The Infection

He became winded after a few blocks and slowed down, cradling the gun carefully against his chest. He heard the tramp of feet and quickly hid as a pack of people ran by growling, their torn shirts flapping. People were screaming everywhere. On the next block, a house was burning without a single fireman on the scene; he could feel the heat on his face. He fought the urge to cough on the smoke.

Todd began to feel as if he were moving through a nightmare. Changing direction to avoid the fire, he approached a group of people huddled on the ground near the wreckage of a horrible car crash in the middle of an intersection. He wanted to ask if they were all right but the tiny voice of common sense warned him to stick to the shadows. One of the cars was on fire, the light glittering on the tiny shards of broken glass carpeting the ground.

As he passed the group of people, he realized they were hunched over a body, pulling out organs and chewing noisily. The light crawled across their gray, bloody faces. He fought the urge to retch.

Picture them eating something nice, he told himself. Fried chicken. They’re eating a bucket of fried chicken. Crispy fried chicken with a side of fries. That’s all. No big deal.

Bad idea. The contents of his stomach leaped into his throat and he vomited noisily against a brick wall, helpless, his eyes filled with water. When he turned back, he saw that one of the eaters was looking right at him. He knew they were different—crazy, demonic, even—but they couldn’t see in the dark, could they? He clung to the wall, trying not to move and yet shaking uncontrollably. The woman was topless, her chest wet and darkly stained, firelight gleaming in her black eyes. Todd stared wide-eyed at her bare breasts. Eventually, she lowered her head back to resume her grisly meal.

People are turning into cannibals, he thought. What the hell is going on? Where am I supposed to go? He suddenly wanted to find a computer or TV so he could see what was happening. Maybe a phone so he could call his dad again. Maybe his dad was dead. He tried not to think about it.

Sheena X. He decided to go to her house, help her barricade the place, and wait out this zombie apocalypse together. He was rolling a fantasy of them sharing the pain of their parents being dead—followed by the realization that that they are in love, and a huge make-out scene—when the Infected came running out of the darkness, howling and reaching for him.

Todd ran in a blind panic. Jesus, he thought. These people want to kill me. The very idea sapped the energy from his legs. Made him suddenly want to sleep. His mind swam in panic. If only, he thought. It’s not fair, he thought. His lungs were gasping for air on razor blades. The gun, he thought. He remembered the pistol in his hand.

He slowed and turned as the first Infected bore down on him, a big man wearing a T-shirt soaked through with blood and sweat, emitting a long, terrible shriek. Todd squeezed the trigger on reflex, forgetting to aim. The bullet entered the side of the man’s head just above the ear, instantly turning half his skull into a spray of blood and skull fragments. The Infected staggered, shaking his head vigorously as if sneezing, shaking free pieces of brain, and then collapsed. The death of this monster struck Todd as nothing short of a miracle.

“Yeah!” he cried through a haze of gun smoke.

More came howling out of the darkness. He had to wait until they got close so he could be sure that he would hit them. But if they got too close, he would panic and run and then they would get him. Todd blanked out his mind, breathing heavily through his nose and trying to slow his heart rate, and pictured the scene as an online first-person shooter game, letting his hand-eye reflexes take over, shifting his aim and firing as the Infected approached.

“I am invincible,” he sang off key, wishing for a soundtrack, then stopped, unable to remember the rest of the words to the song. The fight was over in seconds. He blinked, surveying the bodies of five Infected lying on the ground moaning and thrashing.

He approached the twitching bodies carefully, watching for any who might make a last-second movie lunge and deliver a mortal wound that would be just payment for his hubris. One of them was a police officer. Todd was curious about him because he shot the man three times but the cop kept getting up and coming at him until the last bullet destroyed the right side of his head. The mystery was solved easily; the man wore a bullet-proof vest.

Todd pulled the vest off the man and put it on himself. It was a little big and it was heavier than he thought it would be, but he loved it. He had seen them on TV, of course, and had always wanted one. He thought it made him look bigger, bulkier, tougher than he usually felt when he looked in the mirror. He sensed that he could be good at this—surviving in a post-apocalyptic world.

Looks like school is out forever, he thought. The thought almost made him happy.