The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall

by Joseph Zuko

  Karen pushed a tear from her cheek and then she raised the gun shoulder high. She held it there for a minute before she nodded at Leon.

  What if they can’t find a cure?

  Would Valerie or Robin have to gun me down in cold blood?

  Do I await the same fate?

  What was left of Karen’s Mama threw a hard blood covered hand at the glass door. The noise startled Karen. They were a team. The perfect mother daughter combo and now it was down to this. A broken woman holding a gun inches from the glass door and the empty shell of a woman, itching to feed on anyone and anything she could get her infected hands on.

  “Ready?” Leon whispered.

  Karen shut her eyes and nodded her head. She could hear the sound of the door opening a few inches. The metal chunk that protruded out of Penny’s torso ground along the glass as she moved towards the gap. Karen opened her eyelids, saw the blackness that was her Mama’s infected soul and wished it didn’t have to go this way, but what other choice did she have?

  None!

  “I love you, Mama.”

  BOOM!

  CHAPTER 3

  Every muscle and joint in Jim’s body begged him to go back inside his neighbor’s apartment, take a seat and relax. Have another beer and get some real food. Drink a gallon of water. Take a hot shower. Wait for tomorrow when you aren’t so tired.

  Why dive headlong into the abyss? Jim thought.

  Why risk it?

  No matter how convincing the voice inside Jim’s head could be, he had a job to do. He stepped up onto the lower railing and threw his leg over the top rail. He moved quickly to get himself onto the ledge of the landing. Frank reached out and held one of the straps on Jim’s backpack. It helped steady Jim as he inched his way over to the handrail that ran down the flight of stairs below him. The noise caused by his boots on the metal and concrete seemed to echo out into the parking lot. As Jim reached out for the stair’s handrail Sara made her move up and over to follow after him. Her toes snaked along the edge of the landing. She moved like a cat.

  Despite Sara’s agility the noise was getting them some unwanted attention from the monsters below. A few of the infected that made up the horde were on their way up the stairs to greet Jim. The monster’s failing bodies moved slowly, one step at a time, hungry for the filet mignon in the leather jacket.

  Jim’s boots touched down onto the steps and he whipped his body around to face them. His spear was ready to slice and dice the closest asshole that tried to take a bite. Sara was up and over the step’s railing and by Jim’s side in a quarter of the time it took him to do it. Now it was Frank’s turn.

  For a man in his sixties, Frank was in great shape. He had owned a fishing and hunting shop for twenty years in downtown Washougal, Washington. Frank and his brother, Bob, opened the store with the money left to them when their father passed away. Frank’s father smoked a pack a day and even though he knew the Big C would get him someday as well, he couldn’t kick the habit.

  Ten years into running the store Bob was done with retail. He wanted to try something new so he sold his half of the company to Frank. Bob went off to raise cattle on Government Island. Two years ago Frank was ready to retire and was able to sell his old shop to a young man that had just moved up from Los Angeles. The Californian had just made a killing selling his home in Hollywood to some new starlet and Frank got top dollar for the store.

  The years he spent unloading heavy boxes of equipment into his store and the frequent hunting and fishing trips had kept him fit and trim. The pack of smokes and pot of coffee he finished off daily, along with a lean meat diet helped tremendously.

  Jim thrust his spear into the face of a creep as Sara’s blade bat came crashing down on another one’s skull. Frank made the transition over the rail and was ready to jet for the car. He slid the bolt back on his rifle and the SKS was ready to fuck some shit up. Jim was pretty sure that the zombies, as Tina called them, did not care what kind of weapons his crew was toting, but he liked the idea that the sound of Frank’s bolt clicking into position sent a shiver down their dead spines.

  Jim and Sara stepped to the side and let the man with the deadliest weapon pass. They followed him down the stairs. Frank wasted no time and opened fire. His rounds ripped the small horde to pieces. The methodical pop, pop, pop of Frank’s gun and the brass casings hitting the ground was the only sound the three of them could hear. When the last body dropped to the asphalt Frank paused for a moment and flipped his tapped banana magazine over for a fresh set of rounds.

