The Infection

FLASHBACK: Wendy Saslove

The Screaming changed everything. Millions of people lay helpless and twitching on the ground. Thousands died in accidents. Fires burned out of control. Entire towns suffered without electricity or running water. Devastated survivors walked numbly through the streets. Distribution of everything from food to Internet access to Social Security checks was completely disrupted. Entire industries such as insurance folded overnight. Government and businesses struggled to continue operating as one out of five people simply fell down, broke everything in the process, and took all their knowledge with them in a massive brain drain. The country reeled from the shock.

Seventy thousand people fell down in Pittsburgh alone. The police department was devastated. Roughly three hundred out of nearly nine hundred police officers had either fallen down or simply taken their guns home, locked their doors and refused to return to duty. Burglaries were up as people broke into homes abandoned by the fallen. Arson was rampant as communities, terrified of another outbreak, burned homes with the screamers still inside. Frightened people were taking their guns to the local grocery store, which devolved into scenes of panic buying and looting. The cops remaining on the job dug in, marked their territory and held it with force. They cracked skulls and exchanged gunfire with street gangs and vigilantes. They cleared the streets and protected firefighters and helped to recover the fallen. The police stations became forts in hostile territory. They were used to dealing with murderers and drug dealers and other criminals. Now everybody was the enemy.

The cops worked around the clock. In just three days, they already made a difference. The power was on, food was being delivered to stores, and the fires were under control. For now, that was enough. They were gearing up for another big push to recover the fallen. Humans can live up to nine weeks or longer without food, but cannot go more than about six days without water. Thousands were still missing and had to be found and transported to one of the new emergency clinics as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, people continued to gather at the hospitals each day. Most were pilgrims searching for missing loved ones. It was common to find screamers without any identification on them as their wallets were stolen. Sometimes, screamers were found without any clothing at all, as they had been raped while lying helpless on the ground. The pilgrims arrived filled with hope, clutching photos of friends and family, and stood in line all day waiting their turn to go inside, sit in front of a computer, and try to track down their loved ones in the SEELS database. As a counterpoint, several hundred people also arrived each day shouting and carrying angry signs and concealed weapons. Terrified of another outbreak, they demanded stronger isolation measures for the fallen, calling for their removal to quarantine camps outside the city.

These two groups of people naturally hated each other and were kept separated by an aggressive line of police officers mounted on horses. A line of riot police guarded the front of the hospital, intimidating in their black body armor, helmets with clear plastic visors, yard-long hardwood batons and tactical riot shields. Three-man arrest teams formed a second line.

Wendy was in one of these teams. In the old days, the cops used to form a line and charge, bashing skulls until the street emptied, but the tactics changed over the years. Now snatch teams were sent into the crowd to strategically arrest troublemakers and remove them from the scene. The idea was to prevent a protest from turning into a riot that could suddenly rage out of control. They barely had the resources to counter protests. A large-scale riot might spread and become the end of law and order in Pittsburgh. They had arrested eight people already, rushing into the crowd behind her body shield while the two men with her took down the troublemaker they wanted.

Word was being passed down the line that the new Mayor had had enough of the protests and was cutting off all public access to the hospital at four o’clock.

The cop on Wendy’s left, Joe Wylie, shook his head and spit.

“Bullshit,” he said. “This ain’t no Nazi state. Shit, I lost people in the Screaming, too. These people have a right to find their family.”

“We don’t have the manpower,” said Archie Ward. “Or, in Barbie’s case here, girl power.”

Wendy said nothing, staring forward wearing an expression of sullen professionalism. She knew better than to take the bait. She chewed her gum.

Archie added, “The Mayor’s right. These people here tie up how many cops every day? We don’t have enough people. We’re running on empty, Joe.”

“I don’t mind the overtime. And right is right.”

The sergeant was shouting into his megaphone, telling the crowds to disperse.

They refused, screaming, No!

Another sergeant, the overweight old cop they called John-John, sang out in a comical World Wrestling Federation voice, “Get ready to rumble!”

“What do you think, Barbie?” Joe said.

