Read Online The Infection by Craig DiLouie - Free Book Online

you by your real name.”
    “It’s Todd,” he says quickly. “But don’t tell anybody else.”
    “I promise,” she says with a smile. “It’s our secret.”
    He says nothing, flustered and afraid he might blurt out something stupid and irrecoverable.
    Wendy motions for him to stop. “You ready to shoot that gun, Todd?”
    He nods.
    “Then let’s clear this hallway.” The cop calls out, “Hey! Hello? Anybody home?”
    A woman bursts out of one of the recovery rooms, dressed in hospital scrubs stained with dried blood down the front, and begins jogging towards them with a bark. The survivors flinch, their hearts racing. Immediately, the ammonia smell of piss assaults their nostrils, making their eyes water.
    “Who?” says the Kid.
    “You,” says the cop.
    The Kid wishes he could have set his rifle to full auto and let it rip like in the movies, but Sarge said not to do that. Sarge said you do not need suppression. You just need to stop somebody, running right at you, with as few rounds and as little energy as possible.
    The Kid does not aim at the woman’s head, which offers only a small, lurching target. Instead, he aims at her center torso and squeezes the trigger, firing a single burst of three bullets.
    The center of the woman’s chest explodes and she stumbles, wincing and smoking, before bouncing off a wall and toppling to the floor.
    The man turns the corner and lunges at them from behind. Wendy wheels and fires her Glock. The bullet enters his left eye socket, scrambles his brain and shoots the mess out the back of his head. He collapses instantly without a sound, dead before he hits the floor.
    “Nicely done,” the Kid says weakly, feeling drained.
    “I swallowed my gum,” Wendy says.
    The corridor suddenly echoes with howls and the tramp of sneakers, dress shoes, high heels, bare feet. Wendy and the Kid freeze, breathing hard, standing back to back with guns ready.
    A lot of people are coming.
     
    ♦
     
    Sunlight cannot reach this part of the building where it is now perpetual night. The corridor connects the emergency room with the guts of the hospital. Paul and Anne explore its length, searching for supplies, anxiously aware of the sound of their breathing and footsteps. Paul lights the way with a highway flare, revealing bloody handprints on the wall in glaring detail. Beyond several feet, the light is quickly swallowed in the gloom. Bodies lie on the floor surrounded by small clouds of flies. The air reeks of bleach and rot. Water drips loudly somewhere close. A door slams, far away. Paul’s shoes crunch on the scattered remains of a smashed jar of tongue depressors. Rats scamper along the walls before disappearing into the dark.
    “I made a mistake, Reverend,” Anne says, shattering the silence.
    “What kind of mistake?”
    “The kind you regret.”
    Paul grunts. He does not know what to say. This is survival. He does not think it is possible for somebody to be alive today without having regrets. He is trying hard to keep his moral compass aimed in the right direction but the harsh truth is morality is a luxury at a time like this. There is plenty of guilt to go around. He wishes there were just a little forgiveness. But even guilt is a luxury reserved for those still alive and feeling safe enough to experience it.
    He pauses in front of a door and holds up his flare.
    “‘Custodial,’” Paul reads. “I think this is it. It’s unlocked.”
    Too late, he realizes that Anne was not talking to him as a fellow survivor. She was speaking to him as a man of the cloth. Sorry, lady, he wants to say, that well has run dry at the moment. He realizes that he knows so little about the people on whom his life depends on a daily basis. He glances at this petite woman holding her powerful scoped rifle and the satchel filled with ammo and thinks, take the gun away and she could be a housewife. A dentist. An actress doing local theater. President of the PTA. The only part of her he has really