  “Leave a little for us next time,” Sara’s sarcasm helped to lighten the dark task at hand.

  Jim hit the unlock button on his key fob. The tail lights flashed and the locks clicked. Jim swung the driver’s side door open and the undeniable smell of Burgerville hit him in the face. Oh baby, did it smell good. Jim would slaughter a whole horde of those zombies with his bare hands to get one of the famous pepper bacon cheeseburgers he loved so much. The oil stained paper bag was all that remained besides the odor. Karen had gone there for lunch earlier today and the wonderful smell reminded Jim of his family. He ached to be with them, but there was no time to sit and smell the burgers. They had to hit the road.

  “You’ll have to sit in the back between the car seats,” Jim told Sara. She was the only one with a small enough butt to fit.

  Frank opened the passenger’s door to find his seat covered in junk mail and overdue bills.

  “Sorry, Karen’s arms are always full of the kids’ stuff and she doesn’t clean the car often,” Jim slid into the driver’s seat and negotiated a spot for his spear. Frank used his hand like a rake and pulled the loose papers off the seat and out onto the asphalt. Frank hated to litter but there was only so much mess a man could take.

  Sara wiggled her slim body over Robin’s carseat and squeezed herself into the spot. A lost French fry sat in Robin’s car seat. Sara could tell it was not that old. She picked it up, blew on it and scarfed it down. She didn’t know if she would ever get a chance to eat another Burgerville fry? So why the hell not. It was still delicious. The floorboards were covered with children’s stuffed toys, extra jackets and shoes that had been left behind over the last few months. The seats to her left and right had hard chunks of plastic poking at her shoulders and ribs.

  “Can I move these into the back?” Sara asked Jim as she pointed at the two seats, “If we crash again or I need to get out quickly these things might get me killed.”

  Jim didn’t like the idea of unhooking the girl’s seats. It was like Sara wanted to confirm that the girls were gone and never coming back. He thought about it for a second and understood why she was asking to move them.

  “That’s fine,” Jim grumbled the words out. Sara looked over the belts to see how they weaved through the seats and then hit the release button. It took a lot of effort to get the safety seats up and over the backseat and tucked into the little trunk area of the PT Cruiser.

  The doors to the PT slammed shut and Jim worked the key into the ignition. As he backed the car up the weight of the vehicle pulverized what was left of the bodies in the lot behind them.

  Cliff and Tina stood at their bedroom window and watched Jim, Frank and Sara pull out of the parking lot. It was the second time they watched a Blackmore leave the apartment complex that afternoon.

  “You think we’ll ever see them again?” Tina said, her voice filled with sorrow. She hoped to God they would make it back with the equipment. She didn’t want that young man in the living room dying on her. She had already seen enough death today.

  “Maybe, they made it out of Portland,” Cliff said as he rubbed the back of his buzz cut head.

  “If one of them comes back with a bite taken out of them, what are we gonna do?” Tina rested her head on her husband’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll figure that out if and when it happens.” Cliff tilted his head to rest it on top of Tina’s.

  Sara tossed over the last car seat into the bac
k. With them out of the way she had plenty of space and it felt so much better now that she had room to move. Jim had pulled out of the parking lot and crossed a street. The road was clogged with busted flaming vehicles. So he headed into the backlot of a shopping center. As they rounded the corner of the building Sara spotted a Black Rock Coffee kiosk. Sara worked at a coffee kiosks in Portland, close to where she and her parents lived. She had gotten the job about three months ago and liked it well enough. The other girls she worked with were fun and Sara had mastered the extra flirt it took to get the male and some female customers to leave a little more cash in the tip jar. She worked there part-time and was enrolled at Portland State University. For the last two years she had been studying history.

  She wasn’t sure what career path she was going to take learning about ancient Greece, The Roman Empire and the last two World Wars, but she found them very interesting.

