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

by Zuko, Joseph

  The Charger roared across backyards, parks and abandoned lots to avoid the other fleeing vehicles. They finally got to some clear side streets and skirted around the edge of Vancouver. One of the intersections was so clogged with infected humans it forced them further east out of Vancouver and into the town of Camas.

  Botchy scratched at the door on her bag. Karen pulled open the Velcro door and let the little half blind dog’s head out.

  “Botchy,” Robin said as she pointed down at the little fuzzy head.

  “Botchy?” Leon asked with a smile on his lips.

  “Her name is Paris, but Robin started calling her Botchy a year ago.” Karen let the old lap dog lick at her fingers.

  “Cute.” Leon reached over and gave Botchy a little scratch behind the ears.

  They blasted down a road that looked like the kind of road you would take on a lazy Sunday afternoon drive. More farms and forests than urban sprawl and it only had the occasional housing development.

  Karen spotted an enchanting white house and beautiful red barn on a small dairy farm. It looked completely untouched by the infected disease that was terrorizing their world.

  We should find a farm to live on.

  Karen’s heart lifted slightly after the thought occurred to her.

  Fresh food and the ability to see the infected coming from a long ways off would be amazing. If we could find a place way outside of town it would feel so much safer.

  Even out here on the edge of town Karen could feel the shift from constant doom to a slightly better feeling of only intermittent doom. The thought faded as reality set in.

  Who the hell knows how to raise livestock and plant vegetables?

  The lighter populace and fewer intersections made for a quicker trip, even with the detour into Camas. They cruised down a little traveled street that took them out of Camas and back into Vancouver. It was a straight a shot to Penny’s house now. They sped down the hill and back into the city. A dozen black pillars of smoke rose above their town turned the day into night.

  Troy spoke softly, “Where are the locusts? I thought they were the first sign of the end times?”

  Karen couldn’t tell if Troy was trying to lighten the mood with dark humor or he honestly thought this was the end. She didn’t have time to dwell on it. Her attention was grabbed by a small group of people firing automatic rifles into a horse that lay across the street fifty yards in front of them. They finally landed a kill shot and a majestic creature dropped dead.

  Leon slowed to maneuver past the group. Curiosity got the better of him, “Why did you gun down the horse?” he asked as they passed the people reloading their guns in the middle of the street.

  “Animals can get it too!” A woman answered. Her eyes were filled with tears. Her hands stained red. Karen watched in her side mirror as the group ran off the road and towards the woods. They disappeared into the trees.

  Steam rose off the fresh kill. Its head was caved in. Brains spilled out onto the street.

  What a waste.

  It was only horsemeat but it was still meat and Karen felt the empty pit in her stomach. She realized that the only thing she had eaten in the last three hours was sitting on the floorboard of Troy’s truck. It was time for lunch again.

  Penny lived on the east side of Vancouver. The back of her house was nestled up against a little stretch of forest and on the other side of the woods was a small shopping center. They had a few corporate restaurants and one that was locally owned, a salon, two Starbucks and a QFC.

  Leon pulled into Penny’s neighborhood. Windows and doors were busted out of some of the homes. Blood was smeared like sloppy paint on the doorknobs and along the walls. Through Leon’s open window they could hear the chorus of human suffering.

  Karen couldn’t believe how quickly the infection had already spread. She had hoped that this little corner of Vancouver would still have been untouched by the infected.

  A little luck was too much to ask for?

  Small groups of the infected were forming around the houses with the most damage and the Dodge’s Hemi was alerting all of the recently turned humans to their presence. Leon pulled his axe over into his lap. Troy reset himself in the back seat so he was ready to charge out the door the second Leon clicked it open.

  Karen tried to block out Robin’s view of the destruction. She used her hand and the cars headrest to corner the child and protect her from the intense images. They rolled slowly towards Penny’s house at the back of the development. Karen counted all of the houses with busted doors or new bloody paint jobs on the exterior. She stopped counting the busted up houses when she hit fifty. It meant there was a possible hundred or more infected monsters in this neighborhood.

