The Killing Floor

Pierce is screaming at him, What did you do, Rod? What did you do? Rod looks down in horror at the smoking barrel of his weapon and says, Christ, it was me. I did it. I killed them all. It was me.

Rod lurches out of sleep, sitting up and snatching his shotgun. The soldier who was kicking the sole of his boot jumps back with a panicked yelp. Rod glares at him.

“Why’d you kick me?” he says, furiously rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“I wanted to wake you without getting my head torn off,” the soldier tells him.

He nods and stands, gritting his teeth at a dozen minor aches. The soldier takes a second step back, still unsure of Rod’s intentions. Just another kid, clean shaven and dressed in an ironed uniform with two chevrons on the shoulder, signifying his rank as corporal. Obviously a “person other than a grunt,” or POG for short. He’s so small he appears to be fifteen. Hell, maybe he is.

Rod can’t get past the horror of the dream. The boys of his old outfit looked just as he remembered them in life. He finds it strange that this time, he was the one who shot down his platoon instead of Pierce. Strange, but not too troubling; his survivor’s guilt often makes him feel like he is responsible for their deaths in some way. The real horror is he remembers the faces of the dead so well, while the mental image he has of his wife and children continues to fade over time. Sometimes he cannot remember his son’s face.

He hawks a black gob of phlegm onto the ground. “Why’d you wake me up at all, Corporal?”

“Captain Rhodes wants to see you, Sergeant. I’m supposed to take you to her.”

Christ, he thinks. We just got here. Why are they sending us back out so soon?

“All right,” he says. He spits again and takes a swallow from his canteen. He can’t get the burned charcoal taste of ash out of his mouth.

“Here, Sergeant. Try this.”

The kid offers a packet of flavored powder, which Rod accepts with a nod. He pours a little into his canteen and swirls it around. Instant fruit drink. He take another swallow. Better.

“Outstanding,” Rod says, spitting again. “Thanks for that.”

“Close of business is in an hour, so you have time to get cleaned up, Sergeant,” the kid says quietly, adding the hint: “Captain Rhodes is in Major Duncan’s office.”

Rod sighs loudly, suppressing another surge of rage. You’d think the rear echelon motherfuckers like Major Duncan would change their tune and try to be useful during the end of the world, but some things never change, even during the apocalypse. The infantry often looks down on all the POGs—everyone in the service believes they are part of an elite unit and winners of the big dick contest—but they don’t hate them. Rod does not hate the kid standing in front of him, nor does he hate the mechanics who keep his Stryker operational, the guys who cut his hair, the cooks who load his plate in the chow line. What Rod does hate is officers who bust men returning from combat for dirty uniforms and stubble and flaring sideburns. Officers like Major Duncan, the chairborne ranger the boys call Major Dookie.

The minute Fifth Dragoons returned to the forward operating base, many of them headed for the mess hall. They hadn’t eaten since the previous day, and they were starving. Major Duncan pulled them out of the chow line and told them to get cleaned up. Outside the banquet hall being used as a dining facility, Rod told his squad to hit the showers and put on some clean uniforms, and then go get something to eat if there was still time. This done, he walked into a nearby park, stretched out on the ground at the base of a tree, and fell fast asleep. Screw it, he thought just before he went under.

“You work for Major Duncan, Corporal?”

“That’s right, Sergeant.”

“Did he order you to tell me to get cleaned up before reporting to Captain Rhodes?”

The kid swallows hard. “No, Sergeant.”

“Then mind your own business. Nobody likes a busybody, even if your intentions are good. Understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” the kid answers, paling. “My bad, Sergeant.”

Rod sighs, letting go of his anger. “What’s your name, Corporal?”

“Sam Carlson, Sergeant. Corporal Sam Carlson.”

“Well, then, drive on.” Translation: Carry on with your mission, soldier.

The kid smiles at this and leads him through the park toward the massive building across the street—the old Harry S. Truman Building, former home of the Department of State—that now houses the headquarters staffs of Rod’s regiment and several other large units operating in the area. Along the way, he sees the familiar base personalities hard at work and play: chairborne rangers and the cheesers who suck up to them sunning themselves in the park, sick call ninjas smoking outside the infirmary, gung-ho-mo-fo lieutenants drilling their platoons mercilessly toward perfection, treads terrorizing the enlisted just for the fun of it, tough Jane Waynes out jogging and the shit patrol cleaning latrines, almost everyone sandbagging to stretch out the long, hot day. Observing the dicked-up routine he’s known for years, Rod feels something like fondness for it. It feels normal; it feels a little like home. If nothing else, he knows he is safe here, safe enough to sleep.

Some of the boys from Third Squad call to him as he passes. They’re cleaned up and heading back to the mess hall to get their supper.

“What’s on the menu at the DFAC tonight, vatos?” he says.

“I heard cigarette soup, Sergeant,” Tanner tells him with a laugh, referring to onion soup.

“Sergeant, we got mail,” Davis says. “I think there’s some for you.”

Rod waves the boys on and turns to Corporal Carlson.

“We got about an hour, right?”

“That’s right, Sergeant.”

“Then take me to wherever you’ve put my company clerk.”

♦

Dear Rod,

We’re all okay.

Rod smiles. Gabriela always starts her letters this way when he is deployed, and they have an immediate healing effect on him. This last letter is dated a week ago. While he’d rather it be dated today, he feels assured his wife and children are alive and safe.

He leafs through the handwritten pages hungrily, as if getting acquainted with a brand new book by his favorite author. He has a lot of reading to do. Pages and pages of life.

Back to the beginning. He picks a spot at random in the first letter, and reads:

We’re too close to Columbus, and can’t handle all the refugees and Infected coming south. Shooting kept the kids up all night. I doubt anyone on base slept at all. I sure didn’t. Today we were told that we’re evacuating to Fort Hood in Texas. The trip is going to take a while since we’re going to avoid the major highways, so we’re being told to bring as much food and water as we can carry, while we can only bring a few personal effects. I didn’t know it would be so hard to walk away from our home with almost nothing, Rod. I was allowed to bring a photo album and some toys and books for the kids to keep them occupied during the trip. Sitting on the bus as I write this, everyone is quiet, scared. We’re all diving off a really high diving board and we have no idea of what’s down there, you know?

Rod stops there, sniffing and wiping his eyes. He feels restless, but fights it. He wants to read the entire stack of letters in a single glance, but wants to savor every word. As a compromise, he skips ahead to the middle of another letter.

Fort Hood is serving as a refugee camp for military families, and it’s huge. I heard there are something like thirty thousand of us here, pulled together from bases all over the country, and still growing. It’s even hotter than Georgia, if you can believe that. Hot and dry. We’ve been here six days and we’re still not used to it. I spend half my time chasing the kids around, making them drink plenty of water. The barracks are all full, so we sleep on cots in a big tent they put up for us. You can imagine what that’s like: babies crying all night long, and the cot murder on my back. There’s a lot of resentment between the families that were already here, who have houses and call this place home, and the newcomers like me who showed up scared and with nothing. I’m not getting caught up in any of that nonsense; the Army is taking good care of us. We’ve got everything we need. Things could have turned out a heck of a lot worse. We’re all being given work—help with the daycare, tend the garden, type up memos, empty the latrines, collect firewood, wipe the dust that gets into everything, and laundry, laundry and more laundry —all sorts of jobs. The list of chores is endless. I feel like we’re in the Army too. We eat, sleep, shower, work together. Almost everything we have is government issue and we share everything. I miss our house and old life but in a way it’s kind of fun, like being on a camping trip. We tell stories about our men and it really helps to know so many of these people are feeling the exact same things as I am every day. Last night, some of the wives put on a play that had us all laughing for the first time since the Screaming. The kids are also making the most of it, and my only regret is I did not bring more clothes for them; they are wearing out what little I could bring as fast as they can. Oh, by the way, some drill sergeants are teaching us to shoot. I have a 9-mm and fired it a few times at a target and the drill sergeant told me to tell you that I’m good enough to earn the Bolo Badge, whatever that is, so there! You’d better watch your ass, Cool Rod! Mustang Sally is packing heat.

Rod laughs. The Bolo Badge is slang for the marksmanship badge they give to soldiers who score at the lowest possible grade, and yet still pass, on the shooting range. In other words, Gabriela can’t shoot for shit. He’s proud of her. He always tried, and failed, to get her to learn how to use a handgun for home defense while he was away on deployments, but she always refused; she hates guns. Times have certainly changed, Rod thinks. I pity the dumb Jody who comes sniffing around our kids. My wife the pacifist will turn the bastard into Swiss cheese.

He skips ahead again.

So we’ve got a plague of bedbugs now. The kids all have rashes, and there’s not enough cream to go around, so we’re washing our bedding every day to try to get rid of the pesties. What else? Victor is walking now, and if you can believe it, he’s learned some sign language. Another family taught me a few basic signs for milk, eat, drink and sleep, and I tried them on Victor over the past few weeks. Just when I was about to give up, he asked for milk! Which I give him from the boob, as with everything that’s going on, I decided to keep nursing. I wasn’t even sure what he was doing at first, but sure enough, he kept squeezing his little fist together, which is the sign for milk! He cries so much less because he can tell me what he wants even though he can’t talk yet. Lilia isn’t doing so great right now, though. She asks about you all the time, cries a ton, and has nightmares that make her wet the bed. She’s back in diapers, and sleeps with me now at night. Kristina’s going the other way, thriving like a weed. She’s doing well in the camp school. The one thing that worries me is she’s starting to hoard food a little—she eats as fast as she can, and then squirrels away little bits—raisins, Cheerios, whatever she can get—under her cot.

Rod’s vision blurs with hot tears. His heart aches; he can barely stand it. He can’t believe how much he misses them. Can’t accept how much of them he is missing. They are growing up fast, without a father, in a refugee camp, while he fights this crazy war.

You’re so far away, Rod. I hope you’re safe and that these letters are finding their way to you somehow and giving you some comfort that I know you sorely need right now. I want you to know I’m proud of you, and so are our kids, and we will wait as long as it takes for you to come home. Do not worry about us, Rod. I will look after our little ones. You can keep us all safe by getting rid of these monsters plaguing our country. Fight hard for us, and win, so that you can come back to us by Christmas.

He buries his face in his hands and bawls while Corporal Carlson looks away, trying to give him some dignity. Rod is like every father in that he wants his children to have a better life than him. That is the reason he is here fighting. But he has a feeling that even if they win, his children will face a life of misery. The feeling haunts him.

And yet they are alive. His family is alive. This simple fact gives him all the hope he needs.

Rod is crying because he is happy.

“Corporal,” he says, carefully folding the letters and pocketing them.

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“I think I will get cleaned up before seeing the Captain.”

♦

Showered, shaved and wearing a clean uniform, Rod enters the big building through a cordon of military police armed with billy clubs and flamethrowers. The building has electricity, although it is rationed; only the security lights are on in the gloomy corridors, and its eight floors are accessible using the stairs only. The air is hot, humid and smells like dust and mold.

The corporal sneezes several times, and then they hit the stairs. Refreshed from the catnap, a quick shower and Gabriela’s letters, Rod follows alertly, feeling almost human again, rifle slung over his shoulder and his helmet held in the crook of his arm.

The fourth floor is busy with officers and aides and civilians clacking away on typewriters. Rod grunts with appreciation at seeing civilians contributing to the war effort. Mostly, the Army has been keeping the refugees penned like sheep—under martial law, no less—a complete waste of resources, in his opinion. No wonder they end up rioting. These people are not weak. They survived this long, didn’t they? They just don’t have the training, organization and security of the military. Someone needs to get them organized and into the fight, like those militias he’s been hearing so much about. The Maryland Regulars. The Philadelphia Free Militia. The New Liberty Army. The Virginia Field Army. The Allegany County Partisans.

Natural born killers, from what he heard. And most of them streaming toward Washington to join the final push to liberate the city from Wildfire.

The hot, crowded little office smells like flop sweat and burnt coffee. The window is open and the light is off. Major Duncan sits at his desk, sunlight gleaming on his bald head and glinting on his round wireframe glasses. Captain Rhodes, a gung ho Jane Wayne that Comanche picked up from Army Intelligence, stands behind him with Lieutenant Sims.

Rod knocks.

“Come in, Sergeant,” Duncan says.

He halts two paces in front of the officers and presents a tired salute. “Sergeant Hector Rodriguez, reporting to the commanding officer as directed.”

The officers return the salute, giving Rod a moment to notice the other two people in the room sitting against the wall in office chairs, one of them a hard case in SWAT armor, possibly National Security Agency but probably a mercenary, and the other a pale, blinking specimen in a wrinkled business suit who looks like he hasn’t seen daylight in weeks.

A spook? Rod wonders, but decides against it. The second man is definitely not NSA or CIA. He looks scared. Like he’d rather be anywhere but here. Like a prisoner.

“At ease, Sergeant,” Duncan tells him.

“Thank you, sir,” he answers, assuming the at-ease drill stance.

“Sergeant, of course you know Lieutenant Sims and Captain Rhodes. This here is Dr. Travis Price, a scientist posted at Mount Weather Special Facility, and Captain Fielding.”

“Captain?” Rod says, giving the man a onceover. “First Maniple? Flying Column Corp?”

Few of the private military contractors escaped the Sandbox in the first days of the epidemic. Their dissolving companies pulled some of them out and were forced to abandon the rest. The locals chewed them up until the Army absorbed the survivors on the way back to the States.

Like many soldiers, Rod does not like mercenaries.

“I’m not a merc,” Fielding says. He does not elaborate.

“Captain Fielding is paramilitary,” Duncan tries to explain.

Rod lifts his eyebrows at this, but says nothing. Something big is being planned; the excitement in the room is as palpable as the scientist’s anxiety. They’ll get around to explaining things to him if he stays quiet.

“Rod, we have a special job for you and your squad,” Duncan says. “This one comes straight from the top, and it could end the war.”

Rhodes and Sims grin at this.

“Yes, sir,” Rod says, his heart pounding.

Duncan turns to Rhodes. “Go ahead, Captain.”

“About twenty-four hours ago, we spotted a uniform mike who carries the Wildfire Agent, but is not showing symptoms,” she explains. “About two hundred miles northwest of where we’re standing. As far as we know, the man is unique. First, he spreads Wildfire through the air, and second, the Infected appear to be aware of and submissive to him. How and to what extent, we don’t know. Dr. Price here feels if this man can be captured, the scientists may be able to isolate a pure sample of the Wildfire Agent. If they can do that, they might be able to make a vaccine, a weapon, even a cure. Is that about right, Dr. Price?”

“Yes,” Dr. Price says, clearing his throat. “That’s right.”

Rod nods, considering what he’s heard. About two hundred miles, Rhodes said. As far as we know, the man is unique. The Infected appear to be aware of and submissive to him. How and to what extent, we don’t know. Dr. Price feels they may be able to isolate a pure sample of the Wildfire Agent. If they can do that, they might be able to make a vaccine.

With so many qualifiers, he thinks, my situational awareness has not gained a single inch.

“The mission,” Rhodes adds, “is to locate, contact and recover this individual for the purpose of obtaining a biological sample. Preferably alive.”

And then we save the world and everyone gets a pony. Shit, even the Big Green Machine doesn’t believe in this saving Private Ryan bullshit. Otherwise, they’d put Special Forces on it. They’d throw everything they had at it. Not yank a single tired-out squad off the line and dump them in the middle of no man’s land to find some guy who infects anyone who comes near him, and is now surrounded by, and appears to control, an untold number of Jodies.

After dealing with all that, we just have to convince the unidentified male to surrender to a bunch of soldiers so that scientists can experiment on him in a government lab.

I’m sure this guy, alone and scared shitless, will be just fine with that!

The idea is so crazy he has to resist the urge to laugh openly at it. The Army seems to have found a very creative way to get him killed.

Dr. Price glances at him, his eyes filled with anxiety.

Rod chides himself. What did you expect—that it would be black and white? It’s a chance, and nothing more. In this war of extermination, a chance is everything.

Major Duncan appears to sense his hesitation. He clears his throat and says, “Sergeant, I know you and your men have been through a lot in this war, and that this mission offers a great deal of risk for uncertain gain. I want you to consider something. Do you know the biggest threat to our forces right now? The leading source of casualties among our fighting men?”

Rod realizes the question is not rhetorical, and scrambles to think up an honest answer. “The monsters,” he says. “The hoppers in particular, sir.”

“The correct answer is suicide, Sergeant. Our people are killing themselves in record numbers.” The Major takes off his glasses and cleans them with a handkerchief. “Let me ask you another question. Do you know why we still pay our personnel in dollars, and accept those dollars at the PX for goods available at normalized prices?”

“The dollar’s the national currency, sir.”

The man puts his glasses back on and regards Rod with a grim smile. “Gold is the closest thing this country has to a national currency right now, Sergeant. Gold and things you can touch—food, water, toilet paper. Hell, bullets are so valuable these days they should be the currency. So why bother with paper money, when so many people in the country have given up on it? I’ll tell you the answer this time, Sergeant. One word: Morale. The illusion everything is normal. We pay dollars to soldiers to clear ground and scavenge goods, which we then sell to these soldiers in return for their dollars. We do a lot of things like that to maintain the idea that things are still normal, right down to busting balls about dress and appearance. But we all know they’re not normal. This war is taking a massive toll and it’s only just started. The fact is, Sergeant Rodriguez, we are falling apart a little bit every day. Even as we continue to gain ground, we are losing the war for the hearts and minds of our own people.”

Rod nods in understanding. He underestimated this officer. For a rear echelon type, Major Duncan appears to know what he is doing.

“Do you catch my meaning, Sergeant?” says the Major.

“I understand if there’s any chance to win this fight, we have to take it, and my boys are up to whatever it takes to get the job done,” Rod tells him. “You can count on it, sir.”

“Aieeyah, Sergeant,” Duncan says, while Rhodes and Sims nod.

Rod meant every word he said. It’s a long shot, but any shot at all is enough to make me a believer at this point. After all, there are no atheists in foxholes.

Anne

The bus trembles and bangs over potholes marring the sun-dappled road. Anne studies the forest and open fields through the windows with her detached telescopic sight. A white-tailed deer bounds through the distant growth, fleeing the metal monster with its grinding hum.

“They could be anywhere,” Todd says, studying the same ground with the binoculars.

Anne wants to tell him to stay focused on the mission, which is to find and kill Ray Young before he can infect more innocent people. But she knows what Todd is going through.

“They can’t be far from here,” she says. “We’ve got to keep searching.”

“Of course. It just feels a little hopeless with so much ground to cover.”

