Infected (Releasing the Magic Book 1)

by Maya Riley

  A faint noise caught our attention though, a sound that didn’t belong.

  I moved in front of Maura and walked slowly in the direction of the strange shuffling noises. Bending down, I pushed some low branches out of the way and saw what looked to be a structure. Some sort of building covered in so many vines, that the only give away that it was a structure was the large, rusted door.

  The strange sound seemed to be coming from the inside, as though something, or someone, was banging on the door, begging to be let out. The sound was a steady rhythm, slow and even counts in between each thump.

  Seeing no threat between us and the door, I pulled Maura along behind me as I made a run for it, covering the thirty-foot distance in almost record time.

  Our backs slammed against the solid surface beneath the vines with a little more force put into our landing than intended. The steady banging sound on the other side of the door next to us stopped, going completely silent. My pulse picked up in anticipation as we waited to see what happened next. The seconds stretched on and I reached out a hand for the handle, grasping it slowly and steadily.

  Before I could make a motion, rapid banging startled me and I jumped back, clutching a dagger in each hand. Whatever was on the other side of that door seemed very intent on getting out. Or getting us.

  “Hello?” I called out, wary. I was only greeted with more banging coupled with grunts.

  “What is that?” Maura voiced the question going through both of our minds. “Could that be a rotter? It’s moving a little fast, I wouldn’t think rotters could pound on a door like that.”

  I thought back to the day Jonah pulled me out of the river. The reason I’d gone into the river in the first place was because of a psycho rotter with crazy speed. If the same type was beyond that door, then this would only be the second time I’ve come across one like that.

  “Maura, come on, let’s go. We should leave.”

  “No, what if it’s a person and they’re trapped?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “You know what it’s like to be trapped in a world that turns a blind eye. A world where others find it easier to walk away and ignore the problem. I’m not going to be one of those people.” She pulled away from me and stepped toward the door. “We’ve got to at least see.”

  Before I could stop her, she twisted the handle and was opening the door. A decayed human, long ago infected, clad in an orange jumpsuit, stumbled out and landed hard on the ground. Before I could see what he would do next, a dagger was sticking through his skull and he was sprawled on the ground, unmoving.

  “See? I can handle it.” And with that, Maura disappeared through the door. This may actually be one of those instances where curiosity really did kill the cat. I followed my crazy sister into the creepy, abandoned building with a dagger braced in each hand.

  We left the door open behind us, since neither one of us was willing to chance getting locked inside a strange, unknown place. The morning light trickled in, illuminating a hallway. Broken glass and crumpled papers trailed into the dark. We went as far as the natural light would go before we were thrown into utter darkness. Still, my curiosity was piqued. I wasn’t ready to turn around. Holding both daggers in one hand, I braced my free hand against the wall and continued on. Maura must be curious as well, as she continued to follow without any complaints.

  We reached a break in the wall, an intersection in the hallway blocked by a swinging door. I turned my body slightly to the right and noticed, through the small window in the door, streams of light shining on the floor every several feet down the intersecting hall. I’d never been so grateful for a skylight before. I pushed my way through the door with Maura close behind. My hand searched out the wall again, wanting to feel the only piece of familiarity in this place.

  We slowly made our way down, our eyes on the light up ahead, stepping over broken objects littered along the floor. I gasped when the solid wall turned into cool, metal cylinders. I ran my hand along the cylinders that seemed to make up the rest of the hall. As we neared the light, an open door was illuminated, giving way to a room inside the wall. I peered through the bars to see an operating room. At least, that’s what the inside looked like with the hospital beds and all the surgical equipment. None of the operating rooms on TV ever had bars like this though.

  “Maura,” I whispered. “These are cages.”

  “Is this a jail?”

  “I don’t know what this place is, but something doesn’t feel right.”

  She appeared at my side, seeing the same thing I did. Being someone with unquenchable curiosity, she stepped around me and entered the room. “We could use these blankets. We could bring them back with us, it wouldn’t be difficult to carry a couple extra blankets and pillows. At least the pillows for sure, that’s something you don’t find a lot of.” She shoveled the single blanket and pillow into her arms and turned to leave the room when she froze in place. “Blyss,” was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

  Lincoln

  Water sloshed around in the canister attached to my pack as I stumbled along the trail. It was my fault we were even in this mess. When B walked out that door yesterday all upset, it nearly tore me in two. I’d never meant to hurt her. Seeing her run away like that hurt me more than I was ready to admit. Yet I still let the asshole out, the one I’ve always managed to keep caged until now. We all had a monster hidden somewhere inside of us and mine scared her away.

  Nothing I said had been true. Every bit of it had been my own insecurities that I’d projected onto her because I couldn’t man up and deal with my shit. When she didn’t come back last night, we could only wait so long for her to return. We’d split into teams. Mateo and Adam paired up, Jonah and I went with Puppy, and Maura remained at the cabin. Although when we doubled back shortly after to grab Maura and have her join us and keep an eye on her, the cabin was empty. We should’ve known she wouldn’t stay put. Dammit. Now we had two to search for. Hopefully she’d find B and they’d be safe.