  Shit balls!

  And fuck a duck!

  This wasn’t any safer than the apartment. If they fired off every round of ammo they had at the infected it would only put a dent in the problem. Karen plotted and schemed. There would be no rest or safe feeling, knowing that an army of dead people could bust down the door and eat you in the middle of the night. There was only one option that she could conceive. They needed to clear out these streets and there was only one tool big enough for the job. She knew it was a risky plan, but her options were limited. Karen leaned over to the control console and found a switch labeled sirens and she flipped it. The cruiser spewed its high-pitched wail.

  “What are you doing?” Troy pulled himself closer to the cage that separated them.

  “We need to clear this neighborhood out.”

  Leon looked over and locked eyes with Karen. He read her intent in a second.

  “No. We can’t. I just got her. There has to be another way!” He gave her the most sincere puppy dog eyes he could muster.

  “You got a better plan?” She was ready to hear any other ideas. The two men thought about it and they couldn’t come up with a better one. The sirens called to the infected. Beckoning them to come and play. They stumbled out of their homes and crawled from their cars. Leon made another loop around the neighborhood. He kept the Charger at a smooth fifteen miles an hour. He honked his horn and Karen yelled from her cracked open window. At this speed it allowed the infected to follow, but never catch up to them. In a short time they had a marching army of dead people chasing after them. They totaled a hundred lost souls.

  “Make another lap.” Karen watched from her side mirror as the infected monsters struggled to keep pace with the cruiser. “I want to make sure we got them all before we get to Mama’s.”

  Leon made a left turn and headed back around the main loop of the development. A few more stragglers joined the ranks of Karen’s sad block party and it seemed like they had the majority of them following the Charger.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough.” Karen rolled up her window.

  Leon moved the medical bag over to his left shoulder and used it to block out his open window. It only covered eighty percent of the opening, but it was better than nothing. He mashed the gas pedal and the Charger leapt forward. He put a block between them and the newly formed horde. He crushed the brakes and skidded to a stop.

  “Here we go!” Leon turned his body so he could look out the rear window. He dropped the car into reverse and punched the gas. The tires smoked and screamed as they sped backwards. Leon kept his eyes focused on the leader of the dead. She was a young fit woman, around 30 years old. Her black yoga pants were torn and covered in blood. The once white athletic sports top had been turned dark red with the blood of her victims. Her strong thick quads flexed with every step. The muscles in her thighs made it clear why she was the front-runner of this ghastly crew.

  Karen wanted to scream stop, but it was too late.

  What was I thinking?

  Children are in the car.

  The only plan she could come up with was to use a car to mow down a hundred dead people.

  What a bad idea.

  The second before the first impact Karen closed her eyes. She wished she could close her ears too. The so
und of the bones crunching under the four thousand pound muscle car was absolutely disgusting. Skulls bounced off the rear window and trunk. The dead bodies were sucked under and chewed up by the powerful rear wheels. The back window was completely covered with gore shortly after the first hit.

  Leon was driving blind.

  Body parts flew over the roof and crashed into the mounted light on the top of the Charger. Blood trickled down the windshield and out onto the hood. The metal trunk bent and folded under the pressure of the dead bodies. The car began to slow. The rear window cracked. Troy ducked down behind the back seat. Dead bodies crashed along the sides of the cruiser and knocked off both side mirrors.

  It worked!

  Karen felt a lot better about her idea to use the Charger as a wrecking ball.

  Some slop sprayed in over the medical bag and splashed across Leon’s new sunglasses. He quickly rubbed the sleeve of his jacket over his face and cleaned off the nasty gunk. He had the Hemi redlining, but they were still slowing down. There were just too many infected and they were no longer hitting them fast enough to destroy the bodies.

  Leon tapped the brakes and the car slid on the hundreds of gallons of human remains in the street. The Dodge’s performance transmission allowed him to put it right back into drive without skipping a beat. The back of the car fishtailed down the road. The tires were so slick with fluids they didn’t smoke.

