Greenville was a small town of about three thousand, mostly of large swathes of farmlands and a single downtown road, surrounded by suburbia. Its small downtown strip was in tatters and heavily looted from its drugstores, two diners, its courthouse, boutique shops, and its single grocery store.

The vectors within numbered by the dozens.

I had Payne take a good, long look at the town's horizon via the binoculars, the burning buildings of a couple of farmhouses, the few distant screams, the strewn mangled bodies on the streets, and the guttural cries of the infected below the hill.

"What was that sound?" Payne mumbled. He nursed his wounded shoulder, wincing from the pain.

"Ah, that's them. The infected," Logan said.

"Wh—why did you bring me here?" He asked me, steadying his breathing, but his trembling gave him away.

"To give you some new perspective," I said.

Payne took two steps back, but Logan pushed him forward toward the guard rails overlooking the town. We were over the hill rise, standing in the middle of one of the two roads leading to the highway and Albany. If a honcho was down there, then the infected child could organize them into a vicious army.

I crossed my fingers; I wished there were no honchos below.

I caught only about three dozen roaming downtown through my binoculars. I reckoned there must be more out of sight. They were less active during the night, the darkness covering most of the movement. I thought that was interesting to note. Since there was hardly anyone to chase, the vectors stood like twitching statues, occasionally sniffing corners or checking up on the scuffle of cats marauding by their periphery.

Miguel sat on the turret behind me, watching our perimeter with the machine gun while Luke was behind the wheel. Aria had insisted on coming along, telling me how she had wanted "to see the little bitch cry." We left everyone else in the farmhouse.

Payne scoffed, shaking his head. "This won't work. Try again, dipshit."

"I haven't even started yet," I said. "Give it time."

I hadn't interrogated someone before, nor had I ever gone so far as hurting them to get what I wanted. I had always told myself only the cruelest of bullies did that, and for a time, I had considered Logan and his clique to be part of those people. I had thought Logan would step up into the plate and done it, but he had surprised me when he said he had no idea how to do it. It seemed everyone in the group had already determined that I should do the "honor" of breaking Payne. I couldn't admit that most of the interrogation tactics I had learned were from movies or and police procedurals, and I was skeptical whether they would work in real life.

What I am good at, however, was improvised the fuck out of it.

"You don't want to go down there," Payne said, trying to gaslight me. "You're the biggest idiot if you think that is a good idea. If your plan is to get me to talk by bringing me close to those things, you'll get infected. You'll die, and you'll get your friends killed."

"We can try."

"Fuck you."

"What's with the language? I'm trying to have a civil conversation."

"I'm not giving you what you want."

"You don't know what I want."

"Oh, I think I do," he said, letting out a smile with one side of his lips. "You want to get inside the walls, well, bad luck, buddy. I'm not giving you shit, so you might as well give up now, kid. I'm a soldier of the United States Army. I am not going to betray my friends."

I chuckled. "What are you, nineteen? Twenty? A couple of years older than me? And I admire your tenacity and loyalty to the corps. My father served for a long time. If only you respected people instead of treating them like garbage, I wouldn't treat you like this. No need to call me a kid when you're as immature as they come."

"But that's what you are. A sad little bitch."

"Motherf—" Logan started, but I held my finger up. I gave him a glare that said I would handle this.

"Yes. I am the bad bitch who just beat up your friends and shot you. And yes, I do want to get inside the walls. Everyone does."

Payne held his tongue.

"Fine. I'll bite hard if you want it that way, but you're not going to like it. You will tell me the gate you came from, explain these maps and the routes of every scouting team, and the posted sentries. Schedules, codes, supplies, everything, including your base, where you sleep, eat, and shit. Oh, also your call signs." I pointed at the upper-left corner of the regional map where Thompsons Lake was. "Number 34. I'm guessing that was you and your team?"

Payne stayed silent, his narrowed eyes shooting daggers at me.

I stepped forward, inches away from his face. I didn't have to worry about him grabbing me when Logan had binds wrapped around Payne's wrist, tight enough that his skin had turned red from the rope burns.

