The Infection by Craig DiLouie Read Free Book Online Page B

territory. Boasts of kills and time served. Totemic symbols scrawled by people in a hurry. Arrows. Biohazard signs. Skulls and crossbones.
    The Infected stumble and hold their heads, wailing in a constant state of metaphysical pain. They glower and bare their teeth at Sarge as he drives by in the armored vehicle.
     
    ♦
     
    The survivors find the tall, muscular man on his front porch wearing a bathrobe and boxer shorts, shouting and waving a pistol in his right hand and a battered, folded-up umbrella in his left. All of the neighboring houses have a large black X painted on their front doors; the Screaming apparently wiped out this community and left this man as its sole survivor.
    “This is my neighborhood,” he says, firing off a round with his pistol and killing a running Infected, who falls sprawling on the sidewalk, joining another draped over a fire hydrant and a third crumpled in a fetal position on the hood of an ancient Cadillac. “You ain’t welcome here!”
    The Bradley’s gunner, sitting next to Sarge inside the vehicle, sizes up the man through the periscope and says, “I think we found somebody who might be big enough to take you, Sergeant.”
    Sarge snorts and says, “I like his spunk. He’s a fighter.”
    “Spunk as in crazy,” says the gunner. He has the square jaw of an action movie hero and wears a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on the left cheek of his stubbled face. “Crazy as in a threat to all of us.”
    “If crazy disqualified membership, there’d be no club in this rig. Ha.”
    “I thought the plan was we want ‘survivors, not fighters.’ That’s what you said.”
    “Fighters are useful, too,” Sarge says cryptically. “We can’t do job interviews, Steve. Let’s invite him on. If he blends, he blends.”
    “You’re the boss, Sergeant,” the gunner says, shrugging.
    The man roars: “Kids used to play on this street!”
    crack crack
    Sarge says, “Something about him reminds me of Randy Devereaux. Remember Devereaux?”
    “Not really, Sergeant. I hardly knew him.”
    “Right,” Sarge says. “You’re right. That’s my bad.” Steve and Ducky, the driver, are new to the Bradley, replacements for the previous crew, who fell down during the Screaming nearly two weeks ago. Two weeks and an eternity. The replacements barely had any contact with the Bradley’s infantry squad, the boys who survived the Taliban and the Screaming and then flew all the way back from Afghanistan to die in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Pittsburgh.
    “This is a nice place to live!”
    Sarge calls out to him, but the man ignores him. If he does not trust the military, maybe one of the civilians can coax him. Anne volunteers to get out and do the inviting. While the Bradley stands idling, she approaches with her hands up, palms out.
    “What’s your name?” she asks.
    The man glares at her sideways, frowning, then waves her off. “Aw, you don’t live here neither.”
    “My name is Anne. There are five of us plus the crew—”
    The pistol cracks in the man’s hand twice, dropping two distant running figures.
    “I am making my stand!” he announces to the sky.
    “Come on, get in,” Anne says. “You can come with us.”
    “I said, step off, bitch!”
    Sarge laughs, shaking his head, while the gunner grins.
    “But we want you to come with us,” Anne says.
    “Too dangerous out there,” the man tells her, waving his umbrella. “It’s raining zombies!”
    crack crack
    He fires again several times at distant figures running down the street. At long range, barely looking, and does not miss. One of the kills, Sarge saw it clear, was a headshot. The Infected’s head snapped back and he was dead in the blink of an eye.
    Steve says, “Is he actually hitting anything with that pea shooter?”
    “Yeah, he is. In fact, every shot hit a separate moving target and brought it down at between twenty-five and thirty meters.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I’m not a kidder, Steve.”
    “With a handgun,