The Killing Floor

monsters, and it makes them laugh, but at night they’re terrified. Sometimes, late at night, you can hear the real monsters howling outside the wall.

Victor was starting to make such a racket at night that he now sleeps with me and Lilia, and then Kristina didn’t like that so now we all sleep on the floor on an old mattress. Okay, I admit, a part of me likes it. I make them feel safe, and they make me feel needed. The more they need me, the more it takes my mind off other things, like the end of the world.

I’m sorry I sound so down in the dumps in this letter, Rod. Most times I write, I put a big smile on my face because I want you to not worry about us. Things aren’t great, but we’re doing okay. We’re alive and we have enough to eat, and that’s plenty to be thankful for these days. You have enough going on in the war without wondering if your family is all right, because we really are.

It’s just that every day things get a little harder. The other night one of those things got inside the camp and the MPs were chasing it around with flamethrowers. They had it surrounded—this horrible, hoofed, screaming thing—and they were shooting it with jets of fire. We were hustled into the rec center, where we stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark until the coast was clear, and came out to find our dorm tent had burned clean to the ground and all our possessions were floating away in the dark as ash and sparks on the wind. Our photo albums are gone, Rod. All those years of memories. Our entire past. I now have only one photo of you to keep me company at night and remind our kids that they have a daddy, and it’s falling apart from all of us holding it so tight.

Today, a salvage crew brought in a truckload of clothes to replace what we lost in the fire. I try not to think that the clothes our kids are wearing once belonged to other kids who are now probably dead. Dead and eaten, from what I hear the crazies do to children.

If the Marines have taken the White House, I hope that means you’ll win this important victory, and get to rotate out for a few weeks of rest. You could come home and live with us for a while. I really need you, Rod. There was a fire and the photo album is gone and now I can’t stop crying. I feel like it wasn’t just pictures but our past that got burned up and forever lost. Right now, our past is all I have of you.

As time goes on, I feel your absence ever so much. You should be with your family right now. Your place is here. I freely give up this demand, my right as your wife, in the hopes that you will win and be able to save not just us, but the entire country. Do your duty, Rod. The wolves are at the door and your family is counting on you to put this to an end. Fight hard, without mercy. Kill them all. Do whatever it takes to win, no matter how hard, no matter how horrible. Put this to an end. And then come home to us so that we can build new memories.

I love you more than myself. Your children miss their father. We are all praying for you.

Your loving wife,

Gabriela

Anne

Sitting cross-legged on the road, Anne cleans and oils her weapons by starlight while her team sleeps fitfully on the bus, dreaming their bad dreams. With swift, deft movements, working by feel, she reassembles her rifle and dry fires it. The forest crowding the road is alive with the song of insects and nocturnal critters scampering through the undergrowth. The air feels warm and wet against her skin. Most people are terrified of the night these days, but not Anne. She welcomes it. The Infected can hide in it, but so can she. In the dark, Anne becomes a hunter.

The asphalt feels warm against her ass and legs. She finishes her granola bar and washes it down with a few chugs of Red Bull. This is what passes for breakfast, but Anne does not mind. Food is for fuel, not pleasure, these days. And speed is paramount; it is time to get back on the road and narrow Ray’s head start. She reloads the rifle and stands, dusting her pants and stretching like a cat. In the dark, she feels calm, thoughtful and safe, as long as she does not think too much about the past.

About two months ago, she started her day serving breakfast to her husband and three small children in their kitchen. After dumping the dishes into the sink to soak in steaming water, she started rolling out pie dough. Her friend called to tell her there was trouble downtown—mobs of people running amok, doing horrible things to each other. By the end of the day, her husband disappeared and her children lay slaughtered in a neighbor’s living room. Three days later, she surfaced from a state of shock in a deteriorating government shelter. By the end of the week, Sarge taught her the basics of sniper craft, and she began the killing. She learned from the pros who worked the camp watchtowers. She often volunteered for a shift in the towers herself, practicing range finding, estimating elevation and wind. With endless practice, she turned murder into an art. Mostly, she has a knack for it. Some people have a natural talent for certain things. It is a strange thought, considering how she came to be a killer, but sometimes she feels she was born to do this.

Which is good in one way, because it is all Anne has left. Hurting Infection, in fact, is one of the few things that make her feel something besides guilt and loss.

The guilt of allowing her children to be slaughtered, the loss of everything she loved. The guilt of letting Ray Young live, only to see him return and slaughter tens of thousands.

Ray Young has become Infection. All that matters now is catching and killing him before he does even worse because Anne, in a moment of weakness, showed mercy.

Stepping onto the bus, she slaps Marcus’s boot and steps back as the man lunges awake, growling in the dark with a knife in his hand.

“Time to go,” Anne tells him.

“Anne? Christ, it’s still pitch black out there.”

“It’ll be light in less than an hour. We already spent too much time here.”

“Wait a minute.” Marcus sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes. “Listen, Anne. I need to know you’re okay.”

“Since when I have ever been truly okay since you’ve known me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m upset, Marcus. There’s a guy who can control the Infected, and spreads Infection, as far as I know, just by looking at you, and he’s on his way to Washington, DC, where our military is in a fight to the death to take the city back.”

“Look, you think we don’t get it about what kind of threat Young poses to all of us, but we do. We get it. It’s just hard to put your life on the line for something, you know? And that’s what you’re asking us all to do here. You’re asking us to die for this. Most of us would rather go somewhere safe and let someone else figure it out.”

Anne blinks at him. She forgot most people still place a high value on their lives.

“The stakes,” she says finally, unsure how to finish the statement.

“We’ll get him,” Marcus assures her. “We will, or the Army will.”

They remember the planes roaring overhead, the distant thunder, the rising wall of smoke on the western horizon, veiling the setting sun.

“We both know he got away before they dropped those bombs.”

“Anne, let me get to the point. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about Todd.” For Anne, even this is a big admission.

“He can take care of himself.”

“He ran off to snoop around a horde of a hundred thousand Infected, and then was close to ground zero when the bombs fell. Marcus, I’m worried.”

“Let’s talk about you. Anne, you shot and killed a woman today.”

“So what? I’ve shot lots of people.”

“Jean was a crazy, but she wasn’t Infected. You shot her in cold blood and didn’t even blink. As far as I know, that’s a first even for you.”

“You know what she did in the art gallery.”

“Jean and Gary did what they had to do to survive. You’ve never judged anyone before for what they’ve done