“Stop the bus,” she says. “I think I’ve got them.”

“You’re kidding,” Todd says, leaning forward, trying to see what she sees. The forest on the right drops off in a steep slope, revealing a valley divided into farms covering the land like faded patches on an old quilt. “I don’t see anything.”

“There,” she points as Marcus pulls onto the shoulder of the road.

“That smoke? That could be anything.”

“Not smoke. Dust. You were saying?”

“Wow,” Todd says with a grin.

She resists the urge to tousle his hair.

A dust cloud could mean a lot of things. It could mean cattle, but she knows the cattle herds are gone from the area, eaten by survivors and the Infected. It could mean a refugee camp, but if there were one there, she would have heard about it. It could mean a convoy of vehicles, but the dust is too concentrated and localized.

By process of elimination, it is most likely a massive crowd of people.

These are the Infected of Camp Defiance, migrating east. Assuming they are following Ray, then he should be there as well, like Moses leading his people to the Promised Land.

“If I see Erin, I’ll let you know.”

“Promise me you’ll look,” Todd says.

“Promise.”

Marcus cranks the handle, opening the door. Anne touches his shoulder and hops down onto the road, rifle slung over her shoulder and her boots crunching stones.

“You need me to watch your back?” he asks her.

“No thanks, I’m good,” she says. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“You be careful,” he says, and she feels his desire.

“I will,” she says, holding his gaze.

“We’ll be here,” Jean calls from back of the bus. “Like sitting ducks.”

Marcus grins, shaking his head. Anne rolls her eyes at him before turning and marching into the woods. The sooner I dump you in someone else’s lap, Jean Byrd, the better. Maybe they’ll understand how bad you had it during the epidemic.

For now, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

She disappears into the trees, still tingling from the way Marcus looked at her, excited and afraid at the idea of his feelings coming out into the open. Stay focused. The gloomy forest envelops her, thrusting her into a darker, far more dangerous world.

Shrugging her rifle into her hands, she jogs through the foliage. The air smells like moist earth and greenery. The air is cooler here under the shade of the forest canopy, but more humid, covering her in a slick sheen of sweat. Her cap feels wet against her forehead. After fifty yards, she crouches, sweeping the foliage with the barrel of her rifle.

She hears a nasal grunt. Something else responds with a series of glottal clicks. Anne knows of just one thing that uses this form of speech. Hoppers.

She finds the little band hunched in a circle around the carcass of a dead deer, tearing off pieces of meat and chewing, their little cheeks bulged with meat. The monsters look like the product of a bizarre genetic experiment—hairless, barrel chested, albino baboons with legs shaped like a cricket’s. They wobble when they walk, as if struggling, little arms outstretched for balance. When they sight their prey, they are capable of multiple jumps high into the air. Their wide mouths are lined with rows of jagged teeth.

Once they land on their victim, they bite and wrap their legs to prevent him from tossing them away. They then stab him with the erect stinger between their legs. This stinger injects a parasite that grows to become another hopper.

Anne hates the hoppers nearly as much as she does the Demon, the fiercest monster of all. She hates these particular creatures because they are parasites. Bottom feeders. Cockroaches.

As much as she would love to gun them down, she cannot afford to draw any attention to herself. If she shoots, more might show up, not to mention a hundred thousand Infected she believes are marching across the valley just past the next rise.

She goes around the hoppers, staying as close to the ground as she can.

Anne has bigger fish to fry today.

♦

Ahead, sunlight glares through the trees. Soaked with sweat after her journey, Anne slows as she approaches the edge of the forest, pausing every few paces to study her surroundings. The last thing she needs is to leave the woods and run into a pack of Infected.

She emerges at the top of a treed hill overlooking a farmhouse and surrounding cornfields swarming with Infected moaning in the sunlight. The horde seems endless, trampling the fields into ruin, large enough to raise a dust cloud seen from miles away.

So this is where you went.

The sight is breathtaking. So many people. So many lives destroyed just so that a mindless organism could survive a little longer. Sarge would have described the scene as a target rich environment, but she is not here to kill Infected.

Anne is looking for Ray Young, the man who caused all this.

She takes a drink of water from her canteen, breathes deeply, and gets to work. Peering into the eyepiece of the telescopic scope mounted on her rifle, she studies the crowd.

This might take a very long time. Might as well conserve energy.

She detaches the scope from her rifle and puts her back against a large tree, scanning the shifting crowds while she eats a granola bar.

Erin?

The girl drifts among the Infected with her arms at her sides, wearing a lost expression.

At least Todd will get some closure.

A flicker of movement far behind her catches Anne’s eye. A group of Infected swarm over each other, covered in blood, eating one of their own.

Something is moving on their left. She shifts her scope.

Ray Young jogs away from the Infected, looking terrified.

A smile flickers across Anne’s lips.

Got you, you son of a bitch.

She pockets her unfinished snack and reattaches the telescopic sight. Ray stops at the farmhouse and sits on the steps.

He believes he is still human. The tragedy is he is another product of Infection, perhaps the worst of all—a lie, a creature of deception, a Trojan Horse.

An abomination that must be killed.

Time for the killing.

The first step: find a good firing position.

Anne studies the ground, looking for a prone firing position offering support as well as concealment. Making herself as still as possible is necessary for an accurate shot, but is also exhausting. As muscles tire, they move, producing wobble in the crosshairs.

She cannot find a prone firing position on the hill with a decent line of sight. Not even a kneeling position. Anne will have to take her shot at Ray while standing.

Placing her palm against the rough bark of a tree, she extends her thumb to form a V and rests the butt of the rifle there, placing the stock against the pocket of her right shoulder.

Stay right there, Ray.

She flicks the safety to the FIRE position, pulls the bolt back to release the catch, and chambers the first round from the magazine. Locked and loaced.

Ray stands and paces, then stops. Anne rests her cheek against the worn surface of the walnut rifle stock and aligns her eye with the scope. The blurry image comes into sharp focus as she adjusts the magnification. As the reticle clears, she centers the crosshairs on Ray’s chest, making an adjustment to the ballistic cam to compensate for her higher elevation.

This done, she closes her eyes and relaxes. When she opens them, the crosshairs have dropped to her natural point of aim, a little left and below the target. If she were to correct and shoot now, her muscles would tense, which could throw off her aim. Anne adjusts her firing stance and repeats the exercise. When she opens her eyes, Ray is still in the crosshairs. Now she can shoot without any tension. The man looks as scared and confused as he did earlier. Rather than evoking any sympathy, this makes her hate him even more.

In a minute, all of your worries will be over, and you can go to sleep, you prick.

She inhales, exhales.

As she breathes out, she delays her next inhale, knowing she has about ten seconds of perfect stillness to shoot. Her finger touches the trigger.

Just a little more pressure, and BOOM.

Ray grins just before a man steps in front of her shot.

Anne pauses, blinking, and lowers the rifle.

Something strange is happening.

A large number of the Infected are streaming through the crowd, converging on her target.

Ray

Ray sits on the porch steps and watches the Infected bring him gifts. He thought about how hungry and thirsty he was, spoke the words aloud, and now here they come like robot servants, dumping pieces of jerky, cans of pasta in sauce, bottles of water, warm sodas, lint-covered Life Savers, sticks of gum, trail mix and a bag of multigrain tortilla chips crushed to the consistency of sand. He wishes for cigarettes, and soon has his choice of brands. He wishes for a stiff drink, and is given a metal flask with a bullet hole punched through the top and a little vodka in the bottom.

Saying the words is not even necessary. Picturing it in his mind, and willing it to happen, is enough to get what he wants.

Ray laughs. I’m king of the motherfucking zombies.

He takes a long snort from the flask and gasps, raising it in a toast.

“I drink to your health.”

He is starting to process what is happening to him.

The bug turned me into a superweapon. It allowed me to live for this, and this only.

The Infected stand around, staring at him with their glazed, needy eyes. He pulls his STEELERS cap lower over his face and wolfs down his meal of junk food and water. Ray doesn’t want them to see him crying.

He feels defiled. Diseased.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Sorry” doesn’t begin to cover it, bro.

He looks up at the Infected crowding around and feels something else, too. A fierce pride. They belong to him now. They are, in a sense, his children.

Is that me feeling this, or the bug?

A dark defiant thought seeps into his mind and replaces his guilt. The whole world can go fuck itself and become infected, as long as I live.

That was not the bug thinking. That was him. He lights a Winston and leans back on his elbows. I’m alive, and there is only this, and that makes this good. Whatever it is.

Breathe in, breathe out.

You do what you think is best, Ray.

“You got it.”

He smokes in silence, listening to the Infected growl, and tries to reason things out.

I’m a carrier for the bug. I can’t be around normal people. That’s the bad news. The good news is I can control the crazies. Maybe even the monsters.

In any case, it’s nice to finally feel safe. Like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

On the other hand, the idea of living among the mindless Infected for the rest of his life is enough to make him doubt his sanity. He may be a bit of a misanthrope, but he is a sociable misanthrope. He may have a history of abusing people, but he needs people to be happy.

Ray smiles at the gray faces. If he can control the Infected, he can make them all walk off the nearest cliff, or turn on each other. He could be a major weapon against Infection.

He might, in fact, be capable of saving the world using this power. What would that idea be worth to the right people?

Maybe nothing. Maybe they’ll kill me on sight. Just in case. Just to make sure I can’t ever hurt them. It’s the safest move for them.

Maybe we could do a deal, though. I make all of the Infected climb the nearest mountain and jump off and die, and they find a way to cure me. It’s the least they could do for the man who saved the world.

He chooses to believe in this possibility. It is, after all, his one hope. Like he already learned, anything can happen.

Ray stands and stretches. That’s it, then. I’ll try to contact the government. But where is it?

The Army is in Washington. That’s where he must go.

The lump in his side buzzes with appreciation.

“I’m glad the idea pleases you.”

The solution is simple enough: All he needs is a vehicle with a full tank of gas. Maybe a pickup. He’ll take a bodyguard of Infected with him, and ditch the rest here.

I know just who I want for the job.

“Unit 12,” he calls. “Get your lazy asses over here.”

His old police unit streams through the crowd. He can hear the clatter of their gear and their glottal grunts. They stop in front of him in their black T-shirts and load-bearing vests bristling with shotgun shells, grinning wolfishly, their heads cocked and their fists clenched at their sides. Two of them still wear pistols on their hips. Ray laughs and whoops.

“Holy shit. Look what the cat dragged in.”

Tyler Jones shoves through the milling horde, ridiculous red suspenders and all, the front of his gray work shirt black with dried blood.

“Good to see you alive, buddy,” Ray says. “Even with the bug.”

He holds out his hand, but Tyler ignores it.

“I guess Jonesy didn’t make it. Sorry about that, bud. May he rest in peace.”

Tyler grimaces, but says nothing.

“You boys,” Ray tells them, “will be my Praetorians. I’ll bet you dumb shits don’t even know what a Praetorian is. Maybe you, Tyler, but that’s about it.”

It feels good to talk, and oddly, it doesn’t bother him to have a one-sided conversation with a bunch of crazies. It’s not quite like talking to himself; it’s more like talking to a pet dog.

“Now let’s see how good you people really are.”

He pictures a pickup truck and a set of keys.

Now fetch. Howl if you find it.

His mental image of the truck expands to include several big-chested blondes giving it a soapy wash. He laughs.

If you see any hot models hanging around the truck, bring them to me as well.

He is amazed by how powerful he feels. Before he made it to the camp, all of the fight had been sucked out of him. Now he feels like a king, with a nation to do his bidding.

Not to rain on your parade bro, but again, is that you or the bug feeling so good?

He finds the thought depressing. How does one know if he has free will? How much free will can you have if you have a parasite craving to be spread?

Does it matter in the end?

The women drift out of the mob, their faces twisted into frightening imitations of smiles. Brunettes and blondes and redheads. Beautiful, all of them, even with their unkempt hair and gray skin and feverish eyes.

His heart races. He has not been with a woman since before the Screaming.

What is this? Is Infection manipulating me again?

Nope, you imagined this. The bug merely delivered.

It wants you to be happy.

Several Infected howl from the front yard. The owner of the house left a truck behind. The women continue to approach, softly hissing, their heads jerking.

Stop, Ray projects.

The woman hesitate, confused at his mixed signals. One of them lifts her T-shirt and squeezes her scratched breasts together, licking her chops while the others inch their way forward, their eyes gleaming like knives.

Oh God—

He knows of some guys who worked over Infected women. They raped the prettier ones before killing them. They justified it by saying the women didn’t even know they were being raped.

Ray remembers saying he would never sink so low.

But if I’m doomed to have the crazies as company forever. . .

Get away from me!

The Unit 12 cops turn and roar at the other Infected, shoving at them. The women shriek and melt back into the crowd.

Ray takes off his cap and wipes sweat from his forehead.

Shit, that was close.

As if I’d ever do something like that.

A little angel and a little devil perched on his shoulders, arguing over his soul.

But they wanted it.

Bro, they just wanted it because you wanted them to want it.

I’M LONELY.

His discontent passes through the Infected like a wind, agitating them. The crowd parts like massive curtains made of people. A single figure approaches. It is a woman, walking slowly like a bride coming down the aisle to join her husband at the altar.

The Infected howl again in the distance.

“In a minute,” Ray says absently, waiting.

Her hips sway as she walks. Like the other women, her hair is wild, but while this makes the others look like broken dolls, it just makes this woman more attractive. She is older now than he remembered; he hasn’t seen her in years—not since that night she looked into his face and saw only spite. He heard she married a pharmacist and returned to Cashtown to buy a house and raise a family. If anything, the years have been kind to her. She has put on a few pounds, but in the right places. Her face has aged, but she is still beautiful. Her legs, even covered in tiny scratches and insect bites, are still shapely and muscular. When she smiles, she appears human.

She was the only woman he ever loved.

“Lola.”

He takes a step forward just as the top of Tyler’s head disappears in a spray of blood.

A second later, he hears the rolling rifle shot.

Anne

You screwed that up, Anne tells herself.

Ray took a step to her right, forcing a last-second correction. Then one of the Infected stepped to the left to get out of Ray’s way, putting his head squarely in her shot as the rifle boomed in her hands.

The bullet left the muzzle at a velocity of more than half a mile per second, shattering the Infected’s skull as if it were a melon.

She relaxes for her next shot, searching for Ray through the objective lens of her scope. The M21 is a semiautomatic rifle with a twenty-round box magazine, giving her nineteen more shots at him before she has to reload.

The Infected scream and wave their arms over their heads. Shoot me, they seem to be saying. Shoot me instead of him.

Ray is still there, staring up at the hills in terror. The likelihood of him seeing her is virtually nil. She is too far away to detect with the naked eye where she is standing against the treeline, and her rifle is fitted with a suppressor that reduces visible muzzle flash.

Inhale, hold the exhale, shoot.

She fires again, and another Infected falls. They crowd around him now, swarming on top of each other. Her body shudders with disgust.

This is getting weird.

She fires again and again, dropping bodies until Ray’s pale face comes into view. He gapes at the hill where she is positioned, his mouth open in a large O.

Got you, you little shit.

More Infected lunge in front of him, absorbing her bullet and falling into a pile of writhing bodies at his feet.

Shit, shit, shit.

The rifle bangs, recoiling against her shoulder. Her view shakes. She inhales, holds the exhale and fires again. The roar of the rifle shot rolls across the valley. Her left arm trembles with the effort of keeping the weapon still.

I let you go once.

Another body drops, revealing a glimpse of Ray screaming with fear.

Not again.

The rifle dry fires with an empty click.

“Mother,” Anne hisses, releasing the empty magazine and slamming a fresh one into the magazine well. She resumes her firing stance, but lowers the rifle, blinking in disbelief.

The Infected have stopped shrieking and waving their arms. Working in eerie silence, they are building a living wall in front of the farmhouse. Thousands of people scramble with unnatural speed and precision on top of each other, creating a series of swaying human pyramids.

Anne fires at the Infected at the bottom of one of the pyramids and it collapses, spilling bodies into a massive, squirming pile.

“God damn it,” she says between gritted teeth.

She fires into the mass, draining the second magazine. When the rifle dry fires again, she flings it onto the grass with a long, bloodcurdling howl of rage.

Ray

“I never hurt anyone,” Ray shouts at Lola as the truck rockets down the country road. “Sure, I beat on a few guys back in the day, but I never shot at nobody. I never killed a man.”

Lola sits next to him in the front seat like a blow up doll, staring straight ahead with her hands in her lap, wind ruffling her hair. Behind him, in the truck bed, his cops hang on as the vehicle roars around a bend, tires squealing.

“But someone sure as shit is trying to kill me!”

Ray swerves hard to narrowly miss slamming into an abandoned utility truck blocking the right lane. The road is filled with wrecks. I’m going to end up wrapped around a telephone pole if I keep this up. A glance in his rearview reveals nothing but his own dust.

Slow down. Think. Think it through, Ray.

No way that was a random thing. No single shooter shows up to take on a freaking Mongol horde of zombies. It was an assassination attempt, plain and simple.

Whoever it was, he was trying to kill me.

He finds this a truly terrifying idea.

Someone wants to kill me.

Nobody else in the whole world. Just me.

The question is why but the answer is not too hard to puzzle out.

Someone knows what you did to Camp Defiance. It’s called karma, bro.

“I ain’t a bad guy,” Ray growls, and spits out the open window. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Slowing the truck a little more, Ray lights a Winston with his steel lighter and blows a stream of smoke against the dirty windshield.

Was his attacker military? He kind of doubts it. He has a hard time believing the military decided to chopper in a single sniper to kill him.

If they really wanted me that bad, they would drop a cruise missile on my head.

No, he decides. Not military. The sniper was probably some vigilante. Whoever it was, however, he is still good. Not Ray’s idea of Tom Clancy good, but good nonetheless. And there is a good chance the shooter is still hunting him.

Then he laughs out loud. Next to him, Lola blinks rapidly.

“Maybe I’m not the one who should be scared.”

Ray remembers he has thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people who would give their lives to save his without a second thought.

It was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. As he ran from the farmhouse to the truck hidden under the tarp in the front yard, thousands of the crazies were clambering on top of each other like some kind of massive Guinness World Records stunt. Tallest human pyramid. Great Wall of China, made from human beings.

All to put themselves between him and the sniper’s next bullet. It was kind of humbling.

They pass a state police cruiser abandoned on the shoulder of the road. It gives him an idea.

“Whoever it is, if he keeps screwing with me, he’s going to get a bad guy. Am I right or am I right?”