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Wendy said, shrugging. “We got our orders.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Joe said.

“Jesus Christ, rookie,” Archie said. “You’re either the dumbest broad or the best politician I’ve ever met. Either way, you’ll go far at the Pittsburgh PD.”

The words hurt her, as usual, but she would never give the other cops the satisfaction of knowing just how much they did. Her expression never changed just as her opinions were always neutral and noncommittal.

The line of mounted police cantered off of the street. The phalanx of cops in front of the hospital pulled on their gas masks. Some began clashing their batons against their shields, and the rest joined in. Wendy knew these men. Despite their sympathies for one or even both factions, they were hoping the crowd would refuse to disperse and they could let off some steam stomping ass. Joe and Archie were grinning, bashing in a warlike rhythm.

The cops began firing tear gas grenades, which burst in brilliant white clouds. The crowds recoiled from the growing pockets of swirling cloud, people crying and sneezing and gasping and coughing in agony as the gas attacked the mucous membranes in their eyes, nose, mouth and lungs. The cops lowered their visors and crouched, tense, waiting for the signal.

Wendy felt a strong hand grab her ass and squeeze.

“Too bad you’re not a screamer, Barbie,” Joe Wylie said, his voice muffled by his gas mask. “I’d keep you in the spare bedroom.”

Even now, even after the Screaming, even after the thousands of smaller but equally horrible tragedies that followed, some of these men were still trying to break her. She wasn’t broken yet.

“If you ever touch me again, I swear I’ll fucking take you out,” she told him.

Joe grinned. “So there is somebody in there behind the mask. Nice to meet you finally.”

Wendy had attended the Training Academy two years ago with forty other cadets. All cadets experienced some type of degrading hazing treatment, and with three out of four police officers being men, they were hard on women—especially a beautiful young woman like her, making her scrub toilets and clean laundry and fetch coffee. She had taken it all in stride, excelling in firearms training, certification with the TASER, CPR and first aid, high-risk traffic stop training and the rest—all of it. The other cadets had constantly hit on her but she’d had neither the time nor interest in taking romantic risks with men. But then she met Dave Carver. Dave was different. He was a detective—older, experienced, adversarial against the world. He smelled like her cop dad used to smell before he retired, like cigarettes and black coffee. Dave was also different than the young men her own age in that he seemed so sure of himself. He could take or leave Wendy’s looks while seeming to be engaged by her personality and energy. He told her stories about drug dealers and bureaucratic hassles and the time he used his gun during a liquor store robbery. It was only later that she learned that he was married and that she had a reputation.

Dave’s friends were hard men and they could be cruel. After graduation from the Academy, she got assigned to her zone and started doing real police work. But the hazing had not stopped. Instead, it had spread, like infection, throughout Patrol, men and women alike. Through bad luck or somebody’s malice, she had been assigned to the same station as Dave Carver and his friends.

Wendy had worn a mask ever since.

The whistles blew. The line of cops surged forward and crashed into the crowd. The batons rose and fell, driving people back or beating them to the ground. The line quickly dissolved as everyone became lost in the expanding white clouds of gas.

Wendy slammed into a man with her shield, knocking him back. She raised her baton at a couple holding handkerchiefs over their faces, warning them off. People were shouting at each other in the smoke. Wendy felt detached, as if moving through a surreal dream. The desperate faces flashed by, weeping and coughing and screaming. She swung her baton at a man who stumbled away, blood pouring into his eyes from a jagged tear in his scalp. He did not seem to be critically injured, so she continued to press forward, quickly forgetting about him.

As far as the police were concerned, she was at the bottom of the pecking order. But she was still better than these fleeing people. In the larger pecking order of society, they were all lower than her. She was cop. They were civilian.

She heard a deafening bang that she instantly recognized as a gunshot. She flinched as the sound was followed by the roar of multiple shots. Moments later, Joe Wylie staggered out of the clouds, his plastic body shield riddled with blackened holes, and crumpled to the ground in a heap.

