The Killing Floor

him. Not even Steve, who used to report to him. This outfit is not military, LT. It’s a gang. I’m amazed it’s lasted as long as it has. One little thing could tear it apart.”

“And you think I’m that one little thing?”

“Yup,” Wendy says, scooping noodles and corn into her mouth.

Chase stares at the fire. “About two hundred miles from here, the Army is fighting for its life. Everything is riding on this one big battle. Higher Command wants me to get this militia into it as fast as possible. If I don’t make progress, they won’t deliver the supplies I promised.”

Wendy nods. “You’re in a bad spot. If you don’t deliver any supplies soon, you’re going to lose these people. It’s on you, LT. Not Toby. You’re going to have to find a way.”

“Shit,” he says, and then blushes. “Excuse my language.”

“No, you’re right,” she says. “It’s shit.”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

As if on cue, she watches Moses Ackley stand, dust off his pants and approach Toby, no doubt to make his case to strike west instead of east, and screw the Feds. His Biblical beard spills down his chest, giving him a stern, fearsome appearance. Behind him, some of the boys finish a shopping cart race that ends with a metallic crash and laughter.

Wendy remembers driving to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg. It’s the biggest camp in Pennsylvania, even bigger than Defiance, and better organized. They hid the Bradley outside, walked in and found Ethan’s family. Wendy recognized them from the photo Ethan carried around; she felt like she already knew them after living with Ethan for weeks. Carol Bell sat in terrified silence, hugging her little Mary tightly on her lap, while they told her everything. The weeks scavenging in Pittsburgh. Following a theory into one of the hospitals. The flight from the fire that consumed the city. The refugee camp, the bridge. Ethan’s infection and death.

Ethan was brave, they told her. At the end, he died fighting. He saved our lives time after time with his intelligence and intuition. He never stopped searching for you. You were his sole purpose for going on. He never gave up hope. At the end, he believed he had found you. He died knowing you are alive. His last thought was of you.

Carol could not stop crying. She wanted them to tell Ethan she was sorry she left the city during the evacuation. Surely, he would understand she was only looking out for Mary. She refused to acknowledge he was dead. When hope is all you have, it’s hard to give it up.

Hours later, they left her and had a look around the camp. This is a good place, Wendy said. They have their shit together.

We can’t stay, Toby told her. You know we can’t stay. None of these places are good for us.

Toby had barely been able to stand Camp Defiance. None of his group of survivors had been able to really stomach it. They fought so hard to survive long enough to reach sanctuary, just to find out they would rather live on the road.

Now she thinks about that camp and wants to disappear into the crowd. Forget the NLA and the epidemic and the neverending slaughter. Just her and Toby. They could build something like a home there. Wendy is tired of the war. She could handle the fighting if she could believe there might one day be an end to it. She would even lay down her life if it meant victory. But the slaughter never ends. It just goes on and on.

She remembers asking Toby if they have any responsibility to other people. She’s a cop in a lawless land. He’s a soldier without an army. Do they owe people anything? Even if she does, she signed up to be police and help people, not butcher them. Steve sometimes calls the Infected “crunchies,” after the sound they make when the Bradley runs over them. Wendy doesn’t like it; the Infected never quite feel like the enemy to her.

She longs for home.

We’ve done our part. God knows we have. It’s someone else’s turn to fight the war. It’s our turn to live in peace.

But she knows it could never be. The refugee camps are noisy and crowded, filled with people who cannot be trusted, and neither she nor Toby believe they could truly live in one of them again. She just wishes there was a way.

Lieutenant Chase nudges her. “I think something’s happening.”

Tom Ackley has stopped playing. Toby and Moses jog toward a group of fighters gathering around the radio. People are shouting, their voices edged with panic.

“Oh God,” Chase groans.

“What is it?” Wendy asks him, fighting the urge to run to the Bradley.

Instead of answering, he throws his plate into the fire, swears loudly, and buries his face in his hands.

Wendy stands, her hand on the grip of her police baton, and approaches the huddle. “What’s going on?” She shoves one of the men. “Hey! What’s happening?”

The man turns, his eyes wet and feverish. It’s Rick Combs, one of Russell’s guys.

“We just heard it on the radio,” he tells her.

“Heard what?” she grates, her patience exhausted.

“Camp Defiance has fallen. It was overrun. It’s fucking gone.”

¦

Many of the fighters had friends and family living in Camp Defiance. They sit alone or in huddles around the dying fires, wailing into their hands. Aside from the crying, everyone talks and moves as quietly as possible in the funereal atmosphere. Wendy’s brain tingles with shock. She thinks about Todd, Anne and Unit 12, the police unit at the camp where she served with Ray Young, and wonders if any of them made it out. So many people died in Steubenville to save that place: Paul Melvin, Ethan Bell, Ray Young and the rest. All for nothing. To hear the entire camp has collapsed is too much to take in at once, forcing her into a state of denial. An entire camp. More than a hundred thousand people. Wiped out. Just like that. All of them infected or dead.

The commanders of the Technicals crowd around Toby, arguing in hushed whispers, the hissing turning into shouting that startles even those doing it. Chase stands next to Toby, visibly wilting. Some of the commanders blame him for distracting the New Liberty Army. Their shame fuels their fury. If they blame the Army, they don’t have to blame themselves. Wendy pushes through the mob until she reaches Toby and Steve and the Lieutenant, her hand on her baton. She stares back at the angry and terrified faces, angling her body into a fighting stance and planning where she is going to hit them. Her despair craves its own outlet. A part of her is hoping they will give her an excuse to stomp some ass.

“This is why we need to stay in our territory,” Moses says in his deep baritone. “Washington is an empty gesture. The fight is here. If we leave, there will be nothing to stop the bug.”

“We are in our territory,” Russell tells him, scratching at his beard. “And we didn’t do nothing to stop shit. The camp was wiped out on our watch.”

“There’s still the smaller camp at Mason,” Joe Hanley chimes in. “Camp Nightingale. They need protection, too.”

“Cashtown couldn’t hold out,” Martha Grimes says in her raspy voice. “How can Mason hold out, shit for brains?”

“They’re next,” Russell mutters. “You can bet your ass they’re next.”

“We don’t know that. There are forty thousand there. They need us.”

“Your country needs you,” Chase says, but it falls flat. Some of the men openly laugh at him.

“My country is Ohio, boy,” Moses growls. “And we need to take it back before it’s too late. As for America, it can take care of itself. I don’t see it looking out for me and mine.”

“America expects each man to do his duty,” the young officer grates. “I would expect all of you, being military men, to understand that.”

“Dumb shit thinks this is the real Army,” someone snickers.

“Who said that?” Toby roars, shutting them up. “We are, in fact, nominally an Army operation, which means we will give the LT real respect as an Army officer. Whoever disrespects him again will get my boot so far up his ass, he’ll be flossing with my shoelaces.”

The men grumble, sizing him up. Wendy tenses, putting on her game face. There are dozens of commanders here, and just four soldiers. But nobody challenges them.

“So what do you think, Sarge?” someone calls from the back.