The Infection

Wendy slowly removes her badge, runs her thumb over its edged details, and puts it into her pocket. This done, she turns and begins walking back to the truck stop.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king. He is not king because nobody recognizes him as king. The others do not even know he is there.

Wendy coughs long and hard on the smoke and soot, her lungs on fire. When it is over, a smile flickers across her face. If you are still alive after part of you dies, she thinks philosophically, it is like being reborn. She will survive this.

The gunshots escalate back at the truck and the headlights shake and blink out. Moments later, the first screams echo across the asphalt. The darkness closes in around her.

Wendy breaks into a run, reeling from the sudden understanding that her decision to stop being a cop probably saved her life.

♦

Anne steps carefully between the trees, her body taut and her rifle shouldered and ready to fire. She blinks away the sweat that is slowly pooling under her soaked cap. Her finger twitches near the trigger. Each step is planted carefully, one foot following the other, taking her deeper. She is a hunter now. She does not yet know what she is hunting. Her quarry is present, but not known.

Sighing in the trees. She can hear them now, their guttural clicks. Communication that is like ancient speech, but also as mindless as insect mating. The things scamper playfully through the bushes and leap into the trees, releasing clouds of soot that make the little bastards squeal and sneeze.

They’re like children, she thinks, and then banishes that painful thought. Unlike the other survivors, Anne does not question why she is here. Does not constantly compare herself, the world around her and what she is doing in it to the Time Before. Anne has survived so far because she successfully locked away her past. She does not need to remember it to continue atoning for it. She has learned to truly live in the moment.

The ash blankets the treetops and drifts in the air, obscuring everything green and creating a virtual twilight. Anne closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, she sees the eyes glimmering in the haze. Dozens of staring red eyes burning in the gloom, the dark spaces of the forest. She takes another step forward.

Foliage thrashes as the creatures scamper across the treed ground. The air fills with guttural clicks and squeals. Even the squeals sound like language. They know she is here. She is no longer hunting, but observing. There are too many to fight; it is not worth the risk.

Anne raises her rifle slowly and peers into the scope, conducting a slow sweep until stopping at a small group clustered at the foot of a massive oak. The crosshairs come to a rest on a blank little elven monkey face, blandly chewing, its mouth stained. As if sensing it is being watched, the creature bares bloody teeth and glares with pure malice, without real intelligence. She moves the rifle and begins watching the others shove handfuls of some furred animal into their mouths.

She cries out, her eyes flooding with hot tears, before she can stop herself. She falls to her knees, weeping openly with racking sobs, her shoulders shaking with each burst.

The forest suddenly comes alive with hoots and shrieks.

“It’s just a dog,” she says. “Just somebody’s old dog.”

Anne stifles the next sob, sniffing loudly and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Within moments, she regains control of her breathing. She hates them with every ounce of her being. She raises the rifle, aims it at a snarling face, exhales and squeezes the trigger.

The rifle fires with a flash and bang that fills the forest with an echoing, rolling roar. The creatures rush and bound through the undergrowth, hooting and shrieking, gathering for a charge. The acrid smell of cordite fills the air.

She fires again, the rifle lurching hard against her shoulder. She sees the skull explode before the view in the scope jumps in a haze of smoke.

“I’m going to kill you!” she screams at them with incredible volume, her voice ringing through the trees. “Do you hear that, you little freak bastards?”

Her dog had an almost supernatural talent for catching Frisbees.

The creatures try to gather again. Anne shoots another one and the rest leap back into the trees. They appear to be baffled by the distance over which she is reducing their numbers one by one. The little things caper about, roaring and baring their teeth and puffing out their little barrel chests, pointing at her and throwing handfuls of their shit in her direction. She fires again. And again. A group breaks from the woods, leaping at her with their comical insect legs, and she cuts them down. She fires until her rifle clicks empty. They sense her hesitation. With a massive howl, the children of Infection rush at her all together. She drops the rifle.