The Infection

Anne could not bear to finish the thought. Could not bear the idea they might be hurt.

“Please God,” she breathed. “Please God, please God—”

The glass sliding door was open. The screen door was closed, the mesh torn away.

That sour milk stench poured out of the house.

“Please,” she whispered, stepping inside.

The living room was dark. The TV was on, displaying the rainbow colors and emitting the loud ring of the emergency broadcast signal.

“Trudy? Trudy, are you there?”

Nobody answered her. Anne ran across the room to the kitchen. Three small glasses sat on the table. One still had a little milk in it.

“Trudy, where are my kids?”

There was an unmade bed in the master bedroom and the sour stench in there was so concentrated it made her gag, pushing her back out of the room with an almost physical force.

“Trudy, it’s me, Anne!”

All of the rooms were empty. It seemed nobody was home. Where had Trudy taken her kids? she wondered. She needed time to think. She needed to find them and keep them safe until Big Tom came home.

Anne returned to the living room. The emergency broadcast signal continued to grate on her frayed nerves and she moved to turn off the TV.

Oh my God—

“No,” she said. “No, no, no, no—”

She convulsed, bending over and vomiting explosively onto the carpet.

After several moments of retching and gasping to catch her breath, Anne was able to look again at what had been hiding in plain sight.

The bodies were arranged on the floor by the fireplace. Trudy had died wearing an odd smile, her neck cleanly broken. Peter and Alice and Little Tom surrounded her legs.

Something had mangled them. Torn pieces out of them. There was blood everywhere.

They had huddled around Trudy for protection. They had wanted Trudy to protect them because their mother and father were not there.

No, Anne told herself. Peter still held the poker from the fireplace. They were protecting her. That’s my kids. This is just like them. To put somebody else’s safety before their own. So brave. My big, grownup boy is so brave. My good Peter. Just like his daddy.

Anne screamed, clawing at her face, until she passed out.

♦

She found herself wandering in the middle of the street coughing on smoke. Paul Liao was calling to her from the driveway of his home as his wife hustled their kids into an overpacked station wagon. Across the street, a body lay on the sidewalk at the end of a long smear of blood. Somebody far away was screaming. Somebody close by fired a gun, shattering a window.

A van approached and stopped. The doors opened.

“I got her,” somebody said. “Cover me.”

A cop in riot gear appeared in front of her, flinching at the sight of her face.

“Crazies,” she said thickly, her voice sounding alien to her ears.

“You’re safe now, Ma’am,” the cop said. “Step right this way.”

Another cop stood nearby, sweeping the area with his shotgun.

“Jesus, look at her face,” he said. “I thought for a second she was one of them.”

Moments later, he began firing, the gun’s roar filling the world.

“Chase them out,” she insisted. She wanted to tell them something else important but could not remember what it was. The noise had scrambled her thoughts again. She was having a hard time thinking. She was fading in and out of consciousness, making hours blur into minutes. She remembered burying her children in her backyard. She remembered the power going out. She remembered digging a grave for herself. She became angry. She wanted to yell at the big cop, but he was gone. It was dark—inside, not outside. She became aware that she was in some type of big room, sitting with her back to the wall, her face stiff and stinging from an alcohol wipe and the wounds on her cheeks throbbing under thick, bulky bandages. A blanket was draped around her shoulders and she pulled it tighter protectively. She sensed the presence of hundreds of people in the room, coughing and whispering and snoring. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw their bodies lying on cots and sitting huddled on the ground like her.

“Tom,” she said, trying to find her voice. She called out: “Tom? Tom, are you there?”

“Oh Jesus, not another one,” somebody groaned.

“Please shut the hell up!” another voice roared in the darkness. “We’re trying to sleep here.”

“Big Tom!” she cried. “Answer if you can hear me!”

“You’re not the only one who lost somebody, lady,” another voice answered. “Give it a rest.”

There were people sobbing in the dark, talking to loved ones who were not there. Somebody coughed loudly. Nearby, a couple made love on a cot. A man masturbated loudly under a blanket. The tips of cigarettes glowed in the dark. Another man lay on the cool hard floor twenty feet away, huddled around a handful of photos he studied endlessly with a flashlight.