Infected (Book 1): The Fall

by Caleb Cleek

  “So far we’re all fine.” As I said it, I realized that Mary and Lawrence were coughing and had been while I was talking to Kimiko, too. I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. “Actually, I am fine, but two of the people in the diner with me are starting to show symptoms.”

  “Have you told Katie yet?” he asked, referring to my wife. While he had been working the case with me three years ago, he had eaten dinner with us every night for two weeks. He had gotten to know Katie and Toby during that time. The following summer, he and his wife had come and visited us for a couple days.

  “No, I haven’t had a chance. That’s going to be my next phone call. Business has been first today, but it’s time to call her.” I had been putting the call off since I spoke with Doc Baker. Katie hated the risk that came with my job and I didn’t know how to break it to her that her worst fears were about to be confirmed: my job was going to kill me.

  “I need to pass this up the chain. We will follow up on the information you provided and I suspect rockets will be flying before the day is over. I don’t really have the words right now so I’m not going to say anything. I want you to know that Sally and I will do everything we can to help Katie and Toby.”

  Shannon was the kind of man who wouldn’t make promises he didn’t intend to keep. It gave me some comfort to know he would look out for my family when this was over.

  “Don’t take any wooden nickels,” he piped with the return of his Irish accent and hung up the phone. To most it would have seemed boorish, but it was what I expected and needed. We both knew I had hours left to live and I appreciated him not dwelling on it. I didn’t want my last minutes ruined by a lot of crying and lamenting from friends. My life had been good so far and I was going to live it until the end.

  Before I could dial Katie, my phone rang again with a call from Doc Baker. “Dr. Clark said there was no problem with taking Kimiko and placing her in isolation for a couple hours and letting her go. If she isn’t showing symptoms by now, she isn’t going to.”

  “Connor!” Lawrence blurted out. “More trouble! There’s an Asian woman covered in blood running from the Knick Knack Shack.”

  I knew she needed to be dealt with after I got off the phone with Doc Baker the first time. I thought Matt would be here in time to deal with her before she regained consciousness. I was wrong.

  “I have to go Doc. We have a big problem.” And I hung up the phone.

  “Lawrence, you’re in charge here!” I shouted as I ran toward my car. “Take the shotgun and get Mary and Bertha out front.” I slipped the purple slinky bracelet from around my wrist and unlocked the door. I tossed it to Lawrence and yelled, “Lock the doors before you leave. If anything gets out of the diner, it’s up to you to stop it. Aim for the head, body shots don’t work. And don’t let anyone from outside near you!” I shouted as I slid into the front seat of the patrol car. I hadn’t gotten the keys back from Lawrence, so I used the second set I carried on my belt keeper.

  I yanked the gear shift lever down one slot and pushed the gas pedal to the floor while twisting the steering wheel to the left. The tires chirped as the car plowed backwards across the freshly sealed asphalt parking lot. As soon as the nose of the car pointed toward the road, I slammed on the brakes, stopping the backwards motion. I pulled the gear lever down two more notches and buried the gas pedal into the short carpet on the floor. In the ten seconds it took me to get into the car, the infected woman had already moved a long way down Main Street. Her awkward gait looked like it would slow her down. The distance she had covered spoke otherwise. She was as fast as an Olympic sprinter. I was afraid she would leave the street and run between buildings, forcing me to abandon my car and pursue her on foot.

  From what I was seeing, there was no way to catch her on foot. Not only was her speed faster than mine, her stamina was much greater than mine, too. It appeared that luck was on my side, though. She continued running down the middle of the lane. As the car closed the distance, the red needle on the speedometer passed through sixty. She was less than 100 feet ahead. In less than a second I was going to crush her with the car. Like a rodeo clown fleeing a charging bull, she made a last second jink to the right and started down Lincoln Street. I moved my foot from the gas pedal and crushed the brake pedal as my boot tried to push it through the floor. The front of the car dropped instantly as the whole car fought against the restraining force of the brakes.

