The Infected

by Gregg Cocking

  But we weren’t on the road for long until disaster struck. Lourens was behind the wheel when it happened, chatting quietly to Corne as we headed out again on our journey towards Bloemfontein. It was getting late – probably just after 4pm – and we would have to soon decide where we were going to spend the night. Sammie, that was the worst part of the day for me… sometimes we would pull off the road and find a safe, sheltered place, perhaps behind a clump of trees out of sight or over a small hill. Other times, if we were in a built up area and we were sure that there were none of those things running around, we would basically use the bus as a barricade, pulling it up as close to the door of the petrol station or shop or house or whatever place we were staying in (we didn’t worry about scratching or damaging the side of the bus by the way!). And then we would have a quick getaway straight into the bus if anything happened or our nightspotters saw anything. I never slept well though Sammie. Ever.

  Just as I got up to go and speak to Corne and Lourens about our plans for the night, the bus lurched violently to the left, and my first thought was, “Oh no, another pile up.” I grabbed onto the nearest chair as Lourens straightened the bus, but was soon off my feet again as we swayed again, this time to the right. I covered my face, especially the cut above my eye (which we had cleaned and bandaged from our dwindling first aid kit) but came down hard on my side, whacking my ribs on the metal ‘leg’ thing of the bus chair. I was instantly winded and was bashed and dragged around as the bus weaved back and forth for what seemed like ages. The bandage came down and covered my eyes, and as I was thrown helplessly along the slippery floor of the bus, curled as tightly into a ball as I could get, I faintly remember hearing the children screaming. In the chaos I got to thinking of how damn good they had been through all of this – if this whole thing had happened while I was their age I doubt I would have been as well behaved as they had been. Heck, they were so good and well behaved that half of the time I even forgot that they were there.

  After what seemed like an age the bus came to a stop, and a few seconds later, so did I. I uncoiled and could feel the pain flaring up through most parts of my body – I had been bashed around badly Sam, and even now I still have bruises, admittedly in that going away, greeney, yellowy, purpley phase, over my arms, thighs, back, neck and sides. I sat up groggily and tried to take stock of what was going on. I lifted the bandage to see that I was now facing the back of the bus and that my cut was bleeding again.

  I stood up and flinched at the pain in my side – I thought then, and still think now, that I had broken a rib or two on my left side. There was stuff everywhere – whatever we had packed nicely at the back of the bus – clothes, food, magazines – was now littered everywhere. I scanned the bus and saw Sandra and the kids up front and to my right – I went over as quickly as I could. “Are you all okay?” I asked. “Just,” said Sandra as she attended to Luke and Paige – Paige had somehow managed to get herself caught up in a jersey and seemed to be battling to breathe (I found out later that she was busy putting her jersey on when this happened and she had almost strangled herself whilst being flung around). I saw that they were okay so headed on further to the front of the bus, slipping on a You magazine as I strode forward through the pain.

  I looked out the large front window of the bus, now speckled with hundreds of small dead insects, and saw nothing but a peaceful, open country road. No things attacking people as I had expected. No crashed cars, no fires.

  “Are you alright Lily?” Lourens asked. “Sorry about that,” he continued without waiting to hear my answer. “Yeah, a bit sore and battered, but okay. What happened? Did you lose control?” “Come see,” he said as he picked up one of the rifles from the floor and pulled the lever that opened the door. Lourens, Corne and myself stepped out into the heat – even late afternoon in winter in Mpumalanga can take your breath away due to the dry nature of the heat. We scanned the surroundings as we went around to the front of the bus. “Shit, its burst,” said Corne as we looked at the front left tire – it was shredded. Just what we needed. At least we knew that there was a spare – we had had to lift it to get at the blankets on that first night. “Guys…” a bad word, especially in this situation. Especially when said so downcast as it was. Lourens was pointing at the right tire. It too was shredded into what looked like a bad dress that Lady Gaga would wear. “I felt the first one go, so I tried to correct the steering – that’s probably when this one went too.” Sammie, I felt like crying. I feel like crying too often these days…

