The Infection

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

“We still got the TOW,” Sarge says.

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

“Fire it now!” Wendy screams.

“We can’t,” he tells her.

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

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

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

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

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

Sarge presses the arming switch for the TOW.

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

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

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

“We need more distance.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we do.”

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

The thought fills her with claustrophobic panic.

“Um, Sarge?”

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

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

“Target!” Wendy shouts, laughing and crying.

Cowabunga! Steve says.

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

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

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

“Thank God,” Wendy says. “What now?”

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

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

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

♦

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

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

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

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

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

Hackett nods slowly, apparently weighing fight or flight.

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

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

“Me, too,” says one of the engineers.

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

They want to die for something.

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

“And the MG,” another offers.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

“Hooah,” the soldiers shout with hoarse throats.

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