Chronicles of the Infected Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Wood, Rick

  “Hey, Donny, come on!”

  Donny couldn’t move.

  Gus marched back to Donny’s side and grabbed his arm, trying to turn him around. He wouldn’t budge.

  “What are you doing?” he interrogated.

  “I did this…” Donny asked.

  Tears cascaded down Donny’s cheeks.

  “You had to, mate.”

  “I did this. I ki – I actually… I can’t believe I…”

  “You what?”

  “I ki – I ki –”

  “You killed them, Donny. You need to say it.”

  Donny shook his head.

  Gus could hear distant snarls growing closer.“Say it, kid, or you ain’t ever going to be able to move.”

  “I can’t…”

  “Hear that sound? That’s a horde coming this way. We need to go.”

  Donny covered his face.

  Gus grabbed hold of Donny’s arms and threw them aside. Donny’s eyes were scrunched closed, so Gus smacked him around the face to force them to open.

  “Look at me!”

  Donny did as he was told.

  “Repeat after me. I killed them.”

  “No.”

  “Do it!”

  Donny looked deep into Gus’s eyes, seeing his resolve, his adamant determination that Donny would verbalise what he did. Donny knew he needed to. He could hear them getting closer. He knew they weren’t far away.

  “I…”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I killed them, Gus.”

  “Yeah.” Gus nodded. Donny went to look away, but Gus lifted his head by the chin, forcing Donny to look into his eyes. “You did. You fuckin’ killed them. An’ I’m grateful for it. ’Cause if you didn’t, I’d be dead, and so would you. You did the right thing.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Now move your feet.”

  Gus grabbed hold of Donny’s arm and dragged him forward with enough strength that he couldn’t have stayed rooted to the spot if he’d tried to. He dragged him away, forcing him through the wooded area.

  Eventually, Donny’s legs began shuffling. Gus was able to loosen his grip, then remove his arm entirely. He kept listening to Donny’s steps behind him, keeping pace, until they reached the car.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  They drove in silence for longer than Donny could account for. His head leant against the window, watching the barren wastelands and deserted charcoal houses go by. Barely twenty seconds would go without them shooting past an upturned car, an abandoned, broken-down house, or a mutilated corpse.

  He was almost becoming used to the sight. An hour previous and the thought of death filled him with dread. Now he had taken a life, he simply looked upon the bodies as unfortunate souls. Their faces were ripped apart, their brains bursting through their eye sockets, intestines spilling out of ripped skin – their way of going out was far better than those he had stolen lives from, and that was the way he had to look at it.

  He initially couldn’t move. Just watching the bodies slump helplessly onto the floor, not getting back up again. He had waited, expecting them to retaliate, to jump up and march toward him and beat him to death as an act of impotent revenge.

  They didn’t.

  They just stayed there, on the floor – a mother fleeing from a father and daughter, falling over each other’s bodies.

  Gus had to drag him away.

  Donny had wanted to leave, had wanted to escape the sight, run away from what he’d done. He had willed Gus to throw him over his shoulder and take him kicking and screaming out of there.

  But hadn’t been able to move.

  His legs had felt like lead, as if heavy weights were attached to his ankles by thick rope. He wanted to be sick, yet at the same time, found his stomach empty.

  People were dead.

  Because of him.

  He closed his eyes. There they were again.

  “It was six months ago,” Gus spoke, suddenly interrupting Donny’s mental monologue.

  “What?”

  “It was six months ago, and it was just after the infection, or whatever it is, had hit. The whole of London turned to bedlam. I didn’t know what was going on, what was happening, whether it was just there, the whole country, I did not know. All I knew was what my instinct told me, and it told me it was bad, and I had to hurry, I had to…”

  Donny focussed intently on Gus. He studied the contours of his face, only to find an expression he had not seen in him before. Gus didn’t turn and look at Donny, he kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him. One could be fooled into thinking that this was to drive safely, but Donny knew better.

  “Had to what?” Donny asked.

  “Had to… get back to my family.” His eyes flicked downwards momentarily, then he readjusted his vision back to the road ahead. “I had to get back to my wife. Get back to my daughter.”

  Donny looked over his shoulder at Sadie, who had woken up and leant forward. Even with the poor grasp she appeared to have on the English language, the emotions engraved across Gus’s face were enough to intrigue her subdued attention.

  “So that’s what I did,” Gus continued. “My leg was killing, the bullet lodged in it, it kept me limping. But if it weren’t for that damn bullet, I’d have still been in Afghanistan, and would have been nowhere near my family, and would have stood no chance at helping them. Hell, I don’t even know if the troops over there know what’s going on. It was the only time I felt grateful for being discharged. It had felt like such a disgrace, but in that moment, in that quick, fiery thought, I felt like it was a gift from God.”

  Gus snorted.

  “A gift from God, eh? How pathetic is that. If anything, the only thing this shit has done has either confirmed that there is no God, or if there is, he is an arsehole who needs a good swift punch in the face.”

  He wiped his hands through his hair, keeping his eyes glued ahead.

  Donny said nothing.

