He was a sniper before, in the war before this. In the war that, for all its chaos and meaninglessness, still made more sense than this. On the rooftop now, a breeze blew and it kicked up the scent of diesel fuel from an overturned 18-wheeler on the highway. The smell reminded him of that other war, of the mountainous Afghan town where he was stationed, of the diesel trucks and generators powering everything from street vendors’ carts to a newly-built school’s lights on dark winter mornings. He remembered the twin boys from that school who would ask to try on his gear. He remembered them, tried to guess their ages at the time. Ten, maybe eleven at most. But with the brutal muscularity that boys have in places where strength is necessary. Tiny men’s bodies. Tiny soldier’s bodies.
The diesel smell was just one of the scents the Albuquerque wind brought to his rooftop. For a while, it was just the one smell. The decaying smell. The putrefaction of all of the bodies in the Red Cross’s makeshift emergency room. The military was able to hold off the sickened masses from the repurposed recreation center for an admirable amount of time. But as he’d seen in the other war, too, desperation makes men and women both stronger and weaker than they could ever imagine. Before long, stores of food and water were running out and even the Marines were fighting among themselves. He had watched from the rooftop as the people inside made an attempt to escape, and as they were devoured by the sickened. He had watched their bodies bake and bleach in the New Mexico sun, a few reanimating to scavenge the streets. For days the death-stench would waft upward to his post, but as the desert heat intensified into the midsummer months, and as the monsoons washed their blood into the gutters, the sage-filled, sandy, summer smell returned. The smell of his childhood at his grandfather’s ranch in Bernalillo. And of course, the smell of teenage summertimes, parked in the desert, making love to her in the backseat of his Chevy Nova.
He arched his back, stretched his muscles, tried to focus on the pain in his back instead of the pain all over that every memory of her would always inspire. He stared intently through the scope of the sniper rifle, hoping that a target would make itself plain, something he could take down. Usually popping a sickened or two would take his mind off of her. It didn’t last long, but it helped get him through the day. The roof of the high-school-turned-lofts had a splendid view of downtown, offering a vantage point for most of Central Boulevard and parts of the surrounding neighborhoods. Usually there was something to kill. And nothing short of killing something kept her from creeping back into his mind.
Today was tougher, though. It was October now, and the leaves on the few deciduous trees downtown were changing to a fierce yellow. The breeze tossed the leaves like confetti into the air, and imbued it with the bitter, tea-like perfume of autumn. He didn’t know what day of the month it was, and even “October” was a tenuous guess, but it was close enough. He remembered seeing her for the first time in her wedding dress, walking under the Old Town Square trees to the gazebo, a slow cascade of yellow leaves falling around her as she walked. Must have been almost ten years ago, he thought, desperately scanning the boulevards for a sickened to take down. He remembered her black hair gently blowing back from her bare, freckled shoulders as she approached him. He remembered her smile, all red lipstick and crooked teeth and nervousness. He remembered kissing the bride.
Pop.
An elderly sickened emerged from an underpass and immediately slumped to the ground. The soldier’s mind refocused for a moment. He took another breath and began to scan the arroyos.
It had to be close to their anniversary. Which meant it was also close to the ten-year-mark of when he was shipped off. Which meant it was close to the eight-year mark of when she started fucking his stepbrother. He hunched his shoulders.
Movement, then, faint at first but growing louder. He strained to hear. A familiar shuffling and muted, bestial howls. There were a lot of them, somewhere close and getting closer. First just a few were visible, walking the middle of a dry arroyo. Then dozens, then maybe a hundred. He tried to calculate how much ammunition was still available in the sporting goods store down the street, the one he’d been raiding for months now. It was pretty picked-over when he got there, but it had sustained him this far. His mind briefly alighted on a long-term plan. How much longer would he stay, picking off the sickened, passively waiting for signs of healthy life while feeding off the canned goods left in the lofts below? He walked to the opposite corner of the rooftop, toward the direction of the wailing sounds of the sickened. They had someone, he thought. They always howled like that when they were hunting live prey.
