The Infection

Talk to us, God. If you will not even talk to us in this time of darkness and sorrow, why should we give you any allegiance?

The Jews grappled with the Holocaust for more than sixty years, trying to reconcile their belief in a just and merciful God with the millions gassed and shot and fed to the ovens in the death camps. Paul wonders what humanity will make of God when and if this plague ever ends. If God does not need Man’s approval, he may sacrifice it.

The Old Testament God rewarded such waywardness in his creation with pestilence and slaughter. But as Job basically said, what else can you do to me that has not been done?

Paul dons the respirator mask and steps out into the early twilight created by massive smoke clouds slowly writhing across the sky, as if tormented. He spends several minutes watching as the green landscape continues its slow dissolution into a gray wasteland. He thinks of the other survivors wandering across this wilderness, alone and without hope. This is a place where people face themselves and learn what they really are. In war and adversity, we learn our true nature as humans. On our deathbed, our curse as earthly beings. In a place like this, we gaze into a mirror at our image rendered naked in cruel honesty—at who we really are as people.

His knees popping, he bends and begins brushing soot off of the supplies and organizing them for repacking into the Bradley. Lanterns, Coleman stove, propane tanks, rifle bore cleaner and lube, first aid, duct tape, cord, string, roll of sheet plastic, bags of salt, vitamins, toilet bucket, powdered lime, coffee pot, aluminum foil, soap, Ramen noodles, beans, waterproof matches, bolt cutters, energy bars, bedrolls, flashlights, his tattered copy of the Holy Bible.

Lord, would you have destroyed Sodom if I was there?

Abraham argues with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, saying he should not destroy the innocent along with the wicked. He asks God if he would destroy the city if fifty innocent people live there, and God says he would not. He asks God if he would destroy it if forty-five innocent people live there, and God says he would not. And so he bargains with God, forty, thirty, twenty, finally settling on ten. Paul always wondered why Abraham does not ask for mercy if even one innocent man or woman lived there.

Paul decides that he must make himself a righteous man to save the world from God’s wrath, but he does not know how. This is a world where the righteous are easily culled.

He prays for guidance, but again, God does not answer.

♦

“Oh Lord,” Ethan says.

He remembers seeing stories on the news about poor kids from the developing world who were flown to hospitals in the United States to have giant benign tumors removed. The kids were grotesques, carrying twenty to third pounds of flesh on their faces. The tumors were large masses of tissue forming as a result of cancer cells reproducing at an abnormally accelerated rate.

Ducky has something similar growing out of his hip, but it is not a normal tumor. It is a monkeylike creature curled up into a fetal ball, breathing, apparently asleep. Ethan can see where the driver cut the pants of his uniform to release the constantly growing creature. Now he understands why the soldiers were carrying the driver here, away from the other survivors. They do not want the others to see Ducky like this.

Sarge asks the driver how he is feeling. Ducky’s gaze shifts to Sarge but otherwise his expression does not change.

The gunner shakes his head. “He barely has enough energy to breathe right now,” he says.

Sarge looks at Ethan pointedly. “So. You’re the smart one. What do you think?”

Ethan examines the thing growing out of Ducky’s hip, careful not to touch it. It is like cancer, but more than that: a parasite. He cannot believe his eyes; it appears that the man’s entire body has been completely rewired to give everything it has to the growing creature. The thing has apparently reorganized Ducky’s organs and is pressing on his bladder, making him piss himself nearly continuously, a sickly, foul-smelling pink fluid.

Fascinating, almost miraculous, from a purely scientific standpoint. Horrific, and utterly revolting, from a human standpoint.

“We don’t have much time,” the gunner says.

“Time’s up, doc,” Sarge says. “Can you fix him?”

“I don’t understand what it is exactly you expect me to do here.”

Sarge extends his service knife to Ethan.

“Can you fix him?”

Ethan almost laughs, but stops himself. Sarge is not the kind of guy you laugh in front of when one of his people is dying.

Sarge adds, “I sterilized it. It’s clean. And we got plenty of alcohol and gauze.”

“He can’t survive an amputation.”

“Ducky’s a tough sumbitch.” He smiles weakly at the driver. “We’ll booze you up good, Ducky. You won’t feel a thing.”