The Infected Box Set, Vol. 1 [Books 1-3]

by Zuko, Joseph

  “Let’s move our asses!” Bob leads us to the bedroom and slides open the window. It is barely big enough for us to climb out. This side of the house is on a slope so it is a ten-foot drop out the window. Devon goes first. He sits on the sill and dangles his legs out. When he hits the ground he slides down the grassy hill and comes to a stop fifteen feet away from the house.

  “I made it!” he calls up to us. Two of the infected have climbed over the bookshelf. I stab them right away. Sara jumps next and makes it. Bob climbs up into the window. As he fights to get his legs out I take down a couple more freaks. The livestock or I guess, the deadstock now, smash through the house. I am back to back with Bob as he readies himself. Four more infected stumble into the bedroom and I take down the first one. My spear is stuck in its face and the three others are right on top of me. I rip the spear out and swing it hard and it slices off the head of one of them. The last two have their hands on me so I use the shaft of the spear to block them. I catch them under their arms and put the shaft right up into their sternums. They force me back and I knock Bob out of the window. When he hits the ground the rifle goes off.

  “AHHHAH! SON OF A BITCH!” Bob screeches in pain.

  The infected push my head and shoulders out the open window. The spear is caught against the frame and the wall. It stops them. They can’t reach me with their blood caked mouths. I look down at Bob and he has shot himself in the leg. The infected put all of their weight on me. The spear bows under the pressure. I am stuck halfway in and out of this window. I let go of the spear and pull the knife from my hip. I stab the one on my right and its body falls to the floor. I shove against the last one. I am able to get the handle of the spear out the window and I begin to fall. It is ten feet to the ground and I am going to land hard on my back. Awesome.

  Chapter 11

  The fall was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. The impact itself was not what hurt. The grass was soft and I hit it at a good angle and I slid easily down the hill on my back. What hurt was the sharp rock that sliced down the side of my right calf. It tore through my new pants and left a three inch gash.

  When I was twenty years old, I thought it was time I got a tattoo. So I put a Chinese symbol on my right leg. It was the symbol for money or so I was told. I could be a walking advertisement for Chinese laundry detergent. I do not really know. It sits a couple inches above my ankle and it’s the only tattoo on my body. I never liked it. A couple years ago I met a lady in her mid fifties and she had almost the exact tattoo in the same spot. After that I really hated my ink. The rock cut it in two. Slit it right down the middle. Now if I live through all of this I will have an ugly scar to go with my bad tattoo. I get to the bottom of the hill and crash into Bob. He lets out a squeal.

  “We’ve got to stop the bleeding!” Sara holds his wound.

  “With what?” Devon is in a panic.

  “I don’t know,” she walks over to Bob then cuts and tears off a strip from his t-shirt and pulls off his belt. She shoves the rag onto the wound, wraps the belt around his leg then pulls the belt tight and ties it off. Up in the window an infected climbs out after us. It falls and tumbles down the hill. I roll to my stomach and get to my knees. It falls head over heels. I ready myself, get my spear up and aim it at the monster. I stab him right in the chest and the force of it jams my handle down deep into the dirt behind me. My spear is stuck in the ground and its chest. Sara gets to her feet and gives it a chop to the head. Its skull splits in half. Another infected falls out the window and lands on Bob. Devon moves quickly and stabs down into the back of its head, but in his haste he did not see Bob’s leg was underneath. Devon’s spear goes right into Bob’s thigh. Black blood pours into Bob’s open wound. He lets out a high pitch screech. Devon pulls out the spear and kicks the infected off of Bob and sees what he has done.

  “Oh, God! I’m so sorry!” Devon puts pressure on the new wound.

  “YOU IDIOT!” Bob shouts through clenched teeth. I slowly get to my feet and test my leg. It hurts like hell but I can at least walk. Bob has shot off a chunk of his calf. It looks like Devon hit an artery. Bob’s blood pumps onto the grass. It seeps through Devon’s fingers. Behind the house is another forest, thick with trees. I do not want to face one of those turned cows out here in the open, it would run right over us. Bob’s face has gone white. He does not have long.