  Seeing the ruined coffee shop caused her mind to rewind and replay the day. She had worked the opening shift and that meant she was there at four-thirty in the morning and got off at noon. The ride home was a little crazy. People were driving like idiots, they were all over the road and crashing into each other. She had no idea what was really going on.

  When she finally pulled up to her parent’s house, she found it alarming that the front door was wide open. Her father had been terrified of home invasions her whole life. To find the front door unlocked was peculiar, to see it wide open was insane. Sara walked with caution for the front door as she sipped an ice mocha she had made for herself.

  “Mom? Dad?” she called from the open doorway. The living room was a mess. Sara took another sip of her cold coffee, “Maa-,” she cut the call for her Mom short when she noticed the red streaks along the back wall of the living room. From the kitchen she heard the sounds of someone kicking pots and pans across the tile floor. Something was coming her way, fast. Her knees buckled when she saw her parents. Her Mom’s right arm had been eaten to the bone. Her Dad’s belly bulged from the excessive meat he had chewed off of his wife. Sara caught herself from falling to the porch. She didn’t know what to make of this. Were her parents playing a trick on her? It was not like them to mess up the house and cover themselves in fake blood just for a chuckle. What the hell was going on? As they approached her, she could smell an iron tang in the air.

  That’s real blood!

  The two monsters crossed the living room in a hurry. Their black eyes zeroed in on their daughter. Their mouths cracked from the impact of enamel on enamel as their jaws snapped shut. She had to move fast. Sara’s first reaction to something coming to attack her was to throw her half empty plastic coffee cup. The mocha exploded all over her Dad’s face, but it didn’t slow the infected man down. She pulled the front door shut and slammed it closed right in their dead faces.

  Sara ran. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she had to get as far away from them as she could. She got a block away when she heard the front window of her house smash to pieces. She stopped in the middle of the street and turned to look back at her childhood home. Her infected parents were on the loose and coming her way. A neighbor teen called her name from down the street and she ran to him and his friends. She hid inside the teen’s house as Sara’s parents found a new victim. She listened in horror as they ferociously tore the man apart in the middle of the street. His cries for help were unlike anything Sara had ever heard. Her Mom and Dad were like wild animals.

  What the hell happened to them?

  Why are they killing that man?

  The teens didn’t have any answers for her. They were clueless as to what was happening, but for the moment she was safe. The guys suggested that they should go to another friend’s house and that they should take a shortcut through the graveyard. Sara was in such shock she agreed to go and followed them in a cloudy haze. It wasn’t long after that when Jim showed up and saved her.

  Jim’s PT Cruiser raced passed the remains of the Black Rock and Sara thought, I need another coffee.

  As they raced across the parking lot, nasty thoughts stabbed violently into Jim’s mind.

  What if his family didn’t make it to Penny’s?

  What if they died on the road?

  Maybe they were torn to shreds?

  Calling my name and wondering why I wasn’t there to save them.

  He did his best to squash the blood soaked visions in his head. Dwelling on negative, hypothetical possibilities wouldn’t help him get his family back. He stayed focused on the task at hand. He had to get to RS Medical, get the supplies and race back to save Devon. That was what Jim needed to focus on. What the next job that had to be accomplished. Then the job after that. That was the mindset he had to develop to keep himself alive. If he spent too much time thinking about what might have happened or dwelling on outcomes he could not control it would get him killed.

  Jim couldn’t believe the destruction that had taken place in his neck of the woods. The structure fires, the dead bodies on the ground, the total mayhem that had ravaged the city of Vancouver. It was straight out of a big budget disaster movie. As he moved the car through the lot he drove carefully, watching out for oncoming vehicles, looking out for monster hordes or any gun toting humans. So far the route to the store was clear. Jim had shopped there a year ago when he needed a specialty knee brace after a bad kick injured his leg in his Krav Maga class. He quickly remembered the back way to get there so he wouldn’t have to take any roads that might be choked with the dead and blocked by stalled vehicles.