  We stood looking at the tires for a few minutes and were eventually joined by Sandra, Paige and Luke. Corne, who had gone off with the rifle, came back over the closest rise in the road and said, “I see a house a few hundred metres off the road. Let’s move the bus to the side of the road and take what we need and what we can down there before it gets dark.” So we did that – we took food, clothes and blankets and walked down to the house – an empty little farm house, unused for a few years it seemed from the spider webs in every corner, but it would do for a nights rest or until we decided what to do next. After we were settled in – which makes it sound like we were checking into a hotel, which we definitely were not – we all went back up to the bus. It took us around half an hour but we managed to change the right tire with the spare (you should have seen the size of the jack Sammie!), and, with Luke steering, we managed to push that seriously heavy thing to the side of the road. Just before we went back to the house, I painted a quick message on the bus for two reasons – one, any passersby might have helped themselves to whatever was in the bus if they thought it was abandoned (there seems to be a sort of ‘survivors code’ amongst everyone who is not one of them) and maybe they would be able to help us. I had taken some paint from a trashed art supplies shop outside of Hoedspruit, so wrote: GOT A FLAT – IN HOUSE ON LEFT – CAN U HELP?

  That night it was very quiet – probably worse for sleeping – and I struggled to get a decent rest again. There was no action during the night – no things and no survivor traffic, so Corne and Lourens decided to go for a scout around of the area in the morning. I wanted to go with, just to help, but to be honest, I was pleased when they said that someone needed to stay behind and make sure that Sandra and the kids were safe. So we saw them off just after 7am and settled down to a day of relaxation. The kids played some games which they had scrounged from somewhere or other, and Sandra and I lay in the sun on the grass and chatted – the first time we had really done so since the paths of our lives were fatefully thrown together.

  As we lay on the grass and relaxed, probably for the first time since this all happened (don’t worry, I still had a rifle resting by my bruised and battered side), we talked about how you and I had met, our plans for the future and all about you. Sandra then told me how her and Lourens had met – he was a teacher at a high school and she was the principal’s PA. He lived on the school’s premises with his fiancé, but Sandra knew from the first day that she met him that they were destined to be together. She explained how it was never her intention to “be the bitch” and to steal another woman’s man, but “when love has its way with you, there is not much you can do.”

  They flirted for months and became very good friends, and when it started to get serious Lourens broke off the engagement with his fiancé. “She hated me, probably still does,” she said as she looked up at the clouds and played with a few strands of her hair, “But look what we have got.” She raised her head and glanced lovingly at Paige and Luke who were laughing and smiling (for the first time since I saw them climb onto the landrover for that fateful game drive) as they climbed up and down a tree a safe distance of three or four metres away from us. “Those two would never have been here if we hadn’t have gotten together.” She paused and I heard her crying. I looked away. “This wasn’t supposed to happen… they were supposed to grow up and be happy… Be healthy, well adjusted human beings. Not running for their lives from fucking… fucking zombies or whatever they are!” Paige and Luke stopped pl
aying and looked down at us as their mother’s voice got higher and broke. I waved them back to the tree and took Sandra’s hand. “This isn’t how it ends – we can get through this and will look back on it one day when they broadcast a documentary about it on National Geographic and laugh. You will be fine and they will be fine.” I almost, almost convinced myself too.

  Lourens and Corne arrived back sweating in the low winter sun at around 2:30pm – the night had been cold but the day was beautiful. There was both good news and bad – knowing you Sammie, you would want the good news first! They had a tire with them! That was the first thing that Paige saw as they pushed it down the road in front of them – it was taken from a crashed truck that they had found about a kilometre and a half down the road. The front carriage was gutted from a fire, as was the tree that it had crashed into, but it did have some salvageable tires – they are slightly bigger than the ones the bus uses, maybe just a size or two, but it would definitely fit and we would grab a ‘spare’ from there too when we got back out on the road again.