  I resisted the urge to rack the wheel hard to the left in a u-turn. The Crown Victoria has a bad tendency to under steer. When the wheel is turned sharply before the car has slowed enough, the car will continue forward, skidding on the turned wheels. Once the speed drops enough, the front wheels will hold to the road and the car will track in the direction the wheels lead. Prior to that speed, sharp turns are ineffective.

  When enough speed had been scrubbed off, I cranked the wheel to the steering stop. The tires howled in complaint, but they maintained their tenuous grip on the road and the car sliced to the left. As the car passed through one hundred eighty degrees, my foot began to edge back into the gas. The car accelerated through the next ninety degrees and ended with the nose pointing down Lincoln Street toward the elementary school.

  I wasn’t going to catch her before she made it through the pedestrian gate in the fence that ran the perimeter of the playground. The playground was full of kids enjoying their lunch break.

  I slammed on the brake as she burst through the open gate twenty feet ahead of me. I racked the gear shift into park before the car had completely stopped. The transmission ticked as the gears attempted to mesh. Suddenly they locked together and the wheels instantly froze. The car ground to a halt six inches from the elevated curb. My right hand was clawing my Glock out of the holster as I slid from the seat. She was forty feet ahead and moving fast when my feet hit the ground. I raised the pistol level with my eyes. She was in the midst of a playground full kids. Suddenly a lane opened up. I squeezed a round off and she bucked forward with a red emulsion spewing out the front of her chest.

  The explosion of the gun sent the kids into a frenzy. Unsure what to do, they began running aimlessly. Their random movement closed the open lane and I couldn’t get off another shot without unacceptable risk. The force of the bullet drove the infected woman to her knees. I charged her, seeking an opening. As I closed the distance between us, she rose to her feet and headed to an open door seventy feet ahead with blinding speed.

  I was trying to keep up when she breached the open cafeteria doorway. I entered the cavernous room four seconds behind her. My heart dropped when I realized it was full of kids from the second lunch who were still eating.

  They had all heard the gunshot outside. They recognized it for what it was and all knew it was a sound they shouldn’t be hearing at school. It put them on the edge of panic. When the blood soaked, crazed woman burst through the door, they were pushed over the edge and started running without direction. They bounced off each other like pin balls in an arcade machine. Many crawled off the benches they were sitting on and lay beneath the tables.

  She pushed through the crowd, biting randomly at kids. Her insatiable appetite was battling with her survival instinct, which kept her from staying in one place long enough to make a kill, but wasn’t strong enough to force her to completely bypass easy food. Each bite she took tore flesh from a terrified child.

  As she moved to the corner of the room, the worst fear I could imagine materialized out of the mist of my mind. I saw Toby just ahead of her, trapped in the corner. It was as if she could read my thoughts and had sought him out, one kid in a room packed with kids. She made for him as if he was the sole object of her focus.

  Her gaping mouth sought his throat like a lioness after a wildebeest and I realized I had no shot. She was directly between Toby and me.

  She was offset just enough to the right that I could see Toby mouth the words, “Help me, Dad!” With all the tumult in the room, I couldn’t hear his tiny voice. I was too far to reach her before
she was on top of him.

  If I didn’t do anything she would kill him. The only hope I had was a desperation shot. The chance of the bullet not striking Toby, as it passed through her, was almost nonexistent. I had no other option and I squeezed the trigger. The bullet entered the back of her skull, exited her forehead, and smashed a hole in the wall within an inch of Toby’s head. As the bullet ripped through the back of her skull and tore a crater out the front, it created a vacuum in its wake, sucking half of the pulverized contents of her cranium out with it.