Wendy pulled him out of the chaos until other cops hoisted him onto a stretcher and rushed him into the hospital. By the time the gas cleared, they found two other critically wounded cops lying on the ground among the moaning protestors. The cops had identified four shooters; they were dragging the one they’d caught behind some nearby bushes for swift justice.

These were not ordinary times.

The sergeant saw her watching them, gripped her arm with a hand like iron, and pulled her roughly away, towards the police station, which was only four blocks east of the hospital.

“I’m assigning you to recovery operations until the end of your shift, Saslove,” he barked. “Check dispatch to find out where the teams are going tonight. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

Wendy walked to the police station, dumped her riot gear, and caught an hour’s sleep under a desk. For the next twelve hours, she looked for screamers. Her search team found sixteen, half as many as the night before, and one-fifth as many as the night before that. At six in the morning, exhausted but buzzing with coffee, she returned to the police station and entered Patrol. Some of the cops were gathered around a TV set, shaking their heads. Riots in the western states. A wave of violence spreading inland from the coast. Most of the military and National Guard were still deployed overseas and in disarray from the Screaming, with only some units having been flown back to the homeland. The police was the main line of defense and in city after city, that line was breaking. Not here, the officers swore. They were tired and angry but they were holding their ground and they were not going anywhere unless it was on a stretcher.

“Turn that shit off,” somebody yelled, and they did. The windows were open and a cool breeze wafted through the big squad room. Somebody produced a bottle of scotch and was sharing splashes in Styrofoam cups. “Get ready,” he was saying. “They need you out there. Get ready.” Wendy was bone tired and covered in bruises and her jaw and skull still ached from earlier in the night, when somebody clocked her while her team intervened to prevent the looting of the Whole Foods store.

John-John handed her a cup. “You done good, rook,” he said, winking and punching her lightly on the shoulder. “Keep it up.”

You done good, rook.

She smiled, her jaw aching.

“Throw in a blowjob and he’ll make you Officer of the Month,” one of the patrolmen said, sneering. He flinched as another cop jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow. “What’d you do that for?”

“Lay off,” the other cop said. “She’s one of us.”

John-John had raised his cup and was intoning loudly to all of them, “Sometimes it seems the only time a cop is called a hero is when he takes a bullet. Well, today, we got three heroes. That’s right. But I say you’re all heroes, every day, and especially right now, in the middle of this goddamn apocalypse. So here’s to our guys still in critical condition at Mercy Hospital, and here’s to all of you ugly dicks who won’t give up. You guys are my heroes. Here’s to you, Pittsburgh’s finest.”

She’s one of us.

The cops emptied their cups and held them up for refills. Somebody turned a radio on, trying to make it a party. Everybody stood around awkwardly in their uniforms and Batman belts, holding their drinks. The alcohol burned Wendy’s throat, making her feel alert and loose at the same time. Bracing. One of the communication dispatchers entered the room, blustering, “I need somebody to take a domestic disturbance and everybody’s committed. We’re getting flooded with calls.”

“Give it to the commander,” one of the cops called out, and everybody laughed.

The dispatcher was rifling through his slips. “Sound of breaking glass on the street,” he read. “Man heard screaming in alley.”

The officers chanted, Tell it to the commander! until the dispatcher left, red-faced and roaring. The cops cheered. They were dead tired. They needed a break. Wendy had just finished two twelve-hour shifts back to back. In just a few hours, she and the other police officers in the room would have to pull another twelve-hour shift. Until then, they were officially off duty.

The radio was playing an old song that reminded her of summers as a child. A very old song recorded before she was born. Some of the younger cops were moving to the music, nodding and shifting from one foot to the next, trying to unwind. Wendy could not remember the band but the song took her back to one particular summer when she was ten years old, maybe eleven. She remembered riding a bike down the driveway past her dad, who stood hunched over the open hood of his big police cruiser, working on the engine. Her bike’s handlebars had multicolor tassels that streamed in the wind. She remembered the sound of lawn mowers and the smell of fresh-cut grass. A boy kissed her that summer. His name was Dale. There was a tire swing hanging by a thick rope from an old oak tree in his backyard and he kissed her there. The memory gave her butterflies. For a few seconds, she fell asleep on her feet.