  But then there was the bad news Sammie. And it wasn’t good.

  Lourens and Corne had done a full circular sweep of the area during their scouting mission, looking for possible ways out of town, but, as we were located in a sort of valley, and they could see for miles around, the news was kind of grim. Well, that’s an understatement… they were everywhere. The things that is. If we didn’t know better, we would think that they had been surrounding us, but although I did ask Corne about this – in private as I didn’t want to scare my new best friend Sandra and the kids – he was certain, almost, that they had no idea that we were taking shelter in the valley. “We saw hundreds, maybe thousands of them in the area – I have no fucking idea where they are all from – but none of them saw us. And I am certain of that,” he assured me as we rejoined the group.

  We decided to, although we were all pretty tired (I don’t know why I was as I had been doing nothing all day), to change the tire while it was still light and head out in the morning. We would decide in the morning the best way to go – Sandra suggested heading back the way that we had come, but although it made some sense to us, we couldn’t stomach the thought of retracing our steps. So we headed to the bus, the kids pushing the tire, quietly, and the adults behind with the guns. As the bus was on a rise, we didn’t want to take any chances.

  We managed, after quite a struggle, to get the tire on, and all greasy and dirty, freewheeled the bus further down the road, closer to the farm house. We were all dirty, even the kids, as we made our way back to our shelter for the night in the gloom of an early winter’s evening dusk, eating fresh apples which Lourens and Corne had picked from a tree during their scouting mission. The conversation turned to what we would eat if we could have had anything in the world – from our past life, of course. Sammie, I am sure that you would have guessed anyways, but my input to the conversation was a Meat Supreme Pizza from Roman’s Pizza. With a thick base, of course. Lourens said a beef sosatie with green and red peppers, Luke a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Paige a Tempo chocolate bar and Sandra would have loved grilled calamari sprinkled with squeezed lemon. As you know, I am not a seafood lover at all, but even that sounded appealing to me then! Corne started telling us about his extravagant wish list – “I would have a starter of crumbed mushrooms in a creamy garlic sauce, followed by a medium rare piece of rump, washed down by an ice cold Hansa draught,” he said, and I swore I could see some drool escaping from his mouth as he pushed open the door to the farm house. “Then, after some sorbet…” he broke off as he entered the dark house and we followed, and I thought it was just because he was absorbed in his culinary fantasy. The silence was deafening. Except it wasn’t silent. I could hear a faint grunting.

  My world started spinning around for the second time in two days. The silence was shattered by five gunshots from point blank range and the darkness was illuminated each time by a blinding muzzle flash. The grunts got louder, angrier, then disappeared altogether. I reached out in the darkness, all the more darker now thanks to the sudden blinding light from the firing rifles. I grabbed something, someone. It screamed so I knew it was Sandra. I led her back towards the door, only discernible due to the dim starlight from the early evening sky. I tripped over something solid but fleshy, but managed to keep my balance by almost pulling Sandra down, who in turn almost pulled down Luke and Paige who she was clinging to with all her might. Corne tried his Zippo. The first spark, before the flame caught, highlighted only a few splashes of blood. The second, when the farmhouse was illuminated by a small, red hot flame, was enough to make me want to puke.

  I was covered in blood. I hadn’t felt it in the panic, but when the realisation hit, I could feel every single drop oozing down my body. Luke cried out and Paige threw up – or the other way around, I couldn’t be sure. “Come,” I urged. “Out. We have to get out of here.” As I pushed them through the door I glanced back again. I didn’t want to, but I guess it’s like when you drive past an accident on the freeway – you are drawn to it… There had been two of them, I couldn’t tell the sex from the faces, mainly because there wasn’t much of either of their faces left, but one of the bodies did look like it had a breast, although much of the torso was missing too. Corne was on his knees and Lourens had his arm around him. I can’t be too certain, but I am sure that he said to him, “They weren’t real people, boet. Did you hear the grunts? And if they were, they would have heard us coming and come out the house.” Something like that anyway. I needed air, but I also needed to speak to them. I stuck my head out and tried to make sure that we were alone out there, even though it was hard to be sure in the dark. I breathed in hard. I handed Sandra my gun and said to her, “Don’t worry, it’s just in case. We’ll be out now.” I turned back and headed reluctantly into the farmhouse which stank of gun powder and, well, blood, an acidic yet sweet smell. It still makes me nauseas thinking of it.