Lola nods almost imperceptibly.

He slows the truck to a halt and shouts through the open window, “Leon, Foley, get out.”

Two of the cops vault over the side of the truck, landing hard on their boots. They approach the driver’s side window and regard Ray with open mouths, breathing like hyenas.

After he gives them their orders, he pulls back onto the road with a laugh.

Whoever you are, you made a serious mistake to fuck with me.

A roadside sign tells him he is approaching Sugar Creek. He slows the truck to a crawl, navigating a six-car pileup splashed across the road. Then he is on the main drag, driving past an ice cream shop and convenience store.

A man stares at him as he passes, too far away for Ray to tell if he is infected. More people are on his left. One of them waves. Ray waves back.

“Stay cool back there, guys. We’re going to bluff this out.”

He tries not to think of the spores floating out the window to be sucked into the truck’s back draft, maybe infecting these people.

Ahead, more people leave their homes and businesses to watch him approach, some of them waving. Again, he waves back.

“These people are a little nuts,” he tells Lola, who surprises him by laughing out loud.

Something is definitely wrong with these folks.

Then it hits him. They’re infected.

Infected teachers and waiters and cashiers and housewives pour onto the sidewalks, all waving at him like he is some kind of celebrity. Ray knows it’s fake. Either the bug is manipulating him or he is subconsciously controlling the crazies, but ultimately it doesn’t matter.

I like it.

Ray drives along at a snail’s pace, waving back.

“Look, honey. They’re waving at you.”

Lola raises her hand and waves feebly, her face a blank, more robot than human.

He stops the truck in front of a tangled pile of vehicles blocking both lanes of the road. Concentrating, he summons work crews to push the wrecks out of the way. Dozens of people swarm across the knot of vehicles. Ray lights another Winston and watches them work.

“Nobody ever treated me special like this before, Lola. Hell, I don’t want you to think I’m getting a big head or anything, but I could get used to it. I honestly could.”

The last wreck is moved aside. Ray throws the transmission back into gear and nudges the gas.

“Thanks for the help, you guys.”

The waves turn into Nazi salutes. A forest of hands pledging absolute obedience.

“That’s right,” he chuckles. He sees a man wearing a pistol in a shoulder holster and broadcasts, Bring guns to my boys here. And bullets. Whatever you can dig up.

Within minutes, several Infected run out of the mob, chasing after the truck to hand rifles and pistols to the boys of Unit 12.

“Thank you, my subjects. I shall never forget you.”

Now we’ll see if anyone wants to screw around with me.

He laughs and stomps on the gas, roaring out of town on squealing wheels. Lola smiles at the sound of his laughter. Ray notices an ant crawling across her face and brushes it off.

“That’s right, honey. It’s you and me against the world.”

What now? Stick to the plan. Go to Washington. Contact the Army. Make a deal.

Ray glances at the fuel gauge. The rig still has half a tank of gas in it. It feels a bit underpowered when he steps on the gas, but it runs true. It will get him to the city, or at least close enough to walk.

He pats Lola’s knee and smiles at her while he drives. He was hoping his return would offer him a second chance, and here she is in the flesh.

“We’re going to fix you, honey. We’re going to make things right as rain again.”

If they want me to cooperate, they’re going to have to cure you, too. That’s the deal.

Cool Rod

The lumbering Chinook heaves into the air with thundering rotors as the Stryker rolls out of the sunny field and onto the road, picking up speed as it heads toward its objective. Twenty minutes later, the Stryker’s gunner, standing behind the heavy machine gun, crouches inside the passenger compartment and says to Rod, “You should check out the birds.”

Rod opens the hatch and peers outside. The old, cracked country road, flanked by trees and telephone poles and marked by centerlines faded to mere suggestion, is empty. The wind in his face smells like green, living things. The sky is deep blue here, free of the smoky haze hanging over Washington like a permanent shroud. It feels free. It feels like home.

A cloud of black birds swirls over the distant town visible miles down the road. They are crows, scavenging, fighting over an unprecedented feast.

Crows will eat just about anything, including dead meat if it is soft from rot.

Rod’s smile fades.

“What’s it mean, Sergeant?” says the gunner.

“It means stay frosty on the fifty,” Rod tells him, closing the hatch over his head.

Soon they will enter Morgantown nice and quiet, the way they did in Afghanistan during their nighttime patrols. His team will wait for their guy, grab him, and bug out.

He blinks in the heat and the gloom of the Stryker and regards his team. The vehicle holds a squad of nine, but today they are carrying the scientist and the spook and reserving an empty seat for Typhoid Jody. He brought Fireteam B and loaded them up with heavy weaponry and ammunition: Sosa with a flamethrower, Arnold with a machine gun, Tanner with a rifle, and Lynch with a SAW. He also brought Davis with a rifle and field radio. Between the Stryker’s machine gun and the squad, they have enough firepower to make short work of anything in their way.

The young faces look back at him expectantly, but he just nods, and they return the gesture with some relief. No news is good news. Sosa gives him a cocky grin that looks like lipstick on a pig. Rod’s shooters have faith in him, but they think the mission is screwed up. The scientist is dripping with sweat that smells like fear. Next to him, Fielding sits looking sour, probably resenting being taken out of the safest place on the continent and thrown into the shit.

Don’t worry, Captain, we’ll get you back to your cushy desk job. We’re all going to get through this in one piece.

Major Duncan and Captain Rhodes made a big deal out of the mission. They made it sound like the squad was being sent to save the world. It’s a chance, yes, but a long shot to be sure. Saving the world apparently is not even important enough for the Army to give him some air support and keep eyes on the package. Someone is watching, possibly by satellite, but they’re not being very giving with their information, and what they do share, by the time it filters to Rod’s level, is old. In short, this is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

A haystack that is on fire and trying to kill you and eat your flesh. The mission is important, but I’m not going to allow it to become a slippery slope where good men end up taking big risks and dying for nothing. We’re going to do this like we do everything—as professionals.

The Stryker gunner swears loudly.

The nauseating smell has already seeped into the rig, making the boys wince. They know it well from DC. The sweet, beefy, putrid stench of dead bodies left rotting in the sun. They will never get used to it. It’s just a hint now, but getting stronger by the second.

Lynch produces a bottle of menthol vapor rub from one of his front cargo pockets and wipes some under his nose with a cotton swab, sniffing. He passes it on.

“Two minutes,” the commander announces.

Rod opens the hatch as the Stryker rolls into the outskirts of Morgantown on its eight wheels. Behind him, the commander sweeps the fifty across the length of an old red brick apartment building, its windows filled with cheap air conditioners.

Past that, a shopping center, and beyond, main street.

The Stryker passes five bloated, grinning corpses hanging from a traffic light, three by their necks with their hands tied behind their backs, two by their ankles. The calling card of the militia groups. Signs on their chests bear the inscription: INFECTED.

The militia, it seems, are every bit as ruthless as he heard through the grapevine. Some of them wear necklaces made from monster teeth. Others cut off the Jodies’ heads and mount them on spikes to mark human territory. Rod has seen what men can do in war and believes these people are insane. He’s just glad they’re on his side.

A seething carpet of crows bursts shrieking into the air at the Stryker’s approach, revealing piles of blackened, half-eaten bodies covering the street. As the birds take to the air and settle in the hundreds on the rooftops, thick clouds of flies materialize over the dead.

Armageddon visited this place. The storefronts lining the town’s main drag are shattered and burned out, the walls peppered with bullet holes, the sidewalks glittering with broken glass and empty shell casings. The asphalt is coated with a paste of hardening blood. Rod covers his mouth and waves away the hungry flies buzzing around his face. The stench is incredible and he resists the urge to vomit, reminding himself that decorated combat infantrymen do not hurl on over three million dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded military equipment. He thinks about Gabriela’s letters, about baby Victor squeezing his fist, signing for milk, and smiles a little.

The commercial district turns into a residential area, its homes waiting patiently for their owners to return and take care of them. Thankfully, the flies disappear and the stench of death loses its bite the further they get from downtown. Beyond, they drive through another commercial district made of up a car dealership, strip mall, small office building and Walmart store.

Rod slaps his gloved hand against the metal skin of the Stryker. The driver rolls the rig to a stop in the Walmart parking lot about halfway between the junction of the nearby east-west roads and the big box store’s front doors. He closes the hatch and tells the squad to dismount.

“It’s time to earn our money, vatos,” he says.

♦

Morgantown dominates the entrance to a long, lush, green valley flanked by tall, thickly treed hills. From the west, two roads lead into town from the valley. On the other side, three offer multiple routes to Washington. If Typhoid Jody is in a vehicle and heading to Washington from Camp Defiance, Rod is fairly certain he will come through this town. If the man is on foot, it is at least probable he will come through the area rather than hoof it over the hills, with their steep approaches that would challenge even the physically fit.

All assuming, of course, the man is going to Washington at all. The last information they received indicated Typhoid Jody was on the move and heading east, based on the assumption that the large crowd of Jodies is following him. They have nothing else to go on. They do not know whether the man is leading his little army on foot, or whether he’s gotten a ride.

They are not completely without sight, however. Higher Command gave them two James Bond-grade systems normally issued to recon units. The first is a tripod-mounted surveillance sensor offering radar capability. The second is a package consisting of a long-range TV camera, laser range-finder and thermal imager. Using the first sensor, they can detect any moving object within twenty kilometers. Using the second, they can see what’s coming, learn how far away it is, and identify thermal signature—that is, see if what is coming at them is human or not.

The boys fan out around the Stryker, establishing security. Deciding there are no threats in the area, Rod whistles, calling them together.

“Aieeyah,” he says.

“Aieeyah, Sergeant,” they grin.

Rod eyes them with pride, noting their high morale. “Everyone clear on what they’re supposed to do?”

The soldiers nod.

“Then get to it, vatos,” he tells them.

Sosa and Lynch help each other unload motorcycles tied to the sides of the rig, and perform a last-minute spot inspection. Satisfied, they throw satchels over their necks, kick start the bikes, and roar out of the parking lot, leaving behind the acrid smell of exhaust.

Their job is simple: drive five miles down the road and spray paint messages on billboards, the sides of buildings and on the road itself along their return telling Typhoid Jody that they are waiting for him in Morgantown.

Rod does not want a panicked civilian trying to evade his people. He does not have the resources for an extended car chase. Typhoid Jody is going to have to want to come to them. Rod believes he will, as long as they do not make him feel threatened.

Arnold and Tanner, meanwhile, have unloaded the tripods and are jogging with them toward the Walmart. Their job is also simple. They will scale the wall, deploy the gear on the roof facing west, and return, running the fiber-optic cable back to the Stryker. Arnold will stay on the roof to operate the sensors and provide overwatch with his machine gun.

His shooters know where to go and what to do. Now they wait. Rod pats the bulge in one of his front cargo pockets, where he keeps Gabriela’s letters. He has read all of them except the last one, and they have gotten darker over time. His wife is depressed, and there is nothing he can do about it except do his duty and win so that maybe he can get a little R&R with them at Fort Hood.

Tonight, he will read the last letter, aware it may have to last him for a while.

“What do you want me to do?” the scientist asks him, breaking his reverie. “Can I help?”

Fielding stands with his back against a light pole and stares at the scientist with an amused expression, as if the entire mission is an experiment to test the other man’s response to stress. Rod senses he is not here to help, but as a minder. The good doctor is something like a prisoner.

During the airlift and subsequent drive in the Stryker, Rod found himself warming to the scientist. Dr. Price does not fit the egghead stereotype. The man appears to be socially detached and unable to connect with other people, but he is not haughty or arrogant. Instead, he beamed with obvious excitement at the chance to elaborate on his theories, half of which involved molecular biology that went straight over Rod’s head. Otherwise, the man’s entire being appears to be focused on coping with his terror and trying to stay alive.

Fielding is another matter. The man is unreadable. He appears to have no value to the mission other than to keep an eye on Price. Rod wonders what orders the man has, and who gave them to him. He will have to treat Fielding as a wildcard—a potential threat to mission integrity.

“We’re going to set up our roadblock right over there by the entrance to the parking lot,” Rod tells Price. “Just you, me and Captain Fielding.”

He gazes down the road past the Walmart and takes in the bowling alley, gas station and seedy shopping center with a bar. On the other side of the street, the small office building stands dark and derelict. He imagines Typhoid Jody’s approach and tries to visualize the outcome. If the man is on foot, they may be here for a while. Typhoid Jody will see the signs and have miles to ditch his entourage if he agrees to give up. If he doesn’t, the Hellraisers will have ample warning to jump in the Stryker and get the hell out of here.

If the man arrives in a vehicle, he will be alone. They’ll detect his approach from miles away and have plenty of time to get ready even if he’s driving fast. When he sees the roadblock, he will either stop to negotiate, or keep driving. If he agrees to surrender, they will slap a bio suit on him and put him in the Stryker. If he does not, or if he tries to run the roadblock, they are authorized to use deadly force. Because if he does not surrender, he is a threat and must be terminated.

Is that why Fielding is here? To make sure Typhoid Jody dies?

“How much time will we have?” Price asks him. “When the time comes, Fielding and I will have to get into our Racal suits.”

“Anywhere from ten minutes, if he’s driving fast, to hours, if he’s on foot.”

“We should be able to make that work. You should know that our suits are yellow, and the subject’s suit is orange, so you will be able to tell us apart at a glance.”

“Dr. Price, you might as well ring a dinner bell.”

The scientist gapes at him. “What do you mean?”

“The Jodies make a beeline for bright colors like yellow. Red, orange, anything like that.”

“Well,” Price says.

“Not to worry. We should have enough spray paint for you and the Captain to use.”

“Thank you.”

Rod nods. “So why don’t you tell me how much danger we’re in here?”

“Danger?”

“From Typhoid Jody. What kind of a threat is he, exactly?”

“You want facts or speculation?”

“Facts, please.”

“The man you call Typhoid Jody is an asymptomatic carrier of an airborne variant of the Wildfire Agent. But we know about as much about how he does it as we do about Wildfire itself—that is to say, not a whole hell of a lot.”

Rod laughs at the man’s candor. As usual, facts appear to be in short supply. “So we don’t even know if our MOPP suits will offer any real protection.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it.”

“Great,” he says dryly. “What do we know for sure about how he controls the Infected?”

“Again, very little,” Price tells him. “All we know is the human Infected are drawn to him. Thousands are following him. But we don’t know otherwise what level of control he has. With hope, he won’t have any Infected with him.”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Rod agrees, and then adds, “Do you really think he could end the war?”

“I definitely think it’s very possible.”

Another ironclad, definite, absolute, solid maybe, Rod thinks, and sighs.

And yet the world has gotten so bad even maybe sounds like something worth fighting for. He thinks about Gabriela, and his kids, and wants to believe.

It’s a slippery slope for sure, but Rod cannot help but begin to feel hope.

Anne

Anne whistles, letting Marcus know she is approaching and to stand to arms. The large man stiffens and snatches up his rifle.

She emerges from the woods, sniper rifle slung across her back, the brim of her cap pulled down low, casting her face in shadow.

She is finding it difficult to process what she has just seen; she wonders how she is going to communicate it to the others. Visions of the Infected swarming over each other like termites to build human pyramids continue to haunt her, making her feel nauseous and frazzled.

Evan and Ramona sit cross-legged on the ground, eating cold ravioli from cans with chopsticks. Evan nods to her, stands and throws his can into the woods.

“Thank God,” Jean says, her Chanel suit now wrinkled to the point of looking like a wrung out washcloth. She and Gary sit huddled on the ground, their backs against the side of the bus. She looks furious. “Now we can go to Camp Nightingale, right?”

Anne ignores her, scowling.

“Was he there?” Marcus asks her.

“He was there.”

The Rangers gather around, waiting for her to explain.

“What’s with her now?” Anne says, tilting her heard toward Jean.

“She said you were dead and we should leave,” Ramona tells her with a sigh. “The minute you left, she started in on us.”

“Sorry to disappoint her,” Anne says. “Where’s Todd?”

The others glance at each other.

“He split,” Marcus tells her. “Headed the same way as you, in fact.”

“And you didn’t think to stop him?”

His face reddens. “I’m not the boss of him.”

Anne cannot argue. It is her own logic come back to haunt her. We are here by consent, she always told them. When we are fighting, you will do your job or face judgment from the rest of us. But when the fighting stops, nobody owns you. If you want to leave, then leave.

She herself was willing to abandon them all to pursue Ray Young out of a sense of a higher purpose that trumped her loyalty to the team she created. Todd must feel he has a greater loyalty to obey, and Anne can guess what it is.

The dumb kid is going to get himself killed over an infected girl.

“He said to tell you he’ll catch up with us east,” Ramona says. “And that he’s sorry. He said he had to go see for himself.”

Anne points toward the trees and says, “On the other side of that hill, there are tens of thousands of the Infected. That’s where Todd is going.”

“All right,” Marcus said. “You want us to track him?”

“When are we leaving?” Jean says. “That was the deal, right? We help you kill this guy, and then you’ll take us to Nightingale.”

“I didn’t get him,” Anne says.

“We came all the way out here for nothing?”

Gary shushes Jean, starting them hissing and spitting at each other like cats.

Marcus frowns in puzzlement. “What happened? Didn’t have a clear shot?”

“The Infected were protecting him,” Anne tells him, again struggling to find the words. In her mind, she fires at the human pyramid, which collapses into a massive pile of squirming arms and legs. “He can control them. Once I started shooting, they blocked my shot.”

“Control” hardly covers it. Ray has his own personal army.

His relationship with the Infected appears to be symbiotic, but what are the Infected getting out of it? Maybe nothing. Maybe only Infection itself is. If that’s true, who is controlling whom?

The answer does not matter to her. Either way, Ray must pay for what he did to more than a hundred thousand people at Camp Defiance. Either way, he must be stopped before he reaches Washington.

“I’ll need your help next time,” Anne tells her team.

“Come on,” says Jean. “You need to stop rolling the dice with our lives.”

“What about the risk of exposure?” Evan wonders. “I thought the idea was we would provide security for you, and you would kill him with the sniper rifle.”

“I need you to shoot at any Infected between me and him. Just get close enough for suppressing fire. Then throw everything you’ve got. Think you can do that?”

The others nod. Of course they can. And if that does not work, they can always wear the gas masks they keep stowed in their kit, and pray it is enough to keep from becoming infected.

“Come on,” Anne tells them. “We’ve got to get back on the road.”

“Do you know where he’s going?”

“East,” Anne says. “He took off in a white truck. We’re on the only road through this part of the valley. If he hasn’t passed by here, then he’s still going east.”

