Pet From Hell (Infected Series Book 1)

by Justin Gowland

  Stopping just short of the gate he said “You’re not infected or anything are you? No bites or scratches?”

  “No I’ve not been infected. I’ve been hiding out near Thirsk for the last couple of days but they attacked the place I was at this morning and decided to make a run for it.” I replied.

  “Ok keep an eye out and I’ll let you in.” He said coming to the gate and pulling some keys out of the leg pocket on his trousers.

  I watched the infected bash against the fence and shuffle from side to side as he opened the gate. Opening the gate just enough for me to slip inside he closed it straight after I passed through.

  “Hi my name is Marc.” I said holding my hand out to him.

  “Look mate we should get out of sight before these things see us. You can tell us your life story later fucking on, ok?” He said and set off for the building.

  He set a quick pace and I followed as closely as I could, all the time trying not to make too much noise. We reached the back of the building and stood in the shadows, whilst I was breathing hard he was barely out of breath. He slipped round the corner and I followed on the side of the building where some steps leading down to a green painted door. Opening the door a coppery smell hit my nose and I could see smears of blood on the tiled floor. Stepping inside behind the soldier he closed the door and we were in the dark. I heard a click come from beside me and a torch was shone in my face.

  “Ok bud you can follow me we have the top floor to ourselves and we managed to clear the infected out but the other floors have a lot of blood splattered all over so don’t touch anything. We still don’t know how they pass it on.” He said moving past me.

  I knew how it was passed on but until I could figure out who they were and how many I was going to keep that information to myself. Following the soldier through the building I saw what must have been a massive battle in the corridors. Bullet holes riddled the walls and blood and gore was splashed all over the floor and walls. We passed rooms with blood splatters smeared under the closed doors giving me the impression that bodies had been dragged inside. We climbed some stairs and came out in a small vestibule. Bodies had been stacked against the doors leading outside and the sight of that many dead bodies piled on top of each other started to make me feel sick. I gagged and leaned over at the waist and threw up all that I had inside it splattered over the floor and my boots.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder then a voice said “Come on mate we have to get upstairs I need to take over from Chris so he can get some sleep.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stood up and turned to follow the un-named soldier up the stairs to the third floor then down a remarkably clear corridor to small green door. Opening the door I could see a ladder leading up through an opening on to the roof. I had never been so grateful to see a small patch of blue and white sky in all my life. I scrambled up the ladder and out on to the roof. I fell to my knees gasping for breath that I didn’t know I had held after seeing the pile of bodies. After what seemed like hours I looked around the roof I saw how flat it was but there were a few chimneys and skylights but the rest of the roof was flat. The soldier walked past me and headed toward the far end of the roof and walked round a skylight. Getting up off my knees I walked on my shaky legs toward the skylight.

  As I got closer I heard a deep voice come from the other side of it.

  “Okay Jay so who’s our guest?”

  “I think he said his name was Marc or something like that.” Jay said.

  I walked round the skylight and came face to chest with the biggest man I have ever seen. He must have been roughly six feet seven and had arms and legs the size of tree trunks. With black close cropped hair and deep brown eyes peering down at me.

  A hung hand was thrust in my face and the deep rumbling voice said “Hi my name is Chris Jones and that blonde streak of water is Jacob Evans but you can call me Chris and he likes to be called Jay.”

  I took his hand a winced when he closed it round my tiny hand.

  “Erm… Hi I’m Marc Jenks.”

  “So Mr Jenks…” Chris started to say.

  “If we are on first name terms you can call me Marc.” I said interrupting him.

  “Ok Marc then. What’s brought you to this neck of the woods?”

  “I was hiding out at a friend’s house just outside of Thirsk and those things started to try and get in, so I ran for it and I thought with the army being here it would be the safest place to come to.” I said looking at the floor.

  “Well mate as you can see things have not turned out to well here either.”

  “Too fucking right we got well and truly bum fucked.” Jay said looking over the edge of the building.

  “Jay shut the fuck up mate.” Chris said looking angry at him.

  Jay just shrugged his shoulders and walked off on a circuit of the roof.

  “It was late yesterday afternoon when those things first started to turn up. The officers tried to sort out skirmish lines and put as many civvies on buses as we could before trying to ship them out of the area. The only thing we didn’t know at the time was that every person that got bit or died because of them, became one of them and attacked the rest of us. Out of our unit there is only me and Jay left and the bodies you saw lying downstairs are the rest of it. Our mate got bit and didn’t tell anyone and when he died he started to attack the rest of us. Jay and I were up here on lookout when it happened and we were lucky to find out those things can’t climb for shit. So you know how we got here and we know a little about you but what made you want to hide out at your friend’s house?”