  We went out searching, with no luck. The only thing we came across were rotters and the random animals that have been running around, flourishing. Even Puppy had trouble following her scent. Whether it was because of our lack of hygiene, or there were too many rotter and other animal scents mixed in out here, I didn’t know, but Puppy wasn’t handling this too well. I must have really fucked up bad for B to run out and leave Puppy behind. I wouldn’t forgive myself if something happened to her.

  I had no doubt she could defend herself for one night, that girl was tougher than nails and the most stubborn one I’d ever come across. Granted, she had a lot of obstacles, but she always came out on top.

  Leaves crunched under my boots as I carried on. Neither of us had any intention of returning to the cabin without our girl and we’d stay out here searching for as long as it took.

  Puppy stopped and sniffed at a thorn bush, her nose invested in a specific spot. Crouching down, I peered at what she was sniffing. The faint moonlight streaming through the trees illuminated a red substance on some thorns. I reached out my hand and gently brushed at it—dried blood. If this belonged to B, then we were on the right track. My back stiffened. Blood meant she was injured. I waved a hand in the air, beckoning Jonah to come take a look. His face hardened when he saw what I did. There was just enough moonlight to make out his sign: Hurry. He jumped up and rushed away with Puppy in the lead. Cursing, I tied another slip of red fabric and continued after them.

  Every so often since we set out, I’d stop just long enough to tie a red scrap of fabric onto a branch, leaving a trail so we could find our way back. Or so the other guys could come after us if needed. Hell, I’d be surprised if they weren’t already on their way. Despite Mateo’s piss-ass attitude toward B, I knew he cared for her as much as I did, if not more.

  He acted like she was nothing but a thorn in his side, but the rest of us could tell that he enjoyed every moment of her challenging nature. B was the only girl I’d seen who
had witnessed his bad attitude and stuck around. Except for the psycho bitch Conni that took out his eye, but she sure as hell didn’t stay. She was never going to come near him again if I had any say in it.

  We even had this talk the day at the fire station when B went outside to face rotters on her own. We’d confirmed that we all had feelings for her, even Mateo. He couldn’t deny it now. She’d stayed with us, and that was saying a lot.

  Well, for a while there she didn’t have much choice with her ankle, but when we ran from the burning fire station, she still stuck with us. I’d like to think it was for the same reasons we had for sticking around her. At least, she sure as hell knew how I felt about her.

  Puppy took off running and I cursed, having to move so much faster all of a sudden. My leg was doing much better now that it’d been healed some, but it still wasn’t one hundred percent. I caught up right as Puppy’s front paws were pushing against a massive tree trunk, her nose sniffing at every molecule it could get. Her back paws were standing on top of rotter carcasses and I took note of the severed heads that were beginning to become B’s trademark.

  Jonah pointed at a branch and I caught sight of what he was seeing—long strands of brown hair caught on the bark of the branch, swaying in the wind. This must be where she slept, he signed. Good, so we were on the right track.

  Nose back to the ground, Puppy led us away from the tree, following the trail. We’d better find them soon.

  Blyss

  The pounding in my head increased the more awake I became. Soft hands held my face on either side and I found comfort from their familiar touch. A ringing in my ears made it difficult to make out the garbled words that I believed were aimed at me. Slowly, I peeled my eyes open. It was dim, the only light in the room trickled down from a skylight nearby.

  “Blyss!”

  “Ahh! What?” The ringing stopped and the words hit me at full force. My sister was yelling in my face and I threw my arms out to push her away before she burst an eardrum. “I’m here, chill out. What happened?”

  My body registered the cold concrete beneath me. I was on the floor, but had no idea how I got there.

  “That happened.” Maura pointed to a body a few feet away, laying on its back and unmoving. “A rotter, but it had freaking inhuman speed and strength. It rammed into you and you fell down, unconscious. I think you hit your head on the bars. I barely managed to take it out, I thought this would be the end. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Tears began to leak down her face, glistening in the pale light.

  A psycho rotter. I had seen something like it once before, one that had nearly caused me to drown. Could it be the same one? I scooted closer to get a better look. Long red hair, looked most likely to have been female. Not the one from the river. I began to breathe a sigh of relief but then stopped halfway through. This meant that there were more out there. That one was not the only rotter anomaly. How many more were there? Rapidly decreasing the human population even more?

  I wrapped my arms around Maura, pulling her into a tight hug, and we sat there. She was shaking in my arms, her sobs subsiding as I calmed her. I rubbed a hand up and down her back to soothe her, and her breath hitched as I hit a spot on her arm, and I stopped. “Maura?”

  She didn’t answer, so I pushed her back to look at her face. “Are you hurt?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  My eyes widened at her denial. “Please don’t tell me…”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s not what you’re thinking. I was thrown against the cell bars and my arm hurts from the impact. I promise, like I said, it’s nothing. Only a bruise, it’ll be good.”

  “Maybe I could—”

  “No,” she interrupted me. “I know you have some freaky healing thing, but I’m good.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Not of you, necessarily. Just of what you can do. You haven’t mastered it yet, and I don’t know what’ll happen.”