“What about Todd?” Ramona says. “You said he was in danger.”

Anne groans. Her shooting stirred up the hornet’s nest, and Todd is walking right into it. The whole thing infuriates her. What does he think he is going to accomplish?

She feels a wave of grief wash over her mind, leaving behind despair so deep it sucks the air from her lungs. She worked hard to master her emotions, rejecting love and attachment and embracing the strength of perpetual hatred.

The truth, however, is she loves Todd as if he were her own son.

“Are you all right?” Ramona asks her.

“I don’t know yet,” she says in a small voice.

“God, she’s falling apart now,” Jean says. She stands near them now, shrugging out of Gary’s grip. “Look at her. This is who you’re taking orders from.”

Marcus turns and glares at her. “Shut the hell up, lady.”

“Or what?” Jean laughs. “What else can you do to me? I’m practically a hostage.”

“Nobody’s holding you here,” he tells her. “You can go anytime you want.”

“I’d be happy to, Marcus, if I had food, weapons, a car and some directions, but I don’t. Anything I had, I left behind in Hopedale. So I guess that makes me your hostage.”

Marcus grunts. He doesn’t care; he’s not listening to her.

“Todd,” Anne whispers.

She has a vision of cracks appearing in a dam.

Beyond, infinite darkness, seeping in.

“Jean, come back to the bus with me,” Gary says.

“You should be supporting me,” Jean hisses at him. “We need to go to Camp Nightingale now. We’re out in the open. We’re all going to die out here if we don’t get somewhere safe.”

“Anne knows what she’s doing,” Evan says. “We’ve survived out here for weeks together.”

“Look at her,” Jean shrieks. “Can’t you see? She’s lost it!”

“Anne?” Marcus says, looking at her worriedly.

Evan shrugs. “Hey, I have no problem going to Nightingale.”

“Maybe she just needs a rest,” Ramona suggests.

“Someone else needs to take charge and make a plan,” Jean says. “I nominate Evan.”

Anne blinks and the vision of the dam fades. “We need to get back on the road.”

“I don’t know, Anne,” Evan says. “Maybe we should talk about it.”

“Just drop us off at the other camp,” Jean pleads. “Then you can go do whatever you want.”

“Anne, do you have a plan?” Marcus says, frowning.

“There is no plan, you fucking moron,” Jean screams, pointing at Anne. “This woman is crazy and she’s going to get all of us killed if you don’t listen to me!”

“That’s enough,” Anne says quietly, her eyes narrowing.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jean tells her. “You don’t get to look down on me like I haven’t suffered as much as you. I’m sick of your act. You’re not half as badass as you think you are with your guns and scars. You have no idea what we went through in that art gallery. What we had to do to survive. But even then we were better off than we are here. We had everything we needed, and we could make our own decisions without someone telling us what to do.”

“Jean, please,” Gary pleads.

“I’m not finished. We had everything we needed. Then you found us. You told us we would be safe at Defiance. You made a promise to us, and we believed you. Now you’re off chasing some guy on a bizarre hunch and we have to get dragged along, regardless of the fact that every hour we spend out in the open we are in incredible danger. And you refuse to take us to the one place within fifty miles that’s safe. You lied to us! You don’t get to make decisions for us anymore!”

Anne unholsters one of her guns and taps it against her thigh.

It’s time for you to shut up.

“And you don’t fucking scare me either,” Jean tells her. “What are you going to do now? Kill me in front of all these witnesses?”

Anne raises her pistol and fires, the gun discharging with a deafening report, the recoil vibrating down her arm.

The empty shell casing flickers in her peripheral vision. The slug punched a hole through Jean’s throat. The woman stumbles away as if seeking a private place to bleed.

The others watch in horror as she bends over, hands on her knees, struggling to breathe as blood pours from the smoking wound onto the road.

She looks at Anne with wide, disbelieving eyes before falling first to her knees, then onto her side, where she curls into a ball, air bubbles gurgling from her torn throat, her face turning blue. Her body shivers briefly before stiffening.

“Jesus, Anne,” Evan says, backing away.

She shifts her aim to Gary. “This is the new reality,” she tells him. “Do you understand what the new reality is?”

Gary stares at Jean’s body, wearing a pained expression. “Better than anyone,” he says quietly.

“Are you on the bus, or off the bus?”

He takes his time answering. The rest of the team stares at the body in shock.

“I’d like to come with you,” he whispers.

“Let’s go,” Anne tells her team, holstering the gun. “Todd will have to take care of himself, like a man. As for us, we’re leaving right now.”

Todd

Todd kneels in the tall grass on a hill overlooking the farmhouse and the thousands of Infected swarming the fields surrounding it. Hundreds trickle east but most mill around aimlessly, their heads bobbing in search of prey. The humid air fills with their neverending chorus of barks and moans, competing with the loud buzzing of insects and the laughter of birds in the trees.

Todd scans the Infected with the binoculars, feeling queasy. He has never seen so many of them before in one place. Rage and despair is written on their faces. The magnification makes them feel too close for comfort, and he wonders how Anne does it every day, looking at them through her rifle’s telescopic sight. He glances over his shoulder as warning shivers slither down his spine, and it is just as unsettling to see nothing there than something. For months, he has survived because good people watched his back. Only the best can travel alone out here among the Infected. Only the best and the lucky. And sooner or later, everyone’s luck runs out.

The sun beats mercilessly against his head; his old SWAT hat is soaked through with sweat. He can feel the back of his neck slowly frying in the light. Lowering the binoculars, he plunges his arm into his rucksack until his hand grips the familiar shape of his bottle of suntan lotion. He slathers it onto his neck and arms, then takes a sip from his water bottle.

Hours have passed, and still he has not found her. He will search for as long as it takes, one gray snarling face at a time. It does not matter to him that he has no idea what he will do if he does find her. For now, only the search itself matters.

He takes a break to stretch and rub his tired arms, and then returns to his task. Several Infected have broken into the chicken coop and are chasing the chickens, which flee into the swarm to be torn apart and eaten raw.

For the next hour, that is about as exciting as it gets.

His mind wanders while he works. He remembers the fight on the bridge, him and Ray running to one of the buses parked across the road to form barricades, the men inside screaming and shooting and dying, the hordes of Pittsburgh rushing at them in a massive, snarling flood. The bridge exploded in a blinding flash of light, flinging Todd through the air like a doll to land tumbling across the cratered asphalt. The juggernaut galloped straight at him, its rigid tentacles trumpeting its war song. Ray tried to pull him away and, seeing Todd refuse, stood with him, emptying his pistols into the thing before it crashed through the bridge and fell roaring into the torrents below.

I don’t care what he is. I forgive him for what he’s done. I’m not going to help Anne kill him. I have to get away from her. If I don’t I’ll end up just like her, filled with hate.

Todd gazes at the pathetic horde in the valley below and realizes he does not even hate them anymore either. When Anne sees the Infected, she sees only the monster controlling them like meat puppets. When Todd sees them, he sees people enslaved to a monster. It’s hard to hate slaves.

He remembers coming home from the bridge in the dark, his face nuzzled in Anne’s lap. How safe that felt even as the hoofed thing rammed the vehicle. They stepped off the bus, ringed by leering faces and clapping hands. Erin came and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. She called him an amazing boy. She stuck with him even though he always returned to the road, maybe never to return. She said she loved him.

Remembering these things, Todd’s heart feels like it is sinking. He was stupid to run away and live on the road with the Rangers. Erin offered him everything he wanted. She did love him; now that she is gone, he believes that.

We only realize what we have after it’s gone, he understands now. It is a grownup thought, something Paul might have said.

He should have stayed with Erin and built a life together with her, no matter how brief it might have lasted. Happiness is a rare thing these days, and he’d squandered it.

That is what Paul’s smile was trying to teach me, he realizes. That home, as they say, is where the heart is. He can picture the Reverend saying, I used up all my chances, boy. You got your whole life ahead of you. This, too, is a gift.

Todd lowers the binoculars, aware of a vaguely ominous sound. It is the crisp, aerosol roar of a distant jet, growing in volume until it becomes thunder. When he cannot hear anything else, putting him at risk from Infected coming up behind him, he snatches his rifle and glares at the woods, the blank blue sky. The sound crawls along his nerves until he starts to panic.

A formation of four planes appears, roaring high overhead.

The noise fades as the planes stream into the distance. Todd watches them go with pride—after all that’s happened, the Air Force is still holding it together—then resumes his search.

Minutes later, the roar builds again, cascading over the hills.

You guys lost or something?

The planes scream into the valley, flying low like gray birds of prey. Todd flinches with alarm as their searing roar crescendos.

One by one, the planes release bombs that plummet toward the ground, whistling as they fall.

WOOOOOOOOO

Just above the ground, the payloads burst in flashes of light, replaced by clouds of black objects hurtling toward the earth.

Holy shit—

The ground sparkles.

Cluster bomb, he realizes as the air pressure around him changes.

Thousands of explosions ripple across the valley floor with an ear-splitting crackling, devouring it in seconds. The bodies of the Infected fly apart, trees explode into splinters, the farmhouse and outlying buildings dissolve in bursts of flaming matchsticks. The puffs of smoke congeal, roiling into seething waves of smoke and dust.

The planes split up, veering left and right, and circle the valley.

Todd looks down at the scene of devastation in disbelief. The ground is still trembling. Body parts begin to rain around him.

Holy shit. He dives under the nearest tree for cover.

The ground stops shaking but arms and legs, hands and feet, grinning faces and bits of bone continue to plummet onto the hill, shredded and smoking, along with flaming bits of wood and chunks of hot chewed metal.

“Cut it out!” Todd screams, unable to control his fear and revulsion. “Stop!”

The roar fills the world.

The planes return, flying low to the ground, and strafe the valley floor with Gatling cannons spraying dozens of rounds per second. Todd can feel the electric buzz of the cannons in his forehead, deep in his chest, in his teeth.

Something crashes into the branches over his head. A human head, shattered to a pulp, flops smoking at his feet followed by a rain of leaves.

“Sons of bitches,” Todd says, feeling rage unlike anything he has ever felt, so strong he wonders if he is infected. His cannot hear himself scream. “Motherfuckers!”

The boy runs into the grisly downpour, howling at the sky, and stumbles over a naked, mangled torso. Falling to his knees, he grips a handful of earth and flings it at the departing planes, already just dwindling dots in the sky.

“You didn’t have to do this!”

His rage spent, he looks at the smoke and dust drifting across the wasteland of the valley floor, his ears ringing. He presses his forehead into the grass and moans.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he whispers into the dirt.

All I wanted to do was say goodbye to her.

Alarm bells ring in his brain, warning him to get out of here. The noise will attract every monster within miles. The sun is falling, and he will be caught out in the open in the dark. But he does not move.

I need a little time with this, okay?

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.

IT’S NOT FAIR.

He raises his head and gazes down at the scene of Biblical devastation. A massive wall of smoke rises above the valley, reminding him of Pittsburgh. Piles of the dead lay half buried in dirt. Nothing moves. The land has been scrubbed of life.

He stares at it for over an hour, watching the shadows claim the land.

The air fills with a rhythmic shrieking sound, growing louder. Snapping out of his reverie, Todd jumps to his feet and runs to the tree where he left his rucksack and carbine. Shouldering the weapon, he flicks the selector lever from SAFE to BURST, and waits.

The high-pitched rhythm is too regular to be a monster. It’s a machine, close enough for him to hear the roar of the engine. The shriek sounds like tank treads.

The beat-up armored vehicle crashes through the foliage fifty yards away on the hill, chugging puffs of exhaust, and grinds to a halt at the top of the slope, where it stands idling. Whoever is inside it is apparently stunned by the scenes of devastation in the valley below.

The sun is bleeding into the horizon. Todd could get away from these people easily if he wanted. He doubts they have spotted him. All he has to do is back into the trees.

He needs people, however. Shouldering his rifle, he steps away from the tree, hands raised in the air, and approaches the vehicle.

I hope these guys are friendly.

As he closes the distance, he spies the legend on the turret through the humid, smoky air: BOOM STICK.

Despite the horrors he has seen, Todd laughs. It is the laugh of the Infected, a sound one cannot easily distinguish from crying.

A dismembered leg falls from the sky and thuds onto the turret with a final arterial spray of blood, bouncing into the grass. Two bearded men and two women, dressed in motley uniforms, scurry from the back of the tank, glaring at him over the barrels of their rifles.

Todd keeps his hands in the air, his heart racing.

“I don’t know you,” he says, starting to worry.

The Bradley’s hatches open and Sarge and Steve emerge.

“Oh my God,” Todd says, swallowing hard.

“Hey Kid,” Sarge says, using his old nickname. “Where you been?”

Todd barely notices them, his attention focused on the beautiful woman striding toward him in a black T-shirt and baggy camo pants, a police-issue pistol slung low on her hip.

“Wendy,” Todd says, bursting into tears.

She breaks into a run and launches herself into his embrace.

“Hi, Todd,” she says, grinning.

Dr. Price

Travis tells Fielding to take off his watch and any jewelry and badges. To remove anything sharp in his pockets, such as pens or keys.

“Step into the coveralls,” Travis instructs him, finding a certain satisfaction in giving the man orders. “Now get the boots on. After that, we’ll put on the facepiece.”

Fielding pulls on the suit, flexing his hands inside the attached black gloves, while Travis closes the zipper running diagonally from his hip to his throat. Using the coupler, he connects the air hose to an appendage jutting from the mouth of the faceplate.

“Now we’ll put the air tank on your back using the harness,” Travis murmurs, concentrating on his work. Fielding’s breath hisses rhythmically through the respirator. “How does it feel?”

“Hot as hell, but it works,” Fielding says.

“Now you even sound like Darth Vader.”

“Very funny, Doc.”

“We put the suits on using the buddy system. I check your suit for rips and you check mine. The idea here is to achieve an isolated atmosphere within the suit. If one germ gets in, you’re toast. Especially check for holes along the seams.”

“Got it,” says Fielding.

The soldiers are returning on their motorcycles. Travis watches as Sergeant Rodriguez walks away from the Stryker to greet them. He likes the sergeant, wishes Fielding were a little more like him. It’s too bad they are enemies.

“Hope they brought the spray paint back so we can cover up this yellow,” Travis says.

“I would keep it,” Fielding tells him. “The yellow makes us look friendly. We want the guy not to see us as a threat, so he doesn’t get spooked or decide to attack us.”

Travis unzips the man’s coverall and then removes the facepiece and harness. “Do you really think he might attack us?”

“We won’t know what he’s going to do, Doc. Hell, we don’t even know what he is. He may walk like a duck and quack like a duck, but he’s not a duck. For all we know, Wildfire is guiding his every thought and action. He might not even be able to tell the difference.”

“What are we going to do if he does attack us?”

Fielding sneers. “Doc, leave that to me. Just pray real hard he shows up.”

“I’ll bet you wish he doesn’t,” Travis says, sneering back at him. “You’re the kind of guy who’d be perfectly happy to see the world end, as long as you get to shoot me with a big told-you-so smile on your face.”

Fielding laughs. “You know me too well, Doc.”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

The man steps out of the coveralls, stretches and punches him in the solar plexus, knocking the air out of him. Travis doubles over, hugging his ribs and gasping.

“Her name was Sandra Forbes, you piece of shit. The woman you got kicked off the helicopter so you could save the world. She was a travel planner. She worked for the chief of staff.”

Travis comes at him, fueled by sudden rage. He throws an awkward punch that connects with Fielding’s chin. The response is quick, vicious. Travis wakes up on the ground lying on his back.

“Breathe, Doc. Breathe.”

He rolls onto his side, coughing and gasping. “I never would have guessed she was a friend of yours,” he hisses. “I didn’t see you rushing to give up your seat.”

“So it’s my job to rescue everyone?” Fielding says, standing over him, his hands clenched as if itching to hit him again. “And if I don’t, their death is my fault, is that it?”

“What’s wrong with wanting to stay alive?”

“You’re a freak, Doc. You don’t know shit about honor or principle. If it were me, I would give up my life without a second thought if it meant ending the epidemic. You? You want to save the world, but only if others take the risks and do the dying. You’re a coward.”

“Hey!” Sergeant Rodriguez shouts, jogging toward them. “What’s going on here?”

“Just some personal business, Sergeant.”

“Captain, you are fucking up my op. Take a hike.”

“Fine, you can babysit him. He’s all yours.” He leans and whispers to Travis, “I really do hope I get to kill you, Doc. It almost makes me wish your guy never shows.”

Fielding walks away as Rod approaches and kneels next to Travis. “You all right, Dr. Price?”

“Yes, I think so,” Travis says, rolling onto his back and looking up at the blue sky, enjoying the simple act of breathing. “Thanks for that.”

“You mind telling me what that was all about?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Your body is your worst enemy,” the soldier tells him. “Your breathing, your vision.”

“Tell me about it.”

Rodriguez laughs harshly. “You don’t know the half of it. When the Infected come screaming at you, it’s not them you got to worry about the most, it’s your body’s response to stress. That’s their greatest advantage over us; the Infected, well, they don’t know fear. Even now, when I see one of them running at me, I get a jolt to my system, like an electric shock. But then the training takes over and I do what needs doing.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“The point I’m making is a fistfight is not so different. The body reacts the same to fear. Maybe you’ll remember that the next time you decide to take a swing at the Captain. You could never beat him fair and square. The guy has military training from somewhere, and you’d never get past it. He knows how to take punishment, and he knows how to dish it out. He let you off easy with what you got. So don’t antagonize the guy, okay? We happen to need you.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll remember that.”

Travis watches Fielding walk toward the Stryker, and spits into the dust.

You’re making a big mistake underestimating me. When I took that seat on the plane, that wasn’t me being a coward. That was me fighting to survive. You have no idea what I will do.

I just fight differently, that’s all.

Ray

As the sun melts into the horizon, Ray veers off the main road, taking a short detour north to a town called Milford. The idea was to drive into the night to gain more distance from the shooter on his tail, but he is exhausted. And he once had a friend who lived in Milford; he knows the ground, how to get in and out. Lola does not seem to mind.

“Tonight, you’re going to sleep in a real bed, honey.”

She says nothing.

“I know I’ll appreciate it. I’m dog tired.”

After everything he has been through, he feels like he could sleep for a week.

The truck passes an overgrown cemetery on the left, a white delivery van with its back doors wide open, driveways, mailboxes and a sign reading, SCHOOL BUS STOP AHEAD.

“Man, I haven’t been here in years.”

