The Infection

The other cops gather around behind Ray. “Pittsburgh,” they whisper among themselves, almost chanting the word. “She’s a cop.” One of them reaches and touches her shoulder lightly, making her flinch, while another holds out a warm can of beer with a friendly wink.

“Welcome, Officer Saslove,” Ray says, his eyes big and watery. “And God bless you.”

♦

The open air market is set up at the site of the old Cashtown Flea Market on the outskirts of town, and serves as the closest thing to a mall the camp’s residents can get. Now situated in the middle of a vast shantytown, the market’s boundaries are roughly marked on the west by Christmas lights and light bulbs hanging from wires strung between poles, and on the east by one of FEMAville’s many foul canals. These canals were once part of a Medieval-style defense system of staked trenches dug around the old town by the original refugees to stop the Infected, but were slowly absorbed by growth, the stakes removed and burned for firewood, the pits filled with rainwater. Wood planks form bridges over the rank canals, now filled with sewage and garbage and even a few bodies, some always burning, day and night. Solar landscape lights thrust into the dirt mark its edges to ensure night travelers do not fall in. The canals are deadly; if the fall into the toxic sludge itself does not kill you, any number of diseases will.

Todd wanders awkwardly among the crowds of people browsing the wares stacked on the tabletops, as if testing his legs on the deck of a ship. He is not used to crowds. Especially crowds where almost everybody is carrying a gun, axe, hammer, bat or other weapon. The people here are angry and desperate and stink of fear. He feels exposed, vulnerable, a little disoriented with something like vertigo—that weird sense that everybody knows each other and is aware of you and that you do not belong. It’s high school all over again.

Come on, Todd old man, he tells himself. Nobody here gives a crap about you. They have their own problems. Boy, do they ever.

The vendors near him are shouting out products and prices while others are being haggled by customers or chasing away children and beggars. The products include batteries, candles, matches, condoms, cigarettes, hand lotion, knives, sewing thread, spices, seasoned firewood and boxes of useless electronics. Commodities, rarities and plenty of junk. The prices are based on whatever the seller wants—dollars, gold, services in kind, barter—and the market appears to be thriving. Like the earth, capitalism abides. Barter appears to be most popular form of exchange; one merchant is selling playing cards and board games and dice but is only accepting cigarettes as payment.

Nearby, a line of people wait their turn to get into one of a battery of portable toilets. They erupt into spontaneous applause as a truck drags an emergency generator down the road. Electricity means progress. Two men in orange jumpsuits pull the bottom section out of one of the portable toilets, where the waste reservoir is located, mount it on a wheeled cart, and push it up a ramp onto the back of a wagon drawn by a horse.

More than anything, the people here want and need electricity, Todd realizes. That and plumbing. In the shanties where he lives, he saw people everywhere using car batteries, sometimes wrapped together in banks, to power DC devices and AC devices using adapters. One enterprising mechanic has two cars wired together with jumpers and juices up failing batteries as a service. As for water, the only option is to wait hours in line at a government water tank.

Todd walks among the booths, taking notes of merchants and what they buy and sell. Water purifiers, baby supplies, vitamins, tampons, propane, clothespins and lines, toilet paper, garden seeds, weapons and ammo. Sugar, porn mags, chocolate, duct tape, bug spray, soy sauce, bikes, scissors, coffee and tea, candles, jeans, matches, shaving kits, candy, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, manual can openers, laundry detergent. Little bits of comfort and convenience and civilization. Pieces of an America that has fallen down, most of them garbage. Products from other countries that no longer exist. Consumable relics of a past age.

Todd has a lot of DC-powered appliances from the truck stop store that could make life much easier for at least a few people here. They are heavy, though, and liable to break. He wants to dump them in exchange for a different product. The most successful merchants, he notices, specialize in a particular item that everybody needs. The item should be small and lightweight to be easily portable. Something like cigarettes would be ideal but then he would need to be constantly on guard against addicts. Sugar and coffee would be ideal but the sellers are dealing them in plastic baggies, creating a risk of spoilage due to water or infestation. Garden seeds should be a popular item right now but he does not understand gardening.