The Killing Floor (15 page)

“Never mind that right now, Tyler.” He reaches for the coffee and sips it, humming with pleasure. “How long was I gone? I kind of lost track of time out there.”

“You left two weeks and three days ago, champ.”

Ray shakes his head. He was asleep for roughly two weeks.
I’m a regular Rip Van Winkle.
“What’s been going on around here?”

“Progress, Ray,” the old man tells him, puffing on his cigar. “The government is digging wells and building windmills. We even got a radio station now, telling happy stories about loved ones reunited and teaching everyone how to make a vegetable garden. People here started getting a little more hopeful when the Army invaded Washington, DC. They’ve got a big piece of it cleared out already. A whole company of them showed up here, too.”

Ray thinks of Sergeant Riley, how he was regular Army. “The Army’s here? When did that happen?”

“As a matter of fact, they showed up the day you left.”

Just a couple of hours, and Ray would not have had to go to the bridge. The Army would have taken care of it. The Reverend Paul Melvin would still be alive, and so would Ethan Bell, the teacher, and thirty-three National Guardsmen. And Ray would not have been stung and infected.

He sobs, unable to tough it out. He sniffs and wipes tears from his eyes.

Tyler shakes his head. “Jesus, Ray, look at you. Your nerves are shot. Let me get something stronger.” He holds up a small key and uses it to access a file drawer in his desk, from which he produces a bottle of Wild Turkey and two glasses. “I know it’s a little early, but let’s have a snort.”

“Why not?” Ray forces a smile. “I just can’t believe I’m actually here.”

“Shit, boy, I can’t believe you’re here either!” Tyler laughs. “We had a funeral for you and everything. We even said nice things about you. Anyway, drink up while you still can. The good stuff won’t last forever. We’ll all be swilling dandelion wine and mead pretty soon.”

Ray grins at Tyler and remembers his dream. His friend holding two green monstrosities that strained against their leashes, trying to get near him.
Whoa, we got a live one here.

He feels a sudden hot flash followed by the urge to vomit.

The thing shivers, releasing a cloud of musk. This is how it eats.

Tyler is staring at him with obvious concern. Ray reaches for his glass and slams his drink back, gasping with pleasure.

“So how’s your dumb kid?” he says.

Just before he left for the bridge, Jonesy and Wendy had been attacked by camp riffraff while on patrol.

“Jonesy is great, thanks for asking. He got over that knock on his head in about two days. All the guys should be done with their shift in about a half hour. You can say hello. They’re going to shit themselves when they see you.” Tyler taps the end of his cigar against the edge of the ashtray. “Listen, Ray, they made me sergeant. But you’re still in charge here as far as I’m concerned. I’m happier doing dispatch. You rest up and take command whenever you’re ready.”

Ray frowns. He had not thought about it, but right now does not welcome the idea of being a cop again. Does he have any responsibility to other people anymore? He remembers standing next to Todd Paulsen on the bridge, emptying his pistols into the greasy pale hide of the tentacled giant, screaming his head off as it bore down on them. Last time he stuck his neck out to save the world, he got infected. He beat the bug, but far from feeling invincible, he dreads everything now.
Let the Sergeant Rileys fix this mess and leave me out of it
, he decides.
I deserve a break. I’ve got a second chance, and I have to figure out what to do with it so I don’t waste it. And for that, I need a little time. No worries except breathing in, breathing out.

“Any word from Saslove?” he asks.

Tyler nods. “I heard our dear Wendy’s shacked up with that big Black fella, Toby Wilson, and they’re traveling around with an outfit called the New Liberty Army.”

“Good. Sarge will take good care of that girl.”

“She was the real thing.” Tyler snaps his fingers. “Hey, I almost forgot. Get a load of this.” He goes into one of the holding cells, rummages around in a box, and returns with a mint-condition black STEELERS cap. “Try this on for size.”

“I can’t believe it,” Ray says, blinking another round of tears.

Tyler laughs. “Boy, that old hat of yours has seen better days.”

Ray takes off his old STEELERS cap and puts on the new one.

“How does it look on me?”

“Like lipstick on a pig.” Tyler laughs so hard he starts coughing. “Lipstick,” he repeats, his face turning red. “On a pig.”

Ray watches with mounting alarm as the veins in Tyler’s throat stand out hard and dark like wires. The man is choking. He grimaces and wheezes: “
Pig
.”