She opened her eyes. Men were shouting in the foyer. Several of the officers looked at each other, some frowning, others laughing. A scream pierced the air. Everybody froze and glared at the doors. More screaming. Stomping feet. The cops bristled.

The Raspberries, Wendy thought. That was the band.

The doors burst open and people began running into Patrol, grabbing at the nearest officers, who shoved them back with shouted obscenities. More entered the big room, panting, wearing paper gowns and hospital scrubs. The cops flailed with their batons while others tried to cuff the assailants. More rushed in, howling and baring their teeth. The cops nearest Wendy dropped their drinks and reached for their batons. Wendy did the same.

“Son of a bitch bit me!”

Cops were going down. Wendy saw a man bite a cop’s arm and shake his head like a dog. She struck the man with her baton and he stumbled away. The cop sank to his knees, shaking, his eyes glazed, and toppled onto the floor. Everywhere it was hand to hand fighting. The batons rose and fell but for every attacker clubbed to the ground, more took his place.

John-John gripped her arm.

“Go tell the lieutenant we’re under attack,” he roared. “Go, rook, go!”

She ran down the hall and entered the Detectives section. A man instantly grabbed her in a headlock. She struggled but other hands held her. She heard guns crashing back in Patrol.

“Stop struggling, Wendy,” she heard a familiar voice.

She opened her eyes and saw Dave Carver surrounded by a group of burly detectives in cheap suits and bad ties, glaring and flushed and breathing heavily. They reeked of stale coffee.

“Let go of me,” she cried. “I have to see the lieutenant.”

“He’s busy,” one of the detectives sneered. “What’s going on in Patrol, rookie?”

“They’re killing them. I’m serious—they’re killing them!”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s drunk. Smell it on her breath.”

“Who the hell is shooting in the station, rookie?”

“Just let her talk!”

The detectives released her. Wendy caught her breath and said, “We’re under attack. Civilians dressed in hospital clothes. They had no weapons.” The truth suddenly struck her. “They’re screamers. Probably from Mercy. They’ve woken up and they’re crazy.”

Dave nodded. “How many?”

“Forty. Fifty. Maybe a hundred. I don’t know. Maybe more. It’s wall to wall in there. Every patrol officer was committed.”

They suddenly realized the screaming and gunshots in Patrol had been replaced by growling in hundreds of throats. A fist banged on the door, startling them. Then another.

“This is bullshit,” one of the detectives said, paling.

The other detectives glared at the door, their fists clenched.

Dave said, “Is everybody armed?”

Multiple fists were pounding against the door now.

“Where’s Patrol?” one of the detectives cried, panicking. “Where the fuck is Patrol?”

Dave touched her shoulder and said, “Get behind me, Wendy.”

The door began to shake on its hinges, splintering.

The detectives unholstered their guns and aimed them carefully at the door.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s get this over with,” somebody said.

The door exploded inward and people ran screaming into the room. For a critical moment, nobody did anything; their attackers were just regular people—unarmed, sick people. Some of the detectives yelled, freeze, police, stop or we will shoot. A moment later, somebody fired his gun and they all started shooting, roaring like madmen, one running forward and emptying his shotgun at point blank range into the gray faces. But the screamers were already in the room and the fighting quickly turned hand to hand.

Wendy stared, horrified and unable to move. Some of their attackers were police officers. She saw John-John tackle one of the detectives, scattering files and a typewriter from one of the desks. She unholstered her Glock and aimed it at the doorway.

Dave grabbed her arm and began pulling her towards the window. “Get out of here! We’re not going to make it!”

“Fuck you, Dave,” she said, shrugging him off.

“Wendy, get out now!”

“They need my help!” she screamed back.

“We’re done!”

She fought him but he was stronger than her. He began to physically drag her to the window and push her out onto the fire escape.

“Survive,” he said.

“Come with me, then,” she pleaded.

