Infected (Book 1): The First Ten Days

by Thomas, Jack

  The silence that followed went on forever.

  Everything was loud in nature. The wind blew like a hurricane squeezing in though a peep hole, the few winter birds sang louder than ever the saddest songs they knew, my clothes rubbed against each other and made percussion for those birds.

  I looked for a reason to take some of the weight off of Marcus, but it didn’t matter the reason, Marcus needed a break. This was my cross to bear to avoid giving him another.

  “I’ll do it,” the words slipped out of my mouth. I didn’t even think I would make it as far as speaking. Now I needed to challenge myself to not cower out of it. I wasn’t sure if I could manage to control the nausea. I kept a straight face.

  Marcus tried to hide the terror he felt, but his worried face, dropped shoulders and overall ‘I want to kill myself’ look gave away it was an act. He wanted to do it himself. He didn’t want me to do it, but he also knew I needed to learn how to do things like this and it would ease his mind if he wasn’t the one to go through with it. Our sanity was forever going to be left behind with this moment.

  Marcus looked away embarrassed, he was near his breaking point. He took his hand away from his back after messing around in one of the back pockets. Just as he said, there was a gun. He held it to his side so Edwin wouldn’t see it. I reached over, grabbed the gun, and held the same way. I turned around and used my body movements to mask the switch of the gun from my left hand to my right. I took one last deep breath and walked over to Edwin. Marcus paced behind me slowly. My heartbeat was so loud, my every breath tried to rip my ear drums out.

  I took a knee by Edwin, prepared to do this.

  Edwin’s eyes fixed on me when I came close to him. He looked more energetic than when Marcus first put him against the wall minutes earlier.

  “We’re going to take you to the hospital and find something that could help.” A lie he could have easily believed, at least through my understanding. “We have to check to see if you have any other areas of infection so on the way there we could think of which medications will heal you fastest.”

  “Really? Will I be okay?” Edwin asked confused as to what I meant. I didn’t even know where I was going with it.

  “Yes,” Marcus backed me up and put a fake smile on his face. He hated the moment every bit as much as I did.

  “Alright, let’s do it.” Edwin became excited and hyper the way his personality generally called for.

  “Okay!” I couldn’t believe this worked. “Do you feel pain anywhere other than your leg?”

  “Check his head.” Marcus rushed for things to be over with and done.

  “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” Edwin touched around his head curiously, possibly under the impression Marcus spotted something.

  “Turn around so I could see.” Immediately as the words came out of my mouth I regretted them. He shifted from sitting to support himself with one knee and faced away from me. My arm was weak while I lifted the gun up. It was happening. The gun was readily positioned at the back of his head. Marcus froze, his breath held tightly in his lungs.

  I watched Edwin slip away and hit the snow again.

  He’s turning!

  My thoughts yelled at me. I had to finish this before it could happen.

  I stood up and aimed the gun at Edwin’s head precisely when he became conscious again.

  He wasn’t yet turned and flipped himself over from resting on his stomach to resting on his back. There I stood, gun in hand, aimed at the kid’s head and the kid looking dead at me.

  The last thing I remember was his face filled with fear when he saw me, after that, a blank moment in time with nothing but a loud ring. I pulled the trigger. Time stopped. I stood there for days in some alternate universe filled with nothing but ringing bells and tortured screams.

  Suck it up. You can’t go back now.

  This was too real for my taste.

  “Let’s move,” Marcus said. The look on his face was the same one the lady at the fence had, the one the man who protected the girl had, and the same Misha must have had; hopeless, dead, hateful and regretful.

  I struggled to pull myself away from where I stood. I gave Marcus the gun back. There was only one round left so only one of us would be fortunate enough to have a quick and painless death.

  Not a word was spoken for the rest of the walk to the city border.

  “Chester Street,” Marcus said.

  “What about it?” I asked and looked at the same street sign he read.

  “This is the city border,” I hated the way he said it, “Let’s go over how the rest of your trip should be.” He was back in his autopilot setting.

  I was hollow.

  I took off my backpack and backtracked a few feet to sit on the stairs of a small apartment building. I kept a mental note of all the locations we stopped at or ventured to. This could be helpful if I ever return to the area. I opened the map. “Point us out,” I said.

  Marcus stood by to me to look over at the map. “Right here,” he said and pointed at Chester Street on the map napkin.

  “Okay,” I began, “I’m going to take Chester Street up to the highway.” The highway would then take me through all the towns and lead me straight to The Hills. “Then I just have to figure out where the school is.” I hoped I would get there and a million signs would point out the exact location of the school, but I somehow doubted it would happen that way.

  “Here, take it with you,” Marcus held out the gun again. He held it by the barrel and handed it to me, “Just in case.”

  In case things became so bad the only other option was to kill myself. I wasn’t sure if I could handle actually going though with that. Either way I grabbed the handle. “Let’s hope not,” I replied.

  “Let’s,” Marcus repeated in agreement. “Once you’re on the highway the rest should be pretty straight forward.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. I knew it didn’t actually sound good. We pretended to be positive.

