The roar of the gunshot penetrated the walls and rang in her ears.
Later that day, about half of the refugees packed their meager belongings and left the shelter after a long, bloody fistfight between some of the men who were leaving and those who were staying over whether the remaining supplies should be divided up. The Wal-Mart woman ended the dispute by announcing that there were no more supplies. Nothing. Not a crumb. Those who remained were broken people, lying on the cots staring at the ceiling, including Joshua, holding a dirty wet rag against his bleeding nose, one of his eyes almost swollen shut.
The following night was long and uneventful except for people sobbing quietly in the dark. The room stank with the ammonia smell of piss. They were doomed and they knew it.
The next morning, the doors burst open again and a group of men and women entered the garage carrying rifles and pistols and wearing a motley collection of military uniforms. The refugees shrank from them, screaming shrilly.
“Anybody here need a ride?” one of newcomers called out, grinning.
“Sam!” a woman cried, flinging herself into the man’s arms.
“I told you I’d find you,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “I told you.”
“We’ve got buses outside, enough for everybody,” announced another member of the gang, a woman with a bandaged head. “There’s a FEMA camp on the way to Harrisburg and we’re starting a convoy. If you want in, pack up your things now. We’re out of here in ten.”
The refugees crowded around asking questions. They must have been satisfied by the answers, because all of them grabbed whatever possessions they had and hurried out the door to the line of commuter buses idling outside.
As the last of the refugees headed towards the door, one of the them called out to Anne, “Last chance, lady!”
She shook her head.
The man waved and shut the door. Anne sighed with something like relief. The atmosphere, previously tense and stifling, became peaceful. The room suddenly seemed so much larger without the others filling it.
“Why didn’t you go?”
Anne noticed the clergyman had also stayed behind.
“It shouldn’t be that easy,” she said.
“You might be right. I’m not sure if I trusted them either.”
“No,” Anne said. “The others had no choice but to trust them. I have a choice. It should not be that easy.”
The clergyman nodded. He approached and sat on a nearby cot with a heavy sigh, touching the bruise on his face gingerly. Anne got a good look at him. He was a big man, with short, white, frizzy hair and a weathered, stubbled face. She guessed him to be in his late fifties.
“What about you?” she asked. “Why didn’t you go?”
He shrugged and said, “‘Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.’ That’s a fancy way of saying I agree with you.”
“I liked that. Was that the Bible?”
“No. Paradise Lost. John Milton.”
They introduced themselves. His name was Paul.
The Bradley commander approached.
“I think we’ve just about got the rig fixed,” he told them. “If you don’t mind, later on today we’d like to start her up and drive her around a bit. We’ll open the service door a little to ventilate, but it’s going to be loud and smell bad anyway.”
“It’s all right,” Paul said, wandering off to contemplate the rows of corpses, still in their body bags, which lay waiting for transport that would never come.
Anne said, “Sergeant, how could you be so callous when they were dragging that man outside to be murdered in cold blood? You knew he wasn’t Infected.”
The soldier shrugged. “I could give you a dozen reasons, Ma’am. Let me ask you a question. Why were you willing to risk your life to save him?”
She thought of several reasons—the man was innocent, his murder was immoral, a society is judged by how well it defends its weakest members—but all of them rang false and hollow in her mind. She snorted. “What was I really risking?”
Sarge smiled grimly and nodded. “That’s what I thought. In Afghanistan, when things got really bad, the only way we could get through was to accept the idea we were already dead.”
“Jesus,” she said, recoiling.
“Those people out there,” Sarge said, pointing. “The Infected. They’re pretty much the living dead. But us? We’re the dead living.”
“How can you say we’re already dead?” Anne said, panicking at the thought. She thought about it for a moment. “How could you do it? Doesn’t it change you?”
“Yes,” Sarge said. “It changes you. But.” He shrugged again. “You survive.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why survive if it’s not really you anymore?”
“Why me? Why you? Somebody’s got to live, Ma’am. Somebody’s got to carry on. That’s all we need to know. That’s all we’re ever going to know. Somebody’s got to live or the whole thing is pointless.”
“What is?” Anne wondered.
He blinked in surprise. “The human race, of course.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“If we don’t accept it, we might as well let them win now and get it over with.”
He cleared his throat and told Anne how he had taken his unit into the field to test a non-lethal weapon, and how radio dispatches suggested some type of disaster. He and his crew subsequently lost contact with the Army. They were on their own. They had a new mission in mind for themselves. They wanted to return to the mission site and try to locate their lost boys.
“We won’t survive out there long on our own,” he explained. “We need infantry to protect us. In return, we offer protection. The Bradley’s mobility, its armor and cannon.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, I guess I’m saying I want you to join up with us.”
“I want to help you, I really do, but I’m not a soldier,” she said. “Never been one either.”
“I want you to pull together some civilians and run them as a squad. We have weapons. I will teach you how to use them. If we find our guys, then two days, max. Maybe three.”
“What about him?” Anne said, looking at Paul praying over the bodies of the dead.
“I think he’s suicidal,” Sarge said. “But if you want him, you can have him. See how this works?”
“But why me?” she said. “If you knew me, you wouldn’t pick me for something like this.”
“I am picking you based on what I know. You don’t fear death. You’re tough; you’re not looking for easy answers and for everybody else to take care of you. And you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You sat down instead of getting yourself killed helping that man, so I don’t have to worry about you welcoming death or even actively seeking it.”
“Well,” Anne said in amazement. “I can see you’ve thought this through.”
She realized she wanted this. Had, in fact, been sitting here for days waiting for something like it to present itself. The chance to really do something. The chance to fight back and stop the plague in its tracks.
The chance to kill every one of these monsters for what they did to her kids.
“You’re a survivor, Anne,” Sarge said. “I need survivors.”
FEMAVILLE
The refugee camp appears over the next rise, a sprawling mass of people and buildings covering the land as far as the eye can see. Distant helicopters buzz like flies in the still, hot air. Tiny figures swarm among the houses and public buildings and trailers and tents, a seething ocean of humanity partially obscured by smoke drifting from thousands of cook fires.
The Bradley grinds to a halt and the survivors emerge from its dim interior at a crouch, weapons at the ready. Acting like a combat infantry unit is now second nature to them.