  “I didn’t realise at the time that London was turning into the cesspit of it all, but I knew it was going to be quarantined, and I knew I hadn’t long to get them out. I had contacts in the army that may have let me through the edge of the city, but that meant nothing without my family with me. So I got on the motorbike, I raced back, but they… They were…”

  Gus thumped the steering wheel. In a sudden burst of aggression his face turned to a rabid snarl, then abruptly morphed back to inconsolable anguish.

  Donny didn’t move his eyes away from Gus’s. He was transfixed.

  Gus slowed the car down, gradually, until it came to a full halt. He put the handbrake on, switched off the engine, and sat still. He stared at a spot on the road and did not remove his eyes from it.

  “They were already there. So many of them. They had filled my house. I could see my neighbours as I passed them, I could see them fighting, I could see them dying, but worst of all – I could see those bastards, those… fuckers – charging my house.”

  He dropped his head, still not turning his head toward Donny or Sadie. Still keeping his eyes staring anywhere but them.

  “I got in, I killed a load, but – but it was too late. My wife, and my daughter, they were already…”

  Gus lifted his head, turning it slightly toward Donny, but still staring at the ground, still unable to lift his eyes.

  “My wife had even ripped the legs off of my daughter. Our daughter.”

  A difficult silence lingered in the air for a few seconds.

  “I killed them. I had to. I couldn’t let them live. So I killed them. I got my gun, and I shot the undead walking corpses of my wife, and my daughter, in the face.”

  “My God…” Donny whispered.

  “Yeah. So when you hesitate about killing a zombie, or a – a fuckin’ cannibal – you just remember what world we live in now. A world where I – where a guy must kill his own family for their own good. Because he can’t stand to see them eat other families. Then you tell him he needs to cheer up, that he’s to
o ill-tempered, that he should drink less; you tell that broken man that–”

  He paused. Lifted his head. Ran his hands over his face and through his hair.

  He turned toward Donny and looked him in the eyes.

  “Would you mind driving the last hour? I need a kip.”

  “You want me to drive?” Donny asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Gus got out of the car and walked around to Donny’s side, waiting for him to get out.

  Donny did. He took the steering wheel and drove slow and steady for the final sixty minutes, allowing Gus to sit with his eyes closed.

  And for the first time in a while, Gus didn’t scream or cry out. He just slept.

  Minus Four Hours

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  A lonely raindrop planted itself upon the faded scars of Gus’s forehead, prompting a vague flicker from his closed eyelids.

  The open window no longer gave him the aerodynamic wind resistance that indicated they were moving, and he assumed that they had either arrived at London, or they had encountered a problem.

  “What’s going on?” he grunted. “We there?”

  He groggily turned his head, rubbing his fists over his eyes. He grew irritated at the lack of response to his question and sat up, waiting for the blurs to fade from his vision and the inside of the car to return to clarity.

  As he turned to his side, he noticed an empty driver’s seat, and there was no companion nestled in the backseat.

  “What the–”

  Lifting his head, he noticed two figures standing a few yards away, completely still. One could be mistaken for believing they were two waxwork models, such was their lack of movement, except for their unmistakably thin, scrawny bodies.

  Gus kicked the car door open and stumbled out, his nestled bullet sending a shooting pain up and down his leg.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. Despite the bullet being lodged in his body for so long now, the awkward pain still took him by surprise. After stretching his leg out, he managed to limp toward the backs of Sadie and Donny, both stood upon a grassy verge next to a short, steep slope.

  “What the hell? I thought you’d at least wake me when we got–”

  The reason for their stillness and shock became instantly apparent.

  “Jesus Christ,” he gasped.

  Down the steady slope of the verge they stood upon was a wired fence. Behind that was a large brick wall that read the words:

  DANGER

  Quarantine Zone

  DO NOT ENTER under any circumstance

  This sign was large, in white bold writing over a thick red background, repeated every few metres across the wall.

  Do not enter under any circumstance, it read.

  Gus coughed up a laugh.

  “Ironic, ennit?”

  But the other two still didn’t answer.

  As Gus’s eye line lifted, their silence became justified.

  His jaw fell open. He attempted to find the words, but just opened his mouth to inaudible sounds. Incoherent syllables spewed out from between his lips in a hazy stutter, verbalising the disjointed ramblings of his manic, fragmented thoughts.

  The smell hit him first. The overwhelming scent of death. Decay mixed with rotting flesh, hovering toward them across a foggy smoke, filling the air like a toxic spill. Aggravated groans joined the despondent howls, mumbling below the repeated smack of thousands of the infected packed against a solid wall.

  They went on as far as the eye could see. It was almost impossible to distinguish one zombie from another, such was the mass of them. The stronger, more recently deceased clambered atop the weaker, crumbling bodies. Their faces melded into one greyish pale mass, with streaks of dried blood encased upon dirty rags that fell off bony, sickening bodies.

  The wall carried on for a broad circular distance, disappearing around the corner to their left and their right. As far as the radius went, the undead continued to batter against it.

