The Infection

“Don’t even say that word or I’ll actually do it,” Ethan says, pale.

“Wait,” Anne tells them. “Quiet.”

A baby is crying.

Ethan takes two steps forward before Anne reaches out and grips his arm, holding him back.

“It’s a baby,” he says, his eyes wild. “A little baby. Oh, God.”

Paul grunts in surprise, holding his dying flare. A baby in the hospital, alone in the dark. A miracle baby. How did it survive? What has it been eating? Is it Infected?

“That’s not a child,” Anne says.

The creature pushes the doors open and slithers through. The survivors flinch and take a step back with exclamations of horror and revulsion. It is a giant worm, half as thick as a car and twice as long, with an enormous blank face made up of wrinkled folds of skin. The creature appears to be blind, propelling itself towards them using tiny appendages, something like a cross between giant warts and tentacles, that cover its body. It looks sick, its body pale and grayish and covered in purple bruises, trembling as it slithers, starving.

Ethan sobs in horror, unable to comprehend the existence of such a repulsive thing. His concept of reality is disintegrating. It is as if the map of the world were now blemished with big blank spaces marked with the thickly scrawled warning: here be monsters.

The worm plows into the dead, pushing the corpses against the sides of the corridor.

“Can it see us?” Wendy says.

The monster shivers at the sound of her voice, pausing in front of one of the bodies and nuzzling its hair. The massive blank face cracks open, revealing a gaping black maw ringed with sharklike teeth. It promptly begins to absorb the corpse headfirst with a slurping sound.

“Oh, God!”

The creature shudders, then resumes its feast, cracking bones. Chewing.

“I’d like to leave now,” Ethan says, shaking.

“What do we do?” says the Kid. “Anne? What are we going to do?’

The creature shivers again, mewing like a baby wanting milk.

Anne shoulders her rifle and says, “Kill this fucking abomination.”

♦

Gunfire instantly fills the corridor as the survivors vent their fear and revulsion, screaming bloody murder and draining their magazines. The worm abandons its grisly meal and lurches forward, its movements jerky in the strobing light of the muzzle flashes. The bullets sink into the mottled flesh of its face with no apparent effect.

Ethan lowers his smoking carbine, feeling helpless. How can it be killed? Does it even have a heart or a brain? Even if it were just a giant worm without a brain or heart, the amount of ordinance they are throwing at it should be tearing it to shreds, and yet here it comes. The creature appears to have some type of bony plate on its face that is thick enough to absorb their firepower. He sees it differently now, not as an aberration but as a form of life perfectly designed for tunnels. That would mean it is vulnerable on its sides but not its front.

What about its other end?

Something whirs in his brain and clicks.

He roars at the survivors, “GET BACK!”

The creature’s rear end leaps into the air, revealing itself as a second head with another hissing mouth ringed by giant sharp teeth, and lunges forward with surprising speed and force, leapfrogging its front and landing among the screaming survivors, scattering them. Wendy pauses at the top of the stairs, squeezing off a few more shots with her Glock before following the other survivors down.

“Keep going,” she calls. “It’s right behind us!”

They exit the stairs and enter the emergency room. Anne points to the Bradley parked outside in front of the large floor-to-ceiling windows, the barrel of its 25-mm automatic turret-mounted gun aimed directly at them. Slanted rain pelts the armor. Sarge sits in the open hatch, waving at them frantically.

“Out of the way!” Anne screams.

“Everybody get down!”

The cannon fires, shrouding the vehicle in smoke. The windows burst and the inside of the emergency room dissolves in a series of flashing explosions and enormous clouds of smoke and dust. The survivors are on the ground, their faces buried in their arms and eating ash. The vehicle trembles as the gun fires again: BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP, vomiting empty shell casings down its metal chest onto the ground. And again. And again.

The firing finally stops. The dust and ash swirl in black clouds.

The survivors are screaming.

♦