Todd kneels in the tall grass on a hill overlooking the farmhouse and the thousands of Infected swarming the fields surrounding it. Hundreds trickle east but most mill around aimlessly, their heads bobbing in search of prey. The humid air fills with their neverending chorus of barks and moans, competing with the loud buzzing of insects and the laughter of birds in the trees.
Todd scans the Infected with the binoculars, feeling queasy. He has never seen so many of them before in one place. Rage and despair is written on their faces. The magnification makes them feel too close for comfort, and he wonders how Anne does it every day, looking at them through her rifle’s telescopic sight. He glances over his shoulder as warning shivers slither down his spine, and it is just as unsettling to see nothing there than something. For months, he has survived because good people watched his back. Only the best can travel alone out here among the Infected. Only the best and the lucky. And sooner or later, everyone’s luck runs out.
The sun beats mercilessly against his head; his old SWAT hat is soaked through with sweat. He can feel the back of his neck slowly frying in the light. Lowering the binoculars, he plunges his arm into his rucksack until his hand grips the familiar shape of his bottle of suntan lotion. He slathers it onto his neck and arms, then takes a sip from his water bottle.
Hours have passed, and still he has not found her. He will search for as long as it takes, one gray snarling face at a time. It does not matter to him that he has no idea what he will do if he does find her. For now, only the search itself matters.
He takes a break to stretch and rub his tired arms, and then returns to his task. Several Infected have broken into the chicken coop and are chasing the chickens, which flee into the swarm to be torn apart and eaten raw.
For the next hour, that is about as exciting as it gets.
His mind wanders while he works. He remembers the fight on the bridge, him and Ray running to one of the buses parked across the road to form barricades, the men inside screaming and shooting and dying, the hordes of Pittsburgh rushing at them in a massive, snarling flood. The bridge exploded in a blinding flash of light, flinging Todd through the air like a doll to land tumbling across the cratered asphalt. The juggernaut galloped straight at him, its rigid tentacles trumpeting its war song. Ray tried to pull him away and, seeing Todd refuse, stood with him, emptying his pistols into the thing before it crashed through the bridge and fell roaring into the torrents below.
Todd gazes at the pathetic horde in the valley below and realizes he does not even hate them anymore either. When Anne sees the Infected, she sees only the monster controlling them like meat puppets. When Todd sees them, he sees people enslaved to a monster. It’s hard to hate slaves.
He remembers coming home from the bridge in the dark, his face nuzzled in Anne’s lap. How safe that felt even as the hoofed thing rammed the vehicle. They stepped off the bus, ringed by leering faces and clapping hands. Erin came and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. She called him an amazing boy. She stuck with him even though he always returned to the road, maybe never to return. She said she loved him.
Remembering these things, Todd’s heart feels like it is sinking. He was stupid to run away and live on the road with the Rangers. Erin offered him everything he wanted. She did love him; now that she is gone, he believes that.
He should have stayed with Erin and built a life together with her, no matter how brief it might have lasted. Happiness is a rare thing these days, and he’d squandered it.
Todd lowers the binoculars, aware of a vaguely ominous sound. It is the crisp, aerosol roar of a distant jet, growing in volume until it becomes thunder. When he cannot hear anything else, putting him at risk from Infected coming up behind him, he snatches his rifle and glares at the woods, the blank blue sky. The sound crawls along his nerves until he starts to panic.
A formation of four planes appears, roaring high overhead.
The noise fades as the planes stream into the distance. Todd watches them go with pride—after all that’s happened, the Air Force is still holding it together—then resumes his search.
Minutes later, the roar builds again, cascading over the hills.
The planes scream into the valley, flying low like gray birds of prey. Todd flinches with alarm as their searing roar crescendos.
One by one, the planes release bombs that plummet toward the ground, whistling as they fall.
WOOOOOOOOO
Just above the ground, the payloads burst in flashes of light, replaced by clouds of black objects hurtling toward the earth.
The ground sparkles.
Thousands of explosions ripple across the valley floor with an ear-splitting crackling, devouring it in seconds. The bodies of the Infected fly apart, trees explode into splinters, the farmhouse and outlying buildings dissolve in bursts of flaming matchsticks. The puffs of smoke congeal, roiling into seething waves of smoke and dust.
The planes split up, veering left and right, and circle the valley.
Todd looks down at the scene of devastation in disbelief. The ground is still trembling. Body parts begin to rain around him.
The ground stops shaking but arms and legs, hands and feet, grinning faces and bits of bone continue to plummet onto the hill, shredded and smoking, along with flaming bits of wood and chunks of hot chewed metal.
“Cut it out!” Todd screams, unable to control his fear and revulsion. “Stop!”
The roar fills the world.
The planes return, flying low to the ground, and strafe the valley floor with Gatling cannons spraying dozens of rounds per second. Todd can feel the electric buzz of the cannons in his forehead, deep in his chest, in his teeth.
Something crashes into the branches over his head. A human head, shattered to a pulp, flops smoking at his feet followed by a rain of leaves.
“Sons of bitches,” Todd says, feeling rage unlike anything he has ever felt, so strong he wonders if he is infected. His cannot hear himself scream. “Motherfuckers!”
The boy runs into the grisly downpour, howling at the sky, and stumbles over a naked, mangled torso. Falling to his knees, he grips a handful of earth and flings it at the departing planes, already just dwindling dots in the sky.
“You didn’t have to do this!”
His rage spent, he looks at the smoke and dust drifting across the wasteland of the valley floor, his ears ringing. He presses his forehead into the grass and moans.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he whispers into the dirt.
Alarm bells ring in his brain, warning him to get out of here. The noise will attract every monster within miles. The sun is falling, and he will be caught out in the open in the dark. But he does not move.
He raises his head and gazes down at the scene of Biblical devastation. A massive wall of smoke rises above the valley, reminding him of Pittsburgh. Piles of the dead lay half buried in dirt. Nothing moves. The land has been scrubbed of life.
He stares at it for over an hour, watching the shadows claim the land.
