Infected (Book 1): The Fall

by Caleb Cleek

  The noise we made at the front door had obviously drawn her attention to that area. Her twisted mind was still focused on what had been on the other side of the door. It was incapable of realizing that the cause of the noise was no longer there. This was yet more proof that the infected had lost their higher reasoning abilities. Their mind functioned on instinct, the foremost of which was the desire to feed.

  Although I knew my fear that Carol was infected was correct, I couldn’t force myself to pull the trigger without confirmation. “Carol,” I said softly. “It’s Connor.”

  At the first syllable, her posture straightened. She paused for a moment, determining the direction of the sound. I heard air pass through her sinuses in rapid bursts as her nose, and apparently heightened sense of smell, confirmed what her ears had already detected. Her body snapped around rigidly and a pair of lifeless eyes bored into mine. Her head canted quizzically to the left for a brief moment then snapped back to vertical as her lips pulled back, in what was becoming a familiar expression, displaying a set of bared teeth. Her face was covered with gore and her clothes were blood soaked. A chunk of flesh was missing from her forearm.

  I knew what was coming and didn’t wait for her to attack. I aligned the front and rear sights on her forehead just above her eyes and squeezed the trigger. An explosion ripped through the house and was magnified by the confines of the enclosed area.

  The bullet passed effortlessly through the front of her skull and scrambled her brain before exiting the rear and punching through the wooden door. The impulses that had been traveling up and down her spinal cord instantly ceased. With no further instructions being relayed, the muscles in her legs relaxed and her body crumpled onto the tile floor. The index finger on her left hand twitched twice and then she lay motionless. Carol had died some time ago; now her body was dead as well.

  Before I had a chance to feel remorse for having shot a family acquaintance, I heard a thump from upstairs. The noise was followed by several more thumps then rapid footfalls moving in a linear direction, presumably down a hallway. Then they were on the staircase which fed into the living room to my left. The edge of the living room ceiling blocked the top of the descending stairway from my view.

  The first thing I saw was a set of white shoes with untied laces flying wildly as the foot struck the first visible stair step. Then blue jean clad legs descended into view, followed by another set of feet in tan work boots. The torso of the lead body descended far enough to enter my line of sight. It was attired in what had been a blue plaid button up shirt. Now, most of it was a reddish brown with splotches of the original design still visible at the sides.

  “This is a fight we don’t want to be a part of right now,” Matt hissed behind me just before he fired into the chest of the first body prior to the head coming into view. The torso bucked backwards, but did not fall.

  Carol’s body was blocking the door. There was no way to swing the door inward without moving her body. I holstered my gun, trusting Matt to cover my back while I cleared a path out of the house. I clutched Carol’s wrist and pulled to the side of the doorway. At first, friction grabbed at her body. As I slid her through the pool of blood that had already formed around her head, the friction decreased drastically and the body slid easily on the slick tiles.

  Matt continued to hammer away with his forty caliber. It had only been three or four seconds since his first shot, but he was already yelling, “Empty!” I turned back to the stairway and tore my pistol from the holster. There were three dead bodies on the ground between the stairs and five feet from where I were standing. There were three more coming at us. I took aim at the first and fired. Its erratic gait caused its head to wobble from side to side. As I pulled the trigger, the head bounced the other direction and I missed. I fired again and hit it in the jaw. It kept coming. The third shot found its mark and the body fell to the ground. I acquired the second infected, which was just behind the first one. I fired a double tap to the head and it collapsed. I shifted my aim to the next, which had just cleared the last step, and fired repeatedly until it went down, too. My slide locked back.

  I yelled, “Empty!” and dumped the magazine onto the ground and slapped another one into the handle of the pistol, pushing the slide release. Before my reload was complete, I heard the crack of Matt’s pistol to my right. More bodies were descending the stairway.

  I retreated to the front door, twisted the handle, pulled the door inward and yelled, “Move out,” hoping Matt would hear me over the explosions from his pistol. He must have understood because he started moving in my direction as he fired. Every time a body stumbled and fell, another one appeared on the steps.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Matt drop the muzzle of his pistol as he moved behind me and passed through the doorway. I followed, back stepping through the entry to keep bullets going downrange until I could close the door.

  This time, we didn’t wait for the sprinkler to clear the sidewalk. We ran through the spray toward the street, hoping the door knob would confound them long enough for us to get to the truck. My brain was working at an incredible rate. Everything seemed like it was in slow motion. As I ran down the sidewalk, I saw individual droplets fly upwards as my foot struck the thin film of water on the sidewalk. I was able to track the drops in my peripheral vision as they arced toward the grass. A rainbow appeared suspended in the sprinkler mist in front of me. I took another step and it was gone. In the midst of everything going on around me, I marveled at my heightened senses. They should all be shut down as part of my fight or flight response. For some reason, they had become super-sensitized.

  When I reached the truck, whatever anomaly had caused my heightened sense of awareness ceased. Everything returned to normal speed. I didn’t try to catalogue what was happening physiologically.

