The Infected

by Gregg Cocking

  Sammie, it was petrifying. I was just glad to have some people with me, and such a nice family at that. On the hour long drive into Hoedspruit (there was nothing interesting happening – as you know, we are out in the middle of nowhere), Sandra began to calm down (Paige and Luke – a bit bruised but okay – fell asleep, probably out of sheer emotional and mental exhaustion) and we talked about family, our lives, what they did, what I did, and I told them about you and about us – it made the drive go by a bit quicker.

  But sorry Sammie, I’ve got to go now but I’ll finish telling you everything as soon as I can. But for now all you need to know is that I am safe and sound and although we have had some seriously close shaves with the things out there, please know that I will be okay. I love you more than you will ever know and I can’t wait to see you again. Thinking about you has kept me going most of the time… Okay, I am crying and can’t type. Love you baby. See you soon.

  Lily

  Oh. My. God.

  I am so happy that she is alive and well. I could scream, but I won’t for obvious reasons. I feel terrible that she has gone through this without me, but what could I do?

  As soon as I hear from her again I will let you know.

  Thank you!

  See ya

  Sam W

  7:47pm, July 28

  Just checking in but nothing more from Lil. Sure she will send another mail soon.

  Sleep tight

  Sam W

  11:44am, July 30

  Hi – still no word from Lil, but I am not worried. Or not too worried, should I say. I managed to last how long, two or three months without hearing from her? I am sure I’ll be able to last two or three days.

  Just a quick note on the veggie garden while I am here – I am so so so so so so so so close to eating my own homegrown food! A few more days… if I can hold on that long! The cold hasn’t been too bad lately and the days are quite warm, which I am sure is aiding the growth. Can’t wait!

  Okay, no news otherwise, but I’ll update my blog as soon as I hear anything.

  Take care

  Sam W

  12:13pm, July 30

  Typical… as soon as I say I haven’t heard anything, I get a mail from my Lil. Should have maybe posted that sooner…

  Well, without any further ado, here’s what she had to say, another seriously interesting – though long – read:

  From: Lourens Stadler

  Sent: 30 July 2011 11:56 AM

  To: Sam Ward

  Subject: Re: Hi Sam

  Hello Sammie! I told you that I would write back soon, but knowing you, you have been waiting at your computer (a new one I read!) with baited breath. Well, you can breathe out now because your girlfriend is ready to carry on with her little story!

  Here goes baby! So, by the time we made it to Hoedspruit it was pitch black and, unfortunately for us, the town was drenched in darkness too. There had been no sign of life between the camp and Hoedspruit, but as we drove into the middle of town, things suddenly changed. Drastically. It looked like a rock concert… remember when we went to go watch Razorlight at the Doors and we were in the middle of the dancefloor being carried away by the sound and it felt like we weren’t moving ourselves, it was the whole club moving? Remember that? Well, that is what it looked like was going on there, except there were thousands of people, maybe two thousand, maybe three. Maybe even four thousand? I don’t know. And then they all stopped when they saw us.

  I quickly turned the bus around (as quickly as you can turn a bus around) and headed back the way we had come, because, and I knew this as soon as I saw them, all those people there, moving like one sick, big, ugly creature, had the same look about them as the Swedes and as the bar staff…

  We decided to head back towards the camp, but to stop halfway and rest for the night – we doubted that the things could walk the plus minus fifty kilometres from Hoedspruit or from the reserve to where we planned to park for the night. I got us there in super quick time (that bus could really move and I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t have been speed trapping given what was going on) and we settled in for some dinner. Lourens had found a couple of frozen pies which we devoured in their ice cold state – it’s funny how hungry a disaster can make you, isn’t it? And we ate what I had left in the cooler box for our game drive ‘pad kos’ – some biltong, pretzels and peanuts and raisins.

  We then tried to settle down for the night (luckily the bus had a stash of blankets in its ‘hold’ for those early morning transfers) so the kids took the backseat as a makeshift bed and we took it in turns staying up on lookout in groups of two for two hours at a time – Corne with Sandra and myself with Lourens. We took the first shift to allow Sandra to absorb what had happened to her, and apart from a lone bull elephant which wandered up to the bus to investigate this strange thing in the middle of the road, it was eerily quiet. Lourens and I chatted about his life back in the city as a frontline journalist, and about his kids and his wife, and I told him all about my route to becoming a game ranger. Not once did we mention those things that had killed my fellow rangers… the things that we were looking out for in the dead of night with cold, heavy rifles perched on our laps…

  At 11pm we woke Corne and Sandra up for their shift and I found a quiet spot on the bus to try and get some sleep. It was impossible though Sammie as I played through my head over and over again what had happened that afternoon. And thought of you and how you must be.

