The gunner shakes his head. “He barely has enough energy to breathe right now,” he says.
Sarge looks at Ethan pointedly. “So. You’re the smart one. What do you think?”
Ethan examines the thing growing out of Ducky’s hip, careful not to touch it. It is like cancer, but more than that: a parasite. He cannot believe his eyes; it appears that the man’s entire body has been completely rewired to give everything it has to the growing creature. The thing has apparently reorganized Ducky’s organs and is pressing on his bladder, making him piss himself nearly continuously, a sickly, foul-smelling pink fluid.
Fascinating, almost miraculous, from a purely scientific standpoint. Horrific, and utterly revolting, from a human standpoint.
“We don’t have much time,” the gunner says.
“Time’s up, doc,” Sarge says. “Can you fix him?”
“I don’t understand what it is exactly you expect me to do here.”
Sarge extends his service knife to Ethan.
“Can you fix him?”
Ethan almost laughs, but stops himself. Sarge is not the kind of guy you laugh in front of when one of his people is dying.
Sarge adds, “I sterilized it. It’s clean. And we got plenty of alcohol and gauze.”
“He can’t survive an amputation.”
“Ducky’s a tough sumbitch.” He smiles weakly at the driver. “We’ll booze you up good, Ducky. You won’t feel a thing.”
“Sarge, I’m sorry about your man,” Ethan says carefully. “But there’s nothing anybody can do.”
“Did I make a mistake hauling your ass out of that hospital?”
“Sarge, you’re not really thinking straight. A procedure like this would take a team of real doctors something like half a day in a real hospital. I’m a high school math teacher. I am just smart enough to know that anything I do will kill this man. Look at this small wound here that’s still weeping; he must have tried to cut it off himself in the Bradley, and the pain stopped him. At some point, I assume the parasite will detach, as you can see legs forming here, but right now there is an entire system of veins supplying blood to it. I cut into this mass and even if Ducky’s heart didn’t fail from the shock, the loss of blood would surely—”
“Holy shit,” Steve hisses, pushing himself away from the driver, falling sprawling on his ass.
The parasite’s eye is open, studying them each in turn. The head, fused to the rest of the body-shaped mass of tissue by a thin film of clear mucus, begins to stir. The men gasp with revulsion. Ducky looks down at it, his eyes wide with helpless terror.
The creature is becoming aware. It is literally being born right in front of their eyes.
“It ain’t nothing, Ducky,” Sarge says, his voice fragile. “Don’t even look at it.”
Ethan points to the thing’s face and says, “See how it’s able to move, but Ducky isn’t. The parasite is now stronger than its host, and is—”
He leaps to his feet and bolts across the asphalt screaming.
Sarge chases Ethan under a darkening sky, calling his name, coughing on the smoke and ash that is now falling in a blizzard and almost blinding him. The tiny green figure flickers like a candle fifty yards ahead. The screams ring out across the blank, empty spaces.
Suddenly, Ethan collapses to his knees, gasping. The soldier catches up and drops heavily to one knee next to him, still coughing.
“Let me see it,” he says.
Ethan moans, shaking, cradling his bloody hand.
Paul and Todd come running, looking down at him in surprise.
“Is he in shock?” Paul says.
“No,” Sarge says. “Not physical shock, anyhow.”
“You need help?”
“What the heck happened to him?” Todd asks him, his eyes gaping.
Sarge leans close to Ethan’s ear.
“You’re okay now,” he says calmly and quietly. “Now let me see it.”
He is still doubting what he saw until Ethan slowly unravels his trembling hand and shows the bloody stump where the tip of his index finger used to be. The fucker bit it off. Ate it with a crunch. Its little black eye gleaming with hate.
Ethan is looking at his hand, his face pale and surprised.
“Somebody, get me the med kit,” Sarge says.
“I’ll go,” Paul says, and starts running for the Bradley.
“And plenty of water, Reverend,” Sarge calls after him. He tears a strip from the teacher’s shirt and winds it tightly around the wound. “We’re going to take care of this,” he tells Ethan. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll put some pressure on it for now, all right? Then we’ll clean it real good and I’ll sew it up.”
Todd drops to one knee next to Ethan and says, “You’re alive, man. You’re alive.”
“You’re fine,” says Sarge. “It ain’t nothing.”
Ethan whispers something. Sarge bends closer to hear.
“Kill. Him.”
“The hell you say!”
Ethan winces, his eyes clenching shut against the pain.
“Not murder. Mercy. Quickly, before—”
Back at the fuel island, Steve’s rifle pops once, twice.
“Take care of this man,” Sarge barks.
“Sarge?” Todd says.
Sarge jumps to his feet and runs back across the lot. “No, goddammit, no!”
He finds Steve standing over Ducky’s corpse, his rifle smoking and his eyes wild.
“What happened?” Sarge demands.
“That thing,” Steve says, shaking with disgust and rage. “That fucking thing.”
Sarge closes his eyes but he can still see Ducky’s body lying on the ground, a drained, sightless, empty husk, and the creature splattered across the asphalt.
He can still see where the parasite had begun eating Ducky’s leg.
Wendy returns in time to see Sarge carrying Ducky, a limp bundle wrapped in a blanket and light as a child, into a nearby gently sloping field crowned by a stand of oak trees. Paul and Todd and the gunner have gathered at the top, covered in soot, next to a hole they dug. They ask her where Anne is; Wendy shakes her head, staring in horror at the empty hole, feeling death’s chill. She tells them the Infected are not far behind. A heavy silence falls on them as they fear the worst has happened to Anne, and turn inward to look at these fears.
Sarge and Steve gently lower the body into the pit.
“He knew he was going to die and yet he kept doing his job to the very end, saving our lives,” Sarge says. “That thing was pounding us and Ducky kept on going. He was in an amazing amount of pain, alone and without hope, and yet he kept on going. For us. And for that, Ducky, you have our thanks. Because of you, we’re still here, and we will remember you.”
He nods to Paul, who intones: “‘Our days on Earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone—as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him.’ Amen.”
“Amen,” the survivors murmur.
Paul lowers his respirator mask to cover his face while the others lift wet bandanas over their mouths. Steve pours gasoline into the hole with the body and Sarge lights it. They step back from the sudden fury of heat and light. Sarge insisted on burning him. That way, he said, nothing will be able to dig him up and eat him.
There is no time for mourning. Sarge knows that grief is a luxury at a time like this. They will just have to try to find Anne on the road, if they can. After several minutes, the survivors plod back down the slope toward the Bradley, now completely inventoried and repacked, everything in its place. On any other day, they might admire the view from this hill, but not today. Not this wasteland across which distant tiny figures toil. Sarge notices a group of refugees breaking into the truck stop, searching for food, water, weapons, shelter. The Bradley is concealed but they should get back on the road now. The day will only bring more refugees, each more desperate than the last, and behind them, a flood of Infection.