  Corne was in tears – the light thrown from the Zippo, now placed on one of the blood soaked window sills attested to this. “How did you know they were here?” I asked. Corne looked at me, his bloodshot eyes piercing in the meager light. “I smelt them,” he whined. “I… I… just fucking knew.” “Good shooting,” piped up Lourens. “Ja,” nodded a slightly more composed Corne. “The first shot was just random, but then I knew where they were and aimed at head height. We got lucky.” I nodded to myself, but then said aloud, “But for how long? If there are others as close as you said they were, I am sure the noise would have alerted them. It was terribly loud in here – my ears are still ringing – and out here, on a quiet, clear night – that sound will be heard from miles around.” Lourens suddenly looked panicked, “Girls! Luke!” he shouted. “It’s okay,” I assured him as he headed for the door, “They are out there but they have a gun. But I reckon we get out of here. Now.” They nodded and we strode purposefully towards the door and out into the cool, dark night.

  Only Sammie, it wasn’t dark at all. As my feet made the transition from the solid concrete floor of the farm house to the soft, spongy clay ground outside the front door, I was blinded, again. It was like looking directly into the sun. I couldn’t see a thing Sammie and if I had my rifle with me, I would have taken a shot at the source of light causing my disorientation. Luckily I had handed my gun to Sandra though as the lights dimmed and I could see that it was a car – more specifically a fully kitted out Touareg 4x4 which I found out later. “Are you okay?” a voice called out over the engine of the car. The door opened and a man emerged, all hair. “I was at your bus and saw your sign when I heard some gunshots. Is everything okay?” I took the lead as no one else was – maybe they too were disorientated by the events of the past few minutes. “Hi there,” I said, quite loudly to be heard over the engine, obviously modified for performance, which he refused to turn off, probably to facilitate a quick getaway if necessary. “We’re good thanks.” I couldn’t see his face but I can imagine the expression he was wearing looking at the bu
nch of us, covered in blood and dazed as we were.

  “Well actually, we have been better,” I laughed, “But we’re okay.” He climbed out of the car and come around into the light so that we could see him. He was probably in his fifties but looked like he was in his sixties. His small, thin frame was draped in khaki clothes at least two sizes too big and his long, grey hair grew from the sides of a bald patch, which consisted of a freckled, blistered head. His glasses, which sat on the tip of his nose (and which were so scratched and dirty I don’t know how he saw out of them) were tied around his neck with a piece of black leather – a second piece was attached to a hat, khaki of course, which hung and bounced over his shoulders. “Hi there. I’m Derek. That was quite a ruckus you caused there, and judging by what I have observed of those unhumans, we don’t have too much time until they figure out that we are here. Jump in and I’ll take you to your bus, then you can follow me. Hurry.” And with that he was back in his car. Before I go on, I like his description for them – unhumans. Everyone seems to have their own name or description for them – things, zombies, the infected, unhumans…

  So we did as we were told and climbed in (after collecting our stuff which was inside the farm house, still bloodied) and amazingly, even with seven of us in there, it wasn’t too squashed. Derek didn’t speak, he just surveyed the surroundings made clear by the high beams on the car. It was seriously toughened this thing, I found out later that it was based on a prototype of a cross between a Dakar rally race car and a tank! Well I made the tank bit up Sammie because I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying over the roar of the engines, but that would be the best way to describe it. It has roll cages inside, bull bars on the front and back, bulletproof, tempered glass, a CB radio (useless now, I checked and double checked) and surprisingly comfortable seating.