  “Get him up!” I lift up Bob’s arm and pull him to his feet. Devon gets under his other arm. It is tough to hold both him and my spear.

  “I can’t believe I stabbed him!”

  “It was an accident! We gotta move. Head for the forest.”

  “Should we leave him? We can’t fix him now!” Sara jumps out ahead of us for the woods.

  “You know where his boat is docked?”

  We move as fast as we can for the edge of the woods. I hope that we can get there and maybe they will lose track of us. We move slower than the infected as we cross the field. It is a hundred yards until we hit the trees. Carrying Bob like this reminds me of high school wrestling. Every year during Christmas break it was a tradition to run up Tukes Mountain. It is more of a super tall hill than a mountain. It sat a couple miles from the high school and was paved all the way to the top. You had to do the run if you wanted to letter in wrestling. On top of that you got your name on the wall with your finish time. They had over ten years worth of names up there by the time I entered high school so it was a badge of honor to run it. We ran it once on Christmas Eve morning. It was freezing out and my lungs burned with every breath. The run started at the high school, then down Main Street and up the hill. The thing that reminds me of this horrible walk is you had to make the run with one of your teammates on your back. You would pair up with someone in your weight class and run as fast as you can, for as long as you can, then you would switch. You would think being carried would be easy, but it was not. You still had to engage your arms and legs to help stay on their back. I can’t remember how long it took to get to the top of the mountain but it felt like forever. As I drag Bob I wonder when is it my turn to be carried?

  I am not in the same kind of shape I was in high school and Bob is not a hundred and forty pound teenager. We are only thirty yards from the tree line when I hear it. I look over my shoulder. One of the turned cows has fallen out of Bob’s window and crash-landed down the hill behind the house. It must have broken a limb in the fall because it drags its rear leg as it limps toward us.

  “Push it!” Devon and I pick up the pace. We are so close to the woods. Another cow and a few more infected humans fall down the hill behind us. Shit.

  The woods slow us down even more. The underbrush is so thick we are moving at a snails pace.

  “Bob, is there a faster way to the boat?” Sara chops at the brush with her machete. He looks up and glances around. Then motions to our right. We head in that direction. The three legged cow smashes through the woods behind us. The underbrush is no problem for her. The forest is so thick I can’t see it but I know the beast is there.

  It is a slog. Every step we take is a fight. I hurt all over. My clothes are still wet and Bob’s dead weight dragging me down.

  My mind flashes to Young Frankenstein when Gene Wilder digs up the dead body with Igor and he says “What a filthy job.” Igor- “Could be worse.” Frankenstein- “How?” Igor- “Could be raining.” Lightning cracks and down comes the rain. It is a great scene. Made me laugh even as a child. Can’t get any worse I think to myself. Then Bob pukes blood on me. That is twice in one day. So it did technically get a little worse, but at least it is not raining. My wife is always telling me me stop complaining. She says I am always complaining about this pain or that pain and most of the time she is right. After ten years of marriage you can run out of stuff to talk about and my back hurting badly from a heavy workout seems like a good topic. After a long hard walk we get to a small path.

  “Bob! Which way?”

  No response.

  “BOB!”

  His head pops up an
d he looks up and down the path. He is fading. We don’t have much time. He will turn from the sick blood that poured into his leg or bleed to death and try and bite my ear off. I reach into his front pocket and dig out the keys to the boat. Bob nods to the left towards north. Down the path we go. Something smashes around the forest. It is the three-legged beast. On the right side of the path there is a large log, three and a half feet high and it has been down for a long time. It is covered in moss and rotted from the elements.

  “Get down,” I mouth to the group. We duck behind the old dead growth. It completely hides us from what is about to come. The monster emerges. Step, step, step, drag. I fight to get my breath under control. I do not want it to hear me. It creeps down the gravel road behind us. We don’t move. We don’t breathe. It doesn’t know we are here. Bob has passed out, but his leg twitches. He is about to change. I lean over and put my forearm across his legs to stop the noise. I don’t think it heard us. I pull out my knife and get ready to take Bob out. I keep the tip of the blade under his chin. His body shakes. I know that stupid cow heard us. I force the knife up into Bob’s brain. I pull it out and wipe the blood off on Bob’s shirt.

