The Killing Floor

“I’m leaving,” she adds. “You can do whatever you want.”

The survivors shift uncomfortably at this news.

“Anne, we need to talk about this,” Marcus growls.

“No, we don’t,” she answers. “If you’re coming with me, we’re leaving on the bus in fifteen minutes. If none of you are, I’ll leave now and track him on foot on my own.”

Marcus appears hurt, but she cannot help that. “We still need to vote on it.”

“There is no vote. You are either with me, or on your own.”

“But how would we find him?” Evan asks.

“I’m going to follow the Infected. They’re following him.”

Jean groans, burying her face into Gary’s shoulder.

Marcus stares at her, raising his eyebrows. Are you sure?

She returns his stare. This has to be done.

“All right, let’s get ready to move,” Marcus announces, standing. Anne stifles a sigh of relief. She was partly bluffing; she is not sure she could stand to part with him.

“You could at least drop us off at Nightingale,” Gary tells her.

“No,” she answers.

“It’s the moral thing to do.”

“No.” Anne barks a short laugh at this. “It isn’t.”

“You’re crazy,” Jean says.

“The sane thing to do is to save as many lives as possible. More lives than just yours and Gary’s. Wouldn’t you agree? That means killing Ray Young.”

“But we were safe in that art gallery. It was hard and we suffered but we were safe. Now you want to drag us along on some quest. We never would have left if we had known.”

Anne shrugs. Things have changed. She can do nothing about it.

“You don’t understand,” Jean says, her tone pleading. “I’ve lost everything. I can’t do this anymore. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

The Rangers bristle at this. Shaking their heads in disgust, they move away to collect their gear to load back onto the bus.

“That’s a good point,” Anne tells Jean. “I have no idea what you’ve been through. So tell me about it. What did you do to survive back there in Hopedale?”

“Wait,” Gary says, startled.

“Leave her,” Jean hisses in a sudden ugly rage, glaring at Anne with open hatred. “If she wants to die so bad, let her. Let her go to her Infected. They’ll rip her apart and stuff the pieces in her mouth to shut up her lies.”

The Rangers ignore her, focusing on their tasks. Anne pats one of her holstered pistols pointedly, and then hurries to catch up with Todd.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” she says close to his ear.

He blinks, lost in his thoughts, as if surprised to see her there.

“If I lost you and Marcus,” she adds. It is too painful to finish the thought.

“Anne, I’m not with you,” Todd tells her.

“I thought you were coming,” she says, surprised at how hurt she feels.

“I am. If what you’re saying is true and the Infected are following Ray, then going with you is my best chance of finding Erin if she was infected. But don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m with you. I won’t kill Ray Young. I won’t do it. I won’t even help you do it.”

Anne grunts in surprise. “What is he to you? He caused Erin’s death, you know. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but it’s the truth.”

“Every couple nights, I have a dream,” the boy says. “I see Paul pulled up into the mouth of one of those tall monsters—the ones that look like giant heads on skinny legs. I see Ethan pushed to the ground and infected. Sarge and Wendy drive the Bradley into the smoke to fight the Demon, and don’t come back. In the end of the dream I’m alone and the juggernaut is coming straight at me. Then all of a sudden I’m not alone. Ray is there and we’re screaming our heads off and shooting at the thing together. My last thought before the monster falls through the broken bridge is I’m happy I won’t die alone.”

She hears the unspoken accusation clearly. You abandoned me. Ray didn’t.

“Infection killed her, not him,” Todd adds. “I don’t hold him responsible.”

“Fair enough,” Anne nods, once again suppressing her feelings. “Just stay out of my way when the time comes.”

Jean

She was starving. Someone was going to have to go out for food, but they were too weak to do it. And Prendergast would not shut the hell up.

They’d been stuck in the art gallery for six days. Instead of sanctuary, it had become a tomb. They were dying by inches, surrounded by Prendergast’s massive, horrible paintings.

The artist himself lay spread eagled at the foot of one these paintings, sweating profusely, his wrinkled black shirt riding up to expose his round white belly.

“My work connects the real and the imaginary,” he said.

“Your work idealizes ideology through literary exposure, and yet real ideology is a hidden force, a political prime mover, not something you can frame and point to,” Jean whispered, laboring to speak clearly. “The paintings juxtapose the real and the imaginary in conflict, not connection.”

“The connection is within the conflict of these opposites,” Prendergast insisted. “My work is fascism expressed as a brand. You can buy it, you can use it, you can throw it away.”

Jean closed her eyes. She did not have the energy to say anything else.

At the other end of the gallery, Gary sat huddled against the wall, hugging his knees and rocking, watching them with narrowed eyes that appeared sunken into his skull.

Getting Ricky Prendergast and Jean Byrd together at the gallery had been his idea. He owned the gallery and considered Prendergast the local boy who made good. The artist’s paintings and their declaration of a stark totalitarianism repulsed and attracted at the same time. Their size enveloped the viewer, threatening his or her individuality, and yet were strangely seductive, promising an existence without thought, whispering, you kind of want this.

Jean was an East Coast art critic who wrote for several important art magazines. Her pen had made a few careers, and broken more than she could count. She and Gary had fallen into bed together after Grady Tallman’s opening (which she later skewered) in New York three years ago. Hearing she was going to be in Akron, he’d convinced her to visit his gallery in Hopedale and review Prendergast’s exhibition at Wild Arts. After the Screaming screwed everything up from air travel to basic utilities, he’d doubted she would show, but she did.

“You’ll love it,” Gary had told her when she’d appeared at his door first thing in the morning. “His paintings are like propaganda for a fantasy regime built on absolutes. They make you want to punch a Nazi in the face. Wow, Jean, I’m so happy you’re here!”

He’d kissed her, laughing, and handed her a mimosa in a champagne flute. He told her how good she looked in her black and white Chanel suit. She sipped her drink, smiling back at him. Gary was strictly small town, but he was extremely cute, and she had always had a soft spot for him.

Jean had toured the gallery, aware of Gary’s eyes on her, and concluded Prendergast’s work stank. His paintings were childish in their assumptions, their one saving grace, in her opinion, being their rich colors and sheer size made them audacious—suggested maybe they weren’t childish after all, but profound, perhaps even threatening.

Gary had sensed her vibe, mistook it for ambivalence, and told her she would really come around once she met the local genius himself.

Prendergast, a giant of a man dressed in a black suit—his height and size squandered on fat, however, making him appear as if he were made of spheres—arrived late, complaining of the ungodly hour. His big, bright grin, framed by dimples and surrounded by a beard, forced you to like him, if only for a moment. He extended his