The Infection

“Wait,” Anne said. “Officer, wait! What are you going to do to him?”

The Captain replied, “Sit down and shut up, Ma’am.”

“I think she likes you, Captain,” the soldier named Parker said.

“Watch out, she’s going to report you to her PTA,” the other added, laughing.

“He’s just sick,” she pleaded. “He’s not one of them.”

The Captain raised his pistol and aimed it at her face.

“Maybe you’re Infected.”

A man stood behind the soldiers and approached the Captain. Anne could tell instantly from his black suit and white collar that he was a clergyman.

“Now, hold on a minute, sir,” the man said.

The Captain turned, gave the clergyman a quick once-over, and said, “Are you Catholic?”

The man blinked, caught off guard. “No, son, I am not.”

“Then I don’t give a rat’s ass what you have to say.”

The pistol flashed in the man’s hand, striking the clergyman in the face and knocking him to the floor. Anne, still standing, exchanged a quick glance with Sarge, who stood by his Bradley with his crew, wiping his hands with a greasy rag. The man shook his head slightly.

Anne swallowed her rage and returned to her seat on the floor as the soldiers dragged the sick man out of the garage and the clergyman lay groaning, cupping his face in his hands.

The roar of the gunshot penetrated the walls and rang in her ears.

Later that day, about half of the refugees packed their meager belongings and left the shelter after a long, bloody fistfight between some of the men who were leaving and those who were staying over whether the remaining supplies should be divided up. The Wal-Mart woman ended the dispute by announcing that there were no more supplies. Nothing. Not a crumb. Those who remained were broken people, lying on the cots staring at the ceiling, including Joshua, holding a dirty wet rag against his bleeding nose, one of his eyes almost swollen shut.

The following night was long and uneventful except for people sobbing quietly in the dark. The room stank with the ammonia smell of piss. They were doomed and they knew it.

The next morning, the doors burst open again and a group of men and women entered the garage carrying rifles and pistols and wearing a motley collection of military uniforms. The refugees shrank from them, screaming shrilly.

“Anybody here need a ride?” one of newcomers called out, grinning.

“Sam!” a woman cried, flinging herself into the man’s arms.

“I told you I’d find you,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “I told you.”

“We’ve got buses outside, enough for everybody,” announced another member of the gang, a woman with a bandaged head. “There’s a FEMA camp on the way to Harrisburg and we’re starting a convoy. If you want in, pack up your things now. We’re out of here in ten.”

The refugees crowded around asking questions. They must have been satisfied by the answers, because all of them grabbed whatever possessions they had and hurried out the door to the line of commuter buses idling outside.

As the last of the refugees headed towards the door, one of the them called out to Anne, “Last chance, lady!”

She shook her head.

The man waved and shut the door. Anne sighed with something like relief. The atmosphere, previously tense and stifling, became peaceful. The room suddenly seemed so much larger without the others filling it.

“Why didn’t you go?”

Anne noticed the clergyman had also stayed behind.

“It shouldn’t be that easy,” she said.

“You might be right. I’m not sure if I trusted them either.”

“No,” Anne said. “The others had no choice but to trust them. I have a choice. It should not be that easy.”

The clergyman nodded. He approached and sat on a nearby cot with a heavy sigh, touching the bruise on his face gingerly. Anne got a good look at him. He was a big man, with short, white, frizzy hair and a weathered, stubbled face. She guessed him to be in his late fifties.

“What about you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go?”

He shrugged and said, “‘Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.’ That’s a fancy way of saying I agree with you.”

“I liked that. Was that the Bible?”

“No. Paradise Lost. John Milton.”

They introduced themselves. His name was Paul.

The Bradley commander approached.

“I think we’ve just about got the rig fixed,” he told them. “If you don’t mind, later on today we’d like to start her up and drive her around a bit. We’ll open the service door a little to ventilate, but it’s going to be loud and smell bad anyway.”

“It’s all right,” Paul said, wandering off to contemplate the rows of corpses, still in their body bags, which lay waiting for transport that would never come.

Anne said, “Sergeant, how could you be so callous when they were dragging that man outside to be murdered in cold blood? You knew he wasn’t Infected.”

The soldier shrugged. “I could give you a dozen reasons, Ma’am. Let me ask you a question. Why were you willing to risk your life to save him?”