  I yanked on the door handle and flung the door open in a frantic effort to get at my rifle, which was resting on the center of the front bench seat with the barrel pointing at the floor. I stepped toward the interior of the truck as the door opened and was suddenly cracked on the head. My vision went dark with the exception of a bright starburst which lasted for a fraction of a second and then vanished. My vision returned. I realized I had thrown the door open with such force it had reached the stop and rebounded back into my head, nearly knocking me unconscious. My wits returned enough to remember I still needed my rifle, which I extricated from the truck. I moved toward the rear and took aim over the bed. Matt was coming around the hood with his rifle in his hands.

  The door knob was proving too much for the limited mental power of the infected. We waited for at least thirty seconds. I could see the curtains in the living room moving back and forth as the infected brushed against them, trying to find a way to get to us. The left curtain moved away from the center several inches, providing a small window into the house.

  Suddenly a face appeared in the window. It moved forward and came to an abrupt halt as it struck the glass. Two hands came up on the window, moving back and forth across the invisible barrier. As the hands moved back and forth, the curtains were forced open further. Another body appeared in the widening gap and repeated the process of bumping into the glass with hands moving across the clear surface. The hands forced the curtain even further to the side.

  Within a short time, the curtains had parted three or four feet. Fists began hitting the window. The strikes were soft at first. The force behind the blows increased as frustration turned to rage. A crack appeared. On the next blow, a fist passed through the glass. The jagged edge dug deeply into the arm protruding through the shattered window. Red fluid ran down the surface in narrow rivers. The arm moved back and forth, trying to escape the clutches of the glass. The shard finally gave way and fell inward as the arm was wrenched back, but not before it had shredded the skin of the protruding appendage.

  Matt began shooting into the visible space between the gaps in the curtain. As one body fell, another took its place. Within thirty seconds no more bodies appea
red. After two minutes, with no more faces appearing in the window, we topped off our magazines and approached the front door. This time, the sprinklers had reached the end of their cycle and shut off. I slowly opened the door. The living room was littered with bodies. Some were still moving. None were upright. I covered the stairs while Matt finished off the infected that had refused to succumb to their wounds. In a matter of minutes, we had cleared the house.

  The last room we cleared was an upstairs bedroom. It appeared that all the infected had been occupying it. The comforter from the bed was wadded in the corner. The once white sheets were strewn across the floor and were now mottled reddish brown. Trinkets from the nightstand had been knocked off and the toppled stand now lay on its side. The stench from the room was overwhelming.

  What unknown force had drawn nearly twenty infected to congregate in the small room was a mystery.

  We went back downstairs and surveyed the carnage. There were eighteen bodies in the living room.

  “There’s nothing here that’s going to help us now,” I said, heading for the door.

  Chapter 25

  We exited the house and walked back to the truck, dejected by finding Marty dead. Faces peering through neighboring windows vanished as we looked in their direction. People who were normally outgoing and friendly had turned into reclusive hermits.

  Finding Marty dead brought home the reality that we were in the midst of an apocalyptic event. There was no telling if any of the people we had hoped to recruit would be alive by the end of the day. “We need to get these vaccinations distributed before everyone’s dead. Any thoughts on who should get them?” I asked.

  “I think Cindy would do a great at organizing the food co-op. If we can find her, she should get one,” Matt said, referring to the secretary at the sheriff’s station. She grew up in Lost Hills and was very active in the community. She organized several large community events every year. Since she had lived in the community for so long, everyone knew her. She wasn’t a formal community leader, but she would do a good job overseeing food supplies and convincing people to work together to stockpile food.

  Matt thumbed Cindy’s phone number onto the screen of his phone. It immediately went to voicemail. I turned the truck around and headed to Cindy’s house on the outskirts of town. When we arrived, her car was not in the driveway. We knocked to no avail; no one was home.

  “She was still at the station when we left yesterday afternoon. Maybe she never left,” Matt suggested as he dialed the phone number to the station. From the conversation, it was clear that she was still there. I turned in the direction that would take us there.

  When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a lone light shining in the reception area. We exited the truck and bounded up the brick steps. By the time we reached the top, Matt had the key to the front door in his hand. He briskly worked the lock which disengaged with a snap. Once inside, he reengaged the lock. Cindy and Kimiko were in the same places they had been when I had last seen them.

  Kimiko’s mascara had smeared and run down her face from tears being repeatedly shed and wiped away. Puffy skin under both she and Cindy’s eyes hinted that they hadn’t slept enough, if at all.

  “I’m glad to see the two of you,” Cindy exclaimed with relief flooding over her face. “The phone has been ringing off the hook. No one is answering 911 so people are calling here. I didn’t see any point in trying to call either of you. I knew you were already doing what you could.”

  Matt and I quickly explained to Cindy the things we knew about what was happening in town and around the world. We told her of the community food co-op we had envisioned and asked if she would be willing to organize it.

  “I don’t know how that would even work,” she answered doubtfully.

