The Killing Floor (30 page)

Ray

While Ray twitches and sweats in a deep snoring sleep with his arms wrapped around Lola, he dreams the Infected are normal again. In the dream they stand outside where he left them, but it is bright and sunny instead of dark, and all of them are well dressed and clean and looking up at the sun, tears flowing down their cheeks as they smile. The men and women look at each other with wide, sparkling eyes. There is no hate here, no rage, just the thrill of freedom.

Lola, accustomed to dreaming of billions of monsters writhing like maggots across the scoured face of a red planet, finds herself at her house in Cashtown, weeding her garden while her children shriek and run barefoot through the sprinkler spray on the lawn. Her husband winks at her as he enters the garage to take out the lawnmower. She vows to hold onto the feeling she has looking at her family—a sense of her soul being filled to the brim with contentment—knowing nothing perfect lasts forever in this world. That night, as they drink wine and barbecue steaks and eat them outside in the cool dusk, she tells herself if she had to pick a day to relive, she would pick this one, this beautiful summer day spent doing almost nothing.

Outside, the other Infected moan in the darkness, free of the dreams of the red planet and the long exodus through space. They dream of the time before, reliving the past. They are free of the bonds of slavery at last, while Infection waits patiently until morning to reclaim its hosts.

Anne

Dawn is coming fast and the bus flies down the road, chasing a paling sky. The V-shaped snowplow retrofitted onto the front, peppered top to bottom with blood, sends the occasional Infected flying into the ditch with a thud. The engine growls as Marcus changes gears with the stick, slowing down and speeding up to navigate occasional wrecks blocking the road. The Rangers peer through the metal firing ports welded over the windows, Anne looking for any sign of Ray Young, the others watching for threats that specialize in the night. The air feels humid but cool against her skin. This has always been her favorite time of the day; it’s a new day, and anything can happen. For as long as she can remember, Anne has been a morning person.

Holding the edges of the seats to stay balanced as the bus bangs over potholes, she navigates the center aisle until she finds Gary, huddled against the window with his arms crossed.

“I’m sorry about Jean,” she says.

“How did you know what we did in the art gallery?”

“I found the evidence. It wasn’t hard to piece together.”

“You shouldn’t have judged her,” Gary tells her. “Her one sin was she refused to accept that things have changed. She honestly thought the whole thing would blow over and her life would pick up again almost where she’d left it. I think she thought once we got to Nightingale, she would find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi.”

Anne frowns. “Jean had bigger sins than that.”

“What we did, we did to survive. We were trapped. It was either that or die. But it wasn’t her. It was me. I was the one who did it. I made a choice. You should judge me, not Jean. Jean just ate.”

Anne nods. Her suspicion has been confirmed. “She just ate.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s why I judge her, Gary. You, I don’t judge.”

Gary stares back at her stricken, on the verge of tears.

“I killed my friend and then we ate him,” he says. “You need to understand this.”

“You survived.”

“If you call living with that surviving.”

“Can you handle a weapon?”

“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” he says. “I killed my friend with a knife.”

“We don’t talk about the past,” she says.

“I killed my friend with a knife,” Gary repeats with a shrill laugh. “It actually feels good to say it out loud. I was selling his paintings in my gallery and then a week later I cut his throat so Jean and I could eat him and live. It was hard work. Once I had him down, I had to lean and put all my weight into it. He hardly struggled. He just looked at me in surprise while I did it. I was pretty surprised too. I mean, I was outside my body, watching myself do it. I should be in jail, but here I am, alive, and he’s dead. Do you see what kind of person I am?”

“Are you willing to kill again to survive? If you had to?”

“I want to live,” Gary says after a pause.

“All right. We’ll give you a nine millimeter. If the Infected get close, you point it, you shoot it. You watch our backs, we watch yours. Think you can do that?”

“I can do it.”

“Good,” says Anne. “If you killed a man to survive, I can’t absolve you. None of us are shining examples of virtue; we’ve all done terrible things or we wouldn’t be here. But it tells me you have what it takes. That’s the only qualification that matters these days.”

“Anne!” Marcus calls from the driver’s seat at the front.

She feels the tug of gravity test her balance. The bus is slowing.

“Thank you,” Gary says, crying.

Anne stands and hurries toward the front.

“We’ve got people waving us down, about a hundred yards up the road,” Marcus says. “Cops having some car trouble, from the looks of it.”

Anne braces her feet with a wide stance and takes a look through her rifle scope. Standing next to a state police car, two large men wearing black T-shirts and load-bearing vests and jeans wave at the bus, flagging it down. The badges on their belts glint in the morning sun.

Something is wrong with their faces.

Anne blinks, thinking:
Impossible.

The cops raise their guns, grinning at her across the remaining distance.

“Go, Marcus!” she screams, taking aim. “Keep going!”

Marcus obeys instantly, throwing the bus back into its highest gear and stepping on the gas. The machinery roars in response, lurching as it accelerates. Anne loses her footing and falls hard onto the floor, the rifle clattering away from her.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

Bullet holes pop through the windshield, spraying the interior with bits of glass. The Rangers drop to the floor, wrapping their arms around their heads. Marcus bellows with rage and pain, half out of his seat and driving blind.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

The bullets shatter the windshield and rip through the air, thudding into metal and bursting through the seats, sending bits of stuffing swirling around them. Wind rushes through the open windshield, carrying the faint tang of rotting milk.

Anne feels the hard, dusty floor under her scarred cheek and wonders how many kids stepped on this spot on their daily commute to school. She pictures their little sneakered feet. She closes her eyes and remembers visiting one of the many orphanages at Camp Defiance. She wanted to see children again. Pastor Strickland gave her a tour and showed her the rows of boys and girls drawing on construction paper with crayons—art therapy, he called it, endless scenes of fire and slaughter, Infected mommies attacking crying daddies, children running through the woods, red eyes identifying the Infected, slashes of blue representing the tears of the victims.

