The Infection

Sarge climbs out of the Bradley gripping his AK47 rifle, leaps down onto the ground, and races into the hospital, shouting names. The impossible creature he saw is now a quivering, smoking ruin smeared across the floor. He hopes he has not killed the other survivors in the bargain. The Bradley’s cannon is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel, and it is best to be nowhere near where its rounds are falling and exploding if you want to live. He had no choice; he heard all the shooting upstairs and revved up the Bradley and brought it back in case the others needed to make a quick exit. He calls the others’ names again and is relieved to hear voices shouting behind reception. He finds the others, covered in black ash, ringed around the Kid, who sits on his knees, holding a bleeding wound on his arm. The cop is screaming and pushing her Glock against his head while he pleads for his life and the others shout at her and each other, waving their weapons.

“It’s dead,” he says, wiping rain from his face. “The thing is dead.”

“We’ve got a bigger problem right now, Sarge,” Anne says.

“My point is we’re okay now. So let’s just be cool and lower all these guns.”

“He got cut by the thing’s teeth,” Anne says. “Wendy is right. He could turn.”

“I’m not doing anything unless that happens,” the cop says.

“How long is incubation?”

“Somebody his age and size… Three minutes, tops.”

“Who has a watch?”

Ethan spits on the face of his watch and rubs it with his thumb.

“Counting down,” he says.

“I’m just trying to protect us!” Wendy says, panicking.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Anne tells her. “You’re doing fine, Wendy.”

“I don’t want to do this,” she says, tears streaming down her face.

“We know. The Kid knows it, too.”

They wait. Ethan marks the time out loud. The survivors hold their breath while the Kid listens to his life ending in ten-second increments. He had pictured a heroic end for himself but this is getting put down, covered in filth, like an animal. After everything he has been through, he will die from a friend’s bullet. He wants to remember something important, hold onto a beautiful memory or thought he can take to the other side with him, but his mind is a raw blank. He wants to pray but all he can remember is the one he used to recite each night as a child.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” he rasps quietly. “I give thee Lord my soul to keep.”

The survivors slowly back away in a widening circle, coughing and fingering their weapons.

“And if I die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.”

He clenches his eyes shut as Ethan counts down the final ten seconds of his short life.

“Zero,” Ethan says, visibly deflating.

“But I’m still me,” the Kid says.

He laughs until it turns into hysterical crying. Wendy drops to her knees and hugs him. Sarge jogs back to the Bradley to get the med kit.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him, her tears joining his. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I want my mom,” he says.

♦

Todd Paulsen sits numbly on the floor in the glow of an LED lantern in one of the recovery rooms. Anne unscrews the cap on a plastic gallon jug and pours water into a bucket. Todd wearily pulls off his ruined bullet-proof vest, ripped and slashed by the thing’s teeth. He is skinny and normally does not like taking his shirt off in front of other people, but right now he does not care. He peels off his T-shirt and reaches to scratch a spot between his bony shoulder blades. He feels hollow, empty. Completed drained. If he were not so scared of never waking up he would be asleep already. He did not know death was so terrifying. It had always been an abstraction to him, sometimes even a romantic one. He could afford such foolishness before today because he had been immortal. Now death is in his hair and skin. It lurks in the empty space between the beats of his heart. Non-existence. Nothingness. And all the world with its beauty and horrors will go on without him as if he never existed. What was it the preacher was always saying? The earth abides. The earth, in other words, does not give a shit.

Todd takes the sponge from Anne and goes through the motions of washing himself. His arms are filthy with ash, the black dust contrasting strangely against his pale torso, gleaming white like a dead fish. He is ashamed of his body and his weakness. He cried in front of them. The adults. He faced death and he cried. He could not think of even one beautiful memory. And worst of all, at the moment he thought he was about to die, he could not remember his mother’s face.

“Would you rather be alone?” Anne asks him.

Todd shakes his head numbly. He is already alone.

Anne says, “Here, let me help you.”

She takes the sponge, wrings it out, and begins wiping down his face and neck.

Somebody knocks at the door. Sarge enters carrying his helmet, filling the space with his large frame.

“We need to talk, Anne.”

Anne glances at Todd and shakes her head slightly.

Sarge nods. He squats in front of Todd, who cringes, his expression vacant.