Dozens of corpses lay clumped around a roadblock of two trucks blocking both lanes; traffic cones direct him toward an abandoned checkpoint on the side of the road. Ray drives over the bodies, breathing through his mouth.

It is not hard for him to figure out what happened. The townsfolk set up the roadblock to keep people out. Like many roadblocks set up in the first days of the epidemic, however, it was overrun from within. On the right, a sign is riddled with bullet holes: KOCH FUNERAL HOME.

Moments later, Ray is in downtown Milford, consisting of an IGA, hardware store, tavern he knows well from back in the day, convenience store and post office. He spots a house where an old chemist ran a meth lab; someone spray painted VAYA CON DIOS across the front door. Further on, an American flag hangs limply from the top of a white pole set in front of the town firehouse.

The Infected creep from their hiding places, grimacing and reaching out to him as the truck rolls past. He is too tired to play around with them this time. He is too tired, and they are too goddamn pitiful.

We’ll make this right, he broadcasts.

The Infected wail in response, an eerie cry that sounds like laughter.

♦

Ray makes a right turn at a stop sign and drives ahead to a small, shabby motel where he remembers two prostitutes who worked 2A. The sign out front says NO VACANCY, which makes him chuckle. He stops the truck in front of the manager’s office and kills the engine.

The Unit 12 cops jump down, holding the weapons they were given by the mob back in Sugar Creek.

Clear the motel, he orders. The last thing he needs is another vigilante or some gun toting survivalist taking a shot at him. Then he tells the other Infected in the area to bring food and water. First aid kit. And candles and a razor. Oh, and some booze.

Then arm yourselves. All of you. Guns, knives, whatever you got.

“Come on, honey. Let’s find us a room.”

Ray enters the office and emerges with a handful of keys.

“Second floor has a nice view of the woods out back.”

He finds a blackened corpse in the first room, its leaking, congealed body fluids fusing it to the bed next to the night table, which is covered in empty pill bottles and a jug of wine. He backpedals and slams the door.

After skipping the next two doors, he tries the third.

“Now, this is more like it.”

The air is stale and smells like dust, but it was cleaned before the epidemic, and the bed is made. The bedroom window in the back offers a view of the swimming pool, bone dry and half filled with a tangle of dead bodies.

Beyond the pool, Infected stagger out of the darkening woods, moaning.

And above the tops of the trees, he sees flashes of light along the horizon. The battle for Washington, DC, still playing itself out.

Ray sighs and closes the curtains.

In the living room, he inspects the drab couch, wood paneling, dead TV and painting on the wall of an empty rowboat grounded on an ocean beach. Two of his cops set boxes on the floor, brought to the motel as tribute by the Infected still living in the town. He can see them down in the parking lot, staring up at his room and moaning.

The sound of bottles clinking against each other brings a grin to his face.

“Jim Beam!” he says, inspecting one. He unscrews the cap, takes a sip, and sighs. “Here, honey, have a snort. You deserve it.”

Lola takes the bottle and drinks it like water, wincing.

“Whoa there, Nelly,” he says, taking it back and screwing the cap back on.

She’s like a child. I have to take care of her.

Working by candlelight, he undresses her and inspects her body for wounds. She has multiple bite marks on her arm, one of which broke the skin and appears red and inflamed, and her feet are cut and bloodied. Otherwise, her long legs are bruised but she appears to be healthy.

“Let’s get you fixed up, honey.”

Dipping a washcloth in the basin of water the Infected provided, he rubs her face and arms, clearing away the dirt. He dips her head into a second basin, washes her hair and brushes it out, taking his time. Then he washes the rest of her body.

“I’m sorry, you know,” he says, glancing at her face for a reaction.

Her face twitches, her eyes open and staring at the blank face of the TV. He wraps a blanket around her shoulders, covering her nudity.

“I’m sorry I hurt your boyfriend. Remember that? Long time ago, right? Well, I’m sorry about it, Lola. It was just me hating everything. This might sting a little, honey.”

Ray dabs her feet with hydrogen peroxide, making the tiny wounds fizz. Lola stiffens but says nothing. He reaches for the tube of antibiotic cream.

“I hated everything because if I liked something, I hurt it until it was gone. Stupid, huh?”

He takes another swig from the bottle of Jim Beam and inspects his work. The wounds on her feet and arm are now clean and bandaged.

“You know, you were the closest I ever came to loving someone. Even more than Tyler, and he was my best friend.”

Rummaging through other people’s luggage, he finds a simple sundress and pair of comfortable sneakers that appear to fit her. She puts them on obediently.

“The weird thing is I hated my dad, but I act just like him. I know right from wrong and all that. I just can’t help myself after a few beers.”

He stops, wondering how to continue. It is hard to explain.

“Screw it. You don’t even know what I’m saying anyway. Open wide, honey.”

He winces; Lola’s mouth smells like an open grave. He takes a needle from the first aid kit and flosses pieces of meat wedged between her teeth. Putting a large dollop of Crest on a motel toothbrush, he brushes her teeth and tells her to spit into the basin.

“You look real beautiful, honey.” His heart aches looking at her. “Why don’t you climb under that blanket and go to sleep? You need a rest.”

I’m going to save this girl, and then marry her, if she’ll have me.

Outside, the Infected pace and grunt. Ray looks out the window and sees their eyes gleaming in the dark. They seem to want something from him, but he cannot guess what it is. He takes another swig from the bottle and belches. He is well on his way to becoming blissfully drunk.

“Rest in peace, Tyler.”

The Infected rustle in the dark, filling the empty parking lot. They do not scare him anymore. He feels oddly at home with the damned.

“The only hope the rest of you have is if I turn myself in.”

Ray places his hand against the window.

“You’re all my second chance.”

Wendy

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

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

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

The simple fact is she feels safe with him there.

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

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

Todd nods and accepts a cup of coffee from Toby.

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

“We’re leaving soon,” Wendy says.

The boy glances at her.

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

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

“Where are you going?” he finally says.

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

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

It’s meant to be.

“You should come with us,” she says.

Todd

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

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

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

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

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

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

FUTILE BUT BRAVE; that will be our epitaph.

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

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

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

We could find a cure.

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

He still wants his revenge on Infection.

“Ray Young is alive,” he tells them.

Cool Rod

Dear Rod,

We’re all okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, a salvage crew brought in a truckload of clothes to replace what we lost in the fire. I try not to think that the clothes our kids are wearing once belonged to other kids who are now probably dead. Dead and eaten, from what I hear the crazies do to children.

If the Marines have taken the White House, I hope that means you’ll win this important victory, and get to rotate out for a few weeks of rest. You could come home and live with us for a while. I really need you, Rod. There was a fire and the photo album is gone and now I can’t stop crying. I feel like it wasn’t just pictures but our past that got burned up and forever lost. Right now, our past is all I have of you.

As time goes on, I feel your absence ever so much. You should be with your family right now. Your place is here. I freely give up this demand, my right as your wife, in the hopes that you will win and be able to save not just us, but the entire country. Do your duty, Rod. The wolves are at the door and your family is counting on you to put this to an end. Fight hard, without mercy. Kill them all. Do whatever it takes to win, no matter how hard, no matter how horrible. Put this to an end. And then come home to us so that we can build new memories.

I love you more than myself. Your children miss their father. We are all praying for you.

Your loving wife,

Gabriela

Anne

Sitting cross-legged on the road, Anne cleans and oils her weapons by starlight while her team sleeps fitfully on the bus, dreaming their bad dreams. With swift, deft movements, working by feel, she reassembles her rifle and dry fires it. The forest crowding the road is alive with the song of insects and nocturnal critters scampering through the undergrowth. The air feels warm and wet against her skin. Most people are terrified of the night these days, but not Anne. She welcomes it. The Infected can hide in it, but so can she. In the dark, Anne becomes a hunter.

The asphalt feels warm against her ass and legs. She finishes her granola bar and washes it down with a few chugs of Red Bull. This is what passes for breakfast, but Anne does not mind. Food is for fuel, not pleasure, these days. And speed is paramount; it is time to get back on the road and narrow Ray’s head start. She reloads the rifle and stands, dusting her pants and stretching like a cat. In the dark, she feels calm, thoughtful and safe, as long as she does not think too much about the past.

About two months ago, she started her day serving breakfast to her husband and three small children in their kitchen. After dumping the dishes into the sink to soak in steaming water, she started rolling out pie dough. Her friend called to tell her there was trouble downtown—mobs of people running amok, doing horrible things to each other. By the end of the day, her husband disappeared and her children lay slaughtered in a neighbor’s living room. Three days later, she surfaced from a state of shock in a deteriorating government shelter. By the end of the week, Sarge taught her the basics of sniper craft, and she began the killing. She learned from the pros who worked the camp watchtowers. She often volunteered for a shift in the towers herself, practicing range finding, estimating elevation and wind. With endless practice, she turned murder into an art. Mostly, she has a knack for it. Some people have a natural talent for certain things. It is a strange thought, considering how she came to be a killer, but sometimes she feels she was born to do this.

Which is good in one way, because it is all Anne has left. Hurting Infection, in fact, is one of the few things that make her feel something besides guilt and loss.

The guilt of allowing her children to be slaughtered, the loss of everything she loved. The guilt of letting Ray Young live, only to see him return and slaughter tens of thousands.

Ray Young has become Infection. All that matters now is catching and killing him before he does even worse because Anne, in a moment of weakness, showed mercy.

Stepping onto the bus, she slaps Marcus’s boot and steps back as the man lunges awake, growling in the dark with a knife in his hand.

“Time to go,” Anne tells him.

“Anne? Christ, it’s still pitch black out there.”

“It’ll be light in less than an hour. We already spent too much time here.”

“Wait a minute.” Marcus sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Listen, Anne. I need to know you’re okay.”

“Since when I have ever been truly okay since you’ve known me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m upset, Marcus. There’s a guy who can control the Infected, and spreads Infection, as far as I know, just by looking at you, and he’s on his way to Washington, DC, where our military is in a fight to the death to take the city back.”

“Look, you think we don’t get it about what kind of threat Young poses to all of us, but we do. We get it. It’s just hard to put your life on the line for something, you know? And that’s what you’re asking us all to do here. You’re asking us to die for this. Most of us would rather go somewhere safe and let someone else figure it out.”

Anne blinks at him. She forgot most people still place a high value on their lives.

“The stakes,” she says finally, unsure how to finish the statement.

“We’ll get him,” Marcus assures her. “We will, or the Army will.”

They remember the planes roaring overhead, the distant thunder, the rising wall of smoke on the western horizon, veiling the setting sun.

“We both know he got away before they dropped those bombs.”

“Anne, let me get to the point. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about Todd.” For Anne, even this is a big admission.

“He can take care of himself.”

“He ran off to snoop around a horde of a hundred thousand Infected, and then was close to ground zero when the bombs fell. Marcus, I’m worried.”

“Let’s talk about you. Anne, you shot and killed a woman today.”

“So what? I’ve shot lots of people.”

“Jean was a crazy, but she wasn’t Infected. You shot her in cold blood and didn’t even blink. As far as I know, that’s a first even for you.”

“You know what she did in the art gallery.”

“Jean and Gary did what they had to do to survive. You’ve never judged anyone before for what they’ve done to stay alive. Christ, we all have blood on our hands. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

The truth is I lost control.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Anne says.

“All right. Forget why. What I don’t get is what’s going on inside your head. Me, I honestly can’t picture doing what you did. Shit, what do you feel about it? Do you feel anything at all?”

Anne’s mind flashes to pointing her pistol at Jean’s face and squeezing the trigger.

“I don’t feel anything,” she says, a little surprised at the realization.

Marcus nods, taking this in. Another major admission.

“We’re wasting time here,” she says. “Can we go now? Please?”

He says nothing, and they regard each other in the dark, their eyes gleaming.

“I need you, Marcus,” she tells him, her voice strained.

“I’ll come,” he says. “We’ll finish this.”

“Good. Let’s wake up the others.”

“But I want more.”

“More?”

“I want you.”

As much as Anne loves Todd as a son, she has come to love Marcus as a man. The thought of giving herself to him fills her with panic, however. For one thing, it is too soon. Just two months ago, she was mother to three children given to her by a man whom she loved with her whole heart for nearly ten years of her life. She never properly mourned them. She cannot just let go.

On the other hand, no more perfect time exists. She could die within the next five minutes.

“If you want sex, I can give you that.”

“It’s not about that, Anne. I want you.”

He is asking her to feel, but she doubts she has anything to give him. She remembers Sarge in the government shelter, what seems like a lifetime ago, calling the Infected the living dead.

Us? he added. We’re the dead living.

The words shocked her at the time. Now she understands.

How can you ask me to love you, Marcus, when you might die before sunrise?

“I want you,” he repeats. “Don’t we deserve to be happy, even if for a little while?”

“I don’t know what that means anymore. I want to but I don’t know if I can.”

Marcus nods. “All right. Then I’ll settle for that.”

He smiles at her in the dark and Anne smiles back, a rare sight at any time of day.

Ray

While Ray twitches and sweats in a deep snoring sleep with his arms wrapped around Lola, he dreams the Infected are normal again. In the dream they stand outside where he left them, but it is bright and sunny instead of dark, and all of them are well dressed and clean and looking up at the sun, tears flowing down their cheeks as they smile. The men and women look at each other with wide, sparkling eyes. There is no hate here, no rage, just the thrill of freedom.

Lola, accustomed to dreaming of billions of monsters writhing like maggots across the scoured face of a red planet, finds herself at her house in Cashtown, weeding her garden while her children shriek and run barefoot through the sprinkler spray on the lawn. Her husband winks at her as he enters the garage to take out the lawnmower. She vows to hold onto the feeling she has looking at her family—a sense of her soul being filled to the brim with contentment—knowing nothing perfect lasts forever in this world. That night, as they drink wine and barbecue steaks and eat them outside in the cool dusk, she tells herself if she had to pick a day to relive, she would pick this one, this beautiful summer day spent doing almost nothing.

Outside, the other Infected moan in the darkness, free of the dreams of the red planet and the long exodus through space. They dream of the time before, reliving the past. They are free of the bonds of slavery at last, while Infection waits patiently until morning to reclaim its hosts.

Anne

Dawn is coming fast and the bus flies down the road, chasing a paling sky. The V-shaped snowplow retrofitted onto the front, peppered top to bottom with blood, sends the occasional Infected flying into the ditch with a thud. The engine growls as Marcus changes gears with the stick, slowing down and speeding up to navigate occasional wrecks blocking the road. The Rangers peer through the metal firing ports welded over the windows, Anne looking for any sign of Ray Young, the others watching for threats that specialize in the night. The air feels humid but cool against her skin. This has always been her favorite time of the day; it’s a new day, and anything can happen. For as long as she can remember, Anne has been a morning person.

Holding the edges of the seats to stay balanced as the bus bangs over potholes, she navigates the center aisle until she finds Gary, huddled against the window with his arms crossed.

“I’m sorry about Jean,” she says.

“How did you know what we did in the art gallery?”

“I found the evidence. It wasn’t hard to piece together.”

“You shouldn’t have judged her,” Gary tells her. “Her one sin was she refused to accept that things have changed. She honestly thought the whole thing would blow over and her life would pick up again almost where she’d left it. I think she thought once we got to Nightingale, she would find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi.”

Anne frowns. “Jean had bigger sins than that.”

“What we did, we did to survive. We were trapped. It was either that or die. But it wasn’t her. It was me. I was the one who did it. I made a choice. You should judge me, not Jean. Jean just ate.”

Anne nods. Her suspicion has been confirmed. “She just ate.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s why I judge her, Gary. You, I don’t judge.”

Gary stares back at her stricken, on the verge of tears.

“I killed my friend and then we ate him,” he says. “You need to understand this.”

“You survived.”

“If you call living with that surviving.”

“Can you handle a weapon?”

“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” he says. “I killed my friend with a knife.”

“We don’t talk about the past,” she says.

“I killed my friend with a knife,” Gary repeats with a shrill laugh. “It actually feels good to say it out loud. I was selling his paintings in my gallery and then a week later I cut his throat so Jean and I could eat him and live. It was hard work. Once I had him down, I had to lean and put all my weight into it. He hardly struggled. He just looked at me in surprise while I did it. I was pretty surprised too. I mean, I was outside my body, watching myself do it. I should be in jail, but here I am, alive, and he’s dead. Do you see what kind of person I am?”

“Are you willing to kill again to survive? If you had to?”

“I want to live,” Gary says after a pause.

“All right. We’ll give you a nine millimeter. If the Infected get close, you point it, you shoot it. You watch our backs, we watch yours. Think you can do that?”

“I can do it.”

“Good,” says Anne. “If you killed a man to survive, I can’t absolve you. None of us are shining examples of virtue; we’ve all done terrible things or we wouldn’t be here. But it tells me you have what it takes. That’s the only qualification that matters these days.”

“Anne!” Marcus calls from the driver’s seat at the front.

She feels the tug of gravity test her balance. The bus is slowing.

“Thank you,” Gary says, crying.

Anne stands and hurries toward the front.

“We’ve got people waving us down, about a hundred yards up the road,” Marcus says. “Cops having some car trouble, from the looks of it.”

Anne braces her feet with a wide stance and takes a look through her rifle scope. Standing next to a state police car, two large men wearing black T-shirts and load-bearing vests and jeans wave at the bus, flagging it down. The badges on their belts glint in the morning sun.

Something is wrong with their faces.

Anne blinks, thinking: Impossible.

The cops raise their guns, grinning at her across the remaining distance.

“Go, Marcus!” she screams, taking aim. “Keep going!”

Marcus obeys instantly, throwing the bus back into its highest gear and stepping on the gas. The machinery roars in response, lurching as it accelerates. Anne loses her footing and falls hard onto the floor, the rifle clattering away from her.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

Bullet holes pop through the windshield, spraying the interior with bits of glass. The Rangers drop to the floor, wrapping their arms around their heads. Marcus bellows with rage and pain, half out of his seat and driving blind.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

The bullets shatter the windshield and rip through the air, thudding into metal and bursting through the seats, sending bits of stuffing swirling around them. Wind rushes through the open windshield, carrying the faint tang of rotting milk.

Anne feels the hard, dusty floor under her scarred cheek and wonders how many kids stepped on this spot on their daily commute to school. She pictures their little sneakered feet. She closes her eyes and remembers visiting one of the many orphanages at Camp Defiance. She wanted to see children again. Pastor Strickland gave her a tour and showed her the rows of boys and girls drawing on construction paper with crayons—art therapy, he called it, endless scenes of fire and slaughter, Infected mommies attacking crying daddies, children running through the woods, red eyes identifying the Infected, slashes of blue representing the tears of the victims.