“All right, babe. I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

He turned away before she could respond, blazing away with his hand cannon. She climbed down the fire escape and stood in the vehicle yard, waiting for him. The guard booth was empty. From here, the sounds of gunfire ground together like the rumble of thunder. The muzzle flashes lit up the windows like paparazzi. Dave did not appear at the fire escape. The detectives were backing against the far wall and giving it everything they had.

Wendy stood helplessly, her fist clenched around her Glock, her eyes flooded with tears.

The shooting fizzled out until the windows became filled with dark shapes stumbling aimlessly, silhouetted by the glare of the station’s institutional fluorescent lighting.

The entire station was wiped out in minutes and she had not fired a single shot. Her ears were still ringing loudly and the loss of sleep over the past few days suddenly hit her hard, making her feel drained and disoriented.

Lay off her. She’s one of us.

She raised her pistol with both hands and aimed it carefully at the windows above her.

“Help me! Please help me!”

A woman ran down the alley in a nightgown, waving her arms.

“Stay right there,” Wendy said raggedly, extending her palm, her nerves raw and electric. Her training kicked in automatically. “What’s the problem?”

“My husband is hurt,” the woman said, her eyes wild. “He’s bleeding.”

“Okay, did you call 911?”

“The lines are all busy.”

“Where do you live, Ma’am?”

“Just over there.”

You can’t do this, she told herself. You need to report what you saw.

Another voice in her head countered: What you saw could not have happened.

“Let’s go, then,” she said.

They entered the house. Wendy felt dizzy. Details in the scene jumped out at her. A pale man dressed in pajamas lying on the floor, bleeding from the head. A table lamp, still on, sitting on its side on the carpet, casting long shadows. Family photos on the wall. A TV with the sound off, showing a worried anchorwoman. A broken pot and the dirt and scattered remains of a plant. A baseball bat.

“Officer, are you okay?”

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the mob run screaming into Patrol.

“Tell me what happened here, Ma’am,” she said mechanically.

“I hit him on the head. You can arrest me if you want. But take care of him first. Please!”

Wendy inspected the wound.

“What’s your name?”

“Lisa.”

“Okay, Lisa, come on over here. He’s got a scalp wound. That type of wound bleeds a lot. I’m going to elevate his head a little so that it is above the heart. There. He’s going to need an ambulance but he should be okay. In the meantime, I want you to sit here and put pressure on it.”

Wendy stood, fighting tears, and tried to call 911. The circuits were jammed. She saw the couch and suddenly wanted to lie down on it for just a minute. Maybe five minutes. Just a little while—

“I had to do it,” Lisa was saying.

“Uh huh,” Wendy said, glancing dazedly at the TV set. The anchorwoman was crying, mascara running down her cheeks in black lines.

“He was threatening our boy—”

“This man—?”

“My husband.”

“You say your husband was attacking your son?”

“Then I stopped him. I heard him wake up and I followed him. When I saw him holding Benjamin down and biting him I grabbed the bat and hit him on the head. I had to do it.”

“Was he one of the people who fell down? One of the SEELS?”

“Yes. It was a miracle. But he must have been confused because he would never hit Benjamin. He loves that boy more than himself.”

Wendy backed away, staring in horror at the sleeping man tangled up in his own limbs. Her hand flickered around the handcuffs on her belt. She unholstered her Glock and flicked off the safety. She frowned, trying to think.

“You can remove your hands now, Lisa. I want you to back away from him slowly.”

Lay off her

“Okay,” Lisa said. “But he’s still bleeding—”

She’s one of us—

The cop raised her gun and fired, the sound of the discharge filling the house. The man’s head exploded and splashed up the wall.

The woman wailed like an animal caught in a steel trap, rushing forward to hug the man’s broken face against her chest.

“You killed Roy!”

Upstairs, a teenage boy was snarling and banging on a bedroom door.

Wendy holstered her gun and walked out the door into the night.

“Why did you do that? Why? Why?”

The woman’s screaming followed her down the street until it became just one of many voices rising up from the city in pain like a demonic choir.