  Karen opened her eyes when she felt the change in direction. The cruiser’s rear and side windows were coated in black. It made it feel like it was nighttime inside the Dodge.

  “I can’t tell how many are left!” Leon called out as he cranked the windshield washers to full blast. The wipers whipped back and forth trying to clear the thick fluids.

  “Mama! Hand!” Robin pointed over Karen’s shoulders at the hood of the car. Karen’s eyes followed the path of her finger until they found what her child had pointed at. A gnarled up severed hand and most of a forearm lay out on the hood in front of her. It was missing a few fingers and at the angle she was looking at it the hand appeared to be giving her the bird.

  Fuck you too buddy!

  “Don’t look!” Karen tried again to block the nasty view. They raced down the street for a few blocks then Leon pulled the emergency brake and whipped the car around one hundred and eighty degrees.

  Less than fifty infected monsters remained upright and moving down the street after them. Karen could see Penny’s house down the block. The lights were out and it looked like no one was home.

  Good, she’s safe in a closet or back bedroom.

  We’re almost home.

  “Let’s try that one more time.” Leon hung a hard right and raced down the block. He popped his head out the open window to line up his attack. Once he got the rear bumper centered on the horde he punched it again. There was no way to see out the back windows anymore. No way to know when the first hit would happen.

  Karen closed her eyes again and began to hum to herself. It was like white noise inside her head. The back of the Charger hit its first infected and kept going.

  It will be over soon.

  Then we will be safe.

  It sounded like the trunk had caved in. The rear window also took a couple heavy hits from some big infected noggins, but it held. When they were three quarters of the way through the horde they hit something big. It was a slow moving monster with a ravenous appetite. The Charger came to a sudden stop and the back of the car bounced into the air. Troy’s head crashed against the metal cage, knocking him out cold. Valerie began to scream at the top of her lungs. The car touched back down and the rear axle landed on the rotund body with a loud crunch. The wheels hovered an inch from the ground.

  They were stuck.

  The wheels spun in the air. Karen could hear the sounds of dead hands banging along the side of the Charger even over the roar of the Hemi, but what she couldn’t hear was the sound of her phone ringing in her pocket.

  Chapter 20

  The cabin of the Dodge filled with screams as infected hands pushed past the medical bag. Leon tried to maneuver the bag to block the encroaching claws but there were too many hands and not enough bag to keep them all out. Fingertips scraped at the window next to Karen’s face. The window was so blacked out with blood she couldn’t tell how many of them were still out there.

  “Troy!” Karen looked back at her brother. He was laid out cold on his chest with Valerie still strapped to his back. Blood trickled from under his baseball cap. Valerie’s tears dripped off her cheeks and onto the back of her uncle’s neck.

  An infected arm pushed past the medical bag. Its nasty hand reached toward Leon’s face. The dirty broken fingers dragged across the mirrored finish of his sunglasses. Leon pushed against the infected arm and he lost his grip on the medical bag. The infected ripped the bag out of Leon’s hands and pulled it clear of the car.

  The tapping fingers next to Karen’s face had become more aggressive and the infected beasts were throwing their fists and elbows at the glass. Leon quickly replaced the bag with his axe. He smashed the blunt head of the weapon into the asshole’s face that stole the bag. It knocked the infected to the ground but it was quickly replaced by another hungry mouth. Karen couldn’t get a clear shot. Leon’s head kept bobbing back and forth in front of the open window. He slammed his foot into the gas pedal over and over but the tires were still an inch off the ground.

  Leon hammered the axe into the faces of the infected, but he couldn’t land a kill shot. Karen’s window spider webbed. She had to make a decision fast, but her option was limited to one. Get out and run!

  How did it go so bad so fast?

