“Works for me.” He leaned down and said something to the driver, and they were off.

Dad, Blake, and Lance abandoned their positions, double-timed it back to the vehicles, and safely ensconced themselves in a Humvee. The Army vehicle drove into the middle of the infected, laid down a broad volley of fire, then stopped and waited while the horde gathered round. The gunner turned so he was facing the vehicle’s rear and let out occasional bursts of fire to keep the undead from blocking their escape route. When the undead had pressed in tightly enough to begin climbing the hood and beating on the windows, the driver put it in reverse and peeled out, running over a few infected along the way.

One of the ghouls clung to the hood and was steadily climbing toward the gunner who still had his back turned. Mike and I shouted warnings, pointing at the thing behind him. He heard us, turned, reached a hand into a pocket of his vest, and produced a snub-nosed revolver. With the ghoul almost in arm’s reach, he stuck the gun in its face and pulled the trigger. Gore splashed across the creature’s back as the top of its head flew apart, brain and skull spatter painting the front end of the Humvee. From the report, I knew the gun was a .357 magnum. Hollow point slugs too, judging by the damage. At that range, he may as well have shot it in the face with an artillery piece. The creature collapsed, nearly headless, and slid from the vehicle.

The driver turned a slow circle around the now congregated infected while the gunner stashed his pistol and returned his focus to the SAW. Once again, the ratatatat of controlled fire rang out, and once again, undead legs flew to pieces. The soldiers worked quickly, driving four laps around the ghouls in concentric circles, gradually whittling them down. Finally, none were left standing.

The Humvee drove to where the other vehicles were parked, squelching over a few corpses along the way. One of them grabbed part of the right rear fender and was dragged along, its lower body remaining in place while the torso trailed an ever-lengthening rope of intestine. Sophia made a choking sound next to me and turned away.

“God, that is so fucking gross.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

I watched as the Humvee stopped next to where the others waited. Mike climbed down from the container by lowering himself over the edge and then dropping the last few feet. I followed suit, then turned and caught Sophia on the way down and lowered her gently.

“Thank you,” she said, standing close enough to kiss. It amazed me that even here, standing in a field of stinking, festering undead, the male sex drive was strong enough to rear its ancient, incorrigible head. I ignored it and put a hand on Sophia’s lower back as we threaded our way through the corpses on the way back to the vehicles.

“Gonna be a hell of a mess to clean up,” I overheard one of the soldiers say to my father. “We’ll have to get some people out here. Haul those thing away to a good safe distance.”

“Hey,” I called, getting his attention. He looked at me. “Isn’t one of those HEMTTs equipped with a shovel, or a bucket attachment, or whatever you call it?”

His eyes grew sharp. “Yes. Yes it is. Good thinking, I’ll see if I can get it out here. You folks okay in the meantime?”

“We’re fine,” Dad said. “But we appreciate the help. While you’re gone, we’ll go around and make sure these things are taken care of permanently.”

“Be careful doing that,” the soldier said. “Those things are twice as dangerous on the ground. Don’t let them get their hands on you, they’re strong as hell.”

“I’m well aware. Thanks again, gentlemen.”

“Be back soon.”

The Humvee drove away. My father looked around at the rest of us, checked his rifle, and tilted his head toward the crawling, moaning horrors in the parking lot. “The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll be finished.”

I looked at the infected, their blood black and shiny in the fading afternoon light, and watched them drag their carcasses toward me, unconcerned with their injuries, shredded hands grasping at gore-soaked asphalt.

Feeling a shift in my stomach, I looked away to the north woodlands, above the parking lot, over the infected, and across the roof of the brewery beyond. Knobby treetops rustled under a sky darkening to electric purple as I thought about what lay across the Mississippi River. The last newscast I had seen before they stopped airing was from California. The talking head was relaying information from affiliates in the Midwest.

The east coast has gone dark.

Nice way to put it. The most verdant, populous region of the country, home to over a hundred and fifty million people, had been overrun. Everything east of the Appalachians was now an infested, toxic, and in many places radioactive no man’s land.

Gone dark.

The Appalachians had not stopped them. The Mississippi River had not stopped them. The combined might of the U.S. Armed Forces had not stopped them. Nothing stopped them. Delayed them, maybe. Held them back for a while. But there was no stopping them. All we had done here was buy time, nothing more. A buffer zone, breathing room, enough space to get some rest and then move on.

I looked down at my rifle and wondered what it would be like to try to wipe out a swarm of mosquitos with it.

“I don’t know Dad,” I said. “As far as killing the infected goes, I’m not sure if we’ll ever be finished.”

THIRTY-THREE

Full dark, and the stars came out.

I lay on my bedroll, eyes open to the brilliance of the sky. Sophia was a warm, heavy weight next to me.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” she said. “The night sky.”

“You mean without a roof between you?”

She slapped my shoulder. “No, asshole. I mean bright. Like this.” She pointed a finger heavenward.

“It’s because the power is out,” I said. “No streetlights, no city lights, no light at all. Light pollution obscures the sky at night. Drowns out the stars. Must have been very disappointing for all those photons.”

“Disappointing?”

“To travel billions of years only to fizzle out in a smog-choked haze.”

“You say it like the stars actually care. Last I heard, they’re just big burning balls of plasma.”

“We’re made of them, you know. Human beings. The dust of stars given life.”

“What?”

“The fundamental elements, the components, the building blocks of life. All deposited on this planet by stars, flung across the universe as they died.”

Sophia was silent for a while, then said, “There’s a kind of beauty in that, I think. The lifeless given life.”

I turned my head and gazed over the edge of the white metal roof. The distant moans of infected drifted to my ears. “The lifeless given life. It supports the duality, I suppose.”

Sophia shuffled closer, lips brushing against my neck. “Now I understand why you don’t talk much. You don’t make a bit of fucking sense.”

There was something wildly erotic about the way she said it, our warmth nestled together under the coldness of an indifferent sky. “It’s beauty and corruption, Sophia. Light and dark. Life and death. For every point, a counterpoint. We, the human race, are the defiance. The struggle of sentience in an ocean of oblivion. Those things out there, they’re a corruption of us. An abomination of something beautiful.”

Another silence, then she said, “You really think people are beautiful? I mean, with all the things we’ve done to each other? War and murder and all the rest of it?”

“I think life is beauty, Sophia. And while there are as many tragedies as there are people in the world to live them, those tragedies don’t diminish the importance of our existence. Think of how far we’ve come. It wasn’t all that long ago we were lying on bare ground, fires burning next to us, wondering what all those bright spots in the big wide dark were all about. Now we know. Now we can draw their chemical components on computer diagrams and replicate their energy in small scale. Ever seen a plasma torch cut through two inches of steel in less time than it takes to say it?”