The Killing Floor

refrigerator is plastered with holiday cards and photos of smiling people he doesn’t know.

First, he needs food and water. He takes a plastic bottle from a cardboard box that had been used as a recycling bin, and puts it under the tap. The faucet spits and shoots enough water to fill most of the bottle before the pipes groan and run dry. He takes a sip and decides to down all of it.

Skipping the refrigerator, he opens one of the cupboards, hoping to find some food.

“Shit!” he screams.

A large, greasy rat tumbles from the cupboard and scurries under the sink.

“Give me a heart attack,” he says, and laughs.

The boxes of food have been torn open, their contents half eaten. The cupboard smells like rat turds. He can hear the little bastards writhing and sneaking inside the other cupboards, and decides not to open them. He’s not hungry enough yet to fight rats for cans.

“No grub for Ray,” he sighs.

He spends the next few hours wandering around the house, picking up items and then putting them back where they belong. Surprisingly little salvage turns up. The only useful item he finds is a replacement for his T-shirt in an upstairs dresser drawer, and a new backpack.

A door bangs open downstairs. He peers over the banister, listening for footsteps. Nothing. He walks down a few steps and listens again, then a few more.

At the bottom, he sees the Infected filling the living room, looking at him.

The moment he appears, they raise their hands in supplication, groaning.

Ray runs through the kitchen door, leaps down the back steps and lands hard on his feet, gasping for air. He does not remember running. He didn’t even think about it. He just moved.

The Infected are not oblivious to him. At least some are interested in him. He wants to know why. Steeling himself, he waves at the nearest Infected tottering past, stumbling over a garden hose.

“Hello?” Ray says.

Several of the Infected stop and stare at him, baring their teeth. He extends his knife with one hand while wrapping the other around his head, covering his eyes. He peers out and realizes they have gone back to ignoring him. For all he knows, snarling is how the crazies express polite interest. He wonders if he should try again.

“I’m Ray Young,” he says. He points to his chest and adds, “My name is Ray.”

Some of the Infected stop and stare at him.

“Ray,” he says. “Young. My name.”

He cringes under their gaze, feeling ridiculous. The Infected study him, their heads bobbing, as if looking for the ideal spot to sink their teeth. Just as quickly, they lose interest and resume their wandering, leaving him feeling even more puzzled. He decides to try an experiment.

He picks the scrawniest man within view and stands in front of him. The man makes a half hearted growl and licks his chops, prompting Ray to take a cautious step backward, his heart skipping a beat. Staring over Ray’s shoulder, the man tries to go around, but Ray holds him in place by his shoulders. The Infected yelps, but does nothing.

“It’s like I ain’t even here,” Ray says, feeling bolder.

The man stares over his shoulder with glazed eyes.

“You’re not so bad now, are you?” Ray says, giving the man a little shove, angry he’d been terrified for nothing. The Infected blinks, disoriented by the sudden attack. Ray laughs harshly and pushes him again. “You’re not scary at all. All bark and no bite!”

The Infected lurches backward, holding its hands up to defend its face. He’s afraid of me, Ray realizes. The thought makes him feel stronger.

“You screwed things up, you know that?” He leans in, pushing the man again. “Totally screwed it up!” Again. “Screwed it up real good, you son of a bitch!”

Why? Why did this happen? Why did you do this?

Driven by sudden rage, Ray believes this man made the world end. Every death, every lost friend, every ounce of misery and fear, was all this man’s doing. Blood pounding in his ears, he shoves the Infected to the ground, kicks him once, and spits on him.

He draws the knife from his belt, but the rage fades, leaving him feeling drained.

“I hate you,” he says, his vision blurring with tears.

All around, the Infected howl and rush at him with hands splayed into claws.

Ray is jostled roughly as the hot, sweaty bodies press in all around, eyes gleaming with hate. His arms forced against his sides, he cannot use the knife to defend himself. An elbow slams into his chest. He can hardly breathe. The Infected snarl through their noses like wild animals. Ray pushes back at them, struggling to stay on his feet.

Someone screams shrilly, ending in a choking gurgle. The man he pushed is being stomped to a pulp by a ring of snarling Infected. One of them hunches over the man’s neck, slurping at an arterial fountain of blood. The others stop kicking at his body and reach down to tear off pieces of clothing and flesh and shove them into their mouths.

Roaring a string of obscenities, Ray doubles his efforts to get away from the crowd now swarming toward the fallen body and groaning with pleasure as they tear it to shreds. They chew on pieces of muscle, cartilage, cotton, denim. A woman holds a hairy strip of scalp over her head like a trophy, screaming a long stream of gibberish before consuming it.

Ray lunges from the crowd, falls to his knees and pukes long and hard into the grass.

Oh God, it’s me, he realizes. It’s me. It’s my fault. I didn’t want that to happen, but it did.

He remembers the Infected on the bridge, reaching out to him as if pleading. The Infected at the wall, trying to tell him something, oblivious to the arc of the flamethrowers. The Infected slapping their hands against the window of the house where he fought Infection.

He did not beat the bug. The bug won, and has been using him all along.

I infected all of these people, he understands.

And now they belong to me.

Cool Rod

The Hellraisers sit on the sidewalk with their backs against the wall of a burned-out bookstore, sweating in M50 gas masks with their rifles held on their laps, taking five. Ash flutters to the ground like snow in Hell; their uniforms are grimy with the stuff. Waves of heat radiate down the street, making them feel like they are being cooked in a microwave. A battalion of heavy tanks got lost and tore through Georgetown two nights ago, shooting everything they saw with Biblical flashes of light, and set fire to the entire district. The fires fizzled out, but not before filling the air with a solid, eastward-moving wall of smoke, heat and ash to greet the Dragoons’ advance, hence the M50s. Saving this city, it seems, requires the Army to destroy it one block at a time.

An M88 Hercules recovery vehicle fills the street with its massive bulk, its thousand-horsepower engine growling as its seventy tons maneuver into position to tow a disabled Stryker. His back against a brick wall, Rod studies his squad and realizes they are spent. He can see it in their worried, bloodshot eyes, barely visible through the dirty lenses covering the top half of their black Darth Vader facemasks. They have fought hard and accomplished incredible things.

But you can win only so many times before it feels like you’re losing.

Rod closes his eyes and feels his mind drift in the dark, searching for a happy thought.

The monsters boil up from the shaft, their wings buzzing—

The surge of adrenaline jerks him from his doze. He sits panting, his body electrified, until he notices the skinny soldier standing over him.

“You all right, Sergeant?” the kid drawls.

Rod wags his head, trying to get rid of the overwhelming feeling of dread left behind by the dream. “What do you want, troop?”

“LT says he wants to see you. I’m to show you the way.”