  In what could only be described as miraculous, the bullet had missed my son. However, in an instant of bone jarring agony, I realized the cruel turn fate had played on me. The contents of her head more or less followed the path of the bullet, but in a widening pattern. The heavier bone chips from her forehead led the mass of debris with the lighter mixture of blood and brains trailing immediately behind. Tiny chips of bone at the lead of the mixture imbedded in Toby’s cheek which was then painted with the viscid amalgam that followed.

  The bone shards had punctured the thin layer of skin God had placed over his body to keep out the malice of the world. Those tiny voids in his skin allowed the virus saturated blood and prion-permeated brain matter entrance into his body. He had been spared the impact of my bullet, but it had indirectly dealt my son a fatal blow none the less.

  Chapter 9

  I took a knee in front of my son. He ran into my arms and buried his head in my shoulder. I squeezed him and felt his heart racing against my chest. After several seconds, I placed my hands on his shoulders and pushed him back so I could examine him. The right side of his face was peppered with bone fragments. Small red beads of blood were forming on his cheek. His entire face was plastered with the pink mush from the woman’s head. I took a handful of napkins from the dispenser on the table and began wiping the filth from his skin. When I was done, there was a pile of soiled napkins on the floor. He still had globules embedded in his blond hair. Those would have to wait until later.

  “Are you okay?” I questioned, looking into his face.

  “Uh-huh,” he replied, looking down at the floor. His eyes betrayed the bravery he was trying to portray. Water began to build along his lower eyelid and his lower lip quivered. Suddenly, he lunged at me and wrapped his arms around my neck. Still fighting back the tears, his body shook uncontrollably.

  I wrapped my arms around him and whispered in his ear, “It’s over. She can’t hurt you now. She will never be able to hurt you again.” I tightened my grip around him, not wanting to let him go.

  And then the Pussy Cat Dolls started singing from my left shirt pocket, “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me.” I hated the ring tone. Katie thought it was hilarious and had insisted that I make it “her” ringtone. The entire week after she put it on my phone, she would call me from her phone whenever we were together in public. She would laugh and laugh as I attacked my pocket, trying to silence it. Shortly after I got married, I learned that once my wife made up “my” mind, there was no point trying to convince her I had a say in it.

  My phone started into its second incantation and Toby let go of my neck, stood up straight and blurted out, “Can I tell Mom how you just blew that lady away?” Eight year olds are resilient. The trauma he just experienced was unimportant compared to the great reaction he would get from giving Katie the scoop.

  “I think you better let me tell her about this one, buddy,” I said, tussling his hair. I extricated the phone from my pocket, wondering how she had heard about the shooting so fast.

  “Hey, Katie,” I said, not knowing exactly what else to say.

  “You are not going to believe what just happened,” she said, giving me a chance to think about how I was going to tell her the extent of my day. “Claire Mantell just came by and asked me if I would take care of her dog and horse for a few days.

  “She was saying something about how she was getting away from town while the getting was still good. You know how she can get,” Katie said in frustration. “She was raving about a plague that was going to wipe out the town.”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Claire was at our house?”

  “Yeah, she was here ten minutes ago. I’m probably going to get sick now. She kept coughing in my face. She was trying to telling me about something that happened at the Knick Knack Shack. She was so intent on getting her story out that she wasn’t covering her mouth before coughing. After the second time her cough sprayed saliva on my face, I started trying to edge her out of the house.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking when I told her I could watch their dog if they ever left town. That woman is crazy! She wasn’t making any sense when she spoke. I finally told her to have a good trip and not to worry about Otis. I pretty much had to push her out the door. She is always strange, but if you take her normal strangeness and multiply it by ten, that was how she was acting today.”

  My churning stomach felt like it was going to give back everything I had eaten at Mary’s. I placed my arm against the wall for support, fearing my legs might give out. I could deal with my exposure, but Toby and now Katie? It was too much. I could feel a knot forming in the back of my throat. I was fighting hard against the tears I could feel welling up in my eyes. I had never cried in front of Toby and I wasn’t going to let him see it in my last hours.

