The Killing Floor (27 page)

“I wouldn’t bank on it.”

“Great,” he says dryly. “What do we know for sure about how he controls the Infected?”

“Again, very little,” Price tells him. “All we know is the human Infected are drawn to him. Thousands are following him. But we don’t know otherwise what level of control he has. With hope, he won’t have any Infected with him.”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Rod agrees, and then adds, “Do you really think he could end the war?”

“I definitely think it’s very possible.”

Another ironclad, definite, absolute, solid maybe
, Rod thinks, and sighs.

And yet the world has gotten so bad even
maybe
sounds like something worth fighting for. He thinks about Gabriela, and his kids, and wants to believe.

It’s a slippery slope for sure, but Rod cannot help but begin to feel hope.

Anne

Anne whistles, letting Marcus know she is approaching and to stand to arms. The large man stiffens and snatches up his rifle.

She emerges from the woods, sniper rifle slung across her back, the brim of her cap pulled down low, casting her face in shadow.

She is finding it difficult to process what she has just seen; she wonders how she is going to communicate it to the others. Visions of the Infected swarming over each other like termites to build human pyramids continue to haunt her, making her feel nauseous and frazzled.

Evan and Ramona sit cross-legged on the ground, eating cold ravioli from cans with chopsticks. Evan nods to her, stands and throws his can into the woods.

“Thank God,” Jean says, her Chanel suit now wrinkled to the point of looking like a wrung out washcloth. She and Gary sit huddled on the ground, their backs against the side of the bus. She looks furious. “Now we can go to Camp Nightingale, right?”

Anne ignores her, scowling.

“Was he there?” Marcus asks her.

“He was there.”

The Rangers gather around, waiting for her to explain.

“What’s with her now?” Anne says, tilting her heard toward Jean.

“She said you were dead and we should leave,” Ramona tells her with a sigh. “The minute you left, she started in on us.”

“Sorry to disappoint her,” Anne says. “Where’s Todd?”

The others glance at each other.

“He split,” Marcus tells her. “Headed the same way as you, in fact.”

“And you didn’t think to stop him?”

His face reddens. “I’m not the boss of him.”

Anne cannot argue. It is her own logic come back to haunt her.
We are here by consent
, she always told them.
When we are fighting, you will do your job or face judgment from the rest of us. But when the fighting stops, nobody owns you. If you want to leave, then leave.

She herself was willing to abandon them all to pursue Ray Young out of a sense of a higher purpose that trumped her loyalty to the team she created. Todd must feel he has a greater loyalty to obey, and Anne can guess what it is.

The dumb kid is going to get himself killed over an infected girl.

“He said to tell you he’ll catch up with us east,” Ramona says. “And that he’s sorry. He said he had to go see for himself.”

Anne points toward the trees and says, “On the other side of that hill, there are tens of thousands of the Infected. That’s where Todd is going.”

“All right,” Marcus said. “You want us to track him?”

“When are we leaving?” Jean says. “That was the deal, right? We help you kill this guy, and then you’ll take us to Nightingale.”

“I didn’t get him,” Anne says.

“We came all the way out here for
nothing?
”

Gary shushes Jean, starting them hissing and spitting at each other like cats.

Marcus frowns in puzzlement. “What happened? Didn’t have a clear shot?”

“The Infected were protecting him,” Anne tells him, again struggling to find the words. In her mind, she fires at the human pyramid, which collapses into a massive pile of squirming arms and legs. “He can control them. Once I started shooting, they blocked my shot.”

“
Control” hardly covers it.
Ray has his own personal army.

His relationship with the Infected appears to be symbiotic, but what are the Infected getting out of it? Maybe nothing. Maybe only Infection itself is. If that’s true, who is controlling whom?

The answer does not matter to her. Either way, Ray must pay for what he did to more than a hundred thousand people at Camp Defiance. Either way, he must be stopped before he reaches Washington.

“I’ll need your help next time,” Anne tells her team.

“Come on,” says Jean. “You need to stop rolling the dice with our lives.”