  In our haste to get out of the camp I didn’t pack my cell phone, and although Lourens and Corne had theirs on them the batteries were both flat – the power in the camp was down so they didn’t put them on charge when they arrived, not that they would have anyway, because as you know, the area has no cell phone signal. We did talk about heading back to the camp to try and find a cell phone charger, but with the bar staff and the Swedes the way they were when we left, we decided against it. There is a cellular shop in Hoedspruit anyway, I told them, but judging by what we had seen earlier in the night I doubted that we would be able to get within a hundred metres of it.

  I must have fallen asleep eventually though, as Lourens gently woke me up at 1am for our next shift. Again it was uneventful and we sat in silence most of the time, gazing out at the sand road as it disappeared into the darkness. I kept expecting to see one of those things coming at us out of the dark with that blank expression on their face, but come 3am we were still all alone, and this time I knew that I would be able to sleep as soon as I laid my head down. And I did.

  But that was until I heard the screams. My worst nightmare must have been coming true… one of them was here, maybe in the bus or trying to get in. Sandra was going all hysterical again and Corne was peeking out the window, rifle at the ready. I glanced at my watch as I reached for the rifle – it was 4:17am. “What is it?” demanded Lourens as we congregated at the front of the bus with Luke and Paige, both wearing weary and scared expressions on their faces. “It’s one of them,” Sandra shouted while trying to whisper. “They are trying to get in!” We spread out to check the surroundings – I took the left of the bus, Corne the right, Sandra the front and Lourens the back, but none of us could see anything. Then we heard it.

  It was quiet yet it was the most frightening sound I have ever heard Sammie. It was an incessant scratching which was getting louder. More aggressive maybe. “Daddy,” whimpered Luke. “I don’t want to die here,” he said. And hearing a helpless little boy say something like that I have never felt so sad and so scared.

  The noise was coming from the back of the bus, so Corne, Lourens and I inched our way to the source of the noise, rifles at the ready, while Sandra consoled the kids as much as she could in her state. It was a horrible sound, as if the metal was being gradually worn through, meaning that they were getting closer. We got to the back of the bus and Lourens peered out the window – he glanced back at us and shrugged his shoulders just as the bus lurched backwards slightly – it wasn’t much, but at that moment it felt like we were being dr
agged a kilometre. And then I saw them.

  There were three of them, one hard at work trying to get deeper into the bottom luggage hold of the bus, and two of them egging him on with unnatural cackles. They were hyenas, Sammie. Damn, fucking hyenas… sorry for swearing baby, but man, I still get flashbacks of that horrible feeling in my heart when I thought we were being attacked by those things.

  The three of us went outside and chased them off – with a fight – and we soon found out why. The bus driver had obviously stopped off at the local butchery at Hoedspruit on the way in, as he had, well, used to have, a collection of frozen chickens in the rear luggage hold. The hyenas, amazing scavengers that they are, had managed to smell them out and were trying to get at them any way that they could. The noises that we had heard were these amazing animals trying to bite through the metal of the bus! They have insanely strong jaws those animals and I have heard stories of them biting through car exhausts to get at mice that have escaped down the pipes. A couple of chicken carcasses were definitely worth the effort for these guys, but luckily for us, we’ll have some nice food over the next couple of days after scraping together what the hyenas hadn’t yet managed to get to..

  What was left of the night was uneventful, so we headed back towards Hoedspruit in the relative safety of daylight. After what we saw in the town centre the previous night we weren’t taking anything for granted – Lourens drove, and as Corne and myself both had more experience with guns (he apparently used to be a police reservist), we sat on either side of the bus with the guns out the windows, ready and waiting.

  There was a bit more activity on the way into town in the morning than there was the night before, and Lourens had to swerve to miss people in the road, all walking in the direction of where we had been last night. We maybe passed one hundred or two hundred, but it was hard to tell as they were so spread out. Their numbers slowly increased as we got closer to town, but apart from dodging in and out of them, there was no need to use the guns – they were way too slow. When we got to the same spot where we had seen the heaving crowd last night we realised why. The smell as we turned left into Main Street was the first clue. The tattered sign which read “Fourth Annual Hoedspruit Spit-Braai Competition” was the second.

  When this thing hit, whatever the hell it is – Ground Zero in Hoedspruit was the town centre – the same place where most of its residents would have been congregated. With lots of booze. And bloody carcasses of meat. It must have been a ripe breeding ground for this thing – we think it may have been a virus – so what we saw when we drove up was an orgy of blood and violence, fuelled by liquor and this unnamed virus. It looked like it and must have felt like the centre of hell for those not yet infected. But judging by the scene that morning, there weren’t any people around lucky enough to escape.

  The morning sun was already going to work on the leftover carcasses – both bovine and human – and birds, rats and lizards where having a ball, picking up scraps wherever they could. In that brief moment when we stopped – we maybe allowed ourselves ten stationary seconds at the site – I spotted no less than seven species of predatory birds, almost a dozen large leguans and hundreds of rodents. And all those were being chased, slowly and unsuccessfully, by the hordes of people not yet alerted to our presence.

  We had seen and smelt enough, so when Lourens looked over his shoulder at me for guidance, I nodded towards the open stretch of road leading out of town.

