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

by Zuko, Joseph

  “You know how to reload it?” Troy pulled a shell from his bandolier and handed it to her.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she said as she took the shell and forced it into the bottom of the shotgun. It took her a minute to get the son of a bitch in there. After she worked out the mechanics of it she fought five more shells into the gun and racked it.

  Out of the corner of her eyes she caught glimpses of horrific acts of violence. Troy swerved all over the road to avoid vehicles and humans.

  Living and dead.

  Botchy was scratching at the door of her bag. It had been awhile since she had ridden in it. Karen pulled open the Velcro door and her fuzzy head popped out immediately. The little doggy was all tongue and loving the salty buffet of tears on Karen’s face. Even with the living nightmare going on all around her the wet kisses of her sweet dog gave Karen a smile.

  “Botchy?” Robin put out her hand so she could get some kisses too. Karen moved Botchy from one child to the next letting the dogs little wet tongue bring joy to both children.

  “Where are we going, Mama?” Valerie asked as she rested her head down on her Uncle’s shoulder.

  “Ganny’s.”

  “There aren’t any bad people there?”

  Karen searched for an answer that would not scare the child. “There won’t be as many and Mama and Uncle Troy will protect you okay?”

  “And Robin?” Valerie needed total clarification.

  “And Robin and Ganny and Botchy. You don’t have to worry. You’re safe.” Karen ran her hand down the back of Valerie’s head. Troy raised his eyebrow at his sister and Karen shrugged her shoulders back at him. The statement felt no different than the promise of Santa’s arrival on Christmas. Troy cut across the parking lot of a gas station.

  “Oh, God!” Troy groaned.

  Chapter 15

  A clerk was being mauled next to one of the gas station pumps. Karen covered her children’s eyes to protect them from the gore. Like before, with her deaf neighbor, the group of infected worked at tearing the young man in two.

  “Where are the police? Where is the National Guard?” Karen turned away from the window so she did not have to watch the man suffer anymore.

  “I don’t know. The National Guard station is located in downtown Vancouver. It will take them a long time to get organized enough to make it to this side of town,” Troy said as he cranked the wheel hard to make a fast right.

  “Can you slow down?” Karen steadied the two girls after the turn.

  “I want to get back to Mama’s, fast.”

  They raced through an intersection. Troy did not see the sports car moving quick on his right. The Mustang ran right into the rear quarter panel of his truck. They spun out of control. The truck did a three sixty in the center of the intersection. The Mustang kept moving forward. Its left front tire folded under the wheel well and its hood bent in half. It was heading right for a small store that sold vacuums. Sparks flew as it jumped the curb and smashed into a storefront. Shattered glass sprayed out over the top of the car and down onto the sidewalk. The driver was laid out dead on the horn.

  After Troy’s truck stopped spinning it kept rolling backwards and crashed into a telephone pole. Both girls screamed their lungs out. They reached for comfort from the nearest adult. Pain exploded up Karen’s right arm. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but before she checked herself she looked down at her girls. They were shaken up but neither of the kids sustained any injuries.

  The growing pain in her wrist had ratcheted past eleven on the “does it hurt” meter. She looked down at her hand. Her wrist looked all kinds of wrong. It was bulged and angled in a bad direction. It had been dislocated or maybe broken. She could not tell. The sight of it made her vomit. All of the pizza in her stomach poured out onto the floorboard between her feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Troy shook off the cobwebs in his brain.

  Karen held up her wrist and showed him what was causing her so much distress.

  “Oh fuck!” he burped out the curse.

  “Bad word.” Robin stopped crying long enough to point out his error.

  “Is it broken?” He reached out for her forearm and took a better look.

  Karen kept her head down. She did not want to look at it.

  She spat the last bit of puke out of her mouth, “I don’t know! Try and fix it!”

  “I don’t know how to fix it! We got to get out of here!” Troy checked three-sixty. Nothing and no one had spotted them yet. He tried the key and the engine revved. He punched the gas and the truck lurched forward. It made a god-awful sound like metal grinding and tearing itself apart.

  The impacted side rear tire sat at a seventy-degree angle and had gone flat. Troy put his truck into four-wheel drive and the front tires activated. He was able to pull back out into the street, but it was like they had the emergency brake on. No matter how much he stepped on the gas he could not get it over forty. The faster they went the louder the noise became.

  Horns blared as cars raced past them.

  “You gotta fix my wrist! I can’t take it!” Karen yelled at her brother.

  “I don’t know how! I might make it worse!” he yelled back. It was the only way to hear each other over the noise.

  “What’s wrong Mama?” Valerie tried to touch the hurt wrist.

  Karen pulled her arm back before the child made contact, “Mama got hurt!”

  “Is it bad? Do you need a Band-Aid?”

  “It’s bad! We need to go see a doctor!” Karen used her other hand to cradle the hurt one so it would not move.

  “We can’t go to the doctor! The hospitals are overrun!”

  The next intersection was blocked by a dozen crashed vehicles and surrounded by the infected. The dead ran as fast as they could toward the truck. He couldn’t maneuver around them. He could only keep the pedal down and hope that the radiator held. Body after body crashed hard into the front end of the truck. Blood cascaded up onto the windshield blinding them until Troy turned on his wipers.