"I was hoping you'd make it a little easier for us," I said. "As you may have realized by now, we are running out of time, so maybe you thought: hey, I'll just fucking wait for these idiots to tire out until backup arrives. There are a few holes there. First, no one knows where you are. Second, what makes you think you won't be dead by then? I mean, you should think it over when an interrogation has a close deadline, which means the things I'm about to do to you are going to be far worse than you can ever imagine."

"You don't have the guts. You can't kill me. I'm no good to you dead."

"I've killed your friends, including the people who used to wear these uniforms," I said, pointing at my combat uniform. It was a lie, but I was hoping he couldn't see through my facade. I had a shoddy poker face, so I masked it up by looking out to the town again. Luckily, he didn't seem to recognize the name tag.

I continued, "I've killed many of them down there, too. We survived New York City, and I'm sure a couple of dozen or so infected will be a cakewalk. But I can't say the same thing to you. I may need you right now, but that doesn't mean I also need your legs, arms, or even your eyes. Just your tongue. The rest are garbage."

His smile dissipated. "Bullshit. You, uh, you can't do that! And everyone in the city died when the terrorists detonated a dirty bomb."

"And yet we're here! As for the latter, well, whose bullshitting now?"

"This virus is a biological weapon from a foreign state coming to attack our country..." Payne started muttering.

I glanced at Logan and Aria skeptically, and they only gave me a wary shrug. "Is that so?"

"Can't you see we're at war? America is under attack! And you are too busy fighting your own people."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before sexually assaulting one of them," Aria spat.

I gave her another glare, reminding her to let me handle this.

Payne showed no remorse at all. "I could have brought you into the walls, but you lost your chance, slut."

Well, screw civility. I threw a punch; my knuckles made contact at the bridge of his nose. I winced from the pain, but not so much as the muffled cry as the soldier's nose bled.

"Mah-fukin-nush!" Payne exclaimed.

"Relax. It's not broken, just misplaced. I've seen worse. Trust me. I'm an expert in breaking noses."

"Em-goin-to-fukin-kill-yuf!"

"Take care of his nose," I said to Logan.

Logan grabbed Payne's chin and turned his head to face him. Logan didn't hesitate to grab his nose and corrected it. A bone snapped tight, and Payne let out another yelp. Miguel was the only one laughing up on the turret.

"When Captain Ramos gets you, he's going to do much worse," Payne said, his voice still sounded stuffy as if he had food between his cheeks. At least I could understand him now.

"Well, I look forward to it, but I highly doubt that'll happen." I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back inside the humvee. "We're heading into town."

Mind you, I had doubts if I was going to pull it off. Luke slowly stepped on the gas, and the humvee moved forward, heading into town. I came close to abandoning the plan and telling them this was some big mistake, but I had dipped my toes into the deep end, and all I could do was stay quiet and sink.

—

Luke drove by the north side of Greenville on the road that led downtown, switching the headlights off as we got closer, and pushed into the township at a turtle's pace. I could see the vectors' silhouettes from a couple of burning buildings lighting up the night. The electricity still worked in most parts of the state, the power grid hadn't collapsed yet, and the humvee was bathed in the neon lights of some of the broken and looted stores.

"Keep your eyes out," I told the others, and they nodded back to me.

I pushed Payne closer to the back windows, which faced downtown Greenville. The streets cast a dark shadow over the large corners, marked only by three streetlights that hum with a yellow-orange glow and coupling with the neon blinking signs, the crisp spring air feeding the fires, and the low guttural croaks of the infected not far behind. I was impressed that Luke managed to drive as quietly as possible. Once he would step on the gas, the engines would drive the vectors into a frenzy.

"See that man with a big bite on his neck. That's how he turned," I told Payne, pointing to a man in a velvet bathrobe and nothing else. "I don't know what this Captain Ramos or some other CO told you, but that is how the infection is spread. Saliva, brain matter, but not the blood. I've waded through tons of viscera, but it never got to me. I think it dies once it is outside the body, but bites get you fast. The bites instantly get into your system, and you turn in less than a day. I've seen one turn within eight hours. Some even three minutes."