Strickland asked about her spiritual health and she told him she was spiritually dead. He said she should return to her faith, which could serve as a source of strength for her as it has for so many others, reminding her there are no atheists in foxholes. Anne answered there are no believers either. There is just you, dying. And that is the true sadness of life.

You’re here, and then you’re not.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

The cops step aside as the bus roars past, emptying their guns at point blank range, the bullets punching holes through the thin metal skin of the vehicle.

The firing stops. Marcus straightens in the driver’s seat, his face flushed with rage. Anne climbs to her feet and looks through the back window to see the two cops standing in the middle of the road, staring at the bus as it zooms away from them.

“Who’s hit?” Anne says. She has to shout to be heard over the rush of wind whistling across the seats.

“Just glass,” says Ramona. “Nothing major.”

“I’m all scratched up,” Marcus says. “I’m all right, but I’m bleeding.”

Evan and Gary tell her they are okay.

“Ramona, get the first aid kit,” Anne says. “Gary, take a look at Marcus and let Ramona know where he’s hurt and how bad. Ramona, patch him up first if you can.”

“Shouldn’t we stop?” Gary says.

“Not after that. Those people who were shooting at us were Infected.”

“How can that be?” Evan says.

“Ray Young,” Anne answers. “Evan, I need you to fetch the machine gun.”

Despite everything that has happened, Evan grins. The M240 is his baby. He hurries into the back, dodging Ramona, and returns with the gun.

“Where do you want it?” he says.

“We’re going to mount it right up there next to Marcus where the windshield used to be.”

“Hot dog,” Evan says. “Here, take the gun. I’ll go get the ammo.”

Their boots crunch broken glass as they lug the twenty-six-pound machine gun to the front of the bus and mount it on the hood, the barrel resting on the integrated bipod.

Marcus glances at them as they set it up for firing. Evan pulls the charging handle, locking the bolt to the rear.

“Give me the ammo,” he says.

Anne opens one of the ammunition boxes and pulls out a long belt of shiny rounds, which he connects to the machine gun, sliding the first round into the firing chamber. Locked and loaded.

“We’re in business,” he grins, the wind ripping through his hair. “It’s set for a cycle of eight hundred fifty rounds per minute. Just keep feeding me the belt.”

“Gary!” Anne calls out. “Sit right there. When I say so, get behind Evan, brace your back against the pole here, and put your hands against his back right about here. Keep him stable, okay?”

“I can do that,” Gary says.

“Good idea,” Evan says, hunched over the machine gun, one hand wrapped around the firing handle and the other hugging the gunstock.

“You’re a long way from designing electrical circuits now,” Anne tells him.

Evan laughs into the wind. “Seems like a dream.” Past or present, however, he does not elaborate.

“People in the road!” Marcus says.

Anne raises her rifle and peers through the scope. A crowd of some fifty grim-faced people, holding knives and baseball bats and hockey sticks, stands in a line across the road next to a massive billboard proclaiming, WELCOME TO SUGAR CREEK.

“Fire, Evan.”

“They don’t look Infected!”

“Fire!”

“Anne!”

“FIRE YOUR GODDAMN WEAPON.”

The machine gun fills the air with its loud chatter as fifteen rounds per second rip downrange into the crowd, every fourth a streaming tracer. Dozens of people crumple under the withering fusillade, body parts and guts torn and hurled across the asphalt, while the rest charge howling, throwing bricks and waving their weapons.

A rock sails past Anne’s ear and falls into one of the seats behind her. The town’s welcome sign collapses into pieces. The snowplow strikes a rushing knot of people with a jarring bang and sends them cartwheeling into the fields bordering the road. Next to her, Evan fires, his body shaking, Gary holding onto his back and trying to keep the man steady. Anne feeds the belt into the machine gun, which spits the rounds at a murderous rate. She catches Marcus’s profile while he drives, ramrod straight in his seat, gripping the wheel with white knuckles, bleeding from a cut in his forehead, tears flowing down his stubbled cheeks and drying in the wind. She knows how much he hates this. The endless slaughter. He hates all of it.

The bus zooms down the town’s main street, scattering garbage and scraps of paper. Hundreds of people emerge from houses and buildings, throwing rocks and waving homemade weapons. Stones and shards of brick clatter against the sides of the vehicle.

Evan continues firing, cutting them down and chewing up the fronts of houses. Anne eyes the ammo belt’s shrinking length with alarm. The sides of the bus thud and vibrate as the Infected throw themselves at it. The street behind them fills with clouds of dust. Signs flash past proclaiming zero down financing, world famous tacos, propane for sale.

“Reload!” Evan screams. “Reload me!”

Anne pulls out the second belt of ammunition as the bus approaches another mob of Infected at the other end of town, arrayed in ranks like a medieval army.

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:
At least I have her potty trained
.

“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.
Maybe a lot like my twenties
, he thinks with a snort. The whole thing seems so pointless but then he remembers the Infected are just a means to an end. The bug’s real goal is to plant new life on the planet.

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.

We like this world just the way it is, and we don’t appreciate you messing with 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.

Thank you for watching over me
, he tells the Infected.

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.

Of course it would be her.

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.

Protect
, Ray tells his cops.

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.

Lola.

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.

Lola!

“Oh, honey.”

Oddly, she seems to be smiling.

There goes your second chance, bro.

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.

KILL KILL KILL KILL

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.

Oh no, you don’t. You’re not going anywhere, Anne Leary. You’re going to stay right here and get what’s coming to you.

“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!”