  I looked round at Chris and Jay and thought that if I was going to survive then I needed to start trusting people. So I called Jay over and asked them both to have a seat and sat on the roof cross legged and told them everything that had happened from finding Tony in the lab up to coming to Catterick looking for the army.

  Jay shot on to his feet and started toward me with hatred in his eyes before Chris managed to clamp one of his large hands on his friends arm.

  “Jay calm down.” Chris said.

  “Calm down, fucking calm down. How can I calm down knowing that this is the fuck that started all this.” He said through gritted teeth.

  “I didn’t…” I started.

  “Marc give me a second to talk to him will you and please keep your gob shut.” Chris said looking me in the eyes.

  I lowered my head and listened as Chris went on to tell Jay that from what I had said it wasn’t my fault all this was happening but actually Dr Jacksons’ and that the only thing that was my fault was going to my friends aid and opening the door to the lab.

  Slowly Jay started to calm down but I could still see by his eyes that he blamed me and to tell you the truth in the back of my mind so did I. Standing up Jay stomped off on a circuit of the roof and every now and then spat over the side and muttered to himself.

  “Look he doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just that he tried to call his parents before the shit really hit the fan and he couldn’t get through. I’m lucky, I don’t have anybody left to call not even a girlfriend.” Chris said.

  “Same here my parents died a while back and I never had any other close family.” I said.

  “So seeing as you were at ground zero, do you have any information on these things?” He asked.

  “Not really, I know that they are dead and that the only way to kill them is head trauma. The one thing that I have found out is that noise attracts them quickly and that their eyesight is crap. You mentioned that they can’t climb, so that’s something new.” I said.

  “Yeah we found out about the climbing when we were up here and they couldn’t get up the ladder to us. They just milled about at the bottom of it and we managed to just shoot straight down on them. Cleaning up after that was a pain in the arse.” He said with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “What have you been doing for food and water?” I asked.

  “This is the Brigade HQ, it has a small kitchen dow
nstairs with enough food in it.” Jay said from over my shoulder.

  I looked back at him and he said “Look mate I’m sorry for going off on one. It’s just been one nightmare after another since this all started. I don’t blame you, I just needed to vent off at someone and if what you are telling us is true then you worked for the bastards that caused it all.”

  “It’s ok, I blame myself for it all. If I had left that goddam door closed and not went to check on Tony then maybe a lot of people would still be alive.” I said.

  Jay just shrugged his shoulders and continued walking past Chris and me. I had a feeling that even though he said he didn’t blame me for everything, in some way he still did.

  “Look I am going to get a little shut eye.” Chris mumbled and walked over to a pile of sleeping bags and rucksacks stacked against another skylight.

  Pulling my bag off my back I pulled out the sleeping bag then my cooking gear and a couple of tin cans of soup. Setting everything up and cooking the soup must have taken me about ten minutes, by that time I could hear snores coming from the large sleeping bag that Chris was in. Jay came over and sat opposite me and I could see that he wanted to ask me something but was finding it hard to voice his words.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked giving him the opening he needed.

  “What’s it like out there? We sort of lost communication early on and never seemed to get it back.” He said.

  “Well the last time I heard anything was that it had spread right across the country and that they had rumoured outbreaks in Europe and the U.S.”

  “How the hell did it get that far?” He asked shaking his head.

  “To be honest I don’t know, from what I saw it doesn’t show straight away and that sometimes it takes hours for someone to become one of them.” I said pointing toward the moans we could hear from the roof top.

  “It spread like wildfire through the Garrison, they didn’t seem to take very long before they came back as those things.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know how it happens, maybe if you get killed by them then you change quickly or if you have multiple bites. Like I said this is all guesswork.”

  He looked at his hands and then looked up and said “Do you know how to use a rifle?”

  “I did a six year stint with the R.A.O.C (Royal Army Ordnance Corp) a few years ago, but I was trained on the SLR and you lot use the SA80 now don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it shouldn’t take much to get you up to speed with one. It’ll also help because we will have three shooters and it will make our security a lot easier.” He said with the first smile I had seen on his face since we first met.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Standing up he walked over to the pile of gear that Chris was lying beside and picked up a rifle and carried it over to where I was sitting. Together we sat for the next few hours going over how to strip and clean the rifle. He then took me through how to use the optical sights. When I had trained on the SLR I had been trained how to use the iron sights and if you showed proficiency then you were shown how to use an optical sight. I had never been anything more than an average shot and therefore never used anything but iron sights. Just as I was practicing how to load the magazine Chris woke up and looked over at what we were doing. I half expected him to come steaming over and snatch the rifle from my hands but he just rolled on to his side and watched.

  “Jay you showing a civilian how to use our weapons?” Chris called out.

  “Fuck you Chris, this civilian used to be a blanket stacker but only knew SLRs.” He said smiling.

  “You were in the R.A.O.C?” Chris said pointing at me.