Strickland asked about her spiritual health and she told him she was spiritually dead. He said she should return to her faith, which could serve as a source of strength for her as it has for so many others, reminding her there are no atheists in foxholes. Anne answered there are no believers either. There is just you, dying. And that is the true sadness of life.

You’re here, and then you’re not.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

The cops step aside as the bus roars past, emptying their guns at point blank range, the bullets punching holes through the thin metal skin of the vehicle.

The firing stops. Marcus straightens in the driver’s seat, his face flushed with rage. Anne climbs to her feet and looks through the back window to see the two cops standing in the middle of the road, staring at the bus as it zooms away from them.

“Who’s hit?” Anne says. She has to shout to be heard over the rush of wind whistling across the seats.

“Just glass,” says Ramona. “Nothing major.”

“I’m all scratched up,” Marcus says. “I’m all right, but I’m bleeding.”

Evan and Gary tell her they are okay.

“Ramona, get the first aid kit,” Anne says. “Gary, take a look at Marcus and let Ramona know where he’s hurt and how bad. Ramona, patch him up first if you can.”

“Shouldn’t we stop?” Gary says.

“Not after that. Those people who were shooting at us were Infected.”

“How can that be?” Evan says.

“Ray Young,” Anne answers. “Evan, I need you to fetch the machine gun.”

Despite everything that has happened, Evan grins. The M240 is his baby. He hurries into the back, dodging Ramona, and returns with the gun.

“Where do you want it?” he says.

“We’re going to mount it right up there next to Marcus where the windshield used to be.”

“Hot dog,” Evan says. “Here, take the gun. I’ll go get the ammo.”

Their boots crunch broken glass as they lug the twenty-six-pound machine gun to the front of the bus and mount it on the hood, the barrel resting on the integrated bipod.

Marcus glances at them as they set it up for firing. Evan pulls the charging handle, locking the bolt to the rear.

“Give me the ammo,” he says.

Anne opens one of the ammunition boxes and pulls out a long belt of shiny rounds, which he connects to the machine gun, sliding the first round into the firing chamber. Locked and loaded.

“We’re in business,” he grins, the wind ripping through his hair. “It’s set for a cycle of eight hundred fifty rounds per minute. Just keep feeding me the belt.”

“Gary!” Anne calls out. “Sit right there. When I say so, get behind Evan, brace your back against the pole here, and put your hands against his back right about here. Keep him stable, okay?”

“I can do that,” Gary says.

“Good idea,” Evan says, hunched over the machine gun, one hand wrapped around the firing handle and the other hugging the gunstock.

“You’re a long way from designing electrical circuits now,” Anne tells him.

Evan laughs into the wind. “Seems like a dream.” Past or present, however, he does not elaborate.

“People in the road!” Marcus says.

Anne raises her rifle and peers through the scope. A crowd of some fifty grim-faced people, holding knives and baseball bats and hockey sticks, stands in a line across the road next to a massive billboard proclaiming, WELCOME TO SUGAR CREEK.

“Fire, Evan.”

“They don’t look Infected!”

“Fire!”

“Anne!”

“FIRE YOUR GODDAMN WEAPON.”

The machine gun fills the air with its loud chatter as fifteen rounds per second rip downrange into the crowd, every fourth a streaming tracer. Dozens of people crumple under the withering fusillade, body parts and guts torn and hurled across the asphalt, while the rest charge howling, throwing bricks and waving their weapons.

A rock sails past Anne’s ear and falls into one of the seats behind her. The town’s welcome sign collapses into pieces. The snowplow strikes a rushing knot of people with a jarring bang and sends them cartwheeling into the fields bordering the road. Next to her, Evan fires, his body shaking, Gary holding onto his back and trying to keep the man steady. Anne feeds the belt into the machine gun, which spits the rounds at a murderous rate. She catches Marcus’s profile while he drives, ramrod straight in his seat, gripping the wheel with white knuckles, bleeding from a cut in his forehead, tears flowing down his stubbled cheeks and drying in the wind. She knows how much he hates this. The endless slaughter. He hates all of it.

The bus zooms down the town’s main street, scattering garbage and scraps of paper. Hundreds of people emerge from houses and buildings, throwing rocks and waving homemade weapons. Stones and shards of brick clatter against the sides of the vehicle.

Evan continues firing, cutting them down and chewing up the fronts of houses. Anne eyes the ammo belt’s shrinking length with alarm. The sides of the bus thud and vibrate as the Infected throw themselves at it. The street behind them fills with clouds of dust. Signs flash past proclaiming zero down financing, world famous tacos, propane for sale.

“Reload!” Evan screams. “Reload me!”

Anne pulls out the second belt of ammunition as the bus approaches another mob of Infected at the other end of town, arrayed in ranks like a medieval army.

Ray

Ray awakens on musty sheets with a pounding headache and a mouth that feels coated with moss. Lola smiles in her sleep, and as Ray gets out of bed, yawning and rubbing his belly, she frowns, stirs, wakes up Infected. Feeling a little nauseous, he plods into the bathroom and pisses loudly. Then Lola pulls up her dress and sits on the toilet, and he thinks: At least I have her potty trained.

“I had the weirdest dream. Did you sleep well, honey?”

Lola barks, making him laugh. His body is paying for last night’s bender, but it did the trick. Overall, he feels better than he can remember.

“Today, we’re going to find ourselves some Feds and make a deal.”

He gives her some fruit juice in a plastic jug, which she gulps. While he brushes his teeth, he wonders what it is like to wake up every day driven by hunger and rage. Maybe a lot like my twenties, he thinks with a snort. The whole thing seems so pointless but then he remembers the Infected are just a means to an end. The bug’s real goal is to plant new life on the planet.

Ray lights a Winston and pats the lump on his ribs, which vibrates like a tiny hummingbird.

“This is not going to turn out the way you wanted, Mini Me,” he tells it.

We like this world just the way it is, and we don’t appreciate you messing with it.

He pulls on his T-shirt and steps into his jeans.

“Let’s go, honey. We’ll get something to eat on the road. The world’s our oyster.”

She takes his hand and he leads her outside into the bright day.

His guards step aside to let him pass: French, Anderson, Cook and Salazar. Ray walks to the edge of the balcony and waves at the Infected gaping up at him with hopeful expressions. The sun is already high in the sky. He overslept, and yet he is still exhausted.

Thank you for watching over me, he tells the Infected.

The sun’s glare makes his eyes tear up. He takes a last drag on his smoke and steps on it.

“There’s just four of us now,” he tells the survivors of Unit 12. “You’ve always been good guys, normal or Infected, don’t matter which. I’m taking you all the way with me. If they want me, they’re going to have to cure you too.”

He leads his entourage down the cement steps and into the parking lot, where he left his truck. The Infected stare at him, sweating and grunting, their skin burned red by the sun, their hair greasy and matted. They touch his shoulders lightly as he passes, growling deep in their throats. Some of them show him weapons they scavenged, baseball bats and shovels, while others try to give him gifts of food. The air is thick with their stench.

“Come on, now,” he says. “I ain’t the Second Coming.”

A massive vehicle rumbles past the motel. Ray freezes, watching it roll past. It is shaped like a school bus, painted in a camouflage pattern, with a large snowplow fitted onto its front, stained the color of rust, and metal slats welded over its windows and doors.

“Wow, what a great rig,” Ray says.

The bus stops with a squeak, idling before it reverses, stops again, and executes a slow turn into the parking lot.

Ray watches it turn with mounting terror until it faces him, giving him a clear view of the giant blond-haired driver, a skinny man with glasses hunched over a machine gun, and a woman standing next to him, pointing at Ray and shouting.

“You,” he gasps.

Even from this distance, he can see Anne Leary’s face shining with fierce excitement at catching her prey.

Of course it would be her.

He flashes back to sitting on the bridge, trying to hold onto a happy thought while she stood over him with a very large gun pointed at the back of his head.

Protect, Ray tells his cops.

The Unit 12 officers raise their weapons and fire as the machine gun opens up, it rounds hacking through the crowd and plowing into the Infected around Ray.

The firing stops. The dying Infected thrash and howl in their own blood. Someone screams on the bus. The air smells like smoke.

Ray emerges from his daze gasping for breath. He pats his body, amazed he got through the exchange without a scratch.

Lola.

She lies on the ground, her brains splashed across the pavement among old cigarette butts. Behind her, Cook crawls on his hands and knees, vomiting blood, his tattered shirt smoking.

Lola!

“Oh, honey.”

Oddly, she seems to be smiling.

There goes your second chance, bro.

As his rage mounts, the Infected around him tremble, shaking their fists and weapons, jaws snapping like animals.

Ray turns to the bus, where Anne is struggling to right the machine gun.

“Kill them!” he commands.

KILL KILL KILL KILL

The Infected howl as one and charge, surging toward the bus in a human flood. The driver puts the vehicle into reverse, inching away slowly, too slowly, making Ray laugh harshly.

Oh no, you don’t. You’re not going anywhere, Anne Leary. You’re going to stay right here and get what’s coming to you.

“Kill them all!”

The air fills with the pop of weapons as the Infected clamber onto the snowplow and force their way into the bus.

“Whatever you think is best, Ray!” he screams. “Whatever you think is best!”

Anne

The bus slowly reverses while Anne tries to pull the machine gun from under Evan’s legs. The Infected shot him. The man shakes violently, bleeding out, his eyes glassy and unseeing. Behind him, Gary sits with his back against the pole, wincing and licking blood from his lips.

“I can feel it in my lung,” he says. He sounds like he is being strangled. “The bullet. It went through Evan and popped into my chest.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells him.

Thrashing in his final death throes, Evan knees Anne in the face and pain flares through the lines of her scars. Above her, Ramona screams and fires her automatic rifle on full auto at the Infected clambering onto the hood of the vehicle.

Anne frees the gun with a final jerk.

“This is your fault,” Gary says. “It’s all your fault.”

She looks up in time to see Ramona fire her last round and slam the butt of her rifle into a man’s face before the hands reach in and pull her out into the mob, which tears her apart. Blood splashes onto Marcus but he ignores it, gritting his teeth, firing a massive handgun into the snarling faces with one hand while steering with the other.

“I’m scared,” Gary says.

This is what you wanted, Anne’s mind whispers.

Your murdered your own children through your stupidity and arrogance and you can never be happy so you kill and kill and kill the Infected in the hopes one day your luck will run out and they will tear you to shreds and eat you like you deserve.

That day has finally come.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says.

Gary does not hear her. He stares into oblivion, his eyes blank, his face pale, his final expression one of pure terror.

Anne glances down at the machine gun in her hands and realizes she could just drop it. Dying would be that simple. She has already gotten enough people killed. Let Ray kill the world. What does she care?

Not yet. Soon, but not just yet.

They can have me, but only after a fight. They have to prove they are stronger. They have to earn it.

The will to survive floods her body with energy. She stands and levels the heavy weapon, putting her back against the pole for support and firing from the waist, holding the ammo belt with her other hand. The barrel lights up with muzzle flashes that fill the air with hot metal.

Anne screams with something like joy. This is how she wants to die.

The hot metal slugs punch through skulls and torsos, spraying brains and guts back into the crowd. Soon she can no longer see individuals, just torn and charred flesh and muscle and clothing, shattered bone, ripped organs and blood.

Then she no longer sees even this, struck by a vision of a single face, watching her without expression, as if lobotomized, a human face with an alien mind.

A human face constructed entirely of seething maggots.

No, not maggots. Monsters.

The face snarls with recognition and hatred before it explodes into millions of howling things hurtling into the void.

“I am Life,” it tells her. “I am Life and you are the enemy of life. You are Death.”

Empty shell casings clatter across the floor. She grunts, sweat pouring down her face. Her arm trembles with exhaustion from the constant recoil.

The bus continues to gain speed. The Infected fall behind, howling and waving their weapons and shooting their guns. Anne lunges and slams the M240 down onto hood, hugging the stock and resuming fire.

The Infected collapse in waves under the withering fire of the machine gun.

“Come on,” she screams, her body jerking from the recoil. “Come and get it!”

The bus steadily puts more distance between them and the Infected. The tracers arc and drop among the crowd, punching more bodies to the ground. The ammo belt runs out.

Marcus stops the bus, turns and finds another way out of town.

Ray fled during the attack. The pursuit is back on. And Anne has survived again.

As with every other time, she is almost disappointed.

Cool Rod

Sitting in the shade of the Stryker, Rod watches his squad tear the plastic wrapping off their MREs and sink their hands into the yellow pouches, producing brown packets containing entrees and seasonings and HOOAH! energy bars. They compare meals and barter like Wall Street traders. Sosa trades a cigarette for Lynch’s hot sauce. Tanner puts his chicken fajitas on the market, but gets no takers. He takes a long pull on a stray bottle of water they liberated from the Walmart’s shelves and passes it on. Lynch suggests lighting some C4 to cook their meals properly, but the air is so hot the others do not seem interested. Sosa, constipated from the steady diet of MREs, calls his a meal ready for enema, making them laugh.

Rod joins in the laughter, enjoying the banter during this rare calm while Davis stands twenty meters away with his rifle providing security and Arnold monitors the recon equipment on the Walmart roof. He tears open his own MRE and inspects his beef brisket with mild disdain. It is not his favorite, but he needs the twelve hundred calories.

Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers Eyes, over.

That’s Arnold calling in from the observation post. Rod places his meal on the ground between his feet and keys the push-to-talk button on his headset, chewing. “Hellraisers 3 here. Go ahead, Eyes, over.”

Contact to the west. A uniform victor, moving fast, over.

An unidentified vehicle, Rod understands. “You got eyes on it, over?”

Not yet, over.

“Let me know when you get eyes on it. Hellraisers 3, out.”

Roger, Three. Out.

The others wolf down their meals, knowing what is coming, but waiting until he gives the order.

“We’ve got a vehicle inbound,” he says. “You know what to do. Let’s get to it.”

The soldiers take final bites of food and slugs of juice and scramble to their feet, pocketing their energy bars and candy for later. They snatch up their weapons and run off. Lynch stays behind to help Sosa pull on his flamethrower harness.

“Corporal, when you’re done there, go tell spooky and the doc we’re expecting company,” Rod says.

“Aieeyah, Sergeant.”

“Hart, I need you on the fifty,” he shouts, banging his fist against the Stryker’s armor. The gunner appears in the cupola, gives him a thumbs up, and grabs hold of the mounted heavy machine gun, locking and loading it.

Checking his shotgun, Rod walks to the checkpoint they built using sawhorses and STOP signs, placed in layers running every twenty meters along the road up to the gas station. The theory is Typhoid Jody will either stop, or try to bypass or drive through the roadblock.

If he tries to bypass or drive through, he will slow down, and the Stryker’s fifty will make quick work of him. If he fails to cooperate, he is a dead man.

Rod’s body rebels, his heart racing and his breath becoming fast and shallow, but not from fear. No, he is simply excited. Can this really be it? Can this guy really offer a cure? If not a cure, maybe a vaccine, or even a weapon?

Is this the operation that ends the war and allows us to retake the country?

He whistles to get Davis’s attention. “Corporal, change of plans for you. I want you to find a safe spot fifty meters behind us, watching our rear. Same plan if something happens to me, though. You’re to take command.”

“Got it, Sergeant,” Davis says, jogging away.

Rod blows air out his cheeks, raises the hood on his MOPP suit, and pulls on his gas mask.

“It’s time to earn our money,” he says.

Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers Eyes, over.

“Go ahead, Eyes, over.”

I have eyes on the uniform victor. Range, about three kilometers. Break. It’s a military vehicle, Sergeant. An APC. Over.

“Shift to overwatch, Eyes. Hellraisers 3, out.”

Rod frowns at the waves of heat rising off the warmed road and wonders about the odds of this being a coincidence. What’s an armored personnel carrier doing in this exact place at this exact point in time? Could this be our guy?

He had the impression Typhoid Jody is a civilian, but he might be military, and he might know how to drive an APC. Alarms flash through Rod’s mind.

How are we going to stop him if he’s driving an amored vehicle?

Fielding and Price approach in their bright yellow spacesuits, carrying what appear to be suitcases made of yellow plastic emblazoned with ominous biohazard symbols.

“Stay behind me,” he tells them.

The vehicle appears in the distance, approaching with a metallic scream, and crushes the first line of sawhorses before rolling to a sudden stop in front of the second.

Rod waves, his heart pounding against his ribs.

The turret turns rapidly, aligning the cannon barrel with the Stryker. Five shooters in a motley collection of military uniforms fan out from behind, taking cover and aiming their weapons at his men.

“Hold fire, Hellraisers,” Rod says into his headset.

“Any idea who they are?” Dr. Price says.

“I believe we’re about to find that out.”

The hatch opens and a large man appears. “Who’s in charge here?” his deep voice booms across the roadblocks.

Rod takes off his mask and pulls his hood down.

“I’m Sergeant Hector Rodriguez, Fifth Stryker Cavalry Regiment. And you would be?”

“Sergeant Toby Wilson, Eighth Infantry Division, Fifth Brigade—the Iron Horse.”

Rod grunts with respect. From what he heard, elements of Fifth Brigade fought hard all over Pennsylvania in the first days of the Wildfire epidemic, and were destroyed piecemeal. If Wilson is from that unit, he and his crew are among its few survivors.

This guy must have one hell of a story to tell.

“Where’s your original dismounts?” he asks, referring to Wilson’s infantry squad.

“Dead just like all the rest. We’re militia now.”

“Well, Sergeant Wilson, it’s an honor, but I’m going to have to ask that you exit my area of operations. If you want to pass through, you’ve got my blessing.”

“No can do, Sergeant. This is important. I need you to tell me about your operation.”

“What the hell?” Rod mutters, then calls back, “Go fuck yourself, Sergeant! Is that enough information for you?”

He hears his boys laughing at their positions. Wilson’s shooters continue to scurry to new cover, fanning out further on his flanks. Preparing for a fight. Soon, they will have him flanked on the left, where he’s weak. He doubts they know about Arnold looking down on them with his machine gun.

The situation is deteriorating fast.

“I ain’t playing with you, Sergeant,” Wilson says. “This is important. I’m going to ask one more time. What are you doing here?”

“I’m telling you for the last time: It’s none of your goddamn business, Sergeant.”

The next few seconds appear to stretch as nobody speaks or moves. Rod has a sense of everyone lining up iron sights on a human target, settling in for the order to fire.

“Sergeant,” Dr. Price says.