  The sun finished its travel upwards and already begun its decline.

  “I’m going to head back.” Marcus adjusted his backpack and belt to move faster back to Trevor’s building.

  “I’m going to stay here for a few more minutes before I keep going.” I stood up and reached out with my right hand.

  Marcus grabbed my hand and gave me a firm handshake. “Don’t stay too long. Try to cover some ground before you set up camp. I’ll try to do the same.”

  We nodded at each other and dropped the handshake. Marcus turned and walked away. I was alone.

  I stood there, sat right back down and took in the fact I was alone. This is where the beginning of the end could have taken place. It was a lot to process.

  What I had to do to keep a child from the experience of being an infectee would haunt me, even more so in my solitude. Should I have done the selfish thing and let Marcus do it? He had enough pressure on him as it was. He put himself in positions to help everyone other than himself and it wasn’t right for there to be a chance to lighten the weight and still let him take the lead. I wasn’t a child, I had to make my own stand and survive without his help. That was the start of significantly more terrible acts I’d likely commit in my life from that point forward.

  As Marcus said, I only rested for a short while. When I stood up I put my backpack back on and adjusted it to be perfectly fit for mobility and comfort. I folded the mapkin again and put it in my back pocket in case I needed fast access to it.

  I walked down the street.

  It was empty.

  More cars crashed and stores looted, but nothing major. It didn’t look the way the first few days did. It somehow managed to look darker. A strange darkness and weight I only became aware of in this moment, it lingered in the air and atmosphere; the snow made nothing brighter. I couldn’t put my finger on what I felt.

  Highway: Route 23

  The highway; the sigh read ‘Route 23’. I arrived.

  Straight shot from here on out.

&
nbsp; I thought to myself as I came on the highway and began the stride; I could take forever if I was forced to avoid anything else that threw me off a straight path. I couldn’t risk going through the woods to come across another pack of hungry or bored wolves, either.

  “Whatever, dodge and weave,” I thought out loud, referring to any infected I came across. I continued.

  The way things usually went; if the walk was uneventful then time would stretch out. I blocked out anything I didn’t want to see. Virtually everything was a graveyard. Whether it was obvious or not was a different story.

  After an hour of walking, the area cleared up. No more buildings, no more cars, just the highway and the woods which wrapped around it. It was eerie, Déjà vu.

  Lantern, check!

  Marcus packed it for me with a lighter to turn it on whenever.

  Right before it became dark I would get the lantern from the backpack and start my search for a safe location to set up camp. There was still some time before nightfall.

  Ways to stay entertained while alone during the zombie apocalypse:

  1. Look at trees.

  2. Look at clouds.

  3. Count the trees.

  4. Count the Clouds.

  5. Count random infected on the highway.

  6. Count random infected in the woods.

  7. Bet against yourself on whether you would see more infected on the highway or in the woods.

  8. Pretend the infected were talking to each other.

  9. Find a coin and take it with you.

  10. Flip the coin.

  A trail about a thousand feet in a straight path cut through the thick woods and led straight to a house on a small property hidden by the trees. The house popped up at the perfect time for me to not waste much of the lantern’s life. The sun was still not fully out of the sky. The trail was clear all the way to the house.The house had a black roof, white paneled walls, a porch, and garage.

  No one saw me head in the direction as far as I knew and there wasn’t anything in the woods immediately around the house to follow me either. It was good enough for me to think it was a safe place to spend the night. The front door was locked. I checked around the back of the house but this door was locked too. It wasn’t bad news at least. The doors being locked meant no one tried to break in. With all hopes, it also meant there was something to salvage still in there. I needed to get inside. I walked around and tried to open every window, but those were all locked too. The windows on the second floor are what were left before a break in became the next step. I used the support beam for the roof over the porch and climbed up onto it. One of the windows was located right there in front of me.

  Yes!

  It was unlocked.

  Full sized bed, white dressers and everything in the room was neatly kept. The house hadn’t been searched or the room was missed or ignored. It was still well lit with the bit of sunlight left in the sky. The door out of the room was open and the hallway wall looked as bright as the bedroom did which was good, there was no need for the lantern. The occasional squint of my eyes was enough for me to manage.

  Dark brown wood under white walls with a light brown stripe lining the walls encircled the room. The color pattern was the same for the entire second floor. Three bedrooms and a bathroom made up the second floor, all of which were cleared of danger. By the bathroom were the stairs down to the first floor and they led straight into the kitchen. The walls were the same in the kitchen but the floor was covered with yellow tile. A round wooden table sat in the center with six chairs made of the same wood neatly placed around it. A metallic fridge fully stocked with food had its own private place in the wall. This made it a fact; no one was there in days. I searched the rest of the house while being less alert but never let my guard entirely down.

  After I made sure the house was safe I put my backpack on the kitchen table and took some things out of the fridge to stuff my face till I couldn’t anymore and pass out shortly after. One of the beds upstairs looked just right for that.

