Everybody was yelling, but I could hear nothing over the screeching that was turning into an ice pick in my ear. Then, there was a crash from the room next to us, metal and glass like something big and heavy had been knocked over. Amy screamed. Molly barked.
I got to my feet once more, wearing the Anna monster like a writhing backpack. I found a wall and slammed backward into it.
It didn’t budge. Somebody was screaming my name.
I heard a door burst open.
“ANNA!”
This was a new voice, a man’s voice, with an accent.
A blast of light flooded the room. Everyone froze.
Standing in the doorway was a Latino guy who I thought looked like Marc Anthony. I knew I had seen him before but in my state of panic, couldn’t place where. He was holding a huge flashlight and he whipped it around the room, first finding Amy, who was still standing next to the dead computer and squinting at the sudden brightness. Then he spotlighted John, who was pointing his shotgun right at my face.
Then the light found me, and I felt the tentacle loosen from around my neck. The Anna thing slithered to the floor, and in the harsh shadows of the beam I saw a filthy nightgown tangled around a nightmare wad of tentacles that looked like they were made of knotted clumps of black hair. Somewhere in the center of it was a pair of eyes on either side of a sideways mouth and clicking mandibles.
The man with the flashlight said, “Anna. Are you okay?”
The tentacles started twisting and bundling together, fusing and melting and re-forming. In a few seconds, there was the little girl again. She straightened her nightgown and sniffled and started crying.
The man said again, “Are you okay?”
Anna shook her head.
“No, you’re all right.”
In the shadows I could see John looking back and forth, between me, the guy, and Anna. He was still pointing the shotgun at me, he realized, and he pointed it at the floor instead.
To me, the guy said, “Are you all right? You’re David, right?”
“She … turned into a … thing…”
“I know that. Did she hurt you?”
“The light went off and she got me around the neck…”
“Did she hurt you?”
“No.”
Anna sobbed and said, “He hurt me!”
The guy said, “Now Anna, you scared him. You turned and you scared him.”
“I didn’t mean to! The lights went out and I c-couldn’t h-help it…”
“Anna, you need to say you’re sorry to David.”
Anna did not agree with this.
“Anna…”
She defiantly said, “I’m sorry.”
To me, he said, “Do you accept her apology, as heartfelt as it clearly wasn’t?”
I had no words. “I … she turned into a … thing…”
Anna started crying in earnest once more. Amy said, “Hey. David.” I turned and out of the darkness, an object came hurtling toward me. I flinched, threw up my hands and squealed. A filthy, stuffed bear bounced off my gut.
I found it on the floor. Handling it like I was passing a piece of meat into a tiger cage, I kneeled and extended the bear toward Anna.
She flung herself toward me, utilizing her preternatural, little-girl speed. I had no time to react. She flew at me, and threw her arms around my neck. She pressed her wet face against mine and hugged me. She said, “I’m sorry I scared you, Walt.”
“It’s, uh, okay.” I put an arm around her, and for the tenth time in a week felt like I had become numb to the ridiculous.
Anna pried herself away from me, plucked Mr. Bear from my hands and navigated her way through the wrecked room, over to the flashlight man. He kneeled down to catch her, and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
I said, “I … don’t understand. Is she…”
“This is my daughter, Anna. She’s eight years old.”
“And you are…”
“I’m Carlos.”
50 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
John, reading the expression on my face, said, “You two know each other?”Carlos answered for me, saying, “We were over in quarantine together.”
I said, “And you are … you’re like her? Right?”
“No. Not like her. What I mean is, she’s not like me. She won’t hurt you. She hasn’t hurt anybody. Not like me.”
“So, you are the one who—”
“Not in front of her. But yes.”
“But you want us to believe that we’re safe. From you, I mean.”
“There is a lot about this situation that you do not understand. In quarantine, they were using you to sort the infected from uninfected, right? But you can’t really do it. Not like I can. Me, I can see them, as easy as telling man from woman. I can see it at a glance.”
“All right. But I don’t under—”
“There isn’t time. Let me just say that … I can tell you what I know, but you don’t want to know it. About who is and isn’t infected, I mean. And when I say you don’t want to know, I’m not trying to up the suspense. I am saying that you don’t want to know. It won’t make doing what you need to do any easier. It won’t make it easier for you to live in the world.”