  “We don’t really know ourselves. But if anyone can convince people to work together on this, it’s you,” Matt said in response. “Everybody in town knows you. You’ve organized lots of other events. Besides, you won’t be doing it by yourself. There will be others to help. You are the one that can convince people to participate. There are only a few people who will be able to subsist by hunting and gardening. We need these people who have the know-how to help those who don’t. Someone needs to teach the others how to provide for themselves. In the short term, I don’t see the majority being able to survive. They are going to have to rely on the help of those who can. Your job would be to get everyone to work together in acquiring and sharing food and survival knowledge.”

  Cindy was quiet for a moment as she considered what Matt and I had said. Her hands fidgeted on the desktop and she twisted back and forth in her chair. Finally, she looked up and said, “I’m still not sure you have the right person. For what it is worth though, I will do whatever I can.”

  “In that case I have something for you,” I said, withdrawing a packet containing an alcohol wipe and a syringe of vaccine from the breast pocket of my shirt. I tore the packet open. Removing the wipe, I advanced toward Cindy. She rolled her chair back and stood up, eyeing the syringe.

  “What is that?” she asked cautiously.

  “It’s a vaccine against the infection, courtesy of the United States Army. Have you been in contact with anyone other than Matt and me since yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Good. If you were already infected, we would be wasting a valuable vaccine. Do you want it in the left or right arm?”

  She silently glanced at her left arm and then back at me, which I took as her answer to the question. As I cleaned the area with the wipe, she questioned, “Does it hurt?”

  “From the way Matt cried and moaned when he got his, I assume it does. I suspect you will be okay though,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  The joke seemed to help her relax a bit. “Well, Matt always was a big baby. If he can do it, it must not be that bad,” she said, smiling for the first time since yesterday.

  I jabbed the needle into her left arm and pushed the plunger, delivering the life-saving serum into the sinewy muscle of her bicep. She winced slightly from the burn of the vaccine as it entered her tissue.

  I replaced the cap over the needle and tossed the syringe into the garbage can. Yesterday it would have been unthinkable. Today there were much larger biohazards to worry about. A capped syringe, in the garbage can that would never be emptied, was suddenly a non-issue.

  “The two of you can’t stay here,” I said to Cindy and Kimiko as I looked around at the sparse office. There was nowhere to sleep, and no food to eat. “It’s going to be cramped, but the two of you are going to stay at my place.”

  Cindy was very conscious about being a burden to people. Normally she would have flatly rejected my offer. Today was different. She simply said, “Thank you. I don’t think I could bear another night alone.” She sat slightly more erect, as if a weight had been removed from her shoulders. The fear of trying to protect herself had been terrorizing. She was a very self reliant woman; however, she knew the horrors she would face outside were beyond her abilities to overcome alone.

  “Before we move out, is there anything else you think we might need?” I asked Matt.

  “Let’s get all the ammo we can carry,” he suggested. “Even though we already have a good supply, this place will probably be ransacked and pillaged before we return. With all the uproar about the Sheriff stockpiling guns and ammo with county funds, everybody knows what’s here. I wouldn’t count on there being any left when we return later.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Let’s load up the truck and get out of here. We have a lot to do.”

  After scurrying back and forth between the armory and my pickup, the four of us loaded my truck up with about thirty thousand rounds. There was still plenty left inside. We agreed that if we had time we would try to get the rest of it before it was stolen. It should be made available to the citizens of the county, but I wanted to be in charge of distributing it.

  We also took a pistol for Cindy. The rest of the guns were secure
d in one of the two large safes in the armory. We loaded the other safe full of ammunition. If someone was really motivated, he could probably get into the safes, but it would be a lot more work than simply taking guns off the wall rack. Both safes were bolted into the concrete slab. Short of someone coming into the station with a cutting torch, they could walk off with a lot of ammunition, but both safes should be intact when we returned.

  Chapter 26

  Everyone except for Matt piled into the truck. Matt went into the back lot and got one of the two patrol pickups. He drove through the back gate and took the lead. We had already agreed that we would take the back route to my house so as to avoid Sergeant Martinez and his road block. It was better not to put him in a situation where he felt compelled to disobey his orders. On top of that, he may view our leaving town differently than going into town. His orders were to prevent the spread of the disease. Leaving town, especially with two more people, may, in his opinion, be too much to allow.

  Matt drove through the residential part of town, feeling it was important for people to see that we were still patrolling. He claimed it would give people hope. We were driving down Birch Street when Matt brought the patrol vehicle to an abrupt stop ahead of my truck. I looked to the right and saw what had captured his attention.

  The front door to the house adjacent to his truck had been kicked in. The door frame was splintered. There were a couple cans of food in front of the door and tire tracks rutted the lawn up to the door.

  As I unbuckled my seatbelt, I turned to Cindy, who was sandwiched between Kimiko and myself on the front bench seat, “If you see any infected, honk the horn. Otherwise, stay in the truck with the doors locked.”