Payne paled and started sweating.

"The process of turning into one of them can be...painful. Very painful," I added.

I had my hand on Payne's shoulder, and I could feel him trembling. Payne didn't want to look at us. He desperately tried to hide his fear, but seeing the embodiment of death for the first time couldn't compound the gravity of reality. This was the monster he had heard behind the walls, and now he had come face-to-face with it.

"How...how is that thing alive?" Payne whispered. His eyes bore down on the infected man in the bathrobe. He had a large chunk of his shoulder and a little bit of his neck missing, and he was bleeding profusely.

"I don't know, some weird virus shit. Frankly, I haven't thought far enough about why they exist, Private. All I know is that they kill, which is enough for me to stay clear from them," I said sarcastically.

"We should get out of here," he said, turning away from the window.

"Relax. I'm educating you."

"Stop. I want to get out of here."

"But I don't care what you want. Tonight's not about you; it's about me and what I want, remember?"

"I—" he paused, thinking. His eyes grew wide, then dropped, biting his lower lip as he contemplated his next move. In the end, I was disappointed. "This doesn't change anything. I'm still not giving you shit."

I sighed and moved to the front, leaving Payne with Logan and Aria. I reached for the radio dial, but Luke shot out and grabbed my wrist. Miguel reeled back as if I had touched the detonator.

"What the heck are you doing?" He hissed.

"The humvee acts like a panic room in wheels. They can't get in. They didn't do that when Alfie and I were stuck in one." I looked up and made sure the turret hatch was secured shut. "Trust me."

Luke narrowed his eyes, and Miguel sucked in a deep breath, reaching down for his pistol. Luke had his hands on the wheels, ready to step on the gas when the situation turned to hell. He gave me a curt nod, and I turned on the radio.

NSYNC's Bye Bye Bye blasted through the speakers. Logan and Aria both stiffened, and Payne's face was strung in between abject horror and constipation. The music vibrated against the humvee's enclosed space, but outside, reverberating outside.

Against the upbeat, catchy tune, the rasping deathly rattle of the vectors joining with the crescendo was horrifying to listen to, all at once coming like an orchestra of sirens converging onto an island in the raging storm.

The bathrobe-clad vector was the first to reach the humvee. He smashed into the back of the vehicle, banged his head real bad against the window that I could hear his skull split open, but luckily, he didn't even leave a measly scratch. The windows were bulletproof, and they could hold a beating from a vector's fist. He shrieked as he struggled to get inside where the prey was, one of which had screamed, rivaling the scream queens from the eighties' horror movies. Payne wiggled his way to the middle of the vehicle, wanting to hide behind us, keeping his distance from the vectors farther and farther while he screamed as if his balls had been taken from him.

I almost yawned, but I had my hand already on my holster.

"Drive! Drive!" Payne squealed.

Everyone was staring at me, but I looked at the vectors as they reached the humvee. No scratches. However, they were maniacal, searching on every crevice, straining for the way in. By the one-minute mark, I counted at least nine vectors outside, and more were still coming. Two had climbed on top. Payne reeled back and pressed his body against the floor, afraid that the turret latch would suddenly open, and the infected would pour into the cramped space. They tried the hatch, but it didn't budge.

It was as if I was in an aquarium, looking at the dangerous predators out through the acrylic viewing panels. I could get so close to the vectors by a hair length, and they couldn't touch me. I was tempted to stare at one of them and make faces, sticking my tongue out like a five-year-old, and made fun of them all day. I snapped out of it once I remembered I had to interrogate Payne.

"They can be killed, of course," I continued with my tirade. "They're not the T-800 per se, but they come pretty close. I can say they are the new apex predators of humanity. Like any living creature, you have to destroy the brain. Duh. It's obvious, but I have seen one die of blood loss from missing limbs or having too many holes from bullets, so they can still die like us. Striking the head, however, brings them down instantly."