“What about the risk of exposure?” Evan wonders. “I thought the idea was we would provide security for you, and you would kill him with the sniper rifle.”

“I need you to shoot at any Infected between me and him. Just get close enough for suppressing fire. Then throw everything you’ve got. Think you can do that?”

The others nod. Of course they can. And if that does not work, they can always wear the gas masks they keep stowed in their kit, and pray it is enough to keep from becoming infected.

“Come on,” Anne tells them. “We’ve got to get back on the road.”

“Do you know where he’s going?”

“East,” Anne says. “He took off in a white truck. We’re on the only road through this part of the valley. If he hasn’t passed by here, then he’s still going east.”

“What about Todd?” Ramona says. “You said he was in danger.”

Anne groans. Her shooting stirred up the hornet’s nest, and Todd is walking right into it. The whole thing infuriates her.
What does he think he is going to accomplish?

She feels a wave of grief wash over her mind, leaving behind despair so deep it sucks the air from her lungs. She worked hard to master her emotions, rejecting love and attachment and embracing the strength of perpetual hatred.

The truth, however, is she loves Todd as if he were her own son.

“Are you all right?” Ramona asks her.

“I don’t know yet,” she says in a small voice.

“God, she’s falling apart now,” Jean says. She stands near them now, shrugging out of Gary’s grip. “Look at her. This is who you’re taking orders from.”

Marcus turns and glares at her. “Shut the hell up, lady.”

“Or what?” Jean laughs. “What else can you do to me? I’m practically a hostage.”

“Nobody’s holding you here,” he tells her. “You can go anytime you want.”

“I’d be happy to, Marcus, if I had food, weapons, a car and some directions, but I don’t. Anything I had, I left behind in Hopedale. So I guess that makes me your hostage.”

Marcus grunts. He doesn’t care; he’s not listening to her.

“Todd,” Anne whispers.

She has a vision of cracks appearing in a dam.

Beyond, infinite darkness, seeping in.

“Jean, come back to the bus with me,” Gary says.

“You should be supporting me,” Jean hisses at him. “We need to go to Camp Nightingale now. We’re out in the open. We’re all going to die out here if we don’t get somewhere safe.”

“Anne knows what she’s doing,” Evan says. “We’ve survived out here for weeks together.”

“Look at her,” Jean shrieks. “Can’t you see? She’s lost it!”

“Anne?” Marcus says, looking at her worriedly.

Evan shrugs. “Hey, I have no problem going to Nightingale.”

“Maybe she just needs a rest,” Ramona suggests.

“Someone else needs to take charge and make a plan,” Jean says. “I nominate Evan.”

Anne blinks and the vision of the dam fades. “We need to get back on the road.”

“I don’t know, Anne,” Evan says. “Maybe we should talk about it.”

“Just drop us off at the other camp,” Jean pleads. “Then you can go do whatever you want.”

“Anne, do you have a plan?” Marcus says, frowning.

“There is no plan, you fucking moron,” Jean screams, pointing at Anne. “This woman is crazy and she’s going to get all of us killed if you don’t listen to me!”

“That’s enough,” Anne says quietly, her eyes narrowing.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jean tells her. “You don’t get to look down on me like I haven’t suffered as much as you. I’m sick of your act. You’re not half as badass as you think you are with your guns and scars. You have no idea what we went through in that art gallery. What we had to do to survive. But even then we were better off than we are here. We had everything we needed, and we could make our own decisions without someone telling us what to do.”

“Jean, please,” Gary pleads.

“I’m not
finished
. We had everything we needed. Then you found us. You told us we would be safe at Defiance. You made a promise to us, and we believed you. Now you’re off chasing some guy on a bizarre hunch and we have to get dragged along, regardless of the fact that every hour we spend out in the open we are in incredible danger. And you refuse to take us to the one place within fifty miles that’s safe. You lied to us! You don’t get to make decisions for us anymore!”

Anne unholsters one of her guns and taps it against her thigh.

It’s time for you to shut up.