  Gus attempted to peer into the distance, to look for the end of the masses of ravenous hungry corpses – but there was none. They did not end.

  He finally understood why Eugene had decided to lay bombs upon this vicinity as immediately as possible. It was the survival of the barely fittest, the battering of the less decayed against the less vile.

  How the fuck am I going to get into that?

  “Right,” Gus said, once he realised they had been stood agape for longer than he was prepared to acknowledge. “Ideas, anybody?”

  Donny’s head slowly rotated toward him. Severe, disturbed confusion stuck to his face as if someone had glued some deformed expression upon him.

  “Ideas?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you know, once we figure out where we’re actually finding this girl.”

  “You mean, you don’t even know where to find her?”

  Gus went to react aggressively; then it occurred to him that it was a pertinently valid question.

  “I just, kinda, thought I’d wing it.”

  “Well, not being funny, but I don’t think we could just set Sadie in there and unleash her. That’s too many even for her.”

  “That’s too many even for a soddin’ army. How we supposed to deal with that?”

  Gus turned to Sadie. This would be a really good time for her to start talking.

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “Zombies, big!” she barked.

  Gus nodded, wishing she had something more constructive to add.

  “Lots,” she persisted. “In there – death.”

  Gus nodded again, wishing she hadn’t added anything at all.

  “Well. If this is how I’m going to go out, it’s how I’m going to go out.”

  Gus charged to the boot of the car, wiping perspiration from his forehead. He had no idea what he was going to do once he had loaded himself with weapons, but he was used to winging it. Maybe if he got himself ready, an idea would present itself.

  He took a number of grenades, attaching them to the inside of his jacket. He slid ammo diagonally over his shoulder, a machine gun over his back, two Uzis on his belt, and a knife with a large, curved blade beside his one good shin.

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?” Donny appeared at Gus’s side, making him jump.

  “What?”

  “What you said about going out. I mean, after what you told me… You want to live, right?”

  Gus smiled at Donny. Not grinned, not smirked – smiled.

  “You’re young, kid,” he said.

  “I’m not a kid. Don’t patronise me.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Gus finished loading his body with guns and turned to Donny, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You want the honest truth?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Right. I have been waiting the last six months, biding my time, looking for the exact right moment to die. To leave all this… shit, behind. And this is it. This is what fate brought to me. Because this is how I go out. This is how I do it.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Donny, I’m only just starting to like you. Don’t make me smack you.”

  Gus walked back toward the edge of the verge, casting his eyes upon the sea of undead faces. Funny, really. Moments ago, he was full of dread. But standing there, feeling the weight of a dozen guns dragging his body to the floor, gave him a sense of resolution. Like he was home. Like this was where he was meant to be.

  “See that sun?” Gus pointed to the sun.

  “Yeah,” Donny confirmed.

  “It’s a little down from the middle of the sky,.I make that about two or three in the afternoon. Agree?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, the girl will be back by the time it’s set, and you can’t see the sun for the moon no more. Look out for her.”

  “And you? Where will you be?”

  Gus looked at Donny, holding a lingering gaze in the young man’s direction.

  “Good luck to you,” he said, and ran down the slope without looki
ng back.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Bill swung the axe around the basement like it was the lead of a rabid dog.

  Kristine pushed herself and Laney against the far wall, keeping them out of reach of the wayward weapon. No sooner had Bill decided that it was time they freed themselves of the basement than he had punched through the glass concealing the axe fixed to the wall for the eventuality of a fire and began wielding it with the control of a madman.

  “Bill, I really think we should think about this,” Katrina urged him.

  “What, you reckon we’re better off down here, canoodling every night?” Bill narrowed his eyes into a leer that sent a fiery shudder up Kristine’s inner thigh. She pushed her hand harder against Laney, unknowingly concealing her from the perverted danger before them.

  “No!” Laney objected. “You do not hurt Mrs Andrews anymore!”

  Bill grinned wildly. His free hand twitched inside his pocket.

  The sick bastard was enjoying her feistiness.

  “You’ve hurt her enough, you won’t hurt her anymore!”

  “It’s okay, Laney, it’s okay,” Kristine whispered. “It’s all right, I’m okay, we’re going to be okay.”

  “How can you lie to her?” Bill asked, that twisted look in his eye he got whenever he wanted to say something provocative for the sake of intensifying her helpless hatred further.

  “All I mean,” said Kristine, “is that we should come up with a plan. We don’t know what’s on the other side of that wall.”

  “A plan?” He let out a large, audible, “Hah!”

  “Bill, please.”

  “How’s this for a plan?”

  He charged up the stairs, forcing each wooden step to buckle under the pressure of his stubbornness. He twisted the lock open for the first time in God knows how long and placed his hand on the door.

  There was no use objecting. No use reasoning with a man that had Bill’s sick temperament and odious nature. He was going through that door, and unleashing whatever was on the other side of it upon them.

  Kristine had to move. She had to get Laney to that door. If a flood of the infected poured down those stairs, they would be trapped. They had the best chance of survival if they pounded up those stairs and embraced the inevitable chaos.