  “Yeah, did six years before buying myself out.” I replied.

  “Well I’ll be dipped in dog shit.” He said standing up laughing.

  He picked up another rifle and walked over to me and said “Come on let’s get you reacquainted with things that go bang.”

  I stood and followed him the edge of the roof. He lay down with the rifle pointed over the lip. I followed suit and managed to remember how to lie in the prone position, which he smiled at.

  “Right remember that this is going to be different than the range that you learned on. You are going to be shooting at moving targets and you have to hit the head. Like you said earlier body shots don’t do shit. The other thing you are going to have to think about is counting your rounds. The mags hold thirty rounds and you can go through them quicker than you think. Before we get down to actually firing I want you to show me how to load and unload the rifle. The last thing you will want to happen is you dropping a mag or getting it jammed.”

  For the next half hour I practiced loading and unloading the rifle, till Chris was happy with my reloading.

  “Ok that’s enough, I think you have got that sorted. Let’s try some shooting out, see if you can remember what you were taught in basic training.” Chris said.

  I lifted the optical scope to my eye and aimed at a large man bashing his head against the fence. He must have been a doctor or something because he had those green pyjamas on but the top hung from him in shreds and from what you could see underneath didn’t leave much to the imagination. His intestines hung out between the rips and his legs were coated with blood and gore. Again like all the other infected his eye and ears ran with the same green slime I had seen on all the others. Placing the cross hairs on his forehead I took a deep breath and as I exhaled I slowly squeezed the trigger. Now I had shot rifles before and had fired a shotgun since leaving the army and I was well aware of the sound but I forgot about the recoil and I nearly dropped the rifle to the floor.

  Chris screamed at me “Make safe that weapon now!”

  Flicking the safety I released the magazine and pulled the charging handle back to eject the round that was in the breach. When he was satisfied that the rifle was safe, Chris looked me in the eyes and just grinned at me.

  “Now that you’re not going to blow your foot off or kill either myself or Jay. Have a look through the scope at your target and tell me what you see.” He said.

  Looking for the man I had shot at I found him climbing to his feet and started to bash against the fence with more determination. The only difference was the hole in his chest just below his neck.

  “Shit I was aiming for his head. I must have pulled the shot when I flinched.” I said feeling disappointed.

  “Nope you did nothing wrong, I mean yeah you did flinch but I gather it’s been a while since you last fired a weapon, am I right?” He answered.

  I nodded, but still felt a little bad about the shot.

  He continued “Look you only forgot to take one thing into consideration when you fired and that was the drop. You remember from your training that a bullet will start to drop as soon as it leaves the barrel even more so when you are firing from up high to target below you. Just remember that for the next couple of shots.”

  The next hour or so we fine-tuned my shooting till I was hitting every other target and if I missed on the first shot I would get them with the second. When I had fired off a total of two magazines of ammo Chris called an end to the shooting and we went over to where the sleeping bags lay and set up for the night. Jay had started to boil some water on a small hexi burner and we sat and talked about what we should do next. After all living and sleeping on the roof for the last few days Chris and Jay were getting tired of not having a roof over their heads.

  “Chris this roof is going to start getting to cold to sleep in our bags soon.” Jay said.

  “I’ve been trying to think of somewhere to go that’s just as secure and will give us walls and a roof mate.” Chris replied.

  I sat watching them and an idea screamed in my head.

  “Can I ask do either of you guys know if there are any army bunkers or something like that near here?” I asked.

  Chris looked at me for a few seconds before laughing. Jay just looked puzzled at the reaction. It took a few minutes before Chris could get himself under control.

  “You
know I had forgotten about them. There is a large one on the other side of York. It was built for the senior army staff in case there was either a biological or nuclear attack.” Chris said with a grin on his face.

  “How the fuck did you know about that Chris?” Jay asked.

  “Well I did a small stint as security for the General here at Catterick and it was part of the security brief we got. I know that the General didn’t get away from here to the shelter. So it might stand to reason no one did.”

  “How do you now that the General is dead?” I asked looking a little bewildered.

  “Well he’s down stairs with a bullet in his head.” He said looking down.

  Standing I looked away from the small light cast by the hexi burner and looked at the stars. It was a fair distance from Catterick to York and I needed Chris to give me more information on how far past York the bunker was. There was also the doubt that I could trust either of these two. I mean we had known each other for less than a day and we were planning on this trek to find this bunker and even if we did find it what would we find when we got there? I must have been stood a while because I heard movement behind me.

  “Penny for your thoughts Marc?” Chris’ gravelly voice said from behind me.

  “I don’t know just seems it might be a long shot. I mean what happens if we get there and find it full of people would they let us in? Or we find it and there is no one but infected inside? It just seems a lot to pin our hopes on that’s all.” I said.