The Killing Floor

your lungs through your ribs.

“Shut the fuck up,” he tells it.

Ray returns to the garage and drags out a short ladder, which he props against the window. Even with its aid, his progress is slow and agonizing. By the time he steps gingerly onto the floor of the house’s kitchen, he is drenched in sweat and has given the growth in his side a full-fledged malevolent personality, something other than God to bargain with.

He needs water. The tap in the sink produces nothing but a single constipated groan. He eyes the refrigerator warily and decides not to open it. Its door is plastered with kids’ drawings, a shopping list and a calendar filled with scribbled appointments and X’s leading up to the day of the epidemic. The day all calendars stopped.

“Damn it,” he says, rubbing his eyes. He left his rifle outside, propped against the wall, like the idiot in a horror movie that everyone yells at. There goes his suicide option. His face feels hot against his hand. Fever. His body trembles as his energy drains out of him and the simple act of standing becomes tiring.

“Ray?” a voice calls from behind the wall. “Is that you home?”

“Who’s there?” he whispers.

“Ray?”

“Whoever you are, please don’t mess with me.”

The ghostly shape floats out of the gloom of the dining room, a giant woman in a white nightgown, her short hair mussed from sleep.

Ray blinks. “Mom? What are you doing here?”

“I’m so glad you’re home, sweetie.”

“Are you a ghost?”

His mother laughs. “Of course I ain’t a ghost.”

“Mom, you’ll never guess what I did.”

His mother checks out the kitchen, wearing a sad frown. “Does it smell musty in here? This place needs a good cleaning. So much dust.”

“I’m a cop now. A real cop.”

“So much work to do—did you say you’re a police officer now?”

“That’s right, Mom. At the refugee camp.”

“Oh,” she says with a worried expression. “Well, you do what you think is best.”

His smile falters. “No, Ma, listen. We just blew up the Veterans Bridge. The Infected were coming out of Pittsburgh because of the fire, and we had to blow the bridge to stop them from crossing over and coming after the camp. I volunteered. I was one of the few who survived.”

“Oh,” his mother says again, touching her face. “Whatever you think is best, Ray.”

“Stop saying that!” he roars. The creature inside him awakens and turns over, pulling at his internal organs. The shock strikes his body like lightning. He wakes up on the floor curled into a ball, still screaming. “Don’t say that to me anymore!”

Several monstrous foghorns blast in unison outside, one of them close. The house trembles from the vibrations. The windows shiver in their frames. Glasses and plates rattle in the cupboards. A distant car alarm honks.

His shouting expended the last of his energy, but broke the sudden delirium. Mom’s not here. They put her in one of those mass graves outside of town. Mrs. Leona Young died during the Screaming, drowning in the bathtub as Ray slept one off downstairs in his basement apartment. So many people died during the Screaming that nobody could give his mother a proper burial. The public health department came to pick up her body for disposal in one of the mass graves the county dug outside of town. The health workers were unable to lift her three hundred pounds, and settled on dragging her from the house on a mattress. We’re going to need a bigger hole for this one, ha ha. Even in death, Leona could not find dignity.

“Don’t give up on me, Momma,” he says, crawling out of the kitchen.

Whatever he thought was best was never any good, but she loved him anyway. All that mother’s love, unconditional, abundant, wasted.

The couch in the living room looks deep and inviting. Gritting his teeth, Ray starts his journey across the dusty-smelling carpet, pausing often to rest. He tries to spit, but his mouth is dry. Maybe I should just give it up. What does it matter where I die? But he makes it. He may have lived like a dog, but he does not intend to die like one. He pulls his body up onto the couch and sits gasping, his face burning with fever as his immune system wars against the invader in his blood. Outside, the light is failing fast. Night is falling for the last time on Ray’s world. Time enough for one last smoke, and then good night and good luck. He puts a wilted cigarette between his lips and lights it, staring out the big picture windows at the empty street outside.

Ray looks around, surprised to see no TV. He notices an unopened can of beer on the end table, hiding in plain sight, and blinks away a tear.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” he says.

He opens the beer and smells it. Sips it. Pours some on the bulge in his shirt.

“You like that, you little bastard?”

The growth throbs in response.

The brew is warm and a little flat and not his brand but it is the best beer he ever drank in his life. Finding an unopened beer is almost enough to make him believe in a kind and merciful God. After savoring a few sips, he chugs half of it and belches.

The can falls from his hand to spill foaming onto the carpet.

“Get out of here,” he whimpers, waving his good arm. “Go. Git.”

The picture windows are filled with Infected. They stand motionless, peering in with dark eyes, their breath steaming the glass.

Why don’t they attack?

“Leave me alone,” he cries. “Just let me die in peace.”

Are they real, or am I seeing things again?

Ray curls into a ball on the couch and closes his eyes, pressing a pillow against his face.

Lord, have mercy, he prays. Don’t let them eat me.

As he loses consciousness, he begins to change.

Outside, the Infected scream in the dark, slapping their hands against the glass.

Todd

The convoy grinds west along U.S. Route 22 with the headlights off, navigating by moonlight. Near the front of the battered yellow school bus leading the convoy, the boy huddles against Anne’s shoulder, her leather jacket draped over his body, lulled into a gentle doze by the droning engine. Three weeks ago, he was acing tests and dodging bullies in high school; now he is a veteran fighter in a war that is just getting started but has already changed him. Some of the other survivors weep in the dark. Outside, the Infected suffer their own pain. He can hear them wailing in the trees, mourning the lost world, until falling silent one by one as sleep overtakes them.

Pressed against the warmth of Anne’s body, Todd feels safe.

“Where have you been?” he whispers.

She does not answer; he wonders if he spoke the words or only thought them.

“Going back and forth on the earth, and walking up and down it,” Anne finally says.

“That sounds like a quote. Who said that?”

“Satan,” Anne tells him. The angel of light who was cast out of heaven for hubris.

Todd used to coolly remark the apocalypse beat high school, but now realizes how stupid it was to say such a thing to people who lost everything. For most of his life, he had intelligence but little experience; he envied the natural gravitas of adults, whose sense of themselves ran deep with time. Now he understands. He senses the pain behind Anne’s answer. She is no longer just a mother figure for him. She is a woman battling her own demons.