Ray
Ray awakens on musty sheets with a pounding headache and a mouth that feels coated with moss. Lola smiles in her sleep, and as Ray gets out of bed, yawning and rubbing his belly, she frowns, stirs, wakes up Infected. Feeling a little nauseous, he plods into the bathroom and pisses loudly. Then Lola pulls up her dress and sits on the toilet, and he thinks:
“I had the weirdest dream. Did you sleep well, honey?”
Lola barks, making him laugh. His body is paying for last night’s bender, but it did the trick. Overall, he feels better than he can remember.
“Today, we’re going to find ourselves some Feds and make a deal.”
He gives her some fruit juice in a plastic jug, which she gulps. While he brushes his teeth, he wonders what it is like to wake up every day driven by hunger and rage.
Ray lights a Winston and pats the lump on his ribs, which vibrates like a tiny hummingbird.
“This is not going to turn out the way you wanted, Mini Me,” he tells it.
He pulls on his T-shirt and steps into his jeans.
“Let’s go, honey. We’ll get something to eat on the road. The world’s our oyster.”
She takes his hand and he leads her outside into the bright day.
His guards step aside to let him pass: French, Anderson, Cook and Salazar. Ray walks to the edge of the balcony and waves at the Infected gaping up at him with hopeful expressions. The sun is already high in the sky. He overslept, and yet he is still exhausted.
The sun’s glare makes his eyes tear up. He takes a last drag on his smoke and steps on it.
“There’s just four of us now,” he tells the survivors of Unit 12. “You’ve always been good guys, normal or Infected, don’t matter which. I’m taking you all the way with me. If they want me, they’re going to have to cure you too.”
He leads his entourage down the cement steps and into the parking lot, where he left his truck. The Infected stare at him, sweating and grunting, their skin burned red by the sun, their hair greasy and matted. They touch his shoulders lightly as he passes, growling deep in their throats. Some of them show him weapons they scavenged, baseball bats and shovels, while others try to give him gifts of food. The air is thick with their stench.
“Come on, now,” he says. “I ain’t the Second Coming.”
A massive vehicle rumbles past the motel. Ray freezes, watching it roll past. It is shaped like a school bus, painted in a camouflage pattern, with a large snowplow fitted onto its front, stained the color of rust, and metal slats welded over its windows and doors.
“Wow, what a great rig,” Ray says.
The bus stops with a squeak, idling before it reverses, stops again, and executes a slow turn into the parking lot.
Ray watches it turn with mounting terror until it faces him, giving him a clear view of the giant blond-haired driver, a skinny man with glasses hunched over a machine gun, and a woman standing next to him, pointing at Ray and shouting.
“You,” he gasps.
Even from this distance, he can see Anne Leary’s face shining with fierce excitement at catching her prey.
He flashes back to sitting on the bridge, trying to hold onto a happy thought while she stood over him with a very large gun pointed at the back of his head.
The Unit 12 officers raise their weapons and fire as the machine gun opens up, it rounds hacking through the crowd and plowing into the Infected around Ray.
The firing stops. The dying Infected thrash and howl in their own blood. Someone screams on the bus. The air smells like smoke.
Ray emerges from his daze gasping for breath. He pats his body, amazed he got through the exchange without a scratch.
She lies on the ground, her brains splashed across the pavement among old cigarette butts. Behind her, Cook crawls on his hands and knees, vomiting blood, his tattered shirt smoking.
“Oh, honey.”
Oddly, she seems to be smiling.
As his rage mounts, the Infected around him tremble, shaking their fists and weapons, jaws snapping like animals.
Ray turns to the bus, where Anne is struggling to right the machine gun.
“Kill them!” he commands.
The Infected howl as one and charge, surging toward the bus in a human flood. The driver puts the vehicle into reverse, inching away slowly, too slowly, making Ray laugh harshly.
“Kill them all!”
The air fills with the pop of weapons as the Infected clamber onto the snowplow and force their way into the bus.
“Whatever you think is best, Ray!” he screams. “Whatever you think is best!”
Anne
The bus slowly reverses while Anne tries to pull the machine gun from under Evan’s legs. The Infected shot him. The man shakes violently, bleeding out, his eyes glassy and unseeing. Behind him, Gary sits with his back against the pole, wincing and licking blood from his lips.
“I can feel it in my lung,” he says. He sounds like he is being strangled. “The bullet. It went through Evan and popped into my chest.”
“I’m sorry,” she tells him.
Thrashing in his final death throes, Evan knees Anne in the face and pain flares through the lines of her scars. Above her, Ramona screams and fires her automatic rifle on full auto at the Infected clambering onto the hood of the vehicle.
Anne frees the gun with a final jerk.
“This is your fault,” Gary says. “It’s all your fault.”
She looks up in time to see Ramona fire her last round and slam the butt of her rifle into a man’s face before the hands reach in and pull her out into the mob, which tears her apart. Blood splashes onto Marcus but he ignores it, gritting his teeth, firing a massive handgun into the snarling faces with one hand while steering with the other.
“I’m scared,” Gary says.