  “Honey,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to keep an even voice. “Something bad happened this morning.”

  I wasn’t doing very well keeping my voice even because she picked up on it and interrupted me. “Connor, what’s going on? You better tell me the truth. Don’t you dare try and hide it from me.”

  “Katie, you know that I have never lied to you and I won’t start now.” I stopped, trying to find the words that would convey what had happened while still softening the blow. “Claire doesn’t have a cold.” I told her about everything that happened at Mary’s. I told her what Doc Baker had said. I didn’t know how to tell her about Toby. I paused again, still searching for the words, still fighting the lump growing in my throat as I thought about our son.

  “Connor, you know I hate it when you joke like that! It isn’t funny. Now tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

  “I’m not joking,” I said in a hushed tone. I looked up at the water stained ceiling and pulled Toby closer to me with my free hand.

  “You’re telling me I am going to die within six hours?” she asked, her voice raising an octave. “Nice try, you had me for a minute. Honestly, why do you think these jokes are funny?” I could hear the anger starting to come through in her voice.

  “Dad, tell her how you blew that crazy lady away,” Toby blurted out, still not understanding the gravity of what was happening.

  “What’s he talking about? And why are you with Toby?” Katie asked slowly. The anger in her voice had turned to fear.

  I wasn’t going to get a better transition to tell her about our son. Before I was done, Katie was sobbing on the other end of the line. “I hate your job! Why can’t we have a job like normal people? Why do you have to have a job where your life is in danger every single day?”

  This was a conversation we had had a thousand times and I wasn’t going to come out any better this time than in the past. “Katie, I am going to bring Toby home. First, I need to secure the school. There were at least sixty kids in here when the woman ran in. Every one of them was exposed. If they leave the school grounds, there’s no hope of containing the disease. It will spread like fire in dry grass.”

  “No, Connor, you need to take care of your family right now. We have given enough to this stupid town. You need to come home and take care of us.”

  She was right, but it was too late for us. There were still a lot of other families who weren’t exposed. I couldn’t lay down and die. That was coming soon, but not yet. “Did Claire say where she was going?”

  “Yeah,” she choked between sobs. “She said she bought airline tickets to her mom’s house in Iowa. She was on her way to th
e airport. What difference does it make?”

  “Katie, it makes a big difference. If she gets to the airport, this disease will spread all over the country. When did she leave and which car was she driving?” Claire had an old Astro mini-van and an extended cab Ford pickup.

  “She was driving the pickup and left ten minutes ago. Don’t you go trying to stop her, Connor! We need you!”

  She was right, I couldn’t go after Claire. I lived fifteen minutes out of town and my place was on the way to the airport. That put her thirty miles ahead of me. It would take me forty minutes to catch her assuming she was driving the speed limit. In her agitated state, she was probably driving closer to eighty or ninety. I couldn’t afford to waste that time.

  “Dispatch, this is Unit 2. Shots fired at the elementary school. Another infected person is down.” At this point, the radio call seemed to have lost its urgency. “Contact the Highway Patrol and give them a B.O.L. for a green, late nineties Ford F-150 with a dent on the front right fender and an American Quarter Horse Association sticker in the back window. The vehicle is traveling south on Highway 72 and is approximately 30 miles south of town en route to the airport. Contact TSA and have them put Claire Mantell on the Do-Not-Fly-List. The vehicle needs to be stopped at all costs. The driver has Ebola and should not be contacted once she is stopped.” Everyone has heard of Ebola and even though it wasn’t what she technically had, it was close enough and would get everyone’s attention, especially the busybodies in town listening to their scanners.

  For good measure, I added, “I want a message put out over the emergency broadcast system for everyone in and around the town of Lost Hills to stay inside their homes.” Panic could work in our favor now. It would keep everyone inside.

  “10-4,” she answered in a calm voice.

  “Are you still there, Katie?” I asked as I put the phone back to my ear.