  Sara gnawed at one of her last remaining fingernails. The sound of the engine revving and the click of her chewing was a great mashup. Otherwise the ride to the RS Medical was silent. They didn’t have a lot to talk about and all of them were dead tired. Frank popped another stick of bubble gum into his mouth as Jim pulled into the disabled spot outside the main doors to the store.

  The lights were off and the windows were intact. Jim was surprised to find the building untouched. He thought that a medical store would be the first place hit after an infection like this had swept the area.

  “We should check out the building first.” Jim spoke softly. Cliff’s advice about knowing the exits was ringing in his ears.

  “Look over there,” Frank said as he pointed across the street. Tucked in a tiny strip mall was a shop that had a one word name. In big black letters just above the door was the word GUN. Not a super clever name, but you knew exactly what they had to offer customers. It was a little store and its lights were out as well. “We need to hit that place. I’m running low.”

  Great, another stop. Jim understood how important it was that Frank not run out of ammo, but more stops meant more time and he was not sure how much Devon had left.

  Jim’s head bobbed up and down, “Okay. You got the list?” he asked as he readied his spear for action. Frank patted his breast pocket.

  “Yep, got it right here.”

  Jim and Frank reached to open their doors. Jim’s fingers looped into the chrome finished handle and he was about to yank it open when a group of zombies slammed into his door. Jim could not help himself, the sudden movement and noise along with the wrecked features of this infected woman at his window made him screech out in a high pitched voice.

  The ear piercing sound of “AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!” filled the PT Cruiser’s cabin.

  CHAPTER 4

  Karen set her pistol down next to the sink in the bathroom. When she turned on the light she didn’t recognize herself. The woman in the mirror looked a decade older. Black circles encased her eyes. Her hair was matted. She was covered in a layer of sweaty salt and dried blood. She needed an hour long shower but only had time for a two minute sink scrub. She got to work. The cool water quickly turned hot as she cranked up the faucet. Karen splashed handfuls of water onto her face and she scrubbed hard to get the nasty parts of the day off of her. To make sure she didn’t waste time, she counted down from fifteen and every time she hit zero she moved onto a new spot and started cleaning i
t. She got most of the gunk out of her hair and off her face. She found a couple of her Mama’s hair clips and used them to keep her red mane out of her face.

  Four, three, two, one and zero.

  Done. She looked a little more like herself. Well at least she didn’t look like a murder victim anymore. She placed her gun back into its holster and exited the bathroom.

  She entered the living room and found that the girls were zoned out in front of the TV and Troy had an icepack held to his forehead. Leon had wrapped a good amount of gauze and bandages around the wound to stop the bleeding. Troy looked up at his sister when she entered the room.

  “My head hurts so bad.” Troy’s voice was rough and dry.

  “I know,” Karen moved closer to him and pulled away the icepack and lifted the bandage. The gash in his forehead had turned dark purple. She replaced the bandage and the icepack. “Can you stay here and watch the girls? I’ve got a lot of work to get done around here.”

  “Okay, I like this cartoon. It’s pretty funny.” Troy looked away from his sister and back to the TV.

  It was like having another child to take care of. She hoped he would be better soon. They were going to need him to get back to normal fast.

  Karen left the living room and headed for Leon in the dining room. He had just closed the blinds to the sliding glass door so they wouldn’t have to see the two dead bodies in the backyard. Karen kept her focus and moved straight for the garage.

  Leon followed her and tried to gauge her mood. He struggled with being so somber for this long. He knew it was only a matter of time before he said something silly and embarrassed himself. He wanted so badly to impress her and hoped that she appreciated how well he had taken care of Troy and the girls. Karen left the door open to the garage for him and she fired up the lights.

  He got to see the full view of the packed garage. “Wow, look at all this shit,” Leon regretted the words the second he said them, but as far as silly things to say it wasn’t the worst. Over the years he had definitely put his foot, his leg and even his whole body in his mouth.