The Infected ran among the vehicles in the jam, peering into the cars as if window shopping before punching in the glass with bloody knuckles. Wendy saw the Infected swarming over a nearby wrought iron fence, emitting a communal howl that made her heart rate skyrocket and her legs turn to jelly. Although her conscious mind was still in pieces, it registered in the back of her mind that Allegheny General was on the other side of that fence; the Infected were still waking up and streaming out of the hospital’s doors even now, like rats.
Wendy unholstered her service weapon and fired once, twice. A man yelped and flopped off of the fence, quickly replaced by another in a paper hospital gown, his legs smeared with his own shit. I don’t have enough bullets, she thought.
People were abandoning their cars and running into the park swinging purses and briefcases or holding hands, turning the traffic jam into a parking lot. She turned, distracted by the sickening sound of crumpling metal and a gunned engine straining against an impossible load.
A man was driving a shiny red 4x4 SUV on a lifted suspension, three tons of glass and steel with a little evergreen air freshener swinging from the rear view and a specialty license plate reading XCESS over the standard visitPA.com. He was panicking and trying to ram his way out of the press of honking vehicles. The acrid stench of muffler exhaust and burning rubber filled the air. He backed up his vehicle, his face and his mouth working behind the windshield, and then stomped his foot on the gas and rammed into the car ahead of him, shoving it forward less than a yard and jolting himself with whiplash.
Recovering, he backed up again, yanked on the steering wheel, and roared into a Volkswagen Jetta in the righthand lane at an acute angle, the collision twisting the frame and shattering the driver’s side windows. The car’s driver howled in shock and pain, covered in blood and glass, trying to shield her face with her arms. As the SUV backed up again, crumpling the hood of another car behind it, an Infected man pulled himself into the Jetta’s open window, his gown flapping and his legs kicking in the air.
Wendy’s stomach turned over and she bent to spit a gob of bile, listening to distant car alarms. The mindless, brutish cruelty of the SUV driver and the rabid Infected was making her feel physically sick. The driver had a cut on his forehead now and looked dazed, revving the engine and bucking his vehicle forward into the car in front of the Jetta, shoving it sideways against the curb and bursting its windows in the sharp impact. The passenger door opened and a woman emerged, wailing and pulling a screaming child out of the backseat. The air filled with a sweet maple syrup smell, ethylene glycol released by a broken radiator. Wendy swallowed hard against another urge to vomit.
“Halt,” she said hoarsely, then raised her arm and stepped forward, shouting: “Stop it!”
She marched up to the SUV as the man stepped on the gas. She did not flinch. Recognizing her uniform, he braked with a short screech, stopping the vehicle inches from her knees. He stared down at her through the window, panting for air. His eyes slowly focused with understanding and regret, began to fill with tears.
The cop raised her gun and fired, punching three cobwebbed holes in the windshield. Smoke filled the cab and blood splashed across the glass.
She wished she had more bullets.
Then she is back in the classroom, cupping Sarge’s face and looking into his eyes.
She knows what it is like to lose control.
“I’ve got you, baby,” Wendy says. “I’ve got you.”
After a brief medical exam, Todd hurries into the processing center, a hot, confusing jumble of people and tables jammed together under various signs and flags in what used to be the school gym. People sit behind the tables, talking to sitting or standing applicants, while others sit on the floor ringing the room, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard marked with numbers. A wave of sour body odor immediately envelops him, almost making him gag. It is so hot in the room and there are so many people sweating that a mist hangs in the air, rising on beams of sunlight entering the space through skylights. He spots Ethan at one of the tables but cannot locate the other survivors. His heart races as he realizes they must have gone through processing already, leaving him behind. He had been last in line for the medical exam and apparently he’d spent too much time in the bathroom taking the longest dump in his life sitting on a real toilet that actually flushed, surrounded by four walls in blissful privacy. His thoughts are jolted as a man shoulders him as he walks past, offering a muttered apology.
His first impression of the place is that there is still a huge number of refugees entering the FEMA camp, but he soon realizes that all sorts of government business goes on here, from job applications to replacement of resident cards to reporting crimes, and more. Some of the tables are run by sharp-eyed, clean-shaven men in business suits under American and other flags indicating various agencies of the Federal and Ohio state governments. Todd figures they’re the complaints department. You go there and complain, and in return they give you bad news.
He takes a number and finds a spot on the floor, fanning himself like everybody else, trying to keep an eye on Ethan, who has moved to another table, keeping the little stump of his finger elevated as he works the room. Probably looking for his dead wife and little girl. Todd is mentally flexible enough to accept that his father is dead or Infected along with all the other cubicle drones at the office where he worked, and his mother is definitely Infected, having fallen during the Screaming. He feels sorry for Ethan but living your life like a defective CD eternally skipping during your favorite song is not living.
Eventually, his number is called and he finds himself sitting at a picnic table across from a red-haired woman who looks at him like he just hit her in the face. Slapping an index card on the table in front of her, she begins to take down his information—name, where he lived, social security number, gender, age, height and eye color, nearest relations and a brief medical history.
“You were in high school?” she says, pen poised above the card.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Todd answers, using the respectful tone he used with teachers.
“What grade?”
“Senior,” he says, worrying in the pit of his stomach that the woman would check up on him and realize he lied about that and his age. But then he notices the stacks of index cards tied with rubber bands being carted by the other bureaucrats, and realizes he can pretty much say anything he wants and there would be no way that she could confirm or deny it.
“Do you want to go back to school? We offer schooling here. You could get your diploma.”
“No thanks,” he says sunnily, his brain working hard on how to defend that decision.
The woman shrugs, does not care.
“Any job skills?” she asks.
“I’ve had jobs before but nothing that required skills,” he tells her. “I am really good with computers, though. What kind of skills are you looking for the most?”
“Psychotherapist,” she answers.
He laughs.
“I’m not kidding,” she adds.
Todd opens his mouth, but she silences him by holding up her index finger, the universal sign for wait a minute. The woman pulls an old mechanical typewriter towards her and starts pecking at the keys with agonizing slowness, glancing frequently at the index card. She finally yanks a business card-sized piece of paper out of machine, stamps it with a seal, and hands it to him with a thick manila envelope.