The Infection

“Sarge, I’m sorry about your man,” Ethan says carefully. “But there’s nothing anybody can do.”

“Did I make a mistake hauling your ass out of that hospital?”

“Sarge, you’re not really thinking straight. A procedure like this would take a team of real doctors something like half a day in a real hospital. I’m a high school math teacher. I am just smart enough to know that anything I do will kill this man. Look at this small wound here that’s still weeping; he must have tried to cut it off himself in the Bradley, and the pain stopped him. At some point, I assume the parasite will detach, as you can see legs forming here, but right now there is an entire system of veins supplying blood to it. I cut into this mass and even if Ducky’s heart didn’t fail from the shock, the loss of blood would surely—”

“Holy shit,” Steve hisses, pushing himself away from the driver, falling sprawling on his ass.

The parasite’s eye is open, studying them each in turn. The head, fused to the rest of the body-shaped mass of tissue by a thin film of clear mucus, begins to stir. The men gasp with revulsion. Ducky looks down at it, his eyes wide with helpless terror.

The creature is becoming aware. It is literally being born right in front of their eyes.

“It ain’t nothing, Ducky,” Sarge says, his voice fragile. “Don’t even look at it.”

Ethan points to the thing’s face and says, “See how it’s able to move, but Ducky isn’t. The parasite is now stronger than its host, and is—”

He leaps to his feet and bolts across the asphalt screaming.

♦

Sarge chases Ethan under a darkening sky, calling his name, coughing on the smoke and ash that is now falling in a blizzard and almost blinding him. The tiny green figure flickers like a candle fifty yards ahead. The screams ring out across the blank, empty spaces.

Suddenly, Ethan collapses to his knees, gasping. The soldier catches up and drops heavily to one knee next to him, still coughing.

“Let me see it,” he says.

Ethan moans, shaking, cradling his bloody hand.

Paul and Todd come running, looking down at him in surprise.

“Is he in shock?” Paul says.

“No,” Sarge says. “Not physical shock, anyhow.”

“You need help?”

“What the heck happened to him?” Todd asks him, his eyes gaping.

Sarge leans close to Ethan’s ear.

“You’re okay now,” he says calmly and quietly. “Now let me see it.”

He is still doubting what he saw until Ethan slowly unravels his trembling hand and shows the bloody stump where the tip of his index finger used to be. The fucker bit it off. Ate it with a crunch. Its little black eye gleaming with hate.

Ethan is looking at his hand, his face pale and surprised.

“Somebody, get me the med kit,” Sarge says.

“I’ll go,” Paul says, and starts running for the Bradley.

“And plenty of water, Reverend,” Sarge calls after him. He tears a strip from the teacher’s shirt and winds it tightly around the wound. “We’re going to take care of this,” he tells Ethan. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll put some pressure on it for now, all right? Then we’ll clean it real good and I’ll sew it up.”

Todd drops to one knee next to Ethan and says, “You’re alive, man. You’re alive.”

“You’re fine,” says Sarge. “It ain’t nothing.”

Ethan whispers something. Sarge bends closer to hear.

“Kill. Him.”

“The hell you say!”

Ethan winces, his eyes clenching shut against the pain.

“Not murder. Mercy. Quickly, before—”

Back at the fuel island, Steve’s rifle pops once, twice.

“Take care of this man,” Sarge barks.

“Sarge?” Todd says.

Sarge jumps to his feet and runs back across the lot. “No, goddammit, no!”

He finds Steve standing over Ducky’s corpse, his rifle smoking and his eyes wild.

“What happened?” Sarge demands.

“That thing,” Steve says, shaking with disgust and rage. “That fucking thing.”

Sarge closes his eyes but he can still see Ducky’s body lying on the ground, a drained, sightless, empty husk, and the creature splattered across the asphalt.

He can still see where the parasite had begun eating Ducky’s leg.

♦

Wendy returns in time to see Sarge carrying Ducky, a limp bundle wrapped in a blanket and light as a child, into a nearby gently sloping field crowned by a stand of oak trees. Paul and Todd and the gunner have gathered at the top, covered in soot, next to a hole they dug. They ask her where Anne is; Wendy shakes her head, staring in horror at the empty hole, feeling death’s chill. She tells them the Infected are not far behind. A heavy silence falls on them as they fear the worst has happened to Anne, and turn inward to look at these fears.

Sarge and Steve gently lower the body into the pit.