  Karen covered the girl’s eyes with her good arm. Disfigured faces cracked into the glass and torsos were sucked under the front wheels. They mowed down twenty of them before they got to the intersection.

  The pile up at the intersection left only one narrow path for them to escape. It forced Troy to take a turn onto a major street that ran east and west through Vancouver. The section of road ahead had a median covered with beautiful plants and well-trimmed trees. It was one of the busiest stretches in the city of Vancouver.

  Right now it was in absolute chaos.

  Crashed cars, dead bodies, buildings on fire and growing packs of infected swarmed the living. Karen’s eyes fluttered from the constant assault on her senses. She coughed up a few dry heaves. Her empty stomach begged to wretch up more puke.

  They drove another block when the back wheel started to vibrate and jump up and down. The noise hit a crescendo and the wheel fell off. The wheel was left in the center of the street. The axle grinded along the road and the truck slowed to five miles an hour.

  “We have to get out!” Troy’s voice was filled with dread.

  “What? We can’t!” Karen snapped back. How could he even suggest it? The thought of trying to make it with a child in her arms was unthinkable. Pile on top of that an injured wrist and it made it an impossible journey.

  “We can run faster than this Karen!”

  “Keep going! I can’t carry Robin with my hand like this!”

  A bus straddled the street ahead. Windows were smashed out and the engine block was on fire. It blocked the whole eastbound lane. Troy angled the truck toward the median. He tried to punch it but the truck was dying a quick death. The front tires climbed up onto the ledge and dug into the bark dust, but no matter how hard he pressed down onto the gas the axle could not make the jump. They slowly crawled down the center of the boulevard until they crashed into the back end of a bus. The front tires fought and dug into the dirt, but it could not gain enough traction t
o pull itself up and around the dead bus.

  “FUCK!” Troy shook the steering wheel.

  “Bad word.” Robin updated.

  “We can’t get out here!” Karen was losing it.

  “We have to!” Troy picked up his shotgun.

  Through the black tinted goo and new blood on the windows Karen surveyed the street. She spotted a beacon of hope. East Vancouver Police Station was written in large black letters across the front of the building. In Karen’s eyes it looked like a beautiful palace of pure white. In reality it looked like every other building in Vancouver. There was nothing really special about it. The main doors were two hundred feet back from the street and tucked around a corner. The whole building sat at a forty-five degree angle in relation to the boulevard.

  Glass windows stood floor to ceiling around the entry. Given the level of chaos that was only a block away from this building, Karen assumed the doors would have been littered with dead bodies. The grounds were clear. No infected in sight. It was their best and only bet.

  “Run for the station,” Karen said as she got Botchy back into her bag.

  Troy opened his door and slid out, his weapon at the ready as he double-checked his surroundings. “Valerie, come on.” His broad shoulders waited at the open door. She popped her seatbelt, crawled across the driver’s seat and climbed up onto his back.

  Karen managed to unlock her belt and pop open her door. Every move she made was agony. She got to her feet and reached out for Robin with her good arm. The little monkey climbed up into her Mama’s only working appendage. Karen screamed out in pain as she stood upright.

  “You okay?” Robin felt responsible for her Mama’s pain.

  She kept the bad wrist tucked up tight against her body, “It wasn’t you baby.” Karen jogged around the back of the truck and joined her brother. Troy had Valerie set and was ready to roll. They got on the move as soon as Karen rounded the end of the truck. She did her best to stay with him as they crossed the street and made for the station’s front door.

  Karen gave birth naturally to the girls, no drugs and no pain relief of any kind. Their births were beautiful, yet hardcore and painful. The human body does an amazing thing after it gives birth. It gives you a wonderful euphoric high that helps you forget the fact that nearly seven pounds of baby just squeezed itself out of your crotch. There was no high coming from her wrist. No feeling of accomplishing something amazing or primal.

  Only pain.

  A mountain of pain stacked on top of another mountain of pain. Sweat had started to accumulate all over her body.

  When was the shock going to set in and dull some of the pissed off nerves in this wrist?

  They stepped off the street and onto the sidewalk. A thigh high chain-link fence separated the sidewalk from an area covered in shrubs that led to the front door.

  Troy crossed over it easily, paused and braced his sister as she stepped over the obstacle. They ignored the paved path and ran across the decorative, bark dust covered, garden of shrubs and short trees. The plant’s branches and leaves dragged across their calves. Their heavy feet kicked the sun bleached little chunks of wood.

  Over Karen’s heavy breath she could hear the sound of the three flags flapping in the wind. The United States flag clung to an aluminum pole twenty feet in the air above them. The primary red and blue colors popped brightly against the white in the spring sun. On two shorter poles were two more flags that waved proudly. A dark green one with old George’s head sitting in the dead center of it for the State of Washington. The last bit of colored canvas was for the Vancouver Police department.

  She focused on the sounds they made and tried to ignore the pounding headache that accompanied the outrageous pain in her wrist.