Then he slams both hands on the desktop, stands and sprays a geyser of vomit from his open mouth. Ray lurches back in his chair as the old man’s breakfast splashes across the desk and onto the floor.

“Tyler!” he roars, standing.

The man collapses to the floor, convulsing.

Ray kneels next to him, pressing down on his shoulders, trying to hold him still. “Aw, shit,” he says. He has no idea what to do. “Help! Help me!”

Run
, Tyler hisses just before his eyes roll back into his head.

Ray jumps to his feet and races down the hallway to find most of the cops on the floor. The men still on their feet stare at them helplessly, their eyes wild, shouting at each other to do something.

Outside the building, he stops in awe. Everywhere, bodies are flopping in the mud like fish while the survivors stand over them, crying for help. A man hobbles away on crutches, raising the alarm.

“
Infection! Infection!”

A cop wrenches a pistol from his shoulder harness and fires into the face of a woman lying on the ground. People shrink away in revulsion from the roar of the gun. Even from two feet away, he misses two shots before the woman’s head explodes across the sidewalk.

“They’ve got the bug!” a woman says, drawing her own gun and emptying half a magazine into another convulsing victim.

Another woman screams at her: “We don’t know they’ve got it!”

“Are you blind?”

A man roars: “That’s my mother! Put that gun down!”

The shooters raise their guns. Ray flinches at another round of gunshots. The cop and a bystander collapse to the ground. People are running, trying to get away.

“Stop it!” a woman shrieks, hugging a wailing toddler against her chest. “Stop it!”

The people on the ground stop twitching. They sit up, looking around in a daze. Slowly, they get back onto their feet.

Ray’s vision shrinks to the size of a small circle.

“Aw, shit,” he says.

Screams rise up from all over the east side of the camp, an exciting wall of sound, like being in a football stadium during a dramatic play. The dogs go berserk, yelping and howling. The first gunshots follow within seconds, a random pattern that rolls into an avalanche.

This is everywhere.

The Infected stand with their arms at their sides, hands clenching and unclenching rhythmically, heads darting to follow the progress of the fleeing survivors. The voice droning over the speaker on the telephone pole stops and a deafening air raid siren begins to wail.

The Infected are running.

Two women drag a man down, one pulling his hair out in fistfuls while the other scrabbles at his clothes with her nails, looking for a place to bite. A fleeing woman runs into a plate glass window and bounces off it, stunned; a teenager in a hoodie lands on her back, gnawing at her scalp. A man’s pistol clicks empty just before a pack surges over him. A tow truck roars down the street, Infected swarming over it, running down anything in its path. A dozen people wrestle in a pile at the curb. A dog with bloody jaws hovers at the edge of the melee, snarling and barking, lunging in to bite and tear the flesh of the Infected.

Ray pulls out his carving knife and turns in place, waving it vaguely at these threats.

A man staggers past, blood trickling down his forehead, wearing the dazed, panicked expression of someone who has just been bitten. The man stops, turns and frowns at Ray, his face twitching. He begins to chew his lips.

Move, bro,
a voice screams in Ray’s head.

He runs back to the police station but pauses at the steps leading up to the main doors. Dark shapes struggle inside. A shotgun blasts twice, and then goes silent. The shape of a man fills the doorway, hunched and snarling, blood splashed down the front of his shirt.

“No,” Ray says, horrified. “God damn it, no!”

Tyler Jones jogs down the steps and stops in front of Ray, his face bright with fever. Ray glances at the knife in his hand, but cannot make himself cut the old man.

“Look at me,” he pleads. “I’m Ray Young. I’m your friend.”

Something like recognition flashes in Tyler’s eyes.

“That’s right,” he goes on. “It’s me.”

Tyler’s head jerks as if trying to see something more interesting behind Ray, and lunges snarling after a screaming woman. Ray watches him go in amazement and realizes the street is filling with Infected.

A military helicopter hovers low over the rooftops, its thundering rotors sending bits of garbage swirling through the air. Ray holds up his hand to shield his face against the wash, watching the Blackhawk turn in place until the machine gunner, crouched behind his M60, comes into view. Another soldier, crouched next to him, makes a chopping motion with his hand.

A burst of smoke appears in front of the roaring gun. The air buzzes with flying metal. People collapse where they stand, large parts of them missing.