  It is silent for a few seconds, but then a set of hooves slam down onto the log. Out of the three of us, I scream the loudest. We crab walk and twist away from the creature while trying to stab it. It tries to climb over the tree, but its busted leg makes it impossible. We slash at its face. Large chunks of meat fall from its skull. Devon lands the killshot and its massive body falls dead onto the log. He pulls the spear from its big head and wipes the blood off on its cowhide. I love this kid. What a funny thing to copy. No time to celebrate, we have got to move. I give Bob’s body one last look. Another person I could not save. The bodies are piling up in the “I could not save” pile. I can’t dwell on it but every time it happens I feel a deep sorrow. I make sure I have his boat keys and we are off.

  I sprint back out onto the path. The path opens onto a beautiful view of my city. Vancouver is right there. It looks so close, like I can reach out and touch it. I wipe the sweat from my eyes and take another look. A dark cloud looms above the city. Smoke from fires burning out of control all over the city. My heart aches at the thought of my family burning to death. By boat it is a two-minute ride across the river. If we swim it will take over an hour. The path widens even farther. The dock is right ahead of us. There is a small fishing boat and a bigger ski boat tied to the dock. I hope we get to ride in the big boat.

  Everything is clear on the beach. No infected and no devil cows. Our boots smack down onto the aluminum metal dock. It echoes loudly giving away our position to any infected in the area. We get to the last leg of the dock. I am ten feet from the large boat when a rough looking man in his sixties steps out from its cabin. He holds a revolver in his hand and draws down on us as we come to an abrupt stop. Our hands go up in the air. I wish I had a gun on me. His face says it all. He is freaked out and liable to do something stupid.

  “I’m looking for my brother!” he has similar features to Bob only older. He steps farther from the cabin and onto the back part of his boat.

  “Have you seen him? His name is Bob. I came to get him when I saw the news.”

  “We’ve seen him. I’m sorry, we tried to help,” I plead.

  “Is that his blood?!”

  “Some of it. He’d taken a bad fall and shot himself,” no need to tell him about what Devon and I did. Tears form in his eyes. He steps out onto the dock.

  “Take me to him! Now!”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s gone. The island’s covered with the infected. It’s not safe.”

  He pulls back the hammer on his gun. “Take me to his body!” tears trickle down the deep cracks in his face and he spits when he talks.

  “I’ve got a brother too and I don’t know what’s happened to him either. I’m very sorry for your loss-”

  “He’s down that path about two hundred yards and behind a large log. Please let us go!” blurts out Devon.

  “Sir, your brother saved us and we did everything we could for him, but right now we have to get off this island,” a small horde steps out of the woods. Perfect timing. They pour out onto the beach. “This place is overrun. We have to get out of here. Please. My name is Jim,” I hold out my hand to shake his. It worked with his brother; I hope it will work for him.

  “Get out of my way!”

  He pushes past us and runs down the dock. We watch him as he unloads his revolver into the first infected reaching the dock. One of the six shots hits it in the head and it falls face first to the aluminum grate. He quickly reloads his gun, much faster than I could reload a gun like that.

  “Let’s fire this baby up and get of this shitty island,” Sara heads for the small boat. She is right. We should leave. I don’t know the man nor owe him anything, but I feel guilty. I know how much I would miss my brother if something happened to him. My brother, Don, is a gun nut and works from home. If anyone is doing okay during all this ridiculous shit, it is him. Sara is in the boat and Devon has already undone the first mooring rope. Bob’s brother empties his revolver into another infected and it drops dead. I step off the dock and down into the boat. I turn the ignition. Nothing happens. The engine is dead maybe the battery, I have no idea. I look over the rest of the controls and there is nothing to it. No other buttons or a choke to pull, only the ignition and the throttle. I turn the key again. Nothing.

  Bob’s brother has gunned down another one. He has it figured out. Headshots are what it takes. He took down the whole small horde, all ten. It was impressive.

  “Battery’s dead!” he reloads his gun. “You want off this island? You gotta help me get my brother!”