  The next hit at her window busted it wide open. Shards of glass rained down on her. She popped off a round at the first thing that moved outside her window. The screams of her children and the gunshot all piled on top of each other caused Karen to go deaf. Everything sounded like she had her head under water.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Karen gunned down another two infected creatures at her window. Leon’s axe disappeared, ripped from his hands and tossed to the ground by an infected man that looked like it had just taken an acid bath. The skin on its face hung like melted cheese. Leon kicked open his door and knocked the man to the ground. In a flash Leon was up and out the door.

  “I’m sorry!” was all he said to Karen as he sprinted away from the car. It didn’t register with Karen what Leon had done until he was half a block away and still moving.

  He left us!

  Motherfucker!

  Three monsters chased after Leon. He rounded the corner of a house and was gone.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  Karen zapped another two.

  “TROY!” she screamed over the sound of her crying children. A body pulled its way through the driver’s side door. Karen fired at the infected until her gun slide locked. Blood splattered the inside of the car and its body slumped over the center console. Another set of infected hands reached into her window.

  Botchy yelped in pain.

  The dog bag was yanked up and out her window. Karen’s bad hand caught the strap and held it tight. Extreme pain shot up her wrist and forearm like a bolt of lightning. Botchy cried for help inside the bag. Karen strained with all of her might. She tried desperately to get her beloved pup back into the car. The infected man pulled and pulled.

  Not Botchy! Please no!

  Karen cried out a guttural scream. Her wrist couldn’t take anymore. Her grip was about to give. This dog was her baby. Botchy had never hurt a soul. She loved everyone and was absolutely adorable. Her only job was to look cute. The tears gushing out of Karen’s eyes stung and blurred her vision. She was completely losing her mind. And just like that the bag was gone.

  I have to save her!

  Karen tried to open her door but it was jammed shut by the stack of dead bodies outside her window. Botchy’s cries climbed to crescendo and then she went silent. Karen unfastened her seatbelt and climbed over the dead body that lay on the center
console.

  I’ve got to save her!

  Karen fought her way over the slimy, sticky mess, worked herself out the door and to her feet on the driver’s side of the Dodge. She quickly switched out the empty magazine for the full one in her back pocket. Karen’s tears caused her eyesight to blur. She tried to wipe them clear, but it was impossible. Her ears rung and they felt like they had mud in them. The pain in her wrist felt like it was radiating everywhere in her body. Karen’s brain had not fully wrapped around what had exactly happened.

  Time had shifted for her.

  It could have been only a few seconds or an hour since the bag was pulled from her hand.

  I’ve got to save her!

  Less than twenty infected remained in the street. The small horde was fighting over the dog bag. Karen stepped around the backend of the Charger. The trunk door had been crushed and sunk deep into the back of the car. It was overflowing with body parts and human soup. She wiped at her eyes again and some of her sight returned. The pack of infected had their backs to her. The gun was up and in a few seconds she emptied the magazine into the skulls of the infected. Ten monsters dropped dead and Karen could see what remained of Botchy.

  Her knees wanted to buckle.

  “Mama! Botchy!” Robin screamed as she pointed over her Mama’s shoulder. Karen almost blacked out. The last of the infected started to chase her. Her gun was empty and she was out of full magazines. Troy’s shotgun was in the backseat of the cruiser. Karen tucked her gun back into its holster. She ripped the rear door open. Valerie was hysterical and calling for her Mama. She was trying to work her way out of the wrap, but she didn’t have the strength.

  Karen grabbed the shotgun on the floorboard, “You’re gonna be okay!” She didn’t have time to properly reassure her baby girl before she could feel an infected pulling at Robin in her wrap.

  Karen spun and put the butt of the shotgun into the face of the infected pulling at Robin. The impact sent the monster to its back. Karen fired the gun at point blank range and eviscerated its infected face. The recoil of the shotgun was excruciating. The gun almost flew out of Karen’s weakened right hand. Her grip on the front stock saved the gun from falling to the ground. Karen cycled through the next five shots and it cut the ranks of the dead in half. Only four monsters remained, but she was tapped out of ammo.