Another machine gun opens fire from the roof of the Walmart. Hundreds of rounds stream into the vehicle and rip it to shreds. What’s left of the roof flops away like aluminum foil and slams into the road, dragged along with a grating, ear-splitting screech. The bus appears to disintegrate into pieces as it roars across the final distance, trailing smoke and rolling debris.
“Come on,” Ray shouts into the roar. “It’s just a freaking bus! Kill the goddamn thing!”
He watches the vehicle continue its approach and feels rooted to the spot.
I never had a chance. The woman is indestructible. It’s not fair.
BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP
He flinches again and spins around as the Bradley fires its main gun, flinging cannon rounds downrange into what’s left of the vehicle. Empty shell casings topple down the Bradley’s metal chest, knocking off a withered wreath of wildflowers someone had placed there. Ray watches the wreath fall away and suddenly he is on the bridge again, watching the Infected come howling at him like an army boiling up straight from Hell, standing his ground and firing because there is nowhere safe to go, and to run is to die.
“Sarge?” he says. Can it really be you?
The cannon rounds slam into the front of the bus, which flies apart in a series of fireballs. Ray glimpses the crumpled hood flying end over end through the air. Then, miraculously, the rig emerges from the cloud of smoke trailing fire and pieces of metal, heading toward him as if in a final death lunge, the driver’s seat blown away. Then it flips.
The soldiers stop firing, watching the flimsy wreck roll several times and collapse, the culmination of a long streak of smoking debris stretched back along the asphalt like metal road kill. A horde of metal parts continues to clang and tumble along, and then the wreck is finally still.
“Ha!” Ray whoops, clapping his hands. “Ha, ha, ha! You’re dead now, Anne Leary! You’re fucking dead! I win!”
Price and Fielding, lying on the ground with their hands over their heads, return to their feet.
Mr. Young, Sergeant Rodriguez says over the radio. Are you all right? Anyone injured over there?
“We’re just great,” Ray tells him, lighting another Winston with shaking hands.
“What now, Mr. Young?” Price says, his eyes wide behind his faceplate. “Are we still your hostages?”
“I don’t know,” Ray says, blowing a stream of smoke and chewing on his lip.
“Give it up,” Fielding tells him. “What you’re asking for can’t be gotten. You’re going to just have to take a chance. Either way, isn’t it worth the result?”
“You really think what I’ve got inside of me could save the world?”
Fielding glances at Price, who nods.
“I believe it,” the scientist says. “I know it.”
We need to talk this out, Ray, Rodriguez says. Let’s keep the hoppers out of it for now.
Ray realizes they’re right. It’s time to give up. He’ll never get a guarantee that would mean anything, and he has a real chance to end Infection.
I want to save the world, he decides.
“That’s weird,” he says, staring at Fielding.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re one of mine.”
Ray’s chest explodes and his blood sprays across Dr. Price’s suit and faceplate, followed by the sound of a gunshot. Then he’s spinning, spinning, falling to the ground.
Over the ringing in his ears, he hears a woman screaming an inhuman cry of joy.
Protect, protect, protect—
Dr. Price
Travis watches in shock as the hoppers flood from their hiding places, bounding across the empty parking lots like a swarm of locusts. The crackle of small arms fire fills the air. Standing over Ray Young, two of the Infected cops level their guns and open fire at one of the windows of the low-rise office building. The third sits on the ground, holding his throat and gurgling as blood flows between his fingers.
Young sits with his back against one of the truck’s tires, legs spread wide, breathing in rapid, shallow gasps. One of the cops topples to the asphalt next to him, a neat hole drilled through his forehead, the back of his skull a smoking, shattered ruin. Young clutches his chest with a bloody fist and stares at Travis, his eyes communicating his desperate need to live.
“Help,” he croaks.
Travis falls to his knees and opens his plastic suitcase, which contains first aid supplies, and stares at it, his face tingling. He feels like he is about to pass out. The last Infected cop appears to do a jig in the air, blood spraying, and then collapses to the ground grinning.
“Fielding, do you know how to treat a gunshot wound?”
Fielding stands over them, fists clenched at his sides, oblivious to the bullets and the monsters flying past. “What do you mean, I’m one of yours?”
“This man is going to die if we don’t treat him!”
Young grimaces in pain. “Thought you were a doctor.”
“I’m not a medical doctor, Mr. Young.”
“Figure it out quick,” Young tells him, “or you’re a dead man.”
Travis takes a pair of scissors and cuts away Young’s T-shirt, exposing the small hole that bleeds down his front. Moving the man as gently as possible, he finds another hole in his back, a little below the first one.
“The bullet passed through.”
Fielding screams, “What do you mean, I’m one of yours?”
Young’s eyes shift to him. “Infected.”
Wadding up a thick bandage, Travis jams it behind Young’s back, and then pushes another against his chest, running tape over it. The man’s face is pale and waxy, but his breathing is steady and his eyes seem alert. Travis has no idea what kind of damage the bullet did inside of him, however. Young needs a medical doctor.
“Doc, what did you do?” Fielding says.
Travis ignores him, watching the hoppers swarm over the Stryker. They rip apart the gunner, tossing shreds of his body high in the air like tissues from a Kleenex box, and then eat their way inside the cupola to get at the rest of the crew.
The big soldier with the flamethrower throws a long jet of fire onto the vehicle, torching the hoppers, which flop to the ground shrieking.
“What did you do to me?” Fielding demands.
The air fills with tracers, flashes of light bursting in all directions, cutting down the leaping creatures. Behind the Bradley, one of Wilson’s people runs with a hopper on her back, another swinging from her outstretched arm, until collapsing a short distance later. The earth around her erupts as bullets kill her and the hoppers both.
Sergeant Rodriguez mows down a pair of hoppers with his shotgun and joins the big soldier with the flamethrower, waving his arm and shouting.
Fielding picks up one of the guns dropped by the dead cops and points it at Travis’s head. “Doc, I’m going to ask just one more time. What did you do?”
Travis turns so that Fielding can see his face through the plate.
“I cut a hole in your air hose. You’ve been exposed the whole time. Young infected you. It was a one in three chance. You’re just unlucky, I guess.”
“Jesus, Doc.” The man’s eyes are wild. “How much time do I have?”
Young shakes his head, staring up at him, breathing hard.
“A few minutes, maybe,” Travis tells him.
“What the hell are you saying? Why, Doc? Why’d you do it?”
“I wasn’t about to let you carry out your orders to kill me if things didn’t work out here. Let’s just say I needed my own guarantee.”
“I’m going to kill you anyway, you idiot. You just killed us both for nothing.”