  Okay, it’s me, Sam… I know that it is a lot to read and to take in, so I’ll give you a break and add the rest tomorrow. Thanks for your time. I’m sure Lil appreciates it too.

  Take care

  Sam W

  6:34pm, August 1

  Hi – just enjoying another beautiful African winter sunset. Absolutely stunning. I have forgotten to appreciate the simple things in life since this crap happened. Sunsets are one of those things and I am now making a point of watching the sun go down every night. With a beer of course (I’ll need to find some more soon though…)

  Okay, so here’s the second half of Lily’s email. Again, it makes for some interesting reading as I am sure you will agree.

  We drove aimlessly and pointlessly for a few minutes, the odd thing in the road forcing us to swerve occasionally. Eventually Corne voiced what I am sure we were all thinking but not saying. “So guys, what are we going to do?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the passing scenery. “Where are we going?” No one said anything for a minute or so until Lourens started slowing down and came to a standstill in the middle of the road. We scanned our surroundings thoroughly but were alone.

  Lourens left the bus in neutral but with the engine running and joined as at the seats in the front of the bus. “There is a convenience store another twenty odd minutes away,” I said. “My first recommendation would be to go past there and stock up on whatever we can get.” “Is it isolated?” enquired Corne. “Yip, pretty much. I think there is a small township a few kilometres away, but it caters mainly for tourists passing through to the game reserves.” “Great, so that’s our first port of call,” nodded Corne. “But then what?” asked Sandra. “Where can we go that’s safe? Where can we take the kids? How will we survive?” The pitch of her voiced raised an octave with each question. Lourens, tiring of his wife’s histrionics as much as the rest of us, said her name firmly and glared at her, but in a loving way if that makes any sense. It must have made sense to her because she stopped asking questions. “The best thing for us to…” started Corne before he was interrupted by a loud noise to his right. A banging on the window. A loud, frantic banging on the bus window just a metre from all of us.

  Sammie, I have heard the expression “shat myself” used it so, so many times, but I never really understood it until that moment. I felt like I was going to poo in my pants and had to ‘clench’ to stop myself from doing just that. I turned towards the source of the noise with my rifle raised and my finger already half pressed on the trigger. Ready… What I saw was a grubby face in between the flurry of grubby hands pummeling the window. My finger tightened on the trigger and I reset my aim for the point between this thing’s eyes. But then I noticed something different. This thing – I was still unable to tell whether it was male or female due to the smudged dirt which had now covered the window – had a life in its eyes that I hadn’t seen in anything other than the occupants on our bus since yesterday afternoon. This person was not one of them.

  “Stop!” I yelled over the commotion. “Don’t shoot!” “What?” cried Sandra. “Fucking kill it!” I reached out and lowered Corne’s rifle. “I don’t think it’s one of those things – look at the eyes.” Lourens and Corne leaned in closer. The banging stopped and the person took a step to the right, our left, allowing us to get a better look. Through the grime, the matted black hair and the sheer fear in the eyes, I could see that it was a stunningly beautiful woman. She was probably in her mid-thirties, was short and petite, had short black hair, which I am sure once clean would look amazing, and deep dark green eyes. She was wearing a khaki shirt and dark green cargo pants caked in mud. I noticed that there was a round circle of blood on her pants above her right knee and that her arms where covered in a host of scratches. I motioned for her to go to the front of the bus and I started making my way there. “You can’t seriously be thinking of letting that onto the bus,” screeched Sandra at me from behind. “I forbid you to!” she shouted, and if it wasn’t for the seriousness of the whole situation I probably would have laughed at that. Lourens opened his mouth to say something, but seeing me point the rifle at his wife silenced him. “I am letting her in and she is going to come with us,” I said firmly and turned towards the door. Sandra didn’t say anything else for quite a while after that.

  It turns out that the exhausted woman that I let onto our bus was Rita Coleman, a 38-year old advertising executive who was on holiday at one of the game reserves just outside Hoedspruit – Ingwelala – with her boyfriend when this happened. They were settling down for dinner when they
were attacked by the lodge staff. Her boyfriend and the three other guests didn’t make it… She had been hiking through Big Five country since then (she said that she would rather take her chances with the animals than with what she had managed to escape from at Ingwelala).

  I cleaned and dressed her leg – there was luckily a small first aid kit in the bus, a Tourist Guide Association’s necessity. She had injured her thigh on a sharp branch when trying to avoid a lone buffalo. She said that either she was fortunate to not see many animals, or she was just in such a state that she didn’t notice them. She managed to bypass Hoedspruit by going around the back of the town when she started to see more and more people in the street, and then she, and I hate to think what would have happened to her if we hadn’t stopped where we did, came across us in the bus.

  She had some water and a bit to eat before falling asleep, probably out of sheer exhaustion. I lay her down and we decided to keep moving. She mentioned that she had family in Nelspruit so we decided on the spot to head in that direction.