The Infection

He looks at the arched ceiling overhead and closes his eyes, remembering the last time he spoke as a clergyman. After the Infected rose, he kept Sara tied to a bed for three days, feeding her, bathing her, changing her bedpan, while the world ended outside his window. He even tried an exorcism, commanding demons to abandon her body while she shrieked and panted, straining at her bonds. Time blurred until he realized that people were probably flocking to his church for comfort and there was nobody there to give it. He had a responsibility to his congregation that was just as great. Exhausted from lack of sleep, he put on his clerical uniform and staggered out into the night. People sobbed and screamed in distant houses as he walked to the church in a daze. The Infected were running howling down streets and alleys, breaking into homes and attacking their occupants. Paul arrived at his church only to find it had been attacked. The dead lay in heaps surrounded by clouds of flies. The streetlights shined through the stained glass windows in a ghostly shimmer. The carpet squished wetly under his feet. The Infected had eaten the children on the altar. And he thought, Isn’t this what you wanted, Paul? The End of Days?

The signs of violence were everywhere in this place. There were as many Infected lying on the ground as those who were not. His congregation had put up a fight—for their children and their sanctuary. The massive wood cross mounted behind the altar, the symbol of his faith in a divine sacrifice that had made life everlasting possible, loomed without potency over the carnage. Rage boiled up inside him. Infection had invaded and defiled this holy place. Infection had raped his wife’s blood. And he, personally, had not been touched.

Dawn brought the singing mob marching down the street out of a haze of smoke, sweeping him along. Middle-class suburbanites carrying shotguns and baseball bats and crowbars and kitchen knives and garden tools. They shouted and sang and waved banners proclaiming: we are the majority and defend our homeland and we shall not be moved. One carried a Bible and a large wooden cross. There were hundreds of them. The vanguard roared and dragged along eight Infected, who snapped and struggled against handcuffs and ropes tied around their necks. The men stopped in the middle of an intersection, threw the ropes over the traffic signal, and promptly began hauling the Infected kicking and gasping into the air. Paul pushed his way through the clapping mob for a better look until he was satisfied that Sara was not one of the victims. The air smelled like smoke. The Infected hung by their necks, jerking and twitching until they died. The mob cheered, some shooting at the corpses with their guns, others singing “The Star Spangled Banner” until everybody joined in, tears running down their cheeks. Paul was finding it hard to breathe. Several people noticed his clerical collar, shook his hand and began shoving him to the head of the column, chanting, “Bless us! Bless us!” A man with a mullet and a hunting bow, standing on the hood of a car, pulled him up with one hand and clapped him on the back. Paul looked down upon the cheering crowd in anger and did not trust the Spirit. What could he say that they wanted to hear? Should he tell them that God was on their side and approved of them murdering their brothers and sisters in broad daylight? Should he rouse them to torture and murder more of them with a hymn, maybe “Onward, Christian Soldiers”? Then he realized how scared they all were. The faces looked up at him hungrily; if ever they needed the strength and hope of Christ’s love, it was now. They were quiet now except for the cries of their babies. A pair of military jets roared overhead in the gray, smoky sky, followed by the boom of distant explosions. His heart opened. He raised his hands and blessed the mob.

“Your war is just,” he told them.

For a war to be truly just, its soldiers must kill with love, not hate, he thought. This was perhaps the first war in history where the combatants killed those they loved most.

People at the edge of the crowd began to scream. Infected were rushing out of nearby lawns and gardens into their midst, punching and biting. Shotguns and handguns roared in a motley cluster of shots, followed by triumphant shouting. Several people began trading punches over a bitten and newly Infected teenage girl lying twitching on the ground.

“Brothers and sisters,” Paul sang to them. “The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid.”