The Infection by Craig Dilouie

Author:Craig Dilouie [Dilouie, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9781934861653
Google: MTgdkgAACAAJ
Amazon: 1934861650
Barnesnoble: 1934861650
Goodreads: 10345761
Publisher: Permuted Press
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THE BRIDGE

When the survivors left Pennsylvania, they crossed a sliver of West Virginia, a piece of ground stabbing north like a spike, before final y entering Ohio. The Veterans Memorial Bridge connects Steubenvil e, Ohio and Weirton, West Virginia—six lanes of modern superhighway carrying U.S. Route 22 across the Ohio River. Nearly twenty footbal fields in length, the cable-stayed bridge consists of steel girders and beams supporting a composite concrete road deck, the entire structure suspended by cables fanning out from the two support towers, a common design for long bridges.

Before Infection, thirty thousand people crossed this bridge every day. Now it is a funnel for more than a hundred thousand Infected moving west away from the stil -burning ruins of Pittsburgh.

♦

The Bradley roars east on Route 22, leading a convoy of vehicles including several flatbed trucks stacked with explosives, armored cars and four school buses packed with soldiers and fitted with V-shaped snowplows on their gril es.

The rig slams into an abandoned minivan and sends it spinning onto the shoulder of the highway without breaking its stride. The crash makes Wendy flinch.

“We’re going to practice a rapid scan,” Sarge says.

Wendy blows air out of her cheeks and nods. She moves her left hand to wipe sweat from her forehead and bangs her elbow again.

“Mother,” she hisses. Sitting in the commander’s seat directly adjacent to Sarge in the gunner’s station, her body is almost surrounded by hard metal edges. Not much room to do anything except work the joystick that controls the turret and weapons systems.

She peers into the integrated sight unit, which provides a relay of what Sarge sees, overlaid with a reticle to help aim the Bradley’s guns. The highway slices through the rol ing hil s to the horizon, flanked with green. Smoke is stil pouring out of Pittsburgh, darkening the eastern sky. The horizon shimmers and pulses with heat waves.

“Hey,” Sarge says. “You’re sightseeing.”

“It’s hard to take my eyes off the road.”

Sarge smiles. “You have to get used to the fact that somebody else is driving. While Steve wil obey our commands to stop and go and so on, we are a self-contained world up here, just you and me. You help scan and identify targets, and I’l track and kil them.”

“Yes, sir,” Wendy says.

“I’m not a sir. I work for a living, Ma’am. Now let’s do a rapid scan with overlapped sectors.”

“With who, what?”

“That means I’l be scanning roughly the same ground ahead as you. First, scan center out, near to far, then left and right to center, near to far. I’l be scanning far to near.” Her gum cracking, Wendy scans the highway ahead and identifies two abandoned vehicles in the grassy median. They are passing a bil board on the right that tel s her to tune in to Channel Seven News at Eleven with Janet Rodriguez, Janet grinning confidently down at her in a power suit with her arms crossed. Beyond, power lines and trees.

The opposite lanes of the highway are occupied by a long column of Infected that stare grimly at the rig as it rol s by on its grating treads.

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