“If I were you, I’d get down, Doc,” Fielding says, kneeling behind cover.

“He’s right,” Rod says. “Get your ass down.”

“We’re looking for a man!” the scientist cries, rushing forward.

“Jesus,” Rod groans. “Get down before you get shot!”

Price ignores him, running toward the distant Bradley and shouting: “We’re looking for the man who brought the Wildfire Agent into Camp Defiance! We believe he is coming this way! We want to bring him to a special facility because we believe his blood may hold a cure to Wildfire! Come on, we’re all on the same side!”

Wilson whistles and Rod tenses, raising his shotgun and aiming it center mass at the figure sitting in the open hatch of the armored personnel carrier.

Go ahead, Wilson. I’m taking you with me.

Wilson has some connection to the camp, and has been tracking Typhoid Jody in the hopes of killing him. Simple justice.

To his surprise, Wilson’s shooters pop up from their concealed positions, weapons lowered.

“Good call, Doc,” Rod says absently, blowing air out his cheeks and lowering his shotgun. He watches Wilson jump down from the Bradley and march toward him unarmed. A woman exits the back of the Bradley and joins him. Rod gives the order to stand down.

“I want you back to observing the road, Eyes. Out.”

Roger that, Three. Out.

Rod steps out from behind the row of sawhorses, and jogs to meet Wilson and the woman.

“Looks like we’re on the same side, Sergeant Wilson,” he says, extending his hand.

“Sorry to step on your op,” the large man says, taking it.

“Hate to see what would have happened if we weren’t on the same side.”

“That’s a topic best avoided, don’t you think?”

“Agreed,” Rod grins. “And you can call me Rod.”

“Rod it is. I’m Toby. The guys call me Sarge. This is Wendy, my gunner.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Ma’am.”

“Likewise,” she says.

Rod blinks as he shakes her hand, feeling his cheeks burn. Wendy smiles wryly in response. God, this woman is gorgeous. He introduces them to Price and Fielding.

“Anything we can do to help, Rod?” Wilson asks him. “We appear to have the same mission.”

“Let me be clear about something, Toby. Our orders are to bring the man in if we can. We are going to do everything we can to make this happen. If we can’t, well, then I’m afraid we’ll have to put him down. Those orders are not open to discussion or compromise.”

“Understood,” Wilson says with a nod.

“In that case I will take you up on your offer of help,” Rod says. “I could use your vehicle a hundred meters behind us and to the left, in front of the strip mall there, with your shooters deployed around it, out of sight, but accessible, and everyone in gas masks if you’ve got them. Provide rear security, and act as reserve.”

“Happy to do it.”

“What do you know about the man?” the scientist asks them.

“His name is Ray Young,” Wendy says. “We came across his trail yesterday, and we’ve been tracking him. Lost him somewhere after Mechanicsburg.”

“Why were you tracking him?” Fielding wants to know.

“He infected Camp Defiance,” Wilson answers. “We figured he uses spores. And if he’s using spores, it’s something we haven’t seen before, something unique. We thought we might be able to get him to where some scientists could take a look at him. Maybe come up with a cure.”

“That’s why we’re here too,” Dr. Price says.

“Smart thinking,” says Rod.

“Not me,” Wilson says with a grin. “We got a smart aleck kid named Todd on our team.”

“So what are we dealing with here, Sergeant?” Rod says. “Do you know the extent of his influence over the Infected?”

Wilson and Wendy exchange a glance.

“We had to shoot our way through two towns,” Wilson tells him. “The Infected attacked us, with weapons. Some of them had guns.”

“Fascinating,” Dr. Price says.

“I was thinking, horrible,” Rod says. “If Mr. Young has that kind of command and control over the crazies, he could be a hell of a lot harder to deal with.”

“After Mechanicsburg, we stopped being attacked, so our guess he went to ground between there and Spring Lake, probably up in Milford, which is around a ten-minute drive off the road.”

“The man is close, then,” Rod says, nodding. “Assuming he’s still coming east.”

As if to confirm his assumption, Arnold’s voice buzzes in his ear.

Hellraisers 3, this is Hellraisers Eyes. Contact, west. Repeat. We have contact.

Dr. Price

Travis catalogs his symptoms: shaking, loss of peripheral vision, lips tingling, heart racing and eyes and mouth feeling dry, which he knows is a result of stress inhibiting the lacrimal gland. Sergeant Rodriguez was right; when it comes to fight or flight, you may end up fighting your own body.

As they wait for the vehicle to approach the roadblocks, Travis remembers what he felt his first day at the White House, and the last, when he fled the building in a helicopter. That sense of history in the air. He glances at the men next to him. Their eyes are gleaming. They can feel it too. The Berlin Wall coming down. Fireballs erupting from the World Trade Center. The Screaming, the first days of the Wildfire epidemic. Fulcra around which history bends. The sense that after today, nothing will ever be the same. After today, everything, everywhere, will be different.

And now this. Bringing Ray Young to a special facility, where they will capture a pure sample of Wildfire and save the world.

He remembers Sandra Forbes swooning in the grip of the Secret Serviceman just before the man flung her into the crowd like so much garbage. I’m sorry, Sandra. But I did it for this. I have a responsibility to the human race far greater than to any single individual.

He turns and studies Fielding’s profile. The man is grinning. He feels it too. For this one moment, these enemies are like brothers, united in common cause.

I owe you an apology as well.

I’m sorry, Fielding, but you won’t be able to come with me for what I must do.

Anne

Anne stands hunched and gasping over the hot machine gun, her dead comrades crumpled at her feet. She and Marcus say nothing for several minutes, just watching the road. They are approaching another town. Anne tenses, but it appears to have been burned off the map. A charred ruin that smells like ash, utterly dead.

The bus jolts over a pothole and Marcus moans in pain.

Anne stares at him with growing horror. The large man hugs the steering wheel, gritting his teeth, his face pale and waxy. Marcus looks like a corpse.

Blood drips from his seat into a dark puddle on the floor.

“You stupid—” She drops the machine gun and hunts for the first aid kit. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” he manages. The simple act of speaking appears to give him pain. “Shot.”

“Stop the bus.”

“No.”

“Marcus.”

“Can’t. If I stop, don’t know if I could drive again.”

“Then don’t,” she says simply, surprising herself. “I’ll get you patched up, and then take you to Nightingale.”

“The mission. . .”

Anne shakes her head. “I don’t care. I can’t let you die.”

“Not up to you,” he says, his eyes a fiery blue in his pale face. “Saw what this guy can do. Understand now. Have to stop him.”

She chokes back a tear, conquering the urge to weep by sheer force of will. Crying is like death, a threshold. Once she starts, she knows, she may never stop.

“I don’t want you to do anything for me anymore.”

“It’s not about you, Anne. Always my choice.”

She probes him with her eyes, looking for the gunshot wound, and finds it in his hip—a small hole with charred edges, the surrounded area blackened with blood. Probably a ricochet, or one of the Infected shot him point blank from the hood. She checks for an exit wound but finds nothing. The bullet is lodged in his pelvic bone.

While Marcus focuses on the road, Anne uses her knife to widen the hole in his jeans, and studies the ragged, broken flesh around the wound. It is still bleeding, but the bullet missed the arteries. She opens a bottle of alcohol.

“This is going to hurt. Get ready.“

She pours the alcohol onto the wound, making Marcus gasp with agony. Anne marvels at his endurance. He has strength of a bull. She wipes away the fluids and pushes a bandage against it.

“I can put a dressing on it but the bullet is still in there. You need a doctor.”

“After,” he says.

“We could go to Nightingale, get you fixed, and then we could live there together, you and me,” she offers. “I could be your wife.”

Marcus does not speak for several moments. Anne studies his face hopefully. Finally, he shakes his head with a tight smile. “Now you ask. Too late for that.” He gestures to the bodies on the floor, the smile turning into a grimace. “Otherwise, they died for nothing. Besides, unless Ray dies, nowhere safe. Must give him mercy.”

“I don’t know if we can get him,” Anne says. “He’s too well protected.”

“Find a way. Always do. Ranger way.”

“We’re not real Rangers, Marcus. I’m just a—”

Anne pauses, surprised she cannot recall what she was before. Instead, she remembers the cries of children washing over her like waves from the distant burning ruin of Camp Defiance. In her mind’s eye, a military helicopter lunges into the sky, wobbling unsteadily, people tumbling out of the back and falling screaming to the ground.

“All right,” she says. “This time, I need you to get me close. We’ll wear gas masks. We’ll drive straight into him. I get out, I shoot him in the head. All or nothing. Then I get you to Nightingale.”

“Can get you close,” Marcus tells her. “Can do that.”

Anne runs her hand along his heavily muscled arm and wonders at the life they might have created together. She kisses it, tasting blood. Presses her scarred cheek against his bicep.

This is her way of saying goodbye.

“Look,” Marcus says. “The road.”

She stands, facing the wind rushing through the open windshield, and sees the billboard looming in a grassy field. The board is plastered with a wilting ad for a gun store and shooting range in the next town, five miles ahead. Morgantown.

The content of the ad barely registers with her. Someone has spray painted over it in bold black capitals:

DEFIANCE? FIND SOLDIERS IN MORGANTOWN

“I think things have just gotten more complicated,” she says.

Ray

The old truck lurches down the road, careening around abandoned wrecks, its driver feeling terrified and elated, still riding high on the adrenaline rush. The ferocity of Anne Leary’s pursuit makes Ray shiver even now.

She was one tough broad. But I took care of that, yes sir. I got her, I’m sure of it. Her and her entire crew, all dead or infected now, and good goddamn f’ing riddance.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, honey.”

He glances right for a reaction but the seat next to him is empty. French, Anderson and Salazar are in the back, clinging to the sides of the truck, and Lola is dead, her brains splashed across a motel parking lot like so much litter.

Nothing ever works out the way you want it to, he tells himself, filled with bitter anger.

Lola is dead, but the plan is the same: go to Washington and help to make things right again. The lump in his side purrs in response to this thought. Yes, yes, it says. Find more people.

After driving through the burned-out husk of Horseneck, he saw the first billboard. He knew it was meant for him. Whatever doubts he had about trying to work out a deal were silenced by the apocalyptic horrors of Horseneck, which reminded him of the dead world of his fevered dream. Infection showed him that world as if it were an offering that would please him. To the bug, a dead world is beautiful. Lots of space for new life.

An epiphany makes him blink. The bug, he realizes, has no master plan other than to diversify and compete. Ray is not particularly special; he is just another mutation, an experiment, part of the Brood. Just like all the monsters. They are not things from another planet, recreated on Earth. They were specially created, like him, from genetic material the Brood found here. The Brood is not an alien race. It is life itself. A runaway program for building life.

You are my seed, the bug hums happily against his ribs, as if they are on the same side.

“I’m your cure, asshole.”

He passes another billboard, this one reading: DEFIANCE GO TO MORGANTOWN.

A feeling of calm washes over him. Every time he drives past a message the military left for him, he feels a little more control slipping away. Soon, it will all be out of his hands. He knows in his gut they are here for him. They know who he is, and they have come for him.

As he drives along happily, he keeps checking his rear view, wondering if Anne Leary really did die. The woman is indestructible. He can feel her back there somewhere, hunting him with that look of fierce glee on her scarred face.

It was just blind luck that prevented her from killing me. Twice.

As terror seeps back into his consciousness, he wonders if the government is going to make an honest deal with him. Maybe the idea is to treat him real good until they don’t need him anymore, and then put him down like a dog. Dissect him and throw him out like garbage. Hell, maybe no lab is out there waiting for him, no salvation, no redemption. Maybe the soldiers are waiting for him up there in Morgantown with flamethrowers.

What an idiot I sure am. I was about to give myself up without making sure I get what I want. I can’t trust anyone. Force is the one thing people respect. The only thing you know for sure is the sucker punch is coming. The only thing you can control is whether you are going to get it or give it.

He scans the forest on his left and sees nothing but trees in the gloom. Then he scans the grassy fields on his right, empty except for giant steel pylons carrying dead transmission lines.

Returning his attention to the road, Ray broadcasts: I can sense you. I know you’re out there. Meet me in Morgantown, but do not show yourselves to the people there. Hide and wait. Hide and wait for me. I will be with you soon.

He hears them murmur across the ether. Not the garbled, agonized voices of the Infected, but the obscene babble of monsters, clicking and chewing and grinding teeth.

He grunts in surprise. He did not know he could control the monsters.

This is a whole new ballgame, folks.

NEXT TOWN STOP WALMART

He barks a harsh laugh. What am I afraid of? I command MONSTERS.

The roadblocks appear at the outskirts of town. Ray taps the brake pad, downshifting, breathing fast and trying to ignore the sensation of falling in his gut. He becomes aware of a large military vehicle on his left and, in the distance, a Bradley like the one Sarge commanded. A big gas mask-wearing soldier with a flamethrower stands next to the Stryker. Ray waves at the man, who hesitates before waving back. Despite all of the anticipation, he is kind of surprised to see them here, just for him.

Straight ahead, another soldier in a gas mask stands with two men in biohazard suits holding plastic suitcases. This, he assumes, is the welcoming committee, rolling out the red carpet.

Cool Rod

Rod watches the truck stop and waits for the man to cut the engine, but he doesn’t; he lets it idle and even revs it once, as if having second thoughts. He studies the distant figure and decides this must be Ray Young. He raises his hands, showing he is unarmed, and waves his arms over his head. Stop, stop. Kill the engine.

The beat-up pickup slowly turns and pulls into the parking lot of the office building across the street from the Walmart. The engine dies and Young steps down from the truck, slamming the creaky door. Rod gets his first good look at the man and feels like he already knows him. Dressed in a wrinkled black T-shirt, dirty jeans and, oddly, a brand new STEELERS ball cap pulled down low over a scowling unshaven face, Ray Young looks like any number of rednecks living around Dallas, where Rod grew up.

Young whistles and three men jump down from the truck bed dressed in bulletproof vests, T-shirts, jeans, cowboy boots. Empty holsters on their hips, guns in their hands. Rod watches them take up positions in a defensive formation around Young, acting like bodyguards.

Friends of his?

No, it looks like Sergeant Wilson was right. The man can control the Infected. Incredible.

Rod checks out the Bradley on his left. Sergeant Wilson watches the scene from the commander’s hatch, wearing a gas mask. His shooters are gone, dispersed into concealed positions. Wilson catches him watching and gestures as if to say: It’s all yours, Sergeant.

“What’s your name, sir?” Rod calls out.

“I’m Ray Young?” the man answers tentatively, as if he’s not sure.

“Bingo,” Rod says to the scientist, who grins behind his faceplate. “You guys ready?”

Dr. Price gives him a thumbs up.

“We’re going to send our scientists over to talk with you,” Rod calls out again. “Is that okay, Mr. Young?”

The man shrugs. “I guess that’d be fine.”

“Do you need anything? Food, water, medical attention?”

Young snorts and spits onto the asphalt. “No, I’m good.”

“You’re on, vatos,” Rod tells Price and Fielding.

The two men approach the distant figures carefully, their spacesuits gleaming yellow in the bright sun. It’s hot as hell in the MOPP suit, but Rod is used to it. So far, so good. All they have to do is get Ray to put on the orange Racal suit and ditch his entourage, and they can pack him up and get him to the USAMRIID facilities at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

USAMRIID: the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, part of the Medical Research and Materiel Command, where the Army’s top disease experts are working around the clock on ways to fight the bug.

Rod watches the men talk and realizes he should have equipped them with radios and given one to Young. It’s too late now.

Something is wrong. Young is shaking his head, chopping at the air with one of his hands for emphasis. Price waves his arms at Rod, and jogs back. Rod decides to take the risk of meeting him halfway. As they close the distance, he eyes the scientist’s bright yellow suit and wonders how hot it is with live spores.

“What’s the story, Doctor?” Rod asks him.

“He says he won’t come with us unless we can give him a guarantee about his safety.”

“Is he crazy? Does he understand why we’re actually here?”

“He’s concerned about later,” Price explains. “What if he turns out to be unhelpful in the fight against the Wildfire Agent? Or what if he is helpful, and we win the war, and now here’s this one guy who can bring Hell back? Either way, what happens to him?”

“Well shit, Doc, that is far above my pay grade,” Rod says. “I can’t give that type of guarantee. Not one that would mean anything to him, anyway. Didn’t anyone think of this kind of thing when the op was being planned?”

Price clears his throat, sounding like, ahem. “I was rushed into the field, Sergeant. I barely had enough time to collect the right equipment. I couldn’t think of everything.”

“All right, all right. Then I guess we’re going to have to negotiate something.” He makes a call on the radio to Tanner to meet him at the last checkpoint with the spare JTRS radio from the Stryker, and then hands his own radio to Price. “Give this headset to Mr. Young.”

“Will do.”

“But then take it right back the second we’re done with the conversation. We don’t want him hearing squad chatter. It’s bad enough I’m sharing our communications.”

“I understand.”

Shit, this is complicated, Rod realizes, jogging back.

Soon he and Young are communicating on the radio while Price swabs down his and Fielding’s bio suits, hoping to capture spore samples.

“Mr. Young, I’m Sergeant Rodriguez, U.S. Army.”

Nice to meet you, Young says. Now listen. I want you to get on the phone to your people and tell them I ain’t going nowhere until I get some simple assurances.

“We can talk about that.”

Ain’t nothing to talk about. You must think I’m flat out batshit nuts to go anywhere with you without some type of guarantee about my safety. In fact, I’m plenty goddamn insulted you took all this effort to come on out here without it. Get on the phone with your people.

“Fine, Mr. Young,” Rod says. “But what type of guarantee would satisfy you?”

Young considers this. Rod watches him light a cigarette.

I want a letter from the President, he says after a long pause.

Rod growls. He knows the man is scared and he can empathize with that, but this is ridiculous. “Do you want him to deliver it personally?”

No need to get smart. But now that you mention it, it should be on White House letterhead and I want a high-ranking officer to give it to me. I want to trust you people, but this is my life we’re talking about. You want it, you got to earn it. Get on the phone. I’ll wait.

“I cannot do what you are asking. The President doesn’t even know we’re here. By the time the message works its way up the chain of command. . . We’re talking a long time, Ray. My orders are to bring you in, or shoot you in the head. I suggest you come in.”

To his surprise, Young laughs. His guards raise their guns, covering Price and Fielding, who respond by raising their hands.

I wouldn’t threaten me, man. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.

“We basically have you surrounded with automatic weapons. If I give the order, it will take all of three seconds to turn you into Swiss cheese. Whether you have hostages doesn’t matter.”

