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

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

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

They agreed instantly to come with him.

“I believe in you, Toby,” she says.

“It’s just us now,” he tells her.

“We’ll find others and start again.”

“A tribe, right?”

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

“A tribe,” she agrees, and sighs.

“We’ll be together.”

“No matter what.”

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

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

“Sarge!” Steve calls out.

“What’s up?”

The gunner grins at him. “Listen.”

The pounding of rotors in the distance, growing louder.

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

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

“What is it? Toby, what is it?”

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

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

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

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

“See that?” he says, sounding wistful.

Behind the first formation, another approaches, five black dots in the sky heading west.

Wendy nods, swallowing hard. Tears roll down her cheeks and she smiles.

“Look at them go,” he adds.

America’s far-flung armies are coming home.

The fight is not over. It is only getting started.

The counterattack has begun.