"This virus takes control of a host, and once in control, doesn't need to sleep, eat, shit, or get tired. How far do you think you'll go without sleeping, or eating, or shitting, or still have the energy to run for hours? After all, we are miles away from Albany. Do you have it in you to run with these things behind you when you're wounded, tired, and weaponless?"

Payne stared back at me; sweat gleamed on his forehead. He was breathing hard through his nose.

I smiled. "Let's find out."

I turned to Luke and told him to drive. He stepped on the gas, lurching the humvee forward, and ran over a couple of the vectors. I flinched, hoping that none of the engines had been damaged. I made a mental note to check up on it quickly once we get back into the farm before heading for the walls. I told Luke to keep the speed at twenty miles per hour, the vectors sprinting after us.

"What are you crazy? Drive faster!" Payne yelled. Luke ignored him.

We found our way back to the top of the hill overlooking Greenville, a good quarter mile from downtown. I slithered to Payne's side and took out my knife. I then cut the ropes. Logan tried to stop me, placing his hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.

I opened the back hatch of the humvee and threw Payne out into the cold. I flung the knife after him, clattering onto the ground. The others protested all at once, but I ignored them, telling Luke to stop thirty yards ahead. He did.

I hopped out of the vehicle with my rifle. I motioned for Logan to follow and then ordered Miguel up on the turret.

"Shoot anything that moves besides us," I told Miguel. He opened the hatch and climbed up, taking the position. "Luke, keep the engine running. Aria, watch our backs."

I stopped five feet away from the vehicle, feeling naked out in the open, even though I was wearing full combat fatigues. Ahead of us, Payne tried to get up as the vectors turned the corner going up the hill.

"Switch to night vision," I told Logan.

Payne grabbed the knife as Bathrobe Man lunged. Payne screamed, repeatedly stabbing Bathrobe Man on the chest. Blade and screams filled the night as Bathrobe Man tried to claw Payne's face off before I sent a bullet through his neck. He went down instantly. Payne whisked looked up, blood all over his face.

"They're coming!" Logan bellowed, and we started shooting.

Payne frantically ran toward us, screaming. Any vector that came close to touching his back had bitten the bullet. One got too close as I reloaded my weapon, but Payne flung his knife behind him. It only hit the vector's shoulder, and it didn't even stick into his flesh. Still, the vector stopped momentarily to block the throw with his arms, surprising me. I had never seen them do that before. Miguel's machine gun went off as he started mowing down the growing horde behind Payne.

Payne reached us, panting with a deer-on-headlights look on his face, and Logan and I parted to let him through. He jumped into the back of the humvee; Logan climbed in next while I was the last, closing the back hatch.

"Drive!" I shouted. I wasn't worried; we had thinned their numbers that they were a good twenty yards away.

Luke stepped on the gas again and drove off.

"Am I infected?" Payne screeched. Aria checked him for bites, but after a minute, she shook her head.

Logan leaned to my ear, "That was pretty stupid."

"I ain't done yet," I said.

Logan thinned his lips but didn't say anything more.

No matter. I tried to be civil, and now I went for the jugular.

"In the next quarter-mile, I am going to ask my friend to stop again. I will do what I just did, and you know those things are not far behind. They'll reach you in less than a minute the moment I throw you out. But this time, I will not save you. I can find another soldier who will be useful to me. As I said earlier, I have no time to waste, and this map—" I showed him the county map with markings of symbols and numbers—"shows me the next scouts nearby. I can ambush them, and I can get my information another way."

I leaned over close to his face, pulling out my pistol and putting the barrel on his left knee. "I can make this harder for you. I can blow your kneecap so that you can't run, you can't hide, and all you can do is watch those things tear you apart. I'll give you this pistol, though, but I will only leave you with one bullet. I'll let you decide what to do with it."

Payne stifled a gasp.

"So, make this easy for both of us."

I handed him the map.

Payne let out a deep breath, frowning. He took one look at the back windows, at the fading vectors on the horizon, and turned back to look at me, unsettled.

Payne told me everything.