Ray drops his smoke and grinds it into the road with his boot.

Even if you’re the hostage?

Rod frowns, but says nothing.

Look behind you, but don’t panic. Make no sudden moves, and you won’t get hurt.

Sergeant, Davis cuts in. Christ, Sergeant, they’re right behind you.

Rod wheels and stares in shock at the two monsters approaching with arms outstretched, tottering on spindly legs oddly articulated like a grasshopper’s. They’re like deformed albino children, mewing and flashing sharp little teeth.

He doesn’t care about the teeth. Instead, he stares in horror at the massive erect stingers swaying between their legs.

Cascading voices blast the radio channel.

Contact, several men shout at once, calling in hoppers and requesting orders.

Ay, wey, Sosa says quietly.

Oh shit is right, Rod thinks. The hoppers are everywhere. Dozens of them. One has ventured close enough to sniff at his boots, its stinger buzzing. So far, nobody is shooting. He is amazed at his boys’ fire discipline.

“Easy, Hellraisers,” he says, aware Young can hear everything he is saying. “Nobody shoots unless I give the order. Understand?”

Sorry, Sergeant, Arnold says from the roof of the Walmart. I can’t cover the target and run the surveillance equipment, over.

“Get on the recon gear and tell me what you see,” Rod tells him. “We need to know what we’re up against.”

Can I torch them, Sargeant? Sosa asks him.

“If you shoot, then people are going to die,” Rod says, hoping his voice is not as shaky as the rest of him is right now. “Mr. Young is just showing us he has big guns too.”

That’s right. Do I have your attention now?

“Roger that, Ray.”

Then get me my damn letter, says Ray.

I see dozens of them, Three, Arnold says. At least a hundred. And more on the way, over.

“Roger that, Eyes. Out.”

He’s giving me no choice, Rod realizes. He knows I can’t deliver his letter. Even if I could, it would still be symbolic. The President wouldn’t have to honor it. This is all about Ray Young’s stupid redneck pride. So I’ll have to give the order to shoot, and then whoever can’t make it to the Stryker will die. We’re all going to die because this son of a bitch feels insulted.

Arnold: Contact west, over.

Rod presses the push to talk button. “What you got?”

Large vehicle approaching fast, over.

Rod can hear it already.

“Friend of yours, Mr. Young?”

I can’t believe it, Young answers, sounding panicked.

“Mr. Young, if you want any of us to survive this fucked up situation, you’d better tell me right now what’s going on.”

It’s Anne Leary. She’s been hunting me since Defiance. She’s trying to kill me. If you want to make a deal, then I’m going to have to ask you and your guys to kill her, Sergeant.

Rod opens his mouth, closes it. He does not want to kill any American who is not infected.

He also has no choice.

“Hellraisers, I want you to smoke that vehicle and anyone in it. Weapons free.”

Ray

Ray has a sense of events spiraling out of control. A moment ago, he was enjoying flexing his power in front of the soldiers, but now he needs their help. His jumpers are deadly and terrifying, but he does not trust them to kill Anne Leary before she kills him. In his mind, she has become the angel of death. He flinches as the whir of the bus engine grows louder.

Fade, he tells his monsters. Get out of the way. Hide until I need you.

Ray sees the bus approaching, the driver crouched low over the wheel and ignoring the squad’s warning shots. Then the Stryker’s heavy machine gun opens up, the pounding fire loud and urgent, like a hammer striking an anvil next to his ear. The gun chews up the thin metal, punching gaping holes in its walls and blowing out the seats, which fly away in clouds of cheap stuffing.

Another machine gun opens fire from the roof of the Walmart. Hundreds of rounds stream into the vehicle and rip it to shreds. What’s left of the roof flops away like aluminum foil and slams into the road, dragged along with a grating, ear-splitting screech. The bus appears to disintegrate into pieces as it roars across the final distance, trailing smoke and rolling debris.

“Come on,” Ray shouts into the roar. “It’s just a freaking bus! Kill the goddamn thing!”

He watches the vehicle continue its approach and feels rooted to the spot.

I never had a chance. The woman is indestructible. It’s not fair.

BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP

He flinches again and spins around as the Bradley fires its main gun, flinging cannon rounds downrange into what’s left of the vehicle. Empty shell casings topple down the Bradley’s metal chest, knocking off a withered wreath of wildflowers someone had placed there. Ray watches the wreath fall away and suddenly he is on the bridge again, watching the Infected come howling at him like an army boiling up straight from Hell, standing his ground and firing because there is nowhere safe to go, and to run is to die.

“Sarge?” he says. Can it really be you?

The cannon rounds slam into the front of the bus, which flies apart in a series of fireballs. Ray glimpses the crumpled hood flying end over end through the air. Then, miraculously, the rig emerges from the cloud of smoke trailing fire and pieces of metal, heading toward him as if in a final death lunge, the driver’s seat blown away. Then it flips.

The soldiers stop firing, watching the flimsy wreck roll several times and collapse, the culmination of a long streak of smoking debris stretched back along the asphalt like metal road kill. A horde of metal parts continues to clang and tumble along, and then the wreck is finally still.

“Ha!” Ray whoops, clapping his hands. “Ha, ha, ha! You’re dead now, Anne Leary! You’re fucking dead! I win!”

Price and Fielding, lying on the ground with their hands over their heads, return to their feet.

Mr. Young, Sergeant Rodriguez says over the radio. Are you all right? Anyone injured over there?

“We’re just great,” Ray tells him, lighting another Winston with shaking hands.

“What now, Mr. Young?” Price says, his eyes wide behind his faceplate. “Are we still your hostages?”

“I don’t know,” Ray says, blowing a stream of smoke and chewing on his lip.

“Give it up,” Fielding tells him. “What you’re asking for can’t be gotten. You’re going to just have to take a chance. Either way, isn’t it worth the result?”

“You really think what I’ve got inside of me could save the world?”

Fielding glances at Price, who nods.

“I believe it,” the scientist says. “I know it.”

We need to talk this out, Ray, Rodriguez says. Let’s keep the hoppers out of it for now.

Ray realizes they’re right. It’s time to give up. He’ll never get a guarantee that would mean anything, and he has a real chance to end Infection.

I want to save the world, he decides.

“That’s weird,” he says, staring at Fielding.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re one of mine.”

Ray’s chest explodes and his blood sprays across Dr. Price’s suit and faceplate, followed by the sound of a gunshot. Then he’s spinning, spinning, falling to the ground.

Over the ringing in his ears, he hears a woman screaming an inhuman cry of joy.

Protect, protect, protect—

Dr. Price

Travis watches in shock as the hoppers flood from their hiding places, bounding across the empty parking lots like a swarm of locusts. The crackle of small arms fire fills the air. Standing over Ray Young, two of the Infected cops level their guns and open fire at one of the windows of the low-rise office building. The third sits on the ground, holding his throat and gurgling as blood flows between his fingers.

Young sits with his back against one of the truck’s tires, legs spread wide, breathing in rapid, shallow gasps. One of the cops topples to the asphalt next to him, a neat hole drilled through his forehead, the back of his skull a smoking, shattered ruin. Young clutches his chest with a bloody fist and stares at Travis, his eyes communicating his desperate need to live.

“Help,” he croaks.

Travis falls to his knees and opens his plastic suitcase, which contains first aid supplies, and stares at it, his face tingling. He feels like he is about to pass out. The last Infected cop appears to do a jig in the air, blood spraying, and then collapses to the ground grinning.

“Fielding, do you know how to treat a gunshot wound?”

Fielding stands over them, fists clenched at his sides, oblivious to the bullets and the monsters flying past. “What do you mean, I’m one of yours?”

“This man is going to die if we don’t treat him!”

Young grimaces in pain. “Thought you were a doctor.”

“I’m not a medical doctor, Mr. Young.”

“Figure it out quick,” Young tells him, “or you’re a dead man.”

Travis takes a pair of scissors and cuts away Young’s T-shirt, exposing the small hole that bleeds down his front. Moving the man as gently as possible, he finds another hole in his back, a little below the first one.

“The bullet passed through.”

Fielding screams, “What do you mean, I’m one of yours?”

Young’s eyes shift to him. “Infected.”

Wadding up a thick bandage, Travis jams it behind Young’s back, and then pushes another against his chest, running tape over it. The man’s face is pale and waxy, but his breathing is steady and his eyes seem alert. Travis has no idea what kind of damage the bullet did inside of him, however. Young needs a medical doctor.

“Doc, what did you do?” Fielding says.

Travis ignores him, watching the hoppers swarm over the Stryker. They rip apart the gunner, tossing shreds of his body high in the air like tissues from a Kleenex box, and then eat their way inside the cupola to get at the rest of the crew.

The big soldier with the flamethrower throws a long jet of fire onto the vehicle, torching the hoppers, which flop to the ground shrieking.

“What did you do to me?” Fielding demands.

The air fills with tracers, flashes of light bursting in all directions, cutting down the leaping creatures. Behind the Bradley, one of Wilson’s people runs with a hopper on her back, another swinging from her outstretched arm, until collapsing a short distance later. The earth around her erupts as bullets kill her and the hoppers both.

Sergeant Rodriguez mows down a pair of hoppers with his shotgun and joins the big soldier with the flamethrower, waving his arm and shouting.

Fielding picks up one of the guns dropped by the dead cops and points it at Travis’s head. “Doc, I’m going to ask just one more time. What did you do?”

Travis turns so that Fielding can see his face through the plate.

“I cut a hole in your air hose. You’ve been exposed the whole time. Young infected you. It was a one in three chance. You’re just unlucky, I guess.”

“Jesus, Doc.” The man’s eyes are wild. “How much time do I have?”

Young shakes his head, staring up at him, breathing hard.

“A few minutes, maybe,” Travis tells him.

“What the hell are you saying? Why, Doc? Why’d you do it?”

“I wasn’t about to let you carry out your orders to kill me if things didn’t work out here. Let’s just say I needed my own guarantee.”

“I’m going to kill you anyway, you idiot. You just killed us both for nothing.”

“You said you would give your life to save the world. See? Ray Young is here. We still have a chance to gain viable samples. If you kill me, you will prevent me from saving the world. So give your life. Go somewhere and die.”

Fielding lowers the gun, considering this.

Travis turns to Young and says, “You’re bleeding through your dressing. I’m going to put another dressing on top of it, okay? We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

Fielding raises the gun again. Travis stares up at him, feeling real terror for the first time. His gamble failed. The man is going to kill him.

“I gave it some thought, Doc,” Fielding tells him, his face a mask of rage. “I realized I don’t give a shit about the world if I’m not in it—”

The man disappears in a blur, the gun cracking once, burying a bullet in the asphalt. Travis blinks in shock several times before realizing Fielding is at the bottom of a pile of hoppers. The man screams as they rip into him with their teeth and tiny hands, stingers pounding.

“Doc,” Young says. “Hey, Price.”

He stammers several times before answering, “Yes?”

“Heal me, or you’re next.”

Anne

Anne crouches next to the window, tears streaming down her cheeks. She shot the bastard, she shot him good, and he’s dying now, but Marcus is dead, dead like everyone else she ever loved, and now that the tears have come, they won’t stop, flowing down the channels created by her scars.

A hopper launches itself against one of the room’s windows, cracking the glass and bouncing off with a scream. The next crashes through in a burst of glass shards and falls to the carpet writhing and spraying blood. A third peers into the window on her other side, hissing at her with its jagged mouth as she shoves the barrel of her rifle against its forehead and squeezes the trigger, splashing the contents of its little skull across a photocopier.

More scratch at the walls, trying to figure out a safe way in. Anne can hear their glottal clicks and grunts. In the distance, she catches a glimpse of an arc of fire streaming from a flamethrower. The air is still filled with gunfire. Ray must have summoned every monster from miles around. The hoppers, being fast, got here first. Others will follow. Already she can hear the booming foghorn calls of the juggernauts. When they get here, anyone still out in the open is going to be slaughtered.

It’s time to make a quick exit if she wants to live. Sadly for her, Anne appears destined to survive this fight as well. She backs away from the front of the building, her rifle banging in her hands as the hoppers appear in the windows. It is hard work without someone watching her back, but it is work that is second nature to her, work that she’s good at.

Even now, with the hoppers pouring through the windows into the withering fire of her rifle, she sobs, mourning Marcus, the man she believes died to save the world from the plague spreader. At the end, when he saw the soldiers and realized their desperate plan was certain to fail, he told her to jump off the back of the bus and save herself, and then stepped on the gas for his suicide run while she rolled away and disappeared into the office building.

The rest was surprisingly easy.

Anne swore she would kill Ray Young for what he did to Camp Defiance, and she has fulfilled her oath. She wonders if it was worth the cost. All of her Rangers are dead. Todd is missing. What if Marcus had taken her up on her offer to go to Nightingale? He was strong; he could have made it. They might have had a life together. Is it possible she could ever be happy?

I don’t get to go back, she knows, shooting a hopper in the face.

She hears another window shatter somewhere to her left. The hoppers have found another way in and are hunting her among the cubicles. Anne continues to retreat into the gloom, backing toward a door under an EXIT sign, which she knows accesses the stairs and offers a route to the rear of the building.

The creature flies hissing at her. She catches a glimpse of mottled gray flesh and large black eyes before putting a round through it, sending it spinning among the cubicles. She turns and shoots another two creeping up on her other side, arms outstretched like children wanting a hug.

As her back connects with the door, she feels a tremor jolt through the building, bumping her body an inch off the ground. Then another.

Something’s wrong.

A violent, agonized roar rakes her ears, sending massive vibrations through her body that leave her feeling shaken.

“Demon,” she whispers, paling.

The building shakes, filling the air with dust. Something is crashing through walls and pounding the floor with giant feet. Behind Anne, a workstation shelf collapses, spilling staplers and tape dispensers and photos of smiling children.

Anne backs away from the door, eyes wide with terror.

The monster roars again. The building continues to shake violently, spilling light fixtures and pieces of acoustical ceiling tile into the workstations. She can hear drywall crumbling into dust on the other side of the door.

Anne has stopped crying. A wave of calm washes over her. She is going to need everything she’s got if she’s going to escape.

And if I can’t escape, if this is my time, I’m ready for that too. Tom, Peter, Alice and Little Tom, I’ll be with you soon.

She turns and runs back toward the front of the building.

Behind her, the wall explodes, flooding the room with a thick, rolling cloud of dust.

Wendy

Wendy plants a final long, deep kiss on Toby’s mouth and breaks away with a gasp.

“Wish me luck,” Wendy says, pulling on the gas mask.

“Be careful, babe,” Toby tells her. “We’ll have you covered.”

“I love you,” she tells him, winking. “It’s show time.”

She touches the Bradley’s instruments lightly, as if saying goodbye to an old friend, and climbs into the passenger compartment. Toby is already dropping the hydraulic ramp and she keeps moving, exiting at a crouch with her police-issue Glock in her hand.

A rifle pops to her right and a hopper flies skidding and tumbling across the asphalt. Wendy turns and sees Todd running toward her, pausing to shoot at distant targets. She points at herself and then Ray. Todd gives her a thumbs up and pats his rifle. He will cover her.

They parked the Bradley in front of a strip mall housing a Thai restaurant, dry cleaners, flower store and 7-Eleven. Across the parking lot, side street and another parking lot, Ray lies with his back against his truck, thirty yards from the office building from whose windows someone shot him, triggering this whole mess.

Her plan is simple—at least, once she reaches Ray Young. First, she just has to run a hundred yards through Hell.

Wendy starts running.

Bullets rip past, taking her breath with them, tracers flashing red in her eyes. Someone shrieks in pain. A fireball blooms in the distance, a single figure making his stand with a flamethrower at the center of a circle of scorched, blackened ground. Over the constant thunder, she hears the ping ping ping of Toby’s AK47.

She dodges a hopper thrashing howling on the ground, pausing to glance over her shoulder. Toby and Steve lean out of their hatches firing their rifles, while Todd paces her on the left. A hopper comes flying at her and the pistol bangs in her hand, the bullet hitting it midair and sending it tumbling lifeless against the side of a mailbox.

She does not have far to go now. Wendy puts her head down and launches into a final sprint.

As she approaches Ray, a pair of hoppers land in front of her, hissing and waving her away.

“Screw you,” she says, shooting one in the head, then the other.

She hops over the bodies and holsters her gun, looking down at him.

“Officer Saslove,” Ray greets her.

The man kneeling next to Ray turns and glances at her through his faceplate flecked with blood. “You’re taking a chance being near him with just that gas mask,” he says, his face pale.

“I know,” she tells him, crouching so her eyes are level with Ray’s.

“Good to see you, honey,” Ray tells her.

“You need to stop this right now, Ray.”

“I won’t let them hurt you.”

“You shouldn’t let them hurt anyone.”

“Too late for that.” He chuckles. “Whatever you think is best, Ray.”

“I thought you came here to save us,” she says. “You can still do that.”

“What do I care?” Ray answers, his eyes blazing. “Nobody ever gave a shit about me. My old man was right. Hit them before they hit you.”

“Does that include me?”

Ray smiles. “No, not you, Wendy. I would never let anything happen to you. See all these people? None of them are innocent. But you are. You remind me of how things were.”

Wendy turns and gazes with longing at the Bradley, where Toby and Steve and Todd are still shooting. She wishes they could all drive away together. Find their island. Try to be happy and forget this long nightmare ever happened.

He pats the ground next to him, and adds, “Sit with me for a minute. Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself. Don’t worry about all this other stuff.”

Foghorns boom in the distance, getting closer. The juggernauts are coming.

“Please stop this, Ray.”

“It’ll be over soon. It really is good to see you again.”

She remembers her promise. Hates herself for making it. Hates the world for making her do it. It’s not fair.

But it’s meant to be.

“I need you to do just one thing for me, Ray.”

“What’s that, honey?”

She raises her hands and takes off her mask. Lets it slip between her fingers.

“I want you to save me,” she tells him.

Ray howls like a dying animal.

“NO!”

“Save me, Ray.”

Then she turns, surprised, as a woman staggers out of the office building at the edge of the parking lot in a cloud of dust, firing a rifle back at the open doors through which she exited moments earlier.

Anne? Anne, is that you?

Wendy shields her face as the front of the building erupts and the Demon comes spilling out snorting with crashing wings, clawing up the asphalt.

Todd

Todd shoulders his carbine and fires. The little corpse skids to a stop against his boots and he leaps over it, shuddering in disgust. Its erect stinger continues to stab at the ground. Even dying, Todd knows, these things are a threat.