The Killing Floor

“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.”

Part II. Endgame

Ray

They are gaining on him.

Ray stumbles through the cornfield crying and laughing and screaming. He flails blindly against the cornstalks with sticky, stinging hands, driven by memories: The Infected raced into gunfire time and time again, some of them taking a dozen bullets to put down, overrunning scores of last stands. Military helicopters screamed low to the ground in high-speed strafing runs, heavy fire striking down both the normal and the diseased. People clawed screaming at the base of walls that once protected them. Officials evacuated the burning school that housed the government, trying to push their way out as the Infected forced their way in, the air filled with burning posters reading, ASK ME ABOUT RESETTLEMENT.

Choking on smoke, Ray fled across the camp, searching for sanctuary until the last strongpoint fell. Realizing the camp was finished, he ran headlong through the slaughter, ignoring screams for help and mercy alike, until he reached the eastern wall. Hours after he entered the camp, he ran back through the gates and disappeared into the woods from which he came.

A massive human pile writhed like worms in the bloody mud. A woman engulfed in flames walked past without a sound until collapsing in a burning heap.

Now he runs through this endless cornfield, his exhausted body driven solely by blind terror, as insects shriek in his ears and the thrash of pursuit grows steadily closer. The sun dips toward evening, bathing the corn the color of blood as the dark closes in.

A running mother, bleeding from multiple bite wounds, suddenly turned against her child, eating him while he cried and struggled in her arms.

Ray bursts gasping from the field and staggers into a large yard. He pauses to catch his breath, his heart thumping at an alarming speed against his ribs, and scans the area for weapons, a place to hide, anything that can help him. They are close behind.

A farmhouse stands with its back door open and inviting. An aboveground pool stinks like rotting plants near a clothesline. An old swing set rusts among the dandelions between a vegetable garden and a barn. A solitary wooden baseball bat leans against an apple tree. Ray lopes to the tree, scoops up the bat and turns to face his pursuers.

The backyard is empty. Insects rip the air like distant chainsaws.

Still gasping, he slaps corn dust and tiny bugs from his T-shirt, wondering what happened.

People were chasing me. Where did they go?

A flock of birds flutters into the air, swirling around the sky before falling into formation and heading east. In the twilight, the wall of corn is dark and impenetrable. As his eyes adjust to the light, he realizes the stalks are trembling.

People are moving across the cornfield.

Ray stands his ground, sure he is being watched. Slowly, his muscles uncoil. He lowers the bat. If they were Infected, they would have attacked by now.

“Hey,” he says. “Who’s there? Come on out of there. It’s all right.”

The movement stops. The ring of cicadas crescendos and ebbs. Please, he thinks, pleading. Don’t go. He needs people right now. He doesn’t want to be alone again.

“I ain’t dangerous or anything. It’ll be safer if we stick together.”

A man appears, bugs and bits of cornstalk clinging to his hair and clothes, followed by two women.

“It’s all right,” Ray tells them. “My name’s Ray. I was at the camp too.”

The people pant, watching him. Dozens more appear. Then a hundred. Behind them, hundreds more stream into the yard. The cornfield ripples with the movement of a horde.

Ray laughs with relief. He can’t believe how many. He takes several steps forward and then stops, his lungs constricting.

Can’t be.

He turns toward the house. The open door now seems impossibly far away.

Can’t be.

The people continue to gather, staring at Ray. Some of them reach out to him, moaning.

Can’t be, can’t be, can’t be.

They’re Infected. All of them.

Todd

The bus rumbles along the road toward Trimble Airport, a tiny commuter airfield outside of what used to be a small town called Appleton. Anne’s Rangers converted one of the hangars there into a safe house. Harsh red light flickers through the metal-slatted firing ports, fitted where the windows used to be, as the sun bleeds into the horizon. Todd is too preoccupied to worry about being caught in the open at night. They’ll reach the safe house soon enough. He does not care what happens in the meantime.

The Rangers sit scattered around the bus, each taking a seat as far as they can from everyone else to be alone with their thoughts. Hugging his assault rifle, Todd tries to process the horror of what he saw today. Jean cries in the back while Gary tries to console her. The Rangers rescued the pair from an art gallery in Hopedale two days ago. She is taking it the worst. Her wailing scatters Todd’s thoughts until he begins to hate her.

We have all suffered, lady. We’ve all lost people.

Todd knows he will never see Erin again. The best he can hope for is somehow she survived and is on her way to a safe place. He shuts his eyes and pleads with God to let her live.

Spare her and I’ll do anything. Just name the price.

He wonders if this is how the Reverend felt when he prayed. Bargaining with a God who does not answer. Who may not even be listening. And yet it feels good to bargain.

I should have tried to save her. I did nothing. I just watched.

If you tried to save her, you’d be dead by now. Dead or infected.

I could have tried.

Around and around his mind goes.

The Rangers lived on the road, searching for survivors and bringing them to the camp. Defiance was their port—a place to rest, retool and resupply. Without it, they are adrift, anchorless, in a sea filled with monsters.