Sarge nods.
“You heard the lady,” he says, and presses the button to drop the exit ramp.
The survivors dismount the vehicle, stepping into May sunshine. Nearby, a squad of National Guard and two machine gun crews watch them fidget with their weapons while wearing expressions of barely concealed disdain. Covered by the Bradley, they are all going up the bridge together. Their job is to clear it of anything breathing so that Patterson and his people can do their work. The big five-ton trucks, loaded with tied-down boxes of TNT and C4 covered in plastic tarps, stand idling, surrounded by large, burly men waiting for their turn in the game. Patterson walks over to them and shouts instructions. Immediately, the men begin taking off the tarps, exposing enough explosive to rip the bridge in half.
Todd checks his M4 carbine and waits for the order to move out, chomping at the bit for some action. He saw the way the Guard were looking down their noses at him and wants to show them what he can do.
The firing at the other end of the bridge suddenly increases in volume. Todd wonders what those men up there are seeing, what they are going through.
Paul nudges him, blowing air out of his cheeks.
“This is going to be a shit storm, boy,” he says. “You stay close to me.”
“I’m not worried, Rev,” Todd says with a smile. “If God is with us, who can be against us?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Paul answers. “I think God might be on their side.”
“Got an extra smoke for me, Preacher?” Ray says.
“Here you go, Ray.”
“Thanks. Feel that breeze. Man, that feels good.”
While the two men smoke, Todd moves away a little, irritated. Between their smoking and all the exhaust hanging in the air from the idling vehicles, he is starting to get a headache.
Gunfire crackles in the distance. The survivors crane their necks and squint at the Market Street Bridge, clearly visible to the south. Vehicles and tiny figures are moving on the road deck. The crackle becomes a steady pounding roar. Sparks flash along its length, tracer rounds streaming to contact. Several pale figures fall off the bridge and into the muddy waters below. A rocket explodes at the far side, a flash followed by a deep boom and a mushroom cloud.
There is a hell of a fight going on over there. The other force is in action.
Todd fingers the handset the Army gave him for the mission and keys it with a squeeze.
“Uh, Sarge?”
Todd, unless this is an emergency, get the hell off the commo, over.
“Sorry about that, Sarge.”
Todd hesitates, but cannot help himself. He is already committed. And he cannot resist using the radio.
“I was just, uh, wondering when we’re going to get moving,” he adds. “Um, over.”
You move when I tell you to move. Out.
Todd smiles. He heard Wendy laughing in the background.
Moments later, Sarge gives the command to advance.
It’s show time, folks.
The Bradley begins crawling along the bridge, keeping pace with the Guard unit led by Sergeant Hackett, fanned out across the left three lanes, and the survivors spread out on the right. On the far right, near the edge, Paul looks down at the brown torrents far below. The water seems a good place to be, he muses, especially if the Infected cannot swim. A man could get a boat and disappear. He thinks about how the Ohio is formed by the Allegheny and the Monongahela meeting at Pittsburgh, and travels all the way here; downstream, it feeds the Mississippi. He asks Todd to swap weapons for a moment and uses the close combat optic to get a magnified view of the far shore. It is swarming with Infected as far as the eye can see. Corpses and small islands of plastic garbage float in the water, collecting in piles on the riverbanks. The Infected gather at the water’s edge, drinking among scores of bloated corpses washed up onto the mud.
Paul lowers the rifle, feeling sick, and hands it back to Todd.
“You look like you saw a ghost, Rev,” Todd says. “What’s going on over there?”
“The usual,” Paul tells him.
Behind them, Ray says, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” repeatedly until doubling over, vomiting loudly onto the road.
Sergeant Hackett frowns at the survivors and shakes his head.
Todd flushes with embarrassment and hisses at Ray, “Come on, man.”
Ray wipes his mouth, gasping, and says, “Fuck this.”
“Contact!” one of the soldiers calls out.
The Guard begin shooting. The Bradley slows even further, almost coming to a halt. The survivors slow their pace as well, waiting until the threat is eliminated.
“Clear,” the soldiers shout. The motley little army resumes its advance.
Ray is right to be scared, Paul thinks. The hordes of hell are waiting for us at the other end of this bridge.
As if reading his thoughts, Ray says, “You don’t look too scared, Preacher. What’s your secret?”
“There isn’t any secret, Ray.”
“You think if you die, you go straight to Paradise to be with the virgins, right?”
Paul smiles and answers, “No, boy. I’m not scared because I’m already dead.”
Ray stares at him in disbelief for several moments before shaking his head. “You people are fucking crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” Todd says.
Paul notices Ethan frowning as if trying to solve a difficult puzzle. The Reverend pauses, raising his shotgun. He knows that look well. Todd sees them and shoulders his carbine.
“What you got?” says Todd.
Ethan suddenly roars, “Heads up!”
His voice is drowned out by a flurry of screams and gunshots and curses. Paul looks up in time to see a flash of pale gray flesh. He pulls the trigger and the shotgun discharges with a burst of light and sound, bucking hot in his hands. The little creature flops to the deck, rolling and hissing and bleeding. Paul aims quickly and fires again. The Hopper explodes, leaving a trail of smoking gore splashed across the asphalt.
He turns quickly, sensing motion in the corner of his eye, and cracks another of the little monsters in the skull with the butt of his gun. The thing stumbles away, reeling with vertigo, squealing with confusion and pain until Ray Young pumps several rounds into it with his pistol.
Killing the Infected is hard because they are people. These monsters are something else. Demons. When Paul kills them, he feels he is doing God a favor.
He scans the area with his shotgun, but sees no other threats. The gunfire around him sputters.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” Hackett calls out.
“Man down!” one of the soldiers cries.
“We need a minute to take care of our people,” Hackett shouts at the survivors. “What you got?”
“We’re all okay here,” Paul tells him, waving.
The Guard pause after this announcement and glare at the survivors with open resentment.
“Guess they thought we’d all be dead or something,” Paul says.
“Sorry to disappoint them,” Todd grumbles.
“The Hoppers were up in the cables,” Ethan says sheepishly, shrugging. “These cables that hold the bridge together. They were up there waiting to drop down on us. A pretty basic ambush.”
Paul nods. “Good one, boy.”
Ray laughs, his face as white as a sheet, and spits on the ground. “Batshit crazy,” he says. “But you seem to know your stuff. I’ll give you that.”
Sergeant Hackett pulls a can of spray paint out of a leg pocket, shakes it vigorously, and sprays a bright orange X on the back of one of the two men in his squad who were stung by the Hoppers. The man nods, accepting his death sentence. He will keep fighting but he will have to be killed when it is all over.