A storefront explodes with a burst of light, raining the street with glass, as Ray throws himself onto the ground and covers his head with his hands.

The Blackhawk stops firing and moves on, searching for fresh targets.

Ray refuses to move. Lying on the road with his face pressed against the warm asphalt, he is going to stay right there and hide in plain sight for as long as it takes.

Feet stomp the ground as people run past him with howls of rage.

This is the last moment of your life
, he keeps repeating in his mind, while praying it isn’t.

Anne

From a nearby hilltop, Anne studies the death throes of Camp Defiance through binoculars. A drifting pall of smoke hangs over it. Helicopters circle low, pulling the smoke into fantastic swirls, dropping missiles that burst on the ground in sudden flashes. Gunfire crackles along its length. Two Chinook transports rise above the airfield in a hard ascent, one of them wobbling unsteadily in the air, people cartwheeling out of the back in a swift return to the earth. The muffled screams never stop, rubbing her nerves so raw she has to fight the urge to join in.

This has been going on for hours. FEMA 41, Camp Defiance, is devouring itself.

Her Rangers stand in a line behind her, hands over their mouths, gasping as an explosion rips apart a patch of ground on the north side, hurling bodies and debris into the air. Jean, whom they picked up in Hopedale two days ago, cries hysterically in Gary’s arms, dressed in her wrinkled Chanel suit. Ramona and Evan lean against each other until standing cheek to cheek, watching. Marcus, the toughest of them all, wipes tears from his eyes. Anne spares a glance at Todd, standing ramrod straight and pale with his hands over his ears, watching the open gates with rigid hope as vehicles emerge singly and in groups, going south. One of the vehicles veers off the road, crawling over the muddy field, tiny figures struggling in the cab.

The Chinooks pound overhead, heading east. The hum of their powerful rotors drowns out the screaming for a few minutes. Anne gasps with relief.

Hundreds of camps have been set up across the country, she knows, possibly thousands. She tries to tell herself the human race can survive the loss of even this massive battle. That they can still win the war. But this corner of southeastern Ohio has just gone dark. It belongs to Infection now. And Anne and her team are in no man’s land, at ground zero. She knows they should already be back in their bus and moving. She returns the binoculars to her eyes and stays.

“What are we going to do?” Marcus says.

“It isn’t over,” she says.

“Can’t we do anything to help them?” Todd asks her.

Anne shakes her head, watching a squad of soldiers emerge at the top of the wall and begin climbing down the other side to safety.
Even the Army is bugging out.

“Erin,” he says, and sobs, covering his face, giving in to the feelings he has been holding at bay all day. “What’s happening to her?”

“It isn’t over,” she repeats, but it is.

She tries not to think of the children. Everyone knows the Infected do not convert them. They eat them. Thousands of children are in the camp. Her hand flickers to her scars, where she scratched her face in grief when she discovered the dead bodies of her own children six weeks ago.

As the endless day grinds on, the others drift away to process what has happened and mourn lost friends. When the sky dims toward twilight, only Todd remains with Anne, watching, hoping for his miracle.

Camp Defiance is dead. A convoy of military vehicles shot their way out an hour ago, and then the entire camp fell silent.

Anne rubs her stiff and tired arms. A lone figure emerges from the camp gates and moves south. She raises the binoculars to her eyes and swears under her breath.

In her magnified view, the man runs splashing through the mud, looking over his shoulder with blank terror. She would recognize that mean face anywhere, even without the ballcap.

“Do you know him?” Todd says. “Who is it?”

“It’s Ray Young.”

“But you said he got stung. The hoppers got him. Nobody can survive that.”

“It’s flat out impossible, Todd, but there he goes.”

She chews her bottom lip, wondering how he survived both the hopper sting and the sudden fall of the camp.

“Look,” Todd says. “More people are coming out.”

She turns slightly, giving her a view of what he is pointing at. Infected are pouring from the mouth of the camp. Scores of them, walking hesitantly, hands pressed against their chests, heads cocked to study Ray’s retreat.

One by one, they trickle after him.

“Are they survivors, Anne?”

She understands. It is a miracle, true, but not all miracles are good. Some miracles are evil. Some miracles, like Infection itself, can end the world.

“Do you see Erin?”

She lowers the binoculars and spits.

“Anne?”

“I should have killed that motherfucker when I had the chance.”