He was one of the ones with a target, a concentric bull’s-eye painted in red on the front of his helmet. But when he turned toward her with a mystified expression, the bite on his shoulder already weeping yellow, she aimed for the eye socket. He whimpered and begged a little, but in her head, she had squeezed the trigger a thousand times, and it was no great effort to do it now, in the cramped cabin, with the daylight dropping away and the smell of bodies heavy in the air. The report was very loud in the narrow hall. At her feet, he lay still. After a moment, the blood began to pool out from under him.
Her progress through the house was slow. The floor was littered with debris, spent ammunition. Bodies lay with their limbs jutting at odd angles—smirkers and soldiers. They were mostly accounted for. She didn’t recognize Denton at first, except by his size. Someone had shot him in the face. There were bite marks all over his arms. His skin oozed with the thick, pestilential yellow of infection.
In the kitchen, she found Sergeant Whitaker. He was propped in a corner, shoulders wedged in the join between two cabinets.
He looked up at her—a hard, dignified look that stopped her in the doorway. The side of his neck had been torn away, leaving shreds of muscle, exposed tendons. His voice was hoarse and liquid. “Are they dead?”
She did not know if he was referring to their makeshift squad or to the recent barrage of smirkers. “Yes, sir.”
“What do you think those Washington fucks are doing right now?”
Dead, of course, all dead. Except the ones still shambling around smiling to themselves. Giggling their high-pitched giggles.
“They don’t pay me to think, sir.”
Whitaker laughed at that, a wet, clotted sound. “No one’s paid us to do a damn thing in months. Maybe you could take up thinking as a sideline. It wouldn’t have to be on the clock.”
He laughed again, viscous, close to choking. The stripes on his sleeve were the brightest thing in the room. The gold looked almost white in the failing light. The blood was seeping out of him, leaving his face gray. Infection imminent.
“You should’ve made corporal,” he said, and it sounded watery. “I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t worry yourself, sir. I don’t imagine I would have cared for it.”
“You never know. Look at you now—you’re the one who’s going to walk out of here tonight.”
Blood and foul yellow seepage were running down the side of his throat, soaking into his shirt.
“Do you want me to take care of it?” she said, jerking her head in the direction of his sidearm.
He smiled at her, a slow, complicated smile. “No, I got this.”
She did not disbelieve Whitaker, even at the last. He was a good man, dependable. Already holding the 9mm to his temple. But she stood in the doorway to make sure. The report made her flinch. When he slumped forward and his hand let go, she turned and started back through the house.
A wooden pull-down ladder stood spindly and erect in the hall. It was fixed to the ceiling by a hinge, and led up to an open skylight. The angle of the ladder was stark, surprising. In the past weeks, the world had taken on an increasingly surreal cast and the ladder did not seem disconcerting now, but only natural and right.
“I’m coming up,” Grace said, to no one in particular—to whomever might be at the top, waiting to put a bullet in the first person to stick their head through the opening.
On the roof, Jacobs the medic was sitting with his legs drawn up and his elbows resting on his knees.
“How do they always know?” he said, staring off over the hillside, the dark trees. The sky was deep purple, already speckled with stars. “We go along, covering our tracks, moving in the daytime. And still, they always know.”
Grace nodded, because his assessment was true. Not a thing you argued with, but how it was. They would always find you. It was what they did.
“There aren’t any bugs up here,” Jacobs said.
“No,” said Grace, taking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “No, I haven’t seen any.”
“It’s the air. It’s thin.”
She wondered if he was cracking up. He didn’t seem the type, but still, with these smart ones, it was hard to say. Sometimes they fell apart, just from thinking too much.
“They’re not hunting people,” he said.
“What do you call it then—what they’re doing?”
“I mean, they’re not hunting people exclusively. They’re not strictly cannibals. We saw eviscerated deer when we were coming up—and rabbits—but they’re not picked clean. They never eat the dead.”
Grace pulled a cigarette out of the pack with her teeth, lit it. Her hands were steady, but felt light and disconnected.
When she breathed out, Jacobs coughed and fanned at the air. “How does something like this just happen?”
Grace observed Jacobs, his raised head, his profile, hard against the velvety sky. She assumed he must be talking in some broad, abstract sense, because the how-and-why of it was far from mysterious.