  On the same property next to the main building was a playground Karen had brought the girls to many times over the last few years.

  Valerie spied the play equipment, “Mama! Look! Can we play?!”

  Kids. She had already forgotten that their lives were in danger. Karen was completely unable to form a sentence and respond. All of the power in her brain had been diverted to fight through the pain and keep basic life support functioning. She had less than a hundred yards to go and it felt like she was about to pass out.

  Troy kept a fast pace and his shotgun was pulled tight into his shoulder, ready to strike down anything that moved and was not human. Every ten seconds he would look back to check on his baby sister. Karen looked like she was drifting into another dimension her face was so wracked with pain.

  Troy rounded the corner and faced the first set of double doors that led into the building. It was clear. He pulled open the door and let Karen in first. The blast of AC felt like a miracle sent down from heaven. It was so cold against Karen’s sweat covered skin. She had to wait for Troy in a little three-foot by ten-foot room made almost completely of glass. Troy pulled the slow moving exterior door shut until it clicked.

  Karen’s eyes had stayed focused on the ground ever since she left the truck. It was a survival mechanism that she was not even aware of. Her primal mind had taken over and it knew that if she tripped over a shrub or rock that there was no stopping her fall and she, or her child, would be seriously injured. Her eyes had remained down even as she entered the first set of doors into the station. Troy opened the last set of doors that let them enter the police station. Karen felt a huge sense of relief as she crossed the threshold.

  She did it.

  She made it through all that pain and now she was safe. The police would protect her and her girls.

  “We need help! Please, someone help us!” Her voice echoed back to her. Karen looked around the front lobby for the first time. It was completely empty.

  What the shit?

  No officers. No help. Just a large, empty, sterile room that looked more like the waiting area of a dentist office than the police station she was expecting. A bloody skull cracked hard against the outside window across the lobby. The double pane glass would hopefully keep them safe. For now.

  Come on universe! Stop fucking with us!

  Chapter 16

  The color scheme of the Police Department was a soft sky blue. The walls had old photos of officers spanning the decades. A bronzed statue of a beautiful German Shepherd sat on the far wall. A plaque hung below the dog’s chest and spoke of its brave K-9 work from the years 1997 to 2006. The dog’s name was Johnnie.

  Across from the statue was a bullet proof glass window that might have led to a call center, but a steel roll-down door was pulled shut just on the other side of the glass. Karen could not see any farther than the steel door.

  Pamphlets littered the counter in front of the glass window. They told of the dangers that might befall the citizens of Vancouver if they were not diligent against crime. An old picture of McGruff the Crime Dog was telling kids to help take a bite out of crime. It hung on the wall next to the front door. It looked out of place and out of date. Not too far from the poster of McGruff was a computer terminal that was designed to be used by people that needed to report law breaking. A laminated piece of paper was taped to it. The words “Out of Order” were printed in black.

  Karen and Troy’s dead buddy on the other side of the glass had a few friends join in on the fun. They crept around the building, stumbling over the short plants, but making their way slowly to the front door.

  The two thousand square foot room’s only furniture was made up of four sky blue low-backed recliners that faced each other in a circle. Plus there were four standard sized, darker blue, waiting room chairs that sat by the wall next to the glassed off front desk.

  Karen spotted the legs on the waiting room chairs. Each leg was a black metal rod, independent of each other. She looked back at the doors behind her.

  The doors had waist high metal handles that ran horizontally across them.

  “Troy, use the chair to lock the doors,” she said as she headed over to the seats and set Robin down in one of the extras.

  Troy figured ou
t what she was talking about and dropped Valerie off next to her sister. He muscled up the chair and raced it back to the doors. The back legs slid perfectly down into the handles. He pushed on the doors and they only opened an inch before the chairs rigid frame stopped it.

  “It’s solid.” Troy stepped away from the door and began to case the room for anything that could help them better block the doors.

  Karen had taken a seat next to her girls. She kept her eyes closed. Her mind begged to drift anywhere but here. In Troy’s walk around the room he found a hallway that led to a set of public restrooms. A door to an office that had the words “Vancouver Permit Office” stenciled into the glass. He pulled on it, but it was locked. Didn’t need to pull a permit anyway.

  Past the bathrooms there was only one other metal door. It was solid black and eight feet tall with no window. Another laminated sign was sloppily taped to it. This door was for “Authorized Personnel Only”, according to the taped up paper.

  “Mama, do you need to cry?” Valerie stared at her Mama with a deep concern.

  “Yes baby. Mama wants to cry, but it won’t help.” Karen lowered the timber of her voice to power through the sentence.

  “Doctor needs to give you medicine?” Her little eyes darted around the room looking at the dog statue, then to the infected sliding along the window and back to her Mama.

  “Mama, dog.” Robin pointed.

  “Yep baby, a dog. I do need medicine, but what Mama really needs is for you two to be quiet.”

  “Why?” Valerie asked. Karen couldn’t answer any more questions. She looked around for her brother.

  Troy hammered his fist into the black door, “Open up! We need help!” he hit it a few more times.

  Nothing.

  “There’s a door, but its solid metal!” He called to his sister.