  Damn it. My choices are to say, “screw you”, jump into the Columbia River, lose an hour and be exhausted or spend ten minutes and help him drag his brother off this deadly island. Another choice is I wait for him to drop his guard, kill him then take the keys off his dead body. What is wrong with me? I shake off that thought.

  “Come on,” I step off the boat and back up onto the dock.

  “Let’s kill him and take the keys,” Sara says quietly. I guess the thought of murder is contagious. In a few short hours we go from trying to save everyone to lets kill them if they get in my way.

  “No, let’s go get Bob,” I say, frustrated. Sara and Devon climb out and follow me. I get to the end of the dock and step over the pile of bodies.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Frank,”

  “Frank, these things are attracted to sound. So keep the shots to a minimum. If we come across one or two let us take care of it.”

  “Alright.”

  “We’ll help you get your brother and then you drop us off on the Vancouver side of the river. Deal?” I hold out my hand again. This time he takes it and we shake.

  “Deal.”

  It is like shaking hands with a stone giant. His bear paw of a hand engulfs and crushes mine. He must wash them with sandpaper. Devon and Sara cross over the dead bodies. They don’t try and hide how pissed they are at me. Frank leads us off the beach.

  We move quickly back into the woods. One of the infected tumbles out onto the gravel and falls at Devon’s feet. He yells at the top of his lungs. I don’t blame him. The thing is the most mangled looking ex-human I have ever seen. It was only held together by the tattered blood soaked clothes on its back. I think it was a female. It is hard to tell. It looks like it was shot through a de-barking machine. It oozes black slime from every part of its body. It is a horror and it stinks. It is not a rotted meat smell. More of a port-a-potty in the hot sun kind of stink. Devon quickly puts the thing out of its misery. Frank dry heaves and his eyes flutter like he is going to pass out.

  “Stop looking at it,” I turn him away from the dead body. “We’re almost there,” I have to pull Frank along.

  “Goddamn, what happened to these people?” he spits a little.

  “We don’t know. Some kind of infection.”

&
nbsp; Two more appear behind us on the path. They are so quiet. I don’t hear them behind us until they are only a few feet away. I take one out fast and easy with a hard stab to its face. Sara swings her machete down onto the other one’s head. Her blade gets stuck in the skull. As it falls to the ground it takes the machete with it. She tries to pull it out but it is stuck. Devon puts his boot on the dead man’s head and wrenches the blade out. He hands it back to her and their hands touch. He gives her a cheesy grin. Kids. We are almost there. Frank stares at the dead cow across the log.

  “What’s this?”

  “Animals can catch it too.” I slow down. Something moves on the other side of the log. We step off the path and get around the end of the tree. Four infected monsters are eating Bob’s body. They have chewed up his hands, face and one has disemboweled him. It scoops his guts into its mouth. Frank guns them down in a flash. He kneels down and pushes the dead bodies off of his brother. Tears stream down his cheeks. He sobs as he pulls his dead brother’s body close to his. My heart goes out to him.

  “Come on,” I touch Frank’s shoulder. He shrugs me off.

  “We need to get back to the boat,” whispers Devon. Sara moves a little closer. Her grip tightens on her machete. She moves in behind Frank.

  “Devon, Sara, keep an eye out.”

  “Fine,” she grits her teeth.

  They stand guard at the end of the log. I slide my spear down between my back and the pack I am wearing.

  “Frank,” he pulls away from his brother. We lay the body down on the ground. He holsters his revolver. I hook my arms under Bob’s and Frank hooks under his legs.

  “Devon, you lead the way. Sara, watch our backs.”

  We truck down the gravel path and run as fast as we can. Bob was six foot two and two hundred and thirty pounds. I struggle to carry the body this way. Frank is a tough old bird. I can’t imagine carrying my dead brother like this. I would have a mental breakdown. Frank runs hard and seems like he could move faster if he wanted to. I am slowing him down. An infected pops out of the woods in front of us. Devon cuts him down without breaking his stride. A few more are behind us. It is incredible how they can magically appear sometimes. You look away for a second and then when you look back there are two of them. You would think I would be out of adrenaline but it keeps pumping through me. We move fast enough that they can’t run us down from behind.