The Infection

He immediately regrets it. The stairwell is pitch black. The air is stale and musty. He cannot remember how high the floors of the hospital go, or what fresh terrors await him up there in the dark. His clumsy footfalls sound like thunder in the stillness. After three flights, his knees and lungs begin to protest.

He cannot stop thinking about the wormlike creature that attacked them. That these things were another of the horrible children of Infection is obvious. But are they a mutation, a freak? Or an entirely new life form? Were they once men? Or has the virus jumped species? He has a terrible feeling that the emergence of this creation may be a sign of a fundamental shift in the ecology of the planet. The Infected violently spread disease and cannibalize the dead; they are a plague and an enemy that has humanity on the run, and that is bad enough. But this is new. The balance of nature is changing. A new world is coming in which humans are no longer at the top of the food chain. The thing appeared to be a bottom feeder, another eater of the dead. There is plenty of food to sustain a large population of these monsters, depending on how much they need to eat. What will happen when they can no longer feed on the dead?

It took a 25-mm cannon to kill it…

They reach the top of the stairs and find the door unlocked. Some of the hospital staff must have fled onto the roof to get away from the Infected rising out of their beds. But the roof is bare of the living or the dead. Ethan walks carefully, feeling exposed under the massive twilight sky.

The rain has mostly stopped but the ground is still wet and the air feels heavy and humid. They walk to the parapet. Over the roofs of the houses and low-rise buildings, they see downtown Pittsburgh in the distance, across the river. The tall buildings stand dark and derelict. The Grant Building is on fire and veiled in white smoke, an incredible sight. Pillars of smoke rise up from a dozen smaller fires scattered across the city. They hear the distant crackle of gunfire at the Allegheny County Jail to the east.

“Reverend, why did those people leave their photos in that garage?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“The parking garage where we stayed last night. People passing through there before us left photos of their families and friends on the wall. Why did they do that?”

“Just saying goodbye, I guess,” Paul answers.

“I don’t think I want to say goodbye,” Ethan says.

Paul shakes his head and says, “I don’t even know how.”

Bonded by their grief, the men watch the sun go down and the Grant Building burn in the twilight. Even after everything they have gone through, it is still sometimes hard to believe what has happened to the world they once lived in. People and buildings and phone calls and TV shows and grocery shopping and the normal pace of life. The gray sky occasionally spits. Over time, the warm rainwater collects in their hair and on their faces, slowly washing away the ash and the filth. They stand there without speaking for over an hour, Paul slowly chain smoking his cigarettes.

This high up, the apocalypse seems almost peaceful.

“The end of the world doesn’t happen overnight,” Paul says, nodding. “It takes time.”

The sky is quickly turning dark. They decide to turn back. Ethan notices that somebody sprayed the words HELP US in bright orange paint across the hospital roof.

“It may never end,” he says, feeling homesick.

FLASHBACK: WENDY SASLOVE

The Screaming changed everything. Millions of people lay helpless and twitching on the ground. Thousands died in accidents. Fires burned out of control. Entire towns suffered without electricity or running water. Devastated survivors walked numbly through the streets. Distribution of everything from food to Internet access to Social Security checks was completely disrupted. Entire industries such as insurance folded overnight. Government and businesses struggled to continue operating as one out of five people simply fell down, broke everything in the process, and took all their knowledge with them in a massive brain drain. The country reeled from the shock.