The Infection

He remembers lighting a cigarette in the alley behind his house several nights after the Screaming. So late at night it was practically morning. He had tossed and turned and barely slept. The neighborhood twenty-four hour convenience store was open and he bought a pack of cigarettes to satisfy an incredible, sustained craving he felt immediately upon waking up. Now here he was smoking for the first time in years. Beating an addiction takes belief in a higher power, and while his faith in God helped, the strength of his marriage got him to finally kick the habit. Now Sara was lying on a bed inside his house, connected to an intravenous bag, and here he was standing in the alley lighting up and blinking at the immediate head rush. He coughed but by the third drag he was hooked again. Like riding a bike. He enjoyed the quiet. A dog barked and then stopped. For the first time in the past few raw days, he felt something like an inner peace. At least one itch had finally been scratched.

A figure appeared under the streetlight at the end of the alley, a small silhouette. Paul squinted at it for a few moments, unsure it was even a person until he realized it was growing larger. Moving towards him. It passed a light fixture mounted on a neighbor’s garage and Paul caught a glimpse of its terrible face. It was breathing hard and running at Paul as fast as the average human being can run. It was doing the hundred yard dash and Paul was the finish line. For several critical moments, Paul was outside his body, watching himself do nothing. He was not sure he could move; his legs had turned to water.

He started to feebly ask, can I help you, barely finishing the sentence before turning and sprinting back into his backyard and locking the gate behind him, his heart hammering in his chest. He sensed the man pacing outside the gate, hissing like an animal.

He walked carefully back to his house on wobbly legs, still filled with dread.

Inside, Sara was sitting on the edge of her bed. Waiting for him.

“No,” Paul says. “I haven’t killed somebody I love. Have you?”

“Yes,” Anne says.

♦

The doors at the end of the corridor burst open and a snarling man races through. The Kid fires a burst that obliterates his face and then falls back, continuously firing and dropping bodies as a swarm of Infected pours into the corridor, filling it with their horrible, sour stench.

Wendy keeps pace at his side, the beam of her flashlight glittering across red eyes, covering him with her pistol. The Kid’s gun jams and he stares at his weapon in numb surprise. The cop empties the Glock into the snarling faces, drops the mag, loads another. The Kid wrestles with the bolt until a howling woman claws at his eyes. Holding the carbine sideways in front of his body for protection, he slams it into her gray face on impulse, breaking her nose. She falls back howling and a giant of a man in a paper hospital gown stomps towards him with clenched fists like sledgehammers, roaring. The top of his head erupts in a geyser of blood and he disappears. Wendy is still shooting, burning quickly through the next magazine. The first woman comes back and wrestles with the Kid for the carbine, her jaws chomping in a blind rage. He hears a scuffle and the crack of the cop’s police baton striking bone. The Kid shoves the woman against the wall and smashes the carbine into her face repeatedly until she slides down the wall leaving a smear of blood. Panting, he turns and sees Wendy fighting two men twice her size and kicking the shit out of both of them with her side-handle baton. He clears the jam out of his carbine and signals to her, murder in his eyes. She backs away just in time for him to gun them down with several bursts from the hip.

They stand quietly for several moments, unable to speak or move, utterly drained. Just breathing. A pall of gun smoke hangs in the air. The cordite bites their nostrils, competing with the bitter smell of blood and the rank stink of the dead Infected.

“You kick ass,” he says finally.

“It’s the training.”

“That was way too close.”

“We’re going to be okay.”

“You’ll have to teach me your judo skills sometime.”

“Wait,” the cop says. “Do you hear that?”

The Kid shakes his head, trying to get rid of the ringing in his ears.

“I can’t hear anything,” he says.

Ethan, Anne and Paul rush into the corridor, breathing hard.

“We heard the shooting and came as fast as we could,” Anne says.

“Sounded like a war up here,” Paul says. “You okay, boy?”

“We’re okay,” the Kid tells him.

“Quiet,” the cop says. “Something is coming.”

♦

The survivors train their light and weapons on the doors at the far end of the corridor. A strange sound comes to them that slowly reveals itself as something familiar. Chewing. The sound of an animal chewing a piece of meat, oddly amplified.

“What the hell is that?” the Kid says, wincing.

A fresh wave of sour milk stench assaults their nostrils with an almost physical force.

“God, that smell makes me want to puke,” the cop says.