The Killing Floor

“I want you to look at it,” she says. “Really look.”

“Wendy, please.”

“Look.”

“I don’t want to!” he snaps, then sighs. “Come on, Wendy, what’s the point? Do you want me to say the world is shit? Yes, it’s shit. I used to see things like this in Afghanistan even before Infection. It doesn’t matter. This is the world now. It’s filled with fucking dead kids.”

Wendy shakes her head. “I don’t want to live in it anymore.”

His eyes widen. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t you ever talk like that.”

“You’re worried about me killing myself? If we stay in this world, we’ll die soon anyway. It’ll catch up to us. Look at what happened to Camp Defiance. Staying here is suicide.”

“It’s the only world we’ve got.” His tone is pleading now. “I don’t understand. What else is there? We’re alive today. What else could we hope for?”

“If we stay in the NLA, one day the Bradley will break down or we won’t be able to find gas, and we’ll end up in one of those Technicals. Those guys die like flies. Who knows how long we’d last?”

“They aren’t as good as us. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”

“Training and skill don’t mean anything on a long enough timeline. Eventually we would get unlucky, and then we would die or become infected. It’s not a forgiving game.”

“All right,” he agrees. “You want to leave the NLA. And go where?”

“The fall of Camp Defiance tells us the refugee camps aren’t safe anymore.”

“Been there, done that in any case,” Toby snorts. “Both of us have. No, thank you.”

“Well, if that’s the world, then we make a new world,” Wendy tells him. “I’ve been thinking about it. We could round up some survivors with skills we need, drive down south where it’s warm all year around, and find a nice island for ourselves.”

Toby sighs as he finally understands what she wants. “You know I’d like nothing more than to do just that, babe,” he says. They are whispering now, as if afraid to wake the sleeping dead. “But the fight is here. We’re taking it back. We’re winning, making real progress. Don’t you feel it? So many towns have been cleared.”

“Come on, Toby. We’re barely scratching the surface. The fight never ends. It will never be over. Look what happened to Paul and Ethan. They died on that bridge to save the camp, and the whole camp fell a few weeks later. None of it means anything. Eventually, the bug is going to win.”

“You’re asking me to abandon my duty to my country. To the children who are still alive.”

“Just as I abandoned my oath to the public,” she tells him. “To protect and to serve. I’m not police anymore. The last real police died in this room. And you’re not in the Army.”

“But I thought we had a responsibility to other people. I thought we believed that together.”

Wendy no longer cares about the survival of the species. How can I explain this to him? It is a hard thing to think, much less say to another human being. All she cares about is seeing Toby and the others in her group survive. That’s all the responsibility she can handle anymore.

“If there was something decisive we could do, I would say let’s do it,” she says. “I would give up my life. But there is nothing like that. There is only death, and more death, until the end. Just like Paul and Ethan. What is the point? The one responsibility we have is to each other and the rest of our group. We have to find happiness while we can. I don’t believe we are dead already, Toby. I am alive and I want to stay alive. And I want to be happy while I can. It’s why I chose you.”

Toby stands in the dark, saying nothing for a while. Finally, he takes a deep breath. “Is your mind made up about this?”

“It is, Toby. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t want it to sound like an ultimatum, but that’s what it is. She hopes he does not call her bluff, because she knows she could never leave him.

But it must happen. We have to go. We’ve gotten away from the NLA, with supplies and a full tank of gas. It’s meant to be.

“As long as we stay together,” he says. “That’s all I want.”

She smiles, her eyes stinging with tears. “Hell, Toby, we’re practically married at this point.”

“All right then,” he says, letting out another long sigh. Wendy can sense something breaking in him, releasing, letting go. “So, have you picked out an island yet?”

“Thank God for you, Toby Wilson.”

“I love you, Wendy.”

She grins, plants her hands on his chest, and kisses him on the mouth.

Ray

Ray creeps out of the farmhouse breathing hard and feeling his heart pound in his chest. Hundreds of Infected mill aimlessly in the morning light, filling the air with their random, anguished cries. They stagger along without purpose, bumping into each other and growling. Some trample the garden while others lie in the tall grass. A few hold their heads with both hands and scream as if suddenly remembering who they are and what happened to them. Each moment brings more tramping out of the cornfield, grunting and wailing.

Last night, they reached out to Ray as if pleading. Their eyes followed him as he retreated into the house, shaking with the disbelieving laughter of a maniac. They moaned softly, a sound like humming, as he entered a coat closet and curled into a fetal ball in the dark and the dust.

The tiny space was hot but at least it was quiet. He started awake repeatedly until exhaustion overcame him. He dreamed of standing with Todd on the bridge, screaming his head off; he woke with a sore jaw from hours of grinding his teeth, and the hopper sting in his side, shrunk to the size of an egg, throbbing gently as if keeping time with a favorite song.

Now Ray inches away from the farmhouse, at the mercy of thousands of Infected. He glances over his shoulder to confirm the open back door is directly behind him, in easy reach, in case he needs to make a run for it. Last night, a miracle: The Infected did not take him. Today, they appear to be ignoring him. But this does not make them predictable. At any moment, they might turn on him, snarling, and decide to have Ray on a stick for breakfast.

He gags, slammed by a solid wall of stink. Oblivious to discomfort, the Infected eliminate their waste in the clothes they were wearing the day they were converted. Their bodies emit a sour stench that makes him think of rotting food and warm, old milk turned into thick cottage cheese chunks by runaway bacteria. One of the Infected passes close by, studying him vaguely before continuing on her way, taking little excited bites at the air.

He can hear them breathe. The wheeze of air entering thousands of lungs. Some of them cry out with the sadness of slaves. Others shriek before lapsing into silence. The spaces in between are eerily quiet. Just the insects and the birds.

Feeling bolder, he walks along the edge of the crowd for over an hour, studying their faces one at a time. The Infected continue to ignore him. Some stare at their feet; others blink at the sun. They don’t look very scary. They look like sick people. Like very sad, very sick people. Like him, they came from Camp Defiance; he recognizes a man who sold mead in one of the trading booths. He wonders how they ended up here.

What is so special about this house? And what is so special about me that the Infected don’t want me for one of their own?

¦

Survival trumps any interest Ray has in solving the mystery. He made it this far, and he’s not about to quit as long as his luck is holding up. He retreats back into the house to do some exploring. As soon as it gets dark, he hopes to sneak through the crowd and strike a path toward Mason, where he knows Camp Nightingale was established. He feels an overwhelming urge to be around normal people who will protect him. Before he goes, he needs to gather up supplies.

The house smells dusty and Ray experiences a vague sense of alarm entering the kitchen. It is abandoned, but it is still not his house. He feels like an invader here. A clock ticks on the wall. Through the sheer white curtain covering the kitchen window, he can see the tightly packed Infected roaming about on their mindless errands. The