I started to ask a question, but stopped myself. I tried to absorb what he was saying. Finally, I said, “Dr. Marconi … he, uh, hinted to me that there may be more infected than everybody thinks.”
“Let’s say he’s right. Let’s say he’s really, really right. Now we got to ask ourselves what that word means. ‘Infected.’ Infected like me? Or like my Anna here?”
I had no answer. I tried to weigh the implications of this, and couldn’t begin to. Molly had joined Anna, and the little girl was scratching her behind the ears.
“Or infected like Dr. Bob Tennet.”
“You mean he’s—”
“He’s something else altogether. When I look at him, you know what I see? A black cloud. I don’t even see a man. Do you understand what I’m saying? He’s not a man. And maybe neither am I and maybe that doesn’t mean anything anymore. But I’m going to say this to you, David, and to your friends here—Tennet is more dangerous than a million of me. He and the people he works for, they figured out how to use a signal, inaudible sound waves, to affect people like me. Turn us, make us lose control. I’m telling you, when left to myself, I can control it. The parasite, it whispers in my ear but I can overcome it. You just got to have the will, to put that cockroach in its place.”
I said, “So we’re supposed to just turn our backs on you and walk out. Knowing all of the people who are—” I glanced down at Anna “—who are, uh, gone, because of you. I’m supposed to just let that go. And you’re going to just, what, go back to work next week? Everything back the way it was?”
“I’m all she’s got. Her mother is gone. And she has to deal with her … condition on top of that. Well, she’s going to have a life, the life a little girl should have. And she’s going to learn how to live with this. Who else is going to teach her? Who else will understand?”
He nodded at John and said, “So, what, you want your friend to shoot me with his sawed-off five-barrel shotgun? And then Anna either gets rounded up by the government and dissected in a laboratory, or torn to pieces by that mob out there? No, you won’t do that to her. I know you won’t.”
I groaned and rubbed my forehead.
John said, “Okay, can somebody quickly just summarize for the shotgun department who it’s okay and not okay to shoot?”
Carlos said, “The world doesn’t make it that simple for us, friend.”
I said, “Yeah, if somebody tries to make a video game based on this situation, I’m telling you right now I’m not fucking buying it.”
Carlos stood, and took Anna’s hand in his own.
I said, “And I still don’t … I mean, I didn’t think children could get infected.”
“Dummy, she’s not infected like the rest. She’s been this way for years. This isn’t new. How can you, of all people, not know that?”
“I … I guess I…”
John said, “Well, I’m lost.”
I said, “Marconi. He had infected patients he was studying, but he had this theory that some of them would literally never turn, that the parasite could just … live there.”
John said, “So, what, we just accept that? These invisible bugs multiplying inside people and we just shrug and move on? Knowing that any day any random person can just murder the shit out of a roomful of people?”
Carlos just shrugged and said, “That’s been the situation for longer than you know. Way longer. And you need to ask yourself, are you even sure all of you are uninfected?”
Amy said, “We’re sure.”
“Are you? Your man there, he spent a lot of time in town, in quarantine, in the basement of this place. He can’t even account for his own whereabouts for the last week or so. You a hundred percent sure he came out of all that clean?”
John shrugged and said, “Eh, he wasn’t all that clean before. No offense, Dave.”
“Fuck you, John.”
To Amy, Carlos said, “I’m not joking, you know. How would you truly know—”
I said, “She knows what I am.”
“But if you were infected you would deny it—”
“Carlos. She knows what I am.”
Silence. Then he nodded and said, “All right, then. Now are you going to let my Anna, and all the rest like her, get burned up in the hellfire they rain down on this place?”
Amy said, “We have to stop the bombs.”
I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “How can that possibly be our responsibility?”
John said, “There’s a way. Everything Tennet said in his press conference is bullshit. The streets out there aren’t full of shambling hordes. They’re full of all-American types carrying hunting rifles and protecting women and children. The reason Tennet had to lie is because he knew he’d never sell the public on those people being zombies. We just got to show them.”