“And you don’t fucking scare me either,” Jean tells her. “What are you going to do now? Kill me in front of all these witnesses?”

Anne raises her pistol and fires, the gun discharging with a deafening report, the recoil vibrating down her arm.

The empty shell casing flickers in her peripheral vision. The slug punched a hole through Jean’s throat. The woman stumbles away as if seeking a private place to bleed.

The others watch in horror as she bends over, hands on her knees, struggling to breathe as blood pours from the smoking wound onto the road.

She looks at Anne with wide, disbelieving eyes before falling first to her knees, then onto her side, where she curls into a ball, air bubbles gurgling from her torn throat, her face turning blue. Her body shivers briefly before stiffening.

“Jesus, Anne,” Evan says, backing away.

She shifts her aim to Gary. “This is the new reality,” she tells him. “Do you understand what the new reality is?”

Gary stares at Jean’s body, wearing a pained expression. “Better than anyone,” he says quietly.

“Are you on the bus, or off the bus?”

He takes his time answering. The rest of the team stares at the body in shock.

“I’d like to come with you,” he whispers.

“Let’s go,” Anne tells her team, holstering the gun. “Todd will have to take care of himself, like a man. As for us, we’re leaving right now.”

Todd

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.

I don’t care what he is. I forgive him for what he’s done. I’m not going to help Anne kill him. I have to get away from her. If I don’t I’ll end up just like her, filled with hate.

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.

We only realize what we have after it’s gone
, he understands now. It is a grownup thought, something Paul might have said.

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.

That is what Paul’s smile was trying to teach me
, he realizes.
That home, as they say, is where the heart is
. He can picture the Reverend saying,
I used up all my chances, boy. You got your whole life ahead of you. This, too, is a gift.

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.

You guys lost or something?

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.

Holy shit—

The ground sparkles.

Cluster bomb
, he realizes as the air pressure around him changes.

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.

Holy shit.
He dives under the nearest tree for cover.

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.

All I wanted to do was say goodbye to her.

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.

I need a little time with this, okay?

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.

IT’S NOT FAIR.

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.

The air fills with a rhythmic shrieking sound, growing louder. Snapping out of his reverie, Todd jumps to his feet and runs to the tree where he left his rucksack and carbine. Shouldering the weapon, he flicks the selector lever from SAFE to BURST, and waits.

The high-pitched rhythm is too regular to be a monster. It’s a machine, close enough for him to hear the roar of the engine. The shriek sounds like tank treads.

The beat-up armored vehicle crashes through the foliage fifty yards away on the hill, chugging puffs of exhaust, and grinds to a halt at the top of the slope, where it stands idling. Whoever is inside it is apparently stunned by the scenes of devastation in the valley below.

The sun is bleeding into the horizon. Todd could get away from these people easily if he wanted. He doubts they have spotted him. All he has to do is back into the trees.

He needs people, however. Shouldering his rifle, he steps away from the tree, hands raised in the air, and approaches the vehicle.

I hope these guys are friendly
.

As he closes the distance, he spies the legend on the turret through the humid, smoky air: BOOM STICK.

Despite the horrors he has seen, Todd laughs. It is the laugh of the Infected, a sound one cannot easily distinguish from crying.

A dismembered leg falls from the sky and thuds onto the turret with a final arterial spray of blood, bouncing into the grass. Two bearded men and two women, dressed in motley uniforms, scurry from the back of the tank, glaring at him over the barrels of their rifles.

Todd keeps his hands in the air, his heart racing.

“I don’t know you,” he says, starting to worry.

The Bradley’s hatches open and Sarge and Steve emerge.

“Oh my God,” Todd says, swallowing hard.

“Hey Kid,” Sarge says, using his old nickname. “Where you been?”

Todd barely notices them, his attention focused on the beautiful woman striding toward him in a black T-shirt and baggy camo pants, a police-issue pistol slung low on her hip.

“Wendy,” Todd says, bursting into tears.

She breaks into a run and launches herself into his embrace.

“Hi, Todd,” she says, grinning.