Then he saw her. Through the scope it was unclear at first, then his heart swelled into his throat and beat at a rabbit’s pace. She was bitten. Probably only hours from sickening. They were after her. She was limping down the arroyo, trying at times to walk up the the sides, but it only slowed her down. Her hair blew around her face as the breeze gusted into a full-blown desert wind. Dust and sand obscured her for a moment, then she was clear in the frame of the rifle scope.
He remembered the first night they slept together. Blake’s burgers and a sunset, vanilla cokes, driving to the top of Sandia, finding a dark spot to pull over, making love in the way only teenagers do, as if death were coming and only their fumbling passion could hold it off another day. He remembered the last time he’d seen her before today. The day he came home. A party with American flags and his grandmother’s tamales. And her, making an obligatory, wounding appearance, smiling sadly at his friends and family. It had all been said by then, of course. She was young, she couldn’t wait or him, they both had changed, Ernesto had been there for her, but could they please still be friends? The same cliches he’d seen with half his platoon. Young men, young women, impatience. Love that, when tested by PTSD, amputations and every kind of distance, doesn’t survive.
She and the mob were much closer now, and now; he was positive it was her. She was thinner, like everyone who had survived. She was flushed and obviously weakened. Blood stained her dark green pants near a wound on her thigh. She was losing ground to the sickened. She must know from the bite that she has no hope of survival, he thought. She knows… but she’s still running. But then, what choice does she have? Their peculiar, plaintive calls echoed from the bowl of the arroyo.
He arched his back, stood up. He stretched his neck from side to side. There was the familiar anger within him, the anger that had fueled the killing of dozens of insurgents and by now, God knows how many sickened. Before he had found out about her and Ernesto, the killing had been harder. He shook when he aimed. He’d shake for hours afterward. He was told he would never be a sniper and they suspended his training, tried to figure out how to use him. But once the divorce papers were signed, the trigger nearly pulled itself. He was a bullet-delivery unit. A conduit for swift and accurate death. The best sniper they had, they said. When they redeployed him, time and time again, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t his anymore. And since then, the only world he cared about was the one he saw in the crosshairs.
Squaring his shoulders again, he took aim, tracking her down the arroyo. She was almost walking directly toward the lofts, slower now, as the sickened, and the sickness, began to close in on her. Desperately, she was looking around her, as if trying to see everything she could before she could see nothing at all. A gust picked up, and a shower of locust leaves, yellow and small, fell around her, onto the sickened, all around. She looked up. It was almost as if she was looking at him, her black hair swirling around her face. He breathed out and squeezed the trigger. The shot was clean. Her neck arched, and she fell back. The locust leaves fell gently onto her body.
He took to the matter of the rest. Mechanically, accurately, he took them down as they converged on her motionless body. He exhausted a clip before the sickened began to disperse. They would eventually move off, he’d discovered, if the smell of their own dead overwhelmed that of the fresh. They wandered away from her body, their howls quieting into the grunts and growls signifying a failed hunt.
He turned around and slumped to the ground, leaning his back against the short wall of the rooftop. He shook. Shaking as though it were his first kill. Shaking like after that moment on Sandia. He took the barrel of the rifle in his mouth a moment, shaking, sobbing, the butt of the gun resting between his feet. How to pull the trigger now?
No. Not yet.
He threw the rifle to his side. It skittered and spun on the rooftop, landing with the scope and barrel pointed toward him. He folded his arms on his knees and sobbed heavily, like a child. He arched his neck and screamed, the sound of it echoing through the silent, ruined city. As the sound faded, he sat in silence, breathing deeply, looking straight ahead. The sun hung full and low behind him, though it was only afternoon. Shadows of trees, buildings, his own shadow, were stretched long against the low orange cast of the autumn sunshine. It would be winter soon. He had to make a choice.
He walked over, picked up the rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He walked to his pack of food and water, nestled in a corner of the rooftop’s low, brick wall, and picked it up. He looked down, the long way down to Central Boulevard. Time to go, he thought. Maybe there was nothing left, maybe he would die in the desert. But he had to get the hell out of Albuquerque.
Today was a sad day for visionaries. Today, we mourn the loss of 