  “You mean aside from having a working arm again?” I challenged.

  She nodded. “Maybe later. I… Maybe wait until we know more about it.”

  “Okay. It’s not broken though, right?”

  “No, just bruised some.”

  “Can I see?” I lowered my voice, trying to express a sense of calmness. I was stubborn when it came to the safety of those I cared about and needed to make sure they were okay.

  She hesitated but relented, pulling one side of her jacket sleeve down to expose the tender flesh of her upper arm. I couldn’t see much in the dimness so I reached my fingers out to feel and she pulled back, moving the jacket back into place. “We should get moving.”

  We got to our feet and moved into the hallway to continue heading in the direction we were before. I knew we should probably get out of there instead of continuing on deeper into whatever this place was, but I couldn’t seem to turn around.

  It wasn’t much longer before we got to another intersection in the hallway, and this time we went left. I began sliding my hand along the wall again, feeling our way about. A few more feet down and my foot kicked something hard and it rolled away. I followed the sound and bent down to pick it up, feeling along its cylindrical form. I pressed in the rubber button at the end and a bright light illuminated our surroundings. A flashlight! How useful.

  My eyes followed the beam to see a series of rooms lining both sides of the hall, all enclosed with large glass windows that served as walls. Inside each of these rooms was one bed, one toilet, and one sink that were mostly overturned. Pieces of metal and broken porcelain coated each of the floors. Some rooms had opened doors or broken windows, and bits of flesh and blood were splattered across the floors and walls. What caught my attention the most, though, were the rooms with something in them. Or someone. I walked to the nearest glass cell and placed a hand against the glass before kneeling down. A man lay on the floor, his own hand pressed up against the glass door. His body was emaciated, his sunken eyes wide and begging to be let out. His chest remained still, his last breath having passed long before we got here. He was a human, no sign of infection on him that I could see.

  “Blyss.” I tore my eyes away from the man in front of me to turn to Maura. She was standing in front of another glass cell, with shock and terror etched across her face. I moved to stand by her to see what she was seeing. On the other side of the glass cell stood a rotter in an orange jumpsuit. Not another normal rotter though. He was moving around the room quickly and pounding on the glass. I suddenly became very grateful for this barrier between us.

  The rotter’s mouth opened in a silent scream—the glass cages must have been sound proofed. Its dead eyes looked right through us, knowing that someone was out here but unable to see.

  “What is this place? It has all of these cells and some of them have actual people inside, and some have rotters. This looks like another psycho rotter.”

  “I don’t know, Maura.”

  “When news of the Void Virus hit the TVs and radios, and everyone began scrambling about, I never once heard any mention of where it had originated from. Nobody seemed to know where it came from, it just popped up one day and the world was doomed.”

  I took her hand in mine, still standing side by side. “I don’t know, Maura. It could be.”

  The rotter’s pounding began to intensify. The glass wall started to shake until I could see the vibrations. I pulled Maura along behind me, heading farther down the corridor and away from the psycho rotter in case it managed to break out. If it had been locked away inside since the beginning of the outbreak and hadn’t broken out yet, I didn’t want to be the reason it suddenly gained the strength to do so. I didn’t want to find out just how hungry a rotter would be after so many months of not eating. Not that they ever seemed to be satiated anyways.

  We continued walking down the hall with the flashlight guiding our way, passing one cell after another. The interior of most of the cells were destroyed. Beds overturned and torn apart, some were flooded from damaged pipes, with broken
porcelain strewn about.

  Some had dark red marks smeared around the floors and walls. There were rotting substances that I didn’t even want to begin to identify. No cell had more than one single occupant, which was either a dead human, most likely having starved to death after the building was abandoned, or the occasional rotter who turned its head in our direction as we passed, sensing our presence. The dead humans sickened me the most, and I didn’t want to meet the kind of people who would abandon the innocent.

  We moved quickly so we didn’t cause a disturbance, occasionally looking back behind us for any surprise danger.

  The building became a kaleidoscope of rooms and hallways that blended together, and it wasn’t long before we lost track of where we’d come from. We’d tried to backtrack, but then ended up in a new section that looked like all the others. It was a never-ending maze and we were regretting having ever stepped foot in this place. There was a good chance we’d meet the same fate as the previous occupants.

  Noises began to echo down each hallway, the horizontal columns of empty space making it impossible to decipher where they were coming from. I tried to identify them, to figure out if they were rotter or human, friend or foe. Then a loud crashing noise sounded, and I jumped before rushing into the nearest open door and securing it behind us.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned around to gauge our surroundings, and I froze. What lay in front of me was something I’d only seen in my dreams, in my nightmares of the past. Some nights when I was reliving my time with Mama G, appearing only when I was asleep, the scene would shift and I never knew why. Every time I’d woken up afterward, I’d never even given it a second thought.

  I stood there breathless, as though I’d been thrown under a steamroller, and looked at rows and rows of cribs. All of them were grey, with no sign of individuality. I knew, without looking, that each one had grey sheets, a grey blanket, and a small grey pillow inside.