  As much canned food,I ghetto opened by stabbing the top with a knife repeatedly, as I could force myself to eat, not a dish I’d personally come up with but there was nothing else good so why wouldn’t I try it?

  I took my time to eat, I was in no rush. I didn’t plan to travel much without the sun up regardless. There was time to kill.

  I finished and went upstairs to shower in nearly frozen water and locked myself in the bedroom with the nice bed I wanted to sleep on. I moved a dresser in front of the door to prevent anyone opening it while I slept and hopped on the soft cozy bed.

  Day 8

  The Solitude

  Hours went by and I couldn’t fall asleep. I sat in bed and thought about the week behind me. The utopian dream the world attempted to reach for so long was devoured by the infection which swept everything away. My being alive was no more than a miracle that took place in the chaos, destruction, and deaths. An unlikely anomaly in the course time and space chose to take. The actions everyone was forced to execute to survive became darker with the passing days. The infection showed humanities true colors. I became a statistic to said flaw in humanity.

  I felt discomfort at most, but a lack of guilt. What happened with Edwin drove me crazy for several hours but this was no more. Few hours into the eighth day and my body and mind already accepted Edwin as an inevitable circumstance of the infection, a casualty of war. Because of this I thought maybe I lost my mind. Either that or I was finally adjusting to the world in a way I didn’t yet understand. The strangest part was that I was not worried. As scared as I was before being alone, I couldn’t manage to feel anything after. Maybe I lost hope and gave up, or maybe I sank into a psychotic break.

  I considered looking for Tylenol pm in the bathroom’s medicine cabinet but it was riskier to be drowsy and disoriented with no chance of it going away than it was to be sleepy and shake it off for a couple of hours. If the universe planned to further screw me, doing it while I was in my weakest state would only make perfect sense. I didn’t plan to make myself open to an attack. Call it paranoia but I wasn’t going to give the universe a chance like that.

  Coinciding with my emotionless state, my body craved adrenaline. I had to run for my life so many times in one week that my body became familiar with it and wanted the pace and rush. I figured it out. The lack of adrenaline kept me awake.

  Eventually I gave up on sleep entirely and came off of the bed. I enjoyed the silent serenity of an empty unharmed home and strolled around the house. The kitchen was probably my favorite part of the house because it was filled with food I could eat for as long as I was still in the house. That being said, I ate so much before I tried to sleep that food was not even an option again. The trivial mysteries of the house were of more interest at the time.

  I followed the wooden lining around the walls of the house which led me straight though the entirety of the first floor. The kitchen opened into the hallway. The hallway led to the front door, the basement door and the living room. I followed the brown striped lines on the wall around the hallway and through the living room. The wooden floors made no noise when I walked over them. I entered the simplistic and elegant living room. As good a place as any to look for entertainment and it turned out to be where I needed to search.

  On the coffee table in the middle of the living room there was a book entitled The Picture Framed. I personally enjoyed reading once in a while, and this particular story was not only one I hadn’t read yet, but it was written by one of my favorite author’s, Jack Thomas, luckiest moment in days. A distraction for the mind and it didn’t involve a sleep coma during the end of the world.

  It could probably even help me sleep if I read till I become relaxed enough.

  With help from the lantern and the little bit of moonlight which illuminated a corner of the living room, I began.

  Chapter One: The nameless Narrator wakes up in a house completely boarded and secured so no one can get in or out of the house without knowle
dge of the proper way to do so. The entire house could be traveled with the exception of the basement from which a girl cried out for days at a time. The nameless narrator attempted to communicate with the girl in the basement through the door. All his efforts were in with no avail. The days went by and the narrator survived off of the food left inside the house’s kitchen.

  The screams would periodically fade and vanished in sync with whenever the girl was asleep or unconscious. Whatever pain was experienced she’d scream day and night, but eventually the screams stopped entirely. The girl went quiet from causes unknown. About a day later the door to the basement became unlocked and upon inspection of the basement the narrator found the girl hanging on hooks by her back. Thin and boney her body hung there lifeless.

  The book was a dark one, but set in a reality without infected roaming the streets and a better reality to jump into than the one I was living. Before I knew it the book killed enough time for the sun to begin to leak into the skies. Dark shades of purple, blue, pink and orange shined between the trees and through the windows of the house and illuminated everything inside the way the blue sky did a day earlier.

  I closed up the book when I finished the first lengthy chapter and put it in the backpack with a couple of other things I found around the house after the light allowed a thorough search to be done. There was nothing major but I did manage to find a couple of useful things. Some food I could take with me and eat along the way and a switch blade perfect for me. To both sides of the blade there was an engraved red dragon. I thought of Hannibal Lector.

  As simplistic and peaceful as the home was, the time to move again arrived, with or without sleep. Daylight was too important for me to sleep and waste more of it.

  And I was back outside again.

  The sun reached its signature blind light status as the sky, in sync, became the perfect hue of blue it was on most days. It was going to be a productive day, granted nothing terrible took place like every other day. So, it was going to a terrible day, another day in the apocalyptic planet Earth.